Mr Darwin's Shooter Page 11

  It was at this moment there came the sound of a splash that Covington would never want to hear again, as when a bucket of swill is tipped overboard in a calm, and a small voice in the heart of him cried, ‘Joey? Was this Joe?’

  Yes it was Joey slipping from his rope and falling in the water.

  Yet even while thinking this thought, so shrill with alarm, something kept Covington staring at their gent, trying for a response.

  Joey Middleton dear sailor chum unable to swim, where was he then? At Covington’s feet with his fingers clasping holystone, he wished. But really where was he at all? Swinging above the deeps lashing at gulls with a coil of hemp? Then what? Blood on the shit of the wind! Drowned. Covington’s attention was elsewhere for the count of three. For he was still looking at the gent, musing on being of service with a warmth inside him akin to desire.

  ‘Boy overboard?’ FitzRoy burst from his cabin under the wheel to roar like a furnace. Yes with your sharp nose like a blade and your fishy lips you may have your spectacle, Capt, of a soul entering heaven.

  MacCurdy dived, Door went after him, trod water and hoy’d. Phipps’s arms pinned Covington to the rails to stop him leaping. ‘The two of them are enough. More will get in their way.’ MacCurdy broke the surface, dived again, returned shaking his head, ‘He is gahn!’ Covington trembling aghast, Gent likewise mumbling a prayer, plucking at shirt buttons in the icy wind, the crew gathering, climbing every vantage point on the ship, bewildered, shivering, delivering the news to each other in undertones. Phipps, meantime, what was he thinking, his eyelids tremoring, his mouth tight shut, surely also of heaven?

  ‘Gahn!’ came the bellow again.

  Capt echoed the sour word in disbelief and grim-featured called for hooks. He could ask for no better crew than a hydrography ship’s to plumb the depths of a harbour. Oarsmen dipped by and held. Dipped and returned. Men able to tune the wind and furrow the four seas grieved for skills denied them in the matter of a small life.

  Joey was down there a long time.

  ‘He is gone to his father,’ said Phipps, grabbing hold of Covington again. ‘I knew it would come. He was too sweet for our world.’

  ‘Let me go, John Phipps, or I’ll use my strength on you.’

  Phipps was sobbing, poor man, and there was nothing for it except to turn aside from him lest Covington’s own sobs crack his bones.

  ‘We have summat!’ cried the West Country men in the evening light. Covington clutched a rope and began hauling. They brought Joey up. His lips were nipped by fish, his sides were torn by grappling hooks, his clothes were peeled away, his eyes were hollow sockets!—he was upside down, dripping like a sponge, and their angry FitzRoy never spoke a truer word as when he boomed out in the presence of crew and weeping Patagonians, ‘Lord God of Hosts, Joseph Middleton was your friend!’

  ‘Amen!’ answered Phipps. ‘He formerly lived by hearsay, now he shall live by sight.’ But all the texts in the world were clay in the mouth and thoughts of heaven collapsed, and Phipps wept, unable to get the words out.

  Covington fled the Beagleand ferried ashore in the dark.

  ‘’Ullo, it’s the mudlark.’

  The nightwatchman with his lantern on high signalled him through the dockyard gates.

  He carried his Polly Pochette with him as he ran, holding her by the neck, her dry dusty bow thrust deep in his inside belt. Sailors heaped bonfires in the wet streets and swigged rum. Covington wanted no more of their game. A wild gang passed by, grabbing men. Covington huddled against a chandler’s warehouse, listening to his heartbeat through the walnut space that was no bigger than his heart itself and as flimsy. Then he ran on. The rain stopped. There was nowhere for him to go. He sat on a stone and plucked strings, and wept. It began to rain again. In spite of the horror of his dear friend being flayed by water he would be shown the cat on his return. He knew it and returned in the miserable pearly light of morning. Their Capt eschewed exceptions. He spake the law of God. Covington could rely on him.

