by Peter Rimmer
“What are we going to do for the birthday?” she asked, still some way off.
“A few children from school. A cake. The usual. What are we going to give Anthony for his birthday?”
“Your birthday, Harry. It’s your birthday next month two weeks before Anthony’s. Whilst it won’t be your fiftieth until next year, I was thinking of a big party.”
“Really, why?”
“Well, we never really celebrated you coming home after being lost in Africa, so why not combine the two? Make it a big celebration. Lots of people. Everyone we know. A marquee on the lawn. A band, of course. I thought we’d cook an ox over an open fire the way we did with the sheep on Elephant Walk. There’ll be so many people we’ll need an ox. Have you ever cooked a whole ox, Harry?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. It was the time of Tembo’s first wife when we all welcomed her on the farm. I told him then I would only do it for his first wife. The party went on all night and half the next day. You have to dig a pit and fill it with dry trees and make some very hot coals before wheeling the ox-braai, as we call it in Africa, over the open pit of the fire. Takes a day to cook, turning the ox and feeding more hot coals from a second fire into the pit. Best food in the world. I can’t believe Anthony is turning fourteen. I’m sorry what I said the other day.”
“So am I. Life is never perfect. My mother says if it was, it would be very boring.”
“Does she know about Frank?”
“I tell my mother everything. Don’t you?”
“Most of that kind of thing would go over the top of my mother’s head. Do you want me to help work out the guest list? What do we have for Anthony’s birthday?”
“A set for making a large model aeroplane that flies.”
“Isn’t he too old for model aeroplanes?”
“You’ll never have to help him, Harry, if that’s some consolation. Can we go for a walk together? The sound of happy children on a spring day is one of the true joys of life. Did you see the first daffodils and crocuses on the banks of the lawn?”
“I just watched Kim coming to join them, hurtling down the path on his tricycle, his small legs peddling like mad.”
“Maybe we’ll find our children in the woods and give them a surprise.”
“Come on. I think it’s going to be a good summer for once in my life in England. Don’t know about roasting an ox in April. Never thought anyone would try such a thing in England.”
“No, Harry. We are not going back to Elephant Walk.”
“Always worth a try.”
“Are we going up to London tomorrow?”
“First thing in the morning as usual on a Monday. Did I tell you? The factory has a new fighter for the RAF in production. According to our intelligence from Germany it’s better than anything they even have on the drawing board. This war is going to be won or lost in the air, not in the trenches. Why are you crying, Tina?”
“Anthony. If the war started now and went on as long as the last one, they’d have him in the fighting. He’s always saying he’s going to be a pilot like his father.”
“Maybe Baldwin will come to terms with Hitler. Often things turn out better than they are… Use my handkerchief to blow your nose or the children will ask why their mother’s been crying.”
“It’s every mother’s nightmare.”
“And every father’s.”
“You are too old to fly in the war, Harry, aren’t you?”
“Much too old. The advantage you have over your contemporaries for marrying an older man. They wouldn’t let me anywhere near the cockpit of a trainer let alone a fighter plane, though I don’t see why not. My reactions won’t be as fast as they were in France, but experience counts more than a quick turn or sharp eyesight and there’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Maybe they’ll let me train the youngsters, pass on what I learnt in the war. There’s a chap my age who is a test pilot. All this office work is driving me nuts. No, if there is a war they might let me fly, Tina. I had a sixth sense at where they were coming from by the end of the war. Just ask Klaus von Lieberman. How I got him in my sights. That last letter of his was quite adamant suggesting we go back to Africa out of harm’s way. Maybe he’s trying to tell us something. That he knows far more than he is allowed to say in a letter. Our chaps think the Nazi police read all the letters going in and out of the country, which is why I am so careful what I say to Klaus. They also listen in to all the telephone conversations. There’s a good boys’ school near Umtali, perfect for Anthony where he’d be right out of harm’s way. Once we are out there and war broke out we’d never be able to get back to England even if we wanted. The Germans have submarines that our chaps think will target civilian liners. We’d be all stuck on Elephant Walk for the duration, right out of harm’s way as Klaus is suggesting.”
“Nice try, Harry.”
“If war breaks out, it would be too late to make our escape.”
“War isn’t going to break out, Harry. Politicians say these things to frighten us and the people making guns encourage them. In Africa, we’d have a much better chance of being massacred by the blacks. There are hordes of them and just a few of us English right in the middle of nowhere. I like to get my priorities right. Whatever happens we are safe in England where we belong… Oh my God, there’s Kim right up the top of that tree. Harry! Do something! He’s going to fall.”
“One minute you don’t want an old man to fly an aeroplane, now you want him to climb a tree… Kim, son, what are you doing up there?”
“Looking for bird nests.”
“You’ll find those in the hedgerows. Now come down slowly or your mother is going to have a heart attack.”
“I’m stuck.”
“I’ll go and get him, Dad,” said Anthony, “he’s such a baby.”
“No I’m not.”
“Then get your own self down. Climbing trees is for kids.”
“Go up and get him!” screamed Tina.
