The Man Whose Dream Came True Read Online Free PDF Page A

It was in total despair that he helped the General to sort out papers.
    ‘Tank training, where the devil are those statistics about tank training?’ The General looked at him. ‘What’s the matter, my boy, you’re looking pale.’
    ‘I’m all right.’
    ‘You don’t look it. Leave it to me, I’ll sort through this stuff and we’ll see what Ted Hasty’s got to say.’
    He lay down in the bedroom, stared at the Morris wallpaper and felt no better. He could stay in his room, refuse lunch and avoid meeting Hasty but if, as had happened before when the General met old army friends, the discussion went on for hours and he stayed the night, a meeting was inevitable. And what was he to do about that letter? He walked gloomily round the room and then went into the little study where he kept the estate papers and accounts. On the desk lay the cheque book in which yesterday he had written out with pleasure the cheque for Clinker.
    In ten ecstatic minutes he burnt his boats. After half a dozen trials on a sheet of paper that he tore up at once he produced the signature itself on the cheque, done with the bold characteristic flourish the General gave to the tail of the ‘y’ in ‘Geoffrey’. He made out the cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds. If the thing was to be done it might as well be done properly. The General saw his pass sheet only quarterly. By the time it arrived, no doubt he would have paid back the money. And if he had not – well, he kept at the back of his mind like an insurance policy the thought of the Bobo letters. Later, when he drove in to town and presented the cheque across the counter a part of him admired his outward coolness. He felt a surge of self-congratulatory pleasure when the clerk cancelled the signature without question and asked how he would like the money. This was the first really criminal act he had ever committed. How simple it was, how calm he felt. The thick wad of money in his pocket gave him such a warm feeling that he decided to wait a day or two before paying the club.
    He had forgotten all about Colonel Hasty, but as he drove the old Morris back into the garage he saw a car in the drive. He avoided the front door, but just as he was about to go up into his room the General’s head popped out of the drawing-room.
    ‘Feeling better?’
    There was nothing for it but to say that he did.
    ‘Come in, join the party. Ted, this is Tony Scott-Williams.’
    A sharp bird-like look at his face, a quick bird-like peck at his hand. He felt recklessly confident, even when the man said he thought they had met.
    ‘I’ve got that feeling too, but I can’t remember where.’
    ‘Too young for the war. Were you out in Kenya in the fifties?’
    ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said truthfully. ‘I was secretary to Sir Archibald Graveney for some time. If you ever came to Throgmorton Hall–’
    ‘Never did. Dead now.’
    The remark threw him for a moment. The Who’s Who he had looked up was three years old. It was bad luck to have picked a man who had died since then. ‘Yes, of course. I left a few months before his death.’
    ‘Used to see him in London sometimes, at the club. Never knew he had a secretary.’
    ‘I hardly ever came down to London with him.’
    ‘Yes yes.’ The General had been waiting with obvious impatience for this exchange to end. ‘As I was saying, Ted, the whole question of preparation goes back to GHQ. More than that, it goes back to the Government. We were landed with these Crusaders straight out of the factory. If we’d had time to train–’
    ‘It’s a matter of logistics.’
    ‘If you mean they had more tanks than we had and better ones, you’re damn well right.’
    The Colonel said something, but his mind did not seem to be on the argument. Throughout lunch, which was served by plumply attractive Doris, Tony was uneasily aware of the bird eye swivelling round to examine him. Occasionally Hasty seemed about to say something decisive. Suppose it was,