Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘What is a pis aller?’

‘What one accepts when one can do no better. It is my only hope.’

‘You are too humble. Oh, you are. I am sure you are mistaken. Believe me, Stephen: I am a woman, after all.’

‘Besides, I am a Catholic, you know. A Papist.’

‘What does that matter, above all to her? Anyhow, the Howards are Catholics - Mrs Fitzherbert is a Catholic.’

‘Mrs Fitzherbert? How odd you should mention her. My dear, I must go. I thank you for your loving care of me. I may write again? There was no unkindness because of my letters?’

‘None. I do not mention them.’

‘Not for a month or so, however: and perhaps I may pass by Mapes. How is your Mama, your sisters? May I ask after Mr Bowles?’

‘They are very well, thank you. As for him,’ she said, with a flash of her eye, the calm grey growing fierce, ‘I sent him about his business. He became impertinent -“Can it be that your affections are engaged elsewhere?” says he. “Yes, sir, they are,” I replied. “Without your mother’s consent?” he cried, and I desired him to leave the room at once. It was the boldest thing done this age.’

‘Sophie, your very humble servant,’ said Stephen, standing up. ‘Pray make my compliments to the Admiral.’

‘Too humble, oh far too humble,’ said Sophie, offering her cheek.

Tides, tides, the Cove of Cork, the embarkation waiting on the moon, a tall swift-​pacing mule in the bare torrid mountains quivering in the sun, palmetto-​scrub, Señor don Esteban Maturin y Domanova kisses the feet of the very reverend Lord Abbot of Montserrat and begs the honour of an audience. The endless white road winding, the inhuman landscape of Aragon, cruel sun and weariness, dust, weariness to the heart, and doubt. What was independence but a word? What did any form of government matter? Freedom: to do what? Disgust, so strong that he leant against the saddle, hardly able to bring himself to mount. A shower on the Maladetta, and everywhere the scent of thyme: eagles wheeling under thunder-​clouds, rising, rising. ‘My mind is too confused for anything

but direct action,’ he said. ‘The flight disguised as an advance.’

The lonely beach, lanterns flashing from the offing, an infinity of sea. Ireland again, with such memories at every turn. ‘If I could throw off some of this burden of memory,’ said Stephen to his second glass of laudanum, ‘I should be more nearly sane. Here’s to you, Villiers, my dear.’ The Holyhead mail and two hundred and seventy miles of rattling jerking, falling asleep, waking in another country: rain, rain, rain: Welsh voices in the night. London, and his report, trying to disentangle the strands of altruism, silliness, mere enthusiasm, self-​seeking, love of violence, personal resentment; trying too to give the impossible plain answer to the question ‘Is Spain going to join France against us, and if so, when?’ And there he was in Deal once more, sitting alone in the snug of the Rose and Crown, watching the shipping in the Downs and drinking a pot of tea: he had an odd detachment from all this familiar scene - the uniforms that passed outside his bow-​window were intimately well known, but it was as though they belonged to another world, a world at one or two removes, and as though their inhabitants, walking, laughing, talking out there on the other side of the pane were mute, devoid both of colour and real substance.

Yet the good tea (an unrivalled cholagogue), the muffin, the comfort of his chair, the ease and relaxation after these weeks and months of jading hurry and incessant motion

- tension, danger and suspicion too - insensibly eased him back into this frame, re-​attached him to this life of which he had been an integral part. He had been much caressed at the Admiralty; a very civil, acute, intelligent old gentleman called in from the Foreign Office had said the most obliging things; and Lord Melville had repeatedly mentioned their sense of obligation, their desire to acknowledge it by some suitable expression of their esteem - any appointment, any request that Dr Maturin might choose to make would receive the most earnest and sympathetic consideration. He was recalling the scene and sipping his tea with little sounds of inward complacency when he saw Heneage Dundas stop on the pavement outside, shade his eyes, and peer in through the window, evidently looking for a friend. His nose came into contact with the glass, and its tip flattened into a pale disc. ‘Not unlike the foot of a gasteropod,’ observed Stephen, and when he had considered its loss of superficial circulation for a while he attracted Dundas’s attention, beckoning him in and offering him a cup of tea and a piece of muffin.

‘I have not seen you these months past,’ said Dundas in a very friendly tone. ‘I asked for you several times, whenever Polychrest was in, and they told me you was on leave. How brown you are! Where have you been?’

‘In Ireland - tedious family business.’

‘In Ireland? You astonish me. Every time I have been in Ireland it has rained. If you had not told me, I should have sworn you had been in the Med, ha, ha, ha. Well, I asked for you several times: I had something particular to say. Excellent muffin, eh? If there is one thing I like better than another with my tea, it is a well-​turned piece of muffin.’ After this promising beginning, Dundas fell strangely mute: it was clear that he wanted to say something of importance, but did not know how to get it out handsomely - or, indeed, at all. Did he want to borrow money? Was some disease preying on his mind?

‘You have a particular kindness for Jack Aubrey, Dr Maturin, I believe?’

‘I have a great liking for him, sure.’

‘So have I. So have I. We were shipmates even before we were rated midshipmen - served in half a dozen commissions together. But he don’t listen to me, you know; he don’t attend. I was junior to him all along, and that counts, of course; besides, there are some things you cannot tell a man. What I wanted to say to you was, do you think you might just hint to him that he is - I will not say ruining his career, but sailing very close to the wind? He does not clear his convoys - there have been complaints - he puts into the Downs when the weather is not so very terrible -and people have a tolerable good notion why, and it won’t answer, not in Whitehall.’ ‘Lingering in port is a practice not unknown to the Navy.’

‘I know what you mean. But it is a practice confined to admirals with a couple of fleet actions and a peerage behind them, not to commanders. It won’t do, Maturin. I do beg you will tell him so.’

‘I will do what I can. God knows what will come of it. I thank you for this mark of confidence, Dundas.’

‘The Polychrest is trying to weather the South Foreland now; I saw her from the Goliath, missing stays and having to wear again. She has been over the way, looking at the French gunboats in Etaples. She should manage it when the sea-​breeze sets in; but God help us, what leeway that ship does make. She has no right to be afloat.’

‘I shall take a boat and meet her,’ said Stephen. ‘I am quite impatient to see my shipmates again.’

They received him kindly, very kindly; but they were busy, anxious and overwrought. Both watches were on deck to moor the Polychrest, and as he watched them at their work it was clear to Stephen that the feeling in the ship had not improved at all. Oh very far from it. He knew enough about the sea to tell the difference between a willing crew and a dogged, sullen set of men who had to be driven. Jack was in his cabin, writing his report, and Parker had the deck: was the man deranged? An incessant barking flow of orders, threats, insults, diversified with kicks and blows: more vehement than when Stephen had left the ship, and surely now there was a note of hysteria? Not far behind him in vociferation there was Macdonald’s replacement, a stout pink and white young man with thick pale lips; his authority extended only to his soldiers, but he made up for this by his activity, bounding about with his cane like a jack-​in-​a-​box.