Book 17 - The Commodore

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Doctor,' cried Tom, 'say but the word and I shall send for Chips and all his crew this moment. If you will direct them, you shall have your Markham sick-berth before the evening gun.'

  The tension fell; Stephen took a little wine; his colour, though still disagreeably sallow, returned to a natural pallor rather than one blanched by fury; he smiled at them; and Captain Pullings sent for the carpenter.

  'Stephen,' said Jack diffidently, 'I had thought of carrying you round the other ships, so that you might meet their captains and officers; but I dare say making a proper sick-berth would take up most of your time.'

  'So it would too,' said Stephen, 'and all my energy. Tom, you have joiners of your own, have you not? I could wish to install a full dispensary there where the swine gambolled and wantoned at their ease, rather than send down to the after cockpit every time I need a black draught. Jack, I beg you will excuse me if I put off the meeting until your dinner for all these gentlemen.'

  Chapter Four

  When Captain Aubrey, his steward and coxswain were at sea, Ashgrove Cottage retained much of its naval quality because of their former shipmates who lived in and around the place, carrying out their usual duties of swabbing, scrubbing and painting everything in sight in as seamanlike a manner as their age and missing limbs would allow, to the admiration of all housewives within calling or gossiping distance; but the family house, Woolcombe, which Jack had recently inherited, always relapsed into a mere landsman's dwelling. Mrs Aubrey spent most of her time at Ashgrove, Woolcombe being left in the care of Manson, the hereditary butler, and a few servants on board wages.

  Yet when Jack was at home, and when there was a good deal of entertaining—particularly polished civilian entertaining—to be done, Manson was brought up to Hampshire, where he had a wretched time of it. He did understand the chief duties of a butler admirably well, caring for the wine in the wood, ulling it, racking it, bottling it, cherishing the bottles and eventually decanting their contents, bringing the wine to table in excellent condition; and he performed the ornamental part of his functions with proper dignity. But the seamen did not value him a bean for any of his skills; they despised him for his neglect of Woolcombe, which was turned out only once a year, in spring, instead of every day at dawn; and they resented the least hint of any infringement upon their rights, privileges or sea-going customs.

  The sound of one of these disagreements brought Sophie running nimbly to the dining-room on the day of the captains' dinner. As she opened the door the sound increased quite shockingly: Killick, his disagreeably yellow face now almost white with fury, had Manson in a corner, threatening him with a fish-slice and telling him in a high shrewish screech that he was not all that a good man should be—telling him with such a wealth of detail and such vehement obscenity that Sophie clapped the door behind her in case the children should hear. 'For shame, Killick, for shame!' she cried.

  'Which he touched my silver,' replied Killick, his quivering fish-slice now pointing to the noble, gleaming spread on the dining-table. 'He shifted three spoons with his great greasy thumbs and I seen him hurr on this here slice.'

  'I was only giving it the butler's rub.'

  'Butler's . . .' began Killick with renewed fury.

  'Hush, Killick,' said Sophie. 'The Commodore says you are to stand behind his chair in your best blue jacket and Manson behind him in his plum-coloured coat; and Bonden is to see to the proper gloves. Now hurry along, do. There is not a moment to lose.'

  There was not, indeed. The invitations had been marked half past three for four and she knew from long experience of naval punctuality that between thirty and thirty-five minutes after the hour there would be a sudden flood of guests. She glanced along the table, all ablaze, all exactly squared; rearranged one bowl of roses; and hurried off to put on a glorious dress made of the scarlet silk, Jack's present, that had survived its almost intolerably arduous voyage from Batavia unharmed.

  She was sitting in the drawing-room looking beautiful and with what she hoped was a convincing appearance of calm, pleasurable anticipation when Jack led in the first of his captains, William Duff of the Stately, a tall, athletic, exceptionally good-looking man of perhaps thirty-five. He was followed by Tom Pullings and Howard of the Aurora; Thomas of the unwelcome Thames; Fitton of the Nimble; and presently the tale was complete—almost complete.

  'Where is the Doctor?' she whispered to Killick as he came by with a tray of glasses. He looked quickly about: his face changed from its unnatural expression of amiability, with a fixed smirk, to its more usual pinched severity, and with a secret nod he hurried out.

