A Woman of Courage (7 page)

They did not; they grew worse. Once again he went away, the second time in a fortnight. No word where he was going or when he'd be back. That night she gave up hope. She phoned the studio, was told there would be a job for her but not the one she'd had before: that niche was filled.

‘When can we expect you?'

‘When you see me. But soon.'

She decided to hang on until Emil returned so that she could tell him to his face that she was leaving him.

‘In the meantime I shall drink his whisky,' she told the silent house which was no longer home. ‘And serve him right.'

Three days later she changed her mind. Dressed and ready to go, she wrote him a note. Half a dozen lines to mark the grave of a relationship that once she'd hoped might last forever. Twenty minutes later she was at the wharf. The ferry had just arrived, the passengers disembarking. She waited to board.

‘Where do you think you're going?' Emil towered menacingly over her.

‘I have left you a note,' she said.

She had one foot on the ferry when he grabbed her arm.

‘Take your hand off me.' Her eyes blazed with such fury that he stepped back. ‘I am leaving you,' Sara told him. ‘Where I am going does not matter. I have left a note.'

The crewman swung the gate shut between them and the ferry began to move. Emil shouted after her. ‘We have unfinished business, you and I.'

Words like a threat; Sara did not answer. Soon the gap between them was too wide to be bridged by voices but neither moved, each staring at the other's diminishing figure until distance took away the last remnant of what they had once meant to each other.

6

‘Give me his number,' Sara said to Willa. While her heart thundered in her chest.

She wrote the number down. She held the piece of paper in her hand and felt Emil Broussard at her side, his breath stirring her hair, his lips and hands moving over her body. After she walked out she had been certain she would never see him again. Sad, but better than the endless pain of remaining with him.

Now, out of the blue, he was back.

She thought she should almost certainly not phone him. She had read that in England the authorities were still wary of opening the ancient plague pits, fearful that the toxins of past days might still linger. She had told herself repeatedly that she was over Emil Broussard. Now she discovered she was less certain of that than she would have wished. If I do not phone, she thought, it will mean he still has power over me. And he does not. Let me say that a thousand times. He does not; does not.

She took a deep breath and dialled the number Willa had given her. It rang and rang and she was about to give up when the receiver lifted.

‘Emil Broussard…'

She remembered the voice; she remembered everything, good and bad.

‘You were trying to get hold of me?'

‘I am sorry. Who is this?'

They'd lived together for a year; he'd asked her to phone him and now was pretending he didn't know who she was? But arrogance had always been Emil's way.

She said: ‘You know damn well who it is.'

‘Ah yes, now I do indeed. Who else possesses such an instinct for courtesy?'

‘Who else has more reason? What do you want, anyway?'

‘To speak to you, naturally.'

‘Why?'

‘I thought it would give us both pleasure to have lunch together today. Revisit old joys, old battles…'

Mockery, too, had always been Emil's way.

‘Sorry to disappoint you but I am tied up. The programme, you understand.'

You fool, she thought. Why make excuses? The next thing you'll be apologising to him.

‘You disappoint me,' Emil said.

‘Why?'

That too she should not have said.

‘Is the programme so important?'

‘It's my job, Emil.'

‘Your job…' Contemptuously he discarded the notion that a job might be important to anyone. ‘So the slave loves her chains?'

The perfect trifecta: arrogance, mockery and contempt. All facets of the same impossible personality. How had she put up with this man for so long?

‘Thank you for your invitation. Whether I love my chains or not, the fact remains I cannot have lunch with you.'

‘I have written my autobiography,' Emil said. ‘It contains certain information the world has long wanted to know. Information that I have until now been unwilling to disclose. The purpose of my invitation is to discuss the possibility of your interviewing me about it on your programme.'

Don't be too eager, Sara thought. Make him come to you.

‘I'm not sure they'd be interested,' she said. ‘It would have to be quite sensational to get them to agree.'

