Children of the Lonely Night: The Third Book in the Harvey Saga

By J. Rowland Broughton

This book is about the last few weeks in the life of Richard Henry Harvey, a gentleman farmer and naval officer whose estate, Long Halls, and its range of woods and farms are situated near the village of Branworth in Lincolnshire. Richard Harvey was born in March 1936 and inherited Long Halls on the death of his father in September 1945. The Harvey family descend directly from a member of the knights array, who fought with William of Normandy in 1066, and there has been a continuous line of the family living at Long Halls since that time.

Richard Henry Harvey was educated initially by private tutor, then at Huntingdon School, and finally at Lincoln College, Oxford, after which he entered the Royal Navy as a career officer. As with many generations of his family, Harvey was granted the Monarchs Special Commission, and over the years, undertook numerous missions for both his monarch and the government. This book covers but a few weeks at the end of his life and is short on the detail of his younger days. Richard Harvey is an enigmatic man; his life is lost in a welter of deeds and misdeeds that mask the true nature of the man. Finally, after years of searching and one failed marriage, he finds the girl that he loves, only for her to ripped away from him by those who would terrorise his country and his home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Oct 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781493141999

J. Rowland Broughton

J. Rowlands Broughton was raised in Lincolnshire during the Second World War. He was educated at the Huntingdon School, Nottingham & District Technical College, Woolwich Polytechnic and the Royal College of Advanced Technology. Most of his working life has been spent in the design and development of Special Purpose Machines primarily for use in the Rubber, Plastics, and Pharmaceutical Industries. For the past twelve years he has been employed at the Nottingham Playhouse Theatre and during his time he has developed his love for writing novels, poetry, and that adaptation of Greek Tragedy. Over the years he has written books and manuals, and has developed programs on the use of Bills of Materials Systems, Systems Control and Engineering Control Systems. Jim is married with two adult children and enjoys music, poetry, painting watercolours and researching Medieval History. Return to the Soil is the second book in a series of four books covering life of the imaginary Harvey Family who had an estate on the edge of the Lincolnshire Fens.

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Copyright © 2014 by J. Rowland Broughton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 10/29/2015

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CONTENTS

Preface

Authors Note

Introduction

Addendum 1

Prologue

Chapter 1   Passing the Time

Chapter 2   The South Coast

Chapter 3   Dreams and Apparitions

Chapter 4   The Return Home

Chapter 5   Settling In

Chapter 6   Out into the Wild World

Chapter 7   On the Road Again

Chapter 8   An Afternoon Out

Chapter 9   They Also Serve

Chapter 10   Misty

Chapter 11   Plans for a Trip

Chapter 12   Obtaining Some Family

Chapter 13   All at Sea

Chapter 14   Long Halls

Chapter 15   Meeting the Gods

Chapter 16   Into the Backwoods

Epilogue

Postscript

For Karen, Alison, and Stuart

‘For we are the children of the lonely night,

No matter where our homes are meant to be,

Nothing can dispel our sense of fright.’

(Scenes in a Coffee Cup) JRB 1984

For Sue Goodchild, without whose badgering

this book would never have been finished

Other Books by this Author:

The New Day

Return to the Soil

The Missing Years (in preparation)

The Opportunist

PREFACE

S OME MEN ARE born to do great things and achieve their destiny without any apparent effort at all. It is almost as if they are selected by the gods to represent the desires and aspirations of their contemporaries, without there being any thought to their suitability for the job. For the most-part, these ‘cavalier’ sorts of characters swan through their lives without a care; not giving a toss for anyone other than themselves or their own way of life. Others can be branded as cowards, or as rogues and failures, often without there being even a modicum of proof or evidence of any guilt whatsoever. In most of these cases, the people rarely deserve the condemnation of their contemporaries and rarely are such people as bad as they are often painted. When one examines the details of the people whose lives have been changed by innuendo and rumour, one finds that in many of the cases, the people concerned had little or no control over the circumstances that led to their downfall. Had there been an element of control over such deeds, perhaps the outcome would have been quite different to what actually transpired.

