The Yellow Admiral (7 page)

'There seem to be many of these as it were clans in the service, quite apart from the obvious political divisions. There are men like you, who are devoted to celestial navigation and who favour others of their kind; and those who delight in surveying anything that can be surveyed however wet, remote and uncomfortable; but I believe this is the first time I have encountered a band of sea-going farmers. I look forward to meeting the Admiral.'

'Yes, and there are chains of kindness and connection. Lord Keith was very good to me, for example, when I was young, and I will do anything I can for his mids or his officers' sons. It runs clean through the service, particularly with the old naval families, like the Herveys. The same applies to particular regions. You find ships where the whole quarterdeck is Scotch, and many of the people. I knew one sioop whose captain hailed from the Isle of Man, and close on every hand had three legs. But as for the Admiral, you will see him soon enough: we must be aboard within the fortnight. I shall just have time to run up to the House for the committee meeting, deliver my thunderbolt, and then post down to Torbay, where Heneage Dundas will touch before the change of the moon, landing Jenkins -,

'Who him?'

'My jobbing captain, my temporary replacement,' said Jack, and from his tone and the set of his face Stephen gathered that he did not think highly of the man. 'With the wind in the south and even south-south-east I have been expecting a signal these last three days.'

Once again Lalla brought her ears to bear on the bushes to the left, within sight of the house but well this side of the park. From them burst a little boy, George, closely pursued by a little girl, Brigid.

'Oh sir,' cried George, 'there is an express from Plymouth. And Cousin Diana is coming.'

'Oh Papa,' cried Brigid, 'there is a man on a steaming horse, and he destroyed with the thirst, bearing a letter so he is, an express letter. Mama carries it in her hand itself, driving the great coach. We came through the shrubbery and then through the whins.' By this time she was with them, and moderating her voice a little, she held up her face to be kissed.

'We saw you through the spy-glass,' said George, 'and since Cousin Diana already had the horses to, she said she should come by the drift: it would save your poor legs.'

'I can hear them, I can hear them. Mother of God, I can hear them. Oh Papa dear, and may I go up on top with Padeen?' She plucked urgently at his coat, distracting him from a remote and broad-winged bird, conceivably an osprey, right in the sun's eye. 'If Mama agrees,' he said. 'She is the master and commander of the coach.'

Lalla was a somewhat nervous, touchy creature, but now she offered an example of that wonderful patience that even the most unpromising animals will often show to the young. George, whom she knew perfectly well, had heaved himself on to her back by halter and mane, with a hand from his father, and now Brigid, who had only met her yesterday, did much the same, but less skilfully. Lalla gazed at her, standing firm until she was more or less seated, and then paced gently along.

The lane marking the edge of the pasture came out on a much broader affair called the drift, along which all Woolhampton's cattle travelled to be marked and registered on the second Wednesday after Michaelmas: here stood the elegant coach with its four matching bays, the leader's head held by Padeen, Diana on the box.

'I have a letter for you, Jack,' she cried, waving it. 'An express from Plymouth.'

'Thank you, Diana,' he replied. 'Should you like me to help you wheel the coach?'

'Lord, no,' said Diana. 'But take care of Lalla. She is apt to lose her head with horses about, even geldings.' Then to Brigid, 'Child, come and take this letter to your cousin.'

'Are you my cousin, sir?' asked the child as Diana turned the horses in her usual brilliant manner. 'I am so glad.'

The coach spilled its cargo in the forecourt, and Jack called to Sophie, standing there on the steps, 'It is from Heneage, my dear. He has lost his bowsprit, foretopmast and I dare say a good many headrails. He is leaving Berenice at Dock and coaching up here with Philip and perhaps a couple of hands: they will reach us on Thursday, God willing. It was handsome to give so much notice.'

'Oh, very handsome indeed,' cried Sophie faintly.

'Do you know Heneage Dundas?' he asked Diana, as he handed her down.

'A sailor? Lord Melville's son? I have met him. Was not his father in charge of the Navy?'

'He was, and a very fine First Lord too. But now it is Heneage's elder brother who has succeeded and who is also First Lord.'

