On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  “A German aristocrat,” went on Harry, having made and received a point, “is in London visiting a friend of mine who says she can cure the poor man’s stutter, something I personally doubt though I have never stammered in my life, thank heaven. He is a Nazi. We even think the worst kind of Nazi who imagines Germany, and the Nazi Party in particular, dominating the world. One of the kind of men who crave power more than life, which makes them so dangerous. He is also, according to what we hear, very charming. Especially with the ladies, who find him equally attractive. We want you to make friends with Herr Henning von Lieberman, my old friend Klaus von Lieberman’s cousin and son of General Werner von Lieberman, both members of Hitler’s Nazi party. Our friend Henning made contact, if that is the polite way of putting it, with Fleur at the Mayfair after dining at the nightclub and dancing to her music. Fleur, who had been put up to the job by me in the first place, being a friend of my nephew Tinus and girlfriend of Andre Cloete, now a pilot in the Royal Air Force at my behest, initiated the contact with the German by flirting with him from the bandstand, something I understand she is very good at, which is where you come into the picture, my old friend Barnaby. Fleur is going to introduce you to Henning. You are going to introduce him to all the showgirls in London, most of whom I understand you are already familiar with.”

  “Why, Harry?”

  “We want to know who he talks to. Seemingly casual meetings in clubs are common, especially where alcohol is served and strangers become familiar with each other. We want to know the people living in our island who are sympathetic to the German cause. We want to know the names of everyone he talks to, which is where your intimate knowledge of most people in the social swirl of London is so valuable.”

  “What’s in it for me, Harry?”

  “I’ll give you the names of companies likely to receive further contracts from the Ministry of Supply. CE Porter phoned me after you phoned him this morning. CE, as usual, was looking for a favour. Now I want one. This is right up your street, Barnaby. Right up your street. What’s more, you can mix business with pleasure to your heart’s content.”

  “Is Fleur having an affair with this German?”

  “That kind of question I never ask a lady.”

  “You’ve got your facts wrong, Harry. My friend is Celia, Fleur’s flatmate.”

  “I don’t think that matters, do you?”

  “It does if Celia tries to put her claws into me again.”

  “Then ask her not to. Frankly, four of you out on the town makes a perfect cover. All the girls have to do is behave like flappers with you, Barnaby, playing yourself. I understand the girls only play the Mayfair at the weekend, but you probably know more about that than me. He’s staying another month in London. Janet Wakefield, the speech therapist, has no idea we are having her patient followed.”

  “You want me to spy on him!”

  “Keep a list of everyone he talks to. That is reporting not spying. The chaps in intelligence will check on your list. Where are you spending Christmas? Are you going down to Dorset?”

  “Purbeck Manor in the winter is a morgue.”

  “Then party with the girls and the German. Andre Cloete unfortunately will not be having Christmas leave. Fleur wants to record some of her songs, I’m sure you know someone. Right up your street. How are you, Barnaby? Shall I ring the bell for tea?”

  “I need a drink.”

  “Come on then, I’m finished for the day. So that’s a yes? You can go round and make plans with the girls when we’ve talked of old times. I had a card from Robert in America. The film of Keeper of the Legend is a great success. Your brother is in the pound seats, though I suppose he’d now call it the dollar seats though somehow that doesn’t sound right. And thank you for asking. My wife is very well.”

  “What are you all doing for Christmas?”

  “The children will be running wild as usual. Tina has filled every spare bedroom with the usual hangers-on. Never mind. It amuses her. Living in the country can be boring so I’m happy with the freeloaders entertaining my wife while they drink my booze. I call it a small price for marital harmony. A busy woman is a happy woman. Not all of the guests are a pain in the arse. Fact is, this Christmas at Hastings Court should be quite fun. I invited an old sea captain from my days in shipping. Cyrus Craig is my age so he isn’t really that old. When I phoned him to spend Christmas with us, to give me some protection from the rest of them, he said two of my other old friends were in England on leave from Africa. They both sailed home on Cyrus’s boat. Bachelors in the Colonial Service, which means they don’t have money to splash around in England. The perks that go with the job make them rich when they live in Africa. Back in England on leave or retirement the chaps from the Colonial or Indian Service have to be careful with their money.”

