Septimus then recalled Montgomery’s maxim that surprise and timing in the final analysis are the weapons of victory. As the youth finished his fourth cigarette and was stubbing it out, the train pulled slowly into Sevenoaks station. The youth’s hand was raised, but Septimus was quicker. He had anticipated the enemy’s next move, and now seized the cigarette packet. He took out the ninth cigarette and, placing it between his lips, lit it slowly and luxuriously, inhaling as deeply as he could before blowing the smoke out straight into the face of the enemy. The youth stared up at him in dismay. Septimus then removed the last cigarette from the packet and crumpled the tobacco into shreds between his first finger and thumb, allowing the little flakes to fall back into the empty packet. Then he closed the packet neatly, and with a flourish replaced the little gold box on the armrest. In the same movement he picked up from his vacant seat the sports section of the Evening Standard and tore the paper in half, in quarters, in eighths and finally in sixteenths, placing the little squares in a neat pile on the youth’s lap.
The train came to a halt at Sevenoaks. A triumphant Septimus, having struck his blow for the silent majority, retrieved his umbrella and briefcase from the rack above him and turned to leave.
As he picked up his briefcase it knocked the armrest in front of him and the lid sprang open. Everyone in the carriage stared at its contents. For there, on top of his Prudential documents, was a neatly folded copy of the Evening Standard and an unopened packet of ten Benson & Hedges cigarettes.
Henry’s Hiccup
When the Grand Pasha’s first son was born in 1900 (he had sired twelve daughters by six wives) he named the boy Henry after his favorite king of England. Henry entered this world with more money than even the most blasé tax collector could imagine and therefore seemed destined to live a life of idle ease.
The Grand Pasha, who ruled over ten thousand families, was of the opinion that in time there would be only five kings left in the world — the kings of spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs and England. With this conviction in mind, he decided that Henry should be educated by the British. The boy was therefore dispatched from his native Cairo at the age of eight to embark upon a formal education, young enough to retain only vague recollections of the noise, the heat and the dirt of his birthplace. Henry started his new life at the Dragon School, which the Grand Pasha’s advisers assured him was the finest preparatory school in the land. The boy left this establishment four years later, having developed a passionate love for the polo field and a thorough distaste for the classroom. He proceeded, with the minimum academic qualifications, to Eton, which the Pasha’s advisers assured him was the best school in Europe. He was gratified to learn the school had been founded by his favorite king. Henry spent five years at Eton, where he added squash, golf and tennis to his pastimes, and applied mathematics, jazz and cross-country running to his “avoid at all costs.”
On leaving school, he once again failed to make more than a passing impression on the examiners. Nevertheless, he was found a place at Balliol College, Oxford, which the Pasha’s advisers assured him was the greatest university in the world. Three years at Balliol added two more loves to his life: horses and women, and three more ineradicable aversions: politics, philosophy and economics.
At the end of his time in statu pupillari, he totally failed to impress the examiners and went down without a degree. His father, who considered young Henry’s two goals against Cambridge in the Varsity polo match a wholly satisfactory result of his university career, dispatched the boy on a journey round the world to complete his education. Henry enjoyed the experience, learning more on the race course at Longchamps and in the back streets of Benghazi than he ever had acquired from his formal upbringing in England.
The Grand Pasha would have been proud of the tall, sophisticated and handsome young man who returned to England a year later showing only the slightest trace of a foreign accent, if he hadn’t died before his beloved son reached Southampton. Henry, although broken-hearted, was certainly not broke, as his father had left him some twenty million in known assets, including a racing stud at Suffolk, a 100-foot yacht in Nice and a palace in Cairo. But by far the most important of his father’s bequests was the finest manservant in London, one Godfrey Barker. Barker could arrange or rearrange anything, at a moment’s notice.
Henry, for the lack of something better to do, settled himself into his father’s old suite at the Ritz, not troubling to read the situations vacant column in the London Times. Rather he embarked on a life of single-minded dedication to the pursuit of pleasure, the only career for which Eton, Oxford and inherited wealth had adequately equipped him. To do Henry justice, he had, despite a more than generous helping of charm and good looks, enough common sense to choose carefully those permitted to spend the unforgiving minute with him. He selected only old friends from school and university who, although they were without exception not as well born as he, weren’t the sorts of fellows who came begging for the loan of a fiver to cover a gambling debt.
Whenever Henry was asked what was the first love of his life, he was always hard pressed to choose between horses and women, and since he found it possible to spend the day with the one and the night with the other without causing any jealousy or recrimination, he never overtaxed himself with resolving the problem. Most of his horses were fine stallions, fast, sleek, velvet-skinned, with dark eyes and firm limbs; this would have adequately described most of his women, except that they were fillies. Henry fell in and out of love with every girl in the chorus line of the London Palladium, and when the affairs had come to an end, Barker saw to it that they always received some suitable memento to ensure that no scandal ensued. Henry also won every classic race on the English turf before he was thirty-five and Barker always seemed to know the right year to back his master.
Henry’s life quickly fell into a routine, never dull. One month was spent in Cairo going through the motions of attending to his business, three months in the south of France with the occasional excursion to Biarritz, and for the remaining eight months he resided at the Ritz. For the four months he was out of London his magnificent suite overlooking St. James’s Park remained unoccupied. History does not record whether Henry left the rooms empty because he disliked the thought of unknown persons splashing in the sunken marble bath or because he simply couldn’t be bothered with the fuss of signing in and out of the hotel twice a year. The Ritz management had never commented on the matter to his father; why should they with the son? This program fully accounted for Henry’s year except for the odd trip to Paris when some home counties girl came a little too close to the altar. Although almost every girl who met Henry wanted to marry him, a good many would have done so even if he had been penniless. However, Henry saw absolutely no reason to be faithful to one woman. “I have a hundred horses and a hundred male friends,” he would explain when asked. “Why should I confine myself to one female?” There seemed no immediate answer to Henry’s logic.
The story of Henry would have ended there had he continued life as destiny seemed content to allow, but even the Henrys of this world have the occasional hiccup.
As the years passed Henry grew into the habit of never planning ahead, since experience — and his able manservant, Barker — had always led him to believe that with vast wealth you could acquire anything you desired at the last minute, and cover any contingencies that arose later. However, even Barker couldn’t formulate a contingency plan in response to Mr. Chamberlain’s statement of September 3, 1939, that the British people were at war with Germany. Henry felt it inconsiderate of Chamberlain to have declared war so soon after Wimbledon and the Oaks, and even more inconsiderate of the Home Office to advise him a few months later that Barker must stop serving the Grand Pasha and, until further notice, serve His Majesty the King instead.