The Midden (4 page)

'I know all that, Daddy. I know he's awful and not one of us and that there is bad blood in
the Gould family because Victor's Uncle Joe was cashiered from the Navy for attempting to bugger
a stoker on a make-and-mend afternoon...'

For a moment Victor had been too shocked to listen. Uncle Joe's disgrace was news to him and
his fiancée's familiarity with the term 'bugger' had surprised him almost as much as it had
evidently mind-blown the Colonel.

'And of course he is all the things you say he is,' she continued, 'but that's why I need him.
You do see that, don't you, Daddy?' (A gurgling sound from her father suggested he wasn't seeing
anything at all clearly.) 'I need someone disgusting like Victor to give my life meaning.'

Naked and cold, Victor had tried to come to terms with this new role as her husband.

Colonel Bright was having difficulties too. 'Meaning? Meaning?' he bawled apoplectically.
'What the hell do you want meaning for? You're a Bright, aren't you? What more meaning do you
need? You don't have to marry some filthy bounder to get meaning. The man's an absolute shit.
He'll make your life a positive hell and go around having affairs with other fellows' wives and
losing money on something loathsome like greyhound racing. Goddamit, the fellow doesn't even
hunt.' This last was evidently the worst thing the Colonel could think of. But Brenda was not to
be persuaded.

'Of course he doesn't, you old darling. He's far too yellow, and besides the poor dear wears a
truss.'

'Dear God,' said the Colonel and Victor in unison. 'But the damned man is only twenty-five.
What the devil does he need a truss for at his age?'

It was a question Victor wanted an answer to as well. He'd never seen the inside of a truss in
his life. Brenda's reply had stunned him too. 'I think it has something to do with his scrotum,
Daddy,' she said coyly. 'Of course I don't know what yet. Perhaps after the honeymoon I'll be in
a position to tell you.'

But Colonel Bright had no longer wanted to hear anything more about his prospective
son-in-law. With a grunt of revulsion he had turned his heel, this time on Victor's shirt, and
had stumped out of the bedroom. From that moment on he had avoided his son-in-law as far as was
possible and had spoken to him only when forced to. And the family's attitude had never changed.
Nor, he realized now, had Brenda's. At the time he had succumbed almost at once to her charms and
the delicious moue she had made as she asked him if she hadn't been a clever little girliewhirl
to get rid of Daddy so quickly. Only later when they had been married and Brenda had decided
she'd had enough of sex herself and preferred counselling other people with sex problems did
Victor fully realize the truth of her remark that she needed someone disgusting to give her life
meaning. By 'meaning' she meant feeling morally superior. Not that Victor had cared. There had
been compensations in his role as the morally inferior. He had been left free to have a notorious
love life while Brenda had had the gratification of forgiving him. Victor found the forgiveness
galling but could hardly blame her for it. His real quarrel remained with the Bright family. And
now he was faced with the invasion of his house by his least favourite Bright, Timothy. To make
matters worse he was expecting his own nephew Henry, who had just returned from a trip to South
America and Australia.

'What a damned nuisance,' he muttered and looked out of the window in desperation. He had
already tried phoning Timothy Bright's house in London but without a reply. As usual in his
dealings with the Brights there was nothing he could do to prevent the fellow from coming. In the
past he had worked out a set of tactics which had tended to keep them at bay by turning the
central heating off just before they arrived and contriving a number of electricity black-outs
when they were in the lavatory or bathroom. On the whole the system had been moderately
successful, although his own reputation had suffered even more as a result. With Timothy Bright
he would have to devise something more in the way of inconvenience. Victor Gould had no intention
of having his own nephew's visit ruined.

In London Timothy Bright completed the arrangements for his trip to Spain. He had been to his
doctor for something to calm his nerves and had been drinking much more heavily than usual. It
was largely due to the fact that he was hardly ever entirely sober the drink and the
tranquillizers did tend to lessen his anxiety about piggy-chops that his plans coincided with the
realization that he had been hard done by in more ways than he had previously imagined. He felt
particularly bitter about his own family. In Timothy's opinion they ought to have helped him by
giving him money. Especially after all he had done for them in the City. Instead they didn't seem
to care what happened to him. They'd let him land up in debt to the Markinkus brothers and they'd
let the bank make him redundant. The Brights had always banked at Bimburg's, ever since the year
dot, and if anyone could have used their influence to see he was kept on, they could. It hardly
occurred to him that only their influence had got him the job in the first instance and had kept
him in it for so long. From this constant self-pity his thoughts turned weakly to
revenge.

