What was it about his elder son that had always irritated him? Why had he been content to turn his affairs over to David, without resentment, without perpetual fault-finding and interference, when he had been totally unable to leave Kenneth alone for one single day to run the firm as he thought best? He didn’t know, and he would never know now, it was by many a long year too late to find out.
‘I wasn’t altogether fair to you in the past,’ he said slowly. He saw Kenneth’s eyes jerk open at such an acknowledgment.
That’s how he sees me, Henry thought, a man who could never admit to a mistake. But we change when death looks us in the face, not by very much perhaps, but we change all the same.
‘There was never enough time,’ Henry said without regret. ‘Never enough time to look at every aspect of living.’ An apology of sorts. As much as he could ever bring himself to utter. It would have to do.
Kenneth looked down at his father. It crossed his mind for an instant that he could reach down and touch his father’s hand, pale and oddly fragile-looking, the fingers extended against the coverlet. But he remembered his mother lying there in Rockley churchyard and the impulse passed.
‘I’d like to put a little money into your business,’ his father said. He gave a brief smile. ‘I’d like to diversify my interests. What figure did you have in mind?’
Kenneth drew a deep breath. ‘Twenty-five thousand,’ he said without emotion. Might as well allow a margin. ‘Thirty if you prefer. It can all be gone into.’
‘I’ll speak to my solicitor. He can look into it. How long will you be staying?’
Kenneth took a pace or two about the room. Impossible to stand still now when relief flowed violently through his limbs.
‘As long as you wish. My junior partner is a very sound man, he can carry on till I get back.’ I’ll phone him the moment I get to the pub, he thought. I’ll tell him it’s all right about the loan, he can turn that job down now. With immense difficulty he restrained himself from laughing aloud, so great was his sense of release.
‘A few days then,’ his father said. ‘I know what business is, you can’t stay here for ever.’ He flung him a glance that held a trace of appeal. ‘You’ll be down again, I imagine. Before very long.’
‘Oh yes, I’ll be down again. It isn’t all that long a run in the car.’ Strange to contemplate the notion of being on visiting terms at Whitegates. He’d have to put things on to some kind of acceptable footing with David and his wife. Matters would have to be handled very delicately there.
‘My solicitor can draw up a new will while he’s about it,’ Henry Mallinson said, almost off-hand. ‘The present one cuts you out, I imagine you realized that?’
Kenneth inclined his head. ‘Yes, I realized that.’
‘You’re my elder son,’ his father said. ‘No getting away from that.’ At the end of life the ties of blood assumed immense importance, a significance he hadn’t altogether bargained for. ‘No getting away from that,’ he said again, heavily, and closed his eyes. ‘I’m tired now, I think I’d better rest. I’m old, Kenneth, really old.’ He opened his eyes, wearily. ‘I never thought it would happen to me. The years go by. You know it happens to other people. But you never imagine it will happen to you.’
Even now Kenneth couldn’t bring himself to take his father’s hand. Later perhaps, in a day or two, before he left Rockley. But not just yet. He couldn’t stretch out a hand and destroy the past all in a moment. Not just yet.
‘I’ll go then,’ he said, moving towards the door. ‘Is there anything you want?’
Henry closed his eyes. His face looked peaceful, infinitely weary. ‘Send Mrs Parkes along. I’ll get her to see about the solicitor. Later on today perhaps. Might as well strike while the iron’s hot.’ While there’s still time, he added in his mind, time to put things right, in some measure at least. ‘You’ll be staying here?’ His eyes came open again, slowly. ‘In the house?’
Kenneth shook his head. ‘No, I’ll get a room at the pub. It’ll be less bother for the servants.’
‘Just as you wish.’ So he isn’t ready to forgive yet, Henry thought, not altogether with surprise. The Mallinson blood ran in Kenneth’s veins and no Mallinson forgave easily, at the first sign of an outstretched hand. He heard the door close quietly. He raised a hand to his face and found to his astonishment that his lids were moist with tears.
Kenneth walked slowly towards the stairs with his mind in a tumult of conflicting thoughts and emotions. The wave of relief which had washed over him in the bedroom was subsiding now. It isn’t going to be as simple as it seemed in that first moment, he thought. Father is no fool about money and the solicitor is even less of a fool – if that is possible. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand pounds, that kind of money wasn’t going to be invested without searching enquiries and the most casual enquiry would elicit the fact that Kenneth’s business was standing on the very edge of bankruptcy. Oh yes, with a good lump sum of capital he was absolutely confident that he could set the firm on its feet again, that it would go forward soundly and smoothly. But to convince his father of that – and his father’s solicitor? Another matter altogether.
He put a hand on the banister, staring down at his feet moving one after the other, a single step at a time, reluctant now to carry him towards that phone. Just what was he going to tell his partner?
There is the new will, some insistent part of his mind said clearly. Drawn up today, signed tomorrow, in all probability. The whole family fortune split down the middle between himself and David. Father looked tired and old, he thought, striving to suppress pity, he looked like a man who could not last many months, many weeks – or even many days.
His fingers gripped the rail tightly. If his father were to die quite soon, inside a week, say, there need be no investigation about a loan. He could either shore up the firm with another loan from the bank till his father’s estate was paid out, or he could simply let the firm go bust, sit back and wait for probate, secure in the knowledge that he need never again lift a finger unless he wanted to. And his father had looked so weary, so ill …
Nonsense! said another part of his mind, loud and distinct, he isn’t very ill at all. He suffered only a mild spasm of some kind, he has an iron constitution, he isn’t all that old as age goes nowadays, he’ll be up and about in a day or two, quite capable of poring over accounts, of recognizing rocky finances when he studies a balance sheet.
Kenneth raised his shoulders in perplexity. I’m really no better off now than when I spoke to my partner this morning, he thought with a stab of hopelessness. He felt all at once acutely angry, obscurely cheated. A way out had seemed to open up before his feet and then to close again, vanishing into the mist. There is no way, he told himself and then paused for a moment, feeling the banister smooth and slippery beneath his hand. There is one way, he thought … if I dared to take it …
Downstairs at the front door, a sudden sharp ring at the bell. Kenneth jerked himself out of his calculations, allowed his face to resume its normal expression and walked quickly down the remaining stairs.
A maid crossed the hall and opened the front door. A few moments later she admitted a man in a dark overcoat, a white-haired man carrying a bag in one hand, his hat in the other.
‘Doctor Burnett! How are you? It’s been a long time.’ Kenneth walked swiftly across the wide spaces of the parquet floor with his hand held out.
