by Rosie Thomas
There were stringent requirements. As she had been aware, Harriet would have to appoint an accountant to work with her. Martin suggested that she should get the best possible, and arrange for him to meet Robin. It was a condition of the agreement that she should also appoint a technical director who would assume responsibility for production, and leave Harriet free to devote herself to marketing, sales and promotion.
‘I can do both,’ Harriet said. She didn’t want any part of this, her new baby, to be embraced by an outsider.
‘I don’t think so,’ Martin disagreed. Harriet glanced at Robin, then accepted the condition. She would find someone else to deal with Mr Jepson and Midland Plastics. Then, drawing a thin folder towards him, Martin outlined the bones of what was to become their deal.
Landwith Associates agreed to invest the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds in Peacocks, for the manufacture and sale of the game Conundrum.
And in return …
Harriet sat without moving, listening with every fibre of herself. In return for their investment, Landwith Associates would control thirty-five per cent of the company and Robin Landwith would assume a seat on the board. Harriet would also take thirty-five per cent, and the balance would be divided between key staff and other directors. The accountant and technical expert would also have seats on the board, and a fifth director might be nominated by Harriet. Martin raised her eyebrows at her.
She thought of Simon, but she knew at once that he would recoil even from the suggestion. Then she remembered Kath timidly watching the business on the Conundrum stand.
‘My mother,’ Harriet said immediately.
Martin nodded. ‘Ten per cent for staff members, the remainder for family investment.’
His silky manner lulled her. Harriet moved to sit on the edge of her chair.
‘At flotation, or vesting date in say three years’ time, the company’s performance will be analysed in the light of your business plan. The proportion of our participating preferred stock in relation to your own holding will be adjusted accordingly.’
If I do well, Harriet translated, I get a bigger percentage of the company. If I don’t, Landwiths take more. It required no great effort to assimilate the terms offered, but Harriet drew her note pad towards her, seemed to give them due consideration. She was unafraid of the scale of it all. It even gave her added confidence. If the Landwiths believed in her to such an extent, she reasoned, she could match the faith with her own, and more. Given their investment, she would create the upside for Peacocks.
‘That seems quite straightforward,’ she said calmly.
She looked at Robin again. His hands were folded on the partner’s desk, and he smiled at her. Robin would be her co-director, not his father. Harriet was aware of invisible threads criss-crossing between herself and the two men. If her attention had not been fully engaged by the business between them, she might have wondered which way they led, and where they would tauten when the time came.
Martin turned a page of his notes. There was much more, of course, but Harriet had accepted the essentials. There had never been any question but that she would accept.
At the end of the deftly-steered meeting, it was Martin who stood up to shake her hand. There had been no signatures yet, the documents and those would come later. But they shook hands; they had struck their deal. Robin gathered up his papers and retreated to his own office. It seemed to Harriet inconceivable at that moment that he had kissed her, let alone that she had been disarmed by his tenderness.
Martin watched his son leave the room. Then he walked with Harriet to the head of the stairs and stood under the gloomy, significant pictures.
‘We shall work well together. I have great hopes for Peacocks,’ Martin Landwith said. His speech was formal, but Harriet saw his oblique, appraising glance again. He was weighing her appeal once more. She was being looked over and deliberated upon.
Then he said, ‘You will be working directly with Robin, of course. This is his project, and he has argued very eloquently for it. But you should also know that I am always available, if I am needed.’
And she was being handed over, Harriet understood. Perhaps not her physical self, and Robin had already managed to touch that for himself, but her acumen. Her potential upside. The father was bestowing her on the son, as she had no doubts he had bestowed other benefits, and strictures, for the whole of Robin’s life. Briefly, wickedly, Harriet allowed herself to imagine it. There would have been toys and bicycles and horses and finally cars; there would have been treats and travel and skiing, tennis and cricket coaching, and expensive education. In return, because there would always be such an equation for Martin, Robin would have been expected to work hard, to behave well, and to shine where his father put down his money. To bring home the school prizes. And he was still expected to do, although the prizes were different, and might even be seen to include whatever she herself could come up with.
