by Peter Rimmer
It had taken a year for Jack to gain control of Great-Grandfather Merryweather’s money, all of it, as Jack was the sole heir. The Merryweathers were profuse with money and scant with progeny.
Jack had been sent to St Paul’s, a secondary public school, as it was close to 27 Baker Street, and the school took day boys, so Jack’s mother would only have to be parted from her son during the day. His mother taking him to school in the family hansom in the morning and picking him up the same way in the afternoon, Jack was the laughing stock of the school to the day he left at the age of seventeen. Being a man of mild disposition he had never minded his mother’s whim. He rather thought the drives together to and from school were the only times his mother was happy. Jack’s father was a drunk.
Racking his brain for the umpteenth time, Jack tried to think of something to do with the rest of his life and came up empty. When a man was richer than most of his friends put together, ideas of working for a living were pointless.
A shady character with a hat pulled down over his eyes came into intermittent view down the dark road, appearing and disappearing as he approached and left the lamp posts. For the first time all day, Jack’s boredom vanished. Gripping the knob of his cane, and the release button ready to flip off the casing to his sword, he watched the man coming straight at him, pace by steady pace, the spluttering lamps unable to reveal his face. The man wore a coat with the buttons open in the front.
‘If the man has a gun, I’m done,’ Jack told himself. Adrenaline pumped into his brain. The palms of his hands began to sweat. The man was almost upon him.
“Evening, Jack. Bloody awful opera. Bloody soprano sounded as if she was in pain. You need a coat at this time of year. Goodnight.”
Jack, speechless, looked at the receding back of his friend, Ernest, and then an idea began to formulate.
Albert Pringle had been waiting up for his gentleman as he had done every night for two years. The rest of the servants had gone to bed in the three-storey house. Sometimes his gentleman went straight up to bed.
Albert waited in the downstairs maid’s sitting room and watched the board. The flap dropped for the main sitting room and Albert picked up the round, silver tray with the single cut glass, the decanter of whisky and the tall syphon of soda. With the tray firmly balanced on the palm of his right hand, he prepared to be of service.
Upstairs the counterpane had been removed from the gentleman’s bed, a corner of the sheets and blankets layered back, the carafe of water sat next to the tall glass, the red satin dressing gown laid at the foot of the bed with the slippers on the floor beneath, and the window left open exactly three inches: the gentleman had a fetish for fresh air, even in the middle of winter.
Opening the sitting room door with his left hand, Albert was confronted by a frown, an opera coat thrown on the settee and the cane propped next to the fire.
“You are still wearing your top hat, sir.”
“So I am, Pringle. Sit down.”
“I’d rather stand, sir.”
“We are going to Africa, Pringle.”
“Why, sir?”
“To shoot tigers.”
“The tigers, I rather think, sir, are in India. In Africa they have lions.”
“I believe there is a Colonial Shipping liner leaving for Cape Town two weeks on Thursday. I thought I was going to be attacked and had my finger on the button. Attacker turned out to be Ernest Gilchrist. Frightfully nice chap. Just pack a good trunk. We’ll buy all the guns in Cape Town. They’ll know all about that sort of thing.”
“Have you ever fired a gun, sir?”
“No. But it’s very simple. You point the gun and pull the trigger. Elephants are as big as haystacks.”
“But they move. Haystacks stay where they are before and after the shot… If you don’t mind the impertinence of my asking, have you been drinking, sir?”
“Opera. Bloody awful. Gilchrist agreed. I rather think I had a small whisky at the club.”
“May I go home to see my mother before we leave?”
“Yes, of course. You can get some shooting practice. Ask one of the St Clairs. I’ll give you a note.”
“I’ve known them all my life. I once had occasion to use Mister Robert’s twelve-bore. Nearly knocked me over backwards. You have to keep the butt firmly into the shoulder if you do not wish to sustain an injury.”
“Good. You’re an expert. I can rely on you, Albert. Tomorrow you shall go and book me a large cabin on the SS King Emperor.”
