The brigandshaw chronicl.., p.141
The Brigandshaw Chronicles Box Set 2, page 141
part #4 of The Brigandshaw Chronicles Series
“I’m always suspicious of people who don’t drink.”
“So am I. Damn unsociable. Maybe if you phone the Prime Minister he’d warn his mother’s family in America.”
“Even I can’t get through to Churchill. For some reason he never takes my calls.”
“Have you ever tried, Harry?”
“Of course not.”
“I heard Anthony was on that raid last night, by the way. Glad he landed safely.”
“Oh thank God.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Why do we worry about our children more than ourselves?”
“They are all we leave behind that lasts. Money gets spent or stolen. If the kids have their own kids, you go on. Basic human instinct. We want to survive on this earth. It’s the only certainty we have. Unless we blow up the world.”
“Won’t the Japs attack India if they attack America?”
“They want to control the Far East. The way Hitler wants to conquer the whole of Europe. You mark my word, that chap Gandhi will let us British defend India against Japan and then throw us out.”
“So you believe William’s story?”
“If the oil bit is true they don’t have a choice. Do you have any more of that Scotch?”
“Not a drop. The last drop went down Sarah Coombes’s throat, bless her heart.”
“She has her eye on you, Harry.”
“I’m married.”
“Tina’s far away. Do you miss her?”
“All of them. More and more. Your own family is the only sanity in this world.”
“You want to run a story on Japan about to attack America? Mr Glass will never go for that without proof, William,” said Horatio Wakefield.
“I phoned Glen Hamilton at the Denver Telegraph from Harry’s office. Got straight through after only ten minutes, just shows where the priorities lie. He also wasn’t interested. Sounded a bit on edge. Won’t run the story. Told me to stop spreading rumours. He was even quite sharp on the phone for Glen. I’ve done my bit. I’m staying with Betty.”
“You can always stay with me and Janet. If you can put up with the noise of the kids. I want them to go to Cornwall. Janet says we’re all in this war together. The idea of foster parents for the kids doesn’t appeal. The school’s closed down. Janet’s teaching Harry and Bergit at home.”
“He was a spy for the Nazis, Horatio. Harry’s confirmed it. One of Henning von Lieberman’s sleepers did something Harry won’t explain to the press.”
“Janet won’t believe you. Said he was such a gentleman.”
“They often are.”
“Did you get enough details for a story?”
“I was told just enough to let you know.”
“How long are you staying with Betty?”
“Who knows. The flat’s comfortable. The girl can cook. And she’s organised.”
“Sounds perfect.”
When William came backstage that night with a bunch of flowers, Genevieve was surprised to see him. He had a girl with him which made it easier. They should never have had their one-night stand in New York when she was feeling lonely and homesick. She had used him which wasn’t right. Having casual sex with someone who cared was wrong, even if at the time she was unaware of the intensity of William’s feelings. Afterwards in England she had tried to explain. Explaining made it worse. If he had come alone with his bunch of flowers she would have had to tell him what was going on with Tinus and hurt the poor man again. Why couldn’t men be just friends, she asked herself shaking hands with the girl. The way the girl looked at William made Genevieve smile.
The play had been running a week, Genevieve taking a cameo part to relieve her boredom with Tinus in Scotland teaching young men how to fly. Her whole life revolved around his odd days of leave. The play was a trivial drawing room comedy about a shiftless young man trying to win the heart of a sports-mad heiress by pretending to be an Olympic athlete. It took people’s minds off the war, relieving the permanent tension. It was not, in her opinion, a very good play but served its purpose.
There was talk in Hollywood of making a movie. Gerry Hollingsworth phoned her every week telling her to come back to America. One of his boys had been killed in North Africa by Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Genevieve had not known what to say. She had once met David in London when Gerry Hollingsworth was Louis Casimir and Jewish. David, she was told, was a lieutenant. Gerry had not told her the name of his regiment. He had been crying down the phone. The sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of Tinus going back on active service had stopped her saying the right words, like ‘no man should bury his own child’. Everything was personal. David to Gerry. Tinus to her.
“Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage.”
“What did you say?” she asked the girl quickly, glancing at William. In his eyes was the look of total loss.
“Your marriage to Flight Lieutenant Oosthuizen. You’re wearing an engagement ring.”
“Oh, this. Well I suppose you could call it that.”
“On the right finger.” The girl was looking self-satisfied.
“Was it your idea to come backstage, Betty?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. William won’t believe me.”
“And you love William. I hope you enjoyed the show. Not my most spectacular part. We are getting married, William, but only after the war. Tinus won’t marry with the war hanging over our heads. Why we’ve told no one other than close friends. How did you find out, Betty? It is Betty? Won’t you both sit down if you can find some room? This is a small dressing room. You see, this time, I’m not the star. Tinus is up in Scotland. He’s a flying instructor. His nerves are shot after four tours so they pulled him off active duty. I suppose you know someone at Tangmere. Pilots talk to each other sitting waiting to be scrambled into action. They say things they normally wouldn’t, not knowing if they will be alive in an hour’s time.”
“Will you have dinner with us, Genevieve?” asked William.
“Not tonight, William. I try and make a call to Tinus from my hotel room. Mostly I don’t get through. Just another girl in love with a pilot. I’ll put your flowers in water. They are pretty. How are you, William?”
“Bombed out. Literally. The whole damn building came down while I was in Singapore.”
“I’m so glad you were lucky not to be in your flat. Have you seen Harry Brigandshaw recently?”
“This morning.”
“Give him my love.”
“Does Harry know?”
“Not officially. We want to be married from Hastings Court and go and live in Rhodesia. As far as possible from all this madness.”
“You’ll give up your career?”
“We give up everything for love, William. Where are you now staying?”
“With Betty. Betty’s my secretary.”
“Ah, that Betty,” said Genevieve with a soft smile. “How convenient. I hope you’ll both be very happy. These are lovely flowers. So difficult to get fresh flowers at Christmas.”
“Goodbye, Genevieve.”
“Goodbye, William. Have a good life. You’re a good man. Look after him, Betty. Good men are hard to find.”
The bombs did not come for three days. For three nights Janet did not take the children to the air-raid shelter under their house in Chelsea. Horatio had had the roof of the cellar reinforced with one-inch steel at the start of the war. There was an outside stairwell to the cellar. The door to the outside had been reinforced with a steel plate. Only a direct hit through the three storeys of the house with the bomb exploding at the bottom was a threat. Horatio had not explained to Janet how they could all be killed. If the house caught fire they would escape up the stairwell into the street. It was better than sleeping in the subway if not so safe. There was always the risk of getting to the underground Tube station before they were safe. There were hurricane lamps and a paraffin heater which warmed up the small room in winter. Horatio wanted Janet to take the children to Cornwall which wasn’t being bombed by the Germans.
Her speech therapy practice had stopped. People had bigger problems to worry about than cleft palates, or stutters, or speaking the King’s English without a provincial accent. Janet would not go without Horatio, the foreign correspondent at the Daily Mail. Except that with the war raging overhead all his reporting came from London. All of it about the war. Everything in their lives was concentrated in the war, in the present, which included Herr Henning von Lieberman.
“He was such a nice man. Spoke beautiful English. How can such a nice man do such terrible things? Without radar, William says, the Germans could bomb London into the ground, day and night. Why? He was so friendly when I helped his stutter. What’s gone wrong with the world, Horatio?”
“According to Harry Brigandshaw it happens slowly. At first you think you are doing the right thing.”
“I think the children are asleep. If the air-raid siren hasn’t gone off by now they can stay in their beds all night. I hate that shelter. Never sleep properly cooped up in a dungeon watching the children toss and turn by candlelight after you turn off the hurricane lamp.”
“Go to sleep, my love. They’re not coming over tonight. Billy Glass thinks the tide has turned in the air war. That the generals in the German high command have realised they can’t invade England across the Channel without command of the air. Even if Hitler won’t believe them. Mr Glass thinks we’re over the worst in London. Now it’s us bombing Berlin and Cologne.”
