Hostage to Fortune

by Carolyn McCrae

  He did not want to side with his father.

  His father had lied to him and had thrown away his wealth because he was afraid that what he had done would come back to haunt him. But Warwick was despicable. It was not only his politics that rankled with Guy, it was his flaunting of his privileged lifestyle, the lifestyle that should have been his own.

  For a frustrating two weeks Guy could think of nothing other than Warwick Eden’s money. He followed the news more than he had since he had left England and no day passed without some mention of Warwick Eden, his thumbing his nose at those who had voted for him and his arrogance. Few items failed to show a picture of the man, on his yacht Beausale, smiling, gloating, Guy thought; overweight, smug and self-satisfied.

  When Guy saw an advertisement for crew on the Beausale he knew what he could do.

  A second officer was required, STCW certification, a qualified watch-keeper, competent, with many sea miles under their belt, preferably in the Caribbean. It seemed his time with Peabody Three had not been wasted. He had a sizeable hoard of gold and dollars in his cabin and he was perfectly qualified for a job on Warwick Eden’s yacht.

  “Sign this,” Guy said, handing AP a piece of paper.

  “What is it?”

  “My reference. You’re saying how well I would be suited to this job they have advertised.”

  “You want another job? On another boat? You want to leave me?”

  “I need this job so we can be together, permanently.” Guy bent down to kiss the man who did not know that he was being used. “I have a plan.”

  Two months later Guy steered Peabody Three into the Marina of Mindelo on the island of Sao Vicente in Cape Verde, the first port of call on his way back to England.

  “You’ve changed,” AP said quietly, resting his head on Guy’s shoulder. “Not so long ago you wanted to blackmail me.”

  “Well, yes… I have changed.”

  Guy put his hand on the back of his boss’s neck and drew him towards him. “Perhaps I have fallen in love with you after all.”

  As they moved towards his cabin Guy thought that not worrying too much about what he did with his body, playing a role and exchanging a few meaningless words, were a small price to pay.

  In a week he would be back in England; he would take up his position on Beausale and begin to put his plan into action.

  The day they arrived in Poole Harbour on the south coast of England Guy was packing his bag when he realised he was being watched.

  “You really are leaving me?” He heard the pleading in AP’s voice and was faintly sickened by it.

  “Only for a short time.” He turned to reassure his anxious lover.

  “What am I going to do without you?”

  “Go back to visit your family. Make peace with them.”

  “Maybe.” His voice betrayed his reluctance and Guy knew he was far more likely to head for Brighton or London where he would soon forget he was missing him.

  “I need to be on that other yacht for just a few weeks, no more, then we can be together.” Guy used his most persuasive voice.

  “But we are together. We have been together. These last few weeks… We couldn’t have been more together, could we?”

  “But we’re not equals, are we? It’s your money behind everything. A few weeks away working that yacht will mean I will come into a very great deal of money and then we can be together as equals.”

  Guy felt no pangs of guilt at lying.

  “Really? That’s why you’re leaving me? To make money? Haven’t you done well enough with the smuggling you’ve been doing?”

  “I have a way to make a very great deal of money.”

  “You’re going to steal it?”

  Guy did not answer the question, allowing AP to think that that was exactly what he was going to do.

  On the last Friday in May 2015 Guy Cliffe joined the crew of Beausale.

  A red-headed steward called Ryan O’Donnell helped him with his kit as he settled into his quarters.

  He could not help smiling.

  Everything, so far, was going exactly according to plan.

  Chapter 7: Arjun Patel

  Although Ashesh Patel did not consider himself to be rich he was unquestionably the head of one of the more prosperous and respected families in his community.

  For many years he had worked long hours managing the chain of clothing stores founded by his grandfather, but with hard work had come great rewards. He had a comfortable, some would say luxurious, home in one of the better suburbs of Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, and he could easily afford the army of staff who ran his household efficiently.

  As he left his church after the Easter Day service in 1972 all he needed to make his life perfect was for the child his wife was carrying to be a boy. His daughter, Raima, was a joy to him but he, and his wife, needed a son to continue his line and take over the business he had worked so hard to build.

  At first Ashesh refused to believe the announcement made by the country’s president.

  “He cannot do this!” he exclaimed to another club member as they sat watching youngsters playing cricket in the exclusive Gymkhana Club.

  “He has said all Ugandans of Indian origin are to be deported.”

  “Deported? Thrown out? Why? What have we done?”

  “He says he is returning his country to Ethnic Ugandans.”

  “But we are Ugandan!”

  “Unless you have official citizenship he says you are not.”

  “But I was born here! As was my father and also my grandfather.” Ashesh waited until the end of the over before adding reflectively, “I suppose we should have seen it coming.”

