Breaking the Line (9 page)

Not that secrets could be kept aboard a ship. Mewed up together, six hundred and fifty souls hugger-mugger in their wooden walls, not even a determined admiral could keep from the crew much of what was going on. There hadn’t been a man jack aboard either
Vanguard
or
Foudroyant
who was not aware of the nature of Nelson and Lady Hamilton’s friendship. They discussed it openly, made lewd jokes and wavered between pity and respect for Sir William. But it was kept to the confines of the ship. What everyone knew and what they were prepared to say to outsiders were two different things.

‘You wouldn’t be sounding off to others like you have to me, Tom, would you?’

Tom Allen was in a bad mood. Aware of his own deficiencies, he hated to be ashore at the best of times, since the few certainties he
harboured seemed to evaporate. Out of the ship he was no longer master of his own domain, and that had been true in Naples, Palermo and on the route home. England would likely be the same. Being in an irascible frame of mind he spoke more forcefully than was wise. ‘It won’t be needed, mate. I overhears enough to know what is knowledge and what ain’t, and this here coach is not taking us to calm waters, I reckon.’

‘What are you saying?

‘I’m saying that enough folks in Palermo and Naples were not as happy as the fleet about our Nellie and his Cleopatra. That there were those who mightily condemned them.’

‘Like who?’ demanded Giddings, with a look that implied he would silence the lot of them.

‘A few captains had high words, Troubridge not least, and there were ten times more civilian tongues that were wont to wag. That Lock cove was forever trying to dig out dirt.’

‘Let them wag, I say.’

‘It’s not the wagging, mate, but the writing that will do for him. There must have been any number of letters home.’ Tom made a gesture at his belly. ‘And you can’t say my master hid away what they were up to, nor can we maintain we don’t see the result.’

‘I reckon, then, it be best not to talk of it, even with shipmates.’ Tom Allen looked at Giddings then, well aware that a threat had just been issued, telling him to button his lip. ‘You got to reckon Tom, that if you can pick up on idle chat so can other folks.’

‘Have a care,’ said Tom suddenly. ‘The dragon’s ahead.’

Giddings looked to where Tom nodded to see Mary Cadogan waiting for them. She had come to sort out the domestic arrangements at the Wrestler’s Arms, well aware that left to his own devices, Tom Allen would make a poor fist of it.

‘They reckon she was a beauty once,’ said Giddings quietly, ‘and she ain’t so bad yet that I wouldn’t have her over now.’

‘You’d get more pleasure out of a piece of knotted wood, mate,’ Tom replied, head turned away from eyes that he knew could read his mind. ‘Take my word for it.’

Much as he hated the idea, Nelson had to make a speech to the assembled Yarmouth worthies. For a man who could address with confidence the entire manpower of a ship-of-the-line he made a poor fist of talking to his awe-struck fellow countrymen. Halfway through, moving the praise from himself to his friends the Hamiltons and the officers and men of the Nile fleet, he realised what hampered him.
Sailors looked at him differently from these worshippers, whose uncritical adoration unnerved him.

Thankfully, the peroration in which he thanked Yarmouth for its welcome was easy, its message that, much as he esteemed their town and those who inhabited it, he must make plans for his onward journey.

‘For there are people waiting to see me, my friends.’ He had trapped himself and he knew it: he had meant his superiors at the Admiralty and the ministers of the government, but there was one person he could hardly leave out – in fact she must come first. It was with some effort that he imbued the words with sufficient force. ‘My wife, Lady Nelson.’

The cheers for her were nearly as great as those for him, which made Nelson blush. He looked at Emma to reassure her.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said to his hosts, when he was back in the room. ‘I fear I will need your strong arms once more to get myself and my companions to our accommodation.’

It was true. Just getting out of the Royal George was hard enough, with people jostling for position on the stairs and in the hallway claiming precedence for some real or imagined standing in the community. The owner was not going to let the victor of the Nile leave without a written testimonial to his visit that he could display on his wall for posterity, so pen and ink had to be fetched. Nelson longed for a party of sailors to clear the doorway since the leading citizens of Yarmouth were too feeble. All the while he tried to interpose himself between the mob and Emma, for fear that she might be crushed.

Emma could not avoid being jostled, but she tried to hide from Nelson that she was somewhat downcast. At first, the cheers and adulation had lifted her spirits, but as she had listened to the speeches of the Yarmouth elite, to toast after toast to the King, the nation and Nelson, to the endless damnation of the French, her good cheer had evaporated. Emma had seen cheering mobs before, but never had she witnessed anything like this. As she stood beside Nelson on the balcony and looked into that sea of faces, it had come home to her just how famous he was. Triumphant Roman generals must have been accorded this honour in ancient days, or an Egyptian pharaoh – but a British admiral?

