Landfalls Read online

  “Mr. Monneron,” Webber says, bursting in. He’s dressed much as he was the previous morning, with the silk gown tied carelessly over faded trousers, stockinged feet shod in a pair of battered silk slippers. He crosses the room and shakes Monneron’s hand. “I’m delighted to see you again.” His smile is unchanged—friendly, artless. Monneron expects him to say something about Banks—I saw Sir Joseph yesterday and mentioned your visit; he knows your Don Inigo, by the way; he said he would send—oh, he has already? You’ve met him? Splendid—but he doesn’t, and his silence makes Monneron diffident about saying anything himself. He’d like to know what Webber said yesterday and what Banks said in turn. Was it “Don Inigo? I’m acquainted with the gentleman. What did you say this Frenchman’s name was?” Or “Don Inigo? Ha! My dear Webber, your new friend is an agent for the French Navy!”?

  But Webber is showing him out of the library and down a corridor to a bright room of north-facing windows. The space smells of canvas, wood, paint, solvents, pine resin, and wax, and Monneron is reminded suddenly, almost painfully, of being at sea. Then Webber surprises him by removing his gown, then his vest and shirt. His arms are thin, his chest almost hairless, his belly just softening into middle age. “My painting costume,” he says offhandedly, grabbing a paint-splattered linen shirt from a peg. Monneron doesn’t know where to look. At sea, he’s unfazed by other men’s nakedness, but on land, it’s different. He wonders if Webber’s lack of self-consciousness is an English affectation, a product of artistic temperament, a habit from his time at sea, or a more personal gesture.

  Hostage

  It’s like being a boy in church—the more Monneron tells himself not to shift about or scratch his head, the more he needs to. But Webber must be used to restive subjects, for he tolerates it without comment. The studio is filled with unfinished paintings, and Monneron’s attention settles on a large oil canvas perched on an easel behind the artist. It depicts a native woman, raven-haired and bare-breasted, with decorous tattoos covering her arms and a jasmine flower tucked behind each ear. A large white cloth wrapped round the lower half of her body fails to hide the outline of her generous hips. “She’s very beautiful,” Monneron says.

  Webber turns to follow his gaze. “I’m finishing her for an exhibit at the Royal Academy,” he explains. “She’s a Tahitian princess who sat for me on board the Resolution.”

  Monneron regards the painting again. The princess is standing, not sitting, and appears to be ashore among heavy-fronded plants, not on the deck of a Royal Navy sloop. He supposes this license is allowed—perhaps even expected—of artists. “How did you persuade the natives to sit for you?” he asks.

  “She was our captive and in no position to refuse,” Webber says. He studies Monneron then turns back to his work. For a moment, the light scratching of pencil on paper is the only sound in the room. “Several of our men had deserted,” he explains, looking back up, “and the islanders were sheltering them. The captain was compelled to take Princess Poedua”—he inclines his head toward the painting—“to press for the deserters’ return.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Of course.”

  Monneron looks again at the painting, at the princess’s serene face, her pliant arms, the openness implied by her breasts, the nipples tipped slightly away from each other. One would never guess she’d been a hostage while this portrait was being done. Now he wonders—did she really have those flowers in her hair? That white cloth—did Webber add that to protect English sensibilities? And perhaps that’s not serenity in her expression so much as surrender. He looks back at Webber, who’s leaning in toward the paper before him with a piece of chalk, the pencil held between his teeth. He cannot quite admire a profession that allows so much dissimulation. His own engineering work demands meticulous calculation and is intolerant of error or alteration of facts. But then again, here he is in Webber’s home pretending to be someone he is not. They are, both of them, simply doing their jobs.

  Webber sits up and takes the pencil from his mouth. “If I may make so bold as to offer my views on something, Mr. Monneron.”

  “Please.”

