Mrs. Cook Read online

  James came and sat on the bed. ‘It will be my last voyage, Elizabeth, I promise you.’

  ‘You think you are the only one to voyage? I have made discoveries I didn’t wish to make. Three children dead. Do you know to which bleak shore that takes me? You said your tribulations started on that long reef of New Holland, but the reef of grief is endless and the coral sharp as knives. So many times I have been stranded there, alone, James, without you. I doubt I can survive another voyage,’ she said, her voice barely audible.

  James reached out to his wife but she pulled away. So much she wanted to lie in his arms, to dissolve in his embrace, to have the pain soothed. But it would be a barbed embrace by the one who had caused that pain.

  ‘Elizabeth, you are the only woman I have ever loved. I swear this by Almighty God. And I swear that I am, and have always been your faithful husband. At home and in parts beyond the seas, you are my constant companion, my succour and my desire, you are as much a part of me as my own flesh.’

  ‘But not enough to keep you by my side,’ Elizabeth threw his loving words back in his face. ‘I’ve had to be mother and father to the children, struggle to learn about your precious instruments, navigation, astronomy, your precious South Seas, so that I can try to explain to Jamie and Nat what it is that keeps their father away from them.’

  She saw him flinch, the muscles in his jaw tighten. ‘Be patient, dear Elizabeth, for one more time.’

  ‘I have been patient! I have waited two years, three. Before we married I waited seven years.’ The waiting years rose out of Elizabeth like a tidal wave and came crashing down.

  James looked on, wanting to help her but not knowing how. There was no rope he could throw to reel her in to safety. ‘I must undertake the enterprise, it is my duty to my country.’

  ‘Duty? It’s more than duty that drives you. Is it not enough to be the celebrated circumnavigator Captain Cook, do you want to be Sir James Cook? Certainly your gentlemen friends love and admire you, but you’re a curiosity to them, a farm boy from Yorkshire, a curiosity like Omai.’

  ‘And they are a curiosity to me!’ James lashed out. ‘Sandwich, Banks, even the king himself!’

  Elizabeth was shocked. ‘You put yourself above the king?’ It was close to blasphemy.

  ‘Not above. Outside. He is the king of this island, but the world is full of islands. I have touched noses with Maori chiefs, shared their breath. Exchanged clothes, names, with the kings of Tahiti, and become their brother.’

  ‘King Toot? Is that it? Perhaps you’ve voyaged too far already, James.’

  By the time the darkness of night turned to a dirty grey, Elizabeth had exhausted herself. James had remained in the room but an ocean away from the bed, passing the last shreds of night in a chair, fully clothed. Neither slept, each wrapped quietly in their own pain. The vigilant Gates knew better than to knock on the door, to bring master and mistress their morning cup of tea.

  Although Elizabeth lay still, James knew perfectly well that she was awake.

  ‘Can I bring you anything?’ he said quietly, his voice strained from the night.

  ‘No thank you,’ she replied sharply.

  Elizabeth felt the icy breeze as James got out of the chair. ‘I have business in town,’ he said, and left the room, the house. Dressed just as he was, as he had been the night before.

  Elizabeth heard a murmured query from Gates downstairs, then the brusque tone of James’s reply. The door opening, the life of the street, vendors’ cries, horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels, all becoming muted as the door shut firmly.

  They had argued, said terrible things. Elizabeth had uttered death’s name, and it had all coursed through her blood to the unborn one. She took a deep breath, saw the mound of her stomach rise and fall. The anguish must stop here, she must draw a curtain on it. What had been said must never leave this room. Elizabeth wondered how much the sound sleeper Gates had heard. She had no reason to doubt her servant’s loyalty, yet it had never before been tested in this way.

  Elizabeth curved her hands upon her belly, making a net of her fingers. James’s pronouncement was still there, a piece of grit in her heart. She must not let it grow, because then every time she took a breath she would feel the lump of it, black and hard as coal, till it grew so big she would not be able to draw breath at all, and the little one would suffocate.

