Mrs. Cook Page 15

  They brought her through the house and out to the back where they firmly tethered her, the hens clucking like disapproving old ladies at this creature with whom they were to share their domain.

  ‘I think I need the aid of two strong lads to bring in the chests,’ said James.

  A small crowd of neighbours had gathered outside the front door. James nodded a greeting while he and the boys lugged the things inside. Time enough for friends and neighbours when he was once more in the bosom of his family.

  That night the boys were allowed to stay up as long as they wanted, and it was after midnight when they finally laid their heads on their pillows.

  Before James and Elizabeth followed, to enjoy the long-anticipated intimacy of their bed, James went to one of the sea chests and brought out a package wrapped in cloth with leather binding around it. ‘My dear,’ he said, presenting it to her. Elizabeth undid the deft sailor’s knots and out tumbled letters, hundreds of them, one for each week that he had been away.

  Elizabeth left them where they fell. She would savour each and every letter later. Right now there was an urgent need to reacquaint herself with their author, to share her bed with her real husband after so many nights with the imagined one.

  She felt the softness of his lips on hers, the play of fingers, the trembling of their bodies as they recharted one another. Elizabeth thought that perhaps after so long the ultimate intimacy might be difficult, as it had been on their wedding night, but instead it was the greatest ecstasy. She felt her skin, her very boundaries, melt and she became the warm South Seas.

  Afterwards, as they lay together, she asked, ‘Did you find the Great South Land?’

  ‘Of riches beyond compare? I have come home to it, Elizabeth.’

  It was not till the first morning birds began twittering, after a night in which neither James nor Elizabeth slept, that the subject of the absent children was broached.

  ‘Hugh told me about Eliza,’ said James softly.

  Elizabeth bowed her head, tears pricking her eyes. How quickly the sadness welled up, even in the midst of happiness.

  James had never known the baby Joseph, but felt keenly the loss of little Eliza. ‘I want to visit her grave. Will you come with me, Elizabeth?’

  Elizabeth picked flowers from the garden and gave them to her husband. Together they walked in the fresh morning, towards St Dunstan’s.

  Elizabeth led James to the grave. He placed the flowers in front of the headstone, and stood quietly, his head bowed. Elizabeth took a step back, to allow her husband a moment alone with his daughter, but he reached his arm out and together they stood. ‘Talk to me of her,’ he asked.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath, preparing her heart for this difficult task, for the sweet sadness of remembering the dead. As Elizabeth had told Eliza of her father, now she told the father of his daughter, how affectionate she was, kissing everyone and putting her little hands on their cheeks. When neighbours asked after her father, she would say, ‘Papa is in Tahiti’, rising up on her toes as if she couldn’t pronounce the name of the place without doing so. Elizabeth told him how they had all witnessed the transit of Venus, how at Christmas Eliza asked if Papa was playing bullet pudding. Finally, Elizabeth told James that their daughter had died peacefully. She did not mention the racking coughs, the fever that consumed her, the terrible sound of her gurgling breath.

  James looked at his wife, into her oceanic eyes, and found the etchings of lines around them that had not been there before. ‘How difficult it must have been for you, both Eliza and the new baby.’

  She nodded, but said nothing of the bleakness that had invaded her, how she’d wanted to bury herself in ashes to avoid God’s will. How she now understood the nature of the darkness in which Mama drowned.

  Slowly they walked back to Assembly Row, where the boys were already up, despite their late night, as if it were Christmas morning. They couldn’t stop looking at their father, not wanting to miss a single word, a single movement, not even the blink of an eye.

  After breakfast, the grand opening of the chests began. There were presents for Elizabeth and the boys, for friends and family, but most of the booty was bound for the Admiralty.

  James presented Elizabeth with several pieces of tapa cloth from Tahiti, some with coloured designs and others plain. She felt its papery texture as James told her it was from the bark of a tree, and beaten rather than woven. Nevertheless, the fabric was fine and Elizabeth appreciated the workmanship of it. Also for Elizabeth was a ring made of turtleshell with the tooth of a shark attached. She slipped it onto her finger after the boys had closely examined it. The ring fitted perfectly. Elizabeth was amazed that the Tahitians’ fingers were the same size as her own. ‘When the women dance they move their fingers like this,’ said James, making the motion of waves.

