Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

by Sulari Gentill

  Thus having ensured that they would not find themselves vagrants, the Australians retreated to the traditional but uncompromising luxury of the Mayfair hotel.

  It was not until later that evening, as they waited for Edna to finish dressing for dinner, that Milton noticed the article in the evening paper.

  “Rowly,” he said, holding the paper up to the light. “Take a look at this.”

  Rowland peered over Milton’s shoulder and then, startled, took the Manchester Guardian from the poet.

  “What is it?” Clyde asked as he poured drinks.

  “Wilfred.”

  “What? Your brother?” Clyde put down the decanter and strode over to look at the paper. They had left Wilfred Sinclair in Sydney when they’d embarked for Germany in April.

  “I think so,” Rowland said, squinting at the newsprint. The article concerned some international economic conference being held in London. The accompanying photograph was of Ramsay MacDonald, the British Prime Minister, with an American delegate. A figure stood in the background, half-turned and somewhat out of focus, but Rowland was sure it was Wilfred.

  “Did he say he was coming to London?” Milton asked, retrieving the drinks Clyde had abandoned.

  Rowland shook his head. “No.” He looked at the picture again. “What the devil’s he doing here?”

  Clyde and Milton exchanged a glance. It was entirely conceivable that Wilfred Sinclair had come to London anticipating a need to rescue his younger brother, but that was not a notion that would please Rowland. So, they didn’t mention it.

  But clearly Rowland’s mind had already moved in that direction. Irritated, he tossed the paper onto the couch. That he had very nearly needed rescue did not make Wilfred’s interference any less annoying. He was twenty-eight, for God’s sake!

  Edna stepped out of her bedroom, in a simple navy evening dress which skimmed gently over the curves of her figure. Her dark copper tresses were caught in a coil at the base of her neck. She smiled.

  Rowland forgot about Wilfred.

  “Where did Mr. Beresford go?” Edna asked, looking about for the butler who had come with the suite.

  “I believe he’s checking on our reservations for dinner,” Rowland said. “It might be difficult to keep him occupied.” Beresford had already cleaned and pressed their suits, polished their shoes and mixed pre-dinner cocktails with extraordinary and yet unobtrusive efficiency.

  “Well, you might have asked him to help you with your tie,” Edna said, sitting on the arm of Rowland’s chair.

  Milton cleared his throat disapprovingly. The poet considered it a matter of colonial evolution that the Australian gentleman dressed himself.

  Sighing, Edna leaned down to deal with the bow tie which hung loosely around Rowland’s neck.

  “I thought I’d attend to it myself,” he murmured, as her fingers worked deftly at his throat.

  Clyde laughed. “I can barely tie a bow with the use of two hands.”

  “There.” Edna considered Rowland critically. “How ever did you manage your cufflink?” she asked, noting that he was in fact now quite immaculately dressed.

  He grimaced. “I used my teeth, actually.”

  She smoothed his lapel. “Poor Rowly. You may have to start dressing more casually.”

  “Casually?” Rowland was clearly unenthused.

  “I’m not suggesting you go out in pyjamas… We could get you one of those polo shirts.”

  “I don’t intend to play polo,” Rowland said firmly.

  “Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Rowly. They’re all the rage and they’ll be entirely adequate while we’re on the boat at least. The cast will be ready to come off by the time we reach Sydney and you can go back to your suits.”

  Rowland elected to leave the sculptress’ fashion advice alone for the moment. “Actually, I was thinking I wouldn’t go home just yet.”

  Milton and Clyde both looked up, surprised.

  “Why ever not?” Edna demanded.

  After what he’d been through, they had all expected Rowland would be keener than any of them to go home.

  “I think I should speak to someone about what we saw… what’s happening in Germany.”

  “Speak to whom?”

  “I’m not sure.” Rowland reached over to retrieve the Guardian from the table on which he’d discarded it. “Surely someone in His Majesty’s government will be interested in what their German neighbours are up to.”

  “How do you propose to get an audience with a Member of Parliament?” Clyde asked sceptically. The Sinclairs wielded influence in Australia, but Britain was another thing altogether.

