A Close Run Thing

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘Ma fille,’ the count interrupted, ‘perhaps Mr Hervey would like to see the garden.’

  The garden, or gardens (for there were three distinct ones: an Italian – geometric, with elegant little fountains; another owing something to the south of the country, with terracotta pots everywhere; and one decidedly English), was uncommonly quiet. The noise of the street was excluded and, at this time, with the sun high and its heat growing, there were few birds with any inclination for singing. Hervey and Sister Maria walked for a quarter of an hour, first in the Italian and then in the Provençal garden, she pointing to some feature and then he to another. They spoke little of the year that had passed. There was so much that might be said, yet Hervey sensed their time together was short, and for his part he could not thus aspire to relate anything of substance. When they reached the English garden he thought it time they should return to the house, conscious that Colonel Grant remained there waiting.

  ‘Well, Sister,’ he began, ‘I am gratified that I have been able to discharge my obligation to you, and to find you in such manifest good spirits. I believe, however, that I must now take my leave of you: you will understand that there are pressing matters to be about.’

  Sister Maria evidently did not consider any matters to be ultimately too pressing. ‘You are right,’ she said, ‘I am in good spirits. I am at peace with God and restored to my family: there is nothing more I could desire. But you, I perceive, are not in such spirits. Something troubles you.’

  Hervey recoiled at the intrusion, just as he had the first time in Toulouse. ‘Nothing troubles me, Sister,’ he said briskly, making some unnecessary adjustment to his sword-slings and turning towards the house.

  ‘Mr Hervey,’ she insisted, ‘I am sorry that one year has put this distance between us.’

  Her words halted him in mid-stride. He did not wish to share his thoughts with anyone now that he had been able so firmly to place them at the back of his mind (or so he thought he had placed them). Serjeant Armstrong had upbraided him for brooding that morning after the battle, and he had been careful since to avoid any such occasion for censure. But he could not pretend that this woman had no sensibility of his disquiet when she so clearly had, nor that their former vocal intimacy was erasable. He sighed. ‘Sister Maria, there is hardly time to begin to explain the circumstances, but I have on my conscience the death of a brave man. My head tells me that it should be otherwise, but not my heart. I should wish, perhaps, to tell you more, but I sail for England shortly. Time is truly pressing.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Hervey,’ she conceded, turning with him for the house, ‘we cannot speak of it, but I urge that you do so when you return to your country. I have been studying your prayer-book – the one you gave me. It is – how do you say – très contestataire?’

  ‘Disputatious?’ suggested Hervey.

  ‘Yes, disputatious. But no matter. In its exhortation before mass – or communion as you say – the priest invites him that cannot quiet his own conscience to go to him for absolution. Do you know such a priest that might, as well as pronounce absolution, give just counsel in this?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he replied wearily.

  ‘Then, you must see him with no more delay than is strictly necessary for your other duties.’

  Hervey agreed.

  ‘And now, before you go,’ she smiled, ‘my father wishes to make some small gesture of our gratitude. Come!’

  * * *

  Later he would regret, much, that their tryst was so brief. Yet in that brief meeting she had again given him a certain peace, and strengthened his resolve on a course additional to priestly absolution (though she could not know it). And he was glad when she said that she would be remaining in Paris, for when he returned he could take up her invitation to visit at the Carmelite house in the city whence she was appointed.

  That Afternoon

  ‘You appear to have made a most felicitous connection, Hervey. Grant tells me that Count Chantonnay has more influence with Louis Bourbon than Condé even,’ said Lord George Irvine as they sipped Madeira after a light luncheon of calf’s tongue followed by early strawberries brought from Provence. ‘Let me see that bauble again.’

  Hervey handed him the velvet-covered case.

  ‘A fleur-de-lis within a laurel wreath – and those are without doubt the finest emeralds. And prettily fixed on that sky-blue ribbon, too. It should set off your levee dress handsomely!’

  ‘It is a family order, sir, approved of the Court by long custom, the count informed me. He was insistent that I should receive it.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ smiled Lord George. ‘I am sure the prince regent will not be ill-disposed to the notion of a foreign decoration’s adorning one of his officers. Envious, perhaps, but not ill-disposed. And a touching reunion with your nun was had, I understand?’

  Hervey would not be drawn. ‘She is a remarkable woman.’

  ‘And you will leave for England this night?’

