Desolation Island by Patrick O’Brian
CHAPTER ONE
The breakfast-parlour was the most cheerful room in Ashgrove Cottage, and although the builders had ruined the garden with heaps of sand and unslaked lime and bricks, and although the damp walls of the new wing in which this parlour stood still smelt of plaster, the sun poured in, blazing on the covered silver dishes and lighting the face of Sophie Aubrey as she sat there waiting for her husband. A singularly lovely face, with the lines that their earlier poverty had marked upon it quite smoothed away; but it had a somewhat anxious look. She was a sailor’s wife, and although the Admiralty in the goodness of its heart had allowed her the company of her husband for a surprising length of time, appointing him (much against his will) to the command of the. local Sea-Fencibles in recognition of his services in the Indian Ocean, she knew that this period was coming to an end.
The anxiety changed to unmixed pleasure as she heard his step: the door opened; a ray of sun fell on Captain Aubrey’s beaming face, a ruddy face with bright blue eyes; and she knew as certainly as though it had been written on his forehead that he had bought the horse he coveted. ‘There you are, sweetheart,’ he cried, kissing her and lowering himself into a chair by her side, a broad elbow-chair that creaked beneath his weight.
‘Captain Aubrey,’ she said, ‘I am afraid your bacon will be cold.’
‘A cup of coffee first,’ said he, ‘and then all the bacon in the world – Lord, Sophie -, lifting the covers with his free hand – ‘here’s Fiddler’s Green – eggs, bacon, chops, kippered herrings, kidneys, soft tack . . . How is the tooth?’ Here he was referring to his son George, whose howls had made the household uneasy for some time past.
‘It is through!’ cried Mrs Aubrey. ‘He cut it in the night, and now he is as good as gold, poor lamb. You shall see him after breakfast, Jack.’
Jack laughed with pleasure; but after a pause, and in a slightly conscious tone, he said, ‘I rode over to Horridge’s this morning to stir them up. Horridge was not in the way, hut his foreman said they had no notion of coming to us this month – the lime ain’t thoroughly slaked, it appears -and even then they will be at a stand, with their carpenter laid up, and the pipes not yet delivered.’
‘What nonsense,’ said Sophie. ‘There was a whole gang of them laying pipes at Admiral Hare’s only yesterday. Mama saw them as she was driving by; and she would have spoken to Horridge, but he dodged behind a tree. Builders are strange, unaccountable creatures. I am afraid you were very disappointed, my dear?’
‘Why, I was a little put out, I must confess: and on an empty belly, too. But, however, seeing I was there, I stepped into Carroll’s yard, and bought the filly. I bated him forty guineas of her, too; and, do you see, quite apart from the foals she will bring, it will be a remarkable saving, since she will train with Hautboy and Whiskers -with her to bring out their metal, I will lay fifty to one on placing Hautboy in the Worral Stakes.’
‘I long to see her,’ said Sophie, with a sinking heart: she disliked most horses, except those of the very gentle kind, and she particularly disliked these running horses, even though they descended, through Old Bald Peg, from Flying Childers and the Darley Arabian himself. She disliked them for many reasons, but she was better at disguising her
feelings than her husband, and with a happy, eager look he ran on unchecked, ‘She will be up some time in the forenoon: the only thing I am not quite pleased about, is the new stable floor. If only we could have had some sun, and a good brisk north-easter, it would have dried out completely. . . nothing so bad for a horse’s
hoofs as remaining damp. I low is your mama this morning?’
‘She seems quite well, I thank you, Jack: a little remaining headache, but she ate a couple of eggs and a bowl of gruel, and she will come down with the children. She is quite excited about seeing the doctors, and she has dressed earlier than usual.’
‘What can he keeping Bonden?’ said Jack, glancing at the stern regulator, his astronomical clock.
‘Perhaps he fell off again,’ said Sophie.
