A Crooked Rib (30 page)

I peered at the minute scrawl. ‘
Pen has just come in
…’ I stopped. ‘Pen?’

‘Her son. She dotes on him.’

‘What a very strange name.
Pen has just come in with his little friend,’
I continued,
‘who asked him, “Why do they call your mama Ba?” And Pen said, “I am not sure but I believe my mama is called Ba because she is as good as a lamb.” No compliment I ever received touched me so much. You see I am conceited and tell it! Now write, to prove you forgive me — and tell me of your dear husband, of both of you — how you are, what you do. Robert’s love—’

‘That’s Mr Browning,’ put in Lucy.

‘And I am ever, my dear friend, your affectionate Ba.’

‘It’s hard to believe I’ve been given something so precious. I shall cherish it forever.’

‘How very kind of Mrs Martin. It’s a mark of how fond she is of you.’

‘I believe she thinks it will help sustain me if I return with my husband to the Cape.’

I could not help but think Sir George required Lucy to accompany him merely for the sake of propriety, but I said only, ‘And will you go?’

‘I don’t want to. I feel it’s my duty, but … I’m terribly afraid. I … Fanny,
please
, dearest, dearest, Fanny, I implore you, come to Cape Town with me.’

Today, we set sail from Plymouth for the Cape of Good Hope. Sir George’s recall to the Cape was at such short notice that hasty arrangements have had to be made to accommodate us on the
Forte
, the flagship of Admiral Sir Henry Keppel, who is going out to take command of the Cape Station. He has relinquished one of his pair of connecting cabins to Lucy and his stateroom to Sir George, while an ante-chamber from Captain Turnour’s rooms serves as my cabin. We are not the only passengers; with us are the explorers, Mr Speke and Mr Grant, on the first leg of their expedition to discover the source of the Nile.

Lucy thinks Mr Grant most unprepossessing but considers Mr Speke quite dashing. She intends to quiz him about his expeditions.

I warned her to be careful that Sir George does not become jealous, but she merely shrugged and said that perhaps it is only justice that he, too, should be made to suffer the pangs of pique.

Though I rejoice to see Lucy in higher spirits, such talk makes me uneasy.

The sea is calm — not even Lucy is troubled by the motion of the vessel — and my initial annoyance with myself for allowing her to persuade me to undertake this voyage has lifted. Each evening, Mr Speke and Mr Grant play at whist with Sir George, who reminisces with them about his (greatly embellished) early exploits in Western Australia, while Lucy and I promenade about the decks, taking advantage of the clement weather. Tonight, after supper, we were joined in our stroll by the Admiral, who pointed out various features of the
Forte
. We parted from him at about nine o’clock.

The Admiral again joined us on our evening promenade. He is very small — at least a head shorter than Lucy — and has bright orange-red hair, but he makes up for these deficiencies by being most entertaining and agreeable. He has travelled all over the world in his naval career, including to New Zealand, and he knows Cape Town very well.

‘Now, as you ladies have spent time in New Zealand,’ he said, ‘I must tell you of an incident that occurred when I was posted aboard the
Rainbow
. The master, Captain Haus, was a great collector of curios: there were game-cocks secured by the leg to alternate gun-carriages on the main-deck, two Bengal tiger whelps, a ferocious-looking bull-dog as gentle as a lamb, and a monkey free to go where he chose. She was quite the oddest vessel on which I ever served. She’d been on the Australian and New Zealand stations and, on my first night aboard, when I dined with my new Captain, on the removal of the dish-cover I was confronted with the tattooed head of a Maori chief.’

I know that the Admiral meant this only for our amusement but, while Lucy laughed greatly, I was forced to turn away and make an excuse to go below.

To a thirteen-gun salute,
Forte
put in at Funchal Bay in Madeira.

‘You’re looking at the top of a huge volcano,’ said the Admiral as we stood at the rail, marvelling at the steep green mountains before us. ‘We’ll be here for three days, so you’ll have time to explore a little. It has unique plant life which may interest you, Lady Grey.’

We met up on deck with Admiral Keppel, who tells us we are about two weeks out from Rio. I am hoping that the leg of our voyage from there to Cape Town will be as calm and mild as this, but he says it is unlikely.

As we promenaded, the midshipmen gave us their customary salutes and waves. ‘I see,’ said the Admiral, ‘that the picnic hamper you ordered for the middies in Madeira has entirely won their hearts,
Lady Grey. Your enthusiastic admirer over there is my young nephew, my namesake, Harry Stephenson.’

‘They remind me of my brothers,’ said Lucy. ‘Always hungry.’

‘That’s boys for you,’ he said, laughing.

