To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

  * * *

  By the time Barnaby went for a drink after the second act, he thought his money was safe. When the curtain went down on the last act he was sitting in the seat where he had started. In the second row of the stalls. A little smugly, with his arms folded defensively over his chest, Barnaby watched Brett and the cast take five curtain calls. The old fox, Oscar Fleming could have milked two more by the sound of the clapping from the audience. Only when people were certain the curtain had gone down for the last time did they get up to leave.

  The theatre crowd gave an air of excitement. They had enjoyed themselves so far as Barnaby could see and overhear. He too was enjoying himself. Not only did the theatre give him something to do, but it was also going to make him money. All the girls were just one of the pleasant extras that came with life. Like so many women in his life, Portia had come and gone. When the chase came to its climax he mostly grew bored and looked for someone else to build his excitement. Barnaby knew he loved women. But in the plural. The more the merrier, he said to himself with a self-satisfied chuckle.

  Barnaby followed the crowd out of the Aldwych Theatre. First, he was going to get himself a bite to eat at Clara’s. Then he was coming back for the first night party to see what he could find among all the young girls. Then they would all see what the morning newspapers had to say about A Walk in the Woods.

  * * *

  Tina Brigandshaw read The Daily Mail review sitting at her lonely breakfast table in her house on Berkeley Square. The children were still in the nursery on the top floor of the house where Ivy and Molly were feeding them their breakfast before taking them for a walk in the square. She was surprised reading the H Wakefield name as the reviewer of A Walk in the Woods. The same H Wakefield who had given her so much pain writing about Harry. She was numb, barely registering the new baby growing inside her, a child who would never know a father. Despite her premonition, Tina had now accepted Harry was dead. That she would never see him again. Never hear his voice except inside her head where she had conversations with him throughout the day and most of the night.

  She was still in her dressing gown picking at the food a servant had put in front of her. Tina knew she looked a mess. Were it not for having to visit Colonial Shipping at the request of Percy Grainger, she would not have contemplated getting dressed. Outside the breakfast room where she took all her meals, she could see the rain drizzling on the bare trees that had mostly lost their autumn leaves. Tina had no idea what Percy Grainger wanted. He had said it was important, and would she come to the office.

  It had to do with Harry’s business, which she knew nothing about. Why else would he want her to meet the other directors of the company? Percy Grainger had asked her to lunch in the executive dining room after the meeting but she had declined. Harry had once said something about entertaining clients for lunch at the office, which she now understood: Percy Grainger had settled with her for an eleven o’clock meeting that morning.

  Leaving most of her food on the plate and her teacup half full, Tina got up to go and dress. She had read the review to try to stop feeling so sorry for herself. The visit to her mother and father had somehow made it all worse. The children had enjoyed themselves making a noise in the garden. They had run around screaming in the surrounding woods. Frank had got in the river up to his neck, frightening the wits out of Molly who had jumped in the water to pull him out. The children had known their father go away before. They were all too young to sense something dreadfully wrong.

  Changing in their bedroom Tina tried to put the pain of Harry out of her mind. The review was good. Ironically, Barnaby was going to make even more money by the looks of it. He had only made one call: the week the Royal Air Force called off the search, Harry’s disappearance spread across a dozen newspapers. He had not come round for which she was grateful. She had no wish for Barnaby to see her constant crying.

  * * *

  “You know where I am if you need any help. For what it’s worth and despite everything we did, Harry was about the only friend I ever had.”

  “Don’t talk of him in the past. He’s alive. Somewhere. He roamed half of southern Africa after his father was killed by that elephant. If they didn’t die in the crash, they can all survive. Harry knows the bush like you know women… No, that’s a cheap shot. Thank you for calling, Barnaby.”

  “You’ll have to come to terms with it one day, Tina. How long can you hope?”

  “He’ll walk out of the bush. You’ll see.”

  “Tina, please be reasonable. It’s been weeks since he must have gone down.”

  “I don’t want to see you, Barnaby.”

  “That I understand. Just remember where I am if you need me.”

  “You didn’t say when I need you.”

  “I know. Goodbye.”

  * * *

  The taxi dropped off Tina outside the head office of Colonial Shipping in Billiter Street, opposite Cannon Street tube station. It was five minutes to eleven o’clock.

  The managing director’s office was unpretentious when the receptionist showed her the way in. Percy Grainger got up from behind his desk. The room was full of men who all stood up. Percy Grainger introduced each one of them by name.

  “We are sorry to bring you here, Mrs Brigandshaw. The board of directors have a problem. As you know we are a public listed company with our ordinary shares quoted on the London Stock Exchange. The directors run the company. The directors have to be appointed by the controlling shareholder each year at our annual general meeting which is tomorrow. The controlling shareholder was your husband, Mrs Brigandshaw. I had asked your husband to sign a blank proxy form if he was ever away and unable to attend our AGM. He refused. There was something that happened in the war about tempting fate. He did not explain only to say he was superstitious. Harry himself told me he did not have a will. In the event of him dying intestate, you will become, as his wife and next of kin, the major shareholder in Colonial Shipping.”

