22.  Landfall  again

May-June, 1806

        

Mavis considered herself far too old to tug at her mama’s hand, these days, but urged her onward by running ahead of her and then turning back to encourage her progress.  “Mama, come on!  I want to show Pellie these clever little things, before his nap!”

        

         “I am coming as fast as I may, Mavis,”  panted Sophie, “this hill gets steeper every time I climb it, I declare.”   

         “We really should keep a carriage, Mama. Or why will you not take a garry?”     

         “Such an expense on a regular basis would be completely unwarranted!”  said her mother, pausing to catch her breath.  “I thank God we have the limbs and wind to – to make the ascent under our own sail, on so fine a day.”

        

         It was in truth an exceptionally fine one, the clouds teased like shreds of wool across a sky so achingly azure Mavis wanted to paint it, but knew that such a colour did not reside in her paintbox.  Spring had come to Gibraltar and southern Spain, and with it jonquils among the shattered rocks, and breezes from the land laden with almond-blossom and thyme.  Sometimes, when the wind was in the right direction, Mavis could hear faintly and far-off the clonking bells of the herds of goats that grazed on the low scrubby spit between Spain and the Rock itself.  It seemed to her more musical than anything she learned at the piano, even.

        

         Mavis had run ahead so far that she had rounded the corner and was half-way up the next flight of steps – a punishing short-cut – when Sophie paused to catch her breath and glanced out of sheer habit back down toward the harbour.

         They had been much occupied since breakfast with Lady Davenport’s Dorcas Sewing Circle for Indigents, and were just now returning after sewing their fingers to the bone all the morning, followed by an expedition by way of reward for such charitable works to discover the latest delights in that Aladdin’s cave of a store,  Mr.  Shahs’s, whose emporium included exotic and frail little lanterns and balls made of waxed tissue-paper, folded impossibly flat, which might be expanded or inflated into an astonishing size and balanced, feather-light, upon a fingertip or two.  These were from the faraway Orient, he had explained, rubbing his hands in pleasure at the prospect of serving such important customers as Lady Davenport and Lady Pelham ––  yes, all that way ––  as were the extraordinary carved elephant-tusks which at once repelled and fascinated Mavis, and the strange little china bowls with what seemed to be translucent grains of rice within the milky china itself –– and the spoons, even odder, also made out of china instead of tin or silver!

 Mavis had spent her pocket-money upon a set of three balls for her brother, in bright hues of crimson and flame and sea-green.   Of course, he would doubtless crush them in a moment and laugh  up at her with the shreds of paper stuck between his fat little fingers – but still she could not resist the idea of surprising him with them.

        

         These were the images in Sophie’s mind when she turned back out of habit to count the masts far below,  as she did each day ––  to see three new ones.  Tall:  very tall – a triple-decker.  With the admiral’s pennant streaming from the mainmasthead, and the yards crossed.       

         And somewhere aboard, then, Edward – unless he were already at home?

        

         Her knees almost gave way at the thought.  “Oh,” she gasped, “oh –– ” – and had to clutch at the iron handrail that ran up the center of the stairs, before she should fall.     

         Edward.       

         Edward.

 

         She could not have said how she managed to cover the rest of the distance between there and her home.  Certainly if her feet touched the ground she had no recollection of it, nor of the way, nor indeed even of how long it took, except that since it was not instantaneous it took far too long –  until she reached her own front-door, which stood open, and heard Pellie squealing from the courtyard, and looked through the hallway and the little back-parlour to see Edward’s angular, uniformed silhouette throwing him up in the air and catching him again – and his hat upon the hall-table.

        

         “Edward – ” she said again, and found that her legs, which had propelled her thus far without seeming to move at all, had now taken root upon the step.  The sight of him took her breath away, set her heart to lurching in her chest with a sick thud, thud.  Mavis was standing by them, talking nineteen-to-the-dozen, and even Mrs. Stroud had come out of the kitchen with flour half-way to her elbows and stood to one side, a tall scarecrow of a spectator.  They did not see her.    

         Sophie watched them thus with a pain in her chest for a few moments more, unable to make any kind of a sound for the lump that filled her throat and the tears before which this joyful tableau soon blurred and swam altogether.  She knew she ought to be a part of it all, but she might as well have set out to fly.

         And then he saw her there.

        

         He passed the baby at once into the waiting arms of someone – she could no longer see who stood there, save for him – and came to her in a few strides.      

         She said his name, foolishly – as if it could be anyone else.  He took her face in his two hands and turned it up to his.  He seemed thinner than before, but tan;  well.  His chest and body were lean and hard – she had not felt a man pressed up against her so since he had left.   

         There had been a time, early on, when he had come to see her in the rain, and she had stood just so in the narrow dark hallway and greeted him with her tongue-tied shock.  Now the hallway was wider and the light came into it from all the rooms on the new side.  In its brightness she could see his brow grown a little higher under the swept-back hair, his eyes slightly more strained (but as warm as ever) – and the set of his mouth, softening, that trembled into a tender smile just for her.  

         “So,” he said, softly, “here I am – are you not going to say hello to me?”

        

         She had promised herself she would not cry when this moment finally came, and she almost succeeded. 

         “Sssshh –– sshhhh – ” he murmured, holding her.  “What a greeting!”  She leaned into his embrace and let the buttons on his uniform cut into her cheek.  They were cold and sharp and hard and very, very real.  And then so was his mouth, all of those things too, except for its warmth.

        

         Mrs. Stroud saw at once what was needed, and had a pot of tea made almost before Sophie had managed to pass from her husband’s arms in the hallway to the dear old parlour, where he sat her down in a chair and pulled another up beside it for himself, all the while taking in her face as if he must memorize it for an examination.  Her hand trembled, holding the cup-and-saucer:  they rattled.  Edward took them both from her, set the saucer down, returned just the cup to her hand and curled her fingers round the handle. 

She sipped it – someone had put double her usual amount of sugar-chips in, and brewed it extra strong into the bargain.  Little by little she stopped trembling and started to recover herself.  Edward watched her closely, with an amused light in his eyes, seemingly not at all impatient, waiting until she should come to herself fully.  Outside in the courtyard, Mavis was dancing Pellie round and round the fig-tree, singing, “this is the way we kiss papa!  Kiss papa!  Kiss papa!” to the tune of Here We Go Round the Mulberry-bush.

        

         “Well,”  he said at last, gently, “Lady Pelham, if the sheer sight of me is going to have so devastating an effect ––  more stunning than a carronade,  by all appearances –– I declare we shall have to take another look at our secret weapon plans, shall we not?  Am I more startling than a submarine ship?”

         She reached out to touch the raven wings of hair that rose from his furrowed brow.  The little dent there winked in the light:  she touched that too, and the crease between his eyebrows, and the radiating lines at the corners of his eyes.  “It is me,”  he said, “truly it is.” 

         “Yes,” she whispered at last, “I see that, Edward.” 

         “Then am I to get my greeting?”      

         “Welcome home, Edward,” she said.

        

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

        

Mavis had not wanted to listen to Stroud, at first.  She clapped her hands over her ears and ran away faster than he could follow, given the fact that not only did she have two of her own feet and he but one;  but also that he bore little Pellie in his arms, hitched up over one bony shoulder to be precise, and was thus doubly hampered.        

         “I’ll thank you,” he called after her, “to be a might kinder’n this, Miss Mavis!”

        

         “I don’t want to go out for a walk with you!” she cried.  “Papa is just now got home, what are you thinking of?”        

         “That’s ezzackly what I’m thinkin’ of,” said Stroud gently, once he had caught up with her at the far end of the courtyard where there was no further to run.

         “But I want to see him!  He hasn’t heard any of our news, almost!  Mama hasn’t hardly told him anything, and we haven’t heard about the voyage, or the ship, or Mr. Hastings, or anything!” she protested.     

         “All in good time, is my advice to you, if you wants to be kind,”  said Stroud.

        

         “Kind?  What do you mean, kind!” she demanded.  

         “Now look’ee ’ere, Miss.”  He cocked his head to one side, as she was used to do herself.  “You know if Mr. ’Astings was to walk in ’ere, you wouldn’t want me to go keepin’ ’im to meself and axin’ a great mountain o’ questions about the ship, would you!” he asked.

         “But that’s different!”        

         He raised an eyebrow.  “’Ow is it different?”        

         “Because – he is my papa – and – ”  she faltered and did not finish.  “What do you know about me and Mr. Hastings, anyway?”

        

         “Only what’s written all over yer face any time you says ’is name,”  said Stroud, more gently still.  “Now then.  Come on.  Just give yer mam an hour or two to catch ’er breath, like.  You can see as ’ow she needs it.  Let ’er ’ave it,  wivout frettin’ about you and Master Pellie ’ere.”  He had also seen just as plainly what it was the capting needed, but he forbore to mention that.  They would, he was sure, manage to fulfill both requirements, given a little time to themselves; and even if my lady had to catch her breath all over again, it would be (from what he knew of her) much easier the second time around, once she had got over the first shock of seeing him.

        

         “Let’s go pick a big bunch o’ them white flowers up on the Rock what smells so sweet,” he said, “an’ take a piece o’ bread-an’-cheese wrapped in a ’andkerchief, an’ a orange, an’ ’ave a bite to eat out there, an’ all.  Then when we gets back I promise you yer dad’ll be ready to ’ear all yer prattle.”     

         “I don’t prattle,” she said, “you’re confusing me with Pellie!”      

         “So I am,” he grinned, “beggin’ yer parding, Miss – ’is prattle, then, an’ your con-ver-say-shun!”

         “That’s better,” she conceded, “and you’re right.  We should.”  She looked towards the parlour, where her mother sat.  “She looked as if we had pelted her with bricks, not just had papa come home.”        

         “You are a one,” said Stroud, leading the way past the parlour to the kitchen to get the grub wrapped up.  “Come on then, young man – you come along o’ me, then.  A book, Miss Mavis, that’s what you ought to write, the way you talks an’ all!”

        

         He popped his head around the doorway of the parlour, before they left.  Pelham was sitting beside his wife with her hands in both of his, and they were speaking in low tones.  Stroud recognized the set of the capting’s shoulders – could feel in sympathy the tension in the muscles, the ache…   he thought of how he had felt the afternoon Hester had arrived, that way a man gets when his body has taken a mind of its own…    “I’m jus’ takin’ the young ’uns out fer a bit, mum – sir – till ye gets yer bearin’s, like,”  he said, lightly, with his crooked smile.  

         Sophie gave him a grateful look – although not half as grateful as the captain’s, briefer though it was.

                 

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

        

         He was unsure how to ask her, she still looked so pale from the shock of his appearance.  And yet – could he not just come straight out and say it?  Why not:  “Will you come to bed?” he asked her.

        

         She found herself again, there, as she had known she would.  There was no more need for the words that eluded her, nor the capacity to hold a tea-cup or anything else without shaking.  Only Edward:  and he did not mind her shaking, here, if he noticed it at all.

        

         For him it was the moment when he could set aside being the captain.   Only here and thus could he outrun his duty for a second, even, shucking off Flag-Captain Pelham to be re-born as Edward.  His clothes lay in a heap upon the floor, just as they had that first night, and hers beside them.    The cares — and there were many of them,  more even than his days aboard Indomitable, to be sure — fell from his shoulders along with his uniform, leaving him stripped in body and soul.

        

         He came to her quickly, frantically even.  In all the times he had sought the solace of her body to quench the long-banked fires of his own, there had been none more urgent than this — not even that very first one, when his shock at being so simply received overwhelmed all else.  He threw himself into her as if his life depended on it.  He had not had the opportunity to do so with such abandon in three years:  so he may well have felt as if it did.

