All The Nice Girls by John Winton Read Free Book Online Page B

me.’
    ‘Can’t help it, sir. You got to have a pass.’
    ‘But this is our submarine! We live here!’
    ‘Got to have a pass, sir.’
    ‘Oh all right.’
    The section of casing was ready to be lifted off. When it was gone, most of the pressure hull aft of the fin would be exposed.
    Dagwood was impressed. ‘They’re certainly getting on with it,’ he said. ‘At this rate we shouldn’t have any difficulty in getting out of here on time.’
    But Ollie was not so impressionable. ‘It’s easy enough to rip things out. Anybody can do that. It’s putting them back, that’s what counts. That’s the bitter bit. Let’s go back to the office and see if we can get some passes to satisfy old Interpol here.’
    ‘Not my fault, sir,’ said the watchman doggedly. ‘Got to have a pass.’
    ‘All right, all right.’
    The Chief Stoker was waiting in the office. He had a list of names and several forms.
    ‘Landlady money, sir,’ he said to Ollie.
    ‘Have you all got digs?’
    ‘We’ve got the digs all right, sir. No trouble at all. Now we need some money to pay the landladies. Suspicious lot round these parts, sir.’
    The ship’s company had indeed had no trouble at all in getting digs. Seahorse ’s sailors settled in Oozemouth as though they had been born there. The Chief E.R.A. went to live with a married cousin living in the city. The Chief Stoker was a Murphy and there was a thriving, spawning clan of Murphys in Oozemouth. The Electrical Artificer and the Petty Officer Electrician made the acquaintance of two widows in the lounge bar of the Hotel Metropole and were offered, and accepted, permanent accommodation. Leading Seaman Miles, the senior torpedoman, and Leading Seaman Gorbles, the senior asdic rating, investigated an advertisement in a tobacconist’s shop and found themselves under the care of two unmarried but well-preserved sisters. Able Seaman Quickly and Stoker Gotobed pulled off the most spectacular feat of all, being found digs by the policeman who took them in charge at closing time (that perspicacious officer, who would clearly go far in the Force, tempered justice with financial appreciation by taking the two sailors to his mother-in-law, who was looking for lodgers). For those who could not find lodgings on their own account, there was always the Landlady Book.
    ‘The Landlady Book!’ Dagwood was charmed with the idea. A book of landladies was as delightful a notion as a medieval book of beasts.
    The Landlady Book combined the functions of medieval bestiary, Michelin guide, Citizens’ Advice Bureau and agony column. During the years Harvey McNichol & Drummond had been building ships for the Navy, many thousands of sailors had come to Oozemouth, stayed while their ships were completed, and left again. But they had bequeathed a record of their experiences to their successors. They had very quickly found out which landladies favoured sailors, which were the best cooks, served the largest helpings, were most generous over the rent, and had the prettiest daughters. The Landlady Book held within its covers a Landlady Lore, a legend of landladies, which had been added to, kept up to date over the years, and passed on from ship to ship. Dagwood could see by the earliest dates in the book that the original landladies must have been dead for many years and that the daughters ascribed to them must by now be grandmothers, and probably landladies, themselves. Some of the prices and terms of hiring had an oddly archaic flavour. ‘Mrs Davies,’ Dagwood read, ‘7 days board and lodging with meat sandwiches at mid-day, 17/6d.’ Also Mrs Thoroughgood who ‘would polish shoes and tender to other small needs for no increment of the weekly charge of One Sovereign.’ Amongst the more modern entries Dagwood noted ‘Mrs Hawkins. Grub good, Telly, but no sandwiches. House haunted. Would suit Chief Stoker interested in spirits.’ Dagwood wondered what incredible psychic phenomenon had manifested itself at Mrs