To Be the Best (22 page)

As he swallowed the last drop of brandy, swung around and walked back into the house, Philip McGill Amory had no way of knowing that his life was about to change, for better and for worse. And forever.

‘I want to sell the Sitex stock.’

Paula’s words fell like an exploding bomb into the quiescence of her mother’s beautiful peach drawing room, and she realized she had startled herself as much as she had her mother and her brother.

Daisy and Philip were obviously flabbergasted, and neither of them spoke; they simply stared at her for the longest moment.

Paula glanced from one to the other. She had not meant to tell them tonight, nor had she meant to be so blunt about it, but since she could not take the words back, she might as well finish what she had started.

She took a deep breath, but before she could continue, her mother broke the short, uncomfortable silence.

Daisy said, ‘I don’t understand, Paula. Why do you want to sell the stock all of a sudden?’

‘Any number of reasons, Mummy, but mainly because oil prices have dropped considerably, and since there’s currently a glut of oil on the world market, I feel they’re going to drop even lower. And anyway, you know that Sitex has been a pain in the neck to me for years now, so I think we ought to get out, once and for all. Sell our entire forty per cent and be done with it.’

‘I see,’ Daisy murmured, puckering her eyebrows. She swung her head, stared at Philip.

Philip returned his mother’s questioning glance, but remained silent.

He rose, walked over to the French doors, stood gazing out across Rose Bay to the lights of Sydney glittering in the distance. The McGill Tower, soaring up into the starlit sky, dominated the cityscape even at night.

Paula’s unexpected announcement puzzled him, and he wondered what was
really
behind it. He turned slowly, his eyes sweeping over her as he returned to his chair. Despite her tan, she looked drawn and tired, and he thought she ought to be in bed, not discussing business at this hour. However, her eyes told him she was waiting for some sort of comment from him.

‘The situation’s bound to change, Paula, it usually does,’ Philip said at last. ‘Oil prices have always fluctuated, sometimes even wildly, and in my opinion, if we’re going to sell, it should be at a more auspicious time than now, when we can get the most for the stock, don’t you think? When oil is at a premium and prices are high, for instance.’

‘And when will that be, Philip? I just told you, there’s an over-abundance of oil in the world today, but you know that as well as I do.’ Paula sighed, shook her head wearily. ‘Hundreds of thousands of barrels are being stored up, yet the world demand for oil has dropped by fifteen per cent – ever since those artificially high prices were imposed by the cartels in 1979. I honestly believe the demand for oil will continue to fall. It’ll go down, down,
down.
You’ll see, this current trend will go on for several years…in my estimation until 1985.’

Philip laughed. ‘Come on, darling, your outlook is awfully bleak.’

Paula said nothing. She sat back on the sofa, rubbed her neck, feeling very tired, once more wishing she had not begun this.

Daisy, whose blue eyes were still troubled, turned to her daughter and said, ‘But I promised my mother I’d never sell our Sitex stock, Paula, just as she promised the same thing to Paul all those years ago. My father told her to hang on to it, insisted that she never let it go, no matter what, and – ’

Cutting in, Paula muttered, ‘Times have changed, Mummy.’

‘Yes, they have, and I’m the first to acknowledge that. On the other hand, I would feel very funny about selling our interest in Sitex. Uncomfortable really.’

Paula gave Daisy a pointed look. ‘I bet if Grandy were alive today, she’d agree with
me,’
she asserted, and stifled a yawn. She felt dizzy, woozy actually, and the room seemed suddenly to swim before her eyes, and she thought that if she didn’t lie down soon she would collapse right there on the peach sofa. But Philip had started to say something else, so she tried to focus on him, to listen to his words.

He was saying, ‘What does it matter if the shares bring in lower dividends for a year or two, or even three or four. Mother doesn’t need the additional income.’

‘That’s absolutely true, I don’t,’ Daisy concurred. ‘In any case, Paula darling, I really don’t think we should be discussing this matter right now. You look exhausted and seem about ready to keel over. I’m not a bit surprised either – as usual, you’ve done far too much since you arrived yesterday,’ she chastised gently.

Paula blinked again. ‘Too true, Mother, and the jet lag generally hits me hard on the second night, doesn’t it?’ She was struggling to keep her eyes open as waves of exhaustion washed over her, almost engulfed her. ‘I think I do have to go to bed. Right now. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have brought this up…we’ll have to finish our chat about Sitex another day.’

