Post Captain (39 page)

'What is a pis aller?'

'What one accepts when one can do no better. It is my only hope.'

'You are too humble. Oh, you are. I am sure you are mistaken. Believe me, Stephen: I am a woman, after all.'

'Besides, I am a Catholic, you know. A Papist.'

'What does that matter, above all to her? Anyhow, the Howards are Catholics - Mrs Fitzherbert is a Catholic.'

'Mrs Fitzherbert? How odd you should mention her. My dear, I must go. I thank you for your loving care of me. I may write again? There was no unkindness because of my letters?'

'None. I do not mention them.'

'Not for a month or so, however: and perhaps I may pass by Mapes. How is your Mama, your sisters? May I ask after Mr Bowles?'

'They are very well, thank you. As for him,' she said, with a flash of her eye, the calm grey growing fierce, 'I sent him about his business. He became impertinent -"Can it be that your affections are engaged elsewhere?" says he. "Yes, sir, they are," I replied. "Without your mother's consent?" he cried, and I desired him to leave the room at once. It was the boldest thing done this age.'

'Sophie, your very humble servant,' said Stephen, standing up. 'Pray make my compliments to the Admiral.'

'Too humble, oh far too humble,' said Sophie, offering her cheek.

Tides, tides, the Cove of Cork, the embarkation waiting on the moon, a tall swift-pacing mule in the bare torrid mountains quivering in the sun, palmetto-scrub, Señor don Esteban Maturin y Domanova kisses the feet of the very reverend Lord Abbot of Montserrat and begs the honour of an audience. The endless white road winding, the inhuman landscape of Aragon, cruel sun and weariness, dust, weariness to the heart, and doubt. What was independence but a word? What did any form of government matter? Freedom: to do what? Disgust, so strong that he leant against the saddle, hardly able to bring himself to mount. A shower on the Maladetta, and everywhere the scent of thyme: eagles wheeling under thunder-clouds, rising, rising. 'My mind is too confused for anything

but direct action,' he said. 'The flight disguised as an advance.'

The lonely beach, lanterns flashing from the offing, an infinity of sea. Ireland again, with such memories at every turn. 'If I could throw off some of this burden of memory,' said Stephen to his second glass of laudanum, 'I should be more nearly sane. Here's to you, Villiers, my dear.' The Holyhead mail and two hundred and seventy miles of rattling jerking, falling asleep, waking in another country: rain, rain, rain: Welsh voices in the night. London, and his report, trying to disentangle the strands of altruism, silliness, mere enthusiasm, self-seeking, love of violence, personal resentment; trying too to give the impossible plain answer to the question 'Is Spain going to join France against us, and if so, when?' And there he was in Deal once more, sitting alone in the snug of the Rose and Crown, watching the shipping in the Downs and drinking a pot of tea: he had an odd detachment from all this familiar scene - the uniforms that passed outside his bow-window were intimately well known, but it was as though they belonged to another world, a world at one or two removes, and as though their inhabitants, walking, laughing, talking out there on the other side of the pane were mute, devoid both of colour and real substance.

Yet the good tea (an unrivalled cholagogue), the muffin, the comfort of his chair, the ease and relaxation after these weeks and months of jading hurry and incessant motion

- tension, danger and suspicion too - insensibly eased him back into this frame, re-attached him to this life of which he had been an integral part. He had been much caressed at the Admiralty; a very civil, acute, intelligent old gentleman called in from the Foreign Office had said the most obliging things; and Lord Melville had repeatedly mentioned their sense of obligation, their desire to acknowledge it by some suitable expression of their esteem - any appointment, any request that Dr Maturin might choose to make would receive the most earnest and sympathetic consideration. He was recalling the scene and sipping his tea with little sounds of inward complacency when he saw Heneage Dundas stop on the pavement outside, shade his eyes, and peer in through the window, evidently looking for a friend. His nose came into contact with the glass, and its tip flattened into a pale disc. 'Not unlike the foot of a gasteropod,' observed Stephen, and when he had considered its loss of superficial circulation for a while he attracted Dundas's attention, beckoning him in and offering him a cup of tea and a piece of muffin.

'I have not seen you these months past,' said Dundas in a very friendly tone. 'I asked for you several times, whenever Polychrest was in, and they told me you was on leave. How brown you are! Where have you been?'

'In Ireland - tedious family business.'

