‘No one’s ever doubted Mr Lashley’s expertise. Or his energy.’
‘Indeed not. He’s fifty years old when CCC takes over Wren’s, an obvious candidate for back-numbering. Instead, he works his way to the top – and stays there. It’s remarkable. Quite remarkable.’
‘A testament to the man.’
‘I agree. Which is why I felt I should give Wren’s rather more attention than the numerous other small companies CCC bought out over the years. Happily, Wren’s records are archived along with CCC’s in St Austell, as you know.’
‘I’d have assumed they were, Fay, certainly. But there could have been all sorts of clear-outs and disposals I’d know nothing about. I haven’t been to the St Austell office in years.’
‘Too busy carving a hole the size of the Isle of Wight out of the Amazonian rain forest, I suppose.’
I winced. ‘I believe we’re both in IK’s pay one way or the other.’
‘You’re right, of course. IK’s ecological credentials – or the lack of them – are a subject for another day.’ She smiled appeasingly and the arrival of our starters consolidated the pacifying effect. I wondered as the waitress delivered our plates how Fay Whitworth was going to approach the thorny issue of environmentalism in her history of the company. Would the anti-deforestation protesters who’d disrupted the last AGM get a mention? I rather hoped so.
‘It’s ironic, don’t you think,’ I ventured, ‘that you’ve found researching a long defunct minnow of a company like Wren’s so troublesome, when IK is a worldwide concern employing thousands of people and turning over millions of dollars?’
‘Yes. It is ironic. Very. Any idea why it’s happened?’
‘None. How could I have? You still haven’t told me what went wrong.’
‘No. I haven’t, have I? Very well. I was directed to the Wren’s section of the archive and initially made good progress. Documentation from the early years of the company is surprisingly extensive. Walter Wren was an unusually good employer for the period. His pits worked throughout the clay strike of 1913, for instance, thanks to the higher wages he paid. But it was a small company and it stayed that way, so it was bound to be vulnerable when consolidation swept through the industry. I’d like to be able to attach some facts and figures to its vulnerability, but that’s where I struck a major snag. All the Wren’s material is box-filed by financial year: 1895/96 through to 1968/69. And all the box-files, neatly labelled, are there to be seen on the shelf. But those covering the last twelve years of the company, from 1956/57 to the end, contain mostly blank paper.’
‘Blank paper?’
‘Yes. Some inconsequential documents at the top, then reams of unused sheets of paper – the flimsy kind once used for carbon copies. It’s the same in every file. From CCC records I know Wren’s directors voted to accept the CCC takeover offer at a meeting held on the twenty-second of August 1968. But the report of that meeting, along with everything else during the run-up to the takeover, is missing.’
‘That … can’t be right.’
‘Those were more or less the same words used by Mr Newlove when I complained to him.’
‘Pete Newlove?’
‘Yes. You know him?’
It really shouldn’t have come as any surprise that Pete was still clinging to a desk in St Austell. He was the same age as I was and probably planned to soldier on until he was sixty-five. He was also, in all probability, the only former Wren’s employee still on the payroll. Other than me, of course. ‘Pete and I go back a long way,’ I admitted cagily.
‘In that case, you’ll be well placed to say whether his ineffectiveness in addressing my complaint was deliberate or not.’
‘I’m sure he’d have tried to be helpful.’
‘I found him trying, certainly. Suffice to say I never got much more out of him than a shrug of the shoulders.’
‘Then no doubt you went over his head.’
‘And fared no better. Which I thought odd, given I was working on a project personally backed by your former chairman.’
It was odd. There was no denying it. ‘I can go down to St Austell and crack a few heads together, Fay. But if everyone’s genuinely baffled …’ She’d already managed to consume her salad, I noticed, leaving an entirely empty plate, while I was still squeezing lemon on my gravlax. The woman was a fast worker, no question about it. ‘There’s a limit to what I can do.’
