Ships that pass in the night.
Two people almost meet in a far place but do not. Non-the-less, this creates an inexplicable bond. These are ‘ships that pass in the night’. On life’s ocean, the expectation that their paths will cross again is unlikely. Well, who knows?
This story and its connection to Mallorca is a convolution. To explain its significance, I have to go back to Karachi harbour 1971. I was a twenty-two-year-old Junior Engineering Officer working for BI the British India Steam Navigation Company. BI was an enigma, working for it you were transported back to the days of the British Raj. The ships employed British officers, a euphemism for colonial white, Indian lascar crew, and Chinese carpenters. By the seventies, the company started to employ what it termed Locally Engaged Officers, euphemistically non-white. This was progressive, but in Karachi, in late September 1971, it caused a particularly tricky problem. India and Pakistan were about to go to war, their navies were mobilising. The large Indian contingent aboard MS Chakla tied up directly opposite the Pakistani Naval Dockyard created a sensitive problem for the Pakistani authorities.
For reasons known only to himself, our third deck officer, Rajat Singh, decided to test the ship’s windsurf board. He had the crew lower it into the water, between Chakla and the Naval Dockyard, climbed down a rope and cast off. What happened next almost started the war early. I won’t elaborate on that, it is covered in my story ‘Sikh on a windsurfer’, other than to say we were ordered to leave Pakistan waters. We were lucky.
Less fortunate was a British freighter named Harmattan, she was anchored in Karachi harbour when India and Pakistan went to war. Three Indian PT missile boats made a night attack on the port, and one missile hit the ship’s 2nd Engineer’s cabin and exploded in the engine room. Seven of Harmattan’s crew were killed. We got the news from our Radio Officer while Chakla was returning to the UK. Previously, I’d not met anyone who knew of the missile attack on the Harmattan, that is, until a chance meeting in Mallorca twenty years later. This is how it happened.
Unless you are rich, living in Mallorca can be a financial balancing act. For half a year the island is overrun with tourists, followed by a half year of relative quiet. A squirrel economy, you have to make enough in the summer to get you through the winter when there is little work. For that reason, we were never tempted to go into the bar or restaurant business.
The world is complex, but if you can solve problems, you needn’t be short of work. Getting work wasn’t the problem, getting parts and getting paid was. I made a foray into the world of the handyman and gave it up as a bad job. I got tired of the ‘five-minute job’ that took hours and kilometres of driving for parts, and of dealing with rich people reluctant to pay. I even let some people off paying because they were going bankrupt, watching their life savings disappear on some unsustainable dream, usually a bar. Not a good business model.
I ended up with a core of clients who rented out their houses to holidaymakers. These houses always had problems with water pumps, boilers, plumbing, electrics. All the houses had swimming pools which required constant maintenance and cleaning. Some people say they like looking after pools, they find cleaning the waters soothing, meditational. This philosophy is particularly prevalent in people handing the work over to someone else. They say they can no longer pursue this aquatic Tai-chi due to unspecified commitments. I soon learned to hate swimming pools.
Pools are a magnet for animals, that fall in and then can’t get out. I was forever saving rabbits, mice, rats, snakes and lizards with a long-pole cleaning net, or fishing out dead limp bodies.Worse than the animals was having a ton of red Sahara dust, swept up in thermals from North Africa, dumped into the pool in a rainstorm. This inevitably occurred just after cleaning and the night before clients were due. It would be impossible to get the pool clean before the guests’ arrival.
The dust is so fine it goes into suspension in the water, and takes a chemical coagulant and two days of treatment to recover the pool. The clients complain to the owners about the state of the pool. No matter how much you explain the cause of the problem to the owners, they listen politely, but in the end, you are relegated to a rip-off artist or just idle.
My loathing for house and pool management grew, and I determined that as soon as possible, I would add them to my list of ‘Businesses tried and not recommended’.
On one occasion, I was looking after a house, the clients weren’t my responsibility as they were from an independent holiday company. However, I was required to ensure that the pool was maintained and so I made regular visits to the property. The house was on a hill with a spectacular view down a valley to Cala D’or and the blue Mediterranean.
To get to the property, you had to drive up a rough track between the house and outbuildings of Sebastian, a local farmer. Sebastian was one of those types you find anywhere in the world from Cornwall to Kandahar. Overtly ambivalent, you never knew whether he was preoccupied with his work or harbouring sinister resentments against strangers interrupting his privacy on their way up the hill. These sentiments weren’t just directed at foreigners, Sebastian was unbiased in his aversion of the rest of humanity.
Strategically placed at the narrowest point between the buildings was a stone-built dog kennel. A small dark cave that housed a big black Pastor Mallorquín dog restrained on a short stout chain. This brute lay dormant in its lair until you were just passing when it would hurl itself out snarling and gnashing until the chain went taught and it was catapulted back against the wall. This horizontal canine bungee jumping continued until you were out of sight. I always keep my distance from the kennel as I passed this point. However, many an innocent tourist had the side of their vehicle battered by the frenzied creature as it projected itself from the shadows. The animal carried out this ritual with such ferocity that I expected one day to find it in two pieces, head in noose and body strewn across the track. As a sort of Doctor Doolittle experiment one day, I stopped the car as the dog hurled itself from the kennel. I leaned over, wound down the window and asked it what was the problem: “¿ Que pasa hombre?”.
The animal, perplexed by this change of routine looked at me quizzically and then passively returned to its kennel. However, this one time contact did not rehabilitate the dog, which was soon back in action.
On this particular day, I got to the house unscathed late morning and began sprucing up the pool. Roy and Mary, clients from Yorkshire, came out to chat and asked if I would like a drink. This was not unusual, recounting the story of how Sandy and I settled in Mallorca was always good for a couple of beers.
On this occasion, the conversation took a slightly different turn. As Roy and I talked, it became apparent that we had both served in the British Merchant Navy, in different companies but similar times and places. We had both worked around the Indian Ocean, East Africa, the Red Sea, the Gulf, India and Pakistan, and both at the same time in the early seventies. Inexplicably, one incident came to my mind and completely out of the blue, I said:
“Do you remember that ship, the Harmattan that was hit by a missile in Karachi harbour?”
Roy went quiet as he absorbed what I had just said. Then in a thick Yorkshire accent, he replied:
“Do ah remember it! Ah were bloody well on it.”
We looked at each other in amazement. Only a few people knew of that incident. It was incredible that after twenty-odd years, we met for the first time. Strangers, now friends, sitting in the sun, on a remote hill in Mallorca, drinking San Miguel. Ships that passed in the night.