Castle Orchard (6 page)

‘You tell me he’s a natural son of the late Lord Tregorn.’

‘Yes, but pray don’t accuse me of telling the truth.’

Arthur took a lunge at Sir John’s evening coat that was suspended on a hanger.

‘That’s new, a devilish fine shade of blue. What a beauty you will be. Had you better not put it on? I never should go to Almack’s for one has to wear knee-britches and my poor little legs are nothing when only clad in silk stockings.’

Sir John shook his head. He would not go. Arthur, soon bored, went away without him.

‘A gentleman like you, Mr Emill, wouldn’t like the life of a soldier. There ain’t no niceties attached to it.’

Pride was addressing Arthur’s French valet, Emile. They were on far more intimate terms than their respective masters, and the Frenchman liked to sit in Pride’s room, for his own accommodation was little more than a cupboard. To redress the imbalance he would bring Pride a glass of French brandy, as he had a brother in the trade. His own wages, when paid, would not have stretched to such a luxury. He was careful only to bring a small glass.

‘You think you’ll spend the days keeping your uniform as it should be,’ Pride continued, ‘a job you and I understand – brushing an’ polishing an’ pipeclaying an’ a burnishing of buttons – but once you’re off to foreign places an’ your clothes are soaked an’ bleached an’ frozen up solid an’ you’ve been outdoors to bed in ’em for nights on end . . . well, there’s little you can do with brushing. Patching is more the answer. I was in the tailoring business, so patching comes easy to me.’

Emile was not so rude as to ask how a good tailor got to enlist, besides which, Pride, when in full flow, was difficult to stop.

‘The sights you have to see, they turn your stomach. ’Course, there’s nasty things to be seen at home, but they fade away, like, when you’ve seen a battlefield a few days on. I never could like no Frenchman until I had the pleasure of your acquaintance, though we was friendly enough between battles an’ took off our clothes an’ got in the river together. Then there’s no telling who’s French and who isn’t. Why, I’ve parlayed with many a Frenchman when I’ve been on picket an’ had a swig from his canteen, but I didn’t like being on picket. Frightens me to death, standing alone in the dark, your mate half out of earshot, hour after hour with the trees all rustling an’ a wolf behind every rock or every rock looking like a wolf, an’ I stared so much I could make out its eyes an’ ears an’ teeth too. Then I’d think I saw the moonlight flash on a Frenchman’s bayonet an’ I wondered if it weren’t the whole army an’ I’d be spliced down the middle afore I could squeak.

‘I was ever so thankful when I got me discharge but I didn’t care to leave Captain Allington and I told him out straight I’d stay on as his private servant if he’d be so kind as to keep me – even if I never got no wages, for Captain Allington wasn’t rich, for all his grand connections.’

Pride paused for breath. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed in lieu of a tailor’s bench, making Allington a waistcoat.

‘Lightweight for summer, this is. The Captain won’t have anyone make his clothes except me. He says it keeps me out of harm’s way and I fancy I still know the tricks of it. ’Course, I had to do some tailoring in the Army. When the regiment was due for a refit, they uniforms would come out to Portugal any old size and shape and the men were any old size and shape, though most of ’em were little fellows like me, and the devil it was to get them matched up.’

‘That is a fancy colour for your sober Captain.’

‘My master dresses very sober except in the waistcoat. Here he allows a little something extra, not that much of it shows.’

‘Soldiers are dandies,’ commented the Frenchman.

‘No, they ain’t.’

‘But look at your guardsmen here in Piccadilly, each one a figure of glory.’

‘Well, yes, but I don’t believe many of them were in Spain.’

‘My dear Mr Pride, it is the uniform. The uniform is a dandy thing. How many a time you have shown me the red your Captain wore in its box of cedar? And the blue one too, he wore at some other time. They are beautiful, dandy things, not at all right for killing or for waiting for a wolf to eat you.’

Pride attempted to disagree but he was not clever at it. After a few weak sallies into the enemy camp, he contented himself with sipping his brandy, though he did not like a Frenchman to have the better of him.

