by Peter Rimmer
“Dorian can’t wait to farm in Rhodesia. There’s a girl called Eleanor Botha.”
“There’s always a girl at your age, Anthony. Is she pretty?”
“A body to kill for. Played beach bats with her on Clifton Beach.”
“Memories. Sweet memories.”
“Yours or mine, Dad?”
“Mine, I’m afraid. It seems impossible for you now but once I was your age.”
“What was her name?”
“Jennifer. Her name was Jennifer. We were both still at school. Oh yes. Clifton Beach. That place was something. Is the water still icy cold?”
“Freezing. Nobody cares. I love South Africa.”
“They’ve given your Cousin Tinus a spot of leave. Ordered him actually. During the height of the battle they were taking Dexedrine pills to keep them alert. Not good for the long-term health, ingesting chemicals. He doesn’t know but they’ve taken him off the active duty list. Don’t want him and the others who flew at the start of the war to burn out. When his leave’s up he’s going up to Scotland to be an instructor. I suggested Gwelo to a friend of mine at the Air Ministry. They don’t want the veteran pilots that far away. They gave him a bar to his DFC.”
“Are his fighting days over?”
“Depends on how long the war lasts.”
“When do we go on active duty, Dad?”
“When you get to Boscombe Down, weather permitting. Lancasters. But you all know about Lancasters. Best bomber we have.”
4
For the first time in her life Genevieve was perfectly content. The green Morgan with the top down was still the best way to travel on an evening in late summer. They had both begged and borrowed the petrol coupons. Now, for both of them, the war did not exist. No one existed other than themselves. All their thoughts were in the present, driving the country lane, holding hands, Tinus with one hand on the wheel, the two-seater the only car on the road.
“Are you hungry, darling?” she asked.
“Only for you.”
“We have to eat as well.”
“I used to come here with Uncle Harry. There was always a pretty barmaid at the Running Horses. Never did I think I’d take a famous American actress to dinner.”
“I’m English.”
“I was going to tell you before we were interrupted for so long. You have an American accent. Do you know how long I’ve loved you?”
“Tell me again.”
“Since the moment our eyes first met.”
“What was her name?”
“Minnie. I think it was short for Minerva. Christmas 1933. That was the time I saw you first. At the Mayfair. I found out you were really nineteen. You said you were twenty-one. Something to do with attending the Central School of Speech and Drama when you were too young to be eligible. I was sixteen but our eyes said we understood each other. You were going to be famous then. I was just a schoolboy. Then those lovely years we kept meeting at Oxford. The three musketeers. I’m going to miss André for the rest of my life. You never make friends like that again. He was a year older than me. Same cricket team at Bishops in his last year. Watched him score 112 runs for Oxford against Cambridge at Lord’s. You remember that time you came to visit me at Oxford with Gregory L’Amour. What is his real name?”
Tinus had found it better not to talk about André after he was shot down six months earlier over the hop fields of Kent, his aircraft exploding on impact. They were both silent for a long time thinking of André.
“Joseph Pott,” said Genevieve after Tinus had wiped away his tears and blown his nose.
“Before we made love I was bitterly jealous of Joseph Pott. Wouldn’t admit it to myself. You, my darling Genevieve, were beyond my reach. Now we will always be touching each other. With you it was the first time I ever made love. Before I was satisfying lust.”
“I hope you satisfied that as well.” She was smiling up at him, the moment with André in the past.
“I will never satisfy my love for you if I live to be a hundred.”
“Two days in bed, Tinus!”
“Everyone left us alone. Wasn’t that just marvellous? Uncle Harry knew you were coming down with me to Hastings Court. He drove past to go to Southampton to meet Anthony. Left us alone. How does he know so often how to behave?”
“All we’ve eaten was bread and jam.”
“And love, Genevieve. Maybe I am hungry. Please God, Anthony comes through the war. So many friends. So many dead.”
