Mr Darwin's Shooter Read online

  ‘Cannot?’

  ‘Meaning will not,’ quipped King, making a sign with his hands for Darwin’s eyes, slashing the fingers of his right hand across the palm of his left, representing a man being flogged.

  ‘Oh, my Lord, I had not thought of that,’ Darwin sighed, and sank down onto a rotting log that shifted slightly under his weight, sending out a scurry of beetles that he followed with a glazed eye. His moleskin breeches were stained and caked with dirt; his skin was lumpy with insect bites; beads of sweat decorated his upper lip. Covington liked the picture he made, it was young and adventuresome, beginning a time of hero-worship. But he was half-gone with exhaustion and drink, and impatient, and without further talk scooped his belongings from the ground and stood ready to attend the gent’s needs, leaving him only his bird-basket, that was strapped to his back.

  ‘What now?’ the gent growled, submitting and objecting simultaneously to Covington’s proffered arrangements.

  ‘Covington is our hammerman!’ shrilled King.

  ‘Indeed?’

  Covington half-bowed, acknowledging his place on earth as a servant. At the same time he was quick to make it seem as if he had been done an injury, or would be, if his arrangements were questioned. This pertness in his adopting a role unasked-for put Darwin on his mettle, and showed Covington his way forward with him. If a medal was stamped to show their relationship henceforward, it would have sunrays leading back to this moment.

  Darwin and King began walking and Covington followed. When they slithered down a slope of red soil and wandered into a country of ferns lofty as a cathedral Covington went along. At every turn Covington came on a little, and Darwin, easing the discomfort Covington’s presence caused him, chose to beg assistance. ‘Come over here.’

  ‘Squire?’ Covington leapt forward.

  ‘Are you afraid of snakes?’

  ‘I have yet to feel it,’ Covington boasted.

  ‘Nota bene,’ said Darwin, with his boot planted on something threshing in the leaves. Covington leapt back. The other laughed: ‘What do you call that?’

  Covington peered close. ‘A serpent, sir.’ But the creature had legs, and Darwin laughed again, proving Covington’s ignorance in the natural history of dry land. The creature was as big as a blanket-roll with teeth like a trap, and a head raised in proud alarm. It ran towards King, who leapt and yelled. It changed direction and rollicked towards Darwin, who made a gleeful cry, raised his gun, and blasted it front-on.

  ‘Do you call this duty?’ cried King.

  ‘Nay, sheer delight,’ Darwin answered him.

  Soon Covington found that, as well as his Polly Pochette, he carried seed pods on a string around his waist, and a crude bag woven of banana leaves, in which he hefted a weight of colourful clam shells from the stream bed he had washed in earlier. Still he was willing to carry more! Still the young naturalist kept scooping things up!

  The noonday sun was high when King sidled up to Covington and said, ‘We are suffering a great heat.’

  Covington said nothing.

  ‘He believes you are in for a flogging, Covington.’

  Covington stared back at King wide-eyed, as if to say, we have not spake of the cat!

  ‘He is your only chance,’ King persisted. ‘You shan’t have a hope with me.’

  ‘Hush!’ from up ahead.

  Darwin raised a warning hand. On a low branch huddled a bird with a long curved beak. Its tail was flat as a paddle, its feathers black as cachou de Laval. It had a pale throat-patch that hung in the darkness as pretty as any white peach of Kent.

  Darwin took the gun from King and loaded a smaller kind of shot. From branch to branch in the shadows the bird stepped along, squawking low. Covington squatted on his heels and watched. He had scant knowledge of shooting yet admired the hunting mode displayed, the naturalist not spreading himself cheesily in the woods like King, but turning thin sidelong to his target despite his large frame, and raising the gun-barrel deceptively like something in nature. When he fired, the bird fell among brambles with a thud.

  ‘There’s a pickle,’ he muttered, and stood with a hand to his belt.

  ‘Poor sport, Darwin,’ carped the Midshipman. ‘Our kingdom for a dog?’

  Darwin angled his head, and smiled faintly perspiring at Covington plaintively staring from his ground. Covington beamed his wishes and they lit on the young master with unspoken understanding. Should I yap? Darwin gave the barest nod.

