The Company

by Sally Spencer

  John smiled again, but this time there was a sad edge to it.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

  ‘It does,’ I insisted. ‘It really does. If something’s important to you, then it’s important to me, too.’

  My brother’s smile became more self-conscious.

  ‘I don’t think I’d have the nerve to tell you a second time,’ he said. ‘And anyway, you’ll find out soon enough, as it is.’

  ‘Find out what?’

  ‘Something you should have known a long time ago.’

  ‘Don’t play games with me,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not,’ he replied earnestly. ‘I’m through with games, and I’m through with pretending. For the first time in my life, I think I’m actually facing reality.’

  ‘Then tell me about it!’ I insisted.

  Instead, John had stood up.

  ‘I’ll get you another pint,’ he said. ‘But since I’m driving, I think I’d better switch to orange juice.’

  I was still at my desk, my leg still aching, my eyelids drooping – but suddenly my brain was wide awake, because what my sleepy thoughts had drifted into was precisely the thing my active mind had been trying – and failing – to pin down.

  This was it!

  That conversation in the pub had been just like the conversation I’d had with Jill in front of Warrington railway station, as she set off for Cornwall. It had been the point at which – if I’d been sharper, or cleverer, or more sensitive or … or I don’t know what – I could have broken the chain.

  I rang for black coffee and tried to order my thoughts. It was clear to me now that in that minute or so in which I’d been musing about myself and the great black hole in my own life, John was telling me something vitally important about his. And I’d let him down!

  I raised the question of the company again, on the way back to the village.

  ‘Your problem,’ I told my brother, ‘is that you think Uncle Tony and Philip are going to leave you alone to run your own little empire. But they won’t, you know. Uncle Tony will want to show everyone who’s boss. And as for Philip – well, every slight that he thinks he received when we were kids will be paid back a hundredfold. You just see how you’ll like running your maintenance business with Philip sticking his nose in it every five minutes. See how you’ll like going to him and asking permission before you take the smallest decision.’

  ‘It won’t be like that,’ John said confidently.

  I laughed bitterly. ‘Do you really think you can fight them off? Do you imagine, even for one second, that you’ve enough clout of your own to prevent Philip from taking malicious pleasure in turning you into nothing more than a glorified office boy?’

  ‘I’m sure he’d like to do that, but it isn’t going to happen.’

  I slammed my hand down – hard – on the dashboard.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, John, grow up!’ I said. ‘You told me earlier for the first time in your life, you’re facing reality – but you’re not! You’re living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.’

  ‘And the reason it won’t happen,’ my brother continued calmly, ‘is that I won’t be around to be turned into anything.’

  ‘And what, exactly, do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that I’m resigning. I’m going to let someone else run MCM.’

  His words came as a shock. I’d always been the restless one. I was the one who’d made the decision to go to university, instead of joining the family business. It was John, not me, who’d inherited our father’s placidity – and it was almost inconceivable to think of him cutting loose.

  ‘When do you plan to make the break?’ I asked.

  ‘As soon as Grandfather dies.’

  Another shock.

  ‘But he could last for years and years,’ I said.

  John shook his head. ‘You’ve not been here. You’ve not seen how frail he really is. He makes an effort for your benefit, because you’re never here for long, but he can’t keep it up all the time. He’ll be lucky – very lucky – if he lasts till Christmas.’

  ‘But if he does hold on longer?’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to grit my teeth and bear it, won’t I?’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What’s so important about staying on until he’s gone?’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt him,’ John said simply.

  ‘And you think that leaving the company will hurt him?’

  ‘Perhaps a little – but that’s not what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Then what are you talking about?’

  My brother turned towards me. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, yet it was almost as if he could see me. Worse, it was almost as if he could see right through the skin and the bone into my inner self.

  ‘You really don’t know, do you?’ he asked. ‘I thought for a while that you did and were pretending not to. But you really don’t know.’

  ‘Know what?’ I asked impatiently.

  John shook his head. ‘You can be really thick sometimes.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ my brother said. ‘But let’s get off the subject,’ he continued, and from the tone of his voice I could tell he was smiling. ‘Let’s talk about where I plan to go when I resign.’

  ‘All right,’ I agreed.

  ‘There’s this little Greek island. Thira, it’s called. Lydia and I went there on our honeymoon, and we both fell in love with it. It’s so peaceful – so unspoiled. You don’t need a sports car or a deep freezer there. If you want to go down to the market, you walk. And the fish you buy is fresh from the sea.’

  ‘And you think you could be happy there?’ I asked.

  ‘I know we could be happy there,’ John murmured, as if he could already taste the salt air and feel the Mediterranean sun on his back. ‘Very, very happy.’

  The church clock was just striking twelve as John pulled up in front of our father’s house.

  I opened the passenger door and climbed out. ‘Do you want to come in for a nightcap?’ I asked.

  My brother shook his head. ‘It’s late, and I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow. I think I’ll go straight to bed.’

