The Brigandshaw Chronicles Box Set 2, page 114
part #4 of The Brigandshaw Chronicles Series
“Was that why the Americans came in on our side in ’17?”
“Why are photographers so ignorant?”
“I was only asking, William. I’m not the famous foreign correspondent who gives talks on the BBC.”
“Where did you get the kopecks?”
“Lloyds Bank. Some Russian émigré emptied a suitcase of paper money on the manager’s desk. The manager gave him ten quid.”
“How much did you pay?”
“Two quid for a walletful.”
“How much are they worth?”
“No idea until I try and spend them.”
“Lucky he didn’t get shot,” said William.
“Or had his head cut off. The French cut off their heads.”
“So much for capitalism. Two quid for toilet paper. Let me have a look, Stark? You’d better burn these. Do you know who that man is on the note?”
“The bank manager didn’t know. I asked him. It was only a couple of quid.”
“Bugger’s a thief. That’s Tsar Nicholas, poor sod. They shot him and his entire family.”
“The New Republic, or whatever Robespierre called his thugs, cut off the heads of the entire French aristocracy. Mind you, they were a bunch of fops. When you go to the piss house, flush those notes down the toilet, Gordon. You don’t want to end up like Horatio in Germany. Never get you out of a Russian gulag.”
“What’s a gulag?”
“A camp in the frozen north they send the people they don’t like.”
“Careful, William. One of those chaps looked up at the word gulag. There was a brief flash of fear in his eyes. I’ll go look for the toilet.”
Eleven hours later, when the train crawled into Moscow station with William declaring he could eat a horse, the same man that had looked at Gordon Stark with fear, looked at him again and smiled.
“Have a pleasant stay in Moscow, gentlemen,” he said in perfect, barely accented English before getting off the train and disappearing into the teeming crowd.
While the three of them were contemplating how easy it was to put their lives in jeopardy and hoping nothing came of their indiscretion, Tinus Oosthuizen was walking the heath at Mickleham alone with the dogs trying to make up his mind. There were more problems in his life than trying to keep his eyes off the fiancée of Janusz Kowalski. Unknown to him until he spoke to William Smythe later, like William, Ingrid had been giving him the full treatment back at the house right in front of poor Janusz. Even Uncle Harry had raised his eyebrows, somewhat embarrassed for his young guest from Poland. Later that day they were all due to drive to Redhill Aerodrome and fly aeroplanes with John Woodall.
The first of five interviews had been the most interesting and had brought him the offer of a job. Tinus would have liked to ask Aaron Rosenzweig, the eldest boy of Sir Jacob Rosenzweig and brother of Rebecca who was married to Ralph Madgwick, manager of Elephant Walk, and ostracised by her family for marrying out of the Jewish faith, whether the job offer had more to do with Uncle Harry, who had arranged the appointment, rather than his own credentials and degree. Strangely, the name of Rebecca had never come up. Or was it so strange, Tinus thought, as he watched Maxwell race away with the old, fat Spaniels trying their best to waddle on behind, one of them barking in overweight frustration.
A job at the London office of Rosenzweigs, a prestigious merchant bank, would have likely put Tinus on the path to riches. The other four interviews over two days, spending two nights at the Williams Hotel in Hackney to preserve what was left of his funds, had been for Tinus a waste of time, job opportunities picked up from the London newspapers. To work for the one company he had always had at the back of his mind, Anglo-American, required a trip to Johannesburg.
It all came down to spending his life making money on paper, matching borrowers and lenders, later floating public companies on the London stock exchange, if he was lucky, always working for someone else and daily commuting to London on the train if he couldn’t afford to live in London itself.
Trying hard to concentrate and keep the picture of Ingrid out of his mind, Tinus walked and walked, wondering why making up his mind was suddenly so difficult. A good job was a good job. There were lots of girls in London. Genevieve visited London. André Cloete, his old friend, was stationed close to London. Everything looked simple were it not for the pictures of Africa staring at him in his mind, beckoning, telling him toiling in a city was not the way to spend the rest of his life.
