Bard phoned Francesca late on Thursday afternoon and told her he was going to New York and wouldn’t be back in London until Monday.
‘But Bard, there’s the dinner on Saturday, at Stylings, it was all your banking people, how am I – ’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said, ‘I can’t come rushing back there for some bloody stupid dinner. You can entertain them yourself, for God’s sake, can’t you, they’d much rather talk to you.’
‘But – ’
‘Francesca please. I really can’t waste time like this. I’ll be there until Sunday, then I’m flying over to Munich. Get the numbers from Marcia. Everything all right?’
‘Yes. It’s fine,’ said Francesca, ‘absolutely fine. Don’t you worry about us, Bard. Goodbye.’
She put the phone down, too angry to be upset. Hours later she remembered the message from Maureen Hopkins. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to risk his wrath delivering that. It couldn’t possibly be important anyway.
Maureen Hopkins sat holding her husband’s cold hand and assured him that she had done exactly as he said.
‘I told him you’d been ill, where you were, and that you’d like to speak to him,’ she said, ‘so don’t worry.’
‘And you actually spoke to him?’
Maureen hesitated. She knew if Clive had any idea his important message had been consigned to an answering machine he would become extremely agitated again. And there was no doubt whatsoever that Mr Channing would have got the message. The answering machine had told her that both Bard and Francesca Channing would be returning later that day.
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘yes, I actually spoke to him. And he was very nice, very sorry.’
‘But is he coming to see me, is he going to ring me?’
‘He’s not coming to see you,’ she said truthfully, ‘but I’m sure he’ll ring you. Please Clive, don’t worry about it any more. I gave Mr Channing your message. Just like you told me.’
Gray had decided to go to Jersey. If Ferrers was right – and it seemed fairly likely – and Channing had been buying shares in his own company, to support the price, then the two companies that had made the purchases must somehow be linked to him. David Guthrie, his editor, had given him a flat no to a trip to the Cayman Islands – ‘The fare alone is two grand, Gray, what do you think this newspaper is, some kind of a benevolent society!’ – but had grudgingly agreed to a trip to Jersey. ‘But you’d better bloody well deliver, Townsend. The last little investment I made in one of your hunches crashed rather, I seem to remember.’
‘I will,’ said Gray and hoped he felt as confident as he sounded. He’d wanted to go immediately, but it was now Thursday afternoon, and if Ferrers was right, and Channings really was about to go down, the activity around it would be intense and he needed to be in London. He would need to talk to Sam, to Alan Ferrers and his cronies, try and talk (fruitlessly he was sure) to Bard himself; he would try them all, Barbour, Francesca – he might just catch her off her guard – Kirsten – she might have some tasty little detail for him: at this stage any quote at all was useful, potentially valuable. Meanwhile he could only wait. He felt excited, that evening, almost fretful; drank too much wine, went to bed early, and dreamed dark, brooding dreams, of huge ugly buildings dwarfing grey city streets; he dreamed that he was driving down roads he did not know, waiting endlessly at airports for flights that never came. And then he dreamed of Briony, standing far away from him, smiling, just out of reach; and then he did reach her, took her hand, pulled her towards him and it was not Briony at all who stood there, but a tall old woman with white hair, dressed all in black, holding out her arms to ward him away.
He woke shaking, sweating; it was only four, still not light. He decided there was little point in staying in bed, and he dressed and got out his bike and went for a long ride out into Surrey; as he drove back over Albert Bridge (thinking as he looked at the Thames, gleaming in the misty golden air, that London at its best really was every bit as beautiful as Paris) his mobile rang, it was Alan Ferrers.
‘Time to do it up now, old boy,’ he said.
‘Do what up?’ said Gray stupidly.
‘Your seatbelt. And watch the screens. Could be something quite interesting happening any minute now. Only could, mind you. Be in touch.’
Gray promptly forgot about the beauties of the City of London, about Briony, even about Clive Hopkins, and put his foot down, weaving in and out of the traffic on the Embankment, his mind fixed only on the office and the importance of getting there as fast as he could without actually endangering his life. He knew what the phone call had meant: the bear raid on Channings had begun.
