by Peter Rimmer
Harry was glad in his mind to be going back to Africa where life was less complicated. Where money wasn’t made by some alchemy on the stock exchange where man had finally found out how to turn lead into gold. A gold that could equally quickly vanish before the eyes because it was not real. Just a number on a cheque that foolish men exchanged for the real gold of life. Land. And what was on it. Only land, to Harry, could produce real gold.
When he looked, Robert was far away in space. Gone on his travels. Harry smiled, envying his friend. He hoped the false gold of the stock exchange would be quickly invested in the ancient land of the St Clairs. Harry liked the idea of keeping them where they were for more generations. Continuity. He hoped Africa and Rhodesia would provide his own family with so long a destiny. Then he smiled at his own irony. If his mother had first married his father and not his uncle, his destiny would have been with Hastings Court.
“A man can’t have two destinies, Robert.”
“Of course he can’t.”
Harry laughed. To Robert, it was just a silly question, worth no further pursuit… He had needed the company of his old friend more than he had thought.
13
Paper Money, Paper Dreams, May to August 1922
The share went straight to twenty-seven shillings and Barnaby began to unload. It was not his money with which to gamble. That much he understood. To his father, the money would solve all his financial problems. Purbeck Manor would be safe for another generation. He, the seventeenth Baron St Clair of Purbeck in the County of Dorset, would have fulfilled his obligation to the family, to his ancestors. Barnaby was clear in his mind when it came to that kind of obligation.
He was going to sell his shares in Colonial Shipping slowly, not to frighten the market. The City of London was fully aware of his relationship to Harry Brigandshaw. Slowly. That was what he was going to do.
In the end, and most importantly, he was going to make a great display of his magnanimity. He was going to make more for himself than the measly ten per cent forced on him by Harry Brigandshaw. He was going to make himself into a jolly good chap and trade on it for the rest of his life.
He could hear them now. ‘Good old Barnaby. He would never cheat you out of a penny. Remember when he gave all that money to his father. And the shares were definitely registered in his name. Barnaby St Clair is sound. You can rest assured on that one.’
When the time was ripe, he was going to leak the story to the newspapers. Have them hunt down the truth while he dined out on being more than a good son to his father. ‘Impecunious baron made financially safe by his younger son, the famous Captain Barnaby St Clair who blew up Turkish supply trains with Lawrence of Arabia.’
When he sold the shares no one would ever again dare to question his integrity. The whisperers would be silenced.
Puffed up with his own vanity, Barnaby went to see Tina Pringle in St John’s Wood soon after the day’s trading came to a close on the London Stock Exchange. The flotation of Colonial Shipping into a public company had been a great success. He wanted Tina to know. He wanted to tell her his plan. She would understand the scheme of things. The irony of being forced to give away a fortune.
“You know something, Barnaby. You are worse than I could ever have thought. Bad enough borrowing money from your inferiors with no intention of giving it back. Now you want to build your name for a really big fraud. You are evil. Plain evil. Just be careful you don’t find fleecing people more enjoyable than making money. How is it you manage to turn everything to your advantage? If you insist, you can take me out to dinner. We shall celebrate. Why don’t you ask Harry? And Merlin. Give CE Porter a ring so he can give me the creeps. That man positively leers at me thinking he’s laying on the charm. He is physically quite revolting. He’s so smooth you can almost see the oil dripping down his back…”
“You look very desirable. Whenever I’ve made a deal, I want to make love.”
“Did I tell you I have a new boyfriend? He’s rich and besotted with me.”
“Why don’t you marry him?”
“I think I will.”
“What’s his name?”
“I forget… Go home and get dressed properly. I want to dance all night. Let’s make a splash. Oh, I do enjoy life in London so much… Your father will be surprised.”
Lady Frederick was playing to full houses at the Adelphi Theatre. Only the Saturday matinees were half full. The critics said Somerset Maugham’s play would have another long run. Brett knew that was not everything to go by. She had a small, good part which she milked for all it was worth. She had slept with the leading man so she was confident. He was better at acting than making love. He was married which Brett thought might have had something to do with it.
For Brett it was business. Plain business. She was pretty, sexy, a passable if not brilliant actress and nineteen years old. Men made the decisions. Word spread in the theatre. Brett had made up her mind to get a lead in a West End production by one means or the other. The trick, she told herself, was to use her attributes and there was no doubt in Brett’s mind which of her attributes was the best. She had ‘it’. She knew she had ‘it’. Every male who ever looked at her saw ‘it’. Best of all, ‘it’ oozed over the footlights into the male section of the audience.
She was going to be a star. People came to look at her, not to hear what she said. If she had to sleep with people what did it matter? Most times it was just good fun.
The play itself was trivial. Comfortable to watch. Good dialogue, which surprised Brett until she found out the playwright was a queer. Most male writers had no idea what women really thought. What they said was only part of it. The hidden meaning had the power. Only a man with female instincts could have written the words she was asked to say… She had her man on the stage and the men in the audience right in the palm of her hand.
