On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  “When does all this happen, Celia?”

  “Soon. Very soon. Barnaby promised. Give me a hug.”

  “Andre said he’d drive down for the weekend.”

  “Oh, Andre. He’s lovely but a student. You can’t make any money out of playing cricket. Anyway he lives somewhere in Africa. You should see Barnaby’s town house overlooking Green Park in Piccadilly. Three storeys. Enormous. Edward is a gem. Barnaby’s valet. So what do you think of it all?”

  “I’m not quite sure but someone should close the front door before the neighbour’s cat gets in. Isn’t the Windmill where they show all the leg? Are you sure what kind of clothes we are meant to wear?”

  “I’ve no idea except it’s off Shaftesbury Avenue, right in the West End. Isn’t Barnaby a dear?… I’m sure we have a bottle of wine somewhere at the back of the kitchen cupboard to celebrate. Then we’re going out to dinner.”

  “The three of us?”

  “No, darling. Myself and Barnaby. You just said you were waiting for Andre.”

  “I have a better idea,” said Tinus when they found Fleur alone in the flat not sure when her flatmate was coming home. “You two go out and celebrate Andre flying solo. I’ll make a surprise call on Genevieve at her father’s flat. It’s only round the corner, so to speak.”

  “Haven’t you been reading the papers?”

  “I never have time at Oxford. What’s wrong?”

  “The papers found out about her grandfather. I asked my tutor, who said it was all about publicity.”

  “Genevieve would never embarrass him or her father,” said Tinus.

  “The studio. The people who put up the money for her film. Mr Strachan says they do things like that. Mr Strachan is my tutor.”

  “How awful. They’d never get away with that in Rhodesia. No one would ever talk to them again.”

  “In London that would not worry the newspapers one bit, or the film company.”

  “Will Celia be here tomorrow morning?” asked Tinus.

  “I don’t think so. Fact is, she said she might go down to the country and visit her parents. Why she hasn’t been back from college this afternoon.”

  “Just as well we brought two cars, Andre. You never know what’s going to happen. I was looking forward to a show with the four of us tomorrow. Andre flew a Tiger Moth solo this afternoon. Going to be a fighter pilot. The chaps are getting Hurricanes at Tangmere. See you back at Oxford, Andre.”

  “Where are you going to stay?”

  “No idea. Fleur will know where to find you a bed. It was all fine being three of us with Genevieve when I first arrived in England. We’re too old for that now. If Genevieve isn’t there I’ll drive straight back. That’s probably a better idea. Famous film stars don’t just sit around waiting for the likes of me. Pity if she isn’t home. I could really do with a good natter. She and I get on so well together… Or I could drive down and surprise Uncle Harry if I stay in town tonight. You two have a good time whatever you get up to. Strange, Celia said she rarely spoke to her mother. I thought they lived in Wapping, which isn’t exactly the country. Please tell her I called.”

  “The Honourable Merlin St Clair is not receiving tonight, sir,” said Smithers frostily when the door to the Park Lane flat was answered to Tinus; even the man downstairs had been rude before he even got into the lift.

  “Actually, I came to see Genevieve. She told me she lives here with her father.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Where has she gone?”

  “I do not divulge information about the family to the press. Goodnight to you, sir. And at this time of night! Vultures the lot of you. Disgusting profession.”

  “My name is Tinus Oosthuizen. I’m from Rhodesia, not the press. Genevieve and I are close friends. If she is in trouble I want to help.”

  “She’s probably with her mother if they’ve even left her mother alone. I’ll write down the address. Miss Genevieve mentioned your name. Mentioned it more than once. Everything is in a pickle.”

  Back in the Morgan, which Tinus had parked on the other side of Park Lane to the flat under a tree, Tinus sat thinking what he should do. Were it not for the man telling him to call at the Chelsea flat as soon as possible, he would have driven in the dark straight back to his digs in Oxford. In the glove compartment were two bars of chocolate, in his room some stale bread and a lump of Cheddar cheese. She was, as he told himself for the umpteenth time, a film star with many friends. He was in his second year at Oxford with no plans in his life other than the week ahead and Saturday’s game of cricket. On the piece of paper the man at the door of the flat had written a phone number. One dead-end for the night was probably enough for one day. He did not need another girl to tell him by her absence he was only nineteen. Celia and Genevieve had better things to do, so to hell with it.

  Pressing the starter button on the wooden dashboard with a jab he made the car fire first time. Putting the car into gear, Tinus let out the clutch and pulled out onto the road. At Marble Arch he turned the car in the direction of Oxford and home.

  Feeling the joy of driving a car given to him by Uncle Harry, Tinus began to sing to himself. The late July sky was mostly clear of cloud. Once he drove out of London he would be able to see the stars when he looked up at the night air, the breeze warm in his face. Tinus began the long comfortable drive, alone with his thoughts.

  When Tinus reached his Oxford room it was well past midnight; stale bread and old cheese eaten along with a jar of onion pickles had never tasted better in his life. When he went to bed, Tinus lay back without a care in the world, waiting to fall asleep.

