Pearls

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘Of course,’ Cathy agreed at once. She spent most of the intervening period with the Prince and Lord Shrewton, listening and watching as they went through the pile of documentation prepared for a consortium which Migatto was forming with one of the Prince’s companies. As her chairman had predicted, she found she liked the Prince. He was direct, unpretentious and carried his wealth lightly; as he systematically explored every area of potential weakness in the proposed deal his patient courtesy never faltered.

  Cathy sensed that the Prince liked her, too; he made sure she was able to follow the discussions by skilfully setting every decision in its context, and asked her opinion with genuine interest on several points. Cathy, who was accustomed to the way most Middle Eastern businessmen simply ignored any woman until she asserted herself, and then fell into confusion when they realized that they had to deal with her, decided that. Prince Hussain was exceptionally astute.

  The following afternoon a sparkling launch took her to meet the Princess aboard the yacht. Tea was served in a spacious salon furnished entirely in subtle off-white shades which somehow took the heat from the burning sun outside. Cathy and the Princess sat facing each other in a pair of deep-sided sofas, with the pale expanse of a silk Persian rug between them.

  ‘Lord Shrewton tells me you are an ambitious woman,’ the Princess began, sipping her tea from a white bone china cup that was almost translucent. ‘Is this not unusual for a woman from your background?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is. But I don’t think I had very many alternatives … I love my work.’

  ‘But you come from a wealthy family, surely?’

  ‘My people were wealthy once, but not any more. When my father died there was nothing left but debts.’

  There was a pause and the Princess carefully put down her teacup, pursing her ripe lips in a momentary pout. ‘I heard something about your father, I think – some … was it …’ she seemed unable to find the words, but Cathy had half a lifetime of experience in setting people at ease on the issue of her father, the Suicide Peer.

  ‘There was a bit of a scandal at the time, perhaps you heard something about that. He committed suicide, you see. Then we found that he’d lost an awful lot of money, which was the reason. In the City in those days people set so much store on names and reputations.’

  The Princess sat back, looking reassured. Cathy had expected that reaction, because she always tried to lighten the atmosphere when she was forced to talk about her father. She shivered slightly. The yacht’s air-conditioning was ferocious and she was wearing only a light blue silk shift from the Valentino wardrobe.

  ‘But it must have been a terrible tragedy in your life. You seem to have come to terms with it very well,’ the Princess prompted Cathy.

  ‘There was nothing else to do but to come to terms with it. I loved my father very much but he was so full of vitality himself that he would never have wanted me to let the shadow of his death hang over me forever.’

  A soft-footed steward in a white uniform came to pour fresh tea. Reflectively, Cathy’s gaze strayed across the glittering water to the hazy horizon beyond the harbour mouth. She was thinking of Daddy more and more, she admitted suddenly to herself. Maybe Monty was right, maybe she was lonely. What welled up in her mind increasingly was the echoing emptiness her father had left in her heart. The intense bond between them, that mixture of care and protectiveness, encouragement, spiritual closeness, the sense that the two of them were in a thrilling conspiracy against the entire world – she would never find it again with any man.

  It had been different to the warm attachment she shared with Monty; the magical element of sexual polarity had been there with her father. Their love had been the synthesis of two opposing life forces, strong, invincible, able, she had felt, to overcome anything. It should have been strong enough to overcome death.

  She shook her head quickly, dismissing the notion that Daddy would have lived if she had loved him more. With the unwavering clarity of vision that was pitiless even towards herself, Cathy recognized that her guilt stemmed from a different source. She had been a mere girl when her father had died. Now she was a woman, and she looked back to him with adult eyes, and recognized that if her father were still living he would have been a man whom she held in slight regard, just as the rest of his business friends had done. She too would have considered him a foolish, charming man of little consequence.

  ‘But you must think of your father sometimes?’ the Princess insisted gently.

