Losing Nelson (12 page)

“Nothing left of it now,” I said. “Someone was talking about it at the club.”

“Left of what?”

“The house they got married in, where Fanny lived with her uncle. Nothing left but a pair of stone gateposts. Thank you very much for the biscuits, I look forward to having them with my tea in the mornings.” I resolved as I spoke to find some way of reciprocating this gift and so cancelling it out, something on my part stronger, more lordly. For the moment, however, no ideas came to me.

I remember some degree of tension developing between us later on, during our session of work. I sensed that Miss Lily was dissatisfied, or disappointed rather, because I was proposing to bypass, for the time being, Horatio’s sojourn in Naples and Palermo, the period between September 1798 and June 1800. I told her I was not ready to deal with it; there were so many revisions of one sort or another, I could not even dictate it, I would have to make a fair copy. The real reason was that I could not yet determine the part Horatio had played in the surrender of the Neapolitan republicans, could not yet find a path for him out of that marsh. I knew that Miss Lily, though it was not in her character to admit it, had been looking forward to dealing with this period of his life. She did not care so much about Horatio’s triumphs at sea—to my mind the most essential part of him—but she took a close interest in his life on land. And of all Horatio’s land experience, his stay in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was by far the most colourful and dramatic, comprising his hero’s welcome in Naples, the love affair with Emma blossoming in the hothouse of the Bourbon court, the
ménage à trois
that resulted, the flight of the royal family as the French closed in, Horatio’s dealings with the republican rebels, and much else besides. And here was I, proposing to go round it and resume in the June of 1800, date of Horatio’s recall to England.

As I say, I could not tell her the true reason, could not explain how important it was for me to preserve his name and reputation, how the remotest suggestion of deceit on his part filled me with a sort
of dread, as if it called my own existence into doubt, as if my being depended on his truth. However, we were able to go as far as the triumphant arrival, one of my favourite passages so far in the book. He anchored in the bay on September 22, just a week from his fortieth birthday, after a voyage of 1300 miles from the mouth of the Nile. I had decided to include extracts from Horatio’s letter of September 25, written to Fanny, in which he describes his arrival and the meeting with the Hamiltons. My own comments were interspersed with these extracts, so the whole thing had to be dictated.

Alongside came my honoured friends: the scene was terribly affecting; up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, “Oh God, is it possible?” she fell into my arm more dead than
—

“Did you say
arm
?” Miss Lily said. “Oh yes, I see, he only had one by this time, didn’t he?” She giggled a bit. “Sorry.”

I made no reply to this but observed a pause before continuing in order to mark my disapproval of the interruption.
I hope some day to have the pleasure of introducing you to Lady Hamilton, she is one of the very best women in this world. How few could have made the turn she has. She is an honour to her sex
 …

I paused again here, as I wished to insert some speculations that I had written the evening before about Fanny’s reactions to these words. It was typical of Horatio’s frank and enthusiastic nature that he should write in such terms to a wife so conventional, so far away and lonely, who must have known Emma’s fame as a beauty, must have known too about her earlier career as mistress to the rich.

“One wonders,” I began, “what Lady Nelson would privately have made of—”

But Miss Lily was not typing. She was sitting inactive at the keyboard. After a moment she turned to me with an expression of perplexity I knew at once to be false. She said, “What does that mean, an honour to her sex?”

Now this was not, strictly speaking, a legitimate question for Miss Lily to ask; it did not arise from any difficulty in carrying out her task of typing. That she should ask it at all—and even more that I should attempt to answer it—was a mark of the changed relations between us and her talent for taking over the ground.

“He was paying her a compliment,” I said. “He thought she did credit to her sex.”

“No, but what does it
mean
?” Her face wore the same expression as when she had talked about Scott of the Antarctic.

I tried again. “He thought her a fine example of womanhood.”

“Nelson was a fine example of manhood, I suppose.”

The grotesqueness of this understatement almost made me laugh aloud. “Only the finest this nation has ever produced or ever will.”

“Could someone writing about him say he was an honour to his sex?”

I thought for a moment, Miss Lily’s eyes intently on me. “Well, not in so many words.”

“It is words we are talking about, isn’t it? Could it mean he was brave or had a good character or that there was something special about him, like he was very strong or …” Miss Lily’s indignation wavered a bit. “Something physical,” she said. “Could it be that?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I was growing weary of this conversation, for which, after all, I was paying at the rate of fifteen pounds an hour.

“It isn’t what you would call logical, that’s all I am saying,” Miss Lily said.

“It meant something to Horatio, and that is the point at issue, in my opinion. You have to think historically.” But this was something, I had already discovered, that Miss Lily never did. She used the past tense, but she had no sense of the past at all. Everything and everybody lived in a perpetual present in her mind.

She looked at me now in silence for a moment or two, compressing
her lips as if considering how to reply. The expression gave an unaccustomed severity to her face, slightly increasing the prominence of her cheekbones, thinning out the rather full lower lip. “Well,” she said, “instead of talking about honour to her sex and so forth, he should have had the sense to see that she was just making a big scene of it. How long had she known he was on the way—three or four weeks, wasn’t it? She had plenty of time to get the act together.”

“Perhaps we could move on?” I said. I spoke rather coldly. It was true, of course, that Horatio was simple-hearted and devoid of guile, but I didn’t like Miss Lily’s tone; it reflected on his intelligence. She was not much taken with Emma, that was obvious—but I didn’t want to lose more time discussing the matter, I was keen to make the two-year hop, to reach the haven of June 1800, the departure from Naples.

