The Nutmeg of Consolation (23 page)

Stephen scratched steadily on, though now his look was more benign as he wrote... and so, having demolished Baker on the economy of the solitary bee, I shall only add that I am heartily tired of being a solitary bee myself. I have no words to express my longing to hear from you again, to learn that you, and perhaps our daughter, are recovered, well and happy. And so far as material things affect happiness, it may increase yours as it has increased mine, to know that if these prizes reach port, our economy may be somewhat less sparse, pinched, anxious, grey.'

Jack returned to his letter: 'Yet Surprise's share of these two merchantmen alone should be something of a relief to poor Stephen, as owner and fitter-out he has the largest share, of -course. Something of a relief, I say; but I am afraid it can go only a very little way towards recovering his fortunes. I am not sure how they stand, because although as soon as I heard of the bank being broke I hurried to his room and said that I had never regretted anything in my life so much as my advice to move to Smith and Clowes, that I hoped and prayed he had not followed it to a disastrous extent, and I had meant to go on to say that we had shared purses before and must certainly do so again. But I stumbled over my words - I had already put it badly - and he pulled me up - "No, no. Not at all. It was no great matter. I am infinitely obliged to you." Since then he has said nothing and although from time to time I have thrown out what I hope were delicate hints and suggestions he has not seemed to notice them; and with a man Lucifer could not hold a book, bell or candle to for pride I cannot raise the subject directly. But, however, when this voyage is over I shall beg him, as a favour, to sell me the Surprise: not only would it give me extraordinary pleasure, but it would at least serve to keep him afloat.

'To go back to the other ships: the Americans are rather thinly manned, many of their people having been set ashore in Peru, it being so much wiser to put it out of their power to rise upon you and recapture the ship; but there is little risk of that, since they will be escorted not only by the Triton, which is a powerful ship for these waters and full of hands, but by the Nutmeg too. It will be quicker for her to return to Batavia by way of Canton, there waiting for the north-east monsoon - quicker than beating back into the teeth of this one. I offered Tom the command, but he said he had rather stay with us; so Fielding has her, and very highly delighted he is. '

Killick came in and stood breathing heavily in the doorway and looking disagreeable. They took no notice, intent upon their letters; he came forward to the table and moved some knives and forks, quite unnecessarily, and with unnecessary noise.

'Get out, Killick,' said Jack, without looking round.

'Killick, you break in upon my thoughts,' said Stephen.

'Which I only came to say the cook has burnt the soup, the Doctor ain't shaved yet, and your honour has spilt ink on your breeches, your only decent breeches.'

'God's blood - hell and death, so I have,' cried Jack. 'Go and rouse out my second-best - Stephen, we may poach upon your comforts, may we not? Killick, go and ask Mr Martin, with the Doctor's compliments, for three slabs of portable soup.'

'Three slabs of portable soup it is, sir,' said Killick, adding 'It won't be nearly enough, though; not nearly enough,' as it were to himself.

Jack returned to his letter. 'My dear, we are to have a farewell dinner in half an hour. There is plenty of time, but I know that all hands concerned are anxious for its success, the more so in that Nutmeg is a regular man-of-war with a pennant, and led by Killick they will come in on one pretext or another, or peer through the companion, glooming and coughing at us until we are up there, square-rigged and spotless, to welcome our guests.'

He had finished the letter, with love and kisses all round when the door opened for Tom Pullings, now acting as the frigate's first lieutenant again, in spite of which he was wearing the uniform of his rank as commander, a splendid uniform, though somewhat creased and smelling of tropical mould, not having been put on for the last nine thousand miles. 'Forgive me, sir,' he said, 'but you did not hear me knock; and I believe a boat is putting off from Triton.'

'Thank you, Tom,' said Jack. 'I shall just seal this letter and then I am with you.'

