by Peter Rimmer
“Can I bring you a drink?”
“Why not bring your bottle in here and have another one with me?” she giggled.
“It’s very lonely week after week on my own. Nothing to do. No one to look after. I don’t really have any friends. Being a gentleman’s gentleman doesn’t bring me into contact with many people. I shall be most obliged to bring my whisky bottle, though in all honesty the bottle more rightly belongs to Lord St Clair. Drinking alone is a terrible habit, but what else can I do? I don’t like the country and someone must look after the flat.”
“The bottle, Smithers. It’s cold outside. Can you make me up a room?”
When Smithers came back with the bottle of whisky on a silver tray with two glasses, she realised the advantage of having a barmaid for a mother that the whole world knew about. A bastard with a Lord for a father was suspended somewhere between the aristocracy and the working classes with none of the advantages or disadvantages of either.
“Your overnight case is in your usual room,” said Smithers formally.
“Now sit down and tell me what’s been happening in England.”
Surprisingly, Smithers sat down comfortably in her father’s armchair without a blink, pouring the drinks where he sat.
“Don’t you know? We’re preparing to go to war while kidding ourselves nothing bad is going to happen. Rather like Sir Francis Drake playing his game of bowls in sight of the sails of the Spanish Armada.”
“I have a friend who is a journalist. I’d better give him a ring. First a drink to welcome me home. How is my father?”
“The strangest part of it all. Lord St Clair has grown fond of his late father’s pigs. The cows, he tells me, talk to him. He is again riding a horse. Your father is now a man of the country as if London and this flat never existed. I’m too old to look after another man; every man has different habits a valet has to know by instinct to perform his job properly. Now, why are you in London, if I may ask without sounding impertinent?”
“It’s Christmas. I have an audition for a London production and I’m tired of making films. Keeper of the Legend is finished, in the can as they say in America, making me an out of work actress. Films are made up of thousands upon thousands of bits the editors make into the film you see on the screen. Most of making a film is made up of waiting around. I want to go on the stage where from the opening curtain you stay in the part, not drink coffee and tea in the middle as yourself. A play is satisfying. You have an audience who reacts. You never know what people think of your film part until you read it in the paper. My Uncle Robert says it was like writing the book; he was never there to feel the reader’s reaction, or hear him laugh. People on a film set do their jobs and rarely interact except to pretend they are having a wonderful time getting rich… Cheers, Smithers.”
“Your very good health, Miss Genevieve. And welcome home. Do you have the phone number of your journalist friend or shall I look it up in the book?”
“He may not even be in England.”
The contrast for Genevieve was overwhelming; from the chaos and noise of making a film, to the silent flat trying to cheer up an old and faithful servant her father had abandoned. She rarely drank anymore, neither liking the taste nor losing her control. Louis Casimir, who still called himself by his American name of Gerry Hollingsworth, drank through the day now he was living with his wife, his hands off the young girls prepared to do anything to get into films. Living in his house on the beach with so many people was like living on the film set all day long, not a moment to herself to be herself, to be normal. Always someone to impress. Always avoiding the looks of lechery.
No one wanted to know Genevieve, they just wanted to take her to bed. And this included some of the women in the industry, the women with power who were too old to attract a new husband or a handsome young boy they didn’t have to buy, and had taken to relieving their frustration on pretty young girls flitting around the fringe of the limelight. There was a feeling of desperation among all of them, men and women, from stars like Gregory L’Amour, who in the end had given up trying his luck with her, to fat, bald-headed men like Mr Hollingsworth, who still gave her that look of longing, as if the only way he could satisfy his life was by making her his mistress; his star, whose father held one of the oldest titles in England, something Hollywood was only able to manufacture on screen.