        

         It was also, after all, the first occasion he had had to come to her since she had given birth to their child —  so perhaps this was a reclaiming of the Grail of her flesh for himself, besides. 

 

It pierced her that his cries began the moment he entered her, not caring that it was the middle of the afternoon and the neighbours doubtless outside at their business, and only grew sharper with each plunge after that.  And then his abandon moved her, naked as he was — and as he would allow himself to be before no-one else, ever. 

He held nothing back, not his groans, not his rough slaking of the past ten-months’-worth of need, or the thirty-four months it had been since he had been able to do this with all the force and passion that was in him for her — the only other time he had done so.  (Oh, Edward —!)  He trusted her to contain all he brought to her, without fear that she would fail him.  As of course she did not, only meeting his volcanic wanting with her own fierce joy.  It was swift, of course, desperately so:  and she rejoiced in that, too, that he wanted her so much.

        

         Hester, peeling apples in the kitchen for a snow to celebrate this return, smiled to herself.  She had had little doubt, now that she had come to know Sophie, that such would be the capting’s reception:  but still it delighted her to know it and to feel that she was not alone in exulting so that a man might have such need of what she had to give.  Power, it is, she thought to herself, hearing but trying not to listen too closely:  power.  They think they has it all, when it’s us as gives it to them.  Poor lambs — bless them. 

She had just about worn out Stroud when she first arrived, in all the frustration of her long widowhood and then the anticipation of the sea-voyage stoking her fire so furiously she scarcely could bear the sight of him, after all that time.  So Stroud’s capting felt no less:  and his lovely wife neither, from the sound of things.  First his cries and then Sophie’s not much later floated down the stairs:  though his were inarticulate altogether, just like Stroud, while Sophie’s consisted of his name:  Edward — Edward — oh — oh — Edward! …

Ain’t that typical,  she thought, sweeping the apples into a large pan.

        

         Upstairs Pelham could not contain his desire, did not even try to.  Having further succeeded in bringing his wife most ardently to that rare and incomparable place where she sobbed and clutched at him — a skill he had begun to learn during his illness, and longed to practice, ever since, almost as much as he starved for his own release —  he gazed into her face, kissed the tears from her cheeks — “there is a name for this, Edward,” she whispered shyly, “it’s called  la petite morte, the little death — did you know that?”

        

         “No,” he said, wondering.  And then wondered further where she should have learned such a thing;  but decided  some things were better left unasked.  Although he suspected strongly that Emma Hamilton must have something to do with it. 

God, he thought, if men were ever to have such conversations — !  Perhaps we should not come so ill-prepared to bed, though, if we could have the benefit of another’s experience — ?  Lord knows, it was a lonely and terrifying feeling, to make landfall in a woman’s arms for the first time and feel as if she were a terra utterly incognita  who must be opened and claimed from a heading of complete ignorance.  Although the discovery was worth all the anxious anticipation, a thousand times over.

         “I thought it was you — that it just happened, sometimes,” he whispered, “and now you tell me it even has a name.  Whatever next?” 

         Not in words, but in actions, came her answer, showing him whatever was next.  He wondered then if heaven could be half so sweet as this.  Though if we must leave our bodies behind, he thought, how could it?

        

         “Wait,” he said, though her mouth was sweeter than honey, “— wait!”   Now that his body’s first cry for rescue had been met,  these gentler moments following offered a different kind of gift:  to fill the desire he also had to understand this better – to plumb the heart of that mystery which was Sophie and all the ways she was with  him.  Could he ask her all the things he longed to know?  How was he to find the words, even, for half of them?  Should he feel shame, at being so ignorant of her?  Yet  how could he spend so much time away from her and still learn all he needed to learn, if he did not ask?  ——And if not now, then when?

        

         He held her close to him, caressed her hair.   This alone was enough to make the wanting begin again, but he ignored it.   “What is it like,” he asked, “this little death?”

        

         She had put her head on his shoulder, when he asked her to wait.  Now she looked up at him, trying to think how to describe it, even.   She ran her nose along the line of his jaw to feel the stubble starting;  scraped her tender bruised mouth there next, and on to his chin, seeking the small pain of it to feel him fully…    “Falling,” she said, “— falling to pieces.”  

         He raised his eyebrows.      

         “That’s why it makes me cry, Edward.  I can’t help it, afterwards, it feels as if I am shattered –  broken altogether, into a thousand splinters, and I have no self-control, and so then the tears come:  and I can’t hold them back any more –”

        

         He kissed her forehead, tenderly.  “What are they for? —— the tears?  I — I’ve wondered… that you could be sad, at such a time… ”

         “They are the ones I hold in every day, I think,” she said, “— for you —  missing you — saying goodbye all these times — worrying if you are safe — having to manage —”       

         “Oh,” he said on a sigh, feeling guilt, now.  So all his lovemaking served simply to remind her of what he could not give her?  “—of course.  I am sorry, Sophie.”

        

         “Don’t be,” she said.  “It’s not that you make me sad — it’s that — it brings me to a place where all the things I feel most deeply run together, and I am carried away by them.  It opens the flood-gates.  I have to get past them, to feel it at all.”      

         “Does it hurt, then?” 

         “Oh, no!  —— just the opposite:  it’s — sweeter than I can bear.”

         “Oh,” he whispered, smiling, “I do know how that feels!”  

         “Do you?”    

         “God, yes!  Can’t you tell? —— that I feel that way every time I hold you?  And when I enter you, oh, God —!  You must know!”   

         “Yes,” she whispered, “I do know it — I can tell, the way you throw yourself into me, as if I could save you from drowning —— that’s what thrills me.  What you must be feeling — the force of it — I feel it through you, the way you move...”

        

         “Oh Sophie,” he murmured, her hair falling in a silky mass across his chest, “so then –– I didn’t think – it doesn’t always happen, does it – this little death – ?  I have thought of it as — the crown, sometimes, some very special times, when you are most deeply moved —!  But if it’s like — spilling is, for me, then — do you not need it each time?  Are you not cheated?”       

         “No,” she whispered.  “That’s it, exactly – it is the crown, Edward.  But everything else is the crown jewels, so I don’t miss it, this time or that ——  I don’t expect it, even.  It’s strange to explain, I don’t understand it myself, only that there are different kinds of joy, in being a wife to you, Edward, and that is but one of them – if it passes me by, in the heat and haste of the moment – so few times as we can snatch together, God knows, each one of them is so very precious to me, the hurried ones I think sometimes most of all –––  then it simply waits and builds for the next time.  It satisfies me to – to receive you – in so many ways,” she said, “not just that one.”

 

         He wanted to know more, much more; he wanted to know everything, everything about her, all the things he had wondered in the long night watches when sleep would not come because the thought of her was too sharp.  He longed to sound her all the way, with his body and his understanding both: but just now his body would not be ignored any longer, was gaining the upper hand again.

God, it had been so long — so very long!  Could it really be that she was here in his arms again at last, at last — and nothing to do but take her?  His breathing grew ragged once more, drawing to itself all the times he had lain aching so very much for this moment.   There was a sweetness in him like something molten that he had pleasured her too, that she had told him of it.  Oh lord, that there was a name for it, even.

 

So it satisfied her to receive him?  Should he believe it?  Yes:  it was written all over her face.  It was she who had begun to reawaken him, even, before he had told her to wait, wanting to know more of what she was saying, first.

He was ready now, though.  More than ready —  he was consumed with an old new hunger whose satisfaction that little while ago had barely taken the edge off;  only left him wanting more.  But now, with everything she had just told him ringing in his ears, it was quickening in his blood, racing through his heart. 

Sophie, Sophie.

He asked for it, simply, humbly;  he got it.

Of course.

 

This time he could shape words, not just groans:  found himself wanting to,  for her to understand what this meant to him — to excuse his urgency, his taking her to bed now, in the middle of the day, his near-desperation even this second time to find himself where he had so frantically and painfully yearned to be for so very, very long a time.  He did so, brokenly, trying to tell her:  “Oh — Sophie — do you — know — do you know — how long — it’s been —?  Oh, God — how long — since I’ve come — to you — without — restraint? — Three — years — Sophie — three — long — years — since I — could — come here — so freely! — and — do — this — this — this — this!!!!!

         Impossible to say, if the words added emphasis to his actions, or vice-versa:  but whichever it was, he did succeed in communicating to her the absolute and aching extent of his desire to do so, put-off all that time or turned aside to other, gentler things — not that she hadn’t already guessed it, known it, felt it for him each of the other times;  counted it off for herself, just how long.

 

She ached for him all over again, for his frustration since first they had made love in her little bed that sacred night.

         “Oh, Edward,” she said, “Edward.”

 

         “I can’t help it,” he said afterwards, “I’m sorry — everything else — everything in between — oh God don’t misunderstand me, it was sweet, it was more than sweet, I think it saved my life — but this!  Oh, God, not to have done this with you so freely in all that time — without holding back — Sophie, I have missed this so very much — almost more than I could bear! —— I beg your pardon, love, if I seem precipitous, but oh! —!! I can’t tell you — I can’t — just how very badly I have needed this —!”

         “Ssshhh,” she murmured, her mouth by his face, her lips against his cheekbone.  “You don’t have to explain yourself, my love.”

         His breathing was still rough from the exertion, the emotion.  He turned to her and moved down the bed so that his face was between her breasts.  He had shaved that morning, but his chin rasped a little, now.  She cradled it there as he sighed deeply.  As he nestled, it scraped her nipples:  she caught her breath — they were still tender from just now, how greedily he had made love to them.  (“My goodness!” he had said, when the milk had sprayed, “and will you feed me, too?”) 

She almost wept again just at the thought of that — how he had trembled then,  taken aback – but not stopped, except to whisper in between, so lovingly, “Oh Sophie, hush – don’t cry!  What – ?!   I may still, may I not —?  Oh, please ——!?  I don’t mind…!”

“Oh, Edward,” she said, “thank God you are home at last!”

 

“Are you all right now?” he murmured after a minute or two, bracketing his question with little kisses where his lips brushed her skin.

“Me?  Of course!  Why shouldn’t I be?  I am more all right than I have been these three years too, Edward!”

“You shook, when I came home just now;  you couldn’t speak, my love,” he reminded her. 

“Oh, that!” she smiled. “That — why, Edward, it had been three years for me too, you know —!”

“That’s what you were thinking?  I thought you were just overcome!”

“I was — with all of it — with the sight of you, I couldn’t believe it, that you were home — here — safe — and, yes, the three years —!”

 

“Have you missed this, then?”  he asked her. “I thought I was too rough, too quick –!”

 “That’s what I missed!”  she cried, and he looked up at her then from where his face was cradled, and his eyes sparkled, the lines of question on his forehead so dear.  “You not holding back —  truly, Edward, truly!” she reassured him.

“Thank God I wasn’t the only one,” he smiled, and snuggled against her again in absolute, utter, overwhelmed contentment.

        

Three years’ worth of longing, since he had been able to take all he needed, just as he needed it,  without stint –  three years of putting his duty first —  fully met at last.

        

         They were still abed when the trio returned from their picnic, with armfuls of jonquils, Pellie asleep –– as was his papa, soundly, exhaustedly, his head upon Sophie’s breast and she lying quite still under its weight, keeping vigil over him in his vulnerability, so.     

         He stirred at the sound of their footsteps, the happy voices floating up the stairs.  “Should we feel foolish, to be so found out?” he grinned, twisting her hair in his fingers.  

         “No,” she answered, “we should feel blessed.  And there is always later, and tonight –– ”

         “Both?” said he, raising his eyebrows.  “Goodness gracious, Sophie, you have a high opinion of my stamina!”   

         “No,” she smiled, “I have experience – and hope!”

        

         And so they dressed, and came downstairs to play with the children.

