LANDFALL

Alison James

Chapter 1	Encounter
Chapter 2	Tea
Chapter 3	The Butcher’s Bill
Chapter 4	Of Sailors, Ports, Wives & Widows
Chapter 5	The Alameda Gardens
Chapter 6	Love & Duty
Chapter 7	The Wager
Chapter 8	Letters
Chapter 9	The Visit
Chapter 10	Homecoming
Chapter 11	A Wedding Bouquet
Chapter 12	The Root Of All Evil
Chapter 13	An Inquisition
Chapter 14	Lessons In Love
Chapter 15	All Over The Med Like A Blue-Arsed Fly
Chapter 16	The Crouched Lion Springs
Chapter 17	Friendship
Chapter 18		Beginnings
Chapter 19		Trafalgar
Chapter 20	Stroud Goes Out On A Limb
Chapter 21	Postbag
Chapter 22	Landfall Again
Chapter 23	Pellie’s World (& Dinner)
Chapter 24	Mavis
Chapter 25	Two Difficult Interviews
Chapter 26	England’s Green and Pleasant Land
Chapter 27	Portchester
Chapter 28	The Winkle-Pickers
Chapter 29	A Father’s Loss
Chapter 30	The High Cost Of Smuggling
Chapter 31	Resurrection
Chapter 32	Recovery
Chapter 33	A Promise
Chapter 34	Harriet
Chapter 35	Landfall by Moonlight

Acknowledgements:

I owe a debt of gratitude to many people, without whom this book could not have been written. Foremost among them are:

Howard, Jeremy and Laura Cohen, for their love and encouragement, shining faith in me, and for putting up with this –

Sue Edlin, Indefatigable collaborator, tireless friend and patient listener –

Holly Birnbaum, for giving me her house, her heart and her belief in me as a writer –

Beth Dambriunas, this story’s midwife and figurehead –

A. E. ‘Jimmy’ James, Lt. Cdr., R.N., my father and the one who started it all those years ago –

My mother, Kathleen James, for planting the love, the history, the passion –

Mr. C. S. Forester, for giving us Hornblower –

and Mr. Robert Lindsay, consummate Pellew:

from my heart,

thank you.

1. Encounter

It could all be laid at Mavis’s door, it was agreed afterwards, for better or worse – it was she who set the whole train of events in motion. Headlong motion, blinded by tears and driving rain; inescapable, unstoppable motion.

It had not been a promising day for Captain Sir Edward Pelham, commander of His Majesty’s Frigate Indomitable, lying at anchor off Gibraltar. It had begun with a flogging, an event he particularly loathed, especially when the recipient was a good man gone bad. This one was an excellent seaman, a prime deck-hand and regular monkey on the shrouds, who had been persuaded by those who called themselves his friends to smuggle not only a keg of illicit spirits aboard ship, but to compound his offence by including a whore in the party; and becoming so noisily, rowdily, irrepressibly drunk that the Captain had been forced to make an example of him – since in His Britannic Majesty’s glorious Navy of the year of Our Lord 1803, it was not permitted even the very best man alive to call the first lieutenant a “ ’orse’s arse”, swing wild and ineffectual punches at the Ship’s Master and fall to the deck when these missed, only to puke up his guts upon the buckled shoes of his Captain, while the Captain’s feet most unfortunately occupied said shoes.

It would have been an offence against all notions of discipline to overlook so flagrant a set of infractions. Pelham had had no choice but to have the miserable man suffer under the lash: ten agonizing swings. Nor could he forgo witnessing it. His was the ship, his the ship’s company who must be prevented from such disorderly crimes; his was the pronouncement of sentence. He took responsibility for the whole wretched affair. It weighed on him still, hours later, dogging his steps, as did the stench of the man’s bowels opening under the fear before the first cut of the cat o’ nine tails. Pelham climbed higher and higher up through the town to escape, seeking fresh air and a clear view. The harbour lay below him, and the sweep of Algeciras Bay – ships at anchor like toys, the rooftops a jumble of brown and orange tile, the clouds massing in sail-like billows that piled on each other to form a column, a pillar, an anvil, a thunderhead – and opened upon him with a furious downpour that smoked as it hit the ground.

Pelham bent his head forward grimly and pressed on through the winding streets toward the open, broken slopes above the town. He regretted not having brought his cloak, but it was far too late now. Still, wet or dry made little difference – he was in no mood to return to his ship until his lungs were clear.

It was at this moment that the irresistible force that was Mavis launched itself at him from an alley, colliding with the immovable object presented by Pelham’s right thigh with a shock that sent her flying through the air in a ricochet, to land in the drowning gutter amid a torrent of filth.

At first Pelham had not the least idea what had hit him, till Mavis’s furious cry of “You might look where you’re bloody going!” alerted him to her plight behind him. The rain was falling in ropy grey curtains, “like stair-rods” as Mavis was later to explain, and a surplus cannonball having been lodged in the drain to prevent large objects from falling into it, a dam of debris had built upon it – upon which Mavis’s trajectory ended. Pelham ran to her aid. Mavis turned on him with the hiss and splutter of an angry cat: “Look what you’ve done! Now my pinafore’s torn, I’ve broken my slate and my book’s in the gutter!”

Pelham retrieved the book, apologizing as handsomely as he was able, which was very handsomely indeed, and once more offered Mavis his arm to extricate herself from the greasy torrent. Gravely she took the book. Only then, mollified by his humble words, she accepted this second time what she had refused the first, and allowed him to pluck her out of the drain, set her on her feet, and lead her to the shelter of a nearby doorway, where he knelt (with never a thought to his white knee-britches) to brush away the remaining pieces of straw, vegetable-peelings and other loathsome ornaments which still stuck to her small person. He noted with no little admiration her mastery of the struggle to hold back tears, even while he rubbed clean with his snowy handkerchief the nasty grazes upon both her knees.

“There,” he said, a minute or two later, when her breathing had settled from shuddering gasps to something more controlled, “that’s a bit better, anyway.”

“Well that’s the least you could do, after running into me like that,” flashed Mavis. “You really should look where you’re going! I might have been really hurt, not just a bit.”

“You’re right, of course,” Pelham said. “Hm – it’s really most unfortunate that you didn’t see me, either.”

Hazel eyes evaluated him from under thick brows. “You mean I wasn’t looking where I was going too!”

“Er – yes, I suppose that is what I mean.”

“Well you should just say so, then!”

“Forgive me – I was trying to be more polite in making the suggestion.”

She broke into a grin whose radiance was only enhanced by two very large front teeth; teeth that clearly she had yet to grow into. “Are you somebody important?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You talk like it.”

Pelham was taken aback, had to consider a moment. Was he? “Well – hm – what makes somebody important? Do you mean behaving like a gentleman? Anyone can do that.”

“Yes, but you’ve got a lot of gold stuff on your uniform, and that big hat, and your hanky’s so clean – well, it was anyway. And you just talk like somebody – you know – some kind of bigwig.”

“Let me assure you I wear my own hair – see?” Pelham turned to show his dark ribboned pigtail.

“I didn’t mean it literally,” said Mavis in a scornful tone.

“Ah. I see. Well – hm – you decide, then. Er – Pelham, at your service – Edward Pelham.”

“You’re a naval officer, aren’t you.”

“Indeed I am.”

“What’s your ship? I keep a look out for all the ships, I go up on the roof to see who’s coming in and out. Are you with that big one down there? The one with the red flag?”

“No; that’s the Warrior, eighty-four guns, three decks, the Vice-Admiral’s flagship. That’s why it’s got that red pennant. It means he’s aboard. Admiral Newton – Froggy Newton, we call him.”

“Which one’s yours, then?”

“See the smaller one, to the west, lying at anchor further out? Three masts, sails nicely furled, no loose ends, that pretty frigate there?”

“The one that just came in yesterday?”

“The very one.”

“That’s your ship?”

“Yes. HMS Indomitable – I don’t suppose you know what that means?”

“Mama says I am indomitable. When I keep on until I get my way. ”

“Does she! Well, it is better to be resolute than defeated, is it not? – hm?”

Mavis looked up at him, beaming. “Oh, that was very witty! She’s a beauty!”

“So she is. And she doesn’t give up easily, either.”

“You’re proud of her, aren’t you. So’d I be, if she was mine! I wish girls went to sea.”

Pelham considered this statement. “You’re right, it’s most unfair. Should you like to fight, do you think?”

“Are you saying girls don’t fight? That’s what you think! Only most of them are sneaky. I hate girls like that. They’re stupid and all they do is giggle and whisper secrets behind your back. I’m never going to be like that!”

“I should certainly hope not!”

“Of course I don’t want to fight when I grow up. But I want to be a doctor. Actually, a ship’s surgeon. I’m good at healing things, I really am. We had a seagull with a broken wing and I splinted it even though it pecked me and I fed it till it got better. And I didn’t even throw up when our dog got run over last week and all its guts spilled out – let alone faint, like most girls would. I held it in my lap till it died. I could go to sea if I was a doctor, couldn’t I?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Pelham, who did, all too clearly, but thought, if anyone can break the mould, why shouldn’t it be this force of nature I have just run into?

“My name’s Mavis. Mavis McKenzie.”

“Delighted to make your acquaintance.” Pelham bowed.

“What kind of a name is Pellum?”

“Oh – it’s just a name. I believe it’s a Saxon place-name, originally – sounds like one, anyway.”

“Oh. Mine means a thrush. Everybody asks me when they hear it.”

“Ah. Do they? I fear, I haven’t studied my Latin very hard of late – I should have had to ask you too.”

Mavis positively beamed at him. “It’s not Latin, it’s Welsh. Nobody’s ever heard of it.”

“Well, that explains it, then doesn’t it – Welsh! Good Lord! Why should they have?”

She shrugged. “My grandmother was Welsh. Her name was Gwladys. The nuns say it’s unchristian, because you’re supposed to be named after a saint.”

“Saint Mavis? Patron saint of – er – martyred dogs?”

She gurgled. “I hate the nuns, anyway.”

“That doesn’t seem very Christian either, hm?”

“Well they hit me. With a ruler. Look!” – and she thrust out her palm for him to see. It was covered in red weals, and little oozing blisters.

Pelham frowned. “Nuns did that to you?”

“Sister Clarice and Mother Patrick. Mother Patrick held my arm so I wouldn’t run away and Sister Clarice did it.”

“Good God, child, that’s unconscionable! Why ever did they think you deserved it?”

“Because I wouldn’t learn my fractions. That’s what they said. I said I couldn’t because they didn’t teach them so anybody could understand, but they said I was in – insolent and disobedient. I only told the truth! My Mama never hits me. Well, she only did the time I ran out in the street and made a wagon turn over so as not to kill me. It spilled oranges everywhere! She was crying when she spanked my legs, though. Sister Clarice enjoys it!”

“Hm. I know people like that. It’s a very nasty thing. Don’t let it keep you from telling the truth, my dear. The only thing to do with bullies is to stand up to them. Even grown-up bullies.” Pelham looked up at the sky. Rain still fell, but it seemed to have slackened off; unless he was very much mistaken, it was clearing to the west. The doorway which sheltered them had a rise of three or four broad stone steps, where they now sat. The weight he felt earlier had lifted from his shoulders; he was amused and entertained by this child, quite inordinately so, and was enjoying their conversation with its sense of simple equality (a gift offered him rarely, in his position of command) that made him want to continue it. He had known fleeting moments in his life when he wished he had been a father: this was one such. He allowed himself the indulgence of enjoying it a little longer.

“I have never met the child that learned better for being beaten. So much for charity – I am shocked. Tell me – hm – how far had you got with the fractions, before you stopped being able to understand them?”

“Well I know the words, like half and quarter and third. And that all makes sense. But when you start to write one number over another and then sometimes you’re supposed to do sums with the numbers, and some of them are really something quite different, or they’re two things at once, well, how could anybody understand it?”

“Should you like me to explain? I think I could, in a way you would understand. I have to teach young midshipmen to do far harder sums than this – mathematics, you know – sines and cosines and tangents and trigonometry and rhumb lines and all kinds of navigation. But it’s all based on numbers, and they’re really not so hard.”

“I’m better at French. And music.”

“Then that shows you have a fine intelligence. All it will take you to grasp fractions is not to be afraid of them. Come, here is an apple – ” Pelham fished it from the pocket of his britches. “I brought it to eat on my walk, but we shall sacrifice it to the cause of your education.”

“Well – as long as you don’t mind – ”

“I don’t. I like to teach, actually. Now, look. Here it is. How many pieces are there?”

“What do you mean, how many pieces? You haven’t cut it yet.”

“Quite right. So – how many apples do I have?”

“One.”

“Exactly so. One whole apple. One whole. No more, no less. A perfect, entire whole. Now – observe.” Pelham took out his pocket knife and bisected the apple neatly on the stone step. “Now what do we have?”

“Two halves.”

“And how do we write a half?”

“A one over a two?”

“And where do we get the two from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why, because we had to cut the apple into two pieces, to get a piece this shape, where two of them would make up one whole. What would a two over a two be?”

“I don’t know!”

“Of course you do. You just don’t know that you know. Look.” Pelham balanced one cut half on the other. “What’s this?”

