Losing Nelson Read online

  “It is not a question of what they believed. Horatio acted in good faith—he needn’t have had any knowledge of what they believed. How can he be held responsible for what went on in their minds?” It was my last attempt to fight back. I straightened myself, I looked the fellow in the face. “There is no evidence,” I said. “None whatever.” It is a terrible thing to face a cynic and put all your hope in a negative. “Not a scrap,” I said, and I pressed my lips together to keep them from trembling.

  I had looked away, but his voice came over to me, unhurried, unmistakably nasal now, slightly metallic. “This is a case where the search for evidence complicates the issues and obscures the truth, as it has been doing now for two hundred years. You say there is no evidence, therefore we cannot know. That is false reasoning, Mr. Cleasby. We should look first at what we already know, because it often precludes the need for evidence. If we know the painter’s work, we don’t need his signature on the painting—not necessarily. Don’t you agree?”

  “We do if we have to prove it.”

  “But we are talking about knowledge, not proof. What do we know about Horatio Nelson? A gifted naval commander, certainly, but that does not help much. A hero, yes. Heroes never admit mistakes, let alone wrongdoing. Heroes need to succeed gloriously—it is obligatory, at least until the moment comes for them to die gloriously, and this was not his moment. We know he was inordinately vain, we know he could gobble up flattery by the cartload, we know he took in hatred of the French with his mother’s milk, we know he was a lifelong devoted servant of monarchs, we know he was totally ignorant of Naples except for where it lay on his charts, we know he was besotted with Emma Hamilton, who was besotted with Queen Maria Carolina, who wasn’t besotted with anyone but had a lively desire to save her kingdom from the French and avoid the fate of her sister Marie Antoinette. She was just as set on winning as the admiral but a lot more adaptable. Or perhaps I mean intelligent. My saviour, she said to him. Devoted Lady Hamilton said the same. The queen and the mistress. Do you not see what this comes to, the irresistible conclusion? Look at the picture. Do you really need a signature?”

  I could not answer him. His loquacity amazed me: deliberate, unfaltering, with a constant edge of malice in it. Those wrinkles round his eyes that I had thought due to scanning far horizons came from squinting over books in his library. He was shortsighted, of course. He would have his glasses in a case in one of the pockets of his jacket. Rimless glasses.

  “In order to satisfy his appetite for victory, in order not to disappoint those who hailed him as their saviour, in order to punish those who had dared to desire a republic on French lines … Do you not see? He could not fall short in any particular. In his way were a few hundred men and women who thought they were protected by a treaty, and an intractable warrior-priest named Ruffo, who had made the treaty with them and wanted to save his face. So a way was found, a form of words. The appearance of good faith was preserved. And lo and behold, the rebels come walking out into the arms of the British marines.”

  So far I might have resisted; it was still, after all, in the realm of argument. But he had foreseen everything, even this vestige of resistance. He had planned everything in advance. He kept the killing stroke for the end.

  “What does it matter, after all?” he said. “Why should it matter?” That thin smile was on his face again. “He was a man in a tight corner, wasn’t he? We were at war with France—it was a struggle for survival, great issues were at stake. A spot of fraud, a few hundred expendable people, the statutory cover-up afterwards. Fairly standard for our times, isn’t it? Or any other times, for that matter. Look at this century of ours, the things that have been done. Churchill made shadier deals and he is thought a great Englishman, whatever that means.”

  “He was a politician.”

  He leaned forward—he hadn’t heard me. “What was that?”

  “Churchill wasn’t a hero.”

  “Oh, I see. It’s because Nelson was a hero that they have been trying so long to keep the taint of falsehood from him. That’s why he couldn’t be allowed to do anything underhand. Well, heroes are useful, there is no denying that. Nelson was useful at the time, and he has been useful ever since. The Royal Navy keep a silence for him on Trafalgar Day, don’t they, and fly the flags at half-mast? Stirring stuff, especially now that most of the glory has departed.”

