A Woman of Substance

‘I thought your birthday was at the end of April.’

‘It is, darling. But that’s only a couple of months away.’

‘I hope I get an invitation,’ he said. ‘After all, you’ll need an escort and I have been your most constant admirer for nigh on forty years.’

‘You will, darling,’ Emma replied, relieved that the awkward moment had been so easily bridged. ‘But I didn’t ask you here to chat about my offspring. I wanted to talk to you about a couple of things …’

The telephone rang and Emma stood up abruptly. ‘Excuse me, Henry. It must be Paula calling from Paris. That is the only call I told Gaye she could put through.’

‘Of course, my dear,’ he said, standing up also. She crossed the room to her desk and he sat down, relaxing in front of the fire, enjoying his sherry and his cigarette, his mind at ease. Emma looked tired, yet he could not detect any outward signs that she was troubled. In fact, he thought she seemed rather gay. He glanced around the room as she continued her telephone conversation. He envied Emma this office, which was more like a library in a stately home than a place of business. With its panelled walls, soaring shelves of books, magnificent English paintings, and handsome Georgian antiques it was a gracious retreat, one which he would have liked to own and work in himself.

Emma finished her call and he stood up as she rejoined him by the fire. She had a folder of papers in her hand which Henry could not fail to notice. She placed the folder on the table next to her chair and sat down. Henry settled back in his chair and lit another cigarette.

‘Paula sends her love, Henry. She’s in Paris, taking care of a few things at the store for me.’

‘Delightful girl,’ Henry responded, a note of admiration in his voice. ‘She’s so like Daisy, sweet and open and uncomplicated. When is she returning?’

Emma did not think Paula was uncomplicated at all, but she resisted any comment about her granddaughter. ‘On Thursday. Another sherry, Henry?’ she asked as she started to pour it into his glass.

‘Yes, thank you, darling. You said you wanted to talk to me about a few things, before you took Paula’s call.’ He eyed the folder curiously. ‘Anything serious?’

‘No, not at all. I would like to liquidate some of my personal assets and I thought you could handle it for me,’ Emma replied, her voice casual, her face relaxed. She sipped her drink slowly and waited, regarding Henry intently, knowing only too well how he would react.

In spite of his anxiety earlier, he was taken by surprise. He had not expected this at all. He put down his glass and leaned forward, a worried pucker creasing his brow. ‘Do you have problems, Emma?’ he asked quietly.

Emma met his gaze directly. ‘No, Henry. I told you I want to liquidate some of my own assets. For personal reasons. There are no problems. You should know that, darling. After all, you handle most of my banking business.’

Henry reflected for an instant, his mind rapidly reassembling all those figures he had seen that morning. Had he inadvertently missed something of vital importance? No. That was not possible. He breathed a little more easily, and cleared his throat. ‘Well, yes, that’s true,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In fact, I looked over all of your accounts before I came over. Everything is in good order. Very good order. As a matter of fact, things have never looked better,’ he finished in all truthfulness.

‘I need a little cash, Henry. Ready cash. For personal reasons, as I said. So, rather than sell any shares, I thought I would get rid of some real estate, jewellery, and part of my art collection.’

Henry was so flabbergasted he was momentarily rendered speechless. Before he recovered sufficiently to make a comment she handed him the folder. He took out his glasses, put them on, and looked at the lists inside, startled and apprehensive. As his eyes ran down the assets he remembered his foreboding earlier in the morning. Perhaps his instincts had been correct.

‘Emma! All this doesn’t represent a little cash, as you casually call it. These assets represent millions of pounds!’

‘Oh, I know. I figured about seven or eight million pounds. What do you think, Henry dear?’ she asked calmly.

‘Good God! Emma! Why do you suddenly need seven or eight million pounds? And what do I think? you ask me. I think there is something wrong and that you are not telling me. You must have problems I can have no way of knowing about!’ His grey transparent eyes blazed as he endeavoured to control his anger. He was certain she was hiding something, and it annoyed him.