  ‘Not very much. I don’t have much time for reflection nowadays,’ Cathy returned at once, unwilling to open her heart to a stranger when, after so many years of pushing her emotions aside, she herself had barely discovered how she really felt.

  The Princess asked her about Jamie of whom, she said, Lord Shrewton often spoke, and Cathy talked about her son freely, with a sense of relief. Eventually she sensed that the Princess was restless, and remembering that her hostess was childless, she switched the conversation to the subject of the resort and the Princess’s future business plans.

  ‘And what about you, what do you see for yourself in the future?’ the older woman asked, crossing her exquisitely modelled legs and rearranging the narrow pleats of her cream silk skirt.

  Cathy looked at her frankly and decided that there might be some percentage in flying a kite. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’m a junior director now and although Migatto have the reputation of being a dynamic outfit it is rare for anyone to make it to senior director under the age of forty. I’m not sure I want to wait that long.’

  A sweetly humorous smile puckered the Princess’s cheeks. ‘But Lord Shrewton thinks very highly of you, he’s told me so …’

  ‘I’ve never known Lord Shrewton act against his own judgement, and he’s got the rest of the group directors to consider. In any case, I think I’d prefer to be independent. In a few years I’d like to put my own team together and set up a financial consultancy.’ Cathy saw that the Princess was absorbing what she said with close attention and was encouraged to continue. ‘I plan to offer comprehensive advice across the whole financial spectrum. I want a base of business clients, but I’d like to specialize in high-profile private clients. My experience has been that the private client, because the volume of business is often small, is neglected by big institutions. I understood that very well when I thought about the tragedy of my father’s death. He wasn’t advised, he was exploited by people who were pretending to advise him, and it’s a common experience among people with substantial personal wealth. No one’s really geared to looking at finance in relation to individuals and their lives. Don’t you agree, Princess?’

  ‘Most certainly,’ the older woman said at once. ‘And when do you plan to make this move?’

  ‘When I’m confident I’ve got the necessary expertise – three or four years, maybe.’

  ‘Well I hope you will pay me the compliment of accepting me as your very first client? I am a wealthy woman in my own right, independently of the Prince, and I always feel as if I’m a nuisance to his people, someone they deal with as a favour to him, that’s all. Promise me that you’ll come to me when you are ready?’

  ‘Of course, I should like that very much indeed.’ Cathy smiled with delight and congratulated herself on a successful sale. She also was really interested in doing business with the Prince, but to deal with a man of such stupendous wealth would be out of the question for a young, unproven consultancy – unless, of course, there were a special reason why she should come to his attention.

  A few moments later the steward announced that the launch was ready to take her back to the shore, and Cathy bade the Princess a warm farewell. She joined Lord Shrewton at the airstrip, and as their plane soared away into the rose-tinted dusk she felt a curious mixture of elation and sadness.

  She had confided her ambition to only two people – to Monty who had inspired her, and to Henry Rose who she hoped would join her. In retrospect, she was surprised that she had opened up so r
eadily to the Princess. She was rich, of course, but she was also more than a little sinister. It was not entirely the kind of involvement Cathy had wanted, even for the sake of a good platform from which to approach the Prince. She was surprised also at the force of the feelings which had been unlocked in that casual conversation. Maybe she had been lulled by the Princess’s thoughtful welcome, maybe softened by the impressive completeness of L’Equipe Kalispera’s conception. Her father would have loved the place, she thought. She would have loved to have gone there with him. A light blanket of sorrow wrapped itself around her as Cathy confronted the enduring pain of her father’s loss.

  When she returned to London things began to happen which made Cathy wonder if it were not already time for her next move. First of all she sat down at a board meeting and listened in open-mouthed astonishment as Nigel Fairwell announced that the Japanese were now buying options as if they were going out of style, a phenomenon for which he smoothly took all the credit.

  ‘Nigel – I did all the selling in Tokyo,’ she protested to him afterwards.

