by Pirate Irwin
Sebastian, ever the opportunist, had actually made his peace with his tearoom adversary von Preetz, something which had delighted the German who believed he had secured his version of Munich in, like Hitler, persuading an Englishman that the Nazis were bent on peace and only wanted what was stripped from them in the unjust peace of Versailles, which made Steiner just shrug his shoulders at his former friend’s shameless immorality.
However, Stuart still had no patience with the Germans or von Preetz’s toned down opinions of the Jews but being inquisitive by nature – he had inherited something of his father in him after all – he still wanted to spend some time in Germany and realized that by making friends with the Count he could rely on several welcome invitations and visits to the nicer castles in the country as he had no intention of slumming it.
The fact that both England and Germany had nearly gone to war with each other a few months earlier, the appeaser Chamberlain waving his little piece of white paper and declaring that it bore the stamp of peace in our time on his return, which to Sebastian was about as valid as a piece of loo paper, mattered little to this son of an intrepid explorer.
Besides, Sebastian was not interested in hanging around London and working in the nine months’ free time he had between one establishment and the other – toiling away in the stuffy atmosphere of a bank or in Lloyds wearing one of those stiff white collars did not appeal to his sartorial taste, quite apart from the fact he had spent nearly eight years wearing one at school and university – while bumping into Mirabelle filled him with dread.
Playing the cad was fine so long as one wasn’t humbled in public and there was a good chance Mirabelle would exact some revenge, and while he thought it might be him being paranoid, he sensed a froideur every time he came across her brother, Rupert, or her parents without the subject actually being addressed.
However, a day before he was due to set off for Germany his luck ran out.
He agreed to lunch with his mother at a top establishment in Knightsbridge; the fact she was paying had persuaded Sebastian to come along. He had just consumed a fine bottle of Bordeaux; his mother was a light drinker and maintained that her beautiful clear china doll-like skin and tiny waist was down to this, when he heard Mirabelle call out from over his shoulder.
“Sebastian! Gosh, I haven’t seen you in ages,” Mirabelle said.
Sebastian, buoyed by the consumption of the Bordeaux and the heady hedonistic thoughts of his forthcoming trip, shed his nervousness at what might be revealed and jumped up to greet Mirabelle, kissing her on both cheeks, while Mrs Stuart smiled warmly and received two pecks in return. However, Sebastian did notice that Mirabelle’s brightly coloured floral dress could not hide the fact she had put on a bit of weight round the waist since their fateful liaison last June.
“Mirabelle, why this is a pleasant surprise,” he lied. “You look wonderful. I always thought a few extra pounds would do you good,” he grinned, hoping against hope that she wasn’t what he thought she was.
Mirabelle, too, laughed and replied: “Oh, how sweet, but didn’t my mother or Rupert tell you? I’m pregnant.”
While Stuart was delighted he had regained his seat when he heard the news, he still felt very faint and ordered a bottle of champagne, in theory to celebrate this great news for a friend of the family, but more to sustain himself and calm down.
“How lovely, dear. When’s the baby due?” twittered Mrs Stuart, though for once Sebastian was delighted she had intervened because he was starting to feel rather nauseous and in even greater need of the bubbly.
“It’s due in mid-February, Mrs Stuart,” Mirabelle smiled.
The bottle arrived, brought by Jean-François the rather patronising and at the same time ingratiating maître d’ of the establishment, of which Sebastian was a frequent visitor, and to his Gallic taste none was quite so beguiling as their unexpected guest.
The arrival of the bottle drew a disapproving look from Mrs Stuart.
“Do you really think that is necessary, Sebastian? I certainly won’t drink more than a smidgen of it and I don’t believe Mirabelle will touch a drop, given she is pregnant,” she said in a reprimanding tone.
Sebastian dismissed her objections and nodded at Jean-François to go ahead and open the bottle and the Frenchman was only too delighted to crack it open on what looked like a very special occasion.
