Soldier of the Queen (16 page)

It raised a laugh and he was pleased. ‘We have one other distinction,’ he went on. ‘We are one of the only two regiments in the army to share a number. These are the 19th Hussars and the 19th Lancers. It sprang entirely from the mistake of a Whitehall clerk and has never been rectified. Now that it has become tradition, it never will be, because every regiment in the army has a peculiarity of costume or equipment or name, associated with some event in its history, and they are usually retained with the tenacity of a tigress defending her young.

He touched the badge on his forage cap. ‘Under the motto on your lance caps you’ll see the words,
Aut Primus Aut Nullus
. That’s Latin, and it means
The Best or Nothing
. That’s what we believe in, isn’t it, sergeant?’

‘Sir!’

‘The 2nd Dragoons, the Greys, have the motto,
Nulli Secundus
, which means
Second to None
, but of course that’s rubbish because they’re second to
us
. And don’t believe those people who’ll try to tell you we’re a
junior
cavalry regiment, because we’re not. We were formed first in 1642 and it was only due to the lack of foresight of someone who allowed us to be disbanded that we were a little late in the field when Joshua Goff reformed us in 1760.’

It was all nonsense he knew, but it mattered, because a man’s loyalty had to be not to the Queen or the army but to his regiment, and for that he had to know everything about it as well as he knew his own family.

‘It has been said,’ he went on, ‘that cavalry exists to look pretty in peacetime and get killed in war. What that means is that we’re expected to look smart on parade but that, since we’re the screen of the army, both in advance and retreat, we’re always the first to bump into the enemy. In moments of crisis, the cavalry is called on to charge. To relieve pressure, to restore a desperate situation, to lead a forlorn hope, doing the things that will bring success out of failure. It’s a responsible job and we must never forget it.’

He paused long enough to look at them and to let them get a look at him. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘no matter how often you’ve swung your leg over a polished saddle, a trooper can’t lay claim to true cavalrymanship until he has enough music in his horsey soul to appreciate the majesty of “Stables.”’

‘This,’ he continued, ‘means that you will leap from your beds at Reveille, which in the cavalry sounds at 5.30 – earlier than the infantry because you have horses to attend to. To the fastidious, mucking out might seem a revolting way to start the day, especially as you’ll find there are always too few forks.’ He held up his hands, the fingers outspread. ‘But, have no fear. I carry my personal mucking out equipment on my hands. And so do you.

‘Before you get your mounts, however, you will learn to conduct yourselves like soldiers, and to remember that cleanliness is next to Godliness. Here, that means bright buttons and glistening souls. You belong in the Queen’s best regiment of horse and in the best squadron in that regiment – mine!’ He gave them a long hard look. ‘So God help any man who ever forgets it. Dismiss ’em, Sergeant.’

Leaving the stables, Colby walked towards the Riding School. The riding instructor’s voice could be heard even outside the huge shed with its outward-sloping walls and tanbark floor.

‘Get up, dammit! You can get the bark out of your ear later. And sit
in
the bloody saddle, not on it! Now trot and sit straight. Grip with your knees. Head up. Heels down. AND SIT STILL! You’re darting about in the saddle like a fart in a bottle!’

Recruit riding was in progress, men shaking down in the saddle in a test of grip and endurance, turning, inclining, circling, evolutions performed at a walk, trot and canter, with or without stirrups. As they finished, the order ‘Bring in the jump’ produced a hurdle topped with gorse, and they crossed their stirrups and swung into a canter.

‘Drop your reins and fold your arms!’

As son of a commanding officer, Colby had learned to ride as a boy with the recruits and he knew the severity of this exercise as well as any of them. The tighter the arms were folded, he’d been informed, the tighter the grip with the knees, and it always seemed to be true and was valuable advice if the horse jumped big.

As he saw Colby the riding instructor came to attention. ‘We got an old soldier, sir,’ he said quietly, nodding to a man who was jogging round, apparently having difficulty with his horse.

The riding instructor was experienced enough to be able to tell a man’s former trade from the way he sat. Carpenters, he claimed, held one shoulder forward from the habit of using a plane, while tailors, from being used to sitting cross-legged, kept their knees away from the saddle and were always the worst of riders.

‘’E’s feigning awkwardness, sir,’ he went on. ‘Pretendin’ ’e’s a green’orn. But ’e ain’t. just watch ’im close, sir.’

