A Hard, Cruel Shore Read online

  Lastly, to make things even worse, winter was a bad time to bathe, or wash what little clothing one possessed, so the aromas of most of Lewrie’s fellow passengers were “high”, and grew worse after body heat in the closely sealed coach shared the smells about, and any attempt to lower a sash window was greeted with cries of alarm.

  They all had to get out and help push near the crest of Portdown Hill, as per usual for overloaded coaches, where a fresh snow only masked the semi-frozen mud of the roadway.

  From there on, the roads were actually better than Lewrie remembered, better drained and gravelled, not so badly rutted as he had experienced the last time he’d gone up to London, and a fresh snow of several inches softened what bumps there were; along with better suspension straps to lessen the swaying and rocking of the coach body, Lewrie almost could drift off with his chin on his chest.

  The glass windows were glazed over with frost outside, and fog inside, so there wasn’t much to see for the most part, not ’till they rolled into a posting house every fifteen or twenty miles on for a change of horse teams, and a chance to get out, stretch their legs, take a quick trip to the “jakes”, and rush inside the inn for a hot beverage or a bite of something, always too short a time, for one of the coachmen would wind his long horn, “tara-tara-tara!” and it was back inside the coach, crammed arsehole-to-elbow for another couple of hours before doing it all over again.

  * * *

  With a great sense of relief, Lewrie and Pettus finally alit at the Elephant and Castle posting house in London, retrieved their belongings from the coach top (hoping that the semi-frozen passengers up there hadn’t pilfered them looking for spirits or more clothing to warm them) and hired a hackney to bear them to the Madeira Club, at the corner of Duke and Wigmore Streets, where Lewrie was a member and could always count on a set of rooms when in town. After all, his father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, Sir Malcolm Shockley and several other gentlemen had founded the club years before, and Alan Lewrie was almost a “legacy”; he even got a decent discount!

  They trooped up the steps of the stoop into the grand foyer, where the clerk’s high desk, the mail slots, and cloak room were located. It was nigh six of the evening, and the Common Rooms beyond teemed with members, full of good cheer, and the heat from the large fireplaces.

  “Yes, sir?” a new desk clerk asked as Lewrie shed his cloak, cocked hat, and wool mittens.

  “Captain Sir Alan Lewrie,” Lewrie replied, leaving off the “Baronet” for now. “I’m a member? My man and I need rooms.”

  “Oh, dear Lord, sir,” the clerk quailed, looking through his ledger for a moment, then stuck a finger in the air. “Might you excuse me a moment, sir? I must summon Mister Hoyle.”

  Lewrie waited as patiently as he could, but sensed that something was amiss, this time. He hadn’t been back to the Madeira Club for over two years, but surely…! In its own quiet way, the club set an excellent table, and had one of the most extensive wine cellars in London, even stocking a crock or two of his favourite Kentucky corn whisky. Deliciously tempting aromas were wafting in from the kitchens, and …

  “Sir Alan, so good to see you back, again,” Hoyle the longtime manager of the club said, coming forward with both hands outstretched. “We had no word of your coming, I’m so sorry. It seems that, ehm … over the last year and a half, the club has gained an host of new members, and a fair number of those long-term lodgers. I am afraid that we are quite booked up. You would be staying how long?”

  “Only a night or two,” Lewrie told him, feeling quite let down, and a tad miffed, in point of fact; along with starving, of course.

  “I fear that we are so full that several of our bachelor members have consented to share a set of rooms,” Hoyle went on, wringing those hands, “with two bed-steads per room, quite … crowded. Also, I must advert to you that we have to turn away many would-be lodgers, who are un-aware that it is members-only. They think that we are a common hotel! It may be … ehm, difficult to find rooms this time of night, anywhere in London. The times, d’ye see?”

  Lewrie went through a short list of former lodgings in his head, letting out a long, disappointed sigh as he wondered if he and Pettus would have to return to the Elephant and Castle and hope for the best.

  “If it is possible, Sir Alan, you are more than welcome to partake in the supper,” Hoyle offered as a sop. “Turbot, turkey for the fowl course, and of course our usual beef roast,” he tempted.

