Until the Colours Fade

by Tim Jeal

  After expressing condolences for his father’s death, Sir James was at a loss what to say; to mention the activity he had witnessed below would merely be painful; instead he picked up the book Humphrey had been bent over when he entered: Book Four of Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War.

  ‘Did you know that Thucydides wrote an account of the battle of Navarino?’ he asked, knowing that the boy was interested in the action in which his grandfather had died.

  Humphrey looked puzzled and embarrassed. Surely the admiral knew that the Greek historian had died two thousand years ago? Guessing his thoughts, Sir James told him how Sir Edward Codrington, being an amateur classicist, had pointed out to his captains, on the evening before the battle, that the Athenians had defeated the Spartans in Navarino Bay in the fifth century B.C.

  ‘Not every admiral reads his captains Thucydides before an action, but that’s what we were treated to. The Athenians hemmed in the Spartan fleet between the mainland and the island of Sphakteria; so Codrington wanted us to do the same. We even sounded the channel but found it was too shallow. A pity, we might have attacked the Turks on both sides of their line.’

  ‘Like Nelson at the Nile,’ cut in Humphrey, eager to show his knowledge. Sir James smiled.

  ‘Not quite; that was a great victory against a far more formidable enemy. If you like I’ll show you what happened.’

  Needing no further encouragement, Humphrey held out paper and a pen. Sir James quickly drew in the outline of the coast and islands and then started on the ships.

  ‘Your grandfather was here in the Asia, here I am in the Philomel. Bathurst in the Genoa, and the Dartmouth….’

  He looked up and saw Helen smiling at him; she had evidently been watching for some moments. He took in her widow’s cap and tight-waisted black dress.

  ‘James, the fools didn’t tell me it was you till a moment ago. Forgive me.’ She inclined her face for his formal kiss. ‘I’m sure Humphrey would hang onto you all day if I let him.’

  ‘We’ll go on another time,’ Sir James assured the boy with a conspiratorial wink, implying that women never appreciated the importance of tactics and battles but that they two knew better. Then wishing him good luck with his translation, Crawford followed Helen from the room.

  She led him to a small sitting room dominated by a boule table covered with letters, notes and account books, and motioned to him to sit on a chesterfield by the window.

  ‘My poor Helen, that it should come to this…. My dear girl, I am so sorry.’

  She looked down and sat on the ottoman opposite. No answer was possible or expected. She knew that his sympathy embraced not only her husband’s death, but the sadness of her marriage and her present difficulties. Since her wedding she had seen little of her godfather, but enough for him to have realised her unhappiness. Nor would she now have to explain about debts and mortgages for hours before he would believe her pessimism justified.

  ‘When will you leave here?’ he asked at last.

  ‘When we have somewhere smaller to go to. It’s not yet certain whether the house must be sold, or whether a tenant will suffice. The estate seems to have been as badly managed as it is possible to imagine.’ She smiled and murmured: ‘I am sure it is no surprise to you.’ He said nothing but shook his head slightly. ‘I often thought of the advice you gave me – when it was too late.’ But then in spite of the gloominess of what she was saying, she felt happy. Seeing Sir James again reminded her vividly of the years before she married. Unlike men of fashion he retained the short Roman hair-style now replaced by close curled and waved hair. Nor did he care that the ‘Osbaldiston’ necktie was rarely worn by the beau monde. He kept what he liked and added any new style to his wardrobe if it pleased him. Helen remembered that this had been his habit in her childhood and recalled her mother’s indignation that Sir James ruined the pockets of beautifully-cut coats with an assortment of papers, bank notes and coins. ‘That manservant of his is useless; he needs a wife,’ she had often said, after he had become a widower; and Helen had known very well that her mother would have liked to have become the second Lady Crawford. Helen had always admired her godfather’s casual attitude to clothes and appearances, thinking it the hallmark of a man of the world to be confident enough to consider an outfit or an opinion invulnerable simply because he assumed it. He entered society as a visitor from a rougher more demanding world and saw no need to make concessions. His ease in any company, she believed, sprang from his having had no permanent home for so long; he could make himself comfortable in any temporary place. She had never been deceived by the sleepy nonchalent look his heavy eyelids gave him; often she had noticed a keen darting glance at his blue eyes under his thick grey eyebrows and a slight flicker of amusement or disdain if he were being treated to a pompous or dull speech. Many people had spoken of him as cold and indifferent but this, she was sure, was because they never watched him closely.

