by Peter Rimmer
“You see that damn film again and you and I are going to fight.”
“Andre, it’s none of your business. You’ve been down to London three times to see Fleur at the Windmill.”
“That’s different. She’s my girlfriend.”
“And how many others? The Windmill is a girlie show for jaded old men to look at young girls kicking up their legs. Don’t tell me Celia isn’t being bedded by my Uncle Barnaby for all his trouble.”
“He’s not your real uncle.”
“You’re right. He isn’t. I thoroughly despise the man. He’ll dump her when he’s had enough. They were both fools to give up their music studies at the Royal College and I feel responsible as I introduced Celia to Barnaby St Clair who promptly twisted her mind.”
“Fleur seems happy. There’s not much scope for a violin player in an orchestra even if they got into one at the end of four years’ hard study. Fleur said they were tired of waiting for their lives to begin.”
“And you’re going home in January.”
“You make it sound as if I have been using her.”
“Let’s go get a beer, Andre. It’s the thought of that smooth bastard in bed with my girl.”
“We all have to move on. If you think of her as your girl, why haven’t you come down to London with me at the weekends?”
“She was going back to America with him. The only thing I won’t do is make a fool of myself.”
“I have a better idea. Let’s go down to the Mitre and get tight.”
For a moment the two friends looked at each other. Tinus knew that to tell his male friend he was going to miss him when Andre went back to Africa would have been worse than making a fool of himself in public. Tinus knew and Tinus knew Andre knew; they were at the parting of their ways. They had grown up, no longer schoolboys but adults going out into a hostile world.
“If there is a war, are you coming back to join the RAF?”
“Of course I am… You’ll see her again. Mark my words. We’re the three musketeers.”
While Tinus was trying to come to terms with his love life and education, in Tyneside a thick fog was rolling up the river from the North Sea. Above the shipyard a dark sky was looking like snow to Alfie Hanshaw. Over his shoulder was a canvas sack containing the tools of his trade as a riveter. The sign said wanted and underneath a list of trades, the third on the list reading riveter. The rumour was right. The yard was about to lay the keel to a new ship for the British navy. Horatio Wakefield had been right, even if he did refer to a keel as a hull. All Alfie wanted now was a job to retrieve his long-lost self-respect. If war meant work, he had told Nel, then roll out the guns. She had listened to him ranting on as she always did, the only solid part left in his life.
“How it works for the likes of you and me is a bloody mystery. We have a damn big war which we win to save the world, next minute we’re starving. Some bugger in Germany shouts off his mouth, frightens the shit out of all them toffs in London, and now Fred Corbit says they’re hiring. If we have a war the Huns will sink our merchant ships which the yard will have to replace putting me, Alfie Hanshaw, back to work for the rest of his life. Can you tell me what’s going on, Nel? It’s daft. People got to threaten to blow off each other’s bollocks for the working man to get a job. You’d think it would be the other way round. The likes of me would help build ships to trade with the world, not end up on the bottom of the sea.”
“I don’t care so long you got work. Neither Chris nor Megan got a pair of shoes and winter’s coming. We ain’t got no coal and weren’t it not for your cousin Paul on the council we’d been kicked out of this council house more likely.”
“First I got to get one of them jobs.”
By the time he stood in the shed after showing the geezer his apprenticeship papers he was blowing warm breath into his hands with a broad grin on his face. Everyone, it seemed, was being offered a job sweeping up the floors if they didn’t have a trade. All round the shipyard it was a hive of activity that came and went from Alfie’s view as the fog swirled around from the sea.
“Riveter,” he said again with pride.
“Sign here.”
“How much?”
“Two bob an hour.”
“Thanks, guv.”
“Tomorrow with your sack. Seven o’clock sharp until six when the whistle blows, six days a week.”
“Blimey.”
“What’s the matter, cock?”
“I can’t add up enough of them two bobs.”
“You get paid once a week. Can you last that long?”
“Just... What’s it going to be?”
“An aircraft carrier. We’re going to blow Jerry back into the sea. Swordfish. Them’s the aircraft. Carry a bloody big torpedo under their belly, according to the man from the Ministry. You were too young to be in the last war. Least this time I’m too old to go to sea... Next! What you done before, cock?”
As he told Nel when he got home, being ignored at the end was a right royal pleasure; he had a job. By then the thick fog had swallowed up their semi-detached house.
Three weeks later, when Horatio Wakefield opened a registered letter that had been delivered to his door, a postal order for the exact amount of a third class train ticket from London to Newcastle-upon-Tyne fell into his hand. With the money order was a note in two handwritings: ‘Thank you from Alfie, Nel, Chris and Megan’. They had all signed the laboriously written note, the children with different coloured crosses made with crayons. On the note was an address which Horatio put aside to add to his Christmas card list.
Later that day in the evening, when William Smythe came round for supper, the postal order was on the dining room table next to the uncorked bottle of red wine.
