The Dilemma

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘I’d like to. Honestly. I need some air. Bit of a hangover. And then I can slope off home.’

  ‘Yes. You certainly could. Well, if you really don’t mind, Oliver. And actually, then we could both slope off home.’

  He was at the station when he realised he had forgotten his jacket. He would have left it, because it was a hot evening, and he had already struggled down the crowded steps into the litter-strewn, evil-smelling hell that was Piccadilly Circus on a hot evening, if his season ticket hadn’t been in it. Slightly reluctantly, half tempted to buy a ticket – but then he wouldn’t have his season ticket in the morning, and the queues were so awful – he went back.

  ‘Everyone’s gone,’ said Hugh. ‘Shouldn’t let you up really. Go on, young man, don’t be long.’

  ‘Thanks, Hugh.’ He was surprised; the new team usually worked late.

  He ran up the stairs, went along to his office, picked up his jacket and walked back along the corridor more slowly, checking the jacket pockets. The door to the office that had been Marcia’s, the one that Sloane was now using, wasn’t properly shut; he must still be here then; they were locked up like Fort Knox at night. Obviously Sloane had gone out for a break and was coming back. He could hear the phone ringing. And then he heard the answering machine pick it up and something kept Oliver there, kept him standing, listening, trying to hear. And because he couldn’t quite hear, he pushed the door open, gently, and put his head in. And heard just the end of the message: ‘… about the financial routes into Switzerland you were asking for. I’ll have those details for you tomorrow. Goodnight.’

  It wasn’t the words that were intriguing: they could have meant anything. Well, almost anything. It was the tone. The tone which was brisk, efficient – but friendly. Familiar. And the voice. Oliver knew that voice. He knew it very well.

  Feeling heady, his heart thudding, he went into the room, picked up the phone, dialled 1471. The number that came up meant nothing to him, but he wrote it down on a piece of paper, stuffed it in his pocket and ran down the stairs.

  ‘Mum! Quick, quick, Kitty’s fallen out of the window – ’

  ‘What? Jack, where, why – ’ Rachel and Francesca had been sitting in the convent kitchen; they shot out into the hall, to see Jack sliding happily down the banisters.

  ‘Yeah, got you!’ His little face was radiant with pleasure. ‘Course she hasn’t. She’s playing with her stupid posting box thing. And that nice big little girl. Mary.’

  ‘Jack, that was very naughty, frightening me like that,’ said Francesca, and burst into tears. Rachel looked at her. She put her hand out, took Francesca’s, just as she had when she had been a little girl. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Francesca, sniffing. ‘Jack’ll probably start practising his catapult in the chapel next. I can’t cope with it, any of it – ’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re missing Nanny already!’ said Rachel briskly. ‘I think we’ll go and find Richard. Jack, you come with me. You really are very naughty.’

  ‘It was only a joke,’ said Jack indignantly.

  ‘Now,’ said Rachel, having checked that Mary was playing with Kitty with infinite care in the laundry, and that Sister Mary Agnes was keeping an eye on them both while ironing exquisite linen and lace altar cloths, ‘tell me what the matter is. There’s more than all this with Bard and Liam, isn’t there? There’s something else?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Francesca, ‘but I can’t tell you what it is.’

  ‘Why not? You obviously need to talk about it. It’s eating you up. I’m not going to tell anyone. And maybe I can help.’

  ‘No one can help,’ said Francesca with a sigh.

  ‘Francesca, whatever it is, I won’t mind. Whatever you’ve done, I’ll be on your side. That’s what mothers are for. Come on, tell me.’

  David Sloane, who was now leading the investigation into the Channing Corporation’s affairs, phoned Bard that morning and asked him if he could go and see him again, just to run over some ground they had already covered. There were two areas he was particularly interested in, the charitable trust in the Netherlands Antilles, and a particular purchase of two very large tranches of shares just about a month earlier.