  “I’m not sure,” Rowland admitted. He handed the paper to Edna and pointed out the photo they had been discussing before she’d entered the room. “Perhaps Wil will know someone.”

  Rowland stood to answer the door, but Beresford reached it before him. The caller was a gentleman, dressed for dinner in white tie and tails. His fair hair was thinning slightly but not one strand of it was out of place. Wire-rimmed glasses did nothing to lessen the intensity of the dark blue eyes which were common to all the Sinclair men. He addressed the butler politely but impatiently.

  Beresford turned to Rowland who was now standing beside him, and announced, “A Mr. Wilfred Sinclair, sir.”

  “Yes, thank you, I can see that. Hello Wil.”

  At first Wilfred moved to shake his brother’s hand, breaking off as he noticed the sling. “Rowly… what in God’s name?”

  “What are you doing here, Wil?” Rowland asked as Wilfred strode into the room.

  “I was told some chap called Sinclair was making enquiries as to where I might be lodging…” He looked again at Rowland’s injured arm. “I expect we have rather a lot to talk about.”

  Rowland showed his brother into the suite’s sitting room. “We’d better have a drink.”

  Aside from Beresford, they were alone in the suite. The others had already gone down to dinner. Rowland had planned to join them once he’d made a few more telephone calls to ascertain where his brother was staying in London. Apparently the fact that he was here, and making such enquiries, had reached Wilfred first.

  It was not until Beresford had served drinks and withdrawn that Wilfred began to interrogate his brother.

  “You drew on the Deutsche Bank account.”

  Rowland nodded. The simple fact that he’d needed to call upon private funds would have told Wilfred that the Old Guard had abandoned him and his companions, and that they were friendless in Germany. He had no doubt that his brother had been preparing to go into Germany after him. He hesitated, unsure where to start.

  Wilfred waited, tapping his fingers restlessly on the scrolled armrest of his chair.

  Rowland began with their arrival in Munich as reluctant agents of the Old Guard, the clandestine organisation of which Wilfred was part. He gave an account of everything they’d been asked to do, and everything they’d done, to stop Eric Campbell—the commander-in-chief of the Australian New Guard—establishing links with the Nazis.

  Wilfred listened silently as Rowland told him about camps in which “enemies of the State” were imprisoned, of the book burnings and the brutal oppression of dissent. He smiled faintly when Rowland recounted how they had finally panicked Campbell into leaving Germany by convincing him that his deputy, Francis de Groot, was mounting a coup to depose him as leader of the Australian Fascist movement.

  Wilfred looked disapprovingly at the sling. “You still haven’t explained what you did to yourself.”

  “Oh… yes.” Rowland paused, surprised by how much he didn’t want to talk about what had happened to him, how awkward and humiliating he found it.

  “Rowly…” Wilfred prompted.

  Rowland spoke quietly—without lingering on detail. He recounted the night when the Nazi SA came for him, how they’d broken his arm as a punishment of sorts for a picture he’d painted, beaten him senseless and left him for dead. How he’d regained consciousness only to face anothe
r attacker and had been saved by the German girl whose portrait had brought him to the attention of Ernst Röhm and his Stormtroopers in the first place.

  Wilfred stared at him, shocked, appalled and furious. He took a cigarette from the gold case in his pocket and lit it. Rowland waited for him to say something.

  “Dammit, Rowly! You and your obscene bloody paintings… Why is it that every time I let you out of my sight you try to get yourself killed?”

  Rowland bristled. “For God’s sake, I wasn’t—”

  “What possessed you to—”

  “Sod off, Wil!” Rowland sat back angrily.

  Wilfred stopped. “Are you all right?”

  Rowland let it go. It was as close as his brother would ever come to an apology.

  “You’ve seen a doctor?”

  “Yes, in Paris… though that was probably a mistake.”

  “Why?”

  “Dr. Rousseau returned with the police and some Germans. We were lucky they arrived just as we were leaving.”

  “You told this doctor that you were wanted by the Nazis?” Wilfred flared again, exasperated that his brother could have been so reckless.

