Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

by Sulari Gentill

  “Harcourt?” Edna’s brow creased. “I thought you said her name was Thistlewaite.”

  “It is dear,” Ethel explained. “Harcourt is the title, Thistlewaite the name. Euphemia’s father is Henry Thistlewaite, the Baron of Harcourt.”

  “Oh. How long had she and Lord Pierrepont been married?”

  “When he died? Barely a month.”

  Rowland shrugged, unsure why this was scandalous enough to be whispered among the ladies of the Dominions. “Lord Pierrepont was free to marry, and he wouldn’t be the first man to fall in love with a beautiful younger woman.” He winked at Kate who was sixteen years Wilfred’s junior.

  His brother’s wife blushed.

  “Oh, Euphemia isn’t beautiful, Mr. Sinclair. The poor thing has rather too many teeth to be beautiful or even handsome, I’m afraid. And she isn’t all that young. She’s an odd girl really, quite bookish and peculiar.”

  “Even so,” Rowland said. Who knew what a man in a nightie would find desirable?

  “But there’s more, you see. Some of the other wives have heard—and this is a rumour mind you and not something to which Bertha would attach her reputation, though I do think there may be something to it—that Bunky was carrying on with an American.”

  Rowland waited.

  “An American,” Ethel repeated.

  “Which American?” he asked, trying to respond enthusiastically.

  “That’s the strange thing, nobody seems to know. Bunky has never been so circumspect in the past. I’ve known him to introduce his dalliances to each other. It’s rather mysterious.”

  “But that was before he was married.”

  Ethel’s face fell. “Oh dear, that is true. The marriage could explain it.” She sighed. “Mr. Isaacs will be less than impressed with my efforts at sleuthing, I’m sure.”

  “Not at all, Ethel,” Edna protested. “After all, perhaps the new Lady Pierrepont discovered Lord Pierrepont’s inconstancy and killed him!”

  “So, we are all agreed that Bunky was murdered?” Ethel smiled triumphantly.

  Edna stopped, realising that the fact was not supposed to be common knowledge even in Stanley Melbourne Bruce’s own home. She looked to Rowland hesitantly.

  “What does Minister Bruce say on the matter?” Rowland asked carefully.

  “He said he rather likes my new hat, as he always does when he wants to change the subject and convince me to leave it to the police!” Ethel replied. She glanced at the portrait of her husband over the mantel and rolled her eyes, exhaling fiercely.

  Rowland smiled. He did wonder how regularly Mrs. Stanley Melbourne Bruce came upon matters that her husband thought were best left to the police. “Sadly, the police do not have the wives of the Empire’s diplomats at their disposal.”

  “Indeed, Mr. Sinclair, they do not.”

  11

  MADAME TUSSAUD’S

  Additions to Australian Group

  LONDON, March 7

  Messrs W. M. Woodfull, W. M. Hughes, S. M. Bruce and J. T. Lang have been included in the Australian group at Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. The secretary told a press representative that Don Bradman had been removed, following complaints by enthusiasts that his hair was incorrect and his batting position was faulty. “So many people are asking, ‘Where is Bradman?’ that we are hoping to obtain accurate details enabling his restoration.”

  Townsville Daily Bulletin, 1933

  Milton was quite unashamedly envious that Rowland Sinclair had found H.G. Wells at the Geological Museum, and more so that he had managed to exchange fisticuffs with Fascists in the same afternoon. It seemed to the poet that Rowland did not fully appreciate either encounter as he should.

  He was almost inconsolable when Rowland informed him of the other literary luminaries who had also been in the public gallery that morning.

  “You met them?”

  “Not at all. They just waved at Wells and sat down. He told me who they were.”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd to find so many illustrious figures in the one place?”

  “Not really. In my experience illustrious people seem to know one another. As far as I can tell, they all seem to be part of a set. It’s probably not surprising that they step out together from time to time, though why they’d choose to do so at an economic conference is beyond me entirely!”

  While Rowland had been at the conference, Milton and Clyde had set out from Claridge’s for Hyde Park, where Clyde had hoped to capture the famous English stroll in pencil and wash. Milton had taken Paradise Lost. Their intention had been to pass the day in these tranquil pursuits. As it happened however they’d found themselves in that part of Hyde Park known as Speakers’ Corner where public discussion was at least tolerated, if not encouraged.

