The Invasion Year

“Ever been?” Lewrie asked him as they headed south down Baker Street, turning right onto Oxford Street, and bound for the shortest and most direct main route down Park Lane along Hyde Park.

“The once,” Sir Hugo allowed, picking lint from his coat. “When I got tapped and named a Knight of the Garter. Back when the King was saner than he is now, and ‘Prinny’ was a toddler. Horrid-stuffy, was ‘Farmer George’s’ Court in those days. In Publick, at least. My sort, well… ye’ll note they haven’t had me back for a brandy since.”

“Understandably,” Lewrie japed with a smirk.

“Don’t imagine your welcome will be a whit better, haw haw!”

Damme if he ain’t got it exactly right, Lewrie thought.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When rattling down Park Lane at a comfortable clip, their cabriolet had seemed fashionable enough for the occasion. The morning was clear and sunny, and those West Enders who had risen earlier than the norm were out in their own open-topped carriages, or on horseback for a canter through Hyde Park, to their right. Turning into Piccadilly, then turning once again into St. James Street, though, they found the way to the palace was lined with four-horse-teamed equipages, mostly closed, and with only their sash-windows down to acknowledge the season, all very much grander than their own. Sir Hugo began to work his mouth, squint, and grumble as they joined the long queue leading to the entrances, as if regretting his choice of conveyance.

“Might as well have hired a one-pony dog cart,” he groused.

“Doesn’t matter,” Lewrie told him. He could have given a bigger damn if they had had to walk, at that point, or had they been trundled up in a rag-picker’s wheel barrow. He’d intended to get a good night’s sleep, but some members of the Madeira CLub (the younger, still-single ones) had proposed more toasts than usual, posed more “a glass with you, sir!” individual toasts that had gone on in the Common Room long after the uncommonly good supper, with all its toasting, and the port, cheese, nuts, and sweet bisquits. Major Baird, their “chicken nabob” who’d come back from India with a middling fortune in loot and was still seeking a suitable mate (when not pursuing stand-up “knee-trembler” sex with the wenches who haunted the theatres), had even discovered a stone crock of American corn whisky, and had urged Lewrie to imbibe with him.

To say that Lewrie was a tad hung over would be an accurate statement; a bit too “blurred” to feel impatient, out-classed by others’ elegance, or anything much at all. Though there were some young women in the gawking crowd that usually thronged outside the palace on days when levees were held that were quite fetching. And, since Lewrie seemed to be Somebody of Note (he was in a carriage bound for the portico, wasn’t he; an officer, wasn’t he?), some of the bolder even cheered and tossed a flower or two. They surely wouldn’t waste flowers at a closed coach, where the top-lofty nabobs kept their aloof distance!

“P’rhaps it ain’t that bad, after all,” Sir Hugo said, leering across Lewrie at a round-faced teenaged beauty who was all but bouncing on her tip-toes in excitement. Sir Hugo even tipped his cocked hat to her and grinned. Which grin seemed to put her off and make her frown. The sight of a beak-nosed old goat, liver spots and all, ogling her like a vulture would a neglected beef roast would have put any young woman off… even if he was dressed in a general’s uniform, and might be as famous as the Duke of Cumberland after Culloden.

“Hmm. Pretty,” Lewrie commented, after a glance. “How do you keep yer wig from comin’ off when ye tip yer hat?” he asked.

“Glue,” Sir Hugo said with a pleased sigh, sniffing the flowers he had gathered from the floor of the coach. “There’s times when losin’ my hair’s a blessing… lots o’ scalp for the paste, heh heh. It washes off, later,” he added with a shrug.

The palace staff was very well organised. As each coach rolled up, one of the passengers, and the coachee, was handed a numbered ticket made of pasteboard. At the foot of the walk sat an easel with much larger numbers stacked up beside it, so that when the guests departed their number could be displayed to the throng of coaches waiting in a side yard, summoning the proper conveyance. The British Army should have been so efficient, but then… Army officers bought their commissions, and the palace staff were selected, and paid, for competence.

“Your invitations, sirs,” a grandly liveried flunky demanded, chequed them off a list, and bowed them onwards to the imposing entrance.

Did one ask Captain Alan Lewrie what he recalled of St. James’s Palace in later years, he could only shrug, cock his head to one side, and respond by saying, “Huge. Rather huge.” His hangover might have had something to do with it. There were grand marble staircases, and sumptuous carpetting, huge head-to-toe portraits, many times lifesize, framed in overly ornate gilt. There was a positive shit-load of gilt, Lewrie remembered. High ceilings, replete with angels and cherubs above him, thousands of candles burning, furniture lining the hallways and gigantic rooms, too grand to really sit on, and one long hall after another; he reckoned that he might have walked half a mile before reaching yet another hall where the levee was held, which was already thronged with the rich, the titled, the elegant and dashing, and those who would be honoured… and hopefully become titled, and elegant and interesting because of it… at least in part.

“Anyone you know, hey?” Sir Hugo asked after another liveried and white-wigged servant had taken their hats and presented them with yet another set of claim tickets.

“Hmm?” Lewrie responded, peering about owl-eyed.

“Damn my eyes, are ye foxed?” Sir Hugo grumbled. “Did ye take on a load o’ ‘Dutch Courage’ with yer breakfast?”

“Nought but coffee, lashin’s of it,” Lewrie told him. “Now, last night was another matter. No, I don’t think I do know anyone. Don’t even see the Blandings, yet. Do you?”

“None I know… but one’r two I’d care t’know,” Sir Hugo said as he raised a brow and put on a grin to a willowy and languid dame in her forties, one with dark auburn hair and a “come-hither” grin, who was gliding by on the arm of a much older and tubbier man. She seemed to look the both of them up and down, then smiled and played with her fan against her cheek for a moment. Flirtatiously?

“I’m out of touch,” Lewrie confessed. “Does that mean anything?”

“The key to Paradise,” Sir Hugo muttered back. “She’s took with one of us. Either that, or she had an itch needed scratchin’.”

Yet another liveried fellow came up to them as they neared the tall and wide doors to the hall proper. He seemed to know what he was about, and was all coolly buinsesslike.

“Captain Alan Lewrie… Major-General Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby, aha,” he briskly said, “honouree and guest. In a moment, you gentlemen will be formally announced. Right after, Captain Lewrie, might you grant us a few minutes to explain the procedure, with some of the others?… Oh, good. Tea or coffee will be available, and there are side-chambers where any adjustments of your habiliments may be made… and last-minute needs may be answered in a ‘necessary.’ Once His Majesty has made his entrance, an equerry shall queue you up in order of honours to be presented.”

“I’ll take another number?” Lewrie asked, hoping that coffee would be shoved into his hands, instanter.

“In a matter of speaking, sir,” the courtier told him, grinning. He was an older fellow who had obviously supervised these ceremonies so often that he could have done them in his sleep.

Another queue as couples, or parties of three or more, waited to be announced and admitted. There were old hands at it who’d been coming to the palace for ages, along with nervous, coughing, and “aheming” throat clearers of both sexes. Husbands squeezed wives’ hands to reassure them; sons and daughters ranging from gawky teens to matronly women with flushed faces, all but squirming in un-accustomed finery to get more comfortable, some moving their lips over rehearsed phrases of greeting should they get a chance to be spoken to by their sovereign, and a pair of teen daughters practicing their deep curtsies, tittering at each other each time. There were men…