Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  It was Peter’s challenge each evening to arrive home unobserved. This was not always easy. While he struggled back from Golden Square on the Central Line, Miles was driven home from Charles Street Mews by Makepiece, cutting fifteen minutes from the journey. On the occasions he spotted his son arriving home at the same time as himself, Miles expressed surprise. ‘Don’t you have something to go to this evening? Isn’t there some client event you should be at?’ Miles himself seemed always to be setting off to one client dinner or another.

  Then there was Conception, their Holland Park Square Filipina maid.

  ‘Is my idle son home yet, Conception?’ Miles would ask.

  ‘I think he go backside in garden, Mr Straker,’ Conception replied, massively blowing his cover.

  Minutes later, Miles would hound him down in the shrubbery, declaring, ‘Here you are. Put down that ruddy instrument and come with me to the Pendletons’ drinks. Come on, you’re meant to be one of their account men, aren’t you? You won’t do any good skulking out here in the bushes.’

  Learning from experience, Peter gravitated deeper into the hinterland of the garden. He incubated a fantasy in which his songs were recorded by a major label and he became the new Neil Young or James Taylor, only less overtly commercial. He believed that if only the whole world was exposed to his lyrics and music he could make a difference, and escape the purgatory of working for Straker Communications and his father for his entire life.

  Samantha hadn’t set eyes on a single member of her family for five days in a row. Their hours no longer coincided. These days, she seldom returned from nightclubs before three or four o’clock in the morning, which was three hours before Miles left for his breakfast meetings and five before Peter set off on the tube for Golden Square. Archie was away at Bristol University and Mollie went into college every day from Chawbury. Which left Sam, gloriously unsupervised, recuperating by day in her bedroom at the top of Holland Park Square, in preparation for the next night’s fun.

  Ostensibly in London to find some kind of job, her efforts in this direction were cursory. She was intending to send letters to the HR department of Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Condé Nast, the Admirable Crichton party planners, Louis Vuitton, Harrods, Tiffany and several other organisations where she wouldn’t object to working, but these letters had not yet got themselves written, and somehow the notion of fulltime employment with hours became less appealing the longer she did nothing about it. In fact, she couldn’t see how it would even be logistically possible to fit in a job, given how little time she already had just coping with all the things she needed to do. Such as remembering to drop her clothes into the laundry basket so they could be washed and ironed by Conception, and shopping for new clothes whenever she forgot, and making arrangements for each night with so many people, like whose flat they where all going to meet up in first, and whether to go to L’Equipe Anglaise behind Selfridges or Chinawhite, or even Tramp if someone could get them in.

  Blessed with a fabulous figure, long blonde hair, instinctive sexiness and a strong sense of entitlement, Sam felt immediately comfortable in her new persona as proto ‘it’ girl. School had never held much interest for her, nor had travelling, beyond the soporific comfort of sunshine. But now, here in London, shuttling between nightclubs in an endless succession of black cabs as a fully assimilated member of a young, rich, attractive subculture, she felt fulfilled. It was amazing how many people she already knew, and counted as good friends, that she hadn’t even heard of four months earlier. Her mobile rang incessantly. She was greeted by name by the barmen at half a dozen clubs, and was waved straight inside by the clipboard gatekeepers. She was named by Tatler in their annual list as one of the 500 most desirable teenagers in Britain, in a write-up which began ‘Straker Communications heiress Sammy Straker, 19, is one trust fund babe who knows how to party big. Woo her with her favourite Moscow Mule at Po-Na-Na and watch her shake her booty at nearby 151 on the Kings Road.’ When he saw the piece, Miles experienced a surge of paternal pride, loving the idea of his daughter as a leading socialite, as well as the flattering name-check for his company. So he agreed, with only token complaint, to pay off her overdraft and raise her allowance to better reflect her new circumstances.

