Flashman’s Lady

‘Oh, Don, how delightful!’ cries she. ‘Why, it will be the jolliest thing, and Canterbury is the most select place, I believe – yes, there is a regiment there – but, oh, what shall I have to wear? One needs a very different style out of London, you see, especially if many of our lunches are to be al fresco, and some of the evening parties are sure to be out of doors – oh, but what about poor, dear Papa?’

I should have added that another reason for my leaving London was to get away from old Morrison, who was still infesting our premises. In fact, he’d been taken ill in May – not fatally, unfortunately. He claimed it was overwork, but I knew it was the report of the child employment commission which, as Don Solomon had predicted, had caused a shocking uproar when it came out, for it proved that our factories were rather worse than the Siberian salt mines. Names hadn’t been named, but questions were being asked in the Commons, and Morrison was terrified that at any moment he’d be exposed for the slave-driving swine he was. So the little villain had taken to his bed, more or less, with an attack of the nervous guilts, and spent his time d---ing the commissioners, snarling at the servants, and snuffing candles to save money.

Of course Haslam said he must come with us; the change of air would do him good; myself, I thought a change from air was what the old pest required, but there was nothing I could do about it, and since my first game for Mynn’s crew was on a Monday afternoon, it was arranged that the party should travel down the day before. I managed to steer clear of that ordeal, pleading business – in fact, young Conyngham had bespoken a room at the Magpie for a hanging on the Monday morning, but I didn’t let on to Elspeth about that. Don Solomon convoyed the party to the station for the special he’d engaged, Elspeth with enough trunks and bandboxes to start a new colony, old Morrison wrapped in rugs and bleating about the iniquity of travelling by railroad on the sabbath, and Judy, my father’s bit, watching the performance with her crooked little smile.

She and I never exchanged a word, nowadays. I’d rattled her (once) in the old days, when the guv’nor’s back was turned, but then she’d called a halt, and we’d had a fine, shouting turn-up in which I’d blacked her eye. Since then we’d been on civil-sneer terms, for the guv’nor’s sake, but since he’d recently been carted away again to the blue-devil factory to have the booze bogies chased out of his brain, Judy was devoting her time to being Elspeth’s companion – oh, we were a conventional little menage, sure enough. She was a handsome, knowing piece, and I squeezed her thigh for spite as I handed her into the carriage, got a blood-freezing glare for my pains, and waved them farewell, promising to meet them in Canterbury by noon next day.

I forget who they hanged on the Monday, and it don’t matter anyway, but it was the only Newgate scragging I ever saw, and I had an encounter afterwards which is part of my tale. When I got to the Magpie on Sunday evening, Conyngham and his pals weren’t there, having gone across to the prison chapel to see the condemned man attend his last service; I didn’t miss a great deal apparently, for when they came back they were crying that it had been a dead bore – just the chaplain droning away and praying, and the murderer sitting in the black pen talking to the turnkey.

‘They didn’t even have him sitting on his coffin,’ cries Conyngham. ‘I thought they always had his coffin in the pew with him – d--n you, Beresford, you told me they did!’

‘Still, t’aint every day you see a chap attend his own burial service,’ says another. ‘Don’t you just wish you may look as lively at your own, Conners?’

After that they all settled down to cards and boozing, with a buffet supper that went on all evening, and of course the girls were brought in – Snow Hill sluts that I wouldn’t have touched with a long pole. I was amused to see that Conyngham and the other younger fellows were in a rare sweat of excitement – quite feverish they got in their wining and wenching, and all because they were going to see a chap turned off. It was nothing to me, who’d seen hangings, beheadings, crucifixions and the L--d knows what in my wanderings; my interest was to see an English felon crapped in front of an English crowd, so in the meantime I settled down to écarté with Speedicut, and by getting him well foxed I cleaned him out before midnight.

By then most of the company were three-parts drunk or snoring, but they didn’t sleep long, for in the small hours the gallows-builders arrived, and the racket they made as they hammered up the scaffold in the street outside woke everyone. Conyngham remembered then that he had a sheriff’s order, so we all trooped across to Newgate to get a squint at the chap in the condemned cell, and I remember how that boozy, rowdy party fell silent once we were in Newgate Yard, with the dank black walls crowding in on either side, our steps sounding hollow in the stone passages, breathing short and whispering while the turnkey grinned horribly and rolled his eyes to give Conyngham his money’s worth.

