The Reverse of the Medal (4 page)

'Bless them' cried Jack, sitting down beside her; and they engaged in a close conversation on the subject of chickenpox, its harmless and even beneficent nature, the necessity for passing through such things at an early age, together with considerations on the croup, measles, thrush, and redgum, until the flagship's bell reminded him that he must return to the Surprise for his fiddle.

The diseases that Dr Maturin and Mr Waters discussed were of quite a different order of gravity, but at last Stephen stood up, turned down the cuffs of his coat, and said, 'I believe I may venture to assert, though with all the inevitable reserves, of course, that it is not malignant, and that we are in the presence not of the tumour you mentioned, still less of a metastasis - God between us and evil - but of a splanchnic teratoma. It is awkwardly situated however and must be removed at once.'

'Certainly, dear colleague,' said Waters, fairly glowing with relief. 'At once. How grateful I am for your opinion!'

'I never much care for opening a belly,' observed Stephen, looking at the belly in question with an objective, considering eye, rather like a butcher deciding upon his cut. 'And of course in such a position I should require intelligent assistance. Are your mates competent?'

'They are reckless drunken empirical sots, the pair of them, the merest illiterate sawbones. I should be most reluctant to have either of them lay a hand on me.'

Stephen considered for a while: it was difficult enough in all conscience to love one's fellow men by land, let alone cooped up in the same ship with no possibility of escape from daily contact, or even to remain on civil terms; and clearly Waters had not accomplished this necessary naval feat. He said, 'I have no mate myself. The gunner, running mad, murdered him off the coast of Chile. But our chaplain, Mr Martin, has a considerable knowledge of physic and surgery; he is an eminent naturalist and we have dissected a great many bodies together, both warm-blooded and cold; but as far as I can recall he has not seen the opening of a living human abdomen and I am sure it would give him pleasure. If you wish, I will ask him to attend. In any case I must return to the ship for my violoncello.'

Stephen mounted the Irresistible's various ladders, losing his way once or twice but emerging at last into the brilliant light of the quarterdeck. He stood blinking for a while, and then, putting on his blue spectacles, he saw that the larboard side of the ship was crowded with bumboats and returning liberty-men. The flag-lieutenant was leaning over the rail, chewing a piece of sugar-cane and bargaining for a basket of limes, a basket of guavas, an enormous pine-apple; when these had been hoisted aboard Stephen said to him, 'William Richardson, joy, will you tell me where the Captain is, now?'

'Why, Doctor, be went back to the ship just after five bells.'

'Five bells,' repeated Stephen. 'Sure, he said something about five bells. I shall be reproved for unpunctuality again. Oh, oh. What shall I do?'

'Do not let it prey on your mind, sir,' said Richardson.

'I will pull you over in the jolly-boat; it is no great way, and I should like to see some of my old shipmates again. Captain Pullings told me that Mowett was your premier now. Lord! Only think of old Mowett as a first lieutenant! But, sir, you are not the only one to be asking after Captain Aubrey There is a person just come aboard again on the same errand - there he is,' he added, nodding along the larboard gangway to where a tall young black man stood among a group of hands.

Stephen recognized them all as men he had sailed with in former commissions, most of them Irish, all of them Catholics, and he observed that they were looking at him with curiously amused expressions while at the same time they gently, respectfully urged the tall young black man to go aft; and before Stephen had time to call out a greeting - before he could decide between 'Ho, shipfellows' and 'Avast, messmates' - the young man began walking towards the quarterdeck. He was dressed in a plain snuff-coloured suit of clothes, heavy square-toed shoes and a broad-brimmed hat; he had something of the air of a Quaker or a seminarist, but of an uncommonly powerful, athletic seminarist, like those from the western parts of Ireland who might be seen walking about the streets of Salamanca; and it was in the very tones of an Irish seminarist that he now addressed Stephen, taking off his hat as he did so. 'Dr Maturin, sir, I believe?'