“It restores my faith in humanity, William. Why is it the ordinary people are honest in kind and word while the rest of the world rob their grandmother to get on in the world? Must have got himself a job. I told you about that night Alfie Hanshaw came to stay with us after Mosley’s march fizzled out leaving hundreds of poor sods without the means of getting home. You think Mosley with all his upper-class crap worried about the workers? Sod them. He wanted power.”
“They’re laying a keel for a new aircraft carrier on Tyneside,” said William.
“Must be the job. He’s a riveter. What’s the matter with you, Will? You don’t want to have a drink. You look miserable.”
“I am. At London airport at the beginning of the month she gave me a peck on the cheek. That chap Paul Dexter was with her, his hands all over the place. Hate the bastard. At the other end Hollingsworth and L’Amour were waiting to greet the big star, both of them panting, I have no doubt. Since then not a word, but what could I expect?”
“Sounds like you are jealous,” said Janet Wakefield from the couch where she was feeding young Harry from a bottle, her milk having dried up after five months. “You should find a young girl and impress her with your worldliness. That can work. Then you can settle down and become an ordinary family man like the rest of us.”
“Sarcasm will get you nowhere, Janet.”
“I’m being realistic, William. Look at us; we’re happy. Look at you; you’re miserable.”
“Not sure I can settle down to married life. I’m off and away too often.”
“But you’d marry Genevieve if she let you.”
“That’s different.”
“Not at all. Just proves if you find a nice girl you’ll settle down.”
“And if war breaks out?”
“We’re all in the same boat,” said Horatio.
“At least Genevieve is far from the brewing trouble. Europe’s getting out of hand. They are flocking to Spain. Can you imagine getting yourself killed for some stupid ideal you know nothing about? They call it the International Brigade and half of them are idealistic young Frenchmen fighting the Republican cause against Franco. They should mind their own damn business. The governments are giving lip service to telling the young men of Europe to leave Spain a
lone to fight its own battles. My guess is they are testing men and weapons for the bigger war to come. Germany has sent squadrons of its air force to help the fascist Franco; dive-bombers. Italy is supporting Franco. Even a few stupid Americans are waving self-righteous flags for the Republicans and getting themselves killed fighting Franco’s fascists. What is it with young men? They all think they know best and all want to go to war.”
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” said Janet primly, taking the bottle out of Harry’s small mouth; the baby had fallen fast asleep.
“Does anyone ever know what they are doing?” asked William.
“I do. I want ten more children.”
“So the boys will grow up and go to war?”
“I’ll box their ears.”
“To add to the mix of crass stupidity,” William went on to keep his mind off Genevieve, “Italy has conquered Ethiopia for a reason that quite escapes me, using mustard gas on Ethiopian troops and civilians, weapons banned by the Geneva Convention.”
“They’re jealous of us,” said Horatio. “Want their own empire. Mussolini likes to strut around. He’s a bully and the Italians love him now he’s restoring their pride.”
“Everyone thinks they can change the world for the better,” said Janet getting up from the couch, “but they can’t. They just keep stirring the same old mess. We will now have supper. Both of you can go and wash your hands in the downstairs closet.”
The two men sheepishly went off to wash their hands in the small basin before sitting down to supper.
“Your poor children are going to have a hard time growing up in this house,” said William half under his breath to Horatio.
“I heard that,” said Janet.
“They’ll love their mother like I do,” said Horatio, taking his place at the head of the table after dutifully washing his clean hands.
Then they all grinned at each other and tucked into the food Janet had laid out on the table, Harry safely in his cot next to her chair. When Horatio stopped eating to pour the wine they raised their glasses to each other.
“To friendship,” said William, the word echoed by Janet and Horatio.
“This food is delicious, Janet,” said William. “At least young Harry and his siblings won’t starve. My father said the second most important thing after being born is to be born to a mother who is a damn good cook. That the way to any man’s heart is through his stomach.”
Part 6
The All American Man — March to June 1937
1
The children were growing up. Watching his youngest son Kim screaming down the narrow path between the elm trees, Harry Brigandshaw remembered it was the boy’s seventh birthday at the end of the month. The red tricycle was under full control as it careered over the bumps and through the piles of last year’s wet leaves. Some of the other children were further into the small wood at the end of the path; Harry could hear them calling to each other, the perfect sound of happiness.
Ever since the spring flowers had come out on the banks of the lawns, Harry had begun to lose his mental and physical lethargy as his body finally threw off the effects of his forced stay in the Tutsi village after his seaplane had crashed into the river. The bugs, as his local doctor liked to call them, had finally worked their way through his system, even the bilharzia parasite leaving no permanent scars in the way the London doctors had expected.
By the time he watched Kim hurtle down the slope and disappear through the trees into the wood, Harry had convinced himself he was as right as rain, the work at the Air Ministry during the week a daily pleasure, no longer a burden. Best of all he again had the joy for life, a hope for the future and with it the energy to do something about it for his children.