For a professional name Lily White was something of a misnomer, and by the time she reached thirty, only her old mother knew she was born Lily Ramsbottom, south of Wigan. She had been an only child and the cause of her mother’s dishonour. Like other people in life, she had no knowledge of her father, and like them, she kept the fact to herself.
With a face like an angel and large breasts, she had set out for London when she was seventeen years old to leave her sordid past and the Ramsbottom name behind. She had one intention in her life: she was going to trade her body for a husband above her class who was rich.
Her only way into the kingdom of wealth was through the theatre. Many a duke had married an actress. Many a man of high position could trace his mother back to the West End stage, and very few, when they did this, wished to trace their mothers further. Somehow the myth and fantasy of the stage bore a new life and obliterated the past… For Lily, all would have been well if she could act, dance or sing.
By the time she was eighteen, her sights had sunk from dukes and earls to any man who would marry her. If she could have suffered dirty old men she might have had a chance. By nineteen she was a young dandy’s mistress, a kept woman, a courtesan. By twenty she had changed hands twice. By the time her large breasts caught the eye of Jack Merryweather she had lost all count of the gentlemen who had passed through her life, some kind, some not so kind. Regularly she sent money to her mother with fictitious descriptions of her life on the stage. The rest she saved and invested in three per cent Consols, money as safe as the Bank of England. If she was not going to marry wealth she was going to make it herself, shilling by shilling. Hard work whatever the kind, she told herself, was always the best way in the end.
Jack came round to the small flat he rented for Lily at eleven o’clock in the morning.
Earlier, Albert Pringle had drawn his bath with the help of the staff carrying buckets of hot water up the stairs to Jack’s bathroom where he had soaked for half an hour, intermittently calling for more hot water. Often the idea he took to bed, like quite a few young women, was not as good the next morning as it had been the night before. The great safari, to his great surprise, was alive and well in the morning.
After a good breakfast, he had set off to visit Lily and tell her of his good news.
“Can I come with you, Jack?”
“Don’t be silly, Lily. Women don’t go on safari. Your beautiful body would turn a nasty brown. Now, aren’t you glad for me? I’ve at least found something to do. We sail for Cape Town two weeks on Thursday.”
“You said I wasn’t going.” Lily tried her best sulk.
“Pringle and I.”
“Can’t I go as far as Cape Town?”
“And what are you going to do there?”
“Wait for you, Jack,” she said in a small voice, shifting her blouse to emphasise her bust.
“We wouldn’t be able to travel as husband and wife.”
“Oh, Jack. You are so kind. Even a very small cabin.”
When going to the colonies, Jack thought to himself in retrospect, it was better to take with you whatever you needed.
When he left to walk to his club for lunch, Lily smiled to herself. Men are so predictable. Maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for in the colonies. She began to hum a song she had once tried to sing in a music hall. As usual, she was out of tune.
Three slices of cold roast pork, a spoonful of apple sauce and a tossed green salad saw Jack through luncheon and into the reading room for h
is coffee and a read of the day’s newspapers. Lily was a nice person for his purpose, but like everyone else in his life, she always wanted something. He didn’t mind the money side of the matter, it was the reorganisation that made him wonder if it was all worthwhile. Jack knew as much as anyone that Lily was in it for the money, but that applied as much to his tailor. An allowance, a flat, if small, in the capital of the world, and the girl wanted to go to Cape Town. Why couldn’t people be satisfied with what they had, he asked himself, oblivious to the irony.
For half an hour he read the morning newspapers and then settled back in his leather armchair. There was nothing much in the papers, he decided, that hadn’t been, since the end of the Boer War. Content that the empire was stronger than at any time in its history, Jack Merryweather put his head back and fell fast asleep in his chair.
When he woke, the coffee was quite cold on the low round table where he had left the club’s newspapers. Looking at his fob watch on the end of its gold chain, for the life of him, he could think of nothing to do. He was the only member of the club in the room.
