Breaking the Line

by David Donachie

  ‘You are healthier than when I saw you last,’ Fanny said softly.

  ‘Yes.’

  It could hardly be otherwise, although he knew that two and a half years in the Mediterranean had taken its toll, the wear and tear of battle and command. Fanny was referring to the period after the failure at Tenerife and the loss of his arm, a troubled time of constant worry and pain: worry that he had sent men to die to no good purpose, pain from a wound that would not heal. Nelson could not help but recall how supportive Fanny had been, always there when required, quiet, elegant, keen to reassure him that the way his attack had been rebuffed added lustre to his name for the heroism of the action. She insisted all blame for the defeat had fallen on the deficiencies of the political masters who had sanctioned the attempt without providing the means to guarantee success.

  Fanny put up a hand to stroke Nelson’s cheek. ‘Yet you look tired.’

  Nelson didn’t recoil. Her touch felt as natural now as it had in the past. ‘I was a perfect wreck four months ago. I would not have said it before, but being on land restores me, that and good company.’

  Nelson knew that by alluding to his travelling companions once more he had set out to shatter any intimacy between Fanny and him, and it was plain that she saw it to. She didn’t snatch away her hand but let it fall gently to her side. But there was hurt in her eyes, much as she sought to disguise it.

  ‘I so want you to meet them, Fanny,’ he said, ‘for they are the kindest people on earth.’

  ‘You often wrote to tell me so,’ she replied, her voice soft.

  ‘And now, my dear, you are to meet them in the flesh, for I have arranged that we shall all have dinner together this very evening.’

  9

  When Emma first met Fanny it was a moment for sharp observation, and what she saw was in a large measure what she had expected. Fanny’s face was long, thin and solemn, her nose prominent with skin that seemed dry. Around her set mouth Emma could see the vertical wrinkles that rose over the thin top lip, which was downy with hair. Her blue eyes were pale and lacklustre, with generous bags beneath them. Her hair was pepper and salt and, though held by a blue silk bow, several untidy curls had escaped at the nape of her neck. Not tall, her body was more hips than shoulder, she lacked a waist and had no bosom to speak of. She wore a dun-coloured dress, cut high, with added lace arranged scarf-like to show little neck. The whole image was one of overwhelming respectability, of a woman comfortable to be sinking into dull middle age.

  ‘Lady Nelson,’ Emma said, stepping forward, ‘how pleased I am to make your acquaintance at last.’

  What Fanny Nelson saw was a woman a good deal larger than she had expected, but one who had been and still thought of herself as a beauty. The hair was so rich in colour that she a suspected dye, but the face was warm and smiling, with round rosy cheeks and a high forehead above large green eyes. Dressed in a deep burgundy-coloured gown Lady Hamilton was not afraid to show a great deal of neck, though her ample cleavage was masked by a sparkling silver cross studded with gemstones.

  Was she a harlot? Emma Hamilton was certainly fulsome and forward, at home in company, lacking any hint of shyness. But the shock in the meeting for Fanny was that her husband, who had pledged his love to her, could find attraction in one to whom she was so contrasted. There was no refinement in Emma Hamilton that Fanny Nelson could see.

  Still, she would reserve judgement, keep her own counsel, give no cause for offence and let matters take their course. She would avoid any situation in which a precipitous decision could be made. All the parties needed time to adjust to the more rigorous social climate of London. That applied to her and her husband when alone, and even more so in this company.

  ‘Allow me to name Sir William Hamilton to you, Fanny.’

  The old man stepped forward on his stick-like legs to take her hand, execute a deep bow over it, and brushed it gently with his lips. It was the act of the perfect courtier and that impression underlined her appreciation of his features when he stood again: a prominent nose, which denoted activity, under a broad forehead, which implied intelligence. The blue eyes still had in them enough sparkle to indicate devilry and the way the man held himself, in expectation of elegant conversation, was attractive.

  ‘I have long wanted to meet you Lady Nelson,’ he said, ‘for I have been in receipt of much correspondence lauding you. I see now that those who wrote to me were not mistaken.’

