Octavia

by Jilly Cooper

  What could I possibly wear to win over Gareth? He’d said he liked his women gentle, unspoilt and vulnerable. I put on a white dress, bought for Ascot last year, but never worn. It was very garden party, with a full skirt, long sleeves and a ruffled low-cut neckline which showed off my suntan and I hoped made me look innocent and fragile. I had to make a hole in the material to do the belt up tight enough. My eyelids, after a fortnight’s crying, were the only part of me that hadn’t lost weight. I hid them behind tinted spectacles.

  I arrived at Seaford-Brennen’s head office to find everyone in a jittering state of expectancy. Yesterday’s shock over Massingham’s death had given way to excitement over Gareth’s arrival. The secretaries had seen his picture on the financial pages. They knew he was rich, successful, attractive and, most important of all, single. They had all washed their hair and tarted themselves up to the nines. The offices, as I walked through, smelt like Harrods’ scent department; not a paper was out of place. I encountered some hostile stares. Why did I have to come swanning in to steal their thunder?

  The Seaford-Brennen boardroom, with its dove grey carpet, panelled walls and family portraits, was discretion itself. Xander was the only person in there, sitting halfway down the huge polished table, directly beneath the portrait of my father. Their two bored, handsome restless faces were so much alike. Xander was chewing gum, and drawing a rugger player on his pad.

  ‘Hullo angel,’ he said in a slurred voice as I slipped into the seat beside him. ‘The condemned board is still out eating a hearty lunch. This place is in an incredible state of twitch, even the messenger boys are on tranquillizers. Ricky’s already been on to me this morning breathing fire about expenses. You must keep bills. I said I’m already keeping a Pamela, what would I want with a Bill.’

  Oh God, I thought, he’s smashed out of his mind; he must be chewing gum to conceal the whisky fumes.

  ‘What happened after you left me?’ I said.

  ‘I went out and dined, not wisely, but too well, with a friend, and things escalated from there.’

  ‘Did you get to bed?’

  ‘Well not to my own bed, certainly.’ He tried to rest an elbow on the table, but it slid off.

  The door opened and Miss Billings, the senior secretary, came in, fussing around, moving memo pads, straightening pencils. A great waft of Devon violets nearly asphyxiated us.

  ‘You ought to put a bit more Pledge at the top of the table,’ said Xander reprovingly, ‘and I’m rather surprised you haven’t laid on a red carpet and a band playing “Land of my Fathers”. Mr Llewellyn is used to the best of everything you know.’

  Miss Billings clicked her tongue disapprovingly and bustled out, beads flying. Next moment she was back, with Tommy Lloyd, the sales director.

  ‘Do you think we ought to put flowers in the middle of the table?’ she asked.

  ‘A bunch of leeks would be more appropriate,’ said Xander.

  Tommy Lloyd gave him a thin smile. He tolerated Xander but didn’t like him. An Old Wellingtonian with a bristling grey moustache, ramrod straight back, and clipped military voice, he had been in next succession after Massingham. His red-veined nose must be truly out of joint at Gareth’s arrival. He was followed by Peter Hocking, who was in charge of production and just about as inspiring as a flat bottle of tonic, and old Harry Somerville, his false teeth rattling with nerves, who’d been with the firm since he was sixteen, and was still treated by everyone as though he was a messenger boy.

  Gradually the rest of the chairs were taken up by departmental heads, flushed by lunch, who greeted me with a good deal less enthusiasm than usual, a far cry from the fawning sycophancy when my father was alive.

  There was desultory talk of our chances of winning the Test match. Peter Hocking was boring Harry Somerville with a recipe for home-made wine. But on the whole everyone was strangely quiet, and kept glancing at their watches or the door.

  ‘When all else fails, go to Wales,’ said Xander. ‘I feel exactly as though I’m about to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Have you got a cigarette? I seem to have run out.’

  I gave him one and, having opened my bag, took the opportunity to powder my nose and put on some more scent. My hand was shaking so much, I put on far too much. The smell of Miss Dior wafting through the room clashed vilely with the Devon violets.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Xander. ‘At least it will cover up the smell of congealed blood and rotting corpses.’