  It was a long-established rule in the Navy that the higher a sailor rose in rank the later he was fed. As a midshipman Jack Aubrey, like the ratings, had eaten at noon. When he was made a lieutenant, he and his fellow-members of the wardroom mess dined at one; when he commanded his own ship he ate half an hour or even a full hour later; and now that he was, for the time being, a commodore with a squadron, it was thought proper that he should move on towards the admirals' still later hours. But his stomach, like those of his guests, was still a captain's. It had been sharp-set before three; it was ravenous at half-past; yawning and gaping with hunger. Conversation, though stimulated by Sophie's increasingly anxious efforts, by olives and little biscuits handed on trays by white-gloved bluejackets, by Plymouth gin, madeira and sherry, was tending to flag or grow somewhat forced when the door opened and Stephen made a curiously abrupt entrance, as though propelled from behind. He was in a decent black suit of clothes, his wig was powdered and set square on his head, his white neckcloth was tied with perfect accuracy, so tight that he could scarcely breathe. He still looked somewhat amazed, but recovering in a moment he bowed to the company, and hurried over to make his apologies to Sophie: he had been 'contemplating on wariangles, and had overlooked the time.'

  'Poor Stephen,' said she, smiling in the kindest way, 'you must be dreadfully hungry then. Gentlemen,' she called, rising, to the relief of one and all, 'shall we go in, leaving introductions for later?' And privately, 'Stephen, gorge yourself with soup and bread: the venison pasty may not be quite the thing.'

  After the proper hesitations and yielding of precedence at the dining-room door, the table filled quickly, Sophie at one end and Jack at the other.

  Stephen, as he had been desired, earnestly attacked the soup, a most uncommonly good dish made principally of pounded lobsters, with their carefully shelled claws aswim in the rosy mass, and when the first pangs were assuaged he gazed about the table. Since this was essentially a social gathering, convoked by Sophie, the seating was unorthodox from the service point of view, though she had respected seniority to the extent of placing William Duff on her husband's right, while on his left he had young Michael Fitton, the son of a former shipmate and close friend. For her own neighbours she had two exceptionally shy officers, Tom Pullings, who had an ugly wound and a countryman's voice, both of which made him uneasy in company, and Carlow of the Orestes, who had no reason for diffidence at all, being well connected and well educated, but who nevertheless hated dining out and who, she felt, needed taking care of.

  Stephen gazed about. He was not a particularly social animal—a watcher rather than a partaker—but he did like to see his fellows and quite often he liked to listen to them. On his left there was Captain Duff, talking eagerly to Jack about Bentinck shrouds: Stephen could detect no sign whatsoever of the tastes attributed to him. Indeed he could have sworn that Duff would have been most attractive to women. Yet the same, he reflected, might have been said of Achilles. His mind wandered over the varieties of this aspect of sexuality—the comparatively straightforward Mediterranean approach; the very curious molly-shops around the Inns of Court; the sense of furtive guilt and obsession that seemed to increase with every five or ten degrees of northern latitude. On the other side of the table, not directly opposite Stephen but one place up, sat Francis Howard of the Aurora, perhaps the best Greek scholar in the Navy: he had spent three happy years i
n the eastern Mediterranean, collecting inscriptions, and Stephen had hoped to sit next to him. On Howard's right he saw Smith of the Camilla and Michael Fitton, both brown-faced, round-headed, cheerful, intelligent-looking young men of a kind quite usual in the service. They could never have been taken for soldiers. Why did the Navy attract men with round heads? What had the phrenologist Gall to say? Stephen's right-hand neighbour, Captain Thomas, was round-headed too, and deeply tanned: but he was neither young nor cheerful. After a very long career as a commander, chiefly in the West Indies, he had been made post into the Eusebio, 32, which was destroyed in the hurricane of 1809; and now he commanded the Thames. He was the oldest man present, and his authoritarian face was set in an expression of disapproval—perpetually cross. He was known in the service as the Purple Emperor.

  'Sir,' murmured a familiar voice in Stephen's ear, 'you've got your sleeve in your dinner.' It was Plaice, forecastleman, wearing white gloves and a mess-servant's jacket.

