'It's the name he's using there,' his mother said.
Jack turned the sheet over. The letter was signed 'Jeez'.
His mother anticipated him. 'It's what he always called himself. He was always Jeez to me and to everyone.'
To himself almost, but aloud, he read: 'Dear Hilda, This comes a bit out of the blue I'm afraid, and I have to hope that it doesn't upset you. God knows that once I did enough to upset you and I've no right to repeat the dose. I suppose that it's because of my present situation, because I am sentenced to hang, that I thought it would be good to tie down some of the loose strings of my life, that's why I'm writing. About going out of your life, well, I'm not saying anything about that. What happened is gone. No excuses, no whining, it just happened… '
'And, Christ, did it happen,' Sam snapped. 'Walked out on a fine lady and a two year-old child.'
Jack ignored him.
'… A lot of years later I came back to the U.K. and I found out that you were well and married, that Jack was well, that you had a new baby. I didn't see the need to drag up the past. You were in good shape. I was OK. I reckoned you were best left alone… '
'And why couldn't he leave her alone now?' Sam couldn't let go of it. 'Suddenly, twenty-four years after he's dumped your mother, it's a sob story.'
'… So, I'm in a bit of a mess now, things aren't looking too good. As I used to say, you win some but most you lose.
If you read in the papers that I'm going for the early walk then please just think of me that morning, and remember the better times. As I will. If nothing comes up at the last minute, this has to be goodbye to you and the lad. I watched him at sports once over the fence. I thought he was OK.
Things aren't always what they seem. When I'm gone, ask the old man. He'll tell you. Yours affectionately, Jeez… '
'Got all that's bloody coming to him.'
Jack put the letter back into the envelope. He was very pale. His hand trembled as he gave it to his mother.
'Why should he have written to you, Mum?'
'Perhaps there's no one else he could have written to.'
She stood up. Jack knew she wanted to be out of the room.
She didn't want her husband and her son to see any more of her tears. She laughed in a silly, brittle way. 'There's jobs. Will's tea. Our dinner. Have to be getting on.'
She was going to the door.
'Do you want a hand, Mum?'
'You talk with your father – with Sam.'
She went out. She couldn't help herself, she was sobbing before she'd closed the door.
'Sponged for sympathy, that's what the bastard's done.
Old man, indeed. I'd give him bloody old man.'
'Steady, Sam. He's my father.'
'I've put it together, what he did, what it said in the papers. He was involved with communist terrorists and murder.'
'You're talking about my father.'
'He treated your mother like dirt.'
'He's still my father.'
'He's not worth a single one of your mother's tears.'
'Do you bloody well want to hang him yourself?'
'Don't swear at me, son, not when you're under my bloody roof.'
'Isn't it enough for you that they're going to throw him in a pit with a rope round his neck?'
'He made his bed. He'd no call to bring his problems into my house, into your mother's life.'
'He's still my father,' Jack said.
Sam dropped his head. The hardness was gone from him.
'I'm sorry, Jack, truly sorry that you ever had to read the letter.'
They had a drink together, large Scotch and small soda, and another, and there was time for one more before Hilda Perry called them to dinner. They talked loudly of business, Sam's garage and showroom and Jack's work. They sat at the dining room's mahogany table with candles lit. The man who was in a cell fifty-five hundred miles away was thought of but not spoken about. When they were having their coffee Will came in and sat on Hilda's knee and talked about the school soccer team and there were bellows of laughter.
Jack pushed his chair back and stood up. His lather was going to hang. He thanked his mother for dinner. He said he had some work that had to be sorted by the morning. In a gaol on the side side of the world, dear God. He said he'd go to his room and put his head into his papers. Was so alone that the one he wrote to was the one he had most hurt.
He told Will that he should learn to kick with his left foot if he ever wanted to be any good. He had no sense of his father's face. He rested his hand on Sam's shoulder, and Sam patted it. The man he didn't know was his father, and his father was going to hang.
He went up the flower-carpeted staircase to his room.
It was a little under four miles to work, across on the London side of the town. Jack Curwen was employed by Richard Villiers and his son, Nicholas. The office was an unlikely place for D amp; C Ltd (Demolition and Clearance). There was no yard for JCB diggers and bulldozers and heavy earth-transporting lorries; there weren't any cranes; there weren't any workmen. Villiers was a shrewd man, which made him a good employer, and he'd long before decided that the way to the maximum profit and minimum outlay was to be in the art game of sub-contracting out. He hunted out the business and then pulled in the freelance operators that he needed. A few local calls could bring in a million pound's worth of plant and transport whose maintenance and upkeep was some other bugger's headache. D amp; C Ltd liked to boast that nothing was too small, nothing too large. They could clear the foundations of a 5000 square yard warehouse in dockland. They could take out the stump of an oak tree.
Villiers came into the office in the morning to ferret into the balance sheets and retired with a huge handicap to the golf course for the afternoon. Nicholas Villiers looked after the sub-contracting side of the business, and Jack was there to sniff out new contracts. There was a business manager who kept the books, two secretaries and a receptionist. Nice and lean, was how Richard Villiers described D amp; C Ltd, no waste, no fat. He liked young Jack because he didn't have to pay the lad that much, and because the lad kept the cheques rolling. When he retired there might be a director-ship for the lad.
D amp; C Ltd were housed in the ground floor of a Victorian building. They shared with a solicitor, an accountancy practice, a chiropodist and two architects.
Jack would have preferred to have just slipped in that morning, shut himself away. No chance. Villiers had an office where he could keep his clubs and his wet weather anoraks and leggings. The business manager had his own territory. Nicholas Villiers and Jack and the two secretaries shared what had once been the ground floor drawing room.
The girls and Nicholas Villiers stared at him, like he looked awful.
'Been on the piss, have we?' Villiers asked loudly. Janice giggled, Lucille dropped her head.
'Didn't have a very good night,' Jack muttered.
He'd had a tossing, nightmarish, sweating night.
He'd nicked his right side nostril with his razor.
He'd missed breakfast.
'You look pretty rough.'
'Didn't sleep much.'
'Not got the 'flu?'
Hadn't been on the piss, hadn't got the 'flu, only problem was that his father was going to hang. Nothing else was wrong.
