O’Hara looked at Arthur, a shrewd calculating look. ‘I don’t know this gentleman, sir. We haven’t been introduced yet.’
‘My apologies. This is the Honourable Arthur Wesley, newly arrived at Dublin Castle.’
O’Hara bowed his head. ‘Sir.’ Then he prodded the boy with his boot. ‘Liam, son, did you get the gentleman’s name?’
‘Aye, and he’s down for five guineas, so he is.’
‘Good boy.’ He ruffled the child’s hair before he bowed his head again to the two officers. ‘Enjoy the race, sirs.’
Whaley waved a farewell and pulled Arthur towards the stands. Arthur brushed his hand off. ‘What did you do that for,Whaley?’
‘Do what, Arthur?’ Whaley frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Making me take that five-guinea bet. That’s almost all the money I have right now. If that Charlemagne loses I’ll have no money to pay the rent at the end of the week.’
‘Nor will I,’ Whaley laughed. ‘If we lose, we’ll just have to do what every other young officer does, and borrow some money. Besides, how can that horse lose with a name like that?’
‘Oh, that’s very scientific, Buck. I don’t suppose you bothered to check his form.’
‘Why should I? The source of my tip is unimpeachable. Come on now, Arthur, or we’ll be too late to find a good spot to watch the race.’
With a bitter sigh of frustration at his friend’s thoughtlessness, Arthur followed him into the stands and they climbed up until they had a view of the whole track.The horses were already being marshalled down by the starting line and the jockeys urged their mounts into place with quick twitches of the reins and pressure from their knees as the crowd grew quiet in anticipation. The starter waited until all the mounts were as close behind the line as possible, then he dropped his flag and with a throaty roar from the crowd the horses kicked out and galloped down the opening straight.
‘Which one’s ours?’ Arthur shouted into his friend’s ear.
‘Green and black colours! There, in third, no, fourth place.’
‘Fourth? I thought you said he couldn’t lose.’
‘The race has just started, Arthur. Give the poor bloody horse a chance. Now do be quiet and let me watch.’
Charlemagne managed to stay up with the leaders as the horses swung round the first bend, but made up no ground as they pounded down the next straight towards the final bend. Arthur watched with a sinking feeling of despair. Then the animals swept round, with Charlemagne a full five lengths behind the three leaders. Suddenly, the lead horse reared to one side as the jockey’s reins snapped. The second animal drew up and was immediately knocked flying by the horse in third place.
‘Ahhhh!’ roared the crowd, and then, as Charlemagne swerved past the tangle of horses and riders and thundered down the home straight towards the finishing line the crowd began to jeer and boo. As their horse safely crossed the line and the jockey punched his fist into the air in triumph Whaley and Arthur shouted with delight and pounded the rail with their hands.
‘What did I tell you?’ Whaley screamed. ‘He did it! Come on, let’s go and see O’Hara!’
Despite having to pay out a considerable sum to the two officers the bookie was cheerful enough since he had raked in all the money placed on the three unfortunate horses that had come to grief on the home straight.
‘You gentlemen care to make another bet?’ O’Hara indicated the board behind him on which he had chalked details of the coming races. Arthur was about to walk away when Whaley held him back. ‘Just a minute. There’s good odds on that last name in the fifth.’
‘With good cause, no doubt,’ Arthur responded. ‘Come on. We’ve chanced our arm enough already today. Let’s take the winnings and go.’
‘But look. The odds are twenty to one.’
‘Yes, but I doubt we can rely on another freak of fate today.’
‘Oh, come on, Arthur. Let’s just give it five guineas. We can afford that now. And if we win, we’re almost twice as well off. Come on,’ he pleaded. ‘Just one more bet.’
Arthur looked at him a moment, and relented. After all, he was already more than fifty guineas better off. ‘Just one last bet then. But I’ll place mine both ways.’
The outsider came in third and Arthur smacked his fist into his hand as it crossed the line, much to the chagrin of Whaley, who had bet to win.The betting did not end there. Several more races went by and Arthur backed almost as many losers as winners by the end of the day, but he had been careful with his initial winnings and was pleased to leave the racecourse twenty guineas richer than when he had arrived.They went and found the other two officers and returned to the hired carriage. Henderson and Courtney had lost a small fortune but were putting brave faces on it.
