by J M Gregson
There was nothing sexual in the bond between them. He had joked about it over the months with his wife. Sarah had sworn him to secrecy when she stopped weeping and recovered her self-control, or he would have told Bronwen now about Beaumont’s predatory attentions. It was a pity he was not able to do that, for Bronwen would have given him a better perspective on the situation. She would have told him that Sarah was not a pretty and vulnerable girl, but a woman of thirty-three who was quite capable of looking after herself.
That was exactly what Sarah Vaughan herself told him, but it did not have the same effect coming from her. Gerry saw it as the brave attempt of a victim to assert her independence, in a situation where she was at the mercy of a predatory and experienced older man.
Gerry would have loved to discuss Sarah’s predicament with his closest working colleague, Jason Knight, but her demand that the information should go no further meant that too was impossible. That again was a pity, because the chef would also have put a better perspective on the news than he could. Jason would, indeed, have been rather more cynical, not about Sarah’s innocence and shock, but about the possibilities of turning the situation to her advantage. It might just have been to his advantage as well, of course, but that would have been no more than a happy coincidence.
As it was, the effect upon Gerry Davies of Sarah Vaughan’s revelations was unfortunate. It upset his usually sound business judgement. It meant that he allowed personal and emotional considerations to impinge upon his working relationships, a thing he had always previously avoided. As he had told Knight, he respected Martin Beaumont as an efficient entrepreneur, a shrewd judge of markets and potential niches in them, a good picker of men and women to serve him, an excellent leader, and an employer who rewarded ability and hard work.
These were accurate judgements. They should not have been modified by the news of Beaumont’s lubricious tendencies. He was not the first owner of a business who thought power and position entitled him to put his hand up skirts, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. Lust was a more dangerous weakness than it had been in the past, and that was surely a good thing. But it didn’t make Martin Beaumont any less efficient at the things he did well as a business leader.
When it was much too late, Gerry Davies would see all of this. But on the day after Sarah Vaughan had arrived in his deserted shop in such a distressed state, he took a decision which was to prove momentous for other people as well as him.
He went across to Jason Knight’s kitchens at four o’clock, knowing that at that time he would find the chef resting in his den before he began directing the preparations for the evening’s meals. Once the door was safely closed, Davies spoke abruptly, as though he feared that hesitation might affect his decision. ‘I’ve changed my mind about what you said. I think we should challenge Beaumont about the future of the firm. I think we should have our say in the running of this place.’
Vanda North couldn’t remember what Jane Beaumont looked like. A solitary meeting ten years ago had left no lasting impression. A tall, rather pretty, athletic woman, she thought. But she had only the vaguest memory of Martin’s wife.
When she opened the door to her visitor, she was shocked by what she saw. She looked into a haggard, strained face. The high cheekbones must once have been striking, but now they were too prominent under the stretched grey skin to look anything but unhealthy. The deep-set dark eyes had probably been intriguing in this woman’s youth; now the dark rings beneath them made them look haunted.
Vanda knew from her time with Martin that Jane Beaumont was two years younger than her husband, which would make her now fifty-four. Had she not known that, she would have taken her for over sixty. Vanda had expected to be embarrassed by this meeting. That might still happen, but she realized now that she would have to be careful not to show the pity and concern she felt for her visitor.
Jane Beaumont smiled. ‘You have a nice place here. Charming and quite individual.’ She sounded like a polite child who had been primed by her parents with the right things to say.
‘Thank you. I like it, and most people seem to find it an intriguing old place. Please come inside. I have tea and biscuits waiting.’ Vanda spoke as robustly as she could, thrusting aside the thought that she in turn was responding as if her visitor were a well brought-up youngster. Two minutes later, she carried a large tray into the sitting room where she had taken this unexpected guest. ‘Old places have their disadvantages too, of course. I had to have the thatch on the roof renewed when I moved in here twelve years ago. Set me back a pretty penny at the time, that did. And buildings insurance can be prohibitive.’
Jane Beaumont gave her a wan smile. ‘I want to talk to you about Martin.’
‘I see. I doubt whether I can be of any help to you, but I’m prepared to listen to whatever you have to say.’ Despite the embarrassment she felt was coming, Vanda was glad that the woman had dispensed with small talk. She had been wondering how to move beyond the meaningless preliminaries.
‘You were Martin’s mistress. I know that.’
‘Yes. It sounds trite to say this now, and it’s probably meaningless, but I regret any pain I caused you. Passion makes you selfish, makes you disregard the effects of your actions upon others. I know that’s no excuse for—’
‘Passion, yes. I suppose it was that. Perhaps I felt that myself at one time. I doubt if it was strong enough to merit the term passion, but it’s too long ago for me to be certain of anything now.’ She looked past Vanda, staring at a picture on the wall but seeing in her mind’s eye something else entirely. She picked up a biscuit, took a small bite from it, then stared at it in her hand as if wondering how it had got there. ‘It may be that now I have to hurt you. But I want you to help me.’
‘I’ll do that if I can. At this moment, I can’t see anything I could do which might be useful to you.’
