“Out of sight is not always out of mind, Sir Frederick. Your name is high on my register of officers on the Sick and Hurt list and who are to be employed when possible. It is, in any case, sir, difficult to ignore you if you make a habit of shooting foot-scamperers in the West End!”
“A single brace is hardly a habit, my lord!”
“Very true, Sir Frederick, and once can happen to anyone – but more frequently can cause eyebrows to raise, especially when there is a degree of notoriety to overcome!”
“Notoriety, my lord?”
“There are those who do not scruple to suggest that you bought the alliance of your cannibal savages, pointing out that you would have been hard-pressed to carry away another hundred or so of prisoners.”
“They would be well-advised not to make that suggestion in my hearing, my lord!”
The First Lord laughed, much entertained by the thought that the poison might be spread in public or to its victim’s face.
“They will not, Sir Frederick – but it has been said in my hearing and has reached the ears of most people of influence. The rumour has not taken hold, and if it did it would serve but to distinguish you as an officer especially zealous in the King’s service. Next year’s rumour will be listened to more seriously perhaps – ‘no smoke’, you know.”
“Why, my lord?”
“You have made enemies, Sir Frederick. In part it is simply because you have been successful and small men must always belittle those who are not as them, must hide their own inadequacy behind their sneers and slanders. There are captains - and admirals - in plenty who protest that they would have done your deeds, and bettered them, but that you jobbed your way into the command and they were unfairly overlooked. For each of the many in the service who cry your name up, there is a detractor who regards you as the author of his misfortune. Specifically, of course, the Pursenett affair rankles still amongst some of the Prince’s intimates, mostly those who fell out of favour with him. Horley’s connections resent that he died in the Sugar Islands while you achieved fame. Admiral Farquhar has enemies and you are one of the more distinguished of his people. Above all, Sir Frederick, you are political, cannot avoid the stigma any more than I can. While the Tories are in office they will say you are rewarded and, should the Whigs form a Ministry, then they will be said to be courting you and the Alton connection.”
Reluctantly, Frederick agreed – he was no longer naïve, had had his eyes opened to the realities of power, and to the people who exercised that power.
“Whilst I remain a serving officer, my lord, I must, I believe, keep my hands clean of politics. When the wars end – well, who is to say?”
“You are considering a seat, Sir Frederick?”
“No, my lord – I do not think I have it in me to be a member.”
“I agree – there are too many compromises to be made, your honour on the line. A working career, as it were? One of the Boards?”
“It seems probable, my lord. I have a feeling that peacetime service would be of little interest to me, yet I will be too young simply to bury myself in my acres.”
Earl Spencer nodded, the message would be passed he implied.
“Do you make a long stay in London, Sir Frederick?”
“No, my lord – Lady Harris is not with me. I go home to Dorset tomorrow, but we shall return for the Season. I am, in fact, here to close the purchase of a town house, in Mount Street, lately the residence of the Dowager Duchess of Kensington.”
“Good address! I had heard it was to come on the market, am very pleased that the Navy should take it!”
The First Lord noted another point in Sir Frederick’s favour – his willingness to perform his proper duty as a senior officer, to show himself and his service off rather than skulk in one of the naval cliques in the provinces. Few sailors were known to the powerful, due to their habit of hiding away from the demands of polite society, and the few who were known tended to be the less desirable specimens of the breed, self-publicists of the most rancid sort, parading for the mob, wearing foreign robes and orders, demanding applause for their admittedly often brilliant actions. Very difficult to deal with, such people, ideally sent off on long cruises to faraway places, but not always willing to go. He smiled at Sir Frederick, courteously escorted him to his door.
Home to a beaming, bright-eyed, bubbling wife.
“Sir Frederick!”
“My lady!”
“Such news as I have for you, sir, but you first! Did all go well in Town?”
“It did, Elizabeth, we are now proud owners of the house of the late Dowager Duchess of Kensington, a ‘good address’, I am told, and to be refurbished in the best of taste by our good friend, Mr Russell. We are to walk in at the beginning of April.”
Frederick turned to Wymington, waiting to relieve him of hat, coat and gloves. “Will you take on the ordering of staff for Mount Street, Wymington? A resident couple, I suspect, and as many as you need from Abbey, perhaps some temporary for the Season. You will know better than I, I am certain.”
Wymington thought so as well, but was far too polite to say so.
“Our Mr Chalfont, husband, has been much in the company of my sister.”
“Charlotte? But, she is still only seventeen.”
“Old enough to tell me of her hopes, Frederick! Mr Chalfont has been teaching my scapegrace brother the use of sword, pistol and gun. Little sister was attracted by the noise, wished to try her hand…”
“And so they came into daily contact with predictable results!”
Frederick wandered upstairs to change, mind busy on the new problem. Rakeman had long since reported that Horse Guards had no love for Mr Chalfont. The brothers he had killed were related to the Castlereagh clan and there was no prospect of even a blind eye, still less forgiveness. Rakeman had said, however, that a commission as lieutenant could be obtained in any one of the three Presidencies in India, that, for example, the Bengal Army had vacancies in most of its regiments of foot and the Company would welcome a nominee of Sir Frederick’s choosing. But… ‘lieutenants may not marry’, an adage applicable equally to John Company’s armies as to forces of the Crown.
