The Yellow Admiral (31 page)

Chapter Ten

The paying-off was over and that was the best thing that could be said about it. Even before Napoleon's abdication the ships of the blockading squadron had been sent home in ones and twos, the Bellona being almost the last; and during all this time those of the crew who had been pressed from merchantmen had grown more and more discontented. Throughout the war, or rather wars, the merchant service had been short of hands and wages were correspondingly high; and now here were these ugly, unscrupulous dogs in Grampus, Dryad and Achates going into port to pick up the gold and silver before anyone else, although they had not been on the blockade half as long as the Bellona, had not had a quarter of the hard lying and short commons. There were also some who wanted to see their wives and children; but this did not have quite the same urgency, nor the same effect of intense frustration.

They told their divisional officers of it and the officers told the Captain; he acknowledged the hardship, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do about it. His few attempts led to a most disagreeable rebuff or to total silence; and the last weeks were thoroughly uncomfortable aboard. For example, there was little inclination to bring decks to a very high pitch of cleanliness when it was known that they would soon be desecrated by dockyard maties in hob-nailed boots, stripping and unrigging the barky and laying her up in ordinary: this and a thousand other things led to short answers, ill-will, and sullen looks, though to no deliberate insolence or failure to obey orders - not even the first smell of mutiny. Apart from anything else, these 'awkward buggers' as they were technically known, scarcely amounted to a dozen messes out of fifty-odd, many of the rest of Bellona's people being old man-of-war's men, some of them indeed Captain Aubrey's shipmates for many a commission, and they would not give the slightest countenance to capers of that kind, or anything like them.

Yet even so the awkward buggers made the last days unpleasant, and they prolonged the necessarily painful end: they included all the Bellona's sea-lawyers, and when the Commissioner and his clerks came aboard, together with the ship's pay-books and some heavily-guarded sacks of money, they produced such a series of quibbles about dates of entry, first rating, dates of being turned over, deductions for slops, venereal medicines and the like that the process had to be carried over to the first hours of another morning.

'Even so, it ended happy,' said Stephen.

'I suppose so, if you call this happiness,' said Jack, turning his eyes from the dock where the Bellona lay waiting to go into ordinary, deserted and looking doubly so, since some facetious hands had loosened lifts and braces, causing her yards to hang all ahoo, like a sea-scarecrow - turning them to the left-hand side of the carriage, where a gang of local women had gathered to receive those Bellonas who were still capable of walking as they emerged from the doors of the Old Cock and Bull, where the prize-agent's clerk had met them.

'I do love a jolly sailor,' sang the women.

'Blithe and merry might he be...' A brewer's dray interrupted them and stopped the carriage, but when they had done with screaming and making gestures at the brewer's men, they sang on

'Sailors they get all the money,

Soldiers they get none but brass.

I do love a jolly sailor,

Soldiers they may kiss my arse.

Oh my little rolling sailor,

Oh my little rolling he,

I do love a jolly sailor,

Soldiers may be damned for me.'

Most of the women might have looked tolerable by lamplight, though there were many old hacks fit only for darkness, but the strong unforgiving sun on their raddled faces, dyed hair, flimsy, tawdry and dirty clothes, was a melancholy sight. Jack had taken leave of many old companions as they left the ship, and just now he had given his officers a farewell dinner, officers who did their best to disguise their extreme anxiety about another ship: it was a superficially cheerful occasion that left deep sadness behind it; and now Jack found the whores' antics more depressing than he might have done at another time.

They drove on in silence.Yet presently they were out of the town, into the country and the spring, with rare white clouds sailing very slowly across a pure blue sky on a breeze just strong enough to stir the bright new leaves, and this had a soothing effect on bosoms that had been blockading Brest through one of the roughest winters ever known, particularly as the post-chaise, at Stephen's request, had taken side-roads through charming cultivated country - springing crops on either hand - a stretch of country much favoured by migrants. Stephen knew that Jack did not feel passionate about birds that did not offer a legitimate shot, so he did not trouble him with a rare warbler near Dartford, nor with a probable Montagu's harrier, a cock bird, away on the right; but when they were walking up and down outside the half-way inn while the horses were being changed he said, 'While you were attending to ship-affairs and the people's pay, the Commissioner's secretary gave me some letters that had come down from London. They confirm my arrangements. Will I tell you about then?'