“The apple.”

“How many halves?”

“Two.”

“So one-half is ½ – let me write it on your slate – what’s left of it – d’you see? And two halves is 2/2. Which makes a whole – because you’ve got as many pieces as it took to cut it up in the first place.”

“All right,” said Mavis.

“Shall I go on?”

“Why not? Nothing ventured, nothing gained! That’s what Mama says. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“Very well, then. Do you cut this half here in half again. Watch out – you hold the knife like this – keep your fingers up here out of the way – cut towards your friend, didn’t anybody ever teach you that? There! Excellent… ”

By the time the rain had stopped, Mavis had mastered two-fourths, romped on to several thirds, an assortment of twelfths, eighths and sixteenths, and the apple was all eaten. Pelham’s little knife had taken up a new home in her pocket – a small gift, he had said, as a memento of the occasion.

“Mama will be happy it’s stopped raining,” she remarked cheerfully.

“It’s grand when the sun comes out afterwards, isn’t it,” Pelham agreed.

“Yes, but she’s got a special reason. We’ve got a tank on our roof to collect the rain and it’s got a leak and she said she didn’t know what she’d do because we couldn’t afford to have a man come and mend it, so she climbed up on the roof last week before I went to school and she was banging away at the pipe to break it so the water would run down the roof, not into the tank and through the ceiling into my room.”

“Good gracious.”

“Yes, and the pipe broke when she hit it and all the water ran down into the street just like she wanted. Which was a good thing because my ceiling nearly fell in last week and my bed got all wet. Only now the tank is empty, so we won’t have any water and that’s going to be a problem too.”

“Oh, dear. What does your mamma intend to do next? She sounds quite intrepid.”

“She’s very brave. She does lots of things.”

“Clearly!”

“She had to tie knots in her skirt to climb out on the roof. When I do it my skirts don’t get in the way because they’re shorter, and then I walk along the peak like this – ” Mavis spread out her arms – “till I come to the corner by the chimney. That’s where I sit to watch the ships.”

“Do you!”

“I really ought to go home now. I escaped from school. That’s why I ran into you. I was running away. Mama will be very anxious.”

“Shall I escort you home? That way we can explain to your mamma that you have been perfectly safe all this time.”

“All right.” They set off down the street, Mavis leading the way with little skips. She threaded her way through narrow turns, down several flights of steps, and under an arch to a small terrace overlooking the bay. A woman was coming toward them in a kind of stumbling run, gasping for breath and as wet as a drowned rat – clearly, she had sought no shelter from the worst of the rain. “Oh,” said Mavis, “There’s Mama!” – and she ran towards her, calling, “Mama! Mama! Here I am!”

The woman collapsed to her knees in the street and took the flying child into her arms, first hugging, then shaking her for a moment, then hugging her again. Pelham felt for her: she had clearly been beside herself with worry.

“Mavis, how could you run away like that!”

“Mama, they hit me again! I told you I wasn’t going to stand for it, Mama, you wouldn’t have either!”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

“I don’t know, I just ran further and further and then it was raining and I stopped to get out of it. Oh, and I ran into a gentleman, this one here, and he’s been teaching me fractions!”

Mavis’s mamma rose to her feet and turned to Pelham. Her frock was so thoroughly soaked that it clung to her, petticoats and all, and she cut a very fetching (though most improper) figure in which little of her generous shape was left to Pelham’s imagination. He looked at the ground for a moment, then (because she was speaking to him) was forced to look up again. “I am so very grateful to you, sir!” she said, still quite out-of-breath.

“Not at all, ma’am. Not at all. The pleasure was all mine, let me assure you.”

“Mavis, did you thank him?”

“Not yet, Mama.”

“Really, ma’am – ” Pelham cleared his throat and kept his eyes on her face, which seemed rather pleasant also. “I have spent the most delightful hour in Mavis’s company. Er – Pelham, ma’am, at your service – Edward Pelham.”

“Sophie McKenzie. I’m very pleased to meet you.” It seemed to Pelham as if she invested the formulaic words with a genuine intent, perhaps because of the way she met his eyes and held them as he took her hand briefly and bowed.

“Mavis has been a fountain of entertainment and information,” he said.

“Oh? I hope she hasn’t been boring you!” She looked concerned, which was not his intention.

“Far from it,” he hastened to reassure her. “Please accept my condolences on the recent tragic demise of your dear dog – and permit me to speculate that the large and alarming bird which appeared on your roof last week and most foully abused your laundry was probably an African vulture – they are passing through the straits just now, I have seen several – indeed, one perched on our mast for a while.”

“See, Mama, I told you he was a gentleman!”

“Mavis, hush! We may think these things but we don’t embarrass new acquaintances by talking about them to their faces!”

“I should be honoured if Miss Mavis counted me among her friends,” said Pelham. “And I am – er – most humbly gratified at her high estimation of my character.”

He watched her shoulders drop as the kind purpose of his words had its intended effect. He was an acute observer of humanity – necessarily so, in his career, but even for a Naval captain, particularly gifted in this regard. A deep human sympathy was the foundation for his success with his officers and men, as well as the esteem in which he was held by his peers and superiors. He could charm at a dinner-table, if necessary – an essential skill in a naval officer – but was at his happiest in franker conversation with those he trusted. His intuition for people was rarely wrong; it was also illuminated by the purpose it served in him, which was neither to dominate nor manipulate (as is so often and cynically the case with those who read their fellow man most closely) – but simply to understand, put others at their ease if necessary, and thus to ‘get on with it!’ (a favourite phrase of his) with the least amount of fuss.

It should also be said, lest it be thought by any that Captain Pelham was any kind of human paragon, that he was ambitious; had a hasty temper which cost him much to govern; that he did not suffer fools gladly – and that he subjected every man-jack aboard his ship to the most rigorous discipline, requiring of them superhuman efforts, sacrifice and diligence –expectations exceeded only by the degree to which he demanded the same of himself.

His kindness was often thus concealed beneath his stern, peremptory manner. Captain Pelham was also bold, certainly, while not rash; brusque often, and at times harsh in pursuit of his duty, which was at all times his paramount concern. Within the confines of his ship, no detail escaped him: he ruled like a very Caesar. His men were known to boast of the rigours they endured under his iron command to crews from other, lesser vessels, in the full knowledge that it was these very qualities in him which made their own the envy of the fleet. Above all he was fair – hard, but fair; he valued each of them, would not throw away the life of the least of them for bravado or vainglory; and they knew it.

At this moment his attention was engaged upon how to offer her his coat without offending her. To let her return home thus all unaware, a public spectacle, would not have been the act of a gentleman. “You must allow me to escort you to your house, ma’am,” he said with some firmness, as if he did not intend to be denied.

“Oh – thank you, Mr. – I mean, Captain? Pelham – ”

“Captain,” he confirmed –

“ – but that really won’t be necessary. Mavis has taken up far too much of your time already. You’ve been so kind – truly, I – ”

“I must insist,” he said. “You have been exposed to the storm, ma’am, and you will take a chill if you do not permit me to lend you my coat.”

“Oh, I don’t need your coat, thank you, Captain Pelham – we don’t live far, I – ”

“I think… you would do better to accept it, ma’am, before you go back through the town,” he said, as gently as he could, and in a tone low enough so that Mavis should not hear it. She was still looking at him in all innocence, so he allowed his gaze to descend for a moment, knowing she would see it, upon her state of dress.

She looked down and realized what he meant. She might almost as well have been naked.

“Oh! Oh, goodness! Oh, whatever must you think?” She turned from him in embarrassment, pulling her skirts loose. Pelham felt keenly for her in her discomfiture. He saw her nipples taut from cold before he looked away, and the new deep flush in her cheeks.

He took off his coat and held it out for her to put on. “I think, ma’am, that you care more for your daughter’s wellbeing than for any vanity so trivial as your – er – outward appearance.”

She looked up at him as he lifted it onto her shoulders. “Mavis was right,” she said. “You are a gentleman.”

“I hope so, ma’am,” he said, offering her his arm.

She glanced up at him again, and whatever she saw reassured her; she took it, and must have resolved to put away her embarrassment, for she walked upon his arm gracious as a duchess in spite of everything, right up to their door. Mavis kept the conversation going in a lively three-sided way; Pelham felt more at ease than he had in a long while. It seemed so very pleasant to have no greater responsibility than the escort of two clear-hazel-eyed females to their front door. When they reached it, Pelham released her hand, and bowed deeply. “I am honoured to have made your acquaintance, ma’am,” he said, and meant it.

Mavis danced around him as he put his frock-coat back on. “You’re really a kind person,” she said, “even if you are important.”

Now it was Pelham’s turn to flush – a thing he had not done in a good many years: “Hardly!” he protested.

“Which?” Sophie asked him, her eyes alight with amusement, “ – kind? Or important?”

“Hm,” was all he could find to say, leaving Mavis the last word: “Well we know better, don’t we, Mama.”

Her mother smiled and nodded. Pelham turned on his heel, bowed once more, and took his leave.

He enjoyed the company of women, as most seafaring men do when the rare occasion arises, and was pleased and unsurprised to find that his foul mood had evaporated. On returning to his ship he busied himself with a great deal of work, both necessary and unnecessary – pausing now and then to look up at the ceiling of his cabin, or out of its great stern windows, with a kind of half-amused, half-perplexed expression. The encounter had made a deep impression on him, though he was not sure why. To be sure, Mavis was indeed a force of Nature and a companion of the first water; he found himself planning their next lesson on fractions. The idea brought him a most particular kind of pleasure.

That night, on taking off his coat, he pulled a long strand of chestnut-brown hair from the collar. (His own was considerably darker.) He sat and looked at it for a long time, staring through it to whatever vision lay beyond, before retiring to his cot – where he tossed uncharacteristically, troubled by unusual dreams he did not remember on waking.

***********************

Mavis was on the roof when a loud and protracted knocking sounded at the front door. She heard the conversation from her perch: it occasioned her a delight as keen as anything she had overheard in her nine years.

“Christ a’mighty, Stroud, you don’t ’ave to twist the bleedin’ knocker clean off the door!”

“Wants ’em to ’ear me, don’t I!”

“You bang like that an’ the bloody dead’ll ’ear you! They’ll ask you to ’elp with the last fuckin’ trump!”

“Shut up – they’re ’ere!”

“Shut up yerself!”

“Ssssh! Capting Pelham’s compliments, mum, an’ we’re ’ere about the tank.”

“What?”

“Capting Pelham’s compliments,” repeated the sailor kindly, as if Sophie were deaf or not too bright, “and we’re ’ere about the tank. On your roof. The one what leaks.”

“I heard you,” Sophie said, and found that she was clutching her bosom – “I just don’t understand. I’m so sorry. Do you mean you’ve come to repair it?”

“That’s right, mum,” Stroud tugged at his forelock. “Mister Cooper’s on ’is way up the ’ill too, mum, but ’e ’ad ter make a quick stop on the way, so we come on ahead. See, me an’ Bates ’ere, we know what we’re doing, like, with lead linings an’ all that. Not to mention being master carpenters, what we is an’ all. An’ this is Percy, that’s what we call him, an ’e’s learning, like. So Capting said, we should come up here wiv Mr. Cooper and ’ave a gander, like, see what we can do to fix you up, an’ Percy ’ere, ’e can learn off of us, wiv us showing ’im, like.”

“But – I wasn’t expecting – ”

“It’s Capting’s orders, mum, we just does what ’e tells us to. Now is it busted, or ain’t it?”

“Well, yes, it is, but – I couldn’t possibly put you to the trouble – ”

“Well then, that settles it then, dunnit?” said Stroud, with crushing logic. “You got a busted tank an’ we’re ’ere to fix it. Nothink wrong with that as I can see. We’ve to patch it the best we can, an’ then case it in this nice oak, mum. Nice little afternoon’s work. If we’d ’ave stayed on board the Indy we’d just ’ave ’ad to do somethink else, an’ not ’alf as nice as a little jaunt into town to fix your tank, mum.”

“Oh, ” said Sophie. “But – it doesn’t seem right, to have the Navy repairing my house!”

“Don’t you worry about that, mum. We’re the Capting’s men an’ that’s that. Besides, this ’ere oak on this cart ain’t from the quartermaster, mum, it’s from the chandler. The Capting put it on ’is account, mum, and ’e ain’t short of a bob or two as far as I know, not our Sir Edward, ’e ain’t. So if I was you I’d just say, yes, thank you, if you please, an let us get on wiv it, see?”

“I see. Sir Edward, did you say?”

“’s right, mum, Capting Sir Edward Pelham, commander of the dear old Indy.”

“Oh. Goodness. What will he do if I send you away?”

“’Ave us flogged for disobeyin’ ’is orders, most like. You don’t want to start nuffink like that, mum, see – orders is orders!”

“Oh – I see – I suppose you’d better come in, then.”

“Mind that ladder, our Perce!”

“All right, Batesy, what do you think I am, stupid or somefink?”

“You said it, not me! Anyway, I got the torch ’ere so look out!”