  “Much as I desire it … no,” Lewrie had to decline. “I must find lodging, first, and can brook no delay, temptin’ though it is. If someone would be so kind as to whistle up a hackney for me, I’ll be on my way. Perhaps I’ll drop in tomorrow afternoon, sir.”

  “But of course, sir!” Hoyle replied, sounding relieved, and turned to one of the footmen to go out into the cold and flag down a conveyance.

  * * *

  “Where are we going to go, sir?” Pettus asked as they bundled into the small one-horse coach.

  “We’re goin’ to the one place we can’t be turned down, Pettus,” Lewrie said, wondering if he should cross the fingers of his right hand for luck, anyway. “Coachman, Duke to Oxford Street, down Audley, and thence to Upper Grosvenor.”

  “Roighty-ho, sir!” the coachman said as he whipped up.

  “A den of iniquity, Pettus,” Lewrie told him with a derisive laugh. “Where we can’t be refused … my father’s place!”

  “Your father, sir?” Pettus asked, perplexed. “Don’t know that anyone’s ever met him. I know I haven’t.”

  “Then they’re more fortunate than I am,” Lewrie said, rolling his eyes.

  * * *

  Lewrie’s father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, had suffered more than a few financial ups and downs in his life. His family had once been well-off Kentish gentry, rich enough to purchase him a commission in the 4th Regiment of Foot, the “King’s Own”. But, through a series of bad investments, mis-adventures, and to be perfectly honest, his family’s penchant for spending too freely and gambling too deep, they had gone smash, had sold off their estates in Kent, and had reduced young Hugo (not yet knighted for bravery) to hunting potential wives with rich dowries so he could even pay his regimental mess bills.

  Alan Lewrie was the result of such a calculated marriage which was not, in the cruel light of day, strictly legal. There were still in those days “false justices” who wed people without the posting of the banns, which made the sole issue from Elisabeth Lewrie and Hugo Willoughby, Alan, therefore, a bastard. And, when it was determined that there would be no dowry coming from the Lewries in Wheddon Cross, Devonshire, the “happy couple”, both dis-illusioned and ready to tear each others’ throats out, Hugo Willoughby took the low road, abandoning the pregnant Elisabeth in Holland, absconding with her jewelry, and dancing a jig back to England.

  With creditors cleared, mess bills paid, the young Hugo sported himself rather grandly; he had much better fortune at gambling than his father and elder brother, got involved with the Hell-Fire Club for a time (bailing out just before it was exposed, but not evading all the opprobrium), and went abroad briefly to win his spurs and receive his knighthood. At Bath, Sir Hugo now, wooed and wed an incredibly wealthy widow, Agnes Cockspur, who, unfortunately, came with two children of her own, Belinda and Gerald whom he would not have wished for if they’d come with the crown of Prussia attached. Some grand spending followed, a poor turn or two of the cards in the Long Rooms at Almack’s and the Cocoa-Tree, and the Lewries in far-off Devonshire, seeking the grandson reputed to have been born in St. Martin-in-the-Fields parish before Elisabeth had succumbed to child-bed fever, put Sir Hugo in a frantic search for another source of income. He’d struck gold when he found the orphan, pounding oakum with his little hands in a parish poorhouse, and had taken him in to his St. James’s Square house as his own, clothing, tutoring, and sending young Alan to a series of public schools.

  When Alan was seventeen, an idle, foppish Buck of the First Head back in London af
ter being expelled from Harrow for the destruction of the governor’s coach house in youthful emulation of the Gunpowder Plot (all the horses managed to escape), it appeared that Granny Lewrie was about to expire and join the Great Majority. Sir Hugo was by then a very relieved widower, but just about “skint” and in debt. If Alan, the only male Lewrie heir, was to inherit, he would be saved.

  Sir Hugo had drawn Belinda into a plot (for a share) to entrap Alan in incest, replete with pre-arranged witnesses, so he could be press-ganged into the Navy as a Midshipman and be an ocean, and a year apart when the money came in.

  Perhaps one now understands why Alan Lewrie was never a glad sailor!

