The Vital Chain Read online

  THE VITAL CHAIN

  Sally Spencer

  © Sally Spencer 2017

  Sally Spencer has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.

  This edition published by Endeavour Media in 2018.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  The rain, which had dogged us all the way from Bristol, was showing no signs of easing up, and the maddeningly monotonous clicking of the windscreen wipers only served to increase the tension which already filled the air inside the car.

  There were five of us in the BMW hire car. In the front sat Edward Conroy, my father, and Tony Conroy, my uncle. Crammed tightly together in the back were myself, my brother John, and Bill Harper, Uncle Tony’s executive assistant.

  Uncle Tony – red-faced, weightlifter-solid – was driving recklessly, negotiating the narrow country lanes at a speed well in excess of the limit. My father – half a head shorter and far less square – was breathing heavily through his nose in a way which, I knew from experience, indicated irritation.

  ‘Are you sure this is a short cut, Tony?’ my father asked, looking down at the map which was folded awkwardly on his knee.

  ‘Of course I’m sure!’ my uncle snapped. ‘We wouldn’t be taking it if I wasn’t.’

  ‘Well, short cut or not, we’re going to be late,’ my father said, not without an element of morbid satisfaction in his voice.

  ‘We won’t be late!’ Uncle Tony replied through gritted teeth as he pulled hard round a bend. ‘We can’t bloody afford to be late.’

  Certainly he couldn’t, I thought. He had a lot riding personally on the meetings he’d arranged with the potential new clients in Swansea. A good first impression was essential, and a lack of punctuality wouldn’t help create one. Nor would those clients be likely to be impressed by the five of us arriving in one vehicle – as if Conroy Enterprises was so strapped for cash that we couldn’t afford to hire a second car.

  ‘We should have flown!’ my uncle said. ‘If we’d chartered a plane, we’d have been there by now.’

  And I, seeing an opportunity to get under his skin after all the emotional stress he’d put me through, couldn’t resist the temptation to say, ‘It’s no good thinking of what might have been.’

  “It’s no good thinking of what might have been.” That was rich, coming as it did from someone who had spent a great deal of his life thinking about just that!

  We reached a T-junction and Uncle Tony, with barely a glance to the left, wrenched the wheel around to the right.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Tony!’ my father exploded. ‘Do you want to get us all killed?’

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ my uncle snapped back.

  Bill Harper, who was sandwiched between John and me, reached – with some difficulty – for the leather attaché case which had been resting at his feet. Then, with another clumsy movement, which involved elbowing both of us, he managed to open the case and extract some papers.

  ‘Would you like me to brief you on the first meeting, Mr Conroy?’ he asked.

  And though there were four Mr Conroys in the car, we all knew he meant Uncle Tony, whom he served with an apparent dogged loyalty which seemed to belong to an earlier generation.

  ‘Brief me?’ my uncle said, his eyes glued to the road. ‘No, I think I’ve got everything I need to know.’

  I glanced down at my watch. We definitely weren’t going to make it. On the one hand I was glad because if anyone had been riding for a fall it was my uncle. On the other hand I had finally come to accept that the fortunes of the small business I had lovingly built up over the years were now inextricably tied in with whatever decisions Uncle Tony chose to make for Conroy Enterprises.

  ‘Should be joining the main road again soon,’ Uncle Tony grunted as he accelerated along a straight stretch of lane.

  And so we would have – if it hadn’t been for the truck.

  It was a military truck, from the air force base at St Asaph.

  I know that now.

  All I knew then was that a great metal beast had suddenly emerged out of the rain and was heading in our direction.

  It should have been a safe enough encounter. The lane was narrow, but by slowing down the two vehicles would have been able to crawl cautiously past each other. The driver of the truck did slow down – but the BMW hire car carried on as if it had the whole road to itself.

  ‘Put your brakes on, for God’s sake!’ my father shouted.

  ‘I’m trying to!’ my uncle screamed back.

  I could hear the sound of his foot, desperately pumping the brake pedal.

  I could see the face of the truck driver gazing down, white with horror, as he drew ever closer.

  At my side, I felt Bill Harper start to tense at the same moment as my stomach, without consulting me, began to do somersaults.

  We were only yards from the truck now, and it had ceased to look like any kind of vehicle at all, instead transforming itself into the solid metal wall which would crush us on contact.

  I thought of reaching across Bill and his bloody attaché case, opening John’s door, and pushing my brother out. But even as the plan was forming in my mind, I recognised there would be no time to carry it out.

  We had just a split second left.

  Only Uncle Tony could save us now.

  My uncle had given up trying to bring the car to a halt, and was finally taking the only evasive action open to him, which was to steer for the narrow gap between the truck and the high stone wall which bounded the lane. He was a good driver, and might actually have made it if he hadn’t hit the patch of water on the road.