Before dusk the cistern was patched worthy of any tinker (which trade Stroud had dabbled in, before the press-gang took him, along with a good many other pastimes, some of them legal); sheathed in good red weathered oak, reconnected to the gutters and downspouts, and ready for the next rainfall – and Mavis had added considerably to her already colourful vocabulary.

Sophie sent a letter back with the men:

Dear Captain Pelham, I hardly know how to thank you for your kind thought in sending your men to repair our tank. They seem to be doing a magnificent job and it looks as if it will now withstand a hurricane – or several! I realize Mavis must have been prattling away to you, and I feel most conscious that she may have left you with the impression that you were obliged to help in our domestic difficulties. Please, I pray you, do not think we are looking to you for anything beyond your very great kindness of the other day – except for one thing further, perhaps, which is our hope to have the pleasure of your company at tea tomorrow or any other day which might suit you, so that we can convey our thanks to you in person under more comfortable surroundings than when we first met. We are most obliged to you for thinking of us so kindly. Very truly yours, Sophie McKenzie.

***********************

Pelham read it with a twitch in his cheek. He had got exactly what he wanted – and without having to ask for it. Except (as he now realized) that his unspoken request must have been perfectly clear to Sophie, since she granted it immediately: an invitation, the assurance that a further visit from him would be welcome. The idea that he was so transparent caused him a moment’s pause; he took up his pen at once to reply, before second thoughts got the better of him.

My dear madam, It is with very great pleasure that I accept your kind invitation to take tea with you. Tomorrow I have an appointment with the Port Admiral; should it be convenient to you, therefore, I shall be delighted to join you the following afternoon (Wednesday). Would three o’clock be suitable? Believe me, madam, your most humble servant, Edward Pelham.

2. Tea

Pelham looked up at the lowest part of the roof. Only a corner of the cistern was visible from the street angle, but it appeared to be snugly encased in good red oak. He nodded in satisfaction and was just preparing to lift the brass dolphin doorknocker when a voice called to him from above: “Coo-eee! Can you see me?”

He stepped back and surveyed the roof line. “No, Mavis, you’re quite invisible from here. Is this an ambush?”

“Well if it was I wouldn’t have called out coo-eee, would I!”

Pelham was forced to admit the logic in this. “No, Mavis, no more you would. I – I must be grateful to you, I see.”

“What for?”

“For warning me before you threw boiling oil on my head – or whatever devilish plan you had in mind.”

“Oh, I wasn’t going to do anything bad to you! I’ve just been looking out for you. I saw you right away, far down the street, because of your hat.”

“Did you!”

“What’s that you’ve got?”

“Oh – just a package. I had some errands to run.”

“Oh. Do you think you could help me some more with my fractions, after tea? You were so good at explaining them last time! I really understood, after you showed me.”

Pelham frowned. “Mavis – I will be delighted to help you. I was even – dare I say – looking forward to it. But I must tell you that I am getting the damnedest – hm – I beg your pardon, cruellest crick in my neck trying to converse with you like this. Do you think you might be persuaded to come down from up there?”

“Of course! Sorr-eee.”

Pelham shook his head as with a clatter of roof-tiles Mavis appeared on the end of the roof-peak.

“I have to get down on the inside,” she explained, “so you’d better knock for Mama. I’ll see you in a minute.”

“Very well.” For the second time he lifted his hand to the knocker. It made a pleasing, solid rat-tat-tat under his grip. He stood there a moment longer, just enough to re-form in his mind the greeting from which Mavis’s appearance had distracted him, before the door opened and Sophie herself stood there. “Hello,” she said, and acknowledged his bow with a graceful little bob. Her gown was some pleasant shade of blue, more modestly draped than the last time he had seen her, and she seemed taller than he remembered; though not by much. Pelham swallowed. He uttered the greeting he had prepared: “Good day to you, ma’am – most kind of you – hm – this is a very great pleasure.” It seemed dry as he said it.

“It’s you who have been kind,” she said. “Won’t you come in?”

He followed her through a narrow hall into a small but delightful sitting-room. It had two windows either side of a French door looking onto a small courtyard where a fig-tree spread broad green leaves, flanked by terra-cotta pots of pink and orange flowers. In front of the fireplace, empty now, a small table was laid for tea between two mismatched, shabby armchairs, and a piano stool – although he remarked that no corresponding instrument was to be seen. Sophie reached to take Pelham’s cape and hat from him. “Please sit down,” she said. “I’ll call Mavis. Tea won’t be long – ” and she left him there alone to look around at his leisure. He heard her call the child outside, smiled at the pleasant sing-song of her raised voice.

Taking a keen interest in the art and science of interior decoration, as his own quarters aboard the Indomitable most eloquently testified, Pelham noted with approval the pleasant atmosphere of the room. It lived in the soft buttery cream of the walls and the faded rose-coloured Persian rug. This was sadly threadbare in the middle, but like the rest of the furnishings it made no demands upon the guest, merely existing serenely and cosily, in a manner inviting ease and comfortable conversation. Sitting in the taller chair, he let his eyes wander around the rest of the room. One could tell a lot about the soul of the person who inhabited a room, he had always thought.

The plates on the wall were chipped but good, silhouettes of classical-looking faces. They seemed of a piece with the worn chairs: favourites still kept for their pleasant lines, despite having seen better days. Which could be said of many of us, thought Pelham to himself; shaving earlier, he had noted the incursion of more silver threads here and there at his brow. Plenty of wear left yet, though, damn it, he had told the wry face in the mirror. The face had looked back unconvinced – and weatherbeaten to an extent he had not realized.

Perhaps it was just as well that his reverie was interrupted just then. “Here I am,” Mavis announced, bursting into the room.

“Ah,” said Pelham, “so I see.”

“Don’t tell Mama I got my frock dirty. She made me change before you came and I wasn’t supposed to be on the roof. I thought I could sort of sniggle and snaggle my way down on my toes but I ended up sliding like I always do – ” and she turned to show him a dusty patch on her backside, before sitting swiftly with an admonishing “ssssh!” as her mother pushed open the door with a tea-tray in her arms.

“Here we are – sorry to make you wait for it – I don’t trouble with a servant for such simple things as tea,” said Sophie. She sat opposite him and leaned forward to pour. Pelham stretched his legs out for better support of the tea-cup and saucer and the small plate she handed him. The tea was pleasantly strong and she had cut thick slices of bread and butter. “I thought you might be hungry,” she said, “so it isn’t very delicate. Mavis and I talked about what to offer you, and we both thought we shouldn’t attempt pretensions.”

“Thank God, ma’am,” said Pelham, meaning it with regard to more, he realized, than bread-and-butter. The straightforwardness of her welcome, for example. The lack of ornament about her person. He felt the strength of his assent called for further explanation: “We don’t get fresh bread at sea, only hard ship’s biscuit – not too weevilly, if we’re lucky – and the butter’s usually rancid – so it’s more of a treat than you know.”

“That’s disgusting!” cried Mavis.
“Yes, indeed,” Pelham nodded, “it is. Quite vile. A sailor’s life is not an easy one, Mavis, you must realize if you are to endure its privations.”

“Do you eat the weevils?” Mavis’s voice was dark with foreboding of what the reply must be; Sophie leaned forward to hear his answer with equal interest.

“Hm – well – you tap out the loose ones, you know, and then – hm – you get used to them after a while. Can’t spend all night picking your biscuit all to crumbs to get rid of every last one of ’em, you know. It wouldn’t be practical.” Pelham stopped, but they seemed to be hanging on his words and so he felt obliged to continue: “Hm – but my cook has a way with ship’s biscuit: he serves it stewed – fricasseed – steamed into puddings, fried up with bacon – even grates it into these little marmalade affairs, I have no idea how he does it – quite delicious – and of course you don’t notice the weevils so much, then, d’you see.”

“Oh,” said Mavis, her eyes as round as saucers. “What kind of puddings?”

“Well, let me see. Roly-poly – suet wrapped in a cloth, we call that ‘boiled baby’ – and there’s spotted dick, with raisins, you know – that’s a big favourite in the midshipmen’s mess. As it was when I was a midshipman, these – oh, my! Twenty and more years ago. It’s a beloved tradition.”

“Did you know you were going to be a captain?”

“No. No, I didn’t. I hardly dared to believe I could be so fortunate. But it was my dearest hope.”

“Do you like it, then?”

“Above everything. It is my life.” Pelham’s answer was immediate, unconsidered. He noticed Sophie’s head turn at the force of his tone.

“I suppose you must be entirely single-minded, to bear all that responsibility and do your duty without question at every moment, no matter how hard or dangerous,” she said. “I don’t expect all that splendid gold braid comes free.”

“No,” said Pelham, “it doesn’t.” She watched his eyes glaze momentarily and stare into a distance beyond the room – a distance, she surmised, thick with smoke and the roar of cannon, bloody and heartbreaking. His look was painfully grim for a moment before breaking into a lighter expression. “Now – Mavis – speaking of midshipmen, miss, here’s a tool I believe you need – hm?” and he reached beside him in the chair, held out to her something cylindrical, wrapped in blue paper. It was heavy.

Mavis unwrapped it carefully, her small face luminous, hardly daring to believe it might be what she hoped the moment she’d seen it. It was.

She beamed, even more widely than Pelham had hoped. Sophie, however, looked stricken – a reaction he should have anticipated, he now chided himself, and had failed altogether to do so – leaving her to think… what? Oh, please God, not that!

“Mavis, what – ? Oh, Captain Pelham, you really mustn’t! How could you – Oh my goodness, child, a glass of your own? Sir, you are too kind – how are we to – I haven’t even thanked you for the tank – you must take it back, Captain Pelham, we can’t be so obliged to you – ”

“But Mama, it has my initials on it!” – which indeed it did: MM, most beautifully and elegantly engraved into the brass barrel, not in a florid script like some ornamental frippery thing, MM – but very simply in square, deep Roman capitals: MM, perfectly suited to its utilitarian and workmanlike purpose.

“Now you’ll be able to see all the ships come and go even better,” said Pelham. “We call this a bring-’em-near — d’you see? — because it does. That’s it! I shall expect you to learn the difference between them, now – a frigate, a first-rate, a second-rate, a sloop, a brigantine, a hoy, a bum-boat – you do know the difference between square-rigged and fore-and-aft, don’t you? You’ll have your work cut out for you now!”

He turned to Sophie for assent, only to find her gaze on him bright with tears. Seeing that he saw, she blinked, but held his gaze. “You’re too kind,” she said.

“I – forgive me, I didn’t – I thought only of what should please my new friend here, Miss McKenzie of the adventurous spirit and lofty ambitions.” He felt awkward now.

“It’s beautiful. Mavis, you may run and look out at the harbour with it.” Mavis needed no second bidding. She left the room at a run, quite forgetting her dirty best frock.

Sophie looked down at her hands, then up once more at Pelham. “More tea?” she asked, and then, “Captain Pelham, how are we to repay these gestures? First the cistern, and now this – tell me you don’t think, because I appeared before you with no modesty when we met, that I – that you expect – I have to ask… ” She spoke levelly, matter-of-factly.

“Good God, madam,” said Pelham in dismay, “nothing could have been further from my mind!”

His horrified tone spoke more than any words could have. She had been holding herself rather stiffly, like someone who expects to be hurt. He was afraid she was going to cry. Instead she gave a little shake, let out a breath, and said lightly, “I’m sorry. It was silly of me.”

“Not at all,” he said, “it was my fault –”

“Let’s forget about it,” she said. “It was a misapprehension.” And she took his teacup, refilled it, handed it to him with a grateful look. “They really did do a most splendid job,” she said. “And I truly don’t know how to thank you.”

“Please don’t,” he said.

“All right.”

Pelham stared into his cup, conscious of a tide of relief. Could it possibly be that easy, to get over a painful misunderstanding? With a woman, especially! – a woman you barely know, whom you have insulted by your unthinking behaviour? He had never imagined finding himself in this situation. But then, he had not anticipated the collision with Mavis, in the first place, and yet that seemed fore-ordained in a pattern of strange and unfolding promise that was leading him into – what? A place both unknown – and yet as familiar, or so it felt, as the home he had not had since he was a child?

Mavis saved him once again from too deep an introspection by her excited return, waving the glass in triumph. “It really does bring-’em-near!” she cried. “I saw your ship! I saw the men up in the crow’s-nest. And the cook is making boiled baby for dinner!”

“You made that up,” said Pelham.

“Only the bit about the boiled baby. I really, really did see the Indy. Every bit of her.”

“The ‘Indy’?”

“Oh, that’s what your sailors called her. I think they really like the ship a lot. I saw lots of sailors climbing up and down the rigging.”

“Hm! Were they, indeed? – I daresay Mr. Cowles had them racing up and down the ratlines. We like to keep ’em nimble and in good practice, d’you see, because we all depend on making sail or reefing it in, in the blink of an eye – under the most god-awful conditions, hm – begging your pardon. So the men need to go aloft without a second thought, the moment they hear the order, and right smartly, too!”

“I saw a puff of smoke from the cannon in the front – and then I heard the bang afterwards.”

“The bow-chaser? Did you! And can you tell me why that should be?”

“What do you mean?”