‘It’s only money,’ Jack Courtney shrugged.‘I’ll just have to send home for some more.’
‘Wish I could,’ Henderson replied unhappily. ‘I already owe several months’ pay to those sharks in Dublin. My father’s paid ’em off once already. Swears he won’t do it again.’
Arthur smiled. ‘I’ll wager he does.’
‘How much?’
‘Twenty guineas.’
‘Done.’
‘But you must let me write the letter to him.’
‘What?’
‘I write the letter or the bet’s off.’
Henderson considered the stakes for a moment and then thrust out his hand. ‘You’re on.’
It amazed Arthur just how far one could go in placing a bet. In the months that followed he bet on the weather, the colour of the vicereine’s dress for the next ball, Captain Wilmott’s waist measurement, and once he even bet Whaley that the latter could not walk six miles round Dublin in less than an hour. Even though Whaley was quite drunk at the time, he took the bet, and through a supreme feat of endurance, won it. Other bets Arthur won, most he lost, and as the summer of 1788 settled on the city he found that he was in debt. He owed Dancing Jack money over a bet who could down the most Tokay one night at the castle. When Jack pressed for the money Arthur had none to give him.
‘That’s bad form, Wesley,’ Jack responded with unusual seriousness. ‘A bet is a matter of honour. It’s like pledging your word. A gentleman always honours his debts.’
‘And it will be honoured,’ Arthur said firmly. ‘As soon as I find the money.’
‘Then see to it, before word gets out that you are not good for your bets.’
The first person Arthur turned to was his landlord, the bootmaker on Ormonde Quay. The bootmaker did not have to be persuaded; he had already made loans to a number of his gentlemen lodgers and knew that they would go to almost any lengths to repay him rather than be publicly dishonoured. Besides, the interest rate on the loans provided a nice source of income in itself. For Arthur, the problem got progressively worse as he was compelled to borrow money from one lender to pay off another, and all the time the sums he owed grew as fast as a vine, threatening to wrap itself around him and choke him to death in the long run. He briefly considered approaching his brother William for a loan, since William was now a respectable member of the Irish parliament, with enough sinecures to provide a comfortable living. But the prospect of enduring one of William’s sermons on debt was too much for Arthur to bear. After a certain point, when it was clear that he would not be out of debt as long as he remained in Dublin, Arthur simply ceased to worry about his debts and accepted them as a fact of life.
Dublin offered other pleasures of the most carnal and sophisticated kind. And there was no more infamous club than Fitzpatrick’s on Birdsall Street. So infamous, in fact, that it had an appendix all of its own in the latest edition of
Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies
. It was to Fitzpatrick’s that Arthur and Dancing Jack were making their way on a humid July evening. Even though it was past eight o’clock Dublin was bathed in a warm orange glow, accentuated by a thin mantle of smog. Aside from a brief shower earlier that day the weather had been glorious for the last week and the streets stank of sewage.The two officers were passing through one of the slum neighbourhoods and the streets were filled with ragged barefoot children, gaunt with hunger but still playing games amid the rubbish and filth strewn the length of the street. Loud singing spilled from a drinking-house at the end, and several men were slumped against the wall, having drunk themselves into oblivion. A haggard-faced whore was calmly going from one man to the next, rifling their pockets.
‘Away with you!’ Jack lashed at her with his cane and she shrieked as the blow landed across her shoulders. ‘Bloody thief !’ He raised his cane again and the woman scrambled back, rose to her feet and scurried round the corner.
Arthur glanced about and saw that the people in the street were gazing at the two smartly dressed officers with open hostility. ‘Come, Jack, this is not a friendly place.’
‘Not friendly? Pah! This lot are nothing more than craven cowards.’ He waved his hand dismissively at the people in the street. ‘Like all the Irish. Black-hearted barbarians fit for nothing but growing potatoes.’
‘Quiet, Jack.You’ll get us killed.’
The door of the drinking-house burst open and two men rolled into the street, cursing and snarling as they grappled on the filthy cobblestones. One of the men snatched a shillelagh from his coat and before the other could react he smashed the small club down on the other man’s skull. There was a dull crunch and the man fell back unconscious, blood welling up from under his hair. His assailant did not spare a second in bending over him and pounding away at the head of his victim, until his face was spattered with blood and brains. He glanced up, saw the two officers watching and took to his heels.
