Flashman and the Redskins. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ can guess that I was sufficiently pale and wan next morning to satisfy Spring that he could continue to rest easy chez Willinck. One look at me, and at Susie languid and yawning, and he gave me a sour grin and muttered: ‘Christ, non equidem invideo, miror magis,’^fn3 which if you ask me was just plain jealousy, and if I’d known enough Latin myself I’d have retorted, ‘Ver non semper viret,^fn4 eh? Too bad,’ which would have had the virtue of being witty, although he’d probably not have appreciated it.

      Pleasantries would have been out of season, anyway, for the news was bad. Susie had had inquiries made in town, and reported that Omohundro’s death was causing a fine stir, there was a great manhunt afoot, and our descriptions were posted at every corner. There was no quick way out of New Orleans, that was certain, and when I reminded Susie that something would have to be done in the next few days, she just patted my hand and said she would manage, never fear. Spring said nothing, but watched us with those pale eyes.

      You may think that it’s just nuts, being confined to a brothel for four solid days – which we were – but when you can’t get at the tarts, and a mad murderer is biting his nails and muttering dirty remarks from Ovid, and the law may thunder at the door any minute, it can be damned eerie. There we were in that great echoing mansion, not able to stir outside for fear someone would see us from the road, or to leave our rooms, hardly, for although the sluts’ quarters were in a side-wing, they were about the place most of the time, and Susie said it would be risky to let them see us – or me to see them, she probably thought. Not that I’d have had the inclination to do more than wave at them; when you have to pile in to Mrs Willinck every night, other women take on a pale, spectral appearance, and you start to think that there’s something to be said for monasteries after all.

      Not that I minded that part of it at all; she was an uncommon inventive amorist, and when you’ve been chief stud and bath attendant to Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, with the threat of boiling alive or impalement hanging over you if you fail to satisfy the customer, then keeping pace even with Susie is gammon and peas. She seemed to thrive on it – but it was an odd thing – even when we were in the throes, I’d a notion that her mind was on more than passing joys, if you follow me; she was thinking at the same time, which wasn’t like her. I’d catch her watching me, too, with what I can only call an anxious expression – if I’d guessed what it was, I’d have been anxious myself.

      It was the fourth evening when I found out. We were in her salon before supper, and I’d reminded her yet again that New Orleans was still as unsafe for me as ever, and her own departure upriver a scant couple of days away. What, says I, am I to do when you’re gone? She was brushing her hair before her mirror, and she stopped and looked at my reflection in the glass.

      ‘Why don’t you come with me to California?’ says she, rather breathless, and started brushing her hair again. ‘You could get a ship from San Francisco … if you wanted.’

      It took my breath away. I’d been racking my brains about getting out of the States, but it had never crossed my mind to think beyond New Orleans or the eastern ports – all my fleeing, you’ll understand, had been done in the direction of the Northern states; west had never occurred to me. Well, God knows how many thousand miles it was … but, by George, it wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded. You may not agree – but you haven’t been on the run from slave-catchers and abolitionists and Navy traps and outraged husbands and Congressman Lincoln, damn his eyes, with a gallows waiting if they catch you. I was in that state of funk where any loophole looks fine – and when I came to weigh it, travelling incog in Susie’s caravan looked a sight safer than anything else. The trip upriver would be the risky part; once west of the Mississippi I’d be clear … I’d be in San Francisco in three months, perhaps …

      ‘Would you take me?’ was the first thing that came to my tongue, before I’d given more than a couple of seconds’ thought to the thing, and her brush clattered on the table and she was staring at me with a light in her eyes that made my blood run cold.

      ‘Would I take you?’ says she. ‘’Course I’d take you! I … I didn’t know if … if you’d want to come, though. But it’s the safest way, Beauchamp – I know it is!’ She had turned from her mirror, and she seemed to be gasping for breath, and laughing at the same time. ‘You … you wouldn’t mind … I mean, bein’ with me for – for a bit longer?’ Her bosom was heaving fit to overbalance her, and her mouth was trembling. ‘I mean … you ain’t tired of me, or … I mean – you care about me enough to … well, to keep me company to California?’ God help me, that was the phrase she used. ‘You do care about me – don’t you? You said you did – an’ I think you do …’

      Mechanically I said that of course I cared about her; a fearful suspicion was forming in my mind, and sure enough, her next words confirmed it.

      ‘I dunno if you … like me as much as I – oh, you can’t, I know you can’t!’ She was crying now, and trying to smile at the same time, dabbing at her eyes. ‘I can’t help it – I know I’m just a fool, but I love you – an’ I’d do anythin’ to make you love me, too! An’ I’d do anythin’ to keep you with me … an’ I thought – well, I thought that if we went together, an’ all that – when we got to California, you might not want to catch a ship at San Francisco, d’you see?’ She looked at me with a truly terrifying yearning; I’d seen nothing like it since the doctors were putting the strait-jacket on my guvnor and whisking the brandy beyond his reach. ‘An’ we could … stay together always. Could you … would you marry me, Beauchamp?’

      If half the art of survival is running, the other half is keeping a straight face. I can’t count the number of times my fate has depended on my response to some unexpected and abominable proposal – like the night Yakub Beg suggested I join a suicidal attempt to scupper some Russian ammunition ships, or Sapten’s jolly notion about swimming naked into a gothic castle full of Bismarck’s thugs, or Brooke’s command to me to lead a charge against a head-hunters’ stockade. Jesu, the times that we have seen. (Queer, though, the one that lives in memory is from my days as a snivelling fag at Rugby when Bully Dawson was tossing the new bugs in blankets, and grabbed me, gloating, and I just hopped on to the blanket, cool as you please for all my bowels were heaving in panic, and the brute was so put out that he turfed me off in fury, as I’d guessed he would, and I was spared the anguish of being tossed while the other fags were put through it, howling.)

      At all events – and young folk with their way to make in the world should mark this – you must never suppose that a poker face is sufficient. That shows you’re thinking, and sometimes the appearance of thought ain’t called for. It would have been fatal now, with Susie; I had to show willing quick, but not too much – if I cried aloud for joy and swept her into my arms, she’d smell a large whiskered rat. It all went through my mind in an instant, more or less as follows: 1, I’m married already; 2, she don’t know that; 3, if I don’t accept there’s a distinct risk she’ll show me the door, although she might not; 4, if she does, I’ll get hung; 5, on balance, best to cast myself gratefully at her feet for the moment, and think about it afterwards.

      All in a split second, as I say – just time for me to stare uncomprehending for two heart-beats, and then let a great light of joy dawn in my eyes for an instant, gradually fading to a kind of ruptured awe as I took a hesitant step forward, dropped on one knee beside her, took her hand gently, and said in husky disbelief:

      ‘Susie … do you really mean that?’

      Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been that – she was watching me like a hawk, between hope and mistrust. She knew me, you see, and what a damned scoundrel I was – at the same time, she was bursting to believe that I cared for her, and I knew just how to trade on that. Before she could reply, I smiled, and shook my head sadly, СКАЧАТЬ