Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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First published in Great Britain by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd 1977

Reissued by Collins 1981

Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1977

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman? © The Beneficiaries of the Literary Estate of George MacDonald Fraser 2015

Map © John Gilkes 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2015

Cover illustration © Gino D’Achille

George MacDonald Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780006513018

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2015 ISBN: 9780007449491

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The following piece was found in the author’s study in 2013 by the Estate of George MacDonald Fraser.

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman?

‘How did you get the idea of Flashman?’ and ‘When are we going to get his U.S. Civil War memoirs?’ are questions which I have ducked more often than I can count. To the second, my invariable response is ‘Oh, one of these days’. Followed, when the inquirer is an impatient American, by the gentle reminder that to an old British soldier like Flashman the unpleasantness between the States is not quite the most important event of the nineteenth century, but rather a sideshow compared to the Mutiny or Crimea. Before they can get indignant I add hastily that his Civil War itinerary is already mapped out; this is the only way of preventing them from telling me what it ought to be.

To the question, how did I get the idea, I simply reply that I don’t know. Who ever knows? Anthony Hope conceived The Prisoner of Zenda on a walk from Westminster to the Temple, but I doubt if he could have said, after the calendar month it took him to write the book, what triggered the idea. In my case, Flashman came thundering out of the mists of forty years living and dreaming, and while I can list the ingredients that went to his making, heaven only knows how and when they combined.

One thing is sure: the Flashman Papers would never have been written if my fellow clansman Hugh Fraser, Lord Allander, had confirmed me as editor of the Glasgow Herald in 1966. But he didn’t, the canny little bandit, and I won’t say he was wrong. I wouldn’t have lasted in the job, for I’d been trained in a journalistic school where editors were gods, and in three months as acting chief my attitude to management, front office, and directors had been that of a seigneur to his serfs – I had even put Fraser’s entry to the House of Lords on an inside page, assuring him that it was not for the Herald, his own paper, to flaunt his elevation, and that a two-column picture of him was quite big enough. How cavalier can you get?

And doubtless I had other editorial shortcomings. In any event, faced with twenty years as deputy editor (which means doing all the work without getting to the big dinners), I promised my wife I would ‘write us out of it’. In a few weeks of thrashing the typewriter at the kitchen table in the small hours, Flashman was half-finished, and likely to stay that way, for I fell down a waterfall, broke my arm, and lost interest – until my wife asked to read what I had written. Her reaction galvanised me into finishing it, one draft, no revisions, and for the next two years it rebounded from publisher after publisher, British and American.

I can’t blame them: the purported memoir of an unregenerate blackguard, bully, and coward resurrected from a Victorian school story is a pretty eccentric subject. By 1968 I was ready to call it a day, but thanks to my wife’s insistence and George Greenfield’s matchless knowledge of the publishing scene, it found a home at last with Herbert Jenkins, the manuscript looking, to quote Christopher MacLehose, as though it had been round the world twice. It dam’ nearly had.

They published it as it stood, with (to me) bewildering results. It wasn’t a bestseller in the blockbuster sense, but the reviewers were enthusiastic, foreign rights (starting with Finland) were sold, and when it appeared in the U.S.A. one-third of forty-odd critics accepted it as a genuine historical memoir, to the undisguised glee of the New York Times, which wickedly assembled their reviews. ‘The most important discovery since the Boswell Papers’ is the one that haunts me still, for if I was human enough to feel my lower ribs parting under the strain, I was appalled, sort of.

You see, while I had written a straightforward introduction describing the ‘discovery’ of the ‘Papers’ in a saleroom in Ashby-de-la-Zouche (that ought to have warned them), and larded it with editorial ‘foot-notes’, there had been no intent to deceive; for one thing, while I’d done my best to write, first-person, in Victorian style, I’d never imagined that it would fool anybody. Nor did Herbert Jenkins. And fifty British critics had recognised it as a conceit. (The only one who was half-doubtful was my old chief sub on the Herald; called on to review it for another paper, he demanded of the Herald’s literary editor: ‘This book o’ Geordie’s isnae true, is it?’ and on being assured that it wasn’t, exclaimed: ‘The conniving bastard!’, which I still regard as a high compliment.)

With the exception of one left-wing journal which hailed it as a scathing attack on British imperialism, the press and public took Flashman, quite rightly, at face value, as an adventure story dressed up as the memoirs of an unrepentant old cad who, despite his cowardice, depravity and deceit, had managed to emerge from fearful ordeals and perils an acclaimed hero, his only redeeming qualities being his humour and shameless honesty as a memorialist. I was gratified, if slightly puzzled to learn that the great American publisher, Alfred Knopf, had said of the book: ‘I haven’t heard this voice in fifty years’, and that the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police was recommending it to his subordinates. My interest increased as I wrote more Flashman books, and noted the reactions.

I was, several critics agreed, a satirist. Taking revenge on the nineteenth century on behalf of the twentieth, said one. Waging war on Victorian hypocrisy, said another. Plainly under the influence of Conrad, said yet another. A full-page review in a German paper took me flat aback when my eye fell on the word ‘Proust’ in the middle of it. I don’t read German, so for all I know the review may have been maintaining that Proust was a better stand-off half than I was, or used more semi-colons. But there it was, and it makes you think. And a few years ago a highly respected religious journal said that the Flashman Papers deserved recognition as the work of a sensitive moralist, and spoke of service not only to literature and history, but to the study of ethics.

My instant reaction to this was to paraphrase Poins: ‘God send me no worse fortune, but I never said so!’ while feeling delighted that someone else had said it, and then reflecting solemnly that this was a far cry from long nights with cold tea and cigarettes, scheming to get Flashman into the passionate embrace of the Empress of China, or out of the toils of a demented dwarf on the edge of a snake-pit. But now, beyond remarking that the anti-imperial left-winger was sadly off the mark, that the Victorians were mere amateurs in hypocrisy compared to our own brainwashed, sanctimonious, self-censoring and terrified generation, and that I hadn’t read a word of Conrad by 1966 (and my interest in him since has been confined to Under Western Eyes, in the hope that I might persuade Dick Lester to film it as only he could), I have no comments to offer on opinions of my work. I know what I’m doing – at least, I think I do – and the aim is to entertain (myself, for a start) while being true to history, to let Flashman comment on human and inhuman nature, and devil take the romantics and the politically correct revisionists both. But my job is writing, not explaining what I’ve written, and I’m well content and grateful to have others find in Flashy whatever they will (I’ve even had letters psychoanalysing the brute), and return to the question with which I began this article.

A life-long love affair with British imperial adventure, fed on tupenny bloods, the Wolf of Kabul and Lionheart Logan (where are they now?), the Barrack-Room Ballads, films like Lives of a Bengal Lancer and The Four Feathers, and the stout-hearted stories for boys which my father won as school prizes in the 1890s; the discovery, through Scott and Sabatini and Macaulay, that history is one tremendous adventure story; soldiering in Burma, and seeing the twilight of the Raj in all its splendour; a newspaper-trained lust for finding the truth behind the received opinion; being a Highlander from a family that would rather spin yarns than eat … I suppose Flashman was born out of all these things, and from reading Tom Brown’s Schooldays as a child – and having a wayward cast of mind.

Thanks to that contrary streak (I always half-hoped that Rathbone would kill Flynn, confounding convention and turning the story upside down – Basil gets Olivia, Claude Rains triumphs, wow!), I recognised Flashman on sight as the star of Hughes’ book. Fag-roasting rotter and poltroon he might be, he was nevertheless plainly box-office, for he had the looks, swagger and style (‘big and strong’, ‘a bluff, offhand manner’, and ‘considerable powers of being pleasant’, according to his creator) which never fail to cast a glamour on villainy. I suspect Hughes knew it, too, and got rid of him before he could take over the book – which loses all its spirit and zest once Flashy has made his disgraced and drunken exit.

[He was, by the way, a real person; this I learned only recently. A letter exists from one of Hughes’ Rugby contemporaries which is definite on the point, but tactfully does not identify him. I have sometimes speculated about one boy who was at Rugby in Hughes’ day, and who later became a distinguished soldier and something of a ruffian, but since I haven’t a shred of evidence to back up the speculation, I keep it to myself.]

What became of him after Rugby seemed to me an obvious question, which probably first occurred to me when I was about nine, and then waited thirty years for an answer. The Army, inevitably, and since Hughes had given me a starting-point by expelling him in the late 1830s, when Lord Cardigan was in full haw-haw, and the Afghan War was impending … just so. I began with no idea of where the story might take me, but with Victorian history to point the way, and that has been my method ever since: choose an incident or campaign, dig into every contemporary source available, letters, diaries, histories, reports, eye-witness, trivia (and fictions, which like the early Punch are mines of detail), find the milestones for Flashy to follow, more or less, get impatient to be writing, and turn him loose with the research incomplete, digging for it as I go and changing course as history dictates or fancy suggests.

In short, letting history do the work, with an eye open for the unexpected nuggets and coincidences that emerge in the mining process – for example, that the Cabinet were plastered when they took their final resolve on the Crimea, that Pinkerton the detective had been a trade union agitator in the very place where Flashman was stationed in the first book, that Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King had a factual basis, or that Bismarck and Lola Montez were in London in the same week (of 1842, if memory serves, which it often doesn’t: whenever Flashman has been a subject on Mastermind I have invariably scored less than the contestants).

Visiting the scenes helps; I’d not have missed Little Big Horn, the Borneo jungle rivers, Bent’s Fort, or the scruffy, wonderful Gold Road to Samarkand, for anything. Seeking out is half the fun, which is one reason why I decline all offers of help with research (from America, mostly). But the main reason is that I’m a soloist, giving no hints beforehand, even to publishers, and permitting no editorial interference afterwards. It may be tripe, but it’s my tripe – and I do strongly urge authors to resist encroachments on their brain-children, and trust their own judgment rather than that of some zealous meddler with a diploma in creative punctuation who is just dying to get into the act.

One of the great rewards of writing about my old ruffian has been getting and answering letters, and marvelling at the kindness of readers who take the trouble to let me know they have enjoyed his adventures, or that he has cheered them up, or turned them to history. Sitting on the stairs at 4 a.m. talking to a group of students who have phoned from the American Midwest is as gratifying as learning from a university lecturer that he is using Flashman as a teaching aid. Even those who want to write the books for you, or complain that he’s a racist (of course he is; why should he be different from the rest of humanity?), or insist that he isn’t a coward at all, but just modest, and they’re in love with him, are compensated for by the stalwarts who’ve named pubs after him (in Monte Carlo, and somewhere in South Africa, I’m told), or have formed societies in his honour. They’re out there, believe me, the Gandamack Delopers of Oklahoma, and Rowbotham’s Mosstroopers, and the Royal Society of Upper Canada, with appropriate T-shirts.

I have discovered that when you create – or in my case, adopt and develop – a fictional character, and take him through a series of books, an odd thing happens. He assumes, in a strange way, a life of his own. I don’t mean that he takes you over; far from it, he tends to hive off on his own. At any rate, you find that you’re not just writing about him: you are becoming responsible for him. You’re not just his chronicler: you are also his manager, trainer, and public relations man. It’s your own fault – my own fault – for pretending that he’s real, for presenting his adventures as though they were his memoirs, putting him in historical situations, giving him foot-notes and appendices, and inviting the reader to accept him as a historical character. The result is that about half the letters I get treat him as though he were a person in his own right – of course, people who write to me know that he’s nothing of the sort – well, most of them realise it: I occasionally get indignant letters from people complaining that they can’t find him in the Army List or the D.N.B., but nearly all of them know he’s fiction, and when they pretend that he isn’t, they’re just playing the game. I started it, so I can’t complain.

When Hughes axed Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, brutally and suddenly (on page 170, if I remember rightly), it seemed a pretty callous act to abandon him with all his sins upon him, just at the stage of adolescence when a young fellow needs all the help and understanding he can get. So I adopted him, not from any charitable motives, but because I realised that there was good stuff in the lad, and that with proper care and guidance something could be made out of him.

And I have to say that with all his faults (what am I saying, because of his faults) young Flashy has justified the faith I showed in him. Over the years he and I have gone through several campaigns and assorted adventures, and I can say unhesitatingly that coward, scoundrel, toady, lecher and dissembler though he may be, he is a good man to go into the jungle with.

George MacDonald Fraser

Dedication

For K, 6

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman?

Dedication

Explanatory Note

Maps

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Keep Reading

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Footnotes

Notes

About the Author

The FLASHMAN Papers: In chronological order

The FLASHMAN Papers: In order of publication

Also by George MacDonald Fraser

About the Publisher

EXPLANATORY NOTE

Since the memoirs of Flashman, the notorious Rugby School bully and Victorian military hero, first came to light ten years ago, and have been laid before the public as each successive packet of manuscript was opened and edited, a question has arisen which many readers have found intriguing. The five volumes published so far have been in chronological order, spanning the period from 1839, when Flashman was expelled and entered the Army, to 1858, when he emerged from the Indian Mutiny. But not all the intervening years have been covered in the five volumes; one gap occurs between his first meeting with Bismarck and Lola Montez in 1842–3, and his involvement in the Schleswig-Holstein Question in 1848: yet another between 1849, when he was last seen on the New Orleans waterfront in the company of the well-known Oxford don and slave-trader, Captain Spring, MA, and 1854, when duty called him to the Crimea. It has been asked, what of the ‘missing years’?

The sixth packet of the Flashman Papers supplies a partial answer, since it deals with its author’s remarkable adventures from 1842 to 1845. It is clear from his manuscript that a chance paragraph in the sporting columns of a newspaper caused him to interrupt his normal chronological habit, to fill in this hiatus in his earlier years, and from the bulk of unopened manuscript remaining it appears that his memoirs of the Taiping Rebellion, the U.S. Civil War, and the Sioux and Zulu uprisings are still to come. (Indeed, since a serving officer of the United States Marines has informed me that his Corps’ records contain positive pictorial evidence of Flashman’s participation in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, there is no saying where it may end.)

The historical significance of the present instalment may be thought to be threefold. As a first-hand account of the early Victorian sporting scene (on which Flashman now emerges as a distinguished if deplorable actor) it is certainly unique; on a different plane it provides an eye-witness description of that incredible, forgotten private war in which a handful of gentlemen-adventurers pushed the British imperial frontier eastwards in the 1840s. Lastly, it sheds fresh light on the characters of two great figures of the time – one a legendary Empire-builder, the other an African queen who has been unfavourably compared to Caligula and Nero.

A small point which may be of interest to students of Flashman’s earlier memoirs is that the present manuscript shows signs of having been lightly edited – as was one previous volume – by his sister-in-law, Grizel de Rothschild, probably soon after his death in 1915. She has modified his blasphemies, but has not otherwise tampered with the old soldier’s narrative; indeed, she has embellished it here and there with extracts from the private diary of her sister Elspeth, Flashman’s wife, and with her own pungent marginal comments. In the presence of such distinguished editing, I have confined myself to supplying foot-notes and appendices, and satisfying myself of the accuracy of Flashman’s account of historical events so far as these can be checked.

G.M.F.

So they’re talking about amending the leg-before-wicket rule again. I don’t know why they bother, for they’ll never get it right until they go back to the old law which said that if you put your leg in front of the ball a-purpose to stop it hitting the stumps, you were out, and d----d good riddance to you. That was plain enough, you’d have thought, but no; those mutton-brains in the Marylebone club have to scratch their heads over it every few years, and gas for days on end about the line of delivery and the point of pitch, and the L--d knows what other rubbish, and in the end they cross out a word and add another, and the whole thing’s as incomprehensible as it was before. Set of doddering old women.

It all comes of these pads that batters wear nowadays. When I was playing cricket we had nothing to guard our precious shins except our trousers, and if you were fool enough to get your ankle in the way of one of Alfie Mynn’s shooters, why, it didn’t matter whether you were in front of the wicket or sitting on the pavilion privy – you were off to get your leg in plaster, no error. But now they shuffle about the crease like yokels in gaiters, and that great muffin Grace bleats like a ruptured choirboy if a fast ball comes near him. Wouldn’t I just have liked to get him on the old Lord’s wicket after a dry summer, with the pitch rock-hard, Mynn sending down his trimmers from one end and myself going all-out at t’other – they wouldn’t have been calling him the ‘Champion’ then, I may tell you; the old b-----’s beard would have been snow-white after two overs. And the same goes for that fat black nawab and the pup Fry, too.

From this you may gather that I was a bowler myself, not a batter, and if I say I was a d----d good one, well, the old scores are there to back me up. Seven for 32 against the Gentlemen of Kent, five for 12 against the England XI, and a fair number of runs as a tail-end slogger to boot. Not that I prided myself on my batting; as I’ve said, it could be a risky business against fast men in the old days, when wickets were rough, and I may tell you privately that I took care never to face up to a really scorching bowler without woollen scarves wrapped round my legs (under my flannels) and an old tin soup-bowl over my essentials; sport’s all very well, but you mustn’t let it incapacitate you for the manliest game of all. No, just let me go in about number eight or nine, when the slow lobbers and twisters were practising their wiles, and I could slash away in safety, and then, when t’other side had their innings – give me that ball and a thirty-pace run-up and just watch me make ’em dance.

It may strike you that old Flashy’s approach to our great summer game wasn’t quite that of your school-storybook hero, apple-cheeked and manly, playing up unselfishly for the honour of the side and love of his gallant captain, revelling in the jolly rivalry of bat and ball while his carefree laughter rings across the green sward. No, not exactly; personal glory and cheap wickets however you could get ’em, and d--n the honour of the side, that was my style, with a few quid picked up in side-bets, and plenty of skirt-chasing afterwards among the sporting ladies who used to ogle us big hairy fielders over their parasols at Canterbury Week. That’s the spirit that wins matches, and you may take my word for it, and ponder our recent disastrous showing against the Australians while you’re about it.¹

Of course, I speak as one who learned his cricket in the golden age, when I was a miserable fag at Rugby, toadying my way up the school and trying to keep a whole skin in that infernal jungle – you took your choice of emerging a physical wreck or a moral one, and I’m glad to say I never hesitated, which is why I’m the man I am today, what’s left of me. I snivelled and bought my way to safety when I was a small boy, and bullied and tyrannised when I was a big one; how the d---l I’m not in the House of Lords by now, I can’t think. That’s by the way; the point is that Rugby taught me only two things really well, survival and cricket, for I saw even at the tender age of eleven that while bribery, fawning, and deceit might ensure the former, they weren’t enough to earn a popular reputation, which is a very necessary thing. For that, you had to shine at games, and cricket was the only one for me.

Not that I cared for it above half, at first, but the other great sport was football, and that was downright dangerous; I rubbed along at it only by limping up late to the scrimmages yelping: ‘Play up, you fellows, do! Oh, confound this game leg of mine!’ and by developing a knack of missing my charges against bigger men by a fraction of an inch, plunging on the turf just too late with heroic gasps and roarings.² Cricket was peace and tranquillity by comparison, without any danger of being hacked in the members – and I turned out to be uncommon good at it.

