Дик Фрэнсис - Decider

Within six months he’d broken her arm in a fight and punched out two of her front teeth.

‘Mrs Binsham,’ Roger Gardner said, ‘has insisted on a shareholders’ meeting next week. She’s a dragon, they say. She’s Conrad’s aunt, of course, and apparently she’s the only living creature who makes him quake.’

Forty years back she had implacably forced her brother, the third baron, to behave harshly in public to my mother. Even then Mrs Binsham had been the dynamo of the family, the manipulator, the one who laid down the programme of action and forced the rest to follow.

‘She never gave up,’ my mother said. ‘She would simply wear down any opposition until you would do what she wanted just to get some peace. In her own eyes, you see, she was always right , so she was always certain that what she wanted was best .’

I asked Roger, ‘Do you know Mrs Binsham yourself?’

‘Yes, but not well. She’s an impressive old lady, very upright. She comes to the races here quite often with Lord Stratton — er, not Conrad, but the old Lord — but I’ve never had any really private conversations with her. Oliver knows her better. Or at least,’ he faintly grinned, ‘Oliver has obeyed her instructions from time to time.’

‘Perhaps she’ll sort out the present squabbles and quieten things down,’ I said.

Roger shook his head. ‘What she says might go with Conrad and Keith and Ivan, but the younger generation may rebel, especially since they’re all coming into some shares of their own.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Certain.’

‘So now you have an informant in the nest?’

His face grew still; wary almost, ‘I never said that.’

‘No.’

Oliver returned. ‘The sponsors are unhappy about the dead horse, bless their little hearts. Bad publicity. Not what they pay for. They’ll have to reconsider before next year, they say.’ He sounded dispirited, ‘I’d framed that race well, you know,’ he told me. ‘Ten runners in a three-mile ’chase. That’s good, you know. Often you’ll only attract five or six, or even less. If the sponsor pulls out, it’ll be a poorer affair altogether, next year.’

I made sympathetic noises.

‘If there is a next year,’ he said. ‘There’s a shareholders’ meeting next week... did they tell you?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re holding it here on the racecourse, in the Strattons’ private dining room,’ he said. ‘Conrad hasn’t moved into the big house yet, and anyway this is less personal, he says. Will you be coming?’ It was less a question, I thought, than an entreaty.

‘I haven’t decided,’ I said.

‘I do hope you will. I mean, they need an outside view, do you see? They’re all too involved .’

‘They wouldn’t want me there.’

‘All the more reason for going.’

I doubted that, but didn’t bother to argue. I suggested collecting the boys, and found them ‘helping’ the valets pack the jockeys’ saddles and other gear into large laundry hampers while eating fruit cake.

They’d been no trouble, I was told, and hoped I could believe it. I thanked everyone. Thanked Roger. ‘Vote your shares,’ he said anxiously. Thanked Jenkins. ‘Well-behaved little sods,’ he said helpfully. ‘Bring them again.’

‘We called everyone “sir”,’ Neil confided to me as we left.

‘We called Jenkins “sir”,’ Alan said. ‘He got us the cake.’

We reached the mini-van and climbed in, and they showed me all the jockeys’ autographs in their racecards. They’d had a good time in the changing room, it seemed.

‘Was that man dead?’ Toby asked, reverting to what was most on his mind.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘I thought he was. I’ve never seen anyone dead before.’

‘You’ve seen dogs,’ Alan said.

‘That’s not the same, plank-head.’

Christopher asked, ‘What did the colonel mean about voting your shares?’

‘Huh?’

‘He said “Vote your shares.” He looked pretty upset, didn’t he?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘do you know what shares are?’

‘Pieces of cake,’ Neil guessed. ‘One each.’

‘Say you had a chessboard,’ I said, ‘there would be sixty-four squares, OK? Say you called each square a share. There would be sixty-four shares.’

The young faces told me I wasn’t getting the idea across.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘say you have a floor made of tiles.’

They nodded at once. As a builder’s children they knew all about tiles.

‘Say you lay ten tiles across and ten tiles down, and fill in the square.’

‘A hundred tiles,’ Christopher nodded.

‘Yes. Now call each tile a share, a hundredth part of the whole square. A hundred shares. OK?’

They nodded.

‘What about voting?’ Christopher asked.

I hesitated. ‘Say you owned some of the tiles, you could vote to have yours blue... or red... whatever you’d like.’

‘How many could you vote on?’

‘Eight,’ I said.

‘You could have eight blue tiles? What about the others?’

‘All the others, ninety-two, belong to other people. They could all choose whatever colour they liked for the tiles they owned.’

‘It would be a mess,’ Edward pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t get everyone to agree on a pattern.’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ I said, smiling.

‘But you’re not really meaning tiles , are you?’ Christopher said.

‘No.’ I paused. For once, they were all listening. ‘See, say this racecourse is like a hundred tiles. A hundred squares. A hundred shares. I have eight shares of the racecourse. Other people have ninety-two.’

Christopher shrugged, ‘It’s not much, then. Eight’s not even one row.’

Neil said, ‘if the racecourse was divided up into a hundred squares, Dad’s eight squares might have the stands on!’

‘Plank-head,’ Toby said.

Why did I go?

I don’t know. I doubt if there is such a thing as a wholly free choice, because one’s choices are rooted in one’s personality. I choose what I choose because I am what I am, that sort of thing.

I chose to go for reprehensible reasons like the lure of unearned gain and from the vanity that I might against all odds tame the dragon and sort out the Stratton feuds peacefully, as Roger and Oliver wanted. Greed and pride... powerful spurs masquerading as prudent financial management and altruistic good works.

So I disregarded the despairing plea from my mother’s remembered wisdom and took my children into desperate danger and by my presence altered for ever the internal stresses and balances of the Strattons.

Except, of course, that it didn’t seem like that on the day of the shareholders’ meeting.

It took place on the Wednesday afternoon, on the third day of the ruin hunt. On Monday morning the five boys and I had set off from home in the big converted single-decker bus that had in the past served as mobile home for us all during periods when the currently-being-rebuilt ruin had been truly and totally uninhabitable.

The bus had its points: it would sleep eight, it had a working shower room, a galley, sofas and television. I’d taken lessons from a yacht builder in creating storage spaces where none might seem to exist, and we could in fact store a sizeable household very neatly aboard. It did not, all the same, offer privacy or much personal space, and as the boys grew they had found it increasingly embarrassing as an address.

They packed into it quite happily on the Monday, though, as I had promised them a real holiday in the afternoons if I could visit a ruin each morning, and in fact with map and timetables I’d planned a series of the things they most liked to do. Monday afternoon we spent canoeing on the Thames, Tuesday they beat the hell out of a bowling alley, and on the Wednesday they’d promised to help Roger Gardner’s wife clean out her garage, a chore they bizarrely enjoyed.