The Commodore (13 page)

'I believe they were all removed to Haslar, sir, when the late surgeon died. An alcoholic coma, I am told.'

'Infamous,' said Stephen, not so much at the alcoholic coma as at the monstrous surroundings. 'Let us look at the dispensary, and then I can make my report. Mr Wetherby, pray show the way.'

The child led them forward to a ladderway, from which the sty was even clearer, the smell much stronger - the pigs looked up at them, their little intelligent eyes full of curiosity - down into the darkness of the orlop, beneath the water-line, where by the faint gleam of reflected light that filtered down through grating after grating and by an occasional lantern they groped aft to the cockpit, the midshipmen's berth, a noisy, noisome place. There were only four young gentlemen, one ape and a bulldog in it at present, but they could be heard a great way off, and the youngster said 'I should not dare go in, sir, if you was not with me. Mind your step, I beg.'

'What would happen, were you to go in?' asked Stephen.

'The oldsters and the master's mates would scrag me, sir, and feed me to the bulldog.' He opened the door and stood aside.

'Gentlemen, good day,' said Stephen into the abrupt silence. They were disparate creatures: one a dark, fierce-looking man sitting on the deck trying to read by a purser's dip; two gangling youths with their wrists and ankles starting from their clothes; and a devilish little fourteen-year-old trying to show the ape how to stand on its head. But they instantly saw that it would not do to play off their humours on this visitor and they returned his greetings, standing up with what grace they could summon, while the devilish boy quite unnecessarily strangled the bulldog, advancing to pay its respects. Stephen looked round the cockpit, which was his action-station and which would be his operating-theatre in the event of a battle: a fine spacious theatre, since it ordinarily housed a score of young men - and walked on aft.

'Oh sir,' cried Mr Wetherby again, 'pray mind your step.' And well might he cry: the hatch to the after powder-room was open, and the gunner's face framed in it, a foot above the deck. The face, ordinarily grave, spread in a smile and his right hand reached up. 'Why, Doctor,' he cried, 'we heard you was coming, and right glad we were. Rowley, gunner's mate in the old Worcester.'

'Of course,' said Stephen, shaking his hand. 'A nasty splinter-wound in the gluteus maximus. How does it come along?'

'You would never know it, sir. I showed it to my old woman when I came home. I showed her the scar, what there was of it, and I said "Kate, if you could sew as good as the Doctor, I should put you out to work, and live at my ease, ha, ha, ha!' With this he vanished like an inverted Jack-in-a-box, and the hatch clapped down over him.

Smith opened the dispensary door, and a strong light came out, coming from the operating lantern that hung within. 'I hope you will not think me over-busy, sir,' said he. 'But last night the purser told me that some stores had come down from the Sick and Hurt Board, and rather than leave them lying in his steward's care I have been putting them in the medicine-chest. I was still at it when your boat came alongside, so I left things as they were. I am afraid they will not all go in.' The hatch opened abruptly: the gunner's beaming face reappeared. 'I said, "Kate, if you could sew as well as the Doctor, I should put you out to work and live at my ease," and clapped to again over his laughter.

'You did perfectly well, Mr Smith,' said Stephen, looking into the miniature apothecary's shop with its drawers, bottle racks and recesses. 'But I am afraid you are in the right of it. These' - nodding at the powders, dried roots, drugs, ointments, bandages, dressings, tourniquets and the like that covered the floor - 'will never go in. We shall be obliged to put - to stow - them in the starboard dispensary.'

'By your leave, sir,' said Smith after a hesitation, 'there is no starboard dispensary.'

'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' cried Stephen. 'Five hundred and ninety souls to be dosed out of one miserable cupboard, four foot by three at the most! All, all of a piece throughout. Very well, gentlemen: be so good as to put them into my cabin here' - opening the door of a room measuring six foot by four - 'while I go and make my report to the Captain. Oh such a report, by God.'

'Why, Doctor, what's amiss?' cried Tom Pullings as he burst in upon them.

'Stephen, have you had a fall?' asked Jack, starting up and taking him by the arm, for he was unnaturally pale, and his eyes glared extremely.

He looked coldly at each in turn, and then in a carefully controlled voice he said 'I have just discovered that this - this vessel, for I will not call it a vile hulk, has a sick-berth that would disgrace a Turk, a sick-berth that a parcel of Hottentots would blush for, so they would. It is a sick-berth so horrible that I cannot consent to be associated with it, and' - his voice now rising with passion - 'if it cannot be converted into something less like Golgotha, more designed to kill rather than to save, I wash my hands of it entirely.' He washed his hands, glaring at their shocked faces. 'I wash my hands, I say: the shame of the world.'

