A Shot Rolling Ship (10 page)

The journey across the anchorage was horrible. He faced the men rowing the boat, who had seen him clamber down the side, ditty bag in hand, and had heard too that last exchange and now there was one of their fellow crewmen, and a landsman to boot, not hauling on an oar as they were, but sitting in the thwarts with the captain, for all the world like an officer. The desire to challenge Colbourne, to get him to admit that he had set out not only to get Pearce off the ship but to undermine him, was powerful, but having been truly humbugged once, he decided against it, for he had a very strong feeling that if he was to try and hold a conversation that would be overheard by the nearest men on the oars, the lieutenant would turn it to his advantage.

So he sat in silence, avoiding the eyes that were fixed on him, listening to Colbourne’s coxswain issue soft orders that turned the boat left and right though the shipping that filled the anchorage, unable to hear the whispered exchanges between the oarsmen, all of which he knew to be about him. Jumbled thoughts went from anger to despair, the former an attempt at justification which demanded to know why it was he who had to lead men to something they should aspire to and achieve themselves, the latter the certain knowledge that human nature was not designed that way; men needed to be led for good or
ill. He had set himself to do just that and walked out on the responsibility he had created.

It was a relief to reach the shore and to step on to dry land for the first time in six weeks, even if the earth seemed to move beneath his feet. Colbourne was standing, legs well spread, showing the way to adjust. ‘Take your time Mr Pearce, give it a moment, otherwise I assure you, if you seek to walk right off, you will take a most ignominious tumble, and that would never do. We can hardly have the ship’s crew cackling at you, can we?’

Damn the man, he is laughing at me.

‘Your ditty bag, Mr Pearce.’

The turn to take it from one of the boat crew was executed slowly. He reached out a hand for the canvas sack, which was released a split second before he grasped it, falling to the ground with a soft thud. Pearce started to bend down, only to hear Colbourne’s voice once more.

‘No, Mr Pearce. You have a certain station now, so it behoves you to demand that sack be picked up and placed in your hand.’ Pearce did not stop, and picked it up himself. Colbourne added, as the sailor dropped back into the boat. ‘Insubordination comes so very naturally to you, does it not?’

No reply came, so Colbourne continued. ‘My first task is to report to the Commodore’s office and hand in my logs and papers. I daresay, since Mr Short has brought in that capture, small and damaged as it is, the great man will oblige me with a glass or two. Normally I would ask you to wait here, but I fear under present circumstances
that would be unwise. Like as not I would return to find you floating face down in the harbour.’

‘You have had your fun, Mr Colbourne.’

‘A simple sir would suffice, and as for fun, Pearce, I think you have had quite a deal of that at my expense this last two weeks. Now let us be off. You will be quite safe outside the naval buildings, which will give you plenty of time to plan your next move.’

‘You could hand me over now, couldn’t you?’

‘Yes, I could, but it may surprise you to know that I meant some of what I said in my cabin. I too have taken part in discussions on the nature of liberty. I have even corresponded with people who have attended meetings where your father spoke, and they would, no doubt, tell me that he is an estimable man who does not deserve to be proscribed merely for holding radical sentiments, just because madness has replaced sense across the Channel. As for the ship and my career in the Navy, I have done what I had to do, and if I seemed to have taken pleasure in it you must allow me that, for it is no more than a release from a period of anxiety that both those things were about to be taken from me. I will not betray you, for I was brought up to keep my word.’

‘Thank you…sir.’

Back aboard
Griffin
the mood was sombre. The men changed into the best shore going rig, even although they would not set foot on land, but they did so in a muted way, with none of the joviality that normally attended such an occasion.

‘He’s gone and left us high and dry,’ said Rufus, ‘ain’t he?’

‘He has that Rufus,’ Charlie replied, ‘and after all we’s been through together. I never thought I’d live to see the day.’