All the same, we had not proceeded far when there was another interruption. I was dictating a passage very much altered and revised, describing the return to England of Horatio and the Hamiltons. A strange trio they must have seemed to those who met them at this time: the admiral so wizened, so decked with stars and medals, returning to popular applause and establishment disfavour; Sir William not far from his end, his face like parchment, his liver in ruins after thirty-six years at the Naples court; Emma large and flaunting and noisy, heavier now but beautiful still, facing an uncertain future in England, on affectionate terms with both husband and lover, as were these with each other.
Tria juncta in uno
, they called themselves: three joined in one. The motto of the Order of the Bath, to which both men belonged. Emma’s phrase, perhaps. Horatio could never have said it; he was joined with no-one, ever, he was unique. He travelled with them, yes; so much is true. As a trio they did not make a good impression, at least not on their compatriots. I was obliged to admit this, though it pained me that he could be so misjudged. It was not
any fault of his. He was on land, he was in travesty. And he was envied. In my book I was intending to quote a passage from General Sir John Moore’s diary as typical of this prejudice against him. In the summer of 1800, in Leghorn, Moore made a brief note:
Sir William and Lady Hamilton were there attending the Queen of Naples. Lord Nelson was there attending on Lady Hamilton. He is covered with stars, ribbons and medals, more like a Prince of the Opera than the Conqueror of the Nile. It is really melancholy to see a brave and good man, who has deserved well of his country, cutting so pitiful a figure
.

Moore did not remark on the strangest fact of all: Rear-Admiral Lord Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe was returning home
overland
. It was a decision that had always perplexed me. An admiral recalled after famous victories, his flagship waiting in the bay … I was arriving at this point now in my dictation.

“In Nelson’s life, as in all lives, there were concurrent paths, lines running in parallel, each characterized by a cluster of attributes particular to itself, appearing simple in stated form but complex and subtle in suggestion. The obvious broad division in Nelson’s case was between sea life and land life. At sea he was himself, he was performing the task for which he was gloriously fitted; on land he sometimes faltered, his faculties lost the concentration of genius they possessed at sea. Why then, in that June of 1800, did he choose to return home by land? Was it for the pregnant Emma’s sake, because she was unwilling to face the long voyage? Had Sir William some business to see to on the way? Or was it that Nelson himself was anxious to postpone—”

But Miss Lily had paused again. Without looking at me—she was regarding the screen of her computer—she said, “I have a good idea why they went by land.”

I became aware of needing patience, a considerable store of it. “Have you?”

“It was the obvious choice, really. I mean, they were a travelling show by this time, weren’t they?”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Everybody knew about them in advance, wherever they went. So the more places they went to, the better, that’s all I am saying. From the point of view of the spectacle, that is. It was like a tour. I mean, they took risks going by land, didn’t they? Napoleon had just defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo. He was invading Italy again. Their carriage passed within a mile of the French outposts. It would have been much safer by sea, but that way they wouldn’t have been able to put on the show, would they? Trieste, across Slovenia, then through the Alps to Klagenfurt and Vienna, then Prague and Dresden, then all those little courts in Germany, all the way to Hamburg. Everywhere they went, fireworks, bands playing, spectators by the thousand. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? It was a show, they were stars—that’s all I am saying.”

For some moments, hearing her say these things about Horatio, hearing her compare this greatest of men to a travelling player, I felt a mixture of fury and distress that I was afraid might have drained the blood from my face. I turned away from her in a pretence of looking at the shelves of books, as if in search of some reference. I could not read the titles; agitation blurred my sight. But I felt no urge to move round behind her, no impulse to renew that terrible scrutiny. All I wanted was to hide my feelings. She was immune, and somehow she knew it. I cannot describe my sense of this more exactly. It was as if she had got inside my guard.

However, something else came now into mind, the disturbance in my feelings settled into a kind of curiosity. Still with my face turned away, I said, “How is it that you know so much about the circumstances of the journey, the route they took and so forth? We haven’t done this part before.”

“I got a book out of the library.”

At this I turned to face her. She was sitting quite composed, her hands resting quietly on either side of the keyboard. “What book?” I asked her.

“It’s about the three of them, Nelson and the Hamiltons. It’s by a man called Russell.”

“I know the book. I’ve got it here.” I made a gesture towards the shelves. I was touched, deeply, inordinately, that Miss Lily had shown this interest, had taken the trouble to borrow this book from the library. My rage was forgotten. “Quite good,” I said. “A bit on the chatty side.”

“That’s what I like about it.” She smiled suddenly, her first real smile of the whole evening. It occurred to me now that her sharpness of tone, her tendency to interrupt, those disrespectful remarks about Horatio, might have been due simply to wounded feelings at my seeming to doubt her word in the matter of his wedding date. (I was wrong about this, as it turned out. She continued to argue and interrupt on a regular basis.)

I don’t know how it happened—an accidental combination of circumstances, the smile, this moment of perception coming after my rage, a desire to trump the shortbread biscuits: before I knew it, I was asking Miss Lily if she would like to go to Portsmouth one of these days to visit HMS
Victory
, Horatio’s flagship, now permanently docked there.

“Well, that would be nice.” Miss Lily’s eyes were bright and helplessly steady and somehow relentless. “Get a bit of sea air,” she said. “It would have to be a Saturday.”

A
lmost as soon as Miss Lily had gone I fell prey to doubts about the wisdom of this Portsmouth offer. The typing sessions were one thing—they were limited in duration, specific in function, easily controllable, though Miss Lily was showing alarming signs now of breaking through the fences. The trip to Portsmouth was a very different matter. It involved a whole day; we would be thrown together, obliged to converse, to look at each other, in a train, in a café, without the protection of the desk, the bookshelves, my dictating voice. The prospect made me feel nervous.