Ebb Tide (35 page)

'Thank you, Henry. I think it can be of little consequence now, but I suppose I should let Her Ladyship know.'

'How is she?' asked Vane, his open face betraying his concern.

'Inconsolable at the moment.'

'Would you present my condolences?'

Frey shook his head. 'No, no, my dear sir, you are of the family and have as much right as me to be here, come in, come in.'

Frey announced Vane and left him with Elizabeth for a few moments, joining them after an interval. Vane sat alongside her, holding her hand, and Frey noticed she seemed more composed
.

'There was a second letter, Elizabeth,' Frey said softly. 'Vane found it; you must have dropped it.' He held it out towards her. 'It has an Admiralty seal.'

'Please open it. It cannot be of much importance now.' She smiled up at him and he slit the wafer and unfolded the letter. For a moment he studied it and then, lowering it, he said with a sigh, 'Sir Nathaniel attained flag rank on the 14th. He has been gazetted rear-admiral, Lady Drinkwater.'

'They are rather late, are they not?' Elizabeth said, with a hint of returning spirit.

'I think Sir Nathaniel would rather have died a post-captain than a yellow admiral,' Frey said with his engaging smile.

Elizabeth reached out her other hand and took Frey's. 'I am sure you are right, my dear,' she said, shaking her head, 'and I am sure he would rather have died at sea than in his bed, painful though that is for me to acknowledge. Do you not think so?'

Frey nodded and gently squeezed Elizabeth's hand. 'I rather think I do, my dear.'

It took some months for Elizabeth to feel her loss less acutely but her husband's absences during the long term of their marriage had, despite their last years of intimacy, in some ways prepared her for widowhood.

'It seems to me', Catriona had once said to her, after the untimely death of her own first husband and before she had married Frey, 'that a sea-officer's wife lives in an unnaturally prolonged state of temporary widowhood in preparation for the actual event.' It was a sentiment with which Elizabeth perforce agreed. She was an old woman and her lot, compared with Catriona's for instance, had been a far easier one.

If she regretted anything, it was that she had not known her husband well until both of them were advanced in age. Now, that sweet pleasure, and it seemed very sweet in retrospect, was forever denied her. It was at this point that she recalled the task she had given him: that of recording his memoirs. About twelve weeks after the news of Drinkwater's death had arrived at Gantley Hall; after his body which had been washed up on the beach of Croyde Bay was sent home in its lead coffin; after the visits of their children and the renewed weeping that accompanied the funeral rites; and after Sir Nathaniel Drinkwater had been laid with due pomp and ceremony beside his brother Edward and the mysterious Hortense, it occurred to Elizabeth to go through her husband's papers more thoroughly than she had at first done.

She was familiar with most of what she found, though she had not read the pages of penned memories earlier, merely flicked through them. Nor did she now intend to read them in their entirety, but her eye was caught by this phrase or that, and as she dipped into them so the hours passed and she felt a curious contact with him as she sat in silence. Regretfully reaching the end of the document which had no real conclusion, but simply mentioned his continuing connection with the sea through the Trinity House, she was about to lay it down when a loose leaf of paper, folded in half and stuck in amid the rest, fluttered to the floor. She bent and picked it up, unfolding it as she did so.

It seemed to be a draft, separate from the main body of the memoirs and written with less certainty, for it contained several erasures and corrections. At the top right-hand corner was scribbled a date. With a fluttering heart, she noted it had been written on the eve of his departure to join the
Vestal
, and it struck her that he might have had some premonition of his death. It was not so curious a fancy, she thought, given his age and the exertions of the duty he was about to undertake. She had to wipe her eyes before the script swam into focus.

In Concluding these
Memoirs
Recollections,
Drinkwater had written
, I am
almost
Compelled almost, to Review my Life, to Weigh the Balance of Profit and Loss, not in terms of Success, for Providence, as Frey reminded me, has been Materially Kind to me, but in terms of Usefulness. My Actions will have caused Grief in Quarters unknown to me, and in Quarters known to me but not to Those whom I have Offended and this Troubles me. Such a Pricking of Conscience may be but an Indulgence, perhaps a Punishment in Itself, for those whom I dispatched from Life had no such Period for
Contemplation
Reflection or Regret.

Yet I was Compelled by Duty and I am left Wondering whether I am thereby Exculpated and whether Anyone takes Ultimate Responsibility? The King, perhaps? In whose Name and under whose Authority a Sea-Officer conducts himself and Who was Mad? Or is All Ordered by Providence? And is it therefore beyond our Comprehension?

