Perilous Shore

by Chris Durbin

  When one has spent a full two hours in a bad temper, it’s difficult to snap out of it with any grace, but Featherstone made his best attempt. After all, his beloved Ann had never had a gentleman caller, and he vaguely understood that it was probably a significant moment in her life. He wouldn’t willingly spoil it for her.

  ‘Thank you, Polly. You may inform Miss Featherstone of her caller. I’ll send for her shortly,’ he said with an expression that hovered somewhere between an unnatural smile and a grimace. ‘And when you’ve done that Mister Holbrooke and I will have coffee in the drawing room. I assume it’s fit for visitors.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ Polly replied, ‘Mrs Featherstone gave me particular instructions yesterday that the drawing room was to be ready for visitors at a moment’s notice. That’s why your breakfast wasn’t ready, sir, nor your shirt, I was smoothing the covers.’

  There was a looking glass in the library. Featherstone took a moment to adjust his expression; he didn’t want to appear discontented when he met this sea officer. Where was his wife when he needed her? Why was the whole routine of the household thrown to the winds for this visit?

  ◆◆◆

  ‘Good morning, Mister Holbrooke. How do you do?’ asked Featherstone. By a feat of superhuman self-will, he’d almost wholly restored his natural geniality in the half dozen steps from the library to the lobby. ‘Will you join me in the drawing room?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ replied Holbrooke, nursing a hand crushed to half its usual size by the steel grip of Featherstone’s handshake. ‘I’m very well, thank you.’

  The drawing room at Bere House was comfortable in a provincial, unshowy way. It faced southeast across the square and caught the best of the morning sun. Today it was unusually splendid; there were flowers on the sideboard and fresh linen covers had been laid across the backs of the chairs. The glass in the windows had evidently been cleaned that very morning and there was a pleasant smell of beeswax polish in the air. By chance Martin Featherstone hadn’t visited the drawing room yet, having been taken up with fuming about the lack of breakfast and a clean shirt. He was startled by what he saw but managed to stifle an impolite expression of surprise.

  ‘Please take a seat, Captain Holbrooke, the maid will be here in a moment. Will you take coffee?’

  They settled into comfortable chairs with a view of the bustling town. For a small settlement of perhaps a thousand souls, it was remarkably busy. There were carts and drays, horses and oxen, women and men, all mingled and all crossing each other’s path. The peculiarity of Wickham was that the shops and inns, the dwellings and businesses were scattered democratically around the square, offering no natural routes for an established pattern of movement. They looked out upon a glorious confusion of movement.

  ‘I’m happy to see that you’ve returned safely. Have you seen your father yet?’

  ‘Not yet, sir, I’ll call on him later today, although my chaplain is with him now and no doubt, they’re on the stream casting a fly for the trout.’

  ‘I read with interest about the capture of Emden,’ continued Featherstone who was no angler, ‘I understand your ship was there with the famous Commodore Holmes.’

  Holbrooke smiled ruefully. Holmes, of course, was taking all the credit, but he’d only arrived on the Ems the day before Emden’s fall. All the hard work had already been done by Kestrel.

  ‘Yes, my ship was part of Mister Holmes’ squadron,’ he replied modestly. There was no benefit, he knew, in explaining the niceties of the commodore’s position in relation to a mere commander. ‘Kestrel’s in the yard now, probably until the end of May, so I’m shore-bound for a few months.’

  ‘I see,’ Featherstone replied.

  There was an awkward pause. I may as well take the bull by the horns, Holbrooke thought.

  ‘I called in the hope of seeing your daughter, Ann,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, of course…’

  The maid came in bearing coffee. The cook had been ordered by Mrs Featherstone to keep a pot of water near the boil until further notice, and its rapid arrival confused Featherstone.

  ‘Polly, would you tell Miss Featherstone that Captain Holbrooke is in the drawing room?’

  Polly curtsied to Mister Featherstone, then in defiance of protocol, she quickly curtsied to Holbrooke, looking him full in the face as she did so. After all, her routine had been turned upside down in anticipation of this visit, she deserved to see the man who was causing such expectation.

