Decider. Part 4

'Eight,' I said.

'You could have eight blue tiles? What about the others?'

'All the others, ninety-two, belong to other people. They could all choose whatever colour they liked for the tiles they owned.'

'It would be a mess,' Edward pointed out. 'You wouldn't get everyone to agree on a pattern.'

'You're absolutely right,' I said, smiling.

'But you're not really meaning tiles tiles, are you?' Christopher said.

'No.' I paused. For once, they were all listening. 'See, say this racecourse is like a hundred tiles. A hundred squares. A hundred shares. I have eight shares of the racecourse. Other people have ninety-two.'

Christopher shrugged, 'It's not much, then. Eight's not even one row.'

Neil said, 'if the racecourse was divided up into a hundred squares, Dad's eight squares might have the stands on!'

'Plank-head,' Toby said.

CHAPTER 3.

Why did I go?

I don't know. I doubt if there is such a thing as a wholly free choice, because one's choices are rooted in one's personality. I choose what I choose because I am what I am, that sort of thing.

I chose to go for reprehensible reasons like the lure of unearned gain and from the vanity that I might against all odds tame the dragon and sort out the Stratton feuds peacefully, as Roger and Oliver wanted. Greed and pride... powerful spurs masquerading as prudent financial management and altruistic good works.

So I disregarded the despairing plea from my mother's remembered wisdom and took my children into desperate danger and by my presence altered for ever the internal stresses and balances of the Strattons.

Except, of course, that it didn't seem like that on the day of the shareholders' meeting.

It took place on the Wednesday afternoon, on the third day of the ruin hunt. On Monday morning the five boys and I had set off from home in the big converted single-decker bus that had in the past served as mobile home for us all during periods when the currently-being-rebuilt ruin had been truly and totally uninhabitable.

The bus had its points: it would sleep eight, it had a working shower room, a galley, sofas and television. I'd taken lessons from a yacht builder in creating storage s.p.a.ces where none might seem to exist, and we could in fact store a sizeable household very neatly aboard. It did not, all the same, offer privacy or much personal s.p.a.ce, and as the boys grew they had found it increasingly embarra.s.sing as an address.

They packed into it quite happily on the Monday, though, as I had promised them a real holiday in the afternoons if I could visit a ruin each morning, and in fact with map and timetables I'd planned a series of the things they most liked to do. Monday afternoon we spent canoeing on the Thames, Tuesday they beat the h.e.l.l out of a bowling alley, and on the Wednesday they'd promised to help Roger Gardner's wife clean out her garage, a ch.o.r.e they bizarrely enjoyed.

I left the bus outside the Gardner house and with Roger walked to the stands.

'I'm not invited to the meeting,' he said as if it were a relief, 'but I'll show you to the door.'

He took me up a staircase, round a couple of corners, and through a door marked Private into a carpeted world quite different from the functional concrete of the public areas. Silently pointing to panelled and polished double-doors ahead, he gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder and left me, rather in the manner of a colonel avuncularly sending a rookie into his first battle.

Regretting my presence already, I opened one of the double-doors and went in.

I'd gone to the meeting in business clothes (grey trousers, white shirt, tie, navy blazer) to present a conventional boardroom appearance. I had a tidy normal haircut, the smoothest of shaves, clean fingernails. The big dusty labourer of the building sites couldn't be guessed at.

The older men at the meeting all wore suits. Those more my own age and younger hadn't bothered with such formality. I had, I thought in satisfaction, hit it just right.

Although I had arrived at the time stated in the solicitor's letter, it seemed that the Strattons had jumped the clock. The whole tribe were sitting round a truly imposing Edwardian dining table of old French-polished mahogany, their chairs newer, nineteen-thirtyish, like the grandstands themselves.

The only one I knew by sight was Rebecca, the jockey, dressed now in trousers, tailored jacket and heavy gold chains. The man sitting at the head of the table, grey-haired, bulky and authoritative, I took to be Conrad, the fourth and latest baron.

