On a Making Tide (4 page)

‘Way to
where?'

‘I'll head south, I reckon. Who knows? I might end up in London town, dipping the pockets of German George hisself.' Seeing the look in Emma's eye, he spoke more quickly. ‘Tell your Nan that you fancied the dabs for supper. She's so soft on you she'll pay out even if she does bark. Maybe Hargreaves'll take one of her rabbits instead of coin.'

He lifted a hand to chuck her under the chin. ‘I'll recall you kindly, Emma. We was friends even afore what happened today.'

‘You're not goin' right off.'

‘What's to stay for?' he replied, holding up the watch and chain once more. ‘I ain't got no one to say farewell to, 'ceptin' you. Brand and Potts will have heard about this bein' lifted soon enough, and if my name's mentioned they'll be looking for me to take it.'

Fred turned once, then spun back, his eyes hard in a way that she had never seen before. ‘They two sods have been at your Nan for money, right?'

‘She told 'em to bugger off.'

‘They won't. It's not their way. If you was to ask around you'd hear that when Brand and Potts get refused, they're like to wait on a lonely road, takin' by force what folks won't part with willin'. An' I heard them discussin' your Nan not a day past, and sayin' as how she needed to be taught her place.' Emma put her hand to her mouth. ‘Best tell Mrs Kidd that, and say it comes from me. Now, wish me good fortune, lass. And remember, should you ever come to London, look into every coach and four, 'cause, like as not, you'll find Fred Stavely, Esquire, alolling on velvet cushions like the cock of the walk.'

There was a rattle as Fred gathered the watch and chain into his hand. Then, with a final smile, he turned round and strode off.

He might have thought that Grandma Kidd was soft enough on Emma to forgive her, and maybe she would have done so if the fish had been clean. But the grubby offering, ‘with half the muck of the market on it', was not accepted. Emma spent the rest of the day under her baleful looks with sharp reminders about the state of the Kidd finances, though in honour, before they packed up to go home, she sent to Hargreaves the money he was owed.

As always, it took an age to get out of the town, carts clogging up to leave through the narrow gateways. So it was under a darkening sky, full of low, troubled clouds, on Saltney Marsh, that Emma first spied the men loitering by the side of
the road. She knew her Nan had seen them too, just by the way she stiffened up. That was the moment she chose to tell her what Fred had hinted at.

‘Your eyes is better 'an mine, child. Is that Brand and Potts up ahead?'

‘I think it is. The tall one is so like Brand.'

They had chosen a good spot in the middle of the marsh with only this one road. And the fading light was security against anyone seeing what they were about from a distance.

‘Get in the back, girl,' said Mrs Kidd, sharply.

‘But—'

‘Do as you're bade for once this day.'

Emma climbed over on to the flat bed of the cart, her heel going over on the coal that her grandmother had failed to sell. ‘What will you do, Nan?'

‘I'll not part with a penny, that's for certain.'

‘Fred told it like they were prepared to offer violence.'

‘Happen,' Mrs Kidd replied enigmatically.

They were close now, the features distinct of the pair of villains. Both stepped out at once, barring the narrow road, with the taller one, Brand, holding up his hand. Grandma Kidd flicked her whip to get the nag moving faster. One of the cartwheels dropped into a pothole, which made Emma stagger and fall to her knees. Putting out both of her hands to save herself, she grasped two sizeable pieces of coal. Potts stepped forward, hands outstretched to take hold of the horse's head-collar. As soon as he got close, Grandma Kidd was on her feet, the whip flashing out in front of the horse's nose, to drive Potts backwards.

‘You get away from there, Ismail Potts,' she shouted, ‘or for certain I'll mark you.'

‘You had best hold up,' shouted Brand, lifting a heavy stick.

‘I'll do no such thing,' the old lady replied, applying the whip to the horse's hindquarters.

‘We've come only for what's due,' yelled Potts, reaching out to catch the traces again.

The whip took him right across the face, making him duck as he yelled in pain. Emma was on her feet, the two lumps of coal sent forth, not with any real force, but enough to make Brand move back instead of forwards. The whip drove him back another step. Now they were abreast of the wagon, Emma rained lumps of coal at them, ignoring her grandmother's command to get back on the box and take the reins. One lump caught Brand on the temple and he spun away to join Potts, who was holding his cheek and swearing in pain and anger. But he was standing still, making no attempt to pursue the bucking cart.