“And if the Japs come into the war?”
“Don’t let’s think about it. I’m going to have a look at the children.”
When Horatio came back to tell Janet they were asleep, she was breathing softly. Horatio kissed her gently on the forehead, not wanting to wake her up. Of all the things he had done in his life, marrying Janet had been the best.
Instead of going to sleep, Horatio lay on his back thinking of his conversation with Harry Brigandshaw when Horatio had congratulated Harry on his twenty-three kills in the last war, the start of what Horatio thought would be an easy conversation. The exchange had been at the very beginning of what became a lasting friendship of mutual trust.
“It was murder, Mr Wakefield. What’s the difference? Thou shalt not kill. Under any circumstances. When they asked Socrates in the Plato Dialogues if it was right to kill a man if the man had a knife to his throat about to kill him, you know what Socrates said?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you should read Plato before congratulating me on shooting down twenty-three enemy aircraft. Thank God Klaus von Lieberman survived.”
“I’ll read Plato, Mr Brigandshaw. What did Socrates reply?”
“The man might change his mind. Killing him was still murder. The crews that died by my guns were murdered by me, Mr Wakefield. I have to live with that every day. Men with families who still remember them and I didn’t even know their names. Saving Klaus from the flames of his crashed aircraft was the only good thing I did in the war. Revenging the death of my brother George was only compounding the wrong. Making the whole damn thing go round again. If I knew who they were I’d find every member of those families and go down on my knees. Thou shalt not kill. Under any circumstances. Plato explains the complete certainty of that rightness better than me.”
With the night sky outside their bedroom still quiet, not even a roaming searchlight in the sky, Horatio realised once again the rightness of Harry Brigandshaw’s words. In the children’s bedroom young Harry and Bergit slept. His son was named in honour of Harry Brigandshaw who had called Klaus von Lieberman when Horatio had been abducted from Berlin to the countryside by the Nazis before the war while he and William were on assignment as freelance journalists to report the rise of Hitler. His daughter Bergit was named in honour of his saviour’s wife. The goodness of Harry’s words was not lost on Horatio. Without Harry saving Klaus, he would likely have been dead, his two children never born. Now Harry’s son Anthony was bombing the Germans, Klaus’s son Erwin blitzing the English. Man’s stupidity once again in its eternal repetition.
Sometime after the moon stopped shining through the bedroom window, Horatio fell into a restless sleep.
When he woke in the morning it was still quiet outside.
“Good morning, my darling. Did you sleep better last night? Bergit and Harry haven’t made a sound. Go back to sleep while I go downstairs and make us some tea. My word, it’s chilly this morning.”
“Did you sleep all right, Janet?”
“Like a log. Won’t it be nice when the war is over?”
7
The call came through from Glen Hamilton in Denver, Colorado, ten days later. Horatio was in a meeting with Billy Glass, the editor of the Daily Mail. William Smythe was sitting on the leather sofa in Mr Glass’s Fleet Street office. The call had been redirected from William’s office by Betty Townsend. Horatio picked up the phone after a nod in the phone’s direction by his editor. Mr Glass believed in delegation right from the start.
“William?” said a distant voice. The line was bad.
“Horatio Wakefield of the Daily Mail.”
“Glen Hamilton. It’s not yet on the wire. William was right. The Japs have attacked Pearl Harbor in a surprise assault from aircraft carriers. Devastation to our Pacific Fleet. Roosevelt is about to declare war on Japan. Probably Germany a couple of days later. Thought I owed that to William for not listening.”
“He’s right here.”
The line suddenly went dead leaving Horatio staring at an empty phone.
“Who’s right here?” asked Billy Glass, taking in Horatio’s expression of surprise, quickly followed by relief, followed by a broad smile.
“My friend William. The Japs have attacked the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. They’re in the war. We’re not on our own anymore. We can win. That was Glen Hamilton from Denver returning William’s favour.”
