by Peter Rimmer
“The Tropical Diseases Hospital in Bloomsbury,” he told the driver.
“Why didn’t you say that the first time?” The man had a thick accent.
He had found the same cab driver who must have turned round and gone back to the rank. With a strong feeling his luck had changed, Bruno began to enjoy himself. His mother said a good meal was like a blood transfusion. His mother was right. Looking at his watch, Bruno saw the time was half past four in the afternoon. With luck he’d have his proof before the pubs opened again at six o’clock, in time for a celebration even if he had to drink on his own… He began whistling out of tune.
The cab driver quickly shut the window that separated him from the fare. He was an opera buff and hated anything out of tune.
The cab driver was a Russian Count in better times, a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy who had gone over to the peasants at the end of his life, throwing away his land and title. The first revolution in 1905 had been brutally put down by the Cossacks at the order of the Tsar. As was his habit, the cab driver always lived in his head, ignoring his body driving the car. He found living in the past was better than living in the present. The communists had killed his family, which had made him bitter. He had been away fighting Trotsky’s Red Army with the brief help of the United States and Britain, which was how he came to be driving in the London rain.
He dropped the young man at the hospital after taking one unintentional wrong turn. His upbringing had made him honest for life. Foolishly, he had expected others to behave the same way. With his mind in a muddle the Count drove off, hoping someone would flag him down on his way back to the Fleet Street taxi rank. Business was bad. Men took the Tube or walked in the rain. He was so cold his body was numb, something he had grown used to after the revolution that had destroyed his world.
William Smythe had arrived at the hospital at two-thirty, two hours earlier. A different-looking Harry Brigandshaw was sitting up in bed; someone had come in and given him a haircut. The matron of the ward had been right on the telephone. His man looked much better. The skin was still the colour of yellow parchment but the short hair looked less grey, making Brigandshaw ten years younger. There were now laughter lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Come in, Smythe. You know one of my brothers-in-law. This one is the writer, Robert St Clair. His wife is out shopping. Barnaby, ask that pretty nurse for another chair so I can give our friend some more to write about.”
“You look much better, Mr Brigandshaw.”
“Barnaby made his barber come all the way from Regent Street. How do you like my haircut? They injected me right into the stomach to kill the bilharzia worm. That chap on the boat did his best but you need a laboratory to find out what is wrong. They gave me some new-fangled drug to kill the rest of the bugs in my body that the Tutsi tribe is immune to. Each race builds up its own immunity, so the doctor explained.”
“When are they letting you out?”
“In a week or so. They want to monitor the new drug. If you keep my whereabouts to yourself until I get out of here, I’ll give you more story than you can ever write. You and your readers will be sick of Brigandshaw. Now, where was I in the story, Mr Smythe? Barnaby, why don’t you take your brother home and give him some lunch?
“Robert’s up from Dorset where he’s writing a new book. He’s let his flat in London to an old friend of mine but we won’t go into my past on that one. Robert’s wife has written a play I intend financing if the Receiver of Revenue gives me back my money. Why is it when we feel well, problems are so much smaller? I had a message from the managing director of my old company saying he wants to visit. Poor chap must be feeling rotten… Visiting hours finish at half past four. Good to see you again, Robert. All those years ago at Oxford. Your friendship has meant a lot to me. All of you St Clairs. I still think of Lucinda at least once a day. She was my first wife, Mr Smythe. Yes, she was my first wife. Still wonderfully alive in my mind…
“Barnaby finally got a call through to Rhodesia. My wife is bringing the children home. Though what is home these days I’m never sure. Home with the Tutsis was a very long time. I owe them my life. I just hope they don’t kill too many Hutus with the guns I sent them in exchange for my freedom. There is always a price to pay, Mr Smythe. Often paid by someone else. One man’s good fortune is often another man’s disaster… Adele, my dear, we don’t need the chair after all but thank you for showing your pretty face. Two of these gentlemen are just leaving… Mr William Smythe, I would like you to meet Miss Adele Cornfelt… Are you married, Mr Smythe?”
“No, sir, I’m not.”
“Every man should have a wife don’t you think, Adele?”
Unable to speak, Adele Cornfelt left Harry Brigandshaw’s private room, her face as red as a beetroot, something that only happened to her when she looked into the eyes of a man and saw what she was looking for. As she closed the door with her back to them, she was certain the young man was still looking her way.
When William looked back after the door shut, he saw Harry Brigandshaw was having a good chuckle.
“That’s one thing that hasn’t changed while I was away.”
It was William Smythe’s turn to feel hot flushes on his cheeks, something he thought was long past in his nefarious life.
“Was I that obvious?”
“Both of you… Now I do feel better. Remind me again where I left off the story. Then I want to hear about you. To me my own story is boring. Yours will be more interesting. How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“The prime of life, so they say, which of course is wrong. So long as we live it is always the prime of life. We just look at life from a different angle.”
“Does she know who you are?”
“That’s a tricky question. Probably. All men are the same when they look at a pretty girl. An open book of hope and desire. Here my name is Harry Manderville. Until I get out… Take the girl for a coffee in the hospital canteen when you finish your work. My bet is she’ll accept. What do you think, William?”
