He had been to see the vicar, and arrangements for the funeral were completed. Tomorrow morning, at eleven, his father would be . . . He stopped mid-thought. “My father,” he said aloud, “will be buried, and I shall never see him again.”
With a sudden burst of anger directed at nobody in particular, he put his foot down on the accelerator, and arrived at the farm with a screech of brakes.
“Justin? Why so fast? You should join me in this very strange mode of transport, slow and careful.”
Justin stared. It was Pettison, in a wheelchair and snug in layers of rugs, being lowered from the back of an ambulance, and attended by anxious paramedics.
*
When they were settled in front of a fire in the farmhouse, Justin’s mother explained. “Robert rang soon after you left,” she said. “Insisted that he should be at your father’s funeral, and asked if we could put him up overnight. Well, as you know, we still have the hoist we got for Dad, and so I said yes, we could certainly manage. Wasn’t it wonderful of him? Goodness knows how you persuaded the hospital,” she added now, addressing a grinning Pettison.
“Charm, my dear, charm,” he said. “Amazing what one can do with a silver tongue. The ambulance will be back for me tomorrow afternoon, after the wake. I shall meet some old friends, I expect, Justin. You see, I had to come and say farewell to a good old friend.”
Of course, thought Justin. Brothers-in-law. He thought some more, and then was very sure that he hadn’t heard the whole story. With Pettison, there was always an ulterior motive.
“Right,” he said. “Well, we’d better get the bedroom ready, Mother. It’ll have to be the ground floor quarters, I’m afraid, Robert. We’ll never get you upstairs in that wheelchair!”
“Can you spare a moment, Justin, for a little private chat? A matter of business, my dear,” he added to Mrs Brookes, who smiled, added another log to the fire and tiptoed out.
“Wonderful mother you have, Justin. I am sure in some ways the death of your father must have come as a relief.”
“I don’t think we can know that,” said Justin coolly. “My parents had a form of silent communication, developed over fifty years of happy marriage. I hope I shall be able to say the same one day.”
“Remarkable!” said Pettison. “So now, just reassure me that the little people are still safe and well.”
“If you mean the latest consignment of endangered animals, then yes, they are perfectly well, and being looked after until you return. Do you have a customer for them?”
“Oh yes, a very noble customer! Titled aristocracy, no less. He should know better than to keep such people as pets, but who am I to quibble? I run a business, and ask no questions.”
“You’ll be answering some, one of these days,” said Justin gloomily. “I reckon your time is running out. The sooner you get back into harness, the better.”
“Ah, now there’s the thing. They say I have to stay in hospital, with occasional forays back home, for another three weeks. Even then, I shall still be in a wheelchair, possibly for good. So I wonder, when you get back, whether you could take over for a short while. You know the ropes at the zoo, and with Margie—and, I understand, the dreaded Dottie Nimmo—and the new keeper, things should go on pretty well. What do you think? There’ll be suitable rewards, of course.”
“What sort of rewards?” asked Justin, suspiciously. He imagined a cage full of rare parrots, or some such.
“Money, my dear chap. What else?”
Justin remembered his dream of running a proper, untarnished zoo, and said that in that case, he would do as his uncle suggested. “You’ll have to send a message to say I’m coming. Best send it to Margie. I must stay here for another week, and then I’ll return.”
“Ah, that brings me to the second thing,” said Pettison. “Your mother and I were having a chat, and she confided that she hoped to go away and stay with her old friend in Spalding for a week or two, more or less straight after the funeral. The old boy who works on the farm is quite willing to take over. Not much happening at the moment, he has said. So you can return to Farnden, and take over at the zoo without delay.”
They talked for a few more minutes, settling how the latest creatures were to be delivered to the buyer, and then Justin left Pettison to have a snooze by the fire while he helped his mother in the kitchen.
*
“Watch the milk in that saucepan, will you, Justin. It mustn’t boil, so tell me when it is about to.”
“How will I know when it is about to?”