Seagulls in My Soup by Tristan Jones

Author:Tristan Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2014-05-10T11:51:12+00:00

10. The Thousandth Man

Sundays are what you make of them. They can be days of holiness and gloom if you go to chapel, sacrifice and misery if you go visit your in-laws, a sports day if you think that chasing a ball around, or watching it being done, is the acme of human endeavor—or you can rest and read. Not being Scottish, Irish, English, or Continental, I decided on the last pursuit on the day following my visit to the diabolical dentist.

That Sunday was to be, I thought, ambrosial. Despite the cavernous hole on the starboard side of my upper jaw, when I awoke I was elated. It was the first time in months that Cresswell, Nelson, and I had been alone, to do as we pleased. I could lounge around in my underpants, without having to sluice my face in the water bucket; I could burn the bacon and eat an egg raw in milk and throw my pillow playfully at Nelson, and he could jump around as best he could on his three legs, with his tongue hanging out, and pant and grin at me, and not worry if his tail brushed a damned china cup off the table. By the time breakfast was over we had, both of us, sloughed off, in half an hour, months of weary fair manners-at-table, and Oh-deah-we-really-jolly-well-ought-to-buy-a-decent-bally-tea-towel, which was Sissie’s plaint every breakfast time. Now Nelson could hop onto the starboard berth, which had been his favorite lounging place before the days of Nemesis, in the shape of the bishop’s sister, had overtaken us in the vineyards of France. Now he could lie there, with his head on his paw, grinning at me, until I gave him my tin bacon plate to clean with his eager tongue before I restowed it, by throwing it at the stove and letting it find its own resting place, just like the good old days.

After breakfast and the daily exercise just described, as it was yet cool topsides, I chose a book to enjoy. Shakespeare isn’t for the morning, and Boswell’s Life of Johnson I decided to save for the next day. Conrad’s Nostromo tempted me, but in the end I settled for my old friend, The Oxford Book of English Verse. I made another pot of tea and subsided onto my berth, with my head on piled pillow and oilskin jacket, my back to the hatchway, whence came the daylight. Now, after I lit a cigarette, I was in my own version of paradise. Here was bliss, a quiet ecstasy, perfect contentment, supreme happiness. Now I was as near to Avalon or the Fortunate Isles as I could ever expect to be in this life—and probably after. No one had ever told me, in those days, that a “man of action” was not supposed to enjoy poetry. No one had ever tried to insinuate into my consciousness that poetry and action were completely inimical, one to the other. In my Welsh innocence it never occurred

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