by Peter Rimmer
“That was Colonel Braithwaite,” he said to the two privates, who were not sure what to do now they were surrounded by advancing Germans. “Worst bloody landing I ever saw. Poor sod must have been dead in the cockpit before it came down… There’s three of us, a bloody balloon and a regiment of Germans. Put down the guns, mates, and put up your hands. I’ll give my last report and tell ’em.”
“Better ask ’em,” said the Tommy. “Don’t want being shot for desertion.”
After the observer cranked up the field telegraph he reported their position.
“Surrender, Corporal.”
“Who are you?”
“Captain Middleton. Good luck.”
“Colonel Braithwaite just killed himself. Crashed and burnt.”
“Are you sure it was Colonel Braithwaite?”
“Certain. Reported 33 Squadron many times. Three yellow stripes on his plane’s tail. The rest of them had three black stripes. Are we losing the war?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
Ten minutes later the three of them were smoking German cigarettes.
By the time the corporal was sent off on a train back to Germany, Fishy Braithwaite had landed at Dover from a ship. He was still in uniform and had bluffed his way ashore. Then he took the train up to London. If she was going with Brigandshaw he would be there to stop them. She had been given Brigandshaw’s phone number in England. She was going to ask him up to London. In case Brigandshaw contacted his squadron he had overheard the man repeating the phone number of the Wentworths’ London home. So he knew where she was. His fiancée! Asking for another man.
When he got on the train his flying goggles were still hanging around his neck. No one spoke to him. One glance was enough to avoid conversation. He had not even eaten since taking the motorcycle.
When Sara Wentworth eventually phoned for Harry Brigandshaw in hysterics, she was frightened for her life. After staying in the London house for a day, she had gone to Birchdale to be with her parents, where she had slept for twelve hours without waking. Once properly rested she wanted to rejoin the FANY and find out where they wanted her to go. She took the train from Warminster back to London and reported to the FANY headquarters for duty. The old doctor had left instructions that Nurse Wentworth was to stay on leave for a fortnight. She had gone to the London house. Going back to Birchdale would have been too depressing. Jared was dead and there was nothing more she could do for her parents.
The townhouse was on the Bayswater Road in Holland Park. She had seen a man sitting on the bench with his back to the iron railing that ran along the length of Holland Park. The bench was on the other side of the road to the small gate and steps that led up to the front door of the Wentworths’ three-storey house. The house was in an attached row of ten similar houses. There were people walking the footpaths on both sides of the road. She noticed the man on the bench was wearing goggles and wondered idly what he had done with his motorcycle. The man was wearing a brown leather overcoat of a type she had never seen before. She had let herself into the house and thought no more about the man on the bench.
There were no servants in the house as her father had taken the only one left to Birchdale. The men had gone off to the war. There were white dust sheets over the furniture and everything reminded her of Jared. Often they had stayed in the house together without their parents after they came back from their trip to Africa and their stay at Elephant Walk. She had watched her brother becoming an unwilling stockbroker and entertained his clients, including Jack Merryweather. The three of them had talked for hours about their adventures in Africa. She had liked Jack and asked him more than once to send her love to Harry if he was writing a letter to Elephant Walk. He was good-looking enough but not her type. There had sometimes been a girl with him. For Jared, not for Jack. She and Jack were always looking for a nice girl for Jared to marry.
She had wandered around the house all afternoon and when it came to teatime there was no milk. There was plenty of tea and biscuits but no fresh milk. It was then she looked out of the lounge window to see if it was raining. To her surprise, the man was still sitting on the bench and seemed to be looking at her through the goggles.
She went downstairs, put on her coat from the stand in the hall, and picked up an old umbrella. London was full of odd people, and if they wanted to sit on a park bench across the road from her house, they had a perfect right to do so. Maybe the man had come and gone while she was making her bedroom comfortable and folding up the dust sheets. When she went out to get the milk she was not sure how long she had been thinking back on her life with her brother. The man wearing the goggles was still on the bench when she stepped onto the street. And when she came back with the milk and a loaf of bread, he was still in exactly the same spot on the other side of the road.
Inside, she closed the curtains to the street and turned on the electric lights. She made herself tea and opened a tin of butter and a jar of Gentleman’s Relish. On the fresh bread, she spread the butter and relish, took everything into the lounge with the drawn curtains, and sat down in an armchair for tea. She read a book for some time until her eyelids drooped and then she took herself off to bed. The old doctor was right. She was worn out.
She looked down from her third-storey bedroom onto the dark street before closing the curtains. For some reason, she had not first turned on the lights. She could not see whether anyone was sitting on the bench. She fell into a soundless, dreamless sleep that went on all night. She was woken by the birds singing in the park, the dawn chorus. As always, winter and summer, she had slept with one of the bedroom windows half open. The first thing she remembered was that Jared was dead. She lay thinking of him, the covers drawn up to her chin. Then she took a deep breath, jumped out of bed, and ran to open the curtains. It was freezing cold in the early spring morning.
