Patrick O'Brian: The Ionian mission

'I suppose it is his shocking old father,' said Diana.

General Aubrey was an opposition member of Parliament, a vehement enthusiastic loquacious Radical, a sad handicap to any son serving the Crown, whose ministers controlled appointment and promotion.

'Sure, that has something to do with the matter,' said Stephen. 'But there is more to it than that, I believe. Do you know a man called Andrew Wray?'

'Wray of the Treasury? Oh yes. One sees him everywhere: I was obliged to dance with him at Lucy Carrington's ball the day you went off to your old reptiles, and he was at the Thurlows' dinner. Listen: there is another carriage: it must be Admiral Faithorne. He is always as regular as a clock. Stephen, we are behaving abominably. We must go down. Why do you ask about that scrub Wray?'

'You think him a scrub?'

'Certainly I do. Too clever by half, like so many of those Treasury fellows, and an infernal blackguard as well - he treated Harriet Fanshaw so shabbily you would not believe it. A scrub for all his pretty ways, and a coxcomb: I would not touch him with a barge-pole.'

'He is now acting as second secretary to the Admiralty during Sir John Barrow's illness. But he was in the Treasury some time ago, when Jack told him he cheated at cards, told him quite openly, in his candid naval way, in Willis's rooms.'

'Good God, Stephen! You never told me. What a close old soul you are, upon my honour.'

'You never asked.'

'Did he call Jack out?'

'He did not. I believe he is taking a safer course.' A thundering treble knock on the front door cut off his words. 'I will tell you later,' he said. 'Thank you, my dear, for my beautiful present.'

As they went down towards the hall Diana said, 'You know all about ships and the sea, Stephen.' Stephen bowed: he certainly should have known a fair amount about both, having sailed with Captain Aubrey since the turn of the century, and in fact he could now almost always discriminate between larboard and starboard: he prided himself extremely on his acquaintance with fore and aft and some even more recondite nautical terms. 'Tell me,' she said, 'What is this barge-pole they are always talking about?'

'Ho, as for that, mate,' said Stephen, 'you must understand that a barge is the captain's particular boat, or pinnace as we say; and the pole is a kind of unarticulated mast.'

He opened the drawing-room door for her, disclosing not one young woman but two, alternately scorning one another and adoring Jagiello, who sat between them in his splendid Hussar's uniform, looking amiable but absent. On seeing Stephen he sprang up, his spurs clashing, and cried 'Dear Doctor, how happy I am to see you,' clasping him in both arms and smiling down on him very sweetly.

'Admiral Fait home,' called the butler in a hieratic boom, and the clock struck the hour.

More guests arrived, and profiting by the frequently opened door the kitchen cat glided in, low to the ground, and swarmed up Stephen's back to his left shoulder, where it sat purring hoarsely, rubbing its ear against his wig. Still more guests, one of them being the banker Nathan, Diana's financial adviser, a man after Stephen's own heart, he too being wholly devoted to the overthrow of Buonaparte, using his highly-specialized weapons with singular efficiency. And although the ceremony was spoilt by an ugly scene when the butler removed the cat, they did at last move into the dining-room, where they sat down to as good a meal as London could offer, for in spite of her sylph-like form Diana was rather greedy and in addition to an educated taste in wine she possessed an excellent cook. His talents had on this occasion been directed to the preparation of all Stephen's favourite dishes.

'May I help you to some of these truffles, ma'am?' said he to his right-hand neighbour, a dowager whose influential countenance had helped to re-establish Diana's reputation, damaged by ill-judged connections in India and the United States and only partially restored by her marriage.

'Alas, I dare not,' she said. 'But it would give me great pleasure to see you do so. If you will take an old woman's advice, you will eat up all the truffles that come your way, while your innards can still withstand 'em.'

'Then I believe I shall,' said Stephen, plunging a spoon into the pyramid. 'It will be long before I see another. Tomorrow, with the blessing, I shall be aboard ship, and then hard tack, salt-horse, dried peas and small beer must be my lot: at least until that Buonaparte is brought down.'

