An Able Seaman
We seldom visited my father’s parents. At a challenging distance in the early carless days, 3-4 hours of bus & train each way meant we’d arrive in Clacton for lunch, and leave soon after tea.
I well remember, from a toddler’s perspective, the tiered front garden path, shoulder deep in ‘elephant’s ears’, and seemingly perpetual bluebells and aquilegia. We always entered at the side of the house through the kitchen door, into a cloud of meaty cabbagey fog from whence loomed my tall, stooped, be-sticked, and steamily be-spectacled grandmother. The thick lenses blurred the twinkliest warm brown eyes, and a fearsome demeanour, carved from years of arthritic pain, masked the warmest and kindest of hearts. The kitchen shelves were like a laboratory, groaning with tall kilner jars full of discoloured vegetables, and endless rows of pickles and jams. Daughter of a Fulham master baker, Grandma was born to nurture.
Whilst my mother fell into the lunch preparations, my father and I went off in search of his sister. Aunt Gwen, a jolly corduroyed gung-ho tomboy, was always with her two horses in the paddock, a small and resolutely unapproachable dachshund permanently tucked under one arm. I had mixed feelings about the horses. For one thing, they seemed unable to distinguish tiny fingers from the bits of muddy carrot that I reluctantly proffered, but worst of all was being hoisted up so high to sit on their rough backs and having itchy pants all the way home.
I just wanted to get back to the kitchen where my allocated task was to bang the old brass gong that summoned everyone to lunch. Lunch, for me, was a dull affair, with too much food, too much grown-up talk, and no fidgeting. But, as he mopped the gravy from his stubbled chin, grandpa would invite me to find him up the garden later to fetch him in for tea. Then he would disappear for forty winks, the ladies would retreat to the kitchen, and my father and I would walk down to the seafront and back.
Everything ‘up the garden’ was always manically enhanced by copious amounts of horse manure so it was a thrilling jungle to a nature obsessed toddler, and my eager bleatings of ‘Gwampaaaaw’ would eventually elicit a distant response. “Ahoy there young lady” would set my bearings, and as i drew closer, wafts of sweet tobacco smoke would lead me to him. His ’headquarters’ was a gnarly old bench surrounded by massive stands of rhubarb and giant lacy cabbages destined for grandma’s less than haute cuisine.
Over the years, he always looked and smelled the same, in the few scattered times we met. A compact blend of Popeye and Spike Milligan. Gnarly old hands clasping a battered enamel mug, a smelly old pipe clenched between surprisingly white teeth, watery cornflower blue eyes scanning a hedgerow horizon, he'd frequently slip into tales of his maritime youth on the tall ships. The young Able Seaman would be channelled, to regale me with tales of climbing 'alorft' in stormy seas, men overboard, whales alongside, and a regular bloomin great albatrorse .. amidst brief warblings of shanty songs. Aah, the days when boys were men, and too many, including his younger brother, slipped below with their magnificent craft.
Immensely hard of hearing, two-way conversations were barely negotiable. He wore an ancient hearing aid with ever-failing batteries, that whistled and chirped from his lower waistcoat pocket. From the other pocket, over his heart, he would frequently pluck an old watch, tethered by a gold chain, to peer absently into its face whilst he slowly wound its furled knob as though he were summoning the past.
When he finally stood, his old bowed legs would adjust to the lie of the land, as he hitched up his worn pale corduroy trousers and we’d head off past the fruit trees to visit the bees. Under an old apple tree we’d occupy another wobbly bench to silently watch the bees coming and going. Then grandpa would prompt me to share with the bees any news I might have to tell. He told me that they would exchange honey for a good story. We always went home with a small sticky jar with my name on, so I must have impressed them with my small tall tales.
Tea was a solemn affair, formally laid out again, as was lunch, in the gloomy dining room. Bone china, silver cutlery, cold meats and salad, fresh but so dry scones, and rows of potted jams and pickles. In the centre of the table, on a raised platter, sat Grandma’s notorious (though to me, noxious) Victorious Punge (as I heard). The grown-ups drank ritualistic tea in clinking cups and saucers, whilst I was plied with thick milk or watery homemade lemonade. Grandpa and my father talked about judo or athletics, whilst the women rattled and prattled and I peered through the gloom waiting for the next chimes on the old grandfather clock in the hall with the little rocking ship that mocked our mortal time. After tea it would be my father who strolled back up the garden with grandpa and probably left him there until I rediscovered him on our next visit.
On departure, we always left more ceremoniously, through the grand front door, with much cramped waving through armfuls of garden produce and jars of nameless pickles and honey. I remember ‘matchboxing’ all the big cabbage caterpillars on the train home, to enlist in my metamorphosis menagerie.
The last time I saw Albert, frail and mortally widowed, he was staying with my parents, to give my aunt a break. I was briefly home from uni. I could see my parents needed respite too, if only from the relentless whistling of his hearing aids, the chomping on his unlit pipe, and the regular sonorous breaking of wind. I took him for a shuffle in the park, where we sat on a bench and watched the bees on a buddleia bush. “ Anything to tell them?” I asked. There was a pause, after yet another lengthy passing of wind. He started to chuckle, those blue eyes dancing with mischief. “I don’t know if bees need to blow orft”, he said, “but they might enjoy this poem ..
“Farts are very useful; they give the belly ease.
They keep the bedclothes warm at night,
and suffocate the fleas.”
[ And such a past: born in the 1870’s, the son of a hansom cab proprietor, he went to sea aged fourteen. The Victorian navy having recognised the need for fitness, they had adopted Swedish gymnastics to produce robust, hence Able seamen. Young Albert thrived, and fast became a naval gymnastic champion, and a fearless performer on the tall ship masts. After ten years at sea, he had met his Emily, and returned to land as a prison warder and disciplinarian at HMP Lewes. Soon after, he secured the job, with cottage, as Dulwich College teacher of gymnastics and swimming, until the day his tired old body could retire. Over those years, he was a practitioner of a form of Reiki, and was known to have saved many lives from drowning, the last from the sea during his eighties.]