Chapter 5: Second Chances

Fight Back

I left the charabanc and its passengers in Arrochar enjoying an unseasonably beautiful day and set off for Glasgow to see Karen. She had been my top priority two days ago when the arrival of Maître Grasse altered my priorities. I had been feeling really pleased with my strategy: I had found a way to keep Pierre working for Black Sheep until I saw him with Agnes and realised the real source of his attraction to the company; love is a powerfully persuasive tool.

I was invited to stay for lunch, but I had my fill of humble pie! It’s a dish that leaves a rather hollow feeling in your stomach, so I pulled into a filling station and bought a cardboard sandwich. As I sat eating it, I thought of the things I had to do, mainly to take my mind off the tasteless food. When I got a minute, I was going to savour one of Pierre’s special dinners.

I checked for messages before I drove off and all but one was routine. There was a message from the architect we used asking me to call at my convenience. It wasn’t an urgent request and I decided that I could safely delay replying until after I had talked to Uncle Henry’s most trusted confidante, our head nurse Karen. She had access to his private bank account in Switzerland and I had a feeling she was still obeying his instructions although he had died almost five years ago.

The refurbishment of the Glasgow home was well advanced in the charge of Richard McTurk. He had built our luxury coach at his factory near Falkirk, and I had been pleased when he asked if he could run the Glasgow project.

“I’m better at running things than tinkering, Kenneth. I really thought my own wee factory where I could please myself was what I needed but like so much else in life it would have been better staying a pipe dream. I need the buzz of a deadline to bring out the best in me.”

When I visited two weeks before, he had completed the new bridge between the main building and the mews flats on the other side of the back lane. Now that we had breached the rear wall of the main property, he should be pressing ahead with the constructional work required in the interior of the listed building. From the lane it looked a bit like the Bridge of Sighs in Venice and the residents in the other flats were already calling it the ‘Bridge of Smiles’ because everyone seeing it for the first time laughed. The design came from the architect, but it was Dick who came up with the engineering solutions that made the idea practicable – and acceptable to the planning authorities.

As a vehicle approached the bridge along the lane sensors checked its height and width. Retractable bollards stopped the advance if the truck would damage the bridge structure. In the middle there was room for a furniture van or bin lorry to pass through. Inside there were shallow escalators that locked onto wheelchairs while at the side of the moving stairs were chairs to carry the less sure-footed up or down the slope.

I parked in the lane and walked towards his portable office. Dick was poring over a drawing board when I opened the door.

“There’s a key missing for the private elevator,” he began as soon as he turned round.

Until I was forced to retreat and regroup Kirsty and I had lived in a luxury attic flat served by a private lift. I had handed over my key when I stormed out and there were two others held by Karen and my great Aunt Harriet. When I told Dick, he reminded me that there was a fourth key. Harriet had told me where to find it more than four years before although I hadn’t actually checked to see if it was there. She said it was at the back of a drawer in the partner desk that was in what had been my office.

Dick and I crossed the bridge that opened through the wall that had once housed a well-stocked bar. The desk had been moved next door to the boardroom to keep it safe while the work was being done to demolish part of the wall and fit a new doorway.

“We searched the desk and there was no sign of a key,” Dick grumbled.

“You wouldn’t: you have to pull the drawer right out and the key should be hanging on the outside of the back.”

As I was speaking, I pulled out the shallow pen drawer and turned it round to show a key stuck to the back with masking-tape. Dick just grunted in acknowledgement and pocketed the key. It was then I noticed that it was singularly quiet in the building. It should have been a noisy hive of workmen but all I could hear was a fly buzzing frustratedly because it was trapped in an empty house.

Dick had already gone back towards the bridge leaving me to return the drawer to the desk. I shouted after him that I would go up to the flat to have a word with Karen, who had moved in there with Jenny when Kirsty and I moved out.

“They’ve gone out. They decided to spend the day in Rothesay since the weather was so nice. They haven’t been gone long so I don’t expect them back until late.”

