Clarissa Oakes (10 page)

After this quite brilliant occasion Clarissa Harvill or rather Oakes faded from Stephen Maturin's immediate attention. He saw her of course every fine day—and the
Surprise
sailed north-north-east through a series of very fine, indeed heart-lifting days until she reached the calms of the equator—sitting well aft on the leeward side of the quarterdeck, taking the air, or sometimes on the forecastle, where the little girls taught her games with string, cradles far beyond the reach of any European cat; but although he saw her and nodded and spoke, this was a time when he was very much taken up with his intelligence work, and even more so with trying to decipher Diana's letters and make out what underlay their sparsity, brevity and sometimes incoherence. He loved his wife very dearly, and he was perfectly prepared to love his unseen daughter with an equal warmth of affection; but he could not really get at either through the veil of words. Diana had never been much of a correspondent, usually limiting herself to times of arrival or departure or names of guests invited, with brief statements of her health—'quite well' or 'cracked a rib when Tomboy came down at Drayton's oxer'. But her notes or letters had always been perfectly straightforward: there had never been this lack of real communication—these lists of horses and their pedigrees and qualities that filled paper and told him nothing: very little about Brigid after a short account of her birth—'most unpleasant; an agonizing bore; I am glad it is over'—apart from the names of unsatisfactory nurses and the words 'She seems rather stupid. Do not expect too much.' Unlike Sophie Diana did not number her letters, nor did she always date them with anything more than the day of the week, so although there were not a great many of them he found it impossible to arrange the series in any convincing order; and often when he should have been decoding the long reports from Sir Joseph Blaine, who looked after naval intelligence, he found himself rearranging the sequence, so that Diana's ambiguous phrases took on a different meaning. Two or three things were clear, however: that she was not very happy; that she and Sophie had disagreed about entertainments, Sophie and her mother maintaining that two women whose naval husbands were away at sea should go out very little, certainly not to assemblies where there was dancing, and should receive even less—only immediate family and very old friends. And that Diana was spending a good deal of time at Barham Down, the big remote house with extensive grazing and high down-land she had bought for her Arabians, rather than at Ashgrove Cottage, driving herself to and fro in her new green coach.

   He had hoped that having a baby would make a fundamental change in Diana. The hope had not been held with much conviction, but on the other hand he had never thought that she would be quite so indifferent a mother as she appeared in these letters, these curiously disturbing letters.

   They were worrying in what they said and perhaps more so in their silences; and Jack's behaviour made him uneasy too. Ordinarily when letters came from home they read pieces out to one another: Jack did so still, telling him about the children, the garden and the plantations; but there was a constraint—almost nothing about Barham Down or indeed Diana herself—and it was not at all the same frank and open interchange.

As Jack worked his way systematically through Sophie's letters he found that her very strong reluctance to say anything unpleasant gradually diminished, and by the time he read the last he knew that the baby 'was perhaps a little strange' and that Diana was drinking heavily. But he had also been told with great force that he must not say anything; that Sophie might be quite mistaken about Brigid—babies often looked strange at first and turned out charming later—and that Diana might be entirely different once she had Stephen at home again. In any case it would be pointless and wicked to put poor dear Stephen on a rack for the rest of the voyage and Sophie knew that Jack would not say anything at all.

   This was bad. But there had been an area of silence between Jack and his friend years ago, and about Diana too, before Stephen and she were married. On the other hand, from their very first days at sea together, there had never been anything that Jack had had to keep from him in the line of naval warfare: intelligence and action complemented one another and Captain Aubrey had often been officially told in so many words to consult with Dr Maturin and seek his advice. This time however his orders made no mention of Stephen at all: was the omission deliberate or did it arise merely from the fact that they originated in Sydney rather than Whitehall? The second was the probable answer, since the occasion for the orders, the trouble in Moahu, had only just arisen; but there was a faint possibility that Sydney, informed by Whitehall, might know as much about Dr Maturin's views on colonialization, muscular 'protection', and the government of one nation by another as did Jack, who had so often heard him speaking of 'that busy meddling fool Columbus and that infernal Borgia Pope', of 'the infamous Alexander', 'that scoundrel Julius Caesar' and now worst of all 'the scelerate Buonaparte'. It seemed to him that he was now bound to offend Stephen either by asking him to collaborate in what might look very like annexation or to wound him by an evident neglect. Some infinitely welcome compromise might present itself in time, but for the moment it was a worrying position; and this was not Jack Aubrey's only source of worry either. Not long since, he had succeeded to two inheritances, the first on his father's death, which brought him the much-encumbered Woolhampton estate, and the second on that of his very aged cousin Edward Norton, whose much more considerable possessions included the borough of Milport, which Jack represented in Parliament (there were only seventeen electors, all of whom had been Cousin Edward's tenants). And inheritance, above all the inheritance of land, brought with it a mass of legal procedures to be followed, duties to be paid, oaths to be sworn: Jack had always been aware of the fact and he had always said 'Fortunately there is Mr Withers to deal with the whole thing'. Mr Withers being the Dorchester attorney, the family's man of business, who had looked after both estates ever since Jack was a midshipman.