  ‘The men too?’ asked Nat.

  James showed them how the men danced, legs apart, thighs thrust out in a suggestive manner, though fortunately the suggestion was lost on the boys.

  The next item appeared to be some sort of mat. ‘A mantle worn in wet weather,’ said James, lifting it out of the chest. ‘A gift from a Tahitian chief.’ It was made of pandanus leaves, James explained, which repelled the rain, and it had a dark brown ornamental border.

  ‘It rains in Tahiti?’ That was not Elizabeth’s idea of paradise.

  ‘By the bucketload. Then it is over and done with. The sun comes out again.’

  For Jamie there was a hatchet of jade from New Zealand. It was dark green, the colour of yew trees, and had a smooth, polished finish. For Nat, an adze, the head fashioned from dense black volcanic stone, and bound to the handle with coconut fibre. There were fish hooks made of shells, decorated paddles and clubs, cloaks made of feathers, a basket of coconut fibre with shells and beads decorating it. It seemed as though all of the South Seas was spread out in the Cooks’ living room.

  The quantity of items brought back by James was nothing compared to the bounty gathered by Dr Solander and, especially, Mr Banks. ‘Is it true that Mr Banks brought back 17 000 plants we’ve never before seen in England?’ Elizabeth asked.

  The newspapers were full of the voyage, all of London ablaze with Mr Banks this and Mr Banks that, but little mention of James. Though James did not keep a house in fashionable New Burlington Street, as did the celebrated Mr Banks, with nobility dropping in to visit, he was high in the esteem of everyone at number 8 Assembly Row. To the boys it was as if King George had come to stay. The Admiralty, too, was obviously impressed. The minutes of their meeting for 1 August 1771 read: ‘Resolved that [Lieutenant Cook] be acquainted the Board extremely well approve of the whole of his proceedings, and have great satisfaction in the account he gives of the good behaviour of his officers and men, and of the cheerfulness and alertness which they went through the fatigues and dangers of the Voyage . . . ’

  There was talk of a second voyage, hopefully not too soon, Elizabeth thought to herself. It looked as if James would never resume his post in Newfoundland. He was mapping the whole world now. Mr Banks would go again, and on a much larger scale.

  While Mr Banks could not help but be puffed up by being the toast of the town, he did not forget his friend and fellow traveller, James Cook. It was Banks who had the pleasure of writing to James to tell him that he had been promoted to captain.

  There was a family dinner to celebrate the promotion, with Charles, Isaac and their young sister Ursula present. Isaac must have grown six inches since he’d been away and, while not yet twenty, had developed a confident, smooth manner. ‘Captain Cook,’ he said, striding into the room and shaking James’s hand.

  ‘Isaac had the honour of being first to step ashore at Botany Bay,’ announced James. ‘He’s master’s mate now.’

  James had discovered the east coast of New Holland, which he re-named New South Wales. Elizabeth recalled James’s letter about this ‘capacious safe and commodious’ bay, their first landing place. Mr Banks likened the coastline to a ‘lean cow, cove
red in general with long hair but nevertheless where her scraggy hip bones have stuck out farther than they ought accidental rubbs and knocks have entirely bard them of their covering’. The natives, who went about naked, were a very dark brown with hair ‘black and lank much like ours’, James wrote. Unlike the South Seas people he had so far come across, the New Holland natives distanced themselves. Even the beads and nails left as gifts for them remained untouched.

  ‘It was Stingray Harbour when I first stepped ashore,’ Isaac began, ‘on account of the stingrays. Then the captain renamed it Botanist Harbour because of the large number of new plants Banks and Solander collected.’ Isaac’s words almost tumbled over each other in his haste to get them out. Beneath his man-of-the-world veneer Elizabeth saw the excitement of the small boy who had once marvelled over James’s instruments.

  ‘And eventually,’ added James, ‘long after we’d left the place, it became Botany Bay.’