  “But Harry is not dead.”

  “Exactly, Mrs Brigandshaw. There is no proof of his death. Only his disappearance somewhere over the African jungle between Khartoum and the farm Elephant Walk. Our solicitors have informed us you may apply to the court in two years to have your husband declared legally dead. Please forgive me. This is just as difficult for me. In the meantime, we are asking them to give you power of attorney over your husband’s shares in the company so tomorrow you can approve my recommendation for the continuance in office of the current board of directors without which the company may not legally function. I am now formally asking you to become your husband’s proxy on the board until the end of the two years when you’ll be able to dispose of your shares as you wish. I understand you know Mr C E Porter who arranged with Harry for the company to go public some years ago. When Harry still lived in Africa, C E Porter voted his shares. He also had a seat on our board. I am sure Mr Porter will give you good advice in these terrible circumstances we all presently face.”

  “You want me to be a director of your company?”

  “Yes, Mrs Brigandshaw, we do.”

  “I know nothing whatsoever about business or the company.”

  “It is more a formality.”

  “Can’t we wait?”

  “No, Mrs Brigandshaw. We want you tomorrow at our AGM with power of attorney to vote your husband’s shares.”

  “The nightmare is getting worse. Frankly, I have no idea what you are all talking about.”

  “But you will do as we wish? For the company? For the staff?”

  “Of course, Mr Grainger. My husband held you in high esteem.”

  “We have these papers for you to sign for our solicitor’s appearance in court this afternoon. The company car will be at your door to pick you up at two-thirty tomorrow afternoon. The AGM begins at three p.m. In a moment our driver will take you home, Mrs Brigandshaw. With all our condolences. Harry Brigandshaw, like his grandfather, our founder, was a very special man to all of us. It is not wrong to say
we loved him.”

  “He’s not dead, you know. He’s coming back.”

  “We all hope so. Now if you’ll sign here and here, our receptionist will witness your signature and I will attend the court on your behalf this afternoon.”

  12

  July 1929 – Doctor Livingstone, I Presume

  John Lacey, Marquess of Ravenhurst was full of excitement. Not even the stifling heat in Madison Avenue where he was walking on the pavement between the towering skyscrapers of New York could dull his mood. His marriage to Stella Fitzgerald may have been a convenience for both of them but his money was real and growing every day. Every cent of the million dollars paid to him by Patrick Fitzgerald for marrying his daughter had been invested in the New York Stock Exchange. His new friends told him nothing could stop the Dow Jones going higher and higher. America was on an unstoppable roll. Stella’s friends, and by association his, were stockbrokers, investment bankers, men of new money, richer than Croesus living fabulous lives in fabulous apartments newly decorated by his wife. Magnificent homes high above the City with views over Manhattan that took his breath away. The old crumbling house he had lived in like a hermit until Cuddles Morton-Sayner came knocking on his back door, was far from his mind. America had changed him.

  The business of war and genteel poverty were gone with the bustle, the excitement, the brand newness of the New World he had not so much as imagined until they had set up home in their Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park. Even the man in the flat below them was a titled Englishmen, one of the breeds of bankers who were making John Lacey enormously rich. His decision never to impregnate his wife with the old seed of the Ravenhurst’s had long been tossed out of the proverbial window. John now wanted an heir. An American heir. Not so much to inherit his title, as American citizens were unable to do so. He wanted the boy to inherit the fabulous wealth and lifestyle that went with being rich. Really rich and getting richer every day.

  Finding the entrance to his wife’s building where Stella kept a small, exclusive design studio only frequented by the rich, he went through the revolving door into the cool of an air-conditioned building where man lived at the temperature he chose for himself away from the fickle dictates of nature. The cool air that brushed over his face was utter bliss, the personification of everything he liked about living in America. John Lacey was quite happy to admit to himself that the real seducer had not been Stella Fitzgerald but America, a mistress he was looking forward to enjoying in luxury for the rest of his life. Suddenly England was a long, long, way away, forgotten in his past, the weeds stalking through his ancestral home for all he cared. For a few dollars more he would have taken on an American accent was it not for his new American friends. They just loved the English marquess with his strange pompous accent that they said made him so much fun at their dinner parties. They wanted him to stand out. They wanted him to be different. John even suspected that was the reason he was so often invited into the sumptuous apartments across the island of Manhattan. 1929 was proving to be the best year of his life.

  That night they were hosting a dinner party for ten of Stella’s rich advertising friends who worked in the office building where he was now going up smoothly in the air-conditioned lift that did not require an operator: John had merely pressed the tenth-floor button to take him where he wanted, the doors closing automatically. Image, selling, advertising were all the rage in America. Everyone pushed. No one waited for the buyer to walk through the door, for the customer to ask politely if it was possible to do business. The polite old boy network of the old world had long ago drowned in the mass frenzy of getting the wealth every American strove for and wanted. Everyone had a chance, John understood. You just had to push.

