Mr Darwin's Shooter (11 page)

One day Covington crossed six low hills, counting each one, and came around the corner of a ruined barn and found himself overlooking the shallow vale he longed for, and the remembered chestnut tree. It had been bare the last time but now was in its last full leaf and turning gold. The spikes hung like tassels on a curtain.

He stood there in wonder. The tips of his fingers tingled, and he wanted to reach out. But what to touch? The tree was a throne in his eyes. The air was luminous around it, golden with autumn light. All creation sang in the presence of a maker who seemed, when Covington turned around quickly, to be invisibly standing at his back and smiling. The roots of the tree made places to sit, benches and settles and a soft couch. The leaves made an arbour above Covington's head. A man starved of God had stood there, casting around with his fierce eyes and making a plea. Without Phipps to impose catechisms Covington made free with his own. By the going up of the tree his thoughts went up to heaven. By the light of the sun beaming down he thought of God's understanding reaching him. By the roots of the tree, finding a spring, he considered his own deeper nourishment. He thought how the spirit was never seen, but felt, and so was known. Thus he ministered to his own needs roughly, clumsily, without instruction, as he was born to do.

A voice inside him had always said, ‘Make something of yourself.' Now that he had a trail of life behind him, Covington saw how the path wound around and came back upon itself.

The sun went down and he saw Joey Middleton and John Phipps coming from the distance, striding inside an inky shadow. But there was nobody there, though he ran to greet them, deceived by old gnarled roots and bare stones.

Later he lit a fire, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders and listening until his ears ached to the distant sound of shooting inside the walls of the park. The gentry were going all at it for snipe in the woods over there and Covington could well picture King and Musters trooping along with King's father and his brother-officers in such a place, for it had been their plan to go shooting when they left the ship. One half of their life was navigation and the other half was creature-carnage.

But then watching them in imagination Covington also pictured John Phipps with his thin, knowing smile setting snares and acquiring his part of the bag for the sake of the good idea he had, that the countryside must be free as the ocean, and that a man, choosing God, was unfettered before the wind.

Back when they had signed over to the
Adventure
Phipps had taken it for an omen, because of the commander being named King. ‘Those named King know humility in their bones, for they are fallen from high places as their family name indicates.'

‘What has this to do with being a Christian?' the boy had argued.

‘Everything indeed, because those who are beggars may also become
kings
in heaven.'

Covington smiled at the memory of all the tangles Phipps made in his thinking just to squeeze a parable from a situation, or to make an interpretation convenient to the day. It gave comfort to an ordinary soul to hear a righteous man
bedevil himself. Covington knew that Phipps had just liked the look of the
Adventure
, and felt familiar with her lying there in Monte Video waters because two old shipmates, Door and MacCurdy, had already rowed across and were snug in her, and Covington did not think it such a bad hypocrisy to have, either, in a man who loved the sea life.

After it was fully dark, and misty with starlight, Covington went down to the chestnut tree and prayed. In his aloneness he felt as if he rolled a stone from a door inside himself. A feeling shot up from inside him akin to light. It was such a powerful longing that it made a shape in his inner eye as he pressed his eyeballs with his knuckles. And who was standing there, robed in white, gesturing him to follow? It was the son, Jesus of Nazareth, who had trodden the dust, drunk the water, touched the leaves of the tree, and had been in every way a man before he took his step upwards into glory.

Covington scrambled back to his sleeping place in the ruined barn. What had he seen, if anything at all? He lay with his chin cupped in his hands, staring out into the silent night. He saw the white-robed man running up a rocky path and dashing along the stone wall and into the park. He smiled. No—it was because he pressed his eyes tight while praying. But Lord did he have such gratitude for just being alive.

He sang himself to sleep with Bunyan's hymn, that was their anthem in chapel and always brought tears to worshippers' eyes:

The next day Covington returned to Bedford where, at his last farewell, he gave Mrs Hewtson a great kiss, took out his Polly Pochette, and stood on a chair and played ‘Greensleeves' in his sweetest style, while tears ran down.

Mrs H said, ‘How shall the young sprats live, if you don't bring a fortune home?' She cut fresh plumcake and wrapped it in muslin and sealed it inside a tin. ‘Take this with you, mind.'

Long-stepping, sizeable as a man, Covington walked to Devonport in bare feet, economising on shoe leather. When he was almost there he saw two figures crossing a bare field ahead of him. He fell in behind them and heard they were catechising each other. It made him smile, grin and clutch his heart with joy. What fantastic simpletons they were, the doleful sailor in the battered, three-cornered hat, and the sprightly, bare-headed sailor boy at his side. How ridiculously easy to dog their steps and hear the way they did it:

‘“What is the fear of God?”'