She loved him and was sure that he loved her. But how could she hope to hold on to someone so beloved by his fellow countrymen, whose every move would be accompanied by a besotted crowd of admirers? It was one thing for the common people to cheer so, but even the most potent citizens of this town had been close to
grovelling in his presence. Emma knew it was deserved, but the depth of feeling had shocked her.

And then he had mentioned his wife

With a crowd constantly present outside the Wrestler’s Arms it was far from peaceful, but at least the stream of visitors had dried up so that Nelson could write some letters, the first to the Admiralty to say he was home and once more fit for active service. After a light supper, Emma retired to bed, Sir William and Cornelia likewise, propriety demanding that each guest had a chamber of their own. Nor, in a strange establishment, could Nelson contemplate a visit to Emma. He stayed in the parlour, wrote a second letter and addressed it to his wife at Roundwood, near Ipswich, Suffolk.

This was a small country establishment Fanny had taken on his instruction, as much for his father as for herself. It was not very grand accommodation for a couple like the Hamiltons, but it would give him a chance to return some of the hospitality he had received in both Naples and Palermo.

Nelson contemplated what to say. Should he hint that things could not be as they had been before? Although he had thought about it endlessly since leaving Naples, the enormity of the difficulties he faced now bore down on him. Within forty-eight hours he would introduce Emma to Fanny. What had his wife heard? She could not be in ignorance of his behaviour in the Mediterranean. The way in which he had ignored this seemed to haunt him now, the way he almost invited observers to question his actions, which could hardly have been left out of letters sent home to England. He knew the power of gossip, just as he knew that not everyone he had dealt with had been happy with his arrangements. Apart from the well disposed who had felt uneasy, there were people who disliked or envied him and would do all in their power to damage his reputation. He had given them plenty of ammunition.

He wanted his wife to take to Emma as so many others had. She must be brought to realise that happiness was as necessary to her husband’s wellbeing as fame or appearances. Fanny had the title and she would enjoy all that flowed from his success. He would attend upon her socially as a husband should but she must share him privately, and accept what was, after all, a not uncommon relationship in the circles in which they would now move. He had a high
regard for her, but it was not love, given the lack of physical passion that had existed between them for years. That was something he had wanted throughout their married life – that and children. Fanny had poise, grace and exquisite manners, and when Nelson thought of her it was with an abiding fondness. She would grace his name and rank splendidly, but he would seek his comforts elsewhere. He knew that in writing this note he should start as he intended to continue. The quill moved again, but the words he should have used would not come.

The note stated that he and a party would be arriving at some time on Saturday, setting off from Yarmouth on Friday, following a service of Thanksgiving to which he had been invited.

It dawned on him as he reread it that he had failed to mention his father, also that he could hardly turn up with two elevated guests without letting her know. He added,

That would do. It would tell Fanny all she needed to know, if indeed she had been on the receiving end of any gossip. If not, it was an innocent communication. He sanded and folded it, in the knowledge that Tom Allen was waiting to talk to him.

7

‘There’s a naval gent to see you, your honour.’

Nelson looked up, his expression grim. He might have sent a civilian away, but how could he shun a fellow officer. It was with a forlorn last hope that he asked, ‘In uniform?’

‘Aye, your honour, but it be of a fair old cut.’

‘Who is he?

Tom Allen replied with a negative shrug, adding, ‘He claims your acquaintance.’

‘Yet he does not give his name?’

The man who entered a few moments later was tall and spare, somewhat stooped with age, but with a lined face that had once been fleshy and was now loose-jowled. He had a pair of jug ears, which were obvious when he removed his hat. They pricked at Nelson’s memory, and had him searching for a name that was just out of reach.

‘Admiral Lord Nelson.’

His visitor said those three words as if he had been rehearsing them for an age, his voice carrying the tremor of his years. Nelson took pride in his service memory, his ability to identify by name the many hundreds of men with whom he had served, but this fellow, who was looking at him in an almost avuncular fashion, eluded him.

‘It is many years ago now, sir,’ his visitor continued, ‘but I recall a miserable youth who made my acquaintance at the gates to Chatham Dockyard.’

‘Frears,’ said Nelson suddenly, taking in with a swift glance the information provided by the coat. ‘Lieutenant Frears?’

‘The very same, sir.’

The memory was clear to Nelson now: of the trials and tribulations
he had encountered on joining his first ship at Chatham. It had been a cold, friendless introduction to naval life, a wet, freezing day; indifferent locals induced increasing misery in the thirteen-year-old midshipman. Frears had taken him in hand, insisting that he join him for a warming meal by a hot fireside, then he had delivered him and his sea chest to HMS
Raisonable,
the ship his uncle commanded.

‘My dear Lieutenant Frears,’ cried Nelson, standing up and holding out his hand, ‘pray take a seat at once. Tom, some wine, at the double. Have you eaten Mr Frears?’

