To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

  “Sorry, darling, actresses have to be seen. Part of the job I’m afraid. There’s a bar over there that really looks nice and it’s not yet full. Come on. Follow me.”

  When they reached the small room, Brett turned around and went out again. Harry was not where she expected him to be. She hoped he had come up into the bar. Then she saw him through the French windows further down on the lawn under a tree where the lights flooding the face of the old house shone some light. He was smoking a cigarette talking to a man.

  “What was that all about?” asked Christopher following Brett.

  Brett saw Tina at the moment they walked back into the ballroom. The band was playing. Some of the guests had begun to dance. Tina was looking around searching for someone. To make Brett’s night worse they were wearing similar dresses with Tina’s large breasts making Brett’s look small. Brett stared at Tina and Tina stared back. There were people in between them. The band was now loud, the trumpets and the trombones in the big band were in full swing. Tina glared and then went white, now looking over Brett’s shoulder.

  “Hello, Brett,” said Barnaby. “How are tricks? Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Barnaby was smiling across at Tina full of self-confidence.

  “Leave her alone,” said Brett.

  “Don’t you think more appropriately you should leave her husband alone, Brett? Ah, Christopher. Didn’t see you at first… Where is Harry?”

  “On the lawn talking to Ignatius Bowes-Lyon,” said Christopher on his guard. He had also seen Harry under the tree.

  “Merlin’s here. On his own, poor chap… I think we are all in for a jolly good party don’t you think?”

  Barnaby began to walk off in what Christopher thought was Tina’s direction.

  Christopher moved forward quickly and grabbed Barnaby by the arm.

  “If you go near that woman, I’ll punch you on the nose.”

  “Don’t be silly Christopher or whatever you call yourself these days. You couldn’t punch the skin off a rice pudding.”

  Pulling his arm free with a jerk, Barnaby turned to look for Tina who was gone.

  “There’s going to be trouble,” said Brett not unhappily. “He’s obsessed with that girl. Thinks she’s his property, not Harry’s… Shall we dance?”

  To Christopher’s surprise, they swept round the room as if they had danced together all their lives. When the music finally stopped, they were on the opposite side of the ballroom.

  “That was lovely, Christopher.”

  To Christopher’s equal surprise, he even thought Brett meant what she had said.

  * * *

  Barnaby was furious. Were it not bad for business he would have punched Christopher. At the bar, he ordered a whisky which he drank. He could see Harry on the lawn with a man who looked familiar. Expecting Tina to find Harry, he watched the two men on the lawn. He was morose and went back to the bar for another drink. People were filling up the bar. Mostly men, their women in the ballroom watching the dance and listening to the music. Barnaby had his back to a pillar that when he looked up went right through the ceiling. His anger at being told what to do by Brett was building. The whisky was the fifth he had had that night. When he looked again for Tina out on the lawn, the two men were walking further away from the house in the direction of what looked like a jetty in the dark. Then Barnaby saw her. She was walking after the two men, fifty yards apart. He swallowed what was left of the whisky and walked to the French windows. Tina was walking slowly. With hope rising he walked out on to the terrace and down the small flight of stone steps. Tina turned. She must’ve seen him and began to run despite her long gown. It was the kind of game they had played as children. Barnaby began to run as well, following Tina running right down to the jetty catching her up all the way.

  * * *

  Harry and Ignatius heard Tina shout and turned around from where they were standing next to the jetty with boats lined up on either side. They both saw a man running down behind Tina.

  “Barnaby!” said Harry. “You’d better leave, Iggy. This is not your quarrel.”

  “Harry! Can’t you help? Barnaby is chasing me.”

  * * *

  Barnaby took the one punch before he knew what had happened. He found himself going backwards between two boats into the water. A frozen Tina had her hand to her mouth. Harry was still coming forward as Barnaby fell in floundering.

  When he climbed out, he was alone. A man who was guarding the boats gave him a smirk.