That brought a halt to the thoughts that Michael O’Hagan was harbouring, a mixture of hurt and anger. As a man he reckoned himself too trusting, but had decided long ago that it was better to be that way than forever suspicious. That trust had been abused before, but he could recall no time in the past when he had felt as let down as he did now. In the few weeks he had known John Pearce he had come to think of him as a close friend, the kind he had not had since childhood, and right now, because he knew the reasons he was so desperate to get off the ship, there was room to forgive him for going. But there was no room to forgive Pearce for not explaining. Damnation to the rest of the crew, but he should have told him what was afoot.

Just goes to show,’ Charlie added, ‘that in this life it don’t do no good to trust anyone.’

Michael glared at him, and recalled that as a customer in the Pelican he had not much liked Charlie Taverner, and that was for his smarming ways as much as anything else. On top of that was the fact that Charlie, like the rest of his mates, rarely had any money, and he was always trying to part from their coin those who had some. Michael worked hard all day, a sinker paid good money to dig deep ditches and shafts, often up to his knees in freezing mud and
slime, and at night he drank what he earned. If he woke in the morning with nothing left in his pockets it made no odds, for another day’s work would set him up again, but he did have difficulty in recalling what had taken place the night before, and he suspected that sometimes Charlie had taken advantage of his inebriation. On top of that, there had been a serving girl called Rosie that Michael was sweet on, a girl Charlie was always trying to steal away.

‘There’s a reason,’ Michael said.

‘’Course there is, Michael. He got the chance to look after hisself and he took it.’

‘Why don’t you tell them?’ asked Gherson, who had come close enough to hear. ‘Tell them that your sainted friend is a man who has betrayed his country as well as his friends.’

Michael’s huge hand shot out and grabbed the man by the throat, lifting him, gasping, until his head hit the deck beams. He then moved in so that his face was right in that of Gherson’s, his voice a quiet, menacing hiss. ‘Don’t you talk of betrayal, or I’ll be after telling our shipmates what you get up to when no one’s looking. Now you will say nothing and nor will I, but if I hear you have opened your big gob and split, you’ll be the loser.’

‘Belay Michael, for the love of Christ,’ said Latimer, grabbing at his hand, for Gherson’s pretty face was going blue. ‘You’re choking the life out of the bugger.’

Michael let go and Gherson dropped like a sack of peas, in a heap on the planking, his hand rubbing his throat.

‘You heard me Gherson, did you not?’

That got a rasping noise and a nod. Charlie, who had always been wary of Michael O’Hagan, not least because he had felt his fist one night when the Irishman was drunk, had taken a couple of steps back, causing those he disturbed to curse him.

‘You said there was a reason, Michael,’ asked Rufus.

‘There is.’

‘Is it a good enough one to leave us in the lurch?’

It was a gentler Michael who put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘To tell the truth, Rufus, I don’t know, for what is reason enough for one man, can be seen as little to another. I need to think on that.’

‘Are you going to tell us what it is.’

‘When we’re back at sea, Rufus, then I’ll tell you.’

‘It won’t do for me, whatever it is,’ said Charlie Taverner.

That got a chorus of agreement, not much of one, for those who had been offended by Pearce’s blatant self-interest, had turned to other more pressing needs, like getting their pigtails greased and decorated, and airing their shore going rig, anything that would make them look good, this despite the fact that the brutes they were going to service would have had them in sackcloth as long as they could pay. 

Emerging from the gates of the naval yard, John Pearce entered a world more familiar to him than that of any ship; the narrow streets were bustling, with people hurrying to unknown destinations, weaving between carts drawn by hand or horse. The smell was the sweet pungent odour of the manure that covered the cobbled roadway, driven into the gaps between the stones by a constant succession of wheels; of smoke from chimneys too sooted-up for real safety and a general whiff of corruption that went with humans in the mass. There were hawkers and traders in canvas covered stalls filling every available wall space, the odd drab of a whore who would strut in what she supposed to be a seductive way whenever anyone emerged, too poor to do anything but offer her services in an alley, for the folk that emerged through these gates had coin, be they Navy or dockies, and perhaps some of the latter were going
home to an abode where what the emaciated whores could give them in a two minute tryst, for a two pence piece, was not available in the bed space of their own home.