Chest heaving, Emma's face was full of triumph. She and her Nan, two females with forty years between them, had seen off two of the biggest rogues around, proving that they were nowt but stuffed bullies of no true account. She had seen a picture once, at the curate's lessons, of a man in a chariot after winning some ancient Biblical fight. That was what she felt like now.

‘Get back on the box, girl, this instant!'

Brought back to reality with a bump, Emma obliged, glancing at her dress,
which was covered in streaks of coal dust. Grandma Kidd, transferring the whip, sat down herself. Her free hand took Emma round the shoulders.

‘I'm sorry for the state I'm in, Nan.'

‘You'll do for me, lass, clean or dirty,' the old lady said, as she hauled her granddaughter hard to her so that she could give her a kiss. ‘An' even stinkin' of fish.'

Mrs Killannan, wife to HMS
Raisonable
’s gunner, was a substantial woman. Rosy-cheeked, broad in the hip and with huge breasts, she terrified not only her husband but most of the officers as well. She would bend in knee and spirit to the premier, and to the second lieutenant at a pinch. But no one inferior to that dared challenge her, especially when it came to the behaviour of her charges in the midshipmen’s berth. She had two precepts that were paramount: cleanliness in both body and mind, so that as long as the boys stayed spruce, and were attentive to their prayers, she left them to their own devices. She believed, quite wrongly, that even with a touch of wildness, her ‘boys’ were too in awe of her to countenance disobedience.

‘This ’ere is Mr Nelson,’ she said, to the assembled mids who occupied a space no bigger than eight feet by twelve. ‘Now, he is nephew to the captain, but that don’t signify ’cause you know that he’s a man who would shudder to see special treatment afforded.’

In the dim lantern light, here below the waterline, it was possible to make out with certainty only the faces of the half dozen closest to him. Yet each person had some feature that marked him out as an individual, even if in one case it was a face so bland as to be remarkable for that alone. A square chin here, a prominent nose there: the looks of indifference that were real contrasted with those more contrived. One, with the dark stubble of a heavy growth, seemed older than the lieutenant who had discovered him asleep on deck. Another’s face was so round and cherubic that he had the appearance of an overgrown baby. The only thing it seemed that they all had in common was a determination to ignore him, as though the arrival of a new member of the mess was an everyday occurrence.

Although unaware of it, Horatio Nelson was likewise the object of surreptitious examination. Those he had joined saw a slight youth, thin, handsome but pale, with very fair hair and grey-blue eyes that were slightly hooded and shielded whatever thoughts he harboured. His skin was clear, his lips slightly feminine in their fullness, with no trace of the flickering tongue that denoted nerves.

He had been in this situation before, suddenly required to face a potentially hostile group, with which he would have to co-exist. But he had
attended school in the company of his elder brother, and although that had provided little in the way of physical defence, at least he had had someone to associate with until he found his own friends. This, he knew, as the gunner’s wife began the introductions, was different.

‘Now this here is Mr Dobree,’ she said, patting the fellow with the dark chin, ‘and he is senior in this mess. So you will bide with what he says. He answers to me, an’ answers well.’

‘What peril would I risk if I failed to respond to you, dear lady?’ Dobree asked, his voice soft and supplicating, an odd look in his watery, chestnut eyes as he leant forward into the light.

That was nothing to the warmth of the response from Mrs Killannan. The apple cheeks reddened a touch more and the hard countenance melted fleetingly, like that of a mother looking upon a favourite son. Yet Nelson could see the insincerity in Dobree’s expression and picked up a hint, from the nods and winks that rippled through the other members of the berth, that this was a game they enjoyed.

‘You will find, Nelson,’ Dobree added, his voice silky, ‘that your own dear mother would struggle to match the grace and comfort afforded us by Mrs Killannan.’

‘My mother is dead,’ the newcomer replied quickly, only realising after the words were out of his mouth that, in some way, he had failed his new shipmates, several of whom frowned at him for dampening a situation that clearly amused them. The next words were blurted out and, judging by the stony faces, did nothing for his standing. ‘I am sure you are right.’

Dobree’s expression hadn’t changed, and his moist eyes were locked on those of the gross-faced gunner’s wife. He put out a hand to brush her thick forearm. ‘You may look here for comfort, sir. That is, if you feel the need.’