  “I met Captain Craig when you reappeared out of Africa, Harry. You were then a bit fuzzy in the head at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases so you probably don’t remember.”

  “I met Vivian Makepeace and Thornton Holmes in Dar es Salaam after I escaped from the Tutsis. Cyrus was giving me my first proper meal since my seaplane went down in the Congo. In the hotel dining room, I think it was. Strange how something once so vivid can seem so far away. I lived in a round hut with a tribe of Tutsis for months and months on end and now it seems like someone else, not me, was living there tending to de Wet Cronjé before he finally died of malaria. Another life. I phoned Makepeace and Thornton and invited them for Christmas. They’re staying at the East India Club. I want to find out what happened to my Tutsis. What happened to the British Resident in Mwanza who cashed me a cheque and countersigned the cheque I gave to the gun merchant who sold me the guns for the Tutsis as the price of my freedom. My body was so full of bugs by then I can’t remember the chap’s name.”

  For a moment it was on the tip of Harry Brigandshaw’s tongue to ask Barnaby down to Hastings Court for Christmas until he remembered that his son Frank, who had just turned thirteen, was the spitting image of Barnaby St Clair and the other guests might notice. The three of them knowing was enough. Frank would hopefully never find out. Life, Harry thought, was strange; a bunch of bums, as he put it to himself, could screw up Frank’s life.

  “You were jolly good to me those first weeks after my ordeal in the Congolese bush, Barnaby. Thank you again. You were waiting at the docks when the ship’s doctor and Cyrus Craig had me loaded into an ambulance. Even fuzzy I saw the goodness in you, Barnaby. I must ask Cyrus what happened to the doctor. Shopped me to the press to make money. Can’t blame him. Ship’s doctors are paid peanuts.”

  “Always my pleasure, Harry.”

  “What are you going to have to drink?”

  Feeling strange that Harry understood he truly cared for him, Barnaby followed Harry Brigandshaw out of the club’s lounge. Outside the door, Kay was still waiting with his empty tray, making Barnaby wonder how the man failed to get cramp in his bent arm. Being appreciated by Harry had made Barnaby feel good about himself for the first time in a long while. Usually, he knew, he was plain selfish with only his personal needs in mind. Thinking of Frank, the sudden guilt made the good feeling quickly go away.

  ‘You’re a swine, Barnaby,’ he said to himself. ‘And one day you’re going to get your comeuppance despite the odd patch of decent behaviour.’ He told himself to think carefully before again upsetting Celia Larson; some girls used men as much as some men used girls. Celia Larson was not one of them. Barnaby had the suspicion that under the appearance of being a flapper was a serious girl who wanted a home and family of her own where she could play the violin to herself without having to impress an audience.

  “You think we might have some dinner together tonight, Harry? Just the two of us?”

  “I’d like that very much, Barnaby. We can talk about old times and Lucinda. I think about your dead sister every day of my life. Braithwaite wanted to kill me, not Lucinda. Likewise, Barend died and it should have been me. I’ve tried to be a father to Tinus but it
isn’t the same. He’s assessing the viability of a major dam across the Mazoe River at the moment, home on Elephant Walk with his mother and sisters. If we go ahead I’m going to call the dam de Wet Cronjé, in honour of the civil engineer. That hippo coming up from the riverbed right in my flight path, is a nightmare I see in my mind’s eye whenever I look back. Isn’t it so often how small events like that hippopotamus coming up for air at that moment cause such horrendous repercussions for so many people? Tina was wonderful holding my family together while I was missing presumed dead. Why I don’t mind how many guests she invites to Hastings Court for Christmas. I should never have tried the trip in the first place, putting so many people at risk.”

  “You can never foresee what is going to happen.”

  “I was selfish wanting to open up an air route down Africa. It was all about my ego.”

  “How about dining at the Café de Paris?”