  When I heard the scream of the tyres and felt the car slew to the left, I knew we were doomed.

  Panic engulfed me – pure blind panic. We were going to die, a voice screamed in my head. We were all going to die ! Not of old age. Not of some disease which would slowly eat away at us. We were going to die suddenly – violently – the result of some freak accident!

  Through the windscreen I could see a stone wall ahead of us, oddly angled as we skidded across the lane. Then the wing of the BMW hit the wall with a jarring thud, sending shock waves juddering through the whole vehicle.

  ‘Oh God!’ my brother gasped.

  And I found myself repeating silently, ‘Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!’

  The car was on two wheels now, and we were all sliding towards the right hand side of the lane. Then it flipped completely over, righted itself and began to roll again. It was like being trapped inside some monstrous fairground amusement which had gone tragically wrong. I was fighting for breath but yet, even in the last few moments, I still
clung onto the hope that there might be some way for us to escape our fate.

  Then the car slammed hard against the truck – and my universe went black.

  ****

  There were probably less than two hours between the moment when Grandmother realised that she was a widow, and the ringing on the doorbell which heralded the news of the dreadful events in South Wales.

  The first of these events certainly came as no shock to her. Though Grandfather had been a vigorous man in his time – had built up his business empire almost single-handed – the last few years had not been kind to him, and he had spent the final three swathed in rugs in his favourite armchair, like an under-the-weather child or a sick puppy.

  That was where he’d been the last time I had seen him – the day I’d stormed out of the board meeting.

  It was late April and pleasantly warm, but a coal fire was blazing away in the grate, filling the sitting room with its sticky heat.

  ‘I thought it would be you, Rob,’ the old man said.

  ‘What do you mean, Grandfather?’

  ‘I thought that, after the meeting, you’d be the one to come and appeal to me. Your father’s far too passive. Always has been. So’s your brother. But even when you were a little lad, you showed a different kind of spirit. Well, now you’re here, why don’t you have your say?’

  ‘You can’t gamble with the company like this,’ I told him.

  A thin smile came to his old lips. ‘I’m not doing the gambling. Your uncle Tony is.’

  ‘He couldn’t do it without your permission.’

  Grandfather nodded weakly. ‘No, he couldn’t,’ he agreed. ‘And what if I had withheld that permission? In six months or a year, when I’m no longer around, he’ll go ahead anyway. Isn’t it better to do it now, while I’m still here to offer advice?’

  ‘The heart of your company – the company that you built up from nothing – is furniture,’ I reminded him. ‘The haulage business was never more than a handmaiden – a useful adjunct. And now Uncle Tony’s planning to move haulage centre stage – and you’re just standing by and letting it happen.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Grandfather said, ‘because it’s what Tony wants.’

  ‘And what about what I want, Grandfather?’ I demanded. ‘Doesn’t that matter to you at all?’

  ‘Of course it matters. Haven’t I always done everything in my power to make you happy?’

  I thought of the one time he visited me in the institution, just after the caring yet unsmiling doctors had announced I was ready to be released into the community again, and I, for my part, had been far from sharing their conviction.

  I remembered listening as he promised to buy a publishing house for me, and wondering which one of us was really the lunatic.

  And I felt ashamed.

  ‘You’ve always been very good to me,’ I said contritely.

  ‘When I’m gone, somebody will have to take the decisions,’ Grandfather said, ‘and – barring accidents – that will be my eldest son, your uncle Tony.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ I pointed out. ‘You could split the firm. Let each of us run our own show.’

  A sudden fire burned in Grandfather’s eyes, as bright as the one in the grate.

  ‘Never!’ he said. ‘Never! I’ve spent a lifetime building it up. I’m not about to allow it to fall apart after I’ve gone.’

  ‘Uncle Tony could bankrupt us.’

  My grandfather shook his head. ‘I’m not quite as doddering as to let him go ahead if there was much chance of that. Besides, I’ve taken risks right from the start. I took a risk with you. It’s about time someone else in the family had the responsibility.’

  ‘So there’s nothing I can do to persuade you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The heat had made my trousers stick to my knees, and my throat felt incredibly dry.

  I stood up.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, Grandfather, it’s rather stuffy in here,’ I said. ‘I think what I need is a breath of fresh air.’

  I walked over to the door.

  ‘Rob!’ said a cracked voice behind me.

  I turned. ‘Yes, Grandfather?’

  The old man was clutching tightly onto his stick, and there was a pleading look in his watery eyes. ‘You won’t stop coming to see me when you’re up in the village, will you?’ he asked. ‘Not because of this?’

