He put the half dozen or so social invitations, various thank-you notes, and personal letters to one side, pushed the carved rosewood chair away from the antique rosewood desk, went out into the gallery.
It was from this long and spacious hallway that the other rooms in the apartment flowed; a staircase at one end led up to the second floor. He crossed the flowing space, walking in the direction of the drawing room, thinking how restful the gallery was after the busy activity of his offices. It never failed to give him pleasure. The floor was stained ebony and highly polished, the walls white and hung with his collection of very fine Chinese paintings by past masters, dating from the fifteenth century to the present.
Drawing to a standstill in front of an ink-on-paper painting by Sun Kehong, dated 1582, he straightened it, then stood back, regarded it for a prolonged moment, smiling, nodding to himself in appreciation of its refinement, elegance and simple beauty.
Moving slowly, he continued along the gallery, admiring the art he had so lovingly assembled. The gallery was sparse, the only piece of furniture a console table made of ebony upon which rested a carved celadon vase with a cover from the Qianlong period, balanced by two white nefrite rams carved in the Song spirit. At the far end, against a short wall, glass shelves suspended on brass chains from the ceiling appeared to float, held his prized collection of rare Ming bronzes.
Recessed ceiling spots, discreet, strategically placed, illuminated the art; these were the only lights and this area of the apartment was dim, shadowy, tranquil. He lingered, allowed the peacefulness to penetrate his bones, calm his turbulent spirit, in the way he had learned to do over these many years.
After a short while, he entered the drawing room, and his face changed, lit up, and so lost some of its tightness. He hovered in the doorway.
It was early evening, and the mist was rolling down the Peak. Outside the long wall of window, the sweeping view of Hong Kong, Victoria Harbour and Kowloon across the water was slightly obscured. Familiar images were smudged, indistinct, wrapped in a haze of greyed blues and whites, the colour combination reminding him of the faded glaze on a piece of ancient Chinese porcelain. Ah Qom, the Chinese amah who had looked after him and his home since the beginning, had turned on the silk-shaded carved jade lamps and lighted the fire, and this airy graceful room of perfect proportions was bathed in warm and mellow light. It welcomed him.
Huge overstuffed sofas and chairs, covered in pale blue and lavender and grey Thai silks by Jim Thompson, were balanced by Chinese cabinets, chests, and tables of varying sizes and shapes made of black or dark-red lacquered wood. Wherever he looked, his eyes rested on an object of rare beauty. His possessions were meaningful to him. They gave him great satisfaction, nourished him, helped to restore his mood when he was feeling out of sorts.
He felt this lightening now, and a return to normal, and he moved forward across the antique Chinese silk carpet, sat down on the sofa. He knew that in a moment, Ah Qom’s niece, Mee Seen, would bring his jasmine tea, as she usually did half an hour after he had been home, no matter what time he returned from the office. It was a ritual, as so many things were a ritual here.
This thought had no sooner passed through his head, when the pretty, delicately-formed Chinese girl in her black silk cheongsam came hurrying in with the tray.
Smiling and bowing, she placed it on the low table in front of him.
He thanked her graciously, inclining his head.
Smiling and bowing, she departed.
He poured the fragrant tea into the small, paper-thin porcelain bowl, drank it quickly, poured another, sipped this more slowly, let his mind relax and empty itself of all thoughts. After savouring a third bowl, he placed it on the dark-red lacquer tray, leaned his head against the sofa, and closed his eyes.
Gradually the last shreds of his anger drifted away.
***
He had been half dozing, awakened with a start, when the antique chiming clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour of six.
Sitting up, stretching his long frame, he realized he must go upstairs to shower and change for Lady Susan Sorrell’s dinner party at her house in Recluse Bay.
Immediately pushing himself to his feet, he walked swiftly across the drawing room, but stopped suddenly in front of the long console next to the coromandel screen. The silver-framed photographs arranged there glittered brilliantly in the light from the adjacent lamp. He stared at the photograph of his father, then let his glance wander to the smaller picture of the woman.
