On His Majesty's Service

the encapsulation of his predicament: what now was his connection with Kat? It was not even that of last summer, when she had told him she was with his child. There had been an interval of full six months; feelings might intensify or abate in that time, but they did not remain as they had been. What indeed were his feelings? What were the proprieties to observe in his peculiar circumstances – a new-married officer and the wife of a general who secretly carried his child? He put down the pen, sick to the pit of his stomach.

There was, he knew from long years (the debilitating contemplation of Henrietta), one antidote to this condition – activity, any activity. It did not cure, but it did relieve. And sometimes the relief continued long after the activity ceased, by placing the demon-cause out of mind’s reach. He dressed quickly, slipped silently from his room, descended the stairs of the sleeping club, and stepped out into an empty Pall Mall. A horse, a gallop, would have been his natural support, but in its absence the most vigorous walking – marching – would suffice. He would imagine himself a cornet in Spain again, dismounted, forging through snow which the infantry had not yet trod. And beneath his frosty breath he would keep repeating the line of scripture: For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers. It would call him to duty. It never failed.

He set off towards St James’s Palace, hastening past the watchmen’s braziers and the guards, through Milkmaid’s Passage and into the darkness of the Green Park. Here, shortening step, he broke into a double, clenching his gloved hands to his chest and matching his breathing to the four-pace rhythm. With the snow underfoot, the moon was bright enough to light his way once his eyes had disaccustomed themselves to the gas lamps of St James’s, and he doubled confidently to the wall which enclosed the gardens of the King’s new palace at the other side of the park, except for running into a goose-girl whose terrier then snapped at his heels for twenty yards, the geese honking noisily as if in encouragement. At the wall he turned right and lengthened the step to challenge himself the more on the grade to the Piccadilly-bar, where gaslight once more lit the scene – a few empty cabs plodding east, and night-soil carts passing both ways. He doubled on the spot for a while, taking in the torch-lit facade of Apsley House, where first he had met Kat. It had then been the residence of the commander-in-chief, and now it was that of the prime minister. He would not see its inside again; what there had once been was now gone, and would never be again …

He doubled across the road at a cinder crossing, giving the lonely sweeper a penny without stopping, and on into Hyde Park, wary now of footpads, then along the New Road, where poor Strickland had met his end when his chariot ran into the Oxford Mail, then turning off south down an interminable rutted path to the Royal Military Asylum, and thence along King’s Road, catching the toll-booth napping, and back round the south side of Buckingham House into the Mall as far as the Duke of York’s Steps, which he took two at a time into Waterloo Place, where he finally ceased doubling and for the last fifty yards walked on a long rein to get his breath back.

At a quarter before seven o’clock he reached the doors of the United Service, his face glowing, the blood coursing through his veins, feeling as if he were being scrubbed by a tellak in a Mogul steam bath. The invigoration was complete, the demon gone. In its place there was resolution, clear-sightedness, energy. He took the stairs at a bound, flung open the door of his room, threw off his clothes, put on his robe, gathered up his razor, brush and soap bowl, and took possession of one of the bathrooms, to emerge in half an hour clean-shaved and cleansed. He put on the frogged coat he had not worn in months and then assailed the room in which his good friend was still sleeping.

‘In God’s name!’ protested Fairbrother at the intrusion of daylight as the curtains were pulled roughly back.

‘“Sick Call” at Hounslow was half an hour ago,’ said Hervey breezily.

‘I told you last night I would sleep long and then see a barber.’

‘I don’t recollect,’ replied Hervey, picking up his friend’s coat from the floor.

‘That’s because you were paying no heed. It was like supping with a waxwork.’

‘I am sorry for it, but I am all attention now. Let me draw your bath while you shave. Then we shall eat a hearty breakfast and go to Hounslow.’