        


 

 

23.  Pellie’s World (i)

        

Little Pellie was not sure about this glittering gold-beribboned and buttoned figure that swept him up and whirled him far from the safety of familiar arms.  The eyes sought his, the voice was deep but warm, this much he knew, and the mouth smiled often when it was not speaking.  He frowned and poked the face to see what it would do, whether it would feel soft, like the one that was his world, or rough like the other everyday hobbling one with the deep voice.  Or whether it would kiss and blow on his fingers like the short one with the dancing eyes.   

         It  bit his fingers, would not let them go — held them there with its big strong hand and sucked upon them.  Then it laughed, loudly.

          

         He let out a yell of indignation.       

         It laughed more heartily still. 

         Squirming and wriggling, he tried to make it put him down before it did something even more frightening.  And it was going to, he could feel it coming, until the voice of his world came and then her face swam into his view beside the strange one.  She was smiling, cooing, her familiar tones unafraid and wrapping him up safe with the sound of them.  

He caught his breath and looked for her, fixed his eyes on those features whose eternity reassured him.  If his world was not afraid, then all must be right after all.  He kicked, to see what the stranger would do, and felt himself held firmly, yet with room enough to do so.  His own world leaned forward and kissed his waving hand.  He reached for the hard shiny knobs, pulled one into his mouth.

        

         Afterwards Pellie drank from his world and filled his belly, and was warm and safe again while the stranger watched with a stare as wide as his own.  His world rubbed his back till his bubble came up.  Then, still in her arms, he felt that griping, and drew his legs up and squeezed it out of him till the griping stopped and his wrapping stuck to him.  His world smiled in a different way and was going to take him away to make it stop sticking, until the giant soft one took him from her arms and did so instead, the one that was always covered in black, and had the blue eyes. 

This one’s touch was not as gentle as his world’s, but he liked the firmness of it.  It knew what it was doing and it talked to him without changing the tone of its voice.  There was that smell again.  He gurgled at the giant, wondering why it always came when that smell did.  It clucked back, and the smell went away and was transformed into something fresh and dry instead.  The giant always restored his wellbeing like that.

        

         Then it brought him back to the stranger with the hard knobs, who took him back and looked at him anew.  He returned the stare look for look:  their mutual fascination made his tummy feel electric.  The new hands held him up, curved round the back of his head so as to see him better, and dandled him on a hard white lap.  Everything about this one was hard, except for the eyes.

        

         The voice was as deep as the everyday-deep one that went step-rap-step-rap and had the curly hair.  But this one’s hair was dark and did not cover any part of its face.  There were lines in the face that kept changing.  Pellie wanted it to keep on speaking: its voice made his chest buzz.  It spoke to him, then to his world, then to him again, and his world spoke back.  There was a tone in her voice he did not know, but a good one, and her cheeks were coloured red.  His world had wrapped herself around it and him and made all them part of herself again, so he was content to watch and see what would happen next.  

         The short one came then, and did the piggy game on his fingers, and Pellie’s world pulled her inside too.  She seemed able to stretch indefinitely, and whatever his world comprised was always good.  Sometimes when the short one took him away, he missed his world.  Something was empty till she spoke again, even if it came from out-of-sight.  But when they were all together, he was in heaven.  That was why she was his world.

        

         The hard one picked him up and walked with him over his shoulder, so that he could see the rest of the universe from his perch.  They moved from room to room, the blue-place and the green-place, and the hard one was speaking and then sometimes just listening, because his world was speaking back.  He could not see her, but he could hear her voice, and when she spoke the hard one quivered, holding him. 

He wanted to see his world again, not just hear her, and he started to fuss.  The little sounds came up from his throat and spread his tension outside him, so the coloured spaces were filled with fussing.  It worked:  the hard one obeyed right away, did his will and turned so he could see his world again.  She reached out and touched his head:  her hand cupped it.  She spoke the hushing sounds and he let the fussing float up out of him till it went away.  Then another bubble came up and he spat the sour white curds onto the hard blue shoulder: blap!

        

         What a fuss now!  The giant rushed up with a cloth, his world swept him up and away from there, and the hard one laughed so loudly as he handed him over that he wished he could have stayed.  Laughter made his kingdom fizz.  This one’s voice, the harsh chuckles of it, made him feel excited, even more so than the short one who giggled all the time.  His world said oh – oh – oh! — and now this time it was the turn of the hard one to turn suddenly tender and reassuring. 

Then the dark-blue wrapping with the hard gold bits disappeared, the giant carried it away, and Pellie found himself back in the arms of the hard one again.  But now it was all dressed in white from head to foot, except for the black band around its throat, next to the place his own head rested as it drooped.  The white fabric was creamy and fuzzy by his mouth.

        

         His world put a soft cloth under his cheek, to save him from getting the fuzziness inside his mouth, and smiled at him.

        

         The hard one carried him again as they toured all of his kingdom, from the place with the low ceiling and the short one’s bed where they played sometimes and the hole in the wall where the outside looked so far away you couldn’t touch it — one of his favourite places — to the place under the wideopen with the big green waving shade that smelled sweet and gummy. 

His full belly took over more and more of his consciousness, contentment made physical, and he slumped into the embrace that held him.  The last thing he saw before his eyelids fluttered closed and stayed so was the look on the face of his world:  as if she was singing, even though her mouth was barely parted and it was the hard one that spoke — but her face was music.

        

        

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

        

Supper  (interlude)

 

         Mrs. Stroud outdid herself at supper.  All the candles were lit in all the chandeliers, so the dining-room had never blazed with half so much light.  The plates shone and the silver had been polished afresh that afternoon by Stroud himself, every piece of it, and when they sat down at six o-clock — late, for the captain, whose stomach had been growling since half past three —  the feast that greeted them amazed even Sophie, who had been enjoying such delights for some time now.

        

         There seemed wave upon wave of it, each more delicious than the last.  First Mrs. Stroud served veal-soup, a delicate broth with translucent wafers of mushroom floating in it, and croutons upon the top fried in butter till they crunched and then melted upon the tongue.  This was removed by a colourful remoulade of creamed spinach surrounding a hillock of mashed carrots, the whole drizzled with demerara-sugar-glaze and sprinkled with toasted almond-slivers. 

Then Stroud carried-in a dish of braised fennel steaming with overtones of horseradish, and another of baby beetroots served hot (Mavis puckered up her nose, here, but her papa helped himself with a look of such pleasure and surprise that she found she could even forgive the beetroots the fact of their existence, for once). 

Normally Stroud did not wait upon the table, but tonight he had been pressed into service, since his wife had her hands more than full in the dishing-up of all of this extraordinary spread.  Not that he needed any pressing, in truth, for he would not have missed this sight for the world.  He looked around the room, at their plates and the gleaming silver and the forest of candles no brighter than their faces, and his heart overflowed with thanks — for the capting’s safe return to them, and for his being here to see it.

        

         Next, borne into the room in triumph by Mrs. Stroud’s own hands, a steak-and-kidney pudding made its appearance, crowned with a sprig of flowering rosemary:  not so grand perhaps as the roast it might have been, but Mrs. Stroud had it upon good authority that this was the capting’s favourite, and so have it he should, this very night, made in her special way with the unforgettable gravy that was her signature oozing velvety and fragrant from its tawny flanks.  This was accompanied by tiny new-potatoes from Morocco, round and buttery and speckled with parsley, and a dish of new peas.  “Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Pelham, “is there no end to this?”

        

         “Not yet, sir,” said Mrs. Stroud briskly.  These three words could hardly contain all she felt, but her pride found expression in the perfection of the pudding in all its glory.  The suet-crust was golden and light as a feather outside,  while its insides were revealed to be drenched with the savoury meat-juice and spilling-over, once it was cut,  with tender pieces of steak and delicate round slices of lamb’s-kidney (she would use nothing so coarse as a pig’s, which most on ’em did, no wonder it was so overbearing when made by an ignorant hand).   It  was the very model of all it should be, and more:  it spoke for her. 

        

         Mavis had arranged the spinach and carrots on her plate into an approximation of a flag, surrounded by the babiest potatoes in a halo, and proceeded to eat it a stripe at a time, in between bites of steak-and-kidney, counting on her mother’s being so overjoyed by the presence of her papa that she would not chide her for playing with her food, for once:   in which she was right.

 Although her activities did not escape her papa, who met her eyes with his stern ones and raised an eyebrow before allowing his cheek to lift into a dimple on the side facing her.  A little later he caught her eye again, reaching out after he had filled his own glass and topped-up her mother’s, and poured a finger of wine into her empty one (which had held nothing stronger than chaste lemonade, before).

        

         He raised his, then:  “To my family,” he said — “to being home.”  Mavis drank – it tasted rather peculiar — but would, she knew, remain unforgettably special when linked with the suddenly husky tone of his voice as he said those words, and the over-brightness of her mother’s eyes. 

        

         Sophie took only a little food throughout, but what she had she ate heartily, listening to Pelham answer Mavis’s questions and ask some of his own in return.  The answers surprised her — Mavis was more forthcoming in the excitement of her papa’s interest in all her doings than ever she was with her mama. 

Hearing her husband speak of his ship — his pride in it, the details of his men and of supplying her and sailing her and the admiral’s brilliant, eccentric ways and the rough weather they had had, on the way — all these brought her a pang of jealousy, as she should have felt were he speaking of a mistress that occupied so much of his time and energy — and yet it pierced her with joy, too, to watch him so animated, speaking so unselfconsciously of the passion that was all the rest of his life outside this house.

        

         Then, when their stomachs were groaning and not a single thought of dessert could be faced, Mrs. Stroud sent in her pièce de résistance, a featherweight  mountain of apple-snow, chilled and sharp and sweet with the last hoarded Bramleys from last year and the egg-whites beaten by those capable elbows without mercy till they shone whiter than clouds, all folded together and dissolving in the mouth into the very approximation of heaven-on-earth, or at least ambrosia.       

            She followed it  in, wiping her hands on her apron, not so much anxious — she had more faith in her abilities than that — but to witness their response now the meal was crowned and complete — and to be sure they had had enough.

 

         It was like coupling, really, she thought, looking around the table:  being in bed or at dinner, the same thing, more or less ——  wanting to see that satisfaction on their faces as well as feeling it upon her own, her gift taken and appreciated, hunger sated and fulfillment offered at her hands.

         “Food of the gods, Mrs. Stroud!” cried Pelham, scraping the last of it from his dish reluctantly.  

         “Glad to know you liked it, sir,” she said.   

         “Liked it!  Good God, my dear woman, if anything could keep me ashore it would be the thought of your table — ”  here his eyes met Sophie’s, and the thought they shared went unspoken but not unheard  —— “well, your table and the joy of being here with my family!”

        

         The candles blazed, the chairs scraped back, the diners dabbed at their lips with snowy napkins, relaxing into stories and laughter, and Mavis thought that she had never felt so contented in all her life.

        

        

 

Pellie’s World (ii)

 

         Later, in the dimness of the night-room, Pellie’s world fed him and sang to him.  He had spent the evening between dozing and the rough-and-ready arms of the curly-headed one with the odd footsteps.  There had been singing, plenty of it, and his world had sat where he could watch her at the box-that-made-sweet-sounds, and made them.  Its black-and-white teeth fascinated him, the arrangement of them, her hands moving over it. 

Now at last in the middle of the night she was restored to him, his very own world, and he reveled in her completely, made her his again.  Normally, he would have let sleep steal over him, afterwards;  but this time he lay quiescent.  Things were not the same as they always were:  the hard one was in his world’s bed!  