I let Dick go ahead while I stopped and considered several alarm bells that were filling my head. There should have been a house full of tradesmen but there were none and he, for the first time since we met, was decidedly truculent.

The refurbishment is costing a great deal of money and there is nothing coming in while construction work is continuing. My plan was to open the main building first allowing us to house five paying guests and to open the public dining room on the ground floor. The boardroom will become a private club open to non-residents. The flats across the lane will be converted into service flats including suites for married couples.

Then there was the trip to Rothesay that started surprisingly late in the day. It seemed to me that there were still people plotting against me. Perhaps it was paranoid of me to think that Karen had decided on the outing after she received a phone call telling her that I was on my way to Glasgow. Paranoid or not, I resolved to keep a close watch on the four clients and five staff members who knew of my destination when I left Arrochar.

For the moment I had to deal with Dick’s decision to stop the work I had ordered him to do. There was new kitchen equipment on order and essential work to be done on the structure of the property before it could be fitted. Aside from the penalties I would incur if I delayed the delivery, there was the bigger problem that I could not open the doors to paying customers until all the work on the main building was done. I had planned to bring the service flats in the old mews into use after the grand opening.

I followed Dick slowly while I thought out my best options. I had to get him to put the men into the main building at any cost, even if the price included sacking him and replacing him with another clerk of works. I didn’t want to do that if it could be avoided because I had plans to bring him into my organisation to oversee other projects. His value lies partly in his willingness to speak his mind and not simply to do as he’s told when he has misgivings.

When he worked on the charabanc, this characteristic had worked well, and it continued to be effective until today. He had been got at and it wasn’t hard to guess the leader of the assault team. Jenny had given me a hard time and the lesson I had given her has obviously made her more determined to triumph over me. She’s another person I want to keep in the company if I can ever convince her to accept my leadership. What puzzled me was Karen’s role. She’s totally committed to Henry’s concept for the retirement homes, and I needed to find out what I was doing that she disapproved of.

When I got back to the office, Dick had anticipated my unease for he presented me with a typed letter on notepaper of Black Sheep (UK) Ltd. signed by Jennifer Kelty, Managing Director. It authorised Dick to stop work on the main building pending the production of new plans.

“That company no longer exists,” I told him waving the paper under his nose. “The majority shareholders applied successfully for a winding up order months ago. In fact, the minority shareholders have accepted the settlement we offered.”

“What would you know about it? You walked off and left them to it. Now you expect me to believe they don’t exist. I thought you were straight.”

If I’m straight then I’m the only one, I thought. I had too much to do to spend more time explaining that I was the good guy. In about two weeks Dick would present me with an account for work done in the calendar month; he would expect to present it, signed by me, to my bank and it would transfer funds to him. I was tempted to let him try getting anything with a paper signed by Jenny, but I wanted to keep him if possible.

“I walked away from a conspiracy to push me out. The cash for this development is authorised by me, I waved my hand to encompass the site. Before I could continue, he interrupted:

“She said you would try that tale,” he told me with an air of triumph as if her correct estimate of my attempt at explanation validated everything else she said. I turned away and walked to the door before I turned and hit him with a Parthian shot.

“Unless you complete the work in the big house, I will not authorise payment.”

I left my car where it was and took a taxi to my architect’s office where parking is impossible. I needed to clear up what he meant in his message about changing plans. He was, I was told, in a meeting but had asked to be informed when I got in touch. I was hardly seated when he came into the office I was parked in.

“What the hell’s going on Kenneth? I’ve that clown Matthew Gilchrist in my office with a smartly dressed lady who is demanding that I draw up new plans for the Glasgow project.”

“I suggest you throw the pair of them out. They have neither the authority - nor the cash – to ask for plans. I signed off your plans for the building in my capacity as chief executive of Black Sheep International. Your solicitor has viewed the deeds and confirmed my sole right to treat with you. End of story.”

