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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Copyright

  To Ghislaine

  And since this outward I, you know,

  Must stay because he cannot go,

  My fellow-travellers shall be they

  Who go because they cannot stay …

  Across the mountains we will roam,

  And each man make himself a home:

  Or, if old habits ne’er forsaking,

  Like clockwork of the Devil’s making,

  Ourselves inveterate rogues should be,

  We’ll have a virtuous progeny;

  And on the dunghill of our vices

  Raise human pineapples and spices.

  From The Delinquent Travellers

  by S T Coleridge, 1824.

  It is a world by itself, with no law ruling except force, no compunction except fear, no religion except that of the devil.

  Description of ‘The Happy Land’

  from The Sliding Scale of Life,

  by James McLevy, 1861.

  1

  27th May – 20th October 1868

  Tellurophobia. The only word (apart from Chad Hobbes on the fly leaf) I have written until now in the one hundred and forty days out of Portsmouth to Vancouver Island. Perhaps it’s my anger at the maniac Captain which has kept me staring at the blank first page, whenever I have opened this maroon leather journal my mother gave me. His intention – announced at the first of one hundred and forty hellish dinners in his cabin – was to make the voyage without a single landfall. The Ariadne, ‘one of her Majesty’s men of war’ (she is only a three masted corvette with 18 guns) would be dependent on no Blacks (by which he meant the inhabitants of South America) or Yankees (ditto of North). He wasn’t going to dirty his decks with soot, he declared glowering at Mr Scott the engineer, chugging in and out of the Plate, or Callao, or San Francisco. The Ariadne would enter Esquimalt Harbour as it had left Portsmouth, under pristine sail.

  My first fantasy of the voyage was dashed. Not even the one or two day stops for supplies which I had expected in the parts Darwin had visited with the Beagle. Not even a distant sight of the pampas. Or of the Galapagos, which we avoided in a wide arc. The Captain, once underway, had a rabid phobia of land. Or to be exact it was the opposite of rabies, not a fear of water, a hydrophobia, but an equally furious fear of earth, a tellurophobia. (I am proud of this coinage.)

  The closest we got to land after Land’s End and the Scillies was Tierra del Fuego. Even the Captain couldn’t avoid this. After crossing the Equator at English midsummer, we had gone through autumn into winter in a few weeks. There was an increasing pall of cloud and drizzle then wet snow as in early August we passed through a Strait before rounding the Horn. I leaned for a whole afternoon over the starboard rail, with snowflakes catching in my beard and dripping down my neck from my sou’wester, peering at the gloomy headlands. There Darwin, in 1835 on the Beagle, had seen the beacon fire lit in farewell by the poor Fuegian, Jeremy Button – who had been bought for a pearl button, taken to London for five years, almost forgetting his own language, then returned by the Beagle to this wilderness. Now there was not a spark to be seen. Where was Jeremy Button?

  Two months later, after passing through another brief summer on the water, with the orange sun bisecting the sky as if tracing the equatorial on the first mate’s sextant, we sighted land again, a wall of dark grey, blanketed in lighter grey cloud, not unlike Tierra del Fuego. ‘Forty eight North,’ Robbins remarked. (He has been my only friend on this voyage). ‘Where Drake gave up searching for the North West passage in fifteen-whatever-it-was, turned around, then headed South again.’ Robbins had joined me at the rail for a moment and muttered, ‘I’d better move on, or that bloody man will have my shore leave.’

  As night fell we beat in towards the coast, which divided around us into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and as the twin bluffs of cloud-covered land on each side darkened and disappeared, the sails were run down, the anchor dropped with a rattle and splash, and lights set. The ship strained like a dog at a leash. For a while I stared out into blackness. Then as the rain battered more heavily on the foot-smoothed familiar deck, I picked my way across it and into the hatchway. A hurricane lamp swung jerkily above the steps which I descended, as I thought, with the sea legs of an old sailor.

  The 140th – I’ll spell it out, the ONE HUNDRED AND FORTIETH – evening at the Captain’s table. He sat at the head, with 5 naval officers, 3 officers of Marines, the ship’s surgeon, and myself, cramped together down the sides. I was the only landsman, and the only one with a beard, since the navy required its officers and men to be clean shaven. I was on sufferance, an unwelcome guest. Not that the Captain was friendly with his officers either. I had given up wondering how such a man could exist, breed children as he evidently had on his poor wife in Norfolk, and go to sea and live close-quartered with his officers for months, yet keep all conversation to brief discussions of the weather, supplies, and ship’s management – from which, of course, I was excluded.

  This had suited me, or so I told myself on my long deck walks, or my days out of the rain looking at this blank journal or reading Darwin again, at the small table in the cabin I’ve shared with Robbins who was seldom there until dog-tired at night. Sometimes I could keep him awake for a while, the candle sputtering between our narrow grey-blanketed bunks, and ask him about the navy, his life at home in England, his undeclared love for the inevitable local maiden – ‘a dear girl.’ But nothing about the future. Robbins himself had never left home waters. He had no more clue than I about the New World, although he had found time to read a few chapters of my Four Years on Vancouver Island by Mayne. I had not had the courage to quizz the Captain about the place, although he had already spent a year at Esquimalt, where he was now returning with a hold full of arms and ammunition and a fresh Company of Marines.

