by Debra Daley
I asked him how he had manifested the sparks and he explained that the nymph’s rocky seat was insulated in such a way that an operator beneath the stage could charge her body with an electrical machine. Some other people arrived then to congratulate Mr Paine and Johnny on the show.
I turned away and, without thinking about it, picked up the jealousy glass that was sitting on the table in front of Eliza and raised it to my eye. I had forgotten about its trick angle. Instead of fixing on the orchestra as I intended, my gaze veered away and swam into a glittering haze that was the reflection of hundreds of candle flames, I realised, in the wall mirrors. All of a sudden, against this brazen background, a face shot up huge and unexpected. My fright was intense. I knew the horrible features captured in the lens. My blood ran cold at the sight.
*
In the gloom beyond our rucked-up wake, something has caught the captain’s attention and he has ordered the mast lamp to be extinguished. And now a vast shadow falls over the Seal. It is cast by a high cliff that makes a miniature of us. We have entered a sublime gorge, whose walls rise to misty heights and provide a funnel for the wind. Its eerie moan makes the hair stand up on the nape of my neck.
The captain says abruptly, ‘In fact we cannot stop to place you on to the wherry, madam, we are obliged to make haste. I will put you off as soon as I can.’
My heart leaps at this reprieve, although my gladness is compromised by the fear that we are being followed. My straining eyes make out a blotch beyond our stern that might be another vessel, perhaps. In any case, I am relieved to feel the cutter surge.
The faster we go, the colder it becomes, and I cannot help the chatter of my teeth. That velvet scarf is gone. At the bottom of the harbour now, I suppose. It is the third covering I have lost. You see how my protection comes and goes. I doubt that this captain is moved by my plight – he is more likely to be irritated by my quaking and gasping – but he commands a canvas-covered hatch under the long sweep of the tiller to be opened. There is another larger hatch, I notice, cut into the foredeck, which is straddled by a heavy machine for handling cargo. The captain bellows at me to watch my head and he dispatches me below.
I climb down the steep companionway into a musty hold where space presses hard. The view forward discloses a figure poking at a cauldron on top of a stove. He looks up at my approach, his cropped hat nearly grazing a swaying clutch of game and cured haunches fastened to a beam overhead, and if he is surprised to see a sloven doused in seawater materialise in his domain, he gives no sign of it. He has a tufty beard like a goat’s whiskers and a stiff frock and his face is as creased as brown wrapping paper. With his wooden spoon he indicates a bunker. He is as close-mouthed as his master for he will not offer his name or any word at all. I take up a spot on the bunker, which is convenient for the warmth of the stove. I do not mind its film of coal dust. Under the restless light of lanterns that swing from the beams, I take in my surroundings. A strong smell of canvas, hemp and lard, with an undercurrent of night soil, carries from the cutter’s forward direction. I glimpse swaying hammocks and bulky shapes which I take to be lockers. The remainder of the hold might be taken up by cargo if there were any.
The cook shuffles towards me. As he bends stiffly to lower on hinges a small table next to the bunker, I see, exposed by his tattered breeches, a shin and foot whose grotesque appearance tell of some ghastly mishap in the past. I dare say it is this impairment that has reduced him to a life below decks.
I ask what name the captain goes by, and he replies, ‘What need you care?’
He is right about that. The identity of the Seal’s master is peripheral to my principal concern, which is to stay on this cutter until it lands in France. I am beginning to think this objective might be accomplished if only the conditions continue to prevent the captain from offloading me. My gaze strays sternwards to a doorless after-cabin – the captain’s quarters, judging by papers, or charts, held fast in slats, and by some sort of instrument sitting in a gimbal on an economical table. A half-drawn curtain discloses the corner of a bed-place, and I turn away from the intimacy of that sight.
The tang of juniper cuts through the sweaty scent of stewing meat. The cook is grinding something in a tumbler.
Waves bang against the hull as loud as drumbeats. A faint vapour rises up from my drying petticoat.
The cook stirs sugar into the tumbler. As he passes me the toddy, the boat bucks violently. I cannot bring the drink to my lips. The lanterns squeak on their hooks and shadows swoop wildly around the hold. One of these shadows dives at me and I flinch and cry out. My hand flies to my mouth.