‘Oh, come on, Henry,’ Emma clucked. ‘Don’t get so excited. Nothing’s wrong. Actually, I only need about six million for my … shall we call it my personal project? I prefer to sell these things, since I don’t need them anyway. I never wear that jewellery. You know I’m not overly fond of diamonds. And even when it’s sold I’ll still have more than enough that is decent for a woman of my age. The real estate is cumbersome. I don’t want that either, and I feel this is the perfect time to sell and make a profit. I’m being rather clever really,’ she finished on a self-congratulatory note, smiling pleasantly at Henry.

He gazed at her in astonishment. She had the knack of making all of her actions sound admirably pragmatic and it generally maddened him. ‘But the art collection, Emma! My dear, you put so much love and time and care into gathering these … these masterpieces. Are you sure you want to let them go?’ His voice had taken on a saddened, wistful tone. He glanced at the list in his hand. ‘Look what you’re listing here. Sisleys, Chagalls, Monets, Manets, Dalis, Renoirs, and Pissarros, and a Degas. Two, in fact. It’s a fabulous collection.’

‘Which you so generously helped me to acquire over the years, through your contacts in the art world. I am grateful to you for that, Henry. More than you will ever know. But I want to liquidate. As you say, it’s a fabulous collection and so it should bring a fabulous price,’ she said crisply.

‘Oh, indeed it will!’ Henry asserted, the banker in him suddenly taking over. ‘If you are absolutely certain you want me to sell the collection I can do so very easily.’ His voice became enthusiastic. ‘Actually I have a client in New York who would love to get his hands on these paintings. And he’ll pay the right price, too, my dear. But, Emma, really! I don’t know what to say. It seems such a shame …’ His voice trailed off weakly, for he suddenly recognized that she had manipulated him rather cleverly, and turned his attention away from her reasons for selling.

‘Good,’ Emma said hurriedly, seizing the opportunity to further promote Henry’s enthusiasm, his banker’s instincts. ‘What about the real estate in Leeds and London? I think the block of flats in Hampstead and the East End factory property will go for a good price.’

‘Yes, they will. So will the office block in the West End. You’re right, of course, it is a good time to sell.’ He concentrated on the various lists she had given him, making swift mental calculations. She had underestimated the overall worth, he decided. The paintings, the real estate, and the jewellery would bring about nine million pounds. He put the folder down, and lit a cigarette as his anxiety accelerated.

‘Emma, dear. You must tell me if you have problems. Who else is there to help you but me?’ He smiled at her and reached over and patted her arm fondly. He had never been able to remain angry with her for very long.

‘Henry, my darling Henry. I don’t have problems,’ Emma replied in her most conciliatory and reassuring manner. ‘You know I don’t. You said yourself things have never looked better.’ She went over and sat next to him on the sofa and took his hand. ‘Look here, Henry, I need this money for a personal reason. It has nothing to do with a problem. I promise you. Please believe me, Henry, I would tell you. We’ve been friends for so many years, and I’ve always trusted you, haven’t I?’ She smiled up at him, using the full force of her charm, her eyes crinkling with affection.

He returned her smile and tightened his hand over hers. ‘Yes. We have always trusted each other, in fact. As your banker, I realize you have no business or money problems as such, Emma. But I simply cannot understand why you need six million pounds and why you won’t tell me what it’s for. Can’t you, my dear?’

Her face became enigmatic. She shook her head. ‘No. I can’t tell you. Will you handle the liquidation of the assets for me?’ she asked in her most businesslike manner.

Henry sighed. ‘Of course, Emma. There was never any question about that, was there?’

She smiled. ‘Thank you, Henry. How long will it take to liquidate?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. Probably several weeks. I am sure I can sell the art collection within the next week. I also think I have a client who would buy the jewellery privately, so we avoid a public sale. The real estate should move fairly easily, too. Yes, I would say a month at the most.’

‘Excellent!’ Emma exclaimed. She jumped up and moved over to the fireplace, standing with her back towards it. ‘Don’t look so miserable, darling. The bank is going to make money, too, you know. And the government, with all the taxes I shall have to pay!’

