by Peter Rimmer
“Of course.”
“Will Harry see me?”
“Why ever not? He’s much better after the treatment. Sitting up in bed with his hair cut. My barber did a first class job… You did see the pictures in the Mirror?”
“Why I am calling, Mr St Clair, the first photograph in the Mail left a small shadow of doubt… I did everything with her best interests at heart.”
“Explain that to Harry. Tina was not so sure. She and I go back to our childhoods.”
“Rumours do abound, Mr St Clair. All of us are selfish. The share market could have gone the other way. Hindsight is an exact calculation. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Which was the same thing he said the following afternoon to Harry Brigandshaw in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.
“Of course you haven’t, Percy. Remember, I gave you the top job. When I came from Rhodesia to take over the company that dropped into my lap and frightened the hell out of me. Friends don’t have to explain to each other. Your coming to see me is proof of your good intentions now and in the past.”
“Do you want the company back? You will get the share at half the price the government got to pay your death duties. They are going to give it all back with compound interest. The man I negotiated with is still the man in charge. You’ll own your same percentage of the public company and still have a large sum of money in the bank. Since you went away the world has entered a terrible depression. Of course I will sell you back your Berkeley Square house at current market value, which is less than half what I paid for it.”
“You are living in my house?” Harry was enjoying himself. He knew from Barnaby perfectly well what had happened to his house.
“Yes, I am… Why are you laughing, Harry? This is no laughing matter.”
“Oh, but it is. I hated that house. Tina was the one who wanted to live in London and go to the theatre once a week… Did they sell Hastings Court, the house that belonged to both my grandfathers in turn?”
“But I thought the house wasn’t yours. Didn’t you give it to the Royal Air Force Association as a rehabilitation centre for wounded airmen after the war? I wondered why the old house hadn’t been sold, but there again the sale of your shares covered death duties. The RAF Association would love to get rid of it. Upkeep and rates are enormous. There are just three blind airmen still at the home. The aftermath of wars are soon forgotten by those who did not suffer.”
“I had agreed to pay the overheads and the rates. My maternal grandfather is still alive. The house had been in his family for centuries. I’m even booked in here under his surname. For grandfather’s sake, I could not sell the house so I lent it to the RAF Association. That was after the National Trust not wanting it.”
“But you’ll want the company back?”
“Of course not, Percy. The whole idea of taking it public in the ’20s was to get out from under some of my responsibilities. Make the board responsible, not just me. I’m a Rhodesian farmer now growing tobacco thanks to grandfather Manderville’s cousin in Virginia. If my wife still wishes to live in England after all she has been through, we will live in Hastings Court half of the year. I only ask you one question: when I disappeared, was what you did in utmost good faith?”
“Of course it was, Harry. Back then it looked like the stock market was going all the way up to heaven.”
“Give your wife my regards and thank you for coming to see me.”
“So that’s it?”
“That and the man at the Department of Inland Revenue, ask him for my cheque as soon as possible. I’ll talk to the RAF Association. Pay them the rates and overheads they lost after I disappeared.”
“You are a good person, Harry.”
“So are you. Don’t forget it. We all give advice and most of it is not very good, though in the end it turned out just fine. For all of us, we all got what we wanted! Now that doesn’t happen often in life.”
“You don’t even want to be on the board?”
“Not in a fit, Percy Grainger. Not in a fit.”
“Your wife and children sailed from Cape Town to Southampton yesterday. It will be the company’s honour to pay for their trip.”
“I believe they’re on the King Emperor. The children will rip it apart, bless them. I’m getting out of here tomorrow and going down to Dorset. The children’s grandparents will be happy to hear they are coming home.”
“You’ll be staying with them?”
“With the St Clairs. And not for any reason of snobbery. Robert and I were up at Oxford together. My first wife grew up at Purbeck Manor.”
“Life is complicated.”
“And then we die.”
“Welcome back, Harry.”
