by Rosie Thomas
When the time came the design would be printed on to the packaging, and then laminated to give it sparkle. For now, Harriet could do no better than stick a laminated proof to the sample box.
Even so, she was delighted with the fresh impact of it.
The bankers inspected the packaging carefully. Harriet opened the lid to reveal the game itself. There were printed instructions, but as yet the sheet was only pasted inside the lid. There was no moulding to cradle the board or to offer little cups in which the counters and balls would neatly rest. That could come only when Harriet had raised the money for it.
Please, she wanted to implore the three pink faces. Instead she lifted out the black shiny board, fitted the white wings in their slots.
‘This is how it works.’
The three men gave their attention to playing Conundrum. Two of them were good at it. The third was not, although he was clever at concealing it by deferring to the others when his turn came, and by masking his deliberations with a knowing smile. Harriet thought that probably she was the only one who noticed his shortcoming.
Rather noisily, the other two challenged each other to produce the lowest score over three games. The atmosphere in the conference room became frivolous. Harriet kept the score, and declared the senior man the fair and square winner at the end. She thought that was probably important. The third man slipped out of the room, and came back again with a sheaf of papers as the game finished.
‘Quite intriguing,’ was the senior man’s verdict, and his assistants nodded. ‘And most strikingly presented.’ More nods followed.
Harriet allowed herself to begin to hope.
‘Now, shall we take a look at your plans for the business?’
All frivolity ebbed away at once.
Harriet took out her projections, one copy for each of the three pairs of fleshy pink hands, and she began to talk. She had rehearsed her pitch so thoroughly that the points came fluently one after another, in logical and convincing sequence. The dates and the figures and the estimates fitted together, as neatly as the wishbone gates into their slots. Harriet convinced herself as she talked. She could have sung, although she kept her voice dispassionate and level. They couldn’t refuse her now.
A hundred thousand pounds. In this financial cathedral, it was so very little.
As soon as she finished her pitch and answered their questions, she knew that they would indeed refuse her. She barely heard the formulae as they were reeled off, but the meaning was quite clear.
‘This is a fashion product, Mrs Gold, of course.’
‘The most unpredictable market of all. If only we could predict …’
‘The high risk attached to small ventures of this kind …’
The third one, the one who had failed to solve the game’s riddle, read from his sheaf of papers. It contained the financial histories of other companies, the proprietors of games and toys and fashion products that had failed to capture the market’s imagination. As they were afraid Conundrum would also fail.
Harriet rallied herself. ‘I believe you are misjudging. Conundrum is nothing to do with fashion. Its appeal is timeless. I know the market will respond to that appeal.’
They were shaking their heads, each with his own interpretation of polite regret. Harriet thought savagely that they looked like the three wise monkeys, possessed of the wrong kind of wisdom. The senior man stood up, and held out his hand.
‘You may well prove us wrong, Mrs Gold. I wish I could be sure that you won’t, and at the same time I wish you the best of luck.’
Harriet shook his hand, although she would rather have bitten it. She listened to his thanks for her kindness in letting them see her proposal, and his repeated regret that it appeared not to be quite the right investment for Morton’s, whilst many of their rivals might well take quite a different view of it. The one who couldn’t play the game held open the door for her, and then escorted her to the lift. She wondered if it might have been different had he been as good at it as her bus conductor.
She found herself in the street again, under the tall towers. All she knew for sure was that she had failed again. The game was good, she reasoned, so the fault must be her own. Her awareness of that, and the optimism she had felt about this meeting, made the disappointment harder to bear. She tried to think back over everything she had said, and to pin-point the moment when the tide had turned against her. But it was no use. She couldn’t work out exactly where she had gone wrong. They had given her a fair hearing, a long one she saw now, when she looked at her watch. And at the end of it they had simply decided not to back her.
Harriet hurried on. She was due back at Stepping, where Karen would be needing help. Tuesday afternoons were often busy, for no particularly obvious reason.
She was already recovering her balance. There wouldn’t be any failure if she refused to acknowledge it. This connection had been one possibility, and she had been wrong to place too much faith in it. There would be other connections, and one of them would hold. If she couldn’t believe that, she told herself, then it would be better to give up right away.
By the evening, when she let herself into the basement flat again, she had decided what she was going to do. She would get Mr Jepson to make up more samples of the game, a dozen at least, and she would have boxes printed and the best packaging she could manage. She would print posters and leaflets and lots of powerful, bright promotion material. She would take a bigger stand at the Toy Fair, instead of a modest one, and she would staff it with her own sales people, and she would give Conundrum the showiest splash she could possibly devise.
She had enough capital to do it. Just enough.
Then, when the buyers had seen and ordered, she could go out and borrow the money for the production run ten times over.
Harriet fed the cats, and they subsided into a purring dome of bicoloured fur in the only comfortable chair. She opened the small suitcase that she had taken to Morton’s with such misplaced optimism, and placed Conundrum and its bright box beside Simon’s original on the mantelpiece. She was standing back to look at it when she heard people coming down the steps to her basement door.
