Flashman And The Tiger fp-11

by George MacDonald Fraser

  It was pure chance I was at that theatre at all—or even in London, for it was still winter, when Elspeth and I prefer to snug up cosily at our Leicestershire place, where the drink and vittles are of the best, and we can snarl at each other comfortably. But she had insisted we go up to Town for the Macmillan christening'—being Scotch herself, and fancying that she occupied a place in Society, she was forever burdening other unfortunate Caledonians with her presence—and I didn’t mind too much; I’d heard rumours from friends in the know that there was to be a monstrous increase in death duties at the next Budget, and being in my seventy-second year by then, with a fat sum in the bank, it seemed sensible to squander as much among the fleshpots as we indecently could.

  So to Town we went, and in between brandy-soaked evenings with old comrades and hopeful prowlings after a new generation of loose women, I allowed myself to be talked into escorting my grand-daughter to the theatre to see Mrs Campbell drivelling abominably in Mrs Tanqueray. I’d much have preferred going to watch Nala Damajanti and her Amazing Snakes at the Palace, or the corsetted fat bottoms and tits in George Edwardes' show, but being a besotted grandparent I’d have let my little Selina coax me into watching three hours of steady rain and been happy. She was a little darling, and the apple of my bleary old eye—how my son, as unpromising a prig as ever saddened a father’s heart by becoming a parson, could have sired such an angel, I’ve never been able to fathom. I call her little, but in fact she was one of your tall, stately beauties, with raven black hair (like mine, once), eyes flashing dark as a gypsy’s, and a face that could change from classical perfection to sparkling mischief in an instant. She was just nineteen then, a lovely, lively innocent, and I watched her like a jealous hawk where the Society boys were concerned—I know what I was like when I was their age, and I wasn’t having the dirty young rips lechering round my little Selly. Besides, she was officially affianced to young Randall Stanger, a titled muttonhead in the Guards, and their forthcoming nuptials would be quite an event of the Season.

  She was chattering happily as we came out after the third act, and caught the eye of the bold Oscar, who was holding forth languidly to a group of his fritillaries near the bar entrance, looking as usual like an overfed trout in a toupé. He and I had known each other more or less since the days when I was being pursued by Lily Langtry; as I went past now, trying not to notice him, with Selly on my arm, he nudged one of his myrmidons and said sotto voce:

  "Strange, how desire doth so outrun performance," and then, pretending just to notice me: "Why, General Flashman! In London out of season? That can only mean that all the hares and foxes have left the country, or the French are invading it." His group of harumphrodites all tittered at this, and the fat posturer waved his gold-tipped cigarette, well pleased with his insolence. I looked at him.

  "Quoting Shakespeare, Oscar?" says I. "Pity you don’t crib him more often. Get better notices, what? My dear," says I to Selly, "this is Mr Wilde, who writes comic material for the halls. My grand-daughter, Miss Selina Flashman."

  "You grandchild? Incredible!" drawls he. "But delightful—beautiful! Why, if dear Bosie were here, instead of indulging him-self so selfishly in Italy, he would write verses to you, ma’mselle—verses like purple blooms in a caliph’s garden. I would write them myself, but my new play, you know …" He pressed her hand, with his fruity smile. "And I see, dear Miss Flashman, that you are discriminating as well as beautiful—you have had the excellent taste to choose as your grandfather one of the few civilised generals in the British Army." He waited for her look of surprise. "He never won a battle, you know. May I present Mr Beasley[10] … Mr Bruce … Mr Gaston … Colonel Moran …"

  He turned her with a flutter of his plump hand to his toadies, and gave me his drooping insolent stare. "Do you know, my dear Sir Harry, I believe I have a splendid idea. I might—" he poked his gilded cigarette at me "—I might confer on you an immortality quite beyond your desserts. I might put you in a play—assuming the Lord Chamberlain had no objection. Think what a stir that would create at the Horse Guards." He gave a mincing little titter.

  "You do, Father Oscar,' says I, "and I’ll certainly confer immortality on you."

  "How so?" cries he, affecting astonishment.

  "I’ll kick you straight in the tinklers—assuming you’ve got any," says I. "Think what a stir that’ll create in the Café Royal." I turned to Selly, who was out of earshot, listening to what one of Oscar’s creatures was saying. "Come, my dear. Our carriage will be—" And that was the moment when I found myself looking at Moran.

