by Peter Rimmer
“You want to be Jewish again, Gerry?”
“I’ve never not been Jewish. Just kept my mouth shut.”
“Do we have to change our name back to Casimir?”
“That doesn’t matter. I’m too well-known as Hollingsworth in America. People don’t like to be confused. They’ve nearly finished the marquee. Do you want to have a look inside?”
“Where do we go to shul?”
“Can you find out? How many guests are actually coming?”
“Two hundred. Maybe more. The press are inviting themselves.”
“Is this too much of an intrusion in our home?”
“Not for Genevieve. You owe her a lot.”
“She owes me a lot. She won’t go on much longer.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She’s got a lot of pretty actresses ten years her junior snapping at her heels. If she has kids she’ll want to retire. She’s worth more than me. Did you know that? Spoke to the Honourable Barnaby St Clair. Her uncle runs her financial affairs through a trust to avoid tax, clever chap. Bought up dozens of bombed out sites in London dirt cheap. They’re going to sit on them. Wait for the economy to pick up. Then build with the money they got from the British government for the bomb damage. To look at him you wouldn't think he was rich. The old aristocracy don’t have to show off. There’s nothing like old money or an old title. Not that Barnaby’s money is old. Made it all himself. Took the risk on the stock exchange with good information and came out top. Got out before the ’29 crash. Had friends inside the companies giving him information. They’re going to make it illegal in the States. Insider trading. Trick is to find the loopholes before they block them.”
“What’s she going to do with all that money?”
“What do people do with money, Carmel? They show off.”
“Not Genevieve. You forget. She’s old aristocracy from her father.”
“Then she’ll send all her boys to Harrow or Eton. Tinus went to Oxford. On a Rhodes Scholarship. Forget all the stuff about the decorated fighter pilot and the Battle of Britain. He’s got a top economics degree. Good cricketer. Played cricket for Oxford. She’s picked the right blood in Tinus. If his Cousin George went to England he could call himself Sir George Manderville, Bart, Harry Brigandshaw told me. By the luck of the draw, Harry owns the Manderville family seat in Surrey. That’s what George wants. The family manor house. Anyway, they’re now in business together. George is going to grow cigar wrapper leaf on his tobacco plantation in Virginia. Told me so. Calling his cigars Mandervilles with a knight in armour on the box. There are tobacco merchants in London selling ‘Churchills’. Not a bad marketing idea. Said the idea of the name came from Tinus. One smart lad.”
“Where are they going to live?”
“Haven’t said. Tinus prefers the West Coast. After growing up in Rhodesia in the African sun, he doesn’t like the cold. Look at that, Carmel. That chap’s caught a fish. Look at it leaping out of the water on the end of his line.”
“Poor fish.”
“You still eat beef. Someone has to kill the cow.”
“You want tea or a drink?”
“A drink. Can you imagine what that lawn is going to look like on Saturday? I’ve hired six buses to bring them from LA. Instead of them driving all the way back.”
“It’s so nice under this tree.”
“Isn’t it? The Pacific Ocean is so blue. None of the Rhodesians have come to America for the wedding. Not even his sisters.”
“Maybe they can’t afford it. Do farmers in Rhodesia make any money?”
“You know the old saying. Plough it back into the land. Probably short of ready cash. Shall I call Mrs Mendez or will you? She can bring out the drinks cabinet with lots of ice in the bucket. I like America. Even the drink cabinets have wheels in California.”
They were married by the Reverend Jethro Thackeray of the Methodist Church, a compromise between Genevieve’s Church of England and Tinus’s Dutch Reformed Church, the church of Tinus’s Afrikaans ancestors. Tina had chosen the Reverend Thackeray, impressed with his nickname of ‘Priest to the Stars’. A second bomb had been dropped on the people of Nagasaki, ending the Second World War. The Emperor had surrendered. The clear blue Pacific Ocean was untroubled as they vowed to be man and wife until one of them died.
