It was at this point that he recalled his ambition to make a fortune and the method his Great-Uncle Harold had used. Timothy turned to horse-racing and gambling. Having lost nearly everything on the horses he borrowed heavily and, using an infallible system he had read about, bet everything on the roulette wheel at the Markinkus Club. The roulette wheel ignored the system and when Timothy finally pushed back his chair and stood up there was little he could do except accompany two very thickset men to the office for what they termed 'a quiet word with the Boss'. It was rather more than a quiet word. By the time Timothy Bright left the casino twenty minutes later he was in no doubt what his future would be if he did not pay his debts within the month.
'And that's generous, laddie,' said Mr Markinkus, who was clearly in an expansive mood. 'See you don't miss the deadline. Yeah, the deadline. Get it?'
Timothy had got it, and in the dawn light filtering slowly over London he tried to think where to turn for help. It was at this dark moment that he found the inspiration that was to change his life so radically. He remembered his Great-Aunt Ermyne who had gone to her demented death repeating the never-to-be-forgotten words 'You must always look on the Bright side' over and over again. Timothy had only been eleven at the time but the words, repeated like a mantra as Auntie Ermyne was wheeled down the corridor at Loosemore for the last time, had made a deep impression on him. He had asked Uncle Vernon, Ermyne's husband, who seemed to be in a talkatively good mood, what they meant. After the old man had muttered something about a few years of freedom and happiness, he had taken Timothy by the hand and had shown him the family portraits in the Long Gallery.
'These are the Bright side of the family,' he had explained in tones that suggested ancestor worship. 'Now when things look darkest, as they generally do, I'm told, just before the dawn, it is to the Bright side that we always look. Here, for instance, is Croker Bright shortly before he was captured by the French. His forte was piracy on the high seas and after that the usual silk and brandy smuggling. He was particularly feared by the Spanish. Died in 1678. We owe a great deal to him and to his son, Stanhope, here. Stanhope Bright was a fine fellow. You can see that. He was a slave trader and became the founding father of the Bristol Brights. Very rich man indeed. His cousin over here is Blakeney Bright, also known as Mangle Bright, not, as people would have us believe, for any good agricultural reasons but for the invention of a particularly devastating form of high-speed beam engine. I forget what it was supposed to do but I do know it was only used in coal mines where very high casualty rates were perfectly acceptable.'
Old Uncle Vernon had moved on down the Gallery extolling the virtues of Bright ancestors while Timothy had learnt how one Bright after another had made a fortune against quite amazing odds of character and circumstance. Even after the abolition of slavery, for instance, the Rev. Otto Bright, of the Bright Missionary Station on Zanzibar, had done a remarkable fund-raising job for the Church by supplying well-favoured young men from Central Africa to discriminating sheikhs on the Arabian peninsula while his sister, Ursula, had pursued her own feminine tendencies by persuading a number of young women from Houndsditch to join what she called 'secular nunneries' in the less amenable ports of South America. Even as late as the 1920s several American Brights who were the direct descendants of Croker Bright had collaborated with the bootlegger and gangster Joseph Kennedy in rum-running during Prohibition. Uncle Vernon remembered some of them.
'Fine fellows who followed the family traditions,' he said and quoted another old family maxim.' "Where there is a demand, supply it: where there isn't, create one." That is an old saying that dates back to Enoch Bright, a contemporary of Adam Smith and the truer Tory. The saying is at the very heart of modern economic practice and Croker is a good example.'
Now, standing in the grey dawn off the Edgware Road, Timothy recalled his uncle's words and looked on the Bright side. It wasn't at all easy but he did it. He still had his job of a sort at Bimburg's Bank; he had a flat in a friend's name in Notting Hill Gate and a new motorbike, a Suzuki 1100, in place of his old Porsche, which he kept in a lock-up garage; but above all he had the Bright family connections. These were his most important assets and he meant to make use of them. With their present help and the example of past Brights to inspire him he would find a way out of his temporary difficulties and Mr Markinkus's threats and make his fortune. With renewed optimism he hurried back to his flat and spent much of the day asleep.
Over the weekend he racked his brains for a way forward. Perhaps, if he went home and asked Daddy to lend him some money...No, he'd done that too often and the last time Daddy had threatened to have him certified as a financial lunatic if he ever mentioned the word 'borrow' again in his presence. And Mummy didn't have any money to lend. Perhaps if he wrote to Uncle Fergus and told him...But no, Uncle Fergus had a 'thing' about gambling and had once preached an awful sermon at his strange Presbyterian Church about 'Gambling Hells' which he seemed to think of quite literally. There was absolutely no member of the family he could ask for help in his predicament. 'You'd think someone would be willing to supply the money considering the demand I have for it,' he thought bitterly. And then on the Tuesday just when he was almost past thinking and was at his lowest ebb, he received a telephone call at work. It was from a Mr Brian Smith who suggested that Timothy drop by for a drink at El Baco Wine Bar in Pologne Street on his way home that night. 'Say 6.30,' said Mr Smith, and rang off.
Timothy Bright considered the invitation and decided he had nothing to lose by accepting it. Besides, there had been something about Mr Smith's tone of voice that had suggested he would be well advised not to reject it. At 6.25 he entered the wine bar and had hardly ordered a Red Biddy when the barman told him that Mr Smith was through the back and waiting for him. Without wondering how the barman had known who he was, Timothy took his drink through the door.
'Ah, Mr Bright, my name is Smith but you can call me Brian,' said a man who didn't look or sound like any Mr Smith, or Brian for that matter. Timothy had never set eyes on him before. 'Good of you to come.'
'How do you do?' said Timothy, trying to be formal.
'Pretty damn well,' said Mr Smith, indicating a chair on the other side of the desk. 'I hear you don't do so good, no?'
'Nobody's doing very well in this depression...' Timothy began, before deciding Mr Smith wasn't talking in general terms. He also appeared to be cleaning his nails with a cut-throat razor. Mr Smith smiled or something. To Timothy it was definitely not a proper smile.
'Good, so we understand one another,' said Mr Smith, and apparently cut an errant fly in half in mid-air. 'You want some money and I got some you can have. How does that sound to you?'
'Well...' said Timothy, still overwhelmed by the fate of the fly, 'I...er...I suppose...that's very good of you.'
'Not good. Business,' said Mr Smith, now glancing in a hand mirror to assist him in using the razor to defoliate a nostril. 'Want to hear more?'
'Well...' Timothy said hesitantly, wishing he wouldn't flourish the razor quite so casually.
'Good, then I tell you,' continued Mr Smith. 'You gotta motorbike, big Suzuki eleven hundred, yes?'
'Yes,' Timothy said.
'You gotta uncle?'
'Actually, I've got quite a few.'
'Sure, you gotta lots. You gotta one who's Judge. Judge Sir Benderby bloody Bright?' interrupted Mr Smith. 'Right?'