The Commodore (19 page)

In the afternoon watch Bonden, coming below on a more or less convincing pretext, said to Reade 'As I dare say you know, sir, some of our people were free-traders at one time. In course, they are reformed characters now, and would scorn an uncustomed keg of brandy or chest of tea; but they remember what they learnt in them wicked days. Mould and Vaggers were once in this very spot with just such a blow in their topsail schooner, and they say with the breeze not half a point west of this there is a passage at high tide for a very weatherly craft. They took it, being in a hurry: they passed between the Hammer and Anvil, cleared the Downs and so beat downChannel as light as a fairy and put into Shelmerston the next day for supper, having met their friends off Gris Nez. And their barky,' he added, gazing at the horizon, 'was not as weatherly as ours.'

Reade did not reply at once. Like many other midshipmen, he had carried prizes into ports; but he had never had such a voyage as this, still less such a vessel. For half an hour he watched the weather-gage, and when it showed half a point in their favour he called for Mould and Vaggers.

'Mould and Vaggers,' he said in a deep, formal voice, 'with this breeze and at this state of the tide, could you undertake to pilot the tender through the passage?'

'Yes, sir,' they said, but they would have to look sharp: the ebb would start in half an hour.

The Ringles looked sharp. They were sick and tired of being rattled about like dried peas in a can, and they were very willing to show those lubbers in the Downs how seamen of the better sort dealt with situations of this kind. They won their anchors, hoisted a scrap of the jib, set the close-reefed mainsail and edged away through the shipping.

Mould was at the helm with three turns round the tiller; Vaggers and two friends at the mainsheet. There was a great deal of white water over the face of the sea, and with the beginning of ebb breakers showed wider on the edge of the sands. They were steering for a particular shoal, and already the sequence that gave this shoal its name was beginning to show: a roller would break on the right hand, shooting up a column of water that at low tide and with a strong swell and following wind would be flung across a twenty-yard channel, falling with a loud dead thump on the flat sand the other side, the Anvil. So far the Hammer was no more than a little ten foot fountain, but the men's faces were tense as they approached it, for immediately after it came a dog-leg in the channel that had to be judged to the yard.

They were between Hammer and Anvil: the little fountain rose, sprinkling Stephen and Reade. 'Ready about,' said Mould. 'Helm's a-lee.' The schooner stayed to perfection, a smooth turn with never a check: Mould held her so, very close to the wind for a moment during which she forged somewhat ahead, and then let her fall off. They were through, clear of the narrows, clear of the Downs; and now, for a craft as weatherly as the Ringle, with plenty of sea-room, it was only a matter of a dozen long reaches for home.

Stephen Maturin, the clock of his appetite much disordered by the use of coca-leaves (a strictly moderate use now, however, with the dose being administered to a person wholly recognizable as himself) walked into the dining-room at Barham while the meal was in full progress: that is to say when Clarissa had cracked the shell of her second boiled egg.

She was not a woman much given to shrieks or exclamations, but she was not wholly above commonplace reaction and now she uttered a great 'Oh!' and quickly asked him was it he? And had he come back? before recovering herself, sitting down again and suggesting that he should have something to eat - an omelette was a matter of minutes, no more.

'Thank you, my dear, I dined on the road,' said Stephen, giving her a peck on each cheek. 'What a pleasant table this is,' he went on, as he sat down at her side. He had inherited an absurd amount of silver from his godfather, most of it Peruvian, sober, almost severe; and a gleaming river ran down the whole length.

'It is to celebrate the day I left New South Wales,' said Clarissa. 'Will you not take a glass of wine, at least?'

'I might, too,' said Stephen. 'A glass of wine would go down very well. But listen, my dear. We must be off to Spain within the hour; so when you have eaten your egg and may it prosper you, perhaps you would put just what you and Brigid will need for the voyage.'

Clarissa looked at him gravely, with the spoon poised between her egg and her mouth, but before she could speak there was a thundering on the stairs and in the corridor and Padeen and Brigid burst in. Padeen began a long stammering word that might have been chaise but that never came to an end, Brigid cried out 'Horses!' in English; and then, seeing Stephen, both fell silent, amazed.

