Ebb Tide (32 page)

'Why so?
Had
Their Lordships at the Admiralty upset him?'

'Indeed, yes. They had, you may recall, prevented him from commanding anything after
Andromeda
on account of the harshness with which he ruled his ship ... except, of course, the squadron that took King Louis back to France, and then he had Blackwood to hold his hand. I think he felt the humiliation keenly, though I have equally little doubt but that Their Lordships acted correctly.'

'I had forgotten...'

'We have so much to forget, Elizabeth. Our lives have been rich in incident, I often think.'

'Well, my dear, you have all that heart could desire now,' Elizabeth said.

'Indeed I have. I can think of nothing else except a lasting peace that our children may enjoy.'

'I do not think even
your
knighthood will annoy the Russians to the extent of spoiling that, Nathaniel,' Elizabeth said, laughing.

'Indeed I hope not,' her husband agreed. 'Here's to you, Lady Drinkwater, and the luck of Midshipman Drinkwater who found you in an apple orchard.'

'And to you, my darling Sir Nathaniel.'

'May I speak?'

'Of course, sir,' said Frey, glaring at the immobile Drinkwater as he stood in a futile attempt to look impressively relaxed. Frey's attention shifted from his model to his canvas as he worked for some moments, his face intense, his eyes flickering constandy from his image to his subject. Periodically he paused to recharge his brush from his palette or mix more colour.

'This reminds me of standing on deck for hours in bad weather, or in chase of the enemy. One is obliged to be there but one has nothing to do, relying upon others to work the ship. Consequently one passes into a state of suspended animation.'

'Yet,' Frey said, placing his brush between his teeth while he turned to his side table to replenish his dipper with turpentine, 'yet you always seemed to be aware of something going wrong, or some detail needing attention, I recall.'

'Oh yes, I was not asleep, though I have once or twice fallen asleep on my feet. But under the cataleptic conditions I speak of, I had, as it were, retreated into myself. All my professional instincts were alert but my mind was passive, not actively engaged in the process of actually thinking.'

'And you are not thinking now?' asked Frey almost absently, as he worked at the coils of bullion that fell from Drinkwater's shoulders.

'Well I'm thinking
now,
of course,' Drinkwater said, with a hint of exasperation which he instantly suppressed, 'but a moment ago I felt almost disembodied, as though I was recalled from elsewhere.'

'Ah, then your soul was about to take flight from your body...'

'And how the deuce d'you know that?'

'I don't know it. I just think it might be an explanation,' Frey said simply, looking at Drinkwater but not catching his eye and immediately returning to his canvas.

'You don't think it might be that I was just about to fall asleep?'

'You said yourself', said Frey, working his brush vigorously, 'that it reminded you of how you felt when you stood on deck. Presumably you weren't about to go to sleep then? In fact I supposed it to be a natural state to enable you to remain thus for many hours.' He paused, then added, 'My remark about the soul may have been a little facetious.'

'You wish to concentrate upon your work. I shall remain quiet.'

Frey straightened up, relaxed and looked directly at his sitter. 'Not at all, sir. Please don't misunderstand ...'

'My dear Frey, I am not deliberately misunderstanding you. But I have never thought you had the capacity for facetiousness. I think you believed what you said, but you have no means of justifying it on scientific principles and so you abandon it rather than have me ravage it with my sceptical ridicule.'

Frey smiled. 'You were always very perceptive, Sir Nathaniel, it was one of the more unnerving things about serving under you.'

'Was I?' Drinkwater asked, his curiosity aroused. 'Well, well. I suppose as you are engaged in painting my portrait it would not be inappropriate to quiz you a little on your subject.'

Frey laughed. 'Not at all inappropriate, Sir Nathaniel, but immodest in the extreme.'

'Nevertheless,' persisted Drinkwater with a grin, 'my curiosity quite naturally overwhelms my modesty.'

'Well that is not unusual, but it is rather disappointing in so unusual a character as yourself, sir.'

'Ah, now you are just baiting me and I'm not certain I should rise to it.'

