Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

He would not have formed the wish, if he had known that it would mean depriving Stephen of the tropical delights he had promised, to say nothing of the pleasure of walking about on land himself, unhunted, with never an anxious glance behind, in Madeira, Bermuda or the West Indies, unharassed by any but the French, and perhaps the Spaniards and the yellow fever.

Yet there it was, formed and fulfilled; and here he was, under the lee of Drake’s Island, with Plymouth Hoe on his larboard bow, waiting for the 92nd Foot to get into their transports in Hamoaze: and a long business it would be, judging from their present state of total unpreparedness.

‘Jack,’ said Stephen, ’shall you call on Admiral Haddock?’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I shall not. I have sworn not to go ashore, you know.’

‘Sophie and Cecilia are still there,’ observed Stephen.

‘Oh,’ cried Jack, and took a turn up and down the cabin. ‘Stephen,’ he said, ‘I shall not go. What in God’s name have I to offer her? I have thought about it a great deal. It was wrong and selfish in me to pursue her to Bath

- I should never have done it; but I was hurried along by my feelings, you know - I did not reflect. What sort of a match am I ? Post, if you like, but up to the ears in debt, and with nothing much in the way of prospects if Melville goes. A chap that goes sneaking and skulking about on land like a pickpocket with the thief takers on his line. No. I am not going to pester her as once I did. And I am not going to tear my heart to pieces again: besides, what can she care for me, after all this?’

‘Beg pardon, ma’am, but can you tell me where Miss Williams is?’ asked the Admiral’s butler. ‘There is a gentleman to see her.’

‘She will be down presently,’ said Cecilia. ‘Who is it?’

‘Dr Maturin, ma’am. He particularly told me to say, Dr Maturin.’

‘Oh, show him in to me, Rowley,’ cried Cecilia. ‘I’ll entertain him. Dear Dr Maturin, how do you do? How come you are here? Oh, I am amazed, I declare! What a splendid thing about Captain Aubrey, the dear man, and the Fanciulla: but to think of the poor Polychrest, all sunk beneath the wave - but you saved your clothes, however, I dare say? Oh, we were so pleased to read the Gazette! Sophie and I held hands and skipped about like lambs in the pink room, roaring out Huzzay, huzzay! Though we were in such a taking - Lord, Dr Maturin, such a taking! We wept and wept, and I was all swollen and horrid for the port admiral’s ball, and Sophie would not even go at all, not that she missed much - a very stupid ball, with all the young men stuck in the door and only the old codgers dancing - call that dancing! - by order of rank. I only stood up once. Oh, how we wept - handkerchiefs all sopping, I do assure you - and of course it is very sad. But she might have thought of us. We shall never be able to hold up our heads again! I think it was very wrong of her - she might have waited until we were married. I think she is a - but I must not say that to you, because I believe you were quite smitten once, ages and ages ago, were you not?’

‘What upset you so?’

‘Why, Diana, of course. Didn’t you know? Oh, Lord.’

‘Pray tell me now.’

‘Mama said I was never to mention it. And I never will. But if you promise not to tell, I will whisper it. Di has gone into keeping with that Mr Canning. I thought that would surprise you. Who ever would have guessed it? Mama did not, although she is so amazing wise. She was in a horrid rage - she still is. She says it has quite ruined our chances of a decent marriage, which is such a shame. Not that I mind so much about a decent marriage; but I should not like to be an old maid. That is quite my aversion. Hush, I hear her door closing: she is coming down. I will leave you together, and not play gooseberry. I may not be six foot tall, but at least no one can say I am a gooseberry. You won’t tell, will you? Remember, you promised.’

‘Sophie, my dear,’ he said, kissing her, ‘how do you do? I will answer your questions at once. Jack is made post. We came in that frigate by the little small island. He has an acting command.’

‘Which frigate? Where? Where?’

‘Come,’ said Stephen, swivelling the admiral’s great brass telescope on its stand. ‘There you have him, walking on the quarterdeck in his old nankeen trousers.’

There in the bright round paced Jack, from the hances to the aftermost carronade and back again.

‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘he has a bandage on his head. Not - not his poor ears again?’ she murmured, focusing the glass.

‘No, no, a mere scalp-​wound. Not above a dozen stitches.’

‘Will he not come ashore?’ she asked.

‘He will not. What, set foot on land to be arrested for debt? No friend of his but would stop him by force - no woman with any heart of friendship in her would ask it.’

‘No, no. Of course. I was forgetting.. .’

Each time he turned he glanced up to Mount Edgcumb, to Admiral Haddock’s official residence. Their eyes seemed to meet, and she started back.

‘Is it out of focus?’ asked Stephen.

‘No, no. It is so prying to look like this - indecent.

How is he? I am so very glad that - I am quite confused

- everything is so sudden - I had no idea. How is he? And how are you? Dear Stephen, how are you?’

