‘There is no need. Everything was in order at the last fitting, bar a few buttons to be shifted and the epaulettes. Yet I may come up when George and I have finished this surcingle.’
‘Then please may we open the epaulette-case? We have never seen an admiral’s epaulette close to; but Miss O’Hara says we must not touch it on any pretext whatsoever without permission; and Mama has gone to fetch Granny and Mrs Morris.’
‘Oh Papa, won’t you come up and put on just the undress coat?’
‘Please sir,’ cried George, ‘please may I see the presentation sword again? You will certainly wear your presentation sword in full dress: that’s poz.’
Jack ran up the ladder into the loft for an awl and a hank of saddler’s twine.
‘Well, bloody George,’ murmured Fanny, looking at his gooseberry wounds, ‘you will cop it if Miss O’Hara sees you. Stand over and I’ll wipe you with my handkerchief.’
Charlotte directed her voice into the loft and called ‘Mama will be amazingly disappointed if you do not come up, sir.’
By the time Sophie returned with her mother and Mrs Morris, Jack was in the blue chamber, which had a dressingroom that opened off it; and in this dressing-room Killick, with a fanatical glee and without waiting for any man’s permission, had laid out the contents of all the tailor’s parcels:
although in himself he was as dirty, slovenly and sea-bucolic as it was possible to be in the Navy, he delighted in ceremony (for a grand dinner he would sit polishing the silver until three in the morning) and even more in fine uniform. Jack had gratified him much in the first, possessing a fair amount of plate and then having been presented with a truly magnificent dinner-service by the West Indies merchants; but hitherto he had almost always been a disappointment in the second, patching up old coats and breeches, and having them turned when they were too threadbare. (It was true that during most of Killick’s servitude Mr Aubrey had been extremely poor and often deep in debt.) But now the case was altered: superfine broadcloth in every direction; a dazzling abundance of gold lace; white lapels; the new button with a crown over the fouled anchor all agleam; undeniable cocked hats; a variety of magnificent swords and a plain heavy
sabre for boarding; two bands of distinction-lace; a star on the gorgeous epaulette, heavy with bullion; white kerseymere waistcoats and breeches; white silk stockings; black shoes with silver buckles.
Having passed through the plain ‘undress’ stage – pretty splendid, nevertheless –
Jack came out of the dressing-room in all the glory of a flag-officer, his hair powdered, the Nile medal gleaming on his lace jabot, and his laced hat adorned with the diamond spray given him by the Grand Turk, a spray that was made to quiver and sparkle by a little clockwork heart. ‘Behold the Queen of the May,’ he said.
‘Oh very fine!’ cried the ladies; and even Mrs Williams and her friend, who had been sitting there with pursed lips, disapproving of such expense, were quite melted, adding
‘Glorious, superb: superb: superb.’
‘Huzzay, huzzay,’ cried George. ‘Oh, to be an admiral!’
‘How I wish Helen Needham could see him,’ said Charlotte. ‘That would clap a stopper over hçr prating about the General and his plume.’
‘Fan,’ said Sophie, rearranging her husband’s neckcloth and smoothing the golden fringe of an epaulette, ‘run and ask Miss O’Hara whether she would like to come.’
A clock in the corridor struck the hour, followed by several others at different levels, the last of all being the slow deep chime from the stable-yard. ‘God’s my life,’ cried Jack whipping off his coat and hurrying into the dressing-room. ‘Captain Hervey will be here.’
‘Oh don’t throw it on the floor,’ called Sophie. ‘And do please, please take care of those stockings as you pull them off. Killick, make him take the stockings off by the band.’
• When the men had gone, thundering down the stairs, Jack dressed as a plain country gentleman rather than a sea-going peacock and Killick looking as usual like a lean, cantankerous and out of work ratcatcher, the ladies walked into Sophie’s boudoir. Mrs Williams and her friend sat together on an elegant satinwood love-seat with entwined hearts for a back, and Sophie in a low, comfortable elbow-chair with a basket of stockings to be darned beside it.
She rang for tea, but before it came her mother and Mrs Morris had resumed their habitual looks of disapproval. ‘What is all this we hear about those extremely expensive garments forming part or indeed parcel of an admiral’s uniform? Surely Mr Aubrey cannot be so thoughtless and indiscreet as to assume a rank superior to his own, a flag-rank no less?’ The mention of high authority always brought a pious, respectful look to Mrs Williams’ face: before it had quite faded she interrupted Sophie’s answer with the words ‘I remember a great while ago, that he called himself captain when he was really only a commander.’
‘Mama,’ said Sophie in a stronger voice than was usual with her, ‘I believe you mistake: in the service we always call a commander captain out of courtesy; while a commodore of the first class, that is to say a commodore with a captain, a post-captain, under him, in this case Mr Pullings…’
‘Yes, yes, honest Tom Pullings,’ said Mrs Williams with a condescending smile – is absolutely required, not just by courtesy but by
Admiralty rules, to wear the uniform of a rear-admiral. So there,’ she added, sotto voce but not altogether unheard, as the tea-tray came in.
Even at Ashgrove, a tolerably well-run house with a strong tradition of promptness and order, tea entailed a fair amount of turmoil; but in time the older women were quiet at last, absorbed in stirring their sugar, and Sophie was about to make some remark when
Mrs Williams, with that prescience sometimes found in mothers, cut her short with the words, ‘And what is all this about inquiries being made in the village concerning Barham Down?’
‘I now nothing about them, Mama.’
‘Briggs heard that there had been a man in the ale-house asking about Barham Down and those that lived there, a man
like a lawyer’s clerk. And since he had to go there on some business to do with rat-poison he asked the landlord what was afoot; and it appeared that most of these questions were about Mrs Oakes. Not about Diana. It was not a matter of gathering evidence for a criminal conversation case or a divorce with Diana as the guilty party as I thought straight away, but something to do with Mrs Oakes: debts, I have little doubt. But it is also possible that that Mr Wilson the manager had a wife somewhere. . .’
Sophie had been brought up so straight-laced that she possessed no very exact notion of how babies were made in the first place or born in the second until she learnt from personal and startling experience; and one of the changes in her mother that surprised her most was this strong, almost obsessive and sometimes singularly specific interest – disapproving interest of course – in who went, or wanted to go, to bed with whom:
an interest fully shared by Mrs Morris, so that the two of them would go over the details of any fresh trial for crim. con. for an hour or more. She was reflecting on this when she heard her mother say’. . . so of course I borrowed the gig and called, Briggs driving all the way up that steep, stony road to Barham. She was denied, but I insisted – said I wanted to see the child, my own grand-niece after all, my own flesh and blood. So I was admitted. I thought she was far too expensively dressed for a mere lieutenant’s widow, and her cap was outré: I believe she has some pretensions to looks. Well. I questioned her pretty closely, I can tell you – what was her maiden name? Who were her employers in New South Wales? Did she teach the harp? – Nothing so graceful as the harp – When did this curious – I did not say alleged- marriage take place? She was evasive – short, unsatisfactory answers – and when I told her of it, saying I expected more openness, she positively turned me out of the house. But I was not going to be put down like that by a chit worth no more than fifty pounds a year if that and I said I should come back. In Diana’s absence I have a right to supervise the bringing-up and welfare
• of the child. If there is an undesirable connexion in that house, she must be removed. I shall speak to my man of business, and I shall say – . .’
‘You are forgetting, Mama,’ said Sophie when the torrent paused, ‘you are forgetting that Dr Maturin is his daughter’s natural guardian.’