Post Captain (54 page)

Sir Joseph looked grave, but said he was sure that any request from Dr Maturin would receive the most sympathetic attention.

'My request is, that Captain Aubrey, in the Lively, should form part of the squadron.'

Sir Joseph's face cleared wonderfully. 'Certainly: I think I may promise that on my own responsibility,' he said. 'I believe Lord Melville would wish it: it may be the last thing he can do for his young friend. But is that all, sir? Surely, that cannot be all?'

'That is all, sir. You oblige me most extremely: I am deeply obliged to you, Sir Joseph.'

'Lord, Lord,' cried Sir Joseph, waving away the obligation with a file. 'Let me see: she has a surgeon, of course. I cannot in decency supersede him - besides, that would not answer. You must have a temporary rank - you shall go in her with a temporary rank, and join early in the morning. The full instructions will take some time to draw up - the Board must sit - but they will be ready by this evening, and you can go down with the Admiralty messenger. You will not object to travelling in the darkness?'

The rain was no more than a drizzle by the time Stephen came out into the park, but it was enough to prevent him from wandering among the bookstalls of Wych Street as he had intended, and he returned to the Grapes. There he sat in a high leather chair, staring at the fire, his mind ranging in many, many directions or sometimes merely turning on itself in a comfortable lethargy, until the grey daylight faded into a dim, unemphatic night, foggy and suffused with orange from the lamps outside. The coming of an Admiralty messenger aroused him from his delicious sense of inhabiting a body with indefinite, woollen bounds, and he realized that he had not eaten since his biscuit and madeira with Lord Melville.

He called for tea and crumpets, a large number of crumpets, and with candles lit on the table by his side, he read what the messenger had brought: a friendly note from Sir Joseph, confirming that the Lively should be sent and observing 'that in compliment to Dr Maturin he had given orders that the temporary commission should be modelled as closely as possible upon that granted to Sir J. Banks, of the Royal Society', which he hoped might give pleasure; the commission itself, an imposing document, entirely handwritten because of the rarity of its form, with Melville's signature smudged with haste; an official letter requesting and directing him to proceed to the Nore to join his ship forthwith; a later note from Sir Joseph to say that the instructions could not be ready until after midnight, begging his pardon for the delay, and enclosing a ticket for Le Astuzie Feminili - it might help Dr Maturin to pass the hours agreeably, and persuade him to do justice to Cimarosa, 'that amiable phoenix'.

Sir Joseph was a wealthy man, a bachelor; he liked to do himself well; and the ticket was for a box, a small box high on the left-hand side of the house. It gave a better view of the audience and the band than the stage, but Stephen settled into it with a certain complacency; he leant his hands, still greasy from the crumpets, upon the padded edge and looked down at the groundlings - his fellows on almost every other occasion - with some degree of spiritual as well as physical loftiness. The house was filling rapidly, for the opera was much talked of, much in fashion, and although the royal box away on his right was empty, nearly all the others had people in them, moving about, arranging chairs, staring at the audience, waving to friends; and immediately opposite him there was a group of naval officers, two of whom he knew. Beneath him, in the pit, he recognized Macdonald with his empty sleeve pinned across his coat, sitting next to a man who must surely be his twin brother, they were so alike. There were other faces he knew: all London that attended to music seemed to be there, and some thousands that did not - an animated scene, a fine buzz of conversation, the sparkle of jewels; and now that most of the audience was thoroughly settled, the waving of fans.

The house darkened and the first notes of the overture quelled the greater part of the talk, muting the rest. Stephen turned his eyes and his attention to the band.

Poor thin pompous overblown stuff, he thought; not unpleasant, but quite trivial. What was Sir Joseph thinking of, to compare this man with Mozart? He admired the red-faced 'cellist's bowing, however - agile, determined, brisk. To his right a flash of brightness drew his eye: a party of latecomers walking into their box and letting in the light from the door at the back. Goths: Moorish barbarity. Not, indeed, that the music had much to say: not that his attention had been wrenched painfully from something that required close concentration. Though it would have been all one to those grass-combing Huns, had it been Orpheus in person.

