The Graveyard Position by Robert Barnard Read Free Book Online Page B

were antireligious, I remember,” said Merlyn. “I suppose this is part of the same thing.”
    â€œProbably, dear boy. You’d have been antireligious if your father had been a Peculiar Person.”
    â€œHe was, but not in the religious sense,” Merlyn replied with feeling.
    â€œAnd I had the same father,” said Francis. “No one could call me antireligious.”
    â€œYou should be fair to Clarissa,” Merlyn insisted. “She always made it clear to her clients that she wasn’t making predictions, merely estimating probabilities based on the positions of the planets—”
    â€œAnd the fall of the tarot cards or the lines on the palm. You’re not a boy any longer, Merlyn. I don’t have to mince my words. Your aunt Clarissa was a charlatan, and you don’t have to shut your eyes to that out of gratitude. She was very good to you, that we all know, but you’re much too old to pretend there could be anything in that sort of nonsense.”
    â€œWell, maybe,” admitted Merlyn. Food seemed to be stimulating Malachi to his remembered liveliness. He was tucking into his pâté, waving his knife, and taking copious drafts from his glass of Burgundy.
    Francis, on the other hand, though apparently enjoying his soup, was losing much of it down his tie.
    â€œYou mentioned my father—” began Merlyn.
    â€œJust in passing, dear boy,” said Malachi. “Just to show you that you had nothing to complain of, compared to mine. What’s a mild addiction to alcohol, evidenced by the occasional binge, compared to my father’s madnesses: a slavish addiction to the Authorized Version as the word of God and a belief in faith healing comparable to the beliefs of Clarissa at their barmiest? Your father and I used to go on the occasional pub crawl—”
    â€œI remember.”
    â€œâ€”and you can say what you like about him, but he wasn’t barmy.”
    Merlyn nodded.
    â€œOh no. Not barmy. In fact, quite on the ball when he was sober. I’d just quarrel with the word binge to describe his drinking. At what point does a binge become a bender? Three weeks? Four weeks? Five? He had drinking sprees as long as a teacher’s summer holiday from when I was eight onwards. In the end it was easier to stay with Aunt Clarissa and save on the train fares back and forth. We said it was so I could keep going to just one school, but really, Clarissa was afraid I would come to serious harm.”
    â€œAh—well, I never knew that, old chap.”
    â€œHe came up occasionally on token visits, but really he wasn’t interested.”
    â€œI suppose it was on those visits that he and I—”
    â€œâ€”went on your sprees. Yes, it was. Have you had much to do with him since I…left?”
    â€œWhy would I, dear boy? He would hardly come back to visit Clarissa, would he? To her, he was her sister’s widower and your father, and I think she quite liked him too, but beyond that? Nothing. As for the rest of us, he didn’t give a fig for any of us. No, my drinking days with him ended when you went to India. He never came here after that, that I knew of.”
    â€œI went to Italy.”
    â€œWherever. India sounds much more adventurous.”
    â€œHave you ever heard that he’s died?”
    Francis perked up at the fascinating topic of death.
    â€œDied? He wouldn’t be more than sixty-five now, would he? No age. Anyway, you’d be the one to know that, surely?”
    â€œNo, I wouldn’t. Everyone thought I was dead, remember. If Clarissa hadn’t heard of it, there was nobody else who could tell me.”
    Malachi digested this, along with a piece of red beef, which he chewed appreciatively. Francis, even, was attacking his sea bass with something like relish, and getting most of it into his mouth.
    â€œWonderful chicken!” he said appreciatively. Malachi smirked at Merlyn.
    â€œThe