  “He was a rebel too. He broke the line …”

  My voice was again reduced to little more than a whisper. He gave no sign of having heard me. “Don’t you know it yet?” he said. “Heroes are fabricated in the national dream factory. Heroes are not people.”

  He was looking at me as he spoke, but I could not meet his eyes. I looked down at his hands. One lay palm down on the table, the other was loosely curled round his almost empty glass. The nails were immaculate. The pads on the knuckles looked soft.

  “You know,” he said, “dulce et decorum, sweet and fitting. Not to die for one’s country exactly, not necessarily, but to dream of it and be proud. To deal with our fears by dreaming. There are no heroes out there, Mr. Cleasby, there are only fears and dreams and the process of fabrication.”

  He knew me, somehow he knew me. I was still looking at his hands.

  “No heroes,” he said. “Surely you know that?”

  Soft indoor hands. Quite hairless on the backs. Of course. The hair had been worn away by gloves, kid gloves, black … Why hadn’t I seen it before? He was Badham.

  I stood up quickly. “Another drink?”

  He made as if to rise from his seat. He didn’t want me to get away. “No,” I said, “it’s on me.”

  “The waiter will come,” he said, but I didn’t answer, I turned and walked over to the bar. There were more people there now, someone was asking for a drink, I had to wait, and this was a good thing because it enabled me to gather myself together. Some sort of a plan had to be made. I had to prevent him from realizing that I knew his true identity.

  I glanced towards him. He was sitting in the same position, with his back to the bar. Across the few yards that separated us I took in the details of his appearance, seen thus from behind: the slightly ridged line of his jacket collar, the strip of shirt above, a cream or pale yellow colour. The shirt seemed too tight; it creased the flesh of his neck into folds at the sides. Above this the hair on his nape grew in loose thin curls like delicate shavings of some pale wood. The bar had hushed around me, all sound had drained into this closeness of sight. But I must have shifted my position, moved a little closer to the counter of the bar. I met Badham’s eyes! There was a narrow panel of mirror set in the angle of the wall behind my chair, and he was watching my face in the glass. His own seemed to change now as he met my eyes, and I knew he had understood I was on to him.

  There was no time to lose. There were no lifts on this side of the hotel, so I could not follow my first escape plan, which was to mount to the first floor and then come down by the stairs past the reception desk and out to the street. I would have to walk past him—there was nothing else for it. My heart was beating heavily and my throat had gone dry. He would assume I was going to the gents, or so I hoped. When I got opposite the swing doors I darted suddenly sideways, bumping into a porter with a luggage trolley and knocking my shin on one of the cases. And so I made it out into the street.

  The sun was low over the sea now but still strong; I felt the heat of it as I stepped out from the shade of the awning. I must have crossed the road directly and gone down the steps, because I was suddenly there in the little marina where the white boats rested in their moorings, side by side. The boats didn’t move, but the surface of the water was shivering all over, and this seemed strange, unaccountable, the masts and mooring ropes quite motionless, their reflections wriggling in the water like snakes, there was blood in among them too, a shuddering of red, as if the snakes were bleeding as they writhed. The cruelty that Badham had used against me came to my mind. A lump formed in my throat and my eyes filled with tears. The surfac
e of the water glimmered and blurred and it seemed to me that the ripples of blood were gaining, spreading, soon they would cover the whole surface of the harbour. I had to get away from this. I went back again, onto the pavement. The white rocks on the foreshore below me were dazzling in the sunlight. There was the gleaming sweep of the bay, the softly glowing crests of the promontories beyond. In this luminous moment the message came to me, like a pulse beat in the softness of the evening: Villa Emma. The little house that Hamilton built for her at Posillipo. Where we went to escape the foul city, where we walked hand in hand through the gardens above the sea. I would go there now, at once. She would be waiting. I would get a taxi or a bus.

  I began to walk across the pavement. I was still almost directly opposite the hotel. I saw Badham come through the swing doors, pass under the awning, and emerge onto the pavement. I saw him hesitate, look this way and that. I had the impression that he might be going to cross the road towards me. I went rapidly back down the steps. One of the boats had a black rubber guard tied to the bow, and I saw this stretching and contracting in the water like a lung. I waited some minutes, then I went up again, holding myself in readiness for flight. There was no sign of him on the opposite pavement, but this meant nothing in itself, he could easily have been hiding somewhere.