Pelham could not keep himself from teaching any more than Mavis could keep from seeking knowledge like a baby bird crying for food, Sophie saw: a serendipitous combination. He took her perfectly seriously, without an ounce of condescension, and she blossomed under it – returning the favour. I don’t suppose too many people talk to him like that, aboard ship, she thought. She sipped her tea, watched and listened without moving, so as not to break the spell and return him to self-consciousness.

“How fast can the sound be travelling, if it takes a second to reach you?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, how far away from the ship were you, up there on your roof? Think about it – if the bang came instantly, like the sight of it, then they’d seem to happen together, no matter how far the distance, wouldn’t they? You’d have seen it and heard it all at once. But it’s like thunder, d’you see, that we hear seconds after the flash. So the sound is slow – it has to travel. It can’t catch up to the sight. You know – you can tell how far away the storm is, by counting off the interval between the flash and the crash. Hm? – I believe it’s about a quarter-mile for every second, if you count nice and slowly.”

“Oh!” The joy of understanding dawned on her face at this little lesson in physics. “You know a lot! Why don’t the nuns teach us interesting things like this ? Tell me more!”

“Goodness me, that’s a tall order, miss! Such as what?”

“Well – how do you know where you’re going? How do you come to the right place and not get shipwrecked by mistake?”

Pelham nodded approvingly: “You’ve put your finger on it there, you know. You really have. That’s a very good question, and a thorny one! It’s quite a major undertaking, making landfall after weeks at sea! Hm – I think we’ll need your slate for this one.”

She ran to get it, and Sophie plied him with more bread-and-butter. Soon he was explaining the compass-rose to Mavis, the lines of latitude and longitude that girdled the globe, and the crucial difference between nor'nor'east and east nor'east – heaven forbid she should confuse them! The subject of navigation and direction soon absorbed them both; Pelham was most earnest in his manner: “Now you understand, do you not, that Polaris resides always at the same point in the sky, no matter how the rest of the stars wheel about it and the planets wander all over? Do you know how to find it?”

“Isn’t it part of the Plough?”

“No, but you may find it by following the side of the Plough – it points right to it, look.”

“How can you just draw a constellation like that? How do you remember where all of them are?”

“It’s my profession,” answered Pelham without a trace of boastfulness. “I daresay I know it better than the Good Book, if I were to be put to the test on both! Hm?”

Mavis giggled.

How rarely do children share their true thoughts with adults, thought Sophie. We teach them with criticism and disapproval to conceal, evade, dissimulate. Yet watching these two, one would not think such falseness existed in the world. They have so much in common! Is it Mavis’s way of saying exactly what comes into her head, or the captain’s simplicity with her, that allows them to come together so easily?

The hour passed in such pleasant intercourse, as natural and free as magpies chattering. Sophie did more listening than talking, though she took her share in the conversation when her opinion was sought. She was an intelligent woman, not afraid to speak her mind when asked, and yet with a certain warmth and sensibility that made her contributions more likely to enlighten than to offend the listener. When speaking or listening her face came alive in a sparkling way she was most likely unaware of, given the modesty of her manner.

Watching them together now occasioned her a sadness that she could not place for a while, until she recognized in herself the desire to be nine years old once again, headstrong and passionate, learning all manner of things both essential and obscure at her father’s knee or workbench. A lonely man, widowed while his daughter was still too young to retain more than the vaguest memories of her mother – a soothing hand on her brow when she had the scarlet-fever, laughter from another room, flowers everywhere –– he had always been pleased to see her and to share his work and interests.

His lined face used to crinkle like a last-year’s apple at her grave remarks; he might not have noticed that her petticoats were outgrown or her shoes all in holes, but he never failed to pay attention to his little daughter’s confidences. She had learned Latin at his knee, and the proper construction of a flywheel; the calculation for the teeth of a cogwheel and the mathematics of gears.

She had also learned patience, during his long periods of total absorption in his work, and the knowledge that to be devoted to a calling (such as the perfection of the hardwood movement for a five-guinea stable-clock) did not guarantee the appearance of food upon the table and rent paid on time; in fact, quite the opposite, for he counted the hours spent without reward in the furtherance of his passion to be a kind of joyful servitude for the betterment of mankind – whether or not mankind should ever return the favour. (It did not.)

He had lost almost everything in the end, in pursuit of his dream engines, making less money on the sale of them than it cost the two of them to survive. He did not hide the extent of his misfortunes from her. One autumn evening he folded quietly to the floor like an old outworn overcoat that someone has let slip, alone and without fuss. Sophie, quite destroyed by her loss, could find no way past the debt but than to accept her only suitor, their landlord. They had owed him several years’ back rent, and so there was little help for it.

It was not a match she had ever wanted.

Being kind and conscientious, she worked hard at making the best of it; but Mr. McKenzie was not a thirty-five-year-old bachelor for nothing. His eyes were as narrow as his soul; his opinions were as strong as they were ill-considered; his generosity of spirit no greater than his sense of pecuniary responsibility. He was easily swayed by a new friend with a novel investment plan; less so, by the desire of his wife for stability and a peaceful home; for the kind of consideration and understanding with which she had grown up. She had suffered much, in the intervening years, with little complaint and a great deal of fortitude.

Only in the early mornings, when Mr. McKenzie was still noisily asleep and mercifully unconscious of her existence, had she sometimes despaired and looked about her, wishing for some other life to claim her. It did not, of course, except in the very great blessing of becoming Mavis’s mother. This gift had occupied much of her passion and all of her devotion from that day to the present one. Together mother and daughter had weathered many trials, and fully intended to continue thus, both of them against the world – cheerful, resolute, determined; and most contriving and ingenious wherever want issued the next challenge.

Mr. McKenzie’s last and most ambitious plan had been the sinking of all his savings into an established wine business owned by a chance acquaintance visiting Winchester from his home in Gibraltar. With little notice and less forethought, he removed his family to the Rock just as the bottom fell out of the wine-trade – and every other kind of business, in that once-thriving crossroads of commerce; for Spain had shifted from neutrality into outright hostility toward Britain, and there was every demand for goods but no-one able to supply them. It was not Mr. McKenzie’s habit to reflect upon his own responsibility for what might befall him; nor did he do so now. Blaming everyone, from the government to Sophie’s late father, he grew embittered and sullen as his business dwindled and shrivelled up altogether. What little stock remained he drank himself, in increasing measure. His rages grew violent at times.

She found that she did not miss him too painfully, since he had left her a widow. If he had been kind, she would willingly have forgiven him everything else, for she was by nature tolerant and slow to find fault; but his faults were of the kind that is hard to overlook, causing suffering as they did to all around him while he blamed them for it.

Now she sat in her shabby, comfortable parlour and observed: a thing she most delighted to do. Mavis was in heaven, quite clearly. Pelham was most animated: the lines in his face folded themselves into ever more relaxed expressions as he sat forward in his chair and allowed himself to be drawn out by the child. It was a mobile face, capable of much expression without speech, and she found herself watching him ever more closely, when he should not be aware of her scrutiny.

I am half sorry I was so quick to head him off from my suspected seduction, she thought. Now that we have established that I am not that kind of woman, perhaps I should take a long hard look in the mirror. For if he could read my mind at this moment, he would fall off his chair in shock. As I ought to – for shame, woman, what are you thinking of? For she had been counting the buttons on his waistcoat, and wondering if it would take a very great deal of time and effort to unfasten them; and then found herself watching the expression of his mouth as he spoke, suddenly conscious of being drawn to bring her own against it till he should groan, and kiss her back.

Her own thoughts startled her: it was certainly not her wont, to indulge in such fancies. But there was something about him – a force of being, the energy of a man so very far beyond wondering what kind of a figure he must be cutting – that had captured all of her attention, even while she had been wishing herself a child once again, while life had seemed to hold open so many wondrous possibilities – and before it had taken her instead in unwanted directions. Sophie was not given to illusions about herself, or others. She observed her own response as if it were some exotic and unusual moth which had flown into the room. Goodness, what a thought! she said to herself: I mustn’t go any further down that alley!

She stood, brushing crumbs from her lap, and he looked up, startled. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I must just water the geraniums, before I forget. I meant to see to them earlier, but we were busy in anticipation of your call.”

He looked up at the tall clock in the corner of the room. “Good lord! Can that be the time? It has flown, just flown! I must go – ”

“But you haven’t helped me with my fractions yet!” cried Mavis.

Pelham looked conscience-stricken. “Oh, Mavis, you are quite correct. I am so very sorry.”

“You promised!”

“I did indeed.”

“Mavis, the Captain is far too busy a man to be able to come and instruct you at your whim, darling,” Sophie chided her.

“No, ma’am, a promise is a promise and she is quite correct to remind me of it. I should be most distressed to think of it later, if she had not. Hm – we are re-fitting some of the ship’s ribs and cordage, I may well be detained in harbour this whole week – I am sure we can manage another time, if you will forgive me the liberty of giving you but little notice, when it may be.”

“Oh yes!” cried Mavis, with such evident delight that Sophie could only nod in agreement and cease protesting.

“Very well then – it’s settled. I shall send you a note, if I may – or perhaps take a chance?”

“That would be all right, Captain Pelham,” said Sophie; “We are rarely out, sir, so as long as you are willing to risk it – ”

“Of course,” he said. “Now, ma’am, my cloak – ?”

Sophie fetched it, and whispered something to Mavis that Pelham did not catch. Mavis ran into a half-glimpsed kitchen and returned with a little basket, covered with a cloth. “We baked these for you ourselves,” she said proudly. “I grated the lemon peel, and I only grazed my knuckles a little on the grater.”

“Oh! How very kind. Hm – so there will be no more flesh in here than the equivalent of a weevil or two, then, I may be reassured?”

“Yes,” giggled Mavis.

Pelham bowed deeply to each of them in turn. Mavis curtsied back as deeply, with a swagger that made him bite the inside of his cheeks so as not to smile and injure her solemn dignity. Sophie gave him her hand, briefly. “We shall look forward to it, sir,” she said.

Will you? said Pelham to himself, raising his eyebrows at her. “I hope so,” he said.

Striding quickly down the hill, he heard Mavis from the roof: “Good-by-eee! Bye-eeeeee!”

He thought he was hungry for dinner, but found that he was not; he must have eaten more bread-and-butter and marzipan-cake than he had realized, while chattering away with Mavis. He ate little at the mess-table, and retired early to his cabin to read.

Later in the evening, he thought of the little basket, and uncovered it. Small pale gold crumbly discs flecked with strands of peel gave off a wonderful smell of butter and lemon. On the cloth, which he had not noticed, folded under, was embroidered a frigate – and her name, HMS Indomitable.

Pelham ate one of the little wafers. It melted in his mouth like a dream. He thought of Sophie bent over the cloth with her needle, contriving, stitching; of all the time it must have taken to make the lovely, delicately-captured lines of the Indy sailing close-hauled, the taut sails she had worked in cream against the white cloth, the tiny pennant rippling at her topmast – it streamed the right way, he remarked with approval, to leeward: a detail often overlooked by landlubbers. He felt both humbled and exalted. But if he was to be honest with himself, more exalted than humbled, on balance: far more.

3. The Butcher’s Bill

Various cares kept Pelham from that pretty little sitting-room, for some good while longer than he would have liked. It had come in that one visit to assume an attraction in his mind which grew stronger with each day that passed in which he found himself balked of it. He had found there a sense of ease that seemed quite extraordinary in its very ordinariness, his not being a life remarkable for its ease. So Pelham chafed even as he could not in good conscience leave aside his duty for his personal pleasure. When the day came that found him free, he hurried through his business with the quartermaster and victualler, straightened his black silk stock with hasty fingers and set off up the hill towards the Moorish castle with an impatient stride that brought his white-stockinged calves to a goodly ache before he reached the green-painted door he sought.

It was Mavis who opened it. Her joy upon seeing him humbled him. He was not used to any display of emotion at his appearing, excepting fear and nervousness on the part of his junior officers. Pulled by her through the hallway and into the sitting-room, Pelham sat down as he was told and listened to her account of all the ships she had seen come and go with her bring-’em-near midshipman’s glass. “Now will you give me another lesson on fractions?” she concluded. “You mustn’t forget like you did last time!”

“Hm? – yes, of course. That was one of my intentions in coming today. Where is your mamma?”

“She has a sick headache. She’s resting. I’ve been up on the roof – I just now came in. I tore my frock.”

Pelham looked commiseratingly at the right-angled rent in the stuff of her navy-blue skirt. “But your mamma is an expert with a needle, as I have seen for myself – surely she can stitch that up? – that is, if you cannot?”

“Of course – she made it. She makes all my clothes. I’m glad you liked the ship. She stayed up late to finish it for you, long after I was in bed – she used up all our candles! She copied the picture off the clock.”

Pelham looked behind him to the corner where its long case stood, to remind himself of the painting on its pearly face – and blinked. It was missing. “Mavis, am I seeing things? Or failing to see things? Did not the clock stand right there, in that corner?”

Mavis looked down at her dusty slippers. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Why not? What is the matter?”

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, don’t tell me – secrets are to be kept.”

“But you are our friend, aren’t you?”

