fact that little Blowitz had stolen a march on him, and he could not figure out how it had been done. Astonishing, eh? Here was the greatest statesman of the age, who’d just settled the peace of Europe for a generation and more, and still that trifle haunted him over the years. Perhaps ’twas the affront to his dignity, or his passion for detail, but he couldn’t rest until he knew how Blowitz had got hold of that treaty. How do I know, you may ask? Well, I’m about to tell you – and I’m not sure that Bismarck’s mania (for that’s what it amounted to) wasn’t the strangest part of the adventure that befell me five years later, and which had its origins in my meetings with Grant and Macmahon, Caprice’s picture, and the Congress of Berlin.8
The trouble with a reputation like mine is that you’re bound to live up to it. It’s damnably unfair. Take General Binks or Colonel Snooks, true-blue military muttonheads, brave as be-damned, athirst for glory, doing their dutiful asinine bit in half a dozen campaigns, but never truly catching the public eye, and at last selling out and retiring from obscurity to Cheltenham with a couple of wounds and barely enough to pay the club subscription, foot the memsahib’s whist bill, send Adolphus to a crammer ’cos the Wellington fees are beyond them, and afford a drunken loafer to neglect the garden of Ramilles or Quatre Bras or whatever they choose to call their infernal villas. That’s Snooks and Binks; profitable labour to the grave, and no one notices.
And then take Flashy, born poltroon and wastrel, pitchforked against his will into the self-same expeditions and battles, scared out of his wits but surviving by shirking, turning tail, pretence, betrayal, and hiding behind better men – and emerging at the end o’ the day, by blind luck and astonishing footwork, with a V.C., knighthood, a string of foreign decorations as long as Riley’s crime sheet, a bloody fortune in the bank, and a name and fame for derring-do that’s the talk of the Empire. Well now, Flash old son, says you, that’s compensation surely, for all the horrors unmanfully endured – and don’t forget that along the road you’ve had enough assorted trollop to fill Chelsea Barracks, with an annexe at Aldershot. And Elspeth, the most undeserved benefit of all.
Furthermore, you’ve walked with the great ones of the earth, enjoy the admiring acquaintance of your gracious Queen and half a dozen other royalties and presidents, to say nothing of ministers and other prominent rabble, and are blessed (this is the best of it) with grandlings and great-grandlings too numerous to count … so what the devil have you to complain of? Heavens, man, Binks and Snooks would give their right arms (supposing they haven’t already left ’em in the Punjab or Zululand or China, from which you escaped with a pretty whole skin) for one-fiftieth of your glory and loot. And you’ve never been found out … a few leery looks here and there, but no lasting blemishes, much. So chubbarao,fn6 Flashy, and count yourself lucky.
Well, I do; damned lucky. But there’s been a price to pay, and I don’t mean in terror and agony and suffering. Not at all. My cavil is that having bought it cruel hard, I wasn’t left to enjoy it in peace, like Binks and Snooks. They could run up to Town to get their hair cut and drop in at the club at a moment of national crisis, and no one paid them any heed, much less expected ’em to race round to Horse Guards applying to be let loose against the Ashantis or the Dervishes or whatever other blood-drinking heathen were cayoodling round the imperial outposts. Retired, gone to grass, out of reckoning absolutely, that was Colonel Snooks and General Binks.
Ah, but Flashy was a different bag of biltong altogether. Let some daft fakir start a rising in a godforsaken corner you never heard of, or the British lion’s tail be tweaked anywhere between Shanghai and Sudan, and some journalistic busybody would be sure to recall that ’twas in that very neck of the woods that the gallant Flashy, Hector of Afghanistan, defender of Piper’s Fort, leader of the Light Brigade, won his spurs or saved the day or committed some equally spectacular folly (with his guts dissolving and praying for the chance to flee or surrender, if only they knew it). ‘The hour demands the man, and who better to uphold Britannia’s honour in her present need than the valiant veteran of Lucknow and Balaclava …’ and so forth. They were never rash enough to suggest I should have command, but seemed to have in mind some auxiliary post of Slaughterer-General, as befitting my desperate reputation.
