To the hilt [en]

'At least let me check it from the legal point of view,' Grantchester said.

Ivan with a touch of starch told him that he, Ivan, knew when a document had been correctly executed, and his codicil had.

'But perhaps I can see it…?'

'No,' Ivan said, regretfully polite.

'I don't understand you.'

'I do,' Patsy said forcefully. 'It's quite clear that Alexander is manipulating you, Father, and you're so blind you can't see that everything he does is aimed at taking my place as your heir.'

Ivan looked at me with such troubled indecision that I quietly went out of his study and climbed the stairs to the room I'd slept in, to put together the few things I'd brought with me, ready for leaving. I'd done my best for the brewery - for Ivan, for my mother - but the biggest difference between my stepfather and me was the ease and extent of his mood swings and changes of opinions, and, good and honourable man though he might be, I never quite knew what he believed of me from one hour to the next.

It had seemed, since his illness, that he had relied on and believed in and made use of my good faith, but it had been a frail belief after all.

I could hear shouting going on downstairs, though I'd thought my departure would at least have stopped Patsy haranguing her father.

I stood at the window looking out towards Regent's Park and didn't hear my mother come upstairs until she spoke behind me.

'Alexander, Ivan needs you.' I turned. 'I can't. I'm not fighting Patsy.' 'It's not just Patsy. That man who runs the brewery is here now too. Desmond Finch. Ivan thinks the world of him but he's a terrific fusspot, and he trots to Patsy with every complaint. They're all telling Ivan… yelling at him… that the terms you signed with the creditors are disgraceful and they could all have done better, and they want him to cancel your power of attorney retrospectively so that your signature on everything is void.'

I asked, 'Did Ivan send you to fetch me?'

'Well, no. But last night he was so pleased…'

I sighed and put my arm round her slender waist. 'And,' I said, 'he can't legally make my signature void.'

We went down. Ivan looked hunted, harried by the pack. They all resented my reappearance, and I looked at them one by one, trying to put reasons to their antagonism.

Patsy, tall, good-looking, fierce and obsessed, had been an unappeasable foe since the day her father had fallen in love with my mother. Young women who felt possessive of their widowed fathers usually hated the usurper who displaced them, but Patsy's rage had skipped over her sweet-natured unthreatening stepmother and fastened inexorably on me. If she had ever stopped to make a sensible reckoning she would know that she had never lost anything at all because of me, let alone her father's love, but emotion ruled her entirely, and, after twelve years of her steadfast detestation, I didn't expect her to change.

She'd married Surtees two years after her father had married my mother, and in the weak, good-looking Hooray-Henry had chosen a mate she could indoctrinate.

I looked at Surtees as he stood behind Ivan's chair; he was a person, I thought, who would always seek such a shield, who would never have the steel to stand out in the open and say; 'Here I am. Judge me as I am.' Patsy had married a man she could bully and it had been very bad for both of them.

I found it less easy to understand Desmond Finch. He stood there glaring at me, thin, aggressive, flashing his large silver-rimmed glasses in sharp little head movements, his Adam's apple actively jumping in his neck. I had no reason to doubt the general assessment I'd been given that he was efficient and energetic in his job, but I believed also in the evaluation that he would act only if given directions. It seemed plain that he danced to Patsy's instructions: plain also that he'd made no objective overview on the brewery's troubles, in spite of his own whole career being bound up in its financial health.

A limited man, I thought. Short-sighted mentally as well as optically. A voice baying in the pack. Not one to sink the teeth in first.

And Oliver Grantchester? He'd never liked me; I'd never liked him.

There he balefully stood, bulky, going bald, Ivan's legal adviser from way-back, consulted, wise - and enchanted by Patsy to the extent that his manner to me was always of suspicion, distrust and obstruction.

Ivan said weakly, 'Couldn't you have got a better deal for the brewery, Alexander?'

I smiled grimly. 'I'm sick of the brewery,' I said. 'Ivan, let Patsy loose on the creditors. I don't give a damn about the fact that she'll ruin her inheritance. Why should I care? The brewery is yours. It's rescued; it has problems that are basically solved, but which you can muck up in a moment. I'm a painter and I'm going back to my own work, and goodbye… a heartfelt goodbye to you all.'

Ivan said miserably, 'Alexander…'

'For you,' I said to him plainly, 'I've taken risks that I'll take again, and I've begged and persuaded and bargained to save your good name. Because you sent me the chalice' - and I glanced at Patsy and Surtees, who stared as if transfixed - 'I got beaten beyond a joke. And I've had enough. I'll do anything on earth for my mother, but that's where it now ends. Do what you like, Ivan. Just count me out.'

My mother said, barely audibly, 'Oh no… please, Alexander,' and Ivan looked exhaustedly strained.

Grantchester said heavily, 'Ivan tells us he gave you his codicil for safe-keeping. He now sees that this was a mistake. So hand it over.'

Into the silence that followed I said, 'Ivan?'

His eyes looked deep in their sockets. I understood the impossibility he faced. His faith in me was a disloyalty to his daughter; a disloyalty I had no right to coerce, even if I could.

'I'll get it,' I said, letting him off. 'It's upstairs.'

I went up and fetched the sealed envelope, and returning, put it into his hands.

'I'll take it,' Grantchester said authoritatively, but Ivan put the envelope on his knees and folded his hands on it, and shook his head.

'I'll keep it here, Oliver,' he said.

'But-'

'Then I can tear it up if I change my mind.'

I smiled into Ivan's troubled eyes and without weight said I would be upstairs for an hour or two more if he wanted me.

'He doesn't want you,' Surtees said spitefully. 'None of us do.'

I shrugged and left them and, shaking my head to my mother's pleading eyes, went back upstairs, looking out of the window and waiting.

They went on shouting, downstairs, but finally the angry voices came out of Ivan's study and descended to street level and left by the front door. When all was quiet I went out of my room and onto the stairs, and found Ivan on the landing below me, looking up. He made a gesture towards his study, a flip of the hand that was unmistakably an invitation, so I went down and followed him into his room, and sat opposite him in my usual chair.

My mother, looking as frail as her husband, stood beside Ivan, touching him as if to give him strength.

He said to me, 'Did you mean it, that you've had enough?'

For answer I asked, 'Did you cancel the power of attorney?'

'I… I don't know what to do.'

'No, he didn't,' my mother said. 'Ivan, tell Alexander… Beg Alexander to go on acting for you.' To me she said, 'Don't leave us.'

I had so recently vowed I would do anything on earth for my mother. So small a thing, to stay and field a few insults. I wilted inside from disinclination.

'What did you mean about being beaten?' Ivan said.

'That black eye I had last week…'

He frowned. 'Keith Robbiston said you were hurt.'

I told them about the robbers. 'I didn't want to worry you when you were so ill… so I didn't tell you.'