After a pause of no more than half of a breath Padeen took Brigid by the hand and led her up to him: she looked at Stephen with a shy but quite open interest, even a smile, and slightly prompted she said in clear high Irish 'God and Mary be with you, my father,' holding up her face.

He kissed it, and said 'God and Mary and Patrick be with you, my daughter. We are all going to Spain, the joy and delight.'

Padeen explained that they had been in the high back room netting a hammock before Brigid should be brought down for her pudding when they saw the Royal William's chaise come into the stable yard with two horses they knew, Norman and Hamilton, and two horses they did not, borrowed no doubt from the Nalder Arms.

Mrs Warren brought in the pudding, flustered and upset by all this activity. She tied the child's bib rather sharply, squaring her in her chair, clapped the pudding down (common quaking pudding) and said to Clarissa 'The post-boys say they are to water their horses and walk them up and down for an hour, no more. Am I to give them something to eat?'

'Bread, cheese, and a pint of beer for each,' said Clarissa. 'My dear Brigid, you are not to play with your food. What will your father think?'

Brigid had indeed been beating her pudding to make it quake in earnest, but she stopped at once and hung her head. After a while she whispered in Irish 'Would you like a little piece?'

'A very little piece, if you please,' said Stephen.

He contemplated Clarissa as she finished her egg. 'How I value that young woman for not asking questions,' he reflected. 'It is true that she is used to naval ways, and to leaving home, family, kittens, doves, pot-plants at a moment's notice - no tide must ever be missed, God forbid - but I am convinced that she does not need to ask: she understood the essentials when first our eyes met.'

All this he had known or strongly surmised at some level: the child, on the other hand, left him astonished, completely taken aback, at an enchanted loss. He had hoped and prayed with more than a hundredweight of candles judiciously shared among fifty-three saints for some perceptible progress: but now, and virtually at once, the child was living an outward life.

She finished her pudding, and showing her bare-scraped plate she asked if she might get down: she did so want to go and look at the chaise close to and touch it. This was in English of a sort, but then in a quiet and as it were confidential Irish she said to Stephen 'And should you like to be shown the chaise? The chaise and four?'

'Honey, am I not after coming in it? It is warm with my warmth, like a chair. And we shall all set off in an hour, no more, when I have drunk up my coffee.'

The child laughed aloud. 'And may the Padeen and I sit on the little small seat high up behind, on the dickey?' she asked. 'Oh such happiness!'

Clarissa had never accumulated much in the way of personal property. Once she put her head in at the door and asked 'Is it cold?'

'Bitter cold in the winter,' said Stephen, 'but never trouble your mind. We shall buy a suitable garment in Corunna, Avila, or Madrid itself. Take something against the wet in the north, however, and half-boots.'

He had barely had time to deal with the aged groom and the women servants, paying them down six months' board-wages, giving instructions for the care of the livestock and the renewal of the laundry boiler, a bill that Mrs Aubrey would pay, before Padeen reported 'All stowed aboard and roped, sir; and may the Brideen and I sit on the little, the little, on the little small... ?'

'You may,' said Stephen, walking out of the house. He opened the carriage door for Clarissa, called 'Bless you all,' to the servants gathered on the steps, and 'Give way' to the post-boys: the carriage rolled off.

'Will I explain the position?' asked Stephen.

'Padeen and I have been betrayed?'

'Just so.'

'Yes. There have been enquiries in the village: odd-looking men along the lane and even in the stable-yard.'

'It all turns on a question of revenge against me. The pardons I had asked for, the quite usual pardons for you and Padeen in a case like this, were not refused, but they were held up, delayed and delayed by ill-will. They will be granted I believe, and quite soon; but until then we are all much better out of the country, out of my enemy's reach. In any case I should like to have Brigid under the care of Dr Liers, who has had more success with children of her kind than any man in Europe. Not, the dear God be thanked beyond measure, that she seems to need the care of any medical man at all. The change is of the nature one usually associated with miracles alone.'

'It is utterly beyond my comprehension,' said Clarissa. 'Nothing I have ever known has given me such happiness - day after day, like a flower opening. She prattled for quite a while with Padeen and the animals, and now she does so with me and the maids: a little shy of English at first. To begin with she spoke it only to the cats and the sow.'

