Babylon South. Jon Cleary
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of it all. He did not tell her of his father, a morbid sincere Communist who committed suicide when the Russians came in; nor did he tell her of his mother, an unstable woman who went mad after his father’s suicide and died in a fit. He kept all that to himself, held in by the tight rein that now guided his ambition. He no longer threw rocks, was no longer a patriot of Czechoslovakia or his adopted country, was now an egoist if not an egotist. He loved no one but himself, but he harboured dreams that some day Venetia might turn to him for more than financial advice. Or if not her, then the boss’s daughter: it didn’t matter. But he was too shrewd to show it. What he didn’t know was that Venetia knew it.
‘By this evening we’ll be sitting pretty. I can’t wait to read it in the newspapers tomorrow.’
‘You’re gunna show ’em, Venetia old girl!’
Venetia old girl showed her teeth; both men, blind with dreams of triumph, took it for a smile. ‘Let’s go and have some lunch.’
As he stood aside to let her pass out of the room ahead of him, Broad said, ‘Oh, how did the inquest go?’
You cold son-of-a-bitch: he might have been asking her how a visit to the dentist had gone. ‘Murder by person or persons unknown.’
‘Eh?’ He was startled and puzzled; it wasn’t the sort of answer he’d been expecting. Up till now, Venetia’s life before he had come into it had never interested him.
‘The funeral will be tomorrow,’ she said, went past him, crossed the outer office and went into the boardroom where a light lunch had been laid out. Behind her she heard Broad say to Polux, ‘An extraordinary woman!’ and Polux grunt in agreement. You don’t know the half of me, she told them silently. But then, she told herself, there is a percentage of myself that even I don’t know.
The board meeting began an hour and a half later. The other board members filed in: Edwin and Emma, Justine, two directors from Intercapital and three outside directors representing the public shareholders. With them was a flock of legal eagles and financial advisers. Major wars, thought Venetia, have been started with smaller gatherings than this.
Edwin nodded politely at her and Justine, as he would have even if they were bringing him before a firing squad; which, in a way, this was. Emma gave Venetia a look as blank as that of the firing squad itself; she didn’t look at Justine at all. The others crowding into the big room smiled or looked deadly serious, depending upon their experience of Venetia. Though none of them had had the experience of a two-billion-dollar takeover by a woman; for some of the more historically-minded she might have been the Empress Tz’u Hsi; they walked gingerly, as if their feet were tightly bound. Some of them, Venetia noticed, had their briefcases in front of their genitals, as if afraid of castration. She must look for a small scalpel, to wear from her gold bracelet.
The boardroom was all pale grey but for the pink upholstery on the chairs and a single Marie Laurencin painting on one wall. Some of the older men looked as if they would have preferred to be in a darker, panelled room, a men’s club, which most boardrooms in Australia were. Even the more cultured of them thought the Laurencin was out of place, especially since it was a painting of pale, semi-nude women. If it had to be a nude, give ’em a Norman Lindsay.
When they were all seated, one of the men, a newcomer, looked around for an ashtray and found none. ‘Do you mind if we smoke, Lady Springfellow?’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Springfellow and that was that. ‘Right, I don’t think there is any need for preliminary remarks. My daughter will sum up why we are here and then I’ll listen to what you have to say.’
Justine stood up. She was dressed in pink today, a silk dress that offset her mother’s grey silk suit. They hadn’t gone to the inquest wearing mourning, today was a day for battle colours, though knights who had ridden into combat under pink and grey banners might have been suspect. The younger, even the older, men looked at Justine with approval: a girl as beautiful as this had to have a soft side. She had recovered from the ordeal of the inquest; she had been upset at what had seemed to her the cold-blooded formality of it all, as if declaring a man legally dead meant no more than taking away his driving licence. Still, the ghost of her father, even though a gentle one, had at last been exorcized and now she was her mother’s daughter completely.
‘First, let me say when we take over the various elements—’
‘When?’ said Emma, soberly dressed, even wearing a hat and gloves: old Mosman keeping up standards. ‘Nothing has been decided yet.’
‘Yes, when.’ Justine looked across the table at her aunt. The older men looked slightly embarrassed; women should not fight, at least not in the company of men. The younger ones sat up, hiding their grins by lowering their heads; this was going to be even better than they had anticipated. Then Justine went on: ‘The Springfellow name will be retained. We shall do that out of respect for tradition and for the value of the name. It’s a name I’m proud to have myself.’
She looked across at Edwin, who visibly annoyed Emma by nodding.
‘So—’ Justine had learned a few tricks from her mother: the value of a pause, for instance. ‘So we are offering six dollars fifty for all Springfellow and Company shares beyond those my mother and I own, subject to the usual minimum acceptance conditions. On top of that we are offering nine dollars fifty a share for all those shares in Springfellow Bank beyond those owned by Springfellow and Company, again subject to the usual conditions.’
‘Those should be two separate transactions,’ said one of the Intercapital directors.
‘They will be,’ said Justine. ‘I am merely summarizing here. But we do not want any hiatus between the two deals. We want them wrapped up together. Payment will be in cash, payable within the usual thirty days. The corporation will then become a private one, though certain of you will be invited to join our board.’ That was a carrot thrown in front of the horse drawing the tumbril and everyone recognized it as such.
Especially Emma. ‘Very generous. Do you expect us to respond to that sort of bribery?’
‘Not you, Aunt. I wouldn’t expect it of you,’ said Justine coolly. Oh, I’m proud of you, thought Venetia and sat silent. ‘We are just hoping you will take the money and run.’
‘I’ve never run away from anything in my life,’ said Emma, peeling off her gloves, which were not kid but suggested chainmail. ‘We real Springfellows never do.’
Beside her Edwin tried to look like a man who wasn’t already bending to the starting-blocks. Seemingly there was less fight in him than in his sister; it was as if he knew the battle was already lost and he wanted to retire, if not run, with dignity. In his secret heart, which he never opened, even to his wife, he knew that Venetia had taken over the Springfellow empire at least five years ago; indeed, almost from the day, long before that, when she had legally inherited Walter’s estate. Also in his secret heart he had hoped that Walter might some day reappear and save them all. But tomorrow that hope would be buried for ever with Walter’s bones.
‘I am not selling,’ said Emma, gloves now off, ‘no matter what you may offer. Nor is my brother.’ She did not even look at Edwin; he was leaving all the fight to her. They were fighting, he knew that, but he had lost all heart for it. ‘We have the capital to buy up a major block of shares in Springfellow and Company and we are doing that at the moment.’
Justine looked up the table at her mother; Venetia looked at Michael Broad. He spread his hands in an almost Jewish gesture. ‘Unless it’s happened in the last hour …’
‘It has,’ said Emma, bare-knuckled. ‘You should have kept track of the stock exchange board.’
As if on cue but a trifle late, like a wounded messenger from another part of the battlefield, there was a knock on the door and one of Venetia’s secretaries came in and put a sheet of paper in front of her. Venetia looked at it, then sat up straight. Justine sat down at once, recognizing she had just lost her status. Her mother was not the sort of general who stayed in the background when the tide of battle went against her.