On a Making Tide (19 page)

‘Where have you been?’ her mother asked.

‘Here and there,’ Emma replied, not wishing to list the odd jobs she had found, nor the desperate places where she had paid to lay her head, even less the doorways she had sometimes been forced to sleep in. Cold, hungry and full of self-pity she had felt herself part of the world that lived with nothing. What had seemed an age had been less than a month, but in such an existence time loses any meaning.

There was little companionship. Girls her own age, selling themselves, spat at her lest she interfered with their trade. Beggars defended their patch because their lives depended on it. There had been men who’d approached her, most rude in their demands for a price, others with kindness in their voices that did not extend to their eyes. Cocooned by family or service, Emma had been shielded until then from the narrow margin between security and death. But in the last month she had seen it close to, and was sure of only one thing: she wanted no part of it.

Now she didn’t want to look her mother in the eye, so she glanced around the small anteroom instead. It was simply but tastefully decorated, the quality of the hangings and furniture as good as anything she had seen in domestic service. The floorboards shone with polish, whose smell mingled with that of the fresh cut flowers in a vase on the table. Her appreciation of her surroundings was heightened by the fact that she was
sitting on a comfortable chair, not dealing with the needs of others. How nice to feel like a guest instead of a servant!

‘Happen we can find another household,’ said her mother.

‘This one would serve.’

‘It would not!’

‘Why?’

There was a long pause while they looked at each other, the mother wondering how much her daughter understood, the child willing the woman to open up and tell her the whole truth. Questions posed in the past had led to vague replies concerning the kindness of gentlemen, and being involved in entertaining no less than the ladies of the stage.

‘I make my way, child, using what gifts God gave me to do so.’

That was the only answer Emma had ever received to her few direct questions. Yet she knew very well that there was more to it than that. The story of her mother’s abandonment by Sir John Glynne had been bandied about so often in her grandmother’s household when they forgot the girl was present. The residue of previous family arguments had led to the use of expressions that made more sense in this room than they had in Hawarden. And hints from the likes of Cath Lane had filled in most of what was still missing.

‘Why are you known here as Mary Cadogan?’

Her mother turned to look out of the high sash window, to the quiet street outside and the gates of a rich man’s redbrick townhouse across the way. That allowed Emma to examine the dress she was wearing, of heavy warm pink silk, embroidered at collar, cuffs and hem. She didn’t need a mirror to see her own drab garment, the same grey dress with which she had departed the Linley house, not improved by a month on the streets. To rub the coarse cloth between her fingers served only to highlight the contrast in material.

‘I liked the sound of it,’ her mother replied eventually, ‘and changing my name shut behind me some doors that left open only reminded me of sorrow, the loss of your father being but one. There’s no Mr Cadogan wandering about if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Is this a bawdy house?’

Emma’s mother laughed then, full-bloodedly, spinning round with her head thrown back, seeming to shed the years and cares that had come to line her face. She was once more the beautiful mother Emma remembered; the woman with the trim figure and lively face who could never walk down a Hawarden street without attracting the open admiration that had made her daughter proud. Yet the change of expression underlined to Emma how much older her mother was now, and how she had come to rely on elegance to support her fading beauty.

Flesh had turned the fine-boned face square, and pouches had appeared beneath the brown eyes, fighting a losing battle against the powder used to
disguise them. Her mother’s smile had always been one of her best features, that and a pert nose. They, at least, were as she remembered them.

‘A bawdy house, Emma? Don’t let Kathleen Kelly hear you say that.’

‘Who is Kathleen Kelly?’

‘The lady that owns this fine, respectable establishment.’

Emma was irritated by the obvious condescension of that reply, the way it was delivered and her mother’s arch expression.

‘I’m not a child, Mother.’

When she replied the humour was still on her mother’s face, but it had gone from her eyes. ‘No, Emma, you’re not. Yet neither are you a full-grown woman.’

‘I’m old enough to be told what you do here.’

