Book 11 - The Reverse Of The Medal

by Patrick O'Brian

  'No, sir,' said Jack, 'I shall speak to them like a sucking dove.'

  'Pig, Aubrey: sucking pig. Doves don't suck.'

  'No, sir. I shall probably find them together, talking about medical matters.'

  So indeed they were. Mr Waters was showing Mr Maturin some of his pictures of the most typical cases of leprosy and elephantiasis that he had met with on the island—remarkably well-drawn, well-coloured pictures—when Jack came in, delivered his message, took one glance at the paintings and hurried away to have a word with the Admiral's secretary before paying the necessary call on Captain Goole.

  Mr Waters finished his description, returned his last example of Barbados leg to its folder, and said, 'I am sure you have observed that most medical men are hypochondriacs, Dr Maturin.' This, delivered with a painfully artificial smile, was clearly a prepared statement: Stephen made no reply, and the surgeon went on, 'I am no exception, and I wonder whether I too may importune you. I have a swelling here'—putting his hand to his side—'that gives me some concern. I have no opinion at all of any of the surgeons on this station, least of all my assistants, and I should very much value your reflections upon its nature.'

  'Captain Aubrey, sir, what may I have the pleasure of doing for you?' asked the secretary, smiling up at him.

  'You would put me very much in your debt by producing a bag of mail for the Surprise,' said Jack. 'It is a great while since any of us has heard from home.'

  'Mail for Surprise?' said Mr Stone doubtfully. 'I scarcely think—but I will ask my clerks. No, alas,' he said, coming back, 'I am very sorry to say that there is nothing for Surprise.'

  'Oh well,' said Jack, forcing a smile, 'it don't signify. But perhaps you have some newspapers, that will give me an idea of how things stand in the world: for obviously you are much too busy with this damned court-martial to tell me the history of the last few months.'

  'Not at all, not at all,' said Mr Stone. 'It will take me no time to tell you that things are going from bad to worse. Buonaparte is building ships in every dockyard, faster than ever; and faster than ever ours are wearing out, with perpetual blockade and perpetually keeping the sea. He has very good intelligence and he foments discord among the allies—not that they need much encouragement to hate and distrust one another, but it is wonderful how he touches on the very spot that hurts, almost as though he had someone listening behind the cabinet door, or under the council table. To be sure our armies make some progress in Spain; but the Spaniards . . . well, you know something of the Spaniards, sir, I believe. And in any event, it is doubtful that we can go on supporting all these people or even paying for our own part of the war. I have a brother in the City, and he tells me that the funds have never been so low, and that trade is at a stand: men walk about on Change with their hands in their pockets, looking glum: there is no gold to be had—you go to the bank to draw out some money, money that you deposited with them in guineas, and all they will give you is paper—and nearly all securities are a drug on the market: South Sea annuities at fifty-eight-and-a-half for example! Even East India stock is at a very shocking figure, and as for Exchequer bills . . . There was a flurry of activity at the beginning of the year, with a rumour of peace causing prices to rise; but it died away when the rumour proved false, leaving the City more depressed than ever. The only thing that prospers is farming, with wheat at a hundred and twenty-five shillings the quarter, and land is not to be had for love or money; but at present, sir, a man with say five thousand pounds could buy stock, capital stock, that would have represented a handsome estate before the war. Here are some papers and magazines that will tell it all in greater detail; they will depress your spirits finely, I do assure you. Yes, Billings,'—this to a clerk—'what is it?'

  'Although there is no mail for Captain Aubrey, sir,' said Billings, 'Smallpiece says there was someone inquiring for him, a black man; and he conceives the black man might have a message at least, if not a letter.'

  'Was he a slave?' asked Jack.

  'Was he a slave?' called Billings, cocking his ear for the answer. Then, 'No, sir.'

  'Was he a seaman?' asked Jack.

  No, he was not; and when at last Smallpiece came sidling in, intensely, painfully shy and almost inarticulate, it appeared that the black man seemed to be an educated person—had first inquired for Surprise in a general way among those that went ashore, when first the squadron came to Bridgetown, and then, since the frigate was reported in these waters, more particularly for Captain Aubrey.

