Man Of War mh-9

by Allan Mallinson

  Hervey held up a hand. These were deep waters – waters he had never before trodden. There were strange forces at work in such depths; he did not trust himself to remain afloat, let alone make headway. But he had freely entered those waters, had he not? In truth, had he not long craved this new-found intimacy, even without knowing that he did? ‘Fairbrother, I can scarce say the words, for they will, I know, dismay you the more – and why should I care about that? – but I have asked Lady Lankester to marry me, and she has accepted me. That is, truly, an end to it.’

  Fairbrother shook his head. ‘You do dismay me. You play the Stoic: you would beat out your brains to prove your virtue!’

  ‘And what, precisely, do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean precisely what I said last night; no more, no less. Hervey, I have seen the way you look at Lady Lankester – she is an uncommonly attractive woman – but it is plain that there is insufficient love between the two of you. And it will not serve, I tell you.’

  ‘And I repeat that I have asked for Kezia’s hand, and she has accepted me. It would be unsupportable to consider otherwise now.’

  Fairbrother’s face was a picture of incredulity. ‘You would proceed knowing that you were in error?’

  ‘That is to distort what I said. Once we are married—’

  ‘Is it to distort what you said? I cannot think so. Your sister has the wisdom and courage to recognize her error and to act on it, and yet you who have had so many years the habit of such wisdom and courage – where it touches indeed on other men’s lives as well as your own – all you can do is be a philosopher!’

  ‘I am resolved to make the best of things and to do my duty. Is that so very bad?’

  ‘It is not so much very bad as improbable.’

  ‘Perhaps in your philosophy.’

  ‘And doubtless there will be “Kat of my consolation”,’ said Fairbrother, half beneath his breath.

  ‘What? ’

  ‘Go and read your Shakespeare! He will tell you a good deal more of humanity than will your philosophers!’

  Hervey left Fairbrother to his barber while he himself went on foot to Golden Square, to number 33 Great Pulteney Street, the premises of Mr John Broadwood and Sons, piano-makers to His Majesty King George IV &c. He had been once before, to buy a piano for Georgiana, and it had cost him twenty-eight guineas. This morning it was his intention to buy something altogether more substantial, a wedding present that would both delight his bride and express his admiration – and consideration – for her playing. He knew that the cost of such a piano – a grand, such as Herr Schubert himself would be pleased to sit at – would be rather greater, but he had no very good idea of by how much.

  The demonstrator at the showroom quite understood that Hervey himself did not play, and endeavoured to tell him of the considerable improvements of late in the construction of the concert-grand pianoforte – the solid bars in combination with the fixed metal string-plate, the compressed-felt hammers, and so on and so on. And since, he explained, compositions for the pianoforte were now of greater range, it was de rigueur to have an instrument of six octaves, from bottom C to seventh octave F. Hervey supposed he understood that such innovations were necessary in a pianoforte to be played by someone of Kezia’s proficiency. He also wished for an instrument of appropriate beauty for his wife to sit at, and recognized therefore that rosewood was the very least he could choose for the case. The demonstrator took careful note of his requirements (the pianoforte was to be portered to Hanover Square, and thence, sometime in the autumn, shipped to the Cape Colony), and retired to his desk to render a quotation for all but the cost of the shipping room.

  A few minutes later, it was in Hervey’s hands. He studied the figures carefully, trying to recall by how much they exceeded what he had imagined. ‘A hundred and eight guineas,’ he said pensively.

  ‘We ask for a deposit of ten per cent, sir; the balance to be paid within twenty-eight days of delivery.’

  Hervey nodded, then sat down at the writing desk to arrange the transaction.

  He walked back from Golden Square distinctly lightheaded. Within the past twenty-four hours he had committed himself to very nearly a year’s pay for canvas and rosewood. But it was done, and he did not regret it. He could not, in all honour, have done other than pay the balance on the portrait of Henrietta, and arrange for its completion, for where otherwise might it have been disposed? It was only right, too, that Georgiana should know her mother thus. There had once been a very pleasing portrait of her at Longleat, head and shoulders, when she had been eighteen, but that had perished one evening when the sconce candle had guttered too much and the varnish had taken alight quicker than anyone saw.