        

         She laid him down to sleep, back in his crib, close beside her, and he lay and watched through the bars as the hard one and his world went from being two people into one.  Pellie’s world made soft sounds in her throat, ones he didn’t know, but the cadence of them stole his breath so that he almost wanted to cry, but didn’t, so as to hear her make more of them.  She did, holding the hard one in her arms and even letting him drink at her breast, where no-one came but Pellie himself. 

Then the hard one started to fuss — why, when he was in the place that takes away all fussing? — but he did, and she soothed him.  But the hard one only fussed louder and the shape of him was hard too as he climbed on top of Pellie’s world, covering her altogether, his shoulders and back all angled, so different from the soft round shape of his world in the night. 

Pellie watched the sharp movements get sharper, the hard one fussing in a harsh tone that stirred in his own little chest — fussing, fussing — until the fussing turned to a cry just the way his own fussing did.  The hard one called out loud, now, suddenly still; and then his world held the hard one in her arms and rocked him, just as she did for Pellie when the cries were his.    

         And, just as when Pellie cried, the hard one snuggled into her all-encompassing embrace, and was soothed, then, and fell asleep with his mouth at her breast.

        

         Pellie stared;  but everything was silent, and his world lay still, and her face was soft, and its glowing look enfolded him too, in the shadows:  all must be right, if she looked so peaceful.  He could feel the peace in his little body.   His eyelids grew heavy, then, and he did not fight their descent any more.  All was well, and so he let sleep claim him too.

                 

        

        


 

 

24.  Mavis

 

Mavis wanted to be present, when her parents should discuss the vital matter of where they were to live now that the French were beat at sea, for the time being anyway — at least until they could build more ships to replace all the ones papa and the admiral had sunk at Trafalgar (though she did feel sorry for their sailors who had to be killed, but it was their own fault for firing upon papa).  For now, he said, his duties took him up and down the Channel and across to the West Indies, not into the Mediterranean any more.      

         It seemed most unfair that such a momentous decision was to be settled without her input.  Why, it was not as if she had no say in the matter!  She fully understood the desireability of a return to England.  After all, if it meant seeing more of papa, she would have removed to Tartary itself, and braved Cerberus to get there. 

But where they should settle — what amenities it should have, what she could not live without — these must surely be taken into consideration!  There had to be hills, and water, and a town with shops that sold everything she might need, and interesting children to play with (not sissies) — a school where she would never ever be whipped across the palms of her hands, no matter how far she forgot her tongue and let it run away with her, and — and — and here they were telling her she must let them discuss it without her — and talking about drains!

                 

         “Pa-pa!”   she cried, “you are forever sending me for walks now you are home!  It’s not fair!”   

         “Oh.”   Her papa’s eyebrow lifted in that way that made her want to smack him and hug him all at once.  “My goodness, Mavis, and I had felt so sure that you would want to go—”       

         “Well I don’t!” she cried —  

         “—that I had asked Mr. Hastings to present himself here at ten o’clock sharp and accompany you.  Should I send and tell him not to come?”

        

         Mavis looked at him then, and the powers of speech deserted her.  “Hm?” he said.  Finally she squeaked: “You did what?  When?”    

         “Ten o’clock — he will be here very soon, I daresay!”      

         “But I haven’t washed my face!” she cried. 

         “Why, Mavis,” remonstrated her mother gently, “you led me to believe that you had, when I asked you — at least you did not say that you had not — and I did say you should put on your best frock.”

         “I thought that was because papa was home!” she cried.  “This is different!”      

         “Oh,” said Pelham, “so a captain is not worthy of a clean face, whereas the mere threat of a lieutenant  may command one!  Hm?”      

         “Papa!”  she cried, and flung her arms around his neck.  He held her, returning her embrace with just the right amount of squeeze.  “Have a care to your heart, Mavis,” he whispered before she withdrew.

        

         She fled upstairs to her room to recreate her toilette now that the day had suddenly turned upside-down into a rainbow-spangled tide of further joy.  “Mrs. Stroud!” she panted, “oh!  Mrs. Stroud, did you iron my new apron?  The one with the lace cutwork?”

        

         “I did that, Miss,” said that paragon of domestic support, “got up early to do it, I might add.  And I was right pleased to see you ’aven’t got no stains on it yet, neither!”

        

         “Oh, thank you!” cried Mavis, breathless, rushing past her on the stairs.  

         “I put it on your bed, Miss,” said Mrs. Stroud after her as she reached her room and slammed the door behind her. 

        

         Oh no!  She must not wake Pellie — “Sorry!” she called-out, putting her head around the door once more.       

         “Ssshhh!” said her mother.   

         “Let her be,” said Pelham. “If he wakes, I’ll take him.”      

         “What, give him another chance to spit-up on your uniform?”      

         “Once spitten, twice shy,” he articulated crisply, with a smile; “will you not give me a muslin for protection, if I ask nicely?”

        

         “I will give you anything you ask for, Edward,” she smiled back — “have I not always?” 

         “Yes,” he said, and his eyes spoke with feeling.  She watched the lines at the corners of them, and wondered how she could be in the same room with him and not rush to kiss them every time they changed — and the ones across his forehead, and  those at the sides of his mouth, too.

        

         They had breakfasted on kippers and fluffy scrambled eggs, with button-mushrooms sautéed in butter and mountains of toast-and-butter and Mrs. Stroud’s bitter-orange marmalade.  Every kind of satiation filled Pelham as it never could at sea:  he felt slower and kinder than he had in months.  God forbid the enemy should see him as he was at home — for this was another side of him entirely from the tiger they knew, who stalked his quarter-deck with narrowing eyes, looking where to strike for deadliest effect.

        

         It was not that he had to be one there and the other, here;  the relief of home was that it could encompass both.  He must put away the tender side, at sea, and be the tiger only.  His men felt his duty, his very great care of them, but its warmest depths must stay within his breast, or else they should not fear him as they must:  love & respect alone were not reason enough for them to obey him.  Here he could be himself without thinking what that self might be,  without concealment.  The trained killer could step back — though not leave entirely — while the father admired his posterity and the lover found his fulfillment at last. 

         Not to mention his stomach.  Admiral Viscount Lord Nelson enjoyed a fine table for so scrawny a frame as he had, and they had had fresh supplies beyond anything he would have shipped aboard Indomitable, for sure:  a wanton extravagance to beggar any pleasure he had taken in living well while at sea up till now.  But there was a difference, between that food and this;  and this was better. 

            “In truth, Sophie, Mrs. Stroud is no finer a cook than you, my love,” he said, “but I must confess I do love to sit and dine with you upon the fruits of her labours!” 

         “Yes,” said Sophie, smiling, “I do know what you mean, although I shall forever treasure that morning you let me make breakfast for you.”    

         “And fall asleep waiting for it!” he smiled.  “Did  you kiss me, to wake me up?  I never asked you — but I was sure that you had!”

        

         She nodded.   

         “I knew it!” he said. “God, I felt it, and my heart thumped thinking that you had — and then more than my heart, the more I thought about it ——!” 

         “I couldn’t help myself,” she said.   

         “You still can’t,” he said, “thank God! — and nor can I.”   

        

Heaven knew where this exchange might have led, if it had not been ten o-clock exactly, the church-clock striking it down the hill from them, and Mr. Hastings’  knock at the door upon its last stroke.  Stroud opened it, grinning from ear to ear to see his officer and protégé looking so dressed-to-the-nines and fit, not to mention his sparkling hazel eyes a-looking over Stroud’s shoulder in search of a glimpse of the baby.  Then Pelham filled the hallway, slight though he was in size and the hallway twice its former width:  but to Hastings’  eyes the hall was full nevertheless. 

Stroud nodded to his former (and forever) divisional officer, still grinning;  tugged his forelock in his old salute, and then slipped around the side of the captain and stumped away towards the back of the house as quietly as his peg would allow on the gleaming stone flags.  Hastings wondered if it would be inappropriate to smile just yet.     

         “Sir,” he said.

        

         “Ah, Hastings!”  cried Pelham, his voice mellow as Madeira and his eyes as warm a brown.  Still, he looked his lieutenant up and down, pleased to find him as smartly turned-out as ever he could have wished-for, and nodded:  “Hm? Hm!  You’ll do.”

        

         “Thank you, sir,”  said Hastings, his lips twitching.

         “I expect you’d like to see the other Pelham,” said Pelham, “but I believe he’s in the arms of Morpheus just at the moment.”   

         “They do spend plenty of time there, sir, as I understand these things — I would very much like to see him later, though — ”  

         “Indeed,” smiled Pelham, “Well you shall have another chance in due course, I daresay, unless his mother is feeding him — hm —”  — here he had the grace to flush, realizing the treacherous waters of embarrassment which his proud parenthood had all-but  led them into, though his colour rose not quite as deeply as Hastings’.

        

         “Is he like Miss Mavis, sir?  Or does he take after you?”   

         “Both, God help him,” said Pelham;  “come in!”    

          Hastings came into the drawing-room at the front of the house on the new side.  While it was too airy for the intimacy of the old back-parlour,  it yet had the calm he associated with anywhere that Sophie was, and was painted in just the same shade of blue he knew so well from Pelham’s old day-cabin aboard Indomitable.  (The one in Victory was far larger, and currently a butter-yellow with gold damask curtains at the windows:  wide and splendid, but less dear to both of them than had been the perfect elegance and intimacy of the Indy’s.)  

Flanking each of the two tall windows, white-gloss-painted shutters bore recent evidence of Stroud’s dab hand with a brush;  sunlight streamed in and picked out the intricacies of the blue-green Persian rug, the Greek-key dado around the edge of the ceiling.  “My goodness, sir, this is very pleasant,” he said — “quite a lot more space than before!”    

         “I should hope so too,” answered Pelham wryly, “given the ever-increasing size of this household!  Mind you, the latest addition is a treasure — aren’t you, Mrs. Stroud!”

        

         That lady’s cheeks took on a sharp wine-coloured stain;  she nodded her head curtly. “Kind of you to say so, sir,” she said.  Hastings tried not to stare at his former seaman’s bride, standing in the doorway, though she would have been a striking figure in any setting.  Statuesque and dignified, she had a baby’s napkin over her shoulder just now and a vase of flowers – marigolds? nasturtiums? - in her square, capable hands.

 “Just picked these for you an’ milady, sir,” she said, setting them down on a side-table Hastings recognized from the old house:  but some loving hand had smoothed and polished away its scratches, since the last time he had seen it, and it now had the glowing patina of a graceful middle-age, not the battered and worn-out look it had formerly had.  Not unlike the captain, he thought, and this made his mouth twitch again.

        

         “Miss Mavis is – er – putting the finishing touches on her toilette,” said Pelham wryly.  “I had thought she was ready, but that was before she heard you were expected — at which news she suddenly found it necessary to wash her face this morning.  I daresay she will be brushing her hair, too.”  The twinkle in his eyes gave the lie to his dry tone. 

         “I’m in no hurry, sir,” said Hastings: “it’s a beautiful day.  We have all the morning, to wander wherever she likes.”     

         “I expect she’ll have you scrambling all over the Upper Rock like a damned mountain-goat,” said Pelham, “so be warned!  Er – if you take her down into the town, sir — ” here he fished in his pocket, handed some coins over into Hastings’  palm including two half-crowns and a sovereign — “— I say, should you go down and not up, why, you may wish to get a lemonade for yourselves, or some little gift — she likes trinkets, sets a load of store by ’em — ”      

         “We have time for both, sir, I think,” said Hastings.

         “Ah, what it is to have young legs, to be sure,” smiled Pelham, “and all your wind –” though Hastings was the last person he could have fooled into believing him anything less than strong as a horse and perfectly fit:  he could be up the ratlines to the mast-head, even now, as quick as any of them;  quicker than some, and Hastings knew it.

