Treason’s Harbour. Patrick O’Brian

Tower. They all turned, and once again the watchers involuntarily recoiled. ‘Ten minutes is all these fine gentlemen have in which to pace stately to the Governor’s; for they must not pelt up the cruel slope, creasing their careful neckcloths, losing their hair-powder, gasping in the heat, and arriving in a state of crimson dissolution. You had much better sit down with me and drink a glass of iced cow’s milk in the shade; the goat I cannot recommend.’

      ‘I dare not,’ she said, as the captains took their leave, walking off in order of seniority, ‘I should be late for Miss Lumley. Captain Aubrey,’ she called, ‘if by any chance I should be delayed for this evening’s rehearsal, I beg you will step in and show Captain Pullings the lemon-tree – it has been watered today! Giovanna is going to Notabile directly, but the door will not be really shut.’

      ‘I should be very happy to show Captain Pullings the lemon-tree,’ said Jack, and at the word captain Pullings laughed aloud once more. ‘It is the finest lemon-tree of my acquaintance. And pray, ma’am, will Ponto be going to Notabile too?’

      ‘No. Last time he killed some goats and childs. But he knows the naval uniform. He will not say anything to you, unless perhaps you touch the lemons.’

      ‘Your plan seems to answer, sir,’ said Giuseppe, watching the officers and Graham start climbing the steps towards the palace and Stephen and Mrs Fielding sit down to a dish of iced cream flavoured with coffee – they had agreed that Miss Lumley was not a sea-officer and could not therefore have so morbidly acute a sense of measured time.

      ‘I believe it may answer very well,’ said Lesueur. ‘In general I have found that the uglier the man, the greater his vanity.’

      ‘Now, sir,’ said Laura Fielding, licking her spoon, ‘since you have been so very kind, and since I should like to send Giovanna off to Notabile, I shall ask you to be kinder still and walk with me as far as St Publius: there are always a great many blackguard soldiers hanging about the Porta Reale, and without my dog…’

      Dr Maturin declared that he should be happy to act as vicar to so noble a creature, and indeed he looked unusually pleased and cheerful as they left the courtyard and as he handed her across the Piazza Regina, crowded with soldiers and two separate herds of goats; but by the time they were walking past the Auberge de Castile part of his mind had drifted away, back to the subject of mood and its origins. Another part was very much in the present, however, and his silence was in some degree deliberate; it did not last long, but as he had foreseen it disturbed Laura Fielding. She was under a constraint – a constraint that he perceived more and more clearly – and both her tone and her smile were somewhat artificial when she said, ‘Do you like dogs?’

      ‘Dogs, is it?’ he said, giving her a sideways glance and smiling. ‘Why now, if you were an ordinary commonplace everyday civilly-prating gentlewoman I should smirk and say “Lord, ma’am, I dote upon ’em,” with as graceful a writhe of my person as I could manage. But since it is you I shall only observe that I understand your words as a request that I should say something: you might equally have asked did I like men, or women, or even cats, serpents, bats.’

      ‘Not bats,’ cried Mrs Fielding.

      ‘Certainly bats,’ said Dr Maturin. ‘There is as much variety in them as in other creatures: I have known some very high-spirited, cheerful bats, others sullen, froward, dogged, morose. And of course the same applies to dogs – there is the whole gamut from false fawning yellow curs to the heroic Ponto.’

      ‘Dear Ponto,’ said Mrs Fielding. ‘He is a great comfort to me; but I wish he were a little wiser. My father had a Maremma dog, a bog-dog, that could multiply and divide.’

      ‘Yet,’ said Maturin, pursuing his own thought, ‘there is a quality in dogs, I must confess, rarely to be seen elsewhere and that is affection: I do not mean the violent possessive protective love for their owner but rather that mild, steady attachment to their friends that we see quite often in the best sort of dog. And when you consider the rarity of plain disinterested affection among our own kind, once we are adult, alas – when you consider how immensely it enhances daily life and how it enriches a man’s past and future, so that he can look back and forward with complacency – why, it is a pleasure to find it in brute creation.’