I say this in all modesty; as you may know, I have three other prime talents, for horses, languages, and fornication, but they’re all God-given, and no credit that I can claim. But I worked to make myself a cricketer, d----d hard I worked, which is probably why, when I look back nowadays on the rewards and trophies of an eventful life – the medals, the knighthood, the accumulated cash, the military glory, the drowsy, satisfied women – all in all, there’s not much I’m prouder of than those five wickets for 12 runs against the flower of England’s batters, or that one glorious over at Lord’s in ’42 when – but I’ll come to that in a moment, for it’s where my present story really begins.

I suppose, if Fuller Pilch had got his bat down just a split second sooner, it would all have turned out different. The Skrang pirates wouldn’t have been burned out of their h--lish nest, the black queen of Madagascar would have had one lover fewer (not that she’d have missed a mere one, I daresay, the insatiable great b---h), the French and British wouldn’t have bombarded Tamitave, and I’d have been spared kidnapping, slavery, blowpipes, and the risk of death and torture in unimaginable places – aye, old Fuller’s got a lot to answer for, God rest him. However, that’s anticipating – I was telling you how I became a fast bowler at Rugby, which is a necessary preliminary.

It was in the ’thirties, you see, that round-arm bowling came into its own, and fellows like Mynn got their hands up shoulder-high. It changed the game like nothing since, for we saw what fast bowling could be – and it was fast – you talk about Spofforth and Brown, but none of them kicked up the dust like those early trimmers. Why, I’ve seen Mynn bowl to five slips and three long-stops, and his deliveries going over ’em all, first bounce right down to Lord’s gate. That’s my ticket, thinks I, and I took up the new slinging style, at first because it was capital fun to buzz the ball round the ears of rabbits and funks who couldn’t hit back, but I soon found this didn’t answer against serious batters, who pulled and drove me all over the place. So I mended my ways until I could whip my fastest ball onto a crown piece, four times out of five, and as I grew tall I became faster still, and was in a fair way to being Cock of Big Side – until that memorable afternoon when the puritan prig Arnold took exception to my being carried home sodden drunk, and turfed me out of the school. Two weeks before the Marylebone match, if you please – well, they lost it without me, which shows that while piety and sobriety may ensure you eternal life, they ain’t enough to beat the MCC.

However, that was an end to my cricket for a few summers, for I was packed off to the Army and Afghanistan, where I shuddered my way through the Kabul retreat, winning undeserved but undying fame in the siege of Jallalabad. All of which I’ve related elsewhere;fn1 sufficient to say that I bilked, funked, ran for dear life and screamed for mercy as occasion demanded, all through that ghastly campaign, and came out with four medals, the thanks of Parliament, an audience of our Queen, and a handshake from the Duke of Wellington. It’s astonishing what you can make out of a bad business if you play your hand right and look noble at the proper time.

Anyway, I came home a popular hero in the late summer of ’42, to a rapturous reception from the public and my beautiful idiot wife Elspeth. Being lionised and fêted, and making up for lost time by whoring and carousing to excess, I didn’t have much time in the first few months for lighter diversions, but it chanced that I was promenading down Regent Street one afternoon, twirling my cane with my hat on three hairs and seeking what I might devour, when I found myself outside ‘The Green Man’. I paused, idly – and that moment’s hesitation launched me on what was perhaps the strangest adventure of my life.

It’s long gone now, but in those days ‘The Green Man’ was a famous haunt of cricketers, and it was the sight of bats and stumps and other paraphernalia of the game in the window that suddenly brought back memories, and awoke a strange hunger – not to play, you understand, but just to smell the atmosphere again, and hear the talk of batters and bowlers, and the jargon and gossip. So I turned in, ordered a plate of tripe and a quart of home-brewed, exchanged a word or two with the jolly pipe-smokers in the tap, and was soon so carried away by the homely fare, the cheery talk and laughter, and the clean hearty air of the place, that I found myself wishing I’d gone on to the Haymarket and got myself a dish of hot spiced trollop instead. Still, there was time before supper, and I was just calling the waiter to settle up when I noticed a fellow staring at me across the room. He met my eye, shoved his chair back, and came over.

‘I say,’ says he, ‘aren’t you Flashman?’ He said it almost warily, as though he didn’t wish quite to believe it. I was used to this sort of thing by now, and having fellows fawn and admire the hero of Jallalabad, but this chap didn’t look like a toad-eater. He was as tall as I was, brown-faced and square-chinned, with a keen look about him, as though he couldn’t wait to have a cold tub and a ten-mile walk. A Christian, I shouldn’t wonder, and no smoking the day before a match.

So I said, fairly cool, that I was Flashman, and what was it to him.

‘You haven’t changed,’ says he, grinning. ‘You won’t remember me, though, do you?’

‘Any good reason why I should try?’ says I. ‘Here, waiter!’

‘No, thank’ee,’ says this fellow. ‘I’ve had my pint for the day. Never take more during the season.’ And he sat himself down, cool as be-d----d, at my table.

‘Well, I’m relieved to hear it,’ says I, rising. ‘You’ll forgive me, but—’

‘Hold on,’ says he, laughing. ‘I’m Brown. Tom Brown – of Rugby. Don’t say you’ve forgotten!’

Well, in fact, I had. Nowadays his name is emblazoned on my memory, and has been ever since Hughes published his infernal book in the ’fifties, but that was still in the future, and for the life of me I couldn’t place him. Didn’t want to, either; he had that manly, open-air reek about him that I can’t stomach, what with his tweed jacket (I’ll bet he’d rubbed down his horse with it) and sporting cap; not my style at all.

‘You roasted me over the common-room fire once,’ says he, amiably, and then I knew him fast enough, and measured the distance to the door. That’s the trouble with these snivelling little sneaks one knocks about at school; they grow up into hulking louts who box, and are always in prime trim. Fortunately this one appeared to be Christian as well as muscular, having swallowed Arnold’s lunatic doctrine of love-thine-enemy, for as I hastily muttered that I hoped it hadn’t done him any lasting injury, he laughed heartily and clapped me on the shoulder.

‘Why, that’s ancient history,’ cries he. ‘Boys will be boys, what? Besides, d’ye know – I feel almost that I owe you an apology. Yes,’ and he scratched his head and looked sheepish. ‘Tell the truth,’ went on this amazing oaf, ‘when we were youngsters I didn’t care for you above half, Flashman. Well, you treated us fags pretty raw, you know – of course, I guess it was just thoughtlessness, but, well, we thought you no end of a cad, and – and … a coward, too.’ He stirred uncomfortably, and I wondered was he going to fart. ‘Well, you caught us out there, didn’t you?’ says he, meeting my eye again. ‘I mean, all this business in Afghanistan … the way you defended the old flag … that sort of thing. By George,’ and he absolutely had tears in his eyes, ‘it was the most splendid thing … and to think that you … well, I never heard of anything so heroic in my life, and I just wanted to apologize, old fellow, for thinking ill of you – ’cos I’ll own that I did, once – and ask to shake your hand, if you’ll let me.’

He sat there, with his great paw stuck out, looking misty and noble, virtue just oozing out of him, while I marvelled. The strange thing is, his precious pal Scud East, whom I’d hammered just as generously at school, said almost the same thing to me years later, when we met as prisoners in Russia – confessed how he’d loathed me, but how my heroic conduct had wiped away all old scores, and so forth. I wonder still if they believed that it did, or if they were being hypocrites for form’s sake, or if they truly felt guilty for once having harboured evil thoughts of me? D----d if I know; the Victorian conscience is beyond me, thank G-d. I know that if anyone who’d done me a bad turn later turned out to be the Archangel Gabriel, I’d still hate the b----d; but then, I’m a scoundrel, you see, with no proper feelings. However, I was so relieved to find that this stalwart lout was prepared to let bygones be bygones that I turned on all my Flashy charms, pumped his fin heartily, and insisted that he break his rule for once, and have a glass with me.

‘Well, I will, thank’ee,’ says he, and when the beer had come and we’d drunk to dear old Rugby (sincerely, no doubt, on his part) he puts down his mug and says:

‘There’s another thing – matter of fact it was the first thought that popped into my head when I saw you just now – I don’t know how you’d feel about it, though – I mean, perhaps your wounds ain’t better yet?’

He hesitated. ‘Fire away,’ says I, thinking perhaps he wanted to introduce me to his sister.

‘Well, you won’t have heard, but my last half at school, when I was captain, we had no end of a match against the Marylebone men – lost on first innings, but only nine runs in it, and we’d have beat ’em, given one more over. Anyway, old Aislabie – you remember him? – was so taken with our play that he has asked me if I’d like to get up a side, Rugby past and present, for a match against Kent. Well, I’ve got some useful hands – you know young Brooke, and Raggles – and I remembered you were a famous bowler, so … What d’ye say to turning out for us – if you’re fit, of course?’

It took me clean aback, and my tongue being what it is, I found myself saying: ‘Why, d’you think you’ll draw a bigger gate with the hero of Afghanistan playing?’

‘Eh? Good lord, no!’ He coloured and then laughed. ‘What a cynic you are, Flashy! D’ye know,’ says he, looking knowing, ‘I’m beginning to understand you, I think. Even at school, you always said the smart, cutting things that got under people’s skins – almost as though you were going out of your way to have ’em think ill of you. It’s a contrary thing – all at odds with the truth, isn’t it? Oh, aye,’ says he, smiling owlishly, ‘Afghanistan proved that, all right. The German doctors are doing a lot of work on it – the perversity of human nature, excellence bent on destroying itself, the heroic soul fearing its own fall from grace, and trying to anticipate it. Interesting.’ He shook his fat head solemnly. ‘I’m thinking of reading philosophy at Oxford this term, you know. However, I mustn’t prose. What about it, old fellow?’ And d--n his impudence, he slapped me on the knee. ‘Will you bowl your expresses for us – at Lord’s?’

I’d been about to tell him to take his offer along with his rotten foreign sermonising and drop ’em both in the Serpentine, but that last word stopped me. Lord’s – I’d never played there, but what cricketer who ever breathed wouldn’t jump at the chance? You may think it small enough beer compared with the games I’d been playing lately, but I’ll confess it made my heart leap. I was still young and impressionable then and I almost knocked his hand off, accepting. He gave me another of his thunderous shoulder-claps (they pawed each other something d--nable, those hearty young champions of my youth) and said, capital, it was settled then.

‘You’ll want to get in some practice, no doubt,’ says he, and promptly delivered a lecture about how he kept himself in condition, with runs and exercises and forgoing tuck, just as he had at school. From that he harked back to the dear old days, and how he’d gone for a weep and a pray at Arnold’s tomb the previous month (our revered mentor having kicked the bucket earlier in the year, and not before time, in my opinion). Excited as I was at the prospect of the Lord’s game, I’d had about my bellyful of Master Pious Brown by the time he was done, and as we took our leave of each other in Regent Street, I couldn’t resist the temptation to puncture his confounded smugness.

‘Can’t say how glad I am to have seen you again, old lad,’ says he, as we shook hands. ‘Delighted to know you’ll turn out for us, of course, but, you know, the best thing of all has been – meeting the new Flashman, if you know what I mean. It’s odd,’ and he fixed his thumbs in his belt and squinted wisely at me, like an owl in labour, ‘but it reminds me of what the Doctor used to say at confirmation class – about man being born again – only it’s happened to you – for me, if you understand me. At all events, I’m a better man now, I feel, than I was an hour ago. God bless you, old chap,’ says he, as I disengaged my hand before he could drag me to my knees for a quick prayer and a chorus of ‘Let us with a gladsome mind’. He asked which way I was bound.

‘Oh, down towards Haymarket,’ says I. ‘Get some exercise, I think.’

‘Capital,’ says he. ‘Nothing like a good walk.’

‘Well … I was thinking more of riding, don’t you know.’

‘In Haymarket?’ He frowned. ‘No stables thereaway, surely?’

‘Best in town,’ says I. ‘A few English mounts, but mostly French fillies. Riding silks black and scarlet, splendid exercise, but d----d exhausting. Care to try it?’

For a moment he was all at a loss, and then as understanding dawned he went scarlet and white by turns, until I thought he would faint. ‘My G-d,’ he whispered hoarsely. I tapped him on the weskit with my cane, all confidential.

‘You remember Stumps Harrowell, the shoemaker, at Rugby, and what enormous calves he had?’ I winked while he gaped at me. ‘Well, there’s a German wench down there whose poonts are even bigger. Just about your weight; do you a power of good.’

He made gargling noises while I watched him with huge enjoyment.

‘So much for the new Flashman, eh?’ says I. ‘Wish you hadn’t invited me to play with your pure-minded little friends? Well, it’s too late, young Tom; you’ve shaken hands on it, haven’t you?’

He pulled himself together and took a breath. ‘You may play if you wish,’ says he. ‘More fool I for asking you – but if you were the man I had hoped you were, you would—’

‘Cry off gracefully – and save you from the pollution of my company? No, no, my boy – I’ll be there, and just as fit as you are. But I’ll wager I enjoy my training more.’

‘Flashman,’ cries he, as I turned away, ‘don’t go to – to that place, I beseech you. It ain’t worthy—’

‘How would you know?’ says I. ‘See you at Lord’s.’ And I left him full of Christian anguish at the sight of the hardened sinner going down to the Pit. The best of it was, he was probably as full of holy torment at the thought of my foul fornications as he would have been if he’d galloped that German tart himself; that’s unselfishness for you. But she’d have been wasted on him, anyway.

However, just because I’d punctured holy Tom’s daydreams, don’t imagine that I took my training lightly. Even while the German wench was recovering her breath afterwards and ringing for refreshments, I was limbering up on the rug, trying out my old round-arm swing; I even got some of her sisters in to throw oranges to me for catching practice, and you never saw anything jollier than those painted dollymops scampering about in their corsets, shying fruit. We made such a row that the other customers put their heads out, and it turned into an impromptu innings on the landing, whores versus patrons (I must set down the rules for brothel cricket some day, if I can recall them; cover point took on a meaning that you won’t find in ‘Wisden’, I know). The whole thing got out of hand, of course, with furniture smashed and the sluts shrieking and weeping, and the madame’s bullies put me out for upsetting her disorderly house, which seemed a trifle hard.

Next day, though, I got down to it in earnest, with a ball in the garden. To my delight none of my old skill seemed to have deserted me, the thigh which I’d broken in Afghanistan never even twinged, and I crowned my practice by smashing the morning-room window while my father-in-law was finishing his breakfast; he’d been reading about the Rebecca Riots³ over his porridge, it seemed, and since he’d spent his miserable life squeezing and sweating his millworkers, and had a fearful guilty conscience according, his first reaction to the shattering glass was that the starving mob had risen at last and were coming to give him his just deserts.

‘Ye d----d Goth!’ he spluttered, fishing the fragments out of his whiskers. ‘Ye don’t care who ye maim or murder; I micht ha’e been killed! Have ye nae work tae go tae?’ And he whined on about ill-conditioned loafers who squandered their time and his money in selfish pleasure, while I nuzzled Elspeth good morning over her coffee service, marvelling as I regarded her golden-haired radiance and peach-soft skin that I had wasted strength on that suety frau the evening before, when this had been waiting between the covers at home.

‘A fine family ye married intae,’ says her charming sire. ‘The son stramashin’ aboot destroyin’ property while the feyther’s lyin’ abovestairs stupefied wi’ drink. Is there nae mair toast?’

‘Well, it’s our property and our drink,’ says I, helping myself to kidneys. ‘Our toast, too, if it comes to that.’

‘Aye, is’t, though, my buckie?’ says he, looking more like a spiteful goblin than ever. ‘And who peys for’t? No’ you an’ yer wastrel parent. Aye, an’ ye can keep yer sullen sniffs to yersel’, my lassie,’ he went on to Elspeth. ‘We’ll hae things aboveboard, plump an’ plain. It’s John Morrison foots the bills, wi’ good Scots siller, hard-earned, for this fine husband o’ yours an’ the upkeep o’ his hoose an’ family; jist mind that.’ He crumpled up his paper, which was sodden with spilled coffee. ‘Tach! There my breakfast sp’iled for me. “Our property” an’ “our drink”, ye say? Grand airs and patched breeks!’ And out he strode, to return in a moment, snarling. ‘And since you’re meant tae be managin’ this establishment, my girl, ye’ll see tae it that we hae marmalade after this, and no’ this d----d French jam! Con-fee – toor! Huh! Sticky rubbish!’ And he slammed the door behind him.

‘Oh, dear,’ sighs Elspeth. ‘Papa is in his black mood. What a shame you broke the window, dearest.’

‘Papa is a confounded blot,’ says I, wolfing kidneys. ‘But now that we’re rid of him, give us a kiss.’

You’ll understand that we were an unusual menage. I had married Elspeth perforce, two years before when I had the ill-fortune to be stationed in Scotland, and had been detected tupping her in the bushes – it had been the altar or pistols for two with her fire-eating uncle. Then, when my drunken guv’nor had gone smash over railway shares, old Morrison had found himself saddled with the upkeep of the Flashman establishment, which he’d had to assume for his daughter’s sake.

A pretty state, you’ll allow, for the little miser wouldn’t give me or the guv’nor a penny direct, but doled it out to Elspeth, on whom I had to rely for spending money. Not that she wasn’t generous, for in addition to being a stunning beauty she was also as brainless as a feather mop, and doted on me – or at least, she seemed to, but I was beginning to have my doubts. She had a hearty appetite for the two-backed game, and the suspicion was growing on me that in my absence she’d been rolling the linen with any chap who’d come handy, and was still spreading her favours now that I was home. As I say, I couldn’t be sure – for that matter, I’m still not, sixty years later. The trouble was and is, I dearly loved her in my way, and not only lustfully – although she was all you could wish as a night-cap – and however much I might stallion about the town and elsewhere, there was never another woman that I cared for besides her. Not even Lola Montez, or Lakshmibai, or Lily Langtry, or Ko Dali’s daughter, or Duchess Irma, or Takes-Away-Clouds-Woman, or Valentina, or … or, oh, take your choice, there wasn’t one to come up to Elspeth.

For one thing, she was the happiest creature in the world, and pitifully easy to please; she revelled in the London life, which was a rare change from the cemetery she’d been brought up in – Paisley, they call it – and with her looks, my new-won laurels, and (best of all) her father’s shekels, we were well-received everywhere, her ‘trade’ origins being conveniently forgotten. (There’s no such thing as an unfashionable hero or an unsuitable heiress.) This was just nuts to Elspeth, for she was an unconscionable little snob, and when I told her I was to play at Lord’s, before the smartest of the sporting set, she went into raptures – here was a fresh excuse for new hats and dresses, and preening herself before the society rabble, she thought. Being Scotch, and knowing nothing, she supposed cricket was a gentleman’s game, you see; sure enough, a certain level of the polite world followed it, but they weren’t precisely the high cream, in those days – country barons, racing knights, well-to-do gentry, maybe a mad bishop or two, but pretty rustic. It wasn’t quite as respectable as it is now.

