Chapter 6 Lynched on the Links part I
We were on holiday in Brighton with Mama and Papa Rawlins. This is to say, Clara, Tony, and I were on holiday, as was Mama, and I had managed to call them Mama and Papa quite happily now, and Papa was on some kind of business-with-pleasure trip with three industrialists. They spent their days playing golf and dancing around what Papa could tell them whilst bidding to make parts for something, presumably made of steel as they were all steel magnates, or possibly steal magnets as each was attracted to the idea of royally shafting the government if he could. Parbleu! I must be thoroughly English if I can manage such puns. All of them had wives, and two of the wives were what is known as ‘golf widows’ whilst one of them determinedly played, and must have put quite a crimp on talking secret weapons. Me, I see no point in spoiling a good walk by knocking about a little ball whilst damaging the turf, or giving yourself a sand shower bath, and if forced to play I always aim my little ball at the water feature so I might say, ‘Tiens! What a shame, I shall go to the clubhouse now.’
If talking to any of the steel magnates, I pretend to think they are watching birdies, and ask if they saw any greater spotted niblicks, or the warbling mashie, and if they managed to see that rare birdie, the eagle. It drives them to gobbling incoherence, and they cannot seem to help themselves in attempting to explain, and I listen, so charmingly winsomely, me, with my head on one side, and my eyes wide open and interested, and ask what bird lives in the holes if they are trying to catch them and ask if a shotgun might be more efficient if they are hunting them.
“Stop playing with your food, Adele,” said Papa, when he found I had entrapped Samuel Endicott with a desire to know how he heated his driving iron and why he did not leave his laundry to the hotel maid.
“I’m just trying to explain golf to the lass,” said Endicott.
“She doesn’t care,” said Papa. “When I told her to use a spoon to drive down the fairway, she produced a tablespoon.”
“I had it to open my hard boiled eggs,” I said. “And the ball is about the size of an egg, only rounder. It reminded me I wanted to mashie it with salt and pepper and niblick it slowly.”
Mrs. Corbett, the lady golfer, took me to task.
“My dear Mrs. Rawlins, pretending to be stupid is not good for the cause of womankind!” she said. “I know you have more understanding than you pretend, or you would not use golfing terms with such... such unerring inaccuracy. Surely you can manage to display some proper feeling?”
“But why should I?” I said. “It is, in my opinion, a game of the most boring. Me, I am very English now, and appreciate the brisk walk, the plunge in the cold sea, but the golf, no. It is tedious, and listening to the tales of the prowess of men playing with their little balls and poking them into as many holes as they can is to me the epitome of ennui, the paradigm of purgatory. So, I irritate them until they go away. Me, I think it is most improper in the advancement of womankind to pander always to the little foibles of men, who need to be laughed at.”
“Do you laugh at me?” she demanded.
“Not as much since you manage a phrase like ‘unerring inaccuracy,’ which I like a lot,” I said. “And truly, it is not my place to laugh at those women who slavishly follow their husband’s interests.”
She gaped.
“I play golf to show that a woman may be as good as any man!” she yapped.
“I am not so insecure that I feel a need to prove it,” I replied. “I already know.”
Dear reader, had she but known that I had spent three years as a man to gain my degree!
She stared at me then strode off.
Me, I have no time for fools. And she is a fool, because there is only one reason that I can see that men turn a stroll together into a game requiring the technical understanding to hit their silly little ball round the whole course without losing it too often, and that is to have an excuse to be men on their own, enjoying a walk, to speak or to be silent as they wish, without women filling all the silences with chatter, as, I fear, my sex is too often inclined to do. Tony likes my capacity for silence. Notably he does not play golf, go hunting, shooting, or fishing, nor does he spend time at a club.
Mrs. Corbett was a woman I would describe as ‘tweedy.’ By this, I mean that she chose to wear tweed jackets as the upper part of her garb, tailored to her figure. She also wore tartan a lot, less, I thought, in devotion to our dear queen and her love of Scotland than to declare an allegiance to those very masculine country sports. She had a loud, hearty voice, and probably believed in cold baths and not sparing the rod on children. I disliked her. Mr. Corbett was a quiet sort of fellow, who said, ‘yes, dear,’ and ignored his wife.
The other women were Mrs. Endicott and Lady Bagpuss, Sir Cyril having been knighted for services to industry.
Mrs. Endicott was the complete opposite of Mrs. Corbett, being almost ethereal in appearance, with languid movements and attitudes, golden ringlets, and a penchant for soft, draping fabrics like georgette. She fluttered like a bird and managed to open her eyes wider and more winsomely than me. She was the sort of woman men automatically want to help. She tried to drape herself all over Tony, since he was the only man who did not go off playing golf, and Tony pulled the bell for a servant and asked for the hotel nurse as Mrs. Endicott was feeling faint, and needed to go and lie down. It was more amusing watching Papa handle her – and he had the cheek to accuse me of playing with my food! Papa pretended to be deaf. The conversation went something like this, when she cornered him.
“Of course, I’m so terribly delicate, but I try to support Samuel,” she said.
“That’s dreadful,” said Papa. “Hernias must be a terrible trial to him.”
“He doesn’t have a hernia!” she was indignant. “And nor do I, I’m just fragile, but I don’t like to fuss.”
“What, he’s lost his support? Perhaps you should suggest he goes to the hospital,” said Papa.
“No! I support him in his work!” she shouted at him.
“Dear me, there’s no need to shout,” said Papa. “We don’t need to advertise his need for a truss. And I’m sure you are right, that he doesn’t shirk.”
She had hysterics, so Papa copied his son and called for the hotel nurse.
Sir Cyril was a man who had grown into the role of knighthood, and gloried in it, booming about a desire to enter politics. His wife was, not to put too fine a point on it, a snob. She had discovered that her husband’s name came from the old French town Bacquepuiss, and insisted on people using it.
