‘ABOUT FACKIN’ TIME!!!’ he yelled when we were all standing to attention. ‘CAN’T HAVE YER LYING IN BED ON A LAVVERLY MORNIN LIKE THIS, CAN WE, OYSTERMAN?’
‘No, Sir.’
He brought his face up to mine, and glared deep into my soul. A headbutt, I felt sure, was imminent, and I braced myself accordingly. Disconcertingly, however, he must have struck out blindly to his side, for Dick suddenly gasped and fell clutching his stomach, as though hit by a speeding cannonball.
‘Take nothing for granted, Lickley. I would have thought that you understood that better than most.’
‘Now, out on the grounds, all of yer. Except you, Oysterman. Corporal Tibbs will be round for you and the rest of the young ladies shortly. Tpah!’ Another volley of phlegm splattered directly into my forehead, and slid down over my face in a very slimy manner. It still did not seem the right time to broach the subject of my illegal impressment, somehow.
Muskets were collected, my comrades departed coughing and cursing, and I was left to wipe my face clean and ponder the prospect of another day in Hell. Already I felt physically and mentally soiled, and ‘twas clear that unless I roused myself to letter-writing activity soon I would never escape. My mind and my ability to hold a pen would atrophy, and I would become completely submerged in the quagmire of army life. The longer I left it the harder it would get, but where was I to get the pen, paper and time from? I was pondering this question with my hand on my aching back when the door creaked slowly open and two dour faces peeped in.
‘He’s a brute, that Sergeant Mycock is,’ said Anne Pomeroy. ‘Wish he’d die.’
‘He will one day, Mrs Pomeroy. Nothing is so certain.’
‘Wish he’d die soon, then.’
Peter Pomeroy, tricorne already in place, looked up at his mother enigmatically.
‘Everyone’s been stroked by him,’ Ann went on. ‘It’ll be your turn soon, you know, whether you do anything wrong or not.’
‘So I may as well try and escape, is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, I’m not saying that,’ said Anne, shocked. ‘I’m no devil’s advocate. No, not I.’
Still, her presence and the subject matter of the conversation had fused together an idea in my mind.
‘Mrs Pomeroy. I wonder if I could beg a favour?’
Immediately she clutched her son, and shrank away from me.
‘No, no….I don’t mean that. I mean could you possibly write and post a few letters for me? I would write them myself, but I never get the time, and even if I did, I doubt whether they would reach their destination. Yours might get through, but they need to be sent urgently, before I’m carted off to America.’
Mrs Pomeroy looked doubtful.
‘I am assuming you can write, of course,’ I faltered, beginning to wish I’d never asked.
‘Of course I can,’ she said. ‘But what happens if I get caught?’
‘There will be nothing treasonable in them, I assure you. All I want you to write on each one is the address of this inn, the message ‘Help – I have been impressed – Rescue me’, and my name, Harry. Will you do it if I give you the addresses to send them to?’
‘Come down, Oysterman!’ came a shout from Corporal Tibbs outside. ‘Or I will be coming up to winkle you out with my bayonet!’
‘Quick!’ I whisped hotly. ‘Say yes!’
‘Shall we, Peter?’
‘Yes,’ said the Enigmatic One in a puzzled tone, as though struggling as much as me to understand what was going on in the world.
Snatching the knob of chalk and the torn piece of meat wrapping offered, I scribbled down the names and addresses of my father in London, my mother in Lewes, and Amanda Philpott in Steyning. Whilst writing, the sad and belated thought flashed through my mind that I had no friends in the world other than this motley crew. No wonder I had turned from Life to Poetry.
‘Thank you!’ I enthused, shoving the paper in her hand, ‘Thank you, thank you!’ Carried away perhaps, I moved forward to kiss her, but she grimaced and kept her head stretched just out of reach of my lips. Thwarted, kissing air, I opted instead for the easier gesture of playfully tipping Peter’s tricorne off his head, but this met with an even more disastrous response.
‘Sorry!’ I begged, as Peter’s eyes welled up with tears and he reached blindly for his mother’s skirts, ‘Only trying to be friendly…’
‘OYSTERMAN, GET DOWN HERE, YE DOG!!’
