Caribbean (65 page)

When a listener asked if he expected to be fighting the French for the rest of his life, he snapped: “What other enemy could there be?” Quickly he corrected himself: “Enemies we have aplenty, but none so valiant at sea as the French. They’re the immortal foe.” As he uttered these words he was looking out upon the sea in which his great predecessor Drake had said precisely the same about the Spanish and in which his successors would affirm their undying enmity to the Germans. Same sea, same ships of oak and iron and steel, same men of
Devon and Sussex and Norfolk, same enemy under different names, same islands to defend, and same young fellows wondering in the long watches of the night whom they would marry.

Of his four requirements, it was the third which gave him the most difficulty—that his wife be rich. As the sixth of eleven children born to an impecunious Norfolk clergyman, he was inordinately afraid of poverty and obsessively concerned with money. This made him a shameful fortune hunter, willing to marry almost anyone if she brought him both a sufficient dowry and relatives who would give a forward push to his naval career, so he refrained from telling his young associates the real reason why he had avoided marriage with the various young charmers he had tentatively wooed.

In each case he tormented himself with ugly questions: How much will her parents give her? Will she inherit their wealth when they die? How soon could one expect them to die? Will she prove a careful custodian of the few funds we will have? And the most terrifying question of all: Suppose when this appointment ends I am not given a ship and am left ashore with only a hundred pounds a year? Could she possibly live with a naval officer on half-pay and with no prospects? And when the answers to this barrage of rhetorical questions proved adverse, as they always did, he fled the young woman, grieved over their separation, and stumbled like the amorous sailor he was into another infatuation doomed to a similar end.

This terrible preoccupation with money revealed itself only when he was thinking of his matrimonial problems. When free to think about himself in his role as a fighting man, he invariably ignored personal gain, as Admiral Digby reported on Nelson’s having been offered the New York Station: “I greeted him with ‘Good fortune, Lieutenant Nelson. You are come on a fine station for capturing prize money,’ and he astounded me by snapping: ‘Yes, sir, but the Caribbean is the station for gaining honor.’ ”

And it was honor, fame, glory that Horatio Nelson sought. Indeed, he was so hungry for these accoutrements to a naval career that as a boy he pleaded, badgered and groveled for assignments to fighting ships, and as a man, suffered untold humiliations in begging his superiors for an appointment to this or that larger ship. And if he was finally given one with 28 guns, he connived to get one with 64 and as soon as he boarded that ship he started machinations to get one with 74. But he was no fool chasing only greater size, for when he dined aboard the Spanish monster
Concepción
with her 112 guns, he
was not overawed, for he saw quickly that whereas “the Dons may make fine ships, they cannot seem to make the men to staff them. Long may they remain in their present state!”

As Nelson grew older he also grew more bold, and occasionally statements came tumbling out revealing his positive lust for glory. One night at the fortress in Port Royal he thought, while staring at the marvelous bay where the old town had vanished beneath the waves: How awful it would be to die before one had had his chance at glory! And next day he began writing a torrent of letters to his superiors, begging them for promotions, assignments to better posts, commands of this fine ship or that. Shameless in his ambition, he was also honing himself mercilessly in those attributes of leadership which would entitle him to command, if opportunity ever came.

Since he could find no white heiress to fit his requirements on Jamaica, he was forced to seek temporary companionship from among the lively beauties of no means who clustered about Fort Charles, and Jamaican legend would always insist that in his loneliness he found warm consolation in the arms of three different girls of high color. Their names are not recorded, for they were not deemed worthy of remembrance, being half-breeds, as the local gentry called them contemptuously, but the little houses near the fort in which they lived could be pointed out, especially in those later years when the name Nelson was engraved in golden letters in the hearts of Englishmen.

“That’s the wee house where Captain Nelson lived with his dark beauty,” the locals would say, and in time the three little houses lent a touch of humanity to the stories about the austere young captain who fretted in idleness awaiting a French attack on Port Royal.

