by Peter Rimmer
“Are you going to the Harcourt Ball, Cuddles?”
“Of course. After father shot himself, they all feel sorry for me.”
“Take me, Cuddles?”
“Is this a cash transaction or a favour?”
“Both. And you won’t have to ask Lady Harcourt for my separate invitation. We’ll spend the weekend at Riverglade to be near. Hayter will invite us. I help him in business. The charming Barnaby St Clair will be in attendance with the American… Now that’s an idea. For you to chaperone Stella Fitzgerald for the season. Maybe a thousand pounds for the season for all the right introductions. Her father wants her to marry the eldest son of a duke and that costs money?”
“I should think so too… Twenty-four hours. I’ll have to tell Lady Harcourt who I am bringing. And St Clair, now I know.”
“That was the idea, Cuddles. These Americans don’t know the form. Would you like me to phone her father in Boston?”
“Would you, darling…? Do you really want to go with me C E? Or is it just business?”
“I want to see you, Cuddles. We had a lot of fun.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Getting the vote won’t make the slightest difference.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Women will just vote what their families tell them to vote. You can’t have two people running the same family. They fight like cats and dogs.”
* * *
The last thing Harry Brigandshaw had wanted was an invitation to a dance, to talk polite small talk to people he had no wish to know and sleep in a strange bed. If he was going to talk about anything, it was farming in Africa, which left the locals looking at him with blank, very uninterested faces that Harry quite understood. London trivia left Harry with a vacant look.
For some reason, the invitation had come to the office for Mr Harry Brigandshaw and partner and not to the Berkeley Square house for Mr Brigandshaw and wife. Harry’s first instinct was to drop the invitation in the wastepaper basket. Instead, Harry shoved it in the drawer of his desk and put the May Ball out of his mind where it would stay forgotten until just before the dance when he would send Lady Harcourt his regrets for himself and his wife.
He had made no mention of the invitation to Tina. They were talking to each other, for the sake of the three children, otherwise, they were living apart. Harry did not have to have his wife followed to know when she saw Barnaby. He knew. The same way Tina knew when he visited Brett Kentrich at the Regent Mews flat. They were simply living separate lives mostly in the same house. Life went on. Thankfully the children, or so he thought, were too young to notice anything was wrong. The servants knew as the servants always knew. One of the prettier chambermaids had even given him coy looks which Harry ignored.
Even his desire to go back to the farm in Rhodesia had been squashed, as he would never then see his children, the most important three people in his life. Harry had trained his mind never to think of Frank as Barnaby’s son. His life had become one long charade anyway. For Harry, there was no solution. Divorcing the mother of his children was out of the question.
He had even thought of going down to Dorset on his own to explain his predicament to Tina’s mother and father but could see no way they could possibly help. They believed their daughter was in a good marriage with a rich man. The truth, like the truth always did, would hurt. If he had thrown the happiness of his life away having a blistering affair with Tina on the boat, the consequences of what was now a disaster should neither be visited on the children nor their grandparents. He had made his bed in the owner’s cabin of the SS Corfe Castle in September 1922. If the only good that came were the children, he was happy. Even when he wanted to wring Tina’s neck in his fits of jealousy when he knew so well she had again been with Barnaby, he thought of the children he may well have never had. After Lucinda’s death, he had had no wish to marry again and would certainly not have done so were Tina not pregnant from their affair on the boat. Life was never straightforward. Never had been. When Brett asked him about the invitation, he even smiled.
“You didn’t really think I could take you as my partner, Brett?”
“Why not?” sulked Brett.
“I’m married.”
“Are you going?”
“Now I think I’ll have to. With Tina. To squash any rumours the invitation to me and partner might have made. Those society folk have tongues like vipers. I always have to think of the children… How on earth did you engineer the invitation, Brett?”
“Cuddles. Cuddles Morton-Sayner.”
“Who on this earth is Cuddles?”
“She sells social favours.”
“Is she a whore?”
“I suppose in a way. She prostitutes herself. If we go together, everyone will know your marriage is only kept alive for the sake of your children. We can go out together again in public even if you won’t get a divorce and make an honest girl out of your Brett… Harry, you do realise how much I love you? I’ll throw up my career and go with you to Rhodesia.”
“And be miserable. No. Absolutely no to both requests. Frankly, I think we should stop seeing each other.”
“If you do Harry, I’ll kill myself.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Try me.”
* * *
Cuddles Morton-Sayner had always liked the analogy of pushing out the barrow when money became tight. Everyone, she thought, had something to put on their barrow to sell. Everyone could make some money if they put their mind to it and often it was fun. If some thought arranging social favours was beyond the pale, it was better than begging or letting an old mother starve. Cuddles looked at her occupation as an exercise in public relations. People needed doors opening in their private lives as much as their business lives. An introduction that proved successful in business was rewarded with a monetary commission. She was no different to a stockbroker who pointed out the right share, using his knowledge of business and accounting. If she were ever to print a calling card, it would read:
Miss Prudence Morton-Sayner, Public Relations Broker.
