Gradually the accounts in the big stores were closed down; the successful, clever girls, like Marjorie were moved on to smaller, less glamorous establishments, the less fortunate dismissed. Countrywide there were now only twenty-eight department stores with Farrell counters – and only a handful of them, Marjorie knew, justified their space. She was no fool; she had spent her life in the cosmetic business, and she knew that in spite of its fluffy image, its heart was as hard as nails. It was big business; and big business had to pay. As one of the gay make-up artists – there seemed to be more and more of them, these days – who did events at Rolfe’s said to her over several very jolly glasses of wine, ‘Marjorie, darling, it don’t mean a thing if it don’t go ker-ching!’ Ker-ching being, of course, the music of the till.
Rolfe’s did not do badly; she had a loyal clientele who had always used Farrell products, but sometimes she read of the millions of pounds annually turned over in the top stores and felt quite sick and anxious because she was the family breadwinner. When Marjorie walked out of the house in the morning she left behind her a husband who hadn’t worked for fifteen years; he had been a scaffolder in his youth, a handsome young man called Terry, who had won Marjorie’s heart, and for a time they had been a rather dashing young pair, with what looked like a very promising life before them. Then a horrible fall had crushed his spine and left him in a wheelchair. His disability allowance was smaller than ever thanks to ‘the cuts’, and they were fairly strapped for cash, as Terry put it. Marjorie’s income was essential: without it, she had absolutely no idea what they would do.
Patrick looked round the incredibly cool bar Jonjo had brought him to, all glass and mirrors and black and white. He’d ordered a gin and tonic, which Jonjo had clearly found quite amusing, and was listening to Jonjo telling him about his new job. As usual, he didn’t really understand much of what he was saying. He’d googled the company Jonjo now worked for which was called MPR, and learned that it provided brokerage services, trade execution trading platforms and other software products, and that its revenue in 2010 had been 702 million dollars – which he more or less understood. Jonjo was a foreign exchange trader.
‘We’ve got some very blue chip companies,’ Jonjo said now. ‘It’s high pressure, of course, but it’s a genius set-up, all the guys on the desks are really cool, so good to work with. I’m having a great time. How about you?’
‘Oh – you know,’ said Patrick, deliberately vague, ‘more of the same, really.’
‘Yeah?’ Jonjo looked at Patrick rather intently. ‘You still enjoying it?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Patrick, trying to sound convincing. ‘I mean, it’s nothing to get really excited about, but I have a lot of good clients, my colleagues are great, and I more or less write my own job spec.’ He wished it sounded just slightly more exciting.
‘Yeah, well I suppose you would. It’ll be yours one day.’
‘Possibly,’ said Patrick primly.
‘Oh, P, come on, you know it will – it’s a family firm and you’re the only one of your generation. Anyway, that kind of brings me round to what I want to talk to you about.’ He hesitated, looking mildly embarrassed; Patrick was intrigued.
‘Well, come on, spit it out. You don’t want me to cover up for some woman do you?’
‘Patrick! Would I?’
‘Yes,’ said Patrick and grinned at him. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘I know, but I’m not married any more. God, which reminds me. I can’t be much longer. I’ve got a hot date with a sculptor.’
‘A sculptor?’ Patrick struggled not to sound astonished.
‘Yeah. Thinking of buying one of her – er – what are they called?’
‘I could make any amount of suggestions,’ said Patrick, with a grin, ‘but the word I think you’re looking for is pieces. What are her . . . pieces like, then?’
‘Oh lord, no idea. Bronze, I think she said. A good investment anyway. Want to come along? It’s the private view. Quite fun. Cork Street.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Patrick, and it was true: he rather liked private views with their heady blend of attractive people and pretentious chatter, ‘but I can’t. I’ve got a hot date with a history project.’
‘Yeah?’ Jonjo’s expression veered between boredom and – what? Sympathy? It depressed Patrick.
