The Company

by Sally Spencer

  ‘John.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘And finally?’

  ‘Uncle Tony.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t like that at all. John probably did die first – a good liar always sticks as close to the truth as he can – but it was your father who asked Harper to get my father out of the car.’

  Finally, I saw what he was getting at.

  ‘But Uncle Tony was already dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly. As the solicitor told us, Grandfather died about an hour before the crash, which meant that, though he never knew it, my father had had effective control for that hour. But then he died as well, and control went to Uncle Edward. True, he only had it for a minute or so – maybe even less – but that doesn’t matter, because when Edward died, control passed to you.’

  ‘So that’s what Bill had on you,’ I gasped.

  ‘One word out of place from Harper, and I would have lost the company to you,’ Philip said. ‘I would have given him almost anything to keep quiet – but the only thing he would settle for was joint control. I thought I could live with it at first … but I couldn’t. And that night, after I’d had a couple of drinks, I knew what I had to do. And I’m not ashamed of having done it – only of getting caught.’

  ‘There was no need to do it,’ I said. ‘You could have continued running the company, even if I did own the controlling stock. I told you I was only ever interested in Cormorant Publishing, and it was the truth.’

  ‘If only I could believe that,’ Philip said wistfully.

  Our world views were a million miles apart, and I was never going to convince him that I really didn’t want Conroy Enterprises.

  ‘I’ll get you the best team of lawyers that money can buy,’ I told my cousin. ‘Don’t worry about how much it costs. The company will foot the bill.’

  ‘Of course it will,’ Philip replied. ‘The company will take care of me. The company will take care of you. It’s always taken care of all of us, hasn’t it?’

  And at that moment, I think he really hated the company more than he had ever hated anything before.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Dusk was about to fall, and I was standing in the churchyard, looking down at my family’s gravestones. Behind me, I could hear the click-click of a woman’s high heels on the flagstone path, but I didn’t turn to see who it was – my business was not with the living but with the dead.

  The gravestones still had a stark newness which made them look like intruders, but after one or two harsh winters, they would blend in with the sombre setting of the rest of the place. That was the way things were – the way things had to be. The graves would age – and the images of those they contained would gradually begin to fade in the minds of those still living.

  ‘Life goes on, Grandfather,’ I said to the nearest grave. ‘However much we think it couldn’t possibly, it still goes on.’

  ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’ said a voice which I instantly – and achingly – recognized.

  I turned around. Marie was standing a few feet away from me. She was wearing a green dress which matched her eyes perfectly, and even though I fought it, I found my heart beating a little faster.

  ‘Have you come to see him?’ I asked bitterly, pointing at Uncle Tony’s grave.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’ve come to see you, just as I promised that I would in Bristol.’ She took a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, flipped open the top, then closed it again. ‘Best not to smoke in a churchyard,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m trying to give them up.’

  ‘I’ve been telling you to do that for a long time,’ I said.

  There was something wooden and unnatural about our conversation – but that hardly came as a surprise. Now that I’d discovered the truth about her and my uncle – now she no longer had a need to use me – we really had nothing much to say to each other anymore.

  ‘You’re angry,’ Marie said.

  ‘Don’t I have a right to be?’

  ‘I suppose so. But perhaps when you’ve heard what I have to say, you won’t feel quite so hostile towards me.’

  It was almost like my conversation with Philip – but in reverse – I thought.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I told her.

  She looked around the churchyard.

  ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Let’s go somewhere with a bit more life in it – somewhere I don’t feel guilty about smoking a bloody cigarette.

  We walked up the avenue of yew trees. Swallows were circling the church tower, and in the grass, tiny insects chirped urgent, incomprehensible messages. A small furry creature scuttled quickly across the path, then disappeared behind an ancient gravestone, and I was reminded of the day that John, Philip and I killed the shrew.

  Marie and I passed through the lychgate and crossed the road to the George and Dragon.

  ‘I’ll go and get the drinks, you take a seat,’ Marie said, pointing to one of the wooden benches in front of the pub.

  I sat down and looked across at my grandfather’s house. I thought of how much the old man had meant to me, and how the chain of command he’d set up to hold Conroy Enterprises together had caused so much damage.

  Marie returned with the drinks – a pint for me, an Irish whiskey for herself. She placed them on the table between us.

  ‘You said you’d come up here to give me an explanation,’ I reminded her.

  She lit a cigarette and puffed nervously on it. ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ she said. ‘I’ve told so many lies in the past …’

  ‘I know you have.’

  ‘… but you have to believe that everything I’m going to tell you now is the truth.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said, noncommittally, still not sure whether or not she had stopped playing games – still not sure if she hadn’t worked out one final way in which she could use me.

  ‘I wasn’t lying when I said I was brought up in Ireland, but I wasn’t giving you the full picture either, which is that I was actually born in England. I told you I was adopted, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. The first time we met. Was that true?’

  ‘Completely. It was true about my having a happy childhood, too. I knew I was adopted, but it never bothered me. Why should it have, when I had the kindest, most loving parents anyone could have wished for?’