“I hope so. If you don’t mind me asking, what is the name of your old friend living in Robert St Clair’s flat? I love Robert’s books. Every one of them.”
“Brett Kentrich. Mrs Christopher Marlowe. I financed his musicals while Brett played the lead.”
“She must be happy you are alive?”
“I hope so. I hope they are happy together.”
“Are you happy, Mr Brigandshaw? I’m sorry, that’s very impertinent.”
“For the moment. That’s the most we can hope for. Little bits of happiness down the journey of life. Why is it the old clichés are so damnably true?... Bush happy, they call it in Africa. White men go funny after a while in the African bush. It’s different to being happy but quite all right. Something to do with the sun and the teeming wild animals. We find our roots as animals again. Part of the food chain… Those Tutsi were more civilised than we are, what we call civilisation is bricks and mortar, cars, aeroplanes, material comfort, a false belief we have arrived at our destination... What are you writing down?”
“The human side of the story. Something about man’s conceit that he doesn’t consider himself an animal.”
“Oh, he’s an animal all right. The only difference is, when we kill each other in modern, civilised society we don’t eat what we kill… The war made me cynical. The Tutsi only kill what they are going to eat… Except the Hutus, which makes them human like the rest of us.”
When Adele came to tell them visiting hours were over, it was five o’clock. Many pages of his notebook were covered with meticulous shorthand. Having recovered his poise, William asked Adele to show him the hospital canteen.
“Not for visitors, Mr Smythe.” Adele also had a grip on herself.
“It will be six o’clock fairly soon. Could you show me the whereabouts of the nearest public house?” He was smiling. Harry had told him earlier Adele went off duty when the visitors left.
“On my way home, I pas
s the Crown on the way to the Tube.”
“Lovely. I’ll be able to stand in the rain until it opens.”
In his desire to get to know Adele Cornfelt, William had forgotten all about Bruno Kannberg. He had given him the slip by climbing out of a ground floor window and shinning over the high wall that dropped him in the back street on the other side to the busy Fleet Street and the entrance to the Daily Mail offices. So far as he knew, had he thought of it, the man would still be standing in the rain.
Harry, using all his charm from a propped-up position in bed, had suggested breaking hospital rules by another ten minutes while Adele went off to change out of her uniform. Half an hour later, she came back. A civilian overcoat covered her clothes. There was a touch of red on her lips and her eyes looked bigger.
“Goodnight, Mr Brigandshaw. You really do look much better.”
“So do you, Miss Cornfelt. See you in the morning.” Harry was smiling.
This time Adele managed not to blush.
Five minutes later, when Bruno saw his quarry leaving the hospital, it was to see William Smythe in the company of a young girl. They were talking animatedly and looking into each other’s eyes. The hunch had been right; where else would a man from Africa go for medicine? The girl had to be a nurse going off duty. Why would Smythe have brought a girlfriend to an interview with Harry Brigandshaw? The hospital porter dressed in a long coat and purple top hat was holding open the door for the girl to go out into the street. Outside it was darkness and a wet street. The gaslight had come on across the road and cars with their lights on were passing in the opposite directions down the busy street. Earlier Bruno had deliberately made a friend of the porter.
“Who was the girl, Johnson?”
“Nurse Cornfelt. Don’t know the man.”
“Do you know her ward?”
“She looks after a private ward with one patient. The man came back sick from Africa.”
When Harry opened his eyes from a short snooze, a man was standing at the foot of his bed.
“Who are you?”
“Bruno Kannberg from the Mirror, Mr Brigandshaw. Welcome back to England.”
“You want an interview?”
Harry began to pull himself up in the bed. The man came round the bed and put the pillows up behind Harry’s back. He was still physically weak but mentally alert to the intruder.
“That would soothe my editor. I’ve been standing in the rain all day waiting for William Smythe to leave the Mail in Fleet Street. Chap must have gone out somehow without my seeing.”
“Ah! He was with the nurse.”
‘Someone must have given this man the name of the nurse and the number of her ward,’ Harry thought to himself.
“How is it we men are always tripped up by women? You’ve ten minutes before the night nurse walks in and throws you out. She’s a lot bigger than Adele Cornfelt and not so accommodating. In exchange, I want another week of privacy. Then I will give a press conference and face the world once again… Kannberg. Never heard that name before. Where are your family from?”
Harry always liked to make friends with people he had just met. Getting them to talk about themselves usually worked.
“Riga. In Latvia. We fled the communists with the clothes on our back. Father fought with the British against the Reds. Why the British let us into the country. The communists confiscated three blocks of flats on the waterfront and took away our house. All to house the people. I hope they are comfortable.”
“Anyone with a gun can take away your property, Mr Kannberg. No one can take away your brains… Unless they kill you. With your brains and your obvious tenacity, I am sure your new life will be good. The excitement in life is building success, not inheriting money. I was lucky enough to do both. I built Elephant Walk out of the bush. Colonial Shipping was my paternal grandfather’s company. I still have a lot to do on the farm. The shipping company has gone.”