The visitors were Charlie Thimbell and a man called Henry Orde. Henry was an old friend of Charlie’s. Harriet knew him a little, and liked him. But she sighed inwardly at the sight of the two of them. She wanted to think about the day’s defeat, and to marshal her reserves of confidence once more, and now she would have to descend into the realm of sociability’.
‘Come in,’ she invited, not opening the door very wide.
The men came in anyway, in their bulky overcoats, bringing cold air with them and making the room seem tiny. Harriet blinked at seeing the place so unfamiliarly crowded, and Charlie stared around him.
‘We were having a drink around the corner,’ he announced, ‘so we came on to see you. Harriet, what is this place? I’m worried about you. Jenny is as well, she says she hasn’t seen you for weeks.’
‘We’ve talked on the phone,’ Harriet automatically defended herself. ‘Thanks for being concerned, but there’s no need, really. Hello, Henry.’
She knew that she sounded stiff, and wondered if she had been so absorbed in her scheme that she had forgotten how to talk normally. She knew too that her visitors had come out of friendship, but she felt the intrusion even more strongly. Conundrum was hers, succeed or fail, and until it had succeeded her protective instinct towards it was as strong as a mother’s. But still she took the men’s coats, and pitched the cats off the chair, and brought a bottle of wine and glasses from the kitchen.
They settled themselves as comfortably as they could in the small space.
‘It’s fine for me,’ Harriet said quickly. ‘I don’t need a lot of room, and it’s cheap because I take care of the cats. Sort of take care of them.’
‘How did it go today?’ Charlie asked, dismissing the flat.
‘Today? Yes. Well, it didn’t go, exactly.’
She told them, briefly, and they
listened, nodding their heads with their accumulated financial expertise. Suddenly they reminded her of the three wise monkeys at Morton’s, and she felt a flash of anger.
It strengthened her determination to launch Conundrum in her own way, with her own money.
She took her sample down from the mantelpiece again and gave it to Henry to play with. She walked up and down the cramped room, talking about her plans for the fair and the compelling promotion that would bring the buyers flocking. She made ideas up as she went along. She would have the box’s sunray motif made up in three dimensions to back the stand. She would have her sales team in black and white shiny outfits, she would invite celebrities to play. With the force of her enthusiasm alone, if necessary, she would get the buzz going. As she talked Henry Orde flicked the release spring. The rattle and roll of Conundrum’s balls counterpointed her words.
‘When I’ve got the orders I can go back and choose who’s going to lend me the money,’ Harriet finished triumphantly. ‘It’s the best way to do it. I know it’s the best way.’
There was a little silence.
‘Well?’ Harriet demanded.
Charlie sucked at his wine, and Henry appeared to be intent on rearranging the coloured counters in the slots.
‘Don’t you think I can do it?’
Charlie looked up at her at last. She felt like a termagant standing over him, but she stood her ground.
‘You could lose everything you’ve got,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it happen. So has Henry.’ Henry was a solicitor.
‘And equally, I’ve got everything to gain. I can only go bankrupt, can’t I?’
Henry looked at her then, too.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. He had a nice, bashful smile that Harriet had always liked. ‘You could just be right. I think it’s worth going for. They’re a very conservative bunch at Morton’s. And this isn’t their field. They prefer telecommunications, electronics, the heavy stuff. I know someone you could try.’
Henry took a business card from his wallet and scribbled on the back of it. When Harriet looked at what he had written she saw the words Landwith Associates, and an address in SW1.
‘They’re a small firm of venture capitalists. With a reputation for risking long shots.’
Harriet returned his smile, and put the card away. ‘Thanks. I think I’m going to do it my own way, just the same.’
‘Good luck.’
Twice in one day she had been wished it. It would do her no harm, Harriet thought.
‘I saw Leo the other night,’ Henry said, interrupting her reverie.
Harriet had not seen Leo for weeks, since the completion of the sale of the flat. She felt a twinge of guilt when she realised that he was fading out of her life, and then reminded herself that she had no reason to feel guilty about Leo.
‘How was he?’
Harriet saw the two men exchange a half-glance. She guessed what it meant. Henry and Charlie thought that if she wasn’t alone, stranded here as they imagined in a poky flat, then she wouldn’t need to chase after entrepreneurial rainbows and risk losing the little security she had.
They didn’t believe that she could make it, and they were old friends. No wonder Morton’s had turned her down.
The realisation was comforting. It might just be that the fault was not hers after all, but only the shortsightedness of the huge, hermetic, male-dominated business world.
‘He asked about you,’ Henry told her. ‘Not that I could tell him anything.’
‘I’ll have to give him a call,’ Harriet said mildly.
They sat for a little longer, talking and drinking wine, until Charlie looked at his watch.
‘Time for home.’
‘Is Jenny back?’
‘Yes. I must go, or I’ll be late for supper.’
Henry’ stood up too. Harriet wasn’t sure what his current domestic arrangements were, but he clearly also had somewhere to go. Yet they both hesitated, and it struck Harriet that they felt badly about leaving her. They were sorry for her, abandoned in reduced circumstances with the cats and the balance sheets for company.
