Girl on the Orlop Deck (18 page)

But her mother was having none of it. ‘The very idea,’ she said. ‘An’ have you out an’ about all creased and anyhow. What would people think? ’Twon’t take me more’n a minute. You take a little stroll round the town an’ pop in an’ buy us some more ale at The Dolphin and by the time you gets back ’twill all be done for ’ee an’ I can have my gel back again.’

There was no point in arguing, as Marianne could see from the set of her mother’s jaw. She simply had to do as she was told and take another wind-buffeted stroll through the town which wasn’t what she wanted to do at all. ’Tis such a small place, she thought disparagingly, as she passed the ancient beams of The Duke of Buckingham, a stuck-in-the-mud place, the sort a’ place that just goes on and on and never changes. ’Tis only me what’s changed. She stood on the cobbles and watched as a carriage and pair passed by and was saddened to think that the greatest change of them all was the one that had left no sign and could never be talked about. And suddenly and without any warning, standing there in the strong sunlight and the full power of the wind, she had the most wrenching memory of her dead baby, so small and pale and never alive, and before she could prevent it her eyes were full of tears. She had to turn in to Peacock Lane before anyone could see her for fear of what they would say, for you don’t expect to see a ship’s boy standing in the street blubbing his eyes out.

This won’t do, she told herself, quite crossly. You’re dressed like a boy so act like one. And she went striding off towards The Dolphin to buy the ale, making the most of her rolling gait and deliberately being as much of a boy as she could.

Which was perhaps just as well, for whom should she see booming his way out of the dark door of The Dolphin but Tom Kettle with his
peg-legged
companion and, being a shrewd man of business, Tom Kettle recognized her at once.

‘Well dang my eyes if it ain’t young Matt,’ he said. ‘Come back on the
Superb
have ’ee?’

‘No, sir,’ Marianne told him. ‘I’m on the
Victory
.’ The pride of being able to claim such an honour dried her tears in the instant.

‘Ship’s boy, are yer?’

‘No sir, I’m a loblolly.’

‘Are you bigod!’ Tom Kettle said, plainly impressed. ‘Then you’re worth your weight in gold an’ that’s the truth of it. I allus knew you’d do well fer yourself. Didden I say so, Peg? First time I clapped eyes on ’ee I said “That boy’ll do well”. Strike me if I didn’t. Good luck to ’ee, boy. You got some sterling work ahead of ’ee once that there battle begins.’

His words stirred Marianne to the strangest emotion. It felt like homesickness. But that couldn’t be right. You don’t feel homesick for a ship, do you? And specially when you’ve only just left it an’ come ashore an’ you got no intention a’ going back to it. You feel homesick for your home. That’s what the word means. But there it was, pulling her guts with yearning, strong and unmistakable. There was no doubt about it: she was missing the ship and her shipmates.

It troubled her all the way home because it was such foolishness. ’Twas as if she was still a loblolly, which she most certainly was
not
. I must get back into my proper clothes the minute I’m home, she decided. The sooner I’m done with my old life and I’ve put it behind me and forgot it, the better.

Once he knew he was in command, Admiral Collingwood began to organize his forces. He was a patient man but a determined one and he meant to make sure that Villeneuve’s fleet was located and then penned in harbour until he could send a message to his old friend requesting him to return to them and lead the battle. There wasn’t a captain in the British fleet who didn’t know how low their Admiral had been when he left them They were
his
captains after all, who’d dined with him on the
Victory
at regular intervals all through their long chase, and none knew him better, nor admired him more. When Admiral Collingwood sent out a message requesting them to dine aboard the
Royal Sovereign
, they accepted his
invitation
at once. Like him, they felt the time of reckoning was long overdue.

He outlined his plan to them in some detail. He intended to dispatch his ships, two by two to every likely harbour and the rest in line to pick up signals and pass them on. The watchers would work in pairs so that
their vigil was constant and when they saw any arrivals or any significant activity they would flag it back to the next ship along the line. A squadron would be sent to guard the Straits of Gibraltar to make sure that there was no possibility of the French slipping through in to the Mediterranean, the rest would watch the harbours.

