The Brigandshaw Chronicles Box Set

by Peter Rimmer

  The mangled poppy fields grew neat white crosses, scored with the names of men. Row after row, field after field, all in neat straight lines. People started digging for unexploded ordnance. Cows in search of grass blew themselves up on the hidden mines and unexploded shells. Many of the crosses bore the names of men but not their bones in the rich earth beneath.

  And finally, as Glen was about to write his last article under the silent winter sky of France, he had a telephone call from his friend in New York.

  “Fifty pounds advance, Glen. Better than nothing. At least the book will get into print. Shall I write the author or will you?”

  “You write, Max. By now that family would cut my throat. Thanks a million.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Glen had never heard the name of the publisher. He was tired. Tired of war. Tired of people. But most of all he was tired of himself. And now, as a war correspondent, he was out of a job. At Calais, he took the ferry to Dover, with the intention of spending what was left of his money in London. Mike Vogel had given him a severance cheque and a letter of recommendation. Like so many at the end of war, he had no idea what he was going to do stateside. If only Wendy Wallop had known. Her rich American would arrive home flat broke. He was thirty-three years old and, having come to the end of his great writing career, he would have to go home to his mother and father, as financially naked as the day he came out of the womb.

  Then he thought to hell with it. Something always came up.

  On the ferry boat was a beaming Jack Merryweather making his last journey as a soldier. He was going home to marry Fay Wheels and see his daughter Mary. The idea of boredom had flown up into the sky. For their honeymoon, he was going to take his whole family to Africa, to Elephant Walk. Harry, Robert, Lucinda, and Merlin had booked him with them on the SS King Emperor. Harry and Lucinda were getting married for the second time in Harry’s Uncle Nat’s bush church in Rhodesia though without the bishop, but that did not seem to matter as the bishop, Nathanial Brigandshaw, who had once been a missionary in Rhodesia, had officiated at the first ceremony in the small church near Corfe Castle.

  “Now there you are, Glen,” said Jack. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Wonderful thing you did for Robert St Clair. The whole family owe you a big debt. A twenty thousand print run they say. A lot for a first novel. Robert’s dedicated the book to Granny Forrester and has looked all over the place for you. To thank you. It’s a new beginning for all of us. What are you going to do now the war’s over?”

  “Get drunk in London till my money runs out and then go home. There are a lot of correspondents looking for a job right now.”

  “Nonsense. You’ll come with us to Africa. We sail next week on the SS King Emperor.”

  “I can’t afford it, Jack. I’m near to broke.”

  “The Brigandshaws own the bloody ship. We’ll get you a return ticket. Where’s your adventure? All of us from HQ and Lucinda. When one door closes, another opens. All that sort of thing. My word, am I glad to see you, Glen Hamilton.”

  “I’m a manipulating bastard, Jack. You know that.”

  “So what? You kept your word. To us English, that is the most important thing of all.”

  3

  February 1919

  The British Army demobbed Barnaby St Clair in Cairo on the same day Jack Merryweather and Glen Hamilton disembarked at Dover. He had turned twenty-one three months earlier. The pale-skinned Englishman who had joined the army at the age of eighteen could have been mistaken for an Arab in the streets of Cairo, were it not for the piercing blue eyes and the well-cut linen suit with a Panama hat. The tailored suit and wide-brimmed hat were Barnaby’s gift to himself when he left the army. The years in the Arabian Desert, first with Colonel Lawrence and then with Allenby into Damascus, had scorched his skin and added three years to his age.

  Port Said at the Mediterranean entrance to the Suez Canal was full of ships, most of them on their way to the ports of Europe. Barnaby had one thing on his mind, and it all concerned Tina Pringle and the slithery wetness of her hands on his genitals. He was obsessed. What he wanted was a ship down the east coast of Africa with a call at the port of Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa. From there it was a day’s train journey to Johannesburg. He was going to surprise her.

  On the second day of his quest, he found a coaster and took the ship.

