Cross Channel Page 7

  Of course there was gambling. What was the point of sport if a man did not gamble? What was the point of a glass of soda if it did not have brandy in it? Wagering, as Tankerville had once put it, was the salt which brought out the savour of the dish. Nowadays Hamilton himself wagered modestly, just as he had promised Evelina and his mother before his marriage. In his present mood, however, and having regard to the money he had saved by Mr Hawkins’ absence, he was damned inclined to wager a little above the normal on the outcome of the match between Dorset’s XI and the Gentlemen of France. To be sure, some of the Chertsey fellows were becoming a little dull of eye and plump of shank. But if Dorset’s men could not have the beating of Monsieur, then they should turn their bats into winter kindling.

  They left Chertsey by post-coach on the morning of Sunday, 9th August. Approaching Dover, they encountered several carriages of French making towards London.

  ‘Running away from the bowling of Mr Stevens, I shouldn’t doubt,’ observed Sir Hamilton.

  ‘Best not to bowl full tilt, Lumpy,’ said Dobson, ‘or they’ll be filling their breeches.’

  ‘So will you, Dobson, if you dine French-style too often,’ replied Stevens.

  Sir Hamilton had a sudden memory, and recited to the occupants of the post-coach the lines:

  She sent her priest in wooden shoes

  From haughty Gaul to make ragoos.

  Inchoate murmurings greeted the verse, and Sir Hamilton caught Dobson’s eyes upon him, their expression more that of an anxious tutor than of a second under-gardener.

  At Dover they met the Earl of Tankerville and William Bedster at an inn already over-crowded with emigrant French. Bedster had formerly been the Earl’s butler and the most celebrated bat in Surrey; now he was a publican in Chelsea, and his retirement had helped increase his circumference. He and the Chertsey men taunted one another over their last English dinner with the contentious happenings of forgotten seasons, and noisily argued the merits of two-stump cricket over its modern replacement. In another corner of the inn sat Tankerville and Sir Hamilton Lindsay, ruminating upon the general situation in France and the particular position of their friend John Sackville, third Duke of Dorset and His Majesty’s Ambassador, these six years past, to the Court of Versailles. Such matters were not for the ears of Lumpy Stevens and the Chertsey men.

  Dorset’s embassy had from the beginning been conducted in a manner to make Mrs Jack Heythrop tip her nose in disapproval. His hospitality in Paris was of the most generous kind, embracing under its roof gamesters and card–sharps, wh–s and parasites. His intimacy with many of the finest ladies of French society extended, it was said, even as far as Mrs Bourbon herself. It was whispered – yet especially not before the likes of either Mrs Jack Heythrop or Mr Lumpy Stevens - that Dorset even lived en famille at Versailles. The mundane business of mere diplomacy he left to his friend Mr Hailes.

  Ever since his appointment in 1783, the Duke had thought nothing of returning to England annually for the cricketing months. But this summer he had failed to appear. From such absence, rather than from the ubiquitous presence of French refugees in London, Tankerville and Lindsay had judged the current disturbances across the Channel to be of proper gravity. As the summer had proceeded and public order deteriorated in the French capital, scoundrels began issuing libels on the British nation, and rumours were started of the Royal Navy blockading French ports. In these darkening circumstances Dorset had proposed, towards the end of July, as a gesture of conciliation and friendship between the two countries, that a team of English cricketers be sent to play a team of Frenchmen in the Champs-Elysées. The Duke, who during his six years had done much to foment interest in the game, was to organise the eleven Parisians; Tankerville was enjoined to arrange transport of the English players with all despatch.

  Sir Hamilton lay in bed that night recalling his tour with Mr Hawkins a dozen, no, nearer fifteen years ago. He himself was now becoming almost as plump of shank as many of the Chertsey fellows. He remembered the ratty horses and the lank pigtail queues trailing down like an eel; the stinking macquerel and the voluptuous melon; the coachman and his horse, kneeling in whipped equality; the blood running from the roast thrushes when the knife was inserted. He imagined himself smiting the French bowling to all parts of the Champs-Elysées, and Frenchmen carrying barbered dogs applauding him from beneath their umbrellas. He imagined seeing the French coast approach; he remembered being happy.