“So what is to be done, my dear? I cannot provide for Mr Chalfont in a way that will permit him to wed.”
“Nor should you, sir. He must look to his own future.”
“And if he cannot?”
“Then he is unfit to bear the responsibilities of a husband and a father. In fact, sir, I understand him to be deep in some scheme with young David LeGrys and Mr Hartley, to do with the laying of a number of turnpikes, they to be contractors in the belief that a proper business organisation must infallibly be successful. David has mentioned the matter to me – he proposes to risk his two thousands and to raise another ten or so between you, Mr Robinson and Rakeman.”
“He cannot. His prize-monies are held in trust until he is twenty-one or attains commissioned rank or its equivalent in civilian life. Stainer is trustee with me and will no doubt be easy in the interpretation of the terms, but I can see no way of releasing the funds to a speculative venture at age fourteen or fifteen, however precocious his circumstances have made him.”
“A pity, but no doubt he will find a way.”
It struck Frederick that she was less concerned about David, or Chalfont, even her sister, than was her wont, and the news of Chalfont – a young girl’s first love – was not so important as to warrant her portentous greeting. It behoved a caring husband to show sympathetic perception, but he wished he had some slight idea. What had she said, about Chalfont? ‘The responsibilities of a husband and father’ – that could well be it!
“My dearest love, you said you had news for me. Can it be what I hope?”
She beamed delightedly.
“We are to expect a token of our love, husband!”
He had read, perhaps, too few novels of the day, was still unfamiliar with the terms of sickly Romanticism, was for a moment at a loss, recovered quickly.
“Towards the end of August seems probable, husband, though the means of calculation seems a fraction haphazard.”
“Then four or five weeks in London will still be practical, I imagine, and will give the opportunity to consult with the best of medical practitioners.”
“I shall, of course, do so, husband, but lightning does not strike twice, truly – you need have no fear for me!”
Easy to say, believable on a rational, intellectual basis, but at gut level Frederick knew that his Marianne’s death had been Fate’s balancing of his personal scales. Exceptional good luck in his profession had been cancelled out by disaster in his personal life. He had been fortunate in the Spice Islands, and had survived on the Barbary Coast, so the scales were tilted high in his favour again. There was nothing to be gained by making this point, by alarming her, and in any case one’s personal fears were a private matter, not to be laid out for the delectation of others.
“I am sure you are right, my love. I saw the First Lord this week, signified my availability from the autumn, but perhaps I should amend that.”
“Why, sir? We have discussed the matter and are agreed that you must go to sea again, little though I like the prospect of separation! The war shows no sign of abatement and you should go, duty and interest both demand it. If you can be here when the baby is born, then so much the better, sir – but you must accept whatever is offered.”
News was surfacing of the Scandinavian countries and Russia actually forming an alliance again to protect their commercial interests. Unfortunately from the English viewpoint the commercial health of the northern neutrals depended far more on trade with continental Europe than with Britain, and the blockade was seen as essentially hostile. To the English, the blockade was seen as a legitimate and normal act of war, and attempts to circumvent it were hostile and incompatible with neutral status. As ever, both sides had enough of the right to make collision inevitable in the absence of statesmanship amongst the political classes – and Pitt’s powers were waning, three bottles of port a day combining with the fatigue of long service to destroy him, while the northern states were all more or less absolute monarchies governed by hereditary imbeciles and the neurotically inbred, assisted by corrupt and perverse placemen.
Following the appointments and movements given in the Naval Gazette it became clear that a fleet was forming in the German Ocean, that line of battle ships were shifting from Plymouth and Portsmouth to East Coast ports, the blockading flotillas being cut to bare bones in the process.
“Cold up there in winter, my love – and my blood thinned by too many years in the Tropics. My health is still too frail for the cold waters, I fear – and I’m damned if I want to go up there! I think I can stretch my credit at the Admiralty so far – I shall certainly try to!”
They rode out together with LeGrys, Chalfont and Hartley to view the final stage of the turnpike, the joining of the two parts as it crossed the Abbey estate. Hartley had worked out from Dorchester in the east and Bridport to the west, his quarried stone available more easily at either town and more simply transported on his own made carriageway to the roadhead.
They had all visited the site before, daily in the case of Hartley, de facto contractor for this working, but were still fascinated by the new, scientific construction of the modern road. The course was dug out, cut down to firm subsoil or country rock, and then a base of solid Portland limestone blocks was settled, slightly cambered, each as heavy as a man could lift, eight or nine inches thick and the foundations of the pavement. On top of the first base they laid as many feet as were needed of solid, compacted rubble, fist-sized stones, evenly spread and tamped hard. Over this came the carriageway itself, layers of gravels, each smaller than the one below, the top surface no more than pea-sized. Each layer was repeatedly wetted and compacted by heavy stone rollers pulled by sweating men.
“Why not horses?” Frederick had enquired.
“Their hooves cut the part-made surface too much. Besides which, the men go and crap in the bushes.”