  ‘Tell me about the great world,’ she said after a silence.

  ‘Doing excellently well without me.’

  ‘For long?’ she asked, lifting her hands in a show of astonishment.

  ‘I fear so.’

  ‘Truly?’ she whispered, all flippancy gone.

  ‘Palmerston will get back, but not to the Foreign Office, and the First Lord has little regard for me.’

  ‘First Lords come and go.’

  ‘So do admirals, but being so numerous, they mainly go.’

  ‘Can Palmerston really do nothing for you?’

  ‘Not if I ask at the wrong time.’

  ‘But at the right time?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He smiled carelessly. ‘But there are probably better things than satisfied ambition.’

  ‘For an admiral?’ she murmured.

  ‘I think even for them.’ She was looking at him questioningly. ‘The gift of understanding my children would be no mean blessing. The other evening I was foolish enough to suppose that Magnus might like to hear my opinion on his future plans. I was mistaken. But then even those who ask advice, rarely follow it.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘But why you should submit to my trivial woes I have no idea.’ He got up and looked down at her. ‘If you should ever want to talk to me, send and I shall come. And I promise that I have got over the desire to advise, help, suggest, or any such folly.’

  She got up and came towards him.

  ‘I remember once when you were very cross with me over Harry, you said that nobody was worth anything until life had crushed the conceit and optimism out of them.’

  ‘I must have been feeling my age at the time. But now I’ve become quite as young and foolish as the rest.’ He shut his eyes for a moment, pained by the recollection. ‘Crushed did I say? Oh dear. You must have been particularly pert and insufferable that day.’

  ‘Life was very different then.’

  James nodded and picked up his cane, remembering a young girl in a loose flowing dress with the low décolletage so favoured at the time, her eyes glowing with excitement and pleasure, and Harry Grandison’s glistening phaeton at the door, complete with crested panels and two perfectly matched black horses. Later, the red plush of a box at the opera, or the bare shoulders and flashing diadems at a ball. A country girl narrowly brought up by a naval officer’s widow. Could he ever have imagined she would follow his advice? Picnics of plovers’ eggs, prawns and aspic jellies washed down with champagne; young men with polished boots and flowered waistcoats kissing primrose gloves to her in the Row. What a fool he must have been to have tried to dissuade her. And now still beautiful, but pale and careworn, what an impossibly different situation ahead of her. Leaving the room he smiled at her and said:

  ‘When I come next, I should prefer it if you did without your cap.

  She laughed aloud and took it off at once.

  ‘My badge of widowhood. Gladly.’ She took a comb from her hair and shook it free so that it fell to her shoulders. Then she touched the jet brooch which fastened the high collar of her black dress. ‘My dress
maker tells me that jet trimmings are now considered elegant with full mourning.’ Sir James recognised the bitterness in her voice, but felt unable to say openly that he understood the cause. Instead he murmured:

  ‘Your life will not remain empty for long.’

  ‘It will take a veritable Sir Galahad to burden himself with my debts and anxieties, let alone with my poor boy.’

  Crawford took her by the arm and led her across to the pier glass.

  ‘Look at yourself, Helen.’

  She stared at her reflection for a moment and smiled.

  ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re very kind, James, more than I deserve.’

  ‘If reason really governed our actions, there would be no love, no courage and no despair. Men in spite of all that’s said are less rational than women. You’ll see.’

  On his way out, they paused in the centre of the marble-paved hall.

  ‘You’ve done me good, James.’ Suddenly she laughed. ‘What were those expressions that used to amuse me so? The way sailors talk of women’s eyes?’

