On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  The man sat up at the noise of his aircraft exploding, the small engine fire finding the last of the fuel. Two French soldiers with rifles at the ready were running towards them across the field making the flock of sheep make a run at the hedge. Most of the sheep floundered in the ditch as Harry stood up, the French soldiers pointing their guns at his belly.

  In their flying clothes, the pilots looked much the same, the leather coat of the Royal Flying Corps brown, the German’s coat black. Harry pointed at the roundels of his own aircraft thirty yards away and smiled. The French soldiers lowered their guns. Having never studied French growing up in the African bush, all Harry could do was make signals and grin.

  “Klaus von Lieberman. Your name, sir?” The German pilot had spoken perfect English.

  “Harry Brigandshaw. Royal Flying Corps.”

  The German spoke in French to the soldiers.

  “I told them I would like to be your prisoner.”

  Scratching the back of his head, standing in the drawing room at Hastings Court where Harry had taken the call from Germany, with the sun flooding the room and picking out his wife’s beautifully arranged bowls of flowers, he was smiling. The voice from Germany despite the bad line had sounded the same as the voice in the French field back then in 1917.

  When William Smythe returned alone from his walk, he was met on the lawn by Harry. The servants were laying out the white tablecloths over trestle tables preparing for lunch under the shade of the trees, the spring day surprisingly warm.

  “If he’s alive, Klaus will find him for me. The man gave me his word as a gentleman.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Klaus von Lieberman. The von Liebermans have been powerful in Germany for centuries. I shot him down in 1917. Somehow we got my aircraft up from the field with the two of us crammed into my cockpit. We were thinner in those days. Both of us left our long flying coats for the sheep and I flew us both back to my squadron. He spent the rest of the war in Scotland as a prisoner, the only one of his pilots to come out of the war alive. We kept in touch. After the war, we made visits to each other. Once he visited Elephant Walk with the intention of hunting big game. When he saw the beauty of the animals in the bush, he couldn’t pull the trigger. Now I have asked him a favour. To find Horatio Wakefield. You can smile, William. Not all Germans are sadists who hate Jews. Most of them came from the same stock as ourselves. We British are Angles and Saxons, Danes and Normans, Celts and Swedes. The Germanic, Norse and Celt tribes. Underneath we are all the same. Just the few of us are different. The few that spoil everything. One rotten apple in the barrel, so to speak… Did you see Genevieve on your walk?”

  “Yes I did. Deep in conversation with Tinus.”

  “They are two of my favourite young people. How about you and me going into my study for a cup of tea? I’ll tell you about my friend Klaus and the crass stupidity of war. If you ever meet him he’ll tell you the identical story.”

  Catching the eye of the servant laying the lunch table, Harry ordered a pot of tea sent to his study.

  Later, from a canvas chair under the trees while he waited for lunch, Harry watched them come back together, the backs of their hands brushing occasionally as they walked side by side, and only then understood what William Smythe had been trying to say. He was even a little jealous of the intimacy that had once been his; they had still not had their walk together for Harry to hear all about Elephant Walk. Nothing ever stayed the same in relationships. The boy had become a man. It was more interesting to walk the heath with a girl than an uncle trying his best to take the place of a father.

  Whether the two beautiful young people understood what was going on themselves, Harry doubted. Good-looking men and women took their power for granted, especially when they were young.

  For lunch there was a large salmon from the lochs of Scotland, sent down by express train to London and delivered the last few miles in a small truck to Hastings Court, Harry not even daring to ask Tina how much it had cost. She imagined his money to be endless, something he hoped a new war in Europe would not prove wrong.

  In Harry’s experience, it was more difficult to hold on to money than make it in the first place. Even Elephant Walk gave him qualms, with a few Englishmen controlling the whole country lived in by so many blacks, most of whom were living the same way their ancestors had lived for centuries, happily oblivious to civilisation’s trappings, the trappings that for Harry only gave the appearance of making life happier. A thatched hut next to an African river teeming with fish surrounded by game, was to Harry the perfect setting; a Zambezi bream fresh from the river onto the fire as good to eat as any salmon shipped down from Scotland.

