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someone to act like that.’
    â€˜Yes, or hire someone to act like that. Degenerate. But the business consequences, as distinct from the personal, are another matter, private to Manse and his people.’
    â€˜Are they, Ralph?’
    â€˜How could it be otherwise?’
    She knew something like collapse of the Ralph-Shale business pact had always been possible. The soft-soap terms to describe the relationship – ‘positive understanding’, ‘virtual pals’, ‘civilized cooperation’, happy closeness as ‘business associates’ – these cheery labels would do all right for the surface, for the obvious, but only for the surface and obvious. What their businesses were about was what all businesses were about: the need to make and inflate profits, the need to be still here, to survive. And, in the type of businesses they ran, the survival compulsion brought persistent, very special and acute pressures. Margaret had read somewhere lately that three-quarters of entrepreneurs failed – and Ralph loved to describe himself as an entrepreneur, his central ambition to bring seller and buyer together: particularly buyers who needed regular refills for their junkiness, and who had steady raw cash, got no matter how.
    That three-quarters figure applied to normal, above-board, legal businesses. For the kind of outfits controlled by Ralph and Mansel Shale this failure rate would be much, much higher, because competition was rough and ferocious, expressed often by handguns or something bigger. Had Ralph decided that Manse Shale, his dear, virtual friend, his happy business associate, his sharer of positive understanding, was, in fact, a towering menace to Ralph’s own career and should be toppled? And, if so, would Shale feel he had to answer back in a similar bloody style: that is, blast a child or two on the opposing side – Ralph’s side?
    They said Manse was broken by sorrow and had removed himself from all routine leadership tasks in his company. As chairman, though, he could still give orders. Some would argue that chairmen existed only to give orders, and draw pay. Between sessions with the Litany and anthems, Mansel might have time to whisper a few harsh, tit-for-tat instructions about Ralph and his family. So, Margaret yearned to bolt in good time from the hazard area with Venetia and Fay. She believed she owed them that, though they wouldn’t understand.
    â€˜I still wonder about Manse’s successor,’ she said.
    â€˜Wonder is OK,’ Ralph said. ‘Wonder is natural. But don’t worry . Let me mention Harry Truman, US President at the end of the war.’
    â€˜Truman?’ she replied. Ralph would flourish bits of knowledge now and then, like a star in the pub quiz. He had started a degree course in the local university, but suspended it for the present, to deal with what he referred to as ‘exceptional counter-slump demands’ on his company. There must have been some US history in Ralph’s Foundation Year.
    â€˜Suddenly, Truman had to take over from Franklin Roosevelt, a brilliant President, who’d died,’ he said. ‘Hardly anyone had even heard of Truman. But he turned out great.’
    â€˜Do you want Shale’s new man to turn out great?’ she said.
    â€˜Immaterial either way.’
    â€˜Is it?’
    â€˜Totally immaterial,’ Ralph replied.
    â€˜A competitor.’
    â€˜There’s enough business for both the firms,’ Ralph said. ‘Always has been. Why should things change now?’
    A kind of stifling, workaday tact and censorship had come to exist between Margaret and Ralph, and the children seemed to have adopted the style, perhaps unconsciously, possibly believing this was normal for every family and all families. Some facts were never spoken about although known to the whole household. Margaret felt partly responsible. It began, didn’t it, with her attitude to