by Sara Fraser
‘What for?’ Jethro asked.
‘Becos’ I just gi’ the sergeant two guineas from the pair on us, so that he could drink our health . . . He’s to be our drill instructor, see, so you wants to keep on the right side of him.’
‘You men am to goo to number four company’s quarters, at present commanded by Captain Josiah Parker,’ Turner told the recruits before he dismissed them. ‘Now he’s not a bad officer as far as it goes . . . He’s away from the battalion more than he’s wi’ it. You’ll each on you be put as bedmate wi’ a steady man who’s done some time, when you gets to your rooms. He’ll look arter you and show you the way to do things . . . You’ll parade behind your barrack block when the assembly is beaten tomorrow morning.’
‘Wun’t we be on the parade ground then, Sar’nt?’ Deane the flat-nosed drover asked.
‘What?’ The sergeant was contemptuous. ‘Does you think that we lets bloody wapstraws like you on our parade ground when you carn’t even stand proper, let alone march. My oath we doon’t! Now gerroff to your quarters . . . GOO ON! AT THE DOUBLE! Wright? Stanton? You stay here a minute.’
When the others had gone running and the sergeant was alone with the two of them, he winked at Turpin.
‘I’se put you in the same room as your mate,’ he told him. ‘You’ll show him the ropes, I don’t doubt.’
‘Thank you very much, Sar’nt,’ Turpin answered smartly, and added, ‘Oh, by the way, Sar’nt. The rest o’ the ’cruities asked if you’d do ’um the honour o’ drinkin’ their health. I explained the old custom to ’um, d’you see, Sar’nt.’ Turpin had taken money from each recruit by a mixture of warning and cajoling and this, minus a sum he had secreted to compensate his trouble, he now passed to the N.C.Q. Turner laughed admiringly.
‘You’ll goo far, cully, you ’ull.’ Still chuckling he left them. Their quarters were on the second storey. It was a long wide room lined on each side with double-sized box beds each filled with straw and covered by a coarse sheet with the blankets folded upon it. Above every bed was a row of wooden pegs with a shelf above them. A large black-iron firegrate with engraved royal ciphers upon it was set into one side wall midway along its length, and at the far end of the room, beneath a small barred window, was a long wall-rack for the muskets. The centre space between the lines of beds was dominated by narrow trestle tables placed end to end to form one whole, and on their scrubbed wooden boards were arranged small earthenware bowls, assorted pothooks, fire-irons, candlesticks, and long barbed flesh-forks. On either side of the musket rack, stood a huge crock pot each with a wooden cover. Turpin nudged Jethro and pointed.
‘Be careful when you wants to take a piss at night, matey.’
‘Why?’ Jethro was curious.
‘Because one o’ them pots is for pissing in, and the others wheer they keeps the salted meat . . . And salt though it might be, a drop o’ piss doon’t improve the flavour.’
Each corner of the room was partitioned off by blankets hung from ropes, and at the sound of fresh voices one of the blankets was pushed aside and a woman looked out. Her body was fat and shapeless and her hair hung in an untidy mess about her broad, pudding-like face.
‘Sadie! Charlotte! Bertha!’ she yelled stridently. ‘We’se got some Johnny Raws come.’
To a muffled accompaniment of curses and children’s wails, the blankets at the three other corners were pushed aside and more frowsty women appeared, with small, snot-nosed, tow-headed children about them.
The woman addressed as Sadie, a blonde, statuesque creature, grumbled, ‘Fine bloody time to come, ain’t it. Only bleedin’ chanst we ’as to get some sleep, and these bleedin’ Johnny Raws ’as to come disturbin’ us.’
‘Now then, my pretty,’ Turpin remonstrated good-naturedly. ‘That’s no way to welcome good men and true, who’re come to buy a drop o’ the Mother’s Comfort for friends . . . And all paid for wi’ the bounty money that’s ajinglin’ in me pockets.’
At the mention of ‘bounty money’ a change that was almost magical in its immediacy came over the women. The three named ones came smiling and simpering to welcome the newcomers. While the first woman dropped the blanket and bent over her sleeping, sweat-smelling husband in the bed, whose coat, hung on its peg above his head, bore the white chevrons of a corporal on its upper sleeves.
‘Wake up, Charlie, ye lazy pig!’ she whispered urgently, shaking his shoulder hard. ‘There’s ’cruities here, wi’ bounty to spend.’
