The Flood-Tide (27 page)

‘Dearest Flora, in great haste, on my way to the coach, I write to tell you that I am going to Portsmouth to take command of the
Isabella,
36, a great step forward which I know you will rejoice in, though I am sorry to leave my dear
Ariadne
with such short notice. I am to join the Channel fleet, so I hope you will have more frequent news of me than hitherto. Look in the newspapers for mention of me, for I hope to bring glory to the name of Morland. At least, I trust I will never cease to deserve the love and respect of my wife and children, whom I trust think of me and pray for me as often as I for them. Ever your loving husband, Thos. Morland.’

He sealed it and wrote the direction on the outside, and was hastily scattering sand over the wet ink when the bosun's calls shrilled their warning that the new captain had arrived. Thomas hurried on deck.

The new captain was coming through the entry port, his hand at his hat in acknowledgement of the compliment. He was a young man with a swarthy face and black hair in lovelocks, and the lithe walk of a cat.

‘Captain Morland?' he inquired, his eyes going straight to Thomas's gold lace.

‘Captain Thomas Morland at your service, sir,' Thomas said.

‘Captain Hannibal Harvey at yours, sir. I am ordered to take command of the
Ariadne.'
The young man grinned irrepressibly, his teeth looking very white in his pirate's face, and Thomas, from his own memories, guessed how delighted he must be to be appointed to such a new and lovely ship.

Harvey read himself in, and Thomas said, 'Welcome aboard, Captain. You'll find her everything you've hoped, I am sure.'

‘Will you do me the honour, sir, of taking dinner with me, and telling me all about her?' Harvey said genially. 'If you don't think it indelicate for the second husband to ask the first husband about the wife's habits.’

Thomas smiled. 'Nothing would please me more, but alas I am ordered to Portsmouth at all speed, and must take your shore boat up the river if I am to get to Charing Cross in time for the coach.’

Harvey bowed his consent. 'I regret that we shall not have the opportunity to become acquainted, then, sir. But time and tide and the Admiralty wait for no man.'

‘It is the fortune of war,' Thomas said, equally solemnly, and was glad that he was leaving
Ariadne
in the hands of a captain he felt he could have liked very much.

*

It was a peaceful summer at Morland Place, and Flora, after an initial tendency to complain of boredom, slowed her pace to that of the burgeoning countryside, and allowed herself to drowse through the days, swelling alongside Jemima and an estimated two months ahead of her. Nothing could ever quite make Jemima rest, but Flora became positively lazy, rising late in the morning, idling away an hour or two dressing and drinking chocolate before joining Jemima for her daily walk in the gardens.

She interested herself in what interested Jemima -Allen's doings, the state of the horses, and the health of the children all taking a higher place than the state of the nation in their talk. Whether Allen should renew the licence for the Bear and Staff, which everybody knew was little better than a brothel, and watered its ale into the bargain; whether Helios's tendon would go down in time for the race at Wetherby; whether James's arm was sound enough for him to be allowed to take part in the cricket match at the midsummer fair; these were the matters of burning interest that summer.

The midsummer fair in itself was topic for endless conversations, for Jemima and Allen had decided that this year they would make it a very grand celebration. There had always been a certain amount of merrymaking at Morland Place at midsummer, both because it was an old traditional fair day, and because it marked the end of shearing. But this year Allen, on account of being Justice of the Peace, and Sir Allen, thought a more public event would be appropriate.

