‘That’s Rivers, Nelson. You must mind out for him, since his morals are as thin as his patience. But that is as nothing to the needs of his belly, though I regret to say he’s not singular in his hunger. Now, you must, in all conscience, have some food in that chest of yours?’
He did, and his willingness to share gained him a place at the table, which was a board suspended from two hooks in the deck beams above and removed at night so they could use the space to sleep. That first night was strange: his futile attempts, a cause of much hilarity, as he tried and failed to get into his unfamiliar hammock. Rivers and Dobree eventually hoisted him in so that they could get some sleep, the former making much play of goosing him in the process before killing the lanterns and plunging the berth into Stygian blackness.
There was an element of terror in the dark, which was full of strange sounds and what seemed like surreptitious movements, the creaking of the ship as it moved on the tide removing any similarity to his old school dormitory or to his bedroom at home. He lay, eyes open, thinking of his family, the two brothers and four sisters who had always seemed like a shield against any hostility in the world. The image of his mother floated in and out of his mind, sometimes smiling, at other times scowling, warning him never to do anything to shame her.
The word ‘shame’ conjured up the face of his father: dark, stern and pessimistic. It was a word he was much given to using, as though it represented a fate he struggled against in vain, the knowledge that it was only a matter of time before one of his motherless brood let him down. He presided over a cold house, due to parental frugality in the matter of wood, where meals were a purgatory of short commons and sharp-eyed fatherly observation. No laxity was allowed either in posture or table manners: a Nelson back touching a chair was held sinful, and meals were consumed with a posture that would not have shamed a Prussian Grenadier.
Greed was a sin too, so the natural hunger of a boy who had been out in the fresh air all day had to be kept in check so that only his share of the family repast made it to his plate, and that was never enough. All the while his father dominated the table from his position at the head. The Reverend Edmund Nelson was no storyteller, which rendered his sermons as dull as his conversation. For all that, Horatio missed his family, father, sisters and brothers, as well as the Parsonage, and had to fight now to stop himself sobbing with homesickness.
He couldn’t recall what he had been thinking about when sleep took him, but he did know, when he woke up, that he had had the most vivid of dreams, all centred on home and family. What had been the name of that cowherd? It was ten years ago and Horatio had been only four …
‘That looks a likely tree, young Mr Nelson. You can see the lapwings a flying in and out, and ahovering o’er the edge building it up. Now that means there’s eggs in that there nest, an’ all it will take is a leg up from old Dan …’
‘Dan,’ he hissed to himself. ‘That was his name, Dan.’
He had met him in a field close to his grandmother’s house and, with the innocence of childhood, had just started talking. Old Dan must have taken to him, because they were soon off into the woods nesting, with Dan saying that it was never too early to start a collection of eggs. That a gentleman, which he most certainly must grow up to be, should collect them, and butterflies, and press flowers in a book so that he would always have a memory of his countryside childhood to hand.
He recalled how Dan had lifted him up on to that lower branch. ‘Now, watch how you go, young sir, allus make sure ye has a handhold, ’cause that will save you from a fall. And don’t go right near that nest when the birds are about, ’cause their flapping will see you tumbling.’
Coached inch by inch he had made his way up several branches till he could put a hand into the nest. His size had driven the lapwings away, regardless of old Dan’s warning. It was easy to get the eggs out.
‘There’s four and they’re warm,’ he squeaked.
‘Don’t take ’em all, lad. Leave a pair for them to raise. That way there’s a nest for someone else to look into in the future.’
Getting down took twice as long as getting up and old Dan, as he said, ‘had to go about his occasions’. Taking the boy, who now cradled his treasures in his shirt, to the edge of the wood, he pointed across a deep grass meadow. ‘See that oak tree yonder, standing solitary like it were there to hang a poacher? That be your way home. There’s a stream t’other side, which you can wade. You’ll see your grandma’s house from there.’
‘Can I come again, Dan?’
