‘It would,’ I said. ‘And not only because of the picture. May I make a confession?’
He looked at me without pleasure. Then he slowly stretched up his arms and, bending them, nursed the back of his head in his palms. His striped shirt fitted smoothly into his waistband. ‘I don’t think I have the strength for a confession. But if you must, make it.’
I told him.
Halfway through, he lowered his arms. At the end, he picked up a pencil and played with it idly. He said, ‘So you know quite a lot about our little dabble in hairdressing. Why are you telling me, Wendy?’
‘Because it came up at the lunch with Mr. Johnson,’ I said. ‘We met a Colonel Sullivan who works for Black & Holroyd. He knew MCG were in trouble. He asked if Kingsley’s were interested.’
‘And you said?’ said Sir Robert. The pencil had come to rest.
‘Nothing. But I thought you should know.’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Robert. ‘I’m glad you told me. How did you learn what we were doing?’
I said, ‘I read files. I probably shouldn’t. But I love the firm. I want to help, if I can. That’s why I told you.’
‘I think I believe that,’ said Sir Robert. ‘In fact, I know I do.’ He tossed down the pencil and sinking back, smiled at me ruefully, his legs outstretched, his hands loose on the arms of his chair. The neck of his shirt was unbuttoned. He said, ‘It’s my fault, really, isn’t it, Wendy? I should have trusted you with all this long ago. And of course Colonel Sullivan’s right: MCG are ideal for our purposes. The salons would give us a new market for all our washing and drying equipment. The firm is well run: the problems are recent, and all on its cosmetic side. But as it happens, that’s enough to make its shareholders restive, and give us an opening. We want that new outlet.’
‘And if you owned MCG, it would help service your debts?’ I said cautiously. ‘The loans you raised to set up Mr. Morgan’s division? In which case—’
‘Yes?’ said Sir Robert. His head had levelled, compressing his jaw.
‘—I wondered if you meant to resume the talks secretly when you and Lady Kingsley went on vacation? Because if so, the portrait would make a very good cover.’
‘The portrait?’ said Sir Robert. He had forgotten about it. He said, ‘Johnson. Yes. Where was he going?’
‘He’s going to Essaouira,’ I said. ‘It’s a place on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. He isn’t going to paint. He’s meeting a woman called Dolly.’
‘Who is she?’ he said. He looked irritated rather than amused.
‘I don’t know. Apparently Mr. Johnson has a number of lady friends. But if you and Lady Kingsley stayed where he could reach you, he could finish the painting, and you could court MCG without causing more rumours.’
I waited. He said, ‘Yes. Yes, that would be possible.’
I knew it would. I knew how often he used these short trips to camouflage business. I said, ‘There is something else. It might scupper it, or it might be a help.’
‘Yes?’ he said. He had pulled himself to the edge of his seat and picked up the pencil again.
I said, ‘The PR man, Colonel Sullivan will be over there too. He goes about with a vintage car crowd, and every year they arrange a foreign rally. I’ve checked. This time it begins at Rabat, spends three days partying at Marrakesh, and ends in the south after ten days. They don’t touch Essaouira. Now, the Colonel’s inquisitive. On the other hand, he knows you want Mr. Johnson to finish the portrait, and the fact that you haven’t altered your plans may well put him off the scent. I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know either,’ said my Chairman. He pushed both hands through his hair, which stood up in spikes like a boy’s. He said, ‘You’re an amazing girl, Wendy. What shall we do? I must think about it. I shall, of course, and you will hear what we decide. You can probably help us. Not that it’s the only problem we have.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘The bomb. They haven’t caught anyone yet?’
‘Well,’ said Sir Robert, ‘the only person they’ve caught can’t tell them anything. They’ve found one of the bastards in the wreckage. He must have blown himself up.’
I thought of us all standing there, and the silly conversation with Mr. Morgan. I said, ‘Who was he?’
‘Nobody knows. They asked me to go and look at him. Not very nice.’
‘No,’ I said. I waited.
He said, ‘The point is, they also asked me to open the safe and take our private papers away. I suppose they wanted to check they were in order.’
‘And they weren’t?’ I said.
‘Oh, they were,’ said Sir Robert. ‘But they weren’t quite the way that I’d left them. I happened to know exactly how the papers were lying.’
He would. He’d spent the night in the office. Part of the night, anyway. I said, ‘You mean the safe was secretly opened and closed by someone during the bomb scare? Then the same someone was caught by the explosion? Who could he have been?’