Jack looked over his white breeches to make sure that they had not been hit by any of the flying droplets of blood. ‘Like I said, black-hearted barbarians. Where else in this world are you likely to come across a thieving whore and a murderer in the space of less than a minute? Tell me that, Arthur.’
Arthur took a step towards the man lying in the street. ‘We should get him to a doctor.’
‘No point, Arthur. He’s well beyond help now, and we’re late. If we’re not at Fitzpatrick’s by the appointed hour then my sweet Mary will have found herself another man for the night. Let’s go.’
Arthur took a last look at the body, wincing as blood trickled around the cobbles towards the gutter. Then he straightened up and hurried after his friend.
With the arrival of summer the vicereine gave fewer balls and instead concentrated on planning and holding fine picnics in the surrounding countryside. Before he began to attend these events Arthur had conceived of picnics as being largely informal affairs consisting of a hurriedly packed picnic basket in response to a spontaneous call to take advantage of a hot summer’s day. His parents and brothers and sisters would go scrambling across the fields around Dangan until a quiet spot was found by a stream in which they could cool their bare feet as they ate bread and cold meats and cheeses. By contrast the picnics organised by the vicereine amounted to a complex culinary campaign that would have rivalled a military exercise in the demands it placed upon staff officers to co-ordinate movements of guests, supplies of food and entertainments.These arrangements tended to keep the aides fully occupied for days at a time, and Arthur could not help thinking that they represented her revenge on the awkward squad of Dublin Castle.
On picnic days, the carts and wagons of those hired to prepare the food arrived at the spot chosen before the vicereine’s guests arrived. Tents were set up, orchestras tuned their instruments in the shade of trees and vast amounts of cold meats and delicacies prepared.
The general high spirits amongst those who attended the picnics thoroughly infected Arthur, and he was often to be discovered talking at the top of his voice to his cronies. Once he had taken a few drinks the alcohol brought out a malevolent mischief in him, and many picnics were spoiled for some by finding some rather unpleasant wildlife in their picnic hampers. Or he might push someone into a river, or inform their coach drivers that their vehicles were no longer needed, so that the owners faced a long walk back into Dublin.
Eventually the vicereine had had enough and summoned Lieutenant Wesley to her private apartments at the start of August. Arthur knocked on the doors to her rooms and was shown to her office by a footman.
‘Lieutenant Wesley to see you,Your Grace.’
‘Show him in.’
The footman beckoned and Arthur marched through the door and stood to attention as the footman closed the doors gently behind him and left his mistress and her guest alone.The vicereine was an elegant lady some years older than Arthur and considerably wiser. She sat at a small escritoire and quickly finished a note she was writing on a sheet of vellum, before closing the lid of her inkwell and setting her pen down. She gazed at him for a while until Arthur became uncomfortable and his mind raced with ideas about the reason for this summons to a private interview.
‘Sit down, Lieutenant.’
‘Yes,Your Grace.’ He pulled up one of the chairs that lined the room, ready for the intimate recitals that she sometimes held here.
‘Arthur, if I may call you that?’
He nodded.The resort to his first name did not bode well and he swallowed nervously.
‘Arthur, do you know why you are here?’
‘No, Your Grace.’ He recognised the strategy and felt like a naughty schoolboy caught out by his teacher.
She smiled briefly. ‘Behaviour is what I wish to discuss with you. Namely, your behaviour - or lack of it, I should say.’
‘Your Grace? I’m not sure I understand.’
‘I hope you do,Arthur, because it is the only way in which you may be redeemed. Frankly, I am tired of the ceaseless pranks that you play on some of the guests at my picnics.’
‘I do not mean to cause offence,Your Grace.’
‘You do worse than that, Arthur.You cause annoyance.You are like a small spoiled brat of a boy, the kind that does his utmost to ruin birthday parties and that sort of thing. Just to gain attention. Well, now you have my attention and all I can say is that I am beginning to wish that my husband had never consented to your brother’s request that you become an aide. It’s a shame, a great shame, for I like nothing more than to be surrounded by handsome, charming men like yourself. I can see that you have potential, but at present, this boorish behaviour of yours will not do. Do you understand?’