The Sinking Admiral. Simon Brett

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       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘Amy, my dear, another round for everyone, please,’ said the Admiral, placing a steadying hand on the bar. His silk handkerchief drooped drunkenly out of his blazer breast pocket, and his silver hair looked as though someone had been running their fingers through it.

      Amy knew better than to query her boss’s request, however unusual it was. ‘What’ll it be, folks?’ she shouted.

      The peace of the late afternoon had vanished. With the return of Stan, Ben’s cameraman, word had spread via the usual jungle drums that kept the inhabitants of Crabwell up to speed with the latest developments, and the bar was once again full. Incongruously out of place among the regulars were a bunch of Viking re-enactors, dressed in the full kit and waving rustic-looking tankards. Amy had been a bar manager far too long to find anything strange about their presence. In her line of work you served everyone and didn’t ask questions.

      She looked around for other locals and saw Crabwell’s GP, Dr Alice Kennedy, who quite often dropped in at the end of evening surgery. She was, as ever, smartly but unobtrusively dressed, on this occasion in black trousers and a navy blue blazer. Amy never quite knew whether Alice came in just for a relaxing drink or to monitor the intake of her patients. Though perfectly friendly, the doctor always seemed slightly aloof from the other barroom regulars. But maybe a level of professional detachment went with the job.

      The same could have been said of Crabwell’s vicar, the Rev Victoria Whitechurch. She wasn’t a regular in the pub, but she had been there for the ‘Last Hurrah’. Maybe she was on the lookout to see which of her parishioners overindulged. Or perhaps she was on a proselytising mission, hoping to enlist more locals into the diminishing ranks of her congregations at St Mary’s.

      The Admiral was holding court. This was the second of the rounds he’d bought for everyone present. Amy supplied the flood of orders with her usual efficiency, noting that if this kept up, she would have to descend to the cellar and switch to a new barrel of the draught bitter. However, most orders were for spirits, and she rang up the Admiral’s tab with a feeling that approached despair. The state of the pub’s finances could not justify this random largesse. Then she asked herself, what did she know? The old boy could have come into some unexpected funds. Maybe that would explain the odd procession of folk he’d had climbing to his Bridge throughout the day.

      At what time tomorrow, she wondered, would she receive a summons for the talk he’d promised her? And what would it be about? Amy looked at the happy crowd of villagers and others from further afield, and hoped it was not going to be to tell her that he was selling up. Equally, she hoped that he didn’t want to probe into those details of her past life that she wished to keep secret.

      ‘This a common occurrence, your boss pushing the boat out?’ Ben, the ever-present television presenter, leaned on the bar and shoved his whisky glass towards her. ‘You can make mine a double Glenlivet,’ he added.

      She didn’t answer his question, but looked at his brown eyes, twinkling at her with confident warmth, took the glass and fished out the required bottle, thankful he hadn’t asked for the peaty Laphroaig that was the Admiral’s favourite tipple. What was it about brown eyes that could melt a little piece of the steel she had built around her badly bruised heart?

      Amy pushed the filled tumbler towards the presenter and looked at the Admiral, now climbing up on a Windsor chair and raising his glass.

      ‘My friends, here’s to the “Last Hurrah”,’ he said, and the reckless gleam in his eye did nothing to reassure his bar manager.

      ‘“The Last Hurrah”,’ Ben murmured, raising his own glass. ‘And what’s that all about, eh?’

      ‘No idea.’ She came around from behind the bar and started clearing empty glasses, lining them up on the counter.

      ‘Tell us,’ shouted someone to the Admiral, ‘tell us about the time you were stranded in the Caribbean.’

      ‘Ah!’ he smiled benignly at them. For the last few weeks he had worn worry like a mother whose son was about to go to war, now it was as though peace had been declared. A slurp of Laphroaig and a long stare into the distance, then he began: ‘Antigua was on our port bow and a hurricane was beating up behind us. We would have to anchor down in Nelson’s Harbour and ride it out.’

      ‘Was he really ever a sailor?’ Ben pushed the flotilla of dirty glasses a little further to the back of the counter to give Amy space for another trayful.

      ‘Thanks,’ she muttered. ‘How about helping me collect the last of the empties?’

      ‘But I might drop them!’ He looked at her with limpidly innocent eyes and leaned back on his stool, surveying the scene. Amy followed his gaze. The Admiral might have been at the wheel of his schooner (a large photograph of the long-gone actual boat was on the wall of the bar, the wind filling its sails, including the spinnaker, the craft leaning forward with the urgency of a greyhound released from the traps). There was the slightest uncertainty in his stance on his chair, his customary drawl wobbled a bit, and the occasional fumbling for a word as he retold the familiar story, suggested he was deep in alcohol’s grip.

      Then Amy saw that Stan, the cameraman, had his lens trained with steady accuracy on the Admiral Byng’s landlord, relishing the opportunity of showing him up. ‘You bastard,’ she shot at Ben and headed for her boss.

      ‘… and as we hunkered down under a wind wilder than horses freaked out of their senses and a rain that emptied the heavens, we old mariners swapped stories of weird adventures. And that was when…’ the Admiral lowered his voice, and his audience waited in gleeful anticipation. ‘That was when I heard tell of the Treasure of the Forgotten Island.’

      ‘And it’s still forgotten!’ someone shouted out as Amy barged into Stan, knocking his camera off its target. ‘The island and its gold ingots, all forgotten.’ Most of the audience had heard the story more than once.

      Stan swore, lifted his camera, and glared at Amy. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

      ‘It’s so crowded tonight,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Can hardly move in here. Having trouble, are you?’ She picked up an empty glass and blocked his view as she moved towards her boss.

      The Admiral ran a finger over his silver moustache. ‘Ah, well,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Somewhere there’s a map, and some time I’ll be going back. And when I get my rightful fortune, it’ll be drinks all around every night.’

      ‘What rightful fortune?’ demanded one of the Viking re-enactors raucously.

      ‘Ah, СКАЧАТЬ