  Bard said shortly he was really quite unable to give him any information about the activites of his shareholders, and David Sloane said he would still like to see him if he could spare the time. Bard said that unfortunately he had a great deal of time.

  David Sloane conducted the interview as usual from Bard’s own office, and started by commenting helpfully that he had come to the conclusion that Bard really should have had the staircase carpeted over: ‘or perhaps removed and a lift put in, bit more appropriate for commercial use.’ These observations clearly not being particularly welcome, the interview did not begin on a very happy note.

  When it was over, David Sloane called his secretary in, asked her if the preliminary documentation on the Channing case had been completed, including the official questionnaire which Channing himself had been required to complete in all its painstaking detail, and then lifted the phone to his opposite number at the Serious Fraud Office.

  Sandie, who was still greatly enjoying the whole situation, happened to be passing Bard’s study shortly after he got back, with a pile of clean towels. She wasn’t one to eavesdrop, but she did pause and check the pile just outside his door, and she heard his voice raised in what sounded like genuine anguish.

  ‘I cannot understand it, Pete,’ he was saying. ‘They seem to be bloody psychics. How have they got onto it all so fucking fast? Look, I’ll come down and see you, I think, ASAP. We’re obviously missing something …’

  Another little morsel to tell Colin about, Sandie thought, hurrying on to the airing cupboard as she heard the receiver go down. He’d already said she might be called as a witness in any inquiry. She liked that idea.

  Gray sat in the co-pilot’s seat and watched the green fields of Jersey shrinking beneath him. He hadn’t been able to change his flight.

  ‘We’ll take a buzz right round the island,’ shouted the instructor, whose name was Rob. ‘That was a very good take-off by the way. You’re a natural.’

  Gray smiled modestly; he wasn’t about to admit to what must now be twenty trial flights. He wondered, as he always did at this point, why he didn’t study for his licence; it was such a heady feeling, just getting up here in the tiny little car-like planes, by what seemed largely faith and willpower; totally liberating, with nothing around you but the sky, a bit like the moment when the first drink of the day hit your bloodstream. And he always felt so safe: aren’t you terrified up there in one of those little things, people would say to him, aren’t you scared it would crash; and no, he would say, no I’m not, and try to explain that the plane was so small, the sky so welcoming, the entire experience so absorbing, it seemed quite impossible that anything could go wrong, it just felt like driving, rather slowly and carefully on a vast and completely empty highway. A blue highway. His only problem was that he was afraid to take his eyes off the road, as it were; afraid to look down and study the landscape, for fear he was going to bump into something. He knew it was absurd, but the earthbound driver’s anxiety and brainwashing was hard to overcome.

  They banked round to the right; he had a moment of giddy fear, aware suddenly of the angle, the sensation of being able at least to fall, then steadied, and forced himself to look down. And it was quite lovely; a brilliant blue and gold day, the cliffs – so small, so sheer, from up here, edged with the brilliant yellow of the gorse, the white of the huge dog daisies, the paler gold of the sand, the toytown castles set on the tiny heads, the absurd neatness of the golf courses, stitched into the wilder landsape, and the smaller islands, Guernsey, Sark and Alderney, looking as if they were floating free in the dancing sea. Bard Channing and the News, and the refusal of the two to come together on Jersey at least, seemed a very long way away and almost unimportant.

  He did an almost perfect landing and sat in
the cockpit for a few minutes, chatting to Rob, sorry to have come back to earth.

  ‘You really should sign up,’ said Rob. ‘You’re very good.’

  ‘Well – I’m only here for a few days,’ said Gray.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘Well, there are dozens of schools all round the M25. Why not have some lessons there? Look, I’ve got a list inside, why don’t I give it to you.’

  Gray hesitated, then he said, ‘Yeah, OK. I’ve left my jacket there anyway. I’ll have to come back in.’

  He followed Rob in, up the stairs into the office, and while he was waiting for the list to be found looked idly at the notice board. It was covered with details of flying events, and photographs of happily grinning people.

