The lonely beach, lanterns flashing from the offing, an infinity of sea. Ireland again, with such memories at every turn. ‘If I could throw off some of this burden of memory,’ said Stephen to his second glass of laudanum, ‘I should be more nearly sane. Here’s to you, Villiers, my dear.’ The Holyhead mail and two hundred and seventy miles of rattling jerking, falling asleep, waking in another country: rain, rain, rain: Welsh voices in the night.
London, and his report, trying to disentangle the strands of altruism, silliness, mere enthusiasm, self-seeking, love of violence, personal resentment; trying too to give the impossible plain answer to the question ‘Is Spain going to join France against us, and if so, when?’ And there he was in Deal once more, sitting alone in the snug of the Rose and
Crown, watching the shipping in the Downs and drinking a pot of tea: he had an odd detachment from all this familiar scene – the uniforms that passed outside his bow-window were intimately well known, but it was as though they belonged to another world, a world at one or two removes, and as though their inhabitants, walking, laughing, talking out there on the other side of the pane were mute, devoid both of colour and real substance.
Yet the good tea (an unrivalled cholagogue), the muffin, the comfort of his chair, the ease and relaxation after these weeks and months of jading hurry and incessant motion
–
tension, danger and suspicion too – insensibly eased him back into this frame, reattached him to this life of which he had been an integral part. He had been much caressed at the Admiralty; a very civil, acute, intelligent old gentleman called in from the Foreign Office had said the most obliging things; and Lord Melville had repeatedly mentioned their sense of obligation, their desire to acknowledge it by some suitable expression of their esteem – any appointment, any request that Dr Maturin might choose to make would receive the most earnest and
sympathetic consideration. He was recalling the scene and sipping his tea with little sounds of inward complacency when he saw Heneage Dundas stop on the pavement outside, shade his eyes, and peer in through the window, evidently looking for a friend. His nose came into contact with the glass, and its tip flattened into a pale disc. ‘Not unlike the foot of a gasteropod,’ observed Stephen, and when he had considered its loss of superficial circulation for a while he attracted Dundas’s attention, beckoning him in and offering him a cup of tea and a piece of muffin.
‘I have not seen you these months past,’ said Dundas in a very friendly tone. ‘I asked for you several times, whenever Polychrest was in, and they told me you was on leave. How brown you are! Where have you been?’
‘In Ireland – tedious family business.’
‘In Ireland? You astonish me. Every time I have been in Ireland it has rained. If you had not told me, I should have sworn you had been in the Med, ha, ha, ha. Well, I asked for you several times: I had something particular to say. Excellent muffin, eh? If there is one thing I like better than another with my tea, it is a well-turned piece of muffin.’ After this promising beginning, Dundas fell strangely mute: it was clear that he wanted to say something of importance, but did not know how to get it out handsomely – or, indeed, at all. Did he want to borrow money? Was some disease preying on his mind?
‘You have a particular kindness for Jack Aubrey, Dr Maturin, I believe?’
‘I have a great liking for him, sure.’
‘So have I. So have I. We were shipmates even before we were rated midshipmen –
served in half a dozen commissions together. But he don’t listen to me, you know; he don’t attend. I was junior to him all along, and that counts, of course; besides, there are some things you cannot tell a man. What I wanted to say to you was, do you think you might just hint to him that he is – I will not say ruining his career, but sailing very close to the wind?
He does not
clear his convoys – there have been complaints – he puts into the Downs when the weather is not so very terrible -and people have a tolerable good notion why, and it won’t answer, not in Whitehall.’ ‘Lingering in port is a practice not unknown to the Navy.’
‘I know what you mean. But it is a practice confined to admirals with a couple of fleet actions and a peerage behind them, not to commanders. It won’t do, Maturin. I do beg you will tell him so.’
‘I will do what I can. God knows what will come of it. I thank you for this mark of confidence, Dundas.’
‘The Polychrest is trying to weather the South Foreland now; I saw her from the Goliath, missing stays and having to wear again. She has been over the way, looking at the French gunboats in Etaples. She should manage it when the sea-breeze sets in; but God help us, what leeway that ship does make. She has no right to be afloat.’
‘I shall take a boat and meet her,’ said Stephen. ‘I am quite impatient to see my shipmates again.’
They received him kindly, very kindly; but they were busy, anxious and overwrought. Both watches were on deck to moor the Polychrest, and as he watched them at their work it was clear to Stephen that the feeling in the ship had not improved at all. Oh very far from it. He knew enough about the sea to tell the difference between a willing crew and a dogged, sullen set of men who had to be driven. Jack was in his cabin, writing his report, and Parker had the deck: was the man deranged? An incessant barking flow of orders, threats, insults, diversified with kicks and blows: more vehement than when Stephen had left the ship, and surely now there was a note of hysteria? Not far behind him in vociferation there was Macdonald’s replacement, a stout pink and white young man with thick pale lips; his authority extended only to his soldiers, but he made up for this by his activity, bounding about with his cane like a jack-in-a-box.
When he went below this impression was confirmed. His assistant, Mr Thompson, was not perhaps very wise nor very skilful – his attempt at a Cheseldon’s lithotomy had an ominous smell of gangrene – but he did not seem at all brutal or even unkind; yet as they went round their patients there was not a smile – proper answers, but no sort of interchange, no friendliness whatsoever, except from one old Sophie, a Pole by the name of Jackruckie, whose hernia was troubling him again. And even his strange jargon (he spoke very little English) was uneasy, conscious, and inhibited. In the next cot lay a man with a bandaged head. Gummata, the sequelae of an old depressed fracture, malingering? In an eager attempt to justify his diagnosis, Thompson darted a pointing finger at the man’s head, and instantly the crooked protective arm shot up.
By the time he had finished his rounds and settled in his cabin, the Polychrest was moored. Jack had gone off to
–
make his report, and something nearer to peace had come down on the ship. There was only the steady grind of the pumps and the now almost voiceless bark of the first
lieutenant getting the courses, the square courses, and topsails furled in a body, smooth enough for a royal review.
He walked into the gun-room, which was empty but for the Marine officer. He was reclining upon two chairs with his feet on the table; and craning up his neck he cried, ‘Why, you must be the sawbones back again. I’m glad to see you. My name is Smithers. Forgive me if I do not get up; I am quite fagged out with mooring the ship.’
‘I noticed that you were very active.’
‘Pretty brisk, pretty brisk. I like my men to know who’s who and what’s what and to move smart – they’ll smart else, you catch my meaning, ha, ha. They tell me you are quite a hand with a cello. We must have a bout some night. I play the German flute.’
‘I dare say you are a remarkable performer.’
‘Pretty brisk, pretty brisk. I don’t like to boast, but I fancy I was the best player at Eton in my time. If I
chose to do it professionally, I should make twice what they give me for fighting His Majesty’s wars for him – not that the pewter matters to me, of course. It’s precious slow in this ship, don’t you find? Nobody to talk to; nothing but ha’penny whist and convoy-duty and looking out for the French prams. What do you say to a hand of cards?’