The Club(39)
At one point, it had looked as if Ned was going to take it surprisingly well.
It was only when guests started drifting off to their cabins before dinner that Adam had finally managed to catch five minutes with his brother, and only then by offering to drive Ned back to his own cottage so he could freshen up too. Even so, for half the journey Ned had been on his phone, staring out of the window and barking instructions about tonight.
It was funny, Adam thought. When the magazines and newspapers wrote about Home they always focused on the stupid row between their grandfather and father, prompted by some of the latter’s ideas for modernizing the club and shaking up its membership policy, a row which had been temporarily resolved and then crackled ablaze again at every family gathering for half a century. When they profiled Ned they always made such a big deal about how much of the father’s vision was shared by the son – and it was always son, singular; how much Ned had inherited from their father: his looks, his ambition, his quick, cutting wit, his temper. As if their grandfather had not left Adam a share of the club too, albeit a much smaller share than Ned’s. As if their father had spent his life sitting around fuming about being cut out of his own father’s will in this particular regard, rather than having pursued for several decades a highly successful and lucrative legal career.
As with most things you read in the media it was all completely garbled, of course, most of it based on a single interview that one of their father’s estranged cousins – Ned said he had met him once or twice as a child, although Adam could not recall ever having encountered him – had given about twenty years ago and had been repeated as fact in every profile piece ever since.
Had his father expected to inherit the club? Yes, probably, eventually. But he would have been a fool to rely on it. Adam’s grandfather’s entire existence revolved around falling out with one relation, while bringing another temporarily back into the fold. Hinting at what his will might hold for this one, or that one, who might get this much share in the club, to whom he might leave the building: if you wanted to identify where Ned had inherited his love of game-playing from, his delight in getting people to dance to his tune, there was one very obvious candidate.
But this nit-picking, this assumption on Ned’s part that unless he did something himself, somebody else would fuck it up? It was their mother from whom he had acquired that particular trait. The way she would fuss. The way she would hover. The way, the afternoon of the Covent Garden Home relaunch, Ned had so proudly shown her around, and all the time, the entire fucking time, you could see her eyes flicking from this thing to this thing, that to that, looking for something misplaced to comment on, something slightly askew to point out, something – anything – so he would be absolutely clear she was not overawed by any of it. ‘That must have cost a pretty penny,’ she would say, jutting her chin at the carpet, or the curtains, or one of the gilt-framed mirrors in the lobby, making it obvious who she thought had been taken advantage of.
It was not until Adam had left home, he had once told Laura, that he realized how intense it had been, how pressured, growing up in the same house with his dad, with his mum, with Ned. The rows. The silences. The continual tension, never knowing when things were all going to kick off.
They paused at a crossing for a Land Rover to pass in the other direction.
‘I’m leaving,’ he told Ned, abruptly.
Ned had turned to look at him with a sudden frown.
‘What I mean,’ said Adam, keeping his voice calm and non-confrontational, his eyes on the road, ‘is that I want to hand in my notice. To exit the business.’
‘I see,’ said Ned. ‘And how long have you been thinking about this?’
‘A long time.’
‘A long time.’
There followed a pause.
‘And you’ve talked about this with your wife?’
‘I have.’
Another silence. Adam glanced at Ned. Ned’s eyes were on the road, his face thoughtful. They were over now on the wilder, less manicured side of the island. The trees overhung the road completely in places, branches of bushes slapping against the wing mirrors of the Land Rover as they passed. And all the time, as they drove in silence, as they turned onto the side road up to Ned’s own cottage, past the ‘Private’ sign, as he began weaving around the potholes that still remained on this stretch of thoroughfare, Adam was waiting for Ned to start screaming at him or pounding the dashboard and demanding he stop the car and fuck off and walk home.
It didn’t happen. Instead Ned asked him quite calmly why he had decided he wanted out. Was it more responsibility he needed? Less responsibility? A different role? Projects that were slightly more special? Adam shook his head.
‘So what do you want?’ Ned had asked him, and Adam had told him: something of his own, somewhere. Maybe in Melbourne – Ned had registered this, nodded – maybe somewhere else. Ned had asked about the menu, about the concept, made a couple of approving remarks, made a couple of suggestions. Ned had asked how he was going to afford all this. Adam had explained he wanted to be bought out. His was, after all, only a 10 per cent share. He had done a few rough calculations.
He was still mentally bracing himself for an explosion.
It still didn’t come.
Instead Ned had asked Adam what he calculated his share of the Home Group to be worth, at this precise moment, the logic behind his figures, what kind of arrangements and timescale he would consider, whether he had any particular buyer in mind. He had listened with the appearance of thoughtfulness while Adam tried to explain how much he had learned, working alongside his brother all these years: ‘And I’ve enjoyed it too, obviously, and it has been wonderful, there’s nothing I regret or resent.’