To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

“It’s a title. I’ll have you know I am a knight of the realm.”

  “We kicked all that out long ago, Jake. Welcome to America. Your daughter? Good. We need some good-looking broads in New York. My brother says some of the trash that arrives here should be thrown back in the sea. What are you doing in America, Jake?”

  “I’ve come to open a bank.”

  The man gave him a different look.

  “Better open the bags. What you got in there to open a bank, Jake?”

  “I have a bank in England.”

  “You have a bank in England and you travelled on that rust bucket out there on the quay? Lucky to get here. Go on then. You’re free. Do what you like. Start a bank. Everyone does something when they come to America, Jake.”

  “It’s Sir Jacob, my good man.”

  “Not in America, Jake… Have a nice day.”

  The man winked at Rebecca who giggled. Even if her father was unaware of it, the man from customs was pulling her father’s leg. At that moment, Rebecca knew she was going to like living in America.

  * * *

  The letter from Ralph Madgwick was in the handbag Rebecca took with her to the park. It was the only English habit she had not left in London. Without her little bag, she felt naked. The idea of anyone snatching her bag on Hampstead Heath had never crossed her mind.

  Rebecca had read the letter many times after first sitting down on a bench in the park. She was far more interested in reading the letter and wondering how the person knew who she was; the American woman who had put it in her hand just before the policeman waved them across the road.

  Having now told her father she had the letter, her dilemma was letting him read what it said. He would have either to lie to her or admit to destroying so many of Ralph’s letters. She had only stopped writing when Ralph stopped writing back, thinking men fickle. There had been two letters from Ralph and then silence. Both had been waiting at the bank in Manhattan her father had given as their forwarding address.

  Once Rebecca wrote back after the terrible voyage out from England, she gave Ralph the address of Abercrombie Place. The porter at the reception desk downstairs took in all the mail. There were only ten apartments in the block. Like a men’s club, her father had explained, the mail was only handed by the porter to the owner of the flat. As Rebecca had never been inside a men’s club she always let her father collect the mail.

  Now it was clear from the letter in her bag that dozens of Ralph’s letters had never reached her hands. For two months, Ralph had written to her every day. Rebecca was not sure which would hurt her father most. Not being shown the letter or knowing she knew he had destroyed so many letters. If he had only told her at the time he was not going to let her read Ralph’s letters, she might have understood. She was not yet twenty-one. Her father had complete authority over her affairs. Thinking Ralph had forsaken her had made it all so much worse. Two men, she loved, fighting over her love.

  With a supreme effort of will, Rebecca kept the letter from Ralph tightly in her bag, while gripping the bag on her knee where she sat next to her father on the park bench, the leaves falling, the people scuffing at the autumn leaves on the ground with their feet as they passed by the bench.

  * * *

  Sitting next to his daughter on the bench, Sir Jacob knew perfectly well the letter he wanted to read, so he would know how to take countermeasures to prevent a catastrophe, was in his daughter’s small bag she was fidgeting with on her knee. If the boy was coming to America then likely he was being sent. Sir Jacob knew Ralph had no money to speak of that Ralph could call his own.

  They sat in silence for a long ten minutes, each waiting for the other. Then Sir Jacob got up having made up his mind to drop the matter from all future conversation. A year was a long time. There were many more girls in London who would catch Ralph’s eye. If neither brought up the subject of the stolen letters the matter did not exist. He could still stop Ralph’s future letters reaching his daughter.

  “Come along, my dear,” he said brightly. “It’s a beautiful day. I feel like a good long walk after being cooped up in the office all week. Tell me what you have been doing…? The new flowers in the flat are so beautiful. You arrange them so well… Where do you get them from, my dear?”

  “A nice little florist I found, father. Yes, a nice long walk will be just what we want. The brown and red colours of the leaves are so beautiful at this time of the year. They say it gets very cold in January in New York. We were lucky to arrive at the end of February. My friend in the flower shop tells me the worst of the winter is over by the end of February. Let’s make the best of a walk while we can.”

