The Steep Approach to Garbadale (4 page)

‘Oh, God, no. Nothing that bad. She’ll live to be a hundred if she takes care of herself, or lets us take care of her.’

‘And you really don’t find that depressing?’ Al asks, looking at his cousin quizzically.

‘Al, stop it.’ Fielding sips his mineral water. ‘Anyway, there’s more. The thing - oh, yes. You’re invited to Gran’s eightieth birthday party next month.’ He digs in his other jacket pocket and produces the envelope with Al’s invitation in it and hands it to him. Al looks at it like it contains a bomb, or possibly anthrax. He puts it unopened in his grubby hiking jacket. ‘The place is going on the market this week,’ Fielding tells him, ‘though there’s no viewing for a couple of days either side of the party. But it will be the last chance for the family to see the place. Well, you know. To stay there.’

‘Think I’ll pass.’ Al drinks. ‘Thanks all the same. Pass on my apologies if I forget to RSVP.’

‘There’s more.’

‘Is there now?’

‘This is what it’s really all about. I didn’t track you down over half the UK just to give you a party invite. The point is, the party’s more than just a party. I mean, there’ll be the party, but there’s other stuff over those few days too. That’s what I really need to talk to you about.’

‘Will it take long? Should I nip to the loo again?’

‘Please don’t.’

‘Just kidding.’

‘It’s about Spraint Corp.’

‘Oh, really? What joy.’

‘Basically, they want to buy us out.’

Al’s glass is halfway to his lips, but there it stops, for quite a few seconds. At last - some sort of reaction. He looks surprised. Taken aback, Fielding would even go as far as to say. ‘Do they now?’ Alban says, and drinks, but it’s with a forced casualness.
Now
they were getting somewhere.

‘One hundred per cent,’ Fielding tells him. ‘Total buy-out. One or two of us might get to stay on as consultants. Maybe. It’d be for shares and cash. Mostly shares. They’d keep the name, of course. That’s a large part of the value.’

Al just sits there nodding for a while, arms folded. He seems to be staring at his boots; chunky yellow things with lots of laces.

He looks at Fielding and shrugs. ‘Is that it?’

‘Well, that’s where the party comes in. The family, the firm, will be holding an Extraordinary General Meeting the day before Gran’s birthday, at the castle, at Garbadale House.’ Fielding sips his water. ‘Pretty much everybody will be there.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ Al says, and nods. He’s still staring at his footwear. His eyes are open quite wide.

‘So you might like to be there for that, too, obviously,’ Fielding tells him. ‘The EGM is on Saturday, October the eighth. Gran’s birthday party is the day after.’

‘Okay.’

‘Like I say, more or less the whole family should be there. They’re coming in from all over the world.’ Fielding gives it a moment. ‘Be a pity if you weren’t there, Al. Really.’

Alban nods, looks at his pint, then nearly drains it and stands up, pulling on his jacket. ‘You fit?’ he asks, nodding at Fielding’s mineral water. ‘Continue our walk?’

‘Sure.’

 
They walk down the river embankment, to where the traffic on that side disappears and a railway bridge crosses the river. There’s a footbridge tacked on to the side of the rail bridge; they take the steps up to it and on.

‘So, what do you think?’ Fielding asks Alban.

‘About the party? The Extraordinary Meeting? The takeover? Our one big happy family getting together for a knees-up?’

‘All of the above.’

Al strides purposefully on for a bit, then slows and stops, near the centre of the footbridge. He turns and looks down at the water rushing gently past beneath. It’s clear brown like smoked glass and sparkles fitfully under the sun. Fielding leans on the parapet beside him.

Alban shakes his head slowly, light brown curls blowing in the breeze. ‘I don’t know that I want to be part of any of it. Sorry.’

Fielding feels like saying something and normally would, but sometimes you just have to let people fill their own silences.

Al takes a series of deep breaths and looks up to where the river disappears upstream. ‘Once upon a time I felt . . . constrained, all tied up by this family. I had this idiot idea that if I could get away for a year and a day, I’d be free of it somehow, or at least able to accept it on . . . On mutually agreeable terms.’ He glances at his cousin. ‘You know? Like in the days of serfdom? If a serf could escape his master for a year and a day without being caught, he was a free man.’

‘I’ve heard something like that.’