Pushing herself to her feet, Paula went and kissed her mother goodnight.

Philip, who had risen at the same time, put his arm around her and walked her across the drawing room and out into the entrance foyer.

They stood together at the bottom of the staircase.

‘Shall I help you upstairs, Beanstalk?’ he asked, his eyes kind, full of brotherly affection.

Paula shook her head. ‘Don’t be daft, Pip, I’m not
so
decrepit that I can’t make it to my bedroom.’ She covered her mouth with her hand and yawned several times, then grasped the banister, put a foot on the first step. ‘Oh dear, I
think
I can make it…I shouldn’t have had the wine with dinner.’

‘It’ll make you sleep like a top.’

‘Gosh, I don’t need anything to do that,’ she murmured, leaned forward and kissed his cheek. ‘Goodnight, love.’

‘ ’Night, Paula darling, and let’s have lunch tomorrow. I’ll meet you in the Orchid Room at twelve-thirty. Okay?’

‘You’re on, brother o’mine.’

When she got to her room, Paula was so bone tired she hardly had the strength to undress and take off her makeup. But she managed somehow, and within minutes she was pulling a silk nightgown over her head and gratefully sliding into bed.

As her head touched the pillow she admitted to herself that she had made a tactical error,
had
picked the wrong time to discuss Sitex. With a sudden flash of insight, she knew her mother would never agree to sell the stock, no matter what
she
said, and that this would drastically interfere with her plans.

Or would it?
Her last thought, before she fell asleep, was of her grandmother. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat,’ Emma had been fond of saying. Remembering this, Paula smiled to herself in the dark before her eyelids fluttered and closed.

Silence reigned in the back office of the Harte Boutique in the Sydney-O’Neill Hotel the following morning.

Paula and Madelana sat facing each other across the large desk, their heads bent and close together as they pored over two ledgers.

It was Madelana who looked up first.

‘I can’t imagine how Callie Rivers managed to make such a
mess,’ she said to Paula, shaking her head, her face a picture of disbelief. ‘It took some sort of perverse genius to create a muddle of these proportions.’

Paula raised her eyes, looked at Madelana, and grimaced. ‘Either she’s totally dense and my judgement was haywire when I hired her, or her illness debilitated her to such an extent she just hasn’t known what she was doing these past few months.’

‘It had to be her illness, not you, Paula. You’re far too smart not to spot a dud the minute you see one,’ Madelana said confidently, and closed the ledger in front of her with a degree of finality. ‘I’ve checked these figures three times now…twice with the calculator and once by hand. You’re right, I’m afraid. We are in the red here…and the red is
very
red.’

Paula took a deep breath, expelled it, stood up and began to pace for a few seconds, her face reflective. Returning to the desk, she took the ledgers, put them in the filing cabinet and locked this, then dropped the key in the pocket of her grey linen jacket.

‘Come on, Maddy, let’s go back to the stock room and try to make some sense there.’

‘Good idea,’ Madelana answered, rising immediately, following Paula out of the office and into the main area of the three-level boutique.

‘We’ll be downstairs, Mavis,’ Paula informed the assistant manager, and swept on across the floor without pausing, making for the heavy glass doors which opened into the hotel lobby.

‘Yes, Mrs O’Neill,’ Mavis answered quietly, staring after Paula, her gloomy face reflecting her worry.

Madelana merely nodded to the young woman.

But once she and Paula were crossing the dark-green marble lobby, she confided, ‘I think Mavis is all right basically, Paula. Just out of her depth. Callie Rivers should never have made her the assistant manager. She doesn’t have
what it takes to run a boutique of this size and importance, and she’s not very imaginative or creative either. Still, she
is
honest, and that counts for a lot, I guess.’

‘Everything you say is quite true,’ Paula agreed, walking briskly into the empty elevator as the door opened, pushing the button for the floor below. ‘Callie left her a mess to cope with, and she didn’t know what to do to correct it, I realize that now.’ Paula glanced at Madelana through the corner of her eye. ‘I don’t hold Mavis responsible, you know. I just wish she’d had the sense to tell me everything. She knew she could phone me, or telex me, any time she wished.’

