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Patrick O`Brian: THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL

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Patrick O`Brian THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL

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The eleventh installment in Patrick O'Brian's excellent series of naval adventures finds Aubrey and Maturin back in Britain as their journey to the Pacific, begun in the previous book, comes to a conclusion. Aubrey, always a minnow among land sharks when he has money in his pocket, finds himself innocently ensnared in a complicated stock exchange scam that may have been set up by Maturin's enemies in the intelligence game. The complex case and courtroom scene, O'Brian assures us in a note, are based on a real case. The pillory scene is powerful, as Bonden gruffly clears the square of all but sailors, and officers and seamen of all stripes come to show Jack their love and respect. After several books at sea, "The Reverse of the Medal" brings readers back to the Admiralty in London with its complicated and layered intrigues, back to Ashgrove and Sophie, and back to Maturin's espionage machinations. As always, O'Brian's wonderfully intelligent prose and satisfying grasp of historical nuance captures the reader in little pockets of 18th-century Britain.

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'Why, Doctor, be went back to the ship just after five bells.'

'Five bells,' repeated Stephen. 'Sure, he said something about five bells. I shall be reproved for unpunctualitv again. Oh, oh. What shall I do?'

'Do not let it prey on your mind, sir,' said Richardson.

'I will pull you over in the jolly-boat; it is no great way, and I should like to see some of my old shipmates again. Captain Pullings told me that Mowett was your premier now. Lord! Only think of old Mowett as a first lieutenant! But, sir, you are not the only one to be asking after Captain Aubrey There is a person just come aboard again on the same errand - there He is,' he added, nodding along the larboard gangway to where a tall young black man stood among a group of hands. Stephen recognized them all as men he had sailed with in former commissions, most of them Irish, all of them Catholics, and he observed that they were looking at him with curiously amused expressions while at the same time they gently, respectfully urged the tall young black man to go aft; and before Stephen had time to call out a greeting - before he could decide between 'Ito, shipfellows' and 'Avast, messmates' the young man began walking towards the quarterdeck. He was dressed in a plain snuff-coloured suit of clothes, heavy square-toed shoes and a broad-brimmed hat; he had something of the air of a Quaker or a seminarist, but of an uncommonly powerful, athletic seminarist, like those from the western parts of Ireland who might be seen walking about the streets of Salamanca; and it was in the very tones of an Irish seminarist that he now addressed Stephen, taking off his hat as he did so. 'Dr Maturin, sir, I believe?'

'The same, sir,' said Stephen, returning his salute. 'The same, at your service.' He spoke a little at random, for the bare-headed young man standing there in the full sun before him was the spit, the counterpart, the image of Jack Aubrey with some twenty years and several stone taken off, done in shining ebony. It made no odds that the young man's hair was a tight cap of black curls rather than Jack's long yellow locks, nor that his nose had no Roman bridge; his whole essence, his person, his carriage was the same, and even the particular tilt of his head as he flow leant towards Stephen with a modest, deferential look. 'Pray sir, let us put on our hats, for all love, against the power of the sun,' said Stephen. 'I understand you have business with Captain Aubrey?'

'I have, sir, and they are after telling me you would know might I see him at all. I hear no boats arc allowed by his ship, but it is the way I have a letter for him from Mrs Aubrey.'

'Is that right?' said Stephen. 'Then come with me till I bring you where he is. Mr Richardson, you will not object to another passenger? We might take turns with plying the oars, the weight being greater.'

The pull across was comparatively silent: Richardson was busy with his sculls; the black man had the gift, so rare in the young, of being quiet without awkwardness; and Stephen was much taken up with this transposition of his most intimate friend; however, he did say 'I trust, sir, that you left Mrs Aubrey quite well?'

'As well, sir, as ever her friends could desire,' said the young man, with that sudden flashing smile possible only to those with brilliant white teeth and a jet-black face.

