I turned away from the place where Peter Hay had died. I had never willingly returned to where I had found the body of my old friend. My way brought me down to Hamish’s cottage (now shared by Joanna). The brooder houses would be empty now, the pheasants loose in the woods and farmland since early July, but Hamish and Ronnie were busily loading sacks of grain into the back of Hamish’s long-chassis Land Rover pickup. The feed hoppers would have to be topped up and it was Hamish’s habit, when the birds had gone up to roost on the evening before a shoot, to lay trails of grain which in the morning would encourage them out of their coverts and out to where he wanted to begin his drives. No bird, he contended, flew as well as one which was going home.
Hamish, I was amused to note, had been allowed to regrow the beard which he had shaved off during his courtship of Joanna.
We exchanged a few words about the prospects for the next day. The light faded while the few words grew into an animated discussion of the estate’s planting policy. I was not considered hale enough to lift sacks of grain but I could still carry a bucket, so I went the rounds with them under a shining moon and only got back to the house in time to wash and let Joanna brush the chaff off my tweeds. Joanna, lush of body and with luminous eyes in a face which departed just enough from beauty to be interesting, had been a dangerous sexpot but I was relieved to see, now she was a respectable married lady, that her manner was less flirtatious and she was almost prudishly careful where she stroked with the brush.
*
Duncan, Elizabeth’s husband of less than a year, had returned from work. After he graduated in Electronics and Computing and the pair were married, none of the usual careers open to him (most of which might have taken them anywhere in the world) seemed appropriate. He could have settled down and taken a hand in the running of the estate but, as he told me when I had a fatherly chat with him before the wedding, to have a wife who was also his employer would put an unfair strain on both of them. Instead, he had taken a partnership with Jake Paterson, who was beginning to think seriously of retiring. Jake operated the TV and radio shop in Newton Lauder, installed and maintained security systems and did most of the computer sales and maintenance for miles around. Elizabeth had provided the money for the partnership agreement but I was pleased and relieved to learn that, thereafter, Duncan had refused to accept more than his keep and the occasional unsolicited gift from her.
Duncan gave me an unaccustomed grin of welcome and I saw for the first time why he so rarely opened his lips when he smiled. White but uneven teeth were the only flaw in a face of almost film-star handsomeness.
Miss Payne handed round the drinks. When we moved through to the dining room she came with us and settled at one of the four places set, leaving Joanna to serve the meal. There was an excellent wine. Either Peter Hay’s cellar or his standards were surviving.
At first, the dinner-table conversation was no more than a catching-up with minor news. We were enjoying a cordon bleu trout with almonds when Duncan said, ‘Hugh McPhail, from Potter’s Farm, was in the shop today. The computer he uses for farm records and accounts has crashed. He thinks somebody sent him a virus.’
‘Maybe they did,’ Elizabeth said.
Duncan shook his head. ‘He hadn’t been doing more than receiving and opening e-mail. You don’t admit a virus without running a macro infected with a malicious code.’
‘Didn’t he keep backup disks?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Some. But he’s not sure if they’re complete or not. He wants to know, can we let him have copies of any accounts over the last year or so?’
‘I could let him have some of them. But he’d be better approaching Jim Frazier at the factor’s office.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ Duncan said. ‘He took up about an hour — which I could have put to better use — telling me what a hard time farmers are having.’
‘I’m sorry for the farmers,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It’s a terrible time. Perhaps it’s time that we reviewed some of the farm rentals.’
It was unusual for her to take the soft-hearted view but I had some sympathy with that viewpoint. Farmers, after years of easy prosperity, were now faced by a world in which one food crisis after another had forced meat prices down. Many fields had been turned over to cereal crops only to meet with a succession of poor harvest years. Farmers were being urged to diversify, but among so many there was only so much diversification to go around. The more far-seeing realized that future profit depended on efficiency. The result was that, despite a general shortage of money, many were re-equipping and Agrotechnics was busy. It was a climate in which only a man like Maurice Cowieson could deal in agricultural machinery and not make money.
On the other hand, while compassion can be a virtue in a landowner it is not always to be recommended as a business principle. Peter Hay had somehow managed to steer a course which avoided the worst pitfalls — to mix my metaphors. ‘Farmers are congenital grumblers,’ I said, ‘and Hugh McPhail’s the worst of the lot. Any farmer will tell you he’s heading for Queer Street while leaning against the back of his Ferrari. And you daren’t suggest for a moment that they brought the BSE crisis on themselves and lost their markets due to bad feeding practices. You could consider allowing some credit at a reduced rate of interest.’
Elizabeth looked at me sharply. I was happy to see that she was developing some of her grandfather’s sense of paternalism, provided only that she did not let it run away with her. ‘And when one of them can’t keep up? What then? Slam the door, as with Cowieson’s?’
‘If necessary.’
‘What would my grandfather have done?’
