Page 52 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

The next morning Lennie, feeling idle, decided to stroll along Fifth Avenue, look in the shop windows and take note of the fashions so that he could report them back to Rose.

It was a still day, very cold, but dry and bracing, and in his coat with the big fur collar he felt impervious.

He was staring at a display of hats in Saks’s window and composing an amusing letter in his mind when he was accosted by a lady just coming out of the store – a tiny round thing bundled up in furs, tottering on high-heeled boots.

‘Lennox Manning, I declare! I didn’t know you were in town! ’

He submitted dutifully to an embrace from Mimi Niebling, one of New York’s noted hostesses.

‘I’m just here for a few weeks on business,’ he said.

‘You’re looking wonderful, Mimi. I swear you get younger every time I see you.

’ There wasn’t much of her to be seen between fur hat and fur coat, but it was the right thing to say.

She giggled like someone a quarter of her age and girth.

‘You and your silver tongue! You get that from mixing with all those Hollywood types, I suppose. Oh!’ Her eyes widened as she thought of something.

‘Now, that’s a wonderful coincidence. You’ll never guess who’s coming to my cocktail party this evening. ’

‘No, I never will,’ Lennie said solemnly.

‘Anthea Taylor! There! What a lucky thing I bumped into you! You must come and meet her!’ Most of Mimi’s utterances came with exclamation marks. ‘You know her, of course?’

Anthea Taylor was one of MGM’s stars, and on the rise. Sifting through his mind, he remembered that he had read she was starring in a play on Broadway between pictures. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I know who she is.’

‘She’s my guest of honour. We’re celebrating her Academy Award nomination,’ Mimi beamed.

‘You must come and help me look after her. She’ll be feeling a little lost, so far from home, and you’ll be a friendly face.

Now, say yes! I must have you! And we’ll make up a party for dinner afterwards.

That’s settled, then.’ She beamed again, certain she had got her way.

It was her practice to ride over obstacles like a tank across no man’s land.

‘Come early! Bless you! Now I must dash!’

‘Let me call you a cab.’

‘No need!’ she said, and produced from nowhere a small silver whistle, which she blew piercingly. As if by magic, a large yellow cab scorched to the kerb, and she waved a fur-gloved hand to him as she climbed in.

Lennie smiled to himself and strolled on.

He’d had no plans for the evening, and he felt he might as well submit to Mimi as anyone.

Her hors d’oeuvres were always excellent; and through the wealth and connections of her husband, who it was said ‘owned half of everything’, she was able to command the most interesting guests.

It would be worth putting on a tuxedo for.

On the corner of Tottenham Court Road, Oliver bumped into a small, wiry man with horn-rimmed glasses, a scarf wound up to his chin and a soft hat pulled down to his eyes. He was carrying a canvas bag, which he now clutched to his chest as though fearing it might be snatched away.

‘Good gracious!’ Oliver exclaimed. ‘Beefy Oxenford, as I live and breathe!’

The little man looked up and blinked, ‘Oh, hello, Winchmore,’ he said mildly.

‘Old Beefy!’ Oliver said, grinning. ‘I haven’t seen you since the Armistice! What are you doing these days?’

‘Oh, this and that,’ Beefy said vaguely.

The nickname Beefy was one of those ironic labels, Beefy being notably slight of build.

But he had a wiry strength. He had been an anaesthetist during the war, and had served with Oliver in many a sticky part of the Front, where delirious soldiers often had to be restrained as they were being put under.

‘Still passing gas?’ Oliver asked. He knew most of the gasmen in London, and he hadn’t heard Beefy’s name mentioned. But there were other cities.

But Beefy said, ‘No, I gave that up after the war. Never wanted to go into another operating theatre.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Oliver said. ‘That was quite a picnic, wasn’t it? Come and have a wet, and tell me what you’re up to.’

The Rising Sun on the corner of Windmill Street was just a step away, one of those old pubs full of oak panelling and acid-embossed glass screens.

Established at a table with two pints of beer, the men looked at each other.

‘I say, do take off all that muffling,’ Oliver said.

‘You look like Sergei Sokolov, the Sinister Spy. What’s in the bag? ’

‘Nothing in particular,’ Beefy said, unwinding the scarf. ‘Just some bits and pieces. For my hobby.’ He thrust the bag under the table.

They talked a bit about the war, and the fate of various people they both remembered, and Oliver spoke briefly about his plastic-surgery work.

