Peter… Alan? What Wilkes said of life… 'a few good fucks, and then we die,' ha ha!'
'Damme, but I believe I started the day lookin' for stationery,' Lewrie said, perking up as he changed the subject. 'Yet here I sit, with not a single sheet, nor a ha'porth of ink yet. And there is that furrier in the Haymarket to discover… just in case Admiralty's run short of Post-Captains before the fleet sails for the Baltic.'
'You'll not dine with us, Alan?' Clotworthy Chute exclaimed in seeming disappointment. Perhaps he'd fancied that Lewrie would foot the bill, as he had at Harrow with ale, porter, and 'tatties.'
'Some other time, Clotworthy,' Lewrie demurred. 'I think I'll finish this last glass, then toddle along. I believe we should all consider our drinks celebratory… that we survived an encounter with Mistress Durschenko's charmin' father, hmm?'
'Do you think we'll really have to go fight the Russians, Danes, and Swedes, Alan?' Clotworthy asked. 'Mean t'say…'
'Aye, and the sooner the better,' Lewrie assured him. 'Time is not on our side, not with the weather warmin', and their navies' ports thawin' out. Do they put to sea, and combine, well…'
'Beat 'em like a drum, no matter,' Peter scoffed with a sublime confidence that bordered on indifference; he even allowed himself one idle yawn. 'We've Nelson, after all.'
'And Alan… can he tear himself from betwixt his doxy's legs,' Clotworthy chuckled over the rim of his glass.
'We'll see, won't we?' Lewrie asked, finally finishing off his brandy, and more than ready to depart. 'One way or t'other.'
'By yer leave, sir!' an impatient porter snarled at him, trying to make way on the crowded sidewalk with several wrapped packets.
'By yer own bloody leave, damn yer eyes!' Lewrie snapped back, more than ready to fight someone, raising his walking-stick in threat.
'Pardons… pardons.' The weedy little brute shied away, more sauce than sinew, and scurried off.
'Bloody Hell!' Lewrie growled under his breath. 'What a pack of cods-heads.'
Are they what I'd've become, if I'd stayed ashore in London… anywhere in England? he fumed to himself as he strode along for his lodgings; Then, thank God for the Navy!
Alan Lewrie had always cynically, cheerfully admitted that he would never be buried a bishop, that the most he had aspired to would be to be considered a 'Buck-of-the-First-Head,' a merry denizen of the 'cock and hen' clubs in the more sordid parts of London; sleep in late, roister and rantipole 'til dawn, and begin it all over, had he had his druthers.
Such as he seemed to be doing now.
Yet… not only had it become tiresome… boresome!… but it was beginning to pall, the ambrosia turned to ashes in his mouth. The morning's encounter with Peter and Clotworthy made him squint with revulsion.
Christ, am I havin' an Epiphany? he wondered.
He shook that notion off with a shiver and a barely audible Brr.
Idle hands, the Devil's workshop, he recalled; and I've been damned idle, since before Christmas. Or, t'other'un… 'lie down with dogs and ye rise with fleas.' Oh God, ye don't hear from me much, but… I really need t'get back t'sea! Doesn't have t'be a frigate… a cutter would do, a one-masted revenue sloop! Hell, even the Impress Service, just so long as I'm employed at something! I'm not a huge sinner after all… compared to some I could name. Right… I'm a fool for women, and I always get in trouble ashore. There may be women aboard warships, despite what the Admiralty wishes, but… none that tempt my eye, the plug-uglies. Most of 'em foul an' rough as bosuns…
He accepted the fact that Peter and Clotworthy were right in one regard; he never had been a callous, unscrupulous abuser of women's affections. He'd always gone soft on them. In point of fact, two of his duels, in his early days, had been in defence of a girl's good name or honour, so… didn't that count for something? Mean t'say…!