‘Uhh! Wha! Uhh! Wha’s that you say?’ He sat up on the bed, yawning wide and scratching his hairy naked body. ‘God rot yer bleedin’ eyes, Annie! Ye fat pig, ye!’ he spoke with the harsh twang of a Northern Irishman. ‘Haven’t I bin on the piquet all night, blast ye! And you ashakin’ me for I don’t know wha’ . . .’
‘Hush yer blether, damn ye!’ His wife clapped her hand across his mouth. ‘Will yez lissen to what I’m tellin’ ye,’ she hissed. ‘There’s two Johnny Raws come, wi’ the bounty in their pockets.’
Her husband’s pale blue eyes filled with glee and he dragged her fat grimy paw from his mouth. ‘Why couldn’t ye say that in the first place, ye stupid sow!’ he swore at her in a jocular tone, and getting off the bed he dragged on a pair of trousers and slipping his tunic upon his bare torso went out through the blanket.
‘Well, well, well! Welcome boys to Corporal Rourke’s room,’ he greeted them smilingly.
Jethro and Turpin examined him closely. He was as big as them and well muscled, with a swarthy complexion and thick black curly hair. Very handsome in a brutal, coarse way.
‘Where is it ye’re from, lads?’ he wanted to know, and ushered them to sit on the benches flanking the tables.
‘From Worcestershire,’ Jethro answered for both.
‘Ahr, to be shure, ye would be, wouldn’t ye . . . this being a Worcestershire recruited battalion . . . I’m from Ulster, meself, transferred from the North Antrim Fencibles about a year since?’ He laughed with a great show of strong white teeth. ‘’Twas transferred I did to get away from that ugly fat ould sow there, my missus . . . But she found out and follered me. Ah well, ’tis the cross I have to bear for me sins, not to mention me utter stupidity in marrying her like I did.’ He laughed again. ‘Faith! There’s me owld Ma would turn in her grave so she would, if she knew that her fine boy, Desmond, brought up to be a good Catholic had married a Protestant . . . And it’s not even as if my missus had the looks to recommend her, is it?’
‘Hold yer blether, ye Papish bastard!’ his wife cursed him spiritedly. ‘I was pretty enough for ye when ye was beggin’ and pladin’ wi’ me to marry yez . . . I could have taken me pick o’ plenty. I’ll tell ye. And they was all good, clean-living, God-fearing Protestant boys. Not a bleedin’ Roman like ye . . . burning y’candles for the Pope.’
His pale blue eyes hardened and he swung to her and said warningly, ‘Now ye’ve said sufficient for the day, my jewel.’
‘Oh have I now?’ she warmed to her task. ‘Twelve bloody kids that Pope lover has put in my belly! Twelve on um’! And seven still livin’, so help me God! That’s all he’s good for, that and getting drunk! He calls me a fat sow and all the badness he can get his tongue to when we’em in front o’ people, but he calls me summat else at night.’ She nodded her head until her flabby cheeks shook, ‘Ahr, and it’s every night wi’out fail as well!’
Turpin Wright had sat watching quietly and he sensed that there would be physical violence between man and wife in a very few seconds. He stood up and taking some money from his pocket threw it on the table.
‘Can we get a couple o’ bottles d’you think?’
The big blonde, Sadie, snatched up the coins instantly.
‘We’ll get more than a couple, my handsome,’ she exclaimed delightedly. ‘Come on, Annie, and help me carry ’um. We’ll not be long away, Johnny Raw!’
She started to walk past Turpin, but he grabbed her upper arm and swung to face him.
‘I’m only gooin’ to say this the once
, my pretty.’ His voice was soft and low, but there was in it a note that caused all at the table to look at him nervously. ‘I’m no Johnny Raw! So you’d best make good and sure that them bottles comes back here in double quick time and that what’s in ’um arn’t bin helped to spread itself wi’ water, or anythin’ else . . . Understand?’
The blonde gazed at his hard tough features and a spasm of fear crossed her own. ‘I will, cully . . . I will,’ she muttered.
Turpin grinned, and released her arm to fondle her large firm buttocks with the same hand. ‘I rackon you an me ’ull grow to be real good friends, my pretty,’ he told her pleasantly, ‘now fetch that drink, I’m fair parched.’
The tension eased and the two women went on their errand. The corporal had read correctly the danger that had threatened in the room, and now his pale eyes held a hint of caution as he regarded his two new recruits.
