91 REVERE STREET
469
"Let's have a squint at your
figger
and waterline, Bob," Billy
would say. He'd admire Father's trim girth and smile familiarly at
his bald spot. "Bob," he'd say, "you've maintained your displacement
and silhouette unmodified, except for somewhat thinner top chafing
gear."
Commander Billy's drinking was a "pain in the neck." He
would take possession of Father's sacred "rhino" armchair, sprawl
legs astraddle, make the tried and true framework groan, and crucify
Mother by roaring out verbose toasts in what he called "me boozy
cockney-h'Irish." He would drink to our cocktail shaker. "'Ere's to
the 'older of the Lowelldom nectar," he would bellow. "Hip, hip,
hooray for senor Martino, h'our h'old hipmate, 'elpmate, and hhonor–
ary
member of '07-h'always h'able to navigate and never says
dry." We never got through a visit without one of Billy's "Bottoms
up to the 'ead of the Nation. 'Ere's to herb-garden 'Erb." This was
a swaggering dig at Herbert Hoover's notoriously correct, but insular,
refusal to "imbibe anything more potent than Bromo-Seltzer" at a
war-relief banquet in Brussels. Commander Billy's bulbous, water–
on-the-brain forehead would glow and trickle with fury. Thinking on
Herbert Hoover and Prohibition, he was unable to contain himself.
"What a hick! We haven't been steered by a gentleman of parts
since the redoubtable Teddy." He recited
wet
verses, such as the
following inserted in Father's class book:
"I tread the bridge with measured pace;
Proud, yet anguish marks my face–
What worries me like crushing sin
Is where on the sea can I buy dry gin?"
In his cups, Commander Bilge acted as though he owned us.
He looked like a human ash-heap. Cigar ashes buried the heraldic
hedgehog on the ash tray beside him; cigar ashes spilled over and
tarnished the golden stork embroidered on the table-cover; cigar
ashes littered his own shiny blue-black uniform. Greedily Mother's
eyes would brighten, drop and brighten. She would say darkly, "I
was brought up by Papa to be like a naval officer, to be ruthlessly
neat."
Once Commander Billy sprawled back so recklessly that the
armchair began to come apart. "You see, Charlotte," he said to
Mother, "at the height of my
climacteric
I am breaking Bob's chair."
