Flashman and the Angel of the Lord

I’d supposed it would be straight aboard and hey for Merry England, but I was wrong. P. and O. hadn’t a berth for months, for the furloughs had started, and every civilian in India seemed to be leaving for home, to say nothing of ten thousand troops to be shipped out; John Company was hauling down his flag at last, India was passing under the rule of the Crown, everything was topsy-turvy, and even heroes had to wait their turn for a passage to Suez and the overland route – at a pinch you could get a ship to the Cape, but that was a deuce of a long haul. So I made myself pleasant around the P. and O. office, squeezed the buttocks of a Bengali charmer who wrote letters for the head clerk and had her dainty hands on his booking lists, tempted her with costly trinkets, and sealed the bargain by rattling her across his desk while he was out at tiffin (‘Oh, sair, you are ay naughtee mann!’). And, lo, ben Flashy’s name led all the rest on a vessel sailing two weeks hence.

I was dripping with blunt, having disposed of my Lucknow loot and banked the proceeds, but there wasn’t a bed to be had at the Auckland. Outram pressed me to stay with him – nothing too good for the man who’d smuggled his message through the pandy lines to Campbell – but I shied; only the fast set stayed up after ten in ‘Cal’ in those days, and I guessed that chez Outram it would be prayers at nine and gunfire and a cold tub at six, and I didn’t fancy above half scrambling out in the dark to seek vicious diversion. I played it modest, saying I knew his place would be full of Army and wives, and I’d rather keep out o’ the way, don’t you know, sir, and he looked noble and patted my shoulder, saying he understood, my boy, but I’d dine at least?

I put up at Spence’s, a ‘furnished apartment’ shop with a table d’hôte but no bearers even to clean your room, so bring your own servant or live like a pig. It served, though, and I could haunt the Auckland of an evening, seeking what I might devour.

I’d been two years without Elspeth, you see, and while they hadn’t been celibate quite, what with Lakshmi and various dusky houris here and there, and only the buxom Mrs Leslie at Meerut by way of variety, I was beginning to itch for something English again, blonde and milky for preference, and not reeking of musk and garlic. So the moment I saw Lady Plunkett (for her husband had a title) on the Auckland verandah, I knew I’d struck gold, which was the colour of her hair, with complexion to match. Beside Elspeth you’d not have noticed her, but she was tall and plump enough, with a pudding face and a big mouth, drooping with boredom, and once I’d caught her eye it was plain sailing. Believe it or not as you like, she dropped her handkerchief by my chair as she sailed out of the dining-room that evening (a thing I thought they did only in comic skits on the halls), so I told a bearer to take it after the mem-sahib, satisfied myself that her husband was improving his gout with port in company with other dodderers, and sauntered up to her rooms on the first floor.

To cut a long story short, we got along splendidly, and I had slipped her gown to her hips and was warming her up, so to speak, when the door opened at my back, her eager whimpers ended in a terrified squeak, and I glanced round to see her lord and master, who shouldn’t have been up for hours, tottering across the threshold, apparently on the verge of apoplexy. Well, I’d been there before, but seldom in more fortunate circumstances, for I was still fully clad, we were both standing up, and she was half-hidden from his gooseberry gaze. I hastily surrendered her tits, and glared at him.

‘What the devil d’ye mean by this intrusion, sir?’ cries I. ‘Begone this instant!’ And to my paralysed beauty I continued: ‘There is only the slightest congestion, marm, I’m happy to say; nothing to occasion alarm. You may resume your clothing now. I shall have a prescription sent round directly … Sir, did you not hear me? How dare you interrupt my examination? Upon my word, sir, have you no delicacy – out, I say, at once!’

He could only gobble in purple outrage while I chivvied her behind a screen. ‘That’s my wife!’ he bawls.

‘Then you should take better care of her,’ says I, whipping out a dhobi-list and scribbling professionally. ‘Fortunately my room is close at hand, and when I was summoned your lady was suffering an acute palpitation. Not uncommon – close city climate – nothing serious, but unpleasant enough … h’m, three grains should do it, I think … Has she had these fits before?’

‘I … I don’t know!’ cries he, wattling. ‘What? What? Maud, what does this mean? Who – why – are you a doctor, sir?’