He laughed. ‘Sometimes I think you’re quite incorrigible, Emma Harte.’

‘I am! I’m the most incorrigible woman I know. Now, let’s go into the boardroom and have lunch, and you can tell me about all your latest lady friends and the exciting parties you’ve been to whilst I have been in New York.’

‘Splendid idea,’ he said, although he was still riddled by that strange apprehension as he followed her across the office.

The following day Emma began to feel unwell. The cough she had developed in New York still troubled her and there was a tightness in her chest. But it was a whole week before she succumbed, and for that entire week she assiduously refused to admit there was anything wrong with her normally robust health. Imperiously, she brushed aside the fussing of Gaye Sloane and her daughter Daisy. She refused to deviate from her usual work schedule and religiously went to the office at seven-thirty every morning, returning to her house in Belgrave Square at seven in the evening. Since she was accustomed to working in her executive suite at the store until eight-thirty and sometimes nine o’clock at night, she felt this relatively early departure was a great concession on her part. But it was her only one.

Sometimes, at the end of a day, as she pored over the mountainous pile of balance sheets, stock reports, dividend sheets, and legal documents, she was wracked by coughing that exhausted her and left her weak and listless for a while. To Emma, the rasping cough was ominous; nevertheless, she carried on, pressed by a feeling of tremendous urgency. It was not the routine business matters that troubled her, for these she dealt with quickly, precisely, and with her own brand of shrewdness. It was the pile of legal documents, prepared by her solicitors at her bidding, that were her gravest concern. With them spread out before her on the huge desk, illuminated by the shaded lamp, she would sometimes balk at the enormity of the work still to be accomplished. She would think: I won’t finish! There’s not enough time left. And her mind would be frozen by momentary panic. But this mental paralysis was a passing emotion and she would continue to work again, reading and making notations for her solicitors. As she worked one thought would run through her head: The documents must be irreversible, irrevocable! They must be watertight. I must be sure, absolutely sure that they can never be contested in a court of law.

Often the pains in her chest and rib cage became razor sharp and almost unbearable. It was then that she was forced to stop working for a while. She would get up and cross the luxuriously appointed office, so wracked by pain that she was temporarily unaware of its gracious, timeless beauty, a beauty she had patiently created, and which normally gave her a great satisfaction. She would open the tiny bar and with trembling hands pour herself a brandy and then rest for a short time on the sofa in front of the fire. She did not especially like the taste of brandy, but since it warmed her and also seemed to deaden the pain briefly, she thought it the lesser of two evils. More importantly, it enabled her to go back to her desk and continue working on the legal papers. As she pushed herself beyond physical endurance, she would fume inwardly and curse the treachery of her body, which had so betrayed her at this most crucial time.

One night, towards the end of the week, she was working feverishly at her desk when she had a sudden and quite irresistible urge to go down into the store. At first she dismissed the idea as the silly whim of an old woman who was feeling vulnerable, but the thought so persisted that she could not ignore it. She was literally overcome with an inexplicable desire, a need, to walk through those vast, great halls below, as if to reassure herself of their very existence. She rose slowly. Her bones were afflicted with an ague and the pain in her chest was ever present. After descending in the lift and speaking to the security guard on duty, she walked through the foyer that led to the ground-floor departments. She hesitated on the threshold of the haberdashery department, regarding the hushed and ghostlike scene that spread itself out before her. By day it glittered under the blaze of huge chandeliers, with their globes and blades of crystal that threw off rays of prismatic light. Now, in the shadows and stillness of the night, the area appeared to her as a petrified forest, suspended in time and space, inanimate, frozen and lifeless. The vaulted ceiling, cathedral-like in its dimensions, was filled with bluish lacy patterns, eerie and mysterious, while the panelled walls had taken on a dark purple glaze under the soft, diffused glow which emanated from the wall sconces. She moved noiselessly across the richly carpeted floor until she arrived at the food halls, a series of immense, rectangular rooms flowing into each other through high-flung arches faintly reminiscent of medieval monastic architecture.

