by Peter Rimmer
“Didn’t you find anything?”
“One large diamond, which is still uncut.”
“What did you do with it?”
“It’s safe. Safe for a rainy day. Do you know, I haven’t thought of that diamond for years. I was in my thirties. When I went home after the war.”
Somewhere a pigeon was calling from among the trees behind the Running Horses. The evening was still and quiet, both of them silently enjoying each other’s company.
“Do you want another one?” said Tinus having finished his beer.
“Why not?”
At least, Harry thought, he hoped his diamond was safe as he watched his nephew take the empty glasses into the bar. Many years ago, he remembered building the large uncut diamond into the stonework of the new mantelpiece over the fireplace in the lounge of the main house of Elephant Walk. To Harry, it had looked like a piece of worthless quartz it was so big, which was the whole idea. Who in his right mind would stud a diamond into the mantelpiece over the fire, Harry had asked himself? Last time he looked it was still there. Hopefully it still was and would stay there until it was needed, a time Harry hoped would never come.
The best place to hide anything he had found out, was right under people’s noses. Even his family did not know what was staring at their backs when they stood in the winter evenings in front of the big log fire ‘airing their knowledge’. The smoke from the fire over the years had turned the surface of the uncut diamond black to add to the illusion. Back then, like Tinus, he was footloose and fancy-free, not knowing what to do with the rest of his life.
“Her name is Alison,” said Tinus, coming back with two brimming mugs.
“The same as your grandmother who left Hastings Court with my mother when they ran away to Africa. Alison was my nurse and married my father’s partner, his mentor and muse. The man whose name you bear, Martinus Oosthuizen. If two men loved each other it was your grandfather and my father. To have such a friendship is one of the greatest joys that can come out of a life. Cheers again, young Tinus. May your life be an interesting one.”
“Didn’t you find diamonds on the Skeleton Coast?”
“It was after we had parted. Near where the diamonds he had found on the beach in the sand south of Alexander Bay. Those that were washed up by the sea or swept down the Orange River. I was looking for a diamond pipe, the actual diamond deposit forced up from the bowels of the earth where the volcanic heat made them. I needed time on my own to wander, to forget the war and at best remember my dead friends when they were alive and having fun. Living off the gun. Oysters and mussels off the rocks at low tide. Driftwood fires far from the presence of man. Not seeing a soul month after month. Looking up at the layers of the stars. Three distinct layers as clear as crystal with the naked eye. Feeling insignificant but alive. At peace with myself in the end when I decided to go back to Elephant Walk, my mother worried again out of her mind. Mothers always worry, Tinus. You should think of that. My sister worries about you so far away. We only have one family that is our own and it’s very precious. My mother still worries about me, she says.”
“I miss my father.”
“We all do. Barend was on his way home to you all when he was killed. Never forget that.”
“Would he have stayed with us?”
“I hoped he would. Your mother hoped so. He had found religion buried at the bottom of the mine thinking he was going to die. He was going to farm the other side of Elephant Walk again. You would have seen. Underneath his wanderlust and hatred of us British for killing his father, he was a good man. My friend. A good, true friend. Don’t think back with bitterness, Tinus. Your life is in the future to enjoy. Don’t do what your father did and look back in bitterness until it consumed him.”
“Maybe Hitler has other ideas about my future.”
“There is always someone around with bad ideas. Often the ones who tell you they are good and righteous are just as evil. You can only rely on yourself and take what comes. Some have a long life, some short. But does anything matter except the present moment?”
“I’d like to visit the Skeleton Coast of South West Africa one day and follow your footsteps.”
“Maybe you will. The Namib Desert is one of the most beautiful places on God’s earth… When we’ve finished these we’d better go home. Tina and the children will be back by now. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Starving. I was going to buy a packet of crisps but didn’t want to ruin my appetite for Mrs Craddock’s cooking. Why is it some people can cook so well?”