   But while Jack was on the high seas—in the Straits of Macassar, to be exact—Mr Withers died, and his successor could think of nothing wiser to do than to send a great mass of papers, asking for instructions on scores or even hundreds of such matters as enclosures, mineral rights, and the disputed successions to Parsley Meadows, which had been in Chancery these twelve years, matters of which Jack knew nothing but which he was now trying to reduce to order with the help of his clerk Adams in spite of the contradictions at every turn, missing documents, vouchers, receipts.

   'At least,' he said, coming into Stephen's cabin with a sheet of papers, 'I have the particulars of the advowsons I told you about some time ago. But tell me, is Martin an idoneous person?'

   'Idoneous for what?'

   'Oh, just idoneous. Two of the livings, if you can call them livings, are vacant; and this letter says I am required to present an idoneous person.'

   'As far as benefices are concerned no one could be more idoneous, fitting or suitable than Martin, since he is an Anglican clergyman.'

   'That makes him idoneous, does it? I was not aware. Well, here are the particulars of those in my gift: Fenny Horkell and Up Hellions are the vacant ones, and they should have been filled before this; but since I am on active service the Bishop has to wait until I can send home. They are in the same diocese, in spite of being so far apart. I am afraid neither could be called anything remotely like a plum, but Fenny Horkell has a decent house, built by a wealthy parson forty years ago for the sake of the fishing, which I know Martin would enjoy: it has sixty acres of glebe, poor plashy stuff, but it has the Test flowing through from one end to the other; yet the tithe only amounts to £47.15.0, although there are 356 parishioners. The next, Up Hellions, is rather better, with £160 a year and thirty-six acres of glebe—excellent wheat land—extraordinary number of hares—and there are only 137 souls to look after. If they interested Martin he could have a curate in Hellions, a dreary place, as the other man did.' As Stephen said nothing Jack went on 'I suppose you would not care to put it to him? I feel a little awkward about offering what might be looked upon as a favour, though a precious meagre one, above all with this monstrous income-tax. Perhaps he might prefer to wait for Yarell, with more than three times the income. It is held by the Reverend Mr Cicero Rabbetts, a very ancient gentleman, well over seventy, who lives in Bath.'

   'Take heart of grace, brother, and put it to him directly: show him the papers and desire him to turn the question over in his mind.'

   'Very well,' said Jack reluctantly, leaving the cabin; and as soon as the door closed Stephen returned to his letter, one of those rambling sea-letters so often written by sailors five thousand miles and more from the nearest post-office. He had by now calmed his mind somewhat by the reflexion that Sophie's quiet, staid, middle-class, provincial world had always disapproved of Diana's; that Sophie herself disliked horses as dangerous, smelly, unpredictable animals, and had no taste for wine, drinking elder-flower in summer and elderberry in winter. Clearly when she had visitors this would not do, but as far as claret was concerned she felt that one glass was enough for any woman: a view that Diana despised. Indeed it was surprising to see how much of Mrs Williams' early influence was still to be seen in her daughter, who could not take much pleasure in Diana's active social life, her fox-hunting, or her driving the new green four-in-hand with only one servant up behind. Stephen mused for a while on the curious interpenetration of English classes by which it came about that two quite close cousins might belong to two widely different cultures, a state of affairs guaranteed to cause disagreement, even if Diana had been a devoted mother, which she quite obviously was not—disagreement, and as a natural consequence even in so sweet-natured a woman as Sophie, an unbalanced account with never a lie from beginning to end but essentially untrue.

