Page 104 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

English were still stuck in some sort of time-warp compared with the decadent
continentals) it struck me that if Jayne liked that sort of thing, she would probably
like this sort of thing. It looked like being a good day.

But it wasn’t. When retiring, I missed a scheduled time-change. So, when I
awoke for a stimulating day, the tour had gone! Missed by ten minutes, ‘despair’
did not begin to describe what I felt, later made only the worse by looking at
some of the tour brochures; what even they showed was well beyond what I
thought publicly acceptable (though, truth to tell, erotic art very quickly turns
into grotesquery, and here much did so).
We departed in the evening; even the rather romantic image of Capri
disappearing astern (for me, accompanied by Scotland’s finest product) did little
to raise my morale. It certainly did nothing to raise Jayne’s.
The voyage to Barcelona, which should have been a pacific interlude, did not
prove to be so; we were heading into a westerly wind of unusual ferocity for the
Mediterranean, and while the pitching was slight, stabilisers can do nothing in
that sort of sea; the dining saloon was almost deserted for dinner. It did not worry
me too much; I was told that Jayne was now having a very good time with the 2nd
mate (a useless Lothario-type of fellow, in my view) and Stuart was disconsolate
to find that Carole was evidently enjoying the attention of the homunculus; la
donna e mobile (times two)!

From the sea, Barcelona simply looked like a big city. But we really didn’t
have eyes for it, for anchored outside the harbour was the magnificent USS
Enterprise, at that time virtually new (being launched in 1962), the world’s first
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the longest naval vessel ever built. While
the world boasted a number of small aircraft carriers of dubious utility (naval
minnows such as Brazil and Canada each operated such vessels, though both
were without significant navies), and they were therefore not uncommon, this
was a singularly impressive ship. One could only assume that it was in a Spanish
port because the U.S. was keen to bring that fascist state into NATO, though
this objective was not achieved until 1982. The Americans were judicious in
their behaviour, however; the pilot told us that the first boats ashore from the
ship disgorged 200 military police, charged with maintaining order by asking
questions of disorderly crew only after knocking them on the head and bringing
them back on board. And this, we knew, unlike the Royal Navy, was a dry ship,
so there obviously being, in spite of sobriety, an acute awareness of Spanish
sensibilities. Still, there were about 4,000 lusty young men on board, each with
a lot more money than most Spaniards were likely to have. And aircraft carriers
do not operate like lone wolves; somewhere in the harbour were likely to be at
least five (manned) escort warships.

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