That brought forth a sigh, then a smile. How to say that Mrs Kelly, termed the Abbess, was a procuress? To tell her daughter that, no, 5 Arlington Street was not a bawdy-house, but a place where men came to find companionship, even if consummation of any desire they might feel took place elsewhere? That the job of Mrs Kelly’s ladies, nicknamed nuns, was to encourage the customers to spend money on highly priced suppers and wines by stroking male vanity.

‘Mrs Kelly’s house is a place of entertainment. Food is eaten, cards are played, songs are sung and often, late at night, there will be dancing. The good lady provides company of a charming nature. We can be taken out for picnics and the like during the day by her clients, that being at our own choosing. Other times – say after supper – we might consent to be escorted to Ranelagh and the Vauxhall.’

Her smile had faded. It was a long time since she had visited either. Nor had there been many picnics. The clients no longer seemed quite so keen to take her anywhere but their bed. To flatter and entertain her was no longer deemed necessary. She had slipped from the front rank of Mrs Kelly’s nuns, but was not yet reduced to serving at table. Kathleen Kelly would hesitate to chuck her on to the streets, but the hints had multiplied that it might be time for her to consider moving on.

‘God in heaven, now. Sure, what are you doing sitting here?’

Neither of them had heard the door open and domestic habit made Emma shoot to her feet. The newcomer was a red-headed woman, with a lined, over-powdered face. The mouth was large, the accent Irish, the voice loud and vulgar.

‘And who would this be?’

‘I’m Mrs Cadogan’s daughter,’ said Emma, before her mother had a chance to reply. There was extra pleasure in using the unfamiliar name, as if it created a distance between herself and her mother that had never existed before.

The woman was between them now, very close to Emma, exuding perfume. ‘You never told me you had a daughter, Mary.’

‘Emma, this is Mrs Kelly,’ Mary replied, her voice flat with despair.

‘I came looking for a place, Mrs Kelly,’ Emma blurted out, wondering why her mother’s eyes closed tightly as she said it.

Kathleen Kelly looked her up and down, inducing a blush as Emma recalled what she must look like: hair unclean, face likewise, her dress marked by where she had worked and slept these last four weeks. Then the older woman took Emma’s chin between finger and thumb and squeezed gently. Suddenly Emma was back in that dark Hawarden hallway, looking into the florid face of Sir John Glynne.

‘Would you look at those eyes, Mary Cadogan? Would they not just make your heart melt, now? And such hair, clean and dressed proper.’

‘Kathleen?’ said Emma’s mother, a note of desperation in her voice.

Emma experienced a surge of pressure in her breast, a mixture of defiance and desire: the need to break free of control and a determination never again to serve others. There was a mass of other emotions as well: the feeling of being cast adrift by the loss of Samuel Linley, the worthlessness she had felt since his death, the certainty that the life she had been living was not for her.

‘Will you take me in, Mrs Kelly?’ asked Emma.

‘Sure, I don’t think we’d struggle to find you a place, girl.’

‘Please!’

Mary Cadogan didn’t get any further with her protest, as Mrs Kelly glared at her. ‘Being so young, she will need grooming. Who better to look after a girl like you than her own dear mother?’

Emma missed the implications of that, not in the least aware that her mother had been threatened. She sat down again, taking a deep breath of the luxurious scent of the room, her hands running sensually along the silk coverings on the arms of her chair. The temptation to pick up the bell that lay on the side table and ring to order tea was almost overwhelming.

The crew of HMS
Seahorse
caught the smell of the city of Calcutta before they ever clapped eyes on the place, another odour to add to those that had already assailed their nostrils. Dry burnt earth contrasted with rotting swamp was at the base, but as they sailed slowly up the Hoogly there were sharp overtones of fruits, spices and humanity, all of which emanated from the boats traversing the river, many full of dark-skinned women, the rest with fresh victuals. All was for sale. Behind them the rest of the squadron followed under topsails, the Commodore’s pennant of Sir Edward Hughes atop the mainmast of
Ramilles.

