This Thing Of Darkness (84 page)

‘Pray tell — how was your journey?’

‘Most satisfactory, thank you, although I dare say it will be easier still when the railway has reached Durham. I took the train from London to Peterborough, and from York to Darlington. I travelled the rest of the way by coach. I apprehend that the Newcastle and Darlington Junction Company is soon to complete the final stretch.’

‘Indeed so. But as a naval man, I am surprised you did not take the steam-packet.’

‘I . . . The timetable did not suit, I am afraid.’

He is lying,
thought Sheppard, privately exulting to have scored such an early hit, albeit by accident.
He does not want to travel by sea. There is something of a history there, without a doubt.

‘So, Captain FitzRoy. It seems we have been chummed together.’

‘Indeed so. I fear that I owe you an apology. When I accepted Lord Londonderry’s offer of the candidateship I had no idea that there was to be another man standing on the Conservative interest.’

Sheppard smiled wolfishly. ‘Let us say no more of it. Do you have a local agent?’

‘A gentleman has been appointed to act on my behalf - a Major Chipchase.’

‘Ah yes, Chipchase - a capital fellow,’ observed Sheppard with mock-thoughtfulness, doing his best to indicate that he thought entirely the reverse. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Taylor will be in the van of my team.’ He put what he hoped was a subtle emphasis on the word ‘team’. It would be an idea to dispirit this FitzRoy chap early on. ‘Won’t you take any ale?’

FitzRoy covered his mug with his hand. ‘No, thank you. You are most kind, but water shall be quite sufficient.’

‘I should be wary of the water hereabouts, if I were you.’

‘I am obliged to you for your concern, Mr Sheppard, but I have drunk of the water in worse places than this delightful city, I assure you.’

‘Then you must let me have the settlement of the ale at least.’

‘I shan’t hear of it. I must call the reckoning. You are my guest, and we are to work together closely over the coming weeks.’

‘Even though we are to stand against each other in the poll itself,’ remarked Sheppard pointedly.

‘Even though we are to stand against each other in the poll itself,’ smiled FitzRoy. ‘I give you my parole, Mr Sheppard, that ours shall be a fair fight, and that I shall give you my every assistance in the weeks leading up to the election.’

‘Unlike yourself, Captain FitzRoy, I make no fair pretence of family or blood. But it shall be a fair fight all right — I give you my parole to that.’

 

FitzRoy retreated to his little room high in the eaves of the Queen’s Head, sat before the fire and took off his boots. His unopened trunk watched balefully from the corner, his personal possessions guarded like little prisoners by upright rolls of brightly curled paper: half completed sea-charts and plans of South America and the Falklands, a task still unfinished after nearly five years, a task for which he had ceased receiving payment twenty-eight months previously, a task it seemed would never end, but which had still to be worked at most assiduously, for it was all he had left to cling to of his former existence. Suddenly he felt an immense wave of melancholy wash over him. He wished that he had not found Sheppard quite so obnoxious. He missed his wife and children, and he wondered what he was doing here, so far from home. He wished, too, that he had summoned up the courage to have travelled by coastal steamer - the courage, come to that, to step aboard any vessel at all. By way of consolation, he reached inside his coat for the only comforting object to hand: the letter he had received from Bartholomew Sulivan two days previously. It had filled him with joy, and it had broken his heart. It had been posted in Monte Video. ‘My dear FitzRoy,’ Sulivan had written, ‘I hope your work goes on cheerily. We arrived here after a twelve days’ passage and - would you believe it? - had not a breeze that we could call a gale of wind ...’ A passage of nautical information ensued that plucked and tore at FitzRoy’s sorrowful heartstrings, taking precedence, naturally, over the personal details that followed. Sophia Sulivan had gone with her husband, for the Sulivans had settled on a cattle-farm in West Falkland, where she had given birth to a son, James Young Falkland Sulivan, the first British subject ever to be born on the islands. When not patrolling his new domain aboard HMS
Philomel,
Captain Sulivan occupied his time collecting geological information on behalf of Darwin: the philosopher, it seemed, wanted him to research Agassiz’s new theory, proposed before the Geological Society of London, that the earth had once been covered in great ice sheets: that the great rocks strewn across the Falklands valleys had been carried there not by a flood of water but by a flood of ice. In spite of the fact that he was a good Christian, and also of course because he was one, Sulivan had been only too happy to oblige the philosopher. Darwin, it transpired, was also married with child: he was living in Upper Gower Street with his wife Emma, his son William and his baby daughter Anne, Syms Covington and Harry the tortoise, who had been renamed Harriet, now that her gender had been properly diagnosed by Mr Bell.

