To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

  “You mean you are not going back on the stage?”

  “Not with a family.”

  “You can’t all live in an attic?”

  “Of course not, darling. Christopher is rich. We can do what we like. We were going to give up the flat anyway. The attic is pure nostalgia. Where it all started for Christopher. We are making a new start to our lives.”

  Tina watched her adversary walk down the bar to Uncle Wallace who stood up from his stool at the bar. Tina understood. Harry was dead. They were both making new starts in their lives. The world was full of false starts and cross purposes. She had her five children. That would have to be enough.

  “What does this Uncle Wallace want?” asked Tina.

  “The usual. Christopher to take over the firm. Or rather Barrington Madgwick to take over the firm.”

  “I thought it was Barrie.”

  “That was Christopher again. Changing his name.”

  “And the woman with Uncle Wallace?”

  “His secretary. She’s been in love with Ralph Madgwick for years. Rosie Prescott. Followed Ralph to America and back again. Uncle Wallace likes the theatre and so does she. Convenience… Poor old bugger wants to retire to the country. Some people have all the bad luck… She’s jealous of you.”

  “Rosie Prescott?”

  “Brett Kentrich. Poor old Harry. I miss him.”

  “You mean that don’t you?”

  “I’m not a very nice person, Tina. You of all people should know that. Harry saw clean through me. He was a friend. Not had many of those in my life… But you can’t have everything now, can you? You should know… Now may I go and see my son… What’s he like?”

  “You.”

  “Poor chap. He’ll need a skin as thick as a rhinoceros.”

  * * *

  Uncle Wallace watched Tina Brigandshaw leave the bar with Barnaby St Clair. He knew exactly who they were. Rosie Prescott had told him when she sat down at the bar. All the young people seemed to know each other. Madgwick and Madgwick was collapsing. Uncle Wallace had come to Clara’s from seeing Sweet Moments of Life, which he had enjoyed for the third time. Secretly he was proud of the nephew who liked to call himself Christopher Marlowe.

  Uncle Wallace liked to say his worst enemies did him the biggest favours. Like the Germans knocking out his left eye sending him back to England before they killed him. The stock market crash, though not a person, had done the same thing. At last, he was free from family obligations. He could go live in the country the last years of his life. Hunt, shoot and fish to his heart’s content.

  “What are you going to do, Rosie? The American company will stay afloat under Sir Jacob Rosenzweig. We’ll lose our shareholding and they will change the name of the New York company but there will still be a job. Not like the new owners in England who don’t want our staff. Only our clients.”

  “Not without Ralph.”

  “You still love that stupid nephew of mine after all he has done?”

  “Because of what he did. He loves her. She loves him. Why should religion get in their way…? Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t see straight when it comes to Ralph.”

  “Ever thought of being a housekeeper in the country…? Can you ride a horse?”

  “Even some of us who choose to live in London can ride a horse. But not to hounds. I find the idea of chasing a poor defenceless fox appalling.”

  “They are vermin. Kill the pheasants. Breed like rabbits if we don’t hunt them down. Anyway, that’s enough. Here comes his wife. She must think I’m here for a riot act on family responsibility… Ironical, really. All my years as senior partner after their father died was a waste of time… Why are so many things in life a waste of time, Rosie Prescott? Like the last war and the next one. And the next one… There’s always another war… Brett! How lovely you look. You know Miss Prescott from your wedding reception. Fine wedding. Fine old Norman church, St Giles. Backbone of England. When that nephew of mine has finished tinkling the ivories tell him I have something to say to him. He doesn’t have to be frightened. Fact is, Barrington will have a good laugh. Saw his show again tonight. Good but not as good as it would have been with you in the lead, Miss Kentrich. No, indeed. Have a drink. Fact is when you all hear what I have to say we’ll have a good few drinks… Did I hear you say to those people you were going to give up the stage? Oh, congratulations. I may have one eye but I have two ears and both are very good. Have your children but stay on the stage. London would miss you. You would miss the stage. I’m sure Barrington is writing a new show just for you, Brett… He really is a lousy piano player… Did you hear all those false notes when he saw me sitting at the bar… Poor Ralph. Gave him a hard time and now he’s staying out in Africa. His mother tells me he’s going to grow tobacco and build himself his own farm… She’ll be all right. Not all her money was in the firm. Lately, she has lived quietly, my sister-in-law.”

  “What are you talking about Uncle Wallace?” asked Brett expecting trouble.

  “Madgwick and Madgwick are going out of business.”

  * * *

  Even as Tina and Barnaby opened the door to leave Clara’s, they heard Brett’s peal of laughter.

  Then they found a taxi to take them to see their son.

