To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

  “Yes, he did.”

  “I’ll see what I can come up with. The Canterbury Tales were a set work at school. I’ll read them again.”

  “That’s a good girl.”

  “You say the press hasn’t heard about Harry Brigandshaw disappearing in Africa?” she asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “They will. It’ll make one hell of a story. War hero lost in the jungle. The fact he is very rich will make it all the better. I know. I’m a reporter.”

  “Robert, you and Merlin must warn Tina… Anyone like a leg of chicken? This food looks marvellous.”

  * * *

  By ten o’clock in the morning on the following Wednesday, Tina Brigandshaw had the four children and the two children’s nurses packed in a taxi on the way to the railway station. To add to her woes, on the Monday it was confirmed she was pregnant with her fifth child.

  * * *

  When she came back to the Berkeley Square house from her gynaecologist in Paddington, a man from The Daily Mail had been waiting on her doorstep.

  “Is it true Mr Harry Brigandshaw has not been heard from in three weeks?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Wakefield. From The Mail. Does he have a will? Who gets his money?”

  “My husband is not dead.”

  “After his aircraft went down in the jungle and not a word for three weeks?”

  “My husband grew up in Africa. If he was forced to land he will know what to do. He was a fighter pilot. On board is an aircraft mechanic and Harry knows more about aircraft than most men alive.”

  “Will you inherit Colonial Shipping?”

  “You don’t listen. I said he wasn’t dead. Now excuse me.”

  “Then you have heard from him?”

  Tina had pushed past the man and slammed the front door in his face. She was crying. Frank was wailing somewhere inside the house. She and Ivy had tried everything to soothe his pain. He was teething or just being his usual self. When Frank did not get exactly what he wanted, he yelled his lungs out. The other three children had never given trouble. After the first week, Dorian had slept through the night in the nursery where the two nurses slept with the children. The reporter was ringing the front doorbell as if by right. Gritting her teeth, Tina pulled herself together. There was no point in feeling sorry for herself. It would not help the situation.

  Going up the stairs to see what was happening in the nursery, she had decided to take everyone down to Dorset where she could think, away from people asking questions to which she had no answers.

  * * *

  As she was about to get into the taxi behind the rest of them, she stopped for a moment, standing up straight to look around. For the first time in her life, she knew what it felt like to be in love. Barnaby had always been lust. Harry, now he was gone, she knew to be love. The irony was not lost on her thirty-year-old mind.

  She told the taxi driver where to go. Then she climbed into the back of the taxi. The family luggage was in the open compartment of the vehicle next to the driver. Her mother would know what to do. Her mother would know how to help. Merlin had told her to get out of London and he was right. Phoning Percy Grainger every day was worse than waiting by the phone for news. She hated Africa even more than in the past. For Tina, Africa was always dark and evil. Menacing.

  * * *

  When they all arrived later in the day at Corfe Castle railway station, her mother and father were waiting on the platform. This time she had not tried to fool her mother she could look after four children on her own. Ivy had the baby in a bassinet. The rest of the children stepped down from the train, each, in turn, holding Molly’s hand… Ivy was nineteen. Molly seventeen… Frank had stopped being a nuisance. The boy ran to his grandmother and jumped into her arms – something he never did with Tina. Anthony at five years old shook hands formally with his grandfather. Beth was sucking her thumb and stroking her small blanket at the same time with her fingers. Old Pringle was in uniform and still on duty.

  Being the very end of summer there were other people getting off the London train. The sun was shining and the day warm. The winter weather was still on the way. Tina looked up at the distant hill with the ruins of Corfe Castle prominent on the hilltop. How strange she thought if the ghosts up there knew Frank was one of them. None of the children had been told Harry was missing somewhere in Africa. Merlin had said they would not understand. Tina was glad Barnaby had the sense to keep away. He was the last person on earth she wished to see in her life at that moment.

  Only standing on the railway station so close to where she was born did the premonition sweep over her taking away most of the pain. Harry was still alive. She felt it in her bones. Then she walked across and fell into her mother’s arms. The arms where she had always been safe. Always.

  The taxi was waiting to take them all to the cottage by the river where the Pringles lived.

  * * *

  There was no telephone in the cottage, only at the station where Tina had phoned the previous day. She had told her father Harry was missing before someone told him from reading the papers. The only good thing that had come from the interest shown by the press had been the concern of the Royal Air Force. A man from the Air Ministry had phoned to say the RAF was sending a search party by air down Africa. They knew which path Harry had flown. He would have to pick up fuel on the way.

  “He’s got extra fuel on board in petrol cans. There are small ports on some of the lakes with petrol for the more sophisticated fishing boats. Bowes-Lyon was one of our best navigators. They were going to land on the lakes at the ports after landing on the Nile at Khartoum. Lake Tanner. Lake Rudolf. Lake Victoria. Lake Tanganyika. Lake Nyasa. They have a range of nine hundred miles with the long-range fuel tanks Harry had fitted under the wings.”

  “If they went down in the jungle wouldn’t it swallow them up?” Tina had asked not understanding a word of what the man had said.

