This time, though, I had a stronger hand in the poker game between us. ‘You’re going to have to get a locum in,’ I said casually.
‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘Don’t bloody know how I’m going to go about it from here, though.’
‘It’s done,’ I told him. ‘A woman called Carol Salt starts tomorrow, that’s Monday, if you’ve lost track of time. She lives in Crail, she’s thirty-four, and she’s looking to get back into practice now that her second child’s going to nursery.’
‘How the hell did you. .?’
‘I asked Conrad, a couple of days ago, to speak to the health board. They came up with her name straight away and I gave her a call. I saw her yesterday and we agreed terms. She’s coming in on a locum basis initially, with a view to buying the practice.’
He drew me one of the longest looks I’ve ever had from him. ‘I just love it when you get authoritative,’ he drawled drily. ‘Is that Dallas Salt’s daughter?’
‘That’s her; he practised in Dunfermline, didn’t he?’
‘Aye, but he’d gone private before he retired. I heard that he offered to hand over to her but she turned him down.’
‘That’s right. She told me that she believes in the NHS and wants to work in it.’
‘Good for her, then. But tell her to forget about buying the practice: if she wants it, once she’s seen what fills my waiting room, she can have it. My patients aren’t a commodity to be sold. She can pay me a fair rent for the surgery, but that’ll be that.’
I grinned at him. He thought it was triumph, but it was pride: I’d known he’d say that, but I hadn’t volunteered it to Carol.
‘Right,’ he said, sipping from a glass of water,‘now you’ve sorted out my life, it’s time you got back to your own.’
‘I know. Your surgeon’s told me you’re now officially on the convalescent list, so I’ve booked a plane back to Cannes on Tuesday.’
‘A plane.’ He shook his head, then winced. ‘My son, hiring bloody planes. Why don’t you just buy one?’
‘Not one, a fleet, actually; Susie and I have been thinking about buying an air-charter company. There’s money to be made there.’
‘Get away with you. You don’t know what to get up to next, you two.’ He frowned. ‘Have you heard from Tom’s mum lately?’ The question took me by surprise but he’s always been good at that. My dad’s always had a fondness for Primavera; he didn’t know the whole story of what happened last year, only that she was a bit silly and got banged up for deception, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have shut her out. Like son, like father, I suppose.
‘Last Wednesday, as it happens. She came out to Monaco to visit him. She was as cut up as the rest of us when she heard what happened; she sends her love.’
‘You give her mine too, when Susie’s not listening.’ He winked. ‘You got the rest of the summer off?’
‘Yes, just like you. Once you’re out of here, by the way, I want you and Mary, and Jonny and Colin, through at Loch Lomond. There’s a pool to swim in and plenty of ground to walk around. It’ll be good for your recovery.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘You will, for sure. I’ve told Mary and Jonny to make sure it happens.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘if my oldest grandchild’s on-side, I’d better go along with it. He’s grown into a formidable young man.’
‘That he has. He has a formidable girl-friend too; his mum’s a bit worried about that, if you know what I mean.’
‘Tell her not to, will you? I remember when you and Jan turned sixteen, I decided that my prime responsibility as a father was to make damn sure you knew about the importance of contributing to the profits of London Rubber, then put my trust in your good sense. Christ, what else was I to do? Throw buckets of water over the pair of you?’
I smiled, although he didn’t fully understand why. ‘That wouldn’t have done a hell of a lot of good,’ I confessed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already had that discussion with Jonny. Told him to buy in bulk, to cut down the chances of being spotted in Boots by some loose-tongued friend of Ellie’s or of his girl’s mum. I reckoned that Harvey was a bit new on the scene to be expected to handle that one.’
‘Harvey will never be able to handle that one. Nice guy when you get to know him, but I don’t think he was ever sixteen.’ He paused. ‘You know, you’re a bloody good uncle; make sure you’re as good a dad.’
‘Susie says I’m doing all right.’ I changed the subject. ‘Speaking of my brother-in-law, he’s invited me to lunch tomorrow, in the New Club.’
‘That’s a bit daring on his part. I didn’t think they let actors in there. What’s that about?’
‘I don’t think it’s about anything other than being friendly.’
‘Nah, son, Harvey being friendly is him taking you for a pint or, rather, you taking him but him insisting on buying. When he invited me to the New Club it was to ask me if it was okay to marry Ellie.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘A major-occasion venue, is it? What could that be? You don’t think my sister’s up the duff, do you?’
‘What was that?’ Ellie barked, from the doorway.
10
Happily she found the idea laughable. It was also inconceivable (a nice play on words, if I may say so): I had forgotten that after Colin’s birth her marriage had been in such a sad and sorry state that she had decided to have herself sterilised. She had suggested to Alan Sinclair, her first husband, that he might have a vasectomy but he had chickened out.
When she developed an infection after the procedure and became pretty seriously ill, I offered to vasectomise him myself, with the garden shears. I’d never liked Alan, but that incident pretty much put an end to our relationship. When Ellie decided to bin the tosser, I couldn’t have been happier.
Harvey January was a different sort altogether. My dad and I had raised four eyebrows between us when he first appeared on the scene. He’s a lawyer, and not just any old lawyer but a Queen’s Counsel, so we were concerned that she had picked on another work-obsessed, boring stuffed shirt just like Mr Sinclair. When we spent some time getting to know him, we found we were wrong. Harvey’s actually a shy bloke for a lawyer. (I know, I didn’t think it was possible, either.) But he’s in no way boring, and his shirt doesn’t have anything in it but himself; he wears tee-shirts on Sundays just like the rest of us. Learning to play golf, on my advice (or at last taking the game up: it will be a long learning curve for him) was the clincher. My dad takes the view that all golfers are inherently okay; I don’t agree with that, but it got Harvey’s feet well under Mac the Dentist’s table. It worked with his potential step-sons too: Jonny takes a certain unspoken pleasure from giving a QC a shot a hole. . including the par threes. . and still taking a golf ball a round off him, while Colin’s chuffed that he doesn’t get any shots when they play. (That won’t last long, though: Colin’s an improver and he’s passing him by.) To top it all off, he loves my sister and lavishes attention, and as much money as she will allow, upon her.
My dad was right about the New Club invitation, though: very strange that he should choose to take me, an actor, of all people, brother-in-law or not, to one of the most formal settings in Edinburgh. I’d been there once before, a guest at a reception organised by Clark Gow: no, that’s not a person, it’s an accountancy firm. They’re our tax advisers, Susie’s and mine, and one of their Scottish partners is a member. It’s located in a reasonably modern, if formidably ugly, building on Princes Street, but that has nothing to do with the name. That goes back, I suppose, to the days in the eighteenth century when it really was new. Most of contemporary Edinburgh doesn’t know that it’s there, but that doesn’t matter, because most of contemporary Edinburgh wouldn’t aspire to membership. (To be honest, my impression is that if they did, they wouldn’t have a cat’s chance in hell.)