“Oh no.”
“I must say, I would not be anywhere else for a thousand pounds!”
“Will you not call me Dicky, Mr Talbot? I know I have not, what you said the Romans would think of Mr Bowles—”
“‘Gravitas’. You should not worry, sir, some people have it, others not and are none the worse for the lack. I have been thought to exhibit a measure of the quality myself but it is nature, not nurture. Well, Mr Pike, I will call you Richard if it will make you happier.”
“Thank you, Mr Talbot. Do you prefer Ed or Eddy?”
“Mr Pike, you may address me as ‘Edmund’ in this emerg—in the situation which we find ourselves in. So cheer up, man!”
“I will try, Edmund. But the children do not seem to get any better for all we can do.”
“Now there I can give you comfort. Good God, sir, my young brothers are for ever breaking their knees or elbows or both—all four I should say! They get colics, rashes, colds like puppies. It is growing up, Mr Pike, Richard, I should say, and a damned lengthy and painful business if you ask me!”
“They say the wind is not blowing from where it ought to be. The movement of the ship—”
“The wind may change, man! Before we know where we are we may find ourselves riding along as easy as in a postchaise! Come, you know that Britannia rules the waves! I would not be anywhere else for—”
“I am afraid, that is the truth of it.”
“—a thousand pounds.”
“It is this sinking—”
“Now come! The officers assured me—”
“They do really seem to be sinking, a little weaker today, then again tomorrow. Oh, Edmund, is there nothing to be done? I begged the surgeon to get us transferred to the other ship, though what we should do in India I do not know—but he would not. And that was when the weather was fine.”
“A foul wind cannot last forever. When we get into the Southern Ocean—”
“But the ship is not getting along, is it?”
“She will get there little by little. The seamen will operate the dragrope and take off our weed and increase our speed. Oh—I should not have said—You see? We have nothing to worry about, sir, nothing at all.”
“And another thing. Edmund, I cannot help feeling that the ship is lower in the water. I do not mention my suspicions to Mrs Pike but only this morning I caught her eye—and I knew, Edmund! She was thinking the same thing!”
I laughed aloud, not a little relieved at finding there was some positive comfort I could give the poor, irritating fellow.
“What a man you are, Pike! I confess that when I was feeling sick and particularly low I imagined the ship was too! But today the sailors have pumped no more than they did when she was anchored at Spithead!”
“I do know that, Edmund, and everything you say is true. But Bates says she has more water in her.”
“Would it interest you to know that the first lieutenant told me himself that they pump no more than they did? She has more water in her because of the rain and spray. It lies about where the pumps cannot get at it—annoying but not in any way dangerous! Be warned—it sounds worse than it is because of our movement. Down below if you are not experienced you would mistake the sound of rainwater washing about for a positive wave rolling from one end of the ship to the other!”
“The first lieutenant would tell you that, wouldn’t he? I mean he would wish to keep everyone calm so as to avoid trouble. But it is good of you to talk so to me, Edmund, and I believe you partly and I will tell Mrs Pike, making as much of it as I can.”
“I think before you return to your hutch—cabin, I mean, good God, man, you’re not a rabbit, are you? Well—I had better give you a good stiff drink.”
“Oh no, Edmund. Like I told you it burns my throat and makes me go silly. Edmund, I have even prayed but nothing happened. I keep thinking about ‘Suffer little children’. It doesn’t do them any good being young and small, does it? I mean they are the less able to defend themselves. Like you said the other day when we thought the other ship might be French, they are too young for the French. But I can’t keep out of my head that they aren’t too young for Our Lord, Edmund, and if they slip through our hands in this devilish place, this desert, I couldn’t leave them to sink, not here; I should jump in after them—”
“Pike! Pull yourself together! Richard! I said Richard! Stop blubbering, man! Anyone would think you was a girl, curse it!”
“Administering comfort, Mr Talbot?”