  “You look a bit wet, sir,” said the man in good humour.

  “Mind your own bloody business.”

  Skirting the big house with all the lights, moving in the dark from tree to tree, Barnaby found his Bentley 3 Litre under the tree where he had parked. The keys to the car were in his pocket where he kept them with his house keys. He never let go of the keys.

  Grimly smiling at not being seen, Barnaby drove his car down the long driveway of Nuneham Park, away from the party. He was on his way back to London. His jaw was clenched to stop his teeth chattering. His jaw hurt from the punch but not as much as his pride.

  * * *

  When Christopher and Brett sat down together later for the buffet supper in a room on the other side of the mansion to the ballroom, there was still no sign of Barnaby St Clair. Not long after Christopher had stood up to Barnaby, Brett had seen Tina and Harry come back into the house. They were hand in hand.

  Looking at Christopher with new eyes, she thought Barnaby was wrong about the rice pudding. The man who liked to be thought of as a bohemian had straightened his back and seemed to grow six inches when confronting Barnaby. Brett knew he had gone through the war in the trenches as a captain in The Royal Dragoon Guards where conditions were anything but soft. She had a sneaking suspicion the only thing that would have looked like the skin off a rice pudding had Christopher taken his threat further, would have been Barnaby’s face. Under the long hair and soft voice, Brett had seen something else which made her wonder if all those years of war had made Christopher want to change who he had become in the army and live like someone else. The war had disgusted him and what it had made him become. Why he now said so little. Found small talk so unimportant.

  Eating first her oysters and then a lobster salad, Brett began to think of Christopher Marlowe, the piano player, in a different light. There was much more to his life than Happy Times, musical or no musical. Then she smiled to herself. How often it was the best things in life were right under her feet.

  “Why are you smiling, Brett?”

  “You would have hit Barnaby?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And you would have beaten him.”

  “Oh yes.”

  For a man who never boasted about writing a long-running West End musical, Brett found the two softly spoken words more chilling than what might have been an ugly night in public that certainly would have reached the papers for both of them, the kind of bad publicity Oscar Fleming would have abhorred and never forgotten in their future careers.

  Then it came to Brett as she watched Christopher staring at nothing in the room. The war had made them all killers. Christopher. Harry. Barnaby. Merlin. What she now saw was just the veneer of civilisation. The good manners. The polite talk. Even the way they drawled their speech.

  “Was it terrible in the trenches?” she asked Christopher putting a hand over his where it was resting on his knee half under the table.

  Christopher did not reply. Instead, he gripped her hand so hard it almost hurt making Brett want to cry, not for the pain in her own hand but the pain in Christopher’s tortured mind. For Christopher, she saw the war would never be over and now people who knew were talking about another one.

  * * *

  Cuddles Morton-Sayner was worried. She was being paid to protect Stella Fitzgerald from social gaffes and find her an aristocratic husband. She had not seen Barnaby St Clair for hours. At first, she had thought with so many people milling around and socialising she had missed him in the crowd. C E was
off talking business but came back regularly to see if she was all right. He was her partner for the evening and knew how to behave. Stella had been swallowed up in the crowd more than once for half an hour at a time. The May Ball was a place to meet people as well as dance. The old days of booking a girl for a dance had gone with the war when so many changes had swept through England. Even Lady Harcourt had no longer received her guests formally. People were expected to send her a cheque for the Red Cross in the Royal Mail, which made it easier but not so personal. A payment, no longer a gift.

  By the time Cuddles had eaten her supper and Barnaby had still not turned up, Cuddles knew she had to do something. How were they going to get back to Riverglade and poor Douglas Hayter who had looked so forlorn when Stella swept away to the ball in all her finery? Douglas had come right out to the car on the driveway in his wheelchair to watch them go. When Cuddles had turned round in the car to look back as the Bentley reached the end of the long driveway, Douglas was still watching them from his wheelchair, the lights of the car shining up the avenue of trees for him to watch their car disappear.