Thomas Edward Willington

March 1987

AUTHORS NOTE

T HE HARVEY FAMILY are a product of my own imagination and bear no resemblance to any persons either living or dead. Branworth, Long Halls, and Huntingdon School do not exist other than in the context of these books and this narrative. As far as possible, the historical detail is factual, but in some places, the time scale may have slipped a little.

JRB

INTRODUCTION

T HIS IS THE story of the last few weeks in the life of Richard Henry Harvey, a gentleman farmer who was resident at Long Halls near the village of Branworth in the county of Lincolnshire. Richard was born in March 1936 and inherited the estate on the death of his father in September 1945. Henry Harvey led an active if remote sort of life; he was educated initially by a private tutor before being sent to Huntingdon School to prepare him for entry into Oxford University. It is a tribute to the young man’s resolve that he managed to keep the entire Long Halls Estate intact despite having to pay out a vast sum of money to settle his father’s death duties. This he and his estate manager accomplished without having to sell a single building or one acre of land. The death of his father left him an orphan at nine years of age, for his mother had died bringing him into the world. So it was that at an age when most young men are carrying out their youthful pursuits, Richard Harvey became the owner of the vast estate that is Long Halls. In all of this, Harvey was guided by his estate manager, friend, and mentor Jarvis Johnson plus a small group of guardians who organised his education and his development as a farmer and a manager. Johnson and Harvey were close companions and sound friends, and Richard owed Jarve a great debt of gratitude for the way in which he took over the control of the estate during some of Richard Harvey’s longer absences from the estate during his extended naval career. Richard was a man of many and varied talents, born into a wealthy and well-connected family, and yet deprived of the love and affection of a close-knit family. He did not have those close ties that a living family would have brought to a young man. All of his life was spent in pursuit of some mythical beast that he perceived as family happiness. Harvey was a giant of a man, standing 6' 6" tall, with breadth of frame that suited a well-proportioned man of his height. On the crest of all of this lay a shock of uncontrollable blond hair that retained its straw colour until the day that he died. He had a passion for riding that had at times resulted in serious injury and a disability in his left arm that had impaired both its sense of touch and its ability to rotate through a full articulation. His left hand was badly scarred, a detail that embarrassed him to the degree where he wore a glove upon it at all times when he was in the company of other people.

Harvey was an introvert, preferring his own company to that of the crowd. Very few people were close enough to him to be regarded as friends, but those who managed to break through that reserve were admitted to his small circle of friends for life, a factor that many of them did not discover until after his death. As far as women were concerned, we know very little, for very little is recorded of his relationships, certainly until the discoveries of the past few weeks raised the eyebrows of many in the community and in a district where he was believed to be a confirmed bachelor. On the surface of it all, he appeared to be a shy unassuming man who had little time for the uncertainties of female company and all of the mothers of ‘would-be brides’ who had given up their attempts to marry their numerous daughters to him in years gone by. Despite all of this, he was a very popular man inside his very restricted circle. He had few interests outside his large estate and the welfare of his workers and tenants. He was a Justice of the Peace, the duties of which he took very seriously, and he maintained a life-long interest in hunting, riding, and shooting in general, though his wounds and injuries had restricted his participation in later years. He owned a small number of racehorses and was a moderately successful owner on both The Flat and National Hunt courses in England. Until a short time before his death, Richard Harvey had not seen his son for almost ten years, and he had only one other living relative, his cousin Patricia, Lady Robson. Richard Harvey’s will is published as an addendum to this rambling screed and is self-explanatory. In his years since leaving the Navy, Richard appeared to be content to live out his time on the Long Halls Estate and only left his comfort zone when pressing matters took him away. Long Halls stands on a mound on the edge of the Lincolnshire Fens, commanding a panoramic view of fine English countryside whilst it remains discreetly shielded from the prying eyes of the rest of the world by a beautifully maintained semicircle of fine trees. A large portion of the estate’s acreage is let to tenant farmers, with the exception of the Hall Farm and the Court Farm, both of which are managed for the estate by Jarvis Johnson. From the date at which Harvey left Oxford University until Lady Day 1974, very little is so far known about the movement of Richard Harvey. Long Halls was mainly shuttered and barred, the exception being the central portion and perversely the oldest portion of the main house and kitchens, which were kept in readiness so that Harvey would have a place to go to when his duties allowed it. Outside the writing of these pages, there is little to be found in official documentation, though it is known that Harvey was involved in some form of intelligence work and was a full-ranking commander for a large part of his service. He returned to Long Halls on the day after Lady Day 1974 to take up the reigns of his life just as if there had been nothing in the intervening years. Most of the details that you see here were written by Richard Harvey himself, and as his solicitor, I have merely placed them in some sort of logical order and provided some additional words to make the whole thing more readable than it was.