  Granny Lewrie, however, refused to perish, proving harder to kill than breadroom rats, the creditors came calling, and Sir Hugo, ever the responsible sort, sold everything he owned or could lay his hands on, including his commission in the King’s Own, right out from under Gerald and Belinda, and lit out for Oporto in Portugal where many an English gentleman hid out when in arrears, and creditors in England could not collect, abandoning everyone and all responsibilities, as usual. Belinda had become a much-in-demand courtesan round Covent Garden and Drury Lane, eventually opening her own house of prostitution, and Gerald, a sodomite, worked his way down to whoring himself round Wapping. Undesirable children, indeed!

  Sir Hugo did never reveal how he’d prospered in Oporto, but it was rumoured to involve rich Portuguese widows and “gifts” of their jewelry. Cleared of debts at last, and with the help of old friends (some members of the old, dis-banded Hell-Fire Club who had never been exposed) and some old military contacts, he had finagled an appointment with the Honourable East India Company army, command of the 19th Native Infantry, where he performed wonders. Cad he might be, but he was always a damned good soldier! He returned from India and his campaigns a full nabob, worth over an hundred thousand pounds in loot, which is a wonderful Hindoo word for … loot.

  More circumspect in his middle age, Sir Hugo had run up a fine house in London, had bought an estate from Phineas Chiswick uncomfortably close to Alan and his wife’s rented farm in Anglesgreen, and had invested to establish the aforementioned Madeira Club, wealthy, comfortable, in the centre of the West End, and still able to indulge his lusts whenever he felt an itch.

  Is it any wonder, then, that Alan Lewrie might still harbour a smidgeon of suspicion, resentment, and outright loathing for the old fart?

  * * *

  Here he was, though, going up the stone steps of the stoop to the door to raise the brass lion door knocker, taking only an instant to admire the grandness of his father’s house. Unsure of what sort of reception he might get, Lewrie had bade the coachman to wait ’til he and Pettus had actually been allowed in!

  Locks turned, bolts were drawn, and the door was opened by a butler in fashionable new black livery, a man who could have been a retired Sergeant-Major or a servant worthy of St. James’s Palace.

  “Yes, sir? And who is calling, please?” that worthy asked.

  “Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, to see Sir Hugo,” Lewrie told him, striving for a top-lofty and confident air.

  Before replying, the butler gave Lewrie one of those irritating look-overs from hat to boots, with one brow up as if asking whether the creature who stood before him was even human.

  “Sir Hugo is not receiving callers, sir,” the butler drawled in a clench-jawed Etonian accent. “Have you a card, you may leave it for his consideration.”

  “Tell the old fart that his son is here, and is in need of a night’s lodging,” Lewrie shot back.

  “His son, you say, sir?” the butler replied, showing no sign of surprise.

  “Why, his other bastards show up once a week?” Lewrie asked with a cock-headed grin. “He’s home, is he? Well, go tell him that Alan’s home from the sea.”

  The butler grumped and harumphed, but stepped back and swung the door a tad wider. “If you will be so good as to wait in the parlour, Sir Alan. Your man may bide here, in the foyer.”

  “Pay the coachman, Pettus, and he can go on,” Lewrie called over his shoulder, and went inside, removing his cocked hat and shrugging his boat cloak, holding them out for the butler, who had to take them and hang them up before he could go re-lock the door, on the way giving Pettus another of these dis-believing head-to-toe inspections.

  It had been years since Lewrie had been at his father’s house, understandably, and he looked the public rooms over with a new eye.

  The entry hall was the usual black and white chequered marble, with an expensive Turkey carpet, and some rather nice pieces of furniture, a large sideboard dominating. The old wood panelling had been painted over with white, the ornate millwork picked out with gilt to lighten the old gloominess that had once welcomed visitors. Several scenic paintings lined the walls, in gilt frames, as well.

  The front parlour had been turned into a library/office where his father could have in people he had to deal with, done in a pale mint green with more white millwork, more anonymous scenics suggestive of a Grand Tour of the Continent that Sir Hugo had never taken, and a wall or two of books that Lewrie suspected had never had their pages cut, or their bindings opened. There was a large marble fireplace, though, and a roaring fire to which he was drawn like a half-frozen moth to warm his hands and lift the back of his uniform coat to bring some life back into his buttocks. He tapped at the mantel to determine if it was really marble, or the old contractors’ fraud, painted slate.