A charming harp came up through the strings, two harps running up and down, an amiable warbling. Signifying nothing, sure; but how pleasant to hear them. Pleasant, oh certainly it was pleasant, just as it had been pleasant to hear Molter's trumpet; so why was his heart oppressed, filled with an anxious foreboding, a dread of something imminent that he could not define? That arch girl posturing upon the stage had a sweet, true little voice; she was as pretty as God and art could make her; and he took no pleasure in it. His hands were sweating.

A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations - admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music. He himself at this moment was thinking in terms of scent.

The orchestra and the people on the stage pumped busily up to the obvious climax: it blared out - the house burst into a roar of applause, and in the latecomers' box he saw Diana Villiers, clapping politely but with no great enthusiasm, not looking at the stage with its smirking bowing actors but at someone deeper in the box behind her. Her head was turned in a curve he would have recognized in an even greater crowd: her long white gloves, pointing upwards, beat steadily together as she talked over the general din, her expression and the movements of her head pushing her meaning through the noise.

There was another woman beside her - Lady Jersey, he thought - and four men behind. Canning; two officers in scarlet and gold; a civilian with the high colour and oyster eye of Hanover and the ribbon of the Garter across his breast - a minor royal. This was the man to whom she was speaking: he looked stupid, uncomprehending; but pleased, almost lively.

Stephen watched with no particular emotion but with extreme accuracy. He had noted the great leap of his heart at the first moment and the disorder in his breathing, and he noted too that this had no effect upon his powers of observation. He must in fact have been aware of her presence from the first: it was her scent that was running in his mind before the curtain fell; it was in connection with her that he had reflected upon these harps.

Now the applause had stopped, but Diana's hands were still raised, and leaning forward he watched with an even greater intensity. She was moving her right hand as she talked to the man behind her and by Christ she was moving it with a conscious grace. The door at the back of the box opened. Another broad blue ribbon, and the women stood up, bobbed. He could not see the face for the tall standing men, but he could see, he did see this essential change confirmed - her whole movement, from the carriage of her head to the pretty flirt of her ostrich-fan was subtly altered. Bows, more bobs, laughter, the door closed, the outward-facing group reformed: the figure reappeared in another box. Stephen took no notice of him, did not care if he were the Duke of Hell, but concentrated his utmost

attention upon Diana to prove what he knew to be the fact. It was so: everything showed it, and he extracted the last dreg of pain from the knowledge, the spectacle. She was on display. The purity of wild grace was gone, and the thought that from now on he must associate vulgarity with his idea of her was so painful that for a while he could not think clearly. Not that it was in the least obvious to anyone who knew her less well, or who valued that purity less highly, and not that it detracted in any way from the admiration of the men in the audience or of her companions, for it was done with great instinctive art; but the woman in the box over there was not one to whom he would have paid any attention, at any time.

She was uneasy. She felt the intensity of his gaze and from time to time she looked round the house; and each time she did so he dropped his eyes, as he would have done, stalking a doe: there were plenty of people looking at her from the pit and the other boxes - indeed, she was perhaps the finest woman there, in her low sky-blue dress and the diamonds in her black, high-piled hair. In spite of his precaution their eyes crossed at last: she stopped talking. He meant to rise and bow, but there was no power whatsoever in his legs. He was astonished, and before he could grip the pad in front of him to raise himself the curtain had gone up and the harps were racing through glissando after glissando.

That my body should be affected to this point, he said, is something beyond my experience. I have felt the great nausea before, God knows, but this want of control... Did the Diana I last saw at New Place ever exist in fact? A creation of my own? Can you create a unicorn by longing?

Through the music and the caterwauling on the stage the insistent knocking at the locked door of his box disturbed the course of his reflection. He did not reply, and presently it went away. Had he had a hand in her death? He shook his head to deny it.

