Читать книгу The Beaufort Sisters - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 21

The rain stopped the next day, but it was almost a week before the flood fully subsided. The yard lost two-thirds of its boats, sunk or smashed; all the moorings and slipways and the work-shed went downriver. Tim and Nina, the house abandoned, living now in the hotel in Henley, drove up at the end of the week and took stock of the damage. Eileen Hamill stayed at the hotel to look after the children and Steve drove up with the Davorens.

‘It will take us at least six months to get things back to normal,’ Tim said. ‘We’ll never be ready for summer.’

‘What about the insurance?’ Nina asked. ‘Maybe we could buy all the boats we need.’

Tim looked around at the havoc. ‘The insurance won’t cover everything by a long chalk. You want to stay on, Steve?’

The Australian shrugged. He was utterly depressed, unrelated to the casual, happy man the Davorens had known. ‘I’m willing. But I don’t know if the wife wants to. Did she tell you? One of my paintings finished up stuck under the bridge all the way down at Henley. She saw some kids chucking stones at it, using it as a target. She’s more upset at what happened than I am. I think she’d like to move somewhere else, right away from here.’

Tim took Nina’s arm and they walked back to the car. The sky had cleared and the sun was shining; the flood-damaged valley was exposed pitilessly in the pale silver-gold light. Upstream the island was above water again; even at this distance it was possible to see the mark just below the upper-storey windows of the house where the flood had peaked. The boat-yard was thick with mud and debris, all of it beginning to smell as the sun shone on it. It looks like a battlefield, Tim thought. And I’ve just lost the battle.

‘I hate to say it, but I don’t want to start all over again. And that’s what it would mean.’

Nina felt a mixture of surprise, relief and disappointment. She had never seen him defeated before; or anyway so ready to accept defeat. In the time they had been married he had made compromises, but always with a wry insouciance that let her know he was granting concessions to please her. But this was a surrender of himself for himself: for the first time she saw a weakness of character that she had never suspected.

‘What worries me is what will happen to Steve?’ He looked across at the Australian moving through the wreckage of the yard; Steve picked up a rudder, looked at it as if wondering what to do with it, then threw it aside. ‘You should have seen the look on his face when everything he owned went past here the other day. I think it was then I realized how lucky we are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We could lose a lot. This, for instance – even a lot more.’ He gestured at the yard. ‘But we could never lose everything. He was telling me yesterday. He has exactly fifty-two pounds in the bank and that’s all.’

Her disappointment in him was giving way to relief for herself. My character is no better than his. ‘I don’t want to stay here if you don’t. But what will you do?’

He had done a lot of thinking: that was evident as soon as he spoke. ‘I could go to work for your father again.’

‘Back in Kansas City?’ She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice.

‘Not just yet, perhaps later. I could work for the oil company now it’s set up an office in London. I don’t know what I’d do, but I’m sure your father could find something for me.’ There was just a hint of sarcasm in his voice, as if he were adding salt to his own wounds.

‘We’ll have to call him right away. They’re leaving Paris for Cherbourg tomorrow, to catch the ship.’ She was pushing him, but she was confident now she was taking no risk.

They called Lucas that afternoon at the Crillon in Paris. ‘Sure, I can find a place for you,’ said Lucas. ‘I’m sorry about the boatyard. You sure you want to come and work for me?’

‘Lucas, it wasn’t exactly easy for me to make this decision – ’

‘Sure, I understand. But I had to ask.’

Lucas came to London alone, on the boat train. Edith and Margaret had wanted to come back to London for a few more days, but he insisted that they take their booked passage on the Ile de France from Cherbourg. He expected some heated discussion in London and he did not want any interference from the women. He expected he would get enough from Nina.

He was right. ‘You can’t do this, Daddy! You can’t expect us to go out to Abu Sadar, taking Michael to a place like that – ’

‘You and Michael don’t have to go. All I’m asking Tim to do is go and learn the business at the source. He said he could speak Arabic – that’s not much, but it’s more than he has to offer in the London office.’

You son-of-a-bitch, thought Tim, using an Americanism because it had just the right amount of bite to it. There were four-letter words on the tip of his tongue, but he held those back. He was surrendering to Lucas and he was going to do it as gracefully as possible. To do so, he knew, would take some of the edge off Lucas’ satisfaction.

‘I’ve given it a lot of thought since you called me, Tim. If I put you into the London office, I’d have to move someone sideways to make way for you – ’

‘Why do you have to move someone?’ Nina demanded. ‘The company is big enough – just make another position.’

