‘I’ll challenge the winner!’
Paul Galvin shouted at Grant Morrison and Justyn Silver, the folds of his belly falling over the top of his shorts as he watched them battle it out on the squash court. The two combatants needed no extra incentive, but eventually Grant emerged victorious and went straight into battle with Paul, who very quickly became incredibly sweaty. Galvin Senior was a smallish, stocky man with greasy, grey swept-back hair, and it soon became clear to Grant that he was cheating, reinventing the score at regular intervals and claiming some dodgy line calls in his favour. As he romped to a controversial victory he let out a roar emanating deep within the pit of his overfed stomach. Shaking hands heartily with his opponent and pretending to commiserate, he walked off the court with the triumphant look of a conquering Roman emperor.
‘So that puts you in your place,’ asserted Caroline, who had been the sole spectator on the balcony.
‘I couldn’t have cared less, but did you notice how brazenly he cheated?’
Caroline smiled, amused at how badly Grant was taking defeat; the validity or otherwise of the scoring was an arcane dark art to her.
Grant went on, ‘And I was concerned that he’d worked up such a sweat and was wheezing so much – like a wounded elephant – he might have had a cardiac arrest at any moment.’
‘Oh, come on. He beat you. Get over it,’ she teased.
Grant was having none of it. ‘I mean, what sort of man cheats at squash? Does he cheat in life, in business, too?’ He continued his rant as they walked back into the hotel, where he promptly bumped into Danny Galvin.
‘So, the old man thumped you,’ Danny announced joyfully.
‘Well, let’s just say I didn’t think the match was played on a completely level playing field.’
‘Oh, that means Dad was up to his usual tricks, winning by hook or by crook,’ Danny laughed.
‘Well, you said it. I wouldn’t like to accuse anyone.’
‘No. Everyone knows Dad always cheats at games. He has to win at all costs, you see. There are people who say he cheats in business, but I’d rather not know.’
Paul Galvin’s business dealings were largely mysterious, apart from the fact that he was a London-based accountant who commuted daily to his office in Holborn from his home in Chelmsford. However, later the same day Paul disappeared to visit a business venture of his own. He had used his experience and expertise advising clients in the property sector to set up some personal private speculation; in 1970 he had bought an old petrol station near Penzance and gained planning permission to knock it down and build three holiday homes.
By chance, that very day Paul’s son, Danny, and Justyn Silver filled their cars with four friends each and drove off to the go-karting circuit at Penzance. En route Danny unexpectedly pulled his Mini off the main road. Justyn drew up behind him. Danny had spotted his father shouting and gesticulating at a group of people outside what looked like a new housing development. Unbeknown to the teenager, the buildings had been on the market for over a year. Paul had been unable to sell any of the houses and now had the bank breathing down his neck. Danny was later to discover that his father had borrowed to the hilt to build the houses. With costs spiralling and Paul failing to recoup any cash from property sales, the bank were threatening to foreclose, and the family home in Chelmsford would have to be sold to pay off the debts. There was a further twist, known only to Paul: the company contracted to undertake the building work, Sandersons of Penzance, had been recommended by Tom, the hotel porter. Tom’s brother, Dickie, had worked for Sandersons for some thirty years as a plasterer. This brought the problem closer to home, as Dickie, Ivan’s father, was now unlikely to receive his wages.
Danny alighted from his car to hear his father yelling ‘You have done me’ at someone who was obscured by the group in front. ‘Come on out, you idiot. You have stitched me up, sold me down the river!’
Out of the group emerged Tom, for once looking sheepish and rather diminished. Paul used to enjoy a late-night brandy with the porters Tom and Bill, who would keep him company downing their ‘rosy leas’, as they called their tea in exaggerated Cockney accents.
In 1970, when Paul first told Tom about the plot of land he had bought in Penzance, Tom pointed him in the direction of Sandersons. When the houses didn’t sell, Paul attributed this partly to a poor performance from the firm. With the cost overrun and the failure to find buyers, Paul was left in severe financial distress by early 1972. He deliberately collapsed his company, Galvin Properties Ltd; this triggered Sandersons’ bankruptcy, as the firm was still owed 50 per cent of their fees. Tom, although blameless in the execution of the project, had wound up both his brother, Dickie, and Robin Sanderson, the owner of the company, by saying that Mr Galvin could still afford fancy hotel prices, living the life of luxury at the hotel on the hill, as he called it. Collapsing his company was Paul’s way of protecting his financial well-being, as he had put all his assets into his wife’s name to safeguard their home in Chelmsford.
As Tom moved forward from his position at the back of the group, Paul let rip. ‘This is the fool who talked me into building in this pisspot town with your mickey-mouse company.’
At that moment Paul saw his son Danny coming towards him, while the others waited in the two cars.
‘Dad,’ Danny called out. ‘Are you OK?’
‘No, he’s not OK. He’s not OK at all,’ said Robin Sanderson angrily.
Fortunately Danny’s unexpected appearance had a calming effect on Paul, who returned to his car exclaiming that he had had enough for one day.
Danny saw the looks of thunder on the faces of Robin Sanderson and Dickie Youlen, but he addressed Tom. ‘What’s going on?’
The porter was speechless, but his brother was more forthcoming. ‘Your father has cheated us – left me and my mates unpaid. And Mr Sanderson here tells us it’s the end. He and his family have had this business for eighty bloody years, and now it’s the bloody end!’ Dickie roared.
Danny hastily withdrew from the scene and told his friends what he had just heard.
‘Wow, that’s heavy, man.’ They fell silent for a few minutes before Caroline exclaimed that the scene with parents was becoming a real drag. Ten minutes later the teenagers were happily bashing into each other on the go-karting track, laughing their heads off.
Back at the hotel that evening the mood at the Galvins’ table was even more muted than at that of the Hughes-Webbs. Danny obtained permission to leave after the main course. His father hadn’t uttered a word since they sat down other than to bark his order from the table d’hôte menu at an unfortunate waitress.
Around eleven that night ‘Puffin, shag, herring gull, gannet and chough’ was heard in a deep Cornish baritone, floating into reception as Tom came on duty. Paul took a break from pacing around outside the hotel, dragging angrily on a cigarette, to utter in ominous tones, ‘I’ll sort him out.’