The Letter of Marque (16 page)

He considered the image for a while, the careful drawing of the cords enveloping the balloon and holding the basket, the wooden figure and its expressionless face, the frozen, theatrical posture; and absurdly enough there was something of Diana there. She was a splendid rider, and although she would never have sat like that, even on a blue cross between an ass and a mule, nor ever have struck a histrionic pose, the wild improbability, the symbol for a horse and the figure's total lack of concern did have a real connection with her.

'Thank you, Blaine," he said after a while. 'I am deeply obliged to you for this information. Is there anything, however tenuous, that you could add?'

'No. Nothing at all. But you may think the absence of any tattle or rumour in such a place as present-day Sweden tolerably significant.'

Stephen nodded, studying the print once more and making a certain amount of sense of the Swedish. 'I should like to make an ascent in a balloon,' he said.

'When I was in France before the war,' said Blaine, 'I watched Pilastre de Rozier and a friend go up. They had two balloons, a small Mongolfier just over the basket and a larger one rilled with gas above it. They rose at a fine pace, but at three or four thousand feet the whole thing took fire: Icarus could not have been more dashed to pieces.' Sir Joseph regretted the words as soon as they were out, but no explanation, no softening, could do anything but make them worse, so he moved about, bringing the wine from its corner and pouring them each a glass.

They talked about Tokay and wine in general until they were half way through the bottle and then Stephen said, 'You spoke of present-day Sweden as being remarkably full of rumours.'

'It is scarcely surprising that it should be so, when you come to reflect: Bernadotte may have been elected crown-prince and he may have turned against Napoleon, but he is still a Frenchman and the French do not despair of turning him back again. They can offer him Finland, Pomerania - quantities of land - and they have a hold on him: half a dozen natural children in Pau, Marseilles and Paris. And if that don't answer there is always the legitimate royal family, the excluded Vasas, who have plenty of supporters and who may contrive a coup d'etat. Then again the treaty of Abo is much disliked by the better kind of Swedes. And of course the Russians and the Danes are also closely concerned, as well as the northern German states; so in spite of the present alliances Stockholm is full of agents of one kind or another, attempting to influence Bernadotte, his entourage, his advisers and his various opponents, actual or potential; and their doings or their alleged doings give rise to a wonderful amount of talk. It is not our department, thanks be - I have seen Castlereagh bowing under the pile of reports - but naturally we hear our fair share.'

The little silver bracket-clock struck one and Stephen stood up. 'You will never desert a bottle at half-ebb?' cried Blaine. 'Sit down again, for shame.'

Stephen sat, though as far as he was concerned it might have been cocoa; and when the last glass was poured he said, 'Will I tell you a strange example of the power of money?' 'If you please,' said Blaine.

'My servant, Padeen, whom you know, has an impacted wisdom-tooth, from which he suffers extremely. The operation is beyond my skill, and when I took him to the best tooth-drawer in Plymouth nothing would induce him to open his mouth; he had rather put up with the pain. Yet now that I have brought him to London, to be dealt with by Mr Cullis of Guy's, the case is altered: he opens his mouth cheerfully, he is pierced, lanced and probed without a cry; and this is not because Cullis is Sergeant-Dentist to the Prince Regent, which means nothing at all in the County Clare, but because the operation is to cost seven guineas, with half a guinea to the dresser. The expenditure of such a sum, more than Padeen had ever seen in his life before this stroke with the Surprise, not only confers a certain status upon a man, but must necessarily entail an extraordinary degree of well-being.'

'Do you mean he is not waiting for you downstairs?' asked Blaine, who could be disappointing at times. 'Do you mean you are going to walk home by yourself? And with that absurd great diamond in your pocket into the bargain? I can easily imagine the insurance declining responsibility in such a case.'

'What insurance?'

'You will not tell me it is uninsured?'

'I might.'

'Next I shall hear that the ship is not covered either.'

'Ah,' said Stephen, struck by the thought. 'There is maritime insurance too, so there is: I have often heard of it. Perhaps I should make some arrangement.'

Sir Joseph cast up his hands, but he only said, 'Come. I will see you to the corner of Piccadilly. There is always a knot of link-boys there. Two will see you home and two will see me back.' And as they were walking along he said, 'When I spoke of Mr Aubrey's engaging a national ship of roughly equal force just now my words were not quite so much in the air as they may have appeared to be. I am right in supposing that he is particularly well acquainted with the harbour of St Martin's, am I not?'