‘Tim wouldn’t like that, would you, Tim?’

The old son-of-a-bitch is co-opting me on his side while he’s cutting my balls off. ‘We don’t want any nepotism. At least none that will show.’

‘I’m not going to Abu Sadar and I’m not letting you go!’

‘Drop your voice, darling heart, or we’ll be thrown out of here.’

‘We shouldn’t have invited her to lunch,’ said Lucas. ‘Women should be left out of business discussions.’

Lucas had checked into the Savoy again and Tim and Nina, leaving Michael with Eileen Hamill, had come up by train. They were having lunch in the Grill, a setting not designed for family rows.

‘Do you want to go to Abu Sadar?’ Nina said.

‘Not really. Certainly not without you and Michael.’

‘It’s no place for women and children, not yet awhile.’ Lucas looked at the dessert trolley as a waiter approached with it. ‘I’ll try the baked custard. You’ll only need six months out there. You’ll get the feel of the business and then you can come home to Kansas City, to head office. Don’t you want dessert, Nina?’

‘And what do I do?’ Nina dismissed the waiter and the dessert trolley without looking at either. ‘Sit here in London twiddling my thumbs?’

‘I think what your father is suggesting is that you should go back to Kansas City. Or is that a wild guess, Lucas?’ The sarcasm was as smooth as the baked custard which he, too, had ordered.

‘Do you need to go to the ladies’ room?’ Lucas said to Nina.

‘No, I don’t! Dammit, Daddy, what are you trying to do?’

‘Tim will go into marketing when he comes back to head office. That suit you, Tim?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Go and powder your nose, Nina. When you come back we’ll have it all worked out.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ She looked at Tim for support, but he shook his head, a gentle movement that she almost missed. But his message was in his eyes: your old man has won, darling heart. Abruptly she stood up, almost knocking over a waiter, and plunged blindly across the room and out to the ladies’ room.

‘Do you agree she and Michael should come home?’

‘As she asked you, Lucas, what are you trying to do? Are you stuffing me and having me mounted like some sort of trophy?’

‘This is good custard. Think I’ll have some more. Stuffing you? I take it that’s a euphemism for a stronger term. No, I’m not. I’ll remind you, you came to me asking for a job. I didn’t have you flooded out of the boat-yard.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that.’

‘Cut out your whimsy. That’s your trouble, you don’t take anything seriously enough.’

‘You’re wrong there, Lucas old chap. I know this is bloody serious. You’re trying to break up my marriage.’

‘That’s where you are wrong. I’m not trying to break up your marriage. But I don’t want my daughter and my only grandchild traipsing round the world after you while you try to make a living at trades you have no training for. I can make a good career for you in oil. You’re intelligent and if you can sell oil as well as you sell yourself, you’ll be a success in no time.’

‘You’re a past-master at flattery.’

Lucas ignored the comment. ‘I can’t bring you in cold and dump you on the marketing vice-president back home. That’s why you have to go out to Abu Sadar. While you’re out there Nina and Michael can live in comfort back home in your own house.’

‘I still feel I’m being stuffed. But as the ladies say, if rape is inevitable you may as well lie back and enjoy it. No ladies of my acquaintance, I hasten to add.’

‘You’d never need to rape any woman. You’re too good a salesman.’

‘No more flattery. It’s going to my head. Yes, I think I’ll have some more baked custard. I’ll probably get nothing like this out in Abu Sadar. Unless you’ll send me food parcels?’

Lucas smiled, knowing he had won. ‘I’ll see if Sears Roebuck send food parcels.’

Nina came back, face made up, spirit repaired. Before she even sat down she knew that everything had been decided, that her father, this time with the acquiescence of her husband, had claimed her back into the family. She was angry at Tim for his surrender, but her anger at herself was only slightly less. She would be glad to be returning home.

‘I think I’ll have some dessert, after all. No, not baked custard. I’ll have a couple of éclairs. I always over-eat when I’m unhappy. When do you leave for Abu Sadar?’

‘He goes as soon as possible,’ said Lucas. ‘I’ll stay on until you’re ready to leave, then you and Michael can come home with me. The Queen Mary is sailing next week.’

‘How appropriate. Just like old times.’

‘There was nothing wrong with old times.’

‘There is if you persist in trying to hang on to them. I see you’re ready for your coffee. I’ll have a double brandy with mine.’

‘The good life,’ said Tim, trying to salvage something out of the lunch, the past and the future. ‘I thought we had said goodbye to it, but it seems I was wrong.’