“I most certainly hope so!”

Mavis heaved a great sigh, and her chin began to wobble.

“Oh, dear. Nothing to do with you, I hope? Tell me you did not break it, Mavis!’

“Oh, no! No, I do try Mama sorely, with my careless ways – but this was much, much worse than anything I’ve ever done. She says we all have our crosses to bear and I used to think she meant me, but she said I’m her pride and joy and the apple of her eye –”

– indeed, thought Pelham, this much is very clear –

“ – but today it wasn’t my fault at all.” She looked up at him confidingly, and Pelham saw the weight of concern in her round, childish face. “You can keep a secret, can’t you?”

“Of course. Isn’t that what friends are for? – though, Mavis, you must consider whether your mamma would want you to share such a confidence.”

“She has a headache because she’s been crying. About the clock. It’s all the butcher’s fault. He’s such a nasty man – I wish I could shoot him. Poor Mama!”

“I don’t understand, yet. What made her to cry?”

“She sent to the butcher’s this morning for our dinner, and he came here and told her we had to pay the bill or he won’t give us any more meat. We were going to pay him last week, but I broke my slate and then my shoes were too small, they made me a big blister on my toe. So mamma had to pawn the clock.”

Pelham looked again at the place where it had stood, a thing of beauty. The walls were a different colour just there, marking its absence all the more. “It was a beautiful piece,” he said. “As I recall, it had a particularly comforting tick, and a lovely luster – mahogany? And that charming picture of the ship at sea.”

“Yes. My grandmama painted it. My grandpapa made the clock, all of it. He was a master clockmaker. When we came here from England, Mama had it put in a crate and shipped all the way here. I was too little to remember. We used to have other things he’d made, too, but that was the last one. Mama is so afraid she won’t be able to get it back. I liked the place with the sea best. You could see each wave. And the big pendulum inside. When the man came this morning from the pawnbroker’s and put it on a cart I told him he’d better be careful with it, or else!”

Pelham began to understand.

“Tell me, Mavis, is your father – deceased? I have never heard you mention him.”

“Well, he died when I was quite little, but I do remember him. He wasn’t very nice.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“We don’t talk about him a lot. He left us this house but hardly any money. Mama is always having to invent ways to get by.”

“I see.”

“And then Mama gets upset because she’s at her wits’ end. She doesn’t tell me that, I just know it. She puts on her best bonnet and goes to talk to the tradesmen, to see if they’ll let us go a bit longer, till next quarter, and usually they do. But the butcher said he’d had enough, and we couldn’t have meat any more. And then he said unless Mama would like to work for it, with a horrid look, and so she slapped him. And then she slammed the door in his face. So then she had to pay the bill right away – and that’s when she pawned the clock. She was really angry! But she said she’d sooner rot in hell, than owe him the money. That’s how I knew she was angry, she doesn’t usually say things like that. I can see her thinking them, but usually she doesn’t say them.”

“Hm,” said Pelham.

“Do you think it would be so horrid, to work in a butcher’s shop? I suppose it would. Raw meat isn’t very nice. But she loved that clock, she’s been lying down sick ever since the man took it away.”

“I see. Look – Mavis – your mamma is a proud woman, I know that much. I admire that. I think – you shouldn’t tell her that you have told me all this. I think she would be chagrined – hm – disturbed, that is – to think her private affairs were not so private.”

“Did I do wrong to tell you?”

“No, my dear, you did not – your intentions were only kind. But – you must understand that – hm – that money is one of the things that people can be most particularly troubled by. And people often prefer to keep their troubles to themselves.”

“Why?”

“That is a very good question, Mavis. Why indeed? Because they are too proud to show that they are hurt, I imagine. At least – that is my own reason – or excuse, if I am perfectly honest.”

“You don’t have money troubles!”

“No; but I have other cares. I think everyone does, my dear.”

“Like what?”

Pelham heaved a sigh. His collar and neck-cloth felt tight. “Are you going to make me tell you?”

“Yes. Because you said it was a good question, why not.”

“Did I! So I did. Well, then – what are my cares, you care enough to ask me? Perhaps – that I have lost so many fine men under my command, over the years, to things which might have been prevented.”

“Like what?”

“Like – accidents. Quarrels. Bad judgement. The wind swinging into the wrong quarter and bringing the enemy’s guns to bear on us suddenly. Falls – drownings – errors I have made in holding back, or entering into action, from one moment to the next. Men who trusted me to look after them. Men it was my duty to protect. Men I should have been able to save.” He turned his face from her and stared out of the window.

“That’s sad. But – don’t you expect that kind of thing when you’re a captain?”

“Yes; but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. You must be one, to feel it fully, Mavis.”

“Is that all?”

“Why, isn’t it enough?”

“I thought perhaps – the way you are so kind to me – I wondered if you had had a little boy or girl, and lost them.”

“Why, no, I haven’t – though that was a very dear thing for you to think. I – I once had a child that was to be born, but – it was not. That was a very long time ago, when I was a young man. My – er – wife died also, in giving birth. I – should have liked to be a father, though, Mavis, you are quite right about that.”

“I was going to have a baby brother once, but he was born with the cord wrapped around his neck, and so he died. Mama didn’t say anything, but I know she was very disappointed. But my father was disappointed worse.”

“And how did you know that…?”

“Because I heard him shouting at her. I remember what he said, because it hurt my feelings too. He said she could not even give him a son and he might as well find someone who would. Though I don’t see how he could have, because he was married to Mama, unless he divorced her like Henry the Eighth. But she said she doubted he’d manage it before he drank himself to death. And she was right.”

“Oh, dear. How very – hm – unfortunate.”

“Well, yes, but even though Mama’s never said we’re better off without him, I know that’s what she thinks. And so do I. We’re not lonely, you know, because we have each other. I’m sorry your wife died. Are you lonely?”

“It was a long time ago – a very long time.” Pelham stared out of the window once more, at the brilliant flowers on the little terrace. He could see the letter now, informing him. He’d got it months after the fact, in the West Indies. The scent of jasmine came back to him, and the bitter gall rising in his throat on reading the few terse words. The taste of regret, as sharp as anything he had known since – not just for the young woman who had gone to the grave undelivered of his child, but for the nature in him he couldn’t help, that had planted it between those fatally narrow hips even while she made a face of disgust. A bull in a china shop, he thought; so much to regret that it didn’t do to begin.

Regret for the waste of it all, the lives that never should have been joined. Yet – what should he have done? He had thought marriage meant that this was sanctioned, encouraged even “…which is an honourable estate… ” wasn’t there something about it being intended for the purpose of bringing forth children? With my body I thee worship, he had vowed; did it mean nothing?

Her mamma had been altogether more keen on the marriage than had young Lady Catherine Bole, as he should have realized; but at the time he found the young lady’s cool formality pleasing, believing it promised as calm and unruffled a marital prospect. He had always had a great dislike of “scenes” and discord. He had been naïve. As it turned out, her mamma had no intention of spoiling any of her plans by making her daughter privy to the seamier secrets of the married state; from what he pieced together after his bride’s shocked cry of, “Oh, my God! I thought only animals did that!”, mamma’s hurried wedding-day instructions to “put up with it” had not elucidated the details of what it was her daughter was expected to endure, so that she came to him with some vague expectation that she was to have certain unpleasant duties such as sharing the chamber-pot, perhaps.

It had taken four humiliating attempts to breach her bony and unyielding reserve, on successive nights, each made worse by his own almost complete inexperience, and each more agonizing than the last. He was unprepared for the depth of her horror; had intended to be patient, kind, tender, till she should become used to him in this new way. He did not know what to do in the face of outright revulsion. Oh, she had tried to hide it, with the frosty politeness that had been bred into her, and certainly he had never forced her, God knew; but from the way she used to turn her face aside and hold herself stiffly under him, he knew that he was doing violence to her spirit.

Their mutual disappointment had proved insuperable. After his last and successful attempt to turn her from bride to wife, she had pulled away from him and wept with a bitter despair he would never forget – a Pyrrhic victory at best. Following that initial protracted fiasco, he had waited almost his whole two weeks of wedding leave in a state of shame, outrage and disappointment; then (for appearance’ sake?) she had asked him back to her bed before he must go back to sea – a submission that could hardly have been more painful for her than it was for him. The marriage had been a mistake, and they both knew it. Perhaps, if he had not been so much away – perhaps, had they had weeks and months to spend together, building the kind of intimacy only time can bring… who knew?

Meanwhile she had forced herself to endure him, then and on his few subsequent shore leaves, while he hoped each time that it might be different – and it was, after a while, for she came to regard his lovemaking in time with the kind of reluctant tolerance one reserves for tedious but necessary duties such as changing a baby’s napkin. Still, she felt always like a doll that he must not break, and yet could not help but do so – until, with a kind of Old Testament inexorability, he succeeded in breaking her beyond repair. The sensation of despair was not too far from him even now; he could feel it returning, a wave of pain in his gut. The scarlet petals on the terrace swam before him as he choked on the thought.

He had rarely dwelt on it, since; told himself it was long past and best left there. That whole chapter of his life seemed an interlude with no relevance to anything before or after it. Oh, he made a gallant leg, when meeting women; charmed them with his gracious conversation – enjoyed their company for the unmentionable but socially sanctioned erotic charge it offered – played the game, and steered as clear of their pursuit as he might. Such intrigues threatened the ordered equilibrium of his life. Women seemed to him loose cannons: they might not intend to do damage, but it happened nonetheless. An enemy broadside could be faced, but to be holed below the waterline, to be sinking and unable to strike back – these wounds he could well live without, and thank you. There was a taint of deception to the whole game, that in society, women seemed one thing – eager to take hold of a man – but turned out to be another, desiring that man’s station, the husk of him, more than his actual self – a sin Pelham found it hard to forgive. Ambition he understood, but he retained a deep revulsion for sailing under false colours. He did not ever wish to be tolerated again. The position of suppliant was not for him – better not to need at all, than to ask and be refused, with the only thing worse than refusal being acceptance.

He had been naïve with a woman twice in his life – the first time as a drunken young midshipman, in a brief and unsatisfactory encounter with a Portsmouth whore that made him blush to think about it yet – and the second time with his icy bride. Twice was enough.

Another man might have taken a mistress, but the path of dishonour held no appeal for Pelham; he could not conceive of treating any woman in a way he would not wish his sister to be used, and it seemed easier by far to avoid all such ill-advised entanglements. Besides, the news of his loss which caught up with him in Jamaica had felt more abstract than real: after the first shock he was conscious above all of a numbness in the ensuing weeks and months, and then to his private shame he recognized a kind of relief, that the whole unhappy charade was over – tragically though it had ended. He determined in the future to keep as tight a rein on his passions as on his ship, desiring heartily to endure no such painful distraction ever again. The Navy resumed pride of place in his life (had it ever really been otherwise? No, it had not, if he were to be honest) – became his passion, his interest, his life, his partner, his all.

The flowers were very red in the sunshine; they hurt his eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

Pelham frowned. “Be sure you know what you are doing when you marry, Mavis. Only marry the man you truly want. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise – not for money, not for rank, not for pity – not for any reason. There is no reason in the world that will put right a marriage that should not have been made. Better by far to stay single.”

Mavis reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were warm, sticky. He held onto them. “Why did you say that? Didn’t she want you?”

“I meant to advise you, Mavis, not talk about the past. What’s done is done.”

“I’m sorry, but if she didn’t want you I think she must have been stupid. I would have!”

The blaze in her eyes pierced Pelham to the quick. Yes, you would, he thought, God love you, Mavis! He said lightly, “I’m far too old for you, Mavis dear.”

“Oh – you know what I mean!”

“Yes – and you do me a very great honour, child. You don’t know how much.”

“I’m glad. I thought you were laughing at me.”

“Never! Friends like you are the greatest treasure a man can have, Mavis. I do not have so many friends, let me tell you.”

“Oh!” Mavis considered this confidence. “So you are lonely, then!”

“Not exactly – it’s quite impossible to be lonely on board ship, my dear, for it’s the most crowded place in the world.”

“So you’ve got some friends, then! I’m glad. I shouldn’t want you to have nobody.”

“Thank you, Mavis. I do – but I must tell you that few of them tell me the truth as forthrightly as you do.”

“I bet you don’t either – to them, I mean. Because you can’t be comfortable, like you are here. You’re above them, you know, so you can’t let them see you cry. Or – I expect you don’t cry, do you, sorry – but you know what I mean.”

How can she know that? he wondered. What an extraordinary understanding she has!

“Actually, Mavis, I have shed a tear – indeed, child, over a butcher’s bill, even.”

She returned his mild look with a hard stare. “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s what we call the list of killed and wounded when we have been in action.”

“Oh!”

“I told you – when I have lost men I would have given anything not to have lost – and you are right, it wouldn’t do for a captain to break down and bawl in front of his officers. And no more I do. But afterward, Mavis, in my cabin, when they are all gone and I am holding that damned sheet of paper, and the list is long, far too long, and has a name or two on it that I had rather have been my own, then – I have known the ink to blur before my eyes.”

