The Midden (24 page)

'You see it's Arnold, Daddy,' she went on. 'He's become impossible.'

'Become?' said Sir Edward, who had always found his son-in-law quite unbearable.

'He's begun to plot against me, Daddy, he really has.'

'Plot? What the hell for?'

'He wants to silence me.'

'Really? Enterprising chap, your husband. I tried for years with your mother and it didn't do
any bloody good at all.'

Lady Vy's face sagged still further. 'Why are you always so horrid to me, Daddy?' she
whimpered.

'Because you come to see me, dear, that's why,' said Sir Edward. 'Now if you stayed away I
couldn't be, could I?'

'But you don't even hear what I have to say,' she went on.

'I try not to, but some of it sticks. What part were you thinking of?'

'About Arnold plotting against me. You see, he wants to stop me talking to the
newspapers.'

Sir Edward peered over his cheeks at her. 'Very sensible of him, I'd have thought,' he said.
'I agree with him. You shouldn't go anywhere near the newspapers. What are you complaining about,
dear?'

Lady Vy looked wildly round the book-lined room and fastened on the heavy velvet curtains. 'He
put a naked man into my bed the other day and then nearly beat him to death,' she almost screamed
in her panic. 'Then he made me help him take him downstairs into the cellar and he tied him up in
two sheets with yards of tape round him and he got a basting syringe from the kitchen and...'

'Wait a moment, wait a moment. I'm lost. Arnold got a basting syringe from the kitchen? What
in God's name did he do that for?'

'He used it to give the boy the Valium with whisky. It was awful, Daddy.'

'I should rather think it was. Absolutely revolting and rather dangerous. You should tell him
that. After all, he is your husband, though God alone knows what made you marry the shit. Still,
it's your bed and you've got to lie in it.'

'But not with a naked man friend or whatever of Arnold's, Daddy. You can't expect me to do
that.'

'Really? Don't see why not. I should think anyone would be better than Arnold. Ghastly fellow.
Always thought he was.'

'But don't you understand what I'm saying, Daddy dear?' Lady Vy appealed pathetically.

'I'm trying not to, my dear,' said Sir Edward, rinsing his mouth out with brandy for emphasis
and spitting into the fire. 'It all sounds too utterly filthy. Still, if you will bring these
things to my attention...'

Lady Vy made a final attempt. 'Daddy, you've got to do something. Arnold mustn't be allowed to
get away with it. He must be stopped.'

Sir Edward shrugged massive shoulders and remained silent. He often found that the best thing
to do was to stretch his daughter's attention span past its limit so that she forgot what she had
been saying. This time it didn't work.

'He's going to kill me when he finds out I've told you,' she went on.

Sir Edward looked at her appreciatively.

'There is that, of course,' he said presently.

But for once his daughter had been driven past the point of the baby talk she thought he
enjoyed. 'He's going to blacken your name too. He said he'd have the whole family in the gutter
press like Fergie's father and Prince Charles and he can, you know. He's been doing some terrible
things and he's going to be arrested and he's trying to save his skin by using us. You don't
understand. And I've left him for good. And he's out for blood.'

All the words Auntie Bea had dinned into her poured out and for the first time in his life Sir
Edward took some notice of her. He was particularly horrified by the mention of Major Ferguson
and he certainly didn't like talk about blood. In fact he was genuinely alarmed.

He had never had any time for Sir Arnold, but he had to admit that the man could not be not as
cretinous as he looked. In his opinion it was a disgrace that such a creature should have been
appointed a Chief Constable, and he had regarded the appointment as another example of
administrative decadence and the failure of the men in Whitehall to think at all clearly on
social issues. That decadence had spread all the way to the top now in the exposure of those
private peccadilloes that had always been there but had never been made public knowledge to hoi
polloi for perfectly sound reasons of state. All that had been changed, and even the Royal Family
was not invulnerable to the smears of exposure and the destruction of the mystique that was
essential to political stability. Sir Edward Gilmott-Gwyre knew his Burke, but he also had no
illusions about the loyalty of all his friends once he had been pilloried. The pack would turn
and rend him almost without any hesitation. He put the tendency down to the need to get rid of
the contagion of contempt as fast as possible. It was as necessary as the swift scavenging of
hyenas to keep dead meat from rotting in the sun.