  * * *

  When Rebecca wrote back to Ralph the next day, she gave the name of her friend at the flower shop, along with her friend’s home address. Her friend Maryanne knew all about Ralph Madgwick. They were both the same age with almost the identical problem. Except that Maryanne was a Christian and her boyfriend, Shaul, a Jew.

  When Maryanne had finished reading the letter from Ralph, there were tears in her eyes.

  “He sounds so lovely. All those months will fly by like the rushing of the wind. They always do when you are in love. Rebecca, I’m so happy for you. So happy. It tells me all will be well with Shaul after all. This is America, the land of the free. You just see. We’ll all be best friends. Have apartments next to each other. Our children at the same schools. Aren’t you excited, Becky? I’m so excited. Come back at my lunchtime and we’ll go for coffee… I love your Ralph already.”

  * * *

  “Fifty bucks!” said Glen Hamilton to Freya Taylor in Denver on the Wednesday. “You gave an old man with a horse and buggy fifty bucks!”

  “Fifty-two to be exact. A buck for recognising the photograph of Machiavelli, a buck for telling me he knew what the daughter looked like and fifty bucks for pointing her out.”

  “Thought you’d be gone a month.”

  “Now you tell me. I was enjoying myself. Max Pearl looks like a friendly pudding but he’s better company over dinner than most men I’ve seduced.”

  “You seduce men, Freya?”

  “Always. Had a chance with Ernest Hemingway but Max spoilt the fun. He went off with an Italian-looking girl with a face right out of Botticelli. Max said the girl was Legs Diamond’s girl. Max knows everything and everyone. Legs Diamond was due back in New York the next day. Jack Kreindler who owns the joint told Max he was going to tell Ernest. Before he got himself killed… You ever been to 21, Glen?”

  “All the time I’m in New York. Did you seduce Max?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Just because a man’s good fun you don’t have to take him to bed.”

  “You must be sick of trains.”

  “It was beautiful. Clickety-clack across the heart of America. All these new aeroplanes are going to take the fun out of long-distance travel. All the autumn shades of brown and red. All the leaves on the trees ready to fall. Fall is the most beautiful time of the year in America.”

  “You going to write and tell Robert St Clair?”

  “No, I’m not. Old embers don’t burn bright. It was years ago. Why do we always think of things that happened to us years ago are so much better than what is happening to us now?”

  “Write out a chit for the fifty-two bucks. I’ll sign the expense.”

  “Are we going to write an article?”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I’m not a journalist. I’m your assistant.”

  “Now you are a journalist. Part of the time. Put it all in. The policeman with white gloves. Meeting Hemingway. The Botticelli girl. The Machiavellian father. All of it except Legs Diamond.”

  “Won’t he recognise the Italian?”

  “The Legs Diamonds of this world don’t read. You’ll have a monthly column. A pseudonym. How about Juliet? Each month you will tell our readers of a lover in distress. A love story to cut to the heart. You, Freya, are going to lighten all the women’s hearts in Denver. Maybe, just maybe far be
yond. Love is the only thing in life worth having, did you know that?”

  “How long have you been married to Samantha?”

  “All my life… Well done, Freya Taylor, newspaper reporter… Now leave me alone and let me do some work… You sure about Robert?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You don’t like him any more?”

  “Of course I do, he’s a writer. And a very nice man.”

  “Out you go.”

  “I’m gone.”

  * * *

  Glen sat at his desk smiling to himself. Then he picked up the handset of his telephone. The operator answered.

  “Put me through to telegrams. Thank you…I want to wire England. The address is Purbeck Manor, Dorset, England… Yes, just that. Last time I heard the house had been where it was for hundreds of years. In the same family. Send it to Robert St Clair. Message reads:

  “Letter of love delivered to safe hands STOP when are you coming out again to America STOP Freya Taylor sends her love STOP. Glen Hamilton.”