'Pray, Stephen, sit down,' said Jack gently, leading him to a chair. 'Pray sit down and drink a glass of wine. Do not be cross with us, I beg.'

Pullings was too upset to say anything, but he poured the madeira; and they both looked at Stephen with infinite concern. He was still pale, still furious. 'Have either of you ever been in this odious travcsty of a sick-berth?' he asked, his glare piercing first the one and then the other. Oh, the moral force of that wholly unfeigned wholly disinterested and righteous anger!

Jack slowly shook his head, his conscience clear on at least that point. Tom Pullings said 'I suppose I must have walked through, on my way to see the pig-sties; but since all the invalids were discharged to the hospital before ever I came aboard there was nobody there: so I did not notice it was so very wrong.'

Stephen told them that a sick-berth with no peace, no light, no air, could not possibly be right in any particular whatsoever: he told them in vehement detail; and, his energy subsided a little, he told them that the only ship-of-the-line sick-berth he would consent to be associated with must of necessity banish the swine in favour of the Christian sick, must lie right forward under the forecastle, and must have light, air and access to the head according to the plan of the eminently ingenious and truly benevolent Admiral Markham.

'Doctor,' cried Tom, 'say but the word and I shall send for Chips and all his crew this moment. If you will direct them, you shall have your Markham sick-berth before the evening gun.'

The tension fell; Stephen took a little wine; his colour, though still disagreeably sallow, returned to a natural pallor rather than one blanched by fury; he smiled at them; and Captain Pullings sent for the carpenter.

'Stephen,' said Jack diffidently, 'I had thought of carrying you round the other ships, so that you might meet their captains and officers; but I dare say making a proper sick-berth would take up most of your time.'

'So it would too,' said Stephen, 'and all my energy. Tom, you have joiners of your own, have you not? I could wish to install a full dispensary there where the swine gambolled and wantoned at their ease, rather than send down to the after cockpit every time I need a black draught. Jack, I beg you will excuse me if I put off the meeting until your dinner for all these gentlemen.'

Chapter Four

When Captain Aubrey, his steward and coxswain were at sea, Ashgrove Cottage retained much of its naval quality because of their former shipmates who lived in and around the place, carrying out their usual duties of swabbing, scrubbing and painting everything in sight in as seamanlike a manner as their age and missing limbs would allow, to the admiration of all housewives within calling or gossiping distance; but the family house, Woolcombe, which Jack had recently inherited, always relapsed into a mere landsman's dwelling. Mrs Aubrey spent most of her time at Ashgrove, Woolcombe being left in the care of Manson, the hereditary butler, and a few servants on board wages.

Yet when Jack was at home, and when there was a good deal of entertaining - particularly polished civilian entertaining - to be done, Manson was brought up to Hampshire, where he had a wretched time of it. He did understand the chief duties of a butler admirably well, caring for the wine in the wood, mulling it, racking it, bottling it, cherishing the bottles and eventually decanting their contents, bringing the wine to table in excellent condition; and he performed the ornamental part of his functions with proper dignity. But the seamen did not value him a bean for any of his skills; they despised him for his neglect of Woolcombe, which was turned out only once a year, in spring, instead of every day at dawn; and they resented the least hint of any infringement upon their rights, privileges or sea-going customs.

The sound of one of these disagreements brought Sophie running nimbly to the dining-room on the day of the captains' dinner. As she opened the door the sound increased quite shockingly: Killick, his disagreeably yellow face now almost white with fury, had Manson in a corner, threatening him with a fish-slice and telling him in a high shrewish screech that he was not all that a good man should be - telling him with such a wealth of detail and such vehement obscenity that Sophie clapped the door behind her in case the children should hear. 'For shame, Killick, for shame!' she cried.

'Which he touched my silver,' replied Killick, his quivering fish-slice now pointing to the noble, gleaming spread on the dining-table. 'He shifted three spoons with his great greasy thumbs and I seen him hurr on this here slice.'

'I was only giving it the butler's rub.'

'Butler's...' began Killick with renewed fury.

'Hush, Killick,' said Sophie. 'The Commodore says you are to stand behind his chair in your best blue jacket and Manson behind him in his plum-coloured coat; and Bonden is to see to the proper gloves. Now hurry along, do. There is not a moment to lose.'

There was not, indeed. The invitations had been marked half past three for four and she knew from long experience of naval punctuality that between thirty and thirty-five minutes after the hour there would be a sudden flood of guests. She glanced along the table, all ablaze, all exactly squared; rearranged one bowl of roses; and hurried off to put on a glorious dress made of the scarlet silk, Jack's present, that had survived its almost intolerably arduous voyage from Batavia unharmed.