  He seemed strangely elated. He’d always liked novelty. There were little red patches along his cheekbones.

  The waiting got worse. Everyone’s shirt collars were getting too tight. Miss Billings sat on the right of the top of the table, flicking the elastic band which held back the pages on which she had already taken shorthand that day. We all jumped when the telephone rang.

  Tommy Lloyd answered.

  ‘Downstairs are they? Good. Well no doubt Ricky’ll bring them up. Miss Billings, will you go and meet them at the lift.’

  ‘The enemy are at the gates,’ said Xander, still drawing rugger players on his memo pad. ‘The Barbarian Hoards are coming. I suppose we’d better lie back and enjoy it.’

  There was a spurt of nervous laughter round the room, which died quickly away as the door opened. They came in like the magnificent four, Ricky smirking as though he was carrying a very large bone, followed by Gareth, and a huge, massive-shouldered wrestler of a man in a white suit. Bringing up the rear was Annabel Smith. She was wearing a very simple black suit, and her conker-coloured hair was drawn back in a chignon. The dead silence that followed was a tribute to her beauty. Suddenly I felt silly in my white dress, like a deb who’d been left out in the rain.

  I was so wracked with longing and shyness, it was a second before I could bring myself to look at Gareth. He was wearing a light grey suit, dark blue shirt and tie. I’d never seen him so formally dressed. His heavy face had lost most of its suntan, and looked shadowed and tired. He didn’t glance in my direction.

  Everyone sat down except Ricky, who stood for a minute looking silently round the table, as if counting the house.

  ‘Shall I bring in coffee now?’ said Miss Billings fussily.

  ‘I don’t think we need it, thank you,’ he said. ‘And you needn’t bother to stay either, Miss Billings. Mrs Smith is going to take the minutes.’

  Displaying the same sort of enraged reluctance as a cat shoved out in a rainstorm, Miss Billings was despatched from the room. Any minute I expected her to appear at the window, mewing furiously.

  Ricky cleared his throat.

  ‘Gentlemen, I just want to introduce Mr Llewellyn whom I’m sure you all know by repute. He’s brought with him his right hand man, Mr Morgan,’ — the massive wrestler nodded at us unsmilingly — ‘and his very charming personal assistant, Mrs Smith, who together have been responsible for so much of Mr Llewellyn’s success.’

  Mrs Smith gave everyone the benefit of her pussy-cat smile. Round the table a few faces brightened. Mrs Smith’s legs were a much better reason for staying awake in meetings than Miss Billings’.

  ‘Although Mr Llewellyn has come in at very short notice,’ Ricky went on, ‘as your new’, he paused on the word, ‘overall director, he has, as you know, many other commitments, so we mustn’t expect to monopolize too much of his time. He has, however, been examining the structure of Seaford-Brennen’s for some weeks, and has come up with some very useful suggestions, but nothing for anyone to get alarmed about.’

  ‘What about Hugh Massingham?’ said Xander’s slurred voice. Everyone looked round in horror, as though one of the portraits had spoken. There was an embarrassed pause. Xander went on carefully putting the stripes on a rugger shirt. I didn’t dare look at Gareth.

  ‘I was just coming to that,’ said Ricky, with a slight edge in his voice. ‘I know how upset you must all be over Hugh’s death. As a close personal friend and a colleague for many years, I know how much I’m going to miss him, and how our sympathy goes out to his widow an
d family. I hope as many of you as possible will go to the memorial service on the 5th. In the meantime,’ he said, going into top gear with relief, ‘it was vital to restore public confidence immediately and prevent a further fall on the stock market, so we invited Mr Llewellyn to join the board.’

  To avoid any further interruption from Xander, he hastily started introducing Gareth round the table. Tommy Lloyd shook hands, but was obviously bristling with antagonism, nor did any of the other department heads look particularly friendly. Poor Gareth, he was obviously in for a rough ride. It seemed an eternity before they came to me. I was sure the whole room could hear my heart hammering.

  ‘You know Octavia,’ said Ricky.

  Gareth’s eyes were on me. They were hard and flinty, without trace of the former laughing gypsy wickedness.

  ‘Yes, I know Octavia,’ he said grimly.