‘If you can find me, lad. I don’t stay in one field for long.’
Now he could smell his way across the meadow, the sharp scent that tickled his nostrils as he crushed grass and meadow flowers on his passage. They came up to his chest, and as he looked back he could just see how his route marked a deep trail, made dark and obvious by the dropping sun. He was picking flowers too, a posy for his grandmother, because he knew she would be pleased. A happy grandmother meant a mincemeat tart.
It was the stream that had flummoxed him. Old Dan might say to wade it, but to his four-year-old eyes it had looked deep and menacing, clear water that showed a bottom made up of grasses that bent in the current and, as he looked hard, the occasional darting fish. Unsure of how to cross he sat down, not unhappy since the sun was still warm, content to arrange his posy and wait for the stream to go away.
That was how they found him, sitting there in the dark, the posy sagging sorrowfully, his father angry, and not mollified by his childish explanation that he had gone nesting with old Dan, or even the evidence of the eggs.
‘Do you not fear to wander off with strangers?’ his father demanded.
‘I don’t know fear, Papa. What does it look like?’
No wonder his brother William had called him a pious little turd. But that had been over the theft of the pears from Classic Jones’s garden. Every boy in the school had eyed them as ripe for plunder, but Jones the headmaster was so free with the birch sapling that no one was brave enough to act. Each, though, seemed stalwart enough to accuse every other boy in the room of being a scaredycat, an accusation that the younger Nelson could not countenance.
‘I’ll go.’
‘Shut up, Horace,’ said William.
‘I will not, brother. I make a genuine offer. If you and the others will aid me in the manufacture of a rope I will pinch Jones’s pears.’
‘You don’t like pears,’ William muttered.
But he was too late. Others, less fearful that the younger Nelson might get a good flogging, had already set to with their bed sheets, twisting and knotting them to make the rope necessary to lower him from the first floor window. Within five minutes he was out, hands clasped hard over one of the knots, being eased down to the ground.
A windowful of heads and whispered jabbering watched him climb the pear tree. Hands shot out to direct him to the most fecund branches. His pillowcase was full when he descended, and was sent aloft before the thief, who arrived in the room to see that a goodly half of his haul had tooth marks in them already.
‘Here, Nelson. Have some.’
He waved away the pears pressed on him. ‘I cannot abide pears.’
‘So why did you steal them?’ demanded a frustrated William.
‘The others were afraid to, brother. I was not.’
In his own head now those words sounded as though they had emanated from a pious little turd. Was he that? How would he fare here in this berth? What would he become in the Navy? Would future nephews sit at table while he, like his heroic uncle, moved cruets and cutlery to describe a historic battle? Would he make his late mother and dour father proud of him? The terror of failure was very real, and it was with deep gratitude that he heard the gunner’s wife come to rouse them so that they could wash, say their prayers and partake of breakfast.
No cleaner or any more pious than other boys their age, they spent much of their time circumventing the strictures of the gunner’s wife. Midshipman Nelson, almost as his f
irst lesson, learnt that she was a slave to flattery. Praise for her natural maternity, judiciously mingled with hints that there was a desirable woman in that huge, squat body, could usually melt the frown that appeared when she espied anything amiss.
He also realised quickly that, for all his height and need to shave, Dobree was weak in the article of discipline, more interested in peace, food and a good pipe than any exercise of authority. Two of the others, Rivers and a fifteen-year-old called Makepeace, exerted whatever terror was going in the berth. This mostly extended to stealing victuals from the plates of those too young, small or cowardly to challenge them. Like all societies of youngsters, they revelled in vulgarity, never using a proper expression where slang, preferably larded with filth, would do. And for all the books he had brought, none referred to nautical vernacular so that initially a lot of the conversation went over his head.