  They sat in silence for two minutes, not knowing quite what to say. Neither of them had been in this situation before.

  Shortly there was a knock on the door and Sophie and Ann came in. Mrs Featherstone brought a much brisker atmosphere to the gathering; she knew exactly what to do with gentleman callers. There were renewed introductions, then farewells from Martin Featherstone who, with a sigh of relief, felt he really should see to his business.

  Sophie Featherstone was not embarrassed at all by the meeting. She liked Holbrooke and loved her stepdaughter as only a childless woman can. She’d already decided that they were a good match and had determined to make it her business to promote the friendship.

  ‘Goodbye, dear,’ she said to the retreating form of her husband. His business was only two hundred yards away and there was no ceremony about his coming and going. Even so, he felt that his wife could have walked him to the door…

  ‘Now,’ she said, turning back to the drawing room where Holbrooke and Ann were coyly considering each other across a small card table, ‘we dine at two in the afternoon, Captain Holbrooke, and I’ve taken the liberty of assuming you will stay to join us. Mister Featherstone will be back promptly at that time as he missed his breakfast.’

  She didn’t look too contrite at her husband’s missed meal, nor did she pause to hear whether Holbrooke would in fact like to stay for dinner.

  ‘I have business with the cook and the maid.’

  She looked out through the window at the beautiful spring morning.

  ‘When we last met, we played whist, so I know very well that it’s not your favourite pastime, Captain. I propose to leave you two alone. It’s a beautiful day for a walk, and if you’ll take my advice, there’s a good path down to the dipping hole and along the stream from there. Ann, you should wear your walking shoes for it may be a bit damp underfoot. But of course, you were brought up in the town, weren’t you, Captain? You’ll know the path well.’

  And with that, she was gone. They could hear her voice fading away to the back of the house as she called her servants to her.

  ◆◆◆

  Sophie Featherstone would have given David Chalmers a run for his money in the understanding of human nature. She knew very well how awkward it was to become acquainted with someone while regarding them across a card table in the confines of a drawing room, however sunny. When walking, on the other hand, the two people were not committed to staring at each other, with all the self-consciousness that it caused. They could converse much more freely looking at the buildings and trees, passing the time of day with friends and neighbours and looking out for tree roots and stones in the path.

  Holbrooke and Ann walked side-by-side along the square towards the dipping-hole. They did indeed encounter friends. In Sophie’s case it was a matter of a passing greeting, but in Holbrooke’s it required a longer pause; apart from his short visit last Christmas, he hadn’t spent any time in his hometown for years. And he was locally famous! People with the slightest acquaintance wanted to speak to him, to congratulate him on the victory at Cape François, where he’d been in temporary command of a frigate, and Emden, although they were hazier about his role in that affair.

  Past the dipping-hole they continued walking upstream on a flint-laid path that followed the Meon. Holbrooke knew it well; half a mile further on they would pass on the other side the cottage where he’d grown up. In his youth, he’d known it as the poachers’ path, because the boys of the town set their night lines here and in the height of summer tickl
ed the tiny trout from under the alder roots. Once a year, in May, it became a dangerous place as the itinerate traders at the Wickham Horse Fair claimed their share of the catch.

  Holbrooke’s rather vague memory of Ann had been of a shy girl who blushed when she met his eye, but something had changed. It would have been an exaggeration to suggest that in the past three months she’d become bold, but she’d certainly gained confidence. Whereas before she’d been a pretty young woman who had to be coaxed to talk, now she was positively chatty. Perhaps her nature thrived in small groups rather than the horde of people who had shared Christmas dinner at Rookesbury House, or perhaps it was the fresh air.

  ‘…and did you really persuade the French to leave Emden without having to fight for it? That must have taken some diplomatic skills.’

  ‘Not really,’ replied Holbrooke, ‘they knew that they couldn’t hold it against a determined attack, all I had to do was persuade them to leave before they were forced to. But that’s enough about the war, let’s talk about something more cheerful.’