  Fanny executed a little curtsy, then, since the clock had chimed five o’clock, allowed Sir William to seat both her and his wife at the table. There she sat, opposite Emma, trying hard not to look that lady in the eye, knowing that to do so would incline her to be angry and disputatious.

  The curtains were closed to keep out the dark cold night, though the wind could still be heard as it gusted at the creaking windows. Everything seemed to shrink to the table, which was well lit with double candelabra reflecting off white linen. The only other light stood in a corner by the sideboard, which was used by the servant to transfer food from chafing dish to plate, and wine from bottle to decanter.

  That the woman was so different was initially surprising, but Fanny was now inclined to look on it as a good thing. Warm sunshine and loose Italian morals might suit this Hamilton creature, but that bloom would struggle in cold winter London. Nelson had been absent from her side too long: he had forgotten the asset that she was to his name and station. Once reminded of that, Fanny was convinced he would see sense.

  Over the soup, conversation turned to Nelson’s success at the Nile, and Fanny noticed the excessive level of mutual praise between this trio with whom she was dining. Modesty was her watchword, as it was to all right-thinking folk, and she longed to remind them of this, but, true to her strategy she bit her tongue.

  Nelson praised Sir William as an ambassadorial rock whose thirty-seven years of service had laid the foundation for all that followed, only to hear a paean to his own character from the ex-Ambassador. And if his approbation of Sir William was fulsome, that for Lady Hamilton was extravagant. It seemed to Fanny that her husband would not have stood any chance in battle without the woman’s aid.

  ‘I did my duty,’ said Emma, in a rare attempt at modesty.

  ‘And I say bravo to that.’ Nelson cried, beaming at his wife. ‘I did try to get the government to recognise Lady Hamilton’s contribution, my dear, but they were deaf to my entreaties. Fortunately the Tsar of Russia was not so tardy, as the cross at Emma’s neck will testify.’

  The use of her name, and the intimacy it implied, had everyone spooning their soup with concentration. Nelson was blushing at his gaffe, Fanny was seething, but she maintained her sang froid as the soup plates were replaced with a the fish course.

  Emma was determined to pick up the conversation and root it firmly in the triumph of the battle. ‘I cannot describe to you, Lady Nelson, the joy that attended the news of Lord Nelson’s victory. Naples was en fête for weeks.’

  ‘I have never been to so many balls and entertainments in such a short space of time, my dear,’ added Nelson. ‘Damn me if I wasn’t closer to expiry in Naples than I was at Aboukir.’

  Fanny shot her husband a sharp look for employing such shipboard language in her company. How far had these people corrupted him? Then she replied to Emma, ‘There was much joy in London too, Lady Hamilton.’

  ‘I am sure it could not have compared to Naples. Even the King and Queen danced for joy.’

  ‘Is that not unseemly behaviour for a monarch?’ asked Fanny, archly, before adding. ‘Though I daresay the removal of a guillotine blade from a royal neck is an occasion for some vivacity.’

  ‘Take my word for it, Lady Nelson,’ said Sir William, quick to cover another chill in the atmosphere, ‘I saw our own sovereign dance many a jig when we were lads together.’

  Fanny grasped at that, aware that she had forsaken her planned approach. ‘You were a boon companion, I believe.’

  ‘We shared a nursery, George and I, and much more b
esides as we grew up. I fear now, though, that he has become too serious for his own good.’

  ‘He has much to make him so,’ said Fanny.

  Sir William smiled at Fanny, thinking that she was without doubt a good woman, no beauty but with a fine sense of refinement. In some ways she reminded him of his first wife, Catherine, who had been cut from the same mould. Respectable, with a determination not to see that which was otherwise; musical without too much talent, good at embroidery and all the other domestic talents; an excellent hostess who was a boon and close companion. She had made him very happy. But was Fanny Nelson like Catherine in any other way – for instance in the matter of turning a blind eye to her husband’s peccadilloes?

  ‘Would that King Ferdinand of Naples,’ Sir William added, ‘was a little less frivolous and our own dear sovereign a little more so.’

