Free Child's Play by Reginald Hill Page A

mixing with them bloody Lomases does to you, I've seen it for myself. Still, Grandad would probably have had a laugh at what happened next.'
    'And what was that?' inquired Goodenough, recognizing the straight-man's cue.
    'Well, Sam did well at his job, he had the gift of the gab, it seems. And not just for selling ale either. Lomas had a daughter, Gwen. Big plans for her, evidently. He'd made a pile of brass, bought Troy House in Greendale, and was in a fair way to setting himself up as a gentleman though he were no better than my grandad to start with. Gwen was going to marry a real gentleman, that was the idea. Then it happened. Her poor cousin Sam put her in the club!'
Huby chortled at the family memory.
'And that's how Sam came to marry into the Lomases?' said Goodenough.
'Aye, that was it. Lucky for them he did, too! Everyone says Lomas's would've gone under in the depression if it hadn't been for Sam. He kept 'em going and when things got better, he was the boss of the whole shooting match. By the end of the Second War they were booming and they amalgamated with one of the really big firms and went national, though they kept the name. That's what sticks in my throat! All that so-called Lomas money, it's Huby money really. They'd have been in the sodding workhouse if it hadn't been for Sam.'
'Didn't he try to put any of it his brother's way, when he was doing so well?'
'Oh aye. He came round once when he were coining it. Offered to make things up. Fancy clothes, fancy car, fancy wife, he had the lot, and Dad was still just keeping things together here. Never had the money, you see. That's what this place needs. Capital. Brass breeds brass, that's the way of it.'
He stared gloomily towards the window where the beginning of the extension stood silent in the evening sunshine.
'And your father's response?'
'What do you think?' snarled Huby. 'He told him to sod off again. What else could he say? Well, that did it!'
'I suppose it would,' said Goodenough. 'Now, about your uncle's son, your cousin, the missing heir . . .'
'Missing?' exclaimed Huby. 'Bugger's as dead as Gruff-of-sodding-Greendale, and everyone knows it. She knew it too, I reckon, only her conscience wouldn't let her believe it.'
    'Conscience?' said Goodenough, puzzled.
    'Oh aye. Between her and Sam, the poor devil had a hell of a life. Her wanting him to be a proper gentleman, him wanting him to be a proper he-man!'
    'And what did Alexander want?'
    'Just to be a lad, I reckon. I didn't know him well though we were born within a month of each other. He went off to some fancy school, of course, while I just went local, and only when they caught me! But we'd bump into each other in the holidays sometimes and I'd say how do? and he'd say hello , all very polite, like. Being of an age, we got called up at the same time in 1944. We went off on the same train and did our basic at the same depot, so it were natural we should chum up a bit, being cousins. He asked what I wanted to do. Stay alive, I said. I were good with engines and so on, so I was looking for a berth in the REME and I got it too, ended up a Lance-jack at a depot down near Tunbridge. He sounded dead envious when I told him this. What about you? I said. He was going for an officer, he said. His mother would like that, the uniform and people sirring him and all. And then he thought he might volunteer for training as one of them Commandos. I looked at him as if he were daft. Anyone less like a commando I couldn't imagine. But he did it, the poor sod. I heard later his dad were chuffed to buggery. My son, the officer, Gwen would say in that hoity voice of hers. My lad, the Commando, Sam would say. Well, between 'em, they did for the poor sod. Me, I never left these shores. Him, he's picked clean on the bed of the Med by now. Sam finally accepted it. She never did. Couldn't. She knew whose fault it was he ended up like he did.'
With this interesting bit of deep analysis, Huby seemed well satisfied. His pipe had