Flashman at the Charge

So I looked about for a way out, and found a deuced clever one – I rejoined the Army. That is to say, I went round to the Horse Guards, where my Uncle Bindley was still holding on in pursuit of his pension, and took up my colours again, which isn’t difficult when you know the right people. But the smart thing was, I didn’t ask for a cavalry posting, or a staff mount, or anything risky of that nature; instead I applied for the Board of Ordnance, for which I knew I was better qualified than most of its members, inasmuch as I knew which end of a gun the ball came out of. Let me once be installed there, in a comfortable office off Horse Guards, which I might well visit as often as once a fortnight, and Mars could go whistle for me.

And if anyone said, ‘What, Flash, you old blood-drinker, ain’t you off to Turkey to carve up the Cossacks?’, I’d look solemn and talk about the importance of administration and supply, and the need for having at home headquarters some experienced field men – the cleverer ones, of course – who would see what was required for the front. With my record for gallantry (totally false though it was) no one could doubt my sincerity.

Bindley naturally asked me what the deuce I knew about fire-arms, being a cavalryman, and I pointed out that that mattered a good deal less than the fact that I was related, on my mother’s side, to Lord Paget, of the God’s Anointed Pagets, who happened to be a member of the small arms select committee. He’d be ready enough, I thought, to give a billet as personal secretary, confidential civilian aide, and general tale-bearer, to a well-seasoned campaigner who was also a kinsman.

‘Well-seasoned Haymarket Hussar,’ sniffs Bindley, who was from the common or Flashman side of our family, and hated being reminded of my highly placed relatives. ‘I fancy rather more than that will be required.’

‘India and Afghanistan ain’t in the Haymarket, uncle,’ says I, looking humble-offended, ‘and if it comes to fire-arms, well, I’ve handled enough of ’em, Brown Bess, Dreyse needles, Colts, Lancasters, Brunswicks, and so forth’ – I’d handled them with considerable reluctance, but he didn’t know that.

‘H’m,’ says he, pretty sour. ‘This is a curiously humble ambition for one who was once the pride of the plungers. However, since you can hardly be less useful to the ordnance board than you would be if you returned to the wastrel existence you led in the 11th – before they removed you – I shall speak to his lordship.’

I could see he was puzzled, and he sniffed some more about the mighty being fallen, but he didn’t begin to guess at my real motive. For one thing, the war was still some time off, and the official talk was that it would probably be avoided, but I was taking no risks of being caught unprepared. When there’s been a bad harvest, and workers are striking, and young chaps have developed a craze for growing moustaches and whiskers, just watch out.1 The country was full of discontent and mischief, largely because England hadn’t had a real war for forty years, and only a few of us knew what fighting was like. The rest were full of rage and stupidity, and all because some Papists and Turkish niggers had quarrelled about the nailing of a star to a door in Palestine. Mind you, nothing surprises me.

When I got home and announced my intention of joining the Board of Ordnance, my darling wife Elspeth was mortified beyond belief.

‘Why, oh why, Harry, could you not have sought an appointment in the Hussars, or some other fashionable regiment? You looked so beautiful and dashing in those wonderful pink pantaloons! Sometimes I think they were what won my heart in the first place, the day you came to father’s house. I suppose that in the Ordnance they wear some horrid drab overalls, and how can you take me riding in the Row dressed like … like a common commissary person, or something?’

‘Shan’t wear uniform,’ says I. ‘Just civilian toggings, my dear. And you’ll own my tailor’s a good one, since you chose him yourself.’

‘That will be quite as bad,’ says she, ‘with all the other husbands in their fine uniforms – and you looked so well and dashing. Could you not be a Hussar again, my love – just for me?’

When Elspeth pouted those red lips, and heaved her remarkable bosom in a sigh, my thoughts always galloped bedwards, and she knew it. But I couldn’t be weakened that way, as I explained.

‘Can’t be done. Cardigan won’t have me back in the 11th, you may be sure; why, he kicked me out in ’40.’

‘Because I was a … a tradesman’s daughter, he said. I know.’ For a moment I thought she would weep. ‘Well, I am not so now. Father …’

‘… bought a peerage just in time before he died, so you are a baron’s daughter. Yes, my love, but that won’t serve for Jim the Bear. I doubt if he fancies bought nobility much above no rank at all.’

