by Peter Rimmer
“What is it, Grandma?” asked Genevieve.
“However terrible life may seem at the moment there is always something in the future that will make you smile. Try and remember that, my child. I have felt your pain. Tried to take away some of it. In the end, there is always something to smile about.”
“Do you think Lucinda will marry Harry Brigandshaw?”
“No, but I’m not really sure.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think he loves her. Likes her, yes. Good friends. But none of the power of love.”
Genevieve, her granddaughter, burst into tears and ran out of the room where they had been sitting around the fire.
“You’re an old fool, Nettie! An old fool.”
She would ask Doctor Reichwald, who was now Doctor Smithers, to give Genevieve something to make her feel better, if there was such a thing. Then she stoked the fire with a log of wood and used the poker to stir the embers. The flames came up again and warmed her, so she fell asleep in the old armchair.
When she woke her daughter was offering her a glass of sherry. Then the room filled up with her family and she smiled. Penelope put the black-eyed curly-headed heir to the barony in her lap and she smiled again. In the end, he would be what they wanted him to be whatever colour his eyes. Lord St Clair, Eighteenth Baron St Clair of Purbeck.
They had given Glen Hamilton a room on the third floor down an old, dark corridor with pictures on the walls too dark to see. The room had no bathroom attached, and when he asked the doddering upstairs maid where he could find one, she pointed to the side table with a large enamel basin and in it a large jug of cold water. On a rail to the left of the wooden stand was a towel. A metal dish held a cake of soap. He had been in England long enough to know that the bathroom to them was a place for a bath. Usually, the toilet was in a separate small room with a tiny window. He asked where he could find the toilet. Between the maid’s broad Dorset accent and his American, they were largely speaking a foreign language to each other. He asked again. Very slowly. The old woman pointed under the bed, which seemed unlikely. He again looked bewildered. With pain written all over her face, the old woman bent down by half leaning herself on the big, four-poster bed. The curtains were drawn. The woman triumphantly hoicked a huge potty from its hiding place. He had not seen one since he was a child and then it was much smaller.
“Potty,” she had said and left the room leaving him gazing at the thick enamel chamber pot with the big curly handle. On one side, though he did not know it, was emblazoned the St Clair coat of arms.
When he looked up at the tall ceiling there were cobwebs in the corners. The air was stale and despite the bitter cold, he opened the windows onto the bleak winter afternoon. Most of the big trees were leafless. It was drizzling. One of the trees almost touched the bedroom window. When he put his hand inside the bedcovers it was warm. Someone had aired the bedding in a room with a fire. Then he saw the bedroom fireplace freshly laid. Despite the warm bedclothes and the fire ready for a match, the whole house gave him the creeps. He was sure it must be haunted. He would not be the first or last journalist to put himself in harm’s way while pursuing a good story. More than anything else, Glen Hamilton was scared of ghosts.
The next day was Christmas Eve when he found himself alone with Lucinda. She was aloof, ice-cold, but more attractive to him than any hot-blooded, full-busted Southerner. He was used to women reacting to him favourably; they met each other’s eye and understood what they were about. Sometimes he followed up with the silent look. With all the travel and cynicism of a journalist, he had never married. Only when he could not have a woman did the idea of marriage enter his head. He had a strange thought that any woman who rejected him would reject the advances of other men. The idea of a faithless wife was an anathema. The fact that he himself played around, and would always do so for as long as women found him attractive, was to Glen Hamilton the male privilege of life. The more Lucinda froze in his presence, the more he wanted her. And when they were at last alone he smiled his sweetest smile and asked her to take him for a walk in the garden. The trees were still dripping water but the rain had stopped.
The reason Lucinda agreed to walk out alone with the American had nothing to do with the bright eyes of Glen Hamilton. She wanted to teach Harry a lesson. Get his attention. Make him jealous. They had not resumed their love affair. Harry always seemed to be somewhere else in his mind, staring, always staring into the distance of the past.
“What’s the matter, Harry?”
“You don’t want to know, Cinda. That burden is mine. I’m sorry. Not very good company. Please excuse me. I’m going to borrow Robert’s horse and go for a ride.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
“Not where I’m going. I have to be alone to think. Please, Cinda, leave me alone.”
“I will, Harry Brigandshaw, I will.”
“And if the American wants to know about Mervyn Braithwaite, don’t tell him.”
Why the American should want to know about Mervyn Braithwaite she had no idea. A newspaper at Purbeck Manor was a rare intrusion. After what Harry told her about his CO and the murder of Sara Wentworth, she presumed the colonel had been committed to an asylum. She had not been told of his reported death. She now even wondered if Mervyn Braithwaite had not been right. That Harry and Sara were lovers. Why Harry was so peculiar.
When Glen Hamilton had been rebuffed and firmly put in his place they had walked over a mile along the bank of the river. She had waved at Mrs Pringle and called out Happy Christmas. When the American gave up his amorous quest and asked her about the murder she told him everything she knew. Including the contest for Sara Wentworth between Harry Brigandshaw and Mervyn Braithwaite… Harry had made her bitchy, which was not normally part of her nature. She was hurt. When she got back from the walk and after again fending off the boorish American, she went up to her room and had a good cry.