All of these words have all been lifted from handwritten notes made by Richard Harvey in diaries, notebooks, along with some short poems that were added at various times during his final few months. Some of the notes might well have meant something to Harvey, but there are a small number of which where the meaning escapes me, so being a man of my profession, I have omitted them. From the way in which the notes and drawings are constructed, I can only conclude that Harvey must have occupied his leisure time for a considerable period of time to complete them, but there is strong evidence to suggest that he had written the bulk of this work during a short period prior to his death. I do not think that Richard Harvey would like to see the estate become the subject of lengthy litigation, and I do not think that this will be the case, for his son’s case appears to be indisputable. As requested in the handwritten will, this manuscript was first read by the writer of this introduction to this book; it was then read by Jarvis Johnson and then passed on to Sir Malcolm Wakeham. Both of these gentlemen agreed that as far as they could ascertain, the details contained herein were the truth. It had been the intention of Richard Harvey to submit this document to the national newspapers to make certain that the details of this case became known. However, in consultation with Sir William Faddon, Sir Malcolm Wakeham, and various members of the government, it was decided that to leave it to the whims and fancies of journalists might limit the scope and detail of the story. So it came down to my making a decision to publish the details in the format that you see before you. Because Richard Harvey wrote most of it, it comes from the very seat of the action. It is minus one or two notes and memoranda that have little bearing on the outcome of events. I am indebted to Sir Malcolm Wakeham for his assistance in all matters relating to the armed services part of this account; my thanks must also go to Jarve Johnson and his sister Elizabeth, for their confirmation of the details relating to the marriage of Richard and Mary Austin. I am grateful to Sir William Faddon of Faddon, Hill, and Prescott, the Harveys’ London solicitors and last but not least, all branches of the armed services, the police, and the Home Office for confirming, where it was possible, the details contained in this account. Finally, if the publication of this record in its complete form contributes in any way towards emphasising that men and women are very often different to how their public image is perceived, then this intrusion into the life of a very private man has not been a waste of time.

Thomas Edward Willington

The Havelings, Upton

Nottinghamshire

ADDENDUM 1

Last Will and Testament

Note:

I , RICHARD HENRY Harvey, of the Long Halls Estate, Branworth, in the county of Lincolnshire, being of sound mind, do hereby declare this to be my last will and testament.

I hereby will and bequeath to Jarvis Johnson, my good friend these many years, all those buildings, outhouses, barns, and courtyards and all of the land totalling some 327 acres, collectively known as ‘Court Farm’, Branworth, Lincolnshire in recognition of his goodwill, friendship, devoted service, and loyalty that has remained unchanged for these past thirty years. These lands and buildings are ceded to him and to his heirs and successors in perpetuity.

I hereby will and bequeath that all of my full-time staff each receive the sum of fifty pounds for each completed year of service to me.

I hereby bequeath to the nation that collection of papers, books, maps, and documents known collectively as the ‘Harvey Archive’.

I request that Thomas Edward Willington be my legal and literary executor and that all of the papers, manuscripts, photographs, and documents relating to those handwritten papers not now in his possession be forwarded to him as soon as is conveniently possible after my death.

