Читать книгу: «Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 1: Flashman, Royal Flash, Flashman’s Lady»

Chapter 2

I didn’t linger on the way home. I knew my father was in London, and I wanted to get over as soon as I could the painful business of telling him I had been kicked out of Rugby. So I decided to ride to town, letting my bags follow, and hired a horse accordingly at the “George”. I am one of those who rode as soon as he walked – indeed, horsemanship and my trick of picking up foreign tongues have been the only things in which you could say I was born gifted, and very useful they have been.

So I rode to town, puzzling over how my father would take the good news. He was an odd fish, the guv’nor, and he and I had always been wary of each other. He was a nabob’s grandson, you see, old Jack Flashman having made a fortune in America out of slaves and rum, and piracy, too, I shouldn’t wonder, and buying the place in Leicestershire where we have lived ever since. But for all their moneybags, the Flashmans were never the thing – “the coarse streak showed through, generation after generation, like dung beneath a rosebush,” as Greville said. In other words, while other nabob families tried to make themselves pass for quality, ours didn’t, because we couldn’t. My own father was the first to marry well, for my mother was related to the Pagets, who as everyone knows sit on the right hand of God. As a consequence he kept an eye on me to see if I gave myself airs; before mother died he never saw much of me, being too busy at the clubs or in the House or hunting – foxes sometimes, but women mostly – but after that he had to take some interest in his heir, and we grew to know and mistrust each other.

He was a decent enough fellow in his way, I suppose, pretty rough and with the devil’s own temper, but well enough liked in his set, which was country-squire with enough money to pass in the West End. He enjoyed some lingering fame through having gone a number of rounds with Cribb, in his youth, though it’s my belief that Champion Tom went easy with him because of his cash. He lived half in town, half in country now, and kept an expensive house, but he was out of politics, having been sent to the knacker’s yard at Reform. He was still occupied, though, what with brandy and the tables, and hunting – both kinds.

I was feeling pretty uneasy, then, when I ran up the steps and hammered on the front door. Oswald, the butler, raised a great cry when he saw who it was, because it was nowhere near the end of the half, and this brought other servants: they scented scandal, no doubt.

“My father’s home?” I asked, giving Oswald my coat and straightening my neck-cloth.

“Your father, to be sure, Mr Harry,” cried Oswald, all smiles. “In the saloon this minute!” He threw open the door, and cried out: “Mr Harry’s home, sir!”

My father had been sprawled on a settee, but he jumped up when he saw me. He had a glass in his hand and his face was flushed, but since both those things were usual it was hard to say whether he was drunk or not. He stared at me, and then greeted the prodigal with:

“What the hell are you doing here?”

At most times this kind of welcome would have taken me aback, but not now. There was a woman in the room, and she distracted my attention. She was a tall, handsome, hussy-looking piece, with brown hair piled up on her head and a come-and-catch-me look in her eye. “This is the new one,” I thought, for you got used to his string of madames; they changed as fast as the sentries at St James’.

She was looking at me with a lazy, half-amused smile that sent a shiver up my back at the same time as it made me conscious of the schoolboy cut of my clothes. But it stiffened me, too, all in an instant, so that I answered his question pat:

“I’ve been expelled,” I said, as cool as I could.

“Expelled? D’ye mean thrown out? What the devil for, sir?”

“Drunkenness, mainly.”

“Mainly? Good God!” He was going purple. He looked from the woman back to me, as though seeking enlightenment. She seemed much amused by it, but seeing the old fellow in danger of explosion I made haste to explain what had happened. I was truthful enough, except that I made rather more of my interview with Arnold than was the case; to hear me you would suppose I had given as good as I got. Seeing the female eyeing me I acted pretty offhand, which was risky, perhaps, with the guv’nor in his present mood. But to my surprise he took it pretty well; he had never liked Arnold, of course.