“No bloody way,” he said turning round on the spot, his pace quickening as he strode back to Hastings Court.
Halfway down the hill he remembered the dogs. Looking back up the long slope of the heath he saw the Spaniels coming down, trying to catch up. Maxwell stopped, asking by his stance why they were being so slow.
“You dogs eat too much,” he said to the Spaniels.
Putting two fingers in his mouth, Tinus let out the whistle that he had learnt to call the pack of Rhodesian Ridgebacks on Elephant Walk. Like a runner out of the starting blocks, Maxwell took off down the hill, both Tinus and the dog now sure they were going in the right direction.
“You’re homesick, you fool. Go home. You’ve done your degree. Go home to Elephant Walk.”
Only when he found Ingrid waiting to give him the eye back at the big house did Tinus remember there were no young girls near Elephant Walk. Probably only a couple of dozen in the whole of Rhodesia, and all with their noses stuck in the air. Proof that any shortage in demand could always command its own price, a price far higher than it was really worth.
“The first law of economics, Tinus,” he heard Mr Bowden his tutor say in his head. “Probably the first law of life. Always have what the other fellow wants and sell out dearly. The bigger the competition, the bigger the profit.”
The way Count Janusz Kowalski treated the wandering eye of his girl told Tinus one thing clearly: in Poland, there was a surplus of pretty young girls, explaining to some extent why Ingrid was trying so hard, throwing her net as wide as possible, not wishing to end up, as Tinus’s mother so often put it, ‘on the shelf’. Something highly unlikely to happen to Paula and Doris on Elephant Walk, even now Paula was nearly twenty-three years old and in their mother’s words, ‘about to miss the boat’. Young men looking for an adventure in a new country outnumbered young girls eight to one, even if most of the men were hidden away in the bush.
Maxwell, now far ahead of the pack of Spaniels and sniffing at the large picnic basket filled by Mrs Craddock for their lunch and waiting to be packed into the car to take the men to Redhill Aerodrome, had been the first to arrive.
“We’re going when you’re ready, Tinus.”
“Do I have to change?”
“What for? I’ve put what flying gear we need in the Austin. Just the three of us. John Woodall knows we’re coming. There’s a young lad from Australia he wants you to meet.”
When they got into the car, Uncle Harry explaining to them two of the big cars would fit into the concrete air-raid shelter he was planning to build for Hastings Court, Ingrid stood on the steps looking miffed. Janusz waved at her, saying something in Polish. The girl looked bewildered.
“Will she be all right on her own?” asked his Uncle Harry.
“Told her to take the dogs for a walk and not get lost. That big dog wants another walk, Tinus.”
“Must be difficult in company where you don’t speak the language. When are you two getting married?”
“She wants to stay in England and learn English. I try and help now I’m here. The trouble is, not many people speak Polish in England so no one can translate. I’ve found a Russian émigré who speaks Polish, French and English. The Russian aristocracy were good at their languages. Something to do, I suppose, when you don’t have a job. Ingrid will find it much easier to learn when we get back to London. Anyway, I have to go home. We Kowalskis like to earn our living in spite of the family estate. When I gave the Russian a pound note he kissed me. Where he was born in Russia there were seventy servants on the family estate tending the house and the gardens.”
“Don’t you worry about Poland?” asked Tinus.
“All the time. Don’t you worry about your farm in Rhodesia? That’s the trouble with a big estate. People can see what you have. You can’t hide it. Wouldn't that be part of your job as a merchant banker? Hiding jewellery so they can take it with them when they run?”
“Where do they run to?”
“America, if they have enough jewellery. Are we going to fly one of your brand new fighters, Colonel Brigandshaw?”
“Not really. More like the plane you were flying when you first met William Smythe in Warsaw. A biplane. Great for aerobatics.”
“But not much good against Germans.”
