Clarissa Oakes (14 page)

   'Whether this unguarded friendliness is very wise or in the event very kind I do not know. Men are sadly apt to misinterpret such conduct and even when no masculine vanity or self-love steps in, a tenderness may arise in some bosoms, I fear. A tenderness or perhaps something with a grosser name in certain cases, or a mixture of the two in yet others: for after all, the lady came aboard in circumstances that could never be called ambiguous, and even the faintest remains of a bad reputation are wonderfully stimulating.

   'Dear Jack, who is not insensible to her charms, keeps very much aloof; but to my astonishment I find that he is anxious for my peace of mind. For
my
peace of mind. Some of his more obscure general remarks upon human happiness became clear to me on Tuesday, when he surprised me extremely by repeating the sonnet that begins
Th' expense of spirit
, saying it in his deep voice better than I thought he could possibly have done, and ending

All this the world well knows, but none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell

with the fine sullen growl it calls for, generally in vain. I was transfixed. And the words
savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust
echoed strangely in my mind.

   'The bell tells me that I shall see the lady in five minutes, unless she sends to cry off, which is not unlikely, she being to dine with the gun-room today; and although she may have some manly virtues I am sure she is woman enough to spend some hours dressing for a feast, so I shall leave this sheet unfinished.'

   Stephen was not infallible. He was by no means infallible. The tap at his door five minutes later was his patient, true to her hour. The coming feast had brought some colour into her cheeks and she looked very well, but in point of fact he found neither improvement nor deterioration in her physical state; and when the examination was over he said, 'We must persevere with the steel and bark; I believe I shall increase the dose a trifle, and I shall also send a little wine forward, to be drank medicinally, a glass at noon and two glasses in the evening.'

   'How very kind,' said Clarissa, her voice muffled in the folds of her dress; and again he reflected that she took no more notice of her nakedness than if they had both been men. Perhaps this was because he was a physician and did not count; yet most of his few women patients had made some gestures in the direction of modesty. Clarissa made none, any more than a professional painter's model would have done. But when her head emerged and she had buttoned herself and smoothed her hair she said, with a certain awkwardness, 'Dear Doctor, may I beg you to do me another kindness, nothing to do with medicine?' Stephen smiled and bowed and she went on, 'Something disagreeable happened yesterday. Mr Martin was showing me how to tune the viola when his little cat—you know his little cat?'

   The little cat's mother had joined the ship in Sydney Cove, and had been tolerated so long by Jack-in-the-Dust—she was a good mouser—that it was thought inhuman to turn her ashore when she proved to be in kit: and Martin had adopted this survivor from the litter, a stupid, persecuting animal.

   Stephen bowed again. 'Well, it suddenly jumped on my lap, as it so often does. I dislike cats and I pushed it off, perhaps a little harder than usual. "Oh," cries he, "do not be unkind to my little cat, I beg. Were you not brought up with cats? Were there no cats at home when you were a child?" And a whole string of enquiries. As you know, I dislike questions as much as I dislike cats, and I may have answered him a little sharply.'

   'Perhaps you did, my dear.'

   'And I am afraid he may think I am still cross. But what is worse, the wretched creature disappeared last night and he may possibly imagine that I threw it overboard. Please would you seat him next to me at dinner? I should be so sorry if we were not friends.'

   Stephen, feeling that his eyes might betray his reflexions, looked down and said in a neutral voice 'I have no say in these things: Pullings is the president of our mess. But I will mention it to him if you choose.'

   Another tap at the door, and this time it was Reade, bringing the Captain's compliments: if Dr Maturin should wish to attend the ceremony he had between four and five minutes in which to change. The message was delivered in an embarrassed mumble, and when Mrs Oakes asked Reade whether her husband was already on deck he flushed and said 'yes, ma'am,' neither smiling at her nor looking at her, which was in so great a contrast to his usual attitude of open admiration that each gave him a quick, penetrating glance.

   Stephen however had little time for quick penetrating glances. Killick was fuming there at the door and even before Mrs Oakes was quite out of the room he had whipped Stephen's greasy old coat off—a steady stream of nagging reproach.

