The Surgeon's Mate (7 page)

'Java! That is in the East Indies, is it not? How romantic! Spices and people in palanquins! Elephants too, I dare say. How you have travelled, and what a great deal of the world you have seen! Were the ladies of Java as beautiful as they say?'

'There were some pretty creatures, to be sure; but none to touch those of Halifax. The Admiral was very pleased about the Dutch seventy-four - ' 'Why, what happened to it?'

'Oh, we sank her: a lucky shot can do wonders in those seas, with a following wind. I am speaking of the forties, you understand, with a full gale and more right aft. She broached to and sank the moment her foremast carried away. But he was not so happy about the Leopard's statement of condition: her guns had been obliged to be heaved overboard, and in any case the ice had given her frame such a wrench that she could not carry any weight of metal - no good to man or beast: only fit for a transport. However, that did not concern me. I was already appointed to another ship, a frigate called the Acasta, so he packed me off home in La Fleche. We had a beautiful passage - '

Miss Smith uttered a shrill scream and recoiled into his arms. A toad was walking deliberately across the path, glistening in the light from the windows. 'Oh, oh,' she cried, 'I nearly touched it.'

Jack helped the toad gently on to the grass with his toe, somewhat hampered by her clinging arm. When it was gone she said she co.uld not bear reptiles, nor spiders: they made her feel quite ill. Then she laughed in a way that Jack would have thought unsteady had she been a plain woman, and suggested that they should find a seat in the shrubbery. But as it happened, victory, wine, good food, and perhaps the warmth of the ballroom had suggested the same thing to so many other guests that there was not an empty seat to be found among the clustering laurels; while at the secluded summerhouse they started back only just in time to avoid a very grave indiscretion. They were obliged to be content with a bench near the sundial; and there, as they sat down in the warm night air, filled with the smell of greenness and summer and night-scenting flowers, he glanced up at the guards of the Bear for a notion of the time; and seeing that they were dimmed by wafts of low haze drifting in from the sea he observed 'I dare say we shall have a shower, presently.'

But she, taking no notice of his remark, said 'You were saying you had a beautiful passage.'

'So we did, logging at least two hundred miles from noon to noon, day after day of sweet sailing, until we had rounded the Cape and crossed the tropic line. But then a damned - an extremely untoward thing fell out. She took fire, burnt to the water-line, and blew up.'

'Heavens, Captain Aubrey!'

'Then the boats separated in the darkness, and seeing they were not provisioned, we had a sad time of it until we were picked up by Java, some way off Brazil. But even then our troubles were not over, because some days later Java fell in with the American Constitution, and as you remember, the Americans beat her into a cocked hat.'

'Oh, how well I remember: people absolutely wept when they heard the news. But they said it was not fair - that the American was not really a frigate at all, or that they had more guns or something.'

'No: she was a frigate without any kind of doubt, a heavy frigate; and it was a fair fight, I do assure you. She would have been a tough nut to crack in any case, and in the event she used her guns better than we did: and we were taken.'

'But the dear gallant Shannon has set that right,' she said, laying her hand on his knee.

'So she has,' said Jack, laughing with pleasure. 'And now I find it hard to remember how hipped we all were at the time. Well, the Americans were very good to us once it was all over: they sent most of Java's people home in a cartel and carried those of us who were knocked about back to Boston. Maturin very handsomely volunteered to come with me and his other patients - '

'You were wounded?' she cried.

'Oh, only a musket-ball in the arm,' he said. 'But it went bad, as these things will, and I should have lost it but for him. So there we were, do you see, prisoners of war in Boston. Our exchange was delayed for one reason or another, and finding the situation did not suit, Maturin and I took a boat, together with Diana Villiers - '

'What in Heaven's name was she doing there?'

'She had been staying with friends, before the war was declared. And we sailed out to meet Shannon as she stood in to look into the harbour. Broke was kind enough to take us aboard and give us a passage to Halifax, and that is how - '

The rain he had promised, the rain foreseen by the toad, began to fall quite fast, and they ran in. Their entry was not particularly remarked: they were only one couple out of several, and they were preceded by a young lady who attracted far more comment, her white dress being liberally scattered with moss behind and even stained with the green of grass. Even so, they were not quite unnoticed. Colonel Aldington gave them a sullen, resentful look; and when Jack was drinking rum-punch to ward off the damp, Miss Smith having retired for a moment, he said 'Look here, Jack, this is all very fine and large, but you took my partner. I saw you steal away just as I came to claim her - I saw you - and I had to stand there like a fool all through that dance and the next. It ain't right: no, it ain't right.'