Mavis slipped her other hand in his. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

“Not even Mama. She says, Do as you would be done by. And I wouldn’t want anyone telling about that, if I was you.”

“You are a very observant little girl.” He had been going to say ‘perspicacious’, but thought better of it and used the simpler word – though he probably need not have, he smiled to himself.

She got up and opened the French door onto the courtyard. The sweet gummy fig smell assailed him at once, and the sharp scent of those massy flowers in the sun.

Pelham followed her out-of-doors. It was glaring, and she sought the shade of a small bench under the fig-tree. “I’m not going to marry until I’m old,” she threw back over her shoulder. “At least thirty. I’m going to sow my wild oats first.”

If that is old, then I am done already, thought Pelham, joining her on the bench. “Are you!”

“Yes, and my husband’s going to be a sea-captain so we can both go to sea together and I can treat the crew when they are hurt and wounded. And he must be kind – and not care for the bottle.”

“God grant you find him, my dear.” Pelham picked a petal up from the ground, where it lay like a splash of blood. He found himself more inclined to hug the child, in her innocence, than laugh at her, but did not allow himself to; such intimacy seemed untoward – it might break the spell. Could Mavis end up a sacrifice upon the altar of maternal ambition? The idea brought him a stab of pain. Surely not – Sophie seemed to him altogether of a superior understanding, he reasoned, and possessing far too much common sense to perpetrate such a betrayal. And besides, her love for the child was blazingly apparent; surely Mavis’s welfare would never take anything less than first place, to her? Would money force their hand? Please God, it would not.

Lightly he changed the subject: “Tell me, Mavis, what are those flowers called? Those there, the scarlet ones, that smell so sharp?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No – or I shouldn’t have asked you!”

“Oh. I thought you knew everything! Those are geraniums. They like the sun and they don’t mind being dry, so they’re very accommodating. That’s what Mama says.”

“Indeed. Mavis – speaking of your mamma – I have been thinking what we are to do about your clock. I believe I have an idea – but you must let it come from me. I will make your mother a proposal, but she must not think you instigated it.”

“Oh, thank you! I knew you would know what to do!”

“Well – we shall have to see if your mamma will go along with it.”

“I have the utmost faith in you,” said Mavis gravely.

The sound of their voices must have floated up to Sophie, for they heard a sound at the upper window and she appeared, framed in it, her hair sticking damply to her brow. “Mavis – is that you? I heard voices – oh! Captain Pelham!”

“I understand you are indisposed, madam. I am sorry to hear it.”

“Oh – it’s nothing – I shall come down right away. I beg your pardon.”

“For what?”

“For failing to be here to entertain you.”

“Mavis has filled the bill most excellently, my dear madam. You must have no concern on that score.”

Sophie disappeared from the window and Pelham could hear her moving about the upstairs rooms. Mavis gave him a conspiratorial wink just as Sophie appeared in the doorway downstairs and came outside to join them. She was dressed in a drab muslin of some sort, her cheeks almost as colourless. “Captain Pelham – how very nice to see you again, sir. I am so pleased you found the time – please forgive me, I – ”

“Say no more, ma’am. I have had the megrims myself upon occasion, and damned sick I’ve felt – excuse me, wretched. Had ’em as a boy – they disappeared when I went to sea, thank God.”

“Oh, if it were only as easy as that!” she smiled wanly. “I should just join the navy, then, and all my ills would evaporate.”

“It’s the fresh air, so they say.” He noticed her squinting in the brilliant sunshine. “Let us remove back indoors, ma’am – you should not be out here in the sun, if you are so recently recovered from your headache.”

“You miss nothing, do you,” she said.

“I hope not,” he answered.

On retaking his seat in the parlour – it seemed suddenly cool and dim, after the dazzle of the courtyard and its whitewashed walls – Pelham saw his opening and took it. “Speaking of not missing much, ma’am, why, where is your clock? I admired it most particularly upon my last visit – I cannot help noticing it is gone. Did it need repair?”

Sophie looked sharply at Mavis, who cast her eyes up at the ceiling. Tell the truth, said Pelham to himself. Please, Sophie McKenzie, help me – don’t dissemble now, or it will be lost.

“I think it won’t surprise you to learn that it’s in pawn, Captain Pelham,” she replied. Her tone was very even.

Pelham knew he must tread carefully, now. “Madam, I –”

“Please do not say anything more,” she cut him off. “You must know that I had rather lose it than lose the respect for myself that I must if you offer to redeem it.”

“Why, mistress McKenzie, I am very well aware that I have stepped on your toes once already in that regard, and I had rather shoot myself than do so again.”

“Thank you.” Her voice was steely.

“I do, however, think I begin to see a solution to the dilemma.”

“What do you mean?”

He kept his eyes on the parting of her hair as he spoke: “I think I may have a plan which will satisfy all parties.”

“That is very hard to imagine.”

“Believe me, ma’am, there is no charity in it from beginning to end. Are you at least willing to listen?”

“Say yes, Mama,” urged Mavis.

“What is it, sir?” Sophie held her head so high in the air that she could have balanced a tea-cup on her nose. I do the same thing, thought Pelham.

“It is this. I have, under my command, a young man by the name of – well, never mind – it is one of my lieutenants, a very fine one. He is in dire need of a service I know you to be more than capable of.”

“How so?”

“I have seen your needlework, ma’am, and it is exquisite. I have not yet even thanked you for it – forgive me. I understand from Mavis that you not only embroider, but make all her dresses, too. I have told Mr. Hastings on more than one occasion that he is not to be turned out so shabbily upon my quarterdeck, and begged him to wear one of my old shirts until he can get another – but he is as proud and stubborn as you are, madam, and he had rather wear rags than take one of mine. His cuffs are so frayed you would think they had been fothered. It is a pitiful sight. Quite frankly, a disgrace to himself and the ship’s company. I cannot abide slovenliness in an officer. So – if you would be so good as to make him a shirt of his own, for which I shall advance him the cost until we return to Portsmouth and he may get his pay, why then that will get your clock out of pawn, my lieutenant decently dressed once more – or as decently as may be, till he gets himself a new uniform altogether, but we need not blush for him in the meantime – and honour will be satisfied all around.”

Mavis was beaming with satisfaction. “He worked it all out himself, Mama, I didn’t ask him to!”

“Mavis, do you promise you are telling me the truth?

“She is, ma’am,” said Pelham, truthfully. “She asked me for nothing. She never has. Except for the lesson I owe her.”

Sophie had the strange sensation that Pelham had taken command, without her exactly knowing how, and while maintaining the appearance that she was the one with the choices to make. “What about Mr. Hastings? You said he’s proud – what if he feels as I do? Your plan won’t work unless he wants a new shirt badly enough to borrow from you to pay for it.”

Pelham shrugged. “Indeed, ma’am. You have put your finger on the fulcrum of my – endeavour. But if I tell him he should most greatly oblige me by doing so, for my own private reasons having nothing to do with dispensing charity to him, I do not think he will trouble himself to be so – particular in his scruples.”

“So particular as I am, do you mean?”

“What can I say? It is your pride, ma’am, and I honour you for it. You command nothing but my respect with your insistence upon it.”

“You mean my obstinacy.”

“That too.”

Sophie was silent for a while. Mavis held her breath; Pelham stared out of the window as if the matter were of supreme indifference to him, whichever way she should decide; and as though the view out there commanded his attention so entirely that he was unaware of the pause in the conversation. Sophie looked at the frilled cuffs at his wrists, the collar of his shirt buttoned high under the windings of the black silk neck-cloth. The proposal was more than a sop to her vanity; it was a good deal of work. And yet, in accepting, she thought, I am once more taking a gift from him: the restoration of my self-regard.

“I’ll need a pattern,” she said. “You must give me that shirt of yours that Mr. Hastings won’t wear, so I can get the pieces just right.”

Pelham kept his back toward her a moment longer – perhaps so that she should not read his face. “Consider it done. I shall send it tomorrow, if I cannot bring it myself.”

Mavis danced up and down. “Mama! Mama! Oh, thank you for saying yes! I’ll help you with the easy parts.”

“Thank you, Mavis. Captain Pelham – have I been out-manoeuvred?”

“I hope not, ma’am – that is what happens between enemies, when one gains the upper hand over the other. I had rather intended to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of all parties – which is not the same thing, I hope! Do you feel – in some way bested, ma’am?”

“No-o – I think I feel – that I have a friend who is very kind – and very, very clever.”

Pelham drew himself to his full height and bowed stiffly, staring over her shoulder at the wall. Sophie felt ashamed of herself for treating his generosity so meanly. “I’m sorry, Captain Pelham. You did not deserve that, sir. It was a shabby thing to say. You have been nothing but kind – it is my own awkwardness you must overlook, sir. These years have been – difficult – I see traps and shadows where there are none.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” he said.

Sophie sighed, and realized that she had barely been breathing at all. “Tell me, then, sir – you had begun to say – did you like that little cloth so much? I did not think to impress you with my stitching to the extent of seeking employment!”

Pelham turned to face her, then. “It is the most exquisite gift anyone has ever given me,” he said.

Once more Mavis held her breath; but this time it was for the look in his eyes, the network of lines around them having arranged itself into an expression of such open, diffident tenderness that it made her throat hurt to look at him. Oh! thought Mavis to herself, I have been very blind!

******************

Her favourite of the three sailors brought the package the next morning, early, before she set out for school. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied neatly with string. A note was attached. Mavis opened the door, and called to her mother; Sophie thanked him and took it inside in a strange, distracted state, leaving Mavis outside to gossip with Stroud a minute or two more.

Sophie sat in her favourite chair and opened the note.

Unlike the precise, elegant penmanship of his previous letter, this was scribbled:

“My dear Mrs. McKenzie – I have just now learned that we are to put to sea as soon as we are ready. The enemy has been sighted off Tarifa, and we intend to chase him down. While we have not yet effected all the repairs I had planned, we are seaworthy and I have no doubt that we shall acquit ourselves handsomely enough. Your precious clock must not be jeopardized while I am gone, so I have taken the liberty – or precaution – of enclosing advance payment with this shirt. I hope it is enough – we failed to settle upon the price, as I recall.

I must humbly beg your pardon for the shirt. I do not have a single clean one to send you now that we are about to make sail. Please forgive its soiled state. As to the pattern, it will do very well except that Mr. H. is still young and may yet grow a little about the shoulders, so you should perhaps make it a couple of inches fuller there. In every other respect I think we are built alike. Please give my kindest regards to Mavis and tell her I have not forgotten my promise – and, God willing, shall be back to redeem it as soon as I may. Believe me, madam, your very humble servant, Edward Pelham.

Sophie untied the knots in the string and unfolded the paper. Inside was a twist of blue paper – it fell to the floor with a ‘clink’ – and Pelham’s shirt. She stared at it. It was mostly white, except for the ivory stain of his sweat under the arms, and a circle of grime inside the collar where it had rubbed against his neck. The cuff frills were spotted, too, and stained with ink.

It smelled of him – of course.

She stared at it for a moment as if it had just struck her in the chest – then breathed him in, deeply and more deeply still, holding the shirt to her face, rocking back and forth in the chair, until she almost felt faint. Oh, God, what might it feel like to take a man into her bed whose person she actually wanted? Now I know I am mad, she thought.

“Mama, what are you doing?”

“Oh – Mavis – look, the captain has sent me his shirt to copy.”

“But why were you smelling it? Oh, Mama!”

“I wasn’t!”

“Yes, you were – I saw you. Mama, you like him too! I should have known. I thought you were cross with him, but you’re not, are you!”

“Don’t be silly, Mavis!”

“Mama, are you going to marry him? You should, you really should!”

“Mavis, that’s ridiculous! My goodness, child, what will you think of next?”

“But you should!”

Sophie began to lose her temper. “In the first place, Mavis, he has not asked me – nor do I expect him to. In the second place, I believe he has been kind to us because he has taken a fancy to your company – and because he feels comfortable here, as a man does in a worn-out old shoe. And thirdly, such speculations are damaging – they can lose friends – and lastly, it is none of your business!”

Mavis hung her head “Yes, Mama. Only – you wouldn’t say that, if you’d seen what I have.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way he looks at you when you’re not looking.”

“Mavis, that’s enough! I shall lose my patience with you entirely in a moment, if I hear any more of that nonsense. Now get along to school, madam, it’s past time and you shall be punished for being late again!”

“But I’m right,” was Mavis’s parting shot – “you’ll see!”

Sophie picked up the screw of paper from the floor by her chair and unwrapped it. Inside was the glint of gold: a five-guinea piece. It would redeem the clock twice over. She sat there for a very long time, the shirt still clutched in her fingers.

Ï

The Levanter had been blowing all week, trailing its dirty gray cloud off the top of the Rock over the town. Sophie was in a state of weariness and agitation combined – a difficult mood to sustain. She raised her voice to Mavis on several occasions, and slept but fitfully. She kept glancing out to sea, as if her patience might be rewarded after all this time by a different sight than the one of two minutes earlier, which was a horizon bare of the Indy – but it was not. Mavis haunted the roof with her glass like a little ghost.