Chapter Twenty
Rachel put the phone down after a long and anxious conversation with Reverend Mother and decided that whatever the complexities of the conversation – and they would be considerable — she had to speak to Bard personally. She knew he’d been away all weekend, that Francesca (as she had informed her mother in a curt voice) hadn’t even seen him, that he’d failed to make an appearance at a dinner he’d asked her to organise at Stylings, had been first in New York then in Munich, and had flown in late the night before and had still not appeared home.
Rachel quailed from her task, from speaking to him, bothering him: apart from the fact he was bound to be hostile to her, for exacerbating an already difficult situation with Francesca, he was having what was clearly an appalling time with the business. Even as she dialled Channings’ number, she saw a piece in the Telegraph headed ‘End of the line for Channing?’ The papers had been full of the story all weekend; how his shares had fallen in price to some all-time low, how he had been holding crisis talks with his bankers; she had read estimates of how much Coronet Wharf, his great gleaming white elephant in Docklands, had cost him, and the figures, running into dizzy millions, had read doomsday-style, prognostications of the length of time it would take to recoup the losses on the loan, running into hundreds of years. There had been several ‘no comment’ quotes from Bard himself, and several slightly longer ones from Pete Barbour, admitting yes, there were certain difficulties, but he had every confidence that it should still be perfectly possible to salvage the company. And several well-informed articles by financial pundits, including one by the charming young man she had met at Douglas Booth’s funeral, explaining that salvage was not only extremely unlikely, but barring a miracle impossible now: now that the shares had tumbled, the cash-flow was out of control, the rolled-up interest into astronomical figures, the confidence of the bankers and the shareholders at rock bottom. But in spite of all this, there was still her small helpless community in Devon, looking to her for help, the bank down there looking to her for reassurance; and in spite of it all, therefore, she had to do it, had to talk to him. If only to be able to tell Reverend Mother the whole thing was off, she had to do it: had to make sure.
Marcia picked up the phone: ‘Mr Channing’s office.’ She sounded quite normal.
‘Oh, Mrs Grainger. I’m so sorry to bother you. But this is very urgent. Could you possibly ask Mr Channing if he could spare me just literally two minutes. I realise it’s not the best time but – yes, yes, I’ll hold. Thank you.’
That in itself was extraordinary: for Marcia simply to ask her to hold on, without a long litany of warnings (‘It’s very unlikely he will be able to speak to you now’), reproaches (‘I don’t think you can quite realise how busy Mr Channing is’) and crushing put-downs (‘I’m afraid he can only take calls of the highest priority this morning’). Still more extraordinary was that she came back, said, ‘I’ll put you through, Mrs Duncan-Brown.’
She hadn’t been expecting that, hadn’t got her speech quite ready; she pushed the paper aside, adjusted her glasses – Rachel found it very difficult to speak succinctly when she couldn’t see – and said, cursing the shake of nervousness in her voice, ‘Bard, I’m so sorry to bother you, when things are obviously not easy, but – ’
‘That’s all right, Rachel. Is there a problem?�
�
‘Well, it’s just that – well, I really have to know what to say to the bank.’
‘The bank?’ he said, and he sounded puzzled, as if a bank was unfamiliar to him, something quite outside his experience.
‘Yes,’ she said, puzzled herself by his reaction. ‘The bank who are dealing with the convent. You know?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘oh, yes, that bank. Look, Rachel, I – Christ, you’d better come over, we have to talk.’
‘What – now?’ She looked at her watch; it was two o’clock. How could Bard possibly have time to talk to her at two o’clock in the afternoon? ‘Yes, all right, Bard. Fine.’
She got in a taxi, feeling the extravagance entirely justified. When she arrived at Channing House, Hugh saluted her, phoned up to Bard; told her to go up to Marcia’s office. It all seemed perfectly normal: maybe they were just having a quiet day.
She walked rather slowly and carefully up the polished staircase, knocked warily on Marcia’s door. Marcia called her to come in, and rose to greet her graciously. She also looked quite her usual self, calm, imposing, immaculate. ‘Mrs Duncan-Brown. Good afternoon. Mr Channing won’t keep you a moment.’
