All The Nice Girls by John Winton Page B

about what’s wrong with the Navy, has he?’
    ‘Not yet, sir.’
    ‘He will. He’s a good fellow but some of his staff are a bit dubious, eh?’
    Dagwood thought of Mr Swales. ‘I have had a bit of trouble with one or two of them, sir.’
    ‘It’s a good thing you don’t always agree with the civil servants, Jones. Tybalt’s not a civil servant of course, but the rest of that crew are. There are two forces that get things done in the Navy and one of them is the friction between civilians and serving officers. Friction leads to frustration and frustration is a powerful source of energy. Some of those civil servants hold a good deal of responsibility and handle large sums of money. Who do they think they are, they say of us in the Navy, they look down on the civil servants yet they can’t see further than their present appointments and they won’t give us the facts we need. The Navy, on the other side, deal with actual men and conditions. Who do they think they are, we say of the civil servants, sitting in their damned little offices and telling us what to do? They ought to come down and actually see what goes on for a change. Both sides swear at each other and the remarkable thing is, something happens!’
    It was a good point. Dagwood acknowledged it. ‘But what’s the other force in the Navy, sir?’
    ‘Ah, I thought you’d ask that! It’s the struggle against chaos, Jones. The Navy is always on the brink of chaos. I served for forty years and I never took over a job that wasn’t in a state of chaos. I worked for two years to put it right and the man who came after me always thought he’d taken over the job in a state of chaos. The Navy runs in a state of suspended dissolution. Always has. Always will.’
    It was now very plain to Dagwood that he had gravely misjudged the Admiral. All that business with the postman dodging and jinking across the lawn had been very misleading. The Admiral was not, as Dagwood had first thought him, just another retired flag officer quietly going bonkers in the country. He was still very much alive and sensitive to the changes taking place in the world and the Navy.
    As if to prove that he was not yet a doddering old fool, the Admiral suddenly switched his attack on to Dagwood himself. ‘You’re a technical officer, aren’t you, Jones?’
    ‘An electrical officer, sir.’
    ‘That’s a pity.’
    Dagwood reddened. ‘I don’t think so, sir.’
    ‘Of course it’s a pity! The Navy’s a damn fine life for a young man, whatever his particular expertise is, but there’s only one job in the whole Navy that makes the whole lot worthwhile and that’s to command your own ship. It doesn’t matter how old or how small she is, once you’ve commanded her the Admiralty won’t owe you a penny. There’s no other job like it and once you’ve done it every other job, no matter how responsible or interesting, seems flat and stale. I know.’ Dagwood was not disconcerted by the attack. He relished it. Beneath the Admiral’s dogmatic assertions and massive blockbuster arguments, assembled piece by invulnerable piece, Dagwood perceived the charm of manner for which Rob Roy was still remembered in the service.
    ‘If you didn’t have technical officers, sir, the most you could command nowadays would be a dumb lighter.’
    ‘Of course! And that’s my answer! ‘
    The Admiral, too, was enjoying himself; it was seldom someone came to see him who spoke his own language (albeit a primitive dialect of it). The Admiral began to talk of his early days in the Navy. ‘ . . . Submarines were just starting when I joined. When they asked me why I wanted to join the Navy I said I wanted to be a submariner. In those days I might just as well have said I wanted to practise robbery with violence! I was nearly failed out of hand! Submariners were supposed to be pirates you see, and there was a suggestion that they should be hung from the yard-arm if they were captured in time of war . . .’
    The