The Letter of Marque (27 page)

'There you may set your mind at rest. The Diane will certainly be bought into the service, and the shipwrights will go through her with a fine tooth comb. We have in fact two men who are particularly skilled in these matters and it will be strange if their minds do not work along the same lines as the Frenchmen's.'

'You are a present comfort, Sir Joseph dear: it was stupid of me not to have thought of that.' He smiled, nodding to himself and sipping his madeira; then he said, 'This tooth-comb, now, this fine tooth-comb that the worthy shipwrights will be using - we often hear of it; it appears in daily speech. And yet who has ever combed his teeth, in this or any other day?'

'May it not be that the fine qualifies the tooth rather than the comb? That what is intended is a comb with fine teeth, that is to say with thin teeth set close together?'

'Of course, of course,' said Stephen, clapping his hand to his forehead. 'This is not my most brilliant hour, I find. And I will confess that I am equally stupid about the present situation as far as it affects Aubrey: may I beg you to enlighten me?'

'If he had still been on the list, this would have been a knighthood, even a baronetcy - he would have had one for the Waakzaamheid if his lamentable old father had not kept on harrying the Ministry in the Commons - but even so this feat, coming on top of the coup in the Azores, has aroused a fine pitch of enthusiasm in the service and, what is more important for our purposes, in the public. There are ballads in the street already. Here is one I bought yesterday: the poet feels that Aubrey should be made a duke, or do strawberry leaves come down lower than dukes?'

'I fancy they may descend as far as mere earls, but I am not sure of that,' said Stephen, taking the broadsheet, which began

The ermine robe, the golden crown,

And the leaves of strawberry oh,

Who's the Tar we'll see in Town?

Sure 'tis Captain Aubrey oh.

Who smote 'em low, who smote 'em high?

Hey the leaves of strawberry oh,

Who did the Frenchmen in the eye?

Sure 'twas Captain Aubrey oh.

In Martin's port the other night,

Hey the leaves of strawberry oh,

Who woke them with a horrid fright?

Who but Captain Aubrey oh?

'Well,' said he, 'one cannot but approve the sentiment. But allow me to break off and ask whether there is any news of General Aubrey?'

'There is nothing certain, but that remarkably sharp, pertinacious, intelligent man of yours, Pratt, believes he may be on a true scent at last, in the north country.'

'So much the better. Now may we return to the present situation? I perfectly see that as a mere civilian Jack Aubrey cannot look for a title - which in passing I may say he probably would not desire - but can he look for reinstatement, which he most certainly does desire with all his heart and soul?'

'Maturin,' said Sir Joseph, after a considering pause, 'I wish I could say "Yes, and in the near future rather than at the next coronation". But there is something damned odd about the whole situation.' He drew his chair nearer and went on in a low tone, 'I told you some time ago that I was not satisfied with the way Wray and Ledward were pursued after we had made such a cock of taking them. It should not have been possible for them to leave the country; yet they did leave the country. I suspect they have some very highly-placed ally: this ally would naturally be opposed to Aubrey, and his presence would help to explain the inveteracy against our friend - an inveteracy that goes beyond the Ministry's dislike of him for having used him so ill, beyond their hatred of his father's Radical associates, beyond their extreme reluctance to admit they made a mistake. Yet on the other hand here are people who were ill-disposed and who are now well-disposed, Melville and some of the junior lords, for example, as well as several respectable members: and naturally there is the great force of public opinion. My impression is that at the present moment the balance is tolerably even, and that if we ..." The little silver bracket-clock struck the hour and Sir Joseph stood up. 'Forgive me, Maturin,' he said, 'but I had no dinner and am perfectly faint with hunger. Besides, I asked Charles to keep us the corner table by the window, and if we are not prompt it will be torn from him.'

They walked down to their club, and once again Stephen observed the discreet nods and becks, the quiet 'Give you joy, sir,' that were directed at him as one connected with a splendid victory. Their corner table in the supper-room, over by the far window and remarkably secluded, was waiting for them, and in the few minutes that elapsed before the appearance of the boiled fowl with oyster sauce, his usual supper dish, Sir Joseph eagerly ate pieces of bread. 'As you are no doubt aware,' he said, 'the official dispatch, or rather report, was extraordinarily laconic: all it said was that the Surprise, having been honoured with instructions to intercept the Diane, proceeded to St Martin's and removed her from her moorings there on the night of the twelfth instant, together with the ships and vessels named in the margin; they were towed out of the harbour-with the assistance of boats from HM ships and so on and delivered to the Port Admiral at Plymouth. Of course there have been unauthorized accounts in all the papers, the one more sensational than the last, together with the factual statement of receipt from Plymouth; but I should be very glad to hear ..."