His hatred for her had never dimmed. It rose up in him again. Impatiently, he shoved it away. Nothing must impinge on his new-found calmness, or ruin the evening ahead, which he had been anticipating for several days.
He had never intended to keep a photograph of her in his home, where every single object was perfect, chosen by him, the perfectionist, for its very perfection. But his better judgement had triumphed over emotion when he had unexpectedly found the picture amongst a trunk full of old possessions years ago. He had been on the verge of throwing it away when he had recognized its great usefulness.
Hong Kong was a place of status, of keeping face. Both were of paramount importance. And so it did him no harm whatsoever to be known as the grandson of that late great international tycoon, Emma Harte. However, tonight he could not bear to see that diabolical old woman’s face, and he pushed her picture behind the larger one of his father standing outside the Commons. Being the son of Robin Ainsley, respected Labour politician, Member of Parliament and former Cabinet Minister, had done him no harm either. His family ties had made him eminently acceptable, had propelled him into the highest echelons of local society.
Returning to the library, Jonathan Ainsley seated himself at the desk, took a ring of keys from his jacket pocket, opened the bottom drawer. He lifted out the folder marked HARTE’S and opened it, let his eyes scan the top sheet covered with several columns of meticulous figures in his own neat handwriting.
A smile of triumph brought a lift to his mouth, and he chuckled quietly. He generally laughed when he reviewed this list, reminded himself exactly how much stock in the stores he now owned. Harte’s shares were traded on the London Stock Exchange, and for years he had been buying shares through nominees: his Swiss bank and other financial institutions. Today he was a major shareholder in the Harte department store chain, although only he knew this.
Closing the folder, he set it down on the desk, leaned back in the chair, and steepled his fingers, gloating to himself. Paula O’Neill would make a mistake one day. No one was infallible. Not even her. And then he would strike.
Jonathan reached down into the drawer for another folder, this one unidentified, and slipped out a sheaf of papers. They were detailed reports from the London detective agency he had been employing for a number of years.
Since 1971, Jonathan had had his cousin Paula O’Neill watched on a regular basis. Nothing scurrilous about her had ever been turned up, and he had not expected it to be. On the other hand, it suited his purpose to know as much as possible about her and her life, her family, her friends, and any business moves she made.
From time to time, he had had Alexander Barkstone and Emily Harte watched and reported on as well. Like Paula, they were pristine. In any case, he was not particularly interested in them. As long as his cousins continued to run Harte Enterprises on a profitable basis, and he continued to get his large dividend cheque every quarter, that was all that mattered to him. After all, it was Paula O’Neill who was his target.
He glanced at the last report which had come in from the agency in London. It placed her at the Villa Faviola in late August. He supposed that was why he had been so startled to see her in the Clipper Lounge of the Mandarin Hotel earlier. Obviously she was either on her way to Australia, or going back to England from there.
Damn her, he thought. He returned the folders to the drawer, locked it, and hurried out, climbed the stairs to his bedroom, having no wish to become enraged again. Thinking about that bitch made
his blood boil.
He paused on the landing, breathing deeply, cleansing his mind of her infuriating image.
As he went into his room, Jonathan expected to see his valet, and was surprised to find the room empty. Tai Ling was nowhere in sight, although his pleated dress shirt, black tie, and black silk socks had been laid out on the bed. Undoubtedly Tai Ling was downstairs in the laundry, steaming his dinner jacket, and would reappear at any moment. Humming to himself, he strolled over to a Ming chest, emptied his pockets of keys, credit-card wallet and money, and began to undress.
Like the other rooms in his home, the bedroom was furnished in excellent taste, with the emphasis on all things Chinese and unique Oriental objects of art. It was understated, masculine in feeling, a trifle cold and austere, and the women who were brought by him to his bed soon discovered that the ambience reflected something in Jonathan’s nature.
