Babylon South. Jon Cleary
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are,’ said one of the Intercapital directors. He was a man named Safire, in his fifties and an advertisement for creature comforts; if ever he were reduced to the breadline, he would ask for croissants. He had a voice full of rich plums, a vocal orchard of over-ripe fruit. Venetia had never liked him, nor he her. ‘We arranged the sale this morning, but didn’t let the market know till half an hour ago. When this meeting was timed to start.’
‘Thank you, Erwin. I hope Intercapital’s policy holders are treated better than you’ve treated me. Do you cut their throats as their policies mature?’
‘I think that’s uncalled for,’ said the other Intercapital director, a thin under-nourished man named Newstead, seemingly chosen to contrast with Safire’s sleek corpulence. ‘Business is business, Venetia. We are in business to do our best for our clients.’
‘My sister-in-law must have an awful lot of insurance with you. Is the sale of shares finalized? I’ll give you seven-fifty.’
Safire and Newstead looked at each other like men who suddenly realized they had jumped before ascertaining the depth of the pool. Emma said, ‘You can’t renege, Mr Safire. The sale has already been through the exchange. It wouldn’t look good for Intercapital if I reported you to the Companies and Securities Commission.’ She had them by the throat and she looked up the table at another throat, Venetia’s. ‘That raises our holding in Springfellow and Company to 19.9 per cent.’
‘Still less than ours,’ said Justine, shooting cross-fire.
‘But still too big for you to buy out over our heads.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d tell us where you got the money?’ said Venetia.
‘You’re not that naive and neither am I,’ said Emma. ‘You’ll find out eventually, but for the time being that’s our business. You’d be surprised how many people are prepared to put up money to fight you.’
Venetia bent her head for a whispered conference with Broad and Polux, both of whom looked as if they would cut Emma’s throat if there were not so many witnesses. Everyone else, except Justine, seemed at a loss for somewhere to look; one man got up and closely examined the Marie Laurencin, as if he had just been called in to appraise it. All the men in the room were, in these days of takeovers, accustomed to seeing blood spilt. But this was family blood, almost blue, and abruptly they were squeamish.
Justine leaned across the table towards Emma; for a moment she looked a younger, darker version of her mother, all sharpened steel. ‘You won’t win, you know that. You’ve done nothing but draw dividends all your life, never contributed a thought or a suggestion to the firm—’
For once Emma was cool and controlled. ‘I’ve contributed something now, haven’t I? The other shareholders, the public who have never had a spokesman, may canonize me.’ She looked smug enough to do the job herself, if no one else would.
Safire and Newstead both smiled at that, throwing petrol on Justine’s smouldering fury. ‘Goddamnit, Emma, you’re doing this out of spite!’
‘Partly,’ said Emma, still cool; she and Justine were alone in their own arena. ‘It adds taste to it. But the main reason, as Edwin tried to explain to you when you first made your horrible offer, is to keep the firm, the name, where it started and has always belonged – in the Springfellow family, the real Springfellows.’
‘The real Springfellows will die with you and Uncle Edwin! There’s no one after you-except me! I’m a real Springfellow, I have my father’s name—’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Emma and for the sharper ears in the room there was an enigmatic note in her voice. ‘Unfortunately, there isn’t a hint of him in you. You are your mother’s daughter through and through.’
Justine was leaning across the table, her voice low but strained; she seemed on the verge of reaching for Emma and doing her harm. Emma just sat and stared at her, only moving to gently shake off Edwin’s hand as he tried to put it restrainingly on her arm. There was dead silence in the big room; the air was full of taut invisible wires. Then a man coughed and it sounded thin and shrill, like a castrato caught halfway to a wrong note.
‘That will be all,’ said Venetia. ‘The meeting is adjourned.’
‘You mean you withdraw both your bids?’ said Edwin and looked suddenly relieved.
‘No,’ said Venetia and looked directly at Emma. ‘I mean the war is just beginning.’
2
‘Venetia darling,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘I had to call you—’
‘You took your time, Philip.’
‘Don’t you read the papers? I’ve been in New Zealand with that lesbian PM of theirs. Christ, don’t ever try to work out a defence treaty with a dyke … Don’t you follow my movements at all?’ He sounded more bewildered than hurt, as if his minders had fallen down on their job of letting the voters know where he was.
‘I was looking for a little sympathy. They’ve discovered the phone in New Zealand, haven’t they?’ She was leading him on, being perverse. She really hadn’t wanted to hear from him at all, least of all this morning.
‘Well, just let me say this—’ It was the politician’s catch-cry. Every night, on the TV news and the current affairs programmes, heads were bobbing emphatically, like horses’ heads on a carousel, and voices were demanding, Just let me say this … Television had bred a new breed of politician, mechanized clones from all parties with interchangeable clichés and platitudes. ‘Nobody has greater respect for you, Venetia, than I do. And that’s not just the politician in me speaking.’
‘That’s sweet of you, Philip.’ She wondered if he realized how pompous he sounded.
She had known him for twenty-five years. They had been occasional lovers, but there had been no love and no mention of it. He had once been the biggest TV star in the country, his chat show out-rating every other programme; if Armageddon had occurred on a Friday night, 65 per cent of the nation’s viewing audience would have told it to wait. Then a kitchen cabinet of rich industrialists had pushed him into politics and, after a decent interval, into the prime ministership. He was politically inept, almost stupid, but he understood what his advisers told him, if they kept their words and their sentences short, and he could memorize any speech written for him after no more than two readings. On television, which was now an annexe of the voting booth, he looked and sounded sincere. He was also handsome, charismatic and had more sex appeal than any two other Members of Parliament. Those who knew him intimately, including Venetia, knew that to go to bed with him was like being laid in a voting booth. He was the sort of lover who wanted a pat on the front after the exercise; you were expected to vote him the best stud since Errol Flynn or, if your fantasies were kinky, since Hyperion – the horse, not the god. The voters, those not in his bed, had heard hints of his dalliances, but, unlike Americans, Australians never expected too much morality of their leaders. It was the natives’ only show of political sophistication.
‘I can’t come to the funeral, of course—’
‘Of course not. You never knew Walter.’ Going to bed with Philip didn’t make him a friend of the family; at least not in Mosman. ‘Thanks for your call, Philip. I’ll be in touch.’
She hung up in his ear: something even the lesbian PM from across the Tasman would not have done. She was in no mood for the hypocrisy of a part-time lover, even if he was the Prime Minister.
She looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, turning her face to the frank light of the morning sun. She was long past the need of vanity to prop herself up; an honest woman knows what is best about herself. She had never been strictly beautiful, but she had had the sort of face that the early days of Australian television, with its awkward lighting, had demanded: cheekbones that could be highlighted, good strong teeth that were not shadowed by her upper lip, hair that reflected the light and didn’t look thin under it. Since then the years, and an expensive beautician, had