Authors: Howard Fast
“It was a
loose word came from me lips.”
“Loose words and loose britches.
Ah, ye make me sick.”
“And what are you, me lass?
Some shining inspiration?”
“O’Brian!”
Clinton shouted, and then entered the room, reflecting on the curious madness
of the British military that allowed wives to accompany their husbands
overseas. Mary O’Brian sputtered her apologies. She was a large, stout woman,
quite comely but with most of her teeth missing. Her husband was lean,
fox-faced, and given to stealing anything he could. Yet he was a good servant
and a good soldier, with a sergeant’s rank and twenty years of military
experience behind him.
“Sure, and
what the devil was I thinking?” O’Brian said. “It’s the time that does me an
injustice, and me thinking it’s no more than noon and at least two hours before
Your Excellency would be coming.”
“It is six
o’clock in the afternoon,” said Clinton. “I want hot water and my dress uniform
and clean linen, and so help me, I will break you if it is not ready and
waiting in half an hour.”
He turned
on his heel and mounted the stairs again. In his bedroom, he stripped off his
sweat-soaked clothes and looked at himself in the mirror. The roll of fat
around his belly was fast becoming a paunch. He kneaded the belly fat with his
hands and regarded himself with disgust and despair.
O’Brian
entered with a tub of hot water and began to rub down Clinton’s back and
buttocks with a hot towel. Suddenly, Clinton found himself staring at the rug
and at the spreading pool of dampness. It was a Chinese rug, a pale blue
background decorated with intertwining dragons, a thousand pounds in the best
London carpet shop and probably brought from China by one of those incredible
Yankee square riggers that roamed the whole world as if it were theirs without
doubt or question; and suddenly he was aware of the seat of his disquiet and
misgiving—the arrogance of these people, not guts or gallantry but simply an
astonishing and righteous arrogance that he alone among the four generals
appeared to sense and respond to.
“Goddamn
you,” he exploded at O’Brian, “we are not in a stable, you stupid Irish sot!
See what you are doing to the rug—if you know what a rug
is
!
Get me a towel to put under my feet and stop slopping the bloody water.”
“Yes, sir,
Your
Excellency. Goddamn me for a pig, and not knowing
even the smell of the finer things,” he said, leaping into the next room and
returning with a thick towel for Clinton to stand on. “There ye are
,
me lord. Sure as there is a God in heaven, ye’ll be giving
me thirty lashes for the stupidity of me behavior.”
“Oh, shut
up,” Clinton said.
“Yes, sir.”
He washed
Clinton expertly. Lost in his own thoughts, Clinton stood there while O’Brian
parted his buttocks, lifted the testicles and penis, washing and currying him
as a mother washes a child. His wife came into the room, carrying the freshly
ironed linen, paying no more attention to the naked general than she might have
given a piece of furniture. But suddenly Clinton was aroused, not only
conscious of her but hot with desire.
“Get me my
robe!” he snapped at O’Brian.
As if
O’Brian had a map of every nerve in his body, he grinned as he handed the robe
to Clinton, and Mary O’Brian, laying out the linen, watched the general
covertly as he covered himself. O’Brian went after her as she left the room,
and at the door out of the sitting room, he whispered to her, “Now there’s a
bit of humping would make me a master sergeant before ye could say Paddy’s pig,
and it ain’t no small thing, me love, to have a bastard out of the nobility.”
“You’re a
dirty louse, O’Brian.” She swept off, grinning out of her toothless mouth.
As for
Clinton, he had been dead for weeks, and now he was wonderfully alive, his
blood coursing through his veins, his sex throbbing, his mind filled with
pictures of taking the great, fat Irish woman to bed. Watching him, O’Brian
read his thoughts and made his own plans. Clinton did not dwell upon what had
happened to him. He simply allowed himself to fall into the fact that it had
happened, and reserving Mary O’Brian and thoughts of her for the future, he
began to dwell on Reverend Hallsbury’s wife. His pique faded. It would be an
exciting evening. By and large, he had found no pleasure in Boston women. They
were dull, narrow, obsessed with their own tiny class structure.