Taking a dark blue Chinese silk robe from the armoire and slipping it on, he went into the adjoining bathroom, wondering who it was that Susan had invited to the dinner party especially to meet him. She had sounded mysterious on the phone the other day, but it was bound to be an interesting woman. Susan knew his taste very well.
He sighed, thinking yet again how much he missed the arrangement they had had for almost a year. It had been purely sexual, a relationship convenient for them both. Although they had also enjoyed each other on an intellectual level, there had been no emotional involvement to spoil things. Just sex and intelligent talk. Perfect, to his way of thinking.
Three months ago, when she had told him her husband was suspicious of her, that they must end their affair, he had believed her, had immediately agreed to do as she wished. He had not realized at the time that there would be such a void in his life when she was no longer available to him. It was not particularly the sex he missed, even though she was very good in bed, since sex was an easy commodity to find anywhere in the world these days. Rather, he missed their conversations, their repartee, their shared English upbringings and backgrounds.
But he had not tried to pursue Susan, or reinstitute the affair. The last thing he wanted was to be cited as corespondent in a messy divorce, or spotlighted as one of the chief players in a nasty little scandal in the Crown Colony. After all, he was a man of great standing here, and it was his home.
He stared at himself in the mirror over the washbasin, ran his hand over his chin. He had risen very early to play squash before a business breakfast at seven, and there was a hint of blond stubble on his chin. The electric razor was handy, and he plugged it in, ran it over his jawline. As he did, he thought of his cousins, Paula O’Neill and Emily Harte, but fleetingly. And with a sudden rush of pride he congratulated himself on all that he had accomplished in eleven years. He had come a long way.
***
When Jonathan Ainsley had alighted in Hong Kong in 1970 he knew at once that he had found his natural habitat and his spiritual home.
The air was full of excitement, mystery, adventure and intrigue. Anything—and everything—seemed possible. Furthermore, he smelled money. Vast amounts of it.
He had come to the Far East licking his wounds, after being ignominiously kicked out of Harte Enterprises, where he had been head of the real estate division. Alexander had fired him; Paula had banished him from the family. And forever after he had blamed her for everything, believing that Alexander did not have the guts to stand up to him without her encouragement and support.
Before he had left England, Jonathan had done three things. He had dissolved his partnership with Sebastian Cross; sold his interest in Stonewall Properties to Sebastian for an excellent price; put his real estate holdings in London and Yorkshire on the block, and had made a tidy profit in the process.
When he had set out on his travels he had had two overriding goals—to amass a great fortune and to wreak revenge on his cousin Paula, whom he loathed.
Jonathan had been attracted to the Eastern world ever since his youth. Its religions, philosophies, and customs fascinated him; he drew aesthetic pleasure from its art, decorative objects and furniture. And so he decided to do a tour of this part of the world before settling in Hong Kong, which he had concluded was the most logical place to set up in business. For the first six weeks of his self-imposed exile, he had wandered around, sightseeing and enjoying being a tourist. He had stopped off in Nepal and Kashmir, gone hunting in Afghanistan, made a leisurely trip through Thailand, before proceeding to Hong Kong.
Before leaving London, he had taken the precaution of collecting letters of introduction from friends in the City and in real estate. Within a few days of arriving at the Mandarin Hotel, he had begun to call on those to whom the letters were addressed. At the end of his second week he had met a dozen or more bankers, businessmen, owners of land and construction companies, as well as a number of wheeler-dealers whom he considered to be dubious and not worth pursuing.
Two of the men he was particularly drawn to were a fellow Englishman and a Chinese. Separately, they had decided to help Jonathan get started, for their own reasons and to suit their own ends, and they were to prove invaluable to him. The Englishman, Martin Easton, was a real estate developer; the Chinese was a highly respected banker by the name of Wan Chin Chiu. Both were highly influential in their own circles, professionally and socially, but it was Jonathan who brought them together.