  As Sam explained it, she lived a life of incredible economy in any case, since so many of her drinks, club entry fees and taxis were taken care of by others. ‘I probably only have to pay for one drink in ten,’ she said. ‘You’re getting away with murder, Dad, you’ve no idea. Margaritas are twelve quid each at most places.’ And Miles, who was perfectly happy to be wound round his beautiful daughter’s finger, took her clothes shopping at Joseph and paid another two thousand pounds into her account when she told him she was short.

  During this initial period of her initiation to the party circuit, Sam was pleased enough to hang out with anyone at all. Her circle was composed of school friends and their brothers, all more or less her own age. If they ate out, which they seldom did, it was at pizzerias or creperies where the bill didn’t exceed ten pounds per person. In these early days she regarded boys aged twenty-five, let alone thirty, as impossibly old. Over time, however, she found herself taken up by a more sophisticated group, older and richer, who took her instead to Italian and French restaurants like L’Incontro, Sale Pepe and above all San Lorenzo, and money was no longer a consideration.

  These new friendships came with strings attached. Samantha understood instinctively that she was expected to put out in return for dinner, or anyway in return for a second dinner, and this she did without a second thought, with neither moral nor emotional hesitation. She regarded sex as the natural conclusion to a fun evening, a favour lightly conferred, costing nothing, and likely to validate not imperil a new acquaintanceship. In her first year in London, she slept in fourteen different beds in bachelor flats across four boroughs: Chelsea and Kensington (8), Fulham (3), Westminster (2, both Pimlico) and Barnes (once only, far too far). Few of these liaisons endured for longer than a few weeks, nor were they intended to. Sam discovered she enjoyed and was good at sex, but her boredom threshold was low, and there was seldom much regret in moving on. Her new boyfriends drove powerful cars and took her to watch polo at Windsor and racing at Goodwood. One, who was her oldest admirer so far being 46 (a fact she decided to conceal from her parents) was a notorious philanderer working in commercial property. One evening, after a boisterous dinner at Morton’s in Berkeley Square, they had gone on to Annabel’s. It was the first time Sam had been inside, and she liked the place immediately, recognising it as a grown-up nightclub, a step up from the ones she usually went to.

  The property whiz, who evidently came to Annabel’s all the time, led her to a table next to the dance floor and ordered champagne. The bottle was being opened when he said, ‘Good God. There’s an old flame of mine, the redhead. Scrubber with the big tits. She married Robin Harden. Robin Hard-on, we called him. But that’s not Robin she’s with tonight, oy oy.’

  Samantha looked for a redhead, and recognised her at once. It was Serena, their Hampshire neighbour. A split-second later she saw the man she was with: her father. Miles had one arm draped round Serena’s bare shoulders and was smoking a cigar. His eyes, lustfully focused on Serena’s cleavage, looked ready to pop from their sockets.

  25.

  Two years almost to the day following the opening of Andover Freeza Mart, Ross was persuaded to take his business fully public on the Footsie.

  His financial svengalis, Callum and Brin, were convinced the timing was right, with a surplus of institutional cash looking for a home. Furthermore, the business had been growing at such speed, with eighteen new stores opened in as many months, they were keen to play down their investment. Ross, too, could see the sense in it, even though a part of him resisted the idea of being quoted on the main stock exchange with all the hassle and accountability that implied. His newest stores in Romsey, Haslemere, Farnborough and Sevenoaks, fitted out to a higher design spec, had been instantly successful, perfor
ming way ahead of forecast. Anecdotally, Ross had heard the folks at Safeway and even Sainsburys were taking him seriously as a competitor for the first time. And when he interviewed a potential new marketing director, who came from Pendletons, the guy told him his bosses were ‘obsessed’ by Freeza Mart and monitoring prices against their own on a daily basis. Ross found it hard to believe, but it was flattering nonetheless.

  He broke the news of the flotation to Dawn on the evening before he informed his senior staff. Dawn was initially nonplussed, not understanding what it meant for them. But after he’d sunk a couple of cold beers, and then a couple of glasses of wine, Ross told her the stockbrokers were placing an initial valuation on the business of £320 million, of which the Clegg family owned thirty percent. They would realise £35 million of their stock at flotation, and still retain a big chunk of the equity. Dawn looked astounded, she’d had no idea. ‘Not bad, is it love, when you think where we started out, in that little one-room office,’ Ross said.

