Then, in March, came two simultaneous bombshells. Danziger’s, the nationwide Australian sports goods retailer, confirmed in writing that a legally enforceable agreement with Bushranger Sports prohibited them from handling cricket bats originating from Bushranger’s domestic rivals. Our ownership of Viburna meant we now fell within that classification. The whole point of taking them over in the first place-readier access to the Australasian market-was vitiated if Danziger’s doors were closed to us. And the lawyers agreed they were closed-if the agreement was valid. Well, Bushranger were bellicose enough in their assertions to suggest they had no doubts about its validity. And Danziger’s insisted Greg Dyson had long known of its existence. Naturally, we wanted to hear Dyson’s response to that. But he chose this moment to send us a perfunctory letter of resignation and quit Melbourne without leaving a forwarding address behind him.
There was worse to follow when Adrian and Jennifer hurried out to Melbourne to investigate. Previously undisclosed creditors of Viburna came to light. Along with details of substantial foreign exchange transactions in the last few weeks of Dyson’s tenure of office which he’d apparently used to camouflage the diversion of Viburna funds to overseas bank accounts held in names which sounded horribly like aliases. Viburna funds were of course Timariot & Small funds. More ominously, they represented moneys lent to us on the assumption that we could repay them from the profits our takeover of Viburna would bring in. But now there weren’t going to be any profits. Just escalating losses made worse by legal fees, hidden debts and outright theft. I don’t know whether Dyson had ever tried his hand at sheep-shearing. But he’d certainly done a thorough job of fleecing us.
The recriminations began straightaway. Simon and I felt Adrian, who’d had more dealings with Dyson than the rest of us, should have realized he was a crook. We also reckoned Jennifer should have spotted the holes in Viburna’s books. There were acrimonious meetings and blazing rows; simmering resentments and incipient feuds. Adrian brazened it out, insisting we’d been taken in by a master fraudster: no blame could attach to him. Jennifer took a different line, admitting she should have smelt a rat sooner and offering to resign her directorship. She was genuinely appalled that we’d been so easily deceived. Well, so were all of us. In the end, there was nothing to be gained by making Jennifer a scapegoat. Her offer was never taken up. And Adrian remained in charge. But his authority-along with our faith in him and in each other-was damaged beyond repair. The anxious debates and stifled accusations left us divided and dispirited. Timariot & Small could never be the same again.
Worse still, it couldn’t be prosperous either. The Petersfield operation remained as viable as ever. We were actually doing very well. But the Viburna connection was an open wound we couldn’t staunch. To cover the debts Dyson had accumulated on our behalf and wind up Viburna Sportswear committed us to several years of corporate loss. Nothing could change that, even if the Australian authorities caught up with Dyson-which they showed no sign of doing. Uncle Larry never once said “I told you so.” But the affair saddened him more than any of us. He’d been researching Timariot & Small’s financial record for his company history and knew a profit, however small, had been turned in every year of its existence. Every one of a hundred and fifty-six years, to be precise. But the hundred and fifty-seventh was going to be different. And so were quite a few more after that. The future had lost its certainty. It was no longer a safe place to go.
Caustic though she was in her criticism, Bella refused to become embroiled in the consequences of the Viburna disaster. As Lady Paxton, I suppose she thought she should remain aloof. And Sir Keith’s money meant she could afford to. They’d sold the London house and taken to using The Hurdles as their base in England. More and more of their time, however, was spent in Biarritz, which Bella found convenient both for Pyrenean skiing and Côte d’Argent sunbathing. I saw little of them and remained unsure whether Sir Keith had been told about Rowena’s suicide attempt. If not, I didn’t propose to break the news. Especially since she seemed to have recovered from it so well.
My evidence for that assessment was admittedly limited. But it was persuasive. Early in April, I was driving back through Bristol from a visit to an engineering firm in Pontypool who claimed they could solve our saw-dust extraction problems at a stroke. I diverted on a whim to Clifton and called at the flat in Caledonia Place on no more than an off-chance that anybody would be at home. It was, after all, the early afternoon of a working day. But Rowena’s Easter vacation had just begun and she welcomed me warmly, plying me with non-herbal tea and repeated assurances that she’d put the neuroses of the autumn well behind her. I found it easy to believe. She looked, sounded and behaved like a relaxed and self-confident twenty-year-old. The baggy black outfit she wore was unflattering, the taped music she turned down for my benefit excruciating, but both were fashionable. She hadn’t cut her hair though and I hoped she never would, but it was tied back under some sort of bandana. Her strangeness-her ethereality-was fading. And part of me regretted its going. But I knew she’d be happier without it.
One other encouraging sign came in a telephone call which occupied Rowena for a whispered ten minutes in the hall. A boyfriend called Paul, she later admitted. “It’s nothing serious,” she added. But I couldn’t help suspecting her blushes told me more than her words.
I’d studied a framed photograph that stood on the mantelpiece while she was out of the room. It was of her and Sarah with their mother and couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. An unremarkable snapshot, casually posed. But even there, in Louise Paxton’s distant half-quizzical smile, you could read the tentative beginnings of her enigmatic end. From the shadow of which Rowena was at last emerging.
What shall I give my daughter the younger
More than will keep her from cold and hunger?
I shall not give her anything.
By June, I’d had a bellyful of Timariot & Small’s intractable problems and was in need of a break. To my surprise, Bella offered me one, in the form of an invitation to visit her and Sir Keith in Biarritz. I’d been too preoccupied to book any kind of a holiday for myself, so I accepted with well-disguised alacrity.
I went out as soon as I could arrange a fortnight’s leave and found the resort still hanging back from the tumult of high summer. Its white façades and terracotta roofs lined three miles of surf, sand and crumbling rock with dilapidated but undeniable dignity. Torquay with a Gallic swagger, if you like. And like it I did. Its empty dawn beaches. Its stinging salt winds. Its dazzling afternoons and languorous evenings. Its never obsequious air of being every man’s haven. And every woman’s too.
L’Hivernance was at the northern end of the town, where the Pointe St.-Martin and its lighthouse stood guard over the Plage Miramar. The villa had been built in the twenties for an exiled Chilean politician. Its site was sheltered but panoramic, its design plain yet boldly curvaceous, all peach-washed bays and balconies, with wide arched windows like the heavy-lidded eyes of some bosomy dowager. It was easy to imagine its first owner glaring out at the Atlantic as he’d once glared out at the Pacific, ruminating on the rights and wrongs of the latest coup in Santiago. Perhaps because he’d been afraid of political enemies sending agents in search of him, there was no entrance visible from the street. Just a doorless frontage commanding a prospect of the ocean, flanked by the sub-tropical foliage of the garden. A driveway, leading in by one gate and out by another, curved round to the rear, where access could be discreetly obtained. Or not, as the case might be.