The Rendezvous and Other Stories

by Patrick O'Brian

  The Rendezvous

  and Other Stories

  By Patrick O’Brian

  THE AUBREY/MATURIN NOVELS

  Master and Commander

  Post Captain

  H.M.S. Surprise

  The Mauritius Command

  Desolation Island

  The Fortune of War

  The Surgeon’s Mate

  The Ionian Mission

  Treason’s Harbor

  The Far Side of the World

  The Reverse of the Medal

  The Letter of Marque

  The Thirteen Gun Salute

  The Nutmeg of Consolation

  The Truelove

  The Wine-Dark Sea

  The Commodore

  NOVELS

  Testimonies

  The Catalans

  The Golden Ocean

  The Unknown Shore

  Richard Temple

  TALES

  The Last Pool

  The Walker

  Lying in the Sun

  The Chian Wine

  BIOGRAPHIES

  Picasso

  Joseph Banks

  ANTHOLOGIES

  A Book of Voyages

  The Rendezvous

  and Other Stories

  Patrick O’Brian

  W· W· NORTON & COMPANY

  New York London

  CONTENTS

  The Return

  The Happy Despatch

  The Dawn Flighting

  Not Liking to Pass the Road Again

  The Slope of the High Mountain

  The Little Death

  The Passeur

  The Tunnel at the Frontier

  The Path

  The Walker

  The Soul

  Lying in the Sun

  Billabillian

  The Rendezvous

  The Stag at Bay

  Samphire

  The Clockmender

  The Chian Wine

  The Virtuous Peleg

  A Passage of the Frontier

  The Voluntary Patient

  The Long Day Running

  On the Bog

  The Lemon

  The Last Pool

  The Handmaiden

  On the Wolfsberg

  The Return

  ALL DAY the fly had been hatching, and where the stream broadened into a deep pool between two falls the surface was continually broken by the rising of fish, broken with rings spreading perpetually, crossing and counter-crossing. It was a perfect day for the hatch, mild, gentle and full of life. Under the willows on the far side of the pool ephemerids drifted in their thousands, and the trout jostled one another in the shade of the willows, drunk with excitement and greed. Great heavy-headed cannibals with harsh, jutting under-jaws came from their stony fastnesses beneath the fall to rise at the fly; tender young trout rose beside them and took no harm.

  All down the length of the stream the trout made holiday: they added a fresh, water-borne note to the incessant, imperceptible noise of the country, a note quite distinct from the purl of the water over the big pebbles above the fall, and from the sharp punctuation of the splash of the diving kingfisher, who flashed up and down his beat, darting ever and again on some minnow or tittlebat, some half-transparent fishlet that strayed up into danger from the green, waving forests in the stream’s bed.

  The best part of the stream lay between the ruined mill and the bridge: a path, some little way from the water, but roughly parallel with it, ran through the grass from the mill to the bridge. On the other side the woods came down to the water’s edge, where huge pollard willows stood knee-deep in the stream, making deep quiet bays for chub and quiet-loving fish. Formerly the underbrush had been cut back for the comfort of fishermen, but now it was overgrown, and the riot of young fresh green was brave in the sun.

  Immediately below the pool the stream ran with a deeper note, flowing faster through a more narrow course, being constricted by worn rocks, which it could surmount only when the winter rains came down. Here the bridge spanned it in one leap: an ancient stone bridge it was, exquisitely lichened and its lines all rounded with age. There was an appearance of vast solidity about the bridge; it was massive and immovably firm, but it had a wonderful grace. A few self-sown wallflowers, tawny yellow, grew in its sides, and the sun was upon it now. The road that the bridge carried on its back ran clean a little way into the wood, but after the first bend it was lost and overgrown, for it was quite neglected.

  The kingfisher perched on a stump close by the bridge to preen itself in the sunlight. It took no heed of the trout, nor of any of the innumerable sounds that came from hidden places all around it, but all at once it froze motionless on the stump, with its head raised questioningly. Then it sped down the stream in a blur of blue-green light, low over the water.