“Please, Tinus, no more war. Stop the car. I want to sit on that four-bar gate and listen to the birds. We can wait ten minutes more for our supper.”
“I could wait for ever sitting with you on a four-bar gate listening to the birds. Will you marry me, Genevieve?”
“You’ll have to ask my father for my hand. Mother likes you.”
“I’m glad. So, what do you say? Not them.”
“Have we got enough petrol to drive down to Dorset? My grandmother is going to love my marrying you, Tinus Oosthuizen.”
“So it’s a yes?”
“From that first look in the Mayfair it’s been yes.”
“I’d never seen a girl with eyes of different colours. Will our children have mismatched eyes?”
“I hope so. You will be careful, won’t you, Tinus?”
“Stop crying. Everything is going to be just fine. The Americans will be forced to come into the war with all the noise from Japan about America stopping their supply of oil. You forget, Gregory sent me this rabbit’s foot he found in the graveyard of my ancestors at Hastings Court. Had it put on this chain by a jeweller. I only wear the rabbit’s foot around my neck in combat. I hope he finds someone to love him.”
“He’s a pilot now. We are friends. Good friends. Can you understand that?”
“When Harry gave me this talisman from Gregory I knew he understood I loved you. It was you I thought beyond my grasp. Do you want a leg up onto the gate? It’s quite tricky balancing. You need to wind your legs behind one of the wooden bars. I never knew it was possible to be so happy.”
“Neither did I.”
Faintly on the wind from the direction of Leatherhead came the sound of the air-raid siren.
“It’s back again,” Genevieve said.
“It’s never far away. The Germans are early tonight. Look. My hands are trembling. You’d think I was used to it.”
“The birds are still singing.”
“To them all the noise is just man. They don’t hear the threat. We were lucky they didn’t knock Hastings Court to the ground. Just the horses. The head groom had gone off into the army. I want this damn war to be over. Now I’m trembling all over. My nerves are shot to ribbons. It’s not just me. Most of us are scared.”
“Come here.”
“I can’t. I’ll fall off the gate.”
Then they were laughing. When they got down to drive on to the Running Horses, Tinus had stopped trembling. Far away they could hear aircraft in the sky. A breath of wind brought the sound of machine gun fire. As they got into the car they could hear the sound of bombs falling followed by the explosions.
“I’m all right now. We’d better spend tonight in the shelter. Harry’s very proud of his shelter.”
“Caught in the spider’s web.”
“Something like that.”
“Let’s get back on the fence.”
Sitting on the fence proved difficult. It was not possible to grip the slat of wood and hold hands. They got off into the farm’s field and went for a walk. Holding hands was easy. The idea of sitting down in a restaurant while people were being killed had put them both off their food. The Morgan was left in the road with the top down. No one drove cars during an air raid. Near the elm trees they felt the dusk. Together they were happy. What the world did to itself was no longer their business while they held hands.
Tinus was now quite calm. He only let his mind stay in the very present. The bombing north of Leatherhead was not part of his present. Or flying aeroplanes. If
his life stopped now it had been fulfilled. They were joined in mind, body and spirit.
The birds in the trees and hedgerows went on calling in the dusk. The smell of wild flowers had become stronger. They walked right round the field and back to the car where Tinus had left it to get on the four-bar gate the first time. There was dew on the leather seats. Backing in towards the four-bar gate, Tinus turned the car around.
Back at Hastings Court they found a tin of baked beans in the kitchen cupboard and a bottle of Uncle Harry’s best wine in the cellar. They ate the beans with a spoon out of the tin. Not finding the can opener Tinus had hacked the can open with a carving knife.
With the bottle opener he found in the cocktail cabinet in the lounge, Tinus pulled the cork from the bottle of Hock. The Hock was from Germany. From 1937. The wine poured into crystal glasses tasted good. By the time they finished the wine by candlelight outside on the back lawn they decided to sleep in the house. The lawn had not been cut all summer. There was no petrol for the lawnmower.
