A Perfect Heritage (3 page)

He had met her at a dinner in the City and been immediately enchanted by her; she was sparkly and articulate, and clearly found him interesting too. She was, she said, a marketing manager at a toiletries company.

‘Toothpaste and deodorant might not sound very exciting,’ she said, ‘but last year it was washing powders, so a big improvement. And of course it’s exciting because it’s not the product, it’s what you can do with it. Sending the sales graph in the right direction is hard to beat!’

He asked her out to dinner that weekend and they talked for so long the waiters were piling chairs on to tables before they realised how late it was, and she invited him out the next Friday.

‘My treat this time. No, that’s how I operate, sorry, don’t like spongers.’

Patrick found her signing the credit card slip extremely painful and said so; she replied that he was clearly very old-fashioned. ‘Most of the men I know would be thrilled.’ In the event, any discomfiture on Patrick’s part didn’t last very long because in three months they had moved in together.

By the time they were married in 1996, Bianca had moved jobs twice and become marketing manager of an interior design company. She continued to work until the week before Milly was born and was back at her desk in four months; when Fergie joined them two years later, she only stayed at home for twelve weeks. There was the nanny, she said, and she got very bored rocking cradles. Which did not mean she was a bad mother – she was intensely loving and passionately involved with her children. She just operated better maternally if she had something else to do and when Ruby made her embryonic presence felt, unplanned and the result of a bout of bronchitis, a strong antibiotic and a resultant decrease in the effectiveness of the pill, she did not, as some women in her position might have done, opt for a termination, just welcomed Ruby determinedly and said she liked to keep busy. Which she did.

Her career trajectory had been impressive; Patrick, while being immensely proud of her, couldn’t help wishing she would take more time off when she had the children; but they certainly didn’t seem to have suffered, they were all bright and charming and self-confident. He sometimes felt also that Bianca might take a little more interest in him and his work; but then, as he so frequently said, there wasn’t anything much to take an interest in. He was a partner now, extremely well-paid, his hours were civilised – more than could be said for Bianca’s – and on the whole he didn’t mind being the ballast in their household, as he put it. He was exceptionally good-natured. Then, when Milly was five, Bianca was made sales and marketing director of a fabric company. That was when her salary overtook Patrick’s and Patrick did mind that – quite a lot. Bianca teased him about it.

‘Darling! It’s our money, just as yours is; it pays for our family, our life, what do the proportions matter?’

He once asked her, when he had a great deal to drink, if she would give up her job if he really wanted her to; she leaned across the table and said, ‘Darling, of course, if you really wanted it, but you wouldn’t, would you? You’re not like that – and that’s why I love you.’

And she did: very much. As Patrick loved her. And when life was a little less than perfect, he would remind himself that a little boredom at the office and an occasional sense of resentment was more than made up for by having a clever and beautiful wife who loved him, three enchanting children, a wide circle of friends and a lifestyle most people would envy.

Chapter 2

Bianca Bailey was often quoted as saying that meetings, like life, were not rehearsals. However small, they mattered; they needed proper attention and careful planning. No one, not the most junior secretary, not the least regarded maintenance manager, had ever left a meeting with the formidable Ms Bailey feeling they had not had a proper hearing and that their concerns were not being addressed.

The one in prospect that afternoon, when she, Hugh Bradford, and Mike Russell would try to persuade the Farrell family to come on board, mattered very much indeed; consequently, they had devoted several days and a great deal of work to planning its conduct.

‘They’ve reached the point, I think,’ said Hugh, ‘where they know they need us, so that’s good, but it’s crucial they feel we like the company, that we’re not just in it for a fast buck. In other words, that we want to make it work. They must also feel we understand it, and the whole industry. Your department, Bianca, obviously.’

‘Of course. Hopefully, my background should convince them of my understanding of the industry. I’ve a lot to learn about cosmetics though, and they know it, and I’ll use that fact to help get them on side: the brand itself – well there’s quite a lot not to like. I’ve had a cursory look at it, products, outlets, image – pretty non-existent really – but there are a couple of areas I can talk about very enthusiastically. The hero product, for instance, The Cream it’s called – great name, isn’t it? – that’s the sort of thing they should be building on, skincare and quality, and I’m going to say that. There is a wonderful Englishness about them, brand launched in 1953, coronation year, and I don’t need to tell you how much we can capitalise on that in the immediate future, with things like royal weddings and next year’s jubilee. I won’t really know anything, of course,’ she added, ‘until I’ve done a deep dive – and I can’t do that until I’m there.’ Bianca’s Deep Dives – a minute scrutiny of not just the finances and the products, but the infrastructure of a company went very deep indeed. ‘Let’s hope we can talk them into that being sooner rather than later.’

‘Indeed.’

‘That’s all from me – for now. Except I do feel so excited about it.’

‘Excellent,’ said Mike, smiling at her. He found her endless enthusiasm for new projects extremely endearing. It was, of course, one of the prime reasons for her success.