   He dipped his pen and wrote on: 'In the brief note that was all I had time to scribble before the
Eclair
left us I believe I told you how I discovered that the platypus (a warm shy inoffensive soft furry animal, devoid of teeth) had unexpected means of defence, spurs extraordinarily like the serpent's fang and equally capable of injecting venom, and how I survived the discovery; I also spoke, perhaps too facetiously, of dear Jack's first conscious encounter with middle age; but I do not think I described the new member of our ship's company, a young person brought aboard, dressed as a boy, by one of the midshipmen and kept
under hatches
as we say until it was too late for Jack to turn back and deliver her up to the authorities of that infamous penal colony as he would in duty have been bound to do had New South Wales not been so far away. Poor Jack was in a terrible passion to begin with, quite pale with fury, and he repeatedly called out that they should be marooned. To keep up the necessary façade he made as though to carry out this dreadful sentence the next day, and the people very gravely went through the motions of inspecting the strand on that side of the island most exposed to the swell and reporting that the surf made landing impossible. He was very much incensed against the wench—hates women aboard, troublesome, unlucky creatures, capable of using fresh water to wash their clothes—but she is quite pretty, modest and well-bred, not at all the trollop that might have been expected, and now he is reconciled to her presence. The two were married in the cabin by Nathaniel Martin, and Miss Clarissa Harvill became Mrs Oakes; Mr Oakes (though eventually to be discharged) was restored to his office or station, and his wife, legally recovering her civil freedom by this ceremony, also acquired the freedom of the quarterdeck. I write their names in this indiscreet, improper way, my dear, because this is little more than the ghost of a real letter: it will almost certainly never be finished, never be sent; but I do love communing with you, if only in thought and upon paper. So on the quarterdeck she sits, under an awning when the weather is fine, as it nearly always is, and sometimes I am told in the warm night when her husband is on duty. I do not know her well, since my own work has taken up much of my time, but I have already perceived that there are two women in her. No uncommon state of affairs, you will say; but I have never known it in this high degree. Ordinarily she is anxious for approval, willing to agree; there is a general complaisance in her air and the civil inclination of her head; she is a good listener and she never interrupts. The officers all treat her with a proper respect, but like me they are eager to know what brought a young gentlewoman out to Botany Bay. All they can learn from her husband is what he knows: to wit, that at a house he visited outside Sydney she was teaching the children French, music, and the use of the globes. The information does not satisfy them of course and sometimes they angle for more. When this happens, the complaisance (the perfectly genuine complaisance, I am sure) vanishes and the second woman appears. Once to my surprise Jack was a little insistent about the voyage out—had she seen any islands of ice south of the Cape?—and there was Medea rather than Clarissa Oakes. She only said "I am under great obligations to you, sir, and I am extremely grateful; but that was a very painful time and you will forgive me if I do not dwell on it," yet her look was more eloquent by far, and he withdrew at once. Davidge, on the other hand, when he made enquiries of the same nature was told that her usual answer to an impertinent question was—I forget exactly what but "vulgar curiosity" came into it; and I think she has not been troubled since.'

East-north-east the frigate sailed, rarely exceeding a hundred miles a day between noon and noon in spite of perpetual close attention to her great array of canvas; but on a Sunday, immediately after church, the south-east trades returned to their duty, and although the royals and flying kites had been taken in, the
Surprise
awoke to a life she had not known since leaving Sydney Cove. Her deck sloped, she leant her larboard bow well down, overtaking the swell and splitting it with a fine broad slash of white. All the tones of the rigging—quite different for the various sets of stays, shrouds and backstays and of course for all the cordage—rose and rose, and by the first dog-watch the resultant voice of all these sounds combined and sent forth by the hull reached the triumphant pitch that Stephen associated with ten knots. The wind, blowing under a sky beautifully mottled with white and an even purer blue, brought with it flying spray, and an uncommon freshness. At two bells the log was heaved and to his intense satisfaction Stephen heard Oakes report 'Ten knots and one fathom, sir, if you please.'