At this point the fowl was placed on the table, and Blaine, having served Stephen, was about to engulf a leg when the Duke of Clarence came hurrying across the room, larger than life in a bright blue coat with the star of the Garter gleaming on his manly chest. They leapt to their feet as he hailed them in his powerful voice: 'Maturin, there! How d'ye do?' -shaking his hand - 'Sir Joseph, good evening to you. As I was leaving Joe told me the Doctor was here, so I thought I should just run in and ask him how he did, though I have not two minutes to spare.' Blaine looked despairingly at his chicken and wiped away a dribble of saliva. 'Was you there, Maturin? Was you there with Aubrey at St Martin's?'

'I was, sir.'

'Was you, though? Was you? A chair, there. Light along a chair, Arthur. Sit down, gentlemen, and let me hear about it between bites. Lord, I wish I had been with you, Maturin; it was the completest thing, from what I understand. Though I don't suppose you saw much of it, in the orlop.' A man in black walked swiftly over from the door and murmured in the royal ear. The duke stood up. 'They are waiting for me,' he said, 'and I have to go down to Windsor early in the morning. But I tell you what, Doctor: let Aubrey know that when he comes to town I should be very glad to see him. My compliments, and should be very glad to hear it all from his own lips, when next he comes to town.'

'Another five minutes, and I should have grown sullen,' said Sir Joseph, wiping his lips some time later. 'I might indeed have committed lese majesty. Now, Maturin, if you are a little less sharp-set, you will oblige me with a really full account, bearing in mind that I am no great seaman.'

He listened attentively, watching the explanatory crusts with keen intelligence: at the end he sighed, shook his head and observed, 'As the Duke said, it was the completest thing.'

'It would I believe have been the perfect cutting-put, but for those infernal gun-boats and the ebbing tide. If it had not been for those few minutes, which allowed the Dianes on shore and the soldiers to come down, I think we should have carried her away with no blood shed at all.'

'It must indeed have been a very severe engagement until the gangplanks parted. You did not mention the number of casualties, I think, and I forgot to ask, being carried away with the general triumph.'

'We had no men killed, though we had a power of wounded, some of them gravely.'

'You were not hurt yourself, I trust?' 'Never a scratch, I thank you; but Aubrey had a pistol-ball within an inch of his spinal cord and closer still to his great sciatic."

'Good God! You never told me he was wounded.' 'Why, it is nothing much of a wound now, though it was near to being his last at the time. We extracted the ball very prettily and the small hole - for it was no more - is healing as I had hoped. But he also had a couple of slashes, thigh and forearm, that cost him half the blood in his body, he being so active at the time.'

'What things you tell me, Maturin! Poor fellow: I am afraid he must have had a great deal of pain.'

'The extraction of the ball and the period just before was cruel indeed. But as for the rest, you know, people feel surprisingly little in the heat of battle. I have seen horrible wounds of which the patient was quite unaware.'

'Well, well,' said Blaine, meditating. 'That is some kind of a comfort, I suppose. But I dare say, having lost so much blood, he is tolerably pale?'

'His face might be made of parchment.'

'So much the better. Do not think me heartless, Maturin, but a pale hero is far more interesting than a red-faced one. Can he be moved?'

'Certainly he can be moved. Did I not carry him back to Ashgrove Cottage, where he is now walking quietly about among his roses, putting soft-soap to the greenfly?'

'Could he be brought as far as London, do you think, in easy stages? I ask, because it seems to me that this is the very moment to produce him to the public gaze and, even more, to the gaze of some of the men who help to make decisions. But you feel the journey would be too much, I collect?'

'Not at all. With well-sprung carriages, and they driven gently on modern turnpike roads, a man might be in his easy chair all the way. No: it is that I have kept him to pap almost entirely and I have cut off all wine, spirits and malt liquors with the exception of a tablespoon of port before retiring; then again he sometimes shows signs of that nervous irritability so usual among the convalescent, and he might not do himself justice in a large gathering.'

'I could limit it to a short dozen.'

'And I could give him a comfortable dose that would ensure a benign tranquillity, if not any very high degree of brilliance in discourse. Yet to what extent is a physician entitled to manipulate his patient in anything but strictly medical matters? Perhaps you will allow me to reflect for a while."

