30. The High Cost of Smuggling

A small locket, but something was better than nothing. Philippe’s life had held a lot of nothing, in its short span. He tugged at it, and the chain broke.

“No!” cried the corpse, weakly.

Philippe almost pissed himself.

He leapt back with a cry, and fell on his rear in the sand, the locket trailing from his fingers. Could the dead speak?! Was it possible a body so battered (and shot through the breast to boot) could wash ashore and still cling to life?

The corpse groaned again; spluttered; made retching sounds. Philippe got out of the way just as a gallon or more of seawater spewed from its grey lips onto the ribbed sand where he had hauled it by its limp, cold arm. He eyed it sideways, as a horse eyes a man with a whip. Then he reminded himself that he might be but ten years old; but this was his beach, his corpse, and it clearly had no more fight in it than a kitten, if that. He could simply leave it here and it would very soon be fully the corpse he had taken it for. Perhaps that would be best. He opened the locket. Painted with a brush no wider than a couple of hairs onto an ivory lozenge was the profile of a woman. She looked sad but kind. The almost-corpse coughed and retched again and coughed till a froth of pink bubbling blood formed freshly at the hole in his white chest. It was looking at him. Then it spoke: though he did not understand the words, even though there were only a couple of them, but they sounded like “m— mazza—” — was this his mother, in the picture?

The bright brown eyes beseeched him. Then it spoke French, and he nearly pissed himself again. “Ma maman — s’il vous plait — laissez-la — ma mère…”

“Mais c’est moi qui l’ai trouvée —!” said Philippe, indignantly, though not quite sure of himself. After all, robbing the dead was one thing — they had no further use for anything, after all, and waste not, want not… but this felt different, even to him. And after all again, the corpse set such store by it that losing it had brought him back to life, just. Philippe wondered whether the thought of his own mother would foster such a resurrection in him, careworn and grey and shrill as she was: probably not. He shrugged.

“Oui,” whispered the corpse, “mais — c’est ma mère… pas votre… ”

No, it was not his mother, obviously, and the almost-corpse seemed very set on it. He met the eyes again. They were horribly bloodshot and rolled in its head.

“S’il vous plait — ” murmured the corpse again. A drowned Englishman he could have left without compunction for the seagulls and the next tide, whichever came first; but one that could speak —! That seemed different, somehow. Quoi faire — what to do?

Philippe stuffed the locket back into its hand — ugh! it was cold and wet, like the insides of a crab, the grey part you don’t eat: it could have been a dead-man’s, for sure — and ran away, pausing only to pick up his basket over by the sea-thistles. “Maman —” he cried, “Maman—— ”

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

Hastings’ recollections were very intermittent, and had mostly to do with moments of excruciating pain, that had pulled him out of his near-faint for a moment or two. He recalled being yanked by the arm up onto the beach; and the little sharp cut at his neck from the chain before it broke. In a world of pain this one was distinct: he fought it with all he had left, as little as that was. The effort of speaking brought his belly to itself and he remembered vomiting up all the saltwater in him, then the rest of his guts. Each retch sent white fire through the wounds in his chest and shoulder. From his vantage-point, his cheek pressed up against the sand, he saw the child running away.

Oh, well.

An indefinite amount of time passed, during which he wondered how long it takes to die. His limbs would not answer him, though whether that was from the stiffness of extreme cold and exposure, or their being broken in a dozen places by his dashing upon the rocks in the surf during the night; or from loss of blood, he could not tell — or any combination of these, of course. He found that he could breathe a little better after he threw-up the seawater and coughed up more; and that was the extent of which he was capable. Not that too well, either: he recognized in himself the shallow, panting breaths that come when a man is at the end of his endurance and but a gasp or two away from the darkest portal. He had held men in his division who breathed just so; but not for long.

An age later, a woman came to kneel by him. Not quite a hag, but almost. Was it one of the fates come for him? No: her eyes held something pitying, in her lined and bitter face, and she laid a hand on his forehead much as his own mother might have done. Her shawl was a stringy brownish-green, like bladderwrack, he remembered, and her skirts stained with seawater. Why should he notice such things now? Because they were the last things he would ever see? Quite possibly. “Vas d’mander à tes coussins de venir,” she said over her shoulder, in the thickly accented Breton French, not cousins with a soft ‘z’ but coussins. Then she felt his chest, turned him over to look at what must be the exit-wound in his shoulder. Knives; or a blunt sword running him through: Hastings slipped into the mist that rose up mercifully and came for him.

He was in a hovel, and it reeked. The blanket over him stank of rotting shellfish and horse-sweat. The bed under him was harder than the deck of Victory, which was at least smooth. Figures stood over him, arguing. The child stood in a corner and watched, his eyes sharp in the smoke and dimness.

Someone was spooning gruel into his mouth. He took it, though swallowing seemed at first beyond him: it built up in his mouth spoon by spoon till he gagged. Rough but capable hands pulled at him till he sat up a little, and shoved something hard and lumpy behind him to prop him there — an agony — and then he found he could swallow the gruel. It was thin and poor. It was easier to eat if he did not also try to open his eyes: he had enough life in him to do one or the other, but not both.

His fever mounted and raged, then. The bed became his circle of hell. He burned and shivered and burned again. Time stretched into an eternity of suffering, then telescoped so that he did not know if it were day or night, or whether the ones that spoke had just now walked away and come back, or returned hours later.

Somewhere in the jumble of it all the thought of Mavis came to him, sweetly: he saw her perched in the crook of the oak-tree at the end of the garden in Portchester, that looked out over Portsmouth Harbour and the masts of his Majesty’s navy, all the way out beyond Gosport and Southsea, like bookends, and Spithead through the gap between them. She was holding her little glass, and her face was a picture of longing.

For him.

It was almost as if she felt him watching: her foot slipped, and she nearly fell, then, under the force of his gaze. “Watch out,” he smiled — “you’d better be more careful than that, specially if you’re going to climb the ratlines—!” She laughed down at him. The room swam.

The woman shook him. “Prisonnier,” she said —

“Non,” he asked. “Non” — and begged for his life with his eyes. He opened his hand that clutched the locket still — had it been days he had held it thus, or hours? — offered it to her.

“Non,” she said, “pas ta maman!”

“Mais sauvez-moi,” he asked her: “save me?”

She shook her head — though whether in wry despair, like his captain, or plain refusal, he could not tell.

He fretted, in between hours of raving. Mavis’s face came to him again, this time a mask of anguish. So I am lost to her, then, and she knows it, he thought; and felt his bowels wrung at the idea of his being so vital to anyone. Her heart was on his conscience. He tried to tell her the simple truth: that he loved her, would always love her — it was only how, that he did not know. How he did; how he should. Being oh! so much too old for her, as she must agree, did she not? — she wept bitterly, then, and he stood over her, helpless in imagination, until he realized it didn’t matter any more, since he was already dead — he must be — and so he could break his word to himself, now, if he wanted, and touch her. He took her in his arms then, so very gently, and dropped a single kiss on top of her head, all sobbing as she was. May God forgive me for that, he thought, if it was wrong — I meant no desire by it, only comfort.

No; the desire that racked him was quite separate: to touch her breast once more, not this chaste kiss of his spirit upon her hair but his right hand trembling there, not pulled but placed deliberately — to know the feel of it again before he died, her sweet taste faint honey under his tongue, as from the end of a grass stem —— dreamed and then shut away, shut away, for shame. Both the innocent kiss and the guilty one haunted him by turns. She is a child – a child – a child, he thought; but it was not the act of a child that had pulled his hand there, made him touch the promise of her. She had meant him to feel everything he felt — and only then, realizing what she had done, did she offer him her contrition: not on her own account — oh, she regretted it not at all! — but on his. Could she know how and what he felt? Did she? He would have waited for her — but it was too late now.

A night passed; two. His wound was fire and ice; his limbs hurt uniquely at each joint and every inch. He saw Pelham, staring, staring, the butcher’s bill under his trembling hand. He tried, but could not bear his captain’s pain as well as his own. I have failed him again, he thought — he had no strength left to bear anything. Let his family comfort him, he thought; and then to Mavis: oh, do not plague him with questions — let him tell it, so, as he can. I never realized, he thought, then, how much he cared for me — I should have — I should have.

His father came in the room – or was it some other old man? The fire smoked and he retched convulsively. He could not control his bowels, but there was little enough left in him by now: a slime whose flux he barely noticed, till it smarted on his salt-raw skin. Expressionless, the woman cleaned him up. “Pardon,” he whispered in shame, “je suis désolé… ” She shrugged, shaking her head.

The fever took him again, then.

Philippe felt important. He knew who the smugglers were — didn’t everyone, in these parts? — but one didn’t speak of it. There was supposed to be a war, and here were men taking good English silver for trade, as if the fighting were between two other parties entirely —! Business was business, after all, and sacred as such: mere wars — bah! La politique… an interference, an inconvenience. His uncle had to do with them sometimes, he knew, when it was an especially large load to be shipped on a moonless night from the rocky cove out to the waiting ketch. Now maman had decided to get rid of the English and try to get some money for him — something they could not have got from the soldats! No, the soldats would have come and dragged him away to his death and Philippe and maman would have been no better off than before; but this way — a fortune indeed might have fallen into their hands, not the meager possessions of a dead man washed up in his underwear, but his price in silver! He felt prouder still of making the discovery.

The cutter came for the next rendezvous, the last moonless night of the season — he was lucky the timing was right! — and they dragged the English out on a litter, in a cart that his uncle used to carry seaweed for the fields, along with the casks of brandy and the packets of lace. One of these would have bought him and his mother twice over. Where was the justice in the world? Not here: but perhaps they might grasp a tiny piece of it — with luck? Philippe heard low, sharp words exchanged aboard the row-boat: the skipper of the cutter had not expected anything unusual, resented the time it would take and the uncertainty of reward. What! They expected him to pay for this wretch so close to death? What if he was not reimbursed by the English? What if the poor sod died before he could get him ashore, across La Manche?

Philippe’s mother had lost too many arguments in her life. What difference did it make to the skipper? Wasn’t it worth a chance? Alors, she said, pay me next time — half of anything you get for him. If it’s nothing, it’s nothing.

A third, said the skipper — and I’ll keep my expenses.

She waved her hand at him in wordless disgust. “Take him,” she said, “just take him. Somewhere he has a maman that is looking for her son.” And we have brought him all the way down here, now, thought Philippe — the trip back to our house on this cart would probably kill him, anyway. And then we’d have nothing for sure but a hole to dig — more work.

So Hastings came ashore like a limp rag, hearing English voices now in his fog, the boat under him grinding on the pebbles of Chesil Bank, where the skipper could tell just how far he was along its shingly stretch by the size of them; and was manhandled along with the lace and the spirits up over the spine of the bank, crunching underfoot, and into another row-boat, and across another stretch of water — he smelled mud, this time, and heard a bitterne boom as they startled it among the reeds by their stealthy passage — and thus, finally, each movement jarring him to fresh agony, into a stone barn — he smelled it, rather like a church but with an overlay of sheep and dung no church ever had — where they laid him down at last on a pile of hay. It felt like heaven to be still. The casks and packets continued their journey before he did: the men ignored him, working fast and hard before dawn to get their profit safely on its way. Finally the skipper came to his bed in the hay, where he lay shuddering, still wrapped in that stinking blanket. “Now’s yer chance,” he said in a rich West Country burr (though it was not necessarily kind, for being slow and thoughtful) — “to tell me ’oo’ll pay to ’ave you back safe. Or not.’

Hastings knew what would happen if it were or not.

He mastered all his faculties, forced the words to come out clearly even though they were no more than a whisper. “I am Lieutenant Hastings, of His Majesty’s Navy,” he said, “and if you will take me to any town, I am sure there will be — some recompense there — for you. Or I will send some myself, when I recover.”

“Fat chance o’ that,” spat the skipper with a curl of his lip. “And how Oi’m supposed to explain foinding you is another matter again, ain’t it.”

“A boat —?” suggested Hastings “—you picked me up —?”

“Yeah, an’ you a-rowin’ it!” snarled the skipper, his sarcasm reminding Hastings of Pelham in one of his more biting moods.

Hastings knew his life depended on coming up with the right answer. He thought for a moment. “Get me to a doctor,” he said, “and send to Plymouth — any Naval vessel — a message to Victory — she’s close-in…”

“Victory? What, the admiral’s ship? Admiral Nelson?”

“Yes,” croaked Hastings, with the last of his breath. The wound in his chest was on fire.

“Whoi didn’t you bloody say so afore?” asked the man. “Jack! Jack, there! Take my ’orse and roide ’ell-fer-leather to Plymouth… ”

There was an indefinite period on the hay, while the skipper tended to him very roughly, now and then, as one would an investment that might pay off but probably wouldn’t. There was fever, and raving, and pus running from the wound in his shoulder. He tried to move his limbs, and found that they had indeed begun to answer him after all their punishment upon the rocks, although he was still purple and green all over — a progression from the black-and-blue and scraped-raw-red he had begun with. But the shoulder-wound refused to heal, brought him nightmares and many losses of consciousness as his body fought the poisons in his blood, and barely held its own: fell back; almost gave up.

Then came a ride on a farm-cart into a town, that cost him so much agony he could not even speak. A bed, a clean one. Could it be? A doctor poked at him, and smelled his piss; shook his head. The locket with Hastings’ mother in it had been pinned through the chain to the inside of his shirt — when they unpinned it, Hastings moaned weakly and they set it beside him on the stand. Then there was a day and a night of more delirium, and pains all up and down his limbs as they were washed and rubbed and came back to life, sprains, bruises and all. His collar-bone was broken, and perhaps one arm — the wrist was splinted — and as for the wound in his chest, the ball had traveled through and out the other side, the seawater had reamed it, and it throbbed constantly. He could not eat; barely drank. The doctor shook his head again.

How long had it been? He had no idea; it must have been weeks, but how many he could not tell. His life made no sense any more, since the unremitting fever played with him like a cat tossing its catch.

And then out of the confusion there was a loud, firm, somehow-familiar tread upon the stairs outside — no tip-toeing — and a voice he knew so well: “Where is he? In here? Well, why didn’t you say so, man!” — and there stood his own captain above him, and white-faced Johnson behind him, both of them breathing hard it seemed, although Pelham was fitter than a fiddle and a flight of stairs was nothing to him — a trip to the main-top was, barely! — ; large as life and a hundred times more welcome —— and at the sight of the captain in his uniform, hat and all – for he had not even taken it off in his haste to climb the stairs and see his man — Hastings felt the room swim again. What was that streak running down Pelham’s cheek? Surely not a tear —! But it must be, for another followed it, and the captain dashed them away with an impatient hand, turning to hide them from the doctor – yes, he would do that, thought Hastings – oh, God, it is him, then, and I am home safe —— and fainted again.

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

“Now, then,” came Pelham’s voice, but gently, this time — “come along, man, open your eyes — you're aboard Victory now — and I am going to feed you this soup if it kills me!”

“I beg your pardon, sir —” murmured Hastings in a low tone; the captain must have had to bend, to catch it — he felt Pelham’s nearness, smelled his soap that Sophie made, and the hint of brandy.

“That’s better,” said Pelham, more quietly yet. “Come on, now —”

Hastings opened his eyes. He must be in the captain’s night-cabin, in his own cot, with the damask hangings embroidered by Sophie’s own loving hands. A bird was worked in crewel by his brow, a tall bird with a green breast, and beyond it Pelham sat in his shirtsleeves with a bowl in his own hand, a spoon in the other, and a deeply worried look upon his face that relaxed into concern when Hastings’ eyelids fluttered and parted.