  ‘Her toplights made my heart jump like a brig’s boom in a calm.’

  ‘A little loose in stays,’ cried Helen. ‘I remember that best.’

  Sir James looked slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Expressive, I suppose; some women, like some ships, don’t come round quickly.’

  ‘Promise me, James. You’ll come soon and make me laugh.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  She watched him put on his hat and go out to his coach. Looking back Sir James saw her solitary figure small under the massive portico. From a single chimney, that belonging to the room where they had sat, a thin ribbon of smoke was rising into the chill air. He stared glumly across the misty park at the bare trees and suddenly smiled. Like a brig’s boom in a calm.

  20

  Charles Crawford returned to Leaholme Hall from Devonport two days before Christmas and learned, as he had feared he would, that Helen Goodchild had left Hanley Park to stay with her sister-in-law until the New Year. Nevertheless his disappointment was softened by the news that during his absence his father had seen Helen regularly. As soon as Catherine had told him this, Charles had jumped to the optimistic conclusion that Helen, with her usual astuteness, was making herself pleasant to his father in order to undermine the numerous objections which he might raise should his eldest son and heir appear keen to connect himself with a widow whose financial prospects were so uncertain. During his reluctant stay in the West Country, Charles had thought a great deal about his chances and had become increasingly hopeful. Few eligible men would take at once to a woman of thirty-three with a thirteen-year-old son and enough assignments, mortgages and debts to keep several hard-working solicitors busy for years. In fact even Charles had entertained doubts about the wisdom of marrying, until George Braithwaite had told him that less than ten thousand had been raised on Hanley Park itself before Goodchild’s death.

  After dinner on the day of his return, Charles and his father sat drinking port at the horse-shoe table in front of the fire in the dining hall. Moments like these Charles cherished above all others; the vast room lit by a dozen candelabra and the glow of the fire, his father at his side, nodding at what he said and listening carefully. After Charles had regaled him with the technical details of the inquiry and the case against the Inspector of Machinery at the dockyard, he mentioned that Admiral Phipps Hornby, the Second Sea Lord, had chaired the commission.

  ‘Privately he told me he thought it scandalous that no further employment had been offered you.’

  ‘Most kind,’ replied Sir James ironically. ‘A pity Northumberland, like most First Lords, is deaf to any voice but his own.’

  ‘His Grace won’t last long. Derby’s administration can’t survive the next budget.’

  To Charles’s surprise, these words, which he had intended to comfort his father, only made him angry; but the mood was short-lived. Sir James turned to his son with a smile.

  ‘If a man’s on the shelf and no spring tide will get him off, he must try something else.’

  ‘Superintendent at a dockyard?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Damn dockyards.’ He pushed back his chair and assumed a heroic pose. ‘How do I strike you?’

  ‘I’m sorry…?’

  ‘My looks, man.’

  ‘Little changed,’ replied Charles with evident confusion. Vanity had never been one of his father’s traits, but possibly disappointment would lead to unexpected eccentricities.

  ‘Changed from what? How old would you say?’

  ‘Forty-five. Maybe a year or two more.’

  ‘But not fifty-four?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  Sir James relaxed and became thoughtful. After a long silence he turned to Charles.

  ‘Whatever I look, I feel far older. Just recently it’s as if I always have a dead weight on me; the sensation that a great misfortune had just happened or is about to happen to me. I used to have a peculiar elasticity of spirits which resisted constant strain and pressure for long periods without losing its spring. But it’s not so now – the spring is gone, quite gone.’

  Charles could have sustained no greater shock had Sir James told him that he had decided to become a missionary or begin a career in trade. The quality he had most admired in his father was his refusal to give in to pessimism or self-pity whatever his problems. The confession embarrassed him too, more, he guessed, than would have been the case had his father admitted to immorality or drunkenness. Nevertheless he felt tears in his eyes.

  ‘You mentioned doing something else.’

