Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  ‘So she talked you round?’

  ‘Right. Kept telling me what a grand investment it was, on and on about it. Until I caved in. I asked a couple of my larger investors, Callum Dunlop and Brin Watkins, what they reckoned, and they were positive too. So now we’re in the middle of this big renovation project costing an arm and a leg, on top of everything else, with the new Coventry warehouse still bedding down.’

  Ross’s PA knocked at the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but your twelve o’clock is here.’

  Megan stood up to leave. ‘Thank you for being so forthcoming.’

  ‘You see. I was right, wasn’t I? There’s nothing interesting to say about me.’

  ‘Actually, Ross, quite the reverse. There’s plenty. Classic triumph over adversity stuff, the public responds well to that.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable about it. What worries me, if you put your head above the parapet …’

  ‘It might get shot off?’

  ‘Exactly. I’d sooner keep my head down working. I don’t really like seeing my name in print.’

  ‘I saw you made it onto the Evening Standard Power List.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. I hated that. Especially the mention of the London house and what I was supposed to have paid for it.’

  Megan smiled. ‘Half my clients pay me to increase their profile. They love appearing on lists like that.’

  ‘Me, I hate it. It makes me squirm. I hated our people inside the business reading it.’

  ‘Then you’d better start getting used to it,’ Megan said. ‘The way your business is growing, it isn’t going to stop anytime soon.’

  35.

  Greg Clegg’s adoption as Labour candidate for the Kingstown ward of the Hammersmith and Fulham council was a triumph of political manoeuvring and bad faith. At the outset, Greg’s chances of selection seemed negligible; there were at least three others with greater claims than he. One, the deputy headmaster of a local comprehensive school, had served the party faithfully for fifteen years. Another, a pillar of the borough probation department, was the live-in partner of the local party secretary. The third, being a Jamaican-born female trades union convenor at the Royal Mail, had obvious credentials of her own. Greg’s application was welcomed as evidence of his future ambition but scarcely taken seriously by the selection committee. In the first round of interviews, he was ranked third or fourth by each of the six councillors on the panel, having struck them as too young and supercilious. Several commented they had found him obnoxious in his replies to their questions.

  As the selection process moved to the second round, however, two candidates surprised everyone by withdrawing their names. It was very unexpected and rumours circulated about dirty tricks. Greg said he suspected a smear campaign by the Tories. Whatever the reason, the deputy head and the Jamaican union convenor dropped out, leaving only Greg and the probation services supervisor, Gaynor Barnes. Gaynor’s selection looked like a shoe-in until the local newspaper, the Hammersmith and Fulham Courier, following an anonymous tip-off, ran a front-page story exposing an alleged expenses scam in her department. This was vehemently denied by all involved, and no incriminating evidence was ever produced, but the publicity alone was enough to make a full investigation inevitable, and it was of course impossible for Gaynor to seek public office until this was concluded. And so, with no other candidates left, the committee had no option than to select Greg as the youngest ever candidate for the safe Labour ward.

  His selection was a source of surprise and pride to Ross and Dawn, who both immediately promised to canvas for him in the council elections, six months away. Greg consented to spend a rare weekend at Chawbury where toasts were proposed by his parents and Ross made a nice speech predicting a glorious future in politics.

  ‘Uncle Greg might become prime minister,’ Gemma said to Mandy, who was perched on her lap. ‘He’s going to be Tony Blair.’

  ‘I hope you realise what you’re taking on, Greg,’ Ross said at one point. ‘It’s quite a commitment being a councillor. Folk expect you to help them jump the housing queue or get a new bathroom put in.’

  Greg rolled his eyes. ‘I won’t be involved in any of that. I’ll leave that to social services, thank you.’

  ‘You’ll be surprised by the size of your post bag. You’ll have to set aside quite a bit of time to deal with it all.’

  ‘Listen, I’m not getting dragged down by the small stuff. I’m interested in the big issues—planning, policy and resources, the environment.’

  ‘It’ll be helpful having you in planning,’ Ross said, laughing. ‘We’ve been having no end of trouble with Hammersmith and Fulham over our North End Road superstore. You’ll be able to sort it for me.’