'Sophie, Clarissa,' called Diana, 'should you not like to take an airing? I am going to stretch the horses for a couple of hours: they are in great need of exercise. We might go as far as Lyme.'

'My dear,' cried Sophie with great conviction, 'I really cannot.'

'Are you taking Brigid?' asked Clarissa.

'Oh yes: of course. And George, if he would like it.'

'Then I will come too, if I may have five minutes.'

The Thursday that brought Captain Dundas and Philip and that was also expected to bring Mr Cholmondeley's coachman to deprive Diana of her supreme delight, in fact brought the owner himself with two friends, in a post-chaise. He arrived shortly after the others while the drawing-room was still in something of a turmoil with introductions, enquiries after the journey, the health of friends, the likelihood of a French sortie from Brest (most improbable), and Stephen noticed how well Sophie, a retiring provincial lady, coped with the situation - better, indeed, than Cholmondeley, a wealthy and obviously fashionable man. He apologized profusely for this intrusion and protested that he should not stay five minutes; his only errand was to beg Mrs Maturin to keep his coach and horses for a while, if she could bear it. He was on his way to Bristol, there to take ship for Ireland on an urgent piece of legal business that had been delayed too long and that could be delayed no longer lest it go by default; and he was most unwilling that the team should be left idle in their indifferent London stable- no air, no light. He then had the exceedingly awkward task of asking Jack whether he might see Woolcombe's head groom, to arrange for the feeding and the care of his cattle: this having been civilly but very firmly declined, he turned to his not inconsiderable social powers, cheerful, fairly amusing and not small enough to be mere prattle. He and his friends had many acquaintances in common with Captain Dundas and Diana and news of them filled the dangerous gaps that threatened to appear before he stood up and with eloquent gratitude took his leave of Sophie and all the company - a particularly civil farewell to Dr Maturin.

He had not in fact stayed long (though it seemed longer) and the men had little more than the impression of a wellbred man, a fairly agreeable rattle, something of a coxcomb; but it had been long enough for the ladies present to be convinced that he admired Diana extremely.

When he and his friends were gone the place seemed pleasantly empty and free. What small awkwardness there might have been with Heneage and Philip now vanished entirely- they belonged to the home side - and from dinner-time onwards the household settled down enjoying these last days ashore as much as ever they could. In this they were reasonably successful, in spite of the crises threatening Jack Aubrey's future. He and Dundas had a great deal of naval talk to exchange quite apart from the very highly-detailed account of how, in a dense fog off Prawle Point a lost and blundering East Indiaman had come smack across the Berenice's stem with her courses set and all the forces of the tide at three bells in the graveyard watch, shattering her head and bowsprit in the cruellest manner, so that Berenice's foretopmast came by the board and there was a butt sprung low beneath the starboard cathead - 'a perfect jet of water, like a God-damned Iceland geyser'.

Much of their talk, which was really not fit for mixed company because of its profoundly nautical character, was conducted as they walked over the common with guns or sat in hides either side of the mere, according to the direction of the wind; duck had grown more plentiful, mallard for the most part but also the occasional teal. They always invited Stephen for the dawn and evening fighting, but he rarely went: although he would eagerly shoot specimens and of course bring birds home for the pot when they were called for, he was not fond of killing; and since young Philip took care of Brigid and George entirely, he lapsed back into that contented solitude of an only child, going his own way, in silence, without reference to anyone at all. It was a natural way of life and it suited him very well. Sometimes he went driving with Diana, but although he greatly admired her skill - the four bays were likely to be the best-drilled, best behaved, best-paced team in the county quite soon - her concentration on speed distressed him. Natterjacks were common in no part of the world - he had seen comparatively few - and now in one drive he had been swept past four. Shrews were another of his present studies, and Diana could not be brought to like them very much, having learnt as a child that every time you touched or even saw a shrewmouse you aged a full year; and then, as everybody knew, they gave you the most excruciating rheumatism and made in-calf heifers abort.