  On the door of the studio, John Lacey read his own family name:

  * * *

  Stella, Marchioness of Ravenhurst – Interior Design

  * * *

  Then he went inside to sit with the receptionist until his wife was free to see him. He wanted to take his wife to lunch. The only quibble John Lacey had with his life in America was not having enough to do. He couldn’t very well wander around the fields with a shotgun over his shoulder in Manhattan. Or translate ancient Greek for a pittance.

  The debacle of the brass band at the railway station in Boston no longer seemed what it was at the time. He even tolerated the brashness of his father-in-law, the ‘I know we bought you’ of his brothers-in-law. He had doubled their money on the stock exchange so to hell with them. They could patronize him any which way they wished.

  When a young man about Stella’s age eventually came out of his wife’s inner office and blushed deep red when he saw him sitting at reception, he thought nothing of the man. Stella always did like doing business with men. John even gave the man a friendly smile. He had seen him somewhere before. At one of the many parties. Probably in his own house. When he got up and thanked the receptionist for the cup of coffee she had brought to him while he had been waiting, she did not look him in the eye for some reason. By the time John opened the door to Stella’s office the man behind him had gone and the girl at reception was busy on her typewriter, hitting the heavy keys for all she was worth.

  “What are you doing here, John?”

  “I came to take you to lunch.”

  “Not today, John. I’m up to my eyeballs in work. Don’t forget the party tonight. The caterers are coming at six so make sure to be there to let them in.”

  His wife was very often up to her eyeballs, an expression unknown to John. Stella had picked it up from Cuddles Morton-Sayner when Cuddles was searching the aristocracy for a husband to give a nice ring to her married name and to satisfy the ego of her brothers and father.

  * * *

  When her husband left the office five minutes later, Stella let out a small sigh. Even if she wanted him to, she doubted he was capable of making her pregnant. After six months she had given up seducing him and taken herself a young lover. Never once had John made the first approach. She had his name. He had her family money. Her friends liked him as a host at her parties, flattered by being flattered by an Englishman with a title. In some ways, she had grown quite fond of him. Like the faithful family dog she thought he had become. He dressed well at her insistence, not in old English tweeds and his manners had always been impeccable. Best of all, John and his name were good for business. People liked to drop names. It made them feel more important: my apartment was decorated by the Marchioness of Ravenhurst had a nice ring to it. Her brothers dropped her new name all the time.

  Just before she went back to the picture she was painting on a board for the chairman of Westgate Oil to show to his wife, so the stupid bitch could see what she was getting before she paid for the outrageously expensive decoration, Stella shuddered in the cold draught of the air conditioning. For a brief flash, she saw not the drawing board in front of her but a river through the trees in the light of a colourless moon. In her head, she could hear owls hooting across the moon-splashed night. It took another full minute to find her concentration and go back to her work. She wondered how he was. What he had done with her clothes. The man who had taken her virginity in his house on the banks of the River Thames. The man she seemed quite unable to get out of her head. In all the sex that had come to her after that first time, none other had been so satisfying. None other had satiated her lust. None had made her feel so good. Strangely, she found she could remember most of their day-long conversation, she sitting at the feet of his wheelchair. She could still feel the power in his arms when he had stopped her running head first into the river. More and more as the months went by Stella regretted not going back for her clothes. Only when the painting for the bitch was finished did she realise what she had to do to lay the ghost. She would take a month’s holiday away from her husband. She would tell him it was boring business. That it was best for her to go alone. Her husband was quite besotted with his new lifestyle anyway and never even talked of England, let alone the old house rotting away in the
marshes he had so lovingly described when they first met in London. She would go to England and collect her long-lost clothes and find out what it was a legless man had done to her. Sitting at her desk the one thing she wanted most in life was to see Douglas Hayter again. To talk to him all day. To make love all night while the owls called to her through the open French windows from the woods.

  * * *

  Keppel Howland had gone all the way to New York to make his old friend Ralph Madgwick a proposition. This despite their lack of correspondence during his years up at Oxford on a Madgwick scholarship reading English literature. He wanted Ralph to go back with him to Africa and look for Harry Brigandshaw. Keppel even had the title of the articles he was going to write to make himself a name in journalism. In the footsteps of Doctor Livingstone. What he had read in the newspapers of the RAF flying over the jungle trying to look for a crashed aircraft under the trees, he knew was a waste of time. A publicity stunt to make it look as if the air force cared about its war heroes. The RAF high command prompted by the build-up in the press at two of their airmen’s disappearance. What was needed were feet on the ground. An expedition like Stanley had put together in order to find and resupply Livingstone, Stanley a Welsh journalist who had concentrated the world on Africa, and the search for the famous explorer. With interpreters, Keppel could ask the locals questions. Probe any rumours of a devil crashing in from the sky. Even if Harry and the others were long dead the finding of the crash site would make world headlines. Make him famous. If he found Harry Brigandshaw it would repay Harry for the hospitality he had shown them when they left the leopard cave at Harry’s invitation dropped to them from out of the sky. Harry in so many ways had been the start of his career as a writer. His first published article in The Daily Mail had been titled The Leopard Cave.