Losing Nelson Read Online Free PDF Page B

“There you are, there you have it, that is clear enough, I think.”
    “Quite clear,” Miss Lily said. “He wanted her to praise him.”
    “He says that he expected her to be pleased at his success.” Her obtuseness was beginning to annoy me. “Let us see how she replies.”
    I went to the shelf where I keep the collections of his correspondence and took down Geoffrey Rawson’s compilation of 1949 as being shorter and easier to handle than most. I found Fanny’s letter in a few moments and read it aloud to Miss Lily, deliberately dwelling on the more plaintive phrases:
Thank God you are well … My anxiety was far beyond my powers of expression … Altogether, my dearest husband, my sufferings were great
 …
    This read, I looked rather closely at Miss Lily. “She has a hero for a husband and that is how she writes to him.”
    However, she returned my gaze firmly, and I could tell that she was not convinced, that she was siding with Fanny. Her eyes are brown and soft in expression but very steady in their gaze. I could feel my annoyance with her turning into rage. “She couldn’t give him what he needed,” I said. “She let him down.”
    “Well, after all, she grew up in the West Indies. That was where they met, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes, they met on Nevis. But what has that got—”
    “You said yourself that the parsonage would have been freezing in the winter.”
    “Parsonage?” Later I was to become more used to Miss Lily’s oblique approach to things, so strangely at odds with the directness of her gaze. But now I was bewildered. And my anger grew.
    “You probably think I am taking too much on myself. I knew hardly anything about him, about Lord Nelson, when we started this work. History was never my strong point in any case. I have got secretarial skills, that’s about all you can say. Most of my work is not historical, it is more contemporary.”
    “I don’t know what you are driving at with this reference to the parsonage.”
    “Well, she would have been used to something warmer, wouldn’t she? As I see it, he left her there alone, or with just her father-in-law for company, I mean disregarding him being a hero and all that side of it, either in a freezing parsonage in Norfolk or in lodgings somewhere she had not chosen to be. Draughty places, those old houses.” I saw her hunch herself a little and clutch at her elbows; she was putting herself in Fanny’s place. “And I grew up in this country,” she said. “He doesn’t write to ask her if she is keeping warm enough or anything like that. I mean, it was the middle of February. He was all right, wasn’t he, he was down there in the south.”
    “All right? Good God. He had received a shrapnel wound in the battle that opened his forehead to the skull. He was suffering from attacks of breathlessness due to stress and fatigue, he had—”
    “She was alone, she was frightened for him. You would think he would know what it is like to be frightened.”
    “But he did,” I said. “He never showed fear himself, but he understood it in others, and he was always gentle with those who—”
    “But that is among men, isn’t it?”
    I had no idea what she meant by this, but I could not escape the feeling that she was getting the upper hand in this discussion. And she was daring to criticize him, Horatio. The skin on my face felt tight with the efforts I was making not to let my fury show. I was afraid it would show in my eyes, which tend to get suffused with blood when I am upset. I moved round behind her to the other side of the table, where she could not see me without swivelling right round in her chair. The screen was facing me now, but I took care not to look at it. At a distance of about three feet, I found myself studying the back of Miss Lily’s head. Her dark brown hair was caught up behind in aponytail, exposing the nape of her neck, naked, palest cream in colour, surprisingly sturdy-looking, with a tender, faintly gleaming down