‘Killick was there to prop him up: no, no, ’tis ten to one they arc prating about their horsemanship in the Brown Bear tap, the infernal lubbers.’ Bonden was Captain Aubrey’s coxswain, Killick his steward; and whenever it could be managed they moved with him from one command to the next: both had been bred to the sea from their earliest years –
Bonden, indeed, had been born between two of the Indefatigable’s lower-deck guns – and while both were prime man-of-war’s men, neither was a great hand with a horse. Yet it was clear to all that in common decency the mail addressed to the Commanding Officer of the Sea-Fencibles had to be fetched by a mounted man; and daily the two traversed the Downs on a powerful, thickset cob, conveniently low to the ground.
A powerful, thickset woman, Mrs Williams, Captain Aubrey’s mother-in-law, walked in, followed by a nurse with the baby and a one-legged seaman shepherding the two little girls. Most of the servants in Ashgrove Cottage were sailors, partly because of the extreme difficulty of inducing maids to stay within reach of Mrs Williams’s tongue: upon seamen, however, long inured to the admonition of the bosun and his mates, its lash fell unregarded; and in any case its virulence was much diminished, since they were men, and since in fact they kept the place as trim as a royal yacht. The rigid lines of the garden and shrubbery might not be to everyone’s taste, nor the white-painted stones that bordered every path; but
no housekeeper could fail to be impressed by the gleaming floors, sanded, swabbed, and flogged dry every day before sunrise, nor by the blaze of copper in the spotless kitchen, the gleaming windowpanes, the paint perpetually renewed.
‘Good morning to you ma’am,’ said Jack, rising. ‘I trust I see you well?’
‘Good morning, Commodore – that is to say Captain -you know I never complain. But I have a list here -, waving a paper with her symptoms written upon it – ‘that will make the doctors stare. Will the hairdresser be here before them, I wonder? We are not to be talking about me, however: here is your son, Commodore, that is to say Captain. He has cut his first tooth.’ She led the nurse forward by the elbow, and Jack gazed into the little pink, jolly, surprisingly human face among all the wool. George smiled at him, chuckled, and displayed his tooth: Jack thrust his forefinger into the wrapping and said, ‘How are you
coming along, eh? Prime, I dare say. Capital, ha, ha.’ The baby looked startled, even stunned – the nurse backed away – Mrs Williams said, ‘How can you call out so loud, Mr Aubrey?’ with a reproachful look, and Sophie took the child into her arms, whispering,
‘There, there, my precious Iamb.’ The women gathered round young George, telling one another that babies had sensitive ears – a thunder-clap might throw them into fits – little boys far more delicate than girls.
Jack felt a momentary and quite ignoble pang of jealousy at the sight of the women –
particularly Sophie -concentrating their idiot love and devotion upon the little creature, but he had barely time to be ashamed of it, he had barely time to reflect ‘I have been Queen of the May too long’, before Amos Dray, formerly bosun’s mate in HMS Surprise and, in the line of duty, the most conscientious, impartial flogger in the fleet before he lost his leg, shaded his mouth with his hand and in a deep rumble whispered, ‘Toe the line, my dears.’
The two little pudding-faced twin girls in clean pinafores stepped forward to a particular mark on the carpet, and together, piping high and shrill, they cried, ‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Good morning, Charlotte. Good morning, Fanny,’ said their father, bending down until his breeches creaked to kiss them. ‘Why, Fanny, you have a lump on your forehead.’
‘I’m not Fanny,’ said Charlotte, scowling. ‘I’m Charlotte.’
‘But you are wearing a blue pinafore,’ said Jack.
‘Because Fanny put on mine; and she fetched me a swipe with her slipper, the – swab,’
said Charlotte, with barely contained passion.
Jack cast an apprehensive look at Mrs Williams and Sophie, but they were still cooing over the baby, and almost at the same moment Bonden brought in the post. He put it down, a leather bag with Ashgrove Cottage engraved on its brass plate; and the children, their grandmother and their attendants leaving the room at this point, he begged pardon for being late: the fact of the matter was, it was market-day down there. Horses and cattle.