  Sir Hamilton Lindsay was never put to the test on the Elysian Fields, nor did Lumpy Stevens ever make Frenchmen fill their breeches as they received his demon bowling. Instead, Lumpy Stevens played at Bishopsbourne in the match between Kent and Surrey, watched by several Chertsey men and Sir Hamilton Lindsay. Their rendez-vous with Dorset had not taken place, as originally intended, at the Duke’s hôtel in Paris, but on the quayside of Dover in the morning of Monday, 10th August 1789. The Duke had relinquished his embassy two days previously, and had travelled the 90 miles to Boulogne on roads even more infested with bandits than was usual. It was presumed that Dorset’s hôtel had been plundered by the mob within hours of his departure; but in spite of this he was in remarkably cheerful spirits. He was, he said, much looking forward to spending the late summer and autumn in England as he normally did. The French capital would not seem so far away, since many of his Parisian friends had now come to England. He would discover whether there were enough among their number for the match which had been intended for the Champs-Elysées to be played instead at Sevenoaks.

  General Sir Hamilton Lindsay and his wife walked to the church every Sunday afternoon. It was in truth a strange pilgrimage, since he would as soon step inside a mosque or a synagogue as inside a papistical shrine. Yet the fact that the church had been reduced and was now quite inactive drew much poison from the visit. Besides, it was the kind of ambulation he required if appetite for his dinner was to be provoked. Lady Lindsay had insisted on such bestirring of the shanks ever since she had been permitted out to join him.

  A lieutenant would accompany them at a discreet distance, which did not offend Sir Hamilton, even though he had given his word in the matter as a soldier and a gentleman. The French maintained that the officer was present in case the General and his wife needed protection from some of the coarser local patriots; and he was prepared to connive in this diplomatic mendacity. No doubt General de Rauzan was receiving the same courteous caretaking at his villa near Roehampton.

  Elements of the revolutionary army had passed through the village on their march to Lyon a dozen or so years earlier. The bells of the church had been taken down; the silver and copper removed; the priest encouraged either to marry or to flee. Three cannoneers had set up their engine opposite the west door and had used the saints in their niches for target practice. As the General observed each week – an observation which always put him into a brief good humour - their accuracy had evidently been as nothing compared with that of Lumpy Stevens. Books had been incinerated, doors taken from their hinges; colour had been bludgeoned from the stained-glass. The soldiers had even begun demolition of the south wall, and upon departing had left instruction that the church was to be used as a quarry. The villagers, however, had shown pious obstinacy, and not a stone had been removed; even so, wind and diagonal rain swept uncivilly through the injured edifice.

  On their return, dinner would be laid out beneath the awning on the terrace, and Dobson would be standing awkwardly behind Lady Lindsay’s chair. In the General’s view, the fellow had managed his successive translations with some skill: cricketer, gardener, infantryman, and now major-domo, manservant and chief forager. The very suddenness of their impromptu ménage had naturally given licence for a little more informality than would have been permitted at Nesfield; even so, the General was surprised that while addressing his beloved Evelina, his glance would increasingly slide up beyond her bonnet to Dobson standing behind her. At times he damned well found himself addressing Dobson, as if expecting him to join in the conversation. Hap
pily the fellow was sufficiently trained never to catch his master’s eye on such occasions, and besides knew how to feign a proper deafness. Evelina, for her part, treated her husband’s divergence from social form as if it were mere eccentricity, to be accounted for by his long exile and lack of intercourse. He was indeed much changed when she had come out three years ago: he had grown corpulent - no doubt from the unfavourable diet - but also indolent and weary. She had not doubted his pleasure at seeing her again; but found that his mind now travelled only in the past. It was natural that he should think so hard upon England, but England should also represent the future. That was what she enjoined him to hope: one day, they would surely return. There had been dismaying rumours that Buonaparte felt little zeal for the return of General de Rauzan to the ranks of his higher command; and it was true that the Frenchman’s notorious docility in permitting himself to be captured by Sir John Stuart at Maida could well displease any commander. But such rumours must be dismissed, she believed; hope must be made to flicker. England, England and the future, she urged upon him. But in the General’s mind England seemed to represent only the past, and he was connected to that past as much by Dobson as by his wife.

