‘A professional deformation, I suppose: politics and delicacy can rarely go together,’
said Stephen, looking at the appointment again. ‘But will I tell you something, brother?
This is a most wonderfully auspicious date, so it is. On this same fifteenth of May, a Saturday if I remember but in any event just forty days before the Flood, Noah’s grand-daughter Ceasoir came to Ireland with fifty maidens and three men. They landed I believe at Dun-na-Mbarc in the County Cork;
she was the first person that ever set foot on an Irish strand, and she was buried at Carn Ceasra in Connaught, beside which I have often sat, watching the blue hares run.’
‘You astonish me, Stephen: I am amazed. So the Irish are really Jews?’
‘Not at all. Ceasoir’s father was a Greek. And in any case they were all drowned in the Flood. It was not for close on three hundred years more that Partholan arrived.’
Jack reflected upon this for some little while, looking at Stephen’s face from time to time; and then he said, ‘But here I am prating away eternally about my own affairs; and I have never even asked what kind of a day you spent. Not a very pleasant one, I fear?’
‘It is quite mended now, I thank you; your news would have mended anything. But I was put out, I confess. Indeed, I flew into a passion. I went to my bank and there I found that the dogs had carried out almost none of the instructions I had left with them nor those I had sent from Lisbon: there were even some small annuities still unpaid because of trifling informalities in my initial order. Then when I desired them to send a considerable sum in gold down to Portsmouth as soon as we were aboard they observed that gold was exceedingly hard to come by; that if paper money really would not answer they would do their best for me but that I should have to pay a premium. I pointed out that in the first place I had deposited a very much larger sum in gold with them, that it was absurd to expect me to pay for metal that was my own, and eventually I carried my point, though not without the use of some very warm expressions, such as the nautical lobcock and bugger.’
‘Quite rightly applied too. I am sure I should never have been so moderate.
Stephen, why do you not change to Smith, the brother of the Smith we dined with just before we left? For my part I shall never desert Hoare’s because sooner or later they do everything I ask and because they treated me so well when I had no money at all; but still I do have an account down there with Smith because it is so convenient, particularly for Sophie. In your place I should cashier your lobcocks out of hand and place everything with Smith.’
‘I shall do so, Jack. As soon as that gold is aboard the Diane I shall write them a letter in which every legal requirement is fulfilled three times over – I shall have it drafted by a lawyer. Come in.’
It was Lucy, sent to know what the gentlemen chose to eat for supper: Mrs Broad thought a venison pasty and an apple pie would be very lovely. Stephen agreed, but Jack said, ‘Heavens, Lucy, I could not eat another thing today. Except perhaps for some of the apple pie, and a little piece of cheese. And Lucy, pray ask Killick to step up, if he is below.’
A moment later Killick appeared, his eyes starting from his head, and Jack said, ‘Killick, jump round to Rowley’s, will you, and get a new pair of epaulettes. Ship them first thing tomorrow morning and have a hackney-coach waiting at half past eight. I have an appointment at the Admiralty. Here is some money.’
‘So it’s all right, sir?’ cried Killick, his shrewish face suffused with triumph. He held out his hand and said, ‘If I may make so bold. Give you joy, sir, give you joy with all my
heart. But I knew it would be – I said so all along – ha, ha, ha! I told ’em all, it will be all right, mates. Ha, ha, ha! That’ll learn the buggers.’
‘Speaking of food,’ said Stephen, ‘will you come to Black’s and dine with Sir Joseph and me and Mr Fox tomorrow at half five? That is to say, in your dialect, at half past four?’
‘If I am through with the Admiralty by then, I should be very happy.’
‘This is not an invitation, Aubrey; you are still a member, and must pay your share.’
‘I know I am, and very handsome it was in the committee to write to me so; but I had sworn never to set foot in the place until I was reinstated. And the Gazette will be out tomorrow, ha, ha. I shall pay my scot with the greatest pleasure.’
In order to be through with the Admiralty by dinner-time, Jack Aubrey had first to get there, and at one point this seemed
to present insuperable difficulties: a little after midnight Killick was brought back to the Grapes on a shutter, drunk even by the strict naval standards, being incapable of speech or movement, however slight. He had been tumbled in the mud; someone had plucked out a handful of his sparse pale hair; he had been partially stripped; his money had been taken away from him; he had no new epaulettes and those which he had carried as a pattern had disappeared.
Rowley did not live over his shop and no amount of hammering at the door could therefore rouse him, and the rival establishment was far over beyond Longacre, directly away from Whitehall. However, by dint of a great expense of spirit on Jack’s part and of effort on that of the coach-horse he did arrive, very hot but properly dressed, in time for his appointment at the Admiralty; and there, in that familiar waiting-room, he had time to grow cool again and to relish the sensation of being in uniform once more. Sophie had been quite right: his white breeches and his blue coat were loose about the middle, where his paunch had been; but the coat and high stiff collar still sat perfectly well on his shoulders and neck, sustaining them in the most agreeable manner. There were few other officers there, and those few only single-epauletted lieutenants, who did not presume to say anything more than ‘Good morning, sir,’ to his ‘Good morning, gentlemen’, so presently he took up The Times. He opened it at hazard, and there leaping out of the page before him there stood the column from the Gazette, which, he found, could not be contemplated too often.
‘Captain Aubrey, if you please, sir,’ said the ancient attendant, and a moment later Admiral Satterley, having greeted Jack most cordially, with the kindest congratulations, explained the Diane’s present situation. ‘She was given to Bushel for the West Indies and she was to sail next month. He has been offered the Norfolk Fencibles, which suits him tolerably well – his wife has an estate there – and which has this advantage, seeing we are so pressed for time: he can take almost no followers with him. He has a full gunroom and some
capital warrant officers: the midshipmen’s berth is short of experienced master’s mates, however. I believe his stores are pretty well completed, but his complement was still sixty or seventy hands short when last I heard. Here is a list of his officers: if there are any alterations you wish to make, I will do what I can in the short time we have at our disposal; but in your place I should not make any sweeping changes. They have not been together long enough under Bushel to feel any jealousy at his suppression, and they all
know who took the Diane in the first place and who has a natural right to her. But you study the list while I sign these letters.’
It was an informative list, with each officer’s age, service and seniority. They were young men, upon the whole, with James Fielding, at thirty-three, the oldest and most senior of the lieutenants: he had been at sea for twenty-one years, ten of them with a commission, but most of his service had been in line-of-battle ships on blockade and he had seen very little action, missing Trafalgar by a week – his ship the Canopus was sent off to water and take in provisions at Gibraltar and Tetuan. The second lieutenant, Bampfylde Elliott, obviously enjoyed a good deal of influence, having been made well before the legal age; but he had seen almost no sea-service as an officer, since a wound received in the action between the Sylph and the Flèche had kept him ashore until this appointment. The third was young Dixon, whom he knew; and then came Graham, the surgeon, Blyth, the purser, and Warren, the master, all men who had served in respectable ships. The same applied to the gunner, carpenter and bosun.