Valletta

 I

 Now there was a sun-shower over Valletta, and even a rainbow. Howie Surd the  drunken yeoman lay on his stomach under mount 52, head propped on arms,  staring at a British landing craft that chugged its way through the rainy  Harbour. Fat Clyde from Chi, who was 6' 1"/ 142 pounds, came from Winnetka  and had been christened Harvey, stood by the lifelines spitting dreamily  down into the drydock.

"Fat Clyde," bellowed Howie.

"No," said Fat Clyde. "Whatever it is."

He must have been upset. Nobody ever says things like that to a yeoman. "I'm  going over tonight," Howie said gently, "and I need a raincoat because it is  raining out, as you may have noticed."

Fat Clyde took a white hat out of his back pocket and tugged it down over  his head like a cloche. "I also got liberty," he said.

Bitch box came on. "Now turn in all paint and paint brushes to the paint  locker," it said.

"About that time," said Howie. He crawled out from under the gun mount and  squatted on the 01 deck. The rain came down and ran into his ears and down  his neck and he watched the sun smearing the sky red over Valletta. "What is  wrong, hey, Fat Clyde."

"Oh," said Fat Clyde and spat over the side. His eyes followed the white  drop of spit all the way down. Howie gave up after about five minutes of  silence. He went around the starboard side and down the ladder to bother  Tiger Youngblood the spud coxswain who sat at the bottom of the ladder right  outside the galley slicing cucumbers.

Fat Clyde yawned. It rained in his mouth, but he didn't seem to notice. He  had a problem. Being an ectomorph he was inclined to brood. He was a  gunner's mate third and normally it would be none of his business except  that his rack was directly over Pappy Hod's and since arrival in Valletta,  Malta, Pappy had commenced talking to himself. Not loud; not loud enough to  be heard by anyone but Fat Clyde.

Now scuttlebutt being what it is, and sailors being, under frequently  sentimental and swinish exteriors, sentimental swine, Clyde knew well enough  what it was about being in Malta that upset Pappy Hod. Pappy hadn't been  eating anything. Normally a liberty hound, he hadn't even been over yet.  Because it was usually Fat Clyde who Pappy went out and got drunk with, this  was lousing up Fat Clyde's liberty.

Lazar the deck ape, who had been trying the radar gang now for two weeks,  came out with a broom and started sweeping water into the drain on the port  side. "I don't know why I should be doing this," he bitched  conversationally. "I don't have the duty."

"You should of stayed down in first division," Fat Clyde ventured, glum.  Lazar began sweeping water at Fat Clyde, who jumped out of the way and  continued on down the starboard ladder. To the spud coxswain: "Give me a  cucumber, hey Tiger."

"You want a cucumber," said Tiger, who was chopping up onions. "Here. I got  a cucumber for you." His eyes were watering so bad he looked like a sullen  boy which is what he was.

"Slice it and put it on a plate," said Fat Clyde, "and maybe I will -"

"Here." From the galley porthole. Pappy Hod was hanging out, waving a  crescent of watermelon. He spat a seed at Tiger.

That's the old Pappy Hod, thought Clyde. And he is wearing dress blues and a  neckerchief.

"Get your ass in gear, Clyde," said Pappy Hod. "Liberty call any minute now."

So of course Clyde was off like a streak for the fo'c's'le and back inside  of five minutes, squared away as he ever got for liberty.

"832 days," Tiger Youngblood snarled as Pappy and Clyde headed for the  quarterdeck. "And I'll never make it."

The Scaffold, resting on keel blocks, was propped up on each side by a dozen  wood beams a foot square which extended from the sides of the ship to the  sides of the drydock. From above, the Scaffold must have looked like a great  squid with wood-colored tentacles. Pappy and Clyde crossed the long brow and  stood in the rain for a moment, looking at the ship. The sonar dome was  shrouded in a secret tarpaulin. At the top of the mast flew the biggest  American flag Captain Lych had been able to find. It would not be lowered  come Evening Colors; and come true nightfall portable spotlights would be  turned on and focused on it. This was for the benefit of any Egyptian bomber  pilots who might be coming in, Scaffold being the only American ship in  Valletta at the moment.

On the starboard side rose a school or seminary with a clock tower, growing  out of a bastion high as the surface-search radar antenna.

"High and dry," said Clyde.

"They say the Limeys are going to kidnap us," said Pappy. "And leave our ass  high and dry till this is over."

