On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  They smiled at each other as they had done over so many years without the need for saying a word. They were as comfortable with each other as they were with the house. With his dark blue uniform overcoat on the hook next to his balaclava helmet, the rabbit gloves stuffed one into each pocket, Old Pringle sank slowly into the comfort of his chair before taking off his boots and wiggling his toes in front of the stove close to where the burning wood was glowing hot through the grill. Then he sighed deeply and waited for the tea to draw in the old brown pot he watched his wife fill with water from the big kettle.

  “The one they call Genevieve came off the train. Lord St Clair met her.”

  “Thought her in America.”

  “Back for Christmas, I should think. Now that’s a queer one.”

  “No queerer than our Frank being Barnaby’s bastard.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “Just look at him. Like his father too. Right royal little brat if you ask me.”

  “The world’s changed, Mrs P.”

  “Not for the better.”

  “Never does. Just the one train down and the one train up. What’s for tea?”

  “Kippers.”

  “My favourite. We’re lucky, Mrs P.”

  “I know. Comes of a simple life. Not getting above ourselves. All you need is a warm fire, a cup of tea, and a pair of kippers with homemade bread and jam.”

  “Especially your plum jam, Mrs P.”

  Then Old Pringle smiled to himself for the second time in as many minutes; they were like two peas in a pod, perfectly content with their lot in life, never wanting more than they had.

  When the kippers were put in front of him on a tray, he could see they were thick and juicy, the knobs of butter melting into the rich brown skin of the smoked herring; with newly baked bread hot from the oven and soaked with butter, it was as he always said, ‘food sent from heaven’. Without looking up from the tray on his lap, Old Pringle tucked into his high tea with relish.

  When the call came through from Genevieve to William Smythe the next day, it didn’t help either; she had wanted to tell him about her part in the play, leaving a void in his soul. Earlier, Isaac, the old Jew who had forged his American passport and financed his trip with Horatio Wakefield to Berlin to report on the plight of the German Jews following the rise of Hitler, had phoned William’s office in Fleet Street to say Fritz Wendel was dead, murdered and burned along with thousands of his fellow Jews. Fritz had been William’s contact in Berlin, the man who had warned him in time to get out of Germany the day the Nazis arrested Horatio. The tears for Fritz were still wet when Genevieve had phoned.

  “I just phoned Tinus in Rhodesia. Three minutes then the exchange cut us off. Person to person call, each second so precious. It’s hot as hell on Elephant Walk. It was the best Christmas present I could ever have, hearing his voice.”

  “When are you coming up to London?”

  “After Christmas. Probably after New Year. My grandmother is so pleased to see me you have no idea. Sally-Sue has seventeen piglets though they moved around too much to count properly. Father says there are seventeen. Except in what father calls his den this house is freezing. The old Manor needs people like the old days, according to my grandmother. Then there were a dozen servants, aunts and uncles, even the odd poor relation. With fires burning in every room the house was a lot warmer, but maybe they were just used to it. When I stand in front of the fire my face burns while my lovely little bottom stays frozen.”

  “Can we go out, Genevieve?”

  “We can go out, William. I love going out with friends.”

  “Are we just friends?”

  “I don’t see how we can be any more.”

  “We were in New York.”

  “I was lonely. So homesick and glad for a friend from England.”

  “Was that all it was? And Genevieve, don’t giggle. That really hurts.”

  “It was lovely. Lovely moments should be left alone to remain lovely moments for ever and ever. Not destroyed. When we are both old I am sure we will treasure our memory of New York.”

  “I want to treasure it now.”

  “I hear Dad in the driveway. He went to see a farmer in Mickleham. Have a lovely Christmas. I’m looking forward to seeing you, William.”

  “So am I,” William had said miserably when he put down the phone after the line went dead.

  The article he was writing in memory of Fritz Wendel became too difficult to concentrate on and William pushed away his portable typewriter. It was time anyway to tell Horatio Wakefield. The article would be better written without so much personal emotion. From the distance of hours, even days. Fritz had become a friend, a good friend, and good friends, William had found in his life, were hard to come by; too precious to lose for no other damn reason than having a religion someone else did not like.

  Putting on his trilby felt hat along with his winter overcoat, William prepared to leave his small office and the warmth of his room.

  “Going over to the Daily Mail, Betty. Look after the shop.”

  “How was Genevieve?”

  “How did you know it was Genevieve?”

  “I put her through, remember?”

  “She’s in love with Tinus Oosthuizen.”

  “Well that’s good news.”

  “Not for me, Betty.”

  Had William turned round and looked at his secretary before going out the door on his way to visit Horatio Wakefield, he would have seen a whimsical smile on her pretty face, the look of a speculative idea that was just taking shape in her mind. Betty, like Genevieve, was twenty-three years old and said by many to be just as pretty. Some of her friends even said she was similar and wasting her time working in an office, even if the office was situated on Fleet Street with all the bustle and excitement of the international press.

  “Maybe I’m not wasting my time,” she said to the now closed door as she licked the tip of her index finger. “If war does break out he’s too old to be called up into the army.”