  I wished him good night, then watched as he reversed out of the driveway. The thought that I hadn’t listened to what he’d had to say earlier was preying on my mind, which was perhaps why I was careless, and dropped my keys.

  They fell into the flower bed which ran along the edge of the path, and though there was an almost full moon that night, I couldn’t see them from where I was standing.

  ‘Bloody idiot!’ I rebuked myself, squatting down and running my hand over the damp soil between the plants.

  It only took a couple of seconds to locate the keys, and as I was straightening up again, I heard the sound of my brother’s car coming to a stop.

  I walked back to the gate. To get home, John should have turned right at the end of School Lane, but instead he had parked just on the corner of it.

  What the hell was he playing at? I wondered.

  The sound of the car door slamming cut through the quiet night air, and I saw my brother striding towards the High Street.

  Perhaps he’d decided that taking a walk might help him think through whatever he’d tried to tell me in the pub.

  And perhaps, now we were back in the village where we’d both grown up – and where he, at least, felt secure – he might give me a second chance to listen to what he had to say.

  I slipped my keys back into my pocket and set off in pursuit.

  By the time I reached the church, there was no sign of him or anyone else. I was faced with two choices – I could either assume he’d followed the High Street down to the steep hill which led on to the main road, or I could gamble on him having taken the small lane which led to Grandfather’s house. I chose the latter, but two minutes’ investigation was enough to convince me I’d made the wrong decision.

  Very well then, I thought, I’d see if I could catch up with him on the High Street.

&nbs
p; John wasn’t to be found there, either, nor on any of the small lanes which ran off it.

  I saw nothing in the least sinister in his disappearance, but it was certainly frustrating that I appeared to have missed my chance to make amends for my earlier inattention.

  I checked my watch. I’d been wandering around for nearly fifteen minutes, and what now seemed most likely was that John had decided simply to leave his car on School Lane for the night and walk home. I took the path to Smithy Lane, wondering if he was still up, and felt like talking.

  Through a chink in the drawn curtains of my brother’s lounge, I could see a light shining. I strolled up the path, and was almost at the door when, though that chink, I caught sight of something which froze me in my tracks.

  The gap wasn’t very wide, and it only gave me a partial view of the lounge, but a partial view was enough to see the couple. They were locked in each other’s arms, kissing passionately. From both her hair and her general build, the woman was obviously my sister-in-law. But the man who was holding her tightly to him did not have my brother’s bulk. He was slimmer than John – much more elegant. And he looked vaguely familiar.

  The lovers broke off from their embrace. Lydia walked across the room, out of my line of vision, and I was left looking at the profile of Paul Taylor, my father’s executive assistant.

  How long had this been going on? I wondered.

  And did John know about it?

  I thought back to a conversation – or perhaps, more accurately, a confrontation – that I’d had with Philip at John and Lydia’s wedding reception.

  ‘I’ve only just met this Enid,’ Philip had said, referring to the girl he’d been chatting up, ‘but I’ll have her before the night is out – just see if I don’t. Even if I don’t get all the way, I’ll probably have more luck than your John will.’

  ‘And just exactly what do you mean by that, Philip?’

  ‘You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.’

  ‘Know what? Is this something to do with Lydia?’

  ‘Well, bugger me. And I always thought you were the smartest out of the three of us.’

  And hadn’t John used almost the identical words to me on the drive back from the pub?

  ‘You really don’t know, do you? I thought for a while that you did and were pretending not to. But you really don’t know.’

  Both John and Philip had seen something in or about Lydia that had gone completely over my head.

  And yet, earlier, in the pub, John had said not just that he loved her, but that his love made all of the other concerns of life seem of no consequence.

  Perhaps that was why they had been planning to move to their Greek island. Perhaps they thought that once they were there, Lydia would have the opportunity to become the kind of wife she should be – the kind of wife that John deserved.

  Lydia appeared again, and the couple moved across the lounge towards the hallway. Paul was leaving!

  I wanted to stay where I was – to confront them, to say that John was the best man I’d ever known, and they were worth less than the dog shit on his shoe.

  But I didn’t – because if John knew what was going on, and had decided that it was a price worth paying to keep Lydia, then my intervention might do more harm than good.

  And so I stepped quickly back across the road and – like a guilty schoolboy – took cover behind one of the plane trees.

  The front door opened and I saw Lydia framed in front of the hall light. She glanced quickly up the lane and then down it, but shrouded in darkness as I was, I was confident she couldn’t see me. My sister-in-law stepped to one side, and Paul Taylor emerged. After checking the lane for himself, he turned quickly to the right, and headed for the track to the village which I’d come up.

  Lydia closed the front door, and I was about to move off myself when I saw the car headlights coming from the opposite direction to the one Paul had taken.

  John! It could only be John!

  I heard the church clock strike. It was exactly one o’clock.

  Was that a coincidence?

  Or had it been pre-arranged? Had John deliberately stayed away until one because he knew Paul Taylor would leave just before then?

  John drove his car into the garage and entered the house. I waited until the downstairs lights went off, then set off towards home.