‘We have several advantages over the French,’ Colllingwood told them, ‘as you well know. We are excellent navigators and have given proof of that in the commendable speed with which we crossed the Atlantic, our gunners fire at twice the rate of any Frenchman, be he never so well trained, our ships are copper-bottomed, which we’ve had cause to be thankful for over the last two years, and we have Mr Popham’s new signalling method, which ensures that our messages are promptly sent and quickly passed on. I mean to make full use of it.’ And then remembering the words with which Nelson always involved his captains, he added, ‘How say you to that?’

They thought it an excellent plan and said so. ‘We’ve let the beggars elude us for far too long,’ Captain Scott said. ‘Time they were brought to book.’

So the paired ships were sent off on their guard duty. It took a little time before they were all in position, but the watch was kept as soon as they arrived off shore. The
Sirius
and the
Euryalus
were sent to Cadiz, which pleased Jem, because, as he said, ‘I’ve know’d the beggars would come here, all along.’

‘I hope they prove ’ee right,’ Tom said, ‘for I tell ’ee, I’m sick to the teeth with all this hangin’ about.’

August wore away and eased into a golden September. The British ships prowled the Spanish coast and blocked the Straits of Gibraltar, waiting and watching. The
Victory
and the
Superb
rode at anchor at Spithead, waiting for orders. Nelson, having reported to the Admiralty in person, recovered his spirits at Merton in the peace of the countryside. It was a quiet interlude which none of them expected to last for long.

Marianne spent her time helping her mother with the laundry and the housework. She found it mightily boring after the drama of the seas and it took her a long time to get used to wearing skirts again and even longer to accustom herself to ale instead of grog. One evening, after nearly three weeks of her new dull existence, she was so homesick for seagoing company that she dressed herself in her sailor’s slops, while her
parents were safely in the kitchen, and sneaked out to the Dolphin for a pint of grog and an hour or two of sailors’ talk. It was the best evening she’d spent since she came ashore. For a start she was greeted royally by a gunner called Taffy who recognized her as ‘one of our loblollies’ and from then on she sat in the midst of the crew, singing with the best until it was late at night and she was smitten by conscience and said she had to get home ‘or my ol’ woman’ll have somethin’ to say.’

‘Keep a weather eye out for the signals,’ Taffy advised her. ‘’Tis my view of it we shall be sailing in a day or two.’

His shipmates mocked him. ‘You been a-sayin’ that ever since we dropped anchor.’ But he was undeterred. ‘You mark my words,’ he said.

She did mark them. They echoed in her dreams.
Sailing in a day or two
and then I shall be left behind, she thought, as she tossed in her truckle bed, with nothin’ to do except clean other people’s clothes and drag about in skirts.

And then suddenly, everything changed. Lizzie Templeman came knocking on their door early one morning, breathless with excitement, to tell them that another ship of the line had arrived and was lying at Spithead ‘alongside the other two’.

‘The captain come ashore first thing,’ she reported. ‘I seen him with my own eyes. And they say he’s gone to Merton for to see Lord Nelson. What do ’ee think to that?’

‘They’ve found the Frenchies,’ Marianne told her. ‘That’s what’s happened as sure as fate. They’ve found the Frenchies an’ he’s come for to tell him so.’ She was caught up in such emotion she could barely contain it all, excitement and fear because this battle was coming and it would be terrible, jealousy because her old shipmates would be there to see it and she wouldn’t, shame because she was going to skulk away here in safety instead of going with them where she really ought to be, and that terrible ache of yearning because they were the bravest men she’d ever met and they were going to their deaths. ‘I’ll go down to the Dolphin, Ma,’ she said, ‘an’ see what I can find out.’

The inn was crowded with sailors, all drinking but all oddly sober, talking quietly among themselves, their faces stern.