  ‘Of course I won’t, Grandfather,’ I promised him.

  I loved him dearly, I thought as I walked back to my parents’ house, but that didn’t mean I was blind to the fact that he was a stubborn old man – an anachronism who still thought in terms of family firms in an era of multiple-holding, multinational companies.

  Perhaps if Geoff Carson had been a little more flexible back in the early Fifties, and if Grandfather’s father hadn’t died of a broken heart, my talk with him might have gone differently.

  But we can’t change the past, however much we want to, I told myself as I opened my parents’ front gate. All that we can hope is that it does not cast too long a shadow on the present and the future.

  I didn’t know about the will then, of course – didn’t know how Grandfather had used the law to create a tunnel down which the remaining members of the family would be forced to march. Even if I had known, I doubt very much whether I would have been able to imagine the devastating effect it would have in the post-crash world into which I was about to awaken.

  Chapter Two

  I’ve read that when people first recover consciousness, they have no idea where they are or what has happened to them.

  It wasn’t like that with me. Looking up at the ceiling I knew immediately both that I was in hospital and that I was there because of the crash.

  I became aware that two people – a man in a white coat and a woman wearing a crisp uniform – were standing beside my bed.

  ‘What’s happened to … is my brother …?’ I gasped in a voice which seemed to belong to a semi-strangled frog.

  ‘First things first, old chap,’ said the man, in a low reassuring voice. ‘Can you tell us your name?’

  ‘I’m Rob Conroy.’

  ‘And do you know what year it is, Rob?’

  ‘2006.’

  ‘One more question – can you tell me where you were born?’

  I told him I was born in Cheshire – more precisely in a small village outside Northwich – and he nodded as if he were pleased by my performance.

  ‘Well, your mind seems all right, old son, but there’s no disputing your body’s taken a bit of a battering,’ the doctor said. ‘You’ve got three broken ribs, a sprained wrist and a fractured femur, but given what you’ve been through, it could have been much worse.’

  ‘My brother …’ I said.

  ‘What you should be doing now is concentrating on building your strength up, and to do that you have to push any thoughts of anything else to the back of your mind,’ the doctor told me.

  ‘My brother!’ I said as loudly as I could.

  The doctor looked at the nurse for guidance, and the nurse gave him a solemn nod.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, old chap, but only one other person survived the crash, and he was a man called Bill Harper,’ the doctor said.

  It is hard, even now, to describe the feelings and emotions I found myself having to deal with in those first few hours of post-crash consciousness.

  There was the grief, of course. I had never cared much for Uncle Tony, who was a difficult man to admire – or even respect – and my father had held himself so distant from me that I felt I’d hardly known him. Yet both their deaths left a gap, an unexpectedly aching void, in my life. But worse – far worse – was my sorrow at losing my brother John – dear, gentle John, who had made childhood bearable, and who, in my adult life, had been the one person apart from Grandfather I felt I could depend on. I had loved him as much as any brother could, and with his dying a part of me had died.

  Then there was the guilt. Why should I have
survived when my father, uncle and brother had not, I asked myself? And why – and this was even worse – why had I failed to save them? The latter feeling was, I knew even at the time, an irrational one, but it was not unfamiliar – I had felt the same burden descend on me that day, a million years earlier, when Jill’s father had phoned and told me in a dead voice that she would not be coming back from Cornwall.

  Yet as deep and searing as these emotions were, the grief and guilt still sometimes found themselves being nudged to one side by a disappointment which almost bordered on despair.

  Where was Marie, a voice wailed inside my head?

  She must have heard about the crash on the television, or from the newspapers, but she had not even bothered to phone me.

  I tried to tell myself that I had no right to expect her to make any such effort because she’d made it quite clear right from the start that ours was not to be an intimate relationship. Yet wasn’t that just what it had become ? True, we had never so much as kissed, but not only did we enjoy the same things – we seemed to enjoy them the more because we were sharing them.

  And even if she hadn’t developed the same feelings for me as I’d developed for her, wouldn’t it have been just common humanity to pick up the phone and find out how I was?

  I’d have done as much for a casual acquaintance.

  Grief, guilt and disappointment – they rode thunderingly back and forth across my brain as if they were three of my own personal horsemen of the apocalypse. But it was the fourth horseman, even darker than others, who was the worst of all – and his name was Fear.

  I was terrified, you see, that I didn’t have the mental resources to cope with all this, and that it would force me over the edge for the second time in my life.

  Last time, I’d been discovered in my rooms, stark naked and huddled over the fire I’d started on my desk with the notes for an essay I’d been attempting to write. Next time it could be anything. And if there was a next time – if I once more allowed myself to sink into the dark nightmare pool of helplessness – I knew I would drown.