They took a hackney, although the cabman drove a hard price; Hounslow was a deal further than he ranged as a rule, and Hervey could only persuade him by agreeing the fare back, even if in the end they might not take it – for the cabman must return by dusk, he insisted, or else he would not get home to Southwark before his licence required. Nor did he prove inclined to go at more than a half-hearted trot: the ways, though not exactly deep, were, to his mind, treacherous, and ‘I’ve me hosses’ wind to consider’, so that it was late morning by the time they arrived at the barrack gates.

The picket turned out even before Hervey had paid the fare and agreed what hour they should journey back. His heart warmed at the sight of his own uniform again. His troop at the Cape were as ‘regimental’ (as the sweats called it) as any – for first Armstrong and then Collins had made sure of it – but there was something about detached duty which was never quite … entire: it was the absence of the regiment’s god-head, the commanding officer, its high-priest, the adjutant – and, not least of the trinity, the serjeant-major, the apotheosis of the rank and file. It was they who set the tone, regulated the routine, and chose the NCOs, the apostles of the regiment’s creed. A detached troop was a fine command, but not sufficient unto itself. And, in truth, he could not see how a regiment en cadre could be so either.

‘Guard, pres-e-e-ent arms!’

It was sharply done: seven dragoons and the picket commander fallen-in at ‘Attention’, carbines at the ‘Shoulder’, a drill which, uniquely, the Sixth had adopted in the Peninsula so that in one movement they could pay compliments to either field or regimental rank – ‘present’ for the former, butt-salute for the latter. Hervey touched the peak of his forage cap in return as he and Fairbrother came through the gates.

And unlike in many another, in the Sixth the picket commander did not wait to be spoken to. ‘Good morning, Colonel Hervey, sir!’

Hervey recognized the man as one of the dwindling number of dragoons who wore the Waterloo medal, an NCO who knew the regimental form as well as any. He wondered if he would ever hear, simply, ‘Good morning, Colonel’ – the acknowledgement of the all-important detail, that he commanded the Sixth rather than merely possessed the same rank as the commanding officer. ‘Good morning, Corporal Adcock. There’s a good fire in the guard-house, I trust?’

‘There is, sir!’

‘Is the colonel at orderly room?’

‘No, sir.’

‘The adjutant?’

‘He is, sir.’

It was one of the proprieties, unwritten, learned only in the school of regimental soldiering, that the picket answered to none but the commanding officer – and in his place the adjutant and, in silent hours, the picket officer; and so although a sentry paid compliments, and the whole picket turned out for a visitor of rank, it was never inspected, reproved, commended, assigned or dismissed by any other but the commanding officer or his deputy. It was therefore with neither arrogance nor negligence that Hervey walked on without ado, leaving Adcock to fall-out the attendant dragoons by his own authority.

‘Quite a show,’ said Fairbrother good-humouredly. ‘Had they word of our coming, do you suppose?’

Hervey was undeniably pleased by the ‘show’; it spoke of good order and military discipline, as well as of his recognition (he had, after all, been on detached duty for eighteen months, even if during that time he had been home on marriage leave). ‘I fancy it was part chance. I rather suspect that Adcock’s expecting Lord Hol’ness at any minute.’

He looked across the square to the flagpole, but the pennant was not fixed for hoisting: the commanding officer was ‘not at orderly room’, as the saying went, nor his arrival imminent, it would seem. ‘There again, Adcock’s a seasoned NCO. And the sar’nt-major’s wrath’s not worth risking. I should beg his pardon for doubting his address. Come, let’s see how things are within.’

Fairbrother was not strange to Hounslow. He had dined triumphantly with the officers six months before. He had admired the barracks’ generous proportions and the solidity of its buildings, and the more so on closer inspection, for the brickwork and all the furniture was of quality. He recalled, too, that the slate roofs were good and solid (though this morning they were white-clad), and the workmanship inside and out very neat – all bespeaking a high regard for the common soldier. Or so it might seem, but in truth the date ‘1793’ above the gate