The Star of the Sea (53 page)

Mulvey shook his head. ‘No, master. I didn’t.’

‘One morning you came into my castle. With a funny kind of black mask on your face and a great big knife –’

‘Bobby, that’s enough,’ Merridith interrupted with a sigh. ‘Please excuse us, Mulvey, we have a fertile imagination.’

‘He’s only making a crack, sir, it’s all right.’

‘I’m not making a crack.’ The child gave an apprehensive giggle. ‘It was you, Mr Mulvey, wasn’t it?’

‘Bobby, I told you that’s quite enough. Now shut up and eat your confounded supper.’

‘I think we are a little tired, David,’ the Countess said gently. ‘You know how we become more imaginative when we are tired.’

‘We may be tired all we like. There is no need to be rude.’

‘I didn’t mean to be rude, Pops, I just thought it was him.’

‘That’s all right,’ said his mother. ‘We can all make mistakes.’ She turned to the guest of honour. ‘I am sure Mr Mulvey understands.’

Robert was staring at him now. Mulvey tried to laugh. ‘A big man like myself’d never fit in through a little window like that, master.’

‘But he had a funny kind of walk. Exactly like you have. He was a cripple. He –’

The next sound was the slap. It made the boy’s head whip back. The ship plunged hard. Nobody said anything.

‘Apologise to our guest this minute.’

‘Sir, there’s no need,’ Mulvey said.

‘There certainly is. This minute, do you hear.’

‘I’m s-sorry, Mr Mulvey.’

‘Now apologise to your brother for ruining his birthday.’

‘David, for pity’s sake – ’

‘Do not
dare
to interrupt me, Laura, when I am speaking to my son. Do you understand me, woman? Must I write it out in my own blood?
Must you flaunt your disrespect and contempt for me on every possible occasion?
’

She made no response. He turned back to the boy. ‘I am waiting, Robert.’

‘I am sorry, J-Jons.’

‘
Use his name you ridiculous fool
.’

‘I am sorry, J-Jonathan.’

‘Do you accept his apology, Jonathan?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Shake hands.’

They did as they were ordered. Robert was quietly crying.

‘Now get to your bed this minute.
You make me sick to the stomach
.’

The child slipped down from his seat and tottered from the cabin. After a moment, Mary Duane rose and followed.

Merridith filled his glass and took a long drink of wine. Went back to his food as though nothing had happened. A deadened, dazed look had invaded his face, and he cut up his meat with surgical attentiveness.

‘I should like to add my own apology, Mulvey. My own and my
wife’s. My wife feels that children should be indulged whatever they do. A matter of how she herself was raised, no doubt.’

‘Your Honour –’

‘Not another word. I don’t mind a joke. But bad manners are intolerable. We are not in a swinery.’

Dixon sat very still. Jonathan Merridith was pale. The Countess went to a serving table and began to stack the dirty plates. John Conqueroo gave a groan and moved closer to America.

‘Now,’ smiled the Earl. ‘Anyone for cake?’

F
ROM

‘T
HE
B
LIGHT
’

F
RAGMENT OF AN ABANDONED NOVEL

BY
G. G
RANTLEY
D
IXON

Details of the following extract drawn from notes made by Surgeon William Mangan (coeval with the events described herein) and from a long interview conducted with him shortly before his death in 1851.

62°08’
W
; 44°13.11′
N
— 11.15
P.M
. —

‘I’m not disturbing you, Monkton?’ said Lord Thomas Davidson.

The weary-faced surgeon stepped back from the doorway and squinted in surprise.

‘Lord Queensgrove. Not at all. Come in, sir, come in.’

Inside the cramped but orderly cabin sat the surgeon’s sister in a
Japanese kimono. A teapot and porcelain cups had been placed on a card table, near a chessboard whose pieces were also Japanese. She rose to meet him with a careworn frown.

‘Good-night, Mrs Darlington. Forgive my intrusion at this unconscionable hour.’

‘Please, don’t worry. Is everything all right?’ Her loosened hair was wet. ‘It’s not one of the children?’

‘Both sleeping like Endymion. We had a little birthday celebration earlier this evening.’

The lamp was burning low from the rafters over the card table, so that the corners of the room were lost in shadow. A dark mirror hung over the desk which was squashed into an alcove and in it could be seen the reflection of a hunting print.

‘You’ll join us for some tea? Or something a little stronger? I have a nice bottle of Madeira stowed away somewhere.’

‘No, thank you, Monkton. Fact is, I wanted to see you professionally for a moment if I might.’

The surgeon half nodded. ‘Honoured, Lord Queensgrove. Just general run-down feeling, is it?’

‘Well, that – yes. And there’s another small matter.’

‘That’s all right, that’s all right. As a matter of fact, we were only saying, Mrs Darlington and I, how you seemed to be looking a little pale of late.’

‘It’s possibly a little delicate.’

‘Ah. You’d prefer Mrs Darlington to leave us for a moment?’

‘No no. Not at all. I didn’t mean that.’ He did mean that, but he didn’t want to offend her. The surgeon appeared to understand.

He turned to his sister. ‘Marion, my love – would you go and see about that little message I was mentioning before.’

She smiled. ‘I was just about to, dear.’

