‘Reminds me of Quebec this.’
‘Everything reminds you of Quebec, Thomas.’
‘No, but this is similar. Amphibian force. Secret night attack. Silence essential. Precipitous climb when we land. Immediate battle when we get to the top.’
‘What precipitous climb?’ Simon Scattergood piped up with horror.
‘Ho, ho, Simon’s taken the bait.’
‘’Tis no bait, gentlemen, ‘tis fact. Look closely ahead if you don’t believe me.’
We screwed up our eyes against the driving rain, and peered at the cliffs looming up in the mist.
‘Yes, I know, the New Jersey Palisades. Fort Lee stuck on top. But surely we’re sailing past them, to land where ‘tis safe?’
Thomas shook his head sagely.
‘No, ‘tis straight up for us, boys. I’ve heard they’ve found a landing stage for us at a place called Closter Dock. From there ‘tis a steep path all the way to the top.’
This was not what the boys wanted to hear, for Heights ranked second only to Water on their Most Feared list, and they expressed their disgust with a volley of fearful imprecations.
‘Quiet over there!’ came a lordly, authoritative voice, surprisingly near in the darkness. ‘Or I will order your oars to be removed, and the whole lot of you will drift downstream into the merciless currents of the Atlantic Ocean. There you will be carried ever further out to sea until hunger forces you to eat each other, or thirst causes you to go mad, or an American corvair comes along and either captures you or scuttles you. So what’s it to be, my brave lads, food for worms, or food for fishes?’
‘’Tis Cornwallis himself, by the sounds of it,’ whispered Roger Masson in awe.
‘I don’t care who it fuckin’ is,’ grumbled Simon Scattergood, in an undertone nevertheless. ‘I’ve had enough of this game.’
‘We had the same trouble at Quebec,’ recalled old Thomas fondly. ‘Troops didn’t like the look of the Heights of Abraham, not one little bit, but you should have seen them the next day – absolutely joyous they were as they cut the Frenchies to ribbons. Laughing away, they were, laughing away, all the happier for having had such a rough time of it beforehand.’ Thomas, laughing away, drifted back in his mind to the Annus Mirabulus of 1759.
‘Shut up, you bloody old fool. They were Frenchies, as you say. Some incentive to fight there. None here, is there? I might even be related to some of this lot.’
‘Little difference that will make when the balls begin to fly. Your blood lust will rise just the same, no matter who’s firing at ye.’
‘There will be no balls flying in this rain; ‘tis bayoneting weather, thank God.’
There was plenty of aye-ayeing at these last two remarks, and a gradual quiescence spread through the boat at the prospect of marching up a cliff face and gutting colonials, especially when the alternative was madness and cannibalism out at sea. By the time we were nearly across the Hudson everybody was quite composed, as if quietly anticipating the bayonet feast to come. For myself, I was too melancholic to care what happened now that Sophie had abandoned me; I minded neither madness nor cannibalism nor balls. Sitting with one arm resting on the side of the boat, and the other cradling my upright musket, I simply stared stupefied at my knees and meditated on the vanity of human wishes. Until, that is, the battle of Fort Washington came into view around the northern corner of the New York shore, and the flashes of fire and the boom of cannon there quite shook me out of myself. Indeed, so engrossed was I in the unfolding spectacle that the only liquid to drench my knees in the entire crossing was the water spouting from my hat – much to the irritation of the out-of-pocket Nathan, who called me vile names and proved himself a very poor loser as I splashed onto land with exaggerated aplomb.
Disembarked and bedraggled, we stood at the foot of the New Jersey Palisades in the lightening grey of a dismal dawn, and gawped up at the mass of wooded rock we would have to climb. A narrow footpath wound up to the top, and far above us we could see the bobbing caps of men inching their way up it.
‘Well,’ said Roger Masson, examining the ground around us, ‘I can’t see any broken bodies lying around, so the path must be safer than it looks.’
