Losing Nelson Read Online Free Page B

undreamed of, when this impervious face was painted. Twenty years away his crushing defeat of the French at Aboukir Bay, the triumphant entry into Naples, the gratitude of monarchs, the songs and the praise and the abundant love of Emma, Lady Hamilton. Twenty years away his dealings with the Neapolitan Jacobins, which day by day, with oppressed spirits, I was striving to disentangle.
    Thoughts of this period in Horatio’s life brought the usual vaguedistress to my mind. I was still standing there before the portrait, but no longer looking at it. My eyes fell on the papier-mâché bust of him standing not far away, more or less in the middle of the floor. It was larger than life-size, three feet high and crudely painted, the eyes jet black and wide open, the cheeks rouged, hectic-looking; but there was a curve of power and authority in the mouth that I liked. I had seen it in the jumbled interior of a curio shop in Camden as I was passing by, and I had gone in and bought it and brought it home in a taxi, muffled up in brown paper. Only a month or so before—I would not have done it in my father’s time. Now I found myself looking fixedly at him, at the straight line of the cocked hat that shadowed his eyes, the garish stars and medals on his chest, the gilt letters running along the base. I could not read them at this distance, but I knew what they said: ENGLAND EXPECTS THAT EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY .
    Sublime message, surely the most famous naval signal ever given. Greeted with cheers by every ship in the fleet. Then came the last message he ever gave, his favorite, number 16, the signal for close action, which remained at the top-gallant masthead of HMS
Victory
until it was shot away … The trance of admiration that was descending on me was disturbed by the ringing of the front-door bell. I looked at my watch: it was exactly seven o’clock. I knew at once that it must be Avon Secretarial Services in the person of Miss Lily, who came twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, to help me with my manuscript—no small task, as I was constantly revising the earlier sections. I could not use a computer myself. My illness had left me with an abiding fear of screens. Twenty years ago, but I had not been able to overcome it. Not mirrors or clear reflecting surfaces, I had no fear of those, but opaque electronic screens from which faces might emerge. Faces with eyes …
    I had known, of course, that she was coming. But what surprised and rather frightened me was the realization that nearly three hourshad gone by that could not really be accounted for. Since the dusk of the battle and of this winter evening in London, since the separation of the fleets, as I sat by my operations table and stood before the portrait, this mass of time had accumulated and then dissolved away.
    As I mounted the basement steps and went along the passage to the front door, I felt some return of the terror of that morning. Twinges, no more. But somehow it was always later than I thought, I was constantly striving to keep abreast. So much, so very much, depended on that, keeping abreast, keeping the lines parallel.

3

    M iss Lily was always on time. I had taken to calling her that, not to her face, only in my mind, though she had none of the aspects conventionally associated with the flower, she wasn’t languorous at all or scented much or markedly virginal, she was a steady person, in her early thirties, and her name was Lilian Butler. She had been coming for three months by then and she had never been late. This punctuality was one of the things I liked best about her; without strict timing, our lives are formless. However, Miss Lily was inquisitive, and that was a drawback.
    There she was on the doorstep, her little red car parked in the street below. Slung over her shoulder was the case that contained computer and printer. “You have been going up those stairs too quick,” she said to me when I opened the door. Even after such a short acquaintance