Clarissa Oakes Part 9

The Captain's gig ran hissing up the coral sand; bow-oar leaped out, placed the gangboard, and two seamen, one beaming, one severe, handed Mrs Oakes ash.o.r.e; she thanked them prettily. Stephen followed: they pa.s.sed him his fowling-piece, powder-flask, game-bag; Plaice, a very old friend, begged him to take care of the lions and tigers and them nasty old wipers, and the gig instantly put off again.

'Should you like to look at the market?' he asked.

'Oh, if you please,' cried Mrs Oakes. 'I am excessively fond of markets."

They walked up and down in the sunshine, the object of lively but amiable curiosity, much less invasive than he had expected. Seeing that he was with a woman, even his talkative girl of yesterday said no more than 'Ho aia-owa,' with a discreet but knowing smile, and a wave of her hand; and importunate children were restrained.

Wainwright and the South-Seas speaking Surprises showed them the wonders Annamooka had to offer and even those who were not or who were no longer ardent supporters of Clarissa were pleased that she should behold their fluency and the extent of their knowledge.

Twice at least they made the tour, pausing sometimes to look at the exquisite workmanship of the canoes hauled up for caulking, of the nets, the matting of the sails, Clarissa as eager as a child to see and understand, delighted with everything. But while she was watching a man inlay mother-of-pearl eyes on the blade of his steering-paddle she caught Stephen's wistful eye following a pair of doves - ptilopus? - and after a decent pause she said 'But come, let us go a-botanizing. I am sure this island must have some wonderfully curious plants.'

'Should you not like to look at the newly-arrived fishes at the other end of the strand?' asked Stephen; yet although Clarissa could be imperceptive and even stupid on occasion there were times when no amount of civil disguise could hide a man's real desires from her; and in this case the disguise called for no great penetration. 'Let us take the broad path,' she said. 'It seems to lead to well you can hardly call it a village but to most of the houses, and I believe it wanders off into - could you call it a jungle?"

'I am afraid not. It is at the best but open brushwood until the distant reed-beds before the forest: but you are to observe that in true jungle, in the rainy season, there is no seeing a living creature at all. You may hear birds, you may see the tail-end of a serpent disappear, you may sense the vast looming form of the buffalo, but you may come home, if indeed you are not lost entirely, bleeding from the thorn of the creeping rattan, devoured by leeches, and empty-handed, with no acquisition of knowledge. This is much better.'

They walked along, following the stream and pa.s.sing three or four wide-s.p.a.ced houses - little more than palm-thatched roofs on poles, with a raised floor - all empty, their people being at the market: other houses could be seen no great way off, half hidden by palms or paper-mulberry-trees; but there was little sense of village. And since the breeze was blowing off the land they soon left the noise of the throng behind and walked in a silence barely altered by the rhythmic thunder of surf on the outer reef. When they had skirted three remarkably neat fields of taro and sugar-cane a little flock of birds flew up. Stephen's gun was at his shoulder in one smooth movement; he fixed on his bird and brought it down. 'A nondescript parrot,' he observed with satisfaction, putting it into his bag.

The shot brought out an elderly person from the last house in sight, quite close to the lane: she called in a hoa.r.s.e old friendly voice and hobbled down to meet them, baring her withered bosom as she came. She invited them in with eloquent gestures and they walked across a smooth, bright green lawn to the grateful shade of the house, whose level floor was covered with thick layers of matting, and this, in places, with strips of tapa. On these they all sat down, uttering amiable, mutually incomprehensible words, and the old lady gave them each a small dried fish with a most significant look, emphatically naming it Pootoo-pootoo. Clarissa offered her a blue gla.s.s-headed pin, with which she seemed enchanted, and so they took their leave, turning to wave from time to time until the house was out of sight.

Now the rising path, such as it was. still following the quite copious stream, led through young plantations of mulberries and plantain, and the sun, nearing the zenith, beat down with increasing strength. 'Do not you find the solid earth wonderfully hard and unyielding after shipboard?' asked Clarissa, after a silence, the first since they had left the ship.

