In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

  Taking over control of the firm was an exciting idea.

  EIGHT

  Jane Beaumont was a sad figure. Although she was actually two years younger than her husband, she now looked a good five years older than him. When Martin had married her after a short courtship, she had been a tall, willowy girl, with flowing tennis ground strokes and two appearances at Wimbledon behind her. She had considerable ability in several other sports and a physique which reflected this. She had been a lively, pretty twenty-four-year-old, with perfect white teeth and a wide and frequent smile.

  Jane Montague had had everything going for her, in that popular phrase of the seventies. She had been educated at Roedean and her teenage years had been carefully monitored by protective parents. A couple of generations earlier, she would have been that peculiarly British female phenomenon, a debutante. Her old-fashioned father sent her to a Swiss finishing school rather than a university. The company she kept was carefully selected for her. But this was the late seventies, not the thirties, and the dutiful daughter began to insist rather belatedly on choosing her own friends.

  Then, within the space of eighteen months, Jane’s father was killed in one of the fast cars he could never resist and her mother died of ovarian cancer. Three months later, the attractive young athlete Jane Montague was married to the handsome, articulate and eminently plausible Martin Beaumont. Thus was she cut off from the life she had just begun to explore.

  Two of Jane’s aunts had reluctantly assumed some sort of oversight of their niece after the unexpected deaths of her parents. They were disturbed by the sudden advent on the scene of this predatory young man, especially in view of Jane’s newly acquired wealth. But they were no match for the energy and persuasiveness of Martin Beaumont.

  Jane was old enough to make her own decisions, she told them. She was certainly legally well past the age when she needed to heed their reservations. If the aunts suspected that these arguments were articulated by the young man who stood to benefit from them, there was very little they could do about that. Jane Montague became Jane Beaumont and disappeared from their world.

  Jane was very taken at first with the whole business of marriage. Because of her protected upbringing, sex was a later and more exciting discovery to her than it was to the vast majority of her contemporaries. But the children she had taken to be an inevitable consequence of union did not arrive. She was disturbed as well as puzzled by that, though her husband did not seem unduly worried. And during the first two years of her marriage, her allegiance to Martin was unquestioning and indeed unthinking.

  At the end of that period, she realized that he had invested the whole of her inheritance in a new and exciting project he decided should be called Abbey Vineyards. It was done not without Jane’s knowledge but without her real awareness. Martin assured her repeatedly in the long years which followed that this was no one’s fault but her own. Because she had been completely trusting or, as her husband put it, had shown no real interest, Martin had walled in her participation in his enterprise with all sorts of restrictive clauses from his lawyer. The implication throughout the documents was that the capital which fed the firm had been provided by the man who drove and controlled it.

  All this was of no matter, Martin assured Jane. They had agreed marriage for better or for worse, hadn’t they? What was his was hers, and vice versa, of course. That meant that when it emerged when she was thirty that Jane was suffering from bipolar disorder, there was no question of her long-suffering husband choosing to renounce the burden. If she had to be treated in specialist hospitals rather than at home during the periodic attacks which were part of her disorder, that was unavoidable and only showed his concern to do everything possible to alleviate her suffering.

  The suggestions from Jane’s few remaining friends that Martin had provoked and exacerbated this disturbing condition in his wife were both mischievous and ill-conceived. Surely anyone with even rudimentary medical knowledge knew that the condition was genetic? It had been there from birth, Martin reasoned, but had probably been disguised in childhood and adolescence by the obsessively sheltered upbringing which the then Jane Montague’s parents had visited upon their only daughter.

  Martin took his sexual pleasures elsewhere, of course. Some of his male acquaintances nodded their heads and said that was surely to be expected. The man was behaving like a saint in refusing to renounce his unfortunate wife, and there were bound to be a few consequences. A man had his needs, after all, they said. It was one of those vague cliches which are designed to keep people at a comfortable distance from suffering.