She had dressed cleverly for the occasion, in a dress with a cardigan over it, rather than the jacket and trousers that was her usual style, her hair swinging loose on her shoulders, not pulled sharply back, and just a little more make up than she usually wore. The Farrells would see a woman who enjoyed clothes and cosmetics, who would be in sympathy with their world, not some brisk androgyne whose only concern was numbers and the crunching thereof. It would be important to them – and the fact that Bianca recognised it was what made her special, revealing that she cared about and understood a company and its products as much as its economics. In her own words, she
got
it. She could see the magic of a brand while absolutely recognising that it had to be made to work for its living. They were lucky, Hugh thought, to have her.

Athina Farrell had also dressed carefully. She might be eighty-five, but she was still absolutely in charge of Farrell’s and she felt that needed to be spelled out in every possible way, starting with her appearance. She was wearing a calf-length Jean Muir dress in navy jersey, and red suede shoes, both emphasising her still extremely good legs; her silver bob was immaculate, her make up minimal but skilful, the jewellery she was wearing carefully chosen: the pearl choker that Cornelius had given her on their thirtieth wedding anniversary, the Chanel pearl earrings, the Tiffany watch, a twenty-first birthday present from her parents, and her twin diamond rings – one for their engagement, the other identical, made up at Cornelius’s request, for their golden wedding. ‘These people’ as she thought of them, more than a little disparagingly, would see a woman of considerable substance and style, not some foolish old has-been. She had run the House of Farrell for almost sixty years and yielding any part of it had been, until very recently, simply unthinkable, akin to giving away her children. Indeed, it was said by those who knew her best, that she would probably have handed the children over with less anguish.

However, she had been made to face the fact that the company was approaching bankruptcy and needed help. And such help did not come free; there would be a price tag. Her main concern now was that the price tag should be as high as possible, to alleviate the intense pain of the yielding.

She had, therefore, been persuaded to the meeting that cold Friday afternoon in January with the people from Porter Bingham, Venture Capitalists, and was in a mindset that was brave, obstructive – and totally unconciliatory.

She had summoned her two children and Florence Hamilton for a briefing, as she put it, which actually meant telling them what they should say and do, before the meeting. They were all board directors: Bertram, known as Bertie, was managing and finance director, Caroline, known to close associates as Caro and everyone else as Mrs Johnson, was company secretary and personnel director and Florence, known simply as Florence, was board director with an overall responsibility for property.

Athina wasn’t at all sure any of them should be on the board at all; were they not her children – or in the case of Florence, almost as much part of Farrell’s as she and Cornelius – they probably wouldn’t have been. Their lack of substance worried her. Bertie and Caro were both clever enough, but they lacked the instinct and the flair to carry on what she and Cornelius had created, and Florence, who had the instinct and the flair, lacked drive. In truth, she had never been in favour of Florence’s appointment to the board; the idea had come from Cornelius and she had been ill at the time and unable to argue with her usual force.

The highest Bertie would have risen, she felt, had he been working for a firm where there was no automatic assumption of privilege, was higher middle management.

However, the best had to be made of the situation, and so she had summoned them to her flat in Knightsbridge and, as she put it over a sandwich lunch, ‘We need to present a united front, absolutely crucial, no dividing and ruling on offer to them. Of course, our lawyers, Walter Pemberton and Bob Rushworth, will be there—’

‘You don’t think they might be just slightly out of their league?’ said Caro.

Athina said that she was perfectly confident in them.

‘I’ve had several conversations with them and Bob has already made a couple of very shrewd observations. After all, they’ve been with us from the beginning; Cornelius appointed them, and he knew a good lawyer when he saw one.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Caro, ‘but with every respect, Mother, that was sixty years ago.’

‘Caro,’ said Athina, and there was clearly to be no more discussion on the subject, ‘Pemberton and Rushworth are not going to be a pushover.’

‘Good,’ said Caro. ‘Well, I just thought I should mention it.’

‘As you have,’ said Athina. ‘And now to this girl, Bianca Bailey. I have no idea what she will be like on closer acquaintance, but she clearly has a track record of sorts, and she knows the industry, I suppose – what she did with PDN was clever, although they’d better not think they can sell Farrell’s. And we have to retain our majority share. That’s non-negotiable.’

‘And neither can they mess about with it,’ Caro said sharply, ‘turn it into some cheapskate thing. And of course they mustn’t even think of selling The Shop. That’s the sort of thing they’re bound to want to economise on.’

The Shop, as it was known throughout the company, was Farrell’s exclusive outlet in the nineteenth-century Berkeley Arcade just off Piccadilly. The arcade was a magnet for tourists, the shops exclusive purveyors (as they were still named) of jewellery, leather goods, bespoke shirts and other such delights. The Farrell shop was small and enchanting, with a glass-paned door and windows. It not only sold the Farrell range, but offered facials and was where Florence had her office. The lease had passed to Cornelius from his father and it was generally regarded as the company’s treasure. It did not make any money whatsoever.

‘They might begin to wonder,’ said Bertie mildly, picking up his fourth sandwich, ‘what they can do with Farrell’s. Surely we have to allow them some freedom? They’re here to sort the company out, not just pour money into it.’

