On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  “I’m going to Moscow next week.”

  “Who as? By the way, that’s my cover story for disappearing. I went to Russia.”

  “William Smythe. Anyway, I didn’t like being an American.”

  “Then you won’t need my byline to write under. First, I am going to marry Janet in St Martin-in-the-Fields. Then I am going back to my old job. Thanks to you, William, we will have a house without a mortgage for the rest of our lives. A large house by the look of that balance in my bank statement.”

  “Good. I’d better postpone Moscow for after the wedding. I have one last good idea. Why don’t we all invite ourselves down to Hastings Court for next weekend? You can thank Harry in person. His wife likes company now she’s buried in the countryside. Just don’t tell him what you think of von Lieberman or your suspicions. Harry Brigandshaw never thinks badly of anyone. Oh, and before you ask, Genevieve is on her way to America. Making her second film.”

  “So you didn’t get anywhere?”

  “Not even to first base, an expression I learnt posing as an American in Berlin. She thinks I’m far too old, more’s the pity. Welcome home, Horatio. You frightened the shit out of me disappearing. Have you spoken to Mr Glass at the Mail?”

  “He’s made me foreign correspondent.”

  “You’ll be after his job if he isn’t careful.”

  “I do have a short story in my head. Fiction, of course. I’ve called it Betrayal. I’ll have to use a pseudonym, as journalists we are not meant to write fiction. Anyway, the story is set in the lounge of a German residential hotel and I gave my word that Horatio Wakefield would keep quiet.”

  “They pay well for good fiction. I have a friend who publishes magazines.”

  “Did I tell you Janet wants eleven kids?”

  “She’ll tone that down after the first one. Mark my words… You’re a lucky man. I wish I could find someone to love me.”

  Looking at the man he had known since their days together as cub reporters on the Daily Mail, before William joined the Manchester Guardian, Horatio was not sure if William was being serious or pulling his leg. Over the years there had been a number of girls happy to call themselves Mrs Smythe.

  “We’re getting old and sentimental,” he said to William.

  “Funny how we always want what we can’t have.”

  “You’re talking of Genevieve?”

  “She just keeps me on the very end of the hook. As if she doesn’t quite want to let me go, or that’s what I think. You never really know what’s in the mind of a woman.”

  “Or anyone else… Are you really going to Moscow? Haven’t you had enough frights for one lifetime?”

  “I want to know what Stalin will do if Hitler offers him a non-aggression pact. I have heard a rumour of something in the wind. The last thing Hitler wants is to fight a war on two fronts.”

  “Do you ever regret being a member of the British Communist Party when you were up at Manchester University?” asked Horatio.

  “Of course not. The basic ideals of communism are the best way for man to live in harmony.”

  “Bad people have an ability to create an idea that looks good to remove the incumbent establishment who mostly stole their power the same way. Stealing from those who have and giving to those who haven’t is good politics.”

  “You’re a cynic, Horatio.”

  “We all are, William, underneath. Come back safely. Are you really going to wait for my wedding?”

  “That depends on Janet.”

  “Why?”

  “Women take a long time to put on their own wedding. It’s the one moment in their lives when they are the sole centre of attention.”

  “You really are a cynic. All we have to do is call the banns of marriage at St Martin-in-the-Fields and that takes just three weeks.”

  “We’ll see. So you won’t be sharing this office?”

  “Not after the end of the month. So you think Fritz Wendel is dead? And not a traitor to us?”

  “I thought you were dead, old boy. Now look at you. Foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail and about to walk up the aisle. I hope he survives. I hope we all do. He was a good man. Now, before we get morbid, let us go across the road for a pint or two and forget the problems of the world. Janet won’t mind you getting drunk this once. I asked her.”

  “Are we really going down to Hastings Court for the weekend?”

  “Let’s get drunk first.”

  “Is it Harry you want to see or Tina?”

  “Both. She’s still a damnably good-looking woman for a gal with five children. No, don’t be silly. She’s married. To a man for whom I have the greatest respect. It’s just the way Tina looks at a man that makes him think.”

  The day Genevieve finally sailed out of Liverpool on the RMS Aquitania with Louis Casimir on her way to America, Klaus von Lieberman arrived home at his estate in southern Bavaria twenty miles from Lake Constance and the Swiss border. Far away, he could see the snowcaps of the Swiss mountains strangely shimmering in the warm spring air. Bergit was waiting for him; Bergit had always been waiting for him.

  After returning the uniform to Uncle Werner in Berlin, he had driven his own car alone across Germany, knowing what it felt like to sell his soul to the devil. Within weeks of joining the Nazi Party Uncle Werner, the second brother of three next to Klaus’s father, had been promoted to general, which was why Uncle Werner had been the man Klaus went to in order to solve Harry Brigandshaw’s problem. Neither uncle nor nephew had mentioned the Party. No one ever did; silence and a stony stare were more convenient. A man had to be pragmatic he told himself, trying to believe.

  When Harry Brigandshaw made contact after so many years, the family estate was almost bankrupt. What with the war and the aftermath, many old families were insolvent. The prices paid for farm goods was so low his tenants, most of them, were unable to pay their rent. Trying to extract rent from a tenant without money was as hopeless as throwing him off his rented land, there being no one in Germany with money and skill to take his place.