'The same, sir,' said Stephen, returning his salute. 'The same, at your service.' He spoke a little at random, for the bare-headed young man standing there in the full sun before him was the spit, the counterpart, the image of Jack Aubrey with some twenty years and several stone taken off, done in shining ebony. It made no odds that the young man's hair was a tight cap of black curls rather than Jack's long yellow locks, nor that his nose had no Roman bridge; his whole essence, his person, his carriage was the same, and even the particular tilt of his head as he flow leant towards Stephen with a modest, deferential look. 'Pray sir, let us put on our hats, for all love, against the power of the sun,' said Stephen. 'I understand you have business with Captain Aubrey?'

'I have, sir, and they are after telling me you would know might I see him at all. I hear no boats arc allowed by his ship, but it is the way I have a letter for him from Mrs Aubrey.'

'Is that right?' said Stephen. 'Then come with me till I bring you where he is. Mr Richardson, you will not object to another passenger? We might take turns with plying the oars, the weight being greater.'

The pull across was comparatively silent: Richardson was busy with his sculls; the black man had the gift, so rare in the young, of being quiet without awkwardness; and Stephen was much taken up with this transposition of his most intimate friend; however, he did say 'I trust, sir, that you left Mrs Aubrey quite well?'

'As well, sir, as ever her friends could desire,' said the young man, with that sudden flashing smile possible only to those with brilliant white teeth and a jet-black face.

'I wish you may be right, my young friend,' said Stephen inwardly. He knew Sophie very well; he loved her very dearly; but he knew that she was quick and perceptive and somewhat more subject to jealousy and its attendant miseries than was quite consistent with happiness. And without being a prude she was also perfectly virtuous, naturally virtuous, without the least self-constraint.

The young man was not unexpected in the Surprise; the rumour of his presence had spread to every member of the ship's company except her Captain and he came aboard into an atmosphere of kindly, decently-veiled but intense curiosity.

'Will you wait here now while I see is the Captain at leisure?' said Stephen. 'Mr Rowan will no doubt show you the various ropes for a moment.'

'Jack,' he said, walking into the cabin. 'Listen, now. I have strange news: there was a fine truthful young black man aboard the Admiral inquiring for you, told me he had a message from Sophie, so I have brought him along.'

'From Sophie?' cried Jack.

Stephen nodded and said in a low voice. 'Brother, forgive me, but you may be surprised by the messenger. Do not be disconcerted. Will I bring him in?'

'Oh yes, of course.'

Good afternoon to you, sir,' said the young man in a deep, somewhat tremulous voice as he held out a letter. 'When I was in England Mrs Aubrey desired me to give you this, or to leave it in good hands were I gone before your ship came by.'

'I am very much obliged to you indeed, sir,' said Jack, shaking him warmly by the hand. 'Pray sit down. Killick, Killick there. Rouse out a bottle of madeira and the Sunday cake. I am truly sorry not to be able to entertain you better, sir - I am engaged to the Admiral this evening -but perhaps you could dine with me tomorrow?'

Killick had of course been listening behind the door and he was prepared for this: he and his black mate Tom Burgess came in at once, making a reasonably courtly train, as like a land-going butler and footman as they could manage; but Tom's desire to get a really good view of the visitor, who sat facing away from him, was so violent that they fell foul of one another just as the wine was pouring. When the 'God-damned lubbers' had withdrawn, crestfallen, and they were alone again Jack looked keenly at the young man's face - it was strangely familiar: surely he must have seen him before. 'Forgive me,' he said, breaking the seal, 'I will just glance into this to see whether there is anything urgent.' There was not. This was the third copy a letter sent to the ports where the Surprise might touch on her homeward voyage it spoke of the progress of Jack s plantations, the slow indeterminate stagnation of the legal proceedings, and the chickenpox, then at it's height, and at the bottom of the page a hurried postscript said that Sophie would entrust this to Mr Illegible, who was bound for the West Indies and who had been so kind as to call on her.

He looked up, and again this uneasy sense of familiarity struck him; but he said, 'It was exceedingly kind of you to bring me this letter. I hope you left everyone at Ashgrove Cottage quite well?'

'Mrs Aubrey told me the children were taken with the chickenpox, and she was concerned for them, sure; but a gentleman that was sitting by whose name I did not catch said there was no danger at all, at all.'

'I do not believe my wife quite caught your name either, sir,' said Jack. 'At all events I cannot make out what she writes.'

