by Rosie Thomas
Harriet struggled to decipher a subtext from the suave sentences. He knew, of course he knew, but he wasn’t telling her. He left his last sentence delicately in the air, but gave her no doubt that their conversation was at an end. The contrast with the warmth and flattery he had beguiled her with on impact day – seemingly a forgotten aeon ago – was painfully sharp. She might have laughed, if she had not been afraid.
‘Thank you, James,’ Harriet whispered.
She left her office and walked the short distance to Jeremy Crichton’s, bypassing his secretary and interrupting him in the middle of a call.
‘What are you doing, Jeremy? What is this?’
He stared at her, pale eyes behind rimless glasses. ‘I think that’s more properly a matter for discussion at the meeting.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In fifty-five minutes’ time.’
Harriet went back to her office. She knew that she was on her own. The scale of what was happening was only beginning fully to dawn on her, and as she saw it she cursed herself for her blindness and her wilful overconfidence. It was going to be worse than she had feared. It seemed, now she analysed it, as bad as it could be.
It was Robin’s doing. It was only now, after so long, that she perceived it as his revenge on her. She realised that her worst mistake, perhaps her only real mistake, had been to underestimate the clever boy who always got what he wanted. Futile anger and hatred fermented inside her. She tried to suppress her feelings, knowing that they would distort her vision. She was going to need all the clear-sighted logic she could bring to bear.
Harriet waited, in the quiet luxury of her office, through the interminable minutes.
At eleven o’clock exactly she walked through to the board room. She went empty-handed, not knowing what to take with her. She would have to mount her defence and her counterattack off the cuff.
She took her usual place at the end of the table. Karen had been laying out memo pads and water glasses, but at the sight of Harriet she looked frightened and slipped away. Jeremy came in and began to lay out pens and papers in his meticulous way, and Graham Chandler edged in in his wake. Harriet saw his discomfort and spared him more than a surprised glance.
Robin was next. His beautiful dark suit contrasted with the chainstore clothes worn by Jeremy and Graham. His hair and skin possessed a gloss that made the other two look scruffy and stained. He took his place opposite to Harriet and nodded gravely at her. She thought how handsome he looked. In the time they had known each other Robin had lost the last of his boyish softness. He had acquired the polish of maturity.
As she sat, still waiting, Harriet found herself remembering the time they had spent together. She recalled separate nights, isolated hours when they had been close, times when he had told her that he loved her. If she had been different, she reflected, if they had even come together at a different time in their lives, they might have made a team. The irony of the thought, here and now, touched the corners of her mouth with a smile.
She saw that Robin looked at her, with a flicker of doubt in his eyes. If he still loved her, she thought, it was much too late. And he might be handsome but he was also – although she had realised it too late – quite deadly. She met his eyes with a blank gaze and looked quickly away. But the fuel of her anger had died away inside her. She simply felt tired, and anxious for this to be over.
Kath arrived, shown in by Karen. She took her place quickly, looking at Robin for confirmation that she was in the right place at the right time. In the past, at other meetings, it had always been to Harriet that she had directed the silent query. Harriet saw that her mother kept moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue. It showed her anxiety and uncertainty. Harriet braced herself.
Robin began very quietly, looking across the table directly at her.
‘Thank you for coming back from your holiday in Los Angeles to be at this meeting, Harriet. I think you must know that the directors would not have asked it, if it had not been vitally important.’
Harriet inclined her head. Her hands were folded in front of her. She was watching Jeremy Crichton taking the minutes. Usually one of the secretaries sat in on the meeting; this one was too momentous. She realised that she was shaking, and folded her hands more tightly to hide the tremors.
Robin said, ‘Shall we proceed to business?’
The minutes of the last meeting were nodded through; there were no matters arising.