  Slipping his load from his shoulders Covington plunged into the thicket. Angry buzzing flies stung him. He went on hands and knees. The soothing gent’s voice coaxed him: ‘Be careful, there. Go a little to your left. Mind your bandage. Good man, fine fellow!’ Covington crawled in a torment of existence. Welts came on his skin from a hairy vine. Gnats stung him. But he would not have wished himself anywhere else on earth.

  He found the bird under his nose already teeming with ants, as if it were made of sugar. Shuffling backwards he emerged holding the dumpy creature unmarked by gunshot, except it oozed blood, as Covington did himself from under his bandage.

  ‘Whizz-bang, jolly good!’ exclaimed King.

  Darwin brushed the ants from the feathers and pronounced the bird as belonging to the family of toucans, notable for their great beaks disproportionate to the rest of their bodies. He addressed this information to King, in the manner of King himself—making all things obvious— Covington’s brain noting throughout that his name was not used, through having been forgotten again, or withheld in discouragement to over-familiarity, or because with servants it was always just so, when all he longed for was acknowledgement, say as a pet desires a fondle around the ears, as the marmoset Joey had been to his handlers.

  While Darwin stood by, King it was who took a little cotton and placed it in the bill and nostrils of the bird to stem its bleeding; King who took a pocket-knife in one hand and with the other parted the feathers along the bird’s breastbone, making a rough cut between the outer and inner skin, while Covington knew enough of careful work to know it was damned clumsy.

  Darwin growled: ‘Recall, as I showed you, King, use patience, use care …’ (King went slow.) ‘Yet do the whole thing promptly, as I say.’ (King went fast.)

  A memory returned to Covington’s brain. In the first weeks when he never knew this gent except as a piece of yellow bile on a letter-case, King was given his leave to go roaming with a gun. Covington gave thought to who King’s companion was on those countryside rambles. Covington’s unconscionable jealousy came in a whirl as he stood in the steamy forest, breathing hard, observing the task at hand.

  He followed how King treated the head of that bird, for he meant to do better when his day came. King snicked the skin of the ears and tore it over. The eyes soon appeared, as if from the inside of a glove; one broke and the other had a covering of filmy skin that Covington shivered to see, because it still seemed to be looking. King went on fiercely in a panic until the gent hooked him by the shoulder, steered him aside, and extracted the other eye using the point of a quill. ‘Botched,’ he said, stifling extreme irritation. King must have thought he said ‘Tops,’ for he grinned showing his long teeth and batted his morbid eyelids. Darwin in a few minutes had the feathered cape of the bird smoothed on a sheet of paper.

  ‘There so,’ and the dripping, naked corpse lay in the grass. King whistled his achievement. Gent examined the flesh in silent fashion, and said he would cook it and keep the bones. Everything went into the basket, which Covington carried now, and they set forth to escape the forest.

  Covington went ahead of the other two, pretending he was no barnacle on Gent’s hull, but really ensuring there was no fork in the track where they might lose each other. If he came to one he looked back and Gent nodded. Within the half hour he found himself at the edge of the lower town, where a thatched hostelry offered meals and grog. Smartly he made himself understood to a Negro, and when Darwin and King arrived was heard calling for ‘a cup of the good Sangorino for the officers, pra
y’. He had their beakers ready. He had other matters in hand, including the lighting of a fire and the procurement of a cookpot. Ere long the bird was boiled and cleaned of its flesh, and Gent thanked Covington for his trouble—even to taking a taste of the meat and pronouncing it fair, and bidding Covington to suck upon wine at his expense, and so Covington did, but after his previous night’s rort a single cup made him ill in a patch of banana trees; meantime, Darwin and King made merry as schoolboys.

  Covington sat shivering on a bench until they were ready, and it was time to follow them to the harbour. He had the beginnings of a fever. The truth was he had never been entirely well since his flogging. From the dockside the cutter was signalled to collect them. Door manned the sweep oar, raising his eyebrows with bemused expectation on sighting Covington all tattered, licking his lips and muttering into his face, ‘Well oh well, ’ere’s some Christmas beef all fit for slicin’.’

