by Iain Banks
‘That’s very kind but—’ Lauren began, but Alban had already lifted the tray. ‘Oh, all right then. I’ll come with you.’
‘No need,’ he said, heading for the door.
‘I can open the doors.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Win, it’s—’ Lauren began. Alban slid past her, tray over her head, into Win’s sitting room. The old girl was sitting on a chair by a low table, dressed in her most exemplary tweeds, reading from a sheaf of papers.
‘Me,’ Alban said. ‘Hi, Win.’
Grandma Win took off her reading glasses and looked at him, then at the tray he held. ‘Alban,’ she said smoothly, ‘that’s very kind.’
He’d been hoping for something more dramatic, like a swoon or a dropped glass, or at least a look of surprise. He glanced at the windows of the room. Bugger. He’d forgotten. They faced towards the loch. She might have been able to watch them coming back. Or - of course - it was entirely possible he was just being paranoid about what had happened with the starting lanyard.
‘My pleasure,’ Alban said.
‘Will you stay for a cuppa, dear?’ Win said, switching to little old lady mode. Alban put the tray down on the table.
‘I’ll get another cup, shall I?’ Lauren said.
‘Actually, Lauren,’ Alban said, ‘I’d like a word with Win in private.’ He glanced down, smiling, at his grandmother. ‘That be okay?’
‘Well,’ Lauren said, looking uncertain.
‘That’s all right, Lauren,’ Win said.
‘Oh,’ Lauren said. ‘Oh, all right then. I’ll . . . I’ll be in the kitchen, I should think.’
Aunt Lauren let herself out.
‘So, Alban,’ Win said as he poured their tea. ‘Do I detect a note of urgency?’
‘We need to talk, Win.’
‘Well, do we now?’ She squinted at her wrist-watch. ‘How long till your little talk before the EGM?’
‘About forty minutes.’
‘Really? Then I suppose I should feel privileged.’
He handed her a cup. ‘What sort of price do you think we should sell the firm for, Win?’
‘Would you put some sugar in there, dear? My hands are so shaky.’
‘Okay, Win,’ he said, taking the cup back. ‘Milk?’
‘Just a little . . . A spot more. There.’
‘There’s some toast here,’ Alban said pleasantly. ‘Would you like some? With some of your special honey?’
‘Oh, yes, please, Alban. Thank you so much. Oh! Butter first, dear.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘this price. What do you think?’
‘Well, I don’t know that we should sell, at all. What do you think?’
‘I think it’s going to be a close call. I think - unless the Spraint guys have worked some sort of magic on the people who went shooting - they’ll know by now their offer of a hundred and twenty isn’t going to fly. I think they’ll move to one-forty with the implication they might just go to one-fifty if we really press them. Their real ceiling is probably two hundred.’
Win crunched into her toast and honey. ‘That is an awful lot of money.’
‘Mind if I have some toast?’
‘Please do.’
He took some of the honey, too. ‘Of course, if they really do value us so highly, the implication is we’d make the same sort of money eventually through royalties and licence fees by just holding on to what we’ve got. Might be worth pointing that out to those who’re determined to think with their wallets.’ He bit into the honeyed toast and munched away. ‘If,’ he said at last, ‘one wanted to put that sort of view across.’
‘Yes, but what do you think, Alban? People - well, some people - seem to be looking to you for guidance. You need to sort out what you’re going to say, don’t you think?’
He finished his first slice of toast. ‘This is really very good. Mind if I have another bit?’
‘Oh, please,’ Win said. She looked a little less gracious than she sounded. ‘What good taste you display, Alban. It is particularly rare and expensive honey.’
‘Better not finish it, then, eh?’
Win gave a small, uncertain laugh as Alban spooned the firm, dark honey thickly on to the toast.
‘Weren’t you fishing with Sophie?’ Win asked.
‘Yes. Not very successfully.’
‘It’s so fascinating that you two seem to be getting on better again.’
‘Isn’t it? Listen, Win, I want to offer you a deal.’
