The Victory (13 page)

‘Well, apart from his personal dispositions,' Lucy said, 'he
could hardly have liked having to take
Dreadnought
on the
Brest station. Her coppering is all but worn out, and she
gripes in the stays.’

William raised an eyebrow, and exchanged a look with his
wife, but Haworth caught Weston's eye and laughed.

‘
Oh Lucy, you do one so much good,' he cried. 'I love to
hear you talking technicalities like that.’

*

The next morning Weston's servant Bates woke his master by
putting his head through the bedcurtains and whispering that
an Admiralty messenger had come with a sealed letter for
him.

‘Very well, I'll come,' Weston said. 'Wait for me outside.’

When Bates had gone, Lucy rolled over into Weston's
arms, and he held her close and kissed her. She was soft with
sleep, and her skin smelled like warm new bread. 'It is your
orders?' she murmured.

‘
Probably,' he said. 'They won't keep a useful frigate in
port longer than necessary. I'd better go and see.’

She withdrew herself obediently, and watched him through
half-closed eyes as he climbed out through the curtains, put
on his dressing-gown, and went out. She inched over into the
hollow of delicious warmth where he had been lying and
drowsed, curling her hands over her belly. What would life be
like, she wondered languidly, with no trouble? If there were
no war and no Chetwyn; if she and Weston were married in
the ordinary way? For the first time she thought about the
coming baby with curiosity, and felt a momentary pang at the
thought of losing it. She let herself drift into a half-waking
dream of living with Weston, perhaps in the little Essex
village where they had spent last summer, they and the child
in happy obscurity.

‘Lucy?’

She started back to wakefulness, and found him sitting on
the edge of the bed, leaning over her. Her heart sank, for in
his hand was the opened letter, the heavy paper weighted
with the official seal. She struggled up on to one elbow, and
looked into his face, waiting for the blow.

‘It's my orders, I am to go at once,' he said. 'Back to Brest?' she asked.

‘
Yes.' He put down the letter and used his hand instead to stroke her cheek. 'My love, there is no point in your staying
here any longer. It is unlikely I shall leave station again until
we need water, and that won't be for three months.'

‘
Three months.' The words took on a falling cadence of
despair. In three months she would be in retirement, in
accordance with her agreement with Chetwyn.

Weston had no words to offer that could be of any comfort.
It was very hard that he should have to be apart from her at
such a time. Unless a miracle happened, the baby would be
born before he returned — born and borne away. And Lucy would have to face it all alone; she might die, and he would
know nothing about it. He cupped her cheek, and his hand
was trembling. 'I must go,' he said.

Now, this minute?'

‘
The wind will just serve, but if it backs another point, I
may be delayed for days.’

She loved him too much to suggest he delay, in that hope.
She watched in silence as he dressed himself and gathered
together the few belongings he had brought from the ship
yesterday, and all too soon he returned to the bedside to stoop
and kiss her: brow, eyes, nose and lips. 'God bless you,' he
whispered, and then he was gone. She heard his voice outside,
and Bates's, and then the closing of the outer door. In her
imagination she saw them clattering down the stairs into the
cold, stale-beer smell of the taproom passage, and out into the
street.

And then she flung herself almost wildly from the bed, catching her feet in the covers and staggering, before she
rushed to the window and flattened her face against it for a
last glimpse of him. He still carried his hat in his hand, and
the breeze that would just serve ruffled his hair as he and
Bates turned the corner, their footsteps echoing behind them.
He did not look back, but she had known he wouldn't.

 
It was peaceful in the front parlour of the little house named
Plaisir, in the village of Coxwold. Though a fine summer rain was drenching the world outside, there was a comfortable fire
in the grate, and the ladies of the household were seated
around the table at the window, engaged in normal morning
pursuits.

Héloïse had abandoned her solitary work on her History of
the Revolution in favour of a little companionable sewing,
and was stitching some very pretty lace on a new cap for
herself. Under the table her enormous hound Kithra was
sleeping, lying on her feet as usual. She was beginning to get
pins-and-needles, but she didn't like to move in case she
disturbed him.

Her faithful maid Marie, who had escaped with her from
France
and undergone with her all the hardships of flight,
exile and poverty, was working her way steadily through the
usual pile of mending, and enduring the fourth in a series of
colds which had plagued her since March. Beyond her
Madame Chouflon, whose fingers were too stiff in this damp
weather to sew, was reading aloud to them from a book of
French sermons.