He had hoped to interest Brigid if not in shrews then at least in what flowers were still abroad and the more usual birds; but in this he was disappointed, since both children were wholly taken up with admiring Philip, Jack Aubrey's half-brother, the just legitimized son of the late General Aubrey by a dairy-maid at Woolcombe House, at present a long-legged midshipman in Captain Dundas' ship. He was indeed a very likeable young fellow, fresh-full of youth and good-nature, and he was very kind to the little creatures, showing them how to lay aloft in the coach-house with haywain ropes for shrouds, made fast to the topmast beams, whirling them to extraordinary heights on swings, teaching them the rudiments of fives, and carrying them to all manner of curious places in the attics (bats by the hundred), cellars and elsewhere, for he had been born at Woolcombe and he knew the house and its even older buildings through and through.

Sometimes, if Philip would come too, they drove out with Diana, and on shopping days Sophie joined them, but only as far as the village, or Dorchester at the utmost. She was not a cowardly woman - fortitude and courage in plenty, on occasion - but she disliked driving fast; and childhood falls, hard-mouthed froward ponies and inept, sometimes cruel masters had made her reluctant to ride; and on the whole she disliked horses. Clarissa was Diana's most usual companion, apart from the necessary groom and boy.

Stephen took his disappointment philosophically. After all, he had himself reached nearly seven years of age before he paid really serious attention to voles; and shrews, in spite of the fine crimson teeth that some possessed, had certain unfortunate characteristics: not quite the best mammal to begin with. There was time and to spare for shrews; and in any event Catalonia, where he hoped she would spend much of her time once peace was restored, was much, much richer in species. While as for botany, that would necessarily come with the return of spring.

He therefore wandered alone, much as he had done when he was a boy, peering into the water-shrew's domain (the streams on the common held scores) and making a rough inventory of the resident birds: he also read a good deal in Woolcombe's noble but utterly neglected library, where a first folio Shakespeare stood next to Baker's Chronicle and a whole series of The Malefactor's Bloody Register mingled with Blackstone's Commentaries. Yet some of his time he spent at the Hand and Racquet or the Aubrey Arms on the little triangular green, watching the slow, regular sequence of agricultural life and sipping a pot of audit ale. He was taken very much for granted, it being known that he was Captain Jack's surgeon, and people would sometimes come for a whispered consultation. They treated him kindly, as a person known to be on their side, like the Captain himself, and they did not conceal their opinions when he was there. He was esteemed not only for his connexions and his pills, but for dividing his custom, trifling though it was, between these two houses and for avoiding the Goat and Compasses, a more pretentious place run by one of Griffiths' partisans; and although in each house he heard or was directly told quite different things the general burden was the same - intense opposition to the inclosures, hatred of Griffiths and his gamekeepers, who were represented as hired bullies, and of his new intruding tenants, settled on what had been Woolcombe Common, together with a great affection for Captain Aubrey, but a very anxious doubt about his ability to do anything to prevent the destruction of their whole way of life.

All this was confirmed by his slow perambulations of the common and the village with old Harding, who told him the exact nature and tenure of each small holding and cottage (often merely customary, tolerated by indulgence long, long since, but with no formal, written grant) together with its rights on the common. Neither Harding nor Stephen had sentimental, misty views of rural poverty: they both knew too much about the squalor, dirt, idleness, petty thieving, cruelty, frequent drunkenness and not uncommon incest that could occur to have any idyllic notion of a poor person's life in the country. 'But,' said Harding, 'it is what we are used to; and with all its plagues it is better than being on the parish or having to go round to the farmer's back door begging for a day's work and being turned away. No, it ain't all beer and skittles but with the common a man is at least half his own man. And without the common he's the farmer's dog. That's why we are so main fond of Captain Jack.'

They were indeed. At all times they were kind and civil, but as the day for the committee's meeting in London came nearer, so they grew more articulate. 'Bless you, Squire: you will never let them do us down.' General cries of 'Good old Captain Jack!' 'No inclosures!' and 'Down with Black Whiskers' accompanied his progress through Woolcombe, and those villagers who were now Captain Griffiths' tenants moved quickly out of the way: jostling and harsh words were not unknown, even among cousins - in fact the village was full of ill-feeling and potential violence.