  Next he knew it was morning. Putting on his shorts and gym shoes, Tinus went for his morning run. At the willow tree where Genevieve had sat the day the three of them went rowing on the River Thames before the Thames met the River Cherwell, Tinus sat down to catch his breath. When he got home the landlady had his breakfast almost ready.

  “Lots of toast, Mrs Witherspoon. I’m starving. It’s a lovely morning down by the river. Hope I didn’t wake you last night. Bacon and eggs! My favourite. You look after me just like my mother.”

  “Don’t you miss Rhodesia, Tinus?”

  “All the time. Do you know I once flew my uncle’s aeroplane up the Zambezi River with Tembo and flew over the Victoria Falls? We all thought Princess was going to have a heart attack.”

  “Who was Princess?” asked Mrs Witherspoon to keep the conversation going; Mrs Witherspoon was a widow of many years and lonely for company.

  “Tembo’s wife. His fourth wife to be exact. The most expensive bride in Mashonaland, if not the whole of Rhodesia. When Tembo came back from looking for Uncle Harry’s crashed aeroplane in the Congo he had lots of money. Paid twenty cows for Princess. Unheard of. Tembo’s older wives are as jealous as snakes.”

  “Are snakes jealous?”

  “Probably. If Princess runs away her father has to give back the twenty cows. Now that’s a system that needs more looking into.”

  “In England, buying a woman is called prostitution.”

  “In Africa it is called lobola. Do you want me to go on, Mrs Witherspoon?”

  “Eat your bacon and eggs first while I make you some more toast.”

  “Yesterday all I had after breakfast was bread and cheese. Andre flew solo and we went down to London to see the girls.”

  “Where is Andre? His bed wasn’t slept in.”

  “With Fleur, I expect.”

  “What is the world coming to? In Africa, it seems they buy their wives. In London they don’t even marry them before staying the night. Now in my day we would never have got away with such behaviour.”

  “Neither would Andre with Fleur, Mrs Witherspoon. Whatever he says, I’ll bet he stayed in a cheap hotel. These eggs are done just right.”

  Feeling he had scored at least one point for Andre, Tinus finished his breakfast without saying another word. When he looked up from his cleaned plate Mrs Witherspoon had left the room.

&n
bsp; In London, Bruno Kannberg was not enjoying his breakfast, the meeting with Arthur Bumley later in the day weighing on his mind. To add to it all, Gillian West had told him to go to hell the previous night after a courtship that had lasted a year. When the phone rang in his one-roomed flat on the Edgware Road he was not sure which one he feared most; the meeting or losing Gillian.

  “Tomorrow, ten o’clock sharp I want you in my office, Kannberg,” the editor had told him belligerently.

  “What’s it about, Mr Bumley?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Before Bruno had been able to say another word the man was four desks away striding through the newsroom where Bruno sat at his small desk; the fact that Mr Bumley always sounded belligerent did not help. Everyone else on the paper had told him he was a fool for not being the first to headline Genevieve The Illegitimate, Granddaughter of a Lord, seeing the Daily Mirror had been the only one to take what had turned out to be a beautiful photograph which two of the opposition papers had tried to buy. Saying he had given his word of honour had made them laugh. Something else must have happened to add to a story he had failed to make the most of. Now Bumley was going to give him the sack. Then had come the argument with his girlfriend.

  “A whole damn year you wasted, Bruno, and you still live in a one-roomed flat,” she had said.

  “It does have a separate bathroom and kitchen.”

  “The bathroom is a shower on the top of a toilet, the kitchen you have to walk in sideways to get at the sink. Now I’ve finished at Pitman’s Secretarial College I’ll likely earn more than you.”

  “Good. We’ll share the flat.”

  “Are you asking me to live with you?”

  “Of course I am. We have an understanding, Gillian.”

  “My understanding was you earning enough money so we can get married and have kids. I’m twenty-one, Bruno. My biological clock is ticking. It’s bad to have the first kid past the age of twenty-one.”

  “With two incomes we’ll be fine, even if they do tax us together.”

  “So you want to get married. It sounded like you wanted to live in sin.”

  “How could you think of such a thing?”

  “Tell you what. Ten o’clock tomorrow with Arthur Bumley, you ask for a raise, I tell you. A raise, Bruno. Two quid a week raise or I’m looking for another husband before my looks go. A girl can’t just sit around.”

  “He’s going to sack me for messing up the Genevieve story and I wasn’t even meant to do the films.”

  “The sack will put the kibosh on everything between us.”

  “Gillian, can’t you just be patient?”

  “You’ve had a year, damn it. Two quid. Not a penny less. The sack it’s the kibosh, understand, Bruno Kannberg? And by the way, Kannberg sounds Jewish.”

  “I’m not Jewish.”

  “I know that but change your name to something that sounds English.”

  “Maybe you better find another man.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then make some proper money. I want a proper house. A proper family. A proper name.”

  “I barely earn four quid a week now.”

  “That’s my point if you want to marry me, Bruno. You’re twenty-eight years old. Most men of your age have at least three kids. Now get a move on or it’s all over. He might not have got the smut but you were still first with the Genevieve story and that photograph was lovely.”