The youngsters, Nelson, Troubridge and Bertie, could scarce be kept out of the chains, and were to be found, as their duty permitted, just behind Mallory, who was employed casting the lead. They searched the shore eagerly for some of the fabled creatures they had been assured populated the sub-continent, beasts with twelve legs hunted by giants with two heads being the least remarkable. It had been the sport of the ship since they had weighed from Portsmouth to work on the gullibility of the youngsters and landsmen, who fully expected on arrival to see the ship revictualled by trained birds of enough size and strength to carry a twelve-pounder cannon.

‘Ah!’ said Mallory, sniffing loudly as he picked up a particularly pungent, musky odour that had a hint of the unswabbed roundhouse about it. ‘That smell’s like the droppings of the weegee-weegee bird.’ He turned away, cast the line in the muddy water, hauling it in with a cry of ‘No bottom on this line.’

‘The what?’ the trio chorused.

Mock-horror filled Mallory’s scarred face. ‘Are you meaning to tell me that you ain’t never heard of the great weegee-weegee, that special bird that many an admiral has begged to see put on his own coat-of-arms, only to have the King deny him?’ Incomprehension had to wait for another cast forward of the lead, then the sailor continued. ‘It be special, royal like, and only for the anointed King, seeing how it flies in so particular a manner.’

‘How does it fly?’ demanded Bertie.

‘Well, it starts off in a great sweep of a circle, more’n a mile wide, crying “Weegee-weegee” all the while. Then it shortens at each turn, the circles
getting smaller like the inside of a right tidy set of falls, tighter and tighter till the circle is so small it finally jams its beak up its own arse.’

Credulity fought with scepticism, until the latter won out. But their doubt was tempered, just in case he was telling the truth.

‘Four fathom ground on this line,’ Mallory called, after his next cast. Extracting the rope from the water he examined the sand that had stuck to the tallow on the bottom of the lead. ‘We’re near there, lads, and there’s ladies ashore by the ton weight, as well as in them there boats. Why, my gonads are aching already.’

‘Like they was before we raised Trincomalee?’ demanded Thomas Bertie.

His question earned him a dig in the ribs from Troubridge, who was relieved that Mallory, busy on his line again, had pretended not to hear. The cocky Londoner had trouble holding his tongue, and could never be brought to understand that truths discussed in the mid’s berth were not always to be voiced in adult company. Bertie and his loose tongue had nearly landed the gunner’s mate in a yardarm noose when he mentioned too near the premier that he and two other midshipmen had watched the man roger the ship’s goat.

Every youngster knew there were parts of the ship to avoid at certain times, groups of sailors to stay clear of. The committed sodomites, as opposed to those who indulged occasionally, were few and secretive, keeping themselves to themselves, even if their shipmates knew their orientation. Some were identifiable by the over elaborate dressing of their pigtails, others brutes so ugly that many wondered how any creature, male or female, could consider sexual congress with such a beast. In the main, they stayed separate, never interfering where such attentions were unwelcome. If the ship’s boys chose to indulge them that was their affair and no one else’s business, provided it didn’t challenge the proper running of the ship.

There wasn’t an officer on board, from the Captain downwards, who wasn’t aware of what went on in ships at sea, from the smallest merchant vessel to the biggest ship of the line. Sodomy, bestiality, gambling and theft were commonplace. An active commander could make a point of weeding out the first two by careful choosing of his crew, but would struggle to contain the others, even though according to the Articles of War they were all capital crimes. Most made good use of the blind eye to avoid a life spent in constant attendance at courts martial, floggings around the fleet, or hangings.