‘I’m going to sue Martin for divorce.’ Jane was quiet for a long time, sipping her tea and staring at the painting again. Vanda wondered whether she was going to offer any development of a statement she seemed to regard as self-explanatory.
At last, Jane looked at her host and smiled mirthlessly. ‘He’s going to resist. As you know him well, that won’t surprise you. Martin fights hard against any rearrangement of the world he has set up for himself.’
Vanda was relieved to see signs of animation in the thin white face which had until now resembled a mask. ‘That sounds like a very good summary of your husband. You may know that I am a junior partner in Abbey Vineyards. I have been trying to divest myself of that investment and take my money out of his firm. But I find that his lawyers hedged it about with so many clauses that it is proving almost impossible for me to do so.’
Again that thin smile. ‘That does not surprise me, Ms North.’
‘Vanda, please.’
‘Vanda then. Probably he took care to act in his own interests, whereas you were trusting and heedless. That would be in the early part of your relationship with him – when passion ruled, perhaps.’ There was just the faintest stress on her recall of Vanda’s own word. But if she enjoyed turning the mistress’s earlier excuse against her, it was not apparent in the taut face.
‘That is exactly what happened.’ It was quite bizarre, but in the intimate, low-ceilinged setting of this familiar room, Vanda felt a bond of sympathy extending itself between the two of them. ‘I was totally trusting of Martin. I felt I could safely put my interests in his hands. It wasn’t until later that I found everything in his life was totally subsumed in Abbey Vineyards. He had been quite ruthless in pouring my money into that and in making sure that I could never extract it.’
It was a relief to say it, to state openly what she had long since decided was the truth of the matter, but had been unable to confess to anyone else. Jane Beaumont was nodding almost eagerly, showing for the first time a little pleasure, as she recognized this account of a husband she had grown to detest. ‘That would be a fair summary of my marriage, Vanda. I was a rich woman
at the outset of it. Martin used the fortune I had inherited to set up Abbey Vineyards. He also used his lawyers to make it virtually impossible for me either to extract my money or to exercise any degree of control over the enterprise which had been founded on my capital. Everything in his life revolves around the firm. Even his sex life, apparently.’
The last phrase should have been full of acid, but she said it almost sympathetically. They were sisters united by the man’s inhumanity rather than women bitterly divided by being his bedfellows. Vanda said, ‘We seem to be agreed on that. The scales have fallen from both our eyes when it is rather too late for us. But you said I could help you.’
Jane Beaumont paused to drain her cup. She was aware of her movements and her audience now, no longer the chilling automaton she had been when she first accepted a seat in this room. ‘I came to warn you that I might have to hurt you. That you might be called upon to give evidence in a messy divorce. He’s sure to contest it.’
‘You are going to cite me as a co-respondent. As evidence of his adultery.’
‘Yes. If those old-fashioned terms are still the correct ones.’
‘You can do that, if it should be necessary. I don’t think I would have to appear in court. Our affair went on for several years, so he could scarcely deny it. He was supposed to be moving in with me, finishing with you and remarrying. It all seems quite unreal now, knowing him as I do.’
Vanda glanced at the wife Martin had said he was going to leave, then refilled her cup and offered her another biscuit, as if they were friends meeting happily after a long interval. ‘I’m sorry to say that; I realize it must be hurtful. At the time, I was taking care to know nothing of you, to have no picture of you in my mind. I suppose I hoped such ignorance might mean that I was hurting you less. I realize now how cowardly that was. I was merely protecting myself.’
‘It might have been hurtful, once. A long time ago. But not now. You were in a long-term relationship, as I was supposed to be. I feel we’ve suffered similar fates. You didn’t have a piece of legal paper, as I had, but each of us was promised what she was never going to get.’ Jane took another bite of biscuit, realized for the first time that she was enjoying the taste. She could not remember whether she had eaten today before coming here. ‘It might not be necessary to involve you at all. No doubt there are other and more passing fancies of Martin’s we could cite.’
‘There certainly are. I could provide you with chapter and verse on some of them, if you would like it. It mattered to me at the time, though I don’t give a damn whom he beds now.’ Vanda could scarcely believe it, but the mistress and the wife he had cheated were working now as partners against a common enemy. ‘He won’t make divorce easy, if he doesn’t want it.’
Jane smiled ruefully, but this time with a small, companionable humour. ‘I’m well aware of that. He wouldn’t mind losing me, but he can’t afford a divorce. As things stand, it’s very difficult for me to take anything out of Abbey Vineyards because of the way I passed everything over to him to invest, but any divorce settlement would surely give me rights I don’t have at the moment. He might even be forced to sell the firm to pay me out.’
‘I’m sure he would. And that might also mean that I could retrieve my investment and end the partnership. Look, let me have your telephone number and give me three or four days. I’m pretty sure I can get you quite recent evidence on some of his women. Martin’s always been a goat – more fool us for not seeing that when we got involved with him, I suppose. That’s not going to change. It’s almost his only weakness.’ Vanda thought for a moment, then spoke almost to herself. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s had a go at Sarah Vaughan – I doubt whether he’d be able to resist it. Sorry, you don’t know Sarah. She’s a pretty woman in her early thirties who’s one of the bright sparks at the vineyard. I’d be surprised if Martin hasn’t tried to seduce her. I’m sorry, this must be distressing for you.’