Even if her friends had called her Cuddles ever since she could remember it did not have to carry over into her business. She was providing a service. She expected some respect. If some people respected C E Porter and Barnaby St Clair in business, what was wrong with her she asked for pity's sake? She was good at her business. Very business-like. Which was why she drew up a contract for the American from Boston that had to be signed before she would waste her time on the daughter… The son of a duke!
“If I find the little tart the eldest son of a duke, I want a damn sight more than a thousand pounds. With no quibbling. A legal contract between me and the father, a father with more money than sense.”
So there it was now. In neat columns. A duke. A marquess. An earl. A viscount. A baron. A baronetcy… And the one thousand pounds retainer payable on signing the contract… She told herself she was only cuddly by name, prickly by nature. She liked that idea.
When she saw C E Porter, she told him to wire the whole contract to America to save time.
“If you do this and pay for the telegram. If Fitzgerald signs and you have your American lawyer’s confirmation of his signature on a typed copy of the contract, I will take you to the May Ball at no cost. How does that sound?”
“Perfect. I’ll get on with it right away. I’ll ask Hayter to invite us to Riverglade for the weekend of the ball.”
“So Fitzgerald will sign it?”
“Of course he will. What does he have to lose?”
“A thousand pounds. Plus ten thousand pounds if I put her in line to become a duchess.”
“Just make sure his darling girl doesn’t get herself pregnant. American girls are a lot freer than our young girls. Keep an eye on her. She’s pretty.”
* * *
“We are going to the May Ball at Nuneham Park next month,” Harry Brigandshaw told Tina, the first time for weeks she had been addressed by her husband about any
thing other than their children. “We are staying the weekend at the Swan on the river. I’ll be visiting my old college. The professor who taught me geology is still a don.”
“Why are we going? You hate dancing.”
“Brett engineered the invitation which came to me and partner. I will not have this town talking behind my back. To squash any more rumours we are going together.”
“Why don’t you take Brett?”
“Because she is not my wife! Our children will eventually have to go to school. Children can be just as nasty as adults. They called Mervyn Braithwaite, Fishy at school, because sideways-on his face resembled the head of a codfish. Why he became obsessed. Became a killer. Why he killed Lucinda.”
“Are we going back to Lucinda again…? I’m sorry, Harry. My father works for the railways. I don’t see what the children have to do with Fishy Braithwaite.”
“What if the other children say their mother is a whore when they go to school? Our children will be on the defensive for the rest of their lives. People can be very nasty to each other.”
“Then you had better stop visiting that flat in Regent Mews you are so fond of.”
“Keep away from Barnaby, I will keep away from Brett. We are married. For better or for worse, remember… I was going down to Dorset to talk to your parents.”
“You keep my parents out of this.”
“Then we shall go back to Elephant Walk where people don’t have the time to say nasty things about each other’s private lives. Where people do not feed off other people’s pain.”
“I hate Rhodesia.”
“You should have thought of that before you got yourself pregnant on the boat.”
“You men make me sick. Don’t you know it takes two people to get a girl pregnant? That you might have had something to do with the problem? You didn’t exactly run away.”
They both stood glaring at each other in the lounge of the Berkeley Square house. Both had spoken quietly making the words sound even more venomous. Neither had wanted the servants or the children to hear them argue.
“Damn that bloody Barnaby St Clair,” said Tina wanting to cry she was so frustrated.
“Don’t swear. The children will hear and copy you.”
“What are we going to do, Harry?” This time Tina had spoken normally.
“I have no idea.”
“I’ll need a ballgown. The fashions change.”
“That is the least of my problems.”
“Don’t you want a divorce?”
“No. We do not divorce our wives… The children.”
“Always the children.”
“Yes, Tina. Always. Maybe time will temper the jealousy.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Then you do still have feelings for me… What a mess.”
“Just keep up appearances. That is all you have to do. At the ball, we will show the world a loving couple.”
“What I hate most, Harry, is the silences between us.”
“So do I. How do people’s lives get into a mess like this?”
* * *
Uncle Wallace Madgwick had known Lady Harcourt for more than thirty years. The kind of old friends made through associations to events long past. Their lives had crossed at balls, weddings, funerals, the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. They had never really known each other as people but that did not matter. They had gone through lives parallel to each other, always in sight of each other at regular intervals. The only time Lady Harcourt had made a social visit to Uncle Wallace was during the war in the London hospital they had sent him to after losing his left eye in France. The lady worked through the war for the Red Cross. It was the one and the only intimate moment they had had together when she had looked down at him in the bed and said, ‘Oh, Wallace, I’m so glad they did not kill you.’
Uncle Wallace’s invitation to the May Ball had come to him as a surprise, bringing back a flood of memories from the long years that had made up his life. Of course, he had no intention of going to a dance but it did give him the excuse to telephone Lady Harcourt for a natter about old times that had lasted half an hour.