They took their coffee in the library, and as they sat there Stephen said, 'The invalid's pettishness may set in very early. We had a striking example of that in Shelmerston. The captured ships had gone off to Plymouth to be condemned in the prize-court and the Surprise was alone when a Royal Navy sloop stood into the harbour, crammed with men. Her intention was only to escort and even sail the Surprise to Dock, where the Port-Admiral wished her to be repaired in the royal yard at the King's expense; but the hands, many of whom were liable to be taken up on a variety of charges, particularly desertion, did not know this, and they were determined to make the sloop stand right out again - there were no quarterdeck officers present, all of them having gone off with the prizes. Captain Aubrey was composing his report at the time, but as soon as he heard their voices raised he came on deck in a very furious rage and reduced them to silence - goddam swabs - lubbers - not fit to man the Margate hoy - never to be sailed with again - a hundred lashes all round - damn their eyes - damn their limbs - sodomites, all of them -they were to let the boat come alongside at once and hand the young gentleman aboard with man-ropes - did they not know what was due to the King's coat? - forward pack of scrovies - they should all be cast on the beach within the hour.'

'Were they very much distressed?'

'They were not. They knew they had to look dumbfounded, amazed, shocked by their dismission, and they did so to the best of their ability. In the event he forgave them, and advised those who thought it better not to be seen in Plymouth to go ashore at once.'

'So she is being repaired at Dock: come, that was handsome in Fanshawe. Was there much damage?'

'A bomb-shell carried away the little privy and washing-place on the larboard side, no more; it does not greatly signify, since there is another to starboard and its absence will allow the erection of a kind of crane, a desirable crane.'

Sir Joseph nodded, and after a while he said 'Yet I cannot but feel that if Aubrey were to go off to South America now -for I take it you will pass him fit for service quite soon?'

'Once the repairs are done and the vast quantities of stores are in, he can sail with a quiet mind, above all with such a second as Tom Pullings.'

'Very good. But if he were to go off to South America now he would sail away far out of public knowledge; he would sail away into oblivion, and even if he were to defeat all the French and American vessels in those parts at the cost of his right arm and an eye he could not reach home in time to profit by his glory - that it to say in terms of public acclaim and its official consequences. In two or three months the glory would be cold.

He would never have the same favourable combination of circumstances again. He would have missed his tide!'

'Indeed,' said Stephen, 'that is a very grave consideration.' All his naval life he had heard these words, both in their literal and their figurative sense and sometimes uttered with such concern that they might have referred to the ultimate, the unforgiveable sin; and they had acquired a great dark significance, like those used in spells or curses. 'If he were to miss his tide, that would be very bad.'

Sir Joseph's rarely-used long dining-room could not be faulted: it was old-fashioned - walnut rather than satinwood or mahogany - but the severest shrew could not have found a speck of dust; the twelve gleaming broad-bottomed chairs were exactly aligned, the cloth was as white as newly-fallen snow and as smooth, for Mrs Barlow would have none of those folds whose rigour so often spoilt the pure flow of linen; and of course the silver blazed again. Yet Sir Joseph fidgeted about, tweaking a fork here, a knife there, and asking Mrs Barlow whether she was sure the removes would be hot and whether there would be plenty of pudding - 'the gentleman is particularly fond of pudding, so is Lord Panmure' - until her answers grew shorter and shorter. And then he said 'But perhaps we should alter the whole arrangement. The gentleman is wounded in the leg, and no doubt he. should be able to stretch it out, on the leg-rest in the library. To do so comfortably he would have to be at the end of the table. But which leg, and which end?'

'If this goes on another five minutes,' said Mrs Barlow inwardly, 'I shall throw the whole dinner out into the street, turtle soup, lobsters, side-dishes, pudding and all.'

But before the five minutes had passed, before Blaine had even displaced more than a couple of chairs by way of experiment, the guests began to arrive. They were an interesting body of men: apart from the two colleagues Blaine had invited from Whitehall, four were Fellows of the Royal Society, one was a politically active bishop, others were country gentlemen of considerable estate who either owned their boroughs or represented their counties; and of the two City men one was an eminent astronomer. None of them belonged to the Opposition, but on the other hand none of them held any office or desired any decoration; none was dependent on the Ministry and all of those who had seats in the Commons or the Lords were capable of abstaining or even of voting against the government on an issue where they strongly disagreed with official policy. And those who did not have seats were nevertheless men whose advice carried weight with the administration.

For occasions of this kind Sir Joseph hired men-servants from Gunter's, and the splendid butler had announced nine gentlemen before calling out 'Dr Maturin and Mr Aubrey.' The gathering looked eagerly at the door, and there, next to Maturin's slight form, they saw an exceptionally tall, broad-shouldered man, thin in his black coat, pale and severe. Part of the pallor and severity was caused by extreme hunger - Jack's stomach was used to the naval dinner time, several hours before that of fashionable London - but his wounds had their effect upon his colour too, while almost the whole of his severity was an armour against the least hint of disrespect.

