“Nothing.”
“But still you don’t say it.”
“Because I can’t prove it. To you. Or to anyone else.” Her eyes were open wide now, staring at me in amazement. This was the last reply she’d expected. And the last one she’d have wanted to hear. “I can’t prove it, Sarah. Even to myself.”
Waiting for the train at Temple Meads, sobered by cold air and the rowdy dregs of a football crowd further down the platform, Sarah and I looked sheepishly at each other. We both regretted the turn our conversation had taken. We were ashamed of the accusations we’d almost levelled, the inner truths we’d almost revealed. They were intimacies we weren’t ready for. Arenas we weren’t prepared to enter.
“I’m sorry,” she said haltingly, “for some of the things I… Forget it. Please. All of it.”
“Consider it forgotten.”
“But it isn’t, of course, is it?”
“No.” I risked a smile and she bowed her head in understanding. “Shall we agree… simply not to mention it again?”
“Let’s.”
“If there’s anything more I can do to help Rowena… or you… you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
“If you’re sure you want me to. Wouldn’t it be safer… to walk away from us altogether? Safer for you, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But I can’t. So…”
“I’ll remember the offer.” She looked round. “Here’s your train.” Then she leant up and kissed me. “Safe journey, Robin.”
Sarah was wrong. I told myself so over and over again as the train sped towards Reading. She was wrong, even though her explanation fitted the facts with greater exactitude than any other. She was wrong, even though, in my weaker moments, I feared she might be right.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My mother’s death deprived the Timariot family of a centripetal force I’d never realized she embodied. This first became apparent over Christmas 1991, when the traditional mass gathering at Adrian and Wendy’s went by the board. I spent the day alone, tramping the lanes around Steep and wondering whether I oughtn’t to feel deprived or deserted-rather than strangely content.
On Boxing Day, I drove down to Hayling Island to see Uncle Larry. He lived in a chalet bungalow overlooking Chichester Harbour, with a telescope permanently erected in the bedroom window to study the comings and goings of sea birds on the mud-flats. His other passion-cricket-was evident in the daffodil ranks of Wisdens on his bookshelves and the desk-load of notes and documents he’d been trying for ten years or more to distil into a definitive history of Timariot & Small. But the company’s future, not its past, was what he wanted to discuss with me.
“I had lunch with Les Buckingham the other day,” he announced. (Les Buckingham had been his opposite number at one of our biggest rivals in the bat-making business.) “He said something about Viburna Sportswear that worried me. I didn’t know what to make of it. He’s probably got the wrong end of the stick, but, according to Les, Viburna are very much in Bushranger’s pocket. Bushranger Sports, that is.” The clarification was unnecessary. Bushranger Sports of Sydney and Auckland had been making cricket bats for less than twenty years, but had already carved out a large chunk of the Australian market for themselves. “He doesn’t see how they’d let Viburna get away with selling our bats under their very noses.”
“They can hardly stop them now we effectively are Viburna.”
“That’s what I said. But Les… Well, he was unconvinced. Reckoned Bushranger had… ways and means. Couldn’t say what ways and means, of course. That’s why I thought he was just flying a kite. But I wanted to check you’d heard nothing similar. We’ve invested a lot in this takeover. And borrowed to do it, Jenny tells me. With interest rates where they are at the moment, we can’t afford to have it turn sour.”
“I agree. But it’s not going to turn sour.”
“You’re sure?”
“Well, Adrian, Jenny and Simon are sure. So I am too. As for Les Buckingham, now he’s retired, isn’t he bound to be just a bit… out of touch?”
“Like me, you mean?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, you may be right. You’ve all got your heads screwed on. I suppose I ought to just let you get on with it.”
“Probably.”
“And stop worrying?”
“Yes. Believe me, Uncle, there really is nothing to worry about.” But there was, of course. Plenty.
The truth emerged in progressively more disturbing morsels during the first few months of 1992. Rumours no more substantial than Les Buckingham’s began to coagulate into doubts nobody quite seemed able to pin down or dismiss. Unexplained problems delayed-then prevented-placements of Timariot & Small bats in Viburna’s retail outlets. Technical hitches, according to Greg Dyson. Rather more than that, I began to suspect.
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.