Clarissa Oakes (12 page)

   'I am so glad,' said Clarissa. 'Billy, pray bring the Doctor a chair.'

   Stephen usually went to the taffrail to lean over it and either contemplate the birds that followed, particularly in the high southern latitudes, or to lose himself in the hypnotic wake; he had rarely sat looking forward and now the sight of the tall pale topsails reaching up and up into the night sky absorbed him for several minutes. The ship heaved and sighed upon the swell, the voices of seamen talking quietly under the break of the quarterdeck came aft, and an attentive ear could easily catch the sound of Captain Aubrey's sleep.

   'I hope, Dr Maturin,' said Clarissa, 'that when I spoke in that intemperate way about children on Monday you did not feel I was making the slightest reflexion on Sarah and Emily? They are very, very good little girls, and I love them dearly.'

   'Lord no,' said Stephen. 'It never occurred to me that you would put a slight on them. I am no great advocate for children in general, but if my own daughter—for I have a daughter, ma'am—grows up as kind, affectionate, clever and spirited as those two I shall bless my fate.'

   'I am sure she will,' said Clarissa. 'No. I was talking about children that have not been properly house-trained. Left to their own impulses and indulged by doting or careless parents almost all children are yahoos. Loud, selfish, cruel, unaffectionate, jealous, perpetually striving for attention, empty-headed, for ever prating or if words fail them simply bawling, their voices grown huge from daily practice: the very worst company in the world. But what I dislike even more than the natural child is the affected child, the hulking oaf of seven or eight that skips heavily about with her hands dangling in front of her—a little squirrel or a little bunny-rabbit—and prattling away in a baby's voice. All the children I saw in New South Wales were yahoos.'

In their slow progress, with declining winds, towards Fiji there were several of these night-conversations, for more and more Stephen avoided the gun-room, where the ill-feeling seemed to have spread; but few were as decided as the first, Mrs Oakes being usually as complaisant and anxious to please as could be, agreeing with the views expressed and amplifying them. Occasionally this led to awkwardness, as when she found herself wholly committed to both sides in a disagreement between Stephen and Davidge—for other officers often appeared, sometimes forestalling him—on the relative merits of classical and romantic music, poetry, architecture, painting.

   Yet there were times when Stephen happened to be alone with her and she spoke in her earlier manner. From some context that he could not recall Stephen had mentioned his dislike of being questioned: 'Question and answer is not a civilized form of conversation.'

   'Oh how I agree,' she cried. 'A convict is no doubt more sensitive on the point but quite apart from that I always used to find that perpetual inquisition quite odious: even casual acquaintances expect you to account for yourself.'

   'It is extremely ill-bred, extremely usual, and extremely difficult to turn aside gracefully or indeed without offence.' Stephen spoke with more than common feeling, for since he was an intelligence-agent even quite idle questions, either answered or evaded, might start a mortal train of suspicion.

   'I have always disliked it,' said Clarissa after a pause in which six bells sounded and clean round the ship look-outs called 'All's well'. 'When I was young I formed the opinion that impertinent questions, arising from a desire to be talking or from vulgar curiosity, did not deserve true answers, so I used to say whatever came into my head. But I can't tell you how difficult it is to maintain a lie for any length of time with any countenance, if it has assumed any importance and if you are bound to it. You skip from emergency to emergency, trying to remember what you said before, running along the roof-top at full speed: sadly wearing. So now I just say it is a subject I prefer not to discuss. What is that steadily repeated noise? Surely they cannot be pumping the ship at this time of night?'

   'It may be mutiny to reply, but in your private ear I will tell you that it is Captain Aubrey, alas.'

   'Oh dear. Cannot he be turned over? He must be lying on his back.'

   'He always lies on his back. His cot is so constructed that he cannot lie on anything else. Many a time have I begged him to have it made longer, wider, deeper; but as regularly as a clock he replies that man and boy he has slept in that cot, and he likes what he is used to. In vain do I point out that with the years he has grown taller, broader, even more portly—that in the course of nature he has changed to larger boots, larger small-clothes . . .' He sighed and fell silent: a long, companionable silence.

   From well forward came Davidge's voice—he had the watch. 'Mr Oakes, there. Jump up to the foretop with a couple of hands and look to the windward laniards.' After they had gone aloft Davidge turned, paused a while to write on the log-board and then came right aft. 'Are you still here, Doctor?' he cried. 'Don't you ever go to bed?'