  “My favourite food. I’m only catching the train to Leatherhead at eleven-thirty from Waterloo tomorrow. Cyrus Craig, Vivian Makepeace and Thornton Holmes are meeting me at the station.”

  Not far away at the East India Club, Colonel Vivian Makepeace, Controller to the Governor of British East Africa, was wondering why he ever bothered to come home on leave. He knew no one in England, other than the relatives who considered him odd for living his life in Africa. The weather in England was appalling and everything he did cost money from the meagre remains of his pittance of a salary. Were it not for the status earned in Dar es Salaam by saying how much he looked forward to going home every three years, he would have far preferred taking his six months’ leave on the Spice Islands of Zanzibar, not far from Government House and a few miles up the Zanzibar Channel. The old Arab architecture and culture was far more soothing to his nerves than London, let alone the cost.

  The invitation, out of the blue from Harry Brigandshaw to Hastings Court in Surrey, was a godsend, with neither himself nor District Commissioner Thornton Holmes daring to ask how long over Christmas they were allowed to stay. The idea of either of them wanting to spend Christmas with their relatives was appalling.

  His Aunt Matilda, the matriarch of what was left of the Makepeace family and its fortune in England, always asked him the same question despite him now being close to retirement with a future of eking out a pension in some dilapidated residential hotel in Bournemouth: “When, Vivian, are you going to find a nice girl and settle down?” This time round neither of them had told their relatives they were in England.

  To add to his feeling of doom, all the similar home leave sufferers from the Indian Civil Service talked of nothing but Gandhi and the British being kicked out of India while the chaps soaked themselves with gin-slings, their only route of escape as their lives and careers looked to be crashing round their ears.

  The irony was not lost on Vivian Makepeace as he sat at a table not far from the bar, drinking the contents of a late-afternoon pot of tea. Here they all were where they did not want to be, knowing that what they had right now was likely to soon be beyond their means. None of them in the club had any training for anything other than running a crumbling empire where they were no longer wanted, a whole generation of men who had suffered the rigours of English boarding schools to train them to know how to behave like gentlemen and fairly administer an empire, with honour as their only reward.

  “Like the Romans, Thornton, we’re too damn honest. Most other people in history with authority squirrelled away fortunes in bribes while they had the power.”

  “What are you talking about, old chap? I need a drink. For a few days I won’t have to pay London prices for my sundowners so I can afford a couple tonight. Even here inside the club it’s bloody cold. So all that talk in ’31 was true. The chap who looked like a tramp having lunch was the famous Harry Brigandshaw. Just as well, Vivian, you didn’t get him thrown out by the hotel manager into the street.”

  “That was your idea, Thornton. It was you who said the chap was letting down the side, eating in a European dining room looking like a ruffian. I wonder what he looks like now? This Hastings Court is said to be quite the place to spend a free weekend. I can’t understand why he wanted to invite us for Christmas.”

  “I’m going to the bar.”

  “Those Indian Civil chaps are a bore.”

  “They think us chaps in the Colonial Service are a bore. Are you going to tell Harry Brigandshaw his Tutsi friends annihilated their Hutu enemies with the guns he so kindly sent them?”

  “Better not. We want to stay as long as possible. Someone said his wife was once a real looker. Do you think they’ll ever kick us out of Tanganyika?”

  “Probably. The colonies are too expensive, costing England money instead of making her rich.”

  “Just as well we’re both close to retirement.”

  “I’m going to retire to Cape Town. They’ll never kick out the Boers.”

  “The Boers won’t have us.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “No, I am not sure… There’s a place at the bar, let’s go and get a drink before we become morbid.”

  “If there’s a war, do you think the Germans will invade Tanganyika? After all, it was German East Africa before the Great War. We only got Tanganyika in the Versailles Treaty.”

  “I have no idea. Do you really think there is going to be a war in Europe?”

  “I have no idea. What happened to that chap in Mwanza who cashed a cheque for Brigandshaw? What was his name?”

