Crimson (44 page)

As he swabbed his brother’s temples with cold water, Mike muttered, “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Adam. My bloody temper again! Look, forget the money. Just, for God’s sake, open your eyes. Please.”

Adam’s eyelids moved slightly. Mike carefully wiped his face.

Adam looked up and said weakly, “God, my head’s splitting. What happen ed?” He tried to lift his head, but the room tilted. Giddy, he fell back on the rug. With eyelids still closed, he murmured anxiously, “Where’s my watch?” “It’s still on your wrist, old boy,” said Mike, dabbing with the towel at his brother’s face.

“An ambulance is on its way should be here any minute.”

Adam slowly lifted his left wrist and looked at it. Puzzled, Mike wondered what was so special about that ordinary-looking Omega watch.

Adam said weakly, “I don’t need an ambulance … You hit me, that’s all. You’re not Superman… I’ll be okay in the morning.”

FRIDAY, 20 JANUARY 1967

Just after six o’clock, Clare heard the squeak of the garden gate hinge. Her heart jumped. She caught her breath, dropped her oven gloves to the floor, and leapt to the window. David was walking up the garden path, half an hour earlier than expected.

As he came through the kitchen door, he said, “I’ll oil that gate for you tomorrow when we clear the garden … Mmm, what’s that delicious smell?” He took her in his arms.

“Leek-and-potato stew.” Clare’s newfound, short-term leisure meant that she now enjoyed cooking instead of seeing it as an added, rushed, three-times-a-day chore to fit in around earning her living. She mumbled against David’s tweed jacket, “We’re having chicory-and-orange salad with vinaigrette sauce, followed by mushroom croustade with a hazelnut topping, then Stilton and homemade oatmeal biscuits.”

“Sounds delicious.” He kissed the top of her head.

“By the way, are you a vegetarian?” “Only since last week. I decided I don’t like eating dead bodies not after being caught in a trap. I know most people think it’s cranky.” Clare served supper early so that four-year-old Josh could stay up late and eat with them. She would have preferred a romantic candlelit dinner for two, but even more, she wanted Josh to see David as one of life’s pluses and not as an interloper.

After Josh had gone to bed, they again sat on a rug before the fire with their backs to the broken-backed armchair, holding hands as they listened to a radio concert.

Clare murmured, “There’s something I have to tell you.” She had carefully thought out what she was going to say, but when, in the firelight, she looked into his dark fringed eyes, she forgot her rehearsed words. She sighed and said regretfully, “You’re so good-looking.”

“I know what you mean. I hate it. It’s embarrassing. And believe me,

it’s a drawback. Women are distracted and men don’t trust me because of my looks,” David said.

“But there’s nothing I can do about it. I wear my hair long and I comb it forward to hide as much as possible of my face. I used to wear clear glass spectacles, although I didn’t need them.” He added, “But there is one great advantage: nobody wants to fight me. Sometimes if I’m sitting in a bar, I’m teased by strangers, who think I’m a homosexual. Then I slowly stand up, and they see the length of me and back away. They’re not to know I’d never fight.” He laughed apologetically.

“I also have some cranky principles.” Clare didn’t laugh. Instead, she said what she had to say, knowing that this was the time to get it out.

“David, I find you almost unbearably attractive. I love feeling close to you. But I don’t want to go to bed with you. I want to make that clear!”

“Why not?” David settled his arm more comfortably around her.

Clare lost her nerve. She had intended to say, “Because I went through a promiscuous period after I left Sam, and it was a hateful, shameful, humiliating time, and I’ll never let it happen again.” She also feared that early sexual disaster in this relationship would doom it.

But Clare forgot her lines; instead, she burst into tears.

“Because my love life has been such a mess!”

“Well, that’s in the past,” David murmured as he cuddled her.

“But what happen ed?” Clare snuffled a bit.

“Sex isn’t what I was led to expect.” David said, “Sex without a close emotional relationship doesn’t work for me either. I can’t separate sex from oldfashioned feelings like love and affection.”

“But that’s what women usually say!”

“You know, Clare, what I like about you is your innocence. Maybe what I’m saying is the only surefire, tried and tested way to get a girl’s knickers off in thirty seconds which, by the way, it is. But what I said is the way I feel.” “I know why you’re so easy to talk to,” Clare said.