‘That’s because the Rebels haven’t got wind of us yet,’ said Simon Scattergood, ‘but when they do we’ll see how safe the path is; we will strew the floor like pine needles. They will fire down at us, pour boiling water over us, and generally have a field day. We will be sitting ducks.’
‘Tush, tush, Simon,’ said old Thomas, ‘keep those thoughts to yourself. It is no disgrace to be afraid of heights, but it is a disgrace to try and infect others with a fear akin to your own.’
‘Afraid!’ spluttered Simon, charged with the most heinous crime in the British Army, ‘I will show you who’s afraid, old man.’ And off he went, storming off to elbow his way past the queue at the base of the path.
‘Now you’ve done it, Thomas. He will get to the top and bayonet the whole garrison single-handed. There will be none left for us.’
‘Well, I don’t like that kind of pessimistic talk. Especially when there are impressionable young soldiers around, like Harry here.’
I looked round in surprise. Did he mean me? He must have done, for he was looking at me with a tender paternal gleam in his eye.
‘Don’t worry, lad,’ he said, patting me on the shoulder. ‘We’ll make it.’
I put on my best little-boy-lost look for him – much to the amusement of the few who knew me – and allowed him to grasp my hand, and shake it emotionally.
‘At Minden, you know, son, before the battle, we shook hands with each other along the whole length of the line, vowing to stand by each other without flinching. Bonded us together for eternity, and made the battle itself a sort of communion. Not possible to shake hands the whole length of the line here, of course – different kind of battle – but we can shake amongst ourselves. So, good luck, son, and God bless!’
He shook my hand with tears in his eyes, then started on the others. Feeling obliged to show fraternity, I turned round, looked solemnly at Roger next to me, and shook his hand in turn. Though bemused, he did the same, until we were all at it, like a party of Bedlamites. At first I was tremendously moved by this show of true comradeship, until it occurred to me that the battles of Minden and Quebec had both taken place in the same year – 1759 – and that it seemed improbable that old Thomas was at both of them. I began to harbour doubts – I did not want to be bonded for eternity with a liar, nor with anyone else for that matter. And even had he not been lying, such gestures as occurred at Minden spontaneously could not be repeated elsewhere without the taint of meretriciousness attaching itself to them. Such doubts meant that my handshake became increasingly floppy, so that by the time orders came to begin the ascent, the Minden Shake had become the Fort Lee Dangle, and I was glad to be done with the whole spurious affair.
I was even gladder halfway up the cliff when news was passed down from the summit that the Rebels had abandoned the camp without a fight, and run off yet again.
‘’Tis all over!’ Claude Jepson in front of me cried. And for him it almost was, for seconds later he lost his footing and nearly fell to his death on the bayonet teeth of the men following.
‘Steady, Claude,’ said old Thomas, hauling him back up by the shoulders. ‘Don’t relax yet.’
‘Twas a timely warning, for that was exactly what I felt like doing upon hearing the unexpected news. My clothes were soaked with sweat and rain, and my chest was heaving up and down like a pair of bellows, bursting with all the gruesome physical effort of defying gravity. I had even acquired a new fear into the bargain – not of falling, but of being crushed to death by a backward-rolling three-pounder, numbers of which were being pushed and hauled up the cliff-face by prodigiously strong sappers with the arms and lungs of bears; indeed, this fear was so great that I flinched dreadfully every time a shower of soil came tumbling down from the rocks above. In short,
I was not enjoying the experience at all, but at least before the news of the abandonment there was the prospect of a quick death at the top to keep me going. Now that my life expectancy had suddenly and unexpectedly increased beyond noon, I just wanted to get off the cliff path as soon as possible, and to ponder in private the consequences of the American defeat, and the new slant that this gave to relations between the major participants in this war, viz. Sophie, Burnley and I.
Eventually I made it safely to the top, where I stood and got my breath back for a few moments before being whipped into line and pointed in the direction of Fort Lee. As we marched it suddenly occurred to me that booty would be available when we got there, so – just in case Sophie was in one of the tiny boats that were still coming across the Hudson – I determined to pick up a pleasing souvenir that would both mollify and excite her.