  ‘Immediately after the service of memorial for Captain Jessope,’ he replied, at once heavy.

  ‘Jessope? Lord Fitzroy Somerset’s aide-de-camp? He is killed too? I did not know it. I wish in God’s name we might see a list soon. Lord Fitzroy himself is not long for this world, too, by all accounts. Jessope dead! I cannot say I knew him well – I met him but infrequently at White’s – but an engaging officer, though. And you knew him?’

  ‘Imperfectly,’ replied Hervey softly, hoping that Lord George would not dwell on it – which he did not.

  ‘Your captaincy, however,’ demanded his commanding officer peremptorily. ‘What are we to do?’

  ‘As I said, sir, it is wholly beyond my means; it would not do to delay selling any longer – Anson’s widow will need an annuity.’

  ‘Be that as it may, Hervey, I will not send the papers to Craig’s Court until we reach England. Have you no prospects, of any sort?’

  ‘None, I am afraid, sir!’

  Lord George sighed pointedly. ‘Mr Hervey, let me speak plainly with you. Are you not to marry the ward of the Marquess of Bath?’

  Whitehall, 27 July

  The troopers of the Blues, standing mounted sentinel at the gates of the Horse Guards, brought their heavy-cavalry-pattern swords from the shoulder to the carry as Hervey got down from the carriage and walked between them, returning the salute with his right hand. He would have preferred the anonymity of plain clothes but he had thought it fit to wear undress instead so that he might gain entry to the Duke of York’s headquarters with more expedition. He touched his forage cap to the two dismounted sentries at the inner archway and entered the building through an unimposing door in the side-arch. Within, an orderly directed him up the stairs to the adjutant-general’s department where he was received (rather distantly, he thought) by a civilian clerk. ‘Please be seated Mr … ahm … Hartley. We shall attend you forthwith.’

  Hervey sat on a bench comfortably upholstered in buttoned green leather and picked up the copy of The Times of that day which lay on an adjacent table. He turned to its inside pages and studied the consolidated list of officers who had died at, or since, the battle. He knew more names than he did not. He read reports by special correspondents on the movements of the Militia along the south coast, the condition of the forces in Canada, and the occupation in Paris. He read a summary of the parliamentary debates on flogging, and his bile rose on seeing the persuasion of so many as to its supposed efficacy. All news and opinion devoured, he then turned to the front page to amuse himself with the personal notices: ‘A SINGLE GENTLEMAN wishing to domesticate in a genteel private family …; A RESPECTABLE young person WANTS A SITUATION as BAR-MAID …’ (he had to read this a second time); ‘RESPECTABLE officer’s daughter wishes for a situation as a companion …’ (a fate he feared for Edmonds’s daughters). And when even these had exhausted his attention he looked at his watch – the same which Jessope had given him, restored by the skill of a Paris horologist – and enquired of the clerk why there should be such a dela
y in accepting a dispatch from Lord Combermere.

  ‘I beg your indulgence, Mr Harley, we have so much to be about in the wake of events on the Continent,’ the clerk replied.

  He turned to the back-page sales: ‘A PAIR of handsome BROWN CHARIOT or CURRICLE GELDINGS, 15 hands 2 inches high …; THIRTY very clever, active, well bred, seasoned MACHINE HORSES, in high condition, mostly young …’

  Up and down the columns he went, from ‘valuable collection of paintings’ to ‘singularly elegant gothic cottage’. They occupied him another half-hour, and still there was no activity in the clerk.

  ‘Now, see here,’ he began, putting down the paper noisily, ‘I have urgent regimental business to be about. Will you kindly present that dispatch to the adjutant-general now so that I may be released to attend to it.’

  ‘Mr Hurley,’ replied the clerk, with an indulging smile, ‘papers arrive from Paris every day, hourly at times. If your letter were urgent, it would be marked as such. You are merely a courier, sir!’

  ‘Courier be damned!’ he stormed. ‘I have the welfare of brave men’s widows, and much else besides, to be about. If you will not so much as have the courtesy to read the letter, then I shall not wait hereabouts!’

  He stalked out of the headquarters and marched angrily across the parade ground even as guardsmen were drilling there, reaching the middle of St James’s Park before his anger began to subside. What had become of things? he railed. The nation seemed driven by self-important clerks for whom tallies and ledgers, copying and filing were ends in themselves.

