Flashman - 07 - Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser

Author:George MacDonald Fraser
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Military Fiction
ISBN: 9780007217175
Published: 2006-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE SEVENTY-SIXER

It's only when you've grown old that you begin to see that life doesn't run in a straight line; that you can never be sure a chapter is finished, and that half a century may lie between cause and final effect. Why, I met Lola Montez and Bismarck in '42, bedding one and belittling t'other, and thought that was that-and five years later they popped up to give me the scare of my life. And I thought I'd seen the last of Tiger Jack Moran after Rorke's Drift but, damme, he came back to haunt my old age and almost had me indicted for murder. No, you never can tell when the past is going to catch up, especially a past as dirty as mine.

So it was with the old West. I left it on a summer's day in '50, vowing never to return, and twenty-five years later, when the old memories had faded, back it came with a vengeance-and that word is well-chosen, as you'll see.

I blame Elspeth entirely. Having the brain of a backward hen, it had taken her until middle age to discover the delights of luxurious globe-trotting, and since by then old Morrison's ill-gotten pile had swollen prodigiously, she was able to indulge her wanderlust to the full. As often as not I went along, for after thirty years of travelling rough I didn't mind being wafted about in style, from steamer stateroom to hotel Pullman, and stopping at the best pubs on the way; another reason was that I didn't trust the little trollop an inch, for Elspeth at fifty was every bit as beddable as she'd been at sixteen, and had lost none of her ardour. The Bond Street salons and swarms of effete Frog hairdressers kept that corn-gold hair as lustrous as ever, her milky-pink complexion bloomed like a country girl's, and if she'd added a stone to her figure it was all to the good and well-placed. In fact, she continued to draw men like flies to a jam-pot, and while in thirty years I'd never absolutely caught her in flagrante, there were a dozen at least I suspected her of slapping the mattress with, including that pop-eyed lecher Cardigan and H.R.H. Bertie the Bounder. So I wasn't having her panting with Alpine guides and sweaty gondoliers while I idled at home on half-pay; I preferred to keep her in trim myself and discourage foreign attentions. I loved her, you see.

Most of her jaunts were close to home, at first-Black Forest, Pyrenees, Italian lakes, the Holy Land and Pyramids, and endless piles of Greek rubble dignified by antiquity, for which she had a remarkable appetite, sketching away execrably under a parasol and misquoting Byron while her maid scampered back to the hotel for fresh crayons and I loafed impatiently, wishing I might slip down to the native quarter for some vicious amusement among the local wild-life. And then one winter's day early in '75 she remarked idly that I'd never shown her North America.

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