  Jane Beaumont became more lonely and more desperate with the passing years, but very few people were aware of her plight.

  On a still, cloudless evening in early May, Jane sat on the patio at the back of the house for a very long time. She heard her husband come into the hall, but he did not come through to greet her. It was an hour after this, as twilight moved into darkness, that Jane came into the house. She studied Martin without speaking for a moment and then said without preamble, ‘I think we should get divorced.’

  ‘No, Jane. We’ve discussed it before and it’s not on.’ He had the resigned air of a parent dealing kindly with a difficult child.

  ‘Why? Because I might want my share of the loot?’

  ‘There isn’t any loot to be had, my dear. Everything is ploughed back into the business — it always has been. There’ll be profits in the future, but not now.’

  ‘I could make you sell the business.’ It was the first time she’d threatened that, and it gave her the little thrill that came from unwonted aggression. Hit him where it hurts, she thought. That precious business is all the man cares about.

  Martin didn’t think she could make him sell, without his consent, not with the business legally protected from just such a move. But the last thing he could stand at the moment was the messy and expensive business of a protracted lawsuit, especially with all the unwelcome publicity that would bring to Abbey Vineyards. All he said aloud was, ‘It would be a very bad time to try to sell any business, darling, at the height of a major recession.’

  ‘I’m not your darling. I haven’t been that for a long time. It’s time we put an end to the sham. Are you frightened of the world finding out about your other women?’

  ‘You’re not yourself tonight, dear. Have you taken your pills today?’

  ‘Don’t fob me off with that. You think that if I’m an invalid I won’t have the energy to challenge you, don’t you?’ Jane was voicing her own fear. Always in the end he was able to override her, because he had more energy and a fiercer will power than she had. But it mustn’t be like that, if she was ever going to find a way out of this.

  ‘No one is sorrier that you’re an invalid than I am, Jane. In your more rational moments, I’m sure you can see that. But it’s very hurtful to me when you say things like this, even when I know that it’s really your illness that’s speaking.’

  ‘It’s a long time since I was able to hurt you, Martin Beaumont. I want out. That way neither of us will complicate the other’s life.’

  ‘I think you must have one of your bad times coming on, Jane. Perhaps we should see what the medics make of your state of health at the moment.’

  He made it sound like a threat, she thought. And indeed it was a threat, coming from him. It was the most potent weapon in the strange array he used against her. Jane wondered if she looked as unkempt and uncontrolled as she felt. She was sure now that her long black hair was straggly and uncombed. She couldn’t remember when she had last given it any attention. She didn’t enjoy looking in mirrors nowadays.

  She said as firmly as she could, ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with my health. I’m being perfectly rational about our future.’

  Martin gave her the little mirthless chuckle which was the one of his reactions that most annoyed her. ‘Oh, I doubt that, Jane.’ He walked over to the drinks cabinet and mixed himself a whisky and soda with merciless deliberation. ‘Perh
aps we’ll talk tomorrow, when you’re in a more sensible frame of mind.’

  He walked out of the room and into his study, shutting the door firmly behind him. He might have to do something about Jane if she went on in this vein, he thought. It would have surprised him to know that Jane Beaumont was thinking exactly the same about him.

  Like quite a lot of head chefs, Jason Knight did not work on a Monday. It was the quietest day of the week in the restaurant. It was also the logical day for Jason to rest, after weekends that were usually successful but often hectic.

  His absence had the happy effect of giving Gerry Davies an extra day to think about the proposition his friend had put to him on Saturday. Taking control of the firm was a radical step. It was also one which Gerry would never even have entertained, had Jason not suggested it to him. He discussed it in confidence with each of his sons over the weekend, as Jason had suggested he should, but that made his decision more rather than less difficult. It was a good idea in principle, all three of them agreed, but the final decision would depend on the particular firm and the particular circumstances involved.

