by Peter Rimmer
"Can I buy you a drink, since I own the place? You remember Albert Pringle? Well, here we are. What do you want, other than a drink and a good old chat with old friends? Used to belong to Barney Barnato if you never heard of 'im. Built solid like I like it."
Jack turned and looked at her. "Thank you, Lily. I'll have some of that nice Booth's gin with some French vermouth. I can't say you haven't changed because you have. Nice suit, Albert. For my taste a bit flash. The landlord in Strand Street told me what happened, so we don't have to go down that road, now or ever."
"What brings you here?" asked Lily, feigning indifference. She even tried to look at her fingernails.
"I met an old friend of mine in London and one thing led to another. He told me a very strange story about his cousin, Mrs Flugelhorne. There was a lot about Sallie Barker. For some reason of impulse I took the first boat to Africa. I must be sentimental or romantic. I'm not sure which."
"You didn't get a cable?"
"What cable?"
"The one she sent to Elephant Walk. Did you shoot an elephant?"
"No I didn't. Neither did I receive a cable and I stayed for two months. Neither did anyone else on Elephant Walk so far as I know. All you owe me is two months' rent for the Strand Street house. No, on second thoughts, you don't. Have it as a house-warming gift. Funny enough, there's nothing better than ex-employees doing well for themselves. I rather feel I had a part in your education."
"I was an employee. That how you think of me, Jack?"
"Lily. Please. How else would you like me to put it… Thank you, Mister Barman. A very dry Martini, Booth's Noilly Pratt vermouth. Cut a piece of lemon rind, hold it over the full glass, break the lemon peel, and as the juice spurts, burn the juice with a match. And Miss White is paying. I rather think it is the least she could do for an old friend… Now you had better tell me about this Barney Barnato. Who was he?"
Jack let the woman who had once been his mistress prattle on while he tried to take stock of the situation. By looking at her he would never guess her age at thirty-six which, on casting back his mind, he knew to be correct. The large bosom that had been the cause of her becoming his mistress was now all one of a piece with the rest of her body. The hips had risen up to match the stomach, and the stomach had happily merged with the girl's large bust, which joined with the wobbly flesh that hung from her arms and chin. Her chin had largely given up the ghost and lost itself in the flesh. What had once been a good-looking buxom wench, was now a fat, square woman, with legs that matched the size of the legs of the grand piano being played by a young girl rather well, the quartet having gone off for their late supper. Without hearing Lily's voice he would have sworn under oath in a court that he had never before seen the woman in his life. Sadly, Jack thought, there is always a price to pay for everything.
Albert Pringle had not said a word, he was so full of guilt. Jack tried unsuccessfully to give him an understanding look while he listened to Lily in full flight. There was one thing he knew about people. Get them talking about themselves and they will love you all night. Having let his mind fall out of the conversation, he jolted it back to say the right thing to appreciate Lily White's great success by nodding his head with approval. If money was the currency of happiness, the once upon a time Lily Ramsbottom had to be a very happy girl. He finished the dry Martini and ordered another one. He had the feeling it was going to be a long night. By the end of his fifth cocktail he didn't care. It was the wonderful thing he told himself about alcohol. It took care of things. Blanked the mind. Made ugly situations comfortable.
When Sallie Barker sat down next to him he was drunk. He did not even remember taking a taxi back to the Langham Hotel.
She thought to ring him the next day to remind him of his invitation to lunch.
Jack had tried every trick he knew to bring down his hangover but nothing had worked. The front of his head had the wish to split open. His hands were visibly shaking. He rather thought that after the dry Martinis he had drunk a bottle of red wine. He certainly had a red wine hangover.
He told the head waiter to find him in the ladies' cocktail bar when his guest arrived and sat down on a finely made upright wooden chair at the bar, a similar barstool to the one that had started the rot the night before. It was twelve noon and the bar just opened. Sunlight was streaming through the open window searing his eyes. He had forgotten how bright the light was in Africa. The barman put down a gin and tonic, quinine tonic, ducked from behind the bar under the service hatch and covered the offending window with a heavy lace curtain. The first gin tasted terrible. The second not so bad. The man down the end of the bar looked as miserable as Jack felt. Together with the barman they had the place to themselves. No one spoke. They drank in complete silence.