“Come along,” said Pelham again, with a gentle ness in his voice Hastings had never heard yet, not even in the wretched interviews on the subject of Mavis — “you have to eat this. I’m going to get it down you, doctor’s orders, and mine too, God damn it.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” smiled Hastings weakly, and opened his mouth.

“I should bloody well hope so, too,” continued Pelham, catching the drip of broth that trembled from the bottom of the spoon carefully upon the lip of the bowl before he held it out to Hastings. “Cost me a pretty penny, you did — twenty guineas.”

“Oh my god, sir,” whispered Hastings. Pelham leaned forward, wiped away the trickle of broth that had found its way down his chin with a soft damask napkin. Hastings swallowed another spoonful, did not dribble any of it this time.

“It’s all right,” said the captain, his eyes dancing now, “you can pay me back later.”

The sum of money troubled Hastings, and yet he knew it should not. The embroidery in the hangings had such bright colours in it — they swirled, came into focus — a flower, another bird, blue this time; a pomegranate, blood-red seeds showing in its split rose-gold skin — blurred again. “Sir, I can’t —” — he coughed, the words catching in his throat.

“Christ, son,” said his captain, “— I didn’t mean it — ” — with this he winced a little, his eyes closing momentarily in that way Hastings knew so well; opening again to look upon his lieutenant with a depth of regard Hastings had not even dared to guess at, till now: would have given his right arm to deserve, and now here it was, and all his..! “—sweet Jesus,” whispered his captain softly, leaning in again to wipe the spittle from his chin, and anguish still naked in his eyes, “— don’t you know I would have paid the king’s treasury for you, with never a second thought?”

The pomegranate grew large, and swallowed him into its crimson depths.

Hastings wondered afterwards if he had dreamed it, for the next time Pelham was as brisk and business-like as ever with him, sitting there sternly and frowning every time he turned his head away from the gruel. The captain’s own steward changed his napkins — oh, the shame of not being able to govern his bowels, yet, and in the captain’s own bed —! — and when Pelham could not hover over him, for all his other preoccupations, he sent in young Partridge to sit with him constantly. He was not to be alone, for fear he should cough or choke on something, his own vomit perhaps, god forbid, and so leave them high and dry after all their pains — or so the ship’s doctor let him know, the very same one Hastings had found for Pelham those years ago aboard Indomitable. He had stayed with them throughout. What a happy event that he had, now. Johnson’s diligent care of him seemed more tender than anything Hastings had seen in all the years he had visited his men in the doctor’s sick-bay, compassionate a healer as he was. Was he so very ill, then?

Pelham stopped by, though, every hour at least, and laid a hand upon his forehead; frowned. Once Hastings heard him swear, then turn to the surgeon: “Bring him through, for God’s sake,” said Pelham in a low, hard voice, angrily it seemed, “—we can’t fail now. Not in this — I won’t — I won’t, dammit!”

What was that look upon Johnson’s thin face? “Do you think I want to lose him any more than you?” he asked, quietly.

Pelham stared at his surgeon, his anger giving way to surprise, followed by understanding and then compassion, none of it spoken.

**

Johnson stood over him, laid a cool hand upon his brow, how many times?

The wound troubled him, and he sank into its burning depths, then.

Pelham was speaking to him, and the surgeon too. “No choice, lad,” Pelham was saying — “it’ll carry you off, if we don’t get at it. God only knows how you’ve fought it, this far.”

Hastings stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Did you hear a word I said?” asked the captain.

“No, sir — sorry, sir.”

Pelham sighed. “I am almost sure there are fragments still in the wound,” said the little surgeon quietly. “I have probed it and it does not yet seem clean to me. It is trying to heal over, but within it is still a mass of pus. You must submit to my cleaning it, Lieutenant Hastings — all the way through.”

“Sir —?” asked Hastings.

Pelham nodded, unable to bring himself to speak. Hastings realized he was still in that shadowy portal to the next world — getting ready to slip through it even now, when he had thought himself safely rescued. “When?” he asked.

“We should do it now,” said the surgeon, even more quietly.

“Wait,” said Pelham, “— do it here. On my table. Don’t move him down to the cockpit — and — let me hold him down.”

“It’ll take more than you, sir,” said the surgeon, “I daren’t give him more than a little opium, not in this state. Perhaps it will take the edge off — that’s as much as I can do. But you can take his head.”

Pelham did. His hands were firm and strong, and did not flinch. Between the poppy-draught and the brandy, Hastings found there was a garden of pain. Pelham walked in it with him, did not let go.

“I’m taking you home,” said Pelham, hours — or was it weeks — later.

Hastings tried to comprehend. Home was a hours-long, jolting carriage-ride up from Portsmouth, or down from London: he had not been there in years. “— can’t I stay here, sir? I — I don’t want to go home, sir…”

“You forget yourself, sir,” said Pelham. “Be damned to you want, my lad, it’s what you need I have to consider. You will go home, and that’s an order.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” murmured Hastings. “Sorry, sir.” He wondered if his father’s housekeeper was up to turning him and changing his napkins – she must be pushing seventy, now.

“Don’t worry,” said Pelham, with a twinkle in his eye, “I shall have a word with Miss Mavis.”

What?

“You need the nursing,” said Pelham, “and you have to admit my wife is a capital nurse. There’s not a berth in the country’ll give you better care —.”

Hastings started to understand. “But — what about Haslar, sir…?” he mumbled.

“Bugger Haslar!” said Pelham, “I want you back! You’re not out of the woods yet, Hastings — and home is where you belong. I can trust them to care for you. Properly. We’ll be there by nightfall. I can’t keep you on board, you know, we do have a Navy to run — !”

“Sir,” said Hastings. A tear ran down his cheek: he felt ashamed of it, but was too weary to wipe it away: his arms still felt heavier than the spare masts in the hold.

“It’s all right,” said Pelham gently. “I will tell Mavis to stay away from you with her kisses, while you’re so helpless.” And he bent forward, and wiped the tear from Hastings’ face with his thumb, with such tenderness it prompted another, which he dried also. “It’s all right,” he murmured again, “—it’s all right, son.”

And Hastings slept.

31. Resurrection

Little by little the household in Portchester resumed its routine of letter-writing and meals and busy-nesses, though all of it was dull-coloured. Sophie had been fond of the young man, remembering their moments of intimacy, the times their eyes had met in mutual mute concern for the object of both their devotions, namely Pelham: though now she felt his loss most keenly in the pinched faces of her husband and daughter. Their grief seemed on a far more shattering level, and she could only ache for them, hope that time would dull this blow.

She recalled the child she had borne all those years ago – Josiah, would have been his name — and how long it was before the days regained their colour and flavour, afterwards. And that had been a slight loss, compared with this: not a fully-grown, beloved young man, but a lost child never gifted with life, a possibility not to be realized, a pregnancy with a still fruit. Not to mention the wretched family into which he would have been born, had he survived — a drunken father who used a belt on his wife more than once, even when she bore this child within her womb, that should have been sacred; a mother with little to give but comfort and kindness, robbed of her natural joy.

Perhaps it was as well he had not survived the perilous passage into this world, if it had held so mixed a welcome for him. Still, she would watch Pellie at play sometimes, and think of her little dead son, who never had a chance to make mud-pies and get dust all over his baby shoes, or dirt upon his face, since his very-own umbilical cord had squeezed the little life out of him, and with it throttled something within her, for a good while afterwards — until Edward appeared, in fact.

Though the light had started to come back into their world, in that watery way it does in-between clouds, when her brutal husband had dropped not long afterwards, like a stone, of apoplexy, on his way across the room to strike her — dropped with the crop still in his hand. It had been hard not to rejoice publicly, at his brief and modest obsequies (they had been perfectly respectable, so — Sophie had that much decency). Then only the clouds of being poor remained, for a few more years — again, until Edward, and the sun fully out for the first time in her life since losing her mother as a child.

Till now, and this new loss.

She put away her sewing, since it was growing dusk — how lovely these long summer-evenings seemed! — and went to the window. Mavis was visible at the end of the garden, a white moth in her muslin frock, against the dark laurels that sheltered them from the bite of the Solent breezes. She could hear Pellie singing to himself, upstairs in bed, and Mrs. Stroud clattering at something in the kitchen. All it would take for this to be even lovelier, she thought, was for Victory’s tall masts to appear down off Spithead, beyond the outline of Portsmouth across the harbour, and Edward come home again. Perhaps the news she bore — she had not wanted to write it, after his fears last time, preferring to tell him face-to-face, when she could reassure him immediately — perhaps this sweet suspicion would draw the sting a little from his wounded heart. Although one person could not make up for losing another, as she very well knew — yet this would be a fresh joy, a new gift, proof that life had yet some sweetness for them.

Mavis turned, and walked away off towards the sea-gate. Sophie hoped she would remember to be back before the light faded altogether: she had a habit of pacing the shore like a ghost, since these weeks had passed in grief, and often forgot the time and her other duties altogether. Well, she could always count on Stroud to be not too far away; there he came now, limping after her, so far behind she would not notice his slight form skirting close by the sea-bitten, wind-wrenched gorse bushes along the shore.

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

Mavis kicked at the pebbles, not caring that their green slime stained her slipper. Not caring about anything — as she had not, since the letter had come, and chopped off her future. How did you go on walking and talking? But you did, strangely, for a creature without a heart or a head any more.

Stroud followed her, hanging far behind so that she would not see him and take further offence at his care of her.

The evening was pearly-grey, the clouds a smother of pigeon’s-wing. Behind her the Norman castle-keep loomed, and the Roman walls that ran along all four sides on this spit of land. A grim place, more wretched still now that it housed all those French prisoners-of-war. Oh, why could he not have been taken prisoner? she cried out to herself. She could have waited for him, then, no matter how long it took, and been ready at his exchange — more ready even than she was now, which God knew was ready enough for her, if not for him. She had had her courses these last two years almost, and her figure was in a fair way to becoming a more slender version of her mother’s: a lovely thing of curves and planes, cheeks and a bosom that flushed with emotion, the look of a deer all unaware — and all atop long, fast legs. Mavis still liked to run, even if it made her bosom jolt till it hurt — or she had, until last month. She felt as if she would never run again, now: not because she couldn’t, but because there was nothing worth hurrying for, would not be, could not be.

She pulled her mother’s old shawl more tightly round her as the breeze turned the castle walls and penetrated her thin gown. Turning along the sea-walk, she looked back up at the long low chalky line of Portsdown Hill, with its needle-column at the top celebrating the victory at Trafalgar and commemorating the men from Portsmouth and all over England who had given their lives to win it. Lord Nelson himself had started the subscription, and her papa given the most generous sum to start it off: then monies had poured in from every ship in the Navy, men as well as officers, and all over a grateful nation, and so now it looked out to sea, over the Solent and Spithead, reminding all who saw it that England’s hold over the seas had come at a price; and must always do so.

To have lost him at Trafalgar she could have borne, she thought; but for a stupid raid upon a shore-battery! That it had destroyed several of their ships, over the years — two in one month alone — made no difference. The ships would have been well lost, and all their successors too, if he could have been saved thereby.

And so she turned her gaze out to sea, the low shoreline with its fence of masts here and there, ships under repair and at anchor in the roads, within the harbour; the dark blotches of dismasted hulks over towards Gosport, and the small craft that plied in between. A ship’s-boat was pulling straight for Portchester, she saw, from Portsmouth harbour; a tall three-decker stood as close-in to the shallows as she might, with the tide almost out. Was it Victory? Perhaps this was papa, then, come home for a swift visit again on his way down-channel. She had not seen him since that dreadful night when he had returned to tell her, little by little, in anguish the next morning, what had happened. He had seemed to find some comfort in being at home; had hugged little Pellie so tightly to his breast, upon his departure after breakfast, that her dreadnought brother squealed and kicked.

It was Victory’s boat, her longboat to be precise, she recognized it as it drew in closer. She thought the little admiral might have come ashore seeking his Emma, as he did at every opportunity; but they had had no word from Lady Hamilton in a week or two, nor was she newly come to meet him, stepping from her carriage as she did looking so beautiful even now that Mavis could see exactly why the admiral loved her so, had thrown away his reputation and hers in the social and domestic department to make her his. No; tonight it was just papa, and he stood in the bow: his voice came to her clearly across the mudflats: “Pull! Pull!”

What was the hurry? Mama was not going anywhere, and they would not sail again before morning. And why had he come in the longboat, with so many men, instead of the little jolly-boat as he usually did?

His voice was urgent and harsh: “Pu-u-ull!” he cried again. She stepped off the path and started to make her way across the slimy shingle to meet him. They would not be able to come close-in, for the tide was so far out that yards of stinking mud extended between the shore and the shallow water. A wet rope of seaweed wrapped itself around her ankle, and she stooped to pull it off. It was frayed, green, white at the tip; it had left a muddy print upon her stocking. The boat rasped, finding stones beneath the mud; Pelham did not even wait for the men to pull it up, but leapt out ankle-deep into the swirling greenish water in his white stockings and buckled shoes. God, what was the urgency? She looked up to see the coxswain and Thurman – she knew him by the jaunty angle of his hat – lifting something, and papa was bending over the side of the boat to take it from them. It was an awkward bundle, that sagged at both ends when he held it in his arms in the middle: like a rolled-up rug — or a person in a faint wrapped-up in a blanket. The head fell against papa’s breast, and he put his own chin there to hold it close. He waded towards the shore and her, stepping very carefully across the mud; calling over his shoulder for the litter. Men jumped out, then, and started to pull the boat up; and still he was coming straight for Mavis, the clumsy bundle in his arms.

God — the admiral must be hurt — or sick — or dead. What would Lady Hamilton say? Why was papa not bringing him to the Naval Hospital in Haslar, across the harbour round beyond Gosport? Poor little admiral, he always looked as if mere spirit held his flesh and bones together, what was left of them. He must have succumbed to a chill, or —?

But no; the bundle was too big for the five-foot Viscount. It was thin, but long: you could have put two Nelsons in it, almost, the way the feet hung down from papa’s arms, a lanky-legged shape.

Her heart stopped; then she ran out into the tide to meet him, the water splashing cold over her feet and soaking her skirts: they grew heavy and dragged at her ankles, but they did not hold her back.

Feet away now, papa looked at her strangely, the creases in his face newly carved: “I hope you’ll take better care of him this time,” he said, in a wry, harsh tone that was at odds with the glow in his eyes — “…he’s banged-up and battered enough, without you smashing his head into caves.”

She ran; tripped on a rock in her haste; fell flat on her face; got up, dripping and spluttering, and crossed the last few feet all soaked, the wind chilling her: not that she noticed.

The men had shipped their oars, now, drawn the boat all the way up on the grinding shingle. Four of them formed-up smartly with a litter between them, waiting for his order — “Have some sense!” he barked — “go ahead of me, there— ” and he jerked his head toward the shore path.

She could not see the face, the blankets were wrapped so tightly around him; but she did not have to. Her papa’s face said it all. “I have brought him back to you, Mavis,” he said, his voice grating past the swelling in his throat, “and I only hope to God you can keep him alive. Smartly now— ” he added, calling to the stretcher-bearers behind him, “get that litter on the ground ready for him — on the shore, where it’s dry — over there, that grass — look lively, dammit!”