Poor Robin, Harriet thought, and the corners of her mouth drew into a small smile. She held her head up, looking straight at Martin. She was realistic enough not to mind the idea of herself as a commodity, to be bestowed and accepted. She had not minded, either, the skilful sexual summing-up that Martin had seemed to subject her to on her first visit.
If I have to do that for Conundrum, she had thought, then I will.
There would be no need for it, she saw now. The possibility had been dismissed, whether or not it was directly in favour of the son. Only there was no suggestive kindling of Martin’s dark brown eyes as they shook hands for the last time. Harriet felt a cobweb brush of regret. Martin Landwith was extremely attractive. What, she wondered, of Mrs Landwith, wife and mother?
‘Thank you,’ Harriet said coolly, giving none of her speculations away. ‘I’m sure we shall have a successful partnership.’
Outside once more, where the sense of stepping from expensive seclusion into the struggle of reality was as strong as it had been the first time, it struck Harriet that she ought to be celebrating.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon, the low-point of the day. The thin, greenish light in the sky showed that the cosiness of early winter darkness would soon give way to the intrusive pallor of spring evenings. Harriet thought of her friends. She imagined Jane in the thick of a smoky staff-meeting and Jenny in her office shadowed by heaps of manuscripts and proofs. Charlie would be on the telephone, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Karen would be checking the till at Stepping, getting ready to turn off the lights and lock up for the night. Harriet didn’t feel that she fitted into any of these bright pictures, not tonight.
She went to collect her car, and then she drove across London to Sunderland Avenue. As it always did, the drive through the intricate grid of the city soothed her. She left the Peugeot, engine running, outside the off-licence on the corner nearest to Sunderland Avenue. She ran in and scooped two bottles of Moët et Chandon out of the chiller cabinet. When she reached home she carried them under her arm through the baby-blue gates to the storm porch. The light came on over her head as soon as she rang the bell.
‘Harriet! Ken, love, it’s Harriet. Is everything all right?’
Harriet put her arms round her mother, laughing and bumping awkwardly with her burden of champagne.
‘Everything’s fine. Everything’s wonderful. I’ve come with some news that I want you to celebrate, and I want to make a proposal as well.’
Harriet swept them into the kitchen where Ken had been sitting in his overalls, reading the newspaper.
‘I can’t drink champagne dressed like this,’ he protested.
‘Drink it anyway,’ Harriet ordered, pouring out.
She felt euphoric, temporarily released from the weight of worry. ‘A toast, Mum, Ken. To Peacocks.’ She jerked her arm up, and silvery froth from the glass ran down over her fingers.
‘To Peacocks,’ they echoed her.
‘You’ve done it, then?’ Ken asked. ‘You’ve got the money?’
‘I have.’ Harriet c
ould have embraced the kitchen – pine and laminate and flowered mugs – the tree of heaven beyond the window, the whole world in her happiness.
Ken drank, unconcernedly smacking his lips, but Kath only fingered her glass. Her eyes were fixed on Harriet.
‘It’s a big commitment for you. Just for a game, like that.’
‘Not just one game. There’ll be others, once I’ve launched this one successfully. I’ll be expanding, making a whole empire. The sky’s the limit, as they say.’
‘Tell us the whole story,’ Ken said, adopting his shrewd expression that indicated he was the head of a business himself, and understood such matters.
Harriet explained the Landwiths’ proposals. ‘They put up a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and take an initial thirty-five per cent of the company. I have an equal holding, for a token investment of twenty thousand pounds.’
That had been one of Martin Landwith’s final stipulations. It was a sort of gesture of faith, a mere token, Martin had suggested.
Harriet had spent almost every penny she had in getting Conundrum to the Toy Fair. She had still looked Martin Landwith straight in the eye.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I can do that.’
‘I’m going to sell Stepping,’ she told Kath and Ken now. ‘It’s the best way to raise the money. And I can pay back your loan, Ken.’
They were both horrified. Kath gasped, ‘You can’t. Not after all your work. You’ll have nothing.’