“Congratulations, Monsieur Sebastian, you must be very proud . . .”
Sebastian cut him dead as he felt the matter was getting up a head of steam which could well run out of control and the awful truth might emerge.
“It’s nothing to do with me, Jean-François, thank you, that will be all,” and with that the maître d’, put in his place, retreated to the kitchen to take his anger at this most unusual misjudgement out on one of the commis chefs.
“So, Mirabelle, I didn’t realize you had got married,” stammered Sebastian, praying that the riposte would be in the affirmative.
“Oh, I’m not married, Sebastian. That’s why I am so happy to have bumped into you,” she purred and followed it up with a cheeky wink.
Sebastian, with the champagne not having done the trick at all, wished at that very moment the well-tiled floor would open up and swallow him. While his mother would put up with most of his foolish escapades, blaming poor Sebastian‘s behaviour on his pig of a father deserting him, she would not stand for a repetition of his father’s history and would mean an end to the large allowance and any hope he had of going to Germany.
He could tell from his mother’s look that she was cottoning on, and while she may have lacked a certain intellectual curiosity, she was by no means stupid when it came to more earthy matters, as her years of spending time with her own hawk-like mother had taught her many things about social nuances and human behaviour.
“Sebastian, what does Mirabelle mean?” she asked and raised one of her pencil thin black eyebrows.
“Oh, it’s just Mirabelle’s particular sense of humour,” said Sebastian and put on a very forced grin.
“Yes, he’s right, Mrs Stuart, but I would like to see you more often, Sebastian, because we were inseparable till last June,” Mirabelle said, though Sebastian sensed the threat of menace below the surface of her sugary tone.
“That would be lovely, Mirabelle, but I am afraid I am off to Germany tomorrow morning for six months . . . though I suppose I could squeeze you in for a farewell drink and catch up on other things early this evening,” he said.
Sebastian, who thought that he had extricated himself rather well from this tight situation, could see Mirabelle’s face start to crease up as if she was about to start sobbing like the infamous day in June but she collected herself by bending down to pick up her handbag and got up to go.
“Okay, come around to my flat which is Number 15, Earls Court Square, it’s on the third floor. Around eight o’clock. Don’t let me down, Sebastian, because there’ll be hell to pay,” she said with the same underlying tone of menace.
Stuart knew exactly what hell would turn out to be and he was certainly not going to experience the red hot climes of that fate now, so he nodded and stood up, kissing Mirabelle again on both cheeks, which she was glad of because she didn’t feel like having his drink-sodden lips pressed onto hers.
*
“It’s out of the question, Mirabelle. I’m not giving up my trip to Germany to marry you so your child, who may well not be mine anyway, can have a father and salvage what honour is left to you,” stormed Sebastian.
Sebastian, who had gone back home to his mother’s house in Pont Street to have a lie down and sober up after the splendid but exhausting lunch, had kept his word for once and turned up at Mirabelle’s flat on time.
He was seated on a threadbare leather armchair, whose springs were sticking up into his bum making it an even more uncomfortable meeting than he had feared, in what could only be described as unprepossessing a flat as he had ever had the misfortune to visit.
The sitting room, wh
ere he was, was typical of the three-roomed apartment.
There was bland floral patterned wallpaper, some of it peeling off the wall because of rising damp, a depressing grey/black carpet and what furniture there was was very old and definitely hand me downs from Mirabelle’s grandparents, who had taken on responsibility for her after her parents disowned her on hearing the news of her pregnancy.
My, my, Mirabelle, Sebastian thought, we have come down in the world from angel to devil in a very short space of time and he breathed a sigh of relief that he had behaved as he had done and refused any contact with her over the past few months because he could not have countenanced living this sort of hell.
“Of course it’s your child, who else’s could it be?” replied Mirabelle.
“Well, Steiner comes to mind, for one,” Sebastian said sulkily.
