that she shouldn’t suffer financially, as she had physically. Though loyal in public to his son, he had privately not only given her the shares ‘for the future’ but had endowed her also with a lump sum to keep her comfortable on the interest. In return, she had promised never ever to speak of Keith’s behaviour, still less to drag the family name through a messy divorce. The old man wrote that he understood her rejection of Hannah, the result of his son’s ‘sexual attacks’. He would care for the child, he wrote. He wished my mother ‘the best that can be achieved, my dear’.
It was Keith who later divorced my mother – for adultery with an elderly illustrator of childrens’ books, Leyton Morris, my father. The resulting devoted marriage lasted fifteen years, and it wasn’t until she was on her own one-way road with cancer that my mother talked of the Strattons and told me in long night-time outpourings about her sufferings and her fondness for Lord Stratton; and it wasn’t until then that I learned that it was Lord Stratton’s money that had educated me and sent me through architectural school, the foundations of my life.
I had written to thank him after she died, and I still had his reply.
My dear Boy,
I loved your Mother. I hope you gave her the joy she deserved. I thank you for your letter, but do not write again.
Stratton.
I didn’t write again. I sent flowers to his funeral. With him alive, I would never have intruded on his family.
With Conrad identified, and Keith, and Marjorie Binsham, and Conrad’s offspring Dart and Rebecca, there remained two males at the meeting still to be named. One, in late middle-age, sat between Mrs Binsham and Keith’s vacated chair, and I could make a guess at him.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, leaning forward to catch his attention. ‘Are you… Ivan?’
The youngest of the old Lord’s three sons, more bullish like Conrad than greyhound like Keith, gave me a hard stare and no reply.
Dart said easily, ‘My uncle Ivan, as you say. And opposite him is his son Forsyth, my cousin.’
‘Dart!’ Keith objected fiercely. ‘Be quiet.’
Dart gave him an impassive look and seemed unintimidated. Forsyth, Ivan’s son, was the one, I thought, that had reacted least to my attendance. That is to say he took it less personally than the others, and he slowly revealed, as time went on, that he had no interest in me as Hannah’s regrettable half-brother, but only as an unknown factor in the matter of shares.
Young and slight, he had a narrow chin and dark intense eyes, and was treated by the others without the slightest deference. No one throughout the meeting asked his opinion about anything and, when he gave it regardless, his father, Ivan, regularly interrupted. Forsyth himself seemed to find this treatment normal, and perhaps for him it was.
Conrad, coming testily to terms with the inevitable, said leavily, ‘Let’s get on with the meeting. I called it…’
‘I called it,’ corrected his aunt sharply. ‘All this squabbling is ridiculous. Let’s get to the point. There has been racing on this racecourse for almost ninety years, and it will go on as before, and that’s an end to it. The arguing must stop.’
‘This racecourse is dying on its feet,’ Rebecca contradicted impatiently. ‘You have absolutely no idea what the modern world is all about. I’m sorry if it upsets you, Aunt Marjorie, but you and Grandfather have been left behind by the tide. This place needs new stands and a whole new outlook, and what it doesn’t need is a fuddy-duddy old colonel for a manager and a stick-in-the-mud Clerk of the Course who can’t say boo to a doctor.’
‘The doctor outranks him,’ Dart observed.
‘You shut up,’ his sister ordered. ‘You’ve never had the bottle to ride in a race. I’ve raced on most courses in this country and I’m telling you, this place is terminally old fashioned and it’s got my name on it too, which makes me open to ridicule, and the whole thing stinks. If you won’t or can’t see that, then I’m in favour of cashing in now for what we can get.’
‘Rebecca!’ Conrad’s reproof seemed tired, as if he’d heard his daughter’s views too often. ‘We need new stands. We can all agree on that. And I’ve commissioned plans…’
‘You’d no right to do that,’ Marjorie informed him. ‘Waste of money. These old stands are solidly built and are thoroughly serviceable. We do not need new stands. I’m