We Saw The Sea Read Free

Anne’s tears to smiles.
    “Thank God for that,” Michael breathed. “Trust him to notice her perfume. I wish I had half his finesse.”
    Mary brushed a lock of hair from Michael’s forehead. “Never mind darling. I love you just as you are. You couldn’t help that just now. It was very bad luck. And at least Paul’s got rid of Stephen.”
    Paul appeared beside them carrying a couple of drinks. “My!” he said, “Fancy old Ted having a sister. I would have thought she would have been some little horror who accused respectable men in court of having raped her and had crushes on the games mistress.”
    “I had a crush on my games mistress,” Mary said. “I was absolutely sponk on her.”
    “You were what ?”
    “Sponk!”
    “Oh, did you have that word at your school too, Mary?”
    “Yes!”
    Mary and Anne together fell into a fit of giggling. “You’d better have this drink, Mike,” Paul said. “The distaff side appear to be getting their intoxication by mutual support. Now tell me, what have you been doing with yourself since I last saw you?”
    “Nothing wildly exciting. I thought of being a submariner but they were over-subscribed so I went as Pilot of Octopus doing Portland running for a year. Then I went to a coastal minesweeper and now I’m waiting for a new job. I hope to do a long ‘N’ course sometime.”
    “And what about all the others? I’ve been tucked away so long learning about engineering that I’ve got completely out of touch. I haven't seen a CW. List for two years.”
    “Tom Bowles and Ike Smith are both pilots. Tom’s at Lee and I think Ike’s just gone out to the Med. Raymond Ball’s a submariner in Australia. Freddie Spink is somebody’s assistant secretary in Hong Kong and George Dewberry is in Japan. What he’s doing there I can’t imagine. Colin Stacforth is Flags to C.-in-C. Rockall and Malin Approaches and Pete Cleghorn is Pilot in Vertigo . He’s engaged now.”
    “Not to that barmaid?”
    “You heard about that? No, some admiral’s offspring, I heard.”
    “That’s more like Pete. Incidentally, this is something I do know hot from the press. Have you heard about The Bodger?”
    “No? What about him?”
    “Passed over!”
    “What!”
    “It’s a fact. Someone told me it was the report he got from Barsetshire that did it.”
    “But I thought he was the blue-eyed boy there! “
    “So he was, but you remember what a mad-house that ship was. The Bodger was getting on a stinker until one day about a year after we left when old Gregson suddenly announced that he wanted all cadets to be taught how to breed red setters as part of their syllabus.”
    “Name of a name !”
    “Precisely. The Bodger gave a merry laugh and then suddenly realized that the Old Man was deadly serious. It was just after a mess dinner, The Bodger had just listened to Dickie Gilpin sounding off about the Yellow Peril, he had a few grogs under his belt, so The Bodger ups and tells old Gregson that he had no objection whatsoever to cadets being taught how to breed red setters, he wondered nobody had thought of it before, they could breed red setters, white setters and sky blue pink setters for all he cared but until the appropriate B.R.s arrived he was going to stick to the syllabus as laid down.”
    “Cor, the Old Man wouldn’t like that.”
    “Man, that’s the understatement of the year. Gregson retired in a huff and when he came to write up The Bodger’s confidential report he not only underlined it in red he wrote the whole damn lot in red ink. So that was that. There was a Caesar, when comes such another? I saw in the C.W. List yesterday that he’s been appointed Resident Naval Officer in Nassau.”
    “Well, that should suit The Bodger.”
    “Not that Nassau. The one in the Cook Islands. In the South Pacific.”
    “God.”
    “It’s rugged luck all right. You know, Mike, the more I look at it the more I’m convinced that to succeed in the Service you’ve got to humour