Losing Nelson Page 25

  “It hasn’t gone anywhere, as far as I am concerned. It was never there in the first place. I’m not proud to be British any more than I would be proud to be a Hottentot. There’s such a thing as luck, I grant you that. Hottentots might have less going for them in the way of secondary education and supplementary benefits. But I honestly don’t see where the pride comes in. How can you be proud of an accident?”

  This was so wrong-headed and even perverse that for some moments I could not find the words to reply. “Where you are born is a matter of chance,” I said at last. “No-one would deny that. But from that moment onwards, you accumulate impressions, form attachments, grow familiar with certain habits of thought and speech, certain great events in the past of your people. Horatio Nelson looms large in our past—he established our supremacy at sea for a century to come, he saved us from the vile French. Imagine what would have happened if it had gone the other way at Trafalgar and that rabble had come sailing up the Thames. That is what I meant by saying he should make us proud to be British.”

  Miss Lily paused a moment, then said, “Charles, I know you would like me to admire him as much as you do, and I take that as a compliment, but I can’t. It’s no good pretending. I can see he had his good points, but I wouldn’t like my Bobby to turn out the way he did, just shaped for one purpose. There is more to life than shooting broadsides at the French, that’s all I’m saying. As I see it, they took him away at twelve and sort of processed him. That midshipman business was a way of processing people. As far as I can see, they’ve been processing him ever since. Why couldn’t they say, Well, yes, he was a great admiral and a very brave man, and yes, he was generous and warm-hearted, and he won a sweeping victory in the hour of his country’s need, but he was narrow-minded and eaten up with vanity and could never admit he was in the wrong? He was a person, in other words. But no, they had to make him into a great man.”

  “You can’t talk about him as an ordinary man. He wasn’t an ordinary man. He was a great hero. And I don’t believe he was processed, either. You are seeing things in the light of the present. As usual. You are ignoring the nature of eighteenth-century society. You talk as if he had a lot of choice. He was well connected on his mother’s side, but he couldn’t expect much help there—on land, at least. He inherited no fortune. He wasn’t bookish, he didn’t want to be a parson like his father. One step down and it would have been minor civil servant or farm bailiff.”

  “But that is the whole point. That made it easier for them.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The less choice he had, the easier they could brainwash him.”

  “Who on earth are the they you keep talking about?”

  “Them that stood to gain. Anyway, we were talking about being proud, and he really doesn’t make me proud at all. Being proud means not lowering yourself. Same thing applies to me and you and Nelson and everybody. I was left with Bobby, but I kept my head up. I’ve had to bring him up on my own, trying to make ends meet, working free-lance so I could be home when he got in from school. If he turns out well, maybe I can be proud of that. No, I’ve said it before, I can’t help it, he puts my back up—Nelson, that is. He was always so ready to get people killed. If you look at it one way, he was a sort of serial killer. I like men who are gentle and kind and try not to hurt anyone. Women too, for that matter.”

  She paused again, then said in a deeper tone, “People like you, Charles. You can put it down to the wine if you want, but there’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for a long time now. I mean, I know you are very bound up with him and it’s a good thing for a man to have a hobby, but I have to say that you are just about as different from Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson as a person could possibly be.”

  I was quite unprepared for this. She had spoken with such conviction, it was almost like a blow. My first impulse was to get up, move to where she could not see me. She was wrong, of course, I was Horatio’s other self, the shadow side, the reverse of the medal; I could not lose him without losing myself. But she was saying that she liked me, that I belonged among the people she liked. It came to me in my confusion that perhaps these contradictions were only apparent. After all, Miss Lily had nothing much in common with theatrical, beautiful, self-deluding Emma, but sometimes, in my thoughts and dreams, their bodies had blended …

  I sat there in silence, without looking at her. I wanted to say that I liked her too, liked the sort of person she was, liked her looks and the way she talked to me, even when it made me angry. But I could not frame the words.