Blaine hurried forward with his congratulations, his thanks for this visit and his anxious hope that Mr Aubrey's wounds did not cause him very great inconvenience - would he like a leg-rest at table? He was followed, sooner than etiquette allowed, by a round pink man in a cherry-coloured coat whose face fairly radiated goodwill and friendliness. 'You will not remember me, sir," he said with a particularly engaging bow, 'but I had the honour of meeting you once at the bedside of my nephew William - my sister Babbington's boy - when he was hurt during that glorious action of yours in the year four - one of your glorious actions in the year four. My name was Gardner until the other day. Now it is Meyrick.'

'I remember it perfectly, my lord,' said Jack. 'William and I were speaking of you not a fortnight ago. May I offer my best congratulations?'

'Not at all, not at all,' cried Lord Meyrick. 'The boot is on the other foot entirely. Being shifted from one House to another is not to be compared with cutting out a frigate, I believe.' He said several other most obliging things, and although his words were mostly drowned by the greetings of the men Jack already knew and by Sir Joseph's introduction to the rest, their evident sincerity could not but please. None of the other guests quite came up to Lord Meyrick - they lacked his complete simplicity - yet their cordial, unfeigned congratulations would have satisfied a man with a far higher notion of his deserts than Aubrey. His reserve and severity - never natural to him until these last months - quite vanished; and the change was made all the quicker by Sir Joseph's sherry, which spread an amiable glow in his pinched, abstemious belly.

Babbington's uncle absolutely insisted upon giving him precedence, and Jack sat at Blaine's right hand in a pleasant state of mind and a lively anticipation of the turtle soup that his practised nose had long since detected. The Bishop said grace; the promise became reality, green calipash and amber calipee swimming in their juice; and after some moments Jack said to Blaine, 'These classical fellows may prate about ambrosia till they go black in the face, but they did not know what they were talking about. They never ate turtle soup.'

'Are there no turtles in the Mediterranean, sir? You astonish me.'

'Oh yes, there are turtles, but only loggerheads and the sort they make tortoiseshell of. The true turtle, from the ambrosian point of view, is the green one; and to find her, you must go to the West Indies or Ascension Island.'

'Ascension Island!' cried Lord Meyrick. 'What vistoes that calls to mind! What oceans of vast eternity! In my youth I longed to travel, sir; I longed to view the Great Wall of China, the deadly Upas Tree, the flux and reflux of the fabled Nile, the crocodile in tears; but in crossing to Calais I found it would not answer. My frame would not bear the motion. I waited in that vile town until a day of total calm, a true halcyon day, and then I was rowed gently back, still half dead and far gone in melancholy. Since then I have travelled, fought, suffered, survived and conquered solely in the person of William. Such things he tells me, sir! How you and he, in the Sophie of fourteen guns, took the Cacafuego of thirty-two...' And so he went on, with an accurate account of Aubrey's battles - and Aubrey had been unusually favoured in the way of action -until the two country gentlemen on the other side of the table gazed at Jack with renewed respect, even wonder, for it was in fact a most uncommon record, and one told with complete sincerity.

'Mr Aubrey,' murmured Blaine, interrupting the flow just where the Surprise was sinking a Turk in the Ionian, 'I believe the Bishop means to drink to you.'

Jack looked down the table and there indeed was the Bishop smiling at him and holding up his glass. 'A glass of wine with you, Mr Aubrey,' he called.

'With the utmost pleasure, my lord,' replied Jack, bowing. 'I drink to your very great happiness.'

This was followed by several more glasses with other gentlemen, and Stephen, half way down the table on the other side, observed that the colour was coming back into Jack's face: perhaps rather more colour than he could have wished. A little later he also observed that his friend had launched into anecdote. Jack Aubrey's anecdotes were rarely successful - his talent did not lie that way - but he knew his role as a guest and now with a candid look of pleasure at his immediate neighbours he began, 'There was a bishop in our part of the country when I was a boy, the bishop before Dr Taylor; and when he was first appointed he made a tour of his command - of his diocese. He went everywhere, and when he came to Trotton he could hardly make out that such a scattered place - just a few fishermen's huts along the shore, you know - could be a parish. He said to Parson West, an excellent fisherman himself, by the way; he taught me to sniggle for eels. He asked Parson West ..." Jack frowned slightly and Stephen clasped his hands. This was the point where the anecdote might so easily break down again, an unhappy echo of the word place appearing as plaice in the bishop's question. 'He asked Parson West, "Have you many souls here?'"