  Only he could weigh all the facts in this particular instance. He must do that and make the decision which was right for him. All of which put the ball firmly back in Gerry’s court. Wrong metaphor, he decided: the only kind of ball he had ever been happy to handle was a rugby ball, when he was in his physical prime. Thirty years ago, on the mudbaths of Llanelli or Treorchy, that greasy leather-clad ovoid had been difficult to handle, but it had been child’s play compared with this.

  He hadn’t made his mind up what to do by Monday, so he was glad that Knight wasn’t around to ask for his decision. He passed him a couple of times during the day on Tuesday, and thought the chef was looking at him quizzically, but that was probably just his imagination. Gerry waited until he saw Martin Beaumont drive his Jaguar out of its reserved parking space at five thirty before going across to the restaurant kitchen.

  Jason nodded immediately towards the door of his den. Gerry Davies went into the little room and sat rather nervously for a couple of minutes until his friend joined him. Jason must have been a little on edge, for he said without any preliminaries, ‘Well? Have you mulled over what we discussed?’

  ‘I seem to have done nothing else for the last three days. I’ve discussed it with my sons as you suggested. They thought it a good idea, in many respects. They’re more up to date, more forward-looking, than I am.’

  ‘And?’ Knight was too anxious to hear the words of support he wanted to allow any further delay.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t go along with it, Jason. I don’t feel I can challenge Martin to give us control of his company, in view of my present relationship with him. As you suggested, he wouldn’t welcome the idea, and I’m afraid I should feel disloyal. He backed me to do a major job in this place, and he’s paid me handsomely for my efforts. It would feel to me like kicking him in the teeth to say, “Well, loyalty only goes so far, Martin. You picked me up and backed me, but now that we’re successful, I want more than just a wage from you.” I’m sorry, Jason, but that’s how it’s come out. I’ve considered all the other arguments, but they don’t override what I feel.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’ Jason wanted to revive the arguments he’d put before, above all to point out that Beaumont hadn’t picked up Davies out of the gutter but had backed a man who had already proved his ability. But he knew Gerry well enough to accept that he wouldn’t change his mind once he’d made a decision. He thought of a new, more positive, argument, and fancied he heard the pulse of desperation entering his voice as he put it. ‘The company might be all the stronger, you know, if we all had a say in its direction. The people we were talking about are all able people.’

  Gerry Davies smiled ruefully. He felt much happier now that he had announced his decision, even though he knew he had disappointed his friend. ‘You could well be right. I’ve never said what you want to do is wrong, have I? It’s just that it wouldn’t feel right for me, and I can’t go against my instinct.’

  ‘All right. I won’t pester you again. And I respect what you say about having to do what’s right for you. This won’t affect our friendship.’

  ‘Thank you. I didn’t think it would, but I’m happy to hear you say that.’ Gerry resisted an absurd impulse to get up and pump the younger man by the hand. He felt a need to offer him some sort of consolation. ‘If you consult the other three you mentioned and they all feel as you do, then do come back to me. I’ve already told you that I might be wrong, that to an extent I’m acting on gut instinct rather than logic. If you all feel the same and want me in, then I’ll reconsider at that point.’

  It sounded as if he was trying to have the best of both worlds. But Jason Knight knew that it wasn’t like that, that Davies merely needed the reassurance of knowing that other and different people shared his friend’s views. The trouble was that Jason doubted whether he could enlist that support. He didn’t know the others anything like as well as he knew Gerry and he didn’t think they trusted him as Gerry did.

  The financial expert Alistair Morton had been here longer than anyone. He was something of an introvert who always played his cards close to his chest; Jason didn’t know how he would react to an assault on the boss’s control. Jason had always been slightly in awe of Vanda North; he fancied that as an ex-mistress she knew far more about Beaumont than she was prepared to confide in him. He suspected also that she did not entirely trust him, that she saw him as a young man on the make, gifted perhaps, but not entirely to be relied upon. He liked Sarah Vaughan and thought she had the talent to contribute to the firm and its policies. But she was quite young, still relatively new to the job, and lightweight. She might follow the others into a challenge against Beaumont, but she’d hardly be the instigator alongside him.

