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Chapter 44
When I awoke, the sun was shining in the windows. MacClayne was sitting on his cot reading a book, Cuauhtémoc was strutting about on the floor, and Wendy was nowhere to be seen. There was just her mattress, a silent reminder of her existence.
I stepped out into the courtyard and saw Jeff walking past. He seemed to be in a hurry.
"Good morning," I said to him.
He stopped in his tracks, turned towards me and for a moment just stared at me.
"How're you doing?" I tried again, and the next second I found myself unexpectedly sinking to the ground, the world around me momentarily reduced to a blur, which resolved itself into the leafy branch of an overhead tree and a white cloud in the sky, and I wondered curiously why I was lying on the ground until I realized that I had been punched in the jaw. I raised my head and saw Jeff striding off with my bird in pursuit, jabbing at his legs as he went.
MacClayne stepped out the door just in time to see Jeff disappear out the gate. "What happened?" he asked me.
"That's what I was wondering," I said, getting slowly to my feet.
"Did he hit you?"
"Yeah, I guess so," I said, feeling my jaw. Nothing seemed broken.
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm okay," I said, still a bit dazed.
Cuauhtémoc came strutting back to us, clucking as if to announce that he'd gotten his licks in. My feathered avenger. My bodyguard.
As MacClayne commiserated with me, I told him of my chat with Jeff in the restaurant the night before. "He finally broke up with Wendy," I said. "And she broke up with him. They broke up with each other and they both quit drinking."
"They were together this morning," MacClayne informed me. "I saw them loading the jeep, beers in hand. Same as ever."
For some moments I just stared at the concrete wall. All I could think to say was, "So why do you think he hit me?"
"If you haven't got it figured out, I'm not going to explain it to you."
Well, that was MacClayne, sympathetic one minute and insulting the next. I bit my lip, and decided to just let it go and change the subject.
"So what are we going to do about that mattress?" I said.
The monstrous thing still lay there, taking up a disproportionate amount of floor space and reminding me of my disillusionment with Wendy.
"We dragged it over here," MacClayne said. "I suppose it's our responsibility to drag it back."
So we hoisted it up and lugged it back, and, as before, Cuauhtémoc hopped up on it for another free ride across the courtyard. Normally, I would have scolded him and told him to get off, but after the way he'd fought on my behalf, I could hardly refuse him a bit of indulgence.
When we returned to our room, I glanced down at where the mattress had lain, and there was a huge, black scorpion. In this country it could be dangerous to sleep on the floor, and we hadn't even thought of that. Poor Wendy, what if she'd been stung! The instant before I saw the scorpion I'd been angry at her, but now my anger vanished. Even though she probably had something to do with my getting hit on the jaw, I wouldn't have wanted her to get stung. For all her faults, Wendy was a likeable rogue, and she'd given me some priceless guidance to pursuing my seemingly lost geology career.
MacClayne was about to kill the arachnid, but I stopped him. "It's not right to kill a scorpion just for being a scorpion," I said.
He looked at it for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, but let's at least get it out of here."
Using a piece of newspaper I picked it up and transferred it to a bush outside the gate.
It was time to think about getting something to eat, and I suggested The Windjammer. MacClayne hadn't seen it yet, and, as I expected, when we got there he was intrigued with its display of nautical items.
As usual one of us had a plate of carne de res and the other of carne de puerco. We'd finished and were about to order coffee when a couple of Americans came in and sat down at a table near us. We exchanged a nod with them and a conversation developed. Foreigners were rare in these parts and for that reason tended to greet each other on sight.
"You must be from the ship in the harbor," I said after the preliminary hellos. They weren't wearing any of the typical yachting caps or shirts, but something about them gave me the impression they were yachtsmen.
"Yes, we are," said the older-looking of the two. "My name's Morgan. And this is Clyde, my nephew, ship's radio man and electronic whiz kid."
Clyde grinned shyly and glanced down at the table. He looked to be about nineteen or twenty. Morgan, on the other hand, was about MacClayne's age.
"Captain Morgan?" I said, guessing that he probably was the skipper. He seemed like the sort of person who'd be in charge.
"One of the crew," he said with a grin. "But I've been called that a lot. Even as a kid playing pirates they called me "Captain" Morgan. Maybe that had something to do with my interest in sailing vessels. Strange how your name can influence your destiny."
"It is," I said, and then remembered to introduce ourselves. "I'm Olaf. This is MacClayne. And here's Cuauhtémoc, my bird." The bird gave a cluck as his name was mentioned.
"Is he a fighting cock?" asked Morgan.
"Used to be." I told them briefly about my bird's career in the cock pits. I would have said something about the way he'd fought for me that morning, but since Jeff was apparently a friend of these people I thought it best not to mention that.
"So he's your pet," said Morgan.
I glanced at the bird, wondering if he could be considered a pet. I felt he was a lot more than that, but I wasn't sure what word to use. "He's my little friend," I said. "Mi amigito."
"So what are you drinking?" said Morgan, offering to treat us. The waitress was at our table.
I was intending to order coffee, but as beer seemed to be the social thing to request in this situation, I said, "Una cerveza."
MacClayne said he'd just have coffee. "Maybe with a touch of rum in it. Just enough to give it flavor."
The waitress left to fill our orders, and we sat there looking at each other. It was one those moments when it seemed as if nobody could think of anything to say.
"Your ship's a yawl?" I asked.
MacClayne glanced at me. "I think it's a ketch," he said.
"Isn't it the gaff sail on the mainmast and the Bermuda sail on the mizzen that make it a yawl?" I asked. I couldn't resist the temptation to show MacClayne that I knew something about ships--even if I had to cheat a bit by regurgitating something I'd heard in this very same bar the night before.