He laughs. ‘Stupid idea, anyway. Glorified gap year. But anyway. After I came back, after I took up my supposedly rightful place in the company, and then got fed up with that, that was when I knew I had to get out, and decided - realised - a year and a day wouldn’t be enough, that it would never have been enough. Not with this family.’ He turns, gives a small smile.

And then, sometimes, people leave you silences you have no real choice but to fill. ‘So,’ Fielding asks him, ‘how long would be long enough?’

A shrug. ‘Somewhere between until further notice and for ever, I suppose.’

Fielding leaves it a bit, then says, ‘Look, I seem to remember you left because we sold a quarter of the stock to Spraint in the first place.’

No reaction.

‘That’s certainly become the story,’ Fielding tells him. ‘That’s the family mythology, that you disagreed with the twenty-five-per-cent disposal and jumped ship. Back in ninety-nine. I mean, is that right?’

‘That had a lot to do with it,’ Al says. ‘Well, something to do with it.’

‘So, look, if you’re still on the anti side, then—’ Fielding pulls back. ‘Are you?’

‘Am I what?’ Alban asks. ‘Still sworn to renounce the Spraint Corporation of America, Inc., and all its works?’

‘Yes.’

Al shakes his head. ‘I’m not sure I care any more, Fielding. I’m not sure it matters very much at all. One group of shareholders: another group of shareholders.’ He makes a sort of rolling motion with one hand then the other.

‘Shit,’ Fielding says, leaning back on the metal tube of the parapet. ‘I’ll be honest, Al. Some of us were kind of hoping you might help organise the opposition to the deal.’

Alban looks round, surprised. ‘There
is
opposition?’ He pauses, appears to think. ‘We’re not getting greedy, are we?’ He looks away again. ‘Why, that would never do.’

‘Of course there’s opposition,’ Fielding tells him, trying not to respond to the obvious sarcasm. ‘This is our firm, our family, Al. It’s our name on the board. It’s what we’ve done for four generations. It’s what we do, it’s what we
are
. That’s the point, don’t you see? I mean, that’s what’s thundered through to quite a few people in the family, especially since Spraint took their quarter-share. That it’s not about money. Sure the money’s good, but - Jeez - we’ve all basically got enough. If we sell up we’ll all be richer, but we’ll be just like any other family.’

‘No, we won’t.’

‘Well, okay, like any other well-off family.’

‘That may not count as demotion.’

‘Al, come on! I thought this at least would get you going! Aren’t you interested at all? Doesn’t any of this matter to you?’

‘Not in the ways you might think, cuz.’

‘Shit.’

They stand like that for a while, leaning on the edge of the bridge, looking upstream. A passenger train rumbles slowly past, heading into the city, wheels screeching. It looks very tall and heavily metallic, this close up. A kid waves down and Fielding waves back, then turns to lean with Al again. It’s one of those silences.

‘Are you seriously trying to tell me,’ Al says at last, ‘there’s any possibility of stopping the sale?’

Fielding keeps deadpan, in case Al looks round at him suddenly. ‘Yes,’ he states.

‘How many people . . . no, make that, what are the percentages involved?’

‘Hard to say for sure. People are keeping their cards pretty close to their chests. Spraint only needs twenty-six per cent of the remaining family shares to get control—’

‘No, they need a third of the remaining—’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I suppose. Would they be satisfied with control, or do they want total ownership?’

‘They say they might settle for control, but they really want the lot.’

‘“
Might
settle for control”?’

‘They’d have to think about it. They say they’re so confident we’ll take their offer they haven’t bothered thinking about what to do if we don’t.’

Al snorts. ‘Yeah, sure. Well, it’s this family. There are always going to be some diehards.’

‘Guaranteed.’

Al looks thoughtful, strokes his beard. ‘Doesn’t the ninety-two-per-cent thing apply here?’

‘Yeah. They’re really looking for a ninety-two-per-cent share, so they can compulsorily purchase the rest.’

‘Mm-hmm.’ Alban looks round at his cousin. ‘So who’s going to stop them?’ His gaze seems to search Fielding’s eyes. ‘I seem to recall you were on the for-sale side, six years ago.’

