the new model boat from the Pond, with less than enthusiasm. ‘You gonna get that thing hosed down outside? We could do with its room, and without its stink.’
‘Young Lenny can do it, when he finally turns up.’
‘Here he is now,’ said Sam, ‘looking like a wet Sunday.’
James gave him a sharp look, for making rude remarks about Sunday. Sam at least pretended to be an atheist; mainly, I guess, to annoy James and to while away many a boring hour with argument.
I must admit young Lenny looked pretty ghastly; very pale, and jumpy. And very slow to give us a hand with the boat. It was a handful for four, and it didn’t help that the slime on it had dried on the surface, like the top of a cow-pat, but underneath was still wet and greasy, so that your hands slid on crumpling patches of the dried stuff. It was damned heavy, too; full of silt. Worse, three of us had to stand holding it, while Lenny nipped back for the trestles; and didn’t he take his time?
‘Yeuk!’ Sam made a noise of disgust, deep in his throat, flapped his hands to try to shake the slime off them, and dived for the wash-basin, where he spent about ten minutes washing them. Then he went off, and James spent about ten minutes washing his hands. Was no one going to make a start this morning? But the stuff was unpleasant. It tightened on your skin as it dried, gave the delusion of burning the skin, like paint-stripper . . . I spent a long time washing in turn, making sure it was out of every crack and crevice . . . I thought it was odd at the time.
Then I decided to follow James’s example, and polish every bit of brass in my shop. The doorstops in the form of charging hussars were rather fun, every detail of sword and cross-belts coming up beautifully. But the grain-measures (set of three) were a boring drag . . .
Then Lenny darkened the doorway; he seemed to have got himself pretty wet, even though it wasn’t yet raining more than a spot. He would hardly ever wear an apron for a dirty job, like the older men. I supposed he had a daft mother who spent endless hours washing his ragged jeans.
‘Done the outside of it,’ he said sullenly.
‘So?’ I said, tempted to be nasty in return.
‘Thought you would want to see it.’
‘Oh, all right!’ Where had all the enthusiasm gone, that had made us gather so avidly round the first little German tinplate cruiser? I suppose you can get sick of handling gold and jewels in the end, if you have enough of them . . .
It was certainly a fine model ship; a very expensive model ship. A white hull, faintly spotted all over with green algae, six feet long and a foot across. Finely-fitted deck planking, beautifully-cast brass handrails, a varnished wooden superstructure, not even beginning to rot, a white bridge, brass ventilators, all dominated by a single fat brass funnel. The glass in the windows was even bevelled, and quite perfect. And there was the brass-maker’s plate, which I knew must say ‘Ross and Makepeace’ even before I looked at it.
I turned the six-inch steering-wheel on the bridge, and the white rudder swung; I moved the handles of the engine-room telegraphs. Everything was made to work. Extraordinary.
So was the engine-room, under the hatch that Lenny had lifted off at the back. Brass feed-tanks for the methylated spirit, little pipes leading down to the burners. No chance that this one would catch fire in midvoyage. Little working pressure-gauges, and the miniature triple-expansion engine was a masterpiece of engineering, in brass, nearly a foot long and a foot high.
Oh, this was out of this world! The ultimate dream of a model boat! This was one that Christie’s or Sotheby’s would probably send to New York! A hundred thousand dollars? Two hundred thousand? The sky was the limit, once the millionaire yachtsmen got their eyes on it.
And yet all I felt was a dull hate for the thing. It was too big, too overblown. It wasn’t really a model at all. When things get too big, they cease to be models for me. Like that model of a Cunarder, ten feet long, in Liverpool Museum. You can admire it, but you can’t relate to it. A bloke could have sat on the deck of this thing, and it would have