Pirates! (3 page)

The study door was open. I unlocked the bureau and counted out how much I thought was owed to William for the voyages he’d taken, then added some more for inconvenience caused. It came to a decent sum. I poured it into my own purse to take to William. On my way back, I threw the key in the shrubbery. Joseph would think he’d lost it in his drunkenness. He would get the blame for that, and for the money, once it was missed. The thought gave me great satisfaction. However much Joseph denied it, my father would assume that he had taken it to pay his gambling debts.

‘This is what is owed to you.’ I gave the purse to William. ‘I’m paying you off on behalf of my father. Since my brother,’ I smiled, ‘is incommoded.’

William looked as if he would refuse, but Robert urged him.

‘It’s only what’s due to you. Take it, son.’

William took the purse, heavy with gold, weighing it in his hand.

‘Very well!’ He stuffed it inside his jerkin. ‘I won’t forget this, Nancy!’

‘I’m sure you’ll look very well in your Navy uniform. You must promise to come back so I can see it ... ’

‘Of course I will! I mean to make you proud of me!’ He held me by the shoulders and looked at me. He did not speak further, perhaps through shyness, perhaps because he did not have the words for what he was feeling. I, in turn, could find nothing to say. My mind emptied as I stared at him. All I could do was try to read his face, where one look followed hard on another, chasing each other like racing clouds.

He grinned down at me. We were once of a height, but now he was taller.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said, touching my cheek. ‘When I’ve received my commission. And then ... ’

‘Then what?’

He grinned. ‘
Then
you’ll see.’

He kissed me. His lips were cool, the kiss was light, but I could feel his lips on mine even after he stepped away. I put my hand up to my mouth, as if to confirm to myself what had just happened. It was not a clumsy salute of the kind exchanged by children, or a brother’s cursory caress. It was my first proper kiss.

‘You will wait for me, won’t you?’ he said. ‘If I knew that, I’d brave anything ... ’

‘Of course.’ I caught his hand and held it fast. ‘Of course I will. I promise.’

With that, he shouldered his pack and walked out of the yard and on to the short curving drive that led from the house. I followed him as far as the gate. He turned once to wave to me, then he went on, whistling a high thin plaintive melody. His step was light, carefree. A butterfly kept him company, stitching the air above his shoulder. I watched until the turn of the road took him out of sight.

There was no knowing when I would see him again, but I knew that I would wait for him. A lifetime if need be. I still hold to that promise. Even now.

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My Dark-Eyed Sailor ...

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Chapter 6

I did not see William for almost two years. In that time my life changed again. I no longer lacked for female company. I was surrounded at the day school I’d begun to attend and, with such a quantity of brothers on offer, we did not lack for young lady visitors accompanying their mothers to our home. The girls’ giggling, twittering conversation revolved constantly round beaux and admirers. Their thoughts were all of marriage, but I never joined in their chatter and, no matter how much they teased, I would not tell them my secret and why I had no need to chase other young men. My love was a sailor and, when he came home, I would marry him. This was no idle fancy. It was what would happen.

When the wind came from the west carrying the tang of salt on its breath, I would sit with my window open, listening to the gulls crying about the rooftops and think where he was. In what port? Upon what ocean? At night, I would gaze up at a silver sixpence of a moon playing hide-and-seek with the clouds and imagine him on watch, wondering if he saw the same moon, the same stars, or if he sailed under a different sky. Then I would allow myself to dream. When we were married, I did not intend to stay lonely on the shore waiting for him. William would have his own ship and he would take me with him. We would sail the seas together, just as in my childhood dreams, but in those days I’d seen us as sister and brother. Now I would be his wife.

Susan was the only person who knew my secret. She was my close friend and confidante, and I could keep little from her, although I did not often speak to her about William. She said I was mad to love a sailor, for weren’t they the worst of all in their falseness, and wouldn’t she know, having had her own heart broke that many times that she’d stopped counting? Besides, we’d hardly seen each other since we were children. How did I know that he felt the same way? I was building up castles out of the clouds I studied so intently. I told myself that Susan did not understand. How could she? She was too quick to scoff and talk about calf love. What did she know of the kind of love I felt for William? I refused to listen to her. I did not want the fires of my passion doused by bucketfuls of her common sense.

‘Even if he prove true. And even if he be the one for you,’ she said in her matter-of-fact way. ‘You won’t be able to marry him. A poor sailor lad.’

‘Why ever not?’ I looked at her in amazement. ‘If I love him and he loves me?’

‘Love? Who marries for love?’

‘Plenty, I’m sure.’

‘Not in your class, they don’t.’

I knew she was right. Of course. But I thought that such arrangements were for other people. Not for me.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I mean to marry my love and no other.’ I stretched out on the bed, arms beneath my head, ready for dreaming.