Even if Colbourne had not surreptitiously pointed them out, Pearce would have spotted the sharp-eyed men lounging in various poses that allowed them a clear view of the gates, crimps and sharps, always on the lookout for a mark. No doubt they were familiar with the shore workers, the storemen and the Navy clerks, and one or two would have an eye out for the signal that told them these men had something to sell, something they had purloined from the Navy. The largest industrial enterprise in the land was a rich source of almost anything of which a thief could think. Failing that, even if the gate was an unlikely place of exit, they would be on the lookout for men who had no right to be where they were, which would have applied to John Pearce without a uniformed lieutenant walking a pace in front of him. Others would be hoping for some youngster in a blue coat who might have money from which he could be parted, either by guile, or if it could be done without retribution, by force, and that too would apply to any tar allowed ashore because his captain trusted him not to run. Not that either would be approached sober; let them drink first, and copiously, for in their dulled state they were an easier victim.

Odd to think that Charlie Taverner had been one of that kind, something which Pearce had learned from those who knew him rather than from Charlie’s own lips. He could imagine him in this setting, hat tipped back,
sandy hair showing and a smile on his face, seeking by a welcome look to entice some stranger into his orbit. Pearce doubted, without any evidence, that Charlie was one to club an unfortunate once he had filled them with drink, more the kind to use sweet words and flattery to part them from their money, keeping himself fed in the process before perhaps extracting a small loan. That was how he had worked John Pearce on that first acquaintance in the Pelican, which led him to wonder what inroads Charlie would have made into his money if the Press Gang had not intervened. Pride himself as he might on his prudence and wits, he knew that the likes of Charlie Taverner had means of parting any man from the contents of his purse. Clearly it had not worked on at least one occasion, the lawbreaking being what confined him to the Liberties of the Savoy, where Charlie could walk the few streets bounded by that sanction, and work if he could find any that paid.

The scene before him was a tableau which could be seen in every town in the land, and not for the first time Pearce was wont to wonder how many people tried to make their living, by fair means or foul, as parasites feeding on the body of a paying enterprise. It was not just dockyards that attracted such people, you could find them outside any manufactory where the workers received regular pay, in the centre of any market town where those with the means came to buy and sell, people hovering on the edge of life, trying to sustain themselves off the scraps of those who only had a little more. This had been the grist to his father’s radical mill, the gap between rich and poor in a
world where a man would not have to look too hard to find someone expired of starvation only yards away from the gates of houses full of fat merchants and numerous servants. Walking behind Colbourne, he felt a faint tinge of the resentment that had so animated his father at such injustice, while at the same time reminding himself of something he had learned in Paris: that when it came to change it was not those at the bottom of the pile who effected anything, but people who had full bellies, time and inclination. The only role the dispossessed were given to play was usually destructive.

The shop they entered was dark and low-ceilinged, and the man who responded to the tinkling bell almost a caricature of the lowly tailor in the way he was bent and obsequious, with a long tape measure round his collar, a man able to smile at Colbourne and frown at John Pearce in what seemed to be the same look. There was a whole playlet in the fellow as he examined, in a fleeting second, the coat Pearce was wearing: the sneer at the torn off collar, a slight change of expression as he realised that, despite the way it was marked and creased, the black cloth was of very good quality. The look did not last long for this was a man who also knew a customer from a servant.

‘Lieutenant, how may I be of service to you?’

Colbourne indicated Pearce. ‘I want a midshipman’s coat for this fellow, not a new one. In fact quite well worn will do.’

‘Ah!’

Colbourne ignored a reply obviously designed to impart
that such a matter was far from easy. ‘I know you keep such things, since I was obliged to purchase a used garment as a working coat myself, not two months past.’