One reason for this was that it was still a betting game, and the stakes could run pretty high – I’ve known £50,000 riding on a single innings, with wild side-bets of anything from a guinea to a thou. on how many wickets Marsden would take, or how many catches would fall to the slips, or whether Pilch would reach fifty (which he probably would). With so much cash about, you may believe that some of the underhand work that went on would have made a Hays City stud school look like old maid’s loo – matches were sold and thrown, players were bribed and threatened, wickets were doctored (I’ve known the whole eleven of a respected county side to sneak out en masse and p--s on the wicket in the dark, so that their twisters could get a grip next morning; I caught a nasty cold myself). Of course, corruption wasn’t general, or even common, but it happened in those good old sporting days – and whatever the purists may say, there was a life and stingo about cricket then that you don’t get now.

It looked so different, even; if I close my eyes I can see Lord’s as it was then, and I know that when the memories of bed and battle have lost their colours and faded to misty grey, that at least will be as bright as ever. The coaches and carriages packed in the road outside the gate, the fashionable crowd streaming in by Jimmy Dark’s house under the trees, the girls like so many gaudy butterflies in their summer dresses and hats, shaded by parasols, and the men guiding ’em to chairs, some in tall hats and coats, others in striped weskits and caps, the gentry uncomfortably buttoned up and the roughs and townies in shirt-sleeves and billycocks with their watch-chains and cutties; the bookies with their stands outside the pavilion, calling the odds, the flash chaps in their mighty whiskers and ornamented vests, the touts and runners and swell mobsmen slipping through the press like ferrets, the pot-boys from the Lord’s pub thrusting along with trays loaded with beer and lemonade, crying ‘Way, order, gents! Way, order!’; old John Gully, the retired pug, standing like a great oak tree, feet planted wide, smiling his gentle smile as he talked to Alfred Mynn, whose scarlet waist-scarf and straw boater were a magnet for the eyes of the hero-worshipping youngsters, jostling at a respectful distance from these giants of the sporting world; the grooms pushing a way for some doddering old Duke, passing through nodding and tipping his tile, with his poule-of-the-moment arm-in-arm, she painted and bold-eyed and defiant as the ladies turned the other way with a rustle of skirts; the bowling green and archery range going full swing, with the thunk of the shafts mingling with the distant pomping of the artillery band, the chatter and yelling of the vendors, the grind of coach-wheels and the warm hum of summer ebbing across the great green field where Stevie Slatter’s boys were herding away the sheep and warning off the bob-a-game players; the crowds ten-deep at the nets to see Pilch at batting practice, or Felix, agile as his animal namesake, bowling those slow lobs that seemed to hang forever in the air.

Or I see it in the late evening sun, the players in their white top-hats trooping in from the field, with the ripple of applause running round the ropes, and the urchins streaming across to worship, while the old buffers outside the pavilion clap and cry ‘Played, well played!’ and raise their tankards, and the Captain tosses the ball to some round-eyed small boy who’ll guard it as a relic for life, and the scorer climbs stiffly down from his eyrie and the shadows lengthen across the idyllic scene, the very picture of merry, sporting old England, with the umpires bundling up the stumps, the birds calling in the tall trees, the gentle evenfall stealing over the ground and the pavilion, and the empty benches, and the willow wood-pile behind the sheep pen where Flashy is plunging away on top of the landlord’s daughter in the long grass. Aye, cricket was cricket then.

Barring the last bit, which took place on another joyous occasion, that’s absolutely what it was like on the afternoon when the Gentlemen of Rugby, including your humble servant, went out to play the cracks of Kent (twenty to one on, and no takers). At first I thought it was going to be a frost, for while most of my team-mates were pretty civil – as you’d expect, to the Hector of Afghanistan – the egregious Brown was decidedly cool, and so was Brooke, who’d been head of the school in my time and was the apple of Arnold’s eye – that tells you all you need to know about him; he was clean-limbed and handsome and went to church and had no impure thoughts and was kind to animals and old ladies and was a midshipman in the Navy; what happened to him I’ve no idea, but I hope he absconded with the ship’s funds and the admiral’s wife and set up a knocking-shop in Valparaiso. He and Brown talked in low voices in the pavilion, and glanced towards me; rejoicing, no doubt, over the sinner who hadn’t repented.

Then it was time to play, and Brown won the toss and elected to bat, which meant that I spent the next hour beside Elspeth’s chair, trying to hush her imbecile observations on the game, and waiting for my turn to go in. It was a while coming, because either Kent were going easy to make a game of it, or Brooke and Brown were better than you’d think, for they survived the opening whirlwind of Mynn’s attack, and when the twisters came on, began to push the score along quite handsomely. I’ll say that for Brown, he could play a deuced straight bat, and Brooke was a hitter. They put on thirty for the first wicket, and our other batters were game, so that we had seventy up before the tail was reached, and I took my leave of my fair one, who embarrassed me d--nably by assuring her neighbours that I was sure to make a score, because I was so strong and clever. I hastened to the pavilion, collared a pint of ale from the pot-boy, and hadn’t had time to do more than blow off the froth when there were two more wickets down, and Brown says: ‘In you go, Flashman.’

So I picked up a bat from beside the flagstaff, threaded my way through the crowd who turned to look curiously at the next man in, and stepped out on to the turf – you must have done it yourselves often enough, and remember the silence as you walk out to the wicket, so far away, and perhaps there’s a stray handclap, or a cry of ‘Go it, old fellow!’, and no more than a few spectators loafing round the ropes, and the fielding side sit or lounge about, stretching in the sun, barely glancing at you as you come in. I knew it well enough, but as I stepped over the ropes I happened to glance up – and Lord’s truly smote me for the first time. Round the great emerald field, smooth as a pool table, there was this mighty mass of people, ten deep at the boundary, and behind them the coaches were banked solid, wheel to wheel, crowded with ladies and gentlemen, the whole huge multitude hushed and expectant while the sun caught the glittering eyes of thousands of opera-glasses and binocles glaring at me – it was d----d unnerving, with that vast space to be walked across, and my bladder suddenly holding a bushel, and I wished I could scurry back into the friendly warm throng behind me.

You may think it odd that nervous funk should grip me just then; after all, my native cowardice has been whetted on some real worthwhile horrors – Zulu impis and Cossack cavalry and Sioux riders, all intent on rearranging my circulatory and nervous systems in their various ways; but there were others to share the limelight with me then, and it’s a different kind of fear, anyway. The minor ordeals can be d----d scaring simply because you know you’re going to survive them.

It didn’t last above a second, while I gulped and hesitated and strode on, and then the most astounding thing happened. A murmur passed along the banks of people, and then it grew to a roar, and suddenly it exploded in the most deafening cheering you ever heard; you could feel the shock of it rolling across the ground, and ladies were standing up and fluttering their handkerchiefs and parasols, and the men were roaring hurrah and waving their hats, and jumping up on the carriages, and in the middle of it all the brass band began to thump out ‘Rule, Britannia’, and I realized they weren’t cheering the next man in, but saluting the hero of Jallalabad, and I was fairly knocked sideways by the surprise of it all. However, I fancy I played it pretty well, raising my white topper right and left while the music and cheering pounded on, and hurrying to get to the wicket as a modest hero should. And here was slim little Felix, in his classroom whiskers and charity boy’s cap, smiling shyly and holding out his hand – Felix, the greatest gentleman bat in the world, mark you, leading me to the wicket and calling for three cheers from the Kent team. And then the silence fell, and my bat thumped uncommon loud as I hit it into the blockhole, and the fielders crouched, and I thought, oh G-d, this is the serious business, and I’m bound to lay an egg on the scorer, I know I am, and after such a welcome, too, and with my bowels quailing I looked up the wicket at Alfred Mynn.

He was a huge man at the best of times, six feet odd and close on twenty stone, with a face like fried ham garnished with a double helping of black whisker, but now he looked like Goliath, and if you think a man can’t tower above you from twenty-five yards off, you ain’t seen young Alfie. He was smiling, idly tossing up the ball which looked no bigger than a cherry in his massive fist, working one foot on the turf – pawing it, bigod. Old Aislabie gave me guard, quavered ‘Play!’ I gripped my bat, and Mynn took six quick steps and swung his arm.

I saw the ball in his hand, at shoulder height, and then something fizzed beside my right knee, I prepared to lift my bat – and the wicket-keeper was tossing the ball to Felix at point. I swallowed in horror, for I swear I never saw the d----d thing go, and someone in the crowd cries, ‘Well let alone, sir!’ There was a little puff of dust settling about four feet in front of me; that’s where he pitches, thinks I, oh J---s, don’t let him hit me! Felix, crouching facing me, barely ten feet away, edged just a little closer, his eyes fixed on my feet; Mynn had the ball again, and again came the six little steps, and I was lunging forward, eyes tight shut, to get my bat down where the dust had jumped last time. I grounded it, my bat leaped as something hit it a hammer blow, numbing my wrists, and I opened my eyes to see the ball scuttling off to leg behind the wicket. Brooke yells ‘Come on!’, and the lord knows I wanted to, but my legs didn’t answer, and Brooke had to turn back, shaking his head.

This has got to stop, thinks I, for I’ll be maimed for life if I stay here. And panic, mingled with hate and rage, gripped me as Mynn turned again; he strode up to the wicket, arm swinging back, and I came out of my ground in a huge despairing leap, swinging my bat for dear life – there was a sickening crack and in an instant of elation I knew I’d caught it low down on the outside edge, full swipe, the b----y thing must be in Wiltshire by now, five runs for certain, and I was about to tear up the pitch when I saw Brooke was standing his ground, and Felix, who’d been fielding almost in my pocket, was idly tossing the ball up in his left hand, shaking his head and smiling at me.

How he’d caught it only he and Satan know; it must have been like snatching a bullet from the muzzle. But he hadn’t turned a hair, and I could only trudge back to the pavilion, while the mob groaned in sympathy, and I waved my bat to them and tipped my tile – after all I was a bowler, and at least I’d taken a swing at it. And I’d faced three balls from Alfred Mynn.

We closed our hand at 91, Flashy caught Felix, nought, and it was held to be a very fair score, although Kent were sure to pass it easily, and since it was a single-hand match that would be that. In spite of my blank score – how I wished I had gone for that single off the second ball! – I was well received round the pavilion, for it was known who I was by now, and several gentlemen came to shake my hand, while the ladies eyed my stalwart frame and simpered to each other behind their parasols; Elspeth was glowing at the splendid figure I had cut in her eyes, but indignant that I had been out when my wicket hadn’t been knocked down, because wasn’t that the object of the game? I explained that I had been caught out, and she said it was a most unfair advantage, and that little man in the cap must be a great sneak, at which the gentlemen around roared with laughter and ogled her, calling for soda punch for the lady and swearing she must be taken on to the committee to amend the rules.

I contented myself with a glass of beer before we went out to field, for I wanted to be fit to bowl, but d---e if Brown didn’t leave me loafing in the outfield, no doubt to remind me that I was a whoremonger and therefore not fit to take an over. I didn’t mind, but lounged about pretty nonchalant, chatting with the townies near the ropes, and shrugging my shoulders eloquently when Felix or his partner made a good hit, which they did every other ball. They fairly knocked our fellows all over the wicket, and had fifty up well within the hour; I observed to the townies that what we wanted was a bit of ginger, and limbered my arm, and they cheered and began to cry: ‘Bring on the Flash chap! Huzza for Afghanistan!’ and so forth, which was very gratifying.

I’d been getting my share of attention from the ladies in the carriages near my look-out, and indeed had been so intent on winking and swaggering that I’d missed a long hit, at which Brown called pretty sharply to me to mind out; now one or two of the more spirited ladybirds began to echo the townies, who egged them on, so that ‘Bring on the Flash chap!’ began to echo round the ground, in gruff bass and piping soprano. Finally Brown could stand it no longer, and waved me in, and the mob cheered like anything, and Felix smiled his quiet smile and took fresh guard.

On the whole he treated my first over with respect, for he took only eleven off it, which was better than I deserved. For of course I flung my deliveries down with terrific energy, the first one full pitch at his head, and the next three horribly short, in sheer nervous excitement. The crowd loved it, and so did Felix, curse him; he didn’t reach the first one, but he drew the second beautifully for four, cut the third on tiptoe, and swept the last right off his upper lip and into the coaches near the pavilion.

How the crowd laughed and cheered, while Brown bit his lip with vexation, and Brooke frowned his disgust. But they couldn’t take me off after only one turn; I saw Felix say something to his partner, and the other laughed – and as I walked back to my look-out a thought crept into my head, and I scowled horribly and clapped my hands in disgust, at which the spectators yelled louder than ever. ‘Give ’em the Afghan pepper, Flashy!’ cries one, and ‘Run out the guns!’ hollers another; I waved my fist and stuck my hat on the back of my head, and they cheered and laughed again.

They gave a huge shout when Brown called me up for my second turn, and settled themselves to enjoy more fun and fury. You’ll get it, my boys, thinks I, as I thundered up to the wicket, with the mob counting each step, and my first ball smote about half way down the pitch, flew high over the batsman’s head, and they ran three byes. That brought Felix to face me again, and I walked back, closing my ears to the shouting and to Brown’s muttered rebuke. I turned, and just from the lift of Felix’s shoulders I could see he was getting set to knock me into the trees; I fixed my eye on the spot dead in line with his off stump – he was a left-hander, which left the wicket wide as a barn door to my round delivery – and ran up determined to bowl the finest, fastest ball of my life.

And so I did. Very well, I told you I was a good bowler, and that was the best ball I ever delivered, which is to say it was unplayable. I had dropped the first one short on purpose, just to confirm what everyone supposed from the first over – that I was a wild chucker, with no more head than flat beer. But the second had every fibre directed at that spot, with just a trifle less strength than I could muster, to keep it steady, and from the moment it left my hand Felix was gone. Granted I was lucky, for the spot must have been bald; it was a shooter, skidding in past his toes when he expected it round his ears, and before he could smother it his stump was cart-wheeling away.

The yell that went up split the heaven, and he walked past me shaking his head and shooting me a quizzy look while the fellows slapped my back, and even Brooke condescended to cry ‘Well bowled!’ I took it very offhand, but inside I was thinking: ‘Felix! Felix, by G-d!’ – I’d not have swapped that wicket for a peerage. Then I was brought back to earth, for the crowd were cheering the new man in, and I picked up the ball and turned to face the tall, angular figure with the long-reaching arms and the short-handled bat.

I’d seen Fuller Pilch play at Norwich when I was a young shaver, when he beat Marsden of Yorkshire for the single-wicket championship of England; so far as I ever had a boyhood hero, it was Pilch, the best professional of his day – some say of any day, although it’s my belief this new boy Rhodes may be as good. Well, Flash, thinks I, you’ve nothing to lose, so here goes at him.

Now, what I’d done to Felix was head bowling, but what came next was luck, and nothing else. I can’t account for it yet, but it happened, and this is how it was. I did my d----dest to repeat my great effort, but even faster this time, and in consequence I was just short of a length; whether Pilch was surprised by the speed, or the fact that the ball kicked higher than it had any right to do, I don’t know, but he was an instant slow in reaching forward, which was his great shot. He didn’t ground his bat in time, the ball came high off the blade, and I fairly hurled myself down the pitch, all arms and legs, grabbing at a catch I could have held in my mouth. I nearly muffed it, too, but it stuck between finger and thumb, and the next I knew they were pounding me on the back, and the townies were in full voice, while Pilch turned away slapping his bat in vexation. ‘B----y gravel!’ cries he. ‘Hasn’t Dark got any brooms, then?’ He may have been right, for all I know.

By now, as you may imagine, I was past caring. Felix – and Pilch. There was nothing more left in the world just then, or so I thought; what could excel those twin glorious strokes? My grandchildren will never believe this, thinks I, supposing I have any – by George, I’ll buy every copy of the sporting press for the next month, and paper old Morrison’s bedroom with ’em. And yet the best was still to come.

Mynn was striding to the crease; I can see him now, and it brings back to me a line that Macaulay wrote in that very year: ‘And now the cry is “Aster”! and lo, the ranks divide, as the great Lord of Luna comes on with stately stride.’ That was Alfred the Great to a ‘t’, stately and magnificent, with his broad crimson sash and the bat like a kid’s paddle in his hand; he gave me a great grin as he walked by, took guard, glanced leisurely round the field, tipped his straw hat back on his head, and nodded to the umpire, old Aislabie, who was shaking with excitement as he called ‘Play!’

Well, I had no hope at all of improving on what I’d done, you may be sure, but I was determined to bowl my best, and it was only as I turned that it crossed my mind – old Aislabie’s a Rugby man, and it was out of pride in the old school that he arranged this fixture; honest as God, to be sure, but like all enthusiasts he’ll see what he wants to see, won’t he? – and Mynn’s so tarnation big you can’t help hitting him somewhere if you put your mind to it, and bowl your fastest. It was all taking shape even as I ran up to the wicket: I’d got Felix by skill, Pilch by luck, and I’d get Mynn by knavery or perish in the attempt. I fairly flung myself up to the crease, and let go a perfect snorter, dead on a length but a good foot wide of the leg stump. It bucked, Mynn stepped quickly across to let it go by, it flicked his calf, and by that time I was bounding across Aislabie’s line of sight, three feet off the ground, turning as I sprang and yelling at the top of my voice: ‘How was he there, sir?’

Now, a bowler who’s also a Gentleman of Rugby don’t appeal unless he believes it; that gooseberry-eyed old fool Aislabie hadn’t seen a d----d thing with me capering between him and the scene of the crime, but he concluded there must be something in it, as I knew he would, and by the time he had fixed his watery gaze, Mynn, who had stepped across, was plumb before the stumps. And Aislabie would have been more than human if he had resisted the temptation to give the word that everyone in that ground except Alfie wanted to hear. ‘Out!’ cries he. ‘Yes, out, absolutely! Out! Out!’

It was bedlam after that; the spectators went wild, and my team-mates simply seized me and rolled me on the ground; the cheering was deafening, and even Brown pumped me by the hand and slapped me on the shoulder, yelling ‘Bowled, oh, well bowled, Flashy!’ (You see the moral: cover every strumpet in London if you’ve a mind to, it don’t signify so long as you can take wickets.) Mynn went walking by, shaking his head and cocking an eyebrow in Aislabie’s direction – he knew it was a crab decision, but he beamed all over his big red face like the sporting ass he was, and then did something which has passed into the language: he took off his boater, presented it to me with a bow, and says:

‘That trick’s worth a new hat any day, youngster.’