  And, in truth, he wished the portrait for himself. Where it might hang, and the copy, he had no idea, though even as he walked he began realizing that the question was not principally aesthetic.

  As for the pianoforte, that was an expense of an entirely proper instinct. He could think of no better way of displaying his regard for his new wife. It was a token of that regard and, too, a means of cementing their affection. Fairbrother simply did not understand these things: intention could perfectly properly precede success in the marriage state. No, he had not the slightest regret in visiting Mr Broadwood’s. He was, in fact, prodigiously pleased. There was almost a spring in his step as he turned purposefully into Regent Street to head for the office of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, whither Howard’s letter had bidden him. It amused him, even, to think that he had deferred calling at Downing Street in order to visit a piano-maker, and he smiled at the memory of how far he had come in so many things since first he had visited the Horse Guards, all of a dozen years ago.

  Hervey did not keep a journal except when he was in the field. There were too many things he would have to write, yet which, having neither the language nor the will, he knew he would be unable to set down. For whom would he write a journal, indeed?

  He had not considered the question much when first he began writing, in Spain, as a mint-new cornet in Sir John Moore’s army, for every officer had kept a journal. He had vaguely supposed that it was filial duty of some sort. And then much later, in India, the habit long established, he had vaguely supposed it some sort of testament, to be given to Georgiana in the event that he did not return.

  Except that it was testament only to events: it said next to nothing of his inner life, nor indeed of that part of his external life that he considered unedifying. There was no mention of Vaneeta, who perhaps more than anyone or anything had brought him back to some measure of a full life. He occasionally found himself wishing he had her image rather than merely a lock of that shining, raven hair.

  Vaneeta had been kind to him from the very first, unconditionally (the pecuniary business had soon become not a matter of obligation but of desire); she had ministered to him in his convalescence after Rangoon, fiercely protective; and then there had been the terrible parting, when he had almost lost his head, thinking to declare that he would not leave her – and it had seemed as if she might throw herself from the walls of Fort William when the day came for the regiment to leave.

  There came a terrible griping, rats scrambling in his stomach. They told him what he would not otherwise hear: that things were not finished simply because he decided they were. He quickened his step, as if somehow he might leave the uncertainty behind, or advance the sooner to that day in June when all would at last be resolved and he would be a married man once more, with the simple certainties that came with his vows, and the knowledge that he did his best for a daughter he had hitherto neglected;and, he must admit (not admit, so much, as devoutly wish for), an end at last to the wretched, unholy desire that had so often warped and twisted him like the sapling in a gale.

  18 June: this was the day that Kezia had named, a Wednesday – Waterloo Day. He understood, now, the precision with which the day of the wedding was named by a bride: he would not, as he had with Henrietta, ask that she consider anoth
er for the sake of regimental convenience. He smiled as he recalled Henrietta’s exasperation, the first time he had seen her in the least discomfited, when after he had shown no understanding she had blushed and lowered her eyes and said ‘Do not have me spell it out!’ No, this time there would be no such callowness. Even though it would mean that not all of the officers would be able to come – Waterloo would be celebrated in some style, and by all ranks, at Hounslow – he would not raise the slightest objection.

  And on Sunday next he would go to divine worship at St George’s in Hanover Square, and hear the banns read for the first time: ‘I publish the Banns of Marriage between Kezia . . .’ (he did not know her other names) ‘Lankester, widow, of the parish of All Saints, St Paul’s Walden, in the diocese of London, and Matthew Paulinus Hervey, widower of the parish of St John the Baptist, Horningsham, in the diocese of Salisbury . . .’

  He had given his father’s as his parish, for his name was on the roll there still, and inasmuch as he thought of anywhere as home it was Horningsham. Soon, though, he would be able to think of home as the Cape Colony, and then (dare he imagine it?) Hounslow. The place did not matter: wherever Kezia was would be his home from now on. It was comfort indeed. Comfort of unconscionable measure. How could Fairbrother be expected to understand it?