'None but the brave deserve the fair,' said Jack: and pleased with the thought he began to sing in his deep, surprisingly tuneful voice

'None but the brave

None but the brave

Deserve the fair ha, ha, ha! What do you say to that, Tom?'

'I don't know what you mean to imply about the brave,' said the Colonel, exceedingly cross, 'but if that is your idea of the fair, well, all I can say is, your idea is not mine. That's all. I could say more: I could say that after what I heard just now it is no more than I might have expected. I could say something about reputations, and warn you not to burn your fingers, but I shan't. And I could advise you to put your glass down and drink no more - you have had quite enough - but I shan't do that, neither. You always was a self-willed - '

Miss Smith's reappearance checked any retort that might have been forming in Jack's mind: the music began again, and as he led her into the dance he observed that it was strange how differently wine took different men - some grew glum and fault-finding, some quarrelsome or tearful; for his part he found it did not affect him at all, except perhaps to make him like people rather more, and to make the world seem a more cheerful place. 'Not that it could be much more cheerful than it is already,' he added, smiling at the throng, where the greenbacked girl, dancing away totally unconscious of her betrayal, was adding much to the gaiety of nations.

'Surely, Maturin,' said Diana, as the night wore on, 'Jack and Miss Smith are making themselves very conspicuous? Except when they vanish into corners, they are dancing together all the time.'

'Let us hope they enjoy it,' said Stephen.

'No, but really, Stephen, as a friend, should you not tell him what he is at?'

'I should not.'

'No: I suppose not. But upon my word, that woman makes me feel quite indignant: seducing poor Aubrey is like taking pennies from a blind man's hat - see him beaming all over his face and figuring away like a young buck! If it had been that jolly girl with the green back I should not say anything; but with a wrong 'un like Amanda Smith

'A wrong 'un, Villiers?'

'Yes. I knew her in India when I was a girl. She came out with the fishing-fleet - stayed with her aunt, a woman with just the same long nose and just the same idea of laying on the paint with a trowel. They come from Rutland, a raffish set: slow horses and fast women. She tried too hard there and she has tried too hard here; but the army is pretty cautious when it comes to actually marrying, you know; not at all like the Navy. And now her reputation is - well, not much better than mine. Jack really should take care.'

'Certainly she seems unusually complaisant. But is she not perhaps a trifle silly, a little given to enthusiasm?'

'Don't you believe it. She may be an hysterical, flighty, unbalanced ass, but she has a pretty clear head when it comes to the main chance. He is known to be very well off: all the sailors call him Lucky Jack Aubrey. I tell you what, Stephen, unless the roof falls in, he will end the night in that woman's arms; and then he may find himself in a pretty pickle. Could not you give him a hint?'

'No, ma'am.'

'No. Perhaps not. You are not your brother's keeper, after all; and I dare say it will be no more than a passade.'

'Tell me, my dear,' said Stephen, 'what has happened to ruffle your spirits?'

She paused - three steps to the left, three steps to the right, true to the time - and gave him the direct answer he expected. 'Oh, it was nothing,' she said. 'It was only that I was talking to Lady Harriet and Mrs Wodehouse when Anne Keppel came up. She gave me a broad stare and pretended to admire my diamonds - she did not remember having seen them in London - could never have forgotten such a riviere nor such a pendant had I come by them in America? What had I been doing all this time? Impertinent woman. And I had noticed a chill before that. Colonel Aldington or some other old woman has been talking, I swear.'

Stephen made some remark about diamonds and jealousy, but she pursued her own line of thought, saying 'Oh, on such a night as this even the most virulent prude - though God help us, Anne Keppel has no stones to fling - could not be very unkind. But how I do hope we get a ship soon. Lady Harriet is a dear good woman, but even so, life in a station like this, with scrubs like Aldington and Anne Keppel spreading their ill-natured ragots right left and centre, would be hell after a very little while. Oh, bah,' she said. 'Come on, Stephen.'