‘And to what I can do in terms of a comprehensive history of IK/CCC. Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear to you, Jonathan. This isn’t a simple case of material lost, discarded and in advertently disposed of over the years, which isn’t at all uncommon in my wide experience of archival research. It’s a deliberate filleting of the files, compounded and confirmed by the substitution of blanks for the documents removed. Quite an elaborate exercise, considering we’re talking about the records of a company you described in an accurate if decidedly mixed metaphor as a “long defunct minnow”.’
‘Well, I … guess we don’t know when it was done, do we? It could have been many years ago.’
‘The paper used would suggest that. Alternatively, it may have been used in order to suggest that.’
I tried to look and sound more dubious than I actually felt. ‘You seem to be formulating some kind of conspiracy theory here, Fay. It all seems highly improbable.’
‘Oh, I agree. But, improbable or not, something of the kind has occurred. Intriguing, isn’t it?’
‘Is it really such a big obstacle to your work, though? Wren’s is a very small piece in the IK/CCC jigsaw.’
‘You’re developing an interesting habit of saying what others have already said to me, Jonathan. “Ignore such a trifling problem and concentrate on the big picture” was the advice given to me – unsought, I should mention – by Mr Lashley’s son.’
Adam? How the hell had he got mixed up in this? He was supposed to be in Thailand … doing whatever he did in Thailand. ‘You’ve met Adam Lashley?’
‘No. We had a telephone conversation a week or so ago. Well, not much of a conversation, to be honest. More of a monologue on his part. The gist of it was that he thought I was making a fuss about nothing and was being paid more than enough not to. I had the impression he may not have been completely sober. Or does he always speak with a slur?’
I was saved having to dodge that question by the waitress’s removal of our starter plates. I drank some water and tried to sound curious but unfazed as I asked, ‘Where was he phoning from?’
‘London, he said.’
London. Damn. Too close for comfort. Too close altogether. ‘Adam can be a little abrasive at times. He probably thought he was doing his father a favour by encouraging you to proceed.’
‘Well, he was wrong. The more people tell me to disregard the Wren’s puzzle, the more determined I become to solve it. And as far as I can see, the best way to do that is to insist it be dealt with … by someone like you.’
‘And here I am. Ready to deal with it. As best I can.’
‘Any preliminary theories?’
‘None.’
‘There’s nothing you know of in the last twelve years of Wren’s independent existence that anyone might want to … cover up?’
‘I can’t think of anything at all.’
‘Nothing I should be told about that might have a bearing on this?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’ A sip of wine. A narrowing of the gaze. She didn’t look as if she believed me. ‘I’m surprised you say that, Jonathan. Surprised … and a little disappointed.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really. It suggests you underestimate me, which, professionally speaking, I find hurtful. It should be obvious to you that in the conspicuous absence of most of Wren’s records for the period fifty-six to sixty-eight, I’d look to other contemporary records for anything that might shed light on the company’s activities at the time.’
She was right, of course. Suddenly and sickeningly, I saw where this was going. I
saw the bound sets of the Cornish Guardian in St Austell public library. Microfilmed long since, no doubt. But still available for study.
‘Kenneth Foster, husband of Walter Wren’s granddaughter, Muriel, and a director of the company, generally considered number two to the chairman and MD, George Wren, committed suicide in July 1959, a suicide witnessed by his seven-year-old son, Oliver. Nine years later, on the twenty-second of August 1968 – the very day Wren’s board voted to accept the takeover offer from Cornish China Clays – Oliver Foster was found drowned in a flooded clay pit. Death by misadventure was the verdict, though on a strict reading of the facts suicide would have been equally plausible, if not more so. The body was discovered by Oliver’s sister, Vivien, and a friend by the name of … Jonathan Kellaway.’
There wasn’t much I could say to that. I smiled uneasily. ‘I’m sorry, Fay. I should have realized you’d find out about Oliver – and his father before him. Oliver’s death isn’t an event I have any wish to recall, to be honest. But I really don’t think it has any bearing on this problem of missing records.’