They passed him, trotting through the ankle-deep water, splashing and making a great commotion. Mavis’s heart was clutched in silence, apart from all of it; would be, until she saw his face. Pelham came on, steadily, carrying his burden as if it had been a child — he was as strong as an ox, even now, although he would have borne the lad this stretch upon the strength of his heart alone, had he not been.

Any of them could have done the carrying, of course — but they knew that this task was their captain’s and his alone; any man offering to relieve him would do so at his peril.

The distance closed between them: became no distance at all, and she touched the blanket he carried. Her throat was squeezed shut altogether as she did so. Pelham eyed her, lifting his brows at her silence: “I thought at least I would get a thank you from you,” he said. The blanket fell open a little and a limp hand appeared, dropped from it. Mavis took it, walked beside her papa towards the shore. It was cold, lifeless, and this was really happening. She shivered, not knowing that she did so. The front of her gown was all mud, and she did not know that either; or care, if she had.

“He faints a lot,” said Pelham, “—smartly, lads, here we go — steady now — ” and he knelt there on the grass beside the litter and laid his burden down, most carefully, as if it might break into pieces. Mavis thought she would see that speckled clump of coarse sea-grass forever, starred with dandelions, a thistle under her knees. Then he lifted the rough Navy blanket a little at the head end, knowing that Mavis was looking over his shoulder, and under it he parted the folds of a sea-cloak, lined in scarlet silk, his own; and within that, a shawl of fine worsted wool, also his — Mavis had watched her mother knit it, all one long winter — it was like pulling at the petals to reveal the heart of the rose.

A white rose, bruised and crumpled.

She felt her father’s eyes upon her face.

“Papa — ” she said then, angry at the tears starting in her eyes: it must be the wind, for his streamed also.

“I know,” he said.

Hastings’ eyes were half-closed, only the whites visible between: there were lines of pain around them she had never seen, never thought to see. One eyebrow was healing from an ugly split, it looked like a burst fig. More gashes, partly knit, marked his temples, his jaw. His face was almost a skull, she could see the bone of his nose white under the transparent skin, and his cheekbones staring. A stain of red marked each one, the only colour in his blanched face. His hair curled around it, dark-chestnut and silky as she remembered: somehow the sight of it – the only thing unchanged about him – broke her heart all over again. Pelham straightened, stepped back from the stretcher; took her arm and pulled her gently with him: “Look lively — let’s get him home — steady as you go, now, don’t jolt him for God’s sake — that’s the way — come along!”

Stroud had limped up to them; Mavis did not even know he had been out there, but he must have been. He was gasping like a broken-winded horse. Words had failed him — a first, in this lifetime. He held Hastings’ other hand, the left one, while she held his right, all the way home: the tears streaming down his shattered face.

It started to rain.

32. Recovery

They put him to bed, in the best guest-chamber, the one where the admiral stayed with Emma when Victory was in port.

“I can’t stay,” said Pelham, looking as if this admission was dragging his heart out of him freshly upon a cable. “Get him a doctor, for god’s sake — Mr. Johnson here ought to discuss the case, before we get back aboard ship –”

Sophie held her husband’s arm. He was quivering. “Of course,” she said. “Mr. Stroud —?”

“Yes, mum, right away,” said Stroud, who had been hovering in the doorway. Then she sent Mavis to change into dry clothes, a task that took her all of two minutes instead of her customary four; she was back almost at once. Sophie sat on the bed, carefully unwrapping the bundle that was Hastings. When she got down to his nightshirt and britches she almost asked Mavis to help; then she remembered who this was, and thought better of it; unfastened them herself, and drew them off, with extreme care and Stroud lifting his legs. Mrs. Stroud hurried in with a hot brick wrapped in a towel, and they put it at his cold feet. Mavis had not seen him without shoes; his feet were long and bony in the white stockings.

The ship’s surgeon — Mavis thanked God for him all over again, as had Pelham, every hour — drew Sophie aside and spoke to her in low tones. Mavis overheard the words “infection” and “wound;” “gangrene” and “stave it off, of course, is our hope—” and “bowels” and “feeble, very feeble.”

That much she could see for herself. Under his open-necked shirt a bandage was wrapped around his chest and shoulder, on the right side – not the left, or he would have been dead, she thought. The journey had jarred fresh blood to stain it. How —? Had he not been shot a month ago, almost? Why was it still bleeding?

“Why?” she asked the surgeon, “—why is he still bleeding? He looks as if he can’t spare another drop —” which in truth he could not, she was quite right.

Johnson turned to her, not unkindly. “I had to clean it out, Miss, and start the healing all over fresh — pulled out bits of his coat, that was stuck in there and causing it to suppurate — go bad —”

“I know what suppurate means,” she said.

“So you must poultice it, madam,” he said, turning to Sophie, —“and you can help with that, Miss, for it is very painful — he will need to be held, until he’s come enough to his senses to know he ought to lie still: he hasn’t, yet — fights it, I’m sorry to say — you, there, Stroud, you must hold his shoulders, while the little Miss here takes his hands.”

“He isn’t very strong,” said Pelham, “it doesn’t take much to hold him —”

“With luck,” said the surgeon, “the poulticing will draw out any poison that’s left — I did my best, gave it a thorough clean-out, there’s no pus left unless it builds again. I’d like to see some laudable pus, though — this was stinking, I didn’t like the looks of it at all.”

Mavis shuddered, not in disgust but for the pain of it, all she was hearing and what it must have cost him to endure it.

“I didn’t want to go in again,” said the surgeon grimly, “but it was a case of damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, madam — begging your pardon — fools rush in and all that, but it needed to be done right. We would have lost him for sure, otherwise.”

“And a right good job I’m sure you made of it, sir, beggin’ yer parding for speakin’,” said Stroud, “ — like you done on my leg. None better.”

“You’re too kind,” said the doctor — “holding up all right, is it? No problems with the stump?”

“Lovely, sir,” answered Stroud heroically, “couldn’t be better — nor what you just done fer ’im, neither. I’m sure it was a pretty job an’ all.”

“Well,” sighed Johnson, “I did my best — he is the hands of Providence, now!”

“What are his chances?” asked Mavis soberly.

“Oh – not much worse than even, I would say — with luck — not that he’s had any shortage of that yet! He must have used up six of his nine lives, so far…”

Mavis prayed he might have another one left. Just one.

Hastings’ eyelids fluttered. She noticed first; heard his quick, half-groaning intake of breath and the feeble retch that followed it — snatched up a cloth, had it ready by his mouth to catch the splutter of bile that came then. They turned his head carefully, gently, so he would not choke, but Mavis did not give up her self-appointed station beside him. Pelham noted it; and the grave, tender look upon her face as she waited for the next helpless splash, not heeding her sleeves or her fingers. He had done the right thing, bringing him here: let her find out what it is to love a man, not a dream, he thought. Although he must have a word with her, before he left…

It was raining hard, now. Their own doctor came from the village, soaking wet; took off his cloak and coat, and consulted with the Victory’s surgeon in his green weskit and shirtsleeves. It was odd, thought Sophie, so used to uniforms, to have these doctors amongst them in civilian clothes. While they did so, Mrs. Stroud had the lads all come into the kitchen for a sup of ale and a bite to eat, and wrapped up something for the pair back by the long-boat, who were charged with keeping her from being carried off by the tide. “It’ll blow over,” she said.

Mavis sat with Hastings while the doctors talked. He had not opened his eyes again, yet. Sophie made sure she understood what was wanted, and then left the room briefly to speak with her husband outside on the landing.

They exchanged worried glances, away from Mavis. It would be touch-and-go, and they both knew it: too soon to hope. Oh, what if their hearts were to be broken all over again —?! Pelham took her in his arms, then, and leaned his head upon her shoulder. “I swear to God,” he said, “it was worse than fearing I should lose you, because that did not come to pass — only the fear of it! But this —! And still he may not be saved...”

She determined that later might be a better time to share her secret, so strained was he around the eyes. It would wait: till she had his lieutenant on the mend, and he could stop his fretting. “Will you not — just swiftly, now — before you go back?” she asked, no longer diffident to broach the subject with him, since these stolen moments were what they both must live on for months at a time. He shook his head, smiling at her: “No,” he said, but thank you —— my dearest wife — my love — ”

“Of course,” she said, so tenderly that he drew her to him and kissed her again, allowing himself to feel it this time from his mouth all the way down his body, pressed so closely against hers, to his hard thighs against her yielding skirts. “Oh, God,” he said.

“Edward,” she whispered, knowing better than to say anything else, in this moment.

“I was so sure he was lost,” said her husband, “I couldn't — I thought I should never feel joy in holding you like this again — only misery, and need ——”

“Me too,” she said, her breath soft against his neck in the angle between his jaw and his neck-cloth.

“Quickly, then —?” he said, drawing her into their room down the landing.

“Of course,” she said.

“Oh God,” he said again, home at last now. He did not even take off his shoes, this time, nor she hers. In a minute he was all hers again; in three, he was gasping to catch his breath. “You — !” he groaned, “Sophie, Sophie —! I swear to God — ”

“Yes, Edward,” she said, feeling him close, as if he were naked, despite all their clothes between them (except where it counted, thank heavens).

She put her hands to his head, afterwards, in a tender wifely motion, to smooth his hair where it had flown up wildly (with some guilt to think her own fingers had pulled at it, just now).

He fastened his britches, caught his breath; looked at her. She smiled at him, and his eyes crinkled back. “You are a wanton, Lady Pelham,” he said, “no better than you should be, for shame! — to tempt me so, on duty —— thank God!”

Outside on the landing, Stroud cleared his throat and then coughed ostentatiously. “’E’s coming round a bit, now,” he announced, to no-one in particular.

Pelham hurried out to see Hastings before he should have to return to Victory. Stroud made sure not to catch his eye, turning officiously with an armful of clean linen at the top of the stairs. “’E’s askin’ for you, sir,” he said, softly.

“Thank you, Stroud,” said Pelham, surprised to find that he was not in the least embarrassed, even, any more, at the idea that someone knew he had been enjoying his wife. Much had fallen into perspective, in these last weeks: the brevity of life, the urgency of taking what it offered, while you still could — the uncertainty of it all.

Stroud was thinking much the same thing.

Hastings’ eyes were still bloodshot. His voice was a feeble croak. “Sir —” he said.

“You have one task,” said Pelham firmly, warmly, “and that is to get better. That is your duty, sir, to me and to His Majesty’s Navy, and by God you had better do it! And don’t let me catch you slacking — I shall be receiving regular reports from my domestic spies — not the least of which is my Indomitable daughter, and so God help you if you do not, sir!”

“I shall do my very best, sir,” murmured Hastings, with the ghost of a smile.

“I should hope so,” said Pelham: “you had better, sir. Or I shall be out the twenty guineas to boot, not to mention all this trouble and effort you have caused, and then I shall really be disappointed in you!”

He reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair. He must leave very soon, now. Mavis sat beside the bed, her hands in her lap, demurely, looking as if butter would not – could not – would not even dream of attempting – to melt in her mouth. “A word, Mavis, if you please — ” said her father gently, knowing that look.

The rain had stopped; he had little time and no more excuse, if Victory were to leave harbour again on the next turn of the tide. The admiral was not known for his patience, any more than was Pelham himself. She followed him downstairs, and he opened the door into the library. What was he going to say, that he would not say in front of mamma? Was she in trouble — for being so transparently in love with him? But papa had said, “I know” to her — had understood her with his eyes, even as he brought her beloved back to her, wrapped in those blankets. Yet he had a serious look, as he closed the door.

He held out his arms to her, and she came into them. How good it was to be enfolded there for a moment. She thought she could smell mamma’s scent upon his neck. Her own papa, the one she had found; and who had rescued her, in turn, and mamma too: and now saved her beloved. He was the glue that held her world together, absent though he was for so much of the days; but present, constantly — his influence, his love and care of them the backbone of their lives (and theirs of his, did she but know it). She kissed his shoulder, her face turned into it. He hugged her back first, then held her away from him a little, his eyes seeking hers.

“Mavis,” he said then, turning her face up to his with his thumb upon her chin, very firmly, “look at me. No, do not look away.” — he was the captain here, very stern; there was no arguing with him and she knew it. “Listen, now.”

Since he commanded it, her hazel eyes stared unwavering back into his. God, she was lovely. And defiant, ever so slightly, at the tone of his voice — but willing; and calm; and mature.

“Very good. Now listen to me: I shall say this but the once, and there will be an end of it between us. He is ill, Mavis.”

“I know that, papa.”

“And therefore weak, and defenceless, and wide-open to – all kinds of injuries. In body — and spirit. Including to being taken advantage of.”

“Yes, papa.”

“Our job is to get him better, not to take advantage of his weakened state to take what he would not give, if he were completely himself.”

She flushed. “I don’t understand, papa — I would never hurt him!”

“Oh, yes, you do,” he said, sterner still but not unkindly. “And you have, already, though I know you did not mean to. You were even more of a child then, too, and you did not see what your artless advances would cost his spirit. But they have, Mavis. He blames himself for having led you on into this — this passion you feel for him.”

Her eyes blazed for a split-second before filling with tears, and she dropped them then; he let her, did not force her to raise them to his once more. (Knowing when to demand a look and when to release it was the essence of his command.)

The pattern upon the carpet seemed suddenly to occupy all her attention: it swam in alternating blurs of salmon and rose and magenta and dark-blue, all the way from Turkey, to come to her notice now fully for the first time. She blinked, and it came more sharply into focus: how prettily the pieces locked together, the shapes intermingled with realistic trees and leaping animals.

“Be his nurse, Mavis, as you have been his friend so staunchly. I brought him here to be healed, not hurt any further. Do not steal any more kisses from him. Oh, I know how hard it will be not to do so —— ”

—— here she flinched, looked up at him again with the wide-eyed startle of a doe in the forest — “yes, I know,” he said, “though God knows I would never have told you I do, if this had not now come, and this warning I must give you sticking in my throat, Mavis. I do not blame you. I think — I might almost have done the same, in your shoes.” His gaze creased into a tender smile, here, even while his mouth stayed very firm indeed. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, papa,” she whispered.

“Very well, then. We will speak of it no more. Only — Mavis — ”

“Papa?”

“I should — I do — wish for — what you do — almost no less than you, if it should come to pass. One day — that is the key, my dearest daughter. One day. In the far distant future. And only – only – at his behest, not yours. Let him at least believe he has some choice in the matter!”

She held his gaze steadily. “Thank you, papa.”

“Don’t thank me: I value people as I see them. And I have not come across a better officer — or a more decent young man. Oh, and Mavis — ”

“Papa?”

“I saw your face when I mentioned kisses. Don’t think he tattled to me right away, for he did not. But I knew he was troubled, greatly so, and at last he came to me as his commanding officer, thinking he had done wrong by me and my family. It was entirely correct of him to have done so — I should have thought the less of him, had he not. You put him in an impossible position, Mavis.”

“Yes, papa.”

“Do not do so again,” he said, and bent and kissed her.

And then they were off, carrying torches back along the shore, the hail of the men by the long-boat and the splash of their oars fading into the blustery night; and Hastings was upstairs in the bed, requiring her tender care almost as desperately as she needed to give it.

Sophie went into the kitchen. “Mrs. Stroud,” she said softly, “when you have finished with that, and we have Mr. Hastings all settled for the night, I wonder if you could help me with some lemon-juice and baking-powder upstairs? I seem to have got mud upon our counterpane…”

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

It was a long haul, a very long one, and each of them pulled their weight, no-one more than Mavis.