Against his wishes and with special permission from the Air Ministry in London, Tinus wore his uniform, drawing the line at including his medals. Any one of the British at the Long Beach wedding could have read the ribbons on his chest. A Distinguished Service Order and a Distinguished Service Cross with a bar on the ribbon. After the ribbons for bravery on his chest were a small row of campaign ones. After much argument from Tina who wanted a brand new outfit, Tinus had worn his old uniform, the wings on his chest dulled by the years of war. One of the cuffs was slightly frayed. Janusz Kowalski was his best man.
Janusz, also in the same kind of faded uniform worn by Tinus but with the word ‘Poland’ on the shoulders, stood next to Tinus as his fellow pilot. The ribbons on his chest were exactly the same. Looking distracted, Janusz’s mind was elsewhere.
After he spent a week in Warsaw searching for any trace of his previous life, the RAF had been told by the Russians to send him out of the country. Uniform or no uniform, they would have him arrested. Ingrid he had found the first day of his visit.
“Where did you spring from, Janusz? I’m married, you know. What were all these messages you kept leaving for me? We were children, you and I, before the war. Just children. My husband is a leading member of the Polish Communist Party. Take my advice and go back to England. We’ve won the war.”
“You mean the communists. Not Poland. Where did they take my father?”
“To some nice cold place in Russia where he won’t be a nuisance.”
“My mother and sisters?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’ve been asked to go to America.”
“Good riddance. Unless you are a communist you have no place in Poland.”
“Goodbye, Ingrid. I kept your pretty face in my head all through the war.”
“Then you were a fool. Before the war you were a Count. Now you are nothing.”
“I’m still a Count.”
“Tell that to your friends, the Americans, and see how far you get.”
As Janusz gave Tinus the ring, he forced himself to only think of the present and the crowd of people seated in chairs on the lawn overlooking the sea. At least he had a job and a temporary permit to live in America. Three of the bridesmaids were well known in the cinema. One of them smiled at him as he took a pace back. The Reverend Thackeray, who it seemed liked the sound of his own voice, went on, extolling everyone’s virtues. Janusz had heard the Reverend’s enemies considered him a frustrated actor unable to get a good part in a movie.
Janusz smiled back at the girl who had starred in a movie. All the girls in America smiled at the men. Unlike in England, it meant nothing. The polite way to behave in a society where everyone said they were equal. It was going to take him time to adjust to a life in the New World where every second émigré called himself a Count in a pronounced, un-British accent. Genevieve was going to let him live in her flat now she was married and going to live in a house. Gillian Kannberg, who shared the flat with Genevieve, was about to go and look for her husband. William Smythe, the well-known newspaper and radio journalist, was taking her to Singapore once the country was liberated and returned to British rule.
Across to his right, the bomber pilot from Australia gave him the thumbs up, giving a nod and a wink towards the bridesmaids. Next to him was Harry Brigandshaw who had given away the bride and a strange-looking woman in a pink dress Genevieve said was her mum. It was one extreme to another. From the rubble and political uncertainty of Poland to the rich, ordered opulence of America dressed up for a movie. When the party was over and Janusz got back on the chartered bus that would take him to his flat in Los Angeles, it would start the beginning of a n
ew life with all its fear and opportunities. Then he smiled. It was good to be alive.
Three rows behind Harry Brigandshaw, sitting between his wife and the man they called Cousin George from Virginia, Betty Smythe was watching the new bride and groom with a smug grin on her face. The ghost was laid. The skeletons in her husband’s cupboard had been rattled into silence, the final curtain coming down in front of the Reverend Thackeray, a fraud if Betty had ever seen one. The ghost-laying had begun when they met each other, Betty standing back to have a good look. Genevieve had smiled with her mismatched eyes, the one almost the colour of smouldering coal, the other a bright, intense blue. She had expected her husband’s knees to buckle, but nothing had happened. The chemistry for William had gone. Instead of the face that haunted his dreams was the face of a friend, a friend who quickly talked of old memories, friend to friend, no glimmer from either of them of lover to lover. For Genevieve there may well have been nothing but a roll in the hay. For William, whatever it had been that had taken him in so wholeheartedly, it had gone. Now Genevieve was safely married to Tinus Oosthuizen, no longer a thorn in Betty’s imagination every time William mentioned Genevieve in passing. Or they went to the cinema and watched her up on the screen.
