"Are you still there?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"Well… I need your help."

He said it as if it were an everyday requirement, but I couldn't remember his asking anyone for help ever before, certainly not me.

"Er…" I said uncertainly. "What sort of help?"

"I'll tell you when you get here."

"Where is here'?"

" Newmarket," he said. "Come to the sales tomorrow afternoon."

There was a note in his voice which couldn't be called entreaty, but was far from a direct orderand I was accustomed only to orders.

"All right," I said slowly.

"Good."

He disconnected immediately, letting me ask no questions: and I thought of the last time I'd seen him, when I'd tried to dissuade him from marrying Moira, describing her progressively, in face of his implacable purpose, as a bad misjudgement on his part and as a skilful, untruthful manipulator and, finally, as a rapacious blood- sucking tramp. He'd knocked me down to the floor with one fast, dreadful blow, which he'd been quite capable of at sixty-five, three years ago. Striding furiously away, he'd left me lying dazed on my carpet and had afterwards behaved as if I no longer existed, packing into boxes everything I'd left in my old room in his house and sending them by public carrier to my flat.

Time had proved me right about Moira, but the unforgivable words had remained unforgiven to her death and, it had seemed, beyond. On this October evening, though, perhaps they were provisionally on ice.

I, Ian Pembroke, the fifth of my father's nine children, had from the mists of infancy loved him blindly through thunderous years of domestic in-fighting which had left me permanently impervious to fortissimo voices and slammed doors.