“I want to talk to you ladies,” he said, dragging his eyes and his mind away from his present wife.

Three faces turned to him with interest. Drusilla and Octavia ceased fussing at the stove and sat down.

“There was a shareholder’s meeting at the Byron Bottle Company today,” he said, “and management of the company has changed hands. In fact, it passed into my hands.”

“You?’’ squeaked Missy.

“Yes.”

“Then you’re the mystery buyer?”

“Yes.”

“But why? Uncle Billy said the mystery buyer had outlaid the kind of money for shares that no one could ever hope to get back! So why?”

He smiled, not attractively; for the first time since meeting him Missy saw a different John Smith, a powerful and flinty John Smith, a John Smith who might not know the meaning of the word mercy. It didn’t frighten her and it didn’t take her aback; rather, it pleased her. Here was no defeated refugee from life’s insistent pressures, here was no weakling. On the outside he was so delightfully relaxed and easygoing, and there were people who might mistake that for weakness even after they knew him very well, perhaps intimately well. Like his first wife? Yes, she could understand how a wife might come to judge him as less than he actually was, if that wife was a rather stupid, self-centred kind of woman.

But he was answering her, so she paid attention to him.

“I had a bone to pick with the Hurlingfords. Present company excluded, of course. But by and large, I have found the Hurlingfords so damned smug, so sure that their quasi-noble free-settler English origins put them much higher than people like me who have the rattle of leg-irons on their mother’s side and full Jew on their father’s. I admit I set out to get the Hurlingfords, and didn’t care how much it cost me to do it. Luckily I have enough money to buy out a dozen Byron Bottle Companies without ever feeling the pinch.”

“But you don’t come from Byron,” said Missy, bewildered.

“True. However, my first wife was a Hurlingford.”

“Really! What was her name?” asked Drusilla, who was one of the clan experts on Hurlingford genealogy.

“Una.”

Fortunately Drusilla and Octavia were far too interested in what John Smith was saying, and John Smith himself was far too interested in saying it, to pay any attention to Missy.

She sat in stony stillness, unable to move the smallest part of her. Una. Una!

How could her mother and aunt sit there so unresponsive to that name, when they had met her and entertained her in this very house? Didn’t they remember the biscuits, the documents?

“Una?” Drusilla was asking herself. “Let me see now...Yes, she would have to be one of the Marcus Hurlingfords from Sydney, which would make Livilla Hurlingford her first cousin and her closest relative here in Byron. Humph! I never did meet her, but she died a long time ago, of course. A drowning accident, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said John Smith.

Was that it, then? Was that why she glowed? Was that why every time Missy had needed her, she had been there? Was that why so many small incidents had happened so fortuitously in the library? The novels, all leading up to the one about the girl dying of heart trouble. The shares on the desk. The Power of Attorney forms. Una the conveniently handy Justice of the Peace. The impudence and the gay carelessness, so hugely attractive to one as repressed as Missy had been. The scarlet dress and hat exactly as it had flowered in Missy’s imagination, and exactly the right size too. The curious significance she had managed to give all her words, so that they sank into Missy like water into parched soil, and germinated richly. Una. Oh, Una! Dear, radiant Una.

“But her married name definitely wasn’t Smith,” Drusilla was saying. “It was much more unusual, like Cardmom or Terebinth or Gooseflesh. He was a very rich man, as I recollect, which was the only reason the second Sir William approved the match. Yes, I see how they would have insulted you, if you were he.”

“I was he, and they did indeed insult me.”

“We,” said Drusilla, reaching out her hand to clasp his, “are delighted to welcome you into this branch of the family, my dear John.”

The hard John Smith had gone, for the eyes resting on his mother-in-law were soft, amused in a gentle way. “Thank you. I’ve changed my name, of course, and I’d prefer you didn’t speak of all this ancient history.”

“It will go no further than Missalonghi,” said Drusilla, and sighed, assuming he had changed his name to sever all the painful memories. The sordid ramifications Missy knew of from John Smith himself were obviously not a part of Hurlingford history in Byron.

“Poor thing, drowning like that,” said Octavia, shaking her head. “It must have hit you hard, John. Still, I’m very glad things have turned out the way they have, the bottling plant and all. And isn’t it interesting that you’ve gone and married another Hurlingford?”

“It was a great help today,” said John Smith calmly.

“There are Hurlingfords and Hurlingfords, like any other family,” said Drusilla with truth. “Una may not have turned out the right sort of wife for you, so perhaps it’s better she died so young. Where Missy – I think she will make you happy.”

He grinned and reached his arm across the table to take hold of Missy’s cold clammy hand. “Yes, I think she will too.” He managed to kiss the trembling fingers in spite of their distance from where he sat, then he released the hand and gave all his attention to Drusilla and Octavia.

“Anyway, now I’m in control of the Byron Bottle Company and its auxiliary industries, I want to make some much-needed changes. Naturally I shall sit as chairman of the board of directors and Missy will be my vice-chairman, but I also require eight other directors. Now I need a group of busy, interested individuals who will be as concerned about the town and people of Byron as about the bottling plant itself. Today I received the necessary votes to enable me to restructure the board any way I want, and I want to do something so different that when I announced my intentions, I acquired a few more shares! Sir William, Edmund Marshall, the brothers Maxwell and Herbert Hurlingford, and some dozen others sold out to me when the meeting concluded. Their spleen got the better of their judgement, which only confirms what I’ve suspected for a very long time – they’re fools. The Byron Bottle Company is going to get bigger and better! It’s going to become more civic-minded, and it’s going to diversify its interests.”

He laughed, shrugged. “Well, no point in dwelling on the likes of Sir William Hurlingford, is there! I want women on my board, and I want to start with you two ladies and the Misses Julia and Cornelia Hurlingford. All of you have coped magnificently with your hardships, and you certainly don’t lack courage. It may be a radical departure to staff a board of directors with women, but in my opinion most boards already consist of women – old women.”

He lifted that magical eyebrow at Drusilla and Octavia, who were listening to him in spellbound silence. “So? Are you interested in my offer? Naturally you’ll be paid directors’ fees. The previous board paid each of its members five thousand pounds per annum, though, I warn you, I shall cut that figure to two thousand pounds.”

“But we don’t know what to do!” cried Octavia.

“Most boards don’t, so that’s no handicap. The chairman is John Smith, remember, and John Smith will teach you every rope. Each of you will have a specific area to deal with, and I know you’ll look at hoary problems with fresh eyes and new problems with the kind of unorthodoxy a usual board can’t match.”

He looked at Drusilla sternly. “I’m waiting on your answer, Mother. Are you going to join my board, or not?”

Drusilla shut her gaping mouth with an audible snap. “Oh, indeed I am! And so are the others, I’ll see to that.”