Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  The dinner went on and on. Everything took forever. The service was slow, formal and servile, with each course appearing under silver cloches to be revealed with a synchronised flourish. Not only were they served the dishes they’d actually ordered but bonus courses—amuse gueles and a rich lobster bisque—kept appearing with compliments of the chef. At one point, the chef himself appeared to take a bow. Callum was dominating the table with his views on Philip Green at British Home Stores, and the brilliant way he’d unilaterally imposed extended credit terms on suppliers, from thirty to ninety days. Chantelle the lap dancer tried to strike up a parallel conversation with Debbie about flip-flops, but Brin talked over her about Tie Rack and Debenhams.

  It was at this moment Gemma fainted.

  She toppled forward, face first, onto her untouched lobster salad, then slid sideways from her chair onto the floor. The goldy-beige carpet was so thick and springy that her collapse was almost soundless.

  For a moment she lay there clutching at her napkin, before Ross and Dawn leapt to their feet and the French headwaiter and several other waiters including the sommelier were clustering round, getting in the way, while word was sent to summon the hotel doctor. When Ross called for water for Gemma, the sommelier asked whether she would prefer Vitel, San Pellegrino, Evian or Badoit, so Ross snatched a jug from an adjacent table.

  With impressive speed, a Barbadian doctor with battered physician’s bag and stethoscope appeared and examined Gemma on the carpet. She had come round, head cradled in Dawn’s arms, complexion ghostly white.

  The doctor examined her, pressing first her pulse, then abdomen. He frowned, then re-examined her more carefully.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s fine. But her blood pressure is a little low for a lady in her condition.’

  ‘Condition?’ said Dawn. ‘Whatever do you mean? What’s wrong with my daughter?’

  The doctor stretched out his large dry hand. ‘You don’t know? Then let me be the first to congratulate you. You gonna be a Grandma.’

  15.

  The bombshell of Gemma’s pregnancy, quickly followed by the information that she was five-and-a-half months gone, astounded her family. Dawn blamed herself a thousand times for being so unobservant, wondering what kind of mother she must be. And when it emerged when and by whom the deed had been done, she blamed herself all over again. If she hadn’t dragged Gemma to the Hospers Ball, none of this would have happened. It was all her fault! She should never have allowed her to go. And what sort of a mother-daughter relationship did she think she had anyway, if her sixteen-year-old couldn’t confide in her?

  The final twenty-four hours at Nelson’s Bluff were mortifying, with visits to the clinic in Bridgetown, and all the trouble Ross had booking an earlier flight home. And then, of course, everyone in the hotel knowing about it. The shame! Although he didn’t say anything, you could see the disapproval in the unhappy face of Joseph, their personal butler, as they dispatched him for bucketfuls of ice to keep Gemma cool. God, all Dawn wanted was to check out of the beastly place and get home. She’d had it up to here with luxury living.

  On the other hand, she wasn’t sure she could cope with a return to Chawbury. Not with the Strakers so nearby across the valley. The prospect of facing Davina made her feel weak. Although it was obvious Archie had behaved atrociously, she still felt some of the responsibility must lie with herself. It was all so embarrassing. And she couldn’t think what would happen next. There were so many questions. She’d half wondered whether it would be best for everyone if the baby could be … stopped. But after the visit to the clinic, she understood it was far too late, not even legal … and there was the reaction of the other children to consider. Debbie seemed totally confused by it all, excitedly telling everyone she was going to be an auntie, and then comforting her sister for hours in the arctic bungalow, curled up round her in bed. Gemma couldn’t stop crying poor thing, partly from relief that it had all come out into the open at last.

  Dawn kept worrying what the Strakers would say when they got to hear, especially Miles. She had to admit, Miles scared her. She knew he was brilliant and attractive and very successful at what he did, everyone said so, but she didn’t find him easy or warm. He acted so superior and she couldn’t ever think of anything to say to him, he made her feel stupid. The more she thought about it, the more anxious she became. He wasn’t going to be a very nice father-in-law for poor Gemma.

