by Chris Durbin
Now, was she mocking him, flirting a little perhaps? She was older than Holbrooke, but there was probably only ten years between them and the same age gap between her and her husband, he guessed. Now he thought of it, he’d been introduced to a younger woman who was beside her when he arrived. He’d taken them to be mother and daughter, but now he could see that it was barely possible, there couldn’t have been more than a dozen years separating them.
‘Ah, here’s Ann, my step-daughter,’ she declared as the younger woman walked back into the room. Holbrook guessed her age at about eighteen. She was of middle height, and she shared her step-mother’s grace of form and movement, but there the similarity ended. Her mother was much darker of skin, she could almost have come from a Mediterranean country, while the daughter had a pale English complexion and wore her own golden hair in loose tresses that reached almost to her shoulders. Holbrooke realised that he was staring.
‘Perhaps you’d join us in a hand of whist?’ asked Mrs Featherstone. ‘There’s Mrs Garnier who adores her cards, and Ann will join us, won’t you Ann?’
Before Holbrooke could object, he was seated at a card table, and Mrs Featherstone was expertly shuffling the deck. Holbrooke could see a social disaster in the making. He knew in principle how to play whist, he’d even played it a few times, making up a foursome when there was nobody else available, but he also knew that he was a hopeless case where any card game was concerned. So bad was he that each time he played, he had to remind himself which symbol represented the clubs and which the spades. Hearts and diamonds were easy, being pictograms, but where did the black cards get their names? He couldn’t tell. Holbrooke watched the shuffling and dealing with trepidation, attempting manfully to keep his dismay from his face. Usually he wouldn’t have cared, laughing off his ineptitude and quickly moving to another game, chess perhaps, but he realised that he didn’t relish making a fool of himself in front of Ann. He’d only just met her and didn’t really feel any great attraction, but she was the only girl near his age at the party, and she was indeed attractive.
‘Ha, we take the trick,’ said Mrs Garnier as she trumped Holbrooke’s king. ‘Ann and I take the game, I think.’
Holbrooke stifled a sigh of relief.
‘Another game?’ proposed Mrs Featherstone.
‘Have mercy, Sophie, have mercy. Can’t you see that Captain Holbrooke has had enough?’ she said laughing. ‘Let me show you our latest acquisition. It’s by that Italian fellow, Canaletto; a view of London, I think you’ll like it.’ The two women made their apologies and moved to the far end of the room where Holbrooke could see the painting, its bold colours, blue skies, grey-and-white clouds and honey-coloured masonry in stark contrast to the other dull, dark, works of art.
Holbrooke turned back to his erstwhile whist partner. He could see that she looked nervous to be left alone with a uniformed sea officer.
‘Well, I can only apologise,’ he said. ‘I’m no whist player as you see.’
‘It’s not your fault, Captain,’ she said, lowering her eyes to the table, then quickly raising them. She’d probably been teased about that submissive gesture. ‘Mother’s unstoppable when she gets an idea into her head, and she can’t understand that not everyone enjoys whist. I play out of duty, and only an endless repetition has given me any skill in the game.’
‘Then you have my sympathy.’ He almost added: duty’s a hard master, but in a flash of intuition realised how pompous that would sound and at the last moment replaced it with, ‘what do you prefer to occupy your time?’
‘Oh. I love gardening, in the summer, and sewing and music. I read a lot, not novels, much, but I do read histories, and I read father’s broadsheets.’
‘Then you must have followed the course of this war, at least a little.’
‘Yes,’ again she made that curiously self-effacing motion of looking at the table and again quickly arrested it. ‘I read the first account of your action yesterday, but it wasn’t very detailed, and I’m thrilled to have heard it from you. It must be so exciting, being in the navy.’
‘Sometimes it is, but for every hour of excitement we must suffer fifty of dull routine,’ replied Holbrooke and was pleased to see that Ann lifted her eyes to look at him. ‘There’s little exciting about a passage from Portsmouth to Jamaica, for example.’