'And sir, I am very much ashamed to say that when you first came aboard I quite forgot to give you a letter handed to me at Callao. It was in the pocket of this here coat and it flew clean out of my mind till I heard it crinkle.' Jack instantly perceived that the letter was from his natural son, begotten when he was on the Cape Station in his youth, and he scarcely heard Pullings' confused account of a clergyman that had visited the Surprise when she put in, had been deeply disappointed at finding that Captain Aubrey was not aboard, nor Dr Maturin; spoke perfect English, only with a sort of brogue; you would have said he was an Irishman, only he was black, coal-black. Tom had met him again at the Governor's, where he stood next to the Bishop, dressed in a purple frock and treated with great respect. It was there that he had given Tom this letter. Renewed apologies: retreat.

'A letter from Sam,' said Jack, passing the first sheet. 'How well he expresses himself - a very happy turn of phrase, upon my word. There is a message for you,' - passing the second -'And something in Greek. Pray read it all.'

'How he is coming on, to be sure: he will soon be vicargeneral, at this rate. It is not Greek but Irish, and referring to my intervention with the Patriarch it says May God set a flower upon your head.'

'Come, that is civil. I could hardly have put it better myself. So the Irish have a writing of their own? I had no idea.'

'Certainly they have a writing of their own. They had it long before your ancestors left their dim Teutonic wood; and indeed it was the Irish first taught the English the ABC, though with indifferent success, I freely admit. Yet this is a very handsome letter, so it is.'

'Now, sir,' said Killick, a razor in his hand, a towel over his arm, 'the water is getting cold.'

'He is the dearest fellow,' said Jack to himself, reading Sam's letter through once more, 'but how glad I am it came when mine was done.' Sam's existence was perfectly well known and accepted in Ashgrove Cottage; it was perfectly well known and a source of much amusement aboard the Surprise, many of whose older hands had seen the young man first come aboard, his father's image, though shining black. But Jack Aubrey's mind, though logical in mathematics and celestial navigation (he had read several papers to the Royal Society, with great applause on the part of those Fellows who understood them: gloomy fortitude on the part of the rest) was less so where laws were concerned: some, and almost all of those to do with the service, he obeyed without question; others he transgressed at times and then suffered in his conscience; others again he laughed at. Sam's place in this shifting landscape was obscure. Jack could not feel any easily defined guilt at that remote fornication, and he heartily loved his black popish priest of a boy; but a contradiction still remained, and it would have made him profoundly uneasy to read a letter from Sam while he was himself writing to Sophie.

The letter itself was perfect. Between the My dear Sir and the Your most humble obedient and affectionate servant it spoke of Sam's pleasure at seeing the ship, his disappointment at not being able to pay his respects to Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin; of his journey across the Andes; of the great kindness of the Bishop, an ancient gentleman from Old Castile. Everything was entirely discreet; anyone could have read it; yet the whole breathed affection; and Jack had returned to the beginning still again when Killick wiped the smile off his face with the news that the Nutmeg too had lowered down a boat.

In point of fact neither this nor the Triton's was coming to the Surprise; they had quite different tasks, and the foolish anxiety on the part of the frigate's people meant that Jack stood on the quarterdeck, hot in his best clothes in spite of the awning, for what seemed a very long and hungry waste of time. The group to leeward, Pullings, Davidge, West and Martin, the first, second, third lieutenants and the assistant surgeon, found the waiting equally hot and even hungrier. Hot, because although only Pullings was in uniform (West and Davidge, dismissed from the Navy, had no right to it; nor had Martin, though for different reasons) the others were dressed in formal clothes; and they too regretted their coats, waistcoats, high tight neckcloths, leather shoes. Hungrier, because they had reverted to the old-fashioned dinner at two bells (Pullings messing with the gunroom rather than in solitary state), and that was now an hour and a half ago. Presently Martin's lot improved, for Stephen came up, severely buttoned, shaved and brushed, and they fell into a most animated conversation in a neutral zone abaft the capstan, just not encroaching on the captain's holy windward solitude; and the immense amount of information each had to convey abolished all thought of food. This was a comfort denied the lieutenants: their minds ran on their dinner; their stomachs rumbled, they swallowed from time to time, but they said little, so little that Mr Bulkeley the bosun could be heard in the waist quietly reproving one of his mates for being barefoot: 'What will the gentlemen think of us when they come up the side?'

This would be in the very near future, for now the real boats had shoved off, and Killick and his mates were on their way with trays of glasses, bottles, fritoons and what other delicacies the Surprise could afford.

