The More Deceived

Lord Edward Corinth stood poised on the balls of his feet, prepared to meet the attack which he knew would be fierce and unforgiving. In the few seconds remaining to him, he assessed his stance and was satisfied. His knees were bent, his feet at right angles, the back foot turned slightly forward. His rear arm was raised to balance the épée he grasped in his right hand, arm outstretched breast-high. Beneath his mask, a trickle of sweat rolled off his forehead on to the bridge of his beaky nose causing him to move his head very slightly.

‘Hold still! Keep your head perfectly still,’ came the cry as he knew it would. ‘No, don’t look at your blade. Always eye to eye.’

Edward cursed silently. His knee, injured in a car accident two years earlier, was quite strong again despite his having fallen awkwardly on it while chasing a girl on the
Queen Mary
just a month ago but, if he did not move in the next few seconds, it might just betray him.

‘
En garde
! Lunge! Keep your back foot flat. Good! Lunge – recover – lunge!’

Two hectic minutes later Edward felt his épée taken out of his hand as easily as candy from a child. As he heard, rather than saw it clatter across the floor, he stepped back and lifted his mask.

‘For God’s sake, what happened? I thought I was just about to
flèche
.’

His instructor laughed. ‘It was bad of me, I know, but I couldn’t resist it. You laid yourself right open. First I confused your sense of distance by having my arm more retracted than usual, then I went under your arm aiming at the wrist. Always remember, Lord Edward, the best time to attack is when your opponent steps forward. You are tall – taller than me by nine inches – and I had to prevent you using that advantage. I had to keep you at relatively close quarters and attack your blade. You must try not to signal your intentions to your adversary, though. But you did well.’

‘I’m so out of condition, Cavens. I hope you won’t despair of me.’

Fred Cavens, Edward’s instructor and swordmaster, was a graduate of the Belgian Military Institute. Whenever Douglas Fairbanks embarked on a film such as
The Black Pirate
or
The Iron Mask
in which he was called upon to bound across the set, sword in hand, duelling with some evil opponent, Cavens was there instructing him and occasionally stepping in for him when the fight became too acrobatic. He also arranged fights for Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn, both of whom had become close friends.

Edward had once asked him why Belgians seemed to do all the fight arranging in Hollywood and he said, ‘
Les Français sont trop difficiles
. We Belgians are . . . more relaxed. You understand?’

Fenton, Lord Edward’s valet, came forward with a towel and helped him remove his sweat-sodden clothes before proceeding to rub him down. They were in his rooms in Albany. Fenton privately considered the dining-room, even when stripped of its furniture and oriental rugs, an inappropriate place in which to take violent exercise and hinted as much now. Edward was adamant.

‘You sound just like my dear departed Aunt Gladys. Of course this is the place to fence in. Do you not realize that these were Byron’s chambers? This was his
salle d’armes.
He sparred just where we are standing with John “Gentleman” Jackson – “Bruiser” Jackson as he was known in the ring – boxing champion of England during the Regency. And with Henry Angelo he practised with foil and broadsword. It would be ridiculous for any of the other residents to object and they haven’t, have they?’

‘No, my lord, but . . .’

The telephone rang and Fenton excused himself and went out to the hall to answer it.

‘Saved by the bell, eh? You know, Cavens, Fenton’s the best valet in London but there are times when he makes me feel like a naughty little boy. I had a nanny just like him when I was a child. I had to get rid of her by putting tadpoles in her jam sandwiches.’

Cavens laughed. ‘I shall go now. You remember that I leave for Germany on Friday?’

‘Yes, I gather fencing is fashionable there at the moment. I know Mussolini has been encouraging it in Italy.’

‘In Germany I number Herr Himmler among my students.’

Edward frowned. ‘That man? I thought fencing was a sport for gentlemen.’

Cavens looked embarrassed and Edward felt he had been rude. ‘Ah well!’ he said with an effort at humour. ‘Just because Fascists like to fence doesn’t mean we have to give it up. My friend Verity Browne tells me that Karl Marx also liked to fence.’

Cavens smiled weakly. ‘You know the old joke? The German said to the Frenchman, “After all, when the history of the Great War is written, it will be difficult to decide where the greater measure of blame lies.” “Well, my friend,” the Frenchman says, “the one thing history will not say is that Belgium invaded Germany.”’

Edward smiled wryly. ‘I say, Cavens, it’s very good of you to spare the time to teach me. Are you sure I am not being a bore . . . wasting your time and whatnot?’

‘No, indeed. You are a natural athlete, Lord Edward, and if it were not for your knee and your . . .’

