Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘There were two reasons, madam,’ Mike answers politely. ‘Sarah is the cleverest and the wisest person in our family and I asked her to be present.’ Mike tilts his head slightly, looking into Mrs Pongarse’s eyes and smiles, ‘We’ve never done something like this before.’

  ‘And, of course, what a lovely way to show off your talent,’ Sally Harris says, ‘Sarah’s suit is stunning.’ Mike can see she’s trying to show him that she’s on his side.

  Mike smiles. ‘Yes, I admit, I wanted you both to see one of my garments being worn. I thought it might be useful to see that my work is practical.’

  It’s not a bad answer for a young bloke. Mike has learned heaps about the rag trade and in particular from Mr Stan, who often smiled when he was in a tight corner and was always polite to buyers or debt collectors, but who never took a backward step and was a master of the counter punch.

  He’d once told Mike that the only time you kneel is when you know that the bloke who holds the gun at your head will pull the trigger if you don’t. ‘But even then, don’t beg, it is much easier to kill a man who stands and pleads for his life than one who kneels because not to do so will show him to be a fool. Believe me, I know.’ Mr Stan then quoted one of his lines. When you play the game, don’t justify, don’t complain, only explain.

  There is nothing in her manner to suggest that Mrs Pongarse is impressed with Mike’s reply, and she completely ignores Sally’s remark about the suit. In the light, the line of her mouth remains tight. ‘I’m not at all sure that the garment Miss Maloney is wearing is suitable for our clients. We have fifteen stores, thirteen of them in the country. I can’t see young people in the country wearing a suit like that, they have no money and even less fashion sense.’

  ‘But, Mrs Pongarse, we talked about a young women’s shop in the arcade,’ Sally Harris protests. There’s talk of Myers opening a Miss Melbourne shop in Bourke Street and at the Chadstone Shopping Centre, all the signs indicate that the time is right.’

  ‘That will do, Miss Harris, that was only an idea, your idea as I recall.’ It is clear she wishes to diminish Sally Harris’s involvement, though Sarah picks up on this immediately.

  ‘You’re quite right, Mrs Pongarse. I come from a small country town and I’m sure if I walked down King Street in Yankalillee with this outfit on, someone would call the superintendent from the mental asylum up the hill to come and fetch me.’ Sarah smiles, trying to lighten the mood of the interview. ‘I seem to recall you have two shops in the city, this one and one in Brisbane. A Country Stores Young Shop, perhaps within the confines of the two city shops, could work very well.’ Sarah says all this in a rather la-di-da voice which Mike hasn’t heard before. Medicine isn’t the only thing she’s learning at the university.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Maloney, for teaching me my own business. What are you saying?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer, ‘Are you suggesting our clothes are too conservative?’

  Mike jumps in at this point, ‘Yes, for the younger market! Not just yours, everyone’s styles are too old! The rag trade isn’t catering for young Australian women, madam. Norma Tullo is the only one out there.’

  ‘He’s right, Aunt Erica,’ Sally Harris says, forgetting to address her aunt formally as she’d previously done. ‘Tullo’s doing very well with the younger set.’

  Mrs Pongarse turns, her lips drawn even tighter if that’s possible, ‘And you’d know, of course!’

  ‘I am the buyer after all,’ Sally Harris protests. ‘I should know what’s happening in town.’ She’s clearly annoyed and not a little confused at being given such short shrift from her aunt.

  It is becoming clear to Mike and Sarah that while Sally Harris may be all-powerful outside the environment of her aunt’s office, Country Stores has only one boss and a pretty grizzly one at that. Mike hadn’t known that Sally, who was the youngest buyer in the retail industry, was Mrs Pongarse’s niece, which he now thinks may explain her elevation in the business at such a young age. But right now Mrs Pongarse is treating her like a schoolgirl.

  Mr Stan, of course, would have known of the relationship and this might also explain his seduction ploy. Sally Harris was clearly good at her job. Unmarried and in her early thirties, she’d also grown accustomed to the good things in life but was dependent for them on a domineering aunt and an ultra-conservative retail organisation. Seducing a young and talented designer and then becoming his champion was a way of striking back, showing her aunt that she too had ideas. Perhaps the seduction was unnecessary to bring all this about, but, what the hell, Mike was young, good-looking and there to be plucked, a leaf from the virgin creeper.