  The idea of extracting her boss from his mooning over a film star had something to do with his appeal. Betty Townsend liked a challenge. Most men were too easy. The fact that William Smythe had never once given her the eye made Betty that much more determined; she hated being ignored, especially by men.

  “Anyway, I’ll bet he’s never got her into bed,” she said, before going back to her typewriter and her shorthand notebook with William’s twenty pages of dictation for the day. “In an old kind of way, he’s actually quite good-looking. I’ve never seduced a man over thirty before. Maybe he has some tricks even I don’t know.”

  “The Nazis have murdered Fritz Wendel, Horatio. Isaac told me. If war breaks out I’m joining the bloody army.”

  “You’re too old. Sit down, William.”

  “Genevieve is back in town and doesn’t want to go out with me properly. I’ll lie about my age. I don’t look anywhere near thirty-five. People can’t just go off murdering people over religion.”

  “They’ve been doing it down the centuries. When a man with power thinks he’s right, he makes everyone agree with him. Poor Fritz. You told him to get out of Germany and go to America. It doesn’t always pay in life to help other people. Being selfish is part of staying alive. Have you ever fired a gun?”

  “I’ll learn, Horatio.”

  “Isn’t the pen meant to be mightier than the sword? I had a Christmas card from that chap Alfie Hanshaw I helped after Mosely’s abortive march through the East End of London. Hanshaw must feel like you as he’s joined the RNVR. Has a romantic idea to sail and fight on one of the ships he’s helping to build… I was glad to get out of Germany. I have no wish to go back. Even on the turret of a tank with the flags flying. Before the flags fly there’ll be millions of dead people. Little Bergit kept me awake all last night screaming. After the first time, Janet wouldn’t wake up she was so tired. Being a mother of two kids and running her speech therapy practice is damn nigh impossible, despite Nurs
e Blanche. That poor girl really is ugly. Why does God make some people look unattractive? More important, why do we think one person is plain and another pretty? That one has never made sense to me. Blanche makes it up with a very sweet nature. Maybe she’ll find another ugly person and have beautiful children. I mean not all of her family in the past could have been ugly or how did she get here?”

  “What are you talking about, Horatio?”

  “Anything but Fritz.”

  “I’m writing a requiem.”

  “I want to help. Thanks for coming to tell me. The whole thing gets more personal when friends get killed. Maybe I’ll join the bloody army with you.”

  “Genevieve’s got a part on the West End stage.”

  “She’d have been better staying in America.”

  “She’d phoned Tinus in Rhodesia for Christmas.”

  “I said sit down, William. You’re making me nervous. Genevieve has never wanted to be your lover.”

  2

  While William Smythe was dreaming about a perfect monogamous life with Genevieve, Barnaby St Clair was going through his phonebook hoping to get a spark from one of the girls’ names. Giving up a list he had foraged too many times in the past, Barnaby gazed out of the window from his Piccadilly town house at the desolation of winter in Green Park just across the road. In the street down below, cars and taxis were travelling up and down, along with a delivery van emblazoned with the name of Selfridges. There wasn’t even a good-looking girl walking down the pavement.

  Barnaby, sitting in the bay window on the second floor was racking his brain for something to do. During the morning he had amused himself talking to his stockbroker on the phone, giving CE Porter an order to buy shares in the British armament industry up to the amount of ten thousand pounds. The two of them had not spoken business other than to sell the market short before the stock market crash of 1929, when Barnaby had sold all his shares and put the cash with the banks in money instruments that earned interest without taking any risk.

  Dabbling in the stock market again had been fun but the euphoria was quickly over once he put down the phone. Remembering how his brother Merlin had made a fortune during the war, buying shares in a company that made machine guns, had changed his mind. Barnaby was not like many of his optimistic friends, who believed in the diplomacy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain was certain war with Germany was imminent, according to an offhand remark of an acquaintance at a boring dinner party Barnaby had gone to in the hope of finding a girl or two he could woo and finally take to bed; even at forty-one years of age his need for new sexual partners was as rampant as ever.

  Barnaby replayed the conversation in his mind: “The Prime Minister knows much more than we do. A friend of mine at the Ministry says all this appeasement talk from Chamberlain is to give us the time to re-arm. To build up modern equipment that can defeat the Nazis when war breaks out. The war that’s coming is going to rely on sophisticated machines even more than the tanks which won the last, finally breaking the attrition of trench warfare. My friend says the next war will be won in the air.”

  “Poppycock, Marshbanks. The navy protects England and wins our wars by strangling the enemy’s trade routes. Then the tanks go in. The English Channel can only be crossed by ships bringing an enemy in big enough numbers to worry us. It was the same whenever we invaded Europe. The navy, Marshbanks. Those fly boys may be glamorous but without the navy we’ll be sunk.”

  Barnaby had ignored the terrible unintended pun of the old bore who liked the sound of his own opinions. Barnaby had smiled to himself. Marshbanks, whoever Marshbanks might be, was right. Despite the only unattached young girl at the dinner party having a face that resembled a horse, he found his evening had not been wasted after all. It was time to buy shares again. To buy shares in any company that was making or trying to make military aircraft. Even if some of the companies did not come up with the ‘goods’, as he put it to CE Porter the next morning, he would be on the right side of the averages.