Athina and Caro stared at him.

‘Bertie, we are quite aware of that,’ said Athina, ‘but we have to set out our stall clearly from the outset. That’s the whole point. Otherwise they’ll be destroying everything that makes the House of Farrell what is is. And Bertie, I thought your doctor said you had to lose some weight?’

‘I do rather agree with Bertie,’ said Florence, reaching for a third sandwich of her own, as much to display support for Bertie as to satisfy her appetite which was greatly out of proportion to her tiny frame.

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Caro. ‘This is a huge opportunity for them. They wouldn’t be coming on board if they didn’t see that. They’re going to make a lot of money out of the Farrell brand. We own something very precious. We must not forget that.’

‘So precious the bank wants to pull the plug,’ said Bertie. ‘Porter Bingham are saving us from that. All I’m saying is, that’s the bottom line.’

‘It is,’ said Florence, ‘and Bertie is right. Which is not to say we shouldn’t put up a modest fight.’

It was Bertie who had responded to Porter Bingham in the first place. He had received a letter addressed to him as the finance director. After introducing himself as a partner at Porter Bingham Private Equity, the writer, one Mike Russell, informed him that Farrell’s had caught his eye recently while doing some research on a similar business, and that he wondered if Mr Farrell might be interested in a meeting: Porter Bingham was currently investing a £367 million fund and was looking for high-growth investment opportunities where they could support management to accelerate the growth of their business.

Since Farrell’s had no growth to accelerate, Bertie didn’t think Porter Bingham would be very interested in them as a proposition, but he mentioned it to his mother, who was dismissive.

‘I know all about these people. They come in, take over, and before you know where you are, the company isn’t yours any more. Don’t even think about it, Bertie, as your daughter would say.’

‘But Mother, something has to be done. I don’t think you quite realise the – the mess we’re in.’

Athina looked at him sharply. ‘I prefer to regard it as a temporary difficulty, Bertie. And we should certainly not be rushed into some extremely unwise liaison of this sort.’

‘I don’t think it is temporary,’ said Bertie, his voice firmer now. ‘I think—’

‘Bertie,’ said Athina, ‘no.’

But two days later the bank wrote to Lady Farrell and said they would like to remind her that Farrell’s were in breach of bank covenant and that they could call in the overdraft at any time. Perhaps she would like to make an appointment to discuss the situation?

The meeting was unpleasant, culminating in a suggestion that the bank would put in a firm of accountants to do what they called an Independent Business Review and it was clear that they could end up with the company being declared insolvent. Athina, apparently cool, told them they would consider their position, but travelling back to the offices, Bertie could see, for the first time, a flash of panic in her eyes. His suggestion that they should, after all, perhaps meet with the people from Porter Bingham was met with a rather grudging nod.

‘Yes, all right, Bertie, if you really think it might do any good. May I say I very much doubt it?’

The initial meeting at Porter Bingham’s gleaming head office in the City had done nothing to reassure Athina and she had, in fact, told them there could be no possibility of a collaboration as far as she could see and left mid-agenda, trailing a highly embarrassed Bertie. However, a fruitless journey round her own connections in the banking firmament had resulted in a further approach to Mike, via the unfortunate Bertie.

‘Mr Farrell,’ Mike said, ‘I greatly enjoyed meeting your mother and it only confirmed my opinion that she – all of you – have a considerable asset in your possession. She knows what she wants and where she is going, and believe me, that is a quality we value. Why don’t we come to your offices for a further meeting with the three of you, and talk some more?’

Granted the confidence of being on her own territory, Athina became more malleable, and at a second meeting they had agreed to meet Bianca over lunch in the Porter Bingham boardroom; Bianca had been charming, displaying an almost equal blend of confidence and diffidence about the project, which had gained her, if not approval from Lady Farrell, a slight lessening of hostility. And so they had continued along the difficult, winding road towards today’s meeting – the purpose of which was to reach Heads of Terms.

It was a long afternoon; progress was slow, patience stretched. Tea was brought in and cleared again, arguments came and went, concessions were offered and withdrawn, Pemberton and Rushworth raised endless points of order, argued every tiny detail, referred frequently to the past and generally held things up considerably.

Hugh and Mike remained admirably patient.

Six o’clock brought sherry, which everyone refused; another long hour passed.

Mike cleared his throat.

‘I think it is time,’ he said, ‘to discuss the allocation of shares; that, after all, is the crucial issue as far as we are concerned. Your position is unaltered, I believe, Lady Farrell: you still insist on a majority share?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Athina. Her gaze was steely.

Hugh and Mike looked at one another; Bianca knew this moment well. She had witnessed it before. In a game of chess it would be check, if not checkmate.

‘Lady Farrell,’ Mike said, looking at her with an extraordinary blank face, ‘the House of Farrell needs a very large investment to save it from extinction. At least ten million pounds to put it back on a sound footing, with a further injection of up to three million to fund the sort of development that Bianca might envisage. Are you really suggesting that we should do all that and still leave you with a controlling interest?’