  He was on the fringe of Oscar’s group—and so out of place among that posy of simpering pimps that I wonder I hadn’t noticed him earlier. But now recognition was instant, and mutual. His hair had gone, save a grey fringe about the ears, the splendid moustache was snow-white, and the lined brown face had turned boozer’s red, but there was no mistaking that hawk nose and the bright, shifting eyes. Dress him how and where you liked, he was still Tiger Jack.

  He was looking at me with that odd quirky little smile at the corner of his thin mouth, and then the blue eyes turned from me to Selina, who was laughing happily at what someone was saying, fluttering her fan before her white shoulders, teasing the speaker innocently. Moran looked at her for a moment, and when his eyes came back to mine he was grinning—and it wasn’t a nice grin.

  Now all this happened in an instant, while I was recognising him, and realising that he had recognised me. There was a second’s pause, and then as I was about to move forward and greet him he stepped quickly back, murmuring an excuse to Selly and the others, and slipped into the bar. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it seemed damned odd behaviour; however, it didn’t matter, and Selly was taking my arm and murmuring farewells, so I exchanged another disgusted glare with Wilde and led her away. She had noticed, though—sharp little creature that she was.

  "Why did that gentleman—Colonel Moran—hurry off so suddenly?" says she, when we were in the carriage. "I’m sure he knew you."

  "He did," says I. "At least, we met once—in a war."

  "But then, so many of these people seem to behave … most curiously," says Selly. "Mr Oscar Wilde, for instance—is he not a very strange person, gramps?"

  "That’s one way of putting it," says I. "And don’t call me `gramps', young woman; I’m grandpapa."

  Now, why the blazes should Moran have avoided me? Lots of fellows do, of course, but he had no earthly reason that I could think of. We’d met only once, as you know, and been comrades-in-arms after a fashion—indeed, he’d saved my life. It, seemed odd, and I puzzled over it for a while, but then gave it up, and was snoozing in my corner of the carriage and had to be roused by a giggling Selina when we reached home in Berkeley Square.

  Moran wasn’t alone in giving me the cold shoulder at that time, though. Only a couple of days after the theatre I was cut stone dead by someone a deal more important—the Prince of Wales, no less, shied violently away from me in the United Service card-room, and hightailed it as fast as his ponderous guts would let him, giving me a shifty squint over his shoulder as he went. That, I confess, I found pretty raw. It’s embarrassing enough to be cut by the most vulgar man in Europe, but when he is also a Prince who is deeply in your debt you begin to wonder what royalty’s coming to. For if ever anyone had cause to be grateful to me, it was Beastly Bertie; not only had I done my bit to guide his youthful footsteps along the path of vice and loose living (not that he’d needed much coaching), I’d even resigned Lily Langtry in his favour, turned a deaf ear to rumours that he and my darling Elspeth had behaved indecorously in a potting-shed, and only three years earlier had plucked him, only slightly soiled, out of the Tranby card scandal. If that wasn’t enough, he was still using a cosy little property of mine on Hay Hill to conduct his furtive fornications with the worst sort of women, duchesses and actresses and the like. Well, thinks I, as I watched him rolling off, if that’s your gratitude you can take your trollops elsewhere; I’d a good mind to c
harge him rent, or corkage. I didn’t, of course; a bounder he might be, but it don’t pay to offend the heir to the Throne.

  Such rubs apart, I passed the next few weeks agreeably enough. There was plenty of interest about town, what with a Society murder—a young sprig of the nobility called Adair getting himself shot mysteriously in the West End—and a crisis in the government, when that dodderer Gladstone finally resigned. I ran into him in the lavatory of the Reform Club—not a place I belong to, you understand, but I’d been to a champagne and lobster supper in St James’s, and just looked in to unload. Gladstone was standing brooding over a basin in a nonconformist way, offensively sober as usual, when I staggered along, middling tight.

  "Hollo, old ’un," says I. "Marching orders at last, hey? Ne’er mind, it happens to all of us. It’s this damned Irish business, I suppose—" for as you know, he was always fussing over Ireland; no one knew what to do about it, and while the Paddies seemed to be in favour of leaving the place and going to America, Glad-stone was trying to make ’em keep it; something like that.