Recently, however, the Sulivans’ idyllic existence had been thrown over, for the
Pbilomel had
been temporarily transferred to Monte Video. Captain Beaufort’s predictions for the region had not, it seemed, come true: General Rosas, having secured much of his southern frontier, had turned his attentions to his northern neighbour. Uruguay, the new president had declared, was historically the rightful possession of Buenos Ayres, and he had announced his intention to annex it by force. He had banned all British trade from the river Plate and its upper reaches, called the Parana, and was building shore batteries and gathering troops on the southern bank. The Admiralty had decided that the mere presence of Sulivan and the
Philomel
would be enough to deter the dictator. British families had been evacuated from Monte Video as a precaution, but surely, went official thinking, the general would not be foolhardy enough to fire upon a British ship? Sulivan himself evidently did not think so, for he had brought his own family with him to Uruguay for the duration: apparently he could not bear to be parted from the erstwhile Miss Young ever again. FitzRoy shivered to think of his friend, all alone in his little brig, standing between Rosas’ forces and the barely defended Uruguayan capital; but if matters blew up, he reasoned, the
Philomel
could always put out to sea.

Astonishingly, upon arriving in Monte Video, Sulivan had run into no less a person than Midshipman Hamond, still adrift in South America, full of regret at his decision to leave the
Beagle
, and desperate to re-enlist. He had immediately appointed Hamond acting second lieutenant of the
Philomel
, and the two old shipmates were now planning the defence of Monte Video together. With a surge of pride and affection, FitzRoy recalled Hamond’s stutter and his pale, wide-eyed features, and pictured him standing shoulder to shoulder with his tall, dark, intense, devout captain. He felt sure that the pair of them would not let him down.

Such were the details of Sulivan’s life and career to date. His friend had reserved his real bombshell, however, for the end of the letter. How incredibly difficult must it have been for Sulivan to put pen to paper, to pass on such heart-rending news to his old skipper. Fuegia Basket had been found. It should have been a joyous piece of information, but the circumstances surrounding her discovery had ensured that it was anything but.

The young woman, it appeared, regarded herself as ‘civilized’, and would make her business only with the white sailors. Of York Minster, the sealer had not spoken.

FitzRoy folded the letter, replaced it in his coat pocket, and let the sadness overwhelm him utterly and completely. He surrendered outright to shame and defeat: it was a comprehensive realization of failure that-the rapacious Sheppard had managed only to glimpse at the supper-table. He had failed Fuegia Basket. He had betrayed her. Worse than that, he had allowed her innocence to be taken away as surely as if he had taken it away himself.

 

‘The committee will see you now, sir.’

The usher bowed and scraped as he made the announcement, demonstrating a level of deference normally reserved for the many peers of the realm who walked these corridors.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield had tipped him well enough to earn such fawning, but he prided himself that - when it came to earning the respect of the lower orders - his charisma was every bit the equal of his generosity. Wakefield simply oozed charisma. In his time he had charmed cab-drivers, serving-wenches, clergymen, society hostesses and, yes, peers of the realm. Even now, as his fortieth birthday receded into the distance and his fiftieth came ever closer, his square-jawed, handsome face and his brilliant white teeth glowed with youthful good health. His immaculately groomed silver hair and his finely tailored clothes spoke of a comfortable prosperity. His easy manner was at once likeable, reassuring and trustworthy. He bestowed an avuncular beam upon the grateful usher, stood up, straightened his coat, checked the watch in his waistcoat pocket, and strode into the committee room.