3
Harry Brigandshaw was discharged from the Tropical Diseases Hospital the following week when Tina, the children and the nurses, Ivy and Molly, had been on the water for six days on their way back to England; Percy Grainger had advised the captain on behalf of Harry to say Harry was leaving hospital for Dorset to recuperate.
Harry was still shaky when he walked out of the lift to reception with Robert and Freya St Clair, to find Barnaby St Clair had paid his bill in full making Harry, with his back to the others, smile wryly; the circle had again turned since he knocked Barnaby into the Thames for chasing after Tina.
“Nice to see you walk again, Mr Brigandshaw,” said the doorman smiling.
“Ah, the man who blew my cover.”
“I didn’t realise at the time, sir.”
“Robert, give the man a quid. That chap Landan has yet to send me my cheque, though Percy says we’ll have it next week. Like all government departments, they need ten men to authorise the payment before they draw the cheque. I’ll pay you back, I promise. It really feels funny standing up straight after lying in bed so long.”
“The air will do you good in Dorset,” said Freya. She had him firmly by the left elbow.
The American lady was not going to let him go now he had read her play and agreed to finance the production. The previous day, Oscar Fleming had visited him in hospital to go over the details. When Harry had made a decision, he hated beating around the bush. Oscar Fleming had made a fortune with him out of Happy Times, the Christopher Marlowe musical that had run for over three years in the West End.
“I’m not asking you, Oscar. I’m telling you. It’s my money.”
“And my time. My word, you have recovered. Good to see you back, Harry. All right, as a favour. Straight plays don’t make money. We’ll start in Bristol and see if it works.”
“How’s Brett?” He was smiling to himself. Harry liked the idea of convincing Oscar Fleming after Barnaby had failed.
“She’s fine. A mother. She’s not going back on the stage. Can I give her your love?”
“Why ever not? She was an important part of my life. You can’t change that. All our lives are made up of different parts. Lots of them… Are they happy, she and Christopher?”
“No one is ever happy, Harry. We just say we are. I’ve known Brett even longer than you, but that’s enough detail.”
Harry knew perfectly well Brett the up-and-coming actress had once been Oscar’s mistress. The theatre was incestuous. Always had been.
“You’re a cynic, Oscar.”
“A sceptic. When you come back from Dorset we’ll have lunch at my club. I always enjoy lunch at the Garrick…”
“Do you think the Freya St Clair play any good?”
“You never can be certain without an audience. Why so many people lose money in the theatre. Let’s hope we don’t lose too much.”
Johnson, the doorman, had taken the pound note and put it in his overcoat pocket. Then he opened the door and let them out into the December cold where Robert St Clair’s car was waiting in the parking lot. The cold air gripped the back of Harry’s throat. He was a long way from the Belgian Congo.
Wrapped up in rugs they began the long journey down the coast. Freya had packed two large Thermos flasks into a picnic b
asket, she told him smiling, still warm from the good news about her play. Harry could smell the hot pork pies inside the basket that sat with him on the back seat. Robert’s wife was organised. Like all other Americans Harry had met through his life. Harry huddled back in the seat and was soon fast asleep.
“Well?” said Robert an hour later as they motored through the cold Surrey countryside on the Kingston bypass. There had been little or no traffic on the road in the middle of the week. Harry had woken up when they left the built-up sprawl of London. The trees were leafless but there was no ice on the road he was glad to see. A watery sun had only lifted the temperature outside the car a few degrees, as he found out when he misguidedly wound down an inch of the back window for a brief moment.
To Harry, watching everything outside as it went by, England looked beautiful. His Tutsi friends were another life away. It was difficult for Harry to contemplate he was the same person.
“When are we going to eat the pies?” he said, ignoring Robert’s question, only too aware of what it meant.
“At lunchtime,” said Freya, her voice on edge. Harry guessed right they had been talking about his reading of Holy Knight, given to him in hospital by Barnaby.
