On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  Then he took Fritz Wendel’s notebook from his pocket and began to read. English translations of articles from old German newspapers. The old man was still asleep as Horatio furtively read his material.

  When he finished three pages of the notes, the colour had drained out of his face. The old man was awake and looking at him.

  “You don’t like what you read, Mr Wakefield?”

  “No, I don’t, Mr Hillier. Do you think it possible to get a cup of tea?”

  “You make me nostalgic. For my long-lost youth. That long and beautiful summer in England. Her name was Agatha. I don’t remember the last part of her name. We were young, Mr Wakefield. Young and in love. Can you even imagine a man as old as me being ever in love? Such memories make the rest of life worth living, or so I tell myself. Tea? No, not here. Supper is served in the dining room at six o’clock. Will you dine with me tonight, Mr Wakefield? Maybe you would be good enough to ask Lord Nelson to join us, with Lady Hamilton.”

  There was a twinkle in the old man’s eyes; he was pulling Horatio’s proverbial leg, tickled, Horatio thought, by the Christian name.

  “It will be my pleasure,” Horatio said formally to the old man as he picked up the rug from the carpet and put it back over the thin legs.

  “Thank you. Thank you very much. Did you know Lady Hamilton was Lord Nelson’s love?”

  They talked quietly together by the fire until it was time to go into the dining room for supper where they sat alone through the meal. They spoke of literature, of history, but never of themselves. For the other person, Horatio had found talking about himself and the smallness of his life boring.

  Across town, in contrast to Mrs Schneider’s residential hotel, the Continental was bustling with people. It was the cocktail hour for Vince Engelbrecht, sitting on his own drinking a Manhattan and eating peanuts out of the palm of his hand, his belly almost touching the top of the bar. He was smiling to himself as he munched his way through the second bowl of peanuts while he waited for the man from Krupp to keep his appointment for dinner.

  “Meet me in the bar, Herr Vogel, I’ll be waiting. You just got to try an American cocktail. The Continental Hotel is American. How do you say in Germany, seven-thirty for eight?”

  Vince liked a drink or two in his belly before doing business. It made him relax. Less impatient. His need for the deal as a salesman less obvious to the customer. He liked his sales pitch to look as if he was doing the other fellow a favour, which in the current circumstances in Germany he probably was.

  They had spent the previous day on a shooting range somewhere in Saxony. The Germans had driven him out of Berlin for three hours. By the time the big chauffeur-driven car arrived, Vince had no idea where he was, which was probably Herr Vogel’s intention.

  The armour plate had been shipped from Mobile in Alabama under cover of night with equal secrecy, arriving in Germany the week before Vince booked himself into the Continental Hotel. The test fire had gone as Vince expected; machine gun bullets, high-velocity rifle bullets, a twelve-inch artillery shell had failed to penetrate the sheets of armour plating surrounding a prototype German tank and secured in place for the trial by a small team of Americans from Alabama.

  All Vince needed now was a written contract and payment for enough armour plate to cover a hundred tanks; his personal five per cent commission enough to make him rich. Business was business he told himself, pouring nuts into the palm of his left hand from the bowl on the bar, who was he to judge. His German ancestors had fled Prussia in the seventeenth century and ended up in America, at that time Lutherans and Catholics persecuting each other in the name of religion.

  Back in Europe, it just depended on which part you lived in whether you were the oppressed or the oppressor, whether you were Catholic or Protestant. Mostly, Vince concluded from his cynical view of human life, it was a struggle for power and privilege; in the end, it was all about money.

  Down the bar, a man was putting on a bad imitation of an American accent. Vince guessed the man was in Germany like himself selling something someone else would not like him to sell. Over the man’s shoulder, Vince saw his man walking into the bar with two other men, one on either side of him. They were the same bodyguards who had been in the car, no one trusting anyone in Germany. The two burly men stood back as Herr Vogel reached the bar and Vince stood up to shake his hand.

  “We wish to buy the formula, Herr Engelbrecht.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Five million American dollars.”

  “Will you have a drink, Herr Vogel?”

  “No, we require an answer by tomorrow.”

  The bar was now filling up with fellow Americans. Herr Vogel had been speaking directly into his ear. The German turned his back and left the bar, the bodyguards falling in behind. In Vince’s private opinion, all three men were German soldiers. Krupp had been the front who would now be given the formula. Vince had known all along that in all probability he was doing business with the government of Adolf Hitler, the man von Hindenburg had recently appointed Chancellor of Germany.

  When Vince ordered his third Manhattan from the barman, he was chuckling inside while he worked out his own commission on the way the deal had finally gone down.

  The man at the other end of the bar with a big belly stuffing himself with peanuts had twice caught William Smythe’s eye and both times raised his eyebrows as he chucked the nuts down his throat. William knew he was playing the part of a loud-mouthed American badly, and that the fat man knew. The reality of the brief encounter of the two men down the bar was obvious to William after his earlier stint in Berlin; a German officer did not have to wear uniform to be recognised, his civilian attire as regulated as everything else in his life. The two military police also in mufti led William to speculate on the brief words spoken into the fat man’s ear, that soon after, when the German officer had left the bar, turned the fat man’s expression to a smirk.