Cuauhtémoc looked at me out of one eye, as though to say, "Show-off!"--as if he were any example of modesty.
The yachtsmen were grinning.
"So which is it?" asked MacClayne.
"It's a ketch," said Clyde, the younger one.
"A ketch?" I repeated in surprise. I'd just assumed that Jeff had given me the correct, inside information.
"You're both right," said Morgan. He explained some of the finer points of sailboat rigging by which the ship could put it in either category. He finished with a chuckle. "And so we call it a ketch, mostly because we like the sound of the word."
Our drinks arrived. Beers for three of us and rum-flavored coffee for MacClayne. Nothing, of course, was set before Cuauhtémoc, who clucked as if to say, "Where's mine?"
Morgan took a sip of his glass and said, "Sounds like you folks have done some sailing."
"I've handled a tiny sloop on a small lake and that's about it," I said. "Actually, my friend here's the seafaring man. He was in the British Merchant marine and also served on ships of the Royal Navy." I wanted to mention his war experience, but knowing how reluctant he was to talk about it, I figured I'd best leave that for him to say, if he cared to.
All eyes went to MacClayne, and, being the bullshit artist that he was, he hardly needed any introduction, but I gave him one anyway.
"MacClayne's a world traveler," I told them. "He's seen the pyramids of Egypt, hiked in the Pyrenees, worked in the Falkland Islands, and sailed up and down what was once called the Spanish Main."
Something was poking my arm. It was the bird. He'd smelled the beer and wanted some. I felt it best to pay no attention to him.
"Were you in the war?" Clyde asked MacClayne.
"I was," he said, and responded to the query with grace, charm and a war-time drinking story. It was one he'd told me some days back, of the day a beer-famine ended.
". . . The newly supplied pubs held an excellent stock of beer but there were not enough glasses for the numerous drinkers. Tipplers were drinking from jam jars, pots, bowls, even army mess tines. I was wandering about this night . . ."
The bird listened quietly for a while, then nudged me again, and I again tried to pay no attention.
". . . Surely my companion and I were two of the most frustrated drinkers alive, walking around jarless that night; all the beer you could pay for and nothing to drink from . . ."
As MacClayne told his story, the bird kept nudging me. He'd been pretty good lately, hadn't drunk anything for days, staying dry whenever Wendy was around, as though sensing that his vigilance was required. But with her gone, he now seemed to consider himself off watch-duty, and wanted to join in for a bit of social drinking. As much as I might normally object, on this occasion I really couldn't. The bird had been very much on the job and even fought a battle for me. He deserved a drink. I asked the waitress for a small empty glass.
I poured a little of my beer in the empty glass and placed it in front of my bird, who promptly dipped his beak into it and raised his head to swallow. As was his custom, he did that repeatedly and with great avidity. Slightly pained at the sight, I turned away and then realized that MacClayne had paused in his story, and both yachtsmen were staring open-mouthed, first at the bird, then at me.
"He's been under a lot of stress," I said, attempting to explain my bird's predilection for alcohol.
"Under stress? A rooster?" The yachtsmen both burst out laughing, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
"We all have our weaknesses," I said to cover my embarrassment.
The bird flapped his wings and crowed lustily.
"A sailor on shore leave," laughed Morgan.
My bird took a few more gulps, then flew up to an overhead beam where he remained for only a moment before flying to another one across the room. Finally, when I was at my wits end to get him down from there, he returned to our table where he again dipped his beak into the beer. I had to stop him before this got really out of hand.
"No!" I told him. "If you can't drink like a gentleman--"
He paused only to cock his head to one side and give me a disrespectful look before plunging his beak back into the beer.
I took hold of my bird, attempting to lift him off the backrest of the chair. But he clung to it with his talons. It was the usual scene that I'd been through before with him. I had to pry him loose and drag him out of the place.
"Please excuse me," I said to the others as I hung onto my struggling chicken. "My rooster's had enough and I have to get him home."
They were laughing uproariously. Tears were streaming down their cheeks. Even MacClayne was grinning. I didn't share their sense of amusement. I didn't think it was funny at all, just embarrassing.
All the way back to the hotel the bird squawked and fought to get free, using everything short of his beak. Once inside our room I let him go and he flew over to perch on a small table.
"¡Sinvergüenza!" I scolded. "You just had to tie one on, didn't you!"
He glared back at me, let out a squawk, and then flew across the room to perch on a bed. But he stayed there only long enough to give me another squawk, and this time he flew to perch on a tall cabinet above me.
"Okay, I'll get you another," I said at last, and glanced around for a bottle that Wendy might have left behind. There wasn't any, and I headed out the door to go to a nearby shop. Only then did I realize the sky was gray and it was beginning to rain; the storm that had been dogging us still wasn't over.
I bought a can of beer and returned to the room at the same time MacClayne came back. He watched me pour out a cupful and set it on the table for the bird who dipped his beak into the liquor. I expected MacClayne to say something, but he just sat there on the edge of his cot, an inscrutable look on his face. Finally he dug into his bag and took out five or six books. He looked first at one, then at another.
The rain was pattering softly on the roof. MacClayne raised his head and glanced upward, listening to it for a few moments. Then he said, "Maybe we should read something together."
It had been a day or two since we'd taken turns reading to each other, and it seemed like the thing to do on a rainy afternoon. Included in MacClayne's small library was a book of short stories titled The Adventures of Shipping Clerks. MacClayne started first, with the narrative of a seventy-year-old retiree who was recalling his younger days when he took a girlfriend to a carnival where they rode the Ferris wheel. The motor broke down and left them at the very high point of the ride, where they sat and shivered in the cold evening breeze for over an hour before it was finally repaired. Nothing much happened during that uncomfortable hour, and the gist of the story was that it was the most memorable experience in the man's long, and presumably dull, life.
