Book 20 - Blue At The Mizzen

by Patrick O'Brian

  'He is certainly a very able sailor, and he gained his reputation on some fine single-ship actions: but constitutionally he was perhaps more willing to give orders than to receive them, and he did less well on reaching post-rank and being obliged to submit to the discipline of fleet manoeuvres. There was some story of an improper challenge in India, I believe—possibly even of assault—the charge being withdrawn on an undertaking to leave the service. But I make no assertions. I only know that he has not served in a King's ship since, and that some people are a little shy of him.'

  'I think I remember now,' said Stephen, perfectly aware that though his friend had told the truth, it was by no means the whole truth.

  'Returning to Dr Jacob's lapse—dear me, I wonder it does not happen more often—I believe I am right in saying that none of the names of his Chilean committee are those of the gentlemen who first approached us?'

  'That is so: and although I know too little of the country to assert it, there may well be a difference, as between north and south.'

  'Very true.' Sir Joseph considered the proposition for some time; and then, having gazed at the long, thin extent of Chile on a revolving globe, he went on in quite a different voice. 'Of course, I shall have to submit whatever I have to say to my superiors, but I think the general feeling will be that Captain Aubrey should carry on with the original plan, in spite of the unfortunately necessary delay in Seppings' yard, making the best of his way to Valparaiso, where you will feel the ground—assess the possibilities—and proceed accordingly. In spite of everything we have a representative in Buenos Aires who is very well with the authorities, and who can ensure reasonably brisk communication—brisker, at all events, than messages that have to come back round the Horn. It is extremely unlikely that Sir David will already be there: but whether or no, some degree of cooperation would seem the wisest course; though he must be given no official countenance. He is unlikely to have any vessel equal to Surprise; but I must admit that until we have the naval attaché's report from Madrid we remain ignorant of the present Chilean government's strength and of the number of armed merchantmen at their disposal. The attitude of the Peruvian viceroy is naturally of the first importance, but that you know as well as I, indeed probably far better. However, let me consult those who must be consulted and deliver the sum of our collective wisdom tomorrow. Will you drink tea with me in Shepherd's Market—I have one or two trifles to show you—and then perhaps we could sup at Black's?'

  'I should be very happy. Joseph, would you have the goodness to lend me half a crown?'

  Stephen was greeted with the utmost kindness at the Grapes. His little black god-daughters, Sarah and Emily, had so shot up, had grown so leggy, that he did not have to bend to kiss them, and both were in fine spirits, since they had spent the last half hour in the company of William Reade, Stephen's supper guest, who had shown them the Royal Navy's version of Puss in the Corner, a more complex and subtle game than was usual in the Liberties.

  But Mrs Broad, though as welcoming as could be, was very much shocked by Stephen's appearance, which indeed would have done no credit to a hedge-creeper. 'Well, as for that Killick and his capers,' she said when all was explained, 'don't he wish he may have anything at all to eat or drink in this house, to serve the Doctor so. And I shall tell him, ho, ho, don't you fear—I shall let him know.'

  Her natural good humour returned, nevertheless, as she laid out his fine London clothes—black, elegant severity and gleaming Hessian boots—and it was in this splendour that he sat in the parlour while the little girls nervously showed him their copy-books, their sums, and their geographical exercises, with maps. In faltering voices, prompting one another, they recited mediocre verse in English and French, and with more confidence, showed their knitting, sewing and sampler-work. They were not very clever girls, but they were wonderfully neat—their copy-books would have pleased a fastidious engraver—and they were most affectionate to one another, to Mrs Broad and to Stephen. There was one thing that did puzzle him, however: they were still capable of speaking both lower-deck English (now somewhat tinged with Billingsgate, where they did much of the Grape's shopping) and the quarterdeck variety, slipping effortlessly from one to the other; yet neither could manage even tolerable French.

  But it was at supper-time that they showed their real, and very considerable talent. Mrs Broad was away with her cook, cook-maids, tapsters and waiters looking after the ordinary occupations of a fairly busy inn, and Stephen and Reade played backgammon, drinking brown sherry and discussing the pitiful state of their fellow-sailors in a dissolving Navy, when Sarah and Emily came in, wearing long aprons, and laid the table.