He was
almost dressed, O’Brian hovering over him, when Lieutenant Parker, Burgoyne’s
aide, entered and told him that the general was waiting. Parker was a
pink-cheeked, handsome, ebullient lad of twenty. He took the occasion to
observe to Clinton how positively splendid he looked, as indeed he did in his
scarlet coat, his white linen and lace, powdered wig, white silk trousers, and
fine boots.
“Well,
Parker, an old man does his best, doesn’t he?”
“My good fortune to look like you someday, sir.”
“Well
said.” Clinton smiled. “You’ll do, Parker.”
Clinton
and Burgoyne were the last of the guests to arrive, and even as the servant
ushered them into Reverend Hallsbury’s rather splendid sitting room, Clinton
noticed Howe deep in conversation with one of the most beautiful women he had
ever seen, a tall, slender, but full-breasted blonde with bright blue eyes and
exquisite features. Unquestionably, Clinton decided, she was the reverend’s
wife. Nor was he at all disturbed by Howe’s initial place on the starting line.
He had no small opinion of himself in that direction when it came to William
Howe, or to Johnny Burgoyne, for that matter. The reverend himself was a
gray-haired, turning-white gentleman in his middle sixties. He had his own
money from his family, and it was reflected in the imported furniture, the
rugs, the silver, the great chandelier, which held at least a hundred candles,
the diamond set in the cross that hung on a gold chain from his neck, and the
simple string of priceless pearls his wife wore.
Gage and
his wife Margaret were already there, as was Howe, along with a tea merchant,
John Stibble by name, late forties, and a dark, handsome woman who was his
wife. There was a widowed Mrs. Plunkett—her husband had been an officer in the
marines— and two toothy young ladies in their twenties to complete a genteel
pairing with the British generals.
Madeira
and sherry were being served by a man in livery. Clinton reflected upon the
fact that in this half-abandoned town, where a population was being slowly
starved by twelve thousand rebels who encircled the place, there was
nevertheless no shortage of anything the rich required. He and Burgoyne were
moved around and introduced, Mrs. Plunkett clapping onto Burgoyne, to whom she
insisted upon being distantly related. When Hallsbury brought Clinton to his
wife, the people in the room marked the contrast, Howe, so large and dark and
slow of movement and speech, and Clinton and the woman, both of them pale and
fair, their blue eyes grasping at and holding each other. Against them, Howe
was Calaban, a clumsy, shuffling beast who was suddenly speechless as Clinton
and Mrs. Hallsbury recognized each other’s need. She gave Clinton her hand,
smiled her most dazzling smile, and murmured how delighted she was finally to meet
Sir Henry Clinton, of whom she had heard so much.
“Well,
he’s yours for the evening, my dear,” her husband said, the haughty,
aristocratic churchman suddenly humble and beseeching.
It was a
very quick and subtle byplay, yet Clinton marked it as he said the required
thing. “Much that is bad, Mrs. Hallsbury, but certainly very little that is
good. I am charmed.”
“Ah, no, no, indeed, Sir Henry.
Much that is good.”
“Which
proves that no one speaks the plain truth about anything,” Howe put in. “You
interrupt a first-rate lecture upon strategy, Henry.”
“I fear
for you, Sir William,” Clinton said lightly. “To lecture the loveliest woman in
the colonies on anything is all too close to the original sin.”
“Dear
gentlemen, I will have no talk of sin tonight. My husband is well versed on the
subject, and I am his apt pupil.” She threw her smile from one to another. “You
cannot imagine how delighted we are to have Britain’s proudest generals not
simply in Boston but here in our house tonight. Oh, I know that wisdom and
courage are so matter-of-fact to you. But think of a poor woman living day to
day in a jungle. And good Sir William here was only reassuring me that we have
nothing to fear. So you must not scold him, Sir Henry.”