‘Why did Kenneth Foster kill himself?’
‘No one knows. He suffered from depression, but …’
‘And Oliver? Why did he kill himself?’
‘He didn’t. You said yourself the verdict was death by misadventure.’
‘But was that the correct verdict? The report of the inquest said you were the last person to see him alive. I can understand why for his family’s sake you’d want to suggest he drowned accidentally. But perhaps you’d like to tell me now, all these years later, what you really believe happened.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never known.’ It was comforting in its way to have a simple truth to cling to: I didn’t know.
‘In that case, you can have no reason for saying the deaths of Kenneth Foster and his son are irrelevant to the issue of the missing records.’
She had me there, of course. ‘I guess you’re right. It’s just … my opinion.’
Our main courses arrived. That and the topping up of our wine and water glasses gave me a couple of minutes to consider how to counter Fay’s undeniably sound line of reasoning. Nothing sprang to mind, not least because I was already beginning to suspect with queasy conviction that the deaths and missing records were related – very closely related.
‘I’m going down to St Austell this afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’ll do all I can to get to the bottom of this.’
Fay eyed me over the rim of her wineglass. ‘Thank you.’
‘But you must understand I can’t guarantee I’ll succeed.’
‘And you must understand I can’t guarantee I’ll continue with the project if you don’t.’
She couldn’t guarantee she’d continue. But she didn’t rule it out either. There was wriggle room for both of us if we needed it. ‘Very well. I’ll let you know what I find out.’
‘Please do.’
‘Just between you and me, Fay, I’m not privy to the terms you were hired on, of course, but I imagine they’re generous. Are you sure—’
‘I want to risk missing out on a bigger pay day than I’ll ever see in academia?’ She smiled wryly at me.
I smiled back. ‘Exactly.’
‘I won’t put my name to a whitewash, however fat the fee is. It’s as simple as that.’
‘You’re a woman of principle.’
‘Yes. Something you and Mr Lashley are going to have to get used to.’
A couple of hours later, I was standing on the platform at Temple Meads station, waiting for the Plymouth train and considering just how I was going to ‘get to the bottom’ of the mystery Fay Whitworth had uncovered. The bottom, as I well knew, was a lot further down than she could possibly imagine. Over the years I’d come to assume I’d never reach it. But my hopes and assumptions had never counted for much. So maybe they were going to be confounded again. Maybe this time – this last time, surely – I’d find the truth that had previously eluded me. Whether I wanted to or not.
1969
TWELVE
I FONDLY IMAGINED, after nine months in London, that I’d done as much growing up as I needed to, knew the sinful ways of the capital inside out and understood how life should be lived. This delusion enhanced my self-esteem just when it needed enhancing, so I suppose it’s not entirely to be regretted, even though many of the things I said and did make for painful recollection.
I’d moved out of the grim university accommodation I’d initially been consigned to at the invitation of a girl who deserves to remain nameless, joining her and her various supposedly worldly-wise friends in a crumbling house in Walworth, where most weekends and quite a few midweeks descended into druggy disorder to a soundtrack of Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
The sobering experience of a police raid and the nameless girl’s departure to her new boyfriend’s bedsit ushered in a more restrained regime during the second half of the summer term. In a corner of my mind I was also aware that drab reality awaited me in St Austell, where I’d arranged to spend part of the holiday working at Cornish China Clays. Even a student in the sixties couldn’t live on air, far less the fumes we normally substituted for it.
Another reminder of St Austell was waiting for me when I returned late one cool, grey Saturday morning in early June from a reluctant expedition to the local shops. I thought at first the bright yellow Mini parked near the house merely resembled Vivien’s, though that alone made my heart miss a beat. Then, as I stepped indoors and heard her voice, I realized it really was her car and it really was her, talking to Terry in the kitchen.
