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

anything about it. Tony tried to speak, found it impossible. The voice went inexorably on.
    ‘If you were in debt, why not come to me? I would have given you money. But I suppose you’ve done this before, it’s a usual thing. As I said it seems a good piece of work.’
    ‘I haven’t done it before.’
    ‘And you won’t do it again? But if you didn’t cheat me like this you’d do it in some other way. Through the accounts perhaps. Maybe you do that already, I don’t want to know. You can keep the money, but I can’t have you here. You must go.’
    The face was still turned away from him, the voice was never raised a semi-tone above the even uninterested note in which you might talk about the weather. Suddenly all this was too much for him, the bloody condescension of the man saying he could keep the money, the refusal to look at him, the manner which implied that he was an inferior being. As if he hadn’t earned every penny of that money and much more, as if any money could have compensated for the year he had spent listening to that interminable drivel about the war, pretending to take an interest in the attempt to cancel out mistakes by rewriting history, losing games of billiards which he could easily have won. You think you’re giving me something, he wanted to say, but you aren’t, I’ve given you one of the years of my life. He got up and almost ran out of the room, up the stairs to his bedroom. When he came back he had the Bobo letters with him. He tore open the envelope and put the letters on the desk right under the nose disdainfully turned away from him as if he were a bad smell.
    ‘What about these, then?’ he asked in the shrill tone that overcame him under any stress of emotion. It upset him to see that his own hands were shaking while those that took the letters and turned them over were perfectly steady.
    Now the old man did turn and look at him. ‘Where did they come from? Miriam said she had destroyed them.’
    ‘They were in the lumber room.’
    ‘And you kept them?’
    ‘Don’t you understand? If I’d been what you think I am I could have asked for money, I could have made you give me money.’
    ‘Blackmail,’ the quiet voice said meditatively.
    He shook his head violently. ‘I never asked, did I, never said anything. There are your filthy letters, you can burn them, do what you like with them.’
    ‘They are not my letters. They were not sent to me.’ That took him aback. He did not believe it, but he was taken aback. ‘My own darling G. Your name’s Geoffrey. And some of them are to my darling Gee gee–’
    ‘My son’s name was Gordon. We called him Gee gee, and so did some of his friends.’
    ‘Your son,’ he repeated foolishly, and in a moment saw that he had been mistaken, that the letters had been written by one young man to another, not by a young man to a middle-aged one.
    ‘These letters came back to us with the rest of my son’s papers when he was killed. We had no idea that he was homosexual. It came as a great shock. I don’t know why Miriam did not destroy them, but I shall burn them as you suggest.’ He put the letters back into the envelope. ‘Your assumption was wrong, these letters would have been useless for blackmailing purposes. In a way I wish you had tried. You are a scoundrel, Scott-Williams. I want you out of here at once.’
    He could think of nothing to say except that he would have to pack. Now at last the General’s voice was raised, raised in the kind of shout that must long ago have frightened subordinates.
    ‘Get out, sir. Out of my sight.’ The voice dropped again to its contemptuous monotone, as though a brief gale had spent itself. ‘You may take a taxi to the station and charge it to my account.’
    When he left the room the old man had his hands on the envelope, and was staring at the wall.

Chapter Five
     
    On that Wednesday night he stayed at a hotel off Shaftesbury Avenue. By midday on Thursday he had found several reasons for