“Another of life’s best kept secrets. Better to be born poor to a mother who can cook than born rich and eat lousy food because it isn’t cooked properly. Did you know our trip to Switzerland was in all the newspapers?
“Who was it this time?”
“William Smythe, who else?”
4
William Smythe had written about the test flight of the Short Sunderland knowing Harry Brigandshaw was news in England and America. Harry Brigandshaw’s disappearance in the Congolese jungle and subsequent resurrection had made him front-page news around the English-speaking world. It had also made William a lot of money as a freelance foreign correspondent. Just the syndication out of Denver, Colorado, channelled by Harry Brigandshaw’s wartime friend Glen Hamilton, had made William more money than he earned as a cub reporter on the London Daily Mail and reporter on the Manchester Guardian put together. From there he had taken his stories to the BBC Empire Service and made himself a household name. Working for himself had proved the way to get on in the world.
Phillip Crookshank had given him the story, not knowing, as it turned out to William, the real purpose of Harry’s trip, Crookshank’s interest in publicity only to do with sales. While Harry and Tinus were driving back to Hastings Court to sample Mrs Craddock’s cooking, William was having dinner with Horatio and Janet Wakefield at a small restaurant off Shaftesbury Avenue that specialised in Bengali cooking.
After years of climbing the ladder of journalism, his old friend Horatio was now the foreign correspondent of the Daily Mail, his wife Janet a speech therapist specialising in cures for people suffering from stutters with a thriving practice on the ground floor of their three-storey house in Chelsea. Young Harry and Bergit had been asleep in the top floor nursery when they left to go out to the Bengali restaurant, Janet saying the only food she could never get right was Indian curry. The nurse, Blanche, was in charge of the children allowing the parents to leave the house without a worry.
The house had been paid for from the proceeds of Horatio’s half share freelancing in Berlin, before he was taken away by the German police, to be freed by Harry Brigandshaw asking his friend Klaus von Lieberman to intervene and get Horatio back to England. In gratitude, the first-born had been named Harry, the second Bergit, the Wakefields personally thanking the von Liebermans when Klaus and Bergit visited England in July of the previous year.
“I liked the story, Will, but you missed the point,” said Horatio. “Okay, this time the test flight of a flying boat was successful and it didn’t crash in the jungle. But have you looked on the map?”
“If this is going somewhere go on,” said William.
“Lake Constance, and Romanshorn in particular, are as close as you can get without going into Germany to the von Lieberman estate. I tried to speak to Mrs Lieberman on the phone the day your story hit the press but no one would speak to me in English. I asked for both of them with a question mark in my voice and had the phone put down at the other end. How did you learn about the test flight?”
“A chap at Short Brothers tipped me off.”
“Harry knows his friend has a problem. Why he used the flying boat to get as near as possible. I’d like to help if I can.”
“Why don’t you ask Herr Henning von Lieberman, Janet?” said William. “He was your patient for six weeks when the von Liebermans’ cousin visited London. Did you do any good for his stammer? Or better put, did he have a stammer in the first place?”
“He was a very nice man and his stammer has improved, he tells me. Considerably improved. You read too much into everything, Will.”
“Horatio’s up to that trick by the sound of it. Give Harry a ring, Horatio.”
“I did. Told me to mind my own business. First time he’s ever been rude.”
“Now you have got my attention,” said William.
“He just chopped off the conversation telling me to leave it alone. He’s worried, William. I’ve never heard him so on edge. All the communication lines to Germany are coming apart. When countries stop talking to each other they get their wires crossed and end up in trouble with their relationships. My guess is something happened to the von Liebermans and Harry went over with a cover story to have a look, found out what he feared, and came back in a hurry thinking he was doing more harm than good. Did the Americans pick up on the flying boat story?”
“Not this time. The public has a short attention span. Glen said Harry’s old news but three of the British papers picked it up as you found out.”
“There’s a man three tables away who’s been staring at you, William. Your fame has spread. Someone must have told him who you are. The famous foreign correspondent and radio journalist. How does it feel to be famous and stared at?”