‘Must go. Thank you again. Oh, and can you include me in the dinner today please. I will settle my share of the vegetables on Saturday when I get paid.’
Feeling much lighter with the knowledge that wheels were at last in motion to secure my release, I ran outside to join the waiting Corporal Tibbs. Behind him, flanked by two nasty-looking members of the provost guard, were my fellow shit-shovellers of the previous day. This time they were all running up and down on the spot, their faces puce, their tongues lolling.
‘Glad you could join us, Oysterman. Nice day for a run, I’m sure you will agree.’
I looked over his shoulder at the misty fields, the lush foliage of the trees, the early rays of the sun giving promise of another fine day, and agreed that it was. I breathed in deeply of the bacon-scented air, and relished the sensation of approaching freedom. In a week’s time, I was sure, I would be laughing about the whole experience. I would also be more determined to live the rest of my life exactly as I wanted, and I would live it to the full.
I was less sanguine about my prospects when I returned to the Martyr two hours later; at this rate I would not live long enough to see my Salvation Day. My body was drenched in sweat, my tongue was stuck to the roof of my parched mouth, and my ribs creaked like the beams of a stormtossed ship with every desperate breath I took. The environs of Hove, so inspiring for a walker musing on Death, were Death itself to a runner, a fact that did not go unnoticed when I returned to my room, where my messmates were taking breakfast.
‘I don’t know,’ opined Roger Masson, as I shuffled like an old man to my bed, unable to speak, ‘poets ain’t what they used to be. In my day they could wrestle bears to the floor and run to London and back and do all sorts of things. All before breakfast, all without breaking sweat.’
‘Killed a poet, I have,’ growled Ned Lester.
‘They’re floppier these days,’ said Dick Lickley, eyeing me with amusement. ‘More doomed.’
‘’Ee’s doomed, all right, ‘ee be,’ said Claude Jepson, ‘garspin’ n wroithin’ loik a landed troit.’
Unable to respond at first, I eventually recovered enough to take the offered breakfast of dry bread and diluted rum. I was just about to join in a conversation on the demise of bearbaiting when the dreaded cry of Turn Out! Turn Out! came blasting once more through the door.
‘For God’s sake,’ I cried. ‘Is there no rest?’
No, was the unspoken answer, and ‘twas off again for the main working session of the morning, which in my case turned out to be musket drill.
In my former life I would have welcomed a session with the Brown Bess – what poet currently writing could claim firsthand knowledge of the foremost military icon of the age? – but now I was so tired I doubted my ability even to pick one up. However, in the fields where we practised there was no room for doubt, acquaintance with the beast was forced, and soon I was staggering around beneath the weight of it like the rest of the rogues. We were not trusted with trying to fire it yet, but perhaps there was no need to learn, for in a morale-boosting speech Corporal Tibbs explained to us with great asperity that the musket was absolutely useless in the wet, and not much better in the dry, being badly engineered and appallingly crafted. Chances of hitting a barn door fifty yards away were minimal. Nevertheless, according to Corporal Tibbs, it did have one saving grace: ‘twas an admirable pole on which to stick a bayonet. To prove this, he ran screaming at a bluecoated scarecrow and plunged the blade in up to the hilt. Almost drooling with pleasure as the scarecrow shud
dered and popped its turnip eyes out, my fellow recruits could not wait to get started on their own specially-prepared scarecrows, which were waiting anxiously in line not ten yards away. I, however, was not so keen, having neither the passion nor the abandon required for such primitive work. Energy being missing too, I spent the morning miserably tickling my appointed scarecrow until it seemed almost to smile. Indeed, my response was so feeble that I would have been in trouble with Corporal Tibbs had he not been kept busy trying to prise the others off their bewildered victims. By the end of the session, mine was the only scarecrow not shredded, dismembered and scattered to the four winds, and I trudged back to the Martyr feeling even more ineffectual than usual.
‘Never mind,’ said Dick Lickley, as he ladled me some of Anne’s scrag-end and vegetables, ‘this afternoon won’t be as bad.’
