The Sinking Admiral. Simon Brett

kept up, she would have to descend to the cellar and switch to a new barrel of the draught bitter. However, most orders were for spirits, and she rang up the Admiral’s tab with a feeling that approached despair. The state of the pub’s finances could not justify this random largesse. Then she asked herself, what did she know? The old boy could have come into some unexpected funds. Maybe that would explain the odd procession of folk he’d had climbing to his Bridge throughout the day.

      At what time tomorrow, she wondered, would she receive a summons for the talk he’d promised her? And what would it be about? Amy looked at the happy crowd of villagers and others from further afield, and hoped it was not going to be to tell her that he was selling up. Equally, she hoped that he didn’t want to probe into those details of her past life that she wished to keep secret.

      ‘This a common occurrence, your boss pushing the boat out?’ Ben, the ever-present television presenter, leaned on the bar and shoved his whisky glass towards her. ‘You can make mine a double Glenlivet,’ he added.

      She didn’t answer his question, but looked at his brown eyes, twinkling at her with confident warmth, took the glass and fished out the required bottle, thankful he hadn’t asked for the peaty Laphroaig that was the Admiral’s favourite tipple. What was it about brown eyes that could melt a little piece of the steel she had built around her badly bruised heart?

      Amy pushed the filled tumbler towards the presenter and looked at the Admiral, now climbing up on a Windsor chair and raising his glass.

      ‘My friends, here’s to the “Last Hurrah”,’ he said, and the reckless gleam in his eye did nothing to reassure his bar manager.

      ‘“The Last Hurrah”,’ Ben murmured, raising his own glass. ‘And what’s that all about, eh?’

      ‘No idea.’ She came around from behind the bar and started clearing empty glasses, lining them up on the counter.

      ‘Tell us,’ shouted someone to the Admiral, ‘tell us about the time you were stranded in the Caribbean.’

      ‘Ah!’ he smiled benignly at them. For the last few weeks he had worn worry like a mother whose son was about to go to war, now it was as though peace had been declared. A slurp of Laphroaig and a long stare into the distance, then he began: ‘Antigua was on our port bow and a hurricane was beating up behind us. We would have to anchor down in Nelson’s Harbour and ride it out.’

      ‘Was he really ever a sailor?’ Ben pushed the flotilla of dirty glasses a little further to the back of the counter to give Amy space for another trayful.

      ‘Thanks,’ she muttered. ‘How about helping me collect the last of the empties?’

      ‘But I might drop them!’ He looked at her with limpidly innocent eyes and leaned back on his stool, surveying the scene. Amy followed his gaze. The Admiral might have been at the wheel of his schooner (a large photograph of the long-gone actual boat was on the wall of the bar, the wind filling its sails, including the spinnaker, the craft leaning forward with the urgency of a greyhound released from the traps). There was the slightest uncertainty in his stance on his chair, his customary drawl wobbled a bit, and the occasional fumbling for a word as he retold the familiar story, suggested he was deep in alcohol’s grip.

      Then Amy saw that Stan, the cameraman, had his lens trained with steady accuracy on the Admiral Byng’s landlord, relishing the opportunity of showing him up. ‘You bastard,’ she shot at Ben and headed for her boss.

      ‘… and as we hunkered down under a wind wilder than horses freaked out of their senses and a rain that emptied the heavens, we old mariners swapped stories of weird adventures. And that was when…’ the Admiral lowered his voice, and his audience waited in gleeful anticipation. ‘That was when I heard tell of the Treasure of the Forgotten Island.’

      ‘And it’s still forgotten!’ someone shouted out as Amy barged into Stan, knocking his camera off its target. ‘The island and its gold ingots, all forgotten.’ Most of the audience had heard the story more than once.

      Stan swore, lifted his camera, and glared at Amy. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

      ‘It’s so crowded tonight,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Can hardly move in here. Having trouble, are you?’ She picked up an empty glass and blocked his view as she moved towards her boss.

      The Admiral ran a finger over his silver moustache. ‘Ah, well,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Somewhere there’s a map, and some time I’ll be going back. And when I get my rightful fortune, it’ll be drinks all around every night.’

      ‘What rightful fortune?’ demanded one of the Viking re-enactors raucously.

      ‘Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?’ Fitz replied slyly. ‘Let’s just say that things here are changing. My fortune has turned around. Money worries will be at an end, family secrets will be revealed, and the Admiral Byng will be saved! Here’s to the “Last Hurrah”!’

      The vigour with which he raised his arm for the toast nearly overbalanced him. Amy reached out a hand and helped him down from the chair.

      Ben appeared. ‘Is there really a map?’ he asked the Admiral respectfully. ‘I’d love to see it. Treasure Island has always been one of my favourite books.’

      ‘Has it now? So you like stories of buried treasure, do you?’

      ‘Certainly do,’ said Ben. Amy saw him make a subtle sign to Stan that had to mean he should capture this scene on his camera. No doubt he was hoping for more footage of what he’d refer to in his presenterese as ‘Fitz’s lovable eccentricity’. ‘And you say the treasure is buried somewhere in the Caribbean?’

      ‘That treasure is,’ the Admiral replied judiciously. ‘Though you might do better looking for ill-gotten gold rather nearer to home.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ asked Ben eagerly.

      ‘What indeed?’ The Admiral’s eyes gleamed with what Amy recognised as his mischievous look. It did her heart good to see it back. She had been worried by Fitz’s lack of animation over the past few weeks. ‘Well, perhaps we can have a talk about that tomorrow,’ he went on. ‘I think tomorrow is going to be full of all kinds of revelations.’

      ‘Guilty secrets about Crabwell’s drug fiends, illegitimate children, and rich old people murdered in their beds?’ suggested Ben Milne.

      Really, thought Amy, was this how he tried to get his interviewees onto the scurrilous gossip tack? She’d thought he would be more subtle.

      The Admiral, however, was too canny to give any response that might provide titillation for Ben’s viewers. ‘That kind of thing, yes,’ he said, his intonation firmly suggesting that the subject was closed.

      Ben looked as though he would like to keep grilling Fitz, but instead he was nobbled by the Reverend Victoria Whitechurch. ‘Mr Milne, we need to have a talk about spreading the word of God. If you want to get a full impression of what life in the village is like, you and your cameraman will, I hope, be with us in church next Sunday?’

      ‘I’m afraid we’ll be finished with filming and back in London by then.’

      ‘But maybe you could come and visit St Mary’s tomorrow? It’s in terrible need of repair, and if its condition was seen on national television, it might—’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ben quite brusquely, ‘the subject of my documentary is the pub, not the church.’ The vicar recoiled, suitably snubbed.

      Amy went back behind the bar and started washing up the dirty glasses. Someone came and asked for the bar menu. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Last orders were twenty minutes ago. The kitchen’s closed.’ It was a shame. The pub hadn’t been this full since Christmas, and a little earlier she’d asked Meriel if she’d be prepared to take orders beyond the usual cut-off point.

      ‘Ah, now, that’s a pity,’ the cook had said. There was no hint of regret in her smile, indeed it could only be described