Monkton gave a quiet and good-natured laugh as she left the cabin. ‘We chaps sometimes have a difficulty looking after ourselves properly and coming out with a thing. Not like the memsahibs in that way at all. And yet, you know, we really must.’

‘Quite,’ said Lord Queensgrove. Already he was feeling it had been a mistake to come here. He loathed the surgeon’s ingratiatingly chatty manner, the back-slappery and presumption that lay behind it.

‘Would you care to tell me a little more? Oh excuse my oafish manners, please sit down, My Lord; sit down.’ He beckoned to an armchair beside the small rolltop desk and sat down himself on a stool nearby.

‘It’s rather disconcerting to say it. I find myself a little embarrassed.’

The surgeon opened a drawer and took out a notebook. ‘North or south? In a manner of speaking.’

‘South.’

He nodded diplomatically and dipped his pen.

‘Little digestion problem? That type of thing?’

‘Not that.’

He licked his fingers to separate the pages; nodded again and began to write. ‘South by south-west, then. My Lord Nebuchadnezzar.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The old waterworks, as it were.’

‘I suppose one could put it that way, yes.’

‘Lack of vigour?’

‘Not that, no.’

‘Inflammation? Pain?’

‘A little of both.’

‘Mm. Passing water all right lately?’

‘Not really. Gets extremely painful, then.’

Again the surgeon nodded, as though he wasn’t surprised. For a moment there was no sound but the scratch of the nib on the paper. ‘Discharge at all?’

The word struck the patient like a slap across the mouth. A blush flared up; his face was almost smarting.

‘Sometimes,’ he said.

‘Ah. I see.’ The surgeon wrote in his notebook for what seemed a long time. Then he pursed his pale lips and gave a fatigued sigh. ‘Conditions on board a ship aren’t what they might be, of course. Hygienically speaking. Even here in First-Class. It’s my own little bugbear, I must confess. Mine and also Mrs Darlington’s. Ah, Lord Queensgrove, the predicaments we might avoid through simple cleanliness. Mrs Darlington does a lot of work among the poor.’

For a moment Davidson didn’t know what to say. He wondered
if he was being invited to defend the ship’s policies on hygiene, or his own; or to comment on Mrs Darlington’s mysterious works among the poor. But by now the surgeon was rummaging in a small leather bag.

‘You enjoy a drink, My Lord?’

‘Perhaps too much sometimes.’

The physician chuckled. ‘Far from alone in that regard.’

‘Quite.’

‘But we all need to keep an eye on our general consumption. Doesn’t help anything to do with the waterworks or liver. Matter of build-up of toxins, you see. Can cause pain in the lumbar and also the private area generally. Night sweats, too.’

‘I understand.’

‘You bathe regularly of course, sir?’ He took a stethoscope and a couple of small metal instruments from the valise.

‘Twice a week, yes.’

‘Mm. Good fellow. Good for you.’ He went back to the notebook and resumed his writing, pronouncing aloud the last few words, like a pleased schoolmaster completing a report. ‘Bathes. Twice. In every. Week.’ With a flourish he made a motion of heavy underlining and then a vigorous full stop, as though trying to stab an insect with the nib of the pen.

‘I’d probably bang it up to every other day. Or even daily if poss.’

‘All right.’

‘That’s the style. Now, pop over here and let’s take a look at the old site of battle, eh?’

The surgeon lit a tilly-lamp and lengthened the wick, brightening the flame to a rich golden glow. Damp clothes and bed linen had been hung around the sitting room; on the chairs, on the sofa, on a fold-up dressing screen.

Davidson opened his britches and underclothing and pulled them down to his thighs. Undid the lowest three buttons of his shirt. The surgeon took what looked like a pillowcase from a pile of pressed clothes and draped it quickly over the back of a chair.

‘Lean the old stern against there if you would.’

He did as he was told. Monkton knelt and began examining him.

‘Little delicate there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And there, I expect?’

Davidson flinched.

The surgeon clicked his tongue in fraternal sympathy. ‘Just another moment or two like a good man. I believe we’ve got the enemy in our sights.’

One of the steel instruments was so cold that its touch made him shudder. For a while afterwards there was no sensation but the heat of the lamp on his prickling skin; the doctor’s fingertips probing his scrotum and perineum. Then a glitter of pain sparkled through his loins and lower gut, a tremor that trembled his thighs.

‘Mm. Thought so.’ Monkton rose to his feet, wincing with the effort. ‘Little parasitical chap. Mild enough sort of infection; nothing more. Painful old nuisance but he’s easily vanquished. See a bit of him always in close confinement situations. Prisons. Barracks. Things like that.’ He paused and snuffled. ‘Workhouses.’

‘Can you say how I might have got it?’

He looked into Davidson’s eyes for a moment.

‘Perhaps you might have some idea yourself, sir.’

Lord Queensgrove felt hot. He gave a shrug. ‘No.’

The physician nodded. He crossed to a basin-stand and began carefully washing his hands and wrists. ‘Clothing or towel not properly laundered. Privy seat maybe. Can be worsened by chafing of the thighs or the undergarments. But a good hot bath will set you right. Don’t use soap, just very hot water. Just as hot as you can bear it. Have your wife ask that pretty serving girl of yours to get a good handful of garlic from the galley and lob that in too.’ He gave an amiable smile. ‘You’ll smell like a Frenchman but it won’t last long.’