Desolation Island (7 page)

'You are impertinent, sir. You forget yourself. I insist upon your answering my question, instead of indulging yourself in this blackguardly manner.'

In the pleasures of his warm and luscious imagination the Admiral had indeed forgotten himself, but these words brought him violently back to the present. He turned pale, and half rising from his seat he cried, 'Let me remind you, Dr Maturin, that there is such a thing as discipline in this service.'

'And let me remind you, sir,' said Stephen, 'that there is such a thing as respect for one's word. And furthermore, I have to observe that your manner of speaking of this lady would be gross in a libidinous pot-boy. In your mouth it is offensive to the highest degree. Bread and blood, sir, I have pulled a man's nose for less. Good day to you, sir:

you know where to find me.' He walked out of the room, collided with a clerk who was in the act of opening the door, and thrust past him into the corridor.

'Send for a file of Marines,' roared the Admiral, now scarlet in the face.

'Yes, sir,' said the clerk. 'Here is Sir Joseph, to know whether Dr Maturin is still within. The Marines directly, sir.'

Leaving by the little green confidential door that gave on to the park, Stephen felt his anger die away as weariness came down off him like a pall, extinguishing the fire and with it all concern. Yet he had not walked eastwards a quarter of a mile before he became aware that his knees and hands were trembling, and that his nerves jangled intolerably, as though they had been flayed: he walked faster, towards the Grapes and the square bottle on his mantelshelf.

Mrs Broad, taking the sun at her door, saw him at the far end of the street; she read his face when he was still quite a long way off, and as he turned in she called out in her fat, cheerful voice, 'You are just in time for a late breakfast, sir. Now pray go in and sit in the parlour; there is a pure fire, drawing sweet. Your letters are upon the table; Lucy will fetch you the paper; and the coffee will be up this directly minute You could do with your breakfast today, sir, I am sure, going out so early on an empty stomach, and the streets so damp.'

He made some objection: but no, he might not go upstairs - his room was being turned out - there were pails and brooms that he might trip on in the dark - so there he sat staring at the fire, until the scent of fresh-brewed coffee filled the room, and he turned his chair to the table.

His post consisted of The Syphilitic Preceptor, with the author's compliments, and the Philosophical Transactions. After two strong cups that quelled the trembling, he automatically ate what Lucy set before him, the whole of his attention being set upon a paper by Humphry Davy on the electricity of the torpedo-fish. 'How I honour that man,' he murmured, taking up another chop. And there was that quacksalver Mellowes again, with his pernicious theory that consumption was caused by an excess of oxygen. He read the specious nonsense through, to confound the arguments one by one. 'Have I not already ate a chop?' he asked, seeing the chafing-dish renewed.

'It was only a little one, sir,' said Lucy, laying another upon his plate. 'Mrs Broad says there is nothing like a chop for strengthening the blood. But it must be ate up while it's hot.' She spoke kindly but firmly, as to one who was not quite exactly: Mrs Broad and she knew that he had eaten nothing on his journey, that he had taken neither supper nor breakfast, and that he had lain in his damp shirt.

Deep in toast and marmalade, he demolished Mellowes root and branch; and noticing the indignation with which his hand had underlined the whole claptrap peroration, he observed, 'I am not dead.'

'Sir Joseph Blaine to see you, sir, if you are at leisure,' said Mrs Broad, pleased that Dr Maturin should have such a respectable friend.

Stephen rose, set a chair at the fireside for Sir Joseph, offered him a cup of coffee, and said, 'You are come from the Admiral, I collect?'

'Yes,' said Sir Joseph. 'But as a peacemaker, I hope and trust. My dear Maturin, you handled him very severely, did you not?'

'I did,' said Stephen. 'And it will give me all the pleasure in the world to handle him more severely still, whenever he chooses, and on whatever ground. I have been expecting to receive his friends ever since I returned: but perhaps he is such a poltroon as to intend placing me under arrest. It would not surprise me. I heard him call out something to that effect.'

'In his heated state he might have done anything. He is perhaps more suited for the physical than for the intellectual side of these duties; and as you know, it was never contemplated that he should exercise..

'What was Mr Warren thinking of, to leave such an affair to him? I beg pardon for interrupting you.'

'He is sick! He is most surprisingly sick: you would not recognize him.'

'What ails Mr Warren?'