I reckon the young sparks didn’t get it, though, for all they saw in the end was a man lying fast asleep on his stone bench, with his jailer resting on a mattress alongside; one or two of our party, having recovered their spunk by that time, wanted to wake him up, in the hope that he’d rave and pray, I suppose; Conyngham, who was wilder than most, broke a bottle on the bars and roared at the fellow to stir himself, but he just turned over on his side, and a little beadle-like chap in a black coat and tall hat came on the scene in a tearing rage to have us turned out.

‘Vermin!’ cries he, stamping and red in the face. ‘Have you no decency? Dear G-d, and these are meant to be the leaders of the nation! D--n you, d--n you, d--n you all to h--l!’ He was incoherent with fury, and vowed the turnkey would lose his place; he absolutely threw Conyngham out bodily, but our bold boy wasn’t abashed; when he’d done giving back curse for curse he made a drunken dash for the scaffold, which was erected by now, black beams, barriers, and all, and managed to dance on the trap before the scandalised workmen threw him into the road.

His pals picked him up, laughing and cheering, and got him back to the Magpie; the crowd that was already gathering in the warm summer dawn grinned and guffawed as we went through, though there were some black looks and cries of ‘Shame!’ The first eel-piemen were crying their wares in the street, and the vendors of tiny model gibbets and Courvoisier’s confession and pieces of rope from the last hanging (cut off some chandler’s stock that very morning, you may be sure) were having their breakfast in Lamb’s and the Magpie common room, waiting for the real mob to arrive; the lower kind of priggers and whores were congregating, and some family parties were already established at the windows, making a picnic of it; carters were putting their vehicles against the walls and offering places of vantage at sixpence a time; the warehousemen and porters who had their business to do were d--ning the eyes of those who obstructed their work, and the constables were sauntering up and down in pairs, moving on the beggars and drunks, and keeping a cold eye on the more obvious thieves and flashtails. A bluff-looking chap in clerical duds was watching with lively interest as Conyngham was helped into the Magpie and up the stairs; he nodded civilly to me.

‘Quiet enough so far,’ says he, and I noticed that he carried his right arm at an odd angle, and his hand was crooked and waxy. ‘I wonder, sir, if I might accompany your party?’ He gave me his name, but I’m shot if I recall it now.

I didn’t mind, so he came abovestairs, into the wreck of our front room, with the remains of the night’s eating and drinking being cleared away and breakfast set, and the sluts being chivvied out by the waiters, complaining shrilly; most of our party were looking pretty seedy, and didn’t make much of the chops and kidneys at all.

‘First time for most of them,’ says my new acquaintance. ‘Interesting, sir, most interesting.’ At my invitation he helped himself to cold beef, and we talked and ate in one of the windows while the crowd below began to increase, until the whole street was packed tight as far as you could see both sides of the scaffold; a great, seething mob, with the peelers guarding the barriers, and hardly room enough for the dippers and mobsmen to ply their trade – there must have been every class of mortal in London there; all the dross of the underworld rubbing shoulders with tradesmen and City folk; clerks and counter-jumpers; family men with children perched on their shoulders; beggar brats scampering and tugging at sleeves; a lord’s carriage against a wall, and the mob cheering as its stout occupant was heaved on to the roof by his coachmen; every window was jammed with onlookers at two quid a time; there were galleries on the roofs with seats to let, and even the gutters and lamp-brackets had people clinging to them. A ragged little urchin came swinging along the Magpie’s wall like a monkey; he clung to our window-ledge with naked, grimy toes and fingers, his great eyes staring at our plates; my companion held out a chop to him, and it vanished in a twinkling into the ugly, chewing face.

Someone hailed from beneath our window, and I saw a burly, pug-nosed fellow looking up; my crooked-arm chap shouted down to him, but the noise and hooting and laughter of the crowd was too much for conversation, and presently my companion gave up, and says to me:

‘Thought he might be here. Capital writer, just you watch; put us all in the shade presently. Did you follow Miss Tickletoby last summer?’ From which I’ve since deduced that the cove beneath our window that day was Mr William Makepeace Thackeray. That was my closest acquaintance with him, though.

‘It’s a solemn thought,’ went on my companion, ‘that if executions were held in churches, we’d never lack for congregations – probably get much the same people as we do now, don’t you think? Ah – there we are!’

As he spoke the bell boomed, and the mob below began to roar off the strokes in unison: ‘One, two, three …’ until the eighth peal, when there was a tremendous hurrah, which echoed between the buildings, and then died away in a sudden fall, broken only by the shrill wail of an infant. My companion whispered:

‘St Sepulchre’s bell begins to toll,

The Lord have mercy on his soul.’