‘But you’d have thought it gave an opportunity to gain some proficiency at whist,’ she said, with a shy smile.
‘There you have me,’ he replied. ‘I’ll insist that my midshipmen join me every evening for a few hands. That’ll test their loyalty at least.’
◆◆◆
The coach back to Fareham creek was certainly more comfortable than the King’s Head’s dog-cart, but Holbrooke found that he missed Samuel’s chatter, and he’d have liked to ask him about Cape Passaro. He was alone in the carriage, the driver and footman consigned to the outside braving the flurries of snow that had been falling since noon. If they’d been seamen, he would have brought the footman inside out of sheer humanity, but he was unsure of the protocol with domestic servants. It had been strangely painful to say goodbye to his father at Rookesbury House. It would have been easier at the cottage when they could have said those things that a father and son should say when they’re about to be parted by a wartime voyage. He hadn’t even been able to say farewell to Ann, he’d just had to include her in a general leave-taking, and their eyes had met for only a fraction of a second, as he turned to leave. Holbrooke had never had any kind of attraction to a girl, but he felt that he could have with Ann. However, he cast off the feeling. It couldn’t come to anything. By the time he next came to Wickham, everything would have changed and that ten minutes of casual conversation after the hand of whist would be forgotten. In a month they wouldn’t remember each other’s names, and in six months they’d pass in the street without recognising one another.
Holbrooke had been depressed when the longboat had delivered him to the mill in the cold light of dawn, and he was depressed when he was taken up again in the fading light under a darkening sky. He tried to analyse the cause of his melancholy, but his mind just wouldn’t stay on the topic. It was only when they cleared the Cams Hall estate, and the harbour came into sight that his spirits started to lift. The swirling snow created abstract patterns against the glow of the dockyard, as night cast its soft embrace over the hive of industry, like a murmuration of starlings swooping and gliding as they worked their way into their night-time roost. Here was meaningful life, here was the engine that powered the greatest fleet on earth, and it was in that fleet that Holbrooke belonged.
But still, something was niggling in the back of his mind, the memory of the cottage in the bend of the river Meon and his father, his eyes misting over as he said goodbye to his son. And then there was Ann. Holbrooke rid his mind of that memory, a dead-end in the meandering course of his life.
By the time his coxswain had announced his arrival with a stentorian reply of ‘Kestrel!’ to the sloops hail, he’d recovered his right mind and positively beamed with the pleasure of a homecoming as he was piped aboard. Enough of all this soft shoreside life. To the Ems!
◆◆◆
8: To The Ems
Friday, Thirtieth of December 1757.
Kestrel, at Sea. North Foreland West-Northwest 10 leagues.
By Tuesday the wind had veered into the east and Kestrel could point just high enough to clear the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour under sail. On the quarterdeck, they could feel a hundred telescopes watching their progress as they shaved the shallow water off the Round Tower and set a course to weather Bembridge Point on the Isle of Wight. From there, with the wind veering two points to the south, they had spent three days short-tacking along the south coast and then made a single board to weather the Goodwins. With North Foreland five leagues to the nor’west, they had little sea-room to spare as they made their break for the comparative open spaces of the southern North Sea. They could hear the waves crashing onto the exposed sand of the Goo
dwins, and they could see the forest of masts of a convoy in the shelter of the Downs, waiting for the tide to turn so that they could take advantage of this easterly wind to carry them down the channel.
Holbrooke looked at his new sailing master. Josiah Fairview had joined the sloop on Monday, just four days ago. He gave every indication of being a competent navigator – it would have been remarkable if he could have passed the Trinity House examination if he wasn’t – and immediately threw all his energies into ensuring that the trim of the ship was just so. The first of his peculiarities had manifested itself when Holbrooke had interviewed him the day he joined.