To Emma, the food halls would always be the nucleus of the store, for in essence they had been the beginning of it all, the tiny seed from which the Harte chain had grown and flowered to become the mighty business empire it was today. In contrast to the other areas of the store, here at night, as by day, the full supplement of chandeliers shone in icy splendour, dropping down from the domed ceilings like giant stalactites that filled the adjoining halls with a pristine and glistening luminosity. Light bounced back from the blue and white tiled walls, the marble counter tops, the glass cases, the gleaming steel refrigerators, the white tiled floor. Emma thought they were as clean and as beautiful and as pure as vast and silent snowscapes sparkling under hard, brilliant sun. She walked from hall to hall, surveying the innumerable and imaginative displays of foodstuffs, gourmet products, delicacies imported from all over the world, good wholesome English fare, and an astonishing array of wines and liquors, and she was inordinately proud of all she observed. Emma knew there were no other food halls, in any store anywhere in the world, which could challenge these, and she smiled to herself with a profound and complete satisfaction. Each one was an extension of her instinctive good taste, her inspired planning and diligent purchasing; in the whole hierarchy of Harte Enterprises, no one could lay claim to their creation but she herself. Indeed, she was so filled with a sense of gratification and well-being that the pains in her chest virtually disappeared.

When she came to the charcuterie department, a sudden mental image of her first shop in Leeds flitted before her, at once stark and realistic in every detail. It was so compelling it brought her to a standstill. That little shop from which all this had issued forth; how unpretentious and insignificant it had been in comparison to this elegant establishment that exuded refinement and wealth! She stood quite still, alert, straining, listening, as if she could hear sounds from long ago in the silence of this night. Forgotten memories, nostalgic and poignant, rushed back to her with force and clarity. Images, no longer nebulous and abandoned, took living form. As she ran her hands over the rich polished oak counter it seemed to her that her fingers touched the scrubbed deal surface of the counter in the old shop. She could smell the acrid odour of the carbolic soap she had used to scrub the shop every day; she could hear the tinny, rattling clink of the old-fashioned secondhand cash register as she joyfully rang up her meagre sales.

Oh, how she had loved that poor, cramped little shop, filled to overflowing with her own homemade foods and jams, bottles of peppermints, and stone jars of pickles and spices.

‘Who would have thought it would become this?’ Emma said aloud, and her voice echoed back to her in the silence of the empty hall where she stood. ‘Where did I find the energy?’ She was momentarily baffled. She had not thought of her achievements for so many years now, always too preoccupied with business to fritter away her time ruminating on her success. She had long ago relegated that task to her competitors and adversaries. Because of their own duplicity and ruthlessness they would never be able to comprehend that the Harte chain had been built on something as fundamental as honesty, spirited courage, patience, and sacrifice.

Sacrifice. That word was held in her brain like a fly caught in amber. For indeed she had made tremendous sacrifices to achieve her unparalleled success, her great wealth, and her undeniable power in the world of international business. She had given up her youth, her family, her family life, much of her personal happiness, all of her free time, and countless other small, frivolous yet necessary pleasures enjoyed by most women. With great comprehension she recognized the magnitude of her loss, as a woman, a wife, and a mother. Emma let the tears flow unchecked and in their flowing a measure of her agony was assuaged.

Slowly the tears subsided. As she gathered her senses, in an attempt to calm herself, it did not occur to Emma that she had willingly renounced all the things for which she now grieved, through her driving ambition and overriding desire for security, a security that always seemed beyond her grasp, however rich she became. There was a dichotomy in her character which she had never been able to come to grips with. But such thoughts evaded her this night, as she struggled with an unaccustomed sense of loss, feelings of loneliness and despair mingled with remorse.

Within a short time she was totally in command of herself again, and she was mortified that she had given way to such negative feelings, such self-pity; she despised weakness in others and it was an emotion she was not familiar with in herself. She thought angrily: I am living what I alone created. I cannot change anything now. I simply have to go on to the end.

