The Nutmeg of Consolation

by Patrick O'Brian

  The sloven wrote the price on a card, large and plain, and gave it to the coxswain, repeating 'Real lace, yis, yis.'

  'She says half a joe apiece, sir,' said the coxswain, deeply shocked, for half a joe was close on two pounds.

  Stephen laid down the money and with a leering smile the sloven added three complimentary chamber-pots to the parcel.

  'Well, I don't know, I'm sure,' said the coxswain. 'I never seen a Chinese girl with anything like this. Nor yet a little Moor.'

  As the Governor's barge pulled out to the junk Stephen reflected on his new poverty, but superficially; he did not enquire into the nature of his feelings or rather of the feeling that was taking shape at some depth. For the present he was scarcely aware of anything but a general sense of loss and a certain dismay. Often in battle he had had men brought to him, shockingly hurt but hardly conscious of it, particularly if the wound could not be seen.

  'I shall dismiss it for a week or so,' he said. He had done this with various misfortunes, losses and infidelities in the past, and although dreams sometimes undid him by night and although there were other disadvantages it still seemed to him the best way of dealing with a situation where distress and emotion were likely to get out of hand. Relative importance often proved less than he had supposed in the first confusion of mind.

  Aboard the junk he called Mai-mai, Lou-mêng and Pen T'sao and gave them his presents. They thanked him politely, bowed again and again, and cherished the carefully folded wrapping paper; but it was clear from their wondering look at the figures and their shocked, even indignant recognition of the garnished chamber-pots that Stephen had not given the pleasure he had hoped for: though with a certain lack of confidence, it is true.

  He had better luck in the den he shared with Jack Aubrey. Making his way through the labyrinthine bowels of the big junk and along its broad short decks he saw that Mrs Raffles' invitation had been received. Elegant broadcloth coats, calculated to resist an arctic gale, were hanging, brushed and trim, in shady places, and their owners, wearing white breeches, stood close to them, keeping as cool and dust-free as possible.

  'There you are, Stephen,' cried Jack, an involuntary smile ruining the severity of his tone, 'and much credit have you spread on the service, no doubt: I wonder the dogs did not set upon you. Ahmed and Killick took your clothes in hand the moment the invitation came, and there they are laid out on the chest. I will pass the word for the ship's barber.'

  'Before he comes,' said Stephen, 'let me tell you two things or three. The first is that Raffles has a ship for you, a Dutch twenty-gun ship that was wholly immersed for some months on purpose and that has now been raised.'

  'Oh, oh!' cried Jack, his face lighting with joy—that is to say glowed bright red, his teeth gleaming in the redness and his eyes a brighter blue—and he shook Stephen's hand with paralysing force.

  'The second is that when we met Wan Da he told me, as you know, that the Cornélie would be sailing soon. What I did not tell you was that she would be following much the same course that we should have taken in the Diane and must take in this dredged-up Dutchman, by the more or less obligatory Salibabu Passage, that she was extremely short of powder, and that as it is a state monopoly I asked him to persuade the Vizier to allow her none.' The plum-coloured happiness disappeared from Jack's face: he looked down. 'At that time,' went on Stephen, 'I had our possible merchantman in mind, and I did not choose to have her captured or blown out of the water if I could avoid it. In any case, the Cornélie probably has some powder, salved or purchased from the Chinese merchants; and of course I cannot tell how successful Wan Da may have been.' He thought it better not to say anything about the ship's books at present; there was something of a pause, and in that pause began the drumming of the monsoon rain, louder and louder.

  'Well,' said Jack, something of the first glow returning. 'I cannot tell you how delighted I am about the Governor's ship'—raising his voice—'Killick. Killick, there. Pass the word for the barber.'

  'Gentlemen,' said the Governor, 'I cannot tell you how delighted we are, Mrs Raffles and I, to see you at this table. We would indeed wish there were more of you, and that you were all whole; though to be sure'—bowing to his bandaged guests and smiling particularly at Reade, who blushed and looked at his plate—'there are many glorious precedents . . .' It was a well-turned, sincere speech of welcome, delivered with that felicity which had often carried the day in committees; but it did not quite hit the naval tone, and Raffles' hearers, ordinarily fed much earlier in the day, were hungry, clammily hot and thirsty in spite of the rain that had pierced their boat-cloaks, and any speech would have been too long for them; they displayed no sullenness but no very eager attention either, and when Reade turned pale the Governor came to an abrupt close, skipping five paragraphs and drinking to their happy return in ice-cold claret-cup, considered more healthy in this climate for invalids and the young.

