The Reckoning (2 page)

Lucy took her place at the table and Theakston sat
opposite her. 'Well, I must say, it isn't a bit the way I expected
Peace to be,' she remarked as Hicks filled her cup. She
glanced at the
Times,
lying folded beside her husband's plate,
and the
Chronicle
beside her own. 'Nothing but gloomy news,
until one hardly likes to open the papers. And everyone
complaining about being hard-up. If this is what we get for
winning the war, I wonder why we bothered to fight the
French at all.'

‘
Habit,' suggested her husband. He smiled at her. 'I
suppose after twenty-three years, one does sort of miss it.'
Lucy grinned. 'My soldier hero!’

Last year, in glorious June sunshine, Lord Wellington had
led his rag-bag Allied army to victory at Waterloo, and the
Corsican Tyrant had been defeated at last. Theakston had
been there — Colonel Lord Theakston, gallantly leading his
regiment of light cavalry to the charge, and making Lucy
realise precisely how much she'd miss him if he were killed.

Stripped of his regal titles, 'General Bonaparte' was now a prisoner on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,
from which, it was hoped, he would find it impossible to
escape again. But after the euphoria of the victory, peace had
brought no plenty to the victors. Already 1816 was a year of bankruptcies, of unemployment, of soaring prices.

‘
What did you think Peace would be like?' Theakston
asked, watching the dishes being placed in their meticulous
order. Buttered eggs
here,
cold beef
there,
the truckle of
Cheddar
just so,
the mutton ham from Devon adjusted
exactly thus.
Hicks considered the arrangement, and tweaked
a chafing-dish round three degrees to the south-west. A butler
had his pride, after all.

‘
I don't know,' said Lucy, frowning. 'That everything
would be jolly, I suppose.' She peered into a dish. 'What's
this, Hicks?'

‘
Lobster cutlets, my lady. Jacques was of the opinion the
lobsters would not hold until tomorrow. The damp weather,
my lady.'

‘
Oh,' said Lucy. She helped herself largely to sausages,
added a handsome wedge of cheese, and after a moment's
thought, some pickles. 'All these breakdowns, for instance,'
she reverted to the conversation. 'I don't understand why
suddenly nobody's got any money.'

‘
Wars are expensive things to run,' Theakston said, carving
mutton ham to go with his eggs — each fragrant slice so thin
he could have read the
Times
through it, if he'd been wanton
enough to try.

‘
Exactly. So now we don't have one to run, we ought to be
better off, oughtn't we?' Lucy said.

Theakston shook his head, having very little understanding
of the matter himself, too little to be able to enlighten her. 'I
don't know. Better ask John Anstey,' he suggested. 'He
understands these financial mysteries. Probably see him at
the sale today.'

‘Oh, did he say he was going?'

‘He's after George's Mantons.’

Lucy's face sharpened with distress as she remembered the
last time she had seen one of those guns, tucked under George
‘Beau' Brummell's arm as he strolled, immaculately attired,
in the wake of the Duke of York at the Christmas shoot at
Oatlands. Now they were just another item on another sale
list: 'three capital double-barrelled Fowling Pieces by
Manton', part of the 'genuine property of a Man of Fashion,
gone to the Continent'.

‘
I still can't believe it,' she said, putting down her knife.
‘George, of all people! It's like — it's like the end of the world.’

Theakston sympathised with her. It was the end of the
world in a sense — the world of their youth, which had seemed
to them unchanging and unchangeable. He and Brummell
had been at school together at Eton, and had joined the same
regiment — the 10th Dragoons, the Prince of Wales's Own. As
dashing young subalterns of nineteen they had met Lucy at a
dinner party at Chelmsford House, when she was the new bride
of the Earl of Aylesbury, and out to set the Town by the ears.

The three of them had been friends ever since, for twenty
years dominating, and to an extent, shaping London Society
— Brummell most of all, of course. And now the Beau — the ultimate arbiter of fashion, the original Dandy, the founder of
the Bow Window Set, and Perpetual President of Watier's
Club, the 'Great Go' itself — had cut and run. Last Thursday
he had been obliged to flee the country to escape his creditors.
It was a devastating blow to them all, and especially to Theakston, who had no dearer friend except Lucy. Things would never be the same again: with Brummell had departed a large piece of their lives.

Theakston sought to distract her a little. 'Meant to say to
you — I think we ought to go to the sale in the carriage.’