Harriet was prepared for their response. She smiled reassuringly. ‘I can. I must repay Ken before I take on new commitments. I can put the rest of the money into Peacocks, and have a little left over to live on until the new business starts to pay. It’s a good thing; Stepping is worth something now, and I couldn’t have run it properly at the same time as trying to launch this. Everything will be all right, I promise it will.’
She was repeating herself, trying to convince Kath, who only shook her head. Harriet understood that fancy titles and big talk of shareholdings were one thing, and real customers and proper takings were another, altogether better thing in Kath’s view.
‘You’ve got no proper home, and now no proper job either.’ No husband to look after you, Harriet filled in for her. Kath had the security of Ken and his ideal home; she had suffered for long enough without either, it was natural she should want the same safety for her daughter.
Gently, Harriet stroked her mother’s shoulder, looking down at the pewter threads in her hair. She remembered the young girl’s face that she had seen peeping out at her through Kath’s older features.
She felt none of Kath’s fears, not at this moment. She knew that she was poised up on high, with vertiginously steep cliffs falling away on either side of her, but she felt the firm rock of a ridge under her feet, and she was sure that she could tread safely along it. The certainty was exhilarating. She did have a real job ahead of her, whatever Kath thought; she didn’t need a home, or a husband.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I haven’t finished telling you yet. I want to repay Ken for a good reason. Eighty per cent of the new company will be owned by me, the staff and the venture capitalists. That leaves twenty per cent for other investors. If you and Mum want to invest in me all over again, Ken, I’d be very pleased. And if you agree, Mum, I want you to be on the board. You’ll be one of five directors.’
Kath went pink. ‘Me, a company director?’
But Ken only leaned forward, resting his hands palms down on the table-top with the glass of champagne disregarded between them.
‘I don’t know, love,’ he said bluntly. ‘Bricks and mortar make good sense, always have done. Some game and a lot of percentages up in the air is different.’
Kath looked quickly up at him. ‘Ken,’ she implored.
‘It’s all right,’ Harriet put in.
‘Now just wait, both of you. Harriet’s done well in her little shop, and I’m glad of the return on that investment, don’t get me wrong. But I know business, and I’m not keen on this new idea. Just how much cash are you talking about, Harriet?’
‘Ten thousand pounds.’ Martin Landwith had suggested that it would be an appropriate investment from family shareholders.
Ken pulled down the corners of his mouth and shook his head. ‘Too much to put into a mad idea.’
‘Landwith Associates are prepared to put up twelve times that much,’ Harriet pointed out stiffly. Ken’s outright refusal annoyed her, even though she had decided beforehand to accept cheerfully whatever decision he made.
‘They’re welcome. But I’m not a sheep to follow their lead, am I?’
‘Ken, let me speak.’ The pink flush in Kath’s cheeks had concentrated in two spots, high up on her cheekbones. ‘I’ll help her myself. If Harriet believes in this new business, and she wants me to be part of it, then I want it as well.’ She turned to Harriet. ‘I’ve got some money put by. There’s what your Aunt Dorothy left me that I’ve never used, and some I’ve added over the years. I’ll give you your ten thousand.’
She glanced sideways at Ken. It was rare for Kath to oppose him, and she was as apprehensive as she was determined on Harriet’s behalf.
Harriet was reminded of Jane’s offer. She thought with a touch of wryness that she was willing to risk her mother’s money where she had refused her friend’s. But Kath had her husband to look after her and Jane was alone.
To Kath’s evident relief, Ken only slapped his hands down on the table-top. ‘It’s your money. I’m not going to argue with you. If you want to pour it down the drain, Kath, it’s your own affair.’ And then he winked at Harriet. He had taken his stand, she thought, and now he was prepared to be magnanimous. She also knew that ten thousand pounds was not such a very big sum to her prosperous stepfather.
‘You won’t be pouring it down the drain,’ she said clearly. ‘I promise you. It’s a good investment. But thank you, Mum. Thank you for your faith in me.’
