He pampered himself all weekend. Expensive meals, leisurely strolls around the colleges, a trip on the river. He felt he deserved it.
After a large lunch in the hotel on the Monday, he paid his bill with a credit card and had a taxi summoned to take him to the station.
He did not regret leaving. He felt rested and indulged and was keen to get back to work. The next day, whether or not the appointment was officially ratified, Graham Marshall would take over as Head of Personnel.
And he was determined that no one in the Department would be unaware of the change.
He took the Metropolitan Line from Paddington to Hammersmith and walked to Boileau Avenue.
He knew there was no one in when he put the key in the lock. Lilian must have taken her bitterness away, no doubt to plan further ineffectual gestures.
As he walked, he had been thinking. Except for another moment of homage on Hammersmith Bridge, he had concentrated on work. His mind was relaxed and well tuned, and he thought he saw a solution to an interminable dispute between Personnel Department and the Staff Association over a new grading system. The idea had grown as he walked along, and he was impatient to check its feasibility with some figures Terry Sworder had produced from the computer.
Graham rushed up to his study as soon as he got home and pulled Terry’s report out of his briefcase. He jotted a few notes as he galloped down the columns, then sat back with satisfaction. It would work. Put a few backs up, certainly, but his scheme had the required mix of appeal to greed and illusion of consultation; it couldn’t fail to be accepted.
Preoccupied, he hadn’t noticed until that moment the flashing light on his new Ansaphone, which registered the messages left. It had been switched on to record before he left on the Friday morning and he hadn’t had time to check it since.
He was reaching to set the machine to ‘Playback’ when the phone rang. He switched off the recorder and picked up the receiver.
It was Charmian.
‘Hello,’ he responded guardedly, anticipating a new tirade about his shortcomings as a father.
‘You’ve heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘About. . Mummy.’
‘No.’ What the hell had Lilian done now? But Charmian didn’t give him any time for conjecture. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Hmm?’
‘She killed herself.’
‘Good God.’ Graham provided a conventional response while he tried to define what his real reaction was. He rather suspected it might be delight.
‘I’ve been trying to contact you for the best part of forty-eight hours. So have the police. Where’ve you been?’
‘Out,’ he replied laconically.
‘So she finally succeeded. Obviously it wasn’t all talk. I should have listened, should have. .’ Charmian’s voice broke. The shock had transformed her bottled-up emotion for her mother into guilt.
‘Well, I suppose it was only to be expected.’ He spoke with judicious authority, a detached voice of reason.
‘Oh yes, “only to be expected”!’ Charmian snapped. ‘And I bet you’re bloody over the moon about it!’
‘Charmian, I can’t pretend that — ’
‘Now you’ve got rid of everyone, haven’t you? Now you can go back to being the fucking emotional eunuch you always were!’
‘There’s no need to — ’
‘I just thank God I’ve got Henry and Emma away from you, that’s all, before you somehow managed to destroy them too!’
‘Now just a minute. Lilian destroyed herself. I had nothing to do with it.’
‘You drove her to it.’
‘You can’t shift your guilt on to me that easily, Charmian. She had been threatening it for years.’
A sob broke from the other end of the phone. ‘You’ve got it all now, Graham, haven’t you? The whole bloody lot. God, there’s no justice. Everything’s just random. That someone like you should be granted the kind of luck that … If I had any belief in a God, that’d destroy it. And to think — you’ll get all the other money as well now.’
‘What other money?’ he asked, puzzled.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. But if you’ve got any spark of decency in you, see that the children get some of it. Otherwise, just do one thing for me.’
‘What?’
‘Keep out of my life. I never want to see you again. You bastard!’
He replaced his receiver more gently than she had hers. She really was becoming more and more like her mother.
He corrected himself. Her late mother. The thought amused him. To those who have shall be given. The removal of the inconvenience of Lilian was a bonus he had not expected. But what had Charmian meant about the other money?
He switched the recording machine on and played back his messages.
The first voice he recognised as David Birdham’s.
‘Graham, I’ve just come out of the management meeting. I’d hoped to contact you at the office, but it went on a bit. Anyway, the outcome’s good. Your appointment’s agreed.
You are Head of Personnel — or, if you prefer it, Head of Human Resources. The announcement will be made officially on Tuesday. Congratulations, Graham. Have a nice weekend.’
He stretched back with pleasure on his swivel chair and let the tape run on.
‘Graham, it’s Charmian. I just missed you at the office and I’ve been trying all evening, but you’re obviously out. .’ That identified the timing of the message as the Friday evening, when he’d treated himself to dinner at the Grange. Her voice sounded drunk and angry. ‘Listen, it’s about Mummy. She rang me to tell me, just to crow, the cow, but she said she hadn’t told you yet. About William Essex. Apparently that affair she was always on about actually did happen, because the only will the old poof left dates from that time — and she cops the lot. Now all I’m saying is — I’m just warning you — I know she’s cut me out of her will and when she goes, you’ll get it all — but you’ve got to make some over to Henry and Emma. Got to! Do you understand that? That’s all I wanted to say.’
The end of the message was almost apologetic.
She sounded sheepish, suddenly aware of her drunkenness.
But the news, the hard fact that the recording contained, was more bounty. Now Graham had the last piece of the jigsaw that his upbringing had denied him. Not only was he to have the benefits of an increased earned income; he was also now to have the unfair advantage of inherited wealth.
The random gods of chance were in munificent mood; and Graham Marshall was their chosen son.