Her mother watched in quiet pride as her daughter kept weary vigils without fidgeting; wiped his nose when it ran, cleaned-up his blood, and even vomit, gently, quickly, without wrinkling her nose, but with a kindly matter-of-fact reassurance instead. Hastings slept much of each day, like a babe, at first, although when he woke his needs were greater: there was the matter of the poultices, above all, which must be applied scalding-hot to his wounds back and front to draw out the vicious humors. These became a twice-daily ordeal that became no easier as his voice regained its strength and the groans he could not hold in (to his shame) became louder and more wrenching.

At first Sophie would do so, drawing the gauze with wooden tongs from a steaming basin in Mrs. Stroud’s steady hands, and he would simply faint from the pain of it. But after a couple of days, with the hearty broths that had been simmered for him, the apple-sauce, the fresh eggs scrambled and the tender new pease all mashed up and fed him on a spoon — Mavis seemed to be able to get him to eat, by distracting him with chatter — after taking-in some nourishment and sleeping in a clean, wide bed that did not pitch — he came more to himself, and the agony of this treatment became only more apparent each time.

Mavis sat beside him, at these times, and held his hands in hers, while Stroud steadied his shoulders and Sophie pressed the scalding dressings to his still-open flesh. The wounds were draining, although this seemed healthy to her, with no odour thank God, only a discharge that became lighter and more straw-coloured over the course of the next week: the doctor concurred. The drainage stained the bandages cherry-red at first, then dark gold as it oozed between the margins of the newly-forming scars: it was Mavis who bathed the crusts away with her tender hands, unflinching and careful — she did it best of all, her touch perfectly steady, able to loosen each little crystal that Sophie strained to see, especially by candle-light; and so Sophie let her, gratefully — replaced the bandages with clean ones most conscientiously, every couple of hours, day and night — she got up in the night without needing to be woken, came to him by candle-light, barefoot in her wrapper, her mother bringing warm water, then watching as she worked. The doctor said he had never seen a better job of wound-care, in all his years as a ship’s-surgeon, before he retired to Portchester. That was the key, he said, when gangrene was feared: keep it at bay by changing the dressings, changing the dressings, swabbing with lime-juice and changing the dressings! That, and the twice-daily poulticing: watch and watch about, he said; he had rarely seen it take hold, when it was done, so.

Hastings submitted to it all, weakly, gratefully.

When the hot poultices were going on, Mavis kept very still and simply held his hands between hers. She did not stroke or caress them, or anything that might irritate him further — just the steady pressure of her own square, capable fingers on his. She did not move when he cried out. When they were open again she held his eyes with hers, also.

When it came time to change his napkin, or later (when he was a little more recovered) carry out his slops, Sophie kept Mavis from the sight of him undressed, for both their sakes, but did not spare her daughter the cleaning-up of the linens, afterwards. She must know, she thought, if she is going to love this man, what it is: all of it. It will be an antidote to a romantical fancy; but only strengthen a true and selfless caring, if it was there to be drawn on, so — a caring of the kind Sophie wished for her to know. Now we will see how grown-up she truly is, her mother reflected, not just how much she thinks herself so.

Mavis did not fail the test.

Mrs. Stroud gave him his baths, for the sake of his dignity, and so Mavis saw no more of him than head-and-shoulders, for the bandaging. Although that was plenty, for her fourteen-year-old eyes: more than plenty. She remembered the glimpse she had had of him with his shirt off, in the kitchen back in Gibraltar, and how beautiful he had looked to her then: it still brought a lump to her throat to remember it. He was thinner now, his muscles wasted from the long illness, and she saw him less as a beautiful young man than simply as her beloved patient.

There was a particular hollow, above each collar-bone, below the column of his neck, that when she looked at it made her feel faint and giddy in her stomach, and her thighs tremble. At night she lay in her bed and thought about it again, and the feelings returned just at the thought. She found she could make the bottom drop out of her stomach with a lurch, anywhere, at any time, by bringing to her mind’s eye the silky planes of his chest. One day the phrase came to her from nowhere, “he is a bolt of silk” — and it stayed with her after that, rang in her head at the oddest times.

He kept his food down, mostly, after the first week, and her duties with a spoon turned to sitting with him while he fed himself and keeping him company, so he would not be eating alone: the height of loneliness, said Mrs. Stroud, a right shame, and there shouldn’t nobody ever ’ave to do that.

He liked to see Pellie, for a few minutes at a time, and they had plenty of laughs, then; after the second week he stopped clutching his wound when he laughed.

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

There was one day that came to him during that time which stood out from all the rest, although it began in the same way as the others, a seamless unfolding of night and day and meals and dressings and wakefulness and sleep.

He drowsed. The room rocked gently about him, his lieutenant’s berth aboard Victory somehow transported here to Portchester. He heard Pelham’s voice up on deck: stern, for sure, but the warmth of pride in it too, pride in his ship, in his men. Something about drying the sails now they were safely in port —? It was a pleasant dream, not one he wished to wake from.

A light tap on the door brought reality and Mavis. He had not seen her in this pale-green gown: it looked well on her, and the absence of an apron reassured him there would be no painful care at her hands just at the moment. He blinked, sighed, tried to come awake.

“Mr. Hastings,” she said softly, “Oliver —”

“Mmmh?” was the best he could do. Damn, but his shoulder hurt now he was coming fully to consciousness. That, and another waking sensation — he shifted in the bed, all too self-conscious now. Oh, Lord. Well at least it must mean that he was getting better, coming more fully to his old self? But without the power of mind over matter that he would have had with all his strength. He drew his knees up, awkwardly.

“May I come in?” she asked. “I have some news for you —”

There had been a time, not many days ago, when she would have come in without asking. Those had been the fever-days, her cool hand a benediction in between the flaming agonies of the dressings and poultices. Now he was recovered enough to have a social being, was he? He smiled in spite of the throbbing from his wound. “Of course,” he said, “please!”

She came to his bedside. Lord, but she was lovely. She is fourteen years old, he reminded himself. His body cared not a whit for that fact, told him she was beautiful and a young woman and that was that. “Someone is here to see you,” she smiled, “someone very special indeed, Oliver.”

She had started to use his Christian name in the depths of his illness; he would not have taken it back from her now if he could. No-one had called him by it regularly since he had left home. “Are you up to a visitor?” she asked him. Something merry sparkled in her eyes, something suggesting a secret or at least a surprise. Was Pelham home again so soon? “I hope so,” she went on, “because this person has come a long way from home to see you.”

Home? “Father —?” he asked, the strains of the voice from his dream coming back to him now. It had been paternal, he had been right about that, and proud, but not Pelham after all, then ——— ! “I should wash my face,” he murmured, “shave — ” – in truth the stubble on his chin was still nothing like as thick and dark as Pelham’s would have been after such an interval since the last time Sophie had done it for him, but it was noticeable and he felt conscious of it.

She bent, laid a hand on his brow and then caressed his cheek before taking it back. “I can do that for you later,” she smiled, “but I don’t think this person will mind seeing you just as you are right now, truly.”

And then there was a tread on the stairs that he knew, and Sophie’s voice outside the door, “Is he awake? May we come in?”

Mavis tilted her head at him, lifted her eyebrows — was he ready? Hot tears sprang to his eyes in spite of himself; he could only nod. The tears gathered and overflowed. Mavis bent again, and dabbed them away so very gently with a soft muslin cloth from his bedside. “Sshhh,” she whispered, “it’s all right, Oliver — you know, don’t you! It is your papa, come to see you — sh – sh – sh!”

He blinked. She withdrew, made way for a tall, stooping figure.

“Father —” said Hastings, and found he could not keep from weeping altogether now in spite of himself.

So then it was his father drying his tears, cupping his thin wet face in both gnarled hands, and tears of his own not far away.

“Oliver,” he whispered then, sitting slowly and painfully in the hard chair by the bedside, “Oliver — lad — Oliver!”

Sophie and Mavis slipped away.

“I thought I’d lost you,” said his father, by way of an excuse for his own tears: not something Oliver was used to seeing on that stern, remote, craggy face. “We all did —— your captain came to see me — God, but we’re so proud of you, Oliver — I had no idea, no idea at all, how well you’re thought of, how far you’ve come, what you are now — !”

“Came to see you?” murmured Hastings, trying to understand.

“Yes, when we all thought you were lost — as you so very nearly were, Lord! Oliver, what a fright you gave us all—”

Oliver wondered if he ought to apologize: felt almost as if he should, somehow. For getting himself shot through the breast and all banged-up and more than half-drowned and almost completely killed? Or for the fact that he had somehow taken a place in their affections such that his loss would cause all this fuss and anguish? The latter, perhaps, for the former had merely been the performance of his duty, and surely no-one could fault him for that?

“I beg your pardon, father,” he murmured, “if I gave you cause for concern ——”

“Hush, tush!” smiled his father — god, how many years had it been since Oliver had heard that from those firm but kindly lips? It must have been while his mother was still alive, certainly! “It wasn’t your fault, son, for goodness’ sake! — no-one’s saying it was. We were all so – so destroyed, that is all, and now to find you are alive after all is so altogether too much of a blessing that we cannot — cannot behold it in — in equanimity, so — you see — the full extent of our care for you, I think!”

“Of course, Father,” he said.

“No, damme, why must I be so close-mouthed even now? Good God, I almost lost you without telling you — I shall not make that mistake again, son,” said his father in warm tones Oliver certainly had not heard since the passing of his mother from their lives ten years earlier. “ — the extent of our love for you, Oliver, how very much you are beloved, yes, beloved, son —!”

— and so then he had to dry his son’s eyes all over again.

“I don’t deserve it,” gasped Oliver, “Father, I have just been doing my duty, there is no need for all this fuss ——”

“Yes, there is,” said his father. “You are the need for it, Oliver, as dear as you are to us. God, your captain — so proud of you — when we thought you lost, he spent half the night telling me of you — all you have done, the man you’ve come to be, your courage, your zeal, your quickness — he had you sized-up for admiral one of these days, lad, make no mistake!”

“Good Lord —” was all Oliver found himself able to say.

“Such a regard as he has for you,” said his father proudly, “I’d no idea – none at all — I mean, I knew you’d done well, but not — not this much.”

Oliver felt a little guilty at first, at the gulf between what he had allowed his father to know about his professional life and all there had been to know, if he had shared it. And yet he was not one to boast, had nothing like the high opinion of himself that others seemed to — could always see how he could have done something better, faster, more thoroughly, more expediently — how could he have told what he himself failed to perceive? The difference between his having done his duty to the best of his ability, as he thought he had done, and what others saw in that performance? He couldn’t.

Unable to articulate any of that, he took refuge in small-talk; “Father, was Lady Pelham expecting you?”

“No,” said his father, “not today, as such, but Captain Pelham had written to me as soon as he had you back, told me to hurry down here and see you, lad —!” While I still might, he added, silently, for the captain’s letter had not glossed over the seriousness of his son’s situation and how very close they might still come to the loss they had already suffered through once. “I hear it was still touch-and-go for a while, but you’re pulling through nicely now — no more pus in the wound, Lady Pelham tells me, although you’re not getting up at all yet —”

“Oh, God,” groaned Hastings, imagining the conversation downstairs concerning himself and squirming at the intimacy of it.

“Yes,” his father carried on, either blithely unaware of his son’s embarrassment or choosing to ignore it. “She invited me to stay, a day or two, and even to take a look at the wound myself, next time you are to have it dressed — I should like to, if I may,” he added, remembering this was his son’s body and he had not the right to trespass without permission.

“Of course, Father,” said Oliver, “—of course! Mavis usually comes to dress it before dinner, so — what time is it now?”

“Past three,” said his father, thinking, Mavis, is it, not Miss Pelham? “I expect she will be doing so soon, since you’ve slept the afternoon away, they told me.”

Sure enough, another soft knock at the door presaged Mavis with a bowl of water – pleasantly hot, but not the scalding one of the poulticing, along with a roll of clean bandages and a stack of gauze — all upon a tray balanced between her other hand and her tender bosom as she negotiated the door-handle. “It’s time, Oliver, now you are awake.” She turned to his father. “Would you like to do the honours, Dr. Hastings?” she asked, respectfully.

“No, my dear,” he said, “these hands do not have the fine motion they once had – but I should like to look, if I may, to see the condition of the wound for myself —”

“Of course, Dr. Hastings,” she said prettily, setting the bowl down beside the bed. He moved out of her way, ignoring the pain from his stiff joints. It had been a long and punishing coach-ride, and he would pay the price for it in the days to come – would almost certainly not be able to sleep with the pain of it tonight, although he had brought his self-medications – willow, his own pepper-and-mustard ointment for rubbing the swollen knuckles to heat them out of their painful seizing, and even a mild poppy-tea, not that he usually allowed himself to indulge in the dangerous comforts of Lady Opium. But he wanted to be able to get up and down the stairs at least, to see his son, and sit with him, read to him, be able to hold a book, a cloth, a spoon if he needed feeding – and so he had brought all of that, to be at his best here.

Sophie had not thought it necessary to crowd the room with another person if Dr. Hastings was there, and so it was Mavis that opened the ruffled fine lawn nightshirt – it must be the captain’s, then – and pulled it gently down from Oliver’s shoulder, helped by Dr. Hastings as they propped him up a little further on his pillows. Hastings hoped to God that they would put his quickened breathing down to the exertion of it. As she leaned over him, pulling at the pillows behind his back to get them just so, her sweet bosom brushed his shoulder, his chest: how could he help but be most exquisitely aware of it? The French rocks had rubbed off his skin, he felt flayed by everything that happened to him. And he was not such an invalid as all that —! He was two-and-twenty, and coming to himself again after a debilitating illness, and the self to which he was coming was wide-open to such stimulus and utterly defenceless against the feelings accompanying it.

“Sshh,” she murmured, unselfconsciously, “breathe easy —”

Dr. Hastings, watching, could see all too easily why his son’s breathing had quickened; read his wide-open face, too, the sweet flush rising in it now. She has no idea, he thought to himself; thank heavens, or else poor Oliver would not survive this tender care! Although he also assumed from her height and demeanour that she must be sixteen, at least, and not so very far from being a properly eligible object for his son’s affections, if that was where they lay — which they did, by all appearances, if he could see anything at all. His captain’s daughter —! Well, well. It was quite common, after all — and she was entirely lovely, he had to grant that.

Then he watched in amazement and admiration this time, leaning forward to see, as her careful, capable fingers unfastened the bandage that was there and bathed the crusts from the wound where it had oozed, even the sharp little crystals caught in the puckered cracks of the new scar — “it looks like a rose,” she said, “doesn’t it?” — with such extraordinary tenderness he found that he was holding his breath just seeing her work. He had to grant her a very great deal more than lovely, by the time she was done: including skilled, gifted, nimble-fingered, thorough, and utterly devoted.

And he watched also the blazing, luminous expression on her face as she did so, and thought to himself that he had been mistaken in his first apprehension that she had no idea. There is much going on in this household beyond what meets the eye, he thought then: a very great deal. But not to Oliver’s harm; there is so much love for my son here, so much — so very much. More than he ever had at my hands, at least more than I ever showed him, he thought then with a great regret rising in him for how aloof he had been, how preoccupied, how inarticulate on all that mattered.

Oliver winced once or twice. Mavis bit her lip, but continued: “ Sorry — ” she whispered.

“It’s all right,” murmured Oliver.