  Once, he had drawn the mental picture for Tina and seen her physically shudder, the idea of living in harmony only with nature repulsive.

  The children arrived with the food, the pink fish splendid on a long silver tray, the children scrubbed and cleaned by their respective nannies.

  One by one, the rest of the guests assembled on the lawn. Then they sat down at the long table to eat their lunch.

  “Straight after lunch, Uncle Harry.”

  “What, Tinus?”

  “Our walk. You and me. Elephant Walk. Tembo and Princess. The last tobacco crop. I was telling Genevieve of my flight up the Zambezi to the Victoria Falls with Tembo in the front cockpit.”

  “You made it fly again?”

  “Perfectly… After lunch. In the woods I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Can I come too, Father?” asked Anthony across the table.

  “Of course… Beth, do you want to come? You, Merlin?”

  “Why did you teach him to fly, Harry?” asked Merlin sitting next to Genevieve, father and daughter enjoying each other’s company.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s going to be another war.”

  “Nonsense. I just spoke to Klaus von Lieberman on his estate in Bavaria. He says the German establishment are still in control. They don’t want war.”

  “For how long can they control the situation? Hitler wants war. He’s re-arming. He wants back what they lost in the war. Don’t you agree, Mr Smythe? You were there… This salmon is wonderful, Tina. Hastings Court reminds me of my own family home at Purbeck Manor. What do you think, Mr Smythe? Is there going to be war?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re coming up to town on Monday,” said Harry into the silence. “We can all drive up together in the big car while the boys drive to Oxford. I have a surprise for you, Tinus. Something to show you before we go on our walk after this wonderful lunch. It’s in the driveway. Came down from London while you were out walking over the heath.”

  The dogs had a better lunch than the three youngest children, being fed Scottish salmon under the table while the children waited to eat their pudding. No one except Harry seemed to notice. The tablecloth fell almost to the grass, hiding the dogs. He smiled to his youngest son, to tell him to stop feeding the dogs. The boy feigned innocence, bringing his pudgy hands back from under the cloth.

  Harry wondered whether later in life his son would regret wasting good food. Nine-year-old Frank, as usual, was the ringleader. Seven-year-old Dorian, always thoughtful, had his thumb in his mouth at the lunch table, a faraway look on his face. Ever since Harry came back, he found it difficult to make them understand; that children had to be trained, to give them good and fruitful lives.

  After lunch, with the dogs gone and the cats under the long table seeing what they could find, Harry took the guests and his family through the front of the house and let them range out along the terrace to look down on the gravel courtyard at the cars.

  Standing next to Andre Cloete’s black Morgan was an identical model painted in English racing green. Both of the hoods were down, the man from London standing next to it holding the keys.

  “Go and get your keys, Tinus. Congratulations on winning a Rhodes Scholarship. Why don’t you take Genevieve for a spin? There’ll be lots of time for you
and me to talk. Enjoy the car. You earned it. Barend, your father, would have done the same thing for you. Anthony and I will go for the walk in the woods.”

  “Tinus, you’re blubbing,” said Andre.

  “I’m afraid I am,” said Tinus. “Shall we try her out, Genevieve?”

  “Maybe I can come up to Oxford on Monday? We only leave for America at the end of the month.”

  “We can follow each other, Andre,” said Tinus… “Where will you stay?”

  “Don’t they have hotels? I can walk beneath the spires with a lovely man on each arm. You can show me off. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect,” said Andre.

  3

  On Monday afternoon, Harry Brigandshaw called on Air Commodore Arthur Tedder at the Air Ministry in Whitehall. Harry was a man who never gave up a job before it was finished, or so he liked to believe in conversations with himself.