  'Thank you, Joe,' said Stephen, taking it out and mopping it busily, with an anxious look at Killick.

  'Capital soup, sir,' said Duff, smiling at him.

  'The true ambrosia, sir, in the right place,' said Stephen, 'but perhaps a little unctuous on black broadcloth. May I trouble you for a piece of bread? It may do better than my napkin.'

  They talked away, agreeing very well; and when, after the first remove, a roast loin of veal was put down in front of Stephen he said 'Sir, allow me to cut you a piece.'

  'You are very good, sir. There are few things I dread more than having to carve.'

  'For you, sir?' asked Stephen, turning to Thomas.

  'If you please,' said the Purple Emperor. 'Why, you slice as trim as a surgeon.'

  'But then I am a surgeon, sir: so it is no virtue. The surgeon of the Commodore's flagship, if that is the right expression. My name is Maturin.'

  Joe Plaice uttered a loud, coarse laugh, attempted to be smothered with a white kid glove. Stephen and Duff glanced back at him with a smile. Thomas looked furious. 'Oh, indeed,' he said, 'I had imagined that this was a dinner for commissioned officers, for officers in command,' and spoke no more.

  'Sophie, my dear,' said Stephen next morning, 'that was a sumptuous feast you gave us. When next I see Father George I shall have to admit to the sin of greed, of deliberate, premeditated greed. I returned to the venison pasty not once but three times. So did Captain Duff. We encouraged one another.'

  'I am so glad you enjoyed it,' said she, looking upon him fondly. 'But how I regret your having to sit next to that cross old stick. Jack says he is always finding fault, always against everything; and like many of those West Indies spit-and-polish captains he thinks that if he can drive his people so hard that they are able to shift topgallant masts in thirteen minutes and make all the brass shine like gold day and night they must necessarily beat any of the heavy Americans, to say nothing of the Frenchmen. He is going to try to persuade the Admiral to make an exchange.'

  'If you please, sir, Captain Tom has the dog-cart at the door,' said George.

  'But he said nine,' cried Stephen, bringing out his watch, his beloved Breguet. Although it was of the perpetual kind and more reliable than the Bank of England, he shook it twice. The platinum mass that kept it always wound gave a muffled answer, but the hands still said ten minutes past the hour. 'God's my life,' he said. 'It is ten minutes past the hour. Sophie, forgive me, I must run.'

  As a commander and a post-captain Jack Aubrey had never discussed the officers of his own ship with Stephen: as a commodore he had told him about Duff, but rather in the medical line than otherwise. He might also have spoken of the Purple Emperor's shortcomings, since the earlier rule did not apply—Stephen and the Emperor were not messmates, more or less tied by a wardroom loyalty—but it was unlikely that he should do so right away.

  Tom Pullings had no such inhibitions. He had known Stephen since he was a midshipman and he had always talked to him without the least restraint. 'That cove should never have risen above master's mate,' he said as they drove towards Portsmouth on a sweet morning, talking about last night's dinner and their fellow guests. 'He should never have been given authority: he don't know what to do with it so he is for ever giving orders to show that he does. He is always ill-used, always in a rage with someone. You get fathers of families like that. Always someone due for a flogging or kept to bread and water or sent to bed for tittering at the wrong moment. He makes life hell for everyone else in the ship, and to judge by his vinegar headpiece it is not much better for himself. Him and his dignity! Lord Nelson never topped it the dignified don't-talk-to-me kind of nob. If you fart on this man's quarterdeck even to leeward as is but right you have insulted the King's representative. Bah. And he has never been in action.'

  'To be fair, nor have most sea-officers.'

  'No. But he thinks that those that have, hands and all, hold it against him and laugh behind his back: so he takes it out on them, as well as everybody else. How I hope the Commodore will get rid of him. We need a fighting captain in this squadron, not the first lieutenant of a royal yacht, with his double-blacked yards—a skipper whose people can fire their guns and who will follow him like the Sophies followed us—God love us, that was a day!' Tom laughed, remembering the tall side of the Spanish thirty-two-gun frigate and the way he and his fifty-three shipmates from the fourteen-gun sloop Sophie had swarmed up it after Jack Aubrey, defeating the three hundred and nineteen Spaniards aboard and carrying their ship a prize into Port Mahon.