  "Where you went wrong," I told him, "was in not giving the place back to the Pope long ago, and apologising for the condition it’s in. Fact."

  He stood glaring at me with a face like a door-knocker.

  "Good-night, General Flashman," he snapped, and I just sank my head on the basin and cried: "Oh, God, what a loss Palmerston was!" while he stumped off, and took to his bed in Brighton.[12]

  However, that’s by the way: I must return to the matter of Colonel Tiger Jack Moran, who had gone clean out of my mind after that fleeting glimpse of him at the theatre, until a dirty night at the end of March, when I was sitting up late reading, Elspeth having taken herself off to bed with the new serial story. The house was still, the fire almost out, and I was drowsing over the paper, which was full of interesting items about the Matabele war, and the Sanitation Conference in Paris, and news of an action by the Frogs against my old chums the Touaregs at Timbuctoo, in which large numbers of sheep had been captured,[13] when Shadwell, the butler, came in all agog to say that my grand-daughter was here, and must see me.

  "At this hour?" says I, and then she came fluttering into the room in a rush of pink ball-gown, her lovely little face staring with woe, and fairly flung herself on my chest, crying:

  "Oh, grandpapa, grandpapa, what shall I do? Oh, gramps, please help-me—please!"

  "In God’s name, Selina!" says I, staggered. I waved the goggling Shadwell out of the room, and sat her down, all trembling, in a chair. "My dear child, whatever’s the matter?"

  For a moment she couldn’t tell me, but could only sit shuddering and sobbing and biting her lip, so I pushed a tot of brandy into her, and when she had coughed and swallowed she lifted her tear-streaked face and caught my hand.

  "Oh, gramps, I don’t know what to do! It is the most dreadful thing—I think I shall die!" She took a great sobbing breath. "It is Randall—and … and Colonel Moran! Oh, what are we to do?"

  "Moran?" I was dumfounded. "That fellow we saw at the theatre? Why, what the dooce has he to do with you, child?"

  It took some more sips of brandy, punctuated by wails and tears, to get the story out of her, and it was a beauty, if you like. Apparently Moran was well known in gaming circles in Town, and made a practice of inveigling young idiots to play with him—that solved the mystery of why he’d been in Oscar Wilde’s company; there was never any lack of rich and witless young gulls round Oscar. And among the spring lambs he’d fleeced was Selina’s intended, Randall Stanger; by what she said, Moran had got into him for a cool few thou'.

  "In God’s name, girl, if it’s only money—" I was crying out in relief, but it was worse than that; fatally worse. The half-wit Randall, ,afraid to tell his lordly Papa, had set out to recoup his losses, using regimental money, heaven help us, and had lost that, too. Which was black ruin, and disgrace, when the thing was detected, as it would be.

  However, I’m an old hand at scandals, as you may guess. How much? I asked her briskly, and she bleated out, picking her fan to pieces: twelve thousand. I swallowed hard and said, well, Randall shall have it from my bank tomorrow—he can pay off Moran, and put whatever is necessary back into his mess funds double quick, and no one’ll be the wiser. (What the blazes, I’m not a charitable man, but the young fool was going to be my grandson-in-law.)

  Would you believe it, she just wailed the louder, shaking her head and sobbing that it wouldn’t save him—nothing would. "Colonel Moran knows—he knows where Randall has got the money from, and promises to expose him … unless …" She buried her face in the cushions, bawling fit to break her stays.

  "Unless what, confound it? What does he want, except his money?"

  "Unless … unless …" says she, gazing at me with those great tear-filled eyes. "Unless … I … oh, gramps, I must die first! He will expose Randall unless I … submit … oh, God! I’m his price! Don’t you see? Oh, what am I to do?"

  Well, this was Act Two of "The Villain Still Pursued Her" with a vengeance, wasn’t it just? Not that I disbelieved it for an instant – show me melodrama, and I’ll show you truth, every time. And I didn’t waste effort clutching my brow, exclaiming "The villain he shall rue this day!"

  I could even see Moran’s point of view—I’d played Wicked Jasper myself, in my time, twirling my whiskers at Beauty and chivvying ’em into bed as the price of my silence or good will. But this was my own grand-daughter, and my gorge rose at the thought of her at the mercy of that wicked old roué. She must be saved, at any cost.

