He’d been in need of a haircut, long overdue, in point of fact, and a close shave that morning by another’s skillful hand, instead of shaving himself. There had been a vial of West Indies scent for his smooth-shaven cheeks… and a discreet dash or two on his coat, which was still redolent of salt, tar, pea soup farts, and mildew. At least the scent was made from the leaves of the bay tree, and wasn’t all that sweet.
The one item over which he almost balked was the wig. “Look, I only need it the once, for God’s sake,” Lewrie had told the wig-maker after trying several on, and discovering to his chagrin that with one of those follies on his head, his hat wouldn’t fit! “I haven’t worn a wig since 1780! I look like a ‘Macaroni’!”
In point of fact, before his father had crimped him into the Navy that very year, sure that Grandmother Lewrie in Devon would turn “toes up” and leave a fair amount of her fortune to Alan and he could pay off his creditors with young Lewrie half the world away and all un-knowing, Lewrie had been a Macaroni fop, right down (or up) to the wee hat perched atop a too-big wig!
“Couldn’t I just rent one for a day or two?” Lewrie had pled.
“Now what’d my reputation be, did I allow that, sir?” the wig-maker had disagreed. “Letting wigs out and them coming back with fleas, or lice, and the next customer getting infested? No, sir. It must be purchase only. You’re to be presented at Court? I’ll not put shoddy on you, sir… what would people say of me? Try this one, pray do.”
He had found one that was sleekly swept back on both sides and allowed his hat to sit at almost the proper level, though Lewrie’s own sideburns and the short four-inch queue that he wore bound with black ribbon at the nape of his neck were visible. The wig-maker had suggested that he pin it on with ladies’ hat pins, just to be safe.
So that’s how Strachan did it! Lewrie had marvelled. Sourly marvelled, really.
So there he sat in an open carriage, on display to the world in his new finery, with his hundred-guinea presentation sword at his hip, the one awarded by the East India Company for saving the small homeward-bound convoy in the South Atlantic, a few years before, when he’d still had the Proteus frigate. His gilt buttons were polished to mirror-like gleamings, those silly shoes blacked and buffed nigh to patent leather shininess, and all his clothes so restored, or new, that he feared the young imps of the London Mob would delight in covering him with dung and mud before they’d gone half a mile.
He stared at the sky, dreading rain, too. It had rained the day he’d arrived, though the last two had been dry, so maybe there would be no puddles to wade through when they alit at the palace.
If there are, will my father fling a cloak on ’em, like Walter Raleigh did for Queen Elisabeth? he sourly wondered; I doubt that!
“We’ll have to be brushed down, once we’re there,” Sir Hugo said with a squinty look. “Damn powdered wigs. S’pose the palace flunkies and catch-farts know what they’re about with whisks.”
“Ever been?” Lewrie asked him as they headed south down Baker Street, turning right onto Oxford Street, and bound for the shortest and most direct main route down Park Lane along Hyde Park.
“The once,” Sir Hugo allowed, picking lint from his coat. “When I got tapped and named a Knight of the Garter. Back when the King was saner than he is now, and ‘Prinny’ was a toddler. Horrid-stuffy, was ‘Farmer George’s’ Court in those days. In Publick, at least. My sort, well… ye’ll note they haven’t had me back for a brandy since.”
“Understandably,” Lewrie japed with a smirk.
“Don’t imagine your welcome will be a whit better, haw haw!”
Damme if he ain’t got it exactly right, Lewrie thought.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When rattling down Park Lane at a comfortable clip, their cabriolet had seemed fashionable enough for the occasion. The morning was clear and sunny, and those West Enders who had risen earlier than the norm were out in their own open-topped carriages, or on horseback for a canter through Hyde Park, to their right. Turning into Piccadilly, then turning once again into St. James Street, though, they found the way to the palace was lined with four-horse-teamed equipages, mostly closed, and with only their sash-windows down to acknowledge the season, all very much grander than their own. Sir Hugo began to work his mouth, squint, and grumble as they joined the long queue leading to the entrances, as if regretting his choice of conveyance.
“Might as well have hired a one-pony dog cart,” he groused.
“Doesn’t matter,” Lewrie told him. He could have given a bigger damn if they had had to walk, at that point, or had they been trundled up in a rag-picker’s wheel barrow. He’d intended to get a good night’s sleep, but some members of the Madeira CLub (the younger, still-single ones) had proposed more toasts than usual, posed more “a glass with you, sir!” individual toasts that had gone on in the Common Room long after the uncommonly good supper, with all its toasting, and the port, cheese, nuts, and sweet bisquits. Major Baird, their “chicken nabob” who’d come back from India with a middling fortune in loot and was still seeking a suitable mate (when not pursuing stand-up “knee-trembler” sex with the wenches who haunted the theatres), had even discovered a stone crock of American corn whisky, and had urged Lewrie to imbibe with him.
To say that Lewrie was a tad hung over would be an accurate statement; a bit too “blurred” to feel impatient, out-classed by others’ elegance, or anything much at all. Though there were some young women in the gawking crowd that usually thronged outside the palace on days when levees were held that were quite fetching. And, since Lewrie seemed to be Somebody of Note (he was in a carriage bound for the portico, wasn’t he; an officer, wasn’t he?), some of the bolder even cheered and tossed a flower or two. They surely wouldn’t waste flowers at a closed coach, where the top-lofty nabobs kept their aloof distance!
“P’rhaps it ain’t that bad, after all,” Sir Hugo said, leering across Lewrie at a round-faced teenaged beauty who was all but bouncing on her tip-toes in excitement. Sir Hugo even tipped his cocked hat to her and grinned. Which grin seemed to put her off and make her frown. The sight of a beak-nosed old goat, liver spots and all, ogling her like a vulture would a neglected beef roast would have put any young woman off… even if he was dressed in a general’s uniform, and might be as famous as the Duke of Cumberland after Culloden.
“Hmm. Pretty,” Lewrie commented, after a glance. “How do you keep yer wig from comin’ off when ye tip yer hat?” he asked.
“Glue,” Sir Hugo said with a pleased sigh, sniffing the flowers he had gathered from the floor of the coach. “There’s times when losin’ my hair’s a blessing… lots o’ scalp for the paste, heh heh. It washes off, later,” he added with a shrug.
The palace staff was very well organised. As each coach rolled up, one of the passengers, and the coachee, was handed a numbered ticket made of pasteboard. At the foot of the walk sat an easel with much larger numbers stacked up beside it, so that when the guests departed their number could be displayed to the throng of coaches waiting in a side yard, summoning the proper conveyance. The British Army should have been so efficient, but then… Army officers bought their commissions, and the palace staff were selected, and paid, for competence.
“Your invitations, sirs,” a grandly liveried flunky demanded, chequed them off a list, and bowed them onwards to the imposing entrance.
Did one ask Captain Alan Lewrie what he recalled of St. James’s Palace in later years, he could only shrug, cock his head to one side, and respond by saying, “Huge. Rather huge.” His hangover might have had something to do with it. There were grand marble staircases, and sumptuous carpetting, huge head-to-toe portraits, many times lifesize, framed in overly ornate gilt. There was a positive shit-load of gilt, Lewrie remembered. High ceilings, replete with angels and cherubs above him, thousands of candles burning, furniture lining the hallways and gigantic rooms, too grand to really sit on, and one long hall after another; he reckoned that he might have walked half a mile before reaching yet another hall where the levee was held, which was already thronged with the rich, the titled, the elegant and dashing, and those who would be honoured… and hopefully become titled, and elegant and interesting because of it… at least in part.