‘Item three,’ Robin continued. ‘Board appointments.’ There was an instant’s stillness before he went on. ‘I think there is no point in disguising the issue. There has been grave concern amongst directors, managers and a proportion of the company’s shareholders about the running of the company and its financial affairs, reaching a peak during the last few days during the present chief executive’s absence on holiday. It is with the longterm health of the company in mind that the directors have reached a majority decision to appoint a new managing director, under whose guidance Peacocks will continue to achieve a pattern of growth that has been temporarily disrupted.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Harriet said flatly.
He only held up his hand to quieten her. ‘You will want to know on what grounds, of course. But I want to stress that the decision has already been taken.’
There was a folder on the table beside him. He opened it now and cleared his throat before he began to read. Harriet despised him for the theatricality of the gesture, but she sat as still as she could, and listened.
It was what she had expected: he was using Winwood as the spearhead of his attack. Her investment in cheaper production for the long term was interpreted as over-extension, and the shortcomings of the unfortunate moulding machine in particular were Harriet’s fault, because she had bought it after inadequate research.
There was truth in that, Harriet knew. She had been over-eager to get Winwood running and earning its expensive keep.
Different accusations centred on overspending in several areas, in particular within Harriet’s favoured marketing department. Robin lightly indicated the new range of packaging that had been intended to lift the sales of Alarm, the cheerful red point-of-sale material that she had chosen at the enjoyable meeting before she left for Los Angeles …
Overspending, Robin said with carefully judged regret, was endemic throughout the company, and Harriet had failed to control it. She was further at fault in introducing and trying to promote too many new products that had failed as yet to meet sales expectations.
Yet how can Peacocks follow an upward growth curve, Harriet wondered, if I don’t introduce new lines?
As she listened Harriet saw the full extent of her own overconfidence, not in her own business acumen because she was quite sure of that, but in her belief that other people would recognise it too. And in her failure to see Robin quite clearly enough.
When Robin had finished, she lifted her head.
‘I can defend my decisions on every single one of those points,’ she said softly.
She had no need of notes. Her head was quite clear now, except for a faint ringing in her ears, the sound of her own alarm. She answered Robin, point for point. Winwood would pay its way, although the turn-round might take a year. The German moulding machine was exactly right for the job it was intended to do, and the purchase had been made in consultation and with the full approval of the technical director.
She looked across the table at Graham Chandler. He was miserable, his eyes showed her the extent of it.
‘That is correct. The malfunctions were unfortunate, and no one could have predicted them. The machine is working perfectly now.’
Harriet understood that Graham was on her side and that he was too weak to count. She looked past him to Jeremy, only half-visible behind the discs of his spectacles. Jeremy was not on her side. And facing the two of them, Kath. Kath, in her blue two-piece, looking at no one. Harriet found it hard to believe that this was her mother. It was just as hard to believe that all of this was happening.
Robin
said, ‘Maybe so. But in the interim the breakdowns have lost twenty-two per cent of forecast production, resulting in a revenue shortfall of one hundred and sixty-eight thousand pounds, translating into a loss of profit …’
It was only figures. Harriet knew that if she had prepared her own version, she could have made it look as bright as Robin made it dark. But she was not prepared, and Robin had been working, adjusting the light on his half-truths and the shade that softened his careful lies.
Harriet went on, mouthing her defence, but she felt the moment’s clarity slipping away from her. Robin had been too clever. She was only shouting as she went down.
She saw a series of images, vivid in her mind’s eye, superimposed on Robin’s watchful face. She saw herself in Simon’s kitchen, taking the packing-case end that he held out to her. And then she saw herself sitting on the stairs at Jane’s house with Charlie Thimbell; and the basement flat in Belsize Park where she had propped the game on the mantelpiece, so that it overlooked the little room while she worked on her business plan in the empty evenings.
Opposite her, across the table, Robin sat while they went on through the dismal catalogue of her supposed failings. At the end they came to Harriet’s laxity in stealing away to Los Angeles.
Robin closed his folder with a well-judged sigh. ‘And in the managing director’s absence on holiday, industrial action at Winwood results in a further loss of production which in turn will lead to …’
‘What industrial action? This is the very first I have heard of it.’