  After seeing the three off to Oxford in the green and black sports cars, they had driven up to London, dropping William at the flat rented by Horatio Wakefield in Notting Hill Gate. Merlin St Clair, who had gone down by train to Hastings Court for the weekend, was dropped outside his block of flats in Park Lane overlooking Hyde Park.

  After leaving the luggage at the Savoy Hotel, where Harry made his appointment with the air commodore with surprising ease, Harry had driven his wife to Harrods to begin her shopping. The five children had been left behind at Hastings Court in the hands of Mrs Craddock; the children’s schools were within bicycle distance for Anthony and Beth, the three younger children still being schooled at home by a governess who came in from the village.

  Harry was shown into the airman’s office. Tedder had risen rapidly through the ranks of the Royal Flying Corps during the war, and Harry had commanded one of his fighter squadrons.

  “Good to see you again, Harry.”

  “I appreciate your seeing me now, sir.”

  “You never did anything without a damn good reason. What’s up?”

  “Is there going to be another war?”

  “Churchill thinks so. Luckily he’s in charge of supplying the air force. We have a new fighter on the way that is better than anything the Germans have. The Schneider Trophy has been won recently by an amphibious Supermarine model. We are building a fighter plane from that model.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Not yet. The designer says it will break the sound barrier in a dive, which is ridiculous. That’s over seven hundred miles an hour. The aircraft in current service can’t fly faster than a hundred miles an hour before the wings break off. The aircraft’s designer wants the new plane to fly at three hundred miles an hour in level flight, something this latest design achieved. Of course, as a racing seaplane it wasn’t armed.”

  “How many cannon?”

  “Two that will shoot anything out of the sky.”

  “When will it be ready?”

  “Not for years, despite Churchill saying it may be too late. The new aircraft will be made completely out of metal. Hawkers have a fighter on the drawing board they call the Hurricane. Not as fast but more manoeuvrable, so they claim.”

  “In a dog-fight the turning is as important as the speed.”

  “You didn’t come here to talk about aircraft, Harry.”

  “A young friend of mine. One of the reporters who pressured the RAF to go look for me has disappeared in Germany.”

  “We didn’t need any pressure, Harry. Just sorry we didn’t find you. Are you well again? Like anyone else, here in the RAF we followed your plight in the newspapers. Tell me how I can help this young man. Are you sure he’s alive?”

  “If they’d killed him the papers would have been told. As a warning. I just don’t know, sir…”

  “Go on.”

  The meeting was over in ten minutes, with Harry making the drive from Whitehall to the Royal Air Force Club at the corner of Piccadilly and Park Lane, down the road from Merlin St Clair’s flat.

  Harry wanted to be alone. He knew what it was like to be alone and lost, not knowing if anyone was trying to help. Iggy Bowes-Lyon, his co-pilot on the ill-fated amphibious flight down Africa, had been a member of the club. As Harry walked up the steps to the Piccadilly entrance, that only allowed men to walk through its portal, the memories of Iggy came back.

  Tina had arranged to go back to the hotel by taxi, Harry having no idea how long he would have to wait to see the air commodore. In the club, he recognised not one soul other than the doorman. The men at the long bar were so young, deferring to Harry as if he were a senior officer in civvies as he walked up to the bar and ordered himself a pint of beer.

  Tinus would have been more at home with the present company, which brought back to Harry the words spoken earlier by his brother-in-law.

  “Why did you teach him to fly, Harry?”

  No one in the bar wore glasses. All were younger than thirty. By their brief faraway stares, Harry guessed they were all pilots, even the ones out of uniform. If war broke out with Germany, how many of the young men in the bar would live to tell the tale? ‘Less than one out of ten,’ Harry thought to himself.

  In the last war in France, only one pilot in ten had come back alive. It made Harry quite miserable looking at all their enthusiasm at youth’s belief that every man was immortal.

  Raising the glass mentally to Iggy Bowes-Lyon, Harry drank the one beer, unable to face another one among so many young men who had no idea what they were in for.

  “Are you a pilot, sir?”