'He surveyed it twice, and he blockaded it for a great while."

'There may be some possibility - can you stay in town as long as a week?'

'Certainly I can; and I am always to be found at Black's. But in any case we are to meet again at the Royal Society Club's dinner on Thursday, before my paper. I am bringing Mr Martin.'

'I should be very happy to meet him.'

The meeting was indeed happy on both sides. Stephen placed Martin between himself and Sir Joseph, and the two talked steadily until the toasts began. Martin had not, as he admitted, paid as much attention to the coleoptera as he should have done, but in the nature of things he knew more about the habits, if not the forms, of the South American families, having watched them closely on their native soil; and beetles, especially luminous beetles, together with Blaine's outline of a new classification of them on truly scientific principles, were their sole subject.

At the subsequent meeting of the Society Stephen read his paper on the osteology of diving birds in his usual low mumble: when it was over, and when those Fellows who could both hear and understand had congratulated him, Blaine accompanied him to the great court, and taking him a little aside asked after Padeen. 'Oh it was a shocking affair entirely,' said Stephen. 'I thanked God I had not attempted it myself. The apparent tooth was obliged to be broken and the pieces of nerve that could be seen pulled out one by one. He bore it better than ever I should have done, but there is still a great deal of pain. I reduce it as much as I can with the alcoholic tincture of opium; and to be sure he displays remarkable fortitude.'

'He has had his seven guineas' worth, poor fellow,' said Blaine; and then in another tone, 'Speaking of sailors, it would do no harm if our friend held himself in readiness to set off for a short voyage at even shorter notice.'

'Will I send him an express, so?'

'If you can make it non-committal enough: this may be no more than a false interpretation - mere flim-flam. But it would be a pity not to be prepared if it were to turn out true.'

Ashgrove Cottage could never have been described as an eligible residence at any time, since it stood low on a cold, damp slope facing north, on poor, spewy soil, with no means of access but a hollow lane, deep in mud much of the year and impassable after heavy rain. Yet from the top of the slope, by the observatory, one could see Portsmouth, Spithead, the Isle of Wight, the Channel beyond and the vast amount of shipping; what is more, during the high tides of his fortune Jack Aubrey had made considerable plantations, and he had more than doubled the size of the house. The meagre scrubland of former days was now for the most part decently clothed with young wood, and although the cottage itself could not rival the noble stable-yard with its double coach-house and rows of loose-boxes, it did have some very comfortable rooms. In one of these, the breakfast-parlour, Jack Aubrey and Sophie sat sharing a companionable extra pot of coffee. Although some years had passed since Sir Joseph first saw her in Bath she could still be described as one of the loveliest young women of his acquaintance, for although living with a somewhat difficult, boisterous and over-sanguine husband with little or no sense of business, a husband who might be away for years on end, doing his utmost to risk life and limb in far remote seas, and although bearing him three children had taken its toll, while his infamous trial and disgrace had withered her bloom, the singular beauty of her form, eyes and hair was unaffected, while the intense mental and spiritual activity of keeping their home together in his absence and of dealing with sometimes unscrupulous men of business had done away with any hint of insipidity or helplessness in her expression. But the recent spring tide of gold, which had brought the house back to life - it was difficult to believe now, but only a short while ago this warm, luminous, cheerful, lived-in room had, like many of the other rooms, been locked up, shuttered and shrouded in dust-sheets - had also done wonders for her skin: her complexion was that of a girl.

Yet Sophia Aubrey was no fool. Although she knew that short of defeat in the everlasting war and the bankruptcy of the state they would be unlikely to have any serious material worries again she also knew that Jack would never be really happy unless his name were restored to the Navy List. He was cheerful enough on the surface, pleased to be with her and the children, and of course this release from anxiety and from the apparently interminable law-suit had had a great effect; but she knew perfectly well that his appetite for living was very, very much less than it had been - for one example out of many, the stables contained only two dull utilitarian horses and he did not mean to hunt - and that as far as many sides of his life were concerned he was as it were flayed. They entertained very little and they hardly dined out at all: this was partly because most of his old shipmates were at sea, but even more because he refused all invitations except from men to whom he was particularly obliged or who had shown their friendship quite unmistakably at his trial.