  Normally the Captain would wash down his salt beef with half a bottle of claret, then sip one glass of Port with his indescribable Stilton cheese on indestructible biscuit. But this evening he was into a second bottle of claret in no time, and the officers who had religiously followed him for 139 evenings in drinking half a bottle of claret each and one glass of Port, now sent the cabin boys for a second bottle each. I had been economizing and would have to settle my bill before leaving the ship the next day, but I finished my own bottle which had lasted me four dinners, and recklessly sent for another. Was this the Captain’s way of celebrating the end of the voyage? But he was choleric as ever, fixing me with eyes like cold b
lue taws – as we used to call marbles at school:

  ‘Not every immigrant arrives in British Columbia on one of her Majesty’s Ships of War.’

  ‘I dare say. I’m sorry I couldn’t have made myself useful in some way.’

  ‘Useful? At what?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I looked at the officers across the table for support. Robbins’s face was as stony as those of the others, none of whom had ever spoken a word to me beyond ‘Pass the mustard.’

  ‘Nothing for you to do’, the Captain went on. ‘A Man of War doesn’t usually take passengers. Unless a political bigwig. You’re not that, are you? It might have looked better if you’d been hired on as something or other. But as what? You read that scoundrel Darwin, but you’re not a naturalist. And this is not a survey ship. I’m damned if I’m going to let the Ariadne become the Beagle!’ (This was a reference to his terror, as Robbins had described it, that his ship would be used in survey work around Vancouver Island). ‘You studied Divinity at Oxford, I was told, but you’re not a parson. Anyway, I’m the parson here. I conduct the services. I read the funerals. You’re not a surgeon, Mr Giles here is that. So what are you?’

  ‘No idea.’ I took a large sip of my claret and studied the lumps of mashed potato on my plate.

  ‘You’re a young man with pull!’ Glaring around at the stony faces. ‘His uncle is Captain Hobbes, of the Adverse. It’s his father who’s the parson. Another parson’s son for the Colonies!’

  The others, sat tightly around the table, guffawed obediently.

  ‘My uncle assured me I’d be a welcome guest on this ship. He insisted, in fact. I was quite ready to take passage on one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ships or another merchantman.’

  ‘For £60 in steerage with a pack of scum, or £90 first class with shopkeepers and pen-pushing clerks.’

  The Captain set down his knife and fork with a clash. The cabin boys scurried to take away the plates. They brought in dishes of pudding – prunes in lukewarm custard – at the same time setting the battered curved wall of the huge Stilton in front of the Captain, and bringing biscuits, new plates, glasses, and the crystal decanter of Port, although everyone still went on with their claret.

  Later, after we had gobbled up our pudding, the Captain started up again. ‘Why didn’t you join the navy then?’

  ‘I first wanted to go into the church, like my father. Then I changed my mind.’

  ‘Another young man who believes we’re descended from the apes! I know it all! The broken-hearted mother, the outraged father! The bitter arguments around the vicarage table! The crisis of faith! Am I correct?’

  ‘More or less. Not quite as simple, if you’ll forgive me.’ I took a glug from my second glass of Port, come around from Mr Giles. ‘Yes, of course. You’re right. The family quarrels and so forth. But what happened was simply that I changed from reading Divinity to reading Jurisprudence – a new subject at Oxford, since only 1850. You might say that from studying the divine law I had changed to studying natural law.’

  There was a sudden snort from Robbins, who covered it up with a cough, glancing at the Captain who said sharply,

  ‘Yes, Mr Robbins?’

  ‘Well, I mean, really, Hobbes, you do sound niminy-piminy.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ah! You’re a barrister.’ The Captain again.

  ‘No. I took my degree, but I had run out of money. More was not forthcoming from my family. I can’t afford at the moment to go to an Inn of Court, although perhaps I shall when I return to England. The other option of course is to become articled to a solicitor. But I want to see the world, and I thought I might try British Columbia.’

  ‘What? Try what?’

  ‘There are at least a dozen solicitors in the Colony. I’ve written ahead. And I have a letter of introduction to…’

  ‘To the Governor!’ (Exultantly). ‘To the Honourable Sir James Seymour! Do you know what, Gentlemen? Every young reprobate, every remittance man, every played out seedling of a good family who comes to this Eldorado, first goes to the Governor in his “castle” – a glorified shack, if you please – with a letter of introduction! And do you know what the first Governor, Sir James Douglas, used to do?’ The Captain took a gulp of Port. Then he reached for the curved silver knife whose ivory handle stuck out of the Stilton, hacked a blue-yellow piece off the inside of the crumbling brown wall, speared it, and held it up for effect. ‘He would open the letter, glance at it, then lead the young suppliant over to a chest of drawers. Gentlemen, I am not talking about a tiny escritoire. I mean damn nearly a wardrobe. Starting at the top he would open, solemnly, one drawer after another. Each drawer was stuffed with letters. In the bottom and final drawer, which was also stuffed – with letters of introduction, Gentlemen – he would put the new one. Then it was “Goodbye Sir. Very good of you to call. Goodbye now!”’