‘That’s as maybe.’ Susan busied herself about me. ‘The Missis is making other plans.’

‘If she is, she’ll just have to unmake them.’ I paused, not liking this conversation. I rose up on one elbow. ‘What other plans?’

‘To go to Bath.’

‘Bath!’ I sat up, alert now, cross-legged in my petticoat.

‘We’re all going for the season. Cook told me. The whole household, barring your father. He’s got important business. He’s expecting a big convoy of ships, so can’t be spared.’

Not that he would have gone anyway. He could not see what was wrong with Bristol’s own spa at Hotwells and it was barely a mile from our house. People of fashion did not go to Bath just to take the waters, Mrs Wilkes declared. Father did not understand.

‘Come over here, Miss.’ Susan beckoned me to the dressing table. ‘So I can do your hair.’ She commenced brushing, as she did every night, first to get the tangles out, then to make it shine. ‘The Missis has plans for you,’ she winked at me in the mirror. ‘Mark my words.’

‘What kind of plans?’

‘In the matrimony department.’

‘But I’m too young!’

Susan laughed. ‘Miss Contrary! What about yon sailor boy you’ve been mooning over. Not too young for him, are you?’

‘But that’s different! I do not mean to marry him
yet
!’

That was a dream belonging to sometime in the future. Not now. I was beginning to panic. The season was only weeks away ...

‘Never too young!’ Susan winked again and I half wondered if she was teasing, but then she mentioned Elspeth Cooper who was already promised and younger than me. I’d seen the man who she was to marry. Twice her age with the marks of pox on him. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

‘I’ll refuse to go.’

‘Stand up to the Missis?’ Susan guffawed at my chances. ‘I’ll see that when it happens!’

‘It’ll be a waste of time, let alone money! I’ll tell Father! Who’d be interested in me?’

‘Plenty. You’re a handsome young woman, even if you ain’t prepared to make the best of yourself. Don’t know what you’ve got, that’s your problem. I don’t know how many would die for this colour.’ She arranged my hair about my shoulders in a shimmering cloak of gold and copper, winding a strand round her finger to form a ringlet. ‘Don’t even need rags to curl it. There’s been interest already.’

‘In me?’ I didn’t know whether to be flattered, or alarmed. ‘From whom?’

‘Never you mind.’ She commenced brushing again.

‘I can’t see how there could be. I don’t go out in society. I mean, who’s
seen
me?’

‘You’d be surprised.’ Susan gave me one of her knowing looks. ‘I seen the way some of the gentlemen calling here look at you.’

‘You mean friends of Father’s? But they’re all ancient!’ I covered my face with my hands. I’d end up like Elspeth Cooper. I couldn’t bear that.

‘’T’ain’t just the beauty,’ Susan went on, as if such a consideration were irrelevant. ‘You’ll bring a pretty penny when you marry. Someone’ll get a rare prize in you, Miss Nancy, and that’s a fact.’

*

Bath was a town wholly given over to pleasure. Mornings were spent at the bath and pump rooms, or else shopping for ribbons and trinkets, browsing in bookshops, or drinking in coffee houses. The afternoons were spent at Harrison’s Assembly Rooms at the gaming tables, or drinking tea and perambulating about.

Susan was right. Young men did not go to Bath for the cure, that was for sure. They went there to hunt fortunes. My father was rich. That made me a fair prospect.

I found it all unutterably tedious.

The most important social event of every week was the ball held each Tuesday. Whatever the occasion, my brother Joseph went straight to the gaming tables. He would soon be returning to Jamaica to take over the plantation and he was behaving like a man under sentence. He was keen to enjoy every civilised pleasure, and what place was more civilised than Bath? His chief enjoyment was playing piquet or faro. He was very bad at both. My father’s money flowed through his hands like sugar ground to sand.

Mrs Wilkes was not averse to a turn at the tables either, but her play was slow and deliberate, each card considered. Money stuck to her fingers like molasses. It was not what she was there for, however, and after a hand or two she would give up her place at the tables and accompany me into the ballroom. She had a deeper game to play.

The marriage game had its own rules and etiquette, winners and losers, like any other game of chance. The opening bid was an invitation to dance.

