Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

by Sulari Gentill

  Wilfred stood, shaking his head. “I’d better make some calls.” He regarded Rowland sternly. “But once this is sorted, you and your idle Bolshie friends are on the first ship to Sydney!”

  Rowland flared. “I am not a child, Wil. The days when you could pack me off out of the country are long gone.”

  Wilfred smiled coldly. “Don’t count on it, Rowly.”

  The Sinclairs had used Allen and Overy to manage their affairs in Britain and France for the past two years. And though the learned gentlemen were not often called to act on criminal matters, they performed admirably to secure the release of Mr. Elias Isaacs and Miss Allison Dawe from the Brixton court.

  The task had been made arguably more difficult by the fact that Mr. Isaacs—outraged at having his cheeks rubbed with blotting paper to test for rouge—had taken the opportunity to speak out against capitalist oppression and nearly incited a riot among his fellow detainees. As such the constabulary was not inclined to be lenient.

  George Allen gave the matter his personal attention, impressing all and sundry with his extraordinary command of legal maxims in their original Latin. He made representations to a variety of people and eventually the poet was released. As a special favour to the younger Mr. Sinclair, Allen also secured the release of a certain Cecil F. Buchan. Resigned to the follies and indiscretions of young men, and financially invested in retaining the business of both Sinclair brothers, the wily lawyer mentioned nothing of Buchan to Wilfred.

  Having been formally charged, Milton was required to present before the courts the following month. Rowland would not hear of returning to Sydney without him no matter what Wilfred directed or threatened. And so the Sinclair brothers were at odds, but that was not unusual.

  The sun had risen by the time Rowland finally escorted Allie Dawe to her Belgravia residence. On the doorstep she’d started to cry. “It’s all ruined,” she wept. “My career is in tatters and you’ll never speak to me again for inviting you to such a place. First Uncle Alfred and now this… Whatever must you think of me, Mr. Sinclair? Do you hate me for inviting you to that den of inequity and vice?”

  “To be honest, Miss Dawe, I was having rather a good time until the constabulary arrived,” Rowland said kindly and quite sincerely. “But I do think that chap Erroll might have warned you.”

  “You’ve been so understanding, Mr. Sinclair.” Allie took the handkerchief he offered her and wiped her eyes. “I’ve been quite frightened since Uncle Alfred died. I’m not sure what to do. I thought if I could sing, I’d be able to look after mother and myself even without Uncle Alfred’s help.” She broke down again. “I’m not sure how things could be any worse.”

  Rowland wasn’t entirely sure what to do himself. He’d run out of handkerchiefs.

  Allie clutched his arm. “Will I ever see you again, Mr. Sinclair? I could not blame you for wanting to leave me and my troubles to whatever cruel fate has in store!”

  Rowland smiled. Despite what he sensed was a genuine panic, Allie Dawe had quite a flair for the melodramatic. “I’d better come in and explain to your mother, don’t you think?”

  The housekeeper opened the door and, overjoyed to see Allie, shouted for the lady of the house. Mrs. Dawe came slowly down the stairs wearing a sky blue matinee jacket of chiffon and feathers over a matching floor-length nightgown. Briefly, Rowland wondered if Lord Pierrepont had ever tried on this particular ensemble—it was at least, as far as nightgowns went, more appropriate for a man of his age than the revealing negligee in which he’d been killed.

  Mrs. Dawe paused mid-stair, throwing back her head and placing her hand limply against her forehead. She held the pose for several seconds before she resumed her descent.

  “Allie darling,” she said, allowing the girl to kiss her offered cheek. “I haven’t slept a wink worrying about you—I have the most dreadful headache. Oh, where have you been? I expected you home hours ago.”

  Rowland waited as Allie explained. Quite predictably, Mrs. Dawe gasped, stumbled towards a convenient chaise lounge and fainted.

  “Drink this.” Edna handed him a steaming cup from the tray that Beresford had placed on the sideboard.

  Rowland was less than enthusiastic. He wasn’t sure he liked malted milk. Still, he drank it obediently.