This was clearly not an original idea, however. The fort proved to be maggoty with souvenir hunters, for the Americans had disappeared in such a hurry that they had even left their breakfasts frying on skillets. Things likely to aid the British cause such as muskets, artillery and blankets were being carefully logged and collected by pen-wielding officers; everything else was being joyously appropriated for personal use by the rank and file. Soldiers were walking around with squealing piglets under their arms, fresh pipes in their mouths, and bottles of grog in their hands. Even Hartley was at it, for I caught him with his nose stuck deep in a tuft of grass, feeding on some slimy American horror and trembling with rapture. So, not to be outdone, I set about my own
looting. Keeping a devious eye open for anything I could take without being noticed, I began a long whistling walk around the encampment, pretending all the while to be above the undignified scavenging, but I need not have bothered with this subterfuge: everything worthwhile had long since gone, and I picked up nothing except the odd filthy spoon that someone else had thrown away. However, my peregrinations did eventually bring me to the southern end of the fort, where stood groups of officers chuntering among themselves. I ambled closer and listened.
‘Dammit, Sir, dammit,’ one of them was complaining loudly, ‘we could have had the rascals for dinner today.’
‘Indeed, Sir,’ said another, ‘And the rest of America for supper!’
‘It’s Howe’s fault, gentlemen. I have seen more fighting spirit in a slug.’
Craning their necks to look southwards, like wolves straining at the leash, the hotheads were all for chasing down the Rebels, and putting them to the bayonet, but no orders to do so had been received from General Howe, most likely due to the fact that he was still in bed in New York with his American paramour, Mrs Loring. Though in this company I was obliged to spit whenever anyone mentioned General Howe’s name, I was secretly in love with the man and his lethargy, for without his sublime inertia I would now be scouring the New Jersey countryside, moving ever further away from my Sophie, and being urged on to a glorious death by the scoundrel Cornwallis. I suspected many others shared my feelings too – not least Thomas Pomeroy, who was breakfasting happily with Thomas Slocombe and Ned Lester.
‘Campaigning season over now, Harry!’ he shouted. ‘If not the whole war. Isn’t this a glorious day?’
I agreed that it was, and accepted his offer to join them for a celebratory slice of American bacon. Veterans all now, we discussed the crossing, the climb, our marriages and the renewed pain of Thomas’s hernia, before moving on to more exciting matters, such as the date of our return to England. Soon I was feeling quite optimistic myself, and to take advantage of the mood I left the boys to their ramblings and sought out for myself a sheltered bower overlooking the Hudson. There, pending further orders to return to New York and Sophie, I took out of my knapsack a pen, some paper, a pipe and some tobacco. Then, shielding myself from the rain as best I could, I set to work on a timeless memorial to Isaac Tetley.
37
The Spyglass
(Epitaph on a Scalped Sailor – 19th November 1776)
Built of Devon’s noblest clay
Isaac was not born for play
His dreams were not of endless prigging
But of leaping and roaring in the rigging
A gunner was he by trade
Of no man was he afraid
His strength and skill he loved to test
He always seemed to beat the rest
He did not die in a fall, in the normal way
But in the Fall, as the Americans say
A victim of plots that were not his concern
He was sliced through the head by Bloody Burn
So here lies the shell of a forceful talker
Despatched to heaven by a tomahawker
No castles in Scotland, no whisky galore
Shall be his reward on this earth anymore
Artistically supersatisfied with this, I folded it up and placed it in my jacket pocket, for retrieval and recitation over Isaac’s grave, if he had one. Then I lit my pipe and enjoyed a smoke made all the more pleasant by the simple reflection that I was alive, and had genius. I could do things yet, and I owed it to Isaac to do them. And what’s more I was now a free live genius – or would be soon when George Washington officially surrendered his futile cause and I resolved like a gentleman the little misunderstandings with Burnley Axelrod. This meant that I could return home to England with my head held high, mull over my experiences, as I had mulled so satisfyingly over Isaac’s death, and then whip out the finest poetry of the age in a burst of creative activity not seen since Shakespeare hung up his hose. I could see it all – the house on the Thames, the admiration of royalty, the pension, the fawning of the bon ton, the hottest whores in Chelsea, the shattered look on the faces of all those who had ever considered themselves superior to me in any way whatsoever, right down to the state funeral and the best slab in Poet’s Corner. What I could not see in the vision, however, gave me even greater pleasure. There was no Sophie punching me senseless in St James’s Palace, just as I was about to receive my pension from the king. No Sophie nagging me to be more of a man than I already was. No Sophie carping on about the narrowness of English social life, and the restraints it imposed on those who preferred tarring and feathering to whist. In short, the Sussex Dream was back in its original Sophieless form, and I felt released, and free of caring.