(I’m d----d if I know which trick he meant,⁴ and I don’t much care; I just know the leg-before-wicket rule is a perfectly splendid one, if they’ll only let it alone.)

After that, of course, there was only one thing left to do. I told Brown that I’d sprained my arm with my exertions – brought back the rheumatism contracted from exposure in Afghanistan, very likely … horrid shame … just when I was finding a length … too bad … worst of luck … field all right, though … (I wasn’t going to run the risk of having the other Kent men paste me all over the ground, not for anything). So I went back to the deep field, to a tumultuous ovation from the gallery, which I acknowledged modestly with a tip of Mynn’s hat, and basked in my glory for the rest of the match, which we lost by four wickets. (If only that splendid chap Flashman had been able to go on bowling, eh? Kent would have been knocked all to smash in no time. They do say he has a jezzail bullet in his right arm still – no it ain’t, it was a spear thrust – I tell you I read it in the papers, etc., etc.)

It was beer all round in the pavilion afterwards, with all manner of congratulations – Felix shook my hand again, ducking his head in that shy way of his, and Mynn asked was I to be home next year, for if the Army didn’t find a use for me, he could, in the casual side which he would get together for the Grand Cricket Week at Canterbury. This was flattery on the grand scale, but I’m not sure that the sincerest tribute I got wasn’t Fuller Pilch’s knitted brows and steady glare as he sat on a bench with his tankard, looking me up and down for a full two minutes and never saying a word.

Even the doddering Duke came up to compliment me and say that my style reminded him absolutely of his own – ‘Did I not remark it to you, my dear?’ says he to his languid tart, who was fidgeting with her parasol and stifling a yawn while showing me her handsome profile and weighing me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Did I not observe that Mr Flashman’s shooter was just like the one I bowled out Beauclerk with at Maidstone in ’06? – directed to his off stump, sir, caught him goin’ back, you understand pitched just short, broke and shot, middle stump, bowled all over his wicket – ha! ha! what?’

I had to steady the old fool before he tumbled over demonstrating his action, and his houri, assisting, took the opportunity to rub a plump arm against me. ‘No doubt we shall have the pleasure of seeing you at Canterbury next summer, Mr Flashman,’ she murmurs, and the old pantaloon cries aye, aye, capital notion, as she helped him away; I made a note to look her up then, since she’d probably have killed him in the course of the winter.

It wasn’t till I was towelling myself in the bathhouse, and getting outside a brandy punch, that I realized I hadn’t seen Elspeth since the match ended, which was odd, since she’d hardly miss a chance to bask in my reflected glory. I dressed and looked about; no sign of her among the thinning crowd, or outside the pavilion, or at the ladies’ tea tables, or at our carriage; coachee hadn’t seen her either. There was a fairish throng outside the pub, but she’d hardly be there, and then someone plucked my sleeve, and I turned to find a large, beery-faced individual with black button eyes at my elbow.

‘Mr Flashman, sir, best respex,’ says he, and tapped his low-crown hat with his cudgel. ‘You’ll forgive the liberty, I’m sure – Tighe’s the monicker, Daedalus Tighe, ev’yone knows me, agent an’ accountant to the gentry—’ and he pushed a card in my direction between sweaty fingers. ‘Takin’ the hoppor-toonity, my dear sir an’ sportsman, of presentin’ my compliments an’ best vishes, an’—’

‘Thank’ee,’ says I, ‘but I’ve no bets to place.’

‘My dear sir!’ says he, beaming. ‘The werry last idea!’ And he invited his cronies, a seedy-flash bunch, to bear him witness. ‘My makin’ so bold, dear sir, was to inwite you to share my good fortun’, seein’ as ’ow you’ve con-tribooted so ’andsome to same – namely, an’ first, by partakin’ o’ some o’ this ’ere French jam-pain – poodle’s p--s to some, but as drunk in the bes’ hestablishments by the werriest swells such as – your good self, sir. Wincent,’ says he, ‘pour a glass for the gallant—’

‘Another time,’ says I, giving him my shoulder, but the brute had the effrontery to catch my arm.

‘’Old on, sir!’ cries he. ‘’Arf a mo’, that’s on’y the sociable pree-liminary. I’m vishful to present to your noble self the—’

‘Go to the d---l!’ snaps I. He stank of brandy.

‘—sum of fifty jemmy o’ goblins, as an earnest o’ my profound gratitood an’ respeck. Wincent!’

And d----d if the weasel at his elbow wasn’t thrusting a glass of champagne at me with one hand and a fistful of bills in the other. I stopped short, staring.

‘What the deuce …?’

‘A triflin’ token of my hes-teem,’ says Tighe. He swayed a little, leering at me, and for all the reek of booze, the flash cut of his coat, the watch-chain over his flowery silk vest, and the gaudy bloom in his lapel – the marks of the vulgar sport, in fact – the little eyes in his fat cheeks were as hard as coals. ‘You vun it for me, my dear sir – an’ plenty to spare, d---e. Didn’t ’e, though?’ His confederates, crowding round, chortled and raised their glasses. ‘By the sweat – yore pardon, sir – by the peerspyration o’ yore brow – an’ that good right arm, vot sent back Felix, Pilch, an’ Alfred Mynn in three deliveries, sir. Look ’ere,’ and he snapped a finger to Vincent, who dropped the glass to whip open a leather satchel at his waist – it was stuffed with notes and coin.

‘You, sir, earned that. You did, though. Ven you put avay Fuller Pilch – an’, veren’t that a ’andsome catch, now? – I sez to Fat Bob Napper, vot reckons e’s king o’ the odds an’ evens – “Napper,” sez I, “that’s a ’ead bowler, that is. Vot d’ye give me ’e don’t put out Mynn, first ball?” “Gammon,” sez ’e. “Three in a row – never! Thahsand to one, an’ you can pay me now.” Generous odds, sir, you’ll allow.’ And the rascal winked and tapped his nose. ‘So – hon goes my quid – an’ ’ere’s Napper’s thahsand, cash dahn, give ’im that – an’ fifty on it’s yore’s, my gallant sir, vith the grateful compliments of Daedalus Tighe, Hesk-wire, agent an’ accountant to the gentry, ’oo ’ereby salutes’ – and he raised his glass and belched unsteadily – ‘yore ’onner’s pardon, b----r them pickles – ’oo salutes the most wicious right harm in the noble game o’ cricket today! Hip-hip-hip – hooray!’

I couldn’t help being amused at the brute, and his pack of rascals – drunken bookies and touts on the spree, and too far gone to appreciate their own impudence.

‘My thanks for the thought, Mr Tighe,’ says I, for it don’t harm to be civil to a bookie, and I was feeling easy, ‘you may drink my health with it.’ And I pushed firmly past him, at which he staggered and sat down heavily in a froth of cheap champagne, while his pals hooted and weaved in to help him. Not that I couldn’t have used the fifty quid, but you can’t be seen associating with cads of that kidney, much less accepting their gelt. I strode on, with cries of ‘Good luck, sir!’ and ‘Here’s to the Flash cove!’ following me. I was still grinning as I resumed my search for Elspeth, but as I turned into the archery range for a look there, the smile was wiped off my lips – for there were only two people in the long alley between the hedges: the tall figure of a man, and Elspeth in his arms.

I came to a dead halt, silent – for three reasons. First, I was astonished. Secondly, he was a big, vigorous brute, by what I could see of him – which was a massive pair of shoulders in a handsomely cut broadcloth (no expense spared there), and thirdly, it passed quickly through my mind that Elspeth, apart from being my wife, was also my source of supply. Food for thought, you see, but before I had even an instant to taste it, they both turned their heads and I saw that Elspeth was in the act of stringing a shaft to a ladies’ bow – giggling and making a most appealing hash of it – while her escort, standing close in behind her, was guiding her hands, which of course necessitated putting his arms about her, with her head against his shoulder.

All very innocent – as who knows better than I, who’ve taken advantage of many such situations for an ardent squeeze and fondle?

‘Why, Harry,’ cries she, ‘where have you been all this while? See, Don Solomon is teaching me archery – and I have been making the sorriest show!’ Which she demonstrated by fumbling the shaft, swinging her bow arm wildly, and letting fly into the hedge, squeaking with delighted alarm. ‘Oh, I am quite hopeless, Don Solomon, unless you hold my hands!’

‘The fault is mine, dear Mrs Flashman,’ says he, easily. He managed to keep an arm round her, while bowing in my direction. ‘But here is Mars, who I’m sure is a much better instructor for Diana than I could ever be.’ He smiled and raised his hat. ‘Servant, Mr Flashman.’

I nodded, pretty cool, and looked down my nose at him, which wasn’t easy, since he was all of my height, and twice as big around – portly, you might say, if not fat, with a fleshy, smiling face, and fine teeth which flashed white against his swarthy skin. Dago, for certain, perhaps even Oriental, for his hair and whiskers were blue-black and curly, and as he came towards me he was moving with that mincing Latin grace, for all his flesh. A swell, too, by the elegant cut of his togs; diamond pin in his neckercher, a couple of rings on his big brown hands – and, by Jove, even a tiny gold ring in one ear. Part-nigger, not a doubt of it, and with all a rich nigger’s side, too.

‘Oh, Harry, we have had such fun!’ cries Elspeth, and my heart gave a little jump as I looked at her. The gold ringlets under her ridiculous bonnet, the perfect pink and white complexion, the sheer innocent beauty of her as she sparkled with laughter and reached out a hand to me. ‘Don Solomon has shown me bowling, and how to shoot – ever so badly! – and entertained me – for the cricket came so dull when you were not playing, with those tedious Kentish people popping away, and—’

‘Hey?’ says I, astonished. ‘You mean you didn’t see me bowl?’

‘Why, no, Harry, but we had the jolliest time among the side-shows, with ices and hoop-la …’ She prattled on, while the greaser raised his brows, smiling from one to the other of us.

‘Dear me,’ says he, ‘I fear I have lured you from your duty, dear Mrs Flashman. Forgive me,’ he went on to me, ‘for I have the advantage of you still. Don Solomon Haslam, to command,’ and he nodded and flicked his handkerchief. ‘Mr Speedicut, who I believe is your friend, presented me to your so charming lady, and I took the liberty of suggesting that we … take a stroll. If I had known you were to be put on – but tell me … any luck, eh?’

‘Oh, not too bad,’ says I, inwardly furious that while I’d been performing prodigies Elspeth had been fluttering at this oily flammer. ‘Felix, Pilch and Mynn, in three balls – if you call it luck. Now, my dear, if Mr Solomon will excuse—’

To my amazement he burst into laughter. ‘I would call it luck!’ cries he. ‘That would be a daydream, to be sure! I’d settle for just one of ’em!’

‘Well, I didn’t,’ says I, glaring at him. ‘I bowled Felix, caught out Pilch, and had Mynn leg before – which probably don’t mean much to a foreigner—’

‘Good G-d!’ cries he. ‘You don’t mean it! You’re bamming us, surely?’

‘Now, look’ee, whoever you are—’

‘But – but – oh, my G-d!’ He was fairly spluttering, and suddenly he seized my hand, and began pumping it, his face alight. ‘My dear chap – I can’t believe it! All three? And to think I missed it!’ He shook his head, and burst out laughing again. ‘Oh, what a dilemma! How can I regret an hour spent with the loveliest girl in London – but, oh, Mrs Flashman, what you’ve cost me! Why, there’s never been anything like it! And to think that we were missing it all! Well, well, I’ve paid for my susceptibility to beauty, to be sure! Well done, my dear chap, well done! But this calls for celebration!’

I was fairly taken aback at this, while Elspeth looked charmingly bewildered, but nothing must do but he bore us off to where the liquor was, and demanded of me, action by action, a description of how I’d bowled out the mighty three. I’ve never seen a man so excited, and I’ll own I found myself warming to him; he clapped me on the shoulder, and slapped his knee with delight when I’d done.

‘Well, I’m blessed! Why, Mrs Flashman, your husband ain’t just a hero – he’s a prodigy!’ At which Elspeth glowed and squeezed my hand, which banished the last of my temper. ‘Felix, Pilch, and Mynn! Extraordinary. Well – I thought I was something of a cricketer, in my humble way – I played at Eton, you know – we never had a match with Rugby, alas! but I fancy I’d be a year or two before your time, anyway, old fellow. But this quite beats everything!’

It was fairly amusing, not least for the effect it was having on Elspeth. Here was this gaudy foreign buck, who’d come spooning round her, d----d little flirt that she was, and now all his attention was for my cricket. She was between exulting on my behalf and pouting at being overlooked, but when we parted from the fellow, with fulsome compliments and assurances that we must meet again soon, on his side, and fair affability on mine, he won her heart by kissing her hand as though he’d like to eat it. I didn’t mind, by now; he seemed not a bad sort, for a ’breed, and if he’d been to Eton he was presumably half-respectable, and obviously rolling in rhino. All men slobbered over Elspeth, anyway.

So the great day ended, which I’ll never forget for its own splendid sake: Felix, Pilch, and Mynn, and those three ear-splitting yells from the mob as each one fell. It was a day that held the seed of great events, too, as you’ll see, and the first tiny fruit was waiting for us when we got back to Mayfair. It was a packet handed in at the door, and addressed to me, enclosing bills for fifty pounds, and a badly printed note saying ‘With the compliments of D. Tighe, Esq.’ Of all the infernal impudence; that b----y bookie, or whatever he was, having the starch to send cash to me, as though I were some pro. to be tipped.

I’d have kicked his backside to Whitechapel and back, or taken a cane to him for his presumption, if he’d been on hand. Since he wasn’t, I pocketed the bills and burned his letter; it’s the only way to put these upstarts in their place.

* * *

[Extract from the diary of Mrs H. Flashman, undated, 1842]

… to be sure, it was very natural of H. to pay some attention to the other ladies at Lord’s, for they were so forward in their admiration of him – and am I to blame you, less fortunate sisters? He looked so tall and proud and handsome, like the splendid English Lion that he is, that I felt quite faint with love and pride … to think that this striking man, the envy and admiration of all, is – my husband!! He is perfection, and I love him more than I can tell.

Still, I could wish that he had been a little less attentive to those ladies near us, who smiled and waved to him when he was in the field, and some even so far forgot the obligations of modesty upon our tender sex, as to call out to him! Of course, it is difficult for him to appear indifferent, so Admired as he is – and he has such an unaffected, gallant nature, and feels, I know, that he must acknowledge their flatteries, for fear that he should be thought lacking in that easy courtesy which becomes a gentleman. He is so Generous and Considerate, even to such déclassé persons as that odious Mrs Leo Lade, the Duke’s companion, whose admiration of H. was so open and shameless that it caused some remark, and made me blush for her reputation – which to be sure, she hadn’t any!!! But H.’s simple, boyish goodness can see no fault in anyone – not even such an abandoned female as I’m sure she is, for they say … but I will not sully your fair page, dear diary, with such a Paltry Thing as Mrs Leo.

Yet mention of her reminds me yet again of my Duty to Protect my dear one – for he is still such a boy, with all a boy’s naiveté and high spirit. Why, today, he looked quite piqued and furious at the attention shown to me by Don S.H., who is quite sans reproche and the most distinguished of persons. He has over fifty thousand a year, it is said, from estates and revenues in the Far East Indies, and is on terms with the Best in Society, and has been received by H.M. He is entirely English, although his mother was a Spanish Donna, I believe, and is of the most engaging manners and address, and the jolliest person besides. I confess I was not a little amused to find how I captivated him, which is quite harmless and natural, for I have noticed that Gentlemen of his Complexion are even more ardent in their addresses to the fair than those of Pure European Blood. Poor H. was not well pleased, I fear, but I could not help thinking it would do him no harm to be made aware that both sexes are wont to indulge in harmless gallantries, and if he is to be admired by such as Mrs L.L., he cannot object to the Don’s natural regard for me. And to be sure, they are not to be compared, for Don S.H.’s addresses are of the utmost discretion and niceness; he is amusing, with propriety, engaging without familiarity. No doubt we shall see much of him in Society this winter, but not so much, I promise, as will make my Dear Hero too jealous – he has such sensibility …

[End of extract – G. de R.]

It was eight months before I so much as gave a thought to cricket again, but I’m bound to say that even if it had been blazing summer from October to March I’d still have been too busy. You can’t conduct a passionate affair with Lola Montez, in which you fall foul of Otto Bismarck – which is what I was doing that autumn – and still have much time for recreation. Besides, this was the season when my fame was at its zenith, what with my visit to the Palace for the Kabul medal; in consequence I was in demand everywhere, and Elspeth, in her eagerness for the limelight, saw to it that I never had a moment’s peace – balls and parties and receptions, and d---l a minute for serious raking. It was splendid, of course, to be the lion of the hour, but confounded exhausting.

But little enough happened to the point of my story, except that the stout Don Solomon Haslam played an increasingly lively part in our doings that winter. That was an odd fish, decidedly. Nobody, not even his old Eton chums, seemed to know much about him except that he was some kind of nabob, with connections in Leadenhall Street, but he was well received in Society, where his money and manners paid for all. And he seemed to be right in the know wherever he went – at the embassies, the smart houses, the sporting set, even at the political dinners; he was friendly with Haddington and Stanley at one end of the scale, and with such rascals as Deaf Jim Burke and Brougham at t’other. One night he would be dining with Aberdeen,⁵ and the next at Rosherville Gardens or the Cider Cellars, and he had a quiet gift of being first with the word from all quarters: if you wanted to know what was behind the toll riots, or the tale of Peel’s velveteens, ask Solomon; he had the latest joke about Alice Lowe, or Nelson’s Column, could tell you beforehand about the new race cup for Ascot, and had songs from the Bohemian Girl played in his drawing-room months before the opera was seen in London.⁶ It wasn’t that he was a gossip or couch-whisperer, either; whatever way the talk turned, he just knew the answers.

He ought to have been detestable, but strangely enough he wasn’t, for he didn’t push or show off. His entertainment was lavish, in his house on Brook Street, where he gave a Chinese Party that was said to have cost twenty thou., and was the talk for weeks, and his appearance was what the ladies called Romantic – I’ve told you about the earring, enough said – but with it all he managed to appear modest and unaffected. He could charm, I’ll say that for him, for he had the true gift of flattery, which is to show the keenest possible interest – and, of course, he had money to burn.

I didn’t mind him much, myself; he went out of his way to be pleasant to me, and once I had satisfied myself that his enthusiasm for Elspeth wasn’t likely to go the length, I tolerated him. She was ready to flirt with anything in breeches – and more than flirt, I suspected, but there were horny captains I was far leerier of than the Don. That b-----d Watney, for one, and the lecherous snob Ranelagh, and I fancy young Conyngham was itching after her, too. But Solomon had no name as a rake; didn’t even keep a mistress, apparently, and did no damage round Windmill Street or any of my haunts, leastways. Another odd thing: he didn’t touch liquor, in any form.