  “We’ll do our best Mrs Brigandshaw. I knew your husband during the war. We are all praying for their safe return. Everything will be done. Everything. You have my word.”

  * * *

  Luckily for Tina, she was not in London on the following Friday morning when the news from the Air Ministry broke in the press. By then Tina was walking in the woods around her family cottage, trying to imagine life without her husband. Trying to tell herself what she was going to do.

  “Like looking for a needle in a haystack or worse,” the one paper headlined.

  Most of the other daily papers across England were equally pessimistic. Only The Telegraph with its ‘they found Doctor Livingstone didn’t they?’ gave any idea of hope. For most people in Britain Harry’s disappearance with his crew was just another echo from the past. Interesting. Sad. But a long way away.

  * * *

  As Tina’s stay in Dorset went into a second week, the papers were milking the story for the last drop. They touted Harry’s war record in detail; the death of Lucinda, shot dead by Harry’s wartime CO; the man himself shot by Tembo, the black man, after Braithwaite had shot dead Barend Oosthuizen, the self-proclaimed man of God, the preacher who had been saved from the bowels of a gold mine in South Africa to preach the word of God.

  * * *

  By the end of October, Tina was still holed up in the cottage on the small river. The weather was wintry. The three aircraft of the Royal Air Force had returned to England with nothing to report. The search had been called off. Even Tina with her premonition now knew there was little hope anyone would be found. Harry, her husband, was dead in the festering jungle somewhere in Africa… It was all over.

  * * *

  Tina again packed up the children and went back to London, to her house in Berkeley Square, to face the rest of her life alone.

  The story by then had faded from the newspapers, forgotten in people’s minds. There were other stories of other people’s misfortunes to read about. Only the few who knew Harry Brigandshaw or any on board the ill-fated aircraft had felt any
pain.

  * * *

  The day Tina Brigandshaw locked herself up in Berkeley Square with her memories, the curtain rose on A Walk in the Woods. The lights dimmed and Christopher Marlowe’s new musical began. This time Barnaby St Clair was the man who worried if the show would make a profit. It would take four months of good houses to even get his money back. So much depended on the first night, the stalls packed with newspaper critics all waiting to pounce.

  In the audience unknown to Barnaby was H Wakefield of The Daily Mail doubling for the night as the theatre critic. He was the same H Wakefield who had waited for Tina on the steps of her Berkeley Square house. He was fully aware of the Brigandshaw connection with the theatre and his financing of Happy Times. There had been little good story after the air force stopped the search for the missing plane in Africa. All the new breaking stories were domestic and boring to Horatio Wakefield. He had asked the theatre editor of his paper to let him cover the first night hoping to find more story for the Brigandshaw saga that had briefly lifted the sales of The Mail. Horatio was ambitious. Wanted to get on in life and be a success like Harry Brigandshaw with a big house in Berkeley Square and a wife who looked like Mrs Tina Brigandshaw.

  The overture had finished, the curtain rose, the show began when Horatio watched a man get up and leave from the row in front of him that he thought was rude. Halfway through if the play was bad but not just after the show began. He turned around and watched the man as he sat down again in a vacant seat at the back of the theatre. Horatio had no idea what the man was doing.

  Looking back at the floodlit stage Horatio saw Brett Kentrich in all her glory and settled himself back in his seat. So far as he was concerned, the show could turn out lousy so long as this girl stayed on stage just in front of him. To Horatio, about to be married or not, Brett Kentrich was the most beautiful woman in the world. The likelihood of him ever getting to know her personally and shatter his dream was part of the attraction. Every time he saw her she was exactly the same: just perfect.

  When the first act came to an end there was polite clapping. Horatio was still seeing Brett in his mind.

  “She’s just so beautiful.”

  The chap from The Guardian turned to look at Horatio. They had known each other as cub reporters on The Daily Mail before William Smythe moved up in the world and joined The Manchester Guardian. Horatio had known William was frightfully left-wing. They had met that night in the foyer before the show and juggled their seats with the other reporters to sit next to each other. The reason Horatio voted Tory was because his father voted Tory. Horatio and William never talked politics as it could affect their respective papers. They were good friends.

  “She had a long affair with the chap you have been writing about.”

  Horatio smiled. They both thought of other men as chaps. Sort of a silly bond between them over the years.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Brigandshaw financed Happy Times. Did you know he had put up the leading lady in a mews flat off Regent Street?”

  “Does his wife know?”

  “Before he married her. Your beautiful lady tried to break the marriage when Brigandshaw brought his wife back from Africa. The baby they brought with them was either premature or conceived out of wedlock. Take your pick. The other scandal in the family has to do with the chap who got up in front of us after the curtain went up. I saw you turn round and watch him sit at the back. There was a row with Brigandshaw who pulled out of financing the show. The Honourable Barnaby St Clair stepped in to spite Brigandshaw. They say the third of Brigandshaw’s kids is St Clair’s. To add insult to injury Brigandshaw was married to St Clair’s late sister who was shot by that madman Braithwaite. Don’t you know all this? You were writing about Braithwaite just the other day.”

