So one night, when the rain was beating on the widow’s repaired thatch and the Colonel was sitting on the rope bed declaring that his fever was abating, Sharpe asked McCandless how a man became an officer in Britain’s army.
“I mean I know it can be done, sir,” he said awkwardly, ‘because we had a Mister Devlin back in England and he came up from the ranks. He’d been a shepherd’s boy on the dales before he took the shilling, but he was Lieutenant Devlin when I knew him.”
And was most likely to die as an old and embittered Lieutenant Devlin, McCandless thought, but he did not say as much. Instead he paused before saying anything. He was even tempted to evade the question altogether by pretending that his fever had suddenly taken a turn for the worse for he understood only too well what lay behind Sharpe’s question. Most officers would have mocked the ambition, but Hector McCandless was not a mocker. But he also knew that for a man to aspire to rise from the ranks to the officers’ mess was to risk two disappointments: the disappointments of both failure and success. The most likely outcome was failure, for such promotions were as scarce as hens’ teeth, but a few men did make the leap and their success inevitably led to unhappiness. They lacked the education of the other officers, they lacked their manners and they lacked their confidence.
They were generally disdained by the other officers, and set to work as quartermasters in the belief that they could not be trusted to” lead men in battle. And there was even some truth to that belief, for the men themselves did not like their officers to have come from the ranks, but McCandless decided Sharpe knew all that for himself and so he spared him the need to listen to it all over again.
“There are two ways, Sharpe,” McCandless said.
“First you can buy a commission. The rank of ensign will cost you four hundred pounds, but you’ll need another hundred and fifty to equip yourself, and even that will only buy a barely adequate horse, a four-guinea sword and a serviceable uniform, and you’ll still need a private income to cover your mess bills. An ensign earns close to ninety-five pounds a year, but the army stops some of that for expenses and more for the income tax. Have you heard of that new tax, Sharpe?”
“No, sir.”
“A pernicious thing. Taking from a man what he has honestly earned!
It’s thievery, Sharpe, disguised as government.” The Colonel scowled.
“So an ensign is lucky to see seventy pounds out of his salary, and even if he lives frugal that won’t cover his mess bills. Most regiments charge an officer two shillings for dinner every day, a shilling for wine, though of course you could go without wine well enough and water’s free, but there’s sixpence a day for the mess servant, another sixpence for breakfast and sixpence for washing and mending. You can’t live as an officer without at least a hundred pounds a year on top of your salary. Have you got the money?”
“No, sir,” Sharpe lied. In truth he had enough jewels sewn into his red coat to buy himself a majority, but he did not want McCandless to know that.
“Good,” McCandless said, ‘because that isn’t the best way. Most regiments won’t look at a man buying himself out of the ranks. Why should they? They’ve got plenty of young hopefuls coming from the shires with their parents’ cash hot in their purses, so the last thing they need is some half-educated ranker who can’t meet his mess bills. I’m not saying it’s impossible. Any regiment posted to the West Indies will sell you an ensign’s post cheap, but that’s because they can’t get anyone else on account of the yellow fever. A posting to the West Indies is a death sentence. But if a man wants to get into anything other than a West Indies-bound regiment, Sharpe, then he must hope for the second route.
He must be a sergeant and he must be able to read and write, but there’s a third requirement too. The fellow must perform a quite impossibly gallant act. Leading a Forlorn Hope will do the trick, but any act, so long as it’s suicidal, will serve, though of course he must do it under the General’s eye or else it’s all a waste of time.”