‘Now, sir. I don’t know what sort of sailing masters you’ve had before, but I’m not one of your dyed-in-the-wool navigation-and-ship-handling only men. I’ve been on cutting-out-expeditions, I’ve led boarding parties, and I’ve handled a division of guns. You can use me as a regular lieutenant, although I don’t have any aspiration that way,’ he said with a wistful look that belied his assertion. It was unusual for masters to be commissioned, but by no means impossible. Most masters were comfortable in their warranted status and knew that unless they could be certain of eventually being posted as a captain, they were financially more secure than a lieutenant. They had a well-established superannuation system to keep them in comfort in their retirement that was far better than the lieutenants’ half-pay scheme.
‘I’ll keep that in mind, Mister Fairview,’ Holbrooke replied in a non-committal tone. On the face of it, having a master who was prepared to go beyond his stated role could be an advantage, but in a small sloop there was barely room for a commander and a lieutenant to exercise their duties; three may well make a crowd.
‘It won’t last, sir,’ said the master as he stood balanced easily against the pitch and roll of the sloop, looking intently at the eastern horizon. ‘It’ll veer into the west before dawn tomorrow, and we’ll have a pleasant broad reach all the way up to Emden.’
‘Very well Mister Fairview,’ Holbrooke replied, hoping to cut off the conversation. Privately he was dismayed at having a self-appointed weather prophet as a sailing master.
‘I expect the wind to moderate overnight and then pick up in the morning from the south. By the forenoon it’ll have veered right around to the west,’ Fairview continued, remorselessly.
Holbrooke had heard all this before; the master was describing the sequence of winds that he’d expect if the easterly should gradually expire and allow the westerly gales to blow in from the Atlantic. It was a bold prediction so early in the commission and could destroy the reputation of a less self-confident master if he was wrong. But Fairview looked as though he could survive a few failed weather predictions, and, in any case, he was an acknowledged North Sea pilot and certainly had a better chance of being correct than Holbrooke.
‘That pounding you can hear is the sea on the North Goodwin. It’s slack water at the bottom of the tide, so it’ll all be exposed now. That convoy will be able to sail in the forenoon tomorrow when the wind’s in the west, but it’ll be a right lumpy ride past the South Goodwin, and they’ll have missed their easterly wind. They’ll be tacking and tiding down the channel and cursing their luck.’
Holbrooke nodded. He didn’t want to display his lack of knowledge of these waters, and he was listening to Fairview with only half his attention. The master was a relatively old man, in his forties, and who knew what strange winds and currents had brought him to a mere sloop? He was undoubtedly qualified by experience for a ship-of-the-line. At a quieter moment, Holbrooke resolved, he’d try to discover the facts.
The sun sank diagonally towards the southwestern horizon, picking out the convoy’s mastheads as a field of pinpoints against the faint smudge of the Kentish shore. Kestrel was almost clear of the Channel and into the North Sea now. England and France were behind them, and they were approaching the coast of the Austrian Netherlands as it slanted away to the northeast. At this rate of sailing, Holbrooke expected to be off Borkum in the forenoon on Sunday, ready to catch the last of the flood tide. He was keen to inspect the estuary before he made any other plans. He already knew that Fairview had been up to Emden once before, during the peace, but one visit didn’t make a man into a pilot and he wanted to see the river for himself, in the daylight and on a rising tide in case they should touch bottom.
‘We have a clear run overnight, Mister Fairview?’
‘Yes, sir. If we hold our course and keep at least three leagues off the land, there’s deep water all the way to Borkum.’
‘Then turn over the deck to the mate. Who is it?’
‘Varley, sir. He’s a reliable man.’
Holbrooke nodded; he knew Varley’s quality after the passage from Port Royal to Portsmouth. Reliable he was, but Holbrooke could wish that the master’s mate had a little more ambition and took as much interest in fighting the ship as he did in navigation and seamanship. He suspected that Varley avoided anything that brought him to report directly to his captain, rather than to the sailing master. Holbrooke could only speculate on the master’s mate’s relationship with his previous captain.
‘Very well, would you join me in the cabin? And pass the word for the first lieutenant and Mister Treganoc, if they’re at leisure.’
◆◆◆
Serviteur, as always, was ready to offer refreshments. By some means, he managed to produce everything from hot coffee to cold sherry at a few minutes notice at any time of the day or night. Holbrooke could only imagine that the man’s impressive physique and his superior manner overawed the cook and his mates to the extent where they stopped everything to comply with his demands.