  ‘I don’t actually approve of the big supermarkets growing share in the borough, Ross.’ Greg had recently stopped calling his father ‘dad’ and switched to his given name. ‘You’re squeezing out the small shopkeepers.’

  ‘Bollocks. Anyway, what about consumer choice? We’re much cheaper. People appreciate affordable food. You should welcome us.’

  ‘Ross, this is real politique we’re talking here. Small shopkeepers have votes. You don’t. And you’re environmentally undesirable.’

  ‘How so? Freeza Mart has a darned good environmental record. Could be even better of course, but we’re working on it.’

  ‘Please,’ Greg said, rolling his eyes. ‘You’re all as bad as each other. Pendletons, Freeza Mart, Asda. I tell you, I’d like to see the whole lot driven out of the borough. We’re already a nuclear-free zone. I’d like to see us become a capitalism-free zone too.’

  Debbie was eleven hours into a double shift, with only a twenty-minute break for a bite to eat, and feeling ragged. Not that she was complaining. Even after seven months, she never forgot how fortunate she was to have obtained a traineeship at such an amazing place. With a Michelin star, a semi-celebrity chef and a state of design hydrospa, the Buckingham Park Hotel between High Wy-combe and Stoke Poges was a dream position. She knew she was absorbing so much, and it was great to see all the hotel management theory she’d learnt at college being put into practice by such a professional team.

  Of course, she had started at the very bottom, doing everything from chambermaiding to waitressing in the hotel restaurants. The first week she’d been assigned shifts in the formal restaurant, Wy-combe’s, which had been awarded the coveted Michelin star, and been terrified she’d get something wrong: that she’d hand round the elaborate bread basket, with its ten different varieties of olive and corn breads, the wrong way, or make a mistake pouring the wine. Wycombe’s was renowned for its cellar and many guests came specifically to enjoy particularly rare bottles, carefully considered by the Belgian sommelier, Ricard, a stickler for protocol. The dining room was so grand and formal, with its heavy curtains and damask wallpaper and framed citations and awards on every pillar, that most guests were intimidated into total silence, or whispered to their friends in anxious undertones. The food itself was gloriously elaborate, featuring duck foie gras in aspic with a fanned lobster tail on top, or medallions of venison in a reduced partridge and Madeira source. Debbie was excited to be serving it, though privately she didn’t much care for the taste.

  The complexity of running a five-star hotel fascinated her, especially since the Buckingham Park had so many facilities. In addition to the gourmet restaurant, there was a coffee shop known as Le Coffee Shop, popular at lunchtime with parties of local ladies, the spa with its own healthy eating menu, an 18-hole golf course and club house, and a thriving banqueting business for weddings, conferences and dinner dances. The hotel had a licence for wedding ceremonies in the original Georgian morning room, with receptions afterwards in a semi-permanent marquee on the lawn. Debbie found herself constantly occupied, regularly assigned to three different functions in a single day, pouring coffees, clearing plates, handing round trays of canapés and showing guests to their rooms. In her first two months she developed muscles in her right arm
from lugging suitcases up to guest suites.

  Partly because she didn’t complain about doing late shifts, Debbie was often assigned on busy evenings to front desk reception, which gave her a chance to learn about the computerised billing system. One of her tasks, whenever anyone was checking out, was to dial the chambermaid for that floor and ask her to check whether they’d pilfered the towelling robes from the bathroom. It was surprising how many respectable people made off with bathrobes, bathmats and even blankets and electric hairdryers. Toiletries, of course, were expected to disappear, and allowed for.

  Debbie was behind reception one Thursday evening, hair in a bun as required, and wearing her name badge—‘Deborah’—when a distinguished-looking couple arrived at the front desk. It was clear from their body language they were in a filthy mood. Out of context, it took Debbie a moment to place them.

  ‘You’ve got a reservation for me,’ said the man, peremptorily. He did not focus on her face while speaking to her.

  ‘Name, sir?’

  ‘Straker.’ He blew crossly, as if all this bureaucracy was already too much for him. His companion had dark copper hair and black leather trousers.

  ‘Here you are, sir,’ Debbie said, tapping at her computer terminal. ‘We’ve got a lovely suite for you today, the Dashwood suite. If I could just have your signature here sir, and if I could just take an imprint of your preferred credit card.’

