The Blooding of Jack Absolute (7 page)

Craster’s cronies rose from their task and their victim pulled himself up to wheeze against the doorframe. Jack pushed his
chair back, gave himself what space he could. Behind him his friends did the same. They had heard tales of Jack’s cousin.

‘Shall we send this dog for some more of their watered-down ale, cousin, and toast the Absolute name?’ Craster had taken one
step into the room, immediately making it seem too small. ‘After all, you added to its lustre today with your fine Hand. Well
done, old fellow.’

The congratulations came from such a constricted throat it told Jack something. ‘You didn’t make the mistake of backing your
school against your family, did you, Craster?’

The other grunted. ‘I may have risked a little gold, aye.’

‘How little?’

‘Enough.’ The voice lost any pretence to civility. ‘I thought the odds were against you, to be sure. We seemed too strong.’

There was something shifting in the eyes, something behind the words. ‘You didn’t take any measures to affect those odds,
did you?’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘I mean, sir,’ said Jack, ‘the inclusion in a school team of someone who is not a pupil?’

‘Don’t know what you are talking of,’ Craster muttered, turning away. But any further blushes were spared him by the recovery
of the doorman who lurched up, gave his assailants a baleful look and staggered down the stairs. He seemed to be trying to
summon help, noises emerging from his chafed throat.

‘I think you may wish to consider leaving and swiftly. Matthews doesn’t care for his men to be assaulted. He don’t tolerate
it from a Westminster, we are forever banned from the Tavern. From a Harrovian he may take stronger measures.’

Craster stepped closer to the table, lowering his voice. ‘Then I will be brief, sir,’ he said. ‘You would not deny Harrow
a chance to get even, would you?’

Jack frowned. ‘I think another cricket match might take a little arranging.’

‘I do not speak of cricket,’ his cousin interrupted briskly, ‘but of another game in which you are also reputed to excel.
Billiards.’

‘I am indeed … fond of the game.’ Behind him, Fenby sniggered. Jack had been Westminster’s champion for two years now.

‘As am I.’ Craster’s eyes gleamed. ‘Care to take me on?’

Jack hesitated. He’d heard, because his mother had complained about it, that his cousin was spending much time in the company
of rogues of the baize, men who could fleece an unsuspecting fellow of the shoes he stood up in. And Craster’s clothes, now
Jack examined them closer, were finely tailored indeed, quite beyond the purse of one on the sixty guineas per annum Jack
knew his father allowed Craster. Perhaps he was supplementing his living another way.

Craster butted into the silence. ‘Frightened?’

It was Jack’s turn to colour. ‘Of you, boy, never.’

His cousin’s cronies hooted at that. Craster said, ‘Well then, the day after tomorrow, the Angel. Noon.’

There was no hesitation now. ‘Agreed.’

‘And a little wager perhaps?’

‘Of course. How little?’

Craster grinned. ‘Oh, say … one hundred guineas.’

Ede whistled, the sound cut off by Marks’s elbow. It was a lot of money, far more than either schoolboy would have. But no
doubt, as in the cricket, each school would back their side.

‘Done,’ said Jack.

The triumph was clear in Craster’s eyes as he reached out a hand and they shook with no squeezing for dominance, just a quick
agreeing shake. They would have competition enough and shortly.

From below came the sounds of boots on the stairs, the muttering of angered men. Craster glanced back casually, then down
onto the table. ‘What’s this?’ he said, spinning the Mohock Charter around. Ede stepped forward to seize it but Jack waved
him back. He let Craster read.

‘Revival of the Mohocks, eh? I have heard of that crew. Do you think you have the spunk, you four?’ He said it with a contempt
that indicated his beliefs.

‘We shall see,’ Jack said evenly.

‘And the rout planned for tomorrow night, eh?’ He smiled. ‘Well, do get to bed at a reasonable hour, dear cousin. For you
will need all your faculties the day after next.’

Five workers of the Inn had appeared on the stairs now. They were carrying cudgels and headed by the irate doorman and the
landlord, Matthews. The latter called out, ‘Mr Absolute, these curs have abused my man. If you have no objection, sir, we’d
like to teach ’em some manners.’

It was tempting to step back and let justice have its way. And for a moment Jack enjoyed the unease that came to his cousin’s
face and those of his fellows. But blood was blood in the end. And his father would not forgive him if he heard that he’d
not stood up for an Absolute.

‘I would take it as a special favour to myself, Mr Matthews, if you would accept their apologies this one time. And perhaps
a guinea to let liquid soothe your man’s injured throat?’

The seaman’s anger relented somewhat at the suggestion. Craster’s seemed to increase but he recognized he had no choice. Not
with five before him and Jack at his back.