  “Some did and you should have done. It started with Obote and Amin is simply taking the policy to its logical conclusion.”

  “I suppose by that you mean the increasing levels of persecution of our race.”

  Ashesh could not concentrate on the cricket as his mind was filled with a jumble of complexities of how he could make the best of the situation. By the time he returned home to his prestigious gated community he could think of nothing that would make the future easier for himself, his wife and their two daughters.

  Through that autumn, as he saw his friends and business partners leave the country, he was forced to face up to the inevitable and when it was his family’s turn, in November, he was as ready as he could have been to face whatever the future had to offer. Unlike many of his fellow refugees he was not without funds, a substantial proportion of his wealth having been converted into readily transportable, and concealable, gold jewellery.

  Before leaving Uganda Ashesh had done what research he could do into life in England, deciding on Southend-on-Sea in Essex, so within a very short time of arriving in England his family was settled in a flat above a shop he had transformed into an Indian clothing emporium. The steadily increasing population of people whose origins lay in the sub-continent meant that Ashesh’s emporium prospered and they were soon able to move from the cramped flat to a detached house with a garden more suited to his wife’s expectations and his growing family of daughters.

  Although he was a devout Catholic, Ashesh was a superstitious man and he came to believe that Southend was unlucky for him as every child his wife gave him was a girl. He believed that if she were to have the son he required of her they would have to leave Essex.

  In 1982 the family moved to Bradford where his business thrived.

  Within two years he had a chain of shops selling a range of traditional saris and salwar kameez, and increasingly specialising in the ever lucrative sub-continental wedding market.

  Whether it had anything to do with their move away from Essex Ashesh could never know but in 1985, when he had all but given up hope of a son, his wife gave birth to their sixth child, a boy who he had christened Arjun Nicholas, adding the name
of the patron saint of boys to that of his grandfather.

  From his earliest days Arjun had the best of everything. His slightest wish was always met and his whims never ignored by his five elder sisters and his mother. His father was a distant figure through his childhood, as he spent his hours working to provide for his family, but Arjun knew, from his earliest years, that he was his parents’ pride and joy and all their hopes for the future prosperity of the family rested on him.

  At the age of six he was enrolled in the local primary school. For the first time in his life he left the security of his home and the adoration of his mother and sisters; he did not thrive. Every day he counted the hours until he could run home to the security of his sisters and mother in whose eyes he could do no wrong.

  As he progressed through to secondary school he could not succeed outside the protective cocoon his mother and sisters had always provided.

  He saw prejudice where none was intended and blamed his failures on the bias of his predominantly white teachers.

  He was not a strong boy; small and wiry he was bullied by his classmates of all races. He had no friends. He hated sports, preferring, when given the choice, to spend his time when his classmates ran around in the mud painting scenery for school plays. Every school day was a trial but at four every afternoon he returned home where his mother and sisters agreed that he was being unfairly treated and confirmed that he was the best at everything he turned his hand to.

  “It is time you began to learn more of the business,” Ashesh said to his sixteen-year-old son as the family finished its traditional Saturday breakfast. “You have the long summer vacation now, you have no exams to work for, you will come with me every day to learn what it is that feeds and clothes you and keeps you supplied with the most up to date and best of everything.”

  “What if I don’t want to be a shopkeeper?” Arjun replied somewhat more aggressively than he would have done had he stopped for one moment to think.

  There was a long silence around the table.

  Arjun watched with something approaching fear as his mother shepherded his two sisters who still lived in the family home from the room.

  “A shopkeeper?” Ashesh asked quietly, raising an eyebrow. “Is that what you believe me to be? A shopkeeper?”

  “You keep shops. That makes you a shopkeeper in everybody’s eyes if not in your own.”

  “Putting aside the fact that being a shopkeeper is not the worst means of making one’s way through this life I ask you how you could have reached your age with so little understanding of what your father does every day when he leaves this house.”

  “He goes to a shop,” Arjun answered with deliberate insolence.

  “And so will you. Every day this summer. And you will learn what your father does and you will gain experience in the business that will be yours when the time comes. I approach retirement with a feeling of dread that you are not capable of living up to your responsibilities.”

  “I’m not you and I do not want to run your business.”

  “I will not go into the long and respected history of our Emporium—”

  “Then don’t.”

  Ashesh bit his tongue. He had known his wife and daughters had spoilt the boy, and he had never interfered with the way they had raised him because he had always believed that, when the boy reached manhood, he would understand what was expected of him.

  He had no plan to follow if Arjun refused to accept the role he had been born to fulfil.

  “You may not want to take over your family’s business but you will.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You can’t make me,” Arjun repeated.

  “I believe I can.”

  “How?” Arjun asked, his lack of respect plain for his father to see.