  All he said was, ‘Don’t make a scene, Cathy. You did very well, but it was your first trip to Tokyo after all. Experience counts. You can’t expect the Japs to take much notice of a woman.’

  ‘But they did take notice – if they’re getting into options they must have done. The only man we had any trouble with in the whole week was that barman.’

  Nigel put his heavy hand on her shoulder with a paternal gesture. ‘I’m sorry if that’s your reading of the situation, Cathy. It certainly wasn’t mine, or Maurice’s, I’m sure.’

  Maurice was shortly afterwards made a director, of equal status to Cathy, and given most of her areas of responsibility. She was sent to Geneva for six months to work with the banking subsidiary there, then moved on to New York for another six months where she was given a position in the bank’s research department which was valuable experience for her but quite definitely a demotion.

  The New York posting was doubly traumatic because that autumn Jamie, who was eight years old, was sent away to the boarding preparatory school which would precede his entry to Eton at the age of thirteen. The fact that she could not be with her son at this, his first important life passage, wrenched her emotions unbearably. She felt she had missed most of the golden years of his childhood, and that soon he would be on the threshold of maturity, ready to leave just as she was ready to have him with her.

  She flew back for several weekends to see Jamie, which her colleagues treated as further proof of her lack of commitment. Cathy did not care. Jamie needed her, and as she watched his carefree childishness develop in a matter of weeks into a serious, almost calculating, new wisdom, she did not regret investing in his security for an instant.

  Back in London, Cathy was asked to work with the senior marketing director, taking special responsibility for public relations and administration. She was sent on a management course, a seminar on computer technology and another trip to Japan, this time to examine alternative corporate structures. These assignments were all tangential to the group’s real business and Cathy realized at once that she was being moved sideways.

  ‘Formally speaking, I’m supposed to be preparing a report on ways in which the group can be reorganized to meet the challenges of the future,’ she told Monty, sprawled on her old cream sofa at the end of another slow day. ‘But I know, and so does everybody else, that Migatto isn’t the slightest bit interested in anything except plodding along in the same old way. So what the new job effectively means is that at the ripe old age of thirty I’m being put out to grass.’

  ‘I thought they were all patting each other on the back for having the first woman on the board?’ Monty, Cathy thought, was looking thinner than she ever had in her life, but also rather grey and unhealthy.

  ‘They just stuck me on the top of their crumbling outfit for decoration, like a cherry on a cake. I can see now that that’s the only concession to change they’re going to make. Lord Shrewton’s the only one who can see beyond the end of tomorrow’s lunchtime, but he’s getting old, Monty, and he hasn’t the energy to take them on like he used to.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why he likes having you around? Have you talked to him?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s why he likes having me around. Of course I’ve talked to him, but he’s a chairman, Monty, not a dictator. He needs more than just me to drag that group into the twentieth century. The majority of the group directors aren’t prepared to take me seriously at their level. And I’m not prepared to be shunted round the world, and separated from Jamie, because I’m slightly too famous to be fired without the group getting bad publicity out of it. It’s time for me to move on, Monty.’

  Cathy spent the next six months discreetly sounding out three men who she knew shared her way of thinking, having long discussions with Henry, and getting to know a useful number of financial journalists. She also rewrote most of Migatto’s brochures and planned a new corporate structure which, she judged, would take care of most of the sources of inefficiency in the company and allow the employees to work together with better motivation and communication.

  She presented this plan at another board meeting. ‘What I am proposing,’ she concluded, ‘is a system of network management in which all employees will be expected to participate in decision-making processes as equals. I want to institute a structure which will allow information to circulate from the front line in the dealing room back to the board as freely as possible. At present, half the human potential of this company is frustrated by a bureaucratic, hierarchical structure.’

  ‘But you’re asking for a radical change, a long-term commitment to a new management style,’ Nigel Fairwell protested in tones of shocked disbelief.