Turning away, he yelled suddenly. ‘Right shoulder in! Forward!’

The older man was the only one in the group who performed the movement instinctively and the riding instructor frowned.

‘Only one who knew what it meant,’ he said. ‘I reckon ’e was discharged as a bad character from another regiment.’

On the parade ground men were marching and wheeling to the shouts of drill instructors and further away there was the heavy rumble of iron-shod wheels as guns and limbers turned and moved to the rattle and jingle of harness. The high iron gates arched over the sentry, the rifle green of his uniform dark against the drab yellow brick of the building. Tall and thin, bowed legs poured into skin-tight overalls, he exhuded cavalry spirit from every pore. As a small boy the sentry on the gate had seemed more magnificent and far more important to Colby than the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury. As the sentry crashed into a salute, he returned it with equal fervour. He had no time for the bored flicks of some of the younger officers.

The band moved past, playing ‘The Yorkshire jockey’, the regimental march, a piebald drumhorse stepping the pace in front. Dripping aiguillettes plaited in the regimental colours, the kettle drummer was seated between two barrel-shaped silver instruments draped with drum cloths bearing the battle honours of the regiment – Willems, Talavera, Fuentes d’Onor, Salamanca, Vittoria, Nive, Waterloo, Balaclava, Bhurtpore, Guznee. Guiding his horse with reins attached to his stirrup irons, he whirled his sticks first to one drum then the other as if working himself up to the climax of a Zulu war dance. It was a lot of dressing up, Colby thought, for that most primitive of instruments, the drum.

As he swung into the mess, a loud voice was complaining bitterly about some soldier who had objected to the meat the previous day and he turned, recognising the voice. Aubrey Cosgro looked like his older brother, Claude, plump, overfed, pale-faced and pale-souled. He had been switched to Colby’s squadron in the hope of working some improvement but so far it hadn’t been successful. Nobody ever did much with a Cosgro.

‘Did you taste the meat, sir?’ Colby barked.

Cosgro jerked round. ‘I should think not,’ he said.

Colby’s eyes blazed. ‘Then you’d better do it tomorrow,’ he snapped. ‘And for the next seven days! I’ll have a word with the adjutant.’

Leaving Cosgro red-faced and furious, he turned to find himself facing George Laughton, who ran C Squadron. Laughton had been in the regiment for ever, getting nowhere, reliable in that he did nothing wrong but also in that he never did anything very right either.

‘How’re the recruits?’ he asked.

‘Like the remounts. Hairy of heel.’

Laughton sipped his drink and glanced across the mess. ‘Bit sharp with young Cosgro, weren’t you?’ he said.

‘The officers in my squadron do their work like the men,’ Colby growled. ‘I don’t expect ’em to leave it to the sergeants.’

Laughton sniffed. ‘My squadron’s a bit more easy-going,’ he said.

Which, Colby thought, explained why C Squadron would never be as good as A. Anybody knew that a Cosgro – of whatever age – could be trusted no further than he could be thrown. He’d heard that Claude Cosgro, had started sniffing round a farmer’s wife at Hounslow. Wonder what Georgina thought of that, he asked himself. Perhaps nothing, because he’d also heard she was seeing a captain in the Scots Fusiliers.

As Laughton turned away, unimpressed with Colby’s zeal, Brosy la Dell appeared. He had acquired a well-fed look since he’d married the daughter of Colonel Markham’s successor, and since his wife had announced she was expecting a baby, was full of well-being.

‘How’s Grace?’ Colby asked.

Brosy smiled his lazy smile. ‘She’s fine. Baby’s due in a fortnight’s time. Gets excitin’, this family life.’

His enthusiasm made Colby feel lonely. There must be something to this marriage business, he thought, when a man so ardently a bachelor as Brosy had been could become so absorbed by it. He seemed left out in the cold, with the feeling that he was missing something.

‘Thought I might take a short break till it’s due,’ Brosy went on. ‘Get my strength up, you might say.’

‘Fishing?’

‘Probably. Paris don’t come within the reach of a married man.’ Brosy’s eyes were far away for a moment. ‘Pity. It’s the place to go. When Grace and I were there last year, you could feel the electricity in the air. Still, you know it better than I do. It’s where you’ve passed most of your misspent youth.’