The two women stepped out of the elevator, and Paula went on, ‘Let’s face it, if the hotel manager hadn’t mentioned it to Shane on the phone a few weeks ago, I still wouldn’t be any the wiser.’

‘Yes, it was a good thing he found out there were problems, and that Mavis was in a panic and floundering. I think we just got here in time to avert a real disaster.’

‘You can say that again,’ Paula muttered.

The stock room which belonged to the Harte Boutique was located on the mezzanine floor of the hotel, and was actually a series of rooms. These included an office with filing cabinets, a desk, chairs and telephones in the entrance, and several large storage rooms behind this. Racks of clothes were kept there, along with chests of accessories ranging from costume jewellery, scarves, hats and belts to handbags and shoes.

Madelana grimaced as she and Paula paced along the lines of bulging racks, looking at the stock for the second time since their arrival, but only now doing their first proper assessment. Groaning, she eyed her boss. ‘We’re going to have one hell of a job making inroads into this lot. It’s worse than I realized yesterday.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ Paula responded grimly. ‘And I dread to think what awful secrets those chests over there hold.’ She shook her head, and her annoyance and dismay rose to the
surface yet again. ‘This is partially my fault. I shouldn’t have let Callie persuade me to carry several less expensive lines, as well as the Lady Hamilton Clothes. But she convinced me she knew this market better than I did, and fool that I was I gave her a good deal of leeway. And so here we are today, looking at clothes she bought from other manufacturers and which haven’t moved.’

‘I think we do have to have a sale, like you suggested yesterday,’ Madelana volunteered.

‘Yes. We must get rid of the old merchandise, including the remainder of the Lady Hamilton line from last season. A clean sweep, that’s the only thing to do – and then we can start again from scratch. I’ll telex Amanda this afternoon, instructing her to send as much Lady Hamilton stock as she has available. She can air freight it out to us. We need spring and summer merchandise, of course, since Australia’s heading into those seasons now.’ She broke off, stood with her hand resting on the rack, staring at the clothes hanging there, a look of anxiety settling on her face.

‘What’s wrong?’ Madelana asked, as always quick to sense any change in Paula’s demeanour.

‘I hope we
can
move these clothes in a sale, and make
something
on them, however little that is.’

Madelana exclaimed, ‘Oh I’m sure we will, Paula, and I’ve got an idea…why not make it a Grand Sale. Capital G, capital S, and advertise it as being comparable only to the one at Harte’s of Knightsbridge. That’s the world’s most famous sale – so let’s cash in on it. Surely the agency here in Sydney can come up with some clever copy for the newspaper advertisements.’ Maddy thought for a moment, and when she continued it was with a rush of enthusiasm. ‘I think the message we want to convey to the public goes something like this…
you don’t have to fly to London to go to the Harte’s sale of the year. It’s right here on your own doorstep.
Well, what do you think?’

For the first time that morning, a genuine smile flickered on Paula’s mouth. ‘Brilliant, Maddy, I’ll put a call into Janet Shiff at the ad agency this afternoon, and have her start working up some of her snappy copy. Now come on, let’s sort through these clothes, and pick out as much as we can for the sale.’

Madelana needed no further encouragement. She dashed over to one of the other racks, and began her own ruthless process of selection and elimination.

The Orchid Room of the Sydney-O’Neill Hotel was considered to be one of the most beautiful places to lunch or dine in the city. It was also a very
in
spot where people went to be seen and to see, and so it had acquired a certain cachet in local society.

Situated on the top floor of the hotel, two of its walls were made entirely of plate glass running floor to ceiling, and thus it appeared to float, as though suspended between the blue sky and the sea far below, and offered a sweeping view for miles around.

Breathtaking giant-sized murals of handpainted white, yellow, pink and cerise orchids covered the other two walls, and there were real orchids everywhere…arranged in tall cylindrical glass vases, planted in Chinese porcelain pots, and clustered in bowls on every table.

Paula was particularly proud of the room, since Shane had conceived it and had taken an active part in its planning with the architects, at the time the hotel was being designed and constructed. He liked to use animals, birds or flowers endemic to a country as the motif for a lobby, a dining room or a bar in his foreign hotels, and since orchids grew in such profusion in the forests, heaths and woodlands of Australia, this species had seemed appropriate to him. Also, because of the orchid’s various shapes and sizes, and lovely vibrant
colours, the flower lent itself to any number of artistic effects and decorative themes.