  Glen was still smiling when he put down the telephone receiver.

  “One good deed deserves another,” he said happily.

  Only then did he get down to doing some work.

  “Clackity Clack. Clackity clack. She really is a good girl. Positive jewel,” he said to himself. “Poor old Max Pearl. All that money and nothing to show for it.”

  * * *

  The trousers were off the prosthetic foot with the leg straps resting on the ground among the golden leaves. Across the pond in Dorset, the autumn leaves were falling just the same.

  The new book was writing easier in the country with no interruptions to Robert St Clair’s mind. Sitting on the fallen tree thinking through the plot was quite comfortable now his foot was off and resting on the ground. Robert had walked from the Manor house to the same small wood where his brother had fathered Harry Brigandshaw’s young son, Frank. Only Barnaby, Tina and the trees knew what had happened back then.

  It was a perfect autumn afternoon with the leaves falling from the trees all around him. It all made Robert feel so much at home. So much an intrinsic part of it all. They had been around the same old trees so long. Many of the big old gnarled oaks had grown from the earth before the Norman Conquest. A tiny accord for centuries, a giant tree sheltering the moss below and all the small life that lived in trees. Insects. Birds. Squirrels. A bat or two. To Robert sitting on his log, it was all it meant to be, an Englishman at home in his wood, content at peace, the storyline of his new book running in and out of his mind. Never once did he try to think. Pictures of the people popped into his head and began to talk, telling Robert what to write.

  So often, he had tried to explain the process to Portia. He was her mentor. Just her mentor. There was nothing else despite the wishful hopes of Millie Scott. The girl had only just turned twenty. Still twenty years his junior. Robert had now turned forty. The start of middle-age. His mother had told him on his birthday it made her feel old. Little comfort.

  London had grown too hot. Too stuffy. Too full of people all talking at him at the same time. All with their own agendas. The break away from Stanhope Gate had been good for stimulating his mind despite his grumbles. Man liked company. Robert knew that. It was just so nice to get away again and keep the company of wild animals that never interrupted all the thoughts rushing in and out of his mind. He was happy and that was good. The horrors from the war had mostly left him. Even his right foot, the one that was missing, left in France, had stopped itching in his mind.

  Neither he nor Merlin had found themselves wives. They were both far too set in their ways to try something new. Getting to know another person was better done when young. Merlin was comfortable around Millie Scott. There were no surprises. Even being milked by Esther and his daughter Genevieve for every material comfort they could think of, was comforting in its regularity.

  They were all creatures of habit, like the pair of squirrels he had been watching for an hour stashing away the acorns in a hole beneath the one big above-ground root of the great oak tree that gave Robert shade from the autumn sun. They were grey squirrels not indigenous to the island. The tree rats with their curly furry tails were increasingly problematic as they were bigger and stronger than their red cousins were. Robert sighed. Even among nature’s beauty lurked the pain of life. The good for one making the bad for another.

  Robert heard a dog-fox bark from somewhere in the wood. It was time to go home. The day was going. Time to make the first fire of winter in his room.

  His mother had said there would be muffins for tea, dripping in fresh farm butter. Gently, Robert pulled on his artificial foot, tightening the straps. It was not really so much an inconvenience. Then he pulled on his trousers.

  Smiling, Robert got up and without the help of a stick began his walk home to the Manor, walking homeward beneath the falling leaves. The pigeons were calling to each other from all over the St Clair acres. His father’s cows sitting in the field by the small river, chewing the cud, took no notice of him as he passed on his gentle way. The smell of field and woodland was swirling all around him. The sweet scent of flowers. The rich smell of the grass broken by the cows. The smell of cow dung sweet in the gloaming at the end of an English autumn day.

  In the kitchen, his mother gave him the telegram delivered in its brown envelope from the post office in Corfe Castle village. Robert read Glen’s words and smiled.

  “Freya loves me,” he said to his mother giving her a small kiss on the cheek.

  “I thought it was Portia… What was that for?” She had touched her cheek with her right hand.

