Losing Nelson

by Barry Unsworth

  Emma was spirited and notably beautiful and she got out. At twelve she was employed as an under-housemaid in the home of a Chester surgeon. A year or two later she found a place in London as a maidservant. At the age of sixteen she gave birth to an illegitimate child, having been abandoned in pregnancy by the young baronet who was keeping her. She subsequently fell into the hands of the Hon. Charles Greville, whose mistress she became. She loved and admired this cold-eyed young man, second son of the Earl of Warwick, and was deeply hurt when, wanting to marry money, he packed her off to Naples, into the hands of his uncle, Sir William.

  She was stricken, yes—she had thought Greville returned her love. But she must have known already, must have known from her earliest years, that she was a commodity. And the move turned out lucky for her. There wouldn’t have been much for her in England, once her looks had gone. In Naples, beauty and spirit again combining, she first captivated the aging ambassador, then became indispensable to him. In 1791 he made her his wife. So she got out twice—she was an escapee. (Her third great escape, drunk and destitute in Calais, ten years after Trafalgar, was out of this world altogether.)

  When Horatio’s sails appeared on the horizon that September day, he was nearly forty, she was thirty-three. For eight years she had been a celebrated figure at the Bourbon court, intimate friend of the queen, hostess to a wealthy and glamorous international society.

  I paused on this. Thoughts of Emma excited me almost always. She was fond of dressing up, and in my imaginings she had worn many kinds of attire and often none at all. But I wanted that evening to control all stirring in the loins. I was intent not on putting her beauties together in that synthesis of touch upon touch until only the last, the lightest touch is needed, a patient and precarious process that I knew well. No, I was set on analysis, I wanted to isolate some element in her that might help me to understand the part she had played in those June days.

  She had become flaunting and splendid and in a way powerful, with many favours in her gift. But to have known want and degradation, to have known yourself for a commodity—these are things that can never be effaced. Kindness will seem like love; love will get confused with gratitude. I remembered an early letter of hers to her benefactor, Sir William, and I got up from my desk to find it.

  My friend, my All, my Good, my kind Home in one, you are to me eating, drinking and cloathing, my comforter in distress. Then why shall I not love you?

  It is all there. This was what lay behind her habit of flattery, both the practise and the appetite. The mutual assurance of being safe, being necessary, being admired. Like preening among birds that have come to a sheltered place in the course of some perilous migration. For full effect, it had to be reciprocal …

  Finger on the gilt letters. Bourbons. Six paces, palms against the wall, thumbs mustn’t touch. Miss it once and you have to start all over again with a different book. Emma’s love for Greville was not reciprocated, though she thought it was. Sir William was kinder but not much different in spirit. Besides, he was drying out. The queen, she loved the queen; they wrote to each other every day, even when they were both in Naples. Emma would write to Maria Carolina in moments of exaltation, with no intention of sending the words to her. It was a form of praying. Like the words she wrote on the envelope of one of the queen’s letters: Yes, I will serve her with my heart and soul. My blood if necessary shall flow for her. Emma will prove to Maria Carolina that a humble-born Englishwoman can serve a Queen with zeal and true love, even at the risk of her life.

  There was no risk to Emma’s life. She always saw herself as the heroine; Miss Lily had been right in that. But once again she believed that her love was reciprocated. She was surely mistaken in this. Maria Carolina was a member of the great Hapsburg dynasty, rulers of Austria-Hungary, allied by blood or marriage with practically all the crowned heads of Europe. She would have grown up in the art of self-preservation and the exercise of power. Monarchs rarely reciprocate devotion from commoners. They take it for their due and use it for their ends. Emma was the deputy and mouthpiece of this woman, who hated the French and all liberal sentiment, who feared the loss of her life and throne, who needed Horatio’s total support in eliminating opposition in Naples, and who knew that Horatio was deeply in love with her devoted messenger.