Oddest of all, though, was the way that my father-in-law took to him. From time to time during that winter old Morrison came south from his lair in Paisley to inflict himself on us and carp about expense, and it was during one of these visits that we had Solomon to dine. Morrison took one look at the fashionable cut of his coat and Newgate knockers,fn1 sniffed, and muttered about ‘anither scented gommeril wi’ mair money than sense’, but before that dinner was through Solomon had him eating out of his palm.

Old Morrison had started off on one of his usual happy harangues about the state of the nation, so that for the first course we had cockaleekie soup, halibut with oyster sauce, and the income tax, removed with minced chicken patties, lamb cutlets, and the Mines Act, followed by a second course of venison in burgundy, fricassee of beef, and the Chartists, with grape ices, bilberry tart, and Ireland for dessert. Then the ladies (Elspeth and my father’s mistress, Judy, whom Elspeth had a great fancy for, G-d knows why) withdrew, and over the port we had the miners’ strike and the General Ruin of the Country.

Fine stuff, all of it, and my guv’nor went to sleep in his chair while Morrison held forth on the iniquity of those scoundrelly colliers who objected to having their infants dragging tubs naked through the seams for a mere fifteen hours a day.

‘It’s the infernal Royal Commission,’ cries he. ‘Makin’ mischief – aye, an’ it’ll spread, mark me. If bairns below the age o’ ten year is no’ tae work underground, how long will it be afore they’re prohibitin’ their employment in factories, will ye tell me? D--n that whippersnapper Ashley! “Eddicate them,” says he, the eejit! I’d eddicate them, would I no’! An’ then there’s the Factory Act – that’ll be the next thing.’

‘The amendment can’t pass for another two years,’ says Solomon quietly, and Morrison glowered at him.

‘How d’ye ken that?’

‘It’s obvious, surely. We have the Mines Act, which is all the country can digest for the moment. But the shorter hours will come – probably within two years, certainly within three. Mr Horne’s report will see to that.’

His easy certainty impressed Morrison, who wasn’t used to being lectured on business; however, the mention of Horne’s name set him off again – I gathered this worthy was to publish a paper on child employment, which would inevitably lead to bankruptcies all round for deserving employers like my father-in-law, with free beer and holidays for the paupers, a workers’ rebellion, and invasion by the French.

‘Not quite so much, perhaps,’ smiles Solomon. ‘But his report will raise a storm, that’s certain. I’ve seen some of it.’

‘Ye’ve seen it?’ cries Morrison. ‘But it’s no’ oot till the New Year!’ He glowered a moment. ‘Ye’re gey far ben,fn2 sir.’ He took an anxious gulp of port. ‘Does it – was there … that is, did ye chance tae see any mention o’ Paisley, maybe?’

Solomon couldn’t be certain, but said there was some shocking stuff in the report – infants tied up and lashed unmercifully by overseers, flogged naked through the streets when they were late; in one factory they’d even had their ears nailed down for bad work.

‘It’s a lie!’ bawls Morrison, knocking over his glass. ‘A d----d lie! Never a bairn in oor shop had hand laid on it! Ma Goad – prayers at seeven, an’ a cup o’ milk an’ a piece tae their dinner – oot o’ ma ain pocket! Even a yard o’ yarn, whiles, as a gift, an’ me near demented wi’ pilferin’—’

Solomon soothed him by saying he was sure Morrison’s factories were paradise on earth, but added gravely that between the Horne report⁷ and slack trade generally, he couldn’t see many good pickings for manufacturers for some years to come. Overseas investment, that was the thing; why, there were millions a year to be made out of the Orient, by men who knew their business (as he did), and while Morrison sniffed a bit, and called it prospectus talk, you could see he was interested despite himself. He began to ask questions, and argue, and Solomon had every answer pat; I found it a dead bore, and left them prosing away, with my guv’nor snoring and belching at the table head – the most sensible noises I’d heard all night. But later, old Morrison was heard to remark that yon young Solomon had a heid on his shoothers, richt enough, a kenspeckle lad – no’ like some that sauntered and drank awa’ their time, an’ sponged off their betters, etc.

One result of all this was that Don Solomon Haslam was a more frequent visitor than ever, dividing his time between Elspeth and her sire, which was perverse variety, if you like. He was forever talking Far East trade with Morrison, urging him to get into it – he even suggested that the old b-----d should take a trip to see for himself, which I’d have seconded, nem. con. I wondered if perhaps Solomon was some swell magsman trying to diddle the old rascal of a few thou.; some hopes, if he was. Anyway, they got along like a matched pair, and since Morrison was at this time expanding his enterprises, and Haslam was well-connected in the City, I daresay my dear relative found the acquaintance useful.

So winter and spring went by, and then in June I had two letters. One was from my Uncle Bindley at the Horse Guards, to say that negotiations were under way to procure me a lieutenancy in the Household Cavalry; this great honour, he was careful to point out, was due to my Afghan heroics, not to my social desirability, which in his opinion was negligible – he was from the Paget side of our family, you see, and affected to despise us common Flashmans, which showed he had more sense than manners. I was quite flown by this news, and almost equally elated by the other letter, which was from Alfred Mynn, reminding me of his invitation to play in his casual side at Canterbury. I’d been having a few games for the Montpeliers at the old Beehive field, and was in form, so I accepted straight off. It wasn’t just for the cricket, though: I had three good reasons for wanting to be out of Town just then. First, I had just encompassed Lola Montez’s ruin on the London stage,⁸ and had reason to believe that the mad b---h was looking for me with a pistol – she was game for anything, you know, including murder; secondly, a female acrobat whom I’d been tupping was pretending that she was in foal, and demanding compensation with tears and menaces; and thirdly, I recalled that Mrs Lade, the Duke’s little piece, was to be in Canterbury for the Cricket Week.

So you can see a change of scene was just what old Flashy needed; if I’d known the change I was going to get I’d have paid off the acrobat, let Mrs Lade go hang, and allowed Montez one clear shot at me running – and thought myself lucky. But we can’t see into the future, thank God.

I’d intended to go down to Canterbury on my own, but a week or so beforehand I happened to mention my visit to Haslam, in Elspeth’s presence, and right away he said famous, just the thing; he was keen as mustard on cricket himself, and he’d take a house there for the week: we must be his guests, he would get together a party, and we’d make a capital holiday of it. He was like that, expense was no object with him, and in a moment he had Elspeth clapping her hands with promises of picnic and dances and all sorts of junketings.

‘Oh, Don, how delightful!’ cries she. ‘Why, it will be the jolliest thing, and Canterbury is the most select place, I believe – yes, there is a regiment there – but, oh, what shall I have to wear? One needs a very different style out of London, you see, especially if many of our lunches are to be al fresco, and some of the evening parties are sure to be out of doors – oh, but what about poor, dear Papa?’

I should have added that another reason for my leaving London was to get away from old Morrison, who was still infesting our premises. In fact, he’d been taken ill in May – not fatally, unfortunately. He claimed it was overwork, but I knew it was the report of the child employment commission which, as Don Solomon had predicted, had caused a shocking uproar when it came out, for it proved that our factories were rather worse than the Siberian salt mines. Names hadn’t been named, but questions were being asked in the Commons, and Morrison was terrified that at any moment he’d be exposed for the slave-driving swine he was. So the little villain had taken to his bed, more or less, with an attack of the nervous guilts, and spent his time d---ing the commissioners, snarling at the servants, and snuffing candles to save money.

Of course Haslam said he must come with us; the change of air would do him good; myself, I thought a change from air was what the old pest required, but there was nothing I could do about it, and since my first game for Mynn’s crew was on a Monday afternoon, it was arranged that the party should travel down the day before. I managed to steer clear of that ordeal, pleading business – in fact, young Conyngham had bespoken a room at the Magpie for a hanging on the Monday morning, but I didn’t let on to Elspeth about that. Don Solomon convoyed the party to the station for the special he’d engaged, Elspeth with enough trunks and bandboxes to start a new colony, old Morrison wrapped in rugs and bleating about the iniquity of travelling by railroad on the sabbath, and Judy, my father’s bit, watching the performance with her crooked little smile.

She and I never exchanged a word, nowadays. I’d rattled her (once) in the old days, when the guv’nor’s back was turned, but then she’d called a halt, and we’d had a fine, shouting turn-up in which I’d blacked her eye. Since then we’d been on civil-sneer terms, for the guv’nor’s sake, but since he’d recently been carted away again to the blue-devil factory to have the booze bogies chased out of his brain, Judy was devoting her time to being Elspeth’s companion – oh, we were a conventional little menage, sure enough. She was a handsome, knowing piece, and I squeezed her thigh for spite as I handed her into the carriage, got a blood-freezing glare for my pains, and waved them farewell, promising to meet them in Canterbury by noon next day.

I forget who they hanged on the Monday, and it don’t matter anyway, but it was the only Newgate scragging I ever saw, and I had an encounter afterwards which is part of my tale. When I got to the Magpie on Sunday evening, Conyngham and his pals weren’t there, having gone across to the prison chapel to see the condemned man attend his last service; I didn’t miss a great deal apparently, for when they came back they were crying that it had been a dead bore – just the chaplain droning away and praying, and the murderer sitting in the black pen talking to the turnkey.

‘They didn’t even have him sitting on his coffin,’ cries Conyngham. ‘I thought they always had his coffin in the pew with him – d--n you, Beresford, you told me they did!’

‘Still, t’aint every day you see a chap attend his own burial service,’ says another. ‘Don’t you just wish you may look as lively at your own, Conners?’

After that they all settled down to cards and boozing, with a buffet supper that went on all evening, and of course the girls were brought in – Snow Hill sluts that I wouldn’t have touched with a long pole. I was amused to see that Conyngham and the other younger fellows were in a rare sweat of excitement – quite feverish they got in their wining and wenching, and all because they were going to see a chap turned off. It was nothing to me, who’d seen hangings, beheadings, crucifixions and the L--d knows what in my wanderings; my interest was to see an English felon crapped in front of an English crowd, so in the meantime I settled down to écarté with Speedicut, and by getting him well foxed I cleaned him out before midnight.

By then most of the company were three-parts drunk or snoring, but they didn’t sleep long, for in the small hours the gallows-builders arrived, and the racket they made as they hammered up the scaffold in the street outside woke everyone. Conyngham remembered then that he had a sheriff’s order, so we all trooped across to Newgate to get a squint at the chap in the condemned cell, and I remember how that boozy, rowdy party fell silent once we were in Newgate Yard, with the dank black walls crowding in on either side, our steps sounding hollow in the stone passages, breathing short and whispering while the turnkey grinned horribly and rolled his eyes to give Conyngham his money’s worth.

I reckon the young sparks didn’t get it, though, for all they saw in the end was a man lying fast asleep on his stone bench, with his jailer resting on a mattress alongside; one or two of our party, having recovered their spunk by that time, wanted to wake him up, in the hope that he’d rave and pray, I suppose; Conyngham, who was wilder than most, broke a bottle on the bars and roared at the fellow to stir himself, but he just turned over on his side, and a little beadle-like chap in a black coat and tall hat came on the scene in a tearing rage to have us turned out.

‘Vermin!’ cries he, stamping and red in the face. ‘Have you no decency? Dear G-d, and these are meant to be the leaders of the nation! D--n you, d--n you, d--n you all to h--l!’ He was incoherent with fury, and vowed the turnkey would lose his place; he absolutely threw Conyngham out bodily, but our bold boy wasn’t abashed; when he’d done giving back curse for curse he made a drunken dash for the scaffold, which was erected by now, black beams, barriers, and all, and managed to dance on the trap before the scandalised workmen threw him into the road.

His pals picked him up, laughing and cheering, and got him back to the Magpie; the crowd that was already gathering in the warm summer dawn grinned and guffawed as we went through, though there were some black looks and cries of ‘Shame!’ The first eel-piemen were crying their wares in the street, and the vendors of tiny model gibbets and Courvoisier’s confession and pieces of rope from the last hanging (cut off some chandler’s stock that very morning, you may be sure) were having their breakfast in Lamb’s and the Magpie common room, waiting for the real mob to arrive; the lower kind of priggers and whores were congregating, and some family parties were already established at the windows, making a picnic of it; carters were putting their vehicles against the walls and offering places of vantage at sixpence a time; the warehousemen and porters who had their business to do were d--ning the eyes of those who obstructed their work, and the constables were sauntering up and down in pairs, moving on the beggars and drunks, and keeping a cold eye on the more obvious thieves and flashtails. A bluff-looking chap in clerical duds was watching with lively interest as Conyngham was helped into the Magpie and up the stairs; he nodded civilly to me.

‘Quiet enough so far,’ says he, and I noticed that he carried his right arm at an odd angle, and his hand was crooked and waxy. ‘I wonder, sir, if I might accompany your party?’ He gave me his name, but I’m shot if I recall it now.

I didn’t mind, so he came abovestairs, into the wreck of our front room, with the remains of the night’s eating and drinking being cleared away and breakfast set, and the sluts being chivvied out by the waiters, complaining shrilly; most of our party were looking pretty seedy, and didn’t make much of the chops and kidneys at all.

‘First time for most of them,’ says my new acquaintance. ‘Interesting, sir, most interesting.’ At my invitation he helped himself to cold beef, and we talked and ate in one of the windows while the crowd below began to increase, until the whole street was packed tight as far as you could see both sides of the scaffold; a great, seething mob, with the peelers guarding the barriers, and hardly room enough for the dippers and mobsmen to ply their trade – there must have been every class of mortal in London there; all the dross of the underworld rubbing shoulders with tradesmen and City folk; clerks and counter-jumpers; family men with children perched on their shoulders; beggar brats scampering and tugging at sleeves; a lord’s carriage against a wall, and the mob cheering as its stout occupant was heaved on to the roof by his coachmen; every window was jammed with onlookers at two quid a time; there were galleries on the roofs with seats to let, and even the gutters and lamp-brackets had people clinging to them. A ragged little urchin came swinging along the Magpie’s wall like a monkey; he clung to our window-ledge with naked, grimy toes and fingers, his great eyes staring at our plates; my companion held out a chop to him, and it vanished in a twinkling into the ugly, chewing face.

Someone hailed from beneath our window, and I saw a burly, pug-nosed fellow looking up; my crooked-arm chap shouted down to him, but the noise and hooting and laughter of the crowd was too much for conversation, and presently my companion gave up, and says to me:

‘Thought he might be here. Capital writer, just you watch; put us all in the shade presently. Did you follow Miss Tickletoby last summer?’ From which I’ve since deduced that the cove beneath our window that day was Mr William Makepeace Thackeray. That was my closest acquaintance with him, though.

‘It’s a solemn thought,’ went on my companion, ‘that if executions were held in churches, we’d never lack for congregations – probably get much the same people as we do now, don’t you think? Ah – there we are!’

As he spoke the bell boomed, and the mob below began to roar off the strokes in unison: ‘One, two, three …’ until the eighth peal, when there was a tremendous hurrah, which echoed between the buildings, and then died away in a sudden fall, broken only by the shrill wail of an infant. My companion whispered:

‘St Sepulchre’s bell begins to toll,

The Lord have mercy on his soul.’

As the chatter of the crowd grew again, we looked across that craning sea of humanity to the scaffold, and there were the constables hurrying out of the Debtors’ Door from the jail, with the prisoner bound between them, up the steps, and on to the platform. The prisoner seemed to be half-asleep (‘drugged,’ says my companion; ‘they won’t care for that’). They didn’t, either, but began to stamp and yell and jeer, drowning out the clergyman’s prayer, while the executioner made fast the noose, slipped a hood over the condemned man’s head, and stood by to slip the bolt. There wasn’t a sound now, until a drunk chap sings out, ‘Good health, Jimmy!’ and there were cries and laughter, and everyone stared at the white-hooded figure under the beam, waiting.

‘Don’t watch him,’ whispers my friend. ‘Look at your companions.’

I did, glancing along at the next window: every face staring, every mouth open, motionless, some grinning, some pale with fear, some in an almost vacant ecstasy. ‘Keep watching ’em,’ says he, and pat on his words came the rattle and slam of the drop, an almighty yell from the crowd, and every face at the next window was eagerly alight with pleasure – Speedicut grinning and crowing, Beresford sighing and moistening his lips, Spottswood’s heavy face set in grim satisfaction, while his fancy woman clung giggling to his arm, and pretended to hide her face.

‘Interesting, what?’ says the man with the crooked arm.⁹ He put on his hat, tapped it down, and nodded amiably. ‘Well, I’m obliged to you, sir,’ and off he went. Across the street the white-capped body was spinning slowly beneath the trap, a constable on the platform was holding the rope, and directly beneath me the outskirts of the crowd was dissolving into the taverns. Over in a corner of the room Conyngham was being sick.

I went downstairs and stood waiting for the crowd to thin, but most of ’em were still waiting in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the hanging corpse, which they couldn’t see for the throng in front. I was wondering how far I’d have to walk for a hack, when a man loomed up in front of me, and after a moment I recognised the red face, button eyes, and flash weskit of Mr Daedalus Tighe.

‘Vell, vell, sir,’ cries he, ‘here ve are again! I hears as you’re off to Canterbury – vell, you’ll give ’em better sport than that, I’ll be bound!’ And he nodded towards the scaffold. ‘Did you ever see poorer stuff, Mr Flashman? Not vorth the vatchin’, sir, not vorth the vatchin’. Not a word out o’ him – no speech, no repentance, not even a struggle, blow me! That’s not vot ve’d ’ave called a ’angin’, in my young day. You’d think,’ says he, sticking his thumbs in his vest, ‘that a young cribsman like that there, vot ’adn’t no upbringin’ to speak of, nor never amounted to nothin’ – till today – you’d think, sir, that on the great hocassion of ’is life, ’e’d show appreciation, ’stead o’ lettin’ them drug ’im vith daffy. Vere vas his ambition, sir, allowin’ ’imself to be crapped like that there, ven ’e might ’ave reckernised the interest, sir, of all these people ’ere, an’ responded to same?’ He beamed at me, head on one side. ‘No bottom, Mr Flashman; no game. Now, you, sir – you’d do your werry best if you vas misfortinit enough to be in his shoes – vhich Gawd forbid – an’ so should I, eh? Ve’d give the people vot they came for, like good game Henglishmen.

‘Speakin’ of game,’ he went on, ‘I trust you’re in prime condition for Canterbury. I’m countin’ on you, sir, countin’ on you, I am.’

Something in his tone raised a tiny prickle on my neck. I’d been giving him a cool stare, but now I made it a hard one.