  “Where’s Barnaby?” asked Stella. The three of them were eating supper together as was expected of them. Barnaby if nothing else was being rude.

  Further down the table where people had sat down carrying their plates of buffet supper, Ignatius Bowes-Lyon heard the American accent along with the question. He had finished his supper and was thinking about the long drive back to London. He had drunk little knowing how far he had to travel. He got up and walked to the other end of the table.

  “Mr St Clair has gone back to London, I’m afraid,” he said from behind the seated diners.

  “Oh, dear,” said Cuddles, “Barnaby brought us here from Riverglade in his car. We are all staying with Mr Hayter. But thank you for the information, Mr Bowes-Lyon.”

  “My own car is a two-seater. I’ll ask Merlin St Clair to give you a lift.”

  “Thank you, Mr Bowes-Lyon. I would like to introduce you to Miss Stella Fitzgerald. Mr Bowes-Lyon is a cousin of the Duchess of York, the King’s daughter-in-law. Please sit down, Mr Bowes-Lyon. Are you on your own?”

  “Thank you. So nice to meet you, Miss Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, I have a long drive back to London. Despite Elizabeth, I have to work for a living when I can find an aeroplane to fly. I’ll ask Merlin on my way out. You’ll have to forgive me.”

  “Is there anything wrong with Barnaby?” asked Stella. She had been annoyed for hours being left on her own by her escort. Being stood up was the kind of novelty for Stella she did not like.

  “I gather he fell in the river and thought it best to go straight home.”

  “Did anyone push?” asked Stella innocently, full of interest.

  C E Porter sitting on the other side of Cuddles was snorting with pleasure, the very idea of Barnaby in wet evening clothes tickling his funny bone.

  “Was Harry Brigandshaw anywhere near when his brother-in-law fell in the water?” he asked as a matter of fact.

  “Funny you should ask,” said Ignatius, “I rather think he was.”

  “Don’t worry Merlin for a lift old chap,” said C E smirking happily. “I have many friends at the party… Good old Harry.”

  When Cuddles and Stella looked at him together with mirth in their eyes, all three sitting at the table broke out laughing as Ignatius bowed to the ladies and left, unable to keep a straight face.

  Even Stella knew the rumour that surrounded Tina Brigandshaw without the actual facts ever being spoken. That there was bad blood between Harry Brigandshaw and Barnaby St Clair. Slowly, deliberately, Stella began to have her own ideas for the rest of the evening. Wonderful ideas.

  * * *

  Had she planned every detail Tina Brigandshaw knew her timing could not have been better. The marital war was over the moment Barnaby St Clair hit the water impeccably dressed in tails, starched white shirt and white tie. The sapphire studs in his shirt front flashed just before he sank on his back beneath the water. Only she, Harry and Ignatius Bowes-Lyon, halfway up the path towards the house, had seen what had happened. Tina had seen Ignatius spinning around at the sound of the crack of bone knuckle on bone jaw, watch Barnaby disappear into the water and then carry on up the path. She had not seen the man standing inside the door of the small shed that guarded the jetty. Harry had gone across to make sure Barnaby surfaced from the water. Silently he had taken her hand and walked her back to the party.

  All evening they kept to themselves only dancing to the slow numbers, keeping close together. They both knew they wanted to make love more than at any other time in their past. Being fought over by two men had never happened before to Tina. The real luck was Tina being right in the middle of her monthly cycle.

  They said goodbye to no one. Lady Harcourt had long left her own party for the quiet of a friend’s house. Brett had left with Christopher Marlowe from the jetty. Harry had stood watching them at the French windows in the small room that tomorrow would again be a sewing room when the servants took out the long table that stood in for a bar. Harry was smiling. He did not have to tell her he and Brett was over.

