In Vino Veritas (10 page)

‘I presume so. I get the impression that she's very much a junior partner, without any real say in policy.'

‘Perhaps she prefers it that way, whilst the company goes from strength to strength.'

‘Perhaps. I didn't get that impression at last month's meeting, or on one or two other occasions. But as I say, apart from taking a little professional advice, you're the first person I've spoken to about this.'

‘So what are you suggesting we do?'

‘That's what I want to discuss. The first thing to establish was whether you felt the same about the situation as I did.'

Gerry paused for several seconds. ‘My first reaction is that I enjoy my work and like things the way they are. I feel that I'm doing a good job but that in return I am well paid for it.'

‘I thought you might feel like that.' Jason Knight couldn't quite keep the disappointment out of his voice. ‘I knew you'd be absolutely straight with me. But in turn I think I should urge you not to underestimate yourself. Martin Beaumont's success probably owes more to you than you imagine.'

‘We all contribute to it. But that's what we're paid for. Martin took a chance on me when he gave me this job. I work hard partly because I love my job and partly because I want to repay him for his faith in me.'

‘You're wrong about one thing in that. He didn't take a chance when he picked you, Gerry. You'd proved yourself with Tesco. They promote talent, but they're efficient and hard-headed about it. How many times did they promote you?'

‘Three. From very humble beginnings.'

‘I didn't know it was three. But that proves my point. Martin wasn't taking a chance when he chose you to run his shop and retail sales here: it was a hard-headed business decision. You were in charge of one of Tesco's new small stores and no doubt making a success of it. He chose the best candidate of those he interviewed to come here. He's a good picker – I'll give him that!'

‘I think he was taking a chance. But even if you're right, he put me into a job I enjoy and he's paid me handsomely for doing it well. I don't see that he owes me any more than that.'

‘Maybe not in the last industrial generation. The one where unions fought employers for whatever they could get and as often as not destroyed each other. But employee involvement is one of the modern trends. Even big companies are seeking to involve their workers in share schemes, to give them an ongoing interest in the prosperity of the company and reward them for good service. It's the modern way.'

Gerry Davies grinned, his teeth looking for an instant very white against his still thick and densely curly black hair. ‘I don't deny I'm old-fashioned and content with things as they are. I'm fifty-seven now – perhaps too old a dog to learn new tricks, Jason. Probably out of the ark, in your terms.'

‘I don't believe that and I don't think you do. All I'm asking you to do is to consider the situation here. We're part of a successful enterprise which promises to become bigger and better – principally through the efforts of no more than six people. Martin Beaumont himself, who should without question remain the major beneficiary of his original vision and input. Vanda North, because she is at present the only one with any official share in the company above that of wage-earner. Alistair Morton, who has handled the finances of the company since the beginning and should in my book be its financial director. Me, who should be in charge of the restaurant and possibly the allied area of residential accommodation. You, who should be the sales director. Sarah Vaughan, who has made a promising start and should probably be in charge of research and development.'

‘You've obviously given this a lot of thought. But would these be anything more than grandiose titles?'

Jason Knight grinned. ‘Indeed they would. What I'm proposing is that we should be involved in the formulation of policy. In historical terms, I believe we're still in the early stages of the development of a major company. We're key figures, who have already proved ourselves in different ways, and we deserve to have our roles in shaping what will become a much larger concern.'

Gerry Davies tried to take this in. It made sense, once you adjusted your viewpoint. ‘You've got a wider vision of things than I have, Jason.'

‘There's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with being ambitious, is there?'

‘No. No there isn't. But you're pushing me out beyond the boundaries of where I work and feel comfortable.'

‘But not beyond where you would be competent. I'm pushing you – pushing all of us, if you like – to recognize what we're capable of. It might be a little uncomfortable, even a little frightening. But it's exciting as well.'

Gerry Davies thought hard about that, then suddenly smiled. ‘You may well be right. I haven't got beyond uncomfortable at the moment.'

Jason Knight smiled in his turn, a little ruefully, a little at his own expense. ‘I get carried away a bit, don't I?'

‘You do a bit. But I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just finding it difficult to adjust. In my terms, I've come a long way in a short time and I still sometimes go home and can't believe I'm so lucky. I don't say you're wrong, but it's a lot for me to take in.'

‘I say it's not luck but talent and application which have put you where you are. But I appreciate what you say – taking on the idea of pushing for more power is a new concept. I'm not asking you to decide anything now. Give the matter some thought over the weekend and the next few days. Discuss it in confidence with your sons and see what they think. There's no immediate hurry, though I think the sooner we move the better it will be for us. I shan't say anything to anyone else until I have a reaction from you.'

Gerry stood up, then voiced a final thought. ‘Martin Beaumont regards this as very much his company. He won't be easy to convince.'

Jason grinned at the older man. ‘There you are, I told you that you had the potential. You're thinking like a strategist already, you see, not a mere employee. This is company politics among the senior staff, if you like. And you're right, of course. Martin probably wouldn't listen to any one of us as an individual. He'd say no, and if we persisted he'd tell us to piss off and look for other employment. But if we went as a group and told him we wanted in, I don't believe he'd be willing to risk losing all of us at once. I'll be interested to hear whether you agree with that view when you've given the matter some extended thought.'

Gerry Davies was very busy in the shop area for the rest of the day. During the rare moments when he had time to think about his exchange with his friend in the restaurant, he found that he had already accepted one thing at least.

Taking over control of the firm was an exciting idea.

J
ane 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 clichés 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.'