‘What?’ She sounded almost alarmed.
‘Ultimately, I think we’re going to sell. If we are, we should get the best price. I’d suggest telling Spraint it’s one-eighty. Take it or leave it. The only negotiation should be over the mix of cash and stock. I’m prepared to say that, even though in my heart I’d rather we kept control. But I am prepared to say it. That would be my head talking, not my heart. At the moment, I’m not sure what to say.’
Win sat looking at him, blinking. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘I think one-eighty’s a fair price,’ he told her. ‘But I want to know something before I recommend it. I mean,’ he gestured with his hands, ‘I may have less influence than either of us thinks and perhaps in the end it’ll make no difference what I say, but, working on the assumption . . .’ he let his voice trail off.
Win shook her head. ‘Yes, Alban? I’m a little confused . . .’
‘Win,’ he said, sighing, ‘I really don’t think you are.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I assure you I am.’
He smiled, took a breath. ‘Let me tell you a little story.’
He told her about what Aunt Beryl had told him, about Irene and what she had said. Win sipped her tea and took another spoonful of the exotic honey, putting it directly into her mouth and then replacing the spoon in the still half-full honey bowl. She looked more and more troubled and unsure as Alban went on.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I think maybe you know what Irene was talking about.’
‘Do you, dear?’
‘Yes, Win, I do. And if you do, and you’ll tell me, then as a mark of my gratitude I’ll deliver whatever sort of speech you’d like me to deliver. As I say, I can see merit in either approach, but if you’re prepared to trade, I’ll take my lead from you. Because I think you do want to sell, certainly at a price of one-eighty. If I’m wrong, do tell me. Am I wrong?’
Win sat quite upright in her chair, the fingers of one hand tapping on the open palm of the other. ‘It would be a good price, I suppose,’ she said, sounding distracted.
‘But I do need to know whatever you might know about what my mother was talking about.’
Win sat slowly back in her chair, her hands folded on her narrow lap, frail and pale on the dark, autumnal tweed. She looked straight at him for some time.
‘First, I have a question I must ask you,’ Win said.
‘Okay.’ He sat back, too.
She took her time, then said, ‘What are your feelings now for your cousin Sophie? Please, be completely honest.’
He looked down, thinking. Then he met her gaze and said, ‘I still feel a lot for Sophie. In a way I’ll always love her, but I know she’s never felt the same about me. I’ve accepted that. We seem, just as of today, funnily enough, to be getting on really well again - at last. Had a bit of a drama, down the loch. Came through it together. So, we seem to be . . . Well, as good as we’ve ever been, since Lydcombe. Even now, I think I could easily imagine spending my life with her, growing old with her, but I know that’s never going to happen. I guess we’ll stay distant cousins, occasional friends.’
Win nodded towards the end of this, a small smile describing itself on her lips. She kept nodding after Alban had finished speaking.
‘I see,’ she said. She looked at the tray on the table. ‘Would you mind adding some hot water to the pot and pouring me another cup?’ When he had done this and handed her the cup and saucer, she said, ‘All I can tell you, Alban, is that your mother was a very . . . Depressed. S
he was a very depressed kind of person. I have always worried that you might have inherited that trait, but you seem to have escaped it, largely. The treatment for postnatal depression is so much better nowadays. Looking back, I don’t think that inviting your mother and father up here was such a good idea after all. This can be a bleak, lonely old place, especially if you are in a state of mind to be receptive to feelings like that.’ She sipped her tea, looking at the cup. ‘Your mother was very sensitive and easily . . . Not led, perhaps, but prone to moods, influences. She often seemed a little confused, the way sensitive people do sometimes. Confused about her own life, about what she really wanted.’ Win sipped her tea again. She shook her head. ‘I really can’t think of any more that would be of benefit to tell you.’
Alban sat looking at her for a while. He sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said. He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go.’
He rose from his seat.