  Edna curled up on the settee beside him.

  Milton was already stretched out asleep on the other couch, and Clyde snored softly in an armchair. Their dinner jackets had been tossed carelessly over the back of a chair, their ties removed and the collar studs undone, but that was as much preparation for sleep as they could manage. Rowland had dozed off for a few minutes but had woken soon after into a sharp and familiar terror.

  “What are your dreams about, Rowly?” Edna asked gently as she rested her head drowsily against his shoulder. She’d been awake to notice the manner in which he’d jolted back to consciousness.

  “It’s all a bit muddled,” he said. “Mostly Germany. I can’t seem to get away from that moment when my arm snapped or when that boy fired.” He smiled ruefully. “You’d think that since I know how it turns out…” Rowland dragged at his hair, irritated. The clarity of his mind’s eye had always served him as an artist by casting memory to vibrant detail, but now it forced him to relive those moments of agony and panic night after night.

  “I used to have nightmares after my mother died,” Edna said quietly. “I found her you see.”

  Rowland placed his uninjured arm around the sculptress. Marguerite Higgins had taken her own life when her daughter was just a child. He’d known the fact for only a short while, and so it staggered him still.

  “She used a shotgun, you know.”

  Rowland shook his head and held Edna close to him, sickened by the thought of what she would have found after the shotgun had done its grisly work.

  Edna’s voice was quiet and sad. “There was so much blood, Rowly, more than seemed possible. Papa had the walls papered because the blood would show through no matter how many times we painted… but we couldn’t paper the ceiling.” She shuddered.

  “My God, Ed, I’m sorry… I wish I could…”

  She looked up at him. “I’m all right, Rowly. It was a long time ago. Dear Papa… he stayed by my bed, holding my hand every night for a year. It kept away the nightmares.” She pulled Rowland’s arm gently off her shoulder and took his hand. “Why don’t you try to sleep now, Rowly?”

  “I’m a grown man, Ed.”

  “You look so tired, darling,” she said, frowning. “Just try.”

  Rowland couldn’t deny he was tired. A kind of agitated exhaustion.

  Smiling suddenly, Edna stood and fetched the book which lay facedown and open on Milton’s chest. She wriggled back into a comfortable position beside Rowland.

  “What are you doing?” Rowland asked, aware of the familiar rose scent of Edna’s closeness.

  “This will help you sleep,” she promised opening the volume of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. “I remember studying it at school; it’d knock me out in seconds.” She laughed, leaning her head back on his shoulder as she did so. “And you may as well brush up—I suspect that Milt will be stealing from his namesake very soon.”

  Rowland smiled. He’d always kept note of what Milton was reading. It helped him decipher who exactly the poet was plagiarising. Clearly the connection had not escaped Edna either.

  She read then, her voice languid and drowsy. Perhaps it was that, or the malted milk, or the fact that the sculptress was curled into his side, but Rowland did sleep, and for a time, a short time, it was undisturbed.

  9

  FOREIGN NEWS

  LONDON ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

  June, 1933

  Sixty-six nations took their places last week at the long pewlike desks of the London Geological Museum, all ranged alphabetically, in French, by tactful Alfred the Seater so that Cordell Hull of Tennessee (Etats Unis) sat at the end of the row, before, not next to, the kinky-polled delegates from Addis Ababa (Ethiopie). The League of Na
tions organizing committee invited 67 nations but Panama was too poor to accept.

  Time Magazine

  Beresford presented the letter on a silver tray. Rowland opened it quickly with scant regard for the gold leaf embossing and wax seal on the envelope. Scanning the meticulous copperplate on the scallop-edged sheet within, he frowned.

  “Problem, Rowly?” Clyde asked.

  “A familial summons,” he said.

  “From Wilfred?”

  “No… one of the local Sinclairs—my cousin.”

  “There are local Sinclairs?” Edna asked moving to perch on the arm of his chair.

  Rowland nodded. “One or two. Wilfred had Quex keep an eye on me when I was at school in England.”

  “Quex?”

  “Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair. God knows why they call him Quex.”