What she was not aware of, what had, in fact, got her the part, was her boyfriend. Unbeknown to Brett, the backer of the play, Oscar Fleming, was always looking for new angels, the theatre-struck fools who poured good money into doubtful plays with the wish to be part of the theatre, the smell of the greasepaint, the fame of finding a successor, mingling with the stars. They were prepared to invest in the glamour they did not find in their day-to-day boring lives of making money they would ever know how to spend.
Brett Kentrich was the hook Oscar Fleming, the backer, wished to put into Harry Brigandshaw. With an angel that rich, Oscar Fleming could put on any old play and make money for himself. Brett had been surprised Oscar never responded to her advances. Oscar Fleming smiled to himself at so much innocence. For him, girls were two a penny. Rich men like Harry Brigandshaw were much more difficult to come by. Oscar Fleming knew dozens of girls just as able to act the part. Some even much better. But none had a man behind them who owned the controlling interest in Colonial Shipping whose shares had gone to thirty shillings by the end of the second week of its public listing.
Brett was ecstatic. She received an invitation to every theatre function in London. She was meeting play producers she had only read about in the newspapers. Everyone told her how good she was. She was on her way. Her life was a constant excitement. She was at the centre of the world of theatre. In her young mind, Brett told herself she had arrived. She was going to dazzle the world.
“Why is life so good?” she said to Harry.
“Because you are young.”
Harry loved to watch her. Loved to see her joy. Loved to hear for her sake what he felt might well be fake praise. He wanted her to live as long as possible without realising the realities of life. Harry loved her innocence and wanted Brett to have it for as long as possible. He even played along with Oscar Fleming. The man was so transparent Harry wanted to laugh in the man’s face.
The night Oscar Fleming finally propositioned him to finance a new play, Harry was ready to laugh.
‘You may be a cynical old bastard,’ he told himself, ‘but once again you were right. It’s not your bright eyes they are
after, Harry, or Brett’s. They just plain want your money.’
“It’s a lovely opportunity, Oscar. Let me think about it,” he said with a quizzical smile.
“You’ll have to hurry.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“They all want a piece of this action.”
“I’m sure they do… Do you have a part for Brett?”
“Of course we do, old boy.”
“Glad to hear that, old chap.”
“Can I expect your phone call?”
“Of course you can… You don’t want me to read the script, I hope.”
At that moment in his life, Harry would have given anything to ride a horse into the African bush and divorce himself from the whole human race.
But he knew he owed something more to Brett. He had eventually found out what he had suspected, and that was she was nineteen years old having told him at the start she was twenty-five. At the time Harry had not even bothered to question the lie. Now he felt guilty. He was burning up the best months of the girl’s life. From what Harry had seen, a girl had to find her husband while she had the power of youth. Before it was all too late.
They were probably both using each other, but it added up to the same thing. Harry knew what was happening. Brett did not.
“Can you sing?” he asked.
“Of course I can. Everyone can sing.”
They were sitting on the small veranda of Harry’s flat in Regent Mews. It was Sunday night. The veranda was a wooden projection above the stables at the back of the mews. Pigeons were cooing from the rooftops of the houses. The noise of London’s traffic was muted by the many buildings. Hops grew over the veranda. The big green leaves made the small sitting place a pleasure. There were tight little clusters of hops growing on the vines.
“Then sing me something.”
“What do you want to hear?”
“‘Greensleeves’. There is a story it was written by King Henry the Eighth. I like to believe the story. My grandfather says we are related somehow to two of his wives. He never said which ones. If you listen to my Grandfather Manderville, the whole of England is related. Maybe we are… Do you know the tune, Brett?”
“I need a lyre or whatever they had in those days… I’ll try on my own.”
In the soft summer evening, the words so pure lifted gently to the air with a tune so beautiful it made Harry wish to cry for all the loves so lost. Gently, softly, Brett sang the old song to its end. Even the pigeons had stopped their cooing but none had flown away. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Both had felt the magic. Both had felt something more than human life.
“I want you to take singing lessons,” Harry said into the perfect silence.
“But I can sing.”
“I know you can.”
Mrs Schneider was an opera singer long before the war. She was at the height of her fame when Bismarck brought the states of Germany together and made Berlin their capital. To Harry, looking at the frail old lady with the snow-white hair, it was difficult to imagine her as the toast of Berlin during the Franco-Prussian War.
Mrs Schneider had lived in London for thirty years giving singing lessons. Berlin had long ago turned its back on her. Only the eyes that looked at Harry with approval were still young. The rest of the old lady was shrivelled and gnarled. They had just finished listening to Brett sing a medley of songs.
“Oh, thank you, Herr Brigandshaw. You bring an old lady much happiness. A voice so pure is rare in heaven. Here on earth I never hear it before. Maybe, yes, I exaggerate. But not too much, no. Not too much. What is your first name, young lady?”