  “No. I was in admin during the war. Eyes not good enough to fly.”

  “They look all right to me, sir.”

  “Please don’t call me ‘sir’. If I was back in my old RFC uniform, likely I’d be calling you sir as the senior officer.”

  “Attention!” called the same young man in the uniform of a flight lieutenant; the wings on his chest were dulled by being up for two or three years, Harry thought, as he turned to face the intrusion.

  “Hoped you’d come here, Harry,” said Tedder. The man was in civvies as he had been earlier in the afternoon. “Let me buy you a drink. Had two more people to see after you. Nice to talk to an old comrade… Gentlemen, may I have your attention. This is Colonel Harry Brigandshaw, Royal Flying Corps, with twenty-three kills to his name. Barman, please give everyone a drink on my card… Harry, we’ll sit at that table where we can talk alone… At ease, gentlemen.”

  In complete silence, Harry walked to the table and sat down. Only when Harry looked up at them did they all stop staring. Tedder was a born leader, knowing when to give a problem his personal attention. Harry suspected the doorman had been given instructions to telephone the air commodore the moment Harry stepped over the threshold of the club. The drive from Whitehall up The Mall and Constitution Hill took just a few minutes, the time it had taken Harry to order and drink his first beer.

  Not far away as the crow flies, Janet Bray had given up hope. She had left her rooms where she practised speech therapy and walked to her nearby flat in Holland Park. All the praise from the success of her practice was nothing compared to the joy of family life. Before William Smythe had persuaded Horatio to put his head in a noose, the life she had wanted was just ahead, the happiness there to be taken with both hands. Then money had stepped in the way.

  She was now twenty-seven, on the shelf, with nothing to look forward to for the rest of her life. The man she wanted was dead and the other men had passed her by. All the success and money in the world would never bring her happiness. The picture in her mind of a little old lady all on her own made Janet want to scream out loud.

  At the front door of her flat, waiting, was the man who had caused her pain.

  “I miss him as much as you,” said William Smythe.

  “No, you don’t. You weren’t going to marry him and have his kids. By the look of you, it isn’t good news. What do you want, Will? Has the Foreign Office decided to do something?”

  “I went down to Hastings Court to see Harry Brigandsha
w who is right on top of Horatio’s case. He’s up in London now. During the weekend, he phoned an old friend in Germany. Harry says the German has real clout.”

  “Why would Mr Brigandshaw care about Horatio?”

  “He thinks we are part of his coming back. His survival in the hospital. Our success in getting the RAF to make a search down his flight plan in Africa, even though they never found a sign of him or the others. Through three long years he didn’t think anyone cared a damn what had happened to him outside of his family. He wants to say thank you, I expect.”

  “What can he do except talk?”

  “I don’t know. His friend in Bavaria has promised to find out what happened. Old money. Old power in Germany. Harry shot him down during the war.”

  Janet laughed bitterly before putting the key in the door to her flat.

  “You’d better come in, Will. I’m exhausted. Just an hour ago I was trying to get a rich man’s son to utter a word. Clammed up on me and quite frankly I didn’t care. What’s the point? I suppose Genevieve was there and you had a good time?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Actually, it was in the paper. In the gossip column of the Mail. The girl’s famous. Are you going out with her?”

  “She won’t look at me.”

  “At least that’s some retribution for ruining my life.”

  “Harry has a number of people to see in London.”

  “He can go and see the King of England for all I care. It won’t bring back Horatio. Put on the kettle and make yourself useful. I’m sick of being on my own. Over a year waiting patiently for nothing… We were going to have eleven children.”

  Putting a small carry-all on the kitchen table, William unzipped the top and pulled out a bottle of whisky.

  “Better than tea, Janet. I gave Harry your phone number if he finds where he is.”

  “All right. You know where the glasses are. I might as well get tight. Everything is over. My whole life is over. Do you know what it means to a girl of my age?… People only talk, William. They never do anything. They just talk.”