She’d changed too, of course. But in her the change had added a translucence to her beauty and a regality – yes, I think you’d call it that – to her bearing, in wondrous contrast to the smart-arse hints of hippydom I’d tacked on to my persona. Her hair was slightly shorter, swaying around the base of her neck as she turned to look at me, her style of dress more individualized – velvet jacket with silver buttons, embroidered blouse drawstrung at the throat, knee-length pleated skirt: all in different shades of blue. She looked, as Terry accurately put it later, as if she was from another planet – one he badly wanted to land on.
I could hardly disguise the fact that it was a surprise to see her, nor how wonderful a surprise it was. Terry was in the process of cack-handedly percolating some coffee for her, but after a few minutes’ brittle small talk he got the message and slunk off to the bathroom with his favourite combination of the Guardian and the Daily Mirror.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t answer your letter last autumn,’ Vivien said, as soon as we were alone. ‘It was mean of me.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I responded, clearing a crumb-free space for her coffee mug at the kitchen table. ‘It can’t have been an easy time for you. I understood that.’ I gathered a couple of chairs together and we sat down. ‘How’s Cambridge?’
‘Every bit as preposterous as I’d expected. But glorious as well.’
‘I’m glad. Smoke?’
‘Thanks.’
I gave her a cigarette and we lit up.
‘What happened to the Peter Stuyvesants?’ she asked with a smile.
‘I had to ditch them. No good for my working-class credentials.’
‘Your father’s a bank manager, Jonathan. You don’t have any working-class credentials.’
‘Shush! Round here they think I come from a long line of tin miners. None of them knows I was actually born in Norwood.’
We laughed. And the sound of our laughter – easy and genuine, yet brief – was somehow shocking. We fell into an equally brief silence, then Vivien said, ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘Not as good as it is to see you again, I’ll bet.’
‘I’m sorry I … cut you out of my life.’
‘Easily forgiven. If you’re back in it now.’ But was she? What had prompted her unannounced visit was still unclear. ‘How did you track me down?’ (I hadn’t been living there when I’d written to her the previous October.)
‘I sweet-talked your address out of a clerk in the college office.’
‘I’m impressed you went to the trouble.’
‘And you’re wondering why. Is that it?’
‘Well, when we last met, I …’
‘I wasn’t myself. Hadn’t been, really, since Oliver’s death. The psychiatrist Greville found had me on all sorts of drugs – my only excuse for hanging around with that drongo, Roger. You met him in St Austell.’
‘Ah, he was a drongo, was he? I thought so.’ We laughed again.
‘I’m over all that now. I’m me again, seeing clearly, facing facts … and very much hoping you’ll help me.’
A pause. A weighing of words. But the weighing meant little. She’d never looked lovelier. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have been prepared to do at her bidding, as she probably knew. ‘You only have to ask,’ I said, holding her gaze.
‘Then I will. At Easter, I helped Mother clear out Oliver’s room at Nanstrassoe. It was something we had to do sooner or later if it wasn’t going to turn into some kind of shrine. So, we … did it together. There was a trunk he stored all his old toys in from childhood – teddy bears I’d passed on to him: that kind of thing. At the bottom, we found … well, something we never expected to see again.’
‘What?’
‘Father’s briefcase.’
I made no effort to hide my astonishment. ‘I thought … Oliver had spent years looking for it … to no avail.’
‘We all thought that. But no. There it was. It was in a bad state, stiffened and misshapen, the lock and clasp rusted through. It had clearly spent a long time in water.’
‘Water?’
‘Relurgis Pit, Jonathan. I think Oliver finally worked out to his satisfaction that Relurgis was where Father dumped the case the day he died. I think he somehow managed to find it and retrieve it from the lake, though how I can’t imagine. But it’s surprising what can be achieved through single-minded obsessiveness. And Oliver certainly had plenty of that.’
Fault Line - Retail Page 11
