Absolute Honour

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘To deliver—’

  ‘Out of date messages.’

  ‘And to report—’

  ‘To a regiment that is probably at war somewhere else.’

  Jack was starting to be annoyed with the badgering. ‘And what would you have me do, sir?’

  ‘Come to Bath.’

  ‘Bath?’

  ‘It’s where I’ve been this last week.’

  Jack laughed. It was such an absurd idea. ‘And what would I do in Bath? Take the waters?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s what invalids do. And as your physician, I advise you that galloping to London and then, no doubt, throwing yourself onto the delights of the town will undo all my good work and the work of our little friend here.’ He tapped the nutshell still on Jack’s neck. ‘You can send the dispatches on with an officer fit to bear them, and word to family and regiment, who will summon you if duty calls and your health permits. Meanwhile, you can recover properly from an illness that has nearly killed you.’

  The man had a point. And Jack had always wanted to visit a city so dedicated to pleasure. ‘But what of you? I thought business and family were both drawing you away.’

  ‘Now isn’t that the most marvellous thing? For haven’t I discovered that the two of them are also met? And are they not the both of them in Bath?’

  Jack was finding the Irish-isms a little hard to follow. ‘Does that mean they are or they aren’t?’

  ‘They are.’ The Irishman beamed. ‘I’ve a deal to clinch in the city that might go halfway to undoing my family’s entire woe. And now my cousin has just arrived there to seal my happiness.’

  ‘Your cousin?’

  ‘Laetitia Fitzpatrick, the most beautiful girl in all Ireland.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘She is.’ The jug was halted halfway to the lips. ‘But you can take that gleam from your eye, Absolute. For you’ll be getting nowhere near her, sure.’

  Jack frowned. ‘Why not, pray?’

  Red Hugh laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘Lad, you have told me your history of courtesans and widow women and the like. And did I not discover you just now with two tavern hellions fighting over your favours? I’ve told you, my boy, you remind me strangely of myself when I was your age,’ he smiled, ‘which is the main reason I’ll be keeping you far away from my lovely cousin.’

  Jack laid down his beer. ‘Sir, I agree that some of my actions may not always have been entirely honourable. But I would remind you that, youth aside, I am also the son of a baronet and raised a gentleman.’ He flushed. ‘And as such, I know how to behave with a lady.’

  Red Hugh regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Well, Jack, I shall weigh your future conduct against your past misdeameanours.’ He smiled. ‘Still, seeing as we’ll all be neighbours I suppose there’s every chance that you may meet her anyway.’

  ‘Neighbours?’

  ‘Aye, lad. My cousin and her guardian – Mrs O’Farrell, another cousin of mine and her aunt – as befits relatives of the Earl of Clare, have taken a house in a new construction called the Circus. It’s in the Upper Town, where everything is sparkling and bright. They’re even offering one of the houses to King George when he visits in a fortnight. And haven’t I found rooms for us in the very same circle?’

  ‘Such rooms cannot have come cheap. How have we paid for them?’

  ‘And why do you think you rest at the Llandoger Trow? This is where all the prize agents gather. They have assessed a lieutenant’s share of the Robuste at near two hundred pounds, not the five thousand of a treasure ship but handsome enough. They have advanced each of us forty. Which reminds me.’ From a pocket came a sack of coin. ‘There’s over twenty guineas there, after our Bath accommodation expenses.’

  Jack weighed the bag in his hand. Twenty guineas to add to the thirty he’d got for the ermine, which he’d sold to a Bristol furrier. It was a lot of money, over a year of lieutenant’s pay. And he had dreamed of all the things on which to spend his share of the prize. Why not begin with a little luxury in the pleasure capital of England?

  He raised his jug and toasted. ‘Well, then, sir – to Bath!’

  ‘Bath!’

  Now he was committed, all his concerns dropped away. Messages would be sent, regiment and family placated for a time. But the best thing, he realized, looking around the room lately haunted by his ghosts, was that in whatever adventure lay ahead, no dead man would plague his dreams at the end of it.

  – EIGHT –

  All the World’s a Stage

  Rain on the road and a horse’s thrown shoe delayed them. By the time they reached Bath, Red Hugh insisted they proceed direct to the theatre. They were dropped a few streets away, the carriage sent on to their lodgings with their sea chests.