Not that the ha’penny press matters – but the United Service and Pall Mall do, with their raised eyebrows and faintly critical astonishment. ‘Ah, Flashman, lamentable business in Egypt, what? Goin’ with Wolseley, I daresay … No? You surprise me.’ Dash it, you can see them thinking, man of his reputation, prime of life, don’t he know his duty, good God? If I’d had the belly of Binks or Snooks’s gout (both of ’em younger than I) I’d not be thought of, but when you’ve a lancer figure and barely a touch of grey in your whiskers and the renown of Bayard, you’re expected to be clamouring for service. And when your sovereign lady regards you pop-eyed over the teacups with a bland ‘I expect, dear Sir Harry, that you will be accompanying Sir Garnet to Egypt,’ you can hardly remind her that you’re past sixty and disinclined, especially when the idiot you married in an evil hour is assuring Her Majesty that you’re champing at the bit. (Wanted me away, I suspect, so that she could cuckold me in comfort.) All round it’s a case of ‘No show without Flashy’, and before you can say God-help-us you’re in the desert listening to ‘Cock o’ the North’ and trying to look as though you’re itching to come to grips with twice your weight in angry niggers.
It is, I repeat, damnably unfair, and by the autumn of ’83 I’d had enough of it. In the five years since Otto’s Congress I’d been well in the public eye, chiefly because of my supposed heroics in South Africa in ’79 – a place I’d have shunned like the plague but for Elspeth’s insatiable fondness for money, as if old Morrison’s million wasn’t enough without bothering her empty head over her cousin’s supposed mine (but I’ll record that disgusting episode another day). Then in ’82 there had been the Egyptian garboil I mentioned a moment ago; Joe Wolseley had asked for me point-blank, and with the press applauding and the Queen approving and Elspeth bursting into tears as I rogered her farewell, what the blazes could I do but fall in?
In the event it wasn’t the worst campaign I’ve seen, not by a mile; at least it was short. We only went in with great reluctance (when did Gladstone ever show anything else?) to help the Khedive quell his rebellious army, who were slaughtering Christians and vowing to drive all foreigners from the country – bad news for our Suez Canal investors (44 per cent, what?) and our lifeline to India. Joe brought ’em to heel smartly enough at Tel-el-Kebir, where the kilties massacred everything in sight, and my only bad scare was when I found myself perforce charging with the Tin Bellies at Kassassin, but by gallantly turning aside to help Baker Russell when his horse was shot, and so arriving when the golliwog infantry were already taking to their heels, I missed the worst of it, cursing my bad luck and Baker for holding me up. A good glare and loud roar, sabre in hand, work wonders; Joe said I’d been an inspiration to the Household riders, and wanted me to stay on at Cairo, but I muttered that he didn’t need me now that peace was breaking out, and his staff-wallopers grinned at each other and said wasn’t that old Flashy, just?9
I was mighty glad to be home by Christmas of ’82, I can tell you, for while Egypt was quiet enough by then, I could guess it was liable to be hot enough presently, and not just with the sun. After we’d brought the Khedive’s troops back to their allegiance, the idea was that we’d withdraw, but that was all my eye (we’re there yet, have you noticed?), for down south, in the Sudan, the war drums were already beating, with the maniac Mahdi stirring up the Fuzzy-Wuzzies in a great jihad to conquer the world, with Egypt first on the list. Hell of a place the Sudan, all rock and sand and thorn and the most monstrous savages in creation; Charley Gordon, my China acquaintance, had governed it in the ’seventies, and spent most of his time poring over the Scriptures and chasing slavers before retiring to Palestine to watch rocks and contemplate the Infinite. Mad as a cut snake, he was, but the Sudan had gone to pot entirely after he left, and was now going to need attention – from guess who? From the Khedive’s army, led by soldiers of the Queen, that was who, whether Gladstone liked it or not, and I was shot if I was going to be one of ’em.
So I came home, along of Joe and Bimbashi Stewart and others, having served my turn – but would you believe it, in ’83 when that