To the hilt [en]

'Mm,' I said, 'I do see that. Perhaps you'd better write to him.'

'The matter is too urgent. Remind him it is illegal for a limited company to go on trading when it is insolvent, and I fear… I really fear that measures must be taken at once, and only he can authorise them.'

'Well, Mr Tollright, er… hold on, while I explain.'

'What is it?' my mother asked anxiously. Ivan didn't ask but looked deeply exhausted.

He knew.

I said to him, 'There are things that only you can sign.'

Ivan shook his head.

I went back to Tollright, 'Can any of your urgent measures save the day?'

'I have to discuss it with Sir Ivan. But perhaps, yes.'

'What if he gives me power of attorney to act for him in this matter? Would that do the trick?'

He hesitated. It might be a legal move, but he didn't like it.

I said, 'Sir Ivan is still at an early stage of convalescence.'

I couldn't say in front of Ivan that too much worry might kill him, but it seemed as if Tobias's mental cogs abruptly engaged in a higher gear. How soon, he wanted to know without any more protest, could he expect to see me.

'Tomorrow?' I suggested.

'This afternoon,' he contradicted positively. 'Come to our main offices in Reading.' He told me the address. 'This matter is very urgent.'

'Ultra?'

He cleared his throat and repeated the word as if he'd never used it before. 'Well… yes… ultra.'

'Just hold on, would you?' I lowered the receiver and spoke to my unwilling stepfather. 'I can sign things if you give me the authority. Is that what you really want? I mean, you'll have to trust me a lot.'

He said wearily, 'I do trust you.'

'But this is… well, extreme trust.'

He simply napped his hand.

I said into the phone, 'Mr Tollright, I'll see you as soon as I can.'

'Good.'

I put down the receiver and told Ivan that such trust was unwise.

He smiled faintly. 'Your uncle Robert said I could trust you with my life.'

'You just more or less did.' I did a double-take. 'When did he say that?'

'A few days ago. He'll tell you about it.'

And who else had they told? Alexander can hide things… Shit.

'Ivan,' I said, 'It's more solid if a power of attorney is signed and witnessed in front of a lawyer.'

'Phone Oliver Grantchester. I'll talk to him.'

He was vague, however, with his lawyer, telling him only that he wanted to draw up a power of attorney, but not saying what for. Extremely urgent, though, he emphasised; and, as he still felt wretchedly ill, would Oliver please come to his house so that everything could be completed at once.

Oliver Grantchester, it seemed, easily agreed to instant action, but Ivan's gloom nevertheless intensified. How on earth, I wondered, but didn't ask, had a brewery as well known as King Alfred's tied itself in financial knots?

Standing close outside Wantage, the ancient town of the great king's birth, King Alfred's Brewery supplied most of southern England and half of the Midlands with King Alfred's Gold (a fine light brew) and King Alfred's Bronze (a brew more bitter) which flowed by the frothy lakeful down grateful throats.

Ivan had shown me round his brewery. I'd seen the Kingdom and the Crown that I'd declined. He had offered them again and yet again, and he couldn't understand why I went back to the mountains every time.

The phone call done, Ivan seemed grateful when a thin man in a short white cotton jacket came in from the next-door bedroom and told him respectfully that everything was clean and tidy for the day. The obsequious Wilfred, I presumed.

Out in the hallway a vacuum cleaner began whining. At the noise Ivan's fragile tolerance looked on the absolute brink of disintegration. Wilfred went out into the hallway. The vacuuming stopped but an aggrieved female voice could be heard saying, 'It's all very well, but I've got my job to do, you know.'

'Oh dear,' my mother said, and went to pour oil.

'I can't stand it all,' Ivan said.

He stood up, swaying unsteadily and knocking the box of tissues from the table to the floor. I picked up the box, noticing it had numbers written on its underside, one a series that I recognised as Himself's phone number in Scotland.

Seeing me looking at it, Ivan said, 'There's a pencil by the phone but that new cleaner keeps moving my notepad over onto the desk. It drives me mad. So I use the tissue-box instead.'

'Why don't you tell her?'

'Yes, I suppose I should.'

I offered him my arm for balance, which he accepted.

'Think I'll just rest until Oliver comes,' he said, and I went with him through to his wide bed, where he lay down on the covers in his dressing-gown and slippers and closed his eyes.

I went back into his study and eased down into the chair I'd occupied before. Dr Robbiston's tablet had at least diminished the persistently acute stabs of muscular pain to an overall ache. I could no longer feel anything but a general soreness round my left eye. Think of something else, I told myself. Think of how to hide a bankruptcy…

I was a painter, dammit. Not a fixer. Not a universal rock. I should cultivate an ability to say no.

My mother came back. The vacuum remained silent. She perched in Ivan's chair and said, 'You see? You see?'

I nodded. 'I see a man who loves you.'

'That's not…'

'That's what's the matter. He knows his brewery is in trouble, is maybe on the edge. The brewery is the base of his life. It may be that the brewery's troubles brought on his heart attack in the first place. He may feel a loss of prestige. He may think he's failed you. He can't bear that.' I paused. 'He told me to look after you.'

She stared at me. 'But,' she said, 'I would live with him in poverty, and comfort him.'

'I think you need to tell him.'

'But-'

'I know you find it hard to put feelings into words, but I think you should do it now.'

'Perhaps

'No,' I said, 'I mean now. This minute. He talks about dying as if it would be a haven. He's told me twice to look after you. I will, but if that's not what you want, go and put your arms round him. I think he's ashamed because of the brewery. He's a good man -he needs saving.'

'I don't…'

'Go and love him,' I said.

She gave me a wild look and walked into Ivan's bedroom as if not sure of her footing.

I sat in a sort of hiatus, waiting for the next buffet of fate and wishing that all I had to decide that day was whether to pick Hooker's green or emerald for the colour of the grass of the eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach. Golf was peaceful and well mannered and tested one's honesty to disintegration. I painted the passions of golf as much as its physical scenery, and I'd learned it was the raw emotion, the conflict within the self, that sold the pictures. If I painted pretty scenery without feeling moral tension in my own mind, it quite likely wouldn't sell. It was golfers who bought my work, and they bought it for its core of struggle.

The four completed paintings stolen from the bothy had all been views of play on the great courses at Pebble Beach, California, and represented not only time spent and future income, but also an ingredient of anguish that I couldn't quantify or explain. Along with the canvas and the paint, the demon hikers had taken psychic energy, and although I could produce other and similar work again and again, never exactly those brushstrokes, those slanting shadows, those understandings of the flow of determination in the seconds before the striking of the ball.

The comparative peace of half an hour came to an end with the arrival of Oliver Grantchester who brought with him a frail-looking young woman hung around with computer, printer and bag of office necessities.