Yet in the end the Indomitable escaped their watch after all, slipping in with the last light fading from the sky, as the wind shifted one dreary evening. Wet clouds tumbled in from the West, and with them she crept into harbour, shrouded by sheets of cold gray rain.

The next morning it was raining solidly – a gloomy curtain with no let-up. Sophie was out of bed, but still in her nightgown with an old shawl about her; Mavis had dressed for school and was turning the house upside-down for her slate when the brass knocker sounded with a determined hand. Sophie pulled the shawl more tightly about her shoulders, and went to see who might be there in this downpour.

Pelham chided himself for a fool all the way up the hill. He was really far too fatigued for such a wild-goose-chase, having slept not at all that night and little more the previous one. He should have waited till the rain lifted, at least. Yet then he should be even more busy; this foul day gave him a little relief from the normal round of tasks. It did not occur to him that no gentleman would come calling at this hour — he did not think of himself as a caller. He wanted to see them, and he was free: it was as simple as that. For three weeks they had chased the French all around the southern coast, as far as Portugal and back; almost brought them to a fight several times, but had not managed it. There had been a couple of single-ship actions, but not the major engagement so urgently desired. All in all, a frustrating interlude. Now the main part of the squadron had run off into the Atlantic after their prey, while the Indy was ordered back to Gibraltar to complete the refitting of her sheets and cordage. The bo’sun and his men would be very busy for a few days, and even the carpenters in the crew would find themselves with needles in their hands again.

Pelham was bone-weary from arranging all of it, and yet all he could think of this morning was finding himself in Sophie’s delightful parlour, and the low, pleasant sound of her voice. Was it worth a trudge in the rain, and the likelihood of finding her not at home? The answer dripped down his queue, undeniable as the issue from a drainpipe: he was here, wasn’t he? He raised his hand to the knocker again.

“Oh!” she said, standing there frozen in the doorway. “Oh!”

Pelham stood with the rain pouring off his hat onto the shoulders of his already-soaked cape. “Madam, I – ”

She reached out to touch his chest, her hand trembling. “Captain Pelham – ” her voice was a hoarse gasp: “ – oh – oh, thank God you are safe!”

He took her hand, pulled it to his cheek before releasing it. He was cold and very wet. He seemed to be asking her something, but no words came. Finally he managed a word or two: “Madam – shall I come in?”

She stood back against the wall, feeling as stupid as she had ever felt in her life, keeping him standing there in the rain like that. He pressed against her as he came into the narrow hallway and his cape dripped onto her. His hat made a little waterfall out of one side as he tipped it in taking it off. He held it awkwardly under one arm.

“Mama, who is it?” called Mavis. Getting no reply, she came to see for herself. She squealed at the sight of him. “Captain! Oh, Captain! You’re so wet – Mama, take his cloak, look, he’s soaking wet, Mama!”

Sophie gave herself a tiny shake and did as she was told. Pelham unfastened his cape at the neck and laid it over her outstretched arm. Mavis pushed past her in disgust and took his hat, then his frock-coat with all its bullion and added them to the pile in Sophie’s arms. He let himself be led by the child into the parlour, and seated in the chair closest to the fire. He shivered.

In the kitchen, Sophie spread the heavy, wet woollen cloak across the backs of two chairs, in front of the fireplace that was back-to-back with the parlour one, and lit the fire that was laid there. Then she hung his coat to air in the passageway, against the chimney where it would be warm but in no danger of scorching, and felt a little less foolish. It had helped, having had something to do. She ran upstairs to pull a dress over her nightgown: “Mavis, fetch a towel for the captain!” she called.

“I already did, Mama,” called Mavis from the parlour, where she had Pelham at her mercy by the hearth and was kneeling at his feet, rubbing his legs briskly to dry them. “Your stockings are all muddy,” she said reproachfully.

“Ah. Oh, well.”

“Take off your shoes, let Mama stuff newspaper in them.” – and without waiting for his answer, she drew them off his feet.

Sophie came in bearing a soft plaid rug. “Captain, we didn’t expect you!”

“Hm – I – I came to see that all was well with the clock.”

As indeed it was; that treasured object stood squarely in its place, as if it had never left, ticking away the passing of time with its measured, sonorous heartbeat.

“How can I ever thank you?” said Sophie.

“I beg that you won’t,” said Pelham. “We had a business arrangement, ma’am, nothing more.”

“You are very kind,” she said. “I have the shirt for your young man. What are his initials?”

“O H, ma’am – but it’s hardly necessary to – ”

“You must have little experience with laundresses, Captain,” smiled Sophie. “After all my work, I should hate for him to lose it and have some inferior one belonging to another fellow returned to him in its place!”

“Ah. Yes.”

Mavis, ever practical, looked up from rubbing his feet: “Captain, have you had breakfast?”

Pelham was too weary to make excuses. “As a matter of fact I have not, Mavis. I did have my steward bring me coffee at some ungodly hour in the night, but this morning I came away before the cook roused out the pease porridge.”

“Mama – ”

“You must let us serve you, then,” said Sophie at once. “We shall not take no for an answer, sir, so please do not deny us!” and she spread the rug about Pelham’s chest and lap, tucking it in on both sides over his damp shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

Mavis stood up. “Mama, let me run to the baker’s – I don’t mind getting a bit wet, and look, I’m already dressed.”

Sophie reached in her purse for coins, and gave Mavis her own glazed canvas cape to wear. It came down to the child’s ankles, but Mavis did not care what kind of figure she cut on an errand as important as this. She flew out the door, and Sophie went in to Pelham. “Now sit there and be comfortable, I beg you,” she said, “and I shall have something hot for you in a very little while, if you can be patient.”

“You are most kind,” said Pelham, wondering if he should protest her trouble; yet something in her manner told him any such polite demurrage would be not only patently insincere, but an insult. She brought him a cup of cocoa within a minute or two; then he heard pleasant sounds from the kitchen, of bacon spluttering, the fire crackling and Sophie beating something in a bowl; and the accompanying aromas began to drift in to him. The cocoa was bittersweet and perfect; he drank it gratefully. Something unpleasant drained from him with it – a strain, a level of overmastering cares – Pelham felt his body slump. He resisted the desire only briefly, for it felt too entirely wonderful to sit quiescent and allow all these sensations to wash over him, resting his eyes, as he told himself, just for a moment or two…

Before Mavis returned with fresh rolls, Pelham was asleep in the chair.

She tiptoed into the kitchen. “Mama, he’s sleeping.”

“Bless him. Let him be, darling, he must be so very tired.”

“Of course! I wouldn’t wake him up for anything!”

“We’ll have to, though, when breakfast is ready.”

“Yes, but you don’t have to hurry now, Mama. You can take the pan off the fire.”

“You’re right,” said Sophie. “Mavis, you are a treasure.”

Mavis split and buttered the rolls with loving care, arranging them on a plate in a circle like the points of the compass. “How long should we let him sleep?”

“Oh – not more than twenty minutes, I think, or he will be too mortified.”

“Can I be the one to wake him?”

“You, Miss Mavis McKenzie, must go to school.”

“Ma-ma!”

“Darling, don’t argue.”

“But he’s my friend and I love him! And I never see him!”

“Ssssh! There will be other times, my love.”

“There’d better be,” said Mavis darkly, “or I’ll never forgive you. Never!”

Sophie sat by the fire, dressed now, and finished stitching O·H in white on white on the left breast of Hastings’ shirt, over the heart. Watching Pelham’s sleeping face made something lurch like the swing of the tide in her chest. He was turned a little, leaning into the side of the chair; his mouth slightly open, his entire being vulnerable in a way he never was in that hawk-like wakefulness he had always. The lids were bruised with purple shadows, and a small cut on one side of his cheek betrayed a hasty or weary hand had held the razor recently. His breast rose and fell in a slow, gentle rhythm quite foreign to the restless energy of his waking self.

Sophie looked at the hands of her father’s clock – she had let him sleep half an hour: it was time to get busy. Folding Hastings’ shirt, she stood quietly and slipped away, turning in the doorway for one last look back at the sleeping Pelham before leaving the room, as if to burn the gift of this priceless and never-to-be-repeated sight into her memory.

Within five more minutes she had a plate of creamed kippers and spinach, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, and fried potatoes ready, and Mavis’s rolls of course; she had set the kitchen table with a blue-and-white checkered cloth, and rolled a starched damask napkin beside his place.

She went into him; leaned over him.

“Captain Pelham,” she said softly. He stirred, but did not wake. She could have said it louder, but bit her lip instead; then bent forward with a quick motion before she could think better of it and kissed the top of his brow. Now at least I have that much, she thought.

His eyes flew open. “What!”

“Hush – it is all right, captain. You have been asleep, that’s all. Your breakfast is ready.”

He looked as mortified as she had feared. “I must beg your pardon – I don’t know what came over me – how very rude of me. Please – ”

“Captain Pelham, I think what came over you is called exhaustion. And I am more happy than I can tell you, that you felt so comfortable here as to permit it. I should have left you sleep longer, sir, but I knew you would be distressed on waking, to find that you had allowed yourself to drop off.”

Pelham rubbed his face, sat up straight. Had that really been the brush of a kiss on his forehead? He felt it there still, like the end of a dream that stays with you on waking. It must have been part of his dream, he thought – but if it was, then what had woken him?

Following her out of the room, he stopped to examine the clock face. There was the graceful ship under full sail on an indigo sea. But it had no streaming pennant; Sophie had added that on her own, to make it into the Indy in her embroidery.

The name “Jos. Goodenough ” declared itself in elegant script under the picture. A thing to be proud of, thought Pelham; yes, a man could put his name to a creation like that and lift his head with the best.

Sitting in her kitchen was a fresh delight to him. It was small and seemed smaller still, hung as it was with drying bunches of herbs and flowers. The fireplace was tiled with lovely Spanish tile, hand-painted, with a small oven to one side of it, the black iron door set in the tile and framed in blue. The skillet where she had cooked the bacon had filled the air with a delightful blue haze; the food was wonderful, and he wolfed it down, needing no encouragement. His cloak was folded over the back of a chair. “So your father’s clock is safe, then,” he said. “I am heartily glad. I could not have borne for you to lose it.”

“Nor I,” she said. “I have wrapped up the shirts for you. You must take them back, to be sure Mr. Hastings’ fits him.”

“I shall,” Pelham said, with his mouth half-full. Finding himself sitting in shirtsleeves at the table seemed the most natural thing in the world, as if he had always belonged there. It has become like home to me, he thought. Something I have not had ashore, these twenty years. Never, one as comfortable as this. And now, by some grace, I may sit in the kitchen barefoot, in my shirtsleeves, and feel at home. By what right? By no right. It is not something that can be taken – only given. It is their gift to me, to open their lives and let me slip in like a hand in a sleeve. They make it easy, to do so.

It was the ease most of all that was the revelation to him.

The fried eggs on his plate were small, with deep golden yolks. “Do you keep your own chickens, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she said, “in a little cage outside. Though I let them run about the yard, when the weather is fine, and scratch for worms between the paving-stones.”

“Where is Mavis?”

“I sent her to school – under great protest, I may say. She will never forgive me if she does not see you again soon.”

Pelham wiped a piece of roll about his plate unashamedly, to mop up the last of the egg-yolk and creamed kippers. “I may not stay just now,” he said, “I just had to be sure the clock was safe. But perhaps tomorrow – a walk – in the Alameda Gardens? I have heard they are very fine, and I have always regretted finding myself too busy to enjoy them.”

“That would be lovely. But – the rain?”

“The glass is rising,” he said, “and the clouds have gone from low to middle-height just this morning, I saw from your window just now. I believe it will be fair, tomorrow. What time does Mavis come home from school?”

“By two,” said Sophie. “Shall we meet you there?”

“Yes,” said Pelham, “I think – I should like that above all things.”

“So will she,” said Sophie.

“And you?” Pelham lifted one eyebrow a little, quizzing her.

She looked down. “As will I,” she said.

So it was settled. Sophie helped Pelham into his frock-coat, so he looked every inch the captain once more. His shoes were almost dry, and his cloak completely so – though it gave off a slight, not unpleasant fragrance of bacon frying as she put it about his shoulders. He made a deep bow to her, taking her hand in both of his for a moment before releasing it. “Madam – ” he said, by way of taking leave; and was gone, his steps taking him quickly down the hill and back to his ship, the shirts in a parcel under his arm.

Walking down through the town, his thoughts ran on like the Indy before a stiff wind from the starboard quarter. “Thank God you are safe!” – those were her words, as if his wellbeing were of paramount concern to her. She had touched his breast with shaking fingers, those words wrenched from her in a tone of voice unlike any he had heard from her – or from anyone, if he were to be honest with himself. So overcome at the sight of him she had not even the wits to invite him in out of the rain. So she thanked God for his safety, then? And afterwards taken his sleep for a gift, and then smilingly fed him ––– !

Could it be so simple, then, for another human being to meet his needs before he discerned them himself, without need for asking, with a grace that made acceptance not selfish, but blessed? Pelham felt something hot crack inside him, and flood him with – what? It must be gratitude – he realized that he wanted above all to matter to someone as much as that, that he longed for it; for a place in the kitchen, by the fire, in their life; a place to come home to. No, not to someone, he corrected himself, coming in sight of the Indy’s masts as she lay at anchor offshore; he wished to matter as much as that to Mavis – and to Sophie.