  ‘I shall be direct with you. Age and experience allows me a degree of honesty which youth rarely permits itself – I want a wife.’ Charles felt an unpleasant falling sensation in his stomach, as he tried to smile. His father looked down at the surface of the table. ‘I did not expect the news to please you. You may be assured that if I marry and children follow, your inheritance will not be materially affected.’

  ‘That was not in my mind. Only that … after so long.’

  ‘No fool like an old one,’ replied his father. ‘You must speak your mind, Charles. Nobody else will.’

  ‘If you are sure that it would contribute to your happiness, you must marry.’

  ‘Who can be sure of that? Marriage like shipbuilding is at best an experimental science.’ He looked at Charles intently and said in a low voice: ‘You would not turn against me?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I must be sure. Magnus first and then you. It would be a high price to pay.’

  ‘I swear it.’

  Sir James filled his son’s glass and they drank, as if sealing their trust and unity.

  ‘After your mother’s death, I felt a great emptiness and then thought it had gone; I was wrong. Absorption with my work only patched over the damage and hid it from me.’ He stared into the flames of the fire. ‘Of course at my age, youth’s couleur de rose has faded, but there should be some bright lights left, some vividness remaining in the landscape – not just an unending grey haze. Even gratified ambition is stale and unprofitable if unshared. Only the affections bring brightness to the void. I not only wish to marry – I must.’

  Charles coughed uneasily, and shuddered when he thought what Magnus might have made of ‘youth’s couleur de rose’ if it had ever come to his ears.

  ‘Have you talked to Catherine?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet. She can only benefit if I am more in society.’

  Charles ran his fingers down the side of the decanter and said hesitantly:

  ‘The lady? You have met…?’

  Sir James nodded.

  ‘I have not yet asked her; although I think she may accept … in time. I fear I already hope too much – unwisely. You see with her I have glimpsed what I thought lost forever.’ He shook his head and smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘Laugh at me for a commonplace fool – she
makes me feel young.’

  ‘And she is younger?’ murmured Charles, with an agonising presentiment.

  ‘Little older than you.’ And then Charles knew. Who else but her? Who else? A spasm of nausea and then a desire to scream. Sir James did not notice the colour drain from his son’s cheeks, nor see the deliberate movement which upset the decanter. Charles leapt to his feet, muttering apologies. Port dripped down his shirt front, staining his waistcoat and trousers. His father rang for the butler, but Charles said that he would have to change. In his bedroom, he slammed the door and flung himself face downwards on the counterpane; but he did not weep nor make any sound. How could he admit his own feelings now, after what his father had told him? Could he tell him that he had indeed hoped too much, that no father had the right to steal a son’s happiness in pursuit of his own? He had had a wife and children already, had known a life that was not empty of affection, and now should he expect his son to stand aside for him to be given a second youth at that son’s expense? Charles heard his father saying: ‘You would not turn against me?’ Recalled the great weight of depression he had described; and as Charles remembered his own promise of loyalty, he knew that he could not now say what he should have said before. A lifetime of hero-worship and emulation could not suddenly be ended and turned to enmity. For no other man or woman on earth could he have made the renunciation he was now planning. He imagined his father breaking down and weeping years later when he discovered the sacrifice that had been made on his behalf. And then suddenly he sat up and stared in front of him in amazement. Just as he had assumed Helen to be prepared to marry him, he had now assumed that she would accept his father. She could refuse; probably would if he asked too soon, before she had been disappointed by neglect and loneliness. Nor would his father be likely to wait long. Of course for he himself then to approach a woman who had rejected his father would be a hard thing to do, but he would be patient, and careful not to disclose his intention until Sir James had found another woman or gained a new command. Probably Helen had no idea that her godfather regarded her as a potential wife; when she heard she would be horrified. The thought of his father suffering such a humiliation made Charles forget his own troubles for a moment. Given Sir James’s state of mind, he ought to be protected from such an event. While dressing, Charles decided what he would do; what he now firmly believed to be his duty. When he returned to the dining hall, he was calm again. He sat down and smiled at his father.