The Blooding of Jack Absolute (8 page)

This was when he loved his parents best, away from the public gaze, unafraid of being themselves. Yet even as he watched them
laugh and flirt – they had a highly embarrassing way of appearing still to deeply desire each other – he was aware that the
fun was transitory. It could not last. There would be a return to business, there always was since he boarded at school and
saw his parents but rarely. Recently they had never failed to discuss the subject he most dreaded – his future.

It was the brandy that did for him, as brandy usually did. It followed the final course, sorbets conjured from the ice house
beneath the cellar. It was a luxury, a treat for a birthday, for the Indies lemons, together with the smuggled French brandy,
may have cost as much as the rest of the English-supplied meal altogether. Both made Sir James think about money. And money
made him think about Jack’s future.

‘So, boy,’ he said, beginning his campaign as he licked the last of the lemon ice from the bowl and reached for his bumper,
‘have you thought more on our last discussion?’

‘Discussion’ was an odd word for the diatribe loudly delivered a month before to the effect that Jack’s allowance and the
fees at Westminster were bleeding the Absolute coffers near dry and that, now he’d turned sixteen, he should be out and earning
his own living in the world.

‘And what discussion was that, James?’ His mother had placed her own glass down as her husband’s rose. She spoke mildly, her
elbows coming off the table to settle at her side. Her husband recognized the war-like stance.

‘The boy expressed an interest in the army, is all,’ he muttered.

It was a palpable untruth as all there knew. Jack cleared his throat to begin his defence. But his mother was quicker. ‘The
army? That is the first I have heard of it.’ Another lie but she didn’t leave a pause. ‘Yet I thought all this was settled,
James, dearest? We agreed, didn’t we? He is to make use of the brains that God has given him.’

She was using her voice to manage him, and a memory that was selective at best, but brandy always rendered him unmanageable.
‘Brains
my arse!’ he said, his voice rising. ‘Too many brains never did a man any good. Look at me. Never had a use for ’em in my
life!’

‘You are being disingenuous, sir,’ she replied.

Before she could continue, Sir James guffawed, ‘I’ll tell you what use brains are, shall I? For I’ve seen enough of them spilled
on the battlefields of the world to know whereof I speak!’

He glared at them triumphantly. Jack and his mother exchanged a look of mutual incomprehension. After a long pause, Jane ventured,
‘Your … point, my love?’

‘My point? Ah yes, my point.’ He leaned forward, a finger thrust at his son. ‘My point is easily made.’ He stabbed with his
digit on all the main words.
‘Brains
are of little
use
when you are
wiping
them off your
sleeve.
Eh?
Eh?’

Since this was directed straight at him, Jack could not just ignore it. ‘I am still not quite clear, sir, what—’

His father breathed deep, drew himself up. ‘Ye Gods! Am I speaking Hindi? It’s obvious, isn’t it! Life’s a fragile thing,
gone in a moment. Certainly its sudden absence takes many by surprise. So you seize the opportunities life presents to live
before you die. There is no better place to do that than in the army. Now,’ he leaned back, chin raised and pointing at them
like a gun barrel, ‘I have been speaking to an old colleague who is raising a regiment for Canada. It will cost me, of course,
but to get my only son on the ladder …’ he smiled, waved a hand, ‘… least I can do.’

‘I am still not quite clear, husband.’ Jane’s voice was frighteningly calm. ‘Let me see if I have it. In order to utilize
our son’s brains, you would send them where there is the best chance … of a savage stoving them in?’

Sir James flinched but did not withdraw.
‘Stove
my arse! Our country fights a war against our oldest foe, madam. The Absolutes have always fought, I and my father before
me, in a
line back to … for ever. My father died at eighty and I do not doubt that I will live just as long to plague you both. We
are thus talking, madam, of duty.’

‘Well, I have no illustrious ancestors to conjure from my past, to be sure,’ said his wife, her voice returning to Dublin.
‘I have only myself and what I have done with my life. Those experiences have taught me that one’s highest duty is to oneself.
A man need no longer lurk in the barbarous shadows with the herd. Man has taken his rightful place, solitary in the sunlight.’

‘And woman too, Mama,’ Jack added, knowing his mother’s inclinations.

‘Of course. I was speaking generically.’