The film industry had opened her eyes far too wide and what she saw she did not like. Everyone wanted something more. No one was satisfied with what they had; the wife, the car, the house, even the dress they were wearing. All those people milling around all day and night had made her grow up too fast. She’d tasted everything life had to give in a headlong rush and had ended up hollow, wondering what would give her satisfaction, the kind of satisfaction she knew people without such a high opinion of themselves found with each other in a family; a family that cherished each other instead of using each other for what they could get.
Looking at Smithers’s watery eyes regarding her with so much genuine pleasure, she knew he was a better person than the rest of them put together; the man wanted her company to enjoy his drink, not her body, her fame or her new-found money.
“Do you know, Smithers, I don’t drink very much but I think I’ll have another one.”
And there they were, she thought. A girl with a first name only. A man with a last name only. If she asked her father, Genevieve was sure he would have no idea of Smithers’s first name. Maybe Smithers’s mother had known long, long ago.
The audition the next day was a disaster. The play, Private Lives, was set in Paris in 1930, written by Noël Coward.
She was to play the part of Amanda, a divorcee who smoked cigarettes through a foot-long cigarette holder. Genevieve, trying to get into the part, had brought along the thin black holder for the audition. When her nerves made her hands shake, the lighted cigarette dropped from the end of the vibrating holder into her bag resting on her knees. Carrying on with the lines she had learnt on the aircraft that flew her to England from America, Genevieve had snapped shut the handbag and hoped for the best, the eyes of the character playing opposite bulging with dread, expecting the sight of smoke any moment from the bag. Her rendering of the part after that was appalling.
“You were just wonderful, Genevieve,” the director gushed when it was over, Genevieve not daring to look inside the bag. “You will be wonderful at the Savoy Theatre.”
Afterwards when she opened the bag the cigarette had gone out, starved for oxygen, her paper money quite safe. Convinced they wanted a big name, not a good actress, Genevieve took a taxi to Waterloo Station where she waited for her train to Dorset. Smithers had fussed over her so much she had not wanted to say goodbye a second time and had gone to the audition with her overnight case, the rest of her luggage still waiting for her at the left-luggage office.
When the train came in two hours later, she left the warmth of the coal fire in the waiting room and found her platform in the freezing cold. She had a first class ticket. Her compartment was warm. For the first time since leaving America she was able to relax, nothing to do now but listen to the rhythm of the train as it pulled out of the station and gathered speed.
Puffing through the countryside after leaving the built-up areas, everything was white: the fields, the trees, the farmhouses spilling smoke from their chimneys. Before she fell into a doze, lulled by the clack of the wheels on the rails, she thought of her mother and Smithers, hoping both would be all right in their own little worlds of four walls and a bottle of gin or whisky.
She had forgotten to phone William Smythe or Bruno Kannberg. To light up William’s life was unfair. To tell Bruno her biography had stopped selling in America as quickly as it had begun was not what Bruno would want to hear after so much hard work. From Purbeck Manor she would put a phone call through to Tinus in Rhodesia and surprise him with ‘Happy Christmas’; Uncle Robert had told her Tinus, like herself, had gone home for Christmas after Uncle Robert had spoken to Harry Brigandshaw
on the transatlantic phone. Then she fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
When she finally reached Corfe Castle station it was pitch dark, one gas light burning in front of the small railway building. The old station master shuffled out wearing a thick uniform overcoat; the man, Genevieve knew, was Harry Brigandshaw’s father-in-law and the grandfather of his children growing up at Hastings Court, something, Genevieve found, like her own life, strangely bizarre. Then her father came out under the gas light behind Old Pringle as Genevieve stepped down onto the platform. To Genevieve’s surprise her usually formal father moved forward quickly, wrapped her in his arms and wouldn’t let go. It seemed the pigs and cows had, as Smithers warned, changed her father’s view of the world.
“How are you, my darling?”
“Wonderful, Father. That was quite a big hug.”
Behind them the train began pulling out of the station on the last leg of its journey to Swanage.
“Goodnight, Pringle. Wish Mrs Pringle a Happy Christmas for me.”
“Goodnight, my Lord.”