  The forum had its equivalent in Sydney’s Domain and perhaps it was a sense of familiarity that drew the Australians towards it. They had seen many impassioned speakers state their particular cause and case on the grassy lawns before the National Art Gallery back home—Milton had often mounted the soapbox himself, moved by either the Party or poetry.

  “At first it was just crackpots proclaiming the end of the world,” Clyde explained. “But eventually the Communists turned up, so we hung about for a bit and introduced ourselves to the local faithful.”

  “Ended up at a pub listening to speeches about the Fascists,” Milton sighed. He pointed at Rowland. “You should have told us you were going to brawl!”

  Rowland laughed. “If only I’d known. I could well have used a hand…” He trailed off as the butler emerged with a tray of drinks. “I say, where’s Beresford?” The man bearing the tray was new.

  “Mr. Beresford has been assigned to another guest, sir. I’m Menzies. I’ll be looking after you for the remainder of your stay at Claridge’s.”

  Fleetingly Rowland wondered if they had offended Beresford somehow. He was aware that the butler found them wanting in many respects but he hadn’t thought their transgressions of protocol that objectionable.

  Whatever may have caused Beresford’s departure it seemed he had taken the time to instruct Menzies on the subject of Horlicks. Rowland stared at the cup of steaming malted milk which Menzies set before him. “I believe this is your beverage of choice, sir.”

  Milton laughed. “For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise,” he said raising his glass of sherry in toast.

  “Coleridge,” Rowland replied miserably. He very much doubted the milk of paradise would be flavoured with Horlicks powder.

  Ernest Sinclair was waiting eagerly when they called for him at Ennismore Gardens. The six-year-old was obviously looking forward to an outing in the company of his uncle. Wilfred and Stanley Bruce had already left for the day’s business. Kate gave her elder son last-minute instructions for manners and behaviour.

  “Heavens, Kate, I’m not taking him to church!” Rowland said as she fussed over the sharp slick of Ernest’s hair. “You mustn’t worry—we’ll look after him,” he assured his sister-in-law, who he thought predisposed to be unnecessarily anxious. “Though you’re welcome to come, too, if you’d care to.”

  Kate shook her head. “Ethel and I are going to the ballet this afternoon when Nanny takes Ewan for a nap. I was planning to take Ernie, but he’d doubtless prefer the waxworks.”

  Rowland glanced at Ernest, grimacing. “The ballet! Good Lord, a narrow escape!”

  “I’ll say, Uncle Rowly,” Ernest agreed.

  “Ernest!” Kate scolded her son because she could not admonish his uncle.

  “We’ll have him back in a few hours then,” Rowland said hastily before she could change her mind and take the poor child to the ballet. “Come on Ernie, run!”

  Ernest did so without hesitation leaving Rowland to say farewell for them both. Kate smiled as she watched her son run giggling into Clyde’s brawny arms and be thrown into the back of the motor car as if they were fleeing mortal danger.

  And so once again, Rowland and his companions wandered through
the waxwork exhibition. Edna disappeared through the black door to find Marriott Spencer as arranged. The gentlemen took their time, allowing Ernest to examine each figure in his solemn, thoughtful way.

  The boy gasped and pointed occasionally, and reached for Rowland’s hand in the Chamber of Horrors. Milton “enhanced” each statue with amateur ventriloquism and potted biographies that were more creative than accurate. Under his tutelage the Prince of Wales became a famous shoe salesman, Lord Nelson a bloodthirsty pirate and Winston Churchill the man who invented the Arrowroot biscuit. Neither Rowland nor Clyde bothered to correct him or disillusion Ernest, who was rapt in attention.

  In this manner they spent most of the morning.

  As Big Ben struck one o’clock, Clyde hoisted Ernest onto his shoulders and they ventured into the crowded streets of central London to find an eatery of some sort. The presence of Rowland’s nephew made them a little more discerning with respect to the venue, and they bypassed public houses and the bohemian haunts to which they were usually drawn, in search of more respectable establishments.

