though I have known it done. No. On the whole, and speaking quite impersonally, you understand, it could be said that men at the head of the post-captains’ list may assert a right to a flag at the next promotion of admirals. But that don’t mean they have a right to hoist it, let alone to any employment. What happens if they do not like the cut of your jib is that they make you a rear-admiral “without distinction of squadron”. You have a rear-admiral’s half-pay: you have the nominal rank. But you are neither red, white nor blue; neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring; and when sailors call you admiral the decent ones look away – the others smile. In the cant phrase you have been yellowed.’
‘But that could never happen to you, Jack,’ she cried. ‘Not with your fighting record. And you have never refused any service, however disagreeable.’
‘I hope you are right, my dear,’ said Jack, searching down the column. ‘Yet I am afraid it has happened to Captain Willis. John Thornton is not here either, but I think he has accepted a place as commissioner, which puts him out of the running. Craddock is missing too.’
She came and looked over his shoulder. ‘So he is, poor soul: though I never liked him. But there is no mention of “without distinction of squadron”: and I have never seen it either, in any Gazette.’
‘No. They do not make it public. You just get a letter saying that Their Lordships do not have it in contemplation and so on. And I am afraid more and more people are going to get that damned uncomfortable letter. Unless Napoleon wins yet another of those shattering unexpected victories by land all over again, it looks as though this war was pretty nearly over, with the French cleared right out of Spain and Wellington already well into France.’
‘Oh, how I hope so,’ said Sophie.
‘So do I, of course, a very good thing, to be sure. No more carnage. But can you imagine the cut-throat struggle for commands in a Navy reduced to three wherries and a gig?
Armageddon would be nothing to it. No, no. Rather than make things even worse and overcrowd the flag-officers’ list they will superannuate right, left and centre, and the Devil take the . .
They both turned their heads, listening: hoofs again, far off, and sea-going cries: ‘Give way, there. Luff and touch her. Thus, thus, very well thus. Easy, as she goes. Easy. Easy, God damn and blast your eyes. This ain’t the fucking Derby stakes.’
Whenever Captain Aubrey was ashore for any length of time, as for that part of the parliamentary session devoted to the naval estimates, he naturally brought his coxswain, his steward and one or two followers with him. The first, Barrett Bonden, was a tough, powerful, very able seaman; the virtues of the second, Preserved Killick, were less evident
– he was a passable seaman and a brilliant silver-polisher, but as a personal servant he left much to be desired: indeed almost everything. Jack brought them because it was customary for a post-captain to have a minimum of retinue, and Captain Aubrey had the greatest respect for naval customs; yet they were beings so wholly nautical that they were of very little use to him by land. In the present instance, for example, they were barely capable of inducing a staid old mare, well past mark of mouth and thoroughly accustomed to the road, to carry them and the gig to the post-office for the Woolcombe letters without overturning into a ditch or two, or even, in her agitation of mind, losing the way.
The voice died away as the mare, quickening her pace, headed for the familiar stables behind the house. Jack and Sophie sat waiting. The post had been a matter of dreadful importance ever since the first action for wrongful seizure opened with a broadside of writs, each more injuriously phrased and menacing than the last.
In a properly-run household it was the butler’s duty, indeed his privilege, to carry in the family’s letters, taking them out of the leather bag in which the postmaster at Woolhampton had placed them, considering them back and front, and arranging them on a salver. Woolcombe was still a properly-run house, though terribly threatened and managing on the strictest minimum; but its due order was shaken every time the Captain’s coxswain appeared. He had an unshakable view of his own prerogatives; and since Mnason, the regular, hereditary butler, knew that the broken-nosed coxswain had knocked
out or otherwise disabled all challengers for the championship of the Mediterranean fleet, he confined himself to verbal complaints and Bonden carried
20the salver in, smoothing his hair and buttoning his jacket to do so in style.
Jack Aubrey had certain rules, somewhat tainted with superstition, and one of these obliged him to take the nearest letter. Sophie knew no such laws and she instantly reached over for a cover addressed in a well-known hand and bearing an Ulster post-mark: it was from her sister Frances, a young, pretty and more or less penniless widow who had turned her big house into a girls’ school, where, with the help of their former governess she was educating the Aubrey twins, Charlotte and Fanny, among a score or so of others. She enclosed two fairly creditable letters from them, written on hot-pressed pink paper. Sophie, a deeply affectionate soul, read them twice, and with such pleasure that a tear dimmed her eye. She then put them in her lap and picked another from the array, a singularly wretched choice that brought tears of quite another kind: or almost brought them, for by now she had had a good deal of practice at mastering the actual flow.
Each put down a letter. Each looked at the other. ‘What news, my dear?’ asked Jack. Her back was to the light and he did not see how distressed she was. ‘Good news from Frankie and the girls,’ she said, and he heard the tremble, ‘but Cluttons say that with the times so bad and the cost of removing all the inscriptions so high, they are afraid they cannot offer more than the melting-pot price for the Jamaica service.’ Jack nodded, but said nothing. ‘What was yours?’ she went on, for they dealt with these things on an equal footing, with no concealment on either side, almost no concessions.
‘It was from Lawrence,’ he said. ‘Leave to appeal has been refused.’
She digested this. It was the wreck of all their cherished, accumulated hopes as far as that particular case was concerned. ‘We shall have to sell Ashgrove,’ she said after a pause.
‘The creditors will not wait.’
Jack cast her a loving glance. What she said was true; the only evident solution, since Woolcombe was entailed; yet it
was scarcely one that he could have proposed. Ashgrove was her own, and could neither be sold nor mortgaged by him, very much her own, and even legally so, by settlement – a rambling house they had planned together, piece by piece, but of course carried out almost entirely by her, with Jack being so long at sea. Although quite by itself in its own woods it was a wonderfully convenient house for a naval officer, within sight of Portsmouth, and at present it was let to an admiral who had done very well out of prize-money and who had thrown out many a hint about buying it.
‘May I see the girls’ letters?’ he asked. And when he had read them he said, ‘I am afraid you miss them cruelly, but it is really much better that they should be with Frankie. There is nothing worse for children than a house with lawsuits hanging over it – threats they do not really understand
* universe crumbling – parents nearly always sad or cross – perpetually anxious.’ He spoke from intimate knowledge, since it was his father’s litigious propensities even more than his other faults of character that had made Jack’s mother’s short life so unhappy and that had at times so oppressed his naturally cheerful boyhood that even now this house cast a gloom upon his spirits – he was never cordially happy there except in the parts behind, the stable courts, the walled garden and the far garden with its grotto. ‘But I think George is still too young to feel it. And in any case we do not quarrel.’
‘No, my dear,’ she said, looking at him kindly. ‘But he is lonely, poor lamb. Shall we look through the rest? Perhaps we are both missing heirs.’
No sudden fortune, but Jack’s face lit with much the same light as he turned the last letter of his undistinguished pile. ‘Why, this is Stephen,’ he exclaimed, breaking the seal. ‘By God, they will be here today! Stephen, Diana, Clarissa Oakes, Brigid, Padeen, the whole shooting-match. What joy! Listen, sweetheart. “My dear Jack, may I indeed inflict myself, all my women, and a numerous band of followers upon you indefinitely? Diana (who sends her love) says it is a monstrous imposition, above all with no notice; but I reassure her, saying it was an understood thing between us – we had met at Black’s – you had stressed the empty immensities of your palatial home. And I would not wound you for the world, as I must by taking hired lodgings until a suitable house can be found. . .” My dear, what’s amiss? Ain’t you delighted?’