   Dr Maturin, properly uniformed, was propelled up the companion-ladder to the quarterdeck as the noon observation was in progress. He was somewhat astonished first by the flood of midday light after the shaded cabin and then by the colours all about him, high, low and on every hand, a variety of reds and yellows and blues, square, oblong, triangular, swallow-tailed, chequered, strangely brilliant after the eternal blue or grey, for the ship was now dressed over all, a splendid sight under a most luminous and perfect sky. There was just enough breeze to waft out all the flags and streamers that clothed the masts, yards and rigging—a startling multitude of them, blazing away there in the sun: the whole ship too was very fine, her hammock-cloths stretched to a gleaming white unwrinkled smoothness, everything exactly as a sailor could wish it, decks, guns, falls, a quarterdeck alive with gold lace, the gangways and forecastle filled with hands in high Sunday rig, duck trousers, bright blue brass-buttoned jackets, embroidered shirts, ribboned hats.

   'Make it twelve, Mr West,' said Jack, noon being reported to him, and his words were still floating in the air when eight bells struck.

   But whereas they were ordinarily followed by the bosun's pipe to dinner and a wholehearted Bedlam of cries and trampling feet and thumping mess-kids, now there was a total silence, all hands looking attentively aft. 'Carry on, Mr West,' said Jack. 'Away aloft,' cried West, and the mass of the frigate's people raced up the shrouds on either side in a swift and even flow. 'Lay out, lay out,' called West, and they ran out on the yards. When the last light young fellow was right at the end of the starboard foretopgallant yardarm, holding on by the lift, Jack stepped forward and in a voice to be heard in Heaven he uttered the words 'Three cheers for the King.'

   'You must pull off your hat and call out Huzzay,' whispered Pullings into Stephen's ear: the Doctor was staring about him in a very vacant manner.

   Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay: the cheers pealed out like so many rolling broadsides, and after the last nothing could be heard but Sarah and Emily, beside themselves with glee, who huzzayed on and on, 'Huzzay, huzzay for Guy Fawkes', very shrill, until Jemmy Ducks suppressed them.

   'Mr Smith,' said Jack, 'carry on.' And the gunner in his good black Presbyterian-elder's coat stepped forward with a red-hot poker in his hand: the salute, beginning with Jack's own brass bow-chaser, came solemnly aft on either side at exact five-second intervals, the gunner pacing from one to the other with the ritual words 'If I wasn't a gunner I wouldn't be here: fire seven.' When he had reached 'fire seventeen' he turned aft and took off his hat. Jack returned his salute and said 'Mr West, the hands may be piped to dinner.'

   A last wild long-drawn cheer, and before the white clouds of smoke had rolled a cable's length to leeward the usual midday hullaballoo rose to a splendid pitch.

   'By land, in the northern parts of Ireland, I have seen the fifth of November celebrated with fireworks,' observed Stephen.

   'Nothing can exceed the cannon's noble roar,' said the gunner. 'Squibs and burning tar-barrels, even sky-rockets at half a crown apiece, is mere frippery in comparison of a well-loaded gun.' Since he was to take the afternoon watch, thus releasing the whole gun-room for their feast, he was now on the quarterdeck, and turning to Jack he said 'Well, sir, me and my mate will take our bite now, with your leave, and be on deck in half a glass. Are there any special instructions?'

   'No, Mr Smith: only that I am to be told of any considerable change in the breeze and of course of any sail or land.'

   Half a glass went by and then apart from the gunner and his mate and the men at the wheel, the quarterdeck was empty. Stephen and Padeen had carried up two dozen of a pale sherry that had survived the voyage to Botany Bay, entrusting them to the gun-room steward: Stephen had spoken of Mrs Oakes's wish to poor anxious Pullings, had shown the gun-room steward's mate an unusually elegant way of folding napkins, had proposed decorating the table with seaweed, producing examples, and had been desired by all his messmates, their differences temporarily overlooked, to go and watch for his Latham's albatross until four bells. There really was not room for so many people to mill about in so confined a space; besides, it consumed what little fresh air there was—Martin had already gone into the mizzen-top, carrying his silk stockings in his pocket.

   Stephen wandered aft to where the Captain was taking his ease in the great cabin, stretched out on the stern-window locker with one foot in a basin of water.

   'Do you suffer, brother?' he asked, 'or is this part of the Navy's superstitious horror of the unclean?'