  Which opened up another question: would Gemma and Archie get married? They were far too young, surely. Or should they, for the baby’s sake? Dawn didn’t know what to think. It was all too dreadful. And she was sure this would finish her friendship with Davina too, which she minded about dreadfully

  In the end, Ross rang Miles at Chawbury Manor from the hotel, and spoke to both Miles and Davina for a very long time from the phone in the master bedroom. Dawn was sitting on the suitcase rack, listening, and marvelling at how sensible and measured Ross was being. She could hear Miles becoming agitated, then abusive, but Ross didn’t rise to it, remaining very calm. Then Davina came on the line and that part of the conversation seemed to go much better. Ross left it that they were flying home overnight from Barbados, and would head straight to Chawbury. They would all talk further once they arrived home.

  As soon as Davina put the phone down, Miles went berserk. He marched out onto the terrace and spotted Archie on a quad bike, racing round and round the valley floor. It took fifteen minutes of shouting to catch the bloody idiot’s attention, and get him to return to the house. Then Miles let rip. He wasn’t so much angry with Archie for rogering a girl, that wasn’t the issue, but why the hell hadn’t he used a johnnie, and why the Clegg girl for heavens sake? Of all the pretty girls at the dance, why her? Surely Archie could see she was half-witted, just by looking at her. And fat. He’d seen her at the garden party thing, practically obese. Surely Archie could have shown better taste.

  An idea now occurred to Miles that maybe Archie wasn’t actually the father. Once it had taken hold, he became quite fired up about it. It was perfectly obvious the girl—‘Gemma’—he couldn’t speak the name without metaphorical sugar tongs—had had endless other boys. ‘She’s that kind of a girl. Look at the way her mother cakes herself in make-up.’ Miles became convinced the Cleggs were trying to entrap Archie. ‘What proof do we have the baby’s his? None whatever. I tell you we’re not accepting this. Not before they provide irrefutable proof, if they can, which I very much doubt. And we mustn’t breath a word about it to anyone either. If it got out, it’d be all over Nigel Dempster’s column. He’d love this. We need disciplined news management.’

  He glared at his children, all of whom had gravitated to the drawing room to see what the shouting was about. ‘Mollie, you were at the Hospers Ball that night, weren’t you? Did you notice the Clegg girl there? Surrounded by lots of different boys, was she?’

  Mollie looked uncomfortable. ‘Actually I did see her. She was with Archie all the time.’

  Miles sighed. Rapier-witted, and having built his career on anticipating the ramifications of any situation, he kept thinking of further unwelcome consequences. If his son really had fathered a child with Ross Clegg’s dopey daughter, would that compromise the future of the Pendletons’ account at Straker Communications? Surely it was a conflict of interest, or could be interpreted as such? And how intolerable to have a grandchild at all! He who was barely fifty years old and looked seven years younger!

  Mollie said, ‘It must be awful for Gemma. I keep thinking how she must be feeling.’

  Miles exhaled crossly. ‘Believe me, she knew exactly what she was doing, that one. I wouldn’t waste much sympathy on her.’

  Another hideous vision swam into Miles’s head: the shared grandchild being shuttled to and fro across that valley, between Manor and … Park. And the Cleggs using the pretext of the baby to drop in at the house whenever they fancied.

  But Peter said, ‘Gemma seemed really sweet at the fete thing. She bought CDs from my stall. She’s
awfully young and naïve. I remember exactly which one she is.’

  He gave a sidelong glance at Archie, who was staring guiltily at the floor.

  ‘The other person I’m worried about is poor Dawn,’ Davina said. ‘It must be frightful for her, so difficult to know what to do. Oh Archie, the trouble you’ve caused. I think I’m going to write her a letter and drop it in, before they get back, apologising and offering our support in any way we can.’

  ‘You will do no such thing,’ Miles said. ‘I’m serious, we’re not offering or admitting a thing, not unless we have to. And don’t put anything in writing in case they use it against us.’

  Samantha, who had been turning the pages of Vogue on the sofa, said, ‘Do we know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl?’

  ‘For goodness sake, Sam,’ Miles said. ‘We don’t know a damn thing, that’s the whole point. Other than this stupid tart has placed Archie and this entire family in a very awkward predicament. Archie’s the one I’m sorry for. You’ve got your A Levels coming up this summer and should be knuckling down, not distracted by all this. And university after that.’

