To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

  “Where is Clara’s?”

  “You mean you’ve been in London three months and not been to Clara’s?”

  “I’ll help you with the letter to Penelope tomorrow.”

  “That will be a help. I hate writing letters. Poor little Richard… Do you remember him before they took them off to India? Her father was in business out there. Or something.”

  “Not really. All small boys look pretty much the same.”

  * * *

  Barnaby St Clair sat thinking about women while his brothers made their marital plans. His view was over Green Park from the second floor of his townhouse at the top of Piccadilly, not far from where Piccadilly met old Park Lane. Most of the townhouses were exclusive men’s clubs where women were not allowed. Ironically, just up the road from where he quizzically gazed into the tall green elms on the other side of the busy road, was the new Royal Air Force club, founded by Lord Cowdray. Barnaby knew Harry Brigandshaw was a member of the club. His neighbour, so to speak.

  The stock market was still rising steadily. Had been doing so for weeks so there was no need to contemplate the risks in making his money. Barnaby owned a little over five million pounds of mostly ordinary, voting shares in companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. All were pledged to Cox and King’s bank in Pall Mall to secure Barnaby’s four million pounds overdraft. When he sold shares which he did on negative information gleaned from his social connections, he took a taxi to the bank himself to retrieve the share certificates of the companies he had sold. He did not drive his Bentley 3 Litre on short journeys. The share certificates were then hand-delivered to his stockbroker in the City by Edward, his valet. Only Barnaby and his bank manager were ever to know the shares were pledged.

  Every month Barnaby paid the interest on his overdraft exactly on the first of the month. His borrowings were never allowed to exceed eighty per cent of the current value of the shares. Usually, the dividends were sufficient to service the loan. Of late, with the share prices reaching too high in relation to the dividends they paid, Barnaby was forced to sell a few shares to realise his paper profit in order to pay the interest on his overdraft.

  The mortgage on the four-storey townhouse was in a separate account at the bank, the interest again paid on the first of each month. Barnaby hoped he had lulled his bank manager into a false sense of security, making good money for his bank without doing any work or taking any risk. Unless, of course, as Barnaby often thought to himself in his occasional black moods, the value of his share portfolio dipped more than twenty per cent before he could offload the shares.

  What the bank manager had never worked out and hopefully so far as Barnaby was concerned never would, was the habit of Barnaby to sell large numbers of shares short that he did not own, or buy large blocks of shares and sell them again before his stockbroker required payment, forty-five days from the date of the original share transaction. Even Barnaby sometimes shivered at the potential downside of these transactions when for a few days his liabilities could exceed his assets in the shares he was betting went the other way.

  The trick, Barnaby knew, was to sell his entire portfolio at the right time, pay off the bank overdraft and the mortgage with the proceeds and live the life of a gentleman for the rest of his life. With more money in the bank than a man could spend in five lifetimes. The problem with that as he told himself on many occasions after recovering from one of his black moods, was what to do with himself when he took away the fear and joy of his highly addictive gambling. He was not thirty years old until the coming year. He would be bored to tears living in the country. He disliked chasing animals around fields on horseback. He saw little point in all the effort and discomfort of shooting birds in the rain. If he fancied a nice cock pheasant for his supper as he did when the poor birds were in season to be shot, he ordered one ready cooked in a restaurant, far away from having to take the half-dead bird from a large dog’s mouth and wring the pheasant’s neck. Some of his friends had such strange primal instincts he wondered what being a gentleman was really all about.

  Women were Barnaby’s prime source of interest after gambling all his money on the stock exchange and there were very few women in the country without facial resemblance to horses or dogs. He had even met one in Dorset who looked like the family parrot brought back from Sarawak by her grandfather in the middle of the previous century. Horsey women to Barnaby were sexless. Which meant they were no good to him at all.