The face that pushed past that of Mrs Killannan was as gaunt as hers was fat, a comedic combination, framed by the curtain, which produced suppressed sniggers. ‘Where’s this chest to be let down?’

‘I’ll leave you to square that away, Mr Dobree,’ the lady said, spinning round, her sheer bulk enough to force the man who had fetched the chest to jump back. His eyes still fixed on the other members of the mess, Nelson heard her curse the carrier, bidding him shift out of her way in a voice full of venom.

‘Leave it outside for the present,’ Dobree said, as the thin face appeared again, his voice much harder now. He stood up, too tall to complete the motion, even bent his head brushing the deck beams above. He towered over the newcomer, who tensed. There was a pregnant pause, before Dobree spoke in the same silky tone he had used with Mrs Killannan.

‘Well, Mr Nelson, do you have a brain in that limited top hamper of yours?’

The softness of the voice did nothing to help the youngster relax. Instead he bunched his fists, which didn’t go unnoticed. Every member of the berth seemed to edge forward slightly in anticipation.

‘Why we have a gamecock in our midst,’ the senior midshipman crowed.

‘Get on with it, Dobree,’ said another voice, almost as deep, from just outside the range of the lantern. As he spoke, its owner leant forward to show a square, broken-veined face, with thick, widespread eyes, and a button for a nose. His mere presence caused all the others to withdraw to the edge of the lanternlight, like tortoises seeking the shelter of their shell.

Horatio Nelson didn’t relax. If anything this new voice added to his anxieties. He knew that his every action, every expression on his face, would be judged by those present against patterns of which he knew nothing. All he could do was maintain his stance until things became clearer. Dobree didn’t turn to face the voice, but an expression bordering on distaste crossed his face.

‘That’s Rivers, Nelson. You must mind out for him, since his morals are as thin as his patience. But that is as nothing to the needs of his belly, though I regret to say he’s not singular in his hunger. Now, you must, in all conscience, have some food in that chest of yours?’

He did, and his willingness to share gained him a place at the table, which was a board suspended from two hooks in the deck beams above and removed at night so they could use the space to sleep. That first night was strange: his futile attempts, a cause of much hilarity, as he tried and failed to get into his unfamiliar hammock. Rivers and Dobree eventually hoisted him in so that they could get some sleep, the former making much play of goosing him in the process before killing the lanterns and plunging the berth into Stygian blackness.

There was an element of terror in the dark, which was full of strange sounds and what seemed like surreptitious movements, the creaking of the ship as it moved on the tide removing any similarity to his old school dormitory or to his bedroom at home. He lay, eyes open, thinking of his family, the two brothers and four sisters who had always seemed like a shield against any hostility in the world. The image of his mother floated in and out of his mind, sometimes smiling, at other times scowling, warning him never to do anything to shame her.

The word ‘shame’ conjured up the face of his father: dark, stern and pessimistic. It was a word he was much given to using, as though it represented a fate he struggled against in vain, the knowledge that it was only a matter of time before one of his motherless brood let him down. He presided over a cold house, due to parental frugality in the matter of wood, where meals were a purgatory of short commons and sharp-eyed fatherly observation. No laxity was allowed either in posture or table manners: a Nelson back touching a chair was held sinful, and meals were consumed with a posture that would not have shamed a Prussian Grenadier.

Greed was a sin too, so the natural hunger of a boy who had been out in the fresh air all day had to be kept in check so that only his share of the family repast made it to his plate, and that was never enough. All the while
his father dominated the table from his position at the head. The Reverend Edmund Nelson was no storyteller, which rendered his sermons as dull as his conversation. For all that, Horatio missed his family, father, sisters and brothers, as well as the Parsonage, and had to fight now to stop himself sobbing with homesickness.

He couldn’t recall what he had been thinking about when sleep took him, but he did know, when he woke up, that he had had the most vivid of dreams, all centred on home and family. What had been the name of that cowherd? It was ten years ago and Horatio had been only four …

‘That looks a likely tree, young Mr Nelson. You can see the lapwings a flying in and out, and ahovering o’er the edge building it up. Now that means there’s eggs in that there nest, an’ all it will take is a leg up from old Dan …’

‘Dan,’ he hissed to himself. ‘That was his name, Dan.’

