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Authors: Michael Arditti
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apart and she was defeated in straight sets. The following year, despite reaching the third round in the French Open, she failed to qualify at home. In 1988 she retired, aged twenty-six.
Privately, Duncan suspected that she had used the distraction as an excuse, either because she knew that she had reached her peak or else to escape the weight of public expectation. She had capitalised on her celebrity by launching a range of women’s sportswear, which, more than twenty years on and despite an ill-advised venture into ski accessories, continuedto sell. Yet, although aware of the
Mercury
’s parlous state, neither she nor her husband and business partner, Malcolm, had once offered to waive her dividend. Equally galling was to hear his mother explaining why Alison’s business commitments prevented her from making the two-hour trip from London more than three or four times a year, while protesting roundly whenever Duncan, who brought out a twenty-four-page newspaper every Thursday, cancelled one of his twice-weekly visits. At forty-eight, he was inured to his mother’s favouritism but, as he had made clear in terms that even she could not ignore, the one thing that he would not countenance was that she should extend it to the next generation, belittling Jamie by praising his high-achieving cousins.
Alison arrived on Sunday evening, two hours behind schedule. Duncan met her at Francombe station and drove her to Ridgemount where, knowing that Adele wanted her daughter to herself, he declined the cursory invitation to dinner. The following morning the three reconvened in the
Mercury
boardroom, the annual general meeting being one of the rare occasions on which his mother ventured out. As sole directors and equal shareholders, they constituted the entire gathering. Even Dudley Williams, the company accountant, mindful of the balance sheet he himself had drawn up, had sent a certified copy of the accounts, advising Duncan that there was no point in paying him to attend.
The boardroom itself harked back to happier days, with its ormolu chandelier, oval walnut table, burgundy velvet curtains and portraits of Duncan’s four predecessors on the oak-panelled walls. While his mother and sister glanced through their agendas, Duncan studied the men from whom he had received his dual inheritance. In pride of place above a heavy sideboard was his great-great-grandfather, a printer and stationer who had founded the paper to exploit his press’s spare capacity and, during its first ten years, had brought out the four-page weekly single-handed, a practice to which hisdescendant feared that he might soon be forced to revert. By its sixth issue, the
Mercury
’s masthead declared it to be ‘Francombe’s most influential journal, with a wide readership among the nobility, gentry, clergy and visitors of the borough and its vicinity’, a claim that was borne out as its circulation soared, while the various
Observer
s,
Advertiser
s,
Herald
s and
World
s folded.
After forty years at the helm, the founding editor was succeeded by his son, who ran the paper from his father’s death in 1909 until his own in 1927. Although the briefest stewardship to date, it was commemorated in the finest portrait – by John Singer Sargent – on which, as he gazed at its delicate palette and subtle brushwork, Duncan struggled not to place a price tag. His great-grandfather was in turn succeeded by his son, Duncan’s grandfather, for three decades chairman of the Francombe Conservative Association (and knighted for political and public services in 1958), who used the paper as a platform for his reactionary views, denouncing ‘the socialists and rabble rousers who are infecting our town’. Alone of the four editors, he did not die in harness but retired in 1960 in favour of Duncan’s father, who took a more conciliatory line both in his editorials and with his staff, less by virtue of broader sympathies than from a longing for an easy life.
Afraid of
Privately, Duncan suspected that she had used the distraction as an excuse, either because she knew that she had reached her peak or else to escape the weight of public expectation. She had capitalised on her celebrity by launching a range of women’s sportswear, which, more than twenty years on and despite an ill-advised venture into ski accessories, continuedto sell. Yet, although aware of the
Mercury
’s parlous state, neither she nor her husband and business partner, Malcolm, had once offered to waive her dividend. Equally galling was to hear his mother explaining why Alison’s business commitments prevented her from making the two-hour trip from London more than three or four times a year, while protesting roundly whenever Duncan, who brought out a twenty-four-page newspaper every Thursday, cancelled one of his twice-weekly visits. At forty-eight, he was inured to his mother’s favouritism but, as he had made clear in terms that even she could not ignore, the one thing that he would not countenance was that she should extend it to the next generation, belittling Jamie by praising his high-achieving cousins.
Alison arrived on Sunday evening, two hours behind schedule. Duncan met her at Francombe station and drove her to Ridgemount where, knowing that Adele wanted her daughter to herself, he declined the cursory invitation to dinner. The following morning the three reconvened in the
Mercury
boardroom, the annual general meeting being one of the rare occasions on which his mother ventured out. As sole directors and equal shareholders, they constituted the entire gathering. Even Dudley Williams, the company accountant, mindful of the balance sheet he himself had drawn up, had sent a certified copy of the accounts, advising Duncan that there was no point in paying him to attend.
The boardroom itself harked back to happier days, with its ormolu chandelier, oval walnut table, burgundy velvet curtains and portraits of Duncan’s four predecessors on the oak-panelled walls. While his mother and sister glanced through their agendas, Duncan studied the men from whom he had received his dual inheritance. In pride of place above a heavy sideboard was his great-great-grandfather, a printer and stationer who had founded the paper to exploit his press’s spare capacity and, during its first ten years, had brought out the four-page weekly single-handed, a practice to which hisdescendant feared that he might soon be forced to revert. By its sixth issue, the
Mercury
’s masthead declared it to be ‘Francombe’s most influential journal, with a wide readership among the nobility, gentry, clergy and visitors of the borough and its vicinity’, a claim that was borne out as its circulation soared, while the various
Observer
s,
Advertiser
s,
Herald
s and
World
s folded.
After forty years at the helm, the founding editor was succeeded by his son, who ran the paper from his father’s death in 1909 until his own in 1927. Although the briefest stewardship to date, it was commemorated in the finest portrait – by John Singer Sargent – on which, as he gazed at its delicate palette and subtle brushwork, Duncan struggled not to place a price tag. His great-grandfather was in turn succeeded by his son, Duncan’s grandfather, for three decades chairman of the Francombe Conservative Association (and knighted for political and public services in 1958), who used the paper as a platform for his reactionary views, denouncing ‘the socialists and rabble rousers who are infecting our town’. Alone of the four editors, he did not die in harness but retired in 1960 in favour of Duncan’s father, who took a more conciliatory line both in his editorials and with his staff, less by virtue of broader sympathies than from a longing for an easy life.
Afraid of
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