Having finished the story, MacClayne passed the book to me. I was about to begin reading when Cuauhtémoc attempted to hop on my lap. But, being thoroughly inebriated, he landed on my shoulder, fell off, and tumbled down to a crash landing, knocking the book to the floor.
"Ooffff!" I gasped, but before I could say anything else, the bird had already taken off across the room, to the table where he returned to dipping his beak in the beer.
"He's foo tha nicht," chuckled MacClayne. "That's how they'd say it back in the old country. It translates to something like 'he's full of booze tonight.'"
I shook my head grimly and sighed. Yeah, MacClayne could chuckle over this. To him it was funny. To the yachtsmen it had also been funny. For me it was pure humiliation. I could just see those yachtsmen still sitting there laughing about it. And they'd probably go on laughing about it for days and weeks and maybe even years to come. I'd henceforth be known and remembered as the guy whose chicken got drunk--the guy with the alcoholic, unruly, misbehaving bird. The story would be told and retold in every bar up and down the coast.
"Olaf." It was MacClayne's voice, interrupting my thoughts. "Are we going to read?"
"Yeah, I suppose so." I reached over and retrieved the book.
The story we chose was about a man who decided it would be an adventure to spend a night in a posh hotel for the first time in his life. That evening a jealous husband mistakenly identified him as his wife's lover, and emptied a thirty-eight caliber revolver into him.
MacClayne then read us the story of a shipping clerk's relationship with a songbird which came into his room each morning and sang to him. It was truly a perfect bird; it never crapped on the guy's things, never dipped its beak into a beer glass, and of course it had no scandalous sex-life. The creature just sang beautifully.
"Perfect in every way," I sighed, then glanced at Cuauhtémoc, wishing that he could profit by hearing this story.
"Would you really want him to be a perfect bird?" MacClayne asked, looking at me straight in the eye.
"Well, maybe not exactly perfect," I said. "But it would help if he didn't drink so much."
"So why do you think he drinks?"
"Well, I guess he's an alcoholic," I said. "What else could it possibly be?"
MacClayne shook his head forcefully, "Maybe he resents your attempts to reform him, to make him into a model bird," he said. "He's probably asserting his rights as an independent-minded rooster."
"By getting drunk?"
"Cuauhtémoc may feel that every responsible bird with a human under his wing has the duty to booze it up now and then."
We returned to the book and continued on. One shipping-clerk story after another, as we passed the book back and forth, taking turns reading. Meanwhile, my bird continued his rampage; normally he was a rather quiet drinker, but not this day. He crowed and flew around the room. He'd perch on the back of a chair, pause there to flap his wings and crow, then fly to somewhere else. This was the wildest binge he'd ever been on, and it continued for some time, but eventually he settled down in a corner to brood and hiccup.
We spent the whole afternoon reading, and finally supper time came. It was raining pretty intensely at the moment and, anticipating that it would soon let up as it often did around here, we read one last story. It was about a clerk who'd spent the first twenty-eight years of his life in a small town and was then drafted into the navy where shipboard life was as routine and boring as his civilian life had been. Then one night his ship hit a mine and sank. It ended with him in the water, in the midst of the ocean, clinging to a plank which simply reminded him of his desk.
The rain had momentarily paused, and we went to eat. I left Cuauhtémoc in his corner, where he was quietly sleeping it off.
Rather than return to The Windjammer, we went to a nameless restaurant where we enjoyed a leisurely meal followed by coffee. Half an hour later we returned to our hotel room where I discovered that the bird had crapped on my journal. This wasn't the first time he'd done that, nor the second time, nor even the third, fourth or fifth time. I sighed and wondered if the bird did it just to try my patience. When he sobered up I'd give him a good lecture, but for now I took an extra sheet, one left over from Wendy's bed, and fixed up the usual small, tent-like shelter so he wouldn't get cold.
MacClayne was paging through the book we'd been reading earlier, and, when I finished attending to my bird, we got to talking about the dull, uneventful lives that so many people--maybe all of us--were somehow trapped in.
"Perhaps monotony is the essence of life and even nature itself," MacClayne suggested.
"Could be," I said. "I once had a professor who used to say that the geological record is like the life of a soldier, long periods of excruciating boredom punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror."
"Military life. The very thought of it leaves me with a deep, enormous, stupefying and overwhelming groan." MacClayne shook his head, then chuckled sardonically and added, "Stout defenders of King and Queen, of country, of democracy, of draught Worthington, fish and chips and the Good Ship Lollipop."
"What was it like, anyway?" I dared to ask. "Was is comparable to the life of a shipping clerk?"
"Worse," he replied laconically, and, for a moment, that seemed to be the end of the conversation. Then he said, "I entered into the Royal Marines at Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth. August 26th, 1941. I was seventeen at the time.
"Life was a tedium of polishing boots. Then on field training we were forced to charge through muddy fields in never-clearly-understood maneuvers. We shined brass cap-badges and equipment and treated our webbing gear with blanco. We tried, not always with success, to retain a sharp crease in our best battledress trousers for Sunday morning church parade.
"The routine in the Royal Marines had changed very little since Waterloo and the Crimea. World War II appeared largely incidental and merely a disturbance in the routine of barrack-room life.