‘Oh, how horridly you put it. Anyway, I am sure that is not so, because he danced twice with me last season, while you were away, at Lady Brown’s assembly – yes, and at the cavalry ball. I distinctly remember, because I wore my gold ruffled dress and my hair à l’impératrice, and he said I looked like an Empress indeed. Was that not gallant? And he bows to me in the Park, and we have spoken several times. He seems a very kind old gentleman, and not at all gruff, as they say.’

‘Is he now?’ says I. I didn’t care for the sound of this; I knew Cardigan for as lecherous an old goat as ever tore off breeches. ‘Well, kind or not as he may seem, he’s one to beware of, for your reputation’s sake, and mine. Anyway, he won’t have me back – and I don’t fancy him much either, so that settles it.’

She made a mouth at this. ‘Then I think you are both very stubborn and foolish. Oh, Harry, I am quite miserable about it; and poor little Havvy too, would be so proud to have his father in one of the fine regiments, with a grand uniform. He will be so downcast.’

Poor little Havvy, by the way, was our son and heir, a boisterous malcontent five-year-old who made the house hideous with his noise and was forever hitting his shuttlecocks about the place. I wasn’t by any means sure that I was his father, for as I have explained before, my Elspeth hid a monstrously passionate nature under her beautifully innocent roses-and-cream exterior, and I suspected that she had been bounced about by half London during the fourteen years of our marriage. I’d been away a good deal, of course. But I’d never caught her out – mind you, that meant nothing, for she’d never caught me, and I had had more than would make a hand-rail round Hyde Park. But whatever we both suspected we kept to ourselves, and dealt very well. I loved her, you see, in a way which was not entirely carnal, and I think, I believe, I hope, that she worshipped me, although I’ve never made up my mind about that.

But I had my doubts about the paternity of little Havvy – so called because his names were Harry Albert Victor, and he couldn’t say ‘Harry’ properly, generally because his mouth was full. My chum Speedicut, I remember, who is a coarse brute, claimed to see a conclusive resemblance to me: when Havvy was a few weeks old, and Speed came to the nursery to see him getting his rations, he said the way the infant went after the nurse’s tits proved beyond doubt whose son he was.

‘Little Havvy,’ I told Elspeth, ‘is much too young to care a feather what uniform his father wears. But my present work is important, my love, and you would not have me shirk my duty. Perhaps, later, I may transfer’ – I would, too, as soon as it looked safe – ‘and you will be able to lead your cavalryman to drums and balls and in the Row to your heart’s content.’

It cheered her up, like a sweet to a child; she was an astonishingly shallow creature in that way. More like a lovely flaxen-haired doll come to life than a woman with a human brain, I often thought. Still, that has its conveniences, too.

In any event, Bindley spoke for me to Lord Paget, who took me in tow, and so I joined the Board of Ordnance. And it was the greatest bore, for his lordship proved to be one of those meddling fools who insist on taking an interest in the work of committees to which they are appointed – as if a lord is ever expected to do anything but lend the light of his countenance and his title. He actually put me to work, and not being an engineer, or knowing more of stresses and moments than sufficed to get me in and out of bed, I was assigned to musketry testing at the Woolwich laboratory, which meant standing on firing-points while the marksmen of the Royal Small Arms Factory blazed away at the ‘eunuchs’.2 The fellows there were a very common lot, engineers and the like, full of nonsense about the virtues of the Minié as compared with the Long Enfield .577, and the Pritchard bullet, and the Aston backsight – there was tremendous work going on just then, of course, to find a new rifle for the army, and Molesworth’s committee was being set up to make the choice. It was all one to me if they decided on arquebuses; after a month spent listening to them prosing about jamming ramrods, and getting oil on my trousers, I found myself sharing the view of old General Scarlett, who once told me:

‘Splendid chaps the ordnance, but dammem, a powder monkey’s a powder monkey, ain’t he? Let ’em fill the cartridges and bore the guns, but don’t expect me to know a .577 from a mortar! What concern is that of a gentleman – or a soldier, either? Hey? Hey?’

