Hostile Shores (13 page)

“Very good, sir, and good night to you,” Pettus said, bowing a humble and abashed way out the door.

Most-like, he’ll be kickin’ himself in the arse the next week, entire, and lookin’ at me as cutty-eyed as a whipped hound,
Lewrie wryly told himself as he got to his feet. He rinsed his mouth with some water from the wash-hand stand pitcher, brushed his hair into proper order, and went down to the Common Room for some of that brandy.

Lewrie found around two-dozen of the other members of the club gathered by the windows of the Common Room that overlooked the street, whooping and laughing and laying wagers.

“Oh, look, good old Lewrie’s back among us!” Mr. Pilkington, a fellow from the ’Change, and middling in stocks, cried. “Huzzah for the Navy! How d’ye keep, old fellow, and wherever have ye been?”

“Gentlemen,” Lewrie said back with a grin, making a half-bow from his waist. “The West Indies, the Bahamas, Spanish Florida, and playin’ diplomat with the Americans.”

“And none of them scalped you, hah?” Mr. Ludlow, who was big in the leather goods trade, hoorawed. “Come see this, Lewrie. There is a coachee out here, cup-shot.”

“Drunk as Davy’s Sow, I swear!” Pilkington hooted.

“He’s been trying to get back up to his seat, but he’s making a rum go of it,” another crowed in amusement. “There should be a law for people in charge of coaches and waggons being that drunk.”

“All I bought him was ale, beer, and porter,” Lewrie said, crowding to the rain-smeared windows for a better look. “He coached me up from Portsmouth, and he
seemed
sober enough.”

“Wager you all he’s a bottle of rum stashed up there in the box,” a younger member cried. “Been nipping on it on the sly, all the way.”

“Wager it’s more-like ‘Blue-Ruin’,” one of his fellow clubmen of the sporting sort dis-agreed. “Two shillings on gin, not rum.”

“It’ll be rum, and make it five shillings!” the first exclaimed with a hearty laugh. “What say you, Captain Lewrie?”

“I say someone’ll have t’go out there in the rain to see what he has in the box, if anything,” Lewrie rejoined. “Oh, Christ!”

The soused coachman managed to put a booted foot into the spokes of the kerbside front wheel and levered himself up to his seat with the wooden brake lever, but the patient team of horses shifted forward a bit and the coachman made a desperate lunge, arse over tit, almost making it to the driver’s bench before falling backwards in a hand-scrabbling heap on the sidewalk. He wore a blissful smile, though, for he now had a blue glass bottle in one hand, at which he sipped deep.

“It’s gin! It’s gin! That’s five shillings you owe me!” the sporting young gentleman cried.

The coachman took off his old-style tricorne hat and swiped at his hair, finally taking note that it was raining, shook water from his hat, and plunked it back on. He leaned an elbow on the coach’s metal folding steps, got a clever look on his phyz, and began to crawl to them.

“A glass with you, Captain Lewrie,” one of the older members offered, “for you’ve provided us a rare entertainment this evening! You missed the part where he was singing to his horses and kissing them on the lips!”

“Lord, where’s he going now?” Pilkington cried.

The coachman dragged himself up the folding steps, clawed for the door handle, and finally managed to swing it open. Into the coach he went on his hands and knees, amazingly careful not to spill a drop from his gin bottle. The door was pulled closed, and he dropped out of sight for a moment, sprawled on the seats most-like. One moment later, though, up he sat to lower the window glass. He leaned out the door and began to pound on it, bellowing for some phantom coachee to whip up and get a move on, which action raised another gale of laughter in the club’s Common Room. They could hear him through the room’s windows, imitating the starting horn blown by the big diligence coaches when they rattled out from a posting inn, and the shouts of encouragement to the horse team.

The horse team took his thumping, shouting, and the
tra-tarah
as their cue to breast into their harnesses and begin to shamble forward at a slow walk, with no one tending the reins. The last they saw of the coach, and the drunken coachee, it was meandering East down Wigmore Street towards the cross-traffic of Mandeville Place!

“Gentlemen,” the night manager had to call out several times before he drew the members’ attention. “Supper is now served!”

Lewrie finished his Spanish brandy, which he had found not too raw after all, and joined the others as they all trooped into the dining room in high spirits, with some of the younger members still willing to wager that the coachman would get his neck broken, after all, if his coach tangled with another in the rain, or whether the coach would make it all the way to Marylebone Lane before the smash-up.

