hurry, though I think the sooner we move the better it will be for us. I shanât say anything to anyone else until I have a reaction from you.â
Gerry stood up, then voiced a final thought. âMartin Beaumont regards this as very much his company. He wonât be easy to convince.â
Jason grinned at the older man. âThere you are, I told you that you had the potential. Youâre thinking like a strategist already, you see, not a mere employee. This is company politics among the senior staff, if you like. And youâre right, of course. Martin probably wouldnât listen to any one of us as an individual. Heâd say no, and if we persisted heâd tell us to piss off and look for other employment. But if we went as a group and told him we wanted in, I donât believe heâd be willing to risk losing all of us at once. Iâll be interested to hear whether you agree with that view when youâve given the matter some extended thought.â
Gerry Davies was very busy in the shop area for the rest of the day. During the rare moments when he had time to think about his exchange with his friend in the restaurant, he found that he had already accepted one thing at least.
Taking over control of the firm was an exciting idea.
EIGHT
J ane Beaumont was a sad figure. Although she was actually two years younger than her husband, she now looked a good five years older than him. When Martin had married her after a short courtship, she had been a tall, willowy girl, with flowing tennis ground strokes and two appearances at Wimbledon behind her. She had considerable ability in several other sports and a physique which reflected this. She had been a lively, pretty twenty-four-year-old, with perfect white teeth and a wide and frequent smile.
Jane Montague had had everything going for her, in that popular phrase of the seventies. She had been educated at Roedean and her teenage years had been carefully monitored by protective parents. A couple of generations earlier, she would have been that peculiarly British female phenomenon, a debutante. Her old-fashioned father sent her to a Swiss finishing school rather than a university. The company she kept was carefully selected for her. But this was the late seventies, not the thirties, and the dutiful daughter began to insist rather belatedly on choosing her own friends.
Then, within the space of eighteen months, Janeâs father was killed in one of the fast cars he could never resist and her mother died of ovarian cancer. Three months later, the attractive young athlete Jane Montague was married to the handsome, articulate and eminently plausible Martin Beaumont. Thus was she cut off from the life she had just begun to explore.
Two of Janeâs aunts had reluctantly assumed some sort of oversight of their niece after the unexpected deaths of her parents. They were disturbed by the sudden advent on the scene of this predatory young man, especially in view of Janeâs newly acquired wealth. But they were no match for the energy and persuasiveness of Martin Beaumont.
Jane was old enough to make her own decisions, she told them. She was certainly legally well past the age when she needed to heed their reservations. If the aunts suspected that these arguments were articulated by the young man who stood to benefit from them, there was very little they could do about that. Jane Montague became Jane Beaumont and disappeared from their world.
Jane was very taken at first with the whole business of marriage. Because of her protected upbringing, sex was a later and more exciting discovery to her than it was to the vast majority of her contemporaries. But the children she had taken to be an inevitable consequence of union did not arrive. She was disturbed as well as puzzled by that, though her husband did not seem unduly worried. And during the first two years of her marriage, her allegiance to Martin was unquestioning and indeed unthinking.
At the end
Gerry stood up, then voiced a final thought. âMartin Beaumont regards this as very much his company. He wonât be easy to convince.â
Jason grinned at the older man. âThere you are, I told you that you had the potential. Youâre thinking like a strategist already, you see, not a mere employee. This is company politics among the senior staff, if you like. And youâre right, of course. Martin probably wouldnât listen to any one of us as an individual. Heâd say no, and if we persisted heâd tell us to piss off and look for other employment. But if we went as a group and told him we wanted in, I donât believe heâd be willing to risk losing all of us at once. Iâll be interested to hear whether you agree with that view when youâve given the matter some extended thought.â
Gerry Davies was very busy in the shop area for the rest of the day. During the rare moments when he had time to think about his exchange with his friend in the restaurant, he found that he had already accepted one thing at least.
Taking over control of the firm was an exciting idea.
EIGHT
J ane Beaumont was a sad figure. Although she was actually two years younger than her husband, she now looked a good five years older than him. When Martin had married her after a short courtship, she had been a tall, willowy girl, with flowing tennis ground strokes and two appearances at Wimbledon behind her. She had considerable ability in several other sports and a physique which reflected this. She had been a lively, pretty twenty-four-year-old, with perfect white teeth and a wide and frequent smile.
Jane Montague had had everything going for her, in that popular phrase of the seventies. She had been educated at Roedean and her teenage years had been carefully monitored by protective parents. A couple of generations earlier, she would have been that peculiarly British female phenomenon, a debutante. Her old-fashioned father sent her to a Swiss finishing school rather than a university. The company she kept was carefully selected for her. But this was the late seventies, not the thirties, and the dutiful daughter began to insist rather belatedly on choosing her own friends.
Then, within the space of eighteen months, Janeâs father was killed in one of the fast cars he could never resist and her mother died of ovarian cancer. Three months later, the attractive young athlete Jane Montague was married to the handsome, articulate and eminently plausible Martin Beaumont. Thus was she cut off from the life she had just begun to explore.
Two of Janeâs aunts had reluctantly assumed some sort of oversight of their niece after the unexpected deaths of her parents. They were disturbed by the sudden advent on the scene of this predatory young man, especially in view of Janeâs newly acquired wealth. But they were no match for the energy and persuasiveness of Martin Beaumont.
Jane was old enough to make her own decisions, she told them. She was certainly legally well past the age when she needed to heed their reservations. If the aunts suspected that these arguments were articulated by the young man who stood to benefit from them, there was very little they could do about that. Jane Montague became Jane Beaumont and disappeared from their world.
Jane was very taken at first with the whole business of marriage. Because of her protected upbringing, sex was a later and more exciting discovery to her than it was to the vast majority of her contemporaries. But the children she had taken to be an inevitable consequence of union did not arrive. She was disturbed as well as puzzled by that, though her husband did not seem unduly worried. And during the first two years of her marriage, her allegiance to Martin was unquestioning and indeed unthinking.
At the end
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