  ‘But why the hurry?’ Jack grumbled, as the Irishman dragged him through the crowd.

  ‘I hate to miss the beginning of a play,’ came the reply. ‘And besides, I told my cousins I’d accompany them to their box.’

  Jack stopped and two men bumped into him, before cursing and passing around. ‘I can’t meet your cousin like this.’ He gestured to his uniform, the ghastly one he’d worn since Quebec and during his illness, ill-fitting and stained. ‘My good one’s in my trunk.’

  Red Hugh had barely turned. ‘It makes no nevermind. I have no intention of introducing you to Laetitia tonight – if at all.’

  ‘Nevertheless, one can’t appear at the theatre dressed in rags.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry too much, you Macaroni. For I doubt we’ll get a ticket we’re so late. Now come!’

  They did get tickets but only in the sixpenny gallery, among those whose clothes aped Jack’s in poverty. Red Hugh, as ever, stood out in the quality of his attire, Jack feeling like a shabby servant beside him. Once they had forced themselves onto the benches – and Jack was sure he would not last an act if the fat woman next to him did not remove her elbow from his ribs – the Irishman leaned forward to view the crowd below.

  ‘Is she there?’ Jack said, trying not to sound too curious.

  Red Hugh leaned back. ‘Their box is unoccupied at present.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps Mrs O’Farrell has been unable to lure Laetitia away from her books.’

  ‘She’s studious, is she?’

  A snort came. ‘I use the term books loosely. Laetitia’s only flaw is that she is obsessed with novels.’

  ‘A flaw I share. I am myself fond of Richardson, Gaunt—’

  ‘No, no, Jack. Not those kind. Romantic novels! The Tarnished Heart. Sundered by the Moor. By Bower and Byre.’ He shuddered. ‘These tales all seem to concern a wealthy heiress, forced to marry aged and ugly Lord How-Do-Ye-Do. So she elopes with impoverished Ensign Who’s-Me-Father instead. Lives in a byre, starves prettily to death in a bower, no doubt. Or t’other way round.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘You know, I’ve heard the maid declare that, whatever our uncle, the Earl’s, plans for a noble alliance, she will choose for herself and let rank and money go hang. Why, no doubt she would even consider you, a mere baronet’s son, too elevated by far. She will marry for love, she says, and the poorer the suitor the better! Imagine such a thing. This, sir, is what comes of reading.’

  Before Jack could counter that the words ‘mere’ and ‘baronet’ should not be placed in conjunction, the small orchestra, which had been playing various country airs, now struck up something more martial. The audience sighed and settled. ‘Did I never tell you, lad,’ said Red Hugh excitedly, ‘that I played upon the Dublin stage myself in my youth? Minor roles,’ he circled a wrist, ‘tragic parts. At Smock Alley, where your own mother so shone.’ His own eyes gleamed as he leaned forward. ‘Ah, the play’s the thing.’

  Some plays might be. This one was not, Jack thought, after a bare few scenes. He had never seen Henry IV Part I before but he did not think it the greatest of Shakespeare’s works, alternating uneasily between the blown rhetoric of the court and the farce of the tavern. The playing, too, was highly variable. Perhaps he was spoiled by Drury Lane and Coven
t Garden where his mother had taken him regularly, but the innovations of Garrick in the style of acting, where declamation had given way to a more intimate, natural manner, seemed not yet to have reached the Provinces. The younger performers were the worst. They essentially faced front and shouted. It was all noise. Only a couple of the more experienced players engaged. Falstaff had a generous stomach to suit the knight and a way with his words both amusing and melancholy; while in the small part of Mistress Quickly, one Miss Scudder gave a fine impersonation of a bustling, drunk and forward landlady. Jack could almost have sworn that Mrs Hardcastle had followed him from Bristol.

  Or perhaps he was too distracted to enjoy any play. Red Hugh’s obvious reluctance to talk of his cousin, and then just to mock her reading tastes, had intrigued Jack further. He found that if his companion’s eyes were fixed upon the stage, his own kept shifting to the box she was meant to occupy.

