mother’s remembered wisdom and took my children into desperate danger and by my presence altered for ever the internal stresses and balances of the Strattons.
Except, of course, that it didn’t seem like that on the day of the shareholders’ meeting.
It took place on the Wednesday afternoon, on the third day of the ruin hunt. On Monday morning the five boys and I had set off from home in the big converted single-decker bus that had in the past served as mobile home for us all during periods when the currently-being-rebuilt ruin had been truly and totally uninhabitable.
The bus had its points: it would sleep eight, it had a working shower room, a galley, sofas and television. I’d taken lessons from a yacht builder in creating storage spaces where none might seem to exist, and we could in fact store a sizeable household very neatly aboard. It did not, all the same, offer privacy or much personal space, and as the boys grew they had found it increasingly embarrassing as an address.
They packed into it quite happily on the Monday, though, as I had promised them a real holiday in the afternoons if I could visit a ruin each morning, and in fact with map and timetables I’d planned a series of the things they most liked to do. Monday afternoon we spent canoeing on the Thames, Tuesday they beat the hell out of a bowling alley, and on the Wednesday they’d promised to help Roger Gardner’s wife clean out her garage, a chore they bizarrely enjoyed.
I left the bus outside the Gardner house and with Roger walked to the stands.
‘I’m not invited to the meeting,’ he said as if it were a relief, ‘but I’ll show you to the door.’
He took me up a staircase, round a couple of corners, and through a door marked Private into a carpeted world quite different from the functional concrete of the public areas. Silently pointing to panelled and polished double-doors ahead, he gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder and left me, rather in the manner of a colonel avuncularly sending a rookie into his first battle.
Regretting my presence already, I opened one of the double-doors and went in.
I’d gone to the meeting in business clothes (grey trousers, white shirt, tie, navy blazer) to present a conventional boardroom appearance. I had a tidy normal haircut, the smoothest of shaves, clean fingernails. The big dusty labourer of the building sites couldn’t be guessed at.
The older men at the meeting all wore suits. Those more my own age and younger hadn’t bothered with such formality. I had, I thought in satisfaction, hit it just right.
Although I had arrived at the time stated in the solicitor’s letter, it seemed that the Strattons had jumped the clock. The whole tribe were sitting round a truly imposing Edwardian dining table of old French-polished mahogany, their chairs newer, nineteen-thirtyish, like the grandstands themselves.
The only one I knew by sight was Rebecca, the jockey, dressed now in trousers, tailored jacket and heavy gold chains. The man sitting at the head of the table, grey-haired, bulky and authoritative, I took to be Conrad, the fourth and latest baron.
He turned his head to me as I went in. They all, of course, turned their heads. Five men, three women.
‘I’m afraid you are in the wrong place,’ Conrad said with scant politeness. ‘This is a private meeting.’
‘Stratton shareholders?’ I asked inoffensively.
‘As it happens. And you are…?’
‘Lee Morris.’
The shock that rippled through them was almost funny, as if they hadn’t realised that I would even be notified of the meeting, let alone had considered that I might attend; and they had every reason to be surprised, as I had never before responded to any of their official annual bits of paper.
I closed the door quietly behind me. ‘I was sent a notification,’ I said.
‘Yes, but –’ Conrad said without welcome. ‘I mean, it wasn’t necessary… You weren’t expected to bother…’ He stopped uncomfortably, unable to hide what looked like dismay.
‘As I’m here,’ I said amiably, ‘I may as well stay. Shall I sit here?’ I indicated an empty chair at the foot of the table, walking towards it purposefully. ‘We’ve never met,’ I went on, ‘but you must be Conrad, Lord Stratton.’
He said ‘Yes’, tight lipped.
One of the older men said violently, ‘This is a disgrace! You’ve no right here. Don’t sit down. You’re leaving.’
I stood by the empty chair and brought the solicitor’s letter out of a pocket. ‘As you’ll see,’ I