On the other hand he had no intention of becoming that dead meat and, for once, he had
morality on his side. He was, if Vy was to be believed, being threatened by a man who was as
brazenly corrupt as any police officer promoted and protected by Mrs Thatcher. It was necessary
to redress the balance by bringing the past forward to purge the present. In such ringing and
largely meaningless phrases Sir Edward had gulled the voters in the past. He saw no reason why he
should not put his gifts for eloquence to more personal use.

'Now then, my dear,' he said to his daughter. 'I want you to put in writing, that is to write
down, what you have just told me.' For a moment he hesitated. He was putting an unbearable burden
on the poor woman to ask her to write anything vaguely coherent, indeed to write at all. 'Have
you anyone who can help you write it down? Where are you staying?'

'With Auntie Bea, Daddy,' said Vy, much happier now that the storm seemed to have passed.

Again Sir Edward hesitated. 'Auntie Bea?' he said, and was conscious once more of a frisson of
horror. He had once in the mid-seventies, while on a Parliamentary fact-finding mission to Outer
Mongolia, been forced to share a tent with the so-called Auntie Bea and had found her fascination
with thongs and the sexual attributes of leather at first exhilarating and then terrifying. He
had never played the role of a woman in an encounter with a woman before. Eton had been bad
enough: Ulan Bator was frankly appalling. That his daughter should now be the plaything of a
woman like Auntie Bea struck him as being exceedingly bizarre and ironic.

All the same, there could be no doubting Auntie Bea's intellect when she chose to apply it. He
could cheerfully leave Sir Arnold Gonders' baleful curriculum vitae in her hands. And, of course,
Vy. Sir Edward cheered up. He had a purpose in life once more and his daughter had finally found
a woman who could make use of her. When he finally got rid of Lady Vy he made several phone calls
and then changed for dinner. He would sound old Elisha Beconn out about police corruption and
ways of combating it and get another ball of influence rolling. It was worth decanting a really
good claret. Besides, he had a theory to explain why Lady Thatcher was such a passionate advocate
of arming the Bosnian Muslims. Her son was an arms dealer and by backing the Muslims so openly
she was bound to help dear little Markie's standing in Saudi Arabia. It was in the discovery of
real motivation in politics that Sir Edward Gilmott-Gwyre found his greatest pleasure.

'Of course I don't know where he is,' Victor Gould said irritably. He disliked being phoned
late at night and he particularly disliked being phoned late at night by Bletchley Bright with
questions about his wretched son, Timothy. As a result, and because he had something of a bad
conscience, he was less than forthcoming. 'It's true that he did come here some time
ago...'

'What the devil did he do that for?' demanded Bletchley with his usual tact.

'Perhaps he wanted somewhere to stay,' said Victor, just managing to keep his temper. 'Why
don't you ask him yourself?'

'Ask him? How the hell can I? I'm trying to find out where he has got to. The damned boy has
disappeared.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Victor. 'I can assure you that I haven't got him.'

'Didn't suppose for a moment you had,' said Bletchley. 'Can't see why he should come to you in
any case. Still, if he does, be so good as to let us know.'

'Of course,' said Victor and put the phone down with a new and furious resolve not to have
anything whatsoever to do with the damned Bright family in future. They were all impossibly rude
and arrogant and Bletchley, who was usually one of the more polite ones, was showing his true
Bright colours. Victor Gould turned out the light and lay in the darkness wondering what had
happened to the ghastly Timothy. Perhaps he had been killed on that motorbike and his body hadn't
been found. Victor didn't like the possibility but it had to be faced. Above all, he didn't like
the thought of all that money sitting under the stairs. And finally and most decisively, there
was Henry's future to be taken into account. No matter what had happened on that fateful night,
Victor Gould was determined to keep his nephew's involvement out of it. After all, Timothy Bright
had invited himself down to Pud End and had helped himself to had stolen in fact the tobacco with
the Toad in it. Whatever had happened to him was of his own doing and no one else was to blame.
Having come to this conclusion Victor Gould turned on his side and went to sleep.