        

         “Ah!  Mavis!” he cried, then, his face taking on an even greater warmth than Hastings had yet seen it wear:  “—there you are!  And very nice you look, too, my dear.  Here is Mr. Hastings, come to take you out.”

         Mavis came into the room shyly.  Hastings, who was used to her rushing at everything like a bull at a gate, was momentarily taken-aback.  From her letters she had sounded lively as a cricket, as always;  whence had come this tall girl with cast-down eyes and a little figure, to boot?  She looked up, then:  God, but she was a beautiful child.  Caramel skin, dusted with freckles – no warnings from Lady Davenport about her complexion could keep her out of the sun when she had a mind to be in it — topped with a mane of hair like spun toffee, so thick it could barely be confined by its blue ribbon, and to finish all, those dancing hazel eyes now fixed on his with all their former intensity.        

         “Good morning, Mr. Hastings,” she said.  “How – how do you do?”       

         His eyes widened:  “I am quite well, Miss Mavis — and yourself?”        

         “Oh!” she cried then, something giving way within her — he saw it plainly, the same moment he spoke to her — lifting the veil of diffidence and replacing it with a dazzling smile: “Never better — not in all my life — papa is home, and now you are here too — I am so very happy to see you!”  And he saw her cheekbones turning rose under the gold of her skin, like the blush upon an apricot, as she held out her hand to him.

        

         “It is perfectly lovely to see you, too, Miss Mavis,” he smiled back, taking her hand in his.  It was still square, though not as small as he remembered, and the nails were more carefully-kept, he noted.  He brought it briefly to his lips with the swiftest, lightest brush, as he would have Sophie’s.  Mavis’s indrawn breath was audible to all of them.  Pelham looked away before either of them should see the fond crease between his brows, and grow (heaven forbid) any more self-conscious.

        

Hastings bowed slightly, in releasing her hand.  The slight swell of her tender bosom under her eggshell-blue frock drew his eyes with the same sudden, fragile, unexpected beauty of wild-birds’ eggs glimpsed in the hedgerows of his Hampshire boyhood:  a very large lump came into his throat as he forced himself to look away.  God, she was but twelve:  what was he thinking!  He swallowed, knowing himself well enough to suspect his dreams would now be haunted by the sight. 

He had seen in that moment the woman she might be, one day;  and the vision disturbed him, profoundly.  He ought to be ashamed of himself…!  Surely he should feel tenderly amused, noticing this new surge of hers toward womanhood, not moved to his very marrow!  He realized he had been writing to her as if she was the same child he had left, a year earlier;  and she had been writing back to him as a peer. 

It is not familiarity with Stroud I should have been warning her about, he thought, but my self!  It will break her heart, if I should marry (not that he had any such plans, but her look told him she would brook no rival) —— I must be very, very careful not to hurt her, now, he told himself, since she has given me her regard.  Although God knows I did not ask for it;  nor deserve it! 

Suddenly his collar was too tight, his neckerchief squeezing him.  His face, he knew, was turning that tell-tale shade of pink:  and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be done about it.

        

         Sophie, who did not miss much, certainly did not overlook their confusion as she came into the room and into the circle of her husband’s arm.  “Thank you, Mr. Hastings,” she said.  She looked extremely well, roses in her cheeks, a song just behind her spoken words.  Pelham looked down at her fondly.  “My dear,” he said.  God, will I ever be so content?   wondered Hastings — they are like a single candle together. 

        

         “There is no special time you must return, Mr. Hastings,”  said Sophie;  “Mrs. Stroud has packed-up a lunch for you both, and a bottle of lemonade, and you really must enjoy this lovely day — and being on dry land again!”     

         Mavis sparkled.  “A picnic!  How lovely!  Then we must go all the way to the top — there is something wonderful up there I want to show you!”   

         “Bring him back in one piece, Miss,” said Pelham:  “First lieutenants are not two-a-penny, you know, and tall handsome ones cost even more — plus they are rarer than hen’s-teeth.”      

         “I thought you said ships’-surgeons were, papa,” she twinkled, “the time Mr. Hastings had to find you one with but two hours to spare!”    

         “Those too,” said her papa, “though the qualifications differ.”      

         Mrs. Stroud had returned with a leather bag.  It had a shoulder-strap: “I thought it would be easier-like,”  she said, “even if a basket would ’ave been prettier. No use if it don’t do the job, is it!”   

         “Thank you for your good sense, Madam,” said Hastings, taking it from her.  “Since I shall doubtless be the beast-of-burden here, I am doubly indebted to you!”    

         “You are not, so!” cried Mavis — “I’ll do my share!”       

         “Enjoy yourselves, ” wished her mother as they escaped through the front-door into the sunlit street; though there was little doubt of that.  “And now, my love,” — she turned to Pelham — “we must resume our talk of drains, before Pellie wakes.  They are so important, really they are!  I see you laughing at me, Edward, but I know what I am talking about!”

        

         “I should never presume to laugh at you, Sophie my love,” he said, “— most especially upon that – hm – head, as it were — I have no doubt that you do indeed know what you speak of,” — his mouth tried to contain a smile, and failed —  “and I bow to your superior experience in that department, my dearest, seeing as our drains in the Navy are very simple, consisting as they do of a hole over the side, whose edges one hopes fervently shall not be splintered, and that is the extent of their refinement — but can we not hold our conversation when you are feeding him, in a while?”

        

         She flushed.  “So soon —!  You are grown bold, Edward!” 

         “I have learned to take my chances where I may,” he smiled back at her:  “We are very rough-and-ready in the Navy, you know, or else we should not survive.”      

         “Oh, so this is a matter of life-and-death?’’

         “Absolutely,” he said, laughing, and then his eyes held hers and turned dark and very serious now:  “Yes,” he said softly, “it is —— it always is, where you are concerned, with me —— ”

         “How can I say no, then?” she replied.       

         “I sincerely hope that you won’t,” he whispered, his lips an inch from her neck now.

        

         She didn’t.

        

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

        

        

         “I knowed it,” pronounced Stroud, wielding his dish-towel in right seamanlike fashion in the kitchen.     

         “What?” snapped his wife, “at it again, are they? I’ll thank you not to leave all them suds on, ’Enry, it makes ’em a bloody sight ’arder to dry!  Now you just stop listenin’ and leave ’em in peace, Lord love ’em!”

         “No, I knowed, is what I’m sayin’!”

        

         “Knowed what?  Don’t take an eddy-cay-shun to spot what’s goin’ on there, then, does it, doctor!” she said tartly, drying a large plate with even more than her customary vim.  “Been goin’ on since Adam an’ Eve — longer, if them rumours are true as ’ow ’e ’ad another wife afore ’er!”   

         “What?” said Stroud, completely lost now. “’Oo?” 

         “Adam did, or so they say!  Lilith!  Or some such rum, ’eathen name — don’t you know nuffink?  Anyways, no surprises upstairs, so mind yer own business, Mister Stroud!”

        

         “Nah,” he said, “I ain’t talkin’ about now! Lor’ love ’em, I wouldn’t go listenin’ at no key-’oles!  Nah, I meant right at the start – years ago – when ’e ’ad us come up ’ere an’ fix ’er tank for ’er!” 

         “What?”       

         “That cistern” he said.  “I showed you!  All that nice workmanship, in that red oak case — we done that!  I told you!” 

         ‘What’s that got to do with anything?”      

         “It was the first time I seen ’er,” he said, “an’ straightaway I seen it all, see? I knowed, ’ow it was. An’ do you know why?”

        

         “Why?” she asked, curious in spite of herself, hoping he might be going to say something about her and how it had reminded him of her…

 “The look on ’er face,” he said.  “That an’ the fact we were up there at all.”       

         “I thought it was because you thought of me, ’Enry,” she said, sharp in her disappointment.  “Didn’t you tell me that, once?” 

         “You’re right, luv, I did!”  he grinned and chased her round the kitchen table.  “Ezzackly the way I felt about you!  That’s what I meant to say, an’ all!  So give us a kiss, for old times’ sake!”     

         “You are a bloody nuisance, ’Enry Stroud, sometimes,” she declared;  but did not refuse him.  They finished the breakfast-dishes together companionably, the warmth of his hand still felt by both of them where it had squeezed her ripe, full breast.

        

        

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

        

        

         By mid-morning Mavis counted this day as perhaps the happiest in her life, to date.  To start with, papa was home and safe and not leaving just yet.  Then there was the effect this happy event produced in her mamma, who seemed to have wings instead of feet and a sweet many-toned panpipe where her voice had been.  The atmosphere in the house was drenched in bliss as palpable as champagne. 

Even Pellie felt it, gurgling in his father’s arms and blowing bubbles of milk from the corners of his mouth at his mama’s breast.  The tart Mrs. Stroud had somehow lost her customary sharp edge – perhaps she had peeled it off with all the fruits and vegetables that had passed through her capable hands, on their way to be transformed for their table — although she feared this sounded disparaging:  “—what’s a tart, Mr. Hastings?” she asked, over their lunch, following this train of thought along like a porpoise plunging,  “— Why do the girls at school say it like an insult?”

        

         “Well, it is,” he said. 

         “But it’s a pie without a top!  Or something that tastes sharp — isn’t it?”

         “Yes,” — he bit his lip, grinning, “and it’s something else too, Mavis, which I suspect you have more than half an idea what.” 

         “A lady of the night?” said she.      

         “Just so,” he nodded.  “Now, look, speaking of which, that angel-of-mercy Mrs. Stroud has packed us an apple-tart!  Shall we eat it?”

        

         And the whole morning passed in just such light-hearted moments, in between her running ahead and waiting for him to catch up on the steep climb all the way to the top, where the wind wuthered and almost blew her over backwards and he had to grab a hold of her, holding on to her for a second before gently letting her go.

        

         The straits lay before them, the crinkled purple-brown of the Atlas mountains across in Africa, the green-gold mottled flanks of Spain already turning lion-coloured in the late spring heat.  Across the bay the town of Algeciras hugged the shore:  beyond, to the West, lay wave upon wave of sea all the way to Darien and Florida, El Dorado, Chesapeake and Popocatapetl and Brazil!  She made him tell her of all the places he had been, and what was unique about each of them:  not the boring abstractions such as who ruled them, but whether the donkeys were ill-treated, and what strange fruits he had to eat, and the names of their rivers and capes;  these she turned over and over in her mouth like fruit-stones.

        

         “Have you seen icebergs?’’ she quizzed him.

         Yes, he had, lots — more than aplenty, beautiful things though they were by day, he told her, green as glass and sheared into fantastic peaks and turrets, some of them, whole floating cathedrals —— but deadly ones, seeing as how the only thing you saw of them by dark was the white glimmer of waves breaking at the base, and so then they were on top of you on a moonless night—  

         Ohhhh! she breathed, seeing them, shivering from the chill of their too-close passage.

        

         And the blue-footed boobies, he went on, that wait for the seamen to walk up and club them over the head, the silly things (she did not like this!) – and the rocks miles out to sea that are whole bird-kingdoms, raucous and wheeling and alive with their countless wild wings:  and then there are the whales that spout — she wished one would spout upon her! — no, she didn’t, Miss, trust him, for it smelled so very foul, what with the whale been digesting nothing but fish, he was sorry to say —  and the solitary albatross;  and flying-fish, that come skimming up out of the water like streaks of turquoise flame, and land in the boat, honestly, truly, would he lie to her?

