A Close Run Thing mh-1

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘Yes,’ said Hervey softly, ‘he did well. Where might I find Mrs Strange?’

  The driver’s directions were precise, and Hervey tipped him a half-crown after alighting at the Swan hotel in the centre of town – a place, the driver was anxious to assure him, that was most appropriate for someone of Hervey’s rank. And in exchange for this handsome tip the driver swore not to reveal the purpose for which Hervey was in Southwold, and to be outside the Swan at nine the following morning to take him the mile or so to the Strange cottage at the harbour inlet.

  He slept better at the Swan than perhaps he had since those exhausted few hours at La Belle Alliance. The sea air was clean and invigorating. At Yarmouth, where he had spent the previous night, there had been a stench of putrefying fish which had forced him to close the windows of his room, and his doubts about leaving Strange to the French lancers had again returned to haunt him through the small hours. Armstrong had absolved him from all blame, as Lord George Irvine had. Even RSM Lincoln had given him his opinion that no other course had been possible. But ultimately there was, he knew, but one power to absolve (excepting, of course his Maker, to whom he must answer in the final account), and that was the woman for whom his widow-making had the most direct consequence. Would she comprehend anything of military necessity, though? Throughout the journey from Yarmouth he had turned it over and over in his mind. The closer he got to Southwold the greater was his dread, and the heathland through which the coach trundled, its scrubby bushes and sparse trees reminiscent of the landscape of Flanders, did nothing to quieten it.

  At nine the following morning the growler drew up at the Swan, and in ten minutes he was in the little estuary harbour which was abuzz with the activity that high water brings. The Strange cottage was even smaller than he had imagined, and smoke rising from the chimney told him there was now no escape from his self-imposed act of contrition. He dismissed the driver with a shilling, saying that he would walk back to the inn, and then looked about him for a moment or so before approaching the door. He was glad that he had decided against presenting himself in uniform, for though it would have given him some … authority, some status of disinterest perhaps, it would surely have alerted so insular a community to the Widow Strange’s misfortune (she might at least enjoy the liberty to reveal her unhappy news in her own time). His dark-blue coat might, however, make him pass harmlessly for any profession.

  He had thought carefully during the weeks since Waterloo about what he should say. With Margaret Edmonds there was the consolation of knowing that, as a loyal follower of the drum, she would understand. Of wives of enlisted men … he simply had no knowledge. Those few who had been in Spain had, like the gypsies and squatters on Warminster Common, been inhabitants of another world, and the regiment had been in Ireland scarcely long enough for the picked men to bring wives into quarters there. Yet there was something about his expectations in the case of Strange’s wife that he could not fathom, though it had exercised him to no little degree. For in the pouch which Strange had handed him, just before turning to face the lancers, there was a letter, and though he had not read it he saw that the handwriting was very fine. There was, too, a miniature, but water had at some stage permeated the oilskin and the likeness was obscure.

  He knocked at the door. It was opened by a woman of thirty years (perhaps fewer) in a black crêpe dress, her long black hair tied up with a black ribbon and jet slides. All his preparation was suddenly to no avail. ‘I … that is, would you be Mrs Strange?’ he stammered.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, with the rising note which turned the simple affirmation into a question.

  ‘Mrs Strange,’ he began, trying hard to recall the sequence of information he had practised, ‘I am Lieutenant Hervey of the Sixth Light Dragoons, your husband’s regiment.’

  He paused. She looked at him coolly. Would any officer bring ought but bad news? ‘He is dead?’ she asked simply.

  Standing in the open door of a cottage on a busy quayside was not how Hervey had imagined this would be. ‘I am very sorry but it is so, Mrs Strange. May I come in?’

  She listened in silence as he recounted the events of 18 June. He had resolved beforehand that he would attempt to explain the significance of what her late husband had done, notwithstanding his oath of silence to Wellington, for surely a widow deserved no less. And, further, if she did not grasp the significance of their mission that day, then she could not be expected to understand why he had abandoned her husband. And without understanding how might she be expected to absolve him?