Within the Bright family assembled at Drumstruthie there was no such peace to be had. The
realization that his son was a thief came particularly hard to Bletchley Bright but while he was
anxious to do something he was certainly not prepared to repay Aunt Boskie her one hundred and
fifty-eight thousand pounds out of his own pocket.

'With interest of course,' Fergus told him.

Bletchley looked at the old man as if he had said something obscene. 'With interest be
damned,' he retorted. 'Even if Boskie is correct, and I am by no means convinced that the full
facts have been placed before us '

'Balls,' Fergus interrupted. 'Don't talk like a Prime Minister at Question Time. No fudge,
sir. Your son has stolen Boskie's savings and there's no getting away from it. If you want to
keep him out of the courts, you will see that Boskie is fully repaid and with interest at a bank
deposit rate. What's more, if those shares have moved up since that damned boy sold them, you'll
make good that loss too.'

Bletchley looked desperately round at the other family members who had gathered at
Drumstruthie, and found not a single sympathetic eye.

'It will almost certainly mean selling Voleney,' he said. 'And you know what that means. The
old house has been in the family since 1720 and '

'And it will remain in the family, Bletchley,' rumbled Judge Benderby Bright, who was still
furious at having to fly back at such short notice from his holiday on his yacht in Llafranc. 'If
you are forced to meet your boy's debts by selling the house, you will offer Voleney to the
family to buy at a properly adjusted price. Should you try to do otherwise, the Serious Fraud
Squad will immediately be informed of your son's crimes. I hope I have made myself clear.'

There could be no doubting it. Even Boskie's empty chair was implacably censorious.

'If you say so,' said Bletchley. 'I suppose it will have to be like that.'

'It doesn't have to be, provided you find your boy and get Boskie's money from him,' said
Fergus.

'But how am I going to do that without bringing terrible publicity down on us all?' Bletchley
complained. 'I'm sure you wouldn't want that.'

No one said anything but all the eyes round the table watched him carefully. Bletchley sensed
this shift of initiative in his favour. 'All right then, I'll take out advertisements in all the
newspapers and put his photo in. That will surely bring results.'

It was a vain attempt. Still no one stirred, but their eyes indicated the veto. A true Bright
would never have made such a terrible threat. Bletchley Bright came to the family heel.

'Oh, all right,' he said. 'All the same it's jolly hard to know how to go about finding
Timothy if he doesn't want to be found. He's just vanished off the face of the earth.'

'Very wise of him,' muttered the Judge. 'In his shoes I'd stay there. Have you enquired of the
French Foreign Legion?'

'Or the police,' said Vernon. 'You may have some luck with them. I always did think allowing
him to have a motorbike was a most dangerous thing to do.'

'I never did encourage him,' Bletchley replied, 'besides he's twenty-eight. I'd hardly call
him a boy.'

'Never mind what you'd call him. What I am trying to say is that he may well have come off the
thing and even possibly...Do you happen to know if he's insured?'

'He's bound to be,' said Bletchley, taking hope from this prospect.

'I don't suppose he's sufficiently covered to repay Boskie,' said Fergus. 'And in any case it
is too much to hope for.'

Bletchley Bright left the gathering a drained and drawn man. The realities he had spent a
lifetime avoiding had finally caught up with him in the shape of a dissolute and criminal
offspring.

When he arrived back at Voleney it was to be greeted by a distraught Ernestine. 'Oh God,' she
said. 'It's too awful. Do you know that Boskie has escaped?'

'Escaped? What on earth are you talking about? She can't have. She's not being imprisoned
anywhere.'

'That's what Fergus has just phoned to say,' his wife told him. 'He said I was to tell you
that she has escaped from the clinic and gone to London to see the Home Secretary.'

'But she can't have. She's seriously ill and '

'Fergus said that if she dies, the family will hold you responsible for her death.'

Bletchley stared at his wife through bloodshot eyes. It had been a long drive from
Drumstruthie and he had had time to try to think. 'Never mind the old bitch dying. Why has she
gone to see the Home Secretary? What on earth for?'