Exactly four weeks after he had landed at Kai Tak airport, he had set himself up in business. With the help of his new associates he had found small but attractive offices in Central, had hired a small staff consisting of an English secretary, a Chinese expert in land and construction, and a Chinese bookkeeper, and had formed his own company, Janus and Janus Holdings Ltd. In Greek mythology Janus was the god of portals and the patron of beginnings and endings, and Jonathan had selected the name with relish—tongue in cheek—deeming it highly appropriate under the circumstances.
Luck was on his side when he started out in Hong Kong. It was to hold for over a decade.
This extraordinary luck, and the guidance and patronage of his two very powerful friends and backers, were the keys to his immense success. And timing played an important role.
It just so happened that when Jonathan arrived in the Crown Colony in 1970, land and construction were on the upswing. Since his expertise was in real estate, he knew he had accidentally landed on his feet. Shrewd enough to recognize a grand opportunity when he saw it, he plunged into local business with a gambler’s instinct for the main chance, and a certain amount of courage, in that he was risking almost everything he had, plus the money invested in Janus and Janus by Martin Easton and Wan Chin Chiu.
Afterwards he was to realize that he had been unable to throw the dice wrong once. His number always came up.
He made a considerable profit in the first six months, and in 1971, when the really big boom in property and land hit Hong Kong, he was well positioned. Suddenly there was a great deal of activity on the Hang Seng Index, the major index for the Hong Kong Stock Market. Like many others, Jonathan took advantage of the market activity. He cashed in quickly by taking his company public.
His two advisers, who had been guiding him all along, but independently of each other, warned him to start easing off a few months later. He continued to do a considerable amount of wheeling and dealing through the end of 1971 and 1972, but he had reduced his investments in the Hong Kong Stock Market by the beginning of 1973. Wan Chin Chiu, who had his ear to the ground and seemed to know everything, had been more cautionary than Easton, and wisely Jonathan had followed his advice scrupulously.
In any case, he had already made a killing, and was on his way to parlaying those profits into a huge personal fortune. He never looked back from this moment on.
By 1981 he had become a force to be reckoned with in Hong Kong and the world of Far East Asian business. He was a millionaire many times over, owned the skyscraper where his offices were located, the duplex on the Peak, several expensive cars, and a string of thoroughbreds which h
e raced at the Happy Valley race track in Hong Kong.
Some years earlier, he had bought out Martin Easton, who had decided to retire to Switzerland, but he had remained closely associated with Wan Chin Chiu until his death two months ago. Tony Chiu, the American-educated son of the banker, had taken his father’s place, and Jonathan’s association with the bank continued to flourish. His personal outside investments were secure, and Janus and Janus Holdings was rock solid.
Business aside, he was socially prominent, one of the most eligible European bachelors in the community, and considered to be something of a catch. Except that no woman had managed to get anywhere near catching him.
Jonathan sometimes wondered about his own elusiveness, asked himself if he was far too fastidious, too much of a perfectionist when it came to the kind of woman he wanted to marry. Maybe no such woman existed. Yet he had discovered he was unable to alter his disposition.
***
Perfect, Jonathan suddenly thought, remembering the word Susan Sorrell had used to describe the young woman who was to be his dinner partner tonight.
‘She’s just the girl for you, Jonny darling,’ Susan had said, sounding sincere. ‘She’s divine. Simply perfect.’ He had laughed, had pressed for more information, but Susan had merely murmured, ‘No, no, I won’t tell you anything at all. Not even her name. You must wait and see for yourself.’ Well, he would see very shortly.
Now he stepped back from the full length mirror on the door of the armoire, took a last look at himself. He adjusted his bow tie, straightened the black silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his white dinner jacket, and shot down his cuffs.
At thirty-five, Jonathan bore a strong resemblance to his grandfather, Arthur Ainsley, who had been Emma’s second husband. He had inherited Arthur’s blond hair and colouring, his light eyes, his polished, rather refined good looks, and like Arthur he was tall, slender, extremely English in his appearance. If anything, he looked better than he ever had. He had aged well and knew it.
To Be the Best (Harte Family Saga Book 3) Page 24