“Well, I’m damned!” he said, when I had finished, and poured himself another glass. He wasn’t grinning, but his brow had cleared. “You young dog! A pretty state of things, indeed. Expelled in disgrace, by gad! Did he flog you? No? I’d have had the hide off your back – perhaps I will, damme!” But he was smiling now, a bit sour, though. “What d’you make of this, Judy?” he said to the woman.

“I take it this is a relative?” she says, letting her fan droop towards me. She had a deep husky voice, and I shivered again.

“Relative? Eh? Oh, dammit, it’s my son Harry, girl! Harry, this is Judy … er, Miss Parsons.”

She smiled at me now, still with that half-amused look, and I preened myself – I was seventeen, remember – and sized up her points while the father got himself another glass and damned Arnold for a puritan hedge-priest. She was what is called junoesque, broad-shouldered and full-breasted, which was less common then than it is now, and it seemed to me she liked the look of Harry Flashman.

“Well,” said my father at last, when he had finished fulminating against the folly of putting prigs and scholars in charge of public schools. “Well, what’s to be done with you, eh? What’ll you do, sir? Now that you’ve disgraced the home with your beastliness, eh?”

I had been thinking this over on my way home, and said straight out that I fancied the army.

“The army?” he growled. “You mean I’m to buy you colours so that you can live like a king and ruin me with bills at the Guards’ Club, I suppose?”

“Not the Guards,” I said. “I’ve a notion for the 11th Light Dragoons.”

He stared at this. “You’ve chosen a regiment already? By gad, here’s a cool hand!”

I knew the 11th were at Canterbury, after long service in India, and unlikely for that reason to be posted abroad. I had my own notions of soldiering. But this was too fast for the guv’nor; he went on about the expense of buying in, and the cost of army life, and worked back to my expulsion and my character generally, and so back to the army again. The port was making him quarrelsome, I could see, so I judged it best not to press him. He growled on:

“Dragoons, damme! D’ye know what a cornet’s commission costs? Damned nonsense. Never heard the like. Impudence, eh, Judy?”

Miss Judy observed that I might look very well as a dashing dragoon.

“Eh?” said my father, and gave her a queer look. “Aye, like enough he would. We’ll see.” He looked moodily at me. “In the meantime, you can get to your bed,” he said. “We’ll talk of this tomorrow. For the moment you’re still in disgrace.” But as I left them I could hear him blackguarding Arnold again, so I went to bed well pleased, and relieved into the bargain. He was odd fish, all right; you could never tell how he would take anything.

In the morning, though, when I met my father at breakfast, there was no talk of the army. He was too busy damning Brougham – who had, I gathered, made a violent attack on the Queen in the House¹ – and goggling over some scandal about Lady Flora Hastings² in the Post, to give me much attention, and left presently for his club. Anyway, I was content to let the matter rest just now; I have always believed in one thing at a time, and the thing that was occupying my mind was Miss Judy Parsons.

Let me say that while there have been hundreds of women in my life, I have never been one of those who are forever boasting about their conquests. I’ve raked and ridden harder than most, no doubt, and there are probably a number of middle-aged men and women who could answer to the name of Flashman if only they knew it. That’s by the way; unless you are the kind who falls in love – which I’ve never been – you take your tumbles when you’ve the chance, and the more the better. But Judy has a close bearing on my story.

I was not inexperienced with women; there had been maids at home and a country girl or two, but Judy was a woman of the world, and that I hadn’t attempted. Not that I was concerned on that account, for I fancied myself (and rightly) pretty well. I was big and handsome enough for any of them, but being my father’s mistress she might think it too risky to frolic with the son. As it turned out, she wasn’t frightened of the guv’nor or anyone else.

She lived in the house – the young Queen was newly on the throne then, and people still behaved as they had under the Prince Regent and King Billy; not like later on, when mistresses had to stay out of sight. I went up to her room before noon to spy out the land, and found her still in bed, reading the papers. She was glad to see me, and we talked, and from the way she looked and laughed and let me toy with her hand I knew it was only a question of finding the time. There was an abigail fussing about the room, or I’d have gone for her then and there.