Mrs Wilkes had taken care to drop hints as to my wealth among her fellow card players, so I did not lack for partners. First one young man presented himself, then another. Mrs Wilkes watched, assessing each prospect, tallying them on a dance card of her own devising, rejecting those who were too old, too poor, too common, the fine lines about her mouth working like the drawstrings of a purse. If she thought one was right, off she went to secure an introduction to his mother. She would reel off to me their family history, going through their pedigree as if they were thoroughbred horses. Mr Amhurst, Barstow, Denton, Fitzherbert, Fitzgibbon; younger son, nephew, cousin; related, though distantly, to the Earl of somewhere or other. I could hardly tell them apart. Bowing figures in powdered wigs presented themselves in seemingly endless succession: sweating faces looking up at me, mouthing meaningless compliments; limp fingers in damp gloves leading me into the dance. All the time Mrs Wilkes watching everything, her fan fluttering faster than a dragonfly’s wing.

I went through my paces, as expected, although all I wanted to do was to get out of there as soon as possible. The year was turning towards summer, the rooms wanted ventilation and were abominably crowded, filled with a continually milling press and throng of people. As the night wore on the exertions of the dancers added to the warmth given off by the candelabras and chandeliers. The musky stench of overheated heavily-perfumed bodies made the atmosphere close to intolerable. At the stroke of eleven, the ordeal was over. Beau Nash, the Master of Ceremonies, declared the ball to be at an end. I went home with my face aching from so much smiling; my feet and legs sore from standing and dancing all night in thin-soled pumps.

Mrs Wilkes scolded me for being too cold, too distant, too aloof. She was beginning to despair that I’d
ever
find a husband, when a likely prospect presented himself. Mr James Phillips Calthorpe, younger son of a baronet, well bred and well connected. He had hardly a penny in his own right, and altogether no prospects, but he had the tastes that went with his station, liked the gaming tables quite as much as my brother, played with similar skill and enjoyed the same degree of success. I was under no illusion. His ardour was fuelled entirely by his own greed and the size of my fortune.

Mrs Wilkes was beside herself. Calthorpe was considered handsome by some, although I thought his blue eyes altogether too pale, his colouring too vivid, and there was a weakness about his mouth and chin that I did not find attractive. I was envied for his attentions, but I cared for him not at all, finding him shallow and vain with a vastly inflated opinion of himself. I did my best to ignore him and to act cold towards him, but he took my indifference as haughtiness and this served to stoke rather than dampen his interest, which rendered his attentions even more tiresome.

I was stealing myself for another evening of more of them when a young naval officer presented himself.

‘May I request the pleasure?’ He bowed before me.

I was waiting for Calthorpe, saving my energies for him. I did not want to dance before I had to, and began to refuse him, but when he straightened up and grinned at me, I saw that it was William.

Suddenly, everything was different. I tore up my card for the evening and determined to dance with him all night. The room now glowed with a golden light thrown out by the glittering chandeliers. The rows of dancers facing each other looked handsome, beautiful. The normal lines of callow youths and ageing rakes, overpainted women, elderly spinsters and awkward plain-faced girls seemed to have stayed at home. Everyone moved with grace and agility. No one turned the wrong way, barging into me, or treading on my toes. The windows were open. The scent of lilac came in on the air.

Calthorpe arrived too late. He was with his friend Bruton and, when it was clear that I would not leave my new partner for him, Bruton said something that did not improve Calthorpe’s temper. He turned on his heel and marched out, fury and humiliation painting his cheeks, but what did I care? I was being partnered by quite the handsomest man in Bath.

My head filled with so many questions to ask William. What was he doing here? How long had he been in Bath? How long was he going to stay? But there was little chance to talk. I had to content myself with looking. I had not seen him for two years and he had changed. He was a man now. His uniform made him look very dashing, buttons and buckles shining, white stockings and white gloves immaculate. Maturity had carved away the boyish roundness from his cheeks and chin, but his dark eyes were as expressive as ever and his mouth still quirked up at the corners showing that he had not lost his humour or sweetness of nature. I’m sure that I had changed as much as he, but I knew in an instant that all was the same between us. I did not need words. His eyes and the touch of his hand told me enough.

Looks and smiles can convey a great deal in the intricate motions of the dance. My heart beat faster as each step brought him closer and closer, then stopped altogether when his face, his lips, were only inches away. I ached with the waiting as the dance took him away from me, and seethed with jealousy to see him join hands with another. Then he was coming back to me and the delicious rising excitement began all over again. I knew then what dancing was all about.

I thought that there would be time to talk in the interval, but as the last dance ended he told me that he had to go.

‘But why?’ My eyes filled as if I had received a sudden blow. To have such happiness offered and then snatched away was cruel.

‘I have stayed longer than I intended. I only came to deliver a message. My captain’s wife is here. I had a letter for her. Now I must get back to my ship.’

I looked at him. There was no opportunity even to say farewell. Our words were lost in the din of those around us. We were being pushed apart by a crowd of people, all struggling to gain the refreshment rooms at the same time.

‘Meet me!’ I whispered in his ear. ‘Meet me outside!’