In Vino Veritas (11 page)

‘It's a long time since I was able to hurt you, Martin Beaumont. I want out. That way neither of us will complicate the other's life.'

‘I think you must have one of your bad times coming on, Jane. Perhaps we should see what the medics make of your state of health at the moment.'

He made it sound like a threat, she thought. And indeed it was a threat, coming from him. It was the most potent weapon in the strange array he used against her. Jane wondered if she looked as unkempt and uncontrolled as she felt. She was sure now that her long black hair was straggly and uncombed. She couldn't remember when she had last given it any attention. She didn't enjoy looking in mirrors nowadays.

She said as firmly as she could, ‘This hasn't got anything to do with my health. I'm being perfectly rational about our future.'

Martin gave her the little mirthless chuckle which was the one of his reactions that most annoyed her. ‘Oh, I doubt that, Jane.' He walked over to the drinks cabinet and mixed himself a whisky and soda with merciless deliberation. ‘Perhaps we'll talk tomorrow, when you're in a more sensible frame of mind.'

He walked out of the room and into his study, shutting the door firmly behind him. He might have to do something about Jane if she went on in this vein, he thought. It would have surprised him to know that Jane Beaumont was thinking exactly the same about him.

Like quite a lot of head chefs, Jason Knight did not work on a Monday. It was the quietest day of the week in the restaurant. It was also the logical day for Jason to rest, after weekends that were usually successful but often hectic.

His absence had the happy effect of giving Gerry Davies an extra day to think about the proposition his friend had put to him on Saturday. Taking control of the firm was a radical step. It was also one which Gerry would never even have entertained, had Jason not suggested it to him. He discussed it in confidence with each of his sons over the weekend, as Jason had suggested he should, but that made his decision more rather than less difficult. It was a good idea in principle, all three of them agreed, but the final decision would depend on the particular firm and the particular circumstances involved.

Only he could weigh all the facts in this particular instance. He must do that and make the decision which was right for him. All of which put the ball firmly back in Gerry's court. Wrong metaphor, he decided: the only kind of ball he had ever been happy to handle was a rugby ball, when he was in his physical prime. Thirty years ago, on the mudbaths of Llanelli or Treorchy, that greasy leather-clad ovoid had been difficult to handle, but it had been child's play compared with this.

He hadn't made his mind up what to do by Monday, so he was glad that Knight wasn't around to ask for his decision. He passed him a couple of times during the day on Tuesday, and thought the chef was looking at him quizzically, but that was probably just his imagination. Gerry waited until he saw Martin Beaumont drive his Jaguar out of its reserved parking space at five thirty before going across to the restaurant kitchen.

Jason nodded immediately towards the door of his den. Gerry Davies went into the little room and sat rather nervously for a couple of minutes until his friend joined him. Jason must have been a little on edge, for he said without any preliminaries, ‘Well? Have you mulled over what we discussed?'

‘I seem to have done nothing else for the last three days. I've discussed it with my sons as you suggested. They thought it a good idea, in many respects. They're more up to date, more forward-looking, than I am.'

‘And?' Knight was too anxious to hear the words of support he wanted to allow any further delay.

‘I'm afraid I can't go along with it, Jason. I don't feel I can challenge Martin to give us control of his company, in view of my present relationship with him. As you suggested, he wouldn't welcome the idea, and I'm afraid I should feel disloyal. He backed me to do a major job in this place, and he's paid me handsomely for my efforts. It would feel to me like kicking him in the teeth to say, “Well, loyalty only goes so far, Martin. You picked me up and backed me, but now that we're successful, I want more than just a wage from you.” I'm sorry, Jason, but that's how it's come out. I've considered all the other arguments, but they don't override what I feel.'

‘That's a pity.' Jason wanted to revive the arguments he'd put before, above all to point out that Beaumont hadn't picked up Davies out of the gutter but had backed a man who had already proved his ability. But he knew Gerry well enough to accept that he wouldn't change his mind once he'd made a decision. He thought of a new, more positive, argument, and fancied he heard the pulse of desperation entering his voice as he put it. ‘The company might be all the stronger, you know, if we all had a say in its direction. The people we were talking about are all able people.'

Gerry Davies smiled ruefully. He felt much happier now that he had announced his decision, even though he knew he had disappointed his friend. ‘You could well be right. I've never said what you want to do is wrong, have I? It's just that it wouldn't feel right for me, and I can't go against my instinct.'

‘All right. I won't pester you again. And I respect what you say about having to do what's right for you. This won't affect our friendship.'

‘Thank you. I didn't think it would, but I'm happy to hear you say that.' Gerry resisted an absurd impulse to get up and pump the younger man by the hand. He felt a need to offer him some sort of consolation. ‘If you consult the other three you mentioned and they all feel as you do, then do come back to me. I've already told you that I might be wrong, that to an extent I'm acting on gut instinct rather than logic. If you all feel the same and want me in, then I'll reconsider at that point.'

It sounded as if he was trying to have the best of both worlds. But Jason Knight knew that it wasn't like that, that Davies merely needed the reassurance of knowing that other and different people shared his friend's views. The trouble was that Jason doubted whether he could enlist that support. He didn't know the others anything like as well as he knew Gerry and he didn't think they trusted him as Gerry did.

The financial expert Alistair Morton had been here longer than anyone. He was something of an introvert who always played his cards close to his chest; Jason didn't know how he would react to an assault on the boss's control. Jason had always been slightly in awe of Vanda North; he fancied that as an ex-mistress she knew far more about Beaumont than she was prepared to confide in him. He suspected also that she did not entirely trust him, that she saw him as a young man on the make, gifted perhaps, but not entirely to be relied upon. He liked Sarah Vaughan and thought she had the talent to contribute to the firm and its policies. But she was quite young, still relatively new to the job, and lightweight. She might follow the others into a challenge against Beaumont, but she'd hardly be the instigator alongside him.