*
The squall has lost its force and my stomach has ceased its spasms, yet still I crouch at the rail. I am on deck in the lee of one of the Seal’s stolid little guns. Doubtless it has not escaped your attention that I do nothing but stoop and duck and cower. This probably says as much about my character as it does about my circumstances. I wish it were not so. I wish I were more admirable. I mean: I should like you to be proud of me and not because of my curly hair or my ability to dance a fetching minuet.
This is an uncomfortable sea, but the waves look beautiful. They prance under the moonlight like small white horses and every so often they join together in a long trail of spume. It reminds me of a stole of cream lace once favoured by Mrs Waterland. I see it surging around her like foam on the grey sea of her petticoat, while her hair billows from her forehead as though she were making her way dauntless against a headwind.
It is painful to think of Sedge Court and yet I cannot stop wandering its rooms in my mind. Every detail is still so present to me. But I know that the house is already beginning its process of retreat. With each day that passes, it will fade a little more until I can no longer claim it as my home even in my memory.
Mrs Waterland wore that cream stole on the evening that Eliza and I were summoned to entertain Barfield in the withdrawing room. When I was very young I thought it was called the withdrawn room, which seemed an apt description for an aloof space that was little used. The gelid colour scheme of garter-blue and chalk, the white marble fireplace, the lonesome islands of bandy-legged chairs and tables, the remote ceiling and its haughty chandelier, the acreage of parquet flooring on which the heels of our footwear boomed emptily, these elements conspired to produce an effect of absolute froideur.
When Eliza and I arrived we found Mr Waterland deposed upon the pale sofa. He was sheathed in a drab waistcoat unfashionably long, an earthy velvet coat and an ancient brunette wig – the overall effect was rather like a broken bough in a winter landscape. He acknowledged Eliza’s curtsy with a cryptic clearing of the throat, while I kept my gaze low, which enabled him to overlook me.
Barfield was surmounted by a dingy wig with curls as fat as sausages stacked above each ear. The combination of his yellow suit, black facial patches and stockings of a weary green brought to mind a vegetable left overly long in the larder. He seemed determined to be a living lampoon of his class, all roaring opinion and pink-cheeked certitude. As soon as I was introduced as Eliza’s attendant, Barfield expounded on his view that waiting girls ought to be got up in livery like footmen, else we could hardly be told apart from the quality. He spread open his arms, his limp hands hanging at their ends like gloves drying on a line, and grouched, ‘I was at Shugborough this Christmas last and there was a minx of a lady’s maid decked out finer than her mistress. I came perilous close to kissing her and handing her in to supper!’ Then he cackled long and hard, giving us all an unimpeded view of the wet workings of his mouth. Johnny Waterland was lounging at the card table with an amused-at-a-distance mien. As usual, he wore his own hair, which he shook out of his eyes and smoothed a great deal as if he enjoyed demonstrating the freedom of it. I cannot remember what he was wearing. Something precious no doubt, and I am sure those buckles that had impressed Eliza so would have been scintillating expensively on his fine shoes.
Mrs Waterland rose to the spinet and played a brisk, introduc
tory arpeggio that was the signal for me to seize Eliza’s hand and lead her into a minuet. Imagine us, if you can, in the open ground between a card table and the sofa, with heads a-droop like a couple of cabbage roses buckling under the weight of their beauty, as we set off on our serpentine course. Our display was designed to impress Eliza upon Tobias Barfield and I was as tense as the high-pitched strings, excruciatingly attuned to the potential for a misstep. I thought it likely that Barfield’s family would boil itself in oil before it lowered to a girl sullied by mercantile connections, but Mrs Waterland was determined to contract her daughter with an estate, and no avenue should be left untried.