  A little while after a man came down the lost road through the wood. At the bridge-head he paused, blinking in the sudden light. The trout stopped rising; a dabchick dived silently and swam fast away under the water. The pool held still to listen. Treading softly over the encroaching moss, the man came on to the bridge: he leaned over the coping and stared upstream. He was a tall, thick man, with a red face and black hair, quite gross to look at, and urbanized now: on his shoulders he carried a knapsack and a rod. After some minutes he looked down at the stones on which he leaned: initials and dates were scratched and cut into them. He knew almost to an inch where his own should be. They were there, J.S.B. in bold, swaggering letters, deeply carved, with a date of many years ago and a girl’s initials in the same hand coming after them. Mary Adams: how very clearly he remembered her. A glaze of sentiment came over his eyes. A pace along the bridge there was J.S.B. and E.R.L., more discreetly this time, and, lower down, J.S.B. and T.M. There was a little cushion of moss spreading over the T.M.: he flicked it off and stood up. She had always called him Jeremy in full.

  At the far end of the pool a trout rose, with a clear, round plop. The kingfisher flashed under the bridge and vanished upstream. The man walked on over the bridge to the path that led to the mill. From the path in the meadow he could see the stream, but from far enough away that he would not put the fish down.

  He sat down in the sweet, dry grass and threw off his knapsack. He put the joints of his rod together, and it quivered pleasantly in his hand: from the pockets of his knapsack he drew old tobacco tins, a reel with an agate ring, his fly box; his fingers seemed too coarse for the tiny, delicate knots in the translucent cast, but the knots formed and the fly was on – a grannom. At last he stood up and whipped the rod in the air: he worked the line out loop by loop; it whistled and sang. He cast his fly at a dandelion clock, and after a few casts the fly floated down and broke the white ball. Satisfied, he walked gently towards the stream: for some time there had been a recurrent heavy swirl under the alders on the far side. Kneeling down – for the day was bright and the water scarcely ruffled – he worked his line out across the stream and cast a little above the rise. His fly landed clumsily in a coil of the cast; the trout ignored it, but did not take fright. When it had floated down, Jeremy twitched it from the surface and cast again. This time it landed handsomely, well cocked on the surface, and as it came down his hand was tense with anticipation; but the trout took another fly immediately in front of it. The third cast was too short, and the next began to drag, and the fly was half-drowned. He switched tiny specks of water from the grannom and cast again: still the trout let the fly go by, and a snag bore it over to a sunken branch. Delicately he tweaked and manœuvred with his outstretched rod, but the barb sank into the wood and held firm.

  Will it give? he said, or will I go round and free it? Come now, handsomely does it. He lowered the top of his rod and pull
ed through the rings. The line stretched and the branch stirred: all around the trout were rising. He gave it a sudden, brutal jerk and the fly shot back across the stream, carrying a white sliver of wood on its point.

  I did not deserve that, he said, taking the little piece off; I did not, indeed. He walked some way up the pool, waving his rod as he went. At haphazard, he cast to a small rise by the near bank, hardly pausing in his stride. At once the trout took the fly and went fast away with it in the corner of his mouth. The little fish was game enough, but he was finished in two mad rushes: he played himself, and came rolling in on his side, still defying the hook, but with no more power to fight it. The fisherman took another like the first a little higher up, beyond the pool. They were both about half a pound – small for that stream – cleanly run and game, but stupid.

  After he had put the second fish into his bag, he rested; there was a crick between his shoulders from the unaccustomed exercise. He squatted on his heels, and almost without knowing it he filled his pipe as he gazed over the water: the kingfisher passed again, and in the woods a garrulous jay betrayed a fox.

