Brodmaw Bay (45 page)

‘Why did you help us?’

‘I knew them,’ Abraham said. ‘I knew Adam Gleason and his family. I endured the self-loathing of that hypocritical day we held the memorial tribute to our soldier hero who would not return. What was done to that family was a terrible wrong and I’ve lived with it on my conscience since.’

‘You’ve had a long life.’

‘Too long,’ Abraham said. He looked out over the water. ‘I’m reconciled to paying what it will cost.’ He smiled and raised a hand and squeezed James’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorrier than I can say, Mr Greer, for your loss.’ He turned and walked away.

Epilogue

The bay did not prosper in the aftermath of that night. A number of its leading citizens were lost, believed drowned, only the following day, when the boat they had chartered to take them to a small island for some folkloric celebration foundered in fog. After that the community, what was left of it, seemed to lose its spirit and impetus. Within a few years the population had halved. The fishing fleet had dwindled to three or four boats as fish stocks inexplicably decreased.

What happened was a familiar story of rural economic decline. Too remote for tourism, once its principal resource was exhausted the village could not sustain the size to which it had grown in prosperous times. It shrank and dwindled. It could no longer boast a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. Almost nobody lives there now.

James Greer sold the house in Bermondsey. He moved eventually to a flat in Camden Town. He says that he enjoys the cosmopolitan flavour of the area. He finds its frenetic bustle a comfort in what had become, considering his recent personal history, a fairly solitary life compared to the one he once enjoyed.

He does not see a great deal of his son. They remain close emotionally. Perhaps the problem is that they are too close. When they meet, they are reminded, inevitably, of those they loved and cherished and lost. Jack no longer believes his mother was left deliberately to be the last to be saved by his father. Or more accurately, he no longer believes it consciously. He had some counselling sessions with a Harley Street psychiatrist called Eleanor Deacon. They were a help to him. He even developed a bit of a crush on Dr Deacon in the end.

He plays as a professional footballer now. He has a very successful career. He plays for Liverpool, instrumental in the club’s recent renaissance. He has earned wealth and success and a deserved measure of fame. He never really doubted that he would make the grade. He had trials at Chelsea. And they signed him. But childhood dreams can sometimes perish and his did, farmed out to other clubs for loan spells that frustrated him.

Liverpool brought Jack Greer as cover when their first team centre backs were both injured. His performances were so consistently strong that he had become a regular first-choice player by the end of his first full season with the club. He has trained with the international squad. He is only eighteen but maturing quickly and there are those who speculate already in the press that one day he will captain his country.

Towards the end of that first Liverpool season he grabbed the winner against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge when he rose to meet a corner with a towering header in the final seconds of injury time. He thought it quite ironic that he should score that particular goal at that ground against the club he revered in his boyhood. But irony is something Jack Greer has had to learn to live with.

His father was not in the stand that day to see his son score. On his rare visits north to Anfield, despite feeling no greater fondness for the game than he ever did, James does feel very proud when Jack makes a crucial tackle, or brings the ball out of defence in a counter-attack that has the home crowd chanting his name. The fans call him Jacky G. Football has its own language. James makes a point of always watching his son’s performances when Liverpool games feature on the television.

Jack sees quite a lot of Detective Inspector Alec McCabe. McCabe was faced with redundancy or transfer as a consequence of Metropolitan Police budget cuts and opted for the latter. He relocated with his family to Merseyside after applying for and getting a transfer-cum-promotion and he meets Jack for lunch or dinner more or less weekly. These occasions are very important to Jack. McCabe says that his colleagues on the Liverpool force are inclined to rib him about what they call his cockney accent. He has to tolerate their legendary Merseyside wit, he says, daily. He’s happy there.

Jack has never told McCabe about the night his mother and sister died and the policeman is far too tactful and intuitive to ask. There are just the two secrets kept between these friends. The other concerns his own lovely daughter’s ardour for her Anfield hero.

McCabe has resolved one day to tell Jack about that, because having seen them in conversation at one of his family barbecues, he suspects the feeling might be mutual. He is jealous of his daughter’s virtue. But he thinks they might in the future make a really good and happy couple. He does not honestly think he could have anyone finer for a son-in-law.

James Greer spends a lot of time walking or just sitting on benches on Hampstead Heath. He has developed a reputation for eccentricity. No one would go so far as to call him mad. He is far too rich to be derided as a madman.

He sacked Lee Marsden. He represented himself when he courted potential backers. He raised boutique finance to fund the development and marketing of the computer game he created. The interest on his loans averaged out at
almost 40 per
cent. He took a real chance in doing it and it could have been ruinous. But work was the only successful way to distract him from the grief he thought might consume him otherwise. He needed to survive in those first months following the tragedy for the sake of his son. And his industry proved to be very profitable.

An adaptation of the game is used in schools in Europe and the United States as a history teaching aid. In the Far East and in China, it has been customised to help businessmen learn the English language in a relatively painless way. The adult consumer version, a huge hit with gamers globally, inspired a film franchise still going strong at the box office after the fifth movie in the series.

There is a reason for his eccentric reputation. It is that James can often be seen on the Heath, talking animatedly in broad daylight to someone who isn’t there. Quite often he laughs at something no one but he can hear said and most of the time he is smiling. He is very successful in business. He gives a lot of his money to good causes. Anyone with a heart would surely forgive him the indulgence of the person he refers to, when he refers to her at all, simply as his imaginary friend.