He took yet another look at the clock and realized with a jolt that it was almost 10.30. Cursing, he killed the Eminem, started the engine and sped along the drive, the bur oaks blurring past to either side as he roared round the curve and up to the front of the house. He skidded to a halt, took the steps two at a time up to the door, checked his watch: 10.30 on the dot. With a triumphant bark of laughter he reached out and pressed the polished brass bell-nipple, holding it down for way longer than was necessary, the chime clanging angrily through the house, leaving no one inside in any doubt that not only was he there, but he was there on time. Right on the money.
‘Good morning, Master William.’
Stephen, his father’s manservant, had opened the door and was standing in front of him: ramrod straight, black suit, vague smell of pomade, shoes so intensely polished their caps gave off a dim reflection of the ceiling above. He gave a deferential nod and stepped aside, ushering William into the house.
‘I trust you are well, sir,’ he crooned, closing the door after them, his voice soft and sibilant, giving no hint of age or character.
‘Fine and dandy, thank you, Stephen. Although I’ll be a whole lot better in twenty minutes when I’m on my way out of here.’
William flashed a grin to which he received no visible reaction, the butler’s pale, thin-lipped face a study in controlled neutrality. He’d always been like that, for as long as William could remember. As a child he’d harboured a fantasy that the man was actually a robot and that if you undid the screws behind his ears you could ease his face off to reveal the circuitboard beneath. Maybe re program him, make him do some fun things. Like rape his father. Or drag him down to the ornamental lake at the rear of the house and drown him, put them all out of their misery. A couple of times he’d actually tried to do it – climbed on to a chair and felt around the margins of that pale, expressionless mask, working his fingers underneath the oiled hairline in the hope of finding a button or a catch or a switch, some means of getting inside and assuming mastery. And Stephen had let him do it, played along with the game. William had always been grateful for that – the passive acquiescence to the fantasies of a young child. Despite the rigidly formal facade, Stephen was one of the good guys. Recognized the potential to which his own father was so willfully blind. One day he’d reward him for that. The king never forgot those who showed him loyalty in exile. Just as he never forgot those who’d sent him into exile in the first place.
‘In the library?’ he asked.
‘He is indeed, sir. Let me show you up.’
The manservant led him across the hallway – all gloomy oak panelling, leaded window panes and heavy brass door furnishings, more like a coffin than a home – and on to the grand staircase. Portraits tracked them as they climbed, gazing out from the wall with the studied impassivity of those who do not wish to reveal anything of themselves beyond their physical appearance, and do even that reluctantly: his great-grandfather, the family patriarch, thin as a pickaxe and hard as iron; his grandfather, stooped, moustachioed, a gun dog at his feet and a cigar in his hand; his own father, monstrous, bearded, snake-eyed, radiating malevolence, or so it had always seemed to William. There were others, grim-faced figures accompanying them all the way up to the first-floor landing, uncles and great-uncles, some of whom he dimly remembered, most of whom were complete strangers to him. And then more along the panelled corridor leading into the west wing of the house, women this time, the Barren matriarchs: wives and sisters, aunts and daughters. All carried the same weary, slightly disappointed expression, as though even with all the jewellery and fine clothes and elevated social standing, their lives hadn’t turned out quite as happily as they had expected or hoped.
Right at the very end of the passage, beside the door to the library, the last painting in line and the only one illuminated with its own small hooded lamp, was William’s mother. Blonde-haired, sad-eyed, painfully thin. She’d been a good woman in her own way, had done her best to protect and shield, but ultimately there was no standing up to the malign piledriver that was Nathaniel Barren. She had wilted, like all the Barren women wilted. William threw the picture a cursory glance, but didn’t allow his eyes or thoughts to linger on it. His mother couldn’t help him now, any more than she’d been able to help him as he was growing up. He was on his own.
‘Here we are, sir.’
Not entirely on his own. There was always Stephen.
‘Thank you, Stephen. I’ll take it from here.’
‘As you wish, sir.’