“A Tiger Moth. A recreational aircraft. Lovely to fly on a summer’s day like today. Two open cockpits. John Woodall is an old friend of mine who runs the flying school. We flew together in France during the war. 33 Squadron. Three flights with six Sopwith Camels in each flight at full strength. We were usually under strength. Pilots, Janusz. Chap crashes a plane we could quickly replace the plane, but not the pilot. Planes are easier to come by than trained pilots.”
“What were they like, sir?”
“The pilots?”
“No, the Sopwith Camels.”
“Best fighters in France, flown properly. You can help me by passing one of Mrs Craddock’s ham sandwiches sitting next to you in that wicker picnic basket. Why I put the picnic basket on the back seat and not in the boot. We cure our own ham the way we cure it in Rhodesia. The taste makes both myself and Tinus homesick, which is why I like them. She’ll be all right with the dogs. We’ll be back in two hours. You and Tinus will have a chance to fly while John and I have a good chinwag.”
“What’s a chinwag, sir?”
“Digging up old times. Please don’t call me sir. In Rhodesia we are not as formal as you Europeans.”
“But you are Europeans.”
“We’re African. Tinus’s family on his father’s side have been in Africa nearly three hundred years. Anyway, we Europeans came out of Africa in the first place according to the anthropologists I read. From Kenya. Not that long ago if you think how long life has been on the planet. Of course, when the dinosaurs ruled the world millions of years ago we hadn’t begun to evolve. No, we’re Africans, Tinus and I. Despite my being born at Hastings Court, something I don’t remember. My first memories are the smells and sounds of Africa when I was two years old. So far as I recall, apart from bringing the body of grandfather to Hastings Court to be buried next to his ancestors, my mother has not been back to England in fifty years… Good, aren’t they? Just the right amount of mustard. Homemade bread. Home cured bacon. What more can a man want? Now that’s what I call bringing home the bacon… There she is through the trees. One of the first airfields in England. There’s someone taking off right now. I never get sick of watching aeroplanes fly. It really is a beautiful day. Please feel free to have another ham sandwich. I asked Mrs Craddock to make lots of them. The chaps at the airfield always ask for Mrs Craddock’s ham sandwiches. Can you imagine living in something twice this size night after night? The whole family and the servants. You can’t just go to the air-raid shelter when the siren goes off and leave the servants in the old house without protection from the bombs. My wife is finding it difficult to sink in. The last war was in France with the occasional Zeppelin hand-dropping a bomb out of the basket so to speak. This one is going to have hundreds of bombers with levers to open the underbelly and drop a full load right on top of civilians. How do you see it, Janusz?”
“Warsaw in ruins. You only have to look at Spain. What the German bombers did for Franco. Without the German air force on his side, under whatever guise, Franco and his fascists would not be winning the civil war.”
“Hitler’s testing his armaments. They made a right royal mess of Guernica. Now they’ve bombed Barcelona. Why you need command of the air in any war of the future. Will you have command of the air, Janusz?”
“No, we won’t.”
“Neither will we without enough Hurricanes, Spitfires and pilots. Whoever is flying that aeroplane knows what he’s doing. A complete loop followed by a dead stick and pull out just above the airfield. Pass me one more sandwich before the hordes get into the picnic basket. While you’re flying I’ll have a cup of tea from the flask with John. Maybe I’ll take her up for a spin when you two are finished. You remember the old Handley Page, Tinus?”
“Still flies. Tembo really was frightened. Princess won’t let him go up again.”
“Who’s Tembo?” asked Janusz.
“The bossboy on Elephant Walk,” said Tinus. “He runs the place. Even Ralph Madgwick defers to him on most occasions.”
7
They all stood outside the hangar watching the unknown pilot do his aerobatics while munching Mrs Craddock’s ham sandwiches. John Woodall, Tinus could see, had a sweet smile in his eyes as he picked up the second one from the open picnic basket; good, half-sized bread sandwiches with the crusts on, the farm butter yellow at the edges matching the yellow squeeze of the mustard against the thick red of the ham, the edges of the ham covered in a brown sugar coating topped with nutmeg.
“I’d marry a woman just to get a sandwich like this, Harry,” said John Woodall.
“How long’s he been up?”