  Dish after dish, and cheerfulness returned, helped by Mrs Raffles' natural kindness, natural gifts as a hostess, and by the cool breeze that followed the rain; it was wonderful to see how much the invalids and the young contrived to eat and how pleasantly they were persuaded to take an informal leave as soon as any lassitude appeared.

  It was a diminished company that reached the port; a still smaller one that joined Mrs Raffles and the two other ladies for coffee and tea; and only Jack, Stephen and Fielding survived to walk into the library with the Governor. Jack had already made his acknowledgments, his most heartfelt acknowledgments, for Raffles' kindness in offering him the Dutch ship, the Gelijkheid, and now the Governor gave him a portfolio of her plans, sheer draught, deck draught, profile and everything else capable of exact measurement and representation, and over these the sailors pored with close professional attention while Ahmed brought the surviving botanical specimens from the voyage. Before opening the packet Stephen gave Raffles a succinct account of Kumai, that other Eden, its orang-utangs, its tarsiers, its tree-shrews. 'If I could foresee a fortnight's peace, I should go there tomorrow,' said Raffles. 'A visit of courtesy to the Sultan, confirming the alliance, would be a perfect excuse; and the sloop Plover, due from Colombo at the end of the month, would give me pomp enough. But you can have no idea of how uneasy rests a head with even a hemi-demi-semi crown upon it. Java and its dependencies have a vast population of rajas and sultans and great feudatories, and they are all given to parricide, fratricide and coups d'état; and then there is the enmity between the Javanese, Madurese, ordinary Malays of course, Kalangs, Baduwis, Amboynese, Bugis, Hindus, Armenians and the rest; they all hate one another but they are all ready to combine against the Chinese, and quite a small riot can spread with extraordinary speed.' He looked attentively at the packet. 'Should you like a knife?' he asked.

  'I believe I can manage the knot,' said Stephen, seizing it with his canine teeth. 'Sailors do so hate to see one cut cords, ropes or even string,' he added in a muffled voice. 'There: I have it. Now this first packet is a more or less promiscuous collection of what was growing in the boreen behind van Buren's house. I make no doubt that most are familiar to you.'

  'By no means all,' said Raffles: and as he sorted them into two heaps he observed 'There is a man coming this evening who knows a great deal about these epiphytic plants. Jacob Sowerby. He has published in the Transactions, and he has been recommended to me for the post of government naturalist. I have seen one or two others, but . . . Now this'—holding up a limp object that could have appealed only to a devoted botanist—'is something I have never seen, nor anything remotely like it.'

  'Your Excellency,' said a secretary, 'Major Bushel sends to beg you to come to the Chinese market: your presence would deal with the trouble at once. Captain West has already turned out the guard in case you see fit to go. And Mr Sowerby is here.'

  'I am so sorry,' said the Governor to Stephen, and to the secretary, 'Very well, Mr Akers; I shall go by the Lion Court. Pray make my excuses to Mr Sowerby: I hope to be back in half an hour. You may as well show
him up,' he called back from the farther door.

  Mr Sowerby walked in, a tall thin man of perhaps forty: from his tense expression it was clear that he was nervous, and from his first words it was clear that his uneasiness had made him aggressive.

  Stephen bowed and said 'Mr Sowerby, I believe? My name is Maturin.'

  'You are a botanist, I suppose?' said Sowerby, glancing at the specimens.

  'I should scarcely call myself a botanist,' said Stephen, 'though I did publish a little work on the phanerogams of Upper Ossory.'

  'A naturalist, then?'

  'I think I might fairly describe myself as a naturalist,' said Stephen.