"It may take longer than that anyway. Give me a cigarette. There's the  generator and the screw -"

"And the barnacles." Pappy Hod was disgusted. "They will probably want to  sandblast, long as she's in the yards. Even though there's a yard period in  Philly coming up as soon as we get back. They'll find something for us to  do, Fat Clyde."

They made their way through the Dockyard. Around them straggled most of the  Scaffold's liberty section in files and bunches. Submarines too were under  wraps: perhaps for secrecy, perhaps for the rain. The quitting time whistle  blew and Pappy and Clyde were caught all at once in a torrent of yardbirds:  disgorged from earth, vessels and pissoirs, all heading for the gate.

"Yardbirds are the same all over," Pappy said. He and Clyde took their time.  The dock workers fled by, jostling them: ragged, gray. By the time Pappy and  Clyde reached the stone gateway they'd all gone. Waiting for them were only  two old nuns who sat to either side of the gate, holding little straw  collection baskets in their laps and black umbrellas over their heads.  Bottoms of the baskets were barely covered with sixpences and a shilling or  two. Clyde came up with a crown; Pappy, who hadn't been over to exchange any  currency, dropped a dollar in the other basket. The nuns smiled briefly and  resumed their vigil.

"What was that," Pappy smiled to nobody. "Admission charge?"

Towered over by ruins, they walked up a hill, around a great curve in the  road and through a tunnel. At the other end of the tunnel was a bus stop:  threepence into Valletta, as far as the Phoenicia Hotel. When the bus  arrived they got on with a few straggling yardbirds and many Scaffold  sailors, who sat in the back and sang. "Pappy," Fat Clyde began, "I know  it's no business of mine, but -"

"Driver," came a yell from in back. "Hey driver. Stop the bus. I got to take  a leak."

Pappy slumped lower in his seat; tilted the white hat down over his eyes.  "Teledu," he muttered. "That will be Teledu."

"Driver," said Teledu of the A gang. "If you don't stop the bus I will have  to piss out the window." Despite himself Pappy turned around to watch. A  number of snipes were endeavoring to pull Teledu away from the window. The  driver drove on grimly. The yardbirds weren't talking, but watched closely.  Scaffold sailors were singing:

 Let's all go down and piss on the Forrestal  Till the damn thing floats away,

which went to the tune of The Old Gray Mare and had started at Gitmo Bay in  the winter of '55.

"Once he has got an idea in his head," said Pappy, "he won't let go. So if  they don't let him piss out the window, he will probably -"

"Look, look," said Fat Clyde. A yellow river of urine was advancing up the  center aisle. Teledu was just zipping up.

"A fun-loving good will ambassador," somebody remarked, "is all Teledu is."  As the river crept forward sailors and yardbirds hurriedly covered it with  the leaves of a few morning newspapers, left lying on the seats. Teledu's  comrades applauded.

"Pappy," Fat Clyde said, "you intending to go out and get juiced tonight?"

"I was thinking about it," said Pappy.

"That's what I was afraid of. Look, I know I'm out of line -"

Ho was interrupted by a burst of merriment from the back of the bus.  Teledu's friend Lazar, whom Fat Clyde had last seen sweeping water off the  01 deck, had succeeded now in setting fire to the newspapers on the floor of  the bus. Smoke billowed up and with a most horrible smell. Yardbirds began  to mutter among themselves. "I should of saved some," crowed Teledu, "to put  it out with."

"Oh God," said Pappy. A couple-three of Teledu's fellow snipes were stomping  around trying to put out the fire. The bus driver was cursing audibly.

They pulled up to the Phoenicia Hotel at last: smoke still leaking from the  windows. Night had fallen. Raucous with song, the men of the Scaffold boat  descended on Valletta.

Clyde and Pappy were last to get out. They apologized to the driver. Palm  leaves in front of the hotel chattered in the wind. It seemed Pappy was  hanging back.

"Why don't we go to a movie," Clyde said, a little desperate. Pappy wasn't  listening. They walked under an arch and into Kingsway.

"Tomorrow is Hallowe'en," said Pappy, "and they better put those idiots in a  strait jacket."

"They never made one to hold old Lazar. Hot damn, it's crowded in here."

Kingsway seethed. There was this sense of containment, like a sound stage.  As an indication of the military buildup in Malta since the beginning of the  Suez crisis, there overflowed into the street a choppy sea of green Commando  berets, laced with the white and blue of naval uniforms. The Ark Royal was  in, and corvettes, and troop carriers to take the Marines to Egypt to occupy  and hold.