The cricket match was but one part of it, and was to take place on the open ground in front of the house in the morning. Cricket had been vastly improved of late years by the introduction of proper rules, and a third stump to the wicket, and a straight instead of a curved bat, and in some parts of the country it had become as popular as racing, and the subject of as many and as enormous bets. Jemima did not want their cricket match to be compared with anyone else's and found wanting, and so she had persuaded Allen to make it a competition between the village girls and the village boys, all to be under the age of sixteen. They were to be dressed all in white, and there were to be prizes for the winning team, provided by Allen. But nothing in the world could ever stop Yorkshire men betting, and already there was fierce wagering, not only on which team would win, but on how many notches each side would score, and in how many hours and minutes, and many a purse had been promised by way of bribery to improve the performance of the fancied team. The girls had been practising fiercely for weeks on Clifton Ings, while the boys had got together in the field behind St Edward's School, but since the latter team had spent most of their time surreptitiously smoking and boasting of how easily they were going to beat the girls, Jemima was secretly afraid there would be no competition.

The vexed question of whether James should be allowed to risk his newly-healed arm by playing in the match was decided one morning when a deputation of boys came to Allen at Morland Place, just as he was finishing his petty sessions, and begged him to allow it. James, in some way mysterious to Jemima, made himself popular wherever he went, and the boys' team embarrassed Allen in front of his tenants by suggesting that they would refuse to play altogether if James were not allowed to play with them.

‘That boy is born to be hanged,' Allen said to Jemima afterwards. 'I can only think he has bribed the team to beg for him.'

‘I don't know how he does it,' Jemima sighed. Edward was home for the summer, but despite his public-school advantages, he had not been asked to play. Jemima felt rather sorry for Edward, who was continually being put in the shade by his younger brother. James, at eleven years old, was ravishingly beautiful, and had the entire staff of Morland Place in slavery to him, and had even bewitched Father Ramsay to the extent that the priest rarely beat him, and then only reluctantly and with the most half-hearted strokes. As it was a known fact that boys only learned through being beaten, it was obvious that James would grow up entirely ignorant, but equally obvious that it wouldn't matter a bit, since he could make his way in the world very well indeed with no discernible talents.

It was a few days before the fair that Jemima went to find Flora, and being told that she was still in her chamber, laboured up the stairs to the West Bedroom, wondering how Flora could bear to be indoors on such a heavenly day. Jemima had been up since six in order to hear first Mass and take breakfast with Allen before he rode away to York for a meeting of the Turnpike Trust, which was making a determined effort to improve all the local roads, not just the London road. Since he left, she had interviewed Mrs Mappin, labouring under the delusion that it was necessary to give the housekeeper orders about the monthly wash and the necessity of making enough candles for the dinner on midsummer night; had comforted Abram for the loss of his favourite cat, who had eaten too many black beetles and died of a ruptured stomach, and persuaded him that Mrs Mappin had certainly not fed the beetles to Malkin on the sly. She had spoken to the laundress about washing her lace, and to the sewing maids about getting Miss Flora's dress finished in time for her to try it on before the day. She had picked and arranged the flowers for the Lady chapel, taken a piece of bread out to Poppy in the home paddock so that she should not feel neglected, dealt with four callers, written a note to Lady Marjorie and sent it with a basket of early gooseberries over to Shawes, and requested God-den, the kennelman, to look out for a prettily-marked kitten for Abram, who was a man who needed something to love.

The baby stirred inside her as she walked along the passage towards the West Bedroom, and she paused for a moment to put her hand over her belly and feel, even through her clothes, a petulant kick. Another boy, she thought, for it was big and restless. She was surprised to hear Mary's voice coming from Flora's room, and went in prepared to send her away and scold her for troubling Flora, but found her intervention was not needed. Flora was lolling in her bed, with her tray of chocolate and wheaten bread - she claimed not to be able to eat dark bread since she had been in London - watching and advising while Mary, seated before the glass, and wearing a pair of Flora's earrings, attempted clumsily to paint her face with Flora's paints.

‘Like this?' she was saying.

‘Yes, that would be well for Court, but at a private ball, you know, it would be quite out of place,' Flora replied.