        

         And in turn she showed him the wild-fox’s lair, with its kits, in a fall of broken rock under the lee of a cliff;  and the place where the purple orchids nodded their beautiful heads;  and finally, when they had eaten lunch and were ready to descend again, she led him by a sheep-path across the tumbled slopes, via a hair-raising passage above a sharp escarpment,  to a yawning crack in the ground.  “Look inside,” she said. “You can get in, and then stand up, and when your eyes get used to the dark, you’ll see where to put your feet —— ”

        

         In he went, with only a little pushing, his shoulders being so much broader than hers;  and he stood up too far, cracked his head and sat down again.  She rubbed it better, filled with remorse for telling him he could stand-up, and then when he said it was perfectly all right, really it was, and she should not make such a big fuss over so little a thing,  she led him round a twisting corner or two, stooping, till the daylight could not penetrate;  sat him down again upon a bare damp outcrop;  rummaged in the bottom of the bag for the tinder-box she had brought, and the candle-ends.

 “Close your eyes,” she said.  He did so, and heard and smelt her striking the flint and the little flame coming to life – a sizzle, a hiss – and then the tiny faint snap of the candle wicks catching. She put one hand over his eyes, then — the touch brought another swift lump to his throat, as unexpected and intimate as it was — and then she breathed, her mouth by his ear, “now open them!”

          

         He did not know what he had imagined, but not this.  “My God!” he whispered.  A fantastic airy cavern, whose margins stretched away out-of-sight beyond the reach of the candle-light, filled with impossible banks of organ-pipes, frozen falls and ripples and petrified icicles and columns and tree-trunks of stone — ochre, red, orange, gold, brown, moss-green….  Oh!  he breathed, looking all around;  and from behind the shade of the tin candle-holder, whence she could see him perfectly but he her not at all, Mavis watched the expressions upon his face:  drank in her fill of them as he stared open-mouthed all around him, as if in prayer.

        

         She had never been able to look at him one-tenth so long, in all her life till now, without seeming to stare; had had to feed her hungry heart with scraps of him, a moment cracked wide-open with his smile here, another made sweetly sober by his pensive look there.  The beauty of the cave was nothing besides this treasured vista of his face.  She felt like a thief, for bringing him here so she could see it;  for she had planned it all, upstairs, hurrying into her clean apron, once she knew he would be hers for a whole morning. 

         “This is the most — extraordinary place I have ever seen!” he said, his tones still hushed, as if it were sacrilege to raise his voice in here.       

         “Isn’t it, though,” she said.

         “Who knows about this?”    

         “A shepherd boy showed me,” she said.  “It’s hard to get to, so — not many people, I don’t think.  It’s sort of hidden, because of the way you have to come around that steep bit — ”

         He agreed, not wishing to reveal the cost to him in spirit of following her round the margin of the cliff, those few yards with little but air on three sides of them, and the scree falling away beneath waiting to turn his ankles.   He would rather have been at the mast-head in a roaring gale.  The thought of having to return the same way made him feel faintly queasy;  but he would not spoil her pleasure for the world, and determined to face it manfully:  it would soon be over with.  (Or else he would, and then his cares would be over too.)

         The cave ravished him into silence from the sheer beauty of it.  She let the candle burn down to nothing.  In the dark, emboldened, she kissed him on the mouth – a dry flutter like a moth’s-wing,  followed by a gasp and then her voice, suddenly small:  “I’m sorry, I shouldn't have — don’t tell papa —”

        

         “Mavis,” he said, “it is not your papa I am concerned for.”

        

         In the sooty velvet blackness – darker for the candle having guttered – it seemed easier to talk to him.  “What, then?” she asked. “I really do beg your pardon, it was wrong of me, only I wanted to so much —  Oh, God, I never meant to – it was supposed to be a secret ——  and then you looked so beautiful, and I couldn’t help it, truly I couldn’t —!”

        

         “Hush,”  he said.  She hushed.  He took her hand, in the dark.  “Mavis, you are a still a girl, sweetheart, and I am – a young man.”      

         She could not argue with this.

         “Don’t love me,” he said, “not that way — not yet.”        

         “It’s far too late for that,” she said.  

         “But I’ll hurt you,” he whispered, wrenched by the truth of this.  

         “I’ll risk it,” she replied staunchly.  

         “We will go outside and be twelve-year-old Mavis, my captain’s daughter, and Lieutenant Hastings, and we won’t forget this – but there will be an end of it, for now, Mavis.”

         “Please,” she said.    

         “Sweetheart—” he sighed.  “I – I must have your promise, Mavis, don’t you see?  You mustn’t care for me like this, not now!  Perhaps not ever — I am eight years older than you!”       

         “I am a little girl to you,” she mumbled. “I know it.  But I won’t be, one day.”    

         “No,” he said, “you won’t. And that will be then;  and this is now.  And there are a lot of years, in between.”   

         “I know you can’t promise —”      

         “My God, no!” he said.  “That would be folly — and not fair to you or to me!”  

         “But I won’t ask you to, if you just kiss me one more time.  To keep instead of a promise.”      

         “Mavis, no!  You’re a child — it would be wrong of me!”  

         “It’s dark,” she said.  “Kiss the girl I’m going to be when I’m sixteen.”     

        

And so he did, because he could not think how to refuse.  And then he did not want to refuse, and his lips lingered chastely on hers a moment longer.  Feeling it, she took his hand and pushed it before he could stop her against that eggshell-breast under her frock — “don’t forget!” she whispered, her mouth trembling, tasting of apples under his, and then saltwater;  and then she pushed away from him and he heard her scrambling down the tunnel to the entrance;  and a few, half-choked sobs;  and finally her old Mavis-voice, the mischief-maker, the explorer, the mast-climber:  “Come on!” she called, only a little shakily, “are you going to take all day!?”        

        

He was the more shaken, by far.     

         Outside, she exclaimed;  in the dark, while they talked, he had bled all over his white shirt and facings.  “Oh, well,” he said, “it won’t be the first time!”       

         She looked all through his thick, dark hair — she had  to, didn’t she!? — but could only find the tiniest scratch;  it had stopped bleeding, now, and so she tried to clean the worst of it  up with lemonade upon a napkin, at least the trickle on his cheek.  She made him lick the cloth, the way her mother did, and scrubbed at it till it came off. 

Out here in the sunlight she was just a little girl again, and content to let it be so.  He could scarcely believe it had happened at all, except for the very sharp pain in his heart that he must be a source of such hurt to her, one day.  She kept her word to him, though, now, acting as if nothing had happened, as if she had not just made him betray his captain’s trust and perhaps her own lion’s heart into the bargain.  Like a banner in her soul blazed the knowledge that she had made him blush deeper than she had seen his damson-and-cream cheeks turn yet.

         They got past the bad place;  and so, eventually, home.

        

         Her mother sat in the old parlour, in the rocking-chair nursing her brother:  Pelham got up from where he had been sitting on a stool at her feet, his head resting against her lap on the other side — Hastings had glimpsed it;  melted — came out into the hallway, to greet them.  “Good God!” he said.  ‘What have you done to him?”  

         “It’s nothing, sir,” protested Hastings, flushing all over again.  “I hit it on a rock in a cave, sir.  No harm done.”  

         “Maybe not to your thick skull,” muttered the captain disgustedly, “but I’m afraid we can’t say the same for your uniform!”

        

         Mrs. Stroud was summoned, and got him out of his coat and weskit and shirt.  Mavis glimpsed him sitting in the kitchen bare-chested:  oh, but how smooth and silky he was —   and her own cheeks grew very hot indeed, which did not escape her father’s notice as he passed her in the hallway.  “Mavis, go and tidy yourself up,” he said, more sternly than he felt, but with a real edge of concern. 

One of the captain’s shirts was found for the lieutenant, and the bloodstains in his britches scrubbed-at with lemon-juice and baking-powder and chalk — ditto the white facings on his uniform.  Within a quarter of an hour he was already half-way restored to respectability, if not the splendour in which he had arrived;  although the bruise upon his heart was a great deal more stubborn: its traces would not be eradicated for many a day.

         Mr. Stroud’s bride was not one for idle chatter.  In particular, she did not seem to feel that silence between two people was automatically an awkward thing in need of redress.  She took one look at his dazed face and eyes that seemed to focus outside her kitchen altogether, and gave him a cold wet towel for the lump on his head.  Then she rubbed at him and his clothes in quiet efficiency.  As he sat there under her brisk ministrations, he examined his heart and his conscience:  what were his feelings for this child?  Oh, what had he done here!  — had he done anything, or was it she? 

He knew already that her joie-de-vie drew him like a flame:  in all his sober anguishing, its light cut straight through to his soul.  She illuminated things he had never truly seen, till he saw them with her eyes:  the icebergs, the bird-islands – now all of these were inextricably linked with her in his mind, as were the hundred-and-one other things he had taken such pleasure in describing for her, in all his letters.

         Their letters, that had come to mean so much to him.  The thought of giving them up twisted in him.  But he would do it, if it would be better for her, to do so.  What did he know about hero-worship?  Enough to know that this was not it.  What would he miss, then, if he did?

         Her spirit - so bold, so bright.  If their situations had been reversed, would he  have dared to kiss her?  Never!  She did not lack for courage, to be sure:  a quality he admired with all his heart, knowing himself wanting. Pelham had it – the swift, raw kind, not like his own brand of careful bravery that must be screwed-up out of fear and made to override it.   Yes, that was it:  she was fearless.  And indefatigable.

         Had he encouraged her?  Was he to blame, for this mess?  For so he saw it, now that she had shown her hand.  Only so far as he had allowed himself to be warmed by her spirit.  He realized with sudden anguish that she was the first new person to care for him – and tell him so – since he had lost his mother.  What was it about Mavis, and her mother?  These Pelham women – for so he thought of them now, bound-up as they were with the captain in his mind —?  That they dared to love, and declare it? 

He felt humbled, then:  unworthy before Mavis, before the thought of her, even, all of twelve years old though she was.  She is my equal, if not my mistress, in that, he thought:  she knows more about loving than I have ever guessed-at; and about facing the truth — and telling it.

He realized he were approaching all of this turmoil as if it could be solved, like a problem in navigation, when in fact these racing reaches of the heart had nothing to do with tables and fixed points, and were more dangerous, more terrifying, than the stormy unpredictable sea.  She is a child —!  said his rational mind.  And he had betrayed her trust.

 

Then call her friend, said his heart, and be one to her.   And don’t look ahead;  keep his eyes fixed firmly on today and the next day and the next, and on whatever they should bring.  He could not imagine, in that moment, meeting another human being whose spirit appealed to him half so much.

Pelham eyed him strangely; brought him a glass of brandy.  Hastings drank it gratefully.

        

         When the baby had finished nursing, he was brought out for Hastings’  admiration — duly and most sincerely offered.  He was a bonny babe, there was no doubt of that:  with his father’s brown eyes and his mother’s sweet mouth.  There was no doubt about the restless energy with which he kicked his legs, though, nor the insistence he summoned when it came to expressing his desires:  these were straight from his father, untempered by any of Sophie’s gentleness, and there was a deep flame in that wide, velvety gaze that put Hastings most uncomfortably in mind of occasions when Pelham senior had had occasion to call him on the carpet with very real displeasure in his tone, even while those dark eyes shone with affection and pride, nailing him nonetheless.  It was quite uncanny.  “Oh, he’s like you, sir,” he smiled, shaking his head, “the very image — it’s quite alarming!”

        

         “Alarming? Why so, Mr. Hastings?”

         “Your eyes, sir, in that little bit of a face — you being my commanding officer, and everything — and there he is looking up at me with the self-same expression, sir, as if he is all ready to order me up to the mast-head for slacking, or to tell him our position, sir!”  

         Pelham laughed:  the longest Hastings had ever seen or heard him; had to wipe his eyes.  “You could be right,” he said, “I hadn’t seen it, but —”       

         “Oh, yes, Edward,” said Sophie, coming up behind her husband and putting her arms unselfconsciously around his waist – a thing she never would have done aboard ship, thus making Hastings feel like part of the family — “he is so like you, my love!”      