He turned his head to me as I went in. They all, of course, turned their heads. Five men, three women.

'I'm afraid you are in the wrong place,' Conrad said with scant politeness. 'This is a private meeting.'

'Stratton shareholders?' I asked inoffensively.

'As it happens. And you are...?'

'Lee Morris.'

The shock that rippled through them was almost funny, as if they hadn't realised that I would even be notified of the meeting, let alone had considered that I might attend; and they had every reason to be surprised, as I had never before responded to any of their official annual bits of paper.

I closed the door quietly behind me. 'I was sent a notification,' I said.

'Yes, but ' Conrad said without welcome. 'I mean, it wasn't necessary... You weren't expected to bother...' He stopped uncomfortably, unable to hide what looked like dismay.

'As I'm here,' I said amiably, 'I may as well stay. Shall I sit here?' I indicated an empty chair at the foot of the table, walking towards it purposefully. 'We've never met,' I went on, 'but you must be Conrad, Lord Stratton.'

He said 'Yes', tight lipped.

One of the older men said violently, 'This is a disgrace! You've no right here. Don't sit down. You're leaving leaving.'

I stood by the empty chair and brought the solicitor's letter out of a pocket. 'As you'll see,' I answered him pleasantly, 'I am am a shareholder. I was properly given advance notice of this meeting, and I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I do have a legal right to be here. I'll just sit quietly and listen.' a shareholder. I was properly given advance notice of this meeting, and I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I do have a legal right to be here. I'll just sit quietly and listen.'

I sat down. All of the faces registered stark disapproval except for one, a younger man's, bearing a hint of a grin.

'Conrad! This is ridiculous.' The man who most violently opposed my presence was up on his feet, quivering with fury. 'Get rid of him at once.'

Conrad Stratton realistically took stock of my size and comparative youth and said defeatedly, 'Sit down, Keith. Who exactly is going to throw him out?'

Keith, my mother's first husband, might have been strong enough in his youth to batter a miserable young wife, but there was no way he could begin to do the same to her thirty-five-year-old son. He hated the fact of my existence. I hated what I'd learned of him. The antagonism between us was mutual, powerful and lasting.

The fair hair in the wedding photographs had turned a blondish grey. The good bone structure still gave him a more patrician air than that of his elder twin. His looking gla.s.s must still constantly be telling him that the order of his birth had been nature's horrible mistake, that his his should have been the head that engaged first. should have been the head that engaged first.

He couldn't sit down. He strode about the big room, snapping his head round in my direction now and then, and glaring at me.

Important chaps who might have been the first and second barons looked down impa.s.sively from gold-framed portraits on the walls. The lighting hung from the ceiling in convoluted bra.s.s chandeliers with etched gla.s.s shades round candle bulbs. Upon a long polished mahogany sideboard stood a short case clock flanked by heavy old throttled-neck vases that, like the whole room, had an air of having remained unchanged for most of the old Lord's life.

There was no daylight: no windows.

Next to Conrad sat a ramrod-backed old lady easy to identify as his aunt, Marjorie Binsham, the convener of this affair. Forty years earlier, on my mother's wedding day, she had stared grimly at the camera as if a smile would have cracked her facial muscles, and nothing in that way, either, seemed to have been affected by pa.s.sing years. Now well into her eighties, she flourished a still sharp brain under disciplined wavy white hair and wore a red and black dog-toothed dress with a white, ecclesiastical-looking collar.

Rather to my surprise she was regarding me more with curiosity than rigid dislike.

'Mrs Binsham?' I said from the other end of the table. 'Mrs Marjorie Binsham?'

'Yes.' The monosyllable came out clipped and dry, merely acknowledging information.

'I,' said the man whose grin was now in control, 'am Darlington Stratton, known as Dart. My father sits at the head of the table. My sister Rebecca is on your right.'

