comforted Brother Trevor when his wife Sarah had died from cancer – a double blow, as all were quick to recognize, for Sarah was the second wife to have left him under tragic circumstances. Marion had been his saviour during that awful time, not only had she nursed Sarah, she had moved into the Potter home to be more available in the last difficult months. Now she was leaning forward and giving Evelyn a hug. ‘Perhaps you’ll stay for a cup of tea next Thursday.’
Evelyn accepted the invitation, walked down the path to her car and drove home. The children were not yet back from gym; the house was quiet and peaceful. The Finemore problems were still there, her anger, too, but Evelyn felt so much better, so much more in control. Which was how it always was with Brother Trevor, who somehow softened the difficulties, made them more manageable. She went upstairs to change her clothes and freshen her makeup, then to the kitchen, where she buttered some buns, made a large jug of cordial and waited for the children to come home.
FOUR
Lorraine Pascoe, long-time intimate of George Finemore, and former employee at Finemore’s Fine Wines and Spirits, was standing at the stove in head-scarf and underwear frying fish. She did not need to work, she was thinking, George had taken care of that, rather it was her preference to work. ‘I prefer to work,’ she said out loud. Not that that had been a consideration when, a week before and just eight months after George’s death, she had been fired from Finemore’s, or, as Gray Finemore and Selwyn Pryor would have it, ‘reluctantly let go’ as a result of ‘recent company restructuring.’
She reached across the bubbling oil to open a window – perhaps now she’d get round to replacing the exhaust fan – and gently turned the fish. It was to be expected, she supposed, that the boys would get rid of her, for hadn’t she chafed at their ambitions for years? Indeed, her removal was probably the only action, either before or since George’s death, over which Gray and Selwyn had agreed. But nonetheless, she had hoped, in the uncertain terrain of George’s passing, they would have had the sense to keep her on. Not out of any moral scruples, the boys were devoid of those, rather their inflated ambitions should have convinced them that continued prosperity at Finemore’s required the presence of the person who knew the company best. And with George now gone, that person was Lorraine Pascoe. She knew Finemore’s and she knew liquor; she was competent, astute, energetic, and had the loyalty and respect of the staff – qualities not readily demonstrable in the boys.
Although they would describe it differently. Lorraine Pascoe was a ‘scheming female’ who had ‘inveigled’ her way into George’s confidence and had, in the process, trammelled the Finemore sons. On a daily basis, they had been forced to witness George and Lorraine in earnest and spirited conversation; they had listened while plans were made, promotions discussed, figures analysed, schemes evaluated, and they did not like it at all. If not for Lorraine, George would have consulted them, if not for Lorraine, George would have recognized what Gray and Selwyn had to offer.
Lorraine removed the fish from the pan and added some sliced eggplant to the hot oil. The boys had convinced themselves that sex was the sole reason for Lorraine’s favoured status, and sex, as they were quick to point out, defied fair competition. They saw little point then, in extending themselves until the situation changed; they kept short hours, achieved little, and claimed their subordinates’ successes as their own. Not that George was aware of any of this. Weak links in an organization, particularly when these occur in that spongy layer just beneath the uppermost level, are inordinately common and easily camouflaged. It’s a stratum with little to do; the highest level makes the decisions and the people lower down do the work; in the case of Finemore’s, George and Lorraine made the decisions and the Finemore staff were, almost without exception, extremely competent. Lorraine had more than once remarked to her sister (never to George who could be cutting in his own assessments of Gray and Selwyn but would hear no criticism from anyone else) how fortunate it was for the boys that, in addition to being employee and friend of George, she was also lover, for how could Gray and Selwyn have explained their poor performance if she were not?
Unlike George, Lorraine had always lumped the two boys together; Selwyn with his supple charm and Gray his narcotic self-righteousness were both lacking in integrity and quite as bad as each other. George, however, had admired in Selwyn his personable manner which, he said, augured well for a career in sales and marketing. ‘And he’s smart,’ George invariably added, ‘A university professor has got to be smart.’ It had shocked Lorraine that George failed to see through Selwyn, failed to understand that the convivial drinker and lively raconteur was no more than a carefully packaged commodity aimed at eliciting his father-in-law’s favour.
At which he had been quite successful. Selwyn managed to camouflage his lackadaisical performance with zesty ideas; risky ideas, as far as Lorraine was concerned, with practical shortcomings, but ideas that all too often appealed to George. The Drink and Dream series was one of the early brainwaves, in which cheap liqueurs were packaged in icons of wealth: a glass Rolls Royce, a Porsche, a yacht. More recently, Selwyn had developed The Aussie Collection to capitalize on the tourism boom. This included The Red Centre, a claret that gave ‘the glow of sunset’; Sydney Harbour Bitter for a ‘deep thirst’, and Drysabone Lager, a low alcohol beer guaranteed ‘to keep the man drinking through the long hot Aussie summer’. The worst of Selwyn’s schemes had been, in Lorraine’s view, unequivocally obscene: a variety of spirits sold in molded glass body parts designed ‘to satisfy all tastes’. It was the only time Lorraine and George had a serious business disagreement. She had stood in his office, a glass penis filled with cream liqueur in one hand and a cherry brandy female torso in the other, trying to make him see reason. What she called obscene, he said was bawdy, what she described as pornographic he insisted was ‘a bit of fun.’ The only point on which he gave any concession was her appeal to consider the good name of Finemore’s, so the products were marketed under a different label, although everyone knew where they came from.
Each of Selwyn’s schemes was launched in a blaze of expensive publicity that might have been justified for products with some longevity, but none of Selwyn’s schemes ever lasted for more than a year. And between schemes, when he might have applied himself to the routine workings of Finemore’s, Selwyn always had something better to do. ‘The Academy,’ he would say when a subordinate made a request of him, ‘I’m providing some lectures for a colleague, can’t be bothered now.’ And the subordinate, who as often as not had not attended university much less ‘The Academy’, would take the problem to Lorraine. Selwyn, it seemed, fancied himself as a harbinger of the new; he was a man drawn to the splash and sparkle of fast money. Time and time again Lorraine had pointed out to George, such an astute businessman in all other respects, that good business did not require quick manoeuvres, and while George would agree, while he would admit to some of Selwyn’s shortcomings, he nonetheless maintained that Selwyn would prove an asset to Finemore’s.
As for Gray, he was George’s son, and blood was thicker than water. Or so George believed. Gray would ‘come good,’ George used to say, ‘he’s just a bit slow off the mark.’ And while it was true, he was a bit slow, George never realized Gray liked it that way. Gray interpreted slow as thoughtful, careful as considered. When projects were proposed or problems arose, the snailshell of Gray’s imagination would drag through plans, analyses and options, after which he would subject his colleagues to a seemingly endless trail of advice and opinion. Gray believed that on his birth he had taken up an option on perfection; he was that common individual, a man truly satisfied with himself.
Lorraine had never had any children of her own, yet well knew the allegiances of family. As the oldest of four girls, she had gone out to work early, studied accountancy at night, and contributed to the family upkeep; following her father’s death, she had been the sole support for her mother and sisters. Time passed quickly under these circumstances and soon the youngest child had left home and Lorraine was thirty-three and newly employed at Finemore’s Fine Wines and Spirits. Her first position had been as company secretary, and, until the boys fired her, they would always refer to her as
