‘O for a beaker full of the warm south!’
‘Gibraltar?’
‘Too distant. I’ll settle for burgundy.’
‘Burgundy?’
‘At your club!’
III
PISTOLS AT DUSK
The coffee room – as the United Service called its dining room (for a reason Hervey was never quite able to explain) – had been unexpectedly full by the time they returned, and so with little prospect of a timeous meal they decided to seek one elsewhere. ‘I know a good chop house,’ declared Hervey confidently as they stepped once more into Pall Mall, only hoping he could find it again.
In the short space of their time indoors, it had all but stopped snowing, and so the two friends struck out briskly for the Strand, heads high, though soon they were having to sidestep the street vendors at the bottom of the Haymarket, resisting the temptation of hot potatoes and spiced gingerbread (and even coffee, now that the tax on beans was next to nothing), then beyond the assorted stalls and barrows, striding out again across the white piazza before the old King’s Mews, newly cleared of its eyesore huddle of shanties (and with so fine a view of St Martin’s church in consequence that they stopped to remark on it), and then beyond into the Strand itself, strangely silent without horseshoes ringing on the metalled road. Finally they turned up the alleyway of Bull Inn Court, and right into the cul de sac of Maiden-lane, and to number thirty-eight. Hervey was gratified that his memory and instincts had not failed him, for the work of the demolition men was changing the face of these parts by the day.
But ‘chop house’ hardly served: the sign read
‘And deuced fine they are too. Shall we go in?’ he asked, giving up trying to see through the frosted windows.
It was middling full, but they found a table near a stove in a window booth which let in the light and kept out the draught, which Fairbrother was glad of, for he confessed that the cold had begun to chill his blood. And he owned to being fair famished. Hervey, also feeling the cold, had regained his appetite too, dulled before by his disappointing news. They ordered whitebait at once and asked for time to examine the rest of the bill.
It was Fairbrother who at length broke silence. ‘I do believe I could eat a whole steak and oyster pudding,’ he said, having scoured the list, which was long by the standards of the United Service.
Hervey nodded, but as yet was unsure of his choice. ‘I recollect that I had some fine mutton here once … But I shall join you in a pudding, and if it is insufficient then we may order another. And burgundy.’
Fairbrother smiled contentedly. The waiter took away their order.
The burgundy came in no time at all, and the friends had drunk half of it in even less. With both constitution and judgement restored by the time the whitebait was brought (in prodigious quantity), Hervey was expansive once again. ‘You know,’ he said, with a shake of the head and a satisfied sigh, ‘I doubt I could live anywhere truly content without the prospect of a whitebait dinner periodically. It is Old England.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Indeed. Did you know the cabinet has a whitebait dinner each year before parliament’s prorogued?’
‘I did not,’ replied Fairbrother, making an even larger pile of the fish than did his friend.
‘Yes, at Greenwich. They sail down there and eat whitebait at the Old George. At least I
‘Admirable custom. Capital idea.’ Fairbrother had already taken up knife and fork.
‘I doubt there’s whitebait in Gibraltar,’ said Hervey, frowning.
‘We could enquire.’
Hervey nodded. ‘I suppose we could,’ he replied, not very enthusiastically.
The whitebait was consumed hungrily and in silence except for appreciative asides.
And then the burgundy was replenished, a sturdy steak and oyster pudding was laid before them, and a dish of Savoy cabbage, and Fairbrother could at last begin the serious business of interrogation.
‘Where do you suppose one might buy a pistol like that cabman’s? I’m resolved never to go on campaign again without a capped weapon.’
Hervey smiled knowingly. He owed his life to the percussion cap – at Waterloo, possibly the only capped carbine in the field that day. Yet the Board of Ordnance saw no reason, still, to put it into the hands of the rank and file. ‘Flayflints,’ he said, with a sardonic smile at his pun – and to Fairbrother’s mystification. ‘There’s a gunsmith’s in Leicester Street, the other side of Covent Garden – Forsyth’s. We might visit there later. Did the cabman say who was the maker?’
Fairbrother inclined his head. ‘In truth I found him difficult to comprehend, for he said several times that it was
‘It’s possible. Forsyth’s will know.’
Fairbrother helped himself to more burgundy, and became contemplative. ‘But let us suppose we return from this war twixt Turk and Russian sound in wind and limb; what then? Shall you put on a red coat, for it seems clear to me that a blue one will scarcely be worthwhile if all you shall have to command is a hundred dragoons?’
The matter was unconvivial, but Hervey welcomed the opportunity to rehearse aloud the arguments he would otherwise have to make to himself. ‘I confess it is a bitter blow. And if the die is cast, then so be it, but I have a mind that there’s much water yet to flow under this particular bridge. Lord George Irvine may yet make his weight felt. I shall go to see him as soon as may be.’ The colonel of a regiment, although no longer the proprietor he once was, carried nevertheless a deal of influence, with the King especially; and Lieutenant-General Irvine, a Waterloo man and now entrusted with command in Ireland, was not an officer whose opinion could be set aside lightly.
‘But if all else fails and your regiment is indeed reduced, what then? You surely wouldn’t wish to preside over a squadron?’
‘I would not wish it, no, but I might bear it,’ answered Hervey cautiously.
‘But what would it profit you, in both satisfaction and advancement? I’ll wager it would profit you nothing in either.’
Hervey took a deep breath. ‘There would always be some satisfaction in the proximity of men with whom I’d served long years.’
Fairbrother nodded, almost spilling his wine. ‘That, I grant you, but you wouldn’t wish their captain to be forever looking over his shoulder? And might not you and they tire of the proximity, confined to Hounslow, even with an occasional calling to clear the streets of “tumultuous assembly”?’
‘I think, were that to threaten, I should seek a temporary assignment elsewhere – as this mission to the Russians.’
Fairbrother nodded again. ‘That might serve. What, though, would it do for your prospects?’
Hervey thought especially carefully before answering. There was nothing base in the desire for promotion; it was woven, so to speak, into the fibre of every officer’s coat – or ought to be. ‘Sir George Don would be, no doubt, an agreeable commander at Gibraltar – as Lord Hill said – but he is a man of fortifications and suchlike. He spent the whole of the war on Jersey. I am not a man of fortifications. What do you suppose I should do to distinguish myself there? In which case, what would be the difference if I were to stay at Hounslow?’
‘That, I grant you.’
‘And besides, would I persuade you to serve at Gibraltar?’
Fairbrother smiled. ‘Its climate, I fancy, might suit me better than here; I should not wish to grow pale!’
Hervey scowled. ‘But does the thought engage you sufficiently? You agreed to come with me to the Levant, and then to stay awhile at Hounslow.’
Fairbrother’s brow furrowed; he was much bemused. ‘Hervey, I am excessively diverted by the notion that I should have any determination in the matter. But are you quite sure? I would not wish you to calculate for any preference on my part.’