  The flinty glance moved on to Xander.

  ‘And this is Octavia’s brother, my son-in-law, Alexander,’ said Ricky, as though he was daring Xander to speak out of turn.

  Xander got to his feet. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said with a polite smile, hiccoughed and sat down.

  ‘Xander!’ thundered Ricky.

  ‘I know that in welcoming Mr Llewellyn,’ said old Harry Somerville, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously, ‘I speak for everyone in saying how pleased we all are.’

  ‘Balls,’ said Xander.

  ‘Xander,’ snapped Ricky, ‘if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head you’d better bugger off.’

  All the same I had a chilling feeling that he was delighted Xander was playing up, so that Gareth could see what provocation he normally had to put up with.

  ‘Well, I think it’s over to you now, Gareth,’ he added, sitting down.

  Gareth got to his feet, still unsmiling, but completely relaxed. For a second he upended a memo pad on the table, swinging it reflectively between finger and thumb, then he looked round like a conductor waiting until he had everyone’s attention.

  ‘I’d like to kick off by examining the structure of the company,’ he said. ‘As Mr Seaford has already indicated, I’ve been studying your outfit for a few weeks, and I’ve come to the conclusion — and I’m going to be brutal — that your whole organization needs to be restructured from top to bottom, and that some people, particularly those at the top, are going to have to pull their fingers out.’

  He then proceeded to launch a blistering attack on Seaford-Brennen’s managerial hierarchy, its distribution of assets, and its work in progress, which left everyone reeling. Tommy Lloyd was looking like an enraged beetroot, the rest of the table as though they were posing for a bad photograph. There was no doubt that Gareth could talk. He had all the Welsh gift of the gab, the eloquence, the magnetism, the soft cadences. You might hate what he said, but you had to listen.

  ‘I called this meeting in the afternoon,’ he went on, ‘because with your track record, I didn’t think you’d all manage to make it in the morning. Half of you seem to feel it’s only worth putting in an hour’s work before going to lunch. One can never get any of you before 10.30 or after 5.00, not to mention the three hours you all spend in the middle of the day, roughing it at the Ritz.’

  Tommy Lloyd’s lips tightened. ‘While we rough it at the Ritz, as you so politely call it,’ he said coldly, ‘most of the company business is done.’

  ‘Not on the evidence of the order books,’ said Gareth. ‘You’ve got to wake up to the fact that the old boy network is dead — all that palsy walsy back-scratching over triple Remy Martins doesn’t count for anything any more, and you’ve got to stand on your own feet too. You’ve got too used to relying on government subsidies or massive loans from the parent company, and when they run out you squeal for more.’ He looked round the table. ‘When did any of you last go to the factory?’ he said, suddenly changing tack.

  There was an embarrassed shuffling silence.

  ‘We’re in frequent telephonic communication,’ said Peter Hocking in his thick voice.

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ said Gareth banging his hand down on the table so loudly that everyone jumped. ‘I know, because I’ve been up to Glasgow, and Coventry and Bradford in the last few days and morale is frightful. No wonder you’re crippled by strikes.’

  ‘You should know, of course,’ said Tommy Lloyd, thoroughly nettled. ‘I was forgetting you’re one of the new establishments without roots or responsibility.’

  ‘Do you think I’ve got 50,000 employees,’ Gareth snapped, ‘without any kind of responsibility? Sure, I did my stint on the factory floor, so I happen to know men work, not just for a pay packet, but because they’re proud of what they produce, and because the people they work for care about them. You lot think as long as you give the staff a gold watch after fifty years’ hard grind, and a booze-up at Christmas, and then forget about them, it’s enough. In my companies,’ he went on, the Welsh accent becoming more pronounced, ‘we tell everyone what’s going on. We have a policy of employee participation. We even have someone from the shop floor in on board meetings. A blueprint of the company’s future is regularly circulated to all staff. It brings them in, makes them feel they belong. Every worker can ask the management a question and feel sure of getting an answer.’

  He was stunning. There is nothing more seductive than seeing the person one loves excelling in a completely unexpected field. I wanted to throw bouquets and shout ‘Bravo’.