  ‘Would you like some tea, Mr Hervey?’ she asked at length.

  He was pleased to accept, for it seemed that such a gesture might indeed betoken some understanding. It offered him, too, the opportunity to consult the notes he had made previously, yet without which he had so far had to conduct this most difficult of counsels. Her calmness, her dignity, had all but dumbfounded him. He had heard of soldiers’ widows seizing knives and having to be restrained from doing themselves injury. But Mrs Strange had received the news as well – better even – than Margaret Edmonds. And she had called him Mr, not Lieutenant. Here, indeed, was a sign of some… cultivation, some knowledge of affairs. She spoke, too, without Strange’s Suffolk accent. She spoke without any accent. An educated, rather than a refined, voice but alien, surely, to the fishermen’s wharf? Strange had been a fine-looking man, of that there was no doubt. What might he have been – forty? forty-five? But she was so much younger, and in different society Hervey might even have called her beautiful. She had cheekbones as high as the most fashionable of the ladies he had seen in Paris – as high as Henrietta Lindsay’s. Large brown eyes, set perfectly apart, had the look of warmth and intelligence. Her hair, though he thought it certain never to have had the attention of a lady’s maid, shone with hale condition.

  He found his place in his notes. ‘There will be a little money, Mrs Strange – not a lot, I fear. It is customary when a soldier dies for his companions to auction his personal effects, and they by tradition bid generously. Many of his possessions are still in Ireland, of course, but those he took with him into the field have raised a little over forty pounds.’

  ‘That is a worthy sum,’ she conceded.

  ‘There is also the prize-money for Waterloo.’

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘After a battle the Army’s agents assess the value of the enemy’s equipment which has been captured,’ he explained, ‘and this is divided pro rata, that is to say—’

  ‘I understand pro rata.’ She said it kindly, though it did not prevent his feeling awkward.

  ‘This amounts to £19 4s 4d,’ he hastened, looking down at his notebook. ‘There is regimental prize-money of £37 3s 8d, and arrears of pay amounting to £42 2s 3d. With various other payments, your late husband’s estate amounts to £189 7s 8d. There is a full account here, Mrs Strange, and, if you feel able to sign this certificate, I have a banker’s draft which will enable you to withdraw the money at any time.’ He did not, however, explain that the ‘various other payments’ were his own share of the Waterloo prize-money.

  ‘Mr Hervey,’ she began, ‘I am most touched that you yourself should have troubled to make this journey. I sense that you feel responsible to some degree for my husband’s death, and that this might in some measure account for your coming to Southwold. I know nothing of battles, of course, but I do understand that judgements must be made in an instant and that afterwards there is infinite time in which to reappraise them. Is there any purpose in such reflection, though? I am greatly touched, too, that my late husband’s fellow men should have been so generous in raising such an amount, and I should like very much to write and express that gratitude. Would you be able to take such a letter?’

  ‘Yes, of course I would, ma’am.’ Ma’am seemed as appropriate as if she had been—

  ‘Oh,’ she then added distractedly, ‘but I have no writing paper.’

  ‘There is writing paper at the Swan hotel, where I am staying, Mrs Str
ange. You would be most welcome to dine there and to write your letter before, or subsequently, in peaceful surroundings.’

  She seemed relieved. It was curious, he thought, how things of little consequence assumed such importance at these times (Margaret Edmonds had been likewise distressed at having sent away her cook for the day).

  ‘I shall dine at three, then, for I intend walking by the sea a while, with your leave, ma’am.’

  He walked by the sea for three hours. And he swam, too. It had been close on eight years since he had swum in the sea, and on the last occasion – at Corunna – he had done so for his life. The peace of the day (for the beach was empty but for seabirds), and Mrs Strange’s absolution, now contrived in him such contentment that he could not otherwise remember, and he lay in the warm sun and thought of Henrietta (and a homecoming that few could hope to enjoy) until it was time to return to the Swan.