  A man dressed in a dark suit and carrying a briefcase was approaching along the pavement. I moved into his path. “Villa Emma,” I said. He raised his eyebrows and moved his head a little to one side. He had not understood, or so I thought at the time. “Villa Emma, Posillipo,” I said. At this he smiled and made a sort of pointing gesture over his shoulder. There was a bus stop not far behind him, twenty yards or so, and he seemed to be indicating this. I think he was about to say something more, but then his expression changed completely; a cheeping sound had come from somewhere in the region of his heart. He thrust a hand inside his jacket and brought out the cheeping thing and spoke to it as if he wanted to soothe its alarm. At this moment a bus pulled into the stop and one or two people began to descend from it. I was still afraid that Badham might be somewhere near. I ran the distance at an unsteady jog and clambered up.

  The driver started up again as soon as I was on board. He did not look at me or ask for any money. I had to stand to begin with; the bus was full. It jerked and shuddered and swayed heavily on the corners. I found a rail near the door and clung to it. I could not see where we were going. It was very hot inside the bus; I could feel the sweat gathering on my scalp and in all the concave places of my body. Some of the people inside the bus struggled to a yellow box attached to the rail near the entrance. They thrust white slips at this and it made a ringing sound. I understood that they were stamping tickets that they must have had before boarding the bus.

  People got on and off, and after a while I found a seat. We had left the sea and turned inland—I only noticed it now. The street ascended steeply; the sounds of the engine were guttural and grinding. It was now that the pair of them got on, a woman and a girl, the woman bulky and matronly with a red canvas shopping bag, the girl with a face from a nightmare bestiary, wedge-shaped, with a hideously elongated nose like the proboscis of an anteater.

  I suspected nothing at first. All I felt was a sort of dread. The seats on this bus did not all face the same way; they were in two lanes separated by an aisle, and the four at the front faced towards the others. I was sitting in the most forward of these four. For the moment there was no-one sitting opposite. What I was dreading came about. The two of them chose to sit side by side directly in front of me, faceon, the square-faced matron with the shopping bag on her knees and the monstrous girl with her staring green eyes and flexible snout and chin receding to nothing. And both of them looked fixedly at me.

  It was this fixity of regard that alerted me. I could feel their eyes on me all the time. Things began to fall into place. Badham emerging from the hotel, looking to right and left—that had been a signal. The man with the telephone, receiving instructions. The bus that drew up so opportunely, the driver who did not ask me to produce a ticket. And now these two, keeping me under observation.

  They were cunning; every time I glanced at them, they were looking somewhere else. The girl sat hunched forward. She was continually wrinkling the loose skin on her nose and opening her mouth in a snarling expression. She had on a white T-shirt with Louisiana Country Club inscribed across the bosom. What did that mean? They could have been notified that I would be on this bus, but how could Badham have known I would get on it in the first place? Could he have watched me? I had not actually seen him walk away.

  The girl was looking about her, still wrinkling her nose and snarling. She was looking at the other people on the bus. Suddenly I realized: it was an outing, she was enjoying herself, this was her best T-shirt. She was retarded, to say the least, and this woman was looking after her. Surreptitiously, I scanned the woman’s face. I was afraid, but I had to do it. Broad cheeks, small deep-set eyes, an expression of placid resignation. Not the mother—a nurse of some kind, the girl’s keeper … She had taken some trouble to change her appearance, but I knew her now, I recognized her, I had last seen her leading away poor Penhas on the occasion of my father’s funeral. Nothing to do with Badham. Her name was Mrs. White. I felt a great rush of relief. I caught her eye and nodded slightly to show that I had understood, and she blinked twice in reply.