‘MacNab, surgeon, 92nd,’ says I, mighty brisk, ignoring the mewlings from behind the screen and his own choking noises. ‘Complete rest for a day or two, you understand; no undue exertion. I shall send this note to the apothecary.’ I pocketed my paper, and sniffed, looking stern. ‘Port, sir? Well, it’s no concern of mine if you choose to drink yourself under ground, but I’d say one invalid in the family is enough, hey?’ I addressed the screen. ‘To bed at once, marm! Two teaspoonfuls when the boy brings the medicine, mind. I shall call in the morning and look to find you much improved. Good night – and to you, sir.’

Never let ’em get a word in, you see. I was out and downstairs before he knew it, reflecting virtuously that that was another marriage I’d saved by quick thinking – if he believed her, which I’d not have done myself. But, stay … even if he did, he’d find out soon enough that there was no Dr MacNab of the 92nd, and start baying for the blood of the strapping chap with black whiskers, and Calcutta society being as small as it was, he was sure to run me down – and then, scandal, which would certainly tarnish my newly won laurels … my God, if Plunkett roared loud enough it might even reach the Queen’s ears, and where would my promised knighthood be then? But if I could slide out now, undetected – well, you can’t identify a man who ain’t there, can you?

All of a sudden, Westward ho! without delay seemed the ticket – and scandal wasn’t the only reason. Some of these ancients with young high-stepping consorts can be vicious bastards, as witness the old roué who’d sicked his bullies after me for romping Letty Lade in the cricket season of ’45 – and he hadn’t even been married to her.

So now you see Flashy at the Howrah docks in the misty morning, with his dunnage on a hand-cart, dickering for a passage to the Cape with a Down-east skinflint in a tile hat who should have been flying the Jolly Roger, the price he demanded for putting into Table Bay. But he was sailing that day, and since tea for New York was his cargo it would be a fast run, so I stumped up with a fair grace; after all, I hadn’t put cash down for the passage arranged by the Bengali bint, and I didn’t grudge her the trinkets; my one regret was that I hadn’t boarded the Plunkett wench … I hope he believed her.

It was about a month to the Cape, with the taffrail under most of the way, but not too bad until we neared Algoa Bay, when it began to blow fit to sicken Magellan. I’ve never seen so much green water; even less cheering was the sight of a big steamer lying wrecked on a reef off Port Elizabeth,5 and I was a happy man when we’d rounded the Cape and opened up that glorious prospect which is one of the wonders of the seas – the great bay glittering in the sunlight with a score or more of windjammers and coasters and a few steamers at anchor, and beyond them the ‘table-cloth’ of cloud rolling down the flank of the Mountain to Signal Hill, and guns booming from the Castle to salute a man-of-war putting out, with crowds fluttering hats and scarves from Green Point.

Once ashore I engaged a berth on the Union mail steamer sailing the following week, put up at the Masonic, and took a slant at the town. It was busy enough, for the Australian gold rush of a few years back, and the Mutiny, had set the port booming, but the town itself was a damned Dutch-looking place with its stoeps and stolid stucco houses, most of which are gone now, I believe, and the great church clock tower which looks as though it should have an Oom Paul beard round its face. It had been a wild place in the earlies, the ‘tavern of the seas’, but now it was respectable and dull, and the high jinks were to be had at Grahamstown, far away up the coast, where the more sensible Britons lived and the Army was quartered – what there was of them, for the Governor, George Grey, had stripped the colony of men, guns, and stores for the Mutiny, and the old Africa hands in the hotel were full of foreboding over their pipes and stingo, with the country arse-naked, as one of them put it, and the usual trouble brewing to the north.

‘We’ll have the Kaffirs at our throats again ere long, see if we don’t,’ says one pessimist. ‘Know how many wars they’ve given us, colonel, thanks to the damned missionaries? Eight – or is it nine? Blessed if you don’t lose count! To say nothin’ o’ the Dutch – not that they haven’t got their hands full, by all accounts, an’ serve the miserable beggars right! They’ll be howlin’ for you redcoats presently, mark my words!’

‘You never saw a Boer ask help from a Briton yet!’ scoffs another. ‘Nor they needn’t – they’ll give the Basutos the same pepper they gave John Zulu, if Moshesh don’t mind his manners.’

‘You never know,’ laughs a third, ‘maybe the dear Basutos’ll do the decent thing an’ starve themselves to death, what?’

‘Not old Moshesh – that’s a Bantu who’s too smart by half, as we’ll find out to our cost one o’ these days.’

‘Oh, Grey’ll see to him, never fear – an’ the Boers, if only London will let him alone. Any more word of his goin’?’