  She was there with them that day, in the cabin of the Foudroyant, while Horatio and the cardinal argued together, while the differences between them widened and the dislike grew. As I continued to pace back and forth, never faltering, never missing, soothed by the simple but exact repetition of gestures and steps, I could see them there, in their particular places.

  Horatio walks up and down, working the stump of his arm. Such a poor remnant; it seems strange it could move at all. The cardinal sits at one end of the table; he is richly dressed and wears a black velvet skull-cap. He interrupts, he gestures. The treaty must be respected. Horatio raises his voice. He is being contradicted aboard his own ship, in his own cabin. He stops to slam his left hand down on the table. The treaty must be scrapped. Hamilton stands midway between them in close-fitting white trousers and a cutaway coat, peering down that high-bridged nose of his, softening the tones as he translates. Emma takes no direct part, but she is very much there, she is the queen’s special agent. She is constantly on the move—she could never keep still for long. She listens to everything. How she hates this wily priest who wants to offer terms to the vile republicans. She is in a dress of white muslin with a fringed sash. Her hat, broad-brimmed, trimmed with red ribbons, and crowned with ostrich plumes, lies discarded on the table.

  Through the great bay window of the cabin, stretching the whole width of the ship, they can see the lights of Naples and the flames and smoke of riot; they can hear the occasional crash of shots; perhaps the screams of raped or mutilated victims carry across the bay. Among the warships, the bobbing lamps of dozens of small boats, offering to sell fish to the sailors. The barges of the nobility have seen a hasty change of flag since Horatio’s arrival. The tricolour of the republic has been hauled down; they fly the white standard of the Bourbons now. From these barges, through the soft summer air, come the strains of “Rule Britannia”—the fiddlers have played it so often in these two days that they know it by heart.

  Emma moves constantly against the lamplight in her fever of duty and importance. That perfect molding of the brows and mouth. She passes from one side to the other, across the whole width of the window. Between the lamps of the cabin and the deepening indigo of night outside, her limbs glow through the thin stuff of the dress. With every movement, every slightest turn, the muslin touches and defines her—the beautiful shoulders, deep breasts, strong hips. The dress is high-waisted, in the fashion of the time, emphasizing the long thighs, the curve of the abdomen as it dips to the shadowed cleft below, the exquisite concavity in the small of the back, the swell of the buttocks. Back and forward, wall to wall she goes; she cannot keep still. She leans to look through the window, she waves, she has seen someone she knows on one of the gilded, high-prowed barges. Her dress at the front falls away from her body, only a little, enough to see the sway of her breasts, to know they are unconfined. She is wearing only the lightest of garments underneath. Stripped away, thrown aside easily.

  We know, even in the rage that possesses us at the cardinal’s obduracy, we know she is waiting. Back and forth, between the lamplight and the lights of the murderous city, waiting for us. She is entirely ours, entirely ready. When this discussion ends, as it will, in frustration and ill-temper, she will still be there for us, she will wash the cramp away in a gush of love. What greater pleasure than the sureness of love waiting? Across the window, from side to side, a promise in every movement … Later, when the yellow-looking Sir William has retired to his chamber, she will come to ours. She will still be in the same dress, she will kneel, she will lift it up over her head, she is wearing nothing under it. She kneels above us. She will take us in her hand, she will lower her warm mouth to us …

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  I wrote no more character sketches that evening; Emma’s visit drained me. I slept better for it, however. Next day was a Friday. I spent most of it examining what information I had been able to collect as to Horatio’s state of health during those Naples days. He had received a bad wound at Aboukir Bay; a piece of shrapnel had opened his forehead above the right eye, blinding him with blood, so that he thought at first the sudden darkness was a presage of death. This came after weeks of intense uncertainty and strain while he ranged the Mediterranean trying to find the pusillanimous French and bring them to battle. After the victory he suffered from headaches and nausea and had frequently the sensation of a metal belt being tightened across his chest, constricting his breathing. When he arrived at Naples, he had been continuously at sea for six months.