I do hereby request that all of my tenants and retired workers are given the tenancy of such properties that they hold at the time of my death for the duration of their lives or for such periods of time that suits their requirements.

Subject to all of the above provisions and notwithstanding the considerable shock that this may bring, I hereby will and bequeath the balance of my estate, all of the cash, stocks and bonds, and financial holding, all my worldly goods and chattels to my only son Edward James Austen Harvey, the sole offspring of my marriage to the late Mary Austen of Upton in the county of Nottinghamshire.

Signed under my hand this thirtieth day of March 1986.

Signed: Richard Henry Harvey

Witnessed: William John Clarke

and: Robert Scott.

Note:

Attached to the Will are two further documents: The first is a certificate of marriage between Richard Henry Harvey and Mary Austen, which took place at the Registry Office in Newark, Nottinghamshire, on 23 September 1960.

The second is a birth certificate registering the birth of Edward James Austen Harvey at the same office on 26 May 1961.

PROLOGUE

O N 9 SEPTEMBER 1945, Group Captain Henry Gervase Harvey RAF of Long Halls, Branworth, Lincolnshire set off at around four thirty in the afternoon to drive from Biggin Hill near Bromley in Kent to his home in Lincolnshire. On a tight bend near the village of Crowton, he was in collision with an articulated lorry that had slewed across the road in front of his car. Harvey was killed instantly. Thus ended the life of one of the unsung heroes of the Second World War.

Richard Edward Harvey, his only son, had been born at Long Halls on the night of 18 March 1936. His mother, Mary Ayres Harvey, had died within six hours of his birth, so now by the age of nine, he is the sole heir to the Harveys’ estates and on the night of 11 September 1945, when he arrived home from Huntingdon School, he officially inherited the estate under the guidance of Sir John Wakeham, a distant relative, the family’s legal advisor, and a close friend of his dead father.

CHAPTER 1

Passing the Time

I

I CANNOT REMEMBER the real reason for my writing down this series of events, other than having a feeling that sooner or later, I would have to give an account to some higher authority than myself, and as my memory is not what it once used to be, some basic aide-memoire would come in useful. There are times when it is difficult to remember the chronological order in which various events took place, particularly when they moved at a very rapid pace. Over the years, I have developed the habit of keeping a daily log or diary so that I can assess, at a later date, my reasons arriving at a particular conclusion. This is partly a leftover from my days in the Navy, when keeping a log was part of the daily routine. On top of all of that, I am a habitual compiler of lists and ingredients which combine in helping me to keep abreast of the events and players that combine to create this rich charade we call life. Apart from the first few years of my life, and even they are a dim and distant memory devoid of faces, and a few brief months in the early 1960s, I have led an existence in which women have played only a very small part. I am not a homosexual or even a misogynist, for all of my life, I have had all of the desires and demands that a healthy man can have for the opposite sex without the need to chase the local women around the fields to assuage my sexual desire. The truth is that I have never developed a technique or an ease of function in the company of women, so with a few exceptions, I have not entered into anything like a lasting relationship that had any chance of flowering into that condition we laughingly call love. It is true that I had many fleeting affairs, but destiny seemed to have picked me out as one who would remain single for most of his life. Many of my affairs were brought to an end by my female partners, mainly because I lacked the basic skills to develop my attachments from being romantic attachments to a point where they might have developed into a serious love affair. In most of the cases, the young women usually found someone else who had the skills that I lacked, and before I had the chance to react, my career in the Navy intervened, and they lost patience or heart and went off into the world to find someone with a greater sense of urgency than I had. For my part, I usually crawled away to drown my irritation rather than my sorrows in some remote corner where no one knew me. I believe that even the most conservative of men are occasionally wont to stray away from their normal pathway once in a while, simply to rid their soul of unwanted divergences.

