by Peter Rimmer
The kettle boiled and Merlin poured in a little boiling water to warm the big brown family teapot before putting in two spoons of tea from the caddie. There was no milk and sugar. They would drink it black.
They were more comfortable with each other than any time in their lives. They sat with the fire door to the cooker open, with the chickens on the white-scrubbed table. Even inside with the door closed they could hear the guns.
"You imagine how many of our ancestors went to war for England from this house," asked Robert.
Merlin thought for a moment, sipping his hot tea. The fire was warm and he was enjoying his brother's company.
"And from the castle," he replied at last. "So long as someone survives it's all right. The family goes on. England goes on… Jack Merryweather is lucky to have a daughter. Even if he dies there's some of him left behind."
"And Frederick has a daughter."
"That's good but he must have a son. After so many centuries, for the main line to die out would be terrible. Father to son. Father to son. Been like that since the first baron."
"Maybe she's pregnant."
"Who?"
"Penelope."
Merlin suddenly got up and opened the back door of the kitchen and looked out at the night. He listened for some time.
"You're causing a draught," said Robert.
"Thought I heard that damn fox again."
"What was the real matter? You bolted for the door."
"Fred… I had a premonition. The men think I have the sight. It's not Captain St Clair. It's Merlin the Magician. Maybe mother and father knew something about me. When I was born. It's a curse. Father's a romantic. Never got past the legends and his reading. Why Richard was Richard. Richard the Lionheart."
"Mother preferred Arthur for you. Father won. I like Merlin. It makes you different. There's nothing different about good old Robert. Or good old Bob. Plain and simple. Don't read too much in a name and please close the door properly… I can just hear Cook tomorrow when she finds wet tea leaves in the pot. 'One of life's little mysteries,' she'll say."
"You ever feel the presence of our ancestors?" asked Merlin, not wishing to be sidetracked.
"Of course not."
"Well I do. And those portraits in the hall are alive. The eyes follow me. Especially one old fellow. And the look changes. Today his eyes were smiling."
"Good portrait painters have that ability to make the eyes follow you. And I don't want to hear any weird stuff about Fred. He is going to be quite all right. We are all going to be quite all right."
"You don't believe that, do you?"
"Am I going to die?" asked Robert after a long time.
"How the hell do I know?"
"Merlin, sometimes you contradict yourself… I wish I had stayed in Africa. She married Barend but that does not matter. You would have liked Madge. There was so much peace in Africa. In the bush. Wild but peaceful. Empty. I suppose. Empty of people. Animals just kill to feed themselves. They don't blow millions of people to pieces."
"What about that fox? He'd have killed every chicken in the coop and taken just one home for supper."
"The genet does that in Africa," said Robert sadly. "Kills for the fun of it too."
"No. Man is territorial. The Germans want to expand. We want to stop them. They envy the Empire. Man defends his hearth and home."
"Or rapes and pillages. We are the survivors according to Darwin. The part of rape and pillage that evolved."
"Amazing how much nonsense we talk in the middle of the night," said Merlin.
"It's true. How do you think our ancestors got their hands on this place without a bit of rape and pillage? And if we don't stop Fritz, he'll do to us what he did to the Saxons. And the Saxons were from the Germanic tribes. History going round in a circle. No, we'll have to stop Fritz."
"There isn't much here to rape and pillage," said Merlin.
"What about the girls? The villagers? It's not only us they're after. We poor fools in the aristocracy are meant to keep the place safe. And we will. Even if it kills us. For now and forever. We owe them that for our years of privilege. This is payday for the St Clairs. Every time we fight a war it's payday."
"No. This time we're just machine-gun fodder like the rest of them," said Merlin.
"They look up to us."
"In a funk everyone looks for a leader. If you go out to Africa and take up some barren land, if you don't kill off the locals like the Americans, they'll breed under British law and modern medicine, and want the land back again. Stay in England. There are too few of us English to control the world much longer. The Romans found out the same. Even if you run the place far better than they can run it themselves, they want it back again. Some orator promises them the earth, kicks you out and treats his own people worse than you did. But everyone will pretend to be happy as they are being starved and murdered by their own people. Once the orator gets power, he won't give it up unless you kill him. So they will kill him. We haven't had a civil war in England since Oliver Cromwell. And you only have to go up the valley to look at the ruins of Corfe Castle to see what Cromwell thought of the St Clairs. No Robert, stay in England. Teach history. Find a wife. Stop dreaming."
"First, we have to get through the war."
"There's that."
"You think we should go down into the cellar and look for a bottle of old Potts's special brandy?"
"Why not? There's a torch in the drawer of the kitchen table. First I'm going to pluck those two birds before they get stone cold and the feathers are difficult to pull. You want to help?"
"Of course. We have all night. By the bye. Thanks for being my brother."
"Didn't have any choice. But if I had, I wouldn't have changed any of you."
When they finished there were feathers all over the table and floor. The birds were naked from head to feet. Merlin gutted them in the sink and threw the unwanted entrails into the fire. The wet intestines sizzled. He cut open the gizzards and worked out the grit under the tap in the sink. He hung the birds by their heads from a hook next to the sink. Then he looked for the torch in the kitchen table.