They heard the last two servants talking quietly, the only two that had nowhere else to go so they had stayed with his Uncle Harry. The servants were walking out the side door through the garden to the air-raid shelter Uncle Harry had built at the start of the war. The air-raid shelter was dark and damp. Under the duckboards were pools of water. Someone had peed with fright. The square box of concrete blocks cemented together smelled of urine like the toilets at the railway stations.
They were quite happy to die holding hands. They were at the end of the bottle of wine. Tinus opened a second bottle of the same vintage which was just as good. Genevieve found a box of digestive biscuits which they ate. The biscuits were stale and slightly soggy. Neither of them cared. It was strange not to hear the clock tower chime the quarter hour which neither of them mentioned. The rubble from the bombing had been left, though the three dead horses were buried in an old rubbish dump and covered with soil. They could still smell the dead horses when the wind was blowing the wrong way.
When they went to bed in the main bedroom reserved in the past for the Lord of the Manor, both of them were drunk. They made love and fell asleep. They were still clutching each other. Neither of them woke in the night. The dawn chorus of the birds through the open window brought them awake.
“My mouth tastes like the bottom of a parrot’s cage,” said Tinus.
“So does mine. Can we make love again?”
Afterwards, they went back to sleep, still folded in each other’s arms for comfort.
There was no such thing as a normal day anymore. The servants left them alone. In the kitchen someone had thrown away the empty can of baked beans. On the lawn on the table were the empty bottles of wine.
They were taking it minute by minute, not hour by hour.
Genevieve’s play had opened and closed in three weeks. After the bomb exploded in the Café de Paris, coming through the roof killing everyone in their fine clothes and jewellery, people kept away from the West End theatre despite what everyone said about a stiff upper lip. The play was not very good. As a comedienne, Genevieve knew she was not very good. Cameras close up on her face gave her the power to concentre the minds of the audience. The power was in her eyes, the beauty of her face. She was photogenic, they said. It was better to act in a theatre, more personal than acting for a camera. She just wasn’t as good. She was twenty-seven years old. Maybe, she thought sadly, she was losing her grip. Once Tinus had satiated himself would he behave like the rest?
With the war still raging there wasn’t the future to worry about. Everything they did to each other was intense, made so by the certainty of loss. She would always be able to tell herself when she was old she had loved just once. They had a whole week ahead of them before his leave came to an end. To when they were parted. They were right to sleep in the big four-poster bed. She wasn’t frightened when they were together. For long periods they held each other without saying a word. They had their own world for a while. A world without people intent on killing each other.
5
While Genevieve was wondering if love was worth the pain to come, when the magical bonds were broken as they always were despite Tinus proclaiming his love would last forever, Rodney Hirst-Brown was enjoying himself. Something he had not done for a long time. Since Aaron Rosenzweig fired him for stealing thirty-two shillings he was going to pay back. Easier for the banks to get rid of him once they found him a thief. A petty thief that as chief clerk might grow. Easier to kick him out. Never thinking him human. A man with feelings. A man to say sorry and mean what he said. Kick him out, they said. We don’t need him anymore. Once a thief always a thief. When society ostracises him it’s his own fault. His own fault no one will give him a job. Lucky we didn’t put him in jail. Lucky just to lose his job. Who the hell was he anyway? So he fought the Turks in the desert. Years ago. Now he’s a thief. Fire the man. Get rid of him. We don’t want people like him working in our bank. To hell with him. We have more important things to worry about.
And to hell with them, smiled Rodney to himself sitting comfortably in jail in the Brighton police station. Now they were talking to him. Now he was not ignored. Now he was important. A man to be taken notice of.
“Why did you do it, Rodney?”
“I hate the Jews. They fired me for thirty-two shillings. They stole my life. When Hitler wins this war he’ll exterminate the lot of them. That’ll make Aaron Rosenzweig think when they send him to the gas chamber. I fought for this country. I worked hard for that bank. I had to have that thirty-two shillings at the time. Look what I got for it. For fighting. Working. No one even looks at a man out of a job. The bastard had no humanity. Now it’s going to be his turn. Now he remembers Hirst-Brown his chief clerk. The poor sod he fired for stealing thirty-two shillings. You asked me why I did it, copper, now you know.”