The sinners aboard a ship, from sodomites to rum robbers, were no different in their duties from the others. The good ones could hand, reef and steer as well as the next man, go aloft with ease in a howling gale, ply a gun with just as much venom, and when it came to boarding were just as keen to kill and maim as the most ardent psalm singing celibate. Good hands were prized and there was no point in an officer being too zealous
about the law. Better the blind eye and a trim ship than the sight of men hauled up to swing from a yardarm.

And it wasn’t confined to activities before the mast. Rumours abounded of captains who chose their servants with care, of premiers who had to fight temptation tooth and nail so that they could properly carry out their duties, and of others who failed in that and ruined their careers. Some ships, it was said, had wardrooms and mid’s berths where such heathen carnality was the norm rather than the exception. Asked to name such officers or vessels didn’t produce much in the way of evidence, but it was held to be true nonetheless. And when they were discussed, in the darkness of the night, the breathless quality of the conversation made Nelson wonder if he was the only youngster who could never decide if he was excited or appalled by the notion.

There were temptations: he worked with flashy topmen not much past his age who seemed to have lived a hundred years given the depth of their knowledge. Occasionally, because he liked them as people and admired them for their skill, that, added to his own naivety, sometimes led to an invitation. Mostly hints, sometimes actually tactile, couched in gentle terms to persuade him that what hadn’t been tried should not be gainsaid. He always declined, without anger, then wondered, as he tried to get to sleep, if he had done the right thing.

As to the scratching off Trincomalee, that had been an allusion to the activities of Grimface Adams. Ugly as sin, near toothless and textured, he could fold his face into half its true size, which, with a lantern below his chin, made him look like a true ghoul. His other sport was to take money off his mates in the cable tier, giving them the gammeroush to ease the tensions that could find no other relief aboard a near female-free vessel.

He did a brisk trade, at times when officers were thin on the decks, visited in near total darkness by dozens of his shipmates, not one of whom would admit to having been a customer. That common secrecy had been severely strained by the itching that had seized the ship south of Ceylon. Half the crew were at it, all ages and sizes, including the oldest midshipman, scratching away with their backs turned, or earnestly finding a quiet spot for a personal examination to see if they had somehow become poxed.

Grimface Adams might be the likely culprit but no one could openly accuse him of anything. However, the general suspicion soon surfaced, given that he was known to be less than fussy, that he had had himself a monkey at the Cape. Whatever disease he had picked up there he had passed on wholesale. When the truth emerged, only those who never went near him could laugh at it. Grimface, with no more than five teeth in his whole head, had, chomping on a ship’s biscuit, chipped a splinter off the remaining front one. In carrying out his service in the dark cable tier, he had scratched half the cocks on the ship.

Thinking back to
Raisonable
Nelson was aware of just how much he had missed. Rivers’s rumblings had been nothing, and it was probable that a
goodly portion of those who had sided with him had done so to protect themselves from the same abuse. But that was nothing to what had been kept from him by John Judd. This long commission had opened his eyes, but it had also shown him that there were times to keep them closed. He had observed as much as the next midshipman what went on aboard. He heard the clacking of dice, had seen shadowy shapes creeping around on his night time watches. His duty as an aspiring officer was to interfere, to clap a stopper on all illegality. But the other thing he learnt was this: that on a dark night, anyone, even the most brutal bully, might go over the side without so much as a cry for help. Captain George Farmer set the tone; Midshipman Nelson abided by it.

A shout from the masthead told those below that the lookout had spied the first of the ship’s masts that would fill the Calcutta roadstead. That brought the new premier, Mr Stemp on deck, speaking trumpet at the ready, his task to beautify the already perfect, to make his captain proud of the ship as it sailed past the Port Admiral’s residence and fired off the customary salute.

All the facilities of the Calcutta dockyard were thrown open to them, and an abundance of spars, sails and cordage to replace that which had been worn through or lost since the Cape. War, for the King’s Navy, was always on the horizon. If it came there was an enemy at sea in the eastern waters: the French Admiral Suffren, well equipped with a strong squadron to threaten the China fleet and the East India convoys. So there was no shore leave. Instead they worked as hard as the Lascars the Port Admiral employed to get the squadron ready for sea. Once that was achieved, they could look to relax.