"Ours were interminable days of pointless and futile marching up and down, back and forth across the barrack square, obeying without question blithering and idiotic drill sergeants to 'right turn,' 'right wheel,' 'left turn,' 'about turn,' and, 'as you were,' over, over, and over again. Sloping arms, presenting arms, on the march and in the position of attention. Square-bashing was our total occupation all day and for more days and weeks than I now care to remember; and if we didn't give it our best on the parade ground we were punished with extra drill in the evening. As with all things despicable we were told it was good for us.
"Eventually I was assigned to a ship, an LCF--Landing Craft Flak. I was a member of a four-inch-gun crew. My proper position was fuse setter, but in practice we were trained to assume any task in the event of casualties."
"A four-incher? That's quite a cannon, isn't it," I said. "Was it for defense against enemy ships?"
"Not really. Our ship functioned as an artillery platform during beachhead assaults. In the Mediterranean and later at Normandy we shelled shore positions, without ever really knowing what we hit."
I nodded. I was about to say that it wouldn't be much fun to shoot at something if you couldn't witness the result, but I realized that some thoughts are better left unsaid.
"We were also armed with 20-millimeter Oerlikons, which were anti-aircraft guns."
"I suppose you were often under air attack?" I said.
"Constant threat of it, so we were always at our battle stations. But I only saw two German aircraft during the whole war."
I wanted to ask if they'd managed to shoot either of them down, or at least winged them, but I felt it best not to interrupt. MacClayne went on to tell how he spent day after day, strapped into the harness of an Oerlikon, four hours on and four hours off, endlessly scanning the horizon for the enemy planes which so seldom appeared. Except for those rare moments, it did indeed sound as dull as the life of a shipping clerk, or maybe even worse. A shipping clerk would at least have tasks to fill his time, but these men could only stare at the sky.
"Let me ask you something," I said. "When I was a kid I collected pictures of World War II aircraft and prided myself on being able to identify them. But one day I was watching a documentary with combat footage and everything moved so fast that I couldn't tell a Messerschmitt from a Spitfire. How did you tell them apart--in time for it to do you any good?"
"We couldn't. If a plane was heading towards us in a threatening, aggressive manner, then it was assumed to be the enemy.
"Once when we were in the Channel, I saw a plane coming right at us. We were at our battle stations. Jimmy Dunford was strapped into the Oerlikon, and I was the loader and held another drum of ammunition. But we didn't get a shot at it; by the time we saw it and swung our gun around, it was already overhead. It was a Messerschmitt--we could tell from the bottom silhouette as he passed. I thought he was going to turn back and strafe us, but he didn't."
I nodded, but wondered to myself how they'd felt about that. Frustration over not having gotten a few shots in? Or were they just damned glad the plane didn't come back and attack them? I thought it best not to ask.
MacClayne continued, "The only other time I saw a German plane was in the Mediterranean, off the coast of an island called Pantellaria. At the time only God knew where Pantellaria was. I've since looked it up on the map to see if it really existed, and found that it's near Sicily."
I chuckled at the way MacClayne said that.
"As always, we were at battle stations, supposedly ready for enemy aircraft. But it caught us by surprise. The plane suddenly appeared out of nowhere and passed over us at mast-head level. Then it was gone. We didn't even get a shot at it. It was a twin-engined bomber. I think it was a Heinkel; it had that glass nose."
MacClayne shook his head with chagrin, then added, "It dropped a load of bombs. One hit us below the waterline, and we just sank, right there. Fortunately we were in shallow water; our ship came to rest on the bottom, and there were no injuries.
"There were two other LCFs with us and they weren't hit. Our crew was divided up. Half of us got on one, and half on the other.
"So our craft was lost and I never did go in on the Sicily landings and my jolly old life survived for another day. Then they brought us all back to Blighty for the ultimate landings on Normandy."
"Your second ship was also an LCF?"
"Yes, that was LCF One."
I waited for him to say more, but he didn't. Over the years he'd told me bits and pieces of his war experiences, and I knew that his second ship was torpedoed near the mouth of the Seine during the battle of Normandy in 1944. That was when he lost his shipmates, the ones I'd met in my dreams.
For some minutes we sat there in silence.
"My third ship was another Landing Craft Flak, either LCF 38 or 39. It must've been 39, as I remember 38 was lost together with 37 at Walcheren. They were both sunk the same day. That was later as I recall, in October or November. A week after my ship went down, two minesweepers were sunk by our own aircraft."
The Second World War that I'd read so many stories about was full of action. Dozens of battles were taking place every day all over the globe. But the war MacClayne told of was one where he'd spent four years only waiting for something to happen. Well, things did happen--two ships were sunk under him, and others were sunk all around him, but there were no dramatic fire fights, other than shelling distant installations. Nothing really heroic. Both times it was just a single, unexpected explosion, and it was over.
The endless monotony. Rather than excitement, there must have been just a numbing horror of what might someday happen, or of what indeed did happen.
MacClayne had once written an autobiography in which he'd briefly mentioned his years in the Royal Marines, and in it he'd told a couple of drinking stories, including the one about the end of the beer famine. But he'd written nothing of the sinkings or his lost shipmates in that manuscript. Nor did he seem inclined to say any more about his war-time experiences this afternoon; he took out another of his books and began reading to himself.
I picked up my journal, wiped off the bird crap, and began writing. Cuauhtémoc opened his bleary eyes and peered at me. Poor bird, he probably needed to eat something. I gave him some oats, but he didn't seem hungry.
I returned to my notebook, and, as I wrote down what MacClayne had told me, I wondered about a lot of things. For instance, when they were shelling in support of beach assaults, they must have been very close to shore and there must have been enemy fire. I wanted to ask. But MacClayne was reading and didn't look like he wanted to be disturbed. Then I thought of Major Benson. What had eventually become of him? I wondered. If he'd died in the war, I guessed it would have been while on some intelligence mission behind enemy lines.
continued in Chapter 45
I stepped out into the courtyard and saw Jeff walking past. He seemed to be in a hurry.
