Текст книги "Hostile Shores"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
BOOK ONE
KING:
Then forth, dear countrymen. Let us deliver
Our puissance into the hand of God,
Putting it straight in expedition.
Cheerly to sea the signs of war advance.
–WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
T HE L IFE OF K ING
HENRYTHEFIFTH,
ACT II, SCENE II, 189–192
CHAPTER TEN
Calling upon the Port Admiral of Portsmouth was always a dicey proposition. Admiral Lord Gardner was a lean and sour older fellow, “all sealing wax, stay tape, and buckram”, it was said of him (as well as his contemporary at Plymouth), who never seemed to have a good day, and God help the fool, or fools, who crossed him, disappointed, discomfitted, or disturbed him, for he never would suffer fools gladly. And this morning, he was looking particularly dys-peptic.
“Lewrie … Lewrie…,” Lord Gardner mused, working his mouth as if he’d bitten into a rotten lemon, or had dentures made by an itinerant Gypsy tinker. “Aha, sir! I recall you, now. You have not brought in any more of your secret, explosive thing-gummies, have you? Has he, Niles?” Lord Gardner snapped, turning to peer at his long-suffering senior Post-Captain aide. “Come to blow us all to Kingdom Come, has he?”
“Not this time, milord,” Captain Niles informed his master with a genial grin. “Our experiments with those infernal engines are done, and good riddance. Complete failures.”
“For which I say thank God, my lord,” Lewrie stuck in.
“His orders, milord,” Captain Niles said, efficiently whipping the single opened sheet of paper out and laying it on the desk before Lord Gardner, who picked it up and peered at it, myopically, his face in a grim and distasteful moue as if expecting the worst.
“This Commodore Grierson detaches you from his squadron, with orders for England, for a re-fit?” Lord Gardner huffed, waving those orders about. “What an impertinent, jumped-up pop-in-jay he must be, to assume that he may declare authority over His Majesty’s Dockyards, and send us whom he will!”
“Well, my lord, not a thorough re-fit, just a hull cleaning,” Lewrie offered, hoping that the lesser request would mollify him. “Reliant is very weeded, and slow after being brought out of Ordinary in April of 1803, and the bulk of her active commission has been in Bermudan, Bahamian, West Indies, and other tropic waters. The Gulf of Mexico, off Spanish Florida, and the Southern American coast?”
“He also ordered you to strike your broad pendant and sail away?” Lord Gardner gawped. “You are not sent home to face charges at a court-martial, are you, Lewrie? Under some cloud or other?”
“No, sir!” Lewrie quickly assured him. “He came up from Antigua with two sixty-fours, a Fifth Rate and two Sixth Rate frigates, and two more brig-sloops, and deemed my Fifth Rate redundant to his needs. As you will note, too, my lord, he deemed my small squadron’s duties against privateers sufficiently done, and that his new-come warships could do a much better job of keepin’ an eye on any new outbreak of raiders. And, he wanted the three wee ships under me for other duties down-islands. And, since he’s senior to me by nigh two years, there it is, my lord.”
“And you just let him order you to strike your flag and slink off?” Admiral Lord Gardner spat in astonishment.
“With the threat of privateers reduced, and their bases along the American coast eliminated, there was little I could do to argue the point, my lord,” Lewrie told him with a hopeless shrug.
“By God, but he takes a lot upon himself!” Gardner gravelled. “Henry Grierson … Henry Grierson. Who the Devil is he, Niles? Have you ever heard of him?”
“Uhm, I do believe that he is distant kin to Lord Melville, my lord,” Captain Niles tactfully said.
“Oh, good Lord!” Gardner snarled. “Even is he out of office, it will be some harpy in here, still, some female cousin thrice-removed, waving orders with Melville’s seal upon ’em, telling me to build a frigate for her son! The Prime Minister should never have dismissed Johnny Jervis from his post as First Lord of Admiralty. What the Devil was he thinking?”
“Given this Grierson’s connexions, then, perhaps we should put a new frigate together, for Lewrie here, hey, Niles?” Gardner wheezed.
“Would that a dockyard re-fit be possible, sir,” Captain Niles said with a whimsical air.
“Just a hull cleaning, my lord,” Lewrie reminded them. “We’ve weed as long as boarding pikes on our ‘quick-work’.”