‘Yes, I was,’ Fielding says smoothly. ‘Struck me as the right thing to do then. Probably still would, circumstances being the same. We needed the cash injection. I mean, I understand - understood - your point of view, but there wasn’t much argument that we needed more investment. But anyway. That was then. This is now. We don’t
need
to sell to Spraint. We could keep going as a - basically - family firm. We could keep Spraint on board as helpful, even enthusiastic partners, we could be happy with them selling the shares to a third party or we could easily organise a bank loan to buy them back.’ Fielding expects Al to look round again at this, but he doesn’t. ‘Seriously,’ Fielding tells him. ‘That’s a possibility. Our credit’s good. Very good. Kath’s already . . . That’s Aunt Kath - she’s Finance Officer now. You knew that?’

‘Yeah, I knew that,’ Al says quietly.

‘Anyway, she’s held informal talks with a couple of banks and they’re like totally up for it. Positively encouraging. I think they think we should go for it.’

Fielding lets Alban mull this over for a while.

‘So. Look, Al, there’s a couple of people in the family who could be wavering on this. They feel tugged both ways. They can see what Spraint are offering is basically a good deal. It would make sound business sense to sell up. That’s a given. Okay. On the other hand, this is their life, their family, their name being sold here. They can see value - and I mean something more than monetary - in staying on board, keeping in charge. It all depends on how much we value the family, I guess. How much all of us do.’ Fielding thinks he sees his cousin nod. ‘So, some of us would like to at least give Spraint a proper fight. And you could help, Al. There are people - Jeez, my dad’s one - people who’d listen to you. Beryl? Great-Aunt Beryl? She’s always had a soft spot for you, hasn’t she? She’s another.’

‘What about the old girl?’

‘Gran?’

‘Yes. Where does she stand on this?’

‘Well, she sent me. This was her idea. Well, and mine.’

Alban looks at the other man. ‘She’s against the takeover?’

‘Yes,’ Fielding tells him.

‘She was for the last one, the twenty-five-per-cent sale.’

‘I keep telling you, that was different. That was about keeping the company going.
This
is about keeping the company going.’

‘That’s not different, that’s the same.’

‘Jesus, Al, you know what I mean. Without Spraint’s money we might have gone under, so we took it and the company survived. But now they want to make it all theirs and it’ll only be the name that goes on - the company will have gone. It’s business - it’s all about survival. Look, you can help here. If you want to you can make a difference, you can matter. I’m serious. You could have a real influence. Just come and talk to a few people.’

Fielding leaves a space.

‘Why now?’ Al asks. He turns round and his eyes have narrowed and Fielding knows he’s got him.

‘Why now?’ Fielding repeats.

‘Why are Spraint so keen now? What’s changed, what’s on the horizon?’

‘Ah, well, now, we think it’s because the
Empire!
series has been doing so well on the PC and Gamebox, and they’re working on a fresh title for their own new machine, the NG. You heard of that?’

‘No.’

‘NG. Next Generation, taking over from the V-Ex. Out early next year. Kicks kitty-litter sand in the face of the PS2 and the X-box 360. Better, faster processor than top-of-the-line PCs. Processors plural, I should say - it’s got
three
, plus the best dedicated graphics card on the market. Eighty gig hard drive minimum, HD ready. Built-in broadband.’

Alban’s laughing at his cousin. ‘You’re in love, I can see.’

Fielding’s laughing, too. ‘It is one fuck of a machine. It’s going to define the console games market for the next five years.’

‘Yeah, no doubt.’

‘No, this is
true
.’

‘They got the software, the games ready?’

‘That’s what we’re talking about. We reckon the
Empire!
titles and derivatives are going to form a major part of the roll-out and their future plans. One of them might even be bundled with the initial release.’

‘Might?’

‘Yeah, as in maybe.’

‘They’re obviously keeping you well up to date with developments. ’

‘Hey, we’re partners, not Siamese twins.’

Al turns away again, but he’s thinking. ‘Ah, hah,’ he says softly. There’s a surprisingly long pause. ‘And you want to stand in the way of this fucking behemoth.’

‘And we can do it,’ Fielding tells him. ‘If people believe. I mean, we need to get to them before the EGM at Garbadale, but there’s time. We could do it. We’d need to be there at Garbadale, too, obviously, but there’s work to be done beforehand. Just a couple of weeks, max, Alban, that’s all. Expenses on me, obviously.’ Fielding leaves a gap. He can hear the river gurgling. ‘What do you think?’