“Yes, Mother. Why is it always me? What’s wrong with Frank?”
“You are the eldest.”
“Dad, when are you going to teach me to fly like Tinus?”
“Never. It’s too dangerous with the war coming.”
“The sooner I learn, the better I’ll be as a pilot. You always say only the good pilots come through the war. I want to be a good pilot like you.”
“He’s slipping!” shouted Tina.
“Let him slip,” said Frank. “When the brat falls and hurts himself he won’t do it again… Why did that old woman call me Barnaby?” he said, looking at his mother with a sly, malicious stare.
Harry, standing next to him, was again tempted to box his son’s ear.
Looking back at the ill-fated walk along the river, Tina could see why the old lady was so easily mistaken; Frank was the spitting image of Barnaby when Barnaby was eleven years old and the two of them were thick as thieves. Tina had been ten years old, a frequent visitor to the Manor house, still too young to pose a threat, Lady St Clair treating her the same as any small child. She was a woman Tina had grown to love over the five years she had played with Barnaby, roaming the length of the stream the grown-ups liked to call a river, exploring the whole of the Purbeck Manor estate always with the dogs following. Two children happy with each other, not a care in the world, never the slightest trouble to the grown-ups they kept away from until they were hungry or cold or when the rain pelted down and they had to go inside.
Barnaby said then the best food in the world was made in the old railway cottage by Mrs Pringle, all the children fighting for second helpings, Barnaby no different from the rest of them. Soon after that they had been forced to meet secretly, neither of them knowing why their parents made them stop their friendship.
Even the nasty edge on Frank’s voice that wanted his brother to hurt himself made her see the young Barnaby and bring back her loss of their innocence. They had both been banned from seeing each other ever again, neither of them having any understanding of the truth, the
cruelty of the grownup world, that ever since Tina had looked at with cynical understanding, taking what she could get including Harry Brigandshaw. After she seduced him in the owner’s cabin of the SS Corfe Castle, named after Harry’s first wife’s family, she’d got herself pregnant hoping the rich Rhodesian would marry her, as he did, not being part of the English class system.
Even at the start of the voyage to Africa Tina had realised there was no class distinction between the settlers; in Africa white people were all the same and all in need of each other’s protection against the black hordes that surrounded them.
Harry had been out in Africa on an extended visit to Elephant Walk when Barnaby seduced her again, making her pregnant with Frank. For years, before she married Harry, Barnaby had been using her, making her his mistress, laughing at the very idea of marrying a girl from the lower classes. Until Barnaby made his money manipulating the stock market, the two of them had lived off their wits; the aristocrat and the girl so beautiful no man could refuse.
From Africa to London, Barnaby had borrowed money he had no intention of ever paying back, laughing at how easy it was to separate a fool from his money. Even thinking about him as she watched Kim climb down the tree made her wet with excitement, the thought of Celia Larson at half his age in Barnaby’s bed making her mind scream with jealousy.
Even now, lady of her own ancient manor, she still felt inferior for a reason she could never understand, still seeing Barnaby with his clipped, upper-class accent she had tried so hard to imitate mocking her, putting her down.
One day, she said to herself, looking from Kim safely on the ground to the same mocking face that was Frank, she’d use Frank to get her own back, when Barnaby was old, without children, a rich old man on his own without a real friend in the world. Then it would be her turn to take revenge on the whole St Clair family, Lady St Clair included. Someone, long ago, had told her that he who laughed last laughed the loudest. She wanted a laugh so loud it would blow the shackles of class to oblivion.
With the image of the old woman scuttling away with her dogs in disarray in her mind, Tina tasted the first sweetness of revenge for being slighted all her life by people who thought themselves better than the rest.
“Are you all right, Tina?” asked Harry.
“I will be. Oh yes, I will be.”
Then she walked across and hugged her youngest son. When she looked up, Frank’s eyes were mocking her. Not only had the boy inherited Barnaby’s good looks, but his mind. A mind that liked to watch people in pain, tear wings off butterflies, a self-centred mind that only thought of himself. This time Tina wanted to box his ears, knowing that she would have no more of Frank than she had of Barnaby.
When Kim ran off with the dogs to help them hunt for rabbits she shuddered with the feeling of premonition, at how much hurt Frank was going to cause in the world just like his father. She had given birth to the evil that lurked in all of them, the very evil himself, the sin of the parents visited on the son.
She sighed remembering some grown-up’s words from her past: ‘there was a price to pay for everything’. Maybe for Harry, killing all those Germans in what people called a war had killed his first wife and brought him to the woods with his second wife’s illegitimate son. A woman he was bound to by the conventions of the same society that had separated her from Barnaby when she was a youngster.
For years now, the power she had once had over men had gone. She didn’t even bother with her weight. She dressed in expensive clothes whenever people were visiting to show off the wealth of her husband in the hope of causing envy. Her turn to show she had more than the others, many of whom had suffered financially with the ’29 crash.
Somehow it made her feel better, making some other woman jealous. The days of men’s hungry eyes searching her out in a crowded room had vanished with her youth. She was a matron, mother of five children, no longer a player in the field of men, the demise of her power the worst loss after Barnaby to happen in her life.