Lucy was a Morland of Morland Place by birth, and
therefore not only a bruising rider but a tireless walker. She stared at her husband. 'Really, Danby! Chapel Street's only a
step away. I'm not going to have the horses put-to for that short distance. Parslow would think I'd gone mad. A little
rain won't hurt us, but it would mean hours of grooming and tack-cleaning for him.'

‘I've spoken to him already. He entirely approves. It isn't the rain, my love,' he hurried on as Lucy's brows drew down alarmingly, 'it's the crowds. Bound to be unpleasant. You've no idea. I went to Codrington's sale last month, remember. You don't want to have to push through that sort of mêlée.’

Lucy sighed, picked up her knife, and returned her atten
tion to the sausages. 'Yes, poor Codrington! I'd forgotten.
And there was Henry Mildmay last year. It seems as though we're to lose all our friends.’

Round-faced, sweet-voiced Mildmay had fled the country
after £15,000 damages were awarded against him by the
courts for 'Criminal Conversation' with Lord Rosebery's wife.
He had no means of paying such a sum, and he and Harriet Rosebery, who were deeply in love, had run to Stuttgart to
avoid Sir Henry's being arrested. They would never be able to
return to England.

‘It makes you wonder who'll be next,' Lucy said. 'I wish there was something we could have done to save George.'

‘
Nothing for it. Gone altogether too far,' Theakston said. He forbore to remind her that lately Brummell had worn out
the affection of all but his closest friends by borrowing money
he had no hope of repaying. Only three weeks ago Lucy had
made a sharp comment when Theakston had admitted
parting with yet another two hundred pounds, to cover the Beau's losses one evening at Gordon's, a disreputable gambling-hell in Jermyn Street.

Meyler, one of Brummell's creditors, had finally
denounced him publicly in White's as a swindler, and with the
prospect of having all his many debts called in at once, the Beau had been forced to flee abroad to avoid arrest.

Brummell had confided only in Theakston and Tom
Raikes, who had helped him with his plan of escape. He had slipped away from a performance of the opera and hurried to
an appointed spot where Raikes was waiting with a hired
chaise. In this they had driven out to Eltham Common, where
Theakston had earlier taken Brummell's own carriage,
packed with a few of his most precious possessions.

It was a strange place for three middle-aged, town-bred
Dandies to find themselves, an unpromising site for an
emotional farewell. In rain and darkness, with the soaked
grass of the common under their thin-soled, city boots, and nothing of comfort anywhere but the small familiar sounds of the horses, they clasped hands briefly.

‘Good luck, old fellow,' Raikes said gruffly. 'It's a damned shame.'

‘Tom. Danby. My dear friends. Thank you for everything! Can never repay you —'

‘God bless you, George,' Theakston said unsteadily. He
thrust his purse into Brummell's departing grip. Tor the
journey. Hush! Better hurry.’

A moment later Brummell was gone. The carriage lights shewed briefly, swaying through the murk, and then the rain
came on more heavily and blotted out sight and sound. Raikes
and Theakston travelled back to London in the hired chaise and a gloomy silence.

After that there remained only the outcry and scandal, the speculation and condemnation, and finally the announcement on the back page of the
Times
that by order of the Sheriff of
Middlesex, Mr Christie would hold an auction on Wednesday
the 22nd of May at 13 Chapel Street of the entire contents of
the premises. The proceeds would be distrained for Brum
mell's creditors.

That was where they were bound today – a sort of last rite
for their departed friend. Lucy looked past her husband's
shoulder at the dreary swathes of rain blowing past the
window. 'I hate this Peace,' she said with passionate illogic.

He sought to comfort her. 'It's the start of a new era,' he
said. 'A new world, I suppose. It'll take some getting used to.'

‘
I don't want a new world,' said Lucy, reaching for the
lobster cutlets. 'I want the old one back.’

*

Despite Danby's warning, the scene in Chapel Street still took Lucy by surprise, and she looked a little pale as their carriage
drew up outside number thirteen just after ten o'clock. It
wasn't so much the size as the style of the crowd which
brought home to her forcibly that their friend had really
gone, and gone for ever. The neat little house had its windows
stuck all over with sale bills advertising the more important
items of furniture; and the once-white steps were muddy
from the passage of the kind of boots which never would have
been tolerated there a week ago.

‘
Oh, Danby, it's awful!' she said as the footman came
round to open the carriage door. 'All those horrible people
staring – and the upstairs windows left open! George would
never have allowed that, on a day like this. He hated fresh
air.'

‘
You don't have to come in,' Danby said. 'Let Parslow take
you straight home again.’