Losing Nelson Page 26

  The whole moral world was here, in these two pure, irreducible representatives of the polarity that haunts our lives. Every day that July, in the silence of my study, good and evil did battle. Good was steadier, less coherent; evil more flickering, more lucid. I thought at the time they were contending for Horatio …

  They disagreed about Caracciolo also—natural enough, they disagreed about everything. In Mahan’s view, he was a traitor to his king under circumstances of particular flagrancy and richly deserved his fate. Badham, seconded by Constance Giglioli, pointed to the unseemly haste of the proceedings and to irregularities in the trial, the fact that no witnesses were called for the defence. An absurd objection, stout Laughton says; what need witnesses when his guilt was so patently clear?

  I had not told Miss Lily about the grisly aftermath of Caracciolo’s hanging, whether to spare her or myself I didn’t know. Since the age of fourteen or so I had been troubled by the horror of it. At sunset the rope was cut and his body was allowed to fall into the bay. Two days later King Ferdinand returned to Naples, but the city was still in turmoil, so he took up his quarters on Horatio’s flagship and amused himself by shooting seagulls. Early one morning a fisherman reported that Prince Caracciolo had risen from the sea and was coming home to Naples. The king went up on deck, scanned the horizon with his telescope. Midshipman Parsons, standing nearby, saw him turn white and drop the telescope and heard him utter an exclamation of horror. Looking in the same direction, Parsons saw the corpse of Caracciolo standing upright, half out of the water. His face was turned towards them, swollen and discoloured, the eyes started from their sockets by strangulation. He was bobbing up and down on the current and seemed to be heading for the shore. One among the retinue of priests on board, quicker-witted than his fellows, said that Admiral Caracciolo knew he had offended the king and could not rest. This helped Ferdinand to rally from his fear, and after a while he began to joke about it and say that the corpse had come to beg his forgiveness.

  Whether the staring, bobbing, hideously bloated corpse stayed long in the king’s mind or Horatio’s, no-one can say. It had certainly stayed in mine over the years, pegged there by a single astounding fact: the admiral had risen and floated with a weight of 250 pounds attached to him. There was no doubt of this. A boat was sent to tow the corpse ashore, where it found a shallow grave in the sand. The boat brought back the shots that had been tied to him, and Captain Hardy weighed them. The ropes by which they had been fastened still had scraps of the admiral’s skin on them …

  Perhaps I was more than usually prone at this time to dwell on such thoughts. July is the month of maimings and disfigurements and outrages to the body. It was on July 12, 1794, when Horatio was thirty-five, that he suffered the wound to his eye. On land, not at sea. Seven o’clock in the morning. I always made sure I was up and about well before this on the twelfth, so I could give him his due of silent remembrance before I started with the tea.

  I sat at my desk and made the shape of the island with my left hand—it helped me to concentrate. Corsica is shaped like a pointing hand; I had first seen this on my school atlas. The index finger is the peninsula of Cape Corsica, and it points northwards. At the base of this pointing finger, on opposite sides of the knuckle, are Bastia to the east and St. Florent to the west, twelve miles apart. And thirty miles away, roughly corresponding to the knuckle of the little finger, lies Calvi. Blockaded by the British and harassed by the Corsicans on land, the French occupying troops had retreated to these three strongholds.

  A combined sea-and-land attack was decided on. Having lost Toulon, we needed an alternative base, and Corsica answered the purpose. Bastia had a good harbour, and it was well placed for attacks on French shipping and for the defence of Italy. However, St. Florent had to be taken first. One night in February, lying off Bastia, you saw the mountains behind the town lit up with a red glow, and you knew then that St. Florent had been taken and the ships in the harbour set ablaze. You had both your eyes still when you saw these fires of victory …

  As always, you were eager to attack. You were set on taking Bastia by storm. But General Dundas, commander of the land forces, would not give you troops. Visionary and rash, he called the enterprise. Once again prudence and daring were confronted. So you landed with 250 of your faithful crew from the Agamemnon and hoisted twenty-four-pound cannon to the rocky ridges above the citadel, dragging them from rock to rock with the ship’s tackle, a labour of enormous, almost superhuman difficulty. The men would not have toiled so for anyone but you.

