by Peter Rimmer
When they arrived back in Johannesburg at her brother’s house at Parktown Ridge, Tina looked for a letter from Barnaby. There was nothing. When she calculated the boat he was sailing on had arrived in England she waited for a telephone call. There was nothing. She moped about the house and read cheap novels all day. She began to eat too much and put on weight. None of the men Sallie paraded through the house sparked in Tina any interest. She sulked. Tina knew she was good at sulking. There was nothing anyone could do about her sulks. It infuriated the whole household. Silent sulking was her best weapon.
The weeks went by without a word from Barnaby until the truth struck fear right through her body and mind. She knew him too well. If he was having a hard time he would want to talk to her. Want reassuring letters from her that he was still the most important man in the world. He must have landed with his feet on the ground and it made her want to scream. Without her, he was having a good time! Without her help, he was making money out of someone. The weeks and weeks of silence told her everything. The thought ate deep into her soul. She wanted to strangle him: kill him with her bare hands. Most of all she wanted to make him lust after her body so she could make quite certain he never had enough. Never be satiated. Never be free of her power to make him lust. She wanted to tantalise Barnaby St Clair into total submission to one Tina Pringle.
She got the money from Benny Lightfoot. He owed her that much. A man getting a really good young body when he was well past his prime had to pay, one way or the other. If the age difference had been a lot less, she might have tried again. He was rich enough. Now she saw him as an old man with wrinkled hands and a soft pot belly. She did not want the man to even touch her anymore.
“Thank you, Tina.”
“What for?”
“Your youth. That was what I wanted. Have a good life. I hope you find him.”
“I’m sorry, Benny. It’s just the age thing.”
“I know.”
Tina left Albert and Sallie a letter on the silver tray in the hall, next to the front door where visitors left their calling cards. She had not wanted an argument.
Christmas had come and gone but it wasn’t the same in Africa. No one sang carols. Christmas trees ablaze in the sun looked fake. There was no snow. Eating hot turkey in the sweltering heat of an African summer seemed ludicrous. The church bells didn’t sound the same without penetrating the cold and frost of an English winter. She was miserable. Everyone in the Parktown Ridge house knew she was miserable. It was better she left. She was old enough to fend for herself.
When the train left Johannesburg railway station for Durban, she had felt the spark come back into her life. She had bought new clothes for the boat and Barnaby. She was going up the west coast through the Suez Canal. ‘Through the Med’, the sign had said at the ticket office. Round past Gibraltar. It was exciting. Life was exciting again. She would even make herself some fun on the trip. She could not expect her brother to keep her any longer. She was right. She was doing the right thing. She would find Barnaby in London and give him the surprise of his life. Finding him would be easy. Barnaby St Clair always made a lot of noise.
The morning Barnaby was eating nine o’clock breakfast with his brother, the boat bringing Tina Pringle back to England docked in Southampton. It was a warm day for January when Tina found a cab. With her luggage safely in the cab, they drove to the railway station. Tina hugged herself with excitement. She could just imagine the expression on his face. She would stay at the Savoy. Give a nice tone to her arrival in London. Benny Lightfoot, bless his heart, had been very generous. The small, close-fitting hat on her head had made a perfect picture in the mirror of the cab. She was as pretty as paint. The close-cropped hair suited her. Her brown eyes were soft and full of seduction. Her figure was back to perfect.
She pulled the trim fur collar of her white coat up to her small ears. She was enjoying the ride. The cabbie smiled at her in the mirror. She smiled back. She was back in England, well dressed, well spoken and with money in her purse. She would plan her pursuit of Barnaby like a military campaign. When the time was right, he was going to want her so badly nothing would get in their way. Other people could go to hell. Not only was she going to win the battle, she told herself, but she was also going to win the war. She was going to marry him. Become Mrs Barnaby St Clair. She was that determined.
Once ensconced in her room at the Savoy Hotel, it took half an hour to find out where he was. She knew him so well it made her laugh out loud. A pretty laugh that made the bellboy with the sweet little chocolate-coloured box-hat turn back from the door with her shilling tip in his hand. The boy smiled back at the pleasure he could see in her face. The boy was little more than twelve years old but cute as a button.
The first thing she had done when her luggage was safely in the room was to send off for the Tatler, the gossip magazine that followed the aristocracy. Barnaby needed people to make money, to survive. The Tatler needed good-looking young men with titles to sell their subscriptions. If Barnaby had done what Tina expected, the two would have found each other. To succeed in parting fools from their money, Barnaby would have tried to make himself a minor celebrity. To be talked about. Sought-after by the social hostesses of London society. Chased after by horsey young girls with family titles and young rich girls looking to marry into the aristocracy. How Barnaby had got money out of Merlin or Robert was the puzzle in her equation. They had talked about it more than once. Merlin from the wealth he made during the war buying Vickers-Armstrong shares and Robert from the sale of his books. Barnaby would have needed something to set himself up in society. Albert had paid his passage with a small allowance that would have lasted the boat trip and no longer.
When the twelve-year-old bellboy shut the door to her room gently, Tina looked again at the picture of Barnaby in the magazine. The girl he was with had a face like a horse which pleased Tina no end. The one fear since leaving Johannesburg was Barnaby finding a rich girl as pretty as herself.
