The Surgeon's Mate (17 page)

'Sir Joseph,' said Stephen, rising, 'I am deeply obliged to you.'

'Will you dine with me tomorrow?' asked Sir Joseph, lighting him down the stairs. 'I will ask Craddock and Erskine, and then we could look in at Covent Garden: there is a most exquisite young person singing Cherubino - a truly angelic voice.'

With great reluctance Stephen was obliged to refuse -he had to take the Holyhead coach, having some business to transact in Ireland: and when he proved inflexible, Sir Joseph said, 'Then I shall send the papers round before you leave. Where are you staying?'

'At the Grapes, in the Savoy.'

'Your old haunt,' said Sir Joseph, smiling. 'The permit and the Transport Commissioners' docket for your journey to Calais will be there before eleven o'clock. A couple of servants, I suppose?'

'If you please,' said Stephen: he paused at the door, and then said, 'It may be that I will take Mrs Villiers to Paris: there are circumstances that may render it desirable. Would there be any objection?'

'None at all,' said Sir Joseph. 'None at all on our side, and certainly none on the other. A lady with American papers will always be welcome in Paris. I shall just leave a blank in the docket for your servants and any eventual companion, and you will write in whatever you choose.'

'That would be most obliging in you, my dear Blaine.'

'Not at all, not at all. A very good voyage to you, dear Maturin, and pray give the Cuviers my warmest regards.'

'Lord, Maturin, I am so glad to see you back,' cried Diana, running across Mrs Fortescue's drawing-room and taking him by both hands. 'Did you have a good journey? Come into the garden and tell me about it - Mrs Fortescue will be down any moment with all her loathesome brood. No: you look quite fagged. We will sit down.' She led him to a sofa. 'Well, my dear, and how did it go?'

'Much as these things usually go,' he said. 'A great deal of hurry, a great deal of delay, and at last the discovery that it could all have been done as well or even better by the post. I left my toothbrush in Tuam or Athenry, and a valuable pair of list slippers in Dublin itself, and then on the way back an American privateer brig chased us into Holyhead, and we trembling in every limb.' Use had accustomed him to the present Diana, and he mourned for her earlier manifestation only when he was alone. In a quiet way he was pleased to be sitting there by her; they were very easy together; her affection was like a home-coming; and once again he had the feeling that this might be very like marriage. She was looking well, physically well, he observed; the pure complexion often associated with pregnancy gave her a fine brilliance - clearly there was none of the costiveness which was to be feared in that interesting state. But a knowing eye also perceived that beneath Diana's present animation, her immediate pleasure, not all was well: far from it. The traces of deep unhappiness might be impossible to define, but they could not be mistaken; nor could the signs of more recent distress and vexation of spirit.

The reason for this became apparent a few moments later, when Mrs Fortescue came in with her children.

There were five of them, and to Stephen they seemed no more loathesome than the ordinary brood: squat, commonplace, low-browed little creatures with colds, apt to stare and put their fingers in their mouths, but not absolutely criminal. Their mother, on the other hand, was one of those naval wives who had so often caused him to reflect upon the sailor's condition. She was a big, plain, coarse-complexioned woman, rather masculine, and although she ornamented her person with a large number of pins, ribbons and brooches, she had also adopted a breezy, confident manner which made them seem even more incongruous. She used a good many nautical expressions: rather more, perhaps, than most sailors. After a short while it became evident to Stephen that she was on terms of covert hostility with her guest, and that she was afraid of Diana. He was not called upon to take any part in the conversation: Mrs Fortescue had a strong sense of the naval hierarchy and of her own position in it as a senior post-captain's wife, and when she heard that he was a surgeon she had little or nothing to say to him; furthermore he rarely paid much attention to his clothes, and now, arriving from a long journey, he was more than usually shabby and unkempt, not to say dirty and unshaved.

