“His looks didn’t last,” said the doting mother. “His hair turned from blond to brown and lost its curl. He ended up quite ordinary-looking. He’s bald now; he had quite a corporation before the disease took hold of him. He took to hiding it under sashes and gold chains when his waistcoats gave up the struggle.”

MacFarlane looked into the dark eyes, hard as obsidian. Strewth! She must have been a bugger to please, he thought.

“But he always had a sharp brain, our Syd. He went off a-soldiering because there was nothing else for him to do except for helping in the shop. We just had the one then. No way Syd was going to dirty his hands serving the community. And with two older brothers ahead of him, he was never going to inherit the business. Though he had a way with Joel and Henry. Could twist them round his little finger from an early age. They were devoted to their little brother. They would never have seen him go short.”

“Was he prepared for South Africa? That dreadful business?”

“Who was? Of course, he hadn’t expected a posting any farther away than Hull! He’d never have joined up. But there he was. Stuck with it. He made the best of it, though, and came away back home with a tidy sum he’d saved. “There’s nothing to spend your pay on, out there, Ma,” he told me. He invested it in the business. Had to, really, Joel and Henry being dead. They died together in that snow of the winter of 1901. A crash in the Hawksnest Pass, making the Christmas delivery in the truck.”

“Did he make any lasting friends in the army?”

“He didn’t much like the men in his unit. You can’t pick and choose in the army, but he was billeted with some real stinkers. He especially disliked his officer . . . a captain, I think. Dunne, his name was. He had it in for our Syd. Everyone noticed. Never missed a chance to do him in. But there was one who came to visit every year. A really good friend to Syd. Saved his life several times, Syd would say. ‘Uncle Herbert,’ we all called him.”

“What was that, Beattie? Why ‘uncle’?”

“Oh, that was what Syd’s son called him. Turn a page or two . . . here we are. There’s Syd posing at the front door, just back from the wars. Very brown, three inches taller and a lot thinner than when he’d left. They starved our poor boys! They were down to one biscuit a day sometimes. And here’s the girl he left behind. Grace.”

“Pretty girl!”