"Probably the best thing to do," she said from his left elbow.
"Was I very drunk last night?"
"Yes you were. I'd have let you go back to England without seeing me if you did not think it so important. You don't remember asking me to lunch?"
"Not really." Jack stood up. The movement jolted the pain in his head.
"That bad?"
"Did I drink red wine?"
"Yes you did."
"You don't believe the cable never reached me?"
"Lily doesn't. Neither does Albert. They said at the time you'd do nothing."
"I'd have come… It's pretty primitive up there in Rhodesia. Probably the telegraph boy was eaten by lion along with your cable. I'm sorry, do you want a drink?"
"Can you face lunch?"
"Not really."
"Can you tell me everything you know?"
"You didn't read about Mrs Flugelhorne in the papers?"
"The Mansion House is a whorehouse, not a library. People don't talk about middle-aged women. All I want is a truth, warts and all."
Sallie sat down next to him with a glass of perfectly crushed orange juice. The other man down the bar was set for the day. The third stiff gin had steadied Jack's hands. He told her everything he had heard from Ernest Gilchrist.
"Do you know what happened to my mother?"
"She took a job in the country as a housekeeper."
"Poor mother… Do you have her address?"
"No I don't but I'll find out for you."
"Can you watch me eat lunch? I'm starving."
"Funnily enough, I feel much better. Hair of the dog. Let's go and have lunch, and you can tell me all over again what you've been doing. After drinking the gin last night I don't remember very much."
"The irony of life. Father goes bust and kills himself. Mother becomes a servant. I get rich."
"There always was something to be said for a whorehouse." Jack was smiling. He was trying to lighten the mood.
"I was never a whore. They tried. If the rich want you they'll offer a fortune. I was pretty then."
"You are now," lied Jack, finishing his third drink, which he decided was enough.
"You do believe I never whored?"
"Yes. Yes I do. It was never in your nature. I knew your mother was shopping for a husband for you. When you are a rich bachelor it happens often. We understood each other, you and I, that first dinner with your mother and Ernest Gilchrist. I knew you weren't a gold-digger. Your mother was digging for the gold. Not you."
The roast beef in the Langham's restaurant was as good as anything Jack had eaten in Europe. They both ate hungrily at a bay window table. Some of the men looked Sallie's way and pretended not to recognise her.
"None of them can believe I'm just the accountant. The one with his wife two tables away offered me ten thousand pounds. He even tried the legitimate route before he married that girl. He's what they call here a rand baron. What in England you would call a rich crook. They say he salted three gold mines with gold from elsewhere. Word got out. Shares went up. Friend over there dumped his shares. Gold seam ran out. What's better, that or whoring? We look after the girls. I invest their savings and they trust
me. Lily would have lost the lot years ago. Any good-looking man with a dream can make her invest her money. I vet everything. She can't even write the cheques without my signature."
"How did you learn all this? Accounting? Finance?"
"I may not read the scandal sheets, but I do read all the financial papers. And I took a three-year correspondence course. We both did, Albert and I."
"Are you two?…"
"Not like that. Neither of us ever wish to rely on anyone except ourselves. Not my father. Not my mother. Flugelhorne. Lily. You, Jack. We want our own money so we can tell the rest of you to go to hell. Independence. Personal security. Money. To have money. I wanted to have money, real money. I will soon. I found a buyer for the Mansion House. Like my friend over there everyone will have forgotten the foundation of my wealth in five years. No one worries about his salted gold mines. I'll be able to tell the lie that daddy left it to me. Society will accept me because I'm rich and educated. The men who know my past will keep quiet. Education, Jack. Run a whorehouse for six years and you will be amazed. The University of Life. It gives you the sixth sense in business. Did Albert tell you he is going up to Oxford?"