  The German, to William’s trained eye, was a senior officer, the business with the fat man important and lucrative. Catching the man’s eye for the third time, William smiled, the confidential smile of two expatriates in someone else’s country. As William hoped, the fat man began to walk down the bar.

  “You ain’t American, buddy,” the man said loudly for all the bar to hear. The man, to William, was slightly drunk, which made what William wished to do easier.

  Before leaving London, and at the instigation of Harry Brigandshaw, William had phoned Freya St Clair in Dorset to make up a cover for his story. To have some answers for German questions and now American. He had first phoned Harry Brigandshaw at Hastings Court to tell him of Genevieve’s film contract and to ask Harry to look after the girl while William was away. The story had quickly come out along with Harry Brigandshaw’s advice.

  “The passport sounds good. The story worries me. You have never even been to the States. Get hold of Freya and build yourself some background. Commit it to memory. You’ll need it. As a member of the British Communist Party when you were at Manchester University, I thought you would dislike the fascists. Communism is the stumbling block to fascist domination of Europe. Along with Anglo-Saxon democracy.”

  “I forgot I told you my history while you were telling me yours. We are all going to change the world at university; youth thinks it has all the answers. After Berlin, the two are as bad as each other. Thugs in different clothing.”

  “Be careful, William. And phone Freya. While you’re building your story, imagine your toenails being pulled out slowly. It will give you urgency. Concentrate your mind.”

  “How are you?”

  “Not as good as I used to be. My wife says the bilharzia ate away some of my brain.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Just tired. Getting old. Call me when you’re back.”

  The fat American had come to a stop a foot behind his belly, grinning crookedly all over his face, a face that suggested the man was well pleased with himself.

  “Sure I
am. Just not born and bred like you. My name’s Bradley Sikorski from Denver, Colorado.”

  “You here on business, buddy? Name’s Vince Engelbrecht. Family been Americans for centuries. Before that we were Prussians.”

  “Can I buy you a drink, Vince?”

  “’Course you can, why I came over. We can practise teaching you to speak proper American. How long you lived in the States?”

  “Ten years. Once you get past eighteen they say you always keep part of your native accent which, despite a Polish father, is English. Born in Nantwich, Cheshire. What are you having, Vince?”

  “A Manhattan. Glad to clear that up. Now it all makes sense. I like to know what I’m dealing with, Brad.”

  “Don’t we all, Vince.”

  For the first time that day, William had his perfect cover. Later, they went into dinner arm in arm, two Americans away from home.

  Like all drunks, the man liked to boast. William had ordered two bottles of wine to go on top of the Manhattans, nodding to the attentive German waiter who couldn’t speak English when Vince’s wine glass needed filling.

  William waited two long days after Vince Engelbrecht went back to the States before giving Horatio Wakefield the story, chapter and verse, Fritz Wendel delivering his notes to the small residential hotel near the railway station.

  Whether the Germans received the alloy formula for the armour plating, William never knew. But after that, anything with the Horatio Wakefield byline was easy to sell in England and America. As foreign correspondents, they were well on their way under the single byline, splitting fees down the middle. For the first time in his life, Horatio Wakefield began to build up a bank account in England.

  When they met, they met in a public area surrounded by other people, walking through the crowd as if they did not know each other, speaking out of the side of their mouths.

  Horatio was having trouble with the icy rain wetting the lenses of his glasses, distorting his vision.

  “There was more to that story than meets the eye or the police would have paid me a visit,” he said, wiping his glasses with his handkerchief. “My guess is America is happy to do business. That either side making a song and dance about our story would make them partisan to the politics. German nationalism is far enough away from America to not be a threat. They want to dump our empire and take over the world after communism and German nationalism have destroyed each other. A shift in the centre of gravity of world power from London to Washington, or more rightly New York and the money. What the American people think right and what their government think right are two different things. Democracy only goes as far as electing a government, not telling it what to do. For Britain, it’s the son challenging the father. Most Americans forget that not long ago America was a British colony. There was Rome and Constantinople. Now there’s New York trying for hegemony over the English-speaking world. For heaven’s sake, Churchill is half American. In years to come historians will look at it as the same empire. The Anglo-Saxon Empire, not the British.”

  “Just be careful, Horatio. How’s the hotel?”

  “I have a friend. An old man called Hillier. Hillier, not Hitler.”

  “Make sure he is a friend and never trust anyone. It’s getting worse by the day, everyone in the world jockeying for position. Looking after their own positions. The American government may not be so wrong after all. I’ll tell you when to make a run for it.”

  “How comforting.”

  “The bigger the risk, the bigger the profit. I just doubled our fees. None of the papers running your stories blinked an eyelid.”

  “So when do we get out?”

  “When we have enough money… Think of Janet.”

  “I do. Money becomes less important when your life is on the line.”

  “Some people stay clerks all their lives.”

  “And live to a ripe old age.”

  “How boring.”