The captured
Chasse
Marées
were bought into the service, so there was a small pay-out of prize money on the day that leave was finally allowed. For the officers, commissioned and warrant, that meant going ashore. For the hands, confined to the ship for fear they would desert, it meant that the boats full of women and trinket traders that had lain around the anchored ships might now disgorge their occupants on to the lower decks. These soon became so full it was impossible to walk from one end to the other without tripping over recumbent bodies. There was music, a strange amalgam of east and west, much dancing and, on that first day of relaxation, an excess of debauchery as each trader or whore worked to relieve every hand of his share of the recent captures.

Spared a daylight watch, the trio of midshipmen went sightseeing. To be untroubled by the exotic was de rigueur amongst those who had never been outside England. But Nelson, slightly older than his companions, had seen the West Indies and the polar ice, so could withstand any jibes directed at his enthusiasm. He was openly agog at what he saw in the teeming streets and bazaars of the Indian city.

Every spice was on sale, at a cost that would yield a handsome profit if
taken home. Gold wrought into fantastic shapes filled shops that stood next to others overflowing with gaudy silks. The food markets were bedlams of excess, none more so than the fish quays, lined with stalls, produce piled high, and the traders yelling that they could not be beaten on taste, freshness or price. Anything bought was immediately cleaned and prepared by the boys who hung around the market, eager to earn a few annas for their labours.

The temples, even though the sailors had been told about them in advance, were a revelation, with their amazing sculptures of unknown and powerful heathen gods, the sight of which had Nelson crossing himself. Stone and wooden carvings of men and women in every carnal position, quite a few incomprehensible to those who gazed on them, even after what they had so recently witnessed on their own maindeck. They were boys, who, beneath the braggadocio and jokes, still blushed. Each saw fit to suggest a visit to a brothel; each was equally unwilling to press the matter when his companions suggested delay. And, in truth, there was too much to see, as well as their social duties to perform.

There were a few European women in the busy ballroom, but they were in the minority. Some were the wives of the guests, others disreputable creatures who had travelled to India to escape their reputation at home, and perhaps to snare a husband. In such a small, incestuous society, everyone in Calcutta passed on scurrilous details of everyone else. Those prowling for matrimony didn’t suffer in this, since the wives were carved from the same block.

Most of the women present were Indian, concubines of East India Company officials colourfully dressed in delightfully revealing saris,
possessed
of flawless, pale olive complexions, with jewels in their noses. They also wore a great deal of gold, either in bangles around their wrists, or in elaborate buckles and pendants. Close to, they sent out the odour of strong, seductive perfumes, and their laughter was loud enough to echo off the high ceiling. Given the choice, Horatio Nelson would have sought their company, but to an aspiring gentleman that option was not available. He had to move among his own kind, drinking claret in a quantity that seemed excessive to him but perfectly normal to his hosts.

Everyone Nelson spoke to was keen that he should know the depth of his or her connections. He was assailed by the information that their presence in India was a mere sojourn, a pause for breath before they returned home to re-enter the busy social whirl that was theirs by right of birth. Good manners demanded that they enquire of him, just as they obliged him to respond.

The name Burnham Thorpe required that he locate it on the northern shore of the county, his father’s occupation earning a sniff of indifference only eased by the added information that the Reverend Nelson held three livings rather than one. He was too young for the pastime of social gaming
that was the bedrock of these conversations, too eager to describe his rural pursuits and the qualities of quiet charm and good humour of his siblings. But the disdain with which such snippets were received dawned on him eventually. As each conversation progressed Nelson realised that he was being condescended to, that those with whom he talked were inclined to look down on him socially. They saw before them a young fellow, the son of a mere parson, with few prospects and little in the way of interest to advance him in life. And the knowledge of how he was perceived hurt him deeply.