  Who can say how much of this would have gone through Mr Stan’s mind? Probably not the part about Mike being a young and talented designer. But you can bet he’d worked the rest out and thought it was worth a try. If he could get his summer range out and paid for before he closed down, he’d be a happy man. As it happened, he sold all but eight hundred dresses to Grace Bros in Sydney. He complained bitterly about the discounts he had to offer them, but you can bet your baby booties he came out of the deal on the credit side of the ledger.

  ‘Mr Maloney, if, and I emphasise the “if”, we decide to support you in a partnership, what is it that you expect?’ Mrs Pongarse asks.

  Mike is no businessman, but he’s discussed the likelihood of going into business with Country Stores with Sarah, Morrie and Sophie, and made a long-distance phone call to Nancy and Bozo. Morrie isn’t much help, but Sophie is the one who turns out to have the strong opinions. She’s running the Suckfizzle kids’ label very well and is proving to be an excellent businesswoman; the children’s garments are beginning to make them more money than the Sarah Maloney label.

  ‘Mikey, darlink, you must have za . . .’ she appears to be searching for a word, then adds, ‘power!’

  ‘Power?’ Mike doesn’t understand.

  ‘Za power the designs. You make, they take.’

  ‘You mean Mike must have the right to design without interference?’ Sarah interprets.

  Sophie nods. ‘No change, also fabric, always Mikey chooses.’ Sophie’s English is getting better but it’s not a patch on Morrie’s, who would be speaking very well if he didn’t try to include every piece of slang he learns from the workers at the Age in his sentences. ‘Fair dinkum, very bonzer, struth, bewdy bottler, stone the crows!’ he’d exclaimed recently after seeing Sarah model one of Mike’s creations.

  ‘I don’t think you can expect them to simply take Mike’s designs,’ Sarah replies. ‘They’ll want to have an opinion. I mean, wouldn’t you? Mike’s just starting out, he hasn’t got a reputation yet, they’ll feel that they’re the ones who are taking a punt, they’re not going to let him have carte blanche.’

  ‘Half! He make ten design, they take za minimum quantity five!’ Sophie says, quite decided. ‘Minimum quantity’is a phrase she’s learnt from dealing with the shops that sell kids’ clothes. ‘One from two they can throw away.’

  Mike accepts this idea with some difficulty, he thinks he’s worth more than a fifty-per-cent success rate. But after some argument he acknowledges that people don’t yet know what he’s capable of and they’ll want to mess about with his stuff, thinking they know better. I’m not saying Mike is a big-head, or anything, but he’s always been confident about sewing and if you take his embroidery as an example, with all the ribbons he got, he’s probably got every right. Sarah says they’re raving at the university about his clothes.

  Then he phones Yankalillee to discuss the Country Stores offer. Expecting a long call, he’s got a whole pocketful of sixpences for the phone box. Nancy, for once in her life, doesn’t have a lot to say, but it is her suggestion that Sarah accompany Mike and that she wear one of his outfits to the interview.

  ‘You must speak to your brother, he’s the businessman’ is what she finally advises.

  However, Bozo plays the sam
e old record, ‘Mike, you must have control of your own stuff, you must have fiftyone per cent at the very least. But I don’t like it the way it is. They’re big and you’re a nobody. Why don’t you set up a design and manufacturing company and they buy into your company, say twenty-five per cent, that’s what they get for financing your first two ranges.’

  ‘I’ll need more than two ranges to get going.’

  ‘How many?’

  Mike thinks, ‘I reckon four seasons, two summers, two winters.’

  ‘Okay, they get an exclusive range for four seasons and say twenty-five per cent of your net profits until the money they’ve loaned you has been paid back plus some interest.’

  The figures and business ideas Bozo’s spouting are gibberish to Mike. ‘But what if I’m not successful?’