"Good morning," I said to him.
He stopped in his tracks, turned towards me and for a moment just stared at me.
"How're you doing?" I tried again, and the next second I found myself unexpectedly sinking to the ground, the world around me momentarily reduced to a blur, which resolved itself into the leafy branch of an overhead tree and a white cloud in the sky, and I wondered curiously why I was lying on the ground until I realized that I had been punched in the jaw. I raised my head and saw Jeff striding off with my bird in pursuit, jabbing at his legs as he went.
MacClayne stepped out the door just in time to see Jeff disappear out the gate. "What happened?" he asked me.
"That's what I was wondering," I said, getting slowly to my feet.
"Did he hit you?"
"Yeah, I guess so," I said, feeling my jaw. Nothing seemed broken.
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm okay," I said, still a bit dazed.
Cuauhtémoc came strutting back to us, clucking as if to announce that he'd gotten his licks in. My feathered avenger. My bodyguard.
As MacClayne commiserated with me, I told him of my chat with Jeff in the restaurant the night before. "He finally broke up with Wendy," I said. "And she broke up with him. They broke up with each other and they both quit drinking."
"They were together this morning," MacClayne informed me. "I saw them loading the jeep, beers in hand. Same as ever."
For some moments I just stared at the concrete wall. All I could think to say was, "So why do you think he hit me?"
"If you haven't got it figured out, I'm not going to explain it to you."
Well, that was MacClayne, sympathetic one minute and insulting the next. I bit my lip, and decided to just let it go and change the subject.
"So what are we going to do about that mattress?" I said.
The monstrous thing still lay there, taking up a disproportionate amount of floor space and reminding me of my disillusionment with Wendy.
"We dragged it over here," MacClayne said. "I suppose it's our responsibility to drag it back."
So we hoisted it up and lugged it back, and, as before, Cuauhtémoc hopped up on it for another free ride across the courtyard. Normally, I would have scolded him and told him to get off, but after the way he'd fought on my behalf, I could hardly refuse him a bit of indulgence.
When we returned to our room, I glanced down at where the mattress had lain, and there was a huge, black scorpion. In this country it could be dangerous to sleep on the floor, and we hadn't even thought of that. Poor Wendy, what if she'd been stung! The instant before I saw the scorpion I'd been angry at her, but now my anger vanished. Even though she probably had something to do with my getting hit on the jaw, I wouldn't have wanted her to get stung. For all her faults, Wendy was a likeable rogue, and she'd given me some priceless guidance to pursuing my seemingly lost geology career.
MacClayne was about to kill the arachnid, but I stopped him. "It's not right to kill a scorpion just for being a scorpion," I said.
He looked at it for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, but let's at least get it out of here."
Using a piece of newspaper I picked it up and transferred it to a bush outside the gate.
It was time to think about getting something to eat, and I suggested The Windjammer. MacClayne hadn't seen it yet, and, as I expected, when we got there he was intrigued with its display of nautical items.
As usual one of us had a plate of carne de res and the other of carne de puerco. We'd finished and were about to order coffee when a couple of Americans came in and sat down at a table near us. We exchanged a nod with them and a conversation developed. Foreigners were rare in these parts and for that reason tended to greet each other on sight.
"You must be from the ship in the harbor," I said after the preliminary hellos. They weren't wearing any of the typical yachting caps or shirts, but something about them gave me the impression they were yachtsmen.
"Yes, we are," said the older-looking of the two. "My name's Morgan. And this is Clyde, my nephew, ship's radio man and electronic whiz kid."
Clyde grinned shyly and glanced down at the table. He looked to be about nineteen or twenty. Morgan, on the other hand, was about MacClayne's age.
"Captain Morgan?" I said, guessing that he probably was the skipper. He seemed like the sort of person who'd be in charge.
"One of the crew," he said with a grin. "But I've been called that a lot. Even as a kid playing pirates they called me "Captain" Morgan. Maybe that had something to do with my interest in sailing vessels. Strange how your name can influence your destiny."
"It is," I said, and then remembered to introduce ourselves. "I'm Olaf. This is MacClayne. And here's Cuauhtémoc, my bird." The bird gave a cluck as his name was mentioned.
"Is he a fighting cock?" asked Morgan.
"Used to be." I told them briefly about my bird's career in the cock pits. I would have said something about the way he'd fought for me that morning, but since Jeff was apparently a friend of these people I thought it best not to mention that.
"So he's your pet," said Morgan.
I glanced at the bird, wondering if he could be considered a pet. I felt he was a lot more than that, but I wasn't sure what word to use. "He's my little friend," I said. "Mi amigito."
"So what are you drinking?" said Morgan, offering to treat us. The waitress was at our table.
I was intending to order coffee, but as beer seemed to be the social thing to request in this situation, I said, "Una cerveza."
MacClayne said he'd just have coffee. "Maybe with a touch of rum in it. Just enough to give it flavor."
The waitress left to fill our orders, and we sat there looking at each other. It was one those moments when it seemed as if nobody could think of anything to say.
"Your ship's a yawl?" I asked.
MacClayne glanced at me. "I think it's a ketch," he said.
"Isn't it the gaff sail on the mainmast and the Bermuda sail on the mizzen that make it a yawl?" I asked. I couldn't resist the temptation to show MacClayne that I knew something about ships--even if I had to cheat a bit by regurgitating something I'd heard in this very same bar the night before.