  Miles made a cursory scribbled autograph, then said, ‘I can’t believe you need a credit card. We’ve stayed here before. You don’t seriously believe we’ll leave without paying.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s the rules, Mr Straker. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Actually, I do mind. In fact, I’ve a bloody good mind not to check in at all. Jesus Christ, my company held a conference here recently for a hundred people. Where’s the manager? I’d like to speak to him please?’

  ‘I’ll try and locate him, Mr Straker.’

  ‘No, never mind that, I don’t want to hang about waiting for him. Have our bags sent straight up to the room, we’re going to have a drink in the bar. And get someone to park my car. I’ve left it outside.’ He dropped his keys on the desk. ‘The traffic was crawling, it took two hours to get here. It states one hour from London in your literature, which comes close to fraud.’ With that Miles and Serena turned away.

  Left alone behind reception, Debbie attempted to track down a bellboy to carry the cases and someone to shift the car. Before she’d found them, there was the sound of hooting from outside: Miles’s new Jensen was blocking the drop-off point, and vehicles queuing up behind. Shrugging, she picked up the keys and went outside.

  The Straker Jensen was the swankiest car she had ever seen. Dark metallic blue with tan leather seats and a tan leather steering wheel, the interior smelt like a new pair of shoes. Gingerly, she inserted the key and the walnut dashboard lit up like the cockpit of a plane and a Jamie Cullum jazz CD began playing. The bucket seat was pushed so far back her feet could barely reach the pedals. She was searching for the handbrake, which didn’t seem to exist, and the off button for the music which she couldn’t find either, when the cars behind began honking her to get a move on.

  Clutching at random levers to release the brake, the car jerked forward before instantly stalling. Restarting the engine, she proceeded in a series of jolts and lurches along the asphalt drive to the visitors’ car park. By the time she got there, and had inched the Jensen into a numbered parking slot, she was sweating.

  Stretching back in the seat, she let out a sigh of relief. She wondered what the car was worth and whether she was insured to drive it, and what Miles would have said if she’d wrapped it round a bollard, which she almost had. It was typical he hadn’t recognised her. She had actually only met him twice in her life, at that garden opening at the manor and at Mandy’s christening, but nobody ever recognised her in her hotel uniform: it made you anonymous.

  In the walnut tray between the seats she spotted a bottle of scent, Poison by Dior, evidently Serena’s, and rewarded herself with a little spritz. It was shocking Miles would arrive so blatantly at a hotel with Serena, and Debbie felt mortified for Davina and wondered whether she knew. Mollie would be devastated too, and must never find out. If Mollie had any knowledge of her dad’s mistress, she’d never breathed a word.

  Debbie was getting out of the car when she spotted the file on the back seat, with the Freeza Mart logo on the cover. It was a clear plastic sheaf with photocopies of newspaper cuttings and a lot of papers and reports, with coloured stickers protruding from them. Having first checked she wasn’t being observed, Debbie took the file to the front and sifted through it.

  There were numerous articles about her dad, some from newspapers, others from trade magazines like the Grocer and Retail News, with paragraphs marked in yellow highlighter. And notes in the margins: ‘Stock options far too generous—speak institutional investors’ and ‘Growth projections unsustainable—shareholder value?’

  For some reason, Debbie found it troubling. She couldn’t explain exactly why, but the sight of so many cuttings about her father struck her as dangerous, even hostile. It was silly really, since Mollie was her best friend, but she didn’t like Miles Straker, and didn’t trust him either.

  Mollie had a dream, which had begun with a casual conversation in her mum’s kitchen.

  She hadn’t been home to Chawbury for several weeks but had been given, along with the rest of the teaching staff, two days off as ‘marking leave,’ so had headed down to Hampshire for a good rest. After the comparative squalor of the shared flat in Olympia (not that she was complaining: she felt perpetually guilty about how civilised her own place was, compared to the homes of many of her pupils), Mollie found it wonderfully relaxing to hang out in the warm family kitchen, with just her mum there (Miles was at a work conference at a hotel near Stoke Poges) and a lentil and marrow casserole (Mollie had recently turned vegetarian) and have a really good heart to heart.