They danced up the middle; and as he handed her across and received her again he saw that her mood had changed. The dangerous gleam, the raised head of defiance had given way to joy in the dance, to pleasure in the ball and its happy crowd bathed in music and the sense of victory. She was looking as handsome as ever he had seen her, and again he wondered at his own insensibility: and when she cast an eye over the turning dancers and said, with an intensely amused look 'I love that girl with the green on her back,' he wondered even more, for Diana amused - and it was not a usual expression with her - was entrancing. Perhaps his insensibility was no more than a now habitual protection, a way of making the inner void more nearly tolerable: he certainly felt his heart move, as it were involuntarily. Then again, he too was enjoying himself very much more than ever he had expected: the void was still there, certainly, a blank like the white pages of a book after the word Finis, but it was far down, far beneath his consciousness of the moment. The band was deep in a minuet, a Clementi minuet in C major that Jack and he had arranged for violin and 'cello, one that they had often played together; and now that he was in it, in it for the first time as a dancer, the familiar music took on a new dimension; he was part of the music, right in its heart as one of the formally moving figures whose pattern it created - he lived in a new world, entirely in the present. 'I love that girl with the green on her back,' she said again over the deep throb of the 'cello, 'she is having such fun. Oh Stephen, how I wish this night would last for ever.'

In fact it lasted only a very few hours more, only just long enough for Captain Aubrey to fall deeply asleep in Miss Smith's predictable bed. The east was lightening when she shook him awake, saying in a low urgent tone 'You must go. The servants are moving about already. Quick - here is your shirt.'

His head was hardly clear of it before he observed to his consternation that she was in tears. She clung to him, saying, 'We must never, never do it again.' Then calming herself she said 'Here are your breeches.'

His arm was still awkward and he had some difficulty with his neckcloth. She tied it for him, laughing in a way that surprised him, laughing unsteadily and making not altogether coherent remarks about Lady Hamilton doing the same for Nelson: and again she repeated 'Never mind manoeuvres: always go straight at 'em, ha, ha, ha!' His coat was on; his hair was tied up; she whispered 'Go by the garden gate: it is only bolted. I will leave it open tonight.'

Stephen saw him creep into the room they shared, and in spite of the creaking of the boards, almost impossible to ignore, he would have let him reach his bed unnoticed if, in an excess of caution, Jack had not flung down the primitive basin in which they had to wash. It rang like a bell, trundling in a wide spiral until it came to rest against the small table at Stephen's side. This could not credibly be overlooked, and he sat up.

'I am truly sorry to have woke you,' said Jack, smiling at him with a fine glowing face. 'I went for a walk.'

'You look as though you had found the Fountain of Youth, brother. But it is to be hoped that you took a cloak, or at least a flannel waistcoat: with your wound, and at your time of life, the morning dews can have a very dismal effect. The natural humours of the body, Jack, are not lightly to be disturbed. Show me your arm. Exactly so. Tumor, rubor, dolor: there has been inconsiderate exercise, I find; and you are to put it up in a sling again. Do not you feel it - do not you feel a stiffness in the joint?'

'It is a little painful,' said Jack. 'But apart from that, I am astonishingly well. I feel as young as I did when I was first made commander, for all your harping on age and flannel waistcoats, Stephen: even younger. A morning walk sets you up amazingly; that is your Fountain of Youth, for sure. I dare say I shall take another tonight.'

'Did you see many people abroad?'

'A surprising number, walking about in all directions - several officers I knew.'

'What you tell me confirms my supposition: Halifax is an early-rising town. I formed this opinion first from the noise in the street and then from the coming of a little puny boy - a marked case of scoliosis, poor child - with this note for you from Mr Gittings.'

'Who is Mr Gittings?'

'He is the person in charge of the post.'

Jack ripped open the note, carried it to the window, and read, 'Most regrettable mistake... Captain A's mail set specially aside... subordinates misinformed... packets await his pleasure. God bless my soul: God strike me down: I had never... Stephen, I shall step round at once.'