Holbrooke’s officers filed into the small space. The deck in Kestrel’s cabin was adequate – generous even – for a gathering of four men, but the height of the deck-head was not. To the uninitiated, the sight of four grown men crouching a good few inches below their natural height would have been curious at least, but to see each of them attempt to bow from that position as they entered the cabin was downright amusing.
‘Welcome gentlemen, welcome,’ said Holbrooke as he cast an appraising eye over his senior officers. ‘Serviteur will be bringing coffee in a few moments.’
The master had arrived first. He had the air of a young spaniel, forever hoping that someone would throw a ball for him to chase, restless and eager. Holbrooke had a strange sense that he should constantly be offering his sailing master new challenges, just to keep him quiet.
Treganoc was so obviously a marine officer that his red coat was entirely unnecessary to identify his profession. He was tall, well-built and had a quietly composed manner that hinted at an inner strength. He’d joined Kestrel in the last hour before they sailed from Portsmouth, leaving little time for them to become acquainted before the business of setting sail took over. Holbrooke knew that he was lucky to have a marine lieutenant, the establishment was vague on that point, and he could easily have been sent to sea with only a sergeant. You’d want Colin Treganoc guarding your back on the battlefield, he thought.
The first lieutenant was the last to arrive. Nicholas Deschamps had some influential friends in the Admiralty, or at least he had friends whom the Admiralty owed favours; there was no other way to rationalise the urgent need to find him a ship when there were so many other lieutenants waiting. Holbrooke was disgusted to see that the man had come straight from his cot and furthermore he’d evidently turned in all-standing, without even removing his uniform coat, which now betrayed him with its creased back. True, Deschamps had been on watch for the morning – from four to eight – and consequently hadn’t had a full night’s sleep. But there were very few men in Kestrel who’d been blessed with all night in, and few officers would expect to sleep through the night with the sloop battering her way up-channel against an easterly wind. He hoped that his first lieutenant would shake down after a few more days at sea, but nothing that he’d observed so far gave him much hope.
Serviteur brought in the coffee pot. It was evidently very hot, and as
the handle had been lost somewhere between the Caribbean and the Chops of the Channel, he carried it in a small sailcloth bag which he now used as an oversized mitten for pouring. Serviteur’s command of spoken English had improved enormously since he’d first come on board Medina off Cape François in October. He’d been reasonably fluent then, but now he’d mastered the sailor’s vernacular and only his French accent gave away his origins.
‘Begging your pardon, sir, but Mister Chalmers wishes you to know that he’s read the young gentlemen’s journals, and would you like to see them?’
‘Oh, does he?’ Holbrooke wasn’t fooled by the chaplain’s message. ‘Tell Mister Chalmers that he may join us as I’m sure that was his intention, and I see that you’ve already set a cup for him.’ Serviteur made no comment and there was nothing to be read in his face. ‘But I’ll deal with the journals later.’
David Chalmers was another interesting character. He was an unbeneficed parson who’d sailed with Carlisle and Holbrooke in Fury and Medina and shared their adventures in the Mediterranean and West Indies. He’d volunteered for Kestrel because, as he put it, he’d seen the best and the worst of the Middle Sea and the Caribbean, and now it was time for new experiences. Of course, a sloop had no right to a chaplain and Chalmers had been entered on the ship’s books as an able seaman, although there was nothing at all able about his knowledge of the sailor’s arts. By his sheer goodness of character and his willingness to help he’d resolved his anomalous position on board to the satisfaction of all hands during the passage across the Atlantic. It was good to have an old friend in the cabin to counter the three who had been on board for only a few days. But Holbrooke could see that the chaplain’s presence – he still thought of him in that capacity – wasn’t universally appreciated. Fairview looked happy enough, Treganoc was impassive – it was impossible to guess his thoughts – but Deschamps looked hostile, his face closed, refusing to look at or greet Chalmers.