‘If you are bored with London you are bored with life’ ran through the back of his mind. He had heard it from someone, somewhere… Then he remembered what was in the back of his mind. He would have to send Pringle a second time to the offices of the shipping company for Lily’s ticket… If he had a dog he could take it for a walk in Green Park. He sometimes even wished he could be more like his father. At least when drunk a man doesn’t feel the slow passage of time; something he would never admit, not even to himself. He was going to miss the summer season, he thought briefly; racing at Epsom, cricket at Lord’s, tennis at Wimbledon. Then he thought of Lily. With a little piece of luck, she might like staying in Cape Town for the rest of her life. He wouldn’t mind. She was a nice girl. At least he would then have to spend time looking for another mistress. A young man had to have a mistress, of that much he was quite sure.
Then he got up and looked out of the window into Pall Mall. It wasn’t raining. Briefly, a bright sun shone on the wide street. He would go for a good walk in Green Park even if he didn’t have a dog. A constitutional walk would do him good. He would think of something to do after he had finished his walk in the park. He had seen every show in London so there was no point in thinking about that idea. Maybe he would meet someone new. He would not think of Africa in case he changed his mind.
The tall trees were mostly bare, the conifers looking old and tired of winter. Under one stark tree, where he was resting for a moment, Jack saw new buds of spring; some leaves, small, lime-green in colour, had broken from the sticky buds. Along the length of Piccadilly on its way into Hyde Park and towards Buckingham Palace, carriages, mostly closed against the chance of showers, were temporary homes to gentlewomen out of their townhouses to sample the sweet fresh air of spring.
One woman stood in the park alone, fifty feet from Jack, covered from high neck to the toes in leather boots, a black silk dress with long sleeves puffed at the wrists, a brown hat cocked front and back and feathered on one side, black ringlets falling past her ears, dark brown eyes burning, the power of stillness defying the movement in the park and on the road, a suffragette sign held aloft in black, gloved hands. Jack read the sign and smiled, the idea of women and parliament absurd to him. The black-clad lady with the burning eyes wanted the vote for women. Women, like Lily, who had never read a newspaper or made other than a personal decision in her life and never would.
‘Ah, lovely lady of the placard,’ he said to himself. ‘Leave the painful job of politics to wise old men who have read and understood the sad, blood-soaked history of man. Oh, sweet lady with the ringlets, don’t you understand? They are not interested in women, they are not interested in you. All they want is power.’
For ten minutes he watched the young woman. No one else even looked her way. Like Harry Brigandshaw, far away in Dorset, Jack Merryweather felt an inexplicable disquiet. When he looked back from his shiver the girl and placard had gone. He continued his walk, wishing he had a dog. Somewhere in his mind, he had read a poem about a brown-eyed girl with ringlets down her face. From right past the small orchestra on its stand playing Strauss, to the end of the park itself, he racked his brains.
“When I reach home I will write it myself.”
Then he smiled to himself and quickened his pace in the direction that would take him home. Writing poems was something else Jack never told anyone he was doing.
After half an hour of playing with words on a sheet of white paper, Jack gave up. What he wanted to do was evoke the burning brown eyes and the black ringlets set against the white, rose-tinged skin, the cheekbones reddened by the spring wind. He had forgotten all about the placard. Like everything else in his life, he was good to a point and then nothing else happened. For most of his life, Jack had been trying to find a talent. Someone had even said collecting stamps could be a talent, but after buying some blank stamp albums and a large box of mixed stamps that he was told by the stamp dealer might just contain a Penny Black, he lost all interest. Trying to sort them into countries had bored Jack to tears, and he would not have recognised a Penny Black if he had seen one. The albums and box full of stamps were still somewhere in the house.
He pulled the cord that would drop a flap in the box in the maid’s sitting room telling Pringle to bring up his tea. From down the stairs, he heard the knock on the front door. There was the sound of feet from his downstairs passage and the front door to 27 Baker Street creaked open. He would have to tell Pringle to again oil the hinges. A murmur of voices preceded loud footfalls on his stairs coming up towards his study.
“Jack, I need a drink. May I come in?”
“Come in, Ernest. I’ve just ordered some tea.”
“My dear chap, it’s six o’clock and long past drinking tea… What were you doing last night? For a moment I thought you were going to hit me with your cane.”
“I rather hoped you were going to shoot at me.”