  XV

  THE IMMORTAL MEMORY

  The Ionian, the twentieth day at sea, 18 October 1827

  Peto’s launch cut through the light swell with the ease of a knife through fresh-churned butter. The same midshipman of the golden locks and fine, if boyish, features who had brought him aboard Rupert at Gibraltar kept the stroke sharp by the set of his jaw and the steely resolve in his blue eyes. For not only was his captain in the boat, they approached the flagship, and in all probability the admiral watched their boatwork.

  Peto himself was less concerned with the crew’s stroke, or for that matter with the admiral who might be watching from the quarterdeck of His Majesty’s Ship Asia. Rather was he intrigued by Asia’s appearance, for he had not seen her like before, except in the Surveyor’s draught. At two cables’ length he was able to observe her very clearly, and what he saw, he had to admit, he did not much like. She had been teak-built three years before at Bombay to a new design, and although in many respects she looked like any other two-decker, she carried ten more guns than the 74, her stern was round, and it positively bristled with chasers. But an ugly stern, thought Peto, with unseamanlike bowed lights, and altogether too brassy a gallery: more like a gin shop, he reckoned. Stronger, though, he had to admit, this rounded framing. And those sternchasers: no impudent frigate could rake her with impunity.

  At a cable’s length he lowered his telescope; he did not want to be observed scrutinizing the flagship, as if he were a boy or a landlubber. He did not know Codrington well – he had met him but half a dozen times – although he was unquestionably the better acquainted with him for the company of his youngest daughter these past three weeks. Codrington, however, had been in command of Orion at Trafalgar, when Peto had been a midshipman (passed for lieutenant); they were both, therefore, if not of the brotherhood, then of that dwindling fraternity which admitted none its equal save perhaps that of Waterloo.

  Trafalgar: in three days’ time they would be toasting ‘The Immortal Memory’. And he would be proposing it aboard his own ship, a three-decker in the very image of Victory. Except, of course, the admiral would by then have transferred his flag to Rupert, and it would be his to propose the toast. No matter: Codrington was no Nelson, but it would be honour indeed to have his flag fly at the foremast.

  Peto sighed. First, of course, there was the little question of Miss Codrington. It was astonishing to him that in a fortnight’s beating up to the Ionian they had encountered not one of His Majesty’s ships, nor even a trustworthy merchantman, to which this precious cargo could be transferred. How different it was from those great and glorious Trafalgar days when a signal might be repeated the length of the Mediterranean with speed and facility. He exaggerated, naturally; it was the way with men of war who had not yet come fully to terms with peace. Except that, to his mind, it was more the case that parliament had not come to terms with the true nature of peace. What said Thucydides? – Peace is but a cessation of hostilities in a war that is never-ending. And so, just as his old friend Hervey complained of the reductions in the army, parliament now resented ‘ship money’. It was no longer an insurance policy – keeping the wooden walls in good repair; it was like paying a chimney tax in high summer. He huffed. Well, there would be a brig or some such in Codrington’s squadron by which Rebecca and the women could be conveyed to Malta; and with any luck it might be done within a day, everything ordered in a proper seamanlike fashion, so that Rupert might take her proper place, flying blue from the foremast, at the van of the squadron.

  Asia was hove to in the lightest of airs, and the midshipman steered Peto’s launch to windward, the larboard side. Peto was visiting without ceremony, and it made not a deal of difference by which entry port he came aboard. Using the weather to bring and fasten the boat alongside the more securely was exactly as he himself would have done: he would certainly appreciate it when it came to reaching for the ladder.

  ‘Easy, oars!’

  The launch’s crew stopped pulling.

  ‘Boat your oars!’

  Inboard they came.

  ‘Up!’

  Up they went smartly; the midshipman put the tiller a fraction more to larboard and brought the launch scraping gently amidships. One of the crew seized the lower step, and the launch fastened limpet-like to Asia’s side.

