Jeffrey Archer - Only Time Will Tell

He opened the drawer of his desk, took out a cheque book and wrote the words Pay Bristol Municipal Charities and, on a separate line, Three hundred pounds . He then signed the cheque and passed it to Old Jack, who studied it carefully and nodded.

‘I’ll just put it in an envelope,’ said Barrington. He pressed the buzzer under his desk. Old Jack glanced at Miss Potts as she entered the room.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Mr Tar is leaving to go to the bank,’ said Barrington, placing the cheque in the envelope. He sealed it and addressed it to Mr Prendergast, adding the word PRIVATE in bold letters, then handed it to Old Jack.

‘Thank you,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll deliver the document to you personally as soon as I get back.’

Barrington nodded, just as the phone on his desk began to ring. He waited for Old Jack to leave the room before he picked it up.

Old Jack decided to take the tram into Bristol, feeling that the expense was justified on such a special occasion. When he walked into the bank twenty minutes later, he told the young man on the reception that he had a letter for Mr Prendergast. The receptionist didn’t seem particularly impressed, until Old Jack added, ‘It’s from Mr Hugo Barrington.’

The young man immediately deserted his post, led Old Jack across the banking hall and down a long corridor to the manager’s office. He knocked on the door, opened it and announced, ‘This gentleman has a letter from Mr Barrington, sir.’

Mr Prendergast leapt up from behind his desk, shook hands with the old man and ushered him to a seat on the other side of the desk. Old Jack handed the envelope to Prendergast, with the words, ‘Mr Barrington asked me to give this to you personally.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Prendergast, who immediately recognized the familiar hand of one of his most valued customers. He slit open the envelope and extracted a cheque. He looked at it for a moment, before saying, ‘There must be some mistake.’

‘There’s no mistake,’ said Old Jack. ‘Mr Barrington would like the full amount to be paid to Bristol Municipal Charities at your earliest convenience, as he instructed you over the phone only half an hour ago.’

‘But I haven’t spoken to Mr Barrington this morning,’ said Prendergast, passing the cheque back to Old Jack.

Old Jack stared in disbelief at a blank cheque. It only took him a few moments to realize that Barrington must have switched the cheques when Miss Potts entered the room. The true genius of his action was to address the envelope to Mr Prendergast and mark it private, thus ensuring it wouldn’t be opened until it had been handed to the manager. But the one mystery Jack couldn’t fathom was: who had been on the other end of the phone?

Old Jack hurried out of the office without saying another word to Prendergast. He crossed the banking hall and ran out into the street. He only had to wait a few minutes for a tram to the docks. He couldn’t have been away for much more than an hour by the time he walked back through the gates and into the dockyard.

A man he didn’t recognize was striding towards him. He had a military air about him and Old Jack wondered if the limp had been caused by an injury he’d suffered in the Great War.

Old Jack hurried past him and on down the quayside. He was relieved to see that the carriage door was closed, and when he opened it he was even more pleased to find that everything was just as he’d left it. He sank to his knees and lifted the corner of the carpet, but the police statement was no longer there. Detective Inspector Blakemore would have described the theft as the work of a professional.

OLD JACK TOOK his place in the fifth row of the congregation, hoping no one would recognize him. The cathedral was so packed that people who had been unable to find a seat in the side chapels stood in the aisles and were crammed in at the back.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells brought tears to Old Jack’s eyes when he talked about his father’s unquestioning faith in God, and how, since the premature death of his wife, the canon had devoted himself to serving the community, ‘The proof of which,’ proclaimed the Bishop, raising his arms to acknowledge the vast congregation, ‘can be seen by the number of those present, who have come to honour him from so many walks of life, and to pay their respects.

‘And although the man knew no vanity, he could not hide a certain pride in his only son, Jack, whose selfless courage, bravery and willingness to sacrifice his own life in South Africa during the Boer War saved so many of his comrades, and led to him being awarded the Victoria Cross.’ He paused, looked down into the fifth row and said, ‘And how delighted I am to see him in the congregation today.’

Several people began looking around for a man they had never seen before. Jack bowed his head in shame.

At the end of the service, many members of the congregation came up to tell Captain Tarrant how much they had admired his father. The words ‘dedication’, ‘selflessness’, ‘generosity’ and ‘love’ fell from everyone’s lips.

Jack felt proud of being his father’s son, while at the same time ashamed that he had excluded him from his life, in the same way as he had the rest of his fellow men.

As he was leaving, he thought he recognized an elderly gentleman standing by the great gates, clearly waiting to speak to him. The man stepped forward and raised his hat. ‘Captain Tarrant?’ he enquired with a voice that suggested authority.

Jack returned the compliment. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘My name is Edwin Trent. I had the privilege of being your father’s solicitor, and, I’d like to think, one of his oldest and closest friends.’

Jack shook him warmly by the hand. ‘I remember you well, sir. You taught me a love of Trollope and an appreciation of the finer points of spin bowling.’

‘It’s kind of you to remember,’ Trent chuckled. ‘I wonder if I might accompany you on your way back to the station?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘As you know,’ said Trent as they began walking towards the town, ‘your father was resident canon of this cathedral for the past nine years. You’ll also know that he cared nothing for worldly goods, and shared even the little he had with those less fortunate than himself. If he were to be canonized, he would surely be the patron saint of vagabonds.’

Old Jack smiled. He recalled going to school one morning without breakfast because three tramps were sleeping in the hallway and, to quote his mother, they had eaten them out of house and home.

‘So when his will comes to be read,’ continued Trent, ‘it will show that just as he entered this world with nothing, he has also left it with nothing – other than a thousand friends, that is, which he would have considered a veritable fortune. Before he died, he entrusted me with one small task should you attend his funeral, namely that of handing you the last letter he ever wrote.’ He extracted an envelope from an inside pocket of his overcoat and handed it to Old Jack, raised his hat once more and said, ‘I have carried out his request, and am proud to have met his son once again.’

‘I am obliged, sir. I only wish that I hadn’t made it necessary for him to have to write in the first place.’ Jack raised his hat and the two men parted.

Old Jack decided that he would not read his father’s letter until he was on the train, and had begun the journey back to Bristol. As the engine shunted out of the station, billowing clouds of grey smoke, Jack settled back in a third-class compartment. As a child, he remembered asking his father why he always travelled third class, to which he had replied, ‘Because there isn’t a fourth class.’ It was ironic that, for the past thirty years, Jack had been living in first class.