  When they reached the temporary car park and found the pool car Harry had borrowed for the weekend, Cuddles Morton-Sayner was leaving with C E Porter and the American girl who had brought Barnaby to the May Ball. There was no sign of Barnaby and no one seemed to care. The car they were all climbing into was a large Austin driven by a chauffeur dressed in a uniform. Merlin St Clair was standing nearby. An old man with a bald head was in charge of the car. Inside the front seat was a woman with blue-rinsed hair. To Tina, passing by, the woman looked miffed.

  “Everything all right C E?” Harry called.

  “Never been better. Jolly good party. Not a spot of rain.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, Harry.”

  * * *

  Down on the river, the wooden-cabin boat that belonged to Oscar Fleming was shining a light fifty yards down the river on its way back to Ferry Cottage. When the boat landed, Christopher helped Brett from the boat having first tied it up to the posts next to the boathouse for the night. They went inside and turned on the lights. Brett found the key to Oscar Fleming’s small cellar. The key was hidden in a flowerpot in which the flowers had long died from lack of water.

  “Red or white, Christopher?” she called. “Better try red or it won’t be chilled. Take off your coat and tie. Take the whole damn lot off if you want to. I’m getting out of all these clothes. The moon’s due up soon. We can sit on the bench near the water. There are wine glasses in the kitchen and a corkscrew in the drawer.”

  They drank half the wine wearing very little clothes. Somewhere upriver towards Riverglade on the other bank of the River Thames, the owls were calling to each other. The night was warm and Christopher went for a swim in the river. When he climbed up the grass bank, Brett was waiting for him naked in the full light of the colourless moon. They made love slowly at first on the flat grass at the top of the bank ignoring a boat going upriver. Neither of them even heard the engine.

  * * *

  At Riverglade in his bedroom on the ground floor, Douglas Hayter was trying to keep himself awake listening to the owls calling to each other from the trees. Sometimes, when he was more wide-awake he called back to the owls, imitating their sound. The owls called back to him as if he was one of their own. On nights when Douglas was unable to sleep, the conversations with the owls went on for hours.

  Now he fell asleep.

  Douglas woke to the sound of them coming back from the ball. There was something wrong. The car was not a Bentley 3 Litre. Then he heard C E Porter call to someone a cheerful goodnight and the car drove away. Feet crunched on his driveway in front of his house. The front door opened with a key he had given C E Porter earlier in the evening. They were all being as quiet as they could. All was well. The Bentley must have broken down. Douglas fell back to sleep as the owls started calling to each other again. Down on the river, a motorboat was
going downstream from the ball.

  When Douglas woke again the owls were still calling from far away. The moonlight was streaming through the open French windows into the room that had been the drawing room before he came home without his legs. Stella was standing in the moonlight taking off the clothes she had worn at the ball. Douglas thought she must have walked in through the French windows. The night air was surprisingly warm for the beginning of May.

  When she was naked, Stella came to the bed and one by one pulled off the bedclothes. Douglas was lying on his back. Neither said a word. Douglas’s only clothing was his underpants. After the army, he had never slept in pyjamas. Stella leaned over him and pulled off his underpants her large breasts in front of his face. He was rigid with excitement, vibrating with desire. He could see the light of the moon shining through her open legs as she lowered herself. Douglas felt the hard resistance as Stella pushed down trying to let him inside her body. Then it broke and Stella let out her only sound, a stifled, ecstatic scream. Slowly they made love again, and this time Douglas screamed for himself. They relaxed holding each other. Soon they were fast asleep with Stella curled up beside Douglas as he lay on his back on the naked bed.

  When Douglas woke in the night, she was gone. Were it not for the lack of the sheet and blankets and his underpants not within reach, Douglas would have said it was all part of a beautiful dream. The cold must have woken him. The moon had gone. The night outside the French windows was quiet.

  A cock crowed some minutes later from the farm far back on the other side of the river from Riverglade. A farm Douglas had only heard and never seen.

  Douglas was smiling as he fell back into a dreamless sleep, calm and satiated.

  When he woke into the morning, the house was quiet. On Sundays, the servants took the day off.