‘If you please, sir,’ she said to the nearest seaman. ‘Have they found the Frenchies?’

‘What’s it to you, gel?’ the man said, quite crossly. ‘’Tain’t none of your affair. You cut off home and leave well alone.’

Marianne was ruffled to be treated so rudely. You wouldn’t be talking to me like that if I was in my boy’s clothes, she thought, and fought back at once. ‘My brother’s a loblolly on the
Victory
,’ she said. ‘He sent me down for to find out. He wants for to know.’

The tone changed. ‘If that’s the size of it,’ the sailor said, ‘you tell him to get hisself down here quick as he can. The bum boat’s a-comin’ an’ we shall be off an’ gone within the hour. Tell him to look sharp, or he’ll miss it.’

Oh no he won’t, Marianne thought, as she ran home. He’ll be back afore you can down that ale a your’n. She was still running when she reached home and she didn’t stop until she was in the back bedroom and pulling her ditty bag out of the closet. By the time her mother followed her into the room, alarmed by the rush of her arrival, she’d already got her breeches on.

‘Land sakes, child,’ her mother said.’ What
are
you a-doin’ of?’

‘I’m goin’ back to sea, Ma,’ she said. ‘It
was
the Frenchies. They got the bum boat a-comin’ to pick us up.’

‘Us?’ Mary said. ‘What are you on about? You’re not goin on no bum boat, surely to goodness. You’ve come home. You’ve left ’em.’

Marianne was pulling her jacket over her head. ‘I’m goin’ back to ’em,’ she said. ‘It’s no good you goin’ on. I’ve made my mind up to it.’ She started to plait her hair in the old familiar way, her length of tarred string between her teeth.

To be told such a thing put Mary into a panic. ‘Child! Child!’ she said. ‘Think what you’re doin’. This en’t a sea trip, they’m off to fight a battle. You said so yourself. You could get killed.’

The plait was tied and neat. She was shipshape and orderly and quite herself again. ‘I know that, Ma,’ she said calmly, putting on her shoes. ‘But I can’t stay here. I got a job to do. Mr Beattie’s dependin’ on me.’

‘Well then let him. He’s got other boys. He don’t need you.’

‘’Twill be a big battle, Ma,’ Marianne said, putting on her black hat. ‘It’s been a long time comin’ an’ he’ll need every hand he can get. He told me so when I asked for leave.’

Mary tried a straight entreaty. ‘Please don’t go,’ she said. ‘Please. For my sakes. I couldn’t bear it if you got killed.’

But she was wasting her breath. Marianne’s head was full of powerful images, of the gun deck and the gunners testing their cannon, of Mr Beattie in his terrible orlop deck waiting for the wounded, of Nelson,
calm and commanding on the quarter-deck. That was where she belonged, on that beautiful ship, where she was duty bound to be and where she was going. She was beyond thought or argument, already on her journey. In a moment of instinctive pity, she stopped to kiss her mother’s cheek, then she ran out of the door and out of the house.

N
ELSON ARRIVED AT
The George Inn in Portsmouth early the next morning and promptly set up his headquarters there as he usually did when he was in that city. News of his arrival spread with the speed of a gunpowder trail. Within an hour the streets were clogged with carriages and thronged with excited crowds, most of them admirers who had come to cheer him and wish him God speed but some sightseers, come in a more ghoulish way to take ‘one last look at him afore he goes.’

Lizzie Templeman arrived at Mary’s house just before midday. She was appalled to find her old friend in tears and angered when she heard of Marianne’s foolishness. ‘What’s got into the gel?’ she said. ‘’Twas one thing to go huntin’ for our Jem – you could see the sense of
that
– but there’s no need for this, surely to goodness. Didn’t ’ee tell her?’

‘Over an’ over,’ Mary wept, ‘an’ she never took a blind bit a’ notice.’

‘I’m off to see Lord Nelson an’ wish him Godspeed,’ Lizzie said. ‘Shall ’ee come with me?’

