“I was halfway through high school when he was persuaded to stand for the council. Not that he took much persuading. By then the marriage was going through a rough patch. They kept things polite for me, managed a show of affection while they were in together, but as I’ve said, it was a small community and people were only too eager to pass on the gossip. I learned he’d had a number of women. Finally, it seemed, he settled on another party member, a teacher. As I heard it, they were inseparable. I was furious at the time, humiliated. How could he carry on like that and come back at night to my mother? She must have come to the same conclusion, because one night while my father was at a council meeting, she packed up all her stuff and left. She didn’t ask me to go with her and even if she had done, I’d probably not have gone. Despite his faults, I always believed I had more in common with my father and anyway he was the more vulnerable. Of the two of them I felt he needed most looking after and that I had a responsibility towards him. My mother could take care of herself. It turned out I was probably right, because, soon after, she set up home with an insurance salesman. She would have had a regular income, at least. She invited me to visit her in their new house somewhere in the suburbs, but I couldn’t do it. It was irrational but I was angry on my father’s behalf. When I left school, I joined him in the business.”
He paused for breath and again Vera could see how tired he was. “Can I get you anything, Captain Bennett? Coffee? A glass of water?”
He seemed surprised by her kindness and shook his head. “I’m sorry to be so long-winded. I suppose none of this is relevant.”
Vera leaned towards him across the table, seemed almost about to touch his hand. “You tell it in your own way, pet. I’m listening.”
“It must have been around that time that Dad got friendly with Keith Mantel. Keith was a small-time developer then. He’d buy a few properties in rundown areas of the town, do them up and sell them on. The ones on the se afront he tried to let as holiday homes. You could tell he had grand ideas, but Dad probably thought they were in the same league independent businessmen trying to claw a living in competition with the big boys.”
“Did they meet socially?”
“That’s all it was at first, social.”
“Were you involved?”
“Not often. Sometimes Keith would come round to our house. To escape one of his women, he’d say. They’d stay up all night drinking. Dad would start on his stories of life at sea and Keith would provide a willing audience. I tried to keep out of it. Someone had to be up early to sort the papers and anyway I didn’t trust the man. Dad was on the council’s planning committee. It seemed obvious to me that Mantel wasn’t just there to talk about the good old days. He’d be after something.
“Then he took Dad away on holiday. The teacher was off the scene by then and Keith set up a trip to a villa on the Algarve with a couple of young women in tow. It didn’t cost Dad a bean. He was so naive. “Can’t you see what you’re setting yourself up for?” I said. “What do you think he’s going to want in return?” But he wouldn’t have it. They were just mates. That’s what mates did. They shared around their good fortune.”
“What did Mantel want in return?” Vera asked.
“I’m not sure the first time. I never heard the details. I know that soon after a development of Mantel’s passed through the committee on the nod. It was old people’s flats, I think. Sheltered housing. There was a grand opening and Dad dragged me along to it. I don’t know how he squared it with his conscience. Perhaps they’d have approved the plans anyway. But after that it was always going to be difficult to stand up to Mantel. The crisis came with the proposed building of a new leisure centre. Mantel put in the lowest tender but his plans weren’t as good as those of the competitor company. After the planning meeting my father phoned him up to tell him he’d been unsuccessful. I was in the room when he made the call. “Never mind, eh, lad. You win some, you lose some. Better luck next time.” He really thought Mantel would have a few beers and put it down to experience.”
“But he didn’t.”
“He came round to the house that night. A bottle of whisky in one hand. A big brown envelope in the other. I tried to stick around but Mantel sent me away. I went out for a couple of hours and when I came back he was leaving. My father was sitting on the floor. I’d never seen that before. Men of his generation didn’t sit on the floor. All around him on the carpet were photos from the Portuguese trip. Dad in a deck chair with an almost naked blonde sprawled all over him. Dad sitting next to Mantel in a restaurant, laughing at one of his jokes. He was sitting on the floor and he was crying.”
“Mantel had threatened to go public?”
“He said he’d leak the story to the papers that he’d bribed Dad to approve the sheltered housing scheme. He’d bounce back, he said. But Dad wouldn’t. Imagine the headlines. Holiday Romp for Socialist Councillor. Sex and Sangria on the Rates. In one sense it was true of course. My father had allowed himself to be influenced. He’d been a fool.
“He wasn’t only bothered about what his friends in the party would think. It was the people he drank with in the club, and the family. All the aunts and cousins who’d supported him through the divorce because they believed he was something special.”
James paused. The strip light flickered again and faded. Ashworth stood on his chair and thumped the plastic casing. The light returned. James continued as if there’d been no interruption.
“His trouble was that he’d been taken in by his own propaganda. Marty Shaw, champion of the people. He’d believed in that. He didn’t like the real man… I told him he could resign. Keep a low profile for a bit. People would forget. “People might,” he said. “I won’t. Nor will you, will you?” I couldn’t answer. He’d had a lot to drink and I helped him to bed.
“When I woke up he’d gone and so had his car. I thought he’d just taken off for a few days. It would have been in character, running away. I imagined him holed up with an old friend from his fishing days, feeling sorry for himself and drowning his sorrows. I carried on as usual, running the shop, making his excuses to the customers.”
“But he hadn’t run away.”
“Not like that. Three days later his car was reported abandoned.”
“Where?”
“In Elvet. In that car park by the river.”
Where Vera had been with Michael Long the day before. Close to the phone box where Christopher Winter had tried to make his call.
“But he wasn’t in it?”
“He’d left a note. At least he’d bothered to do that. Sending me his love. Asking me to remember him kindly…” James took a deep breath. “He must have waited until the tide was high. He just walked out into the river. He’d never learned to swim. He walked until the current took him, sucked his legs from under him, pulled him down. The shore is uneven there, mud and shingle and outcrops of rock. Perhaps he stumbled. I wonder sometimes if he fought it at the last moment. If he tried to hold the air in his lungs when he went under… It was nearly a month before his body was washed up. Hardly a body by then. They identified him through his dental records.
“In the docks when I’m working late, I think I see him sometimes.”
i “That was when you changed your name?” Vera asked. “At the time of the suicide?”
“Yes.”
An extreme reaction.”
“You don’t understand. It wasn’t just the name. I didn’t want to be Marty Shaw’s son, associated with backhanders and bribes. I didn’t want to run the family business, putting up with the pity, listening to the poisonous gossip of the customers and the family. I wanted to start again.”
“All the same…”
“Look, I was young. You do overact at that age. There was a terrible embarrassment. The pictures, Mantel… It all seemed so squalid, in such bad taste. I sold stories like that every Sunday to fools who slavered over them, then turned self-righteous. If my father had been involved in a major fraud, insider dealing, something like that, I’d probably have found it easier. Emma calls me a snob sometimes. Perhaps she’s right.”