God, where had he heard such tender tones, in the last ten years since he had lost his wife? His heart began to ache all over again: but it was an ache he welcomed.

Moved beyond words, he noticed also his son’s predicament at being the subject of such tender ministrations; remembered his own youth, the helpless heat of his own body once. A good sign, a healthy one: he thanked God for it, another marker on the way to a full recovery, a signpost that he was well out of danger. “You should not catch a draught, Oliver,” he murmured, and picked-up the extra blanket from where it lay folded at the bottom of the bed: opened it and let it settle across his legs and lap in loose folds above the tell-tale counterpane. Oliver had his head tipped back, his eyes closed, his breathing shaky still as Mavis finished her washing of his chest and put the fresh gauze there. He gave his father a grateful look, but Dr. Hastings did not wait to meet it: let the lad have his excuse at face-value, without the self-consciousness that must doubtless bring deeper roses yet to his downy cheeks.

Mavis finished the bandaging with his help, lifting Oliver to pass the white roll around under his arm and across his shoulder in a triangle that would hold the gauze in place till next time. Dr. Hastings sat down again in the chair by the bed, watching her bend to close his son’s nightgown once more, tuck the bed-clothes up under his chin. She is very, very lovely indeed, he thought, a real English rose — I should feel the same way myself, if I were two-and-twenty and she were taking such tender care of me!

“Mrs. Stroud is making you a lamb-and-barley stew, Oliver,” she smiled at both of them, straightening, “ – with dill. Cut up very fine, the lamb, and tender – you can rely on it, put money on it even, you know Mrs. Stroud! – so it will be easy for you to manage. And I will mash the carrots with a fork, before I bring it up. Oh, and a rhubarb-fool, into the bargain. She claims it will keep the bowels open, but I think it just tastes divine – she let me have some. So you can eat all with a spoon — perhaps your papa would like to help you?”

“I should like that very much indeed,” said Dr. Hastings, thinking what a benediction it would be to sit here and have some palpable way of caring for his son, this lad before him so dear, so precious he could not bear to contemplate it, even.

And so the food came, every bit as perfect as Mavis had described for a convalescent who must get his strength back without straining his enfeebled constitution, and he fed him. Oliver, knowing he could have managed, let him do so, understanding his father’s need.

With each careful spoonful Dr. Hastings blinked, smiled at his son, thanking God for all the sustenance that this household brought to his only child; the kindness he had earned at their hands, and the wonder of that; their love of him, so radiant at every moment; and the yet greater gifts to come that he saw so clearly, already.

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

The good doctor stayed a few days, then had to return to his home and his practice. Thoroughly reassured now and (please god!) barring any unlikely and unforeseen relapse, the lad would live to bring yet greater pride to the hearts of both his fathers. The doctor was willing to concede that title to Captain Pelham, or at least to share it with him gladly, after their time together so recently when they had thought him forever lost to them. Lord knew, the last few years, Pelham had proved more of a father to Oliver than he himself had been able to!

When he left it was with a full heart and a kiss from Mavis upon his lined cheek; a handshake from Lady Pelham, with the assurance she would continue to do all in her power to aid his son’s recovery – as if he could have had any doubt of it! – as well as some few jars, pressed upon him with loud insistence by Mrs. Stroud, of the heavenly preserves he had most admired and exclaimed-over, upon his plate, during those few well-fed days: the bramble-jelly being his very favourite.

He returned, then, more grateful to his Maker than he had felt in a great long time – perhaps, he conceded again – two concessions within a week! — perhaps, ever.

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

After that first fortnight, when the fever had quite abated and showed no signs of recurring, Oliver was allowed up and about a little. He especially appreciated being able to take care of his bodily needs without help: his fierce modesty and pride in this matter touched Sophie, who smiled and said, “of course—” even though she doubted he was strong enough, yet; but he persevered. Still he needed to rest much of the day; she and Mrs. Stroud would dress him in his shirt and britches, and put a soft blanket around his shoulders, and he would sit in a chair in the garden for an hour; and then he would be exhausted, and Stroud would help him back to bed.

He found Mavis greatly changed, and said so; she smiled. He did not tell her that it was her enchanting mixture of knowingness and naïveté whose balance had altered, for fear of offending her; but he did find her calmer, now, more apt to carry-on a long and interesting conversation upon a single topic without darting jackdaw-like to the next bright shiny idea, related or not; and the sound of her voice as she sat at the piano and played all the old songs of his boyhood, which his mother had used to sing, made him close his eyes and quiver with the sweetness of it. She had a way of being able to pick-out a tune by ear, after he had sung a measure or two of it in his rusty, uncertain voice, and if she knew it then she could play it all.

These times were magical to him. “Blow Away The Morning Dew,” she sang, and “Early One Morning,” “Greensleeves” and “Blow the Man Down, Billie — ” clearly, simply, with a sparkle in her eyes. He thought that being wounded was perhaps not completely a loss, if he could taste this little heaven because of it.

She was better-informed, and could converse upon politics as well as penguins; although the look that came into her face when she got him talking about far-off lands and exotic sights was still one of absolute and palpable yearning.

If he noticed her pretty figure, now, he did not mention it, however; nor did he make any reference to her increasing age. The changes he commented upon were not ones she cared about: her understanding, her general-knowledge, her ability to sit very still — these he noted affectionately, but they were not the points at issue, and she chafed at the gulf of what he did not say.

He complimented her upon her ability to read-aloud, one afternoon, while lying in bed after being up for an hour or two. She had been reading Shakespeare to him, and then they had taken turns being the characters, King Lear it was, a right old tale if he might say so (he might) — poor Lear, raging, and the Fool left loyal when all had deserted him. Sophie, hearing their voices float down to her in the garden, where she watched Pellie pulling the heads off dandelions and making piles of them, thought that perhaps she ought to chaperone them a little more closely, now that he was better and their spirits so much higher.

It was the Shakespeare that led her into trouble. Mavis had been reading much of it, in an uncut copy of her grandfather’s not intended for children of tender years, and she had got a few ideas of her own about the characters; while some of the sonnets, though beyond her understanding, had ravished her ears and heart with their yearning. Yearning she understood.

“Juliet was fourteen,” she said, into the easy stillness of the afternoon, a-propos of nothing-in-particular.

He gave her a startled look.

“Well, she was,” said Mavis.

“So I’ve heard,” answered Hastings, wondering with a sinking feeling where this was going. He had noted her figure, as has been seen, and very pretty it was; his consciousness of it brought a hot blush to his cheek when she sat beside him, especially if she should chance to brush against him (it was chance, surely?!).

He allowed himself to appreciate the shape of her limbs under her skirts while she ran across the garden towards him, the sun behind her; to see the flattering fit of her frocks, the way she smiled, displaying all her teeth, the way she sometimes showed the tip of her tongue; her skin, her yet-untamed mane of hair — all in a kind of admiration and general haze, an almost-innocent yet still-aroused awareness of her. The exceptions being certain, more extreme moments, for which he excused himself by considering his helplessness to avoid the physical contact which prompted them. If I wait, he thought, it will not be too many more years before this will be licit, and I may claim more of her than this friendship. She already has, there is no doubt of that; but it is my task to wait-and-see.

He was well aware of this, and also of his expected role — one he chafed under, sometimes, thinking he did not wish it to be expected of him, damn it. What if he met some other sweet thing, found himself charmed and beguiled by a young lady of nineteen, say, or one-and-twenty, for whose embraces he would have to wait only till permission was given and the banns read — what then? But the stumbling-block to his further imagination of this possibility was precisely the impossibility of it: there was no-one comparable.

And so she took him by surprise, out of nowhere, with her pointed comment about Juliet, and he did not know what to reply to her.

“You think I’m a child,” said Mavis, who had been spoiling for this conversation lo! these many days.

“No, I don’t,” he said — “ well — but you are — ! In that sense!”

“You keep talking to me as if I were a child,” she said, “and I’m not.”

“I know that, Mavis,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” she said. “You think I’m ‘only’ fourteen – that you’d have to wait for me for ever – that I’m a little girl with a crush on you, that has nothing to do with real love or how men and women are together, or anything. Well, you’re wrong!”

He stared at her. She thought he did not believe her. (She was wrong, in this.) She wanted him to answer her, but he did not. He blinked, said nothing. So she was still a child in his eyes, in spite of everything, then. It wasn’t fair! How could he not see? She felt suddenly desperate now, quite sure he didn’t see, wouldn’t see — would never see: “—Look!” she cried, making him see for himself, with his own eyes, what she was so sure he had not. “Look!” — and before he could stop her, or even had any idea of what she was about to do, she flung down the Shakespeare; pulled her bodice open and tore out the lace fichu there: opened her thin chemise with trembling fingers, and pulled it wide. “Now, look,” she whispered.

Oh, God. He did, for a split second, before he turned his head away. It cost him all he had, to do so. They were round and pointed, at the same time: they were full: they were wild roses; they were pointed straight at his heart (and a second later, his groin). And wounded him in both places.

He closed his eyes as if she had struck him.

Breathing hard, she closed her bodice, her fingers trembling more than ever. She had got what she wanted: his reaction — and now she had, it hurt her to see it.

“No,” he said, on a falling cadence like a hurt child: “Christ, no—!”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, seeing that she had hurt him again, beyond measure. She had meant to give him something: but it was far too great of a gift, and there was nothing he could do with it, now, but tear himself apart refusing it. His face had lost all its colour; now it drained back, redoubled, and she knew that once again she had allowed herself to be carried away on a selfish tide of her own passion, without thought of what was good for him.

“What did you have to go and do that for?” he asked her, then, his voice husky with tears.

She hung her head in shame. “You can open your eyes again, now,” she mumbled.

He did so, but kept them turned from her. “Don’t you think,” he said to the wall, “that it’s hard enough to wait for you already?”

She was stunned into silence.

“Look — ” he said, “I’m not made of stone.”

“I wanted you to know what you were waiting for,” she whispered.

“Oh God,” he said then, “do you think I didn’t?”

“You do?” she breathed.

“What kind of a fool do you take me for?” he asked her, his forehead lined with incredulity. “Of course I knew!”

“Since when?”

“Since the caves, you foolish girl, when you put my hand there — don’t deny it —” (she was not going to). “ — I had to decide, then, what I was going to do about you. I thought I would just let time pass and see what happened. And be your friend, if that is what you wanted. I — I always loved to get your letters. And I thought, well, I can wait — for this — till she is eighteen, or nineteen, and then we will see ——”

“But you can still do that!” she cried.

“Yes,” he said, “with those floating before my eyes at every turn! Lying alone in bed, trying to turn my thoughts from you. Making myself wait. Forcing myself to be patient.” He was too spent to tell her anything but the truth: he had no armour, no defences, after his long illness: he was raw. “And I do want to – wait. I haven’t met anyone else like you, ever. I don’t expect to. When you laugh, or touch me, I feel – the way your father looks when your mother comes into the room, or I imagine he does — there’s a warmth, a glow — a completeness —— but Christ, Mavis, I have feelings! And I have them now, for God’s sake! And there are names for men who seduce little girls, and they’re not pretty. And that is aside from my duty to your family, to your father ——— !”

“Not so little,” she said, “and I’m truly sorry.”

“You said that last time.”

“This one’s worse, isn’t it. Because I’m old enough to know better,” she sighed.

“Yes,” he said.

“But at least you won’t have to wait too long,” she whispered. “And I’m not naïve. I really do love you. I’ve seen you here, been with you — ‘in sickness and in health’ – just like it says in the marriage service. And I only love you more. Not just a foolish romantic dream, but you. All of you!” she caught a sob, went on: “ — and I even know,” she whispered, “what married people do. And I’m not afraid of it — I want to do it — with you.”

“Shut up!” he cried.

She flinched, pulled back against the wall. If it had opened up to let her pass through, she would have been grateful. She looked at him in the bed, the hurt in his face, the shape of him under the blanket, his white nightshirt, his broad shoulders just starting to put flesh on again; at his dark-red hair, tied loosely in a full and lustrous queue — at his hands, that were turned palm-uppermost as if to cup her breasts, his hands that shook.

And saw what she had done: all of it.

“Oh — oh — I — am — so — sorry,” she said then, her voice breaking.

For answer he closed his eyes, in utter misery, ashamed of himself, of his state of desire, of all that he was. He turned his face to the wall. “I think you’d better leave, for now,” he said. His tone was harsh.

She did; and he lay there aching. After an intolerably long time, in a torment of self-hatred and helpless need, he brought himself swiftly and very roughly to a release that tore his soul out.

Wild roses.

He was not by habit a self-polluter: avoided it with all his strength. Dreams might relieve his tensions, but to achieve the same end by his own hand felt deeply wrong to him. But he had no strength, today: none — only a fierce pitch of feeling that would not leave him, till he forced it all the way to its conclusion. It was so far from sweet that he wept harshly, in pain and shame, afterwards. He slept, then, dully, as he had not slept in a long while.

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

Mavis ran outside, not even noticing her mother sitting in the shade of the copper-beech with Pellie, and fled through the back gate out to the shore.

“What have I done?” she wept, huddled on the hummocky grass outside the sea-wall: “Oh, oh, what have I done! — Oliver, oh, Oliver!” It was a lament, more than a question, for she already knew what, and her sobs became only more bitter as she answered it for herself.

And not the least of her griefs was the knowledge that her papa had seen this coming, or something like it — not the extent of it, please God, but that she would do something rash and hasty and passionate — had foreseen it, and loved her enough to risk their mutual embarrassment, to warn her against it. And she had ignored that warning: to her very great peril — for he had been quite right.

She howled louder, then.

Stroud, stripping black-currant bushes the other side of the garden wall, heard her. Things had been coming to a head with her for some time now, since Mr. Hastings had been getting his strength back; and his proximity to her, the access she now had to him, was clearly more than the lass could cope with, given the state of her feelings. He’d watched it brewing like a piece of bad weather. He had a fair idea, then; though not exactly what it might have been — something bold and ill-judged, something irrevocable: a declaration, a confession, he surmised, given his knowledge of human nature in general and of the members of this beloved family in particular. He shook his head. She was going to have a might more heartache before she grew into that spirit of hers, there were no two ways about it. And Mr. Hastings was going to have to sail very, very close to the wind, to handle her.

33. A promise

Stroud watched his beloved lieutenant lose the progress he had made in the past week It seemed to be a setback of the spirit — his body continued to heal, but the roses that had started to return to his cheeks were fading again; or replaced by sharp flushes, not healthy ones, and then a stifled sigh or even a groan; and then pallor.

Stroud was not happy: not happy at all. He thought he knew what the trouble was (and of course he was quite correct). Miss Mavis had tipped her hand too far, too fast, and Mr. Hastings felt like he weren’t in control of the situation, at all, at all — and Miss Mavis was shocked and ashamed. This much was apparent to him, though had he known the extent of her humiliation and its cause he would have had a hard time not laughing his head off and then wiping tears from his eyes at her courage, her blindness, her temerity — and his poor lamb Mr. Hastings so very innocent, shocked to his marrow.

But he did not know, of course, and neither did Sophie — which was just as well, for she surely would have slapped Mavis across the cheek, swift and hard, if she had. But she, too, knew something was amiss: and guessed, what kind of thing it might be; and her heart ached for them both. She said nothing, however, fearing that her interference would only make matters worse. Angels may well fear to tread, here, she thought, seeing Hastings’ wan cheeks and her daughter’s downcast face. It would have been her thought, not to leave them alone together again; but Mavis pre-empted her in this, keeping so great a distance from the one who had made the sun rise in her day that Sophie barely saw her from dawn till bed-time.