His mind drifted off to Paris, to Pezophaps solitarius, and to the silent battle that two little Fortescue boys were waging in the far corner, by a flower-stand: they were striving for some object that he could not make out, possibly a handkerchief, egged on by their sisters. At the same time Mrs Fortescue and Diana were in fairly civil disagreement on some subject that escaped him. He would certainly include some remarks upon the Ratitae" of New Holland... He was aware that the dispute had come to an end; that Diana had presumably gained her point; and that Mrs Fortescue, unwilling to continue the engagement directly, had conceived the plan of making Diana uneasy by attacking him. 'Tell me, sir,' she said, with a look of commiseration, 'is it true that in the Prussian service, surgeons are required to shave the officers?'

'Only too true, ma'am,' he replied. 'And in our own it is worse by far. Dear Lord, how often have I not been set to black Captain Aubrey's shoes?'

She reddened with anger, but before she could reply Captain Fortescue walked in, and Stephen was interested to see a look of pure love on her face, followed by a glance of anxiety and suspicion at Diana, and then with barely a second's pause by renewed anger (the one flush doing for both) as the flower-stand came crashing down, one boy, petrified by his father's entrance, having released the object, so that the other fell sideways. The room was filled with noise, with accusation, blame, denial, and shameless informing; and when the children were led away to be whipped, howling as they went, Stephen and Diana walked into the garden.

'How have you been coming along, my dear?' he asked, as they paced by the Captain's lilies, his pride and joy.

'Very well, Stephen, thank you,' she said. 'I have obeyed you in everything: I have been incredibly good -only one glass of wine at dinner, though there are always vast crowds of people here, which incites one to drink, and no tobacco at all, not even snuff. Stephen, you would not light a cigar, would you, and give me a waft when we are quite out of range of the house?'

'I might,' said Stephen; and after some other physical enquiries he said, 'Have you seen Jack?'

'Oh yes! Except when he was in town he and Sophie were here almost every day until he was called down to Dorset, because his father was ill. Since then Sophie has come over as often as she could - she is a dear, dear creature, you know, Stephen - and we have sat together as mumchance as a couple of gib cats, with our men far from home. You never told me why you went, by the way.'

It was rare that Stephen could answer such a question with complete candour and he did so now with a pleasant feeling of ease. 'I went for a formal riding of the bounds, the bounds of a demesne in Joyce's Country that belonged to my cousin Kevin. It was confiscated, forfeited, after the ninety-eight rising, but since he was killed in the Austrian service, fighting against Buonaparte, it is to be restored. I shall have good news for his father when I see him in France. And I have good news for you too, Villiers,' he said, feeling in his pocket. 'Here is your order of release. It is still conditional, since you may only live in London or the home counties, but I cannot conceive that you should wish to live anywhere else. You are not pleased, Villiers?'

'Oh but I am, Stephen. Delighted. And it was so good of you to take so much trouble. I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear; the idea of getting out of this revolting house, with all these repulsive children... Stephen, light your cigar, for God's sake.' She took a deep draught, breathed out the smoke, turned pale, and leant on his arm. 'I am not used to it any more," she said; and then, turning a haggard face to his, 'I cannot live in England, Stephen. It is bad enough having to support tales of what happened in India: what will it be like when gossip starts coming back from Halifax? I know so many people. Scores of them here, hundreds in town. It is hard enough for me to keep my head high in Hampshire; imagine what it would be like in London in a few weeks' time - Diana Villiers with a great belly and no husband. You know how very small our world is -cousins, acquaintances, connexions at every turn. I could not go to a theatre or the opera or a decent shop without running into someone I know. And can you imagine me mewed up in some forbidding farmhouse, not daring to meet any civilized being, not even the parson, for fear of discovery? Or in some back street on the Surrey side? I should run melancholy mad.'

'Sure, a creature of your social temper requires company.' It was true: without it Diana would pine away. 'But you are to consider,' he went on, 'that a purely nominal ceremony would do away with these inconveniencies. As Mrs Maturin you would be brought to bed with your friends around you, in a decent part of town.'

'Stephen,' she said in a stronger voice. 'I will be damned to Hell before I marry a man when I am with child by another. You would not rid me of it when I asked you, and I promised to do nothing myself. I respected your wishes: respect mine, dear Stephen. Dear Stephen, pray take me to Paris.'

'Would not the same objections apply in France? And could you live easy in an enemy country?'