"Now I was on an AKA during the war," observed Pappy as they elbowed their  way along Kingsway, "and just before D-day it was like this:"

"Oh they was getting drunk in Yoko too, back during Korea," said Clyde,  defensive.

"Not like that was, or like this either. The Limeys have a way of getting  drunk just before they have to go off and fight. Not like we get drunk. All  we do is puke, or break furniture. But the Limeys show imagination. Listen."

All it was was an English ruddy-faced jarhead and his Maltese girl, standing  in the entrance to a men's clothing store and looking at silk scarves. But  they were singing People Will Say We're In Love, from Oklahoma.

Overhead bombers screamed away toward Egypt. On some street corners  trinket-stalls were set up, and doing a peak trade in good-luck charms and  Maltese lace.

"Lace," said Fat Clyde. "What is it about lace."

"To make you think about a girl. Even if you don't have a girl, it's better  somehow if you . . ." He trailed off. Fat Clyde didn't try to keep the  subject alive.

From a Phillips Radio store to their left, news broadcasts were going full  blast. Little tense knot, of civilians stood around, just listening. Nearby  at a newspaper kiosk, red scare headlines proclaimed BRITISH INTEND TO MOVE  INTO SUED "Parliament," said the newscaster, "after an emergency session,  issued a resolution late this afternoon calling for the engagement of  airborne troops in the Suez crisis. The paratroopers, based on Cyprus and  Malta, are on one-hour alert."

"Oboy, oboy," said Fat Clyde wearily.

"High and dry," said Pappy Hod, "and the only ship in the Sixth Fleet  getting liberty." All the others were off in the Eastern Mediterranean  evacuating American nationals from the Egyptian mainland. Abruptly Pappy cut  round a corner to the left. He'd gone about ten steps down the hill when he  noticed Fat Clyde wasn't there.

"Where are you going," Fat Clyde yelled from the corner.

"The Gut," said Pappy, "where else."

"Oh." Clyde came stumbling downhill. "I figured maybe we could wander around  the main drag a little. "

Pappy grinned: reached out and patted Clyde's beer belly. "Easy there,  mother Clyde," he said. "Old Hod is doing all right."

I'm just trying to be helpful, Clyde thought. But: "Yes," he agreed, "I am  pregnant with a baby elephant. You want to see its trunk?"

Pappy guffawed and they roistered away down the hill. There is nothing like  old jokes. It's a kind of stability about them: familiar ground.

Strait Street - the Gut - was crowded as Kingsway but more poorly lit. First  familiar face they saw was Leman the red-headed water-king, who came reeling  out the swinging doors of a pub called the Four Aces, minus a white hat.  Leman was a bad drunk, so Pappy and Clyde ducked down behind a patted palm  in front to watch. Sure enough, Leman started searching in the gutter, bent  over at a 90 degree angle. "Rocks," whispered Clyde. "He always looks for  rocks." The water-king found a rock and prepared to heave it through the  front window of the Four Aces. The U. S. Cavalry, in the form of one  Tourneur, the ship's barber, arrived also by way of the swinging doors and  grabbed Leman's arm. The two fell to the street and began wrestling around  in the dust. A passing band of British Marines looked at them curiously for  a moment, then went by, laughing, a little embarrassed.

"See," said Pappy, getting philosophical. "Richest country in the world and  we never learned how to throw a good-bye drunk like the Limeys."

"But it's not good-bye for us," said Clyde.

"Who knows. There's revolutions in Hungary and Poland, fighting in Egypt."  Pause. "And Jayne Mansfield is getting married."

"She can't, she can't. She said she'd wait for me."

They entered the Four Aces. It was early yet and no one but a few  low-tolerance drunks like Leman were causing any commotion. They sat at a  table. "Guinness stout," said Pappy and the words fell on Clyde like a  nostalgic sandbag. He wanted to say, Pappy it is not the old days and why  didn't you stay on board the Scaffold boat because a boring liberty is  better for me than one that hurts, and this hurts more all the time.

The barmaid who brought their drinks was new: at least Clyde didn't remember  her from last cruise. But one across the room, jitterbugging with one of  Pappy's strikers, she'd been around. And though Paola's bar had been the  Metro, further on down the street, this girl - Elisa? - knew through the  barmaids' grapevine that Pappy had married one of her own. If only Clyde  could keep him away from the Metropole. If only Elisa didn't spot them.