'It is always the same,' said Stephen. 'Dublin's streets might be made of plate-armour, every time I walk about them after having been afloat for a while. Furthermore, in a great city I feel obliged to wear leather shoes or even G.o.d help me boots; and with their unaccustomed weight after the packthread slippers I ordinarily wear aboard and the unforgiving nature of the pavement I am quite knocked up by noon; I grow fractious and ..." At some ten yards distance on the top of an infant sandalwood-tree he saw a beetle, a large beetle, one of the lucani, begin the process of opening its wing-covers and unfolding its wings. In a moment it would be in the air. Stephen was not very deeply moved by beetles, least of all by the lucani, but his friend Sir Joseph Blaine was devoted to them - he was prouder of being president of the Entomological Society than of being the head of naval intelligence - and Stephen was much attached to him. He put down his fowling-piece and ran with twinkling feet for the sandalwood-tree. He was almost within reach when the animal took off in its stately flight, its long body almost vertical. But the breeze was blowing down the slope from the forest to the sea: the beetle could not gain height. It sailed on, making for the trees, at between six and eight feet from the ground, and by running with all his might Stephen could just keep up; but he could not have run another fifty yards when the inexpert creature blundered into an outstretched branch and fell to the ground.

Returning with his capture, Stephen found Clarissa in the shade of a breadfruit tree, bathing her feet in the stream. 'I have found something even better,' she called, pointing up; and there indeed, where the tree forked into four main branches, there was an improbable cascade of orchids, three different kinds of orchids, orange-tawny, white with golden throats, flamingo-red. 'That is what I mean by foreign travel,' she said with great complacency. 'They may keep their lions and tigers.' Having gazed about her for some time she said 'How happy I am.' Then, 'Can the breadfruit be eaten?'

'I believe it has to be dressed,' said Stephen. 'But when properly cooked, I am told, it will serve either as a vegetable or as a pudding. Do you think we might imitate the foremast hands and dine at noon?'

'That would make me even happier. There has been a wolf devouring my vitals this last half hour. Besides, I always dine at noon. Oakes is only a midshipman, you know.'

'So much the better. It is noon now: the sun is directly overhead and even this spreading umbrella of a tree, G.o.d bless it, only just affords us shade. Let us see what Killick has allowed us.' He opened the other side of the game-bag, took out a bottle of wine and two silver tumblers, roast pork sandwiches wrapped in napkins, two pieces of cold plum-duff, and fruit. In spite of the heat they were both sharp-set; they ate fast and drank their sherry mingled with the brook. There was little conversation until the fruit, but that little was most companionable. With the last banana-skin floating down the stream, the last of the wine poured and drunk, Clarissa mastered a yawn and said 'With the pleasure and excitement I am quite absurdly sleepy. Will you forgive me if I lie in the even deeper shade?"

'Do, by all means, my dear,' said Stephen. 'I shall go botanizing along the stream as far as the reed-beds, just before those tall trees begin. Here is my fowling-piece: do you understand how to use it?'

She stared at him as though he were making a joke that should be very strongly resented - Medea came to his mind again - then looking down she said 'Oh, yes.'

'The right barrel is charged with powder but no shot: the left has both. If you feel the least uneasiness fire with the foremost trigger and I shall come directly. But it is always possible that any approaching footsteps may be those of Mr Martin and the surgeon of the whaling ship. They may join us.'

'I doubt it,' said Mrs Oakes.

Stephen Maturin lay along the branch of a tree that gave him a view over the reeds and into the little series of mud-fringed pools beyond. 'There is such a thing as being fool-large,' he said as a procession of coots, purple and violet, of stilts belonging to an unknown species with brown gorgets, and of other singular waders pa.s.sed by within fifteen yards, going from the left to the right and then back again, the larger birds walking stately, the little things like ringed plovers darting among their legs, 'and there is also such a thing as being too complaisant by half. That woman did not even thank me for the gun.' He knew that in the last moments of their conversation the current had changed: he had no doubt said something tactless. He could not tell what it was, just as she, being no natural philosopher, could not tell what he was giving up - hours, irreplaceable hours of running about virgin country, never to be seen again, filled with unknown forms of life. Not that the a.n.a.logy was sound, he reflected, climbing down.

He did not find her mood much improved when he came back to the breadfruit tree, carrying a respectable collection of botanical specimens, but never a bird, of course, without a gun. Yes, she had slept very well, thank you, sir, quite undisturbed; and she hoped the Doctor had found all he had hoped for. He had no sense of hostility or offence on her side but rather the impression that before and even during their meal she had reached too high a pitch of spirits and that now she was suffering from the usual reaction, coupled with physical fatigue: he also perceived that one of her heels was sadly blistered. Clearly it would not be possible to drag her as far as the forest. By way of restoring something of the earlier tone he told her about the little girls' triumph: how Captain Aubrey had brought the butcher up with a round turn, had ordered him to mingle a little taro with the hogs' swill and to sprinkle some on to their grain, how they had hurled themselves upon both with cries of swinish joy, and how the category of the animals themselves had been changed: they were now to be considered lambs, and therefore under the rule of Jemmy Ducks.

