Bedford Square Page 8

  It was a masterly summary, and Pitt was obliged to admit it to himself, whether it was true or not. It was not how he saw Cornwallis, or how he wished to. Honesty and fear both forced him to stay and listen. He was afraid they showed in his face, and he resented the thought that Durand could read them there.

  “You mentioned courage,” Pitt said, clearing his throat, trying to keep his voice from betraying his dislike of the man and his own loyalties. “Was Cornwallis brave?”

  Durand’s body stiffened. “Oh yes, undoubtedly,” he conceded. “I never saw him show fear.”

  “That’s not quite the same thing,” Pitt pointed out.

  “No—of course it isn’t. In fact, I suppose it’s almost the opposite,” Durand agreed. “I imagine he must have been afraid at times. Only a fool would not be. But he had the sort of icy self-control which hides all emotion. One never saw the humanity in him,” he repeated. “But no, he was not a coward.”

  “Physically? Morally?”

  “Certainly not physically.” He hesitated. “Morally, I cannot say. There are few great moral decisions at sea. Such judgments of command as he made were not in the time that I knew him. I think he is too orthodox in his thinking, too unimaginative to be a moral adventurer. If you are asking if he ever got drunk and behaved with abandon … no! I don’t think he ever even behaved with indiscretion.” There was a curious contempt in that remark. “Rethinking your question, yes, perhaps he was a moral coward … afraid to take life by the horns and …” He lost his metaphor and shrugged, a gesture of inner satisfaction. He had painted the picture he wanted, and he knew it.

  “Not a man to take risks,” Pitt summed it up. Durand’s judgment had been cruel, intended to injure, but perhaps in his ignorance of the issues he had said precisely what Pitt wanted to hear—not that Cornwallis was too honest to take credit for another man’s act of courage but that he was too much the moral coward to take the chance. The fear of discovery would have crippled him.

  Durand sat comfortably with the sunlight at his back.

  Pitt stayed for another fifteen minutes, then thanked him and left, glad to escape the claustrophobic feeling of envy that permeated the comfortable house with its family portraits of men who had succeeded and who had expected future generations to follow in their steps and provide even more glittering pictures with their gold braid and proud faces.

  The following day Pitt found two able seamen and a naval surgeon. The first was MacMunn, retired after a pirate raid on Borneo, having lost a leg. He lived with his daughter in a small, neat house in Putney where the carpet was patched and the furniture gleamed and smelled of wax. He was more than willing to talk.

  “Oh, yeah! I ’member Mr. Cornwallis well. Strict, ’e were, but fair. Always very fair.” He nodded several times. “ ’Ated a bully, ’e did. Couldn’t stand ’em. Punish ’em summink ’or-rible. Weren’t free wi’ the cat, but ’e’d see a man wot bullied them wot was beneath ’im flogged raw, ’e would.”

  “A hard man?” Pitt asked, afraid of the answer.

  MacMunn laughed a rich, happy sound. “Nah! Not ’im. You in’t seen nuffink! Mr. Farjeon, now ’e were wot yer’d call ’ard.” He pulled a face, turning his mouth down at the corners. “I reckon as ’e’d ’ave keel’auled yer if ’e could. He’d a’ liked the days o’ floggin’ through the fleet!”

  “What was that?” Pitt’s naval history was shallow.

  MacMunn squinted at him. “Put a man in a longboat an’ ’ave ’im rowed ’round an’ flogged on the deck o’ every ship in the fleet. Wot yer think?”

  “It would kill him!” Pitt protested.

  “Yeah,” MacMunn agreed. “Mind yer, a good ship’s surgeon’d see a man numbed ter the point ’e’d not know. Die pretty quick, so me grandpa told me. ’e were a gunner at Waterloo, ’e were.” Unconsciously, he straightened up as he said it, and Pitt found himself smiling at him without knowing quite why, except a heritage shared, and a knowledge of courage and sacrifice.

  “So Cornwallis wasn’t hard or unjust?” Pitt said quietly.

