Rannoch’s were refusing to collect or accept their scotch because of the tap water. Customs and Excise were pressing all and sundry for the duty. Kenneth Charter’s insurers were insisting that as the whisky was Rannoch’s, Rannoch’s should pay. Rannoch’s said Naylor should pay. Kenneth Charter’s suggestion that they run the stuff away down a drain and forget it was not being treated seriously.
The best news was that the insurers had agreed to reinstate Charter’s policies in fulclass="underline" the tanker fleet would stay in business.
Kenneth Junior’s part was so far unknown to the police and would with luck remain so. Kenneth Junior wrote to his father from Australia asking for more money, which Kenneth Senior sent him along with advice to stay far away until parental disgust had abated.
Mission accomplished, Gerard said with satisfaction. De-glet’s were sending Charter their account.
Into Deglet’s office came news also from the Californian bloodstock agent: he regularly sold the horses shipped by Larry Trent and paid the proceeds as instructed into three bank accounts in the name of Stewart Naylor.
He had met Mr Naylor, who had been over once to open the accounts. The horses were good and had won races for their new owners. Everything was straightforward, he was sure.
Flora came to tell me she and Jack were going to Barbados for a month to lie in the sun.
‘We go every year, dear, but you know Jack, never still for five minutes except that this time his leg will slow him up nicely, won’t it? Of course half the racing world goes to Barbados in the winter... did you know they call it Newmarket-on-Sea?’ And later she sent me a postcard saying Orkney Swayle and Isabella were staying in the same hotel and one couldn’t have everything, dear, could one?
Miles Quigley telephoned, full of importance, to offer me Vernon’s job, starting immediately, as liquor manager to his firm. Double Vernon’s salary, he said, and managerial status and a seat on the board; and I reflected while politely declining that if he’d given Vernon those rewards Vernon might have stayed loyal for life.
Quigley said he was sticking to his agreement not to prosecute and Vernon was co-operating with the police. Co-operating? I asked. Vernon, Quigley said, would be a prosecution witness, chattering in return for immunity. Was I sure about the job?
I was sure. Perfectly certain, thanks all the same.
I would stay with my shop, I thought, because for me it was right. The scale of its life was my scale. We fitted.
I would stay with good-natured Mrs Palissey and maybe one day teach Brian to write his own name. I would eat Sung Li’s dinners and bow to him; and I would listen to my customers and sell them comfort.
Ordinary life would go on.
I went home one night after closing at nine and found the postman had left a package from my mother.
She seldom wrote; mostly telephoned. The note inside the package was characteristically short.
Darling,
Turned out some very old boxes. Found these oddments of your father’s. If you don’t want them, throw them away.
The oddments were from a long way back, I thought, looking through them. One of a pair of military gold cuff links. A bronze belt buckle with his regimental crest. A leather jotter with a slot for a pencil, but no pencil.
I riffled through the pages of the jotter. Nothing but memos about things like duty rosters; notes about the day-to-day running of the regiment. It was only by chance that I came upon the page where he had written something else.
I stared at the page, transfixed. It was a scrawl, a cri de coeur, hurried, barely punctuated, ending without a question mark. I knew my mother wouldn’t have sent it, if she’d seen it. It too nearly destroyed the myth.
I felt nearer to him than ever before. I felt his true son.
He had written... at not quite my present age, he had written:
The battle must be soon now. It is essential not to show fear to the men, but God, I fear.
Why can’t I have the courage of my father
Somewhere in the battle, I thought, he had found it.