Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

The weight of it crushed down on me. I could see what was in Sir Oliver Bulstrode’s evil mind. The last vestiges of my family’s cash were in Georgina’s trust fund. If Elizabeth took control of that money, then Oliver would get his fee. The trustees of the fund would need to be persuaded, but there were few men better at buttering parsnips than Sir Oliver Bloody Bulstrode. In short the pigs had found a honey trough and were ready to snuffle, and none of them cared a monkey’s toss for Georgina.

“She can be found a good institution in England, can’t she?” I tried.

“Oh, undoubtedly!” he said with fake enthusiasm. “There must be scores of institutions which would gladly care for your sister! Yet would any court of law, I ask you, prefer such an institution to the love and care of a family member? Not, I hope, that this matter will ever reach any court,” he added hastily. “I’m sure we can work it out most amicably.”

“You’d call Elizabeth loving and caring?” I asked incredulously.

“The Lady Elizabeth Tredgarth,” he said huffily, “has undertaken to provide the most proper care and attention for her sister. I note, with the deepest regrets, your reservations about the Lady Elizabeth’s suitability, yet I must tell you frankly, my lord, that I cannot see any court refusing her a supervision order. Not when you consider the alternatives.”

I had noted that he had called me ‘my lord’. That was a danger signal which told me Sir Oliver was on Elizabeth’s side. He was on her side because she had a prospect of scooping the cash. Sir Oliver is a venal bastard, but so are most top lawyers. That’s why so many of them become politicians.

“Supposing I offered Georgina a home?” I asked.

He feigned astonished pleasure. “My dear John! What a very splendid idea! And so typical of your generosity! Can you do it? Naturally, you would have to provide constant nursing care. The premises would have to be suitable, or were you thinking of making her a shipmate?” He chuckled at his own jest. “Seriously, John, such a responsibility will involve a great deal of money!”

“There’s Georgina’s trust fund.”

“Which would hardly be made available to someone with a police record.” The steel was in his voice now. “You would be asking the trustees to grant you authority over a great deal of money. Before they would even consider doing that, they would need to be satisfied that you have demonstrated some fiscal responsibility and domestic stability. I believe, unless I am entirely out of touch with your personal affairs, that you possess neither a house nor a wife?”

I stood up. I had not touched any of the salmon salad. “Georgina can stay where she is so long as Felicity is alive and the hospital remains unsold.”

I had not inflected it as a question, but Sir Oliver chose to treat it as such. “She can certainly remain where she is for a time, yes. The Lady Elizabeth has not, I understand, finished preparing her domestic arrangements.” He paused to shake his head sadly, as though I was disappointing him by my wilfulness. “I really do think you may be misjudging your sister. I grant you that Elizabeth can be tiresome, but I do assure you that she is making the most thorough preparations for Georgina’s welfare. Why don’t you inspect those arrangements? I’m quite sure the Lady Elizabeth would welcome such an inspection.”

“Have you inspected them?” I asked.

“Of course. I lunched at Perilly last week, where I found the Lady Elizabeth’s proposed arrangements entirely satisfactory.”

They had me boxed in. I’d just sailed twelve hundred horrid miles to find that I had been utterly outmanoeuvred. I left Sir Oliver’s office, ran down the stairs, and, once on the pavement, took a deep breath to rid my lungs of the leathery stench of his hypocrisy. The street air stank of fumes and filth. And Georgina, like me, was trapped.

I walked beside the embankment. I went there because there are boats moored to the wall, but they’re boats which are never again going to feel ocean waves on their cutwaters, or heel to a cold cold wind as clean as a rigging knife. The boats are trapped. They’re there to serve as pubs or museum pieces. London has taken their guts and their pride away from them, and reduced them to gewgaws.

And I was trapped. But, God help me, I had some guts and pride left; enough, I hoped, to fillet a twin sister and her fat lawyer.

I paced the river. It began to rain, but I was oblivious to both the rain and the passing time. Up and down I went, between Blackfriars and Westminster, thinking.

I was head of the Rossendale family, but my titular authority counted for nothing because I was poor, had a police record, and a reputation for being irresponsible.

Yet, truly, neither the police record nor the irresponsibility mattered because, when dealing with lawyers, only one thing carries real weight. It isn’t justice, or probity, or any other of their fine words; it’s cash. Lots of cash. Lawyers love cash. They grovel for it, swill in it, lie in it, cheat for it, flatter for it and dream of it.

So I needed cash. The trustees of Georgina’s fund might never entrust the money to me, but Georgina wasn’t tied to the trust. If I could replace the trust fund, then I could arrange her future, so the first question to be thrashed out along the embankment was where I could find a lot of money. There was an obvious answer, of course, but my pride wouldn’t let me grovel to Jennifer Pallavicini. So I had to find another way.

I could sell the few shares left in Uncle Thomas’s legacy and I could sell Sunflower . I’d probably raise about one hundred thousand pounds which would be enough to buy a small house in Devon. I could find a job. If no one needed a welder or carpenter, then I could sell my title to some idiot who wanted an aristocrat’s name on his firm’s letterhead. I could join the other clowns in the House of Lords and claim my attendance money. Perhaps I could write a book: Belting Round the World, an Earl’s Story . Perhaps the heavens would open and rain golden sovereigns on me. Perhaps pigs would fly.

It was hopeless. A small house in Devon and a job would not solve my problem because Elizabeth would still hold all the cards; she had a large house, a husband, and no record of being drunk and disorderly. What I needed was a lot of money, very fast; enough to buy a sharper lawyer than Sir Oliver.

Charlie.

That thought stopped my walking. The lights were coming on across the river and reflecting in shaking streaks on the darkening water.

Charlie would help. Charlie would throw himself into this battle with all his huge heart and soul and strength, but Charlie would be no match for a cunning bastard like Sir Oliver Bulstrode. Charlie would give me money, but the lawyers would soon drain that away and Charlie, despite his success and despite his flashy toys, was deeply in debt. Besides, this was family. This was my responsibility, and I had already taken too much money from Charlie. What I needed now was my own money; gobs of money, a lawyer’s wet dream of money. What I needed was a patch of canvas, two feet three inches wide by a shade over three feet long, on which some poor half-mad genius had once painted a vase of sunflowers.

In short I needed Sir Leon Buzzacott. He had known that, which was why he had sent Jennifer Pallavicini with the message that he would look after Georgina’s future.

But to secure that future I would have to crawl abjectly to Jennifer Pallavicini. Otherwise I was trapped by the short and curlies.

Unless, of course, Sir Oliver was right and I was being unfair in my judgment of Elizabeth. That was the last straw of hope I could cling to, and if that straw failed me then I would have to eat humble pie. I turned towards Westminster for the last time. It was late, fully dark, and I was soaked to the skin, so I phoned an old girlfriend and asked if I could have a bed for the night. She agreed, though she didn’t offer her own bed, but I hadn’t expected her to, because nothing was going right these days. Nothing.