After a while, he said, ‘Those were what he had to wear for reviews and such. He didn’t wear ’em for battle, he had second-best for they. As for what he wore at Waterloo, torn off him that were, for the sake of the buttons and the lace. It can’t have been good for much else, not the state he was in. Down to his shirt when we picks him off the battlefield, and lucky to have that, though it was only good for rags. They looters don’t care how much they shakes a man up, dead or alive. Much of the time while I was with him the Captain was in the Portuguese service. His uniform was brown: there’s not much dandy in that. Tell you what, women loves a uniform. A uniform knocks them right silly. They Spanish women flirt, you wouldn’t believe it, and the dancing . . . not at all decent. Women are troublesome things. Look at the trouble my master had with that Italian. Take one look at her and you knew she couldn’t stick by nobody. Just as well Master ain’t sentimental. I only once know’d him sentimental. Laid out the better part of dead. Brussels we were in. Do you know the place? Pretty, that’s what I call it, but the streets were all over straw and crammed tight with the wounded, which didn’t do nothing for it. Took your mind off it, but it weren’t forever. Still, first impressions stick. Master were in this merchant’s house, once Major Wilder had come out and organised things, and there was a young girl with a big, pale plait right down to her hip and she were always laughing and skipping about. Though he didn’t never speak to her, I reckon she kept him alive. Peculiar time to come over sentimental but then he had the wound to the head, which probably accounts for it.

‘Now, if we were wintered in a place, when we got our orders to shift, the scenes when we was marching out . . . you wouldn’t believe it . . . women a-screaming and crying and jumping in rivers, pickets on the bridges to hold ’em back. ‘Twas all on account of the uniforms.’

The weather continued hot. Arthur, having spent much of the previous night at a gambling club in Jermyn Street, lay propped up in bed on a profusion of pillows. It was approaching mid-afternoon and he had a headache. Emile tiptoed into the room with an armful of shirts and a newspaper.

‘Emile, when is it Quarter Day?’ he asked in world-weary tones, for in a night when thousands of pounds had passed before his eyes and through his hands, he had ended the winner of twelve guineas which, though it might pay the wages of a serving maid for a year, was not much to a gentleman.

‘Midsummer Day, sir, twenty-fourth of June, and there’s a gentleman to see you.’

Arthur picked up the candlestick from beside the bed and threw it in the general direction of Emile, saying as he did so, ‘I know what is Quarter Day. Under my beleaguered circumstances, how could I not?’

Emile picked up the candlestick and replaced it with studied care. He said, glancing at the newspaper, ‘Today, sir, is the twenty-third of June.’

‘Why then, I ought to be out and about. Sir John Parkes is to lend me his coach. I won’t take it all the way. I must find the money for posting some of the journey. I am not suited to the hurly-burly of public coaches. I need no clothes beyond a change or two of shirt. There is nothing and nobody at Castle Orchard. Who did you say was at the door?’

‘Mr Rampton, sir.’

‘Show him in then, don’t keep him waiting.’

Emile, without going immediately to the door, said in his usual precise tones, ‘I think Sir John will not lend you his coach, sir. He is no more in a lending position. He is dead. It is in your newspaper.’

Arthur sat up in bed, a look of the most profound horror on his face. Emile proceeded to usher in young Mr Rampton.

Arthur said, ‘It is not, it cannot be true.’

Mr Rampton, who had on a new coat and had hoped Arthur would notice it, asked, ‘What’s not true?’

‘That Sir John Parkes is dead.’

‘Oh yes, it is more than gossip, and Smythe has gone to France.’

‘Smythe killed him? Why not Allington? It’s Captain Allington who has gone to France. Tell me it is.’

‘No. They don’t mention Captain Allington, only Mr Smythe. The dual took place at Chalke Farm, wherever that might be, with not a soul there but the seconds and the surgeon, who could do nothing.’

‘Ah, but by this dastardly act I have lost two good friends. One is dead and the other gone to France.’ Arthur groped under his pillows for a handkerchief. For a while he wept uncontrollably. Rampton could think of nothing to say beyond remarking, to himself, a preference for France over the other.

Arthur then jumped out of bed and pulled a handsome padded dressing gown over his nightshirt, displaying, as he did so, his pair of little thin legs.

‘Allington is to blame,’ he said. ‘Allington is at fault and my poor, good friend Parkes lies stone cold in some horrid place.’

‘But it was Smythe shot him. Smythe accused him of something or another and they say Smythe was quite right. Allington has not been seen these two days.’

