Napoleon's Last Island (39 page)

I was halfway persuaded to, because it did not seem to carry the normal male weight, this suggestion. It was a fancy of his.

‘What if I tell the father you admire so much what you suggested?'

‘Then I shall ask his permission in writing before I make such a suggestion to you again, Miss Balcombe. But I am always open to your acceptance, should you change your mind. The question is indeed whether I deserve that little oscillatory pleasure. Because your father told me this: that if I can find a spare mount, you can go to the races, but not immediately. You'll miss the fun and games of the first two hours, the sack races and buffoonery and all the rest of it, and so will I. It's a small price. Meanwhile, I'm willing to pay it too. I can get you a horse – I want to get you a horse. I want to get you a horse for this reason: up at Longwood a friend of ours has made a notch in the shutters of Longwood through which he can watch the races, and he would be very disappointed not to see Betsy putting them all in place in the ladies' race. I am off to get you a horse from the Longwood stables.' He held up a preventive hand while his bay stepped around and shifted its stance. ‘Too late for you to show me a gesture of gratitude. I'd better go and do it. Meanwhile, young woman, French translation if you please.'

And he waved his arm in a heroic gesture and made to the gate, and I saw him galloping up the track, ultimately disappearing up the hill to the east in the direction of Hutt's Gate and Longwood, where the Emperor waited with his spyglass.

I went into the parlour and got the Montaigne passage and, enlivened, began working on it to the limit of my wits. The exercise did not take long, given the motivation I had, and so I went to wait on the verandah and could see O'Meara returning on his bay with a mounted groom behind him leading a magnificent grey beast. It was one I knew from the Longwood stables, Mameluke, the Arab, an echo of the long-ago Egyptian endeavours of OGF against the Mameluke Turks.

I seized my straw hat and ribboned it up and went tearing down the carriageway to meet him at the crossroads. I dashed past the burial place of Huff, and for once his spirit failed to oppress me.

‘Madame Bertrand has offered you the use of her saddle,' O'Meara called. ‘They are all watching at Longwood.'

Indeed Lady Bertrand's two-pommelled saddle was lustrous astride Mameluke, and beneath it lay a saddlecloth of crimson
velvet and heavy gold embroidery within one corner of which stood the golden bee, OGF's own symbol.

I told O'Meara gratefully that I had ridden Mameluke once before, on a visit there, that Archambault had let me, and that I found him as pleasant temperamentally as dear old Tom. The groom now tried to help me to the saddle, but my alacrity beat him.

‘In the name of God,' said O'Meara, ‘I have never seen a woman ascend a horse as quick as that.' He nodded to the groom to follow and we cantered off towards Deadwood. On the way O'Meara told me that Napoleon had instructed the Comte de Montholon to run a betting book on the races, and that in this book my odds were very short indeed.

‘You see how much harmless joy the Emperor would have been deprived of if you hadn't raced,' said O'Meara.

We dismounted and the groom attended to the horses and tethered them to a rail, and I thought it was my duty to go and thank my father. I found him at a table in the luncheon pavilion with my mother, drinking a tumbler of punch, something which much improved his humour.

I told him in an appropriately soft, maidenly voice that I'd done my Montaigne. But his urgency for my education had been totally appeased by the punch. He leaned to me and I heard his hot spirituous breath in my ear.

‘O'Meara persuaded us OGF wants to see you ride. That trumps all, don't you think?'

A table was set with dishes prepared by the regimental cooks, and at a side table a perpetual supply of ices was brought forth from some cool place to be devoured by the garrison and islanders. I drank a far too syrupy orgeat to quench my thirst, and waited for Captain Rous to mount his rostrum outside and declare the racing underway. Meanwhile my parents and Jane talked with those illustrious yamstocks the Dovetons, and William, at nine, ran wild outside with the Bertrand boys and young Tristan de Montholon, who had all been especially invited as an indulgence.

An officer called for entrants in the sundry races to report themselves to the clerk's tables to record their names and the names of their mounts. I did so, in the line especially for the women's race. I stood holding hands with Jane, who was not by temperament a racer but cosier in a line of women.