Cuauhtémoc looked at me out of one eye, as though to say, "Show-off!"--as if he were any example of modesty.
The yachtsmen were grinning.
"So which is it?" asked MacClayne.
"It's a ketch," said Clyde, the younger one.
"A ketch?" I repeated in surprise. I'd just assumed that Jeff had given me the correct, inside information.
"You're both right," said Morgan. He explained some of the finer points of sailboat rigging by which the ship could put it in either category. He finished with a chuckle. "And so we call it a ketch, mostly because we like the sound of the word."
Our drinks arrived. Beers for three of us and rum-flavored coffee for MacClayne. Nothing, of course, was set before Cuauhtémoc, who clucked as if to say, "Where's mine?"
Morgan took a sip of his glass and said, "Sounds like you folks have done some sailing."
"I've handled a tiny sloop on a small lake and that's about it," I said. "Actually, my friend here's the seafaring man. He was in the British Merchant marine and also served on ships of the Royal Navy." I wanted to mention his war experience, but knowing how reluctant he was to talk about it, I figured I'd best leave that for him to say, if he cared to.
All eyes went to MacClayne, and, being the bullshit artist that he was, he hardly needed any introduction, but I gave him one anyway.
"MacClayne's a world traveler," I told them. "He's seen the pyramids of Egypt, hiked in the Pyrenees, worked in the Falkland Islands, and sailed up and down what was once called the Spanish Main."
Something was poking my arm. It was the bird. He'd smelled the beer and wanted some. I felt it best to pay no attention to him.
"Were you in the war?" Clyde asked MacClayne.
"I was," he said, and responded to the query with grace, charm and a war-time drinking story. It was one he'd told me some days back, of the day a beer-famine ended.
". . . The newly supplied pubs held an excellent stock of beer but there were not enough glasses for the numerous drinkers. Tipplers were drinking from jam jars, pots, bowls, even army mess tines. I was wandering about this night . . ."
The bird listened quietly for a while, then nudged me again, and I again tried to pay no attention.
". . . Surely my companion and I were two of the most frustrated drinkers alive, walking around jarless that night; all the beer you could pay for and nothing to drink from . . ."
As MacClayne told his story, the bird kept nudging me. He'd been pretty good lately, hadn't drunk anything for days, staying dry whenever Wendy was around, as though sensing that his vigilance was required. But with her gone, he now seemed to consider himself off watch-duty, and wanted to join in for a bit of social drinking. As much as I might normally object, on this occasion I really couldn't. The bird had been very much on the job and even fought a battle for me. He deserved a drink. I asked the waitress for a small empty glass.
I poured a little of my beer in the empty glass and placed it in front of my bird, who promptly dipped his beak into it and raised his head to swallow. As was his custom, he did that repeatedly and with great avidity. Slightly pained at the sight, I turned away and then realized that MacClayne had paused in his story, and both yachtsmen were staring open-mouthed, first at the bird, then at me.
"He's been under a lot of stress," I said, attempting to explain my bird's predilection for alcohol.
"Under stress? A rooster?" The yachtsmen both burst out laughing, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
"We all have our weaknesses," I said to cover my embarrassment.
The bird flapped his wings and crowed lustily.
"A sailor on shore leave," laughed Morgan.
My bird took a few more gulps, then flew up to an overhead beam where he remained for only a moment before flying to another one across the room. Finally, when I was at my wits end to get him down from there, he returned to our table where he again dipped his beak into the beer. I had to stop him before this got really out of hand.
"No!" I told him. "If you can't drink like a gentleman--"
He paused only to cock his head to one side and give me a disrespectful look before plunging his beak back into the beer.
I took hold of my bird, attempting to lift him off the backrest of the chair. But he clung to it with his talons. It was the usual scene that I'd been through before with him. I had to pry him loose and drag him out of the place.
"Please excuse me," I said to the others as I hung onto my struggling chicken. "My rooster's had enough and I have to get him home."
They were laughing uproariously. Tears were streaming down their cheeks. Even MacClayne was grinning. I didn't share their sense of amusement. I didn't think it was funny at all, just embarrassing.
All the way back to the hotel the bird squawked and fought to get free, using everything short of his beak. Once inside our room I let him go and he flew over to perch on a small table.
"¡Sinvergüenza!" I scolded. "You just had to tie one on, didn't you!"
He glared back at me, let out a squawk, and then flew across the room to perch on a bed. But he stayed there only long enough to give me another squawk, and this time he flew to perch on a tall cabinet above me.
"Okay, I'll get you another," I said at last, and glanced around for a bottle that Wendy might have left behind. There wasn't any, and I headed out the door to go to a nearby shop. Only then did I realize the sky was gray and it was beginning to rain; the storm that had been dogging us still wasn't over.
I bought a can of beer and returned to the room at the same time MacClayne came back. He watched me pour out a cupful and set it on the table for the bird who dipped his beak into the liquor. I expected MacClayne to say something, but he just sat there on the edge of his cot, an inscrutable look on his face. Finally he dug into his bag and took out five or six books. He looked first at one, then at another.
The rain was pattering softly on the roof. MacClayne raised his head and glanced upward, listening to it for a few moments. Then he said, "Maybe we should read something together."
It had been a day or two since we'd taken turns reading to each other, and it seemed like the thing to do on a rainy afternoon. Included in MacClayne's small library was a book of short stories titled The Adventures of Shipping Clerks. MacClayne started first, with the narrative of a seventy-year-old retiree who was recalling his younger days when he took a girlfriend to a carnival where they rode the Ferris wheel. The motor broke down and left them at the very high point of the ride, where they sat and shivered in the cold evening breeze for over an hour before it was finally repaired. Nothing much happened during that uncomfortable hour, and the gist of the story was that it was the most memorable experience in the man's long, and presumably dull, life.