He was easily wounded, and only a little while ago Sophie had had a difficult time with the representatives of the committee of West India merchants who had talked to her about their present or rather about the arms and the inscriptions that were to be engraved upon it, for the plate was already there in Storr's workshop. She had begged them to omit 'late of the Royal Navy' and 'formerly His Majesty's ship' and the repeated mentions of the word privateer; but the gentlemen had been so pleased with their own composition and so strongly inclined to think it could not be improved upon that she doubted there would be any change.

A party of seamen padded past the window on their way to deal with the drawing-room in the naval fashion; that is to say, to strip it to the boards, scrub and polish everything in sight and then refurnish it completely, chairs, tables and bookcases all exactly squared. Since in the ordinary course of events they did this daily to their captain's quarters at sea, it seemed to them natural that they should do the same by his house on shore; and since the end of their week's leave of solid debauchery in Shelmerston they had repainted all the woodwork at Ashgrove as well as whitening all the stones bordering the drive and the paths in the garden.

They had hardly gone by before a blackbird began to sing from a tree on the far side of the lawn. He was a great way off, but with all its inconveniencies the cottage did have the merit of being a reasonably quiet place and he could be heard in all his glorious purity. 'How I wish I could sing like that,' murmured Jack, rapt in admiration.

'My dearest love,' said Sophie, pressing his hand, 'you sing far, far better.'

The bird stopped in mid-phrase and a hooting and bawling of children could be heard approaching.

'Oh do come on, George, you fat-arsed little swab. Bear a hand, bear a hand there, can't you?' called Charlotte.

'I'm a-coming, ain't I? And you are to wait for me," cried George, quite faint in the distance.

'Charlotte, you are not to roar out like that so near the house. It ain't genteel and besides they'll hear you,' said Fanny, also in a close-reefed topsail screech. An outsider might have found their conversation coarse and aggressive as well as horribly loud; but they had been brought up largely by the seamen who replaced ordinary servants at Ashgrove, and they usually talked lower-deck when they were at liberty. Their abuse was almost always entirely conventional and they were in fact much attached to one another, which was obvious when they appeared at the window, each girl having her little brother by the hand and all three leaping up and down with delight.

'It's come, it's come,' they cried, but not quite together: a discordant noise.

'It's come, sir. It's come, ma'am,' cried Killick, flinging the door wide open. He performed what he conceived to be a butler's duties at Ashgrove; and in his view butlers were perfectly entitled to grin and jerk their thumbs over their shoulders. 'Which it's in a covered cart with two coves with blunderbusses as well as the driver in the stable-yard, sir. There was a gent in charge, to make an address, but he got pissed pardon me overtook in liquor at Godalming, so they come on alone. The address is wrote on paper, any gate, so you can read it yourself. They ask do you choose to have the crates carried in, sir?'

'No,' said Jack. 'Take them into the kitchen - but they are to unload their blunderbusses before setting foot in the house - and give them beer and bread and cheese and ham and pork pie. And you and Bonden bring in the crates, with a screw-driver and a small crow.'

The crates came, escorted by children crying 'Oh Papa may we open them now?' from as far as the kitchen passage.

'George,' said his father, surveying the trim sealed and banded chests, with J, Aubrey, Ashgrove Cottage, Hants, Esquire HANDLE WITH GREAT CARE painted on the top, 'Jump up to your grandmother's room like a good fellow, and tell her there is something come from London."

Before Mrs Williams could change into a suitable garment, arrange her hair and negotiate the staircase, the lid of the first chest had come off, and an extraordinary amount of straw and wood-shavings had invaded three quarters of the room; she cried out in horror, her powerful voice filling the breakfast-parlour. But Jack Aubrey had reached the layers of tissue-paper that concealed the heart of the matter and his hands were searching for a joint in the close-packed parcels. Sophie watched him with dread in her heart as he heaved at a bulky object in the middle, gently prised it free, unveiled its brilliant form - a soup tureen - and in a tone that quite drowned Mrs Williams' indignation he said 'Wait a moment, ma'am," and passed it to his wife. The tureen, an ornate affair in the modern style, was so heavy that she nearly dropped it; but seizing the other handle she checked its downward swoop, and even before she had steadied it she saw that the inscription was as she had wished it to be ... She read it out: To the most eminently distinguished naval commander, John Aubrey, esquire, this service is offered by the Association of West India Merchants in gratitude for his unfailing support and protection of the country's Trade (its life's blood) in all latitudes and in both wars, and in particular acknowledgment of his brilliant capture of that most determined and rapacious private man-of-war the Spartan, the largest of its class. Beneath this piece stood the words Debellare superbos, with two lions rampant pointing at them from either side.