Royal Flash. George Fraser MacDonald
if he was. He stood, smiling with his mouth, considering me.
‘Do you know,’ says he at length, ‘I feel sure I have seen you before, but I cannot think where. That is unusual, for I have an excellent memory. No, not in England. Have you ever been in Germany, perhaps?’
I said I hadn’t.
‘Oh, well, it is of no interest,’ says he coolly, meaning that I was of no interest, and turned away from me.
I hadn’t liked him before, but from that moment I hated Bismarck, and decided that if ever the chance came to do him a dirty turn, I wouldn’t let it slip past me.
Tom had said he was full of bounce, and at supper that night we got a good dose of it. It was very free and easy company, as you can imagine, with no women present, and we ate and drank and shouted across the table to our heart’s content, getting pretty drunk and nobody minding his manners much. Bismarck ate like a horse and drank tremendously, although it didn’t seem to show on him; he didn’t say much during the meal, but when the port went round he began to enter the conversation, and before long he was dominating it.
I’ll say this for him, he wasn’t an easy man to ignore. You would have thought that a foreigner would have kept mum and watched and listened, but not he. His style was to ask a question, get an answer, and then deliver judgement – for instance, he says to Tom, what was the hunting like, and Tom remarking that it was pretty fair, Bismarck said he looked forward to trying it, although he doubted if chasing a fox could hold a candle to the boar-hunting he had done in Germany. Since he was a guest, no one pulled his leg, although there were a few odd looks and laughs, but he sailed on, lecturing us about how splendid German hunting was, and how damned good at it he was, and what a treat we were missing, not having wild pigs in England.
When he had done, and there was one of those silences, Speed broke it by remarking that I had done some boar-hunting in Afghanistan; the fellows seemed to be looking to me to take the talk away from Bismarck, but before I had the chance he demanded:
‘In Afghanistan? In what capacity were you there, Captain Flashman?’
Everyone roared with laughter at this, and Tom tried to save his guest embarrassment by explaining that I had been soldiering there, and had pretty well won the war single-handed. He needn’t have minded, for Bismarck never turned a hair, but began to discourse on the Prussian Army, of all things, and his own lieutenant’s commission, and how he regretted that there were so few chances of active service these days.
‘Well,’ says I, ‘you can have any that come my way, and welcome.’ (This is the kind of remark that folk love to hear from a hero, of course.) The fellows roared, but Bismarck frowned.
‘You would avoid dangerous service?’ says he.
‘I should just think I would,’ say I, winking at Speed. If only they had known how true that was. ‘Damned unpleasant, dangerous service. Bullets, swords, chaps killing each other – no peace and quiet at all.’
When the laughter had died down, Tom explained that I was joking; that I was, in fact, an exceptionally brave man who would miss no chance of battle and glory. Bismarck listened, his cold eye never leaving me, and then, would you believe it, began to lecture us on a soldier’s duty, and the nobility of serving one’s country. He obviously believed it, too, he rolled it out so solemnly, and it was all some of the younger men could do to keep their faces straight. Poor old Tom was in an anguish in case we offended his guest, and at the same time obviously nearly out of patience with Bismarck.
‘I wish to God my uncle had found some other poor devil to bear-lead him,’ says he later to Speedicut and me. ‘Was there ever a bigger bore and ass? How am I to deal with the fellow, eh?’
We couldn’t help him; in fact I resolved to keep as far out of Bismarck’s way as possible. He unsettled me; he was so damned superior. Tom was wrong in one thing: Bismarck wasn’t an ass, whatever else he might be. In some ways he was like that outstanding idiot Cardigan, under whom I had served in the 11th Hussars, but only on the surface. He had the same splendid certainty in everything he said and did; he looked on the world as created for him alone; he was right, and that was that. But where Cardigan’s arrogant eye had the shallow stare of the born fool, Bismarck’s didn’t. You could see the brain at work behind it, and those who listened only to his rather monotonous sermonisings and noticed only his lack of humour – of our kind of humour, anyway – and put him down as a pompous dullard were well wide of the mark.
I wanted nothing to do with him, anyway, but in that short visit at Tom’s place Bismarck still contrived to touch me on the raw twice – and in the only two things that I am any good at, too. Coward and rascal that I’ve always been, I have had two talents, for foreign tongues and for horses. I can master almost any language in short time, and ride anything with a mane and tail. Looking back, I can almost believe that Bismarck smelled these two gifts and set out to hip me over them.
I don’t remember how the conversation at one breakfast came to touch on foreign speech – usually it was women and drink and horses and pugs, with an occasional high flight on something like the scandalous rate of income tax at 7d in the pound.10 But it did, and my gift was mentioned. Bismarck, lounging back in his chair, gave a sneering little laugh and said that it was a useful talent in head-waiters.11
I was furious, and tried to think of some cutting retort, but couldn’t. Later it occurred to me that I might have fixed him with a look and said it was also a useful gift in German pimps, but it was too late then. And you could never be quite sure with his remarks whether he was jibing or simply stating what he thought was a fact, so I just had to ignore him.
The second set-down came on a day’s hunting, when we had had poor sport and were riding home. Conyngham, drawing rein on top of a slight rise from which you could see miles of rolling countryside in every direction, points to a church which was just visible in the distance through the late afternoon haze, and cries out:
‘Who’s for a steeplechase?’
‘Oh, too much of a fag,’ says Tom. ‘Anyway, it’s getting dark and the beasts may go wrong. I vote for home.’
‘Steeplechase?’ says Bismarck. ‘What is that?’
It was explained to him that the object was to race straight across country for the steeple, and he nodded and said it was an excellent sport.
‘Good for you!’ cries Conyngham. ‘Come on, you fellows! You, Flashy, are you game?’
‘Too far,’ says I, for like Tom I didn’t fancy taking hedges on wettish country with the light starting to fail.
‘Nonsense!’ cries Bismarck. ‘What, gentlemen, are the English backward in their own game? Then you and I, Marquis, shall we have it out together?’
‘With you! Tally-ho!’ yells Conyngham, and of course the other asses took off after them. I couldn’t hang back, so cursing Bismarck I clapped in my heels and gave chase.
Conyngham led the field over the first meadows, with Bismarck close behind, but a couple of hedges checked them, and the rest of us caught up. I hung back a little, for steeplechasing in the style of your old-fashioned bucks, when you just go hell-for-leather at everything, is as quick a road to a broken neck as I know. If you have an eye for ground, and watch how the leaders jump and land, you can reap the benefit of their discoveries without the risk of going first. So I rode a nice easy chase for the first mile or so, and then we came into light woodland, with trees well spaced out, and I touched my hunter and moved up.
There is a moment every jockey knows, when he feels his mount surge forward, and he lies with his head down being brushed by the mane, and sees the gap narrowing ahead of him, and knows he has the legs of the field. I felt it then as I thundered past the ruck, hearing the thud of the hooves and seeing the clods thrown up from the wet turf, feeling the wind in my face as the trees flew past; even now I see the scarlet coats in the fading light, and smell the rain-sodden country, and hear the yelps of the fellows as they cheered each other on and laughed and cursed. God, it was good to be young and English then!