“Recall, milord,” Niles said, leaning closer to his superior, “that we spoke with the Commissioner of the Dockyards, Sir Charles Saxton, upon the amount of work he has in hand, and the possible availability of a free graving dock for any vessel coming in damaged? He and his people are completely swamped.”
“‘Swamped’?” Lord Gardner querulously posed. “What the Devil sort of word is ‘swamped’? There are no swamps in England. Ireland, perhaps … all those bloody bogs of theirs … but not in England!”
“I stand corrected, milord,” Niles easily amended, bestowing a congenial look at Lewrie as if to say that Lord Gardner’s bark was not as dangerous as his bite, and that such word-play was natural to their working relationship. “Up to his neck in demands and needful work, rather. I fear that it may be weeks ’til what re-fit work and activation of ships now laid up in-Ordinary would admit your frigate the slightest bit of attention, Captain Lewrie. Even with specific, and urgent, orders from Admiralty, there is little we may do for you.”
“In the Careenage, Captain Niles? My lord?” Lewrie said, feeling that wheedling might suit. “As I said, we only need a bit of hull cleaning. If not the Careenage, any stretch of beach would do.”
“Lord, the beaches!” Captain Niles sadly mused. “I fear that there are now so many private contractors and shipwrights a’building ‘back of the beach’ that there may not be room. So many lost merchantmen to be replaced, new bottoms needed to expand our trade, and many smaller warships being built on speculation, not even under contract with Admiralty … I very much doubt there is a single seaport in all England where you might find the space, sir.”
Gawd, I’ve been diddled! Lewrie thought with a cringe; Sent to “Coventry” like a failure, and stuck there ’til the next Epiphany?
“What if I went up to London and sought fresh orders, my lord?” Lewrie appealed to Lord Gardner.
“You may try, sir, but even with orders, as Niles said, you do not stand a Chinaman’s Chance,” Lord Gardner told him, seemingly in sympathy with his plight. He was not snarling or roaring. “Were it me, I’d have stood on my rights, and previous orders, and given this Grierson puppy the back of my hand!”
“Then there would have been court-martial charges, my lord,” Lewrie croaked, his shoulders slumping in defeat. He puffed out his cheeks in a frustrated sigh, thinking hard.
“Excuse me, my lord, but … having just come in, I’m not yet considered part of Channel Fleet,” Lewrie schemed. “I could leave for London without being faulted for sleeping out of my ship, and see what fresh orders I might … wangle?”
“Do any of you younger sorts have the ability to speak in plain King’s English anymore?” Lord Gardner groused, slapping a fist on his desk top. “‘Wangle’, sir? Learn that word in a swamp, did you?”
“I might’ve heard it in Charleston or Savannah, sir,” Lewrie said with a shrug, “From the Yankee Doodles.”
“Both cities are famous for their surrounding swamps, milord,” Niles dared to jape in a mellow purr, tipping Lewrie a wink that the Admiral could not see.
“Aye, Captain Lewrie,” Lord Gardner grudgingly allowed, “until someone takes note of a perfectly good frigate lazing at anchor, and snatches you up, you are not under Channel Fleet, strictly speaking. If you imagine that you may discover a solution to your problem up in London, you are surely free to go … so long as you do not tarry ’mid the joys of the city.”
“Ehm … might it be best did we issue Captain Lewrie a document of some kind, milord?” Captain Niles suggested. “An order from you allowing him to seek an audience at Admiralty might not go amiss.”
“Fine, fine, scribble him out one, Niles, and I’ll sign it, if you think that’s best,” Lord Gardner said in an irritated growl. His attention had already shifted to a fresh pile of paperwork on the side of his desk. “An excuse for truancy for the headmaster … a dispensation for past sins, hey? Carry on, then. Good day to you, Captain Lewrie. Best of luck … all that,” he muttered, poring over a fresh letter, trying to find the proper “range” at which to read it.
“Good day, my lord, and thank you,” Lewrie said in parting as he followed the pleasant Captain Niles to the outer office.
* * *
He had not come ashore with his boat-cloak, and regretted that lack once he left the Port Admiral’s office building with his written pass safely stowed away in a dry breast pocket of his uniform coat. A sullen and misty rain had sprung up in the meantime, bringing with it a thin haze. Lewrie strolled back towards the quayside in search of a bum-boat to row him out to Reliant. He dodged several timber waggons and goods carts that trundled loudly over the cobblestones of the seaside road ’til he got to the large, mossed, and rain-slick stone blocks of the quayside, and stopped to look round. There weren’t any boats to be seen, not within hailing distance.