Licking her lips with the tip of her tongue, Tina began planning her campaign. The first thing to do was set herself up with a photograph, a big one in the Tatler. She was going to battle her Barnaby in the columns of glossy magazines that followed the rich and famous. In the end, Barnaby would want to find her. Only then would she start the fun. Like so many things in life, it was a lot more simple than she had imagined.
She called the manager of the hotel, affecting the speech tones taught her by Miss Pinforth with such difficulty in the little cottage in Johannesburg. The name of the society photographer was mentioned twice in the Tatler issue that had the photograph of Barnaby and his nag. Tina had chuckled to herself thinking of the girl as a nag.
Tina had dressed carefully before making the call.
“I have a problem, Mr Bennett. Would you please come to my room?”
“Right away, madam.”
Tina thought the poor man was probably frightened of his guests. Everyone who stayed in his hotel thought themselves superior to the manager. He was only there to make them pleased.
It took the poor man three minutes to tap on her door. The man nearly fell over his patent leather shoes when he came through the door at her command. Tina thought rightly, few young girls stayed at the Savoy and none with her kind of looks. The man started wringing his hands, he was so subservient. Tina put on all her hard-learnt airs and graces.
“As you know, my brother, Mr Albert Pringle of Johannesburg, is chairman of the London listed company, Serendipity Mining and Explosives Company which of course he owns. He wished me to see London but was himself unable to afford the time to leave his gold mines in South Africa. Mr Barry Jones of the Tatler will want to take my photograph as I wish to announce my London arrival. Be so kind as to telephone Mr Jones, Mr Bennett, and tell him. I loathe talking to the press but sometimes it is necessary. Men like to announce their presence. We women only have to be seen.”
Tina had deliberately worn a loose dress, leaving her large, firm breasts with litt
le constraint. The poor man’s eyes popped out of his head at the sexuality oozing from the movement inside the top of her dress. It was a trick she used on every man she wished to seduce. The same way she had seduced Jim Bowman in Meikles Hotel the day Barnaby had tricked him out of ten pounds. Then she had been fashionably strapped up but the trick had still worked perfectly. As the manager went out of her room to do her bidding, she had remembered Jim Bowman for some strange reason. She thought the trick and Barnaby had brought Jim Bowman to her mind. She remembered their lunch together. Just the three of them. The poor naïve man would never get his ten pounds back again but that was life.
Three hours later Barry Jones was taking her photograph. The issue was due out on the Friday. The manager had done a perfect job. Tina knew her sexuality would photograph well. The society photographer had come to her room with a lady journalist who knew all about the share price rise and the rise of Serendipity Mining. Albert, if he ever came to London, which she doubted he would, would be an instant celebrity. She changed her dress twice in the large bathroom to give Barry Jones a choice. In the article, the girl would mention Tina was staying at the Savoy. The journalist owed that much to the manager for her story.
When Tina dined alone in the grill room of the hotel that night, she was well pleased with her progress.
Alone later in her room, she would have phoned her mother in Dorset in the cottage by the railway line, where her father had worked checking the line of Corfe Castle every morning, if her mother had had a telephone. She would have liked to laugh with her mother at the incongruity of her situation. Tina Pringle from the railway cottage staying at the Savoy.
“You’ve come a long way, girl,” she said to herself in the mirror. The one glass of wine from the half bottle she had allowed herself at dinner had gone to her head. “Just you wait, Barnaby.”
Tina turned out the bedside lamp and drifted towards sleep. She could hear a ship’s horn coming from the River Thames outside her window. Then she was asleep and back in Africa in her dreams. All night, for some strange reason, she dreamed of Jim Bowman. In the morning she remembered. Even in her sleep, Barnaby was being evasive.
The next day, keeping her room at the Savoy and asking the desk to keep her messages, she caught the train to Dorset to see her parents. It had been a long time and lots for her to tell. Only when the article appeared in the Tatler would the phone in her hotel bedroom begin to ring. She had the time to spare.
By the time she reached Corfe Castle station and home, she was just as excited as a child. The fact that her mother was old, fat and harassed made no difference to Tina. Her mother was her mother and she would only ever have one of those. She chose not to wear her smart new clothes and roughed up her hair.
When she ran into her mother’s ample arms, she was just Tina. Both of them were crying they were so pleased to see each other. Standing waiting his turn her father looked fit to burst.
“I’ve got plum pie just ready. Cable came from village two hours ago. Look at ’er! Look at ’er. Ain’t she a picture? My Tina. Come here, lovey. Give your mum another hug. Pleased to be home?”
“’Course I am.”
“Where you stayin’?”
“London.”
“Where in London?”
“Savoy Hotel.”
“Don’t be daft. Now, you want a nice cup of tea first or a slice of your mum’s plum pie?”
“Don’t you ever stop looking after us?”
“What gives me pleasure. Where’s your luggage?”
“Left it at the hotel.”
“Pull the other leg. How’s Bert? How’s my granddaughter? Little Julia.”
“They send their love.”