“Why would anyone consider me famous?”
“Don’t be modest. It doesn't suit you. Anyway, he’s coming over, having worked out I’m talking about him. Chap looks foreign by the cut of his clothes. And young. If he were a woman I would not have been surprised. On first glance with that long hair he looks like a girl.”
“Mr William Smythe, I’m sure. My apologies for staring. I was going to call you when I arrived in Britain two weeks ago but thought you would not remember me. Count Janusz Kowalski. Our mutual friend Fritz Wendal sent you to Warsaw the summer of 1936 to report on our air show. As a young pilot speaking English, Fritz pointed you out to me. How is he, Mr Smythe?”
“They murdered and burned him. Of course, I remember you, Janusz. Have you brought any modern aircraft into the Polish Air Force since the air show? Did you receive my message after I returned to England?”
“To join the RAF if Germany invades Poland and defeats the Polish forces? Of course, that won’t happen now. The British treaty will make Hitler think twice before invading us. We all feel much safer. Some of my friends fear the Russian Communists on our eastern border more than the Germans in the west, my father in particular.”
“Does your cavalry still ride horses?” William was smiling, enjoying his little joke. “Please sit down.”
“I’m afraid they do. Very well, of course. The last cavalry in Europe. We believe more in tradition than practicalities of war, Mr Smythe. My young friend is looking lonely at the table all on her own, don’t you think? It was rude of me to leave her.”
“Bring her over. Mr and Mrs Wakefield. Horatio was incarcerated by what we now call the Gestapo in our press. He too was a friend of Fritz Wendal.”
“I did not know. Poor Mr Wendal. It is not good to be a Jew in Germany. In Poland we live our lives in the hope of being left alone. A foolish habit of us Poles for many centuries. I will bring Ingrid over. She is the reason I am in London. She studies interior design. We are going to be married. I am now practising law in Warsaw.” The English words came out in detached sentences, as if Janusz was reading from a script translated from Polish.
“Do you still fly?”
“Of course. Mrs Wakefield, Mr Wakefield, excuse me a moment.”
“I’ll have the waiter join our tables.”
“There’s an empty one next to you,” said Janusz.
“Better still. This is a pleasant coincidence. A student and a junior lawyer cannot afford the fancy restaurants.”
“Neither can a working journalist,” said Horatio. “Unless he’s freelance. How long are you staying in London?”
“A week.”
“Have you met anyone in the RAF?” said William.
“Not yet.”
With conversation suspended by the interruption, they waited for the couple to join them at the tables Horatio helped the waiter to push together. For some reason Horatio never understood, every Indian restaurant had square tables so the two fitted nicely together when they finished. He watched William’s smile broaden when the girl, introduced as Ingrid with a surname none of them would be able to ever pronounce, sat down at the two joined tables, her eyes fixed on William. After ten minutes, while the five of them split a bottle of Spanish red wine and told each other their brief personal histories, as was the custom on new acquaintance, it seemed to Horatio the girl was less interested in marriage than her friend Janusz, the way she was flirting with William. She also looked older than the boy, who looked to Horatio as if he had only just started shaving.
Listening to, rather than joining in the conversation, he wondered how people so often believed what they wanted to hear without question. According to Ingrid’s broken English, it seemed the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the French Maginot line were more than enough to make Adolf Hitler behave himself and keep his hands off Poland. Having looked more carefully at British rearmament, Horatio knew it would take two more years to bring Fighter Command up to full strength. In journalistic circles the Royal Navy, stretched from Singapore through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean and out into the North Atlantic, was considered even less prepared; no longer did the Royal Navy rule the waves, able to protect British shipping around the world. By the sound of it at the dinner table, the Poles were relying on something that did not exist, rather like Janusz with the commitment of Ingrid to their marriage.
“How long are you staying with us in England?” Horatio asked in a lull in the two-sided conversation between Ingrid and the clearly infatuated William, something his wife was finding embarrassing by her faint look of disapproval.