  Could a case be made for temporary disturbance of personality, some medical condition that made him peculiarly vulnerable—to Naples, to Emma? A blow to the forehead, almost certainly concussive, might damage the frontal lobes of the brain, disturb the judgement, loosen inhibitions …

  I grew absorbed in this and did not ask myself until much later in the day—halfway through the afternoon—what I was really engaged in, what I was trying to do. Immediately I did so, I felt hot with shame. I had vowed to clear his name, not to seek excuses for him, not to explain everything away on spurious medical grounds.

  I had forgotten about lunch and now began to feel hungry. There was not much to eat, however. I had by this time lost all system in my shopping. I could no longer be bothered to make lists. Sometimes there was too much and things went bad; sometimes there was hardly anything. Bread and cheese was all there was that afternoon, and half a Mars Bar. There was a cauliflower in the plastic box at the bottom of the fridge, but it was half liquefied; I had to throw it away. The bread needed to be thawed out in the oven. In those days I used to buy sliced loaves, several at a time, and keep them in the freezer. The cheese tasted all right, perhaps slightly stale. In any case, by this time I was feeling depressed and not in a mood to register gastronomic subtleties. Afterwards I tried to sleep under my mother’s rug, but I was too tense. The same questions revolved in my mind, scraps of quotations asserted their terrible familiarity, the usual clusters of doubts and misgivings forming immediately round them like scavenger fish converging on scraps of offal cast into the sea.

  To make things worse, I was beginning now to feel distinctly nervous about my forthcoming talk at the Nelson Club, due to be delivered on the evening of April 9—the day, incidentally, on which Horatio, not yet eighteen, passed his examination for lieutenant and was appointed to HMS Lowestoffe for service in the West Indies. I wanted my talk to be a success, to have impact, to be something people remembered and talked about afterwards, an important contribution to the understanding of Horatio’s life. I intended subsequently to submit it for publication in Mariner’s World.

  At seven in the evening Miss Lily arrived, punctual to the minute as always. She was carrying a large bunch of daffodils. In the rather dim light of my hall, the trumpets of flower and the fleshy stems looked strange and savage.

  “Dad put the bulbs in, years ago now,” she said, with that sort of slight irrelevance, or excess of information, which was somehow typical of her, as if she were disarming some protest in advance. “We have a bit of a garden at the back, they keep coming through year after year. It doesn’t matter what the weeds are like, they push up through, nothing stops them.”

  She paused, looking at me solemnly over the nodding heads of the flowers. Her mouth was different. Then I saw she was wearing lipstick, something I had not known her to do before—I would have noticed it sooner but for the flowers. “Nothing is stronger than a daffodil,” she said. “I think they would find their way through concrete.”

  “Your father is keen on gardening, then?” I was constrained to keep on with the conversation, not knowing how to greet these clamorous intruders, afraid of a pause in which I would have to make some response. A distant memory of some similar gift tugged at my mind, a memory of helplessness and dismay.

  “Dad died eight years ago—that’s what I am getting at. He died eight years ago and he put the bulbs in, I don’t know, maybe nine or ten years before he died. That’s seventeen years or so these daffs have been coming out, and they’ve spread, they’re all over the place now. No, we live with my mum. Or she lives with us, rather—it’s my house.”

  I had noticed the we and wondered, not for the first time, if Miss Lily shared her bed with someone. Was there someone who watched her move about, back and forth, with that absolute trust in her love? She wore no ring, but that meant nothing. “Well,” I said, “it is really very kind of you.”

  “I thought they might brighten the place up a bit. You know, now that the weather is better.” While I was still puzzling over this, she said, “I’ll just go and get something to put them in.”

  Barely pausing to deposit her computer, still in its case, against the wall, asking for no directions, she went rapidly down the passage and turned without hesitation into the kitchen, where to the best of my knowledge she had never set foot before. I was left standing there in the hall, in the narrow space between the door and the tall oriental jar I used for my umbrella.