Indeed, I began to wonder how long I could stand it, and settled for spending as little time as I could on my duties, and devoting myself to the social life. Elspeth at thirty seemed to be developing an even greater appetite, if that were possible, for parties and dances and the opera and assemblies, and when I wasn’t squiring her I was busy about the clubs and the Haymarket, getting back into my favourite swing of devilled bones, mulled port and low company, riding round Albert Gate by day and St John’s Wood by night, racing, playing pool, carousing with Speed and the lads, and keeping the Cyprians busy. London is always lively, but there was a wild mood about in those days, and growing wilder as the weeks passed. It was all: when will the war break out? For soon it was seen that it must come, the press and the street-corner orators were baying for Russian blood, the government talked interminably and did nothing, the Russian ambassador was sent packing, the Guards marched away to embark for the Mediterranean at an unconscionably early hour of the morning – Elspeth, full of bogus loyalty and snob curiosity, infuriated me by creeping out of bed at four to go and watch this charade, and came back at eight twittering about how splendid the Queen had looked in a dress of dark green merino as she cried farewell to her gallant fellows – and a few days later Palmerston and Graham got roaring tight at the Reform Club and made furious speeches in which they announced that they were going to set about the villain Nicholas and drum him through Siberia.3

I listened to a mob in Piccadilly singing about how British arms would ‘tame the frantic autocrat and smite the Russian slave’, and consoled myself with the thought that I would be snug and safe down at Woolwich, doing less than my share to see that they got the right guns to do it with. And so I might, if I hadn’t loafed out one evening to play pool with Speed in the Haymarket.

As I recall, I only went because Elspeth’s entertainment for the evening was to consist of going to the theatre with a gaggle of her female friends to see some play by a Frenchman – it was patriotic to go to anything French just then, and besides the play was said to be risqué, so my charmer was bound to see it in order to be virtuously shocked.4 I doubted whether it would ruffle my tender sensibilities, though – not enough to be interesting, anyway – so I went along with Speed.

We played a few games of sausage in the Piccadilly Rooms, and it was a dead bore, and then a chap named Cutts, a Dragoon whom I knew slightly, came by and offered us a match at billiards for a quid a hundred. I’d played with him before, and beat him, so we agreed, and set to.

I’m no pool-shark, but not a bad player, either, and unless there’s a goodish sum riding, I don’t much care whether I win or lose as a rule. But there are some smart alecs at the table that I can’t abide to be beat by, and Cutts was one of them. You know the sort – they roll their cues on the tables, and tell the bystanders that they play their best game off list cushions instead of rubber, and say ‘Mmph?’ if you miss a shot they couldn’t have got themselves in a hundred years. What made it worse, my eye was out, and Cutts’ luck was dead in – he brought off middle-pocket jennies that Joe Bennet wouldn’t have looked at, missed easy hazards and had his ball roll all round the table for a cannon, and when he tried long pots as often as not he got a pair of breeches. By the time he had taken a fiver apiece from us, I was sick of it.

‘What, had enough?’ cries he, cock-a-hoop. ‘Come on, Flash, where’s your spirit? I’ll play you any cramp game you like – shell-out, skittle pool, pyramids, caroline, doublet or go-back.5 What d’ye say? Come on, Speed, you’re game, I see.’

So Speed, the ass, played him again, while I mooched about in no good humour, waiting for them to finish. And it chanced that my eye fell on a game that was going on at a corner table, and I stopped to watch.

It was a flat-catching affair, one of the regular sharks fleecing a novice, and I settled down to see what fun there would be when the sheep realised he was being sheared. I had noticed him while we were playing with Cutts – a proper-looking mamma’s boy with a pale, delicate face and white hands, who looked as though he’d be more at home handing cucumber sandwiches to Aunt Jane than pushing a cue. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but I’d noticed his clothes were beautifully cut, although hardly what you’d call pool-room fashion; more like Sunday in the country. But there was money about him, and all told he was the living answer to a billiard-rook’s prayer.

They were playing pyramids, and the shark, a grinning specimen with ginger whiskers, was fattening his lamb for the kill. You may not know the game, but there are fifteen colours, and you try to pocket them one after the other, like pool, usually for a stake of a bob a time. The lamb had put down eight of them, and the shark three, exclaiming loudly at his ill luck, and you could see the little chap was pretty pleased with himself.

‘Only four balls left!’ cries the shark. ‘Well, I’m done for; my luck’s dead out, I can see. Tell you what, though; it’s bound to change; I’ll wager a sovereign on each of the last four.’

