Send Me Safely Back Again by Adrian Goldsworthy

melancholy. Hanley did not think that the general had drunk enough for this to be the brandy talking.
    ‘I should be dead,’ said Lasalle. ‘So many times I should be dead. A man should not live as I live and survive so long.’
    ‘A hussar who isn’t dead by thirty is a
jean-foutre
,’ said the captain in a tone that suggested a quote. Seeing Hanley’s puzzlement, he added, ‘A nothing, a scoundrel, a pile of horse dung, but worse than all of those.’
    Lasalle drew deeply on his immense pipe. ‘Yes, I said that, and have tried to live up to it.’
    ‘I am twenty-nine.’ The captain’s words were solemn.
    Lasalle blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘And I shall be thirty-four come summer. My luck should already have run out.’
    ‘A man makes his own luck,’ suggested Hanley, his mind too clouded to come up with anything original. In truth he was finding the sombre tone deeply oppressive. Penniless, he was now a prisoner too, cut off from his friends and facing whatmight be years of captivity. Then there was the strange purpose of Espinosa. He drank from his refilled brandy glass.
    They were sitting in silence when the ADC returned.
    ‘You need to learn patience, my boy,’ said the general with just a hint of his earlier liveliness.
    ‘I knew I shouldn’t have left,’ muttered Robert under his breath so that Hanley barely caught the words. ‘Go with her, Englishmen,’ he said loudly. ‘You may disappoint after a Frenchman, but she knows her business. Take him,
cherie
.’ His hand darted back and pinched the blonde again. She yelped, hissed a string of Spanish, French and English oaths at him, but then dutifully put her arm around Hanley’s shoulder and began to lift him. He stood unsteadily. As they climbed slowly up the stairs, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw the ADC with the landlord, supervising a couple of the inn’s staff who were hanging a big mirror back up on the wall.
    ‘General!’ shouted the ADC. ‘You must show us again!’ The officers bellowed their approval.
    Lasalle’s face changed, the desire to entertain his officers wrenching him from his own thoughts. ‘Gaston, my pistols,’ he called, and turned to find his orderly holding the weapons ready. ‘Robert, set up the glasses.’
    Hanley stopped the girl, and made her wait. One of her hands began to smooth his chest in a way that was soon taking more and more of his attention, but he was still curious to see what was about to happen.
    Empty glasses were lined up on a bench lifted on top of one of the tables. Lasalle stood with his back to them at the far end of the room, looking into the mirror. He raised a pistol in his left hand and then rested the barrel pointing back over his shoulder and took aim.
    The bang resounded through the room as the pistol sparked and the first glass shattered into fragments.
    The officers cheered, and the general was handed his second pistol.
    ‘He’s a mad ’un,’ said the girl, and Hanley was no longer capable of puzzling that she spoke English.
    They walked on up the stairs and came to a door that lay ajar. Another shot rang out and there were more cheers. Hanley’s body now demanded that he give attention to the girl and he began a clumsy fumble.
    ‘Wait a minute, Mr Hanley,’ she said. ‘We’re nearly there.’
    They went into the room, and he sank down on to the bed. His energy was fading, but he grabbed the blonde around the waist and tried to wrestle her down.
    She slipped from his grasp and took a glass from the table. ‘Here, have this. It’ll do you good.’ He did as he was told. It tasted bitter, and then he flung the glass down and pulled the girl on top of him in spite of a squeal of protest.
    In moments he was asleep, snoring loudly, and one arm flopped out of the bed on to the floor. The blonde disentangled herself, pulled at her dress to cover her bosom once again and refastened the buttons his eager hands had undone. She got up and stared down at him for a while, a