Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (7 page)

But ‘chop house’ hardly served: the sign read
Rule’s. Porter, pies and oysters
.

‘And deuced fine they are too. Shall we go in?’ he asked, giving up trying to see through the frosted windows.

It was middling full, but they found a table near a stove in a window booth which let in the light and kept out the draught, which Fairbrother was glad of, for he confessed that the cold had begun to chill his blood. And he owned to being fair famished. Hervey, also feeling the cold, had regained his appetite too, dulled before by his disappointing news. They ordered whitebait at once and asked for time to examine the rest of the bill.

It was Fairbrother who at length broke silence. ‘I do believe I could eat a whole steak and oyster pudding,’ he said, having scoured the list, which was long by the standards of the United Service.

Hervey nodded, but as yet was unsure of his choice. ‘I recollect that I had some fine mutton here once … But I shall join you in a pudding, and if it is insufficient then we may order another. And burgundy.’

Fairbrother smiled contentedly. The waiter took away their order.

The burgundy came in no time at all, and the friends had drunk half of it in even less. With both constitution and judgement restored by the time the whitebait was brought (in prodigious quantity), Hervey was expansive once again. ‘You know,’ he said, with a shake of the head and a satisfied sigh, ‘I doubt I could live anywhere truly content without the prospect of a whitebait dinner periodically. It is Old England.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Indeed. Did you know the cabinet has a whitebait dinner each year before parliament’s prorogued?’

‘I did not,’ replied Fairbrother, making an even larger pile of the fish than did his friend.

‘Yes, at Greenwich. They sail down there and eat whitebait at the Old George. At least I
think
it’s the Old George. We should do so ourselves.’

‘Admirable custom. Capital idea.’ Fairbrother had already taken up knife and fork.

‘I doubt there’s whitebait in Gibraltar,’ said Hervey, frowning.

‘We could enquire.’

Hervey nodded. ‘I suppose we could,’ he replied, not very enthusiastically.

The whitebait was consumed hungrily and in silence except for appreciative asides.

And then the burgundy was replenished, a sturdy steak and oyster pudding was laid before them, and a dish of Savoy cabbage, and Fairbrother could at last begin the serious business of interrogation.

‘Where do you suppose one might buy a pistol like that cabman’s? I’m resolved never to go on campaign again without a capped weapon.’

Hervey smiled knowingly. He owed his life to the percussion cap – at Waterloo, possibly the only capped carbine in the field that day. Yet the Board of Ordnance saw no reason, still, to put it into the hands of the rank and file. ‘Flayflints,’ he said, with a sardonic smile at his pun – and to Fairbrother’s mystification. ‘There’s a gunsmith’s in Leicester Street, the other side of Covent Garden – Forsyth’s. We might visit there later. Did the cabman say who was the maker?’

Fairbrother inclined his head. ‘In truth I found him difficult to comprehend, for he said several times that it was
dirigé
, but I could not understand
dirigé
by whom. It is French, we may suppose?’

‘It’s possible. Forsyth’s will know.’

Fairbrother helped himself to more burgundy, and became contemplative. ‘But let us suppose we return from this war twixt Turk and Russian sound in wind and limb; what then? Shall you put on a red coat, for it seems clear to me that a blue one will scarcely be worthwhile if all you shall have to command is a hundred dragoons?’

The matter was unconvivial, but Hervey welcomed the opportunity to rehearse aloud the arguments he would otherwise have to make to himself. ‘I confess it is a bitter blow. And if the die is cast, then so be it, but I have a mind that there’s much water yet to flow under this particular bridge. Lord George Irvine may yet make his weight felt. I shall go to see him as soon as may be.’ The colonel of a regiment, although no longer the proprietor he once was, carried nevertheless a deal of influence, with the King especially; and Lieutenant-General Irvine, a Waterloo man and now entrusted with command in Ireland, was not an officer whose opinion could be set aside lightly.

‘But if all else fails and your regiment is indeed reduced, what then? You surely wouldn’t wish to preside over a squadron?’