And then there were the ceremonies by which boys initiate others into their group. It was in these that Rivers and Makepeace showed that their attitude wasn’t entirely harmless. In an undermanned ship at anchor, some of the usual jokes could not be played. But fertile minds found plenty with which to tease. Dobree sent the new arrival to the Bosun, to ask for a long weight; to the yeoman of the sheets to demand a skyhook. Midshipman Buckle, only a year older than him, gave him a kid and sent him to the wardroom to demand that it be filled with the midshipman’s daily ration of claret. On the first day that the breeze blew with any strength, Midshipman Foley, the same age as Nelson but with two years’ experience, challenged him to a pissing competition, with a sixpence for the winner, which was when Midshipman Nelson discovered the inadvisability of urinating to windward. They were embarrassing but harmless pranks. Slightly less comfortable was the ritual stripping of the new boy, initiated by Makepeace and enthusiastically carried out by the entire mess. Horatio Nelson was a scrapper by nature, but faced with ten pairs of hands his efforts were useless. He was therefore forced to undergo in silence the humiliation of having his breeches pulled off and his parts, hairless and undeveloped, examined and disparaged. He squirmed the most when Rivers fondled them, aware and ashamed of the instant erection as the older midshipman’s face leered over his.
‘We’ve got a Jemmy Jessamy here, by the feel of things,’ Rivers crowed. ‘What’s stirs ain’t much, but it do stir.’
The curses he emitted, and the names he called his attackers before a hand stopped his screaming, earned his groin and belly a double dose of boot-black. Restored to his feet he tried as hard as he could to make light of his humiliation, rubbing hard at his blackened genitals with a piece of tow, half laughing in an attempt to hide his upset. He could not weep before this group: to do so was to invite another drubbing. And there was no good to be had from a display of anger.
Such rituals were commonplace and, though not so violent or thorough, he had received and administered them himself at his old school. He knew that a few amiable curses and insults allied to a display of acceptance would do more to endear him to this mess than protest. Likewise no complaints could be passed to a higher authority.
In the next few days he experienced the first stirring of acceptance: the jokes dried up, there being only so many to be played on a fellow now deeply suspicious of anything. His name was changed to Nellie, which he knew from his past was a good sign. Inclusion in conversation became automatic instead of forced, and he began to comprehend some of the vernacular jokes of this particular berth. He knew he had arrived when he was included in the ‘cocks on the table’. Not that he was up for a prize, but he put out what he had for display and his examination of the opposition was furtive but fascinating.
His problems started when Rivers got him into the lower holds to hunt for rats. It was an entertaining game, played in the faint light from a single lantern, since the older midshipman knew well how to stir them from their hiding places. That gave the tyro, strategically placed, a chance to club them as they emerged. They changed roles, Rivers and he so close as they poked the crevices that Nelson could smell the musk of the older boy’s sweat. Inevitably, as the number increased, it ended with the pair of them racing around as best they could bent near double, squeaking rodents running in all directions from their swinging cudgels.
Breathing heavily they collapsed, their gasps for air mixed with mirth and comments on each other’s hunting prowess, Rivers’s arm over Nelson’s shoulder in a firm grip. It was a strange sensation, that hand on the back of his neck pulling him forward suddenly to be kissed, to feel a strange tongue forcing itself into his mouth and a hand running slowly up the inside of his thigh. Horatio Nelson didn’t react for several seconds, not sure of what he should do, aware that there was excitement in this as well as danger, that there was a delicious sensation in his groin. Rivers was at his breeches buttons, opening them just enough to slip his hand inside.
He pushed away the older boy as soon as Rivers reached his goal. ‘It’s a good game, Nelson,’ he whispered. ‘Better than Rat and Trap.’
In the half-empty holds, with no one else present, the older boy felt free to unbutton his own breeches without being observed, his voice hoarse as he invited the other boy to do likewise. ‘One hand clapping is all very well, Nelson, but this is better, as you will find when you grow a bit.’
He took the younger boy’s hand and pulled it on to his prick. Nelson, not looking, was aware of dry soft flesh and wisps of thin hair but most of all he was conscious of the size, so much greater than his own.
