‘Oh, that you should think ill of me!’ she sniffled. ‘Oh, I could die of shame!’
‘Well,’ says I, breathing brandy everywhere, ‘there he was, wasn’t he? By God! Well, I say!’ I suddenly seized her by the shoulders at arms’ length. ‘Do you—? No, by God! I saw him – and you – and – and—’
‘Oh, you are cruel!’ she cried. ‘Cruel, cruel!’ And then her arms went round my neck, and she kissed me, and I was sure she was lying – almost sure.
She sobbed away a good deal, and protested, and I babbled a great amount, no doubt, and she swore her honesty, and I didn’t know what to make of it. She might be true, but if she was a cheat and a liar and a whore, what then? Murder her? Thrash her? Divorce her? The first was lunatic, the second I couldn’t do, not now, and the third was unthinkable. With the trusts that old swine Morrison had left to tie things up, she controlled all the cash, and the thought of being a known cuckold living on my pay – well, I’m fool enough for a deal, but not for that. Her voice was murmuring in my ear, and all that naked softness was in my arms, and her fondling touch was reminding me of what I’d come here for in the first place, so what the devil, thinks I, first things first, and if you don’t pleasure her now till she faints, you’ll look back from your grey-haired evenings and wish you had. So I did.
I still don’t know – and what’s more I don’t care. But one thing only I was certain of that night – whoever was innocent, it wasn’t James Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan. I swore then inwardly, with Elspeth moaning through her kiss, that I would get even with that one. The thought of that filthy old goat trying to board Elspeth – it brought me out in a sweat of fury and loathing. I’d kill him, somehow. I couldn’t call him out – he’d hide behind the law, and refuse. Even worse, he might accept. And apart from the fact that I daren’t face him, man to man, there would have been scandal for sure. But somehow, some day, I would find a way.
We went to sleep at last, with Elspeth murmuring in my ear about what a mighty lover I was, recalling me in doting detail, and how I was at my finest after a quarrel. She was giggling drowsily about how we had made up our previous tiff, with me tumbling her in the broom closet at home, and what fun it had been, and how I’d said it was the most famous place for rogering, and then suddenly she asked, quite sharp:
‘Harry – tonight – your great rage at my misfortune was not all a pretence, was it? You did not – you are sure? – have some … some female in the cupboard?’
And damn my eyes, she absolutely got out to look. I don’t suppose I’ve cried myself to sleep since I was an infant, but it was touch and go then.
While all these important events in my personal affairs were taking place – Willy and Elspeth and Cardigan and so forth – you may wonder how the war was progressing. The truth is, of course, that it wasn’t, for it’s a singular fact of the Great Conflict against Russia that no one – certainly no one on the Allied side – had any clear notion of how to go about it. You will think that’s one of these smart remarks, but it’s not; I was as close to the conduct of the war in the summer of ’54 as anyone, and I can tell you truthfully that the official view of the whole thing was:
‘Well, here we are, the French and ourselves, at war with Russia, in order to protect Turkey. Ve-ry good. What shall we do, then? Better attack Russia, eh? H’m, yes. (Pause.) Big place, ain’t it?’
So they decided to concentrate our army, and the Froggies, in Bulgaria, where they might help the Turks fight the Ruskis on the Danube. But the Turks flayed the life out of the Russians without anyone’s help, and neither Raglan, who was now out in Varna in command of the allies, nor our chiefs at home, could think what we might usefully do next. I had secret hopes that the whole thing might be called off; Willy and I were still at home, for Raglan had sent word that for safety’s sake his highness should not come out until the fighting started – there was so much fever about in Bulgaria, it would not be healthy for him.
But there was never any hope of a peace being patched up, not with the mood abroad in England that summer. They were savage – they had seen their army and navy sail away with drums beating and fifes tootling, and ‘Rule Britannia’ playing, and the press promising swift and condign punishment for the Muscovite tyrant, and street-corner orators raving about how British steel would strike oppression down, and they were like a crowd come to a prize-fight where the two pugs don’t fight, but spar and weave and never come to grips. They wanted blood, gallons of it, and to read of grapeshot smashing great lanes through Russian ranks, and stern and noble Britons skewering Cossacks, and Russian towns in flames – and they would be able to shake their heads over the losses of our gallant fellows, sacrificed to stern duty, and wolf down their kidneys and muffins in their warm breakfast rooms, saying: ‘Dreadful work this, but by George, England never shirked yet, whatever the price. Pass the marmalade, Amelia; I’m proud to be a Briton this day, let me tell you.’10
And all they got that summer, was – nothing. It drove them mad, and they raved at the government, and the army, and each other, lusting for butchery, and suddenly there was a cry on every lip, a word that ran from tongue to tongue and was in every leading article – ‘Sevastopol!’ God knows why, but suddenly that was the place. Why were we not attacking Sevastopol, to show the Russians what was what, eh? It struck me then, and still does, that attacking Sevastopol would be rather like an enemy of England investing Penzance, and then shouting towards London: ‘There, you insolent bastard, that’ll teach you!’ But because it was said to be a great base, and The Times was full of it, an assault on Sevastopol became the talk of the hour.
And the government dithered, the British and Russian armies rotted away in Bulgaria with dysentery and cholera, the public became hysterical, and Willy and I waited, with our traps packed, for word to sail.
It came one warm evening, with a summons to Richmond. Suddenly there was great bustle, and I had to ride post-haste to receive from His Grace the Duke of Newcastle despatches to be carried to Raglan without delay. I remember an English garden, and Gladstone practising croquet shots on the lawn, and dragonflies buzzing among the flowers, and over on the terrace a group of men lounging and yawning – the members of the Cabinet, no less, just finished an arduous meeting at which most of ’em had dozed off – that’s a fact, too, it’s in the books.11 And Newcastle’s secretary, a dapper young chap with an ink smudge on the back of his hand, handing me a sealed packet with a ‘secret’ label.
‘The Centaur is waiting at Greenwich,’ says he. ‘You must be aboard tonight, and these are to Lord Raglan, from your hand into his, nothing staying. They contain the government’s latest advices and instructions, and are of the first urgency.’
‘Very good,’ says I. ‘What’s the word of mouth?’ He hesitated, and I went on: ‘I’m on his staff, you know.’
It was the practice of every staff galloper then – and for all I know, may still be – when he was given a written message, to ask if there were any verbal observations to add. (As you’ll see later, it is a very vital practice.) He frowned, and then, bidding me wait, went into the house, and came out with that tall grey figure that everyone in England knew, and the mobs used to cheer and laugh at and say, what a hell of an old fellow he was: Palmerston.
‘Flashman, ain’t it?’ says he, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘Thought you had gone out with Raglan.’ I told him about Willy, and he chuckled. ‘Oh, aye, our aspiring Frederick the Great. Well, you may take him with you, for depend upon it, the war is now under way. You have the despatches? Well, now, I think you may tell his lordship, when he has digested them – I daresay Newcastle has made it plain enough – that the capture of Sevastopol is held by Her Majesty’s Government as being an enterprise that cannot but be seen as signally advancing the success of Allied arms. Hum? But that it will be a damned serious business to undertake. You see?’
I nodded, looking knowing, and he grunted