   'I suffer, Stephen,' said Jack, 'but moderately. Do you remember how I stood on the dumb-chalder when Dick Richards and I cleared the
Nutmeg's
rudder?'

   'The dumb-chalder. Sure I think of it constantly: it is rarely from my mind.'

   'Well, it gave me a shrewd knock, and I limped for weeks. And just now I caught my ankle against the linch-pin there, hitting it in just the same place. How I roared!'

   'I am sure you did. Will I look at it, now?'

   Stephen took the foot in his hands, considered it, pressed it, heard the catch of breath, and said 'It is a little small piece of the external malleolus, trying to come out.'

   'What is the external malleolus?'

   'Nay, if you can oppress me with your dumb-chalders, I can do the same with my malleoli. Hold still. Should you like me to take it out now? I have a lancet over there, among the seaweed.'

   'Perhaps we might wait until after the feast,' said Jack, who very much disliked being cut in cold blood. 'It feels much better now. I put a great deal of salt into the water.'

   Stephen was used to this; he nodded, mused for a while, and said 'So the gunner has the watch. Tell me, Jack, is it not very amazingly strange that a gunner should have a watch?'

   'Oh Lord, no. In a frigate it is unusual, of course, but in many a sloop with only one lieutenant, many an unrated ship, it is quite common for a steady, experienced bosun or gunner to stand his watch. And in our case there is an
embarras de choix
. I said there is an
embarras de choix
.'

   'I am sure of it,' said Stephen absently.

   'So many of our Shelmerstonians understand navigation and have even commanded vessels of their own that if the whole quarterdeck were wiped out—'

   'God forbid.'

   'God forbid—they could still carry the barky home.'

   'That is a great comfort to me. Thank you, Jack. Now I believe I shall go and read for a while.'

   In the coach Stephen spread out his authorities, Wiseman, Clare, Petit, van Swieten, John Hunter. They were prolix about men, but although they had little to say about women they all agreed that there was no diagnosis more difficult than in those cases where the physician was confronted with a deep-seated, atypical, chronic infection. He was still reading Hunter with the closest attention when the bell told him he must join his messmates to welcome the gun-room's guests.

The gun-room was almost silent, in a state of high anxiety, with West and Adams both frowning at their watches. 'There you are, Doctor,' cried Tom Pullings. 'I was afraid we might have lost you—that you might have taken a tumble down the ladder like poor Davidge here, or fallen out of the top, like Mr Martin—do you think the table looks genteel?'

   'Uncommon genteel,' said Stephen, glancing up and down its geometrical perfections. He noticed Davidge standing by the far end, his hand to his head: Davidge caught his eye, stretched his mouth in a smile and said 'I took a toss down the companion-ladder.'

   'The bride sits on my right hand, in course,' said Pullings, 'and then Martin, then you, and then Reade. Mr Adams at the foot. The Captain on my left, then Davidge—you are all right, Davidge, ain't you?'

   'Oh yes. It was nothing.'

   'Then West, and then Oakes on Mr Adams' right. What do you think of that, Doctor?'

   'A capital arrangement, my dear,' said Stephen, reflecting that Davidge's nothing was a damned heavy, turgid, uncomfortable one, a dark swelling from his left temple to his cheekbone.

   'I do wish they would come,' said Pullings, 'the soup is sure to spoil,' and West looked at his watch again. The door opened; Killick walked in, said to Pullings Two minutes, sir, if you please,' and took up his place against the side, behind Jack's chair.

   Martin edged his way round and with a decently restrained triumph he said 'Do not beat me, Maturin, but I have seen your bird.'

   'Oh,' cried Stephen, 'have you indeed? And I wearing out the day watching. Are you sure?'

   'There can be no doubt, I am afraid. Yellow, blue-tipped bill, a strong dark eyebrow, a confiding expression, and black feet. He was within ten yards of me.'

   'Well, who ever said the world was fair? But I am sorry to hear that you fell out of the top.'

   'That was a base slander. In my hurry to come down and tell you my foot made a trifling slip and I hung for a moment or two by my hands, perfectly safe, perfectly in control, and if the well-meaning John Brampton had not heaved me up by main force I should have regained the platform with ease. In any event I came down entirely unaided.'