Anthony, the eldest boy, was turning fourteen in just over a month, already pestering Harry to teach him to fly an aeroplane, something with a war brewing Harry had no intention of doing; the lad’s voice was breaking, the boy turning into a man in front of Harry’s eyes. The younger boys, Frank and Dorian, were two years apart from each other. For Beth it would not be so long before the boys began calling to do more than scream around the wood on a bright March morning, the first truly warm day Harry remembered in the year.
To add to everyone’s consternation among the older generation who knew, young Frank, eleven years old, looked more and more like Barnaby St Clair. On a visit to Dorset to see Tina’s parents with the children they had all gone out walking along the small river that led from the railway cottage of his in-laws towards the ancestral home of his late first wife when they had bumped into Lady St Clair walking the dogs.
The embarrassing coincidence had taken place a mile from Purbeck Manor three weeks earlier, everyone coming upon each other through the trees before they had a chance of doing anything to avoid the meeting. Lady St Clair looked ten years older to Harry after the death of Lord St Clair that had been followed a week later by Old Warren who had turned his face to the wall; the two old men had been inseparable for years in their common love of Lord St Clair’s prize pigs and pedigree herd of cows. The master and servant divide was long lost in the true friendship some men were lucky to find, reminding Harry at the time when he heard about Old Warren of how much he missed young Tinus’s father.
Young Frank had almost barged into Lady St Clair deep in her own thoughts and memories, the spaniel dogs off the leash and sniffing at anything they could find as they looked for the scent of rabbits.
“Barnaby, please look where you are going!” Lady St Clair had snapped before she came out of her reverie to see the rest of them looking at her in stony silence, acute embarrassment on the faces of Harry and his wife Tina who had not seen Lady St Clair for years.
“My name is Frank, who are you?” said Frank rudely, soliciting a clip round the ear from his father.
Having never before been hit by his father, Frank burst into tears, holding his boxed ear that Harry knew by the pain in his hand would be ringing for a while to come. The happy walk along the familiar river with his young family had turned to frowns of not understanding what was going on.
“Frank, apologise to Lady St Clair for being rude.”
“I’m sorry,” said the little boy sulkily, still nursing his ear while keeping his eye on his father, the burst of tears quickly drying up.
“So you’re Frank. I’m sorry. It was my fault. All young boys look so much alike, Harry. My goodness, I was just remembering when Barnaby threw your Lucinda in the river when they were children which is how I made that mistake. Memories are all I have left. Tina and Harry, how nice to see you. Now tell me, which is which among the rest of the children? Why don’t you all come back to the Manor for a glass of lemonade? Merlin would so love to see you, Harry. We had no idea you were in Dorset. Robert has started a new book. You two were such good friends when you were up at Oxford together. My grandson Richard would so like to meet your children. It’s been too many years, Tina, since you visited the Manor. How is Mr Pringle? How is Mrs Pringle? Yes, I suppose they are getting old like the rest of us. Please give them both my best regards.”
Forgetting all about the lemonade and her grandson Richard, they had watched the old woman whistle politely for the dogs and put the one old bitch on a leash, apparently having forgotten she had met anyone.
“Come along, dogs. Dinner time. Now don’t you go pulling on the leash, Pinta.”
They had all watched Lady St Clair walk back in the direction from which she had come, the old dog called Pinta straining on the leash trying to get back at the rabbits. Just before the old woman disappeared into the trees she bent down and let Pinta off the leash.
“She’s losing her memory,” said Harry sadly.
“Who is she?” asked Frank.
“Uncle Barnaby’s mother. She mistook you for her son.”
“Does she have a son my age?”
Over the top of the boy they both called their son, Harry had exchanged glances with Tina before they all trooped home to the railway c
ottage. Only when Tina’s parents were in sight with the children already running into the old cottage built many years earlier by the Southern Railway Company, did Harry’s wife Tina utter a word.
“That was a quick cover-up back there. She knows, Harry.”
“Probably. Leave it alone, Tina. What’s done is done. Nothing any of us can do about Barnaby being Frank’s father can ever be changed.”
“That’s about the first time you have said that out loud.”
“What difference does it make? I just hope the boy doesn’t turn out as devious as Barnaby with a penchant for young girls. By the way, he’s still going out with Celia, if that doesn’t make you jealous.”
“Please, Harry. We’ve been through all that a dozen times before, even if we never spoke of it in so many words.”
“Do you ever wish you had been born into the same class as Lady St Clair? That he had married you?”
“What do you want me to say, Harry? We have the children to think about. You knew all about Barnaby and me before you seduced me on the SS Corfe Castle.”
“I rather thought it was you seducing me.”
“Successful seduction takes two people, Harry. Would it help if I said I loved you?”
“Not much.”
Tina, now walking across the lawn towards him, brought Harry back to the present. At thirty-eight she was still a good-looking woman. As marriages went, theirs was as good as many of the others Harry had watched during his life. They both loved the children despite all their nonsense, if not because of all the mayhem caused by youth and pent-up energy. She was smiling at him, no idea he had played back through his mind the recent embarrassment in Dorset, the rare exchange of truth about their own feelings for each other.