Take No Farewell by Robert Goddard

Author:Robert Goddard [Goddard, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 1990-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

I HAVE MANY times wondered why Imry Renshaw is such a good friend to me. I can name precious few occasions on which I have come to his aid, yet he has come to mine more often than I could ever deserve. So it was that night of my exclusion from Suffolk Terrace and for many of the nights that followed. Without his cheerily given advice and boundless generosity, there is no knowing what I might have done. Thanks to his influence, however, I held to a sane and sensible course.

I slept at Sunnylea – slept, at all events, for the few hours of darkness that remained after I had poured out my frustrations and resentments by Imry’s fireside. In the morning, we travelled into London together, Imry having undertaken to approach Martindale, Clutton & Fyffe with regard to my belongings and to consult some estate agents about the availability of bachelor flats. We agreed to meet later at his club.

For my part, Angela’s action had merely heightened my determination to trace Malahide. His pursuit staved off for the present all thoughts of the acrimonious convolutions divorce might force me to describe. I welcomed indeed the excuse he had given me to forget them; his was one lie I could confidently hope to nail. Pausing at Frederick’s Place only to confirm the little Giles had previously told me, I set off for Woolwich.

Croad’s men were cramming some dismal-looking housing onto a site near Woolwich Dockyard. Happily, the foreman knew my name and was as helpful as could be. Malahide had worked there until the Saturday before Christmas. Since then, nothing had been seen of him. He was a skilful worker – but unreliable, as his departure without so much as a day’s notice demonstrated. My request for his address caused much amusement. Any pub between Woolwich and Wapping was one suggestion. Some of his former workmates, however, knew his daughter’s husband, Charlie Ryan. He was a porter at Deptford Hospital and might, if handled carefully, tell me more.

I found Ryan in a dank corner of the hospital laundry. Lean, sallow and unsmiling, he proved as informative as he was disagreeable. A cigarette and a patient audience was all he needed to unburden himself on the subject of his father-in-law, a man he clearly loathed. The long and the short of it was that he did not bother to keep track of the old man’s frequent changes of lodging, but that his wife, Alice, did – much to his regret. I should find her at home that afternoon and was welcome to tell her that my visit was yet another indication of her father’s predictable failure to mend his ways.

The Ryans inhabited one of a terrace of mean yellow-brick houses off the Old Kent Road. The street was a cul-de-sac, entirely overshadowed by the vast grey wall of a gasometer at its farther end. There was an acrid taste of gas in the air, blending rankly with blocked drains and rubbish-choked gutters.

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