Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald

       Chapter 1

      Old Professor Flashy’s first law of economics is that the time to beware of a pretty woman is not when you’re flush of cash (well, you know what she’s after, and what’s a bankroll more or less?), but when you’re short of the scratch, and she offers to set you right. Because that ain’t natural, and God knows what she’s up to. I learned this when I was fourteen, and one Lady Geraldine, a high-spirited Hebe ten years my senior, lured me out in a punt with the promise of a crown if I minded her clothes while she went bathing. In all innocence, I accepted – and I haven’t seen that five bob yet, because the randy baggage had to shell out all her loose change to buy the silence of the grinning water-bailiff who caught us unawares in the reeds, where she was teaching me natural history after her swim. I had the presence of mind even at that tender age to clap my breeches over my face and so avoid recognition as I fled, but you take the point – I had been misled, in my youthful simplicity, by a designing female who played on my natural cupidity.

      Ever since, when they’ve dangled rich rewards before me, I’ve taken fright. If the case of Mrs Phoebe Carpenter was an exception – well, she was a clergyman’s wife, and you don’t expect double-dealing from a wide-eyed simperer who sings come-to-Jesus in the choir. I don’t know why I bothered with her … yes, I do, though; shaped like an Indian nautch-dancer under her muslin, blue-eyed, golden-haired, and with that pouting lower lip that’s as good as a beckoning finger to chaps like me – she reminded me rather of my darling wife, whom I hadn’t seen in more than three years and was getting uncommon hungry for. So, reading the invitation in Mrs Carpenter’s demure smile, and having ten days to loaf in Hong Kong before my ship sailed for Home¹, I decided to have a cast at her; it was a dead-and-alive hole in ’60, I can tell you, and how else should a weary soldier pass his time?

      So I attended morning and evening service, hollering hosannas and nodding stern approval while her drone of a husband sermonised about temptation and the snares that Satan spreads (about which he didn’t know the first dam’ thing), and gallantly helping her to gather up the hymn-books afterwards. I dined with them, traded a text or two with the Reverend, joined them in evening prayers, squired her along the Queen’s Road – she was all for it, of course, but what was middling rum was that he was, too; it ain’t every middle-aged vicar who cares to see his young bride escorted by a dashing Lancer with Balaclava whiskers. I put it down to natural toad-eating on his part, for I was the lion of the hour in those days, with my new knighthood and V.C., and all my Mutiny heroics to add to the fame I had undeservedly won in Crimea and Afghanistan. If you’ve read my earlier memoirs you’ll know all about it – and how by shirking, running, diving into cover, and shielding my quaking carcase behind better men, I had emerged after four campaigns with tremendous credit, a tidy sum in loot, and a chestful of tinware. I was a colonel of six years’ seniority at 37, big, bluff, handsome Flash Harry, quite a favourite with Queen and Consort, well spoken of by Palmerston and my chiefs, married to the beauteous and wealthy daughter of a peer (and a dead peer, at that) – and only I knew (though I’d a feeling that wily old Colin Campbell suspected) that my fame was all a fraud and a sham.

      There had been a time when I was sure it couldn’t last, and they were bound to find me out for the poltroom and scoundrel I was – but I’d been devilish lucky, and, d’ye know, there’s nothing sticks like a good name, provided you know how to carry your credit with a modest grin and a glad eye. Once let ’em call you a hero, and they’ll never leave off worshipping – which is absolute nuts when the worshipper cuts a figure like the adoring Mrs Carpenter’s. After three days of my society I reckoned she was ready to melt; all that was needed was a stroll in the garden after dark, a few well-chosen quotations from the Song of Solomon, and she’d play like one of those abandoned Old Testament queens her husband was forever reviling from the pulpit.

      As a final rehearsal I took her out to picnic at the Poke Fullam bungalow, which was the favoured resort in Hong Kong at that time; we found a secluded spot, spread a rug, disposed of the cold prawns and a bottle of Hock, and settled down to exchange my murmured gallantries for her sighs and coy glances – I didn’t intend to board her that afternoon, you understand; too public, and she wasn’t even part-drunk. As it happened, I’d have been wasting my time, for the innocent Mrs Carpenter had been working to a fixed end just as purposefully as I. And such an end; when I think back on it, words fail me.

      She led up to it by talking of her husband’s ambition to build a church and hall over at Kowloong; even in those days it was the fashionable place, so he would be quite top dog among the local gospel-wallopers. The difficulty, says she sighing, was money – although even that would not have been insurmountable had it not been for the impending war.

      “When Sir Hope Grant begins his campaign, you see, it is certain that there will be a cessation of all China trade, even with Canton,” says she. “And when that happens – why, there will be an end to all Josiah’s hopes. And mine.” And she choked back what sounded like a little sob.

      I’d been paying no heed, content to stroke her hand, brotherly-like, while she prattled, but hearing her gulp I perked up. Get ’em weeping, and you’re halfway to climbing all over them. I feigned concern, and squeezed her hand, begging her to explain what Grant’s campaign could have to do with dear Josiah’s church-building. I knew, as all the world did, that Grant was due in Hong Kong shortly with a fleet and army whose purpose would be to go up-country and force our latest treaty down the Chinese Emperor’s throat, but it wasn’t liable to be much of a war: show the flag to the Chinks, kick a few yellow backsides, and home again with hardly a shot fired – the kind of campaign that would have suited me, if I’d been looking for one, which I wasn’t. I could thank God I’d be homeward bound before Grant arrived, for he knew me from India and would certainly dragoon me into service if I were silly enough to be on hand. You don’t pass up the chance of employing the gallant Flashy. And he don’t pass up the chance of making himself scarce.

      “But even a little war will put an end to traffic with the Chinese merchants,” she lamented. “Oh, it is so hard, when Josiah and his friends have invested so wisely! To be robbed of the deserved profit that would have fulfilled his dream! It is too bad!” And she looked at me with trembling mouth and great blue eyes – Gad, she was like Elspeth, even to the imbecile parting of those crimson lips, and the quivering of her top hamper. Feeling slightly fogged, I asked, what investment had dear Josiah made?

      “Why, opium, of course! He was so clever, laying out Papa’s legacy in two thousand chests of the very choicest Patna,” says this fair flower of the vicarage. “And it would have fetched ever so much money at Canton – more than enough to build our dear little church! But if war comes, and he cannot sell his cargo …” She sniffed and looked woebegone.

      “D’you mean to tell me,” says I, astonished, “that Josiah is smuggling poppy?” I know the Church is game for anything, as a rule, and Hong Kong only existed for the opium trade; most everyone was in it. But it don’t go with dog-collars and Sunday schools, exactly.

      “Gracious, no! Dear Sir Harry, how could you suppose such a thing? Why, it is not smuggling at all nowadays!” She was all lovely earnestness as she explained – and so help me, these were her very words: “Josiah says that the fifth supplementary clause of the new treaty removes all restrictions on the trade in opium, cash, pulse, grain, saltpetre … oh, I forget all the things, but one of them is spelter, whatever that may be; it sounds very horrid. It is true,” she admitted gravely, “that the treaty is not yet ratified, but Sir Hope Grant will see to that, and Josiah says there can be no illegality in profiting by anticipation.” So there.

      Josiah’ll end up in Lambeth Palace or Dartmoor, at this rate, thinks I. Imagine – a clergyman peddling the black smoke. Purely out of curiosity, I asked didn’t he have moral qualms? She twitched her tits in impatience.

      “Oh, Josiah says that is Nonconformist missionary talk, and that it is well-known the natives of China use opium as a sedative, rather than as a narcotic,