The Flag Captain

He saw Ferguson’s wife, plump and rosy cheeked in her white cap and spotless apron, scurrying to greet him, her face torn between pleasure and tears as she curtsied and said, “Never a warning, sir! But for Jack, the exciseman, we’d not have known you were back! He saw your topsails when the mist lifted and rode here to tell us.”

“Things have changed, Ferguson!” Bolitho removed his hat and walked through the high entrance, aware of the cool stone, the ageless textures of oak panelling which shone dully in the filtered sunlight. “There was a time when the young men of Falmouth could smell a King’s ship before it topped the horizon.”

Ferguson looked away. “Not many young men left now, sir. Those not in safe jobs have all been taken or volunteered! He followed him into the broad room with its empty fireplace and tall leather-backed chairs.

It was very quiet here too, as if the whole house was holding its breath.

Ferguson said, “I will fetch you a glass, sir.” He gestured to his wife and the two servant girls behind Bolitho’s back. “You’ll be wanting some time alone on your first hour…”

Bolitho did not turn. “Thank you.” He heard the door close behind him and then moved to the foot of the staircase, the wall of which was lined with the paintings of all the others who had lived here before him. So familiar. Nothing had changed, and yet…

The stairs creaked as he climbed slowly past the watching

portraits. Captain Daniel Bolitho, his great-great-grandfather, who had fought the French at Bantry Bay. Captain David Bolitho, his great-grandfather, depicted here on the deck of a blazing ship, who had died fighting pirates off the African coast. Where the stairs turned to the right old Denziel Bolitho, his grandfather, the only member of the family to reach the rank of rear-admiral, waited to greet him like a friend. Bolitho could still remember him, or thought he could, from the days when he had sat on his knee as a small child. But maybe it was his father’s stories about him and the familiar picture which he really recalled. He paused and looked directly at the last portrait.

His father had been younger when the portrait had been finished. Straight-backed, level-eyed, with the empty sleeve pinned across his coat, an afterthought of the painter after he had lost an arm in India. Captain James Bolitho. It was difficult to remember him as he had looked on their last meeting so many years back when he had told Bolitho of his other son’s disgrace. Hugh, the apple of his eye, who had killed a brother officer in a duel before fleeing to America to fight against his own country in the Revolution.

Bolitho sighed deeply. They were all dead. Even Hugh, whose deceptions had finally ended in death before his own eyes. A death which was still a secret he could share with no one. Hugh’s record of failure and deception would stay a secret, and his memory rest in peace if he had anything to do with it.

Ferguson called from the foot of the stairs, “I have put the glass by the window, sir. Some claret.” He paused uncertainly before adding, “In your bedroom, sir.” He sounded ill at ease. “They were to have been a surprise, but had not been finished at the time of your last visit…” His voice trailed away as Bolitho walked quickly to the door at the end of the landing and pushed it open.

For a moment longer he could see no change. The four-poster bed held in a shaft of dappled sunlight from the windows. The

tall mirror where she must have sat to comb her hair when he had been away… he felt his throat go dry as he turned to see the two new pictures on the far wall. It was just as if she was alive again, here in this room where she had waited in vain for his return. He wanted to move closer but was afraid, afraid the spell might break. The artist had even caught the sea-green in her eyes, the rich chestnut of her long hair. And the smile. He took a slow step towards it. The smile was perfect. Gentle, amused, the way she had looked at him whenever she had been near.

A step sounded in the doorway and Ferguson said quietly, “She wanted them together, sir.”

Bolitho looked at the other portrait for the first time. He was depicted wearing his old dress coat, the one with the broad white lapels which Cheney had liked so much.

He said huskily, “Thank you. It was good of you to remember her wishes.”

Then he walked quickly to the window and leaned over the warm sill. There, just round the hill, he could see the glittering horizon line. What she would have seen from this same window. Once he might have been saddened, even angry, that Ferguson had put the pictures here. To remind him of her, and his loss. He would have been wrong, and now as he stood with his palms resting on the sill he felt strangely at peace. For the first time that he could recall for a long while.

Below in the yard an old gardener peered up and waved his battered hat but he did not see him.

He stepped back into the room and turned once more towards the portraits. They were reunited here. Cheney had seen to that, and nothing could take them apart any more. When he was back at sea again, perhaps on the other side of the world, he would be able to think of this room. The portraits side by side, watching the horizon together.

He said, “That claret will be warm by now. I’ll come down directly.”

Later as he sat at the big desk, writing several letters to be carried to the port officials and chandlers, he thought about all that had happened here in this house. What would become of it when he died? There was only his young nephew, Adam Pascoe, Hugh’s illegitimate son, left to claim the Bolitho inheritance. He was away serving with Captain Thomas Herrick at the moment, but Bolitho decided he would soon do something for the boy to make sure of his rightful ownership of this house. His mouth hardened. Much as he loved his sister Nancy, he would never allow her husband, a Falmouth magistrate and one of the biggest landowners in the county, to get his hands on it.

Ferguson appeared again, his face set in a frown.

“Beg pardon, sir, but there’s a man to see you. He is most insistent.”

“Who is he?”

“I have never laid eyes on him before. A seafaring fellow, there’s no doubt of that, but no officer or gentleman, I’m equally sure!”

Bolitho smiled. It was hard to recall Ferguson as the man who had once been brought aboard his ship Phalarope by the press-gang, he and Allday together, poles apart it had appeared at the time. Yet they had become firm friends, and even when Ferguson had lost an arm at the Saintes he had continued to serve Bolitho here as his steward. Like Allday, he seemed to have that same protective attitude when anything uncertain or unusual was about to occur.

He said, “Show him in. He’ll not be too dangerous, I think.”

Ferguson ushered the visitor through the doors and closed them with obvious reluctance. He would be waiting within a foot of the entrance, Bolitho guessed, just in case.

“What can I do for you?”

The man was thickset and muscular, well tanned and with hair

fashioned into a pigtail. He was wearing a coat which was far too small for him, and Bolitho imagined it had been borrowed to cover up his true identity. For there was no mistaking his broad white trousers and buckled shoes. Even if he had been stark naked he would have known him to be a sailor.

“I begs yer pardon for the liberty, sir.” He knuckled his forehead while his eyes moved quickly round the room. “Me name’s Taylor, master’s mate o’ th’ Auriga, sir.”

Bolitho watched him calmly. He had a faint North Country burr, and was obviously nervous. A deserter hoping for mercy, or a place to hide in another ship? It was not unknown for such men to run back to the one and only world where they might be safe with any sort of luck. Yet there was something vaguely familiar about him.

Taylor added quickly, “I was with you in th’ Sparrow, sir. Back in seventy-nine in th’ West Indies.” He watched Bolitho anxiously. “I was maintopman then, sir.”

Bolitho nodded slowly. “Of course, I remember you now.” In the little sloop Sparrow, his first-ever command, when he had been just twenty-three, and the world had seemed a place for reckless enjoyment and unbounded ambition,

“ We ’eard you was back sir.” Taylor was speaking rapidly. “An’ because o’ me knowin’ you like, I was chosen to come.” He smiled bitterly. “I thought as I’d ’ave to borrow a boat or swim to yer ship. You comin’ ashore so soon made things easier like.” He dropped his eyes under Bolitho’s gaze.

“Are you in trouble, Taylor?”

He looked up, his eyes suddenly defensive. “That will depend on you, sir. I was chosen to speak with you, an’, an’, knowin’ you as a fair an’ just captain, sir, I thought maybe you’d listen to…”

Bolitho stood up and studied him calmly. “Your ship, where is she lying?”