'Let us drink to his confusion,' said the dowager, raising her glass. The whole table drank to his confusion, and then at due intervals to Dr Maturin's return, to his very happy return, to the Royal Navy, to one another, and then standing - a point of some difficulty to Miss Trevor, who was obliged to cling to Jagiello's arm, to the King. In the midst of all this cheerfulness, of this excellent claret, burgundy and port, Stephen looked anxiously at the clock, a handsome French cartel on the wall behind Mr Nathan's head: he was to take the Portsmouth mail, and he had a mortal horror of missing coaches. To his distress he saw that the hands had not moved since the lobster bisque; like most of the clocks in Diana's house the cartel had stopped, and he knew that decency forbade even a surreptitious glance at his watch. Yet although he and Diana lived lives more independent than most married pairs they were very, very close in other respects: she caught his look and called down the table 'Eat your pudding in peace, my dear; Jagicllo has borrowed his ambassador's coach, and he is very kindly driving us down.'

Shortly after this she and the other women withdrew. Jagiello moved up the table to the dowager's place and Stephen said to him, 'You are a good-hearted soul, my dear, so you are. Now I shall see Diana for the best part of another twelve hours; and I shall not have to fret my mind over that infernal mail-coach.'

'Mrs Maturin tried to make me promise that she should drive,' said Jagiello, 'and I have given my word that she should, once the sun was up, subject to your approval.' He sounded uneasy.

'And did she submit to your condition?' said Stephen, smiling. 'That was kind. But you need not be concerned: she drives prodigiously well, and would send a team of camels through a needle's eye at a brisk round trot.'

'Oh,' cried Jagiello, 'how I admire a woman that can ride and drive, that understands horse!' And he went on at some length about Mrs Maturin's shining parts, which had needed only a thorough understanding of horses to be quite complete.

Stephen was aware of Nathan's amused, benign, cynical face on the far side of the table, smiling at Jagiello's enthusiasm: there was something about Jagiello that made people smile, he reflected - his youth, his cheerfulness, his abounding health, his beauty, perhaps his simplicity. 'None of these qualities are mine, or ever have been,' he said to himself. 'Are the Jagiellos conscious of their happiness? Probably not. Fortunatos nimium . . .'A yearning for coffee spurred his vitals, and seeing that the decanters had made their last round untouched by his pink and somewhat stertorous guests he said aloud, 'Perhaps, gentlemen, we might join the ladies.'

Jagiello's offer of the coach had come as a surprise, and the other carriages had been ordered early so that Dr Maturin should be able to make his farewells and reach the Portsmouth coach with half an hour to spare. The carriages therefore appeared at half past ten and rolled away, leaving Stephen, Diana, and Jagiello with a delightful sense of holiday, of free, unexpected, unmortgaged time. Nathan was also left behind, partly because he had come on foot from his house just round the corner and partly because he wished to speak to Diana about money. She had brought some magnificent jewels back from India and the United States, many of which she never wore; and in the present state of war, with Napoleon's astonishing, horrifying victories over the Austrians and Prussians, their value had increased immensely. Nathan wanted her to take advantage of the fact and to put some of the rubies ('vulgar great things, much too big, like raspberry tarts' she said) into a select list of deeply depressed British stocks, a drug on the market - an investment that would yield splendid returns in the event of an Allied victory at last. However, he only smiled and bowed when she suggested that they should take the remains of the bombe glacee into the billiard-room and there eat it while they played. 'Because in any case Stephen must say goodbye to his olive-tree,' she observed. Hers was perhaps the only billiard-room in Half Moon Street to possess an olive: the room had been built out over the garden behind, and Stephen, prising up a flagstone by a convenient window, had set a rooted cutting from a tree growing in his own land of Catalonia, itself the descendant of one in the grove of Academe. He sat by it now, showing Nathan the five new leaves and the almost certain promise of a sixth. With another husband Nathan might have spoken about these stocks and shares; but Stephen would have nothing whatsoever to do with his wife's fortune- he left it entirely to her.