THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL
‘D’ye know, Fairbrother, I had quite forgot: what is the day today?’
The chaise, engaged at short notice and therefore prodigious expense, was bowling comfortably along the downs towards the valley of the Wylye, which Hervey always thought of as the home stretch. In half an hour they would be at his father’s vicarage in Horningsham. It had been a most pleasant drive. Breakfasting early, they had left London at seven o’clock, and it was now approaching five of the evening (he would be ready to adjust his watch, for Warminster time was a half-hour or so behind London’s). They had stopped but once, except to change horses, and then for the briefest of meals, and they had talked for every mile of the way.
Hervey had racked his brain but could think of no likely cause for his mother’s alarm. In the end he had concluded that very likely it was another fit of the vapours, occasioned no doubt by some dispute of his father’s with the bishop (he remembered well enough the tumult of ‘popery in Horningsham’ before he went to India). But if his mother wrote to him, she was by her own reckoning in need of him, and he could do no other but come at once, although there was pressing business in London – and perhaps even more in Hertfordshire. The compensation was, of course, that he would see his daughter. It had been almost eleven months – another birthday, which again he had been absent from. She was now ten years old.
Fairbrother glanced inboard briefly at his questioner. ‘It is a Wednesday, but those are legion; it is the twenty-third of April, and therefore St George’s Day, as I have observed from the flags on the churches – which evidently you have not.’ He had enjoyed the day as much as any he could remember. He wondered what made it special in his friend’s mind.
‘It is the regimental day.’
‘Ah. There will be revelries in Hounslow?’
Hervey smiled. ‘I hope so. Tea and rum is taken to the dragoons by the officers and serjeant-majors at reveille, and then before morning stables the senior officer presents a red rose to each man.’
‘Why red?’
‘That is a good question. Nobody knows, really. Quite probably because there were once not enough white ones. And after duties everyone gives their rose to a female of his favouring, on account of the commanding officer’s giving his to an old nun in the convent where we were lodging in Spain . . . or France; I forget which.’
‘I wonder where they will be bestowed in Cape-town,’ said Fairbrother, with a wryish smile.
‘I wonder too.’
‘Well, I am glad to be seeing “God’s country” at last.’
Hervey leaned forward to look out of the window as they joined the turnpike at Heytesbury, off the windblown Salisbury Plain at last and into the gentle valley of the Wylye, with its villages strung like pearls between the episcopacies of Sarum and Bath. ‘Did I describe it thus?’ He smiled; he knew he had the habit of doing so. ‘Not long now.’
Fairbrother nodded. ‘You have never spoken much of your sister. Might you tell me a little of her before we meet?’
‘Have I not? I have told you she is to marry my good friend Laughton Peto.
‘Oh, just so; and you mention her name with regularity, but I am not enlightened ever.’
Hervey frowned at the challenge. ‘As you well know, she is to marry Peto. They met many years ago, I believe when he came to Wiltshire for my wedding, and then later in Rome when Elizabeth and I had gone there for . . . to see Italy’ (he did not feel it expedient still to disclose to Fairbrother the extent of his melancholy after Henrietta’s death, though that was some . . . ten years ago). ‘They became engaged last summer, just before Peto joined his ship.’ He suddenly looked askance. ‘That is, I
‘Quite.’
‘My father has been vicar of his parish for many years, and lately Archdeacon of Sarum, and Elizabeth has done good works in the parish – or I should say parishes, for my father has had the additional cure of several when they had no clerk. And she has always been active with the workhouse in the town. You know, it was she who found Serjeant Wainwright.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. He comes from an indigent family hereabouts. Though I say “family”, he doesn’t know his father; Elizabeth knew of their situation and urged me to enlist him.’
‘In that alone she has done you the greatest service.’
Hervey sighed. ‘That, and a hundred other things.’ He turned to look at his friend direct. ‘I could not measure my gratitude to her. Such sound sense and compassion.’
‘I look forward to making her acquaintance.’
‘You must not alarm her, Fairbrother, or any of the family.’
His friend looked bemused. ‘I have left my animal skins at the United Service Club, Hervey.’
‘Don’t be an ass. I meant you are not to alarm them with stories of the Cape.’
‘As you wish. Though it was not my intention.’
‘No, but Georgiana might wheedle it out of you, or it might come out casually at dinner on account of some unintended line.’
‘I understand, though do you not think they might have some inkling of events from the newspapers?’
‘That is possible. But by and large I keep these things to myself.’
Fairbrother said nothing. He was a guest, even though he accompanied his friend on the orders of the lieutenant-governor – ‘captain-nursemaid’, Hervey had ribbed – and since he was not on intimate terms with the manners of the English gentry, he was content to take counsel and observe. But how
The joy of the last mile to Horningsham was to him undiminished by such thoughts, however. The prospect of Archdeacon Hervey’s church, when it came, was especially pleasing, and then the parsonage was all charm (Hervey had told him that it was but a modest house and establishment – ‘my father did not have benefit of Queen Anne’s Bounty’), a hotch-pot of building covered in ivy and moss and vines. They had been hourly expected, for Hervey had increased his expenses by sending an express, and as soon as the chaise’s wheels growled into the drive, the household came outside to greet them.
Fairbrother was wholly intrigued by the ceremony. Whenever he had returned to his father’s house the greeting had been with him alone, and at his mother’s cabin it had been all exuberance, with no precedence but that gained by the agility of any number of aunts, uncles and cousins. He descended from the chaise and watched as his friend greeted his father with an easy smile, but with a bow rather than a handshake (or kisses, as he himself would have in Jamaica). The Venerable Thomas Hervey did indeed look as his title, a kindly old gentleman, an Englishman of proper sentiment and loyalties, and just as his friend had described him. Mrs Hervey, on the other hand, of whom her son had spoken little, looked less at ease, a woman, he imagined, of indifferent sensibilities and limited comprehension. He did not think she would care much for his intrusion on the household. Hervey greeted her with kisses and a sort of indulging frown, as much as to say ‘I am here, and I am sure all will be well’.
His sister now came forward, with a look that he, Fairbrother, could not quite recognize. It seemed to carry at once both deference and superiority, defiance even – but certainly the strongest affection. There was no doubting their kinship: the shape of the face, the eyes, the . . . assumption of authority. It was really most striking. They embraced, and Hervey stood back and smiled in a way that said how prodigiously proud he was of her. And then,