“This is my daughter.”
“I know, my Lord.”
“Happy Christmas,” called Genevieve over her shoulder as her father almost ran her to the car.
“It’s freezing. Your grandmother is so looking forward to seeing you. She wants all the news of young Richard. She misses Robert and Freya now they’ve gone to America. Are they coming back?”
“I don’t think so. Freya has her own family in America. She and Robert are back in the Denver cottage, Uncle Robert writing his book. Freya is trying her hand at a script for a movie. She’s promised there’s a part for me.”
“Are you going back to America?”
“No. I’m appearing at the Savoy in a revival of Noël Coward’s Private Lives. It’s set in Paris, about a divorced couple who stay in a hotel with their new spouses. It is a comedy of manners.”
“Is it any good?”
“It’s very good. One of Mr Coward’s best, in fact.”
“How are you, Genevieve?”
“Better for seeing you.”
“How’s your mother?”
“Drunk. So was Smithers. He’s lonely, Father.”
“What can we do for him?”
“Maybe I can move into the Park Lane flat while I’m tramping the boards at the Savoy? Smithers is a dear.”
“Yes, perhaps… Once the heater gives hot air, the car will be warm. There are fires in all the rooms we use at the Manor. Mrs Mason has had a fire burning to air your room for days.”
On the way home they took the high road back to the Manor. The moon had come out from behind the dark clouds. Looking back, Genevieve could see the old ruin on top of its hill that had once been the home of her ancestors. The look of the brooding pile, pale and colourless in the moonlight, made her shiver as if someone had walked over her grave. The many stories she had heard of Corfe Castle flooded back to her mind.
“Is there really a priest’s bolthole under the ruins? Did you really go down inside, Father? We had an American journalist on the set of Keeper of the Legend. He was hawking his own book, American Patriot, that he wants them to make into a film. Uncle Robert told me afterwards that Hank Curley had once visited Purbeck Manor and left early one morning not telling anyone.”
“Did he tell you why he ran away?”
“Not a word. Never even said he’d been to the Manor, despite knowing the story of my life.”
“Old Warren dressed up as the family ghost and appeared at the poor man’s bedroom window. Father had put the American in a downstairs bedroom on purpose so Old Warren didn’t have to do any climbing. Curley wanted to see our family secrets under the priest’s bolthole deep below the ruins of Corfe Castle and father couldn’t have that.”
“Are the now famous parchments genuine? Is the story of the Holy Knight historical fact? I heard from Mr Hollingsworth Curley had questioned Uncle Robert’s veracity when the book was first published with Uncle Robert claiming his story was based on our family history.”
“The parchments were written out in French and English by one of your ancestors who took the words off the tablets deep under the priest’s bolthole. The tablets are genuine, Genevieve. No one but the immediate male descendants of the first Sir Henri Saint Claire have seen the original tablets. Which was why we dressed up Old Warren to frighten the wits out of Curley. He took off that morning from the Manor and went back to America without another word on whether Robert was lying about the parchments to help the sales of his book in America. Max Pearl, Robert’s American publisher, who had been introduced to Robert by Glen Hamilton of the Denver Telegraph, wanted to see the family story to publicise the book; give it, as Robert once said, a hook for the newspapers to hang on to. And you know Freya was Glen’s personal assistant at the Denver Telegraph.”
“I am never sure when it comes to stories about the family,” said Genevieve.
“In 1917, I was posted to Military HQ with Harry Brigandshaw where we met Glen, an American journalist in uniform. That much I can prove. Further back is more difficult. When a story is passed down the generations it takes on a nature of its own, becomes its own story with no one knowing the exact origin of how it began. Did everything happen exactly as it is said even in the Bible? I don’t think so. Always in retelling a story we like to make it sound better, to enchant the listener. Whoever knows the truth about anything once it has happened and been passed by word of mouth and only then written down? Each of us sees a different truth to suit our own view of life.”