'If you please.'

'I thought we should take a holiday for a couple of days at Black's, doing nothing whatsoever apart from attending the Royal Society on the second day. Then on the third you will have to meet the Chileans, and I think that would be better done in my room at the Grapes - we could hardly talk about such matters at Black's, and in any case it would be more discreet. On Saturday and Sunday we can take our ease again - we might listen to some music. And then, always providing that you and the Chileans do not dislike one another, we must go and be interviewed by the Committee; and if that goes well, to the Admiralty for the necessary formalities.'

'That will remove me from the List?'

'Suspend might be the better word. An essential step to allow you to command a hired ship: a private vessel with a private person as her master.'

'Well: I am glad it is not to be on a Friday.'

'Jack, it does not require great discernment to see that the idea of being removed from the List scarcely fills you with delight.'

'No. It don't.'

'My dear, if you have any reluctance at all, let us forget the scheme entirely.'

'No, no. Of course not. Forgive me, Stephen. I am foolishly hipped... these last days, seeing the ship and her company falling to pieces, herself for the knacker's yard, all my mids thrown on the world, aghast, without a penny -no half-pay for them, you know - and with very, very little chance of a ship... it makes one low and I am afraid damned ungratefully inclined to cling to having one's name on the List, any kind of List. But it is great nonsense - with half or even more of the Navy being laid up, and with Stranraer's dispatches and his influence against me I have not the faintest chance of a command. And without a command now I have scarcely the faintest chance of not being passed over when the time comes. To avoid that I should happily take a duck-punt to Spitzbergen, let alone dear Surprise round the Horn again. No, no, my dear Stephen. Please forgive me: it was only a weak, foolish burst of superstition... lycanthropy might be a better word, perhaps.'

'Perhaps it would... but tell me, Jack, you have not forgot the promise of reinstatement, have you?'

'Oh dear me, no. I cling to it day and night, like a bull in a china-shop. But promises are made of pie-crust, you know. First Lords can die and be replaced by wicked Goddamned Whigs - oh, I beg pardon, brother - and by people belonging to another party, who know not Abraham: whereas one's name, printed in that beautiful List, is as solid as anything can be in this shifting world - here today, gone tomorrow.'

'That is one of the things I like about this place,' said Jack, the post-chaise having brought them to the open, welcoming door of Black's. 'There are no wild, enthusiastic changes here. Good evening, Joe.'

'Good evening, Captain Aubrey, sir,' said the porter. 'Good evening, Doctor. I have given you seventeen and eighteen: Killick took your bags up this afternoon.'

Jack nodded with pleasure, and waving towards the cheerful fire at the far end of the hall he cried, 'There. I will lay a guinea that fire was burning in just the same way when my grandfather used to arrive from Woolcombe; and I hope it will be burning when George walks in as a member.'

They hurried upstairs, put on the town clothes that Killick (always efficient in the abstract, and even kind) had laid out for them, and met again on the landing.

'I am going straight to the library to read the history of our missing weeks. Nay months, for all love,' said Stephen.

'So shall I,' said Jack. 'But perhaps a bite first would be a clever idea. Then one could sit reading one's Morning Post or Naval Chronicle without one's belly rumbling and distracting one's mind. I had almost no dinner, you understand - could not relish my victuals.'

'If men did not vanquish the brute within, there would be no learning,' said Stephen. 'Besides, it is too early for supper: you would only get the broken meats from dinner, faintly warmed. Come, James will bring you a sandwich, I dare say, and a can of beer.'