'Sarah and Emily were delighted,' he said, 'yet discreet beyond their years, very careful not to exult over the butcher or to wound his feelings in any way.'

'Yes, they are dear little things,' said Clarissa, 'and I love them much, although they have taken against me to quite a wounding degree.' An incautious mixed band of parrots pa.s.sed within shot: Stephen chose two, killed them cleanly and brought them back. When she had admired their plumage she went on 'I do so dislike being disliked. That reminds me of poor little Mr Reade. How does he do?'

'He is so well and active that I am afraid he will get up too soon. I have left orders with Padeen that he is to be lashed into his cot, if he grow unruly.'

'I am so glad. We were such good friends at one time. Can he have any career in the Navy? I do hope so - he thinks the world of the service.'

'Oh, I have little doubt of it. Honourable wound, excellent connexions, glowing report from his captain: if he is not killed first he will die an admiral.'

'What about the other officers?'

'Captain Pullings will almost certainly be made post when we get home.'

'Will West and Davidge be reinstated, do you suppose?'

'As for that, I am no judge; but I doubt it. The beach is littered with failed sea-officers; many of them, I am sure, courageous and capable seamen.'

'Captain Aubrey was reinstated.'

'Captain Aubrey, apart from his martial virtues, is a wealthy man, with high-placed friends and an unshakable seat in Parliament.'

Clarissa considered this for a while and then with quite another look and in quite another tone she said 'How pleasant it is to be sitting in the shade, just not too hot, with those glorious flowers overhead, next to a man who does not ply one with questions or with - or with a.s.siduities. You will not think I am fishing when I ask does my eye still show much? I have no decent looking-gla.s.s aboard, so I cannot tell."

'It can no longer be called a black eye,' said Stephen.

Clarissa felt the place gently and went on 'I do not give a straw for men qua men, but I still like to look agreeable or at least pa.s.sable: as I said before I do loathe being disliked, and ugliness and dislike seem to go together . . . Someone once gave me a confused account of the little girls' origin - they are not Aborigines, I collect?'

'Not at all, at all. They are Melanesians from Sweeting's Island, a great way off, the last survivors of a community destroyed by the smallpox. We brought them away because it seemed improbable they should live on by themselves.'

'What is to happen to them?'

'I cannot tell. An orphanage in Sydney could not be borne, and my present plan is to carry them to London, where my friend Mrs Broad keeps a warm comfortable tavern in the Liberties of the Savoy. I have a room there all the year round. She is a kindly woman; she has agreeable young nieces and cousins about the house, and I mean Sarah and Emily to live with her until I can pitch upon some better solution.'

Clarissa hesitated and made two false starts before she said 'I wish your Mrs Broad may keep them safe at least until they know what they are about - may keep them from being misused. Indeed I wish they may not have been misused already, plain little creatures though they are.'

'They are very young, you know.'

'I was younger still.' A fruit-pigeon landed on the other bank of the stream and drank a long draught. 'As a medical man you must have come across incestuous families?'

'Often and often.'

'Though perhaps incest is too strong a word as far as I am concerned: my guardian was only some remote connexion. I went to him when I was about the size of Emily. He lived in quite a large house with a park and a lake, very secluded: pleasant enough. I believe there had been deer in the park in his father's time, but he lived almost entirely indoors, in his library most of the time, and he took no notice of poachers: he had no notion of sporting. He was a shy, kind, nervous man, tall and thin; I used to think him very old, but he cannot have been, since his niece Frances, his older sister's daughter, was only a little older than I was myself. The servants really were old, however: they had been there in his parents' days. He was a learned man, and kind, and a very good and patient teacher; I was really fond of him, in spite of ... I did not much care for Frances, though since we had no other companions we played together and ran about in the garden and the park. We were jealous of one another, jealous for his regard, and that did wonders for our lessons: my guardian -I called him Cousin Edward - for Latin and English reading and writing and a string of unfortunate French governesses for the rest. They never stayed, saying the place was too remote; and it is true that the lanes were so narrow and deep that there was no getting the carriage as far as the church in winter except when there was a strong frost. Yet we were not so very isolated after all. The tradesmen came, which was always an event; and people used to call on Aunt Cheyney, the old lady who lived upstairs, but never left her room for fear of taking cold. Mrs Bellingham drove over from Bishop's Thornton almost every week in summer, and when the roads were too dirty she would ride across, taking the high country. She and Aunt Cheyney taught us how to come into a room properly and go out closing the door behind us, and to sit up and be quiet and make our curtsy. There were some others, too, though my guardian disliked visits extremely. I said in spite of just now and I wonder how I can explain it without being gross. We had various games: Cousin Edward played chess and backgammon with us, and battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k in the big hall; and then there was what we called the games in the dark, with lights put out, curtains drawn, a kind of hide and seek; and sometimes he would catch the one, sometimes the other, and pretend to eat us while we screamed. Yet after a while it took a different turn. He was always very gentle; he hardly ever hurt me; and he seemed to think that though our game was private it was of no great importance.