   This was said in a tone that Stephen had never heard from Davidge, drunk or sober: he made no reply, but Mrs Oakes said 'For shame, Davidge. Doctor, pray give me your arm down those stairs. I am going to my cabin.'

   On the companion-ladder they met Captain Aubrey hurrying on deck to see what was amiss in the foretop, the heaving on the first purchase having pierced through his sleep, whereas the thunderous holystoning of the decks some hours later left him quite unmoved, wheezing gently now and smiling as though some particularly agreeable dream were going on behind his closed eyelids.

Morning after morning, now that the sweetening-cocks were left in peace, did their remote commander too sleep at his ease, making up for countless hours on deck at night—for though of course he kept no particular watch, a commander of Jack Aubrey's kind might be said to keep the whole round of them, above all in dirty weather—and laying in stores of resistance for the hurricanes, lee-shores and uncharted reefs that must surely lie ahead, if past experience were anything to go by.

   He slept, quite undisturbed by all the ordinary routine noises that accompanied the ship's warm, calm, slow, unadventurous progress towards Tonga, not rising up for his morning swim until the sun was well above the horizon and sometimes even missing his first breakfast. He slept a great deal these days, often stretching on the stern-window locker after dinner as well as keeping to his cot most of the night; and he dreamt a great deal. Many of his dreams were erotic, some most specifically so, for New South Wales had proved cruelly frustrating; and he found that Clarissa entered not only his dreams, which he could not prevent, but also his waking mind to an unsuitable degree, which he could, and should. He was no more a rigid moralist than most full-blooded sanguine men of his age and service, but this was not a question of morals: it concerned discipline and the proper running of a man-of-war. No captain could make a cuckold of a subordinate and retain his full authority.

   Jack knew this very well: he had seen the effects of the contrary behaviour on a whole ship's company, that delicately-balanced, complex society. In any event, on principle he regarded naval wives as sacred, except in the rare event of one giving unmistakable signs that she did not wish so to be regarded: and Mrs Oakes had certainly never done anything of the kind. She was therefore doubly sacrosanct, never to be thought of in a carnal light; yet again and again licentious images, words and gestures would come into his mind, to say nothing of the far more licentious dreams.

   He tended therefore to avoid the quarterdeck when she was there, sitting by the taffrail, sometimes tatting in an inexpert fashion but much more often talking to the officers who came aft to ask her how she did. He consequently missed several developments such as the beginning of Pullings' and West's intimacy with Mrs Oakes. They were both of them much disfigured, Pullings by a great sword-slash right across his face, and West by the loss of his nose, frost-bitten south of the Horn; they were diffident where women were concerned and for hundreds of miles they said nothing more than 'Good day, ma'am' or 'Ain't it warm?' when they could not avoid it; but her open, candid friendliness and her simplicity had encouraged them, and in time they took to joining Dr Maturin, who quite often combined sitting with her and watching for Latham's albatross (reported from these latitudes) now that his laborious deciphering was done and now that the sick-berth had returned to its usual fine-weather blue-water somnolence, all ordinary sources of infection left far astern.

   In the nature of things Jack also missed Stephen's words to Davidge the day after Davidge had sent Oakes into the foretop. That morning Stephen did not take his breakfast in the cabin, and when Killick heard that his place was to be laid in the gun-room he gave a satisfied nod. The two men at the wheel and the quartermaster had heard the words and they had been reported throughout the ship.

   West, who had had the middle watch, was still asleep, but all the other officers were there when Stephen walked in and said 'Good morning, gentlemen.'

   'Good morning, Doctor,' they all replied.

   Stephen poured himself a cup of what passed for coffee in the gun-room and went on, 'Mr Davidge, how came you to speak so petulantly to me last night as to say "Don't you ever go to bed?" '

   'Why, sir,' said Davidge flushing, 'I am sorry you should take it amiss. It was only meant in a rallying way—in the facetious line. But I see that it missed its mark. I am sorry. If you wish I will give you any satisfaction you choose to name when we are next ashore.'

   'Not at all, at all. I only wish to be assured that when you see me conversing with Mrs Oakes at the back of the poop you will allow me to finish my sentence. I might be on the very edge of an epigram.'

   Well before the ship took her position by measuring the noonday height of the sun, almost all her company knew that the Doctor had checked Mr Davidge something cruel for speaking chuff in the first watch last night; had dragged him up and down the gun-room deck, flogging him with his gold-headed cane; had made him weep tears of blood. At this point Jack knew perfectly well that the dear
Surprise
was about to cross the tropic of Capricorn; but he had no notion of how her surgeon had savaged her second lieutenant.