‘What’s the good a’ that?’ Mary said. ‘He won’t make her come back to me, now, will he?’

‘No, ‘Lizzie agreed, ‘but I tell ’ee one thing. If anyone can beat the Frenchies and keep his men safe while he’s a-doin’ it, he’s the man. I means for to go and give him a cheer. ’Tis the least we can do. Come with me, my dear. He’s a good man an’ ’twill cheer you to see him.’

So Mary was persuaded and put on her bonnet and shawl to join the crowd. It was a chill, calm afternoon with very little wind and the ships at anchor in the harbour lay still as if they were sleeping. But the streets were raucous with people all jostling for the best view and shouting the latest news at one another.

It wasn’t long before a neighbour came pushing her way through the throng to join them. ‘Come to see him off, have ’ee?’ she said. ‘That’s the
style. You got to see him off, I means for to say. I said to my Sidney, I said, I mustn’t miss this. Got to see our hero off to sea. I means for to say. An’ he said – my Sidney I mean not Lord Nelson –
Well, now, Molly Simmons, I s’pose I shan’t see you till he’s took ship then
. That’s just typical of my Sidney. Well you know what he’s like, Mary. No sense a’ hist’ry. Never has had. I means for to say, we can hardly let him go off to sea with the battle comin’ an’ all an’ not be here to cheer him. The very idea! That’s the trouble with my Sidney. He don’t think. Never has done. I said to him only yesterday, I said.…’

Lizzie took Mary’s arm and edged her out of the way. A garrulous neighbour would be just the sort of person to say something foolish and upset her and Molly Simmons was renowned for letting her tongue run away with her. ‘We’ll be better off over here,’ she said. ‘Better view.’

There was a stir at the edge of the crowd and somebody shouting. ‘He’s gone out the back door. This way! Come on!’ Then the horde of people moved as one entity and Mary and Lizzie were carried along by the tidal rush with all the others, willy-nilly. Their hero had tried to make an
unobtrusive
exit from the back door of The George instead of pushing his way through the crowd in the street. He’d been seen of course – there were too many eyes looking out for him – and was being followed down the narrow alleys of Penny Street and Green Row towards the bathing machines. It wasn’t long before they’d caught up with him and surrounded him, some with tears in their eyes, some falling to their knees, cap in hand to call out a blessing on him as he passed. Others offered him their hands and were touched when he told them he wished he still had two arms so that he could shake hands ‘with more friends’. Many wept. It was an
extraordinary
, emotional progress. When they reached the steps by the bathing machines the crowd broke ranks and pushed their way onto the parapet, ignoring the sentries who were trying to hold them back, anxious to watch him every step of the way. There were renewed cheers and cries of ‘God bless ’ee, sir.’ And then he was descending the step towards his barge, alone and serious, and there wasn’t a woman in the crowd who wasn’t crying.

‘Such a fine good man,’ Molly Simmons said, pushing in between her neighbours. ‘I means for to say, when you think what’s ahead of him, poor soul, off to fight them pesky Frenchies, no wonder he looks peaky. They say t’will be a fearsome battle. This could be the last time he sets foot on English soil, think a’ that. I means for to say, the last time we shall ever see him again.’

‘Don’t talk morbid,’ Lizzie said fiercely, trying to check her. ‘You don’t know what’s to come no more than any of us.’

‘Quite right,’ Mary said, glaring at her neighbour because she was too near tears to do anything else. ‘No point meeting trouble half way. If ’tis coming, ’tis coming, and we’ll face it when we must, that’s my opinion of it. Meantime I’ll trouble you to keep
your
opinion to yourself.’

Molly Simmons blushed, suddenly remembering that Lizzie had a son in the fleet. ‘Time goes on, that’s the trouble,’ she said apologetically. ‘You sort a’ loses track. Seems only yesterday we was all at your Jem’s wedding. Such a pretty wedding. All them flowers an’ all.’ But her
neighbours
had turned away from her and were pushing their way out of the crowd.