  “I do now… So Brett was his mistress?”

  “Something like that… When you put up big money for a show like this you get nervous. Why I expect, St Clair went to sit at the back. Let’s go and have a drink at the bar. It’s a lousy show despite your beautiful lady who is about to marry the writer. Now did you know that old chap?”

  “You should work for a scandal magazine.”

  “I’ve thought of it. Trouble is, scandal is petty. Politics is vicious.”

  “Aren’t you writing up this show?”

  “Of course not. I’m a political correspondent. Picked up a free ticket from the night editor. Like you, Horatio, I like the look of Miss Brett Kentrich, the soon-to-be Mrs Christopher Marlowe.”

  “Is she pregnant too?”

  “Why should I know?”

  “You know all about Mrs Tina Brigandshaw.”

  “Now there was one really sexy lady. You should have seen her when she came over from Africa. Her brother is rich. A rand baron in gold and explosives. Put herself up at the Savoy. Wow, she was something.”

  “What else do you know about her background?”

  “Born dirt poor in a railway company cottage somewhere in Dorset. Just shows how far they can go in life with that amount of sex appeal.”

  “Whatever happened in her past she’s taken Brigandshaw’s death very badly.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Must be. How could he have survived?”

  “They say he grew up in the bush. His father was a famous big-game hunter… Come on. I need that drink before the curtain goes up again.”

  “You said the show was lousy.”

  “Not that lousy. Marlowe builds up in the second and third acts. There isn’t much to the story but I like his music… Do you know my shares went up two thousand quid this month?”

  “Why don’t you sell them and take your profit?”

  “Better to borrow from my bank manager and watch the shares go on up. Easiest money I ever made. Chap lends me up to eighty per cent of the current value of my share portfolio. The interest I pay the bank is piddling compared to the rise in the share price. Are you in the market?”

  “I don’t have any money. The Daily Mail doesn’t pay as well as The Guardian. Why I do the stints as a theatre critic to get a free ticket.”

  “I’d better buy you that drink.”

  “The Brigandshaw connection was also my motive tonight. The cast is having a first night party to wait for the crits in the morning paper. Why they opened on a Wednesday night. There are far more daily papers than Sunday papers.”

  “You really are a nit. I work for a paper. You don’t think I know these things?”

  “Anyway, after writing my piece for The Mail I’m coming back to the party. To see if there’s anything more I can write about Brigandshaw.”

  “And ogle Miss Kentrich… Can I come to the party?”

  “If you help me write a good piece. Shouldn’t take ten minutes. The same taxi can wait outside the office and bring us back to the theatre where they are going to have the party. Not only do I get a free ticket for ten minutes’ work, but I also get to drink the free booze. They like the critics to come to the parties. Fleming thinks it gets him better reviews… How much have you borrowed from the bank?”

  “Twelve thousand pounds.”

  “That’s a fortune, William! You don’t earn that money in twenty years.”

  “I was lucky. A friend put me into the market early. Jock Shepherd. He heads up our financial section on the paper.”

  “Aren’t you nervous?”

  “Why should I be? My shares are worth more than my overdraft by over three thousand pounds. How can a newspaper reporter save that kind of money from his salary?”

  “What if the market goes down?”

  “I work for The Manchester Guardian. We have some of the best financial analysts in the world. They all say the market will go on rising as industry gets more efficient as all these new inventions come on stream. It’s scientific inventions that make a man rich. The machines do the work. All you need is capital to buy the machines. It’s working capital that makes the real money. Not working stiffs like you and me. Money makes money
, Horatio. You should get on the bandwagon before you get left behind.”

  “I don’t like owing anyone anything. Particularly money.”

  “What are you having?”

  “A whisky and soda.”

  They were both by then standing at the bar in the foyer of the theatre. Next to them, with his back turned, Barnaby St Clair was ordering himself a large brandy.

  “Looks nervous,” whispered Horatio who had recognised Barnaby from the man who had left the second row of the stalls at the start of the show.

  “So would you be, putting that kind of money on a musical no one has seen. I never understand gambling like that with good money.”

  “At least he loses his own money.”

  “He’s in the market up to the hilt. So Jock says. Borrowed right up to the hilt. The stock markets are a moneymaking machine not like the theatre… You must know how many shows fail.”

  * * *

  Barnaby listened to every word without turning around. He was smiling to himself. When the riff-raff were in the market it was always the time to get out. Taking his drink in his hand, Barnaby moved anonymously among the first-night crowd. By the time he went to his seat at the back of the theatre, he was feeling better. The audience was just getting interested. If the second and third acts went as Oscar Fleming planned, there would be more than polite clapping when the final curtain dropped on the first night.

  * * *

  Oscar Fleming had been quite specific.

  “Never give ’em it all in the beginning. The end is what they remember. What they talk about when they get home. You got to build a show, Mr St Clair. Marlowe knows that as well as I do. Why his first musical made money. You do know his father was a leading man of business in the City. However much he likes to act the bohemian, Marlowe knows the end product that counts in life is money.”