He had met him in a field close to his grandmother’s house and, with the innocence of childhood, had just started talking. Old Dan must have taken to him, because they were soon off into the woods nesting, with Dan saying that it was never too early to start a collection of eggs. That a gentleman, which he most certainly must grow up to be, should collect them, and butterflies, and press flowers in a book so that he would always have a memory of his countryside childhood to hand.

He recalled how Dan had lifted him up on to that lower branch. ‘Now, watch how you go, young sir, allus make sure ye has a handhold, ’cause that will save you from a fall. And don’t go right near that nest when the birds are about, ’cause their flapping will see you tumbling.’

Coached inch by inch he had made his way up several branches till he could put a hand into the nest. His size had driven the lapwings away, regardless of old Dan’s warning. It was easy to get the eggs out.

‘There’s four and they’re warm,’ he squeaked.

‘Don’t take ’em all, lad. Leave a pair for them to raise. That way there’s a nest for someone else to look into in the future.’

Getting down took twice as long as getting up and old Dan, as he said, ‘had to go about his occasions’. Taking the boy, who now cradled his treasures in his shirt, to the edge of the wood, he pointed across a deep grass meadow. ‘See that oak tree yonder, standing solitary like it were there to hang a poacher? That be your way home. There’s a stream t’other side, which you can wade. You’ll see your grandma’s house from there.’

‘Can I come again, Dan?’

‘If you can find me, lad. I don’t stay in one field for long.’

Now he could smell his way across the meadow, the sharp scent that tickled his nostrils as he crushed grass and meadow flowers on his passage. They came up to his chest, and as he looked back he could just see how his route marked a deep trail, made dark and obvious by the dropping sun. He was picking flowers too, a posy for his grandmother, because he knew she would be pleased. A happy grandmother meant a mincemeat tart.

It was the stream that had flummoxed him. Old Dan might say to wade it, but to his four-year-old eyes it had looked deep and menacing, clear water that showed a bottom made up of grasses that bent in the current and, as he looked hard, the occasional darting fish. Unsure of how to cross he sat down, not unhappy since the sun was still warm, content to arrange his posy and wait for the stream to go away.

That was how they found him, sitting there in the dark, the posy sagging sorrowfully, his father angry, and not mollified by his childish explanation that he had gone nesting with old Dan, or even the evidence of the eggs.

‘Do you not fear to wander off with strangers?’ his father demanded.

‘I don’t know fear, Papa. What does it look like?’

No wonder his brother William had called him a pious little turd. But that had been over the theft of the pears from Classic Jones’s garden. Every boy in the school had eyed them as ripe for plunder, but Jones the headmaster was so free with the birch sapling that no one was brave enough to act. Each, though, seemed stalwart enough to accuse every other boy in the room of being a scaredycat, an accusation that the younger Nelson could not countenance.

‘I’ll go.’

‘Shut up, Horace,’ said William.

‘I will not, brother. I make a genuine offer. If you and the others will aid me in the manufacture of a rope I will pinch Jones’s pears.’

‘You don’t like pears,’ William muttered.

But he was too late. Others, less fearful that the younger Nelson might get a good flogging, had already set to with their bed sheets, twisting and knotting them to make the rope necessary to lower him from the first floor window. Within five minutes he was out, hands clasped hard over one of the knots, being eased down to the ground.

A windowful of heads and whispered jabbering watched him climb the pear tree. Hands shot out to direct him to the most fecund branches. His pillowcase was full when he descended, and was sent aloft before the thief, who arrived in the room to see that a goodly half of his haul had tooth marks in them already.

‘Here, Nelson. Have some.’

He waved away the pears pressed on him. ‘I cannot abide pears.’

‘So why did you steal them?’ demanded a frustrated William.

‘The others were afraid to, brother. I was not.’

In his own head now those words sounded as though they had emanated from a pious little turd. Was he that? How would he fare here in this berth? What would he become in the Navy? Would future nephews sit at table while he, like his heroic uncle, moved cruets and cutlery to describe a historic battle? Would he make his late mother and dour father proud of him? The terror of failure was very real, and it was with deep gratitude that he heard the gunner’s wife come to rouse them so that they could wash, say their prayers and partake of breakfast.

No cleaner or any more pious than other boys their age, they spent much of their time circumventing the strictures of the gunner’s wife. Midshipman Nelson, almost as his first lesson, learnt that she was a slave to flattery. Praise for her natural maternity, judiciously mingled with hints that there was a desirable woman in that huge, squat body, could usually melt the frown that appeared when she espied anything amiss.