You or I would know that this was the time to put up your cue and say good evening, before he started making the balls advance in column of route dressed from the front, and even the little greenhorn thought hard about it; but hang it, you could see him thinking, I’ve potted eight out of eleven – surely I’ll get at least two of those remaining.

So he said very well, and I waited to see the shark slam the four balls away in as many shots. But he had weighed up his man’s purse, and decided on a really good plucking, and after pocketing the first ball with a long double that made the greenhorn’s jaw drop, the shark made a miscue on his next stroke. Now when you foul at pyramids, one of the potted balls is put back on the table, so there were four still to go at. So it went on, the shark potting a ball and collecting a quid, and then fouling – damning his own clumsiness, of course – so that the ball was re-spotted again. It could go on all night, and the look of horror on the little greenhorn’s face was a sight to see. He tried desperately to pot the balls himself, but somehow he always found himself making his shots from a stiff position against the cushion, or with the four colours all lying badly; he could make nothing of it. The shark took fifteen pounds off him before dropping the last ball – off three cushions, just for swank – and then dusted his fancy weskit, thanked the flat with a leer, and sauntered off whistling and calling the waiter for champagne.

The little gudgeon was standing woebegone, holding his limp purse. I thought of speeding him on his way with a taunt or two, and then I had a sudden bright idea.

‘Cleaned out, Snooks?’ says I. He started, eyed me suspiciously, and then stuck his purse in his pocket and turned to the door.

‘Hold on,’ says I. ‘I’m not a Captain Sharp; you needn’t run away. He rooked you properly, didn’t he?’

He stopped, flushing. ‘I suppose he did. What is it to you?’

‘Oh, nothing at all. I just thought you might care for a drink to drown your sorrows.’

He gave me a wary look; you could see him thinking, here’s another of them.

‘I thank you, no,’ says he, and added: ‘I have no money left whatever.’

‘I’d be surprised if you had,’ says I, ‘but fortunately I have. Hey, waiter.’

The boy was looking nonplussed, as though he wanted to go out into the street and weep over his lost fifteen quid, but at the same time not averse to some manly comfort from this cheery chap. Even Tom Hughes allowed I could charm when I wanted to, and in two minutes I had him looking into a brandy glass, and soon after that we were chatting away like old companions.

He was a foreigner, doing the tour, I gathered, in the care of some tutor from whom he had managed to slip away to have a peep at the flesh-pots of London. The depths of depravity for him, it seemed, was a billiard-room, so he had made for this one and been quickly inveigled and fleeced.

‘At least it has been a lesson to me,’ says he, with that queer formal gravity which a man so often uses in speaking a language not his own. ‘But how am I to explain my empty purse to Dr Winter? What will he think?’

‘Depends how coarse an imagination he’s got,’ says I. ‘You needn’t fret about him; he’ll be so glad to get you back safe and sound, I doubt if he’ll ask too many questions.’

‘That is true,’ says my lad, thoughtfully. ‘He will fear for his own position. Why, he has been a negligent guardian, has he not?’

‘Dam’ slack,’ says I. ‘The devil with him. Drink up, boy, and confusion to Dr Winter.’

You may wonder why I was buying drink and being pleasant to this flat; it was just a whim I had dreamed up to be even with Cutts. I poured a little more into my new acquaintance, and got him quite merry, and then, with an eye on the table where Cutts was trimming up Speed, and gloating over it, I says to the youth:

‘I tell you what, though, my son, it won’t do for the sporting name of Old England if you creep back home without some credit. I can’t put the fifteen sovs back in your pocket, but I’ll tell you what – just do as I tell you, and I’ll see that you win a game before you walk out of this hall.’

‘Ah, no – that, no,’ says he. ‘I have played enough; once is sufficient – besides, I tell you, I have no more money.’

‘Gammon,’ says I. ‘Who’s talking about money? You’d like to win a match, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, but …’ says he, and the wary look was back in his eye. I slapped him on the knee, jolly old Flash.

‘Leave it to me,’ says I. ‘What, man, it’s just in fun. I’ll get you a game with a pal of mine, and you’ll trim him up, see if you don’t.’

‘But I am the sorriest player,’ cries he. ‘How can I beat your friend?’

‘You ain’t as bad as you think you are,’ says I. ‘Depend on it. Now just sit there a moment.’

I slipped over to one of the markers whom I knew well. ‘Joe,’ says I, ‘give me a shaved ball, will you?’