Colby said nothing. Since returning from the States, he’d been suffering from a deep ennui that came, he suspected, from routine, the absence of excitement and the lack of anyone important in his life. Caroline Matchett was still around, but these days she went in less for acting than for drinking brandy and it was beginning to show. And, as far as a woman with a husband whom she had obligingly discarded could be called unfaithful, he suspected she was being unfaithful to him, too. The signs were there and he had long suspected someone else was visiting her.

‘Grace wants it to be called Horatio after the Old Man,’ Brosy was saying.

‘What?’ Colby’s thoughts had been far away.

‘The baby, ass! Can’t see it myself. One degree worse than Ambrose.’ Brosy peered at Colby. ‘You all right? You look as if you might have saddle sores. Too much 19th Lancers and not enough anything else. You should take yourself off to Paris again. Could be exciting just now with all this talk of war between the Emperor and the Prussians.’

Colby shrugged. The recent French aggressiveness had not gone down well in England, and there had been a strong condemnation in the newspapers and in stiff speeches in Parliament. Fortunately the disturbance, a flutter of ruffled feathers that had become a foreboding beat of wings, had subsided again in the last few days and the threatened storm over some princeling the Prussians wanted to put on the throne of Spain had died to nothing more than a murmur.

‘Won’t come now,’ Brosy said. ‘For once Bismarck got a bloody nose and all this big talk of war by French newspapermen’s simply because they think he should be given a fright.’

‘I don’t think Bismarck frightens all that easily,’ Colby observed.

Brosy smiled. ‘Well, nobody’s going to pick a quarrel with France, are they? Look at the experience of war they have. All those African conquests.’

Colby thought of von Hartmann, the eager young Prussian he had met in America. ‘The Prussians learn fast,’ he said.

Brosy smiled. ‘Well, if they do and they
are
out for war, all the more reason to go while you can.’

Colby was tempted. The previous winter he had flung himself into hunting, but it hadn’t been enough and as he had studied with a fastidious eye the women he met round the shires he had come to the conclusion that old age was hurrying towards him at breakneck speed and he was growing hard to please. He was sick of pre-marital skirmishings that always came to nothing. The occasions were always boring, he found, and the women all seemed to look like Georgina.

‘You could get time off,’ Brosy encouraged.

Yes, he could, Colby thought, and these days too much of his time away from the regiment was spent chasing women, gambling at Deauville or roistering around London and Paris. But Braxby didn’t appeal these days. With his father just clinging to life, his ancient frame knotted from old wounds, frail, nodding, shaking, and white as a corpse already, Colby didn’t enjoy watching him slowly die.

There was one other drawback, too. The Rector’s daughter had her eye on him. Her father was the youngest son of a peer of the realm, had a degree from Oxford, and had been a minor canon at Windsor which, she seemed to think, placed her family firmly among the mighty. She was also pretty and not too stupid and lately had taken to visiting Braxby Manor on the thin excuse that she was bringing calves’ foot jelly or beef tea for his father. What was more, she rode reasonably well, enjoyed hunting and had a brother in the 11th Hussars, all of which made her not too bad a bet. Nevertheless, there remained an uneasy feeling that, brought up in the atmosphere of the church, she would never understand, as Brosy’s undemanding, generous-minded Grace did, the importance of the regiment; and that, full of good works, she would grow boring in time. When he had tried to manoeuvre her into a dark corner after the hunt ball the previous autumn she had made it clear her ambition was marriage, not bed.

Brosy was watching him. ‘You’re cantering on the wrong rein,’ he said. ‘You need a wife.’

That was what Ackroyd was always saying, Colby remembered. Having smuggled him through the Federal lines to the waiting Brosy in New Orleans, where his service with Love’s regiment had been tacitly forgotten and he had become nothing more than a war correspondent who had been foolish enough to get himself wounded, Ackroyd was privileged and didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the fact.

‘You’re growing old,’ he kept insisting. ‘Before you know where you are, you’ll be tottering about on two sticks.’

Ackroyd himself was well-married now, with a small son, and a secure position at the Home Farm, and sometimes Colby watched him with a faint feeling of envy.

He needed a home and Braxby Manor needed a woman. There hadn’t been anybody who had really cared for it since his mother had died and suddenly he wondered what had happened to Gussie Dabney. By the time Ackroyd had got him home he had lost all contact with her and she with him and he had nothing to remember her by but the one urgent letter she had written, a stained yellow sash, a broken feather and a locket with a curl of her hair in it. She’d be twenty-one now, he realised, doubtless married and probably even a mother.