‘How can she say such things?’ Mary wailed. ‘Don’t she have any sense at all?’

‘Let’s go home,’ Lizzie said, taking her arm. ‘We’ve seen him go an’ he’s on his way an’ there’s nothing to be gained by staying here.’

She was right. At that moment, Nelson was sitting in the barge beside his old friend Captain Hardy, being rowed out to his flagship. From time to time he waved his hat to the crowds still cheering along the shore and smiled as some of them ran down onto the beach and waded into the sea to follow him as far as they could. It had been such an extravagant display of affection he was still moved by it.

‘I had their huzzas before,’ he said to Hardy, ‘I have their hearts now.’

Aboard his flagship, the gunners were standing ready to give him a
thirteen
gun salute and the rest of the crew were on deck, lined up and ready to greet him as he was piped aboard, Marianne among them,
surreptitiously
watching the barge as it slid across the milky water towards them, oars dipping in unison. From time to time she glanced up at the
poop-deck
, which was full of politicians and statesman and such like waiting to dine with the Admiral, and a very grand lot they were in their fine hats and their fine coats, their silk stockings and their buckled shoes, standing about as if they were posing for their portraits and talking to one another in their loud plummy voices. They didn’t impress her in the least. We shan’t see the likes a’ you around when the fighting starts, she thought, looking up at them. You’ll be long gone by then. She was swollen with pride to think that she would be at the battle alongside the
gunners and the marines and all the valiant men who would be putting their lives at risk, while these sugared dandies were showing off their finery in London. It surprised her to realize how much she’d altered her opinion of the gentry now that she’d had a couple of years in the navy. There was a time when she’d have admired ’em. But not now. What we wants, she thought, is a good strong wind from the right quarter so that we can set sail. You’d be off to shore pretty quick then.

But there was no wind until the following morning and then it was too slight to be very much help to them. Nevertheless they weighed anchor and set sail along the Channel as well as they could. At first they hugged the coast, watching as the fashionable holidaymakers in Lyme and Torquay stood along the promenades in the sunshine to wave to them. When they reached Weymouth the wind became foul and it was only by Captain Hardy’s exemplary seamanship that they avoided being blown into the town. But when the wind turned fair again, they continued to Plymouth, where they were joined by the two ships of the line that were waiting for them, and from there they sailed on to the Scilly Isles where they met up with the
Decade
who was on her way back from Cadiz bringing Nelson’s old friend Sir Richard Bickerton home on leave because he was too ill to continue in command.
Victory
hove to so that he could come aboard, which he did although he was obviously very unwell, and the news he brought from Spain was as welcome to Nelson as he was. Collingwood had the French fleet penned in at Cadiz, the Straits were so well guarded there was no possibility of any ships slipping through into the Mediterranean and there had been no battle, as yet.

‘If you have a fair wind,’ Sir Richard told his old friend, as they said goodbye to one another forty minutes later, ‘you will be in time. God go with you.’

His news spread through the ship within minutes of his departure. Marianne wasn’t at all sure how she felt about it. Like so many of the men on board she felt it would be a good thing when the battle had been fought and was over and done with but even so … Hadn’t she been standing on this very deck no more than a few weeks ago praying to God not to let it happen? And now she was sailing towards it and it was coming as sure as fate.

Early the next morning, when she was on her way to the heads to empty her bucket, she met up with the gunner called Taffy and, because
the battle was still on her mind, she asked him how long it was going to take to reach Cadiz.

‘Depends on the wind,’ he said, shifting his wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other. ‘Given a fair wind we could be there in a fortnight, if ’tis foul ’twill take longer. But don’t ’ee fret, my lubber, we shall get there sooner or later. The Admiral’s set his heart on it.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘So he has.’ What was coming would come no matter what she thought about it but, foolish though it was, she thought about it constantly. She simply couldn’t help it for it seemed too terrible that these men would be killed. At least young Josh wasn’t being quite so ghoulish now that the reality of seeing bloodshed was so close and that was a blessing. But it
was
getting close – no one could deny it – and the closer it got the more she dreaded it.

