The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [250]
My curiosity got the better of me, I’m sorry to admit, and I glanced at the bottom of the slim strip of paper. I couldn’t believe my eyes—the bill came to two hundred pounds
To my surprise, Barker only commented, “Very reasonable, considering.” He wrote out a check and passed it over to the innkeeper. “I have only tasted Château d’Yquem 1980 once before today,” he added, “and Taylor’s 1927 never.”
The innkeeper smiled. “I hope you enjoyed them both, sir. I feel sure you wouldn’t have wanted to see them wasted on a humbug.”
Barker nodded his agreement.
I watched as the innkeeper left the dining room and returned to his place behind the bar.
He passed the check over to Adams the butler, who studied it for a moment, smiled, and then tore it into little pieces.
TIMEO DANAOS …
Arnold Bacon would have made a fortune if he hadn’t taken his father’s advice.
Arnold’s occupation, as described in his passport, was “banker.” For those of you who are pedantic about such matters, he was the branch manager of Barclays Bank in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, which in banking circles is about the equivalent of being a captain in the Royal Army Pay Corps.
His passport also stated that he was born in 1937, was five feet nine inches tall, with sandy hair and no distinguishing marks—although in fact he had several lines on his forehead, which served only to prove that he frowned a great deal.
He was a member of the local Rotary Club (hon. treasurer), the Conservative Party (branch vice-chairman), and was a past secretary of the St. Albans Festival. He had also played rugby for the Old Albanians Second Fifteen in the 1960s and cricket for St. Albans Cricket Club in the 1970s. His only exercise for the past two decades, however, had been the occasional round of golf with his opposite number from National Westminster. Arnold did not boast a handicap.
During these excursions around the golf course Arnold would often browbeat his opponent with his conviction that he should never have been a banker in the first place. After years of handing out loans to customers who wanted to start up their own businesses, he had become painfully aware that he himself was really one of nature’s born entrepreneurs. If only he hadn’t listened to his father’s advice and followed him into the bank, heaven knows what heights he might have reached by now.
His colleague nodded wearily, then holed a seven-foot putt, ensuring that the drinks would not be on him.
“How’s Deirdre?” he asked as the two men strolled toward the clubhouse.
“Wants to buy a new dinner service,” said Arnold, which slightly puzzled his companion. “Not that I can see what’s wrong with our old coronation set.”
When they reached the bar, Arnold checked his watch before ordering half a pint of lager for himself and a gin-and-tonic for the victor, since Deirdre wouldn’t be expecting him back for at least an hour. He stopped pontificating only when another member began telling them the latest rumors about the club captain’s wife.
Deirdre Bacon, Arnold’s long-suffering wife, had come to accept that her husband was now too set in his ways for her to hope for any improvement. Although she had her own opinions on what would have happened to Arnold if he hadn’t followed his father’s advice, she no longer voiced them. At the. time of their engagement she had considered Arnold Bacon “quite a catch.” But as the years passed, she had become more realistic about her expectations, and after two children, one of each sex, she had settled into the life of a housewife and mother—not that anything else had ever been seriously contemplated.
The children had now grown up, Justin to become a solicitor’s clerk in Chelmsford, and Virginia to marry a local boy whom Arnold described as an official with British Rail. Deirdre, more accurately, told her friends at the hairdresser’s that Keith was a train driver.
For the first ten years of their marriage, the Bacons had vacationed in Bournemouth, because Arnold’s parents had always done so. They only graduated to the Costa del Sol after Arnold read in the Daily