Chapter 24

I came round to a hazy consciousness just before the doctor arrived from the surgery (we tend to get quick service for some reason; possibly to do with our contributions to their occasional requests for funding additional equipment.). I found myself lying flat on my back on the couch, where the girls had moved me after I collapsed.

“What happened?” I asked groggily. “You fainted or collapsed or something; I don’t know what,” said Sandy, “but we called the doctor and he is on his way, so just lie there until he can examine you for a diagnosis.”

Moments later the front door opened and the doctor walked straight in as if he had a perfect right to do so (which he did), and was directed to where I lay. “Right,” he said, all business and taking charge immediately. “What happened? And what were you doing at the time?”

Before I could summon the strength to speak, Sandy informed him that we had been simply standing and chatting when I collapsed unexpectedly. “Hmm. Any symptoms before you collapsed, Mr McIntyre?”

This time, Sandy let me speak, though I was still a little shaken and took it slowly. “I felt a bit unwell, then my vision became blurry, then it all went black,” I explained, feeling that this was minimal information, but the doctor took it in his stride. “Any other symptoms? What were you doing other than standing and talking?”

“Nothing,” I protested stubbornly. “I was just standing there, minding my own business, just chatting. I wasn’t doing strenuous exercise of anything like that. That’s why I am puzzled at conking out like that.” “Fine. How long since he collapsed?” he directed the question to Sandy. She looked at her watch.

“About twenty minutes or so. He was unconscious for about a quarter of an hour, but I was worried. He seemed lucid enough when he recovered, though.” “Quite right. You did right to summon me. Any sudden collapse should be investigated immediately, in case it is a stroke or a heart attack, but in this case it appears to have been a simple faint. These happen more often than you would expect. Standing too long, a touch of dehydration, and you can end up in a faint. You even see this happen sometimes with the odd soldier standing still on a military parade: he just keels over. The treatment is simple: plenty of liquids, but not tea or coffee, as caffeine is not good for a faint.”

“Yes, doctor. Anything else?” “I’d like to set up a hospital appointment for an ECG test; an electrocardiogram. It is just to set my mind at rest in case there is any arrhythmia or any other symptom worth deeper investigation. My present opinion is that there is nothing to be worried about, but it doesn’t do any harm to make certain.”

“That will be fine, doctor. We’ll do as you say. Can Bob drive in the meantime, or do we have to drive him around in the interim?” “Driving should normally not be a problem, but if he has a repeat occurrence, we will need to revisit that question on grounds of safety.”

I just lay there and listened to them talk over me. I felt like an object being discussed for possible purchase, but for some reason it did not disturb me. I was at home, in good hands. That was what mattered. The doctor bade us good day, and left to go back to his surgery, and whatever patients were waiting for his ministrations. I was all set next morning to be off to work, but Sandy and Georgie had other ideas. Georgie said, “Bob, I rang Daddy and said you had taken a turn yesterday and were not fit for work today. He said to me, ‘Okay; that’s fine. I don’t actually pay him anyway, so he can take a day off if he needs it.’ Is that true, darling? Daddy doesn’t pay you?”

Sandy told her, “Of course that is so! Didn’t you know? Bob puts enough cash into Daddy’s law business account to pay him with, as if he was a regular employee, but it is all for show, to make him appear to be employed there. Bob can walk off at any time if he wants to. This has been going on for years.” “Good God! And Daddy was fine with that?” “Fine with getting an extra employee for free? Naturally!”

I added, “And he also acts as if I was truly paid by him; pushes me to get to a high enough work standard, keeps trying to persuade me to take up the law as a profession, keeps riding me as much as he does the rest of the staff; yes, he maintains the fiction perfectly!” Georgie queried, “But don’t the rest of the staff question you shooting off to do your house selling for me?”

“Not really, as I am seen just as a part-time assistant, so as long as I put in enough hours in the month, everything is fine by them.” “Oh.” Georgie was suddenly more conscious of her previous assumptions being mistaken. “Then you and Daddy kept this to yourselves, all these years? Good God!”

