Flashman in the Great Game. George Fraser MacDonald

Paget in the eye, and said:

      ‘It’s all by and done with now, ain’t it? Let’s drop it, George, shall we?’ And I went out then and there, leaving behind the impression that bluff, gallant Flashy didn’t want to talk about it – which convinced them all that Cardigan had shirked, better than if I’d said so straight out, or called him a coward to his face. I had a chance to do that, too, a bare two hours later, when the man himself came raging up to me with a couple of his toadies in tow, just as Spottswood and I were coming out of the Guards Club. The hall was full of fellows, goggling at the sensation.

      ‘Fwashman! You there, sir!’ he croaked – they were absolutely the first words between us since the Charge, nearly two years before. He was breathing frantically, like a man who has been running, his beaky face all mottled and his grey whiskers quaking with fury. ‘Fwashman – this is intolewable! My honour is impugned – scandalous lies, sir! And they tell me that you don’t deny them! Well, sir? Well? Haw-haw?’

      I tilted back my tile with a forefinger and looked him up and down, from his bald head and pop eyes to his stamping foot. He looked on the edge of apoplexy; a delightful sight.

      ‘What lies are these, my lord?’ says I, very steady.

      ‘You know vewy well!’ he cried. ‘Bawacwava, sir – the storming of the battewy! Word George Paget has asked you, in pubwic, whether you saw me at the guns – and you have the effwontewy to tell him you don’t know! Damnation, sir! And one of my own officers, too—’

      ‘A former member of your regiment, my lord – I admit the fact.’

      ‘Blast your impudence!’ he roared, frothing at me. ‘Will you give me the lie? Will you say I was not at the guns?’

      I settled my hat and pulled on my gloves while he mouthed.

      ‘My lord,’ says I, speaking deliberately clear, ‘I saw you in the advance. In the battery itself – I was otherwise engaged, and had no leisure nor inclination to look about me to see who was where. For that matter, I did not see Lord George himself until he pulled me to my feet. I assumed –’ and I bore on the word ever so slightly ‘– that you were on hand, at the head of your command. But I do not know, and frankly I do not care. Good day to you, my lord.’ And with a little nod I turned to the door.

      His voice pursued me, cracking with rage.

      ‘Colonel Fwashman!’ he cried. ‘You are a viper!’

      I turned at that, making myself go red in the face in righteous wrath, but I knew what I was about; he was getting no blow or challenge from me – he shot too damned straight for that.

      ‘Indeed, my lord,’ says I. ‘Yet I don’t wriggle and turn.’ And I left him gargling, well pleased with myself. But, as I say, it probably cost me the V.C. at the time; for all the rumours, he was still a power at Horse Guards, and well insinuated at Court, too.

      However, our little exchange did nothing to diminish my popularity at large; a few nights later I got a tremendous cheer at the Guards Dinner at Surrey Gardens, with chaps standing on the table shouting ‘Huzza for Flash Harry!’ and singing ‘Garryowen’ and tumbling down drunk – how they did it on a third of a bottle of bubbly beat me.² Cardigan wasn’t there, sensible fellow; they’d have hooted him out of the kingdom. As it was, Punch carried a nasty little dig about his absence, and wondered that he hadn’t sent along his spurs, since he’d made such good use of them in retiring from the battery.

      Of course, Lord Haw-Haw wasn’t the only general to come under the public lash that summer; the rest of ’em, like Lucan and Airey, got it too for the way they’d botched the campaign. So while we gallant underlings enjoyed roses and laurels all the way, our idiot commanders were gainfully employed exchanging recriminations, writing furious letters to the papers saying ’twasn’t their fault, but some other fellow’s, and there had even been a commission set up to investigate their misconduct of the war.

      Unfortunately, government picked the wrong men to do the investigating – MacNeill and Tulloch – for they turned out to be honest, and reported that indeed our high command hadn’t been fit to dig latrines, or words to that effect. Well, that plainly wouldn’t do, so another commission had to be hurriedly formed to investigate afresh, and this time get the right answer, and no nonsense about it. Well, they did, and exonerated everybody, hip-hip-hurrah and Rule, Britannia. Which was what you’d have expected any half-competent government to stage-manage in the first place, but Palmerston was in the saddle by then, and he wasn’t really good at politics, you know.

      To crown it all, in the middle of the scandal the Queen herself had words about it with Hardinge, the Commander-in-Chief, at the Aldershot Review, and poor old Hardinge fell down paralysed and never smiled again. It’s true; I was there myself, getting soaked through, and Hardinge went down like a shanghaied sailor, with all his faculties gone, not that he had many to start with. Some said it was a judgement on the Army and government corruption, so there.

      All of which mattered rather less to me than the width of Elspeth’s crinolines, but if I’ve digressed it is merely to show you how things were in England then, and also because I can never resist the temptation to blackguard Cardigan as he deserves. Meanwhile, I was going happily about my business, helping my dear wife spend her cash – which she did like a clipper-hand in port, I’m bound to say – and you would have said we were a blissful young couple, turning a blind eye to each other’s infidelities and galloping in harness when we felt like it, which was frequent, for if anything she got more beddable with the passing years.

      And then came the invitation to Balmoral, which reduced Elspeth to a state of nervous exultation close to hysterics, and took me clean aback. I’d have imagined that if the Royal family ever thought of me at all, it was as the chap who’d been remiss enough to lose one of the Queen’s cousins – but mind you, she had so many of ’em she probably didn’t notice, or if she did, hadn’t heard that I was to blame for it. No, I’ve puzzled over it sometimes, and can only conclude that the reason we were bidden to Balmoral that September was that Russia was still very much the topic of the day, what with the new Tsar’s coronation and the recent peace, and I was one of the most senior men to have been a prisoner in Russia’s hands.

      I didn’t have leisure to speculate at the time, though, for Elspeth’s frenzy at the thought of being ‘in attendance’, as she chose to call it, claimed everyone’s attention within a mile of Berkeley Square. Being a Scotch tradesman’s daughter, my darling was one degree more snobbish than a penniless Spanish duke, and in the days before we went north her condescension to her middle-class friends would have turned your stomach. Between gloating, and babbling about how she and the Queen would discuss dressmaking while Albert and I boozed in the gunroom (she had a marvellous notion of court life, you see), she went into declines at the thought that she would come out in spots, or have her drawers fall down when being presented. You must have endured the sort of thing yourself.

      ‘Oh, Harry, Jane Speedicut will be green! You and I – guests of Her Majesty! It will be the finest thing – and I have my new French dresses – the ivory, the beige silk, the lilac satin, and the lovely, lovely green which old Admiral Lawson so admired – if you think it is not a leetle low for the Queen? And my barrege for Sunday – will there be members of the nobility staying also? – will there be ladies whose husbands are of lower rank than you? Ellen Parkin – Lady Parkin, indeed! – was consumed with spite when I told her – oh, and I must have another maid who can manage my hair, for Sarah is too maladroit for words, although she is very passable with dresses – what shall I wear to picnics? – for we shall be bound to walk in the lovely Highland countryside – oh, Harry, what do you suppose the Queen reads? – and shall I call the Prince “highness” or “sir”?’

      I was glad, I can tell you, when we finally reached Abergeldie, where we had rooms in the castle where guests were put up – for Balmoral was very new then, and Albert was still busy having the finishing touches put to it. Elspeth by this time was too nervous even to talk, but her first glimpse of our royal hosts reduced her awe a trifle, I think. We took a stroll the first afternoon,