  ‘But Archie can’t go to university now, can he?’ Mollie said. ‘He’ll need to be looking after his baby. And his wife.’

  ‘His wife?’ Miles looked thunderstruck. ‘The last thing Archie’s going to do is marry her. The last thing! I’m sure that’s what the Cleggs wanted all along, but it’s not going to happen.’

  16.

  The information that the first Freeza Mart in the South of England would shortly be opening in Andover was headline news in the Andover Daily Echo. An enthusiastic editorial heralded lower grocery prices for Andover residents, alongside a photograph of ‘Chawbury-man Ross Clegg and wife Dawn’ standing on the newly-turfed front lawn at Chawbury Park.

  The newspaper cutting quickly surfaced in Miles’s daily press digest of Straker Communications’s clients, and became an agenda item at the next Pendletons strategic review. The 70,000-square-foot Pendletons store in Andover was one of their most profitable and highest-margin outlets, and the prospect of a cut-price Freeza Mart on the doorstep was unwelcome. The Andover branch had in any case always held a special status in the company, being the closest one to Lord and Lady Pendleton’s country house. It was the store at which Laetitia Pendleton herself shopped and, as such, seen as a showcase for the group.

  ‘It’s important we don’t let them gain a foothold in the south,’ James Pendleton warned. ‘We need to contain them in their Midlands box, so let’s put every resource behind maintaining share. Even if that means temporarily forfeiting margin. And of course we need to step up our PR locally. I find I’m starting to read rather a lot about this Ross Clegg character. Has anyone actually met him?’

  Miles replied, as airily as possible, ‘By extraordinary coincidence, James, he’s become a neighbour of ours at Chawbury. He’s putting up an awful eyesore, a new-build house, uncomfortably close to us actually. So I’ve seen him about the place. To be brutally honest, he’s not very Hampshire. So I doubt he’s going to get much local support longterm.’

  Miles carefully avoided mentioning his uncomfortable summit meeting with Ross and Dawn the previous week, when the two sets of prospective grandparents had sat down at the Manor to discuss the increasingly pressing subject of Gemma’s baby. In the days following the Cleggs’ return from Barbados, Davina had been dropping in on Dawn more regularly than she ever admitted to her husband, making particular efforts to be kind to Gemma, who had taken time off school and was mooching about the house, watching TV on one of the many enormous leather sofas.

  Davina’s first concern had been for Archie, of course. He was so young and so vague, it seemed ridiculous he could become a father. She still helped him pack his suitcase for school, and nagged him to write thank-you letters. This baby would change his whole life and she couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid, so careless. Now he was lurking about, not really speaking, with a hangdog expression. When she tried to discuss it with him, he refused, saying, ‘Stop going on about it, Mum, get off my back.’ Davina adored Archie but, she had to admit, she’d always found him tricky. Too like his father in character. She considered Peter and Mollie her easiest children, being the ones most like herself. The middle two, Samantha and Archie, were pure Miles.

  Miles continued to resist liability for the parentage, having his lawyer send a carefully-worded letter to the Cleggs. Eventually, however, after Ross threatened DNA tests, Miles reluctantly conceded the baby was probably Archie’s. ‘I’m just waiting for Ross to send me a thumping great bill,’ he said. ‘Money will be the next thing, you wait.’ But when they received a brief, professional note from Ross saying that he was, of course, expecting to take care of everything for Gemma’s child, and naturally wasn’t looking for any financial contribution from the Strakers, Miles felt he was being excluded. ‘If Ross thinks he can cut us out, he’s got another thing coming. This child is as much ours as theirs. In fact, we’re going to have to get very involved over questions of schools and so on, since I can’t see the Cleggs having a clue. Davina, we need to get them over to discuss it, sooner the better.’

