To the hilt

by Дик Фрэнсис

  '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 majority 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 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 Gra
ntchester who brought with him a frail-looking young woman hung around with computer, printer and bag of office necessities.

  Oliver Grantchester and I had met about twice over the years, neither of us showing regret that it hadn't been oftener. My presence in Ivan's study was stiffeningly unwelcome to him, raising not a smile but a scowl.

  He said not 'Good morning' but, 'I thought you were in Scotland.'

  Ivan and my mother, hearing his voice, came through from the bedroom and gave him the friendly welcome he hadn't got from me.

  'Oliver!' my mother exclaimed, offering her cheek for a routine kiss. 'So good of you to come.'

  'Yes, good of you,' Ivan echoed pianissimo, taking his customary chair.

  'Any time, Ivan,' Oliver Grantchester said heavily. 'You know that.'

  The lawyer's large grey-suited body and authoritative voice somehow took up a lot of room and made the study seem smaller. Perhaps fifty, he had a bald crown surrounded by greying dark hair and a large fleshy mouth with chins to match. I wouldn't have been able to make him look out of a portrait as a friendly, warm-eyed philanthropist, but that could have been because I, Alexander, prompted no smile in him.

  He introduced his assistant dismissively as 'Miranda', and it was my mother who settled her helpfully at Ivan's desk against one wall, and made space for her to set out her portable machines.

  Grantchester said to Ivan, 'You want to draw up a power of attorney? Very wise of you, if I may say so, in view of your health. I brought with me a basic document. You have that ready, Miranda?' Miranda meekly nodded. Grantchester went on, 'It's a pity more people aren't as thoughtful as you, my old friend. Life must go on. A temporary power of attorney will smooth things over nicely until you're back to your old self again.'

  Ivan meekly agreed.

  'So who is to act for you?' Grantchester asked. 'You know I would be honoured to help you in any way I can. However, you might prefer to have Patsy. Yes, your daughter will be eminently suitable. I expect you've already discussed it with her.' He looked round the room as if expecting her to materialise. 'Patsy it is, then.' To Miranda he said in explanation, 'Draw up the document, naming Mrs Patsy Benchmark, Sir Ivan's daughter.'

  Ivan cleared his throat and said to her, 'No. Not Mrs Benchmark. I'm giving the power of attorney to my stepson, here. Write Alexander Kinloch.'

  Oliver Grantchester's mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. He looked utterly astounded and also angry.

  'Alexander Robert Kinloch,' Ivan repeated to Miranda, and spelled out my last name letter by letter so that there should be no mistake.

  The lawyer, finally finding his voice, said, 'You can't.'

  'Why not?' Ivan asked.

  'But he's… he's… look at him.'

  'He has long hair,' Ivan agreed. 'I wish he would cut it. All the same-'

  'But your daughter, Grantchester protested, 'what will she say?'

  What Patsy would say raised anxious lines on Ivan's forehead. He gave me a long look of doubt, and I looked back with calm, allowing the decision to be his alone. If Patsy got her busy fingers on his affairs, I thought, he would never get them back.

  Ivan looked at my mother. 'Vivienne, what do you think?'

  She clearly felt, as I did, that he would have to make up his own mind. She said, 'The choice is yours, my dear. Your judgment is best.'

  Ivan said to me, 'Alexander?'

  'Whatever you want.'

  'I advise Mrs Benchmark,' Oliver Grantchester said firmly. 'She's the natural person. She's your heir.'

  Ivan dithered. The post-heart-attack Ivan dithered where once he would have dominated. The brewery's predicament had knocked his certainties to pulp.

  'Alexander,' he said finally, 'I want you.'

  I nodded, giving him a tacit promise.

  'Alexander,' he said to Grantchester. 'I'll give the power of attorney to him.'

  'You could have both of them,' his lawyer said, desperately. 'You could have both of them, acting jointly.'

  Even he could see, though, that such a path would lead to chaos.

  'Only Alexander,' Ivan said.

  His lawyer wouldn't accept it without a struggle. I listened to him trying to persuade Ivan with heavy legal arguments to change his decision, and I thought frivolously that, never mind my stepfather, it was Oliver himself who didn't want to have to deal with Patsy raging.

  Ivan, true at least to part of his nature, wouldn't be budged. Miranda typed my name on the document and Grantchester told me crossly to sign it, which I did. Ivan, of course, signed it also.

  'Make certified copies,' Ivan said. 'Make ten.'

  With irritation, the lawyer waved at Miranda who made ten copies on a portable fax machine. Grantchester himself signed them all, thereby, I gathered, certifying that the power of attorney had been properly drawn.