  It was just at this place that he had taken his first trout, tickling under the rill for them with Ralph, who was simple, but who could poach like an otter. The march of the years between those times and now effaced the unhappy days of his boyhood and adolescence, and now that he knew the value of the happiness of the days that remained to him that his former, smaller self had lived in a golden world. He had so little to show for all that he had lost; and sudden, intense regret for it took him by the throat for a moment.

  He took off his shoes and socks, laid down his coat, and rolled up his trousers. The water was surprisingly cold as he waded into the stream; he could feel its distinct movement between each toe and the edged stones hurt his feet. He walked on the beds of water plants, sinking his feet to the ankles in the brilliant green: at each step he could feel innumerable tiny hoppings against his soles. The last time he had walked that way the water had been well up his thighs, he remembered, and in the middle the current had sometimes plucked him off his feet. Above him there was a small pool, with a stone rill above and below it. A crayfish exploded before his white toes, shooting through a cloud of silver minnows. Three or four small trout flitted from the weed-beds as he walked, speeding up the open, clean lanes between the orderly weeds; there seemed to be no other fish, but he knew the ways of these trout, and he waded quietly to the bar of stones, where the water came through fast from the pool. The force of the current had washed out a deep hollow here, and the water was too deep to stand in.

  The sun had passed well over noon-height, and a deep shadow lay slantwise down the wall of stones beneath the water. Nothing could be seen there, but middle-aged Jeremy, standing thigh-deep at the edge of the scoop, leaned over and passed his hand along the stones, feeling gently into the interstices. Almost at once his fingers touched the firm, living body of a trout: the fish, working in the strong current, moved a little to one side. It was not frightened. He touched it again, drawing one finger up its side, feeling the strong, urgent thrust as the trout pushed continually upstream to hold its position. As his eyes grew used to the deep shadow, he could see the trout’s tail, moving steadily to and fro. Carefully he continued to stroke its unresisting body, working the fish into the grip of his fingers: as soon as he could gauge the full length of the fish he knew that it would be too big for one hand, so he brought the other down, changing his foothold as he did so. The trout started and moved restlessly, but the quiet stroking of its belly on each side calmed it. Up and up the fingers stole, now touching the gills for a moment, then lingering. He drew in his breath, made his whole body tense and ready, and then with an instant grasp behind and under the trout’s gills he flung it over his back on to the bank, where it sprang and curved in the sun. Grinning like a boy, he waded in a slow hurry back to the edge, killed his fish – a good fish, a very nice fish indeed – and sat down to dry his feet on a handkerchief.

  He was hungry now, quite suddenly and unpleasantly hungry. He collected dried grass and twigs: the thin blue smoke of his fire rose straight up high into the air. He fanned it until it had a red heart, and he gutted two fish. He washed them in the stream and cut a green withy: coming back to the fire’s black circle, he spitted them and lapped them with a piece of string to keep their bellies in. He twirled the ends and cooked his trout until their skins were wrinkled and golden and their pink flesh showed through the cracks in it. He had a broad leaf for a plate and bread and butter and a screw of salt from his bag. Being rather greedy by nature, he buttered and salted the fish with great care and ate them and the crusty bread in alternate bites, so that the taste came fresh and fresh: and at the end he slit out the little oval pieces from the cheeks of the trout and toasted them on the last piece of crust, so that the morsels spattered for a moment in the heat. After he had wiped his fingers and his mouth, he lay on his back in the soft, cushioning grass with his head under the shade of a bush, and all around him there was a murmur and a drowsy hum, and he slept.

  When he woke up the sun had gone down three parts of the way to the horizon. Long shadows stood across the stream, and in the broad motes that came through the trees the spinners still danced in their hosts.

  The fisherman raised his head and ran his fingers through his hair: he had not meant to lose his time in sleep, but here he did not mind the loss so much as he might have done on another stream; for he was here on a pilgrimage.

