by Peter Rimmer
When the stock market crashed he owed the bank twelve thousand pounds, backed by fifteen thousand pounds’ worth of shares as espoused by Jack Shephard, the financial analyst at his own paper. William sold his proud portfolio three days too late for less than he paid for them.
Were it not for Horatio giving him a home when they fired him from the Guardian, he would have been out in a very cold street, not even the Communist Party wanting him back again now he couldn’t pay his dues.
He had, as he realised, made a second mistake. He had blamed Jack Shephard and, by implication, his own paper in an unpublished article he submitted to his editor.
They had waited three months to let him go, using the drop in circulation as a valid excuse. Not for the first time, William Smythe found out telling the truth was not the best story; that one way or the other, whatever financial system was in place, the unsuspecting citizen was going to lose his proverbial shirt, manipulated by the few who knew what they were doing.
Like all the rest that had lost their money in the feeding frenzy of getting rich, there was nothing he could do except look for another job. Fortunately for William, the system could take away his money but not take away his brains. He was still a good writer. Educated. His brain was clear. Freelance journalism for some papers was better than paying a salary. From a freelancer they only had to pay for what they printed, saving them money.
By the time Horatio burst into the flat with the story of Harry Brigandshaw’s resurrection, William was back into the system, paying off his bank, trying to get back on top before it was all too late. Before he was too old to attract the women to even be interested in him.
For half an hour, William listened to the story of Harry Brigandshaw and Barnaby St Clair, something he had gone through at length when the aircraft went down three years earlier, helping Horatio Wakefield make a name for himself in the newspaper world.
William could also remember Tina Brigandshaw and what she looked like at the opening night of a Christopher Marlowe musical financed by her husband before he disappeared on his flight down Africa. Horatio had written the human side of the story, which centred on the wife who was probably a widow.
They had broken open a bottle of whisky and William had put a match to the fire, the old flat’s only redeeming feature. First the kindling wood caught and then the coal. Soon the small room was warm, the curtains drawn against the October wind howling down the street outside, slanting the rain at the windowpanes.
There were two rooms in the flat apart from the small kitchen. William slept on the couch near the fireplace, which he had done since coming down from Manchester after the wreck of his journalistic career, or so it seemed at the time.
What they enjoyed most was their conversations. Sitting around the fire in the winter. Sitting on a park bench in Holland Park in the summer under the lime-green leaves of the elm trees with the birds singing at dusk, away from the traffic noise down the Bayswater Road.
Both of them had read extensively through twenty of their twenty-eight years on every subject under the sun. Delving into new books and newsworthy magazines like good eaters enjoyed their food, always giving the food time to digest afterwards in good conversation. Sometimes colleagues joined their dialogue but mostly it was just them, never arguing, dissecting the facts of life and the troubled progress of the human condition in its brief moment of existence.
“I’m going to press on Saturday,” said Horatio, taking a lump of coal out of the coal scuttle and putting it carefully on the fire so as not to douse the flames. “Did you fill the coal scuttle, old chap? All the way up three flights of stairs?… Listen to it… It’s a stinker outside. Why is the English climate so utterly appalling?… No wonder Brigandshaw went to live in Africa where the sun shines all the year round.”
“No, you are not.”
“What am I not, Will?”
“Writing the story.”
“You don’t think it’s news?”
“Of course it is, idiot. It’s enormous. Why I’m going to write the story… You did say no one at the Mail knew where you were going when you went to find your Doctor Nash?”
“I didn’t breathe a word. Some other desperate soul would have jumped on the story.”
“Exactly. I’m going to offer the resurrection to half a dozen papers and sell it to the highest bidder. I’m a freelancer. You are a hack. However good the story, you won’t add one penny to your miserable salary. What was the name of the American paper that sent Keppel Howland out to Africa? It wasn’t the New York Herald that sent Stanley to look for Doctor Livingstone?… What a headline! ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume.’”
“The Denver Telegraph. Editor’s a chap called Glen Hamilton. He met Harry Brigandshaw in France during the war when the Americans joined, in 1917.”
“Having let the British Empire bleed to death. There’s outside influence behind Gandhi which no one admits. Isn’t he originally from South Africa? What’s he doing stirring anti-British sentiment? The Americans are jealous of us. Always have been. They’ll do it again, mark my word. There’s going to be another war. This time we’ll be on our own.”
“Sometimes you talk nonsense, Will. The Americans are our cousins. Our friends.”
“Not when it comes to trade. Then no one is a friend. Business is competition. We still make the rules in the empire. The Americans want the empire to fall. They say colonialism is bad. What utter rot, without honest British administration half our colonies will collapse. We are good for world order. Bad for American business. When Germany seeks revenge, the Americans will watch from across the Atlantic while we haemorrhage again.”
“What about the French?”
“The French bled to death at Verdun, poor bastards. They’re finished as a military power. Strange when you think about it: apart from the last war, we and the Germans were on the same side against the French. Without the Prussians, Wellington would have lost the Battle of Waterloo. You and I would be speaking French instead of my brilliant English… Of course we’ll write the Brigandshaw story together. We’ll split the fee in half.”