Frances and I never spoke about it to one another. But when we went to school in Winchester - do you know Winchester?' The question made the strangest contrast with her toneless monologue.

'Only by repute. I know little of England.'

'It was a convent of French Dominicans, and many of the girls were emigres' daughters. But when we were there and we heard the whispering and giggling and wild suppositions about marriage, childbirth, and what went before it, we looked at one another with perfect understanding though we neither of us ever mentioned it in words. It was there that I began to have some notion of what had happened. Though I still could not make out why there was so much fuss. The first part olfoeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas I could understand perfectly well, but not the second. I could not a.s.sociate it with the least degree of pleasure, however short: and so a great deal that I read and heard - romantic attachments, swimming the h.e.l.lespont and so on - remained incomprehensible, in so far as they were for that end, the right true end. So we concealed our knowledge of these matters; and we soon learned to control our learning too. We knew far more Latin than the other girls. That was one of the reasons for our unpopularity: my violence was another.

'When we came back from school, for eventually the nuns would not keep me any longer and I cannot blame them, we found everything changed. Aunt Cheyney had died; many of the servants had been turned away; n.o.body called any more. Only the library and the lessons were the same; and the game in the dark. But then after a while Mr Southam joined in: he was the last remaining visitor, an officer in the army, a big, coa.r.s.e, arrogant man with some very nasty ways. Cousin Edward said we were to be particularly kind to him. We hid as hard as ever we could when he was there: but that was mostly because of his smell and general unpleasantness - the thing itself was of no consequence.

'And so life went on, very slowly, and it seemed to be winter and chilblains most of the time: only the library was heated. Everything grew poorer and poorer. The silver disappeared. Gypsies camped in the park on the far side of the lake, where the wall had fallen down; and the garden was head-high with weeds. All the servants left except for two very old women who could get no other work and who preferred staying to the poorhouse. The tradesmen stopped calling. The coach had been laid up long since, and a little while before Frances was sent away into Yorkshire we dwindled from a gig to an a.s.s-cart; and in this, when the roads were pa.s.sable, Cousin Edward went to Alton with a basket. In winter, although he hated riding, he took the pony. I never saw Frances again, by the way, nor heard what became of her. Looking back now, I suppose they got her in child, and either bearing or getting rid of it killed her.' An orchid flower fell in her lap: she looked at it, turning it this way and that, and presently she carried on with her oddly jerking narrative, not unlike inward speech with its own references and allusions. 'It was the pony indeed that was the death of him. Some farm labourers found him thrown down on the road and brought him back on a hurdle. Mrs Bellingham of Bishop's Thornton saw him properly buried; there was a fair congregation and they said my friends would no doubt come for me. The only people who came were Mr Southam and some lawyer's men who went all over the house writing everything down. He told me I was penniless; no provision had been made for me, but he would find me work in St James's. Do you know St James's?' Once again her voice changed entirely to a waking tone.

'Certainly I know it,' said Stephen. 'Do I not stay at Black's every time I am in London?'

'So you are a member of Black's?'

Stephen bowed.

'I used to work on the other side of the road, or rather beyond the other side of the road, behind b.u.t.ton's. Yes, at Mother Abbott's. But I always had a kindness for Black's because it was a member that begged me off when I was to be hanged. Did you ever go to Mother Abbott's?'

'I have sometimes walked across and drunk tea with herself while my friends went upstairs."