Harry, back with the living, was enjoying himself again. For days now, he had not said a word about the book, teasing his old friend.
“Well, did you read my book?” snapped Robert.
“Why don’t we wait until lunch? Or we could stop under that oak tree on the side of the road.”
The car came to an abrupt halt, with Robert reversing towards the tree where he pulled the car off the road. They had left the Kingston bypass and were driving down a country lane. The big tree was next to a four-bar gate that opened onto a farmer’s field where sheep with thick dirty coats were grazing the dark green winter grass taking no notice of the noisy intrusion.
There were still signs of the previous night’s white frost where the watery sun had been unable to have any effect through the leafless boughs of the old tree. Harry could still smell the pork pies in their greaseproof packets. After hospital food, they were going to eat well.
“Now out with it. You hated the damn book despite my selling millions of copies here and in America.”
“May I open the picnic basket, Freya? I can pass you both what I am sure by the delicious smell is a pork pie.”
“Didn’t they give you breakfast?” said Robert. “Look, Harry… What you think means more to me than the bloody critics or the bloody sales figures. Does the book work, Harry?”
“Perfectly. Now may I have a pork pie? I’m starving. They cleaned out my stomach so well I feel there is nothing left but a hollow.”
“Are you serious?”
“Even better than Keeper of the Legend… Oh, you are clever, Freya. She’s wrapped the pies in the greaseproof packets in the tea cloth. They are still warm. No wonder they were enticing my nostrils.”
“You were playing with me.”
“Don’t you know me by now, old friend? I was waiting to sit by the fire with your family and tell everyone in detail, as I know what it means to you. The reader, the other side of the page, the mirror without which your story can never come alive… But teasing you has been fun… Now, can I pass you one of these delicious-smelling pies? Then we can have a nice cup of tea. After that, the farmer in me says I have to climb over that gate and look at the sheep. Do blowflies lay eggs in the wool in England? Leaves a dark patch. If you don’t cut out that bit of the wool in Africa, when the eggs hatch the worms eat the sheep alive, horrible… I’m going to take back Hastings Court from the RAF Association.”
When they reached Corfe Castle seven miles from Purbeck Manor, the ancient family home of the St Clairs, dusk was falling with the snow. Small, pure white snow, whirling down in the headlights, melting on the ground. It was early for snow in Dorset. Up on its hill, they could see the ruins of the castle, the first home of the St Clairs before Oliver Cromwell knocked it down after the army of Parliament defeated the king, cut off his head and punished the royalist aristocracy.
Harry looked up at the ruins and thought of his first wife, Lucinda St Clair. Tina was coming over from Africa on the SS King Emperor, the same ship that had taken him out with Lucinda on the ill-fated journey at the end of the war when Lucinda was shot dead by a madman. There were tears in his eyes. For everyone. For Tina’s pain. The unborn child in the belly of his first wife, dying. Hutus killing Tutsis. Tutsis with his guns killing the Hutu. So many German pilots killed by the press of his forefinger on the firing button of his Vickers machine gun… They were driving past the railway station when Harry saw old Pringle, the station master at Corfe Castle who carried bags and gave out the train tickets through the round hold in the glass of the station ticket office.
To Harry looking past the swirling snow, his father-in-law looked as old as the hills. As old as the castle on the hill. Like the St Clairs, his second wife’s family had been in the surrounding parts all through the centuries. From before the French St Clairs landed at Hastings with Harry’s maternal ancestors to wrestle England from the Saxon King Harold; the French under the command of William the Conqueror, the first William of England. The Pringles were Saxon. Before that they had been Celt, part of the Dorset soil for all eternity.
“Stop the car, Robert. That’s Tina’s father.”
Harry got out of the car, standing with one hand on the door to give himself support. He still felt as weak as a kitten. The pies had rumbled in his stomach all the way down in the car. The old man saw him and turned away, moving quickly for an old man. Harry understood the last train for the day had left the station and old Pringle was going home to the railway cottage by the small stream where Tina was born. To his old wife in the kitchen, the grandmother of Harry’s children without whom they would never have been born.
