Desolation Island. Patrick O’Brian

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      ‘You know something of my affairs, Jack: I am not my own master, and I am afraid that when I return from London – for I must go up on Tuesday, I find – I shall have to decline. It is scarcely possible at all. But at least I can promise you will have an excellent surgeon. I know a very able young man, a brilliant operator, a profound naturalist – an authority on corals – who would give his eye-teeth to go with you.’

      ‘The Mr Deering, to whom you sent all our Rodriguez coral?’

      ‘No. John Deering was the man I spoke of this afternoon. He died under my knife.’

       Chapter Two

      When his post-chaise reached the outskirts of Petersfield, Stephen Maturin opened his bag and drew out a square bottle: he looked at it with an anxious longing, but reflecting that in spite of his present craving, by his own rules the crisis itself was to be faced without allies of any kind, he lowered the glass and flung it out of the window.

      The bottle struck a stone rather than the grassy bank, exploding like a small grenade and covering the road with tincture of laudanum: the post-boy turned at the sound, but meeting his passenger’s pale eyes, fixed upon him in a cold, inimical stare, he feigned interest in a passing tilbury, calling out to its driver ‘that the knacker’s yard was only a quarter of a mile along the road, first turning on the left, if he wanted to get rid of his cattle’. At Godalming, however, where the horses were changed, he told his colleague to look out for the cove in the shay: a rum cove that might have a fit on you, or throw up quantities of blood, like the gent at Kingston; and then who would have to clean up the mess? The new post-boy said in that case he would certainly keep an eye on the party; no move should escape him. Yet as they drove along it came to the post-boy that all the vigilance in the world could not prevent the gentleman from throwing up quantities of blood, if so inclined; and he was pleased when Stephen bade him stop at an apothecary’s shop in Guildford – the gentleman was no doubt laying in some physic that would set him up for the rest of the journey.

      In fact the gentleman and the apothecary were searching the shelves for a jar with a neck wide enough to admit the hands that Stephen carried in his handkerchief: it was found at last, filled, and topped up with the best rectified spirits of wine; and then Stephen said, ‘While I am here, I might as well take a pint of the alcoholic tincture of laudanum.’ This bottle he slipped into his greatcoat pocket, carrying the jar naked back to the chaise, so that all the post-boy saw was the grey hands with their bluish nails, brilliantly clear in the fine new spirits. He mounted without a word, and his emotion communicating itself to the horses, they flew along the London Road, through Ripley and Kingston, across Putney Heath, through the Vauxhall turnpike, across London Bridge and so to an inn called the Grapes in the liberty of the Savoy, where Stephen always kept a room, at such a pace that the landlady cried out, ‘Oh, Doctor, I never looked for you this hour and more. Your supper is not even put down to the fire! Will you take a bowl of soup, sir, to stay you after your journey? A nice bowl of soup, and then the veal the moment it is enough?’

      ‘No, Mrs Broad,’ said Stephen. ‘I shall just shift my clothes, and then I must go out again. Lucy, my dear, be so good as to take the small little bag upstairs: I shall carry the jar. Post-boy, here is for your trouble.’

      The Grapes were used to Dr Maturin and his ways: one more jar was neither here nor there – indeed it was rather welcome than not, a hanged man’s thumb being one of the luckiest things a house can hold, ten times luckier than the rope itself; and in this case there were two of them. The jar, then, caused no surprise; but Stephen’s reappearance in a fashionable bottle-green coat and powdered hair left them speechless. They looked at him shyly, staring, yet not wishing to stare: he was perfectly unconscious of their gaze, however, and stepped into his hackney-coach without a word.

      ‘You would not say he was the same gentleman,’ said Mrs Broad.

      ‘Perhaps he is going to a wedding,’ said Lucy, clutching her bosom. ‘One of them weddings by licence, in a drawing-room.’

      ‘No doubt there is a lady in the case,’ said Mrs Broad. ‘Who ever saw such a dusty gentleman come out so fine, without there was a lady in the case? Still, I wish I had taken the price-ticket off his cravat. But I did not dare: no, not even after all these years.’

      Stephen told the man to set him down in the Hay-market, saying he would walk the rest of the way. He had in fact the best part of an hour to spare, so he walked slowly through St James’s market in the general direction of Hyde Park Corner and took half a dozen turns round St James’s Square. At this end of the town his clothes excited no attention, except from the women who shared the streets with him, a great number of them, in arcades, shop doorways, and porticoes, some of them fierce, angry, scornful creatures with their bosoms laid out, the caterers to special tastes, others so young – mere slips – that it was a wonder they should find customers, even in so huge a city. One assured him she would give him a good breakfast, with sausages, if he came with her; and although he civilly declined her offer on the grounds that he was going to see his sweetheart, the idea of food so spurred his mind that he walked into one of the alleys haunted by footmen behind St James’s Street and bought a mutton-pie off an old lady with a glowing brazier, to eat in his hand as he walked. He moved on, carrying it, until he reached Almack’s, where they were giving a ball: here he paused in the little crowd that was watching the carriages arrive. He took a bite or two, but his appetite, a purely theoretical appetite, was gone. He offered the pie to a tall black dog that belonged to a neighbouring club and that was watching by his side: the dog sniffed it, looked up into his face with an embarrassed air, licked its lips, and turned away. A dwarfish boy said, ‘I’ll eat it for you, governor, if you like.’

      ‘May it profit you,’ said Stephen, walking off. Through to the Green Park, an expanse lit faintly by the horned moon in which couples could vaguely be seen, and single, waiting figures among the nearer trees. Stephen was not ordinarily a timid man, but the park had seen many murders recently, and tonight he had a greater value for his life than usual: in fact his heart, though admonished and kept down by experience on the one side and prudence (or superstition) on the other, was beating like a boy’s. He cut up to Piccadilly and walked down the hill to Clarges Street.

      Number seven was a large house let out in apartments, with a porter common to them all; so when he knocked at the door it opened. ‘Is Mrs Villiers at home?’ he asked in a harsh, formal tone that betrayed the most eager expectation.

      ‘Mrs Villiers? No, sir. She don’t live here any more,’ said the porter in an absolute, decided, rejecting voice; and he made as though to close the door.

      ‘In that case,’ said Stephen, walking quickly in, ‘I wish to see the lady of the house.’

      The lady of the house was very willing to see him – she had indeed been hovering behind a curtained glass door in the hall, peering through – but she was by no means so inclined to give him any information. She knew nothing about it: such a thing had never happened in her house before: no such person as a Bow Street officer had ever crossed its threshold. She had always taken the greatest pains to ensure that all the inmates of the house were above suspicion, and she had never countenanced the least irregularity. The whole neighbourhood, the whole congregation of St James’s, all the tradesmen, could testify that Mrs Moon had never allowed the least irregularity. In the following discourse, which dealt with the difficulties of maintaining the highest reputation, it seemed that there was some question of unpaid bills: Stephen said that any inadvertence in this respect would be remedied directly, and that he would take it upon himself to look into any unsettled account. He was Mrs Villiers’ medical adviser – naming himself – and the medical adviser to several members of her family: he was perfectly authorized to do so.

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