         “Hm,” said Pelham, “Hm. Is he!  Is he, indeed!”  — the pride in his voice as deep and as old as the sea.

Mavis sat half-way up the stairs,  watching all of all of this, in hiding, her heart aching and tender and bubbling all at the same time, and tried to decide if the happiest day of your life could also be the most painful, and still be both at once.

        

Ò

 

25.  Two Painful Interviews

 

Victory, At Sea

14th June, 1806

Dear Mavis——

        

         I do not think I have ever set out to write a more awkward — let me say difficult — letter.  Whatever I write, I fear it will bring a look of hurt and disappointment to your face.  And please believe me when I tell you that I do care, deeply, what feelings are written upon that — ”

 Oliver Hastings paused, looked up for a moment;  saw it, so very clearly;  winced;  continued:  “—lovely slate.  Here — I shall say it but the once, and then we may – if you wish – go on without reference to it.  But you must know that I cannot in good conscience continue to correspond with you, if I do not say this.

My dear Mavis, then, let me be a friend to you only.  For now.   For a very good while.

I shall delight no less than ever in receiving any words that may come into my hand and heart from yours. I would never claim that your letters and your friendship do not matter to me, for they do — very much so.  And certainly you have my word that I shall reply.

And there we must leave it, for now, Mavis, and very probably for ever after.  Do not ask any more of me than that, or you will hurt us both in forcing me to remind you that I cannot give it.

         In case you are feeling very foolish just now, let me also say that I am honoured beyond all telling by your regard for me — I do not laugh at it, far from it! — I should weep, sooner — ”  — here he put the ball of his thumb to the inner corner of his eye, to carry away a fresh wet streak that had formed there.  For what?  For her;  for the thought of hurting her tender feelings — for himself, that he must. What would mitigate this?  Anything?  Without leading her on, in any way? 

But it had happened, and it meant the world to her, he knew that much;  and she would be thinking of that moment in the cave, as would he, for a very long time to come.  Let her not think it meant any less to him;  that he brushed it aside carelessly, a moment of insignificance.   “—and perhaps it will please you to know that I have in my life taken a kiss or two;  but that yours was the first I had ever been given.  And whatever may happen to us from now on, that will always be true.

         I think there will be many tears for you here, Mavis, though I wish there were not.  I must ask you to forgive me, then, for having encouraged you.  Your affection meant a very great deal to me and I did not think until it was too late that to accept it might be unwise. 

         But it is my dearest wish that you will for ever allow me to call my self

Your friend, Oliver Hastings.

        

Hastings folded the sheet of paper and carefully lit the sealing-wax, dropped a dark-red blob upon its crisp, creamy surface. Thought of Mavis’s square, capable, tender hands trembling as they broke it open.  Swallowed, painfully.

 

Having written it, an ordeal in itself, he faced another.  He could no more have sent it to her without telling Pelham than he could balance on his head upon the pinnacle of the mast — bearing in mind his horror of heights.  He owed his captain that much, as his captain and as a friend also.  It would be deeply wrong to allow this exchange, so serious in its nature, without Pelham being at least somewhat apprised of what was the matter between them.  He shrank from the idea of informing,  but not to do so seemed even worse.  He had taken to heart the lesson of his first sortie;  he was under orders, even.  Pelham expected the truth from him, and it was not his decision whether to withhold it.  He would not betray his captain in word, thought or deed, if he could help it.  He had leave to write to Mavis, yes;  not to break her heart.

The matter had troubled him greatly.  He wondered what on earth he could say, and how to protect Mavis from Pelham’s disapproval — wrath, even, if the whole sorry truth came out.  Perhaps he could simply sketch the situation and ask for Pelham’s forgiveness?  

 

         He tidied his neckerchief then, stood with care (the deck above was low, and his brow wore many a bruise from his straightening absent-mindedly after sitting for a long time) — and, stooping, passed through the gundeck and on towards the captain’s cabin.  Victory  was making spanking way just now, tossing the wave aside from her glossy black bow like a young filly, not the grand old lady she was.  Her keel laid down decades earlier, she was still a marvellous vessel.  Not the Indomitable — but he had come to feel an affection for her nonetheless, as one may love two people in very different ways.

        

The brief pleasure occasioned by noting the ship’s progress gave way once more to a bruised certainty of having done wrong:  and of having to reveal that he had done so.  Heartsick, he raised his knuckles to knock at Pelham’s door.

         “Come!” came that crisp reply.

         Hastings took a deep breath, bowed his head, and entered.

         Pelham looked up from his desk, where he had been going-over the ship’s log.  “Ah.  Mr. Hastings.  What is it?”  There was affection in his gaze, and curiosity.

         “Sir, I do not know if I do right by coming to you, but there is — a matter — most nearly concerning you, sir — you and yours — on which I cannot stay silent, and remain under your command.  Sir.”

         Pelham frowned;  rubbed the crease between his brows;  sat back in his chair.  “Am I to be concerned, Mr. Hastings?”

         “I hope not, sir — not unduly.  But I cannot keep it a secret from you.”

         Pelham stood, went to his sideboard.  “I cannot imagine what would trouble your conscience so, Mr. Hastings, but it seems to be causing you a great deal of unease.  Here, sir, let me pour us both a glass of brandy.  I may need fortification before I hear whatever it is you so fear to tell me.”

         “Thank you, sir,” said Hastings, miserably.  He wanted to get it over with.

         “Sit,” said Pelham, making a motion with his head towards the great table with its elegant phalanx of rosewood chairs.

         “I’d rather stand, sir — ”

         “I had rather sit,” said Pelham testily, “and I have no wish to crane my neck to see your expression, sir. Will you not sit down?”

         “Of course, sir,” answered Hastings, taking a chair across the corner from his captain.

         “It’s Mavis, isn’t it,” said Pelham, relieving him of the necessity of broaching the subject.

 

         “How did you know, sir?”

         “Give me some credit!” said Pelham.  “I shouldn’t have asked you to take her out again.  I hadn’t realized myself, till I saw her with you — and then it was too late, you were committed.  Upon my orders.  Or — request, at least. You could hardly have refused.”

         Hastings sighed deeply.  Pelham waited.  After a moment or two he could stand the suspense no longer, and prompted his lieutenant with a sharp, low  “What happened?”

         His directness took Hastings off guard;  he had been going to talk about affections, and jumping the gun, and the likelihood that Mavis would be hurt by it all.

         “She asked me not to say, sir,” he blurted out.

         “Good God!” cried Pelham then, “you are trying my patience, sir, as much of it as I determined to summon when we sat down to this!  She is my daughter, and I am your captain, sir, and you would do well to remember that much, at least!  You had better tell me all of it:  now.”

         Hastings briefly passed his hands over his face.  Pelham did not overlook the weariness there, and the regret.  But there was no guilt or shame, thank God, only a very great sadness.   Thank God again.

         “She is but a child, sir.”

         Pelham heaved a sigh of his own. “Do you think I am not aware of that fact?”

         “You know it, sir, and so do I.  And she must recognize the truth of it as well, sir.  But she does not wish to — to act accordingly.”

         “Tell me something I don’t know,” said Pelham.

         “Sir, she — has a regard for me surpassing that of a child.  Sir.  I am sorry, sir.”

         It was Pelham’s turn now to rub his face, especially around the eyes.  Mavis’s face rose up in front of him, the look upon it when Hastings came into its purview.  He had seen that look before: knew it well, oh so very well, and more dearly yet:  it was Sophie’s look, when he was by.

         “Tell me you haven’t compromised her,”  said Pelham, “or made her any promises you couldn’t keep.”

         “Of course not, sir!”  Hastings’  colour rose, now, that Pelham could even think such a thing. “Good Lord, sir, your daughter — !  why, I should not treat even a stranger’s child so!  Let alone yours, entrusted to me — my dearest responsibility, sir!”

        

“That is well,” said Pelham, and drained his glass;  stood up to pour himself another.  Hastings had barely sipped at his.  “And so, what?  What is the subject of this anguished visit?  Nothing is news to me, so far.”

         “Merely that I thought — you should know — she is in love with me, sir, and I fear — will be hurt, greatly — because I am so much older, and — life is short, sir, and — I cannot be all she wants me to be, sir.”

         “In love?” Pelham raised his eyebrows. “She is twelve!”

         “I do not know what else to call it, sir,” murmured Hastings.

         “But you care for her — wellbeing.”

         “Sir!  I would give my life in a moment for her safety, sir — for any of your family.”

         “I know,” said Pelham, “that’s why I have not raised my voice and sent you out of here a midshipman.”

         “But, sir, you entrusted her to me and I failed you, sir.  I didn’t see this coming — I thought she loved me as a child does, and I – I allowed it, sir, I encouraged it even.”

         “No more than I did,” said Pelham.

         Hastings dropped his head in shame.

         “Be kind,” said Pelham, softly —— helplessly.

         Hastings looked up at him.  “Sir – no reproach?”

         “You seem to be doing a perfectly adequate job in that department all by yourself, Mr. Hastings. What else can I ask of you, but that?”

         “Why, to tell me I shouldn’t have — ”

         “I thought you had done nothing wrong, except to be the object of her — feelings.”

         “I hope I have not, sir,”  said Hastings stiffly.

         “That at least I should have hoped for from you!  And I am no less guilty than you, for failing to see it. Or for seeing it and underestimating it, to be more accurate.  I  put you in that position, Mr. Hastings.  The responsibility — the blame — is mine.  No, don’t argue with me — I encouraged it.  It seems to be a matter for us both of — failing to shut the stable door, before the horse – er – bolted.”

         “Sir,” mumbled Hastings, wretchedly.

         “Lord knows, if she had been a few years older, it would have been my dearest wish for you — as much as I think of you — sir, I said do not interrupt me!”

         Hastings let the brandy light a path of fire all the way to his belly.

         “She may get her way yet,” said Pelham softly, “if I know anything about Mavis.”

         “Sir, I —”

 

         “Tell her the subject is out-of-bounds indefinitely,” said Pelham.  “And then be careful —— ”

         “Sir!”

         “ ——  for your own heart,” finished the captain, looking down for a moment into his lap, and then up again at this lad who was almost as dear as a son to him.

         Hastings met his commander’s brown eyes.  They were sad and deep-set just now, slightly bloodshot (they had had a gale the night before, and no-one aboard had had more than a scrap of sleep, least of all the captain) ——  and very knowing.  “Sir,” he said, “I am — so sorry.”

         “Don’t be,” sighed Pelham. “She is a passionate soul, I think – old beyond her years, God knows — there are some spirits who are made, to love passionately, I think ——— ”  (his own Sophie being just another such, he thought, with a leap of gratitude for that fact, and for the miracle of its object being himself) —— “if it were not to be you, sir, then who knows who she might have lit on!  At least you are worthy of her feelings for you — and I can trust you, with her — so — it could be worse, yet.”

         “Thank you, sir,”  said Hastings, feeling the depth of this compliment.

         “And, Hastings — keep me informed; and if you find yourself set on going in another direction — ”

         “Sir —?”

         “Wanting to run after another woman, dammit — ”

         “Oh, yes, sir;  sorry, sir — ”

         Pelham hid a smile here,  privately pleased that Hastings had not immediately caught his meaning —  “If you do — have to let her down — for God’s sake tell her yourself — don’t let her hear about it elsewhere.”

         “You have my word, sir.”

         “Very good,” said Pelham, “thank you, Mr. Hastings.  You are dismissed, sir.”

        

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

        

         It was some weeks later that Hastings found himself summoned to his captain’s cabin, not long after they had hailed the Eurydice bound for Tenerife out of Malta, Port Mahon, and Gibraltar, and exchanged mail with her.   They were on a heading for Funchal, and he could see birds soaring overhead, a living signal they were not far from land. 