‘Come on, then,’ he said, ‘you’d better tell me what this proposition is. I don’t want to keep you from your sculptor’s pieces.’
‘Right,’ said Jonjo. ‘Now, I don’t know if you’d ever even consider it. But, well, it goes like this . . .’
‘Bertie, I think we should move.’ Priscilla Farrell’s deceptively good-natured face wore its most determined expression. ‘This house is too big for us now, with the children both away most of the time, and I never wanted to live out here, it was purely for their benefit.’
She made it sound as if Esher was the Outer Hebrides.
‘And mine,’ said Bertie carefully. ‘I like it here, very much. And I have to do the commute, after all.’
‘But look at the performance every time we want to go to the theatre or a concert, for instance. Do we take the car, where shall we park? When I look at people like Margaret and Dick, just walking into the Barbican – so much easier. And I’ve just taken on this new charity, it’s London based and I shall be forever on the train—’
‘Priscilla, I really don’t want to move,’ said Bertie, trying to sound decisive. ‘There’s enough upheaval in our lives at the moment, with Farrell’s being taken over, and God knows what will happen – I could be out of a job for starters.’
‘You’re the financial director! Of course you won’t be out of a job. I talked to Athina about it and she said all your positions would be absolutely unchanged, that you’d still got your majority share—’
‘I don’t think anything will remain unchanged,’ said Bertie. ‘These deals don’t allow for it.’
‘Well, I’d back your mother against a venture capitalist any day of the week,’ said Priscilla. ‘And anyway, if you’re right and you might be in a less certain position, all the more reason to move now, into something smaller and cheaper, rather than later on in a panic. I really think a flat at the Barbican would suit us very well and I thought you’d like the idea.’
‘Did you really? I can’t think why. And what about the children, where are they supposed to live in the holidays?’
‘Oh – we can get one with two or three bedrooms.’
‘Which will cost as much as this house. Priscilla, I love it here. And I love the garden – you know what it means to me. What would I have at the Barbican? A window box at best.’
‘You can grow herbs in window boxes,’ said Priscilla, swinging as always into a well-informed attack. ‘I was reading about it in the Sunday Times only last weekend. Or flowers, of course; whatever you like. Anyway, I’ve asked some of the local agents to come and do a valuation, but as a rough guide we should get at least three million for this house. Which, if you are going to be out of a job, will come in pretty useful. Bertie, I really want you to give it some serious consideration.’
‘I will consider it,’ said Bertie. ‘Of course. Now I’m going to go outside and have my gin and tonic on the terrace. Such a lovely evening.’
Bertie fixed himself a very strong gin and tonic and went out into the lovely March dusk. It had been an incredible spring, with temperatures at a record level, and the garden was thick with birdsong, the great clumps of daffodils he had planted years ago seeming to shine through the half-light. The magnolia tree was heavy with its hundreds of pink candles, the camellia studded with white stars, and he felt, as he always did on such occasions, the garden enfolding him, soothing his ever-present sense of anxiety. Esher might be laughably suburban to the metropolitan dwellers; to him it meant peace, the place where all was right with the world.
Priscilla’s desire to move was intensely worrying. She was so very good at getting her own way.
As
was his mother. For the two of them, negotiations could only mean one thing: winning.
‘Mr Russell, no.’ Athina’s voice was icy. ‘It’s unthinkable. We cannot run the House of Farrell from an office in some squalid area in South London. I can’t believe you’re even suggesting it. It would seem to indicate a complete lack of grasp of the cosmetic industry. We need to be in the West End. Revlon are in Brook Street, Lauder in Grosvenor Street. Are you really suggesting the House of Farrell has an address in Putney?’
‘Lady Farrell, Putney is not squalid. It’s extremely pleasant. Boots are there, in—’
‘Boots!’ Athina’s voice would have withered a row of vines. ‘Well, there you are. That makes my point.’