  * * *

  Christopher Marlowe knew his days of playing the bohemian were over. When Uncle Wallace told him between sets that Madgwick and Madgwick were going out of business, the company’s bad debts equalling the firm’s assets causing the fire sale, the irony was not lost on him. Brett had told him that morning she was pregnant. The responsibility he owed to one family was being replaced by another. Being a father would change everything he did in his life. After Tina’s letter saying the flat still belonged to her as Harry’s widow, they moved back into the attic. Christopher had kept on paying the attic rent out of nostalgia for an easy life without complications when Gert van Heerden returned to Africa to face his own responsibilities. For some reason, Brett had been happy to live in the attic to please him. Now he knew why. His wife who had said she never wanted children was consumed by the knowledge she was going to have a child of her own. Her euphoria was tangible. As the father, some of Brett’s new-found happiness flowed his way. As if he was terribly clever. Even Christopher knew most women changed at the thought of actually being pregnant. It was built into them or the species would never have survived. Like his own understanding that he now had to make a stable home and provide for his child. That too was in his human make-up. Nothing was really terribly clever in life. Everything they did was ordained by their own evolution from time immemorial. How they themselves had survived the fight for life to be born. Every child had to be nurtured before it could stand on its own two feet.

  Smiling and listening to Uncle Wallace he knew he had had a good run. It was now time to settle down. Thankfully without having to sit every day in an office to provide for his children… He was thirty-seven years old.

  “I’ll even have to change my name back to Barrington Madgwick. Can’t have a son with a different surname to his father. Brett can keep her stage name but not me.”

  Uncle Wallace was smiling. He knew. Rosie Prescott was downcast. Christopher understood. In the end, sadly they all had to grow up with the facts of life.

  * * *

  The boys’ bedroom was quiet, the night candle resting on the small table between the two sleeping brothers. Ivy, Molly and the other children were asleep in the room next door. Tina quietly closed the connecting door that stayed open once the children were asleep.

  “Won’t we wake them?” whispered Barnaby not sure whether he wanted this after all.

  “Once they go to sleep a bomb going off won’t wake them.” Tina picked up the thick candle on its silver dish, relit it and held the light above Frank. The boy had his thumb in his mouth. Tina was smiling gently. “They are such angels asleep.”

  “Is that my son?”

  “Yes, Barnaby, though I want you to swear you will never tell him.”

&nbs
p; “Not even if he is in terrible trouble?”

  “You won’t know. We will be far away in Africa.”

  “It’s a strange feeling looking at your own flesh and blood… Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “How can we prove it?”

  “The way he looks. The way he behaves. The total difference between him and the rest of them. Maybe one day they will be able to tell. Anyway, to you it does not matter. You are going to have nothing to do with Frank. You owe that to Harry’s memory.”

  “That boy there removes any burden from my future. I don’t have to marry and give up my freedom. I understand now I have a son. I will go on when I’m dead. The reason for my life is right there in the bed. The only way a man can reincarnate himself is through his children. I was very clever. I’ve got what I need without having the responsibility of having to be a father.”

  “You’re a selfish bastard.”

  “Look after him, Tina. He’s my son. He’ll always be with me in my mind till the day I die.”

  “The taxi is waiting downstairs.”

  “You won’t let me stay?”

  “Not after what you just said… Why I cared about you so much, I don’t know.”

  “We play the perfect tune together, Tina. Never forget it. Very few people in life ever get to play the perfect tune. When they do they stay together one way or the other. You’ll never be rid of me, Tina Pringle. Any more than I will be of you. Some call it fate. It’s much simpler. Sexually, we are the only two people on earth who can satisfy each other. Now and forever. Don’t forget about it. Even in Africa… He’s not a bad-looking boy when you come to think of it.”

  They were smiling at each other. They both understood.

  Tina stayed with her children as Barnaby left the house. In the still of the night she heard the front door click shut, the taxi drove away.

  Blowing out the candle, Tina opened the connecting door so Ivy could hear if the boys wanted something. Or something went wrong. Ivy or Molly liked to look at the children during the night. They were both light sleepers.

  Then she went to her own bedroom, undressed and got into bed. She was still awake when the dawn paled the sky over Berkeley Square. Only then did she fall into dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  When Tina went aboard at the end of August it was not as bad as she imagined. The SS Corfe Castle was the same ship on which she had seduced Harry, half intentionally getting herself pregnant and leading to the chain of events that led to herself and five children sailing to Africa. Nothing had changed with the money. Colonial Shipping shares were still going down like everything else. America was in a depression with banks across the nation going broke. The percentage of workers unemployed had reached 20 per cent and Europe was not any much better according to Horatio Wakefield in The Daily Mail. Tina had bought the paper for something to read not knowing if she would ever again see an English newspaper. A brass band had played them off as the tugs pulled the ship into the Southampton Solent on its way to Cape Town. All the old choke in the throat Tina told herself while wiping the unwelcome tears from her eyes. For Tina, it always took a ship too long to sail. For the hawsers to be released from the bollards. The tugs to get a grip and painfully slowly drag the ship from the jetty. Land of Hope and Glory. Greensleeves, for some reason. All the pomp and patriotism expected from the Empire encapsulated in music. The longing for belonging. The longing for home as they turned their backs and headed out into the world from so small an island. The whole history of England slipping away with the notes of the music floating out on water reminding Tina what she was losing.

