"That means, Miss Gantry, that I don't give a damn about the size of your shareholding, and that I will not allow you to pursue policies which I believe may be holding the company back. This is a publicly quoted company, and I will not let it play by private company rules."
This was too much for me. "Excuse me, Sir Graeme," I interrupted, 'but I was under the impression that last week we appointed you as chairman, not managing director."
He didn't even look in my direction. "I'll come to you in a minute, Mr. Blackstone." I wanted very much to reach across and twist his head round to face me… and then maybe twist it a bit further than that… but for Susie's sake I sat there like a scolded schoolboy.
"You may not like what I'm saying to you, Miss Gantry. You may even think you've made a terrible mistake and be tempted to correct it at once. If that is the case, of course I'll go at once. However, I don't need to tell you how that would be viewed by the business community, especially after the publicity which greeted my appointment.
Now, do we understand each other?"
Susie drew in a deep breath; I feared that when she exhaled it would burn off his eyebrows, leaving him totally hairless. But it didn't.
Instead, she nodded. "I understand you, as long as you understand that I am indeed managing director, as my husband pointed out, and that the day-to-day running of the business will remain mine." She paused, and gave him a sweet smile. "And as long as you understand that if you ever threaten me again, implicitly as you did just now, or explicitly, I will blow you out one second later."
For the first time, Graeme Fisher blinked, then he too smiled.
"Agreed."
Then he turned to me and the smile was gone. "Mr. Blackstone, you're a shareholder as well as a director, I understand."
"True," I said, coldly. I had decided that I did not like the man, and I wasn't about to disguise the fact. "An unpaid director," I added.
"There's no virtue in that," he retorted. "If you're contributing, you should be rewarded. Now let me ask you something: if a situation arose where your wife and I had a disagreement, and let's say, her position threatened your interests as a shareholder, who would you support?"
"Her."
"So you're saying that your first duty as a director is loyalty to your wife?"
"I'm saying that I know my wife, and her abilities, better than anyone on this planet. I don't know you; I only know what you've achieved in another business. If it was a matter of choosing between your judgement and Susie's, then based on experience, I'd back hers."
"Mmm," the old knight muttered, 'commendable, maybe, but still not exactly objective. Mr. Blackstone, I'll be as direct as I can be.
Other than support for your wife, I can't see a single quality that you bring to this table. I've looked at your CV and I can't find a thing on it that qualifies you to be a director of a listed company. Son, this might have been a family business once, but it's gone beyond that; it did as soon as it offered shares for public subscription. I have an instinctive dislike of husband and wife teams in this situation; I don't like pillow talk, or any other discussions between directors to which the rest of the board aren't privy. So, what I'm saying is that I'd feel a lot more comfortable chairing this board if you weren't a member."
"You're asking me to resign?"
"I am indeed."
"And if he doesn't?" said Susie, heavily.
Fisher looked at her and gave her another flicker of a smile. "Don't worry, Miss Gantry, there was no implied threat there. If he doesn't I'll chair it uncomfortably, although I will ask you both not to discuss agenda matters outside the properly constituted forum for such discussions. That is, round this table. Fair, I think."
"Fair," my wife conceded.
I reached an instant decision. "It's okay, Chairman," I told him. "You won't need to bring your haemorrhoid cushion to meetings. I'll resign, on one condition; that you don't seek to replace me with a nominee of yours, or with anyone else who is not acceptable to Susie."
"I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."
"Fine," I said, although I didn't quite believe him, and stood up. "See you in the car," I said to Susie, who was frowning up at me, seriously.
"What the hell did you do that for?" she demanded, when she joined me forty-five minutes later.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe I can't support you as a director, but I sure as hell can as a husband. Besides, no way am I going to let that guy tell us what we can and can't discuss in our own bedroom."
She grinned at me. "You're not as dumb as my chairman thinks, are you?"
Twenty-One.
As the weeks went by I began to think that maybe Sir Graeme Fisher wasn't as smart as he thought, either. Susie gave me blow-by-blow accounts of her meetings with him, and of the board meetings to which I'd given up access. The overall impression that I formed of the guy was that he was efficient, but maybe, just maybe… listen to me, criticising a guy who's made a billion from scratch… not quite as comfortable in the construction industry as he had been in the world of insurance and finance. All the initiatives still seemed to be coming from Susie, but, that said, we both had to concede that with him in the chair, the share price hit an all-time high, around one sixty-five a share, and stayed there.
As Gerry Meek had feared, he did secure the appointment of another accountant to the board, but only on a non-executive basis, and only after Susie had given her approval and her vote. The nominee, Philip Culshaw, had been, until his retirement, Scottish managing partner of one of the big three accountancy firms. Since then he had been collecting directorships and playing golf. By a coincidence he did the latter at my new club, and I had met him there, having drawn him in a Sunday medal. When Fisher offered him a directorship of the Gantry Group… without consulting the board first, incidentally… he had been shrewd enough to call me before accepting, to ask how Susie would view it.
"As long as you're not in Fisher's pocket, Phil," I told him, 'she'll welcome you."
Culshaw's appointment turned out to be the best move Fisher made. Far from being a Trojan horse, introduced by the chairman as a first step to axing Gerry Meek, he had been nothing but supportive of the finance director. His presence, even more than Fisher's, seemed to add to the bank's confidence in the business, so much so that for the first time since her appointment, Gillian Harvey missed a board meeting to take a holiday.
There were other benefits too. Where Graeme Fisher has contacts at the very top of British industry, and in Government too, Phil Culshaw is a mover and shaker who operates and has contacts at all levels. I didn't appreciate this, though, until one Saturday on the golf course… that was all I had available by that time. The extended location work on Mathew s Tale was coming to an end, finally, and we were approaching the point where the team would transfer to a sound stage in the south of England. I hadn't expected to play at all, but he had called me a couple of days before, to invite me to share his tee time at Loch Lomond.
We were approaching the turn and I was two down; Phil's a consistently tidy twelve-handicapper, and my lack of recent practice, even on my small private course, was showing as I struggled to play to single figures. On the ninth green he applauded silently as I rolled in an eight-footer for a half, then fell into step beside me as we headed for our buggy and the tenth tee.
"Have you been hearing any whispers, Oz?" he asked me. I I looked at him, puzzled. "What? Like voices in my head, you mean? I can't say that I have."
"I'll bet you have," he chuckled. "You're a deep one, Mr. Blackstone."
I let that pass. "No, what I meant was have you heard any rumours about the business?"