  ‘Captain Holbrooke! How could you? Don’t you know how much it’s worth to me to hear these things from you who were there? My company will be sought for months to come, just so that I can re-tell the stories!’

  ‘Oh, but I was hoping to hear something of yourself. I know that you like gardening and sewing and reading…’

  They walked on up the stream, past Holbrooke’s father’s cottage and on through the Rookesbury estate.

  ‘Is that your father?’ asked Ann, pointing to two figures casting upstream, with their backs necessarily turned to walkers from downstream.

  ‘Yes, that’s my father and my chaplain…’

  ‘You have a chaplain? How grand, may I meet him? I know your father fairly well; we pass the time of day when we meet in town or at church.’

  ‘Unless we turn around, I fear that a meeting is inevitable,’ Holbrooke replied. ‘Shall we see how close we can get before they see us?’

  They walked on quietly, avoiding the tree roots and the larger stones until they were only ten yards behind the two anglers.

  ‘There!’ whispered William Holbrooke. ‘Do you see him, or rather his tail, just this side of that patch of weed? He rises! To an early March Brown I expect.’

  Chalmers counted to ten to let the trout settle again after his mouthful, then he cast his own imitation. It landed six feet ahead of the trout, in between two thick patches of trailing weed that created a temporary channel in the stream. The trout’s tail flicked faster in agitation; he’d seen the fly. When it came, the rise was lightning-fast, faster than Chalmers could react. He struck, but the canny trout had already discarded the tasteless confection of feather and iron, and with a disdainful flick of its tail it cruised away to the safety of the far bank.

  ◆◆◆

  For the next six weeks, Holbrooke was a regular visitor at Bere Forest House. He called once or twice a week and usually stayed for dinner. The invariable arrangement was for him and Chalmers to take a carriage in the morning and visit the cottage. Holbrooke would walk into the town leaving Chalmers to pester the Meon trout with William. They’d stay the night with Holbrooke’s father and in the morning take a carriage back to the Dolphin. They were pleasant weeks of glorious spring weather, a growing fondness between Holbrooke and Ann, company for William and the occasional unwary trout for Chalmers.

  However, a sea officer in 1758 could count himself blessed with every week that he had away from his duty; for the King’s service was relentless. In early May a letter arrived for Holbrooke at his lodgings: orders, and an end to the halcyon days.

  ◆◆◆

  3: Commodore Howe

  Wednesday, Tenth of May 1758.

  The Admiralty. London.

  The early morning light picked up the motes of dust in the board room of the Admiralty building in London, where Lord Anson was chairing an extraordinary meeting.

  ‘I repeat, Gentlemen, we must comply with Mister Pitt’s wishes, and I must say that there is some merit in them.’

  ‘Merit you say, My Lord, yet we proved at Rochefort that these descents’ – Forbes spat out the word as though it was something distasteful – ‘can’t work. The army’s heart isn’t in it and we’re too vulnerable during the landing. And all for what? A possible – and I emphasise possible – diversion of French forces from Hanover. We have better things to do in the Americas and the Caribbean. Even West Africa for God’s sake! This is a poor use of our naval superiority.’ Forbes was not a man to hide his feelings.

  ‘Nevertheless, we are bound to support the ministry. In any case, Mister Howe is gathering his ships, the Duke of Marlborough is mustering his forces, and the flatboats are a-building. I suggest we salvage what we can out of this and choose the objectives that most suit the war at sea. Now gentlemen,’ he looked around him at the three civilian members, Hay, Hunter and Elliot, and Admiral Forbes; Boscawen wasn’t there, he was on his way to Louisbourg. ‘Perhaps we should start with that nest of vipers in Saint-Malo. We can deprive that scoundrel Thurot of his home base and clear out the rest of the privateers. That will get King Louis’ attention…’

  ◆◆◆

  Holbrooke’s longboat rowed him out into the choppy waters of the Solent. Not for the first time he wondered how many sailors had been drowned in this small area between the Hampshire coast and the Isle of Wight. With the majority of the navy’s men-of-war anchored at Spithead or St. Helen’s, it was quite usual for ships’ boats and the various craft that serviced the fleet to put out from Portsmouth in the unruliest of weather. Today the Solent was in turmoil, with the ebbing tide meeting a sturdy sou’westerly breeze, raising a chop that would soon overwhelm a poorly handled boat. He watched in awe as Dawson steered effortlessly towards Essex, a third rate of sixty-four guns, flying Commodore Howe’s broad pennant.