  Peto was on his feet in a trice, reaching confidently for the steps – narrow, weed-tangled, wooden rungs, all that stood between a dignified boarding and a watery one. The weed was cold as well as slimy. He knew to expect it; he had done it so many times, the climb was without trepidation. The trick was to think of nothing but what hands and feet were doing, step by step, rung by rung, until he got hold of the ropes – and even then to think only of climbing, without looking up, and not of the reception which awaited him.

  Two mates reached out to support him into the entry port, the boatswain’s pipes twittered, Peto adjusted his hat, saluted the quarterdeck, and with a few expressions of ‘good morning, gentlemen’, followed the first lieutenant to the apartment of Sir Edward Codrington, Vice Admiral of the Blue, Commander-in-chief Mediterranean Station.

  ‘My dear Sir Laughton, I am much gladdened by your arrival!’

  The admiral greeted him with a ready smile and a hearty handshake. Sir Edward Codrington was tall – by several inches over Peto – almost bald, and with a noble, humane face which quite belied his reputation for pugnacity in action. Peto was at once assured of his welcome. It had been many years since they had last met, and in the navy these things mattered. Since Nelson’s day – even before – an admiral gathered his favourites about him, men he could trust to place themselves to advantage in battle, or to know what would be his will in some affair conducted beyond sight of the fleet. He, Peto, had never been one of Codrington’s men. ‘Sir Edward, I’m honoured to join your flag.’

  ‘Then join me too in a glass of Marsala,’ was the easy response. ‘Sit you down. You are come most carefully upon your hour.’

  Peto sat as the steward poured. ‘We are come later than I had wished, Sir Edward, for we were obliged to run down into Surt before a storm as violent as any I saw here. I thought I should be blown to Alexandria.’

  Codrington raised a hand to say that it was the way of things. ‘No matter. You are here now. Tomorrow I shall have my captains come aboard and I shall tell you my design.’

  ‘Ay-ay, Sir Edward. But if I may, there is a pressing matter. Your daughter, Miss Rebecca, is aboard my ship. She and her maid joined at Gibraltar, but since I was obliged to run south of Malta I was not able to transfer her to shore, and neither have I encountered any vessel since to which I could entrust her.’

  The admiral looked as if he had not hear
d quite right. ‘The deucedest thing!’

  ‘She occupies your apartment, of course, Sir Edward. I wondered when you might have a sloop or other to take her to Malta. And when you yourself wish to transfer your flag.’ Peto omitted to mention the other women on board: that was a detail best not troubled over now. He would simply put them aboard whatever it was the admiral detached for the duty, and no one but her master need be the wiser.

  The admiral still looked distant. ‘The deucedest thing indeed, for her youngest brother is midshipman with me. He stands watch as we speak. I shall send him back with you, and then, if you will, in an hour or so you may send him back in turn.’

  ‘Sir Edward.’

  ‘And Firefly will be returned tomorrow – she’s taking instructions to General Church the other side of the Morea – and then she can take Rebecca to Malta along with my despatches.’

  Peto nodded. ‘And your flag, Sir Edward?’

  The admiral shook his head. ‘I intend no change – not at this late hour. You’ll see my method when I have the rest of the captains aboard tomorrow.’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir,’ replied Peto, trying not to sound too dismayed. ‘Shall you come aboard Rupert to see Miss Rebecca before then?’

  The admiral shook his head again, and with something of a look which said that he was surprised. Not many months ago Peto himself would have scorned it, but now he was discomfited by the notion that Sir Edward Codrington could reject the opportunity of seeing a daughter – especially a daughter with such evident intelligence, and pride in her father. ‘She will be vastly disappointed, Sir Edward.’

  The admiral’s mouth fell open. ‘I do not doubt it, Sir Laughton. But I fear I cannot oblige her. We are about to undertake a most delicate manoeuvre at Navarin. One, indeed, which is likely to have no other outcome but a fierce exchange of shot. I cannot go calling on a daughter!’