Hostage to Fortune

by Carolyn McCrae

  That was not what John expected his son to say.

  “A bar steward?” he asked, making no attempt to hide his scepticism.

  “Look, Warwick has just bought a superyacht. Whatever he does in politics he will be surrounded by minders but on his yacht his guard will be down. I might get something on him that I can use against him. You know, underage girls, drugs, that sort of thing.”

  “And just how are you going to get yourself on this yacht?”

  “I wouldn’t expect to do it now, I know I need experience, so I’ve got a job in that new cocktail bar opening in the town. I’ll learn about making cocktails and how to serve them properly. Then I’ll apply for a job on the yacht.”

  “A bit farfetched, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. Look,” Ryan spent a short time getting the page he wanted to display on his tablet, “this chap worked on Beausale. He said how they have to advertise so often because the work is so testing. That was his word, ‘testing’. Apparently stewards have to work all hours and put up with all kinds of shit so they’re advertising all the time.”

  John took the tablet from his son.

  The photographs of Warwick showed a man unrecognisable as Fordy’s brother. Where Fordy had had thick dark hair, dark eyes with strong eyelashes and an arched, narrow nose Warwick was fairer, less angular, weaker.

  “You want to do this?”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. You demonstrated and protested but nothing happened. Demonstrations don’t do any good, no one takes the slightest bit of notice. If I could join or organise a demo against England Force it wouldn’t do any good, but if I could find something that would ruin Warwick Eden’s reputation, show him up to be someone not worth listening to, that would work, wouldn’t it? I might even find out whether Barford is really dead.”

  “A job in a cocktail bar, you say?”

  “I start on Saturday.”

  For more than a year Ryan worked at learning the trade of flair barkeeping. He watched the videos of Tom Cruise in Cocktail on YouTube as he perfected his own version of the routine; he ingratiated himself with his customers and his manager, making sure no one had a bad word to say about him until eventually his opportunity came.

  Following the General Election of 2015 in which he failed to win his seat, Warwick Eden had never been out of the news, and when a by-election was called in September Warwick announced, with characteristic flamboyance, that he would stand again, determined to become England Force’s first Member of Parliament. ‘I will fight, fight, fight for an independent England,’ his social media accounts explained, ‘independent of Europe, independent of Scotland, of Wales, of Northern Ireland. The Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has failed just as the European Union has failed. We will free England of its ties to the other nations of the so-called United Kingdom as well as the nations in the disastrous experiment of the European Union.’

  When he was elected with the slimmest of majorities his Twitter account announced that he would not take up his seat in the House of Commons until a date had been set for referendums to remove England from the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom from the European Union. Because he could not bear to be in an England that was so unlike anything he wanted it to be, he would live on his yacht, Beausale, cruising around the Mediterranean.

  The following day Ryan found a number of newly posted advertisements for crew for Beausale, including for stewards, and he applied.

  After what seemed to him to be a cursory selection process, involving emailing a photograph and filling in an online questionnaire but no interview, he was offered the position of second steward.

  When he told his parents their reactions were very different.

  His mother wished him luck, saying what an enormous opportunity it was and how visiting wonderful places would look good on his CV when he finally decided what he wanted to do for a living.

  John, however, was grim. “You’ll be careful, won’t you? That man, and the people he gathers around him, are not to be trusted.”

  “I’ll be fine, Dad, don’t worry. I’ll see you in the spring.”

  Through that autumn and winter, as Beausale cruised the Mediterranean, Ryan saw that Warwick Eden, in the flesh, was far more loathsome than any of the caricatures the press or satirical television programmes had implied. He was arrogant, rude and egotistical. He spent money as if it meant nothing but was violently angry when a drink was dropped or a glass broken, events which were inevitable in the many crowded, drunken parties at which Ryan served.

  Ryan persevered. He was always polite and helpful, pleasant in the face of the most abusive guests and suitably grateful when a guest tipped him for the excellence of his cocktails. Those tips far outweighed the fines he was charged for breakages and spillages.

  “Are you up for another dose of this?” the chief steward asked Ryan as Beausale headed for Poole at the end of the winter.

  “I guess so,” Ryan replied.

  “He’ll be busy with the referendum now. We won’t get away from his face, it’ll be plastered over the news. But after June I expect His Nibs will want to hide his face away.”

  “You don’t think his lot will win then?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “So he’ll be in an even better mood than he has been over the winter?”

  “No doubt he’ll be his usual shy, charming, modest, generous self.”

  “See you in the summer then.”

  Ryan left Beausale at Poole and headed back to his home. He reluctantly admitted to himself that he was looking forward to seeing his parents. It seemed he had been away a lot longer than five months.

  “Well?” John asked his son when they were alone. “Did you find anything you could use against him?”

  “I learned a lot but probably nothing that wasn’t already known.”

  “Nothing that will dent his over-weaning ego then?”