‘I would not wish it, no, but I might bear it,’ answered Hervey cautiously.

‘But what would it profit you, in both satisfaction and advancement? I’ll wager it would profit you nothing in either.’

Hervey took a deep breath. ‘There would always be some satisfaction in the proximity of men with whom I’d served long years.’

Fairbrother nodded, almost spilling his wine. ‘That, I grant you, but you wouldn’t wish their captain to be forever looking over his shoulder? And might not you and they tire of the proximity, confined to Hounslow, even with an occasional calling to clear the streets of “tumultuous assembly”?’

‘I think, were that to threaten, I should seek a temporary assignment elsewhere – as this mission to the Russians.’

Fairbrother nodded again. ‘That might serve. What, though, would it do for your prospects?’

Hervey thought especially carefully before answering. There was nothing base in the desire for promotion; it was woven, so to speak, into the fibre of every officer’s coat – or ought to be. ‘Sir George Don would be, no doubt, an agreeable commander at Gibraltar – as Lord Hill said – but he is a man of fortifications and suchlike. He spent the whole of the war on Jersey. I am not a man of fortifications. What do you suppose I should do to distinguish myself there? In which case, what would be the difference if I were to stay at Hounslow?’

‘That, I grant you.’

‘And besides, would I persuade you to serve at Gibraltar?’

Fairbrother smiled. ‘Its climate, I fancy, might suit me better than here; I should not wish to grow pale!’

Hervey scowled. ‘But does the thought engage you sufficiently? You agreed to come with me to the Levant, and then to stay awhile at Hounslow.’

Fairbrother’s brow furrowed; he was much bemused. ‘Hervey, I am excessively diverted by the notion that I should have any determination in the matter. But are you quite sure? I would not wish you to calculate for any preference on my part.’

Hervey did his best to make light of it (how he envied his friend’s easy way with matters): ‘I should value your … company … advice … and so on.’

Fairbrother reached for the burgundy again. ‘And what of the distaff side? Would Gibraltar be agreeable?’

Hervey checked the movement of any muscle that might convey an unhappy inability to speak for his wife. ‘I very much hope so.’

Kat had once followed him to Lisbon; his own wife might reasonably be expected to travel the few miles further. It did not occur to him that his friend’s answer might be consequent on it.

‘In principle I have no objection to service – however unofficial – in Gibraltar, nor in proximity to men in red,’ his friend replied, smiling wryly. ‘Indeed, I have no principled objection to anything after service with the Royal Africans!’

Hervey reflected the smile. ‘Quite. Just imagine had Lord Hill appointed
me
to a penal battalion!’ He took another good measure of burgundy, and signalled a change of course. ‘This pudding is uncommonly good, is it not?’

Fairbrother understood at once. He invariably did. He did not always heed the signal, but he recognized it, and on this occasion he was happy to oblige. ‘What did you make of Youell?’

And Hervey smiled the more for his friend’s understanding.

They left the warm upholstered comfort of Rule’s just after four o’clock, and set a hopeful, if indirect, course for the gunsmiths. It was darkling, but the streets were well lit, the gaslight made brighter by the snow, and the builders were still at work in Covent Garden, where the plan of the new market was now manifest – a great classical temple on a scale Hervey had seen only in Paris.

Fairbrother remarked again on the ubiquity of London masons.

‘The King is a great builder, I believe,’ said Hervey, slowing to admire the work on a section of Corinthian pillar about to be hoist. ‘Or so he was when regent.’

‘
Urbem lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit
,’
¹
declaimed Fairbrother magisterially, if a shade slurred.

Hervey looked at him with an approving smile. ‘My old cornet-friend Laming was fond of quoting Suetonius – and any number of others whose words seemed apt to our predicament. You would have liked him – a very excellent fellow. But then so are you; Gibraltar would be the duller place without you – brick instead of marble!’

His friend merely inclined his head.

