Christopher Middleton

From the Murat Family Album

One by one the four children, having climbed the wooden stair, appear in early light, clothed who knows how, on the deck of HMS Tremendous. One after the other, they yawn; then they stretch out their arms. Up and out go their arms, as if they were sending telegrams by semaphore. The amaranthine dawn of the Adriatic welcomes the children, their names are imprinted on the salt air: Achille, Letitia, Lucien, Louise. Their father is hiding in a cave behind Toulon; a farmer comes crunching up the mountain trail to the mouth of the cave: I have a place for you in my chicken house, nobody will find you there. The father follows the farmer and accomodates himself in the chicken house. Cluck. Having ferreted about in some straw, he can now eat a raw egg. At that moment his wife, the Queen of Naples, also appears on the deck of HMS Tremendous. Oh, good morning, children, she says. How high the sun is rising. Captain Robert Campbell, rather fat, who finds this Corsican woman, so self-possessed, quite admirable, calls from the galley: This capital cook is doing what he knows best; its bacon again, grissini, and eggs Adriatica. Ha ha, hows that for Latin? Remark the space: the deck of a man-of-war. Here time is stored in tubs that are roped together beneath the booms. The ship creaks, all its wooden members call to the water, hush, call out, and strain again. There is time stored between the strakes and the shrouds which are bellying in the south wind now. Space too is stored with time in the oakwood deckboards. And on the deckboards skip the childrens small bare feet and mothers in slippers. Mama, they shout, and they snuggle up to her huge underskirt. How close to the shore were they sailing? The Tremendous-- had it rounded the toe, sole, and heel of Italy, heading for Trieste, past Bari, all the way up the length of the Neapolitan kingdom? Meanwhile the children are using up the stored time, fooling, and prancing over ropes, and being interpreters, since the sailors can say no more than rumpy-pumpy, fooky-fooky, and shufty kush. The children speak Italian, French, elementary English, and a few phrases in German. Their mother, in her fingers a crisp rasher of bacon, says hardly anything. Joachim, she says to herself. Joachim: first Russia, now where can he be. Oh my, his thighs in those white trousers, when he rode his chestnut mare, his fancy waistcoat, velvet, green, gold frogging over his wounds, under his decorations. …