‘I long to see her,’ said Sophie, with a sinking heart: she disliked most horses, except those of the very gentle kind, and she particularly disliked these running horses, even though they descended, through Old Bald Peg, from Flying Childers and the Darley Arabian himself. She disliked them for many reasons, but she was better at disguising her feelings than her husband, and with a happy, eager look he ran on unchecked, ‘She will be up some time in the forenoon: the only thing I am not quite pleased about, is the new stable floor. If only we could have had some sun, and a good brisk north-easter, it would have dried out completely … nothing so bad for a horse’s hoofs as remaining damp. How is your mama this morning?’
‘She seems quite well, I thank you, Jack: a little remaining headache, but she ate a couple of eggs and a bowl of gruel, and she will come down with the children. She is quite excited about seeing the doctors, and she has dressed earlier than usual.’
‘What can be keeping Bonden?’ said Jack, glancing at the stern regulator, his astronomical clock.
‘Perhaps he fell off again,’ said Sophie.
‘Killick was there to prop him up: no, no, ’tis ten to one they are prating about their horsemanship in the Brown Bear tap, the infernal lubbers.’ Bonden was Captain Aubrey’s coxswain, Killick his steward; and whenever it could be managed they moved with him from one command to the next: both had been bred to the sea from their earliest years – Bonden, indeed, had been born between two of the Indefatigable’s lower-deck guns – and while both were prime man-of-war’s men, neither was a great hand with a horse. Yet it was clear to all that in common decency the mail addressed to the Commanding Officer of the Sea-Fencibles had to be fetched by a mounted man; and daily the two traversed the Downs on a powerful, thickset cob, conveniently low to the ground.
A powerful, thickset woman, Mrs Williams, Captain Aubrey’s mother-in-law, walked in, followed by a nurse with the baby and a one-legged seaman shepherding the two little girls. Most of the servants in Ashgrove Cottage were sailors, partly because of the extreme difficulty of inducing maids to stay within reach of Mrs Williams’s tongue: upon seamen, however, long inured to the admonition of the bosun and his mates, its lash fell unregarded; and in any case its virulence was much diminished, since they were men, and since in fact they kept the place as trim as a royal yacht. The rigid lines of the garden and shrubbery might not be to everyone’s taste, nor the white-painted stones that bordered every path; but no housekeeper could fail to be impressed by the gleaming floors, sanded, swabbed, and flogged dry every day before sunrise, nor by the blaze of copper in the spotless kitchen, the gleaming windowpanes, the paint perpetually renewed.
‘Good morning to you ma’am,’ said Jack, rising. ‘I trust I see you well?’
‘Good morning, Commodore – that is to say Captain – you know I never complain. But I have a list here –’ waving a paper with her symptoms written upon it – ‘that will make the doctors stare. Will the hairdresser be here before them, I wonder? We are not to be talking about me, however: here is your son, Commodore, that is to say Captain. He has cut his first tooth.’ She led the nurse forward by the elbow, and Jack gazed into the little pink, jolly, surprisingly human face among all the wool. George smiled at him, chuckled, and displayed his tooth: Jack thrust his forefinger into the wrapping and said, ‘How are you coming along, eh? Prime, I dare say. Capital, ha, ha.’ The baby looked startled, even stunned – the nurse backed away – Mrs Williams said, ‘How can you call out so loud, Mr Aubrey?’ with a reproachful look, and Sophie took the child into her arms, whispering, ‘There, there, my precious lamb.’ The women gathered round young George, telling one another that babies had sensitive ears – a thunder-clap might throw them into fits – little boys far more delicate than girls.
Jack felt a momentary and quite ignoble pang of jealousy at the sight of the women – particularly Sophie – concentrating their idiot love and devotion upon the little creature, but he had barely time to be ashamed of it, he had barely time to reflect ‘I have been Queen of the May too long’, before Amos Dray, formerly bosun’s mate in HMS Surprise and, in the line of duty, the most conscientious, impartial flogger in the fleet before he lost his leg, shaded his mouth with his hand and in a deep rumble whispered, ‘Toe the line, my dears.’
The two little pudding-faced twin girls in clean pinafores stepped forward to a particular mark on the carpet, and together, piping high and shrill, they cried, ‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Good morning, Charlotte. Good morning, Fanny,’ said their father, bending down until his breeches creaked to kiss them. ‘Why, Fanny, you have a lump on your forehead.’
‘I’m not Fanny,’ said Charlotte, scowling. ‘I’m Charlotte.’
‘But you are wearing a blue pinafore,’ said Jack.
‘Because Fanny put on mine; and she fetched me a swipe with her slipper, the – swab,’ said Charlotte, with barely contained passion.
Jack cast an apprehensive look at Mrs Williams and Sophie, but they were still cooing over the baby, and almost at the same moment Bonden brought in the post. He put it down, a leather bag with Ashgrove Cottage engraved on its brass plate; and the children, their grandmother and their attendants leaving the room at this point, he begged pardon for being late: the fact of the matter was, it was market-day down there. Horses and cattle.
‘Crowded, I dare say?’
‘Uncommon, sir. But I found Mr Meiklejohn and told him you was not attending at the office till Saturday.’ Bonden hesitated: Jack gave him a questioning look, and he went on, ‘The fact of the matter is, Killick made a purchase, a legal purchase. Which he asked me to tell you first, your honour.’
‘Aye?’ said Jack, unlocking the bag. ‘A nag, I suppose: well, I wish him joy of it. He may put it in the old byre.’
‘Not exactly a nag, sir, though it was in a halter: two legs and a skirt, if I may say so. A wife, sir.’
‘What in God’s name does he want with a wife?’ cried Jack, staring.
‘Why, sir,’ said Bonden, blushing and looking quickly away from Sophie, ‘I can’t rightly say. But he bought one, legal. It seems her husband and she did not agree, so he brought her to market in a halter; and Killick, he bought her, legal – laid down the pewter in sight of one and all, and shook hands on it. There was three to choose on.’
‘But you cannot possibly sell your wife – treat women like cattle,’ cried Sophie. ‘Oh fie, Jack; it is perfectly barbarous.’
‘It does seem a little strange, but it is the custom, you know, a very old custom.’
‘Surely you will never countenance such a wicked thing, Captain Aubrey?’
‘Why, as to that, I should not like to go against custom: common law too, for all I know. Not unless there was any constraint – undue influence, as they say. Where would the Navy be without we followed our customs? Let him come in.’
‘Well, Killick,’ he said, when the pair stood before him, his steward an ugly slab-sided middle-aged man rendered more awkward than usual by his present bashfulness, the young woman a snapping black-eyed piece, a perfect sailor’s delight. ‘Well, Killick, I trust you are not rushing into matrimony without due consideration? Matrimony is a very serious thing.’
‘Oh no, sir. I considered of it: I considered of it, why, the best part of twenty minutes. There was three to choose on, and this here –’ looking fondly at his purchase – ‘was the pick of the bunch.’
‘But, Killick, now I come to think of it, you had a wife in Mahon. She washed my shirts. You must not commit bigamy you know: it is against the law. You certainly had a wife in Mahon.’
‘Which I had two, your honour, t’other in Wapping Dock; but they was more in the roving, uncertificated line, if you follow me, sir, not bought