‘Love, soft as an easy chair…’ sang my watchmate for the 10th time since eight bells, following with a whistled version of what he imagined to be the next line. I thought how much better Barbara Streisand delivered the number and ground my teeth silently.
The wretch was clearly missing his girlfriend, but why he had to load up his angst on the rest of us was beyond me. ‘Why doesn’t he finish the song,’ I thought. ‘Or better still shut up?’
Spike, for that was his name, and I were signed on as gash hands aboard a beaten-up vessel headed south for better weather which had so far eluded her. It was February. The gales blew, the mainsail was so old that only regular attention with the needle saved it from blowing out of its bolt ropes, and the main topsail set like a pensioned-off pillow case but Bert was an amiable sort of guy. I don’t suppose my shipmates were crazy about my practising the harmonica either but, like so many before me, I fancied myself without sin, placing responsibility for the tense ambience firmly on Spike and his endless repetition of that single tuneless phrase.
