England and Other Stories (24 page)

The library clock had chimed, painfully, the morning hour. So distant had he felt from his father at this point that his father might as well have been a king and he himself the lowest of commoners. Or his father’s bastard child. It had dawned on him afterwards—gradually but with a nagging lucidity—that, though the matter was apparently being charitably concealed, this might indeed be the truth of it. It was not in his interest to question anything. It was in his interest to conspire in the deception and be grateful—to write milksop letters to his mother and sisters.

He was perhaps, though it was not in his interest ever to verify it, what his schoolfellows had called a ‘fitz’.

He prodded the disobliging fire with the poker. He recalled his mother’s once constant refrain to the maid, like some further, if unwitting, piece of parental advice: ‘A feeble fire, Betty, is worse than an empty grate.’

He saw again his schoolfellows, remembered their plaintive names. Ashmole, Palgrave, Wilkes . . .

Since he had not, even with the advantages of education, overcome by his own ingenuity the problem of his essential superfluity, it came down to the Army, the Navy or the Church. He preferred blue to red, and preferred either to the black-and-white absurdity of being a parson in a pulpit.

He hadn’t thought much, strangely, about a thing called the sea. He was acquainted with it now. And he hadn’t known that service in the King’s Navy, even when he was commissioned and sea-seasoned (even more so then) would involve these vile periods of limbo and of dismal self-exposure—a creature neither of land nor sea, caught between a dubious homesickness and three or four days, depending on the course and the weather, of actual vomiting.

There was no evil in the world but uselessness and no good but its opposite. This he understood, if he would never, precisely, understand his father’s words. He knew that his present disease could only be cured by a series of remedies. It would be eased, a little, by the first sight of his ship, then, more so, by first stepping upon it, but it would only be fully purged (and only then with much retching and wishing to be dead) once that ship had drawn up its chain. Now he was denied even the weakest of those medicines. He did not even know if his ship was at anchor.

He might have enquired at once of the innkeeper, he might enquire of anyone, but he did not want to suffer the naval indignity of having to ask the whereabouts of his vessel. He went to the window and, craning his neck, saw the lights across the water. He imagined himself foolishly asking, ‘Is any one of those the
Temeraire
?’

He would surely know at dawn anyway by the evidence of his own eyes. A Second Rate would be unmistakable. And the sight of it, the pride of it, even under veiling drizzle, would surely chase away this malady. He had never served before in anything so mighty. Even his sisters had understood. And the fact that their lordships had assigned him to a ship of the line must mean that he had not gone entirely unnoticed and was deemed to have some worth. It might even be the preliminary to a captaincy and a frigate.

But he had heard of the
Temeraire
. The name itself was an audacity. Quite so. A French name when they were fighting the French. Napoleon himself might be styled ‘
téméraire
’. More to the point, and as everyone knew (even his sisters knew and forbore to mention it), mutiny had been committed on this ship. Men had dangled from its yardarms. And for all its guns and its belligerent name, the
Temeraire
had never seen action. Its timbers had been damaged by storm and dishonoured by sedition, but never been struck by shot.

Well, it was like him then. He had not seen action either. Action: it was the very word of validated existence. He had received such promotion as he had neither by grace and favour (perhaps the whole fleet knew who, or what, he really was) nor by exploit. Their lordships must have dispatched him to the
Temeraire
because of his competence at gun practice. What else was there to do on the blockade? Gun practice, and more gun practice.

Now he would command a bigger battery of guns on a bigger gun deck. But as a proportion of the ship’s sum of guns his command would be less than what it had been on a Fourth Rate. And on the same gun deck, commanding the other battery, might be another lieutenant—call him Lieutenant Lanyard—and Lieutenant Lanyard might be a squeak of eighteen, and have seen action.

But the
Temeraire
had seen no action save mutiny.

Why, every time, must he suffer these forebodings, like Jonah going down to Joppa—and now be posted to a ship accordingly?