  They had not found the Great South Land. Hopes of finding it had risen when they sighted New Zealand but were dispelled when the Endeavour skirted the coast of that country and discovered it to be two large islands. New Holland was not the fabled continent either. ‘As far as we know,’ said James, ‘it does not produce anything that can become an article of trade to invite Europeans to fix a settlement upon it. However the eastern side is not that barren and miserable country that Dampier and others have described the western side to be. Everything flourishes and the natives think themselves provided with all the necessities of life.’

  ‘Ahem,’ Cousin Charles cleared his throat, finally finding a gap in the conversation. He unrolled his copy of the Historical Chronicle and proceeded to read:

  An express arrived at the Admiralty, with the agreeable news of the arrival in the Downs of the Endeavour, Captain Cook from the East Indies. This ship sailed in August, 1768 with Mr Banks, Dr Solander,Mr Green, and other ingenious gentlemen on board for the South Seas to observe the transit of Venus; they have since made a voyage round the world, and touched at every coast and island, where it was possible to get on shore, to collect every species of plant, and other rare productions of Nature. Their voyage, upon the whole, has been as agreeable and successful as they could have expected, except the death of Mr Green, who died upon his passage from Batavia. Dr Solander has been a good deal indisposed, but it is hoped a few days refreshment will soon establish his health. Captain Cook and Mr Banks are perfectly well.

  Although it was old news, dated Saturday 13 July, everyone took great pleasure in hearing it. ‘Ingenious gentlemen,’ repeated Nat. ‘Yes,’ said Jamie, ‘and we have two of them at the table with us.’ They laughed, and every time either of them addressed James or Isaac they called them ‘ingenious gentlemen’ again.

  ‘How’s the goat faring?’ asked Isaac.

  ‘Eating her way through the garden,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We’ve had to tether her closer to the house. She’s developed a taste for roses, thorns and all.’ Elizabeth turned to Ursula, who had barely said a word. ‘Perhaps after dinner we can feed her the scraps. Would you like to do that, Ursula?’ The little girl nodded.

  ‘A true Endeavour voyager is our goat, one who eats whatever is at hand,’ said James. ‘Banks maintains that he has eaten his way further into the animal kingdom than any man, but we were right there with him, eh, Isaac?’

  Isaac started listing some of the beasts that had kept the voyagers alive. ‘Penguin, kangaroo, dog. Everything that walks, crawls, hops, swims or flies. Banks has a recipe for albatross, if ever you happen to come across one at Billingsgate Market. “Skin them and soak their carcasses in salt water overnight, then parboil them and throw away the water, then stew them well with very little water. When sufficiently tender, serve them up with a savoury sauce”. But the albatross had its revenge on our botanist. He was sick for days afterwards.’

  ‘Did you eat a man?’ asked Jamie.

  ‘Jamie!’ admonished Elizabeth.

  ‘The fellows at school say that the men of New Zealand are cannibals,’ Jamie defended himself.

  ‘Aye, that they are,’ said his father. ‘They eat the bodies of their enemies, to take in their strength.’

  ‘Do they eat everything? The ears and eyes as well?’ asked Nat, eager for gory detail.

  ‘They preserve the heads for trophies,’ said James. ‘Banks bought a head from the Maoris, or rather, it seems he forced them to sell it to him, because they never showed us another afterwards.’

  Ursula looked as if she were about to faint, and pushed her dinner plate away.

  ‘I think we’ve had enough on that subject.’ Elizabeth drew herself up. ‘There are certain people at this table who are very impressionable.’

  Elizabeth was sitting up in bed drinking a cup of tea and reading James’s letters. The Tahitian ring was on the bedside table. To the image of a tropical paradise, with verdant mountains and coral seas, were now added turtles and sharks.

  ‘There’s much mention in your letters of thievery,’ Elizabeth commented. She watched her husband shave, preparing himself for the day. How she treasured these moments, the everyday intimacies that for other wives were a common occurrence.

  ‘There was much thievery,’ James said. ‘At one stage a native even made off with the quadrant, which was kept under heavy guard.’

  ‘But it was retrieved,’ Elizabeth pointed out.

  ‘Thankfully, yes.’