Without intending it, she had let me off the hook. ‘He would have looked damned hard at each of them,’ I said. ‘Those who were working hard and acting wisely but still in difficulties through bad luck, he would have treated with sympathy. The fools, the extravagant or the lazy he would have been happy to get rid of and replace with somebody more efficient. Before going that far,’ I added awkwardly — I had no desire to be regarded as Shylock’s big brother — ‘you could first think about hiring somebody from one of the agricultural colleges to go round and recommend improvements to farm policies and working practices. In the long run, that might be a sound investment. If they reject his advice it might be time enough for something more drastic.’
‘That’s more like it,’ Elizabeth said with satisfaction. ‘I always knew that you had a heart buried somewhere.’
I thanked her, without bothering to mention that in the present that economic climate the re-letting of farms might not attract the same rentals as in more affluent times. I have always been quite happy to take credit when it is not my due.
Miss Payne caught me by surprise by muttering an apology and hurrying out of the room. ‘Poor Bea,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Her father used to farm near here. He was caught out by the BSE calamity. He had a lot of land but it was stony ground, not suitable for anything but pasture. He went to the wall, of course. I think it was the shame of it that finished Bea at university.’
That might explain the discontented expression, but any young woman of energy and resource should be able to put any such disaster behind her and get on with making a life for herself. I wondered whether Elizabeth was really doing her a favour by sheltering her from the need to earn a proper living. Then I remembered the expected little bundle of joy and felt ashamed of the thought. Single parenthood did not carry the same stigma as in my young day. Some girls might embrace it deliberately. But to most it signified an appalling hurdle in the way of dreams.
Chapter Two
Saturday morning came in crisp and bright with just the sort of breeze a keeper prays for to help the birds fly well. At breakfast — served by Joanna who was still unaided by the ostensible housekeeper — the usual air of suppressed excitement seemed to pervade the house. Since the dawn of mankind, the hunt and the feast which succeeded it were the peaks which rose above the ground of mere survival. No matter that the so-called civilizing process has
diminished driven game-shooting to a formalized compromise between the pursuit of meat and poultry farming, it remains a sociable, satisfying and highly demanding activity.
Hamish and Ronnie, I knew, would have been out since dawn, dogging-in the boundaries. Thirty years earlier, twenty even, I would have been with them.
By long-standing arrangement I had not brought a gun but borrowed my late friend’s Churchill, a top quality gun which happened both to fit and to suit me very well. In deference to her grandfather’s expressed wish that things continue much as during his lifetime, Elizabeth had obtained the necessary certificates and retained his guns, but she had never learned to use them — unlike her husband, who was an excellent shot and very much at home in his capacity as host.
The day went well. The bag was comparatively small. Many of the members were seriously out of practice after the long spring and summer layoff. (Hamish, I knew would be pleased. A bird missed today will be there to swell the numbers later in the season.) Nevertheless, the atmosphere among Guns and beaters was almost festive and the buffet lunch in the big barn was a jolly occasion. In the shooting field a person is judged more by their proficiency and obedience to the unwritten rules than by such criteria as money or social status. I was amused to see one of the beaters being served his meal by one of the Guns, but I knew that the beater was a neighbouring landowner whose intractable master-eye problem and absolute refusal to use a crossover stock would not have prevented him from shooting but would have made certain that he never hit anything, while his butler, who had received a substantial legacy from a previous employer but stayed in post because he knew no other life, was a paid-up member of the syndicate. Neither seemed to think the arrangement unusual.
But perhaps I remember the day as being one of the best because of my own triumph. On the last drive, Hamish placed me at a gap in a hedgerow, in full view of Guns and beaters alike, to act as a stop and deter the pheasants from legging it downhill and away from the covert. Instead of trying to escape on foot, a good proportion of birds decided to take wing along the line of the hedge. Because the ground was falling, they came over high.
For once, I found myself on form and the cartridges came to hand the right way round and found the chambers of the Churchill of their own accord. The light, short-barrelled gun seemed to point itself. The sun, for once, was at my back. I had no animus against the birds, only respect. This was their destiny and without this end they would never have known existence. When the final whistle blew there were eleven birds stone dead on the grass and eleven spent cases at my feet. Elizabeth, who was giving the old Labrador an easy day at the picking-up, gathered them and I helped her to carry them to the game-cart. I rejoined the throng at the cars to receive a round of applause — a rare tribute and even rarer and more precious for one who had thought that his years of creditable shooting were behind him. Life had little more to offer.
At the close of the driven day, Hamish took some of the younger and keener guns off to waylay the ducks coming in to feed on a nearby loch. Two syndicate members went home to change and return to dinner. Along with another guest who was staying overnight, I went back to the house for a bath, a rest and a change of clothes, reliving meanwhile every moment of that last drive. For the moment, I was a happy man.
I had plenty of time for a nap.
Bearing in mind that about half the male dinner guests would have had no chance to change out of shooting clothes, I had brought a carefully chosen suit — clean and presentable but far from dapper. Thus clad, I came downstairs and looked into the dining room. The table was extended to its fullest and sixteen places were laid. Ronnie, who had helped to control the beating line all day, was now hastily scrubbed and dressed in his butler suit and was putting the finishing touches to the settings.
‘Do you want a hand with cleaning all the guns?’ I asked him.
