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.
Chapter 4
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.'