  After that, they spent a long celebratory evening reminiscing about the early days of the business, and the problems they’d had borrowing from the bank and managing cashflow, and some of the lovely people who’d worked for them at the very beginning. Ross said he intended to award shares from his personal stake not only to the directors and senior managers, but also a few hundred shares each to every single person on the payroll, full time and part time. ‘It won’t make much odds to us, and it’ll make a big difference to them,’ he said. Then Dawn cried, partly at Ross’s generosity and partly at the emotion of all the money that was coming their way.

  One early consequence of the flotation process was that Ross had to spend a great deal more time in London. He had underestimated the sheer number of meetings he’d need to attend with lawyers and brokers, and the presentations to fund managers who quizzed him on every aspect of the business. At first he found these formal presentations with his financial director intimidating, and found himself becoming aggressive when investors second-guessed his assumptions. ‘I’ve had it up to here with these jumped-up city slickers,’ he told Dawn. ‘They think they know everything but they don’t know jack-shit, most of them.’ Much of the time, his blunt Midlands persona played surprisingly well. He might not have been as slick or smooth as the investor relations professionals representing Sainsburys or Pendletons, but his honesty shone through.

  With twelve-to fourteen-hour schedules sucking up to institutions, not to mention trying to stay on top of the business which felt more neglected with every passing week, Ross could no longer get home to Chawbury each evening. Instead, he began renting a two-bedroomed terraced cottage in a street behind Waterloo, a former railwayman’s cottage which reminded him of the terrace in which he’d grown up. He couldn’t get over the rent, which was £350 a week. ‘We paid four shillings and sixpence for a place exactly like this one when I was a kid,’ he told people. ‘The landlord came round each Friday to collect and you were in trouble if you missed a payment.’ But the Roupell Street cottage suited him, being functional and efficient, and within walking distance of the new Freeza Mart corporate headquarters at One Riverwharf. That was another consequence of going public: transferring the registered headquarters from Droitwich down to London, along with key corporate staff. Ross had severe misgivings about that, because he worried the company might forget its roots and lose touch with their customers. ‘We’ve got a new rule in this office,’ he addressed the team from a jumble of packing cases and files. ‘Every one of us takes the train up to the Midlands once a month for store visits. It doesn’t matter who we are: FD, company secretary, marketing—especially marketing—all of us, we spend a full day checking out our shops, checking the competition, listening to customers. There’s a lot of fancy places with fancy prices to match down here in town, and I don’t want anyone getting seduced by it. Its not real life down here. It’s all bollocks, London, most of it, and don’t you forget it. The day Freeza Mart starts heading downhill is the day we start believing all the London bollocks. Got that everyone?’

  As for absorbing any London bollocks himself, Ross simply didn’t have the time. He was treated to dinner at the River Room at the Savoy on a couple of occasions by his new advisors, but generally he microwaved his own supper in Roupell Street. His PA, Jacqui, who reluctantly agreed to relocate with him but was already missing Droitwich, sent him home with cold-bags of Freeza Mart products to fill the freezer. Sometimes he bought a KFC or burger on the walk home, and ate it in the street to avoid stinking out the cottage.

  He rang home every evening to chat to Dawn and the kids, and discovered he missed them much more than he’d expected. He missed little Mandy too, who felt more like a third daughter than a first grandchild. Gemma was trying her best, bless her, to be a good mum but it was hard on her, she wasn’t even eighteen yet. For the moment, Chawbury was the best place for her, sharing the care of Mandy with Dawn, but in the long run they’d have to decide what to do. She couldn’t stop at Chawbury for the rest of her life. She’d quit school when she fell pregnant and lost touch with most of her mates; the move to Hampshire hadn’t helped either. She was getting awfully lonely with just her mother, Debbie and the baby for company. Dawn and Ross discussed it and reckoned that in a year or so Gemma should enroll at college or even get a job—locally or up in town—and enjoy a bit of freedom again.