He turned from the window back to the fire. He might go out into the dripping lamp-lit darkness, to stretch his coach-cramped legs, to breathe at least the salt-flavoured air, to soothe his spleen. But he did not want, for some reason, to walk, as he would have to, among seamen, though he would walk among them continually soon—let it be soon—on a heaving deck. He had noticed, even as the coach rolled in, that there were many of them. He had not before seen Plymouth so crowded, nor felt—but this was some sixth sense and not a matter of the eyes—the place so pregnant with preparation. So, it would not be so long perhaps.

His reluctance was not from any cocked-hatted nicety. They would of course make way for him and touch their temples, and should he wish (but he would not) to snap at them they would jump. As sailors ashore they were not technically under the full articles of war, but it was not in their interest not to look lively. Everyone minded their interest.

It was more that such contact, or non-contact, might only make him think of his hidden respect for them, or even—and this was mutinous thinking indeed—his kinship. Aboard ship it was different. You acted within timber bounds and iron laws. A sea creature? More a sea mechanism. You did not think. This was precisely his affliction now. He was thinking.

But it was one thing the Navy had taught him, or confirmed in him. He was not, essentially, different from them. Mutinous meditation indeed. Perhaps his competence in the matter of gunnery, his quality of leadership in this regard, his ability at least to achieve what others achieved, but without threats of the lash or other fulminations—with only firmness of voice and no other tyranny than that of his pocket watch—owed itself to this inadmissible fact. Again, boys, and again! And yet again, till you are but part of your guns. As if, as he commanded them, he were really proclaiming: Know your place, know your place. Neither God nor man will find any other place or use for you than this. It is what you are for.

But he had not known action. He knew about noise and smoke and hissing steam that became as great as the smoke. He knew about powder in the mouth and nostrils. But he did not know about splinters. He trusted that, should the occasion arise and they were flying about, he would not lose his power of command. He would not lose his voice. He would not flinch or duck or wish to cover his face, not just because this would be unexemplary, but because he had been led to understand that whatever you did it made no difference.

He had not seen action, but some other sixth sense—a seventh sense—told him that this time might be the occasion. He trusted, simply, that he would do his duty. As he had done his careful, grateful, unmutinying duty to his father and (if such she was) his mother.

My dearest Mama . . . My dearest . . .

He stabbed the fire. All boldness and lustre had fled from his heart. He chewed his fingers savagely. He was himself like one of his mother’s empty grates.

Temeraire
. It was a mocking name, it was an inglorious, ill-fated ship.

I
T EMBARRASSED HIM
now, so many years later, to say he was a vicar’s son, that he’d been raised in a vicarage. It was like saying he’d been raised in some cosy cottage in the country—even if the vicarage had been in one of the less appealing suburbs of Birmingham. It was an ordinary house with a bay window. If you stood by the window you could see the church a little way along the road on the other side. ‘A stone’s throw’ was what his father always said, they were a stone’s throw. It was a common enough expression, but when he was small he always used to picture someone actually lifting their arm and tensing their back to throw a stone. He’d wonder whether the throwing was from or to the church. He was troubled by the idea of anyone throwing a stone at a church, or even from one.

He could still summon up now, though it was long ago, his father’s keen but gaunt face. His father had died when he was still small, so it was always the same unageing face that he saw, while his own face in more than fifty years had changed immensely. There was something about that time, when he was only eight and when his father, though no one knew it yet, was dying, that was imprinted on him. He couldn’t picture nearly so clearly, though he’d actually known him for longer, the face of Peter Wilson, his stepfather. And he’d never known, though the question remained, if when his father had been dying Peter Wilson had been just his mother’s friend and a friend of the family or something more, even at that time. And if his father had known it.

It was like picking up a stone and trying to guess its weight. And not knowing, even now, which way to throw it. His mother knew, but had never said. Why should she? And now that she was old and frail and losing her memory he had even less reason to press her. He could only wonder if it all still pressed upon her anyway.