“You don’t bother to try and prove yourself. You really listen to what I say and you respond to it. My husband didn’t take me seriously.”

“And you haven’t had another relationship since?” Clare hesitated, then took the plunge.

“I had a ghastly series of one-nighters. Usually they hopped on and pumped away and suddenly it was over. I never climaxed and I was too shy and too timid to ask for what I wanted, so afterwards I’d be resentful..

“But if you never told them what turned you on, how could you expect “I agree, it seems crazy. I wasn’t too shy to leap into bed with them, but I was too shy to tell them what I needed.”

“How you feel is how you feel and how you climax is how you climax, and so long as you let a man know those things, there shouldn’t be a problem,” David said. They settled down to some serious kissing.

-FRIDAY, 27 JANUARY 1967

The following Friday evening, after spinach souffle, baked potatoes with sour cream, and rather a lot of excellent claret, Clare found herself sitting naked to the waist in the firelight.

“Let’s go to bed,” she whispered.

“Promise you won’t anticipate?”

“What?” No anxious thoughts.”

“Such asTI hope I’m going to come … I hope my body’s as good as his other girls’.. . I hope I don’t take much longer…” Shyly Clare added, “I hope he isn’t bored or tired … he’ll be disappointed if I don’t come…” I “Hell, it’s all too much trouble. I’m not going to come.

I’ll fake it.”

Clare nodded. David stood up and pulled her to her feet. Hand in hand, they moved upstairs to bed.

MONDAY, 19 MARCH 1967

“Oh my God, darling, I’d forgotten I ever signed thaW Miranda looked with dismay at the document that Adam had just placed on her white horseshoe-shaped desk. She suddenly felt as cold as the raw wind of March that swept the streets of London outside her office window.

Adam stared thoughtfully at Miranda; he leaned across her desk.

“I’ve spent a long, long time thinking about this. Of course, I know you won’t like giving up fifteen per cent of the total equity of SUPPLY KITS nobody would. On the other hand, it was on this condition that I joined your company: you agreed that should your business ever go public, I would hive fifteen per cent of the equity for the nominal sum of fifteen thousand pounds. I would like to hold you to your, bargain, Miranda.”

“But I thought that only referred to KITSV Miranda said, dismayed.

“The wording of the document clearly states, and or any other businesses that arise from this company.” That means fifteen per cent of SUPPLY KITS Miranda. Surely you read the document before signing iff “But, darling…” Miranda looked pleading.

Regretfully Adam shook his head.

“This is not a personal matter, it’s a matter that concerns your business integrity. What made me finally decide to insist on this was when I realized that had you been a man, Miranda,or had I not been personally involved with you, I wouldn’t have hesitated to ask for these shares.” From opposite sides of the desk, they stared at each

other impersonally. It was as if a glass wall had gone up between them. Miranda said quietly, “In that case, Adam, I’d like to get a second legal opinion.”

“Of course. But you’d better inform Freddy Swanson immediately that there is a problem. After all, it’s only two days to the flotation.”

“Why the hell didn’t you bring this up before now?” Miranda fumed.

“I’ve only just reached my decision,” Adam said softly. He hadn’t intended to give her time to try a countermove.

Miranda telephoned her lawyer. Having ascertained that she would, indeed, be forced to sell fifteen per cent of SUPPLY KITS to Adam for a.token amount, she added, “In that case, please rewrite my will and delete all reference to Adam Grant. Instead, reapportion those shares to my staff … No, I’ve had a better idea! Add Adam Grant’s bequest to that of Buzz I mean, Miss Doris Mann.” Miranda replaced the receiver and called for her secretary.

“June, please cancel all today’s appointments. Ask Mr. Swanson if he would be kind enough to see me here, as soon as possible. I mean within the hour.” Miranda’s ten-man board of directors had recently been expanded to include a new chairman, the Earl of Brighton, and Frederick Swanson of Seligman Swanson, the merchant bank chosen to hand lethe SUPPLY KITS flotation. The bank had organized everything concerning the various consultants, the share price, and the prospectus a forty page glossy volume about the company’s structure, trading situation, and future plans. As was customary. in Britain, existing contractual obligations had been included; as was also customary, two weeks before the flotation, the essential details of this prospectus had been published in national newspapers.