  'Also,' Ivan said tiredly, 'I will write a letter to the brewery's Company Secretary making Alexander my Alternate Director, which will give him authority to act on my behalf in all business decisions at the brewery, not just my personal affairs, that are covered by the power of attorney.'

  'You can't!' Grantchester said explosively. 'He knows nothing at all about business.'

  Ivan looked at me calmly. 'I think he does,' he said.

  'But he's… he's an artist: Grantchester filled the word with an opinion near contempt.

  Ivan said obstinately, 'Alexander will be my Alternate Director. I'll write the letter at once.'

  The lawyer scowled. 'No good will come of it,' he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My mother gave me her National Westminster Bank card for getting cash from machines and told me her secret number: a very extreme manifestation of trust.

  I used the card and then bought a train ticket to Reading although I didn't, as she'd begged, acquire some 'decent' clothes before arriving at the offices of Pierce, Tollright and Simmonds.

  I took with me from Ivan's study a folder containing the power of attorney, the certified copies, and a copy of Ivan's handwritten letter appointing me his Alternate Director.

  Tobias Tollright looked me up and down, inspected the power of attorney and Ivan's letter and telephoned my mother.

  'This person who says he's your son,' he asked her, 'would you please describe him.'

  He had his office phone switched to conference, so I could hear her resigned reply.

  'He's about six feet tall. Thin. He has chestnut hair, wavy, curling onto his shoulders. And, oh yes, he has a black eye.'

  Tobias thanked her and disconnected, his enthusiasm for my appearance still bumping along at zero in a way that I was used to from men in suits.

  'What is wrong,' I asked, plunging in, 'at the brewery?'

  Once he'd come to terms with the way I looked, he proved both astute and helpful. In my turn I ignored his fussy little mannerism of digging round his teeth with a succession of wooden picks and making sucking noises, and concentrated on understanding the mumbled nasal voice that by-passed the cleaning. He was barely ten years older than myself, I reckoned. Not enough age gap, anyway for him to pull much advantage of seniority. After the first ten minutes we got on fine.

  His office was a boring functional box with a view of railway lines from a stark window, and strip lighting overhead that developed bags under the youngest eyes. Interesting to paint (a thin glaze of ultramarine perhaps, over yellow ochre) but terrible to live with.

  'Basically,' he said, 'the man in charge of the brewery's finances has milked the cow and done a bunk to Brazil or some such haven with no extradition treaties. The brewery cannot in consequence meet its obligations. The creditors are restive, to put it mildly, and as auditor I cannot at the moment give King Alfred an OK to continue trading.'

  More than enough, I thought, to give Ivan a heart attack.

  I asked, 'How much is missing?'

  He smiled. 'How big is a fog?'

  'You mean, you don't know?'

  'Our embezzler was the Finance Director. He worked the three-card
trick. Find the queen… but she's gone to a nice anonymous bank account for ever and all you have left is debts.'

  I frowned. 'You're not being awfully precise.'

  'I warned Sir Ivan last year that I thought he had an open drain somewhere, but he didn't want to believe it. Now he's so ill, he still won't face it. I'm sorry to say it, but there it is. And he would rather cover up the theft, if he can, than admit to the world that he - and his whole board of directors - has been careless and even stupid.'

  'And he's not the first down that road.'

  'Far, far from it.'

  'So, what are your life-belt measures?'

  He hesitated, picking away at the teeth. 'I can advise you,' he said, 'but I cannot act for you. As an auditor I must keep a certain distance from my clients' affairs. In effect, I can only point out a course of action you might wish to take.'

  'Then please point.'

  He fiddled some more with his mouth and I felt sore and in need of sleep and not scintillatingly bright.

  'I would suggest,' he said carefully, 'that you might call in an insolvency practitioner.'

  'A who?'

  'Insolvency practitioner. Someone to negotiate for you.'

  'I didn't know such people existed.'

  'Lucky you.'

  'Where do I find one?' I asked blankly.

  'I'll give you a name. I can do that at least.'

  'And,' I asked gratefully, 'what will he do?'

  'She.'

  'Oh, well, what will she do?'

  'If she thinks the brewery can be saved - and to do that she will have to make her own independent assessment of the position - if she thinks there's still life in the corpse she'll set up a CVA.'

  He looked at my face. 'A CVA,' he explained patiently, 'is a company voluntary arrangement. In other words, she will try to call together a meeting of creditors. She'll explain to them the scope of the losses, and if she can persuade them that the brewery can go back to trading at a profit, they will together work out a rate at which the debts can be paid off bit by bit. Creditors will always do that if possible, because if they force a firm into total liquidation, they don't get paid much at all.'

  'That,' I said, 'I understand.'