‘You spoke to your mother,’ he said. As though he knew for certain that she would have obeyed him.
‘At lunch before I left.’
‘Anyone else there?’
‘No.’
‘Good. What did she say?’
The question he had instructed her to ask: What had Hilary been doing going into the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore less than one week ago?
‘How did you know I had?’
‘Someone mentioned it to me. Are you saying you didn’t?’ Only the new Jennifer would have dared ask that.
Hilary’s tart response: ‘I am not saying that. I was minding my own business. I recommend you do the same.’
‘She admitted she visited the hospital,’ Jennifer said.
‘We knew that already. A journalist friend of mine is working over there. His girlfriend is a staff nurse at the hospital. She spotted your mother, told him and he tipped me off. What I have to know is what she was doing there.’
‘She told me she was visiting the cardiac unit.’
‘Does she have something wrong with her heart?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Would she tell you if she had?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Someone I know mentioned they saw you there so naturally I was concerned.’
‘It was a routine check-up. I have one every year. It’s a sensible precaution when you reach my age.’
‘But everything was all right?’
‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’
‘You are saying it was just a check-up?’ Anthony said.
‘That’s what she claimed,’ Jennifer said.
‘Do you believe her?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why visit a cardiac unit in Singapore just to have a check-up? Why not do it here?’
‘So you think she’s hiding something?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Something serious?’
‘Bound to be. Otherwise why Singapore and not here?’
‘But she seemed all right in herself?’
Jennifer thought. ‘She looked tired,’ she said.
‘She’s just come back from a trip to Asia. You’d expect her to be tired.’
‘I suppose so.’ But was doubtful.
‘Was that all the information you have for me?’
‘One more thing. She said she was checking on equipment she donated to the hospital a year or two ago.’
‘That stuff doesn’t come cheap. Does she make a habit of donating equipment to hospitals?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I was hoping you would have something more definite,’ he said.
‘I asked her what you wanted. I’ve told you what she said. What more do you want?’
‘I want to know whether she’s got anything seriously wrong with her. Whether she’s trying to hide something.’
‘Why should you care?’
‘Because of the share price,’ Anthony said.
‘Explain.’
‘If we knew for certain there was something seriously wrong with her we could make a killing. An absolute killing.’
Jennifer did not understand. ‘How?’
‘Because of how the market would react when it found out.’
‘You want me to ask her whether she really has something seriously wrong?’
‘Of course not!’ Even the thought appalled him. ‘That’s the last thing I want.’
‘But that was what you wanted me to find out. If I ask her –’
‘Surely you can see that was completely different?’ Exasperated nostrils flared as he downed the last of his coffee. ‘Then you were the concerned daughter worried about her mother’s health. She’s told you there’s nothing wrong, right?’
‘Right.’ Dubiously.
‘So if you start pushing her about it she’ll think you’re up to something.’
Jennifer gave him a straight look. She knew now that the only outcome of this meeting was there would be no outcome. She would not think of the hopes she’d had only minutes ago. ‘So you are up to something,’ she said.
He was preoccupied, barely listening to her. ‘I’ll get my mate to talk to his girlfriend again. Maybe she can dig out the old records, find whether your mother was ever in the hospital for anything more serious than a routine check-up. There has to be something,’ he repeated fiercely, his clenched fist tightening on what Jennifer saw was hope. ‘None of it makes sense otherwise.’
‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘Nothing. You’ve done what I asked.’
‘Didn’t help much.’
She hoped he would disagree but he did not. ‘We can’t all be winners,’ he said.
In the taxi taking her back to Ricketts Point Jennifer saw the waters of the bay and the smart houses lined up like grenadiers on the other side of the road, things she had seen a thousand times yet now saw as though for the first time. She had travelled into a strange place; now all her recent thoughts and hopes stood with fingers pointing at her in condemnation.
Betrayal. And for what?
She changed her mind about going home to the empty house where there would be nothing to distract her from her sense of guilt. She leant forwards and spoke to the taxi driver.
‘I’ve changed my mind. Take me to Southlands.’
In the complication of shops and different levels and shoppers all more purposeful than she, she walked for a while, looking and not seeing, stunned by all the things she would have permitted to happen but which had not, torn between regret and relief at the futility of her meeting with Anthony Belloc. She had been right; he had been interested in her only to use her. Now he had no further use for her. Suddenly she was shivering with the aftermath of shock and the coldness of the air-conditioned mall and wrapped her arms around her plump and aging body and wondered in despair whether there would be anything more for her in life.
It was in this mood that Jennifer Lander found the exit and paused and looked at the noticeboard strategically placed in the entrance and saw a notice that took the breath from her lungs, announcing an exhibition of Martin Gulliver’s paintings at the Lansdowne Gallery, off St Kilda Road.