It was going to be the biggest story of his life. A certain Pulitzer Prize winner. Syndicated all over the world. The New York and Washington newspapers would ask him to name his price. Time magazine would ask him to contribute. From what he gathered from a gullible Lucinda, Braithwaite had tried to murder Harry Brigandshaw by hanging him out to dry. As a novice pilot, by using their connection at Oxford University to post him to 33 Squadron, Fishy tried to get Harry killed and out of the way of his fiancée who had sent back his engagement ring. The great British air ace was a bloody psychopath. No wonder he enjoyed killing Germans and yelling at their deaths. The last pass Glen made at Lucinda had been to disguise his real purpose. Upstairs in his room, he lit the fire and settled down to write the most important article of his life. All this British upper-class nonsense he was going to break into pieces. He hated the upper classes. He hated the people who had lived on the same land for nearly a thousand years. He hated their polite snobbery that allowed him into their home, and if the Lord of the Manor’s daughter wanted to reject him, what else could an American expect? Those so-called aristocrats were the same as everyone else and he was going to show the world. As Matt Vogel had once said in a state of mild intoxication when they were talking about the class system, ‘every man looks the same under a bus’. The fact that Matt was referring to Americans who had made more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes had gone right over Glen Hamilton’s head.
Having finished the best writing he had done in his life on the table that first held the bowl and the vast jug of cold water, he brought the one easy chair up to the fire and planned what he was going to do next. He was impatient to get away, and if the following day had not been Christmas, he would have made an excuse and bolted for the railway station. Even if he had to walk all the way to Corfe Castle. His mother stopped him in his head. ‘Once you accept an invitation you never break it when something better comes along. However tempting. You hear, Glen Hamilton, or I’ll box your ears again and get your father to give you a good thrashing.’ He still feared a tongue-lashing from his mo
ther. So, like a good boy, he put away his papers, put the fireguard in front of the fire, and went downstairs. What he was going to do when he got back to London was find out where the British would have put such a high-profile maniac. Then he was going to get a photograph of the dead Colonel Braithwaite very much alive. And in all the hullabaloo that would break out from his revelations, he would have a follow-up article, with him interviewing the once-dead hero. When he met Granny Forrester at the bottom of the never-ending staircase he was metaphorically hugging himself with excitement.
“Oh, Mr Hamilton. How nice to see you. You will join us for a glass of sherry in the sitting room? I was going to send Harry to find you. How was your walk with Lucinda? Such a nice girl but of course losing her fiancé was a tragedy. Thank goodness Harry is out of the battle at last. They have known each other for ten years and I think she might go out to Africa with him when the war is over.”
“He’s going to marry her?” said Glen, taken by surprise.
“I don’t know, but I hope so. Harry is very shaken by his experiences in the war but once he goes home he’ll be his old self… Now there is just something else I want to talk to you about. You’re a journalist, so you’re a good wordsmith, and we want your valued opinion. They say a writer can recognise a good writer after reading a few pages so it won’t be so much of an imposition. You see, my grandson Robert, who lost a foot in the war, wants to write historical novels, and none of us here have the ability to judge his work properly. Family are always the last to recognise genius in one of their own. Come and meet Robert, Mr Hamilton, and please, as a special favour to an old woman, ask to read his book.”
“It will be my pleasure, ma’am.” He was so full of his own article, he would have kissed a horse’s arse. Of course, he thought it would be a load of rubbish but that didn’t matter since he had nothing to do for another full day.
He had wondered why they had invited him down for Christmas. And now he knew… When he went in to join the family he was having a good chuckle with himself. No one ever did anything in this life without a selfish motive. Not even the British aristocrats.
When standing still in long trousers, the new wooden foot filled Robert St Clair’s right shoe like any flesh and blood foot and no one could see he was crippled. It was a tradition in the family for some reason that the young in the family drank a glass of sherry standing up. They had all gathered for Christmas Eve. The big Christmas tree that normally stood in the Great Hall had been cut down to a manageable size. England was still at war, presents were difficult to find, and everyone had stopped giving them since 1914, using the war as an excuse. They were all there except Barnaby, Frederick, and Robert’s right foot, if you only included the flesh and blood family. Young Richard had been put to bed upstairs. If the heir to the house cried, Robert knew that was just too bad as no one would hear. He was in a tough locking cot and the only harm he could do to himself was to be on his face and suffocate. Even though the cot was older than anyone knew, so far as the folklore of the family went, no harm had come to anyone sleeping in it. Every now and then a female member of the family would take a look. In the good old days when the family was rich, a nurse slept in the room with the children, but there wasn’t any money for a nurse. Even with Penelope’s large personal fortune, she was glad to let her son bellow his lungs out unheard. Pampered children, she told anyone who would listen, grew up with too many vices. Children should be seen and not heard. Robert rather thought there was something to be said for the sentiment. Given the chance, little children were the worst little extortionists in the world, especially when they played sick.