‘Generica … lize
my arse!’ James bellowed, turning puce with the effort of adding the unknown word to his favourite curse. ‘You and your …
philosophies,
madam. They’ve overruled your reason and they are castrating our son. What duty would you have him perform, eh? That of an
Unitarian minister dispensing tea and witticisms in the country? A coffee-house dandy in the town?’

‘I would have him be true to the gifts that God has given him. There are better ways to serve your country than having your
brains extruded for it. Nay! Jack, as he and I have discussed, will compete for the Election to Trinity College, Cambridge.’

Sir James was having a little difficulty breathing. He pulled at his stock. ‘Cambridge. And pray, madam, what will he do there?’

‘Study the Classics, of course, Latin and—’

‘Latin? Latin? He needs one word only of that. One word, along with its declination.’ Sir James now rose and began thumping
the table like a war drum. ‘“Bellum, Bellum, Bellum, Belli, Bello, Bello. War! O war! A war! Of a war! To a war! By, with
or from a war!”’ He beamed, triumphant. ‘That, madam, will suffice for his Latin while the only other language he needs is
French. To read the great military texts in that
tongue. To converse with his prisoners.’ He turned to Jack. ‘You are still religious in your attendance at your French classes,
are you not, boy?’

‘Oh yes, Father.’ Since they did not bother with such fripperies as living languages at Westminster, they had to be sought
outside. Sir James had arranged for Jack to attend a French jeweller in Soho, as well as fencing and riding lessons, to complete
a more martial education. These latter he undertook enthusiastically enough, but French was his passion, his attendance ‘religious’
for reasons his father must not know, for they had little to do with the Frenchman and all to do with his daughter. As he
thought of the divine Clothilde, his heart gave a leap. But his mother’s next words brought it swiftly to earth again.

Lady Jane had used her husband’s draining of a glass to interpose. ‘What he studies is immaterial. It is whom he studies with,
do you not see? At Trinity, he will mingle with the future great of our land. He will then use these connections to get elected
to the House, to join like-minded radicals in Parliament, to actually bring the philosophies you deride to our benighted land.’
Jack sighed. His mother came from a family of rebels and espoused the rebel cause in all things, and she had aligned herself
with a group forming around a ranter named John Wilkes to the continual disgust of her husband, a Tory of the old school.
Her writings and satires supported that cause.

Sir James, meantime, reacted to more than the politics. ‘The House?’ he began to stutter in his horror. ‘Do … do … do you
have any idea, woman, how much that would
cost?’
he finished in a roar.

The heat of this old battle was building between them, both now standing at their chairs and Jack may as well not be there;
indeed, he could probably slide from the room now and neither would notice. But victory to either side might lead to consequences
that he would only have to deal with later. For he had a very clear idea of what he wanted in life. And it had nothing to
do with either war or politics.

‘Actually, parents both, I know myself the course I would pursue.’

They turned. Under their fierce attention Jack wilted slightly. But this was his life they were deciding upon, after all;
so taking a breath he stated his desire: ‘I wish to be a poet.’

The silence that greeted this statement was profound, intense and twice as terrifying as the tumult.

‘Um … with perhaps, some … uh, dramatic works thrown in?’

This last was aimed at his mother. Still they stared, held in their previous attitudes of combat. The words had lodged in
his father’s throat as effectively as a pigeon bone. So it was his mother who spoke first, subsiding into her chair. ‘Jack,
dearest,’ she said, not unkindly, ‘as I am sure you have observed in my life and from my associates, no one makes a living
from the playhouse.’

Aware of the storm about to burst upon him from the other end of the table, Jack rushed to secure an ally. ‘But this is why
I shall write poetry, too. And articles for the journals. I had that small piece in the
Gentleman’s Magazine
last month, remember?’ It had been more in the nature of a notice but it was Jack’s first words in print and he’d been thrilled.
‘And like you, Mama, I wish to use my pen to persuade, to agitate, to subvert.’

During her career on the stage, Jane had been flattered by the very brightest in the land, from very different motives. She
had not succumbed then and would not now. ‘Jack,’ she said gently, ‘you are too young. You have nothing to write about.’