Robin spread his hands, as if to say, Out of your own mouth.
Graham said hastily, ‘They downed tools for two hours yesterday, in protest about the canteen facilities, and there’s a further stoppage planned for this afternoon.’
Robin was behind it, Harriet was as sure as she was certain of everything else. Somehow, he had fixed it with Mick whatever-his-name. Probably with Ray Dunnett as well. He would have wanted to get her at Winwood, in her Achilles heel, and his sense of symmetry led him to wind up his case with Los Angeles, and Caspar, who had supplanted him. There was an inevitable, ironical neatness in it all. Harriet realised the full extent of his determination to finish her.
She faced him, down the table, her hands folded again. ‘And so?’
The images still flickered in front of her. There were the two girls who had come into Stepping, with their bobbing ponytails, playing Conundrum. There was the conductor on the 73 bus, and the precarious glitz of her black-and-white stand at the Earl’s Court Toy Fair, and the moment when her sunburst display collapsed and showered Leo and the two demonstrators and Robin and herself with boxes and shards of polystyrene. An involuntary smile pulled at Harriet’s mouth and she caught her lip between her teeth, because she knew she was on the point of weeping.
Robin gave a tiny gesture, that she could interpret as victorious. ‘And so the directors have asked me to indicate their willingness to accept your resignation from the board of Peacocks.’
‘I see. And if I refuse to resign?’
Kath shifted in her seat but she said nothing.
Robin smiled. It was his moment of triumph, and Harriet could see that it was sweet to him. He smiled sometimes in bed, in just the same way. When he answered his voice was almost caressing. ‘Harriet, I want everything to be quite clear between us. With my supporters I control fifty-two per cent of the company. If you don’t co-operate I will simply call a shareholders’ meeting and oust you, which will be ugly for you and no more than an inconvenience for me. Why don’t we behave like the friends we have been, and make a civilised agreement behind these closed doors?’
The euphemistic we and the directors had gone, Harriet noticed. It was me now, and you, the sordid personal truth of the battle.
‘It would be advisable,’ Jeremy Crichton said.
‘I don’t need your advice. Jeremy, thank you. Tell me, Robin, how you control more than fifty per cent? My holding is twenty-eight per cent and my family has a further twenty as you know, to Landwith’s twenty. Graham has five.’ Harriet smiled at him as she said his name, and saw his relief. Graham couldn’t save her, but he didn’t want her to drown. Harriet knew what Robin was going to say but she wanted to make him say it just the same. She wanted to lay their perfidy in front of them, because it was all she had. Her eyes stung and she found it hard to breathe. She didn’t try any longer to hide the shaking of her hands.
The images she saw now were all triumphant, mocking her in the face of her defeat. She remembered the giddily ascending sales figures after Conundrum became Meizu, the breakfast on impact day when she had swept into the merchant bank as if she were the Queen. She had been wearing the same blue Chanel suit. Harriet looked down into her own lap. She dropped her hands and let them rest there, out of sight. The glint of her big square diamond caught her eye, the diamond that she had bought for herself as one of the rewards of success. It reminded her of Robin’s diamonds, the teardrop necklace and earrings that he had given her, and the words that he had said.
She had underestimated Robin. Her worst, most terrible mistake.
‘Landwith’s twenty, as you say,’ Robin was smiling, ‘Jeremy’s five and the various holdings of a number of institutions, as set out here.’
He held out a slip of paper to her. Like an obedient messenger Jeremy passed it down the length of the boardroom table.
Harriet read the list; it was surprisingly short. From their non-appearance on it she deduced those fund managers that had remained loyal to her. For an instant she was almost heartened, even though she guessed what must be coming next.
‘Another twelve, then. You’re still a long way short of control, Robin.’
His smile showed his teeth, at last. ‘Not if you count in the Trotts’ holding. Their votes take me well past the fifty mark. I’ve got control, Harriet. Face it.’
