“Papadopoulos!” he roared at the poor Chief Officer, who was getting shakily to his feet and mopping blood from his nose, “you son of a poutana, you imbecile, you donkey! You illegitimate son of a ditch-delivered Turkish cretin! Why didn’t you lower the anchor?”
“But Captain,” began the Chief Officer, his voice muffled behind a blood-stained handkerchief, “you never told me to.”
“Am I expected to do everything around here,” bellowed the Captain. “Steer the ship, run the engines, produce the band which can play the Greek songs? Mother of God!” He clapped his face in his hands.
All around arose the cacophony of Greeks in a SITUATION. With this noise, and the Captain’s tragic figure, it seemed rather like a scene from the battle of Trafalgar.
“Well,” said Larry, mopping blood from his eyes, “this was a splendid idea, Mother. I do congratulate you. I think, however, I will fly back. That is, if we can get ashore alive.”
Eventually, the walking wounded were allowed ashore and we straggled down the gangway. We could now see that the Poseidon had another, almost identical, hole in her bows, on the opposite side to the previous one.
“Well, at least now she matches,” said Leslie gloomily.
“Oh, look!” said Margo, as we stood on the docks. “There’s that poor old band.”
She waved, and the three old gentlemen bowed. We saw that the violinist had a nasty cut on his forehead and the tuba player a piece of sticking-plaster across the bridge of his nose. They returned our bows and, obviously interpreting the appearance of the family as a sign of support that would do something to restore their sense of dignity which had been so sorely undermined by their ignominious dismissal of the night before, they turned in unison, glanced up at the bridge, with looks of great defiance raised tuba, trombone and violin, and started to play.
The strains of “Never on Sunday” floated down to us.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION
Venice is one of the most beautiful of European cities and one that I had visited frequently but never stayed in. I had always been on my way to somewhere else and so had never had the time for proper exploration. So, one red-hot summer when I had been working hard and was feeling tired and in need of a change, I decided that I would go and spend a week in Venice and relax and get to know her. I felt that a calming holiday in such a setting was exactly what I needed. I have rarely regretted a decision more; if I had known what was going to happen to me I would have fled to New York or Buenos Aires or Singapore rather than set foot in that most elegant of cities.
I drove through the beautiful and incomparable France, through orderly Switzerland, over the high passes where there were still ugly piles of dirty grey snow at the edge of the roads and then down into Italy and towards my destination. The weather remained perfect until I reached the causeway that leads into Venice . Here the sky, with miraculous suddenness, turned from blue to black, became veined with fern-like threads of intense blue and white lightning, and then disgorged a torrent of rain of such magnitude that it made windscreen wipers futile and brought a great chain of traffic to a standstill. Hundreds of hysterically twitching Italians sat there, nose to tail, immobilized by the downpour, trying to ease their frustration by blowing their horns cacophonously, and screaming abuse at each other above the roar of the rain.
At length, edging forward inch by inch I finally managed to get the car to the garage at the end of the causeway. Having successfully berthed her, I found myself a burly porter to carry my bags. At a run we galloped through the teeming rain to the docks where the speedboat belonging to the hotel into which I had booked lay waiting. My suitcases were drenched with rain, and by the time they had been put on board the boat, and I had tipped the porter and got on board myself, my thin tropical suit was a limp, damp rag. The moment, however, that the speedboat started up the rain died down to a very fine, drifting mizzle which hung across the canals like a fine veil of lawn, muting the russets and browns and pinks of the buildings so that they looked like a beautifully faded Canaletto painting.
We sped down the Grand Canal and when we reached my hotel the boat put into the hotel jetty. As the engine stuttered and died we were passed by a gondola, propelled in a rather disconsolate fashion by a very damp-looking gondolier. The two people occupying it were shielded from the inclemencies of the weather by a large umbrella and so I could not see their faces, but, as the gondola passed us and sped down a narrow side canal that led to Marco Polo’s house, I heard a penetrating female English voice (obviously the product of Roedean, that most expensive of public schools), float out from under the umbrella.
“Of course, Naples is just like Venice only without so much water,” it observed in flute-like tones.
I stood riveted on the landing stage outside the hotel, staring after the retreating gondola. Surely, I said to myself, I must be dreaming, and yet in my experience there was only one voice in the world like that; only one voice, moreover, capable of making such a ridiculous statement. It belonged to a girlfriend of mine whom I had not seen for some thirty years, Ursula Pendragon-White. She, of all my girl-friends, I think I adored the most, but she was also the one who filled me with the most alarm and despondency.
It was not only her command over the English language that caused me pain (it was she who had told me about a friend of hers who had had an ablution so she would not have an illegitimate baby), but her interference in the private lives of her wide circle of acquaintances. When I had last known her she was busy trying to reform a friend of hers who, she said, was drinking so much that he was in danger of becoming an incoherent.
But no, I thought to myself, it could not be Ursula. She was safely and happily married to a very dull young man and lived in the depths of Hampshire. What on earth would she be doing in Venice at a time of year when all good farmer’s wives were helping their husbands get the harvest in, or organizing jumble sales in the village. In any case, I thought to myself, even if it was Ursula I did not want to get tangled up with her again. I had come here for peace and quiet, and from my past experience of her I knew that dose contact with her brought anything but that. Speaking as one who had had to pursue a Pekinese puppy through a crowded theatre during a Mozart concert, I knew that Ursula could get one involved in the most horrifying of predicaments without even really trying. No, no, I thought, it could not have been Ursula, and even if it had been thank God she had not spotted me.
The hotel was sumptuous and my large and ornate bedroom overlooking the Grand Canal was exceedingly comfortable. After I had changed out of my wet things and had a bath and a drink I saw that the weather had changed and the sun was blazing, making the whole of Venice glitter in a delicate sunset of colours. I walked down numerous little alleyways, crossed tiny bridges over canals, until I came at length to the vast Piazza San Marco, lined with bars, each of which had its own orchestra. Hundreds of pigeons wheeled and swooped through the brilliant air as people purchased bags of corn and scattered this largess for the birds on to the mosaic of the huge square. I picked my way through the sea of birds until I reached the Doge’s Palace where there was a collection of pictures that I wanted to see. The Palace was crammed with hundreds of sight-seers of a dozen different nationalities, from Japanese, festooned like Christmas trees with cameras, to portly, guttural Germans and lithe blond Swedes. Wedged in this human lava flow I progressed slowly from room to room, admiring the paintings. Suddenly I heard the penetrating flute-like voice up ahead of me in the crowd.