  Her dream of James as a landman would never become reality. She had married a seaman and a seaman’s wife she would remain. With a big heave, Elizabeth pushed away the reminder that Mr Blackburn, also a seaman, had retired well before the age James was now, and had settled to land life. But Mr Blackburn was hardly in the same fish kettle as James.

  Elizabeth cradled the unborn child in her interlaced fingers. She would like to hold her husband like this, in her belly, nurturing him, keeping him safe, surrounding him with her warm sea of protection. She carried James’s seed inside her, and she must let the little one be nurtured in calm waters, not the tempest that had erupted last night. Elizabeth imagined her breath as wind, a gentle breeze that floated the clouds away. A sky of uninterrupted blue as far as the eye could see, a great empty sky, the weather at rest. A seabird, white as snow, flew into her imagined sky, bowed its wings then hovered in the uplift of wind before soaring into the blue. James must go, must sail, as surely as this bird must fly.

  Elizabeth’s husband did have a mistress—the Pacific Ocean—and he wanted no other man to have her. She had had other lovers before James, but he was her best. None caressed her the way he did, charted and mapped her every feature. None had penetrated her the way he had, found her most secret places. To no other had she yielded them. He loved her in all her moods, when she was calm and pleasant, when she teased, when she was fitful and sultry. He was alert to her every move, to her sighs, to the way she carried him along. He fought against her fury, a match of master and mistress. He rode out her lashings, never retreated from her. He loved her people and they took him into their family. He would sail to the moon for her. She had enchanted him, her juices flowed in his veins. When her sirens called to his blood, he had no choice but to answer, even if he was dashed against the rocks. He must go to her. Elizabeth did not seek out these thoughts, they came uninvited, the moist whisperings of her husband’s mistress. They flooded into her ears and she was powerless to stop them. Against an ocean she could do nothing else but pray.

  They were hard days that followed, the weather bitterly cold. The world had turned upside down—the sky the colour of dirt, and the earth covered in clouds of snow. Elizabeth’s heart also was covered in cold hard snow. She had spent her life waiting; how wasted those years seemed now. She had dreams of James lying in the embrace of his ocean, its waves stroking him like the hands of the Tahitian women. After, she lay awake so as not to dream again.

  The days grew longer and winter drew to a close. Her heart could not remain frozen forever. As she lay beside the sleeping storm of her husband Elizabeth felt the ice beginning to melt, the flow of love returning. She had only to wait one more time. This would be his last voyage, he had promised.

  Elizabeth watched the slow rise of her body, felt the small increments of the days getting longer, and knew that the hibernating creatures of the fields behind her Mile End home, the moles and voles, would soon waken, that snowdrops would push up through the softening earth, their crisp white skirts hemmed in festive green spots, like sprigged muslin, then the daffodils, their yellow trumpets heralding spring, when the new baby would be born.

  BOSWELL’S

  AN ACCOUNT OF CORSICA

  ‘It was curious to see Cook, a grave steady man, and his wife, a decent plump Englishwoman, and think that he was preparing to sail around the world,’ Boswell wrote in his Private Papers.

  English she was, decent she hoped, but plump? Mr Boswell obviously had trouble discerning plumpness from pregnancy. Elizabeth was resting after the dinner at Sir John Pringle’s. It was early April but unseasonably warm. She was lying on the bed, he
r stays loosened, the big dinner and the unborn baby stretching her stomach to the edge of its capacity. So much so that when Gates appeared with a soothing chamomile infusion, Elizabeth doubted she had room for even one small drop of it. Nevertheless, talking about the meal did not make her feel in the least bit nauseous, rather, she enjoyed revisiting the scene. It was probably her last outing before confinement. Soon, very soon, Elizabeth reflected, surveying the outcrops and hills of her body, the baby would be so big that she would have to go without stays, and no support for her uncomfortable, heavy breasts.

  Gates had wanted a full description of the dinner, every detail. Was there anything marm liked in particular that Gates might prepare?