  “Nothing that anybody would be interested in. He’s arrogant, rude, mean in all senses of the word, but I didn’t see anything that would dent his reputation, let alone ruin him.”

  “So it was a waste of time?”

  “Oh no. Certainly not that.”

  “How come?”

  “Last week we were in Monte Carlo and he had one of his many parties. I was in amongst the guests, handing around canapés—”

  “I thought you made cocktails.”

  “I do but sometimes I had to do other stuff. Anyway, I overheard a conversation.”

  “And?”

  “One man, a politician, was being really snide about his host. He said that Warwick was a boorish bore and should never have inherited his old man’s money.”

  “Really?”

  “He said he’d done a lot of business with Stratford back in the day and he said there was an older brother. The woman he was talking to, probably trying to impress, said that she knew that but she thought he had died.”

  “And what did the man say?”

  “He said that there had been something about a fatal accident but that didn’t have to mean there actually was one.”

  “No?”

  “He said that he was not the only person who reckoned that Barford Eden was still very much alive.”

  John sighed. “I thought as much. Are you going to try and find him?”

  “There’s crew who’ve been on the boat a long time, a lot longer than me. Someone will know something. When I go back I’m going to be asking some very awkward questions.”

  Chapter 3: Guy Cliffe

  Guy Cliffe looked down at his father who was gingerly feeling his jaw and wiping blood away from his mouth and smiled, pleased that he had landed a perfect blow on his father’s smug face.

  “You lied. You’ve lied to Mum and you’ve lied to me. You’re a fucking liar that’s what you are, a fucking liar, a fucking weak liar.”
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  “You will be quiet!” Guy’s mother, Elspeth, knelt down by her husband and, after gently wiping his face, helped him to his feet. “Now, is one of you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  “He’s not who he says he is,” Guy accused, not bothering to hide his anger.

  “What are you talking about? Brian?” Elspeth turned to her husband who shrugged, pressing his wife’s handkerchief to the corner of his mouth. She turned back to her son who was standing, arms crossed, defiant. “Guy? Will you calm down and explain, please?”

  Guy pursed his lips. He could have left, leaving his father to explain away their argument, but he stayed. His mother needed to know and his father would never say a word.

  “You know I’m doing this family history project at school?”

  “Yes, you’ve spent most of the last couple of weeks going over what we knew of our parents and grandparents.”

  “And what did Dad tell me?” Guy ignored his father’s warning shake of his head.

  “Your father couldn’t know much about his family, could he? You’ve known for years that he was born in Canada and adopted as a baby and came to England in 1990 after his adoptive parents were killed in a car crash.”

  “All very convenient, wasn’t it?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s all pretty much untraceable, isn’t it? He didn’t know where he was born or what his birth name was and then there’s no Cliffe relation to back up his story, is there?”

  “Why on earth are you saying all this? Can’t you see how much you’re upsetting your father?” Elspeth could see the look on her husband’s face but had difficulty in interpreting it; it was more than pain, it was anguish.

  “I don’t give a shit about upsetting him. I don’t even know who he is but he certainly isn’t ‘Brian Cliffe’. Who are you really, Dad? What’s our real name? Because I really don’t buy into any of this Cliffe crap.”

  Brian sat nursing his swelling lips. “I am Brian Cliffe,” he stated as if repeating a mantra. “I am Brian Charles Cliffe, born somewhere in Alberta, Canada, sometime in June 1968. I was adopted by Phillip and Billy Cliffe who raised me as their only child in Toronto. I worked as a lorry driver and still lived with them when they were killed in a car crash in the backend of 1989. That was when I came to England because I wanted a fresh start and I chose England for no better reason than I’d enjoyed A Fish Called Wanda.”

  “That’s all total bullshit!”

  “Be quiet, Guy, and stop swearing. Let your father finish.”

  “I came to England and moved about a bit before settling in Canterbury.”

  “Why here?”

  “Because I got a job here. It was pretty difficult to get a job then so you went where the work was.”

  “And Mum?”

  “I met your mother through her brother, he was one of the other drivers at work.”

  “And?”

  “We got married in January 1995 and you were born nine months later. End of story.”

  “It is a ‘story’ though, isn’t it? It’s all made up, at least the first part is,” Guy said defiantly.

  “How can you say that? Why can’t you believe what your father says?”

  “Because I’ve checked. I’ve checked everything. It’s amazing what you can find out on the internet these days. Back then you may have been able to get away with stuff like that but you can’t today. It’s 2012, there’s family history websites that cover the whole world. You’d be surprised what you can find out.”

  “I haven’t lied.” Brian spoke as firmly as he could with his rapidly swelling lip but he knew he did not sound totally convincing.

  “What school did you go to?” Guy asked.

  “School?”

  “Yes, what school did you go to? In Toronto?”

  Brian hesitated, speaking slowly as he recognised that his lies were about to be exposed. “I told you all this the other day when you asked. South Hill.”

  “South Hill in Toronto?” Guy repeated.

