Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth Read Free Book Online Page B

the Hamiltons in their barge and was to relate the details of this historic meeting in her autobiography. Three principals, then. First—always first—the hero, still sick, suffering from the prolonged anxiety of that long pursuit and the stress of the nighttime battle in the hazardous shallows at the mouth of the Nile, lonely, in need of comfort, in need of the mother we lost so young; Emma, the blacksmith’s daughter, exuberant, beautiful, excessive, ridden by follies, full of admiration for him, experienced in love; Sir William, aristocratic, cultivated, world-weary, aware of declining powers, prepared if need be (though perhaps not knowing it yet) to lend his wife or even give her, as she had been given by his nephew to him.
    So we go clattering uphill in our open carriage, leaving the pleasure boats and the white birds and the thronged quayside behind us, up to the Hamilton residence, easily recognizable at a distance by those vivid hangings of scarlet, white, and blue. After arriving, some hours of repose. While we are resting, darkness falls. The three thousand lamps that have been set in the façade of the palazzo all spring to life, and the words “Nelson of the Nile” blaze out over the city.
    We take our places at the dinner table. A distinguished gathering. Among the blue uniforms are those of Troubridge and Ball, constant companions of those Naples days. Your two favourite captains. It was they who carried the note to Ruffo that June morning the following year, the note that seemed to promise so much, that brought the Jacobins out of their forts. Your note. I didn’t want to think about this; I wanted to hold on to the scene of our triumph, there in the candlelight, honoured guest, perhaps unsettled by the steadiness of things after so long at sea, perhaps confused by the beauty of fullbodied Emma and the slimmer versions of her that looked down from the walls in a multitude of guises and postures, copies acquired by Sir William before the original was securely his: teenage rosebud Emma in a black hat and pink silk gown; Emma as a bacchante, auburn tresses in artful disarray, flimsy draperies loose about her; Emma as Saint Cecilia, robed in white, palms closed in prayer, eyes looking heavenwards.
    Your eyes were bombarded with Emma. Tired eyes, but not too tired to be beguiled. Were there glances already? Was there already something you wanted to repress or deny? Is that why you said you preferred Emma as a saint? Is that why you found occasion to say, with emphasis, there at the table, that the happiest day of your life was not the victory at the Nile but the day you married Lady Nelson?
    Your room was on the upper floor. It had a broad semicircular window looking southwards over the bay towards Capri. The entire opposite wall was covered with mirrors. You could see the pale disc of the moon rise from the fiery mouth of the volcano as if exhaled upwards. Below, on the silver water, the ruddy torchlights of the small boats, fishing for tuna. And all this again, this blending of ruddy and pale, reflected in every detail in the glass of the wall. And when, in the days of your sickness, the hot September afternoons when you were feverish and she came to tend you, to see to your comfort, as shemoved about the bedside you would see the lines of her body through the light summer clothes. And every movement, the turn of her shoulders, the sway of her hips, would be reflected in the glass. Repeated reflections like a repeated caress. Sweetness of the loins under the bedclothes …
    All this was to come. But how strange it must have seemed to you as you lay alone there on the first night, in that room of multiple reflections. It was the first time in six months that you had slept away from your ship.

5

    T hat night my sleep was broken by dreams. As so often, he was with me and there was the accustomed sense of mourning or lamentation, the massed sense of it and somehow the grain of it in the air. I never see his