Dozens of warships lay in the harbour, towering Third Rate 74s and a pair of more powerful Second Rates of at least 98 guns, perhaps the flagships of admirals come in from the blockade, surrounded by frigates, three-masted older sloops of war, and the newer brig-sloops. All were hazed by the rain, those lying further out indistinct. Lewrie looked to his right and left, and peered up toward the inner harbour, and Gosport. All along the hards there were scaffoldings, and ships in the middle of them being constructed. In the stone graving docks, warships were being repaired, temporarily de-commissioned. Even more, stripped to a gantline with all their top hamper above the lower mast trunks struck, and floating high with all their stores and guns landed ashore, lay anchored just off the graving docks, waiting their turns. The soft, misty rain and the wet haze acted like a blanket upon most sounds that morning, but even from this far away, Lewrie could hear the continual din of saws and hammers, and the tinny ringing of metal artificers on anvils and iron fittings. The Admiralty, and the Royal Navy and its supporting infrastructure, was the world’s largest commercial and industrial enterprise, and Lewrie felt depressingly awed to think that the bulk of its activities was centred within eye and ear shot of where he stood, that instant. It was far too busy to ever get round to dealing with him!
Pleadin’ at Admiralty may not help one tuppenny shit, Lewrie sadly gloomed; Should I even try? Oh, why not? All they can say is no.
A wryly amusing idea crossed his mind; when his father shoved him into the Navy in 1780, Sir Hugo’s old attorney, Mr. Pilchard, had scribbled out a huge forgery. When his son Sewallis had finagled his way aboard a warship as a Midshipman in 1803, the lad had forged his father’s signature on the introductory letter to an old shipmate that had been meant for his younger son, Hugh—in point of fact, the entire letter had been forged, inserting Sewallis’s name for Hugh’s. The art of forgery seemed to run in the family, for God’s sake! Why not just sit down in some tavern here in Portsmouth with a set of orders done by the First or Second Secretary at Admiralty and write his own urgent demand for Reliant to be docked? If he waited for the wheels to clack round like a slow-running mantel clock, he’d be twiddling his thumbs ’till next Summer!
“London it is, then, no matter,” Lewrie muttered to himself.
At least he could get some shopping done, perhaps look up some old friends for a day or two, once shooed from the infamous Waiting Room at the close of the Admiralty’s working day, and …
“Oh, shit!” he groaned.
Once in Soundings of the Channel, once the Lizard had been sighted, he had written several letters for instant despatch as soon as Reliant was anchored. One, the most important of his personal correspondence, went to Lydia Stangbourne at her family’s Grosvenor Street house, in hopes that the Autumn season had drawn her back from their country estates near Reading and Henley. Lydia would never miss the new rounds of plays, operas, symphonies, and art gallery showings.
He had not yet heard back from her, but, if their history together was any judge, it was good odds that she would sling a fortnight’s heap of gowns into her coach and come down to Portsmouth, instanter! How wroth might she be to get to Portsmouth to discover that he’d run off to London like the worst sort of cad?
“Meet halfway … spot her coach somewhere on the road?” Lewrie said with another groan. “Just damn my eyes!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lewrie considered a fast horse, from which it would be easier to spot Lydia’s coach with her family crest on the doors, but in the continual misty rains, a horse just would not do. As quickly as he wished to get to London … to get to Lydia’s house before she left … the roads would simply be too sloppy and muddy, and he would end up looking like one of the urchin Thames-side “mud-lark” boys before he’d gone ten miles, and he had only two uniforms aboard, his daily undress, and his very best, and it was good odds one of them would be ruined. If only he’d kept a civilian suit and top-boots aboard, with a great-coat to protect his trousers with its long, deep skirts, but all his “mufti”, as his father called it from his days with the East India Company Army (where he’d made himself an immense pile of “tin” and had come home a full nabob!), was still at his father’s estate at Anglesgreen. Besides, there was Pettus to think of, and Pettus wasn’t skilled enough a horseman to keep up with the pace he planned! Lewrie would take lodgings at the Madeira Club, of course; his father was one of the founders and investors, and Lewrie could count on obtaining a room, at a discount, but he would not trust one of the house staff to “do” for him … not if he wished to make a good showing at Admiralty!