At last the curtain came sweeping down and the light increased. The box over there was empty, a pair of long white gloves drooped over the plush in front; and the band was playing God save the King. He sat on, and in time the standing slowly-moving crowd below shuffled out, a few people darting back for forgotten hats, and the place was empty, an enormous shell. The people of the house walked about the emptiness with an everyday step, picking up rubbish, putting out the lights.

Two said, 'There's a gent still there, up in the box.'

'Is he drunk?'

'Perhaps he thinks there is another act; but there ain't no more, thank God.'

'Come, sir,' they said, opening the door with their little key, 'it's all over now. This is the end of the piece.'

Long before dawn the Lively's warm, smelly, close-packed gun-deck awoke to violent and unexpected life, the strong-voiced bosun's mates roaring 'All hands! All hands unmoor ship. Rise and shine! Show a leg there! Tumble up, tumble up, tumble up!' The Livelies - the male Livelies, for there were about a hundred women aboard - tore themselves from their pink companions or their more prosaic wives, tumbled up into the wet darkness and unmoored the ship, as they were desired. The capstan turned, the fiddle squeaked, the temporary ladies hurried ashore, and the Nore light faded astern: the frigate stood for the North Foreland with a favourable tide and a quartering wind.

The officer of the watch checked the noise of speculation, but it continued under the cover of the rumbling holystones while the people washed the decks. What was up? Had Boney started his invasion? Something was up, or they would never have been ordered to sea with only half their water filled. Port admiral's barge had come alongside, a civilian and an officer: one gent was with the captain yet.

No news so far, but that there Killick or Bonden would know before breakfast-time was over.

In the gun-room the wonder was quite as great, and quite as uninformed; but it had a depth of apprehension and uneasiness that was lacking before the mast. Word had gone about that Dr Maturin was aboard again, and although they liked him well enough, they dreaded what he might bring with him.

'Are you quite sure?' they asked Dashwood, who had had the morning watch.

'I would not positively take my oath,' he said, 'because he was muffled against the rain, and it was dark. But I have never seen anyone else on earth come up the side like a left-handed bear: you would never believe it could be done, without you see it. I should be certain, if the boat had not answered "aye aye".'

'That decides it,' said Mr Simmons. 'The Admiral's coxswain could never have made such a mistake. It must have been some commissioned officer that the Captain knew well enough to call him his dear fellow; an old shipmate, no doubt. It cannot be Dr Maturin.'

'Certainly not,' said Mr Randall.

'Never in life,' said the master.

The purser, whose cabin had been out of reach of the bees, was more concerned with the political aspects of their sudden move, and with the wretched state of his stores. 'I have not above fifty fathoms of duck aboard,' he said, 'and not a scrap of sennit. What will become of us when we cross the line? What will become of us at Madeira, even: to say nothing of Fernando Poo? And Fernando Poo is our destination, I am very sure, for reasons of high strategy.'

Some time before this, Jack, having given directions to put to sea, came back in his nightshirt and watch-coat to his cabin, where his immediate orders lay, next to the sheaf of detailed instructions and a fat sealed envelope marked Not to be opened until latitude 430 N. He looked somewhat ecclesiastical, but also deeply concerned. 'Dear Stephen,' he said, 'thank you a thousand times for coming down so quick; I hardly hoped to see you before Falmouth. But I find I have lured you aboard on false pretences - Madeira and the West Indies are quite exploded. I am ordered to proceed to sea with the utmost possible dispatch - rendezvous off the Dodman.' He held the paper close to the light. 'Rendezvous with Indefatigable, Medusa and Amphion. Strange. And sealed orders not to be opened until so and so. What can they mean by that, Stephen?'

'I have no idea,' said Stephen.

'God damn and blast the Admiralty and all its lords,' cried Jack. 'Utmost dispatch - muck up all one's plans -I do apologize most humbly, Stephen.' He read on. 'Hey, hey, Stephen? I thought you had no idea: I thought you had just chanced to come down with the messenger. But in case of separation of one or more... certain eventualities and all that, I am requested and directed to avail myself of the counsels and advice of S. Maturin, esquire, MD etc., etc., appointed pro hac vice a captain in the Royal Navy his knowledge and discretion.'