  “Money.”

  “Money?” Arjun began to wonder whether he had been too abrasive.

  “If you wish to benefit financially from my life’s work you will do as I say.”

  “Benefit financially?” Arjun quoted back to his father, increasing doubt crossing his mind.

  “You have a monthly allowance now?”

  Arjun slowly nodded his agreement. He did not like where the conversation was leading.

  “And the trust fund?”

  Arjun nodded again. He had been told the year before that his father had set up a trust fund in his name. It would be some years before the money would be his, but it was a substantial amount. And there was no escape from the fact that the money in the fund, indeed all the family’s money, came from the profits of the chain of shops his father had created.

  “If you wish to continue to benefit from my business you will work in it. Without argument. And don’t think about going crying to your mother or sisters. They will do as I say. As will you.”

  Brooking no more argument Ashesh half-turned his back on his son and pretended to read his newspaper.

  Arjun had no choice but to do as his father said and reluctantly agreed to spend the summer of 2001 working in the offices and on the shop floors of the dozen clothing emporiums in his father’s retail empire.

  His reluctance ended abruptly when he first visited the store managed by Raj Dhokia.

  On the days Arjun attended Raj’s store he spent rather longer getting ready than usual, paying special attention to the clothes he wore, taking greater care with his hair, making an effort to look his best, because he had fallen in love.

  He had suspected for some time that he was different from the boys he knew as he had no interest in girls and took no pleasure at all in looking at the pictures of naked women or in reading the pornographic magazines they had stolen from their elder brothers. He had often wondered whether his reluctance to join in with those boys meant he was gay but it was only when he met Raj that he accepted that as a fact.

  That August was an agony for him as he came to that acceptance, hoping and praying that he said nothing, nor acted in any way, that would make Raj, or his father, suspicious of what he was feeling. He lived for the days he saw Raj but equally he dreaded them. For weeks after the summer ended and he returned to school he could not escape the feelings of loss and confusion.

  Through his final school years, he was able to hide his unhappiness from his family because they were all concerned with their own lives: his father with his work, his sisters with their approaching weddings and his mother with managing the family’s home.

  Through the three years he spent at a local university he continued to hide his true self from his family, though he was certain that had he shouted his love for Raj from the rooftops they would not have noticed as his sisters became pregnant and his nieces and nephews were born and his brothers-in-law did so well. No one in his family seemed to notice that he had become introverted, uncommunicative and secretive. If they did notice, Arjun told himself, they could not care because they said nothing.

  Arjun had no choice but to join his father’s business when he left university, even though he had always said he would never do such a thing.

  “Can you step in here for a moment?” Raj asked Arjun as the first day of his true apprenticeship ended.

  Arjun followed the older man into his office.

  “Tea?”

  “Thanks.”

  Having poured the two mugs from the thermos flask on his filing cabinet Raj closed the door. “I think you know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” he asked, as he sat down, not on the chair behind his desk but on the empty chair next to Arjun.

  “Do I?” Arjun didn’t dare to hope.

  “I think you’ve known for a while, haven’t you.”

  “Known?”

  “Come on, Arjun, don’t kid a kidder. You fancy me, don’t you.”

  Arjun looked down at his feet, knowing he was blushing.

  “Well, my
lovely boy, I quite fancy you too. I have done for a while but while you were a boy I held my tongue. But now you are a man, twenty-one, there is no need to keep quiet anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “But there are rules.”

  “I’ll keep them. Whatever they are I will keep them.”

  For the three years Arjun worked on the shop floor Ashesh believed his son had finally seen sense and come to accept his responsibilities. He saw his son apparently enjoying his life in the business and he felt confident that he could approach his retirement knowing the business was in safe hands. All his daughters and their husbands worked for him but the business had to be run by a man, and after years of doubt, he now could see that that man could be his son not one of his sons-in-law.

  He did not see that Arjun was acquiescent only because he was working with his lover Raj.

  It all ended when, at the end of May 2009, Raj told Arjun he was getting married.

  “I have no choice. A cousin is coming to England; my father has arranged it. She is the daughter of one of his brothers.”

  Arjun had argued but Raj was cruel.

  “You don’t think you’ve been my only one, do you? You don’t think I haven’t been with other men, and women, in the three years you’ve been around?”

  Arjun asked how Raj could say such things. They could not be true.

  “They are true. You are too trusting, little one. You will learn people are cruel and selfish, life is cruel, it can never be what you want it to be.”

  “You do want to stay with me then?” Arjun pleaded.

  “I did not say that. I am thirty years old but I will do what my father expects of me.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Arjun did not leave his room for several days. He told his mother he was sick, but when a friend, a doctor, called to see him no illness could be found.