Cross Channel (10 page)

They would arrive at Chertsey the next day, and then proceed for Dover on the Saturday. Five of the Duke’s cricketers lived hard by Chertsey: Fry, Edmeads, Attfield, Etheridge and Wood. Then there was to be himself, Dobson, the Earl of Tankerville, William Bedster and Lumpy Stevens. The Duke was naturally in Paris; Tankerville and Bedster were coming separately to Dover; so eight of them would meet at Mr Yalden’s inn at Chertsey. It was here, some years back, that Lumpy Stevens had won Tankerville his famous bet. The Earl had wagered that his man could in practice-bowling hit a feather placed on the ground one time in four.
Mr Stevens had obliged his employer, who, it was rumoured, had profited by several hundred pounds in the business. Lumpy Stevens was one of Tankerville’s gardeners, and Sir Hamilton had often set himself musing over the prospect of a separate wager with the Earl: as to which of their two men knew the less about horticulture.

He admitted to a gloomy and irritable mood as he ignored the passing countryside. Mr Hawkins had declined the invitation to accompany him on the journey. Hamilton had urged his former tutor to cast his eyes upon the Continent of Europe one last time. More than that, he thought it a damned generous offer on his behalf to cart the old fellow across to Paris and back, no doubt enduring many gross and whining episodes of vomit on the packet, if the past were any indicator of the present. But Mr Hawkins had answered that he preferred his memories of tranquillity to a vision of the present troubles. He saw no prospect of excitement in the matter, grateful as he was to Sir Hamilton. Grateful and pusillanimous, Sir Hamilton reflected as he took his leave of the broken-kneed old man. As pusillanimous as Evelina, who had poured thunderstorms from her eyes in an attempt to thwart his departure. Twice he had discovered her in hugger-mugger with Dobson, and had been unable to obtain from either the matter of their discussions. Dobson claimed that he was trying to lighten Milady’s burden of apprehension and fear regarding the voyage, but Sir Hamilton did not entirely believe him. What did they have to fear anyway? The two nations were not at war, their mission was peaceful, and no Frenchman, however untutored, would ever mistake Sir Hamilton for one of his own race. And besides, there would be eleven of them, all stout fellows armed with pieces of English willow. What possible harm could befall them?

At Chertsey they put up at The Cricketers, where Mr Yalden gave them good hospitality and regretted that his cricketing days were now in the past. Others regretted this less than Mr Yalden, since their host had not always shown himself scrupulous when the laws of the game impeded him from winning. He was, however, scrupulous in launching his Chertsey men and their compatriots off to war with his strongest hogshead. Hamilton lay in bed with an image of the beefsteak in his stomach tossing on a sea of ale like the Dover packet in a Channel storm.

His emotions were scarcely less turbulent. Evelina’s waterspouts had affected him the more because she had never, in their ten years of marriage, sought to deter him from any of his cricketing ventures. She was not like Jack Heythrop’s wife, or Sir James Tinker’s: ladies who shrank from the notion of their husbands consorting on the turf with blacksmiths and gamekeepers, chimney-sweeps and shoeboys. Mrs Jack Heythrop, her nose pointing to Heaven, would ask how you might expect to exert your authority over the coachman and the gardener when the previous afternoon the coachman had caught you out and the gardener had shown such disrespect to your bowling? It did not make for social harmony, and the sporting universe should be a reflection of the social universe. Hence, according to Mrs Heythrop, the manifest superiority and virtue of racing: owner, trainer, jockey and groom all knew their places, and such places were of themselves fixed by their self-evident importance. How different from the foolish commingling of cricket, which was besides, as everyone knew, little more than a vulgar excuse for gambling.

Of course there was gambling. What was the point of sport if a man did not gamble? What was the point of a glass
of soda if it did not have brandy in it? Wagering, as Tankerville had once put it, was the salt which brought out the savour of the dish. Nowadays Hamilton himself wagered modestly, just as he had promised Evelina and his mother before his marriage. In his present mood, however, and having regard to the money he had saved by Mr Hawkins’ absence, he was damned inclined to wager a little above the normal on the outcome of the match between Dorset’s XI and the Gentlemen of France. To be sure, some of the Chertsey fellows were becoming a little dull of eye and plump of shank. But if Dorset’s men could not have the beating of Monsieur, then they should turn their bats into winter kindling.

