Leontyne Read Free Page B

even contained imprints of the carrots he had eaten for hislast meal. Apparently lighthouse-keepers became excellent cooks. It’s too bad that all the lighthouses are being replaced by radar beacons. Someone has yet to introduce me to the romance of electronics.
    The night of 13 April was my last night at home. The next day I was to take the noon tide to Erith where I would meet up with Ray. The
Leo
came alongside Grices Wharf in Rotherhithe, where I live, to take on final provisions, and I said farewell to Reggie. In the morning, I was given a pennant on which was embroidered a lion rampant (representing Leo), which made a proud sight fluttering in the breeze. All the people in the buildings came to give me a rousing send-off. Balloons, streamers, the lot. Captain Christopher Jones had set off from this very spot to collect the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth Sound on their historic journey. I bet he didn’t get balloons or streamers. I certainly had a lump in my throat, but the moisture in the eye could well have been due to the biting north-easterly wind. Nautical departures have a strange effect on people. The sadness of leaving is almost immediately replaced by an intense excitement that will surely end with the voyage. My mother used to tell me how interesting eye-to-eye relationships would develop on the P&O ships going to India, even before England had disappeared over the horizon. By the Eddystone Rock the pairings were almost complete.
    Through the Barrier for the last time. ‘Are you inward-or outward-bound, sir?’ the calm voice of the controller inquired. Outward-bound is what we were. Plump and fifty, I was leaving behind a life of pampering the pampered and never having to worry about the washing, never mind the washing-up. From now on, it was to be do it yourself. No more limos and lunches or gossip and gush. The 6.00 a.m. shipping forecast would replace the ‘London Last Night’ column or
Variety’s
latest roundup of box-office figures.
    *
    I decided that for our first night I would make fast on the buoy at Erith, which is a flat and desolate part of the Thames. I made a real hash of it as I thought that the tide had turned and was coming in, but to my surprise it was still going out (there is a back eddy just there as every waterman knows!). The result was that I shot past the buoy and had to make a ponderous turn to come in again in the right direction. Next morning, early, I took the dinghy and picked up Ray as arranged, from the bottom of the causeway that stretches out over the mudflats at Erith.
    We set off for Gravesend, so called because after Gravesend all bodies were buried at sea. Some say that this was where the bodies from the Great Plague of London were buried but, logistically, that seems too fanciful to me. The tide soon started to run strongly against us and my confidence in the power of our excellent Gardner engine was a mite diminished. We pushed our way on through the stream and finally tied up on a buoy outside Custom House Pier, amongst the big seagoing tugs. Opposite, on Tilbury Pier, lay the new P&O palace, the
Sovereign of the Seas
. I’m afraid nobody is ever again destined to go by P&O to the land of the cake Parsee. No more fancy dress parties on the penultimate night before arriving in Bombay, when some joker would always come dressed as a baby and another would arrive with a lavatory seat around his neck to be the life and soul of the party. The Queen of Sheba and Nefertiti were, as I recall, favourites amongst the ladies. This elegant ship, however, had been built for the blue-rinse set off Honolulu.
    First thing in the morning we set off, towing the barge to the Medway: we had decided to tow rather than push where there was the chance of getting any sizable waves. As it happened it was a glorious, though misty, morning with a promise of sun later. The air echoed with the mournful calling of the foghorns and we were very excited by the strange beauty