Castle Orchard (4 page)

Allington walked through to the bedroom, stripping off his coat, his neckcloth and his waistcoat as he did so. He had been in the boxing salon in Bond Street, hitting the punching bag, an occupation that kept him fit and relieved his feelings at the same time.

His servant obediently poured out the water. He was thinking about the date and the battle but he thought better of mentioning it.

At his washstand Allington pulled off his shirt. He was a man somewhere between thirty and thirty-five, slim and dark-haired but for an odd streak of white rising from his left temple: his back and his chest were deeply scarred.

Later that afternoon he went to the Travellers’ Club. There he played whist. It was not a gambling club, there was no faro, macao or hazard, and no one was likely to lose or gain a fortune in a night’s play. It was a club in which Allington could steadily apply himself after the dining hour to winning rubbers of whist and at no one person’s expense, for the club was the universal player. He could return the markers to the clerk and collect the money when he fancied, a procedure which suited him well enough. In this, he thought, it differed much to playing chess with Arthur, who had a quixotic brilliance, an eccentricity of play which was amusing, but Allington had long since ceased to expect to be paid.

His was not a popular figure nor yet was he disliked. Men were shy of him. He took no alcohol. His tongue was sharp; he was not talkative, but if his views were sought on some issue of the day, he would give a considered reply, often at length.

There was sport to be had out of him. As Arthur had said, chess, draughts, ecarté, backgammon, piquet, were all grist to his mill but chess was preferred. He never challenged others, yet he could be approached, his glass of lemonade purchased for him and a few hesitant suggestions made as to how he might entertain them. They would choose him an opponent, lay out the pieces, and then wager, not on the outcome of Allington’s winning the game but on the time it would take, even which moves might be made. The stake between Allington and his opponent was five guineas a game though he sometimes made it ten if he felt so inclined. From time to time he would take a cut on the general winnings, which could be considerable. Occasionally, if it had been a good game, he refused the money altogether. He would then go over the play, point out what alternative moves could have been made and diversify on the various dilemmas. He did this so rapidly he was rarely understood. Perhaps they traversed the club rules but nothing was said. The bets could be considered as of a private nature and laying wagers of one sort or another was a universal occupation. Captain Allington himself was the exception: he never bet on anything.

On this particular day there were two very young men, mere boys, in the Travellers’ Club, who had managed to fulfil the club criterion of having travelled five hundred miles in a direct line from London, and being anxious for further adventures had the notion of visiting the battlefields of Spain and Portugal, to follow in the footsteps of Wellington’s army. They had the relevant map pulled down on the wall. Wellington’s army had traversed the breadths of Spain and Portugal, back and forth, from 1808 to 1814, rather too long, when the cost was considered, but these two young men had cheered the passing troops, the British Redcoats, when they were children, running beside the soldiers and gambolling like lambs at the thought of war. Now they fell out with one another on the route they should take or which route would be closest to the original.

Someone said, ‘Ask Allington. He was there.’

‘Ask Allington?’ they repeated.

‘Why not? He was there.’

‘But we are not introduced to him, and even supposing we were, we couldn’t ask him.’

The gentleman they spoke to was an old soldier, not afraid of Allington. He got up on two sticks, went to the library and approached Allington himself with the request. Allington, without saying much, entered the map room. The two young men stood back and bowed respectfully. He took up his cane and without further ado said, ‘August the seventeenth 1808, Rolica.’ He pointed to it on the map. The Portuguese name rolled off his tongue.

He continued swiftly, ‘August the twenty-first, Vimeiro. Over December and January, the retreat to Corunna.’

He broke into Spanish, giving the dates of each battle and adding the figures of how many soldiers were lost at each, all the time pointing rapidly to the map. It took him some time to get to the finish, for he covered the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz and Burgos, before concluding with Toulouse, 10 April 1814. Having done that he said, in Spanish, ‘Why go there? Each one is a graveyard.
¿Es que no tienes otro sitio a donde ir?
’

As neither young man had understood a word of what he had said, though they had followed the rapid movement of the cane over the map, they looked at him in bewilderment.

Allington relented sufficiently to translate the last sentence: ‘Have you nowhere different to go?’

One of them said, ‘We thought it would be of interest, sir.’