“My paper will fire me. They know you live in my flat.”
“Not if you offer the story to the Mail first. As an exclusive for a week. The lucky chap who shared a flat with the freelance journalist who unearthed Harry Brigandshaw from the dead. The whole idea is absolutely lovely.”
“You are still talking rot about the Americans. If they had not come to help us in 1917, we would have lost the war.”
“The Americans knew that. What they wanted was a depleted Britain. Not a rampant Germany. They want to take over running the world.”
The two men drifted into the comfortable silence of old friends.
William Smythe came from a military family. As far back as they could remember. His father had been the regimental sergeant major of the Lancashire Fusiliers when war broke out. By 1916, he was dead along with the rest of the regular British Army.
It was said in the family that a Smythe ancestor had fought with King Henry at the Battle of Agincourt. Another at Crécy. In America against the Colonial rebellion. At Waterloo with Wellington. At Spion Kop. In 1916, RSM Smythe died standing to attention with his swagger stick in exact place under his left arm, his boots shining, his battledress immaculate. His mouth was open letting out the power of his commands in the face of the German enemy.
Only when the first battle of the Somme was over did the remnants of the regiment find the body of their RSM. Buried him with full military honours, the man’s life fulfilled.
By April 1917, William’s two older brothers were dead. William’s mother walked into the river not far from their home in Nantwich and drowned herself; spring flowers were blooming along the banks. William was still at school. Polly was nineteen, the only girl in the family.
The regiment continued to pay for William’s schooling at Kidderminster Grammar. He was a boarder. Later the regiment paid for him to go to Manchester University when the war was fin
ally over. Polly went to America with a GI. She never wrote.
William was proud of his father and brothers. War was part of the family heritage, what they were paid for as soldiers. Dying in battle was the highest honour any of them could find in mortal life. His mother should have understood that before walking into the river feeling sorry for herself. William had shut the memory of his mother right out of his mind.
Through school, he had always been top of his class, as befitted the youngest son of an RSM of a British regiment whose history went back with the Smythes, the Smythes who faced life with squared shoulders and a straight back.
They had lived all over the world, wherever the British stationed a garrison. India, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Borneo, Malta. Of the years when the family were together, only two had been spent in England, home leaves being translated into money to send the boys to England and school. To give them a chance to get on in the world, only the eldest destined for the regular army.
For centuries, the family had been non-commissioned officers. It was William’s father’s great ambition that his eldest son receive a King’s commission, would become an officer and a gentleman. To live in the officers’ mess, hobnobbing with the best.
Writing had long been part of William’s imagination. He wanted to write down and keep the multitude of flavours he had smelt and tasted as a child. So many strange sights and cultures. So much more than the other boys at school had ever seen.
At Manchester University, instead of taking English as his main subject, a dead-end, he had entered the faculty nearest to what he needed for journalism. PPE they called it: Philosophy, Politics and Economics. A grand grounding, William thought, to pepper the world with his brilliant articles that would change the direction of modern civilisation. Change it to a caring, softer place that better understood the needs of man without so many barked commands.
“I was an idealist until my second year, Horatio. A genuine, one hundred per cent idealist… You’d better put some more coal on the fire… I soaked up Plato and the words of Socrates. The Romans. The French. The Russians. I read them all. Believed in all their high philosophies of right over wrong, of good over bad. That, as Socrates said, it was always better to do that which was right, not that which was wrong… Back then it was so easy. So obvious. So right… Except, of course, like all the rest of us I did not know the difference between right and wrong. It’s all very well wanting to do the right things in life but only if you know what you are doing. When I met Lily Gray, she was the only member of our class who had not joined the Communist Party. She was also the prettiest, with a sex appeal that could break a man’s balls…”
“Are you going to be rich, William?” she asked.
“Of course not. I’m going to do good!”
“Then get out of my way. You are a fool, William. I never waste my time on fools. You need money to go through life. Not ideals. You can’t eat bright ideas. Communism is just another bright idea dreamed up by a few in search of power to enslave the rest of the people. When they tell you it’s for the good of mankind you should know it’s for their own good. Plato had his philosopher king who would always know when to do right, which is poppycock except for the king and his sycophants. The power-hungry dreamed up theocracies so the church could rule. Oligarchies for the rich. Aristocracies. And the one I like best, democracies that let every idiot in the country vote for bigger idiots to govern them. Idiots who only have to make promises to get the other idiots to vote for them… Five years later, they all change horses and vote for another pie in the sky. Give me a full-blooded dictator any day. At least you know where you stand. You are either with him or against him.”
“So you won’t go for a cup of coffee in town?”
“Or anywhere else, William. I only go out with men who want to be rich…”
“So there I was, Horatio. From idealist to my present state of cynic in one brief exchange. The frightening part is, the lady was right. She married a man who went through the war supplying the army with tinned food at inflated prices. Said he had a gammy leg, which kept him from the fighting. Rich as Croesus by the end of the war.