'Then you know the parlour on the right. That was where I worked, keeping the accounts: one of the few things the nuns taught me, apart from French, was keeping accounts neatly and accurately: there or in one of the little rooms beyond, keeping men company while they waited for their girl. Or sometimes they came in just to talk, being lonely. Mother Abbott was very kind to me. She taught me how to dress and undress and she let me have clothes on credit; but she never made me do anything I did not choose to do, and it was not until much later that I obliged as they say, when we were short-handed and the girls were very busy.'

'Forgive me,' said Stephen, leaning forward, seizing a small orthopterous insect and putting it into a collecting-box.

'It is an odd thing, living in a brothel,' said Clarissa, 'and it has a certain likeness to being at sea: you live a particular life, with your own community, but it is not the life of the world in general and you tend to lose touch with the world in general's ideas and language - all sorts of things like that, so that when you go out you are as much a stranger as a sailor is on sh.o.r.e. Not that I had much notion of the world in general anyhow, the ordinary normal adult world, never having really seen it. I tried to make it out by novels and plays, but that was not much use: they all went on to such an extent about physical love, as though everything revolved about it, whereas for me it was not much more important than blowing my nose - chast.i.ty or unchast.i.ty neither here nor there - absurd to make fidelity a matter of private parts: grotesque. I took no pleasure in it, except in giving a little when I happened to like the man - I had some agreeable clients - or felt sorry for him. It was sometimes from them that I tried to find out what the world in general really thought. Obviously on the face of it Mother Abbott's customers belonged to the less rigid side, but they reflected the rest and I did learn a certain amount from them. There was one lonely man who used to come and sit with me for hours and tell me about his greyhounds: he was part of a menage a trois; his wife and mistress were great friends; he had children by both; and the mistress, who was a widow, had children of her own. And they all lived together in one house, a vast great house in Piccadilly. Yet he and they and everyone about him were received everywhere, prodigiously respected. So where is the truth of all this outcry against adultery? Is it all hypocritical? I am still puzzled. It is true that he was very grand when he had his clothes on: the blue ribbon is the Garter, is it not? So perhaps . . .'

They both raised their heads at the sound of a shot. 'That will be Martin and Dr Falconer,' said Stephen.

'Oh dear,' said Clarissa. 'I hope they do not come this way. I have so loved talking to you that it would be a pity to spoil it with how-d'ye-do's. But Lord how I have burdened you with my confidences! I have nearly talked the sun down. Perhaps we should be going back to the ship.'

'If you will give me your shoes, I will put them into my bag. You cannot wear them with that blister.'

As they walked down towards the sea, talking in a desultory way of the brothel's inhabitants, of their customs and the customers' sometimes very curious, occasionally touching ways, he said, after a while, 'Did you ever come across two men who were often there together, the one called Ledward, and the other Wray?'

'Oh yes: I had their names in my books many a time. But that was more on the boys' side: the girls were only called in when there was something quite special - chains and leather, you know. Surely, surely they were not friends of yours?'

'No, ma'am.'

'Yet surprisingly enough they did know some quite agreeable people. I remember one very grand person who used to join in their more curious parties. He had the blue ribbon too. But he never acknowledged them in public. Twice I saw them pa.s.s one another in St James's Street and twice at Ranelagh with not so much as a nod on his part, and they never even moved their hats, although he was a duke.'

'Did he have a limp, at all?'

'A slight one. He wore a boot to disguise it. Dear me, how hoa.r.s.e I am - I have absolutely talked myself hoa.r.s.e. I have not talked like this to anyone, ever. I wish I may not have been indiscreet as well as intolerably boring. You are such a dear to have listened to me; but I am afraid I have ruined your day.'

CHAPTER SEVEN.

For many years Stephen Maturin, as an intelligence agent chiefly concerned with naval affairs, had been hara.s.sed, worried and deeply distressed by the activities of highly-placed, well-informed men, admirers of Napoleon, who from inside the English administration sent information to France. Their messages usually had to do with the movement of ships, and they had caused the loss of several men-of-war, the failure of attacks whose success depended on surprise, the interception of convoys with the capture of sometimes half the merchantmen, and (which wounded Stephen and his chief Sir Joseph Blaine even more intimately) the taking of British agents in all the unfortunate countries forming part of Buonaparte's shoddy empire.