“So you won’t show me the tablets deep in the bowels of that hill behind us?” Her eyes were smiling at her father, not believing any more than Hank Curley, quite sure the men in her family were pulling her leg.
“One day Robert will have to show young Richard. That is part of both their heritages as next in line to the title.”
“You’re not going to marry and have a son?”
“I’m too old, Genevieve.”
“Nonsense. You’re never too old. Men in their seventies can father children. I rather like the idea of having a little brother. I’ll get the truth out of him.” Pulling her overcoat closed, Genevieve had a silent giggle to herself.
“So you don’t believe what I’ve been saying?”
“Not a word, except the bit about Aunt Freya. I’ve just come from Hollywood. The parchment story makes for a great promotion. That much I understand. Max knows all the tricks. So does Mr Hollingsworth.”
“So you think we invented everything to sell a book and a film? That the whole story of the book is a figment of your Uncle Robert’s imagination?”
“Something like that. Anyway, it worked. Uncle Robert is a famous writer. By playing what the public are told is my own ancestor they have made me a famous actress as part of the publicity stunt.”
“Would you question every story in the Old Testament in the same way?”
“Probably not.”
“Maybe you should.”
“My faith in my religion tells me what is true.”
“So does my faith in my family. The good and the bad. When the parchments were written, your ancestor only copied down the stories from the tablets that left our family in a good light. He left out the rape and pillage. The murder of the infidels in the name of Christ. The stacked piles of silently screaming dead I have seen carved into those tablets deep in the bowels of your earth. That is why we don’t want the rest of the world to see where we really come from. And that means all of us in this so-called civilised world. The rampaging knights of the Crusades belong to all of us. As God is meant to belong to all of us. No woman should ever see what I saw on the tablets in the cavern under the priest’s bolthole. As Shakespeare said, ‘the evil that men do is not interred with their bones but lives after them’.”
“A mangled quote, Father. I think from Julius Caesar.”
“Does that matter either?”
They fell silent in the car until they were almost at the Manor.
“When we get to the house I want to introduce you to Sally-Sue the Second,” said her father.
“Who is Sally-Sue the Second?”
“My prize sow. She’s just had seventeen piglets, all alive and well. Now that’s something. What’s more you can count them. A pity the moon’s gone in or we would be able to see the old Manor from up here on the road, deep down there in the valley where we’ve always been… I hope you are hungry. Mrs Mason has been baking all day… And that’s the truth.”
While Genevieve was walking down the ice-cold corridor of the old mansion to find the fire in her bedroom out and the temperature inside as cold as the corridor, Old Pringle was putting his bicycle away in the garden shed, the hard pedalling all the way from the railway station having warmed up his body; only his nose was cold, pointing through the warmth of the balaclava helmet knitted for him in thick brown wool by Mrs Pringle. On his hands were homemade rabbit-skin gloves, the fur on the inside, made from rabbits he had shot with his shotgun to feed his family long ago when all the children were at home. As he put out a hand to open the backdoor that led into the kitchen, Old Pringle smiled to himself comfortably as he looked at the old gloves: like himself, the rabbit gloves were coming to the end of their lives.
Opening and closing the door as quickly as possible to keep out the cold, Old Pringle was engulfed by the warmth and the good smells of the food in the kitchen where the wood stove was always left burning, rain or snow, winter or summer as Mrs Pringle had the habit of saying. The sweet smell of baking bread pervaded the room. Next to the hot stove was his easy chair with the soft cushions for his old bones and beyond that, away from the side that housed the fire, hung sweet-smelling herbs that had come from the garden in the summer, now dry and fragrant when broken in his wife’s plump hands before they went little by little into the cooking pots during the long months of winter. On the mantelpiece were photographs of their children, the living and the dead, to remind them both of the happy noise that had once rocked the rafters of the old railway house built at the turn of the previous century. The kettle was on the hob, boiling gently, ready to make his tea.