'Perhaps that is truly my intention.' Frey resumed work, dipping his brush in the turpentine, filling it with a dark colour and applying it to his canvas with those quick, almost indecently furtive glances at his subject that Drinkwater found strangely unnerving.

'What? To put me off pursuing this line of conversation?'

'Just so, sir. To embarrass you into silence.'

'Do your sitters always want to talk?'

Frey shrugged. 'Some do and some don't. Most that do soon get bored. I am apt to reply monosyllabically or occasionally not at all, and then, depending upon my sitter's station and person, I am obliged to apologize.'

'But I can quite understand the concentration necessary to execute ... By the by, why does an artist "execute" a portrait?'

'I really have no idea, sir.'

'Anyway the concentration necessary to do your work must of necessity abstract you from gossip.' Drinkwater paused, then went on, 'So some of your sitters are difficult?'

'Many regard me as no more than a servant or at best a clever craftsman. The example of successful artists like Sir Joshua Reynolds counts for little here in the country and wherever the gentry pay they believe they own...'

'There is more man a hint of bitterness in your voice, Frey,' Drinkwater sighed. 'I am sorry I did not do more for your advancement in the Service. I can see it must irk you to be painting me in sash and star...'

'That is not what I meant, Sir Nathaniel!' Frey protested, towering brush and palette, and emerging fully from behind his easel, no longer looking at Drinkwater as a subject for his brush.

'I know, I know, my dear fellow, of course it isn't what you meant, but I know it is what you feel and it is perfectly natural...'

'No, sir, you read me wrongly. I am aware that you did what you could for those of us who regarded ourselves as being of your ''family'', but the death of poor James Quilhampton, though providing me with the opportunity of happiness with Catriona, set an incongruously high price upon so-called advancement. Believe me, I have no regrets. Indeed, sir, you will not know that, upon your recommendation, I was asked to accompany Buchan's Arctic voyage in 1818. I rejected the appointment because I did not wish Catriona to be left alone again; she had suffered too much in the past.'

'I had no idea you might have gone north with Buchan,' Drinkwater said. 'Well, well. But you are a kind fellow, Frey, I have long thought you such.'

'No more than the next man, sir,' Frey said, colouring, and then he looked down at his palette, refilled his brush and resumed work.

For a moment the two men's private thoughts occupied them and silence returned to the studio. Drinkwater thought of his own Arctic voyage and the strange missionary named Singleton whom he had left among the Innuit people. And then, as he was stirred by an uncomfortable memory, the door opened and Catriona entered bearing a tray. Instinctively Drinkwater moved, before realizing the enormity of his crime.

'My dear Frey, I beg your pardon.'

Frey laid down his gear, wiped his hands on a rag and smiled at his wife. 'Please do break the pose, Sir Nathaniel. Let us enjoy Catriona's chocolate while it is hot'

"He will keep you sitting there until your blood runs cold, Sir Nathaniel,' she said knowingly guying her husband, her tawny eyebrows raised in disapproval. 'A've told him about the circulation of the blood, but he takes no notice of good Scottish science.'

'Thank you, my dear,' Drinkwater said, smiling and taking the cup and saucer. 'I am sure this will restore my circulation satisfactorily.'

Drinkwater looked at Catriona's pleasant, open face. She was no beauty, but he had seen a portrait of her by her husband which had the curious effect of both looking like her to the life yet investing her with a quite haunting loveliness. Elizabeth, who had also seen the painting, had remarked upon it, attributing this synthesis to a combination of Frey's technical skill and his personal devotion.

'It is', Elizabeth had explained in their carriage going home, 'what makes of a commonplace portrait, a work of art.'

He thought of that now as Catriona placed Frey's cup of chocolate upon his work table, and he saw the small gesture of gratitude Frey made as they smiled at each other. He envied them this completeness. His own contentment with Elizabeth was quite different. He acknowledged his own deficiencies and was reminded of the uncomfortable thought that had entered his head with Catriona's appearance.

'Will you take tea with us, Sir Nathaniel, when he has finished with you?'

'That is most kind, my dear. If I am not an inconvenience.'

'You will be most welcome.' She stood beside her husband, looking from the portrait to Drinkwater who, by agreement, was not to see the work until Frey judged it complete.