The business of Parliament was, of course, by necessity a little cramped these days: ever since the House of Commons had been razed by fire and its members had moved to temporary quarters, the committee business of both houses had been squeezed into a number of unsuitable little windowless rooms in the Lords. A thick, stifling atmosphere accosted Wakefield as he crossed the threshold, as if he had stepped fully clothed into a Turkish bath. The gaggle of clerks, witnesses, stenographers and dignitaries to his right were, for the most part, glistening, pink and uncomfortable; the committee members themselves, ranged in a semi-circle to his left, enjoyed a relative advantage in terms of space, but looked hardly any less ill-at-ease. In the middle, unoccupied, stood a solitary chair. This was his stage. He had remained cool in far stickier situations than this. Now was the time to be at his coolest.

‘Mr Edward Gibbon Wakefield, your lordships, the founder and general manager of the New Zealand Company.’

Wakefield bowed deeply and impressively, and took the chair.

The House of Lords Select Committee on New Zealand had first convened in 1838, after promptings from FitzRoy and others that something needed to be done to address the lawlessness of that benighted nation. Thirteen New Zealand chiefs had even clubbed together and written to the British monarch, begging for protection against the depredations of her own subjects. But more importantly - far more importantly - the American flag had been raised at the Bay of Islands, while a French Catholic mission had suddenly appeared to the north of Kororareka. French naval squadrons had already invaded Tahiti, bombarding Papiete and forcing Queen Pomare to flee her kingdom, and now Paris was looking greedily to the west. Captain William Hobson had been dispatched hastily to the South Pacific to sign the treaty of Waitangi with the thirteen chiefs, incorporating their nation into New South Wales, and to build a new capital city, to be named Auckland. The natives of New Zealand were to be given all the rights and privileges of British subjects. No white settlers could hold legal title to land unless the Crown had first purchased it from its native owners at a fair price. Only this month, the British government had gone even further, and had announced that New Zealand was to become an independent and protected colony of Great Britain. When he had heard that announcement, Edward Gibbon Wakefield had realized that, at last, his time had come.

‘My lords,’ he began, ‘for too long, New Zealand has most selfishly and sordidly been used as a dumping-ground for the very worst of our people. The very dregs of our society. But are we a selfish and sordid people? I think not.’

An elderly peer in a bag-wig harrumphed his routine assent. Wakefield smiled a like-minded smile.

‘Rather, this fine new nation should purposely be peopled with our very best men and women. Those gentlefolk who have found themselves thrown upon hardship and distress through no fault of their own, and who deserve to be granted a new beginning. My lords, our own island is become dangerously overcrowded. As you know, there is a want of corn to feed all our people. But were New Zealand to be cleared of her forests, were new cities to be constructed there, farms laid out and crops sown, harbours built and fishing fleets assembled, and, of course’ - an expression of the deepest and most sincere piety moved across Wakefield’s face - ‘were great churches to be erected to the glory of God there, then in due course all Great Britain’s problems might be solved. You might think all this an impossible dream, my lords, or at least a state of affairs that could not yet obtain for many a year. Then you must prepare to be amazed, my lords, when I tell you that
these great cities already exist.’

There was a murmur of astonishment in the committee room.

‘The New Zealand Company, my lords, is a philanthropic concern run by the Wakefield family with a view to encouraging the colonization of New Zealand by decent God-fearing folk. The first shiploads of settlers left these shores eighteen months ago, in vessels commanded by my brothers Arthur and William Wakefield, and my son Jerningham Wakefield. I have heard news — wonderful news, my lords — that this first party has founded no fewer than three new cities upon the Cook Strait, which divides the North and South Islands of New Zealand: the model and patriotically named cities of Wellington, Nelson and New Plymouth.’

‘This is extraordinary, Mr Wakefield,’ said the perspiring peer in the bag-wig. ‘But what of the savages who formerly held title to those lands?’