  When Horatio turned round to make an irritated comment, his friend had disappeared into the crowd. The loneliness and fear flooded back into his mind. As he crossed the road dodging the traffic, Horatio felt physically ill. Was a future he was never sure about worth so much mental turmoil, he kept asking himself. Could they not just be happy with each other in a garret?

  Part 4

  Rites of Passage — April 1935

  1

  Tinus Oosthuizen stood at the rail of the ship, listening to his memories.

  The rains had been over for six months. All day white clouds stood motionless in a clear blue sky. He had checked every strut and bolt on the old Handley Page, thinking of his Uncle Harry and all they would have to talk about in a month’s time when he sailed into Southampton on the SS Corfe Castle. The wartime bomber, converted to private use by his uncle after the war, was more a relic from the past than an aeroplane but it was all Tinus had to fly on Elephant Walk. New tyres had been bought in Salisbury, fitted and pumped up with a hand pump by Tembo with Princess watching.

  “Don’t worry, Princess. Everything will be fine.”

  “What about my children? What about me? I was the most expensive wife ever to come to Elephant Walk. You two try to fly in a machine, you will kill my husband. What then for Princess? Stop it. The ancestors will rise from their graves. They have already spoken to me. A man flying in the air, they said, is against the laws of God. No man can fly in the air.”

  “I can, Princess. I am a qualified pilot. With a British licence.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A piece of paper that lets me fly aeroplanes.”

  “How can a piece of paper let you fly aeroplanes?”

  “Maybe best you stay on the ground, Tembo,” he said to his assistant; they were all speaking Shona, the aircraft terms difficult to translate into the African language.

  “I come up. My first wife says it won’t work; no questions. My second wife laughs in my face. My third wife says I will die which is all right by her. Ever since I bought Princess from her father for twenty cows, my third wife has sulked and become difficult to make pregnant. We fly and you write the boss in England. When Boss Harry come back?”

  “Not for a long while. His wife doesn’t like living in Africa.”

  “Tell him when you write to buy another wife. He has something called ‘pots of money’, your sisters say.”

  “We don’t buy our wives, Tembo.”

  “Then how you get them?”

  Down by the river, far away from the airstrip, black children were swimming bare-arse in the Mazowe in great excitement. At the family compound of houses, Tinus could hear the pack of dogs barking and chasing each other round the flowerbeds and being yelled at by his mother. All work had stopped on the farm with everyone lined up to watch Tembo fly up into the air.

  The small school started by Paula, Tinus’s older sister, was empty of children. Even Paula did not think the old plane would fly and had taken the precaution of sending the children to stand at the top of the runway.

  After everything had been checked, the wooden chocks were put in place in front of the wheels. The end of the lengths of rope from the chocks were given to Princess to hold. Tembo went to stand in front of the engine ready to turn the propeller. Tinus got into the rear cockpit.

  “Contact,” he shouted imperiously. The crowd fell silent while nothing happened.

  “Contact,” Tinus shouted again.

  The engine let out a single loud bang, which bounced round the valley making the impala buck, and the buffalo leave the runway in a stampede. Again, silence.

  “Contact!”

  The engine fired properly. Tembo jumped back from the whirling propeller and clambered up into the front cockpit. The aircraft strained against the chocks.

  “Let go, Princess,” shouted Tinus.

  Princess, now totally in command of the situation, yanked on the ropes freeing the wheels, sending the plane lurching forward down the airstrip, Tinus shouting with excitement at the top of his voice as he pushed down on the throttle.
Then they lifted quickly, up over the river, the naked children standing in the shallows looking up in awe. Then the aircraft climbed to join the white fluffy clouds still motionless up in the African sky.

  “A penny for your thoughts.” The girl had come to stand behind Tinus as he looked out at the rolling sea as the SS Corfe Castle sailed nearer England.

  “Sweet memories, Vera. When will I go back again, I wonder?”

  “Come for a swim. You didn’t come down to breakfast.”

  “Overslept. Have you ever flown in an aeroplane?”

  “Are you going to fly at Oxford?”

  “University Air Squadron. Andre Cloete put down my name six months ago with a copy of my pilot’s licence. This year he’ll be in the Oxford first eleven. Do you think school friends can last a lifetime?”

  “I hope so for your sake. You always talk of Andre Cloete.”

  “After the swim we run round the deck ten times.”

  “You can run round the deck, young ladies walk. Are you excited?”

  “Of course. A whole new life. The start of my real life with so much to do.”

  “Aunty Janice says she’ll introduce me to people in the theatre. To start my career. There was no point in making a stage career in Cape Town. Dead end.”

  “I know a famous film star.”

  “You don’t. There are no famous film stars in Cape Town or Rhodesia.”

  “Have you heard of Genevieve?”

  “Of course. Everyone has. She’s going to America.”

  “She’s a friend of mine. Fact is, in a roundabout way, she’s my Uncle Harry’s niece.”

  “You’re just dropping names.”

  “Maybe. I can still see her in my mind’s eye.”

  “What’s her surname?”

  “She doesn’t have one. Her mother and father were never married.”