“Bless ’em. Now give your da a big hug like you gave me.”
Along the way from the railway station, she had looked up at the ruins of Corfe Castle, once the home of Barnaby’s family.
Everything was so separate. The ruined castle on its hill torn down by Oliver Cromwell. Her paid-for empty room at the Savoy Hotel. The tiny cottage with its garden where she was born and had been so happy.
She wondered if she would ever be that happy again. In her mind, there was a small boy standing in the vegetable garden waiting for her. They would join hands and run together to the river that was really a stream. To each other, they were Barnaby and Tina. To the rest, he was the Lord of the Manor’s youngest son and she the barefoot daughter of a vassal. Tina knew she was able to have one world or the other. But not both of them together.
For a brief moment in her mother’s warm kitchen that smelled of freshly baked plum pie, she was not so sure which world she wanted. The Victoria plums had come from their own tree outside in the garden, bottled in the autumn into Kilner jars by her mother’s own hands. From the high picture skirting, dried herbs hung, cut during last year’s summer. The store cupboard was full of homemade jams and jellies, jars of pickles and hazelnuts in string bags. The old ginger cat was giving her the eye without moving an inch from his perch on the wooden stool next to the Dover stove piled on either side with dry cut wood ready to burn. The square table, big enough for all the large family, was scrubbed white. The sweet smell of woodsmoke was somewhere in the air, mingled with the fainter smells of the dried herbs. Tina began to cry uncontrollably. Her mother folded her back into her arms.
“What’s the matter, pet?”
“I’m just so happy to be home.”
Merlin St Clair suspected he was being manipulated by Barnaby but could not see how. Neither had shown the slightest outward emotion once they had eaten breakfast. The fact he had put his arm through his brother’s getting into the lift had been impulsive and out of character. Even Granny Forrester had found herself doing things for Barnaby she would never do for the other children. It was so often the unexpected, the nice things he did when least expected, that caught people off guard and had them doing favours for the likeable young man without thinking. That was it, Merlin had told himself. When he wished to be, Barnaby was so likeable. He did what you wanted him to do. To turn from being a parasite to being generous. Only afterwards did Merlin remember the generosity was the return of his own money. But before that thought had clouded his mind, he had had Smithers go off in the car and retrieve Barnaby’s possessions from the Army and Navy Club and bring them back to the Park Lane flat. The fact he was nearly thirty-six and living on his own in lonely splendour was a secret he even kept from himself.
Barnaby had straight away lit up the place. Smithers had somehow first produced breakfast for two. Smithers had smiled. Smithers had laughed, something Smithers never did on his own. Everyone felt better. The breakfast tasted better. The illicit morning glass of whisky was a shared naughtiness that would have been letting the team down on his own; a man drinking on his own after breakfast was highly suspect. Instead, it was the best whisky he had drunk in years.
The invitation for Barnaby to stay with him in London for as long as he liked came with the euphoria caused by the whisky after the sudden appearance of his perfectly dressed brother with a cash cheque for five hundred pounds, money that he had written off for the rest of his life. They had had a second and third whisky, swapping all the lovely stories from their youth and family in the old home. Purbeck Manor in Dorset was a place of happy memories they had all shared together. By the time they went off to lunch, Merlin was slightly tight, something he had never been in his life before lunch.
“Come and have lunch with me, old chap,” Barnaby had said with an all-enfolding smile. “I still have to tell the club secretary what I’m doing. Just polite. Super chap. Maybe he’ll lunch with us. Least I can do after such a splendid breakfast is buy you a bite of lunch. Food not bad… It really is jolly good of you inviting me into your home. I’m going to be so happy. We can go out on the town together, introduce you to some jolly good people. London is so much fun if you are part of the set. You’ll see, Merlin, you’ll see. What you’ve been saying leads me to think you’ve not been getting out enough. The
theatre is fun but there’s more to London than going to see a play… I know some splendid gals. There are so many the fun never stops. London’s so gay, Merlin. You should enjoy it living here. We will. What fun. The two of us. Two brothers. Out on the town.”
The ‘gals’, as his brother had called them, were indeed a lot of fun. Merlin thought the night-long plunge into hedonism would lead them straight to perdition at the worst, a sanatorium for people who drank too much at the best. None of the ‘gals’ was looking for a husband. Just a good time with as many men as possible. The ‘gals’ danced to ragtime all night, drank all night, and slept all day, their only daily workload dressing themselves up for the night ahead. They seemed to Merlin young and inexhaustible.
After a week Merlin took a night out alone in the flat with a pot of China tea and a glass of milk to make him go to sleep. When he took breakfast in the alcove overlooking Hyde Park in the morning Barnaby had yet to come home from his night on the town. Merlin thought the thirteen-year difference in their ages had something to do with it. He simply could not keep up. Smithers had even given him a sympathetic look with his bacon and eggs. He had not even bothered to lay breakfast for Barnaby, Merlin’s life had been torn apart. So had Smithers’s.
With the plates cleared away and the fresh pot of tea on the table, Smithers put down the silver tray from Asprey’s. In it lay the morning’s mail. Smiling at the pleasure of his own company, Merlin looked through his letters.
