Free Come Clean (1989) by Bill James Page A

yes.’
    ‘Hear that?’ Macey said, chortling. ‘Only shaping! What I say again is this shooting party will be beautiful. The only word.’
    Loxton, seated in his favourite old bulging and listing armchair, had on full, white-tie evening dress, with a royal blue cummerbund and a yellow carnation in his buttonhole. ‘Show me,
then, Phil, on the model. We still got that?’
    Macey went to his briefcase and brought out a crudely made three-ply representation of what looked like a theatre stage. He stood it on the table. They were in the long, comfortable lounge of
Loxton’s house on the Loam private estate, almost out into the country.
    ‘Make it quick,’ Loxton said. ‘Alma’s going to be down in a minute, ready for this bloody ball. I don’t want her seeing that.’
    ‘Understood, Benny.’
    ‘And don’t call me Benny when she’s here. I told you, she don’t care for it. Just a nickname I picked up in the Navy, being tall. Big Ben, like the clock?’
    ‘And always right,’ Macey added.
    ‘Possibly. Anyway, I was christened Theodore.’
    ‘Okay, Benny.’ Macey now brought from the briefcase three miniature plastic human figures and carefully arranged them on the wooden stage, in a close group, making sure each was
placed correctly. ‘That’s how we was told original Leo and his sons would be standing, and that’s how it still is, Benny, so it’s great the planning’s right on the
nail. That’s important, in view of the fire-point arrangements we had to make. I mean, these three are from a kid’s farmyard set, so when I say Leo and Gerald and Lay-waste will be like
this, they’re not going to be carrying this big whip, or wearing purple riding boots, that’s obvious, but these was the best I could get quick.’
    ‘Which is which?’ Loxton asked.
    ‘Well, like I said original, the whole thing is going to be run by Gerald, and he’ll be here, in the middle, with the microphone.’ Macey took a pin from his lapel and stuck it
into the model platform between the three figures. ‘That microphone is the key to it all. They’ve got to gather around it in a nice, tight group. So, all of them smack in the rifle
sights, extremely neat, extremely open. Gerald will make the main speech from the platform, say what great folks his mother and Leo are, and how it’s their silver anniversary, and many of
them, the usual heartfelt, family stuff. Gerald can talk. He had education and used to go to the library, it’s true, I seen him once myself going in there. But he’s only making the
speech. The other boy, Anthony – well, Tony, Lay-waste Tony – he’s going to do the presentations, one the family’s and another from all the friends, what they call friends,
the people who run with them, that means. Tony’s going to be standing here, behind Gerald while he’s making the speech, and the parcels by him on a little table. The present from the
family is what’s called a censer, made of jade? Very religious. Antique. Oriental, or down that way. It’s for burning incense in. Leo and Daphne do much of that? Not that I heard
of.’
    ‘The presents don’t matter, Phil,’ Loxton said.
    ‘No. Well, Gerald says these great things about Leo and Daphne, and all the guests are sitting at the tables clapping and saying ‘Hear, hear”, and “Give us a song”,
a seven-course dinner, pheasant, none of your bubble-stuffed frozen turkey, Leo’s paying. But, all right, Benny, that don’t matter, either.’
    ‘Alma will be here any time, Phil, that’s all.’
    ‘Right. So, Gerald turns for the big moment of the night, and he calls his dad and mum to come on to the stage for the gifts. Then they climb a couple of steps here, look, and
they’re on the stage, and they walk a few paces till they’re near Lay-waste to take the gifts and say something very elevating and reminiscent into the mike about being married
twenty-five years.’ Macey put a finger on the head of the pin. ‘That’s why