  A pause. 'Now, gentlemen, if you please,' they cried, placing chairs. Stephen was draped in a remarkably broad napkin: Reade was allowed to look after himself.

  The first dish was simply fresh, perfectly fresh green peas, to be eaten with a spoon: then, borne in with some anxiety, a great oval plate sizzling at the edges and containing filleted soles, lobster claws and tails, with here and there a great fat mussel, the whole bathing deep in cream.

  Sarah filled the plates; Emily poured the wine, a pale golden hock.

  'Oh my dears,' cried Stephen, having gazed, smelt and tasted, 'what a sinful delight! What a glorious dish! My dears, how I do congratulate you both!'

  'I ask no better in all my days,' said William Reade. 'No, not even if I hoist the union at the main.'

  'I hope you had a hand in it?' asked Stephen.

  'Sir,' said Emily, 'Sarah and I did every last thing, except that Henry in the snug broke the claws with the side of his cleaver.'

  'Well, I am heartily glad of it. You are dear good girls, and uncommon talented. Bless you both.'

  Drinking tea with Sir Joseph in his very comfortable house in Shepherd's Market could not conceivably be compared to supping at the Grapes: but there was a pleasure, though of a wholly different kind. Blaine, passing by Somerset House, had looked in to see the conscientious man who received and looked after specimens sent to the Royal Society to be kept for members—both Blaine and Stephen were Fellows—and he had brought Christine Wood's parcel, addressed to Dr Maturin, back with him. It was the skeleton, very delicately dissected and reassembled, of his potto, a rare and curious little West African creature, nominally one of the primates, though quiet, slow, harmless, and remarkably affectionate. Stephen had been much attached to his potto, and now he opened the case, gazing upon the anatomy with a mixture of friendship and scientific interest—the very singular formation of the index-finger and of the lower thorax were strangely moving all over again, but even more so the strong link of affection.

  'I believe you do not take sugar?' asked Sir Joseph.

  'No sugar at all, I thank you,' replied Stephen, closing the box and bracing himself for immediate close attention, persuaded by Blaine's expression and attitude that he was coming to the important matter. Yet to his surprise Sir Joseph went on in a falsely casual tone, 'I gather you are well acquainted with the Duke of Clarence, with Prince William?' Stephen bowed: he had treated Prince William several times, but he was not a physician who discussed his patients. Somewhat embarrassed Blaine went on, 'I happened to run into him at the Admiralty this morning. Some extraordinarily indiscreet person had told him that the hydrographical voyage was to go ahead, with Captain Aubrey in command—just that: no mention of anything remotely political. The Prince, as I dare say you know, has an almost reverential awe of Captain Aubrey—too great a respect to present himself unasked, though ordinarily he is not at all shy, not at all backward in such matters.'

  'A bounding, confident, foul-mouthed scrub,' said Maturin: but very low.

  '. . . and he was intimate with Nelson, who liked him well. However, the point is this: he has a son.'

  'I have seen the little FitzClarences, and an ill-bred set of swabs they are: which is odd, when you consider what a dear, cheerful—and indeed beautiful—woman their mother is.

  'You know Mrs Jordan?'

  'Mode
rately well: and I have often seen her on the stage.'

  'But it is not one of those that I have in mind. It is a boy by another woman, a child he does not openly acknowledge, perhaps from fear of angering Mrs Jordan, a son he calls Horatio Fitzroy Hanson. He is about fourteen or fifteen: he has decent manners, a tolerable education, and I think he is the only one of his children that Prince William really likes. Horatio, I ought to say, has no idea of this relationship: the acquaintance, or more than acquaintance, with Clarence—Uncle William—is perfectly acknowledged, but solely on the basis of his being a former shipmate of the boy's putative father. The mother, I am sorry to say, was rather unstable, and she went off to Canada when Horatio was two or three: his grandfather, a severe rural dean, brought him up. Clarence is all you say and I am aware that neither you nor Captain Aubrey could esteem him: but he does nevertheless have some respectable qualities: he is affectionate, fairly generous, and good to former shipmates. Furthermore, he fairly worships the service; and he has the greatest respect for Captain Aubrey. In short he desires me to ask you to use your influence with Aubrey to have the boy admitted to his midshipmen's berth for this coming voyage.'

  'Are you prepared to tell me any more about Horatio's parentage?'

