It was largely thanks to Uncle Fergus's interventions in the market that Timothy was eventually promoted from Bimburg's investment branch to the Names Recruitment Bureau at Lloyd's. This wasn't its official title and its existence was strenuously denied, but its work consisted almost entirely of spreading the word to the millions of newly 'enriched' Thatcherite home owners that becoming a Name at Lloyd's had the advantage of being socially most acceptable and, at the same time, inevitably rewarding. As house prices shot up and the Prime Minister spoke of Britain's new economic success, Timothy Bright did what he was told and recruited new Names to help pay for the anticipated losses on asbestosis, pollution claims, and a host of other disasters. Life was joyful. He moved in a world of self-congratulation and socially accredited greed. In his clubs and at weekend house parties, at political conferences and intimate dinner parties, Timothy Bright could be relied upon to say that prosperity had finally come to post-war Britain and that the Prime Minister had saved the nation from itself. In return for this idolatry he was favoured with fresh confidences about privatization plans and those companies that could expect government contracts. The flow of supposedly confidential information grew so steadily that Fergus was persuaded to take a room permanently in an hotel rather than spend so much time travelling backwards and forwards from Scotland. He was especially delighted to have news in advance of the coal miners' strike, and made provision for the outcome by investing in Nottingham Trucks Ltd and their spare parts subsidiaries.
'A fine man and a Scotsman, MacGregor,' he said when Timothy told him who was to be appointed to the Coal Board to inflame Scargill.
Even Bletchley Bright, normally an exceedingly cautious man where any of his son's financial advice was concerned, was tempted to invest though not in anything connected with coal or along the tortuous lines laid out so carefully by Fergus. He took his son's advice literally, and lost nearly everything in Canadian gold.
'That's the last time I listen to that blithering idiot son of yours,' he told Ernestine. 'The little moron definitely said gold was going to make a terrific come-back. Said he had it from some blighter in the Bank of England. And now look where it is. No wonder the country's in a stew.'
'Now, now, dear,' said Mrs Bright, 'Timothy is doing brilliantly and everyone thinks so. There's no need to spoil things for him. After all, we're only young once.'
'Thank God,' said Bletchley and went off to commune with Old Og, who thought the world was in a dreadful mess too.
'Bain't seem to be no sense in it,' Og told him. 'Had a fellow from the Ministry round said us had to gas all badgers. I told him we got no badgers but he don't hear like. "Got to gas 'em cos they got TB," he says. I tells him straight. "I don't know about that," I says, "and we still haven't got no badgers. You'm come to the wrong place for badgers unless you want to gas Master's shaving brush, that being the only bit of badger round here."'
Bletchley found comfort in the old man's words. They took him back to a world that had never existed in which summers were perpetually sunny and it snowed every Christmas.
In many respects Timothy Bright's world was as unreal as his father's memories. He too went through the eighties believing what the PR men told him and, while politicians and businessmen lived in the hope that their optimistic words would produce the prosperity they proclaimed was already there, Timothy Bright really believed it was. With the sublime ignorance that finds no excuse in law, he thrived in the praise of criminals and timeservers like Maxwell and his acolytes and took the view that a prison sentence was no bar to social advancement. In Timothy's world no one resigned or was punished for negligence or worse. The Great Hen squawked self-congratulations over the City, and Maxwell silenced his mildest critics with the harshest of libel writs and made Her Majesty's Judges accessories to his terrible crimes. And Timothy thrived. He was a merry idiot and everyone loved him.
And just as suddenly he was a bloody swine and no fool after all.
Chapter 2
As with everything else in his life it took Timothy some time to realize that anything was wrong. He went about what he called his work in the same way as before and frequented the same clubs and wine bars to discuss the same topics and tell clients what shares to buy or sell, but slowly it did begin to dawn on him that something was different. People seemed to drop out of his society without any warning and a number of friends he had advised to become Names began to remind him of his advice.
'But I hadn't the foggiest that things were going to turn nasty then,' he explained only to be called a damned liar.
'You knew as far back as '82 that the American courts were going to award asbestosis victims huge sums '
'All right, I knew,' Timothy admitted. 'But I didn't know what asbestosis was then. I mean it could have been the measles or something mild like that.'
'But you knew about the huge awards that were coming. And what about pollution? You were there at the meeting when the whole dirty scheme for recruiting new Names to help pay was first mooted. And don't bloody well say you weren't. We know you were. You went there with Coletrimmer.'
'Well, yes I did,' said Timothy unwisely. 'I remember the meeting but I had no idea the sums were going to be so large. Anyway, I didn't fix for you to go into that Syndicate.'
'Didn't you? Then how come you managed to stay out of it so well?'
'I was only doing what Coletrimmer advised,' said Timothy.
'Oh, sure. That's a likely story. Coletrimmer's up the spout himself and you're sitting pretty. Why don't you follow his example and sod off to South America some place?'
In this new and harsh world Timothy found himself increasingly isolated. His clubs had become the focal points of an unpopularity he could not face and, while he still saw a few old girlfriends from the heady days of affluence, his own financial position deteriorated so drastically that he was unable to entertain them in the same style and they drifted away. 'Timothy Bright's such an awful tick,' he heard a girl he had been fond of say as he stood in a crowded train. 'He was naff enough before. But now. Ugh.'
To make matters worse still, Uncle Fergus gave up coming to London and let it be known he didn't want 'that moron Timothy' anywhere near Drumstruthie. Timothy took this particularly hard. For once he had offered his uncle some good advice and had warned him there was likely to be war in Kuwait. It had been entirely due to Fergus's habit of finding the kernel of truth behind the arrant nonsense that Timothy usually talked that he had decided no war was likely and had invested heavily in Iraqi Oils. Fergus's losses had been very considerable and the old man had never forgiven his nephew. As a result Timothy had nobody at all sensible to turn to when his own financial problems developed. And they developed with alarming rapidity. The house he had bought in Holland Park at the top of the property boom had required an enormous mortgage. As the recession developed and his work tailed off, he found himself unable to keep up his mortgage payments. And, as if that were not enough, he found himself involved in the Lloyd's scandal and owing hundreds of thousands of pounds. In a few months Timothy Bright's world collapsed about him.