  Trumpets blared, Hotspur shouted and Jack squirmed. The bench was damnably uncomfortable! This, no doubt, was another source of his discontent. He was used to the best view in the house, in the pit, with a hired cushion to soothe his arse. The pain only grew as the play proceeded, so when the fiddle, fife and French horn that composed the playhouse orchestra signalled the end of Act Three, he rose quickly. ‘Coming, Hugh?’ A stretch and an ale were what he sought during this middle, long interval. The pantomimes and country dances that would fill the gap he could do without.

  ‘Nay, lad, you carry on. I’ll just sit here and linger with the Bard’s words.’ Shaking his head – the man’s eyes were actually full of tears! – Jack began to squeeze past legs. The stairs led down via the side of the pit and took far longer than it should have, largely due to the two huge men who stood either side of the staircase, forcing people to pass between them in single file while they stared rudely into each face. Jack returned glare for glare as he pushed through. By the time he reached the pit, the crowd was thick before the vendors of nuts, fruit and juices, blocking progress to the street and the adjacent tavern. Frustrated, Jack waited while a mob cleared before him, glancing up to the stage where some of the players had returned to give the entr’acte – in this case an episode from mythology with a maiden Cupid in a toga. He was immediately held, less by the fine legs displayed under Cupid’s miniscule dress, than by her face. For he knew it.

  ‘Fanny Harper!’ he whispered. ‘By God, Fanny!’

  Immediately, and to the disapproval of those behind him, he began to push the other way. The usher was distracted by a drunk and Jack managed to slip unnoticed beneath the rope that was meant to keep the gallery’s peasants from the pit. Beyond it, the crowd was thinner. Jack made for the stairs that led up beside the forestage. By the time he reached them, Cupid had shot love’s arrow and was already exiting.

  ‘Fanny! Fanny!’

  Her kohl-lined eyes looked blankly at him then suddenly widened in shock.

  ‘Jack? I don’t believe … Jack Absolute?’

  She’d halted and another actor bumped into her. ‘Jesus, Fanny, move yer fat arse.’ He darted round her, as she tapped the usher on the shoulder, pointed at Jack and said, ‘Let him up.’ Then, with a quick and still amazed glance back, she disappeared stage right.

  Jack found her in a canvas-enclosed space in the wings. Two other actresses shared the cramped area, each engaged, as Fanny was, in changing costume.

  ‘Eh, Lobster Back,’ snapped one of them, ‘you’re not allowed in ’ere.’

  ‘Leave ’im be,’ the younger one cooed. ‘ ’E’s my admirer, aintcha, love?’

  ‘Mine, actually,’ said Fanny. ‘And aren’t you ladies on?’

  Sticks were being thumped on stage, whistles blown. The two pushed past him, the older one grumpily, the younger with a wink and blown kiss. Through a gap in the curtains, he glimpsed them joining the others on stage. A wild chase began.

  He turned back. ‘Fanny, what … what are you doing here?’

  ‘Playing, obviously. I returned to my trade. No, was forced to return to my trade. You may remember why.’

  The words were spoken with a degree of frost that made Jack flush. He also looked away, for Fanny had pulled Cupid’s short toga over her head. She had nothing on beneath, recalling for Jack the last time he’d seen her, before he left for Canada. She’d been similarly unclad, shamed in the middle of the Pleasure Gardens’ Rotunda by Lord Melbury.

  ‘Why turn away, Jack? You have seen my charms before.’

  The anger was still there. Justified, Jack knew. Her disgrace had been largely his fault. ‘Fanny, I am so sorry. I—’

  ‘Too late for that.’ He looked again, as she dropped a shift over her head.

  ‘Is it so bad? All this?’

  ‘It is not my house in Golden Square, my servants, my little luxuries. It is the life of a player and I thought I’d left that behind.’ Reaching behind him for a brush, she began to stroke it through her long, brown hair.

  He watched her, embarrassed. ‘Look, you are busy. Can we meet later, tomorrow perhaps?’

  She flicked her hair to the other side, ran the brush through it vigorously. ‘I don’t think so. Harper wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Harper?’

  ‘My former husband. He took me back, got me into this company. But he won’t marry me again. So I play under my maiden name of Scudder.’ The brush was thrown down, pins picked up, the hair gathered. With her hand folding it on top of her head, she looked at him properly for the first time. ‘My,’ she said softly after a long moment, ‘but haven’t you changed?’