  Ah, women, he thought again, bringing his mind round in a circle to the subject that rarely left his conscious mind. Why did some women make him want them more than others? Why did some women want him more than some other men? Why did the very odd women, like Tina Pringle, never lose their attraction even minutes after sex and others send him straight off to sleep? Why was he still not free of a woman he had known all his life and others, who had warmed his bed night after night for weeks, were long ago forgotten? Even their names.

  It was not love, he was sure of that, as he stood close to the open window with his binoculars to look at a woman who had appeared in his line of vision across in the park. Love was a word for lust invented by polite people. Barnaby smiled at the thought. The words even had the same kind of sound. Hybrids of the same original meaning back in the primal slime.

  “Not bad,” he said out loud to himself. “Just not worth chasing after across the road. Women! When will I ever get enough of them?”

  Tina, of course, was silly he told himself. She could have had a flat all to herself, really good sex when she needed it, all the security in the world to eventually grow old in comfort and none of the screaming brats all of whom were only interested in what they wanted for themselves.

  Now he was at war with Harry Brigandshaw over the girl he still thought of as Tina Pringle. A war Barnaby knew could get ugly if he went anywhere near Tina again, despite both of them knowing who was the father of young Frank.

  Poor Tina. She had the worst of both worlds. More than once, he was tempted to give her a ring and tell her what a fool she had made of herself. Except there were Harry and Frank, a fear of death and a total lack of any wish to shoulder any kind of fatherly responsibility. Like the cuckoo, he preferred his offspring to grow up in someone else’s nest.

  “For goodness’ sake,” he told himself, picking up the binoculars from the half-moon table. “I don’t even like children. Not even my own.”

  Idly, looking up at the next young woman across in the park, Barnaby wondered if there was something wrong with himself. Something missing… Then he smiled, put down the field glasses in a hurry, ran downstairs to his own front door and out into the traffic where he dodged the cars in his hurry to cross the road and go for a walk in the park, the one he had seen from the window well worth the chasing.

  * * *

  That night Clara had people standing at reception waiting for a table or a seat at the bar. Waiters were running everywhere with trays of drinks and plates of food. Clara was exhausted. Every night except Sundays for weeks.

  “There are times like tonight I’d sell the place lock, stock and barrel, buy a cottage in the country and live out the rest of my life as a recluse.”

  “Why don’t you?” said Christopher Marlowe, smiling. “Sell the whole damn thing.”

  “You’d better get back on the piano… That was Barnaby St Clair and some new girl. Both his brothers he isn’t talking to, are at the bar. All we now need is Harry Brigandshaw and his charming wife… Or Brett Kentrich.”

  “Brett’s right behind you, Clara.”

  “Oh, my God… Miss Kentrich! What a pleasure to see you.”

  “You look harassed, Clara… Have you got a table for us?”

  “No booking?”

  “You know what it is in the theatre… Was that the Honourable Barnaby St Clair I saw going in? Can’t we join his table?”

  “Not tonight. Quite specific.”

  “A new one?”

  “Said he met her this afternoon in the park.”

&
nbsp; “Man’s incorrigible or just maybe something worse. Just do your best, darling. Hello, Christopher. How are you?”

  “How was the show tonight?”

  “One of the screen sets fell over during the interval. Your friend Gert van Heerden lost his temper again. He’s in love with Jane Tamplin but she won’t go with him back to Africa.”

  “Gert’s not leaving England.”

  “Then she’s using that as an excuse. Poor chap doesn’t have enough money… You’d better go and play the piano. The band’s coming back.”

  “Can we have a drink later?”

  “Let’s just see how it all turns out.”

  “It never does, Brett.”

  “Life usually doesn’t… Is Harry here?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Damn. He’s avoiding me… I went to so much trouble to stop him going back to Africa.”

  Christopher was going to say he had gone to a lot of trouble writing Happy Times for Brett and walked away instead. She was not interested in him. Plain to see.

  When he reached his piano stool and struck a chord, he was not sure if writing his new musical had any point. Doing anything in life was pointless if it wasn’t to be shared. Even Happy Times. She had sung his songs, spoke his lines but they had not really shared it together. She was the actress. He was the writer. He had tried so hard. Even Harry wasn’t interested in her any more, the irony not lost on Christopher.

