"Some time during 1949-50, a Captain Harkness came to live in the village. He looked a little like the big screen charmers of the time - Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr., etc. He was well spoken and seemed to charm everyone. He befriended my father, who was very impressed by him, and my father began to spend evenings losing money at cards to him. As far as my mother was concerned, Captain Harkness was no Captain and she summed him up quite correctly as a con man. Father wouldn't hear of it and he regaled us with stories of Captain Harkness' heroic war deeds - told to him, of course, by Captain Harkness. The climax came when Harkness left the village one day without notifying any of the many from whom he had borrowed money 'to tide him over till he could cash his cheque'. Father was among them!"