But the music stopped, she saw them, headed over. Clyde concentrated on his  beer. Pappy smiled at Elisa.

"How's your wife?" she asked, of course.

"I hope she's well."

Elisa, bless her heart, dropped it. "You want to dance? Nobody broke your  record yet. Twenty-two straight."

Nimble Pappy was on his feet. "Let's set a new one."

Good, thought Clyde: good. After a while who should come over but LtJG  Johnny Contango, the Scaffold's damage-control assistant, in civvies.

"When we going to get the screw fixed, Johnny?"

Johnny because this officer had been a white hat sent to OCS, and having  been then faced with the usual two alternatives - to persecute those of his  former estate or to keep fraternizing and to hell with the wardroom - had  chosen the latter. He had gone possibly overboard on this, at least running  afoul of the Book at every turn: stealing a motorcycle in Barcelona,  inciting an impromptu mass midnight swim at Fleet Landing in the Piraeus.  Somehow - maybe because of Captain Lych's fondness for incorrigibles - he'd  escaped court-martial.

"I am feeling more and more guilty about the screw," said Johnny Contango.  "I have just slipped off from a stuffy do over at the British Officers'  Club. You know what the big joke is? 'Let's have another drink, old boy,  before we have to go to war with each other.' "

"I don't get it," said Fat Clyde.

"We voted in the Security Council with Russia and against England and France  on this Suez business."

"Pappy says the Limeys are going to kidnap us."

"I don't know."

"What about the screw?"

"Drink your beer, Fat Clyde." Johnny Contango felt guilty about the mangled  ship's propeller not so much in a world-political way. It was personal guilt  which, Fat Clyde suspected upset him more than he showed. He'd been OOD. the  midwatch old Scaffold boat had hit whatever it was - submerged wreck, oil  drum - going through the Straits of Messina. Radar gang had been too busy  keeping tabs on a fleet of night fishing boats who'd chosen the same route  to notice the object - if it had protruded above the surface at all. Set,  and drift, and pure accident had brought them here to get a screw fixed. God  knew what the Med had brought into Johnny Contango's path. The report had  called it "hostile marine life," and there'd been much raillery since about  the mysterious screw-chewing fish, but Johnny still felt it was his fault.  The Navy would rather blame something alive - preferably human and with a  service number - than pure accident. Fish? Mermaid? Scylla, Charybdis, wha.  Who knew how many female monsters this Med harbored?

"Bwaagghh."

"Pinguez, I'll bet," Johnny said without looking around.

"Yup. All over his blues." The owner had materialized and stood now  truculent over Pinguez, steward's mate striker, hollering "SP, SP," with no  results. Pinguez sat on the floor afflicted with the dry heaves.

"Poor Pinguez," Johnny said. "He's an early one."

Out on the floor Pappy was up to about a dozen and showed no signs of  stopping.

"We ought to get him into a cab," Fat Clyde said.

"Where is Baby Face." Falange the snipe, and Pinguez's buddy. Pinguez now  lay sprawled among the legs of a table, and had begun talking to himself in  Filipino. A bartender approached with something dark in a glass that fizzed.  Baby Face Falange, wearing as was his wont a babushka, joined the group  around Pinguez. A number of British sailors looked on with interest.

"Here, you drink it," the bartender said. Pinguez lifted his head and moved  it, mouth open, toward the bartender's hand. Bartender got the message and  jerked his hand away: Pinguez's shiny teeth closed on the air with a loud  snap. Johnny Contango knelt by the steward.

"Andale, man," he said gently, raising Pinguez's head. Pinguez bit him on  the arm. "Let go," just as quiet. "It's a Hathaway shirt, I don't want no  cabron puking on it."

"Falange!" Pinguez screamed, drawing out the a's.

"You hear that," said Baby Face. "That's all he has to say on the  quarterdeck and my ass has had it."

Johnny took Pinguez under the arms; Fat Clyde, more nervous, lifted his  feet. They bore him to the street, found a cab, and got him off in it.

"Back to the great gray mother," said Johnny. "Come on. You want to try the  Union Jack?"

"I should keep an eye on Poppy. You know."

"I know. But he'll be busy dancing."

"As long as he doesn't get to the Metro," said Fat Clyde. They strolled down  half a block to the Union Jack. Inside Antoine Zippo, captain of the second  division head, and Nasty Chobb the baker, who periodically used salt in  place of sugar in the early morning's pies to discourage thieves, had taken  over not only the bandstand in back but also a trumpet and guitar  respectively; and were now making Route 66, respectfully.