They left Chertsey by post-coach on the morning of Sunday, 9th August. Approaching Dover, they encountered several carriages of French making towards London.

‘Running away from the bowling of Mr Stevens, I shouldn’t doubt,’ observed Sir Hamilton.

‘Best not to bowl full tilt, Lumpy,’ said Dobson, ‘or they’ll be filling their breeches.’

‘So will you, Dobson, if you dine French-style too often,’ replied Stevens.

Sir Hamilton had a sudden memory, and recited to the occupants of the post-coach the lines:

She sent her priest in wooden shoes
From haughty Gaul to make ragoos.

Inchoate murmurings greeted the verse, and Sir Hamilton caught Dobson’s eyes upon him, their expression more that of an anxious tutor than of a second under-gardener.

At Dover they met the Earl of Tankerville and William Bedster at an inn already over-crowded with emigrant
French. Bedster had formerly been the Earl’s butler and the most celebrated bat in Surrey; now he was a publican in Chelsea, and his retirement had helped increase his circumference. He and the Chertsey men taunted one another over their last English dinner with the contentious happenings of forgotten seasons, and noisily argued the merits of two-stump cricket over its modern replacement. In another corner of the inn sat Tankerville and Sir Hamilton Lindsay, ruminating upon the general situation in France and the particular position of their friend John Sackville, third Duke of Dorset and His Majesty’s Ambassador, these six years past, to the Court of Versailles. Such matters were not for the ears of Lumpy Stevens and the Chertsey men.

Dorset’s embassy had from the beginning been conducted in a manner to make Mrs Jack Heythrop tip her nose in disapproval. His hospitality in Paris was of the most generous kind, embracing under its roof gamesters and card–sharps, wh–s and parasites. His intimacy with many of the finest ladies of French society extended, it was said, even as far as Mrs Bourbon herself. It was whispered – yet especially not before the likes of either Mrs Jack Heythrop or Mr Lumpy Stevens - that Dorset even lived
en famille
at Versailles. The mundane business of mere diplomacy he left to his friend Mr Hailes.

Ever since his appointment in 1783, the Duke had thought nothing of returning to England annually for the cricketing months. But this summer he had failed to appear. From such absence, rather than from the ubiquitous presence of French refugees in London, Tankerville and Lindsay had judged the current disturbances across the Channel to be of proper gravity. As the summer had proceeded and public order deteriorated in the French capital, scoundrels began
issuing libels on the British nation, and rumours were started of the Royal Navy blockading French ports. In these darkening circumstances Dorset had proposed, towards the end of July, as a gesture of conciliation and friendship between the two countries, that a team of English cricketers be sent to play a team of Frenchmen in the Champs-Elysées. The Duke, who during his six years had done much to foment interest in the game, was to organise the eleven Parisians; Tankerville was enjoined to arrange transport of the English players with all despatch.

Sir Hamilton lay in bed that night recalling his tour with Mr Hawkins a dozen, no, nearer fifteen years ago. He himself was now becoming almost as plump of shank as many of the Chertsey fellows. He remembered the ratty horses and the lank pigtail queues trailing down like an eel; the stinking macquerel and the voluptuous melon; the coachman and his horse, kneeling in whipped equality; the blood running from the roast thrushes when the knife was inserted. He imagined himself smiting the French bowling to all parts of the Champs-Elysées, and Frenchmen carrying barbered dogs applauding him from beneath their umbrellas. He imagined seeing the French coast approach; he remembered being happy.