  I felt I should join her in the kitchen but hesitated. It seemed a risky thing to me. Too intimate, searching together in that small space for something to put the flowers in. More to the point, I thought, to look for something to put Miss Lily in; it was she that needed containing, far more than the daffodils. I still could not quite believe she had gone marching in like that. There was, however, in spite of my incredulity, a strange feeling of peace at the idea of being in the kitchen with her. I remained where I was—not for long, perhaps a minute or two. The silence seemed intense. I was aware of the small complex of cracks in the wall above the door, like a delta, and the shiny black handle of my umbrella, leaning out of the jar. I began to make my way down the passage. Faint sounds of movement came from the kitchen. I made no sound at all as I approached. I was wearing slippers, but this was an accidental circumstance—I had no intention of creeping up on her. At the doorway I stopped short. Miss Lily had taken one of the kitchen chairs and was standing on it with her back to me, reaching up into one of the overhead cupboards. She did not know I was there. Her black skirt ended some way above the knee, and as she reached into the cupboard the hem rose an inch or two. I saw that her legs, though sturdy, were well shaped, even beautiful, full at the calf and narrow at the ankle; also that she had on black tights decorated with a sort of diamond pattern; also that she had no shoes on, she had slipped them off before climbing onto the chair, but for the thin integument of the tights she was barefoot.

  I did not stay there longer than the time needed to register these impressions. I retreated to the sitting room and waited there, near the open door, so I would know when she passed. She saw me as she came down the passage, stopped at the threshold for a moment, then came through. She had the flowers in a green glass vase with fluted edges, which I knew from my childhood days when my mother used to put flowers in it. It had not been used for a long time—I would not have remembered where it was.

  “I had to stand on a chair,” Miss Lily said. She was smiling with pleasure as she bore the daffodils before her, holding the vase chest-high. She moved about the room with complete assurance, not as if it were strange to her at all. She set the vase down on a small round table in one corner. “There,” she said. “They look nice there, don’t they?”

  All this had taken up some time. “They do, yes,” I said. “Shall we go along to the study and sort of get started?” There might have been some edge to my voice, I don’t know. I had felt a sudden impatience at this dalliance.

  Miss Lily looked at me more closely. “You are very pale,” she said. “You don’t look well to me. You should try and get out more.”

  “Get out more?” I said. “I’ve been in Naples all day.”

  She did not smile much at this. “
There is such a thing as too much studying,” she said as we made our way towards the study. She looked round at me and nodded seriously. “A bit of fresh air and a good brisk walk never did anybody any harm.” She sounded as if she might at any moment thrust a cap on my head and wrap me in a scarf and send me out for a turn round the block. It was really too much. I am not a child, I felt like saying. Secretarial services are what I need. But of course that would have hurt her—I did not want to hurt Miss Lily.

  And so, a good quarter of an hour late, we began the evening’s work. As I have said, I was getting nervous about my talk. I had decided to set my book aside for the time being so as to prepare the talk well in advance. I hate being hurried—it always results in the neglect of something essential—and it was a relief, in a way, to suspend work on the book, postpone the problems of Naples. I had already written a first draft in pencil and corrected this in black ink, my invariable procedure: pencil, correct in black, dictate, typescript, correct in red, dictate. Already, even at this early stage, my pages were a mass of alterations and insertions. I was eager to dictate it all to Miss Lily so that I could then start revising on the typescript. Type gives us a whole new experience of the text, refreshing the eye, stimulating the critical faculty. Those who don’t first labour in longhand never get this boost.

  I intended to base my talk upon two episodes in the early life of Horatio, absolutely crucial, in my view, to his development as a hero, as the English hero, no slightest admixture of the Celt there, he came from generations of Norfolk yeomen. These episodes took place in 1771 and 1775, respectively. The earlier one concerned the first days of his naval career, when he joined the Raisonnable, a sixty-four-gun ship taken from the French twelve years before and captained now by his uncle, Sir Maurice Suckling. Wanting to render this episode as vividly as possible, I had decided to recast parts of it in the present tense. I began my dictation as soon as Miss Lily was ready.