  We did this together, Miss Lily and I—it is all in the book. While still making the shape of the island with my hand, I remembered her voice, her face. I had expected her to be impressed by the devotion of these men. It was a labour of loyalty and even love, hauling up the heavy guns by means of great straps fastened to the rocks. But she didn’t see it. She didn’t see the point of it. What did they get out of it? she said. Except for ruptures. The comradeship, the pride of achievement—she didn’t see it. Mahan expresses warm admiration, quoting the words of Horatio himself: A work of the greatest difficulty which in my opinion would never have been accomplished by any other than British seamen.

  I quoted this too in the course of my dictation; it was important for the understanding of him, that pride in his men. But she was unmoved. One of the earliest of her interruptions. I was surprised at the time—I wouldn’t be so surprised now. She didn’t see the point. What was it for? I could hear her voice in the quiet room, that edge of impatience or slight annoyance in it that what she felt to be unreasonable always induced in her. If it had been to help someone. You know, rescue someone. Even a cat. But just dragging guns up a cliff…

  This voice came to me from the walls, as voices often did. Not faces, not then. Mahan’s reply came almost at once, jovial and easy. He didn’t really want to argue with a lady. To get men to do that, you need leadership qualities of the highest order. You would not expect them to be employed in rescuing a cat now, would you?

  A different voice, a different direction. What did they get out of it? Nasal, metallic—it was Badham. And the answer: A pat on the back and a rupture. But this was not Badham’s voice, it had changed to Miss Lily’s. The terrible suspicion came to me: were Miss Lily and Badham on the same side, were they in league? We are talking about inspiration, Mahan said, but no-one paid him any attention. And that voice of Badham’s was familiar, I recognized it now, it was the voice that sounded in my ears when I read aloud from Horatio’s despatches …

  This was frightening. I had to get up, do a bit of pacing. This time I chose Trafalgar, by Alan Schom. Only one word in the title, no problem of choice. Unerring forefinger on the middle letter. Six paces to the silenced wall. These voices had broken my concentration, taken me away from Horatio and the morning when he lost his eye. It was getting on for seven.

  Bastia was taken in May, thanks to Horatio and his faithful Agamemnons. Now there remained the third citadel, Calvi, difficult of access—there were no landing places nearer than four miles. Again guns had to be hauled up, this time by soldiers and sailors working together. Then, at daybreak on the twelfth, the enemy opened a heavy fire. You were watching from a flat-topped rock that gave a view over the besieged fort when a shell burst on the sandbags on the ramparts, sending out a hail of stone splinters and sand, cutting and bruising you on the right side of the face.

  At first you made light of it. In a letter to Fanny you said it was only a scratch. But it proved more serious. As I continued to pace back and forth, touching the a, spreading my palms against the wall, I pictured you alone in your cabin on the Agamemnon. It is a month after the surrender of Calvi and the expulsion of the French. You are bound for Leghorn to refit. You are still weak and tremulous from the malaria that returned to you in the fierce heat of that Corsican summer. You look in the mirror, clapping a hand first over the left eye, then the right. It is no longer possible for you to deceive yourself: the right eye is useless to you, always will be. The pup
il is irregular, immobile, it has spread to cover almost all the iris; it knows the difference between darkness and light, nothing else.

  I was moved yet again by this testing, childlike and lonely. I was passing the glass-fronted bookcase on my right, where I keep the books I particularly value—Nicolas’s monumental edition of the letters and despatches, some of the earlier biographies. The light was reflected from the glass as I passed. On an impulse I broke off my pacing, advanced my face to the glass, and placed a hand over my left eye. The eye that looked back at me was dazed and disabled by the shine of the glass, but I saw it reflected: vague, cloudy, strangely shapeless and amorphous. It was not mine, and I recoiled from it with a fear that for some moments seemed to stop my heart.