“They sound really convincing – more convincing than you do to tell the truth! However, I rang my lawyer before I spoke to them, and he confirmed your story.”

We shook hands, amity restored, and I went and had a coffee in Prince’s Square while I reviewed my progress. I decided not to tell Dick that there would be no new plans – let him stew for a while. In the continued absence of Karen, I decided that now was a good time to deal with the problem of Matthew Gilchrist so I strolled round to his estate agency in one of the best locations in the city.

He is one of Henry’s lame ducks and the first whose problems did not arise from the seedy side of the sex industry. Matthew’s problem was alcoholism and it pushed him over the line into fraud before Henry stepped in, got him an Alcoholics Anonymous twelfth stepper and bought off his creditors. We all drink, sometimes to excess but an alcoholic is unable to stop once he starts.

The message of AA is simple: don’t start. Their members help each other to resist the temptation to have just one drink. They urge each other to take one day at a time in their resolve to avoid alcohol and to accept that, for them, there will never be a social drink. They consider their condition an illness, a genetic blip, which has no cure but can be controlled by avoiding the first drop of alcohol.

Henry, according to the personnel file I had read, made his support conditional on Matthew’s continuing membership of AA. This support was considerable and included the management of the property portfolio of the group and the leasing of the buildings. I had moved control of the homes from Gilchrist to the new companies I had formed from the old care homes for the elderly. I had transferred the deeds of the Glasgow property to the parent company, and I had a list of the buildings we owned that could be made into nursing homes. My solicitor, Ruth, was drawing up documents to transfer control of these to me.

The problem was that Matthew had fallen off the wagon. He had become involved in a number of deals since Henry died that benefited him more than they did the company. I had given him notice that I would inspect every deal he suggested but that had only stopped him briefly. Now that he was working with Jenny I would have to find a more effective way to bring him under control. It seems that when he drinks his mind turns to fraud to feed his habit.

I couldn’t just drop him and leave him to his fate. When Henry helped someone, he accepted a lifelong commitment. I would have to take care of Matthew even after I ended his ability to damage the business. If I did any less, I would have trouble with Henry’s ghost! First, I had to confront him so I went to his agency and stepped inside.

There were three desks in the entrance hall, one empty and the others manned by two young women rather heavily made up and just edging on the tarty side of smart in their dress. I looked at the photographs and details of properties for sale while they continued with their conversation. It would be inaccurate to say that I interrupted them since they spared me not a glance.

“Well, I think she looks like a spinster schoolteacher from a costume drama,” stated the blonde. “That suit she’s wearing would set you back a month’s wages and I’d kill her with my bare hands to get her shoes,” countered the redhead.

The blonde was not convinced: “They’re likely fake. I’ll bet she got them at the Barras.”

I guessed that Jenny was the topic of this gossip and that she was closeted with Matthew. I didn’t really have time to listen to any more so while they were laughing at this sally, I raised my voice.

“Rude of me to interrupt, I know, but suppose I wanted to buy this property,” I said putting a finger on a decent picture of an estate near Perth that is already owned by Black Sheep International. The blonde, who was nearest to me didn’t turn her head, but she yelled at the door to the inner office: “Customer Mr Sands!”

Mr Sands came out with a friendly smile that swiftly faded when he saw who was there and the property I was still pointing at.

“Oh Mr Winterton, I didn’t know you were coming. Mr Gilchrist’s got a client with him at the moment. Please come through to my office.” He made no secret of the fact that he wanted me to get inside his office with the door shut as quickly as possible.

“The girls were just commenting on Ms Kelty’s outfit. I assume she’s in the market for this property,” and I tapped the photograph.

“That one’s not for sale, of course.”

“What a pity, at that price I’d buy it myself.” I let myself be escorted towards the door he had entered by, but I couldn’t resist a last dig, so I stopped and turned to smile at the two women sitting looking very uneasy. “Did you employ these decorative young ladies?”

I let myself be escorted into his small office and settled in a chair in front of his cluttered desk. He was blushing and struggling to stop wringing his hands.