“We have to make the best of them, Tina,” said Harry. “Channel the boy’s aggression into something that will profit his life.” Harry had seen the boy’s mocking eyes looking at his mother.
The children had all followed the dogs, even Frank had gone to see what mischief he could cause. She took Harry’s hand, feeling sorry for herself.
“Maybe he knows deep down he’s different to the rest. He can be so nasty.”
“So you won’t even consider going back to Elephant Walk?”
“Of course not, Harry. Why leave all this? Here are your real roots. Hastings Court has been in your family for centuries.”
“Maybe. But Africa is in my blood.”
“I hate all those black people watching me silently. Not understanding but wanting what the whites have. You’ve made them discontented. Shown them what they think is an easier life with machinery. Some way unknown to them made them well when they were sick. When jealousy explodes inside of them, they’ll want to destroy you and everything you have so they won’t have to look at it anymore. People hate someone else being better than themselves. Only when it isn’t there anymore will they once again be happy with what they have got.”
“Don’t you think they want to progress?”
“They do but they shouldn’t.”
“Where have those damn dogs gone again? If one of them ever caught a rabbit he’d drop dead with fright.”
“It’s the chase, Harry. That’s the fun. Eating supper afterwards doesn’t take very long and is usually an anti-climax until the hunger comes back again. Those dogs are lucky. They never find what they are looking for. Why don’t you sell Elephant Walk and bring your mother back to the house where she was born? Your sister and her children will be better off in England. Look at Tinus up at Oxford, happy as a sandboy.”
“Our family will never sell Elephant Walk. Mark my words.”
“One day those blacks will take it off you, Harry. Mark my words. There are too many of them already.”
“Everything in life comes and goes. Are we all right, Tina?”
“Probably.”
2
At Purbeck Manor in Dorset, while Tina Brigandshaw was trying to come to terms with her midlife crisis, Robert St Clair was enjoying writing his new book. The idea for the book had come from his mother without her even knowing. With his brother Merlin permanently back at the Manor House as the Eighteenth Baron St Clair of Purbeck following the death of their father, while Robert had been out walking with his mother and the spaniels, Pinta on the leash as his mother considered the dog too old to chase phantoms with the rest of the dogs, he had asked her a question he had wanted to ask her most of his life.
“Why did you call him Merlin? It can’t have been after King Arthur’s magician.”
“Oh but it was. Don’t you remember? You children gave him the nickname when he was ten years old having terrified the cat. Yet, what is more interesting is that your father found somewhere in a book that Merlin the Magician had mismatched eyes just like our Merlin, though they weren’t so pronounced as a child as they are now. Your father had even thought Merlin was reincarnated. Only later did I find out from him there was more to the story as in fact his maternal grandfather came from an ancient Saxon family that stretched back further than the Saxon invasions of England, according to the family legend. To the time of the Ancient Britons when our islands were inhabited by Celts. The family name was Pendrogan, a name that went back into the ancient past. Your great-grandfather thought his name should have been Pendragon, that the family did not only go back to the Saxon King Ethelred, some called the Unready, but to Arthur Pendragon, the king who only lives on through the legend of the Knights of the Round Table. The very sight of the mismatched eyes convinced your father one of his ancestors was Merlin, Arthur’s mentor, and lover, by some accounts, of Queen Guinevere, which is how the strange eyes found themselves in the descendants of the Pendragons.
“Your father’s mother said that though the family name was
Pendrogan, that should have been Pendragon with an A, that she was related to the magician with the mismatched eyes, not Arthur, that even in those days people in high places misbehaved themselves. Somewhere in the Manor are the rambling writings of your great-grandfather on the subject. The trouble with inheriting money and an estate is not having much to work for in life. Not much to do. What Harold Pendrogan did with his life was prove he was a descendent of Merlin the Magician, something your father referred to as poppycock until you children renamed Merlin. Genevieve has the same birth trait. She was going to be Guinevere but apparently her mother got it wrong at the christening.”
After reading the rambling notes of Harold Pendrogan, Robert was convinced his great-grandfather on the maternal side of the family was quite potty, if not stark raving mad towards the end of his long and fruitless life, a life that Robert determined might not be so fruitless after all. In among all the nonsense, as Robert called it at the start of his reading, were the seeds of a damn good book, a book Robert hoped would keep him out of mischief for over a year. He had called it The Mark of the Eyes and writing what by then he had convinced himself to be the truth was giving him the time of his life, despite his wife’s pestering him to go back to America before war broke out in Europe.
To save him having his leg pulled by mother and brother, Robert had kept the theme of his new book to himself, only letting Freya into the secret as he worked away in the old room he had lived in as a boy growing up and since turned into his study. A quiet room looking out from the second floor of the Manor House over the tops of the trees as far as the Purbeck Hills that spined the Isle of Purbeck, an island now connected to the rest of Dorset, an island only in name. Like so many things at the Manor, not everyone knew what was really going on. Soon after he started the book his mother had created another crisis by coming home from a walk saying Barnaby was out in the woods.
