Another man might have extended the same treatment to his parents now, allowing them to learn of Santo’s death in whatever way fate allowed them to learn it. But Ben had tried?and failed in so many ways?to be a man unlike his father, and that meant creating a breach in the wall that surrounded his heart at this moment, allowing some form of compassion to enter it despite his need to hide himself away in a place where it would be safe for him to grieve all the things he needed to grieve.
At any rate, the police were going to contact Eddie and Ann Kerne, because that was what the police did. They delved into the lives and histories of everyone associated with the deceased?God, he was calling Santo the deceased and what did that mean about the state of his heart??and they looked for anything that could be used to assign blame. Doubtless his father’s grief upon hearing about Santo would propel him into expletive first and accusation second, with no wife there willing or able to act as a moderating influence upon his words, but rather with Ann Kerne standing nearby looking what she felt, which would be tormented after years with a man whom she loved but could do little to temper. And although there was nothing for Ben to be accused of in Santo’s death, the job of the police was to make deductions, connecting dots no matter how unrelated they were one to another. So he didn’t need them talking to his father with his father unaware of what had happened to his favourite grandchild.
Ben decided to make the call from his office and not from the family’s flat. He went down by means of the stairs because doing so prolonged the inevitable. When he was in his office, he didn’t at once pick up the phone. Instead, he looked at the china board upon which the weeks prior to and after Adventures Unlimited’s opening day were marked in the fashion of a calendar and filled with both activities and bookings. He could see their need of Alan Cheston displayed on this board. For months before Alan’s advent, Dellen had been in charge of marketing Adventures Unlimited, but she’d not made much of a job of it. She had ideas but virtually no follow-through. Organisational skills were not her strength.
And what is her strength, if you don’t mind my asking? his father would have enquired. But never mind that, no answer required. The whole effing village knows what she’s good at and make no mistake about that, my boy.
Untrue, of course. It was just his father’s way of taking the piss because he believed that children were meant not to get puffed up, which was translated in Eddie Kerne’s mind to children not being meant to have confidence in their own decisions. He wasn’t a bad man, just set in his ways and his ways were not Ben’s ways, so they’d come into conflict.
Not unlike Ben himself and Santo, Ben realised now. The very hell of being a father was realising one’s own father cast a shadow one could not hope to escape.
He studied the calendar. Four weeks to opening and they had to open although he couldn’t see how they might be able to do so. His heart wasn’t in it, but they had so much money invested in the business that not to open or to postpone opening wasn’t an alternative he could choose. Besides, to Ben the bookings they had were covenants that could not be broken, and while there weren’t as many as he’d dreamed of having at this point in the business’s development, he had faith that bringing onboard Alan Cheston was going to take care of that. Alan had ideas and the wherewithal to make them into realities. He was clever, and a leader as well. Most important, he was not a bit like Santo.