Part 1 (2/2)

”At the bottom of the ocean,” chuckled my father.

”Of course, there are the Dutch.”

”The Dutch!” spat out my father.

”Worthy seamen,” put in Fennimore.

My father puffed his lips impatiently. ”There's no seaman like an English one and preferably a west countryman at that.”

My mother laughed with that touch of tender derision she so often showed towards my father. ”You will find Captain Pennlyon a little prejudiced,” she said.

I looked round the table. We must have seemed a strange family to Fennimore-if his own was a conventional one, which I imagined it was. There was my father with his wife and daughter and his three illegitimate sons and the mother of one of them. Of course it was clear that my father was no ordinary man, and for that matter, my mother was no ordinary woman. We were a small party because no one had known that we would have any special guest but there had been time to ask Carlos and Edwina to join us. In any case they often did.

Carlos's mother had been Spanish but he had inherited scarcely anything of hers, he was clearly my father's son. His hair was darkish brown and his eyes light hazel colour; he swaggered when he walked in a manner similar to that of our parent. He had been brought up under my father's influence from an early age and the great aim of his life seemed to have been to grow up as exactly like him as possible. He was a great favourite with Jake. So was Jacko, the son of Jennet, my mother's maid who had been with her for years and had shared many of my mother's adventures. She was a l.u.s.ty irrepressible woman and had had a succession of lovers. At the time it was one of the gardeners. We all knew, because for Jennet love-making was so natural that she made no secret of it. She was now in her forties and I had heard my mother tell her that she was just as l.u.s.tful as she had been in her twenties. She was enormously proud of Jacko and delighted that he had been brought up in the household to follow his father's profession. She thought there was no one quite like the Captain and was very proud that Jacko provided living evidence that he had once glanced her way. Then there was Penn-also with a look of the Captain, and his presence at the table with his mother was perhaps the most difficult to understand. Romilly Girling had come to the house when she had been dest.i.tute after her father had been killed in one of my father's s.h.i.+ps; and, during one of those periods of dissatisfaction with each other which had occurred in the past between my parents, my father out of pique or l.u.s.t had got Romilly with child. Penn was born and was brought up in the house as Romilly had nowhere else to go and it was only later that my mother had discovered who the boy's father was and it was inconceivable that she would turn them out of the house then. My father would never have allowed it in any case, and I think my mother liked to remind him now and then of his infidelities.

However, there we were on this day when Fennimore came to Lyon Court, all a.s.sembled at the table, the only absent one being my little sister Damask who was too young to be of the party. I think it was after her birth that my father realized that my mother would never have a boy and became reconciled to me.

Fennimore, I am sure, was too full of his own project to waste much time thinking about our household. It was clear that he wanted my father's backing for his project. It seems from what I could gather that he was hoping for some sort of partners.h.i.+p.

I listened to him with pleasure. He had an unusually soft musical voice for a sailor. I could not imagine his shouting to sailors on the deck. There could not have been a man less like my father. It was amazing how I compared them all with him.

”If we had entirely neglected trading,” Fennimore was saying, ”we could never have beaten the Armada. We shouldn't have had the s.h.i.+ps.”

”Traders!” cried my father. ”Nothing to do with it. We beat the Dons because we were better seamen and we were determined not to let them set foot on our land.”

”Yes, yes, Captain Pennlyon, that's true of course. But we had to have the s.h.i.+ps and by good fortune we had them.”

”Now, young man, don't you make the mistake of thinking this victory was due to luck. Good fortune, you say. Good seamans.h.i.+p, say I.”

”It was that, but we did have the s.h.i.+ps,” insisted Fennimore. ”Did you know that in 1560 we had but seventy-one s.h.i.+ps trading on the seas and in 1582 we'd increased that number to one hundred and fifty? Why, in 1560, sir, our merchant navy was almost nothing ... we weren't among the maritime nations. What were we doing? Our coastal trade was insignificant. We did a little with the Baltic ports-just with the Low Countries and perhaps a little with Spain, Portugal and France ... a few Mediterranean calls. That will not be so any more. We, Captain, are going to be not one of the foremost trading nations in the world but the foremost. There's coal to be carried ... coal and fish. This has been done in the past, but now that we have driven the Spaniards off the seas we have to take advantage of it.”

My father was listening now. Any method of worsting the Spaniards appealed to him.