‘Do you have brothers and sisters, Sir Harry?’

‘My poor mama died in childbirth delivering her sixteenth infant, Miss Thompson; only eleven of us survived to adulthood and now we number a mere eight. But young Harry’s mother, Polly, has always been her brothers’ pet. My oldest brother, Albemarle, still seeks her counsel in all things.’

‘Is His Lordship also a naval officer?’ I asked.

‘No, he oversees the estates. He’s as unlike me as it’s possible to imagine. First, he’s tall and lean where I’m short and round. Then, I’m a keen hunter—’ He broke off. ‘Do you ladies hunt?’

‘I love to ride,’ I said, ‘but I don’t care for hunting.’

‘I enjoy it greatly,’ said Lucy, ‘but it was impossible to engage in it in New Zealand. There wasn’t a pack of hounds in the entire country. And, when we were last in Cape Town, my health wouldn’t permit it.’

‘Well, there’s ample horse racing in South Africa,’ said the Admiral, ‘so, sooner or later, it should be possible to organise a hunt. I love the chase but Albemarle is of exactly the same mind as you, Miss Thompson. Hunting, he says, is merely “a fool in a red coat chasing after a rogue in a yellow one”.’

We laughed.

‘How does it come about that you and your brother are so very different?’ asked Lucy.

‘Now, as to temperament, I couldn’t say, but I believe the difference in our size is due entirely to the circumstances of my own birth. I was such a sickling, I was given up for dead. I was born unexpectedly, a six-month infant, and as it was high summer and no coffin was ready, my father ordered some receptacle provided in which they might bury me speedily. I was brought, washed and shrouded, to the library where my father and his clergyman cousin were waiting. My father said he folded back the cloth and observed that I was so tiny I resembled a manikin, the smallest of templates for a nine-month child, my head the size of an apple,
my tiny buttocks no bigger than damsons. And the only coffin that could be found, late at night and at such short notice, was an old handleless warming-pan …’

‘A
warming-pan
?’

‘Yes, indeed, Lady Grey. It was polished and brought to my father by two of the household servants. He rested it on the library table, lifted the lid and placed me inside.

‘But the maid noticed my little chest moving. She screamed, crossed herself and cried out to the steward that I was still alive. My father snatched me from my brass coffin and instructed his cousin to baptise me at once. I have other, more illustrious, godparents, but my original sponsors were Cooper, the household steward, and Sanders, the second under-nursery maid.’

The further south we sail, the more I feel the pull of the other side of the world and the harder I find it to turn my thoughts from Te Toa. At night, the stars hang low and dazzling in the canopy of the inky sky; the Southern Cross has replaced the North Star now, and I feel it drawing me back to the Antipodes …

To escape from such idle fancies, I left the deck and returned to my cabin where I was roused from a light slumber by Lucy’s tapping at my door. It was just after ten-thirty but she seemed in unusually high spirits. She said she had had one of her headaches and had been unable to sleep so she had taken a turn about the deck for some fresh air. And, as she stood at the rail, the Admiral had passed by. ‘I’ve been talking most delightfully with him, Fanny,’ she told me. ‘He’s fifty-one years old and his situation is so similar to my own. He’s childless, too. He lost his only little boy seventeen years ago but he says he feels the loss as keenly today.’

‘Your situations are not at all similar,’ I said very firmly. ‘You’re only thirty-seven years old and you have a husband.’

‘I have a husband in name only. You know yourself he has no love whatsoever for me. It was all lavished on Makareta.’

‘Makareta is dead,’ I told her. ‘You must put her from your mind.’

‘I cannot because
he
has not. That’s why he’s so gloomy, so withdrawn …’

‘He’s always retreated into black moods from time to time. He’ll recover.’

‘How can he recover? We’re going back to Cape Town where she’s buried. He will mourn at her graveside.’

‘You’re being dramatic, Lucy. He can’t possibly be seen to make such a pilgrimage. Think of how people would gossip. He would be ruined.’

‘I promise you, Fanny, I long to forget but I can’t. Such humiliation. To be put aside for a native mistress …’

Briefly, I saw Te Toa before me. ‘I don’t see why the fact she was a native should influence your feelings.’

‘But she wasn’t even beautiful or accomplished. What did he see in her?’

‘I can’t say, but you must lay aside these thoughts. You’re pitting yourself against a ghost.’

‘A ghost who has devoured Sir George.’

I have just bid Lucy goodnight for the second time today. I am not at all easy in my mind. After dinner, when I was almost composed for sleep, she rapped on my door and came in flushed, her manner over-bright.