I explained, “The thing was, Georgie, that at first I was unsure what was going to happen to me, workwise, and so I had to devise a workaround to get me official recognition as an employee and so not be bothered by all the pressure put on the unemployed to keep applying for jobs. I didn’t have any job at the time, but I didn’t need employment as I had adequate financial assets hidden away. I worked out that I would be able to have all the paperwork that goes with being employed: national insurance stamp for my health benefits; regular payments towards my future state retirement pension, tax payments at a rate that did not bite into my hidden assets; all those routine aspects of life in the UK that hide you from the darker side of government. I wanted to be seen as apparently perfectly normal and not even suggest that we might have access to all the assets that the time traveller had left to our benefit or such a device as a time machine. I wanted to be just a normal citizen in the eyes of the authorities.”

Georgie nodded her understanding, saying, “I get all of that. I was simply unaware of what was going on in the background while you were marrying Sandy and embroiling me in your marital arrangements. I was having too much fun at the time. It does make sense, though. You had to protect yourself, and by extension, us two women.” “Well, now you know, and you are able to keep that information to yourself, as I know after our years together. The other girls don’t need to be made aware of this, you’ll agree. It doesn’t affect their lives at all, so not knowing is to their benefit.”

In the post next morning, a letter arrived addressed to The Occupier (personal), with the correct address so not a blanket mailing, and it was taken to me instead of just tossing, because of the ‘personal’ tag. Curious, I opened it, and found a printed sheet of paper with instructions for investment. What surprised me most was it being smoothly printed and not written or even typed, and with the salutation, “Dear me: Here is a reminder of what to invest in, this year.”

The rest of the sheet was a list of companies, starting with Overseas Containers Limited, which I had never heard of. I caught Sandy just before she left for her office, and thrust the letter into her hands. “This is your area of expertise, my love. Do you think it is real, a message from our deceased future friend?”

She glanced over the sheet with some diffidence, then suddenly stiffened. “Overseas Containers Limited? I heard talk of some shipping companies thinking of putting such a consortium together to get into the container market. They think it will be big, and they should know. This looks legit to me, Bob. I’ll see if we can help out with financing the consortium, for I don’t think they will have enough venture capital already on hand to make a decent fist of it. But if we provide startup capital at a low interest rate but giving us a growing number of shares as part of the deal, we could be onto a good thing.”

“Know anything about the second firm, Thomson Travel?” “Not yet, but this is what I expect to find: the chance to get in at the start of a company with an offer of investment. I’ll discover who is thinking of setting up that company, and take it from there.”

“Then I’ll leave the list with you, Sandy. It looks like he researched some of the most successful companies nearer his time, and sent himself advice for getting in on the ground floor and making a good profit later.” “I’ll take that as read, and see if we need to switch some investments around to make enough cash available for this venture, or sell some more gold for the investment. It should be a good thing for us.”

Off she went, with the list tucked into the capacious purse that she tucked under her arm. I was left wondering about the source, who had died four years or so earlier. How could he post a letter now? Or was I thinking in the wrong direction, for he started in the far future, didn’t he?

Could a dead man who died four years back be alive today? Conversely can a man die in 1961, many years before he was even born? This was the conundrum that time travel posits. I took a guess that as long as he didn’t meet himself, or have some connection that would have him in two adjacent places at the same moment in time, then the time line would be undisturbed. He had to have travelled back in time to 1965 to post this letter at some point prior to dying in 1960. He would also have to buy a stamp of the period for the letter. One had to imagine the machine placing him in various years and places without any clash occurring. Make the visit to the right date brief but effective, and he would be okay. Call in at a post office with the letter ready for the stamp; buy the stamp, stick it in, post it there and then, and leave by the door before vanishing back to the future; simple, and no clash with himself. As I had eventually worked out, one had to ensure that nothing you did was inconsistent with real history. Everything you do has to be consistent with the known facts of the world around you.

The question I was left with was, would there be any more of these advisory notes in future years? Did he go to these years and send all the letters before he died? He must have been planning to get updated prompts at certain times, so he could get into a new business on the ground floor without having to memorise all the information. He certainly had the address, as that was where his time portal was installed in this era. If so, we would probably get them delivered; but if his death visit to Kilmacolm happened before he arranged to send more suggestions in our future, then these messages would never have been sent.

