I was in a furious rage all the way south, and impatient to get to Cardigan. I knew what it was all about - the bloody fool had read of the marriage and decided that Elspeth was not "suitable" for one of his officers. It will sound ridiculous to you, perhaps, but it was so in those days in a regiment like the 11th. Society daughters were all very well, but anything that smacked of trade or the middle classes was anathema to his lofty lord-ship. Well, I was not going to have his nose turned up at me, as he would find. So I thought, in my youthful folly.
I took Elspeth home first. I had written to my father while we were on honeymoon, and had had a letter back saying: "Who is the unfortunate chit, for God's sake? Does she know what she has got?" So all was well enough in its way on that front. And when we arrived there who should be the first person we met in the hall but Judy, dressed for riding. She gave me a tongue-in-the-cheek smile as soon as she saw Elspeth - the clever bitch probably guessed what lay behind the marriage - but I got some of my own back by my introduction.
"Elspeth," I said, "this is Judy, my father's tart."
That brought the colour into her face, and I left them to get acquainted while I looked for the guv'nor. He was out, as usual, so I went straight off in search of Cardigan, and found him at his town house. At first he wouldn't see me, when I sent up my card, but I pushed his footman out of the way and went up anyway.
It should have been a stormy interview, with high words flying, but it wasn't. Just the sight of him, in his morning coat, looking as though he had just been inspecting God on parade, took the wind out of me. When he had demanded to know, in his coldest way, why I intruded on him, I stuttered out my question: why was he sending me out of the regiment?
"Because of your marriage, Fwashman," says he. "You must have known very well what the consequences would be. It is quite unacceptable, you know. The lady, I have no doubt, is an excellent young woman, but she is - nobody. In these circumstances your resignation is imperative."
"But she is respectable, my lord," I said. "I assure you she is from an excellent family; her father-"
"Owns a factory," he cut in. "Haw-haw. It will not do. My dear sir, did you not think of your position? Of the wegiment? Could I answer, sir, if I were asked: 'And who is Mr Fwashman's wife?' 'Oh, her father is a Gwasgow weaver, don't you know?'"
"But it will ruin me!" I could have wept at the pure, blockheaded snobbery of the man. "Where can I go? What regiment will take me if I'm kicked out of the 11th?"
"You are not being kicked out, Fwashman," he said, and was being positively kindly. "You are wesigning. A very different thing.
Haw-haw. You are twansferring. There is no difficulty. I wike you, Fwashman; indeed, I had hopes of you, but you have destwoyed them with your foolishness. Indeed, I should be extwemely angwy. But I shall help in your awwangements: I have infwuence at the Horse Guards, you know."
"Where am I to go?" I demanded miserably.
"I have given thought to it, let me tell you. It would be impwoper to twansfer to another wegiment at home; it will be best if you go overseas, I think. To India. Yes-"
"India?" I stared at him in horror.
"Yes, indeed. There are caweers to be made there, don't you know? A few years' service there, and the matter of your wesigning fwom my wegiment will be forgotten. You can come home and be gazetted to some other command."
He was so bland, so sure, that there was nothing to say. I knew what he thought of me now: I had shown myself in his eyes no better than the Indian officers whom he despised. Oh, he was being kind enough, in his way; there were "caweers" in India, all right, for the soldier who could get nothing better - and who survived the fevers and the heat and the plague and the hostile natives. At that moment I was at my lowest; the pale, haughty face and the soft voice seemed to fade away before me; all I was conscious of was a sullen anger, and a deep resolve that wherever I went, it would not be India - not for a thousand Cardigans.
"So you won't, hey?" said my father, when I told him.
"I'm damned if I do," I said.
"You're damned if you don't," chuckled he, very amused. "What else will you do, d'you suppose?"
"Sell out," says I.
"Not a bit of it," says he. "I've bought your colours, and by God, you'll wear 'em."
"You can't make me."
"True enough. But the day you hand them back, on that day the devil a penny you'll get out of me. How will you live, eh? And with a wife to support, bigad? No, no, Harry, you've called the tune, and you can pay the piper."
"You mean I'm to go?"
"Of course you'll go. Look you, my son, and possibly my heir, I'll tell you how it is. You're a wastrel and a bad lot - oh, I daresay it's my fault, among others, but that's by the way. My father was a bad lot, too, but I grew up some kind of man. You might, too, for all I know. But I'm certain sure you won't do it here. You might do it by reaping the consequences of your own lunacy - and that means India. D'you follow me?"
"But Elspeth," I said. "You know it's no country for a woman."
"Then don't take her. Not for the first year, in any event, until you've settled down a bit. Nice chit, she is. And don't make piteous eyes at me, sir; you can do without her a while - by all accounts there are women in India, and you can be as beastly as you please."
"It's not fair!" I shouted.
"Not fair! Well, well, this is one lesson you're learning. Nothing's fair, you young fool. And don't blubber about not wanting to go and leave her - she'll be safe enough here."
"With you and Judy, I suppose?"
"With me and Judy," says he, very softly. "And I'm not sure that the company of a rake and a harlot won't be better for her than yours."