  In one respect only, Ross felt disappointed by his new life. He had hoped, in spending more time in town, to get closer to Greg. The fact was, he’d had a tricky relationship with his only son for as long as he could remember, for ten years at least. It was hard to say exactly why, but they rubbed each other up the wrong way. Whenever Greg came down to Chawbury, as often as not they argued. They argued about everything from politics (Greg was way to the left of his father, though Ross still considered himself a socialist) to the way he spoke to his mother (he was routinely supercilious to Dawn). What irked Ross most was the dismissive attitude Greg showed towards Freeza Mart. He went out of his way to denigrate his dad’s business, saying what eyesores the stores were and how disgusting the food. Or he banged on about them being capitalist institutions, designed to rip-off working class customers. ‘All food outlets should be nationalised, along with the distribution chain,’ Greg proclaimed. Since Ross was proud of being a fair employer, and had recently signed off on a corporate mission statement which put permanently low prices as a core competence, he was stupidly annoyed by Greg’s crassness. He knew he shouldn’t be, but he was.

  He set himself the objective of using his time in London to get closer to his son; he would meet him on neutral ground, or better still on Greg’s own territory. Several times Ross left messages to set up drinks or supper. He suggested meeting up in pubs in Holborn or the Strand, close to Greg’s halls of residence, and they’d find a place for a bite to eat afterwards. Greg, however, was slow in replying, often claiming not to have received the message, saying his answer-phone was playing up. And when Ross did get hold of him, he was evasive. When, eventually, they fixed a date, Greg rolled up forty minutes late saying he only had time for a quick drink, not supper, because he needed to work on his PhD. Ross had to work hard to control his temper.

  They met for a drink in a noisy wine bar called All Bar One in Aldwych and Ross told his son about the impending flotation of Freeza Mart, without mentioning his own share valuation. Greg was instantly hostile. ‘You’ve really sold out, haven’t you?’ he said when Ross finished. ‘What’s it feel like, Dad, to abandon your last vestige of self-respect?’

  ‘Actually, Greg, it feels good. Getting a full listing gives us access to a lot more capital, which means we can grow the business faster. We’re planning on opening another fifty, maybe a hundred stores in the next three years if we can get the right locations. We should be in a position to bring good food to a lot more people for less. I’d have thought you’d have approved. We might start up overseas too. There’s big opportunities in the new Eastern Bloc countries. Poland, the Czech Republic, maybe
Slovenia.’

  ‘You’re an empire builder, Dad. A retail colonialist. Think about it. And what it means.’

  Ross did his best to part on good terms, but it still niggled away at him a week later. He hated admitting this, but he didn’t like Greg much at all.

  26.

  Miles read the announcement about the Freeza Mart flotation on the flight to Dubai. He and Serena had settled into adjacent First Class seats on the Emirates 747 when the stewards handed out newspapers. And there in the Lex column was the five-paragraph item: the Droitwich-based cash-and-carry retailer was seeking full public listing, underwritten by Nomura, at a target market cap of £320 million. Freeza Mart founder and CEO, Ross Clegg, 49, would see his personal stake valued at £105 million. Accordingly to the Financial Times, Clegg, who had homes in the West Midlands and in Hampshire, was a low-key workaholic and long-term supporter of Birmingham City football club. He was married to Dawn, ‘who is involved in local charities,’ with a son and two daughters.

  Miles read the item twice, then turned to the news pages where the story was reported in greater detail. For a moment he couldn’t focus on the words, having been knocked sideways by a wave of envy. So intense was it, so debilitating, he was unable to function. The steward offered a tray of champagne and he took two glasses, bolting them both. Then, semi-anaesthetised against the pain of the words, he forced himself to read about the remarkable Freeza Mart success story which had seen expansion from a single outlet to sixty-two in nineteen years, and was now rapidly gaining ground across the prosperous South of England. According to a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium, Freeza Mart was trading particularly strongly against Pendletons, the £8 billion high-end supermarket chain.