  It was said that in fine weather, sails bellying full, there was no joy a seaman knew better than departure. He was rid of the woes of the land, the ship heeling nicely to leeward—the sea washing her decks in a torrent of green—the steersman heading her up to the wind and ever into warmer climes.

  Covington considered this without bitterness as he bared his back. A brightness sparkled on the water. He was given a rag to bite upon. ‘Good cheer, Cobby,’ said a mate, and Covington gave a smile in return and shouted before his mouth was stuffed:

  ‘It will be all the same in fifty years!’

  As he submitted to Regulations he saw the gent watching and taking pity, hand to mouth to hold back spew as their bark went on. Covington did not allow himself to have any thoughts, then, except just one, that he was no dumb beast and the pain he would fling from him like water, because it was his temporal body, that’s all. The gent was braving himself in FitzRoy’s eyes as one who would not speak out loud, but hold, as a guest aboard must bravely, to naval lore in a flogging. Phipps stood by with the others—his own back was scarred, written plain with the transgressions of his youth. Covington till now had only ever suffered tongue-lashings, and boxings around the ears. Other thoughts crowded in. He thought about the sweetness of Joey, blaming himself for his drowning—those few moments of neglect, of not seeing what was happening. He might have pulled him back. He might have said, ‘Don’t, Mudlark, Noodle-head,’ and gone for his own turn at swinging above the water. He might have drowned in his place, and not had this bitterness on his palate, which was made of the taste of seawater, weed, stale cotton and shame. He might have averted his eyes from their gent, instead of coveting his service.

  Bring it down.

  The lash whistled and Covington was flayed for his shoregoing. A stroke for each hour taken without leave, making fourteen in total.

  Captain FitzRoy stood watching, a severe young man with a long slim nose like a paperknife. His firm full lips were thoughtful even in a rage. Two times seven he eyed the rope descending and surely he thought of drownings, and knew of Covington’s grief from his eyes, and his pain, but thought of obedience making all things right on ships, and surely in heaven, and so, to be sure, was soothed in his hard decisions around men and boys.

  After Covington was done, his back sliced and his groin weeping bloody piss, there were the greater shore offenders to be dealt with, Christmas punishments for drunkenness making a stern tally of one hundred and thirty-four lashes in all, their cries piteous, their flesh lying on the decks in scallops as if from a carpenter’s plane.

  Covington was hurt. He stood aching by the ship’s rail, swollen with his body’s water. A bucket of saltwater stung him. The surgeon’s mate applied linseed mash. He saw his skin hanging when he twisted around, donning his shirt. The surgeon, Mr McCormick, said he was fine. King failed to meet his eye. Musters bawled and hid his face. Phipps came to him and gave him a swig of rum. The other topmen left Covington alone; gormless whales of conscience, they regarded whippings akin to weather, to be ridden through and rewarded with fine passage after.

  Covington nursed his body through the next weeks and ate Mrs Hewtson’s plumcake in sorrowful nibbles. There was little conversation in him and no light banter. He moved in the vessel with a sullen power, answering no arguments, entering no pleas. From this date he stood, as on some fearsome headland, remote and proud, surveying his years ahead. It broke hearts to see him, for he was still just a boy. FitzRoy gave his Sunday sermon on the open deck, making his verse the rainbow of hope that Noah saw at the end of the Great Flood. There would be a gathering-in on this voyage and a putting out, he said. A spark would be lit in Tierra del Fuego and it would be a beacon to Christians the whole world over. The men hardly knew what he meant, or cared; they just agreed that if there were missionaries in wild places then maybe their chances of being rescued from shipwreck would be better.

  Covington saw their gent fashion a bonnet from canvas and attach ropes to its sides
, trawling it through combers, bringing up sea creatures, marvelling at their smallness on the deck. ‘It creates a feeling of wonder,’ said their gent to Revd Matthews, who was ever lolling nearby, ‘that so much beauty is created for such little purpose.’