“But they’ll have to give it back.”
“Maybe.”
Pulling up a chair, Bruno sat down next to the man in the bed. He liked the man which always made doing interviews a lot easier.
On the following Wednesday, when Percy Grainger was facing his worst nightmare after reading the confirmation in the Daily Mirror, the news vendors’ billboards screaming out, He’s alive – the Mirror, all over London, and knowing he must now go into the lion’s den, Janet Bray was facing her first class of stutterers at Harrow School, an experience that was proving worse than anything she had imagined.
It seemed every boy in the class, ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, her class of stutterers coming from all ages attending the school, was eating cherries from paper bags and spitting out the pips at each other, only giving sidelong looks at the young girl now standing in front of the blackboard trying to take control.
After her blissful few days with Horatio Wakefield who had made her feel all woman, she had been in a good mood despite the warning of the matron at the school sanitarium. For some reason her appointment to try and cure the children’s stutters fell under the senior matron.
Janet’s first job was to cure their stutters, not to teach them how to speak good English, something the establishment at Harrow assumed they were taught at home. Back when Winston Churchill was at Harrow the school had never presumed to teach him how to pronounce his words.
A boy six feet tall in a black tailcoat stood up and tried to speak, his mouth moving, not a word coming up from his throat. Someone hit him on the cheek with a cherry pip and made him turn round angrily.
“Who the hell did that?”
“What is your name?” asked Janet, smiling with the sudden silence. The boy tried his best to speak again but nothing came out.
“It’s in the mind, gentlemen, not in the mouth. This young man, who I hope was trying to make you behave yourselves in the presence of a lady, spoke perfectly when his temper stopped him thinking before he spoke. By the time I am finished with you everyone will speak without a pronounced stutter. My name is Janet Bray, your speech therapist. I’m probably not a lot older than some of you men, but I have spent four years at the Royal Albert Hall being taught how to cure your impediment. To win for each one of you I need your help. First, always speak using the tip of the tongue. Think of clouds in a beautiful blue sky before you speak. Think of the sea rolling on the shore. Anything but how you are about to speak. You all want to ask out a girl and have her say yes on the first request. Forget about public speaking and what you may have to do in your chosen careers. Think of the girl in your life and what she will want to hear you say.”
Janet was smiling at the boy still standing. The bags of cherries disappeared into the desks. Somewhere from outside in the quadrangle a pigeon began to call. The sound of a pin dropping would have been heard in her classroom of seventeen boys mostly from the British aristocracy.
“Tell me now, what is your name?”
“Willis. Willis…..” The surname stayed deep in his throat.
“Willis is just fine, and thank you, Willis. We’re all going to get along as all of us are on exactly the same side. Even the Duke of York has problems when speaking which he has learnt to overcome slowly but surely.”
“Can you really cure my stutter?” the boy said slowly.
“I just did, Willis. Now we have to work to make the cure permanent.”
When Janet reached home that night, she was glowing. All the hard work at the Central School of Speech and Drama had been worth every minute. The look on Willis Phillips’s face when he realised his tongue was not tied for the rest of his life was wonderful.
When she told Horatio much later that night he just held her hand, pressing his fingers softly into her palm, Janet felt sure he understood the deepness of her satisfaction.
“I’m going to rent a room, furnish it nicely and open my own practice. It’s not so much science but what I call kidology. Harrow takes up one afternoon of my week… What do you think of a woman going into business on her own?”<
br />
“I think it’s wonderful… What are you going to do when we have children?”
“Make sure they don’t stutter and teach them how to speak properly. Are we going to have children?”
“William wants me to go freelance with him. On my present salary I can’t afford to keep myself properly let alone a family, and there’s no point to life without a family of our own. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait until I make assistant editor or write a book like Robert St Clair. William met him with Brigandshaw at the hospital when the Mirror caught William off guard. He’s like a butterfly, flits from one girl to the next. He was talking endlessly about Genevieve we saw in the restaurant. Now it’s some girl called Adele.”
“I can wait. We want to be secure financially before we have a family. Children are very expensive… Do you know how much it costs to send a boy to Harrow School?”
“I dread to think.”
“Not necessarily Harrow. That’s for the toffs. The old English families. But a public school, yes. With a good English public school education, a boy can go anywhere in life.”
“How many children?”
“At least eleven.”
“I’d better start writing my book first thing in the morning. Now we have to sneak you down the creaking stairs and out the front door without waking Mrs Caversham.”
“My landlady is worse.”
“That’s why you are here and not in Holland Park.”
Percy Grainger, the managing director and now controlling shareholder of Colonial Shipping, had made his appointment to see Harry Brigandshaw through the intermediary of Barnaby St Clair. He had made the phone call after searching his soul; facing the problem now, rather than later, seemed the best course of action to calm his nerves. His whole body was strung like piano wire.
“I presume you know where he is?” he had asked Barnaby. They had used the same stockbroker, CE Porter, before the crash, and so had obtained Barnaby’s number through CE.