Having finished the story, MacClayne passed the book to me. I was about to begin reading when Cuauhtémoc attempted to hop on my lap. But, being thoroughly inebriated, he landed on my shoulder, fell off, and tumbled down to a crash landing, knocking the book to the floor.
"Ooffff!" I gasped, but before I could say anything else, the bird had already taken off across the room, to the table where he returned to dipping his beak in the beer.
"He's foo tha nicht," chuckled MacClayne. "That's how they'd say it back in the old country. It translates to something like 'he's full of booze tonight.'"
I shook my head grimly and sighed. Yeah, MacClayne could chuckle over this. To him it was funny. To the yachtsmen it had also been funny. For me it was pure humiliation. I could just see those yachtsmen still sitting there laughing about it. And they'd probably go on laughing about it for days and weeks and maybe even years to come. I'd henceforth be known and remembered as the guy whose chicken got drunk--the guy with the alcoholic, unruly, misbehaving bird. The story would be told and retold in every bar up and down the coast.
"Olaf." It was MacClayne's voice, interrupting my thoughts. "Are we going to read?"
"Yeah, I suppose so." I reached over and retrieved the book.
The story we chose was about a man who decided it would be an adventure to spend a night in a posh hotel for the first time in his life. That evening a jealous husband mistakenly identified him as his wife's lover, and emptied a thirty-eight caliber revolver into him.
MacClayne then read us the story of a shipping clerk's relationship with a songbird which came into his room each morning and sang to him. It was truly a perfect bird; it never crapped on the guy's things, never dipped its beak into a beer glass, and of course it had no scandalous sex-life. The creature just sang beautifully.
"Perfect in every way," I sighed, then glanced at Cuauhtémoc, wishing that he could profit by hearing this story.
"Would you really want him to be a perfect bird?" MacClayne asked, looking at me straight in the eye.
"Well, maybe not exactly perfect," I said. "But it would help if he didn't drink so much."
"So why do you think he drinks?"
"Well, I guess he's an alcoholic," I said. "What else could it possibly be?"
MacClayne shook his head forcefully, "Maybe he resents your attempts to reform him, to make him into a model bird," he said. "He's probably asserting his rights as an independent-minded rooster."
"By getting drunk?"
"Cuauhtémoc may feel that every responsible bird with a human under his wing has the duty to booze it up now and then."
We returned to the book and continued on. One shipping-clerk story after another, as we passed the book back and forth, taking turns reading. Meanwhile, my bird continued his rampage; normally he was a rather quiet drinker, but not this day. He crowed and flew around the room. He'd perch on the back of a chair, pause there to flap his wings and crow, then fly to somewhere else. This was the wildest binge he'd ever been on, and it continued for some time, but eventually he settled down in a corner to brood and hiccup.
We spent the whole afternoon reading, and finally supper time came. It was raining pretty intensely at the moment and, anticipating that it would soon let up as it often did around here, we read one last story. It was about a clerk who'd spent the first twenty-eight years of his life in a small town and was then drafted into the navy where shipboard life was as routine and boring as his civilian life had been. Then one night his ship hit a mine and sank. It ended with him in the water, in the midst of the ocean, clinging to a plank which simply reminded him of his desk.
The rain had momentarily paused, and we went to eat. I left Cuauhtémoc in his corner, where he was quietly sleeping it off.
Rather than return to The Windjammer, we went to a nameless restaurant where we enjoyed a leisurely meal followed by coffee. Half an hour later we returned to our hotel room where I discovered that the bird had crapped on my journal. This wasn't the first time he'd done that, nor the second time, nor even the third, fourth or fifth time. I sighed and wondered if the bird did it just to try my patience. When he sobered up I'd give him a good lecture, but for now I took an extra sheet, one left over from Wendy's bed, and fixed up the usual small, tent-like shelter so he wouldn't get cold.
MacClayne was paging through the book we'd been reading earlier, and, when I finished attending to my bird, we got to talking about the dull, uneventful lives that so many people--maybe all of us--were somehow trapped in.
"Perhaps monotony is the essence of life and even nature itself," MacClayne suggested.
"Could be," I said. "I once had a professor who used to say that the geological record is like the life of a soldier, long periods of excruciating boredom punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror."
"Military life. The very thought of it leaves me with a deep, enormous, stupefying and overwhelming groan." MacClayne shook his head, then chuckled sardonically and added, "Stout defenders of King and Queen, of country, of democracy, of draught Worthington, fish and chips and the Good Ship Lollipop."
"What was it like, anyway?" I dared to ask. "Was is comparable to the life of a shipping clerk?"
"Worse," he replied laconically, and, for a moment, that seemed to be the end of the conversation. Then he said, "I entered into the Royal Marines at Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth. August 26th, 1941. I was seventeen at the time.
"Life was a tedium of polishing boots. Then on field training we were forced to charge through muddy fields in never-clearly-understood maneuvers. We shined brass cap-badges and equipment and treated our webbing gear with blanco. We tried, not always with success, to retain a sharp crease in our best battledress trousers for Sunday morning church parade.
"The routine in the Royal Marines had changed very little since Waterloo and the Crimea. World War II appeared largely incidental and merely a disturbance in the routine of barrack-room life.
"Ours were interminable days of pointless and futile marching up and down, back and forth across the barrack square, obeying without question blithering and idiotic drill sergeants to 'right turn,' 'right wheel,' 'left turn,' 'about turn,' and, 'as you were,' over, over, and over again. Sloping arms, presenting arms, on the march and in the position of attention. Square-bashing was our total occupation all day and for more days and weeks than I now care to remember; and if we didn't give it our best on the parade ground we were punished with extra drill in the evening. As with all things despicable we were told it was good for us.