  ‘You were lucky,’ I said, thinking of how my cousin Philip had talked about his own childhood, and even of my own parents, who had been kind but distant.

  ‘Yes, I was lucky,’ Marie agreed. ‘But though it didn’t bother me, I did start to get curious when I was in my teens. I’d catch myself wondering who my real parents were, and why they’d given me up.’

  ‘That’s only natural.’

  ‘So when I was eighteen, just before I went to Trinity College, I decided to find out.’

  ‘And what did you discover?’

  ‘My real mother had been dead for a number of years by that time.’

  ‘An illness?’

  Marie shook her head, and her hair swirled around her shoulders. ‘She committed suicide. An overdose.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘He was still alive. My first thought was to go and see him, but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to do it.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I think it had something to do with the fact that he probably didn’t even know I existed.’

  ‘How’s that possible?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d done all the background research by then,’ Marie told me. ‘I knew my real mother had left my real father early in her pregnancy. There’s no evidence that he made any effort to find her after she’d run out on him, and I think that if he’d known she was bearing his child, there would have been. Anyway, she carried me to full term, but, because I’d have interfered with her career, she gave me up for adoption.’

  ‘What was her career?’

  Marie looked me straight in the eyes. ‘She was an actress,’ she said. ‘Not a very good one, by al
l accounts, but a very eager one. Most people seem to think that it was her failure to make a name for herself that led to her suicide.’

  She reached into her handbag and placed an old photograph on the table in front of me. It was of a tall, almost stately woman, standing in front of the village church. She had auburn hair which spilled in curls over her shoulders and was smoking a cigarette. I had seen the photograph before – in family albums. And so had Lydia – but unlike me, she had made the connection! And that was why Marie’s interest in the family had been no mystery to her!

  ‘Are you saying …?’ I gasped.

  ‘That I’m Tony Conroy’s daughter, and Philip Conroy’s sister? Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘So when we met at St John’s College …’

  ‘It was no accident. I knew exactly who you were. I’d been following you for a couple of days before I made my move.’

  ‘But why?’

  Marie shrugged awkwardly. ‘Again, I’m not entirely sure. I imagine that I thought that, if I got to know the family through what you told me, it might eventually make it easier for me to approach my father.’

  ‘And did it seem like it was getting easier?’

  ‘Yes, it did, but it also got more complicated, because I couldn’t approach him without explaining it all to you, first – and you’d think I’d only been using you.’

  ‘You had only been using me,’ I said, trying not to sound too bitter, and failing miserably.

  ‘Maybe I was, at first,’ Marie admitted, ‘but it wasn’t long before you really started to matter to me. I’d finally made up my mind to talk to you as soon as you got back from Bristol, and then I was going to see my father.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I’d left it too late, hadn’t I?’

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ I said, as I felt my battered emotions swing from self-pity to empathy for her. ‘You couldn’t have known.’

  Marie reached up, and angrily brushed a tear away from her eye.

  ‘I felt as if, through my own cowardice, I’d cheated him out of something he was entitled to,’ Marie told me. ‘Maybe he wouldn’t have cared about having a daughter one way or the other – but now I’ll never know.’

  ‘That’s when you decided to find his killer?’

  ‘Yes. It was the least I could do for him. The only thing I could do by then. And when Lydia offered to retain me, it seemed like it was meant to be.’

  ‘But you didn’t trust her?’

  Marie shook her head again. ‘I didn’t know that she only wanted Paul Taylor found so that she could kill him before he had a chance to speak to the police – but I sensed that something was wrong.’

  I thought back to our impersonal meeting on Temple Meads station. I’d been devastated that she’d been more concerned about the money than she’d been about me – but that only seemed natural now that I understood she had been hunting down the man she thought was her father’s killer.

  And it was natural, too, that her cool, professional shell should crack after she’d heard from Paul Taylor how easy it would have been for him to prevent the murders.

  ‘You said I mattered to you, didn’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘I did. You do matter to me.’

  ‘Then why wouldn’t you go to bed with me? I know you wanted to.’

  ‘I did – I can’t tell you just how much I wanted to – but I couldn’t allow it to happen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Marie sighed and lit another cigarette. ‘I’ve had love affairs before, and though I’ve always tried to be a good Catholic, I’ve taken precautions. But contraceptives sometimes fail, and if they’d failed me, I would have had the baby because I couldn’t – I just couldn’t – deny that baby the chance to live.’

  I needed to make sure I had at least one thing clear before I went any further.

  ‘That night you phoned me from Bristol, you told me you loved me,’ I said.

  ‘I should never have told you that.’

  ‘Why – because it wasn’t true?’

  ‘No – because it wasn’t fair to you.’

  I still wasn’t getting it.

  ‘If we love each other, then why don’t we just get married?’ I asked. ‘And if you get pregnant, then that’s great – because we’ll both love having children.’