“Twenty minutes. He’s coming in now. We don’t fill the tanks for that kind of flying close to the field.”
“Had an Australian in the RFC. Before your time at 33 Squadron, John. There are plenty more in the basket. William Smythe says young Janusz here is as good as they come.”
“They can go up together and later swap cockpits if Tinus wants to fly, which is a silly question. Good to see you both. How’s the project?”
“Spitfire is on schedule. Tooling up for mass production is the problem. Half the government doesn't take us seriously. Or Hitler, for that matter. They believed what they wanted to hear when Chamberlain came back from Munich. How did you end up with an Australian at Redhill? Bit far from home. What’s he doing in England?”
“Better ask him, Harry. Came over yesterday with a sports job I suppose you’d call it and rented a plane for today. Gave him a student rate. Said he was short of money. Showed me a licence and a letter from his flying club outside Melbourne, wherever that is. Some university. You ever been to Australia, Harry?”
“What kind of a sports job?”
“Looked the same sort of thing as yours, Tinus, only different. Where is the Morgan?”
“Hastings Court. Came in the Austin with Uncle Harry. Had to have somewhere to put the sandwich basket. Go on, Mr Woodall. Have another one.”
“I don’t mind if I do.”
“Come on, Janusz. It’s our turn. He’s taxiing to the fuel pump.”
Watching the two run to the biplane, John Woodall sighed and put his hand in the picnic basket without looking.
“Don’t know where you put them, John.”
“In my stomach. What I would do to be that young again. All the excitement and none of the pain. They look so bloody innocent.”
“They are. Their world is still perfect. Cricket fields. All the history of Oxford. Everything to learn and everyone to help. Not a cloud in the sky. Even their girls are perfect, whatever the girls do to them. I think Janusz likes his girl to flirt. Likes to see her appreciated. They can’t even imagine infidelity in someone they love. To them at that age it’s real love too, not one bump in the road ahead. Do you think it’s instinctively why they like the idea of going to fight the good war at that age? Or all the books they read that makes everyone a bloody hero? Maybe their instinct tells them getting killed young stops them finding out the truth. To die pure and innocent with only love and bravery in their hearts and on their minds. Seems to me every generation does it so there must be something in my theory.”
“Blimey, Harry. Have another sandwich. What’s got into you? The idea of being wired to die young in war is morbid.”
“The start of old age. Nostalgia. Not wanting the children to find out the ugly side of life. Don’t you know what I mean?”
“If I did I wouldn't admit it to myself. I still enjoy my life. In particular right now, these ham sandwiches.”
“You want some tea?”
“Pour away.”
“Doesn’t your wife feed you?”
“Not like this. Pilot’s name is Trevor Hemmings and here comes youth, as they say, in all its glory.”
“Mr Hemmings? My name is Harry Brigandshaw. You’re the second Australian I’ve met.”
“Lucky bastard. Mr Woodall said you come from Rhodesia, Mr Brigandshaw. First time out of Australia for me.”
“What are you doing over here?”
“Buggering around after finishing at Melbourne University. Like Tinus. Can the Pole fly?”
“We’re about to see.”
“Like a ham sandwich?”
“Rather. I never eat before flying or I throw up.”
“Like a friend of my nephew’s.”
“Do you fly, Mr Brigandshaw?”
“Just a little.”
“Colonel Brigandshaw shot down twenty-three Germans in France,” said John Woodall.
“That must make you an ace… They’re good. You make them yourself?”
“I helped cure the pork.”
“Bloody marvellous. There they go. I learnt to fly with the University Air Squadron. Like Tinus at Oxford.”
“You two swapped a life history in ten seconds.”
“Only the important bits. Later we’re going to race against each other. Tells me he’s got a green one like mine. Then I’d better hop it back to my digs in the village.”
“Get your bags and stay at Hastings Court.”
“Tinus hoped you’d say that. Us colonials have to stick together in Pommy land. My bag’s in the hangar. Always travel light, I say.”
“I rather thought that would be the case, Mr Hemmings. Always let opportunity knock.”