She was sitting in the drawing-room looking beautiful and with what she hoped was a convincing appearance of calm, pleasurable anticipation when Jack led in the first of his captains, William Duff of the Stately, a tall, athletic, exceptionally good-looking man of perhaps thirty-five. He was followed by Tom Pullings and Howard of the Aurora; Thomas of the unwelcome Thames; Fitton of the Nimble; and presently the tale was complete - almost complete.

'Where is the Doctor?' she whispered to Killick as he came by with a tray of glasses. He looked quickly about: his face changed from its unnatural expression of amiability, with a fixed smirk, to its more usual pinched severity, and with a secret nod he hurried out.

It was a long-established rule in the Navy that the higher a sailor rose in rank the later he was fed. As a midshipman Jack Aubrey, like the ratings, had eaten at noon. When he was made a lieutenant, he and his fellow-members of the wardroom mess dined at one; when he commanded his own ship he ate half an hour or even a full hour later; and now that he was, for the time being, a commodore with a squadron, it was thought proper that he should move on towards the admirals' still later hours. But his stomach, like those of his guests, was still a captain's. It had been sharp-set before three; it was ravenous at half-past; yawning and gaping with hunger. Conversation, though stimulated by Sophie's increasingly anxious efforts, by olives and little biscuits handed on trays by whitegloved bluejackets, by Plymouth gin, madeira and sherry, was tending to flag or grow somewhat forced when the door opened and Stephen made a curiously abrupt entrance, as though propelled from behind. He was in a decent black suit of clothes, his wig was powdered and set square on his head, his white neckcloth was tied with perfect accuracy, so tight that he could scarcely breathe. He still looked somewhat amazed, but recovering in a moment he bowed to the company, and hurried over to make his apologies to Sophie: 'he had been contemplating on wariangles, and had overlooked the time.'

'Poor Stephen,' said she, smiling in the kindest way, 'you must be dreadfully hungry then. Gentlemen,' she called, rising, to the relief of one and all, 'shall we go in, leaving introductions for later?' And privately, 'Stephen, gorge yourself with soup and bread: the venison pasty may not be quite the thing.'

After the proper hesitations and yielding of precedence at the dining-room door, the table filled quickly, Sophie at one end and Jack at the other.

Stephen, as he had been desired, earnestly attacked the soup, a most uncommonly good dish made principally of pounded lobsters, with their carefully shelled claws aswim in the rosy mass, and when the first pangs were assuaged he gazed about the table. Since this was essentially a social gathering, convoked by Sophie, the seating was unorthodox from the service point of view, though she had respected seniority to the extent of placing William Duff on her husband's right,while on his left he had young Michael Fitton, the son of a former shipmate and close friend. For her own neighbours she had two exceptionally shy officers, Tom Pullings, who had an ugly wound and a countryman's voice, both of which made him uneasy in company, and Carlow of the Orestes, who had no reason for diffidence at all, being well connected and well educated, but who nevertheless hated dining out and who, she felt, needed taking care of.

Stephen gazed about. He was not a particularly social animal - a watcher rather than a partaker - but he did like to see his fellows and quite often he liked to listen to them. On his left there was Captain Duff, talking eagerly to Jack about Bentinck shrouds: Stephen could detect no sign whatsoever of the tastes attributed to him. Indeed he could have sworn that Duff would have been most attractive to women. Yet the same, he reflected, might have been said of Achilles. His mind wandered over the varieties of this aspect of sexuality - the comparatively straightforward Mediterranean approach; the very curious molly-shops around the Inns of Court; the sense of furtive guilt and obsession that seemed to increase with every five or ten degrees of northern latitude. On the other side of the table, not directly opposite Stephen but one place up, sat Francis Howard of the Aurora, perhaps the best Greek scholar in the Navy: he had spent three happy years in the eastern Mediterranean, collecting inscriptions, and Stephen had hoped to sit next to him. On Howard's right he saw Smith of the Camilla and Michael Fitton, both brown-faced, roundheaded, cheerful, intelligent-looking young men of a kind quite usual in the service. They could never have been taken for soldiers. Why did the Navy attract men with round heads? What had the phrenologist Gall to say? Stephen's right-hand neighbour, Captain Thomas, was round-headed too, and deeply tanned: but he was neither young nor cheerful. After a very long career as a commander, chiefly in the West Indies, he had been made post into the Eusebio, 32, which was destroyed in the hurricane of 18o9; and now he commanded the Thames. He was the oldest man present, and his authoritarian face was set in an expression of disapproval - perpetually cross. He was known in the service as the Purple Emperor.