Company Of Spears

Johnson had not spoken much to begin with on the march. Hervey suspected he had a sore head, for the Fifty-fifth’s canteen had been a hospitable place, and the bingo – ‘Cape Smoke’ – improbably cheap. But in truth Johnson had drunk no more brandy than he was capable of, which was not a great deal: he was, anyway, long past the soldier’s practice of drinking, camel-like, all that was available in order to sustain him through weeks of drought. Johnson, for all the appearance at times to the contrary, had a sense of occasion. And on those contrary occasions, Hervey had come to recognize that Johnson had invariably discerned something of the circumstances that he himself had not. What Johnson in his silence had been doing was allowing – consenting to – the growing attachment between Hervey and Fairbrother, for Johnson misliked (or liked) no man for his complexion. True, he thought Indians were detestable (except the ones he knew), Spaniards despicable (except all those brave guerrilleros), Portuguese shameless (except General de Braganza, the army and most of all Dona Isabella Delgado), and the Hottentots and Kaffirs – if that was what they were here at the Cape – beneath contempt (except that he had enjoyed the crack with several black faces in the canteen last night). But this Mr Fairbrother – Captain Fairbrother – as Hervey insisted on calling him, was not Indian, or Spanish or Portuguese or African: he was a gentleman; and that was all there was to be said of the matter.

Perhaps not all. The other officers whom Johnson had known did not talk much about books and such like. And it seemed to him that Hervey was enjoying it a very great deal. If Captain Hervey – or Major, or Colonel, or whatever it was today (he truly thought brevets more complicated than …) – if Captain Hervey needed one thing it was a good friend. And not a woman-friend (Johnson had his decided opinions on these) but another officer. There was Captain Peto, but he was always at sea, and there was Colonel Howard, but he was always in London; and since poor Major Strickland was killed there was no one in the Sixth with whom Hervey could talk on what it was that officers talked about – officers and gentlemen talked about.

Colonel Hervey sometimes talked to him, but he knew it could not be the same. And in Hounslow it had all so nearly come to an end. He did not think of the prospect of a prison hulk so much as the deprivation of that life that had come to mean everything to him: the Sixth and ‘his’ officer. People had always been good to him – or at least fair. And over the business of the coral … well, he had not expected to remain the commanding officer’s groom after that. Yet here he was, taken back like the son in the Bible who went off and ate with the pigs. What had he to complain about ever when such a man as Colonel Hervey was his officer? He had never known anything of the coral; he was only doing as he was told. But he supposed that wouldn’t have made any difference if Colonel Hervey – and Serjeant-major Armstrong and the others – hadn’t been there to help him.

Yes, he certainly approved of ‘Captain’ Fairbrother. He was the sort of friend that Colonel Hervey needed. Perhaps if he had had a friend in Hounslow … No, he must not think like that. But why else would his officer want to marry this Lady Lankester, someone he’d hardly ever met? It was none of his business, of course: what an officer chose to do was his own affair, and quite beyond the understanding of the rank and file. But he did not relish the idea of serving a new mistress. There would never be anybody like Mrs Hervey – not even Mrs Delgado (although she was the one he wanted most to see filling her shoes)…

Hervey concluded where Johnson was thinking of. ‘It puts me in mind of Salisbury Plain. On a fair day, that is.’

‘That’s what I reckoned, sir. Is it all like this? Ah thought there were jungle, an’ lions an’ things.’ Hervey turned to Fairbrother, with a rueful smile that invited a response to Johnson’s boundless question on the natural history of the Continent.

‘Well now, Private Johnson,’ began Fairbrother, endearing himself at once by the appellation of rank, however lowly. ‘Do you recall how many days you were sailing to the Cape?’

Johnson frowned. ‘Abaht fifty, I think it were, sir.’