‘I am very well, I thank you.’

‘No, no, you are not. Come, come and sit down at once. Stephen, has Cissy been prattling?’

‘Never mind,’ said Stephen, looking aside. ‘Tell me, is it true?’

She could not reply, but sat by him and took his hand.

‘Now listen, honey,’ he said, returning the kindness of her clasp.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ cried Admiral Haddock, putting his head in at the door and instantly withdrawing.

‘Now listen, honey. The Lively, the frigate, is ordered up-​Channel, to the Nore, with these foolish soldiers. She will sail the minute they are ready. You must go aboard this afternoon and ask him to give you a lift to the Downs.’

‘Oh, I could never, never do such a thing. It would be very, very improper. Forward, pushing, bold, improper.’

‘Not at all. With your sister, perfectly proper, the most usual thing in the world. Come now, my dear, start packing your things. It is now or never. He may be in the West Indies next month.’

‘Never. I know you mean so very kindly - you are a darling, Stephen - but a young woman cannot, cannot do such things.’

‘Now I have no time at all, none, acushla,’ said Stephen, rising. ‘So listen now. Do what I say. Pack your bonnet: go aboard. Now is the time. Now, or there will be three thousand miles of salt unhappy sea between you, and a waste of years.’

‘I am so confused. But I cannot. No, I never will. I cannot. He might not want me.’ The tears overflowed:

she wrung her handkerchief desperately, shaking her head and murmuring, ‘No, no, never.’

‘Good day to you, now, Sophie,’ he said. ‘How can you be so simple. So missish? Fie Sophie. Where’s your courage, girl? Sure, it is the one thing in the world he admires.’

In his diary he wrote, ‘So much wretchedness, misery and squalor I do not believe I have ever seen collected together in one place, as in this town of Plymouth. All the naval ports I have visited have been cold smelly blackguardly places, but for pox-​upon-​pox this Plymouth bears the bell. Yet the suburb or parasite they call Dock goes even beyond Plymouth, as Sodom outran Gomorrah: I wandered about its dirty lanes, solicited, importuned by its barbarous inhabitants, male, female and epicene, and I came to the poor-​house, where the old are kept until they can be buried with some show of decency. The impression of meaningless absolute unhappiness is with me yet. Medicine has brought me acquainted with misery in many forms; I am not squeamish; but for complications of filth, cruelty, and bestial ignorance, that place, with its infirmary, exceeded any thing I have ever seen or imagined. An old man, his wits quite gone, chained in the dark, squatting in his excrement, naked but for a blanket; the idiot children; the whipping. I knew it all; it is nothing new; but in this concentration it overcame me so that I could no longer feel indignation but only a hopeless nausea. It was the merest chance that I kept my appointment with the chaplain to listen to a concert - my feet, more civil than my mind, led me to the place. Curious music, well played, particularly the trumpet: a German composer, one Molter. The music, I believe, had nothing to say, but it provided a pleasant background of ‘cellos and woodwinds and allowed the trumpet to make exquisite sounds - pure colour tearing through this formal elegance. I grope to define a connection that is half clear to me - I once thought that this was music, much as I thought that physical grace and style was virtue; or replaced virtue; or was virtue on another plane. But although the music shifted the current of my thoughts for a while, they are back again today, and I have not the spiritual energy to clarify this or any other position. At home there is a Roman stone I know (I often lay there to listen to my nightjars) with fui non sum non curo carved on it; and there I have felt such a peace, such a tranquillitas animi et indolentia corporis. Home I say, which is singular: yet indeed there is still a glow of hatred for the Spaniards under these indulgent, unmanly ashes -a living attachment to Catalan independence.’ He looked out of the cabin window at the water of the Sound, oily, with the nameless filth of Plymouth floating on it, a bloated puppy, and dipped his pen. ‘Yet on the other hand, will this glow ever blaze up again, when I think of what they will do with independence? When I let my mind dwell on the vast potentiality for happiness, and our present state? Such potentiality, and so much misery? Hatred the only moving force, a petulant unhappy striving - childhood the only happiness, and that unknowing; then the continual battle that cannot ever possibly be won; a losing fight against ill-​health - poverty for nearly all. Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone. All under sentence of death, often ignominious, frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honour, that deadly, weak and silly notion. I am not acute in my perceptions - my whole conduct with Diana proves it - but I would have sworn that Sophie had more bottom; was more straightforward, direct, courageous. Though to be sure, I know the depth of Jack’s feeling for her, and perhaps she does not.’ He looked up from his page again, straight into her face. It was outside the window, a few feet below him, moving from left to right as the boat pulled round the frigate’s stern; she was looking up beyond the cabin window towards the taffrail, with her mouth slightly open and her lip caught behind her upper teeth, with an expression of contained alarm in her immense upturned eyes. Admiral Haddock sat beside her, and Cecilia.