  Elizabeth saw them all seated for dinner, the women fanning out around Lady Pringle at the head of the table; the men around Sir John, with his bushy eyebrows and prominent chin, at the lower end. She saw Mr Wedgwood’s cream-coloured Queens-ware, named after the approval given it by Queen Charlotte; the tureens and plates, the silver serving platters laden with food, the crystal wine glasses ready to be filled from decanters on a sideboard. All of this around a splendid centrepiece of porcelain Neptunes triumphantly riding in cockle shells, on an ocean of silver tissue. Between the dishes, plates and glasses, Elizabeth caught glimpses of a brilliantly white damask tablecloth, with long sides reaching almost to the floor, which the diners could rest on their laps and lift to wipe their mouths upon, an English custom that often horrified visitors from across the Channel, who were more accustomed to napkins.

  ‘But, marm, what did they serve?’ asked Gates.

  Elizabeth listed the first course dishes—a remove of green pea soup, fricassee of chicken, neck of mutton boiled with caper sauce, hare collops, boiled tongue, currant jelly, paupiettes of veal. ‘So beautifully arranged,’ she told Gates, mapping out the placement of each dish, the suitability of some to the sides of the table, others to the corners.

  After describing the first course, Elizabeth found that she did have room for a few sips of the infusion. Then she went on to the second course—roast turkey, preserved codlins, ragout of mushrooms, potted beef, collared pig, artichokes (at which Gates gasped, ‘Oh, marm!’), roasted wheat ears, apricot compote, and blancmange. By the end of it all, Gates was practically swooning. It was almost as if she had eaten the dinner herself.

  Elizabeth drank the rest of the infusion.

  ‘Are you feeling more refreshed, marm?’ enquired Gates, gathering up the cup and saucer.

  ‘Thank you. Yes.’

  ‘Anything further, marm?’

  Instead of saying, ‘That will be all,’ Elizabeth felt a smile creep to her lips. ‘After dessert they served pineapple and fresh peaches.’

  ‘Oh, marm,’ exclaimed Gates, delighted with this finishing touch when she thought the meal was over. ‘In April. Well I never.’

  Sir John Pringle, as well as being the king’s physician, was also President of the Royal Society, and in both capacities paid great attention to the paper which James had presented to the Society the month before, ‘A Discourse on the Means of Preserving the Health of Mariners’. Elizabeth was seated next to Sophia Banks, and at the end of the meal, when the servants had disappeared and the ladies took a glass of wine at the table before retiring to the drawing room, allowing the men’s conversation to roam high and low—mostly low, to toast their mistresses and discuss politics—the ladies picked up the threads of the conversations that had wafted down from the men’s end of the table.

  News of events in the American colonies was so fresh that it couldn’t help but be talked about. All had hoped that the incident in 1773 during which colonists disguised as Indians boarded a ship in Boston and threw three hundred and forty-two chests of tea into the harbour would be an isolated one. But unfortunately there was more to come. Open rebellion throughout Massachusetts, battles in Lexington and Concord in April 1775. By August of that year, at the time James made his triumphant return, a mere seven months ago though it seemed like years, a general proclamation of rebellion had been issued.

  ‘The colonists are nothing but convicts, pirates and rogues, Dr Johnson avows,’ said Mr Boswell over dinner, ‘but I beg to differ.’ After the first course of the American revolt, the second course had focused on the exotic topic of the impending voyage, with the men all leaning towards James.

  ‘Are you not fearful for your husband sailing at such a time?’ one of the ladies directed a question towards the celebrated circumnavigator’s wife.

  Elizabeth was watching Mr Boswell’s double chins disappear then reappear as he nodded encouragement to her husband. She wondered what of this evening would end up in print. Mr Boswell had a remarkable memory for detail and, without notebook or pencil in sight, was able to record observations and whole conversations word for word. She watched as the man excused himself and made his way to the sideboard and one of the chamber pots. Excitement over the conversation must have gotten the better of him. Normally the chamber pots weren’t sought out till the ladies had left the room and the men had begun drinking in earnest. Elizabeth turned back to her companions.