  Miss Pinforth watched the long thin bill of the sunbird penetrate the inner sanctum of the yellow canna and shuddered. She had turned sixty the previous week and had never been entered by a man. Storm clouds were boiling in the west but overhead passive white clouds patterned the blue sky over the north of Johannesburg. It would rain later, a long, ten-minute cloudburst of water that fed her garden and made it grow in lush profusion. The scents of many flowers mingled around her deck chair that sprawled comfortably under the canopy of a Brazilian pepper tree, planted by Albert Pringle soon after he had bought the house in Parktown Ridge. Her cottage had come later. Now, after three years’ love and care, her garden was a constant joy and revelation. Birds of all sizes and colours. The grey lourie with its distinctive ‘go away’ call, big with a proud crest. The tiny, lesser double collared sunbirds, brilliant metallic red, blue and green, that had woken her senses briefly. No one had looked at her body for a long time and not with any great interest even then. Now she was pale, grey and colourless, even her eyes that had never been much. The bird hovered at the mouth of a red canna, dipping deep for the nectar. She smiled, happy as always, and smiled again as her protégée, more than her pupil, walked down the steps from what they called in South Africa, the stoep. The girl was utterly beautiful, as perfect and colourful as the sunbird now deep in the mouth of the canna.

  The puppy fat had gone and the girl had grown. The luscious mouth prevailed with the luscious body, but more refined, and the strong burr of the Dorset accent had gone forever, lost in hours of elocution lessons. The spoken words were natural, unlike her brother Albert who would never quite be able to hide his humble birth.

  “Well, you’ve done it with Tina,” he’d said. “Not a trace. Doesn’t matter for me. I like to be reminded of where I come from every now and again. And I’m proud of the Pringles of Dorset, even if we come from a railway cottage and not a manor house. It’s what we are that counts, not what we appear to be. But that’s for men. Money and power. Women need good looks and the right manners to get anywhere. They are part of the male display. One day it may change but that is how it is for the moment. Silly but Sallie with all her brains and money is still not accepted in the male world of business, let alone their clubs. Thank you, Miss Pinforth. You have done the perfect job with my sister. She looks beautiful. She speaks well. She reads. But best of all she thinks for herself. Other than Sallie and Tina, women have a habit of repeating what menfolk tell them. Not one original thought… And please remember, the cottage is yours for the rest of your life. Do you know how much pleasure I get from looking down over your garden from my veranda? You have invited in every bird and insect from the whole Transvaal. When Tina marries, you must stay, I insist.”

  “You are kind but sometimes foolish. When my most beautiful bird flies away I will go away. To look for another young girl I can nurture. It is what I do. What makes me happy. They are my family, strung back over the years.”

  “Do any of them contact you?”

  “No. I forbid it. I want to always remember them young… And if life fails them I don’t want to hear about it. Rich husbands can turn from a catch to a catastrophe.”

  Smiling at the memory of their conversation, Miss Pinforth watched Tina Pringle walk down the last steps to the garden path, between the herbaceous borders, past her rose garden and across the small patch of lawn that grew under the pepper tree. The girl was bubbling with excitement.

  “Do you know there are going to be three hundred guests at my twenty-first? And every one of them has sent a written acceptance. I’m glad we waited until the war was over to have the party.
It’ll be so much more fun without that hanging over us.”

  “I’m so happy for you… Now all you have to do is pick yourself a husband.”

  “Do you think it’s as easy as that?”

  “I don’t know. I never tried.”

  “Why didn’t you marry, Miss Pinforth?”

  “For the very simple reason that nobody asked me. And it wasn’t for me to do the picking.”

  Now the war was over, the guilt returned for Albert Pringle. Three of his brothers had died. Safe in South Africa, he had made his fortune from the war. And as the young men came home, many of them broken in body, no one knew what horrors were churning inside of their minds. Quietly, he wondered how many human lives his shells had blown to pieces. The night they searched their consciences on that one was the night they first made love to each other. To comfort each other. To burn out the guilt.

  “I, Albert Pringle, do hereby ask Sallie Barker to be my wife,” he had said the next morning in her bed.

