For we were going, there was now no doubt. War was finally declared at the end of March, in spite of Aberdeen’s dithering, and the mob bayed with delight from Shetland to Land’s End. To hear them, all we had to do was march into Moscow when we felt like it, with the Frogs carrying our packs for us and the cowardly Russians skulking away before Britannia’s flashing eyes. And mind you, I don’t say that the British Army and the French together couldn’t have done it – given a Wellington. They were sound at bottom, and the Russians weren’t. I’ll tell you something else, which military historians never realise: they call the Crimea a disaster, which it was, and a hideous botch-up by our staff and supply, which is also true, but what they don’t know is that even with all these things in the balance against you, the difference between hellish catastrophe and brilliant success is sometimes no greater than the width of a sabre blade, but when all is over no one thinks of that. Win gloriously – and the clever dicks forget all about the rickety ambulances that never came, and the rations that were rotten, and the boots that didn’t fit, and the generals who’d have been better employed hawking bedpans round the doors. Lose – and these are the only things they talk about.
But I’ll confess I saw the worst coming before we’d even begun. The very day war was declared Willy and I reported ourselves to Raglan at Horse Guards, and it took me straight back to the Kabul cantonment – all work and fury and chatter, and no proper direction whatever. Old Elphy Bey had sat picking at his nails and saying: ‘We must certainly consider what is best to be done’ while his staff men burst with impatience and spleen. You could see the germ of it here – Raglan’s ante-room was jammed with all sorts of people, Lucan, and Hardinge, and old Scarlett, and Anderson of the Ordnance, and there were staff-scrapers and orderlies running everywhere and saluting and bustling, and mounds of paper growing on the tables, and great consulting of maps (‘Where the devil is Turkey?’ someone was saying. ‘Do they have much rain there, d’ye suppose?’), but in the inner sanctum all was peace and amiability. Raglan was talking about neck-stocks, if I remember rightly, and how they should fasten well up under the chin.
We were kept well up to the collar, though, in the next month before our stout and thick-headed commander finally took his leave for the scene of war – Willy and I were not of his advance party, which pleased me, for there’s no greater fag than breaking in new ground. We were all day staffing at the Horse Guards, and Willy was either killing himself with kindness in St John’s Wood by night, or attending functions about Town, of which there were a feverish number. It’s always the same before the shooting begins – the hostesses go into a frenzy of gaiety, and all the spongers and civilians crawl out of the wainscoting braying with good fellowship because thank God they ain’t going, and the young plungers and green striplings roister it up, and their fiancées let ’em pleasure them red in the face out of pity, because the poor brave boy is off to the cannon’s mouth, and the dance goes on and the eyes grow brighter and the laughter shriller – and the older men in their dress uniforms look tired, and sip their punch by the fireplace and don’t say much at all.
Elspeth, of course, was in her element, dancing all night, laughing with the young blades and flirting with the old ones – Cardigan was still roostering about her, I noticed, with every sign of the little trollop’s encouragement. He’d got himself the Light Cavalry Brigade, which had sent a great groan through every hussar and lancer regiment in the army, and was even fuller of bounce than usual – his ridiculous lisp and growling ‘haw-haw’ seemed to sound everywhere you went, and he was full of brag about how he and his beloved Cherrypickers would be the élite advanced force of the army.
‘I believe they have given Wucan nominal charge of the cavalwy,’ I heard him tell a group of cronies at one party. ‘Well, I suppose they had to find him something, don’t ye know, and he may vewwy well look to wemounts, I daresay. Haw-haw. I hope poor Waglan does not find him too gweat an incubus. Haw-haw.’
This was Lucan, his own brother-in-law; they detested each other, which isn’t to be wondered at, since they were both detestable, Cardigan particularly. But his mighty lordship wasn’t having it all his own way, for the press, who hated him, revived the old jibe about his Cherrypickers’ tight pants, and Punch dedicated a poem to him called ‘Oh Pantaloons of Cherry’, which sent him wild. It was all gammon, really, for the pants were no tighter than anyone else’s – I wore ’em long enough, and should know – but it was good to see Jim the Bear roasting on the spit of popular amusement again. By God, I wish that spit had been a real one, with me to turn it.
It was a night in early May, I think, that Elspeth was bidden to some great drum in Mayfair to celebrate the first absolute fighting of the war, which had been reported a week or so earlier – our ships had bombarded Odessa, and broken half the windows in the place, so of course the fashionable crowd had to rave and riot in honour of the great victory.8 I don’t remember seeing Elspeth lovelier than she was that night, in a gown of some shimmering white satin stuff, and no jewels at all, but only flowers coiled in her golden hair. I would have had at her before she even set out, but she was all a-fuss tucking little Havvy into his cot – as though the nurse couldn’t do it ten times better – and was fearful that I would disarrange her appearance. I fondled her, and promised I would put her through the drill when she came home, but she damped this by telling me that Marjorie had bidden her stay the night, although it was only a few streets away, because the dancing would go on until dawn, and she would be too fatigued to return.
So off she fluttered, blowing me a kiss, and I snarled away to the Horse Guards, where I had to burn the midnight oil over sapper transports; Raglan had set out for Turkey leaving most of the work behind him, and those of us who were left were kept at it until three each morning. By the time we had finished, even Willy was too done up to fancy his usual nightly exercise with his Venus, so we sent out for some grub – it was harry and grass,fn3 I remember, which didn’t improve my temper – and then he went home.
I was tired and cranky, but I couldn’t think of sleep, somehow, so I went out and started to get drunk. I was full of apprehension about the coming campaign, and fed up with endless files and reports, and my head ached, and my shoes pinched, so I poured down the whistle-belly with brandy on top, and the inevitable result was that I finished up three parts tight in some cellar near Charing Cross. I thought of a whore, but didn’t want one – and then it struck me: I wanted Elspeth, and nothing else. By God, there was I, on the brink of another war, slaving my innards into knots, while she was tripping about in a Mayfair ballroom, laughing and darting chase-me glances at party-saunterers and young gallants, having a fine time for hours on end, and she hadn’t been able to spare me five minutes for a tumble! She was my wife, dammit, and it was too bad. I put away some more brandy while I considered the iniquity of this, and took a great drunken resolve – I would go round to Marjorie’s at once, surprise my charmer when she came to bed, and make her see what she had been missing all evening. Aye, that was it – and it was romantic, too, the departing warrior tupping up the girl he was going to leave behind, and she full of love and wistful longing and be-damned. (Drink’s a terrible thing.) Anyway, off I set west, with a full bottle in my pocket to see me through the walk, for it was after four, and there wasn’t even a cab to be had.
By the time I got to Marjorie’s place – a huge mansion fronting the Park, with every light ablaze – I was taking the width of the pavement and singing ‘Villikins and his Dinah’.9 The flunkeys at the door didn’t mind me a jot, for the house must have been full of foxed chaps and bemused females, to judge by the racket they were making. I found what looked like a butler, inquired the direction of Mrs Flashman’s chamber, and tramped up endless staircases, bouncing off the walls as I went. I found a lady’s maid, too, who put me on the right road, banged on a door, fell inside, and found the place was empty.
It was a lady’s bedroom, no error, but no lady, as yet. All the candles were burning, the bed was turned down, a fluffy little Paris night-rail which I recognised as one I’d bought my darling lay by the pillow, and her scent was in the