First came fine-shredded chicken in broth soup, followed by individual veal and ham pies, then fillets of grilled turbot accompanied by sweet stewed carrots and peas. The meal was topped off by a monstrous beef roast served with asparagus spears and hollowed-out potatoes with melted cheese and shredded bacon. The white wines with the soup and the turbot were excellent, as usual, as were the Bordeaux with the pies, and the cabernet with the roast beef, and the barge after barge of piping-hot and slightly toasted rolls were individual marvels with a liberal smear of fresh butter. Dessert was a strawberry jam roly-poly sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Once the tablecloth was whisked away and the remains removed, out came the nuts, cheese, and sweet bisquits, and the club’s signature, a rich and fine aged Madeira port, and the wine steward’s promise that several casks of the rare “rainwater” port had been discovered at Oporto and were even then sitting in storage for the up-coming holidays.

Lewrie could dab his mouth and lean back in his chair with his port glass in hand, thinking that a meal, a feast, so English, was a topping-fine welcome back to his home shores!

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lewrie rose unaccountably early for a fellow so fond of snugly warm and sinfully soft shore beds, scrubbed, shaved, and dressed, then breakfasted on two cups of scalding-hot tea, and buttered rusks which he cadged from the kitchens long before the day’s first meal was laid, bolted it all down in a rush, then was off in search of some wheeled transport for Whitehall. The best he found was a two-wheeled dog cart driven by a loquacious Irish pedlar who was willing to abandon his usual spot to hawk his cast-off clothing lines for promise of a shilling.

On the way, the Irishman cheerfully filled him in on the most wondrous event of the previous night. “’Twas a
ghost
coach, Cap’m, sor, rattlin’ along with a witch at the reins, swear t’God, for how else kin a coach an’ four make its way from Wigmore Street t’Oxford Street, turn down Regent Street, an’ git t’the Swan an’ Edgar, where it drew up nice as anythin’. Ever’body wot saw it swears they knowed a witch drove it, for they all heard screamin’ laughter and evil cacklin’, but when the parish ‘Charlies’ got to it, there was nary a soul aboard! Fackin’ eerie, it wos!”

*   *   *

All Lewrie’s hurry was for nought, though, for when he got to the Admiralty Office, he discovered an host of others already waiting. He stepped through the archway through the curtain wall, into the wee cobbled courtyard, and found that even the vendor with his tea cart and sticky buns was already there and doing a roaring business with the officers and Mids who had come in hopes of an interview, or the promise of an appointment. There was nothing for it but to go inside, in the process to be cautioned by the surly ancient tiler that “I’d not place much hope innit, Cap’m, sir, for there’s a parcel o’ unemployed before ya!”

Lewrie left his name with a junior clerk, stressing that he was currently a holder of an active commission, and wished to speak with the First Secretary, Mr. William Marsden, about orders for the cleaning of his ship’s hull to make her serviceable for future duties, then looked for a place to sit in the infamous, over-crowded Waiting Room, but all the benches, settees, and chairs were occupied by Commission Sea Officers, the bulk of them Post-Captains with the twin epaulets of men with more than three years’ seniority, some newer-minted Captains of less time in command of a Post ship with but one epaulet on their right shoulders, and a rare Commander or three with the epaulet on the left shoulder. Lieutenants with good sense had already surrendered their precious seats and idly, slowly paced about, striving to appear un-worried, among the Midshipmen whom they had turfed out earlier.

For a rare once, Lewrie had pinned on the star and donned the sash of the Order of The Bath, and as he meandered round the Waiting Room, a Commander sprang from his place at the end of a bench to offer it to Lewrie, who thanked him civilly, thinking that now and then the damned knighthood proved useful, even in this desperate place. There were tales of men, and one Midshipman in particular, who had come to Admiralty each working day for three years running to hunt active sea-going employment!

Over the next two hours, names were called out, and the lucky ones ascended the stairs to the Board Room to receive commissions to a new ship, or new orders for the ones they had. They usually came down with smiles. Lewrie began to note that one particular junior clerk was the one who summoned the officers who left pleased, and another clerk who appeared much less often and caused long sighs of disappointment, usually calling out some officer’s name and only handing over a folded note; for a future appointment, perhaps, or most-likely a rejection. An aged Rear-Admiral who took a seat next to Lewrie, one who did not have a single hope in Hell of employment this side of the grave, told Lewrie with a cackled whisper that said clerk served the Second Secretary, Mr. John Barrow, upon whom Mr. Marsden usually foisted the chore of delivering the bad news.