Among the troops who monitored their captain’s amatory behavior with closest attention was Midshipman Alistair Wrentham, sixteen at the time and just beginning to experience the compelling fascination that a pretty girl can exert upon a young sailor. He was not yet brave enough to consider approaching one of the half-caste girls, and since he knew no other, he spent his time wandering about the ruins of Port Royal and standing on the inner shore of the island, trying to catch a glimpse of the houses that had sunk beneath the waves when the earthquake struck. Others could see them, or so they claimed, but not he; however, one afternoon when he commandeered a small boat and went prowling offshore, he did spot the battered remains of a ship that had sunk at that distant time, and when he hurried back to the fort to announce his discovery, Captain Nelson
himself wanted to be taken out to see the marvel, and in a kind of celebration he asked his dark lady friend to pack a basket of bread and cheese and dried meat, and he brought along a bottle of wine.

It was a gala afternoon, with Wrentham proud to be showing Nelson a matter connected with the sea, but the young fellow was deflated when Nelson peered closely below the waves and said: “That ship, that style of ship I mean, can’t be more than a dozen years old,” and when they rowed ashore to ascertain when the sinking had taken place, old-timers who had been watching them chuckled: “We know what you was thinkin’, the earthquake and all. That’n sunk ten years ago, caught in one of our hurricanes with her caulkin’ already worked loose. Went down like that.” So instead of receiving praise for his acuity as a sailor, even Nelson laughed at Alistair, not insultingly but with the implied caution: Look more carefully next time.

Wrentham’s attention was diverted from such matters when two servants from Trevelyan, the famous sugar plantation in the center of the island, came with a carriage to the spot on the big island opposite Port Royal, launched a small skiff and sailed over to the fort: “We bring a message to Midshipman Wrentham,” the men said, one white, one black, and when he stepped forward they turned to address Captain Nelson: “The Pembrokes who own our plantation are close friends of the Wrenthams on All Saints, and our master seeks permission to entertain the young man for six or seven days.” When they looked inquiringly at Nelson, he nodded briskly and said: “Fine young man. Ready for promotion soon. On your way.” But as Alistair was about to leave the fort, Nelson overtook him and cautioned: “Not seven days, five, because I may soon be moved to another station and I’d like to see you again before I leave.”

The servants sailed their skiff westward the short distance to where their carriage waited and then drove at a steady gait northwestward to Spanish Town, the stately capital of the island which still retained reminders of when Spain owned Jamaica. Wrentham, charmed by his first view of the interior of the island he had speculated upon so often while serving guard duty at the fort, hoped that the men would halt there for the night, but they pressed on, taking a narrow but colorful road that led north along the banks of a tumbling stream, first with the stream on the left, then a ford and the stream on the right. Tall trees lined the way, with birds weaving in and out of the lower branches and calling to one another as if to proclaim the coming of Alistair Wrentham into the realm of the great sugar plantations.

When they broke out of the leafy trail and into the broad expanse of handsome fields where the sugarcanes grew, the men explained: “Trevelyan ain’t the biggest plantation. The one we’re passin’ now is, off to the right. Croome it’s called, and it’s enormous. But ours is richer … better soil … better kept, too.” And when they reached that spot at which, years ago, Sir Hugh Pembroke used to stop to survey his principality, they saw roughly the same: “Yonder atop the hill, the windmills, sails flappin’. Below, the crusher where the oxen take the place of the breeze. See the little stone ribbon comin’ down the hill to them small buildin’s? Thass the channel brings the juice down to be cooked into sugar. And over there the most precious spot of all. Thass where we makes the black rum folks like so well, Trevelyan, and when you’re a man, don’t drink nothin’ else. ’Cause real men drinks Trevelyan.”