With the help of a man belonging to one of the French intelligence-services, sick of his trade and fearing betrayal, Stephen and Sir Joseph had discovered the ident.i.ty of two of these traitors: Andrew Wray, the acting Second Secretary of the Admiralty, and his friend Ledward, an important Treasury official; but the arrest was bungled; the pursuit lacked zeal; and they both escaped to France. Clearly they were protected by someone more highly placed by far, someone of their own way of thinking. Stephen had dealt with Ledward and Wray when the creatures went to Pulo Prabang, part of a mission designed to bring about the alliance between the Sultan and France, whilst Stephen was the political adviser to a mission with the contrary intent. He had indeed dissected them. Yet their protector, or possibly protectors, had still not been found, and after a discreet pause the flow of information had begun again, less ample, less purely naval, equally dangerous.

He squared to his writing-desk in the great cabin, the only place where he could conveniently spread out his copy, his code-books and his dispatches. 'My dear Joseph,' he wrote in their first, private code, the code each knew by heart, 'how I wish, O how I wish, that this, the first of writing, may reach you by the whaler Daisy bound for Sydney, and then by the most expeditious means (India and then overland?) the Governor has at his disposal. I believe the million-to-one chance has served us. Pray think of a duke, well at Court, with the Garter though lame of a leg and with curious ways . . . Come in."

'Which it's all hands, sir, if you please,' said Killick.

'Compliments to the Captain and beg to be excused,' said Stephen, darting a reptilian look at him.

All hands. Of course, that was the pipe he had heard some minutes before.'. . . with curious ways. Before he was a duke, before he had become attached to the ministry, before he was a Privy Councillor and before he had the Garter, I saw him in Holland . . . Come in.'

It was the little girls, smiling and bobbing, dressed in new frocks with blue bows on their sleeves. 'You said you would like to see us when we were ready," said Sarah.

'And very fine you are too,' said Stephen. 'Turn round, will you?' They slowly revolved, holding their arms well away from their stiff skirts. 'The elegant frocks of the world, so they are. But Emily, my dear, what is that in your cheek?'

'Nothing,' said Emily, beginning to grizzle.

'Put it out, put it out: would you shame us all by chewing tobacco before the King of the Friendly Islands himself?' He held out a waste-paper basket and slowly, unwillingly, Emily let drop her quid. "There, there,' he said, kissing them, 'blow your nose and run along. You must not keep Mr Martin waiting: there is not a moment to be lost.'

'You will come along, sir, won't - will not - you, if ever you can?' asked Sarah.

'. . . I saw him in Holland House,' wrote Stephen; and leaning back for a fresh vision of the scene he heard Jack, in another world, address the crowded deck; to starboard the liberty men, who had somehow, after a day of strenuous toil, found time and energy to put on their sh.o.r.e-going clothes of bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned light-blue jackets, white duck trousers, embroidered shirts, broad-brimmed ribboned hats, neat little shoes with bows; to larboard those now jaded souls who had had their fun the night before and a cruel hard day on top of it. Those who were to go ash.o.r.e - and already the fires were burning for the feast - could hardly wait for their Captain to be done: they jigged up and down as they stood, as they jigged so the stolen nails, bolts, pieces of old iron for trading, jangled in their places of concealment. 'I repeat, shipmates,' he said loud and clear, 'we weigh with the first of the ebb. All hands are to repair to the boats the moment the second rocket goes up; they will have five minutes from the first in which to take their leave. And there are to be no women aboard the ship. No women at all, d'ye hear me there?'

'What about Mrs Oakes?' called a half-drunk voice from the sullen larboard.

'Take that man's name, Mr West,' said Jack, and those who had been close to the butcher moved away from him with expressionless faces, leaving him isolated. 'Gig's crew away,' called Jack: a few moments later he went down the side in some state and Stephen returned to his letter.

'I saw him in Holland House during the peace, when he had just come back from the Paris emba.s.sy. As the door opened Lady Holland was saying in that loud metallic voice of hers "How I worship that Napoleon". Some people looked embarra.s.sed but for a moment he stood there in the shadow of the doorway with his hands clasped and his face shining as though he had been granted the beatific vision; then he composed himself and walked in with the ordinary commonplace remarks. Lady Holland ran to meet him: "What news from Paris? Tell us all about your dinner with the divine First Consul."

'Now this man shared in Ledward's and Wray's dirtiest parties, but although he had been to school with Ledward he never acknowledged him in public; nor of course Wray. But the point that carried total conviction with me was that their code for him was Pillywinks, and the name we found so often but could not interpret in Wray's criminally negligent papers.