He was right there – it was worse, for we were returned once more to the noisome monstrosity in the barn, there to finish off the job before the next pile built up. Even the confirmation that Ann had sent my letters could not cheer me, and by the time I was back in quarters for the night I was again at the end of my tether. At this rate I would be dead before anyone came to rescue me.
‘Remind me again, Dick,’ I groaned from my bed, as I examined blisters the size of eggs on my hands and feet, ‘What date do we sail for America?’
‘16th of July. Why, thinking of deserting?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘Just that I can’t see myself being a soldier by then.’
‘Because if you are,’ went on Dick, ‘you’re right to think about it now. Nowhere to desert to on a troop ship, is there? Remember though, you’ll upset Little Bob if you’re caught.’
‘Dick, I told ye, I am not going to desert. Help will come before I am reduced to that course of action.’
‘Nothing wrong with that course of action,’ said Dick, to my surprise. ‘Don’t demean it. I’ve even been thinking about it myself of late. But I’ve decided, if I’m going to desert anywhere, it’ll be in America. New start, new land. Let the army pay for my passage, is what I say.’
‘But America, Dick. Is that not an uncivilized country?’
‘I don’t know till I get there. Can’t be less civilized than this country though, can it?’
I shrugged noncommittally. ‘Twas all very well for an adventurer like Dick to start a new life in the wilderness, but my future as a poet depended for its flowering on a solid basis of culture, and where else was that to be found except in the salons and coffee-houses of London? No, desertion must be attempted on this side of the Atlantic, or not at all. But in all likelihood I was panicking for nothing anyway; rescue would surely come before I needed even to consider such desperate measures. I just needed to hold out a few days longer while the post did its work, and then I would be free to return to my old ways, all the richer for the experience.
But the days passed, the dreaded 16th of July loomed ever larger, and still there was not a squeak from my would-be rescuers. In real desperation now, I was forced on several occasions to screw my courage up to the highest pitch and confront Sergeant Mycock about the illegality of my impressment. But I need not have bothered: each time I was shouted down, beaten down and kicked to a pulp before I had reached the end of my first sentence. But at least ‘twas a response, which was more than I received from the regimental officers to whom I wrote heart-rending accounts of Liberty Abused – their silence on the matter was as profound as the grave. So, at my wit’s end, hemmed in on all sides by a combination of violence and silence, I could think of nothing else for it – the time had come to risk offending Little Bob.
6
Bloodyback
‘Twas only a minimal risk in any case, as far as I could see, for in two weeks a total of fifteen men had deserted, and not one of them had yet been caught, despite Segeant Mycock’s boasts. The only problem seemed to be one of etiquette: should one thank the officers before walking off down the lane, or write them a letter when the escape had been completed?
My first attempt at desertion, therefore, had a complacent air about it. Early one Sunday morning, while everyone including the guards slept off their hangover, I simply stepped out of the front door of the Martyr, looked up and down the empty lane, and sauntered towards the nearest stile. Brighthelmstone – 2 Miles said the signpost above it, and I set off across the fields in the direction indicated. The ease of it all was laughable, and indeed I was starting to emit little snorts of mirth when I passed a great oak tree at the vertex of three fields.
‘Going somewhere, sojer?’
My heart shot into my mouth, and started pounding furiously. I stopped walking and tried to strike an attitude of elegant unconcern, but the shock of the voice and the dread of a gunpowder blast quite unmanned me, and I fear I quaked visibly.
‘Up here, varlet,’ came the voice again, as I scrutinized the hedgerows for signs of my assailant. ‘In the tree.’
I looked up and saw, sticking out of the spreading foliage, the barrel of a pistol pointing down at me. As I could not make out anything else I was not sure whether I had encountered a footpad or a member of the provost guard. I gambled on the former.
‘I have no money, Sir. If I had, I would willingly give it to you.’
‘Are you deserting from the Army camp over yonder?’
I began to suspect the latter.
‘No, I just needed some air. I feel a bit sick after all the liquor I consumed last night.’
