Read Online Upright Piano Player by David Abbott - Free Book Online Page B

few years in the sun. The minutes of the meeting would record only his decision to retire—irregular no doubt, but in a situation like this, the least his friends could do.
    Henry had responded with a calm he did not feel.
    “I accept, naturally, your invitation to leave. I regret that I no longer hold enough equity to influence that decision, but perhaps, even if I did, I would choose not to. You are right: I no longer belong here. I have never been more certain of it.” He had paused and looked round the table. Only Charles met his eye.
    “When the time comes, you can be assured that I will play my part in any sentimental leaving ceremonies you wish to organize.”
    He had stood up and left the room, his board file left open on the table. The silence was eventually broken by Roy Greening. “Well, he didn’t seem to take it too badly.”
    Downstairs in the fifth floor loo Henry was vomiting into a toilet bowl.

    In fact, Roy had been wrong about Henry’s letter. It had sparked off an exchange of views that had enlivened the letters page of the
Times
for three weeks. Nor had Henry been without support, the letters running 60/40 in his favor.
    The BBC had defended the bulletins. The time allotted toeach region, they wrote, was dictated solely by the complexity of the weather conditions in that particular region on that particular day or hour. They did not monitor the amount of airtime allocated to each region, but they expected that if they did so, over the year, there would not be wide variances. They estimated that the extra staff hours involved in such a procedure would cost £20,000 a year, and asked was this really how Mr. Cage wanted them to spend the license money?
    A stuffy response, Henry had thought and had said so when invited to debate the matter on
Newsnight
. He had been up against two defenders of the forecasts: a Scottish Nationalist MP who had thought the letter racist and a geek from the weather bureau who had trotted out the official BBC line. They had both been achingly serious. Henry had been rather flippant and he had left the studio in high spirits, pleased to be back in the limelight.
    The euphoria lasted for two days. Friends had been on the phone congratulating him on his performance, even Mrs. Abraham had been impressed to see him on the telly again. “Like old times, Mr. Cage, and nice to see you spouting on about something that wasn’t just business, if you know what I mean.”
    On the evening of the third day, as he was watching television with a supper tray on his lap, a brick was thrown through his drawing room window. He cried out as the brick skidded across a table sending the framed photographs crashing to the floor. There was glass everywhere. His strangled cry became a bout of coughing, so it was a minute or so before he got to the door. Across the road, old Mr. Pendry was out on his driveway.
    “I heard the crash, saw a van driving away—sorry, didn’t get the number, though—not with my old eyes. Play it pretty rough those weather boys.” He closed his door, chuckling.
    The police were sympathetic and gave Henry the number of someone who would board up his window. They were honest enough to admit that the chances of identifying the culprit were zero, unless he or she did it again and got careless. They promised to make sure a police car patroled the street for the next few evenings. “Chances are it was a random piece of hooliganism. It could just as easily have been the house next door.”
    It was not, however, the house next door that had dog turds posted through the letter box that weekend and it was not next door’s front garden that was doused with industrial bleach the following Tuesday night. The police conceded that the vandalism was targeted and extended the evening patrols, but short of mounting a twenty-four-hour guard outside Henry’s house (not possible with their reduced resources) there was little else they could do. It was suggested that Henry might like to