Ebb tide

Among such surroundings, the pop-eyed, red-faced, white-haired King seemed almost homely, dressed as he had been in his admiral's uniform, leading in Queen Adelaide who had, after years of open scandal, replaced Mrs Jordan, the actress. The King's eyes had actually lit up when he caught sight of Drinkwater's uniform, and after the ceremony of the investiture, he had asked how high Drinkwater's name stood upon the list of post-captains.

'I am not certain, Your Majesty,' Drinkwater had confessed.

'Not certain! Not certain, sir! Why damme, you must be the only officer in the service who don't know, 'pon my soul! Confess it, sir, confess it!'

'Willingly, sir, but it is perhaps too late to expect an honour greater than that done me today.'

'Well said, sir! Well said!' The King had turned to Elizabeth. "Pon my soul, ma'am, your husband makes a damned fine diplomat, don't he, eh?'

Elizabeth dropped a curtsey. 'Your Majesty is too kind,'

'Perhaps he ain't always quite so diplomatic, eh?' The King laughed. 'Well, let that be, eh? But permit me to say, ma'am, that he is a lucky man in having you beside him, a damned lucky man. I speak plain, Ma'am, as an old sailor.' The King looked at Drinkwater. 'Charming, sir, charming. I hope you won't keep her in the country all the year.'

'As Your Majesty commands.'

The King had dropped his voice. 'I purposed your knighthood years ago, Sir Nathaniel, d'ye recall it?'

'Of course, sir, you were most kind in writing to me ...'

'Stuff and nonsense. You might have confounded Boney, and saved Wellington and all those brave fellows the trouble of Waterloo. Damned funny thing, providence; pulls one up, sets another down, don't you know... Ah, Lady Callender ...'

'What are you laughing about?'

Elizabeth's question brought him back to the present. 'Oh, the King's notion that I might have saved Wellington the trouble of fighting Waterloo. It was absolute nonsense, of course. I could only have done that had the Congress at Vienna decided to send Napoleon to the Azores rather than Elba. His Majesty has, it seems, a rather loose grasp of detail.'

'But he recollected that promise to make you a knight.'

'Remarkably yes, but I think it had more to do with taking a revenge upon the Admiralty, of putting Their Lordships in their places, than with upsetting the Russians, as Ponsonby suggested.'

'Why so? Had Their Lordships at the Admiralty upset him?'

'Indeed, yes. They had, you may recall, prevented him from commanding anything after Andromeda on account of the harshness with which he ruled his ship ... except, of course, the squadron that took King Louis back to France, and then he had Blackwood to hold his hand. I think he felt the humiliation keenly, though I have equally little doubt but that Their Lordships acted correctly.'

'I had forgotten...'

'We have so much to forget, Elizabeth. Our lives have been rich in incident, I often think.'

'Well, my dear, you have all that heart could desire now,' Elizabeth said.

'Indeed I have. I can think of nothing else except a lasting peace that our children may enjoy.'

'I do not think even your knighthood will annoy the Russians to the extent of spoiling that, Nathaniel,' Elizabeth said, laughing.

'Indeed I hope not,' her husband agreed. 'Here's to you, Lady Drinkwater, and the luck of Midshipman Drinkwater who found you in an apple orchard.'

'And to you, my darling Sir Nathaniel.'

'May I speak?'

'Of course, sir,' said Frey, glaring at the immobile Drinkwater as he stood in a futile attempt to look impressively relaxed. Frey's attention shifted from his model to his canvas as he worked for some moments, his face intense, his eyes flickering constandy from his image to his subject. Periodically he paused to recharge his brush from his palette or mix more colour.

'This reminds me of standing on deck for hours in bad weather, or in chase of the enemy. One is obliged to be there but one has nothing to do, relying upon others to work the ship. Consequently one passes into a state of suspended animation.'

'Yet,' Frey said, placing his brush between his teeth while he turned to his side table to replenish his dipper with turpentine, 'yet you always seemed to be aware of something going wrong, or some detail needing attention, I recall.'

'Oh yes, I was not asleep, though I have once or twice fallen asleep on my feet. But under the cataleptic conditions I speak of, I had, as it were, retreated into myself. All my professional instincts were alert but my mind was passive, not actively engaged in the process of actually thinking.'

'And you are not thinking now?' asked Frey almost absently, as he worked at the coils of bullion that fell from Drinkwater's shoulders.

'Well I'm thinking now, of course,' Drinkwater said, with a hint of exasperation which he instantly suppressed, 'but a moment ago I felt almost disembodied, as though I was recalled from elsewhere.'

'Ah, then your soul was about to take flight from your body...'

'And how the deuce d'you know that?'

'I don't know it. I just think it might be an explanation,' Frey said simply, looking at Drinkwater but not catching his eye and immediately returning to his canvas.

'You don't think it might be that I was just about to fall asleep?'

'You said yourself', said Frey, working his brush vigorously, 'that it reminded you of how you felt when you stood on deck. Presumably you weren't about to go to sleep then? In fact I supposed it to be a natural state to enable you to remain thus for many hours.' He paused, then added, 'My remark about the soul may have been a little facetious.'

'You wish to concentrate upon your work. I shall remain quiet.'

Frey straightened up, relaxed and looked directly at his sitter. 'Not at all, sir. Please don't misunderstand ...'

'My dear Frey, I am not deliberately misunderstanding you. But I have never thought you had the capacity for facetiousness. I think you believed what you said, but you have no means of justifying it on scientific principles and so you abandon it rather than have me ravage it with my sceptical ridicule.'

Frey smiled. 'You were always very perceptive, Sir Nathaniel, it was one of the more unnerving things about serving under you.'

'Was I?' Drinkwater asked, his curiosity aroused. 'Well, well. I suppose as you are engaged in painting my portrait it would not be inappropriate to quiz you a little on your subject.'

Frey laughed. 'Not at all inappropriate, Sir Nathaniel, but immodest in the extreme.'

'Nevertheless,' persisted Drinkwater with a grin, 'my curiosity quite naturally overwhelms my modesty.'

'Well that is not unusual, but it is rather disappointing in so unusual a character as yourself, sir.'

'Ah, now you are just baiting me and I'm not certain I should rise to it.'

'Perhaps that is truly my intention.' Frey resumed work, dipping his brush in the turpentine, filling it with a dark colour and applying it to his canvas with those quick, almost indecently furtive glances at his subject that Drinkwater found strangely unnerving.

'What? To put me off pursuing this line of conversation?'

'Just so, sir. To embarrass you into silence.'

'Do your sitters always want to talk?'

Frey shrugged. 'Some do and some don't. Most that do soon get bored. I am apt to reply monosyllabically or occasionally not at all, and then, depending upon my sitter's station and person, I am obliged to apologize.'

'But I can quite understand the concentration necessary to execute ... By the by, why does an artist "execute" a portrait?'

'I really have no idea, sir.'

'Anyway the concentration necessary to do your work must of necessity abstract you from gossip.' Drinkwater paused, then went on, 'So some of your sitters are difficult?'