  Marie suddenly looked sadder than I’d ever seen her. ‘For God’s sake, Rob, we’re cousins – and sometimes cousins just aren’t biologically compatible,’ she said. ‘I might give birth to a child who was chronically disabled – who knew nothing but pain for his or her whole life. I can’t risk that.’

  I reached across the table and took her hand in mine. ‘But surely there are tests we can take to find out whether or not we’re compatible,’ I said.

  ‘There are.’

  ‘Then why don’t we take one?’

  Marie pulled her hand away and shook her head.

  ‘I’m not brave enough for that. It would be like committing ourselves to living happily ever after – when there’s a very good chance that we wouldn’t be able to.’

  ‘If the test turns out badly, I could have a vasectomy,’ I said, though even as I said the words, the thought of not having children was tearing a hole in my heart.

  Marie shook her head again – sadly and mournfully. ‘I want children, Rob. It would destroy me not to have them – and I think it would do the same to you.’ A single tear ran down her cheek. ‘I’ll always love you – I want you to know that – but this just has to be goodbye.’

  A voice from my past drifted – unsummoned and totally unexpectedly – into my mind.

  Jill – my darling Jill – standing on Warrington station and talking about the Conroys.

  ‘The family’s too closed in,’ she said. ‘It feeds on itself, and that can’t be healthy.’

  I had tried to break away, but Jill’s death and Grandfather’s offer had dragged me back in. And now the curse of the Conroys was being visited on me again – because the woman I had fallen in love with had turned out to be one of them.

  If only Aunt Jane had not run away, I thought, self-pityingly. She and Uncle Tony might have had a miserable life together, but at least I’d have known who was who – at least fate wouldn’t have been in any position to spring this huge booby trap on me.

  I thought back to the night, long ago, when Uncle Tony had discovered that Aunt Jane had left him. Uncle Tony, my father and my mother were all standing in the hall. John, like the obedient son he had always been, had gone to his room as instructed, but I had stayed at the top of the stairs listening to every word which was being said below.

  ‘When did this happen?’ my mother had asked, after Uncle Tony had told her that Aunt Jane had left him.

  ‘This morning,’ my uncle replied. ‘At least it was probably this morning.’

  ‘Aren’t you sure? Surely if she hadn’t been there, you’d have known.’

  ‘She doesn’t usually get up until noon.’

  ‘But even so …’

  ‘And ever since we stopped sleeping together – which is nearly a year ago – we’ve had separate bedrooms.’

  They’d had separate bedrooms for nearly a year!

  That could only mean one thing!

  ‘Listen, Marie, I don’t think her acting career was the only reason your mother ran away from home,’ I said excitedly. ‘Maybe it wasn’t the reason at all.’

  ‘Then why did she leave?’

  ‘She left because whoever your natural father was, it certainly wasn’t Uncle Tony.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m positive.’

  I reached across the wooden table and took Marie’s hand again, and this time she did not pull away from me.

  ‘Taking the tests isn’t going to be a problem,’ I said. ‘We’ll pass with flying colours – because you’re only Philip’s half-sister and there’s not a drop of Conroy blood in you.’

  EPILOGUE

  Shortly before his death, my gentle, sensitive brothe
r John told me that when you have someone to love, business suddenly doesn’t seem as important any more. Back then, I could never even have begun to imagine how right he was – but I understand it well enough now.

  These days, my business activity is restricted to an occasional trip to Manchester. There, I sign papers relating to several companies I own – and thanks to Grandfather’s legalistic machinations, am never allowed to sell. I do not run these companies – even my grandfather’s complex and devious mind couldn’t come up with a way to make me do that! – and though they earn me considerable dividends, most of this money goes straight into the Conroy Foundation for Good Works. This is not, I should point out, because I have suddenly become saintly, but simply because my needs are few.

  When I’m in England, I take the opportunity to visit my cousin Philip. He has already served a fair chunk of his sentence and, with good behaviour, should be out of gaol in two or three years. When he’s released, I will probably offer him an executive post in Conroy Enterprises, but I don’t think he will accept it – he seems to have lost his taste for power.

  I have tried to see Lydia on a few occasions, too, but the nurses who watch over her have told me she is far too busy writing letters of advice to committees she once chaired – letters which always go unanswered.

  None of that matters. It is part of my old life. The village of my childhood is like another planet, and even Oxford has started to seem unreal. These days, I spend most of my time on the small Greek island which my brother first discovered.

  It’s a good life – a peaceful life. When we want fish, I walk down to the market and buy it fresh from the sea. When I feel like cheese, I milk one of the goats which wander around in the olive grove which came as a part of the ramshackle villa I bought and am slowly – painstakingly – renovating myself.

  We are not quite cut off from our old life here. Occasionally, a thin-faced, sweet-guzzling chief inspector from South Wales will spend part of his annual leave with us. And once in a while – and always unexpectedly – we will be visited by an eminent Scottish author who is currently both dazzling his students at Harvard with his brilliance, and totally confusing them with his thick Glaswegian accent.