“Whatever for? I would never do something like that.”
“I was bored and I didn’t recognise you, Ernest, until you said good evening. Fact was, you looked like a bit of a thug with your coat hanging open. Could easily have had a gun.”
“Come on, we’ll go to the Berkeley. The cab’s waiting for us so please hurry… Pringle, for goodness sake, take away that tea. It’s past six for heaven’s sake… You’re not sick are you, Jack?… You’d better put on your coat. I told you that last night. Pringle, be a good chap and get his hat and coat.”
“The shipping company was very accommodating,” said Albert Pringle diplomatically, the ticket for Miss Lily White propped against the silver teapot.
“For heaven’s sake put down the tea tray.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll get your hat and coat.”
“What shipping line?” asked Ernest Gilchrist. No one spoke. “What’s all this about a shipping line?”
“I’m going on safari. Now there’s an idea. Why don’t you come too?”
“I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life. You really do need a drink, Jack. We’ll ask Paterson to make us a cocktail.”
Deftly, Jack picked up from the tray the envelope with the ticket and locked it in the bottom drawer of his desk. Not wishing Ernest to see his poetry, he crumpled up the sheet of white paper and dropped it into the wastepaper basket under the desk.
The fire was burning in the large grate away from the windows. The cocktail lounge was small and private with comfortable sofas and coffee tables for the drinks. When Ernest sat down opposite Jack Merryweather across the low, round table his eyes strayed around the room.
“Now there’s some luck,” said Ernest. “There’s Sallie Barker with her mother. You mind if I go across, Jack?” The waiter had taken their order and Ernest went off to a nest of sofas and chairs behind Jack. The drinks came and Jack waited for Ernest.
“Do you mind if we join Mrs Barker and her daughter? Paterson, do me a big favour and move
the drinks to the other table and ask Mrs Barker what they are having to drink.”
Jack stood up and turned to follow the drinks. Then he stopped. It was the girl with the burning brown eyes and the black ringlets. She still wore the brown hat cocked at both ends with the feather on the one side. The placard was nowhere to be seen. The girl did not recognise him. She was perfect to look at. There was no doubt about that. Jack wondered why it was always when you were going somewhere else you meet someone special. And when Sallie Barker spoke she had a lovely voice.
Sallie Barker had read the contempt in Jack Merryweather’s eyes back in the park. Nothing was ever what it seemed to be. The only surprise was the rich man her mother had set her up to meet was the same man who had contemptuously stared at her in Green Park.
She was nineteen years old and the only asset left in the family that might be worth anything. She was being sold in a manner of speaking. The genteel called it finding a husband; not any husband, just a rich husband to whom she would belong for the rest of her life. She had only twice before stood in public with a ‘Votes for Women’ placard. Even though her mother was a staunch suffragette, Mrs Barker knew the value of a rich husband. The contradiction was clear to Sallie. She even understood why they wanted her, Sallie, to hold the placard and not one of the girls with eyeglasses. A girl unable to find a husband would be more likely to want to have the right to independence, a job, a means of supporting herself. A pretty girl was thought to get the message across better to the men as men mostly only took notice of pretty women.
Well, whatever they wanted, she would do their bidding. There wasn’t an option. She had no training, other than from Mrs Barker to be a good wife and mother.
When the man she had been set up to meet said he was going to Africa she was quite relieved. She didn’t like men who looked down their noses. The man was good-looking but had the personality of a wet dishcloth. He even sipped his drink. Poor Mother. Finding her a rich husband was not easy. And with Father dead and buried six months ago they needed the money. Soon the word would be out that Jim Barker had died bankrupt. Sallie’s mother had taken up with the suffragettes soon after his death. Before he died, everything looked very rich. After he died, very poor. The bank had owned the business and the house after they called up the personal surety. Barker and Sons (there weren’t any sons, but it looked better on the sign than plain Barker) had been viable when her father was alive. The wool trade was very personal, and the business died with him in the river. Her father had drowned himself. Her mother called it a terrible accident and concentrated on finding Sallie a rich husband. It was their only chance.