  'I know no educated black man,' said Jack, shaking his head. It was not impossible that a West Indian lawyer might employ a Negro clerk; and affairs being in so critical a state at home, it was not impossible that the clerk might wish to serve a writ on him. This could only be done on shore, however, and Jack instantly determined to remain aboard throughout his stay. He took the newspapers, thanked Mr Stone and his clerks, and returned to the quarterdeck. Here he found his midshipman, horribly shabby among all the snowy flagship youngsters, but obviously stuffing them up with prodigious tales of the Horn and the far South Sea, and to him he said, 'Mr Williamson, my compliments to Captain Goole and would it be convenient if I were to wait upon him in ten minutes.'

  Mr Williamson brought back the answer that Captain Aubrey's visit would be convenient, and to this, on his own initiative, he added Captain Goole's best compliments. He would have made them respectful too, if a certain sense of the possible had not restrained him at the last moment; for he loved his Captain.

  During this time Jack leant over the quarterdeck rail, by the starboard hances, in the easy way allowed to those of his rank, looking down into the waist and over the side. He had given his bargemen leave to come aboard and there was only the bookkeeper in the gig, talking eagerly to some unseen friend through an open port on the lower deck. There were several hands on the gangway and in the waist who stood facing aft and looking at him fixedly in the way peculiar to former shipmates who wished to be recognized, and again and again he broke off his small-talk with the first and flag lieutenants to call out 'Symonds, how do you do?' 'Maxwell, how are you coming along?' 'Himmelfahrt, there you are again, I see,' and each time the man concerned smiled and nodded, putting his knuckle to his forehead or pulling off his hat. Presently Barret Bonden and his Irresistible brother came up the forehatchway and he noticed that both of them looked at him not only with particular attention but also with that curious, slightly amused and even arch expression that he had seen, more or less clearly, on the faces of those men in the flagship who had sailed with him before. He could not make it out, but before he could really put his mind to the question his time was up and he walked aft to the captain's cabin.

  Of his own free will Captain Goole would never have received Captain Aubrey. Midshipman Goole had behaved meanly, discreditably over that far-distant tripe; he had played a material though admittedly subordinate part in the theft, he had eaten as much as anyone in the berth; and on being hauled up before Captain Douglas he had blown the gaff—while utterly denying his share he had nevertheless turned informer. It was a pitiful performance and he had never forgiven Jack Aubrey. But he had no choice about seeing him; in the matter of formal calls the naval etiquette was perfectly rigid.

  'I would not receive him, still less introduce him to you,' said Goole to his wife, 'if the rules of the service did not require it. He will be there directly, and he must stay for at least ten minutes. I shall not offer him anything to drink, however; and he will not take root. In any case he drinks far too much, like his friend Dundas—another man who cannot keep his breeches on, by the way—half a dozen natural children to my certain knowledge—birds of a feather, birds of a feather. It is the ruin of society.' A pause. 'You would never think so to look at him now, but Aubrey was once considered handsome; and it may be that which—hush, here he is.'

  Jack had not forgotten Captain Douglas's tripe, nor the spectacular consequences of its theft—consequences that had seemed catastrophic at the time, although in fact he cou
ld scarcely have spent his time more profitably, since his half-year as a common seaman gave him an intimate, inside knowledge of the lower deck, its likes and dislikes, its beliefs and opinions, and of the true, unvarnished nature of its daily life—nor had he forgotten Goole. But he had forgotten the details of Goole's conduct, and although he remembered him as something of a scrub he bore him no ill-will; indeed, as he now walked into the cabin he was quite pleased to see such an old shipmate and he congratulated Goole on his marriage with perfect sincerity, smiling upon them both with an amiable candour that improved Mrs Goole's already favourable opinion of him. She did not find it at all surprising that he had been considered handsome; even now, although his scarred, weather-beaten countenance had nothing, but nothing, of the bloom of youth and although he weighed too much, he was not ill-looking; he had a certain massive, leonine style, and he fairly towered over Goole, who had no style of any kind; and his blue eyes, all the bluer in his mahogany face, had the good-natured expression of one who is willing to be pleased with his company.

  'I am a great friend to marriage, ma'am,' he was saying.

  'Indeed, sir?' she replied; and then, feeling that something more was called for, 'I believe I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Aubrey just before I left England, at Lady blood's.'

  'Oh, how was she?' cried Jack, his face lighting up with extraordinary pleasure.