‘“The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”'

‘“What do they have that want the beginning?”'

‘“They that want the beginning, which is fear, they have, they want,”' stumbled Joey. ‘Blazes, I am too tired to know what they want, Phipps.'

‘We are almost there. I see the town,' said Phipps, pushing the boy along.

‘“They want …”'

At this Covington leapt in front of them, and spread his arms wide, stopping their progress. ‘“Those that want the beginning have no middle or end!”' he bellowed.

‘That is it!' yelled Joey, throwing himself at Covington and punching him on the chest. ‘Where have you bin gone, Cobby?'

Covington held Joey by the thin shoulders and spoke across his head.

‘What have you been feeding him, John Phipps, weeds and wildflowers?'

‘All that I give him he devours.'

‘Only I choke on them catechisms,' said Joey, kicking a stone.

Phipps embraced Covington and called him brother.

‘I am glad to find you,' said Covington.

‘And I you,' said Phipps.

‘I was always coming to find you.'

‘I like the way you came along.'

‘I would have bit a firebrand, had it stood in my way.'

‘I am glad to hear of it. We waited for you under the old tree.'

‘Two nights,' piped Joey.

‘I was there, but not soon enough,' said Covington, feeling ashamed of all his resistance.

‘Soon enough is the time you were there,' said Phipps. ‘It is a great mercy-seat under that tree, is it not?'

‘I'll tell you what, I prayed,' said Covington, ‘and there was no way around it, John. I was given to understanding.'

‘Can you say what that understanding was?'

‘Faith.'

‘How do you explain that faith?'

‘There is no explaining it.'

They passed through a farmyard and drank from a watering trough.

‘Well then, I have heard of a ship,' said Phipps, clapping his spindly hands together. ‘She has a Christian captain and I am sorry to say no maid for a figurehead for you to moan over, but only a dog.'

‘What sort of dog?'

‘A beagle-hound. She's our sister ship, she's had new mahogany fittings made and has been all done-over for her next voyage. We are old Patagonia hands, believe me, and
they will take us if we want. They are all for putting missionaries on Cape Horn.'

‘Where have you heard this from?'

‘From Door and MacCurdy.'

‘What? Have they repented?'

‘Nay, but I have my hopes,' said Phipps with a grin, his sharp Adam's apple wiggling up and down, his parched lips and feverish eyes fixed on Covington in liking.

Within a day they sighted her. Their seafaring language, coarse and hard as old rope, returned to their speech and made them ready for rowdy company. Their catechisms crept away inside them for the moment, like snakes that were shy of the cold. She was tied up alongside the wharf with the look of a captured cockle. Carpenters worked on saw-holes in the deck, creating storage space after raising the upper deck to allow more head-room. Wood shavings floated in the water and sawdust blew in the wind. Cables were strained, and crates of rations—beef, pork, peas, vinegar, rum and cocoa—were carried below by gangs of sailors shuffling one after the other. They remembered her from the days of Captain Stokes as a rotting miserable tub, a former collier in the coastal trade, except she had faced the roaring nowheres brave enough (braver than her captain, who had stiffed himself). Now she was being given three masts and smartened over, being changed from a brig to a bark, though nothing could make her bigger—she was fearsome small—just two small cabins, with the dead commander's space rebuilt. She was ninety feet long with a beam of twenty-four feet. They could not say they loved her, for they had no warmth of life yet shared in her. Yet they loved her promise.

They stood, the three of them, at the dockyard gates, feeling awkward and looking quaint in their patched and
torn clothing and straw in their hair from sleeping in a stable. The watchman greeted them in disbelief. ‘Crew for the
Beagle
? Watch out your bosun don't see you. You're more like mushing mudlarks with shit up to your armpits.' They went to lodgings and took a bath. The next day they returned through the town to find the vessel shifted from the wharf and riding free in the water, and smarter than yesterday by a thousand degrees.

A longboat took them over the choppy grey water and they scrambled up the side. Their seabags and prized possessions were hoisted by a whip from the yardarm. They eyed their new companions, a set of blue-jawed, cavernous-faced piraticals. One had a bamboo flute, another a small skin drum, while Covington had his fiddle and so there would be music made. Joey Middleton was first onto the deck and gave a whoop, sighting Midshipman King, calling him ‘Phil' and striking him on the chest familiarly.