I got clumsily to my feet. It was Miss Granham. She had one hand out before her and the other holding her skirts up away from the streaming floor. I stumbled round the table but she got to the one nearest the door and sank on to the bench. A shift of the vessel fairly tossed me towards the other side and I sat opposite her.
“Miss Granham, you really should not! A lady—where is Mr Prettiman? He should—”
Miss Granham spoke in a weary voice.
“He is sick and I am sick. But he has had a fall. A severe one.”
“What can I do? Shall I visit him?”
Mr Pike sniggered through his tears.
“Edmund visiting the sick!”
“It is comic, I admit, sir. But then anything comic in our situation is a gain.”
The man came round the end of the aftermost table and huddled himself on my bench. As if she was as irritated with him as I was, the ship shrugged, the sawtoothed horizon took up a crazy angle in the stern window and little Pike shot along the bench and collided with me. He muttered an apology and backed off. Miss Granham looked at him compassionately.
“Do they improve, Mr Pike?”
“They are no better. Will you go to them?”
“Later, Mr Pike. I believe you should ask Mrs Pike to invite me. I make every allowance for her natural distress—but really!”
“She is very sorry indeed, Miss Granham, and so much regrets her unfortunate outburst. She said so. I beg you!”
Miss Granham sighed.
“I will do what I can but later. Now Mr Prettiman is injured—”
“I will tell her so. And what you said, Edmund.”
Pike got more or less to his feet. He was like a man balancing on the slope of a roof and he waited till the roof changed its infernal mind and sloped the other way. He went reeling through the door and contrived to get it shut behind him. Miss Granham was leaning back. Both hands grasped the edge of the table. Her eyes were shut and either tears or perspiration ran in drops down her cheeks.
“I had hoped to ask for a little warm water but the truth is my voice is so weak—”
“That is readily remedied, ma’am, for you may borrow mine. Bates! Bates! Where are you, man? Come out of that damned cuddy—I beg your pardon, not you, Bates, you, ma’am—we want hot water and at once.”
“There isn’t any.”
“Say ‘sir’ when you speak to me!”
“Like Wheeler told you, sir, there isn’t any.”
“We’ll see about that! Wheeler! Wheeler! Wheeler, I said! Oh, there you are. What do you mean by it, giving a gentleman hot water without telling him that the ladies were in need of it?”
“Miss Granham is not on my side of the lobby, sir.”
“Well neither am I now I’ve changed over!”
“Yes, sir, but, sir—”
“Hot water, Wheeler, and quick about it! If necessary, light the damned fire again and tell whomsoever should be told it was at my, my—”
“You are more than kind, Mr Talbot, but please!”
“Be easy, ma’am. Bring it to Miss Granham’s cabin, Wheeler.”
“Even hot water, the touch of it in one’s mouth, the warming suffusion. I never thought in the days when I was so particular over the making of a pot of tea that I should come to value hot water without it!”
“No tea—good God, ma’am, I am the veriest, the most absolute the outside edge of enough, the most thoughtless—”
The deck was momentarily level. I leapt to my feet, ran thr
ough the lobby to my hutch, fell on my knees and scrabbled at my bottom drawer, fished out the packet and ran back to Miss Granham before the deck had a chance to change its mind. It was, if not an elegant, at least a very nimble feat and I was pleased to have outwitted our soaked old wooden box for once and avoided doing myself a mischief.
“Here, ma’am, with my apologies.”
“Tea!”
“I had it stowed away the first day we came aboard and to tell you the truth have not had much cause to remember it since then. I only hope the air of this savage ocean may not have ruined it entirely. I have seen you ladies in calmer weather clustered round the teapot and the, what is it, ‘the cup that cheers but not inebriates—’”
“I cannot take it.”
“Miss Granham, for heaven’s sake!”
Miss Granham’s head was turned away. She held out the scrap of paper she had removed from beneath the string. I recognized the familiar writing. “For ‘The Little Duke’ from ‘old Dobbie’ with love, in the hope he will drink nothing stronger.”
