'Relative? Eh? Oh, dammit, it's my son Harry, girl! Harry, this is Judy . . . er, Miss Parsons.'
She smiled at me now, still with that half-amused look, and I preened myself - I was seventeen, remember - and sized up her points while the father got himself another glass and damned Arnold for a puritan hedge-priest. She was what is called junoesque, broad-shouldered and full-breasted, which was less common then than it is now, and it seemed to me she liked the look of Harry Flashman.
'Well,' said my father at last, when he had finished fulminating against the folly of putting prigs and scholars in charge of public schools. 'Well, what's to be done with you, eh? What'll you do, sir? Now that you've disgraced the home with your beastliness, eh?'
I had been thinking this over on my way home, and said straight out that I fancied the army.
'The army?' he growled. 'You mean I'm to buy you colours so that you can live like a king and ruin me with bills at the Guards'
Club, I suppose?'
'Not the Guards,' I said. 'I've a notion for the 11th Light Dragoons.'
He stared at this. 'You've chosen a regiment already? By gad, here's a cool hand!'
I knew the 11th were at Canterbury, after long service in India, and unlikely for that reason to be posted abroad. I had my own notions of soldiering. But this was too fast for the guv'nor; he went on about the expense of buying in, and the cost of army life, and worked back to my expulsion and my character generally, and so back to the army again. The port was making him quarrelsome, I could see, so I judged it best not to press him. He growled on:
'Dragoons, damme! D'ye know what a cornet's com-mission costs?
Damned nonsense. Never heard the like. Impudence, eh, Judy?'
Miss Judy observed that I might look very well as a dashing dragoon.
'Eh?' said my father, and gave her a queer look. 'Aye, like enough he would. We'll see.' He looked moodily at me. 'In the meantime, you can get to your bed,' he said. 'We'll talk of this tomorrow. For the moment you're still in disgrace.' But as I left them I could hear him black-guarding Arnold again, so I went to bed well pleased, and relieved into the bargain. He was odd fish, all right; you could never tell how he would take anything.
In the morning, though, when I met my father at breakfast, there was no talk of the army. He was too busy damning Brougham - who had, I gathered, made a violent attack on the Queen in the House(1) -
and goggling over some scandal about Lady Flora Hastings(2) in the Post, to give me much attention, and left presently for his club.
Anyway, I was content to let the matter rest just now; I have always believed in one thing at a time, and the thing that was occupying my mind was Miss Judy Parsons.
Let me say that while there have been hundreds of women in my life, I have never been one of those who are forever boasting about their conquests. I've raked and ridden harder than most, no doubt, and there are probably a number of middle-aged men and women who could answer to the name of Flashman if only they knew it. That's by the way; unless you are the kind who falls in love - which I've never been - you take your tumbles when you've the chance, and the more the better. But Judy has a close bearing on my story.
I was not inexperienced with women; there had been maids at home and a country girl or two, but Judy was a woman of the world, and that I hadn't attempted. Not that I was concerned on that account, for I fancied myself (and rightly) pretty well. I was big and handsome enough for any of them, but being my father's mistress she might think it too risky to frolic with the son. As it turned out, she wasn't frightened of the guv'nor or anyone else.
She lived in the house - the young Queen was newly on the throne then, and people still behaved as they had under the Prince Regent and King Billy; not like later on, when mistresses had to stay out of sight. I went up to her room before noon to spy out the land, and found her still in bed, reading the papers. She was glad to see me, and we talked, and from the way she looked and laughed and let me toy with her hand I knew it was only a question of finding the time. There was an abigail fussing about the room, or I'd have gone for her then and there.
However, it seemed my father would be at the club that night, and playing late, as he often did, so I agreed to come back and play ecarte with her in the evening. Both of us knew it wouldn't be cards we would be playing. Sure enough, when I did come back, she was sitting prettying herself before her glass, wearing a bed-gown that would have made me a small handkerchief. I came straight up behind her, took her big breasts out in either hand, stopped her gasp with my mouth, and pushed her on to the bed. She was as eager as I was, and we bounced about in rare style, first one on top and then the other. Which reminds me of something which has stayed in my head, as these things will: when it was over, she was sitting astride me, naked and splendid, tossing the hair out of her eyes - suddenly she laughed, loud and clearly, the way one does at a good joke. I believed then she was laughing with pleasure, and thought myself a hell of a fellow, but I feel sure now she was laughing at me. I was seventeen, you remember, and doubtless she found it amusing to know how pleased with myself I was.
Later we played cards, for form's sake, and she won, and then I had to sneak off because my father came home early. Next day I tried her again, but this time, to my surprise, she slapped my hands and said: 'No, no, my boy; once for fun, but not twice. I've a position to keep up here.' Meaning my father, and the chance of servants gossiping, I supposed.
I was annoyed at this, and got ugly, but she laughed at me again.
I lost my temper, and tried to blackmail her by threatening to let my father find out about the night before, but she just curled her lip.
'You wouldn't dare,' she said. 'And if you did, I wouldn't care.'
'Wouldn't you?' I said. 'If he threw you out, you slut?'
'My, the brave little man,' she mocked me. ' I misjudged you. At first sight I thought you were just another noisy brute like your father, but I see you've a strong streak of the cur in you as well. Let me tell you, he's twice the man you are - in bed or out of it.'
'I was good enough for you, you bitch,' I said.
'Once,' she said, and dropped me a mock curtsey. 'That was enough. Now get out, and stick to servant girls after this.'
I went in a black rage, slamming the door, and spent the next hour striding about the Park, planning what I would do to her if I ever had the chance. After a while my anger passed, and I just put Miss Judy away in a corner of my mind, as one to be paid off when the chance came.
Oddly enough, the affair worked to my advantage. Whether some wind of what had happened on the first night got to my father's ears, or whether he just caught something in the air, I don't know, but I suspect it was the second; he was shrewd, and had my own gift of sniffing the wind. Whatever it was, his manner towards me changed abruptly; from harking back to my expulsion and treating me fairly offhand, he suddenly seemed sulky at me, and I caught him giving me odd looks, which he would hurriedly shift away, as though he were