'In Ireland? You astonish me. Every time I have been in Ireland it has rained. If you had not told me, I should have sworn you had been in the Med, ha, ha, ha. Well, I asked for you several times: I had something particular to say. Excellent muffin, eh? If there is one thing I like better than another with my tea, it is a well-turned piece of muffin.' After this promising beginning, Dundas fell strangely mute: it was clear that he wanted to say something of importance, but did not know how to get it out handsomely - or, indeed, at all. Did he want to borrow money? Was some disease preying on his mind?

'You have a particular kindness for Jack Aubrey, Dr Maturin, I believe?'

'I have a great liking for him, sure.'

'So have I. So have I. We were shipmates even before we were rated midshipmen - served in half a dozen commissions together. But he don't listen to me, you know; he don't attend. I was junior to him all along, and that counts, of course; besides, there are some things you cannot tell a man. What I wanted to say to you was, do you think you might just hint to him that he is - I will not say ruining his career, but sailing very close to the wind? He does not clear his convoys - there have been complaints - he puts into the Downs when the weather is not so very terrible -and people have a tolerable good notion why, and it won't answer, not in Whitehall.' 'Lingering in port is a practice not unknown to the Navy.'

'I know what you mean. But it is a practice confined to admirals with a couple of fleet actions and a peerage behind them, not to commanders. It won't do, Maturin. I do beg you will tell him so.'

'I will do what I can. God knows what will come of it. I thank you for this mark of confidence, Dundas.'

'The Polychrest is trying to weather the South Foreland now; I saw her from the Goliath, missing stays and having to wear again. She has been over the way, looking at the French gunboats in Etaples. She should manage it when the sea-breeze sets in; but God help us, what leeway that ship does make. She has no right to be afloat.'

'I shall take a boat and meet her,' said Stephen. 'I am quite impatient to see my shipmates again.'

They received him kindly, very kindly; but they were busy, anxious and overwrought. Both watches were on deck to moor the Polychrest, and as he watched them at their work it was clear to Stephen that the feeling in the ship had not improved at all. Oh very far from it. He knew enough about the sea to tell the difference between a willing crew and a dogged, sullen set of men who had to be driven. Jack was in his cabin, writing his report, and Parker had the deck: was the man deranged? An incessant barking flow of orders, threats, insults, diversified with kicks and blows: more vehement than when Stephen had left the ship, and surely now there was a note of hysteria? Not far behind him in vociferation there was Macdonald's replacement, a stout pink and white young man with thick pale lips; his authority extended only to his soldiers, but he made up for this by his activity, bounding about with his cane like a jack-in-a-box.

When he went below this impression was confirmed. His assistant, Mr Thompson, was not perhaps very wise nor very skilful - his attempt at a Cheseldon's lithotomy had an ominous smell of gangrene - but he did not seem at all brutal or even unkind; yet as they went round their patients there was not a smile - proper answers, but no sort of interchange, no friendliness whatsoever, except from one old Sophie, a Pole by the name of Jackruckie, whose hernia was troubling him again. And even his strange jargon (he spoke very little English) was uneasy, conscious, and inhibited. In the next cot lay a man with a bandaged head. Gummata, the sequelae of an old depressed fracture, malingering? In an eager attempt to justify his diagnosis, Thompson darted a pointing finger at the man's head, and instantly the crooked protective arm shot up.

By the time he had finished his rounds and settled in his cabin, the Polychrest was moored. Jack had gone off to make his report, and something nearer to peace had come down on the ship. There was only the steady grind of the pumps and the now almost voiceless bark of the first lieutenant getting the courses, the square courses, and topsails furled in a body, smooth enough for a royal review.

He walked into the gun-room, which was empty but for the Marine officer. He was reclining upon two chairs with his feet on the table; and craning up his neck he cried, 'Why, you must be the sawbones back again. I'm glad to see you. My name is Smithers. Forgive me if I do not get up; I am quite fagged out with mooring the ship.'

'I noticed that you were very active.'

'Pretty brisk, pretty brisk. I like my men to know who's who and what's what and to move smart - they'll smart else, you catch my meaning, ha, ha. They tell me you are quite a hand with a cello. We must have a bout some night. I play the German flute.'

'I dare say you are a remarkable performer.'

'Pretty brisk, pretty brisk. I don't like to boast, but I fancy I was the best player at Eton in my time. If I chose to do it professionally, I should make twice what they give me for fighting His Majesty's wars for him - not that the pewter matters to me, of course. It's precious slow in this ship, don't you find? Nobody to talk to; nothing but ha'penny whist and convoy-duty and looking out for the French prams. What do you say to a hand of cards?'

'Is the captain returned, do you know?'