Only slightly begrudging the cost, Lewrie hired a four-horse coach for the trip up to the city. With only him and Pettus and their minimal “traps” aboard, he hoped that they would make much better time than buying passage in the diligence or “flying balloon” coaches, with Pettus relegated to a precarious seat on the roof in the foul weather, which would turn him surly for a week or more!
They set off the next morning, just a bit after “first sparrow fart”, and damned if the lighter coach was still too heavy to breast Portdown Hill, and they had to get down and walk. Pettus did comment that if they had booked seats on the “dilly”, they would have had to not only carry their own luggage to the top of the hill, but help with the pushing, too, which was sort of a blessing! The mud covering Lewrie’s Hessian boots like heavy plaster casts made Lewrie disagree … rather tetchily! And, once back inside and out of the drizzle, there was still the mud and mire and horse, oxen, and mule dung mixed in that was flung up in a fine shower by their coach’s spinning wheels that “got up his nose”, both figuratively and literally, that had Lewrie swiping his face and his hair in a continual grumble. Every passing equipage that looked expensive enough to be Lydia Stangbourne’s had to be peered at, did it not?
“It is a good thing that I thought to pack some extra towels, sir,” Pettus cheerfully said as he offered Lewrie yet another clean one, then dug into the depths of a woven basket. “Might you care for some of Mister Cooke’s pones, with Yeovill’s bacon strips, sir? Oh, we have butter, as well!”
“Grrr,” was Lewrie’s impatient comment to that offer, but he did take two of their Free Black cook’s “cat-head” flour bisquits and some bacon, and leaned back inside out of the wet to gnaw at them.
* * *
It was a given for travellers, no matter how impatient, that no matter how fast a coach could bowl along, no matter how rapid a pace a mount could be put to, how swiftly one of the new-fangled canal boats could be towed, or how quickly a ship with a fine breeze could sail, if one went a long distance, then it would take a long time to get there.
Making it even worse were the necessary stops every twenty-odd miles to change teams at a posting inn which had spare horses beyond the demands of the regularly scheduled diligence coaches. When there, no amount of grumbling and drumming of feet inside the coach would put any “urgent” into their coachman, so there was nothing for it but to clamber out, stretch their legs, head for the “jakes” to relieve themselves, slosh down some indifferently brewed tea, or sample a pint of the local beer, ale, stout, or porter. If they did not, for certain the coachman did, for which Lewrie had to pay to keep him merry and mellow. By the time they actually crossed the bridge into London, the coachman was so mellow that he began to bawl out songs in a raspy voice, laughing inanely between verses, and got so lost and befuddled that Lewrie had to mount the box with him to steer him to the corner of Duke Street and Wigmore Street, and the Madeira Club, just around six in the evening.
It was raining for real, by then, of course; just pouring down!
“Good ev’nin’ t’ye, fine sir, and I hope ye found th’ journey comf’table!” the coachman shouted down as Lewrie and Pettus gathered their belongings. “Ye wish me services for th’ return, just ask o’th’ publican at th’ good ol’ Three Nuns for Thom Wheeler, an’ I’ll come direck t’collec’ ye, quick’z ye kin say ‘knife’! Huzzah for th’ Navy, I say! Gawd bless ye, ye brave tars! ‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules th’ waves … Bri-tons never never never shall be’ … someone hold me horses, I gotta get down an’ piss like an ox!”
“Should we help him down, sir, before he dashes his brains out?” Pettus fretted.
“After all he’s cost me, I don’t give a toss,” Lewrie said with a laugh. The coachman’s drunken bawlings had drawn the attention of the Madeira Club’s doorman and desk clerk, who had come out onto the stoop to goggle. “Ah, Lucas!” Lewrie called to the first one he saw and remembered by name. “Captain Alan Lewrie. I will need a room for a couple of nights, and room for my cabin steward!”
“Come in, come in, Captain Lewrie, get out of the rain,” Lucas the desk clerk grandly offered, holding the doors open for them. “We do happen to have a vacancy or two, since Major Baird found a bride, and Mister Showalter is away to his home borough, on the hustings for the next by-election.”
“What?” Lewrie gawped as he shrugged off his boat-cloak inside. “He ain’t elected yet? I don’t know which is more surprisin’, Showalter still standin’ for Commons, or Major Baird takin’ a wife, at last.”
