Company Of Spears

The Somerviles kept both an English and an Indian cook. This evening it was the same Bengali whose sweet and spicy dishes had delighted Hervey many an evening in Calcutta, when at times he had been almost in residence with the Third in Council and his lady at Fort William. In Bloomsbury, as there, the Somerviles followed the Indian practice of beginning with the sweetest dishes, so that they sat down to a table spread with pomegranates, grapes and jujubes, oranges peeled and dusted with ginger, finger-lengths of sugar cane, and slices of mango. When Hervey had attended his first Indian feast, in the princely state of Chintal, he had sat next to the rajah, who had half mocked the English way of proceeding through many dishes to a final sweet course, as though, he had said, ‘you must earn sweetness by progression through much sourness – as in life itself.’ The rajah had said that in India they had no such coyness in their pleasures: ‘We have earned title to indulgence in this incarnation through preparation in earlier ones.’ That evening in Chintal, at his right hand, had sat the rajah’s daughter, the raj kumari, a beauty whose like he had never before seen, or imagined; and later by some power that he thought a kind of madness induced by the very air itself of those strange lands, he had all but defiled his adoration of Henrietta in the raj kumari’s entitlement to indulgence. Only some years later, when he returned to India, a widower, a bittering man, did he see the madness for what it was – and embrace it warmly. But all that must end, he had decided. Soon he would make regular the business of his manly needs.

‘Well, my dear,’ said Emma to her husband, ‘do you not think it becoming that our guest may soon be lieutenant-colonel?’ She had told him the news at once.

‘I do indeed,’ replied Somervile, almost boisterous, as a khitmagar began refilling glasses.

Hervey nodded in acknowledgement. ‘But not forgetting there’s many a slip…’

‘No, of course. But, you know, Hervey, I had thoroughly expected the promotion. Indeed, I had half arranged it.’

Hervey’s face was screwed into a perfect picture of incomprehension. ‘Somervile, I would not put anything beyond your reach, except that in the case of regimental command I rather thought the question lay between the buyer, the colonel and the Horse Guards.’

Somervile took care to check his enthusiasm just enough to swallow several jujubes, and then thought better of his game. He had a notion that at this moment the table, what with Hervey positively glowing at the prospect of command, was not the best place to reveal his hand. He had a better idea: he would tempt him with a display of the very artefacts of the life that Hervey knew best. But that, perforce, was a hand to play after dinner. Meanwhile conviviality would serve – as well as being the most natural of things in the company of his old, and supremely trusted, friend.

‘How was your funeral? A fitting one for so eminently decent a fellow?’

Hervey found his glass being filled for a third time. He glanced at Emma, who gave no sign of noticing. ‘Fitting … yes, very. The Wiltshire Yeomanry turned out smartly, Lord Bath was there of course, and General Tarleton came too.’

‘Tarleton? ‘Pon my word: a singular honour to an old trumpeter.’

‘Just so. It was most affecting.’

‘General Tarleton of the American war?’ asked Emma.

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘No, except from his portrait. There is a print of it somewhere in the house. A very handsome one. You’ve seen it?’

‘I have seen the image, yes,’ said Hervey.

She smiled, indulgently. ‘You yourself will be commissioning a portrait soon, no doubt. Somervile is.’

Hervey looked suitably impressed. ‘Is this true, Somervile? Of course it must be if Emma says so.’

‘Since I have a son and heir I feel it incumbent upon me.’

‘You have good reason too, Matthew,’ added Emma, detecting that her guest possibly considered the undertaking premature.

Hervey smiled but ignored the suggestion. ‘Who shall paint you?’ he asked, in a tone implying he was more sympathetic than Emma had supposed.

Somervile took a long, cogitative drink of his hock. ‘Lawrence, I thought, though he’s probably past his best; or Beechey, perhaps.’

Hervey’s eyebrows revealed considerable surprise. ‘I had not imagined … Forgive me. I supposed the likes of Lawrence and Beechey would have years of commissions awaiting them.’

‘Mm,’ said Somervile, nodding, and draining his glass. ‘That’s what Emma says too. Well, there’ll be a pupil, perhaps. There is not exactly an excess of time.’

‘You mean before you leave for the Cape?’

‘Quite.’