We could live with the facts we had, either way. The messages were intend as reminders to himself over the years, after researching the businesses that would do well and be worth investing in. If potential future messages failed to be delivered, then Sandy would just have to apply her own expert judgment to the matter of investing. With her now developed and proven expertise, her insight and perception of the market, she still had a much better chance than the ordinary person in making good and profitable business choices. The same applied in avoiding future duds. You don’t invest in horse-drawn coachbuilders while motor cars are taking over the roads; you invest in automobile technology.

By the time she got home that night, her plans were already in full swing. She had telephoned an enquiry to the shipping consortium, suggesting a deal for cheap financing, provided that the deal included a generous allocation of shares to the investor in the new company. To sweeten the deal, the finance was a long-term own and loan investment, the loan part repayable either as acceptable chunks at annual intervals, repaid early if cash was available, or with an extra share allocation in lieu of cash; whichever was preferred at the time. It sounded to me like an offer it would be foolish for them to ignore.

The travel company had not yet been set up, but Sandy had intimated to the main instigator our interest in a joint financing of the venture to allow it to expand faster and take over more constituent companies for the new group. Once again this was taking the long-term view, beneficial to all parties. Both approaches had been well received, if only as an expression of interest in her proposals.

The other suggestions by our time traveller for investment were not of so much interest to Sandy, as she decided that she would have to liquidate too many other investments to free capital for what did not have to be immediate purchases, and she was not convinced that these additional investments were worth the candle just yet. According to one of my dictionaries this saying – not worth the candle - is of medieval origin when domestic light came from expensive beeswax candles, so you didn’t want to waste a candle on light that was not essential. I keep finding such interesting tid-bits about our language. Each manages to illuminate a bit more of our linguistic history.

Janet came to me first thing in the morning a few days later with a query that had come from her original employers, the Cafe Continental. She had been approached by one of the owners, with an odd question: had she or Phyllis been asked for payment as ‘insurance’ against fire or other damage? This puzzled her somewhat, and she said that Phyllis had comprehensive insurance cover for the entire building including her cafe section.

“Why do you ask?” she enquired in confusion. “It was a matter that was going round many shops in Greenock,” she was told. “But it is not an insurance company that is approaching them, but what appears to be less than reputable men. Someone has compared this to things that happened in America; what was termed ‘protection money’, where if you don’t pay them, your business gets adversely affected in some way or other.”

Janet asked why she was being asked specifically. “There are a few rumours about, regarding what your family seem to be able to do; help people in difficulties to solve their problem is the general tenor. It is no more than a rumour, but we were wondering if you could get your husband to look into this criminal activity.”

Janet suggested that it was perhaps more a matter for the police, but was told, “They have been asked about it, but say that there is no law against offering an insurance policy, so unless there was evidence of criminal damage, the police force could not officially look into it. Our friends were advised to take note of who the offerers were, in case there was future activity that could be investigated.” I chuckled to Janet, “In other words, do their work for them? Mind you, if we knew who these guys are, I suppose I might be able to check them for criminal or other unsavoury connections.” “That was my thought,” Janet concurred. “You are good at problem solving, as I personally know, and love you for it,” she urged, pressing her ample bosom against me. She know how to use pressure in this way, does Janet.

“Okay, Janet my love; you have pushed me to act, and act I will. The first need is identification of the criminals. Can you ask your friends to pass round the message that we could do with photographs of these characters? That will give me a chance to see where they link to.” “Photographs? That’s a possibility. Secretly photographing them should not be too much of a problem. I’ll push that idea and see what we can do in that direction. They will be seeing these guys again, for my advice was to keep saying they are looking into the costs, because if the insurance they demanded was too high they would go out of business whether or not there was any physical damage.”

That sounded a very good suggestion, so I left her to it, and concentrated on getting with my own work. I had a lot to do today, with a rewrite job at the law office occasioned by a client changing his mind about some details; and several house tours to conduct in the afternoon, all of them in Greenock. Thus it was that it was two days later in my study when I was handed a package by Janet. “A bunch of photos, dear. It all seems to be down to two men, and this is what they look like.”