  “One wants to find a middle way with natives,” he says. “Neither too familiar nor too distant. Your Spaniards tend to be too harsh.” He looks at Monneron, then back at his paper. “But we English have been far too familiar. I think the humanity we extended toward them lowered us in their regard.” Monneron wonders how imprisoning native royalty constitutes overfamiliarity, but doesn’t interrupt. “I believe it cost us the captain’s life,” Webber says quietly.

  “Were you there when—when it happened?”

  “No, I wasn’t.” He dips his brush into water, then paint, and gently draws the brush across the paper in short, even strokes. “But I did have to paint it. The Admiralty needed it for publication—The Death of Cook.” He swirls his brush again in the water and leaves it there. “I had to read all the eyewitness accounts and talk with officers who were there, and—” He exhales. “It was like enduring it again and again.”

  Monneron knows what it is to lose shipmates. During the American War, when he served on the Sceptre with Lapérouse, their campaign in Hudson Bay and the subsequent crossing back to Europe had cost almost one hundred lives. But he’s never lost a commanding officer; it would be akin to losing a parent. He’s fortunate in not knowing that loss either. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  Webber looks up with a smile. “Well,” he says, standing up. “It’s not quite finished, but I think I can release you. What do you think?”

  Monneron’s never seen his own likeness before other than in a mirror, and he still remembers the moment—he must have been eleven or twelve—when he realized that since reflections are reversed, he would never see himself truly, not as others saw him. Now he bends over Webber’s picture and regards the lines of his body in pencil, then chalk, watercolor washes indicating hair color and fabric. He’s standing, not sitting, in the picture, and the background is still blank, which makes him look like he’s floating. He does wonder about the proportions—he’s always imagined himself a longer-legged man. Is that what Banks meant about Europeans who look like savages? And then there’s the face itself, recognizable yet unexpected. It’s an anxious face, the face of a lost child. “Is that what I look like?” he says.

  Webber laughs. “No matter where I am in the world, everyone says the same thing: ‘Is this really me?’”

  Fishhooks

  Webber insists that Monneron stay for dinner. By the time they’ve finished the codling, roast beef, potatoes in brown sauce, boiled cabbage, pudding, and a bottle of Graves, they’ve exchanged personal histories and dropped the “Mr.” from each other’s surnames. Monneron learns of Webber’s early years in Switzerland and tells him in turn about his childhood in Annonay. He’s about to regret that it’s time he returned to Mrs. Towe’s for the night when Webber offers to take him shopping.

  “What? Now?”

  “I promised to show you where to buy knives.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s London. Shops are open late.”

  Monneron accedes, and Webber takes him to an emporium of bladed and pointed things astonishing for the number and variety of its wares. Webber takes charge, collaring a shop boy on whom he loads samples for Monneron to purchase: small, cheap knives (“for your typical islander,” he says, handing them to the boy); longer, sharper knives (“for your minor chieftains”); sturdy axes (“for your village elders”); and lances of different lengths (“be careful who you give these to”). Upstairs they sample ten different sizes of needles, then enter an aisle filled with fishhooks. Monneron and his brothers are avid fishers, so he knows the price of a fishhook; these English hooks are quite inexpensive. Even with shipping costs, it will be cheaper to import these. The shop boy gives way to the owner’s son, who follows Monneron around as he orders “five hundred of these, a thousand of these, no, two thousand…”—almost eighteen thousand fishhooks in all, seventeen different kinds,
to catch everything from smelt to shark.

  It’s nearly ten by the time they return to Oxford Street. Over a late supper of white soup with warm bread, Webber prepares a list of shops to visit the next day. Monneron watches him write, admiring the artist’s pretty, precise script but also aware of a creeping impulse to snatch the paper away and make him stop. Instead, he tears at a ragged fingernail until it hurts, then asks, he hopes not too abruptly, “Webber, why are you doing all of this?”

  Webber looks up, then turns his chair toward his guest and leans back in it with his long legs stretched out. “I’m happy if my experiences can actually be useful,” he says. “Most people who ask me about the voyage only want to know if I met cannibals or slept with native women.”

  “Did you?”

  Webber laughs. “No. Are you disappointed?”