At the head of the line as of right were Sir Hudson's two stepdaughters, Charlotte chatting with the Count Balmain – the Russian ambassador seemed determined to court her and take her to Russia as his prize from the island. Captain Rous could be suddenly heard, a voice that could surmount storms at sea, roaring for attention and for the obedience of riders. ‘Let us honour,' he shouted, ‘the Arabian stallions from which our horses are sprung – indeed, even the horses of this island. Let us honour the Godolphin Barb, the Byerley Turk and the Darley Arabian Monarch, the three founding stallions whose blood is represented here today. Let us honour the great Jockey Club, and the humble jockey club of this island, sending its greetings over the waves to more esteemed ones located in our beloved British Isles. And let us honour Newmarket Heath and the laws which govern the sport.'

It was a curiously showy introduction to a race of six furlongs, which was the length of the course for the opening race, the one for boys. I could hear my brother William exhorting our father to let him join such a race in future.

The ladies' race was at mid-program, two miles, twice around the course as measured out by the military surveyors. It would come after the mile-and-a-half for mares, the mile-and-a-half for colts and of course the aforesaid boys' race.

We poured forth from the marquees again when the racing trumpet was sounded and each race time came. Sir Hudson and his wife and various officials left their tent and mounted the vice-regal stand beside that of the judges. I saw the two Lowe daughters and Adela Porteous there chatting by the base of the scaffolding. They were looking at me? Really? Yes, looking at me, the daughter of Lady Lowe's friend Mrs Jane Balcombe.

In any case, I would reveal myself in the equestrian mode. I watched the boys' race and a yamstock won it from a drummer
of the new regiment. I saw my mother and Jane speaking to people, yet managed no more than pleasantries myself as the other races were run. Lieutenant Croad approached us with a gloss of fever on his face. ‘We have not seen you lately,' said Jane in a merely social reproof, and he apologised and declared that he was too indisposed to race in the regimental handicap, and that he was thinking of retiring to his sickbed. I watched Jane, beneath her parasol, receiving compliments from odious de Montchenu, despite the fact of his and Father's earlier threats of a duel. De Montchenu's company was balanced on the other side by the far more welcome presence of a surgeon named Stokoe from one of the squadron's ships. But she treated Stokoe with the same carefulness as the ridiculous old Munch Enough.

My problems began in the saddling yard, after Captain Rous had stentoriously called us. Lady Lowe had accompanied her daughters to see them mount their thoroughbred geldings. She seemed to take a practical care by testing the girth-straps with her strong little hands. When an army groom helped me onto my horse and my elegant saddle, the vice-regal woman showed me immediate notice.

‘By your saddlecloth, Miss Balcombe,' said Lady Lowe, ‘one would think that to be General Bonaparte's horse.'

‘Yes, one would,' I said, dissembling. ‘I have Lady Bertrand to thank for this comfortable saddle.'

‘I wonder, are French horses and French saddles appropriate to this meeting?' she said, as if it were a suitable subject for a debate by savants. So she liked my mother but, it seemed, showed exasperation at me. It struck me that she wanted this race for her daughters, and they had looked like good things for it – except this unexpected thoroughbred had arrived.

I realised that my father, in his keenness that I should ride to please OGF, might have no idea I had the Emperor's own fine grey stallion. He had every reason to think O'Meara had brought me one of the surgeon's own horses.

Lady Lowe returned to inquiring about her daughters' comfort and further testing the horses' girths. If Lady Lowe,
generally a much calmer person than her husband, was annoyed at me, her husband, who made a speciality of being irked, would not react in a lesser way.

It had become apparent to me now that this was to be a contest between the imperial bee of OGF and the Crown of Great Britain – a petty sporting matter, you would say, but everything was serious on this island of ground risen so sparsely and from such a depth of ocean that small wonders became marvels, and small insults occupied a space they would not on more spacious ground.

I saw the younger Miss Johnson, Susannah, stroll her horse round the saddling yard, pointing out my error of taste to other women, including Miss Knipe, who did not seem to be changed one way or another by the news of my saddlecloth and the heroic horse it identified. But I could see others nod, happy to be drawn into a conspiracy, or more accurately to be made allies of, avid to pursue the normal girls' sport of ostracism.

