Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ says I, mighty brisk, ignoring the mewlings from behind the screen and his own choking noises. ‘Complete rest for a day or two, you understand; no undue exertion. I shall send this note to the apothecary.’ I pocketed my paper, and sniffed, looking stern. ‘Port, sir? Well, it’s no concern of mine if you choose to drink yourself under ground, but I’d say one invalid in the family is enough, hey?’ I addressed the screen. ‘To bed at once, marm! Two teaspoonfuls when the boy brings the medicine, mind. I shall call in the morning and look to find you much improved. Good night – and to you, sir.’

      Never let ’em get a word in, you see. I was out and downstairs before he knew it, reflecting virtuously that that was another marriage I’d saved by quick thinking – if he believed her, which I’d not have done myself. But, stay … even if he did, he’d find out soon enough that there was no Dr MacNab of the 92nd, and start baying for the blood of the strapping chap with black whiskers, and Calcutta society being as small as it was, he was sure to run me down – and then, scandal, which would certainly tarnish my newly won laurels … my God, if Plunkett roared loud enough it might even reach the Queen’s ears, and where would my promised knighthood be then? But if I could slide out now, undetected – well, you can’t identify a man who ain’t there, can you?

      All of a sudden, Westward ho! without delay seemed the ticket – and scandal wasn’t the only reason. Some of these ancients with young high-stepping consorts can be vicious bastards, as witness the old roué who’d sicked his bullies after me for romping Letty Lade in the cricket season of ’45 – and he hadn’t even been married to her.

      So now you see Flashy at the Howrah docks in the misty morning, with his dunnage on a hand-cart, dickering for a passage to the Cape with a Down-east skinflint in a tile hat who should have been flying the Jolly Roger, the price he demanded for putting into Table Bay. But he was sailing that day, and since tea for New York was his cargo it would be a fast run, so I stumped up with a fair grace; after all, I hadn’t put cash down for the passage arranged by the Bengali bint, and I didn’t grudge her the trinkets; my one regret was that I hadn’t boarded the Plunkett wench … I hope he believed her.

      It was about a month to the Cape, with the taffrail under most of the way, but not too bad until we neared Algoa Bay, when it began to blow fit to sicken Magellan. I’ve never seen so much green water; even less cheering was the sight of a big steamer lying wrecked on a reef off Port Elizabeth,⁵ and I was a happy man when we’d rounded the Cape and opened up that glorious prospect which is one of the wonders of the seas – the great bay glittering in the sunlight with a score or more of windjammers and coasters and a few steamers at anchor, and beyond them the ‘table-cloth’ of cloud rolling down the flank of the Mountain to Signal Hill, and guns booming from the Castle to salute a man-of-war putting out, with crowds fluttering hats and scarves from Green Point.

      Once ashore I engaged a berth on the Union mail steamer sailing the following week, put up at the Masonic, and took a slant at the town. It was busy enough, for the Australian gold rush of a few years back, and the Mutiny, had set the port booming, but the town itself was a damned Dutch-looking place with its stoeps and stolid stucco houses, most of which are gone now, I believe, and the great church clock tower which looks as though it should have an Oom Paul beard round its face. It had been a wild place in the earlies, the ‘tavern of the seas’, but now it was respectable and dull, and the high jinks were to be had at Grahamstown, far away up the coast, where the more sensible Britons lived and the Army was quartered – what there was of them, for the Governor, George Grey, had stripped the colony of men, guns, and stores for the Mutiny, and the old Africa hands in the hotel were full of foreboding over their pipes and stingo, with the country arse-naked, as one of them put it, and the usual trouble brewing to the north.

      ‘We’ll have the Kaffirs at our throats again ere long, see if we don’t,’ says one pessimist. ‘Know how many wars they’ve given us, colonel, thanks to the damned missionaries? Eight – or is it nine? Blessed if you don’t lose count! To say nothin’ o’ the Dutch – not that they haven’t got their hands full, by all accounts, an’ serve the miserable beggars right! They’ll be howlin’ for you redcoats presently, mark my words!’

      ‘You never saw a Boer ask help from a Briton yet!’ scoffs another. ‘Nor they needn’t – they’ll give the Basutos the same pepper they gave John Zulu, if Moshesh don’t mind his manners.’

      ‘You never know,’ laughs a third, ‘maybe the dear Basutos’ll do the decent thing an’ starve themselves to death, what?’

      ‘Not old Moshesh – that’s a Bantu who’s too smart by half, as we’ll find out to our cost one o’ these days.’

      ‘Oh, Grey’ll see to him, never fear – an’ the Boers, if only London will let him alone. Any more word of his goin’?’

      ‘You may bet on it – if the Colonial Office don’t ship him home, the doctor will. I don’t like his colour; the man’s played out.’

      ‘Well, he can go for me. We bade good riddance to Brother Boer years ago – why should we want him back?’

      These are just scraps of talk that I remember, and no doubt they’re as Greek to you as they were to me, but being a curious child I listened, and learned a little, for these fellows – English civilians and merchants mostly, a Cape Rifleman or two, and a couple of trader-hunters down from the frontiers – knew their country, which was a closed book to me, then, bar my brief visit to the Slave Coast, and that was years ago and a world away from the Cape. Truth to tell, Africa’s never been my patch, much; I’ve soldiered on veldt and desert, and seen more of its jungle than I cared for, but like our statesmen I’ve always thought it a dam’ nuisance. Perhaps Dahomey inoculated me against the African bug which has bitten so many, to their cost, for it breeds grand dreams which often as not turn into nightmares.

      It was biting hard at this time, not least on Grey, the Governor, and since he was to play a small but crucial part in my present story, I must tell you something of him – but I can’t do that without first telling you about South Africa, as briefly as may be. It won’t explain the place to you (God Himself couldn’t do that), but it may lead you to wonder if two damned dirty and costly wars mightn’t have been avoided (and who knows what hellish work in the future?) if only those Reform Club buffoons hadn’t thought they knew better than the man on the spot.

      You have to understand that in ’59 Africa was the last great prize and mystery, an unmapped hinterland twice the size of Europe where anything was possible: lost civilisations, hidden cities, strange white tribes – they were no joke then. Real exploration of the dark heart of the continent had just begun; Livingstone had blazed his trails up and down it and across, farther north Dick Burton was making an ass of himself by not finding the source of the Nile, but the broad steady inroad was from the south, where we’d established ourselves. The Dutch settlers, not caring for us much, had trekked north to found their own Boer republics in lands where they met hordes of persevering black gentlemen coming t’other way; they fought the Zulus and Basutos (and each other) while we fought the Kaffirs to the east, and everything was dam’ confused, chiefly because our rulers at home couldn’t make up their minds, annexing territories and then letting ’em go, interfering with the Boers one minute and recognising their independence the next, trying to hold the ring between black and white and whining at the expense, and then sending out Grey, who brought the first touch of common sense – and, if you ask me, the last.

      His great gift, I was told, was that he got on splendidly with savages – even the Boers. He’d been a soldier, explored in Australia, governed there and in New Zealand, and saw at once that the only hope for southern Africa was to reunite Briton and Boer and civilise the blacks within our borders, which he’d begun to do with schools and hospitals and teaching them trades. In this he’d been helped by one of those lunatic starts which happen among primitive СКАЧАТЬ