Taking Liberties. Diana Norman

cape Richard Hawkins sailed past on his way to the South Seas, there’s where James Cook set off on his circumnavigation and that’s where the blasted captains who deserted Benbow were shot …’

      Ships were packed so thickly abreast in the Hamoaze that the miniature ferry she could see scuttling between them was almost redundant – you could cross by stepping from deck to deck. She wondered which were the prison hulks.

      The birdsong around her was answered by the tinny sound of officers being piped on and off their ships. From the height of the Citadel opposite came a bugle call and the tramp of marching boots. She had the impression that everyone in Plymouth could see her where she stood, outlined against a Grecian white folly; certainly she felt that she could see everyone in Plymouth. Was Philippa Dapifer one of those ants?

      ‘And that’s Millbay. See the Long Room? Centre of Plymouth social life, the Long Room. There’s to be a civic reception on Saturday. Be an honour for the Mayor if you’d come but no need if you prefer to be quiet. I shall attend, of course. Keeps up the town’s spirits, that sort of thing.’

      If it was a matter of encouraging civic morale, she could do no less, despite her mourning, than to accept.

      He was pleased and turned back to the view. ‘Funny place to put the Long Room, same shore as the prison. However, no accountin’ for what the blasted corporation gets up to … See those blocks? Crammed to the gunwales with Frenchies and Yankees.’

      She saw them. Row upon row of rectangles, like a child’s building bricks scattered in the dust.

      He looked down at her as if she’d flinched, which she hadn’t. ‘Perfectly safe, y’know. We keep ’em well locked up.’

      ‘My goodness,’ she said, lazily.

      No need at this stage to mention Lieutenant Grayle. Caution had been driven deep into the bone by her marriage; for the female to show enthusiasm was to court mockery and disappointment from the male. She might raise the question of a prison visit later, as if it did not matter to her one way or the other.

      Which, she told herself, it did not.

      She took the Admiral’s arm and they walked back to the house.

      

      From the look of it, Plymouth’s Long Room had been an attempt to recreate the Assembly Rooms at Bath. It had a ballroom, card rooms, a tepid bath but, Cotswold stone being unavailable, it had been built of red brick which, in the Dowager’s opinion, meant it fell short of elegance.

      It had a lawn sloping down to the water of Millbay, consequently presenting a distant glimpse of the prison on one side of the bay and a barracks on the other. At work or play, Plymouth society liked to be on the tide’s edge and, with the view it gave them straight ahead of a low sun warming and gilding both sea and grass, the Dowager tended to agree with them. She wondered if Lieutenant Grayle could see it from the window of his cell.

      Supper was very good, the music so-so.

      The various dignitaries and wives introduced to her were what her experience of corporate entertainments had led her to expect: hugely pleased with themselves, overlarge, overdressed, accepting of why she was there – after a bereavement she would naturally wish to be heartened by a visit to fair Devon – and, as far as she could judge, unread except for stock market prices or the Lady’s Magazine.

      Following the neglect of the navy during the uneasy peace after the Seven Years’ War, hostilities with America had stirred things up again and the town was prospering as never before. The building of new barracks, batteries and blockhouses as well as the necessary enlargement of docks for the influx of shipping was putting money in the corporation’s pocket.

      A new dock had begun to be built big enough to take American and French prizes and it was rumoured that the King would be coming to Plymouth to see it under construction.

      Several of the guests were in the later stages of mourning for young men lost in battle but the Dowager was credited with being as brave as they were in showing those damn Yankees that Plymouth could hold up its head under fire.

      She was complimented on it. ‘Good of ee to come,’ the Mayor said. ‘It do encourage us all to see a Pomeroy back in Deb’n.’

      ‘Will you be thinking of settling down yere, your ladyship?’ said the Mayor’s wife, a lady who made up for shortness of stature by a towering wig.

      ‘Possibly.’

      ‘Where? T’Gallants? I heard the lease was up but they reckoned as it was to be sold.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘So I heard. Course, ’tis your family home, I know …’

      They were not put off by her unwillingness to be pinned down; property was interesting. ‘Ah reckon as ee’d be better off in something modern – my brother-in-law do know of a place in Newton Ferrers, very nice that is. Hear that, chaps? Her ladyship’s a-thinkin’ of taking over T’Gallants at Babbs Cove. Fallin’ down I reckon it is by now. I’ve said to her as my brother-in-law …’

      ‘We shall see,’ she said and turned away.

      The music began again and, as her semi-mourning excused her at least from dancing, she was able to retire to an empty table at the far end of the room. It was the first time in many months that she had attended a social event and now she was wishing she had not; she found burdensome the noise, the heat from bouncing bodies, the requirement of constant conversation.

      She had intended to slip quietly into this countryside for relief from the last twenty-two years in quiet and solitude. It had been unexpected and somewhat distressing to discover that the arrival of a Pomeroy would cause such interest.

      ‘Countess? Lady Stacpoole? Oh, let me sit with you, Ah’m overcome that you’m gracing our poor liddle Long Room.’ It was a woman with a headdress of feathers and a large bosom, all quivering.

      Without warmth, the Dowager indicated a chair and the woman fell onto it. ‘You don’t know who I am, do ee?’ she said, roguishly. ‘I’m Mrs Nicholls, Fanny Nicholls.’ She paused, as if waiting for the surprise to sink in.

      ‘How do you do.’ A minor official’s wife. To be discouraged as soon as possible. Feathers and bosom displayed on public occasions. The lace on the purple dress slightly careworn and with a suspicion of grubbiness. She had the most peculiar eyes, very still, their gaze attaching onto one’s own like grappling irons. Above a constantly moving mouth, the effect was disturbing.

      ‘We’m related, you know,’ Mrs Nicholls said. ‘My maiden name was Pomeroy.’

      ‘Indeed.’

      ‘Oh ye-es. Your ladyship’s great-grandaddy and mine were brothers. Jerome Pomeroy was my great-grandaddy.’

      ‘Indeed.’ The Dowager appeared unmoved but she was caught. Great-great-uncle Pomeroy, well, well. One of those unfortunate scandals occurring in even the best-regulated families.

      ‘Your great-grandad’s elder brother, he was. You’ve heard of him, surely.’

      Diana was spared a reply because Mrs Nicholls, in manic chatter, expanded on the story at length while the Dowager dwelt on a more edited version among her own mental archives.

      Jerome Pomeroy. The only one of her ancestors for whom Aymer had shown any admiration, one of the rakes whose debauchery had flourished with the encouragement of Charles II, libertine and poet, a member of the Earl of Rochester’s set until, like Rochester’s – and Aymer, come to think of it – venereal disease had sent him frantic for his soul’s salvation, to which end he had joined a sect of self-professed monks in East Anglia and died, raving.

      At that point a certain Polly James, actress, had entered the scene, claiming the Pomeroy barony for her infant son on the grounds that Jerome had married her three years before. The hearing in the Court of Arches had proved that, if there had indeed been a marriage, it was of the jump-over-broomstick type of ceremony and, in any case,