"Ah, Paradise!" Lewrie extolled, after his first taste of every dish, rolling his eyes in ecstacy. "And damn all Navy rations!"
"Another thing, Alan," Cashman said after a bite of fried fish and a sip of their chilled hock, with a blissful smile on his own face. "When the time comes t'sell, a hero's lands go higher than a poltroon who didn't serve… or those of a secret Abolitionist. Ever hear of William Wilburforce or Hannah More?"
"Aye, damn 'em," Lewrie sourly replied.
William Wilburforce was in Parliament, Hannah More was one of those Society Women with more energy than wit; both were determined to "reform" English Society in their own mould, to tame it, gentle it, and "improve" it. And they were Church of England, not Dissenters!
"Church of England, but they talk more like the Wesley brothers and all their leapin' Methodists," Lewrie went on, after a cleansing slosh of wine. "Spendin' all their time, and half their money, along with lots of other fools, 'bout Sunday schools, so please you, so our children don't grow up wild. Or pick up Republican ideas, and rebel like the Fleet did."
"Somethin' t'be said for that, at least," Cashman commented.
"Ending bear-baiting, dogfights, cockfightin', all sorts of country customs. Hell, it'll be fox huntin', next! Bad as Cromwell and his Roundhead Puritans, out t'take all joy from life. Marketin' fairs, gamblin', even morris dancin'… the heart and soul of us!"
"I'll send them a contribution… to their Abolitionist Society," Cash-man secretly whispered. "And damn the neighbours. Now, do you imagine the reception Wilburforce and More would get, did they ever dare come out here to preach, well… they'd be strung up and hung."
"And pray God for it!" Lewrie quickly vowed.
"Same'd happen t'me, Alan. Or get pence to the pound when I sell up," Cashman assured him. "Did they know my true feelings on the matter. I'm not gettin' any younger, and all I have is tied up in my lands and such. I'd never have the time t'pile up the 'blunt' all over again from scratch. I was lookin' for an out, and by God, here came a chance to take colours once more and get away from the problem."
"And so well-timed it felt dropped from Heaven?" Lewrie asked with a chuckle as he split and buttered one of those luscious rolls. "I see… 'turne, quod optanti divum promittere nemo auderet, volvenda dies en attulit ' ultro'... 'ey wot?"
"Why, you pretentious… hound, sir!" Cashman erupted in an outburst of hearty laughter, much his old self once more. "That's about all the Latin that ever got lashed into you, isn't it? I'll lay it is!"
"Sir, I hold commission in the King's Navy," Lewrie replied in a false haughtiness, his nose lifted top-lofty. "I am a Post-Captain, therefore eminently superior to any Redcoat. Now, how else may I make you assume the proper humility, was I not pretentious?"
"One with crumbs on his shirt front," Cashman drolly rejoined. "Aye, by God. What the gods couldn't promise, rollin' time brought, unasked. An apt quote, I'll grant ye. Never saw that side of you up the Apalachicola. Which reminds me… how is your Muskogee 'wife,' Soft Rabbit was her name? And that bastard son she whelped?"
"Ah, uhm!" was Lewrie's witty response.
"I take it you're married by now, bein' a captain and all?" Cashman went on. casually enquiring. "And married well. I trust."
"Aye, with three 'gits,' now."
"Capital! But I wager you haven't said word one to her about your first 'wife,' now have you." Cashman most evilly grinned.
"I like breathin'," Lewrie retorted, a tad sharpish, wondering if word of his troubles had gotten to the islands ahead of him somehow. "And what about you? Did you ever wed, Kit?" he countered.
"The once," Cashman admitted, quickly losing his jaunty, japing air. "Out here, in '91. No children, sorry t'say, before she passed over… back in '95, just about the time the Maroon War began."
Another reason to quit his lands? Lewrie wondered in sympathy. Another reason to take a commission?
"I'm sorry to hear that, Kit, I…"
"Oh, don't be," Cashman brushed off, swirling his wine aloft as if squinting at it for lees. "Prettier than the morning, she was, aye. But meaner than a snake. Raised out here, d'ye see, used to managing slaves from her cradle, and her kinfolk some of the harshest. She ran through three or four riding quirts a year, slashin' and layin' about at any servant who crossed her. Bought 'em by the half dozen, she did! Fascinatin' girl, but a beast at heart. Horse threw her, one morning. Broke her neck… snap!"
"Dear God, but…" Lewrie gawped, appalled.
"Towards the end, I couldn't abide the sight or sound of her," Cash-man admitted with a rueful moue and shrug. "Happened whilst I was off in the Blue Mountains, start of the Maroon War. Took colours just t'be shot o' her, too. Mean as she was, I always suspected one of our stable boys made her horse shy, perhaps some of the field hands. Left her t'die? Snapped her neck themselves, so it looked accidental? Who knows. Did me a great favour, if they did. You get used to lordin' it over slaves, you simply have to turn mean and callous. Her, I mean to say. Perhaps me, as well, but…" Be shrugged off once more, smiling disarmingly.
"I heard such once before, I think," Lewrie said, after wiping his mouth with the napkin following a dollop of lobster and drawn butter. "Out here, come t'think on it, oh… ages ago, when I was fresh-commisioned, here in Kingston. Lady of my acquaintance… sister of a girl I was wooing? God, they were hellish rich! Anne Beauman, do you know of her? Her youngest sister, Lucy, was the one I was after. Anne said that a slave society gets callous and hard on everyone, once you get used to wallopin' the Blacks, so why not wallop every… what?"
"The Beaumans, Alan?" Cashman told him, in answer to the gawpy look on Lewrie's face, once he'd seen the smirk on Christopher's. "Who hold great swaths of land… on Portland Bight, do they?" "They're your neighbours, of course! You do know 'em!" "Hugh Beauman and his wife Anne are my patrons in the regiment," Cashman delighted in informing him. "Made up his mind I was the man for him, and he's used to gettin' his way."
"Aye, just as they were back in '82," Lewrie recalled. "So how is Anne? At the time, she was the most exotic-lookin' woman."
"Ah, well… faded, sorry t'say. Island women mostly do. The climate and the sun, I expect. Shrivel up and go sour and grey much too soon. Do they not perish o' childbed fever, malaria, or the Yellow Jack." "There was another sister, Floss, I think?" "Died," Cashman coolly told him.
"Ah, pity. Poor old thing," Lewrie said. "But Lucy! Now..'." "Mmmmmm!" Cashman agreed most heartily.
"My first real love. On my part, at least," Lewrie confessed. "Ran into her in Venice two years ago. She'd remarried a Sir Malcolm Shockley, baronet. Richer than God. Why, richer than the Beaumans!"
"She was still here when I bought my lands, in her first marriage," Cashman reminisced. "Aye, one of the great beauties of her time." "Unfortunately, dumber than dirt, too," Lewrie pointed out. "My dear Alan," Christopher Cashman leered back at him, "I never asked her to recite!"
"You never!" Lewrie chortled, catching the sly meaning. Always, did have the most Philistine of tastes, she did! Lewrie assured himself, trying to picture Lucy taking up with Cashman.
"Ah, but I did," Cashman slyly boasted. "Along with half the young swains in Jamaica, I suspect. You?"
"Uhm… no, actually," Lewrie had to admit, "but not for want of trying, mind. She was only seventeen, back then, and chaperoned as close as a Spanish convent girl."