  ‘I have heard much of this Ferdinand,’ Fanny replied, enquiringly.

  Not the half of it, thought Emma.

  Ferdinand might be a lecher and a boor, but Sir William was happy to make him sound a harmless and amusing booby. He related to Fanny Nelson a number of the Sicilian king’s oddities without referring to anything salacious that might embarrass her. The subject of sovereigns and their foibles being safe ground for all four diners the conversation flowed in a way that allowed Nelson to relax, moving easily on to commoners and recent events with Sir William at his most urbane.

  Fanny was happy on the safe ground of a general conversation led by Sir William, who ranged far and wide with ease; the masked condemnation of this person or that, usually someone in government, carefully wrapped in what sounded like praise; the excitement for him of a dig and the discovery of some ancient artefact, the disaster of the sinking of the ship bringing the bulk of his treasures home, which earned vocal sympathy from Fanny.

  ‘I am not entirely bereft, Lady Nelson. I kept back my best pieces to travel with me. They are being brought by separate conveyance from Lowestoffe where we landed.’

  He didn’t add that he would be obliged to sell the things he cherished, vases, coins and statuary, which he had intended to keep, and he felt sad as he described them in some detail to Nelson’s wife.

  The servants had just set before them the meat course, thick slices of fine, rare roast beef as befitted a British hero. Nelson, tasting the claret, was too busy to notice that the ladies saw food with which a one-armed man would struggle. Both Emma and Fanny moved simultaneously to cut up his beef, each noticed the other do it, and froze.

  There was no avoiding difficulty now. They sat, eyes locked, as if daring the other to undertake the task. It was a defining moment for both women, a duty that only one should perform. Fanny, when her husband had come home from Tenerife minus his arm, had become accustomed to beg anyone who invited them to dine to be allowed the unusual privilege of sitting beside her husband for just such a purpose. That Lady Hamilton should assume it with Fanny present was outrageous.

  Sir William, quick to react, called for a servant, ‘Will you cut Lord Nelson’s meat for him?’ The servant whipped away the plate away as Sir William added to Fanny, ‘It was a task my wife kindly undertook for him on our journey.’

  ‘For which I thank you, Lady Hamilton,’ said Fanny icily. ‘But now that my husband is home, I will do it for him.’

  Emma was silent for one reason; she expected her lover to say something – not to put his wife in her place, that would be asking too much, but to inform her, somehow, that she no longer had sole rights to such intimacies. Nelson said nothing: he waited until his meat was put in front of him, then proceeded to eat it.

  The rest of the meal passed in near silence, with Fanny stiff. Nelson red-faced, drinking more than was good for him, and Emma seething.

  ‘I must tell you,’ said Nelson, trying to keep the conversation between him and Fanny formal, ‘that I have made an appointment to be at the Admiralty by seven of the clock.’

  They were back in the parlour, the meal over, the Hamiltons departed, man and wife alone, standing, not sitting, both fearful, both determined.

  ‘And I must tell you, husband, that the meal I have just consumed was one of the least pleasant in my life. Did you deliberately set out to discomfort me?’

  That was the opposite of what he had wanted to do. ‘I wished merely for you to meet my friends, Fanny, to get to know them and to esteem them as I do.’

  ‘It is a matter of some conjecture just how well you know your friends, husband, especially Lady Hamilton. Do you think me blind? Do you not know that half of the people who have written to me from Naples have alluded to a connection with that woman that goes way beyond the bounds of friendship.’

  Nelson didn’t want the truth to emerge with Fanny in such a mood. ‘And what do you believe?’

  ‘Since I do not know what to believe I require that you tell me from your own lips whether such assertions are true or malicious.’

  Still he felt the need to procrastinate, still the hope that there would be no need for a confrontation. ‘Do you believe that certain things are preordained?’

  Fanny didn’t reply, and Nelson took her arm to sit her down, which she did reluctantly, perched upright and rigid as he began to pace back and forth.