‘I’m sorry if this hasn’t been as helpful as you’d hoped,’ Win said. He looked down at her. She went on, ‘I’m afraid you must just say as you see fit at the meeting, Alban; tell it like it is, isn’t that what they say?’
‘Yup, Gran,’ he told her. ‘That’s just what they say. Will you be saying anything?’
‘I don’t think so, dear.’
‘Alban,’ Neil said. ‘You all right?’
‘Fine,’ Alban told him. He’d found Neil just as he was locking the gunroom. ‘You?’
‘Aye, good,’ Neil said, checking the lock one last time then placing the key carefully in his pocket.
‘How was the shoot?’
‘Fine, aye. Couple of hinds.’ He tested the handle of the door, giving it a few twists. ‘No escapees or bad shots. A success.’ He glanced up briefly. ‘You and the fishing?’
‘Couple of trout. All too small.’
‘Uh-huh. That all?’ Neil said, making to walk past Alban up the corridor to the hall.
‘And a wee bit of drama,’ Alban said, not moving to let Neil past. ‘Though we coped.’
Neil met his gaze for a moment, then said, ‘Good. Scuse me, squire.’
Alban let him past and waited until Neil was half a dozen steps away before he said, not too loudly, ‘How badly do you need that reference, Neil?’
Neil stopped mid-stride, making an awkward half-step, his head coming up slightly, then he turned with a smile and said, ‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing,’ Alban said.
9
‘This is not intended to be just a diatribe against the US in general and Spraint Corp in particular, though I do feel I have to explain a little of why I feel the way I do about the choice that we’re being presented with here today.
‘Personally, I believe that when faced with an imperial power - and let’s not kid ourselves, that’s exactly what the USA is - one ought to do everything non-violent that one can to resist it, just on principle. The USA is a great country full of great people. It’s just their propensity as a whole for electing idiots and then conducting a foreign policy of the utmost depravity that I object to. You could argue that Bush junior has never been fairly elected at all, but, in the end, at the last election, faced with a choice between the guy with the purple heart and the guy with the yellow belly, the half of the US electorate that could be bothered to vote appears to have plumped for the latter.
‘Now, Spraint are not a direct part of this; they’re just another US-based company, halfway to being a multinational. Their record on working practices and unions is actually reasonably good from a human-rights point of view, and their main shareholders do give a lot to charitable causes. Well, good for them. Ultimately, the employees have to do whatever they can to uphold shareholder value, with all that can imply, but then that’s just them playing by the rules of capitalism as they’re currently written. It’s a pity that, the way these rules work, they have the effect of putting the fat boys in charge of the tuck shop, but that, for the moment at least, is what we’re stuck with.
‘Spraint want to buy the Wopuld Group because they can; they have the cash and the high-value stock to do it without making any great dent in their bottom line. Also, we represent a loose end for them; as long as the Wopuld family own the majority of the firm, they’re not in complete control of one of their more profitable assets. That makes them uncomfortable; it’s untidy, it’s unfinished business. As long as they don’t have to pay silly money for the seventy-five per cent they don’t yet own, it makes sense for them to have complete control. Of course, the definition of “silly” here can vary. Maybe the urge to be tidy here is itself a symptom of a kind of autocratic hubris, but then that’s the kind of whim you can pursue without immediate penalty when you have overweening power.
‘Personally, I don’t think we should sell. Why do I think we shouldn’t sell? Purely because of the politics of it. Resist imperialism, whether it’s military or cultural. It has nothing to do with the family. Actually, I think it might be best for us as a family to dispose of the firm that bears our name. Maybe, if and when we do sell the firm, that’s when we’ll have a chance to be a normal family again. Well, as normal as any family is; the more I’ve seen of this family and everybody else’s, the more I’ve realised there’s no such thing as a normal one. They’re all slightly mad.
‘But - and this is the real point - at least we’ll have the chance to discover what we’re really like as a group of people tied together by blood, rather than by blood and money. Maybe we’ll discover things about ourselves that we wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Maybe we’ll discover things about ourselves that we wouldn’t have wanted to discover, but - as a rule - I think it’s always better to know the truth.