  Uproarious laughter from all.

  ‘I don’t have a letter of introduction to Governor Seymour.’

  ‘You don’t? What? An immigrant without a letter of introduction to the Governor? It’s unheard of.’ The joke had been milked enough, so he became serious again. ‘Dear boy, the Colony of British Columbia has at present no more than twelve thousand inhabitants, seven in Victoria and perhaps five on the mainland, although including a couple of thousand yellow faced Chinese – “Celestials” as they are called – and surrounded by at least fifty thousand Indians. The Gold Rush has been and gone. They are, as they would put it in their Yankee way, “flat broke”. If it weren’t for our base at Esquimalt, with the Zealous and its five hundred men, plus the company of Marines we are replacing, and the other company on San Juan Island, they would not have much to make a living by. They say Victoria is the Garden of Eden!’ His audience raised its collective head at this change of tone. ‘The Garden of Eden! But it’s the Devil’s own job to make a living there!’ His laughter turned to a kind of choking. ‘For whom, then, is your letter of introduction?’

  ‘Mr Justice Begbie. From my tutor at Oxford. Though I believe Mr Begbie went to Cambridge.’

  ‘Oxford. Cambridge. Landlocked, both of ’em. In the middle of marshes. Stagnant. No wind. Vile places…’

  At this point the thread of the Captain’s conversation became abruptly unravelled, and he wandered into myriad digressions about the landscapes of the English and other coasts. Eventually he lurched off to bed. The officers looked at each other sheepishly, and began to exchange fuddled talk about the procedures for landing in the morning, as if to prove they were still sober.

  With a buzzing in my head, I got up and said Goodnight. I climbed the companionway intending to take a brief stroll on deck. When I opened the hatch door, all I could see in the shaft of golden light was rain pelting down slantwise. I shivered, closed the hatch, paid a visit to the ‘head’, then went to my cabin and to bed. I couldn’t sleep. The wallowing of the ship at anchor was foreign after the rolling and pitching of the open sea. Images of four months on the Ariadne crowded my mind: the Marines in their monotonous drills on deck, the sailors with their own precise drill on sails and ropes. I wondered if they too were boozing it up on the last night of the voyage, in the bowels of the ship where they lived and I had never been. I resent my own innocence. The ship is like school with its boys and masters, and Oxford with its undergraduates and tutors. All my education has been intellectual. The crashing disillusion with Christianity. The mental gloom of a life in which the candle of faith has been snuffed, between the finger of Darwinian science and the thumb of my dislike of the deans and bishops, who were to have been my mentors. I’ve thrown it all over.

  I’ve been sitting up late, writing in this diary at last, my eyes beginning to hurt in the light of the oil lamp, dimmed so that Robbins can sleep. It’s all in the past tense now.

  * * *

  Often in that hard narrow bunk I have found myself imagining women – about which I know almost nothing. Women I had never met but who figured in the more salacious legal cases I
had studied – murdered by their husbands for unfaithfulness. The whores of Oxford lingering in the shadow of St Ebbe’s church, bait for divinity students. The servant girls at home, easy prey for a spoilt boy with a sovereign in his hand and the moral ascendancy of being a gentleman, well-spoken and well-groomed – but also deadly, since they could get pregnant and make claims. My dear older brother Henry was found with a maid in the summer house after dark: she was dismissed, not pregnant thank God, but with a parting gift of money. Dear weeping Mother, and indignant Father. They knew, however, that the Chad who had repudiated God would not become immoral with women. That was for Henry who went to church regularly and without a thought, and joined the army in a modest regiment our father could afford. I’ve shucked off my beliefs, but I’ve never taken my my clothes off in front of anyone. The night before Henry went off to his regiment we went for a drink in the village tavern, the Trout – it’s by a stream. We both drank too much cider and when I went out to relieve myself in the moonlight I saw Sally, one of the barmaids, coming back in. She took my arm and drew me towards a hedge in the dark. ‘Do you want a feel?’ she said, and she pulled up her dress and apron and took my hand and stuck it between her legs, into her drawers. As I felt her my whole body buzzed with the sort of shock you get from an electricity machine, only less sharp, a sort of tingling. She kissed me on the lips and stuck her tongue into my mouth, writhing down below against my fingers, then pulled back slightly and said ‘Won’t you do me then?’ She unbuttoned my trousers with one deft movement and pulled out my member, huge like a donkey’s, and pulled it into the wet of her, leaning back into the hedge. Just as my body had flooded with tingling my brain now flooded with a thousand reasons for pulling away from her – which I did with a jerk backwards. I ran away into a nearby field in the dark and my seed spilled onto the grass.

  ‘Natural law’ instead of God’s. Yes, I sounded niminy-piminy at the Captain’s table, too fussy in my definitions, although I feel hurt by Robbins having said so. I hope the Colony will cure me. I’m here to find myself.