For some time they read silently, avidly; and with an extraordinary degree of self-command they started at about the equinoctial gales of last autumn which cut them off from anything like regular communication, so that only isolated, almost meaningless victories or defeats, almost all by land, came through the cloud of unknowing. But presently Jack, forging ahead in the concentrated sea-water of the Naval Chronicle rather than the turgid pages of The Times, which paid far too much attention to campaigns in Silesia and such places, as well as home politics, cried out, 'So they have given Boney Elba, the island of Elba: ain't you amazed? And he is gone aboard Undaunted, 38, young Tom Ussher's ship. Do you know him at all? He is an Irishman.'

'Sure, I know several Usshers: there were two or three at Trinity. They swarm in the eastern parts; and they have a family habit of being Archbishops of Armagh - Protestant archbishops, of course.'

'So I suppose they are important people?'

'At the Castle they are, without a doubt.'

'The Castle?'

'Dublin Castle, where the Lord-Lieutenant lives, when he is not elsewhere.'

'Tom never spoke of grand connections, but that would account for it. He was made post in the year eight, before he was thirty. Not that I mean to say anything whatsoever against him - we were shipmates once or twice, and although he was a gentle, quiet young fellow aboard - not one of your Hectors at all: no bawling out or quarrelling - he was the very devil in cutting-out expeditions, extraordinarily gallant and dashing. But there are other extraordinarily gallant young men - young men who have no interest - who are not made post before they are thirty. Indeed, who are not even made commanders, but die as mere lieutenants - even as elderly master's mates. Promotion in the Navy is a very rum go. Think of Admiral Pye.' He sighed, and with scarcely a pause went on, 'Do you think we could have supper now?'

'Just let me finish Talleyrand's infamous speech, and I am with you,' said Stephen.

The club was rather full - not only was this the beginning of the London season, but all those members who were sea-officers and free to move had hurried up to besiege the Admiralty and all their influential friends in the hope of one of the few commands available or at least of an appointment of some kind. They saw Sir Joseph Blaine, supping with a friend in his usual place: he rose to greet them, hoped they should see one another again on Thursday, and returned to his guest. They sat at the large round members' table, where Heneage Dundas had been waving his napkin since first they appeared.

'It is long since I had the pleasure of seeing you,' said Stephen's neighbour on the left. 'Are you in town for some time?'

'At the Academy of Ancient Music, so it was,' replied Stephen. 'No: for a few days only, I think.'

'Still, you will be here tomorrow and I trust disengaged? They are singing a great deal of Tallis.'

There indeed he was, with Jack, and they took a deep pleasure in the music, deriving a sense of inward peace that certainly did Jack Aubrey a great deal of good, wound up as he was by the complicated miseries of relinquishing his command at the worst possible moment, paying off, passing his accounts, doing what very little he could do for those at least morally dependent on him - two of his younger midshipmen were the sons of officers who had been killed as lieutenants, leaving their widows fifty pounds a year by way of pension, while others were almost as helpless: and then there were elderly seamen, not eligible for Greenwich, who had no one else to look to.

The next day and most of the day after they did nothing whatsoever but take their ease in the library, talk to their many acquaintances in the bar or the front morning-room, walk along Bond Street to try fiddles and bows at Hill's, or play, not very seriously, at billiards. Stephen delighted in the smooth progress of the balls, their exact lines and the satisfying angles that resulted from their contact - that is to say, when they made contact, which was rarely the case when he impelled them from any distance, he being far more a theoretical player than Jack, who frequently made breaks of twelve or more, taking the liveliest pleasure in the winning hazard. When he had brought off this stroke three times in succession he put down his cue and said, with infinite satisfaction, 'There: a man cannot ask much better. I shall rest my laurels on that. Come, Stephen, we must shift our clothes and hurry along.'

They hurried along to the tavern where many Fellows of the Royal Society gathered to dine before the formal proceedings at Somerset House, in what was generally called the Royal Philosophers' Club. Here they arrived with naval promptness shortly before the president, Sir Joseph Banks, who greeted them very kindly, gave them joy of the victory, and hoped that Dr Maturin would now at last have time for some serious botanizing, perhaps in Kamschatka, a very promising region, almost unknown - 'But I was forgetting,' he said. 'You are married now. So am I, you know: a very comfortable and blessed state,' and moved on to speak to other Fellows, now hurrying into the long low room by the score.