I spoke to her exclusively in French, of which she had a smattering from having been to a fairly good girls’ school, but not enough to keep up with my fluent discourse.
She forced a laugh and said that perhaps it was impolite to speak French in front of those who did not know it well. I spoke English in front of others and continued speaking French to her if I was so unfortunate as to find myself alone with her.
“Damned industrialists,” growled Papa. He was treating us to dinner in a very fine restaurant overlooking the gloriously monstrous Royal Pavilion. “I know they are out to make a profit, and that this drives world trade, but you’d think an ounce of patriotism might counteract a pound of greed.”
“If that were so, the professions of solicitors and barristers would be obsolete,” I said. “What can you tell us that does not leave you sounding so mysterious, papa?”
“Oh, it’s simple, really,” said Papa. “They are bidding to build certain parts for the most recent warships. And most of them build parts for things like mine pumps or steam engines, and I had to explain in words of one syllable that, immersed in salt water there is a galvanic reaction leading to the hulls being more readily reduced to rust because of the weak battery acidic effect; I don’t know if you know about sacrificial anodes, introduced by Sir Humphrey Davy?”
“No, but I understand the principle,” I said. “The loss of material from a more reactive metal preserves the hull. Aren’t ships copper bottomed to stop fouling?”
“Good girl; that school you went to was excellent,” said Papa. “And he iron disappears leaving a wafer thin layer of copper without an anode of zinc. It works better than sheathing the bottom with wood sheathed with copper. The problem arises when one of my idiot manufacturers wants to make some parts out of cheap iron coated in tin, which will vanish as if by magic, as well as reducing the effect of the sacrificial anode. Why can my daughter in law understand this, and by the way she’s listening, my granddaughter,” he nodded to Clara, “But three of the steel magnates of experience and supposed understanding of metallurgy fail to grasp something which is scarcely impenetrable science?”
“You’ll have to test every part they send, Grandpapa,” said Clara. “I don’t understand it all, but if some of the metal dissolves for being in salt water if it’s the wrong sort, they won’t believe you and will try to get away with doing it on the cheap.”
This was one of the longest sentences Clara had managed, and I was so proud of her.
“She’s right,” said Tony. I only nodded; I had a mouth full of the most delectable cauliflower florets deep fried in savoury batter.
“Some of these fools think that government contracts were invented purely for their own enrichment,” said Papa, bitterly.
“Make it clear that standards are to be followed, and substandard work will be treated as treason,” I said, when my mouth was clear.
“I don’t know if it would count... I don’t think the statute books cover that sort of thing.”
“Well, they don’t know that, do they?” I said. “Tell Corbett that his wife will never let him forget it if he is indicted for treason, tell Sir Cyril that it would kill any chance of entering politics, even if he evaded gaol time, and tell Endicott that his wife is likely to be prostrated with grief and needing to sob all the time about it.”
“What a devious and wicked little mind you have!” said Papa, appreciatively.
We returned to the hotel, to find Mrs. Endicott busy fascinating Mr. Corbett, under the nose of his wife, who was buttonholing Sir Cyril on the concept of reducing property qualifications for voting, and proposing the vote for women as well, in a country with a female monarch. He looked trapped, and his wife was glaring.
“I might agree with votes for women, Lady Bagpuss,” I said, refusing to change a perfectly well-Anglicised name, “But I should wish Mrs. Corbett to be examined by doctors to see if she qualified, or if she is one of these prodigy automata, which have a wax cylinder inside them with recordings to give the impression of intelligence.”
She managed a spiteful little giggle.
“Well, at least Cyril is not engaged by her charms, if she has any, unlike her husband who is being thoroughly twisted round Mrs. Endicott’s fragile fingers.”
“Some women are too dangerous for their own good,” I said. What a crowd! I disliked them all.
Nobody but our family came to the communal breakfast, so presumably the tensions, whether of a fiduciary or fidelity nature, led to room service for more private repasts. Thank goodness! No discussion about Mr. Endicott’s stroke, or whether Sir Cyril would break his par, or Mr. Corbett’s sad affinity for bunkers. He had not appreciated my bright and enthusiastic suggestion that he purchase a tin pail and wooden spade such as the children use to build sandcastles on the beach, because making a sandcastle in a bunker would be more fun than fiddling around getting sand in his clothes whilst he tried to get his balls out.
I don’t know if Papa used my suggestions, but it would not surprise me if he did; because the industrialists started to enter bids.
“Why don’t you go to a bronze foundry, Papa?” I suggested. “You are still working on propellers, aren’t you? Bronze propellers won’t corrode, the tin is locked to the copper, and they will last longer.”
“I might, yet,” said Papa. “Someone in my office has a bee in his bonnet about steel being better. It isn’t, but I had my instructions.”
“Don’t tell your colleague, then,” I said.
He stared.
“So simple, so practical,” he said.
I wished him luck on a morning’s golf and grumbling, and took Clara to look over the curiously oriental edifice which is the Royal Pavilion, it having been recently purchased by the town council, refurbished, and opened to the public, that we might wonder at the excesses and extravagances of the queen’s uncle, the former George IV.
“It’s like a fairy tale palace,” said Clara, solemnly. To a child just turned ten, it probably seemed so; and explained a lot about the mentality of the late George.
To my mind, if it came out of a fairytale, it probably belonged to someone’s wicked stepmother. It isn’t made of icing sugar, though, to fatten up children. It rains too much in England for it to have survived intact if it had been.
I suppose I should not be surprised that Papa’s caddy and equerry, a young man named Edwin Paulson, managed to catch up with us.
“Oh, Mr. Tony, Mrs. Tony, please come!” cried Paulson. “One of the golfers has been hanged on the fairway!”