Jason realized now how much he had been relying on going to the others with the sturdy Gerry Davies already beside him as an ally. The older man had the gravitas and the integrity which would be important if he was to make the others share his aspirations for power. He said, voicing a perfectly genuine dilemma, ‘I shall have to consider where I go from here. I was rather relying on having you at my side to help persuade the others.'

‘I'm sorry about that. But I don't see that I'm going to change my mind. Unless, as I say, I knew everyone felt the same, or there were new situations to consider.'

Jason Knight couldn't see how there was going to be any significant change, unless he could initiate it himself. He would have to think of other methods.

Sarah Vaughan had given herself a severe talking to, then got on with the job she knew and liked.

There was surely no reason why she should allow Martin Beaumont and his sexual harassment to interfere with her life. Because harassment was all it was, surely. And because that was all it was, a mature woman like her could put it into its proper perspective. She was thirty-three, not seventeen. It wasn't the first time a man had made a pass at her, and it wouldn't be the last. Like all attractive women, she had long ago learned how to brush off advances she did not want to encourage.

Why then had she been so upset on the night after Martin Beaumont had made his bid for her body in his car? Well, partly because it was exactly that: attempted rape. It wasn't a pass in the way she had always had to deal with them, a clumsy attempt at a kiss which left the perpetrator more embarrassed than the recipient. Her boss had been claiming something like
droit de seigneur.
He had wanted her body and he had been pretty determined about it. Attempted rape was not an exaggeration.

No doubt Martin would say that she was being absurdly dramatic if she challenged him about it, would say that her imagination had translated an innocent bit of flirting into something more sinister. The old male lies would spring readily to his lips, she was sure. Indeed, he would have little alternative but to take a line like that: anything else would be admitting his guilt and inviting her to take whatever steps she wanted in retribution.

She realized something else as she woke from a troubled sleep on the morning after the incident. He might, indeed, deny it altogether. There were no witnesses, after all, and it was only her word against his. No doubt he would have more expensive lawyers at his command than she could ever employ. She had even heard of men bringing counter-suits for defamation of character, when the victim had had no witness to support her claims. Beaumont had an invalid wife, though no one seemed to know much about her; he would no doubt command the sympathy of a court, once some glib and experienced brief had put his case for him.

There was no use cutting off her nose to spite her face, Sarah Vaughan told herself firmly. She had a job she liked and good prospects, because everyone seemed very pleased with the start she had made at Abbey Vineyards. She was well paid for her work. A tiny voice she did not want to acknowledge told Sarah that she might in the future be even better paid as a result of Beaumont's clumsy assault. He would surely want to keep her quiet and compensate her for her discretion.

At midnight on the night after her mauling in the Jaguar, she had been determined to storm in the next morning, to give in her notice, to make Martin Beaumont pay for what he had done. By morning, she was not so sure. She would go to work, see whether Beaumont wanted to be conciliatory, hear what he had to say for himself, and then decide on her tactics. She had surely nothing to lose by doing that.

Sarah didn't want to acknowledge it, but she felt acutely the lack of anyone she could confide in. She was between boyfriends – had been for about six months, if she was honest about it. So there was no one to mount the white charger and challenge Sir Jasper on her behalf – she was already seeing Beaumont in that rather absurd Victorian role. Her mother was seventy now and simply wouldn't understand the issues: it wouldn't be fair to burden her with them. She had never really been close to her younger sister, and even less so since marriage had taken her up to Aberdeen. Her close university friend was married with two young kids in a London suburb. She would be highly indignant on Sarah's part, would be violently in favour of hitting the villain with everything they could muster. But that wasn't quite what her injured friend wanted to hear.

So Sarah Vaughan hugged her knowledge tight and told herself that as a modern woman she could certainly cope with this.

Beaumont had come into the shop when she was helping behind the counter on the day after the incident. They did not acknowledge that they had even seen each other, but she knew that he had been eyeing her up, wondering what, if anything, she proposed to do. And she had taken note of his every movement, in case his body language might reveal what he was feeling. The whole thing was over in ninety seconds, without a word or a look exchanged.

Sarah found that she was trembling a little after he left the shop. She also had a strange feeling she had never anticipated, a small, exhilarating feeling of power. She had always been rather in awe of Martin Beaumont, as owner and driving force behind Abbey Vineyards. Now he had revealed his weakness and she had some sort of hold over him. She felt a small but definite surge of power, which she might at some time in the future be able to exploit.

There were several similar encounters in the days which followed, where they circled each other in the safe presence of others, like wary beasts in the wild. Five days after the incident, Martin acknowledged her with a smile and a nod. Seven days after it, he spoke to her, and she responded. It was no more than one of those meaningless greetings which help to grease the wheels of daily life, but it was a further stage in the restoration of a working relationship.

It was another week later that Beaumont called her into his office to receive her monthly report on her promotional activities. She found that her heart was beating absurdly fast as she went across the courtyard to the big room where he operated. This was just the sort of response she should have long since left behind, she told herself firmly. The man wouldn't attempt anything here, with his secretary in the outer office and numerous other people at hand. But he might be embarrassed, and if he were she would enjoy it.

Martin Beaumont gave no sign of being embarrassed. He listened to her report, asking her pertinent questions about the problems she saw and what she intended to do about them. One or two of his comments were even quite critical. She responded as sturdily as she could, though she found herself quite nettled that he seemed so little affected by what had happened between them.

Then, when she thought they were finished, he said quite suddenly, ‘Car running all right now, is it?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's good, isn't it?'