  Sowerby made no reply for some time but sat there biting his nails; it was clear to Stephen that the man regarded him as a rival, but his manner was so disobliging that Stephen did not undeceive him. Eventually Sowerby, looking at his bitten nails, said 'A very small book would deal with the phanerogams of Ossory. Ossory is in Ireland; and no great work would be required to deal with the whole country, except perhaps for the very low forms of life in the bogs. I have been there. I have been there, and although I hadbeen told of its poverty I was astonished to find how very poor it was in fact, flora, fauna and populace.'

  'Oh, come; it is not every island that can boast the arbutus and the phalarope.'

  'It is not every island that can boast the Iceland moss, or such hordes of barefoot savage children in the capital city itself. Extreme poverty . . .'

  Although the poverty of which Sowerby was speaking in the present instance referred to birds—no woodpeckers, no shrikes, no nightingale—the word suddenly brought Stephen's realization of Smith and Clowes's bankruptcy to life, and this added a fresh dimension to his already complex feelings. He was determined not to show how Sowerby's reflections wounded and angered him, but it was difficult to support the comparison of Trinity College in Dublin 'and its pinched brick lodgings for the students with the splendid courts of my own Trinity at Cambridge, itself but part of a far greater university: but the entire difference between the two islands is on the same scale,' and almost impossible to listen with any appearance of equanimity to the long tirade about 'the disgraceful events of 1798, when a numerous band of traitors rose against their natural sovereign, burnt my uncle's rectory and stole three of his cows' or the statement that this poverty and this ignorance had always been and would always be the lot of that unfortunate priestridden community as long as they persisted in the Romish superstition.

  'Oh Governor,' said Stephen, turning as the far door opened and Raffles came in with a mission accomplished look on his face, 'I am so glad you are come just at this moment, to hear me crush my—I will not say opponent but rather interlocutor—with a singularly apt quotation that has just floated into my mind. Mr Sowerby here maintains that the Irish have always been poor and ignorant. I maintain that this has not always been the case and I support my statement not out of any annals such as those of the Four Masters which might be looked upon as biased but out of a purely English authority, that of your own Venerable Bede himself, God be with him. "In the year 664," he says in his Ecclesiastical History, "a sudden pestilence"—which in Irish we call the Buidhe Connail, the Yellow Plague—"depopulated the southern coasts of England, and soon afterwards, extending into the province of the Northumbrians, ravaged the country far and near, and destroyed a great multitude of men . . . It did no less harm in the island of Ireland, where many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English nation . . ." ' He coughed and went on, ' "Where many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English nation were, at the time, studying theology or leading monastic lives, the Irishmen supplying them with food, and furnishing them with books and their teaching gratis pro Deo." '

  Jack had been watching him closely, and with great anxiety; he knew that Stephen was furiously angry and he knew what Stephen was capable of. Now as his friend sat down, his hands no longer trembling, Jack cried 'Well quoted, Doctor! Well quoted upon my honour. I could not have done half so well, without it had been the Articles of War.'

  'It was indeed a knock-down blow, my dear Maturin,' said Raffles. 'One of those replies one usually makes the day after the event. What have you to say, Mr Sowerby?'

  Mr Sowerby had only to say that he meant no national reflexion, was unaware that the gentleman came from Ireland, begged his pardon for any involuntary offence, and took advantage of the sailors' departure to make his bow.

  'I hope all went well?' said Stephen.

  'Oh yes,' said Raffles. 'It is almost the end of Ramadan, you know, and the stricter Muslims grow fractious by the end of the day, particularly such a burning day as this: tomorrow they will be their usual amiable selves, greasy with mutton-fat. But I am sorry you had to endure that fellow. It must have seemed very long.'

  'The gentleman's second name is Prolixity,' said Stephen.

  They sorted their orchids in silence for a while and then in a hesitant voice Raffles said, 'You are no doubt usually surrounded with gentlemen and fellow-officers—people who know your origin and your worth. I wonder whether you are aware how widespread these illiberal opinions are? Poverty, illiteracy, Popery and so on? And the very strong dislike of those in any way connected with the rising? If you have not mixed with the kind of people who are in authority in New South Wales, I am afraid you may be deeply shocked, should you stay any length of time.'