Frears was grinning now, and nodding, happy to seat himself at Nelson’s table, ‘Obliged, sir, obliged.’

That whole period of his life ran through Nelson’s mind. Of the feuds and fights he had had aboard that ship, the way he had driven his Uncle William Suckling to distraction. And he also remembered the cause of those fights, the gross attempt by a very knowing senior midshipman to take advantage of his youth and sexual inexperience. His face must have closed up at the memory, for Frears looked alarmed. Nelson smiled warmly at the man he recalled with nothing but affection, banished the bad memories, and sat as Tom Allen poured some wine.

‘It is near thirty years, Mr Frears,’ said Nelson. ‘You have weathered well.’

‘Tolerable well, Lord Nelson, tolerable well.’

‘I see our service did not grant you the rank you deserve.’

Frears looked sad as he fingered the old fashioned coat. ‘Luck eluded me, sir, and I lacked the influence to change it. My posting aboard
Victory
was sustained until she was finally commissioned, but nothing like it followed.’

Had he been a good officer? Nelson did not know, never having served with him. That he was a kind man was not in doubt. The rank at which he had remained might point to inefficiency in the way he carried out his duties, but Nelson knew the Navy too well to assume that. Many a good officer had been stuck in a lieutenancy and spent his life watching others less competent or deserving get their step to a post captain’s rank, even rising as he had to an admiral’s flag.

‘You had three sons, I recall?’

‘Aye,’ Frears replied, taking a deep swig of wine, ‘and seeing to their needs forced me to take merchant service.’

‘Then they have prospered, I hope?’ said Nelson, now aware of why Frears had remained a lieutenant. By taking a merchant ship he had removed himself from the active list. To think that Fanny, fed up with freezing Norfolk and little income, had once wanted him to do
the same. If he had given in to her, would he be like Frears now: a touch sad, certainly disappointed, wandering about in an out of date uniform coat?

‘I got one a berth, sir, but he succumbed to the Yellow Jack on West Indian service while still a mid. Poor lad never saw his fifteenth birthday.’

That occasioned another understanding nod. Nelson had almost lost his own life, as well as the best part of an entire crew of two hundred men to that dread malarial disease while fighting up the San Juan river at Lake Nicaragua. The graveyards of the West Indies were full of crosses bearing the names of soldiers and sailors who had succumbed.

‘Another prospers reasonably in the law,’ Frears continued, ‘while the youngest, I’m afraid to say, is of a rakish nature and lost to me and his family.’

‘Then let us drink to him, sir,’ said Nelson, raising his glass, ‘for he has a bloodline that is good and noble, and I am sure one day he will play the prodigal and come home to you.’

Frears obliged, though there was a hint of a tear in his eye. Nelson surmised that of all his brood, the scrapejack was the one the old fellow loved most. It made him think of his own father. How much had the Reverend Edmund Nelson agonised over his son’s behaviour? What would he say about it now, for he was by nature unworldly? Nelson put the thought firmly to the back of his mind.

They talked for an hour, with Frears eager to hear from Nelson’s own lips the story of his exploits. The old man showed signs of resurgent pride as the tale unfolded, and as much interest in stories of the stripling Lieutenant Nelson taking Caribbean blockade-runners as in the great fleet actions. The hour grew late, and Frears realised that he had outstayed his welcome. Nelson felt nothing of the sort: he owed so much to this man that Frears could have stayed all night. And why, now that he was making to leave, was he looking so bashful?

‘I hesitate to place before you a request.’ Nelson smiled for him to continue, which Frears did, albeit stuttering now. ‘I have … a grandson … of twelve years of age … near thirteen.’

Nelson held up his hand. ‘Lieutenant Frears, leave me his name and where I can contact him. Be assured that as soon as I have a command I will request my flag captain to take him in.’

‘You are too kind, sir.’

‘No Mr Frears. My kindness, if you call it that, pales beside that which you showed to me.’

Emma woke in the night to the sound of rolling, distant thunder and lay, rubbing her swollen belly, surprised yet again that she was indeed pregnant, still unsure if she should rejoice or despair. What would this child be like? She hoped for a boy because her lover so wanted a son.

In the next bed Cornelia snored, an unladylike trait that Emma had never felt able to tell her about. Her companion slept like the proverbial log and could bring the roof down if she wished. She had thus provided, without knowing it, a shield of respectability throughout the travelling months that had allowed Emma to go to Nelson at night, to enjoy gentle sex and quiet conversation. She had been happy to let him talk, and knew all about his family, how they stood in his affections, their good points and bad. On the subject of his wife he was guarded. If he noticed that Emma was evasive about her distant past, Nelson never commented on it or pushed for revelation. Emma could talk happily and openly about her childhood and her time in Naples, but the period between was to her thin ice, to be skated over with delicacy. Complete openness might diminish his love for her.