“You’re Patrick I think.” He nodded. “I need you to do some very straight talking. Frankly, your boss is enjoying his last day as a paid employee of Black Sheep and, from what I’ve seen; this business will close by the end of the week without my continued support. I appreciate loyalty but other people in the company are losing out to keep this place open.”

He looked relieved and he visibly relaxed. I was pleased to see this reaction: he must have known what was happening and he could have been conspiring with his boss to defraud the company. He told me that Mr Gilchrist was a great boss when he was sober but there hadn’t been many great days for some time past. His loyalty pleased me even more.

Patrick Sands is the last employee left that has any idea how to advertise and sell houses. Jackie, the girl that had leased the Black Sheep properties, had been sacked when she questioned some of the decisions that had been made on renewing leases.

The women that had ignored me when I came in were employed to massage Matthew’s ego. He insisted that he would have no problem getting the deeds signed if he made an unauthorised sale of the properties owned by Black Sheep. He could, he told Patrick Sands, pull the wool over the eyes of any solicitor that would work for me. He was euphoric when he went out to a meeting earlier, but he had been drinking heavily since he returned with Ms Jennifer Kelty.

Patrick impressed me, so I offered him a lifeline. While we had been talking Jenny and Matthew left with a good deal of banter between him and the office girls. I phoned my solicitor and asked her to send round a locksmith then I gave the ladies two week’s pay and escorted them to the door. Ruth arrived with the locksmith, and I briefed her on what I wanted done. We changed the locks on the outer doors and then broke into the filing cabinets for which Patrick had no keys.

He was to contact Jackie and bring her back then he and she were to take control of the leasing of all Black Sheep properties. Once that operation was running honestly, they could resume selling houses like any other honest estate agency. He’s a bit wet with no discernible leadership skills so leaving him in charge is a holding action to give me time to sort things. In the long term he will make a reliable and honest assistant for Dick if I can patch things up with my clerk of works.

In Matthew’s office I found the phone number of his lawyer and had an amicable discussion about his client’s future. I disarmed his initial misgivings by promising Matthew a place in a clinic specialising in drink related problems and I completely won him over to my side by telling him that I had sound evidence that fraud had been practiced on Black Sheep by his client.

I got a taxi back to my car and drove home berating myself. I was taking too long to do things. I knew that Matthew was drinking, and I should have stepped in earlier but I wanted to make my case as strong as possible. How much this was due to my lack of experience and how much to my inherent nature I would find out in due course.

This was my second blunder. I had incorporated a strand of revenge against my detractors into my plans to redevelop the company. As a result, I’d had to rush around ensuring that I didn’t hurt the innocent. I had also discovered that the guilty can’t be easily shamed: Jenny had not backed down but instead had been stirred to action that would leave her in a very difficult position before long. I admired so many things about her, but I couldn’t think how to win her over to my side without humbling her.

The way I had behaved enabled her to convince Richard McTurk that I was a swindler. I had somehow to find a way to get him back on my side without totally destroying Jenny if that was possible. The key is still Karen. I have only recently discovered just how important she was to Henry and his concept of repairing the damage done to people by the careless power of the rich. I’m beginning to think that she is still operating a plan prescribed by Henry before his death.

He has, I think, left her a list of actions that I must perform to gain her support. I am trying very hard to run the company as Henry did but I’m clearly not ticking all the boxes on the check list he left his favourite nurse. I was really looking forward to a quiet evening discussing my problems when I turned into my drive and had to make an emergency stop to avoid mowing down a boy of about six.

He was followed by a Goth carrying a younger child and she began abusing me before I had got out the car to check that the kid was all right. Welcome home Kenneth, I thought, and have you had a good day?

2.Faith, Hope and Charley

Richard McTurk’s daughter Faith had made a sculpture for our garden, and she had come to check that it was properly fixed.