  To Tina’s surprise, the one thing she would not miss was all the obsequious fawning by the staff of Colonial Shipping, the captain and the crew of the SS Corfe Castle. Once she had everything money could buy, including people’s deference, it seemed unimportant. There was no excitement in all the attention any more. Only for a brief time had Tina’s ego been impressed. She had found through her life that once she had what she wanted she didn’t want it any more. She was still the same self whatever she possessed. It made no difference to her being. The only difference was the perception of the captain who in another life when she spoke a broad Dorset accent and lived in a railway cottage with love, he would have ignored. She would have been too insignificant for him to be rude to. Her difference was the power of great wealth she was leaving behind which was fine by her… As she said to herself looking over the side at the receding shores of England there were some things in life she would never understand… One of them was why people were so impressed with the rich and famous.

  * * *

  The children were already running riot despite the best efforts of Ivy and Molly. Poor girls. For them, it was going to be a long trip before they reached the space of Elephant Walk where Anthony and Frank could shout their lungs out without anyone caring about the noise. The dogs would join in. The wild geese now tame would honk their way to the river… Only Harry would be missing.

  To Tina’s surprise, Barnaby had seen them off at the railway station in London. He was looking smug and rich. Barnaby liked to look rich. He liked what people thought of him in a condescending sort of way. He had laconically waved as the train pulled out of the station, quickly turning his back and going off somewhere in a hurry. Barnaby liked to look in a hurry. Tina had smiled and pulled up the window of her carriage. It was cold even in August… From that moment the children started their mayhem.

  By the time the ship sailed down the English Channel, Tina had found the first-class bar despite women not usually going to bars on their own. She needed a drink and she only had twelve more days at being the owner. Everyone knew who she was. Everyone left her alone. The children, bless them, were not allowed in the bar.

  “Money, old girl, does have some advantages,” she said lifting her glass. She would make it up to Ivy and Molly when they reached Rhodesia by train from Cape Town… The children would have to make their own way through life. In September, the silver spoon was going to fall right out of their mouths.

  * * *

  While Tina Brigandshaw was ordering her third gin and tonic on the SS Corfe Castle, in the heart of Africa, Tembo was drinking from a bowl of white maize beer in the shade of a tree on the shore of Lake Victoria. They had arrived at Mwanza on the southern shore of the lake a week earlier. The rains had been intense locking them between rivers until the end of April when they broke out from their camp to continue the journey north. During the rainy season, Tembo had shot nothing but small game to feed them. The big game was always too far away. Never in one place. To shoot and wound an elephant was a sin likely to be paid for with the life of the next human being that came across the wounded elephant. Tembo had known an elephant to attack a village, rampaging through the mud huts years after being shot and wounded by a white hunter. When Tembo killed the elephant, he found a festering cyst in the shoulder behind the big ear that was years old, by the look of it, and still giving excruciating pain to the elephant. Hunting down the wounded beast to protect the villagers had taken Tembo a week.

  The two small carts bought in Ujiji by the Arab captain had caused most of the trouble in the wet. Loaded with the few tusks of elephant shot by Tembo before the rains came down, they had to be manhandled much of the way through the bush between the north shore of Lake Tanganyika and the south shore of Lake Victoria. Only a span of oxen would have done the job properly, something not for sale in Ujiji. The harnessed packhorses had tried their best. Anywhere wet in the low country the carts sank into the mud. With all the men on the wheels, they could pull the carts from the suck of the mud. Their journey to Mwanza had been long, heavy work with little reward. Only once did the Arab trade his Western goods for rhino horn.

  When the Arab reached Mwanza he had hired a boat to take him up the lake leaving Tembo to guard the small pile of ivory. The Arab thought it would be easier to trade for ivory and horn from a boat than hump the tusks through the bush without an ox wagon
inspanned to eight powerful oxen.

  The British had built two spurs to their railway line out of Dar es Salaam to open up the heart and lungs of Africa to trade. The one spur had gone to Ujiji, the other to Mwanza where the Arab was going to entrain with his ivory and horn leaving Tembo and his Shona to go back to Rhodesia overland on horseback unencumbered by trade goods or tusks. They had blazed a trail. Going back would be easier. With gold for helping the Arab to accumulate his ivory and horn they would buy passages down Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasaland reaching Elephant Walk with money and the horses.

  Tembo, drinking the smooth white beer out of the old wooden bowl was well pleased with himself. He was going to be rich. The open bar under the tree was to his liking. The woman who served him the beer when he wanted was big in the bottom and big in the breast. Young. Just as he liked his women. The man who called himself Parsons and spoke Chinyanga with a smattering of Shona had stayed with Tembo. He was going to take the train from Mwanza to Dar es Salaam. He also thought himself rich, a man following his whims through life, going where life took him without a care in the world. Mostly, the locals spoke Swahili in Mwanza so Parsons was of little use to Tembo’s quest for information other than as a companion with whom to drink beer and listen for any gossip they might understand. Many men came to the shade of the tree to drink beer.

  * * *

  In the months on the journey, Tembo had learnt his own smattering of Chinyanga and Swahili. Some of the black people who worked for the British even spoke English. The British, Tembo understood from Rhodesia, liked to teach the blacks English rather than have to learn so many African languages, hoping one day English would be the common language over the territories they had colonised stretching all of the way up East Africa to Egypt.