Read Online The Forgotten Story by Winston Graham - Free Book Online Page A

a schooner and a tops’l schooner, all around three hundred tons; tidy little craft busy about their owner’s business. And the owner was J. Veal. How many, if any, more there might be trekking across the oceans of the world on the business of J. Veal, Anthony did not know.
    Sometimes he sat in the little master’s cabin and listened, less than half comprehending, to discussions on freights and port dues and insurance costs. He noticed that whenever the conversation was turned by one of the captains upon what they considered necessary repairs to their ships Smoky Joe had a talent for turning the conversation to something else. If they insisted that the repair or replacement was urgently necessary he always ended the discussion with, ‘Well, we’ll consider it, mister, we’ll consider it.’
    He never saw his uncle consult with anyone ashore, though Joe sometimes ventured forth in the morning on his own business with ship’s chandlers, Board of Trade authorities and the like. Once Anthony pulled the cork out of the floorboard of his bedroom and saw his uncle in the office below counting a heap of gold into little piles. There were twenty or thirty such piles by the time he replaced the cork.
    There is something about a spy-hole which has an irresistible fascination for a young boy, even the most honourable young boy, and Anthony on a number of occasions took out the cork and stared down on the greying head of his uncle as he was writing or sorting out papers or adding up figures in a huge ledger. Once a knock came on the office door, and the boy noted with what care Joe put everything away – this in the safe, that in a drawer – before unlocking the door to admit, as it happened, Uncle Perry. Uncle Perry looked round the room curiously and made some joke and laughed: it was clear that he had not often been in this room before; and Joe answered his questions tightly and disapprovingly as if to make it plain that he did not like to be interrupted.
    On another occasion, hearing gruff and unfamiliar voices in the room below, Anthony saw the master and mate of Lady Tregeagle being entertained to a glass of rum and milk. This was the first time he had seen anyone invited into that private office. When they had finished their drink Joe brought out a piece of foolscap paper and signed his name on it, and they both signed their names after him. He did not however give them this paper but kept it himself; and when they had gone he sealed it up in an envelope and stood hesitantly in the middle of the floor for some seconds. Eventually he went to a small oil painting of an old lady on the wall and taking it down clicked it open on some sort of a hinge, so that between the painting and the back there was room to slip the paper.
    Anthony tried to take a firm hold on himself over this matter of peeping. He seldom yielded to the temptation without feeling mean about it afterwards; also he had no lock on his door and knew that if someone were to come into his room while he was so engaged he would never live down the shame.
    No word came to him during these weeks from his father. He had received one letter only since his mother’s death, and he anxiously awaited another. He was quite happy in his new life, chiefly because of Patricia; but he longed to see his father. He longed above all to be in the company of someone to whom he personally belonged. He could not-quite get over the feeling of not belonging here. It was as if he had been in the centre of a circle of friends, and suddenly he had lost that circle, and now he was attached to another circle, but was only at the extreme outer edge.
    He did not come to know Aunt Madge any better than the day he first arrived. That small precise face built upon its column of chins seldom carried much expression beyond a certain vague distaste for the vulgarity of the world around it. The large, shapeless body, with its fondness for ornament – overburdened,