‘Then puke up on the floor of your billets like the rest of the rogues. And don’t you dare leave your quarters again without permission. Now get back to where you came from, and count yourself damned lucky that I don’t report you.’
Sheepish, in no doubt now as to the occupation of the man behind the pistol, I turned and walked…
‘RUN!!’
…ran back to the Martyr, absolutely astonished at the turn of events. Cursing my complacency and my luck – I had walked straight towards what was quite possibly the only occupied tree in the whole of England – I returned to my bed without another soul noticing my absence. Clearly, I was not as clever as I thought I was, and I needed time to lick my wounded pride before considering another attempt at escape. My only consolation was the thought that I had escaped a whipping by a whisker, though the shine was taken off this solace when snoring Dick grabbed my legs, hugged them to his chest, and began to rut gently against my bottom. Another desertion attempt, whatever the consequences, was clearly imperative, and this time, I vowed to myself – disentangling myself from Dick and kicking him squarely on the forehead – the attempt would be well-planned, foolproof and clinically executed. Then if I was caught I would know that I was under special supervision, either Divine or otherwise, and further struggling against my fate would be useless.
So, five days later, plot hatched, I was at it again, scurrying like a fox away from the camp. This time, however, ‘twas night time, and this time, ‘twas Philpott Hall, seven miles distant, that was my destination, for I had decided to do what I should have done in the first place, viz. declare my undying love for Amanda, and throw myself on her mercy and her millions. That she would accept my suit was a foregone conclusion, and then her father could use his influence to free me permanently from the mess I had got myself into. All I had to do was get there in one piece.
Again, the escape started well enough, my squeeze around the side of the jakes going unnoticed by the guard, who was busy as usual trying to peer through the keyhole of Vickie Tremblett’s bedroom door, she being the landlord’s lovely daughter. Free again, I then made good progress over the moonlit fields, giving all trees a wide berth and keeping a wary eye on the ships at sea, in case one should suddenly decide to discharge a cheeky broadside at me. In two hours I was at Steyning, and ten minutes later I was gazing at the distant rooftops of Philpott Hall. Confident now that I was far out of the range of guards, I relaxed a little and allowed myself to survey the scene with proprietary pride. Far from being the Slo
ugh of Despond that I imagined it might be in the dead of night, the countryside around here was an Arcadian wonderland of gleaming cowpats and hooting owls. ‘Twas a ravishment of the aesthetic senses, with each tree and coppice perfectly positioned to provide the most exquisite combination of form and function. Each lungful of damp air was ambrosia to me, and induced the reflection that perhaps even Amanda was nothing like the ogre my memory had painted her. Perhaps she too was a masterpiece of nature in the offing, who only needed good strong loving to remove the inherent flaws. Manhood stiffening at the thought, my reverie turning increasingly lusty, I continued on until I came to the sunken lane that surrounded the Philpott estate. Clambering down to cross, I thought I heard a rustle in some bushes. I stopped still and peered into the darkness. Nothing further stirred, so, suspecting ‘twas merely a nocturnal beast making its bed for the night, I jumped down onto the lane itself.
Immediately the area around the suspected bush burst into life. Onto the lane dashed an officer and three soldiers brandishing arms. I was quickly surrounded.
‘Took yer time, Oysterman,’ shouted the officer down my ear.
‘Who-who,’ I jabbered, truly shaken, ‘Who-who…?’
‘Sounds like that bloody owl we’ve been listening to all night,’ said one of the soldiers, giving me a gratuitous prod on my left buttock with the tip of his bayonet. ‘Come on, express yourself properly, ye dog.’
‘Well, anything coherent to say before we take you back to camp?’
‘How do you know my name?’ I managed to get out. ‘Who are you?’
‘Provost guard, laddie, no more. As for your name, word gets around.’
I started to babble.
‘I’m under special supervision, aren’t I? Tell me I am. Just tell me I am.’
I was butted firmly in the stomach with the stock of a musket.
‘Pish. You are just unlucky, ‘tis all.’
‘But,’ I gasped, doubled up, ‘why arrest me here, of all places?’
‘On permanent patrol here. Protecting the Philpotts.’
Infernal Revolutions Page 7