'My name is Panda, sir, Samuel Panda, and my mother was Sally Mputa. Since I was going to England with the Fathers she desired me to give you these,' - holding out a package - 'and that is how I came to go to Ashgrove Cottage, hoping to find you there.'

'God's my life,' said Jack, and after a moment he slowly began to open the package. It contained a sperm-whale's tooth upon which he had laboriously engraved HMS Resolution under close-reefed topsails when he was a very young man, younger even than the tall youth facing him; it also contained a small bundle of feathers and elephant's hair bound together with a strip of leopard's skin.

'That is a charm to keep you from drowning,' observed Samuel Panda.

'Flow kind,' said Jack automatically. They looked at one another with a naked searching, eager on the one side, astonished on the other. There were few mirrors hanging in Jack's part of the ship - only a little shaving-glass in his sleeping-cabin - but the extraordinarily elaborate and ingenious piece of furniture that Stephen's wife Diana had given him and that was chiefly used as a music-stand had a large one inside the lid. Jack opened it and they stood there side by side, each comparing, each silently, intently, looking for himself in the other.

'I am astonished,' said Jack at last. 'I had no idea, no idea in the world...' He sat down again. 'I hope your mother is well?'

'Very well indeed, sir, I thank you. She prepares African medicines in the hospital at Lourenco Marques, which some patients prefer.'

Neither spoke until Jack said 'God's my life' again, turning the whale tooth in his hand. Few things at sea could amaze him and he had suffered some shrewd blows without discomposure, but now his youth coming so vividly to life took him wholly aback.

'Will I tell you how I come to be here, sir?' asked the young man out of the silence, in his deep, gentle voice.

'Do, by all means. Yes, pray do,' said Jack.

'We removed to Lourenco Marques about the time I was born - my mother came from Nwandwe, no great way off - and there it was that the Fathers took me in when I was a little small boy, and very sickly, it appears. My mother was married to an ancient Zulu witch-doctor at the time - a heathen, of course - so they brought me up and educated me.'

'Bless them,' said Jack. 'But is not Lourenco Marques on Delagoa Bay - is it not Portuguese?'

'It is Portuguese, sir, but Irish entirely. That is to say, the Mission came from the County Roscommon itself; and it was Father Power and Father Birmingham took me to England with them, where I hoped I should find you, and so on to the Indies.'

'Well, Sam,' said Jack, 'You are very welcome, I am sure. And now you have found me, what can I do for you? Had it been earlier, as I could have wished, it would have been easier; but as I said, I had not the least notion... it is too late for the Navy, of course, and in any event... yet stay, have you ever thought of being a captain's clerk? It can lead to a purser's berth, and the life itself is very agreeable; I have known many a captain's clerk take charge of a boat in a cutting-out expedition.

He spoke at some length, and with considerable warmth, of the pleasures of a life at sea; but after a while he thought he detected a look of affectionate amusement in Sam's eye, a discreet and perfectly respectful look, but enough to cut off his flow.

'You are very kind, sir,' said Sam, 'and truly benevolent; but I am not come to ask for anything at all, apart from your good word and the blessing.'

'Of course that you have - bless you, Sam - but I should like something more substantial, to help you to live. Yet perhaps I mistake - perhaps you have a capital place, perhaps these gentlemen employ you?'

'They do not, sir. Sure, I attend them, in duty bound too, particularly Father Power and he lame of a foot; but it is the Mission sustains me.'

'Sam, do not tell me you are a Papist,' cried Jack.

'I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,' said Sam, smiling, 'but a Papist I am, and so much so that I hope in time to be a priest if ever I can have a dispensation. At present I am only in minor orders.'

'Well,' said Jack, recollecting himself, 'one of my best friends is a Catholic. Dr Maturin - you met him.'

'The learned man of the world he is, I am sure,' said Sam, with a bow.

'But tell me, Sam,' said Jack, 'what are you doing at present? What are your plans?'

'Why, sir, as soon as the ship comes, the Fathers sail for the Mission's house in the Brazils. They take me with them, although I am not ordained, because I speak the Portuguese and because I am black; it is thought I will be more acceptable to the Negro slaves.'

'I am sure you will,' said Jack. 'That is... I am sure I shall be able to say that one of my best friends is not only Catholic but black into the bargain - why, Stephen, what's amiss?'