‘You’se took a fancy for Big Sadie, I see, cully,’ the Ulsterman remarked.
‘Ahr, I likes big women, wi’ summat for a man to get ahold of,’ Turpin told him, then said. ‘Is she one o’ your bits o’ fancy then, Corporal Rourke?’
The thin, haggardly attractive woman named Bertha, who was sitting at the table suckling a swaddled baby at one of her flat breasts, cackled with laughter. ‘If you knew Paddy, you’d know that anything in skirts is his bit o’ fancy . . . Ain’t that so, Charlotte?’
Her friend next to her, a toothless, prematurely aged woman of about thirty shared the enjoyment. ‘He’s a rare hot ’un, our Paddy is . . . Ain’t you darlin?’
The corporal took their bantering in good part. ‘Aye! I’m a rare ’un for me weemin,’ he smiled complacently. ‘If the good Lord ever created anythin’ better than a bit o’ rogerin’, then I’ve yet to find it . . . An spakin’ about it makes me feel like a bite o’ the apple right now.’ He leant against the skinny Bertha who was next to him and slipped one hand over her shoulder and into her open bodice to clasp the free breast. The other hand he used to fondle her bony thighs.
‘Get away wi’ you!’ she cackled in delight. Then the baby disturbed from its feed began to squall loudly.
‘Theer! Look what you’se done, you randy Irish goat!’ Bertha shouted in annoyance. ‘I’ll not be able to get the babby back to sleep for hours now and my man ’ull bloody half-kill me so he ’ull, if the babby keeps acrying.’
The Ulsterman’s coarse handsome face was heavy with lust and he continued to knead her flat breasts and thin flanks with his hands.
‘Come on, honey, let’s have ten minutes behind the curtain.’ His manner was joking, but his eyes were serious.
Jethro didn’t know whether to feel pity or disgust at the spectacle of a man so dominated by the desires of the flesh. He was, he admitted, of an ardent temperament as regards women himself, but could feel no desire for the worn-out sluts at the table. He found himself comparing them with Sarah Jenkins. ‘By God! I’d like to see her again,’ he thought, and was surprised at the strength of his longing for her.
The other children who, up until now, had played quietly enough began to squabble and scuffle and the baby cries redoubled their intensity.
‘Arggrrhh be damned to ye!’ the corporal exclaimed and withdrew his hand. ‘For the love o’ God, get them kids quieted, will ye.’
The thin woman was now very angry. ‘Why doon’t you do it, cully?’ she jeered. ‘Most on ’um be yours anyway.’
‘Can’t you shut that brat up?’ A short squat man entered the room wearing the tall hairy mitre cap and the yellow uniform with red and silver facings of a drummer.
‘Theer! I bloody well said I’d get the blame for the bloody babby crying, didn’t I?’ Bertha swore.
The drummer, who was Bertha’s husband, unslung the deep-bodied drum and handed it to one of the children . . . ‘Put it away in my corner,’ he grunted, and scowled at his wife. ‘If that little barstard keeps on bawlin’, I’ll throw it through the bloody window!’ he threatened.
She stood up clasping the baby tightly to her and faced him unafraid. ‘You wants to think about that when you’m pumping the bloody kids into me,’ she retorted.
He raised his hand and aimed a blow at her, but she evaded him and scurried away behind the curtains of the corner bed. The drummer slumped on to her vacated seat and said to Rourke,
‘’As these ’cruities got their bounty?’ He didn’t look at the men he was talking about.
Turpin winked at Jethro and said loudly, ‘In the army, Jethro, the drummer is a man o’ great importance. He’s equal to a corporal and gets a corporal’s pay. But there’s one thing you oughter know about drummers. They’m give the drum because they’m either too weak to carry a firelock, or too blind to shoot wi’ one . . . Now as to ’um being blind, you con see the truth in that straight away, can’t you? This bleeder can’t even see far enough to look at us, when he’s atalkin’ about us. But I con see well enough to reach him, Jethro . . . And if he comes the flash cove wi’ us, then I’m agoing to take his bloody drumsticks and shove ’um right up his arse!’
The drummer’s hairy mitre cap turned so that its brass-badged front plate caught the last of the daylight from the window. He stared long and hard at both Turpin Wright and Jethro, then held out his hand towards them.
