The Graveyard Position (12 page)

“Is that ever possible? You are what you are because of what you've done and who and where you've come from.”

“It doesn't feel like that. Everything I'm meeting up with here seems like a pile of dust in a forgotten corner of my life.”

“And what are you going to move on
to
?”

“To marriage with you, and a completely fresh start.”

“Really? Well, I look forward to being asked properly. Then I can think how I will reply properly.”

And she put down the phone, but Merlyn could imagine the teasing expression on her face.

The acrimonious little party at Caroline's gave Merlyn a lot to think over, or, more accurately, to speculate about. It seemed as though he was being pointed—by Malachi, if by no one else—in the direction of Grandfather Cantelo. Why had Malachi not done this during their meal together, as payment for his treat? But Merlyn dismissed this thought as soon as it came into his mind. Malachi was a disorganized mess of impulses, and to try and detect a clear and logical path through his behavior would be a futile struggle: Malachi had acted as he did at Caroline's to annoy his fellow Cantelos, nothing more sinister than that. He could have instinctively held back on his insinuations about Grandfather Cantelo earlier from the natural cunning that would tell him that they could form the basis for another free meal.

The thought even struck Merlyn that the Cantelos' obvious opposition to any revelations about Old Man Cantelo could have been staged. Any fool could have guessed that Malachi's broad hints would only spur Merlyn on to further investigations in that direction, and this could have been exactly what they all wanted: to keep him away from…from what, exactly? And from whom?

That possibility had to be taken into consideration, but it still seemed to Merlyn impossible to ignore the old man. He seemed to have sown in his time several fieldsful of troubles—or to have had them attributed to him. Merlyn had been struck, while Roderick Massey spoke, about a non sequitur in his harangue: Paul Cantelo's claim not to be Roderick's father rang true, and so did Roderick's relief. Merlyn rather suspected that Roderick had accepted Caroline's invitation precisely with the idea of wiping the Cantelo dust from his shoes, which, stoked up by whisky, he had duly done. But there was a leap from saying that Paul was not his father to saying that he was not a Cantelo. Merlyn's feeling on the morning after the party was that the last people he ought to go to for information were his Cantelo relations, and on impulse he slipped, later in the day, into the offices of the
Yorkshire Post
and various sister papers and asked to consult back files in their library. Once settled in he saw they had serried shelves of the
Dictionary of National Biography,
and quickly ascertained that Grandfather had not made it into those pages. He knew that Clarissa had not owned the house in Congreve Street very long before he started going there, so he put her father's death as in the late 1970s. Luckily there was an index year by year to the paper, and he discovered an obituary for him in the issue of October 5, 1978.

It was not very revealing. It began: “Merlyn Cantelo was born in 1905…” He guessed that the older Merlyn's mother had had a dated and Pre-Raphaelite nostalgia for Arthurian legends, extending even to its wizard. The fairly brief notice went on:

It was brief, less than hagiographic, but suggestive. As Merlyn sat back in his chair considering the account, several things struck him. Though the firm had “suffered” from his mental decline, there was no suggestion that it was anything other than a going concern when it was sold. Where had the money gone? So far as he knew, and in spite of what the obituary said about help from his family, none of the children (sons, it would have to be, Merlyn guessed) had gone into business with his father, and might have hoped to take over. This may have been because they realized he would never loosen the reins of his control, and would be an impossible partner.

He got a strong sense from the obituary that the earlier Merlyn had been a first-rate businessman by the standards of the time, and that his years of decline had not only been sad, but in some way embarrassing. That would certainly bear further investigation.

But further investigation where? Of whom? Malachi, of all the Cantelos, seemed the only possibility, but Merlyn mistrusted the man's butterfly mind, powered by malice and some real or imagined grievances. People who had married into the family might be a possibility, but Caroline's husband and Rosalind's had both entered the family well after Grandfather Cantelo's death. There was no evidence that Gerald's wife or Emily's husband were still of this world, or that they would cooperate if they were. Of outsiders, the family lawyer, Mr. Featherstone, might well know most, but he was by nature a close man who would say as little as possible. A good lawyer keeps his mouth buttoned.

Then Merlyn suddenly remembered his father.

He had married into the family in the years of its prosperity, and had been in communication with its members, at the least, during Grandfather Cantelo's years of increasing senility. Merlyn's father and his mother had been, so far as he knew, a close pair, so Jake would have been in on all the family secrets. Ideal.

Doubts immediately invaded him. Because Merlyn himself had only the vaguest memories of his grandfather—memories, he rather thought, based on no more than one or two actual meetings. What picture he had of him in his mind was of an unruly gray beard and fearsome eyebrows—a physiognomy somewhere between God and the present Archbishop of Canterbury. The vagueness of his memories did not suggest that there had been much traffic between the Docherties and his mother's father.

Still, the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that Jake was the best bet, or at least the best of a bad bunch. He would be inhibited by no vestigial loyalty to the Cantelos, he would be impartial, and he would be bribable. The moment this last thought came into Merlyn's head he drove it out. He had once talked to a woman whose father had collected British folk songs. At the sight of a half crown in the palm of his hand, aged crones in remote Scottish glens had obliged in cracked tones with an apology for a tune that the man's daughter was convinced they had thought up that very moment. And these songs had entered instantly the Folk Song Society's treasury of British musical heritage. Mention money and you're given what it is thought you are after. Merlyn was not conscious of knowing what he wanted as far as information about Grandfather Cantelo was concerned. He just wanted to know the truth.