I found it fascinating to listen to Fennimore. It was obvious that he had studied the matter; he believed in it wholeheartedly. Carlos was inclined to support him, while waiting for the cue from my father, of course. Jacko watched with bright eyes so like his mother's; if the family was going into trade he wanted to be in it too. Penn's eyes never left our father's face. And watching him there, his startling blue eyes fierce at the mention of Spaniards, I was never more conscious of his intolerance and there was a great yearning in me for him to like and approve of Fennimore Landor. I realized that Fennimore in his way was as determined as my father was in his; but while one was noisily vociferous the other achieved as much impact by his quiet insistence.

I sat listening to his voice and it was as though he created before my eyes the fulfilment of a dream. He was going to make our country great-not through war which to my father had always seemed the way to do this, but through trade. To ply peacefully throughout the world practising legitimate trading would prove more profitable, Fennimore was implying, than riding the high seas armed with guns and cannon, boarding, robbing, fighting, killing-sometimes acquiring a prize of great worth and as often suffering loss as well as death.

”The time has come,” he cried. ”The troubles between the Low Countries and the Spaniards have crippled them both. What fools men are to kill when they might trade peaceably! At one time Antwerp was a centre of great wealth-one of the greatest in the world. The closing of the Schelde three years ago finished that. We have still to contend with Amsterdam. They'll be our rivals for a while. That is good. Rivalry is necessary. It is the spur.”

He leaned his elbows on the table and contemplated my father earnestly.

”I prophesy that in the next decade we in this country will build a merchant fleet which will be the envy of the world. We have come through a great ordeal victorious. It is not for us now to gloat over our enemies but to go on to greatness. Our derision cannot hurt them-our trading s.h.i.+ps will. We have to beat the argosies of Venice, the tartanes of Ma.r.s.eilles. G.o.d and our seamen have taken care of the galleys of Barcelona.”

I clapped my hands together and then I flushed because everyone was looking at me.

”Congratulations, Captain Landor,” I stammered. ”I ... was quite carried away.”

He smiled at me then and it seemed a very long moment that we looked at each other.

”The trading s.h.i.+ps would have to be equipped with guns,” my father said.

”There is no doubt of that,” replied Fennimore warmly, ”for there will always be pirates. We must be ready. Our s.h.i.+pyards should now be working at full strength. We need s.h.i.+ps, s.h.i.+ps, s.h.i.+ps.”

”England has always had need of s.h.i.+ps,” said Carlos.

”But rarely as urgently as now. We have this breathing s.p.a.ce. I doubt the Spaniards will ever recover from the trouncing they've had. Our rivals will be the Dutch. We must be prepared to meet the challenge.”

”And this,” said my father, ”is what you wish to speak to me about.”

”Captain Pennlyon, your praises are sung all along these coasts and farther. The Queen herself has spoken of you as one of the guardians of the realm.”

”G.o.d bless her,” said my father. He lifted his gla.s.s and we all drank to Queen Elizabeth.

”May this be the beginning of a new era,” said Fennimore earnestly. ”The great age of peace, trade and prosperity because of these great blessings.”

”Amen,” said my mother.

My father looked at her and I saw the faint smile which pa.s.sed between them; I knew then that she would persuade him to consider Fennimore's proposal, whatever it was going to be, and that he would.

After that the conversation became more general.

Jacko had two of the new medals which had been struck to commemorate the victory. We all laughed over the one on which was engraved ”Venit, vidit, fugit,” a play on Julius Caesar's ”I came, I saw, I conquered.” With the Spaniards they had come, seen and fled.

My father kept gazing at it and chuckling over it.

My mother said: ”The Captain has suffered a great bereavement. He has lost his Spaniards. What shall you do, Jake, with no one to curse, no throats to cut, none to run through with your sword?”

”I doubt not,” he said, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng fire at her, ”that there are some lurking in that poxy land who will yet feel the steel of my sword.”

Edwina commented that she had heard that Robert Dudley's death had caused the Queen great sorrow. ”She truly loved him,” she said. ”What a pity she could not have married him. I believe she would have been happy to do so.”

”She was too wise for that,” said Fennimore. ”She is a great Queen. England comes first with her. She would let no man come between her and her duty to her country.”

”I like the medal,” said my mother, ”which stresses the fact that she is a woman and that a woman was at the heart of our victory. 'Dux femina facti.' It is a heartening thought ... for us women.”

”She is an unusual woman, don't forget, and she wears a crown,” said Jake. ”'Twould be a sorry state of affairs if all women thought they could govern men.”

”'Twould be worth a try,” retorted my mother. ”You have all been saying-and my husband in particular-that we have just had the most resounding victory ever known. And a woman was at the heart of it. I like that medal.”

”There were men who served her well,” pointed out Fennimore. ”But perhaps they did so because she was a woman.”

Edwina said that in her opinion men and women should work together. There should be no rivalry between them. They should be complementary one to the other.

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