‘Is that…?’ Carver started but stopped.
Jane said, heavy in rebuke: ‘Thank you!’
There was a stir throughout the car, with Hilda looking imperceptibly at Carver, who hoped she noticed his equally imperceptible nod to indicate that Jane had to be humoured, in everything. He wouldn’t be able to continue his intended search with Jane occupying her father’s office! To his personal assistant he said: ‘Perhaps, Hilda, you’d help Mrs Carver. You can be with me today, Janice.’
Both women nodded, Hilda at the same time reaching out for the console-mounted telephone.
Janice said: ‘Everything you asked for last night has been fixed.’
As vital as it was he wouldn’t anyway have had time today to go through Northcote’s office and personal vault safe, Carver acknowledged. But Jane wouldn’t be in the office tomorrow. Nor would it have been possible for him to have got to Northcote’s apartment, where he’d told Jennings to disturb nothing, just tidy whatever needed tidying. Would there be a safe or a hidden place there that would open to one of the unidentified Litchfield keys at the bottom of the valise securely clamped between his legs? Deciding that it was a question that wouldn’t upset Jane he said: ‘What’s the reaction been?’
There was a hesitancy between the lawyer and the two women. Finally Davis said: ‘Overwhelming. We’ve got two girls listing the calls. I guess there’ll be as many letters in tomorrow’s mail.’
To Hilda, who was replacing the car phone, Jane said: ‘I’ll personally sign the reply to each one.’
Hilda looked to Carver for another nod of agreement. To Jane she said: ‘Four’s fine for the funeral people. And I’ll keep a note of the letters and messages.’
Jane separated with Hilda the moment they reached the executive floor. Walking with Carver to his office suite, the lawyer said: ‘Jane’s standing up remarkably well.’
‘Remarkably well,’ agreed Carver. For how much longer, he wondered.
Within fifteen minutes of settling behind his own desk Carver fully realized just how impractical his idea of searching Northcote’s office had been, even if he’d known exactly what he was looking for. He handed his diary over to Janice to rearrange his appointments over the next week, together with Northcote’s valedictory address to be copied in time for the partners’ meeting, which she managed, along with more than sufficient duplicates for the following overseas assembly. The partners’ meeting inevitably began with the ritual of condolences, with which Carver supposed he and Jane would become all too familiar over the coming days. At the company secretary’s insistence the partners took a formal vote of acceptance of Northcote’s posthumous speech, which was repeated later at the gathering of the overseas chief executives, also attended by the American partners. At the combined meeting there was the additional formality, again insisted upon by the company secretary although this time endorsed by the lawyer, of another vote unanimously accepting Carver’s succession. Carver hadn’t anticipated the need to make this speech and in effect didn’t. He thanked them for their support and confidence and in a jumble of cliches pleaded his inadequacy to fill Northcote’s place but pledged to do his utmost to try, which would need the help and assistance of them all. There were grunts and mumbles of assurance when he said he hoped he would get that help and assistance.
Jane was waiting in his office and announced at once that the funeral would be in three days. She’d agreed the flowers and the limousines and booked the wake at the Plaza Hotel. There was to be a memorial service at Litchfield at the end of the month and, as he had already instructed, her father was to be interred alongside his late wife. The will was going to be read in Burt Elliott’s office, which the household staff needed to attend to hear about their inheritances. She’d already told Jennings here in Manhattan to arrange that. The remaining staff at Litchfield were coming down in the morning. She’d called Al Hibbert to warn him there would be no one at the estate.
There was no hesitation – or question – in her accompanying Carver to the boardroom drinks gathering, where she spoke individually to practically everyone and called for silence to thank them for their condolences and to announce that the cocktail party at East 62nd Street, which had been cancelled, was going to be held after all and she looked forward to meeting the wives there.
‘It’s what my father would have expected of me,’ she concluded.
Jane was totally composed at the press conference and although she deferred to Carver for most of it she was always ready when a question was directed personally at her. On their way uptown afterwards Carver said: ‘I didn’t think you’d want the cocktail party.’
‘Like I said, it’s what he would have expected. I’ve organized caterers and warned Manuel to expect their call. We’re having steak tonight, incidentally. It was the easiest thing I could think of, with the uncertainty of our not knowing what time we’d be back. We’re actually much earlier than I expected.’
‘You’ve pretty much filled your day,’ said Carver. In terms of actual achievement she’d accomplished far more than he had.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘ Me? ’ said Carver, surprised.
‘You’re the numero uno now.’
He refused to recognize the real meaning of her question. ‘I’ve been practising for over a year.’
‘Frightened?’ she demanded, openly.
‘Of course I’m not,’ Carver lied, although still not in direct answer to her intended question. ‘Why should I be?’
‘It’s a responsibility. You’ve got an empire to protect and people will expect you to build another, to prove yourself.’
If only she knew what he had to protect! ‘Like I said, I’ve had time to prepare.’
‘I’m going to be right behind you, all of the way.’
At the apartment Jane thanked the senior nurse for their attendance but announced at once that they had been engaged prematurely and wouldn’t be required beyond the contractually agreed first week. She didn’t need painkillers for a headache or any other discomfort, nor would she require sedatives later.
As they ate, Jane said: ‘She patronized me. Expects me to collapse. By the way, I spoke to Paul Newton. Told him I was all right and that it wasn’t necessary for him to come over.’
She would collapse, Carver guessed. Not immediately. For the moment – for the coming days – she was going to be wired by all the things that she’d determined personally to do. The breakdown would come when it all quietened: after the memorial service perhaps. He’d speak to Newton tomorrow. And quietly to the nurses, too.
Carver reached out consolingly to her when they got into bed that night and didn’t anticipate her immediate expectation that they would make love and was even more astonished that he was able to and that it was as good as it was.
Afterwards she said: ‘Dad had a saying, that there’s always a birth to make up for a death.’
Carver shifted, unsure what to say. ‘I never heard it.’
‘We should have a baby, John.’
‘We’ve talked about it,’ reminded Carver. But not recently, he reminded himself. He’d actually put the thought out of his mind and didn’t, in the present circumstances, welcome its return.
‘Not properly. Like we haven’t tried properly. I want to undergo IVF treatment.’ If she could become pregnant she would be continuing her father’s bloodline. She wanted very much to do that.
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ said Carver.
‘You’re patronizing me, like the nurse. This isn’t hysteria. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Now’s the right time.’
It wasn’t, thought Carver. Now wasn’t the right time for anything.
People who deal in them – accountants, financiers, bankers, mathematicians – can see a beauty in figures and the patterns that their controlling logic dictates. But it was not actually a pattern of figures that Alice Belling believed she saw when she began going through the printouts of all the worldwide subsidiaries of Mulder Inc., Encomp and Innsflow International. To confirm it she hauled a world atlas on to her desk and was sure she was right as far as the United States was concerned – which if she were right made them very united indeed – and the templates first of Europe and then of Asia were sufficient further to convince her. The temptation to start at once from her terminal in Princes Street was very strong but prudence won over impatience. Using the cybercafe gave her a second cut-out and considering the organization she believed she had discovered, Alice acknowledged that she needed to continue as carefully and as protectively as possible. Which meant waiting until tomorrow. Even though the cafe didn’t open until ten she was still up by seven, determined not to forget anything because today was going to be a long one.