  Into this silence came more words from her, words I hardly took in at first, in the confusion of my feelings. She had meant to tell me as soon as she arrived, but with one thing and another and me taking that funny turn … Just out of the blue, the offer had come. She would have to leave Bobby with his gran to begin with, she couldn’t take him out of school.

  On her face the look of a person in serious argument, wanting to convince. “I’m hoping they will let him come up for the holidays—it would be so good for him to get out of London for a bit.”

  I had the strange, familiar feeling of blood leaving the face. “You can’t go away. There is the book,” I said, as if it were something she had overlooked.

  “It’s only for ten weeks,” she said.

  “But you can’t.” Even to myself I sounded like a child.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. If you like, I could find someone to replace me while I am away.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want anyone else.”

  “I have to fend for myself, you know, Charles. I always have had to. I can’t afford to refuse a thing like this, the money is so good and everything found.”

  “When are you going?”

  “July the seventh, a week on Monday. It’s a residential course in business management at Matlock, in Derbyshire. I’ll be doing the secretarial work—I was recommended for it. I can come next week as usual if you like.”

  “No, you’ll have things to do, preparations to make and so on. We’d better say good-bye tonight.”

  I had spoken on impulse, but I knew it was best. I could not bear the thought of passing another week in the shadow of her leaving. Seeing her, talking to her, knowing all the time …

  “It’s not good-bye,” she said.

  “Of course I’ll pay for next week’s sessions anyway.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that.”

  “It’s only fair—I’m the one who says you shouldn’t come.”

  The week in question was the first week of July, and as I paid by the month, I had to make a cheque out. This gave me time to gather myself together. I had accepted now that she was going away; the thing was to find some sure means of bringing her back.

  “I have enjoyed it so much,” she said, “working together on the book. It is one of the most interesting jobs I have ever had. It has started me off reading about him and that whole period, I never thought I would get so interested in history, I didn’t take to it much at school. And it is entirely because you talked to me, Charles—you weren’t just the employer, you asked my opinion.”

  I couldn’t really remember asking her opinion all that often; she had never much needed to be asked. There must be some way I could make sure she would come back, something I could tempt her with. Then in a flash it came to me: Francesco Caracciolo.

  “We have to deal with Caracciolo next,” I said. “When you come back, that is. I am beginning to believe he will provide some essential clues to the problem of Horatio’s dealings with the Neapolitan Jacobins in 1799.”

  This was calculated to please her. She had always been more interested in Horatio’s doings in this murky city than in any other period of his life whatever, and had been distinctly put out when we sidestepped it.

  “I don’t think we have mentioned him yet in the book,” she said.

  “No.” In fact I had been delaying his introduction because he showed Horatio in what some—especially Badham—had thought to b
e a bad light.

  “Who was he?”

  “He was an admiral in the Neapolitan navy who went over to the Jacobin side and took part in the rebellion against King Ferdinand. They set up a republic—the Parthenopean Republic, it was called—very short-lived, it was born and died within a few months in 1799. It came into being when the king and queen fled to Sicily, and it was propped up by the French—they occupied Naples for a few weeks. When they withdrew, the republic collapsed. We haven’t dealt with this period in the book yet because I can’t quite get it straight in my head. Horatio played a very important part in negotiating the surrender of the rebels, but this Caracciolo wasn’t among them when they came out from their forts. He had gone into hiding on his uncle’s estate. He was arrested and brought in handcuffs to the Foudroyant.”

  “What had he done exactly? I’ll just wash up these few things while you’re talking. No, there’s hardly anything—you just stay where you are.”

  So I went on sitting there at the table and watched her wash up the things and talked about Francesco Caracciolo, raising my voice a little to compete with the clatter.

  “What had he done? What hadn’t he done? He had rebelled against his lawful sovereign and accepted command of a rebel fleet. He had made gunboat attacks on British and royal Neapolitan ships. He had fired on the frigate Minerva and damaged her. The Minerva had been his own flagship—he was firing on his own colours, enough in itself for a capital charge.”