'Oh, nobody has ever thought of Paris as enemy country. We are at war with Napoleon, not with Paris. See how everyone flocked over there as soon as they could, during the peace. I was there myself with poor Cousin Lowndes - the one who took himself for a teapot, you remember: they thought a mesmerist could do something for him -and Paris was filled with English. That was just before we met. Anyhow, I know quantities of people there, emigres who went back, and dozens of friends from before the war, when I lived there with my father. In Paris it would not matter - nobody knows or cares exactly what has passed -I am a widow, and in any case a liaison is neither here nor there in Paris - the atmosphere is quite different. Besides, the war will be over presently: the King will be back -d'Avaray presented me to him at Hartwell, you know -and it will be the old France again. I do beg of you to take me with you, Stephen.'

'Very well,' said he. 'I will come for you in the morning, at half past ten o'clock. Here is Captain Fortescue. How do you do, sir?'

'I am so sorry for the infernal din just now,' said Captain Fortescue, 'but such things are inseparable from family life; and since it is our duty to increase and multiply I suppose we must put up with it. You are admiring my lilies, I see. Ain't they splendid? This one will interest you, Doctor, a great rarity brought me from Canton by my nephew in the Company's service. Oh God, they are at it again,' he cried, narrowing his eyes and leaning towards the lily, where several red beetles were copulating in his sight, increasing and multiplying. 'The dogs, the vile French vermin! And this is inseparable from gardening, too. Forgive me while I fetch my little spray.'

Paris was in all its charming splendour, the trees full-leaf under a gentle smiling sky, the Seine almost blue, the streets filled with moving colour. Much of this colour was provided by the countless uniforms, and these uniforms were those of the enemy; but the difference between what the troops of Buonaparte and his allies really wore in the wet and muddy field and the full dress that delighted the Parisians' eyes was so great that there was no hostile, and very little truly warlike, effect - rather one of a superbly managed, superbly lit stage of enormous size, filled with actors dressed and sometimes mounted with unparalleled magnificence. Diana contributed to this colour in a pervenche-blue gown from Madame Delaunay's, a striking hat only a few hours from the Place Vendome, and a slim black Cashmere scarf-like shawl - garments that brought many a look of respectful admiration from gorgeous gentlemen in brass helmets with horsehair plumes, silver breastplates, clashing swords and spurs, sabretaches, bearskins, little jackets, mostly gold lace, worn on one shoulder alone, curious hats with square tops or round with jelly-bags, scarlet, amaranth, or cherry-pink. Splendid figures in gleaming boots and sidewhiskers beamed upon her or twirled their moustaches with a killing air as she and Stephen wandered about the city, showing one another former haunts, dwelling-places, or even playgrounds.

'Here,' said Diana on the Isle des Cygnes, 'here I first learnt to play marelle, with the Penfao girls. We used to trace the lines from the balustrade to this bush - Lord, how it has grown! It has quite hidden the last square, that we used to call Heaven. Stephen, what is marelle in English?'

'I cannot tell,' he said after some reflection. To escape notice they had been speaking French ever since they landed from the discreet vessel that went to and fro at quite frequent intervals, ostentatiously ignored by the authorities and the navies on either side, a vessel that was neither a full-blown cartel (since Buonaparte would not exchange prisoners) nor yet a neutral, but that often carried hemidemisemi-official negotiators, communications about prisoners of war, distinguished literary men or natural philosophers, and, in the Dover direction, the beautifully-dressed dolls without which Englishwomen would not have known what was in fashion - ever since they landed they had been speaking French, and already there were English words, rarely-used words, that tended to escape them.

They walked across the bridge and looked at a tall thin high-shouldered house in the rue Git-le-Coeur in whose garret Stephen had lodged as a student. 'Dupuytren lived just below,' he observed. 'We used to share our corpses. Now, my dear, if you are not too tired, I should like to carry you to the faubourg Saint-Germain; I have a friend there, Adhe'mar de La Mothe, who has a vast great place with no one in it, and it occurs to me that you might like to live with him. He looks forward to it extremely, and he will invite you to accept one of the upper floors: his aunts will be able to recommend reliable maidservants.'

'Is Madame de La Mothe an amiable woman?'