Read Online Due Diligence by Grant Sutherland - Free Book Online
Authors: Grant Sutherland
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him to the favour he enjoyed as a boy. My father is silent now. There will be no further mention of Daniel tonight.
‘I’m not going to let Lyle get Carltons,’ I tell him, and when he closes his eyes the firelight plays over his face, unforgiving.
‘I’m tired,’ he murmurs. ‘You’ll be tired too. Get some rest.’
A spark leaps onto the rug, and I kneel and flick it back into the fire. But when I turn to speak, the words die on my lips. Lord Belmont, my father, suddenly looks like a very old man.
Taking up my whisky, I consider Darren Lyle: What if‘? But my thoughts soon slide into a deeper channel. Tomorrow I will see Theresa and Annie.
SUNDAY
1
----
S unday morning the world is bright silver. Frost laces the twigs and branches, and glistens on the lawn; the air is cold, the lines of nature sharp and clear. A fox crouches on the wall by the rosebed. Margie steps from the house singing quietly, and the fox drops behind the wall and disappears.
‘Raef,’ my father calls from the hallway. ‘I’m going down to the stables.’
Closing my bedroom window, I go out to join him. Across the valley, three lines of smoke rise from the chimneys of the cottages where our estate workers live. Walking down the hill we hear children’s laughter come up from the river, and voices drifting up from the stable. My father smiles, his face glows. To him this is the finest place in the world. In my late teens I could barely stand it here: it’s strange to think of that now. In those days I was very close to my grandfather, his likes and dislikes tended to become mine: and my grandfather’s life wasn’t here at Boddington, his whole being was tied up with the City. I remember him taking me into his office as a boy, something my father never did. Edward’s boy, Raef, he’d say, nudging me forward to shake a co1league’s hand. He was a big man: this isn’t a trick of memory, his portrait in the Boardroom confirms it. He was the kind who leaves an impression, gregarious and able. The family folklore has him besting Maynard Keynes in a public debate on the gold standard, and Keynes returning in private for advice.
My father isn’t like that at all. He is self-effacing and diffident, people don’t warm to him easily. In the City, I see now, he could never escape my grandfather’s shadow. Only when my father inherited the title and a seat in the Lords did he really find freedom. He resigned the Managing Directorship of Carltons almost immediately. These past nine years there has been a change in the house-guests down here at Boddington; as my father has moved on from orchestrating votes and key speeches among the peers, the industrialists and bankers have been replaced by politicians and senior civil servants. The cartoonists draw my father as a wraith-like Victorian figure in top-hat and tails, a fair representation of the outward man I suppose. But what goes on behind this public facade even I find hard to understand. After almost forty years as his son, years in which he has passed on to me every material blessing he can give, the deep places of his heart remain a mystery. But I’m sure of this: Boddington, the ancestral seat of our family, he truly loves.
Nearing the stables now, I see Charles in the yard talking with someone. It looks like the groom, but then the groom appears from the stalls.
My father notices me squinting. ‘Gifford,’ he says. Eric Gifford, President and leading light of American Pacific. ‘I asked him down.’
‘Why?’
‘He was in town. Charles thought it might be a civil gesture.’
My shoulders tighten. Twelve months ago I would cheerfully have strangled the urbane Eric Gifford. Twelve months ago he was accumulating a stake in Carlton Brothers, and we were wondering if we would be forced to mount a formal defence. At my insistence, Charles was sent across to New York and a truce was organized: Gifford stopped buying at five per cent. But Sir Charles was so impressed with
‘I’m not going to let Lyle get Carltons,’ I tell him, and when he closes his eyes the firelight plays over his face, unforgiving.
‘I’m tired,’ he murmurs. ‘You’ll be tired too. Get some rest.’
A spark leaps onto the rug, and I kneel and flick it back into the fire. But when I turn to speak, the words die on my lips. Lord Belmont, my father, suddenly looks like a very old man.
Taking up my whisky, I consider Darren Lyle: What if‘? But my thoughts soon slide into a deeper channel. Tomorrow I will see Theresa and Annie.
SUNDAY
1
----
S unday morning the world is bright silver. Frost laces the twigs and branches, and glistens on the lawn; the air is cold, the lines of nature sharp and clear. A fox crouches on the wall by the rosebed. Margie steps from the house singing quietly, and the fox drops behind the wall and disappears.
‘Raef,’ my father calls from the hallway. ‘I’m going down to the stables.’
Closing my bedroom window, I go out to join him. Across the valley, three lines of smoke rise from the chimneys of the cottages where our estate workers live. Walking down the hill we hear children’s laughter come up from the river, and voices drifting up from the stable. My father smiles, his face glows. To him this is the finest place in the world. In my late teens I could barely stand it here: it’s strange to think of that now. In those days I was very close to my grandfather, his likes and dislikes tended to become mine: and my grandfather’s life wasn’t here at Boddington, his whole being was tied up with the City. I remember him taking me into his office as a boy, something my father never did. Edward’s boy, Raef, he’d say, nudging me forward to shake a co1league’s hand. He was a big man: this isn’t a trick of memory, his portrait in the Boardroom confirms it. He was the kind who leaves an impression, gregarious and able. The family folklore has him besting Maynard Keynes in a public debate on the gold standard, and Keynes returning in private for advice.
My father isn’t like that at all. He is self-effacing and diffident, people don’t warm to him easily. In the City, I see now, he could never escape my grandfather’s shadow. Only when my father inherited the title and a seat in the Lords did he really find freedom. He resigned the Managing Directorship of Carltons almost immediately. These past nine years there has been a change in the house-guests down here at Boddington; as my father has moved on from orchestrating votes and key speeches among the peers, the industrialists and bankers have been replaced by politicians and senior civil servants. The cartoonists draw my father as a wraith-like Victorian figure in top-hat and tails, a fair representation of the outward man I suppose. But what goes on behind this public facade even I find hard to understand. After almost forty years as his son, years in which he has passed on to me every material blessing he can give, the deep places of his heart remain a mystery. But I’m sure of this: Boddington, the ancestral seat of our family, he truly loves.
Nearing the stables now, I see Charles in the yard talking with someone. It looks like the groom, but then the groom appears from the stalls.
My father notices me squinting. ‘Gifford,’ he says. Eric Gifford, President and leading light of American Pacific. ‘I asked him down.’
‘Why?’
‘He was in town. Charles thought it might be a civil gesture.’
My shoulders tighten. Twelve months ago I would cheerfully have strangled the urbane Eric Gifford. Twelve months ago he was accumulating a stake in Carlton Brothers, and we were wondering if we would be forced to mount a formal defence. At my insistence, Charles was sent across to New York and a truce was organized: Gifford stopped buying at five per cent. But Sir Charles was so impressed with
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