  At five past three the chaise he had sent for her drew up to the inn, and Mrs Strange stepped down. Hervey met her at the door, and they went straight to the Swan’s dining room, a place of some elegance, if a little old-fashioned by the standards he had lately seen in Paris. Mrs Strange made some admiring remark of the furnishings: though she had lived in Southwold for fifteen years, this was her first essay to the hotel. This intrigued him, for it seemed likely that a woman of her refinement might at least have taken tea there even if money for anything more substantial had been wanting. ‘It is only that temperance denied us access, Mr Hervey,’ she revealed when he pressed her.

  She studied the bill of fare intently, and, with her eyes so occupied, Hervey found himself admiring her form. She wore a dress of cotton velvet (green, not mourning), even though the day was warm. Its waist was lower than was the fashion – lower, indeed, than had been the fashion for some years – yet it was unquestionably a dress made by a skilled seamstress. Its neck was high, and she wore a necklace of jet. She was fuller-bosomed, fuller-mouthed than Henrietta, and she put him in mind of a portrait on the grand staircase at Longleat House, a painting he had many a time gazed at as a boy – Reynolds’s subject a picture of inaccessible allure.

  ‘Do you have any family, Mrs Strange?’ he asked as she looked up.

  ‘No, Mr Hervey; my mother died many years ago and my father likewise almost seven years past, just after Corunna.’

  ‘Why do you say Corunna, ma’am? It is an uncommon reference, is it not?’

  ‘It was after Corunna that Harry came home to Southwold on furlough. He was a devout worshipper at the chapel of which my father was minister, as was his family. When my father died … well, I was quite alone; there was nowhere for me to go. Harry was a corporal and asked me to marry him. I think he did so out of kindness: we hardly knew each other. He was the finest of men – strong, gentle, dutiful. I came to live with his parents and continued to teach at the school. These past two years, though, both his father and his mother have been largely unwell and I have spent all my time, in consequence, nursing them both. They were so good to me, it was no hardship – well, perhaps a little tiring.’

  Hervey paused before putting to her the concern that now troubled him as a man as much as an officer. ‘Forgive my directness, Mrs Strange, but how straitened will your circumstances be?’ (With only two hundred pounds she might purchase an annuity of, say, fifteen pounds at most – hardly enough to keep even the cottage roof over her head. And it would go intolerably hard with such a woman.)

  ‘I have some savings, sir: Harry sent home the major part of his pay, and there was a little family money. But I should not remain inactive even with sufficient income – though I will not be a governess. I used to keep my father’s school before he became ill. I might do likewise again.’

  To Hervey the solution was at once manifest. Not a fortnight before, he had received a letter from Elizabeth expressing her anxiety for her father’s school, at her own inexpertise and the exhaustion it wrought in him. ‘You find being a schoolma’am not objectionable, then, Mrs Strange?’ he enquired.

  ‘No, indeed, though there is little opportunity of an opening hereabout.’

  ‘Just so,’ he agreed. ‘See here, Mrs Strange, my father is vicar of a small parish in Wiltshire. He is having great trouble in maintaining his school for the village children. My sister helps but cannot spare all the time that is needed. There is a cottage set aside for a schoolmaster, and although the stipend is very small I think it might be adequate. You are, I believe, the very sort of person my father has need of.’

  ‘Mr Hervey,’ she smiled, ‘you are most kind, but you forget perhaps that my father was a dissenting minister. I hardly think it fitting for me—’

  Hervey was undeterred, and stayed her protest. ‘Mrs Strange, my father has need of someone to instruct the children of the village in the elements of reading and writing, and in those of mathematics. I am sure that you can contrive to do that without offending against too many of the Thirty-Nine Articles!’ he laughed.

  ‘But I should be obliged to attend his church, should I not?’

  ‘John Wesley would have approved of piety wherever he found it, think you not, ma’am? But there is, indeed, an independent chapel in the village if the parish church were not fulfilling.’

  She laughed. ‘I think we need not be so solemn! And how shall I apply for this position?’