      Affection was also to be found in commanders: it fairly beamed from Pullings as Jack Aubrey led him up to the Governor and his guest. Jack did not at all relish this meeting with Wray, but since he felt that he could not avoid it without meanness he was glad that etiquette required that he should present his former lieutenant: the necessary formality would take away some of the awkwardness. Not that there seemed a great deal of awkwardness ahead, he reflected, looking along the line. Wray looked much the same, a tall, good-looking, animated, gentlemanlike fellow wearing a black coat with a couple of foreign orders; he was perfectly well aware of Jack’s approach – their eyes had met some time before – but he was laughing away with Sir Hildebrand and a red-faced civilian, apparently quite unmoved, as though he had not the least reason to look furtive, or even uneasy in his mind.

      The line moved on. It was their turn. Jack made the presentation to the Governor, who replied with a slight inclination of his head, an indifferent look, and the word ‘Happy’. Then he urged Pullings on a step and said, ‘Sir, allow me to name Captain Pullings. Captain Pullings, Mr Secretary Wray.’

      ‘I am delighted to see you, Captain Pullings,’ said Wray, holding out his hand, ‘and I congratulate you with all my heart on your share in the Surprise’s brilliant victory. As soon as I read Captain Aubrey’s dispatch’ – bowing to Jack – ‘and his glowing account of your unparalleled exertions I said Mr Pullings must be promoted. There were gentlemen who objected that the Torgud was not in the Sultan’s service at the moment of her capture – that the promotion would be irregular – that it would establish an undesirable precedent. But I insisted that we should attend to Captain Aubrey’s recommendation, and I may tell you privately,’ he added in a lower tone, smiling placidly at Jack as he did so, ‘that I insisted all the more strongly, because at one time Captain Aubrey seemed to do me an injustice, and by promoting his lieutenant I could, as the sea-phrase goes, the better wipe his eye. Few things have given me greater pleasure than bringing out the commission, and I am only sorry that the victory should have cost you such a cruel wound.’

      ‘Mr Wray: Colonel Manners of the Forty-Third,’ said Sir Hildebrand, who felt that this had been going on far too long.

      Jack and Pullings bowed and gave place to the Colonel: Jack heard the Governor say ‘That was Aubrey, who took Marga,’ and the soldier’s almost instant keen reply ‘Ah? It was held by the enemy, I recollect?’ but his mind was deeply perturbed. Was it possible that he had misjudged Wray? Could any man have such boundless impudence to speak so if it were false? Wray could certainly have barred the promotion if he had wished; there was the perfect excuse of the Torgud’s being a rebel. Jack tried to recall the exact details of that far-away unhappy, angry evening in Portsmouth – just what was the sequence of events? – just how much had he drunk? – who were the other civilians at the table? – but he had been through a great deal of much more open violence since that time and he could no longer fix the grounds of his then certainty. Cheating there had been, and for large sums of money, of that he was still sure; but there had been several players at the table, not only Andrew Wray.

      He became aware that Pullings had been talking about the Second Secretary in a tone approaching enthusiasm for some time – ‘such magnanimity, magnanimity, you know what I mean, sir – benevolent eye – uncommon learned too, no sort of doubt about it – should certainly be First Secretary if not First Lord’ – and that they were standing at a table covered with bottles, decanters and glasses.

      ‘So here’s to his health, sir, in admiral’s flip,’ cried Pullings, putting an ice-cold silver tankard into his hand.

      ‘Admiral’s flip, at this time of day?’ said Jack, looking thoughtfully at Captain Pullings’ round, happy face, with its livid wound now glowing purple – the face of one who had already swallowed a pint of marsala and who was in any case quite overcome with joy – the face of an ordinarily abstemious man who was