Feeling slightly nauseous, sitting in the sun under a picture hat decorated with yellow daisies, she hoped Ruthy was not running riot among the rest of the guests’ children in the big room at the top of the house Mrs Hollingsworth had given over as a crèche. Two of Mrs Mendez’s cousins from Mexico had the job of watching the children.
“I love Ruthy, Will. Don’t get me wrong. But this is bliss. We have three whole hours to ourselves. Having the money to pay a nanny is something I dream about.”
“All in good time. When we get home, we’ll employ a nanny and you can come to the office on your own.”
“What about Ruthy?”
“She’s all right now, isn’t she?”
“She’ll be all right. It’s the other girls’ pigtails I worry about. Who’s the woman in the pink dress with an inch of make-up covering her face?”
“Don’t be rude. That’s Esther, Genevieve’s mother. As a young woman when she seduced Merlin I’m told she was a very striking woman.”
“Didn’t he seduce her?”
“I wasn’t there. Have you ever seen so many people at a wedding? Lucky they have a big garden. Where’s young Harry and Bergit? They’re not with Janet and Horatio.”
“I believe they were taken to the beach, under supervision. Said weddings were boring. Isn’t America wonderful? The climate. The people. All the money. Everyone here looks stinking rich.”
“They are, darling. I’ll have to mingle at the reception. If you get lost tag on to Harry and Tina. The more story I dig up on the wedding the more money we make.”
“Don’t worry about me when you want to work. Never stop a man working, I say. It’s all the familiar faces. Familiar from screen. Never seen any of them in the flesh before. This has been the best honeymoon of my life.”
“You’re only meant to have one.”
“Then I’ll treasure it to my dying day, lover.”
Gregory L’Amour watched the proceedings with the same emotion as William Smythe; he was over her. The girl he had brought to the wedding, trying hard to get her face in every photograph, was ten years younger than Genevieve. One of Gerry Hollingsworth’s rising stars. With all Gregory’s heart he hoped the bride and groom would be happy for the rest of their lives. They had had a good chat, as Tinus called it, the previous day. Genevieve had gone off with Tina Brigandshaw to the shops for something.
“It doesn’t end here, Greg,” Tinus had said. “I never once flew in combat without your talisman. Each time we made contact with enemy aircraft I rubbed the rabbit’s foot. Look, you can see there’s very little fur left.”
“I’m glad. Back then I was jealous, buddy. Jealous of the way she looked at you. Jealous of you as a fighter pilot. Now I know I was lucky not to go to war. Too many people didn’t come back from Europe and the Pacific. What was it really like?”
“Frightening. Sad. Yes, sometimes exciting. Like a boxer when they hold up his hand. Except the opponent gets up off the floor in a boxing match. You never forget killing someone. My cousin died in a Lancaster. So many friends in a war that stretched over five long years. As terrible as the bombs on Japan seem now, they will save lives. If America has to invade the Japanese islands, millions will be killed. American and Japanese. Somehow man has got to find a way of arguing without losing his temper and using his fists. Once we were the three musketeers. You remember André Cloete when you came with Genevieve to Oxford? I miss him so much. School. Cricket. Oxford. Rowing on the Thames and the Isis. Janusz is going to be best man tomorrow. I asked him not to mention André in his speech. Once I sat on a stone inside a magic circle on Headley Heath and asked all the gods for protection. Just to be safe. All the time I was holding your rabbit’s foot. Please remain friends. You will always have a big part of our hearts. Find a good girl who loves you, Greg, and not your fame.”
Then the ceremony was over. People rising from their chairs, moving towards the marquee and the drinks. Flash bulbs going off a few feet from his face temporarily blinding his eyes.