  Unlike Miles, Davina was a good listener, and could actually remember the names of the pupils they’d talked about from one visit to the next, so they discussed Omar the dyspraxic Tunisian boy, and sweet little Benazir who’d been betrothed at the age of six and would shortly be returning to Karachi to live with the in-laws she’d never met, and Kio from Lagos who’d never seen his father. All had been taken on by Mollie for remedial reading classes and quickly become the focus for her boundless compassion. She had only to recount their life-stories to become quite tearful, for the injustices of the world weighed heavily upon her. When Miles was around, he confused and belittled her with macro-generalisations about the underclass and their pre-programmed imperfections (‘Fact: if you confiscated all the capital in the world and gave everyone—all six billion of us—fifty thousand dollars each as a fresh start, a totally level playing field, within five years the world would have reattained its status quo; and nothing you could do to stop it. The Bill Gateses and Warren Buffets would have made it all back again. Ditto the Pendletons. And, dare I say it, the Strakers. And your tragic little Omars, Kios and Benazirs and whoevers would be right back at square one. That’s why Communism failed utterly as a philosophy. Redistribution doesn’t work. You can help people to a certain point—and should help them too, which is why I keep on encouraging Pendletons to fund all these scholarships. It’s all very fine these caring-sharing sentiments, and teaching your school kids about the obligations of citizenship and suchlike, but ultimately you’re not going to make a blind bit of difference.’)

  With Davina, it was so much more reasonable and relaxed. They sat at the kitchen table and ate their supper, and it was low-key and sympathetic. Sometimes Mollie sensed a deep sadness in her mother, but couldn’t tell whether it was to do with the conversation they’d just been having or something else, and didn’t feel she could ask. When she enquired about her week, Davina said only, ‘Oh, darling, it was very nice really. I spent a couple of nights in London with your father, supporting him at his things, an
d the rest of the time down here in the garden. We’re starting a new composting system.’

  The telephone rang during supper and Davina, answering, said, ‘That was Dawny. She’s dropping back some flooring samples she borrowed, from when we re-did the barn.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Dawn for ages. How is she? I used to spend so much time over there.’

  ‘Flourishing, I think. Frantically busy. I don’t envy her doing up that great big London house they’ve bought, but she seems to be thriving on it. She’s so organised these days.’

  ‘I buy soup from Ross’s shop every day,’ Mollie said. ‘From the big new one near school. Freeza Mart’s organic squash and pumpkin soup. We had a supper party at the flat, and everyone thought it was home made.’

  ‘Tell Dawn that when she gets here. Ross will be so pleased to hear you like it. But don’t tell your father, you know how he can be.’

  ‘He’d go ape,’ Mollie said, laughing. ‘I bought my lunch at the Freeza Mart bakery almost every day at college, but never told him. He thought I went to Pendletons.’

  A few minutes later they heard the sound of Dawn’s car outside on the gravel, and she joined them in the kitchen.

  ‘This is all very nice and cosy,’ she declared. ‘And how lovely to see you, Mollie.’ She placed the wooden floor samples on the kitchen table, along with printed fliers for a performance of La Bohème which was to be put on at a notorious sink-comprehensive in Portsmouth. ‘Do come along if you’d like to. Lady Pendleton’s worried not enough of the pupils will show up on the night and we can’t have empty seats when the orchestra have donated their time.’

  Davina put on the kettle and made coffee and herb tea, and Dawn, who was in no hurry to leave, being all on her own at the Park, told them her news and caught up with Mollie’s. She had always had a soft spot for Debbie and Gemma’s friend, considering Mollie the nicest of the Straker kids and the only one she found it easy to talk to. So they chatted about the horses and Dawn’s plan to buy a new one for dressage (‘Don’t tell Ross, if you see him, he’d have a fit. He thinks we’ve quite enough horses already’) and how the building project in Holland Park Square was coming along (‘Serena, my decorator, and I are putting double vanities in the master bathroom, which Ross thinks a dreadful extravagance, but I said to him, “Ross, I’m forty-seven years old. I’m not sharing a basin with your toothbrush a day longer” ’).