‘I’ll come out with you. I need some fresh air.’
‘Listen, Harriet, why don’t you come too? Jenny’d like to see you. I’ll just give her a call and tell her we’re on our way …’
Harriet shook her head. ‘Not tonight, thanks, Charlie. I want to do some things. Just give Jenny my love, and tell her I’ll see her soon.’
‘You can’t work all the time, Harriet.’
‘I don’t.’
It wasn’t the truth, but there was no need for anyone to know that. Harriet opened the basement door and almost shepherded the two of them up the iron stairs to the street level. A taxi came by, and Charlie flagged it. It pulled in to the kerb and the driver opened the window, his breath visible in cumulus clouds in the January murk. Henry paused before he climbed into the back, his hand on Harriet’s arm.
‘Do one thing for me. The rights in this game, whoever they belong to. Secure them, before you do anything else.’
‘I will,’ she promised. ‘I’m going to do that next.’
Harriet didn’t know why she had procrastinated. Only that the cathedral of Morton’s, and everything else that she had been pursuing in the months since she had left Leo, seemed far removed from Simon amongst the flotsam in his cold house. She was afraid, perhaps, of being unable to find a language that would bring them together. Henry and Charlie were right, however. This was just one of the new languages that she must learn.
The taxi drove away. Harriet stood for a moment looking down the street at the lights behind drawn curtains. The thin fog blurred the yellow squares, so that the light seemed to spill beyond the window frame. Then she shivered in the cold air, and turned back down the iron steps.
This time, Harriet drove up to see Simon. She went first to visit Mr Jepson at Midland Plastics, and ordered a dozen more Conundrum samples. She sat in his office with its chipped metal filing cabinets and girlie calendar, drinking thick tea and listening to the subterranean pounding of machinery down on the shop floor.
Mr Jepson wanted to be paid in advance. Harriet leaned forward over his desk.
‘Can I have everything by February the twentieth? Without fail? With a written undertaking?’ Mr Jepson appeared to be offended that she would not accept his word as his bond. Harriet opened her chequebook and wrote out a cheque for the full amount that he had quoted. She held it out to him.
‘My written undertaking,’ she said, ‘in return for yours.’ He buzzed his secretary, and dictated the brief letter to Harriet’s satisfaction.
‘And then there’s the production run. Thirty thousand units, price quoted, for delivery at the end of May. Can you guarantee that, too?’
‘Those wishbones are the devil’s job.’
‘Can you guarantee it?’
‘Aye. If it gets to that.’
Mr Jepson was a Northerner. His voice reminded Harriet of the man in the blue shirt.
‘It will,’ she said grimly. ‘It will, I assure you.’
They shook hands. Mr Jepson was a small man. Over his head the January girl winked out of the calendar at Harriet. She was wearing a white fur tippet and mittens, and long white boots. Nothing else. Harriet’s jaw and neck ached with the wire-tightness of her determination to pin Jepson down. She thought, suddenly, how comforting it would be to have a good cry.
‘Goodbye, Mr Jepson,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we can do business together, now we understand each other.’
Harriet had written to Simon, announcing her visit. He had no telephone, of course. But she had to stand for a long time in rain driven horizontally by the wind, before she heard his steps on the other side of the door. Still the door didn’t open. The movements stopped, replaced by interrogative silence.
‘It’s Harriet.’ And more emphatically, into the blanket of it, ‘Kath’s Harriet. Do you remember?’
At last the bolts were being drawn back. A moment late
r, Simon confronted her. She had forgotten his height, and the milky, frosty eyes. ‘I did write,’ she reminded him lamely. ‘I thought you’d write back and tell me not to come, if you really didn’t want to see me.’
‘You’d better come in,’ was all he said. The door opened another frugal slice. Harriet followed him down the passageway. She hadn’t forgotten the smell, or the gnawing cold, much worse in January than it had been in the mild autumn. The kitchen seemed even more forlornly lumbered.
‘Would you like some tea?’
Harriet would not, but she said cheerfully, ‘Let me make it for you this time.’
She went to the sink and tried to clear some of the slime of crusts and potato peelings and tea leaves before rinsing and filling the kettle. Behind her she could hear Simon moving busily. She had the impression that he was putting things away, out of her sight. The notion that her visit was an unwelcome intrusion stabbed a little dart inside her. She had allowed herself to imagine that he might have been looking forward to it. Harriet brushed aside her own disappointment and began to tell him little, inconsequential snippets of news, mostly about Kath and Ken and the house, or about Lisa and her boyfriend. At length it sounded as though Simon had finished his rites of concealment. She could hear him breathing now, noisily, as if with a degree of difficulty. She plugged in the kettle and washed and dried two cups before turning unhurriedly around.
‘Have you got a bad chest?’
‘It’s winter.’
The economy of the response made her smile, in spite of her discomfort. ‘You think I sound like a busybody from the Council or somewhere.’