‘Those battles are too new, too young. Go and see where Hannibal crossed the Alps. If you must go, learn Spanish.’

They thanked him, but when he had gone they looked at each other in confusion. Turning back to the map they again began to plot a route but their heads were spinning.

‘Now, my young fellows,’ the old soldier said, amused, ‘you are not much the wiser. You forget the size of the army – seventy, a hundred thousand men. They are in divisions. First you might follow one bit and then another. He gave you the major battles, not all the skirmishes. There is a jack-in-the-box quality to Allington. You never know what will come out of him. Waterloo killed him, but such a man is wasted in civilian life. It’s the tenth anniversary. You have set yourselves an impossible task. He was teasing you.’

It was fashionable to be seen at the opera. To go from the opera, to come from the opera, to attend a rout or a ball, even if only to stand on the stair, meant risking one’s person, one’s horses and coach in the mêlée, the impasse of London’s West End at six o’clock in the evening. Should wheels lock and tempers fray, the whole could take hours to untangle.

Young Mrs Rampton thought the opera a bore, but to enjoy it was not a necessity. She gazed with languid fascination at women she supposed to be high-class courtesans and wondered at the impropriety of London society. It was, she considered, the fault of the King: he set a bad example. She tried not to yawn but it was hot and she was tired. Her father-in-law had taken a box. It was full of people she hardly knew. The conversation was of Harriet Wilson, whose memoirs were being published.

‘Who is Harriet Wilson?’ she whispered to her father-in-law.

‘Don’t ask, my dear,’ he whispered back.

Her husband then leaned forward and said, ‘Who is Captain Allington?’

‘The natural son of the late Lord Tregorn, though he’s not acknowledged as such.’

‘Why does he make Mr Arthur so nervous?’

‘Arthur owes him a lot of money.’

‘Has he lent him money?’

‘They are gaming debts. He never asks Arthur for the money. Arthur gives him IOUs and Captain Allington puts them away in his pocketbook – hundreds of them, it is said. I hope you lent Arthur no money.’

‘A tiny bit, a mere nothing.’

Mrs Rampton said, ‘Is it not rather irresponsible to be so much in debt?’

‘In society, my dear, no one thinks anything of it.’

A tiny frown appeared on the hitherto unruffled brow of Mrs Rampton: she did not like the implication she might be ignorant of society. If association with Mr Arthur, however elevating and agreeable, meant her husband was likely to catch his habits, she would not tolerate it.

They left the opera with a little crowd. The confusion had not abated: the postilions, the coachmen, the liveried grooms, the lads known as tigers, in striped waistcoats – fashionable appendages to cling behind gentlemen’s landaulets – the glossy rumps of the fine thoroughbred horses, the shining harness, the brass and the gilt, the top hats, the whips and the emblazoned coats of arms . . . it was pandemonium.

Surveying the scene, somebody remarked, ‘And any minute now the season will end, the parks will be dry as dust and the chance of falling in with an agreeable acquaintance will be . . .’

Arthur, in his club, had abandoned, for the minute, all games of chance in order to eat an early dinner in the dining room. He was in the best of spirits, being at this stage of the evening, in funds. He had won a considerable sum of money.

His companion, Sir John Parkes, was a crony of his, a little older than himself, dissolute, perhaps dishonest, but altogether sharp and shrewd. Arthur viewed him as excellent company and was at that moment listening to, but without heeding, his advice.

‘If you would but go home now, Johnny Arthur, you would do yourself a favour.’

‘Go home just when my luck has turned? Why, you must be mad.’

‘Not mad, merely sensible.’

‘Damn sense. What’s the news? Tell me the gossip,’ Arthur said.

‘They say the little singer, Marietti, has left our friend Captain Allington, or he has left her, on account of Smythe. Perhaps you can tell me about that?’

‘Allington tells me nothing. We share a roof, but that’s all. Why, if I spoke to him more, I should have to ask him to dine. I play the odd game of this and that, to pass the time, but one need not speak. You’ve often been there yourself. Why ask me about him?’

‘Why not ask him to dine?’

‘How can one? In public, he drinks no wine.’

‘So?’

‘Think of having a man at one’s table who drinks only lemonade. If one should drink with him, which one must out of politeness, raise one’s glass, catch his eye – and what has he got? Lemonade, or worse, water.’ The notion, so ridiculous, made Arthur give his usual peal of laughter.