He dropped into Waterstone's bookshop when he left the newspaper offices and bought a road map of the Sheffield area. Then he went along to the Leeds Public Library and looked up in the telephone directories J. Docherty of Carlyn Street. He knew his father would never go ex-directory. There he was at number thirty-five.

“Daddy, I hardly know you,” sang Merlyn to himself. But it was time to get to know him. And through him to get to know his grandfather a whole lot better.

The next day, Wednesday, Merlyn took off for Sheffield in midmorning, taking it easy, going off the motorway for a leisurely half-pint, trying to think through his tactics before he arrived. He neared Sheffield, ignored exit roads to the dreadful Meadowhall shopping center, and got to Carlyn Street about half past one. He drove slowly, and identified number thirty-five before he arrived outside it. It was a few doors away from an intersection with a major road, and had a Chinese takeaway on the corner. It was a warm day, and windows were open in the solidly built Victorian house, and voices but not words could be heard. Merlyn parked outside the house next door and opened his car window. Rap music was coming from upstairs, but now voices and words could be heard.

“If you'd gone to fucking school today I wouldn't be yelling at you now,” yelled Jake's voice. “There's nothing wrong with you.”

“I didn't say there was. I'm supposed to be studying for GCSEs but there's no classes today worth wasting time or bus fare on,” came back a younger voice—that, surely, of the brilliant young Jason.

“If you think you're brighter than your teachers you're heading for a fall, young man.”

“Everyone's brighter than our French teacher. They should have brought over a French village idiot—at least the pronunciation would have been better. I get far more out of just reading the set texts.”

“Well, go and read them in the public fucking library, and turn off that awful CD on the way out.”

A minute or two later the music stopped. Merlyn sat looking in his driving mirror. The front door opened and a pleasant-looking schoolboy came out, banging the door behind him. He wondered if arguments such as he had just heard were commonplace, part of a regular routine.

The house was quiet. Merlyn decided to let his father have a bit of peace, to put him in a better mood. He slipped out of the car and went to the Chinese takeaway, emerging ten minutes later with prawns and cashew nuts, fried rice, and a plastic fork. He settled himself in the car and began eating. He was halfway through his meal when a young woman breezed down the street and through the gate to number thirty-five. She was about eighteen, blonde, nubile, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She let herself through the front door. Merlyn waited for shouting, but beyond a call of “Hi, Jake—I'm just passing through” there was nothing. He was just finishing his meal when the door opened again and the girl came out, a well-stuffed rucksack on her back, and a small case in her hand.

She's leaving home, he thought, his mind reverting to the music of his childhood.

He licked the fork, got out of the car, and stuffed the cartons and plastic bag into a bin. Then he went through the gate and up to the front door. There was a pause after he had rung the bell, then shuffling feet along the hall.

“Merlyn!”

Jake's face seemed to be torn between interest (rather than pleasure) and regret at the interruption of his nap. His hair was ruffled, one of his feet was shoved into a slipper, and he looked, apart from a gleam of roguishness in his eyes, all of his sixty-odd years. He obviously decided that he was, on the whole, pleased and a touch flattered that his visit to Leeds had elicited from Merlyn such a prompt response. He stood aside and ushered him into the living room.

“You'll have a can, won't you?” he asked, with appeal in his voice. Cans obviously figured big and enticingly in his day-to-day routine.

“Just wet the bottom of the glass,” said Merlyn. “I'm sure you can drink the rest.”

“I expect so,” said Jake, his smile conspiratorial. Merlyn's taking the trouble to seek him out had obviously given him the confidence to be himself, and that was preferable to the rather bogus figure he had presented at their last encounter. “Roxanne should be home soon. It's her half day at Sheffield Jail. Jason's studying in the public library, and Sandra's half living at home, half with her boyfriend, depending on whether she wants a meal cooked for her or whether she's willing to do it herself. Children!”

“And your own little girl?”

“Win? She's at school. I'll have to fetch her at three-thirty if I can't get Roxanne to do it. Here—is that enough for you?”

“Plenty,” said Merlyn, taking the glass. He looked around the living room. Newspapers,
Private Eye,
school-books, compact discs, beer cans, and half-empty wine bottles covered most of the available table space and chairs, and littered the floor. Merlyn had a strong sense of déjà vu. “Ah, wilderness!” he muttered to himself.

“Clear yourself a place,” said Jake, doing just that. “Some things don't change, you notice.”

“It's fine,” said Merlyn insincerely, clearing and sitting.

“So to what do we owe this honor?” asked Jake. “It's not a fortnight since we talked.”

“It's information I want,” said Merlyn. “I'd like to talk about the Cantelo family.”

“I thought we had,” said Jake.

“No, we haven't. We just talked about Clarissa. I'm getting interested in other figures.”

“Why? Why don't you just take the money and run?”

“Because—oh, never mind. But you must have had a fair bit to do with the family, before Mum died.”

Jake screwed up his face.

“Not that much. While we were engaged, I suppose, because most of the courtship took place in Leeds. Quarrelsome lot, I thought them. Oodles of bad feeling flying around. After we were married and came here to Sheffield to live, I did my best to avoid them. Your mother went home to see them from time to time, but not that often. She was rather fond of Clarissa and Paul, but beyond that…” Jake shrugged. Beyond that, very little, he implied.

“And what about Grandfather Cantelo?”

Jake shifted very obviously in his chair.

“Never saw much of him.”

“What sort of person was he, in your view?”

“Just what you'd expect from someone heading a fairly important company. A bit pompous. A bit full of himself. No—totally full of himself. Saw himself as the fount of all wisdom…. I forgot to tell you they've been in touch from this DNA testing place, by the way.”