"Eventually I was assigned to a ship, an LCF--Landing Craft Flak. I was a member of a four-inch-gun crew. My proper position was fuse setter, but in practice we were trained to assume any task in the event of casualties."
"A four-incher? That's quite a cannon, isn't it," I said. "Was it for defense against enemy ships?"
"Not really. Our ship functioned as an artillery platform during beachhead assaults. In the Mediterranean and later at Normandy we shelled shore positions, without ever really knowing what we hit."
I nodded. I was about to say that it wouldn't be much fun to shoot at something if you couldn't witness the result, but I realized that some thoughts are better left unsaid.
"We were also armed with 20-millimeter Oerlikons, which were anti-aircraft guns."
"I suppose you were often under air attack?" I said.
"Constant threat of it, so we were always at our battle stations. But I only saw two German aircraft during the whole war."
I wanted to ask if they'd managed to shoot either of them down, or at least winged them, but I felt it best not to interrupt. MacClayne went on to tell how he spent day after day, strapped into the harness of an Oerlikon, four hours on and four hours off, endlessly scanning the horizon for the enemy planes which so seldom appeared. Except for those rare moments, it did indeed sound as dull as the life of a shipping clerk, or maybe even worse. A shipping clerk would at least have tasks to fill his time, but these men could only stare at the sky.
"Let me ask you something," I said. "When I was a kid I collected pictures of World War II aircraft and prided myself on being able to identify them. But one day I was watching a documentary with combat footage and everything moved so fast that I couldn't tell a Messerschmitt from a Spitfire. How did you tell them apart--in time for it to do you any good?"
"We couldn't. If a plane was heading towards us in a threatening, aggressive manner, then it was assumed to be the enemy.
"Once when we were in the Channel, I saw a plane coming right at us. We were at our battle stations. Jimmy Dunford was strapped into the Oerlikon, and I was the loader and held another drum of ammunition. But we didn't get a shot at it; by the time we saw it and swung our gun around, it was already overhead. It was a Messerschmitt--we could tell from the bottom silhouette as he passed. I thought he was going to turn back and strafe us, but he didn't."
I nodded, but wondered to myself how they'd felt about that. Frustration over not having gotten a few shots in? Or were they just damned glad the plane didn't come back and attack them? I thought it best not to ask.
MacClayne continued, "The only other time I saw a German plane was in the Mediterranean, off the coast of an island called Pantellaria. At the time only God knew where Pantellaria was. I've since looked it up on the map to see if it really existed, and found that it's near Sicily."
I chuckled at the way MacClayne said that.
"As always, we were at battle stations, supposedly ready for enemy aircraft. But it caught us by surprise. The plane suddenly appeared out of nowhere and passed over us at mast-head level. Then it was gone. We didn't even get a shot at it. It was a twin-engined bomber. I think it was a Heinkel; it had that glass nose."
MacClayne shook his head with chagrin, then added, "It dropped a load of bombs. One hit us below the waterline, and we just sank, right there. Fortunately we were in shallow water; our ship came to rest on the bottom, and there were no injuries.
"There were two other LCFs with us and they weren't hit. Our crew was divided up. Half of us got on one, and half on the other.
"So our craft was lost and I never did go in on the Sicily landings and my jolly old life survived for another day. Then they brought us all back to Blighty for the ultimate landings on Normandy."
"Your second ship was also an LCF?"
"Yes, that was LCF One."
I waited for him to say more, but he didn't. Over the years he'd told me bits and pieces of his war experiences, and I knew that his second ship was torpedoed near the mouth of the Seine during the battle of Normandy in 1944. That was when he lost his shipmates, the ones I'd met in my dreams.
For some minutes we sat there in silence.
"My third ship was another Landing Craft Flak, either LCF 38 or 39. It must've been 39, as I remember 38 was lost together with 37 at Walcheren. They were both sunk the same day. That was later as I recall, in October or November. A week after my ship went down, two minesweepers were sunk by our own aircraft."
The Second World War that I'd read so many stories about was full of action. Dozens of battles were taking place every day all over the globe. But the war MacClayne told of was one where he'd spent four years only waiting for something to happen. Well, things did happen--two ships were sunk under him, and others were sunk all around him, but there were no dramatic fire fights, other than shelling distant installations. Nothing really heroic. Both times it was just a single, unexpected explosion, and it was over.
The endless monotony. Rather than excitement, there must have been just a numbing horror of what might someday happen, or of what indeed did happen.
MacClayne had once written an autobiography in which he'd briefly mentioned his years in the Royal Marines, and in it he'd told a couple of drinking stories, including the one about the end of the beer famine. But he'd written nothing of the sinkings or his lost shipmates in that manuscript. Nor did he seem inclined to say any more about his war-time experiences this afternoon; he took out another of his books and began reading to himself.
I picked up my journal, wiped off the bird crap, and began writing. Cuauhtémoc opened his bleary eyes and peered at me. Poor bird, he probably needed to eat something. I gave him some oats, but he didn't seem hungry.
I returned to my notebook, and, as I wrote down what MacClayne had told me, I wondered about a lot of things. For instance, when they were shelling in support of beach assaults, they must have been very close to shore and there must have been enemy fire. I wanted to ask. But MacClayne was reading and didn't look like he wanted to be disturbed. Then I thought of Major Benson. What had eventually become of him? I wondered. If he'd died in the war, I guessed it would have been while on some intelligence mission behind enemy lines.
continued in Chapter 45
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