As the chatter of the crowd grew again, we looked across that craning sea of humanity to the scaffold, and there were the constables hurrying out of the Debtors’ Door from the jail, with the prisoner bound between them, up the steps, and on to the platform. The prisoner seemed to be half-asleep (‘drugged,’ says my companion; ‘they won’t care for that’). They didn’t, either, but began to stamp and yell and jeer, drowning out the clergyman’s prayer, while the executioner made fast the noose, slipped a hood over the condemned man’s head, and stood by to slip the bolt. There wasn’t a sound now, until a drunk chap sings out, ‘Good health, Jimmy!’ and there were cries and laughter, and everyone stared at the white-hooded figure under the beam, waiting.

‘Don’t watch him,’ whispers my friend. ‘Look at your companions.’

I did, glancing along at the next window: every face staring, every mouth open, motionless, some grinning, some pale with fear, some in an almost vacant ecstasy. ‘Keep watching ’em,’ says he, and pat on his words came the rattle and slam of the drop, an almighty yell from the crowd, and every face at the next window was eagerly alight with pleasure – Speedicut grinning and crowing, Beresford sighing and moistening his lips, Spottswood’s heavy face set in grim satisfaction, while his fancy woman clung giggling to his arm, and pretended to hide her face.

‘Interesting, what?’ says the man with the crooked arm.9 He put on his hat, tapped it down, and nodded amiably. ‘Well, I’m obliged to you, sir,’ and off he went. Across the street the white-capped body was spinning slowly beneath the trap, a constable on the platform was holding the rope, and directly beneath me the outskirts of the crowd was dissolving into the taverns. Over in a corner of the room Conyngham was being sick.

I went downstairs and stood waiting for the crowd to thin, but most of ’em were still waiting in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the hanging corpse, which they couldn’t see for the throng in front. I was wondering how far I’d have to walk for a hack, when a man loomed up in front of me, and after a moment I recognised the red face, button eyes, and flash weskit of Mr Daedalus Tighe.

‘Vell, vell, sir,’ cries he, ‘here ve are again! I hears as you’re off to Canterbury – vell, you’ll give ’em better sport than that, I’ll be bound!’ And he nodded towards the scaffold. ‘Did you ever see poorer stuff, Mr Flashman? Not vorth the vatchin’, sir, not vorth the vatchin’. Not a word out o’ him – no speech, no repentance, not even a struggle, blow me! That’s not vot ve’d ’ave called a ’angin’, in my young day. You’d think,’ says he, sticking his thumbs in his vest, ‘that a young cribsman like that there, vot ’adn’t no upbringin’ to speak of, nor never amounted to nothin’ – till today – you’d think, sir, that on the great hocassion of ’is life, ’e’d show appreciation, ’stead o’ lettin’ them drug ’im vith daffy. Vere vas his ambition, sir, allowin’ ’imself to be crapped like that there, ven ’e might ’ave reckernised the interest, sir, of all these people ’ere, an’ responded to same?’ He beamed at me, head on one side. ‘No bottom, Mr Flashman; no game. Now, you, sir – you’d do your werry best if you vas misfortinit enough to be in his shoes – vhich Gawd forbid – an’ so should I, eh? Ve’d give the people vot they came for, like good game Henglishmen.

‘Speakin’ of game,’ he went on, ‘I trust you’re in prime condition for Canterbury. I’m countin’ on you, sir, countin’ on you, I am.’

Something in his tone raised a tiny prickle on my neck. I’d been giving him a cool stare, but now I made it a hard one.

‘I don’t know what you mean, my man,’ says I, ‘and I don’t care. You may take yourself—’

‘No, no, no, my dear young sir,’ says he, beaming redder than ever. ‘You’ve mistook me quite. Vot I’m indicatin’, sir, is that I’m interested – werry much interested, in the success of Mr Mynn’s Casual XI, vot I hexpec’ to carry all before ’em, for your satisfaction an’ my profit.’ He closed an eye roguishly. ‘You’ll remember, sir, as ’ow I expressed my appreciation o’ your notable feat at Lord’s last year, by forwardin’ a token, a small gift of admiration, reelly—’

‘I never had a d----d thing from you,’ says I, perhaps just a shade too quickly.