‘The minion of somebody,’ Sir Robert said. ‘There are agents around who are prepared to spy for anyone who can pay them. Anyone with an interest in the stock market. A rival company. A potential target. Or the opposite: a raider sizing up possible victims. Maybe this attempt was the work of one man, and his information died with him. But maybe it didn’t. We’ll only know by watching the market.’
I wondered if he was right. I thought he probably was. I knew about the security measures the company took against hacking and tapping and listening. Every firm did the same.
He got up and stretched, opening his shoulders, and stood rubbing one sleeve with his hand. I stood also. He said, ‘About the files. I’d have worried if it had been anyone else, and of course it wasn’t in order. That said, you’ve turned in a very shrewd piece of work, and I can see there might be more you could do for us. We’ll certainly talk about this again. But meantime, there’s only one rule. I don’t need to tell you, my dear. You don’t discuss these things outside the company.’
No one has a voice, or a smile quite like his. I reassured him.
My mother
is
the company, practically speaking.
Presently he put me into a taxi, and I picked up the Volkswagen and drove myself home to Ealing to assuage the anxiety everyone assumed my mother was suffering. The trouble was, I had a much greater anxiety than she had. I had to tell her that I had told Sir Robert we knew all we knew.
She would kill me.
She didn’t kill me at once, because she was smoking and feeding the printer. Because she was late with her thesis, the sitting-room wasn’t full of the usual neighbours, and she contented herself with routine questions, at the pitch of a bull seal with asthma. Why had she to rely on the answerphone to tell her her daughter was living? Did this firm not send a policeman to break the news to a worrying mother? And if her daughter was living, why did she not present herself on television, when the cameras were all over Kingsley’s? All day, the neighbours had rapped on the door. Was I deformed, that I couldn’t be photographed?
I supposed it would have made her day if I’d been photographed charred in the ruins. I explained, in a low scream, that I’d been at lunch with Johnson Johnson. I started on an introduction to the rest of my news, but what chance did I have against my mother’s lungs, and my mother’s professional daisywheel? I noticed, approaching the printer, that it was composing a speech on geriatrics and the demographic revolution. As I passed it, the machine buzzed along backwards, concluding the author’s case before stating it. My mother banged down a plate of frizzled lasagne and sat herself opposite, her arms as nearly crossed as she could get them. A cup of very strong Turkish tea stood before her. ‘You tell me about Johnson,’ she commanded.
I was happy to talk about painting. I described the rounds in the Great Portrait Battle, and she listened in relative silence. Her eyes, when not shut against cigarette smoke, are large, black and heavily ringed. On the printer, the speech rolled up a space, zapped a dot, delivered three lines, and rolled up another few inches of silence. At the end, she delivered her verdict. ‘You did all right, Wendy. Shot him tight close-probe questions, fixed your aspiration level and stuck to it; thought out your Min and Max Positions and was all set to Walk Away and Come Back. But he outsmarted you. You didn’t make him want the job.’
‘He didn’t want the money,’ I said. ‘After the Chairman . . .’
‘He didn’t need the money,’ she said, banging the pages of
Who’s Who
before her. ‘Look at them schools. Ex-Navy. Yachting Clubs. You needed to find something else.’
I thought I had something else. I thought he really wanted to finish that portrait. I remembered something he’d asked me that I hadn’t asked him. I said, ‘Is he married?’
‘You don’t know?’ my mother screamed. ‘One wife, died years ago.’
‘Years ago?’ He hadn’t looked as old as all that. I read the
Who’s Who
upside down. He wasn’t as old as all that. He was still in his thirties, if barely. And (not in
Who’s
Who)
he had a Balkan girlfriend and a mistress called Dolly. I started to say so. My mother said, ‘Cut your losses. He was tricky. Your job is to—’
Which was as far as she got. The lights went out. The printer sighed and was silent. My mother yelled ‘Mo!’
The answering voice was one I realised, madly, I recognised. It said, ‘When did you last have these fucking wires checked?’
‘Why, checked?’ said my mother. ‘They’ve never gone bust before. You said you was an electrician?’
Exuding annoyance, Mo Morgan came in, with a torch. His pigtail had come undone. He was in his shirt-sleeves with his tie off. He looked like a hand-knotted Dacian rug. I said, ‘Mother. This is Mr. Morgan. One of Kingsley’s executive directors.’
