Some Die Eloquent by Catherine Aird Read Free Book Online Page A

almost all remarks thrown at him. Boiled down, it consisted of inviting the speaker to agree with his or her own last statement. It had proved a sure-fire way of winning friends and influencing people. Sometimes he threw in an additional ‘You’ve got a point there’ for good measure.
    He did now.
    â€˜I know I have,’ declared the foreman. ‘Stands to reason in a small club like Luston Town.’
    â€˜True.’
    â€˜This aunt of yours,’ said the foreman.
    â€˜More like a mother to me,’ said Petforth.
    The foreman looked at him sharply.
    The labourers he had under him these days weren’t like the ones he used to have. University students were two a penny on the site nowadays, graduates almost as common. They’d be having women heaving earth about next, as the Russians did, and the Chinese – not that some of the men around didn’t look like women. He’d got over thinking them all Maryannes, though. There just wasn’t anyone around any more with the clout to tell them to get their hair cut. And they weren’t all fools either. There had been a law graduate wanting to make a quick penny to set himself up who had taught the foreman himself a thing or two about questioning the authority of those above him.
    â€˜Practically brought me up,’ offered the young man before him, whom the foreman only knew as Nick.
    â€˜No family?’
    â€˜Killed,’ said Petforth expressively, ‘in a pile-up on a motorway like this.’ He waved his hand to indicate the area they were working on. In fact at this early stage it bore no resemblance to a motorway at all. The three-lane landscaped tarmacadamed communications artery that was to come where they stood was little more than twinkle in the planners’ eye at this moment. In their minds’ eye – and in the artist’s impression – the well-intentioned road architects saw only the finished product – just as at Passchendaele the General Staff had only visualized victory. What the men on the ground saw in both cases was only mud.
    â€˜It happens,’ said the foreman.
    â€˜I was quite small at the time.’
    â€˜Ah.’ That explained a lot to the foreman. Like why a well-spoken lad like this should be living in squalor and working with a road construction gang, though admittedly times had changed anyway. Time was when speech like his would have been aped up and down the site. Not any longer. The foreman reached for the last shot in his empty locker and said, ‘You’ll lose your bonus, of course.’
    Nicholas Petforth shrugged his shoulders.
    That didn’t surprise the foreman. He couldn’t get at any of his men that way any longer. The odd ones had minds above money and the others were earning so much that it didn’t matter to them anyway.
    In the end the foreman agreed to Nick having next Saturday off as he agreed to most requests these days. Partly because he didn’t think for all his broken-down appearance and bizarre clothing that Nick was the sort of man to lie and partly because he calculated that he’d have the Union after him if he didn’t let him go. And then the consortium which was building the motorway and who would neither know nor care if he gave every man jack in the gang the whole week off provided they didn’t lose money, would be after his blood.
    â€˜You’ll be back after the funeral, right?’ he said, conscious that if there was ever trouble on the site he could be sure of just one thing: no one would ever uphold his authority.
    â€˜Not if she’s left me a fortune, I won’t,’ murmured the young man whom he knew as Nick, picking up his donkey jacket and protective helmet. ‘That’s for sure.’

CHAPTER V
    If you would publish your infatuation
    Come on and try your hand at transmutation.
    â€˜At least,’ murmured Mrs Margaret Sloan, ‘I don’t have to walk