  Should I tell my brother that I knew what was going on? I thought, as I walked.

  Or should I pretend I didn’t know – as he seemed to think I’d been pretending all along?

  I hadn’t made up my mind by the time I reached my father’s house and was no closer to a decision as I pulled up in front of my flat in Oxford the next day.

  Why hadn’t I told Owen Flint any of this? I asked myself, back in my office, as another pain shot through my bad leg.

  I hadn’t told him because I hadn’t thought it was relevant. With divorce so easy nowadays, no one kills for love. I was sure, too, that Lydia knew John well enough to realize that, even though she was the guilty party, he would still make a generous financial settlement – so money couldn’t have been the motive, either. And while I couldn’t bring my brother back to life, I could at least prevent people from sniggering at his memory by keeping quiet.

  That was how I felt the first time I spoke to Flint, and how I continued to feel until I turned on my car radio later that afternoon and heard that the police urgently wanted to talk to Paul Taylor in connection with three murders, and believed him to be somewhere in the Bristol area.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was two days later, the coroner having finally released the bodies, that I drove back to Cheshire to attend the funerals of my father, brother and uncle.

  The church was full-to-overflowing for the service. Grandmother was not there – Jo Torlopp had ruled that the strain would be too much for her – but the remaining members of my immediate family, my cousin Philip and sister-in-law Lydia, sat on the front pew next to me.

  I listened for a while to the eulogies and opened my mouth when the vicar’s words required a response from the congregation, but my mind was not really on the service at all. I was not there to remember the dead – my mission was to seek out justice for them.

  Lydia and Paul.

  Paul and Lydia.

  Had they really plotted to kill my brother? It still didn’t make sense that they would have – but if they hadn’t, why wasn’t Paul Taylor there now, saying just how ludicrous the whole idea was?

  We all walked solemnly to the graveyard. My mother’s grave had been opened to accommodate my father, and two fresh graves had been dug for my brother and my uncle. We listened to the vicar talk about ashes to ashes and dust to dust, we watched as the coffins were slowly and reverently lowered into the holes, we threw a handful of soil on each of the shiny wooden lids. Then, with a collective sigh, we turned our backs and began the process of getting on with the rest of our lives.

  I lost Lydia in the crowd, and by the time I had reached the lychgate there was no sign of her. But that didn’t matter because I knew where she was going. She would be at Philip’s house, to which Philip – the new patrician of the Conroy family – had summoned us all for post-funeral drinks.

  When I reached the house, ten minutes later, Philip was at the door, greeting new arrivals. In his stylish black silk suit, he looked every inch the grieving son. But I was not fooled – there was a lot of his actress mother in my cousin, and he was doing no more than playing the role.

  We exchanged what passed for a dignified handshake, and I made my way to the lounge. A number of people were already there, including Lydia. Another early arrival, Bill Harper, was surrounded by several young executives and quite clearly holding court.

  I made a beeline for my sister-in-law, but Harper broke away from the group and stepped in my path.

  ‘I’ve been taking a close look at the whole set-up in Cormorant Publishing,’ he said, ‘and it seems to me that what we have are some tremendous possibilities for expansio
n into a wider market.’

  It could have been my cousin talking, only a few days earlier – just before he did a complete volte-face after speaking to this same Bill Harper on the phone.

  ‘Do you really think this is the time and place to discuss business?’ I asked coldly.

  Bill grinned. ‘There’s never a time or place when you shouldn’t talk about business,’ he said. ‘Not if you want to get on. And my impression of you, Rob, is that you’re a man who wants to do just that.’

  He was intoxicated, I realized – not rolling drunk, but drunk enough to make him shed what little inhibition he still seemed to have left – and my wisest course would be to end the conversation there.

  ‘What do you mean by “we have some tremendous possibilities”?’ I heard myself say. ‘Philip promised me that I’d have complete freedom to run the publishing house the way I wanted to.’

  Bill’s grin broadened. ‘Philip!’ he said contemptuously. ‘What does Philip know? And what does Philip matter? He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and as long as nobody tries to take it away from him, he’ll be perfectly happy.’

  ‘I will not tolerate any interference in the way Cormorant Publishing is run,’ I said stiffly.

  Bill Harper’s smile froze, but did not completely disappear. ‘I wouldn’t be so dogmatic if I were you, Robbie-Boy,’ he said. ‘You either work with me – or you work against me. And if you decide to work against me, don’t go conning yourself into thinking that you can rely on Philip for support, because you can’t. He’ll back me over you every single time. And the sooner you learn that, the easier it will be for you.’

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ I said, taking one step to the side.

  I felt his hand on my arm. ‘I haven’t finished what I was saying yet,’ he snarled.

  ‘But I’ve finished listening,’ I countered. ‘And if you think I wouldn’t dare hit you because this is a wake, you’re wrong. It’s what my father and brother would want me to do – in fact, I can almost hear them urging me to take a swing at you right now.’

  Harper released his grip. ‘I’ll talk to you later, when you’re feeling more rational,’ he said, before turning and re-joining his courtiers.