If the family refused to help him, why should he do anything for them? From that point it was
an easy slide to the idea of helping himself to what they owed him. It wouldn't be difficult.
Rotten old Auntie Boskie, who was ninety or something, had given him her power of attorney to
sell some shares when she was in hospital the year before and she had never cancelled it. And
anyway she was in failing health and wouldn't notice anything. She wouldn't miss some other
shares. Half of them weren't producing much in the way of dividends. And why shouldn't he use
them? Especially if they saved him from piggy-chops. Auntie Boskie would give him the shares if
she knew about piggy-chops, wouldn't she? It was hardly a question in Timothy's mind. He knew she
would. Having overcome his very few scruples, Timothy Bright sold her shares, and then some of
Uncle Baxter's, and by the time he left London had over £120,000 in cash on him. Of course he
would pay it all back with interest when the present emergency was over. In the meantime he had
something to fall back on if things went really wrong. With this precious idea in mind, and with
the strange brown paper parcel Mr Smith had given him in one of his panniers, he set off for
Cornwall.

He arrived to find Victor Gould sitting out on the lawn with his nephew Henry sipping their
drinks in the evening sunlight. Timothy Bright felt aggrieved. He hadn't expected Henry to be
there. He'd heard that Aunt Brenda had gone to America and he'd thought Uncle Victor would be on
his own. Uncle Victor was known to the Brights as a curmudgeonly old fellow, no one Timothy knew
much liked him, and it had never occurred to Timothy that he had any sort of social life of his
own. Whenever he'd been down to Pud End to see Aunt Brenda, Uncle Victor had been in his
summerhouse or doing something in the garden and had seemed to be some sort of appendage to his
aunt, someone who ran errands and did the shopping for her and occasionally took his Wayfarer
dinghy out or fished or something. That, after all, was one of the main reasons he had chosen Pud
End as a place to stay. He could be quite sure that no one in the Bright family would go there
while Aunt Brenda was away and, since Uncle Victor never had anything to do with the other
Brights, they wouldn't learn where he was or what he was doing. And now Henry had barged in.

Timothy got off his bike and took off his helmet. 'Don't bother to get up,' he said. 'I'll get
a glass and join you. I reckon I know where everything is.' He went into the house jauntily.

'See what I mean?' said Victor. 'He's absolutely insufferable.'

'Then why do you put up with him?' asked Henry. 'Tell him to go some place else.'

Victor Gould smiled bitterly. 'My dear boy, I can see you have no understanding of the
complications and compromises that marriage forces on a man. Your aunt has family loyalties that
are stronger than...well...than anything except some sort of maternal instinct. I could no more
throw this lout out on his ear and live happily ever after with your dear aunt than a
hippopotamus could flap its ears in a mud swamp and fly. I am doomed to endure the brute. Let's
hope he's leaving tomorrow.'

But Timothy, who came out with a glass of Victor's best malt whisky, soon disabused him of
this hope. 'Heard you were on your own, Victor,' he said. 'Thought I'd come down and cheer you
up. Moody old bugger is our Uncle Victor.'

'Perfectly true,' said Victor. 'Very moody indeed.'

'I didn't know you rode a bike,' said Henry after a moment's awkward silence which Timothy
hadn't recognized.

'Oh yes, frightfully good fun. Simply the only possible way to get about London these days,
you know.'

It was a hellish evening. Timothy got drunk, didn't help with the washing-up after dinner, and
talked all the time about the City and stocks and shares, topics which held not the slightest
interest for the others. Worst of all he prevented Henry talking about his year off.

'Oh dear Lord, you can see what a shit he is,' Victor said on the stairs when finally he took
himself off to bed. 'I really can't bear the thought of having him another day. I shall do
something desperate.'