  ‘Aye, but we see it now,’ said Revd, ‘and offer our hosannas.’ The young gent turned and stared at Covington as if he were cousin to those jellies, and truly, as if to flatter his opinion, Covington was silent as a fish.

  On Sundays, for an hour, he sat with Phipps side by side and strove for understanding. They riffled the pages of their book with Phipps tactful and withdrawn. He knew that Covington’s entire soul and not just his skin was flayed—why, Phipps was no different—and they did not know or care if it was Joey or Christ they whispered about. The texts reminded them both ways:

  Wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot too.

  His word I did use to gather for my food, and for antidotes against my faintings.

  His voice to me has been most sweet, and his countenance I have more desired than they that have most desired the light of the sun.

  Covington would not have been able to say, if asked, what he remembered about Joey to rouse such an ache in the heart. Memories were so slim, threadlike, that they seemed hardly to exist at all in the face of a life’s passing. Joey was a boy who used nicknames, was honest about his failings, who danced lightly on the water, screeching ‘Had ’em, Haddums!’ before he fell. And that was just about all.

  Mostly Covington and Phipps went to their different parts of the vessel and were strangers to each other. There was just this love they had, that was without its joyfulness any more, and was only sustainable in their private devotions when they asked God to take it to him.

  Word came of advancement. Covington was elevated to gunroom service, which was only halfway bad. It put him on the ladder to higher things and yet made him servant to those who once might have been his equals. He found himself running errands for midshipmen and the lesser officers whose social standing in the ship was a touch uncertain. His masters included King, the unreliable pal of his childhood, and so remotely detached from him now that he hardly looked up from squeezing his boils when Covington brought him a poultice one day. Covington had gone to great trouble to have it heated on the cook’s precious coals, but King only said, ‘Lay it on my knee, and stand back. Thar she blows!’ and dirtied the clean deck with his blood-riddled muck.

  Off Brazil the lads were made hilarious by a school of octopusses, as they called them, though Covington, who had become prickly and challenging in his moods, knew they were squids, flopping through the water making a poor sight with their tentacles chewed and their bodies in a palsy. It was done by dolphins, who after their attack stood off as if they feared entanglement in the debris that gathered around the ship’s hull. Men mulled about in the strange humour of what they saw, for entertainment was all their life on the wave at that time, as the rudest mockingly called, ‘Them’s not octopussies, but whales’ dicks bitten by the moll of the deeps.’ Mr Earle, the ship’s draughtsman, smiled: he was a rare bird like all his artist-sort, and would play when boys played as if to be a child again, though he was the oldest man aboard. Covington had just begun to notice him—an easy, sickly, good-natured fellow with the knack of getting along with sailors and being as rude as they were if he chose. He thrust a pencil in Covington’s hand one day and showed him how to draw two eyes, a nose and a mouth, then turned it over and the pretty young face was converted into a tree stump.

  As for their gent, who had Joey lost to him as a servant barely before he knew who he was, he played at not knowing who he would have to replace him until the captain gave the word, and was blank to Covington’s flirtations for the post. Their gent was a hard one to catch. He wasn’t such a slug as he looked, even when he puked. He would dampen the wind, as they said, wipe his mouth with the kerchief he kept handy, and get on with his tasks forthwith. Could be he didn’t need a servant at all. Sharp was the word and quick the motion with him, and he would not die laughing, as Mr Earle did almost, savouring every foulness he overheard. This Mr Darwin was something of a Scot in his dolour when the crew got going. There was just a deeper colour he turned at low banter—plum red as he sucked in his cheeks and went about his business. Yet his attention was constant. It made the hair stand up on the back of a young dog’s neck.

  It was good that Covington saw they were squids, for FitzRoy soon afterwards sent for him while he presided at a gunroom supper. Space was squeezed and manners cordial among these higher gentry. This captain was a great one for correction and often barbed his listeners with their ignorance.

  ‘What were those humps in the water?’ he smiled at Covington, holding a bearing on Mr Darwin who slurped his soup hungrily—for there was no motion that week to make a landsman peaky. ‘Those poor objects the men were so engaged upon. I heard them callin’ them octopusses?’