“Mr P. It’s me, Harry,” he called.
The old man began to run, the snow falling, the falling light taking him away.
“What’s the matter?” Harry asked Robert who had wound down the driver’s window and was leaning out of the car.
“They don’t read the papers. Fact is, he can’t read well enough. The inspector does the bookwork once a month up from Swanage. He thinks you are a ghost, Harry. You put the fear of God in him by calling out. The old people are fey in these parts and not just the old of age. They believe in things much further back than Jesus Christ. They are as much druid as Christian. Lucinda was murdered. You died in a plane crash. Of course your spirit would come back to her roots. To old Pringle seeing you here in the gloaming was perfectly natural, even if it did scare the wits out of him.”
“We should give him a lift home.”
“No, Harry. Leave him alone. Any more and you’ll kill him. His heart will be racing enough for one afternoon. Another afternoon when the sun is shining we’ll visit Mrs P and eat some of her plum pie, the best in the world. She bottles their own plums off their trees in the autumn that gives them fruit right through to spring. Get back in the car before you fall over. It’s cold. We don’t want you going down with something after what you have been through. When he gets home to Mrs P, she’ll give him a cup of tea and a plate of kippers and his heart will beat normally. He won’t even mention a word to his wife. People have always seen ghosts in this neck of the woods. Let it go, Harry. Think of Tina and your five children, including the one born after you disappeared. I presume Barnaby told you?”
“She called him Kim. I love the name. Rudyard Kipling… After so long we are all so close again. I can see their ship in my mind’s eye drawing nearer and nearer to England… All right then. Home, James, and don’t spare the horses… Your own mother and father do know I am alive?”
“And well they love you, Harry. You know that from your first visit when I brought you down from Oxford so many years ago so Lucinda could fall in love. She was fifteen. You first met in the garden. Lucinda said her heart melted at first sight… Home it is. I wonder what Mrs Mason is cooking for supper?
I'm starving.”
In the car next to him, Freya was smiling. Her husband was always hungry and always thin, never putting on a pound. It was the one thing she hated about Robert St Clair… Then she was thinking of her two-year-old Richard left in the care of Lady St Clair while they went up to London.
“I’ve missed him terribly.”
“Me too,” said Robert. There was no need for either of them to explain.
Behind them, Harry was climbing back into the car, snowflakes in his hair. Robert smiled at him through the rear-view mirror.
“You’re covered in snow.”
Robert took his left hand from his wife’s knee, put the car into gear and they continued their journey. He was happy. There had never been a time in his life when he was not pleased to be going home. There was something more to life, having solid roots.
Going out of Corfe Castle, they took the high road that would bring them round to the old manor house. When Robert walked the seven miles home from the railway station he took the low road, the path that wound along the river, the one taken by old Pringle on his way to the tea and kippers, away from what he thought was the ghost of his son-in-law.
When the car and the three of them reached Purbeck Manor, it was dark. In one bottom corner of the big house, they could see the lights from the family.
As Harry walked through the side door built into the tall gothic entrance, he could feel Lucinda’s presence, a welcoming presence that made him sad to be alive. So many memories.
Lady St Clair was older than he remembered. Lord St Clair was somewhere out the back of the house with old Warren as usual. Mrs Mason was holding her hands together in front of her apron, standing just behind Lady St Clair.
“Welcome back, Harry,” said Lady St Clair. “It’s a miracle.”
“I saw Mr P near the station but he ran away.”
“Yes, there’s that too… We’re in the cosy room with the fire. That sounds like my husband banging the kitchen door. Come and drink a glass of sherry. We have roasted suckling pig on the spit in the banquet hall if we don’t all freeze to death. This house is cold as charity in the winter. Not quite the fatted calf but it will have to do… Come and tell me what happened.”