'Not a very pleasant specimen,' Henry agreed, and went up to his room thoughtfully. Poor old
Uncle Victor was getting on in years and it was appalling that he should have to suffer this
wretched yuppie in his house just to keep the peace with Aunt Brenda. Downstairs Timothy had
turned the television on loudly.

'That's too much,' Henry muttered and went down to turn it down a bit. He found Timothy
helping himself to a tin of Victor's Perth Special tobacco. 'You know he has that specially made
up for him,' Henry said.

'Yes, but he won't notice it. He's past it, you know. I mean I feel sorry for him,' Timothy
said. 'He used to be a lot of fun, or some people say so, but he seems bloody sour and old to me.
You going to have some?'

'I don't think so,' said Henry, but he took the tin all the same. And for the next hour he
watched the television and listened to Timothy's maudlin conversation. By the time he went up to
his room Henry Gould had formed some very definite opinions, the nicest of which he would have
hesitated to express in words.

When he came down in the morning he found his uncle up and making himself some toast and
coffee.

'I thought I'd be up and about before he deigns to favour us with his presence,' Victor said.
'I must say he left a hell of a mess in the other room and it looks as though he nearly finished
the whisky. Let's hope it keeps him dead to the world for a bit. I thought we might take
ourselves off for a walk along the coastal path and have lunch at the Riverside Inn.'

Henry looked out of the window at the fresh summer day. He and Uncle Victor were going to have
a good time after all. After breakfast they set off, but just before they left Henry went up to
his room, brought the tin of Old Perth Special Mixture down, and put it by the television set.
The scheme he had in mind might not work, but if it did it would be Timothy Bright's own
fault.

It was late afternoon when Henry and Uncle Victor returned to Pud End for tea. They found
Timothy Bright slumped in front of the television. The remains of his brunch were still on the
kitchen table and he had evidently helped himself to a tin of genuine Beluga caviar he had found
in the larder. He was not, however, in an apologetic or even grateful mood. 'Where have you
been?' he asked almost truculently. 'I've been here on my own all day.'

Henry intervened before his uncle could explode. 'As a matter of fact we've been for a rather
long walk. Along the cliffs,' he said.

Timothy missed the implication. 'You might have woken me. I could have done with a walk,' he
said.

'You were dead to the world when I looked in at you this morning or I would have done,' Henry
continued. 'Anyway you wouldn't have liked it much. Very windy and gusty.'

In the kitchen Victor was clearing up. 'Thank you for the tact,' he said when Henry came
through. 'Almost certainly saved me from a murder charge. I know I'm at the age when one starts
complaining about declining standards and so on but that young man really does convince me that
things aren't what they used to be. A short better still a long spell of hard labour would surely
do him a world of good. More to the point, it would certainly do the world some good.'

'I shouldn't be at all surprised if that's what he gets, Uncle Victor,' Henry said quietly as
he began to wash the plates up. 'He's certainly up to something a bit shady.'

'Is he indeed?' said Victor with a touch more optimism. 'May one enquire how you know?'

'I sat up with the idiot last night, and listened to all his drunken boasting. He didn't tell
me what the game is, but he was fairly definite about being on to a quote good thing unquote, and
in my experience that nearly always means something on the wrong side of the law.'

'How very interesting. You know, I should rather enjoy it if the police arrested him here. It
would give me something to deter the rest of the Bright family from ever visiting us again.'

'On the other hand it would give Aunt Brenda something else to forgive you for,' Henry pointed
out.

Victor winced. 'It's not a joke, my boy, not a joke at all. I hope that your wife has a
thoroughly unforgiving nature, I hope for your sake, that is. You have no idea what a terrible
deterrent forgiveness is. I'll never forget the time Brenda forgave Hilda Armstrong for...well,
something or other. Of course she did it in public, at a Women's Institute meeting or it may have
been a parish council meeting. Most embarrassing for everyone. Must have been the parish council
because I don't attend Women's Institute functions. Anyway it led to the Armstrongs being
ostracized and, when old Bowen Armstrong didn't divorce her, he got poison-pen letters and filth
like that. In the end they had to go back to Rickmansworth and pretend that life in the country
hadn't suited Hilda's health. Actually she'd looked quite remarkably...yes, well, it only goes to
show how very deadly forgiveness can be.'