The lips pursed in a fleeting show of distaste; this was a man who enjoyed dealing with Post Captains who could afford a twenty guinea gold-edged broadcloth, took some pleasure from lieutenants buying new, if plain, but had little patience with impecunious midshipmen and could barely bring himself to be civil to anyone seeking second hand. He approached Pearce and stood under his chin.

‘Size will be a problem.’

‘You will look.’

The shrug was eloquent if non-committal, but before he turned to go a finger and thumb were used to feel the edge of the coat Pearce was wearing, one that had been bought for him by a woman in Paris, keen that her young and ardent lover should look like a gentleman, perhaps that her beauty should not be diminished by his less than perfect attire. It made him think of the hat that went with it, and the fine breeches and buckled shoes, as well as the beauty and accomplishments, both social and private of Amelie Labordière, the person who had gifted them to him. A week after the purchase of that garment she had fled Paris with her husband, who had been a tax farmer under the old régime, to avoid arrest by the latest group of politicos to take charge of a revolution descending month by month into increasing chaos. Pearce recalled with some amusement how his father had disapproved mightily of both the giver and the gifts, but
what son paid any heed to a parent where matters of love were concerned?

‘Who gives up midshipmen’s coats to be sold as seconds?’

Colbourne did not look at him, too busy examining a captain’s uniform on a dummy, complete with the twin epaulettes that denoted three years’ seniority. ‘Any number of people. Imagine how many youngsters quit after one taste of a mid’s berth.’ He stopped and looked at Pearce, before adding. ‘You would not know what that’s like.’

‘It cannot be worse than what I have already experienced.’

‘It is, Pearce, believe me. It is home to all manner of thievery and debauchery, a place were the dreams of the inexperienced meet head on the misery of the failed. There are boys who have become men, creatures who will never pass for lieutenant, stuck in such places, bereft of any other place to go, too proud or incompetent to take a lesser rank.’

Pearce had a fleeting recollection of the mid’s berth aboard
Brilliant
. ‘Yet they are always full.’

‘Of course. It is a way for a boy with limited prospects to progress…’

‘To wealth?’ Pearce interrupted. ‘Just like every sailor I have ever encountered, ashore and afloat.’

Colbourne ran a finger over one of the epaulettes, his voice taking on a mildly wistful tone. ‘When you are a nipper, Pearce, it is glory you dream of, not wealth. Of battles won and honours earned, of superiors amazed at
your daring, even a levee at Windsor with the King ignoring admirals and generals, eager to hear of your exploits.’

‘Something achieved, I imagine, by one in a thousand.’

‘Less. But it is that which makes tolerable no privacy, certain tyranny for whoever is the new boy and never enough food. I cannot ever recall my time there without my stomach rumbling.’

‘Most people ashore have more cause to worry where their next meal is coming from. Just outside that door there are boys of the same age as your mids who will starve if they don’t steal.’

‘We do not live in a perfect world, I’ll grant you, but I wonder, does culling the rich, as they are doing in France, make life any better?’

Any reply Pearce might have given to that was stopped by the tailor emerging from his storeroom, several coats over his arm, that followed by the ritual of trying them on. The man, as befitted his trade, had a good eye, and if some of the garments were tight, they were close enough to a fit to be serviceable. The one Pearce would have chosen, almost new and of good quality was discarded after a quick and silent shake of the head from Colbourne. He nodded when Pearce tried on a worn coat, not by any means the worst, not quite shabby, but slightly too small, that cramped him under the arms. Next came the hats, rigid naval scrappers that sat fore and aft on Pearce’s head. Again Colbourne assented to one which was not perfect, a bit rat-nibbled around the rim and Pearce, who liked to dress well, was obliged to defer to his choice. Next came
the haggling over the price, pitched too high as a matter of course by the tailor, beaten down by both men until a stalemate was reached.

‘Of course, if you were to leave your old garment, I may be able to make some alteration to the price.’ That got a raised eyebrow from Pearce as the tailor continued. ‘It is of decent quality and by the stitching has been run up by a very good craftsman. It is also, of course, French.’

