‘Jack, my best thanks for your advice about stocks and shares; I am deeply sensible of your kindness. Tell me, my dear, are you fully committed?’ Jack nodded. ‘Then there is no point in my asking what inquiries you made about your informant.’
‘Oh, he is all right. He knew you – he knew about Testudo aubreii.’
‘Indeed?’ Stephen stood there considering for a moment. There was no way in which the man could gain by deceiving Jack; and if the informant was himself mistaken Jack would still possess the securities, losing no more than the brokerage. ‘I must leave you,’ he said.
‘I have some calls to make.’
‘You are coming down to Ashgrove, of course,’ said Jack. ‘Sophie will be so happy to see you. I had thought of Sunday, because of the bums, but now we could go down tomorrow, if you would like it.’
‘I doubt I shall be free until Tuesday,’ said Stephen.
‘I had just as soon stay a little longer,’ said Jack. ‘Let us say Tuesday, then.’
The first of these calls was unsuccessful. Stephen sent in his name, but after a few minutes he learnt that Mr Wray was not at home. ‘I had almost forgotten,’ he observed, walking off into the drizzle, ‘he owes me a very great deal of money. My coming may be mighty inconvenient.’
The second was no more fortunate. Indeed it was hardly made at al!. Well before he reached the door it occurred to Stephen that Nathan, like all their acquaintance in London, must be aware of the separation and that as Diana’s confidential adviser he would think it improper to speak of her affairs. Stephen did ring the bell, but he was just as glad when he heard that Mr Nathan was not in the way. Nathan’s younger brother Meyer was there, however, and in the hall itself; and when Stephen absolutely refused to have a coach or a chair called for him against the increasing rain, Meyer pressed an umbrella into his hands, a very powerful gingham and whalebone affair. It was under this spreading shelter that Stephen made his way through the hurrying, jostling crowds to the baggage office, for he had made the last part of his journey in a coach. Here the road was particularly deep in semi-liquid mud, horse-dung, and general filth and the crossing-sweeper hurried in front of him, clearing a Red Sea passage with his active broom. On the far pavement he cried ‘Don’t forget the sweeper, your honour.’
Stephen plunged his hand first into one coat pocket, then into the other. ‘I am sorry, child,’
he said, ‘but the wicked dogs have not left me a penny piece, nor a handkerchief. I am afraid I have no money on me.’
‘Did your mother never tell you to keep your wipe and your pewter in your breeches?’
asked the little boy, frowning. ‘Whoreson old bumpkin,’ he added as an afterthought, from some little distance. ‘Whoreson old cuckold.’
In the stage-coach office Stephen took a parcel from his sea-chest, gave directions for the delivery of the rest of his baggage, and made his difficult way to Shepherd Market, carrying the parcel and at the same time managing the broad, heavy umbrella in the increasing wind. The umbrella was a mark of the younger Nathan’s sympathy: Stephen had instantly perceived the more than usually grave, attentive expression, the considerate tone, and in his present excoriated state it seemed to him that it resembled most forms of commiseration: useless, embarrassing, cumbersome and painful.
‘I hope Sir Joseph will not feel obliged to condole,’ he said, approaching the door. ‘I do not think I can bear any more. Sure, the social contract requires some expression of concern; but not now, oh Lord, not now.’
He need not have feared for Sir Joseph. Nothing could have been kinder than his welcome, yet there was not the least hint of uneasy awareness or woundingly particular consideration for a great while. It was not until they had
dealt with the obvious preliminaries about the voyage and had exchanged a great deal of gossip to do with other entomologists and the proceedings of the Royal Society that Stephen asked particularly after Sir Joseph’s health:
he asked as a physician, having prescribed for him – the trouble had been a want of sexual vigour, which assumed a certain importance in view of Blain’s intended marriage, and Stephen wished to know how his physic had answered. ‘It answered in a most surprising and gratifying manner, I thank you,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘Priapus would himself have been put to the blush. But I laid it aside. I reflected upon matrimony, and although I found a great deal to be said for it in theory, when I looked attentively among my friends I found that the practice did not seem to produce much happiness. Scarcely a single pair did I find who appeared really suited to please one another for more than a few months, after a year or so contention, striving for moral advantage, differences of temper, education, taste, appetite and a hundred other things led to
bickering, uneasiness, indifference, downright dislike or even worse. Few of my friends can be said to be happily married, and in some cases . . .’ He broke off, evidently regretting his words, and returned to the contemplation of the beetles that Stephen had brought him from Brazil and the Great South Sea. After some talk of insects he added,
‘Besides, in your private ear I will confess that I heard the lady refer to me as “my old beau”. Old I could bear; but there is something strangely chilling and smart and provincial about beau. Then again, marriage and intelligence make awkward yoke-fellows: not that I am much concerned with intelligence any more, however.’
‘Are you not?’ said Stephen, looking into his face.
‘No,’ said Blaine, ‘I am not. You will recall that I sent you a somewhat cryptic warning of squalls -of troubled waters – of dark obscure currents – when you were in Gibraltar. Well now, almost everything I forecast has come about. Just let me have a word with Mrs Barlow about our supper, and when we have eaten it I will tell you in more detail.’
‘First may I beg you to lend me a handkerchief? My pocket was picked as I was going to the White Horse.’
‘I hope you did not lose much?’
‘Fourpence and a spotted handkerchief, and a mighty dose of self-esteem. I had thought myself a match for a common pickpocket. It is true I was struggling with a cumbrous great umbrella at the time, but that is a poor excuse. My pocket picked clean, as though I were just off the mountain or the bog, for shame.’
It was a lobster of moderate size that they ate for their supper, followed by a boned capon in a pie and then by a rice pudding, a dish they were both very fond of: but Sir Joseph only
toyed with his, and when they carried their wine into the library he said ‘Your having your pocket picked like a countryman brings my own mishap so clearly to my mind that it quite takes my appetite away. I am older than you, Maturin, I have had even more experience, and yet I have been done brown; and what angers me even more is that I no more know who roasted me than you know who picked your pocket.’
He gave Stephen a circumstantial account of the changes that had come about in naval intelligence. Sir Joseph still had a high-sounding title, but in the course of one of those silent Whitehall struggles that turn ministries upside-down he had been deprived of almost all real power: he still represented the Admiralty at the meetings of the Committee for the moment, but he had nothing to do with the day to day business of the department. Last January his horse had fallen with him on an icy road in the country: it had meant no more than a fortnight in bed, but that was fourteen days too long – there had been three important meetings at which his opponents carried all before them and when he crept back he found the organization wholly recast. By now nearly all his friends had been removed or sent to obscure positions far away,
and those who remained could hope for no countenance or advancement. Their clerks were taken from them, their rooms were given to others, and they were lodged in mean holes and corners to induce them to resign, and the least slip of some remote agent was seized upon to discredit them. It was the same with those outside the administration.
‘Invaluable colleagues have been treated with disrespect and have withdrawn in disgust.
When you call at the Admiralty, do not be surprised if they ask you to give up your key to the private door. The pretext will no doubt be that the locks are being changed.’ Sir Joseph himself would have resigned months ago if this had been an ordinary department and if he had not had some hopes of reversing the situation in the end. ‘I cannot tell you, Maturin,’