That was unusual too; normally she told all visitors, with the possible exception of Eddie George, that she would have to ask them to wait, adding, if they had the temerity to ask, that she had no idea how long. Rachel sat down and smiled at her.
‘How are you, Mrs Grainger?’
‘Perfectly well, thank you.’ She returned to her word processor, making it plain that Rachel would be ill-advised to interrupt her further. Rachel picked up the Wall Street Journal, her favourite paper, purely on grounds of its appearance — ‘like The Times used to be when it was a proper paper,’ she would say to anyone prepared to listen – and had scarcely started to read the first article (on the subject of Clinton’s Benefit reforms) when Bard’s door opened and Sam Illingworth came out. She smiled bravely at Rachel, and said hallo to her, but her voice was odd, and she looked as if she had been crying. Dear God, thought Rachel: this was worse than she had thought.
‘Rachel, good afternoon. Come along in.’
Bard stood in the doorway: he looked appalling. White faced, heavy eyed, and somehow bowed, stooped. He was wearing no jacket and his white shirt was open at the neck, his tie hung loosely. Everything about him seemed to hang loosely, she noticed confusedly, even his skin; his face looked jowly, heavy, there were bags under the black eyes, and his arms, usually outstretched in welcome, hung limply at his sides.
‘Bard, hallo.’ She kissed him briefly. He smelt strongly of whisky – odd, she thought, Bard never drank during the day, it was one of his most stringent rules.
‘Hallo, Rachel. Marcia, we’ll have some tea.’
‘Yes of course, Mr Channing.’
She followed him into his office, he shut the door.
‘Bard, is everything all right?’
‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘No it isn’t. It’s all wrong, I’m afraid. And I’m very much afraid I won’t be able to help you any more. With your – project. Certainly not in the short term.’
He looked so dreadful, so wretched and something else – what? ashamed – Rachel felt only the merest pang of panic for her project. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said, ‘we can sort something out. Tell me what’s happened, Bard. I’d like to know.’
‘It’s all over,’ he said, and his voice was quite cheerful suddenly. ‘All the reporters and analysts were right, as they always are. Usually are, anyway. The major bank, that is the Swedish one, has called in the loan, as have Methuens, here, and that means the others are all following suit. And that means the end of the Channing Corporation.’
‘But surely they can’t give up on you just like that? They’ll give you time to sort yourself out …’
‘Oh I’ve had that,’ he said wearily. ‘Months of time, they’ve been very fair. Very good to me, as a matter of fact, I can’t fault them. And until very recently I thought I could get by. They rescheduled the interest payments, restructured the loan itself, all the constructive things – but of course word of that gets out, and has an effect on the share price. Anyway, it had got insane. We’ve been bleeding cash, as they say. The interest on that loan, on Coronet Wharf, was breathtaking, I don’t think we could ever have recouped it. So – today, this morning, they called it in. The receivers will be here any minute. Channings has gone belly up, Rachel. There’s no more I can – ’
He stopped; Marcia had come in with the tea tray. Rachel looked up at her, smiled awkwardly.
‘Thank you, Marcia,’ he said. ‘Yes, put it there. And I’ll have a clean glass, please, as well. Rachel, d’you want some whisky?’
‘No. No thank you.’
Marcia, looking deeply disapproving, fetched a clean glass from the cupboard by the fireplace, gave it to him. ‘Anything else, Mr Channing?’
‘No. No thank you. And I don’t want to be disturbed.’
‘No. No, of course not. Unless – ’ Her voice tailed discreetly away.
‘Yes of course. If they arrive let me know.’ He smiled grimly at Rachel. ‘The receivers.’
‘Ah.’
He filled his glass, sat staring at it morosely. Rachel picked up a cup of tea. ‘Look Bard, if you’d prefer I went – ’
‘I can’t think of anything I’d prefer less,’ he said. ‘It’s good to talk to you.’
‘Where’s Francesca?’ she said. She couldn’t help it, felt somehow that her daughter should have been here, doing what she herself was doing, shoring him up, keeping him company.