  ‘This your Hall of Fame?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Mostly people who’ve got their pilot’s licences,’ said Rob.

  ‘Lot of females.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they tend to enjoy it more than the men. Not trying to prove anything, I suppose, don’t want to be long-haul pilots on their first lesson.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Gray, ‘well, I suppose we – ’ And then his voice tailed off. He felt as if he was completely isolated from everything and everyone in the room, that Rob and the woman behind the booking desk were very far away. There was an odd rushing noise in his ears, and he could feel his heart thudding, very fast. For on the board, right at the bottom, smiling just slightly less ecstatically than some of the others, but smiling nonetheless, in considerable self-satisfaction, was a face he was almost sure – no, he knew – he recognised. It was not a face that he had imagined smiling thus, indeed, and nor was he accustomed to seeing it with hair round it, falling rather untidily moreover onto its owner’s shoulders, with only goggles holding it back from the smiling face, and nor could he ever have imagined those rather stiff shoulders encased in a leather flying jacket, sheepskin trimmed, and certainly not with the friendly addition of an instructor’s arm draped round them; but there was no doubt at all whose photograph it was there, in that room, on that board; who had come to Jersey, who had clearly come to Jersey many times, for how else could the pilot’s licence have been earned there: and who was a great deal more likely to have come for a purpose than simply having a holiday, or even earning a pilot’s licence, to have come here on business. Channing Corporation business.

  It was Marcia Grainger.

  One of the few good things Pattie Channing had done for her daughters was send them to a first-class gynaecologist at the first signs of their needing one. Meg Wilding, who practised from rooms in Welbeck Street, was forty-five years old, a brilliant surgeon and obstetrician, and the mother herself of eighteen-year-old twin boys and a daughter of twenty. She was thus familiar on the most intimate daily basis with raging hormones and their consequences, and friendly, approachable and non-judgmental. She had known Kirsten since she was fourteen. She looked at her this morning across her desk with some foreboding.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘poor you.’

  ‘Does it show?’

  ‘Well – only to me. Because I know you so well. How do you feel?’

  ‘Terrible. Just terrible. Can’t stand it much longer.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it? How did it happen?’

  ‘In the usual way,’ said Kirsten with a sigh.

  ‘No, I mean why did you get pregnant?’

  ‘Yes, so did I. I wasn’t taking my pills properly.’

  ‘Yes, well, they don’t work unless you do,’ said Meg, ‘unfortunately. I think maybe we should consider an implant for you. And – ongoing relationship?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid not. But – oh, God I’m such a mess. Can I – can I tell you about it? Could you bear it?’

  ‘I’d like you to.’

  When she had finished, Meg said she was sure Kirsten was going to make the right decision and that she could, if she liked, make the necessary arrangements. ‘It’ll take about a week. But don’t rush it, Kirsten. I know you’re feeling lousy, but it’s important to get it right.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Kirsten with another sigh. ‘Mrs Wilding, if it was your daughter, what would you say to her?’

  ‘I’d tell her she must make up her own mind. But that her own life was at this stage a very important factor. Insofar as it affected her ability to care for a baby. Emotionally as well as practically. Motherhood is the most difficult job in the world, Kirsten. And it’s not one you can leave if you don’t like it.’

  ‘I know. I know that. But – ’

  ‘And I know about the teaching of your Church and what it does to you. And I would be a great deal less fond of you if you didn’t get so screwed up about it all. A termination is never nice. It’s not nice for the mother and it’s not nice for the doctor, I have to say. I hate it.’

  Kirsten looked at her. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’m surprised you’re surprised.’

  ‘What about the – the baby? What’s it like for – it.’