"Don't be silly. He only went to school for a few years. Can barely write properly."
"Well he can now. Our Albert's going a long way. Mark my words. He sent his mother money which is why I want my mother's address. I don't want to see her. She could have found me easily enough. You did. I want to send her money. Lots of it. Rather like mud in your eye."
"You really think Albert will get into Oxford?"
"Cecil Rhodes did as an adult scholar."
"But he was Cecil Rhodes. The Empire. Some say the richest man in an empire he dreamed of extending from Cape to Cairo."
"Albert may not get to Oxford for other reasons. Rhodes found it difficult to run a financial empire and go across to university. Albert now has the same standard of education as my own. There's a lot of spare time running our business. For the non-participants. Until there's trouble. So we have to be on the premises all the time. On immediate call. We have lots of time to read and study. To talk. Did you know he read many of the books in your library? You thought he was just sitting around when you went to the club or went to see Lily. He was always waiting up for you, wasn't he? To keep himself from going out of his mind with boredom, he began reading your books. You are right, his handwriting was terrible and his reading not much better when he became your valet. But he went on for nothing better to do. Slowly, he understood what he was reading and after that, his reading became a compulsion. He wanted to know it all."
"We never even talked about books."
"Most people leave school and never read another book. Their education stops dead when they walk out of the classroom. For Albert Pringle, he only began to use his brain when he found your library of books."
"Will Lily want to sell the Mansion House?"
"She does what I say when it comes to money. She's going to buy a top hotel. Or build one. She's good at looking after guests and very good at running a restaurant as you could see. 'Got to try everything, Sallie,' is her motto. And she means only the food."
"May I ask you something very personal? Please don't take it as being male. Why did you cut off the ringlets? Fringe your hair? Wear severely cut suits?"
"But you said I was still pretty, Jack."
"I was lying. Sorry. The truth is best left unsaid. You were one of the prettiest girls I ever saw in my life."
"Thank you, Jack. That was very sweet of you. And you didn't mention the glasses. Would you like to have a look through them?"
Guiltily, Jack took the pair of spectacles and half propped them on his nose.
"They're plain glass!" he exclaimed.
"Exactly. In a whorehouse it's better not to look too pretty."
"I wish you would stop calling it a whorehouse."
"And who was the one for telling me the truth?"
"And what are you going to do with your money? The way you just said it, Lily is going into the hotel business, not you."
"No, we're not. Albert and I are going into the mining business. To compete with the man two tables away who thought he could buy my body for ten thousand pounds."
"Wow, that really is a lot of money now I think of it."
"How much would you pay Jack? Or rather how much would you have paid those six years ago when I was nineteen?"
"Not a penny."
"Why?" she said looking annoyed.
"Because you are not a whore. Do you hate the rand baron?"
"Not at all. I envy him. And when I envy I don't want to destroy the other person. Most people are just jealous of the wealthy. Want to see them lose their money so they can all be poor together. I want to be as rich. I want to be a rand baroness, Jack. Only of course, I can't. Albert will be the front."
"But you said he's very clever. Going a long way."
"Some people are marvellous employees and lousy employers. They have to be directed. They don't have the new ideas. They are not creators. Albert is like that."
"And you are a creator?"
"Haven't done too badly so far as a runaway." The eyes were still hard but the smile was soft.
All the way back on the boat to England, Jack toyed with the idea of visiting Mrs Barker rather than writing Sallie her mother's address. Waiting for the ship to sail from Cape Town, he had stayed at the Mount Nelson Hotel and used his time to put a long-distance phone call through to Ernest Gilchrist in Colombo, having remembered the name of the tea merchant. The telephone company had found the telephone number but in the end, and despite a person-to-person call, Jack sent a wire asking Ernest to cable Mrs Barker's address to the Mount Nelson Hotel; Jack had grown bored sitting in the manager's office waiting for the connection that never came. The day before the boat sailed, he had his information.
