by Peter Rimmer
“Come and sit down,” purred Henning, who had enjoyed the flash of hatred he had seen in the man’s eyes at the mention of the Rosenzweig Bank.
They sat down opposite each other in two comfortable armchairs.
“After we do business you will be rich and powerful, Mr Hirst-Brown. You will have the pick of the ladies. Women are attracted to power and money, don’t you know.”
“What’s this all about?”
“A little early in the day, but have a drink with me. Let us first get to know each other. Tell me about yourself. What are you doing after your unfortunate dismissal from the bank? With some difficulty I found out where you live and the phone number of your landlady, a lady, I might mention, who was rather rude. She said you occupy the back room at the top of her house, information she only divulged after I mentioned you had come into a little money. The charming lady said you owed her three months’ rent, something I have for you in my pocket so she won’t throw you out in the street as she threatened at the start of our telephone conversation before she called you down to the phone.”
“How do you speak such good English?” To Henning the man looked agitated, wondering why he had been invited to meet a perfect stranger in such a plush hotel.
“Partly because I went to university in England. I love England. I love the English. Your king, remember, is descended from Germans. We are cousins, Mr Hirst-Brown, with the same hopes for Europe in mind. You see, I also have a personal problem with Rosenzweigs which is what we have in common. That, and our mutual dislike of the Jews who, through their money, are trying to gain control of the world, don’t you think?”
When Rodney Hirst-Brown left the Savoy Hotel down the stairs, not in the lift as he was told, he had difficulty stopping himself from laughing. In his belly were three stiff whiskies and in his pocket three months’ rent for the old bag who called herself his landlady. Out in the street Rodney looked around for a taxi then decided to walk to conserve his new-found wealth, received for doing absolutely nothing. He would give the old bag two months’ rent and keep the rest to treat himself.
There was a pub he frequented near his room that opened at six. Finding a Tube station, he walked down underground. At Holland Park, when he came up again into the dark of Christmas Eve, it was almost six o’clock by the watch that had gone through the Palestine campaign with him so many years ago, a campaign still as vivid in his mind as yesterday. As vivid as the interview that got him fired from Rosenzweigs less than a year ago for borrowing one pound and twelve shillings from the petty cash to pay his bookmaker or have his bones broken by some cockney spiv who did not like being owed money for longer than a month.
Over the following three months he would have put the money back and no one would have been any the wiser. Now, every time he tried to get a job in the City, they found out from Rosenzweigs he had been fired for stealing. The German was right about one thing, he told himself as he pushed open the door to the Crown, feeling the warm air and smell of good beer wash over him. He hated that bastard Cohen for shopping him at Rosenzweigs, the bastard who had been after his job as chief clerk for years.
“Double whisky, Henry, and a Merry Christmas.”
“You got the money, Rodney?”
“This time, yes. Take what is rightfully yours and put the rest of this ten shillings behind the bar for my future consumption. How does that sound?”
“You got a job?”
“Something like that. You know, there was a lord’s son in our officers’ mess in Cairo at the end of the war who stole fifty quid from mess funds and all they did was send him home early and demobbed him in England. Bugger soon got rich. I read it in the paper. I didn’t even borrow a couple of quid and got the sack. The Honourable Barnaby St Clair. That was his bloody name. Nothing bloody honourable about him. There’s no right in it, Henry. No bloody right in it.”
“Glad you got a job, Rodney.”
“Yes, well, we’ll see how it goes. Chief clerk I was. Nearly got my head blown off twice in the desert by the Turks. Life’s a bugger and then you die, Henry. From lieutenant to chief clerk to bugger all before I’m even fifty. Why don’t women ever like men without money? I’m not bad-looking am I? Forty-three next birthday. No fat. Full head of hair.”
“You’re lucky you don’t have a wife and three kids with a mortgage hanging over your head. I only get to lease this place from the brewery. Thanks for paying me back. Have the first one on me. Merry Christmas. Who paid back the fifty quid to keep it quiet?”
“Someone said it was his brother.”
“Some people get all the luck. Steal a quid they lock you up. Steal fifty quid and they’re more worried about getting their money back.”
On his way home at closing time, with two months’ rent still in his pocket to pay his landlady, Rodney Hirst-Brown asked himself the question that had been nagging in the back of his mind: how had Herr von Lieberman known he had been fired for stealing money from the bank, even if he had fully intended putting it back again rather than helping himself to more if no one had found out? Who had told the German?
When he staggered through the door the landlady was waiting, smiling at him, her right hand hovering just above the big pocket of her apron. Giving her the money without a word, Rodney climbed the flight of stairs to his room at the top of the house, wondering what he had got himself into. In his experience of life, no one ever gave him anything for nothing.
4
The Christmas tree at Hastings Court stood thirty feet high in front of the main stairs that rose from the heart of the old house. The children had spent all day up ladders decorating the tree with coloured glass baubles soon after the end of term and the start of their Christmas holidays. Frank had tied the Christmas fairy to the top of the tree by hanging over the banisters, causing his mother to claim in mock amazement that he’d given her a heart attack.