Major Baird had come back from India years before a “Chicken Nabob” with at least £50,000 in profits, or loot, and had spent that long purportedly searching for a suitable mate … when not indulging in “knee-trembler” sex with the orange-selling girls at the theatres, and getting fellated in dark corners with his breeches undone.
“One hopes his new bride is … skilled,” Lewrie sniggered.
Lucas cryptically grinned, knowing what Lewrie alluded to, but a good enough servant to appear unperturbed.
“There is brandy in the Common Room, Captain Lewrie, Spanish brandy I fear, but quite drinkable, as soon as you are settled in your rooms,” Lucas told him as he signalled for a porter to see the luggage abovestairs, “and supper will be served at seven.”
Lewrie’s rooms were second storey, in the back and away from the continual rumble and skreak of waggon and carriage traffic. There was a coal fire laid in the hearth and crackling nicely, with a brass back-plate hot and radiating both warmth and light into the dank coolness of an un-used room. Lewrie sat down on a short settee near the fireplace and tugged his muddy boots off, which Pettus took away for cleaning and re-blacking for the morrow. He handed Lewrie a pair of buckled shoes which did not quite go with snug white undress trousers, but were presentable enough for the clientele of the Madeira Club, and for a fellow who had no plans to be about the town that evening.
“All is ready for the morrow, sir,” Pettus said after brushing the ever-present cat fur from Lewrie’s best-dress gilt-laced coat and hat. The coat was hung on a dresser stand, the hat resting atop the round-topped upper spindle, the sash of the Order of The Bath draped round the spindle, and a fresh silk shirt, pressed waist-coat, and new pair of breeches and stockings arrayed on the shelves below the coat.
“Dress sword?” Lewrie asked, leaning back with his eyes half-closed. Nigh twelve hours in a swaying, jerking, and rocking coach had wrung him out like a dish-clout.
“Oh Lord,” Pettus gasped. “I believe I left it atop your desk, sir, and meant to include it, but … my pardons, sir!”
“So long as we know it’s safe,” Lewrie wearily allowed, waving a hand. “My ev’ryday hanger’ll do. So long as you’re sure ye left it on the desk.”
“Absolutely, sir,” Pettus assured him. “I can see it in my mind’s eye, and once we were in the coach, I thought I had an odd feeling that I was remiss, but … it won’t happen again, sir!”
“As far as I can recall, Pettus, this is the first time ever you’ve been remiss, and that’s a good record,” Lewrie excused. “Don’t take yourself t’task over it. You remembered t’pack towels, and a fine basket o’ victuals, after all.”
“Thank you, sir, and I won’t let you down again, sir. Now, I’ve your ‘house-wife’ laid out on the wash-hand stand, your razor stropped and ready for the morning. Will there be anything else before supper, sir? A pot of tea from belowstairs, or—?”
“No, I think that’ll do ’til morning, Pettus,” Lewrie said as he hauled out his pocket watch from a waist-coat pocket and peered at it. “Last time I lodged here, the kitchen staff arose round half-past five, so have them stir you, too. I think I’ll trust to the staff of the club for the rest of the ev’nin’, and you can get settled in with them and enjoy a good supper and some time off.”
“Very good, sir, and good night to you,” Pettus said, bowing a humble and abashed way out the door.
Most-like, he’ll be kickin’ himself in the arse the next week, entire, and lookin’ at me as cutty-eyed as a whipped hound, Lewrie wryly told himself as he got to his feet. He rinsed his mouth with some water from the wash-hand stand pitcher, brushed his hair into proper order, and went down to the Common Room for some of that brandy.
Lewrie found around two-dozen of the other members of the club gathered by the windows of the Common Room that overlooked the street, whooping and laughing and laying wagers.
“Oh, look, good old Lewrie’s back among us!” Mr. Pilkington, a fellow from the ’Change, and middling in stocks, cried. “Huzzah for the Navy! How d’ye keep, old fellow, and wherever have ye been?”
“Gentlemen,” Lewrie said back with a grin, making a half-bow from his waist. “The West Indies, the Bahamas, Spanish Florida, and playin’ diplomat with the Americans.”
“And none of them scalped you, hah?” Mr. Ludlow, who was big in the leather goods trade, hoorawed. “Come see this, Lewrie. There is a coachee out here, cup-shot.”