The manservant gave a polite tilt of the head, turned and walked back the way they had come, his feet moving soundlessly along the carpeted corridor as though they weren’t actually making contact with the ground. William watched him go – good man, Stephen, reliable – then squared up to the library door, his stomach tightening, as it always did when he stood on this spot, his hand instinctively slipping into his pocket and playing with the coke wrap. He resisted the temptation to backtrack to the toilet for a top-up toot. Afterwards, maybe, but for the moment he wanted to keep his wits about him. He could do that with drugs, take them or leave them. He was in control. Strong. Never forget that, he told himself.
You are in control. You are strong
.
He drew a breath and knocked.
‘Enter.’
The command came like a rumble of distant thunder. William hesitated, steeling himself –
You are in control. You are strong
– then opened the door.
His father was sitting behind his desk on the far side of the library, hulking, white-haired, dressed in a heavy tweed suit. Although the room was huge, double height with a domed ceiling and a gallery running round the upper level, Nathaniel Barren nonetheless dominated it, his huge frame blocking the light from the windows behind the desk, his entire being seeming to permeate every corner of the space like a dark mist. Even at this distance William could smell his aftershave – heavy, sour, like overheated machinery – and hear the pained rasp of his breathing.
‘You’re late,’ he growled, his voice deep and unyielding, subterranean, the sort of sound rock might make if it could talk.
‘I don’t believe I am, sir.’
‘Don’t contradict me. You’re late.’
The old man laid an elbow on the table and tapped his watch. William toyed with the idea of fighting his corner, insisting that he had arrived spot on 10.30 as instructed, but it wasn’t worth it. He’d never won an argument with his father in his life and wouldn’t be doing so today. No one ever won arguments with his father. If Nathaniel Barren said the earth was flat and the moon was made of cheese, that’s the way it was, there was no gainsaying the man. Instead William stood in silence, the last of the coke buzz humming around the margins of his brain, reassuring himself he was in control, he was strong, waiting until his father made a beckoning motion with his finger and he was able to come forward. There were two chairs in front of the desk – ornate, antique chairs with curving backs and worn silk seats – and again he waited for a signal. It didn’t come and so he remained standing. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece, his father’s lungs rasped. Rather than disturbing the silence both sounds seemed only to intensify it, rendering the atmosphere even denser and more oppressive. Suffocating. Every time William came here he felt like he was being buried alive.
You are in control. You are strong.
‘How are you feeling, Father?’ he asked.
‘I’m feeling fine, thank you.’
There was no reciprocal inquiry as to the state of William’s health. He shuffled his feet, tried to block out the clock’s hollow metronomic slap, which had already started to drill into his skull. Maybe he should have had that top-up toot after all. There was an awkward pause, then:
‘I thought the board meeting went well.’
‘Did you?’
‘Jim did a good job on the finances.’
His father pinned him with a withering stare, a stare that said, ‘What the hell would you know about it?’
Everything, actually, you vile, bloated cunt.
His father looked away, shuffling papers on his desk. The clock ticked, his father wheezed, books pressed in all around: hundreds upon hundreds of volumes, thousands of them, their spines arranged in neat, serried ranks from one end of the room to the other and from floor to ceiling. They gave the place an unpleasantly leathery, segmented feel, like the interior of some monstrous, ossified stomach cavity. So far as William was aware, none of them had ever actually been opened, let alone read. They had been purchased by his grandfather as a job lot and were there simply for show, to create an illusion of depth and intellect. The Barrens didn’t have much time for learning or culture. Money, that’s what they had time for. Money and control. In that, at least, William was very much heir to the family tradition.
‘I was talking to Hilary after the meeting,’ he began, doing his best to keep his voice level. ‘She thinks the Egypt tender could—’
His father cut him off with a sweep of the hand. Lifting a document from the desk, he held it up, moving it back and forth in front of William, something distinctly accusatory in the motion, as though he were a lawyer brandishing a damning piece of evidence.
‘You want to tell me what this is about?’
The reason for the summons. No chatty preamble. Straight to business. Pretty much what he’d been expecting.
You are in control. You are strong.