“As long as you’ll have me, yes?”
It was not clear to Horatio how Ingrid paid for her studies and kept herself in London. On the other hand, a girl with her looks was never likely to be without the support of one or two wealthy friends.
“Where did you meet Janusz?”
Horatio smiled to himself; his wife, always the romantic, was trying to protect the up and coming marriage that Janusz had pointed out when he first stood at their table.
“Warsaw.”
“When are you two getting married?”
“We haven’t set a date,” interrupted Janusz.
Then Ingrid ignored the question and put her had on William’s knee under the table, something Horatio only found out the next day. By the time they all went home to their respective abodes, William had given Janusz Harry Brigandshaw’s telephone number at Hastings Court and Ingrid had slipped him her phone number, again under the table, the indiscretion hidden by the long white tablecloth that hung halfway to the floor, again only reported by William the next morning. Horatio could see by the end of their interrupted evening that any thought of what was happening in Germany across the Swiss border had gone right out of his old friend William’s mind.
“He really should get married,” said Janet when they let themselves into their house.
“Something that is not on Ingrid’s mind, who it seems would very much like to stay in England and not go home.”
“You think that was what it was all about?”
“Polish counts with country estates sandwiched between Russian communism and German fascism do not compete with famous English newspapermen as eligible husbands. And she’s got the looks to do what she likes.”
“Why do pretty girls always get to choose?”
“Nature, darling.”
“Did you choose me for my looks?”
“Of course I did, darling. Now run upstairs and tell Blanche we are home if she hasn’t heard. I thought a small nightcap before we retire to bed. More and more I’m convinced your old stammerer Henning von Lieberman was in London spying the land, taking photographs of prime targets such as the London d
ocks and that sort of thing, his therapy sessions with you every morning an alibi for being in London. His father, who is Klaus’s uncle by the way, is definitely a Nazi. General Werner von Lieberman doesn’t even try to hide who he is. Why should his son be any less of a Nazi?”
“You and Harry Brigandshaw have Nazis on the brain. Pour me a very small whisky and I’ll be right down. My first patient is at eight in the morning. Do you really think Hitler will invade Poland and plunge Europe into war?”
“As sure as I am that Ingrid is not going home to marry young Janusz if she has anything to say about it.”
“She was just being polite to William.”
“Yes, my dear.”
When Horatio’s wife came down from the nursery not two minutes later she was smiling.
“Why do they look so angelic asleep and in the morning turn back into little monsters?”
The next day in his office at the Daily Mail, having been given the lowdown on the previous evening by William over the phone, Horatio studied the blown-up map of Europe that took up the entire wall opposite his desk. It showed each adjacent country in a different colour, sovereign states with wandering tentacles of land that sneaked into their neighbours. Sometimes it was a river that bent the borders which had changed since the first tribes roamed the plains and hills that through thousands of years now showed as individual countries on a map that changed every few years, war or no war, friendship or enmity.
“It’s a bloody mess,” he said to the map, thinking, like all Englishmen cut off by twenty miles of sea, of the Continent, that part of Europe on the far side of the Channel as not part of Britain. “No wonder they’ve never got their hands off each other’s throats.”
“They all want what’s theirs as well as yours if possible,” said Mr Glass the editor coming into the office. “Never forget the easiest way to get anything is to steal it. We English have been doing it for years close to home. First Ireland, then we forced the Scots into a United Kingdom, and a Prince of Wales onto the Welsh. Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence and there isn’t much left worth having. Won’t last much longer, of course. Empires have to come and go or we’d have nothing to fight about. The French and the Germans want their own empire. So do the Americans, despite touting their anti-colonialism. Man is avaricious, the reason why we survived top dog in the animal world, but not why I came to see you, Wakefield. I want you to go to Moscow and tell us what’s going on. Are they on our side or Hitler’s?… And do we want them on our side? They too want their empire and there’s only so much to go round. How big is the Red Army? How good is their morale?”