  'I hope she was the same lady, sir,' said Mrs Goole hesitantly. 'Tall, with golden hair done up so, grey eyes and a wonderful complexion; a blue tabby gown with long sleeves gathered here—'

  'Really, Mrs Goole,' said her husband.

  'That is Sophie for sure,' said Jack. 'It is an age since I had any word from home, being the far side of the Horn—would give the world to hear from her—pray tell me just how she looked—what she said—I suppose none of the children were there?'

  'Only a little boy, a fine little boy, but Mrs Aubrey was telling Admiral Sawyer about her daughters' chickenpox, now so far behind them that she had allowed Captain Dundas to take them a-sailing in his cutter.'

  'Bless them' cried Jack, sitting down beside her; and they engaged in a close conversation on the subject of chickenpox, its harmless and even beneficent nature, the necessity for passing through such things at an early age, together with considerations on the croup, measles, thrush, and redgum, until the flagship's bell reminded him that he must return to the Surprise for his fiddle.

  The diseases that Dr Maturin and Mr Waters discussed were of quite a different order of gravity, but at last Stephen stood up, turned down the cuffs of his coat, and said, 'I believe I may venture to assert, though with all the inevitable reserves, of course, that it is not malignant, and that we are in the presence not of the tumour you mentioned, still less of a metastasis—God between us and evil—but of a splanchnic teratoma. It is awkwardly situated however and must be removed at once.'

  'Certainly, dear colleague,' said Waters, fairly glowing with relief. 'At once. How grateful I am for your opinion!'

  'I never much care for opening a belly,' observed Stephen, looking at the belly in question with an objective, considering eye, rather like a butcher deciding upon his cut. 'And of course in such a position I should require intelligent assistance. Are your mates competent?'

  'They are reckless drunken empirical sots, the pair of them, the merest illiterate sawbones. I should be most reluctant to have either of them lay a hand on me.'

  Stephen considered for a while: it was difficult enough in all conscience to love one's fellow men by land, let alone cooped up in the same ship with no possibility of escape from daily contact, or even to remain on civil terms; and clearly Waters had not accomplished this necessary naval feat. He said, 'I have no mate myself. The gunner, running mad, murdered him off the coast of Chile. But our chaplain, Mr Martin, has a considerable knowledge of physic and surgery; he is an eminent naturalist and we have dissected a great many bodies together, both warm-blooded and cold; but as far as I can recall he has not seen the opening of a living human abdomen and I am sure it would give him pleasure. If you wish, I will ask him to attend. In any case I must return to the ship for my violoncello.'

  Stephen mounted the Irresistible's various ladders, losing his way once or twice but emerging at last into the brilliant light of the quarterdeck. He stood blinking for a while, and then, putting on his blue spectacles, he saw that the larboard side of the ship was crowded with bumboats and returning liberty-men. The flag-lieutenant was leaning over the rail, chewing a piece of sugar-cane and bargaining for a basket of limes, a basket of guavas, an enormous pine-apple; when these had been hoisted aboard Stephen said to him, 'William Richardson, joy, will you tell me where the Captain is, now?'

  'Why, Doctor, be went back to the ship just after five bells.'

  'Five bells,' repeated Stephen. 'Sure, he said something about five bells. I shall be reproved for unpunctuality again. Oh, oh. What shall I do?'

  'Do not let it prey on your mind, sir,' said Richardson. 'I will pull you over in the jolly-boat; it is no great way, and I should like to see some of my old shipmates again. Captain Pullings told me that Mowett was your premier now. Lord! Only think of old Mowett as a first lieutenant! But, sir, you are not the only one to be asking after Captain Aubrey. There is a person just come aboard again on the same errand—there he is,' he added, nodding along the larboard gangway to where a tall young black man stood among a group of hands. Stephen recognized them all as men he had sailed with in former commissions, most of them Irish, all of them Catholics, and he observed that they were looking at him with curiously amused expressions while at the same time they gently, respectfully urged the tall young black man to go aft; and before Stephen had time to call out a greeting—before he could decide between 'Ho, shipfellows' and 'Avast, messmates'—the young man began walking towards the quarterdeck. He was dressed in a plain snuff-coloured suit of clothes, heavy square-toed shoes and a broad-brimmed hat; he had something of the air of a Quaker or a seminarist, but of an uncommonly powerful, athletic seminarist, like those from the western parts of Ireland who might be seen walking about the streets of Salamanca; and it was in the very tones of an Irish seminarist that he now addressed Stephen, taking off his hat as he did so. 'Dr Maturin, sir, I believe?'