Jack had caught the train the day after the lunch in the Langham Hotel. There was no point in staying any longer. The untied strings were tied. Lily repulsed him covered in fat. Albert had not said a word, tongue-tied despite his new-found education. Sallie was as hard as nails. And none of them needed his help. The last thing would have been to cable the mother's address to the Mansion House and leave it at that.
The boat arrived at Southampton. The address in his pocket was Plaitford, only a few miles from where his ship had docked which made up his mind for him. Having nothing much better to do, Jack hired a taxi and gave the man the address.
Spring was in full bloom, the trees bursting their buds and flowers in the hedgerows. Jack enjoyed the drive and the English countryside. His trunk had been sent up to London by goods train. The small grip next to him on the back seat carried his shaving tackle and what he would need for a night in a hotel if the task he had set himself took longer than expected. The train to London left at three in the afternoon. His hope was to reconcile mother and daughter. He rather liked doing what he supposed were good deeds.
The address led them to a small mansion hidden from the road by tall trees.
"I want the tradesman's entrance," said Jack to the driver.
"Are you sure, guv?"
"I'm sure, thank you."
The tradesman's sign pointing off the main driveway was quite clear soon after they entered the grounds: when they stopped there was a butchery van unloading an order. Mrs Barker was supervising the packets with great authority, ticking them off against a list in her capable hands. Jack rather thought the business sense of the daughter had come from the mother; no tradesman was going to under deliver to this mansion, he thought with a nervous chuckle; the woman intimidated him for some reason.
"I may be here for some time," he said to the driver. "Please wait. That will be your tip." He gave the driver a five-pound note, which was far too much but he didn't want the man driving back to Southampton if he thought his fare had run off without paying.
"I don't understand the tradesman's entrance, guv," the man said, licking
his lips at the large white folded banknote.
"There are lots of things we don't understand in life. You can keep the meter running. I don't wish to be stranded."
Jack got out of the taxi and walked towards Mrs Barker, who ignored him. He waited for the order to be checked, feeling sorry for the butcher. The butcher was obviously below Mrs Barker in the pecking order of things. Then she looked up at Jack where he stood five yards away waiting patiently. If there was any recognition in her mind it did not show on her face.
"What do you want?" she asked rudely, and Jack wondered if he would have received the same reception had he come through the front door of the mansion. Probably not, he guessed rightly. She might have even claimed to recognise him after all her hard work on the SS King Emperor trying to marry off her daughter to a rich man.
"To speak to Mrs Barker." She looked at him sharply, having recognised the well-educated accent of the upper class. "We have met before. Fact is, I once bought you supper with Ernest Gilchrist and your daughter. Ernest kindly gave me your address. My name is Jack Merryweather."
"He's in Ceylon."
"So I discovered when he led me in a roundabout way to your daughter's address in Johannesburg. Fact is, I lunched with your daughter last month and she asked me to find out your address."
"Why does she wish to know my address?"
"To send you money."
"She enticed that poor man. He was a good man. Mrs Flugelhorne got what she deserved."
The back door was open and Mrs Barker marched off into her domain, slamming the door in Jack's face.
"You earned an easy fiver," he said to the driver when he got back into the car. "With a bit of luck I can still catch the three o'clock to London."
"What was all that about, guv?"
"Just about everything. Murder. Retribution."
"Cor blimey."
"Exactly."
When Jack got back to 27 Baker Street, the letter from Rhodesia was waiting for him on the silver tray where it had been placed by his manservant. The bills and commercial correspondence were left in the study. Visiting cards and personal letters were to be placed on the silver tray in the small entrance hall of the house. Jack was still annoyed at having called on Mrs Barker rather than writing her Sallie's address. Never before in his life had anyone slammed a door in his face. But then again, he told himself, it was the first time he had visited a house through the tradesman's entrance. Jack could still be amazed by people who refused to believe what did not suit them. He rather thought Mr Barker had done the right thing by killing himself whether or not his business had gone bust. Consoling himself with the fact that people still had to live with themselves, despite what they did wrong in life, he put the Barker family out of his mind once and for all. He had done his best. It was not good enough. But he had done his best.