  “No, of course not. He just deduced…”

  “How would he just deduce such a thing, Rowly? You, or one of those hangers-on you insist on dragging with you, must have said something… Was it Isaacs? That blasted Commie never could keep his mouth shut…”

  Rowland snapped. “It was nothing any of us said!” He pulled his bow tie undone and released the first few studs of his shirt to reveal the livid scarring on his chest.

  Silence. Then Wilfred swore. The area around the swastika of cigarette burns was clearly still tender and so red that it seemed the Nazi flag itself had been grotesquely emblazoned on Rowland’s body. He had been quite deliberately and brutally branded.

  Wilfred stood, crushing his cigarette out on the smoker’s stand. Involuntarily Rowland flinched. He fumbled to refasten his shirt. The smell of the cigarette against his flesh came back to him suddenly and he felt ill.

  “Bastards!” Wilfred began to pace. “They won’t get away with this…”

  “I’m afraid the Stormtroopers do what they want, Wil.”

  “I was talking about my esteemed colleagues who left you there to rot! They sent you to Munich against my express wishes; they should have bloody well seen that you got out.” He shook his head, incensed with himself as much as anyone. “I was a damned fool to let you go. What the hell was I thinking?”

  “I don’t recall that there was a lot you could have done to stop me.” Rowland smiled wryly. “For what it’s worth, I think it worked, on the whole. Campbell’s going home with scarcely more than a few German postcards.”

  Wilfred did not seem consoled. “I’ll speak to our man in Paris. At the very least we can smooth things over with the French police… have that doctor, Rousseau, discredited somehow and make it plain that Rowland Sinclair has no connection whatsoever with the man the Nazis want for murder.” He removed his spectacles, polishing them absently as he regarded his brother. “And I’ll arrange another doctor to have a look at you.”

  “Rousseau has already—”

  “Aside from the fact that he turned you in, he’s a bloody Frenchman!” Wilfred returned.

  Rowland smiled, vaguely aware that calling for doctors was his brother’s way of expressing concern.

  “How did you get out?” Wilfred asked.

  Rowland told his brother then what his friends had done, the risks they had taken to get him out of Germany. Wilfred continued to pace.

  “What are you doing in England, Wil?” Rowland changed the subject.

  “I was asked at the last minute to come as a delegate to the London Economic Conference. There are a few matters I need to see to and Kate wanted to take the boys to see her family over here. We sailed about a week after you left.”

  “Kate and the boys are here?”

  As always, Wilfred’s voice warmed when he spoke of his wife and sons. “Yes. Ewan’s a trifle young to understand, of course, but Kate wouldn’t hear of leaving him. And it’s good for Ernie to see England before he goes away to school. He’ll be pleased to see you, I expect.”

  Rowland nodded. He hesitated. “Is mother…?”

  “Mother’s at Oaklea. She’s no better, but there’s no need to worry.”

  Need or not, Rowland was uneasy. Elisabeth Sinclair had for some time been suffering from a frailty of memory. And she had come to rely on the presence of her sons: Wilfred for himself, and Rowland because she believed he was his brother Aubrey, the son she’d lost in the Great War. Wilfred and Rowland had rarely been out of the country at the same time since Aubrey had died.

  “Do you remember Arthur Sinclair?” Wilfred asked.

  Rowland frowned. “Yes. Of course.”

  Arthur Sinclair was their first cousin, a year or so younger than Wilfred—the son of their father’s brother, Edward. For reasons that Rowland could not completely remember, Arthur had been disowned and cut off when still a young man. Edward Sinclair had passed away a couple of years later, before the rift could be repaired. Rowland had seen nothing of Arthur since, though he was aware that Wilfred had tried to find their disinherited cousin after their own father had died.

  “Arthur’s been abroad for the past decade or so, but he’d write every now and then. I’m afraid he’s become a solicitor, but considering the circumstances in which he found himself, we shouldn’t condemn him on that account. He made a visit to Oaklea in April. Mother was clearly overjoyed to see him.”