He flung Sophie’s parcel onto his desk and went straight back to his duties; only the sight of Hastings, hours later, reminded him of it again. A handsome lad, almost grown into his height and the object of his captain’s respect and (privately) deep affection: Pelham was quite sure that Hastings was going to make the very best kind of officer — he had set his feet firmly on the right track already — and it was not by chance that he had requested this favour of Hastings rather than any of the others. Sophie’s beautiful needlework would not be wasted on him; he deserved it (which was about the highest compliment Pelham could have paid to any man). “I’ll see you in my cabin, Mr. Hastings,” he said, and once they were there, with a wry lift of the eyebrow, “I believe you are to be clothed properly at last, sir.”

Hastings stood by stiffly while Pelham cut the string and unwrapped the parcel. On top lay Hastings’ new shirt, crisp and snowy, a fine shirt, a beautiful shirt, his initials stitched on the breast. Pelham held it out to him with satisfaction. “Here you are, sir – and very fine, I think. I believe I mentioned to you, Hastings, that I am much obliged t’you, sir, for… wait! what’s this?”

“What’s what, sir?”

Unwrapping the rest of the parcel, Pelham had found not one shirt remaining, the old one he expected, but two: another new one came next in the pile. E P , it said on the breast, over the heart, where his uniform waistcoat should hide the knowledge of it from all but the wearer. It was every bit as fine as Hastings’. A note from Mavis was pinned to it:

“I helpd with the cuting and sewd on all the butons. Mama did the rest. We hope you like it. Afectinately your friend, Mavis McKenzie.”

Finally, at the bottom of the pile, his old shirt lay neatly folded. It was crisply laundered and starched to within an inch of its life. “I’ll be damned,’ said Pelham.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Oh – er – nothing, Mr. Hastings. Hm – she said you should try it on, man – to see if it needs any alteration before you wear it.”

“Thank you, I shall, sir. Er – sir – where did you find someone to make me a shirt for a shilling?”

“It was a – special arrangement.”

“I shall still have to pay you when we get back to Portsmouth, sir – I haven’t so much as a sixpence to my name right now.”

“That will be perfectly all right, Mr. Hastings,” said Pelham.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Not at all – don’t mention it.”

Hastings closed the door quietly behind him.

Pelham sat perfectly still, so as to let the peace of his cabin calm his mind, endeavouring to empty his buzzing head of all thoughts, so that the eggshell-blue walls and tasteful pictures should work their customary magic and restore him to himself. In the chosen absence of spouse or family to welcome him, he had made his quarters into the haven sought by his restless soul. It seemed today as familiar and comforting as ever, and yet – he had never before perceived it to lack anything toward his comfort, whether physical, mental or spiritual: it had met his needs and assuaged his troubles. For a wife, he had had his ship, every bit as capricious and demanding of attention as any woman ever was – and as responsive to the man who should fully understand her needs, her contradictions, her subtleties; as for sons, he had his lieutenants. But Mavis’s question from his previous visit returned to echo in his head: “Are you lonely? … you’re above them, you can’t let them see you cry – ”

He found no relief of his sober mood in the water-dappled, elusive shifting-net-of-light beauty today. It seemed cool, indifferent. What was wrong with that? Absolutely nothing. With a frown he set the shirts aside and took up his charts once more.

*********************

Sophie caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror, as she passed by its tarnished frame. I look tired, she thought. What a fool I am. I wonder if he has opened the parcel and found his shirt yet? When will he put it on? It will be the closest I ever come to touching his body, to have my needlework beside his flesh, smelling of his soap, damp with his sweat. I must never, ever fool myself otherwise. He is a ship’s captain, for heaven’s sake, the closest thing to God this side of the great divide – and he bears a title, even. Oh! God, I want him so – ! Well, then, let me give him whatever he will take from me – a shirt, a full belly, a listening ear; I shall neither expect nor hope for more. Let it be so – I can have that satisfaction, at least, and no-one the wiser. Something ached inside her. She pressed her lips together and forced herself to ignore it. Perhaps today she might be able to pay the laundress to come, for a change? She must gather the sheets up off the beds, then. I must be very careful, though, she said to herself sternly, or I may lose his friendship altogether, if ever I give my foolishness away.

4. Of Sailors, Ports,

Wives & Widows

They had wrapped their fingers to save them from injury, but still they were sore from pushing the needles in and out of the stiff canvas. Bates sat beside Stroud and grumbled. “Bloody bo’sun – I ’ate sewing. F–cking carpenter, that’s what I am, not some bleedin’ seamstress!”

Stroud shook his head, a mass of unruly curls bobbing above his weatherbeaten face. “Now then, Batesy, you know it’s all for the good. Capting always ’as us reinforce the sheets, before we string ’em up, an’ a good thing too.”

“Bloody capting.”

“’Ere, none o’ that! Don’t you say a word against Capting Pelham, not on board this ship!”

Bates subsided for a few moments, before his tongue once more got the better of him: “’E’s a law unto ’imself, ’e is. ’Oo was that lady ’e ’ad us fix up, then, that water tank we done?”

Stroud gave him a sharp jab with his elbow. “Shut up! That’s the capting’s private business! Don’t you go gabbing about it all over the place!” He looked to see if they had been overheard; but only Thurman sat close by, sewing as if in a trance, thinking (no doubt) of the Yorkshire dales on a June evening, and wondering as he often did what precisely had tempted him to run away to sea as a lad.

“Why not?” Bates had a sharp tone.

Too much bloody bluster in that one, thought Stroud: always finding something to quarrel over. If Stroud mentioned it was a nice day, Bates would maintain it was night. “I like knowing somethink what the rest of ’em doesn’t!” he hissed. “So would you, if you ’ad an ounce of brains in yer snotty noggin, yer nitwit! Any’ow, look, if ’e wants a bit on the side while ’e’s in port, it’s none of your bloody business – or mine!”

“Yes it is – ’e’s the f–cking capting!”

The truth of this statement was unanswerable. Stroud chewed on his quid a moment, then turned and spat with perfect accuracy into the wooden bucket beside Bates. “Well then, business or no business, let ’im ’ave ’is bit on the side in peace, then!”

Bates chewed and cogitated, unconvinced. ’Ow does ’e get straw in ’is ’air, on board the bloody ship? wondered Stroud. That takes real doing, that does. ’As ’e been down with the officers’ chickens again, stealin’ eggs? Gawd, ’E’ll get ’isself flogged yet! He didn’t buy Stroud’s assessment of the situation though: “Nah – it’s not like that! Not ’er! Not good enough for ’im, she weren’t. Not enough of a looker! Too dumpy an’ drab by a long way. Mind you, she ’ad a nice pair o’ jugs on ’er, I’ll grant you that – ” His narrow face lit up briefly.

“Magnificent pair o’ knockers, she ’ad, Bates, there’s no denying it.”

“All right, I ain’t denying it, is I! Lovely bristols on ’er, I said that, specially when viewed from above I might add, cor that weren’t half a nice view from up there right down in between ’em when she bent over – an’ a nice soft round bum an’ all – but she’s got to be the shady side o’ thirty – I say it’s all above board between ’im an’ ’er. ’E’s not like us, coppin’ a look at any female this side o’ the grave – you got a dirty mind, Stroud, that’s what you got!” – from long familiarity, he leaned sideways to avoid Stroud’s next expectoration, while not pausing in offering his opinion. “’E wouldn’t – not wiv the likes of ’er! It’s class an’ all, innit! Look, we even ’ad that bloody Viscountess on board, or whatever she was, all the way from Malta, that time –– as much of a prick-tease as you’ll ever ’ope to see, that one –– and did he get his leg over ’er, then? No ’e bloody didn’t, an’ ’e could ’ave, don’t you tell me ’e couldn’t! Ain’t that right, Thurman?”

Thurman, ever the peacemaker, was not to be drawn into this near-mutinously slanderous discussion. “You’re a pair o’ daft buggers, is what you are, the both of you! I’ll not listen to talk like that.” He frowned at them both, and went on pushing his needle in a disapproving silence.

Bates was not to be hushed, however; his conviction was burning in him with all the righteousness of a true believer, and his belief that the Captain was too august (and too austere) to get his leg over the likes of Mrs. McKenzie was not to be gainsaid. “That’s Capting Sir Edward bloody Pelham, ’e is, Stroud, you low-life! ’E could ’ave any fresh young spring chicken ’e wanted, could the capting, ’e don’t need no poor second-hand widder like ’er, not when ’e could snap ’is fingers an’ ’ave any fancy lady ’e wanted in this en-tire bleedin’ town.”

Stroud shook his head sadly. “Batesy, you don’t know nuffink about the world, do you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Them young ’uns are nuffink but trouble. I should know. I ’ad a Mrs. Stroud in Plymouth once – ”

“You mean different from the Mrs. Stroud in Portsmouth?”

“And the one in Bristol, and Deptford!” added Stroud proudly –

“That true? You lucky beggar! You got a bloody nerve, you ’ave!” Bates spat; his quid had less far to travel, but his aim was poorer than Stroud’s and he had to crawl across the deck and wipe it up by shuffling the seat of his pants over the stain. Thurman wondered when they would both grow up and show a bit more respect for the officers. Not much chance, he thought, not them two – not much chance o’ that around ’ere!

Stroud rolled his eyes heavenward. “Look, a man’s got to look out fer ’is creature comforts when ’e’s ashore, don’t ’e? There’s nuffink wrong with that! Anyway – this Mrs. Stroud as I ’ad in Plymouth – ooh, she was a bit of all right, she was, if you take me meaning. A regular firecracker, she was, between the sheets an’ out o’ them! Welsh, she was, an’ a head of red ’air on ’er – an’ red down below, an’ all! But – ’ere’s the thing, see, Batesy, boy. She was a right looker, she was. An’ young – eighteen, nineteen, not dragged-down an’ no teeth missing, yer know – an’ she knew it. Turned out I weren’t ’er only ’usband, neither.”

“Well, fair’s fair.”

“Right, but see, I ’ad no idea – till the penny dropped – that she wasn’t too pertikler ’oo was puttin’ it to ’er, if I may be so delicate, just as long as she was gettin’ it regular, like.” Stroud heaved a deep liquid sigh at the memory of his betrayal.

“That’s no good!” Bates shook his head in sympathy.

“You’re bloody right it ain’t! So – same thing with the capting – stands to reason! I’m telling you, Batesy, there’s nuffink so lovely after a long voyage than a roll between the sheets with a nice clean widder. She’ll wash yer clothes, cook for yer, never expect nuffink more than what you got to give ’er, and she’ll be grateful as ’ell to get it!”

“You’re a peasant, Stroud, that’s what you are, a low-class turd. Capting wouldn’t never do nuffink like that. ’E’s married to this bloody ship, ’e is.”

“An’ a good thing for you ’e ’as been, Batesy my lad, when I think of the times ’e’s saved your scrawny arse wiv ’is quick thinking. But be that as it may, you old bugger, I’m telling you, ’e’s still a man, like what we are.”

“Nah.”

“What makes you so sure o’ that, then?”

“E’s above that kind of thing, Stroud, you old bugger yerself.”

“I’ll lay you threepence ’e ain’t. ’E spends the night ashore before the month is out, or my arse – if ’e don’t, I’ll even do your bleedin’ laundry for you!” Stroud’s grin was doubly cheerful: he was quite certain of his coming reward, and he loved a wager more than anything – or at least, anything to be had aboard ship.

“You’re on!”

“Bates – don’t tell nobody, now, you and yer big bleedin’ blabbermouth. This is between you an’ me, got it?”

“’Course!”

“All right, then, we’re on! Thurman – you didn’t hear nuffink, eh?”

“What, me waste time listening to the likes o’ you two goin’ at it? I’d rather put up with a bloody sermon!”

Bates shifted his rear end. Had he picked up a splinter just now? “Stroud – ”

“Yeah?”

“What ezzactly d’you say to them, all them women, ter get ’em to ’op into bed wiv you an’ do yer laundry?”

Stroud spat again into the bucket, and gave a fulsome leer. “It ain’t wot I tell ’em as does it, Batesy. Not by a long chalk it ain’t. Oh, no, me lad. It’s wot I does for ’em as does the talking for me.”

“You old bugger!”

Stroud smiled to himself. “Call me a bugger, but you’re jealous an’ I know it an’ you know it. Let me give you some advice, Batesy.”

“Wot?”

“Wash yer smelly arse next time you go ashore, you dirty bastard!”

Bates reached to clap Stroud on the side of the head, but from long acquaintance Stroud was too quick for him, ducking sideways so that he only succeeded in kicking over the spittoon.

Thurman sighed. “Eh, lads! Lads! That’s enough! Come on, then, clean that up before Mr. ’Astings sees it, or there’ll be the devil to pay! That stuff stains summat wicked, it does!”

He was right, of course. And Bates had indeed succeeded in working a nasty sliver “right in his bloody arse – you should ’a seen him,” as Stroud gleefully told his other mess-mates later.