DECISION TIME
1
On the map it wasn’t far from Paddington to Woolloomooloo but with the city in semi-permanent gridlock the journey, especially first thing, seemed to take forever. Fighting her way through Sydney’s early-morning mayhem Sara had plenty of time to think about her mother’s life and how little she knew about it or her.
The horns of vehicles threatened the smoggy air and she saw there had been an accident at a street intersection, a ute and a car with its side panels stove in, two furious men gesticulating. With one lane blocked the incident would make a thousand people later to the office than they would otherwise have been. Two hundred metres further on Sara had to slam on her brakes as some bastard elbowed his way into her lane, missing her by millimetres. Her horn joined the chorus of all the other horns but the fat neck of the other driver showed no concern.
Serve him right if I rammed him, Sara thought.
Hilary had to put up with none of this: a chauffeur-driven car, a chopper when she needed one, the Airbus for the long haul journeys. Pricey, of course, but how delightful if you had the dough.
Hilary was offering her that, with all the other benefits that came with it, but also a burden whose weight she could not begin to imagine. Hilary, starting with nothing, had thrived on it. Wrong, Sara thought. Mother had started without money or position, yes – with blow-all education, either, or so she always claimed – but she’d always been a winner. From the first she’d had the brains, the will and the courage to follow what she had once told Sara was her highway to the stars. It was a neat phrase but was the daughter capable of following where the mother had gone or would she want to create her own highway? Did she really want to enter an environment where one mistake could cost millions?
&nb
sp; Hilary was a walking, talking miracle and where was the percentage in taking over from someone like that? Yet to turn down such a challenge was equally unthinkable. Hilary had paid her the greatest of compliments by believing her capable of assuming the burden and she had a duty to Hilary and herself to prove she was up to the challenge.
She reached the Channel 12 building and drove into the underground parking area: four levels to cater for the people who worked in the fifty-floor building. Two hundred and forty-five metres high, the tallest structure in Sydney. How typical of Hilary that was. Nothing but the best, the highest, the most spectacular would do. In a way it was like a child stacking building blocks one on top of the other. Would she eventually build so high that one misplaced block would bring the rest tumbling down?
No, Sara thought, if that ever happened, which God forbid, it would be a problem for Hilary’s successor. Not the most encouraging of thoughts.
As she took the express lift to the fortieth level she thought about her last words with Emil before leaving him forty minutes earlier.
‘You’ve been on to your agent already? I thought you were still asleep.’
‘No point wasting time.’
‘I haven’t said I’ll do it.’
‘You’ll do it.’
His confidence had exasperated her. ‘You know how I hate being taken for granted?’
‘Of course you’ll do it. All the questions you never had time to ask at our first interview?’ Now he was mocking her. ‘You no longer want to find out the truth about Emil Broussard?’
Of course I do, she thought. That’s the problem.
The lift sighed to a stop. In contrast with yesterday the reception area was quiet although the air was still charged with the suppressed energy endemic to the industry. She went to see Millie Dawlish and found her busy with two assistants, an enormous sheaf of papers and, as always, a tongue willing to lash. She would have done a good job in convict times, Sara thought.
Millie looked up as Sara came in and kicked the two assistants out. She waved to the visitor’s chair on the other side of her desk. Sara sat.
‘Emil Broussard,’ Millie said. ‘What is it with you and him?’
‘We are old friends,’ Sara said.
‘I’ve been asking around,’ Millie said. ‘I gather you were a bit closer than that.’
‘At one time. Not any longer.’
‘Screwing him, were you?’
Vulgarity could sometimes uncover truth but Sara, knowing Millie Dawlish, was ready for vulgarity and only smiled.
‘Have a bust-up?’
‘You could say so. I walked out on him.’
‘Yet now he not only wants to give us an exclusive – a man who’s dodged giving interviews all of his life – but insists he will only do it with you.’
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’
‘Got you back in the sack, has he?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Although it had been closer than she would have believed possible.
Millie had a death glare when she chose to use it. ‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not.’
‘Believe what you want. Don’t you want Channel 12 to have an exclusive interview with one of the world’s top writers?’
‘A Nobel Prize winner? A lot of our viewers would run a mile.’
‘He never won the Nobel.’
‘That’s right. They say he turned it down; is that right?’
‘Maybe that would be one of the things he would be willing to tell us. If we interview him.’
‘If you interview him, you mean. His agent was very clear about that. You would be willing to do it, I take it? Your old mate?’
Sara remembered what Millie had said in her early days at the station. ‘I’m not sure there would be much blood on the carpet.’
‘He’s got to have some shameful secrets, sweetie. We all have those.’
Sara thought: His father…
‘When would all this be happening?’
‘Pretty soon. He wants it as soon as we can draw up the agreement.’
‘Does he have any other terms?’
‘Just that you do it.’
‘You happy with that?’
‘Of course I’m not happy. You’re too close to him for a really objective interview.’
‘Too close to take him apart, you mean?’
