The soused coachman managed to put a booted foot into the spokes of the kerbside front wheel and levered himself up to his seat with the wooden brake lever, but the patient team of horses shifted forward a bit and the coachman made a desperate lunge, arse over tit, almost making it to the driver’s bench before falling backwards in a hand-scrabbling heap on the sidewalk. He wore a blissful smile, though, for he now had a blue glass bottle in one hand, at which he sipped deep.
“It’s gin! It’s gin! That’s five shillings you owe me!” the sporting young gentleman cried.
The coachman took off his old-style tricorne hat and swiped at his hair, finally taking note that it was raining, shook water from his hat, and plunked it back on. He leaned an elbow on the coach’s metal folding steps, got a clever look on his phyz, and began to crawl to them.
“A glass with you, Captain Lewrie,” one of the older members offered, “for you’ve provided us a rare entertainment this evening! You missed the part where he was singing to his horses and kissing them on the lips!”
“Lord, where’s he going now?” Pilkington cried.
The coachman dragged himself up the folding steps, clawed for the door handle, and finally managed to swing it open. Into the coach he went on his hands and knees, amazingly careful not to spill a drop from his gin bottle. The door was pulled closed, and he dropped out of sight for a moment, sprawled on the seats most-like. One moment later, though, up he sat to lower the window glass. He leaned out the door and began to pound on it, bellowing for some phantom coachee to whip up and get a move on, which action raised another gale of laughter in the club’s Common Room. They could hear him through the room’s windows, imitating the starting horn blown by the big diligence coaches when they rattled out from a posting inn, and the shouts of encouragement to the horse team.
The horse team took his thumping, shouting, and the tra-tarah as their cue to breast into their harnesses and begin to shamble forward at a slow walk, with no one tending the reins. The last they saw of the coach, and the drunken coachee, it was meandering East down Wigmore Street towards the cross-traffic of Mandeville Place!
“Gentlemen,” the night manager had to call out several times before he drew the members’ attention. “Supper is now served!”
Lewrie finished his Spanish brandy, which he had found not too raw after all, and joined the others as they all trooped into the dining room in high spirits, with some of the younger members still willing to wager that the coachman would get his neck broken, after all, if his coach tangled with another in the rain, or whether the coach would make it all the way to Marylebone Lane before the smash-up.
First came fine-shredded chicken in broth soup, followed by individual veal and ham pies, then fillets of grilled turbot accompanied by sweet stewed carrots and peas. The meal was topped off by a monstrous beef roast served with asparagus spears and hollowed-out potatoes with melted cheese and shredded bacon. The white wines with the soup and the turbot were excellent, as usual, as were the Bordeaux with the pies, and the cabernet with the roast beef, and the barge after barge of piping-hot and slightly toasted rolls were individual marvels with a liberal smear of fresh butter. Dessert was a strawberry jam roly-poly sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Once the tablecloth was whisked away and the remains removed, out came the nuts, cheese, and sweet bisquits, and the club’s signature, a rich and fine aged Madeira port, and the wine steward’s promise that several casks of the rare “rainwater” port had been discovered at Oporto and were even then sitting in storage for the up-coming holidays.
Lewrie could dab his mouth and lean back in his chair with his port glass in hand, thinking that a meal, a feast, so English, was a topping-fine welcome back to his home shores!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lewrie rose unaccountably early for a fellow so fond of snugly warm and sinfully soft shore beds, scrubbed, shaved, and dressed, then breakfasted on two cups of scalding-hot tea, and buttered rusks which he cadged from the kitchens long before the day’s first meal was laid, bolted it all down in a rush, then was off in search of some wheeled transport for Whitehall. The best he found was a two-wheeled dog cart driven by a loquacious Irish pedlar who was willing to abandon his usual spot to hawk his cast-off clothing lines for promise of a shilling.
On the way, the Irishman cheerfully filled him in on the most wondrous event of the previous night. “’Twas a ghost coach, Cap’m, sor, rattlin’ along with a witch at the reins, swear t’God, for how else kin a coach an’ four make its way from Wigmore Street t’Oxford Street, turn down Regent Street, an’ git t’the Swan an’ Edgar, where it drew up nice as anythin’. Ever’body wot saw it swears they knowed a witch drove it, for they all heard screamin’ laughter and evil cacklin’, but when the parish ‘Charlies’ got to it, there was nary a soul aboard! Fackin’ eerie, it wos!”
* * *
All Lewrie’s hurry was for nought, though, for when he got to the Admiralty Office, he discovered an host of others already waiting. He stepped through the archway through the curtain wall, into the wee cobbled courtyard, and found that even the vendor with his tea cart and sticky buns was already there and doing a roaring business with the officers and Mids who had come in hopes of an interview, or the promise of an appointment. There was nothing for it but to go inside, in the process to be cautioned by the surly ancient tiler that “I’d not place much hope innit, Cap’m, sir, for there’s a parcel o’ unemployed before ya!”
Lewrie left his name with a junior clerk, stressing that he was currently a holder of an active commission, and wished to speak with the First Secretary, Mr. William Marsden, about orders for the cleaning of his ship’s hull to make her serviceable for future duties, then looked for a place to sit in the infamous, over-crowded Waiting Room, but all the benches, settees, and chairs were occupied by Commission Sea Officers, the bulk of them Post-Captains with the twin epaulets of men with more than three years’ seniority, some newer-minted Captains of less time in command of a Post ship with but one epaulet on their right shoulders, and a rare Commander or three with the epaulet on the left shoulder. Lieutenants with good sense had already surrendered their precious seats and idly, slowly paced about, striving to appear un-worried, among the Midshipmen whom they had turfed out earlier.
For a rare once, Lewrie had pinned on the star and donned the sash of the Order of The Bath, and as he meandered round the Waiting Room, a Commander sprang from his place at the end of a bench to offer it to Lewrie, who thanked him civilly, thinking that now and then the damned knighthood proved useful, even in this desperate place. There were tales of men, and one Midshipman in particular, who had come to Admiralty each working day for three years running to hunt active sea-going employment!
Over the next two hours, names were called out, and the lucky ones ascended the stairs to the Board Room to receive commissions to a new ship, or new orders for the ones they had. They usually came down with smiles. Lewrie began to note that one particular junior clerk was the one who summoned the officers who left pleased, and another clerk who appeared much less often and caused long sighs of disappointment, usually calling out some officer’s name and only handing over a folded note; for a future appointment, perhaps, or most-likely a rejection. An aged Rear-Admiral who took a seat next to Lewrie, one who did not have a single hope in Hell of employment this side of the grave, told Lewrie with a cackled whisper that said clerk served the Second Secretary, Mr. John Barrow, upon whom Mr. Marsden usually foisted the chore of delivering the bad news.
By the end of the third hour, Lewrie’s arse was numb, he badly needed a visit to the “jakes” to empty his bladder, and he might have gladly killed for a cup of sweetened and creamed tea. He snagged the “happy-making” clerk to inform him that he would be outside for a bit should his name be called, got his hat and boat-cloak from the cheque room, and went out to the courtyard.