  ‘Good morning, Captain Holbrooke.’ said John Campbell, the captain of the flagship. His native scots accent had persisted through twenty years of service away from his home, and no amount of exposure to the southerners had managed to modify it. ‘Have you met the commodore yet? No? Well, you’ll find him bursting with energy and ready to sail, if only the damned army would move a little faster.’

  Holbrooke had met Campbell at dinner a week before. He’d been a sailing master before he’d passed the lieutenant’s examination and his rise had been rapid since then. The navy had few enough examples of this transformation from a warrant officer to a commission officer, and he was noteworthy among his contemporaries.

  ‘You’ve had your orders to join the squadron?’ Campbell asked.

  Holbrooke patted his breast pocket.

  ‘They arrived yesterday. I’m to join the Inshore Squadron of the Channel Fleet under the commodore.’

  ‘You and many others,’ Campbell grinned, ‘it’s a monstrous great squadron for a commodore, five of the line, ten frigates, seven or so of your kind and over a hundred transports, victuallers and storeships.’

  Holbrooke whistled softly.

  ‘You know that Hawke has hauled down his flag rather than suffer the disgrace of giving way to a junior officer?’

  ‘I’d heard so, sir,’ Holbrooke replied, not wanting to commit himself to an opinion on the rights and wrongs of admirals’ actions. He remembered the strained atmosphere in the navy over Byng’s court martial.

  ‘Of course, it was all a misunderstanding. The commodore merely requested some charts of the waters about Rochefort. Hawke’s soundings were presumed better than anyone else possessed, seeing as he spent considerable time there last year. Hawke concluded from that that this secret expedition was bound again to Rochefort and that their lordships had decided that a captain could make a better hash of it than an admiral.’

  Was that a hint, thought Holbrooke, that the expedition was not bound for Rochefort after all? The talk of London and Portsmouth was of a second expedition to that important naval port.

  ‘What you’ve probably not heard is that Hawke was at
the Admiralty yesterday, and they were none too sympathetic. They cleared up the misunderstanding but declined to restore his command. Anson has the Channel Fleet – again – and Hawke will have to sail as his second.’

  ‘Then does Commodore Howe report to Lord Anson?’

  ‘He does not. The Channel Fleet will cover the expedition, but the inshore squadron reports directly to the secretary of state, to Mister Pitt himself. You can imagine how that was perceived by Hawke!’

  They had stopped outside the commodore’s quarters for a moment, not wanting to enter in mid-conversation.

  ‘You said you hadn’t met the commodore.’

  Campbell had a way of keeping people on the back foot by imparting critical information and following it with an innocuous statement. Holbrooke had no time to digest the vital issue before he had to respond to the lesser. Hawke resigned! That was news indeed. Britain didn’t have enough admirals of his calibre that it could afford to lose one. It was fortunate indeed that he’d agreed to reinstatement.

  ‘No, I haven’t. I know him only by reputation.’

  ‘Well, I’ll say no more, but be prepared for a surprise! By the way, I hear you have Josiah Fairview as your sailing master. He was my mate in Centurion in ‘44, and a damned good one. Give him my best, will you?’

  ‘I will, sir,’ replied Holbrooke, ‘but before I meet the commodore, can you tell me where we’re bound?’

  ‘Now that I can’t,’ he replied. ‘It’s a secret that only the commodore may divulge. I expect he’ll tell you but be prepared to be sworn to secrecy. He’s cleared the cabin of hangers-on, it’ll be just you, the commodore, the secretary and me.’