  Meg Wilding looked at her steadily. ‘None of us can know. Of course. I think – we all like to think – that it isn’t like anything for the baby. That it can’t feel anything at all. But it would be wrong of me to tell you that categorically, because I don’t know. I’ve never lied to you, Kirsten, and I’m not going to start now. I happen to think the Pro-Life people are an irresponsible lot, with their lurid emotive descriptions of the whole thing, just as irresponsible as anyone who goes into termination lightly. But I could be quite wrong. What I do know is that when I do my NHS clinics and I see young mums, young single mums who are having their second or third baby at nineteen, with no husbands to support them, no money, no back-up, my heart goes out to them – in spite of what the Tory press describe as their cushy living conditions. I don’t think a council flat and sixty pounds a week or whatever is adequate recompense for what they have to cope with.’

  ‘No,’ said Kirsten quietly. The talk of single mothers was reminding her of Oliver rather painfully.

  ‘Babies are demanding, tetchy, often disagreeable little creatures. It’s just as well they can’t talk, I often think, or we’d spend all our time quarrelling with them instead of trying somehow to shut them up. Of course they’re lovely too, of course they’re touching and sweet and intensely rewarding – at times. Nothing in the world like the first smile. Or the snuggling little head against your neck.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘Of course some single mothers are brilliant. You could well be. To be fair, I think you might. But not many are. And believe me, Kirsten, without back-up, it’s hard to be adequate, let alone brilliant. Think of the baby, Kirsten, not of yourself. That’s the background against which to make this decision.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you. I’ll – I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘Fine. Now then, let’s be practical, shall we? When was your last period, and – ’

  Oliver had no idea what to do. He felt instinctively he should speak to Bard, but he didn’t know what to say. The thing was so slight, so tenuous, and the implications were somehow unpleasant. If detailed information was being given to the investigating accountants on what seemed to be an unofficial basis, and in what could only be described as a rather clandestine way – and, moreover, by someone with a rather intimate knowledge of the company and its workings – then it seemed to indicate that the investigations had reached what could at best be described as a delicate stage. Oliver was not stupid, nor was he an innocent; as the days had passed it had become increasingly clear that the accountants were looking at rather more than a list of the company’s assets and its profit-and-loss account. Nevertheless it was hardly for him to say to Bard Channing – of whom he was in any case extremely nervous – look, you ought to know that someone you trust is betraying you. If Channing was honest, if he had nothing to hide, there was nothing to betray. But Channing was more to him than a boss; he owed him a great deal, and what did it matter if he did bawl him out? He coul
dn’t kill him. Well, not quite …

  And if it turned out that he was wrong, that everything was in order, that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation, then that was fine. He’d have some egg on his face, but he had greater miseries than that to endure at the moment.

  Bard had been in that morning, to see Sloane. It hadn’t sounded a very happy encounter. Oliver didn’t like Sloane; he treated him with mild, but very obvious, contempt.

  He decided to go out to lunch and have a couple of glasses of wine to give him courage and then phone the house. He had never used the number, had never dared to, but he knew what it was.

  Gray could hardly believe he could have been so stupid, not to have thought of her before, to have assumed she was what she seemed. It was obvious, so obvious; these old biddies always knew everything. Loyal beyond belief, they would all go to the rack for their bosses. And of course she would have known: she would have seen, heard, everything. A perfect accomplice: discreet, slightly forbidding, the embodiment of respectability; if Bard Channing had advertised for someone to help him in his dealings, no-one more suitable could have turned up. She was like the wooden horse of Troy; he could send her in anywhere and no-one would dream of investigating her, of seeing in her more than she seemed. And she was also, clearly, claiming her rewards: a few phone calls (at the busiest times) had revealed a couple of bank accounts and a share portfolio. Clever old trout: she had gone up in Gray’s estimation considerably. And it was going to make a marvellous twist to his story. But he still had to finally nail her at Robinson and Weatherill.

  He was on his way to meet Shelley in the restaurant she had specified when he had called and offered to buy her lunch. It was called La Capannina and was to Jersey, Gray gathered, what the Caprice was to London, being filled with well-dressed expensive people eating well-dressed and expensive food.