When she thought of it, the impending birth did not frighten her. She had gone through it many years before with Little Emma, producing her with such ease that the child’s first cry had surprised her. She worried at the thought of bringing up a child alone. Little Emma had grown up under the care of her great-grandmother, and after a brief few weeks in a Southport boarding house with her mother, the child had, at Charles Greville’s insistence, been sent to a good family to be brought up. The memory brought a pang that Emma had not felt for years, part affection, part guilt, when she recalled how her child had been reared by others.

It was easy in that atmosphere, a dark room, the thunder outside, to feel self-pity, to recall the despair that had animated her then. And it was easy with another child in her womb to sway to the negative and contemplate a repetition of that rejection, to wonder if Nelson, dear, sweet, soft-hearted Nelson, might reject her.

If he did would Sir William continue to support her? Her husband had never mentioned her pregnancy, though he could hardly be unaware of it. Did it make him angry or sad? He had withdrawn from her intimate life with surpassing grace, but he could not keep off his face the occasional flicker of pain, jealousy, or longing. Had she so wounded him that he would cold-shoulder her too?

‘It will not be!’ Emma said aloud.

Cornelia stopped snoring, but she did not wake, she merely moved to get more comfortable. Emma lay, eyes open, as various dramas
were acted out in her mind. The one in which she lost Nelson was banished each time it surfaced, replaced with the one in which she had her hero to herself and to hell with the wife.

She had corresponded with Fanny Nelson, exchanging with her news and pleasantries over hundreds of miles of sea. But she had never met her and knew of her only what Nelson had divulged. A picture had emerged of a quiet woman, a bit of a mouse, pious, far from colourful, no friend to the physical and fearful of the taint of scandal.

That they were rivals had been disguised by distance. That would cease soon: they would be face to face, the companion of Nelson’s heart versus the woman who held him in the bonds of matrimony. Emma had a rosy vision then of she and Fanny as friends, confidantes, frequent visitors to each other’s parlours. They would take tea, and Emma, out of sensitivity would keep the child out of sight and never mention it in conversation.

Fanny would accept the inevitable, as Sir William had done, and would become reconciled to the liaison. Like Sir William, she would lend a shield to the two lovers so that all the proprieties would be observed. With this idyllic dream in her mind, Emma went back to sleep.

Having read late into the night, Sir William was trying to avoid gnawing on his indebtedness. He wanted to sleep, but knew that age had sapped his capacity to do so, and every time he put aside the book and lay in the semi-darkness he contemplated a less than untroubled future. The loss of HMS
Colossus
had been a disaster: ten thousand pounds of his finest possessions now lay at the bottom of the sea off the Scilly Isles.

Those vases, statues and ancient coins had been headed for the auction rooms of London and the proceeds would have allowed him to set up house in the style to which he was accustomed. When they had been despatched that had included Emma too, but now he was no longer sure that she was his responsibility. He allowed himself a flash of irritation as he contemplated the fact that she was with child, and just as clearly she felt it was none of his concern. She had not seen fit to confide in him or ask for his opinion.

Did Emma think she could hide such a thing from someone as worldly as he? And what a complication should the truth emerge, for there was not a soul in London society who would assume that after so many years together, and at his advanced age, that he was the father. The thunder rolled outside his window and seemed an
appropriate sign to Sir William that trouble was brewing. But thinking of Emma and Nelson only brought him back to the knowledge that he was now dependent on Emma’s lover, which was a damned uncomfortable position to be in.

All Sir William’s money was gone, his income from his estates pledged to creditors for some time ahead. It had been spent on his ambassadorial office, on renting villas, throwing balls, entertaining royalty, buying them gifts and feasting his numerous guests. In his valise was a bill to the government requesting that he be reimbursed for monies expended on his office as well as his domestic losses from the looting of the Palazzo Sessa, plus his application for a pension as a retiring ambassador. Both, given the sterling service he had performed in Naples, should be certain, but Sir William knew too much about the ways of Treasury clerks to feel secure. He doubted that they would withhold the money altogether, but haste was anathema to such people.

On the journey from Italy he had had to leave Nelson to pick up those bills not met by whoever was their host, and that looked set to continue in London. The prospect of retirement, which had seemed so alluring in the south of Italy, looked less so now that he was at home. Would malicious tongues say that he had sold his wife to the Hero of the Nile to keep a roof over his head?

Troubled by those and other thoughts, Sir William tossed and turned in his bed. He did get to sleep as dawn broke, only to be awoken by what sounded like an invading army.

The clatter of hoofs woke Nelson from another turmoil-filled dream that promised happiness one minute and disaster the next. The wine he had shared with Frears tasted stale in his mouth and the excessive bed coverings had made him sweat profusely. He opened the curtain to see the first hint of dawn. The sky was overcast, but there was light enough to see the serried ranks of cavalrymen dismounted and attending to the horses’ harness.