“There’s half a ton of iron in there and I want to make sure it doesn’t fall on someone because the idiot that put it up was incompetent,” she told me as she introduced herself. She was inclined to blame Jack, her eldest son, for running in front of me although her sister Charley was still of the opinion that a driveway was no place for a car especially when there were kids about.

Jack is only five but big for his age. Charley had handed me his younger brother, three-year-old Jim while she inspected my victim for injuries, much to his annoyance. While Faith and Charley argued about the extent of the blame, I was able to kiss Kirsty who was a bit late getting to the scene because she is now very evidently walking for two. She went on to soothe the sisters while Jack took my hand and tugged me in the direction of my wilderness area.

I shared his desire to remove the lads from the vicinity of flustered females. There had been a moment of danger, sure, but it was over and the only thing that had suffered was my drive that now sported the marks of rubber that had been scraped from my tyres. Jim had hitched himself about at first, but he had now found a comfortable position in my arms and had settled.

Jack led the way across the bridge onto the bank, the only part I had cleared. The landscaper had insisted on supervising the work in that area to make sure that the burn wouldn’t become blocked and overflow into the kitchen in wet weather. I had left a trowel lying about that I had used to plant a few bulbs and I sat on a garden stool near it.

Jack disappeared into the virgin wilderness still without uttering a word. Jim climbed down, picked up the trowel and began filling empty plastic plant pots with soil. Too much of the dry soil fell off the trowel and he angrily resented my suggestion of moving the pots closer to the source of the soil. His answer was to edge down the bank to dig the really sticky mud from the ultimate edge of the flowing water. I had moved the pot in dumb show because I seemed to have been inducted into some sort of Trappist community where no one spoke.

“Are you goin’ to be our new daddy?”

Jim was looking at me, waiting for an answer. I’m not sure that I expected a three-year-old to speak like a baby but I was taken aback by the clarity of his delivery as much as by the content of his question.

“No, I’m not but I could be an uncle if you like. Would that do?”

He continued to look at me while he gave my proposition due thought. I was really relieved when he finally nodded and smiled at me. Jack had been listening.

“Can we stay here? I mean, if you’re goin’ to be our uncle.”

He came and stood beside me leaning against my shoulder in a companionable way while we watched Jim continue to move impressive amounts of mud. I asked about school and was told that it was Easter holidays, silly. I told them they were both welcome to spend as much time here as they wanted always providing their mum approved.

Once the ice was broken both boys chatted to me about school, their pals, the role of women and things of that sort. They both spoke clearly and fluently; I was impressed by the extent of their vocabularies. I told them what I did and about the problems of waiting to be a father. They also posed an interesting ethical problem since they made naïve but intelligent comments on their family. I was happy to file and forget information on the location of their mum’s rose tattoo but there were aspects of the relationships between the adults that I could not easily ignore. I have plans for their granddad and I’m not sure I trust myself to treat the things the boys told me as confidential.

Jack had his attempt to help his brother spurned so he had settled close by to build a mud castle. Jim became interested and started to help make turrets from the plastic pots. I was given the job of fetching stones and twigs that Jack incorporated into the growing structure. He had clearly inherited his grandfather’s talent. We were all three chatting by this time with only one small but significant hiatus. Jack had made a critical remark about his granny, and I had said that she probably hadn’t meant to say it the way it sounded.

“What do you know?” he asked with real bitterness. “You weren’t there, and you know nothing about us!”

“Would you like me to find out more? Would that be a help?”

He sighed and shrugged: “If you like, but I don’t suppose it’ll do any good.”

I’m part of a big family and I’ve played with the younger members at family get-togethers, but this was the first time I’d been so close to children in such a relaxed atmosphere. I began with an interest in winning over their grandfather but now I wanted to help Jack and Jim for their sake and if I had to fight Dick on their behalf, I wouldn’t hesitate.

“Oh – my – God! What have you done to the kids?”

I looked up to see Faith and Charley standing looking over the burn at the three of us. It was Charley who had spoken, and she still had a look of disbelief on her face. Faith, standing half a step behind her sister was grinning.