  ‘That much I can do for you myself,’ he replied. ‘When might you be able to take up those duties, ma’am?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘It will take me a week or so to conclude all that needs be done here,’ she said, ‘but then I should be ready. Sad as it will be to leave this place after so many years, it has now more unhappy memories than I should wish.’

  ‘“Thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore!”’

  ‘The Moabitess?’ she said, returning the smile. ‘But Ruth had a Naomi from whom to draw strength, whereas I have not.’

  He smiled again. ‘You will at least find my sister agreeable, but I am afraid that for Horningsham it will be a long drive, Mrs Strange – first London, then Salisbury.’

  ‘Or a pleasant cruise from here to Portsmouth perhaps?’ she replied.

  He laughed again. ‘You are right, ma’am. I am but a landsman, and regard the sea only as a barrier.’ He liked this keenness of wit. It reminded him of Caithlin. ‘Mrs Strange, the day is warm and I have taken much exercise: would you find it offensive if I took a little hock?’

  ‘Not in the least, sir,’ she replied at once. ‘And I, if I may, shall join you, for it was never by my own pledge that we were a temperance household, only out of respect for my family and then for Harry – which, I may assure you, is no less diminished now.’

  ‘I did not suppose it for an instant, ma’am,’ he replied.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE INTERESTS OF THE SERVICE

  Horningsham, Wednesday 26 July

  It was a little before ten o’clock, and the morning was already hot, when a coach drawn by two quality middleweight greys drew up to Horningsham vicarage. The horses were not fresh, their shoulders were in a lather and the dappling on their quarters was accentuated by prodigious sweating. The coachman himself looked no fresher, his face grimy and his shirt almost black with the dust of the road. Down from the carriage stepped a tall man in his mid-twenties wearing white breeches, court shoes and the long-tailed coat of a Foot Guards officer, for all the world looking as if he were alighting in St James’s Palace yard to attend a levee. After stretching stiff limbs, brushing the dust from his shoulders and placing his cocked hat under his arm, he exchanged a few words with the coachman and walked towards the house. Vexed that no servant had appeared to assist with the horses, he was already disposed to some disdain of it. Here was no classical architect’s expertise, for sure; rather, was it the haphazard work of successive country builders. The oriel window was quite fine, he conceded, and there was about it a quaint charm, but the house did not betoken
a well-endowed living: of that he was certain. He pulled the bell rope at the door, self-consciously adjusted the aiglets on his right shoulder and waited for an answer. At length (too great a length, he considered), it was opened by Francis, stooping more than usually, who after the officer’s introduction, which he did not fully hear, showed him into the vicar of Horningsham’s modest library.

  Francis was now in something of quandary, for the Reverend Thomas Hervey was at the school and his wife was with him. Elizabeth was taking a walk, and the only member of the family at home was engaged in what Francis judged to be an affair long overdue. This visitor from … (he had not quite heard) could not, in calling unannounced, presume upon him therefore. ‘It may be some time before anyone is at home,’ he said. To which the officer replied that he would wait indefinitely.

  Meanwhile, in the drawing room, the overdue affair was reaching some conclusion. ‘And that is why I am late in coming here,’ explained Matthew Hervey. He was seated on a long settee, with Henrietta a further distance along it than he would have liked, and he was recounting, though not without interruption, his movements during the past momentous six weeks. ‘Believe me, I should not have been spared from garrison duties in Paris had it not been for these other necessities.’

  ‘Well, Matthew dearest,’ began Henrietta with a wry smile, ‘I should never have supposed that the profession of arms brought such intercourse, and with so many ladies of evident charm and accomplishments. It seems such a pity that the unhappy circumstances of these encounters should otherwise mar the enjoyment of them.’

  He hesitated. There was no mistaking the challenge that her smile belied. ‘Madam,’ he began (for her name was still not habitual with him), ‘do not think for an instant that …’ But it would have been better had he hesitated a little longer before beginning, and then he might have finished his protest with resolution.