Ronnie looked shocked that a guest should suggest such a thing. ‘I’ll manage.’ He shooed me though to the big sitting room where the party was assembling.
During my many years in banking, I had noticed that one of the dangers in being seriously rich is that most of their number have difficulty in deciding just how rich they are and either blow the lot in an orgy of extravagance or resort to a quite unnecessary counting of the pennies. I was relieved to note that Elizabeth and Duncan were keeping a sense of proportion. There must have been a temptation to be ostentatious and serve champagne, turning the syndicate shoot, which returned a modest profit to the estate, into a financial millstone, but I was content to accept a middle-of-the-road, sparkling Italian wine as a substitute although I suspected that it would quickly provoke an acid stomach.
I was nursing my glass, spinning it out until dinner should be announced, when a man in his early thirties pushed through the throng, squeezed between two rather stout wives and planted himself in front of me. ‘It’s Mr Kitts, isn’t it?’ he said.
I had watched him identifying me from across the room, so there would be no point denying it. I had tried to hide behind a large and very articulate lady who was lecturing me on the economics of comparison shopping and whom I had seen driving a most unsuitable XJS which I would have given my eye teeth to own, but to no avail. He bore a strong resemblance to his father. He was as tall and almost as thin and, because he was very fair, his mop of hair was reminiscent of his father’s, but he lacked the broken veins and the small pot belly. I let him introduce himself. ‘I’m Miles Cowieson,’ he said. ‘I . . . I saw you at work during the last drive. That was quite a display of shooting.’
‘I don’t always shoot like that,’ I said, modestly but with perfect truth.
‘I never knew anyone who did.’ He stirred uneasily and his face flushed. ‘I believe that you’re a director of Agrotechnics?’
Now that he had changed the subject, I was less willing to give him my attention. ‘I don’t think that this is exactly the time or place —’ I began.
He broke in hastily. ‘Just let me plant one little thought and then I’ll leave you in peace. If the debt is going to be called in and Agrotechnics is going to take over my father’s firm —’
It was my turn to break in. ‘That would be a board decision, not up to me.’
‘I know that. Please listen. It could be the best thing since I-don’t-know-what.’ He must have seen my surprise, for he smiled. His smile had the charm of his father’s but in his case it was quite unconscious and uncultivated. ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Dad’s a fine man but he’s a stick-in-the-mud. I’ve had a thousand ideas for promoting sales — competitions, advertising with a real kick to it, junk email, you name it — but he turns them all down. When we get a farmer half sold, I’d like to demonstrate the machinery on his farm and invite all the neighbouring farmers to come and watch, with lunch to follow. Dad won’t hear of it. If you take the firm over, you could keep me on as Sales Manager and I’ll show you how selling should be done.’ There was an envelope in his hand. ‘Take this. It’s my action plan. Read it at your leisure. I’ve set out a dozen ideas for putting the firm back on its feet but the old man won’t look at any of them. He still expects the world to beat a path to his door. At least let me give them a try.’
‘It still wouldn’t be my decision,’ I said. ‘Anyway, aren’t you being a bit premature? Your father may still raise the finance he’s looking for.’
‘Well, I for one am not holding my breath. I don’t know where he thinks it’s coming from.’
‘The Swiss, he said.’
Miles looked doubtful. ‘I don’t see Swiss money being interested. The Japanese, perhaps. It might be better not to enquire. Anyway, it would only saddle the firm with more debt. Thanks for listening to me.’
‘You may get your chance,’ I said. ‘Are you a partner or salaried staff?’
‘I’m on a salary. Dad was always promising but so far he’s refused to make me a partner.’
‘That may turn out to be for the best,’ I told him. ‘If we do take over — and it’s a big if — at
least one other board member is determined that no staff lose their jobs. Provided that they’re competent staff, I go along with that.’
He thought it over and suddenly smiled. ‘You mean that if the takeover goes ahead, he’d be out and I’d be in?’
‘If,’ I said.
His smile broadened. ‘Well, many thanks. I’m going away for a few days of overdue holiday but I wanted to register my interest in case it all comes to a head while I’m away. Perhaps we can speak again when I come back.’
He melted back into the throng of men in informal dress and women who had somehow managed, even the two who had shot and those who had accompanied the Guns, to be modish and modestly jewelled. I saw him head for the drinks table and a moment later he was in cheerful conversation with Bea Payne who seemed also to be brightening. Miles left me with food for thought. According to his son, Mr Cowieson Senior might be looking for finance from the Japanese; but the Japanese are not moneylenders per se. If they propped up Cowieson’s business, it would be as a first step towards gaining a stranglehold on the Agrotechnics share of the market in farm equipment — a useful diversification for a vehicle plant many miles away which was suffering a fall in orders, but a potential disaster locally. The ultimate result could turn out to be a wholesale transfer of work elsewhere and a return of unemployment to the area. I would have to speak with Gordon Bream, and soon, but off the top of my head I could see no way that we could impose conditions on how Maurice Cowieson raised the money to pay off his debt.
Illegal Tender (Three Oaks Book 12) Page 3