         He felt sure that the summons had to do with Mavis;  and he was not mistaken.

         Pelham stood with his back turned as Hastings entered.  He held a waxed-linen packet sewn with bookbinder’s thread by loving hands (and a stout thimble).  His usual sheaf of letters were spread out;  some still nestled inside the wrappings.  Sophie never missed an opportunity to tell her husband of the progress of their son, the books she had read lately, the weather, their latest domestic adventures, &c., &c.  — all sprinkled with a goodly helping of missing him, to be sure, although she tried so very hard to express this as a positive thing inasmuch as it shewed the extent to which he was beloved, how welcome he would be upon his next shore-leave, her pride in him, and so forth. 

         Mavis usually included a dashing drawing or two, in her bold hand and slightly slapdash execution, which made up in gusto what it might have lacked in subtlety.  This latest packet was no exception:  Hastings spied a gaily-colored compass-rose and a rather crude but jaunty pony-and-trap upon Pelham’s desk, where usually nothing more colorful or thrilling than charts and logs resided, and punishment-lists, and accountings of the ship’s-stores.  They looked perfectly glorious, there — a breath of Mavis’s own dashing spirit blown all the way into this cabin filled with cares and responsibilities.

        

“Ah, Mr. Hastings,” said Pelham absently, looking up as he entered.  He turned.  “For you, I believe.”

         A slender missive, specially by the standards of Mavis’s customary bulging effusions of everything that came into her jackdaw’s head.  But the hand was unmistakeable.  Pelham held it out to him without further comment.

        

It had occurred to Hastings, after their last painful interview upon the subject, that it had never crossed the mind of either of them, captain or lieutenant, to say casually:  “oh, she’ll get over it!”  Why not?  Surely this was exactly the kind of thing one said, under these circumstances:  a youthful case of hero-worship, an infatuation, a crush.  It would have been a relief to both of them, could they but have put it down to just such a passing fancy — talk about waiting it out, till her affections should light on the next pretty face in uniform that came across her sights — or turn to the reading of romantic stories, or a new puppy. 

But neither of them even attempted to dismiss it in so cynical, cavalier a fashion:  because they knew her too well, he thought.  Oh, there was the chance that she would go on from this love to a more mature one, elsewhere;  everything was possible.  But he doubted whether she would ever just “get over it”, or be able to move on, without first knowing the worst kind of heartache. 

Another father, together with a different young male object of such tender affections, he suspected, might have taken it more lightly, at least for their own sakes:  it was a tribute to Mavis’s loyal spirit that they did not — had not — could not.

         So here was her first answer to him after she had dared all and confessed her love (and been rebuffed).  Many an adult would shrink before the task of writing such a letter, and addressing so sharp an injury to their amour-propre.  He was not sure he could have done it himself, under the circumstances:  would he not have run away, hidden and licked his wounds?  A child’s love it might be, perhaps, but no less deeply felt for that.  Hastings remembered the piercing intensity of all his emotions and experiences at that age, before life had built its armour round his soul. 

         And now Pelham was holding it out to him, sealed still, clearly no thought in his mind of reading it first and deciding whether Hastings might get it after his review, or even at all.

        

Hastings saw anew the extent of the trust which Pelham had placed in him:  its continuing to reside in him despite this difficult turn of events. 

         He took it, with a look at Pelham, who nodded back curtly.  His name was writ bold and with a hint of flourish. Clearly Mavis had been practicing her penmanship.  He wondered whether her spelling had also made such progress.  He split the seal with his thumb, opened and read it.

 It was not long, as he had surmised, though it did repeat itself rather. Not something I could have borne to write more than once, either, or to look it through, once I had written it, he thought.  And he saw Mavis’s ink-stained fingers,  and surmised the origin of the two or three watery blots it bore.

         Pelham was staring out of the stern-window.  Hastings wondered what it was costing him, not to be watching his own face just now.

         “Dear Lt. Hastings,”  it began, “first I must tell you I am Very Sorry for puting you on the Spot the way I did.  I shoud have waited and said Nothing.  I think the time woud have gone by faster that way.  Thogh I am not sorry about the two Kisses.  I will never be sorry about them even if my Enemys torchered me in Punishment.”  ( —Enemies? What enemies? thought Hastings.  He shook his head, biting his lip.)  “I shoud have asked for them under Folse pretensis, thogh, the Kisses I mean, not Took them as I did, so I coud have had them and not Scupered you.  I know I have put you in a real Bind.  You were kind enough to write to me of it very Nicely but I see what I did wrong.  I could have got you into Trouble.  Specialy with papa.  It was like you tryed to tell me about with Mr. Strowd when I didnt want to listen either, about him being Blamed for being too Familliar.  I was too Familliar with you.  I took Edvantige of your good Maners.  You coud not have said No to me without being very Cruell, wich you are not, and Rude, wich you are not either. My conduct was Selfish.  It woud have been better in a Grown womman but still too Bold.   I Owe you an Oppolligy Appollogy.  I woud not Hurt you or get you in Trouble for any thing.  I see now it was a dream I shoud have kept to my self.  You are so far Beyond me.  I see now a girl my age has no bisiniss kissing a Man of twenty.  Althogh I am only sorry for making you Uncomftable, never never never for kissing you.  I tell you this so as to be truthfull.  I hope I have not made you regret being my frend. If I coud help it, I woud, but I cannt.

         You are a kind person Mr. Hastings and I woud like to try to be Frends  Friends with you still.  If it does not Hurt you too much.  I would be very sad not to get any more Leters from you.  You dont have to write them any diferently.  I know them by heart and you Write like an Indullgint big brother to a little girl.  I shoud have seen that before but I wanted it to be more.  It isnt and I know that now.  I wil Understand if you Find another Womman not me.  Rispectfully, your friend Mavis Pelham.  PS please write and tell me if you Fergive me before we never Speack of this again. Thank you. And Thank you for not Pushing me Away when I kissed you in the dark and you coudnt see it coming. Thank you for careing enough to Write to me.  We need not Speak of this ferther.  I will wait to hear from you.  Love (crossed out — this wrung his heart afresh!) — afectionatly your friend, Mavis.  PPS  I am a very Lucky girl to have you for a Friend, dont think I dont Know that.”

        

He finished reading, and tipped back his head.  Taking in a deep breath and closing his eyes for a second in a mixture of pain and admiration, but mostly compassion, he held the letter still in his hands, open.  Pelham watched him then, but said nothing.  He drew another quivering breath, came to himself and his duty.  “Would you like to see it, sir?”

         “I would,” said Pelham, “but not if you think — ” (he frowned) “ — dammit, yes I would.  She is  my daughter, God love her!  — the minx.”

        

Hastings held it out, not trusting himself to speak quite yet:  Pelham gave a sigh and a shake of the head before starting.   After that Hastings could tell exactly where Pelham was in the letter by the creases around his eyes:  he watched the expressions chase across his captain’s face, line by line.  A nod of approbation, first;  then a startled exclamation breaking through any intention he might have had to read in silence:  “Kisses!  Kisses, Mr. Hastings?”

         “Please, sir,” Hastings got out, “— read it further — you will understand — I did not —  that is, it was she — ”

         “Harrumph,” said Pelham, frowning as he read on.  Next he came to the “Enemys” line, and his eyebrows shot higher yet.  He shook his head.  “Hmm,” he murmured next, “ –what’s this?  Oh:  scuppered?  She has been spending too much time with Stroud, I see —   hm.  So she fears you will be in trouble with me.  Do you deserve to be, Mr. Hastings?”

         “Sir, I hope not — ”

         “Well, we shall see — let me finish — there is a surprise upon every line, I swear to God, that child —”     — he read on.  His lips twitched.  “I am very pleased to see that you were neither cruel nor rude, sir.  Although I am shocked that so slight an adversary can have the best of an encounter with a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy.  So she took advantage of you, did she — ?!”

 

         Hastings hung his head:  “Sir,” he said dully.  He had fallen from grace, and now he must take what was due.

         “— No business kissing a man of twenty?  I should think not, indeed!  Well, by her own admission, then, she knows better —— ” came the next expostulation, closely followed by, “— though she is unrepentant, I see.  Hmm — intelligent?  No, I see - an indulgent older brother, eh?  Very well:  very well indeed.  That does you credit, Hastings.”

         “Thank you, sir,” mumbled Hastings, not meaning it but thinking that some such response was called for.  Finally Pelham shocked him out of his misery by throwing back his head and laughing.

         “Is it a laughing matter, sir?  I’m sorry, I — ”

         “In the dark, sir?!!!!”

         “A cave, sir,” explained Hastings.

         “Good God —!  So she stole them off you, then? — those two damned kisses of hers, for which I note she is not in the least sorry?  You didn’t see it coming, she says —!”

         “No, sir,” confessed Hastings miserably.  “Or else I never should have allowed it to happen, sir.”

         “Hm.  Hmmm!!  I see. Well —!  I hope you may do better than that against the enemy, sir, if you may be so surprised by a twelve-year-old girl!  —  hmm — I see we have to award her ten out of ten for tactics —!”

         “I am glad you find it a source of amusement, sir,” said Hastings stiffly.

         “Amusement — !! Good God, man, I swear — I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!” said Pelham;  “ — here: take it!”   Pelham folded the letter, returned it to him with a long look and a crease between his half-lifted brows whose like Hastings had not yet seen.  It spoke of sorrow, and mirth, both at once;  compassion, and self-recrimination — reproach, and resignation:  and an abiding affection for both parties to this painful debacle.   “Thank you for showing it to me, Mr. Hastings.”

         Hastings met his eyes.  “I — I did wrong, sir:  I’m sorry. I shall do better, from now on.”

         “Wrong?  Against such an adversary?  I don’t think so, Mr. Hastings.  Come now, if I can forgive you — even the kisses, by God — can you not forgive yourself?  You were no match for her, sir — you and I both, I should have seen it coming, God knows! — I was as naïve as you, in my way!  I thought but to delight her with your company — knowing she worshipped you — yes, yes, I was not blind to it —  I suppose I did succeed in that, at least!”

 

         “Sir. They were – perfectly chaste, sir — I swear upon my mother’s grave, sir, not – desirous – very swift and light, sir — I would not want you to think — ”

         “Oh, for God’s sake!” said Pelham.  What a fuss, over a couple of stolen kisses! — for him to be able to describe them still, at such a distance, spoke of their having made a very deep impression indeed.  Clearly, they had troubled his earnest lieutenant deeply:  for a moment the young man’s words seemed not much less breathless than his daughter’s. 

Dear God, Mavis, what have you done here!?  he asked himself.   “Forget them!”  he snapped, more briskly than he meant to, and then sighed again, more deeply still.  “Mr. Hastings,” he said, in a final tone, “it is in the past. There is no use crying over spilled milk.  I put you in an impossible situation and you did your best.  No harm has come of it — she would doubtless have felt the same way in any case.  Put it from your mind, sir — as I shall endeavour to put it from mine.  She is a child:  we will let her be one — if it kills us — we will insist upon it. Eh?”

         “Aye, aye, sir!”  said Hastings.

         “It occurs to me that it would be as well not to concern her mother with all of this — poor Mavis has been exposed enough, I think —— ”

         “Sir — ”

         “— And, Mr. Hastings —”

         “Thank you, for showing me the letter,”  finished Pelham, gently.

         As Hastings excused himself and left, Mavis’s tear-stained missive in his hands, he thought he felt Pelham’s eyes upon his back, appraising:  considering.  As he closed the door, he thought he heard Pelham mutter something to his departing back:  something resembling “— couldn’t see it coming, eh? In the dark! — the dark!  Oh, Mavis, Mavis…!”