'I wish you• may be right, my young friend,' said Stephen inwardly. He knew Sophie very well; he loved her very dearly; but he knew that she was quick and perceptive and somewhat more subject to jealousy and its attendant miseries than was quite consistent with happiness. And without being a prude she was also perfectly virtuous, naturally virtuous, without the least self-constraint.

The young man was not unexpected in the Surprise; the rumour of his presence had spread to every member of the ship's company except her Captain and he came aboard into an atmosphere of kindly, decently-veiled but intense curiosity.

'Will you wait here now while I see is the Captain at leisure?' said Stephen. 'Mr Rowan will no doubt show you the various ropes for a moment.' 'Jack,' he said, walking into the cabin. 'Listen, now. I have strange news: there was a fine truthful young black man aboard the Admiral inquiring for you, told me he had a message from Sophie, so I have brought him along.'

'From Sophie?' cried Jack.

Stephen nodded and said in a low voice. 'Brother, forgive me, but you may be surprised by the messenger. Do not be disconcerted. Will I bring him in?'

'Oh yes, of course.'

Good afternoon to you, sir,' said the young man in a deep, somewhat tremulous voice as he held out a letter. 'When I was in England Mrs Aubrey desired me to give YOU this, or to leave it in good hands were I gone before your ship came by.'

'I am very much obliged to you indeed, sir,' said Jack, shaking him warmly by the hand. 'Pray sit down. Killick, Killick there. Rouse out a bottle of madeira and the Sunday cake. I am truly sorry not to be able to entertain you better, sir - I am engaged to the Admiral this evening -but perhaps you could dine with me tomorrow?'

Killick had of course been listening behind the door and he was prepared for this: he and his black mate Tom Burgess came in at once, making a reasonably courtly train, as like a land-going butler and footman as they could manage; but Tom's desire to get a really good view of the visitor, who sat facing away from him, was so violent that they fell foul of one another just as the wine was pouring. When the 'God-damned lubbers' had withdrawn, crestfallen, and they were alone again Jack looked keenly at the young man's face - it was strangely familiar: surely he must have seen him before. 'Forgive me,' he said, breaking the seal, 'I will just glance into this to see whether there is anything urgent.' There was not. This was the third copy a letter sent to the ports where the Surprise might touch on her homeward voyage it spoke of the progress of Jack s plantations, the slow indeterminate stagnation of the legal proceedings, and the chickenpox, then at it's height, and at the bottom of the page a hurried postscript said that Sophie would entrust this to Mr Illegible, who was bound for the West Indies and who had been so kind as to call on her.

He looked up, and again this uneasy sense of familiarity struck him; but he said, 'It was exceedingly kind of you to bring me this letter. I hope you left everyone at Ashgrove Cottage quite well?'

'Mrs Aubrey told me the children were taken with the chickenpox, and she was concerned for them, sure; but a gentleman that was sitting by whose name I did not catch said there was no danger at all, at all.'

'I do not believe my wife quite caught your name either, sir,' said Jack. 'At all events I cannot make out what she writes.'

'My name is Panda, sir, Samuel Panda, and my mother was Sally Mputa. Since I was going to England with the Fathers she desired me to give you these,' - holding out a package - 'and that is how I came to go to Ashgrove Cottage, hoping to find you there.'

'God's my life,' said Jack, and after a moment he slowly began to open the package. It contained a sperm-whale's tooth upon which he had laboriously engraved HMS Resolution under close-reefed topsails when he was a very young man, younger even than the tall youth facing him; it also contained a small bundle of feathers and elephant's hair bound together with a strip of leopard's skin.

'That is a charm to keep you from drowning,' observed Samuel Panda.

'Flow kind,' said Jack automatically. They looked at one another with a naked searching, eager on the one side, astonished on the other. There were few mirrors hanging in Jack's part of the ship - only a little shaving-glass in his sleeping-cabin - but the extraordinarily elaborate and ingenious piece of furniture that Stephen's wife Diana had given him and that was chiefly used as a music-stand had a large one inside the lid. Jack opened it and they stood there side by side, each comparing, each silently, intently, looking for himself in the other.

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