What Sir Edward would have done, had he witnessed his daughter’s shameless outburst, did not bear thinking about. Mavis could imagine only too well his fury, hot and then cold: and his disappointment in her, that she could so far have forgotten herself – and his warnings – and her upbringing – and his lieutenant’s peace-of-mind, nay his very health, even – as to do such a thing. Even as he might well have wept for her foolishness, and her brazen courage, in acting thus, and even understood it, better than anyone else; for the impulse was his own — the no-holds-barred, whole-hearted pursuit of what was so desperately and passionately wanted.

But they did not know, of course; only the two parties to the upset held it like a splinter within their hearts. It was invisible, but its wounds were not.

It was left to Stroud to broach the subject, which he did with a very great fear of over-stepping; though, as he said to himself, I can’t overstep too far wiv on’y the one foot, can I, now? And it’s all fer ’is good.

“Sir,” he said, then, one lazy afternoon when the doves were cooing, “you’ve been a might worried lately, ain’t yer.”

Hastings did not answer.

“It’s that Miss Mavis, ain’t it,” Stroud went on, gently. “Don’t take very sharp eyes to see that, sir.”

Hastings shook his head. If he could only think of what to do now, where to go with her, he would not have been fretting so: but he felt hobbled by his obligation to her and her family to treat her as the child she was. And so he did not seek her out; allowed her to continue avoiding him. But the hurt festered, even as his physical wound did not; and Stroud saw it in his eyes. “Eatin’ yer ’eart out, ain’t you, Sir,” he said softly. “She’s a right one, I’ll say it as shouldn’t — but I knows her, sir, I knows her.”

“Yes,” said Hastings, glad of this chance at least to have someone agree that she was far, far too much to handle.

“She won’t answer to the helm, will she, sir. Off on ’er own tack an’ not seeing’ the lee shore ahead, sir. ’Er feelin’s is runnin’ away wiv ’er — and ain’t nobody doin’ a thing to stop it. Out of tryin’ not to notice. If I see things rightly.”

“You do,” said Hastings, too tired and overwrought to argue with what he knew to be the very truth of the matter: and offered by a sympathetic and loyal observer, one whose devotion to Miss Mavis could not be doubted. “Oh, God, Stroud,” he said then, “what am I to do? My hands are tied!”

“Your ’ands, sir, yes,” said Stroud thoughtfully, “and so they should be, ’er bein’ fourteen an’ all. Gorgeous though she is an’ don’t think as I ain’t seen the way she’s been brushin’ up against you, sir. Your ’ands is tied, sir — but not yer tongue.”

Hastings looked at him.

“The way I see it, sir,” said Stroud, warmly, “is that she ain’t got no direction. She’s rushin’ around at ’alf-cock ready to go off an’ no-one tellin’ ’er different, or tellin’ ’er she don’t ’ave to. An’ you, sir, you’re upset because you ain’t got no say in the matter – no control over the situation at all, sir. Which would upset anybody.”

“So —?” Hastings rubbed his forehead, where it ached.

“So tell, ’er, sir. Everyfink. ’Ow you feel. Wot the boundaries is, sir – the rules.”

Hastings stared at him.

“She ain’t stupid, sir,” said Stroud, “an’ she’d do anyfink fer you. She’ll listen.”

“By God,” said Hastings, “she would, too. If I could — find the words to say it —!”

“You will, sir,” said Stroud, firmly. “You got to. Or else this is goin’ to blow up in yer face, sir, an’ it won’t be nobody’s fault – but people is goin’ to get ’urt.”

Hastings let out a great, shuddering sigh. “You’re right,” he said.

“I can see it comin’ a mile off, sir,” Stroud’s face was lined with concern for this family he loved with all the devotion in his battered heart; and his lieutenant, his only lieutenant no matter if he had had a thousand of ’em, the only one for him, ever — such a fine officer: such an innocent lamb in the ways of women.

“You’ll feel a lot better, sir,” he added, “if you gets it off yer chest — an’ so will she.”

Could it really be so simple? Yes, it could — with his honest, clear vision, unclouded by any beliefs about what ought to be said or done or the respective ages of the parties, and seeing only what lay before his eyes, Stroud had put his finger on it: and the rightness of his suggestion lifted a weight from Hastings’ chest that had been making his wound throb.

“What can I possibly say?” asked Hastings, more to himself than out loud.

“I fink the trouble, sir, beggin’ yer parding,” said Stroud earnestly, “is ’ow you ’aven’t talked to the young lady about anyfink wot really matters, sir. Like — ’oo you are, an’ wot she wants, an’ wot you want. Ain’t no good beatin’ around the bush, if you ask me, sir — got to come straight out wiv it. Specially wiv a powder keg like ’er, beggin’ yer parding again, sir. She ain’t a child no more, sir — leastways, she ain’t be’avin’ like one — an’ you got to stop treatin’ ’er like she was. I’ve knowed one or two like Miss Mavis, sir, an’ they’re ’eadstrong, sir, like a frightened filly. They don’t know wot they wants from you, till you sit down wiv ’em. Work it out, like. ’Course, my days, I’d work it out straight into bed, but o’ course you don’t want to be a-doin’ that ’ere.”

“Good god, of course not!” exclaimed Hastings in shock.

“But, sir — I don’t see it’s any different ’ere. Where you is ’eading wiv ’er. It’s lettin’ ’er know where, wot counts. She’s crazy for you, sir, an’ not bein’ able to talk about it’s on’y makin’ matters worse. As fer you, sir, you’ll mend a lot better wiv it orf yer mind, sir. Sort it out, is my advice to you, sir. Get it off yer chest,” he repeated, finally.

“My God,” said Hastings, softly, “how do you know so much?”

“I been around, sir,” said Stroud, “a might longer’n you ’ave, sir. And I cares for you, an’ all, sir,” he added, proudly, reddening: “—enough to say it. Which it might come out cheeky, sir, but I won’t ’old me tongue where you’re in need of it, sir. You can be angry wiv me, if yer wants – tell me I’m an interferin’ old sod wot ought ter mind ’is own business, an’ I’ll agree, sir — but you is my business, sir,” he finished, “an’ I’m sorry for sayin’ it but you ’ad to ’ear it.”

“I’m not angry,” said Hastings — “I’m grateful! My God, Stroud, you’ve been a friend to me these many years — yes, a friend: I’m not your officer any more. It takes a lot of kindness — a friend — to offer advice — in such a thorny place — ” (here he closed his eyes, and saw once more those wild roses, and felt their thorns all freshly). “God,” he said.

“You’ll see, sir,” said Stroud.

“But — she is a child, still,” he protested, “you can’t tell me fourteen is a grown woman.”

“No, sir,” said Stroud, “but she don’t know she ain’t. An’ I’ve ’ad ’em younger ’n that, sir, an’ believe me, when they got the bit between their teeth, they ain’t children no more.”

“Younger —?” gulped Hastings.

“I weren’t nobbut a lad meself, at the time,” said Stroud, “I ain’t no cradle-robber. Fifteen, I were.”

“Oh, God,” said Hastings again.

“Would you like yer tea now, sir? I think my ’Ester’s been putting up scones, an’ all — an’ she’ll steal the ’eart right out o’ yer chest wiv ’er strawberry jam…”

Hastings nodded, weakly. “That sounds — wonderful,” he said. “Please thank her –”

“No thankin’ ’er, sir — that’s ’er job — which she would do it in a ’eartbeat even if it weren’t, fer you, sir.”

“I know,” said Hastings. And for the first time in several days, Stroud saw him smile. Fully. Happily.

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

Being Hastings, of course, he had one more obstacle to clear before he could tell Mavis all that was on his mind. She might well need to know it — but there was still the matter of her being fourteen years old, and the duty he owed to her family. He would not say a word to her, without leave: it would be more wrong than anything that had yet happened between them. Not that that hadn’t been wrong, God only knew how much! — but it had hardly been his fault, nor any of his doing: Mavis alone bore the responsibility for the latest debacle with him. But for him to speak to her — openly, of his feelings! — yes, even including his love for her — that was another matter.

He sought out Sophie in the morning-room.

“My lady,” he said.

“Sit down, dear,” she smiled, “— will you pardon me, if I keep winding this wool?”

“Of course,” he said, “shall I hold the skein? My mother used to — ” He took it up, stretched it between his hands. It was a lovely shade of sea-green, reminding him of the colour of the water above a coral-reef, that turquoise over white sand, though no wool could be as bright and clear. He looked up at her, smiling faintly. “I love to see you — keeping busy — all the things you do, we — can’t imagine, when we’re at sea — how it is, back at home…”

So it was home, was it, now? She was glad. “Have you heard back from your father, yet?” she asked him.

“No,” he said, “though my letter may not have reached him. I wanted to thank him, for coming all the way to see me – he is in pain much of the time, you know, but — he came.”

“Of course he did,” she said warmly. “My goodness, Mr. Hastings! And so would I — and so would you have! An only son?”

He saw she was right, shook his head smiling.

“You know Edward sent a messenger,” she smiled, “as soon as we knew — I told you, I’m sure, but in those first days you were half out-of-things — I couldn’t tell what you had heard, or remembered. It can’t have been a very great surprise, though, when he came in to see you?”

“Thank you,” he said, “I did remember that. And Father said — he’d even been to see him, the captain, when he thought — I couldn’t believe it, that he would have done. So soon, even. It must have been strange, all of you thinking I was dead — ”

“I would call it more than strange,” she said softly. “There were some breaking hearts here, Oliver, I can tell you. Of course Edward went to see your father! It meant a very great deal to him,” she answered. Her fingers moved, winding the ball. “But that’s not what you came to talk to me about, is it.”

“No,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s Mavis,” he said.

“Of course,” she replied, smiling: “I knew that. Difficult, isn’t she. I’m so sorry, my dear.”

“You don’t know — ” he said.

“Should I?”

“No,” he said, “—not all of it. But — it can’t go on like this, my lady.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone,” said Sophie, feeling a greater concern than she had yet. Mavis, Mavis, she thought, what have you done now? “I’m sorry,” she said again. “She means well, but — ”

“No, madam,” he said, “it’s my fault. But I think it’s time I spoke with her directly — not beating about the bush — and I cannot do that — will not — without your permission, my lady.”

He looked thoroughly miserable, she thought. What had Mavis done, to upset his composure so? She was not sure she could stand to know. And so — was she going to trust him to put things right between them, then, without knowing what was wrong? She had stopped winding; sat watching his face. The colour rose in it till it reached the roots of his hair, but there was no guilt there — not the kind she feared. Only a deep embarrassment, with which she sympathized entirely. And he was not hiding it, but had come to her to talk of it. God love him.

“I give you my word of honour, madam,” he said stiffly, since she had not yet replied, “that I would not ask anything of her that would be — wrong for a girl of her tender years. Not to promise, not to believe — nothing. Only to be able to — discuss — everything the future may hold — without treading where I should not, and betraying your trust in me. And Sir Edward’s.”

“It’s not you I don’t trust, Mr. Hastings,” Sophie said gently. “I have seen more than enough of you, these past years, to hold the highest opinion of you — the highest. No, don’t blush,” she added gently, waving her hand with the ball of wool in it; “it is no more than you have earned. And you must know that my husband thinks the world of you. The world. Let me tell you — ” — here she paused, wondering if she was going too far? For this was a confidence of Edward’s, after all — but the stricken face of the young man before her would not allow her to keep unsaid the thing she had been going to say, and so she went on, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but — I will — it is between us, now — when you went missing, and he thought you were dead — Mr. Hastings, that is the first and only time I have seen my husband weep.”

Hastings stared; closed his eyes for a moment, then.

“Yes,” she said, “he came to me, and I am not talking about a tear or two here, sir. He cried his eyes out. Yes. Now do not say I told you, please — but I want you to know just how much he thinks of you. And to remember that, when you tell me you are unworthy, and speak of betraying our trust. You are like a son to us, if you did not already know that. Now how are we to feel, that Mavis has set her heart on you? Only to be afraid that you or she may hurt each other — not to blame either one of you, God no! — but these things happen, and she is yet so young; nothing could come of it, nothing formal, till she is eighteen at least — and that is even presuming that you would wish to — ”

“I do,” he said, very quietly, “and yes, my lady — I know. That there can be no promises made. And I need to tell her that. Not you: me. There needs to be no subject we may not speak our minds about. I think that is the only way, to get through these next few years without misunderstandings — and hearts bruised more than they already are.”

“Are they?” she asked, her face creasing in concern, now.

“It is – an unhappy situation, my lady,” he said, “though no-one’s fault. But I need to be able to speak to her with candour on such subjects as – a man’s feelings, my lady” – his colour had risen even further now, “and teasing, and my own wish to make the first move, when it is time — and I cannot — would not — do that without your permission.”

“Teasing!” said Sophie, frowning: “—teasing, Mr. Hastings?”

“Madam, she doesn’t understand — please, don’t think wrong of her — she wants to give, and doesn’t see that it – is at a cost to me, to refuse her… these are the things I must tell her, madam, if you will let me.”

Sophie looked at him, the earnest face, the hands that trembled slightly. It was so very honourable of him to have come to her in the first place: a sign of his respect for her family, for Edward, that he would do nothing regarding their daughter without their blessing. Oh, she was so safe with him, her willful, foolish, doting, oh-so-vulnerable daughter.

And Mavis would believe him, see the truth of what he told her, in those trembling hands, that deep blush — as she would not from her mother. See it for herself, and know it to be true. There was no-one on this earth with whom she would be safer: she saw that in his eyes, his care for her, the way he had defended her, even.

“She can’t commit to anything, Oliver, you understand that —”

“I don’t intend to ask her for anything, anything at all, my lady! – except to understand better what it is she is doing –— to discuss with her, in the frankest manner, the hopes and expectations which she has — hers and mine, both. So that we may understand one another.” His flush had stabilized now into a high, bright shade of rose, his eyes brighter yet. He spoke with passion: with care.

She listened to him, wondering at his sensibility here; knowing that he was quite right, his instincts truer here than hers had been in wishing to give Mavis the space to be a child. He went on, with a great deal of feeling: “—because, my lady, I cannot go on with this half-woman, half-child like this: I cannot. And if I — could just be honest with her, my lady — bearing in mind her age, of course — I think we could — understand one another better.”

“You have a wise head on your shoulders, my dear,” she said, “wiser than I have been — for which you must forgive me. Yes, she needs a good talking-to; and I am not the one to give it: not here. I’m quite sure that whatever lessons you have for her will be learned more readily at your hands than at mine — for she is motivated, where you are concerned — she wishes to please you, above all. Oh, of course, don’t shake your head: I would too, if I were her. Now remember, she’s not to talk you into anything — anything at all — only to understand one another.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Very well, then,” said Sophie kindly, “you have my blessing. Um — do tell me, what the two of you — er — decide upon — the nature of your understanding, that is.”

“Of course,” he said, his face a picture of seriousness. He hesitated, then launched forward, one last sally — she saw clearly the courage it took for him to make it: his transparent face was far too easily read, more than ever in his illness. “Madam — to convince her — that I will wait for her, if she will but be patient, and not hurry things — ”

“Yes, Mr. Hastings?”

