The Emma Harte 7-Book Collection: A Woman of Substance, Hold the Dream, To Be the Best, Emma’s Secret, Unexpected Blessings, Just Rewards, Breaking the Rules. Barbara Taylor Bradford
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been expunged years ago. The memory of him was there then, so clearly evoked that it bit like acid into her brain. And Emma saw Edwin Fairley as vividly as if he was standing before her. And in his shadow there was Jim Fairley, his spitting image. Edwin Fairley, usually so elusive in her memory, was caught and held and all the pain he had caused her was there, a living thing. A feeling of such oppression overcame her she could not speak.
Paula was watching her grandmother intently and she was afraid for her when she saw the sad expression on that severe face. There was an empty look in Emma’s eyes and, as she stared into space, her mouth tightened into a harsh and bitter line. Damn the Fairleys, all of them, Paula cursed. She leaned forward and took hold of her grandmother’s hand anxiously. ‘It’s over, Grandy. It wasn’t important. Honestly. I’m not upset about it. And I will go to Paris, Grandy! Oh, Grandy darling, don’t look like that, please. I can’t bear it.’ Paula smiled shakily, concerned, afraid, conciliatory. These mingled emotions ran together and underlying them all was a sickening fury with herself for permitting her grandmother to goad her into this ridiculous conversation, one she had been avoiding for months.
After a short time the haunted expression faded from Emma’s face. She swallowed hard and took control of herself, exercising that formidable iron will that was the root of her power and her strength. ‘Jim Fairley’s a good man. Different from the others …’ she began. She stopped and sucked in her breath. She wanted to proceed, to tell Paula she could resume the friendship with Jim Fairley. But she could not. Yesterday was now. The past was immutable.
‘Don’t let’s talk about the Fairleys. I said I would go to Paris,’ Paula cried, clinging to her grandmother’s hand. ‘You know best and perhaps I should look the store over anyway.’
‘I think you must go over there, Paula, to see what’s going on.’
‘I’ll go as soon as we get back to London,’ Paula said swiftly.
‘Yes, that’s a good idea,’ Emma agreed rather brusquely, as glad as Paula to change the subject, but also instinctively pressed for time, as she had been all of her life. Time was a precious commodity to Emma. Time had always been evaluated as money and she did not want to waste it now, dwelling on the past, resurrecting painful events that had taken place some sixty years ago.
Emma said, ‘I think I must go directly to the office when we arrive in New York. Charles can take the luggage to the apartment, after he’s dropped us off. I’m worried about Gaye, you see. Have you noticed anything peculiar when you’ve spoken to her on the phone?’
Paula was sitting back in her seat, relaxed and calm again, relieved that the subject of Jim Fairley had been dropped. ‘No, I haven’t. What do you mean?’
‘I can’t pin it down to anything specific,’ Emma continued thoughtfully, ‘but instinctively I know something is dreadfully wrong. She has sounded edgy during all of our conversations. I noticed it the day she arrived from London and called me at Sitex. Haven’t you detected anything in her voice?’
‘No. But then she has been speaking mostly to you, Grandmother. You don’t think there is some trouble with the business in London, do you?’ Paula asked, alarmed.
‘I sincerely hope not,’ Emma said, ‘that’s all I need after the Sitex situation.’ She drummed her fingers on the table for a few moments and then looked out of the window, her mind awash with thoughts of her business and her secretary, Gaye Sloane. In her sharp and calculating way she enumerated all of the things that could have gone wrong in London and then gave up. Anything might have happened and it was futile to speculate and hazard wild guesses. That, too, was a waste of time.
She turned to Paula and gave her a wry little smile. ‘We’ll know soon enough, my dear. We should be landing shortly.’
The American corporate offices of Harte Enterprises took up six floors in a modern office block on Park Avenue in the Fifties. If the English department-store chain Emma Harte had founded years ago was the visible symbol of her success, then Harte Enterprises was the living heart and sinew. An enormous octopus of an organization, with tentacles that stretched half around the world, it controlled clothing factories, woollen mills, real estate, a retail merchandise company, and newspapers in England, plus large blocks of shares in other major English companies.
As the original founder of this privately held corporation, Emma still owned 100 per cent of the shares of Harte Enterprises, and it operated solely under her aegis, as did the chain of department stores that bore her name, with branches in the North of England, London, Paris, and New York. Harte Stores was a public company, trading on the London Stock Exchange, although Emma was the majority shareholder and chairman of the board. The diversified holdings of Harte Enterprises in America included real estate, a Seventh Avenue dress-manufacturing company, and other stock investments in American industries.
Whilst Harte Stores and Harte Enterprises were worth millions of pounds, they represented only a portion of her fortune. Apart from owning 40 per cent of the stock in the Sitex Oil Corporation of America, she had vast holdings in Australia, including real estate, mining, coal fields, and one of the largest fully operating sheep stations in New South Wales. In London, a small but rich company called E.H. Incorporated controlled her personal investments and real estate.
It had been Emma’s custom to travel to New York several times a year. She was actively involved in all areas of her business empire and although she was not particularly distrustful of those to whom she had given extraordinary executive powers, confident of her own shrewd judgement in these choices, there was a canny Yorkshire wariness about her. She was impelled to leave nothing to chance and she also believed that it was vital for her presence to be felt in New York from time to time.
Now, as the Cadillac that had brought them from Kennedy Airport pulled up in front of the skyscraper that housed her corporate offices, Emma’s thoughts reverted to Gaye Sloane. Emma had instantly detected Gaye’s nervousness during their first telephone conversation when she had arrived from London. Originally Emma had thought this was due to tiredness after the long transatlantic flight, but the nervousness had accelerated rather than diminished over the last few days. Emma had noted the tremulous quality in Gaye’s voice, her clipped manner, her obvious desire to terminate their talks as quickly as possible. This not only baffled Emma but disturbed her, for Gaye was behaving totally out of character. Emma contemplated the possibility that personal problems might be upsetting Gaye, but her inclination was to dismiss this idea, knowing Gaye as well as she did. Intuitively Emma knew that Gaye was troubled by a business problem, one which was of some import and one which ultimately affected her. She resolved to make her talk with Gaye the priority of the day’s business.
Emma shivered as they alighted from the car. It was a raw January day, and although the sun was bright in a clear sky, the wind was sharp with frost and Atlantic rain. She could barely remember a time when she had not felt ice cold all over and sometimes it seemed to her that her bones were frozen into solid blocks of ice, as if frostbite had crept into her entire being and petrified her very blood. That numbing excruciating coldness that had first invaded her body in childhood had rarely left her since, not under the heat of tropical sun nor in front of blazing fires nor in the central heating of New York, which she usually found suffocating. She coughed as she and Paula hurried towards the building. She had caught a cold before they had left for Texas and it had settled on her chest, leaving her with this hacking cough that flared up constantly. As they swung through the doors into the building, Emma was for once thankful for that furnace-like heating in her offices.
They took the elevator up to the thirtieth floor, where their own offices were located. ‘I think I had better see Gaye at once, and alone,’ Emma said as they stepped out. ‘Why don’t you go over the balance sheets of the New York store with Johnston and I’ll see you later,’ she suggested.
Paula nodded. ‘Fine. Call me if you need me. Grandmother. And I do hope everything is all right.’ Paula veered to the left as Emma continued on to her own office, moving through the