‘Cards on the table: I’ll be voting, with my hopelessly puny hundred shares, against a sale at any price. However, if we do sell, and I expect that we shall, I’d suggest putting a price of one hundred and eighty million dollars US on the three-quarters of the firm that we still collectively own and accepting no further negotiation except regarding the mix of cash and stock. And there, I’d suggest no more than fifty per cent in the form of shares. In fact, I’d suggest putting that proposal to the vote here and now, or as soon as the formal EGM comes to order, and presenting that to Mr Feaguing and Mr Fromlax as a take-it-or-leave-it choice. First, though, I believe Aunt Kathleen would like to say a few words as well. Thanks for listening.’
Some polite, restrained applause sounded in the slightly chilly ballroom as Alban resumed his seat beside Great-Aunt Beryl.
‘Well, I for one thought that was awfully well said,’ she told him, patting his hand.
He smiled. At least it was over.
Aunt Kathleen was rather more businesslike. She mostly just ran through the figures, which she’d printed on to a couple of sheets of A4 she referred to once or twice. She professed pleased surprise at Alban’s little speech, which she had decided to treat as basically pro-sale. Her own thoughts were that they ought to ask for two hundred million on a take-it-or-leave-it basis and negotiate down to one-eighty as a last resort only if Spraint absolutely refused to swallow two hundred.
Aunt Kathleen was standing on the small dais at one end of the room by herself. Behind her lay the long table where Win, Kennard, Andy, Haydn, Fielding, Perce and she would sit shortly, when the Extraordinary General Meeting would be formally called to order.
She asked if there were any objections to a show of hands on whether a motion to the effect she had just outlined should be put to the meeting as soon as it began.
Alban abstained. Pretty much everybody else voted yes, though Uncle Kennard voted each way by mistake.
Texan oilmen generally believe that you can tell a lot about a man by his closest friends, so they take particular care only to buy the best. Before being head-hunted to join Spraint Corp, Larry Feaguing had been in the oil industry, based in Texas, and knew the Bush clan reasonably well. The remark about only buying the best friends was one that some drawling Houstonian sophisticate had either made up or repeated as their own to him
at some Republican fund-raising event when he had still been relatively wet behind the ears. He recalled being shocked at the implication, and dismissive of the - probably closet Liberal - cynic who had expressed it. Subsequent experience in the state and the industry had only shown how disillusioningly true the epithet actually was.
Until this weekend the Bush family had provided Larry’s definition of lucky avariciousness and well-connected guile, but now he was beginning to think the Wopulds might have the edge.
‘Did I hear that right?’ he said quietly, leaning over to speak into Fromlax’s ear.
‘Yes, sir. Two hundred million.’
‘Jesus H. Christ.’
‘Sir, please.’
‘Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry.’
Two hundred was the limit they’d been given authority to go to, depending on the cash/stock mix. Feaguing knew the board was prepared to go as high as two-fifty, at a pinch, though he personally thought that was far too much; at that price it would be a vanity purchase, not good business. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Two hundred? He wasn’t just going to say yes to that, certainly not without putting up some sort of fight. He didn’t want to go back to the States having been taken right up to the limit he’d been given, not unless the only other option was not making the sale at all. It would look bad. He might look weak; gullible, even. It would not do his standing in the firm and on the board any good. Yes, he’d have successfully negotiated the purchase of the Wopuld Group and secured the Empire! property, so it wouldn’t do him any harm, as such, but if he could come back, in effect, with change, it would look even better. At the very least he was going to make the greedy bastards sweat a bit.
The motion passed as near as dammit unanimously on a show of hands. Feaguing was so annoyed he had to be reminded by Fromlax that he had a vote, too. Shit, he represented the biggest single share-holding by a long way. They’d tot up the shares belonging to each of the people voting, but as no individual owned more than six per cent of the whole, that would make no difference. Motion carried before he’d even had a chance to put his pitch, the devious Brit bastards.