  Elizabeth thought of all the curiosities laid out in the living room downstairs, how the boys could hardly wait to touch and handle everything. She thought of the shops in London, with everything on enticing display. That’s what the Endeavour must have looked like to the natives, a big shop full of curiosities, and so many of them that the sailors wouldn’t miss one or two.

  ‘I think it was not so much covetousness as a game of skill,’ James said.

  ‘Or in return for Banks taking so many of their plants,’ Elizabeth suggested.

  She went back to the letters. Canoes coming to greet the Endeavour, coconuts, breadfruit and fish in exchange for beads. ‘Apart from the thievery, it sounds as if you had good relations with them.’

  ‘Would that it was always so in the South Seas,’ said James, putting on his shirt. ‘We enter their ports and attempt to land in a peaceable manner. If we succeed, all is well. If not, we land nevertheless and maintain our footing by the superiority of our firearms. In what other light can they first look upon us but as invaders of their country?’ James continued dressing, getting ready to take the boys to Stepney Green.

  ‘The Tahitians didn’t mind you cutting down their trees to make a fort on Point Venus?’

  ‘I asked permission first, and offered gifts as payment. They seemed not to mind the construction at all. On the contrary, they pitched in and helped, digging trenches and carrying water, as if it were all a huge game. One of the chiefs even brought his family along and set up house near the site.’ James buttoned up his waistcoat. He’d not be needing a jacket on this warm day, certainly not to play cricket.

  After James and the boys left, Elizabeth continued reading. The fort became a little community, with a kitchen-dining tent, a forge for the blacksmith, and even a tent set up for Sunday service. For Divine Service ‘as many of the principal natives were admitted as we conveniently could’, wrote James, ‘and there was a vast concourse of people without the fort. The whole thing was conducted very quietly, those in the tent doing as we did, kneeling, standing or sitting. They understood perfectly that we were speaking with our God, as they themselves worship an invisible and omnipotent being.’

  Elizabeth thought of the Bible, now safely home again, which she’d lovingly prepared for the voyage, with its frontispiece showing the light of God shining down on all the peoples of the world. Eliza’s death had made her want to hide from the Lord. Now she felt ready to stand in His sight, to feel the light which shone on all the peoples of the world also shine on her.

  A PAIR OF SHOE BUCKLES

  There was much ado in t
he Cook household leading up to 14 August. ‘Go to the hatter to collect your father’s hat,’ Elizabeth instructed Jamie and Nat. ‘Make sure he puts it into a proper hat box, and mind you take care with it on the way home.’ She had not sent her husband’s dress clothes to the washerwoman, preferring this time to take care of the laundry herself. She had soaked his stockings in lye to remove stains. He would have the whitest stockings in the whole of London. The same with the white kerchief and cuffs. On 14 August, Lord Sandwich was to take James to meet the king.

  ‘You are fussing too much, Elizabeth,’ James said as she got him to try on his coat and made small alterations at the back of the waist. ‘I am to show the king my charts and recount the voyage, not impress him with my sartorial splendour.’

  Elizabeth knew what a special honour it was to have an audience with the king. Ladies and gentlemen who were presented at court spent thousands of pounds on new attire. The least the Cooks could do was make the old look like the new.

  ‘I feel like a marionette,’ James grimaced.

  ‘As well you might. You don’t want your coat splitting when you bow to His Majesty. Have you practised your bowing?’

  James smiled. Despite his protests, he was quite enjoying the fuss. An audience with the king would certainly be something to tell his father, and John Walker, when they went to Yorkshire at Christmas as planned.

  Satisfied with the coat, Elizabeth made preparations for ironing, first securing a blanket on the table while the coals were getting nice and hot. Rather than using a flat-iron, which risked imparting rust and dirt to garments, she used a hollow box-iron into which she placed, with the aid of tongs, a glowing hot coal. When the ironing was done, she carefully placed the billowing shirt on a hanger. All that remained were the shoes.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ said James, ‘I can do the shoes myself. Do not exhaust yourself.’

  As a small concession, she let him black his own shoes and polish them to a mirror-like finish, inspecting the work to see that it was to her satisfaction. It was.