Clinton
felt magnanimous. “But no one scolds Sir William,” he hastened to explain. “Not
even the king. And Sir William is my commander, you know.”
“Bosh,”
said Howe.
“I will
have no favorites. I have seated myself between you.”
At the
table, Clinton waited for the pressure of her knee. The game had begun earlier.
Mrs. Hallsbury was a user, a manipulator. She used Howe because to an observer
it was plain that a woman flirting with two men was less serious than a woman
flirting with one. She used her aging husband with something less than
contempt. And she was using Clinton to assuage an aching loneliness and desire
so desperate it came to Clinton like a silent scream. Yet she played the game
step by step. When she took his hand, there was a slight extra pressure, and
coming into dinner, she mentioned in a whisper only for him that some of the
red Indians in her land were loath to reveal their true names for fear it gave
one power over them. “My name is Prudence,” she said. “Does that give you power
over me?”
“I would
not want such power,” he answered gallantly. “Still, it is unquestionably one
of those damned Puritan names.”
“I am
married to a High Church priest, sir. And do you always swear in front of
women, or is that the current fashion in London?”
“Forgive
me the swearing. I will forgive you the marriage.”
“You are
too bold, sir, and rather nasty.” And with that, she turned her conversation to
Howe, who sat at her right.
Mr.
Stibble was regaling the table with a monologue on the British Empire and the
tea trade. Burgoyne was finding Mrs. Plunkett interesting. And Sir William Howe
was listening to Mrs. Hallsbury when Clinton felt the first pressure of her
knee. Then her leg caressed his, and he dropped his right hand beneath his
napkin to rest on her thigh. She turned from Howe to Clinton, and their eyes
met.
“I think,”
Clinton whispered, barely moving his lips, conscious that her husband was
watching them, “that I want you more than anything on earth.”
“More than a great victory, Sir Henry?”
She smiled. “And in a battle, do you move so directly
and quickly?”
“I do.”
Her light,
high-pitched voice cut across the tea merchant’s peroration like a knife. She
demanded, “Then how would you see us out of our predicament, Sir Henry?”
The tea
merchant halted in mid-sentence, and the table listened. “I would take two
thousand men,” said Clinton, “and I would deal with them as I would with a
snake.”
“And how
does one deal with a snake, Sir Henry?” Gage asked.
Aware that
he was speaking only for her, boasting the way a small boy does, yet becoming
increasingly enamored of his words as he spoke them, Clinton said, “I would
slice through the belly first, and then I would cut off the head, and then I
would cut off the tail.”
“But my
dear Sir Henry,” Burgoyne drawled, “A snake dies slowly. What if the head and
the tail decided to come in here to Boston while you were dealing with the
belly? That might be a bad show for our good friends here.”
“Devil
take
all generals,” Howe said. “Here I sit with as fine a
roast as I ever tasted in England, lovely ladies, and good company. I will not
have this talk of war.
To our host, gentlemen!”
He
raised his glass.
“And to his lovely companion.
I am a
poor churchgoer, sir, but I pledge you my presence at your next service.”
“Which may
be a while off,” the Reverend Hallsbury replied sourly, “since my church is
behind their lines—if indeed they have not burned it to the ground.”
Gage drank
the toast and reassured Hallsbury. “My intelligence is dependable, sir. As of
tonight, your church still stands. They have some nasty ways, but they don’t
burn churches.”
Softly,
Mrs. Hallsbury asked Clinton, “Were you just talking? Or would you do as you
said you would?”
“That I
want you more than anything on earth?” he whispered.
“Your two thousand soldiers, sir.”
“I think I would,” he said slowly.
“Will they listen to you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have never fought in America.
Only
in Europe.
They have.”
“Why aren’t you the commander?”
“Dear lady, the questions you ask.”
“It would
be better, Sir Henry, if you took your hand from my thigh. You are so hot with
passion, sir, that I can smell it. If you continue to look at me that way, not
only my husband but everyone at the table will know.”