She pulled herself up, erect and straight-backed and proud. She thought: Too much of me has gone into this. I will not let it pass into the wrong hands, unworthy, careless hands that will tear it down. I am right to plot and scheme and manipulate. Not only for the past and for what it has cost me, but for the future and for all those who work here and take pride in this store just as I do.

The events of the past few weeks had proved to her that great dissension about the control of the business and the distribution of her wealth would arise within her family after her death, unless she circumvented the dissident members of her family before she died. Now she would finish the last of the legal documents which would prevent the dissolution of this store and her vast business empire; documents carefully drawn which would unalterably preserve all of this and her great personal wealth as well, ensuring its passing into the right hands, the hands of her choice.

The following Monday morning, the pains in her chest were so intense and her breathing so impaired Emma was unable to leave her bed. It was then that she allowed Paula to call Dr Rogers, her London physician. The preceding weekend, most of the documents had been signed, witnessed, and sealed, and now Emma felt she could allow herself the indulgence of being ill. After Dr Rogers had examined her, he and Paula had been huddled at one end of her bedroom, their voices muffled and barely audible. She overheard a few words, but she did not have to eavesdrop; she had suspected for the last few days that she had again contracted pneumonia, and what she overheard only served to confirm her own diagnosis. Later that morning, they took her by ambulance to the London Clinic, but not before she had elicited a promise from Paula to bring Henry Rossiter to see her that same day. Henry arrived in the late afternoon, aghast to find her in an oxygen tent, surrounded by all manner of equipment and fussed over by starchy, antiseptic nurses and concerned doctors. She smiled inwardly at the sight of Henry’s white face and worried eyes that betrayed him so easily, since she was aware of Henry’s dependency on her or, rather more accurately, her business. He clasped her hand and told her that she would soon be well again. She had tried to return the pressure of his clasp, but she felt so weak her hand hardly moved in his. With a stupendous effort she asked him in a whisper if everything would be all right. But he misunderstood, believing her to be referring to herself, when in fact she was asking him about the liquidation of her assets which he was handling. He kept up his soothing talk, reassuring her over and over again that she would soon be home, until she was indignant and fuming with impotent rage.

It was then that Emma realized that she was utterly alone, just as she had always been alone when portentous matters arose. Through all the vicissitudes of her life, whenever she had faced the gravest problems imaginable, she had been totally abandoned and so forced to depend entirely on her own resources. And she knew that she could only rely on herself now to accomplish the few remaining tasks which would preserve her empire and her dynasty. To do that she had to live, and she determined then not to succumb to this ridiculous sickness invading her weak, old woman’s body; she would live and breathe if it took all of her strength. Every ounce of her will power would be brought to bear. It would undoubtedly be the greatest effort of will she had ever exercised, but she would force herself to live.

She was tired though now, so very tired. Dimly in the distance she heard the nurses asking Henry Rossiter to leave. She was given some medication and the oxygen tent was placed around her again. She closed her eyes. She was falling asleep and as she drifted off she felt herself growing younger and younger. She was a young girl again, just sixteen, back in Yorkshire, running on her beloved moors high above Fairley village, to the Top of the World. The heather and the bracken brushed against her feet, the wind caught at her long skirts so that they billowed out and her hair was a stream of silk ribbons flying behind her as she ran. The sky was as blue as speedwells and the larks wheeled and turned against the face of the sun. She could see Edwin Fairley now, standing by the huge rocks just under the shadow of the crags above Ramsden Ghyll. When he saw her he waved and went on climbing upwards towards the ledge where they always sat protected from the wind, surveying the world far below. He did not look back but went on climbing. ‘Edwin! Edwin! Wait for me!’ she called, but her voice was blown away by the wind and he did not hear. When she reached Ramsden Crags she was out of breath and her pale face was flushed from the exertion. ‘I ran so hard, I thought I would die,’ she gasped as he helped her up on to the ledge. He smiled. ‘You will never die, Emma. We are both going to live for ever and ever, here at the Top of the World.’ The dream fragmented into hundreds of infinitesimal pieces and slowly began to fade as she fell into a profound sleep.