Urging the horses on, the men brought Alistair down from the rise and onto the handsome stone bridge with its two arches and the stone aqueduct forming one of the parapets, then across it and up a slight rise toward the imposing great house: “Golden Hall we calls it. Thass where the Pembrokes lives.” As they approached, the driver held the reins between his knees, brought his hands to his mouth, and uttered a powerful “Halloo!” and to the front door came not one of the older Pembrokes but the most ravishingly beautiful young woman Alistair had ever seen, blond hair neatly braided, very white skin, flashing dark eyes, a hint of dimples at the chin and mysterious hollows in the cheeks. She wore, that day when he first saw her, a simple white dress, gathered high above her waist and held in place by a pink ribbon whose carefully tied bow streamed in front. He even noticed her shoes, delicate slippers with no heels, but then he noticed something disheartening: she seemed, in that first glance, strangely older than he, perhaps even nineteen or twenty, and he supposed, with a sense almost of terror, that she was either married or engaged to some young man of the district.

“My name’s Prudence,” she said lightly as she came forward to extend her hand as he dropped off the carriage, and when he took it he felt quivering shocks run up his arm.

The five days he spent at Golden Hall with Prudence Pembroke and her family were an awakening to young Alistair, for even though his family, the Wrenthams of All Saints, was affiliated in some way with the Earls of Gore back in England, they had no sugar plantation nor the tremendous wealth that stemmed from the astute sale of
muscovado and rum to hungry factors in London. He had never seen such a well-run plantation, nor a mansion like Golden Hall, nor a family like the Pembrokes: great tables of highly polished wood, framed oil paintings on the wall, portraits of both Sir Hugh and his powerful friend in Parliament, William Pitt, servants in military-type uniforms, and signs of luxury everywhere. The conversation, too, was what he called “elegant,” for it dealt half with Jamaican problems, half with those in London, and he learned with dismay that fairly soon the Pembrokes, including Prudence, would be returning to their London home.

On that first full day at Golden Hall his embarrassment began, because, as he had anticipated, Prudence did turn out to be nineteen, more than three years older than he, but eight or nine years older in sophistication and her interest in the opposite sex. She was a kind girl and not boastful about her reception by men, but she could not help dropping intimations that in both Jamaica and London young men had found her attractive, or that they had taken her to this ball and that, and the more she said, the more clear it became that he at a callow sixteen would have no chance at all to engage her attention.

But as a well-bred young lady she knew it was her responsibility to help entertain this friend of her family, so she took him on an exploration of the plantation, an inspection of the building from which the dark rum of Trevelyan issued, and even an excursion back to Croome Plantation, where he met one of the owner’s sons, a young man in his late twenties. Is he the one she’s engaged to? he wondered in a flush of jealousy, but he was relieved later when she whispered: “He’s such a bore. All he thinks of are horses and hunting.”

On the third day, when he was helping her over a stile that bridged a fence, she stumbled on one of the descending steps and fell inescapably into his arms, and he felt an enormous urge to hold her there and embrace her and even kiss her, but he could do none of these things. Instead, to his astonishment, she kissed him, crying: “You’re a perfect gentleman, Midshipman Wrentham, and the girl who gets you will be mighty lucky.” And off they went to watch the slaves tending the still-unharvested canes.

It was that kiss which set his mind to thinking seriously about her, and although he realized that she could never be interested in him, he was increasingly interested in her, and late that night he was projected bolt upright in bed: My God! I do believe she’s the kind of young woman Captain Nelson’s been looking for. And he ticked off
the requirements he had heard Nelson expound so often: Loyal she would be, of that I’m convinced. Her parents have brought her up right. And she comes from an important family. They’d help him gain promotions. She’d look good, too, as an officer’s wife. Know what to do ashore. But then he thought: Is she rich? Obviously the family has money, but will any of it come to her?

He could not return to sleep, so convinced was he that if Prudence Pembroke was assured of funds, she was the ideal wife for his captain, and when day broke he was down early, awaiting her. In her absence he tried, with awkwardly self-revealing silences, to question his hosts regarding their plans for their daughter: “What happens to a huge place like this when …?” He could not say the phrase
you die
?

Mr. Pembroke had obviously contemplated this problem, for he said easily: “That’s always been a problem with us sugar planters, all of us. How to pass the plantation along without allowing it to be broken up.”

“How do you do that?”

“We always hand it on to the oldest son. That’s the English way, the safe way.”