‘Welcome to our humble abode, mateys,’ he grinned. ‘Theer’s allus room here for “knowing lads” such as yourselves . . . Specially if they’se got the price of a dram, and they’se travelled these sort o’ roads afore.’
Turpin Wright grinned back and took the outstretched hand. ‘We’se already sent out for the dram,’ he replied, then shivered exaggeratedly. ‘Jesus! But it’s cold comfort here, arn’t it! Have you no coals for the fire?’
‘No,’ the corporal told him. ‘We used our allotment up pretty quick this time, and bedad! There’s hardly a candle stub to be had in the room, let alone anythin’ for supper.’
‘Say no more,’ Turpin said, looking the very picture of geniality and as soon as the women returned with the bottles of gin, the drinking began.
The battalion returned from Southsea Common and the barracks became a hubbub of shouting, cursing, boot-clumping men. Corporal Rourke’s room suddenly filled with soldiers in full drill kit and every one of them took a swig or two of gin, until in a very short space of time the bottles were empty. Turpin Wright, by now half-drunk, commandeered the whole of Jethro’s money and, putting it to his own, grandly proposed to buy food, drink, candles, and coals for the whole room. His offer was eagerly accepted and by the time the gun to signal sunset was fired from the platform of the seaward-facing Duke of York’s bastion, to be followed by the din of muskets, drums, fifes, bells and trumpets from all over the town’s barracks and establishments, the festivities in Corporal Rourke’s room were in full swing. Turpin Wright had appointed himself chairman of the gathering and since he was paying for the ale, gin, meat-pies, and bloaters being toasted by some of the men and women at the roaring fire, no one had objected.
Some of the older daughters and young women of the company had come to join the party and they and their men packed the benches along the trestled tables. The entire length of the tables was thick with stone jugs and raw gin, and the smell of toasting bloaters spitting their rich juices on to the flaming coals overpowered even the fug of the harsh, strong-tasting tobacco that was puffed in the short clay pipes by both men and women alike. Clasps were undone and neckstocks removed. Tunics and bodices unbuttoned and opened as the heat of fire, candles and dense-packed bodies caused sweat to run from hot red faces and across hairy chests, and to trickle down the clefts of plump white breasts. Wailing babies were given scraps of bread-filled rags soaked in gin to suck and they quickly became fuddled and slept.
Turpin Wright, wearing a shako back to front on his head, sat on a stool placed on top of the extreme end of the tables. His face was shiny with greasy sweat, and in one hand he held a stone jug of gin, while in the other a clay pipe waved to and fro, its burning ashes threatening t
o spill over the heads of those who sat directly below him. On the left were Corporal Rourke and Jethro. On the right lolled Big Sadie, slack-mouthed and glazed-eyed, her vast melon-like breasts spilling from her loosened bodice so that their big brown-ringed nipples were in plain sight.
There was no room for dancing, so the gathering sang instead, accompanied by the shrill tin whistles that some of the men produced. They roared the words of the Rogues March . . .
‘Fifty I got for selling me coat,
Fifty for sellin’ me blannnnnket . . .
If ever I ’list for the army agen,
the devil shall be my seeerrrgeant!’
Feet stamped in unison and sinews stood out stark in muscular throats as they bellowed the chorus . . . ‘Poor owd sodger! Poor owd sodger!’ and the tin whistles thrilled jauntily on in counterpoint. ‘Poor owd sodger! Poor owd sodger!’ To thunderous applause the best singer in the room, a freckle-faced Scotsman, gave them the haunting melody called ‘Love Farewell’, with its words of men dying in violent battle and mourning, as they died, the women they had loved and left. Fists hammered on tables and men and women wiped tears of laughter from streaming eyes in tribute to the saucy innuendo-laden ditties that Turpin Wright himself obliged them with.
As chairman, he would call the party to order after each contribution and, pointing with his pipe-stem at some man or woman sitting at the tables, would shout,
‘The honourable chair calls on you to sing a song, or dance a jig, or tell us a tale!’ And all present would bellow, ‘and the company desires it also!’
Mainly they sang. The sentimental,
‘Farewell, my lovely Nancy, farewell I must away . . .
For I hear the drums abeating and no longer can I stay . . .’
All who knew the song would join in. The sadness inherent in its verses bringing maudlin tears to drunken eyes as they sang softly,
‘For we’ve orders out from Portsmouth town, and for many a long mile . . .
For to fight the French and the heathens, on the baannks o’ the River Nile!’