  ‘It’s a business risk they’ll either take or reject. You have to bet on yourself, Mike, and they’ll have to take a punt on you as well.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll be in that. It’s their money and they know they’ve got me by the balls, they’ll want me exclusively. Miss Harris says there’s room on the sixth floor for a factory which would cut down the overheads. They can also buy fabrics at a highly competitive price.’

  ‘Don’t sell yourself short, Mike,’ Bozo warns. ‘If you go into their organisation, sooner or later they’ll swallow you up. What did you say, they’ve got fifteen stores, thirteen in the country? How are you going to earn a reputation as a young and exciting designer when your stuff is being sold in the bush? Not much use being a big fashion statement in Coonabarabran, is there? It will take years, mate. That is if you do it their way. You’ve got to be able to sell to everyone, all the big city outlets.’

  Mike sighs, Bozo’s got a point. In the back of his head he can hear Mr Stan again. If you work for the classes you eat with the masses. If you work for the masses you eat with the classes. ‘Bozo, what do I know about running a company? I don’t know anything about business!’

  ‘You’re running a business right now, Mike. What do you think the Sarah Maloney and the Suckfizzle labels are?’

  ‘That’s a backyard operation, just me and Sophie, we sew things.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we just make a few dresses and kids’ things, I design them and Sarah and Morrie sell them at the uni and Sophie flogs the kids’ stuff to the shops.’

  ‘How do you know whether you’ve made a profit or a loss?’

  ‘Sophie does all that, she’s very good. She gets that narked if I don’t tell her exactly what I’ve spent. Even if I buy a piece of velvet the size of a small hanky for an appliqué from Buckleys’ remnant tray, she wants to know and writes it down in a notebook. One pice velvit one shilling,’ Mike says, pronouncing her spelling.

  ‘You mean a ledger? She writes it in a ledger?’

  ‘No, a notebook, a Croxley pad.’

  ‘And the money you make?’

  ‘She keeps it in a bag.’

  ‘A bag! What sort of a bag?’

  ‘A sort of body bag, she’s made this bag with its own straps and she wears it around her waist.’

  ‘What, for everyone to see, like a tram conductor?’

  ‘No, of course not! She wears it under her dress and she even sleeps with it under her nightie.’

  ‘What’s she do when Morrie, you know . . . wants a naughty?’

  Mike grins. ‘How would I know? Uses it as a cushion under her bum, I suppose. I think it’s all a part of what happened to them in Poland before they came here. She doesn’t trust banks and she says if there’s Nazis, that’s what she calls burglars, this time they’re gunna have to kill her first to get the money.’

  Bozo laughs, ‘Well, why don’t you just do as you’re doing now, mate. Make Sophie your partner and register a company with both of you as shareholders with you owning fifty-one per cent.’

  ‘Mate, I couldn’t do that to Sophie, we’d have to be equal, we’re mates and she works harder than me.’

  Mike can hear Bozo sigh at the other end. ‘Mike, in money terms, forty-nine and fifty-one are equal enough, you must maintain the major equity.’

  ‘I’ll try,’Mike says, then a thought occurs to him. ‘Hey, if we have a proper company, we’ll have to pay income tax!’

  ‘That’s right, everyone has to in the end.’

  ‘Well, we don’t now. Mr Stan doesn’t with the stuff he makes and sells from cabbage.’

  ‘Until they catch up with you and him.’

  ‘Me yes, him never!’ Mike laughs, then sounds serious again. ‘Yeah well, I think it’s all pretty academic. Like I said before, I don’t think Country Stores will buy us being a separate company.’

  ‘Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. I’m warning you, Mike, if they have the control they’ll eventually blow you out of the water. Don’t let them turn you into what amounts to being one of their employees with a small share in the profits they make from your exclusive-to-them designs. It’s selling your talent far too cheaply.’

  ‘Sophie says to ask for total design control and choice of fabrics and the proviso that they must accept five out of every ten designs I do.’

  ‘In your dreams, Mike! You’ve got half a chance of that happening with your own company, you’ve got Buckley’s if they have control. Mike, listen to me, for Christ’s sake!’

