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On nights such as this one, Jack wouldn't desire to sit at Stephen's side for all the tea in China, nor indeed for all the fine French spars in the dock with which he might replace his new-sprung fore-topgallant yard.
Naturally, however, on nights such as this one, fore-topgallant yards - sprung or no- are far from Jack's considerations. He'd as soon leap nude from the maintop into the choppy sea of a brisk Nor'easter as speak a word. He'd be as like to dash his own dear fiddle against the good Lord Nelson's noggin as to overlook a single measure that's played out. He'd never have made more than an amateur musician himself, of course, but that's not to say his love of it don't signify. Indeed, it's for love of it that his most particular friend has his seat three rows to windward with Jack sat bereft of decent company there in his lee. They both agreed upon this strange arrangement. They've kept to it.
The simple fact of the matter is that although their general orders are alike and there are points along the way at which Jack's course and Stephen's will converge with some great inevitability, their ways of sail are quite often decidedly disparate. Jack's close-hauled with the wind to larboard and Stephen beats a ponderous path behind, eight points off on the opposite tack; or, Stephen runs sprightly before the wind in a two-reef topsail breeze and Jack's lagging in the doldrums with every shred of canvas set but not a breath of air to lift it. On the point of playing music, their paths cross neatly; on the point of listening to it, however, they've agreed to disagree.
The music's presently that same Locatelli that they heard the evening that they met for the very first time, the C major quartet with its uncommon winding-up that Jack did not have the chance at all to enjoy to its full advantage. Stephen sits for'ard with his wire-stiff wig patted down in place and Jack loses himself to the toing and froing of the first violinist's tindy bow. This time, he intends to enjoy it.
Of course, afterwards they'll meet outside in the sultry air of the summer night and discussion will follow as they wind their way through the streets to the inn, pretending not to recognise the errant Surprises lingering drunkenly here and there with a dockside trollop or a bottle in their hands. They might agree or disagree - Stephen may have found the cellist's phrasing all ahoo - the violist was perhaps a trifle over-eager in the minuet - but over a bumper of port in Jack's room or perhaps in Stephen's, the conversation will continue. Jack knows he turns grievous red in the face when he argues. Stephen's eyes turn beady and his lips turn thin. Jack then often blusters, put about, but Stephen ain't malicious in the main: he might press his point rather longer than's required from time to time, but other times he drains his glass, and smiles, and stops Jack's mouth with his.
There was a time, not even very long ago, when that last was not quite true and their arguments when heated sometimes turned so solemn that it would bring Jack most abominably low. It made very little reasonable sense to him back then, he thinks, how a dragging disagreement brought him by the lee just so; he'd kept many friends on many ships and off 'em too, if none so singular a man as Stephen Maturin, and when debate turned hot he'd turned to work instead of melancholy. But there it was: he was and always had been desirous of Stephen's good favour. He'd made out of it then just a particular friendship, of a type he'd been yet to encounter.
It was not, in fact, till they'd found their seat aboard the Surprise and sailed away to the far side of the world that the nature of things became clearer. An errant musket ball found Stephen's side and in a trice, as he bled, Jack understood: he could steer the ship straight down to hell if honour and duty should demand it of him, but he'd put Stephen off to shore before the sails were set. They came about and returned with all haste to dry land, and when Stephen lived, when it was Stephen as came by the Acheron moored around to windward, he knew it couldn't but be right that Stephen's friendship meant to him just what it did.
Naturally, of course, he misunderstood that meaning quite entirely. That was, until one morning once the Acheron was took and Jack saw what remained of Stephen's wound as he held up his shirt there in his little den in order to redress it. Jack's innards turned, though not this time from the blood and gore; Jack stared, wide-eyed; Stephen's brows crept high; Jack reached out one hand to touch bare skin with callused sailors' fingers. Stephen watched him in apparent fascination, and Jack fancied it weren't his most academical expression. Jack squared up and put his other hand on Stephen's belly, and a strand of Jack's yellow hair had escaped his queue that Stephen reached up to tuck fondly back behind his ear. Jack's chest felt tight. His head reeled like a ship's boy who'd been at the grog, and, quite by accident - he'd swear it were an accident - he staggered into Stephen, mouth pressed firm to mouth.
The moment did not last. Stephen stepped his way back against a table behind, knocking over a pestle and mortar filled with who knew what along his way, and he said, "Joy, I think we might..."
Mortified to the very core, Jack excused himself quite quickly. He exited to his cabin and he closeted himself inside.
The great cabin of the HMS Surprise is a good deal larger a space than Jack had ever dared believe he'd occupy. He'd wished, of course, in his few idle hours below deck in the Resolution's gunroom, and then after that he'd wished some more. He'd perhaps also hoped, which he fancies is a fraction less fanciful than wishing. Hope has a dash more reality in the fabric of it, Jack likes to think, as any young midshipman attached to his first cruise might hope to ship an epaulette one day, might hope to find himself hosting his lieutenants in a cabin such as weren't to necessitate they bow their heads too low on standing. After all, the sweeping windows athwart the Sophie's stern had furnished quite the bello visto, but when the men had made the requisite obeisance, their hunches made the gesture seem damned queer.
The great cabin that day just following the mess with Stephen seemed a good deal smaller then than it had before. Jack loosed his neckcloth and sat down at his table and he poured himself a drink into a glass. He supposed, as he drank it, that he hadn't thought that Stephen would refuse him; he thought perhaps he'd rather counted all his chickens in one basket or something of the sort, as his friend had been so uncommon obliging to him through the years. Then Stephen came bustling in and closed the door behind him.