  “Yes, South Hill Collegiate.”

  “You’re really sticking to that story?” Guy did not try to hide his disbelief.

  “Yes,” Brian replied tentatively, recognising that his son, and probably now his wife, knew he was lying.

  “Dad, you’ve heard of Facebook haven’t you?” Guy grimaced theatrically. “Yes? I checked who had been at South Hill Collegiate, yes, that’s the sort of thing you can do with social media these days. They have a page for all their old students. I made contact with a man, your age, who went to South Hill Collegiate and he said he couldn’t remember anyone of that name but he would check for me. They’ve got everything digitised now so he sent me a copy of the yearbook for 1984 when you would have been sixteen, in grade eleven. There was no one who looked remotely like you, and no one called Cliffe. I asked him if anyone called Brian Cliffe had ever been to the school. He came back and said he couldn’t find anyone of that name at any time at the school. You weren’t there, were you? So why have you been lying?”

  Brian looked at Elspeth but said nothing as he stood up, ready to walk away without answering any of his son’s questions.

  “Why are you lying, Dad? What are you hiding?”

  Brian looked at his wife again. They had been together for eighteen years. He wondered if she cared for him enough to cope with the truth. He decided she wouldn’t and walked out of the room without saying a word.

  “Mum?” Guy hoped his mother could answer some of his questions.

  “Your dad has always found it difficult thinking about his time before he came to England. It always upsets him.”

  “Aren’t you interested? Doesn’t it matter to you that he’s lied?”

  “You asked him and he had to say something. He probably just forgot.”

  “No one forgets what school they’ve gone to. Nobody.”

  “Maybe he used another name?” she asked tentatively. “He may have changed his name for some reason, when he came to England, and he doesn’t want to have to explain.”

  “There wasn’t anyone in that yearbook who looked remotely like him.”

  “He’s always been Brian Cliffe to me,” she added, Guy thought, rather pathetically.

  “How did you meet?” It was a question Guy had never asked, but now it seemed important to him to know everything about how his parents had got together.

  “As your dad said, he worked with my brother. We just sort of clicked.”

  “You’ve never worried about him not having any parents? Any family?”

  “He’s explained that.”

  “But he doesn’t even speak with a Canadian accent.”

  “He explained that too. His adoptive parents were English.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Forget it, Guy, please. If we can’t believe what he says there’s no point in being a family, is there?”

  “Sorry Mum, I can’t believe him. I’m going to find out who he really is, because he certainly isn’t Brian Cliffe.”

  That evening, as his parents sat down in front of the television Guy called out from the hall to say that he was going out. His mother answered, without really concentrating, that he wasn’t to be too late. But Guy had no intention of going out. He opened and shut the front door, in case they were listening, before turning and silently climbing back up the stairs.

  In the previous week, when his parents were out, he had searched through drawers and cupboards hoping to find documents or certificates, or anything that might explain his father’s life. He had found his parents’ marriage certificate and his own birth certificate, but he found nothing dated before 1995. His last hope was the loft. If there was nothing there he would have to admit defeat. And Guy did not like to be beaten at anything.

  With the ladder safely pulled up and
the hatch closed he switched on the light and looked around at the jumble of boxes of long unused Christmas decorations, of pictures removed from walls over the years and of a variety of his obsolete games consoles. There were a number of old-fashioned cases but they only contained old clothes.

  He had been in the loft for over half an hour when, amongst piles of books, he found a box of vinyl records. As he took out the albums one by one he was certain they would have been his father’s since they were not the sort of music his mother would have listened to.

  After registering the fact that he had heard of many of the artists – Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, David Bowie and John Lennon – he realised that they were the music of the 1980s. They were the first evidence he had found that showed his father had had a life before 1995.

  As he turned the covers over to read the blurb he noticed faded initials on most of them. He thought the letters looked more like ‘BE’ than ‘BC’ but the light wasn’t good and the ink had faded badly so he decided he was probably mistaken.

  As he went to replace one album back in the box an envelope slipped from the sleeve.

  There was no address, simply a name, Barford.

  Whoever Barford was, Guy thought, he had never read what was inside, as the envelope had never been opened. He ripped at the flap and and removed the single sheet of paper it contained.

  My son. Sixteen is an important birthday. You will soon be a man and will no longer listen to your father, that is if you have ever done. I write to you so you do not go through your life ignorant of your heritage.

  First I must tell you that the people you have always called ‘Granny’ and ‘Grandpa’ are not your grandparents, they are not my mother and father. My mother died many years ago as, most probably, did my father. I remember little of either.

  What I do remember is a tale my mother told me of my father being a thief, of his stealing from his father and burying what he had taken in a garden. One day, to cheer me up I think, she drew a picture of the house. ‘This is where we were all happy together,’ she told me. I have long ago lost that picture but I remember the house seemed exotic, not an English house at all. I cannot remember if she ever told me where that house was. If she did, I have forgotten.