The brittle music hammered on and Eliza and I stepped and bowed and exchanged wistful over-the-shoulder glances, as a girl dancing a minuet should, as if to intimate that we were slightly sorry about the recent death by duel of our twin admirers – and it seemed that we might come through the thing unscathed. But inevitably, the effort of keeping time got the better of Eliza. She stumbled and dropped my hand, so that the shape of the dance was broken. She said, ‘Oh dear,’ in response to my glare and began to giggle. It was absurd to allow her clumsiness to annoy me so, since I could not care less if Barfield were impressed. Perhaps what upset me was that she was at liberty to make a hash of things, whereas I must be responsible for the success of our performance.
*
At last I feel able to come shakily to my feet – and narrowly miss being brained by the swinging boom. It is the captain who has hauled me by the arm out of its way. He is not interested in my gratitude. He roars instead at the second mate, Mr Robinson, who is at the tiller – ‘By almighty God, what kind of shoddy gybe was that, Robinson? The sail was not pulled in!’ – and at another hand, small, dark and cat-like – I think his name is Dubois – ‘You did not slacken the stays, you dolt! You might have cracked the topmast or the boom.’
The captain’s appearance is very stark, a black shape imprinted on the softer dark of the sky. Bareheaded, he stands like a pylon on legs wide apart, braced against the rise and fall of the boat. His hair dives around and about like a collection of innumerable sail ties, his coat swells as he takes a couple of strides towards Dubois, who is fumbling at the boom. The captain seizes Dubois by the front of his shirt and almost lifts him off his feet. ‘Drunk are you, by God?’ I hear him snarl. In a few brief hours I have already learned that the captain is partial to sarcasm, and so I suppose I expect him to wound the blundering hand with a cutting remark. But he does not. He has walked Dubois back towards the rail and then in one fluid movement he hoists him up and throws him overboard. There is a flat, dead sound of a splash. I cannot believe what I have just seen. ‘Break the mast,’ the captain shouts, ‘and this is what will happen to us all.’ He turns on his heel – and catches sight of me with mouth hanging open, appalled.
He says, his tone rough, ‘Were it not for the law of hospitality that respects the stranger, you too would be overboard, madam. Next time, close the hatch after you. Or must you baulk at that request, as is your style?’
*
The captain says, ‘If I had a glass now I would drink it,’ and the cook limps over with a bottle of wine and pours a measure without spilling a drop in spite of the pitching boat. The captain is dining at his table, while I watch from my designated spot – the little fold-down table next to the coal bunker. He looks up suddenly as the dripping Dubois slithers down the companionway and grovels at his master. The Seal has been circling this last quarter of an hour and I have been listening to the muffled shouts of the crew’s efforts to bring the hapless deckhand from the water. Someone, I gathered, had thrown him an empty cask as a flotation device. The captain has been indifferent to the rescue. The lamp in his quarters throws his face into relief. It is as hard and steep as a cliff, with a steep drop from the cheekbones to the wide ledge of his mouth.
He says, ‘Your watch is not finished, Dubois. Go above and see it out or you will not live to enjoy another, by God.’
I am heartily sorry for my own error of failing to shut the hatch, but I think that the captain has treated the deckhand too hard and when Dubois has hauled himself back on deck I cannot help but say, ‘No wonder Terry Madden ran off, since you are such a severe master.’
The captain makes a sharp, expulsive sound that might be an attempt at a laugh. ‘A dunking is nothing. I’ve seen a cannonball go through young lads like a hawk through a flock of sparrows and their bodies torn open from luff to leech. The wars of politicians, that’s a hard master for you, Miss Smith.’ He raises his glass to his lips and finishes it in one draught. His hair is prematurely streaked with grey, I notice. Seeing that my gaze is still on him, he adds with a wry twist of the lip, which seems to be a characteristic of his, ‘Please do convince yourself of the quality of my claret, madam. Jim, pour her a glass.’ Perhaps he very slightly regrets his sharpness, because he says after a pause, ‘The winemaker is known to me. He is a good man, who does not rush his harvest.’
He withdraws to his supper and the contemplation of a chart spread out before him. I think I can discern a compass rose in the top right-hand corner. He wolfs down his stew without noticing it, and when the cook, Jim, has taken our plates away, the captain shifts in his chair, puts one long leg over another and brings out a pair of callipers and other instruments that I do not know. He seems to be calculating the bearings of the Seal.