  He walked back along the stream so as to fish up the same stretch again, and at the end of the pool by the bridge he saw a big rise – no splash, but the big, swirling ring that it is such a pleasure to see. The trout was on the farther side, well out in the open water, so it was necessary to creep up to an alder and, kneeling precariously on the edge, to cast left-handed from a long way off. Tentatively he worked a long line out, feeling his way across. A capricious little breeze, with no fixed direction, had arisen while he slept: the bushes behind him were a continual anxiety, and his knee kept slipping on the rounded edge of the bank. With his mouth closed tightly, he breathed heavily through his nose and concentrated on the flying line: his fly weaved back and yon, like a detached speck over which he had some occult control. The fly sped out and out, and still further; it was a very long cast. He shot the line, checked its run and bowed his rod; its forward motion stopped and as naturally as a dropping ephemerid the fly touched the surface, precisely where he had wanted it. The trout came straight at it, took it hard and vanished in a series of rings that spread out well across the pool before the fisherman raised his rod in a gentle tightening of the straight line. At once there was a great jar on the line as the trout jerked against the pull and sent the hook right home. The reel screamed, the rod curved, the line raced out. The trout leapt, not once but six times, showing clear a foot above the water at each leap. The man scrambled away from the insecure bank and stood in the water: his rod was thrilling with life under his hands. Three-pounder at least, he said it was, perhaps four, and Aah, would you? he said as the trout turned and dashed for the willow roots. His rod curved almost to a half-circle, checking sideways. The trout leapt again, slapping the water; it changed direction and shot up past him to the other end of the pool, into the deep stones beneath the rill. He could not reel in fast enough, and the line was still slack when the trout reached the stones.

  Deep down in the calm water at the side of the rill the fish lay, beneath weeds and a tangle of drifted wood. Anxiously he twitched on the line; it was as dead as if it were tied to a rock. He was almost sure that it must be round the wood if not round the deep weed as well, but with his rod far out on the one side and then on the other he tried to stir the trout. There was no result, no feeling of life. With his rod pointing at the fish, he thrummed on the line, pulled and eased, did everything he knew, but it was entirely of its own foolish will that the trout moved in the end. Moved by some fancy, it turned round from its hole in the rocks and headed downstream with fresh str
ength. The cast strained shockingly: a green streamer carried away from the weed-bed, the line snaked free through the floating debris, and he was still on to his fish. For a dangerous minute the weed dashed through the water after the trout, but its stems parted before the cast.

  Again the reel sang and the line fleeted away in spite of his checking finger and the straining rod: it was a heavy fish and a strong one. When the line was gone to the first knot in the backing, the trout was the whole length of the pool away; he dared not let it run any further, so he stopped the line dead for a second; it stretched and he let it go slack. The trout stopped, leapt twice, but went on under the bridge, down through the dark tunnel of swift water, and the fisherman’s heart sank. But he ran down the bank, now in the water, now out of it, stumbling and panting and sweating. The line was fraying against the stone foot of the bridge both this side and that; the strain was unwarrantable, and still the trout was running. He reached the bridge, with a couple of yards of backing on his reel, and the fish curved across to lie under the shade of the far bank, with its gills opening wide and fast.

  Jeremy had been under the bridge; he knew its dark-green slipperiness and the almost certainty of a ducking. The rod might break too. However, there was nothing for it: he pushed his rod through, tip foremost, and bowed his head under the arch. The pent-in water took him behind the knees and nearly had him down at once: its note changed as soon as he was under the bridge. Then the trout began to rush across the stream again, and in his flurry of spirit he was through the bridge and on the shingle the other side before he had had time to think about it.

  The heavy strain of the angled line had tired the trout, and its rushes were now much shorter, and they lacked the irresistible fire of the first. He made line on it fast, and fought it hard, never giving it a moment to recover. He thought he had it once, and pulled it in towards the bank as it lay inert upon the water, but before he had got it more than halfway it revived with a desperate rush and very nearly broke him against a stone on the bottom.