“That’s impossible as we never had sex without taking precautions and anyway the timing of the pregnancy rules that out.”
Sebastian realized he was running out of options but just sat there with the springs digging into him, shaking his head at the physical and mental agony he was being put through.
“I’m sorry, Mirabelle, I will not accept the child as mine and that is my final word on the matter.”
“The sins of the father have certainly come to rest on you, haven’t they, Sebastian?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, just shut up, you silly bitch!” screamed Sebastian and went bright purple in the face. What the hell possessed me to come here, he thought to himself.
“Oh yes, Sebastian, your father taught you well. Bed every woman in sight but lord, don’t ever accept the responsibility for the resultant mess. You make a fine pair and if he were around I am sure he would be very proud of you,” she said venomously.
Sebastian just wished she would stop and while he disliked intensely what she was telling him, deep down he knew that it was the truth, but he certainly wasn’t going to let her know that was how he felt.
“Fine, Mirabelle, have the bloody baby but don’t expect me to accept it. All we had that day was sex, it wasn’t love and it certainly wasn’t the start of an affair. It was for me, as I explained at the time, an experiment and a very interesting one at that both in the act and the results. I also don’t think we would be having this conversation now if Adam hadn’t discovered us. Do you?” he said and winked at her.
Mirabelle, who had pulled her long and rather lank hair up into a pony tail at the back and who looked to Sebastian very tired and drawn with black rings under her eyes, seethed at this tart response and wondered how could she ever have fallen for this cad, who showed no signs of remorse whatsoever over his treatment of Adam and then herself.
“Jesus, Sebastian, why do you always avoid the facts and interpret things as you want to see them,” Mirabelle thundered. “Because for your information, Little Lord Fauntleroy, the facts are the following,” she sneered. “Yes, we had sex and Adam discovered us, disowning both of us from that moment on, I am pregnant, which has cost me the respect and support of my parents and brother, and you are the father. What I hoped was that you would draw upon any vestige of honour you may have inherited from your dear, sweet mother and accept me and the child. Obviously judged on this evening’s performance I was wrong to even let the thought enter my head,” she railed.
Sebastian, while taken aback by the fierceness of the onslaught and personal abuse, smiled, whistled through his teeth and thought to himself, just stand firm, old boy, 12 hours from now you will be on the boat on the first leg of the journey to six months of hedonistic pleasures and she will be out of sight and out of mind.
“Listen, Mirabelle, I am sorry that Adam discovered us that day, but it is as far as I am prepared to go. I am going to Germany tomorrow and that is that.”
“And what if I tell your mother. All those nicely laid plans will go to seed, no?” Mirabelle said with a note of desperation in her voice.
“Go ahead and try. Personally I doubt you are willing to humiliate yourself in that way,” Sebastian replied icily.
“Well, I hope for your sake you are right, Sebastian, because what have I got to lose – I who have been reduced to nothing and forced to live in this fucking awful apartment as a penance for one moment’s madness, while you strut around untouched by the shit you have created!” she shouted and then, exhausted at finally having released her pent up emotions, slumped back into the tatty sofa with her head down on her knees.
“Oh, I am sure I am. Mirabelle, earlier you said I should look at the facts, well I think you should look at reality and judge people’s characters better because you have seriously misjudged me and this whole situation.”
With that, Sebastian rose, picked up his black fedora and sensing a kiss was out of the question, besides Mirabelle was now sobbing uncontrollably with her head still pressed into her knees, left, leaving he believed behind him a closed chapter of his life and set fair for the next adventure in his inexorable rise to the top. Five minutes after Stuart had departed, there was a knock on Mirabelle’s door.
“Go away, Sebastian, I don’t want to see you any more. Leave me to suffer in peace. As far as I am concerned you no longer exist,” she cried.
Despite her pleas the knocking continued so Mirabelle walked unsteadily to the tiny kitchen, pulled a knife from the drawer and went to the front door, promising herself that if Sebastian even tried to reason with her she would end his rotten existence there and then.