In the quiet of his stateroom with Secretary Scott to assist him, Nelson was writing letters, one to the British Consul at Lisbon to keep him informed of events, and the other to Admiral Collingwood, urging him to ensure that all his ships were fully provisioned and supplied with water and begging him on no account to acknowledge his arrival. ‘I wish to arrive unbeknown to the enemy and would not have you salute or hoist colours even if you are out of sight of land.’ Then having made what preparations he could, he sent the
Euryalus
on ahead with his mail and began to draw up a plan of battle.

Jem Templeman had been fully prepared for this battle for over a month, the bungs made and in position, masts and timbers inspected and repaired wherever repair was necessary, every task no matter how large or how small completed at once and to the best of his ability. He was full of unleashed energy, secretly afraid of this coming fight and yet excited by it and eager for it too, unable to be idle, prowling about the ship as the ship prowled along the Spanish coast and the signalmen passed on any information that could be gathered and the watch kept a careful eye on Cadiz. There was now a combined French and Spanish fleet in the harbour and the ships were in plain view. Watchers from the crow’s nest claimed they could count them and if their reports were correct it was a formidable force – fifteen Spaniards of the line, and twenty-four French ships, four with 80 guns, fourteen 74s, five frigates and two gun brigs. The gunners on the
Sirius
maintained that the Spaniards could be
discounted ‘on account of they’m poor seamen and worse gunners’ but even so, thirty-nine warships was a sizeable fleet, even for Nelson to tackle.

‘Time he come an’ joined us,’ the gunners said. ‘He’ll know what’s to be done with the beggars.’ But there was no sign of his arrival yet, so, for the moment, all they could do was keep watch and to note that the Frenchies were showing no signs of coming out.

Like everyone else on the
Sirius
Tom and Jem were so tense they could barely stand still, even when they were standing by the rail chewing baccy. They fidgeted from foot to foot, spat more often than was
necessary
and swore at everything, from the food and the ship’s boys to the French and the weather.

Tom’s emotions were in such a turmoil, he was beginning to have superstitious doubts about the whole affair. ‘I can’t help a-thinkin’ of that ol’ Count Carry Cho Lo,’ he said, gazing lugubriously at the French masts massed in that distant harbour.

‘What ol’ Count Carry Cho Lo?’

‘Neapolitan prince,’ Tom explained. ‘Don’t ’ee remember? Old Amos told us about him in the Bay a’ Naples that time. Nelson hanged him from his own yard-arm and buried the beggar at sea an’ he came back to haunt him. Dead as a doornail, so Amos said – don’t ’ee remember? – standin’ up in the water with his white hair trailing an’ his eyes still open. What if he was an omen?’

‘I don’t hold with omens,’ Jem said, ‘an’ specially not afore a battle. I got enough on my plate without omens.’

‘But what if—’ Tom persisted.

‘You ask me,’ Jem said, spitting a long stream of tobacco into the sea, ‘it’s high time them lily-livered beggars come out and faced up us and took what’s a-comin’ to ’em. I’m sick to the innards waitin’ for the beggars. If Nelson was here we’d be after ’em quick as a flash.’

But it wasn’t until the 25 September that Nelson finally met up with Collingwood’s fleet, on a balmy evening when the peaceful smell of the orange groves was wafted out to sea as if to greet him. Several days later, he too saw the French and Spanish fleet in Cadiz harbour and estimated them to number thirty-three, writing in his journal that night:
It is believed that they will come to sea in a few days. The sooner the better
. But unfortunately the balm of the last few days had brought an almost total lack of wind power and neither fleet was going to sail
that day or the next. The 29 September was Nelson’s forty-seventh birthday and, as a battle was still obviously out of the question, he threw a party instead and invited all fifteen of his commanding officers to join him on
Victory
to be wined, dined and entertained – and, when the celebrations were over, to be shown his plan of attack, which they unanimously approved.