This outrageous idea now halted Jack’s next words.
Nothing to write about?
Were not his journals full of his life, with characters he encountered, scrupulously observed? Did he not have a sheaf of
poems on every subject whose style had been compared favourably by an usher at school with Thomas Gray’s? Was he not halfway
through his first play:
Iphigena or Lost Love Lamented?
Well, he’d written the first scene and that
a cracker. His mother was talking nonsense. It was not that he had nothing to write about. It was that he had too much!

Of the two male Absolutes, his father recovered his voice first. As so often was the case, he was three sentences behind the
conversation.

‘Poet … poxed … poltroon!’ he roared. ‘D’ye think for a moment that I am going to pay you an allowance so you can sit in a
room and … versify!’

‘So long as I have pen and paper, what need is there for money?’ Jack replied, loftily, ‘I may live on air.’

It was odd how arguments took these turns. It must have been the liquor – his parents’ standing order to water down each glass
having been ignored since the age of fourteen – but it was strange how often it made his tongue say the thing most likely
to provoke his already overtaxed father.

It did. ‘You puppy!’ Sir James was up now, his chair smashing to the floor behind him. ‘By God, you sneer at me, sir, at the
money I have spent educating you, turning you from the Cornish peasant I found into this … simulacrum of a gentleman. And
here I have been offering to spend yet more to get you a commission and you … you …’ He was swaying alarmingly and staggered
back, only to lurch forward and around the table towards Jack, who hastily leapt up and moved away behind his mother. ‘Damn
me if I don’t disown you, lodge three and fivepence with the trustees and make you live on the interest, take you from your
damn, Whiggish school and get you an ensignship … in the Artillery! I’ll be buggered if I don’t disinherit you and leave my
all to Craster!’

This invective had accompanied three journeys around the table, Jack preceding him on every one. At the beginning of the fourth,
however, his father’s toe caught on the rucked-up rug; he pitched forward and, missing the table, crashed onto the floor.

‘Husband,’ cried Jane, moving forward.

‘Father!’ Jack bent down.

‘Sheep shit,’ declared Sir James. From his prone position by Jack’s feet, he sniffed again before his son could step away.

He looked down. Indeed, his shoes were stained a vivid and reddy brown.

‘Ah,’ said Jack.

Sir James rose to his knees. ‘Ode in the bedroom? When the Muse descends one must listen? Well, you can kiss my arse, ’cos
you’ve just snuck in through Taylor’s garden.’

He was up now and steadier than he’d been and Jack knew what that steadiness foretold. Lying was the ultimate vice and there
would be only one victor on this battlefield. As Sir James took another step forward, Jack made a bold brush of it … and fled.

Jack awoke from a dream of love. Though the images vanished with the opening of his eyes, their lingering effect was clear
before him. He’d thrown off the heavier coverlets in the night and only a sheet lay atop him, in the nature of a tent held
up by a single pole.

Jack reached down and grasped the structure in both his hands. To be alone in his bedroom at Absolute House and not in the
dormitory at Porten’s where he boarded, with the dozen beds shaking each morning under their occupants’ exertions, this was
a rare joy and he immediately thought of taking advantage of it. Hidden in his armoire were some quite extraordinary prints
that Sommers, a schoolfellow who had developed a talent for the purchase and purveying of such choice items, had supplied.
It would be a matter of moments to fetch them, study and learn, lie back …

Then, an image from his dream did come back to him and it halted his motion out of the bed. A face appeared in his mind’s
eye, sweet, pure, unblemished, framed with the palest of fair hair formed in corkscrew curls. Clothilde! He was to see her
today. And he could not, would not sully his thoughts of her with any actions now.

And yet … There was another whom he also planned on visiting this day, one whose face – and body – had also
haunted his sleep and helped cause his by now quite painful physical display. She would be more than delighted if he used
her in such a way. So long as he recounted every detail of it. Fanny liked details.

He groaned, then levered himself out of the bed. No. He knew a piss would help ease the strain and indeed, all the milk he’d
drunk in Nance’s scullery the night before – a fine way to prevent the morning headaches, he’d always found – was taxing him
now. He’d hidden there from his raging father until he’d given up the hunt and retired. Pulling the chamber pot from its drawer,
he set to. There was relief in one sense, little in the other but, having decided, he would hold firm … or rather, not.