At intervals along the roadside the navvies tended hot fires burning a mixture of clay and crushed limestone. The fine powder resulting, a crude form of cement, was shovelled and brushed over the final surface while still hot, permeating the gravel and setting as rain fell to act as a binder that would retard the inevitable break-up of the top skin. The effects of the hot dust on the navvies’ eyes and softer parts were rather unpleasant, but accepted as part of the hardest and best paid of all manual jobs.
The road was held together by kerbs and drains, so becoming an all-weather highway, usable throughout the winter. It was a copy of the Roman roads, differing only in not assuming their rigid, military insistence on the straightest line from point to point and like them, enabling land transport to be efficient. The toll gates ensured that travel would never be cheap, but it would always be available, even in winter.
Frederick became aware of a vigorous three-sided discussion behind him, listened more carefully and discovered the potential partners to be debating whether it would be possible to build a furnace to burn cement and so turn out a cleaner, wood-ash free product that could be carried dry in bags to the workings. They thought there might be savings in labour and fuel as well as the benefit in quality.
Frederick had a sudden idea, a stroke of inspiration, of unprecedented originality.
“Had you considered, gentlemen, that the first thing a builder does is to dig his lime pit? Burned and slaked lime for plaster, lime and clay together for the cement that makes his mortar. Our partner, Cleckheaton, for example, how many tons must he make? Would it not be easier, even cheaper, for him to buy in from a furnace rather than go to such effort?”
He failed to notice, or possibly misinterpreted, the looks of amaze on the three faces, did not see all three turn as one questioningly to Elizabeth or her minute headshake of denial. It upset their notions of the eternal universe for Frederick to produce, all on his own and unprompted, an original and very probably practical and profitable suggestion – it was not his role at all.
“Thick, close-woven sacks…”
“Indian jute.”
“Costly!”
“Penny on the sack, deductible from the next bill on their return in usable condition.”
“Build a furnace at a canal-head where chalk or limestone, clay and sea-coals come together, near a big city where there are always builders busy.”
“Chatham?”
“Fareham?”
“Teesside?” Elizabeth suggested, the only Northerner amongst them. “There are coal pits there, limestone hills and claylands, and the new industry forever expanding and housing its workers.”
By week’s end the three had recast their partnership and were planning a first, experimental furnace to establish a process and discover whether local builders would be interested in their product. At Frederick’s suggestion the initial cost was being born by Abbey, the estate coming in as quarter partner of the Bagged Cement Enterprise.
Mount Street was a haven of delicate intimacy, fashionably and oh so tastefully decorated according to the dictates of Paris – ‘Directoire, you know’ – in an overpowering elegance that Frederick found intimidating. He felt at odds with his surroundings, a fighting sailorman posturing in a goldfish bowl; Elizabeth was equally uncertain, felt the whole effect to be rather ‘daring’. He was relieved by her judgement, her Puritan tastes so wholly at odds with the spirit of the times that her disapprobation suggested the certain applause of more ordinary mortals.
Viscount Alton himself paid them an early call, meeting Frederick for the first time since a fleeting visit in childhood, an event that neither remembered clearly. Frederick appeared in the first fruits of Russell’s tailoring – Hessian boots; dark mustard-yellow pantaloons and waistcoat; black tailcoat and a neat, unobtrusive tie-cravat on a white shirt, all spotlessly clean and pressed. Bosomtwi had insisted on th
e hire of a servant, a gentleman’s gentleman, for their stay, was shaking his head and anxiously learning the supervision of a gentleman’s wardrobe, a simple smoothing-iron no longer sufficient. Lord Alton, equally restrained in very similar dress, strongly approved – his country nephew would not put him to the blush sartorially.
Conversation over half an hour established that the sailor was acceptable in other aspects – he had the deportment of a gentleman and could be unleashed on polite company. The Duke of Clarence, Prince William Henry, the Royal Tar, was invariably foul-mouthed and often ill-mannered, left a suspicion of all sailors, cast a cloud on the whole breed, but Frederick passed muster, was invited to dine and join the Altons in their box at the Opera on the following evening.
“Good place to see and be seen, Sir Frederick, you will meet many of your acquaintance there. I’ll put your name up for the club, if you wish?”
Frederick did wish, could not hope for a better sponsor. Elizabeth joined them, elegant in Therese’s gowning and much approved. Lord Alton left at the end of his half an hour pleased with his protégés, allies and satellites of the next generation of his political clan.
A most enjoyable Opera – Frederick’s first, a Mozart, La Clemenza di Tito, new to England, Elizabeth rapt – and any number of introductions made as well as a few faces remembered and one that frankly delighted Lord Alton.
“Sir Frederick? We have not been introduced, but I was at the Hamlet last year and at Wimbledon Common next morning. My name is Sefton.”
They shook hands, Frederick wondering why he was so favoured. Sefton was rich, a leader of society, known to the Prince but not one of his intimates, not especially political but a friend of stability and good order – he was not one to make casual acquaintances. It did not occur to Frederick that he might be regarded as a coming man, one who might be worth knowing in future years.
“I am honoured, my lord. May I introduce my wife?”
Britannia’s Son (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 4) Page 11