   Nor did he know until several days later that Martin was teaching Mrs Oakes to play the viola. A more than usually discordant shriek came aft when he and Stephen were getting ready to work their way through a Clementi duet, one of the many scores that had followed them half round the world with such perseverance. 'Lord,' said Jack, 'I have heard poor Martin make many a dismal groan, but never on all four strings at once.'

   'I believe that was Mrs Oakes,' said Stephen. 'He has been trying to teach her to play the instrument for some time now.'

   'I never knew. Why did you not tell me?'

   'You never asked.'

   'Has she any talent?'

   'None whatsoever,' said Stephen. Pray do not, I repeat do
not
, endeavour to conceal my rosin in your breeches pocket.'

During this somewhat withdrawn period Captain Aubrey, with the help of Adams, nominally his clerk but in fact the frigate's purser as well, and a highly efficient secretary, caught up with his paperwork and advanced well into the dreadful maze of legal papers. He also spent more time than usual writing to Sophie, and he began his Tuesday's sheet (the fourth) with a detailed plan for increasing the Ashgrove Cottage plantations from the southern edge of Fonthill Lane right down to the stream, with timber, then chestnut coppice, so useful for staves, and alders at the bottom, always leaving room, however, to cast a fly. He had had this scheme in mind, maturing for a great while, but it was only now that he had the leisure and tranquillity of mind to deal with it: he did the subject justice, going on at some length about the virtues of the ash, beech and durmast oak that would delight their great-grandchildren and even drawing a creditable view of the wood in its prime. Then came a pause while he sat reflecting and gently chewing his pen; this was a habit of his boyhood, and he found the taste of ink favourable to composition; but as it had very often happened in the past, his chewed pen was too much weakened to do its duty and he had to mend it, very carefully paring off the sides with a razor he kept for the purpose and squaring its end with a clipper. The pen now traced an elegant treble clef and he went on 'Our unlikely marriage seems to be answering quite well. Oakes is more serious and attentive to his duty than he was, and I have rated him master's mate, which will be an advantage to him in his next berth. And Mrs Oakes is well-liked by the people and the officers. Little Reade is quite devoted to her—it is pretty to see how kind she is to him and the little girls—while Stephen and the other officers so often sit with her on the quarterdeck that it is a positive saloon. For a variety of reasons such as Humboldt's measurements and the estate papers I am rarely there except where the management of the ship is concerned, and I hardly know what they talk about; but Tom at any rate rattles away famously, laughing in a way that would astonish you, he being so shy in company. No: at present I am rather out of things, as captains so often are, yet I do see that she is very popular with them—so much so that I wonder the gun-room has not yet given her the feast that is her due as a bride. Though I believe it was their intention to sway away on all top ropes, to do the thing handsomely, with a hecatomb among their livestock; only their sheep died, their fowls had the pip, and as we could not put into Fiji for hogs, contrary winds obliging us to bear away for Tonga, she may be a mother before ever she sits down to the banquet, unless they will be content with a plain sea-pie accompanied by dog's-body and followed by boiled baby. She does not take it ill, however, but sits there tatting away, listening to their stories; and her presence adds to the gaiety of the ship. Not only the quarterdeck's, either: when the hands are turned up to dance on the forecastle in the evening they know very well she is there and they skip higher and sing sweeter. She certainly adds to the gaiety of the ship. I only wish she may not add too much. In your ear alone I will say that I am a little afraid for Stephen, who is so very often there. It is not that she is a raving beauty in any way—would never set Troy on fire. She is quite well-looking, however, with fair hair and grey eyes, in spite of a rather pale face and a slight figure; nothing really remarkable, though she does hold her head very well. On the other hand she is cheerful, has unaffected good manners—neither missish nor eager to put herself forward—agreeable company and a great change from the ordinary well-worn gun-room round. And of course a woman, if you understand me, is a woman; and in this case the only one for hundreds of miles. "Oh Stephen is in no danger," I hear you cry. "Stephen is so high-minded and philosophical that he is in no danger." Very true: I know no one more sober or temperate or less likely to play the fool; yet these feelings may come upon a man before he is aware, and even the wisest can go astray—he told me himself that St Augustine was not always quite the thing where young women were concerned—and I should be very sorry if it were to happen to him.'