Alexander Kent - Second to None

Everything looked neat. There was a smell of freshly baked bread, and new casks of ale on their trestles, each with its own clean towel. She paused, and with her hands on her hips stared at her reflection in the looking-glass. She did not smile, but examined every feature as she would a new girl applying for work in the kitchen.

She shivered, staring at herself. As he would see her. His friend Bryan Ferguson had brought the news. The man-of-war Frobisher which had taken her man away from her last year was at Plymouth. John Allday was back, and coming home. She looked around the parlour again. Coming home. She allowed her mind to explore it. Never to leave her.

She could hear her brother, also named John, chopping wood for the kitchen. She had told him not to, with only one leg, but he was doing it for her. Allowing her this time to be alone.

She walked through the outer parlour. The auctioneers were still there but one was counting out money, and their horses were already at the door. She walked past them into the afternoon sunshine. Almost June, the summer of 1815. Where had it all gone, and so quickly?

She gazed down the empty road, the hedgerows rippling slightly under the breeze off Falmouth Bay, campion and foxglove splashing colour against the many shades of green. She turned and looked at the inn. She could not have done it without her brother. He had lost his leg in the line while serving with the Thirty-First regiment of foot, the Old Huntingtonshires. If it had been her, she thought, she would have given up. Now, freshly painted, the inn sign with the ship which had become so important in their lives was moving restlessly, as if the old Hyperion was remembering also.

Unis was well acquainted with the ways of the sea, its demands and its cruelties. Her first husband had been a master’s mate in that same old ship and had died aboard her, like so many others. John Allday had burst into her life not far from here, when she had been attacked by two footpads while on her way to this very inn.

Big, shambling, but there was no man like him. As he had dealt with her attackers she had realised that he was in pain; he was suffering from an old wound, which she knew now had been a sword-thrust to the chest. She had seen the scar many times. She wiped her eyes. He was coming home. Bryan Ferguson had said it would be today or tomorrow. She knew it was today. How could she? But she knew.

The two auctioneers were leaving, heaving themselves into their saddles, well filled with rabbit pie and the vegetables she grew behind the inn. They waved to her, and cantered away.

She was small, pretty and neat, but customers did not take liberties with her. Not more than once.

She smiled. Anyway, she was a foreigner, from over the border in Devon, the fishing port of Brixham where she had been born and had lived until her man had been reported killed. Discharged dead, the navy termed it.

She pushed some hair from her eyes and looked at the hillside, which was alive with young lambs either grazing or frolicking in the pale sunshine. Foreigner maybe, but she would be in no other place.

Bryan Ferguson had warned her, or had tried to; her brother had also done his best. It would be difficult, most of all for John Allday. She thought of that last visit, when Bryan had brought the news that Sir Richard Bolitho was ordered to sea again. Even Unis had been angry; he had been back in England no time at all. The house below Pendennis was empty now, except for the Fergusons and the servants.

She recalled the young Captain Bolitho at the church. So erect, brave in his dress uniform, with the old sword at his hip which had been pointed out to her. All that was left of the man they were remembering.

And Lady Catherine. She had come here to the inn whenever she had wanted a friend, and Unis ventured to call herself that, when Sir Richard was away at sea. She had been in the parlour that night Squire Roxby had died, and had gone from here to comfort his widow. A family, but it was more than that. In the room where John had finally found himself able to tell her about his son John Bankart, who had died in battle, how he had carried him himself, and had put him over the side for his burial.

She glanced at the narrow stairway. And together they had had Kate. That would be different this time, too. She nodded firmly. From now on. She had seen the hurt on the strong, weathered features when he had returned from sea, and his own child had run from him to Unis’s brother.

Little Kate was upstairs now in the beautiful cot John had made for her. Like the toys, and the perfect ship models; his big, clumsy-looking hands could perform miracles.

Her brother had said, “When I got back from the war, a pin missing and all, I was grateful. I was thankful to be spared, crippled or not. When things were bad I remembered, or tried to, all those lines of men. Friends I’d known, lying out in the field, bleeding to death, calling out with nobody to hear. Waiting to die, quickly, to be spared the crows and the scum who rob the likes of poor soldiers after a battle. What I hated most was pity, well meant or otherwise. All I had left was my pride.” He had looked at the old tattoo on his arm and had managed to smile. “Even in the old bloody regiment!”

Unis knew what John’s standing as the admiral’s coxswain had meant to him. How he had belonged. That was what he had said, right here, just before he had left. Not merely the personal coxswain of England ’s most famous sailor, but his friend. And he had been there. Bryan Ferguson had told them about it after Adam Bolitho’s return, and he had heard it from the admiral at Plymouth. John had been at Richard Bolitho’s side when he had been shot down.

Horses’ hooves and the rattle of wheels startled her from her thoughts, but the sounds went on, and were lost around the curve of the road.

She stared at the hand pressed under her heart. Was it fear? John was safe. He would never go back to sea. She knew he and Bryan Ferguson had discussed it, talked about the point at which a man was reckoned too old to fight for King and country. It was like a red rag to a bull for John Allday.

She thought of his letters; how she had waited for them, yearned for them. And had often wondered about the officer who had written them on John’s behalf. George Avery was a good man, and had stayed at the Old Hyperion. She had often thought of him reading her letters aloud to John, a little like having letters from home for himself, although John had told her he never received any.

How long would it take? What would he do? He had often said he would never become just another old Jack, yarning and “swinging the lamp.”

But it would be hard, perhaps for all of them. Bryan Ferguson had told her that he and her John had been pressed together here in Cornwall, and taken to a King’s ship in Falmouth. Bolitho’s ship. What had grown from that unlikely meeting was stronger than any rock.

Here on the edge of the little village of Fallowfield, it was not like Brixham or Falmouth. Farm workers and passing tradesmen were more common than men of the sea. But there would still be talk. Everyone knew the Bolitho family. And Catherine was in London, they said. There would be more ceremonies there; how could she endure it? There was gossip enough in any town or village. How much worse it must be in the city.

She heard her brother descending the stairs, the regular thump of his wooden leg. His spar, John Allday called it.

“Little Kate’s fast asleep.” He limped towards her. “Still thinking on it, Unis love? We’ll make it right for him, see?”

“Thank you for that, John. I don’t know what I’d have done-”

She looked into his face and froze, unable to move. She whispered, “Oh, dear God, make my man happy again!”