Distant Music by Charlotte Bingham

Author:Charlotte Bingham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409057192
Publisher: Transworld

Chapter Ten

In all his twenty-six years, Portly Cosgrove could honestly swear that he had never paid much attention to anyone but himself, which was probably, he realised, why he was already famous among his acquaintances for being so relaxed and even-tempered. Perhaps if you did not really listen to anyone but yourself, stayed in your own little world, you could quite easily go about with a serene outlook, because the real problems of earning your living, bringing home the bacon, did not have to be faced.

Now, of course, that he was wishing, most heartily, that he had, it was too late.

The reason why it was too late for him to listen to other people’s advice was that he was broke. Bourton had gone off with his money, and not just a little bit of it but all of it, every single penny. He had done this, most effectively, while Portly’s mental back, as it were, was turned – or in other words while Portly was in America trying to buy the rights to a play he had seen off Broadway.

Donald Bourton, trustworthy gentleman that he had pretended to be, had decamped with everything, withdrawn the lot from their business accounts. He had even absconded with the stamp money. That had been quite something. To find that you could not even afford to stamp an envelope to send Donald Bourton a letter filled with invective was, Portly discovered, humiliating to a degree.

It was only now he had his back to the wall that he was being forced into the recognition that, in this new reality he was occupying, he was not in the least bit self-sufficient.

Having been brought up by an affable uncle who had died and left him a small fortune, he had never really thought much about where money was coming from. Money had always been there for him, like the weather, or the news on the radio; a fact, but not a worry.

Staring out at the rain falling from a leaden, grey sky, Portly tried, for perhaps the hundredth time, to work out how he could best start his life again. At that moment his feelings exactly matched the sky, and at the same time he knew that to indulge in such feelings was a pathetic waste of time and energy, and he had very little left of either before he would be joining the tramps queuing for soup at various addresses around the poorer parts of town.

The first thing he knew he had to do was get out of London. London was too expensive for him, and not only that, but in London he was always in danger of bumping into one or other of his friends or acquaintances, all of whom would have heard of his misfortunes, and all of whom would be less than sympathetic, knowing as they would that he had lost everything he had inherited by investing in his one great love – the love of his youth – the theatre.

Once out of

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