Free Flight by Victoria Glendinning Page B

about it, and he gives her the time. On a human level, he performs better than I do. I should have thought about how Dawn might feel, and had a word with her myself.
    *   *   *
    In the lengthy and tedious discussions that followed, between Cox & Co.’s bankers, accountants and lawyers, and Harpers’ bankers, accountants and lawyers, Giles’s promise that Arthur would be the first chairman of the new firm began to look unrealistic. For if Arthur had not been Arthur, as Giles reminded Martagon in the aftermath, Cox & Co. would not have been up for a merger at all, except on their own terms.
    Of course, the board of Cox & Co. – including Martagon – thought it was going to be on their own terms. But as the negotiations and due diligence proceeded, it began to look less and less like a merger and more and more like a takeover – by Harpers. The balance sheets told their own story.
    In meeting after meeting, Cox & Co.’s position melted away. From the City’s viewpoint, the tensile strengths that Arthur had built into the business were seen, bleakly, as points of fracture. The figures that were now being produced seemed to prove Cox & Co. to be terminally ailing. It was embarrassing and humiliating even for those, like Martagon, who were hell-bent on the merger.
    Martagon betrayed Arthur a second time. On the final, decisive day of the negotiations, the two sides attended at the Institution of Civil Engineers in Great George Street, each with their phalanxes of accountants and lawyers, occupying separate suites, next door to one another on the lower ground floor. Messages and memos passed to and fro between the professionals they employed – all of whom stood to gain, fee-wise, from spinning things out as long as possible. Meanwhile the principals were sidelined.
    Martagon was sitting with Tom Scree, Mirabel Plunket and other Cox people, waiting to sign the final documents when they appeared. It was after six o’clock when the senior man from their solicitors’ firm put his head round the door. ‘The other side,’ he whispered, ‘have made another difficulty.’
    â€˜I just don’t believe it. If it’s about the warranties again,’ said Martagon, ‘tell them to take a running jump. Everything is in order, we’ve been over and over it all and so have they.’
    â€˜It’s not the warranties. It’s about Sir Arthur Cox. They are reneging on the arrangement. About the chairmanship.’
    Martagon had been half expecting this. But he was none the less furious. ‘That is outrageous,’ he said, vivified by anger. ‘That is just not on.’ He picked up his mobile and banged in Giles’s number: ‘I have to speak to you privately. Right now.’
    The two met on the steps outside the building, in the cold, inhaling the fumes of gridlocked traffic waiting to get into Parliament Square.
    â€˜These are the longest red lights in London,’ said Giles.
    Martagon was too agitated for small-talk. ‘What the fuck are you up to now?’
    â€˜I’m sorry, mate. It just can’t be done. My people won’t wear it. I did everything I could.’
    â€˜You gave me an undertaking. You gave me your word. Your word of honour.’ Martagon heard and hated the whine in his voice.
    â€˜Informally. I agreed informally. Cox is yesterday’s man. He’s lost it. Cox is dogmeat. You know it.’
    â€˜I can’t accept this, Giles.’
    â€˜Come on, sharpen up. This is business. Our business, yours and mine. We’re on the point of signing. Do you want to scupper the whole merger, our future, over this one issue?’
    Martagon took a deep breath of polluted air into his lungs. ‘No. No, I don’t.’
    â€˜Right, then.’
    â€˜I shan’t forgive you for this.’
    â€˜Yes, you will.’

THREE
    The disease of management is worse than other diseases, because it