‘What’s that, cap’n?’ says he. ‘There’s no such thing in this ’ouse.’

‘Don’t fudge me, Joe. I know better. Come on, man, it’s just for a lark, I tell you. No money, no rooking.’

He looked doubtful, but after a moment he went behind his counter and came back with a set of billiard pills. ‘Spot’s the boy,’ says he. ‘But mind, Cap’n Flashman, no nonsense, on your honour.’

‘Trust me,’ says I, and went back to our table. ‘Now, Sam Snooks, just you pop those about for a moment.’ He was looking quite perky, I noticed, what with the booze and, I suspect, a fairly bouncy little spirit under his mamma’s boy exterior. He seemed to have forgotten his fleecing at any rate, and was staring about him at the fellows playing at nearby tables, some in flowery weskits and tall hats and enormous whiskers, others in the new fantastic coloured shirts that were coming in just then, with death’s heads and frogs and serpents all over them; our little novice was drinking it all in, listening to the chatter and laughter, and watching the waiters weave in and out with their trays, and the markers calling off the breaks. I suppose it’s something to see, if you’re a bumpkin.

I went over to where Cutts was just demolishing Speed, and as the pink ball went away, I says:

‘There’s no holding you tonight, Cutts, old fellow. Just my luck, when my eye’s out, to meet first you and then that little terror in the corner yonder.’

‘What, have you been browned again?’ says he, looking round. ‘Oh, my stars, never by that, though, surely? Why, he’s not out of leading-strings, by the looks of him.’

‘Think so?’ says I. ‘He’ll give you twenty in the hundred, any day.’

Well, of course, that settled it, with a conceited pup like Cutts; nothing would do but he must come over, with his toadies in his wake, making great uproar and guffawing, and offer to make a game with my little greenhorn.

‘Just for love, mind,’ says I, in case Joe the marker was watching, but Cutts wouldn’t have it; insisted on a bob a point, and I had to promise to stand good for my man, who shied away as soon as cash was mentioned. He was pretty tipsy by now, or I doubt if I’d have got him to stay at the table, for he was a timid squirt, even in drink, and the bustling and catcalling of the fellows made him nervous. I rolled him the plain ball, and away they went, Cutts chalking his cue with a flourish and winking to his pals.

You’ve probably never seen a shaved ball used – but then, you wouldn’t know it if you had. The trick is simple; your sharp takes an ordinary ball beforehand, and gets a craftsman to peel away just the most delicate shaving of ivory from one side of it; some clumsy cheats try to do it by rubbing it with fine sand-paper, but that shows up like a whore in church. Then, in the game, he makes certain his opponent gets the shaved ball, and plays away. The flat never suspects a thing, for a carefully shaved ball can’t be detected except with the very slowest of slow shots, when it will waver ever so slightly just before it stops. But of course, even with fast shots it goes off the true just a trifle, and in as fine a game as billiards or pool, where precision is everything, a trifle is enough.

It was for Cutts, anyhow. He missed cannons by a whisker, his winning hazards rattled in the jaws of the pocket and stayed out, his losers just wouldn’t drop, and when he tried a jenny he often missed the red altogether. He swore blind and fumed, and I said, ‘My, my, damme, that was close, what?’ and my little greenhorn plugged away – he was a truly shocking player, too – and slowly piled up the score. Cutts couldn’t fathom it, for he knew he was hitting his shots well, but nothing would go right.

I helped him along by suggesting he was watching the wrong ball – a notion which is sure death, once it has been put in a player’s mind – and he got wild and battered away recklessly, and my youngster finally ran out an easy winner, by thirty points.

I was interested to notice he got precious cocky at this. ‘Billiards is not a difficult game, after all,’ says he, and Cutts ground his teeth and began to count out his change. His fine chums, of course, were bantering him unmercifully – which was all I’d wanted in the first place.

‘Better keep your cash to pay for lessons, Cutts, my boy,’ says I. ‘Here, Speed, take our young champion for a drink.’ And when they had gone off to the bar I grinned at Cutts. ‘I’d never have guessed it – with whiskers like yours.’

‘Guessed what, damn you, you funny flash man?’ says he, and I held up the spot ball between finger and thumb.

‘Never have guessed you’d have such a close shave,’ says I. ‘’Pon my soul, you ain’t fit to play with rooks like our little friend. You’d better take up hoppity, with old ladies.’