  I did not stay longer in my study that day. I remember that an immense weariness descended on me; my limbs felt heavy, and it seemed hard for me even to hold my head up. I went to the big armchair in the sitting room, got under my mother’s rug, and dozed away the rest of the morning.

  This sort of daytime sleeping fit grew frequent as the days passed. I think it was a sort of subterfuge, a means of escape from Mahan/Badham, perhaps a way of bringing Miss Lily’s return nearer. Ten weeks, she had said. That would take us to Monday, the fifteenth of September. I had decided to phone Avon Secretarial Services that day to see if she was back.

  In the midst of all this, I did not neglect Horatio’s calendar. I was ready well in advance to commemorate his second maiming, which took place early in the morning of July 25, three years later. With three ships of the line and a frigate, he had been ranging from Lisbon to the coast of North Africa, hoping for a favour from the gods, a sight of the legendary Spanish treasure fleet, returning from South America. Now the rumour came that they had arrived, loaded with bullion, in the Canary Islands, Tenerife. What a prize!

  Grigson was very good on the Tenerife engagement. I have never forgotten his lessons. The big map, glossy and smelling of hot glue, draped over the blackboard, Grigson stocky and nimble, a creature of fire with his reddish hair and the glinting pelt of his sports jacket, wielding a billiard cue, his own property, pointing out the routes, the distances. Here is your grade A in O-level history. The pointer hovering, tracing, pausing, and pouncing, keeping always to the rhythm of his voice and his movements before us. Boys, we stood alone, the French had twice our population …

  Cadiz to Tenerife, a thousand miles. According to intelligence reports, Santa Cruz de Tenerife was ill defended. Reports also mentioned Spanish merchant ships in the harbour. A thousand miles, six days running before the wind, while the crews trained at the guns and the carpenters made scaling ladders for the assault. Then, faintly outlined against the sky to the southwest, the volcanic peaks of Tenerife, where Grigson’s cue came to rest.

  The intelligence reports were false; the fortifications were formidable. The sea approaches below the town were commanded by powerful batteries. Should they have attacked at all? Boys, you must try to imagine the times they lived in and the men they were. In 1797, as in 1940, we stood alone. Any measure, any prospect of success, anything that could force the allies of France out of the war … Grigson had a sense of the past—he should have talked to Miss Lily.

  The plan depended entirely on surprise. Under cover of darkness, a combined force of seamen and marines would put ashore in boats with muffled oars. Without warning, they would attack the batteries on the heights to the north of the town. Grigson rolled up the map at this point and used coloured chalks on the blackboard. Red for the French batteries, blue for our ships, dotted white for the planned line of attack. Here is the bomb ship ready to open fire on the town; here are our three ships of the line, anchored out of range. At dawn they will close in, ready to bombard the town. But that won’t be necessary. With the guns taken by storm and the town threatened with destruction, the governor will capitulate, all bullion or treasure belonging to the Spanish will be handed over.

  But it is not to be. Grigson shakes his head, the cue is grounded, the blue ships stay where they are. Strong offshore currents make it impossible for the frigates to land the men, and in their battle with the tides they are sighted by the enemy; the advantage of surprise is lost. The attack has failed. But when did you ever accept defeat? What did you say? Thus foiled in my original plan, I considered it necessary for the honour of our King and country not to give over the attempt.

  Heat rose through Grigson’s wiry reddish hair, warming the air around him. The gestures of the hand not holding the cue were brief and strong, cutting or chopping motions. No-one could long sustain his gaze. He approved of your words; we knew he approved by the tone in which he quoted them—I think it was the first time I ever heard your words spoken aloud. They came to me in Grigson’s voice that July evening, while I waited. It was late, nearly midnight. I was waiting for one o’clock, the time of the wound.