  “I felt like it… Is father back from his darling pigs?”

  “In the sitting room. The fire’s going. He’s waiting for the pot of tea and the muffins.”

  “So am I.”

  “The boy said the telegram was from America. Is there anything wrong?”

  “Nothing at all. Cupid struck right where he was wanted.”

  “You are talking nonsense again Robert.”

  “Not all nonsense is nonsense, mother dear… Believe me.”

  “Are you going to America now?”

  “Probably. Yes, I rather think I shall take a trip on the RMS Olympic to America. To Denver, Colorado to be exact. Why not? I’m forty. Life begins at forty. Of course, I will need a train for the last part of the journey from New York.”

  “Now you are just talking rubbish… Robert, please carry the tea tray.”

  The old cook Robert had known all his life had been sent to her room to rest. Robert picked up the laden tea tray and took it to his father.

  * * *

  Gert van Heerden, the stage director of Happy Times, answered the knock on Christopher Marlowe’s attic door. Christopher was away in Ashtead. A duty visit to his widowed mother. This time Gert and Christopher had not gone walking in Ashtead Woods. Somehow, there was something missing from the time of their poverty when a vegetable soup with three shin bones cooked on the single ring was luxury itself.

  Gert had let himself into Christopher’s room looking for some of that magic. There was none there. Just an attic room with the one big window looking out over London roofs. In comparison to then, they were both now rich. Christopher was certainly rich. Because Gert still lived in the same old building off Shaftesbury Avenue, he spent only half his wage from Oscar Fleming, the impresario and producer of the show. He did have a larger room on the same floor, this time with a window. The box room where he had lived with his dog in poverty was a box room again, full of junk. The dog still slept in his bed when Jane Tamplin was not staying the night, the dog miffed when turfed onto the carpet. Jane loved Heinz 57, but even Jane drew a line at three in a bed when one was a dog. Heinz 57 was so faithful to Gert, he poured emotion and love out of his eyes. The dog had big eyes, big, floppy ears and a long snout. No one Gert had asked could tell him which of the many breeds made up the dog’s ancestry.

  A small boy was standing in the doorway when Gert o
pened the door. Gert was due at the theatre in two hours; it was only a short walk from the attic. The boy was holding out a small brown envelope. A telegram.

  “You Christopher Marlowe, mister?”

  “Yes,” said Gert taking the envelope. Telling a small lie was easier than having to explain. The boy waited. He was looking expectantly at Gert. Gert found a penny in his pocket and gave it to the boy.

  “Thanks, mister.”

  It was the first time a telegram had been sent to Christopher. Gert opened the envelope. He could hear the boy go off down the stairs whistling, the stairs creaking as the lad went down.

  Letter delivered to Rebecca. I am going to America on RMS Olympic.

  Gert smiled. The sender had not bothered to sign his name. Maybe, Gert thought, famous writers were not required to sign their names to telegrams.

  Gert’s first instinct was to go and tell Ralph Madgwick. Ralph would be at the offices of Madgwick and Madgwick now he was behaving himself. It had been Christopher’s condition for asking Robert St Clair to send the precious missive to Glen Hamilton in America. Even Harry Brigandshaw had known Glen Hamilton during the war. The world according to Gert’s view of it was smaller than everyone thought. A man at the theatre had delivered a verbal message from Gert’s mother in Cape Town only the other day. She had still not made a trip to England despite his father’s suggestions.

  “What if the girl doesn’t want to write back?”

  Hearing the voice of his master, Heinz 57 looked up at him with enquiring eyes.

  “Walk?” said Gert. The dog always wanted to go for a walk.

  The whole dog wagged. They went out of the room, leaving the open cable on the small table. Christopher would guess he had opened the envelope. At least it was not a crisis. Christopher could decide later whether to tell his brother the news. Love had as many changes as spots on an African leopard; when it came to love, he told himself going down the old stairs with the dog following behind, it was better not to interfere.