‘Pengelley. Yes, I remember them.’
‘Now these Pengelleys had two farms on the estate, both held for his life by old Frank Pengelley: and the last time the Captain was ever in Dorset just before we set sail, old Pengelley told him he was worried about the lease if he should die before the ship came home – worried for his family, it being a lease for two lives and he being the second.
His father’s son, if you understand.’ Bonden nodded. Leases for one, two or three lives were usual in his part of England too. ‘Well, it seems that as the Captain was getting on his horse – that big flea-bitten grey, you remember? he said he would see the young Pengelleys right, by which old Frank understood his sons. But when old Frank died, which he did when we had not been gone a year, Mrs gave Weston Hay to his eldest boy William and Alton Hill, with all its sheepwalks, to young Frank, the old man’s nephew and godson, leaving the other brother, Caleb, with nothing.’
‘That Caleb was an idle drunken shiftless creature, no sort of a farmer. Though he had a pretty daughter.’
‘Yes. But when we come home, it appeared that the Captain did mean sons when he said young Pengelleys, and he and Mrs had words about it. Many times and most severe. And about several other changes she had made: there were a lot of deaths down there in Dorset while we were away.’ Killick hesitated, unable to see Bonden’s expression in the darkness, but presently he went on. ‘Yes, Caleb did have a pretty daughter, which her name was Nan: and Nan is a maid at Asbgrove. You know Ned Hart, as works in our garden?’
‘Of course I do. Of course I do. We was shipmates. He lost a foot in the old Worcester.’
‘Well, Ned and Nan want to marry. And if Caleb can get that there lease he says he will set them up. That is how I come to know so much: Nan tells Ned how Caleb goes to work, and Ned tells me, as someone that knows the Captain’s mind.’
‘Fair enough. But they would never part brass rags over a thing like that?’
‘No. But one thing added to another and every time there was a disagreement, with hard words and ill-feeling. You remember Parson Hinksey?’
‘The gentleman as courted Miss Sophie long ago, the cricketer?’
‘Yes: well it turned out that it was Parson Hinksey as advised it – advised the lease and everything else, all the things they disagreed upon. He was over to Ashgrove at least every week all the time we were away, says Ned, and now he sat in the Captain’s chair.’
‘Oh,’ said Bonden.
‘Taken much notice of by Mother Williams and her tiemate; and by the children.
Looked up to.’
Bonden nodded gloomily: an unpromising state of affairs.
‘So there was words, and Parson Hinksey always being brought up. And Parson Hinksey calling very frequent. But that was nothing, nothing, against what happened when
the Captain was in London and she went to dinner over to Barham, where Mrs Oakes looks after the poor Doctor’s little natural.’
‘She ain’t a natural . . . She’s as pretty a little maid as ever I see – talks away to Padeen in their language, and quite like a Christian to us. Laughs when the barky ships a sea, goes aloft on old Mould’s shoulders, never seasick – loves the sea. We just run her and Mrs Oakes across to the Groyne in the tender. A dear little maid, and the Doctor is as happy as.. .’ Before he could hit upon the very type of happiness Killick went on, ‘Just what happened Nan could not tell, but it was to do with that there silk the Captain bought in Java and that we made Mrs Oakes’s wedding dress out of.’
‘I sewed its bodice,’ said Bonden.
‘Well, that only took part of the bolt and the rest was brought home as intended in the first place. So Mrs A wore it to this dinner where there was Parson Hinksey and some other gent: and when she came back she tore it off – said she would never wear such a rag again – and gave it to her maid, who showed Nan a piece – had never seen such lovely stuff, she said.’
‘I do not know what to make of that,’ said Bonden.
‘Nor did I,’ said Killick. ‘Not until it all came down through Mrs A’s particular maid Clapton and her friends down to Nan. But it seems that when the Captain came back a day or so after this dinner there was a letter waiting for him about the lease that vexed him, and he checked Mrs A with seeing too much of Parson Hinksey, of thinking more of his advice than her husband’s, and perhaps he said something else, being carried away, like. Anyway, it was far, far more than she could bear and she went for him like a Tartar, right savage – calling out that if he could use her so, and accuse her so, while she was wearing his trull’s leavings and being civil to her, she would be damned if she had anything more to do with him and she took off her ring and told him he might – no, she never said that: she tossed it out of window. But she might have said it, and worse: nobody ever thought she had so much spirit or fury in her, nor such a power of dragging him up and down, though with never a tear nor a foul word nor breaking things. Well, that was just before we sailed. He slept in the summerhouse the last few days and she in a dressing-room with a locked door; and there were no fond farewells at parting, though the children saw him to his boat and waved, and. .
A ship’s boy put his head over the rail and said ‘Mr Killick, sir, Grimble asks is he to take up the duck or wait for you? Which Commodore’s cook says it will spoil, else.’
‘Killick,’ said the Commodore, passing him an empty gravyboat, ‘tell my cook to fill this with something that very closely resembles gravy or take the consequences. Heaven and earth alike revolt against a parched and withered duck,’ he added, addressing Stephen.
‘If a duck lack unction, it forfeits all right to the name,’ said Stephen. ‘Yet here are some aiguillettes – what is the English for aiguillettes? – from the creature’s inner flank that will go down well enough with a draught of this Hermitage.’
‘I wish I could carve like that,’ said Jack, watching Stephen’s knife slice the long thin strips. ‘My birds generally take to the air again, spreading fat in the most disastrous fashion over the table and the laps of my guests.’
‘The only vessel I ever sailed turned ignominiously upside
down,’ said Stephen. ‘Each man to his own trade, said Plato:
that’s justice.’
The gravy came, somewhat pale and thin, but adequate:
Jack ate and drank. ‘Surely you will have a little more?’ he said. ‘The bird lies before you, or what is left of it. And another glass of wine?’
‘I will not. I have done quite well; and as I said, I must be tolerably Spartan. I shall probably have a busy day tomorrow, starting early. But I will join you when the port comes on.’
Jack ate on without embarrassment – they were very old friends, differing widely in size, weight, capacity, requirements – but without much appetite either.
Stephen said ‘Will I tell you another of Plato’s observations?’
‘Pray do,’ said Jack, his smile briefly returning.
‘It should please you, since you have a very pretty hand. Hinksey quoted it when I dined with him in London and we were discussing the bill of fare: “Calligraphy,” said Plato,
“is the physical manifestation of an architecture of the soul.” That being so, mine must be a turf-and-wattle kind of soul, since my handwriting would be disowned by a backward cat; whereas yours, particularly on your charts, has a most elegant flow and clarity, the outward form of a soul that might have conceived the Parthenon.’
Jack made a civil bow, and pudding came in: spotted dog. He silently offered a slice to Stephen, who shook his head, and ate mechanically for a while, before pushing his plate away.
Killick
brought
the
port, with bowls of almonds, walnuts and petits fours. Jack told him that he might turn in and stood up to lock the doors of both coach and sleeping-cabin after him, taking no notice of his shocked ‘What, no coffee?’
‘I did not know you had dined with Hinksey,’ he said, sitting down again.
‘Of course you did not. It was when I ran up to London in the tender, and you were already at sea. I ran into him in the back of Clementi’s shop, where he was turning over scores – pianoforte and harpsichord. I found him very knowing, conversible on the subject of your old Bach, and carried him back to Black’s, where we had a moderately good dinner. It would have been better if a table of soldiers had not started roaring and bawling.