  'So it was, too,' said Stephen.

  'What is more,' said Tom, 'the Thames's gunner told our gunner they had not used up even their practice allowance this last eight months: the guns were rattled in and out now and then, but only in dumb-show; and he doubted—he fairly wept when he said so—they could fire two broadsides in five minutes. Anything for pretty decks and perfect paint.'

  'Have you anything against Captain Thomas personally, Commodore?' asked the Admiral. 'Do you feel he may possibly lack conduct?'

  'Oh not at all, sir. I have no doubt he is as brave as a . . .'

  'A lion?'

  'Just so. Thank you, sir. As brave as a lion. But I do feel so strongly that in this squadron gunnery is of the first importance; and a ship's company capable of firing at least three well-directed broadsides in five minutes cannot be suddenly improvised.'

  'What makes you think the Thames cannot do so?'

  'Her captain's statement that they have never timed themselves, and her gunner's returns, which show that even the trifling official allowance of powder and shot has not been expended.'

  'Then you will have all the more to work them up with. No, Aubrey: I cannot shift the Thames and you will have to make do with what you possess. Which upon my word is pretty handsome for a young fellow of your age. I have never seen a ship in better order than Thames herself; and the Duke of Clarence said the same when he went aboard her at the Nore. In any case it is not a question of suddenly improvising anything at all. You will probably have several weeks before you are on your station, with the wind so wickedly fixed in the south-east. On the other hand, by way of compensation for taking Pyramus away, I mean to give you the Laurel; and what is more, I mean to give you your sailing-date at last. Wind and weather permitting, you will proceed to the rendezvous off the Berlings specified in your orders on Wednesday the fourteenth.'

  'Oh thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I am most uncommonly obliged to you; and if I may take my leave at once I shall hurry aboard and set everything in train for Wednesday the fourteenth.'

  'There is not a moment to lose,' said the Admiral, shaking him by the hand.

  'Pass the word for Dr Maturin,' said the Commodore, and the word passed down through the echoing decks.

  'Him and the Commodore have been tie-mates this many a year,' observed a seaman as it made its way along the orlop.

  'What's a tie-mate, guy?' asked a landsman, newly pressed.

  'Don't you know what a tie-mate is, cully?' asked the se
aman with tolerant scorn. The landsman shook his heavy head: there were already seventeen thousand things he did not know, and their number increased, daily. 'Well, you know what a pigtail is?' asked the seaman, showing his own, a massive queue that reached his buttocks, and speaking loud, as to a fool or a foreigner. The landsman nodded, looking a little more intelligent. 'Which it has to be unplaited, washed on account of the lice, combed, and plaited again for muster. And can you do it yourself, behind your back? Not in time for muster, mate. Not in time for Kingdom Come, neither. So you get a friend, like me and Billy Pitt, to do yours, you sitting on a cheese of wads at your ease, or maybe a bucket turned arsy-versy; and then you do his: for fair's fair, I say. And that is what we call tie-mates.'

  'I heard of that Billy Pitt of yours,' said the landsman, narrowing his eyes.

  Presently Stephen pitched upon the right ladder—the ship had at least one more floor than he had remembered—and found the Commodore and the Captain of the Bellona in the great cabin. They were smiling, and Jack said 'Such pleasant news, Stephen. We are to have the Laurel, twenty-two, one of the new sixth-rates, amazingly quick in stays, and she is commanded by Dick Richards. You remember him, Stephen?'

  'The unhappy boy so woefully afflicted with acne that they called him Spotted Dick? Indeed I do. An obstinate case, though not bad at heart.'

  'The very man. I taught him gunnery: he laid a pretty chaser, and his gun-crews were the best in the ship—the best ship afloat. I had been growing very anxious. I have seen so many squadrons formed, delayed in port, delayed still longer, the date put off, put off again, and then, when their officers had all their stores aboard for say a six months' voyage, dispersed, the whole scheme given up, the commodore sent back among the mere post-captains and reduced to begging in the Street, having spent his last guineas on a rear-admiral's gold lace.'

  'When do we sail?'