His mother hadn’t met him in any case, that afternoon, at the school gates. He was eight years old and he didn’t need his mother to meet him. The school wasn’t much further away than the church. But she was one of those mothers who’d still turn up, perhaps because she was the Vicar’s wife. And he was one of those kids who, though he might have preferred his mother not to turn up, was secretly glad that she did.

But this time it was his father. It was a cold grey day in March. A mean buffeting wind was blowing. It was also the last day of term before the Easter holiday, and he wondered, though there was no logic to it, whether it was because of this that his father and not his mother had come to meet him.

He certainly hadn’t known then that his father would be dead by Christmas. Nor could his mother have known, nor even his father himself. He wasn’t well and he looked tired, standing by the school gates, but not especially ill. He’d been clearly able to manage the walk to the school, something that would prove impossible soon. He’d been told by his doctor that he shouldn’t overdo things, at just the time, around Easter, when his duties were particularly demanding, but he’d made a joke about this. There was a deputy vicar lined up to take at least some of the services, and since ‘vicar’ meant deputy anyway that meant there was a deputy-deputy.

It had disappointed him to be told that a vicar was only a deputy. It seemed like a mark of unimportance. And he’d been troubled by the idea that a doctor could tell a vicar what to do.

They’d walked back together. He felt that his father had come to the school gates in order to tell him something, to have his exclusive attention as they returned home. But something—perhaps the evil wind, constantly sending up clouds of dust and grit as they walked—had forestalled this.

It was anyway only when they got back that he realised his mother wasn’t at home. He’d assumed she’d simply indulged his father’s whim, but now his father said, ‘Mum’s sorry she couldn’t meet you, but she’ll be home any moment.’ It was said in a way that made him understand he shouldn’t ask why. In any case, almost in the same breath, his father said, rather strangely, ‘Easter is coming.’ It was hardly necessary to say it, everyone knew Easter was coming, but since he’d said it so quickly after what he’d said about his mother it made him think that Easter was like a person too who’d turn up at any moment—from wherever it was that Easter went.

His father put the kettle on and cut a thick slice of bread which he plastered with butter, then with strawberry jam. This was his regular reward for coming home from school. His father was doing exactly what his mother would normally do, though he was doing it, sleeves rolled up, with his sinewy arms, which for the first time he’d thought were not like a vicar’s arms, but just like any man’s arms.

They took their tea, and the bread and jam, into the front room. They used their front room regularly. A lot of people seemed not to do this—they reserved their front rooms for special occasions. Perhaps their own case was different because the house was a vicarage and because from the front room you could see the church. From where his father now chose to sit he couldn’t have seen the church—you had to be close to the window—but he sat so that he was nonetheless looking out, at their gate and the privet hedge juddering in the wind. It was clear that he wanted to say something.

It was St Peter’s Church and it was only a coincidence that it was Peter Wilson. There were lots of Peters. His own name was Paul. There was a St Paul too. Since his father was the Vicar of St Peter’s, he’d absorbed a few facts, even when he was very small, about St Peter. That his symbol was the crossed keys. That these keys represented the keys to heaven, since St Peter was the keeper of the gates to heaven. That Jesus had once said to St Peter that he was the rock on which he’d build his church, since the name Peter was also just an ordinary word meaning ‘rock’. It had seemed to him that, with all these attributes, Peter must be the best and most important of all the saints. So he’d been proud and glad that his father was the Vicar of St Peter’s.

But his father now said, with the tiredness in his face showing in the light from the window, that St Peter had once been no kind of saint at all. It was like his remark about Easter. It came from nowhere and seemed to be heading nowhere, but he said it with some emphasis. He said it was important to understand this. St Peter had once been no saint at all. Then he said, and this was a rather shocking remark, that it was important to understand too that there had once been no such thing as Easter.