‘You don’t say, sir? Vell, blow me, but you astonish me, sir – you reelly do. An’ me takin’ werry partikler care to send it to yore direction – an’ you never received same! Vell, vell,’ and the little black eyes were hard as pebbles. ‘I vonder now, if that willain o’ mine, Wincent, slipped it in ’is cly,fn3 ’stead o’ deliverin’ same to you? Hooman vickedness, Mr Flashman, sir, there ain’t no end to it. Still, sir, ve needn’t repine,’ and he laughed heartily, ‘there’s more vere that come from, sir. An’ I can tell you, sir, that if you carries yore bat against the Irreg’lars this arternoon – vell, you can count to three hundred, I’ll be bound, eh?’

I stared at him, speechless, opened my mouth – and shut it. He regarded me benignly, winked again, and glanced about him.

‘Terrible press, sir; shockin’. Vhy the peelers don’t chivvy these d----d magsmen an’ cly-fakers – vhy, a gent like you ain’t safe; they’ll ’ave the teeth out yore ’ead, ’less you looks sharp. Scandalous, sir; vot you need’s a cab; that’s vot you need.’

He gave a nod, a burly brute close by gave a piercing whistle, and before you could wink there was a hack pushing through the crowd, its driver belabouring all who didn’t clear out fast enough. The burly henchman leaped to the horse’s head, another held the door, and Mr Tighe, hat in hand, was ushering me in, beaming wider than ever.

‘An’ the werry best o’ luck this arternoon, sir,’ cries he. ‘You’ll bowl them Irreg’lars aht in no time, I’ll wager, an” – he winked again – ‘I do ’ope as you carries your bat, Mr Flashman. London Bridge, cabby!’ And away went the cab, carrying a very thoughtful gentleman, you may be sure.

I considered the remarkable Mr Tighe all the way to Canterbury, too, and concluded that if he was fool enough to throw money away, that was his business – what kind of odds could he hope to get on my losing my wicket, for after all, I batted well down the list, and might easily carry my bat through the hand?10 Who’d wager above three hundred on that? Well, that was his concern, not mine – but I’d have to keep a close eye on him, and not become entangled with his sort; at least he wasn’t expecting me to throw the game, but quite the reverse; he was trying to bribe me to do well, in fact. H’m.

The upshot of it was, I bowled pretty well for Mynn’s eleven, and when I went to the wicket to bat, I stuck to my blockhole like glue, to the disappointment of the spectators, who expected me to slog. I was third last man in, so I didn’t have to endure long, and as Mynn himself was at t’other end, knocking off the runs, my behaviour was perfectly proper. We won by two wickets, Flashy not out, nil – and next morning, after breakfast, there was a plain packet addressed to me, with three hundred in bills inside.

I near as a toucher sealed it up again and told the footman to give it back to whoever had brought it – but I didn’t. Warm work – but three hundred is three hundred – and it was a gift, wasn’t it? I could always deny I’d ever seen it – G-d, I was an innocent then, for all my campaign experience.

This, of course, took place at the house which Haslam had taken just outside Canterbury, very splendid, gravel walks, fine lawns, shrubbery and trees, gaslight throughout, beautifully appointed rooms, best of food and drink, flunkeys everywhere, and go-as-you-please. There were about a dozen house guests, for it was a great rambling place, and Haslam had seen to every comfort. He gave a sumptuous party on that first Monday night, at which Mynn and Felix were present, and the talk was all cricket, of course, but there were any number of ladies, too, including Mrs Leo Lade, smouldering at me across the table from under a heap of sausage curls, and in a dress so décolleté that her udders were almost in her soup. That’s one over we’ll bowl this week that won’t be a maiden, thinks I, and flashed my most loving smile to Elspeth, who was sparkling radiantly beside Don Solomon at the top of the table.

Presently, however, her sparkle was wiped clean away, for Don Solomon was understood to say that this week would be his last fling in England; he was leaving at the end of the month to visit his estates in the East, and had no notion when he would return; it might be years, he said, at which there were genuine expressions of sorrow round the table, for those assembled knew a dripping roast when they saw one. Without the lavish Don Solomon, there would be one luxurious establishment less for the Society hyenas to guzzle at. Elspeth was quite put out.

‘But dear Don Solomon, what shall we do? Oh, you’re teasing – why, your tiresome estates will do admirably without you, for I’m sure you employ only the cleverest people to look after them.’ She pouted prettily. ‘You would not be so cruel to your friends, surely – Mrs Lade, we shan’t let him, shall we?’