  And so they had met, not without awkwardness, in Miles’s study, with Archie banished to the Playstation for the duration of the visit, and Peter, Samantha and Mollie, all down at Chawbury for the weekend, instructed to greet the guests politely and then make themselves scarce. Both Davina and Dawn were dreading the meeting, begging their respective husbands not to fly off the handle. Dawn had actually been physically sick ten minutes before setting off, leaving Gemma and Debbie behind at home. In the car during the short journey up to Chawbury Manor, Dawn implored Ross not to do anything stupid. ‘Promise me you won’t. Promise you won’t loose your rag. Let’s try and keep things nice and civilised.’

  Ross shrugged. ‘I’ve told you, love, I’m calm as anything. Just so long as Miles doesn’t wind me up like he did on the phone in Barbados.’

  ‘Ross,’ said Dawn, in a warning voice. And then they arrived.

  The first half of the meeting went off better than feared, with Davina bringing in a cafetiere of coffee (which felt more appropriate than drinks, under the circumstances) and the two men doing their best to stay calm and reasonable. Dawn said how beautiful the countryside was looking at the moment, and Davina agreed it was her favourite time of year. Eventually they moved on to Gemma. Dawn reported the baby’s due date was in the third week of August and that Gemma was planning to give birth in Basing-stoke and North Hampshire General Hospital.

  ‘In a private room, I hope. Not NHS,’ Miles said.

  ‘Yes, we’ve decided to push the boat out and go private,’ Ross said. ‘I want Gemma to have the best care available.’

  Miles wished she’d taken better care herself at the Hospers Ball, which was the whole bloody trouble, but said nothing.

  Dawn said that, having given it all a lot of thought, she and Ross had decided the best thing would be for the child to be brought up partly as their own. ‘Otherwise it’ll ruin Gemma’s whole life. She’s too young to be tied down night and day with a baby. We’re not saying she won’t look after it, or take responsibility, but we thought we should share the responsibility. And, of course, if Archie wants to play his part, and get to know the little person, he’ll always be most welcome. He can come and go at the Park as he pleases.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s something for Archie to decide for himself,’ Miles said non-committally. ‘He’s going to be very occupied with exams for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘It would be nice for Gemma if he gave her a bell some time,’ Ross said. ‘Just to say hello and show support. I know she’d appreciate that. She’s feeling a bit isolated at the moment. A friendly call would buck her up. Not to apologise or anything, just to touch base.’

  Miles began to feel agitated. He was uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. The way the Cleggs were going on, you’d almost have thought it was Archie’s fault, all this. So he s
aid, ‘I should jolly well think not. Apologise, I mean. Archie’s got nothing to apologise for.’

  ‘Well, I’d have thought damn near raping my teenage daughter was something, wouldn’t you? You can argue the toss, but that’s what happened, give or take.’

  ‘I strongly resent that remark,’ Miles replied. ‘That’s not my understanding at all. If your daughter hadn’t thrown herself at him….’

  Ross felt a muscle twitching in his jaw, which always happened when he became angry. He glared at Miles, hating his stupid, supercilious, arrogant attitude and his stupid, supercilious face. ‘Gemma did no such thing. Your son took complete bloody advantage. Plied her with spirits he’d brought into the party, then pressed himself on her. That’s exactly what happened.’ Ross was seething, fists clenching and unclenching. If there hadn’t been ladies present, he’d have stood up and bloody decked Miles, he was that close. ‘And if you ever—ever, do you understand me—imply anything else, I’ll make a formal complaint of rape to the police. I’d have done so already if my wife hadn’t talked me out of it.’ Ross was perched on the edge of the sofa, poised for a fight. He felt Dawn’s restraining hand on his knee.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Dawn said tearfully. ‘Let’s not get heated. It’s the baby we’re here to talk about, there’s no good casting blame.’

  An ugly silence settled on the room.

  Davina, peacemaking, said brightly, ‘Obviously this is a dreadful situation for all of us. And I agree with Dawn, there’s no point trying to cast blame. They’re both so young, and what’s happened has happened, awful though it is. The important thing is to make sure this new little life is cherished and loved by all of us. I was thinking about this in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep: much worse things happen all the time in this world. It isn’t the end of the world at all, that’s the way I see it. And here we are at opposite ends of this lovely valley, all so lucky in so many ways. There are worse starts for a child than to be brought up here at Chawbury, by all of us.’