  'Mr Hanson, his nominal father, was a sea-officer: he and Prince William served together in the West Indies. Horatio's mother was staying in Kingston with relatives. She and Mr Hanson became engaged: they nevertheless quarrelled furiously. But there is said to have been a more or less irregular marriage. In any case Hanson was lost in the Serapis and his wife went home, pregnant. I have this from three sources, none of them capable of providing a consistent or even a coherent account. The only thing I know is that Clarence provided consolation and that he is persuaded the child is his.'

  'I am sure Jack will at least look at the boy, if only for his Christian name. I shall speak of him when I write to tell about the voyage: perhaps it would be better not to mention the alleged connexion. But tell me, did the extraordinarily indiscreet person who told the duke that the hydrographical voyage was to go ahead have any grounds for his assertion?'

  'Oh, certainly . . . I am so sorry. I should have told you that at the very beginning: after all, it concerns you more than anyone else. I grow sadly muddled these days—as though you must know it by intuition—and then I will admit that the endless uninformed arguments for and against the project, topped by Clarence's indecently prolonged and public harangue about this boy, quite upset me. Yes, yes: you shall go: but I must warn you, Stephen, that now the war is over, rigid economy is the order of the day, and you will not be furnished with anything like the means you carried to Peru.'

  Stephen nodded and said, 'Since we are to go, I think I must write to Captain Aubrey at once. His tender, Ringle, is an extraordinarily swift-sailing vessel, and will certainly outstrip any packet. I shall send her off tonight, with the falling tide, and desire Jack to put into Seppings' yard for the repairs that are still needed without the loss of a minute. If you could induce your colleagues to cast these words into the form of an order properly signed and sealed, I might enclose it in my letter.'

  'Shall you not go yourself?'

  'I shall not: I am going down into the country to see my daughter Brigid, Sophie Aubrey and her children.'

  'Please give them all my love: but before going you will accompany me to the Foreign Office and Treasury for technical details?'

  'Certainly. And Mrs Oakes will almost certainly be there: you remember her, I am sure?'

  'Indeed I do, and with much gratitude—the clearest, most valuable information imaginable; and an unusually handsome woman too, unusually handsome. So are some of my latest acquisitions, sent by an intelligent ship's surgeon from the Seychelles.'

  Some of the beetles were indeed truly remarkable; but for beauty it seemed to Maturin that his daughter, Sophie, and even her children surpassed them in everything but colour. His unpredictably time-eating interview with people in and about Whitehall had made it impossible for him to give notice of his arrival, and he found them wholly unprepared, playing cricket of a sort in a new-mown paddock by the house.

  Brigid, who was at the wicket, being bowled to by George, was the best-placed to see the chaise stop in the lane and a figure step out. 'It's my Papa,' she cried, flung down her bat and ran like a hare across the grass, leaping up to catch him round the neck—no shyness, no hesitation—it fairly touched his heart. 'My dear, you have grown almost pretty,' he said tenderly, putting her down to greet the others. 'Dearest Stephen,' said Sophie, 'I do hope you will put up with an egg—there is almost nothing else in the larder: but tomorrow . . . Do you see Clarissa coming up with a gentleman? He is her husband, the rector of Wytherton, a great scholar. They were married from here last month. Clarissa, you remember Dr Maturin, I am very sure?'

  'I give you all the joy in the world, my dear,' said Stephen, kissing her. 'Your servant, sir: and my very best congratulations,' shaking the parson's hand. 'My dears,' he went on, 'it is delightful to see you sporting in the sun, and on so pure a green. Forgive me for a few moments while I fetch what few trappings may have survived the voyage.'

  'I will carry your bag, sir, if I may,' said George, on leave from Lion, 74, commanded by Jack's old friend Heneage Dundas.