By late Christmas Eve all the children were in bed dreaming of their Christmas presents stacked high under the tree waiting to be opened on Christmas Day, with all the guests gathered to watch the ceremony after breakfast. At the bottom of each child’s bed, tied to the railing, each of them had hung the largest sock they could find that during the night would be filled by Father Christmas coming down the chimney with his bag full of presents.
Just before midnight, both a little drunk from the wine that had gone with the five-course dinner in Mrs Craddock’s best tradition, Harry and Tina crept as silently as possible into each of their children’s rooms to fill the stockings with bags of sweets, oranges, bananas, toy trumpets for the younger boys and dolls for the girls. Anthony, turned fifteen in June, had not hung a Christmas stocking having for three years in a row watched his parents staggering around his bedroom trying not to giggle. Beth, in deference to tradition, had hung her stocking and fallen fast asleep thinking of William Stokes, Anthony’s best friend from school who had come over for the day to kick a football with her brother and have some lunch before going home to his family to spend Christmas Day.
With everything Harry had to say to his wife, it was difficult to enjoy himself playing Father Christmas as much as usual. Every year, not including those spent with the Tutsi in the Congo, the ritual had been the same, with Harry hanging the stockings when his children were too young to do it for themselves. The coal fires in the children’s bedrooms, like every other grate in the old house, were glowing warm in the dark with the curtains drawn and the cold of night outside the thick old window panes, small pieces of irregular-shaped glass held in place by leaden strips that had been put in place so long ago no one at Hastings Court knew when. Beth had not fully drawn the long curtain. Standing for a moment looking out, waiting to draw the curtains tight, Harry looked across through the tall trees, imagining the small yew trees that surrounded the ancient family burial ground where they had placed his grandfather Manderville after bringing him back from Rhodesia.
“Happy Christmas, Grandfather,” he said quietly, holding his wife’s hand as the moo
n came out to wash the stark winter countryside with a colourless light.
“Happy Christmas, Daddy.”
“You’re meant to be asleep.”
“I know I am. Is it really Christmas Day?”
“Not quite, Beth. Go back to sleep. Tomorrow’s a long day.”
“Happy Christmas, Mummy.”
Throughout the old house there was not another sound. When the moon went behind a cloud, Harry drew the curtain. When Tina closed the door behind them it never made a sound.
“She’ll never remember being awake,” said Tina. “Whatever you are going to tell me can wait till after Christmas. I don’t want any of this spoilt.”
“Do you think the children will be all right?” Both of them knew Harry was asking the larger question.
“Of course they will. Everyone goes through life. Some easier than others. Beth and Frank will have the hardest time because they want more than the others. Do you miss your grandfather?” Tina had known what he was thinking looking through the curtain.
“All the time. His wisdom. His smile that always spoke of hope when times went wrong. Even though I was twenty-one when my father was killed by the elephant, I thought of him as a father to me, not a grandfather.”
“That’s nice.”
Far on the other side of the house, in the old clock tower, the chimes of midnight echoed through the house, the waves of resonant sound going out over the trees and countryside. They stood listening until the twelve chimes were complete.
“Happy Christmas, Harry.”
“Happy Christmas, Tina.”
Then they walked down the dark corridor, using the torch, to their bedroom where they undressed and got into bed, both of them falling asleep the moment their heads touched their pillows.
Nearer the clock tower, in a small bedroom that had once been part of the servants’ quarters until Tina redecorated to accommodate her burgeoning list of weekend guests, Colonel Vivian Makepeace was wide awake, his heart racing, having been woken in a panic by the gong on metal. Not knowing where he was, he lay in the dark until his eyes grew accustomed and the dying glow of the coal fire in the grate brought back his sanity, yet he was still unable to stop the thumping of his heart.
Earlier at dinner he had drunk too much claret and too much port after stuffing himself with the best English food he had eaten since before Aunt Matilda ran out of the family money to live in genteel poverty in the crumbling home that had once been the pride of the Makepeace family. Once awake he knew from experience he would not go back to sleep, his body being somewhere between drunk and having a hangover.
Someone had kindly left a carafe of water and a glass on his bedside cabinet above where the servant had shown him the potty, the nearest bathroom being far down a dark corridor he would never have been able to find in the night. With the glow from the fire reflected in the glass, Vivian poured himself some water, feeling better once he’d drunk it in thirsty gulps.
Fortunately, he had no need for the potty and the embarrassment the next day of not knowing what to do with the slops. On mild reflection, Vivian concluded a tent on safari was more comfortable than an English country house, even if the food was not so prolific. Even then he was not sure if a slice of venison cut from the carcass of a kudu roasting over an open wood fire was not as good as Mrs Craddock’s supper, when a man had walked all day and was hungry.
The damn clock had woken him striking midnight, waking the whole house with resonating bongs. The idea of finding a small place in Zanzibar to live out his retirement among the rich smell of cloves came back to him, the thought not unpleasant. What a man needed was often nearer than he thought, the conversation that morning with Harry Brigandshaw, the first they had really had on their own, coming back to him as he began to toss and turn, finally lying on his back to think.
“This is all right, Colonel Makepeace, but it just isn’t Africa.”