Write off the odd convenient quarter-hour romp here and there, and what have you? he thought, scanning back over his conquests as he dodged a brace of strolling ladies and a street urchin bullying a wee dog; A string of fond relationships, that's what, by… sorry. Long-time, mutually pleasin' love affairs! Don't make me a bad person, not like Peter, or Clotworthy, or…
He practically stormed up the steps to the doors of the Madeira Club, thrusting the doors back so forcefully that the day porter at the desk jumped in fright, scrambling to come round to gather up his cloak, hat, walking-stick, and mittens. 'Still raw out, sir? A fine mist falling, still? I'll have your cloak and hat sponged, then send them up to your rooms, sir.'
'Er, thankee,' Lewrie mumbled, realising that he'd stomped back to the club so fiercely that he'd worked up a sweat under his clothes. 'Any letters for me?'
'Uhm… nossir, none so far today.'
'Very well, then. Do any come, I'll be in the Common Room.'
'Very good, Captain Lewrie.'
Lewrie dabbed at his temples and cheeks with a handkerchief to make himself presentable, once he'd found a nice, quiet corner, and a thickly padded leather wing-back chair near the fireplace. A servant took his request for hot coffee, and padded away, leaving him to stew on the morning's doings.
'What the Devil do I do?' he muttered as he stirred sugar and milk into his cup. 'It can't go on like this. Not for long, or I'll be 'skint' by Easter.' His accounts at Coutts's Bank, some prize-money that had dribbled in from Mediterranean captures way back in '96, was sufficient for keeping a gentleman of his station in moderate comfort, with enough to keep up his rented farm and home in Anglesgreen, both the boys at their school, his daughter Charlotte's first tutor, and his wife, with her typical thriftiness, in fine style. Dabbling with the whores, though, sweet as one of them was…
Lord Peter could afford such squandering, both of his purse and his repute, but he was the beau ideal of the Abolitionists, of the Respectable; of the dour Hannah More, Rev. Wilberforce, and all of their grim adherents, and he could not risk running into any more of them in 'Mother' Batson's parlour. 'Saint Alan, the Liberator!'
He would have to see Tess just one more time, he realised with what the French would call tristesse, a sweet-sad sorrow, flooding him. There really was no future in it, even were he as rich as the fabled Walpoles. Sadly, he also realised that if he could afford for her to be his long-time kept mistress, he'd tire of her someday, too, and abandon her to her uncertain fate. Better he spoke of Lord Peter to her, and hope that Tess struck him the right way.
After all, he did try to plant the seed of the idea in Peter's mind, of buying her out and setting her up under his protection; that would be best, in the long run. And go back to living the life of a 'salty, tar-splotched' nautical monk!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Good morning, Captain Lewrie,' the day porter greeted him as he entered the club the next morning, giving him a chary, cutty-eyed look as he took his things to hang up. 'Breakfast will be served the top of the hour, sir… there's to be pork chops and smoked mullet, fresh up from Sheerness.'
'Umph' was Lewrie's sleepy comment. 'Thankee.'
'Coffee or tea in the Common Room, sir,' the porter advised, to a man who looked badly in need of either.
'Morning, all,' Lewrie nodded to his fellow lodgers gathered by the table of pots, cups, and saucers. 'Mister Giles, Major Baird… Mister Pilkington… Showalter.'
Pilkington was the club's Cassandra, sure that Trade would end, and the economy go smash, due to this Baltic business; Showalter was still angling for a seat in Commons, next by-election on his home hustings, and courting monied supporters like a street-walker; Mr. Giles was hellish-devout, and big in the leather-goods trade and tanneries, whilst Major Baird, their 'chicken-nabob' come back from India with a fortune of at least Ј50,000, was still searching for a suitably proper wife… or oral sex in the loge boxes at the theatres.
Yet all eyed him as charily as they would a naked drunk at the altar of the local parish church. Know too damned much about my business, Lewrie thought with a wince and a sigh; and where I was, damn 'em. There were