However, it seemed my father would be at the club that night, and playing late, as he often did, so I agreed to come back and play écarte with her in the evening. Both of us knew it wouldn’t be cards we would be playing. Sure enough, when I did come back, she was sitting prettying herself before her glass, wearing a bed-gown that would have made me a small handkerchief. I came straight up behind her, took her big breasts out in either hand, stopped her gasp with my mouth, and pushed her on to the bed. She was as eager as I was, and we bounced about in rare style, first one on top and then the other. Which reminds me of something which has stayed in my head, as these things will: when it was over, she was sitting astride me, naked and splendid, tossing the hair out of her eyes – suddenly she laughed, loud and clearly, the way one does at a good joke. I believed then she was laughing with pleasure, and thought myself a hell of a fellow, but I feel sure now she was laughing at me. I was seventeen, you remember, and doubtless she found it amusing to know how pleased with myself I was.

Later we played cards, for form’s sake, and she won, and then I had to sneak off because my father came home early. Next day I tried her again, but this time, to my surprise, she slapped my hands and said: “No, no, my boy; once for fun, but not twice. I’ve a position to keep up here.” Meaning my father, and the chance of servants gossiping, I supposed.

I was annoyed at this, and got ugly, but she laughed at me again. I lost my temper, and tried to blackmail her by threatening to let my father find out about the night before, but she just curled her lip.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said. “And if you did, I wouldn’t care.”

“Wouldn’t you?” I said. “If he threw you out, you slut?”

“My, the brave little man,” she mocked me. “I misjudged you. At first sight I thought you were just another noisy brute like your father, but I see you’ve a strong streak of the cur in you as well. Let me tell you, he’s twice the man you are – in bed or out of it.”

“I was good enough for you, you bitch,” I said.

“Once,” she said, and dropped me a mock curtsey. “That was enough. Now get out, and stick to servant girls after this.”

I went in a black rage, slamming the door, and spent the next hour striding about the Park, planning what I would do to her if I ever had the chance. After a while my anger passed, and I just put Miss Judy away in a corner of my mind, as one to be paid off when the chance came.

Oddly enough, the affair worked to my advantage. Whether some wind of what had happened on the first night got to my father’s ears, or whether he just caught something in the air, I don’t know, but I suspect it was the second; he was shrewd, and had my own gift of sniffing the wind. Whatever it was, his manner towards me changed abruptly; from harking back to my expulsion and treating me fairly offhand, he suddenly seemed sulky at me, and I caught him giving me odd looks, which he would hurriedly shift away, as though he were embarrassed.

Anyway, within four days of my coming home, he suddenly announced that he had been thinking about my notion of the army, and had decided to buy me a pair of colours. I was to go over to the Horse Guards to see my Uncle Bindley, my mother’s brother, who would arrange matters. Obviously, my father wanted me out of the house, and quickly, so I pinned him then and there, while the iron was hot, on the matter of an allowance. I asked for £500 a year to add to my pay, and to my astonishment he agreed without discussion. I cursed myself for not asking £750 but £500 was twice what I’d expected, and far more than enough, so I was pretty pleased, and set off for Horse Guards in a good humour.

A lot has been said about the purchase of commissions – how the rich and incompetent can buy ahead of better men, how the poor and efficient are passed over – and most of it, in my experience, is rubbish. Even with purchase abolished, the rich rise faster in the Service than the poor, and they’re both inefficient anyway, as a rule. I’ve seen ten men’s share of service, through no fault of my own, and can say that most officers are bad, and the higher you go, the worse they get, myself included. We were supposed to be rotten with incompetence in the Crimea, for example, when purchase was at its height, but the bloody mess they made in South Africa recently seems to have been just as bad – and they didn’t buy their commissions.