  “Gawd no!” MacMunn waved the idea away. “ ’e were just quiet. I never fancied bein’ an officer meself. Lonely kind o’ way o’ doing things, I reckon.” He slurped his tea. “Everybody got their place, an’ w’en there’s dangers o’ yer in one rank, all the same, yer got companions like. But w’en there’s only one o’ yer, yer can’t talk ter them above, an’ they can’t talk ter you, an’ yer can’t talk ter them below. Can’t make a fool o’ yerself if yer an officer, ’cos people expect yer ter be right all the time. An’ Mr. Cornwallis took ’isself very serious. Didn’t know ’ow ter unbend ’isself, if yer know wot I mean.”

  “Yes, I think I know.” Pitt recalled a dozen times when Cornwallis had hovered on the brink of candor and at the last moment retreated self-consciously. “A very private man.”

  “Yeah. Well, I suppose if yer want ter be captain, yer gotta be. Make a mistake, show a weakness, an’ the sea’ll ’ave yer. Makes men ’ard, but makes ’em loyal too. An’ yer could always rely on Mr. Cornwallis. Bit stuck kind o’ by the book, ’e were, but honest to a fault.” He shook his head. “I ’member one time w’en ’e ’ad ter punish a feller wot done summink wrong, don’t rightly recall wot now. But it weren’t much, but regulations said ’e ’ad ter be lashed wi’ the cat … answered back the bo’sun or summink. Yer could tell Mr. Cornwallis din’t wanna do it. Bo’sun were a right bastard. But yer can’t break ship’s discipline or ye’re all lost.”

  He twisted up his face, thinking back to the incident. “But Mr. Cornwallis, ’e made ’ard work of it. Paced the quarterdeck all by ’isself fer days, ’e did. Mad as ’ell. Then suffered like ’e were the one wot ’ad bin beat.” He took a deep breath. “Bo’sun got lost overboard an’ Mr. Cornwallis bust a gut tryin’ ter find if ’e were pushed.” He grimaced. “Never did find out, though.”

  “And was he?” Pitt asked.

  MacMunn grinned at Pitt over the top of his mug.

  “Yeah, ’course ’e were! But we all reckoned as Mr. Cornwallis din’t really wanter know that.”

  “So you didn’t tell him?”

  “S’right! Good man, Mr. Cornwallis. Wouldn’t wanter make things ’ard fer ’im. An’ if ’e’d a’ know’d, ’e’d a’ ’ad the poor sod ’anged from the yardarm, no matter ’ow much ’e’d a’ felt fer ’im, an’ like ter ’ave pushed the bo’sun over ’isself.” He shook his head. “Got ’is imagination all in the wrong places. Feels for folk summink terrible, but takes everythin’ too exact, if you know wot I mean?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” Pitt answered. “Would he ever take credit for another man’s act of bravery, do you think?”

  MacMunn looked at him incredulously.

  “More likely ’ang for another man’s crime, ’e would! ’Oo-ever said that’s both a liar and a fool. ’Oo is ’e?”

  “I don’t know, but I intend to find out. Can you help me, Mr. MacMunn?”

  “ ’Oo, me?”

  “If you will. For example, did Captain Cornwallis have any personal enemies, people who were envious or who cherished a grudge?”

  MacMunn screwed up his face, his tea forgotten. “ ’Ard ter say, if ye’re honest like. Nothin’ as I knows of, but ’oo can say wot goes on in a man’s mind w’en ’e’s passed over in the ranks, or w’en ’e ’as ter be told orff fer summink. Honest man knows it’s ’is owndoin’ … but …” He shrugged expressively.

  But no matter how hard Pitt pressed, MacMunn had few practical suggestions to make, and Pitt thanked him again, and left him feeling considerably lighter in spirits, as if he had met with something essentially clean which had washed away the sense of oppression which had weighed him down after speaking with Durand. A fear inside him had eased.

  The early afternoon found him in Rotherhithe with Able Seaman Lockhart, a taciturn man rather the worse for drink who gave him no information of value and seemed to remember Cornwallis as a man to be feared, but respected for his seamans
hip. He disliked all senior officers, and said so. It was the only subject upon which he would offer more than single-word replies.

  By late afternoon, when the air was hot and still and a haze had settled over the City, the river winding below in a glittering ribbon, Pitt walked up the hill from the landing stage towards the Greenwich Naval Hospital to see the onetime ship’s surgeon, Mr. Rawlinson.