If it were so, it would be a great burden lifted from my Soul.

I think that
  
It seems that
 
I can only conclude

In the end, the Complex
must
be rendered Simple, and our Understanding kept Imperfect.

Elizabeth laid the sheet of paper in her lap and stared out of the window. Grey clouds were sweeping in from the west and she would need a candle if she intended reading any more, but there was nothing else to read. Her husband had found a kind of peace, she thought, rising. As Frey said, providence had been very kind to him.

Author's Note

In this, the fourteenth and last in a series of novels which form the 'biography' of Nathaniel Drinkwater, I have taken some liberties with the patience of my readers. For this I must crave an indulgence. For twenty years I have accompanied Drinkwater and, from time to time, our lives have enjoyed curious parallels. His capture of the
Santa Teresa
and heady anticipation of prize money coincided with my own part in the salvage of a cargo ship in the North Sea which, at first sight, seemed to hold the promise of a small fortune; his incarceration in an attic office at the Admiralty happened when I myself relinquished sea-going command in exchange for an office desk. It was no accident that he assisted me in escaping my confinement, just as I engineered his own. There have been other, more technical comparisons, but they would be tedious to enumerate and, in this last novel, he has, at least at the time of writing, preceded me over the final threshold.

In the invention of Drinkwater and his adventures, I have worked through an obsessive fascination with the period in which he lived. Beyond the basic concept and a handful of historical facts, I started each story with no particular idea of what exactly would happen to the main protagonist. For me the process of writing was to find out, and to that extent Drinkwater's life was not entirely my own conscious creation. I have consequently derived much fun from the stimulation which this form of exploration produces, but one thing I resolved upon, that where what appeared to be expedient invention threw up a train of events, I must follow the train of cause and effect to its conclusion. To this end, this fourteenth book concludes several yarns, bringing together storylines begun in the earlier novels. It is for this that I ask my readers' indulgence, in the hope that they, like me, wanted to know what happened to Hortense, or Edward or Mr Frey, or why for years poor Nathaniel endured the recurring and horrible nightmare of the white lady.

As to the manner of Drinkwater's death, it is expected nowadays that a novelist must most assiduously research his subject. Some years ago, I came across an account by an eighteenth-century seaman who had only narrowly escaped drowning. It was powerfully written and made an impression on me, thus sowing the seed of an idea. Furthermore, by a series of personal misadventures, I have myself been three times helpless in the sea. On one of these rather desperate occasions, I did not expect to live.

For those who wish to know upon what historical hook the substance of this last tale is hung, the Trinity House Steamer
Vestal
did indeed run her own boat down on 14 July 1843 after abandoning an attempt to land at the foot of the cliffs at Hartland Point. Also drawn from life are Captain McCullough and the Sentinel Service, a little known part of the Royal Navy's rich history. As for the two troopers aboard
Cyclops
in 1780, it is matter of fact that in that year two men were dismissed from the 7th Queen's Own Light Dragoons and sent to serve in the Royal Navy as a punishment. Moreover, cheese issued by the royal dockyards was often of such age and consistency that sailors fashioned it into boxes and worked it like wood, and there is a record of a cheese being fashioned into a mast-truck, fitted with flag halliard sheaves and shipped atop a warship's mast where it remained for the duration of her commission. Such are the happy gleanings of assiduous research!

As for more seminal inspiration, whilst still a teenager I came across six battered volumes of William James's monumental
Naval History of Great Britain,
which records in meticulous and largely accurate detail every action fought by the Royal Navy during the wars of the French Revolution and Empire. I parted with my pocket money of half-a-crown, a sum which now sounds as archaic as the age of the books themselves, though they had been published a century before my own birth. Astonishingly, most of the pages were uncut.This purchase was to create a lifelong interest in maritime history and to result ultimately in the 'biography' of Nathaniel Drinkwater.

I am aware that when coming to the end of a much-enjoyed book, the reader is often assailed by a sense of regret. Something of the same
tristesse
hangs over me now as I tap out the last words of the saga.

I have immensely enjoyed writing the series, but every voyage has its ending and Drinkwater exceeded his allotted three score years and ten to die not ignobly. To those of my readers who have shared something of this enjoyment, may I simply express my gratitude. Your support meant the whole tale could be told, and while your precise image of Nathaniel Drinkwater may differ slightly from my own, the substance of his invention is common to us both.