Chapter 6

Tuesday 6 January 1976, 7.15pm

We visited her hubby Eric at least once a week and occasionally twice where our busy schedules allowed, for almost four months until the courts finally ruled on Thursday 6 January that life support could be switched off on Wednesday 14 January 1976 at 5pm. The Judge ruled that there was no appeal to his decision but would allow just over a week of life support to allow all parties to brace themselves for the inevitable.

Then, the very next day, on Wednesday morning, a week before the expected shut down, a communication was circulated by the Company Secretary of an Extraordinary Board Meeting of the Trembletts Group to discuss rumours of a hostile takeover bid.

Villa had earned a third round FA Cup Replay that evening against second Division side Southampton at Villa Park and we had both planned on going. My new friend at the club, Pat Matthews, had reserved tickets for Gina and I on Monday when they went on sale. My season ticket only guaranteed me a seat for league games.

“I have to go to the board meeting, Harry,” Gina said apologetically when I rang her back after she left a message with my 11 o’clock appointment. “Daddy’s away, so I have to be there. Hostile bids mean aggressive, timely and expensive repostes. I expect there’s plenty of my supporting board members coming, even at such short notice, so I’ll be perfectly safe. You can still go to your match.”

I knew where my loyalties lay. Fred and Pam were on holiday in the Caribbean until the end of next week. She couldn’t use either of the Toms to drive her because while Fred and Pam were away and the duties in the garden were minimal in January, so the domestic help were also departed for warmer climes, leaving Gina and I to happily fend for ourselves for the two weeks.

I didn’t need to go to every single match my team were involved in, while I did want to protect Gina from a hostile environment. That wasn’t just physical in form, I had no real fears on that point, but emotionally I wanted to boost her confidence before the meeting and then calm her down after a couple of hours of open hostility and scorning disrespect from a bunch of dinosaurs who knew their days were numbered once Gina could finally exercise Eric’s stockholding into shaking up and modernising the board, which would include sacking all of Eric’s old Trembletts and Collins cronies.

“No, honey, I wouldn’t enjoy a single minute of the match knowing you had to face the Tremblett board on your own”, I said. “We’ve been to three monthly meetings so far, including your initial meeting, and you can cut the ‘females belong in the kitchen not the boardroom, attitude towards you with a knife. I could cope with allowing you to go without me if your father was there, but as we know he can’t be, so I’m driving you there.”

“Honey, you’re a treasure.”

“Just hold that thought all day and, when you are in that meeting, just remember there’s someone the other side of that door who believes in you and cares about you.”

I hadn’t taken into account the late shopping nights for the January sales still in full swing in the West End, so we arrived a little late, then I found I couldn’t park nearby because of “Police No Parking” cones all around Tremblett House. After circling the block in a fruitless search for a space, which made her two more minutes late, I dropped Gina off at the front entrance, then drove around to find somewhere further afield to park.

It was a mild evening, but the weather was forecast as changeable and I had to bear in mind that on the previous day London had 6mm rain fall overnight, while the week before the worst gales to hit the British Isles for over twenty years had caused 21 deaths just a hundred miles north east of London. So I took with me the James Smith & Son brolly I normally kept locked in the boot, just in case it was raining when we left to return to the car. I had to drive around for twenty minutes and eventually parked about five or six minutes’ brisk walk away from the office building.

Julie, the lone bar server in the board member’s lounge, was agitated when I reached the board room area.

“Thank god you’re here Harry,” she gushed, her voice full of panic and her pretty young face contorted in anguish, “I was frantic and didn’t know what to do other than wait for you. I think they put a Micky in Mrs Tremblett’s drink because within a couple of minutes she was out of it and they virtually dragged her into the board room and locked the door behind them,” she recounted breathlessly. “I tried to ring the police but the phone ain’t working either in here or in any on the offices off the corridor. I waited ‘cos I thought you’d know what to do. I have a key to the board room.”

She walked to the door while I gripped my brolly and, as an afterthought, picked up a heavy half-full bottle of Champagne by the neck from an ice bucket on a table I passed.

“How many?” I asked with a growl.

“Four of them, Harry, the nasty Collins’ twins, Mr Bambridge and the secretary Mr Cooper. I was expecting the whole board, but only these four at first and then Mrs Tremblett turned up.

“Unlock and stand back, Julie,” I growled and then I kicked the door open.

In front of me, Gina was spreadeagled naked on the board room table, apparently completely senseless, her clothes discarded on the floor. The bare-legged Collins’ twins were holding up Gina’s legs and Cooper, the Company Secretary, was raping her at the edge of the table. Behind him was Bambridge, also without his trousers on. He was the first to half turn to face me and didn’t even see the champagne bottle hit him across the face with his nose taking the brunt of it.

I could see what was happening in slow motion as it appeared his nose just disappeared into his face, his cheekbone shattered and his jawbone broken in more than one place, displaced teeth flying up and down like in a sport’s action replay. At the same time, champagne foamed around my wrist and shot up my arm. Bambridge collapsed to the ground, so I could concentrate my focus on Cooper, who was now half-turned facing me with a look of horror on his face. My peripheral vision could see his disgusting wet dick that he had violated my Gina with.

I was surprised the bottle hadn’t shattered from the first blow, clearly it was stronger than bone and cartilage, but I had carried through with my stroke and it would take time to draw the bottle up, cocked ready to reuse as an offensive weapon again. Instead, I put all my effort into my left arm now behind me, at the end of which was my Smith & Son umbrella, which I gripped about the middle of the shaft. It was a sturdy steel tube and framed umbrella with a solid crome-plated tip with a rounded point. I thrust it at his face at an upward angle. He had no time to raise his hands to defend himself, so the umbrella connected first with his lower front teeth, which exploded from either side of his jaw, then punctured his tongue, entered his soft pallet and interfered with his spinal nerve column at the back of his head. He shivered, as if on the end of an electric shock, and collapsed like a rag doll.

Thrusting away with my left side, while propelling myself forward, I effectively swung the champagne bottle from low and behind me, swinging it at the Collins twin on my right. He did manage to release Gina’s left leg, and lift his right hand up to fend off the blow, but my rage, the arc of travel, the leverage at the very end of my outstretched arm, and putting much of my body weight behind it, made his gesture fruitless and just gave the surgeons a challenge to remove his broken hand from the ruination of his fractured skull and jumble of bone peppered scrambled tissue. And still the bottle didn’t break. This time the last of the contents foamed up my arm or gushed to the now slippery floor.