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ng away for the annual general meeting.'
'Whimbrill holds our proxies.'
'That's what's worrying me. I don't know him very well, but he doesn't strike
me as a very forceful man.'
'He believes his own future is at stake.'
But I could see she wasn't sure of him. 'That's not quite the same thing, is i
t? And if they made him an offer -' She hesitated. 'He's an accountant, you se
e. They have a different way of looking at things.'
'Well, there's nothing we can do about it now,' I said.
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'No.' She nodded reluctantly. 'He's a strange man. He doesn't seem to have
anything to live for outside Strode House. That makes him very vulnerable.
But you're probably right. If they liquidate both companies, then they dest
roy, him, and that's something that puts fight into the mildest of men.' Sh e
was silent for a moment, and then she said, 'All this wouldn't have happe ned
if there'd been anybody at Strode House to succeed Father - a man with real
drive. When he died the guts went out of the organisation. It had been
slipping for some time and it needed somebody with a fresh outlook, new ho
rizons.' Her hand was in mine and the night was warm, the sound of London's
traffic a muffled roar. 'I often wonder what would have happened if I had
married Hans de Witt,' she murmured. And she went on to talk about the obli
gations of members of the family in a family business. 'I didn't understand
this at the time. I was only a kid.'
I asked her who Hans de Witt was and she said, 'The son of a Dutch shipowne
r.' She was smiling gently and her fingers tightened on mine. 'It's a long
time ago now. He was much older than I was, but Father was interested in a
merger. He was looking to the future and he threw Hans at me. But I was hav
ing my first love affair and Jennifer grabbed him before I had recovered my
senses.' Her voice betrayed an enviousness she didn't bother to conceal. '
Jennifer is a great big woman; she's quite content to be a Dutch hausfrau.'
'So the merger never went through.'
'Oh, it wasn't Jennifer's fault. Not then. Hans inherited from his father jus
t after the war when the de Witt cargo line was crippled by Holland's loss of
the Dutch East Indies. He switched to passenger carrying, running emigrants
to North America. He's very successful now and if I'd married him . . .' She
looked at me, smiling. 'Well, I didn't, and that's that. But I wanted you to
know why I feel as I do. As a member of the family I had an obligation and I
failed to see it as such. Father was right, of course. Hans has the nerve, th
e drive, the energy, all the things that Henry and George lack. He'd have mad
e a big company of it - a rival to P. & O. perhaps.' She sighed. 'I've been p
aying for my selfishness ever since. And now if Peter fails __»
She was silent then and when I glanced at her I saw that her eyes were close
d. The glow of the lights picked out the bone formation of her face, glimmer
ed on her raven black hair. It was a strong face and her small body tight-pa
cked with energy so that I felt myself in the grip of something stronger tha n
myself, 'Never mind,' she said softly. 'Don't let my conscience spoil our last
evening.' I knew then that her need was as great as mine. I lit a cigar ette
and my hand was trembling for there is a luminosity about London at tha t time
of the year, the promise of full summer just ahead, an to-morrow I wa s seeing
the children. The feeling of longing had become an ache deep down i n the
life-stream of my blood. Her hand slipped from mine and without a word she got
to her feet and went into the bedroom, the rustle of her dress a si lken sound
in the quiet stillness of the room.
And later as I lay beside her in the dark, relaxed and smoking a cigarette,
listening to the sounds of a great city falling silent into slumber, I found
myself thinking over the things she had said to me that evening. Never havi ng
had money I had not given a thought to its obligations. She had not only made
me realise that a company, like a ship, is only as big as the men who r un it,
but also that the direction of it must have an impulse greater than m oney. A
fresh outlook, new horizons, she had said - it was this I had been g roping
towards when I had stood staring at the Palace of Westminster on my f irst day
back in London. This was the malaise that had spread through all se ctions of
the country and the thought bolstered my determination to back Pet er with
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everything that was in me. To build something for the future, that w as it,
and my thoughts turned to the great days of our mercantile expansion, to .the
East India Company and men like Alexander Guthrie who had opened up new
territory with nothing but their wits and determination to sustain them
. I was thinking of an island in the Indian Ocean and dreaming dreams and fa
lling gently into sleep.
IV
1. THE ISLAND
'Steer one-two-zero.' Recce's voice was sharp, almost staccato, and he star ed
straight ahead at the flat, calm, oily sea that reflected a blinding daz zle
of light. White shirt, white shorts, white stockings and shoes, his hea d bare
and the crinkly fair hair bleached almost white by the sun - he look ed cool
and immaculate, very slim, very good-looking, with a certain air ab out him,
not cocky quite, but ambitious - certainly ambitious. And that puz zled me,
for an ambitious man you would have thought would be at pains to c ultivate a
member of the family who was not only the mainspring of the whol e venture but
also a man about his own age who could be expected to be a po wer in the
company when older directors had retired.
The wheel moved under the lascar helmsman's hands and the Strode Trader swu ng
slowly on to her new course. It was a twenty-degree turn, but apart from the
compass there was nothing to show that the ship's head had altered, fo r there
was nothing anywhere but the eye-searing blink of flat water, an em pty
heat-hazed void with sea and sky all one great refraction of light and no
horizon.
'That do you?'
'Yes.'
Peter was standing behind the helmsman wearing a sarong and nothing else, his
bare chest smooth and brown. The lascar wore khaki shirt and shorts. T
he time was 1420 hours and the heat in the wheelhouse intense, no air stir
ring except that made by our passage through the water - a hot, humid curr ent
of air coming in through the open doors to the bridge wings. This was the
third change of course in twenty-four hours, each course dictated by P
eter and given by Reece himself direct to the helmsman. And each time he h ad
given it standing in front of the empty mahogany expanse of the wheelho use [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]