A little faintly, as if shocked by what she had promised, Kath said, ‘I’d like to do it for Simon, too, in a way. What about Simon, Harriet?’
‘He won’t take anything now. There isn’t anything to take, yet. I’ll see that he gets a fair share when the time comes.’
‘I know you’ll do what’s right,’ Kath pronounced.
‘So. I propose ten per cent for you, Mum, and five each for Ken and Lisa. If you want to count them in, of course.’
Kath looked pleased. ‘Of course I do. I’d like that.’
Harriet held out her hand. ‘Deal.’
They shook hands, the three of them. ‘Drink your champagne,’ Harriet ordered. ‘This is supposed to be a celebration.’
They saved the second bottle of champagne for Lisa’s arrival. She came in a little later, irritable with her day’s work and the rush hour, sulkily pretty in a bright pink padded jacket. Her eyes went straight to the bottle and glasses.
‘What’s going on, Mum? Have you won the pools?’
‘Harriet’s landed her big loan for starting the new business.’ Kath’s expression was a cocktail of sensibilities. She was proud of Harriet as well as anxious for her, but she was ever-conscious of the long-standing rivalry between her daughters and would never over-praise one to the other. She was also eager for everything to be nice, as she always vaguely put it to herself. There must be no quarrels, tonight or ever, if only that could be possible. As she watched her mother’s small internal battle Harriet was exasperated by her, and loved her very much for it.
‘That does call for a drink.’ Lisa held her glass out to be filled.
‘We’re all going to be shareholders. Isn’t that smart?’
Lisa raised her eyebrows at her sister and Harriet explained the arrangements.
‘For me?’ Lisa crowed. ‘I’m going to be a rotten capitalist at last?’
‘Thanks to Mum. But you won’t be able to get your clothes at cost from Stepping any more.’
Lisa looked at her, ‘Good luck. Good luck to all of us. Tell you what, shall I make a spec
ial dinner? Are you staying?’
Harriet had inherited her lack of enthusiasm for the kitchen from Kath. Ken and Lisa were the cooks.
‘Just for this evening.’ No encroachment beyond that on Lisa’s territory. ‘I’d love some dinner.’
Lisa cheerfully rattled and sang over the stove, and Harriet laid the circular pine table in the dining room. Kath found new pink candles in a drawer and stuck them into glass candlesticks, and Ken came downstairs in a clean shirt and a green cardigan with leather-covered buttons.
The candlelight was warm and flattering, and they were a family around the table when they sat down to eat.
After the meal Kath held up her hand, preparing to say something important. The other three, after some good-humoured protests, fell obediently into quietness.
‘I just want to say, Harriet, that whatever happens – don’t interrupt me – whatever happens, and I’m not as clever as you so I can’t predict what that will be, whatever it is I want you to know that we’re all on your side. We’re all behind you, Ken, Lisa, aren’t we? If there’s anything we can do to help you, love, you only have to ask us.’
And Ken lifted his glass, charged now with celebratory Niersteiner Gutes Domtal from his own cellar, and bellowed ‘Here’s to it, love. I’m all for what Kath says.’
‘And me.’ Lisa’s eyes were bright, and her pink lipstick exactly matched the swaying pink plastic bobbles of her earrings. They drank, Trotts and Peacock, undifferentiated.
‘Thank you,’ Harriet said simply.
She was lucky, she reflected. She had friends and family, and no need of anything else.
Spring came. It was a wet, cold spring, but it might have been sub-tropical for all Harriet noticed.
She sold her interest in Stepping, repaid Ken’s loan and deposited twenty thousand pounds in the Peacocks’ account. The money from Landwith Associates was credited to the same account, and Kath’s with it. Harriet and Robin officially became business associates. She appointed a partner in a firm of high-powered accountants to the board, on Martin’s personal recommendation, and employed a technical expert from the toy industry to work for her on a part-time basis. The expert, whose name was Graham Chandler, took on Mr Jepson and won hands down. Tooling up was completed, and Conundrum went into production. Landwith capital flowed out of the Peacocks account as fast as blood from a severed artery.