Robert had to smile. Penelope was playing up to the American, talking about India, and hinting her father was very rich. He even heard her mention to the American her son would one day be Lord St Clair. Someone must have told her Americans, living in their republic which forbade such things, were susceptible to titles. The girl was looking for a new husband, which was probably not all bad. The unheard screamer upstairs needed a father in his life. And with so many British killed, an American was probably the next best thing. They spoke English and were not so far away as the Australians. And there were not enough Rhodesians. Robert smiled to himself.
His father had read the first paragraph of the family saga and had seemed surprised Robert could write at all.
“Jolly good, Robert. Jolly good. Keep it up.”
“But I finished the book, Father. I’d like your opinion.”
“If the rest is as good as the first paragraph, I’m sure it is very good.”
“Won’t you read it, Father?” He was pleading.
“Don’t be silly, Robert. I haven’t read a book since I was at school. If it were not for the farmers’ weekly newsletter and the occasional newspaper, I’d have likely forgotten to read by now. Do you know they made me read the whole of Vanity Fair at school? And that was punishment enough. I don’t know how people sit down and read a book, let alone write one. You must be very clever, Robert. Don’t know how an old clod like me had a son like you. Jolly good. Jolly good.”
His mother had not even read the first paragraph, saying she had broken her reading glasses. Merlin changed the subject of writing so adroitly, Robert found himself off at a tangent without knowing what had happened. Lucinda was too full of her dead fiancé, and Harry Brigandshaw, to want to read. Annabel’s husband, fellow artist, professional painter, the sergeant with the Military Medal, had tried to read but the damage done to his lungs by the mustard gas had welled up into convulsive coughing, and Robert had had to rescue his manuscript from the flying remains coming out of his brother-in-law’s lungs.
No one in the family wanted to touch the thing and it made him hate the lot of them. It was probably a load of junk but at least someone could give it a read. Had he worked so hard to just make a fool of himself?
Robert went off to stand by the fire and sulk. He was a failure. All his life had been a failure. He couldn’t even get himself properly killed like the rest of them.
Everyone except Robert knew what was going on. Penelope, on cue, had engaged the American in a light flirtation. She owed the St Clairs an explanation, but often, when explanations are needed, the explanation did more harm than good. She knew the dates as well as they did. Frederick’s last, wonderful leave and the miraculous birth of her son. However many fingers they used, and whatever the medical possibilities of a very late birth, the only father Richard could possibly have was Frederick St Clair. Despite the distraction, despite the opportunity, and the knowledge the boy she was dancing with would probably die within a month, Penelope had never been unfaithful to her husband. And knowing the racial snobbery of the English, she had not dared explain the dark, curly hair and the coal-black eyes of her son sleeping upstairs. Her grandmother’s mother was an Indian, with more ancient blue blood in her veins than all the St Clairs from the time of William the Conqueror. But that explanation which should not have had to be given as an excuse would have led their minds in a host of new directions. Instead of protesting too much as had been done in Shakespeare, she kept quiet. She knew that was all that mattered. So when the family wanted her help with Robert’s book, she gave them all a good look at the temptress they thought she was. When she took Glen Hamilton across the room to the fire and Robert standing alone she had mixed feelings. She was being made part of the family but would her action make them think young Richard upstairs was even more of a bastard? She could only hope that when the boy grew up, the genes of his father’s families would shout out loud and clear. That what he did in life would squash any bad rumours from the time of his birth.
“Why don’t you tell Mr Hamilton about your book, Robert? Mr Hamilton is one of the most famous journalists in America.”
Knowing flattery always worked on a man, she left them shaking hands at the fire to go up into the dark, cold house of Christmas Eve to check on her son.
“Maybe not yet,” she heard the American say and wondered once again at the conceit
of some men. She was gone from the room when Glen turned round.
Merlin from the other side of the room watched with approval. He had started the ball rolling, as he liked to say when he was home on his last leave and had sneaked day after day into Robert’s study to read the book without his brother knowing. During Merlin’s brief leave, Robert was constantly being plucked away to strange places by the rest of the family. When he reported the book was astonishingly good, but who was he to judge as a family member, he had been tasked with finding a suitable reader. A whole chapter had been temporarily removed from the manuscript for Robert’s parents to read. The problem they all came to was bias. Was the family biased? The writer was family. The story was family. Would they be making fools of themselves, and give Robert the worst let-down of his life, and that included losing his foot? Though they all appeared so disinterested in Robert’s writing, they were all excited. And they knew how much it meant to Robert. So when Robert left the fire and the room to go and get his manuscript for the American they all held their collective breaths. The one thing Merlin had found out for certain about Glen Hamilton was his reputation as a journalist. Though Glen Hamilton was unaware of it, his fellow journalists held him in the highest esteem as a writer and had been glad to recommend him to Merlin as the man to read the St Clair manuscript.