Slowly, stiffly, Harriet turned her head to Kath. ‘You’ll vote with him?’ she whispered. ‘With him, against me? You would do that, Mum?’
Harriet had never called Kath anything at any of their meetings. She had scrupulously avoided any mention of their relationship. But now she gave the word its full weight. In an echo of Robin’s cheap effects she even repeated it. ‘Mum?’
Kath’s head wobbled a little, so that the loosening flesh on her full cheeks shivered like milk coming to the boil. A dark flush coloured her skin, but she held her chin up.
‘I never liked it, Harriet. I never liked what you did to make this business. You did it at Simon’s expense. You drove him off that bridge, you and your business together. You’ve as good as got his blood on your hands.’
Harriet fended the words off, pushing them aside with an uncontrolled sweep of her arm that sent the blank notepad at her elbow flopping to the floor.
‘I live with that. It isn’t necessary to offer me a reminder. But you’re confused, Mum. You don’t think logically, because you’ve never needed to. You’ve lived your life behind Ken, and before that behind your own determination to keep up appearances. You have to have things nice, don’t you? Well, listen to me. Things aren’t nice. And when you tell me you want to vote me off my own board because you think I’ve got Simon’s blood on me, then I tell you that you’re confusing business with sentiment.’
Harriet took a breath. She looked away from her mother’s dark red face to Robin’s smooth one. ‘You would never have been guilty of mixing business and sentiment, Robin, would you?’
‘I might have been, once,’ he answered her softly.
She saw the last picture, then. It was the day of her pricing meeting. She had gone back to Robin’s office after that meeting, bearing her news. She had felt powerful enough to take over the world, and they had made love, heated by their mutual success. Harriet suppressed the vision, pinching it into blackness behind her eyes, and it was replaced by anger that swept up hotter than any erotic impulses she had ever known.
She swung back on Kath, who seemed to shrink away from her in fear.
Harriet hissed at her. ‘Don’t support him. Don’t you understand? Can’t you see why he wants to do this? What the little-boy reason is behind it all?’
Kath had been turning a pencil in her fingers. It was a Peacocks pencil, one of the kind that the company gave away at toy fairs and trade promotions, decorated with a little peacock’s tail. It snapped in her hands now. She laid the two splintered pieces carefully on the table, beside her notepad. She jerked her chin at Robin, and the loose skin shivered.
‘If you think he’s been working on me, turned my silly head or whatever it is, then you’re wrong. I’ve lived long enough, Harriet, with your explanations and translations and allowances as though I’m a child, or a fool. You mean well, usually. But I can make my own mind up. I have made it up. I’ll vote with him. Not with him, really, but against you. I’m doing it because of Simon.’
Harriet stared mutely at her. She wanted to scream, Stupid. Do you think that unll help Simon? Do you? But she suppressed the impulse. She knew that Kath’s decision was irrevocable, and no amount of screaming would change it. It was a revelation to find such determination within her soft, tremulous, conciliating mother. And even as she recognised it she felt the buried links of inheritance, surprisingly taut. In the midst of her anger at Kath’s ignorant betrayal, she knew that she was like her.
There was no need to ask about Ken. Ken would support his wife, of course, because Kath must not be upset. Harriet gave a grim smile at the thought.
‘And Lisa? What about little Lisa?’
Lisa would vote against Harriet, of course. She would be glad to. It would be her revenge for all the years that Harriet had been older, and cleverer, and quicker, and closer to Kath.
‘Lisa too,’ Robin murmured.
Harriet ignored him. She was still looking at Kath, but she was shaking so much in her anger that the greying fair hair and the blue two-piece seemed to blur into anonymity before her eyes.
‘So it wasn’t enough for Lisa to have my husband. She wants to do it all. Take my company as well.’ Harriet’s voice had started low but now it rose until she was shouting. The room went very still. ‘Not that she’d have had the wit to do it, if I hadn’t been fool enough to hand it to her with a few shares. My company.’