‘I don’t know what you mean, my man,’ says I, ‘and I don’t care. You may take yourself—’

‘No, no, no, my dear young sir,’ says he, beaming redder than ever. ‘You’ve mistook me quite. Vot I’m indicatin’, sir, is that I’m interested – werry much interested, in the success of Mr Mynn’s Casual XI, vot I hexpec’ to carry all before ’em, for your satisfaction an’ my profit.’ He closed an eye roguishly. ‘You’ll remember, sir, as ’ow I expressed my appreciation o’ your notable feat at Lord’s last year, by forwardin’ a token, a small gift of admiration, reelly—’

‘I never had a d----d thing from you,’ says I, perhaps just a shade too quickly.

‘You don’t say, sir? Vell, blow me, but you astonish me, sir – you reelly do. An’ me takin’ werry partikler care to send it to yore direction – an’ you never received same! Vell, vell,’ and the little black eyes were hard as pebbles. ‘I vonder now, if that willain o’ mine, Wincent, slipped it in ’is cly,fn3 ’stead o’ deliverin’ same to you? Hooman vickedness, Mr Flashman, sir, there ain’t no end to it. Still, sir, ve needn’t repine,’ and he laughed heartily, ‘there’s more vere that come from, sir. An’ I can tell you, sir, that if you carries yore bat against the Irreg’lars this arternoon – vell, you can count to three hundred, I’ll be bound, eh?’

I stared at him, speechless, opened my mouth – and shut it. He regarded me benignly, winked again, and glanced about him.

‘Terrible press, sir; shockin’. Vhy the peelers don’t chivvy these d----d magsmen an’ cly-fakers – vhy, a gent like you ain’t safe; they’ll ’ave the teeth out yore ’ead, ’less you looks sharp. Scandalous, sir; vot you need’s a cab; that’s vot you need.’

He gave a nod, a burly brute close by gave a piercing whistle, and before you could wink there was a hack pushing through the crowd, its driver belabouring all who didn’t clear out fast enough. The burly henchman leaped to the horse’s head, another held the door, and Mr Tighe, hat in hand, was ushering me in, beaming wider than ever.

‘An’ the werry best o’ luck this arternoon, sir,’ cries he. ‘You’ll bowl them Irreg’lars aht in no time, I’ll wager, an” – he winked again – ‘I do ’ope as you carries your bat, Mr Flashman. London Bridge, cabby!’ And away went the cab, carrying a very thoughtful gentleman, you may be sure.

I considered the remarkable Mr Tighe all the way to Canterbury, too, and concluded that if he was fool enough to throw money away, that was his business – what kind of odds could he hope to get on my losing my wicket, for after all, I batted well down the list, and might easily carry my bat through the hand?¹⁰ Who’d wager above three hundred on that? Well, that was his concern, not mine – but I’d have to keep a close eye on him, and not become entangled with his sort; at least he wasn’t expecting me to throw the game, but quite the reverse; he was trying to bribe me to do well, in fact. H’m.

The upshot of it was, I bowled pretty well for Mynn’s eleven, and when I went to the wicket to bat, I stuck to my blockhole like glue, to the disappointment of the spectators, who expected me to slog. I was third last man in, so I didn’t have to endure long, and as Mynn himself was at t’other end, knocking off the runs, my behaviour was perfectly proper. We won by two wickets, Flashy not out, nil – and next morning, after breakfast, there was a plain packet addressed to me, with three hundred in bills inside.

I near as a toucher sealed it up again and told the footman to give it back to whoever had brought it – but I didn’t. Warm work – but three hundred is three hundred – and it was a gift, wasn’t it? I could always deny I’d ever seen it – G-d, I was an innocent then, for all my campaign experience.

This, of course, took place at the house which Haslam had taken just outside Canterbury, very splendid, gravel walks, fine lawns, shrubbery and trees, gaslight throughout, beautifully appointed rooms, best of food and drink, flunkeys everywhere, and go-as-you-please. There were about a dozen house guests, for it was a great rambling place, and Haslam had seen to every comfort. He gave a sumptuous party on that first Monday night, at which Mynn and Felix were present, and the talk was all cricket, of course, but there were any number of ladies, too, including Mrs Leo Lade, smouldering at me across the table from under a heap of sausage curls, and in a dress so décolleté that her udders were almost in her soup. That’s one over we’ll bowl this week that won’t be a maiden, thinks I, and flashed my most loving smile to Elspeth, who was sparkling radiantly beside Don Solomon at the top of the table.

Presently, however, her sparkle was wiped clean away, for Don Solomon was understood to say that this week would be his last fling in England; he was leaving at the end of the month to visit his estates in the East, and had no notion when he would return; it might be years, he said, at which there were genuine expressions of sorrow round the table, for those assembled knew a dripping roast when they saw one. Without the lavish Don Solomon, there would be one luxurious establishment less for the Society hyenas to guzzle at. Elspeth was quite put out.

‘But dear Don Solomon, what shall we do? Oh, you’re teasing – why, your tiresome estates will do admirably without you, for I’m sure you employ only the cleverest people to look after them.’ She pouted prettily. ‘You would not be so cruel to your friends, surely – Mrs Lade, we shan’t let him, shall we?’

Solomon laughed and patted her hand. ‘My dear Diana,’ says he – Diana had been his nickname for her ever since he’d tried to teach her archery – ‘you may be sure nothing but harsh necessity would take me from such delightful company as your own – and Harry’s yonder, and all of you. But – a man must work, and my work is overseas. So—’ and he shook his head, his smooth, handsome face smiling ruefully. ‘It will be a sore wrench – sorest of all in that I shall miss both of you’ – and he looked from Elspeth to me and back again – ‘above all the rest, for you have been to me like a brother and sister.’ And, d---e, the fellow’s great dark eyes were positively glistening; the rest of the table murmured sympathetically, all but old Morrison, who was champing away at his blancmange and finding bones in it, by the sound of him.

At this Elspeth was so overcome that she began piping her eye, and her tits shook so violently that the old Duke, on Solomon’s other side, coughed his false teeth into his wine-glass and had to be put to rights by the butler. Solomon, for once, was looking a little embarrassed; he shrugged and gave me a look that was almost appealing. ‘I’m sorry, old boy,’ says he, ‘but I mean it.’ I couldn’t fathom this – he might be sorry to miss Elspeth; what man wouldn’t? But had I been so friendly? – well, I’d been civil enough, and I was her husband; perhaps that charming manner of mine which Tom Hughes mentioned had had its effect on this emotional dago. Anyway, something seemed called for.

‘Well, Don,’ says I, ‘we’ll all be sorry to lose you, and that’s a fact. You’re a d----d stout chap – that is, I mean, you’re one of the best, and couldn’t be better if … if you were English.’ I wasn’t going to gush all over him, you understand, but the company murmured ‘Hear, hear,’ and after a moment Mynn tapped the table to second me. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘let’s drink his health, then.’ And everyone did, while Solomon gave me his bland smile, inclining his head.

‘I know,’ says he, ‘just how great a compliment that is. I thank you – all of you, and especially you, my dear Harry. I only wish—’ and then he stopped, shaking his head. ‘But no, that would be too much to ask.’

‘Oh, ask anything, Don!’ cries Elspeth, all idiot-imploring. ‘You know we could not refuse you!’

He said no, no, it had been a foolish thought, and at that of course she was all over him to know what it was. So after a moment, toying with his wine-glass, he says: ‘Well, you’ll think it a very silly notion, I daresay – but what I was about to propose, my dear Diana, for Harry and yourself, and for your father, whom I count among my wisest friends—’ and he inclined his head to old Morrison, who was assuring Mrs Lade that he didn’t want any blancmange, but he’d like anither helpin’ o’ yon cornflour puddin’ ‘—I was about to say, since I must go – why do the three of you not come with me?’ And he smiled shyly at us in turn.

I stared at the fellow to see if he was joking; Elspeth, all blonde bewilderment, looked at me and then at Solomon, open-mouthed.

‘Come with you?’

‘It’s only to the other side of the world, after all,’ says he, whimsically. ‘No, no – I am quite serious; it is not as bad as that. You know me well enough to understand that I wouldn’t propose anything that you would not find delightful. We should cruise, in my steam-brig – it’s as well-appointed as any royal yacht, you know, and we’d have the most splendid holiday. We would touch wherever we liked – Lisbon, Cadiz, the Cape, Bombay, Madras – exactly as the fancy took us. Oh, it would be quite capital!’ He leaned towards Elspeth, smiling. ‘Think of the places we’d see! The delight it would give me, Diana, to show you the wonder of Africa, as one sees it at dawn from the quarterdeck – such colours as you cannot imagine! The shores of the Indian Ocean – yes, the coral strand! Ah, believe me, until you have anchored off Singapore, or cruised the tropical coasts of Sumatra and Java and Borneo, and seen that glorious China Sea, where it is always morning – oh, my dear, you have seen nothing!’

Nonsense, of course; the Orient stinks. Always did. But Elspeth was gazing at him in rapture, and then she turned eagerly to me. ‘Oh, Harry – could we?’

‘Out o’ the question,’ says I. ‘It’s the back of beyond.’

‘In these days?’ cries Solomon. ‘Why, with steam you may be in Singapore in – oh, three months at most. Say, three months as my guests while we visit my estates – and you would learn, Diana, what it means to be a queen in the Orient, I assure you – and three months to return. You’d be home again by next Easter.’

‘Oh, Harry!’ Elspeth was positively squeaking with joy. ‘Oh, Harry – may we? Oh, please, Harry!’ The chaps at the table were nodding admiringly, and the ladies murmuring enviously; the old Duke was heard to say that it was an adventure, d----d if it wasn’t, and if he was a younger man, by George, wouldn’t he jump at the chance?

Well, they weren’t getting me East again; once had been enough. Besides, I wasn’t going anywhere on the charity of some rich dago show-off who’d taken a shine to my wife. And there was another reason, which enabled me to put a good face on my refusal.

‘Can’t be done, m’dear,’ says I. ‘Sorry, but I’m a soldier with a living to make. Duty and the Life Guards call, what? I’m desolate to deny you what I’m sure would be the jolliest trip’ – I felt a pang, I’ll admit, at seeing that lovely child face fall – ‘but I can’t go, you see. I’m afraid, Don, we’ll have to decline your kind offer.’

He shrugged good-humouredly. ‘That’s settled, then. A pity, but—’ he smiled consolingly at Elspeth, who was looking down-in-the-mouth ‘—perhaps another year. Unless, in Harry’s enforced absence, your father could be persuaded to accompany us?’

It was said so natural it took my breath away, but as it sank home I had to bite back an angry refusal. You b-----d, thinks I, that’s the game, is it? Wait till old Flashy’s put himself out of the running, and then innocently propose a scheme to get my wife far away where you can cock a leg over her at leisure. It was plain as a pikestaff; all my dormant suspicions of this smooth tub of nigger suet came back with a rush, but I kept mum while Elspeth looked down the table towards me – and, bless her, it was a doubtful look.

‘But … but it would be no fun without Harry,’ says she, and if ever I loved the girl it was then. ‘I … I don’t know – what does Papa say?’

Papa, who appeared to be still tunnelling away at his pudding, had missed nothing, you may be sure, but he kept quiet while Solomon explained the proposal. ‘You remember, sir, we spoke of the possibility that you might accompany me to the East, to see for yourself the opportunities of business expansion,’ he was adding, but Morrison cut him short in his charming way.

‘You spoke of it, no’ me,’ says he, busily engulfing blancmange. ‘I’ve mair than enough o’ affairs here, withoot gallivantin’ tae China at my time o’ life.’ He waved his spoon. ‘Forbye, husband an’ wife should be thegither – it was bad enough when Harry yonder had tae be away in India, an’ my wee lassie near heartbroken.’ He made a noise which the company took for a sentimental sniff; myself I think it was another spoonful being prised loose. ‘Na, na – I’ll need a guid reason afore I’ll stir forth o’ England.’

And he got it – to this day I can’t be certain that it was contrived by Solomon, but I’ll wager it was. For next morning the old hound was taken ill again – I don’t know if surfeit of blancmange can cause nervous collapse, but by afternoon he was groaning in bed, shuddering as with a fever, and Solomon insisted on summoning his own medico from Town, a dundreary-looking cove with a handle to his name and a line in unctuous gravity that must have been worth five thousand a year in Mayfair. He looked down solemnly at the sufferer, who was huddled under the clothes like a rat in its burrow, two beady eyes in a wrinkled face, and his nose quivering in apprehension.

‘Overstrained,’ says the sawbones, when he had completed his examination and caught the tune of Morrion’s whimpering. ‘The system is simply tired; that is all. Of organic deterioration there is no sign whatever; internally, my dear sir, you are sound as I am – as I hope I am, ha-ha!’ He beamed like a bishop. ‘But the machine, while not in need of repair, requires a rest – a long rest.’

‘Is it serious, docter?’ quavers Morrison. Internally, as the quack said, he might be in A1 trim, but his exterior suggested James I dying.

‘Certainly not – unless you make it so,’ says the poultice-walloper. He shook his head in censorious admiration. ‘You captains of commerce – you sacrifice yourselves without thought for personal health, as you labour for family and country and mankind. But, my dear sir, it won’t do, you know. You forget that there is a limit – and you have reached it.’

‘Could ye no’ gi’ me a line for a boatle?’ croaks the captain of commerce, and when this had been translated the medico shook his head.

‘I can prescribe,’ says he, ‘but no medicine could be as efficacious as – oh, a few months in the Italian lakes, or on the French coast. Warmth, sunshine, rest – complete rest in congenial company – that is my “line” for you, sir. I won’t be answerable for the consequences if you don’t take it.’

Well, there it was. In two seconds I had foreseen what was to follow – Solomon’s recollection that he had only yesterday proposed just such a holiday, the quack’s booming agreement that a sea voyage in comfort was the ideal thing, Morrison’s reluctance being eventually overborne by Elspeth’s entreaties and the pill-slinger’s stern admonition – you could have set it all to music and sung the d----d thing. Then they all looked at me, and I said no.

There followed painful private scenes between Elspeth and me. I said if old Morrison wanted to sail away with Don Solomon, he was more than welcome. She replied that it was unthinkable for dear Papa to go without her to look after him; it was absolutely her duty to accept Don Solomon’s generous offer and accompany the old goat. If I insisted on staying at home in the Army, of course she would be desolate without me – but why, oh why, could I not come anyway? – what did the Army matter, we had money enough, and so forth. I said no again, and added that it was a piece of impudence of Solomon’s even to suggest that she should go without me, at which she burst into tears and said I was odiously jealous, not only of her, but of Don Solomon’s breeding and address and money, just because I hadn’t any myself, and I was spitefully denying her a little pleasure, and there could be no possible impropriety with dear Papa to chaperon her, and I was trying to shovel the old sod into an early grave, or words to that effect.

I left her wailing, and when Solomon tried to persuade me later himself, took the line that military duty made the trip impossible for me, and I couldn’t bear to be parted from Elspeth. He sighed, but said he understood only too well – in my shoes, he said with disarming frankness, he’d do the same. I wondered for a moment if I had wronged him – for I know I tend to judge everyone by myself, and while I’m usually not far wrong to do so, there are decent and disinterested folk about, here and there. I’ve seen some.

Old Morrison, by the way, didn’t say a word; he could have forced my hand, of course, but being as true a Presbyterian hypocrite as ever robbed an orphan, he held that a wife should abide by her husband’s rule, and wouldn’t interfere between Elspeth and me. So I continued to say ‘no’, and Elspeth sulked until the time came to put on her next new bonnet.

So a couple of days passed, in which I played cricket for Mynn’s side, tumbling a few wickets with my shiverers, and slogging a few runs (not many, but 18 in one innings, which pleased me, and catching out Pilch again, one hand, very low down, when he tried to cut Mynn past point and I had to go full length to it. Pilch swore it was a bump, but it wasn’t – you may be sure I’d tell you if it had been). Meanwhile Elspeth basked in admiration and the gay life, Solomon was the perfect host and escort, old Morrison sat on the terrace grumbling and reading sermons and share prices, and Judy promenaded with Elspeth, looking cattish and saying nothing.

Then on Friday things began to happen, and as so often is the case with catastrophe, all went splendidly at first. All week I’d been trying to arrange an assignation with the tantalising Mrs Leo Lade, but what with my own busy affairs and the fact that the old Duke kept a jealous eye on her, I’d been out of luck. It was just a question of time and place, for she was as ready as I; indeed, we’d near got to grips on the Monday after dinner, when we strolled in the garden, but I’d no sooner got her panting among the privet with her teeth half way through my ear than that bl----d minx Judy came to summon us to hear Elspeth sing ‘The Ash Grove’ in the drawing-room; it would be Judy, smiling her knowing smile, telling us to be sure not to miss the treat.

However, on Friday morning Elspeth went off with Solomon to visit some picture gallery, Judy was shopping with some of the guests, the house was empty except for old Morrison on the terrace, and Mrs Lade bowled up presently to say that the Duke was abed with an attack of gout. For show’s sake we made small talk with Morrison, which infuriated him, and then went our separate ways in leisurely fashion, meeting again in the drawing-room in a fine frenzy of fumbling and escaping steam. We weren’t new to the business, either of us, so I had her breasts out with one hand and my breeches down with the other while I was still kicking the door to, and she completed her undressing while we were positively humping the mutton all the way to the couch, which argued sound training on her part. By George, she was a heavy woman, but nimble as an eel for all her elegant poundage; I can’t think offhand of a partner who could put you through as many different mounting-drills in the course of one romp, except perhaps Elspeth herself when she had a drink in her.

It was exhilarating work, and I was just settling myself for the finish, and thinking, we’ll have to have more of this another time, when I heard a sound that galvanised me so suddenly that it’s a wonder the couch didn’t give way – rapid footsteps were approaching the drawing-room door. I took stock – breeches down, one shoe off, miles from the window or any convenient cover, Mrs Lade kneeling on the couch, me peering from behind through her feathered headdress (which she had forgotten to remove; quite a compliment, I remember thinking), the doorknob turning. Caught, hopeless, not a chance of escape – nothing for it but to hide my face in the nape of her neck and trust that the visible side of me wouldn’t be recognised by whoever came in. For they wouldn’t linger – not in 1843 – unless it was the Duke, and those footsteps didn’t belong to a gout patient.

The door opened, the footsteps stopped – and then there was what a lady novelist would call a pregnant pause, lasting about three hours, it seemed to me, and broken only by Mrs Lade’s ecstatic moanings; I gathered she was unaware that we were observed. I stole a peep through her feathers at the mirror above the fireplace – and almost had convulsions, for it was Solomon reflected in the doorway, his hand on the latch, taking in the scene.

He never even blinked an eye; then, as other footsteps sounded somewhere behind him he stepped back, and as the door closed I heard him saying: ‘No, there is no one here; let us try the conservatory.’ Dago or not, he was a d----d considerate host, that one.