Millie’s killer glare was suddenly a killer grin. ‘How well you know me.’
‘Let me know when you’ve made up your mind,’ Sara said.
‘Of course. Now, let’s see what we’ve scheduled for tonight.’
2
As soon as she could escape Sara went into her own office. She sat down and thought. She was keen to do the interview, right enough, but Hilary had said this Hong Kong business was urgent. Go to Hong Kong with Martha Tan and interviewing Emil might well be impossible. And how would Millie react when she discovered Sara was moving on? Because Sara knew that whatever Hilary might say there would be no turning back. It was eerily similar to the situation when Emil had invited her to Hideaway Island. No commitments, he had said, but she had known better and been right.
She sent Hilary a text, asking to see her as soon as possible.
Within minutes she had her answer.
Come now.
Hilary and Desmond Bragg were in conference but Janet had been told to send her in as soon as she arrived.
‘Give us five minutes, Desmond.’
‘Hong Kong,’ Sara said as soon as they were alone.
‘Yes.’
‘You still want me to go?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’ An inconsequential word yet of such significance, committing her to a future that was certain to be traumatic and might conceivably prove beyond her ability to handle. ‘But there is a problem,’ she said.
Hilary’s expression did not change. ‘Which is?’
‘Emil is offering to do an interview with Channel 12 but only if I do it.’
The ghost of a smile. ‘Millie has already told me.’
‘How am I supposed to do both?’
‘Very simple. You go to Hong Kong. When you come back you do the interview. Problem solved.’
‘What if he won’t wait?’
‘I think you’ll find he will. But if he won’t then we miss out. Hong Kong and what you make of it is worth a hundred interviews with Emil Broussard.’
‘To you, perhaps.’
‘And to you.’
‘Are you so all-knowing?’
‘Not at all. But if it hadn’t meant that much to you, you would never have agreed to go.’
It was like trying to hack your way through steel plate with a penknife: there was no way to reach her mother behind the implacable exterior, the woman to whom everything was so simple, so clear.
‘I loved him, you know.’
‘Which makes your courage all the more remarkable. I am thankful you are over it.’
And Sara lost it. ‘There are times I think you’ve never loved anyone in your life.’
‘Then you would be wrong.’ Hilary’s expression softened. She reached across the desk and took Sara’s hand in hers. ‘I don’t want to fight with you. But if you ever sit in this chair you will understand it is a dilemma you have to face every day of your life.’
‘That the company comes first.’
‘No. To balance your duties between the company and those who are dear to you.’
Sara’s eyes smarted, aware if only for a moment that for once in their lives she and her mother had almost succeeded in touching one another.
‘Who is going to tell Millie?’
‘Desmond will take care of that. Channel 12 is his baby.’
‘Does Desmond know?’
‘About you? Of course. I told him as soon as I got your text.’
‘But I could have been planning to tell you I’d decided to stay with Channel 12.’
‘You are too much like me to take the easy choice. You’ve proved that a dozen times over,
even with Broussard. I hated it at the time but now I believe your affair with him was a good thing. You discovered you had the courage to accept the challenge he presented, and the courage to walk away when you saw it was not working. Not many have the strength of purpose to do that.’
‘Like Jennifer?’
‘I wonder. Until this week I would have agreed with you. Now I’m not so sure.’
‘When we saw her the other day she seemed no different to me. Except that she’d been drinking.’
‘Which itself was a change. But there was definitely something. I should know. After all –’ and again the spectral smile ‘– I’ve known her all her life, have I not? And I had the feeling she may be coming to her senses at last. I certainly hope so.’
‘You’ve never liked Davis.’
‘I think Davis Lander is a detestable man. He is arrogant and a bully and, as my mother-in-law said to me once, I rue the day he married my daughter.’
Sara was interested. ‘Did she really say that to you?’
‘Mrs Madigan said it, yes. Jennifer’s grandmother, not yours.’
‘Why?’
‘Lots of reasons. She was fishing, you know.’
‘Mrs Madigan?’
‘Jennifer. She was looking for answers to a number of questions I did not intend to answer. The interesting thing was that she was willing to ask them, which is more than she would have done once.’
‘What questions did she ask?’
But the shutters were up again. ‘Nothing that need concern you at the moment.’
‘I still want to know why you’ve decided to move on when the business has been your life.’
‘Not all my life,’ Hilary said. ‘A major part, I grant you. As to my reasons, I’ll tell you when I’m ready. Or not, as I decide. Now, let us talk about your upcoming work schedule.’
‘I must do tonight’s show.’
‘Of course. Tomorrow morning I have asked Martha to brief you about Hong Kong. Two hours should be ample. She’ll expect you in her office at seven-thirty. Bring an overnight bag and don’t forget your passport: you’ll be going straight to the aircraft from here. Any queries, sort them out with Martha.’
A Woman of Courage Page 17