'This is unnecessary!' Keith snapped at him from somewhere behind Conrad. 'He does not need introductions. He's leaving.'

Mrs Binsham said repressively and with exquisite diction, 'Keith, do stop prowling, and sit down. Mr Morris is correct, he has a right to be here. Face facts. As you cannot eject him, ignore him.'

Mrs Binsham's direct gaze was bent on me, not on Keith. My own lips twitched. Ignoring me seemed the last thing any of them could do.

Dart said, with a straight face covering infinite mischief, 'Have you met Hannah, your sister?'

The woman on the other side of Conrad from Mrs Binsham vibrated with disgust. 'He's not my brother. He's not not.'

'Half-brother,' Marjorie Binsham said, with the same cool fact-facing precision. 'Unpalatable as you may find it, Hannah, you cannot change it. Just ignore him.'

For Hannah, as for Keith, the advice was impossible to follow. My half-sister, to my relief, didn't look like our joint mother. I'd been afraid she might: afraid to find familiar eyes hating me from an echo of a loved face. She looked more like Keith, tall, blonde, fine-boned and, at the moment, white with outrage.

'How dare you!' She shook. 'Have you no decency?'

'I have shares,' I pointed out.

'And you shouldn't have,' Keith said harshly. 'Why Father ever gave them to Madeline, I'll never know.'

I refrained from saying that he must know perfectly well why. Lord Stratton had given shares to Madeline, his daughter-in-law, because he knew why she was leaving. In my mother's papers, after she'd died, I came across old letters from her father-in-law telling her of his regret, of his regard for her, of his concern that she shouldn't suffer financially, as she had physically. Though loyal in public to his son, he had privately not only given her the shares 'for the future' but had endowed her also with a lump sum to keep her comfortable on the interest. In return, she had promised never ever to speak of Keith's behaviour, still less to drag the family name through a messy divorce. The old man wrote that he understood her rejection of Hannah, the result of his son's 's.e.xual attacks'. He would care for the child, he wrote. He wished my mother 'the best that can be achieved, my dear'.

It was Keith who later divorced my mother for adultery with an elderly ill.u.s.trator of childrens' books, Leyton Morris, my father. The resulting devoted marriage lasted fifteen years, and it wasn't until she was on her own one-way road with cancer that my mother talked of the Strattons and told me in long night-time outpourings about her sufferings and her fondness for Lord Stratton; and it wasn't until then that I learned that it was Lord Stratton's money that had educated me and sent me through architectural school, the foundations of my life.

I had written to thank him after she died, and I still had his reply.

My dear Boy,I loved your Mother. I hope you gave her the joy she deserved. I thank you for your letter, but do not write again.Stratton.

I didn't write again. I sent flowers to his funeral. With him alive, I would never have intruded on his family.

With Conrad identified, and Keith, and Marjorie Binsham, and Conrad's offspring Dart and Rebecca, there remained two males at the meeting still to be named. One, in late middle-age, sat between Mrs Binsham and Keith's vacated chair, and I could make a guess at him.

'Excuse me,' I said, leaning forward to catch his attention. 'Are you... Ivan?'

The youngest of the old Lord's three sons, more bullish like Conrad than greyhound like Keith, gave me a hard stare and no reply.

Dart said easily, 'My uncle Ivan, as you say. And opposite him is his son Forsyth, my cousin.'

'Dart!' Keith objected fiercely. 'Be quiet.'

Dart gave him an impa.s.sive look and seemed unintimidated. Forsyth, Ivan's son, was the one, I thought, that had reacted least to my attendance. That is to say he took it less personally than the others, and he slowly revealed, as time went on, that he had no interest in me as Hannah's regrettable half-brother, but only as an unknown factor in the matter of shares.

Young and slight, he had a narrow chin and dark intense eyes, and was treated by the others without the slightest deference. No one throughout the meeting asked his opinion about anything and, when he gave it regardless, his father, Ivan, regularly interrupted. Forsyth himself seemed to find this treatment normal, and perhaps for him it was.

