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Only two days after he’d left Pat broken on the cobbles behind the beershop, Sharpe was walking the streets for a living, but at least now it was the better streets he walked, and if it all reminded him of the days when he was sent to the West End to steal - and the rest - then so it should, but now it was his choice and it wouldn’t last forever.
He’d accepted Sally’s offer of a room for a few nights, and was finding it easier than he’d feared to stay away from the drink, but he needed food, surprising amounts of food now the drink wasn’t filling him up and dulling his senses, and he wouldn’t let Sal pay for that. He’d fed himself by his own efforts when he was 9, he could do it now, the world hadn’t changed that much.
And in truth he still enjoyed it.
He knew he was lucky that his looks and his rank had given him a certain style and bearing which bought him respect, and so he was able to choose his marks carefully, saving his inviting sidelong glances for men who were well fed, soft and well dressed. These were respectable men up from the country on business - his business, though no doubt they claimed otherwise to their wives - who would value his company and what came at the end of it, and be grateful. Men who were slightly nervous of his scarred face, who would allow him to set the rules and would not seek to control him. Occasionally in his wanderings he would see other ex-officers who he suspected were about the same business as himself, but those he avoided. Nobody around here knew who he was, and he wanted to keep it that way. Those few who might recognise him now he was so much older were mainly retired, rotting quietly on their country estates.
Sometimes the turn of a head, the quirk of a mouth, would remind him of Pat and he would freeze, but he made sure to keep to the better areas, where Pat in his bitterness would not go, believing himself unwelcome.
But more than anything, this life gave him a sense of coming home. Not to a place - the West End wasn’t home and he was never going back to the rookery - but to himself. To the person he had been before he met Gisela, before he met Lucille, Jane, even Teresa. Before he met Recruiting Sergeant Hakeswill and spent all those years fighting the King’s enemies; doing it exceedingly well, but in the process becoming “Colonel Sharpe”, the confident and effective but ultimately lonely man who had belonged nowhere.
Now “Colonel Sharpe” was an attitude, a disguise he wore along with a false name to get himself into the places that served the men he was after, a comfortable blanket that kept him safe from prying eyes. No-one would ever imagine that the quiet, slightly intimidating man who faced the wall for strangers two or three times a night was a war hero, and the slightly richer men who took him back to their private rooms at the end of an evening thought he was just an over-aged Captain who hadn’t wanted the tedium of the peacetime army.
Not that he wasted much time talking to them. His marks were terrified of anyone finding out what they really did when they came to London and so he only had to hint at enjoying a meal together for them to hustle him through a back door into their lodgings, and he came to know the houses they used as well as he knew Sal’s beershop. Once in the room they would pour sherry with slightly shaking hands, which he would pretend to sip at before moving closer, meeting their eyes with a knowing smile while they fussed with their hair, their fob, their cravat, then he would shift his gaze to the mouth, focussing on plump, pale lips as he took another step forward, then when the lips finally parted to show the moistening tongue soft and pink he would take charge, thrusting his tongue between the anxious lips, sealing their mouth with his own while one hand was already working at their breeches until he was sure they were ready and then he’d allow them to explore his own hardness, basking in the joy and relief on their faces until it was time for him to turn away and position himself on the bed for their pleasure, and sometimes his groans of wanting were real and sometimes they weren’t but they were always muted, because although everyone knew what went on in these houses there was no need to flaunt it and risk bringing the law down on their heads.
Some of the men whose rooms he visited wanted him to fuck them instead, and he charged a lot more for that, but mainly he was content for the time being to be passive, to receive their caresses and their words of wonder and their panting exultation as they emptied their seed and their longing into his body. Different seed every night but always the same longing - someone to touch; someone to spend time with, breathless and trembling with anticipation.
Someone, however briefly, to love.
He’d told himself he’d stop doing this once his next pension payment arrived, but as long as he managed to keep from Sally what he was doing - she thought he was renewing acquaintance with old friends while trying to decide what to do with his life - he thought he might carry on, maybe perhaps just once a week or so. It stopped him from being lonely, and that stopped him from wanting to drink.
After just a few days of Sharpe’s new life he was able to start paying Sally for the room as well as the food, and by the time the month was out she trusted him enough to allow him back in the taproom, where four nights a week he made himself useful keeping order and bringing up the new barrels.
And then the letter came.
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Richard,
My brother is writing this for me while my arm gets he knows about us and he knows what I did.
If I had my life to live again I would be starting this letter with my dearest Richard, my love, my friend, my hope. My life, my everything. But you’re not mine any more, and perhaps you never were.
I hurt you, I know that. I hurt you so badly and if I could take that back, do things differently, beleve me my l I would.
Looking back, it all started to go wrong that very first day. I was so excited to see you, to start our new life together, but I’d never been so scared in all my life, not even in India when I thought you were dead. We’d never talked about what our life together was going to be like, even whether we would ever, you know. Well, we did, of course, and to start with it was beautiful, so beautiful. Like you. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I love you, Richard, and I can hear you saying “You’ve a bloody funny way of showing it, then” and you’re right. Of course, you’re right. That day, you got off that coach looking so confident, so smart and at ease, and I felt I couldn’t ever be good enough for you, and then, well, I won’t mention the bank fellow again, we had that argument didn’t we.
I think I was disappointed about that, and I felt so innadd unworthy to be your, whatever I was supposed to be. There was me, just an old retired sergeant, and there was you, travelling all the way from Horton Wa in the company of one of the greatest actors of our age, and instead of introducing me to him you just and I wanted to suggest we go to the play but I thought you’d think I was getting above myself, and you wouldn’t enjoy it anyway, so I never dared say it.
So many things I wish I’d said, and so many I wish I hadn’t. There are no excuses for how I treated you, none at all. You were you are so precious to me, I think I was so scared of losing you that I tried to keep you by my side so you wouldn’t go off and find someone better than me. My brother says Da did the same, when we were small he would but that’s no excuse.
I’ve given up the drink. I always envied how you didn’t seem to need it, you’re so much stronger than me that way.
I’ll end there, you probably stopped reading and tore this up long ago, so I’ll just say again, I got everything so very badly wrong and I’ll understand if you never want to hear from me again, but Richard - I love you. I will always love you, and I would like nothing better than to see you again one day and try to put right the awful wrongs I did to you.
Your Pat, always
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Pat
I got your letter. You can write again if you want.
Richard
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Patrick Harper,
Once a week is often enough to write, please leave Richard alone. I don’t think you have any idea of the harm you’ve done to that poor man. He almost drank himself to death during the last few months with you. He wouldn’t want me to tell you that, but I think you should know and realise what you did. I’ve never known a stronger man but you nearly killed him.
He says he doesn’t want to see you yet, and nor do I.
Sally Philips (Mrs)
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Pat
I’m putting this in a letter because I know if I get in a room with you I won’t be able to say it.
You saved my life so many times. So many times. I really, truly, would be dead without you, and I owe you so much for that. But you broke me and you nearly killed me. I’m not telling you how, because I was stupid and I’m ashamed, but you did, you need to know that before we meet, if we ever do.
Not yet though, I don't want to see you yet.
Richard.
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