Hostile Shores

Lewrie’s rooms were second storey, in the back and away from the continual rumble and skreak of waggon and carriage traffic. There was a coal fire laid in the hearth and crackling nicely, with a brass back-plate hot and radiating both warmth and light into the dank coolness of an un-used room. Lewrie sat down on a short settee near the fireplace and tugged his muddy boots off, which Pettus took away for cleaning and re-blacking for the morrow. He handed Lewrie a pair of buckled shoes which did not quite go with snug white undress trousers, but were presentable enough for the clientele of the Madeira Club, and for a fellow who had no plans to be about the town that evening.

“All is ready for the morrow, sir,” Pettus said after brushing the ever-present cat fur from Lewrie’s best-dress gilt-laced coat and hat. The coat was hung on a dresser stand, the hat resting atop the round-topped upper spindle, the sash of the Order of The Bath draped round the spindle, and a fresh silk shirt, pressed waist-coat, and new pair of breeches and stockings arrayed on the shelves below the coat.

“Dress sword?” Lewrie asked, leaning back with his eyes half-closed. Nigh twelve hours in a swaying, jerking, and rocking coach had wrung him out like a dish-clout.

“Oh Lord,” Pettus gasped. “I believe I left it atop your desk, sir, and meant to include it, but … my pardons, sir!”

“So long as we know it’s safe,” Lewrie wearily allowed, waving a hand. “My ev’ryday hanger’ll do. So long as you’re sure ye left it on the desk.”

“Absolutely, sir,” Pettus assured him. “I can see it in my mind’s eye, and once we were in the coach, I thought I had an odd feeling that I was remiss, but … it won’t happen again, sir!”

“As far as I can recall, Pettus, this is the first time ever you’ve been remiss, and that’s a good record,” Lewrie excused. “Don’t take yourself t’task over it. You remembered t’pack towels, and a fine basket o’ victuals, after all.”

“Thank you, sir, and I won’t let you down again, sir. Now, I’ve your ‘house-wife’ laid out on the wash-hand stand, your razor stropped and ready for the morning. Will there be anything else before supper, sir? A pot of tea from belowstairs, or—?”

“No, I think that’ll do ’til morning, Pettus,” Lewrie said as he hauled out his pocket watch from a waist-coat pocket and peered at it. “Last time I lodged here, the kitchen staff arose round half-past five, so have them stir you, too. I think I’ll trust to the staff of the club for the rest of the ev’nin’, and you can get settled in with them and enjoy a good supper and some time off.”

“Very good, sir, and good night to you,” Pettus said, bowing a humble and abashed way out the door.

Most-like, he’ll be kickin’ himself in the arse the next week, entire, and lookin’ at me as cutty-eyed as a whipped hound, Lewrie wryly told himself as he got to his feet. He rinsed his mouth with some water from the wash-hand stand pitcher, brushed his hair into proper order, and went down to the Common Room for some of that brandy.

Lewrie found around two-dozen of the other members of the club gathered by the windows of the Common Room that overlooked the street, whooping and laughing and laying wagers.

“Oh, look, good old Lewrie’s back among us!” Mr. Pilkington, a fellow from the ’Change, and middling in stocks, cried. “Huzzah for the Navy! How d’ye keep, old fellow, and wherever have ye been?”

“Gentlemen,” Lewrie said back with a grin, making a half-bow from his waist. “The West Indies, the Bahamas, Spanish Florida, and playin’ diplomat with the Americans.”

“And none of them scalped you, hah?” Mr. Ludlow, who was big in the leather goods trade, hoorawed. “Come see this, Lewrie. There is a coachee out here, cup-shot.”

“Drunk as Davy’s Sow, I swear!” Pilkington hooted.

“He’s been trying to get back up to his seat, but he’s making a rum go of it,” another crowed in amusement. “There should be a law for people in charge of coaches and waggons being that drunk.”

“All I bought him was ale, beer, and porter,” Lewrie said, crowding to the rain-smeared windows for a better look. “He coached me up from Portsmouth, and he seemed sober enough.”

“Wager you all he’s a bottle of rum stashed up there in the box,” a younger member cried. “Been nipping on it on the sly, all the way.”

“Wager it’s more-like ‘Blue-Ruin’,” one of his fellow clubmen of the sporting sort dis-agreed. “Two shillings on gin, not rum.”

“It’ll be rum, and make it five shillings!” the first exclaimed with a hearty laugh. “What say you, Captain Lewrie?”

“I say someone’ll have t’go out there in the rain to see what he has in the box, if anything,” Lewrie rejoined. “Oh, Christ!”

The soused coachman managed to put a booted foot into the spokes of the kerbside front wheel and levered himself up to his seat with the wooden brake lever, but the patient team of horses shifted forward a bit and the coachman made a desperate lunge, arse over tit, almost making it to the driver’s bench before falling backwards in a hand-scrabbling heap on the sidewalk. He wore a blissful smile, though, for he now had a blue glass bottle in one hand, at which he sipped deep.

“It’s gin! It’s gin! That’s five shillings you owe me!” the sporting young gentleman cried.

The coachman took off his old-style tricorne hat and swiped at his hair, finally taking note that it was raining, shook water from his hat, and plunked it back on. He leaned an elbow on the coach’s metal folding steps, got a clever look on his phyz, and began to crawl to them.

“A glass with you, Captain Lewrie,” one of the older members offered, “for you’ve provided us a rare entertainment this evening! You missed the part where he was singing to his horses and kissing them on the lips!”

“Lord, where’s he going now?” Pilkington cried.

The coachman dragged himself up the folding steps, clawed for the door handle, and finally managed to swing it open. Into the coach he went on his hands and knees, amazingly careful not to spill a drop from his gin bottle. The door was pulled closed, and he dropped out of sight for a moment, sprawled on the seats most-like. One moment later, though, up he sat to lower the window glass. He leaned out the door and began to pound on it, bellowing for some phantom coachee to whip up and get a move on, which action raised another gale of laughter in the club’s Common Room. They could hear him through the room’s windows, imitating the starting horn blown by the big diligence coaches when they rattled out from a posting i

The horse team took his thumping, shouting, and the tra-tarah as their cue to breast into their harnesses and begin to shamble forward at a slow walk, with no one tending the reins. The last they saw of the coach, and the drunken coachee, it was meandering East down Wigmore Street towards the cross-traffic of Mandeville Place!

“Gentlemen,” the night manager had to call out several times before he drew the members’ attention. “Supper is now served!”

Lewrie finished his Spanish brandy, which he had found not too raw after all, and joined the others as they all trooped into the dining room in high spirits, with some of the younger members still willing to wager that the coachman would get his neck broken, after all, if his coach tangled with another in the rain, or whether the coach would make it all the way to Marylebone Lane before the smash-up.

First came fine-shredded chicken in broth soup, followed by individual veal and ham pies, then fillets of grilled turbot accompanied by sweet stewed carrots and peas. The meal was topped off by a monstrous beef roast served with asparagus spears and hollowed-out potatoes with melted cheese and shredded bacon. The white wines with the soup and the turbot were excellent, as usual, as were the Bordeaux with the pies, and the cabernet with the roast beef, and the barge after barge of piping-hot and slightly toasted rolls were individual marvels with a liberal smear of fresh butter. Dessert was a strawberry jam roly-poly sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Once the tablecloth was whisked away and the remains removed, out came the nuts, cheese, and sweet bisquits, and the club’s signature, a rich and fine aged Madeira port, and the wine steward’s promise that several casks of the rare “rainwater” port had been discovered at Oporto and were even then sitting in storage for the up-coming holidays.