"Sort of quiet," said Johnny Contango. But this was premature because sly  young Sam Mannaro, the corpsman striker, was even now sneaking alum into  Antoine's beer which sat uneyed by Antoine on the piano.

"SP's will be busy tonight," said Johnny. "How come Pappy came over at all?"

"I never had that happen to me, that way," Clyde said, a little brusque.

"Sorry. I was thinking today in the rain how it was I could light a  king-sized cigarette without getting it wet."

"Oh I think he should have stayed on board," said Clyde, "but all we can do  is keep an eye out that window."

"Right ho," said Johnny Contango, slurping beer.

A scream from the street. "That's tonight's," said Johnny. "Or one of  tonight's."

"Bad street."

"Back during the beginning of all this in July the Gut ran one killing a  night. Average. God knows what it is now."

In came two Commandos, looking around for somewhere to sit. They picked  Clyde and Johnny's table.

David and Maurice their names were, and heading off for Egypt tomorrow.

"We shall be there," said Maurice, "to wave hello when you people come  steaming in."

"If ever," said Johnny.

"World's going to hell," said David. They'd been drinking heavily but held  it well.

"Don't expect to hear from us till the election is over," said Johnny.

"Oh is that it then."

"Why America is sitting on its ass," brooded Johnny, "is the same reason our  ship is sitting on its ass. Crosscurrents, seismic movements, unknown things  in the night. But you can't help thinking it's somebody's fault."

"The jolly, jolly balloon," said Maurice. "Going up."

"Did you hear a bloke got murdered just as we came in." David leaned  forward, melodramatic.

"More blokes than that will get murdered in Egypt," said Maurice, "and don't  I wish they would truss up a few M.P.'s now, in those jumping rigs and  chutes. Send them out the door. They're the ones who want it. Not us.

"But my brother is on Cyprus and I shall never live it down if he gets there  first."

The Commandos outdrank them two-for-one. Johnny, never having talked to  anyone who might be dead inside a week, was curious in a macabre way. Clyde,  who had, only felt unhappy.

The group on the stand had moved from Route 66 to Every Day I Have the  Blues. Antoine Zippo, who had wrecked one jugular vein last year with a  shore-based Navy band in Norfolk and was now trying for two, took a break,  shook the spit out of his horn and reached for the beer on the piano. He  looked hot and sweaty, as a suicidal workhorse trumpet should. Alum however  being what it is, the predictable occurred.

"Ech," said Antoine Zippo, slamming the beer down on the piano. He looked  around, belligerent. His lip had just been attacked. "Sam the werewolf,"  said Antoine, "is the only sumbitch here who could get alum." He couldn't  talk too well.

"There goes Pappy," said Clyde, grabbing for his hat. Antoine Zippo leaped  like a puma from the stand, landing feet first on Sam Mannaro's table.

David turned to Maurice. "I wish the Yanks would save their energy for  Nasser."

"Still," said Maurice, "it would be good practice."

"I heartily agree," pip-pipped David in a toff's voice: "Shall we, old man?"

Bung ho. The two Commandos waded into the growing melee about Sam.

Clyde and Johnny were the only two heading for the door. Everybody else  wanted to get in on the fight. It took them five minutes to reach the  street. Behind them they heard glass breaking and chairs being knocked over.  Pappy Hod was nowhere in sight.

Clyde hung his head. "I suppose we ought to go to the Metro." They took  their time, neither savoring the night's work ahead. Pappy was a loud and  merciless drunk. He demanded that his keepers sympathize and of course they  always did, so much that it was always worse for them.

They passed an alley. Facing them on the blank wall, in chalk, was a Kilroy,  thus:

[picture missing]

flanked by two of the most common British sentiments in time of crisis: WOT  NO PETROL and END CALL-UP.

"No petrol, indeed," said Johnny Contango. "They're blowing up oil  refineries all over the Middle East." Nasser it seems having gone on the  radio, urging a sort of economic jihad.

Kilroy was possibly the only objective onlooker in Valletta that night.  Common legend had it he'd been born in the U.S. right before the war, on a  fence or latrine wall. Later he showed up everywhere the American armies  moved: farmhouses in France, pillboxes in North Africa, bulkheads of troop  ships in the Pacific. Somehow he'd acquired the reputation of a schlemihl or  sad sack. The foolish nose hanging over the wall was vulnerable to all  manner of indignities: fist, shrapnel, machete. Hinting perhaps at a  precarious virility, a flirting with castration, though ideas like this are  inevitable in a latrine-oriented (as well as Freudian) psychology.