'A most shocking stroke of the palsy. His laundress- he has chambers in the Temple * found him at the bottom of the stairs: no speech left, and his right arm and leg quite paralysed. He was let blood; but they say it was too late, and hold out little hope.'

They were both heartily grieved for Mr Warren, their sound though humdrum colleague: in this immediate context, however, it was apparent to both that his stroke must result in greater power for Admiral Sievewright.

After a pause Sir Joseph said, 'It was a mercy that I stepped into the Admirality when I did: I had forgotten to tell you that the Entomologists hold an extraordinary meeting tonight. I found the Admiral in a high-wrought state of passion. I left him quiet, uneasy, and as near to admitting himself in the wrong as it is possible for a man of his rank in the service. I represented to him that in the first place you were a purely voluntary ally, our most valuable ally, and in no way his subordinate in our department; that your entirely unremunerated work, carried out at very great risk to yourself, had enabled us to accomplish wonders - I enumerated a few of 'em, together with some of the injuries you have received. I stated that Mrs Villiers was a lady of the most respectable family and connections, the object of your... ' He hesitated and looked anxiously at Stephen's expressionless face before continuing, 'of your respectful admiration for a considerable number of years, and no new acquaintance, as he supposed; that Lord Melville had described you as being worth a ship of the line to us any day of the week, a figure that I had ventured to dispute, on the grounds that no single ship of the line, no, not even a first-rate, could have dealt with the Spanish treasure-frigates in the year four; and that if by his handling of this admittedly difficult affair Sievewright had offended you to such a pitch that we were to be deprived of your services, then I made no sort of doubt that the First Lord would call for a report, and that this report would pass through my hands. For in confidence, I may tell you that my retirement has proved somewhat hypothetical: I attend certain meetings in an advisory capacity, almost every week, and there have been flattering proposals that I should accept an office with remarkably extensive powers: Sievewright is aware of this. He will apologize, if you so desire.'

'No, no. I have no wish to humiliate him at all: it is always a wretched policy, in any case. But it will be difficult for us to meet with any great appearance of cordiality.'

'So you do not fly off? You do not abandon us?' said Sir Joseph, shaking Stephen by the hand. 'Well, I am heartily glad of it. It is like you, Maturin.'

'I do not,' said Stephen. 'Yet as you know very well, without there is a perfect understanding, our work cannot be done. How much longer is the Admiral to be with us?'

'For the best part of a year,' said Sir Joseph, with the unuttered addition, 'If I don't sink him first.'

Stephen nodded, and after a while he said, 'Certainly I was vexed by his blundering attempt at manipulating me: the guileless sea-dog lulling a suspected double agent by telling him what steps have been taken, for all love! That I should be attempted to be gulled with such sad archaic stuff: it would not have deceived a child of moderate intelligence. He spoke of his own mere motion, did he not? The alleged Home Office was so much primitive naval cunning?'

Sir Joseph sighed and nodded.

'Of course,' said Stephen, 'a moment's reflection would have told me that. I cannot conceive how my wits came to desert me so. But the Dear knows they have been wandering these many days.. - that unpardonable error with Gomez's reports.'

Stephen had left them in a hackney-coach, as Sir Joseph knew very well: the classic lapse of an over-tired, overworked agent. 'They were recovered within twenty-four hours, the seals unbroken,' he said. 'No harm was done. But it is true that you are not in form. I told poor Warren that the Vigo trip was too much for any man, immediately after Paris. My dear Maturin, you arc knocked up: you must forgive me for saying so, but you arc quite knocked up. As a friend I see you better than you see yourself. \our face has fallen away; your eyes are sunk; you arc a wretched colour. I do beg you will seek advice.'

'Certainly my health is but indifferent,' said Stephen, tapping his liver. 'I should never have flown out upon the Admiral had I been in the full possession of my faculties. I am engaged upon a course of physic that allows me to carry on from day to day, but it is a Judas-draught, and although I can stop the moment I please, it may play me an ugly trick. I suspect it of having clouded my judgement in a case where I lost my patient, and that weighs upon me cruelly.' Stephen very rarely confided in any man, but he had a great liking and respect for Sir Joseph, and now, in his pain, he said, 'Tell me, Blaine, just how far was Diana Villiers involved in this affair? You know the importance I attach... you know the nature of my concern.'