That flush again. “May I have your permission to kiss her, just once? She must know that I mean it — that I do not take her lightly — that she may trust me, when I tell her what her love means to me — that I will not throw it away — ”

She looked at his rosy, trembling mouth: thought of Edward’s upon hers, so hard and urgent. Knew that was not what he meant. This mouth was too young to kiss anything but tenderly: and his care for Mavis was so very apparent — for her good. And he was right, that in order for Mavis to rein herself in, she had to believe him: that he was serious. Did she dare say yes?

Fourteen years old —! Yes: going on twenty-four. And Juliet had been but fourteen, after all. And so — did she dare say no, for that matter, and set herself up to be disobeyed!

Whatever she said, he would abide by, she knew that.

Oh, but they were so very young, these children of hers, and so very much on the edge. She wanted Mavis to understand fully just what it was this young man was giving her.

“Yes,” she said. “One.”

He blinked, swallowed: said nothing.

They sat together until Sophie had finished the skein.

“Thank you,” he said, before leaving, young enough still that his voice was hoarse with emotion.

“Thank you,” she replied.

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

And so now, he had but to find her. This was not to be an easy task. As has been said, Mavis had been avoiding him since the scene the week before. At dinner she sat with downcast eyes, and during the days she was nowhere to be found. He missed her, keenly. He had thought the house a lovely place, and it was — but without Mavis it seemed to be missing half of its heartbeat. Sophie was the still center and warm soul of every room: but Mavis was the sparkle, he saw that now.

He gave a great deal of further thought to what he could say, and do; and how he should approach it at all. He thought she would probably cry; and steeled himself for that. He dressed with great care, going so far as to put on the full uniform they sent with him when he left Victory, blue coat, weskit and all; he shaved, with the help of Stroud, since his right arm still did not have its full range of mobility. He tied his black neck-cloth, and felt like himself again. He checked in the mirror to see that it was straight, saw his own face, so earnest and pale still. This was the lieutenant over whose loss his captain had wept: yes, wept. He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering how he had come to deserve such regard from the heroic and imperturbable Pelham; tried to envision him sobbing; could not. Only a wife might have that side of him, clearly. Yet even so, he still found it hard to believe the captain would have allowed himself to break down so completely. Cried his eyes out, she had said. Over himself? This thin-faced lad in the mirror? Yes; apparently so. He could not imagine it, but he had her word that it had happened. His captain; his hero, the model of all he hoped one day to be.

He set out to find Mavis.

He knew he would have to track her down: if he asked her for an interview at some later time, she would work herself into a fit of anxiety wondering what he meant to say — as he would have, were their positions reversed. But his endurance was yet slight, and he knew he would break down if he had to chase her here and there and all over. So he asked Stroud to let him know when she was not too far away, and thus he learned during the afternoon that she was out in the back, walking the sea-path: “The prize is in sight, sir,” said Stroud, grinning, “been hailed from the lookout down by the shore, sir. Good luck, Mr. ’Astings, sir….”

He took a deep breath, and went to find her.

She was dressed in one of her simple muslin frocks, and the wind whipped it round her ankles. She stared out to sea, and when he came to her she did not turn to greet him. As he approached, he could see that she knew very well he was close by; there was nothing wrong with her eyesight — except that as he drew up beside her, tears stood in her eyes.

He closed his eyes for a moment; opened them; touched her elbow. She pulled her arm in a little more tightly to her side. “You needn’t — ” she began.

“Sweetheart,” he said.

This was the very last thing she expected to hear. She had been waiting for a further reproach the whole week; not this. His voice was very kind.

She turned to face him, and he took her by the elbows. “Will you talk with me?” he asked her, “—as equals? Man to woman?”

“Of course,” she said, wiping away a tear with the back of her hand.

“Good,” he replied, “I hoped that you would.”

“I would do anything you asked me,” she said, her voice quavering, “if you would only forgive what I did —”

“Ssssshhh,” he said, “we won’t talk about that, yet.”

“What then?”

“Why, about you, sweetheart; and me — and what it is you want of me, hope for from me, and whether I can give it to you — and what our dreams might be, one day — and how we are to achieve them without hurting each other along the way — and things like that.”

She bit her lip. “Oh,” she said. “Yes.”

It was not as hard as he had feared, to say it: all he had to do was open his heart. Which was far, far simpler than keeping it locked and bolted and ready to burst. He tilted his head, sought her eyes. “But we must be completely honest with one another, darling, do you see?”

Her head was spinning with all these endearments — could he possibly mean them the way she wanted him to?

“Don’t call me darling” she said, “unless you mean it.”

“Very well, Mavis, my darling,” he said.

Her face turned to his then was a picture he thought he would never forget. “Now,” he continued, while she was still dumbfounded, “there are things you want of me, aren’t there — things you hope for.”

She nodded.

“What?”

“Don’t make me say…”

“But you must,” he said gently, “if we are to be — what we wish to be — to one another. And friends into the bargain. We are friends, are we not?”

“Oh, yes,” she smiled: a watery, tremulous smile.

“And what else would you have me be?” he asked her.

“My sweetheart,” she said.

“I thought I already was that,” he smiled back, gently.

She flushed. “My lover,” she said, shyly, “my husband.”

“Mmm,” he said softly, “I think I guessed that.”

“I told you,” she whispered.

“So you did,” he said. “Do you know, darling, it is a foolish custom, I know, but — quite accepted, usually — expected, even — for the man to ask the woman to be his wife, not the other way around.”

She looked at him, said nothing. “You see,” he went on, “you leave me little room to ask you, if you have already made up your mind… and so my hands are tied — I cannot even make the first move, for you have already made it — and the second.”

“I am sorry,” she whispered.

“I forgive you,” he replied, very gently, “for it has not happened to me in my life, let me tell you, to be so — wanted; so — loved. But, sweetheart, there are things we must explain to one another, things we must each understand — do you see? Otherwise, this won’t work, it can’t possibly: the differences between us will scupper everything. They almost have.”

“Yes,” she mumbled, “I know.”

“It’s not too late,” he said, taking her hands.

“I’m listening,” she said.

Where to begin? “I do — love you, Mavis,” he said. “Truly — truly I do. With all my heart. It — it isn’t easy, what with you being — so very young.”

“I’m sure,” she said, wondering when she would wake up — not yet, she prayed.

“I love the girl you are one way, and the woman you are going to be another. Don’t — jump the gun on me, Mavis, for I must wait a very long time, you know, for the second to come true.”

She sighed.

“You know I’m right. Now, we will have more plain speaking about that in a second or two, but first let me say that you must not consider yourself under any obligation to me — ever — not at any time. We should not talk of marriage, not yet. I have no right, no wish, to have that from you. It would be wrong. And Mavis, what we cannot do here is to act wrongly — do you see?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Now you have my word of honour,” he said then, “that I will wait for you until you are eighteen. And then we can have this talk a second time, if we want to, and it may lead us further — I hope that it will.”

“Ohhh,” she breathed.

“But in the meantime, what we must have, sweetheart, is an understanding. Not an engagement, not a promise, but just that — to understand one another. Do you see?”

“I would like that,” she said.

He was starting to grow short-of-breath with the effort of standing; she pulled him down to sit by her in a grassy hollow out of the wind, sheltered by a big gorse-bush starred with its small yellow flowers. When gorse is out of flower, kissing’s out of season, she thought, and wondered if it might even come to such a wondrous thing as that, under the blessing of these year-round golden pea-like blooms. From his eyes, she thought — prayed — that it might.

He smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“Now, where were we?”

“An understanding,” she prompted him.

“Yes. Now if I come home maimed, and unable to support you, there is no understanding, even,” he said — “You are free at all times. You are, anyway. You must be.”

“But I don’t want to be,” she said.

“And that is one of the reasons I love you,” he said, “because you are loyal and brave, and you have a great heart.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Now,” he said, “as part of that understanding, you need to see how it is for me.”

“Of course,” she whispered.

“Well, I haven’t told you; and I don’t think you do, yet.” He paused a moment: this was the most difficult part of all, and he had tried to find the words: felt foolish at every turn. In the end he had had to trust that they would come, with her. They did: “I — I’m a man, Mavis. Not a boy.”

“I know that,” she said.

“You do and you don’t. You don’t know — a man’s nature, or you never would have — done what you did. There are feelings — very strong ones —— ”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“It was not your fault you didn’t know,” he said, “— but if I am to wait all these years for you, and in the meantime treat you like the girl you are in your parents’ house — and do you no disrespect, not even in thought — then you cannot — you must not — tease me so cruelly, and make me want you now.”

“Tease…” she murmured, trembling.

“Yes, tease. Please — don’t — ever — do anything like that again — not until we are married!”

She looked up at him in wonder, her eyes ablaze at the thought.

“Yes, I would like it then,” he whispered, “very — very — much.”

She sparkled. “But not till then,” he repeated. “because now, it — isn’t — kind, it’s — torture.” And then he went on to tell her, as best he could, that he loved her passionate and tender spirit, most tenderly and passionately so, with more of his heart than he had ever allowed to feel anything of the kind, up till now, and he had little doubt of its changing in the next four years. And he told her then, his colour rising, but determined to speak his mind, that his body waited also, with bated breath, to see what would come of that budding promise she was to him just now: and that in some ways, this wait was the hardest of all.

“Ohhh,” she said, with the eyes of Juliet.

Now, was there anything he ought to know from her?

There was; it came out in a passionate, incoherent outburst, slowing finally to a calmer stream. That she loved him, of course; that she would hurry, well she would do her best, and not waste her time with childish pursuits and foolishness, any more — “Oh, I think you should,” he said, “for both of us —! ” which made her laugh. That if he came home maimed she would only love him more than ever; that if he would only keep himself for her, and not stray into the arms of ladies of the night, she would make it so very worth his while…

“I shall try,” he said, and she wondered why he seemed to be trying not to laugh.

Remembering their new freedom to speak whatever was on their minds, she asked him, “are you laughing at me?”

“No, sweet heart,” he said — “well, yes — that I shouldn’t go with ladies of the night — is a very straightforward request. I hope I can meet it.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“It’s a lot you’re asking of me,” he said, “to wait.”

“I’m not asking you,” she said, “you said you would. Have — have you?”

“No, sweetheart,” he answered her, truthfully, flushing: “I am a virgin.”

“Me too,” she said, and at the obviousness of this they both laughed till the tears ran from their eyes. Then he grew serious again.

“What?” she asked him.

“Stop doing the running,” he said.

She hung her head. “Will you?” he asked her —“do I have your word on that?”

She nodded. “Good,” he said, “because it would help me to wait — I think — if I could have one real kiss from you. And I should like to have a choice in the matter.”

She bit her lip.

“Now, may I —? ” he raised his eyebrows, gently.

God, he hoped this was keeping his word to Lady Pelham: but he did not offer it in dishonour: far from it. He honoured Mavis’s heart, and wanted to give it the response it deserved: just for once.

“May I?” he asked again.

Reading the answer in her brimming eyes then, he lifted her chin with his fingertips, and bent his head to hers, and kissed her.

It was a proper kiss, lingering and firm, his lips taking hold of hers tenderly and brushing them in all directions till she felt giddy. His mouth was warm and sweet and moist, and his hand cupped the back of her head to press her face to his more firmly. Truth to tell, it was by far the longest and most heartfelt kiss he had ever given — or received. And in the middle of it, she felt his hand come up to her breast, and caress it through her dress; the shape of her in his palm, his thumb moving. She gasped; her eyes widened. So did his, but he only kissed her longer. She almost fainted, then. His touch was deliberate, and his mouth took first her top lip and then her bottom one and made them his own, until at last he parted from her on a sigh. “Now hurry up and grow, so we can do this properly,” he said, smiling with his mouth: but his eyes blazed, and his breath came unsteadily.

“It’s different, when you do it,” she said, breathless herself.

“Of course it is,” he said, “because I’m not a child — I’m a man. And that was a real kiss — as real as I know how to give you. And it’s going to have to last us both, for I don’t think I could bear another one: I said one, and I meant one. One a year.”

“You don’t mean that,” she said, laughing.

“Oh, but I do,” he said; and she saw the self-discipline in his eyes, and knew he was telling her the truth.

“And we’re not engaged,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” he replied, “or your father would have every right to shoot me.”

“Then what — ?”

“You know what,” he said, and his eyes met hers, man to woman, friend to friend, soulmate to soulmate. “I love you,” he said — “and that will have to be enough, for now. Is it?”

Her face told him the answer.

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

Much later, he went to find Stroud, who was polishing the silver. He sat beside him, picked up a fork and another cloth, and joined in. Stroud waited for him to speak. “Thank you,” he said, finally. “You – were a very great help to me, Stroud.”

“I ’ope so, sir. Everythink all right, is it, now, sir?”

“Yes,” he said, “thank God! I don’t think I could have stood it, otherwise —”

“She all right with it all, now, then, sir, if I may ask?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “thanks to that plain speaking — she is. Though I didn’t think I had it in me, to speak as plainly as I did!”

“I knew you did, sir,” said Stroud, hiding a smile in the scars and creases of his crinkled face.

“God bless you, Stroud,” he said then, with feeling.

“And you, sir,” said Stroud; and meant it every bit as much.

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

Mavis’s eyes sparkled with a secret she could not keep entirely, although she did not seem to perceive the contradiction of her asking Stroud to keep it for her.

He put down his fork, broke off a flame-red rose on a thin stem; rubbed the thorns off with his calloused, twisted fingers, and reached forward, tucking it behind her ear. He did not have to reach down, any more. From any other manservant this would have been a highly presumptuous gesture, insolent even in its familiarity: but he was not any other manservant, he was Stroud, and he loved her.

“What?” he said, gruffly.

Her eyes changed from sparkling to a deep glow. “Mr. Hastings and I are going to be married,” she said, “when I am eighteen. Oh, we are not formally engaged — but he is going to wait for me: we have an understanding. Please don’t tell anyone I told you, for it wouldn’t be right to have it known all about. But we are — we do.”

“Wait fer you, eh?”

“Yes,” she said, meeting his green eyes that had seen so much and weathered it, all the foolish and cruel and helpless ways of folks. Her gaze was candid, fully knowing.

“An’ now tell me somethink as I didn’t know,” he grinned, “fer the last two years.”

For answer she flung her arms around his neck and kissed his whiskery, carunculated cheek, almost knocking him off his peg. She was still but fourteen years old, after all.

Fourteen going on four-and-thirty, more like. He set her gently back on her own feet. “Wait, miss,” he said, “give me a minute or two — ” and he snipped a whole armful of roses for her to take back in the house: flame and cream, and white for Yorkshire, red for Lancashire – gold and peach and the tenderest pink: she buried her nose in them. “Oh, thank you,” she cried, “they’re glorious!”

“They are that, Miss, if I say so meself,” he agreed.

Nothink like as lovely as ’er face, though.

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

Sir Edward was impatient to have his lieutenant back. Heartened by the reports of his progress which had streamed from Portchester with every westbound ship in His Majesty’s Navy, it seemed, he came as soon as he might to see for himself.

He was pleased at what he saw. Gone was the transparency of a tenuous hold on this life, more than a foot already in the next — this ruddy lad was fully planted back in this one. And there was something else: Hastings had lost a gaucheness he had had, ever since Pelham knew him. In its place was a quiet confidence that seemed to go all the way to his feet — which seemed fully another inch further from his head, what with all Mrs. Stroud’s cooking and the bracing sea air, and Mavis’s healing company.