  "When do you have to answer him?" I asked.

  "Next week," she sobbed. "He will wait only a few days—and then … then I must be … ruined!"

  "Does Randall know?" I asked, and she shook her head, snivel-ling into her handkerchief. "Well, don’t let him know, understand? No one must know—above all, not your grandmother. Let me see

  – first thing is an order on my bank for the twelve thousand, so that this idiot you’re going to marry can square his accounts—"

  "But Colonel Moran—" she wailed, beating her little fist.

  "I’ll see to him, never fear. Now, Selly, all is going to be well, d’you see? Absolutely well—and you don’t have to worry your pretty head over it, you understand me?" I took her hand and put my arm round her shoulders and rubbed my old whiskers against her brow, as I’d done since she was a baby, and she wept on my shoulder. "Now—you dry your eyes, and let’s see your best smile

  – no, your best one, I said—there, that’s my princess." I wiped a tear from her cheek, and she flung her arms round my ancient neck.

  "Oh, gramps—you are the dearest grandpapa! I know you will make it right!" She sniffed in my ear. "Perhaps … after all, if you offered him more money … he is such a greedy, odious person. But you will find a way, won’t you?"

  That, of course, remained to be seen, and when I’d packed her off to bed, and sent word round to her fond parents' house that she’d be staying the night with us, I sought enlightenment in brandy. I find it helps. Moran, thinks I to myself; evil, lecherous skunk. I thought of that shifty eye and wicked mouth—aye, he fitted the part he’d written for himself. Trying to ruin virginity, was he—and my little Selly’s at that, damn him. Well, now, if I was in his shoes (as I had been, of course) what would make me forego my dirty designs? Threats of violence?—well, they’d have worked on me, but they wouldn’t on Moran, that was certain. He was all cold steel and courage, that one; I’d seen him. Money, then? Aye, I could have been bought off—I had been, in the past. So—Flashy’s bank account was in for another rough shaking. Well, if needs must, so be it—I couldn’t see any other way.

  Not that I was resigned to tamely paying up, you understand; if I could find a way of foiling the swine I’d do it, but I plied my wits through a bottle and a half by next afternoon, without striking paydirt. However, until I saw Moran himself, there was nothing to be done, so I sought out his direction by discreet inquiry, and early evening found me round at his room
s, off Bond Street, sending in my card. I was ushered up, and there was the man himself, very much at his ease, in a most luxuriously fitted den, all leather and good panels and big game trophies on the walls. Chinese carpet, too, rot him; his price wasn’t going to be a cheap one.

  "Well, well," says he, setting his back to the mantel, very lean and cool. "I half-expected you’d be round, if not quite so soon."

  "All right, Moran," says I, giving him my damn-you stare, and keeping my tile on. "What’s the game?"

  "Game, my dear chap? The only game I’m interested in is big game, what? Reminds me—have you seen that rubbish in The Times sporting columns—review of some book on shikar'?" He sauntered forward to his desk, and picked up a paper. "Here we are—`No beast, perhaps, is more dangerous than the buffalo.' What tosh, don’t you agree? Why, what buffalo that ever walked could compare with a wounded leopard, eh? Or a tiger, if it comes to that. But maybe you’ve another opinion?" He gave a short laugh, and the blue eyes slipped quickly over me. "What d’ye think of my collection, by the way? Only the best of it here, of course—rather fine, though. That ibex head, for example, and the snow leopard beside the window—"

  "My only interest in your collection," I growled, "is that it isn’t going to contain my grand-daughter."

  "No?" says he, lightly. "Thought she’d look rather well, mounted—wouldn’t you think? Don’t do anything foolish," he added sharply, as I started to plough forward, snarling at his filthy insolence. "You’re past the age when you can lift your stick to anyone—not that you could ever have lifted it to me."

  My rage was almost choking me as I glared at him, standing so easy behind his desk, mocking me.

  "Listen, you foul kite," says I. "You’ll drop this vile … affront you’ve put on my girl, or by God it’ll be the worse for you! I’ll make this town too hot for you, so help me, I will! You think I’m helpless, do you? You’ll find out other—"

  "Drop it, you old fool," snaps he. "D’you think you can bluster at me? Think back to Isan’lwana and ask yourself if I’m the man to be brow-beaten. Yes—that makes you think twice!"