The most recent of my affairs had been ended by the lady calling my bluff or I had been found wanting in some obscure department of my being to be finally faced with the fact that yet another tottering liaison had crumbled to its inevitable conclusion. I must admit that it had been a most enjoyable affair while it lasted, staggering through all of the recognisable phases to its ultimate conclusion, and when the final whistle was about to be blown, I had fallen into the set-piece routine, even to the point of nearly asking her to marry me. But I knew what the answer would be before I pattered out my stock speech. The lady concerned knew that I was fairly well off, but that did not hold any sort of attraction to her; it seems that what held good twenty years ago was no long a matter for consideration in this day and age. On reflection, there was little to blame her for; she was, after all, only a slip of a girl, and I was old enough to be her father, or should I say that she was young enough to be my daughter. Either way, the result would have been the same.

As in most areas of the country, Lincolnshire has its own collection of well-entrenched bachelors, and being so long in the arena of the single male, it was sufficient for my contemporaries to consider me one of the few. They formed a loose sort of brotherhood to offer advice and consolation to the broken-hearted few who found themselves in situations that did not truly reflect their intentions, but most of all, they rallied round to offer sympathy and to fill the gaps left when at last a lengthy affair came to a timely conclusion. Quite what they will make of my marriage, I hate to think. But all of that is a side issue.

I called a meeting of my three consulting members, who in short are three men of roughly my own age, who being unmarried and unattached, get together as and when the situation deems it either advisable or necessary to help one of us to get roaring drunk or at least to cry on each other’s shoulders, whichever state suits the conditions in which we find ourselves. This glorious organisation is known far and wide (well, in our area of Lincolnshire) as ‘Bachelors Unanimous’ (BU). My demands on the comforts of BU had recently occurred on average about once every five or six months, and my state of mind varied in each case according to the length of time each particular affair had lasted. We had no fixed venue for our meetings, the only criteria being that they had food and drink in both quality and quantity. The only other factor that had a part in our deliberations was that the meeting should take place in easy reach of our homes, this being in no small part due to the fact that the drinking and driving laws are harsh and should remain so. So it was when my latest romantic involvement, the one with Sanda Parkin, came to an end, we settled upon The Spa Hotel at Woodhall, which was about ten miles away from my home at Long Halls.

The Spa is a rambling old establishment full of memories of times gone by, and in many respects, it is a capsule of time that failed to die when the rest of the world changed at the end of the First World War. Many of its standards of service are not to be found anywhere on mainland Britain. There, they still thrive on the selling of service, and that means service of the highest quality, and we were prepared to pay the price for that service, the only element that has changed beyond all belief since the end of the Great War. The hotel has managed to retain an air of loft gentility, coupled with the ability to produce meals of the very highest standard and to present it in a way that is pleasing to all but the unfeeling few. The only disadvantage the hotel has is its proximity to the golf course, a game I must admit that never raised even a modicum of interest in me. So on that night when we had dined particularly well and had drank to excess, in spite of the real reason for the meeting, the conversation inevitably turned to talk of bunkers and greens and handicaps, indeed all of those things a non-golfer found of no importance whatsoever. As the conversation continued so, my intake of alcohol increased to the point that well before the end of the night, I was obviously drunk to everybody around except of course myself. The rest of that night and indeed the next ten days are little more than a blur at best and a total blank at the worst. I could recall all that happened prior to arriving at ‘The Spa’; I had driven out of the rear gates of the Long Halls Estate in the Rover and had cruised down the back road to Potterton, where I was due to pick up Smitherson outside ‘The Lion’; he was on time as usual. We left there at about 7.15 p.m. and motored by way of Metham and Martin across to Woodhall, where we met up with Hackney and Rogers, arriving at the Spa about 8 p.m. For once, our arrangements seemed to be going well.

