– to understand what sort of woman I am, but one of the fundamentals must be to reproduce. It’s taken me a bit of time to work it out. But that makes it sound so clinical. It isn’t meant to be like that.’ Under the grill the meat was spitting and she dived towards it. ‘I would like to give you what you want.’
‘Kitty, this is madness.’
She straightened up, flushed and, clearly, already pregnant with this new development in their strange life together. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s just another stage.’
In the office the next morning, Angela appeared in skintight shiny trousers and a little jacket and informed Julian that Harold wished to see him urgently.
Harold approached his boss with the wariness of the messenger who understands there is a more than even chance he will have turned into the kill by the end of the interview. If he had not known what was coming, Julian might have been amused.
‘Julian, I can’t make those figures work as you asked. In particular, the Lincolnshire figures. They don’t look good.’
He slid papers on to the desk and Julian gave them a quick once-over. ‘You’re wrong, Harold. It’s not a question of them not looking good. They’re disastrous.’
‘I think I meant that.’
‘Well? Can I have a breakdown?’
Harold looked even worse. ‘For example, the Lincolnshire project. The take-up on the houses is less than a third. That means…’ He cleared his throat. ‘It means only thirty houses have been sold, and none of the ones in the higher bracket price range. We needed to sell sixty-five to achieve the margin. I’ve run a check on the local employment figures. Not good. The young are moving south to look for jobs and agricultural wages have hit rock bottom. The upturn we calculated on has not happened.’
Julian informed Harold that he could add to the list of woes. A letter had come in from Bristling’s factory, who had decided to pull the plug on the Lincolnshire project for precisely the same reasons.
Harold was trying hard to keep some sort of control. ‘Protest is also building over the Sussex site. The antis have discovered that the houses would be built on part of an old smugglers’ route. The heritage people are jumping up and down.’ Harold dug his hands into the pockets of his fashionable linen suit.
‘I believe it,’ said Julian.
The two men were silent.
‘Maybe,’ offered Harold, ‘we could palm off the Lincolnshire project on the council.’
‘I think not.’
Julian took another look at the figures. If a profit warning on the next quarter’s results was going to be necessary, then the share price would be affected. He ordered Harold to arrange a couple of emergency meetings and to get himself a cup of coffee. Harold disappeared.
Although he had known for some months that this might happen, Julian needed a few minutes’ grace. Daily, he had watched the figures, adjusting projections here, strategy there, but his fire-fighting tactics had not been sufficient.
At some point, he had made a mistake and, like the gene pool heading for extinction, taken the wrong turning. Nothing overtly dramatic, but decisive nevertheless. Kitty had talked about evolution, and wrong turnings littered evolutionary history. He was desperate for this not to happen to Portcullis. Nor should it have done so. In theory the genes for survival were in place – his team, their experience, the backers and shareholders. Surely it was a question of reshaping projections and vision to fit into an altered context. Yes. He must act. He
Thus, Julian went into battle to hammer a rescue package into shape.
By the end of the day, he was exhausted, all attack played out. Gradually, the building emptied, leaving a series of lit rooms. Julian got up, extracted a bottle of whisky from the cabinet and poured himself a slug.
Much later still, he picked up his papers, stowed them in his briefcase and left the office. He needed to go home, to his real home, and the need was so powerful that he could think of nothing else.
When he arrived he found he was almost gasping with relief.
Inside Cliff House, the heat had gathered and the rooms were stifling. Julian flung open the windows one by one and let fresher salt air stream in. He leaned on the window-sill and listened for a long time to the sea. He may have lost his way temporarily in the City’s wild and dangerous waters but he had returned to this anchorage. As he always did.
Then he went to bed.
Agnes spent a good part of Saturday morning recovering from the morning nausea. This was of a different variety from the one that floored her late in the afternoon and different again from the late evening bout that Mother Nature slipped in for good measure before bed. So far, she had tried everything: eating cream crackers, no breakfast (that had been bad), a brisk walk, copious amounts of food. Nothing helped and, struggling to achieve all that she had to do, Agnes was astonished that reproduction ever took place, because it was so awful.
She was in the study preparing for a day of financial planning. Probate was through, and she had to face the problems that riddled Flagge House.
Money? Yesterday she had endured a session with Mr Dawkins and the bank manager, and walked over the house with Mr Harvey to work out the priorities. In the Action file on the desk lay various forms for grant applications, all complicated.
She slid her fingers inside the waistband of her trousers and pulled at it gently to give her growing stomach a breathing space. An unseen agency had packed her head with wet wool wadding and reduced her concentration to the level of the average rabbit.
Should she tell Julian about the baby? Surely the tiny package of cells growing inside her had rights. ‘Picture your baby,’ she would say. A smart, hungry, demanding squaller who needs you. When you look back over your life, you will want him or her in the family photos. In place, and part of you. You will have wanted to stand on the rugby touchline cheering him on, or to have ferried a daughter to a late, late party in an unsuitable new dress. Little things that make the throat prick with tears and pride and which make the photograph more alive and better than the one without them.’
The shabbiness of telling and distressing Kitty shamed her; her weakness in having done so shamed her – and she feared the future to which she saw no solution. But she longed to see Julian, with a miserable, aching longing.
She looked round the study, still cluttered with her uncle’s things. A massacre in Africa, dying children, whale slaughter – these and other outrages she had tackled in her work, grown angry over and recorded so that others might feel the same. Yet the terrible truth was that when it came to this point, her own predicament and desires won out.
Agnes picked up the phone and dialled.
An hour later, she drove up to Cliff House, where Julian was waiting.
On the phone, she had said simply, ‘It’s me.’
There was a pause. Agnes, I’m so glad you rang. Can you come down here. Just for the afternoon. Please.’
She hesitated. Actually, I did want to discuss something with you.’
So there she was at Cliff House and he was opening the door of the car. He bent over and touched her hair. ‘You don’t look well. Are you all right?’
‘And you? You look awful too.’ He shrugged. ‘Kitty?’
‘She’s away’
Julian took Agnes’s hand and led her through the house.
Lunch was waiting on a table under an umbrella on the terrace. They sat down and Julian passed her a spinach salad. ‘All my own work. Tell me what you’ve been doing. Is your aunt better?’
The conversation was heavy with the unsaid. They exchanged news but it was not until he had drunk half a bottle of wine that Julian told her about Portcullis. He was concerned but resolute. ‘I’ve had to do some thinking. I confess that I had been led to believe in my own myth. I wanted to believe in it. But financial pratfalls happen in a business life, and more people struggle back from the brink than is supposed.’ He looked over to Agnes.