By the end of the third hour, Lewrie’s arse was numb, he badly needed a visit to the “jakes” to empty his bladder, and he might have gladly killed for a cup of sweetened and creamed tea. He snagged the “happy-making” clerk to inform him that he would be outside for a bit should his name be called, got his hat and boat-cloak from the cheque room, and went out to the courtyard.

Half-past ten of the morning must have been the tea interval for Admiralty drudges, for a great many men in civilian suitings came out to purchase a mug or cup of tea, and something upon which to gnaw, then trotted back inside to more scribbling and copying.

Lewrie got himself a mug with sugar but no cream, and stepped out of the way for the others, quite near two young men who were sipping hurriedly at their teas and sharing a thin Spanish
cigarro,
what some tobacco aficionados demeaned as a
cheroot.
They nodded greetings, hoped he did not mind the drifting smoke, then returned to their conversation, most of which was grousing about their superiors and what tasks to which they were put.

“What about the charts, then, Jemmy?” one of them asked the other. “Dalrymple won’t be happy if our office has to pay for them.”

Lewrie knew that Mr. Alexander Dalrymple was the Hydrographer of the Navy, for the very good reason that it was to that worthy that Lewrie had mailed the up-dated charts and soundings that Lt. Tristan Bury had made of Bermudan waters, just before Lewrie had dragooned him into his little anti-privateering squadron in the Spring.

“Well, he’s in charge of charts and such,” the other breezily said between quick puffs on the
cheroot
before handing it over. “Even if Admiralty doesn’t print its own. The Board’s decided that all the troop transports, and the Lieutenants assigned to each one, must have them … the Cape of Good Hope, and the separate charts for Table Bay, and Cape Town, Blaauwburg Bay, Saldanha Bay, even Simon’s Bay on the other side of the Cape. If the hired-on transport masters want their own copies, they can buy them, but Admiralty will foot the bill for our people. Now, which office gets the bill, that’s the question!”

“We’ll be dashing all over London to purchase them, or pay for rush jobs to have them printed,” the fellow from the Hydrography Office bemoaned. “Then, we’ll have to amend them all with the latest soundings and hazards! By hand! When will Marsden let us know?”

“His Majesty Head Clerk Swami said the Board will tell him by mid-afternoon … just in time to ruin your evening, hah hah!”

“Gentlemen,” Lewrie intruded, putting his stern face on. “You may believe that discussing what sounds like a secret expedition to Cape Town is safe, here behind the curtain wall, but you never know who might be listening. The matter is better mentioned safely
inside
the building, if at all.”

“Sorry, sir, we didn’t—,” the young fellow whom Lewrie took to be a junior scribbler in William Marsden’s office said with a shocked look.

“Well, I doubt the tea vendor or the newspaper boys are Dutch, so it might be alright,” Lewrie allowed, giving them a reprieve, and a grin. “Upon that head, though … there
is
an expedition planning to capture Cape Town from the Dutch? I was there several years ago, and took the opportunity to hunt and ride all over the town and its environs, over to Simon’s Town on False Bay? When you speak with Mister Marsden, pray do you mention to him that Captain Lewrie of the
Reliant
frigate, who’s waiting word for an interview, may prove useful to the endeavour, hmm?”

“Captain Lewrie and the
Reliant
frigate, of course, sir,” the young clerk replied, nodding as he committed that to memory. “I shall as soon as I am abovestairs, sir. And, thank you for your caution … about the, ahem.”

“It always pays t’keep mum about official business outside of work hours,” Lewrie congenially agreed, shrugging off the young man’s thanks. “His Majesty’s Government has an organisation to root out any enemy spies, or people who’d profit by givin’ ’em information. You’d be surprised how many they discover.”

The two clerks finished their teas, took their last puffs from the
cheroot,
and the one from the Hydrography Office pinched the lit end, stubbed and scrubbed it on the sole of his shoes, and stowed it away in a waist-coat pocket for later. A last “good day” and they went back inside to their scribblings and filings.