  Covington told him straight, ‘They were squids, sir,’ as he backed out, collecting a dish. When he was gone, ‘What is its name?’ Covington heard asked from around the hatch—and there returned the murmur, ‘Syms Covington,’ confirmed among the company with yawns.

  ‘Odd job man.’

  ‘Fills in where needed and scavenges for what you will.’

  ‘Brains?’

  ‘An excellent copyist and a butcher’s boy.’

  One day Covington saw the captain moving along the rail towards him. From his manner, thought Covington, he might be one of those dolphins when it raised its snout, finning along steady with a round eye on the lookout. The gent followed him. FitzRoy went absently fingering the pigtailed scalps of sailors and gave no expression or indication of mood until he reached Covington’s place.

  ‘A moment of your attention,’ he spoke to the gent over his shoulder. Covington felt the pads of FitzRoy’s fingers move across his skull seeking lumps and bumps. ‘Now this one for example. Covington, will you hold steady, lad?’

  It was not a question that needed answering. FitzRoy’s fingers were quick and spiky, jabbing and plucking at hairs.

  ‘Amativeness—full. Philoprogenitiveness—full. Concentrativeness—ditto. Adhesiveness—full. Combativeness—large. Destructiveness—very large. Constructiveness—small. Secretiveness—large.’

  ‘Am I a dumb ox,’ thought Covington, still with his head down, ‘to be used like this?’

  Then the gent had a turn at him and it was not such an unpleasant feeling—soothing and distancing, rather, as if one’s own self had no case to argue. These hands were already well-used, such mighty golls for a young gent of twenty-three, rough-grained and white with starching or whatever chemicals he contrived from his pickling jars and packets of arsenical powder.

  Then the hands were gone and the attention of the pair was elsewhere. FitzRoy murmured thanks but Gent said nowt.

  Covington knew this much already about the one who treated him deaf as a mainmast. Naked life was his subject in nature. Rocky islands and stones from beaches were living materials to his eyes, likewise skeletons of fishes and birds from which he conjectured former existence. With his geology hammer it was knock and it shall be opened unto you. Whereas their captain saw weather in the skies, their gent saw weather in the ground, and in the rocks of the islands, and talked of changes to the earth as if what was placed by God in enduring stability was a theatre of sorts. The thought opened the eyes of anyone who cared to consider it. Covington was one: it increased his amazement at creation. Phipps was another, and smiled in wise agreement. God’s book was a fatter volume than he had conceived. All earth spoke God’s praises.

  When Covington heard that his adventure on St Helena island was known to the gentry, and he was said to be advanced with the opposite sex, he noticed the gent’s eyes on him more often—though without much interest in engaging him in conversation. Indeed there was a stronger shyness about him then, a withdrawal, if that could be said of a gent who barely came forward in
the first place, whose attention clamoured from a distance.

  They found themselves becalmed. It was hot weather, thick as steaming flannel. Passengers and crew mingled, seeking every patch of shade. Men jumped overboard and swam around the vessel to wash themselves. Covington played the fool and acted sick for Miss Devil’s Horns every time he saw her. He had a bad cough just then and was somewhat feverish. Horns was the female of the Patagonians, Fuegia Basket being her Christian name, fourteen years old and sitting on the deck hoping for a breeze. Covington made out he could not keep his young dog’s eyes away from her. The lads said he was lost in Fumbler’s Hall, and clearing his throat he said, ‘Sure and I am struck in the philoprogenitives real hard,’ hitching the crotch of his trousers.

  Then he had a dream that made him look at her twice. In the dream she reached out a hand and drew him to her. It made it seem she was the one who would rise from the water some day, riding in a seashell in all her Sunday School finery and savage guile. It made him go around looking at her closer when he got the chance. One day when he stood near the dame, and roughly catarrhed his lungs, getting her attention, Revd Matthews came by and spoke of Miss Basket having a novio, as if underlining his words.