Beside Héloïse her little daughter Sophie-Marie, with three
cushions under her to raise her to the level of the table, was
making a pomander for her mother's wardrobe by the satis
fying process of pressing whole cloves into the skin of an
orange. Before she began, her mother had told her the
etymology of the English word, and while she worked she
crooned
‘pomme d'ambre'
over and over like a litany under
her breath. Brought up bilingually, she had used English and
French almost at random all her life, but now at the age of
five she was just beginning to separate the languages, and was finding the process interesting.

Opposite Héloïse, in the favoured seat which commanded a
view of the little front garden, the white paling fence, and the
road, her ward Mathilde was officially working at her daily
task of embroidery. But Héloïse noticed that her fingers had not made a new stitch for at least ten minutes, and that most
of Mathilde's efforts were given to staring out of the window,
peering at the sky to see if the clouds were going to break, and occasionally drawing a deep involuntary sigh.

One of the maids, Nan, came in to see to the fire. It seemed a welcome interruption. Madame Chouflon broke off reading,
Marie put down her work to blow her nose, and Héloïse took
the opportunity of moving her feet and wriggling them to
restore the circulation.

‘Has Stephen come back from the blacksmith?' she asked.

‘
No, my lady, not yet,' said Nan. 'But the butcher's boy's
been, and Mr Barnard says the beefsteak he brought is only
fit to be given to the dog.'

‘
How can you know that?' Héloïse asked, intrigued. Barnard, her cook, was a French provincial who spoke
English only in the direst emergency, and both Nan and Alice,
the other maid, were Londoners who understood no word of
any language but their own.

‘
Well, I don't exactly know what he
said,'
Nan admitted,
brushing down her skirt as she stood up, 'but it's easy enough
to know what he
means.'

‘
Ah,'
said Héloïse. 'And did the butcher's boy also under
stand?'

‘
I think so, my lady,' Nan grinned. ‘Mr Barnard threw it
back at him, and then he grabbed his big knife and started
sharpening it. I never saw anyone move so fast as that boy! But I think all Mr Barnard meant by it was that if he hadn't
got no beefsteak to cook for your dinner, my lady, he'd have
to go and kill a duck after all.’

Héloïse chuckled. 'It's never wise to assume Monsieur
Barnard does not mean the worst. But I expect you're right in
this case.'

‘Yes, my lady. Will that be all?'

‘Yes, Nan. I'll come by and by and speak to him about dinner.'

‘
That butcher gets worse and worse,' Marie said when Nan
had gone. 'It would be much better to let Kexby bring us
meat from Thirsk.’

The suggestion was not entirely ingenuous: Kexby the
carrier was in love with Marie, and took her out on his cart on
her days off.

‘
I suppose it will come to that in the end,' Héloïse said, 'but
I had hoped to win approval for us all by patronising the
village suppliers ... Sophie, my love, put them closer
together. There must not be any space between the cloves, or
the orange will go bad.'

‘
Yes, Maman,' Sophie said patiently. 'Why doesn't Nan
understand Monsieur Barnard?'

‘
Because she doesn't speak French, my pigeon,' Héloïse
replied.

‘Yes, but why doesn't she learn? It's very easy.'

‘
To us it is, but not to her and Alice, because they are
English.’

Sophie frowned over her work, evidently feeling there was
a flaw in the argument. 'Perhaps she doesn't want people to
think she is French. Is it a
very
bad thing to be French,
Maman?'

‘
Not a bad thing at all,' Héloïse said indignantly. 'Who put
such an idea into your head, child?'

‘
I heard Mr Bates say so to Mr Antrobus after church on
Sunday. He said French people are wicked because they make
us have a war.’

Reaction to these words was various. Héloïse and Marie exchanged disturbed looks, Madame Chouflon tutted vigor
ously, and Mathilde started and blushed, then turned to stare
out of the window with a particularly languishing expression.

‘
It is not the French people who wish for war,
chérie,'
Héloïse answered her daughter, 'but this man Buonaparte
and his friends. Ordinary French people are no different from ordinary English people. Not,' she added in fairness, 'that you have very much French blood in you, my Sophie. In fact, you
are three-quarters English.'

‘
Good,' said Sophie with satisfaction. 'I should not like to
be wicked, for then Our Lady would not love me.’