Solomon laughed and patted her hand. ‘My dear Diana,’ says he – Diana had been his nickname for her ever since he’d tried to teach her archery – ‘you may be sure nothing but harsh necessity would take me from such delightful company as your own – and Harry’s yonder, and all of you. But – a man must work, and my work is overseas. So—’ and he shook his head, his smooth, handsome face smiling ruefully. ‘It will be a sore wrench – sorest of all in that I shall miss both of you’ – and he looked from Elspeth to me and back again – ‘above all the rest, for you have been to me like a brother and sister.’ And, d---e, the fellow’s great dark eyes were positively glistening; the rest of the table murmured sympathetically, all but old Morrison, who was champing away at his blancmange and finding bones in it, by the sound of him.

At this Elspeth was so overcome that she began piping her eye, and her tits shook so violently that the old Duke, on Solomon’s other side, coughed his false teeth into his wine-glass and had to be put to rights by the butler. Solomon, for once, was looking a little embarrassed; he shrugged and gave me a look that was almost appealing. ‘I’m sorry, old boy,’ says he, ‘but I mean it.’ I couldn’t fathom this – he might be sorry to miss Elspeth; what man wouldn’t? But had I been so friendly? – well, I’d been civil enough, and I was her husband; perhaps that charming manner of mine which Tom Hughes mentioned had had its effect on this emotional dago. Anyway, something seemed called for.

‘Well, Don,’ says I, ‘we’ll all be sorry to lose you, and that’s a fact. You’re a d----d stout chap – that is, I mean, you’re one of the best, and couldn’t be better if … if you were English.’ I wasn’t going to gush all over him, you understand, but the company murmured ‘Hear, hear,’ and after a moment Mynn tapped the table to second me. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘let’s drink his health, then.’ And everyone did, while Solomon gave me his bland smile, inclining his head.

‘I know,’ says he, ‘just how great a compliment that is. I thank you – all of you, and especially you, my dear Harry. I only wish—’ and then he stopped, shaking his head. ‘But no, that would be too much to ask.’

‘Oh, ask anything, Don!’ cries Elspeth, all idiot-imploring. ‘You know we could not refuse you!’

He said no, no, it had been a foolish thought, and at that of course she was all over him to know what it was. So after a moment, toying with his wine-glass, he says: ‘Well, you’ll think it a very silly notion, I daresay – but what I was about to propose, my dear Diana, for Harry and yourself, and for your father, whom I count among my wisest friends—’ and he inclined his head to old Morrison, who was assuring Mrs Lade that he didn’t want any blancmange, but he’d like anither helpin’ o’ yon cornflour puddin’ ‘—I was about to say, since I must go – why do the three of you not come with me?’ And he smiled shyly at us in turn.

I stared at the fellow to see if he was joking; Elspeth, all blonde bewilderment, looked at me and then at Solomon, open-mouthed.

‘Come with you?’

‘It’s only to the other side of the world, after all,’ says he, whimsically. ‘No, no – I am quite serious; it is not as bad as that. You know me well enough to understand that I wouldn’t propose anything that you would not find delightful. We should cruise, in my steam-brig – it’s as well-appointed as any royal yacht, you know, and we’d have the most splendid holiday. We would touch wherever we liked – Lisbon, Cadiz, the Cape, Bombay, Madras – exactly as the fancy took us. Oh, it would be quite capital!’ He leaned towards Elspeth, smiling. ‘Think of the places we’d see! The delight it would give me, Diana, to show you the wonder of Africa, as one sees it at dawn from the quarterdeck – such colours as you cannot imagine! The shores of the Indian Ocean – yes, the coral strand! Ah, believe me, until you have anchored off Singapore, or cruised the tropical coasts of Sumatra and Java and Borneo, and seen that glorious China Sea, where it is always morning – oh, my dear, you have seen nothing!’

Nonsense, of course; the Orient stinks. Always did. But Elspeth was gazing at him in rapture, and then she turned eagerly to me. ‘Oh, Harry – could we?’

‘Out o’ the question,’ says I. ‘It’s the back of beyond.’

‘In these days?’ cries Solomon. ‘Why, with steam you may be in Singapore in – oh, three months at most. Say, three months as my guests while we visit my estates – and you would learn, Diana, what it means to be a queen in the Orient, I assure you – and three months to return. You’d be home again by next Easter.’

‘Oh, Harry!’ Elspeth was positively squeaking with joy. ‘Oh, Harry – may we? Oh, please, Harry!’ The chaps at the table were nodding admiringly, and the ladies murmuring enviously; the old Duke was heard to say that it was an adventure, d----d if it wasn’t, and if he was a younger man, by George, wouldn’t he jump at the chance?