  ‘Those cannoneers, my dear. Had they but half the skill of Lumpy Stevens, they should have not wasted so much shot.’

  ‘That is quite true, Hamilton.’

  Lumpy could hit a feather placed upon the ground one time out of four in practice bowling. More than one time out of four. He had won the bet for Tankerville at Chertsey. Lumpy had been the Earl’s gardener. How many of them now were buried in the soil?

  ‘Dorset was never again the same man,’ he continued, easing the remnants of his cutlet to the side of his plate. ‘He retired to Knole and received nobody.’ Sir Hamilton had it on authority that the Duke had kept to his room like an anchorite, and that his only pleasure was to hear the music of muted violins playing from the other side of his door.

  ‘I had heard that the family was disposed to melancholy.’

  ‘Dorset was always the liveliest fellow,’ the General replied. ‘Before.’ This was true; and at first he had remained so after his return from France. That autumn there had been cricketing as there had been all their lives. But as Knole filled with émigrés the situation in France had brought dark clouds to Dorset’s mind. There had been letters exchanged with Mrs Bourbon, and many considered the loss of that intimacy to be the immediate cause of his melancholia. It was repeated, not always in the warmest of spirits, that upon quitting Paris the Duke had made a gift of his cricket bat to Mrs Bourbon, and that the lady had preserved this attribute of British manliness in her closet, just as Dido had hung up the galligaskins of the departed Aeneas. The General did not know the particularities of this rumour. He knew only that Dorset had continued cricketing at Sevenoaks until the season’s end of 1791 - the very same summer in which Mrs Bourbon and her husband had undertaken their flight to Varennes. They had been recaptured, and Dorset had cricketed no more. This was all the General could say, except that Dorset, thinning the noise of the world to muted violins heard through a wooden door, had not lived to learn the murderous news of the 16th October 1793.

  God knew he was no Papist, but the cannoneers and fusiliers of the revolutionary army were no Protestant gentlemen either. They had taken the crucifixes from the fields and made an auto-da-fé of them. They had paraded asses and mules wearing the vestments of bishops. They had burnt prayer books and manuals of instruction. They had forced priests into marriage and ordered French men and French women to spit upon the image of Christ. They had taken their knives to altarpieces and their hammers to the heads of saints. They had dismantled the bells and taken them to foundries where they were cast into cannon with which to bombard fresh churches. They had expunged Christianity from the land, and what had been their reward? Buonaparte.

  Buonaparte, war, famine, false dreams of conquest and the contempt of Europe. It grieved the General that this should be the case. He had many times been rallied by his fellow officers for being a Galloman. It was a fact he would acknowledge, and in honest justification would adduce evidence as to the national character such as he had observed it. But he also knew that the true source of his inclination lay much in the effects of memory. He judged it probable that all gentlemen of his age in some way loved themselves when young, and naturally extended such tenderness to the surrounding circumstances of their youth. For Sir Hamilton, this time had been that of his tour with Mr Hawkins. Now he had returned to France, but it was to a country changed and reduced. He had lost his youth: well, every living soul lost that. But he had also lost his England and his France. Did they expect him to endure that also? His mind had become a little more steady since they had permitted Evelina and Dobson to join him. Yet there were times when he knew what that poor devil Dorset felt, except that for him there was no door and the violins were not muted.

  ‘Dorset, Tankerville, Stevens, Bedster, myself, Dobson, Attfield, Fry, Etheridge, Edmeads …’

  ‘The lieutenant has procured for us a melon, my dear.’