I partly envied one of the Miss Letts, who rode with a standard saddle, astride, but only because nothing better was expected of her.

The trump sounded. So we went out one by one onto the track. Was there an extra flurry of comment when Mameluke and I went by the fence? So I fancied. The Johnsons and their mother had made me self-conscious and filled the air with a sense of imminence I would have preferred was not there.

I longed to be able to bestride Mameluke like a yamstock and send the world to hell. I felt that either way my brash success or dutifully chosen failure could be better addressed that way. As it was, the very ornateness of the pommel restricted me to only one leg that could be used to give direction. It was not even athletically possible to ride astride with Fanny's saddle.

I hoped Mameluke had had lots of use from the much heavier Madame Bertrand and so was accustomed to responding to women riders. My left heel was loose in the stirrup to guide him. I decided that I would not be intimidated into sitting slovenly on this horse. I would sit straight-backed, heels down. Our grooms lined us up at the starting line, and if not our grooms, various gallant gentlemen smelling of spirits stepped in to do it, yelling
such things as, ‘Whoa, Dolly!' The Count Balmain had hold of the elder Lowe stepdaughter's bridle.

When the judge, an officer of the 66th, brought his flag down, each groom stepped back and slapped our mounts on the hindquarters, as all the women shook their reins, sometimes – comically – with no effect. Mameluke ambled forth and I saw ten women ahead of me, and Miss Porteous whacking her mount with a whip, since he too, though an imported thoroughbred, seemed more impressed by the sociability rather than the urgency of the event.

Mameluke lunged all at once and was on his way, and I could feel through my body that the realisation of contest had arisen in him. But after a hundred yards he seemed to settle companionably amidst the other horses. There were most unfeminine grunts from riders when their horses' shoulders or haunches collided with those of others. These young women became combative. I saw the aforesaid Miss Porteous raise her stirrup and push an offending opponent off, and judged her even though I was doing precisely the same to the horse of a surprised Miss Knipe, who did not have her soul as invested in this tournament of vanities as did Miss Porteous and I. Mameluke ran fraternally and for some time on the shoulder of Susannah Johnson's horse. There was some jostling between Mameluke and her mount which I would have liked to blame on her, for she came up on my right and, I chose to think, aimed a kick at Mameluke and tried to push us wide on the course. I responded by turning Mameluke's massive shoulder against her and tried to ram her left leg to an extent that had I succeeded she would have woken next morning with a deep blue bruise from the knee downwards.

My aggression was justified. I knew its origins in nature and motivation. And I had greater motives than hers. I was watched through shutters, and that awareness revived all the more strongly in me once Mameluke began really to move.

I am pleased to say that I did not cause the younger Miss Johnson the damage I was willing to. I passed her and her sister and Miss Lett, and felt a dizzying exaltation grow, even as a captain's young wife was keen to assert leadership on the
back straight and into the bend and so to the end of the first mile. Mameluke's breath sounded like laughter, a celebration of boundless energies yet to be deployed. I could hear much of the garrison, and the soldiers in the infield, yelling at us, seeing Mameluke bear me along and interpreting me purely as a sporting woman, not a vindicator of a lost empire.

The second mile was the purest amalgam, the unity of simple intention between Mameluke and me. We were on the shoulder of the young wife's mount and she turned to me with the simplest smile of permission, an acknowledgement that she expected to be passed and had been lonely at the front of the field. This surrender was delicious, yet I did not at once avail myself of it until we were emerging from the home bend. I went a little wide on the turn into the straight but this was merely to give myself room for singular triumph. The garrison and yamstocks whistled and hoorayed Mameluke on, but I was most aware of the eye at the spyglass aimed at me.

I crossed the line five lengths ahead of everybody, and Susannah ran in second. But Miss Knipe and one of the captain's wives, without knowing they were doing it, cast a mocking light on the contentiousness of Miss Johnson and me by deciding they were so far behind that, laughing, they trotted their horses over the finish line in perfect indolent unison, honest triers who were there only for sociability's sake.