Alexander Kent - The Flag Captain

Under his breath he muttered, “By God, Captain, we are going to need you! ”

Then he looked down at the lolling bargemen and growled, “Now, you idle buggers, let me see you make this boat move! ”

The stroke oar, a grizzled seaman with thick red hair, said between his teeth, “Do yewm reckon the word o’ the troubles will reach us ’ere?”

Allday eyed him bleakly. So they all knew already.

He grinned. “Word is like dung, matey, it must be spread about to be any use!” He dropped his voice. “So it’s up to us to make sure it doesn’t happen, eh?”

When he looked astern again Bolitho had already vanished, and he wondered what would be waiting for him on his return home.

Bolitho made himself stand quite still for several minutes as he stared towards the house. He had avoided the road through the town and had used instead the narrow twisting lane with its green hedgerows and sweet smells of the countryside. As he stood in the bright sunlight he was conscious of stillness, the hard pressure of the land through his shoes. It was all so different from the constant movement and sounds of shipboard life, and the realisation was one which never failed to surprise and please him. Except that this time it was not the same. He half listened to the gentle murmur of bees, the distant bark of some farm dog as it scurried around the sheep, while his eyes rested on the house, square and uncompromising against the sky and the sloping hill around which led towards the headland.

With a sigh he strode forward again, his shoes disturbing the dust, his eyes squinting against the glare. Once through the broad gates in the grey stone wall he paused, unsure of himself and wishing that he had not come.

Then as the double doors at the top of the steps opened he saw Ferguson, his one-armed steward, backed by two servant girls, waiting to greet him, their smiles so genuine that he was momentarily drawn from his own thoughts, and not a little moved.

Ferguson took his hand and murmured, “God bless you, sir. It is a fine thing to have you back home again.”

Bolitho smiled. “Not for long this time. But thank you.”

He saw Ferguson’s wife, plump and rosy cheeked in her white cap and spotless apron, scurrying to greet him, her face torn between pleasure and tears as she curtsied and said, “Never a warning, sir! But for Jack, the exciseman, we’d not have known you were back! He saw your topsails when the mist lifted and rode here to tell us.”

“Things have changed, Ferguson!” Bolitho removed his hat and walked through the high entrance, aware of the cool stone, the ageless textures of oak panelling which shone dully in the filtered sunlight. “There was a time when the young men of Falmouth could smell a King’s ship before it topped the horizon.”

Ferguson looked away. “Not many young men left now, sir. Those not in safe jobs have all been taken or volunteered! He followed him into the broad room with its empty fireplace and tall leather-backed chairs.

It was very quiet here too, as if the whole house was holding its breath.

Ferguson said, “I will fetch you a glass, sir.” He gestured to his wife and the two servant girls behind Bolitho’s back. “You’ll be wanting some time alone on your first hour…”

Bolitho did not turn. “Thank you.” He heard the door close behind him and then moved to the foot of the staircase, the wall of which was lined with the paintings of all the others who had lived here before him. So familiar. Nothing had changed, and yet…

The stairs creaked as he climbed slowly past the watching

portraits. Captain Daniel Bolitho, his great-great-grandfather, who had fought the French at Bantry Bay. Captain David Bolitho, his great-grandfather, depicted here on the deck of a blazing ship, who had died fighting pirates off the African coast. Where the stairs turned to the right old Denziel Bolitho, his grandfather, the only member of the family to reach the rank of rear-admiral, waited to greet him like a friend. Bolitho could still remember him, or thought he could, from the days when he had sat on his knee as a small child. But maybe it was his father’s stories about him and the familiar picture which he really recalled. He paused and looked directly at the last portrait.

His father had been younger when the portrait had been finished. Straight-backed, level-eyed, with the empty sleeve pinned across his coat, an afterthought of the painter after he had lost an arm in India. Captain James Bolitho. It was difficult to remember him as he had looked on their last meeting so many years back when he had told Bolitho of his other son’s disgrace. Hugh, the apple of his eye, who had killed a brother officer in a duel before fleeing to America to fight against his own country in the Revolution.

Bolitho sighed deeply. They were all dead. Even Hugh, whose deceptions had finally ended in death before his own eyes. A death which was still a secret he could share with no one. Hugh’s record of failure and deception would stay a secret, and his memory rest in peace if he had anything to do with it.

Ferguson called from the foot of the stairs, “I have put the glass by the window, sir. Some claret.” He paused uncertainly before adding, “In your bedroom, sir.” He sounded ill at ease. “They were to have been a surprise, but had not been finished at the time of your last visit…” His voice trailed away as Bolitho walked quickly to the door at the end of the landing and pushed it open.

For a moment longer he could see no change. The four-poster bed held in a shaft of dappled sunlight from the windows. The

tall mirror where she must have sat to comb her hair when he had been away… he felt his throat go dry as he turned to see the two new pictures on the far wall. It was just as if she was alive again, here in this room where she had waited in vain for his return. He wanted to move closer but was afraid, afraid the spell might break. The artist had even caught the sea-green in her eyes, the rich chestnut of her long hair. And the smile. He took a slow step towards it. The smile was perfect. Gentle, amused, the way she had looked at him whenever she had been near.

A step sounded in the doorway and Ferguson said quietly, “She wanted them together, sir.”

Bolitho looked at the other portrait for the first time. He was depicted wearing his old dress coat, the one with the broad white lapels which Cheney had liked so much.

He said huskily, “Thank you. It was good of you to remember her wishes.”

Then he walked quickly to the window and leaned over the warm sill. There, just round the hill, he could see the glittering horizon line. What she would have seen from this same window. Once he might have been saddened, even angry, that Ferguson had put the pictures here. To remind him of her, and his loss. He would have been wrong, and now as he stood with his palms resting on the sill he felt strangely at peace. For the first time that he could recall for a long while.

Below in the yard an old gardener peered up and waved his battered hat but he did not see him.

He stepped back into the room and turned once more towards the portraits. They were reunited here. Cheney had seen to that, and nothing could take them apart any more. When he was back at sea again, perhaps on the other side of the world, he would be able to think of this room. The portraits side by side, watching the horizon together.

He said, “That claret will be warm by now. I’ll come down directly.”

Later as he sat at the big desk, writing several letters to be carried to the port officials and chandlers, he thought about all that had happened here in this house. What would become of it when he died? There was only his young nephew, Adam Pascoe, Hugh’s illegitimate son, left to claim the Bolitho inheritance. He was away serving with Captain Thomas Herrick at the moment, but Bolitho decided he would soon do something for the boy to make sure of his rightful ownership of this house. His mouth hardened. Much as he loved his sister Nancy, he would never allow her husband, a Falmouth magistrate and one of the biggest landowners in the county, to get his hands on it.