“Vivian please, Mr Brigandshaw.” To Vivian Makepeace, a man had to have been a regular soldier to carry his rank into civilian life; fighting a war like Harry Brigandshaw, however brave, did not count, which was why he did not call Harry a colonel.
“Harry, please. You’re an old friend and a guest in my house.”
“Thank you, Harry. I’m having a ripping time.”
“I’ll bet you can’t wait to get back to Dar es Salaam. Going on home leave without a purpose is a bore. Thornton confided he’d prefer to spend his leave in Africa, which brings me to my point. I’m also going home. Not quite home but near enough. An old school friend of mine has sold me his father’s house in Cape Town where the son and I went to boarding school at Bishops. I spoke to the headmaster at his residence last week and found a place for Anthony. There’s not a lot of difference in the education curriculum between England and South Africa. We can find the younger boys and Beth places in preparatory schools when we get there. There is going to be another war in Europe. I want my family out of the way. I’ll be coming back and staying in London, working at the Air Ministry job they gave me. This war is going to be about aerial bombardment. The Germans will bomb London. The RAF will bomb Berlin. I don’t want to be worrying about my wife and children when I should have more important things on my mind. My wife doesn’t yet know I’ve bought the house in Bishop’s Court.”
“Why are you telling me this, Harry?”
“I want your opinion, Vivian. What’s the situation in Africa? Are we going to hold on to the colonies in Africa or, after a war and England bleeding to death for the second time in a generation, will they, like India, demand their independence?”
“Probably. Whether they get it or not is another story. Don’t quote me, civil servants are not allowed to talk politics. Officially that is. Unofficially Africa is a mess. We’re putting in more money than we get out, if you exclude South Africa with their gold and diamonds, but that’s in the hands of the Boers who’ve been there three hundred years. Roads, telephones, airports, extending harbours, medicine in the form of hospitals and clinics, education. Education is the big one and our Achilles heel. When a man is educated he wants to run his own country. Putting up schools and bringing in teachers costs a fortune, even helped by the missions of half a dozen churches.”
“So you think I’m wrong to move back to Africa?”
“I’d get on the ship tomorrow if I did not lose face by not coming back for my home leave. My blood’s gone thin, Harry.”
“Mine never thickened. I was taken to Rhodesia as a very small boy, but I’m sure you’ve heard that story. My mother ran away from this house with my father and, apart from grandfather’s burial, never came back again. She’s still on Elephant Walk with my sister and my sister’s three children for the moment. Tinus is due back at Oxford next month.”
“Go with your heart, Harry. But everyone I spoke to at the Colonial Office said there won’t be a war; that if Germany wants bits of Czechoslovakia and Poland, let them have those parts that speak German. No one can afford another war.”
“Everyone affords a war when they have to afford it. Hitler wants Europe, not parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia. We’ll be ready. We just need a little more time to re-equip ourselves with modern ships and aircraft.”
“I’m hopeful our parts of Africa will be British for another twenty years. Until the generation being brainwashed by the missionaries come of age. Religion sometimes does more harm than good in its desire to spread a particular faith.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear. I hope you are enjoying yourself. The three of you can stay as long as you like. Cyrus will have to go next week as his ship sails. You and Thornton are welcome to stay out your leave at Hastings Court. I think you are wrong about religion. It teaches people the difference between right and wrong.”
“Do you mean that, Harry? About Hastings Court?”
“Why? Don’t you think the house is big enough?” They both laughed, uncomfortable talking religion. “Two days into the New Year the house will be empty. Make yourselves at home. Ride
the horses, walk with the dogs in the woods. Anything’s better than a London hotel. You see, I know what you chaps get paid. Terrible. My way of saying thank you for being got out of the Congo and back to my family. For doing the job you do.”
Looking back on the conversation as the tower clock struck the quarter hour, Vivian hoped he had been right about twenty years. Already the Colonial Office was making plans to withdraw where the colonies were losing England boatloads of money, despite what it would do to British prestige in the rest of the world. In everything, he reflected, still wide awake, it all came down to money. Making money. Not losing it. Convinced that Harry Brigandshaw was wrong about another war, Vivian tried the old, stupid trick of counting sheep, falling asleep before he reached fifty to sleep right through the rest of the night to wake without a trace of a hangover and only the memory of gongs going off in the night.
In the small room next door, Captain Cyrus Craig woke with a start quickly followed by the kick of fear in his stomach. Before traveling down to Surrey he had been told by the Admiralty that his days as a civilian were once again over. A phone call from a friend had told him he was about to be called up in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, even before his ship sailed out of London on its outward voyage to Africa round the Cape.
“We didn’t keep you on the Reserve for nothing, Cyrus.”
“Surely I’m too old?”
“Don’t you captain a ship at present? We’ve found you a corvette. Convoy duty to protect our wonderful Merchant Marine. My word, what would you do without the navy? You’re to report to Plymouth on the third of January. Your call-up papers are being delivered to your hotel.”
“How do you know which hotel?”
“We know everything, Cyrus.”
“I’m going away for Christmas. Giving up my room in London in the meantime.”
“Don’t go too far away. Give me the new address.”
“What do I tell the shipping line?”