‘I’ll get it back on Wednesday, never fear,’ he muttered, before turning to the men blocking the door and handing over the
coin. ‘And now, if you wouldn’t mind …’

The three were jostled a little as they made their way down but were allowed through. His men scurried on but at the bottom
of the stair Craster paused and called back, ‘A good turn deserves a reply, cousin. I was at my dear uncle’s house this noontime,
paying birthday respects to my aunt. They said they were seeing you at suppertime but, sure, they must have mistaken the day
… for do they not dine at six? And is it now not half past that hour?’

With a final smirk, he was gone. Jack flushed. He didn’t know how it happened but he was always incorrigibly late. As the
landlord and his men passed down the stairs, Jack seized coat, hat and stick. ‘Zounds. Bloody damnation and hell,’ he cursed,
‘I must be away.’

‘But, Absolute,’ Fenby had snatched up the parchment, ‘do we not have to settle on the Initiation Rites?’

‘You three do it. I’ll agree to all you devise and see you tomorrow. Five o’clock at the Old Hummum Hotel.’ He was at the
door when he turned back. ‘Marks, you’ll raise the stake, yes?’

‘I will.’ Marks’s skill at dicing and an eye for winners in the cockpits meant he had a syndicate of Westminsters who would
back him. A hundred guineas was a large sum. But once it was known that school honour was at stake …

Jack took the stairs three at a time. Behind him, the Mohocks’ war cry rang out again but this time he did not join in. For
now he had to reckon with something far more savage than a savage. He had to deal with Sir James Absolute.

Jack ran. His legs, sore from his exertions at the crease, were wobbly at the start and combined with a stomach – and brain
– still awash with the Five Chimneys’ Fine Porter, to make the placing of his feet on the slick cobbles of Horse Ferry Street
rather tricky. There were crowds outside the Cockpits in James Street, his constant dodging and weaving accompanied by the
shrieks of birds in battle, so he did not really get into his stride till he was past Buckingham House and onto the grass
of Green Park. He had, of course, been strictly forbidden to go there at night for darkness transformed it from a fashionable
strollers’ promenade into an arena for other forms of exercise. Indeed, it seemed to Jack that every second bush was being
shaken vigorously, giving forth groans, giggles and the occasional curse or scream. The worst part of the Park was on the
edge of Piccadilly, where the two-penny bunters could dispatch clients in one moment and be back on their pitch a moment later.
But it was the most direct route home and although he was still several streets away, he imagined he could hear his father’s
roar.

Down Street took him up. There was a cut through Collins Court, a fence to jump that brought him out onto Brick Street and
the gardens. Though these were diminishing in size, swallowed by the houses and white stone mansions of an
ever-expanding Mayfair, there were still a few hold-out tenants who grew vegetables to sell and kept their animals. Jack had
often used this back way into the house and it was his only hope now. Hoisting himself over the fence, he failed to shush
the sheep that scattered from his path. Someone shouted from an open doorway but he did not pause. A wall was vaulted and
he was in the back garden of Absolute House. Light came from the scullery and he made for it. More light came from the room
above, the glister of a hundred candles. The birthday celebration was underway.

The Absolute cook, Nancy, was bent humming over a steaming kettle and did not notice him. He warily ascended the stairs, gained
the ground floor and the steady rumbling that had accompanied him since he’d made the garden grew clear.

‘Misbegotten … kiss-my-arse … wastrel … jackanapes,’ were just some of the milder epithets that nicely covered Jack’s climb
up the somewhat creaky main stairs. Once in his room, it was a matter of moments to strip off his cricket clothes and pull
on a fresh lawn shirt, his emerald waistcoat, mauve coat, green breeches. With a quickly-tied blue stock, a glimpse in the
mirror told him he was both fashionable and presentable. The only problem was that someone appeared to have removed all his
shoes. So slipping back into the ones he’d arrived in, he descended.

The roaring had subsided, replaced by a vigorous slurping. Nancy exited as he arrived at the door, gasping at his sudden appearance,
then giving him a warning look. But since there was nothing to be gained from timidity he took a deep breath and marched into
the room.

‘Mama,’ he cried, heading straight for her, ‘congratulations on your birthday!’

Lady Jane Absolute, née Fitzsimmons, rose from her chair, her face summoning up the complexity of emotions that had made her
such a sought-after actress in the days before she became a Lady. There was delight within the eyes, a spark
raised by the recognition of her only child. A mother’s love showed in the lips, which looked as if they would frame words
of thanks and welcome … were it not for the anger spreading like flame from two spots on the cheeks to the high forehead,
in a red almost as deep as the framing curls. Yet if there was a storm within the beauty, it was as nothing to the tempest
that erupted at the other end of the table.

‘You dog!’ Sir James yelled. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Upstairs, Father.’