Beefy then admitted that after demobilisation he had had what was nowadays called a ‘nervous breakdown’, and had gone home to live with his parents in Stevenage.

He had been shaken out of the state by the sudden death of his father.

Having to comfort his mother and sisters and deal with all the practicalities had put his feet back on firmer ground.

He had inherited a large slice of his father’s fortune, and, on the death of his mother in 1928, he had sold the family house – his sisters being settled in marriage by then – and had come to London, where he lived modestly on his private income, and devoted his time to his hobby.

‘Television.’

‘Good Lord!’ Oliver said. ‘I thought you were going to say you’ve been working on some wonderful new surgical invention. You always were interested in machinery and gadgets and so on. But television?’

‘I’ve been working with Baird,’ he said, unmoved by Oliver’s sceptical tone. ‘But the fire was a terrible blow.’

‘The fire?’ Oliver said vaguely.

‘Crystal Palace. You must know it burned down. It was in all the papers.’

‘Of course, I heard about it.’ The fire had broken out in the night of the 30th of November, and the blaze had been seen as far away as Willesden and Haywards Heath.

‘Well, that’s where Baird had his workshops and studio and so on. All destroyed. And now Reith has dropped the Baird system in favour of EMI.’

‘Who’s Reith?’

‘John Reith, fellow in charge of the BBC. You’ve heard of the BBC?’

‘Of course.’

‘They were doing experimental television radiations, using the Baird system and the EMI system on alternate weeks. But Reith hates Baird, something to do with their schooldays – they’re both Scots, you know – and the fire was the final excuse to drop him.

But to be fair, the EMI system is better.

Vacuum cells. Electron scanning.’ He frowned, staring into the distance.

‘All the same,’ he said, coming back suddenly, and fixing Oliver with a stern look, ‘Baird is a true visionary. He’s already working on colour transmission and larger screens, which is more than the other lot are.

But mechanical scanning will only take him so far.

Look here!’ he said. ‘Have you got an hour or two?’ Oliver made a cautious noise.

‘Come back to my place, and see the receiver set I’m building.

That’s what’s in the bag – parts I’ve been scavenging.

There are all sorts of useful shops in Tottenham Court Road. Have you ever seen television?’

Oliver admitted he hadn’t.

‘Well, then, come back to my place and I’ll give you a demonstration.’ He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘We can catch one of the regular BBC programmes. And I can show you the new improved receiver I’m building.’

‘What was it like?’ Verena asked later, over dinner.

Oliver considered. ‘Human fish swimming in dishwater.’

‘Oliver!’

‘It’s true. Like figures viewed through the fog. And the sound was a bit foggy, too. Poor old Beefy! He says it’s because they don’t have enough lines in the picture for his larger screen, whatever that means. He says Baird reckons he can get a thousand lines before long.’

‘It sounds like a school punishment.’

‘The conventional set he had was better – still grey and strangely two-dimensional, like a post-Stilton dream, but not so foggy. But the screen was so small – about six inches square. After squinting at it for half an hour, I had quite a headache. Beefy says that’s why the BBC only broadcasts for an hour at a time, twice a day – concern for the welfare of the “lookers-in”, as they seem to call them. ’

Verena seemed bemused. ‘It all sounds most unsatisfactory.’ She helped herself to the fish from the dish the footman was holding for her.

‘Well, it’s early days. One must suppose it will get better.

I dare say radio was pretty sad when they first started it.

And you remember how jerky the old cinema films used to be.

But I can’t see the point of television, I must say.

If I want to see a play, I’ll go to the theatre.

If I want to hear a political talk, I’ll go to the town hall. If I want a variety show—’

‘I take the point,’ Verena interrupted. ‘What did you see, by the way?’

Oliver gave a rueful smile. ‘A variety show – dancers, singers, jugglers, and a man telling jokes. Oh dear!’ He took potatoes from the offered dish, and waited for the sauce to be handed.

‘However, Beefy said that this Reith fellow is negotiating with the Postmaster General for the right to show the Coronation on the television. I don’t suppose there are more than two hundred people in the country who have a receiver, but as a general principle, looking to the future, that might be something worthwhile – to show great national events.

After all, not everyone can attend them in person. ’

Verena looked up from her plate. ‘Surely they won’t film inside the Abbey.’

‘Good heavens, no. Just the procession.’