Stephen laughed with pleasure, an odd grating sound; and after a while he said 'She will learn Spanish too, Castellano. I am sorry it will not be Catalan, a much finer, older, purer, more mellifluous language, with far greater writers - think of En Ram�lull - but as Captain Aubrey often says "You cannot both have a stitch in time and eat it." I mean to take you - or rather to send you under escort, since I cannot leave the ship - to the Benedictine house in Avila, where an aunt of my father's is Abbess, and where Dr Llers will be at hand. It is the easiest and kindest of disciplines there; the nuns are gentlewomen and several of them and the pensionnaires are English of the old Catholic families, or Irish; they have an excellent choir; and the convent owns three of the finest vineyards in Spain. I intend Padeen to go with you as your servant and as a continual source of springing life for Brideen. You will not be lonely there; and though your life may be rather dull, it will be safe.'

'I ask no more,' said Clarissa.

The chaise was on the smooth road now, not far from the turning to Ashgrove Cottage, and Brigid's voice could be heard exclaiming at the huge enormous great haycocks, bigger than she had ever seen in her life.

'Shall we have time to call on Mrs Aubrey to take leave?' asked Clarissa. 'It would surely be most improper to vanish with never a word. It would also look like a low-minded resentment.'

'We shall not,' said Stephen. 'Even as things are, the tide will be half out. There is not a moment to be lost.' He reflected, and presently he repeated the word resentment in a questioning tone.

'Yes,' said Clarissa. 'It was all most unfortunate. She has very kindly come to see Brigid and me from time to time, and a little while ago she sent a note saying she had a letter from Captain Aubrey in London with some news about my pension as an officer's widow and might she call. Since a friend of Diana's had given us a present of venison and since it was full moon and she all alone I asked her to dinner, together with Dr Hamish and Mr Hinksey, our parson. We laid things out with some degree of splendour - even that dreadful Killick could hardly have done better than Padeen - and I put on my very best dress. It was that glorious crimson Java silk which Captain Aubrey gave me to be married in.'

Stephen nodded. He remembered the incident perfectly: the cutting of a bolt of cloth that Jack Aubrey had bought from a Chinese merchant in Batavia with the help of the Governor's wife.

'Yes. But Mrs Aubrey walked in wearing exactly the same stuff. Cut a little more full, and gathered here; but exactly the same magnificent red. We stared at one another like a couple of ninnies, and before either of us could say anything the men arrived, first Hinksey and then the Doctor. But I knew with absolute certainty, as though it had been printed on her forehead, that she thought Aubrey had given me the cloth for services rendered and that she had come off with the fag-end of his mistress's leavings. The food was pretty good, as I remember' the wine was of your choosing - we drank an ancient Chambertin with the venison - and from time to time she remembered her manners and added something to the general talk. But it was no good. The dinner, one of the few I have ever given, was a complete failure. Brigid was brought in when Mrs Aubrey and I went to the drawing-room, so there was no possibility of explanation even if I had felt inclined to make any, which by then I most certainly did not. Fortunately the men did not sit long over their wine, so the evening soon came to its miserable end. That is what I mean by resentment.'

Stephen nodded. 'There is nothing to say: only that I very deeply regret the unhappiness, all of it unnecessary. We are descending towards the sea.'

'The sea, the sea!' cried Brigid, leaping about in an ecstasy as they went down the shore to the waiting boat. 'Oh what a wonderful sea!' This was her first sight of it, and she was luckier than most. The tide was half out and from the harbour mouth a small swell sent in a series of waves that broke in white fan after fan on the pure hard sand: the water itself was a living blue-green, perfectly clear. Very high overhead rode a sky of no determinate colour crowded with towering cumulus; on either hand the bay curved out in tawny cliffs, while from behind Shelmerston the remote and setting sun sent a warm, diffused, calm, even and comfortable light. She broke away, seizing three strands of sea-tangle and a piece of green fresh-curling weed, thrust them into her bosom and ran back. 'How do you do, sir?' she said to Bonden, offering her hand, and the boat's crew welcomed her with infinite benevolence. 'Let the Doctor's little maid sit up in the bows,' said Mould, and they passed her from hand to hand until she was perched on his folded jersey, calling out with delight as the boat shoved off.