Oliver Grantchester and I had met about twice over the years, neither of us showing regret that it hadn't been oftener. My presence in Ivan's study was stiffeningly unwelcome to him, raising not a smile but a scowl.
He said not 'Good morning' but, 'I thought you were in Scotland.'
Ivan and my mother, hearing his voice, came through from the bedroom and gave him the friendly welcome he hadn't got from me.
'Oliver!' my mother exclaimed, offering her cheek for a routine kiss. 'So good of you to come.'
'Yes, good of you,' Ivan echoed pianissimo, taking his customary chair.
'Any time, Ivan,' Oliver Grantchester said heavily. 'You know that.'
The lawyer's large grey-suited body and authoritative voice somehow took up a lot of room and made the study seem smaller. Perhaps fifty, he had a bald crown surrounded by greying dark hair and a large fleshy mouth with chins to match. I wouldn't have been able to make him look out of a portrait as a friendly, warm-eyed philanthropist, but that could have been because I, Alexander, prompted no smile in him.
He introduced his assistant dismissively as 'Miranda', and it was my mother who settled her helpfully at Ivan's desk against one wall, and made space for her to set out her portable machines.
Grantchester said to Ivan, 'You want to draw up a power of attorney? Very wise of you, if I may say so, in view of your health. I brought with me a basic document. You have that ready, Miranda?' Miranda meekly nodded. Grantchester went on, 'It's a pity more people aren't as thoughtful as you, my old friend. Life must go on. A temporary power of attorney will smooth things over nicely until you're back to your old self again.'
Ivan meekly agreed.
'So who is to act for you?' Grantchester asked. 'You know I would be honoured to help you in any way I can. However, you might prefer to have Patsy. Yes, your daughter will be eminently suitable. I expect you've already discussed it with her.' He looked round the room as if expecting her to materialise. 'Patsy it is, then.' To Miranda he said in explanation, 'Draw up the document, naming Mrs Patsy Benchmark, Sir Ivan's daughter.'
Ivan cleared his throat and said to her, 'No. Not Mrs Benchmark. I'm giving the power of attorney to my stepson, here. Write Alexander Kinloch.'
Oliver Grantchester's mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. He looked utterly astounded and also angry.
'Alexander Robert Kinloch,' Ivan repeated to Miranda, and spelled out my last name letter by letter so that there should be no mistake.
The lawyer, finally finding his voice, said, 'You can't.'
'Why not?' Ivan asked.
'But he's… he's… look at him.'
'He has long hair,' Ivan agreed. 'I wish he would cut it. All the same-'
'But your daughter, Grantchester protested, 'what will she say?'
What Patsy would say raised anxious lines on Ivan's forehead. He gave me a long look of doubt, and I looked back with calm, allowing the decision to be his alone. If Patsy got her busy fingers on his affairs, I thought, he would never get them back.
Ivan looked at my mother. 'Vivienne, what do you think?'
She clearly felt, as I did, that he would have to make up his own mind. She said, 'The choice is yours, my dear. Your judgment is best.'
Ivan said to me, 'Alexander?'
'Whatever you want.'
'I advise Mrs Benchmark,' Oliver Grantchester said firmly. 'She's the natural person. She's your heir.'
Ivan dithered. The post-heart-attack Ivan dithered where once he would have dominated. The brewery's predicament had knocked his certainties to pulp.
'Alexander,' he said finally, 'I want you.'
I nodded, giving him a tacit promise.
'Alexander,' he said to Grantchester. 'I'll give the power of attorney to him.'
'You could have both of them,' his lawyer said, desperately. 'You could have both of them, acting jointly.'
Even he could see, though, that such a path would lead to chaos.
'Only Alexander,' Ivan said.
His lawyer wouldn't accept it without a struggle. I listened to him trying to persuade Ivan with heavy legal arguments to change his decision, and I thought frivolously that, never mind my stepfather, it was Oliver himself who didn't want to have to deal with Patsy raging.
Ivan, true at least to part of his nature, wouldn't be budged. Miranda typed my name on the document and Grantchester told me crossly to sign it, which I did. Ivan, of course, signed it also.
'Make certified copies,' Ivan said. 'Make ten.'
With irritation, the lawyer waved at Miranda who made ten copies on a portable fax machine. Grantchester himself signed them all, thereby, I gathered, certifying that the power of attorney had been properly drawn.
'Also,' Ivan said tiredly, 'I will write a letter to the brewery's Company Secretary making Alexander my Alternate Director, which will give him authority to act on my behalf in all business decisions at the brewery, not just my personal affairs, that are covered by the power of attorney.'
'You can't!' Grantchester said explosively. 'He knows nothing at all about business.'
Ivan looked at me calmly. 'I think he does,' he said.
'But he's… he's an artist: Grantchester filled the word with an opinion near contempt.
Ivan said obstinately, 'Alexander will be my Alternate Director. I'll write the letter at once.'
The lawyer scowled. 'No good will come of it,' he said.
CHAPTER THREE
My mother gave me her National Westminster Bank card for getting cash from machines and told me her secret number: a very extreme manifestation of trust.
I used the card and then bought a train ticket to Reading although I didn't, as she'd begged, acquire some 'decent' clothes before arriving at the offices of Pierce, Tollright and Simmonds.
I took with me from Ivan's study a folder containing the power of attorney, the certified copies, and a copy of Ivan's handwritten letter appointing me his Alternate Director.
Tobias Tollright looked me up and down, inspected the power of attorney and Ivan's letter and telephoned my mother.
'This person who says he's your son,' he asked her, 'would you please describe him.'
He had his office phone switched to conference, so I could hear her resigned reply.
'He's about six feet tall. Thin. He has chestnut hair, wavy, curling onto his shoulders. And, oh yes, he has a black eye.'
Tobias thanked her and disconnected, his enthusiasm for my appearance still bumping along at zero in a way that I was used to from men in suits.
'What is wrong,' I asked, plunging in, 'at the brewery?'
Once he'd come to terms with the way I looked, he proved both astute and helpful. In my turn I ignored his fussy little mannerism of digging round his teeth with a succession of wooden picks and making sucking noises, and concentrated on understanding the mumbled nasal voice that by-passed the cleaning. He was barely ten years older than myself, I reckoned. Not enough age gap, anyway for him to pull much advantage of seniority. After the first ten minutes we got on fine.
His office was a boring functional box with a view of railway lines from a stark window, and strip lighting overhead that developed bags under the youngest eyes. Interesting to paint (a thin glaze of ultramarine perhaps, over yellow ochre) but terrible to live with.
'Basically,' he said, 'the man in charge of the brewery's finances has milked the cow and done a bunk to Brazil or some such haven with no extradition treaties. The brewery cannot in consequence meet its obligations. The creditors are restive, to put it mildly, and as auditor I cannot at the moment give King Alfred an OK to continue trading.'