  Tommy Lloyd’s lips, however, were curling scornfully.

  ‘Good of you to give us your advice, Mr Llewellyn,’ he said. ‘That kind of Utopian concept may work in the building industry, but I don’t get the impression you know much about engineering. We’ve been running our own show very successfully, you know, for fifty years.’

  ‘That’s the trouble. Seaford-Brennen’s was a first-class family firm, but you’ve been living on your reputation for the last twenty years.’

  ‘We’ve got the finest, most advanced research department in the country,’ said Tommy Lloyd, stung, but still smiling.

  ‘That’s the trouble again,’ said Gareth. ‘Lots of research, and none of it applied. Two months ago I came back from a world trip. The Brush Group and British Electrical were everywhere, you were nowhere. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.’

  Tommy Lloyd picked up a cigar and started paring off the end.

  Gareth turned to Kenny Morgan who handed him a couple of sheets of paper.

  ‘Kenny’s been looking into your books,’ said Gareth.

  ‘He’s no right to,’ said Tommy Lloyd, turning purple.

  ‘He calculates you won’t even make a profit next year, certainly not £8 million as you forecast. That’s a lot of bread.’

  ‘I consider that a gross breach of security,’ said Tommy Lloyd, addressing Ricky directly.

  Ricky ignored him and continued looking at Gareth, who went on softly:

  ‘And if anything, Kenny’s estimate is still too high. All I’m saying is you need help in running your business, and I intend to make it what it’s never been — efficient. You’ve got to face up to international competition: Americans, Germans, Japs, Russians. Last year I saw some industrial complexes in Siberia running at a fraction of our costs. If we’re going to beat the Russians at their own game, there’s no room for companies with a purely domestic market.

  ‘And your domestic figures aren’t very pretty, either,’ he added. ‘You all know they’ve sagged from 15.2 per cent of the home market four years ago to 4 per cent today.’

  He paused, stretching his fingers out on the table, and examining them for a minute.

  ‘Now, what is the solution?’ he said, looking round the table.

  Xander drew the bar across a pair of rugger posts.

  ‘I think we’d all better start practising the goose step,’ he said.

  There was an awful silence. All eyes turned once more on Xander, but this time more with irritation than embarrassment. A muscle was going in Gareth’s cheek.

  ‘When I need
a funny man,’ he said sharply, ‘I’ll hire Morecambe and Wise. Do you personally have the answer to the problem?’

  Xander leaned back for a minute to admire his artwork.

  ‘Well, not right here in my pocket,’ he said, and hiccoughed gently.

  ‘Well shut up then,’ snapped Gareth.

  He got out a packet of cigarettes. Several lighters were raised, but he used his own, inhaling deeply, then said briskly:

  ‘To get you out of the wood, Ricky and I suggest the following measures. To start with Seaford International is going to write off their £15 million loan as a loss, and give you a further £10 million over the next four years for a new model programme, and for modernizing the factories. Secondly, the existing products need more stringent tests. Practically everything you’ve produced recently has been blighted by poor reliability. Thirdly, I intend to re-jig the production operation. It’s got to be speeded up. Waiting lists are so long, buyers have been forced to go elsewhere. I’d like to have the new engines rolling off the assembly by January at the latest. And you’re not producing enough either, so instead of laying off men at Glasgow and Bradford, we’re going to initiate a second shift system. There are enough men up there who need work. Then it’s up to you to sell them. That’s your baby, Tommy.’

  Tommy Lloyd turned puce at the casual use of his Christian name.

  ‘We’ve got to completely re-think the export market too,’ Gareth went on. ‘The appetite in the Middle East and in Africa for your sort of stuff, particularly power stations, should produce thumping big orders.’

  ‘You talk as though we’ve been sitting round since the war doing F. . all,’ said Tommy Lloyd stiffly. ‘Anyone can put up proposals.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Gareth. ‘So let’s get the ball rolling early tomorrow. Over the next fortnight Kenny and I plan to have talks with all of you individually. I won’t be here all the time, but Kenny’s going to put in a four-day week for the moment. Kenny,’ he added, turning and looking at his manager’s battered lugubrious face, ‘I can assure you, is much tougher than he looks.’