  “She remembered Arthur?” Rowland’s voice bore only the slightest hint of bitterness… a fleeting moment of unguarded hurt. For years now his mother had failed to know him, insisting he was Aubrey as if her youngest son had never existed.

  Wilfred’s eyes were sympathetic, but he was honest. “Yes, she recognised Arthur. It seems she was close to his mother, and rather fond of him.”

  “I see.”

  “Arthur very kindly agreed to remain at Oaklea whilst I was abroad… to keep an eye on mother and relay any urgent matters from the managers to me.”

  “Oh.” Rowland decided now was as good a time as any to ask an indelicate question. “Why was he…?”

  “Disowned? An inappropriate liaison that he refused to relinquish, I believe,” Wilfred replied gravely. “Not something you are in any position to hold against him, Rowly.”

  Rowland smiled, conceding. “Indeed. We black sheep should probably stick together… form our own flock.”

  “Good man. I did always feel Arthur was a little hard done by. We’ll organise your passages home tomorrow.”

  “Actually, I’d prefer not to go home just yet.”

  Wilfred sighed heavily. “Why?”

  Rowland explained. “I think I should speak to someone about what’s going on in Germany, Wil. The Nazis are not your run-of-the-mill conservative government.”

  “We are all aware of that, Rowly.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “You’re not the first man to express misgivings about Mr. Hitler’s Germany, Rowly,” Wilfred said wearily. “Why should they listen to you?”

  “I thought that perhaps you could have a word, Wil… perhaps they’d take me seriously if you—”

  “You overestimate my influence.”

  “Please, Wil. I can’t just go home without trying.”

  Wilfred’s brow furrowed. He reached for another cigarette and then thought better of it. It was more than just the burns, the broken arm. There was a change in his brother’s eyes… a kind of controlled panic. It had been a long time since Rowland had actually asked for his help. Wilfred relented cautiously. “Perhaps I could arrange for you to talk to Pierrepont… he at least has some sway with that fool Chamberlain. I’ll look into it. But, Rowly,” Wilfred leaned forward, “you’ll learn in time that there is only so much you can do.”

  3

  A BYSTANDER’S NOTE BOOK

  POINTED PARS AND PITH
Y POINTS

  TO KEEP IT GOING

  The most exclusive “gentlemen’s” club in the world is the Carlton Club, London, to gain membership of which a “gentleman” otherwise eligible may have to wait twenty years. But, as some of the exclusive members lately have found it hard to pay up, the exclusiveness has been relaxed to the extent of letting in a score of new members ready to enter and willing to pay the fees. The day, perhaps, is only a few years off when a “gentleman club man” may be classified among human beings.

  The Worker, 1932

  Wilfred Sinclair was not a member of the small but exclusive gentlemen’s club, Watts, in London, nor was he ever likely to be invited to join. Although the Sinclairs had long been counted among the colonial elite, the Bunyip aristocracy was not the stuff of Watts. Even so, the elderly steward was polite and helpful.

  “Shall I reserve three places for luncheon, sir?” he asked, glancing into the dining room. Most of the places around the long table, which ran down its centre, were already occupied with men in white tie and tails, all speaking with unnecessary volume. The boisterous, all male gathering reminded Rowland of boarding school dinners. Having no particular wish to revisit those years, he had never appreciated the attraction of gentlemen’s clubs.

  “No, thank you, George,” Wilfred said, raising his eyebrows as a dinner roll was flung across the table to hoots of laughter. One of the diners began to crow like a cockerel and the others clucked in reply. “Lord Pierrepont is expecting us, but we don’t plan to stay long.”

  “Very good, sir. Perhaps you’d like to take a refreshment while I call for someone to take you up to the suite.”

  “That won’t be necessary, George. We’ll go up ourselves directly.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Wilfred motioned his brother towards the sweeping staircase that led to the upper floors.

  “Pierrepont can be a slippery sod,” he warned quietly as they made their way to the second floor suites that were reserved for members. “He’s a self-important egotist, in desperate debt, but he is well-connected and, what’s more, his first wife was German. He’ll be very happy to think the worst of them.”