‘It isn’t. Our marriage was over a long time ago. Getting Martin to acknowledge that is the only thing that concerns me now.’ Jane sipped her second cup of tea, set it carefully down in the saucer and stared at it for a long time. ‘There’s something you ought to know. I didn’t expect to be telling you this, but if we’re going to work together, you’ve a right to know it.’
Vanda wanted to reach across the low table and take the other woman’s hand, to establish some sort of physical contact which would assure Jane of her support. But she knew that it was much too early for that, that this most unexpected liaison must be allowed time to develop. She said very quietly, ‘Are you sure you want to tell me this now? I’m sure we shall be seeing each other again. Maybe the time—’
‘No, I must tell you now. You have a right to know, if you’re going to help me. I have a bipolar disorder. It’s relatively mild, the doctors tell me. Most of the time I control it with drugs; occasionally I need treatment in a specialist unit for a few days. At present it isn’t a problem, but you need to know that I have the condition, because Martin will use it. He fights dirty when he’s under pressure; I suspect you already know that. If his back is against the wall, he’ll make out in court that I’m a raving lunatic, or at best a highly disordered personality, whose evidence is totally unreliable.’
Vanda didn’t want to admit that when her own judgement had been undermined by the excitement of sex, Martin had hinted something of the sort to her. She had accepted these vague hints of a wife like Mr Rochester’s in Jane Eyre, probably because at the time it was what she wanted to hear. She said, ‘He’ll have two of us to contend with, if it comes to anything like that. We’ll get our own medical evidence in, if we should need it.’
Jane Beaumont had been planning ahead, even to the extent of deciding upon the medical specialist she would call. But it gave her immense confidence to hear this sturdy woman of the world declaring her allegiance. Almost thirty years of marriage to Martin as well as her bipolar problems had ensured that she rarely felt confident. To have not only her resistance but her tactics endorsed by such a robust ally was more heartening for Jane than she could begin to express.
In their different ways, both of these women led lonely lives. Vanda’s isolation was nothing like as desperate as Jane’s, but she realized now how empty life had felt over the last year or two. How empty she had let it become, perhaps. Once they had what they wanted out of this situation, she would make the rest of her life altogether richer.
The two exchanged details of their lives outside Martin Beaumont, of their very different childhoods, of their preferences in books and art. And in television, that perpetual resort of the lonely. As she drove away from the thatched cottage on the edge of the village, Jane Beaumont was much more animated than she had been when she arrived.
Vanda North stood in the doorway of her ancient home until the car was quite out of sight. She went thoughtfully back into the house and sat down to revolve her thoughts on this new commitment. It was only when the clock chimed in the hall that she realized the visit she had so feared in prospect had lasted for three hours.
TEN
Martin Beaumont was no fool. Even those who hated him knew that. It was what made opposition difficult. And those women who had more personal reasons to resent him, such as Jane Beaumont and Vanda North and Sarah Vaughan, realized when they thought coolly about it that he was a man who would not easily be defeated.
Beaumont was a shrewd and highly experienced operator. He sensed that there was going to be a challenge to his domination of the empire he had created at Abbey Vineyards. Not perhaps to his leadership, but to his position as the autocrat who determined every aspect of policy. He knew all about Vanda North’s desire to end her powerless partnership and withdraw her funds, of course, but he was confident that his lawyers had tied that up for him years ago. Nevertheless, if she became more than a lone voice of opposition, things might get difficult.
Beaumont sensed rather than knew that Jason Knight was considering how to strengthen his position. Knight was
an ambitious and well-informed man as well as a highly proficient chef. Martin was keeping an eye upon him as the restaurant prospered and the chef’s position within the firm strengthened. Knight had taken care that his sounding of Gerry Davies was unobserved by the owner, but Beaumont was well used to divining what was going on around him from the minimum of information.
Fiona Cooper was just the sort of personal assistant he needed. She was both discreet and intelligent: she gave away nothing, but vacuumed up the gossip around the place and passed it to her employer. And Beaumont himself noted the odd phrase which signified a change of attitude in Gerry Davies, a man too honest for his own good, too unused to the ways of dissimulation to adopt them when he needed them. Davies took care to say nothing about either his meetings with Jason Knight or his knowledge of what had passed between Beaumont and Sarah Vaughan. Nevertheless, Beaumont noted subtle changes in his speech and his bearing which suggested that his unthinking loyalty and admiration for the owner had been affected.
It was always Martin Beaumont’s inclination to tackle opposition head on. If he was in a position of strength, he believed in exploiting it as quickly as possible, lest the situation changed. And he felt himself to be very much in a position of strength with Tom Ogden, that obstinate strawberry-grower whose land obtruded so inappropriately into his. When he sensed that he held all the cards, Martin liked to bully the opposition.
He acknowledged that openly to himself. He knew that he enjoyed a little bullying when he felt he could not lose – it was a release from the more subtle and patient manoeuvres which were so often necessary in the rest of his dealings.