  “You are to come up, Sir Alan,” the butler said as he returned from the upper storey, where the proper parlours, dining rooms, and such would be. Lewrie trotted up the marble staircase and was shown to yet another, larger parlour where the gleaming wood floors were almost lost under several Turkey or Axminster carpets, yet one more roaring fireplace, some rather surprisingly tasteful settees, chairs, and side tables, and … his father, standing before the fire, warming his own hands. He looked over, scowling.

  “So, you’ve turned up, again, like the bad penny,” Sir Hugo scoffed.

  “Said the counterfeiter,” Lewrie rejoined as he crossed the room to join him. “What is it, regimental mess night?”

  Sir Hugo was wearing a new-style army uniform, a long-tailed cutaway coat doubled over his chest with bright gilt epaulets on his shoulders, wide black lapels that featured the blue and white button holes of the 4th Regiment of Foot, a gilt waist-belt and a large silver buckle plate very snug white breeches, and top boots. Damn his eyes, he still kept a fine, lean soldierly figure, and looked quite impressive, to the un-familiar, at least. The only odd thing about him was his wig, which fit so close to his head that it looked more like a head of real hair, right down to the sideburns.

  What, he’s gone completely bald, at last? Lewrie wondered, recalling a rapidly-thinning head, and liver spots, under the powdered peruke that Sir Hugo had worn to witness Lewrie’s presentation at court when he’d been knighted. It looked damned expensive an expedient.

  “In point of fact, it’s a supper with old comrades,” Sir Hugo told him, nigh sneering, “among which I very much doubt anyone from the Fourth will attend. And, if I do not leave this instant, I will be late. Harwell said something about you needing lodging? What’s the matter with the damned club?”

  “Full up with long-term lodgers,” Lewrie said with a shrug. “Admiralty summoned me on short notice, too little to write and ask if there were rooms available.”

  “In trouble with ’em again, are ye?” Sir Hugo posed.

  “Got struck by lightning on the way back from the evacuation of Corunna, and there’s a question whether my ship will be repaired, or turned into a trooper,” Lewrie told him. “I intend t’save her.”

  “Corunna?” Sir Hugo blurted. “You were there?” At least he could take professional interest. The news of the evacuation, and the death of General Sir John Moore, had come with the first ships to make port, only days before, and the papers were full of it, though with little deep details, yet.

  “Aye, I was,�
� Lewrie told him, “and a right mess it was. We beat the French to a stand-still, then got the army off that night and the next day, leavin’ ’em nothing. Whoever dreamt up marchin’ into Spain in Mid-winter deserves shootin’ … but, Sir John Moore paid for it.”

  “I never met him but the once, and that was briefly, back in Oh-Four, when the French looked ready to sail cross the Channel and invade,” Sir Hugo said. “Knew Baird. Did he survive?”

  “Sir David?” Lewrie said. “Met him when we re-took the Cape Colony from the Dutch, three years ago. He lost an arm, but I hear he’s still with us. Good fellow.”

  “Aye, he is,” Sir Hugo said, looking deep into the flames with a pensive expression. “What a bloody waste. I suppose that’ll be the end of any more nonsensical adventures in Spain and Portugal. Let the Dons tend to their own affairs. The damned French are just too powerful.”

  “They can be beat,” Lewrie objected. “I saw it, at Vimeiro. I went ashore and had a hand in the fighting. We put Arthur Wellesley back in Lisbon, with fresh re-enforcements, and you’ll see.”

  “You actually were at Vimeiro? Just damn my eyes!” Sir Hugo exclaimed with real excitement. “Pop up here, there, everywhere, hah!”

  “About a room for a night,” Lewrie reminded him. “I’ve my man with me, and he needs a bed, too. And some supper’d be welcome.”

  “Harwell?” Sir Hugo bellowed in a raspy parade ground voice. “Ah, there ye are. Prepare a room for my son … lay a good fire, mind, and his man will need a place to doss down. Is there anything edible in the larder for them?”

  “I will see to it, Sir Hugo,” the haughty butler replied with a bow.

  “Sorry t’dash off so quickly,” Sir Hugo apologised, gruffly and quickly, as were most of his apologies. “I’ll most-like be back long after you’ve retired. Perhaps we’ll have a moment in the morning over breakfast before you head off to the Admiralty.”

  Short, semi-sweet, and quickly done with, Lewrie thought of his usual interactions with his father.