‘She’s still down at Stylings. I was meant to be there this weekend, for some damn dinner – oh, it was one I’d asked her to organise – and didn’t show. Because of all this, obviously. But I’m not her favourite person, I’m afraid.’
‘She should be here,’ said Rachel, ashamed of Francesca suddenly, ashamed she should be so self-obsessed, that she couldn’t see that Bard needed her, that however hurt she was over the dinner, Mary, Ireland, what she saw as Bard’s neglect, she should be able to set it aside for now.
‘Well – perhaps. We’ve not been communicating too well lately. As you know.’ His voice was emotionless, he seemed not to care.
‘Bard, I’m sorry. For my part in that. So sorry.’
‘That’s all right. One of those things. Anyway – that brings me back to it, the convent – ’
‘Bard, please don’t worry about that. It should be the least of your concerns. Can I do anything? Anything at all?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘just stay here. Be here. Keep me company for a few minutes. I can’t bear to be alone. Alone with it.’ He dropped his great head onto his hands; his voice was muffled. ‘Christ, I could – ’
Rachel stared at him feeling shocked and helpless. ‘Oh Bard. Bard, I’m so sorry. So desperately sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and his voice was raw with pain. ‘I’m only glad Duggie isn’t here. It would have broken his heart.’ He looked up at her and she saw tears in his eyes; one rolled slowly down his cheek.
‘It’s the waste, Rachel, all those years of work and effort and investment, and I go and fuck it all up with a piece of arrogance, bad judgment, thinking I could walk on water. How could I have done that, how could I have been so stupid?’
‘We’re all stupid, sometimes,’ she said, thinking of all her own follies, thinking of the most recent, ‘we all make mistakes. You just got the opportunity to do it on a larger scale.’
‘I know, but it’s not just me. It’s all the others. Marcia, Pete, Sam, Charlie. I’ve failed them all. Stupid fucking, arrogant idiot. I – oh Christ – ’
Rachel stood up, walked over to him, without even thinking what she was doing, put her hands on his shoulders, tenderly, gently. He sat up, looked at her, startled, clearly ashamed, embarrassed, then suddenly, put his arms round her waist, buried his head against her. She stood there, stroking his hair, talking quietly, soothingly to him, as if to a child; an
d then she heard the door open, and Marcia’s voice and someone else’s, as if from very far away, and looking up found herself staring straight into Francesca’s eyes.
Chapter Twenty-one
‘Sit down there,’ said Jess, ‘and stop fidgeting. You know I don’t like fidgeting. If you make an effort to appear calm, you feel calm.’
Bard glared at her. ‘I have no desire to feel calm. This is not a situation for calm.’
‘Well, what is it a situation for? Making a ridiculous, hysterical fuss? Upsetting everybody? What good is that going to do?’
‘I have not,’ said Bard, very slowly, ‘been upsetting anybody. Well, not directly.’
‘You’ve been upsetting Francesca.’
‘Francesca has been upsetting me. And how do you know, has she been talking to you?’
‘She has, but not in the way you mean. And only because I telephoned her, asked her to come and see me if she wanted to. And she said she couldn’t, just at the moment. But she’s clearly at the end of her tether. Doesn’t know what to do to help you. Wants to very much. And something is upsetting her very badly. I don’t know what it is.’
‘She could try talking to me about it,’ said Bard quietly.
‘Isambard, I have known you much longer than Francesca has. And I know how difficult it is to get you to talk about anything when you don’t want to.’
‘I do want to.’
‘No you don’t. You don’t want to talk. You just want people to listen to you. That’s quite different. You should try listening to her.’
‘Mother – ’
‘Isambard, please.’ Her gaunt old face was less stern, very distressed suddenly. ‘I beg of you, don’t shut Francesca out. Don’t risk losing her as well. She is such a lovely woman. She can help you so much, if you allow her to.’
He was silent, clearly struggling to keep his temper, to appear at least to be listening to what she said. Then finally he said, ‘Yes, all right. I’ll try, I promise. Mother, do you have any whisky in this house?’
The Dilemma Page 50