  “Don’t be silly, Albert. Just because we had a fuck doesn’t mean you have to marry me.”

  “Darling, I’ve never heard you use that word before.”

  “And I’ve never heard you use that one directed at me. But, we used to run a brothel, remember. Whatever we might have called the Mansion House, it was still a damn good whorehouse.”

  “Will this be the only time?”

  “I hope not. I’m not afraid anymore. It just goes to show what I’ve been missing. You’re one hell of a lover, Bert. One hell of a lover… Oh, and Benny Lightfoot is coming to dinner tonight. You’d better be here. Better leave Tina at home. He has a new girlfriend even younger than Tina. It’s such a true saying. There’s no fool like an old fool.”

  “He likes young girls and young girls like money. That’s not making a fool of himself. That’s getting lucky.” He was annoyed with Sallie changing the subject.

  Albert left through the back door, hopefully unseen. He had a meeting at nine o’clock. Sallie watched him wistfully from her bedroom window. She was thirty-one and tired. Tired of business. Tired of being a woman in business. Tired of sorting out everyone else’s problems.

  Tired of body, but strangely satisfied, she drew herself a bath and soaked in the warm water, trying to make her mind go blank. When there were too many things to think of, it was better to blank the mind and think of nothing. Men, she knew, in a similar pursuit, got drunk. Then she dressed for work and wondered what to say to Albert when they met in the office.

  Her mother was already at the breakfast table. Lily White took her breakfast in bed when she woke, which was rarely before ten o’clock in the morning. She said to Sallie that long sleep shortened her day, and as she had nothing much to do, that was an advantage. And that when she dreamed, in her sleep she was young and beautiful. More and more often she said she dreamed of Jack Merryweather.

  Mrs Barker’s eyes were snapping as Sallie sat down to her breakfast table. She drank down half of her glass of orange juice. Molly Hardcastle was in the kitchen and gave her a wink. ‘So everyone knows!’ she told herself wearily.

  “Did that man stay the night in your bedroom?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “He’s as common as dirt.”

  Sallie poured herself a cup of tea, which she drank without sugar. She was never going to be fat like Lily White, that much she had made up her mind.

  “Whores behave like that.” Her mother was high on the horse.

  Sallie looked long and steadily into her mother’s seething eyes. The epitome of righteous indignation glared back at her. She thought of bringing up cousin Flugelhorne and how he had raped her. She thought of bringing up how her mother had deserted her and disbelieved her story. She thought of telling her mother to her face that she was a selfish bitch and to get out of her house and life forever. She would even enjoy it for a few days after, getting all the bile and vitriol off her chest and out of her mind. But she didn’t, because none of it would have penetrated her mother’s thick skin. In her mother’s mind, her mother was always right. She would even righteously thrive on being thrown into the gutter by her rich daughter. But most of all, whatever happened, she would never change the fact that the woman waiting for an answer at her breakfast table was still her mother.

  “I hope you’re not going to marry him. Your father would never have approved.”

  The fact of needing approval from a man who had gone bankrupt and killed himself made Sallie even smile briefly.

  “No, Mother. I’m not going to marry Albert. We are just good friends.”

  “Then what was he doing in your bedroom? Think what the servants will say.”

  A snort came from the adjacent kitchen and Sallie had to look away from her mother. She had not been able to hide the flash of laughter in her eyes. She ate a piece of dry toast, drank the cup of tea, got up from the breakfast table without saying a word, and left the room. Then she drove herself to the office.

  Strangely, Albert greeted her as if nothing had happened and it made her annoyed.

  Barnaby St Clair knew perfectly well the date of the party. Tina’s last three letters had been full of it. By the time his train reached Johannesburg, he could barely contain himself. His instinct had been to rush to the house on Parktown Ridge and throw himself into her arms. They had known each other all their lives. Loved no one but each other. Had exchanged the smallest secrets from the age of five. It was almost too much for him but he knew that what he was about to do was crucial to the future of his life. He waited. He booked himself into a cheap hotel on the other side of Johannesburg. He drank. He fidgeted. He walked away from people in mid-conversation. He only had one thing on his mind but he waited one whole week.