But it was all deception. Kilroy by 1940 was already bald, middle-aged. His  true origins forgotten, he was able to ingratiate himself with a human  world, keeping schlemihl-silence about what he'd been as a curly-haired  youth. It was a masterful disguise: a metaphor. For Kilroy had sprung into  life, in truth, as part of a band-pass filter, thus:

[picture missing]

Inanimate. But Grandmaster of Valletta tonight.

"The Bobbsey Twins," said Clyde. Running around the corner in a jog trot  came Dahoud (who'd discouraged little Ploy from taking a Brody) and Leroy  Tongue the widget storekeeper, both of them with night sticks and SP  armbands. It looked like a vaudeville act, Dahoud being one and a half times  as high as Leroy. Clyde had a general idea of their technique for keeping  the peace. Leroy would hop up on Dahoud's shoulders piggyback and rain  pacification about the heads and shoulders of boisterous bluejackets, while  Dahoud exerted his calming influence down below.

"Look," yelled Dahoud approaching. "We can do it running." Leroy slowed down  and cut in behind his running mate. "Hup-hup-hup," said Dahoud. "YO." Sure  enough: neither of them breaking stride, up hopped Leroy, clinging to  Dahoud's big collar to ride his shoulders like a jockey.

"Giddap there, boss," Leroy screamed, and away they dashed for the Union  Jack. A small detachment of Marines, all in step, came marching out of a  side street. One farm lad, blond and candid-faced, counted cadence  unintelligibly. Passing Clyde and Johnny, he broke off for a moment to ask:

"Wot's all that noise we hear?"

"Fight," said Johnny. "Union Jack."

"Right ho." Back in formation, the boy ordered a column left and his charges  set course dutifully for the Union Jack.

"We're missing all the fun," whined Clyde.

"There is Poppy."

They entered the Metro. Poppy sat at a table with a barmaid who looked like  Paola but fatter and older. It was pitiful to watch. He was doing his  "Chicago" bit. They waited till it was over. The barmaid, indignant, arose  and waddled off. Poppy used the handkerchief to swab off his face which was  sweating.

"Twenty-five dances," he said as they approached. "I broke my own record."

"There is a nice fight on at the Union Jack," suggested Clyde. "Wouldn't you  like to go to it, Poppy?"

"Or how about that whorehouse the chief off the Hank that we met in  Barcelona told us about," said Johnny. "Why don't we try to find it."

Poppy shook his head. "You guys ought to know this was the only place I  wanted to come."

So they begin: these vigils. Having put up their token resistance, Clyde and  Johnny straddled chairs to either side of Poppy and settled down to drinking  as much as Poppy but staying soberer.

The Metro looked like a nobleman's pied-a-terre applied to mean purposes.  The dancing floor and bar lay up a wide curving flight of marble steps lined  with statues in niches: statues of Knights, ladies and Turks. Such was a  quality of suspended animation about them that you felt come the owl-hours,  the departure of the last sailor and the extinguishment of the last electric  light, these statues must unfreeze, step down from their pedestals, and  ascend stately to the dance floor bringing with them their own light: the  sea's phosphorescence. There to form sets and dance till sunup, utterly  silent; no music; their stone feet only just kissing the wood planks.

Along the sides of the room were great stone urns, with palms and  poincianas. On the red-carpeted dais sat a small hot-jazz band: violin,  trombone, saxophone, trumpet, guitar, piano, drums. It was a plump  middle-aged lady, playing the violin. At the moment they were playing C'est  Magnifique tailgate fashion, while a Commando six and a half feet tall  jitterbugged with two barmaids at once and tree and four friends stood  around, clapping hands, cheering, them on. It was not so much a matter of  Dick Powell, the American Singing Marine, caroling Sally and Sue, Don't Be  Blue: more a taking-on of traditional attitudes which (on suspects) must be  latent in all English germ plasm: mother loony chromosome along with  afternoon tea and respect for the Crown; where the Yanks saw novelty and an  excuse for musical comedy, the English saw history, and Sally and Sue were  only incidental.

Early tomorrow deck hands would come out in the bleaching glare of the  pier's lights and single up all lines for some of these green berets. The  night before, then, was for sentiment, larking in shadows with jolly  barmaids, another pint and another smoke in this manufactured farewell-hall;  this enliste............