  Climbing the ship’s ladder Covington lifted his eyes and saw Capt’s lamp burning in his cabin. So he was home. Indeed he was home. So he was doing his tally of miscreants. Indeed he was adding ’em up. Covington felt a trembling in his shanks and cursed himself for cowardice as he traipsed along deck. John Phipps’s eyes were upon him, somewhat cold. He had been gone from their bark near twenty-four hours. He would be hanged if Capt read the laws true. And when a hideous Capt emerged from below, and leered, it seemed he would be: ‘I am putting ye to the hoop,’ lipped a horned figure with burning eyeballs and the tongue of a lizard. The whole catalogue of a commander’s crimes came to him in the grin of a jack-a-dandy—for it was Jemmy Button, a Fuegian wanting clams for his chowder, and not the captain at all. I am putting ye in my soup. In hand-me-down gloves and polished shoes Jemmy was a right proper hog in armour. ‘I have mistook a savage for an aristocrat,’ grunted Covington. Jemmy’s English was contained to a few words. ‘Where you bin gone, Sailor Cobby?’

  ‘I have “bin gone” nowhere, old sport, ’cept under King’s Orders,’ Covington replied, holding his breath and getting jigged up and down with Jemmy’s arm around him.

  ‘Sailor Covington?’ The voice was Darwin’s.

  ‘Aye?’

  With the gent using his name Covington’s blood was refreshed.

  ‘Follow me.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Ask Covington what happened next and he would burst his gizzard to tell of it. By silent consent of Capt he accompanied Darwin to his cabin—the cramped poop cabin, which he shared with two others—where he found himself occupied in cleaning, drying, storing and, if ye will believe it, in dispersing the rankest shellfish to the Fuegians’ kettle. The gent solicitously asked, ‘Are you ill? Are you up to this?’ and when Covington said nay and yea, he disbelieved him, and gave him a swig of gripe water, and a few drops of opiate, after which Covington was fit to carry on in true naval fashion, shedding all tiredness and standing to his colours.

  If Covington looked like a beggar in his torn trowsers then so did his gent. There began with him the idea of brothers, the good elder and the willing younger. There began so many other ideas that his brain was a bucket of jewels to think of them.

  Covington whistled at his work, meriting more praise than he earned in dreams. He copied Darwin’s way of prising open shells with a knife, cleaning them of flesh, washing them out, and tying them together with a piece of thread while keeping the hinge intact. The smaller shells the naturalist told him to pack inside the larger, to save room, and to ensure their safety. The cleaning they completed on deck until rain drove them inside. Covington was told that a scientific collector in England would give more for a shell covered by its rough coating than when it had been taken off by unskilful hands.

  ‘I shall keep that in my mind,’ he said, with a forwardness that prepared his way.

  With Darwin that long day Covington experienced what he knew, but hardly dared hope, would free him from punishment this time round: namely, that any sailor who assisted the ship’s gent was given goodwill by certain officers for the reason that the gent was close with Capt, their avenging Moses, whose law was writ in officers’ commissions.

  As the work went along Covington heard these words: ‘Good man, well done, you have been a brick,’ and other such let-outs of breath as occurred to the one he chose and would serve unto eternity if he was wanted. They settled snug in the poop cabaña where Darwin let go the preposterous strain gents had about them, even between themselves. He culminated in examining Covington’s thoughts as he expressed them, rather than by fossicking around the root-hairs of his nut and making suppositions. The boy liked this better, and his vanity swelled. It came about that Covington knocked shells to the floor that were arranged for sketching, and was able to set them from memory back just as they were, making piles of uninjured, cracked, small, large and curious, all ready for the gent’s pencil.

  Darwin turned from the table.

  ‘This is good, Covington.’

  ‘Yea?’

  ‘The captain praises your wits. I praise your eye.’

  ‘I look and listen,’ Covington replied. Then rubbed his fishy hands through his hair and gave out a grin. ‘That is not all the captain says about me.’

  ‘I would not know,’ said Darwin, his jaw tightening a little. There would never be any gossip from him, and that was that.

  ‘He is a good Christian, our Capt,’ said Covington.

  ‘Indeed he is.’

  ‘I am a believer too, as the Lord is my witness.’

  ‘I can see that about you.’