  Jason realized now how much he had been relying on going to the others with the sturdy Gerry Davies already beside him as an ally. The older man had the gravitas and the integrity which would be important if he was to make the others share his aspirations for power. He said, voicing a perfectly genuine dilemma, ‘I shall have to consider where I go from here. I was rather relying on having you at my side to help persuade the others.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that. But I don’t see that I’m going to change my mind. Unless, as I say, I knew everyone felt the same, or there were new situations to consider.’

  Jason Knight couldn’t see how there was going to be any significant change, unless he could initiate it himself. He would have to think of other methods.

  Sarah Vaughan had given herself a severe talking to, then got on with the job she knew and liked.

  There was surely no reason why she should allow Martin Beaumont and his sexual harassment to interfere with her life. Because harassment was all it was, surely. And because that was all it was, a mature woman like her could put it into its proper perspective. She was thirty-three, not seventeen. It wasn’t the first time a man had made a pass at her, and it wouldn’t be the last. Like all attractive women, she had long ago learned how to brush off advances she did not want to encourage.

  Why then had she been so upset on the night after Martin Beaumont had made his bid for her body in his car? Well, partly because it was exactly that: attempted rape. It wasn’t a pass in the way she had always had to deal with them, a clumsy attempt at a kiss which left the perpetrator more embarrassed than the recipient. Her boss had been claiming something like droit de seigneur. He had wanted her body and he had been pretty determined about it. Attempted rape was not an exaggeration.

  No doubt Martin would say that she was being absurdly dramatic if she challenged him about it, would say that her imagination had translated an innocent bit of flirting into something more sinister. The old male lies would spring readily to his lips, she was sure. Indeed, he would have little alternative but to take a line like that: anything else would be admitting his guilt and inviting her to take whatever steps she wanted in retribution.

  She
realized something else as she woke from a troubled sleep on the morning after the incident. He might, indeed, deny it altogether. There were no witnesses, after all, and it was only her word against his. No doubt he would have more expensive lawyers at his command than she could ever employ. She had even heard of men bringing counter-suits for defamation of character, when the victim had had no witness to support her claims. Beaumont had an invalid wife, though no one seemed to know much about her; he would no doubt command the sympathy of a court, once some glib and experienced brief had put his case for him.

  There was no use cutting off her nose to spite her face, Sarah Vaughan told herself firmly. She had a job she liked and good prospects, because everyone seemed very pleased with the start she had made at Abbey Vineyards. She was well paid for her work. A tiny voice she did not want to acknowledge told Sarah that she might in the future be even better paid as a result of Beaumont’s clumsy assault. He would surely want to keep her quiet and compensate her for her discretion.

  At midnight on the night after her mauling in the Jaguar, she had been determined to storm in the next morning, to give in her notice, to make Martin Beaumont pay for what he had done. By morning, she was not so sure. She would go to work, see whether Beaumont wanted to be conciliatory, hear what he had to say for himself, and then decide on her tactics. She had surely nothing to lose by doing that.

  Sarah didn’t want to acknowledge it, but she felt acutely the lack of anyone she could confide in. She was between boyfriends — had been for about six months, if she was honest about it. So there was no one to mount the white charger and challenge Sir Jasper on her behalf — she was already seeing Beaumont in that rather absurd Victorian role. Her mother was seventy now and simply wouldn’t understand the issues: it wouldn’t be fair to burden her with them. She had never really been close to her younger sister, and even less so since marriage had taken her up to Aberdeen. Her close university friend was married with two young kids in a London suburb. She would be highly indignant on Sarah’s part, would be violently in favour of hitting the villain with everything they could muster. But that wasn’t quite what her injured friend wanted to hear.