  “I don’t remember his name but I did hear he was eaten by a crocodile. Went out alone with some ferry captain, got drunk and the two of them went for a swim, so it seems. When they found the ferry, if you can call it a ferry, there was no one on board.”

  “Not a bad way to go.”

  “I suppose not, we all have to go sometime.”

  “I hope they were very drunk.”

  “So do I. Pity we can’t remember his name. Met him a couple of times. I rather think we both got ourselves a bit squiffy together. I’ll remember his name if I don’t think about it.”

  3

  When Timothy Kent had approached Fleur Brooks with the strange request to befriend some middle-aged German, it was Timothy Kent who caught her eye and her interest; he had the most beautiful blue eyes that Fleur imagined would go with the blue uniform of the RAF with the white wings of a pilot on his breast… Timothy had come to the flat she shared with Celia in Paddington wearing civilian clothes. The knock on the door had come at a respectable eleven o’clock in the morning, by which time both girls had had their beauty sleep and opening the front door to a beautiful young man was a pleasure for Fleur, despite the cold draught of winter air that came with it. By luck, Fleur had bathed and dressed herself in a red pair of slacks that showed off her young body to the best advantage. Before the young man had opened his mouth he had looked at her from top to bottom and back again ending with a smile.

  “My name is Flight Lieutenant Kent. Are you Miss Brooks or Miss Larson? Colonel Brigandshaw gave me your names and address. Colonel Brigandshaw has a request.”

  “I’m Fleur. Come in. Celia is still in the bath. We work late. Both of us are violin players in a band.”

  “At the Mayfair, Miss Brooks. For the last two nights we have watched the same man sitting at the same table close to the bandstand. He was on his own. How he managed the same table so close to the band we are not sure. Too many questions would have alerted the gentleman. He’s a German. From what I could see, Miss Brooks, the gentleman is enamoured of you. When I mentioned the place and situation to Colonel Brigandshaw he surprised me. Apparently you know his nephew and Pilot Officer Cloete, the young South African who scored sixty-three runs against the army, enabling the RAF to beat them by two wickets last summer.”

  “Would you care for a cup of tea? Celia!” yelled Fleur. “Hurry up. We have a guest. I’m making tea.”

  “Who?” Celia, still soaking in the bath, had been quietly listening to every word, liking the sound of the y
oung man’s voice.

  “You’ve heard every word,” said Fleur still raising her voice. “Get your clothes on.”

  “Tea would be very nice.”

  “I buy the tea from Fortnum and Mason,” Fleur said to Timothy Kent.

  “Only the best… We would like you and Miss Larson to get to know Herr von Lieberman if he comes into the Mayfair again tonight.”

  “Oh, he will,” said Fleur heading into the small kitchen and putting the kettle on the ring, lighting the gas with a two-pronged piece of metal on a spring that when pushed together sparked and lit the gas. “Just a couple of minutes. The water in the kettle is already warm… We have caught each other’s eye on more than one occasion. I always smile over the bow of my violin at the customers to bring them back again. The more customers who listen to us three nights a week means we keep our job for longer. What’s a smile when I’m sitting with the rest of the band? He’s rather good-looking in a mature way… Celia? Did you smile at him? You know the man.”

  “Always smile at the customers, Fleur. It’s the rule. Never break Martin’s rules. What’s Harry Brigandshaw got to do with this?”

  “We work together, Miss Larson,” Timothy Kent called through the still-closed door of the bathroom. “We work together in the Air Ministry, in intelligence.”

  “So you’re not a pilot,” said Fleur, disappointed.

  “I’m a fighter pilot, actually, seconded for a one-year tour to the Air Ministry. There was quite a fight for the job. Colonel Brigandshaw was one of our best pilots in the war.”

  “What do you want us to do?” said Celia, opening the bathroom door to reveal herself fully clothed. “This is all intriguing me.”

  “My flatmate, Miss Celia Larson,” said Fleur, annoyed with the way Celia was looking at Timothy Kent.

  “If you are willing to help, could you possibly come over with me to the Air Ministry? Colonel Brigandshaw thought it would be easier for you to decline our request if he was not the one to ask in the first place.”