Дик Фрэнсис - Decider

It was Keith who later divorced my mother — for adultery with an elderly illustrator of childrens’ books, Leyton Morris, my father. The resulting devoted marriage lasted fifteen years, and it wasn’t until she was on her own one-way road with cancer that my mother talked of the Strattons and told me in long night-time outpourings about her sufferings and her fondness for Lord Stratton; and it wasn’t until then that I learned that it was Lord Stratton’s money that had educated me and sent me through architectural school, the foundations of my life.

I had written to thank him after she died, and I still had his reply.

My dear Boy,

I loved your Mother. I hope you gave her the joy she deserved. I thank you for your letter, but do not write again.

I didn’t write again. I sent flowers to his funeral. With him alive, I would never have intruded on his family.

With Conrad identified, and Keith, and Marjorie Binsham, and Conrad’s offspring Dart and Rebecca, there remained two males at the meeting still to be named. One, in late middle-age, sat between Mrs Binsham and Keith’s vacated chair, and I could make a guess at him.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, leaning forward to catch his attention. ‘Are you... Ivan?’

The youngest of the old Lord’s three sons, more bullish like Conrad than greyhound like Keith, gave me a hard stare and no reply.

Dart said easily, ‘My uncle Ivan, as you say. And opposite him is his son Forsyth, my cousin.’

‘Dart!’ Keith objected fiercely. ‘Be quiet.’

Dart gave him an impassive look and seemed unintimidated. Forsyth, Ivan’s son, was the one, I thought, that had reacted least to my attendance. That is to say he took it less personally than the others, and he slowly revealed, as time went on, that he had no interest in me as Hannah’s regrettable half-brother, but only as an unknown factor in the matter of shares.

Young and slight, he had a narrow chin and dark intense eyes, and was treated by the others without the slightest deference. No one throughout the meeting asked his opinion about anything and, when he gave it regardless, his father, Ivan, regularly interrupted. Forsyth himself seemed to find this treatment normal, and perhaps for him it was.

Conrad, coming testily to terms with the inevitable, said leavily, ‘Let’s get on with the meeting. I called it...’

‘I called it,’ corrected his aunt sharply. ‘All this squabbling is ridiculous. Let’s get to the point. There has been racing on this racecourse for almost ninety years, and it will go on as before, and that’s an end to it. The arguing must stop.’

‘This racecourse is dying on its feet,’ Rebecca contradicted impatiently. ‘You have absolutely no idea what the modern world is all about. I’m sorry if it upsets you, Aunt Marjorie, but you and Grandfather have been left behind by the tide. This place needs new stands and a whole new outlook, and what it doesn’t need is a fuddy-duddy old colonel for a manager and a stick-in-the-mud Clerk of the Course who can’t say boo to a doctor.’

‘The doctor outranks him,’ Dart observed.

‘You shut up,’ his sister ordered. ‘You’ve never had the bottle to ride in a race. I’ve raced on most courses in this country and I’m telling you, this place is terminally old fashioned and it’s got my name on it too, which makes me open to ridicule, and the whole thing stinks . If you won’t or can’t see that, then I’m in favour of cashing in now for what we can get.’

‘Rebecca!’ Conrad’s reproof seemed tired, as if he’d heard his daughter’s views too often. ‘We need new stands. We can all agree on that. And I’ve commissioned plans...’

‘You’d no right to do that,’ Marjorie informed him. ‘Waste of money. These old stands are solidly built and are thoroughly serviceable. We do not need new stands. I’m totally opposed to the idea.’

Keith said with troublemaking relish, ‘Conrad has had this pet architect roaming round the place for weeks. His choice of architect. None of us has been consulted, and I’m against new stands on principle.’

‘Huh!’ Rebecca exclaimed. ‘And where do you think the women jockeys have to change? In a partitioned-off space the size of a cupboard in the Ladies loo. It’s pathetic’.

‘All for want of a horseshoe nail,’ Dart murmured.

‘What do you mean?’ Rebecca demanded.

‘I mean,’ her brother explained lazily, ‘that we’ll lose the racecourse to feminism.’

She wasn’t sure enough of his meaning to come up with a cutting answer so instead ignored him.

‘We should sell at once,’ Keith exclaimed, still striding about. ‘The market is good. Swindon is still growing. The industrial area is already on the racecourse boundary. Sell, I say. I’ve already sounded out a local developer. He’s agreed to survey and consider—’

‘You’ve done what ?’ Conrad demanded. ‘And you’ve consulted no one, either. And that’s never the way to sell anything . You know nothing about business dealings.’

Keith said huffily, ‘I know if you want to sell something you have to advertise.’

‘No,’ Conrad said flatly, as if that settled it. ‘We’re not selling.’

Keith’s anger rose. ‘It’s all right for you . You inherit most of Father’s residual estate. It’s not fair. It was never fair, leaving nearly all to eldest sons. Father was hopelessly old fashioned. You may not need money, but none of us is getting any younger and I say take out our capital now .’

‘Later,’ Hannah said intensely. ‘Sell when there’s less land available. Wait.’

Conrad remarked heavily, ‘Your daughter, Keith, fears that if you take the capital now you’ll squander it and there’ll be none left for her to inherit.’

Hannah’s face revealed it to be a bull’s eye diagnosis, and also showed disgust at having had her understandable motives so tellingly disclosed.

‘What about you, Ivan?’ his aunt enquired. ‘Still of the same indecisive mind?’

Ivan scarcely responded to the jibe, even if he recognised it as one. He nodded with a show of measured sagacity. ‘Wait and see,’ he said. ‘That’s the best.’

‘Wait until you’ve lost the opportunity,’ Rebecca said scathingly. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

He said defensively, ‘Why are you always so sharp , Rebecca? There’s nothing wrong with patience.’

‘Inaction,’ she corrected. ‘Making no decision’s as bad as making the wrong decision.’

‘Rubbish,’ Ivan said.

Forsyth began, ‘Have we thought about tax on capital gains...’ but Ivan was saying, ‘It’s clear we ought to shelve a decision until—’

‘Until the bloody cows come home,’ Rebecca said.

‘Rebecca!’ Her great-aunt’s disapproval arrived automatically. ‘Now stop it, all of you, because at the moment I and I alone can make decisions and I have the impression that none of you realises that.’

From their expressions it was clear that they neither knew nor cared to be told.

‘Aunt,’ Conrad said repressively, ‘you have ten shares only. You cannot make unilateral decisions.’

‘Oh, but I can,’ she said triumphantly. ‘You’re so ignorant, all of you. You fancy yourselves as men — oh, and women , Rebecca — of affairs but none of you seems to realise that in any company it is the directors, not shareholders, who make the decisions, and I ...’ she looked round, collecting undivided attention, ‘I am at present the sole remaining director. I make the decisions.’

She brought the meeting to its first taste of silence.

After a pause, Dart laughed. Everyone else scowled, chiefly at him, disapproval of a grandson being more prudent than defying the dragon.