“Now she’s fat, going on ugly with five kids. But Lily’s laughing. Her husband’s rich. Saw her four years ago which set me on the path of buying the shares that crashed all around me. But I understood she was right. A man has to be rich to get through this world. All my father got from the war was his head blown off. Now tell me which of the two was right. If all those Smythes in history had just made money instead of being heroes, I wouldn’t be where I am now, owing money I never even spent. But things are now going to change, thanks to the resurrection of Mr Harry Brigandshaw.”
“I’m going to get fired. Then we won’t have this flat or that bottle of whisky you are clutching… But is Lily happy?”
“Of course she’s happy. Her husband is rich. The house is big enough to get away from him when she wants. To get away from screaming kids. She can buy her solitude in the country. He’s away half the time. Probably has a mistress. She doesn’t care. If she wants a lover, she takes one who’s impressed with her wealth. She was only going to be pretty for a short time of her life. She’s going to be rich until the day she dies. What she sees in the mirror doesn’t matter anymore… Ask your friend Brigandshaw when he’s up and well, money counts. He’s going to want his money back. You and I are going to write the story and this time get paid… I give you Lily, who taught me more at university in five minutes than the rest of them in three years. She had learnt a lot for a nineteen-year-old.”
Horatio gave his friend a queer look before attending to the fire.
They had been born not far from each other, William in Nantwich, Horatio in Chester. The same class. Men of men. Military on the one hand, sailors on the other. That’s why Horatio had the name that had plagued him throughout his life, a name that, however hard they tried, no one could make smaller or sound less, as William put it, like a twit… And even the cross given him at his christening was a lie, something Horatio only found out when he went into journalism as a cub reporter with the Daily Mail… When he first met William Smythe.
“He fought on the Victory at Trafalgar. Only a cabin boy of fourteen. The greatest battle in our naval history.”
“Who, Father?”
“The man you are named for. Your ancestor.”
“Nelson! We are not related to Lord Nelson, Father. Wish we were. The kids at school wouldn’t laugh at my name. Why did you call me Horatio? Jim would have been much better. Like my Uncle Jim.”
“Your grandfather, two greats back, was a cabin boy on HMS Victory.”
His father had said the words with such reverence, Horatio thought his father was going to cry from the thought of such an illustrious ancestor. A man going from admiral to cabin boy didn’t seem to matter a bit. From that day on, Horatio looked at his father in a different light.
The first mate of a cargo ship that plied the China route had fallen off his pedestal. Even at the age of ten, Horatio thought there was more to life than being a cabin boy on Nelson’s Victory. A story that wasn’t even the truth. Uncle Jim, drunk, told him the real story in a pub off the Waterloo Bridge many years later, Uncle Jim at the end of shore leave and broke as usual just before going back to sea.
“The old bugger lived to ninety-seven. Kept him in free drinks ’til the week before he died. He was a cabin boy all right. Conscripted off a coal boat that sailed round Wales to and from the Port of Liverpool. He was at the Battle of Trafalgar, that much was fact. On another ship. The Nelson bit came later when he came ashore as tough as old teak, after fifty years at sea. Got to bosun, did great-grandfather. Just don’t tell your father. Split my bloody side when he called you Horatio. Now run along with that first pay packet and buy your uncle another drink. How much you’ve got left?”
“One shilling and eleven pence three farthings.”
“Then make it a big one.”
“Can I change my name?”
“Not once you’re christened. Church of England don’t allow that. You’re stuck with it, Horatio.”
“You sure?... When do you go back to sea?”
“Tomorrow, thank God. Train to Liverpool then off to South America. My money was gone last week.”
“Why didn’t you marry?”
“Whatever for? Enough trouble finding drinking money without having a wife. Now off you go to the bar. I’m still thirsty. Why didn’t you go to sea like the rest of us Wakefields?”
Horatio, on his way to the bar, had chosen to ignore his uncle, the answer was so obvious. He wanted to get on in his life. Like Lily Gray, he said to himself as he thought back on his evening in the pub with Uncle Jim. The old scoundrel now dead at the bottom of the sea in a storm off Argentina. When Horatio had left that pub the last time he saw Uncle Jim he was down to sixpence to last him the rest of the month.
“It was worth it.”
“What was?” said William, coming out of his own reverie as he stared at the flickering fire.
“Buying Uncle Jim those drinks. They don’t make characters like that nowadays. He worked for months in harsh conditions just to get drunk when he came on shore. Never heard him say a nasty word about anyone in his life. Except about my great-great-grandfather who, as you know, turned out to be something of a fraud.”
“He got free drinks. Told a good story. That’s not fraud. That’s entertainment… Stop hogging the bottle, Horatio. Remember, I’m soon to be rich. Then I will be buying the bottles of whisky.”
3
The bidding began the next day much to Horatio’s amusement, tinged with fear for his job at the Daily Mail.
“The strangest thing, Mr Glass, a friend of mine claims he knows Harry Brigandshaw is alive and back in England. Has talked to him. William Smythe is offering the story to one paper as an exclusive. He’s a freelance journalist.”
