The Ionian Mission. Patrick O’Brian

how it worked and telling him how she had stood over the workmen, bullying them into finishing it in time – oaths, sweet persuasion, promises until she was hoarse, as hoarse as a God-damned crow, Stephen chéri – he reflected on her generosity, her improvidence (rich though she was, she never had any money to spend, and this was far more than even she could afford), and on her ignorance of naval life, of the damp, cramped cupboard that a surgeon lived in at sea, even the surgeon of a seventy-four, a ship of the line: this precious piece of misguided craftsmanship might do very well for a field-officer, a soldier with a baggage-wagon and a dozen orderlies, but for a sailor it would have to be wrapped in waxed canvas and struck down into the driest part of the hold. Or perhaps it might be allowed in the bread-room…

      ‘But the shirts, dear Stephen,’ she was saying. ‘I am absolutely desolated about the shirts. I could not get the wretched woman to finish them. There are only a dozen here. But I will send the others down by coach. They may catch you in time.’

      ‘God’s love,’ cried Stephen, ‘there is no need, no need at all. A dozen shirts! I have never had so many at one time since I was breeched. And in any case I need no more than two for this voyage. Sure, it is almost over before it is begun.’

      ‘I wish you were back already,’ said Diana in a low voice. ‘I shall miss you so.’ And then, glancing out of the window, ‘There is Anne Trevor’s chariot. You will not mind her coming, Stephen? When she heard that Jagiello was dining here she begged and prayed to be invited, and I had not the heart to say no.’

      ‘Never in life, my dear. I am all for the satisfaction of natural desires, even in Miss Trevor, even in a Judas-haired rack-renting County Kerry absentee landowner with a Scotch Anabaptist vulture by way of an agent, or bailiff. Indeed, we might go so far as to leave them alone for two minutes.’

      ‘It seems a damned odd voyage to me,’ said Diana, frowning at the pile of shirts. ‘You never told me how it all came about. And it is all so sudden.’

      ‘In the crisis of a war naval orders are apt to be sudden. But I am just as pleased: I have some business to deal with in Barcelona, as you know: I should have travelled to the Mediterranean in any case, Jack or no Jack.’ This was true as far as it went; but Stephen had not seen fit to explain the full nature of his business in Barcelona, nor did he now say that he also had a rendezvous with French royalists no great way from Toulon, a rendezvous with some gentlemen who were heartily sick of Buonaparte, a rendezvous that might lead to great things.

      ‘But it was understood that Jack was to have the Blackwater and take her to the North American station as soon as she was ready,’ said Diana. ‘He ought never to have been shoved into a temporary command in that rotten old Worcester. A man of his seniority, with his fighting record, ought to have been knighted long ago and given a decent ship, perhaps a squadron of his own. Sophie is perfectly furious: so is Admiral Berkeley, and Heneage Dundas, and all his service friends.’ Diana was well informed about Captain Aubrey’s affairs, he being married to her cousin Sophie and an old friend into the bargain; but she was not quite as well informed as Stephen, who now said, ‘You are aware of Jack’s predicament, of course?’

      ‘Of course I am, Stephen. Pray do not be an ass.’ Of course she was: all Captain Aubrey’s acquaintances knew that on coming ashore with his pockets full of French and Spanish gold he had fallen an even easier prey to the landsharks than most sailors, as being of a more trusting, sanguine disposition. He had made a disastrous plunge into the arms of a more than usually rapacious shark and he was now deep in law-suits, with the possibility of ruin at the end of them.

      ‘I am speaking more of the most recent phase. It seems that he forgot the discretion his legal advisers urged him to observe, and it seems to them that an absence from the country is now essential for a while. I forget the details – mayhem, attorneys flying out of a two-pair-of-stairs window, glass damaged to the extent of several pounds, clerks put in fear of their lives, blasphemous words, a breach of the King’s peace. That is why things are so sudden. And that is why he accepted this command. It is no more than a parenthesis in his career.’

      ‘He will come back for the Blackwater then, when she is ready? Sophie will be so happy.’

      ‘Why, as to that, my dear, as to that…’ Stephen hesitated; and then, overcoming the passion for reserve that among other things made him so unsuitable a husband, he said, ‘The fact of the matter is that he had very great difficulty in getting even this command: his friends were obliged to make the most pressing representations to those in power, reminding them of services rendered, of promises made by the late First Lord; and even with all that he might never have had it if Captain – if a friend had not very handsomely stood aside. There is some hindrance, some personal grudge in the Admiralty itself; and in spite of his record he may be disappointed of the Blackwater, although he has been fitting her out so long. The parenthesis may close only to find him on shore, eating his heart out for so much as a rowing-boat that flies the King’s flag.’

      ‘I suppose it is his shocking old father,’ said Diana.

      General Aubrey was an opposition member of Parliament, a vehement enthusiastic loquacious Radical, a sad handicap to any son serving the Crown, whose ministers controlled appointment and promotion.

      ‘Sure, that has something to do with the matter,’ said Stephen. ‘But there is more to it than that, I believe. Do you know a man called Andrew Wray?’

      ‘Wray of the Treasury? Oh yes. One sees him everywhere: I was obliged to dance with him at Lucy Carrington’s ball the day you went off to your old reptiles, and he was at the Thurlows’ dinner. Listen: there is another carriage: it must be Admiral Faithorne. He is always as regular as a clock. Stephen, we are behaving abominably. We must go down. Why do you ask about that scrub Wray?’

      ‘You think him a scrub?’

      ‘Certainly I do. Too clever by half, like so many of those Treasury fellows, and an infernal blackguard as well – he treated Harriet Fanshaw so shabbily you would not believe it. A scrub for all his pretty ways, and a coxcomb: I would not touch him with a barge-pole.’

      ‘He is now acting as second secretary to the Admiralty during Sir John Barrow’s illness. But he was in the Treasury some time ago, when Jack told him he cheated at cards, told him quite openly, in his candid naval way, in Willis’s rooms.’

      ‘Good God, Stephen! You never told me. What a close old soul you are, upon my honour.’

      ‘You never asked.’

      ‘Did he call Jack out?’

      ‘He did not. I believe he is taking a safer course.’ A thundering treble knock on the front door cut off his words. ‘I will tell you later,’ he said. ‘Thank you, my dear, for my beautiful present.’

      As they went down towards the hall Diana said, ‘You know all about ships and the sea, Stephen.’ Stephen bowed: he certainly should have known a fair amount about both, having sailed with Captain Aubrey since the turn of the century, and in fact he could now almost always discriminate between larboard and starboard: he prided himself extremely on his acquaintance with fore and aft and some even more recondite nautical terms. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘What is this barge-pole they are always talking about?’

      ‘Ho, as for that, mate,’ said Stephen, ‘you must understand that a barge is the captain’s particular boat, or pinnace as we say; and the pole is a kind of unarticulated mast.’

      He opened the drawing-room door for her, disclosing not one young woman but two, alternately scorning one another and adoring Jagiello, who sat between them in his splendid Hussar’s uniform, looking amiable but absent. On seeing Stephen he sprang up, his spurs clashing, and cried, ‘Dear Doctor, how happy I am to see you,’ clasping him in both arms and smiling down on him very sweetly.

      ‘Admiral Faithorne,’ called the butler in a hieratic boom, and the clock struck the hour.

      More guests arrived, and profiting by the frequently opened door the kitchen cat glided in, low to the ground, and swarmed up Stephen’s back to his left shoulder, where it sat