"Are you coming?" he asked.
Robert had found the remains of the leg of pork from supper in the meat safe and was cutting himself slices of bread. Instead of butter he used the dripping from the roast pork that Cook had scraped into a pot and left in the meat safe.
"The smell of that offal makes me hungry. I'm going to have a sandwich. And please use all your Merlin magic to find the brandy. Nothing better than a good pork sandwich and a balloon glass weeping up the inside with Napoleon brandy. Look in all the spots. Whatever you find we'll drink. I'll have the fire stoked up. Now off you go."
"You're impossible."
"A man has to eat. And there's only one torch. By the time we've had a few drinks it will be breakfast time."
From inside, the old house was completely silent. From outside, they could still hear the guns from France.
"Poor sods," said Merlin as he left the kitchen.
Chapter 17: January 1916
At first sight, Fishy Braithwaite's resemblance to a codfish was uncanny. The same flattened pointed face with wet fishy eyes. He had been known as Fishy from prep school and very few ever found out his christened name was Mervyn. The second sight showed the cold, killer fury behind the wet eyes, with the blonde invisible eyelashes. He was thirty-one years old, a major in the Royal Flying Corps, seventeen confirmed kills to his name, Military Cross and Bar, with a burning hatred for the whole human race that for so long had looked at his face and laughed. Now, no one laughed at him in France. They called him sir, kept the first smirk to themselves, and avoided his company even in the officers' mess, a French farmhouse the British rented at exorbitant cost, along with the farmer's field for the aircraft; the irony of paying rent to defend another man's country was lost on the French, not on Fishy Braithwaite. He hated them as much for their exploitation as the G
ermans for shooting down his pilots. Major Braithwaite was commanding officer of 33 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, and he ran the show efficiently, like a tyrant. The new pilots went from inner laughter at his facial appearance to bowel-melting fear in thirty seconds. But for all of his nastiness and discipline, he kept most of them alive, for which they were grateful. He told even his senior officers he was there to kill Germans and not to make friends.
Most of the hatred and malice stemmed from Sara Wentworth's disdain. To love a woman for so long without reward had eaten away all the goodness in his soul. And when Harry Brigandshaw was posted to his squadron as a raw pilot out of flight training, the request for the transfer had come from Major Braithwaite. Fishy Braithwaite was going to have his rival killed. When the war was over and Brigandshaw dead, she would marry the war hero he now was, and he would take his revenge for all the years she scorned him, fifteen long years of ridicule. Even their engagement so many years ago had become a mockery of marriage.
And now, on his last leave, she had made excuses not to see him. He with two Military Crosses. He who was still officially her fiancé.
He, the eldest son of a family of great wealth. How dare she deny him what she had agreed to do? That their parents had wanted the marriage as much as Mervyn had nothing to do with her final agreement. All that running off to Africa, that had worried Sara's father so much, should have brought her to her senses instead of making her wild. And now she was running around in a nurse's uniform close to the reserve trenches instead of waiting for him at home when he came back on leave. She mocked him and he would not be mocked. Why did his face have to freeze her heart? They told him even in prep school it was impossible to judge a book by its cover. And he was not a wet fish. No he was not, his mind screamed at him. And every time he shot down a German, he screamed out loud, 'See, I'm not a wet fish! And you're dead!' The other pilots thought he was laughing at the kill and shunned him all the more.
Harry Brigandshaw had contacted the Wentworth home in Warminster at the end of his first week in England. A man had answered the telephone, asked his name and then gone off somewhere after Harry asked to speak to Jared. They had kept in contact by letter for years and Jared had given Harry the family phone number in one of his sporadic letters. The correspondence had been with Jared, though Sara's name always appeared in the letters, with the throwaway line about her still not having got around to marrying Fishy Braithwaite. Harry had thought nothing personal about the references.
He could hear voices talking some way away from the telephone and then the mouthpiece was picked up followed by a pause.
"Hello," he said expecting Jared to come on the line.
"This is Mrs Wentworth, Jared's mother. Are you the nice young man from Africa?"
"I live in Africa, yes, Mrs Wentworth. May I speak to Jared?"
"You could if he were here but he is not. My son joined the navy."
"Yes, he told me so in a letter. So he's not there?"
"No, he's not."
"When will he be home?"
"I have no idea."
"I'm here in England you see."
"Oh, Sara will be glad to hear you're in England."
"Well, then, is Sara there?"
"Then you wanted to speak to Sara?"
"Yes, if Jared is not there."
"Then I'll tell her. She'll be very pleased."
"But she's not there?"
"No, Sara is in France. She is a volunteer nurse. FANY, that's the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Won't you come down to Birchdale still this weekend?"
"Will Jared be home?"
"No. But Sara will be home on leave. She wrote to me from France. You don't have relations in England."
"I do, actually. My grandmother and my uncle Sir James Brigandshaw. He's the managing director of Colonial Shipping."
"How very nice for you. But I still think you should come down to Birchdale all the same. Sara often talks fondly of you, Mr Brigandshaw."