  Ernest gazed at the lines of hungry men outside the Salvation Army soup kitchen as they walked past. Rowland gave him a guinea to drop into the collection box, and Clyde told him stories of the days when he had walked the wallaby track in search of work, when he too had relied on charity to eat.

  “Why didn’t you get a job, Mr. Watson Jones?”

  “There weren’t any to be had, Ernie.”

  “Couldn’t your mother and father have helped you?” the child persisted. Ernest could not yet comprehend a problem that his own father could not solve.

  “My mum and dad could barely feed themselves, Ernie.”

  Ernest slipped off Clyde’s shoulder, silent and clearly troubled. The child was aptly named. Rowland took the boy’s hand. The refined, sheltered world in which he and Ernest had been raised was rarely touched by the day-to-day realities of the Depression. Only through his friends had Rowland become aware of the struggles of the unemployed and the families that relied upon them. In Sydney, he did what he could with quiet anonymous donations. But the problem was not confined to any one city or nation. For the first time he began to wonder what Wilfred’s economic conference might achieve.

  After that, dining seemed less important. In the end they found a restaurant that sold battered fish and chipped potatoes. The meal was one that Rowland could manage one-handed without fuss or embarrassment, and so it was particularly enjoyed, despite its simplicity.

  By the time they returned to the waxwork museum, Edna had quite happily spent most of the day immersed in the art of Marriott Spencer. They found her using what looked like surgical instruments to whittle refinements into the facial features of a wax-cast head under the guidance of the hook-handed sculptor.

  “Gentlemen!” Spencer exclaimed. “You have come to take my protégée so soon. We are not finished!”

  Rowland checked his watch. It was getting late.

  “But you must speak with Francis about your friend the aristocrat! He is in the next room… Go! Edna and I are busy.”

  Edna laughed. “Go on,” she said quietly to Rowland. “I’ll wash up while you speak with Frankie.”

  Francis Pocock had worked at the wax museum since before the war. He was an immense man. His jowls expanded down to his shoulders in a way that made him look like a squat melting candle. Rowland could not help but wonder if the years of working with wax had caused the man’s flesh to behave in a similar manner to his material. Pocock did not look up from his work.

  Rowland introduced himself and his friends and eventually the wax sculptor extended a pudgy hand in greeting. “I’m busy. What do you want?”

  “We were wondering about the statue of Lord Pierrepont, Mr. Pocock.”

  “What about it?”

  “For what kind of display do you intend it?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m a friend of Lord Pierrepont’s family,” Rowland said, knowing the claim was at best a gross exaggeration and more accurately an outright falsehood. “I thought it might comfort them to know he was going to be remembered at Madame Tussaud’s.”

  Pocock grunted. “He won’t be.” He looked at Rowland fiercely. “Friend of the family, eh? Well you tell Lady Pierrepont that unless she settles the account as agreed, I’ll be melting him down to wax the floors!”

  “Lady?” Rowland remembered then the intelligence of the wife of the British High Commissioner to Ceylon. “Euphemia is paying for the statue?” he asked, feigning familiarity with the new Lady Pierrepont. “I say, she didn’t tell me that!”

  “She hasn’t paid a single penny for anything yet!” Pocock was clearly irate. “I risk my job to take on a private commission and then, when I’ve already cast the head, she decides a statue would be ghoulish just because he’s dead!”

  “I see. That is bad luck,” Rowland said, glaring at Milton who was grinning openly.

  Pocock sighed. He stepped over to where the unfinished statue of Pierrepont had been leant against a wall and, with a measure of twisting and grunting, removed the head. He gave it to Rowland. “Here, for Lady Pierrepont with my condolences. She will at least be able to tell the baby what its late father looked like. If she pays her account I will make the rest of him!”

  Rowland looked down at the waxen head which Pocock had thrust at him. It was, as far as he could tell, a startling likeness, though admittedly he had last seen Pierrepont in less than ideal circumstances.

  Clyde, who was standing behind Pocock, was signalling wildly for Rowland to give the head back. Milton was trying not to laugh and, thankfully, Ernest had stopped with Edna and Spencer.