The door hadn’t closed before I was trying to disengage, but without success, for Mrs Lade’s hands reached back in an instant, clamping her claws into my rear, her head tilting back beside mine. ‘No, no, no, not yet!’ gasps she, chewing away at me. ‘Don’t go!’

‘The door,’ I explained. ‘Must lock the door. Someone might see.’

‘Don’t leave me!’ she cried, and I doubt if she knew where she was, even, for her eyes were rolling in her head, and d----d if I could get loose. Mind you, I was reluctant; torn two ways, as it were.

‘The key,’ I mumbled, thrusting away. ‘Only take a moment – back directly.’

‘Take me with you!’ she moans, and I did, heaven knows how, hobbling along with all that flesh to carry. Fortunately it all ended happily just as my legs gave way, and we collapsed at the threshold in joyous exhaustion; I even managed to get the key turned.

Whether she could dress as quickly as she stripped, I can’t say, for she was still swooning and gasping against the panels, with her feathers awry, when I flung on my last garment and shinned down the ivy. Feverish work it had been, and the sooner I was elsewhere, establishing an alibi, the better. A brisk walk was what I needed just then – anyway, I had a match in the afternoon, and wanted to be in trim.

* * *

[Extract from the diary of Mrs Flashman, June —, 1843]

… never have I felt so guilty – and yet, what could I do? My heart warned me, when Don S. cut short our visit to the gallery – and there were some Exquisite Watercolours which I would have liked to view at leisure – that he had some Purpose in returning early to the house. What my Foreboding was I cannot explain, but alas! it was justified, and I am the most Wretched Creature in the world!! The house was quite deserted, except for Papa asleep on the terrace, and Something in Don S.’s manner – it may have been the Ardent Expression in his eyes – led me to insist that we should seek out my Dear H. at once. Oh, would that we had found him! We looked everywhere, but there was no one to be seen, and when we came to the conservatory, Don S. filled me with Alarm and Shame by declaring himself in the most forward manner – for the atmosphere of the plants, being extremely Oppressive, and my own agitation, made me feel so faint that I was forced to support myself by leaning on his arm, and find relief by resting my head on his shoulder. [A likely story!!! – G. de R.] In that moment of faintness, picture my utter distress when he took advantage of the situation to press his lips to mine!! I was so affronted that it was some moments a moment before I could find the strength to make him desist, and it was only with difficulty that I at last Escaped his Embrace. He used the most Passionate Expressions to me, calling me his Dear Diana and his Golden Nymph (which struck me, even in that Moment of Perturbation, as a most poetic conceit), and the Effect was so weakening that I was unable to resist when he clasped me to his bosom yet again, and Kissed me with even greater Force than before. Fortunately, one of the gardeners was heard approaching, and I was able to make good my retreat, with my wits quite disordered.

My Shame and Remorse may be imagined, and if aught could have increased them it was the sudden sight of my darling H. in the garden, taking his exercise, he explained, before his match in the afternoon. The sight of his flushed, manly countenance, and the knowledge that he had been engaged in such a healthy, innocent pursuit while I had been helpless in the Heated Embrace of another, however much against my will, were as a knife in my heart. To make it worse, he called me his Jolly Old Girl, and asked eagerly after the picture gallery; I was moved almost to tears, and when we went together to the terrace, and found Mrs L.L., I could not but remark that H. paid her no more than the barest civility (and, indeed, there was very little about her to Entice any man, for she appeared quite bedraggled), but was all kindness and attentiveness to me, like the dear best of husbands that he is.

But what am I to think of Don S.’s conduct? I must try not to judge him too harshly, for he is of such a warm temperament, and given to passionate disclosure of it in every way, that it is not to be wondered at if he is Susceptible to that which he finds attractive. But surely I am not to blame if – through no fault of mine – I have been cast by Kind Nature in a form and feature which the Stronger Sex find pleasing? I console myself with the thought that it is Woman’s Portion, if she is fortunate in her endowments, to be adored, and she has little to reproach herself with so long as she does not Encourage Familiarity, but comports herself with Proper Modesty …

[Conceit and humbug! End of extract – G. de R.]

There’s no doubt that a good gallop before work is the best training you can have, for that afternoon I bowled the best long spell of my life for Mynn’s Casuals against the All-England XI: five wickets for 12 in eleven overs, with Lillywhite leg before and Marsden clean bowled amongst them. I’d never have done that on cold baths and dumbbells, so you can see that what our present Test match fellows need is some sporting female like Mrs Leo Lade to look after ’em, then we’d have the Australians begging for mercy.

The only small cloud on my horizon, as we took tea afterwards in the marquee among the fashionable throng, with Elspeth clinging to my arm and Mynn passing round bubbly in the challenge cup we’d won, was whether Solomon had recognised me in the drawing-room that morning, and if so, would he keep his mouth shut? I wasn’t over concerned, for all he’d had in view was my stalwart back and buttocks heaving away and Mrs Lade’s stupefied face reflected in the mirror – it didn’t matter a three-ha’penny what he said about her, and even if he’d recognized me as t’other coupler, it wasn’t likely that he’d bruit it about; chaps didn’t, in those days. And there wasn’t even a hint of a knowing twinkle in his eye as he came over to congratulate me, all cheery smiles, refilling my glass and exclaiming to Elspeth that her husband was the most tearaway bowler in the country, and ought to be in the All-England side himself, blessed if he shouldn’t. A few of those present cried, ‘Hear, hear,’ and Solomon wagged his head admiringly – the artful, conniving scoundrel.

‘D’ye know,’ says he, addressing those nearest, who included many of his house party, as well as Mynn and Felix and Ponsonby-Fane, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if Harry wasn’t the fastest man in England just now – I don’t say the best, in deference to distinguished company’ – and he bowed gracefully towards Mynn – ‘but certainly the quickest; what d’you think, Mr Felix?’

Felix blinked and blushed, as he always did at being singled out, and said he wasn’t sure; when he was at the crease, he added gravely, he didn’t consider miles per hour, but any batter who faced Mynn at one end and me at t’other would have something to tell his grandchildren about. Everyone laughed, and Solomon cries, lucky men indeed; wouldn’t tyro cricketers like himself just jump at the chance of facing a few overs from us. Not that they’d last long, to be sure, but the honour would be worth it.

‘I don’t suppose,’ he added, fingering his earring and looking impish at me, ‘you’d consider playing me a single-wicket match, would you?’

Being cheerful with bubbly and my five for 12, I laughed and said I’d be glad to oblige, but he’d better get himself cover from Lloyd’s, or a suit of armour. ‘Why,’ says I, ‘d’you fancy your chance?’ and he shrugged and said no, not exactly; he knew he mightn’t make much of a show, but he was game to try. ‘After all,’ says he, tongue in cheek, ‘you ain’t Fuller Pilch as a batter, you know.’

There are moments, and they have a habit of sticking in memory, when light-hearted, easy fun suddenly becomes dead serious. I can picture that moment now; the marquee with its throng of men in their whites, the ladies in their bright summer confections, the stuffy smell of grass and canvas, the sound of the tent-flap stirring in the warm breeze, the tinkle of plates and glasses, the chatter and the polite laughter, Elspth smiling eagerly over her strawberries and cream, Mynn’s big red face glistening, and Solomon opposite me – huge and smiling in his bottle-green coat, the emerald pin in his scarf, the brown varnished face with its smiling dark eyes, the carefully dressed black curls and whiskers, the big, delicately manicured hand spinning his glass by the stem.

‘Just for fun,’ says he. ‘Give me something to boast about, anyway – play on my lawn at the house. Come on’ – and he poked me in the ribs – ‘I dare you, Harry,’ at which they chortled and said he was a game bird, all right.

I didn’t know, then, that it mattered, although something warned me that there was a hint of humbug about it, but with the champagne working and Elspeth miaowing eagerly I couldn’t see any harm.

‘Very good,’ says I, ‘they’re your ribs, you know. How many a side?’

‘Oh, just the two of us,’ says he. ‘No fieldsmen; bounds, of course, but no byes or overthrows. I’m not built for chasing,’ and he patted his guts, smiling. ‘Couple of hands, what? Double my chance of winning a run or two.’

‘What about stakes?’ laughs Mynn. ‘Can’t have a match like this for just a tizzy,’fn1 winking at me.

‘What you will,’ says Solomon easily. ‘All one to me – fiver, pony, monkey, thou. – don’t matter, since I shan’t be winning it anyway.’

Now that’s the kind of talk that sends any sensible man diving for his hat and the nearest doorway, usually; otherwise you find yourself an hour later scribbling IOUs and trying to think of a false name. But this was different – after all, I was first-class, and he wasn’t even thought about; no one had seen him play, even. He couldn’t hope for anything against my expresses – and one thing was sure, he didn’t need my money.

‘Hold on, though,’ says I. ‘We ain’t all nabob millionaires, you know. Lieutenant’s half-pay don’t stretch—’

Elspeth absolutely reached for her reticule, d--n her, whispering that I must afford whatever Don Solomon put up, and while I was trying to hush her, Solomon says:

‘Not a bit of it – I’ll wager the thou., on my side; it’s my proposal, after all, so I must be ready to stand the racket. Harry can put up what he pleases – what d’ye say, old boy?’

Well, everyone knew he was filthy rich and careless with it, so if he wanted to lose a thousand for the privilege of having me trim him up, I didn’t mind. I couldn’t think what to offer as a wager against his money, though, and said so.

‘Well, make it a pint of ale,’ says he, and then snapped his fingers. ‘Tell you what – I’ll name what your stake’s to be, and I promise you, if you lose and have to stump up, it’s something that won’t cost you a penny.’

‘What’s that?’ says I, all leery in a moment.

‘Are you game?’ cries he.

‘Tell us my stake first,’ says I.

‘Well, you can’t cry off now, anyway,’ says he, beaming triumphantly. ‘It’s this: a thou. on my side, if you win, and if I win – which you’ll admit ain’t likely’ – he paused, to keep everyone in suspense – ‘if I win, you’ll allow Elspeth and her father to come on my voyage.’ He beamed round at the company. ‘What’s fairer than that, I should like to know?’

The bare-faced sauce of it took my breath away. Here was this fat upstart, with his nigger airs, who had proclaimed his interest in my wife and proposed publicly to take her jaunting while I was left cuckolded at home, had been properly and politely warned off, and was now back on the same tack, but trying to pass it off as a jolly, light-hearted game. My skin burned with fury – had he cooked this up with Elspeth? – but one glance told me she was as astonished as I was. Others were smiling, though, and I saw two ladies whispering behind their parasols; Mrs Lade was watching with amusement.

‘Well, well, Don,’ says I, deliberately easy. ‘You don’t give up in a hurry, do you?’

‘Oh, come, Harry,’ cries he. ‘What hope have I? It’s just nonsense, for you’re sure to win. Doesn’t he always win, Mrs Lade?’ And he looked at her, smiling, and then at me, and at Elspeth, without a flicker of expression – by G-d, had he recognised my heaving stern in the drawing-room, after all, and was he daring to say: ‘Accept my wager, give me this chance, or I’ll blow the gaff’? I didn’t know – but it made no odds, for I realised I had to take him on, for my credit’s sake. What – Flashy, the heroic sport, back down against a mere tyro, and thereby proclaim that he was jealous of his wife where this fat swaggerer was concerned? No – I had to play, and look pleasant. He had, as the Duke would say, humbugged me, by G-d.

But what was he hoping for? A fluke in a million? Single-wicket’s a chancy game, but even so, he couldn’t hope to beat me. And yet, he was so set on having his way, like the spoiled, arrogant pup he was (for all his modest air), that any chance, however slim, he’d snatch at. He’d nothing to lose except a thousand quid, and that was ha’pence to him. Very well, then – I’d not only beat the brute; I’d milk him for the privilege.

‘Done, then,’ says I, cheerfully, ‘but since you’ve set my stake, I’ll set yours. If you lose, it’ll cost you two thousand – not one. Suit you?’

Of course he had to agree, laughing and saying I drove such a hard bargain I must give him the tie as well – which meant that if the scores finished even, I would forfeit my stake. I had to win to collect – but it was a trivial thing, since I was bound to drub him handsomely. Just to be sure, though, I asked Felix then and there if he’d stand umpire; I wasn’t having some creature of Solomon’s handing him the game in a box.

So the match was made, and Elspeth had the grace not to say she hoped I would lose; indeed, she confided later that she thought Don Solomon had been just a little sharp, and not quite refined in taking her for granted.

‘For you know, Harry, I would never accompany him with Papa against your wishes. But if you choose to accept his wager, that is different – and, oh! it would be such fun to see India and … all those splendid places! But of course, you must play your best, and not lose on my account—’

‘Don’t worry, old girl,’ says I, climbing aboard her, ‘I shan’t.’

That was before dinner. By bed-time I wasn’t so sure.

I was taking a turn about the grounds while the others were at their port, and had just strolled abreast the gates, when someone goes ‘Psst!’ from the shadows, and to my astonishment I saw two or three dark figures lurking in the roadway. One of them advanced, and I choked on my cheroot when I recognised the portly frame of Daedalus Tighe, Heskwire.

‘What the d---l are you doing here?’ I demanded. I’d seen the brute at one or two of the games, but naturally had avoided him. He touched his hat, glanced about in the dusk, and asked for a word with me, if he might make so bold. I told him to go to blazes.

‘Oh, never that, sir!’ says he. ‘You couldn’t vish that, now – not you. Don’t go, Mr Flashman; I promise not to detain you – vhy, the ladies an’ gents will be waitin’ in the drorin’-room, I daresay, and you’ll want to get back. But I hear as ’ow you’re playin’ a single-wicket match tomorrow, ’gainst that fine sportsman Mr Solomon Haslam – werry esteemed cove ’e is, quite the slap-up—’

‘What d’ye know about his cricket?’ says I, and Mr Tighe chuckled beerily.

‘Well, sir, they do say ’e plays a bit – but, lor’ bless yer, ’e’ll be a babby against the likes o’ you. Vhy, in the town I could get fifty to one against ’im, an’ no takers; mebbe even a hundred—’

‘I’m obliged to you,’ says I and was turning away when he said:

‘Mind you, sir, there might be some as would put money on ’im, just on the chance that ’e’d win – vhich is himpossible, o’ course, ’gainst a crack player like you. Then again, even cracks lose sometimes – an’ if you lost, vhy, anyone who’d put a thousand on Haslam – vell spread about, o’ course – vhy, he’d pick up fifty thousand, wouldn’t ’e? I think,’ he added, ‘me calkerlation is about right.’

I nearly swallowed my cheroot. The blind, blazing impudence of it was staggering – for there wasn’t the slightest doubt what the scoundrel was proposing. (And without even a word of what cut he was prepared to offer, rot his insolence.) I hadn’t been so insulted all day, and I d----d his eyes in my indignation.

‘I shouldn’t raise your voice, sir,’ says he. ‘You wouldn’t want to be over’eard talkin’ to the likes o’ me, I’m sure. Or to ’ave folks know that you’ve ’ad some o’ my rhino, in the past, for services rendered—’

‘You infernal liar!’ cries I. ‘I’ve never seen a penny of your d----d money!’

‘Vell, think o’ that, now,’ says he. ‘D’you suppose that Wincent ’as been pocketin’ it again? I don’t see ’ow ’e could ha’ done, neither – seein’ as my letters to you vas writ an’ sealed, vith cash henclosed, in the presence of two reliable legal friends o’ mine, who’d swear that same vos delivered to your direction. An’ you never got ’em, you say? Vell, that Wincent must be sharper than I thought; I’ll just ’ave to break ’is b----y legs to learn ’im better. Still, that’s by the by; the point is’ – and he poked me in the ribs – ‘if my legal friends vos to svear to vot they know – there’s some as might believe you’d been takin’ cash from a bookie – oh, to win, granted, but it’d make a nasty scandal. Werry nasty it would be.’

‘D--n you!’ I was nearly choking with rage. ‘If you think you can scare me—’

He raised his hands in mock horror. ‘I’d never think any such thing, Mr Flashman! I know you’re brave as a lion, sir – vhy, you ain’t even afraid to walk the streets o’ London alone at nights – some rare strange places you gets to, I b’lieve. Places vhere young chaps ’as come adrift afore now – set on by footpads an’ beat almost to death. Vhy, a young friend o’ mine – veil, ’e vosn’t much of a friend, ’cos ’e velched on me, ’e did. Crippled for life, sir, I regret to say. Never did catch the willains that done it, neither. Course, the peelers is shockin’ lax these days—’

‘You villain! Why, I’ve a mind to—’

‘No, you ’aven’t, Mr Flashman. Werry inadwisable it vould be for you to do anythin’ rash, sir. An’ vhere’s the necessity, arter all?’ I could imagine the greasy smile, but all I could see was shadow. ‘Mr Haslam just ’as to vin termorror – an’ I’ll see you’re five thahsand richer straight avay, my dear sir. My legal friends’ll forget … vot they know … an’ I daresay no footpads nor garrotters von’t never come your vay, neither.’ He paused, and then touched his hat again. ‘Now, sir, I shan’t detain you no more – your ladies vill be gettin’ impatient. A werry good night to you – an’ I’m mortal sorry you ain’t goin’ to vin in the mornin’. But think of ’ow cock-a-hoop Mr Haslam’ll be, eh? It’ll be such a hunexpected surprise for ’im.’

And with that he faded into the darkness; I heard his beery chuckle as he and his bullies went down the road.

When I’d got over my indignation, my first thought was that Haslam was behind this, but saner judgement told me he wouldn’t be such a fool – only young idiots like me got hooked by the likes of Daedalus Tighe. G-d, what a purblind ass I’d been, ever to touch his dirty money. He could make a scandal, not a doubt of that – and I didn’t question either that he was capable of setting his roughs on to waylay me some dark night. What the d---l was I to do? If I didn’t let Haslam win – no, by G-d, I was shot if I would! Let him go fornicating round the world with Elspeth while I rotted in my tin belly at St James’s? Not likely. But if I beat him, Tighe would split, for certain, and his thugs would pulp me in some alley one fine night …

You can understand that I didn’t go to bed in any good temper, and I didn’t sleep much, either.

It never rains but it pours, though. I was still wrestling with my dilemma next morning when I received another blow, this time through the smirking agency of Miss Judy, the guv’nor’s trull. I had been out on the gravel watching Solomon’s gardeners roll the wicket on the main lawn for our match, smoking furiously and drumming my fingers, and then took a restless turn round the house; Judy was sitting in one of the arbours, reading a journal. She didn’t so much as glance up as I walked by, ignoring her, and then her voice sounded coolly behind me:

‘Looking for Mrs Leo Lade?’

That was a nasty start, to begin with. I stopped, and turned to look at her. She leafed over a page and went on: ‘I shouldn’t, if I were you. She isn’t receiving this morning, I fancy.’

‘What the d---l have I to do with her?’ says I.