“Then get off your arse down to the newsroom. Talk it straight to Jimmy on the press. Stop everything. We can get this into the London streets first.”
“What about me?” asked William as Horatio ran for the door.
“Bugger you, Will,” said Horatio over his shoulder. “Every man for himself.”
“Do I get my usual fee, Mr Glass? Sounds like Betty redirected my call from Denver.”
“Your freelance cheque for top information as usual, William Smythe. What would we at the Mail do without you? Now this does put the cat among the proverbial pigeons. They’ll attack Hong Kong and Singapore next. A small price to pay for America coming into the war.”
“Not if your cousin is stationed in Singapore and the Japs invade overland down the Malayan Peninsula. My cousin Joe is a sergeant in the Royal Engineers. Married to a Chinese girl. Cherry Blossom’s father was the one who tipped me off. Sometimes I don’t like being right. They have kids. Now this bloody war is right on their doorstep.”
“Have a drink with me, Will. It’s six o’clock. We’ll have the paper on the street corners by dawn. Got hold of a bottle of Scotch from a lady that owed me a favour. This means victory.”
“Not if they sank the American fleet.”
“Singapore is a fortress. The Japs won’t get in there. That port controls the seas of Asia. But you know all that.”
“Cherry Blossom’s father said…”
“Is he a military man?”
“He was right last time. Is it real Scotch?”
“All the way from Scotland. I’m so glad Horatio took that call. Now you and I can drink in comfort while he does the work. It’s two weeks since Jerry last hit London. Oh yes. Now we are going to win. You know my guess, William? We’ll win the war and lose the empire. Isn’t America’s wish for the British Empire to dissolve part of a pet theory of yours? Empire out one door. The dollar in the other. There’s always a price to pay. Whatever we do, with or without the Americans, our two nations are joined at the hip. Lose a bit of money in the colonies. Make it up in joint American British trade. Half the bloody colonies cost us more money to administer than we get from trade. Or am I quoting back your own words, William? Let Gandhi have India and see what they do with it. In the end they’ll still be speaking English like the Americans. The educated Indians. Met a few of them in London. Jolly good chaps. We’ll export more railway rolling stock than ever. You don’t want soda in your Scotch? Of course not. Ruins the aroma. Have a cigar. Last box. This is big news.”
“I’ll just phone Betty. Say I’ll be home a little late.”
“How nice. She really has sunk in her claws. I have a new mistress even my wife doesn’t know about. Chop and change to keep on top’s my motto. Makes me feel years younger. Now just smell that malt whisky. Some Sassenachs say there are only two good things out of Scotland: the road out and the whisky. For myself, I’m rather partial to the Scots. My new lady is a Scot. Ministry of Information. Not sure if she wasn’t planted but who cares? She doesn’t. Asked her once. You know what she said? ‘Who cares.’ Lovely girl.”
“Did she get you the bottle of whisky, Billy?”
“How on earth did you know?”
William waited for a moment as his call went through.
“It’s me, Betty. Back a bit late. Thanks for Glen’s call. No, I won’t be too late. Billy Glass has found a bottle of whisky… Yes, I’m sure you can. Bye… She’s coming over.”
“Clever girl.”
“She is rather.”
When Glen Hamilton phoned Freya St Clair she was sitting in front of the fire in the lounge of Purbeck Manor. As Freya Taylor she had been Glen’s personal assistant at the Denver Telegraph before marrying Robert St Clair. She was the first to read Holy Knight in 1928. Her son Richard, just turned eleven, was sitting next to her reading a book, quiet for once in his life. Outside the long sash windows rain was pelting down. Merlin St Clair, the Lord of the Manor and her brother-in-law, had moved the phone from the hall to the lounge. It was better than talking in a draughty hall that was often cold in summer. Four-year-old Chuck had gone off to find his grandmother. Lady St Clair always found time to alleviate Chuck’s boredom. Chuck was mostly bored in the old manor house living with the old people. There were no young children for miles.