"Now, look here..." Jack said, as though chastising the fellow could avert the fire of carronade when Stephen was athwart his hawse and clearly meant to rake him stem to stern. However, his words trailed off in irons and thus Jack's own first volley fell dismally short.
"My dear, I meant only to caution discretion," said Stephen, sitting down there opposite. "We might wail till we're ashore, at least. Now, might we not take a little breakfast before you make a start at the wine?"
Jack called for Killick with a heart that fairly few before the wind and at the sound of the next bell attacked his bacon with great gusto. England weren't so very distant, after all.
At sea there's not a shred of privacy for the having, not for landsmen nor for master's mates, not for cooks nor carpenters nor even for men been made captains. So, at sea, Jack and Stephen eat together; they speak together; they scrape a little Boccherini on their instruments together, pretending Killick's mutterings pass them by unheard. They take the air together on the quarterdeck and Jack keeps his eye on Stephen's nearness to the rail lest he turn away and find the doctor's vanished with a splash and sunken like an anchor that's slipped clear of its chain. And so, at sea, their intimacy must not stray into the physical; on land, lodged in an inn or so on or so forth, as if dispatched to a cruise and set for prizes once the lagging convoy duty that's their time at sea is done, what they've got's quite something else.
Stephen's surgeon's hands and his intent, bespectacled gaze understand Jack's anatomy in its entirety. And while he may from time to time rather break the mood to express again how Jack's constitution might well bear a little less of his beloved visage de porco, were Jack to speak the Spanish, and bear a little more exercise instead, by and by his firm physician's touch wears less careful. Stephen might have no sealegs to speak of but he has a damn steady hand - Jack would trust his knife any day - and when he plucks at the fastenings of Jack's good coat it's such as a crossbreed of surgery and a good, clear pizzicato. When his warm palm presses and strokes at Jack's membrum virile there over the front of his best breeches, it's between a physician's examination and the smoothest arco of a cellist's bow.
Jack's never held himself a great advocate for sodomy, of course, though he's never gone in for the lash as some other captains have and hanging's always seemed a damned to-do. These days he's not so sure it's all such stuff and nonsense, such things as Stephen said regarding Mr. Marshall on the Sophie once upon a time. Stephen's aspect can be nigh on disagreeable at times, his manner disconcertingly abrupt, and he's not what one could call a handsome man - blood on his shirtsleeves quite frequently turns Jack's insides all about - but that initial outrage at the governor's afore Molly Harte plucked at her harp soon gave way to respect. Respect turned to esteem and esteem to endearment, endearment to the closest of all amicable affection. At sea, Jack misses his Sophie bitterly as seamen are like to do; but with Stephen there's an intimacy Jack don't much find elsewhere. And later, once the music's stopped, they'll find that intimacy at their inn.
Perhaps, Jack thinks, his beating of his fist against his thigh and his pom-pom-poom to follow with the 'cello truly aren't quite the thing, and Stephen's consternation's right. He'd never had it brought to his attention how he waved his hand to beat the measure before he chanced to take a seat beside the ill-favoured, pale-eyed creature that he'd taken Stephen for those years ago. And yet again, perhaps Stephen's thinking ain't so damned correct and he don't skip half a beat ahead; perhaps his hand in the air's as rhythmic as the marine on deck who beats to quarters. After all, there are still days these days when Jack's not sure if Stephen can tell a futtock shroud from a ratline, and that means something.
He supposes quite rightly this is what's to be expected when one takes aboard a fellow who's not been much at sea, as was the case with Stephen when the Sophie first ran out her sweeps and pulled for the fairway out of Mahon. Stephen has an intellect that so outruns Jack's own on most any point of sail that even beating windward in a howling tramontana Stephen would run four knots to Jack's every three; the one tack upon which his friend's sails begin to luff in a most unseemly manner is the topic of naval seamanship. Such common notions as tacking versus beating, beating versus wearing, bring Stephen by the lee on the most regular of bases. Frankly, and somewhat shamefully, Jack harbours a scintilla of pride that in that area Stephen could not hope to compete. There Jack has the weather gage.
And so perhaps, he thinks, his friend's deficiency as concerns nautical affairs might signal he's the same damned amateur to music that Jack finds he is himself. Perhaps Stephen's not so very far advanced. He won't gloat, for sure, but he thinks there's a metaphor in there somewhere.
Later on tonight, their paths will cross. They'll have their opinions on the pieces played and then they'll retire to Jack's room or to Stephen's though in all likelihood there's one of those won't be slept in at all. Stephen will take off his spectacles and then take off his clothes. Jack will let down his hair about his shoulders and Stephen's fingers will catch in it. They'll go to bed and Jack's face will be red as a beet despite his heavy tan as Stephen enumerates the Latin names of all the parts he touches, within him and without. Jack's fingertips will find the scar that lies there just beneath the last of Stephen's ribs. It's a familiar gesture. The meaning will penetrate.
At times, their two courses diverge; they sit apart at concerts so they both enjoy what's played, and who's got the right of matters just don't enter their consideration. At others, they find their separate tacks will bring them parallel just for a while; they lie skin to skin in the heat of the night or it's duettoes in the cabin with a fiddle underneath Jack's chin, and both modes come to them just as easily as kiss your hand.
The music plays on and Jack's hand beats the time, perhaps a beat ahead and perhaps not that at all.
It don't matter, he thinks, as their divergences don't separate them long.
It don't matter, as it makes their meetings all the sweeter.