She had forgotten the man outside but when she looked down onto the bench he was still sitting in the exact same position. Sara shivered before running back and jumping into her warm bed. The man had still been wearing his goggles. She wondered if he had frozen to death. She didn’t think so. It was the end of April. Trying to put the war out of her mind, she went back to sleep.
When she woke late in the morning after the best sleep of her life the sun was warming the room, and Sara was ravenously hungry. She dressed quickly and only then looked out of the window. The man on the bench was not dead. He had taken off the goggles. Even from the third storey and looking down across the Bayswater Road she was quite certain. She would know that squashed face and those large fishy eyes anywhere. On the bench was the man she had been forced to accept as a fiancé but never married. It was then she understood the implication of her phone call to 33 Squadron. An innocent phone call to report her brother’s death had turned into a nightmare.
In a panic, she rushed down to the telephone and called the number 33 Squadron had given her. She knew she was quite hysterical. The woman on the other end of the phone had repeated back her address. She checked the bolts on the front and back doors. After closing all the windows, she holed herself up in a cold funk and waited for Harry Brigandshaw. There was no doubt in her mind. The madman on the bench outside had overheard her phone call. She had been told Harry was recovering in England from a plane crash. She had wanted to tell him about Jared. They had all been friends. The fact that she wanted to hear Harry’s voice again had only been part of the reason for phoning the squadron.
Only much later did she wonder if she had done the right thing by calling Harry Brigandshaw. And when she looked out of the top window before the daylight went and saw Fishy Braithwaite was no longer sitting on the park bench she was not sure whether to laugh or cry.
In the afternoon the following day, she heard the ring of the front doorbell. She was embarrassed. What was she going to say to Harry, dragging him all the way up from Dorset? She had let her imagination run wild. Now the man had gone from the bench she was not so sure it had been Fishy Braithwaite. Harry would think she w
as chasing him again. The hysterics and threats to kill herself were more than expected from Jared’s death. Everyone was losing someone in the war. No one she knew had killed themselves with grief. She patted her hair, put a brave smile on her face and lifted the bolts from the front door.
Outside Harry and Lucinda were glad to hear the footsteps from inside the house. The drive had turned out a pleasure with the top down all the way. Lucinda was a good driver, and the twisting, narrow English country lanes a joy to drive through in spring. The sun had shone most of the way. Granny Forrester had been right as usual. To rush around the lanes in the dark would have been looking for an accident. In the morning, there had been no more panic phone calls and Harry was of a mind to call off the trip. He had wondered if Sara had created all the drama to make him pay her a visit. He was still wondering how she knew he was in England.
That morning, they all enjoyed a good breakfast, with Robert eating two of the large duck eggs, too rich for Harry, who had stuck with the chicken eggs. He even suggested to Lucinda they give up the drive to London. Robert had given both of them a funny look and Granny Forrester had a smirk on her face. Was it that obvious, thought Harry!
“We can have a nice lunch on the road at a quaint old inn,” said Lucinda.
“Good idea,” said Granny Forrester.
“Jared would expect you to make sure his sister is really all right,” said Robert, looking at the remains on his breakfast plate.
Only when they had had their lunch just outside Guildford, and were on a piece of straight road, did Harry have the first, terrible rush of panic. It was worse than when he thought he was going to die with his engine cut out and the German coming in for his kill.
“It’s Fishy Braithwaite,” he said out loud, suddenly understanding. “Sara must have phoned the squadron and asked for me and been given your phone number.”
“What’s between you and Sara?” asked Lucinda, with the new authority born from their half hour in the woods.
“She’s obsessed. Fishy’s obsessed. It’s a love triangle that doesn’t exist.”
“You’d better explain, Harry.”
With his right hand stroking her knee, Harry told her everything. Including his posting to 33 Squadron. Sara sending a key to the safety-deposit box where she had deposited her engagement ring. Colonel Mervyn Braithwaite sending it back again. The man had even bragged that no woman would ever break off an engagement to him.
“Do you love her?”
“Of course not. A friend, yes. As is Jared. We enjoyed their company on Elephant Walk. Robert was the one after Sara, not me.”
Lucinda had parked the car in front of the Wentworths’ London house. Harry had a good look around before painfully getting his legs out of the car and himself up onto the crutches. It was teatime. People were walking up and down both sides of the Bayswater Road. There were cars going up and down both ways. It was a typical London afternoon in spring and the trees in the park on the far side of the iron railing were lush with young green foliage.
“I’ve only got a broken leg,” he said to Lucinda, who hovered at his elbow.
The small gate was opened for him by Lucinda. The steps up to the front door made him concentrate on what he was doing. He had his head down. Lucinda had a proprietary hand on his elbow. Neither of them saw Fishy Braithwaite vault over the iron fence from his hiding place in Holland Park, dodge through the traffic, and pull his service revolver out of his flying coat, a long, brown leather coat that kept him warm at night. He was wearing his flying helmet and goggles.
As Sara opened her front door to apologise to Harry for all the fuss, she was surprised to find him standing there with Lucinda St Clair and briefly felt annoyed. Then she smiled.