I drain my glass. The claret is indeed excellent. There is a long French summer in the bouquet of it.
The captain’s chin lifts in that abrupt way he has and at first I think he has sensed my scrutiny. I am only observing him so closely because, even with the English shore so far behind us, escape from my tormentors depends on him. There is no one else to bring me forward so I must seize the captain’s strings like a child and get where I can by my proximity to him.
In fact he is looking past me at the first mate, Mr Guttery. He raises an arm and beckons the man to approach. There is something in the captain’s lifting of his arm in that nearly negligent way in order to disguise the urgency of a situation, the hand cupping at the air …
The gesture strikes me with such force that I nearly utter a cry out loud. From the time I first laid eyes on the Seal’s captain I have had a niggling sense of an acquaintance with him. Now I understand why. I had seen that same unhurried beckoning on the strand at Parkgate when I was a girl.
Can I trust my eyes? Is the captain of the Seal the stranger who caught my attention so forcibly that day the master’s cargo went under? Eight years have passed since then. But I am certain that it is he! I see him standing on the sands, I see the revenue men approach …
And yet, where is the rising tide of delight that so engulfed me then?
The man before me bears an identical physical stamp to that fascinating stranger, but he does not captivate me at all. If anything, he antagonises me with his grudging manners and high-handed attitude.
He has returned his attention to the chart. Won’t he be amazed to discover that we have encountered one another before? To come so fortuitously into one another’s orbit must signify a meaning – although I cannot tell what. But the novelty of it! It is a connection that might make the captain more disposed to help me.
But as I stare at his lowered head, I find myself becoming reluctant to say anything to him after all. Because I cannot predict his reaction. To disclose that I once watched him escape the customs officer – if this is, indeed, the same man – is nearly the same as declaring that I know him to be a smuggler. There is no advantage to me in that. He is a smuggler still, I realise. Why else does this vessel carry eight swivel guns and a magazine and muskets and such fine claret?
Mr Guttery edges by, light on his thin shoes, and by the time he has settled himself at the captain’s table and loosened the buttons of his striped waistcoat, I have quashed the impulse to announce our previous encounter. Instead I stay fast on my bunker.
You see how I am learning to look out for myself. Well, isn’t that the way o
f the world? Nothing must occur but I must ask how it will benefit me.
The captain and Mr Guttery are speaking in low voices with the air of conspirators. I cannot place the captain’s accent – and I recall that was true of the stranger at Parkgate, too. At first I took the captain for Irish, but that does not seem absolutely accurate – in any case, did not Terry Madden say his master came from France? I must say that I am curious to know more of this smuggler. I can hardly know less that I do at this moment. He has kept even his name from me.
As I come to bid him and Mr Guttery a good night, I find the boldness to ask, ‘Will you do me the courtesy of telling me what you are called, sir?’
Without lifting his gaze from his chart the captain says, ‘I am called McDonagh. Now good night to you.’
The Seal, Open Sea
April, 1766
In spite of my fatigue, I lie awake in the shifting darkness. My rank, salt-encrusted clothes rub uncomfortably against my bruised skin, and thoughts and images will not leave me alone. Not even the very relative luxury of the captain’s berth helps me to sleep. He insisted on donating its use to me, although the courtesy was offered in a most harsh tone.
I find myself rather satisfied to know his name. Captain McDonagh.
I keep going over my first sighting of him at Parkgate: his face takes my attention and holds it. He is in conference with a fisherman on the tide-line. In the distance boatmen shift the master’s cargo from a barge to a lopsided punt. Captain McDonagh rows strongly in the surf. Captain McDonagh sets his sail.
He strikes me still as a self-sufficing man and one that is determined to come out of the way of harm. That is a reassuring quality, don’t you think?
I continue to marvel at the happenstance that has brought us into proximity. The event cries out for interpretation, but all I can say is that it reinforces my strong sense of being bound by a chain of circumstances whose links I am unable to break. There seems to have been no swerving from anything that has taken place in my life. Is it too far-fetched to believe that my arriving at this spot here on the Seal has been decreed? Has Captain McDonagh been sent through time and tide to save me? And by whom or by what force?