‘No, he’s in his rooms. He’s ill, if you can believe that. They call it a megrim but we know about megrims, a fanciful thing for women. It’s not the ague. He will be drunk.’ Arthur began to rush distractedly about. ‘I shall demand to see him. I have a right. Parkes was my friend.’

‘I beg you not to,’ Rampton said, alarmed. ‘You’re not in a fit state of mind. Besides, it’s rather a crowd at your door.’

Arthur remembered he was in danger of being arrested if he left his rooms. He subsided into a chair and wept some more.

‘There’ll be an inquest and some futile enquiry. I must attend to my own affairs. Emile must book me a place on the mail and I shall go down to Salisbury or they will put me in the King’s Bench. I dare say my friends will still visit me, those that are not dead or gone to France, but I cling to my liberty. Last night I had five thousand pounds in my hands and this morning I have twelve guineas.’

‘A clever man such as yourself would surely do better at the whist table, where your fate, much of the time, would be in your own hands.’

‘It’s true, it’s true, but it doesn’t have the allure. Why, I do play it from time to time and win quite a little money. Even Allington says I could win regularly if I paid attention, and that’s a compliment from him, though I think I hate a compliment from Allington. One day I shall trounce him at his own game, I shall be one jump ahead of him and it will be my turn to say “checkmate” in those quiet, dismissive tones, which I am sure I shall mimic to a nicety at the time. Now, Rampton, I shall bet you the twelve guineas I won last night that I shall beat Allington at chess before the year is out.’

Rampton said he would like to oblige Arthur in any way he could, but he demurred when it came to a bet on a matter on which he could have no opinion. Arthur, who saw little relationship between a bet and an opinion, began to think Rampton a bore, but he was too much distracted by the death of his friend and his own precarious pecuniary state to do more than suppose Rampton still might be useful to him now and again. The lure of the Quarter Day rents eventually taking precedence in the rag-bag of his mind, he announced decisively, ‘I shall leave for Castle Orchard, even if I die getting there.’

Rampton was puzzled. He thought there would have to be some catastrophic accident to the coach that travelled so regularly and reliably between London and Salisbury for Arthur to lose his life on the road.

The rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat of the drum meant charge, and charge little Frankie Conway did. He charged and cheered and screamed and ran and waved his arms, bounding through the copse at Castle Orchard, slithering on mud, on the wild ransom, the dog’s mercury, the brambles catching his clothes, the hazel slashing his face; and to him, as to the others, it was never only a game.

Robert had a real soldier’s coat, not the smart one that had belonged to their uncle, but a raggedy old coat from the rank and file with the lace torn off and a patch on the elbow. It was a rusty brown, but once, once it had been a glowing scarlet: its glory had to live in the mind’s eye. It was not very much too big for Robert and he, despite his coat not being an officer’s coat, would always be the officer. Stephen carried the drum and he beat it well, even when he was running along. Frankie only had a stick, but that was all he and the little ones had.

Phil ran through the wood as hard as he could go and his breath hurt as it struggled in and out of his chest. Though it was only a game he was always afraid and they, in the end, always caught him. He could never run fast enough, though he ran and ran and ran.

‘I don’t want to be the French any more.’

He lay on the ground and the Conway boys stood round him with their sticks, even the twins, only six years old.

‘You have to be the French.’

‘You are our prisoner. We are going to shoot you, because you are a deserter and that is the worst thing you can be. On goes the blindfold and then you are shot by ever so many soldiers at once. You are blown into so many little bits and nobody ever remembers who you were after that, because you’re nothing.’

‘You wait for the bang, bang, bang with your blindfold on and your insides drop out and they are like the insides of a rabbit, pink with green bits.’

‘And purple bits.’

‘But first he must be our prisoner.’

‘We will lock him up.’

‘And forget him.’

‘And the rats will gnaw his flesh.’

‘When he is shot, all the other soldiers will look at the little bits of him that are left and remember not to be cowards and run away. You are a coward because you are afraid of the river.’

‘And then the birds will peck his eyes out.’

And so it went on until such time as the Conway boys thought of their dinner.

Phil wandered home, ragged and dirty, woebegone, unable to say why he always had to be the French, except that he was a coward and afraid of the river.