Horse Under Water Read Free Page B

find out how high he could lift his chin without losing sight of his class.
    ‘Seeing how this is an officers’ course some young gentlemen may feel that the due care and attention in respect of hours of commencement need not be observed. I would like to correct this impression right away. Late arrivals will not, repeat not, enter the classroom after the door is closed but will report to the Lieutenant-Commander’s office. Third door on the right down the corridor. Any questions. Right.’ There could be no questions.
    On the lapel of C.P.O. Edwards’s serge jacket was a star, a diver’s helmet, a crown of red thread, and a small C. C.P.O. Edwards was a professional diver, an expert, a ‘Clearance Diver’. He walked to the rear of the class and put large cardboard boxes on each desk. ‘Don’t you dare touch till you are told to,’ he shouted to the young paymaster lieutenant in the front row, adding, some moments after, ‘sir.’ A couple of the officers grinned at each other but I didn’t see anyone start opening a box.
    ‘Right, have-your-notebooks-ready-and-I-don’t-want-any-body-asking-for-a-pencil,’ he said, probably for the thousandth time. ‘This is your kit,check it; sign for it. I don’t want anybody asking me for a spare hood. Look after your gear and it will look after you. Lose something and come and tell me about it and you know what I shall do? Do you, sir? Do you know what I will do?’ The Chief was talking to the officer with the G-Plan bedroom.
    ‘I’ll larf, sir, that’s what I will do; larf.’ The Chief gave no sign of laughing either now or at any future time: I thought for a moment that LARF was some strange nautical verb.
    There are lots of different degrees of diving skill. The first dives are done with the divers on the end of a leash like a well-bred poodle taking a dip. At the end of three weeks we would be shallow-water divers – the lowest form of submarine life. We were training to be amateurs.
    Any member of ship’s crew could volunteer for this course and become the one to do inverted pressups on the barnacles to discover a foreign limpet of destruction. Others might stay here at Vernon to shake off the leash of authority and swim alone in the dark sea as a Free Diver; but it was the Clearance Divers who spent long professional years to learn the whole box of tricks from copper helmet to rubber flippers. C.P.O. Edwards was such a man.
    Finally we were allowed to open the big brown boxes while the C.P.O. sang the contents to us.
    ‘Combinations, blue woollen, one. That’s it, son. A blue woollen man knitted by an old maid.Frocks, white woollen, one. That’s it – I know it’s a roll-neck pullover but you sign for a Frock. I’m not responsible for Naval Nomenclature. Helmet, blue woollen, one. Keep your head warm – one of the first rules of diving. Right. Mittens, free flooding, one pair. Right. Neck ring, one. No, that’s your neck seal. A neck ring is metal.’ He made a clucking noise in the throat and walked across the room, in tacit protest at an appalling state of ignorance. ‘Right. Neck clamp, one. Metal, son, the thing that fits on your neck ring. Right. Neck seal, one. Well where did you put it? Look, he’s got it on his desk,’ then in a louder voice, ‘look after your gear, already you are mixing it all up. I’m telling you, the rating divers on the other course will pounce on you lot like a jaunty onto a Crown and Anchor game.’
    By now everyone was examining the gear like kids on Christmas morning. There were the one-piece black rubber suits, with two-way stretch and tight-fitting wrists, and the belt and the undersea knife. By now the classroom looked like a war-surplus store.
    ‘Do we have the rest of the day off, chiefie?’ someone asked.
    ‘There’s a couple of things on the agenda,’ said C.P.O. Edwards. ‘Muster at the sick bay for a medical, half an hour with the recompression chamber and a quick dip into the tank for all of