  ‘I’ve had a fever.’

  ‘It’s not that. You’re thinner, yes, but there’s more.’ She stepped closer. ‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘I see what it is. You’ve become a man, Jack Absolute.’

  He turned away, uncomfortable under that appraising gaze. ‘I’ve … I’ve had some experiences.’

  She stepped away. ‘Haven’t we all, dear?’ She began to put up her hair. With pins in the mouth she mumbled, ‘Though I am most surprised by the clothes, Jack. You were always such a peacock. And I’d heard you’d enlisted in the Queen’s, not some troop of the Cumberland yeomanry.’

  ‘This?’ Jack tried to smooth down a crease. Embarrassment made him seek an excuse. ‘This is more in the nature of,’ he looked about him for inspiration, ‘a costume.’

  ‘Well, then, you will certainly be at home in Bath.’ Hair up, she took his arm, pulled aside a curtain to reveal the crowd milling in the pit. ‘The town is a giant theatre, Jack, and everyone here is a player. We are merely the professional ones, and not necessarily the best, either. For all here is artifice, a glittering façade. And beneath that glitter, Bath hides every human frailty, all its vices.’

  Jack glanced up, to the gallery. Red Hugh, dressed in purple, should have stood clear among all the brown and grey up there. But strangely, all Jack saw were the two huge men who’d blocked his progress down the stairs, and who now seemed to be searching for something.

  Fanny’s words drew him back. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘and here one of our newest players makes her entrance. In Bath but two days and regard the legion of her admirers.’

  Jack looked where Fanny did. Indeed, it was hard to look anywhere else. For a body of men were pushing down the pit’s side aisle, moving forward while simultaneously looking back. Many stumbled but the progress was not halted. What was driving it was clear. Or rather whom.

  She moved slowly, steadily, not so much walking as gliding, so that her hooped dress appeared to float before her, rolling her admirers on like jetsam before a tide. The theatre was not large and Jack’s eyes were good. Yet he felt like rubbing them, because they had to be deceiving him. He could not believe that anyone – anything – on the whole planet could be so beautiful.

  Of what did beauty consist? A fortunate combination of eye, nose and lip? These could be altered, with colour and shading, yet he knew the face he beheld betrayed the merest breath of paint. Was beauty in that sweep of an eyebrow, the fall of curl upon the forehe
ad, the magenta-redness of both a contrast to the churned cream of the skin? Or did beauty rest finally in the eyes themselves that, even at a distance, fast diminishing due to her approach and the intensity of his regard, seemed to be all the greens of the world? Her beauty was all these things and more that he could not comprehend, swept into a whole that had him actually gasping as he looked. In that instant, all thoughts of McClune and his bookish cousin were swept away. For he had seen the lady he would pursue in Bath.

  ‘What … what is her name?’

  ‘Laetitia Fitzpatrick.’

  Jack gasped again. He had dismissed her the moment before and now he had to take her up again. How easy that was!

  Fanny continued, ‘Niece of the Earl of Clare, it is reported, which seems unfair for it makes her rich as well as … well, as you see.’ She snorted. ‘Perhaps not so unfair. For even this beauty will fade while her gold will ever glister. They say she’s come to Bath to marry and is destined for nothing less than a duke.’ She had finished dressing; now she reached forward and turned to Jack. ‘God spare me, not another recruit!’

  He could not reply. Could not talk about new love before an old, even if he’d been able to find words. Instead he looked at her, at her transformation, for her legs were now swathed in a bulky skirt, her bosom lost within the folds of a dull grey blouse. There was an Abigail’s cap on her head. ‘You are Mistress Quickly,’ he said.

  ‘I am. And I am soon on again. The play begins anew. So … shoo!’ She took his arm, began leading him towards the stage, where the interval pantomime was just concluding.

  ‘You are the best thing in the piece.’

  ‘I know.’ she said. ‘Me and Harper.’ She gestured to the wings opposite where Falstaff was mustering his girth. Halting, she then pursed her lips and whistled. A boy occupying the end of one of the onstage benches looked up. She beckoned him over and reluctantly he ceded his perch. ‘There, you goose,’ she shoved Jack toward the vacant seat. ‘Now you can sit and gaze upon your love.’