  ‘Whom do I forget? Whom do I damned forget? Why is it always the same one?’ The General stared across at his wife, who was poised to carve - what? A cricket ball? A cannonball? The violins were scrabbling at his ears like insects. ‘Whom do I forget?’ He leaned forwards on his elbows, and covered his eyelids with his fattened finger-ends. Dobson quickly bent his head towards Lady Lindsay.

  ‘You forget Mr Wood, I believe, my dear,’ she murmured.

  ‘Wood.’ The General took his fingers from his eyes, smiled at his wife, and nodded as Dobson lowered a slice of orange melon before him. ‘Wood. He was not a Chertsey man?’

  Lady Lindsay was unable to seek assistance with this enquiry, since her husband’s eyes were upon her. So she answered cautiously, ‘I have not heard so.’

  ‘No, Wood was never a Chertsey man. You are right, my dear. Let us forget him.’ The General dusted sugar on his melon. ‘He had never been in France, of course. Dorset, Tankerville, myself, that is all. Dobson, of course, has been in France subsequently. I wonder what they would have made of Lumpy Stevens?’

  Lumpy Stevens had won Tankerville’s bet for him. Lumpy Stevens could hit a feather one time in four at practice-bowling. The French cannoneers …

  ‘Perhaps we may expect a letter tomorrow, my dear.’

  ‘A letter? From Mr Wood? I very much doubt that. Mr Wood is almost certainly cricketing with the Angel Gabriel at this very minute on the turf of the Elysian Fields. He must be dead and buried by now. They all must. Though Dobson is not, of course. No, Dobson is not.’ The General glanced up above his wife’s bonnet. Dobson was there, staring straight ahead, unhearing.

  Dorset’s embassy in Paris had prospered. There had been complaints against him of the usual kind. Nowadays the world was ruled by Mrs Jack Heythrop and her sisters. But The Times had reported in 1787 that as a consequence of the Duke’s presence and example, racing in France had begun to decline, and the pursuit of cricket had begun to take its place, as making better use of the French turf. It had surprised the General that the young lieutenant who spied on them had been unaware of this, until, the calculation being done, it was shown that the fellow would scarcely have said farewell to his wet-nurse at the time.

  The mob had burnt Dorset’s hôtel in Paris. They had burnt prayer books and manuals of instruction. What had become of Dorset’s cricket bat? Had they burnt that too? We were about to embark at Dover on the morning of the 10th when whom should we see but the Duke. On the quay, the mail packet at anchor behind him. In good spirits, too. Therefore we had gone to Bishopsbourne to dine with Sir Horace Mann, and the following day the match between Kent and Surrey …

  ‘Dorset, Tankerville, Stevens, Bedster, myself…’

  The melon is sweet, do you not find?’

  ‘Dobson, Attfield, Fry, Etheridge, Edmeads …’

  ‘I think tomorrow we shall expect a letter.’

  ‘Whom do I forget? Whom do I forget?
’

  The physician, though French, had seemed a reasonable man to Lady Lindsay. He was a student and follower of Pinel. The melancholia in his view must not be permitted to develop into démence. The General must be offered diversions. He must go for walks as often as he could be persuaded. He was to be allowed no more than one glass of wine with his dinner. He must be reminded of pleasant moments from the past. It had been the physician’s opinion that, despite the evident improvement in the General’s condition brought about by the presence of Madame, it might be advisable to send for the man Dobson, to whom the General made such frequent allusion that the doctor had at first taken him to be the patient’s son. It would be necessary, of course, to place a guard upon Sir Hamilton, but it would be as discreet as possible. It was regrettable that, according to the physician’s private information, there was no immediate prospect of the proposed exchange being effected, and of the Englishman returning to his own country. Unfortunately, it appeared that the family and advocates of General de Rauzan had repeatedly failed to persuade those close to the Emperor of the Frenchman’s military importance.