  Barnaby had always liked a calculated gamble based on inside information. In the old days after the Great War, he had first made his fortune buying and selling shares while borrowing as much money as he could lay his hands on from his bank against the security of his shares that went on up and up in the biggest bull run in history until, like all bull runs, it went bust.

  When the phone rang in the hall downstairs, Edward answered the ring while Barnaby kept on hopefully looking for a pretty face walking along the pavement two storeys down below. Girl-watching from his bay window was perfect, as he could look down but the girls, or anyone else for that matter, Barnaby told himself, never looked up. It was the perfect spot for a voyeur with no chance of being caught; anyway, he reassured himself, there was no law to stop him looking out of his own window at what was walking up and down the pavement below.

  “Mr Brigandshaw would like a word with you, sir,” said Edward his valet after walking up the single flight of stairs.

  “Oh would he?” said Barnaby, for some reason feeling a pang of guilt.

  Putting down his small black book that had so far failed to spark in him enough interest to make him phone one of the girls, Barnaby left his bay window and walked down the stairs to the only telephone in the house, situated conveniently for everyone in the entrance hall of the townhouse next to the front door.

  “Harry, this is a surprise. Where are you?”

  “At the Air Ministry. I want a favour.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because you owe me one. Meet me in the RAF club in half an hour. You can walk or, if you must, take a taxi.”

  “In the bar?”

  “All right. In the downstairs bar. Tell the doorman you are meeting me if you get there first. You aren’t doing anything are you?”

  “Not really.”

  “I thought so.”

  When the line at the other end went dead Barnaby was smiling. It would take CE Porter days to pick up ten thousand pounds’ worth of shares. If he questioned his brother-in-law without Harry knowing what it was all about he would find out the name of the companies with the best chance of making money when war broke out. Especially now Harry wanted a favour from him; Marshbanks had mentioned a friend at the Ministry but not which one.

  “There’s always a price to pay, Harry,” he said to himself as he put on his thick overcoat before opening his front door to a cold blast from across the leafless trees in the Park.

  With a round bowler hat on his head that Barnaby thought made him look professional, he walked down the steps onto the pavement and turned right in the direction of Park Lane. He felt like a walk now it was no longer raining. Swinging his rolled umbrella, he strode along on his way to the RAF club. Across in the park, somewhere from up a tree, a pigeon was calling. Being a club, the bar would be open even if the RAF club only let men into its precincts; no chance of finding a pretty face in a men’s club.

  “I wonder what he wants?” Despite them both knowing perfectly well his fatherhood of Frank Brigandshaw, the subject was never mentioned, so that wasn’t it; for once in his life, the unwritten code of the English gentleman had worked in his favour, even if he had in a moment of mutual frenzy with Tina given Harry, first married to his sister, a pair of horns.

  ‘Anyway, she was mine long before Harry got hold of her.’ For a moment the picture in his mind of a young Tina gave him the spark he had looked for in his phone book.

  “He’s in the lounge, Mr St Clair. Colonel Brigandshaw said it was too early in the day to drink an alcoholic beverage.”

  Giving the doorman, whose name he could never remember, a pained smile Barnaby walked down the wide high-ceilinged corridor, with aeroplane photographs plastered up the walls on both sides, to the heavy oak door that led into the lounge and all the boring dark leather sofas and armchairs that reminded Barnaby of old men in their dotage, not dashing young pilots.

  In the corner, beside the cheerful fire, Harry Brigandshaw happily waved to hi
m without getting up. Apart from a waiter standing and holding an empty silver tray in the palm of his hand there was not another living soul in the wood-panelled room.

  “You’re a man-about-town, Barnaby, which is why we need your help. Sit down in front of the fire. You may remember me talking about my friend Klaus von Lieberman… That will be all, Kay. If I need anything I’ll ring the bell. Go and have yourself a nice cup of tea with the chef in the kitchen… Very modern bell system in the club,” Harry said as he watched the waiter go out and close the big oak door behind him. “That bell there is connected to a panel in the kitchen. Instead of making a noise, it drops a flag that has the word ‘Lounge’ written on the metal disc in red… Now we can talk in private. Waiters have very good ears; it alleviates their boredom on the job.”

  “What’s all this about, Harry?”

  “Take off your overcoat and put it with your brolly on the chair. I’m surprised the doorman didn’t take them. Do you actually wear a bowler hat? I’d have thought a foxy hat with a green feather would be more your style for the ladies.”

  “You’ve never worried about the hat before.”

  “Maybe you should for the mission I have in mind for you; it stamps you as far too British. You do remember Fleur Brooks? The charming young girl who plays the fiddle in a band. When I first met the beautiful Fleur she was attending the Royal College of Music and playing Beethoven quartets.”

  “There’s more money in a nightclub band. Unlike some of us, she won’t inherit a fortune from her parents or her grandparents.”

  “Point taken, Barnaby. I was lucky. If you agree to my request, I will buy you a drink in the bar. It was so nice of you to come so quickly with so much on your plate these days.”

  Smiling sweetly at each other they both paused, the verbal duel at an end.