The group of us were all of much the same age and background as each other in that we all had interests in farming and its attendant offshoots. It wasn’t until we were actually sitting in the bar of the hotel that the conversation actually turned to the subject of golf. We had eaten well and drank at length; in fact, we were one of the last, if not the very last customers to leave. I can remember going into the car park to find that it was empty except for the two cars for our group. Rogers and Hackney both had early meetings on the following morning, so they drove off straight away, but Smitherson and I sat nattering to each other on a low stone wall that surrounds the lawns of the hotel and forms a barrier between the car park and the road. It was only when the hotel manager strolled round to lock the car park gates that we realised that the time must be after one o’clock. In retrospect, I think that a sober man would have recognised the fact that after all of the night’s revelries, he was in no fit state to drive, but that was not the case, and as we were both in roughly the same condition, we clambered into the car and roared out of the car park at speed, headed out over the Kirkstead Bridge and took the fen road towards Martin. The car windows were right down because it was a warm and humid, moonlit night. It was late and most people would have been in their beds by that time, which was probably just as well, for if there had been a policeman anywhere along the route, we would surely have been stopped and breathalysed, and without a doubt, I would have been banned from driving. I can vaguely remember dropping Smitherson off at the crossroads leading down to Potterton and calling out to him as he staggered off into the night in the opposite direction to the one that I was taking. I blasted off into the unknown, for I had no desire whatsoever of returning to what would have been a large and empty mansion. What happened was that I suddenly had an almost maniacal desire for speed; for some reason, it suddenly became of paramount importance for me to find out exactly how fast my old Rover could travel. I drove like the wind out on to the open road, along roads that are still but a vague recollection to me, perhaps from the dim recesses of my youth, and at speeds that must have horrified some of the villagers, I shot out of their dreams as I travelled though their night. How many of them must have sat there in fright waiting for the impact to occur, I do not know. I flashed through village after village, and still, the angels of good fortune continued to shine on me. During this whole episode, not one police car, not one patrolling constable came within spotting distance of me. I recalled walking in dew-soaked grass and feeding lumps of sugar to the donkeys that came to investigate my presence, but all of this is but a blur to me. I saw the sea and the initial vision of the beginning dawn, and then I drove again round a long slow curve, meeting people as I progressed: kings, princes, knights, and bishops each dressed in the robes of the offices, each one waiting for someone to address them. I saw the final scramble to avoid the hedge and the deepening ditch as darkness finally closed around me.

II

My entire relationship with Bachelors Unanimous was false and had been so for many years, for in the long hot summer of 1960, when I was home recovering from wounds received on active duty, I first met Mary Austen. Jarve Johnson had been the one constant in my life, the only person whom I felt I could trust. For as long as I can remember, he has been the only person to whom I could turn to for advice or help and know that I could receive it unstintingly and without excuse or motive. I cannot remember my mother or what she looked like, for she died giving birth to me, and my father in his torment at her death destroyed all pictures and photographs of her that were in existence. It must be a family trait in that both he and I share the same disdain for photographs. My father was a remote, almost sombre sort of man, who did not display any outward signs of affection or grief, yet I know that he loved me and that in his way, he was still in love with my mother. My entire life has been governed and centred round Long Halls and its estate; I went off to school, as the men of my family have done these past two centuries; my time in ‘the service’ and the few weeks that I spent at Upton in the early 1960s are those that are of note. As a child, I spent the whole of my time either at Huntingdon or at Long Halls. My father was also tied to the estate and to his career in the RAF, so we never had holidays as such and rarely spent a night away from Long Halls unless duty required it. In most cases, when the sun started to dip in the sky, the Harveys turned their feet towards home.

It must have been in May or early June 1960 that Jarve had said, ‘I think that it is time that you had a change of scenery, Dick.’ He smiled at the shock that must have shown on my face. ‘You need a bit of a change to set you up now that your wounds have healed, and the doctor thinks that it would be a good thing too to get you away from here for a while.’

‘So you’ve been discussing things with him behind my back, have you?’ I grinned. ‘Now it’s real shame that you couldn’t ask me first.’

‘Well you know how it is, Dick.’ He was embarrassed. ‘The time and the opportunity presented itself, so I took it!’ I remembered that look of shock on his face for it was not in keeping with his whole attitude towards work or on his general outlook on life. ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘it’s time you started to broaden your farming horizons a little and mix with a few people from differing walks of life.’ It was true, of course. Since the death of my father and my leaving university, the whole of my life had been involved with people much older than myself. It was a life of crops, yields, stock, farms, and the general running of the estate or my being away on various service commissions for the Royal Navy.