'Killick!' they called, not very loud; but Killick affected not to hear, and pursing his lips he posed the trays on the gleaming capstan head, everything arranged just so, the pieces of baconrind neatly crossed, nothing to be touched until the feast began.

'Stand by,' cried the bosun, and poised his call. 'Side-men away,' called West, the officer of the watch, as the first boat hooked on and the guests were piped aboard.

The first was Goffin, a tall burly black-haired man with a red face, a post-captain who had been cashiered (though he still wore the naval uniform, with trifling changes). He saluted the quarterdeck; all the officers returned the salute: he said 'How do you do, Aubrey?' without a smile and turned straight to Killick and the capstan; his nephew followed him, somewhat more gracious; then came the people from the Nutmeg, with the two surviving French officers, and finally Adams, accompanied by Reade and Oakes, for whom Jack felt a particular responsibility and who were to remain in the frigate; though they, having dined at noon, could not reasonably hope to dine again.

When all the officers had taken their whet, which was limited to gin, Hollands and Plymouth, and madeira, Jack led them below; as they trooped in, crowding the great cabin, Goffin called out 'By God, Aubrey, you do yourself proud,' and he moved towards the head of the table with its splendid array.

'Here, sir, if you please, opposite your young gentleman,' said white-gloved Killick, showing him a place at the other end, next to Pullings.

He swelled, his face went a darker red, and he sat down. It was impossible to fault the arrangement: by immemorial convention the captured French officers sat on Jack's right and left and the King's officers took place of those who were not or who were no longer King's officers. If this had been a small informal gathering and if Goffin had been a friend Jack might have ordered things differently: but then again he might not - when he had been struck off the list himself, when he had been in Goffin's uncomfortable position, well-meaning but thick-headed friends had sometimes given him the precedence due to his former rank; and he could feel the misery yet. Goffin however saw the matter in another light; he felt that his condemnation for the trifling offence of false muster was so merely technical (he had entered the name of a friend's son on his ship's books to win the wholly absent boy some years of service-time when he should in fact go to sea; a common practice, but illegal; and his clerk, repeatedly kicked and cuffed, betrayed him) that he deserved better treatment. He sat for some time, trying to work out some remark that, though offensive, should not be too gross.

He had a perfectly good opportunity with the soup, which smelt so like a glue-factory that the two Frenchmen put down their spoons before exchanging a haggard look and submitting to the horrors of war, while Pullings, for the honour of the ship, called to Stephen 'Very good soup, Doctor,' and Jack said quietly to his neighbour 'I am so sorry, Jean-Pierre: it was a desperate measure. Please tell your friend not to finish it.' But Goffin missed his chance; soups were all one to him; he ate it mechanically and passed his plate for more; and only when the plate was empty did he say to his nephew on the other side of the table, an elderly young gentleman who had failed to pass for lieutenant, 'Was you ever at a Lord Mayor's banquet, Art?'

'No, sir.'

'Or any of the City halls, Grocers', Fishmongers' and the like? This is the sort of show you see among the commercial gents.'

The shaft missed its mark, because Jack was laughing in his deeply amused, full-throated way at one of his own jokes, but this and various other jets of malignance were perceived by those at the lower end of the table and it did not take long for Jack to become aware of their uneasiness. He guessed its source when he saw that dark face down there at Pullings' right and he was certain of it a moment later.

In a pause Fielding had just said 'Speaking of bears, sir, did I ever tell you that my father was a midshipman in the Racehorse under Lord Mulgrave, or Captain Phipps as he was then, in his voyage towards the North Pole? He was not exactly shipmates with Nelson, who was in the Carcass, but they saw a great deal of one another ashore, and they got along together famously. Nelson...'

'You must not talk about Nelson with two French officers in company,' cried Horse-Flesh. 'It ain't civil.'

'Oh, never mind us, sir,' replied Jean-Pierre with a laugh.

'Our withers are unwrung. We have Duguay-Trouin, to name but one.'

'Duguay-Trouin? I never heard of him.'

'Then you have a treat in store,' said Jean-Pierre. 'A glass of wine with you, sir.'