  “Ahh… The Gay Lord Quex—a comedy in four acts,” Milton murmured. “Perhaps your cousin was a thespian.”

  Rowland smiled. “It probably wouldn’t be wise to accuse Quex of that.”

  “Well, it’s lovely that he wants to see you.” Edna peered curiously at the note. “Were you close?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Why not?”

  Rowland smiled. Edna had always been rather direct.

  “I was fifteen when I was sent over here to school,” he said. “Quex is about twenty years older than Wil, and was busy doing whatever it is that admirals do—I really only saw him when I was in some kind of trouble.”

  “You don’t suppose he knows that you were in Soho last night, do you?” Milton glanced at The Daily Mail which lay open on the card table. The paper carried a lurid account of the gentlemen’s dance.

  Rowland shook his head. Milton alone had taken the fall for their presence at the event. The poet’s name had been listed along with Buchan’s in what was claimed to be the public interest. The dance was decried across the media as an example of the lax morality and decadent perversion of the upper classes.

  For the most part, Milton seemed to regard the incident as a grand joke, though every now and then he was moved to quote Wilde.

  “Wilfred may have mentioned it to him,” Clyde speculated. The summons was surely too coincidental.

  “I doubt it,” Rowland said. “Wil is usually discreet about my indiscretions.” He sighed as he dropped the letter back onto the tray. “But he may well have let Quex know I’m in London.”

  “So, you’ll have to go see him?” Edna asked, watching Rowland carefully.

  “Yes, eventually.” Rowland checked his watch. Wilfred was sending a car at ten to take him to the Geological Museum—the venue of the London Economic Conference. He was not entirely sure why he was being sent for, but he assumed—hoped—it meant that Stanley Melbourne Bruce had found someone who would give him a hearing.

  “We’d best set off,” he said, grabbing his hat from the stand by the door and waiting for Edna to pull on her gloves.

  Ethel Bruce had invited the sculptress to join her and Kate for luncheon. Edna was sure that the minister’s wife had discovered some tantalising gossip about the late Lord Pierrepont through her networks among the Empire wives. She did, in any case, rather like Mrs. Bruce.

  And so they left Clyde and Milton to their own devices.

  The black Rolls Royce took them first to the Bruces’ terrace in Ennismore Gardens, where Edna alighted to join the ladies and both Bruce and Wilfred climbed in.

  Stanley Melbourne Bruce was dressed in the impeccably conservative and elegant style with which Australian caricature artists made him synonymous. He made no mention of the previous night’s affair. Rowland’s eyes moved to Bruce’s feet, checking for spats. Bruce noticed.

  He shook his head. “For pity’s sake, man, it’s the middle of summer!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “The attire for which you are so obviously looking, which the gullible Antipodean media have convinced hoi polloi I never step outdoors without, is actually an item which is sensibly worn in the winter—helps with chilblains.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m meeting with Chamberlain today. If the opportunity so arises I shall introduce you, but I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. You’ll just have to be on hand on the off-chance that I can convince him to have a drink with you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can watch from the public gallery. You might even find it interesting.”

  Rowland nodded politely, though he very much doubted it.

  The hall in which the conference was being held had been arranged with pewlike desks at which representatives of the sixty-six participating nations took their places in an order determined alphabetically and in French. Wilfred sat with the Australian delegation in the first pew and Bruce sat with his fellow gentlemen of the League of Nations who had organised the conference. From the vantage of the elevated public gallery, Rowland watched with the gathering of London press and a scribbling gaggle of foreign correspondents who followed the proceedings with a zealous attention. In this company, he felt the need to at least feign some sort of appreciation for the importance of the men below, and so he consciously set his face to look engaged.

  It was of some consolation that the conference hall was at least visually interesting: the dark-skinned delegates from African nations, the representatives of the subcontinent and, of course, the delegations from Europe. Cordell Hull, the American Secretary of State, stood by his chair in conversation with Daladier, the French delegate. The Frenchman’s hands moved expansively and vigorously as he spoke. The American stood with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his waistcoat, rocking slightly on his heels.