That was how I came to leave for India; how the foundation was laid of a splendid military career. I felt myself damnably ill-used, and if I had had the courage I would have told my father to go to the devil.
But he had me, and he knew it. Even if it hadn't been for the money part of it, I couldn't have stood up to him, as I hadn't been able to stand up to Cardigan. I hated them both, then. I came to think better of Cardigan, later, for in his arrogant, pig-headed, snobbish way he was trying to be decent to me, but my father I never forgave. He was playing the swine, and he knew it, and found it amusing at my expense. But what really poisoned me against him was that he didn't believe I cared a button for Elspeth.
There may be better countries for a soldier to serve in than India, but I haven't seen them. You may hear the greenhorns talk about heat and flies and filth and the natives and the diseases; the first three you must get accustomed to, the fifth you must avoid - which you can do, with a little common sense - and as for the natives, well, where else will you get such a docile humble set of slaves? I liked them better than the Scots, anyhow; their language was easier to understand.
And if these things were meant to be drawbacks, there was the other side. In India there was power - the power of the white man over the black - and power is a fine thing to have. Then there was ease, and time for any amount of sport, and good company, and none of the restrictions of home. You could live as you pleased, and lord it among the niggers, and if you were well-off and properly connected, as I was, there was the social life among the best folk who clustered round the Governor-General. And there were as many women as you could wish for.
There was money to be had, too, if you were lucky in your campaigns and knew how to look for it. In my whole service I never made half as much in pay as I got from India in loot - but that is another story.
I knew nothing of this when we dropped anchor in the Highly, off Calcutta, and I looked at the red river banks and sweated in the boiling sun, and smelt the stink, and wished I was in hell rather than here. It had been a damnable four-months voyage on board the crowded and sweltering Indiaman, with no amusement of any kind, and I was prepared to find India no better.
I was to join one of the Company's native lancer regiments(9) in the Benares District, but I never did. Army inefficiency kept me kick
ing my heels in Calcutta for several weeks before the appropriate orders came through, and by that time I had taken fortune by the foreskin, in my own way.
In the first place, I messed at the Fort with the artillery officers in the native service, who were a poor lot, and whose messing would have sickened a pig. The food was bad to begin with, and by the time the black cooks had finished with it you would hardly have fed it to a jackal.
I said so at our first dinner, and provoked a storm among these gentlemen, who considered me a Johnny Newcomer.
"Not good enough for the plungers, eh?" says one. "Sorry we have no foiegras for your lordship, and we must apologise for the absence of silver plate." "Is it always like this?" I asked. "What is it?" "What is the dish, your grace?" asked the wit. "Why, it's called curry, don't you know? Kills the taste of old meat."
"If that's all it kills, I'm surprised," says I, disgusted. "No decent human being could stomach this filth."
"We stomach it," said another. "Ain't we human beings?"
"You know best about that," I said. "If you take my advice you'll hang your cook." And with that I stalked out, leaving them growling after me. Yet their mess, I discovered, was no worse than any other in India, and better than some. The men's messes were indescribable, and I wondered how they survived such dreadful food in such a climate.
The answer was, of course, that many of them didn't.
However, it was obvious to me that I would be better shifting for myself, so I called up Basset, whom I had brought with me from England - the little bastard had blubbered at the thought of losing me when I left the 11th, God knows why - gave him a fistful of money, and told him to find a cook, a butler, a groom, and half a dozen other servants. These people were to be hired for virtually nothing. Then I went myself to the guard room, found a native who could speak English passably well, and went out to find a house.(10) I found one not far from the Fort, a pleasant place with a little garden of shrubs, and a verandah with screens, and my nigger fetched the owner, who was a great fat rogue with a red turban; we haggled in the middle of a crowd of jabbering blacks, and I gave him half what he asked for and settled into the place with my establishment.
First of all I sent for the cook, and told him through my nigger:
"You will cook, and cook cleanly. You'll wash your hands, d'ye see, and buy nothing .but the finest meat and vegetables. If you don't, I'll have the cat taken to you until there isn't a strip of hide left on your back."
He jabbered away, nodding and grinning and bowing, so I took him by the neck and threw him down and lashed him with my riding whip until he rolled off the verandah, screaming.
"Tell him he'll get that night and morning if his food's not fit to eat," I told my nigger. "And the rest of them may take notice."
They all howled with fear, but they paid heed, the cook most of all. I took the opportunity to flog one of them every day, for their good and my own amusement, and to these precautions I attribute the fact that in all my service in India I was hardly ever laid low with anything worse than fever, and that you can't avoid. The cook was a good cook, as it turned out, and Basset kept the others at it with his tongue and his boot, so we did very well.
My nigger, whose name was Timbu-something-or-other, was of great use at first, since he spoke English, but after a few weeks I got rid of him. I've said that I have a gift of language, but it was only when I came to India that I realised this. My Latin and Greek had been weak at school, for I paid little attention to them, but a tongue that you hear spoken about you is a different thing. Each language has a rhythm for me, and my ear catches and holds the sounds; I seem to know what a man is saying even when I don't understand the words, and my tongue slips easily into any new accent. In any event, after a fortnight listening to Timbu and asked him questions, I was speaking Hindustani well enough to be understood, and I paid him off. For one thing, I had found a more interesting teacher.