‘You’ll never guess, Fanny. I went out to the deck for a little air. It’s close in my cabin, you know — and there was the Admiral. He detests card games and prefers to be outdoors, he says. He asked to accompany me and we talked most agreeably. I told him Papa was one of Nelson’s captains and he said his greatest pride is that his first commission was signed by Admiral Hardy. Only think of it, Fanny! And your papa, too, knew Admiral Hardy, did he not?’ She sat down on my bunk. ‘
Now
say that the Admiral and I are not alike, if you will?’

‘You may be alike in some respects but not as much as you believe.’

She stood up and moved about restlessly. ‘It’s such a beautiful evening — the moon is throwing a path right across the sea. I told Sir Harry of the Maori belief that the souls of the dead walk along it to their final resting place.’

I remained silent.

‘He said it comforted him to think of his little boy on such a path to Heaven. And then, he recounted to me a most wonderful legend of the South Seas. He said the natives say that in the Pacific Ocean, far below the reach of the sun-shafts, lurks the giant octopus, a hideous thing with a beak of iron and tentacles half as long as the top-mast. It’s sightless and tracks its prey by scent alone, releasing a spray of blinding ink through which it seizes its unwitting victim.’

‘Has he seen one?’

‘No, but he’s often heard tell of it. The natives say that in springtime, on just such a soft night as this with scents drifting over the sea, the octopus rises from its dark lair, up through the moonlit water. It glides towards the seashore where the sweet-smelling breadfruit tree, the pandanus — you remember, Fanny — bends its blossoms to touch the ocean’s surface, and there … the horrid thing is lured, crazed, by the fragrance of the flowers. It hauls itself from the water, lumbers to the trunk of the pandanus, entwines itself around her and … makes … love to her.’

I sat speechless.

‘And after it is … spent, it falls exhausted back into the sea and doesn’t rise again for a full twelve-month. Isn’t that a remarkable story?’

‘Lucy, you’re speaking to the Admiral much too intimately for such a short acquaintance.’

‘You’re quite wrong. He was entirely respectful and polite. I can see you disapprove but, after all, my husband himself collects such legends.’

‘So you’ll recount this story to Sir George?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And why not? Because you know very well his jealousy and fury would be roused. Listen to me, Lucy, I
implore
you. You’re in grave danger if you continue to allow even such a harmless light-hearted dalliance with the Admiral to continue.’

‘My husband has no idea of where I am.’

‘The
Forte
is a very small community. People will gossip.’

‘They have no reason to. And why should my husband deny me the simple pleasure of congenial company?
You
know how cold and uncharitable he is to me, Fanny, and I promise you he has no cause
whatsoever to reproach me. All I am guilty of is conversation.’

‘Sir George may consider it criminal conversation. I think you should meet Admiral Keppel again only if you’re accompanied.’

‘Then I must ask you to accompany me tomorrow evening. I’ve promised to join him on a perambulation about the deck. He will leave a note at my door as to the time and place. His cabin abuts mine, you know.’

‘I’m pleading with you, Lucy. Be sensible. Don’t antagonise Sir George.’

‘Well, since it pains you so, I’ll be prudent.’

At the cabin door, she paused and turned to me, her eyes still bright. ‘Have you noticed, Fanny, the daintiness and delicacy of the Admiral’s hands?’

As we approach Rio, my old feelings of apprehension are mounting. This is ridiculous. I am being fanciful. Have I not travelled a large part of the globe and come safe home? What are the silly fancies of an old blind gypsy woman?

This morning, under steam, we put in to Rio. The salutes from the other vessels in the harbour seemed endless and continued to echo about us as we disembarked for Petropolis.

I was foolish to be so worried about returning here. We passed a most agreeable time ashore, the Admiral having persuaded Sir George, Mr Grant and Mr Speke to join him in hiring two open carriages in which we made several excursions. I saw no grotesques, was accosted by no one, and even the flamboyant colours of the plants no longer seemed menacing. I understand now that my fantasies were, indeed, merely the imaginings of a distressed child.

Earlier tonight, we all crowded on deck for a last sight of Rio.

‘They say the
Flying Dutchman
haunts the South Atlantic,’ said Lucy, ‘trying still to round the Cape.’

‘Merely a sailor’s tale,’ said Admiral Keppel, joining us, ‘isn’t it, Sir
George? We seamen are known for our superstitions.’

‘That’s true,’ said Lucy mischievously. ‘Papa always said it was considered bad luck to carry a woman aboard ship.’

‘Hush, Eliza.’

‘Nonsense, Ma’am. Many captains’ wives accompany them on voyages. And how would you ladies traverse the world if no ship would give you passage?’

The weather remains fair and the ship steady. Lucy and I are engaged to play together at cards.