  What pleasant days they were—an English summer at its best, and English countryside at its best, enough night-rain in the hills to keep the trout-streams fine and brisk, and there were reports of a hoopoe seen three times at Chiddingfold parsonage. This year was happy in unusual numbers of birds (nesting-time had been particularly favourable) and Stephen and Brigid wandered about the smooth hay-meadows, by the standing corn, and along the banks, he telling her the names of countless insects, many, many birds—kingfishers, dippers, dabchicks, and the occasional teal: coots and moorhens, of course—as well as his particular favourites, henharrier, sparrowhawk and kestrel and once a single splendid peregrine, a falcon clipping her way not much above head-height with effortless speed. A hare in her form: two dormice: an infant weasel, unalarmed: and such quantities of butterflies. He found with lively pleasure that she was much more receptive now: but she was a very tender creature, and he was not at all sure how she would like his hunting, shooting and fishing. But that would not be for a great while yet: and there was the force of example—all the people she loved and respected were more or less passionately concerned with these pursuits.

  Then again there was the mild, agreeable social life. Old friends to dinner once or twice; a few morning calls; and Mr and Mrs Andrews came over in their gig to spend a few hours in the library, a noble collection built up by some generations of Aubreys with good black ink in their veins.

  Yet there was a certain sadness too: the end of the war had meant that almost all the soldiers and sailors and those multitudes who had kept them in activity were now obliged to find civilian work, and obviously wages dropped, when there were any wages to be had at all. And now with the cry of 'Economy, economy!' taxes soared to extraordinary heights—Jack's agent on the Milport estate wrote in anguish that the one fair-sized farm—three hundred acres—which was just coming into good heart after all the draining, was required to pay £383 11s 4d in rates and taxes. Fortunately neither Cousin Edward's nor the Aubrey land had ever been enclosed, so the villagers and outlying cottagers, together with their returning sons and younger brothers, got along moderately well in the traditional way: it is true that Jack's game dwindled strangely; but on a nearby estate, which had been subjected to rigorous enclosure—no common land with rights of grazing, cutting fern, taking turf—there was not so much as a single rabbit to be seen. Then again, although the Corn Laws endeavoured to keep the price of wheat at £4, taxing imports accordingly, a great deal of American and Continental food now came in, legally or illegally, and farming was no longer a very profitable business. The landowners suffered, of course; and most of the farmers suffered even more; but the people who were really ground right down into misery were the men, women and childre
n who worked the land—those who had not so much as a decent garden left after enclosure.

  Clearly this was not the case immediately around Woolcombe, but it was most emphatically the case quite near; and it diminished the joy of living there.

  Then again, like most naval wives, Sophie had looked forward with the keenest delight to an almost indefinite time of perfect peace in her husband's company, and she heard of this hydrographical voyage, this certain hydrographical voyage to the uttermost point of the inhabited globe, with the most intense disapproval and vexation of spirit. Stephen timidly put forward the proposition that it would greatly enhance Jack's likelihood of a flag: but even repeated it seemed to have little good effect.

  'I think,' he said, after one of these useless and indeed rather irritating attempts at consolation—consolation, after all, does imply a superiority of experience or just plain intellect on the part of the consoler: a superiority which an intensely discontented mind is unlikely to accept—'I think I shall ride over to Shelmerston this afternoon.'

  'Do not forget that the Andrews are coming to spend the evening with us.'

  'Who are the Andrews?'

  'Clarissa and her husband.'

  'Dearest Papa,' cried Brigid in her fearless way, but speaking English, Irish not being allowed in the house any more than Maltese aboard a man-of-war. 'Dearest Papa, was you to take the dog-cart, we could both go.'

  'Four of us could go,' said George. 'The back dog-boards take up.'

  'Five,' cried his twin sisters. 'We are very thin, and will squeeze close.'

  'But what about Padeen?' asked Sophie, who had almost never been in the fast, rakish, high-wheeled dog-cart.

  'Oh,' they replied, but quite kindly—no scorn for her ignorance. 'He runs by the dog-cart, you know.'

  'He always gets up behind the coach,' said Fanny, 'but he runs by the dog-cart.'

  'Is he not the finest runner in all Connaught?' asked Brigid.

  Stephen had long been on good terms with the slim, leggy, yellow gelding: a gelding not to be disturbed by mares or fillies, obviously, but not by voluble children either, and they bowled pleasantly down to the coast, then turned left-handed along the sandy roads to Saint Peter's Pond, where men were already working on the canals that would drain it, but where at the far distant upper end innocent water-fowl swam, waded and dived. 'There,' said Stephen, clapping his glass to with infinite satisfaction, 'the purple herons have brought off their brood again: the only pair in the three kingdoms.'