  'I did have a passing glimpse of them in the time of that unfortunate man William Bligh; we touched at Sydney Cove for some essential stores in the Leopard. The people were in a state of insurrection, but from what little I saw of the officers they seemed to me, with some exceptions, a parcel of beggars on horseback, with all the froward arrogance and vanity the term implies.'

  'Alas, there has been no improvement since then.'

  'It is an odd thing,' said Stephen, after a pause, 'that when the American colonists broke away from England, a great many English supported them; even James Boswell did so, to my astonishment, in opposition to Dr Johnson. Yet when the Irish tried to do the same, no voice, as far as I know, was heard in their favour. It is true that Johnson, speaking of the infamous union with Kevin FitzGerald, said "Do not make an union with us, sir. We should unite with you, only to rob you", but that was long before the rising.'

  'It is a standing wonder to me that Johnson should have borne with that scrub Boswell, and that the scrub should have written such a capital book. I remember a passage where the Doctor grew outrageous about the revolting colonials and called them "a race of convicts, that ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging", and another where he said "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American" and called them "Rascals—robbers—pirates", exclaiming he'd "burn and destroy them". But then the intrepid Miss Seward said "Sir, this is an instance that we are always the most violent against those whom we have injured." Perhaps the same violence is now in action against the Irish. Will you join me in a bowl of punch?'

  'I believe not, Raffles; though I am very sensible of your kindness. Indeed, as soon as we have sorted through this heap I shall bid you good night. It has been a somewhat wearing day.'

  As he passed through the corridor where the secretaries lived he caught the heavy scent of opium, a drug he had used for many years in the more convenient form of laudanum, taking it sometimes for pleasure and relaxation, sometimes for the relief of pain, but above all for dealing with emotional distress. He had abandoned it on his reconciliation with Diana, doing so for many reasons, one of them being his belief that a man ought to manage without bottled fortitude. Plain fortitude from within, that was the cry; but as he caught that familiar smell it occurred to him that he might well have been tempted to break his resolution if he had happened to have a pint bottle at hand: tonight was going to call for an uncommon constancy of mind. For one thing he had been exceedingly angry, which was no help to sleep at all. For another it was likely that his more loquacious self, in spite of all the discipline he could impose upon it, would, in moments
of distraction or near-sleep, certainly torment him with observations on his new poverty—his inability to oblige Diana, to endow a chair of osteology, to do the handsome thing on occasion, to maintain some of the annuities he had promised, to undertake remote voyages in the Surprise when peace should come at last. And if he slept at all, the waking would be worse, with all these aspects invading his mind afresh; accompanied, no doubt, by others he had not yet perceived.

  The event proved him totally wrong in both instances. Sleep came at once, jumbling the last words of his paternoster, a deep sleep in which he lay totally relaxed until in the first hint of light he became aware of the luxury of lying there in a state of almost disembodied ease and well-being; then of the delighted recollection that they had a ship; and then of a massive form between him and the faint source of light and of Jack's rumbling whisper asking him if he were awake.

  'What if I am, brother?' he replied.

  'Why, then,' said Jack, his deep voice filling the room as usual, 'Bonden has as it were found a little green skiff, and I thought you might like to come with me and look at the raised Dutch sloop whose name I never can recall.'

  'By all means,' said Stephen, getting out of bed and flinging on his clothes.

  'Of course, I suppose you could wash and shave later,' said Jack. 'We are to breakfast with the Governor, you recall.'

  'Aye? Well, I dare say we are, but a wig covers a multitude of sins.'

  At this time the citadel of Batavia, which contained the Governor's residence, was in a somewhat chaotic state, the last Dutch administration having tried to deal with the appalling mortality from fever by doing away with many of the moats, canals and water-defences, and by temporarily diverting others, with the result that Stephen had but to step from his window into the green skiff, and with Bonden's helping hand to settle himself on a borrowed cushion in the stern, where Jack joined him. They pulled gently along this narrow winding domestic waterway for a hundred yards or so, once looking straight into an astonished kitchen, once into a room from which they averted their blushing faces, then out through the ruined watergate, along the canal through the shallows, running gently with the tide, and so into the open bay. The growing day was perfectly calm, and the few large fishing-proas that were in motion paddled through the mist, singing gently.