Mavis, too, he eyed as soon as he saw her with a very deep and fatherly concern. He knew he had left a bomb already lit: he had returned to find the fuse longer, the charge less damaging: more of a firework, now, if it were to go off at all — which it seemed as if it might not, yet, since her urgent, breathless quality had quite dissipated, to be replaced by a calm and sober joy.

Having satisfied himself as to the condition of each member of his household, he made love to his wife most passionately, and tenderly, and at very great length, not caring if it was the middle of the afternoon, or what anybody thought. He had found from their early days together that if he did not — at least do something of the kind! – he was of no use to anybody ashore until he had; so he might as well get it over with, and feel like himself, able to concentrate on whatever lay before him and not fly into a foul temper from the frustration so long reined-in, now still most cruelly out-of-reach even as it was within view. After all, it was that which had sunk him the night he came home, so soon after their marriage, to find her busy cooking his dinner, when all he could think of was —— and so they had quarreled, mightily and grievously, through his blindness, his foolishness. So now he did as he knew was best, for everyone concerned, and made no apologies: nor were any expected.

More deeply happy than he had ever thought to be in his life, he held her afterwards, kissing her shoulders and the top of her head with a casual, easy lightness now.

“Edward,” she murmured, “there are two things I would like to tell you, now that you are fully home ——”

“Does ‘fully home’ mean what I take it to?” he teased her.

“You know perfectly well it does,” she said: “what do you want me to call it? Well and truly f—ed?”

“My god!” he said, shocked at her language: “no, ‘fully home’ will do very well, my love!”

“Very well then,” she smiled, twisting his hair in her fingers. “First, then — two times ago, in April, when you were – er – ‘fully home’ — ”

“Mmmmm?” he pulled her hand to his mouth, kissed the palm, sending a new wave of thrills through her even though he had brought her already past the brink and into heaven.

“You left something behind,” she whispered, “my love.”

“What?” he asked, puzzled.

For answer she took his hand, her turn now, and put it on the soft roundness of her belly. It barely showed, yet: but she had felt it, the greater size of her womb cramping harder when la petite morte filled it and her with waves of contractions, like tiny sweet birth-pangs. And he could not have known how much more sensitive her breasts were: only that she moaned at his very first touch there. But they were: heavy and tender. There was no doubt, now — none at all. She waited for his response as her meaning dawned.

“Oh, God!” he said. All the captain had gone out of his voice — it was hollow, humble — awe-filled.

“After Christmas,” she said, and then, hurriedly, “I am perfectly well, my love — being with child agrees with me, do you not recall?”

His heart thundered where her head rested upon his chest: she heard it, felt it. The poor thing, she thought, racing again, so soon after —!

“I am stunned,” he said.

“You really ought not to be, love,” she said — “didn’t last time teach you anything about the consequences of making love to your wife so passionately?”

“But again —!” he croaked.

She could only smile.

“But that was the time — when we thought — oh, God,” he said, remembering.

“Yes,” she said, “the dearest time of all, ever, Edward, although – thank God! – it was unfounded — but you didn’t know that then, and you came to me anyway, my darling, in your grief —— and let me comfort you: as best I might, in every way I could, and you wept, afterwards —”

“I have not forgotten,” he said.

“To have the gift of a child, from that time, as well as your tears,” she said, “makes me want to cry with joy.”

He heaved a great sigh, then. “I shall fret,” he said, “you know it — I cannot help it — you will have to be patient with me, Sophie, it is unavoidable — you tell me not to be anxious, but how can I fail to worry!”

“It’s all right,” she whispered, “that’s how I know how much you love me.”

“Have I not shown you and told you in every other way known to man?” he asked her, frowning.

“That too, Edward,” she murmured, “for which I know myself most truly blessed, each day that passes.”

“Good,” he said, relieved. “Now — did you not say you had two things? Dear God, how I hate surprises! What is the second?”

So she told him.

“You allowed what!” he cried, then, shocked all over again at this next piece of news, as if it had not been enough to digest that he was to be a father again. “God in heaven, Sophie, I know she is your daughter, my love, and I trust your judgement with her — I must! — but to permit a kiss! From a grown man of two-and-twenty! Good God, I had been trying to head this off — !”

“Quite rightly so, Edward,” she said quickly, “until he was here, in this household, under her care, and it could not be headed-off any further — they are so very young yet, the pair of them, and it was tearing out both of their hearts!”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “So what now? They cannot be engaged!”

“No, of course not,” she smiled, “but they have an understanding. He is to wait for her until she is eighteen, she has his word on it: and so she knows she need not run after him and try to grasp him before he escapes her altogether. She trusts that he truly loves her, and will be patient.”

“Hm,” said Sir Edward; “Hmmmm.”

“It is a good thing, truly, love,” she said. “They are so much happier, now, and more contented, and there is peace: and not that awful sense of a volcano about to erupt. She is calm, and so is he.”

“One kiss did so much?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“That and the conversation that came with it,” she told him, and explained how his lieutenant had kept faith with him, with them all, even in this extremity, and sought her permission to speak to Mavis at all on the subject of his feelings for her, and hers for him.

“Very well,” said Pelham, relieved. “That is very well indeed: well done. I felt the volcano, as much as you did — I feared its bursting.”

“I hoped you would see it so,” she said.

“You are the fountain of wisdom,” he said, “and I bow to you in all things domestic. Including our daughter’s engagement, premature though it may be – er – understanding, then.”

“I am glad, Edward,” she whispered. “My anchor,” she added fondly, kissing the top of his head.

It was a lover’s game they played in their letters, a truthful half-banter dear now through many repetitions. “My anchorage…” he replied, his arms tightening around her.

She sighed in fulfillment. How eagerly he had set out to please her, in all his homecoming joy and missing of her — and succeeded, as much as anything she had yet felt with him: it had been wrenching, shattering, so much so she almost wet the bed, felt she must lose control of herself entirely, all safe as she was within his arms. She felt shaky from it even now. God, that he could move her so! How fortunate could she be? Edward…

She felt sure it was more acute because she was with child. Her body seemed to thrill with the new life in it, catch fire more helplessly. The homage he loved to pay to her breasts had alone made her gasp and then cry out, this time, as soon as he began there, and beg him not to stop – as if he would have, but she couldn’t help crying it and god knew he loved to hear it. Most especially when she sobbed please, please, Edward, please —!

These helpless cries of hers moved him beyond anything, she knew — they always had, from the very beginning. He thought of them at sea even now, sometimes deliberately and sometimes he could not help it. Then he would have to wrench his thoughts back to the ship, or — if he did not do so for too long — turn and walk away across the quarterdeck quickly, stand at the rail and look out to sea. When he wrote to her of this wryly, confessing his predicament, she would still bite her lip to read it, no matter that it had been fully five years since first he did so — nothing had changed, there!

He kissed her lazily now, not wanting to break from her embrace even though they were both profoundly satisfied. As familiar as they were to one another, this time had followed the pattern of their sweetest reunions: first he had quenched his urgent need in her arms, as hard and swiftly as he must, thrilling her with the force of his wanting even after all these years. That done, and his breath regained just a little – enough to kiss her – he proceeded to lose it again, this time turning all his attentions upon her to bring her there also, his own desire renewed with each of her little gasps. Like an explorer he claimed the sweet rich earth of her, then shared his fresh excitement with her all over again.

It was bliss to them both; how could it be otherwise? Their years of loving had brought them to this knowledge of each other: a never-failing well from which they both drank. Starting as a happy accident, he had learned to make this joy deliberate. He might be three-and-forty, and she thirty-eight, but they made love as if Adam had awoken to find Eve anew, each time he came home. How could it be otherwise, indeed?

He too had been as happy today as at any time yet, what with all he felt to be here, to find Hastings well and all so blessed. Coming hotly in to her again upon the full force of her tide, as he loved to do more than anything, he had seemed ablaze with joy and relief. And what a tide it had been: he had felt it, kissed her with each wave, his eyes a dark blur of emotion.

“Oh, Edward,” she said, re-living it in this sweet after-time, feeling herself contract again at the thought of him, even, like a little bow-wave reaching the shore minutes after, “you are the moon to me, too — ”

He smiled, catching her meaning instantly; drew his hand up her thigh, a shiver after it. “Why,” he murmured, “because I draw your tide — like this?”

“Of course,” she said, “and an irresistible pull it is too, my love — oh — ohhhhh — you need not demonstrate it again, Edward, or I shall be good for nothing, nothing at all...”

“What a pity that would be,” he answered, continuing his fingers’ moonlight journey. She gasped: all sweetly teasing, he was trawling her bowels, her soul along with it.

This surge she felt under his touch moved her still, after all these years. How was it that she opened to him so immediately? “Edward,” she whispered, “don’t — don’t — no, I don’t mean it — do… oh, please, do —”

“I can never resist it when you say please to me,” he murmured, “it stiffens me at once, don’t you know that?”

“Well, love,” she whispered, “after all, you are the key to my lock —”

He breathed out on a sigh, his breath warm on her skin. She waited, holding her own breath, for him to resume his attentions to her breast which he had been caressing. Instead he tilted his head, looked up at her strangely.

“No,” he said, “you have it all turned around, Sophie…” He was thinking of the man he had been before he met her, and how far he had come, since: all the emotions she had brought to him, or rather, brought him to — the tenderness, the passion, the ease and warmth – contentment, joy, love, fatherhood, pride, humility — his most essential physical being sanctioned, welcomed — and then finally how he had climbed upon her in this very bed, but a few weeks before, and come to her to crack him open so that he might shed a lifetime of reined-in tears upon her breast, all of this, all of it ——

“—no,” he said, huskily: “my dear, don’t you know you are the key to mine —?”

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

Sometimes, for a man of three-and-forty, he conducted himself like one of three-and-twenty, with her.

He did so now, helplessly, wonderfully, thrilling them both all over again.

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

“Do you think we should join them, now? It is almost time for tea — we will be missed all over again. Pellie will be asking for us — ”

“Very well,” he smiled, “though reluctantly on my part, Madam — though by God,” he added then, remembering all she had had to tell him, “when I return to your arms tonight, I was going to ask you to promise me I might find anchorage again, all the way — but have I not already put too great a strain upon you — ?! God forbid I should be greedy, in your delicate condition, more than I have already been —! ”

“All is well, love,” she said. “Perhaps as it advances, you will need to be more careful with me, as you were, that time — before — but for now I am as fit as a fiddle, and so very — very — very glad to have you home again!”

“As I am to be here,” he said, wishing even now he need not dress and leave her bed just yet. “Now come along then, did you not promise me a cup of tea, at least, if I must leave your arms?”

“Yes, love,” she laughed, “and Mrs. Stroud has made a raisin-cake, I have it on good authority, and bacon tartlets, and cheese straws — ”

“Then it is almost worth it,” he said, “ — almost.”

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

He decided to say nothing to Hastings, but the young man sought him out anyway.

“Sir,” he said.

Pelham waved his hand. “I know all about it,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m sure you did your best.”

“Truly I did, sir,” said Hastings — that damned blush again! would he never be able to stand in front of his captain without it?

“I never doubted that you would,” said Pelham. “That is why you may have her, sir — to cherish as your own — with my blessing. All in good time, of course.”

“Thank — thank you, sir.”

“You are very welcome,” said Pelham, and meant it.

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

Hillfold House,Castle-street, Portchester

14^th October, 1808

My very Dearest Mary,

I am so sorry that I am not able to be with you at this sad time. I should greatly have wished to pay my final respects to your indomitable mother, from whom Edward and you have derived so many of your most admirable qualities: strength of resolve, principle, a pride in your family, integrity, intelligence, nobility of mind. I shall for ever be grateful that I was able to know her and that she had the happiness of seeing her family reach forward into the next generation in the person of her grandson as she so dearly wished.

Most especially do I regret my absence from your sisterly arms. After a lifetime it must be a very great loss indeed and a terrible blow, my dear, to part with a Mother. I can only imagine it. Edward has been quiet but I know he feels it. You however were constantly her companion and her mainstay and so your loss must be ever the greater from hour to hour as you wake to each new day with her gone. Still the knowledge that you so sustained her with your affections and did her every duty as a daughter must uphold you now.

You must have a great deal to do and manage, and I would give much to be able to come to you. However, I hope that my dearest - I should say, our dearest - Edward’s presence will bring you some measure of comfort and will be a pillar of support to you in this time of affliction.

I am only sorry that Helena was not given to see which of Life’s gifts should come next, and perhaps if G-d should be so kind, a grand-daughter to bear her name. I have already told Edward that I should wish it so, if it is a daughter born to us. He likes Harriet better, but will have Helena for middle name – so G-d grant it will be so. (Whatever the child, son or daughter, it is an active one, though less rough than was Pellie. It swims and dances, sleeps till late in the mornings, plays games all night — Edward has to rub my back a great deal in the night watches, to give me a little relief, if this is not too intimate an account for you, dear Mary — I hope not as you have always told me you enjoy these little details of our family life. He laughs to feel it wriggle. The other day we could both have sworn a little heel made a lumpy transit across this wide arc of my middle, we watched it in fascination together, it could not have been anything else. He was hardly at home for this time before the birth of our son, and so everything is a source of fresh wonder to him.)

I am sure he will explain to you himself that the exigencies of my condition will not permit travel, and I hope you will understand and forgive me for that. I know that you will. I am not as young as I was, and this child is causing me to feel it more than ever! No, dear, do not be alarmed, for I am perfectly well and happier than I have ever been – I continue to wonder if that is possible, and then Edward shows me that it is, indeed — with his presence, with his loving attentions, with bringing to me the very great blessing of bearing this, our much-longed-for second child to complete our little family. I mean only that I do grow tired easily, and must rest with my feet upon a stool so that my ankles will not swell too greatly — the other day I did not pay attention, and then I could not put my slippers on at all!

The blessed event is but a few weeks away now and only for this reason did I accept the necessity of staying behind while he came to you, my dear sister. You have been in my thoughts at every moment. I think of you wandering those echoing halls and rattling around that big house all alone, and I wish you were not there, but here. I have asked Edward to propose to you that you should join us here, but I do wish to add my own voice to that request and to these condolences.

You must know how very welcome you would be. We have plenty of room and, while we are not so grand as you have been accustomed to, I recall upon your last visits how warmly you have spoken of feeling at home here. Will you not make it so, Mary?

You must see that if you would, you should also be doing us the greatest kindness. I shall have my hands very full what with not one but two children to manage, and your patience and kindness, your great love for Pellie and his for you – not to mention mine and Mavis’s, naturally – would be such a blessing to have with us. I cannot begin to describe the gratitude I should feel, if you would grace us with your company (and your help too, I shall not blush to say it). Though my little household staff here are more than adequate to the task of caring for us – it is your hands to hold the baby now and then, your time to play with Pellie — the delight of your presence and the warmth of your friendship, your good counsel while Edward is away, that I most wish for. And when he is home, the pleasure for him of having the company of all the women he loves at one fireside!

Perhaps you could begin by coming for an indefinite stay, without committing yourself. Then, if we are all suited to the arrangement, you could either remove here permanently, or if you still wished for a greater degree of privacy and independence, as you have been used to, there are any number of lovely properties available for lease or purchase locally.

Edward can always make arrangements for Buckfastleigh to be managed or let, next time he is ashore.

He will discuss all of this with you, I know, but I had to have my say!

Mary, dear, will you not come?

I do hope that you will. I look forward with all my heart to seeing you soon, for a visit of whatever length you wish, I remain as always dear sister your affectionate sister Sophie.