Mr. Swanson arrived at the reception area and was shown “to the private lift that went straight to Miranda’s office on the top floor.

When he stepped out, he was astonished by his first view of the place. The entire sixty-foot room was white, including the marble floor. The furniture was white and chrome, and even the many vases of spring flowers were white. The space looked clean, glamorous, and exciting. At the far end of the room, spotlights shone on white tables, upon which cosmetics, in various stages of testing, were spread. Overriding the scent of flowers was the faint suggestion of a peculiar smell, slightly reminiscent of a school science lab, but fruitier.

Miranda walked forward to welcome her visitor.

“Good morning, Freddy.”

“What’s happen ed?” Freddy Swanson asked. He was pleased by the progress of the flotation: SUPPLY KITS was thriving; KITS had sacrificed its 1966 profit only to facilitate the other company’s expansion. I Swiftly Miranda outlined her problem, grateful for once that her personal involvement with Adam was a secret.

“Why did A da wait until so late?”

Freddy thundered.

“An undisclosed stock option worth three hundred thousand pounds throws out all your figures! That means our brochure and advertisements are inaccurate.”

“Originally he decided not to take up the option because kc thought it would upset me,” Miranda said lamely.

“But Adam eventually decided that he couldn’t afford such sentimental generosity.”

“Which, of course, did upset you.”

“To be frank, Freddy, he’s earned it. I doubt SUPPLY KITS would be going public without him.”

“Nevertheless, Adam’s a qualified lawyer,” Freddy said, “yet he put his name to a prospectus which says that all material information has been disclosed but does not mention a fifteen per cent stock option that I

wasn’t told about.” He sat down on a white, tulip-shaped chair.

“I’ll calculate the exact figures,” he murmured.

“Adam has acquired one hundred and ninety-two thousand thirty.-shilling shares worth two hundred and eighty-eight thousand pounds for fifteen thousand pounds, which leaves you, Miranda, holding sixty per cent of the shares.” Slowly he looked up from his calculations.

“I suppose we can’t do anything about it at this stage. All the expensive consultants” work has been done, all the donkey work is over, everyone is exhausted, and some of the public have already applied for the shares, so very reluctantly I will take no action. Those shares mustn’t be sold to Adam until after the flotation.

Everyone in the office noticed the new, impeccably polite coldness between Miranda and Adam. Nobody guessed the reason. But Miranda felt exposed and lonely.

Early on the following Thursday morning, she grabbed the pale pink copy of the Financial Times from her breakfast tray. SUPPLY KITS was now on the London Stock Exchange: the share price had risen to thirty-three shillings. As Miranda poured her coffee, she realized that checking the share price would now be her first priority every morning. She was no longer the proprietor of SUPPLY KITS but the managing director and major shareholder of a public company.

For a moment, Miranda’s eyes sparkled: the little sister number three in the nursery to whom no one had paid much attention, was now, at the age of twenty-six, clearly a number one in the business world! She was one of the few self-made women in Britain. In the world! She remembered her early unsuccessful struggles for equal treatment and wondered what her sisters would think of this news. To hell with equality now.

She wished she could share her glee with Adam. Miranda hated the coldness between them. Perhaps she should not have been so aggressive. After all, she had agreed to the 38o when she wanted Adam to join the company: he 51 only taking what he was entitled to.

Hearing a knock, Miranda turned her head to the door as the housekeeper entered; she carried a Victorian brass birdcage, in which was a dove. Attached to the ring at the top of the cage was an olive branch with silvery-grey leaves.

She tore open the card. Adam’s angular black hand-Wnfing read: “Can I tell you tonight how sorry I arnT Miranda threw back her sheets and took the cage to the She laughed as she watched the dove soar above the chestnut trees, which were already showing the first flecks of green.

I,.“Ilmt evening Miranda ran down the stairs to her drawing room, ker heart was beating hard and she was short of th.

Adam, in white dinner jacket, turned from the window and stared.

“Darling, are you dressed or undressed? One ia ever knows these days.” Miranda wore a sheer cream thiffon Grecian gown with thonged gold sandals that crisscrossed to her knees.

“Definitely dressed. It’s Zandra Rhodes.”