  ‘Can you indeed?’ Covington was interested.

  Darwin looked uncomfortable. ‘It is a manner of speaking.’

  ‘You have seen me at my texts?’ insisted the boy. He was deaf to any sarcasm that Darwin allowed himself.

  At that moment, seeing a barrel of dirty salt that needed moving, Covington enfolded his arms around it, and raised it to a higher shelf.

  ‘Not there,’ Darwin said. ‘In the hold if you please. With my other stores.’

  Covington staggered below, where the air was fetid and always smelled of mildew and dead rats, and of a fishes’ graveyard. He stowed the salt between the parlour furniture of the Fuegians and a few labelled jars, and returned wiping his hands in quick-time down the side of his breeches.

  ‘You have good strength,’ said Darwin.

  ‘I have, if I am given good work,’ Covington boasted. ‘Lifting, carrying, hauling. It is all the same to me.’

  ‘You have concentrativeness, too.’

  Covington laughed, gladly remembering that great word and a few others besides.

  ‘Where are you from?’ Darwin asked.

  ‘The topgallant forecastle,’ Covington quipped, ‘above the coalhole. That’s where I swing my hammock. I sometimes believe I was born there, ’cause whenever I want better for myself, I get sent back there.’

  ‘Your accent is Bedfordshire,’ said Darwin.

  ‘Just so. There is no room for me there any more,’ Covington nodded, ‘except in the open fields. But then our John Phipps gave me a taste of the sea. Us Covingtons go back before Oliver Cromwell’s time, God bless ’im.’

  ‘Your people are dissenters, still?’

  ‘They are butchers and horse cappers,’ Covington nodded, ‘that is what they are. They love their meeting house and their ale.’

  ‘Bone men too?’

  ‘Aye. By the drayload.’

  ‘I am always chasing bones.’

  ‘It is a long road round, to go back to Bedford for them.’

  ‘Agreed, we are better off in America.’

  ‘We?’ said Covington with dim hunger in his voice.

  ‘Tell me more about you,’ said Darwin.

  ‘They say I was born in a stable and wrapped in a horse-blanket. I do remember this—on cold nights we put our feet in warm horse-cack. That is barely all I remember till I was taken to chapel, and then I saw a young man leaping a stile. He was in a stained-glass window. I kept reaching out to it.’

/>   ‘You wanted to break the glass?’

  ‘Nay, but I am telling you something curious. That young man had a round face and light-coloured hair, which puts me in mind of you, sir.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Darwin a little remotely.

  Covington leaned his hands on the table. The day had worn him down. He’d had nary a wink of sleep and his fever tackled him. Darwin peered at him close. ‘Use a chair, if you please,’ and sat Covington down. He felt pinched at the knees from the tight fit. He had legs like callipers and bumpety wrists that slung from his sleeves like bollards. And so did his brother Darwin have long legs, bumpety wrists, and so on.

  ‘It must be no great joy,’ said Covington, ‘to be wedged in here writin’ out your thoughts, while the sea bucks you around, and Lieutenant Stokes draws his charts at the same time, aye Mr Darwin?’

  ‘It has its compensations,’ said the gent, and Covington believed from the light in his steady eyes that he meant entertaining Covington himself in that steamy tinderbox might be one of them. ‘Covington,’ he stared at the boy roundly, ‘you are very ill. Don’t deceive me with it.’

  In his guts, Covington feared, he was working up to a run for the Spice Islands. But he shook his head. He didn’t want to leave where he was. ‘I am fit as a pudding in a dog’s mouth,’ he boasted as he looked around him. He had been in and out the poop cabin carrying cocoa, tea, beef on a platter and pease porridge by the bucketful; and looking in those books, that one time with Mr Stebbings; but had never looked around him as he did then, with such ease and freedom.

  ‘It is a real snug little home you have in here. You must be warm as a mouse in a churn.’

  ‘When it is calm I like it better than anywhere else in the world,’ acknowledged Darwin.

  ‘Is that where you place your pillow?’ Covington gestured at a plank.

  ‘Yea, and I can never get my legs fully stretched.’

  ‘It is easy to see why not—if you never make space behind your head.’

  ‘But then I would have no place for my pistol box.’