  Rawlinson was busy, and Pitt had to wait in an anteroom for over half an hour, but he was reasonably comfortable and the unaccustomed sights and sounds held his interest.

  When Rawlinson came he was dressed in a white shirt with the neck open and the sleeves rolled up, as if he had been hard at work, and there were bloodstains on his arms and several places on his body. He was a big man, well muscled, with a broad, amiable face.

  “Bow Street police station?” he said curiously, eyeing Pitt up and down. “Not one of our people in trouble, surely? Not over the river and on your patch, anyway.”

  “Not at all.” Pitt turned from the window, where he had been watching the water and the traffic going up to the Port of London. “I wanted to ask you about an officer who served with you in the past … John Cornwallis.”

  Rawlinson was incredulous. “Cornwallis! You can’t mean he’s come to your attention. I thought he was in the police himself. Or was it the Home Office?”

  “No, police.” It seemed explanations were unavoidable. He had promised discretion. How could he honor that and still be of any use? “This is an incident in the past that has been … misinterpreted,” Pitt replied tentatively. “I am looking into it on Captain Cornwallis’s behalf.”

  Rawlinson pursed his lips. “I was a ship’s surgeon, Mr. Pitt. I spent a great deal of my time in the orlop.”

  “The what?”

  “The orlop. The lower deck, aft, where the wounded are taken and we do our operating.”

  Below them on the river a clipper with canvas full set was drifting up tide towards the Surrey Docks, its magnificent sails white in the sun. There was something sad about it, as if its age were already dying.

  “Oh. But you did know Cornwallis?” Pitt insisted, dragging his mind back.

  “Certainly,” Rawlinson agreed. “Sailed under his command. But being the captain of a ship is not a very sociable position. If you haven’t been at sea you probably haven’t much of an idea of the power a captain has and the necessary isolation that requires.” Unthinkingly, he wiped his hands on the sides of his trousers, unaware of smearing them with traces of blood. “You can’t be a good commander without keeping a certain distance between yourself and the men, even the other officers.” He turned and led the way into a wide gallery through a glass-paned door and down the steps to the grass, the panorama of the river beyond the sloping ground.

  Pitt followed, listening.

  “The whole structure of the crew is built on a very tight hierarchy.” Rawlinson waved his hands as he spoke. “Too much familiarity and men lose that edge of respect for the captain. He has to be more than human to them, close to infallible. If they see his vulnerability, his doubt, ordinary weaknesses or fears, something of the power is lost.” He glanced at Pitt. “Every good captain knows that, and Cornwallis did. I think much of it came naturally to him. He was a quiet man, solitary by choice. He took his position very seriously.”

  “Was he good?”

  Rawlinson smiled, leading the way across the grass in the sun. The breeze from the river smelled of salt. The tide was running sharply. Overhead, gulls circled, crying loudly.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Actually, he was very good.”

  “Why did he come ashore?” Pitt asked. “He’s comparatively young.”

  Rawlinson stopped, his expression guarded, defensive for the first time. “Forgive me, Mr. Pitt, but why does that concern you?”

  Pitt struggled for the right reply. Surely only some element of the truth would serve Cornwallis now?

  “Someone is endeavoring to hurt him,” he replied, watching Rawlinson’s face. “Damage his reputation. I need to know the truth in order to defend him.”

  “You want to know the worst they could say, with any honesty?”

  “Yes.”

  Rawlinson grunted. “And why should I not suspect that the enemy you speak of is you yourself?”

  “Ask Cornwallis,” Pitt responded.

  “In that case, why don’t you ask him what the worst or the best is of his career?” It was said with wry amusement, no ill will at all. He stood in the sun with his bloodstained arms folded, a smile on his face.

  “Because we don’t always see ourselves as others do, Mr. Rawlinson,” Pitt replied. “Does that need explaining?”