‘In magnificent offices on the river,’ Mike continued, without drawing breath, ‘probably at a fraction of the cost we are paying in Cavendish Street. I’m sorry, Lady Farrell, but you have to think about it. You can’t afford not to. Looking at alternative office sites was agreed in the Head of Terms – and I intend to put into the contract that when your lease expires, in January 2014, there will be no question of renewing because the rent will probably quadruple then. As will the rates. You’ve been very fortunate to have it for so long at the level you do. Now, I would also like to propose we dispense with your personal chauffeur—’
‘Out of the question! Colin Peterson has driven us for thirty years. There is no way I am going to tell him he is out of a job.’
‘Well, that is your prerogative, Lady Farrell, but I’m afraid you will have to pay him yourself.’
‘But Mr Russell, not only has Colin Peterson worked for us all his life, his father did so before him. What do you suggest I say to him? That he has to go on the dole?’
‘You won’t have to say anything, Lady Farrell: we will of course negotiate with Mr Peterson. It may be that he can come up with some proposal himself. But the current situation is financially untenable. I’m sorry.’
‘And do I understand that I am now to pay rent on my flat? A property owned by the company?’
‘I’m afraid so, Lady Farrell.’
‘I think that is probably the most outrageous of all your proposals.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. But you see, what is happening now is against current tax laws. It’s forming a tax-free component of your income. And that is simply wrong.’
‘But Bernard Whittle has always said it was perfectly ethical.’
‘Lady Farrell, this is not the first time that I have found Mr Whittle to be under some very erroneous impressions. Now, either you must pay rent for the apartment, or it must be set as a taxable benefit against your income. One or the other. I’m sorry.’
Athina was perfectly sure that he was not sorry at all. She drew herself up as she asked her next question.
‘And what is this about a new chairman? I’ve spoken to Walter Pemberton and the rest of the family and none of us recollect any such suggestion being mooted. I am the chair of this company and intend to remain so.’
‘Lady Farrell, the chairman will be a non-executive position. That is to say, he will not have shares in the company, he will only be in attendance two days a month, let us say, and he will certainly have experience of the cosmetic industry, so he’ll know what he’s talking about—’
‘Are you suggesting I don’t?’
‘No, no of course not. No one understands the industry better than you. But we need someone to run the board.’
‘I don’t understand you. Run the board in what way?’
‘Primarily at board meetings. Which, as you will remember, will be held monthly. He will control the agenda, the debate at the table and so on. The official jargon is that he will force structure, compliance and good governance on the board.’
She looked at him witheringly. ‘It sounds to me rather insulting to suggest that we need such – such discipline.’
And so it went on, day after painful day, with what seemed to Athina endless concessions; she was exhausted by it, not just the actual discussions but the emotional strain, as she felt the control of Farrell’s slip irreversibly away from her.
They were painful and desolate, those days; and more than once she considered sending them on their way, her tormentors, choosing death rather than dishonour for her life’s work. On those occasions, surprisingly, it was Bertie, rather than Caro who helped her stand firm, who told her it was what Cornelius would have wanted, that it was worth anything, anything at all as long as the House of Farrell lived on.
‘But Bertie, it won’t be the House of Farrell,’ she said. ‘It will be some other bastard brand, not the thing that Cornelius and I created.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard, I know there is much change, but we shall still have ultimate control and I think, too, we can trust Bianca. She will see us and Farrell through.’
‘Well, I can only say I do hope you are right.’
‘I hope so too,’ he said.
Chapter 6
‘So – yes. I am interested. Of course.’ Patrick smiled at Saul Finlayson. ‘It sounds like a fascinating opportunity.’
That was, he knew, a rather understated response to Finlayson’s proposition, conveyed via Jonjo, that Finlayson, one of the biggest movers and shakers in the City of London, and runner of a very successful, fairly new hedge fund, was looking for someone with Patrick’s qualifications and experience to work for him personally as a research analyst. And that was a dizzying prospect, of possibly finding himself in the heady uplands of a market that he hardly understood, let alone where he might have something to offer.