“Brett.”
“Then I will call you Brett. To act and sing. Oh, such joy in heaven. How did you find me, Herr Brigandshaw?”
“I have a man named Grainger. He is good at finding the best.”
“Then treasure your man you call Grainger. Often the best is never found. What you want, Brett? To sing opera? To sing musical?”
“You really think I have a good voice?”
“Not at the present. But you will. Breathing. Control. Phrasing. There is so much to learn on the road to perfection.”
They all looked at each other. Conspirators.
“You’d better get me to the theatre, Harry, or I’ll be late. I still have to earn a living.”
“Three times a week,” said Mrs Schneider as she saw them to the studio door.
By the time Brett had received her tenth singing lesson from Mrs Schneider, the story of Barnaby St Clair’s generosity broke in the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard. After deducting his ten per cent, Barnaby had given his father a cheque for forty-one thousand pounds. To Barnaby’s surprise, the giving of the money had given him pleasure. He told Tina when he arrived back from Purbeck Manor that the smile on his father’s face was so bright they could have seen in the dark.
With the cheque in his father’s hand, Barnaby had been taken to look at the calf born the previous day.
“First Merlin and now you, Barnaby. I’m a lucky father. You have saved the family line.”
His mother had not been so gullible when Barnaby came back alone from the ten-acre field.
“Where did you get the money, Barnaby?”
“Harry, Mother,” said Robert, interrupting. “I’ll explain later.”
“Then he didn’t steal it?”
“No, Mother.”
“Thank God for that.”
Lady St Clair, looking from one son to the other, sat down heavily on the bench outside the dining room. The French windows from the great dining room were open to the summer day.
“Then it is something to do with Colonial Shipping going public?” she said, looking from one to the other.
“Yes, Mother,” said Robert.
“Poor Lucinda. She would have been happy in Africa… I think I will go to my room. I like to think about these things on my own… The Lord works in strange ways.”
Tina Pringle knew she was running out of time. Barnaby was so self-centred nothing had worked. All her well-planned ways to make him marry her had come to nothing.
“I will not be his damn mistress,” she said to her empty flat. “Who the hell does he think he is? I am the only person who understands his bloody nonsense and still wants him for the rest of his life. With or without any damn money.”
The kitten Barnaby had given her that was almost a cat did not even bother to get off the kitchen chair. Tina picked up the tabby cat and gave it a hard squeeze. The cat clawed her hand and was flung on the kitchen floor. The cat got back on the chair and went to sleep.
“Damn you, Pickles. Why don’t you listen to me?” There was blood dripping from the back of her right hand. Tina sucked the wound and tasted blood. Frustration made her kick the wall which hurt her toes. She was wearing slippers.
Barnaby had left ten minutes ago. Tina was furious with herself for sleeping with the man. He had left to go to CE Porter’s offices with a big smirk on his face. He would not now come back for a few days. Until the pressure again mounted in his loins.
The damn man had not even given her a lift down to Corfe Castle to visit her parents. At first, she had thought he was taking someone else. She even hoped he was. The truth, that he did not wish to be seen with her in Dorset, was worse.
For a brief moment, she thought of going back to Johannesburg. Until her obsession surged. The jealousy came back screaming through every fibre of her body.
She kicked the wall again with the other foot to see how much it hurt.
Justine Voss was dreaming of the family she was going to have. There were five boys and five girls evenly spaced. Boy, girl. Boy, girl. There was a big house with many rooms. Servants were ready to look after her perfectly brought up children. The elder boys had tutors. They learnt Latin and French. Mathematics and the arts of science. The elder girls had tutors. They read good books. Learnt needlepoint. How to play the piano. How to listen to a man… Everything in Justine’s mind was definite except
for the whereabouts of the great house and the name of the man who was to be the father of her ten well-behaved children… It was all she wanted. All she had ever wanted. A family. With her family surrounding her, she would be happy for the rest of her life.
Justine fantasised for large parts of her day. Always the same fantasy. What she had not had in her past she was going to have in her future. Her family would be a shrine to her poor father killed by the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War. To Justine, the Boers were more wicked than the devil.
Mrs Voss watched her daughter dream away the summer day. Justine was to turn twenty-three in thirteen days’ time.
Mrs Voss could remember the day her child was born as clearly as yesterday. The loneliness of the nursing home in Athens. Not one familiar face. Not even sympathy for her pain. No one from England had come to help. Not even a word.
They had said for a first child the birth was easy. Only the matron had spoken a little English. For twenty-three years she had not been alone. Now it was coming back again. The loneliness. The sense of permanent loss.
The angelic look on Justine’s face had been on hers.
Justine was alone in the small arbour that overlooked the sea. A small parasol kept the eleven o’clock sun from the unblemished white of her face. Mrs Voss was standing in the bay window of her bedroom two storeys above the slope that dropped all the way down to the ring of beach. They were both looking out to sea, a calm blue sea, sparkling in the morning sun.