  A servant brings in plates of dried fruit and nuts and a bottle of port. Then it’s nearly midnight, and Monneron is so relaxed and languid that when Webber invites him to stay the night, he allows himself to be led upstairs without protest.

  Bolts of Silk

  Some inchoate compunction alarms him into wakefulness, and without the fermented apple smell and watermarked ceiling of Mrs. Towe’s, he can’t at first place where he is. He turns over in the bed to make sure he’s alone, and relieved on that point, remembers: Oxford Street, Webber, shopping, fishhooks, a bottle of port. A clock somewhere chimes nine, much later than he usually rises. He dresses quickly and heads down the stairs, but stops on the landing, accosted by a life-size oil of James Cook. He remembers again what Banks said about Webber’s portraiture, and this time he sees it: a disproportion of parts, the head oddly simian, the wig looking outgrown and pinched, torso and thighs too thin, left hand too large for the arm above it, feet hidden behind a rock as if Webber didn’t know how to render them. The late captain may not look savage, exactly, but he does lack dignity.

  “Good morning, Mr. Monneron.” The manservant appears at the bottom of the stairs. “Mr. Webber is in his dressing room and says you may join him there if you’d like.”

  No, he would not like, Monneron thinks, remembering the nonchalance with which Webber undressed before him yesterday. “I will wait for him in the library, if that is all right,” he says.

  Webber arrives five minutes later, dressed for another outing. “Monneron—breakfast before heading out?”

  Monneron gets up with effort, suddenly exhausted by Webber’s generosity, his indefatigable energy, the boundlessness of the man.

  Webber cocks his head to one side. “Did you not sleep well?”

  Monneron rallies himself to remember why he’s there: the expedition, the minister, Monsieur de Lapérouse. He still needs Webber’s knowledge, but only for one more day. “I slept very well, thank you,” he says. “Breakfast sounds wonderful.” He wills himself not to look away when he sees the relief on Webber’s face.

  After breakfast they venture into the city in a hired coach Webber has retained for the day. The artist has worked out exactly where to go, beginning at a notions shop for beads; then a foundry on Thames Street for unworked iron bars and copper sheeting; several grocers for samples of bouillon tablets, molasses, salts, preserved walnuts—all used as antiscorbutics on the Resolution; a brewers for spruce beer and essence of malt, a sickly sweet decoction Webber assures him is palatable when mixed with water or tea; and finally, back to Oxford Street for a fabric shop. Only then does Monneron understand that they have circumscribed a long, serpentine loop around London, a loop that will return him again to Webber’s home for the night.

  “Reserve these gifts for island royalty,” Webber is telling him as he browses the display of silks and fine linens. “They’re quite partial to red and gold—look at this, Monneron.”

  He holds out a bolt of silk taffeta, deep crimson shot through with gold thread. Monneron runs his hand over the fabric; its smoothness and color remind him of a well-dressed friend of his mother who visited Annonay one summer and was quite free with her favors. He has to clear his throat before saying, “It is exquisite,” and when he looks up at Webber’s smiling, oddly knowing face, he can feel himself flush. He turns away, oppressed by the man’s nearness.

  “You’re tired,” Webber says gently. “I’ll take you home.”

  “Webber,” Monneron says. “I must return to my lodgings tonight. I can take a cab from here.”

  Webber’s face opens in disappointed surprise, and Monneron cannot suppress a flare of impatience. I have spent a day and a half riding all over London with you, he wants to say. Is that not enough? Instead he protests that he has much to do before he leaves, letters to write, accounts to check over—and it’s all true, but still he sounds like a boor. “I am sorry, Webber,” he says. “You have been so good to me.” He does not add, I no longer have need of you. But the expression on Webber’s face suggests he has heard it anyway.

  He won’t hear of Monneron taking a cab. They ride in silence to Mrs. Towe’s. “I’ll have your portrait ready tomorrow afternoon,” Webber says when the driver stops.