'No. He won't be back for hours and hours. You have plenty of time. Come let us have a hand of piquet.'

'I play very little.'

'You need not be afraid of him. He'll be pulling down to Dover against the tide - he's got a luscious piece there- won't be back for hours and hours. A luscious piece, by God: I could wear it. I'd have a mind to cut him out, if he weren't my captain: it's a wonder what a red coat will do, believe you me. I dare say I could, too; she invited all the officers last week, and she looked at me..

'You cannot be speaking of Mrs Villiers, sir?'

'A pretty young widow - yes, that's right. Do you know her?'

'Yes, sir: and I should be sorry to hear her spoken of with disrespect.'

'Oh, well, if she's a friend of yours,' cried Smithers, with a knowing leer, 'that's different. I have said nothing. Mum's the word. Now what about our game?'

'Do you play well?'

'I was born with a pack of cards in my hand.'

'I must warn you I never play for small stakes: it bores me.'

'Oh, I'm not afraid of you. I've played at White's -I played at Almack's with my friend Lord Craven till daylight put the candles out! What do you think of that?'

The other officers came down one by one and watched them play; watched them in silence until the end of the sixth panic, when Stephen laid down a point of eight followed by a quart major, and Pullings, who had been sitting behind him, straining his stomach to the

groaning-point to make him win, burst out with 'Ha, ha, you picked a wrong 'un when you tackled the Doctor.'

'Do be quiet, can't you, when gentlemen are playing cards. And smoking that vile stinking pipe in the gun-room - it is turning the place into one of your low pot-houses. How can a man concentrate his mind with all this noise? Now you have made me lose my score. What do you make it, Doctor?'

'With repique and capot, that is a hundred and thirty; and since I believe you are two short of your hundred, I must add your score to mine.'

'You will take my note of hand, I suppose?'

'We agreed to play for cash, you remember.'

'Then I shall have to fetch it. It will leave me short. But you will have to give me my revenge.'

'Captain's coming aboard, gentlemen,' said a quartermaster. Then reappearing a moment later, 'Port side, gents.' They relaxed: he was returning with no ceremony. 'I must leave you,' said Stephen. 'Thank you for the game.'

'But you can't go away just when you have won all that money,' cried Smithers.

'On the contrary,' said Stephen. 'It is the very best moment to leave.'

'Well, it ain't very sporting. That's all I say. It ain't very sporting.'

'You think not? Then when you have laid down the gold you may cut double or quits. Sans revanche, eh?'

Smithers came back with two rouleaux of guineas and part of a third. 'It's not the money,' he said. 'It's the principle of the thing.'

'Aces high,' said Stephen, looking impatiently at his watch. 'Please to cut.'

A low heart: knave of diamonds. 'Now you will have to take my note for the rest,' said Smithers.

'Jack,' said Stephen, 'may I come in?'

'Come in, come in, my dear fellow, come in,' cried Jack, springing forward and guiding him to a chair. 'I have scarcely seen you how very pleasant this is! I cannot tell you how dreary the ship has been without you. How brown you are!'

In spite of an animal revulsion at the catch of the scent that hung about Jack's coat - never was there a more unlucky present - Stephen felt a warmth in his heart. His face displayed no more than a severe questioning, professional look, however, and he said, 'Jack, what have you been doing to yourself? You are thin, grey - costive, no doubt. You have lost another couple of stone: the skin under your eyes is a disagreeable yellow. Has the bullet-wound been giving trouble? Come, take off your shirt. I was never happy that I had extracted all the lead; my probe still seemed to grate on something.'

'No, no. It has quite healed over again. I am very well. It is only that I don't sleep. Toss, turn, can't get off, then ill dreams and I wake up some time in the middle watch - never get off again, and I am stupid all the rest of the day. And damned ill-tempered, Stephen; I sway away on all top-ropes for a nothing, and then I am sorry afterwards. Is it my liver, do you think? Not yesterday, but the day before I had a damned unpleasant surprise: I was shaving, and thinking of something else; and Killick had hung the glass aft the scuttle instead of its usual place. So just for a moment I caught sight of my face as though it was a stranger looking in. When I understood it was me, I said, "Where did I get that damned forbidding ship's corporal's face?" and determined not to look like that again - it reminded me of that unhappy fellow Pigot, of the Hermione. And this morning there it was again, glaring back at me out of the glass. That is another reason why I am so glad to see you: you will give me one of your treble shotted slime-draughts to get me to sleep. It's the devil, you know, not sleeping: no wonder a man looks like a ship's corporal. And these dreams - do you dream, Stephen?'