'I wish with all my heart I could make a clear-cut reply; but in all honesty I can give you no more than my impression. I think Mrs Wogan did impose upon her to a large extent; but Mrs Villiers is no fool, and a clandestine correspondence rarely assumes the form of foolscap documents forty pages long. And then the precipitate departure- chaise and four all night and day to Bristol - a six-oared boat and the rowers promised twenty pounds a head to overtake the Sans Souci lying windbound in Lundy Roads- gives some colour to the notion of an uneasy conscience. Yet I am inclined to think that the haste was the fact of Mr Johnson, moved by a purely personal motive. Not that as an American he might not also be interested in information of value to his own country: though we have not established any connection whatsoever between him and Mrs Wogan, apart from this perhaps fortuitous common acquaintance with Mrs Villiers and, of course, a common interest in America. But at all events it is the United States that have benefited from these activities, not France. Mrs Wogan was their Aphra Behn. Their Aphra Behn,' he repeated, finding no response.

'Aphra Behn, the lewd woman that wrote plays in the last age?' said Stephen at last.

'No, no: there you are out for once, Maturin,' said Sir Joseph with great satisfaction. 'You have fallen into the vulgar error. As to her morals, I have nothing to say, but she was first and foremost an intelligence agent. I had some of her Antwerp reports in my hands not a week since, when we were looking through the Privy Council files, and they were brilliant, Maturin, brilliant. For intelligence, there is nothing like a keen-witted, handsome woman. She told us that De Ruyter was coming to burn our ships. It is true that we did nothing about it, and that the ships were burnt; but the report itself was a masterpiece of precision. Yes, yes.'

In the long pause that followed Stephen considered Sir Joseph as he sat there musing by the fire, his fine, kindly face, more like that of a country gentleman than of an official who had spent most of his life behind a desk, set in an amiable expression; and it occurred to him that somewhere in that keen, capacious mind a thought was forming: 'If Maturin is in fact reaching the end of his usefulness, we had better get him out of the way before he makes some costly mistake.' The thought would no doubt be tempered with genuine regard, friendship, and humanity, even by gratitude; it would probably contain a clause to the effect that Maturin might yet recover, and that in his powers, his connections, and his unrivalled knowledge of the situation in his own particular sphere might be put to service; but as things stood, with regard to many factors, including the position of the Admiralty, the thought even without any qualification, would be a reasonable and indeed proper thought in the official part of Sir Joseph's mind. A well-run intelligence service must have its system of dealing with those who were past their best or who had fallen by the wayside and who yet knew too much: a knacker's yard run with more or less brutality according to the nature of the chief; or at least a temporary limbo.

Sir Joseph felt the pale eye upon him, and it was with a certain uneasiness that he returned to Aphra Behn. 'Yes. She was a brilliant agent, brilliant. And we might call Mrs Wogan the Behn of Philadelphia. She too turns an elegant verse, and she writes a pretty play; letters are as good a shield as natural philosophy, perhaps even better. But unlike Mrs Behn she has been caught, and she is to be packed off on the first ship bound for New Holland, lucky not to be hanged. I never like to see a woman hanged, do you, Maturin? But I was forgetting - all is grist to your grisly mill, and you have your female subjects too. She is not to be hanged, because the D of C, as our Admiral would put it, has made interest for her: it seems they were bed-fellows not long since. For the same reason she is to be treated with certain égards' a corner to herself aboard, perhaps a woman, and no servitude when she arrives at Botany Bay, there to spend the rest of her days. Botany Bay! What a goal for a naturalist, if not for an adventuress! Maturin, you need, you deserve, a break, a holiday to set you up. Why do not you accompany this ship? To keep your hand in, you can plumb the lady's mind; it contains a vast deal more than was revealed to us, of that I am very sure, and what she has to say may resolve your doubts about Mrs Villiers. To make my suggestion more tempting, I may observe that the ship in question is to be commanded by your friend Aubrey, though he don't yet know this part of his duty. The Leopard, for the Leopard is her name, was already under orders for Botany Bay to deal with the unfortunate Mr Bligh, of whose predicament you arc aware; when she has done this, and has delivered Mrs Wogan, together with some people we shall add as a blind, she is to join our force in the East Indies, where, with your spirits quite recovered, you will be of the utmost service. Pray do consider of it, Maturin.'