She heaved the door open and to her total surprise and not a little delight standing there was not Sebastian, but Steiner.
“My God, Adam, what on earth are you doing here? You’re the last person I expected to see or hear from!” she exclaimed.
“Apart from Stuart perhaps?” Steiner murmured.
“You saw him?”
“I couldn’t fail to. I was outside your apartment block when I saw him arrive and go in. What’s with the knife, Mirabelle, are you going to end everything now?” enquired Steiner in his usual matter of fact manner.
Mirabelle, who had had quite enough surprises for a year, let alone a day, had completely forgotten about the knife, looked down at it and smiled sheepishly at Adam.
“Oh that! Yeah, it was a stupid impulse I had that if it had been Sebastian coming back to try and smooth things over I would have terminated his loathsome life.”
Steiner, who was still standing on the landing, gave her one of his piercing glances with his startling black eyes and thought Sebastian, you really aren’t that clever, are you, my son. You could have had this beautiful girl to yourself but instead you trod on her and reduced her to this tearstained nervous wreck standing there with a knife in her hand.
“That would indeed have been a lovely end, if a little melodramatic for my taste,” said Steiner, smiling.
He then pushed himself past Mirabelle into the sitting room and remarked to himself that despite the dinginess of the surroundings and with her living in such straitened circumstances, his former love had retained her beauty and pregnancy had only increased her allure, despite her current misery.
Steiner, who was elegantly dressed in a chalk pinstripe suit with a white shirt and navy blue tie, ambled through the normal pleasantries and chit-chat, telling Mirabelle that he had settled on working for his father up at the mill in Bolton before going to law school as a small way of repaying him for his support during his schooling.
However, Steiner, never a dab hand at that side of social etiquette, decided to get it over and done with quickly so he could move to the reason for his coming down to London on a weekday, which father Steiner had not been best pleased about, waffling on what sort of example that would set the other workers in the factory.
“So, Mirabelle, how are you bearing up under all this pressure? I can imagine that Stuart has removed himself from any responsibility as only he is capable of.”
“Of course. He’s off to Germany tomorrow for six months and personally I couldn’t think of a regime more suited to his character
,” she replied.
“What, Ein Führer Ein Volk. Ein Stuart Ein Volk!” Steiner screamed in mock fashion, placing his little finger above his lip and doing a Nazi-style goosestep with the right arm raised in salute.
Mirabelle laughed and nodded her assent at what for her former love was a terrific joke.
“He’s going to be spending a lot of time with his new best friend von Preetz, that paragon of good German values,” she said.
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least; he was always out for that extra lift up the ladder, but when I think how he despised the Prussian asshole at Oxford it makes my skin crawl,” Steiner sneered.
“Well, he claimed you were his best friend, Adam, and look what happened,” Mirabelle stuttered.
Both of them went silent for a moment with Mirabelle embarrassed at bringing up that horrendous day back in June which had marked them so deeply at such a young age.
“Sorry, Adam, would you like a drink? I’ve got some vodka and Scotch but that’s all, I am afraid. Here, how impolite of me, let me take your coat,” Mirabelle mumbled.
“Yeah, okay I’ll have a Scotch with water only, if you don’t mind. Thanks Mirabelle,” he replied.
He removed his tweed coat and homburg hat, placed them in her arms and sauntered over and sat down in the same old leather armchair, which Sebastian had vacated only minutes before.
Mirabelle came back moments later with his drink, which he sipped with some distaste as there was a film of dust on top of the liquid inside the glass.
“So, have your parents helped you out?” Steiner asked, though he knew by the look of the flat that the answer would be a negative.
“Not exactly. In fact, they have disowned me for my one moment of foolish passion,” she replied and could feel the tears welling up again.
Steiner, who normally found any show of emotion a trifle embarrassing, handed Mirabelle his handkerchief.