'To carry the same conviction to your mind, let me tell you about my source: she is the lady who blew Mr Caley's head off with a double-barrelled gun some years ago; and as you will recall (which I did not at the time) our fellow-member Harry Ess.e.x had her sentence commuted to transportation. It was therefore in New South Wales that she joined our company.'

There followed a succinct account of their voyage, its interruption and its present aims: a more detailed account of his walk with Clarissa in which he could not refrain from the briefest notice of Sir Joseph's beetles; and then as detailed an account as he could remember of their conversation about Ledward, Wray and the lame man, both at the first mention of their names and during the walk down to the strand, a long walk, and made longer by the blister. The exact sequence was not always easy, and to fix it he sometimes gazed out of the window. The frigate lay stern-on to the sh.o.r.e, a sh.o.r.e lined with fires and as brilliant as could be: no moon to interfere: leaping flames above an incandescent heart, white sand, dark green looming behind, a blue-black sky; the whaler clearly lit upon his right; and all along the line straight young brown bodies dancing to the sound of rhythmic song and drums. But dancing in a series of exact, perfect evolutions that would have put the Brigade of Guards to shame. Advance, retreat and twirl; twirl, retreat, advance; a half turn and so back again, the close ranks and files interchanging, all with a perfect simultaneity of pace and waving arms. In the middle, beyond the fire, a temporary roof of palm fronds had been set up, and here by the chiefs' side sat Jack: then other notables: to their right Clarissa and her husband, then Wainwright and Dr Falconer, Reade, Martin and the little girls, now hung with wreaths of flowers, staring with amazement and delight. They were all slowly, absently sipping kava in coconut cups from the ancestral bowl in front of the chief.

Back to his coding, the fires dazzling in his eyes, and he struck out several lines in which the sequence was mistaken. To convey the perfectly convincing, ingenuous, nature of her words was, he feared, beyond his powers; but certainly their exact, inconsequential train might do something towards it.

When next he looked up he realized that for some time he had been hearing neither song nor drums but a confused din not unlike the roar of a bull-fight: it was in fact a boxing-match. He had heard of the sport for ever, but curiously enough he had never seen a formal contest - nothing more than scuffles among the boys in earlier commissions or dockside brawls. Yet this appeared to be a singular battle. He took up his small spygla.s.s, never far from hand, and his first astonished impression was confirmed. There were two fine upstanding young women setting about one another with bare fists. Violent, wholehearted blows, and judging from the cries of the onlookers, well given and well received. Clarissa was laughing; the little girls hardly knew how they liked it; some of the seamen and all of the islanders backed one girl or the other with the greatest zeal. Yet at the very climax, and for no reason that Stephen could see, when neither was giving an inch, the old chief beat the kava-bowl, an attendant blew on a conch, the chief's sister intervened, the two young women fell back and walked off, one rubbing her cheek, the other her bosom: there was a cry of disappointment from the seamen who had enjoyed it, but almost immediately afterwards, from one end of the line to the other, came baked hogs, baked dogs, fishes and fowls wrapped in leaves, yams, plantains, breadfruit.

Stephen's watch uttered its tiny silver chime, and looking at the pile of sheets he had so inconsiderately filled he said 'Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d, I shall never get all this receded in time: and already my poor boiled eyes are dropping out of my head.' He put on his green shade, wiped away his tears, changed his spectacles and opened the new code-book.

He did not look up again until a great howl plucked him from his task, his mechanical work. There was Awkward Davies flat on his face with a burly islander sitting on him, pinning him down with an arm-breaking hold. Davies presumably gave some sign, uttered some word, for the islander got off, helped him up, and led him back to his friends in the kindest way.

Again Stephen's watch struck and while it was still striking the first rocket soared up. 'Oooh,' cried all the people, and 'Aah!' followed by cheers as it burst.

The second rocket, not a quarter of a page later, was followed by nautical cries and then by the arrival of the boats. Some few hands had contrived to get drunk on the chief's kava, but most came aboard very quietly, welcomed in a low voice by the harbour-watch.

When his sheep had been counted Jack looked into the cabin. 'Am I interrupting you?' he asked from the doorway.

'Never in life, my dear. I am only copying: let me finish my group and I am with you.' Many years before this Jack, no fool at sea, had perceived that Stephen was more than a ship's surgeon, more even than a man whose political advice would be sought by a captain where relations with foreigners were concerned; and gradually his close connexion with intelligence had become so evident that there was nothing strange about his coding messages, sometimes of surprising length.