  “She’s a beautiful woman.”

  “Oh, so that’s it. Mixing work and play.”

  “Darling, you really can go off at a tangent. And as for changing my name, I would never insult my ancestors.”

  “They were Russians. You’re English.”

  “Latvian Russians. White Russians who fought the Reds. With more help from the West in 1919 there wouldn’t be any communism. Hitler would not have frightened the Germans into being fascists. The world would be a far better place and not the time bomb it is at the moment.”

  “I don’t care about that. Two quid, Bruno or it’s the kibosh for us.”

  “Mr Bumley will laugh at me.”

  “Ask him.”

  “Yes, dear… Now where are you going?”

  “Home. On my own. The next time we speak you’d better have that increase or don’t bother calling me. I have my own life to think of.”

  Reflecting that life was cruel, that he was now likely to spend his life all alone in one small room, Bruno got up from the small round table where he ate the meals he cooked in the small corridor that served for a kitchen and went to answer the phone that was ringing on top of his writing bureau beside his unmade bed.

  Only the people at the office and Gillian had his phone number in what he liked to call his hideaway; his parents and friends and informants with news called him at the office, the only way to get an undisturbed night’s sleep. He had tried leaving the phone off the hook when he was first given a number but the telephone exchange objected for some reason. It turned out some people in an emergency made the telephone operator interrupt the call when the number was unavailable and would not listen when the girl explained the line was open but no one was answering her call. The telephone department had threatened to remove the phone, instead giving him a new number for his flat.

  “Hello, Jane,” he said. “What’s up?” Jane was the telephone operator at the Daily Mirror.

  “It’s Genevieve, Bruno. Have you ever written a book?”

  “Of course. Every journalist has an unpublished novel in his bottom drawer. Most of us are frustrated novelists.”

  “I want you to write a book for me. Ghostwrite a book, they call it. My name will appear as the author. We’ll split the royalty in half. You were the only one to keep his word. Now I’m going to tell the truth about my life and make some money for me this time.”

  “Why don’t you write it yourself? Anyone can edit out grammatical mistakes.”

  “Fact is, apart from the Hall, I never went to school. I still have difficulty reading the scripts, though that is getting better. My mother was a barmaid. They don’t take bastards at good schools. My father tried. The next idea was a tutor but mother wouldn’t have one in the house when I was growing up. Do you think publishers would be interested in the inside story now my family have been dropped in the shit?”

  “They’ll fight over it.”

  “Then start them fighting by announcing what we are up to.”

  “Won’t you change your mind about the ghostwriter and give it to someone else?”

  “You kept your word. Now I’ll keep mine. Meet me in Chelsea at my mother’s tonight. It was her idea. I want to put some money in the bank before they kick me out on the street where the papers say I came from.”

  “So do I.”

  “Perfect. Got a pen?”

  “Go ahead… Well, this was a nice surprise. Where’d you get my number?”

  “From Jane. She was a bit overawed for some reason when I told her who it was.”

  “You’re famous, Genevieve.”

  “I hope so. For the sake of the book.”

  “Doesn’t your film contract have something to say about writing your memoirs?”

  “William Smythe helped me with the contract. There’s no preclusion for telling my own story. He had them take it out when he sent them his own typed up draft of the contract. Probably they missed what William had deliberately left out.”

  “Why not ask William to write your book?”

  “He’s in Warsaw. There’s another reason I won’t tell you. Six o’clock tonight at 10 The Royal Crescent, Maple Road, Chelsea.”

  “Very grand.”

  “It is, actually. My dad’s paid for it ever since I was born.”

  “How’s your grandfather taking it?”

  “He’s dead… Died last night full of morphine to control the pain. He never knew what they were saying as Gran stopped the paper being delivered to the Manor House at the star
t of the war. My father is the one to worry about. Life can be cruel.”

  “Tell me about it. I am sorry about your grandfather… Gillian wants to give me the kibosh.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “You will if we handle this one right. Do you know any publishers?”

  “All of them. They all rejected my novel. I’ll get the more likely non-fiction publishers on the phone in the office after Bumley gives me my grilling for not telling him about your family.”

  “Give me a ring when you have something.”

  “Goodbye, Genevieve,” he said wearily.

  At ten o’clock, Bruno knocked on the door of his editor’s office to find the room full of people.

  “Come in, Bruno. You’re heading this one up. Mosley is planning a march through the East End. He thinks the workers will come out for him like they did for Hitler. Our information is the Londoners are going to barricade the roads and disrupt the march. We may have a class system in England that many of us hate, but none of us are communists or fascists. That’s what you are going to tell Hitler in your articles, Bruno. Short and sharp. England is not for buying. Why they don’t throw Mosley in jail I just don’t know.”

  “Because if we did we would also be fascists, Mr Bumley.”

  “Perhaps you are right, Bruno… Right, I want you all out on the streets the moment Mosley’s mob appears. Is that clear?”

  Feeling a little relieved, Bruno hung back. “Can I have a word in your ear, sir?”

  “What do you want, Kannberg?”

  “An extra two quid a week.”