  “What did they do with him?”

  She had her back to me, standing there at the sink. She reached to put the dishes in the rack overhead and I saw the arch of her back. An inch or so of shirt had escaped from the waistband of her trousers. Some strands of brown hair had worked loose from the coil at the back of her head; the light brought out glints of copper in them. She was going away. A feeling of grief rose within me, like a slow tide. I did not believe she would come back.

  “He was arrested by Ruffo’s men and handed over to Horatio, who convened a court martial that same morning. It took them two hours to bring in a death sentence, by a four-to-two majority. The verdict was reported to Horatio, and he ordered the execution to be carried out at five that afternoon. Caracciolo was hanged in full view of the fleet from the yardarm of the Minerva, which he had once commanded. He remained hanging there till sunset. Then they cut the rope and let him fall into the bay.”

  Miss Lily turned towards me. The washing-up was finished. “Who ordered that to be done?”

  “Horatio. He wasn’t present at the trial, though.”

  “He didn’t need to be, did he? Do you mean to say he had this man tried, condemned, and executed all in the course of a few hours?”

  “He was absolutely right, in my opinion. Naples was still full of unrest. He wanted to make an example.”

  “Well, he certainly did that. But what was it an example of? How to hang people in a hurry? He was supposed to believe in God, wasn’t he?”

  This was one of the fairly frequent occasions when the precise import of Miss Lily’s words was not immediately clear to me. But she seemed to need no answer to her question. Perhaps I had succeeded in interesting her in Caracciolo, I couldn’t really tell; but it was clear that she didn’t view Horatio any more favourably than before.

  It was nearly eleven by the kitchen clock. She was getting ready to go. I could think of nothing now to delay it. In silence I followed her to the study, watched her collect her bag with the computer, accompanied her to the door.

  She smiled up from the lower step as she had so often done before. “It’s been a nice evening, hasn’t it?” she said. “Don’t work too hard, and don’t worry. Take some time off in the summer, go for a trip somewhere. We’ll catch up on the book when I get back.”

  “I thought we might go to the Maritime Museum at Greenwich when you get back,” I said. “They’ve got a whole section devoted to Horatio. We could walk through the park and maybe have tea somewhere in Greenwich. Bobby could come too, if he liked the idea.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said. She sounded as if she meant it. She was going away. I sensed she was sorry for me, sorry to be leaving me alone in the house. I had a momentary, desolate sense of advantage. This would be a good time to mention the trip to Burnham Thorpe, Horatio’s birthplace, a weekend together and Bobby left at home. But before I could speak, while I was still gathering my nerve, Miss Lily did something she had never done before: she came back up the steps and kissed me on the cheek, the right cheek. I felt the brief warmth of her lips and the warmth of her face against mine.

  22

  I tried for a while to go on with the book, but I added nothing of significance after she had gone. I had come to depend on these dictating sessions more than I realized, and not only for the material help: I had come to take her interest, though generally expressed in interruptions, as a gauge of the interest of the book, a sort of guarantee. Without her, almost at once, I began to falter, lose confidence. Insensibly, without my being aware of it, Miss Lily had insinuated herself into the very grain and texture of the work; her presence, her voice, were everywhere in it, winding and coiling through. I knew by the middle of July that I would not be able to continue until she came back. I still hoped she would come back.

  I spent my days reading and rereading the conflicting versions of Horatio’s conduct in Naples in 1799. As I had remarked to Miss Lily, the more closely argued of these dated from late Victorian times, concern for his honour having declined more or less to zero level in this cynical age of ours. On the defending side there was a phalanx of robust, deep-voiced males: A. T. Mahan, naval historian, forty years’ service in the American navy, his staunch supporters Professor J. K. Laughton of London University and H. C. Gutteridge, late scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, a more Jesuitical type. The other side was more feline in character: F. P. Badham, about whom I knew only that he addressed his prefaces from the Reform Club in Pall Mall; Constance Giglioli, née Stocker, who was married to an Italian botanist and lived many years in Italy; and various Italian sources, not translated and therefore out of my reach—out of the reach too, as it appeared, of Mahan, Laughton, and Gutteridge.