  We were on a level now, far above the sea, moving between large buildings with identical balconies. The roads were wider and there were pockets of greenery here and there, scattered groups of trees and clumps of brightly flowering bushes. There were not many people on the bus now, but a man was sitting opposite me on the other side of the aisle. I leaned forward and spoke to his averted face: “Posillipo?” He turned and looked at me for some moments in silence. Then he shook his head and pointed in the direction the bus had come from. He called forward to the driver, who merely shrugged. Some minutes afterwards the bus stopped. “Capolinea,” the man said. He again pointed behind him, the way the bus had come. The bus driver got down from his seat and came towards us. “Capolinea,” he said.

  Everyone was getting off; we had come to the end of the line. I understood now. They had wanted to keep me away from Villa Emma at all costs. Misled by the man with the telephone, I had boarded the bus on the wrong side of the road. Posillipo was in the other direction. The driver showed me his watch and made a little circle above it with his forefinger. One hour. I would have to wait an hour before I could get a bus back. The driver smiled; his moustache lifted. He made little chopping motions in the direction from which we had come. “Posillipo.” He was in it too, of course.

  Everyone else was off the bus by now. I followed them. The driver got back into his seat and the bus drew away, gathered speed, disappeared in the distance. If this was the end of the line, where was he going? I thought I knew the answer to that. Mrs. White and her charge had got off with the others. They were someway off, walking along together by the side of the road. I had no idea where I was or what I should do. It was ten minutes to seven. The sun was setting in silver cloud over a sea invisible from here. I was not proposing to stay where I was, in that empty place, alone and exposed, without cover of any kind. I was not such a fool as that. While I was still hesitating, the signal came. Mrs. White glanced slightly over her shoulder. I immediately began to follow, taking care to keep a distance between us.

  The road curved away; I lost them from view. When I came round the curve, there was no sign of them. But there was an unsurfaced road going off at right angles, with houses on one side and a stone wall on the other, bordering what looked like private grounds. After a while the road narrowed, the houses were less frequent. It was no more than a footpath. There was no sign of Mrs. White or the girl. I had made a mistake somehow, I had misread the signal. I stopped at the edge of the road and stood still. Immediately, with this ceasing of movement, I became aware that I was being watched. I was in a trap. I could not simply go back the way I had come, it was too dan
gerous, it was what they expected. Then I saw that there was a gate in the wall on the other side, a little way farther along, a metal gate, painted green.

  There was no padlock on the gate, just a simple bar. It opened quite easily. I was planning to make a detour, keeping within the shelter of the wall, until I could get back to the dirt road again at a point somewhere near where it joined the main road, find a hiding place where I could wait for the bus. But I was too much in fear of the open, I stayed in the shelter of the wall too long. When I finally hoisted myself over it and dropped down on the other side, bruising my elbows and jarring my legs in the process, there was no sign of the road. I was in what I took to be the grounds of some large house or perhaps hotel. A gravel path wound away through thick shrubbery. All I could do was follow this—I had lost all sense of direction now.

  I came out onto an asphalt driveway and an empty car park with white lines marking the spaces. On the other side of this were some single-storey brick buildings that looked like offices and then a large white house with balconied windows. I crossed the car park, passed round the nearer of the brick buildings. Through a window I saw two men in long white coats talking together. They stared at me as I passed.

  I began to walk more quickly. There was a pavement now, leading in the direction of the white house. A man appeared suddenly from a side turning and walked towards me. He was passing a hand over his face, down and up again, with rapid repeated movements. As we drew opposite he stopped doing this, but he kept his hand stretched over his nose and peeped at me over the top of it.

  Someone called out, perhaps in greeting, someone hidden by an angle of the building. From an upper room I heard the sound of a woman’s laughter, strangely sustained, as if she were laughing also on the intakes of breath. A uniformed nurse came round a corner of the building with a very old man in a wheelchair. His face was tilted back and his eyes were closed, his sharp nose pointed up towards the sky. From the frame of his wheelchair there dangled a teddy bear and a black monkey with glass eyes. The bear and the monkey jerked and danced—they were on strings of elastic. The old man’s eyes were not closed, they were white slits, he was watching me. The nurse said some words I did not understand. She left the wheelchair and came round towards me.