‘A man who was offered the Nobel and turned it down? A writer whose last contract was for a million dollars? A writer whose Breton father wanted independence from France so much that he fought for the Nazis in the hope of obtaining it?' She could almost see the snarl. ‘Is that sensational enough for your people?'

‘Fought for the Nazis?'

No wonder he had kept quiet about his past. Always, in his writing and his life, Emil had known how and when to set the hook. Now, between one instant and the next, it was buried deep.

‘Of course I'll discuss it with them,' Sara said. ‘But I still can't manage lunch. Not today.'

‘Dinner, then?'

‘Oh Emil, I'm sorry. I'm tied up tonight as well.' To reject him not once but twice… She took a deep breath and plunged. ‘It would be lovely another time.'

‘Tomorrow night, then. At nine o'clock.
D'accord
?'

Get her make-up off, nip home, a quick shower and change of clothes: another rushed evening. So what was new?

‘
D'accord.
'

‘Your address?'

It was a rule in the business that you never gave your address to anyone: but this was
Emil
, she told herself, and rules, just occasionally, were meant to be broken.

She hung up, wondering what she'd let herself in for. I am not going down that path again, she thought, never. Never! But memory could be a traitor, and the question in her mind remained.

EXECUTIONER MODE

It was quarter to eleven when the chopper put down on the landing pad atop the Brand Corporation building. With the rotor still turning Hilary thanked the pilot – something she never forgot – and was out of the door and heading purposefully for the lift that would take her to the executive floor housing her suite of offices and the penthouse that was her home from home when she couldn't spare the time to return to Cadogan Lodge: there had been occasions when she had roosted there for days at a time. The vast bed was regularly aired, the towels and other goodies replenished every week. Handy for entertaining important guests, it was a showcase. The dining room contained numerous examples of early colonial Australian furniture, including an 1840 cedarwood bookcase provenanced to Dorothea Mackellar. One of the two Opie portraits of Lachlan Macquarie hung on the wall behind Hilary's chair; the other was on display at the State Library of New South Wales. The vast reception area provided a contrast in style. It had two hundred and seventy degree views across the city and an outside balcony from which it was possible to see the length of the harbour from the bridge to the Heads. The furniture was luxurious and modern with a few good paintings: Olsen, Nolan, Boyd. Also a Gulliver, the artist whom Jennifer had loved and whom Tom Tallis, the curator of her collection, had tipped to become the next big name in the art world. Poor Tom, felled by a stroke a month ago at the age of fifty-five. He was a sad loss, both as curator and friend.

In a glass-fronted cabinet a chambered nautilus shell was an elegant brown and white memento of her first magical visit to Penang. Ah, Penang…

But today Hilary had no time for smiling memories of recent days, so she left the penthouse as soon as she had checked that all was in order there and headed across to her office. Now all her attention was focused on the news that Vivienne Archer had given her three hours earlier. She was in executioner mode and must decide swiftly and unemotionally how to deal with the problem of Hong Kong.

Alerted to Hilary's arrival, Vivienne was waiting in the outer office. ‘I've got Desmond on stand-by if you want him,' she said.

Fifty-year-old Desmond Bragg, one of the fat boys' lunch brigade, was aptly named, but knew all there was to know about running a television network. Desmond was CEO of Channel 12 and his office, like Vivienne's, was almost but not quite as substantial as Hilary's own: status was a built-in feature of the Sydney business world, extending even to where you ate your lunch. Hilary despised such nonsense but Desmond insisted it was important. He had told her once that the position of your table at Cavaliers sent a signal to the watchers who was on the rise and who wasn't.

‘Should we care?'

‘We might. For example, you might think it useful to know that Haskins Gould is back in town.'

‘I'd hoped we'd seen the last of him. Where's he been hiding?'

‘Zurich is what I hear. Got some deal with the Stanislaus Bank. You remember? They were in with that crowd in the Bahamas.'

‘Mortensen Associates? They're as crooked as a dog's hind leg!'

‘Naturally. And the buzz is he's got a couple of bottom-of-the-harbour schemes on the go as well.'