  'The same, sir,' said Stephen, returning his salute. 'The same, at your service.' He spoke a little at random, for the bare-headed young man standing there in the full sun before him was the spit, the counterpart, the image of Jack Aubrey with some twenty years and several stone taken off, done in shining ebony. It made no odds that the young man's hair was a tight cap of black curls rather than Jack's long yellow locks, nor that his nose had no Roman bridge; his whole essence, his person, his carriage was the same, and even the particular tilt of his head as he now leant towards Stephen with a modest, deferential look. 'Pray sir, let us put on our hats, for all love, against the power of the sun,' said Stephen. 'I understand you have business with Captain Aubrey?'

  'I have, sir, and they are after telling me you would know might I see him at all. I hear no boats are allowed by his ship, but it is the way I have a letter for him from Mrs Aubrey.'

  'Is that right?' said Stephen. 'Then come with me till I bring you where he is. Mr Richardson, you will not object to another passenger? We might take turns with plying the oars, the weight being greater.'

  The pull across was comparatively silent: Richardson was busy with his sculls; the black man had the gift, so rare in the young, of being quiet without awkwardness; and Stephen was much taken up with this transposition of his most intimate friend; however, he did say 'I trust, sir, that you left Mrs Aubrey quite well?'

  'As well, sir, as ever her friends could desire,' said the young man, with that sudden flashing smile possible only to those with brilliant white teeth and a jet-black face.

  'I wish you may be right, my young friend,' said Stephen inwardly. He knew Sophie very well; he loved her very dearly; but he knew that she was quick and perceptive and somewhat more subject to je
alousy and its attendant miseries than was quite consistent with happiness. And without being a prude she was also perfectly virtuous, naturally virtuous, without the least self-constraint.

  The young man was not unexpected in the Surprise; the rumour of his presence had spread to every member of the ship's company except her Captain and he came aboard into an atmosphere of kindly, decently-veiled but intense curiosity.

  'Will you wait here now while I see is the Captain at leisure?' said Stephen. 'Mr Rowan will no doubt show you the various ropes for a moment.'

  'Jack,' he said, walking into the cabin. 'Listen, now. I have strange news: there was a fine truthful young black man aboard the Admiral inquiring for you, told me he had a message from Sophie, so I have brought him along.'

  'From Sophie?' cried Jack.

  Stephen nodded and said in a low voice. 'Brother, forgive me, but you may be surprised by the messenger. Do not be disconcerted. Will I bring him in?'

  'Oh yes, of course.'

  'Good afternoon to you, sir,' said the young man in a deep, somewhat tremulous voice as he held out a letter. 'When I was in England Mrs Aubrey desired me to give you this, or to leave it in good hands were I gone before your ship came by.'

  'I am very much obliged to you indeed, sir,' said Jack, shaking him warmly by the hand. 'Pray sit down. Killick, Killick there. Rouse out a bottle of madeira and the Sunday cake. I am truly sorry not to be able to entertain you better, sir—I am engaged to the Admiral this evening—but perhaps you could dine with me tomorrow?'

  Killick had of course been listening behind the door and he was prepared for this: he and his black mate Tom Burgess came in at once, making a reasonably courtly train, as like a land-going butler and footman as they could manage; but Tom's desire to get a really good view of the visitor, who sat facing away from him, was so violent that they fell foul of one another just as the wine was pouring. When the 'God-damned lubbers' had withdrawn, crestfallen, and they were alone again Jack looked keenly at the young man's face—it was strangely familiar: surely he must have seen him before. 'Forgive me,' he said, breaking the seal, 'I will just glance into this to see whether there is anything urgent.' There was not. This was the third copy of a letter sent to the ports where the Surprise might touch on her homeward voyage; it spoke of the progress of Jack's plantations, the slow indeterminate stagnation of the legal proceedings, and the chickenpox, then at it's height, and at the bottom of the page a hurried postscript said that Sophie would entrust this to Mr Illegible, who was bound for the West Indies and who had been so kind as to call on her.