  The savings many of them had had in the bank were rendered worthless by inflation that at one point, before Hitler took control, required a wheelbarrow to carry the number of notes needed to buy the morning newspaper.

  At the estate that had been in the von Lieberman family for centuries, they were all living off homegrown food. Provided nothing was wanted from outside the farms, the people survived. Ploughing had come down to horses; there was no money for fuel or tractor parts. To keep the family estate afloat financially when Klaus came back from Scotland after the war, he had pledged his family land to a Jewish banker in exchange for a dollar loan. There had been no point in the banker lending him German money to have its value halved the next day.

  “In dollars, Herr von Lieberman. Dollars backed by an equal amount in gold by the American government, or pounds sterling backed by gold in the Bank of England. That I will lend you against your estate. That you must return to me in kind.”

  In 1921, when Klaus had mortgaged the estate, the German mark had gone into freefall when Germany was forced to accept an unpayable war reparations bill, and after Britain and France threatened military force to implement the Versailles agreement. Whichever way Klaus turned he was beaten.

  Soon after borrowing the money to pay his father’s bills, the tenants stopped paying for reasons Klaus understood only too well: they were all in the same predicament. None of them had any money. The war had bled Germany dry. And as he said to Bergit, “Now the French and British want to suck the stone for blood. Can’t they see they are doing more harm to themselves than good?”

  What was left of the dollars was banked in America to pay the interest on the loan to the bank, Klaus hoping that once Germany had recovered from the war, the estate would again pay its own way and, with frugal living, Klaus would be able to pay back the banker his money.

  The thought of losing his ancestral home had never been allowed to enter his head. Like so many generations before hi
m, Klaus considered his job in life to protect the family estate and hand it down to his eldest son. By the time he decided to take a few of the dollars to marry Bergit and take her on honeymoon, he thought his father lucky to be dead, killed in the war that was also now killing the family estate.

  With an open invitation to visit Harry Brigandshaw and free passage on a Brigandshaw family boat, the Brigandshaws owning Colonial Shipping, he had taken his wife into the bush of Rhodesia for the best three months of his life. For the first time since 1914 when he had gone off to war, Klaus von Lieberman was able to leave his problems behind. It was summer in Germany, mid-winter and the dry season in Africa, the best time to roam the bush with his beautiful wife, a girl he had known most of his life.

  When they returned to Germany, Bergit was pregnant with their first child. The financial situation on the estate was worse. Germany was in its worst state since Bismarck cobbled the principalities of Germany into one state.

  By the time the wheels of his car crunched the driveway in front of the old house with its spires and steep roof, Klaus was sickened by what he had done to save Horatio Wakefield. Trying to keep a bright smile on his face, he strode towards his wife who came forward gently into his arms. She was crying. Tears of happiness. Foolishly the girl thought he was the only person able to solve their problems.

  “It may sound silly and trite, Klaus, but nothing else matters if we have each other. Did you get him out of the country?”

  “At a price. Uncle Werner made me join the Nazi Party without actually saying so. He even said he will stop the Jews taking the estate. Where are the children?”

  “At school.”

  “I had forgotten the time of the week.”

  “How can Uncle Werner stop the bank taking the estate and the house?”

  “I asked him. He smiled. He said in an emergency we had to be practical. That it wasn’t the first time the von Liebermans had changed sides to save the estate. That the preservation of a man’s family was his first duty.”

  “Harry suggested on the phone, when he asked you his favour, you should go to Africa. He knows we’re in trouble. Everyone in the world knows we’re in trouble and all they want is war reparations. Maybe Adolf Hitler is right. Uncle Werner is right. What else can we do?”

  The sickening feeling was back in Klaus’s stomach as he looked out over the family estate.

  “That old car’s on its last legs,” he said, trying to focus on reality.

  “Good. I always preferred riding horses.”

  Inside and outside the house the servants went about their jobs. None of them had been paid for over a year except in board and lodging. The dollars had run out in the German bank’s American branch. Further afield the tenants were going about their work, though none of them had less than three years net in arrears and some of their houses were falling down in disrepair; repairing houses was the landlord’s job. Klaus understood it did not matter on the estate who owned what, which class they came from; they all had to rely upon each other to survive. They were all part of the same complexity of life. They were part of a single process that gave them existence. Had done for centuries. The same families in the same place. All doing their jobs.

  On the table in the hall, Klaus picked up the letter from the Rosenzweig Bank in Berlin. He did not have to open the letter to know what was inside.

  “Maybe we should take the children to Rhodesia. They’ll pick up English soon enough. Get away from all this,” said Klaus.

  They were both speaking in English after Bergit pointed to the letter sitting ominously on the silver tray; so the servants were unable to understand.

  “We can’t. We are not free to go. What about them? What about the tenants? There is more to owning an estate than having comfort without giving in return. We are responsible for them. The same way my father is responsible for his people whether he likes it or not. We were born to responsibility. Maybe Hitler is the only way out for everyone.”