‘Tell me again what happens when you are presented,' Mary said, and then turned with a petulant frown as she saw her mother's image in the mirror. 'I wasn't troubling her, Mama,' she forestalled Jemima quickly. 'Flora said she was glad of the company.' Jemima looked at Flora, who shrugged slightly, and smiled. 'Besides,' Mary went on importantly, 'I have to know how things are done, for when I'm presented I want everyone to notice me and think how well I do everything.'

‘And what makes you think you'll be presented?' Jemima asked. Mary looked round-eyed.

‘But of course I will be. Papa will arrange it. And then I shall live in London, like Flora, and never be in the country.'

‘Don't you really mind her prattle?' Jemima said to Flora, resisting the temptation to argue with Mary, whose values seemed to Jemima to need some rearranging.

‘She's company for me,' Flora said. 'What brings you up here at this time of day?'

‘Edward brought me a newspaper from Sir John Anstey, with his compliments. It is a few days old, but he thought you would be interested in the news. The French fleet has come out of Toulon.' She held out the paper as she spoke, and Flora took it automatically, but her face was pale. Jemima hastened to reassure her. 'Oh, do not be alarmed, it is not bad news. Hardly news at all, really, but he thought you would be interested.’

Was there a battle?' Flora managed to ask. Jemima helped her by opening it at the correct page.

‘There, you see, there's the report. No, Estaing and the whole Toulon fleet slipped out and into the Atlantic, and Admiral Byron was detached with thirteen ships to follow - to America, as everyone supposes.'

‘And
Isabella?'

‘
No, I have looked at the list, and she was not amongst them. She must have remained with the Channel fleet.'

‘Oh.' Flora pushed the paper away without interest, and Jemima sighed inwardly. Where, she wondered, was the young woman who had read every list of ships in the
Gazette
for the mere pleasure of repeating the names over to herself? Flora had been more of a naval wife before her marriage than after.

‘Well, now I have interrupted you, can I not persuade you to get up and come out into the fresh air? It is a perfect day - a slight breeze - not too hot. Dinner will be late today, because Allen is in York, so I have ordered a little nuncheon for us to take in the rose garden. Won't you join us?’

By the time Flora was dressed and had made her way down to the rose garden the rest of the party was assembled in the shade of one of the high hedges, and she paused for a moment, thinking how attractive a party it looked. Jemima sat on a rug spread on the grass, looking, despite her bulk, cool and comfortable in a dress of applegreen linen, her dark hair, streaked with silver, drawn back into a bunch of loose curls under a
bergere
hat. She was standing baby Harry up in his froth of white petticoats, and he was refusing to take his weight on his own feet, and crowing with laughter and grabbing for her hat brim with his fat fists. Beside her, little Louisa sat, leaning against her casually, while she frowned in concentration over the attempt to make a daisy chain when she had not the least idea of how to marry one limp stem to another. Her legs stuck straight out from the hem of her petticoats in the way only a small child's can, and from her dark curly head and her air of belonging one might easily have thought she was Jemima's baby, rather than Flora's.

Father Ramsay sat on the marble bench with James lolling on his shoulder from behind - something no other boy in the history of the world would have been able to do to Father Ramsay - both watching Edward, suddenly very grown up, carving the cold roast duck. Edward had brought the younger John Anstey and he was sitting on the other side of the cloth, next to Mary, holding out a plate to Edward for the first carving, which was evidently destined to become Mary's portion against all other claims. At a little distance Rachel and Alison and Esther and Flora's maid Joan sat with their own feast, keeping an eye on the party, ready to take the babies if they became a nuisance or run messages if required.

It was a pleasant, peaceful, domestic scene, and for a moment Flora felt oddly lonely, for it did not need her, there seemed no place for her there, not even as mother of Louisa. She wished suddenly that she could be back in London with her
friends -
only that was impossible, in her condition. She wished she was not pregnant; and she was within a whisker of wishing she was not married when Mary looked up and saw her, and invited her to sit beside her with a heroine-worshipping smile. Well, at least someone wanted her, Flora thought self-pityingly.