‘That’s what the Duke is asking, I daresay,’ says Miss Judy, giving the journal her sly smile. ‘He has not directed his inquiries to you as yet? Well, well, all in good time, no doubt.’ And she went on reading cool as be-d----d, while my heart went like a hammer.

‘What the h--l are you driving at?’ says I, and when she didn’t answer I lost my temper and knocked the paper from her hand.

‘Ah, that’s my little man!’ says she, and now she was looking at me, sneering in scornful pleasure. ‘Are you going to strike me, as well? You’d best not – there are people within call, and it would never do for them to see the hero of Kabul assaulting a lady, would it?’

‘Not “lady”!’ says I. ‘Slut’s the word.’

‘It’s what the Duke called Mrs Lade, they tell me,’ says she, and rose gracefully to her feet, picking up her parasol and spreading it. ‘You mean you haven’t heard? You will, though, soon enough.’

‘I’ll hear it now!’ says I, and gripped her arm. ‘By G-d, if you or anyone else is spreading slanders about me, you’ll answer for it! I’ve nothing to do with Mrs Lade or the Duke, d’you hear?’

‘No?’ She looked me up and down with her crooked smile and suddenly jerked her arm free. ‘Then Mrs Lade must be a liar – which I daresay she is.’

‘What d’you mean? You’ll tell me, this instant, or—’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t deny myself the pleasure,’ says she. ‘I like to see you wriggle and mouth first, though. Well, then – a little bird from the Duke’s hotel tells me that he and Mrs Lade quarrelled violently last night, as I believe they frequently do – his gout, you know. There were raised voices – his, at first, and then hers, and all manner of names called – you know how these things develop, I’m sure. Just a little domestic scene, but I’m afraid Mrs Lade is a stupid woman, because when the talk touched on his grace’s … capabilities – how it did, I can’t imagine – she was ill-advised enough to mention your name, and make unflattering comparisons.’ Miss Judy smiled sweetly, and patted her auburn curls affectedly. ‘She must be singularly easy to please, I think. Not to say foolish, to taunt her admirer so. In any event, his grace was so tender as to be jealous—’

‘It’s a d----d lie! I’ve never been near the b---h!’

‘Ah, well, no doubt she is confusing you with someone else. It is probably difficult for her to keep tally. However, I daresay his grace believed her; jealous lovers usually think the worst. Of course, we must hope he will forgive her, but his forgiveness won’t include you, I’ll be bound, and—’

‘Shut your lying mouth!’ cries I. ‘It’s all false – if that slattern has been lying about me, or if you are making up this malicious gossip to discredit me, by G-d I’ll make you both wish you’d never been born—’

‘Again, you’re quoting the Duke. A hot-tempered old gentleman, it seems. He spoke – at the top of his voice, according to a guest at the hotel – of setting a prizefighter on to you. It seems he is the backer of some persons called Caunt and the Great Gun – but I don’t know about such things …’

‘Has Elspeth heard this foul slander?’ I shouted.

‘If I thought she would believe it, I would tell her myself,’ says the malicious tart. ‘The sooner she knows what a hound she has married, the better. But she’s stupid enough to worship you – most of the time. Whether she’ll still find you so attractive when the Duke’s pugilists have done with you is another matter.’ She sighed contentedly and turned away up the path. ‘Dear me, you’re shaking, Harry – and you will need a steady hand, you know, for your match with Don Solomon. Everyone is so looking forward to it …’

She left me in a fine state of rage and apprehension, as you can imagine. It almost passed belief that the idiot heifer Lade had boasted to her protector of her bout with me, but some women are stupid enough for anything, especially when tempers are flying – and now that doddering, vindictive old pander of a Duke would sick his bullies onto me¹¹ – on top of Tighe’s threats of the previous evening it was the wrong side of enough. Couldn’t the selfish old lecher realise that his flashtail needed a young mount from time to time, to keep her in running condition? But here I was, under clouds from all directions, still undecided what I should do in my match with Solomon – and at that moment Mynn hove up to bear me away to the pitch for the great encounter. I wasn’t feeling like cricket one little bit.

Our party, and a fair number of local quality riff-raff, were already arranging themselves on chairs and couches set on the gravel before the house – the Duke and Mrs Lade weren’t there, thank G-d: probably still flinging furniture at each other in the hotel – but Elspeth was the centre of attraction, with Judy at her side looking as though she’d just swallowed the last of the cream. Tattling trollop – I gritted my teeth and vowed I’d be even with her yet.

On the other sides of the lawn was the popular mob, for Solomon had thrown open his grounds for the occasion, and had set up a marquee where free beer and refreshments were being doled out to the thirsty; well, if the d----d show-off wanted to let ’em see him being thoroughly beat, that was his business. Oh, Ch---t, though – was I going to beat him? And to compound my confusion, what should I see among a group of flash coves under the trees but the scarlet weskit and face of Daedalus Tighe, Heskwire, come to oversee his great coup, no doubt; he had some likely-looking hard-cases with him, too, all punishing the ale and chortling.

‘Breakfast disagree with you, Flashy?’ says Mynn. ‘You look a mite peaky – hollo, though, there’s your opponent all ready. Come along.’

Solomon was already on the lawn, very business-like in corduroys and pumps, with a straw hat on his black head, smiling at me and shaking hands while the swells clapped politely and the popular crowd shouted and rattled their pots. I stripped off my coat and donned my pumps, and then little Felix spun the bat; I called ‘blade’, and so it was. ‘Very good,’ says I to Solomon, ‘you’ll bat first.’

‘Capital!’ cries he, with a flash of teeth. ‘Then may the better man win!’

‘He will,’ says I, and called for the ball, while Solomon, rot his impudence, went across to Elspeth and made great play of having her wish him luck; he even had the gall to ask her for her handkerchief to tie in his belt – ‘for I must carry the lady’s colours, you know,’ cries he, making a great joke of it.

Of course she obliged him, and then, catching my glare, fluttered that of course I must carry her colours, too, to show no favouritism. But she hadn’t another wipe, so the minx Judy said she must borrow hers to give me – and I finished up with that sly slut’s snot-rag in my belt, and she sitting with her acid tongue in her cheek.

We went out to the wicket together, and Felix gave Solomon guard; he took his time over it, too, patting his blockhole and feeling the pitch before him, very business-like, while I fretted and swung my arm. It was spongy turf, I realised, so I wasn’t going to get much play out of it – no doubt Solomon had taken that into account, too. Much good might it do him.

‘Play!’ calls Felix, and a hush fell round the lawn, everyone expectant for the first ball. I tightened my belt, while Solomon waited in his turn, and then let him have one of my hardest – I’ll swear he went pale as it shot past his shins and went first bounce into the bushes. The mob cheered, and I turned and bowled again.

He wasn’t a bad batter. He blocked my next ball with his hanging guard, played the third straight back to me, and then got a great cheer when he ran two off the fourth. Hollo, thinks I, what have we here? I gave him a slower ball, and he pulled it into the trees, so that I had to plough through the chattering mob to reach it, while he ran five; I was panting and furious when I got back to the crease, but I held myself in and gave him a snorter, dead straight; he went back, and pushed it to his off-side for a single. The crowd yelled with delight, and I ground my teeth.

I was beginning to realise what a desperate business single-wicket can be when you haven’t got fieldsmen, and have to chase every run yourself. You’re tuckered in no time, and for a fast bowler that won’t do. Worse still, no fieldsmen meant no catches behind the stumps, which is how fast men like me get half their wickets. I had to bowl or catch him out myself, and what with the plump turf and his solid poking away, it looked like being the deuce of a job. I took a slow turn, recovering my breath, and then bowled him four of my fastest; the first shaved his stumps, but he met the other three like a game-cock, full on the blade, and they brought him another five runs. The crowd applauded like anything, and he smiled and tipped his hat. Very good, thinks I, we’ll have to see to this in short order.

I bowled him another score or so of balls – and he took another eight runs, carefully – before I got what I wanted, which was a push shot up the wicket, slightly to my left. I slipped deliberately as I went to gather it, and let it run by, at which Solomon, who had been poised and waiting, came galloping out to steal a run. Got you, you b----rd, thinks I, and as I scrambled up, out of his path, pursuing the ball, I got him the deuce of a crack on the knee with my heel, accidental-like. I heard him yelp, but by then I was lunging after the ball, scooping it up and throwing down the wicket, and then looking round all eager, as though to see where he was. Well, I knew where he was – lying two yards out of his ground on his big backside, holding his knee and cursing.

‘Oh, bad luck, old fellow!’ cries I. ‘What happened? Did you slip?’

‘Aaarr-h!’ says he, and for once he wasn’t smiling. ‘You hacked me on the leg, confound it!’

‘What?’ cries I. ‘Oh, never! Good l--d, did I? Look here, I’m most fearfully sorry. I slipped myself, you know. Oh, my G-d!’ says I, clapping my brow. ‘And I threw down your wicket! If I’d realised – I say, Felix, he don’t have to be out, does he? I mean, it wouldn’t be fair?’

Felix said he was run out, no question; it hadn’t been my fault I’d slipped and had Solomon run into me. I said, no, no, I wouldn’t have it, I couldn’t take advantage, and he must carry on with his innings. Solomon was up by now, rubbing his knee, and saying, no, he was out, it couldn’t be helped; his grin was back now, if a bit lop-sided. So we stood there, arguing like little Christians, myself stricken with remorse, pressing him to bat on, until Felix settled it by saying he was out, and that was that. (About time, too; for a moment I’d thought I was going to convince him.)

So it was my turn to bat, shaking my head and saying what a d----d shame it had been; Solomon said it was his clumsiness, and I mustn’t fret, and the crowd buzzed with admiration at all this sporting spirit. ‘Kick ’im in the crotch next time!’ bawls a voice from the trees, and the quality pretended not to hear. I took guard; twenty-one he’d scored; now we’d see how he bowled.

It was pathetic. As a batter he’d looked sound, if dull, with some good wrist-work, but from the moment I saw him put the ball to his eye and waddle up with that pregnant-duck look of earnestness on his face, I knew he was a duffer with the ball. Quite astonishing, for he was normally a graceful, sure-moving man, and fast for all his bulk, but when he tried to bowl he was like a shire horse on its way to the knackers. He lobbed with the solemn concentration of a dowager at a coconut shy, and I gloated inwardly, watched it drop, drove with confidence – and mishit the first ball straight down his throat for the simplest of catches.

The spectators yelled in amazement, and by George, they weren’t alone. I flung down my bat, cursing; Solomon stared in disbelief, half-delighted, half-frowning. ‘I believe you did that on purpose,’ cries he.

‘Did I—!’ says I, furious. I’d meant to hit him into the next county – but ain’t it the way, if a task is too easy, we botch it often as not? I could have kicked myself for my carelessness – thinking like a cricketer, you understand. For with 21 runs in it, I might easily lose the match now – the question was: did I want to? There was Tighe’s red waistcoat under the trees – on the other hand, there was Elspeth, looking radiant, clapping her gloved hands and crying ‘Well played!’ while Solomon tipped his hat gracefully and I tried to put on a good face. By Jove, though, it was him she was looking at – no doubt picturing herself under a tropic moon already, with inconvenient old Flashy safely left behind – no, by G-d, to the d---l with Tighe, and his threats and blackmail – I was going to win this match, and be d----d to everyone.

We had a sandwich and a glass, while the swells chattered round us, and the Canterbury professional rubbed embrocation on Solomon’s knee. ‘Splendid game, old fellow!’ cries the Don, raising his lemonade in my direction. ‘I’ll have some more of my lobs for you directly!’ I laughed and said I hoped they weren’t such twisters as his first one, for it had had me all at sea, and he absolutely looked pleased, the b----y farmer.

‘It is so exciting!’ cries Elspeth. ‘Oh, who is going to win? I don’t think I could bear it for either of them to lose – could you, Judy?’

‘Indeed not,’ says Judy. ‘Capital fun. Just think, my dear – you cannot lose, either way, for you will gain a jolly voyage if the Don wins, or if Harry succeeds, why, he will have two thousand pounds to spend on you.’

‘Oh I can’t think of it that way!’ cries my darling spouse. ‘It is the game that counts, I’m sure.’ D----d idiot.

‘Now then, gentlemen,’ cries Felix, clapping his hands. ‘We’ve had more eating and drinking than cricket so far. Your hand, Don,’ and he led us out for the second innings.

I had learned my lesson from my first bowling spell, and had a good notion now of where Solomon’s strength and weakness lay. He was quick, and sure-footed, and his back game was excellent, but I’d noticed that he wasn’t too steady with his forward strokes, so I pitched well up to him, on the leg stump; the wicket was getting the green off it, with being played on, and I’d hopes of perhaps putting a rising ball into his groin, or at least making him hop about. He met my attack pretty well, though, and played a hanging guard, taking the occasional single on the on side. But I pegged away, settling him into place, with the ball going into his legs, and then sent one t’other way; he didn’t come within a foot of it, and his off-stump went down flat.

He’d made ten runs that hand, so I had 32 to get to win – and while it ain’t many against a muffin of a bowler, well, you can’t afford a single mistake. And I wasn’t a batter to trade; however, with care I should be good enough to see Master Solomon away – if I wanted to. For as I took guard, I could see Tighe’s red weskit out of the corner of my eye, and felt a tremor of fear up my spine. By George, if I won and sent his stake money down the drain, he’d do his best to ruin me, socially and physically, no error – and what was left the Duke’s bruisers would no doubt share between ’em. Was anyone ever in such a cursed fix – but here was Felix calling ‘Play!’ and the Don shuffling up to deliver his donkey-drop.

It’s a strange thing about bad bowling – it can be deuced difficult to play, especially when you know you have only one life to lose, and have to abandon your usual swiping style. In an ordinary game, I’d have hammered Solomon’s rubbish all over the pasture, but now I had to stay cautiously back, while he dropped his simple lobs on a length – no twist at all but dead straight – and I was so nervous that I edged some of them, and would have been a goner if there’d been even an old woman fielding at slip. It made him look a deal better than he was, and the crowd cheered every ball, seeing the slogger Flashy pinned to his crease.

However, I got over my first shakes, tried a drive or two, and had the satisfaction of seeing him tearing about and sweating while I ran a few singles. That was a thing about single-wicket; even a good drive might not win you much, for to score one run you had to race to the bowler’s end and back, whereas in an ordinary match the same work would have brought you two. And all his careering about the outfield didn’t seem to trouble his bowling, which was as bad – but still as straight – as ever. But I hung on, and got to a dozen, and when he sent me a full pitch, I let fly and hit him clean over the house, running eight while he vanished frantically round the building, with the small boys whooping in his wake, and the ladies standing up and squeaking with excitement. I was haring away between the wickets, with the mob chanting each run, and was beginning to think I’d run past his total when he hove in sight again, trailing dung and nettles, and threw the ball across the crease, so that I had to leave off.

So there I was, with 20 runs, 12 still needed to win, and both of us blowing like whales. And now my great decision could be postponed no longer – was I going to beat him, and take the consequences from Tighe, or let him win and have a year in which to seduce Elspeth on his confounded boat? The thought of him murmuring greasily beside her at the taffrail while she got drunk on moonlight and flattery fairly maddened me, and I banged his next delivery against the front door for another three runs – and as I waited panting for his next ball, there under the trees was the beast Tighe, hat down on his brows and thumbs hooked in his weskit, staring at me, with his cudgel-coves behind him. I swallowed, missed the next ball, and saw it shave my bails by a whisker.

What the blazes should I do? Tighe was saying a word over his shoulder to one of his thugs – and I swung wildly at the next ball and sent it high over Solomon’s head. I was bound to run, and that was another two – seven to get to win. He bowled again, and for once produced a shooter; I poked frantically at it, got the edge, and it went scuttling away in front of the bounds for a single. Six to get, and the spectators were clapping and laughing and egging us on. I leaned on my bat, watching Tighe out of the corner of my eye and conjuring up nameless fears – no, they weren’t nameless. I couldn’t face the certainty of it being published that I’d taken money from a tout, and having his assassins walk on my face in a Haymarket alley into the bargain. I must lose – and if Solomon rogered Elspeth all over the Orient, well, I’d not be there to see it. I turned to look in her direction, and she stood up and waved to me, ever so pretty, calling encouragement; I looked at Solomon, his black hair wet with perspiration and his eyes glittering as he ran up to bowl – and I roared ‘No, by G-d!’ and cut him square and hard, clean through a ground-floor window.

How they cheered, as Solomon thundered through the quality seats, the ladies fluttering to let him by, and the men laughing fit to burst; he hurtled through the front door, and as I completed my second run I turned to see that ominous figure in the red weskit; he and his cronies were the only still, silent members of that whole excited assembly. D--n Solomon – was he going to take all day finding the b----y ball? I had to run, with my nerve failing again; I lumbered up the pitch, and there was a great howl from the house; Solomon was emerging dishevelled and triumphant as I made the third run – only another three and the match was mine.

But I couldn’t face it; I knew I daren’t win – after all, I wasn’t any too confident of Elspeth’s virtue as it was; one Solomon more or less wasn’t going to make all that much difference – better be a cuckold than a disgraced cripple. I had wobbled in intent all through the past half-hour, but now I did my level best to hand Solomon the game. I swiped and missed, but my wicket remained intact; I prodded a catch at him, and it fell short; I played a ball to the off, went for a single that I hadn’t a hope of getting – and the great oaf, with nothing to do but throw down my wicket for victory, shied wildly wide in his excitement. I stumbled home, with the mob yelling delightedly; Solomon 31, Flashy 30, and even little Felix was hopping from one leg to the other as he signalled Solomon to bowl on.

There wasn’t a whisper round the field now. I waited at the crease, bowels dissolving, as Solomon stood doubled over, regaining his breath, and then picked up the ball. I was settled in my mind now: I’d wait for a straight one and miss it, and let myself be bowled out.

Would you believe it, his next three balls were as squint as a Jew’s conscience? He was dead beat with running, labouring like a cow in milk, and couldn’t keep direction at all. I let ’em go by, while the crowd groaned in disappointment, and when his next one looked like going wide altogether I had to play at it, like it or not; I scrambled across, trying desperately to pull it in his direction, muttering to myself: ‘If you can’t bowl me, for Ch---t’s sake catch me out, you ham-fisted buttock,’ and in my panic I stumbled, took a frantic swipe – and drove the confounded ball miles over his head, high into the air. He turned and raced to get under it, and there was nothing I could do but leg it for the other end, praying to G-d he’d catch it. It was still in the air when I reached the bowler’s crease and turned, running backwards to watch; he was weaving about beneath it with his mouth open, arms outstretched, while the whole field waited breathless – down it came, down to his waiting hands, he clutched at it, held it, stumbled, fumbled – and to my horror and a great shriek from the mob, it bounced free – he made a despairing grab, measured his length on the turf, and there was the b----y ball rolling across the grass away from him.

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