‘In public he takes no alcohol. What do you imply by that?’

Arthur helped himself to a cut of rare roast beef. ‘On his own, he drinks to excess.’

‘How do you know?’

‘A simple matter of deduction. He’s often ill. He vomits, lies in bed, draws the curtains, can’t bear a noise, lets no one near him but his servant. There is nothing so unusual in that, we all know the sensations, but he must think such excesses aren’t the thing. In his efforts to control it, he tries to abstain altogether. After all, a man getting an income the way he does can’t afford to be drunk. And then he tolerates that servant of his who is quite frequently drunk. Anyone else would have dismissed the fellow years ago, but he has, you see, a sympathy for him. He’s anyway odd in his choice of servants, for his groom is a deaf-mute. Maybe he isn’t mute, but I never heard him speak.’

‘Allington doesn’t say much, so perhaps he has a sympathy for him too.’

This made both men laugh. They broached another decanter of wine. It sat on the table, squat and ruby-red. Arthur was slightly tipsy. He had drunk one bottle already.

‘Captain Allington is not only of doubtful birth—’ he began.

‘Hush, don’t speak so loud.’

‘Why not? Everybody knows it.’

‘Now listen, Johnny. What everybody knows is often wrong. I told you a bit of gossip just now which is incorrect.’

‘About Allington leaving the Marietti? I was going to come around to that. Isn’t it true?’

‘It wasn’t Smythe, it was me. Smythe was drunk but innocent. I was less drunk and guilty. Some instinct for self-preservation made me leave before breakfast. Smythe was less lucky.’

Arthur drew in his breath. He said, ‘Allington challenged him?’

‘Allington said nothing. He came. He saw. He walked out.’

‘But it’s not at all a pretty situation. Allington will want satisfaction. Was he not in the Ninety-fifth? Aren’t they all devilish fine shots? Maybe the officers don’t have to shoot, but only to run in front to show it is good to be shot at. Ah, but then maybe he was a Light Dragoon so he will hack the pair of you to bits with his sabre.’ Arthur was momentarily overcome with mirth, but then he said, more soberly, ‘I stand your friend.’

‘They don’t use sabres nowadays, not for duelling,’ Sir John said coldly, while contemplating the unlikely role of Arthur as a second. ‘If it was so, he is lame – one could outmanoeuvre him. I wouldn’t find much honour in killing a lame man because I went to bed with his mistress. If it comes to a fight, it will have to be pistols. It’s my belief, besides, you have confused his regiments.’ He was leaning anxiously across to his companion, who could see the rouge on his cheeks.

‘Allington won’t fight you, Sir John. He will look at you with the silent disdain a guardsman would have for a speck of dust on his boot.’

Sir John, not caring for the comparison, said, ‘Such a man as Allington wouldn’t be cowardly.’

Arthur fixed him with his round, childish blue eyes. A little shudder escaped him, something that disturbed the breast beneath the rose-pink waistcoat. He whispered, ‘They say he was brave to the point of madness, that he was an intelligence officer. But I hope you haven’t upset him, made him peevish or irrational. I owe him a great deal of money.’

‘So I understand. I have frequently watched the procedure.’

‘He may suddenly ask for it – and they are debts of honour.’

‘Mortgage your estate, mortgage Castle Orchard.’

‘But I shall lose all my bets. It is a strange father to make a will so to disoblige his son. Trustees held my estate until I was thirty, as if I were a minor . . . the indignity of it. And then the bets I made, even with you, that I wouldn’t mortgage it, sell it, lose it, before I was thirty-five. I have two years to go and then I shall make a lot of money. Otherwise I shall have to pay a lot out – and how could I do that? You see, it is important to me not to have Allington disturbed. Every betting book in every club in London has evidence of . . .’ He was going to say ‘my folly’, but not being in the mood to admit to such a thing, he bit the sentence off.

‘You must do your sums and choose the lesser evil.’ Sir John knew it was not only Allington to whom Arthur owed money. Could there be anyone more familiar with the shady world of the moneylenders than Johnny Arthur? What were the sums involved – and did Arthur know them himself? The sums were more, perhaps, than the value of Castle Orchard, which Sir John thought closer in size to four thousand than forty thousand acres, a good but not a grand estate.