  Rawlinson relaxed. “No, it doesn’t.” He began to walk again, waving his hand in invitation to Pitt to accompany him. “Cornwallis was a brave man,” he answered. “Both physically and morally; perhaps a trifle short in imagination. He had a sense of humor, but it didn’t show very often. He took his pleasures quietly. He liked to read … all manner of things. He was a surprisingly good artist with watercolors. Painted light on water with a sensitivity that astounded me. Showed a completely different side of the man. Made one understand that sometimes genius is not in what you put in but what you leave out. He managed to convey”—he circled his hands in a sweeping motion—“air! Light!” He laughed. “Would never have thought he had such … daring … in him.”

  “Was he ambitious?” Pitt tried to phrase it to earn an honest answer, not one motivated primarily by loyalty.

  Rawlinson considered for a moment before he replied. “In his own way, yes, I think so. But it wasn’t readily observable, not as it was in many men. He did not want to seem excellent so much as actually to be so. The pride in him, the hunger, was not for appearances but for reality.” He looked at Pitt quickly, to see if he understood. “It made him …” He searched for a way to express what he was looking for. “It made him seem remote at times. Some people even thought him evasive, where I think he was only complex, and different from them. He was his own hardest taskmaster. He was driven, but not in order to please or impress anyone else.”

  Pitt walked beside him in silence, thinking that if he did not speak, then the other man would continue.

  He was right.

  “You see,” Rawlinson went on, “he lost his father when he was quite young, eleven or twelve, I think. Old enough to know him, from a boy’s eye, not old enough to be disillusioned or challenge him in any way.”

  “Was his father in the navy?”

  “Oh, no!” Rawlinson said swiftly. “He was a nonconformist minister, a man of profound and simple belief, and the courage both to practice and to preach it.”

  “You knew him better than you intimated.”

  Rawlinson shrugged. “Perhaps. It was only one night, really. We’d had a bad skirmish with a slaver. Boarded them and took the ship all right, but it was teak and burned.” He glanced at Pitt. “I see that means nothing to you … how could it? Teak splinters are poison, not like oak,” he explained. “We had a few men hurt, but our first officer, a good man—Mr. Cornwallis had a great affection for him—was in a bad way. He helped me remove the splinters and do all we could for him. But he went into a fever and we sat up all night, spelled each other the next day and the next night.” He reached the gravel path and turned to walk back up the slope, Pitt keeping pace with him.

  “Not a captain’s job, you’ll say, and neither was it. But we were well away from the coast by then and the slaver was dealt with. He took one watch on deck, the other with me.” His mouth pulled tight. “God knows when he slept. But we saved Lansfield. Lost a finger, that’s all. I suppose we talked a bit then. Men do, in the watches of the night, when they’re desperate and there’s nothing they can do to help. Didn’t see much of him after that, except as duty required. I suppose I always think of him as he was then, the lamplight yellow in his face, gaunt with worry, angry and helpless, and so tired he could hardly keep his head up.”

  Pitt did not bo
ther to ask if he would have taken credit for another man’s act of courage; there was no need. He thanked Rawlinson and left him to go back to his patients. He walked in the bright, late-afternoon light down towards the river and the landing stage where he could catch a ferry back up past Deptford, Limehouse, Wapping, the Tower of London, under London Bridge, Southward Bridge, and probably get off at last at Blackfriars.

  He knew far more of Cornwallis, and if anything he was even more determined to defend him from the blackmailer, but he had little more idea of who that might be, except that it was even harder to think it was anyone who had served with him and genuinely believed the charge to be true.

  He remembered the way the letter was written, the grammatical correctness, not to mention the spelling and the choice of words. It was not an ordinary seaman, nor was it likely to be one of their dependents, such as a wife or sister. If it was the son of a seaman, then he had definitely improved his position in the world since childhood.

  As he reached the river’s edge the smells of salt and weed sharp in his nostrils, the slap of water, the damp air, the cry of gulls, light on their wings, he knew he still had a very long way to go.

  That morning Charlotte opened the first delivery of mail and found a letter addressed to her in handwriting which swept away the years like leaves on the wind. Even before she opened it she was certain it was from General Balantyne. What was written inside was very brief:

  My dear Mrs. Pitt,

  It was most generous of you to be concerned for my welfare, and to offer your renewed friendship in this present unpleasantness.

  I thought of taking a brief walk around the British Museum this morning. I shall be in the Egyptian exhibit at about half past eleven. If you should find yourself free, and passing that way, I should be delighted to see you.