“You must come, Wallace. It’ll be the last time. This year is the last ball I shall throw at Nuneham Park.”
“Gout. I have unbearable spasms of gout, which requires sitting in a comfortable chair with the afflicted foot on a small stool to stop the blood rushing. There is nothing more painful than gout. Anyway, you won’t have time to talk to old friends. You’ll be far too busy. I’ll just be another old codger in a uniform smelling of mothballs. All the youngsters will keep well away from me in case I tell them stories and bore them to tears… It’s been a lovely chat. Looking back, we had happy times… Can I send my nephew instead?”
“Of course, you can. I’ll change the invitation list from Colonel Wallace Madgwick MC to Colonel Madgwick or nephew in case you change your mind.”
“The boy can tell me how it went in detail. I can then enjoy your ball without all the pain in my foot.”
“Maybe we can again speak on the phone without being interrupted so many times by the exchange. Six minutes would never have been enough time.”
* * *
The idea in Uncle Wallace’s mind was to send young Ralph to the ball with Rosie Prescott as a reward for Rosie keeping his nephew in line at the office. Uncle Wallace knew Rosie had an eye for Ralph, which would stop all the nonsense of Ralph going to America next year. If nothing else, Uncle Wallace was an optimist when it came to his living in the country far away from all the bickering of the human race.
“It’s not that I don’t like people, just that I have grown tired of them. I’m sixty-three, Ralph. I deserve some peace.”
“Let me think about it.”
“There’s a good boy… How are you getting along with Postlethwaite?”
“Famously. I’ll be going to America next year, don’t you worry.”
“I do, Ralph.”
* * *
Leaving his answer late, intentionally, Ralph told his uncle he could not be unfaithful to Rebecca by taking Rosie to the ball. Ralph made his point a week before the date of the May Ball in the senior partner’s office.
“Why don’t you give the invitation to Christopher…? I mean Barrie.”
“Do you think he would want to go?”
“Yes, I do, Uncle Wallace. Indeed I do.”
“Then ask him for me… How’s his new musical coming along?”
“Famously.”
Uncle Wallace suspected something was up when Ralph left his office whistling.
“Sorry, Rosie,” Uncle Wallace heard his nephew say to his secretary in the outside office.
“That’s all right, Ralph. I’m happy for Rebecca.”
Rosie Prescott, it appeared by the tone of her voice had become resigned to her fate as a spinster a long time ago.
Uncle Wallace sighed. A bachelor was respected by society. A spinster they felt sorry for. How could the two be anything but the same, he asked himself?
* * *
The worst part of the day for Douglas Hayter was watching the rowers on the river in the mornings. During the school holidays from boarding school before the war, come rain, sun, hail or snow, Douglas had taken the slim craft out of the boat shed on to the river dressed in a singlet and shorts and sculled a mile up and down the Thames before breakfast. He had tried three times without his legs each time falling in the water. He could not balance the boat however hard he tried and swimming without legs left him floundering. If he had fallen out of the boat in the middle of the river, he would likely have drowned which seemed to Douglas a little silly after having survived the war even with stumps.
The morning of the May Ball that was to take place at Nuneham Park just upriver, Douglas was sitting in his wheelchair at Riverglade. He was looking down on the river that ran at the bottom of a long slope of well-cut lawns the gardener had cut specially for the guests who were due to arrive soon after
breakfast. Douglas liked the smell of cut grass and the look of the clumps of daffodils that dotted the lawn as far down as the river. If anything, he was excited at the thought of guests and some new faces to relieve his chair-bound boredom. He had tried artificial legs but the stumps were not long enough. Even the lone sculler out on the river was rewarded by his wave rather than his frown. Douglas for once was in a good mood.
“Beautiful day for the dance, Douglas,” came floating across the water and up the slope of the lawn to the veranda where he was sitting. The early morning was still. Not a breath of wind.
“Good morning, Dale. Who are you taking?”
“Martha Abbot.”
“Have a lovely time. I have guests who are going. Isn’t it Lady Harcourt’s last May Ball?”
“I rather think so. Parts around here will never be quite the same.”
Douglas watched and envied his old friend moving smoothly over the calm water, bending, pulling, dipping in the oars until the trees and a bend in the river took Dale Jarvis out of sight.
“Damn,” he said. “Damn. Damn. Damn.”
Swearing made him feel better. He was alone so no one would have heard. A flotilla of swans came into view, swimming with the flow of the river. They were all big, majestic birds. The cygnets would come later he hoped. At the end of the spring. It was why he had gone into business to protect Riverglade, as after the war and the death of Douglas’s parents in a major car accident, the estate was quietly falling down from disrepair. Riverglade and the river were all he had. When Douglas restored the old house with loving care, it was well worth having. A solace for the loss of his legs and the end of life as he had known it. Back then when he was eighteen years old and a German shell blew him almost in half.