‘You can tell?’

The tailor shrugged, in that open-handed gesture that was such a characteristic of his trade. ‘To a man in my occupation, the cloth and the cut, but more especially the stitching is to you what a face would be. It tells me a great deal.’ Suddenly aware that he might be praising it too much, the tailor added. ‘Not that it has full value. A great deal of work, in cleaning and repair, will be needed to make it saleable.’

Pearce emerged under a hat and in his tight blue coat the lighter by near four guineas, to be told that the garments had been chosen because it was best not to look too prosperous. ‘For half the sharps round here will be after you before you get way from the port. Wouldn’t take long for men like that to smoke your true rank.’ The look Pearce gave him produced a small laugh before Colbourne continued. ‘These men know their trade, and it is fair to say they know ours.’

‘Yours,’ insisted Pearce.

‘And they are not just here around the ports. They could
be anywhere, looking for a running sailor to turn in. Best to look poor.’

Pearce suspected that was not the real reason; Colbourne had diminished him in the eyes of the ship’s crew, dressing him like a near tramp was just another way to take him down a peg. The next purchase was a sextant, and like his coat and hat it had seen better days.

‘This is like a badge of office, Pearce. Anyone seeing this and the coat will know you are Navy and elevated enough to be ignored.’

‘As long as they don’t ask me to use it.’

That purchase completed, Colbourne took him to a large, bustling inn called the Angel, in what was the main street of the town, a wide, uphill thoroughfare of a kind that John Pearce had seen all over England – tall narrow dwellings above shops, red brick and grey stone, well proportioned and redolent of the ordered society that had created them, with the odd medieval structure of timber framed wattle and daub sitting incongruously in between. Civic pride and prosperity had seen the High Street cobbled, with pavements of York stone for those on foot. The Angel was a fairly new construct, meant to look imposing, with large windows and gas lamps to light it at night. Chalked on a board outside the arched entrance to the stableyard were the times and destinations of the various coaches that came and went from the town.

‘I leave it to you where you go, that is none of my concern.’

Pearce put out a hand to be shaken, but Colbourne,
who had been reasonably friendly throughout the various transactions that had got them to this place, declined to take it. His response was, in fact, quite blunt and aloof. ‘I think not, Pearce. It would imply that we are equals and that is not an estate I would want anyone observing us to suppose.’

The message that John Pearce was going to ask him to pass on to Michael O’Hagan died on his lips, and he was forced to mouth the words ‘trust me’ to the back of a man walking away from him without a backward glance and without even the slightest hint that he wished him well.

The journey across southern England, first to Winchester, then on to the London coach, was far from comfortable. It was not just to save money that Pearce elected to sit on the roof of both, it was also to avoid intimate conversation. The turnpike roads were reasonably smooth and the conveyances well sprung, but it was a rocky ride nevertheless. Even inside, the noise of the iron-hooped wheels on the metalled road surface and the constant blast of the horn meant that any verbal exchange had to be carried on at a high pitch. Yet talk there would be, for taciturn silence would be frowned upon, social intercourse being the only thing that made such travel bearable, the kind that strangers always indulged in. A midshipman’s uniform coat was a standing invitation to say which ship he served on, how long he had been in the Navy, what action if any he had seen, and to whom he was related or acquainted.

Pearce fancied himself a manufacturer of tales, but a tissue of lies, which he was bound to impart, was a difficult
thing to sustain for two whole days. Best to take an outside seat where, while the coach was in motion, an exchanged shout was the maximum level of talk, and that was usually about the thing that concerned those passengers most: the weather, for rain soaked them, the wind buffeted them and the jostle for an inside seat, where bodies on the rim kept out some of the elements was a game of musical chairs at every stop to change horses and allow the passengers to stretch their legs. He played the taciturn young fellow early on, one who kept away from his fellow passengers in the inns at which they took sustenance, so in the main Pearce was left alone with his thoughts; what life had he led to get him to this point, for it was a fact that it was not one of his choosing.