Jonjo had arranged for them to meet in the Blue Bar at the Berkeley Hotel, near Finlayson’s office, so that he might meet the man and hear his proposition first hand. ‘I think you’ll like him, extraordinary fellow,’ Jonjo had said, ‘but you must make your own mind up about that.’
Finlayson smiled back at him now; but so briefly that a blink would have obscured it. It was one of his trademarks, Patrick discovered, that brief smile, unnerving to anyone who didn’t know him. He had other unnerving habits; he spent a lot of time during a conversation with his fingertips together, staring up at the ceiling, and he ate and drank with extraordinary speed. His plate was often empty before his companions had so much as picked up their knives and forks and he was leaning forward again firing questions, demanding answers, generally making a mealtime as uncomfortable as it could be. Fortunately for Patrick they were not having a meal, merely an early evening post-work drink; Finlayson had ordered a tonic on the rocks and downed it in one, while Patrick and Jonjo were taking preliminary sips of their martinis.
‘Well,’ said Finlayson, ‘I don’t know about the fascinating, but it’s important. Now, you are a chartered accountant, and one of the things you do, or are trained to do at any rate, is look at the accounts of a company in huge detail. That sound right to you?’
‘Yes, it does. But—’
‘OK. So you can be given an annual report that’s two hundred pages long, look at it for two days, and then come back with stuff most people couldn’t possibly find out or know in a month of Sundays. You are someone who can look into what I call the weeds of the company, who knows how and where to look for possible problems, someone who has a sort of instinct about something that doesn’t seem to quite add up. Because to my mind – our minds – that’s where genuine ideas can come from. About what might happen to that company and what it’s actually up to. All right?’
‘Yes, I . . . think so,’ said Patrick. He felt increasingly edgy. ‘I don’t know that I’m your man, not if you want ideas.’
‘No, no,’ said Finlayson impatiently, ‘the ideas would come from your reports and observations, not you. Most people don’t have time to do that sort of in-depth stuff, and don’t employ anyone who does, either. But to me it’s essential. Jonjo suggested you, so do you think you have that sort of ability? To trawl endlessly through stuff and spot anything that – well, asks a question. I’ve always maintained,’ he added, ‘a really go
od accountant would have spotted that Enron was fudging their accounts.’
‘Really?’ said Patrick. ‘Good God. Well, you really should know that the stuff I’m involved with at the moment is pretty tame by anyone’s standards. I really don’t know that I’m high-powered enough for that sort of thing.’
‘That’s for me to judge,’ said Finlayson. ‘Look, it boils down to this: if I feel you’re the right man for the job, then you probably are – and I’d like to take it on to the next stage.’
Patrick felt a mild sensation of panic.
‘Well . . .’ he said. ‘Well, I’m deeply flattered but I’d like to think about it a bit more, talk to my wife about it, that sort of thing . . .’
‘Yes, yes, OK,’ said Finlayson. He seemed to find this understandable but irritating. ‘And on that tack, you should therefore point out to her that even though you’d be doing familiar work, it would be a much more demanding environment than you’re probably used to and you’d work pretty long hours. Think she’d be up for that? You’d probably have a few uneaten dinners, that sort of thing.’
‘My wife’s very realistic about all that,’ said Patrick, hoping this was true. ‘She works pretty long hours herself.’
‘Of course. I googled her. Clever girl. Well, have a think, and so will I. The package should be pretty attractive but we can discuss that when you’ve made up your mind. I get the feeling we’d work OK together and Jonjo thinks so too. Want another of those?’
‘No, no, thank you,’ said Patrick.
‘OK. Well I’ve got to go – dining with a client, God help me.’
And he was gone. Jonjo sat back in his seat and said, ‘I think he liked you. Up to you now, I’d say.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Whether you think it’s your bag, whether you can work with him.’
‘Bit hard to say,’ said Patrick, ‘after . . .’ he looked at his watch . . . ‘twenty-five minutes.’
A Perfect Heritage Page 6