‘Hell, I know that,’ said Mrs. Doris Hellman, my mother. ‘Came to say you was all right, in case I heard of the corpse. Anybody you knew? Not that Valentine Dresden?’
The note of hope in her voice would have smitten an ox. Mo Morgan said, ‘Mrs. Helmann, it wasn’t. But the life or death of Val Dresden is the least of obstacles in your little girl’s way. Do you have a 13 amp fuse?’
‘Cupboard behind, third shelf up, fourth box from the left. You work in washing machines?’ said my mother. She knew. She knew very well that he was an electronic designer who could write his own ticket, and did.
I could hear him scrabbling about, occasionally swearing. After a bit, all the lights came on, blinding us. The printer whined into life, and the speech rattled out its clinching argument; produced a space, and then two snaps which might have been someone’s initials. The telephone rang. From two rooms away, Mo Morgan yelled, ‘Your telephone’s ringing!’ My mother, sitting with her arms almost crossed, didn’t get up. I went, and after some time, came back.
My mother and the newest director of Kingsley’s were seated on either side of the fire, consuming strong Turkish tea and wet halva. I said, ‘That was the Chairman.’
‘He phones you at home?’ my mother said. ‘He carries your number?’
‘He wanted to thank me,’ I said. ‘Mr. Johnson has changed his mind. He thinks he can manage the portrait, if Sir Robert can come to Morocco.’
‘Morocco?’ said my mother distantly.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mr. Johnson has a yacht there.’ I couldn’t understand it, myself.
Dolly
was the name of his yacht. He had planned a holiday on his yacht and Sir Robert had talked him into finishing his commission. It was good news, of course.
My mother said, ‘There are yachts in the Sahara? I believe you. Arabs, camels, palm trees and yachts. And there is snow in the Sahara. I believe this Mr. Morgan as well. He goes there every year. Ice picks, crampons, to the desert. I believe you all. Hell freezes over.’
She was looking at Mr. Morgan, who went on chewing halva, undisturbed. ‘You never heard of the Atlas mountains?’ he said. ‘And all those beaches? Casablanca? Tangier? Agadir? Where’s Johnson put this yacht of his?’
I didn’t know Mr. Morgan was going to Morocco. I didn’t know what to say. It seemed to me that Morocco was getting too crowded. On the other hand, he was a Director. ‘The yacht’s at Essaouira,’ I said. ‘Sir Robert will stay in Marrakesh, and Mr. Johnson will come inland to paint him.’
‘Two hours’ journey each way. Bully for him,’ said Mr. Morgan. ‘I’d rather climb Toubkal.’
‘He climbs the same mountain every year,’ said my mother, pouring tea. ‘This shows little initiative. Is climbing bad for the bowels?’
‘Terrible,’ said Mr. Morgan. His big-nosed face, surrounded by half-pleated hair, looked like that of an Afghan hound in a drizzle. ‘And I don’t eat properly either. You could send me off with some food.’
‘A fine pressed ham, I make,’ said my mother. ‘Wendy will tell you. But what is the use? You drink like a haddock.’
‘I have problems,’ said Mr. Morgan. His eye, roving, fell on the copies of the
FT
and
Forbes
and
Business Management.
He said, ‘Someone’s doing an MBA study course?’
‘Wendy,’ said my mother triumphantly. ‘You have problems, you take them to Wendy. You lament the erosion of student competence in oral and written communication, analytical thinking and interpersonal development? I give you Wendy.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Morgan with moderate gratitude. He said to me, ‘You into company tactics?’
‘Is she?’ said my mother. ‘Look at this MCG mess? Have Kingsley’s gone about that the wrong way or not?’
‘Mother,’ I said.
He didn’t query the reference. He didn’t look surprised or suspicious. ‘They sure have,’ he said promptly. ‘What would you have done in their place?’
I sent out wild signals. My mother paid no attention. She said, ‘You want to acquire a nice little company, do you woo the shareholders before you’ve made love to the management? Do you talk about asset stripping – are you crazy? You get hold of their figures. You sort out their discounted cash flow: profit before tax and interest; piles of non-cash little addbacks. You judge their discounted terminal value. Then you stalk them like a sweet cat: lots of good food and drink; high class invites; tickets to premières, boxes with private toilets and unmarried ladies with titles. Yes,’ said my mother. ‘That Sir Robert Kingsley got written out of the will, and deserved to. But Morocco. Yes, if he could tempt that firm to talk in Morocco, he might have a second chance.’