“Harry, I’m sorry. I thought I saw Mervyn and panicked. You know us women. How kind of you to come.”
Mervyn Braithwaite came over the now-closed small gate in one leap, his flying coat open, his uniform visible, and ran up the steps, the gun firing at Sara as she stood in the front door. She was dead before she collapsed on the floor.
“I am not a wet fish! And you’re dead!”
Fishy Braithwaite screamed on and on until Harry hit him across the throat with the wooden end of his right crutch. Lucinda was kneeling next to Sara. Two men were holding down Colonel Braithwaite and a policeman was running towards them down the road.
“She’s dead, Harry.”
“It’s a bloody war. You can’t kill and kill and kill and stay sane. Poor sod. Mad as a bloody hatter.” Bending down with difficulty, Harry covered up his CO’s RFC uniform by closing the flying coat. The goggles were still on his face.
“When you get him to the station, call General Trenchard at the War Office,” he told the constable. “He’ll want to know about this right away. I’m afraid the girl’s dead. We’ll be in this house for as long as you want us to be.”
“What happened?” asked the constable.
“It’s a very long story and it started very long ago. At school, kids being mean to kids… Look after him. He was a damn good pilot.”
Only inside the house did Harry begin to cry. For all of them. The dead and the living. Then he pulled himself together and phoned Birchdale. Mrs Wentworth answered the phone and before he could say anything thanked him for calling about Jared. Then he told her Sara was dead. Shot by Mervyn Braithwaite.
Outside a crowd had gathered at the sight of another person’s adversity.
“It was my idea,” she said.
“What was, Mrs Wentworth?”
“Mervyn marrying Sara. Now I have no children. Nothing to leave behind. I’d better go and tell my husband. I won’t ask you why you are there, Major Brigandshaw. Such a coincidence has to have a reason. If she had not gone off to Africa with Jared this would never have happened. Sara would have been safely married with children. You do know the firm Braithwaite and Penny? Very big firm. I hope you’re proud of yourself, Major Brigandshaw.”
The phone near Warminster went dead. Harry stood for a long time. If it was somehow his fault, he could not see why.
Harry and Lucinda stayed the night at the Savoy in separate rooms. It was as if someone had thrown a cold bucket of water over them.
Harry never saw Colonel Braithwaite being taken away. When the ambulance arrived to take away Sara, Braithwaite was gone. The crowd was still there. Bigger than ever. People at the back standing on tiptoe to have a look at the dead girl on the top of the steps. One woman lifted up her child to have a better look.
They waited another two hours in the house. A senior policeman came and said they could go. He took their names and Harry told him the dead girl’s family had been told. The blood had been cleaned from the steps. The policeman took the key to the house. They parted with the policeman in the street. Most of the crowd had gone.
The Ford fired the first time and they drove to the hotel. They ate supper in the Grill Room but neither of them was talkative or hungry. Harry thought it better not to drink champagne so soon after Sara’s death.
The next day they drove back to Purbeck Manor. The magic had gone. Harry stayed the next night and made his usual excuse about visiting Granny Brigandshaw in her Kensington flat. Lucinda drove him to the railway station.
“Was that all it was?” asked Lucinda, dry-eyed.
“I don’t know.”
“Try not to get yourself killed, Harry. And give my regards to your grandmother.”
“I’m not going to visit her.”
“I know.”
“Thank your mother for me again.”
“Will I hear from you again?”
“Yes, I’ll write… I didn’t tell you but Mrs Wentworth blames me for Sara’s death. For Sara going out to Africa. For Sara not marrying Mervyn and having a brood of kids. Ever since I can remember it has always been my fault.”
“We all say that. It’s much better for Mrs Wentworth to blame someone else.” Then the train arrived and took him away. At a complete loose end, Harry phoned his U
ncle James at Hastings Court. His uncle sent a car up to London for him.
“It’ll be my first visit to Hastings Court.”
“You were born here, Harry. You could have owned Hastings Court. You still could.”
“What do you mean, Uncle James?”
“Ask your grandfather. Ask your mother. It’s not for me to say.”
In the old dining room at Hastings Court, where unbeknown to Harry his grandfather Brigandshaw, the Pirate, had died a lonely death, Harry, sitting at the breakfast table, read the previous day’s Daily Telegraph. He was alone in the vaulted hall of a room that had watched his mother’s ancestors eat for centuries. The obituary was prominent, next to some old lord who had died peacefully in his sleep. Harry read it twice and left his last cup of tea to go cold. His leg was mending fast and he only needed a stick.
He found what had once been his grandmother Brigandshaw’s favourite bench overlooking the ornamental lake. And let his mind think.
Colonel Braithwaite was reported killed by ground fire.
Even in death, the German air force had not been able to shoot him down. Colonel Braithwaite probably dead in his cockpit when he crash-landed his Sopwith Triplane with the three distinct yellow stripes, in front of the British observation post. The corporal who reported the crash said that the body was burnt beyond recognition. Soon after, the corporal’s position was overrun by the Germans. A report in a German newspaper stated Colonel Braithwaite had been given a military funeral after the British corporal identified the charred remains.