  This controversy, at once passionate and remote, was a maze that I entered and wandered about in every day after the ritual making of the tea. I would pour out the tea in the kitchen into my mono-grammed mug and carry it through on the black-and-red japanned tray I always used, together with six biscuits, always six. I had taken to buying the sort of biscuit called wholemeal digestive, as being a convenient form of food and also pleasant to dip into the tea.

  I could feel myself getting slower and slower. Everything took longer. I often felt impelled to stop what I was reading and start again from the top of the page or the beginning of the chapter. Somewhere, embedded in the texts I was reading, lay the glinting nugget that would clear his name, set him beyond the snipings of malice forever. I was dogged by the appalling fear that I would miss it, somehow skim over it. Hours went by in the contemplation of a paragraph, sometimes only a sentence. This one of Gutteridge’s, from the introduction to his Nelson and the Neapolitan Jacobins, occupied a whole morning: The chief object of the present volume is not to continue the controversy, but rather to bring together the mass of evidence which deals with the point, and to reduce it to a form in which it will be accessible to the English reader, who may therein find the refutation of these charges.

  I sought refutation too, but this sentence, from whatever direction I approached it, had a strange opacity about it, almost mystical in nature. The original pile, the mass of evidence, could obviously not be assembled within the covers of a single book; there was simply too much of it. So the reduction had been carried out beforehand. How could I know by what means it had been done? Abridgement, summary, excision, exclusion? And what particular attributes could a form have, by whatever means reduced, that would make it accessible to an English reader rather than a Chinaman, say? He was writing in English, of course, but he surely couldn’t
mean that. Was he implying that the English have some faculty of understanding denied to others? Or was he implying the opposite, that the English are so dense that only simplified forms can be accessible to them? Was it simply an appeal to shared prejudice? Could he really hope to put an end to controversy in such a way? What, in short, did H. C. Gutteridge mean?

  He gave me headaches, but he was merely a satellite. It was the two protagonists, Mahan and Badham, that stalked through my days and nights. By now they had acquired definite physical characteristics. Touch by touch, detail by detail, these two long-dead Nelson scholars, so opposed in their views and the tone of their discourse, had assumed form and shape in my mind. Mahan was bluff and hearty, large of frame, with blue eyes; he had sandy-coloured hair, rather bushy at the temples, and those wrinkles around the eyes that come from scanning far horizons. He had a slightly shambling, careless gait and a sprawling fashion with his legs when he sat down; he was expansive and open-handed, always the first to pay for the round. Badham was thin and sparse and yellowish and he wore rimless glasses that reflected the light; his mouth was like a cut in a lemon and he had a prominent Adam’s apple; he was neat and precise in all his movements and very quick-stepping, and he spoke Italian and wore thin black leather gloves. Their voices too were quite different. Mahan’s was manly and energetic, interspersed with easy laughter; Badham’s was metallic, slightly nasal, and though he sometimes showed a malignant glee, he never laughed.

  Mahan’s view of the Naples episode accorded fully with his generous nature. Basically, he took Horatio’s word for it. Incapable himself of treachery and falsehood, he could not believe it of a man he admired so much, any more than I could. He accepted Horatio’s declaration that the rebels came out in the full knowledge that the treaty was annulled. Badham, on the other hand, subjected to close analysis—he was generally a disagreeably analytical character—Horatio’s assurance that he would not oppose the embarkation of the rebels, maintaining that the distinction between embarking and sailing was never made clear to them and that this was a deliberate fraud on Horatio’s part, designed to winkle them out.