'I shall finish all but the detail of the background today,' Frey said.

'I shall be glad. When I am under such scrutiny I feel like an object.'

'That is what he sees you as,' Catriona threw in. 'However,' she added, putting her head to one side and looking at the portrait, 'I think you will be tolerably pleased.' And with that pronouncement she gathered up her skirts and swept from the room.

Frey and Drinkwater exchanged glances, the former's eyes twinkling. 'She is my harshest critic.'

'And yet the picture you painted of her is outstanding.'

'Oh that. She will not let me hang it. Since that day I showed it to you and Lady Drinkwater, it has stood facing the wall. I think when I am dead, Catriona will burn it,' he said, laughing and gathering up his brushes and palette again. 'They are strange creatures, women...'

And yet, thought Drinkwater, resuming his seat and the pose, you understand them infinitely better than I do myself.

'A little more to the left, sir ... No, no, just the trunk of the body...'

Again they fell silent. Drinkwater knew the uncomfortable thought could not be excluded from his mind, and that it must needs be uttered. He had never enjoyed complete intimacy with any other human being, not even Elizabeth, for there had always been that vast gulf created by his profession, his long absences and his ignorance of most of her life ashore. There had been the brief and torrid physical passion with the American widow, a moment of intimate joy so exquisite that its aftermath was a long and lingering guilt. The effect was to have prohibited a more destructive lust with Hortense Santhonax, for she had infected him with another sickness, that of discontent and wild longing. He had, by chance, captured a portrait of her when he took her husband's ship
Antigone
in the Red Sea, and it had lain like a guilty, reproachful secret in the bottom of his sea-chest for years until he had burnt it. It was ironic that she, perhaps the most beautiful of the women whom he had known, now lay under the ruined flint arch of the priory at Gantley Hall, alongside his wild and ungovernable brother Ned.

But perhaps men, at least that majority of men in his situation and from which Frey was excluded, never got close to women. It demanded the most noble sacrifice upon Elizabeth's part for her to comprehend all the complex workings of his seaman's mind. God knew she was a marvel and had done her best! That he was unable to understand her in her entirety was, he concluded, one of those imperfections in life that were profoundly regrettable, but equally profoundly unavoidable. The enigma resided in the eternal question as to why mankind troubled itself with the unattainable. He sighed. Providence had regulated the matter very ill, but that is why many men, he supposed, were often easier in the company of their own sex. He had been close to young Quilhampton and had counted him a friend. After James's death, for which he still held himself accountable, he had grown very friendly with Frey. That last escapade upon the coast of France had left them with more than the bond of shared experience, and he thought that the thing had coalesced when Frey had said that if Drinkwater handled
Kestrel,
he himself would fight her. In that odd moment of decision, they had become one, divining each other's thoughts as they engaged in their horrible profession of execution.

And so, in the circumambulatory nature of thoughts, he was returned to the central theme of his anxiety and unconsciously uttered a deep sigh.

'You seem to be in some distress, Sir Nathaniel. Is it the pose?'

'What?'

'Are you all right, sir?'

'No, if I am honest, I am far from being all right...'

Frey lowered his brush and stepped forward. 'Please relax, sir,' he said, alarmed. 'Pray invigorate yourself!'

Drinkwater smiled. 'No, no, my dear fellow, do not concern yourself. I am merely troubled by conscience. Invigorating myself at such a moment might prove fatal!'

Frey gave his sitter a steady, contentious look; what they had between them come to call, with reference to Catriona, 'a Scotch glare'.

'No, really. I am quite content to sit still a little longer.'

Frey stepped back behind the easel and resumed work. 'I cannot imagine why your conscience should trouble you, sir. I have not known another person with your sense of duty'

'That is kind of you, Frey, but it may be the essence of the problem. Duty is a cold calling. It induces men to murder, giving them licence without consolation. Have you any idea how many men I have killed?'

'Well no, sir.' Frey looked up, astonished at the candour of the question.

'No,' replied Drinkwater bleakly, 'neither have I.' 'But...' Frey began, but Drinkwater pressed on. 'One remembers only a few of them and they were almost all friends! James, for example ...'