  ‘You know that I do, Fanny, for I have told you often enough of the dreams I had regarding my destiny.’ He stopped and looked hard at her. ‘I knew I would be a hero. Before I was even a lieutenant I knew I would command fleets and win the kind of victories that are now attached to my name.’

  She could not deny that, though even now she would not admit that the way her husband had talked about ‘his visions’ had sometimes troubled her as being almost blasphemous. Fanny felt it was not for mere mortals, however convinced they were of their attributes, to forestall the Almighty. She had thought her husband sometimes a touch deranged when he talked of such things, near penniless in a Norfolk Rectory. The light in his eyes had been as it was now: absolute certainty about the future, which to Fanny, as it should be to any God-fearing person, was sacrilege.

  ‘I have heard enough of your victories on this occasion, husband,’ Fanny snapped. ‘And, I must say of the attributes of your friends. Rarely have I heard such vanities. If that is what passes for proper behaviour in Naples it will scarce pass here. Strutting peacocks would blush to hear the acclamation you granted each other.’

  ‘You would want me humble?’

  ‘I would want modesty, husband, which is a quality, not a crime.’

  Nelson’s eyes were suddenly sad, the light of destiny gone to be replaced by gentleness. He realised there was no course open to him now but to tell the truth. ‘Would you believe me if I told you that I have no desire to cause you any hurt?’

  Fanny knew the meaning of that, and knew that if she responded she would hear words she dreaded. She also knew there was no alternative but to speak, though she left it open for her husband to pull back from the direction in which he was heading.

  ‘Nothing would please me more than that you should convince me of it.’

  Nelson wanted to tell her she had been a dutiful wife, a sterling companion and a great support. Yet he knew that was not what he felt. It would be too much to say that she had betrayed him, thus allowing him to do the same. He knew that it had been his enthusiasm that had got them to the altar, but she must have known his needs and desires. Had she set out to fulfil them only to find she could not, or had she never had any intention of satisfying him?

  ‘What do you want of me, Fanny?’ he asked, temporising.

  ‘That you should lay the ghost of this gossip, husband.’ She looked around the small parlour, almost with distaste. ‘That you should leave this place with me at once, and let all London know that on the hero’s return he has come back to his family as well as his nation.’

  Nelson spoke softly, almost with sadness. ‘That I cannot do.’

  Fanny dropped her head. ‘Am I to be told why?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Lady Hamilton?’r />
  ‘Emma,’ said Nelson, with some force.

  ‘Such familiarity,’ said Fanny, ‘A friendship must be very deep for that.’

  ‘Emma is more than a friend, Fanny. I am in love with her.’

  ‘You have …’ Fanny paused, ‘… taken matters beyond mere mutual regard.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She had one defence left, that the sun and his fame had turned his head, and there to take advantage of his state of mind had been a woman who had once been a whore, and had turned into a climber, latching on leech-like to a hero.

  ‘You are sure, husband, that this is not mere infatuation?’

  ‘I thought that on first meeting Emma seven years ago.’

  ‘Seven years,’ gasped Fanny. ‘You have kept this from me for seven years?’

  Suddenly the continual references to the good Lady Hamilton in all those earlier letters made sense. How could she have been so blind? Later reflection would tell her that she could not have known: that Nelson had said as much about others, including women, as he had about Emma Hamilton.

  Quietly Nelson explained that it had not all been deceit. He could honestly say that he had doubted his own feelings for five years and that it was only seeing Emma again that had brought them to the fore. Fanny listened in silence, her fingers knotted around a handkerchief, determined not to give way to tears.

  ‘If you say you do not wish to hurt me, husband, that must mean you still have some regard for my feelings.’

  ‘I do,’ replied Nelson, truthfully.

  ‘Then I demand a chance. I have that right.’ She looked up at him for the first time in an age. ‘You and I have had so little time together these last seven years it is scarce to be wondered that you have forgotten what it was that attracted us to each other in the first place. I ask that you spend some time with me, give me the chance to rekindle in your heart some of the tender feelings you have expressed so eloquently in your letters.’