‘You may bet on it – if the Colonial Office don’t ship him home, the doctor will. I don’t like his colour; the man’s played out.’

‘Well, he can go for me. We bade good riddance to Brother Boer years ago – why should we want him back?’

These are just scraps of talk that I remember, and no doubt they’re as Greek to you as they were to me, but being a curious child I listened, and learned a little, for these fellows – English civilians and merchants mostly, a Cape Rifleman or two, and a couple of trader-hunters down from the frontiers – knew their country, which was a closed book to me, then, bar my brief visit to the Slave Coast, and that was years ago and a world away from the Cape. Truth to tell, Africa’s never been my patch, much; I’ve soldiered on veldt and desert, and seen more of its jungle than I cared for, but like our statesmen I’ve always thought it a dam’ nuisance. Perhaps Dahomey inoculated me against the African bug which has bitten so many, to their cost, for it breeds grand dreams which often as not turn into nightmares.

It was biting hard at this time, not least on Grey, the Governor, and since he was to play a small but crucial part in my present story, I must tell you something of him – but I can’t do that without first telling you about South Africa, as briefly as may be. It won’t explain the place to you (God Himself couldn’t do that), but it may lead you to wonder if two damned dirty and costly wars mightn’t have been avoided (and who knows what hellish work in the future?) if only those Reform Club buffoons hadn’t thought they knew better than the man on the spot.

You have to understand that in ’59 Africa was the last great prize and mystery, an unmapped hinterland twice the size of Europe where anything was possible: lost civilisations, hidden cities, strange white tribes – they were no joke then. Real exploration of the dark heart of the continent had just begun; Livingstone had blazed his trails up and down it and across, farther north Dick Burton was making an ass of himself by not finding the source of the Nile, but the broad steady inroad was from the south, where we’d established ourselves. The Dutch settlers, not caring for us much, had trekked north to found their own Boer republics in lands where they met hordes of persevering black gentlemen coming t’other way; they fought the Zulus and Basutos (and each other) while we fought the Kaffirs to the east, and everything was dam’ confused, chiefly because our rulers at home couldn’t make up their minds, annexing territories and then letting ’em go, interfering with the Boers one minute and recognising their independence the next, trying to hold the ring between black and white and whining at the expense, and then sending out Grey, who brought the first touch of common sense – and, if you ask me, the last.

His great gift, I was told, was that he got on splendidly with savages – even the Boers. He’d been a soldier, explored in Australia, governed there and in New Zealand, and saw at once that the only hope for southern Africa was to reunite Briton and Boer and civilise the blacks within our borders, which he’d begun to do with schools and hospitals and teaching them trades. In this he’d been helped by one of those lunatic starts which happen among primitive folk: in ’57 a troublesome warrior tribe, the ’Zozas, had got the notion that if they destroyed all their crops and cattle, the gods would send them bumper harvests and even fatter herds, and all the white men in Africa would obligingly drown themselves; accordingly, the demented blighters starved themselves to death, which left more space for white settlement, and the surviving ’Zozas were in a fit state to be civilised.6 Meanwhile Grey was using his persuasive arts to charm the Boers back under the Union Jack, and since our Dutch friends were beginning to feel the pinch of independence – isolated up yonder, cut off from the sea, worn out with their own internal feuding, and fighting a running war against the Basutos (whose wily chief, Moshesh, had egged on the ’Zozas’s suicide for his own ends) – they were only too ready to return to Britannia’s fold.

That was the stuff of Grey’s dream, as I gathered from my fellow-guests at the hotel – a united South Africa of Briton, Boer, and black. Most of my informants were all for it, but one or two were dead against the Boers, which put one grizzled old hunter out of all patience.

‘I don’t like the Hollanders any better’n you do,’ says he, ‘but if whites won’t stand together, they’ll fall separately. Besides, if we don’t have the Boers under our wing, they’ll go on practisin’ their creed that the only good Bantu’s a dead one – or a slave, an’ we know where that leads – bloody strife till Kingdom Come.’

‘And what’s Grey’s style?’ asks a fat civilian. ‘Teach ’em ploughing and the Lord’s Prayer and make ’em wear trowsers? Try that with the Matabele, why don’t you? Or the Zulu, or the Masai.’