  ‘Of course I am,’ she said. ‘At present we’re not growing fast enough and we’re wasting our resources. I think that’s a problem which needs a radical, long-term solution, don’t you?’

  There was an awkward pause and a lot of throat-clearing.

  ‘Should never have sent her to Japan,’ one of the men muttered under his breath.

  The meeting broke up with no commitment other than to read her proposal again. Four or five of the men, including Maurice, went through the dark oak door to the directors’washroom. They came out ten minutes later, laughing together.

  When the minutes of the meeting were circulated, Cathy read with astonishment that the board had voted to reject her proposal.

  ‘You were there,’ she said to Maurice, ‘they decided no such thing. They decided to keep it under consideration.’

  ‘Oh, maybe they decided to turn it down later,’ he said.

  ‘But the meeting was over.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe they talked about it in the john. I don’t remember. You didn’t seriously expect them to go for it, did you?’ She looked at him with dislike; Maurice was getting unbearably self-important. The mere idea of a sprat like him laughing and joining with the rest of the men in flushing six months of her work down the lavatory made her boil with rage.

  ‘I’m never going to get any further at Migatto,’ she said to Monty that evening. ‘Sure, I can run off to Lord Shrewton and whine, but it won’t crack the real problem. They treat me just like they used to treat my father, you know. Like someone of limited capabilities but a certain value, who has to be kidded that they’re of some real consequence. They tolerate me, that’s all.’

  She had a sad meeting with Lord Shrewton, which she deliberately arranged in his office to indicate that from now on, business and family should be separate. She sat opposite him at the enormous Jacobean table which he used instead of a desk and made her proposal.

  ‘I’m very angry,’ she said with calculated weariness. ‘I should resign, I know, but there’ll be a rumpus and the papers will want to know why.’

  ‘And you’ll be severely tempted to tell them, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he put in quickly, amusement glowing behind his spectacles. ‘That would never do, would it?’

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sp; ‘I see you’re way ahead of me,’ she smiled.

  ‘Damn shame. You’re the best man among them if you want my opinion. I’ve been very pleased with our association. What shall we do, then? Let you go with a decent pay-off? I suppose you’ve another job lined up. Headhunter taken you up to a high place and showed you the world?’

  ‘Not exactly – Henry and I want to set up on our own.’

  ‘Pinch all Migatto’s business, I suppose. Serve us right.’ Her chairman now looked thoroughly pleased with himself, as if her cleverness was entirely to his own credit. ‘What sort of figure did you have in mind?’

  She told him, and he agreed it after a token show of hesitation.

  In addition to her handshake from Migatto, Cathy funded her company with a loan from Henry’s bank and mortgages raised on her apartment and his house. They wanted offices which were equipped with the most modern technology, knowing that the faster they could get information and react to it, the more effective they would be. They also needed a full complement of staff from the outset. Their clients would soon take their business elsewhere if there was any delay in processing instructions or drawing contracts.

  Henry found the Pall Mall office, which he had redecorated in a severe modern style. The scheme was black and white, with classic, Italian leather chairs, big black leather sofas, black marble tables and a vivid abstract painting which Cathy privately disliked.

  ‘I can see what you’re thinking,’ he said as she helped him to hang the vast canvas. ‘You’re thinking we ought to have a nice set of sporting prints or maybe a few ancestral portraits. Shame on you. This company’s a tough, fast-moving outfit geared for the twenty-first century, and I’m not having any gentlemanly British junk around the place.’

  Princess Ayeshah was true to her word, and within a week of Cathy’s approach switched a portfolio of several million francs to the company. She did not, however, achieve her ambition to be CBC’s first private client. That privilege was claimed by Heinz Feuer, whose portfolio was even larger than the Princess’s, though the Zurich bank who had invested it had done so much more cautiously than the Geneva firm which the Princess had patronized. He also sent Cathy a huge bouquet of lilies, highly scented trumpets with fantastically curled tips and crimson spots on the creamy petals blending to dark red throats.