Until, that is, I heard in the distance the sound of what was surely an arriving baggage train, all rattling wheels and shrill cacophony. The girls, it seemed, were back, and try as I might to regain the pristine ferocity of my vision, I could not help wondering whether Sophie was amongst them. I was still vacillating between control and abandon half an hour later, when there was a rustle in the bushes behind me, and out popped The Girl Herself, wet, bedraggled, wide-eyed and utterly captivating.
‘Sweetie!’ she cried, and rushed forward to embrace me.
‘Sophie!’ I had chance to cry back joyously, before my scrabbling feet told me we were in mortal danger of toppling backwards over the fearful precipice. ‘Sophie!’ I repeated, this time sharp and desperate, ‘Steady, girl, or we will be over!’
‘But I’m so happy!’
‘So am I,’ I said, clutching desperately at her. ‘But decrease your pressure on me, I beg you.’
My wish was laughingly complied with, foothold and balance was regained, and we stood watching over our shoulders – I in terror, Sophie in delight – as an avalanche of rock and soil roared its way down to the banks of the Hudson far below.
‘Now why did not we think of that?’ laughed Sophie, peering over the edge to observe the final impact.
‘’Tis in the nature of things to learn too late,’ I said, assuming we to mean we Rebels. Palpitating with fear, I averted my eyes from the dizzying sight, and led her by the hand to safer ground. ‘Besides which, I would not be here now had you done so.’
‘What?’ said Sophie, shocked. ‘You mean you came up the cliff path with the rest of the common rogues?’
‘Aye,’ I
said proudly, sniffing in a dewdrop on the end of my nose. ‘Why should I not?’
‘Oh Harry, you rough, tough man. I thought you had come the same way as us.’
‘Not I, Madam.’
I cocked my head and struck a heroic pose, much to Sophie’s delight. Unable to resist the irresistable, she pounced on me again, this time safely, and we fell to with a passion, celebrating what seemed like our umpteenth reunion with a tongue sandwich, until the self-centred poet in me, and the headstrong Boudicca in Sophie, were completely routed.
‘I suppose I owe you an explanation, my dear,’ said Sophie, in soft confessional mood afterwards, ‘unless you have already guessed the real reason for my actions yesterday.’
‘Something to do with what Elzevir said, perchance?’
‘Perceptive Man! But then I suppose that is what Eloise, not to mention hundreds of other duped boobies, have said too, in their time.
I looked at Sophie, Sophie looked at me, and I knew I was in for a weary bout of ratiocination. One of the major fault lines of our short marriage was already well established, and I sighed inwardly at the prospect of having to go through it all again.
‘Sophie, believe me, I am not a rake about his progress. ‘Tis true that I slept in the same bed as Eloise, but there was never any question of real sexual intimacy taking place between us – from my point of view because…’ Because I was refused permission would not sound right, ‘…because I was tired after a day’s riding…on a horse…with Dick; and from hers because she needed her wits about her to paint me while I was sleeping. Anyway, even if bouts of pleasure had taken place, I fail to see how I can be held accountable for actions carried out before I met you.’
Infernal Revolutions Page 48