“I’m not a policeman, Rodney. I’m with MI5.”
“All coppers are bastards. We used to sing that in the army. Before they gave me my commission. There was an officer in the Cairo officers’ mess who ran off with fifty quid. His dad was a peer. You know what they did, copper? Bugger all. Told him to go home and leave the army. Me, the whole bloody lot of you ostracised.”
“You don’t have to swear. Now, tell me, what happened?”
“I don’t care if you shoot me. Better than always being on my own. Being ignored. Mrs Leadman only talks to me when she wants the rent. Henry only talks to me when I buy booze at four times the cost of drinking alone in my room. Four times to drink in company where the landlord says a few kind words he doesn't mean just to get your custom. Or do they hang traitors? I’m a civilian. I suppose you want to hang me, copper. You all make me sick. Did the best I could with my life and look what you all did with me. Mr von Lieberman bought me a drink in the Savoy. He was nice to me. Interested in my problem with the Jews.”
“What was his name again?”
“You heard, copper!”
“You don’t have to be rude.”
“I don’t see bloody why not. Take me out and shoot me for all I care. When Hitler’s finished the likes of Aaron Rosenzweig will be dead and forgotten. Their money given to people who deserve it. You think he’d have lent me a fiver. A bank so bloody rich, a family so rich. What do they do? Kick me in the gutter. Kick me out on my neck.”
“How did you get the radios, Rodney?”
“Bugger off. I want my lawyer.”
“This is wartime, Rodney. You don’t get lawyers in wartime. Not when you aid and abet the enemy. How does it feel to be a traitor to your country?”
“Very good as a matter of fact. Haven’t had so much company in years. People actually talking to me. Interested in Rodney Hirst-Brown. His brother’s now Lord St Clair, the Eighteenth Baron St Clair of Purbeck.”
“Who, Rodney? You’re getting me confused.”
“The officer and gentleman who stole the fifty quid. The Honourable Barnaby St Clair. Kept tabs on that one, I did. Specially after I got fired. Do
you know what it’s like to be a forty-two year old bald, ex-chief clerk without a job that no one talks to? The last woman that looked at me was years ago and she was a whore. The system’s not fair. Hitler’s going to change the system. Now do you understand? I don’t bloody care anymore. You can shove the whole human race up your bottom, copper.”
When the man left him alone in the cell, the loneliness flooded back again. Then he cried. Feeling sorry for himself. Wondering what his life had ever been about. If they were looking at him through the little square window he didn’t care anymore. Just didn’t care. The whole damn lot of them could go to hell where they belonged. It didn’t really matter if he told them. It was all so simple. At least he’d have some company if he told them the story right from the start.
Wondering whether he should have told them the name of Herr Henning von Lieberman should Germany win the war, Rodney reverted to feeling miserable. Then he called back his interrogator. They were going to shoot him anyway.
The food parcel had arrived from America on the Saturday morning. Mrs Leadman had answered the door. Mrs Leadman had a strident voice when she wanted to be heard.
“Mr Hirst-Brown. The Railways are here for you.”
Expecting a package from a letter a month before, Rodney wiped the smirk off his face and went downstairs. A man from the Southern Railway Company was waiting for him at the front door, a large box in his hands labelled ‘Food Parcel’ in red letters. Ever since rationing, relations and friends overseas had been sending food parcels to England. The Americans were particularly good at it.
“Sign here, please. Lucky bastard. By the weight of it, got to be sugar. My wife’s got a sweet tooth. Kids the same. Oh well, some of us have all the luck. Americans like to send us food parcels. My missus says it makes ’em feel better. Kind of not so guilty, safe in their beds far from the bombing. Real sweet tooth she’s got my missus. You going to open it now?”