Conrad, coming testily to terms with the inevitable, said leavily, 'Let's get on with the meeting. I called it...'

'I called it,' corrected his aunt sharply. 'All this squabbling is ridiculous. Let's get to the point. There has been racing on this racecourse for almost ninety years, and it will go on as before, and that's an end to it. The arguing must stop.'

'This racecourse is dying on its feet,' Rebecca contradicted impatiently. 'You have absolutely no idea what the modern world is all about. I'm sorry if it upsets you, Aunt Marjorie, but you and Grandfather have been left behind by the tide. This place needs new stands and a whole new outlook, and what it doesn't need is a fuddy-duddy old colonel for a manager and a stick-in-the-mud Clerk of the Course who can't say boo to a doctor.'

'The doctor outranks him,' Dart observed.

'You shut up,' his sister ordered. 'You've never had the bottle to ride in a race. I've raced on most courses in this country and I'm telling you, this place is terminally old fashioned and it's got my name on it too, which makes me open to ridicule, and the whole thing stinks stinks. If you won't or can't see that, then I'm in favour of cashing in now for what we can get.'

'Rebecca!' Conrad's reproof seemed tired, as if he'd heard his daughter's views too often. 'We need new stands. We can all agree on that. And I've commissioned plans...'

'You'd no right to do that,' Marjorie informed him. 'Waste of money. These old stands are solidly built and are thoroughly serviceable. We do not not need new stands. I'm totally opposed to the idea.' need new stands. I'm totally opposed to the idea.'

Keith said with troublemaking relish, 'Conrad has had this pet architect roaming round the place for weeks. His His choice of architect. None of us has been consulted, and I'm against new stands on principle.' choice of architect. None of us has been consulted, and I'm against new stands on principle.'

'Huh!' Rebecca exclaimed. 'And where do you think the women jockeys have to change? In a part.i.tioned-off s.p.a.ce the size of a cupboard cupboard in the Ladies loo. It's pathetic'. in the Ladies loo. It's pathetic'.

'All for want of a horseshoe nail,' Dart murmured.

'What do you mean?' Rebecca demanded.

'I mean,' her brother explained lazily, 'that we'll lose the racecourse to feminism.'

She wasn't sure enough of his meaning to come up with a cutting answer so instead ignored him.

'We should sell at once,' Keith exclaimed, still striding about. 'The market is good. Swindon is still growing. The industrial area is already on the racecourse boundary. Sell, I say. I've already sounded out a local developer. He's agreed to survey and consider '

'You've done what what?' Conrad demanded. 'And you've you've consulted no one, either. And that's never the way to sell consulted no one, either. And that's never the way to sell anything anything. You know nothing about business dealings.'

Keith said huffily, 'I know if you want to sell something you have to advertise.'

'No,' Conrad said flatly, as if that settled it. 'We're not selling.'

Keith's anger rose. 'It's all right for you you. You inherit most of Father's residual estate. It's not fair. It was never never fair, leaving nearly all to eldest sons. Father was hopelessly old fashioned. fair, leaving nearly all to eldest sons. Father was hopelessly old fashioned. You You may not need money, but none of us is getting any younger and I say take out our capital may not need money, but none of us is getting any younger and I say take out our capital now now.'

'Later,' Hannah said intensely. 'Sell when there's less land available. Wait.'

Conrad remarked heavily, 'Your daughter, Keith, fears that if you take the capital now you'll squander it and there'll be none left for her to inherit.'

Hannah's face revealed it to be a bull's eye diagnosis, and also showed disgust at having had her understandable motives so tellingly disclosed.

'What about you, Ivan?' his aunt enquired. 'Still of the same indecisive mind?'

Ivan scarcely responded to the jibe, even if he recognised it as one. He nodded with a show of measured sagacity. 'Wait and see,' he said. 'That's the best.'