  The party was the first big social event in Johannesburg since the end of the war. A marquee had been set up on the big lawn in front of the veranda to the right of Miss Pinforth’s cottage and garden. As if the gods were on the side of Tina Pringle, it had not rained for three days. There had been no boiling thunderclouds grouping on the horizon every afternoon. Only blue sky and white, waterless clouds. At night, for three nights, the great canopy of heaven had domed above Johannesburg, the Milky Way clear and splashed across the night skies, the Southern Cross pointing the way for travellers in the distant bush, three layers of stars in the great heaven.

  Albert had hired the most expensive caterers, imported a string orchestra from Cape Town, and employed a small army of servants to tend to the guests at his sister’s twenty-first.

  “Mum and dad would have liked all this,” he said to her before the first guest arrived. They were looking down from the long veranda to the lawn and the marquee and all the coloured lights.

  “No, they wouldn’t. Mother would have said it was a waste of money.”

  “Have you a man in mind? Someone to marry you?”

  “Oh, it’s all a gamble once you know they have money. And yes, I want to marry money. Living in a railway cottage was all right but I much prefer this house. People who say money is not important are usually those who will never have a chance of putting their hands on lots of it. If I can’t have it, it can’t be any good. Sour grapes… Do you like my dress? You haven’t said a word… Are you lovers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And about bloody time. When are you getting married?”

  “She won’t have me. And that’s the first guest arriving. And that dress makes you look even more smashing if that’s possible… Now, stand straight, sis. Be prepared to meet your guests. This is the night Tina Pringle is presented to Johannesburg’s society… Where’s Miss Pinforth?”

  “I’m here, Mr Pringle.”

  “You look beautiful in an evening gown,” said Tina.

  “My dear, I’ve been telling you for three years not to tell lies. But thank you. May you have a wonderful life, my Tina. A wonderful life.”

  There had been one late letter of regret delivered by Bill Hardcastle and left on the silver tray just inside the front door of the house
on Parktown Ridge.

  ‘Miss Lily Ramsbottom regrets she will be unable to attend the ball on the occasion of Miss Tina Pringle reaching her majority.’

  Mrs Barker had not been invited.

  Sallie arrived among the first as she had promised and went to stand between Tina and Albert to receive the guests. The orchestra was playing a Strauss melody in the marquee where a wooden dance floor took centre stage. Waiters in white jackets offered the guests drinks. The buffet had been set up in the sitting room with its furniture removed. If it had rained they would have danced in the sitting room on the polished floor. Miss Pinforth had arranged the flowers in every empty corner of the house. The flow of cars came and went on the gravel driveway, the chauffeurs parking the cars in the streets to let the new arrivals spill into the ball. With the flow of drinks, the sound increased, giving small groups their privacy. By nine o’clock the guests had been received. Tina was taken away by a young man who would inherit millions. Albert led Sallie down the steps onto the lawn and into the marquee where they danced.

  “Why did Tina give me a filthy look when I arrived?” she asked.

  “Better ask her.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “What about?”

  “Stop being obtuse, Bert.”

  “You look lovely, Sallie.”

  “And stop changing the subject.”

  “What subject?”

  By ten o’clock the whole house was seething in people and Tina was sure some of them had not received an invitation. Many of the faces she had never seen before in her life including a man in a linen suit who had just come in through the front door. The doorman was given a Panama hat and was trying to throw the man out of the house. Whether invited or not, guests were required to wear evening dress. The man was tall, broad-shouldered and his face was tanned the colour of mahogany by the sun. Ignoring the doorman, and giving him what looked like a five-pound note, the gatecrasher moved into the house. Tina moved forward in full sail to throw him out. The man was looking around him at the guests, while Tina was swallowed in the crowd. Then she was on the other side looking into piercing blue eyes, and she was running. By the time Barnaby caught her she was clean off the ground. He put her down gently. Everyone in sight had stopped talking. The doorman froze on his way to throw out the intruder.