The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [183]
The grand pasha would have been proud of the tall, sophisticated, and handsome young man who returned to England a year later showing only the slightest trace of a foreign accent, if he hadn’t died before his beloved son reached Southampton. Henry, although broken-hearted, was certainly not broke, as his father had left him some twenty million pounds in known assets, including a racing stud in Suffolk, a one-hundred-foot yacht at Nice, and a palace in Cairo. But by far the most important of his father’s bequests was the finest manservant in London, one Godfrey Barker. Barker could arrange or rearrange anything, at a moment’s notice.
Henry, for the lack of something better to do, settled himself into his father’s old suite at the Ritz, not troubling to read the “Situations Vacant” column in The Times. Rather he embarked on a life of single-minded dedication to the pursuit of pleasure, the only career for which Eton, Oxford, and inherited wealth had adequately equipped him. To do Henry justice, he had, despite a more than generous helping of charm and good looks, enough common sense to choose carefully those permitted to spend the unforgiving minute with him. He selected only old friends from school and university who, although they were without exception not as well-breeched as he, weren’t the sort of fellows who came begging for the loan of a fiver to cover a gambling debt.
Whenever Henry was asked what was the first love of his life, he was always hard pressed to choose between horses and women, and as he found it possible to spend the day with the one and the night with the other without causing any jealousy or recrimination, he never overtaxed himself with resolving the problem. Most of his horses were fine stallions, fast, sleek, velvet-skinned, with dark eyes and firm limbs; this would have adequately described most of his women, except that they were fillies. Henry fell in and out of love with every girl in the chorus line of the London Palladium, and when the affairs had come to an end, Barker saw to it that they always received some suitable memento to ensure that no scandal ensued. Henry also won every classic race on the English turf before he was thirty-five, and Barker always seemed to know the right year to back his master.
Henry’s life quickly fell into a routine, never dull. One month was spent in Cairo going through the motions of attending to his business, three months in the south of France with the occasional excursion to Biarritz, and for the remaining eight months he resided at the Ritz. For the four months he was out of London his magnificent suite overlooking St. James’s Park remained unoccupied. History does not record whether Henry left the rooms empty because he disliked the thought of unknown persons splashing in the sunken marble bath, or because he simply couldn’t be bothered with the fuss of signing in and out of the hotel twice a year. The Ritz management had never commented on the matter to his father; why should they with the son? This program fully accounted for Henry’s year except for the odd trip to Paris when some Home Counties girl came a little too close to the altar. Although almost every girl who met Henry wanted to marry him, a good many would have done so even if he had been penniless. However, Henry saw absolutely no reason to be faithful to one woman. “I have a hundred horses and a hundred male friends,” he would explain when asked. “Why should I confine myself to one female?” There seemed no immediate answer to Henry’s logic.
The story of Henry would have ended there had he continued life as destiny seemed content to allow, but even the Henrys of this world have the occasional hiccup.
As the years passed, Henry grew into the habit of never planning ahead, since experience—and his able manservant, Barker—had always led him to believe that with vast wealth you could acquire anything you desired at the last minute, and cover any contingencies that arose later. However, even Barker couldn’t formulate a contingency plan in