Patrick O'Brian: Post captain

A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations - admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music. He himself at this moment was thinking in terms of scent.

The orchestra and the people on the stage pumped busily up to the obvious climax: it blared out - the house burst into a roar of applause, and in the latecomers’ box he saw Diana Villiers, clapping politely but with no great enthusiasm, not looking at the stage with its smirking bowing actors but at someone deeper in the box behind her. Her head was turned in a curve he would have recognized in an even greater crowd: her long white gloves, pointing upwards, beat steadily together as she talked over the general din, her expression and the movements of her head pushing her meaning through the noise.

There was another woman beside her - Lady Jersey, he thought - and four men behind. Canning; two officers in scarlet and gold; a civilian with the high colour and oyster eye of Hanover and the ribbon of the Garter across his breast - a minor royal. This was the man to whom she was speaking: he looked stupid, uncomprehending; but pleased, almost lively.

Stephen watched with no particular emotion but with extreme accuracy. He had noted the great leap of his heart at the first moment and the disorder in his breathing, and he noted too that this had no effect upon his powers of observation. He must in fact have been aware of her presence from the first: it was her scent that was running in his mind before the curtain fell; it was in connection with her that he had reflected upon these harps.

Now the applause had stopped, but Diana’s hands were still raised, and leaning forward he watched with an even greater intensity. She was moving her right hand as she talked to the man behind her and by Christ she was moving it with a conscious grace. The door at the back of the box opened. Another broad blue ribbon, and the women stood up, bobbed. He could not see the face for the tall standing men, but he could see, he did see this essential change confirmed - her whole movement, from the carriage of her head to the pretty flirt of her ostrich-​fan was subtly altered. Bows, more bobs, laughter, the door closed, the outward-​facing group reformed: the figure reappeared in another box. Stephen took no notice of him, did not care if he were the Duke of Hell, but concentrated his utmost

attention upon Diana to prove what he knew to be the fact. It was so: everything showed it, and he extracted the last dreg of pain from the knowledge, the spectacle. She was on display. The purity of wild grace was gone, and the thought that from now on he must associate vulgarity with his idea of her was so painful that for a while he could not think clearly. Not that it was in the least obvious to anyone who knew her less well, or who valued that purity less highly, and not that it detracted in any way from the admiration of the men in the audience or of her companions, for it was done with great instinctive art; but the woman in the box over there was not one to whom he would have paid any attention, at any time.

She was uneasy. She felt the intensity of his gaze and from time to time she looked round the house; and each time she did so he dropped his eyes, as he would have done, stalking a doe: there were plenty of people looking at her from the pit and the other boxes - indeed, she was perhaps the finest woman there, in her low sky-​blue dress and the diamonds in her black, high-​piled hair. In spite of his precaution their eyes crossed at last: she stopped talking. He meant to rise and bow, but there was no power whatsoever in his legs. He was astonished, and before he could grip the pad in front of him to raise himself the curtain had gone up and the harps were racing through glissando after glissando.

That my body should be affected to this point, he said, is something beyond my experience. I have felt the great nausea before, God knows, but this want of control.. . Did the Diana I last saw at New Place ever exist in fact? A creation of my own? Can you create a unicorn by longing?

Through the music and the caterwauling on the stage the insistent knocking at the locked door of his box disturbed the course of his reflection. He did not reply, and presently it went away. Had he had a hand in her death? He shook his head to deny it.

At last the curtain came sweeping down and the light increased. The box over there was empty, a pair of long white gloves drooped over the plush in front; and the band was playing God save the King. He sat on, and in time the standing slowly-​moving crowd below shuffled out, a few people darting back for forgotten hats, and the place was empty, an enormous shell. The people of the house walked about the emptiness with an everyday step, picking up rubbish, putting out the lights.

Two said, ‘There’s a gent still there, up in the box.’

‘Is he drunk?’

‘Perhaps he thinks there is another act; but there ain’t no more, thank God.’

‘Come, sir,’ they said, opening the door with their little key, ‘it’s all over now. This is the end of the piece.’

Long before dawn the Lively’s warm, smelly, close-​packed gun-​deck awoke to violent and unexpected life, the strong-​voiced bosun’s mates roaring ‘All hands! All hands unmoor ship. Rise and shine! Show a leg there! Tumble up, tumble up, tumble up!’ The Livelies - the male Livelies, for there were about a hundred women aboard - tore themselves from their pink companions or their more prosaic wives, tumbled up into the wet darkness and unmoored the ship, as they were desired. The capstan turned, the fiddle squeaked, the temporary ladies hurried ashore, and the Nore light faded astern: the frigate stood for the North Foreland with a favourable tide and a quartering wind.

The officer of the watch checked the noise of speculation, but it continued under the cover of the rumbling holystones while the people washed the decks. What was up? Had Boney started his invasion? Something was up, or they would never have been ordered to sea with only half their water filled. Port admiral’s barge had come alongside, a civilian and an officer: one gent was with the captain yet.

No news so far, but that there Killick or Bonden would know before breakfast-​time was over.

In the gun-​room the wonder was quite as great, and quite as uninformed; but it had a depth of apprehension and uneasiness that was lacking before the mast. Word had gone about that Dr Maturin was aboard again, and although they liked him well enough, they dreaded what he might bring with him.

‘Are you quite sure?’ they asked Dashwood, who had had the morning watch.

‘I would not positively take my oath,’ he said, ‘because he was muffled against the rain, and it was dark. But I have never seen anyone else on earth come up the side like a left-​handed bear: you would never believe it could be done, without you see it. I should be certain, if the boat had not answered “aye aye”.’

‘That decides it,’ said Mr Simmons. ‘The Admiral’s coxswain could never have made such a mistake. It must have been some commissioned officer that the Captain knew well enough to call him his dear fellow; an old shipmate, no doubt. It cannot be Dr Maturin.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Mr Randall.

‘Never in life,’ said the master.

The purser, whose cabin had been out of reach of the bees, was more concerned with the political aspects of their sudden move, and with the wretched state of his stores. ‘I have not above fifty fathoms of duck aboard,’ he said, ‘and not a scrap of sennit. What will become of us when we cross the line? What will become of us at Madeira, even: to say nothing of Fernando Poo? And Fernando Poo is our destination, I am very sure, for reasons of high strategy.’