Her name was Fetnab, and I bought her (not officially, of course, although it amounted to the same thing) from a merchant whose livestock consisted of wenches for the British officers and civilian residents in Calcutta. She cost me 500 rupees, which was about 50
guineas, and she was a thief s bargain. I suppose she was about sixteen, with a handsome enough face and a gold stud fixed in her nostril, and great slanting brown eyes. Like most other Indian dancing girls, she was shaped like an hour-glass, with a waist that I could span with my two hands, fat breasts like melons, and a wobbling backside.
If anything she was a shade too plump, but she knew the ninety-seven ways of making love that the Hindus are supposed to set much store by - though mind you, it is all nonsense, for the seventy-fourth position turns out to be the same as the seventy-third, but with your fingers crossed. But she taught me them all in time, for she was devoted to her work, and would spend hours oiling herself with perfume all over her body and practising Hindu exercises to keep herself supple for night-time. After my first two days with her I thought less and less about Elspeth, and even Josette paled by comparison.
However, I put her to other good uses. In between bouts we would talk, for she was a great chatterbox, and I learned more of the refinements of Hindi from her than I would have done from any munshi. I give the advice for what it is worth: if you wish to learn a foreign tongue properly, study it in bed with a native girl - I'd have got more of the classics from an hour's wrestling with a Greek wench than I did in four years from Arnold.
So this was how I passed my time in Calcutta - my nights with Fetnab, my evenings in one of the messes, or someone's house, and my days riding or shooting or hunting, or simply wandering about the town itself. I became quite a well-known figure to the niggers, because I could speak to them in their own tongue, unlike the vast majority of officers at that time - even those who had served in India for years were usually too bored to try to learn Hindi, or thought it beneath them.
Another thing I learned, because of the regiment to which I was due to be posted, was how to manage a lance. I had been useful at sword exercise in the Hussars, but a lance is something else again. Any fool can couch it and
(ride straight, but if you are to be any use at all you must be able to handle all nine feet of it so that you can pick a playing card off the ground with the point, or pink a running rabbit. I was determined to shine among the Company men, so I hired a native rissalder of the Bengal Cavalry to teach me; I had no thought then of anything beyond tilting at dummies or wild pig sticking, and the thought of couching a lance against enemy cavalry was not one that I dwelt on much. But those lessons were to save my life once at least - so that was more well-spent money. They also settled the question of my immediate future, in an odd way.
I was out on the maidan one morning with my rissalder, a big, lean, ugly devil of the Pathan people of the frontier; named Muhammed Iqbal. He was a splendid horseman and managed a lance perfectly, and under his guidance I was learning quickly. That morning he had me tilting at pegs, and I speared so many that he said, grinning, that he must charge me more for my lessons.
We were trotting off the maidan, which was fairly empty that morning, except for a palankeen escorted by a couple of officers, which excited my curiosity a little, when Iqbal suddenly shouted:
"See, huzoor, a better target than little pegs!" and pointed towards a pariah dog which was snuffling about some fifty yards away.
Iqbal couched his lance and went for it, but it darted out of his way, so I roared "Tally-ho!" and set off in pursuit. Iqbal was still ahead of me, but I was only a couple of lengths behind when he made another thrust at the pi-dog, which was racing ahead of him, swerving and yelping.
He missed again, and yelled a curse, and the pi-dog suddenly turned almost beneath his hooves and leaped up at his foot. I dropped my point and by great good luck spitted the beast through the body.
With a shout of triumph I heaved him, twisting and still yelping, high into the air, and he fell behind me. Iqbal cried: "Shabash!" and I was beginning to crow over hi
m when a voice shouted:
"You there! You, sir! Come here, if you please, this moment."
It came from the palankeen, towards which our run had taken us. The curtains were drawn, and the caller was revealed as a portly, fierce-looking gentleman in a frock coat, with a sun-browned face and a fine bald head. He had taken off his hat, and was waving insistently, so I rode across.
"Good morning," says he, very civil. "May I inquire your name?"
It did not need the presence of the two mounted dandies by the palankeen to tell me that this was a highly senior officer. Wondering, I introduced myself.
"Well, congratulations, Mr Flashman," says he. "Smart a piece of work as I've seen this year: if we had a regiment who could all manage a lance as well as you we'd have no trouble with damned Sikhs and Afghans, eh, Bennet?"
"Indeed not, sir," said one of the exquisite aides, eyeing me. "Mr Flashman; I seem to know the name. Are you not lately of the 11th Hussars, at home?"
"Eh, what's that?" said his chief, giving me a bright grey eye.
"Bigod, so he is; see his Cherrypicker pants" - I was still wearing the pink breeches of the Hussars, which strictly I had no right to do, but they set off my figure admirably - "so he is, Bennet. Now, dammit, Flashman, Flashman - of course, the affair last year! You're the deloper! Well I'm damned. What are you doing here, sir, in God's name?"
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