  It was early evening, almost a week later, that he stepped down from the Yarmouth-to-London stage at the crossroads near Southwold. So much had passed since his dismal time at the Horse Guards. The Earl of Sussex, whom he had called on shortly afterwards, had been solicitude itself. The earl, not yet an old man but whose service with the Duke of York in Flanders twenty years before had ended with a broken hip, had been at once animated by the prospect of finding new officers for his regiment. And in Norwich, where it was his business to settle the regimental estate of Joseph Edmonds, he had found the major’s widow and two daughters in uncommon spirits and a very safe distance from destitution. But, unappealing though the prospect of Norwich had been, he anticipated that Southwold would be an altogether more formidable ordeal.

  There should have been a chaise, or at least a van, from the town waiting at the crossroads, but there was not another soul in sight. As far as the eye could see in the direction of Southwold there was desolate marsh, and the forlorn calls of the curlew accentuated the eerie emptiness. In the other direction there was open heath, with scarcely a tree, and those that there were leaned to landward, bent half-way to the ground by the wind which often as not drove in from the sea. The coach-driver, anxious because hay-waggons had made him almost thirty minutes late on this stage, asked if Hervey would take charge of some packages for merchants of the town. ‘Daren’t wait no longer, zur,’ he explained in Suffolk vowels more pronounced than Serjeant Strange’s. ‘Anything from Southwold’ll ’ave to wait till tomorrow. There should be summat along soon.’

  Hervey understood the driver’s impatience full well: his pay would be docked if he were late at Ipswich, and there would be little chance of making up any more time along this road, as yet unmacadamized, and with a team already blowing. In truth he was glad of the peace of this lonely crossroads for a while, where he might compose his thoughts in respect of Widow Strange. Not that she would have been aware of that status; for, while Margaret Edmonds might learn from an express or even The Times of her husband’s death, Strange’s widow would have no such notification. He had contemplated writing to her, but with no knowledge of whether she might be capable of reading he had demurred and resolved on this call.

  A mile or so across the marshes, in the direction the stage now took, stood Blythburgh church, rising from the wetlands with all the grandeur of a cathedral, testimony to the county’s former wool-wealth. Wealth long past, he knew. Now it was fishing and little else, although the war had brought additional business by way of the new naval establishments along the coast – victualling yards, hospitals, signalling stations. But he did not suppose the Strange family would have much of it.

  After a quarter-hour a growler came up from the direction of Southwold and the driver began a litany of apologies before even the brake bound on. Immense was his relief when Hervey assured him that it mattered not at all and that he had the packages from the London coach. Minutes later, the parcels and his portmanteau safely stowed, they set off at a trot towards the little fishing town. ‘Only a couple of miles, that’s all, zur,’ began the driver, ‘but it’s a bugger when the tide’s ’igh ’cos the stream ’tween us and the town gets up and the old ’orse ’e doesn’t always like it!’

  Hervey sympathized. ‘Do you know of a family called Strange?’ he added. ‘A fisherman, I believe.’

  ‘Peter Strange?’

  ‘I do not know his Christian name. He had a son …’ Hervey checked himself. ‘His son enlisted in the Army.’

  ‘Well, there is but one Strange in Southwold, zur – or, rather, there was one Strange. Old Peter died last month. Have you come all this way to see ’im then?’ he asked in amazement.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Terrible sad, it were. Alice Strange, old Peter’s wife of nigh on fifty years, died in May an’ old Peter just seemed to give up all will to go on. That daughter-in-law of theirs never left ’is side these past three months, but weren’t to no avail: she ’ad to bury ’im, too.’

  ‘Where is Mrs Strange now, then?’ asked Hervey.

  ‘Bless me, zur, in ’eaven for sure – an’ Peter, too, for they were fine God-fearing folk.’

  For all the solemnity Hervey found it hard not to smile.

  ‘I meant their daughter-in-law,’ he explained gently.

  The driver looked at him quizzically. ‘You know the family, then, zur?’

  ‘No, I do not, but I have news of Serjeant Strange.’

  ‘Serjeant! By, that young lad ’as done well. Oi knew ’e would, mind: never a braver man on an oar with a gale blowin’. Reckon ’e would ’ave joined the Navy ’ad ’e not seen ’is two brothers drown out in the bay. Said ’e wanted t’ave nothin’ to do wi’ the sea after that, did young ’Arry. Oi’m glad ’e ’as done well, though.’

  ‘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.