A PEREGRINATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22776, 11 January 1936, Page 4

A PEREGRINATION

RECORDS OF AN ENGLISH JOURNEY I. DEPARTURE. On the desk before me is a postcard. Its legend is brief and to the point. “You had better begin at the beginning,’’ it says. The cryptic message bears the initials J. B. P. and its relevance is to quite another matter than the recording of one more English journey*—to the elusive and insidious works of Marcel Proust, indeed. But John Boynton Priestley’s is a name that has some authority in the sphere of narrative prose, and whatever the enterprise a commencement must be made somewhere. What more' sensible than to adapt his advice to the circumstances of this chronicle, and make a start at the start of things? Or nearly there —for the.beginning of a long journey, as of a visit to relations in Oamaru, is always likely to be confused and indeterminate. It is of a staggering urgency and muddle as it occurs, and, happily, of no consequence in recollection. There can be no pleasure or profit in recalling the maledictions uttered upon the graceless body of a ship which decided to sail two weeks earlier than was anticipated; the deranged wrangle with shopping lists occasioned by this decision; the frenzied telegraphing and pulling of tenuous strings at Wellington that produced a passport providentially out of the red tape. The beginning may be taken as the stage set by a designer of marine fittings, who had unimaginative conceptions of bedded comfort, but a strong flair for economising in space. Excitement has proved a soporific, and if the narrow bunk receives one with that hospitality of the unbending kind to be discovered in duchesses who open the grounds of their stately homes to colonial visitors, there is no complaint. Through the head, though one is not con scious of it, there must stir the steady pulses of the engines, for one wakes in darkness, with a rush of eagerness. The, throbbing note has acquired a new impetus, the turbines have taken up the whining aria that is to be the theme song for the next six weeks.

The primary reluctant smudge of dawn is on the low harbour hills as one scrambles out on deck. Faintly lit by a steely sky, the waters appear to glide past. It seems that we are already on our way, till one realises the moorings are hot cast off yet. One or two orders come from the bridge, and are silently answered by foreshortened, ghostly figures on the wharf. With earnest, rapt attention a deck-hand squints along the gang plank, directing its upward course to a man at a donkey engine. Evidently our last link with the Dominion must be severed and disposed just-«o before a proper ship can take the Pacific in its teeth. Then, while shiveringly one scrambles below for clothing and hot tea, the tug works its frothy art upon the considerable bulk of our vessel, and soon we are slipping down channel. The receding wharf looks like a crazy .platform built by a child, a poor enough springboard for this leap into strange waters. Now, as one turns to look for’ard. we are sailing at daybreak in truth. Before us is a gold and orange dawning—something to steer hopefully into out of the bleak drabness of a provincial port. REFECTION. For forty days thereafter that unyielding bunk is one’s couch, change of position but not of scene, one’s daily fare, with anticipation always to whet the appetite. Forty days of ocean voyaging, of occasional foreign ports and draughts of salt air, are an experience in anybody’s life, but what is to say about their sensations has been many times said. To inspire with interest, not deaden with banality, the spiritual adventure of a first long voyage requires an unusual pen. This useful but mundane one shall not be forced to literary gesturings, but some things it is apt enough to record—for instance, breakfast. One is summoned by a steward who is as yet debating in his mind, with classconscious integrity, one’s social standing in his ship. His manner has just that shade of deference which, with enlightenment, may be reduced into servility or transmuted into companionship. But one has, for the moment, more pressing problems of status to resolve than one’s relationship with the inmates of the galley. Diffidently, one urges oneself into the saloon. The Old Man (as a member of his crew one may assume that form of reference) indicates a seat —that farthest removed from his grizzled augustness. The officers, dissecting bloaters with the unhurried deftness of pathologists at a post-mortem, acknowledge the presence of a stranger by the negative act of pretending not to realise it. Huskily one orders ham and eggs whilst the company chews stolidly. The Old Man is. discussing maritime incomprehensibilities with the Mate. One regards with a pretence to detached, intelligent absorption the cutlerv and the crossed flags on the linen tablecloth. Acceptance may come soon or late, but no self-respecting school welcomes the new boy with handshake and with cheers; least of all the school of Mercantile Marine, which shares with Jehovah in understanding of the mysteries of stars and wind and wave; least of all a new boy who is by official rating a deck-hand, and by courtesy a hewer of eggs at the Old Man’s board. CONVERSATION.