Jarve was wise enough to recognise that this was not really enough variation for a ‘young sprout’ like me, and so he, in his countrified way, was trying to rectify the matter. ‘Don’t you know anyone who you could spend a few days with, Dick?’ he asked seriously. ‘It’s not good for a young man to have a social life away from the general run of his home and work. You seem to spend all of your time cooped up with men the same age as me.’

‘I don’t mind that, Jarve,’ I laughed. ‘The work gets done and we get along okay. The estate keeps making a profit and I’m advancing in my naval career.’

‘That is what I’m talking about,’ Jarve insisted. ‘You have no life away from your work. Here you spend your time cooped up alone in that rambling old house with two or three old ladies to fetch and carry for you. When you are away, you spend your time working for and with people who are many years older than yourself. When you are out on the estate, the people who you have contact with are usually many years older than you are, and you really do not have any social contact with people of your own age, and I think that it is time you at least had a change of environment.’

‘As you know, Jarve, I have only one relative in the entire world. The only friends I have are former school and university friends, none of whom I would like to foist myself on even for a few days,’ I explained. ‘So, Macduff, what do you suggest?’ I asked this in all humility, for I had never been able to go outside the bounds of my very limited world in the past. I thought that this had him foxed, for he was suddenly stunned into silence. As it turned out, he was not foxed at all; he was merely thinking out his next move. Jarve Johnson was not the sort of man to be perplexed by any problem. It was true that some problems took longer than others to resolve, but the truth was that could all be resolved given the right sort of time and effort. On this occasion, he was merely withdrawing into himself for a while, and before I had time to feel pleased with myself, he rapidly turned the tables on me. I love Jarve as most young men love their fathers, for although I know him as a friend at that time, he was also the rock upon which I could rely at all times and in all circumstances. My admiration for him even up until this very day knows no bounds, for if ever a man gave his life to a stranger’s son, it was he.

When my father died suddenly in a road accident in September 1945, Jarve had been my father’s steward since the middle of 1930 and was some twenty years my senior and so had, I believe, much more experience of life than I. Many men would have baulked at taking on the orphaned son as well as running the estate, but this was not in Jarve’s character. He seized both duties as a challenge to his experience and ingenuity, and in all categories, he surpassed all that could be expected of him. He ran the estate in a manner that was as firm as it was fair; no one was given preference over another, and no one received more than was their fair due. He rooted out the bad and unfair as ruthlessly as he saw necessary and replaced them with sound and efficient farmers. His principles of sound farming and good animal husbandry held firm in his deals in the field of human relationships. A short time elapsed before Jarve answered my comment, but when it came, I was the one who was stunned into silence.

‘In that case, I think that you should go and spend some time at my sister’s place over at Upton,’ he decided.

‘Your sister?’ I was astounded. ‘What sister is that? I never knew that you had a sister.’

‘Then it just goes to show that you don’t know everything that there is to know about me now, doesn’t it?’ was all that he could muster, but there was a grin as wide as the Humber Estuary on his face; the fact that he had never mentioned his family and had never even given the slightest reference to a sister all took me by surprise. ‘Yes,’ he continued without the slightest concern, ‘I reckon that you could do with spending a couple of months with the women over at Upton. That will set you up before having to report back to your office down in London. It will do you a power of good, young man.’

I would not wish the reader to think for one minute that I was totally and utterly within his control, for that would not be at all true, but he was the nearest thing that I had to a reference point that I had had since the time of my father’s death. My family’s solicitors saw to the legal and financial affairs of the estate and the administration of my business interests, but this was all of secondary importance to me. The really fantastic job of reconstruction after the Second World War was all down to the gigantic efforts of Jarve and Jarve alone as my steward and my friend. I could not envisage him being a part of another family or of being a brother to a band of girls. The