‘You’ve never seen the Masai!’ snaps the old chap. ‘Anyway, sufficient unto the day. I’m talkin’ about settlin’ the Bantu inside our own borders –’

‘We should never ha’ given ’em the vote,’ says a Cape Rifleman. ‘What happens when they outnumber us, tell me that?’ This was an eye-opener to me, I can tell you, but it’s true – every man-jack born on Cape soil had the vote then, whatever his colour; more than could be said for Old England.7

‘Oh, by then all the Zulu and Mashona will be in tight collars, talking political economy,’ sneers the fat chap. He jabbed his pipe at the hunter. ‘You know it’s humbug! They ain’t like us, they don’t like us, and they’ll pay us out when they can. Hang it all, you were at Blood River, weren’t you? Well, then!’

‘Aye, an’ I back Grey ’cos I don’t want Blood River o’er again!’ cries the hunter. ‘An’ that’s what you’ll get, my boy, if the Boers ain’t reined up tight inside our laager! As for the tribes … look here, I don’t say you can civilise a Masai Elmoran now … but they’re a long way off. Given time, an’ peaceful persuasion when we come to ’em – oh, backed up by a few field pieces, if you like – things can be settled with good will. So I reckon Grey’s way is worth a try. It’s that or fight ’em to the death – an’ there’s a hell of a lot o’ black men in Africa.’

There were murmurs of agreement, but my sympathies were all with the fat chap. I don’t trust enlightened proconsuls, I’d heard no good of the Boers, and fresh from India as I was, the notion of voting niggers was too rich for me. Can’t say my views have changed, either – still, when I look back on the bloody turmoil of southern Africa in my lifetime, which has left Boer and Briton more at loggerheads than ever, the blacks hating us both, and their precious Union fifty years too late, I reckon the old hunter was right: Grey’s scheme was worth a try; God knows it couldn’t have made things worse.

But of course it never got a try, because the home government had the conniptions at the thought of another vast territory being added to the Empire, which they figured was too big already – odd, ain’t it, that the world should be one-fifth British today, when back in the ’fifties our statesmen were dead set against expansion – Palmerston, Derby, Carnarvon, Gladstone, aye, even D’Israeli, who called South Africa a millstone.

While I was at the Cape, though, the ball was still in the air; they hadn’t yet scotched Grey’s scheme of union and called him home, and he was fighting tooth and nail to get his way. Which was why, believe it or not, I found myself bidden to dine with his excellency a few days later – and that led to the first coincidence that set me on the road to Harper’s Ferry.

When I got the summons, aha, thinks I, he wants to trot the Mutiny hero up and down before Cape society, to raise their spirits and remind ’em how well the Army’s been doing lately. Sure enough, he had invited the local quality to meet me at a reception after dinner, but that wasn’t his reason, just his excuse.

We dined at the Castle, which had been the Governor’s residence in the days of the old Dutch East India Company, and was still used occasionally for social assemblies, since it had a fine hall overlooked at one end by a curious balcony called the Kat, from which I gather his Dutch excellency had been wont to address the burghers. I duly admired it before we went to dinner in an ante-room; it was a small party at table, Flashy in full Lancer fig with V.C. and assorted tinware, two young aides pop-eyed with worship, and Grey himself. He was a slim, poetic-looking chap with saintly eyes, not yet fifty, and might have been a muff if you hadn’t known that he’d walked over half Australia, dying of thirst most of the time, and his slight limp was a legacy of an Aborigine’s spear in his leg. The first thing that struck you was that he was far from well: the skin of his handsome face was tight and pallid, and you felt sometimes that he was straining to keep hold, and be pleasant and easy. The second thing, which came out later, was his cocksure confidence in G. Grey; I’ve seldom known the like – and I’ve been in a room with Wellington and Macaulay together, remember.

He was quiet enough at dinner, though, being content to watch me thoughtful-like while his aides pumped me about my Mutiny exploits, which I treated pretty offhand, for if I’m to be bongeredfn3 let it be by seniors or adoring females. I found Grey’s silent scrutiny unsettling, too, and tried to turn the talk to home topics, but the lads didn’t care for the great crusade against smoking, or the state of the Thames, or the Jews in Parliament;8 they wanted the blood of Cawnpore and the thunder of Lucknow, and it was a relief when Grey sent them packing, and suggested we take our cigars on the verandah.

