Flashman (The Flashman Papers, #1)

by George MacDonald Fraser

other words, while other nabob families tried to make themselves pass for quality, ours didn’t, because we couldn’t.

Both of us knew it wouldn’t be cards we would be playing. Sure enough, when I did come back, she was sitting prettying herself before her glass, wearing a bedgown that would have made me a small handkerchief.

“However, a fine leg in pantaloons and a penchant for folly seem to be all that is required today,” he went on. “And you can ride, as I collect?” “Anything on legs, uncle,” says I.

Four heads inclined in reply, and one nodded—this was Mistress Morrison, a tall, beaknosed female in whom one could detect all the fading beauty of a vulture.

I took Elspeth home first. I had written to my father while we were on honeymoon, and had had a letter back saying: “Who is the unfortunate chit, for God’s sake? Does she know what she has got?” So all was well enough in its way on that front.

Travelling, I think, is the greatest bore in life, so I’ll not weary you with an account of the journey from Calcutta to Kabul. It was long and hot and damnably dull; if Basset and I had not taken Muhammed Iqbal’s advice and shed our uniforms for native dress, I doubt whether we would have survived. In desert, on scrubby plain, through rocky hills, in the forests, in the little mud villages and camps and towns—the heat was horrible and ceaseless; your skin scorched, your eyes burned, and you felt that your body was turning into a dry bag of bones. But in the loose robes and pyjamy trousers one felt cooler—that is, one fried without burning quite black.

This I will say for the Afghan—he is a treacherous, evil brute when he wants to be, but while he is your friend he is a first-rate fellow. The point is, you must judge to a second when he is going to cease to be friendly. There is seldom any warning.

in short, for the true talent for catastrophe—Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day. Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation.

I have observed, in the course of a dishonest life, that when a rogue is outlining a treacherous plan, he works harder to convince himself than to move his hearers. Akbar wanted to cook his Afghan enemies’ goose, that was all, and perfectly understandable, but he wanted to look like a gentleman still—to himself.

I had not had a woman for an age, and I was getting peckish. To make it worse, in that Christmas week a messenger had come through from India with mails; among them was a letter from Elspeth. I recognised the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, “To my most beloved Hector,” and I thought, by God, she’s cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake.

It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark.

Closing my eyes, I could imagine her soft, white body, and Fetnab’s, and Josette’s, and what with dreaming to this tune I rapidly reached the point where even Lady Sale would have had to cut and run for it if she had happened to come within reach.

Even now, after a lifetime of consideration, I am at a loss for words to describe the superhuman stupidity, the truly monumental incompetence, and the bland blindness to reason of Elphy Bey and his advisers. If you had taken the greatest military geniuses of the ages, placed them in command of our army, and asked them to ruin it utterly as speedily as possible, they could not—I mean it seriously—have done it as surely and swiftly as he did. And he believed he was doing his duty. The meanest sweeper in our train would have been a fitter commander.

It was nip and tuck like a steeplechase, with the shots crashing and echoing and thousands of voices yelling; only once did I check for an instant, when I saw young Lieutenant Sturt shot out of his saddle; he rolled into a drift and lay there screaming, but it would have done no good to stop. No good to Flashy, anyway, and that was what mattered.

Not that I minded her or my father much. I was all over Elspeth, revelling in the dreamy way she listened to my talk—I had forgotten what a ninny she was, but it had its compensations. She sat wide-eyed at my adventures, and I don’t suppose anyone else got a word in edgeways all through the meal.

30