  An enthusiastic member of the British contingent opened with an impassioned presentation on currency exchange. One by one the delegates rose to speak on the subject. Some spoke through interpreters, or with heavy accents. By the sixth delegate, Rowland was restless and becoming desperate for distraction. He had counted the ceiling roses, imagined wives for each delegate, and mentally raced the Spanish translator.

  He pulled the artist’s notebook from his breast pocket and attempted to clamp it open between his thumb and the cast. Inevitably it slipped from this awkward grasp and fell between the two seats in front of him.

  The occupant of one of those seats turned sharply—an old man, small and dumpy with penetrating eyes beneath thick, untidy eyebrows that sloped down in a way that made him seem both enquiring and melancholy. His moustache was wide and thick and he, too, had a notebook.

  He reached down to retrieve what Rowland had dropped. The battered leather book had fallen open. Clearing his throat, he paused to take the liberty of leafing through it. Sketches of naked women, as one would expect in the notebook of a young man, and darker drawings of people gathered under Nazi banners, soldiers—strutting, assured—and civilians with their faces turned away. The edges of the pages were stained a dark brown. The notebook had at some time been splattered with blood. All this seemed to pique the old man’s interest. He returned the notebook and introduced himself.

  “Herbert Wells,” he said in a piping voice. “I say, did you draw these?”

  “Rowland Sinclair, Mr. Wells… yes.”

  “Not bad, my boy—jolly good in fact. I’ve been known to pen the odd picshua myself.”

  Rowland slipped the notebook back into his jacket. “I’m afraid I find penning anything rather tricky at present,” he said ruefully. Though he’d only been in the cast for a few days, it felt like an age. He nodded towards Wells’ notebook. “Are you…?”

  “Sketching the conference? In a manner of speaking, my boy. You’re an Australian are you?” He scrutinised Rowland as if he could see nationality in his features. “Your countrymen among the delegates have been honing my ear for the Australian inflection. I have been looking in vain for inspiration for my latest book.”

  It was only then that Rowland realised that he was talking to the renowned novelist and futurist, H.G. Wells. Clearly it showed on his face, for Wel
ls smiled.

  “I am not entirely unknown in the Antipodes then?”

  “Not entirely,” Rowland replied. “An honour to make your acquaintance, Mr. Wells. I hope I haven’t interrupted your… research.”

  “Not at all, my boy. I had hoped for a chapter on vision and hope but I fear I shall have to write instead about petty bickering and self-interested posturing! Even the Soviets are entirely unimpressive.”

  Wells beckoned Rowland to the seat beside him.

  “The world is in debt, Sinclair, but most of that debt is owed to the Americans.” He pointed to Cordell Hull. “That gentleman there holds the financial future of the civilised planet in his hands. If the Americans can bring themselves to act in the interests of the world as a whole, then perhaps there is a chance, but I would not wager more than a shilling upon it.”

  For some reason Rowland recalled then that Cordell Hull was the last person to have seen Pierrepont alive. He wondered what the American Secretary of State thought of the peer’s strange demise, if he had indeed been told it was anything out of the ordinary.

  “Are they actually making any decisions here?” Rowland asked sceptically. He was not particularly well versed on the processes of international politics but he presumed that in this arena, as in business, all the actual negotiation was done beforehand at the Masonic Temple or other such venue.

  Wells nodded. “You have a valid point, Sinclair, but a good businessman keeps his word. A good politician doesn’t give the same weight to his promises.” He pointed out MacDonald, Prime Minister of Britain, Daladier of France and Cordell Hull. “Those gentlemen believe they have an agreement, a way forward; that, after this conference, mankind will hail them all as heroes.”

  “Are they wrong to believe this?”

  Wells shrugged. “Hull has, in the finest American tradition, reminded us of the piety of his nation. With grave and splendid words he has called on the rest of the world to abandon such sins as selfishness. He has called on his God to forbid, and the delegates to resist, the temptation of the serpent that carries local interest in her belly… but to ask that of his own president is perhaps even more than his God could expect.”