‘Forgive my young men,’ says he. ‘They see few heroes at the Cape.’ The sort of remark that is a sniff as often as not, but his wasn’t; he went on to speak in complimentary terms of my Indian service, about which he seemed to know a great deal, and then led the way down into the garden, walking slowly along in the twilight, breathing in the air with deep content, saying even New Zealand had nothing to touch it, and had I ever known anything to compare? Well, it was balmy enough with the scent of some blossom or other, and just the spot to stroll with one of the crinolines I could see driving in under the belfry arch and descending at the Castle doorway beyond the trees, but it was evidently heady incense to Grey, for he suddenly launched into the most infernal prose about Africa, and how he was just the chap to set it in order.

You may guess the gist of it from what I’ve told you already, and you know what these lyrical buggers are like when they get on their hobby-horses, on and on like the never-wearied rook. He didn’t so much talk as preach, with the quiet intensity of your true fanatic, and what with the wine at dinner and the languorous warmth of the garden, it’s as well there wasn’t a hammock handy. But he was the Governor, and had just fed me, so I nodded attentively and said ‘I never knew that, sir,’ and ‘Ye don’t say!’, though I might as well have hollered ‘Whelks for sale!’ for all he heard. It was the most fearful missionary dross, too, about the brotherhood of the races, and how a mighty empire must be built in harmony, for there was no other way, save to chaos, and now the golden key was in his hand, ready to be turned.9

‘You’ve heard that the Orange Volksraad has voted for union with us?’ says he, taking me unawares, for until then he’d apparently been talking to the nearest tree. Not knowing what the Orange Volksraad was, I cried yes, and not before time, and he said this was the moment, and brooded a bit, à la Byron, stern but gleaming, before turning on me and demanding:

‘How well do you know Lord Palmerston?’

Too dam’ well, was the answer to that, but I said I’d met him twice in the line of duty, no more.

‘He sent you to India on secret political work,’ says he, and now he was all business, no visionary nonsense. ‘He must think highly of you – and so he should. Afghanistan, Punjab, Central Asia, Jhansi … oh, yes, Flashman, news travels, and we diplomatics take more note of work in the intelligence line than we do of …’ He indicated my Cross, with a little smile. ‘I have no doubt that his lordship values your opinion more than that of many general officers. Much more.’ He was looking keen, and my innards froze, for I’d heard this kind of talk before. You ain’t getting me up yonder disguised as a Zulu, you bastard, thinks I, but his next words quieted my fears.

‘I am not persona grata at home, colonel. To be blunt, they think me a dangerous dreamer, and there is talk of my recall – you’ve heard it bruited in the town, I don’t doubt. Well, sir,’ and he raised his chin, eye to eye, ‘I hope I have convinced you that I must not be recalled, for the sake of our country’s service – and for the sake of Africa. Now, Lord Palmerston will not be out of office long, I believe.10 Will you do me the signal favour, when you reach home, of seeking him out and impressing on him the necessity – the imperative necessity – of my remaining here to do the work that only I can do?’

I’ve had some astonishing requests in my time – from women, mostly – but this beat all. If he thought the unsought opinion of a lowly cavalry colonel, however supposedly heroic and versed in political ruffianing, would weigh a jot with Pam, he was in the wrong street altogether. Why, the thought of my buttonholing that paint-whiskered old fox with ‘Hold on, my lord, while I set you right about Africa’ was stuff for Punch. I said so, politely, and he fixed me with that steely gazelle eye and sighed.

‘I am well aware that a word from you may carry little weight – all I ask is that … little. His lordship has not inclined to accept my advice in the past, and I must use every means to persuade him now, do you not see?’ He stared hard at me, impatient; there was a bead of sweat on his brow – and suddenly it came to me that the man was desperate, ready to snatch at anything, even me. He was furious at having to plead with a mutton-headed soldier (he, Sir George Grey, who alone could save Africa!), but he was in that state where he’d have tried to come round Palmerston’s cook. He tried to smile, but it was a wry grimace on the pale, strained face. ‘Decisions, you know, are not always swayed by senators; a word from the slave in the conqueror’s chariot may turn the scale.’ Gad, he could pay a compliment, though. ‘Well, Colonel Flashman, may I count on you? Believe me, you will be doing a service to your country quite as great as any you may have done in the past.’

I should have spat in his eye and told him I didn’t run errands for civil servants, but it’s not every day you’re toadied by a lofty proconsul, patronising jackanapes though he may be. So I accepted his hand-clasp, which was hard (but damp, I noted with amusement), marvelling at the spectacle of a proud man humbling himself for the sake of his pride, and ambition. All wasted, too, for they did recall him – and then Pam reinstated him, not at my prompting, you may be sure. But his great African dream came to nothing.