Sir Hamilton Lindsay was never put to the test on the Elysian Fields, nor did Lumpy Stevens ever make Frenchmen fill their breeches as they received his demon bowling. Instead, Lumpy Stevens played at Bishopsbourne in the match between Kent and Surrey, watched by several Chertsey men and Sir Hamilton Lindsay. Their
rendez-vous
with Dorset had not taken place, as originally intended, at the Duke’s
hôtel
in Paris, but on the quayside of Dover in the morning of Monday, 10th August 1789. The Duke had relinquished his
embassy two days previously, and had travelled the 90 miles to Boulogne on roads even more infested with bandits than was usual. It was presumed that Dorset’s hôtel had been plundered by the mob within hours of his departure; but in spite of this he was in remarkably cheerful spirits. He was, he said, much looking forward to spending the late summer and autumn in England as he normally did. The French capital would not seem so far away, since many of his Parisian friends had now come to England. He would discover whether there were enough among their number for the match which had been intended for the Champs-Elysées to be played instead at Sevenoaks.

General Sir Hamilton Lindsay and his wife walked to the church every Sunday afternoon. It was in truth a strange pilgrimage, since he would as soon step inside a mosque or a synagogue as inside a papistical shrine. Yet the fact that the church had been reduced and was now quite inactive drew much poison from the visit. Besides, it was the kind of ambulation he required if appetite for his dinner was to be provoked. Lady Lindsay had insisted on such bestirring of the shanks ever since she had been permitted out to join him.

A lieutenant would accompany them at a discreet distance, which did not offend Sir Hamilton, even though he had given his word in the matter as a soldier and a gentleman. The French maintained that the officer was present in case the General and his wife needed protection from some of the coarser local patriots; and he was prepared to connive in this diplomatic mendacity. No doubt General de Rauzan was
receiving the same courteous caretaking at his villa near Roehampton.

Elements of the revolutionary army had passed through the village on their march to Lyon a dozen or so years earlier. The bells of the church had been taken down; the silver and copper removed; the priest encouraged either to marry or to flee. Three cannoneers had set up their engine opposite the west door and had used the saints in their niches for target practice. As the General observed each week – an observation which always put him into a brief good humour - their accuracy had evidently been as nothing compared with that of Lumpy Stevens. Books had been incinerated, doors taken from their hinges; colour had been bludgeoned from the stained-glass. The soldiers had even begun demolition of the south wall, and upon departing had left instruction that the church was to be used as a quarry. The villagers, however, had shown pious obstinacy, and not a stone had been removed; even so, wind and diagonal rain swept uncivilly through the injured edifice.

On their return, dinner would be laid out beneath the awning on the terrace, and Dobson would be standing awkwardly behind Lady Lindsay’s chair. In the General’s view, the fellow had managed his successive translations with some skill: cricketer, gardener, infantryman, and now major-domo, manservant and chief forager. The very suddenness of their impromptu
ménage
had naturally given licence for a little more informality than would have been permitted at Nesfield; even so, the General was surprised that while addressing his beloved Evelina, his glance would increasingly slide up beyond her bonnet to Dobson standing behind her. At times he damned well found himself addressing Dobson, as if expecting him to join in the conversation. Happily the fellow
was sufficiently trained never to catch his master’s eye on such occasions, and besides knew how to feign a proper deafness. Evelina, for her part, treated her husband’s divergence from social form as if it were mere eccentricity, to be accounted for by his long exile and lack of intercourse. He was indeed much changed when she had come out three years ago: he had grown corpulent - no doubt from the unfavourable diet - but also indolent and weary. She had not doubted his pleasure at seeing her again; but found that his mind now travelled only in the past. It was natural that he should think so hard upon England, but England should also represent the future. That was what she enjoined him to hope: one day, they would surely return. There had been dismaying rumours that Buonaparte felt little zeal for the return of General de Rauzan to the ranks of his higher command; and it was true that the Frenchman’s notorious docility in permitting himself to be captured by Sir John Stuart at Maida could well displease any commander. But such rumours must be dismissed, she believed; hope must be made to flicker. England, England and the future, she urged upon him. But in the General’s mind England seemed to represent only the past, and he was connected to that past as much by Dobson as by his wife.