It was not the answer expected, the word swallowed and sticking in the older man’s throat. ‘Up … stairs,’ he gurgled.

‘Aye, sir. Composing an ode on Mother’s birthday. I heard you call, of course. But Mama always tells me that when the Muse
descends, one must listen and never turn away from her, howsoever pressing the summons. And I believe I have been visited
this night. Oh, let me recite it, pray. It begins, “In fairest lands, the fairest do display—”’

It was as far as he got, further than he expected and he was thankful for the interruption. Extemporizing was not his strength.

‘Ode!’ His father’s already florid face had grown purple with the effort of expelling the monosyllable. However it was the
sole impediment to the flow that followed. Sir James’s language had been bred in the country and expanded in the barracks.
It included oaths in all the languages he spoke, for he had served in three other countries’ armies as well as his own. His
periwig slipping further and further back over his greying stubble, his words drew him from his seat the better to level his
volleys at Jack. He seemed as wide as the table end, his powder-blue coat spreading around him like the tail feathers of an
enraged peacock.

Helpless before the storm, Jack looked to his mother for succour. The anger was still there in her colouring yet had been
displaced by something else in the eyes, something that disturbed Jack even more. He could withstand the fusillades from Sir
James, so long as they were confined to words and not
actions – he may have grown taller than his father in the last year, but he had not one half his strength – but what he found
harder to take was what he saw in his mother’s eyes. Disappointment. He had hurt her, she whom he loved more than any in the
world.

So he stood silent, head bowed. And when the storm abated while Sir James took a deep drink of punch and drew breath to continue
the assault, he spoke.

‘I am so sorry, Father. And Mama, a thousand apologies for this rudeness. It was only my regard for you that delayed me, determined
to get my poem right. If I may be permitted to continue with it to show that my lateness has not been all waste?’

He calculated on his father’s wrath – and hunger. Sir James was not a man who brooked delay once sat at supper, and his idea
of poetry was his hunter clearing a hedge. At a pinch, Jack could produce a recently conned love poem from Ovid – a schoolfellow
had bought some of the more scurrilous verse from a ‘print’ shop in St Giles. He thought he could adapt it and they might
not know it. Not always certain with his mother who was fiercely well read. But he had calculated his father’s reaction perfectly.

‘Damn your poem, sir!’ he shouted.

‘Sit, Jack,’ his mother softly said. ‘We can discuss poetry later, methinks, when the soup does not grow cold.’

There was always something in her voice, as if all the words she spoke were taken straight from a ballad. The music came from
the Irish lilt that yet lingered, the delivery on a breath that had carried whispers to the furthest gallery in the largest
theatre in the realm. Sir James had confessed one night, when mellowed by a fourth bumper of claret, that it was the voice
that first entranced him. ‘Could lure a fleet to the rocks and the sailors would drown content,’ he’d declared.

It contented now. With a subsiding growl, he sank back into his seat and reached for his spoon. Jack, under cover of the renewed
slurping, took his seat, set, he noticed thankfully, closer to the female end of the table.

Silence accompanied the turtle and punch. A few words of a strained and general nature were exchanged over the soused eels
and Rhenish. His mother spoke of the latest play she’d penned, a one-act farce containing a veiled attack on the government
she hoped would slip by the Chamberlain, while they cleaned the bones from the Pigeons Fricando and sipped at a Calcevella.
Jack merely picked at the Attlets of Fat Liver – he was not overfond of oysters – but the accompanying Porter was as good
as at the Five Chimneys and led Jack, by association, to describe, in some detail, the cricketing victory and his part in
it, remembering to say that the game was played the day before to maintain his ‘ode’ alibi. This finally drew Sir James out
of his grouch, for he had been a Westminster too and a keen batsman, before a never-explained incident had led to him leaving
school for the army at the age of fourteen. By the time the Veal in a Sharp Sauce had been washed down with an excellent Claret
and even more so after the Duke of Cumberland’s pudding had been flamed, consumed and enlivened with a Lunel, the conversation
had become general and boisterous. His mother’s hair had slipped down in places and she leant with her elbows on the table;
Sir James had thrown off his coat and three times Nance had had to put it on the chair back as she brought the next dish in.
At that third time, she was encouraged to sit and take a glass of port as reward for the splendour of her feast. Jack observed
again how there were few airs around the Absolute table. His father had spent more than half his life in barracks before his
valour on the field at Dettingen had earned him a battlefield knighthood from King George and the death of his brother Duncan
had given him the baronetcy. Whilst Jane had risen from the streets of Dublin on the strengths of beauty, the singing voice
of a goddess and an instinct that told her the traditional way of acting – the rolling, roaring declamation of the old Stagers
– was a thing of the past. A talent that James Quinn had recognized when he brought her from Dublin to Drury Lane.