  He smiled first at Danny Hill who had picked up his trumpet, then at Harvey Lyttleton at the microphone who was going to sing the first song from Christopher’s new musical to test it on the aftershow diners. They began the new set as they had done so many times before. The black beret was firmly on Christopher’s head, the hair no longer down to his shoulders. The song was a love song. The words for Brett Kentrich. As he played the background to Harvey’s crooning, Christopher watched Brett and one of her party being shown by Clara to a stool at the bar. She had not even turned round to listen so he could wave. She was talking animatedly with the man escorting her to the bar where Millie Scott was sitting with Merlin St Clair and his writer brother from Dorset, the author of Keeper of the Legend. If the brothers were still at the bar when the set finished he would go and talk to them. By then Brett would have been shown to a table. She didn’t want to talk to him. He’d be thick-skinned not to have seen that at reception when she arrived from the Aldwych Theatre. There had been no sign of Oscar Fleming, the lecherous old impresario in the party. Even Oscar Fleming, so it was said, had had an affair with Brett Kentrich… If only he could find other women attractive. The more she brushed him aside, the more he wanted her. It was becoming an obsession that dominated every facet of his life. Even being a bohemian had lost part of its attraction. Apart from having a roaring success on the West End stage, nothing was working in his life.

  To add to Christopher’s disquiet his brother Ralph arrived at reception with another tart he had picked up somewhere. From the stage, he could see through to the reception desk over the heads of the dancers.

  “Poor old Uncle Wallace. Even bribery hasn’t worked.”

  It seemed his brother was back to his old tricks staying out late getting drunk and not going to work in the morning… Ralph was right. America was a long way away and eighteen months was a lifetime. Poor Rebecca. Poor old Jacob Rosenzweig. He’d dragged his daughter to America under false pretences… Anyway, Christopher told himself when Harvey had finished singing his new love song to only mild applause he was not going to go back to work in an office. Under any circumstances. Never. Whatever his mother said and pleaded. He was his own man even if he was without Brett Kentrich.

  The rest of the set, Christopher played without any concentration. Danny gave him more than one frown. His heart wasn’t in it after Brett left the bar to join a table.

  There were no new tables available. Her party had split up. She and the man who had gone with her to the bar had been invited to the Ramsbottom table. Clara must have asked them. He could just imagine the fawning conversation. The dumbstruck silence of the three daughters. Mrs Ramsbottom talking nineteen to the dozen in her broad Yorkshire accent.

  They were regulars at Clara’s when they were staying in London. Mr Ramsbottom was in coal. Mrs Ramsbottom called him Mr Ramsbottom. He called her Mrs Ramsbottom. No one had ever found out their first names. The girls were called Hermione, Clarissa and Portia. None of them was married. Why the last girl had got a name from Shakespeare had always been a mystery to Christopher.

  He always went to their table when they came in. They were so grateful for the attention. The girls were brought down from Yorkshire three times a year each to find a husband. They had never yet come to Clara’s with escorts. Mr Ramsbottom was rich. Mrs Ramsbottom was always hopeful. She liked the chinless wonders for her daughters with upper-class accents. Mrs Ramsbottom was a social climber. Had told Christopher her daughters would only be allowed to marry gentlemen.

  Many of the so-called gentlemen came into Clara’s to look at the actresses and dancers who came in after the West End shows had finished playing. Mrs Ramsbottom had never considered Christopher to be a gentleman. Gentlemen, the type he supposed she wanted for her daughters, did not play the piano in a supper club. Even a very high-class supper club.

  Christopher always relaxed and smiled in her company. Mrs Ramsbottom was a straightforward kind of person. When Clara told her in front of him he had written Happy Times, she had given out a good Yorkshire bellow of a laugh.