King reacted with only a faint smile and Covington knew better now, wincing as Joey was told: ‘How are you, boy? I am afraid you must call me mister. And please, your pea-jacket has a smell about it.'

‘But I brushed it well,' chirped Joey, and it was a shame to hear him carry on. ‘Ask Phippsy.'

The midshipmen were all bunched in a pack, draped on the foredeck appraising the new arrivals with their caps pushed back. They had their clay pipes between their teeth and went puffing away.

‘Howdy-do, Covington. Is your mother well?'

‘Very well, King, and yours I trust the same?'

‘Middlin'.'

‘There shall be no joy here,' thought Covington, as King continued:

‘Middlin' for a woman who hates the sea and now must join my father in Australia.'

In the scramble to be of best service Joey won the day. He was made servant to the poop cabin where they were to
welcome a wealthy young gent aboard, a Mr Darwin of Derbyshire, twenty-three years old, a bug-catcher and very close with the captain in all his dealings. To be on the good side of a well-heeled passenger, it was agreed, was a very fine thing. He was counted upon to have silver to spread around for favours.

‘You are quicker than hell would scorch a feather,' said Covington to his small friend when he heard that Joey had won the gent.

Joey dropped his eyes—apologising for favours he hadn't sought, but were granted him for his smooth cheeks and merry eyes. It wasn't his fault that a nipper was still a nipper and so made a pet as affectionate as a marmoset. Anyway, his gent wasn't aboard yet. He was sleeping with the captain in lodgings in Devonport. It was the captain who had put him forward.

Covington, with his strength and willingness, was made ship's fiddler and odd job boy. It meant constant mending of broken wood, also tending to chickens and goats, and jumping to command whenever a need was quick, bringing mallet, twine, and tar-bucket at any hour; and if there was need for a dance, to warm his fiddle with a jig. It was no change from before but was only his new start. He longed for better and plotted to put himself in the way of the captain, to display his penmanship and willingness, and be preferred as Joey was.

They hung about at anchor, awaiting favourable winds. The season turned blisteringly cold. They got the measure of their Captain FitzRoy. He was a wind-chapped, peaky-faced young aristocrat who would have everything done before he thought of it, with a habit of placing a finger to his chin and staring with glittering eyes to etch his memory. Nimble Joey, with eyes of a fawn, polished silver and folded napkins without being asked. At the last minute as the wind swung to the needed quarter Mr Darwin came aboard, and Covington, at the other end of the ship, gained
no strong impression of him that first day, except to note that he was tall, round-headed, and as dully dressed as a curate. The way he jumped back whenever a sailor ran past denoted a landsman's willingness to apologise for his existence, while at the same time ensuring that all his baggage be placed where it was most likely to trip a sailor over.

Covington stared at the missionary they were carrying to Cape Horn. He was proof that the Lord does not choose those that love him. Revd Matthews was a smiling, sly man of God, mawkish and sweet of manner. The three native Patagonians who came with him were another story. They were smoothly at ease, dressed in frocks and topcoats. They behaved like proper Methodists in allowing themselves to be meekly marshalled below for supper and prayers, but their eyes flashed around with mischief in them.

At the cry of ‘Man the windlass!' and the sound of the bosun's pipe, FitzRoy in high spirits shouted loud as if all voyaging was new to him: ‘Ho for the Canary Isles!'— which was to be their first anchor on the way to putting their human cargo into the wilderness. All the passengers were sick, and not to be seen. But forthwith the
Beagle
ran aground on a mudbank and they were called onto the deck to add their weight to the port-side. The wind howled as all seventy-three souls paced from one side to the other, and rocked her free. Humiliated they returned to harbour. The crew said darkly there was a foul-weather Jack aboard to cause such trouble, there had to be someone and maybe it was the gent—that flap of brown cape and pair of white hands gripping the side rail as he spewed and spat before disappearing inside again, sick as rotten vinegar. Joey threw a punch that bounced off Covington's chest: ‘
Covington
is the foul-weather Jack,' at which Covington growled and fended Joey with his palm.

In regard to their gent there was another thing Covington noted, a quality in him remaining true years later: that while he was faint against his background he was
strong in his effect. Phipps worried that the gent's father, Doctor Darwin, being the richest man in Derbyshire, was surely a great patron for a favoured boy, and he ruffled Joey's hair as he said it, fearing to lose Joey, his chosen one. Covington, with narrowed eyes, considered his displacement in Phipps's affections, and allowed for Christian forbearance to get him by.