'Got a penny, Colonel?
A small boy, no more than six, with a grubby face and torn trousers, stared belligerently at Sharpe. The child, as Sharpe used to do, had climbed the wall, risking the broken glass embedded in its top. Would the boy believe him, he wondered, if he told him that the «Colonel» had once been one of the ragged urchins who came here to steal? 'What do you want it for?
'Something to eat.
'Just one. If you ask me for another I'll clout your head off. And if you send your friends to ask me I'll come and find you and bite your eyes out. Understand?
The boy grinned. 'Tuppence?
Sharpe gave him a penny. 'Now bugger off.
'Want a girl, Colonel?
'I said bugger off! The boy fled, going to buy gin as Sharpe had known he would.
He thought of Jane Gibbons, and the memory of her made him feel guilty that he had come so expectantly to these gardens to meet another woman. He wondered, for the hundredth time, why he was so sure he must marry her. He did not know her, indeed, he had met her now just three times. He knew nothing of her, except that she was beautiful and she had helped him. He recalled her face, mischievous, so full of life, so lovely as she had spoken to him on the boathouse steps, yet what, he asked himself as the parade of fashion and display went past him, could he offer her? Ruthlessness? The talent to demand mens' death to defeat the French?
What use was he? He could send a skirmish chain forward, he could impose their fire on the enemy, and he could kill. Year after year, nineteen years in all, he had killed. He knew when to kill, when not to kill, and he thought, as he looked at the vacuous faces and listened to the empty laughter, that these were the people he fought for. And again, as he watched a young man drunkenly dance some ludicrous steps in front of a laughing girl, he knew that, should he have been born in France instead of England, he would have worn the red epaulettes of the French voltigeurs with the same pride as he wore his green jacket and he would have killed the British officers of the skirmish line with the same skill with which he now made Napoleon's light troops leaderless.
He finished the ale. The orchestra was playing a waltz. What life could he have with Jane Gibbons? Or with any woman? What would he do with himself if there was no war? He had become so hardened by it, so craving of its excitement, so sure of himself within its achievements, what would he do with twenty-four hours a day? Even with the money of the diamonds, what would he do? Plough? Grub up new land? Breed cows? Or would he, and he dimly saw the possibility though he dreaded it, stay in the army to insist that it must never change from the machine that had defeated Napoleon? He would have a servant to clean his uniform, a horse to parade on, and a fund of memories with which to bore and awe young officers. The soldiers of Britain's army, he reflected, were not there out of choice, but of necessity. It was an army of failures, bonded by victory, and, unlike their conscripted French counterparts, most had no life to go back to, no home to return to when the war was done. The army was home, the regiment was family, and Lord Fenner threatened both.
'You are a fool. The voice came from behind him, from beyond the angle of the pool's parapet. He stood and turned. She watched him. She was masked with a cheap black mask, but there was no hiding her piled red hair that was held with pearl clips. She wore, on this warm August night, a dress of lilac silk that clung to her body in a fashionable sheath. A shawl of dark lace was over her bare shoulders. He remembered, from the night when he had met her at Carlton House, that she was beautiful, and oddly the cheap black mask only enhanced that beauty. He half bowed, clumsy and unsure of himself.
'Ma'am.
'You've been looking very grim. Had you realised your own foolishness? She put her fan into her other hand and offered her elbow. 'Walk with me.
They went down one of the gravel walks that was edged with the intricate box hedges, and Sharpe saw how the men eyed her body and looked enviously at him. Two of the watchmen who guarded Vauxhall were dragging a feebly protesting drunk towards the gate and one of them, perhaps an old soldier, grinned at Sharpe and sketched a salute.
She walked slowly, her head high, her voice amused. 'They'll think I'm your whore, Major. He did not know what to say, and she laughed mockingly at him. 'Wives don't dress like this.
They don't?
'This is how you attract a husband, Major, but once he has married you he begs you not to dress like it again. With arrogant aplomb she swept a child from her path with her fan. 'Just as a man falling in love with an actress begs her to leave the stage, even though her profession was exactly what attracted him to her in the first place. You have been, she went on in the same bored voice, 'excessively foolish.
'Foolish?
'You go to the Horse Guards, even though you had been ordered back to Spain, and you behave with childish mystery. The Horse Guards, not being foolish, sent for Sir William Lawford, knowing he had been your Colonel, and you, in your innocence, tell him everything. Do you think we might sit here? They serve a smuggled champagne which is bearable, and fortunately too expensive for the rabble to afford.
They had come to a place where, beneath lamps hung in the branches of great oaks, tables of white-painted iron were set before a small restaurant. An aproned waiter took her order and obligingly moved the nearest tables away so they would not be overheard.
She had her back to the restaurant and to the people who walked past its small garden. She took off her mask, and her green eyes stared at him with apparent scorn. ‘Take your shako off, Major. You look like a groom waiting on me.
He put it on the table to which, in a moment, the waiter brought the champagne, some bread, and one of the strange jellied-meat loaves like the one Jane Gibbons had given him just the night before. Now it seemed like a month before. 'What is it?
She smiled at his ignorance. 'A galantine. Aren't you curious how I should know your business so well?
'Yes, Ma'am. He poured the champagne. He wished suddenly that he had a cigar.
She sighed, perhaps because he had not asked her directly how she knew so much, and cut into the galantine. 'You are also a lucky fool. Sir William is an ambitious man. He chose not to speak with the Horse Guards, but with Lord Fenner. Do try the galantine, Major. It might not be ration beef, she said the last two words with a sneer, 'but it won't slay you.
'Lord Fenner? Sharpe could not believe that a man he thought a friend had gone to his enemy. 'He went to Lord Fenner?
'Who will make a small bargain with Sir William. She laughed at Sharpe's expression. 'Fenner, Major Sharpe, has patronage. He can give Sir William a small pourboire. Don't you know how these things work?
'A pourboire? He stumbled over the unfamiliar word.
'A small reward, alley-cat. She sipped her champagne and her green-eyes searched his expression. 'You look like an alley-cat, a very handsome one.
Sharpe was groping for meaning in her words, for sense. He could only translate what she had said so far as desperate failure.
She nibbled at the bread. 'Sir William wants to avoid a scandal. He won't get you your Battalion. That's what you want, isn't it? He nodded, and her green eyes seemed to mock him. 'He doesn't want you hurt, but he'll protect the government first. She smiled at Sharpe. 'You do understand me, Major? Sir William wishes you no harm.