  “I’ll see that Lady Pierrepont—Euphemia, gets it—him,” Rowland said. Clyde groaned audibly. “I’m sure she’ll be grateful.”

  Pocock grunted and waved for them to go. “Tell her to pay!”

  Rowland tried to carry the head discreetly but it was not really possible to do so. As it had no handle of any sort, he was forced to bundle it under his uninjured arm like a ball.

  “I don’t suppose you could wrap this up in something for me, Mr. Spencer,” he asked when they rejoined the sculptress and her tutor.

  “Do we get to keep that?” Ernest asked, staring at the head in awe. The glass eyes looked blankly out from the crook of Rowland’s arm.

  “Afraid not, Ernie, we’re just delivering it to someone for Mr. Pocock.”

  The boy was clearly disappointed. Milton seemed so, too.

  Obligingly, and without question, Spencer had Pierrepont’s head wrapped in brown paper and twine, tying an extra loop to act as a handle. He swung the package on his hook a couple of times to test the knots were secure and, so satisfied, returned it to Rowland.

  They thanked and farewelled Marriott Spencer then, and took Ernest to the souvenir shop in the vain search for something as desirable to a small boy as a wax head.

  Exhausted by the day’s adventures, Ernest fell asleep on the drive back to Ennismore Gardens. Clyde carried him into the terrace and they stayed for a while to drink tea with Kate and Ethel Bruce. They had a perfectly civilised conversation without once mentioning the head of Lord Pierrepont.

  It was not until they’d returned to the privacy of their suites at Claridge’s that Clyde spoke his mind.

  “What the Dickens were you thinking, Rowly?” he demanded. “Why would you agree to take Lord Muck’s ugly mug home with us?”

  Rowland glanced at the head, which Milton had unwrapped and placed prominently on the sideboard. “It didn’t seem like I could politely refuse.”

  “For God’s sake, he gave you a head, not his flaming dance card!”

  “I trust your judgement, Rowly,” Milton said as he poured drinks. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders… and another on the sideboard.”

  Rowland smiled. “I’ll take it to the recently widowed Lady Pierrepont. I’m more than a little intrigued to meet her to be honest.”

  “Meet her? Do
esn’t it alarm you that she would want a wax replica of her husband?”

  “Alarm me? No—not excessively.”

  “Why not?”

  Rowland shrugged. “I was at Oxford.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Clyde asked.

  Rowland sat down. “I shared digs once with a chap called Rutherford, son of an earl. Nice fellow, liked horses. He had every nag he ever owned stuffed and mounted when it died… kept a taxidermist on staff and the horses in his ballroom. Had his first pony moved into our rooms at Oxford—a moth-eaten Shetland called Cloppy.”

  Clyde stared at Rowland for a moment, unsure whether he was joking. “Right then,” he said uncertainly. “You’re saying the English are mad?”

  “The ones with titles can be eccentric.” Rowland rubbed the back of his neck where the weight of the sling was concentrated. “It’s a wax head, Clyde—a little odd I’ll grant you, but probably not all that different from commissioning a painting of your husband.”

  Clyde gave up. “Very well, then. Go ahead and call on a grieving widow with her husband’s head under your arm, but mate, don’t be surprised if she calls the police.”

  12

  HENCE INSANITY

  A medical man, who has travelled extensively for the purpose of studying human development, asserts that two of the greatest evils in the world are over-indulgence in alcohol and tobacco. “I am not speaking as a moralist, but as a physician,” he said. “The strain of modern life is leading more and more to its victims flying for relief to alcohol and tobacco, and I believe that these are tremendous factors in bringing about conditions favourable to insanity. “I have seen cases of lunacy directly caused by excessive cigarette smoking, and the insanity born of alcoholism is well known to doctors. “It is not the pressure of modern life that breaks us down. It is the drugs and stimulants we take to mitigate its effect.”

  Camperdown Chronicle, 1933

  The light of the summer moon was almost bright as it streamed in through the open window. Rowland looked out onto Brook Street, reorienting himself after a brief and troubled sleep. Cursing, he wiped the cold sweat off his brow, his heart still beating rapidly and his breath ragged. Blow Wilfred and his advice… he needed a drink.