To the Hilt (5 page)

Himself had approved of the match between Ivan and the widow of his much-loved youngest brother. He’d stood beside me at the wedding ceremony and told me to go to him if I ever needed help; and considering that he had five children of his own and half a clan of other nephews and nieces, I’d felt comforted in the loss of my father and in a deep way secure.

I had managed on my own, but I’d known that he was
there.

I said to Ivan, “Mother thinks you may be worried about the Cup.”

He hesitated over an answer, then asked, “What about it.

“She doesn’t know if it’s troubling you and making you feel worse.”

“Your dear mother!” He deeply sighed.

I said, “Is there something wrong with this year’s race? Not enough entries, or something?”

“Look after her.”

She’d been right, I thought, about his depression. A malaise of the soul, outwardly discernible in weak movements of his hands and the lack of vigor in his voice. I didn’t think there was much I could do to improve things, if his own doctor couldn’t.

As if on cue a fifty-to-sixty, thin, mustached, busy-busy person hurried into the room in a dark flapping suit, announcing that as he was passing on his way to the Clinic he had called in for five minutes to check on his patient. “Morning, Ivan. How’s things?”

“Good of you to come, Keith.”

Ivan drifting a limp hand in my direction, I stood up with parent-inculcated politeness and was identified as “My stepson.”

Dr. Keith Robbiston rose in my regard by giving me a sharp glance and a sharper question, “What analgesic have you been taking for that eye?”

“Aspirin.” Euston Station aspirin, actually.

“Huh.” Scorn. “Are you allergic to any drugs?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you taking any other drugs?”

“No.”

“Then try these.” He produced a small packet from an inner suit pocket and held it out to me. I accepted it with gratitude.

Ivan, mystified, asked what was going on.

His doctor briskly answered while at the same time producing from other pockets a stethoscope and blood-pressure monitor. “Your stepson... name?”

“Alexander Kinloch,” I said.

“...Alexander, your stepson, can’t move without pain.”

“What?”

“You haven’t noticed? No, I suppose not.” To me he said, “The reduction and management of pain is my specialty. It can’t be disguised. How did you get like this? It can’t be organic if you’re not taking medicine. Car crash?”

I said with a flicker of amusement, “Four thugs.”

“Really?” He had bright eyes, very alert. “Bad luck.”

“What are you talking about?” Ivan said.

I shook my head at Dr. Robbiston and he checked around his heart-threatened patient with effective economy of movement but no comment on my own state.

“Well done, Ivan,” he said cheerfully, whisking his aids out of sight. “The ticker’s banging away like a baby’s. Don’t strain yourself, though. But walk around the house a bit. Use this strong stepson as a crutch. How’s your dear wife?”

“In her sitting room,” I said.

“Great.” He departed as abruptly as he’d arrived. “Hang in there, Ivan.”

He gave me a brief smile on his quick way out. I sat down again opposite Ivan and swallowed one of the tablets the doctor had given me. His assessment had been piercingly on target. Punch bags led a rotten life.

“He’s a good doctor, really,” Ivan told me defensively.

“The best,” I agreed. “Why do you doubt him?”

“He’s always in a hurry. Patsy wants me to change ... ” He tapered off indecisively; only a shadow seemed left of his former chief-executive decisiveness.

“Why change?” I asked. “He wants you to be well, and he makes house calls, a miracle these days.”

Ivan frowned. “Patsy says he’s hasty.”

I said mildly, “Not everyone thinks or moves at the same speed.”

Ivan took a tissue out of a flat box on the table beside him and blew his nose, then dropped the used tissue carefully into a handy wastebasket. Always neat, always precise.

He said, “Where would you hide something?”

I blinked.

“Well?” Ivan prompted.

“Er ... it would depend what it was.”

“Something of value.”

“How big?”

He didn’t directly answer, but I found what he said next more unusual than anything he’d said to me since I’d known him.

“You have a quirky mind, Alexander. Tell me a safe hiding place.”

Safe.

“Um,” I said, “who would be looking?”

“Everyone. After my death.”

“You’re not dying.”

“Everyone dies.”