  Bozo reads all the business magazines and now gets all the Melbourne newspapers every day and cuts things out of the financial section and pastes bits into a big art book he’s bought. If Bozo could’ve worked with Mr Stan for five years and not Mike, imagine what he’d know now. But I don’t think Bozo wants to work with anyone. Funny that, he’s always been in control, even fixing up junk. He ran things and we just helped, doing what he said.

  After the telephone conversation with Nancy and Bozo, Mike reports back to the others and they agree Bozo’s right. Mike and Sophie should legitimise the organisation they’ve already got and offer their design and manufacturing services to Country Stores. Sarah suggests they might offer them exclusivity for three years.

  Mike seems to understand. ‘If we outsource the work and they pay for the manufacture of the ranges and pay the design company for quality control and supervision. Of course, they’ll also have a twenty-five per cent partnership until they’ve got their original investment back. Then there’s the normal retail profit they’ll make for themselves in the stores from my exclusive ranges.’ He’s got it down pat for the interview and Sarah’s there to correct him if he makes a mistake.

  So now Mrs Pongarse asks Mike what he wants out of a possible partnership, that is, if they, Country Stores, are interested in the first place. Mike and Sarah have rehearsed the whole thing with Mike doing the talking and Sarah coming in if she’s needed.

  Mike starts selling the idea of a design and manufacturing company with the majority owned by him and Sophie. The first indication they have that things are going wrong isn’t very long in coming and it’s plain from Sally Harris’s expression that it’s not how she saw things happening. Her mouth has fallen open and she can’t believe what she’s hearing. Sarah can hear that Mrs Pongarse is breathing faster, her bosom going up and down, but her eyes can’t be seen because of the light and her lips remain in a tight, straight, blue line. Now she’s folded her arms across her ample breasts, which isn’t a very good sign.

  It doesn’t take all that long to outline the proposition and when they’re finished Mrs Pongarse ignores Mike and Sarah and turns instead to Sally Harris. ‘That’s not how you put it to me, Miss Harris. What have you to say?’ She’s pretty cranky.

  So is Sally Harris, who turns on Mike, ‘Michael, that’s not what I suggested!’

  ‘No, I know, but it’s a reasonable proposition and me and my family think what you wanted wasn’t in our best interest.’ He’s practising what Mr Stan said, explain but don’t justify.

 
‘I’ve never heard such impertinence!’ Mrs Pongarse says, looking at Mike and Sarah. ‘Who do you think you are? If there is to be any decision on this matter I shall be the one to make an offer, not you or Miss Harris!’

  ‘You asked what we expected, madam,’ Sarah says quietly, ‘and we told you.’

  ‘You again!’ Mrs Pongarse snorts, ‘You may have won with the university but you won’t put one over me, my girl. You, in that ridiculous outfit!’

  There’s some of Nancy in Sarah, only she knows how to stay calm and Nancy doesn’t, but both can fire a verbal bullet and score a bullseye. ‘Mrs Pongarse, when I wear Michael’s clothes I feel like a princess. I dare say you’ve never been quite young enough to have had such an exquisite experience or you’d know immediately just how wonderful my brother’s designs are.’

  There is an audible gasp from Sally Harris, who can’t believe her ears. It’s probably been years since anyone has talked back to her aunt, much less insulted her in such a calm and dignified manner.

  Mike looks at Sarah and she smiles at him. He can see she’s not afraid and this gives him the courage to say, ‘I suppose that’s it then?’

  ‘No, it’s not!’ Mrs Pongarse shouts out. She points to Mike. ‘You thought that by seducing my niece, you could influence us to help you to go into business for yourself! You impertinent young scoundrel!’

  Mike’s jaw practically hits his knees and he looks over at Sally Harris, who seems equally flabbergasted.

  ‘Aunt Erica, how dare you!’

  Sarah looks at Sally Harris. ‘You told your aunt my brother seduced you?’

  ‘She did no such thing!’ Mrs Pongarse says, pursing her lips, ‘I heard it elsewhere.’

  ‘Well, who did then?’ Sally Harris demands. ‘Because it’s not true!’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I am entirely responsible for the seduction. Now tell me, who told you?’ Sally Harris demands a second time.

  ‘It’s none of your business, Miss Harris.’ The old lady wears a smug look.