“Oh, Lord, ma’am, good God. I mean—believe me—what a fool! She might at least have folded the paper, curse it—and here am I swearing like a trooper. I beg your pardon, really, ma’am, I do not care for tea and only drink it out of politeness. Why, Miss Dobson would be most angry if she thought—a disciplinarian I can tell you! She would stand me in the corner for an hour by the clock if she thought that—I suppose here I should find myself mastheaded by her if we have a masthead which in fact I suppose we do since young Willis spends so much time up there. She is a dear friend as you can imagine but perhaps too much addicted to the sentimental school—”
“Mr Talbot.”
“—only a fanatic would have a small boy taught to read out of Sir Charles Grandison! She thought, I suppose, that such a perfect exemplar of Christian behaviour would do me good but I assure you, ma’am, that tale, if tale it be in all those volumes, has marked me for life!”
I thought for a moment that Miss Granham was trying to stop herself from laughing. But it was worse than that. Her face was contorted with effort, yet despite that the tears fairly burst from her eyes. They were of the “boo-hoo” variety. It is the first and possibly last time I have seen a lady grit her teeth! But still the tears flowed. I do not know how to convey my astonishment not to say my embarrassment. She began to beat on the table with her fist.
“I will not! I will not allow myself—”
Her bonnet, her very shoulders shook. Never have I seen such an evident conflict in a lady!
“Oh, God! Oh, I say, ma’am! You really must not—I did not mean that I was forced to read the whole of Sir Charles Grandison! Then you might well pity me! I doubt the great Panjandrum himself read it all! Did he not say that he had never read a book to the end? I will lay my horse to a shilling that he was thinking of Richardson—”
Miss Granham began to laugh. It was hysteria, I suppose, for which of course the accepted remedy is a smartly smacked face. But the truth is I did not dare.
“I believe, ma’am, you should allow me to escort you to your hutch—cabin, I would say—”
“What a fool!”
“Not really—but she hoped to bring me along in the style of Sir Charles but failed as you see. Wheeler will bring you the water. Allow me. A lady is naturally less able to counteract the movement of a vessel and even her garments must render the attempt additionally difficult, not to say dangerous. Permit me, ma’am.”
She was docile. I gave her my arm but that was clearly not enough. I took her hand therefore; but before we had got fairly into the lobby the frantic movement of the vessel forced me to put my right arm round her narrow waist and I was holding her up.
An unexpected fact became apparent with stunning force. Between thirty and forty years she might carry in her reticule but she was a woman! More than that and not to put too fine a point on it, Miss Granham was not wearing stays! There was no doubt about it. Good God, her waist, her bosom was that of a young woman! It put the final touch to my embarrassment and I was most anxious to have done with her as soon as possible. But it was not to be. That other female, jealous, I suppose a poet would say, of this newly revealed femininity, suddenly savaged us as a hound will savage a fox. The first movement sent me spinning across the lobby so that I was forced to use all my strength and an agility I did not know I possessed in keeping my—I should say “our”—feet. The next movement set us instantly on the slope of a mountain and in a mountain stream at that. I grabbed at one of the handrails to prevent us from falling towards what was at least temporarily down. We swung out. We fell, because the handrail came with us and, awful to relate, the whole bulkhead, or wall, in this instant of thin ply, came with us too. As we approached the wooden drum of the mizzen I contrived to turn so that my shoulder struck it and Miss Granham did not. The whole of the buff-coloured sheet—the plywood—now impeded us. Forced to let go of the handrail and forced by the countermotion to dance like a clown carrying a puppet I sped towards the open, the violated cabin. We were in it just long enough to see that an old lady lay there, her grey hair matted with sweat, her mouth open, her eyes in their sunken discoloured sockets staring at us with terror! I cannot think how I contrived to bow and mutter an apology before the ship swept us away. I got a handhold on the rails at the opposite side of the lobby without knowing what process had taken us there and worked along it until I could deliver Miss Granham safely to her door.
“Allow me, ma’am. It was a seventh wave I believe. I must apologize for—you are quite safe now. Allow me, ma’am.”