‘They were some ideas I had about the future of the company, Pa. Ways of moving it forward, taking us up to the next level. Thought you and the board might be interested. I’ve highlighted some possible—’
‘You think the corporation needs ideas?’
William bit his lip. He’d known the document would spark a confrontation, had been readying himself for it, but now that he was here, in the eye of the storm . . .
‘A business always needs ideas, Pa. What’s that word the Nips use?
Kaizen
. Continual improvement.’
His father shifted in his seat, his bulk rising up like a wave about to slam on to a beach.
‘You think the corporation needs
improvement
?’
You’re fucking right it does
, William thought.
Sure we’re big, but we’re unwieldy as well. Too many arms, too much going on, too much ballast. Other companies are tightening and streamlining, adapting, refocusing. We’re just resting on our laurels. The tides are changing and we’re not going with them. In a few years we’ll be overtaken, beached. Get your hands off the tiller, old man. Time for a new captain.
I’m
the future of Barren
.
He remained silent.
‘Ideas,’ his father intoned, leafing through the document, his voice a rasping basso-profondo. ‘Improvement.’ He was shaking his head, his heavy-lidded eyes bright with ridicule.
‘They’re just thoughts, Pa,’ said William, struggling to hold his nerve. ‘I’m concerned we’re pinning too many hopes on the Egyptian gas tender. If it doesn’t come off—’
‘It’ll come off.’
‘There’s been a change of regime over there—’
‘You’re an expert in geo-politics now?’
‘All I’m saying—’
His father let out a contemptuous snarl, reached an arm across his chest and hurled the document at William’s head. It missed and fluttered away behind him, crashing to the carpet like a dead bird.
‘I didn’t put you on the board to have ideas, boy! I put you there to do what I tell you and only what I tell you. You think you know how to run this company better than me? Know better than I do what’s good for it?’
William resisted the temptation to shout,
Yes I fucking do!
‘Forty years I’ve run Barren. I
am
Barren! I made it what it is today, and now suddenly my drug-snorting, whore-mongering wastrel of a son thinks he can waltz in and lecture me . . .’
The old man started coughing, rocking back and forth, the diseased honeycomb of his lungs buckling under the weight of his fury, his face turning a deep shade of purple.
Maybe he’ll just choke himself to death right here and now
, thought William,
save us all a lot of trouble
. ‘Whore-mongering wastrel!’ The old man started in again, jabbing a trembling finger at William. ‘Trying to tell me my business. To turn the board against me. Ideas – you’ve never had a single worthwhile goddamn . . .’
The tirade faltered as he was overcome by a renewed fit of coughing. He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his mouth, then grabbed the plastic mask from the desk beside him and clamped it to his face, frantically drawing oxygen up the tube from the tank on the floor, eyes blazing like globs of molten iron. William forced himself to meet his father’s gaze, to hold it, although, my God, it was hard, took every ounce of will he possessed. He managed it for a few seconds, then, feeling he’d just about made his point, shown he wasn’t going to be intimidated (although he
was
intimidated, wanted to piss and shit his pants he felt so threatened), he turned and walked over to the document on the floor. Bending, he picked it up and smoothed down the crumpled pages, the rasping grate of his father’s breathing pushing at his back like a predator gathering itself to pounce.
Once, as a child, years ago, when his mum had still been alive and
she
had still been around, William had drawn up a family tree. It had been a beautiful, intricate thing, modelled on one of the bur oaks that lined the mansion’s front drive, the names of all the different family members hanging like acorns from its spreading branches. He had spent almost a month working on it, getting it just right, making sure he didn’t leave anyone out, the names of the family’s central male bloodline – his great-grandfather, grandfather, father and he himself – running down the trunk and highlighted in gold to emphasize their position at the very core of the family. He’d framed it with his own hands, helped by Arnold the gardener, who was good at stuff like that, and presented it to his father on his fiftieth birthday, confident that this would be the thing that opened the old man’s heart, persuaded him that he, William, was a worthy successor to the family name. His father had given it only the most cursory of glances before putting it aside. ‘I’m not sure
your
name should be in gold,’ had been his only comment.