"Hasn't she married Mervyn Braithwaite?"
"No she has not. How do you know of Mr Braithwaite?"
"Well, from Sara, really. But Fishy, I mean Mervyn, was up at Oxford at the same time as myself and Robert St Clair. Robert met Sara and Jared at Elephant Walk in '07, I think it was. Might have been '08."
"Then you will come down this weekend. I insist."
"Well, if you insist."
"After so much hospitality Jared and Sara received in Africa, yes, indeed, I insist. Telephone when your train will arrive at Warminster station and I'll have the chauffeur meet you. Goodbye, Mr Brigandshaw. I shall look forward to meeting you."
Feeling guilty at not visiting Granny Brigandshaw in her London flat, Harry had taken the train to Warminster on the Friday afternoon and was met by a large motor car of a type he had never seen before. The chauffeur turned out to be Sara Wentworth in her civilian clothes. They had not seen each other for nearly ten years but Harry would have recognised the long brown-red hair anywhere. It was still down to her waist. The feet, as he remembered, were surprisingly small. Harry thought she would now be in her early thirties, like himself. She was strikingly good-looking but what was most striking was the way she greeted Harry as if her whole world centred on their meeting. It was only round about Saturday lunchtime that Harry realised the poor girl was head over heels in love with him. This made Harry very nervous. Explaining that Granny Brigandshaw was expecting him that night, he fled Birchdale for the railway station, this time with the chauffeur at the wheel of the car. It had all been very embarrassing, Sara convinced in her mind that after all the years alone in Africa he felt the same way as she did. In the end, he had to tell her in plain words and there had been a scene at the end of the rose garden next to the lily pond.
"Then who are you in love with?" she demanded.
"No one."
"Then why not me?"
"Sara, we haven't seen each other in almost ten years."
"There's another woman!"
"No there isn't. Anyway, I thought you were engaged to Mervyn Braithwaite."
"I hate him. His face looks like the face of a wet cod."
"But you agreed to marry him."
"Only after mother and father threatened to cut me off without a penny. Either you marry me and get me out of here, or I break the engagement and get thrown out onto the street. Or I marry Fishy. And I'd rather die than do that."
"Doesn't he love you?"
"Of course he does. Follows me around all day with those wet eyes. Gives me the creeps… You've got to help. You're my hope. I love you, Harry. From the first, forever. Please!"
"Sara, we don't really know each other. On the farm there was always four of us together. I rather thought you were more interested in Robert St Clair."
"He was just after my money."
"Well, look old girl, this really is a pickle. And I have to get back to London to see my grandmother."
"You never before mentioned your grandmother."
"I did on the phone to your mother. And my Uncle James. And he's not the only one. There's Uncle Nat. They just made him a bishop, so I should see him too, and then the Flying Corps want to see me in Farnham on Monday."
"You're making excuses."
"Not really, Sara. Please, I had no idea you felt this way for so long."
"It's horrible, Harry. Horrible… And it hurts."
Harry had told his grandmother later the same day he had never been more embarrassed in his life.
"Should 'ave married years ago, grandson."
"There aren't that many opportunities in Africa, Granny Brigandshaw."
"Not by sound of it lad. Not by sound of it." Granny Brigandshaw had still not lost her north country accent that had come with the poverty of her birth. Harry thought she liked to put it on a bit now she was Lady Brigandshaw, widow of a baronet. He liked her better for it and for not living at Hastings Court, where his Uncle James was now ensconced with an entourage. He had he
ard the family say Granny Brigandshaw had always been on her own and preferred it that way.
He had left her reading a book, with a pair of spectacles lodged on the end of her nose. For a moment, Harry thought of asking her the truth about his birth. Which was when she had picked up the book and the spectacles. How she always knew what he was trying to say, he never understood. After the war, he made up his mind to get the truth from his mother once and for all.
Ten days later he made his first solo flight in a trainer aircraft that had been built before the war. The small plane had an undercarriage made from parts first intended for bicycles. Harry's lifelong friendship with aircraft had begun, even though his first landing nearly ripped off the bicycle wheels. To Harry, the rest of the aeroplane frame seemed to be made of painted cloth, string and wire struts. But it flew. Flew him up into the high blue heavens and the cotton wool clouds. He had never been so happy in his life and completely forgot about Sara Wentworth and her chronic obsession. And the war he was about to fight.
To add insult to Fishy Braithwaite's injury, his twin sisters were the toast of pre-war London society. When they came out, the twins were given a ball by their father in the family town house in Park Lane. The carriages and new motor cars had lined up right down Hyde Park as the girls were launched into society. Where Fishy was plain ugly his sisters were beautiful, one dark, one fair. They were not identical twins. Mervyn, the eldest, was seventeen months older than his twin sisters. Where his eyes were wet and fishy with no visible eyelashes, theirs were round, wet and seductive, with long soft brown lashes that they had learnt at finishing school in Switzerland to flutter like the wings of a butterfly. Where his face was squashed, theirs were round and in perfect proportion. Where his shortness on a man was unfortunate their smallness on a woman was petite and drew the desire of every man's protection.