  “The French won’t let us. Neither will the British. In the end it’s just another war to be fought. More treasure to be blown to pieces. The idea of living in a thatched house in the African bush, miles away from anyone, with a gun to shoot supper, is very appealing. When we are tossed out of here by the bank, what happens to the children? Don’t we owe our first allegiance to our children?”

  “They are no different to the other children on the estate. We can’t take everyone to Africa to run away even if we wanted. Many of the people talk about Hitler behind my back, as if I shouldn’t hear, even though they know I do. They all know the problem, a problem you can’t solve, Klaus. Hitler is stopping war reparations. Stabling the mark. Giving men jobs in the cities. Giving them back their pride. The only people he hurts are the people who want to stop him. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t run Germany like the rest of the world. Losing the war stopped that. If they get rid of Hitler, the communists will take over and then where will we be? And when I say we I mean everyone on this estate. You can’t run an estate this size without trained management. There’s more to successful farming than ploughing and planting seeds. An estate, like a country, has to make a profit to succeed. The bank won’t know what to do with the estate. Ask them. They’ll try and sell it for whatever pittance they can get and still come after you as no one in his right mind will pay good money for a bankrupt business, which is what a big estate is today. A business. With everyone working for the business. Including you and me. However many vons we have in front of our aristocratic name. We all need each other, including the bank. If Hitler can make the bank understand calling up the loan is self-destructive, then like your Uncle Werner I am all for Hitler. Desperate times require desperate measures however much that sounds like a cliché, Klaus. We can’t go to Africa. We can’t run away. We are responsible for these people. The responsibility is of your ancestral inheritance. Ask my father. He’ll tell you the same. Now, get your shotgun. We still have game in Germany even if they are not the size of an elephant… Now what are you laughing at?”

  “You. You are wonderful. Come on then. Let’s go and shoot everyone’s supper, though likely it will only be our own. Do we have any wine left in the back of the cellar?”

  “Right at the back.”

  “Good. We’ll have a bottle together with supper. The two of us. If Wakefield could see me now out of my borrowed uniform, he’d likely think me a different man. Keeping in the part of his colonel, I managed to go through a whole lunch without saying one word. What do you think of that, Bergit?”

  “Did you really join the Nazi Party?”

  “I had to.”

  “Do you know what it entails?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “The wine sounds lovely. If we wait until eight o’clock, the children will be in the nursery. Rabbit stew. Lots of rabbit stew. That’s what we’ll all have for supper.”

  Four days later the RMS Aquitania sailed into New York harbour giving Genevieve her first sight of America. The voyage for Genevieve had been unpleasant. Throughout she could feel Louis Casimir staring at her. When she looked at him the unveiled lust made her put up her hands to hide her face. He never did anything. Never smiled. Never acknowledged her embarrassment.

  As they docked in all the excitement at the end of the voyage, she asked him when his wife was coming to America.

  “Deirdre won’t leave the children.”

  “How long are we going to be in America?”

  “That depends. Did I tell you I am changing my name by deed poll? In America I am Gerry Hollingsworth.”

  “Why, Louis?”

  “Gerry, Genevieve… I don’t like being a Jew anymore. Not an obvious Jew. Better for the children and for Deirdre.”

  “Is your wife Jewish?”

  “Of course. We rarely marry out of our faith.”

  “Affairs don’t count I suppose, Louis?”

  “Really, Genevieve.”

  “I’ve seen the way you look at me. I’m an actress who will m
ake you money. So please don’t look at my face all the time. It gives me the creeps.”

  “I can’t stop. You are safe. I promised my wife.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it. Well, how long?”

  “I need to raise money. Making a film of Robin Hood is expensive. I want Errol Flynn to play the outlaw opposite your Maid Marian.”

  “He’s American!”

  “Actually, he’s Australian. We have a lot of publicity work to do. To build you up on this side of the Atlantic. You’ll see in a few minutes. My co-producer in America has a welcome ready for you… Probably six months.”

  “And all the time your wife stays in England?”

  “Don’t you find me attractive?”

  “Frankly, no. I don’t go for old men. The only man I have any time for is eighteen.”

  “I did not know you have a lover. Please keep that to yourself. The public like their stars to be unattached.”

  “He’s not my lover. I never even kissed him. He shied away.”

  “Ah, the boy up at Oxford. Now I remember. Is he not Harry Brigandshaw’s nephew? Harry does get around, introducing you to men… There they are on the docks. A whole gaggle of them with cameras at the ready. The American press. Smile at them. Be nice to them. Flirt with them. Give them a little flash of leg and bust you are so good at.”

  “Have you asked Errol Flynn?”

  “Of course not. I want him to ask me.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “You, darling. Don’t you know that expression ‘in like Flynn’?”

  “Don’t be vulgar.”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “It will take more than me flashing my breasts at the cameras to get Errol Flynn to play opposite me.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “There’s that look again. You’re mentally stripping me.”

  “Exactly… Are you ready for the gentlemen of the press? The gangplank is going down. I want you to pose at the top. Good luck. Good luck to both of us. If we play our cards right, we’ll leave all the nonsense in Europe behind forever. Gerry Hollingsworth. Have you got the name?”