“Did you love her, Greg?” asked the girl, surprising him with her perception.
“Oh yes. I loved her. You can’t fool the camera lens all of the time. Now I love her as a friend. She’s giving up the movies. Maybe stage acting after she has had her children. They are going to have three, so she tells me. What we have left, she and I, is our chemistry on screen which will last forever if they replay old movies. They’re going to live in New York when they come back from Mexico. For their honeymoon Tinus has found them an island off the coast with just one thatched house and no other people. Won’t tell anyone where. She wants to be Mrs Oosthuizen, no longer Genevieve.”
“Does the press know she’s retiring?”
“They don’t want to make a fuss. Just let it happen. The orchestra is striking up. Anything over twelve instruments, I’m informed, is an orchestra not a band. I call it a swing band. Let’s go and dance.”
With a certain amount of self-satisfaction, Tina Brigandshaw watched the proceedings sitting at the top table, a long series of interconnected tables covered in one long, white tablecloth, two away from the groom. From where she sat, the dance floor was swinging, the guests glad to get out of the sun and shake a leg. The fact the wedding she had planned so carefully cost a small fortune had never entered her head. Harry had paid for the wedding with a small fraction of the profit he made from the Tender Meat Company supplying tinned food to the Allied armies around the world. She had stinted on nothing. The best florist for the flowers. The best caterer for the food. A wine connoisseur recommended by Gerry Hollingsworth for drinks. The smart little wedding they had given Mary Ross and her plumber on the lawns of Hastings Court paled into nothing compared to the raucous opulence in front of her.
For the first time in years, Tina felt she was doing something worthwhile, glowing in the warmth of all the attention, the reflected attention, she admitted to herself, directed at the star of the show, Genevieve. William Smythe had promised to mention her by name as the well-known Mrs Brigandshaw from Hastings Court in the English county of Surrey who planned the sumptuous wedding attended by so many Hollywood stars. For the first time in her life, Tina felt she had personally arrived. If only her children, left at boarding school in England, could now see her sitting with the stars.
Even the upset of watching Tinus and Janusz in their RAF uniforms had lasted through the Reverend Thackeray’s ceremony, a man of God who impressed her immensely. Never before had Tina met a famous priest, one as equally recognisable to the press as the stars. With all the publicity in the English papers, the old families in Surrey who looked at her down their noses would have to think again, accept her in English society despite the fact she was raised in a railway cottage, her father a porter at the time she was born. Now, w
ith the biggest wedding in America for many a year swirling around her, she was satisfied.
“Isn’t it all wonderful?” she said to Cousin George sitting on her right, Harry on her left smiling more than she had seen him do since Anthony’s death.
“Mixing with the rich and famous, I’d call it. My wife never seen nothing like this before. You done a job fit for a queen. Pity her father didn’t come. Like to have shaken hands with a real-life baron. Never done that before, despite me being a real life baronet under all my American. This band can play real swing. Where’d you get them, Tina? Come on Thelma, you and I are going to dance.”
Getting up, moving back his chair, Cousin George bowed from the waist to his wife, pulled back her chair and offered her his hand.
“Can you dance, George?”
“Let’s go find out. There are still things you don’t know about George. All these young good-looking people make me feel a young man with his beautiful wife.”
“What’s got into you?”
“The wedding, Thelma. Weddings make me smile.”
Harry Brigandshaw, watching with pleasure the happiness between Cousin George and Thelma, was thinking how different his life could have been had his great-grandfather come to America instead of his younger brother. That way, Harry surmised, he would have been an American. Had he been twenty years younger he might have considered living in America, a compromise between England and Africa for Tina.
“Would you have liked to live in America, Tina?”
“Oh yes. There’s none of the class nonsense in America.”
“I think there is. Here it’s just money, not who your father was. People always drift into company where they feel most comfortable.”
“What would we do with Hastings Court?”
“Or Elephant Walk?”
“You’re not harping back on that one, Harry. We’ve been through all that.”
“It’s always in the back of my mind. It gets into your blood.”