‘I know! My great age . . .’ Edward was about to be thirty-eight.

‘You are not too old. One of my pupils started at sixty. Fencing is like a physical game of chess. It helps to be quick and agile but if you are slower you can fence defensively. If you trained hard enough you could reach Olympic standard.’

‘No, no, Cavens old man. It’s true I did fence a bit at Eton but I hardly did anything when I was at Cambridge . . . had other fish to fry . . . so I’m terribly rusty now, as you can see.’

‘While I am away, practise, practise, practise and then practise some more. When I am back we shall continue our search for
la botte secrète
– the perfect thrust,
n’est-ce pas
?’

At that moment Fenton re-entered the room. ‘Sir Robert Vansittart is on the telephone, my lord. He wishes to speak to you.’

‘His secretary, you mean?’

‘No, my lord, Sir Robert himself.’

‘Good heavens! What can I have done to deserve this?’

Vansittart was Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs – the Foreign Office’s effective chief. Not a politician but, nevertheless, highly political, he wielded immense power and could promote or vitiate the policy of his political masters. If he supported the Foreign Secretary – at this time Anthony Eden – he could be a most able servant but also a dangerous enemy. What this great man could have to say to him, Edward could not imagine. Wrapped in a towel, he hurried to the telephone half expecting to find one of his friends was playing a joke on him.

‘Sir Robert, I apologize for keeping you waiting. I was just . . .’

‘Ah! Lord Edward. I am delighted to have caught you. Something has come up which I thought might interest you. Can’t say anything about it on the telephone but I wondered if you were free this afternoon? Forgive the short notice but . . .’

‘Of course, Sir Robert. I have no engagement I cannot break. Shall I come to your office about three?’

‘Could we say four? I have a luncheon which may drag on. The Italian ambassador . . . need I say more?’

Edward’s elder brother, the Duke of Mersham, had once reprimanded him for dressing sloppily with the comment, ‘If you cannot dress like a gentleman, you should at least dress like a Conservative.’ Another piece of advice the Duke was fond of repeating was ‘Gentlemen shop at gentlemen’s shops’ and Edward always had. His suits were made in Savile Row by Leslie and Roberts, his boots by Lobb and his hats by Lock in St James’s Street. Thus it was that, when Edward set out for the Foreign Office, he was impeccably dressed in his most sober tie and black pinstripe suit. Fenton had urged him to wear spats but he had declined on the grounds that they were beginning to look old-fashioned. Fenton had pursed his lips and begun to protest but Edward had cut him short.

‘I want to look reliable and . . . respectable and so forth but I don’t want to look a complete fossil.’

The truth was that Edward wanted to be taken seriously. Over the past two years he had done several jobs – unofficial ones – for the Foreign Office or at the behest of Major Ferguson of Special Branch but he had never met Vansittart. With war looming, he was anxious to establish his position with the powers-that-be on a more formal footing. It was not a question of money. He had plenty of that. It was more that he wanted to be useful . . . to have a purpose in life . . . to serve his country and be able to tell himself he wasn’t just a useless
coureur de dames
. He was easily bored and the idea of office work of any kind filled him with horror. Politics was out of the question. All the hypocrisy, the lies you had to tell and the babies you had to kiss.

There was always the army but he was really too old to imagine he would be allowed to do any real fighting. No, what he was good at – if he was good at anything – was nosing out the truth and he had a feeling that this was where there was a role for him. Not spying exactly but . . . well, he supposed it was a type of police work. He had been told that Vansittart thought well of him – he had done some useful work preventing a scandal which might have touched the Royal Family – but to be commissioned by him personally . . . that was something else.

It was a glorious spring day and he decided to walk across St James’s Park rather than take the Lagonda. He had, of course, no idea how he appeared to passers-by as he strode purposefully across the grass, recently mown for the first time that year. Tall, long-legged, with a look on his face which a foolish observer might have mistaken for vacuous, he exuded the confidence – some might say the arrogance – of the upper-class Englishman who had never had reason to doubt his place in the universe. In point of fact he did often doubt himself and, as he scattered the ducks drying their feathers beside the water, he was far from feeling satisfied with his position or rather his reason for existing. He had a good brain. He was, despite his age, still something of an athlete. He had a large circle of friends not just in his own social circle but in neighbourhoods and social classes in which aristocratic young men rarely ventured. He had no wife or child but an
amitié
– irregular and hard to define – with a young Communist journalist who exhibited an annoying preference for Europe’s battlefields over the joys of Piccadilly.