  “Don’t be daft. Our Christopher here is a piano player. Had he written Happy Times, would he play your piano, Miss Clara? I like that one! Good show, it was. Me and Mr Ramsbottom seen show three times. Going again I should think. Our girls like it. What a nice bit of rubbish, Miss Clara. No offence, Christopher. I like you. But I have a secret. You’re a lousy piano player.” The third laugh was even louder than the first two.

  “I suppose if I told you my father was chairman of the Baltic Exchange, you wouldn’t believe that either?”

  Christopher remembered the conversation word for word. He had been enjoying himself. The girls had liked his show. That was more important to him.

  They relaxed with him and laughed heartily at his small jokes. He was not a potential husband. They could afford to relax. Even in the presence of Mrs Ramsbottom. Christopher had the feeling the girls would be a lot of fun away from their parents.

  He was now watching them dumbstruck. Brett was a big name. Her escort did not have any chin to talk about. Mrs Ramsbottom was in full flight.

  When the set finally came to an end with Danny Hill wearing a distinct pained expression for his benefit, Christopher worked his way through between the tables on his way to the bar and the two St Clair brothers. He had checked that Barnaby had not joined them… Mrs Ramsbottom was right about one thing. He was a lousy piano player. Especially tonight.

  So not to make himself more miserable than he already was, Christopher gave Brett and the Ramsbottom table a wide berth. Mrs Ramsbottom had tried hard to attract his attention. She obviously wanted to show off the star of the musical stage that now graced her table. Even to Christopher. Having a big star at your table was no good to Mrs Ramsbottom unless everyone saw what was happening. Christopher had found it difficult not to break out into a broad smile as he avoided eye contact with Mrs Ramsbottom.

  “Hello, Millie. Merlin. Did I sound as bad to you as I did to myself?”

  “Worse, Christopher. Please meet my brother Robert, the author.”

  “Why I came over… Sorry, that did not sound quite right.”

  “Shall I go and ask Brett to join us,” said Millie in mock retaliation.

  “You stay right there, miss, or I’ll never write a funny line for you ever again… I’ve read Keeper of the Legend twice, Robert.”

  “I’ve seen Happy Times twice,” said Robert. His missing foot was itching as usual. “Barnaby told me to come up to London. I was hibernating in Dorset. Writing all right but hibernating. I’m
glad I came up to London.”

  “Barnaby’s in the club,” said Christopher.

  “Leave him where he is,” said Merlin. “Millie, move across the one seat so the two authors can have a good chat. You look very nice tonight, Millie.”

  “Why, thank you kind, sir.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do, you old fool.”

  “What’s that meant to mean?”

  * * *

  They talked together for half an hour. There were few other authors. Both had seen or read the other man’s work. There was a bond between them. Robert told Christopher about the death of nine-year-old Richard. About their quest. About Barnaby being unfit to inherit the title. It was difficult for Robert to explain himself without denigrating his younger brother in front of someone who was not a member of the family.

  “Poor Harry,” said Christopher. “Everyone in London talks about Barnaby and Tina behind his back. What you are saying is by no means news to me. I first met your brother in France during the war. He was in the trenches on a fact-finding mission from Palestine. Allenby thought the Turks might resort to trench warfare. That was before T E Lawrence raised the Arab revolt and attacked the Turkish supply lines changing everything. You can’t fight trench warfare without a solid supply line. Sorry, old chap. I forget. Teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs. I heard about your foot from Merlin.”

  “Better to lose a foot than a head.”

  They both tried to laugh. The laughter had a false ring to it. Christopher looked away. Instinctively he looked for Brett. She was getting up from the Ramsbottom table with the chinless wonder. The pair moved off between the tables towards reception. Brett was going home. Mrs Ramsbottom looked distinctly crestfallen which gave Christopher a good idea. Danny Hill was sitting in for him at the piano, doing a far better job. Christopher had managed to signal him from the bar when the new set had been due to start. Now the small dance floor was crowded. The band was trying the new song again to make it more familiar. The polite clapping when it came to an end was stronger the second time. Christopher gauged the increased applause professionally. It was important. He could write as many tunes as he liked but if the public did not catch on to them, want to hum them, they were no good.