‘You couldn't keep Haskins down with lead boots,' Hilary had said. Although heaven knew she'd done her best. ‘Next time I'll use six-inch nails on the coffin lid.'

‘Might be wise,' Desmond had said. ‘He was letting fly only yesterday.'

‘To you?'

‘I was at the next table but Haskins always likes the world to know what he's thinking.'

‘What he says he's thinking.'

‘This time he meant it.'

Hilary was amused, or sort of. ‘Talking about me, was he?'

‘Among other things.'

‘Nothing complimentary, I'll bet.'

‘You'd better believe it.'

‘What did he say?'

‘He said, and I quote, “I'm gunna bring that effing bitch down if it's the last thing I do.”'

‘Effing? Did he really say that? Haskins never used to be so delicate in his language, as I recall.'

‘They come down hard on language at Cavaliers.'

Hilary smiled. ‘That must inhibit him.'

‘Something else I heard him say: “I am a lion in ambush.”'

Hilary laughed. ‘Lion? Haskins? More like hyena, I'd say. Should I be worried?'

‘I doubt it. Won't hurt to keep an eye on him, though.'

Hilary would not have been seen dead in Cavaliers, the lunch club where the champagne was imported and your status depended on whether the maître d' condescended to take your order himself, but Desmond was the best in his business so she was prepared to tolerate his ways. In truth he was right: signals in the corporate world were always useful, however you got them.

‘I would like Desmond to sit in,' she said now. Hilary turned to the young woman who was standing by her desk, dark eyes alert. ‘Morning, Janet. Please ask Mr Bragg to join us in five minutes. Bring us some coffee and hold all calls until I tell you. Martha, I want you to sit in as well.'

Vivienne and Martha on her heels, she walked into her inner sanctum and closed the door.

‘Sit down, the pair of you,' she said. ‘Vivienne, you'd better tell us what's going on.'

She listened, fingertips joined, face expressionless, as Vivienne obliged.

It was a sorry saga. Acquiring Channel 12 had meant taking over the contractual baggage that came with it. Part of this had been a deal with the Lennox brothers, a two-man team in Hong Kong who had persuaded Channel 12's previous proprietor they had an in with top Chinese officials that would enable 12 to set up its own operation in mainland China. Do that and they would be making money by the bucketload. Of course there were problems; the brothers had been disarmingly honest about the difficulties they faced in winning approval for a foreign-owned station in China and the time frame in which this could come about but 12's management, which in those days had liked to flex its corporate ego by chucking other people's money around, had gone along for the ride. One of the major considerations, predictably, had been the need for what they called seed money and how it could be used to eliminate what might otherwise be insurmountable problems. Channel 12 had entered into an arrangement to pay the Lennoxes two hundred and fifty grand a month to grease palms in what the brothers claimed was an unavoidable part of the commercial process in the People's Republic.

Hilary had been sceptical about the arrangement but had gone along because the legal costs of breaking the contract would have been gigantic. However, two years on there was still no sign of the promised bonanza and she had appointed Cheu Mun Kwong, a Hong Kong enquiry agent, to initiate enquiries. Now he had emailed a twenty-page report, which Vivienne placed on Hilary's desk.

‘You need to read this,' she said.

Hilary looked askance at the bulky document. ‘Tell me the gist of it.'

‘It's a crock,' Vivienne said.

‘What are you saying?'

‘I'm saying you're down six million bucks.'

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come…'

Janet brought in the coffee. Hilary gave her trademark smile. ‘Any chocky biscuits?'

‘I'll get some.'

‘And another cup for Mr Bragg.'

‘You know what I think?' Vivienne said. ‘I think the whole thing is a fraud.'

‘Can we prove it?'

‘Mr Cheu thinks he can.'

‘Then maybe we should tell him to do that. And get the police on to it as well,' Hilary said.

‘I think there could be a better way,' Martha said.

The other women looked at her.

‘How?' Vivienne asked. ‘If Hilary is down six million…'