Seagulls in My Soup Read Free Page B

the catamaran for lunch. This means that I had changed from my working jeans into my only other pair of pants—corduroys, which were reasonably clean, and Sissie had exchanged her seaboots for her ditchdigger’s brogues, which were once again dry after the thorough scrubbing she had given them earlier that morning.
    As we approached the catamaran, Sissie sang out,
“Bellerophon
ahoy, can we come aboard?”
    Two voices replied from down below—the gruff, low voice and the high, choir-boy’s voice. “Yes, do come, we’re almost ready. And take off your shoes, please!”
    Sissie and I clambered over one of the sterns of the catamaran and entered the spacious cabin, which extended almost the full beam of the boat—about sixteen feet. This, after
Cresswell
’s cabin width of six feet, was a bit like comparing No. 10, Downing Street, with the White House.
    Inside the cabin was a prospect I shall never forget. All around the windows there were chintz curtains, all flower-patterned with roses and such. On every horizontal surface, or so it seemed, there was a small vase decorated with plastic flowers, roses and such. The inside surfaces of the cabin were decorated with flowery
wallpaper,
all roses and such, while the cabin sole (or deck) was covered with a rose-patterned
carpet.
It was a bit like being in a flower-nursery greenhouse. There were roses everywhere.
    As my senses recovered from the visual shock, I was now in for an aural shock. Billy, whose voice of course I immediately recognized, called up from inside the galley, which was lower than the main cabin, in one of the hulls.
    â€œWelcome aboard, old chap,” I heard him say. I turned, expecting to see a biggish, burly man of about thirty-five. Instead, to both Sissie’s and my instant confusion, a most attractive woman of around twenty-eight or so, clad in a flowery dress—roses and such—tripped lightly up the small ladder, grabbed hold of Sissie (who later told me she was too astonished to move), kissed her on the cheek, and held her hand!
    Billie had medium-length dark hair and beautiful blue eyes, and was very attractive indeed by any standards. Then Tony appeared. Instead of a choir-boy-like adolescent of about fifteen, which both Sissie and I expected to encounter, we were confronted by a slight, balding man of about forty-eight, wearing thick-rimmed spectacles and stooping with the weight of responsibilities which only captains know. (Either that or his sleeping berth was too short for his length, which was about six feet, two inches.)
    After we had shaken hands with Tony and mouthed pleasantries, I again looked around the cabin of
Bellerophon
and saw then one of the strangest things I’ve ever come across in a small sailing craft. Fitted right across the forward end of the cabin was a full-scale, pedal-operated chapel organ, complete with pipes and stops, bellows and knobs, and all sorts of paraphernalia. I stared for a full two minutes at the organ, then turned to see Tony, his head bent as he stooped under the cabin roof, grinning hugely at me. “You like music, eh?” he asked.
    â€œWell . . . a bit of classical stuff. You know, Brahms, Beethoven, stuff like that,” I replied.
    Quickly Tony, who I now noticed had bird-like movements, sat himself down on the stool in front of the organ and started pedaling away at the bellows, all the while grinning at me. “You’ll like this one,” he said. “Always start the day off with this one.” He stopped pedaling for a second or two. “Guess what it is?”
    I tried to look nonplused; and so I was, not at Tony’s question but by the whole lunatic-seeming scene. Here was a six-foot-odd giant with a choir-boy’s voice, and a sister who sounded like a regimental sergeant-major and looked like a Hollywood star, sitting at an organ onboard the ugliest sailing vessel I had ever seen. I shook myself from my