“We were playing and chatting,” I defended feeling a little guilty for listening to some of the family secrets I’d heard.

“I don’t believe you! First you try to kill Jack with your car and then you try to drown Jim in mud.”

I had been watching the boys – I mean, I’d have noticed if one of them had fallen into the burn – but I hadn’t noticed that we were all a bit muddy. Well, a lot muddy, I must admit! The boys were grinning which showed their teeth glistening white in a mud-coloured frame. When they ran across the bridge and tried to hug their Aunt Charley, she turned shrieking and sprinted for the back door of the house with the lads chasing happily after her.

“Kirsty’s made fish fingers and oven chips but I daresay they’ll keep until we hose that pair down,” Faith laughed. “Charley came out to apologise for shouting at you, but I guess you’ll have to live without it.”

I crossed the bridge attempting to apologise for the muddy mess, but she interrupted me.

“This is the best two hours the boys have spent in weeks. Talking to a man and getting filthy was just what they needed. If you weren’t so muddy yourself, I’d give you a big hug. Oh, bugger it! I’m going to hug you anyway!” and she did. When she pulled away there was a patch of mud on her cheek and her smart blouse was going to have to go in the washing machine.

There was a fight going on in the kitchen about getting clean before eating with aunt and nephews all looking sulky. I insisted that faces and hands must be clean but kitchen towels on the seats would serve until they had recovered somewhat from the state of starvation they claimed to be suffering. Charley looked as if she might object but I suggested that she go upstairs and run the bath in the room off the main guest bedroom. She looked at Kirsty who nodded and then she shrugged and set off for the stairs.

Faith sat at the table with the boys and listened while they told her what we had been doing. I joined Kirsty at the grill where another packet of fish fingers was cooking, and we hugged each other. Becoming a dad is a bit frightening and my brief time with Jack and Jim had given my confidence a boost. I think Kirsty felt the same – it must have crossed her mind as it had mine that I wouldn’t be up to the job!

I made the lads strip to the buff in the kitchen before I sent them up to be bathed and Kirsty put their clothes in the washing machine. Faith and I were finishing the fish fingers and oven chips.

“You’ve sorted my sons out and it’s years since Charley was so amenable to suggestions. I don’t suppose you’d take on the rest of us?”

Faith said it with a little laugh but there was something in her tone that revealed a serious side to the question. I was still puzzling over what to do about her father after he and I had been at loggerheads this morning. I looked at Kirsty and she gave me a little nod. I’ve liked Dick since I met him, I’m impressed by Faith and Charley, and I want to help and nurture my new friends Jack and Jim.

“I’m ready to do what’s needed, Faith.”

I briefly told her of my plans for Dick to take over the Black Sheep properties and how concerned I was at his support for Jenny and Karen.

“He’s sold the factory, did you know? And he hasn’t been back to Falkirk for six weeks. Mum’s going frantic and Charley’s no help.”

This all came out in a rush and, when she finished, her face crumpled, and tears ran down her cheeks while she sobbed quietly. Kirsty came round and hugged her and told me to check that the boys had towels. It was clear that Faith had already confided in my wife.

Upstairs, I went to the linen cupboard and got out two tartan bath towels and took them along to the guest bathroom. From the shrieks I could tell that all three were having a good time. I knocked on the door and Jack yelled for me to come in.

“Uncle Ken, Charley loves the bath, but she won’t get in with us. Tell her to get in. You used to take a bath with us so why don’t you anymore?”

“Perhaps Charley thinks you’re getting too big to share a bath.”

“But this bath’s huge. She could easily fit. Jim and me would give her tons of room.”

“I can’t get in with you and that’s final,” Charley said sounding rather wistful, I thought.

“It’s that thing you’ve got in your titty, isn’t it?” Jim joined the conversation for the first time. Jack and I looked at each other, then we turned to look at Jim and finally we looked at Charley who was blushing. She shrugged.