“Drunk as Davy’s Sow, I swear!” Pilkington hooted.
“He’s been trying to get back up to his seat, but he’s making a rum go of it,” another crowed in amusement. “There should be a law for people in charge of coaches and waggons being that drunk.”
“All I bought him was ale, beer, and porter,” Lewrie said, crowding to the rain-smeared windows for a better look. “He coached me up from Portsmouth, and he seemed sober enough.”
“Wager you all he’s a bottle of rum stashed up there in the box,” a younger member cried. “Been nipping on it on the sly, all the way.”
“Wager it’s more-like ‘Blue-Ruin’,” one of his fellow clubmen of the sporting sort dis-agreed. “Two shillings on gin, not rum.”
“It’ll be rum, and make it five shillings!” the first exclaimed with a hearty laugh. “What say you, Captain Lewrie?”
“I say someone’ll have t’go out there in the rain to see what he has in the box, if anything,” Lewrie rejoined. “Oh, Christ!”
The soused coachman managed to put a booted foot into the spokes of the kerbside front wheel and levered himself up to his seat with the wooden brake lever, but the patient team of horses shifted forward a bit and the coachman made a desperate lunge, arse over tit, almost making it to the driver’s bench before falling backwards in a hand-scrabbling heap on the sidewalk. He wore a blissful smile, though, for he now had a blue glass bottle in one hand, at which he sipped deep.
“It’s gin! It’s gin! That’s five shillings you owe me!” the sporting young gentleman cried.
The coachman took off his old-style tricorne hat and swiped at his hair, finally taking note that it was raining, shook water from his hat, and plunked it back on. He leaned an elbow on the coach’s metal folding steps, got a clever look on his phyz, and began to crawl to them.
“A glass with you, Captain Lewrie,” one of the older members offered, “for you’ve provided us a rare entertainment this evening! You missed the part where he was singing to his horses and kissing them on the lips!”
“Lord, where’s he going now?” Pilkington cried.
The coachman dragged himself up the folding steps, clawed for the door handle, and finally managed to swing it open. Into the coach he went on his hands and knees, amazingly careful not to spill a drop from his gin bottle. The door was pulled closed, and he dropped out of sight for a moment, sprawled on the seats most-like. One moment later, though, up he sat to lower the window glass. He leaned out the door and began to pound on it, bellowing for some phantom coachee to whip up and get a move on, which action raised another gale of laughter in the club’s Common Room. They could hear him through the room’s windows, imitating the starting horn blown by the big diligence coaches when they rattled out from a posting inn, and the shouts of encouragement to the horse team.
The horse team took his thumping, shouting, and the tra-tarah as their cue to breast into their harnesses and begin to shamble forward at a slow walk, with no one tending the reins. The last they saw of the coach, and the drunken coachee, it was meandering East down Wigmore Street towards the cross-traffic of Mandeville Place!
“Gentlemen,” the night manager had to call out several times before he drew the members’ attention. “Supper is now served!”
Lewrie finished his Spanish brandy, which he had found not too raw after all, and joined the others as they all trooped into the dining room in high spirits, with some of the younger members still willing to wager that the coachman would get his neck broken, after all, if his coach tangled with another in the rain, or whether the coach would make it all the way to Marylebone Lane before the smash-up.
First came fine-shredded chicken in broth soup, followed by individual veal and ham pies, then fillets of grilled turbot accompanied by sweet stewed carrots and peas. The meal was topped off by a monstrous beef roast served with asparagus spears and hollowed-out potatoes with melted cheese and shredded bacon. The white wines with the soup and the turbot were excellent, as usual, as were the Bordeaux with the pies, and the cabernet with the roast beef, and the barge after barge of piping-hot and slightly toasted rolls were individual marvels with a liberal smear of fresh butter. Dessert was a strawberry jam roly-poly sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Once the tablecloth was whisked away and the remains removed, out came the nuts, cheese, and sweet bisquits, and the club’s signature, a rich and fine aged Madeira port, and the wine steward’s promise that several casks of the rare “rainwater” port had been discovered at Oporto and were even then sitting in storage for the up-coming holidays.
Lewrie could dab his mouth and lean back in his chair with his port glass in hand, thinking that a meal, a feast, so English, was a topping-fine welcome back to his home shores!