It is. as a matter of fact, some meals later that one makes a debut as a conversationalist. Breakfast is again the order, and the head-of-table talk has turned to ships of war. The Old Man is speaking of a vessel—a sloop—which has gone to the ship-breakers. The Beta, was it? No! The Gamma? No again! The captain’s name? It was Smith-—or Brown. Some name like that. But what was the ship's name? Epsilon? No, not Epsilon. As the Old Man reviews the possibilities of nomenclature of a sloop commanded by a man named Smith (or Brown) everyone looks silently, searchingly into space. Memory can be literally felt beating the air of the saloon. Perhaps Alpha, the Old Man wonders aloud, but no, it was not the Alpha. The deck-hand at the table’s foot, by some fond chance, has the knowledge. His mouth has been cleared of toast and haddock a full five minutes. He is about to give voice, when the conversation changes. His chance has come and gone. He must remain a breakfast mute throughout the ages. But, wait! The Old Man still has a faintly worried look. His mind is not

on the conversation. “ What was that sainted sloop’s name? ” he asks. He has it on the tip of his tongue. 1 With a premonitory “ er-hum ” that echoes round the messrooin like muted thunder, the deck-hand prepares to speak. Seven pairs of eyes regard him. Forks are stayed in their progress to seven, mouths, and the steward stands rooted in his tracks. “Kr-hum! Was-was it the De-De-Delta?” A smile—actually, a smile —breaks through beneath the Old Man’s clouded brow. A wave of relief sweeps round the table. ' . ’ - *. ', ' < ' “ Delta—that’s it. Delta! Yp(4 indeed! ” and like an invocation everybody echoes, “Delta!” “Well,” says the Old Man, closing the episode, “ as I said, she’s gone to the shipbreakers.” One returns to one’s congealing food with a fine warm glow inside; “ Well done, thou good and faithful deck-hand— ” nobody says it, but the benediction quivers in the air. Greatly daring, one harassed some subtle test. Henceforth, one’s conversational, rating is assured. DECK-HAND. Grey days at sea. One is beginning to wonder jvhether the poet Keats was complimenting Chapman’s Homer, for gazing on the Pacific can be a monotonous exercise. It is not, of course, pacific. “Moderate gale; rough sea, and heavy confused swell. Overcast and squalls. Vessel labouring and straining and shipping water.” This is a recent entry in the Log. Neither has this uneasy sea the whimsical, changing moods attributed to it by retired skippers, laboriously writing their memoirs in suburban London villas. It is a cold, forbidding mother, or a dreary restless mistress, this southern ocean, whatever the romanticists may say of it. One finds relief in work. Chipping rust —there is a worthy occupation for a man. There’s satisfaction in the keen attack, with a predatory blunt instrument, upon those corns and callouses of rust that promote themselves from the smooth steel plate. You may assault with desperate vigour, while the clangour of the smitten bulwarks rings throughout the ship, and the rusty Sescrescences remain unmoved. And so,* in time, art comes into your' stroke. It ia not the force of the blow, but the direction that counts. Three brisk taps here, on the crown of the projection, a sharp, sweeping stroke there, where the rust fringes the true steel, and a fine, thick flake of decaying metal rings on the iron deck. A dab of red-lead on the ugly scar which the operation discloses on the plate, and one approaches with guile another ugly blight. Or painting—here is a pursuit Walton could have followed with contemplative joy. Painters, like anglers, must be born, not made. There are insensitive souls who have been painters and sold their birthright. Faulkner, the novelist, has traitorously turned from spreading roofs with colour to recording the maunderings of idiots: Hitler, the dictator, forsook the gentle art he practised upon the houses of Braunau before he ever led a putsch. But such defections remain incomprehensible to the true-men' of the craft. Being men of charity and goodwill, they may forgive Faulkner, because he makes the best home-brew in Springfield, Ohio; and excuse Hitler, with the reflection that between renovating a house and revitalising a nation there is some affinity. Yet beer is not a substitute for, merely a complement of, painting, and the pity of it is that the political painter lays on his pigment with a coarse, unselective brush. He has no longer the time for thoughtful contemplation, nor the detached moderate outlook that are the painter’s blessing. And painting a ship—there is a work compact with art and honest satisfaction. The best time is when the Pacific has calmed at last, and the sun'rides high above the funnel. Grey paint, for the hatch casings, is the preferred colour, tor it is restful to the eye and smooth in application. Eaen long stroke of the brush is a little ceremony in itself. Each slow roll of the ship across the blue, swelling sea has a soothing, kindred suavity. As often as the ritual is repeated it brings comfort to the soul. Arm, brush, ship, sea, and horizon swing in sweet curves together, like a solemn, rhythmic movement from a fugue. Even as the thoughts move from trivialities to great concerns, and dissolve at last into dreamy nothingness, a job of work is being done. Two bells are struck. In harmony with the rolling ship and the steady sweep of the brush, one’s mind swings back into awareness. Before the eyes ia a heart-warming expanse of fresh grey hatch-easing. The sun is consorting with the clouds on the horizon, planning the staggering finale of a tropical day, as one strolls aft,' paint : pot in hand, for tobacco, leisure, and quiet talk. It is. difficult to believe there are those who would liefer make a revolution than paint a ship. J. M.