  ‘I have a greater fear for our cousins in America,’ said Elizabeth, sparing a thought for Cousin Frances and Mr Lieber. She hoped that fighting hadn’t broken out in Philadelphia. ‘Mr Cook has come home from two voyages to the South Seas, he will return from the third, God willing.’ She dabbed at the corners of her mouth, not so much because she suspected a crumb or a sliver of meat to be lurking there, but to hide any slight quivering of her lip. Elizabeth was pleased with the way she conducted herself. At the table she had noted no sideways glances in her direction, no whisperings. The last thing she wanted from this gathering of James’s friends was pity.

  There was more talk of it in the drawing room to which the ladies retired. ‘It is unimaginable,’ exclaimed one young woman, with at least as much eagerness as Mr Boswell had displayed. ‘Around the world. It’s as fanciful as flying to the moon.’

  ‘Yet it has been done,’ said Sophia Banks, with a smile for Elizabeth.

  ‘Is it true,’ said the young woman, turning the conversation to more usual topics, ‘that Lord Sandwich is openly living with Martha Ray?’ It seemed she was directing her conversation to Elizabeth once again, although Elizabeth felt that Sophia Banks could address the question with more aplomb. Not only did Elizabeth draw a curtain on her own private sentiments in public gatherings, but on those of others.

  It was true that Sandwich was by this time cohabiting with Miss Ray. Open cohabitation with a mistress was the least of Sandwich’s dissoluteness. He was also an inveterate gambler, often staying at the card tables all night, not even leaving to have supper, instead holding meat between pieces of bread with one hand while playing cards with the other.

  ‘It is true. All of London knows.’ The question had been answered by an older woman, who had the longest neck Elizabeth had ever seen on a human being. It seemed to extend right down to the beginnings of her crinkled bosoms. Nevertheless, the long-necked woman had relieved her of the task of phrasing a diplomatic answer.

  ‘Your brother has still not found a wife, Miss Banks?’ the same woman asked.

  ‘My brother is quite settled, thank you.’

  Elizabeth smiled at the poise of Sophia’s answer. Mr Banks maintained that he’d eaten his way further into the animal kingdom than any man, but he had also probably made his way further into the female kingdom. He’d sampled all the South Sea morsels, as well as the Dutch in Cape Town. There had been a first course of a fiancée, one Harriet Blosset, before the Endeavour voyage, whom he’d later disengaged to the tune of £5000. Then there was the side dish of Mrs Burnett, the woman waiting for him at Madeira. After another meal, so the talk went, there was fruit—a child. As if the mere thought had conveyed itself to her belly, Elizabeth felt the kick of her unborn child quicken her breath.

  The sound of the gentlemen approaching the drawing room quelled any further questions. Tea and coffee were served, and the dinner
came to its natural conclusion.

  A few weeks later Mr Boswell came to tea, bringing with him an account of his own travels in Corsica. It was the third edition, printed for Edward Dilly in the Poultry, 1769, with a new and accurate map of that island, dense with place names such as Talano and Grevellina, and surrounded by a jigsaw of coastline. The brown cover was smooth and shiny, gilt on the spine, the outline of stars in between a pattern of diamonds.

  Elizabeth allowed Mr Boswell to pay his respects then she went upstairs, heaving herself up the banister. She felt so enormous in these last days of April that she was no longer comfortable sitting on a chair. Words of the conversation her husband was having with Mr Boswell wafted up with the twittering of birds in the apple trees and bees buzzing in and out of the blossoms. She heard her husband confess that his observations on matters of religion and government in the South Sea islands might be quite erroneous. Scant knowledge of the language made room for misinterpretation, and in that great ocean even truth was fluid. On occasion it was hard to discern whether the information being given was accurate in the first place, and there were gaps through which understanding might fall.

  If James was not actually voyaging he was talking about it, Elizabeth reflected as she fanned herself. At least, she consoled herself, this time he would be here for the birth of the new baby.