‘I lay emphasis on the conditional, mind. I might add that so would Hounslow be – the duller place, that is.’

Indeed he was certain of it. He did not doubt there were agreeable officers in Gibraltar, and he supposed there would be too at Hounslow – though he fancied that no officer of spirit would stay in a depot squadron, which is what it would amount to if the regiment were placed
en cadre
. But with Fairbrother he knew he might speak his mind, and in turn receive unvarnished opinion. He had never felt the want of that resource before, but he had lately, at the Cape, felt its beneficial qualities keenly, and he did not wish to be done with it now.

‘I am greatly flattered.’

But Hervey intended no flattery, only the truth. ‘Fairbrother, let me speak plainly. I should esteem it the greatest good fortune if you accompanied me either to Hounslow or to Gibraltar – or, frankly, to anywhere else His Majesty is pleased to post me.’

Fairbrother, for once inclined to cast off insouciance, clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. But there was increase in his sportive humour nevertheless. ‘Might we
conditionally
visit the Fifty-third’s tailor then, and lay a swatch of red cloth across your breast?’

Hervey was inclined to enter the spirit of archness. ‘
Scarlet
cloth.’

Fairbrother smiled, conceding the point. ‘Ah, yes – scarlet. It seemed to me in the Royal Africans that the distinction lay solely in the fastness of the dye. A private man’s red coat was a pale affair after a good soaking, whereas an officer’s scarlet remained true – an allegory, as it were, of devotion to duty.’

‘The burgundy makes you excessively poetic. I have no intention of visiting the Fifty-third’s tailor. A red coat’s a red coat, and I fancy I can imagine what a button with “fifty-three” on it looks like – as opposed to one with “fifty-two”, or whatever it might otherwise be.’

The calls of the flower sellers – which with little other than greenery to sell were more importunate than those of the costers – were now intruding on their conversation, so that both men had to raise their voices to continue. ‘Even so, what a world apart are those two buttons. Would not the Fifty-second tempt you dearly?’

The Fifty-second – the ‘Oxfordshire Light Infantry’ – had been with Moore and the Light Brigade at Shorncliffe, and then Corunna; they were (they considered themselves, at least) an elite. Hervey was certainly tempted to agree with his friend – if only for the purpose of silencing him on the subject of red coats. ‘The Fifty-second would tempt anyone.’

A flower seller, pretty, Italian-looking, in a cloak with the hood thrown back, stepped in front of Fairbrother, bringing both men to a halt. ‘Buy these snowdrops from a poor, frozen flower girl, captain,’ she said, in a curious mixture of the accent of the streets and somewhere more distant. ‘It’s bitter cold, captain, and I needs buy a hot supper.’

Fairbrother reached instinctively inside his coat for his pocket-book, before realizing that coin was more appropriate.

Hervey wondered why the girl had made his friend the object of her entreaty and not him. Was it the affinity of a similar complexion (for he observed that hers was not much lighter than Fairbrother’s), or did his friend possess a more generous countenance? More susceptible, even?

‘How much?’ asked Fairbrother, purse in hand.

‘Sixpence, if you please, captain.’

‘
Sixpence?
’ said Hervey, astonished.

The girl turned to her questioner. ‘Why, sir, they’re picked this morning and brought a good long way,’ she replied disarmingly.

‘Here’s a shilling,’ said Fairbrother, taking no notice. ‘Two bunches, if you please. That will buy a hot supper will it not?’

‘It will, captain. God bless you.’ She handed him the snowdrops with a smile that might have been genuine.

He took them and then gave a bunch back to her. ‘Put these in a window to brighten it.’

‘Oh, thank you sir,’ she thrilled. ‘And a very good evening to you.’

Fairbrother raised his cap as she stood aside to let them pass.

Hervey said nothing until he was sure they were out of earshot. ‘I will say that I have been similarly done to in the past, but never more charmingly. I dare say we’ll be lucky to make it from the market without having to give a shilling to every girl. She’ll be telling them all this very moment.’