“It’s essential to tell
someone
where you’ve hidden something, otherwise it may be lost forever.”

Ivan smiled.

I said, “Are we talking about your will?”

“I’m not telling you what we are talking about. Not yet. Your uncle Robert says you know how to hide things.”

That put me into a state of breathlessness. How
could
they? Those two well-intentioned men must have said something to someone somewhere that had got me beaten to buggery and thrown over the next best thing to a cliff. Nephew of one, stepson of the other... I shifted in undeniable pain in that civilized room and acknowledged that for all their worldliness they had no true conception of the real voracious jungle of greed and cruelty roughly known as mankind.

“Ivan,” I said, “put whatever it is in a bank vault and send a letter of instruction to your lawyers.”

He shook his head.

Don’t give anything to me to hide, I thought. Please don’t. Let me off. I’m not hiding anything else.... Every battered muscle protested.

“Suppose it’s a horse,” he said.

I stared.

He said, “You can’t put a horse in a bank vault.”

“What horse?”

He didn’t say. He asked, “How would you hide a horse?”

“A racehorse?” I asked.

“Certainly.”

“Then ... in a racing stable.”

“Not in an obscure barn miles from anywhere?”

“Definitely not. Horses have to be fed. Regular visits to an obscure barn would be as good as a sign saying ‘Treasure Here.’ ”

“Do you believe in hiding things where everyone can see them but they don’t realize what they’re looking at?”

I said, “The snag with that is that in the end someone
does
understand what they’re looking at.
Someone
spots the rare stamp on the envelope. Someone spots the real pearls when the mistletoe berries wither.”

“But you would still put a racehorse among others?”

“And move it often,” I said.

“And the snag to that?”

“The snag,” I said obligingly, “is that the horse can’t be raced without disclosing its whereabouts. Unless of course you’re a crook with a ringer, which would be unlike you, Ivan.”

“Thank you for that, Alexander.” His voice was dryly amused.

“And if you didn’t race the horse,” I went on, “you would waste its life and its value, until in the end it wouldn’t be worth hiding.”

Ivan sighed. “Any more snags?” “Horses are as recognizable as people. They have faces.”

“And legs ...”

After a pause I said, “Do you want me to hide a horse?” and I thought, What the
hell
am I saying?

“Would you?”

“If you had a good reason.”

“For money?”

“Expenses.”

“Why?”

“Do you mean, why would I do it?” I asked.

He nodded.

I said feebly, “For the interest,” but in fact it would be because it might lighten his depression to have something other than his illness to think about. I would do it because of my mother’s anxiety.

He said, “What if I asked you to
find
a horse?”

He was playing games, I thought.

“I suppose I would look for it,” I said.

The telephone on the table by his elbow rang but he merely stared at it apathetically and made no attempt to pick up the receiver. He simply waited until it stopped ringing and then showed exasperated fatigue when my mother appeared in the doorway to tell him that someone at the brewery wanted him.

“I’m ill. I’ve told them not to bother me.”

“It’s Tobias Tollright, dear. He says it’s essential he talks to you.”

“No, no.”

“Please, Ivan. He sounds so worried.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” Ivan said tiredly. “Let Alexander talk to him.”

Both my mother and I thought the suggestion pointless, but once he got the idea in his head Ivan wouldn’t be budged. In the end I walked over and picked up the phone and explained who I was.

“But I
must
speak to Sir Ivan himself,” said an agitated voice. “You simply don’t understand.”

“No,” I agreed. “But if you’ll tell me what’s the matter, I’ll relay it to him for an answer.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“Yes, but um ... fire away.”

“Do you know who I am?” the voice demanded.

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“I am Tobias Tollright, a partner in a firm of chartered accountants. We audit the King Alfred Brewery accounts.”

“Right,” I said.

“There are discrepancies... Really, Sir Ivan is Chairman and Managing Director and Major Shareholder... it is
unethical
for me to speak to you instead of him.”

“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 authorize them.”

“Well, Mr. Tollright... 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 flapped 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. He’s one. 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 emphasized; 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, the King Alfred 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 that it had numbers written on its underside, one a series that I recognized 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.”