  Monneron gets out of the carriage, then turns around in the street. The portrait—he’d forgotten about it. And Webber can see that he has. “I will come tomorrow, Webber,” he says, then compelled by some need to address his indebtedness, says, “May I help pay for the driver?”

  Webber looks stricken. “Please don’t insult me, Mr. Monneron.”

  On a tarnished salver in Mrs. Towe’s entryway lies a message addressed to Monneron. “It came yesterday,” the landlady says from her parlor. The note is short and unsigned:

  Sir

  have secured dipping needles for expedition which I should be honored to entrust to your safekeeping at earliest convenience

  Influence

  Sir Joseph receives him the next morning in the study under the stairs. He pats the top of a large box on his desk, then says: “On loan from the Board of Longitude.”

  Monneron sits up. The Board of Longitude? Clearly they are well past the fiction of Don Inigo. Sir Joseph opens the box, pulls out an instrument, and sets it on the desk surface. It’s an odd apparatus, looking like a framed vertical compass set over an adjustable tripod. “There’s a second one like it in the box,” he says. He looks pointedly at Monneron. “They were on the Resolution and the Discovery.”

  The Resolution and Discovery—the ships from Cook’s last voyage! Monneron breathes in sharply. “Sir Joseph,” he says helplessly. “How—?”

  Banks smiles. “There are quarters in which I have some influence,” he says. Then more seriously: “We are honored to cooperate with your government in this.”

  Monneron cannot speak. He’s struck, as he has not been before this moment, by the real importance of the expedition he represents. But also by the pointlessness of the secrecy he’s been compelled to maintain—a secrecy that now seems like so much bureaucratic posturing.

  Banks packs the dipping needle back into its box. “Take good care of these instruments,” he says. “Discover much. Write everything down. And then, come back. It’s very important that some of you come back.”

  Five Guineas

  He’s loath to leave Mrs. Towe’s after depositing the dipping needles in the locked storage room. But he needs to collect the portrait and pay for it, and more than that he wishes to unburden himself to Webber, so he returns one last time to Oxford Street. He’s surprised and vexed to learn that Webber is out. He has no right to his vexation, of course; he knows that. He’s gone from expecting nothing helpful from the artist to having scruples about taking advantage of him to feeling smothered by the man’s wanton availability to being, now, annoyed by evidence that he has other things to do. How can an acquaintance of four days have grown so tangled?

  The dignified servant says no, he doesn’t know when Mr. Webber will return, but there’s a parcel for Mr. Monneron, if he would just step inside for a moment. This duty discharged, the servant doesn’t invite him to wait. “May I—I should like to leave a note for Mr.
Webber,” Monneron says. The man returns with pencil and paper, then departs without showing him to the writing table in the parlor. Monneron leans awkwardly over a ledge in the entryway to write.

  What he wished to say in person—about Don Inigo and Lapérouse and the minister, about Banks and the dipping needles—he cannot safely commit to paper. So he settles for thanking Webber—for the painting, for his hospitality, his time, knowledge, friendship. “I will think of you often on the voyage,” he writes in French (English would take too long), “especially when we begin trading with natives.” Then he places five guinea coins on the sheet and folds it up as securely as he can. The coins slide around inside, clinking with metallic vulgarity, but it’s the best he can do. He’s a little relieved, after all, not to have seen Webber again in person.

  Back at Mrs. Towe’s, he unwraps the portrait and looks at it by the late afternoon light. Webber has filled in the scenery around Monneron, who is now standing on a tropical shore. Palm trees and native huts grace the beach while mountains, ocean, and cloud-dappled sky fill out the background. His facial expression is also altered—or does it simply look different in context? He doesn’t look anxious and lost now so much as surprised and curious. The painting is like a wish for a successful expedition: the young explorer standing amazed in a new place. On the right side, partly blocked by his own figure, Monneron can make out the image of a ship anchored offshore, a ship flying a white flag with three fleurs-de-lis. So he did know, Monneron thinks. He blinks back his regret as he rewraps the painting.