‘No.’
‘Come on,’ Rivers insisted, pulling hard to restore contact.
Nelson stood up and tried to edge past him, only to be grabbed and pushed until his back was against the end of a barrel, with Rivers, now upright, trapping him.
‘It’s nowt but a bit of play.’
Nelson pushed him hard, to little effect. ‘Go play with yourself, damn you.’
Rivers laughed, a throaty sound. His square face and button nose were so close that the saliva on his lips gleamed. The fist that took him on the ear didn’t inflict much pain, but it surprised him, and he took a half-step back.
The follow up blow caught him on the lip, which split and began to bleed. Rivers had his hand to it, which muffled the string of curses aimed at the back of his escaping victim.
Breeches fully undone he couldn’t follow.
CHAPTER 4
The rest of the day had an endless, surreal quality, full of confused imaginings, not least about what might have happened if he hadn’t fled. Part of him had wanted to stay, he knew that; to experiment with what had only ever been the subject of hushed discussions or inaccurate jokes. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that part of Rivers was still there, in his hand, which induced mixed emotions.
Nelson felt even worse in company than he was alone. He was convinced that every member of the berth had an inkling of what had occurred, which made him examine every remark to try and glean if it was innocent or barbed, which made him appear moody and suspicious. Rivers, subdued at first, soon latched on and proceeded to heap on his head a stream of insults.
Nelson had yet to learn that the berth was split: a few liked Rivers and actively encouraged him; the rest laughed at his sallies for fear of seeming weak. Dobree remained aloof: he just smiled at the references to pretty blond catamites being perfect for the Captain’s servants, to jokes about being stretched across a gun for a thick whip, or the best way to trim the wick on the Captain’s candles.
Faced with a silent, stone-faced victim, Rivers grew bolder. Allusions to ‘bum boys’, and the pleasure they gave their superiors, came thick and fast. The others watched the victim closely, supposing through his occasional shudders that he was taking it badly, unaware that in reality he was wondering if Rivers’s slurs were true. There had been pleasure mixed with terror in the depths of the ship, and he wasn’t sure where one had begun and the other ended. He tried to block the images from his mind, glad that the table hid the effect of memory, but he couldn’t block out the abidi
ng question: had he run from fear of Rivers or for fear of his own inclinations?
Examining the faces of the others produced a confused answer to that question. His shipmates refused to meet his eye. Was that from disgust? He couldn’t know that they were waiting for the inevitable outcome: a sobbing plea to be left in peace.
That didn’t happen. When Nelson’s self-control shattered, he dived across the table to attack his tormentor. For the second time Rivers was taken by surprise and absorbed half a dozen blows before he could retaliate. But, given their respective height and weight that mattered little. Nelson was soon knocked to the floor, with his opponent stepping in to boot him. ‘You snivelling little shite,’ Rivers spat, as his foot swung.
Trapped by the bulkhead, Nelson tried to rise, only to be knocked back by another blow, more of a heavy slap than a punch. Following through, Rivers called for the others to join in. His friends, especially Makepeace, had already moved forward. Nelson grabbed Rivers’s foot and pulled hard, sending the older boy flying. That gave him enough room to begin to rise until Makepeace landed a punch that felled him again, forcing him to curl up into a ball, with his hands around his head. He began to feel the impact of the kicks now raining in on his body.
It was odd listening to the sounds of anger and excitement, feeling the strength of the blows without much pain. His senses, except his hearing, seemed numb, as though the assault was being inflicted on another. Each voice was clear: Rivers spluttering as he cursed and swore; Dobree calling feebly to them to let Nelson be. He guessed that Makepeace, a silent attacker, was inflicting the greatest hurt, his boot beating a tattoo on his unprotected back. Everyone, it seemed, had joined in, Rivers’s deep growl set against a background of high-pitched squeals. But many seemed token in their efforts, careful as they added their contribution, using the confined space and ample noise to amplify the apparent extent of their labours.
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