  The walls and ceiling of the study were shadowed. The only light came from the lamp on my desk. Your words, as spoken by Grigson, were in my mind. Then a surprising thing happened. After all these years of recalling the wound, remembering Grigson and his billiard cue and coloured chalks, it came to me that there had been one boy in that class at odds with the rest of us. Strange that I had not remembered him before. A picture of him came now into my mind, gradually, detail by detail. It was like peering at something under water that has been stirred, waiting for the tremors of the surface to subside. A sallow boy, large but not athletic. Heavy brows. Rather adenoidal. The nature of his questions came similarly slowly to my mind. A nasal voice. I think he wore rimless glasses. At that moment, when Grigson’s theme was honour, this boy actually asked if it hadn’t been wrong of Nelson to try again. This to Grigson, whose bristles of hair seemed to issue sparks, who perhaps misunderstood the question, not thinking any boy could be so lacking in esprit de corps. Well, certainly it was wrong of him to lead this second attack in person, he was a rear-admiral and commander of the whole squadron, he was wrong to risk himself, but of course it was gallant too …

  But no, that was not what this boy meant. I could not remember his name. What about the thousand officers and men Nelson took with him, only half of whom returned? This boy had been reading other texts than those furnished by Grigson. We were all against him, we shared our teacher’s disdain for this insinuating outsider.

  But he would not be silenced. The sea was rough, there were powerful batteries on the heights above the shore, the chances of success were almost nil. Is that what honour means? Was it the hope of Spanish gold that made you throw those lives away? A kind of serial killer. No, he didn’t say that, the Badham boy didn’t say that, Miss Lily said that. This boy had a limited existence. Why couldn’t I remember his name? Why had I no memory of him in any other class, questioning any other teacher?

  Wiped off the slate for all these years between. I tried not to think of him anymore, but only of that doomed, gallant second attempt. Quarter to one now, fifteen minutes to go, you are already pulling for shore, you and the thousand others. Shortly before you have written a hasty letter to Sir John Jervis. Tomorrow my head will probably be crowned with either laurel or cypress.

  Grigson approved of this too, but I was not in his class now, I was alone in my study, the class had gone, that boy had gone, who could tell where Grigson was? As the moment of the wound drew nearer, I was quite alone. Laurel or cypress. You knew, you must have known, how expensive in lives it would be, how slight the chances of success. Even to get ashore under fire like that, let alone to storm the heights. A thousand men, all with a hope of life, and you wrote to Jervis as if there were only one. What was it for? Miss Lily’s favorite question. No use as a base, too far away—the Mediterranean was the vital zone. The point was the treasure. You were the commander of the squadron, you were entitled to one quarter. No, boys, personal greed did not enter into it; the objective was to cripple the Spanish by depriving them of the means to continue the war. Yes, he was right, the times were desperate, the Spanish could not be brought to a ba
ttle, it was the only way. Think of the times they lived in, think of the men they were.

  Three minutes to one. A heavy sea running. The boats are too crowded, many of them do not reach the shore, they capsize, and the men in them are drowned. The Spaniards have seen us; the shore batteries open up while the boats are still hundreds of yards from land. However, you reach the harbour mole, you draw your sword, prepare to leap ashore. At that moment, as you raise your sword, your right arm is shattered by grapeshot. You make an attempt to pick up the sword with your left and continue, but your strength fails and you fall. Bleeding heavily, you are laid in the bottom of the boat, and they begin to row you back to the ships. But you will not allow them to return in an empty boat. Half fainting as you are, you will not let them proceed, you order as many men as possible to be gathered into the boat from the sea.

  Thinking of this, I felt the familiar smart of tears. Tears always came to restore my feeling for him. That stoicism, that forbearance, that care for others. The same man, the author of the letter to Jervis …

  The first ship they came up with was the Seahorse, commanded by your friend Fremantle, still out there in the night somewhere, taking part in that disastrous landing. But his wife, Betsey, is still aboard—she has been given special permission to accompany her husband. By now your arm is pumping blood in spite of the tourniquet, but you refuse to quit the boat. I would rather suffer death than alarm Mrs. Fremantle by her seeing me in this state, when I can give her no tidings whatever of her husband. You order them to go on, to find your own ship, the Theseus. At last they do so, but you will not be helped aboard. Let me alone. I have yet my legs left and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and get his instruments.