I managed to usher her into her cabin and shut the door with great thankfulness. I made my way to my own hutch, keeping my eyes averted from the violated cabin which, I now realized with almost as much terror as she, contained none other than my onetime inamorata, Zenobia Brocklebank!
I pass over the grumbling from the sailors when they were ordered to mend the bulkhead at once, the shrieks from Zenobia until she was hidden again, the soul-destroying hammering which was necessary before the business was done. I got myself back to the saloon in a rage and a determination not to be defeated by the ship and the weather. I yelled for the servant and ordered food and drink. It came and proved to be salt beef but pickles to go with it and ale to wash it down. Never believe the complaints of seamen about their food! To a man with all his teeth in his head this proved to be a feast for a king, however much I had to wrestle with it! Admittedly, once the plate got away from me and I saved the beef, to say nothing of a mess of pickles with my right hand! What is more, I licked that hand clean with positive gusto. I cannot tell how it came about but the absurd passage with Miss Granham restored me to a state of cheerfulness which I believe is natural to me and which mal de mer had temporarily defeated! When I thought of Miss Chumley with a throb of longing, even that transformed itself into a determination to conquer all! This was more than recovery. It was enhancement! Once back into my hutch, I dared adventures of balance to get into a nightshirt and nightcap, got into my bunk and determined to have a good night! Astonishingly enough, with no qualms to interrupt it, I sank almost at once into a deep sleep that neither of the aches of my body—one shoulder confoundedly tender from that damned mizzenmast—could hinder.
(14)
I woke with the faintest trace of light through my louvre and lay for a while in a state of surprise at my restoration. I supposed that I had, as they say of sickness, “turned the corner”, and that my concussion had run its course. I felt full of energy and determination. I even sat, half-dressed, at this flap and wrote a whole candle’s worth of record—of Mr Askew, Mr Benét, Charles, Miss Granham and Mr Gibbs! By that time there was as much daylight about as ever did reach our sordid quarters and I put out the guttering candle. The effect of my restoration was still with me; but I cannot say that when I got myself dressed and oilskinned and went cautiously out for a breath of the open that there was much in sight to please a man now heartily tired of salt water! Too much of it flew
everywhere. I looked up to discover if Captain Anderson was stumping up and down the weather-side of the quarterdeck but he was not to be seen. Instead of that, an oil-clad figure waved to me from the forrard rail of it. A faint voice came through the wind.
“Hullo there!”
It was Lieutenant Benét.
“Why hullo! A nasty morning!”
“I will be with you directly.”
Cumbershum emerged from the bowels of the ship. He grunted at me and I grunted back. It is all that is necessary with the man. He ascended to the quarterdeck and the ship’s bell struck eight times. The ceremony was brief. The gentlemen made to raise their hats but wore sou’westers secured by what they call, of course, “chin stays”. Their action was therefore purely symbolic, a raising of the right hand to the level of the eyebrow. The men at the wheel presented the course to the new quartermasters. Benét came down the ladder. He held the forrard rail with both hands and leaned over.
“Come up, sir.”
“You are cheerful this morning, Mr Benét.”
“It is an appearance perhaps.”
“Separation as I am beginning to find out—”
“I understand you. Wilson! Keep your eye on the bloody luff! Well, Mr Talbot, I spent the whole watch occupied with the two lines I quoted to you and have improved them materially. ‘Essential Beauty lovelier than a woman, too fair of form and feature to be human—’ Is that not a gain?”
“I am no poet.”
“How do you know, sir? I am told you wept when Mrs East sang—”
“Good God! They were tears, idle tears and where in heaven or hell they came from—or what—besides, I had been cracked over the head!”
“My dear Mr Talbot. Once faced with the necessity of communicating with the most sensitive, most delicate of creatures—only poetry will make that connection. It is their language, sir. Theirs is the language of the future. Women have dawned. Once they have understood what syllables, rather than prose, should fall from those lips, women will rise in splendour like the sun!”