The Emerald Valley (71 page)

Why had he chosen today to come with a take-over offer? Was there some connection with Ralph's visit yesterday? Oh yes, now that she came to think about it, there had to be!

‘Mr Fricker, please listen to me,' she interrupted. ‘I don't know what has prompted you to come and make me this offer, but I really feel I should tell you that you're wasting your time. Roberts Haulage is not for sale.'

The bluff features hardened a little. ‘Come now, Mrs Roberts, listen to what I have to say.'

‘I have listened. Perhaps now
you
should do the listening. This is my business and that's the way it's staying.'

‘You would do well to consider …'

‘I don't need to consider. I'm sorry you have had a wasted journey. Good day, Mr Fricker.'

‘Now just a minute …'

‘Good day, Mr Fricker.' She had risen and he did the same.

‘This isn't wise, Mrs Roberts.'

‘I'll be the judge of that.'

‘And not a very good judge, I'd say. Well, you've had your chance. I've offered you good money when all I needed to do was bide my time. You haven't heard the last of me, I promise you. But next time, there won't be money on the table.'

‘That makes no difference, since there's nothing to buy.'

‘There won't be by the time I've finished, certainly. You'll regret turning me down. I made the offer out of the goodness of my heart, because I felt sorry for you …'

Sorry, my foot! Amy thought furiously. When did you or anyone else make an offer because you felt
sorry
? No, you want my business and you thought this was a good time to get it. And the whole thing
stinks
!

‘I don't think there's any more to say.' Amy moved to the door.

‘All right.' The mask was down now. ‘I'll pick up your few assets much cheaper when they're sold off to pay your debts. It will save me a bob or two, Mrs Roberts.'

‘We shall see about that,' Amy retorted.

After his car had pulled out of the yard she stood shaking with anger.

Oh yes, it was all adding up now, wasn't it? The reason Ralph had been to see her yesterday … everything. She had wondered what his real purpose was, when there had been nothing to say which could not have been said on the telephone. He had come to pump her about the business and when she had been fool enough to pour out her heart to him he had let her, with never a mention of the fact that he was connected with the Frickers. Then presumably he'd gone straight home and telephoned Don Fricker to confirm what they had suspected; no doubt advised that this was a good time to press for a take-over. A take-over which would net Roberts Haulage not only for the opposition but, eventually, for himself as Don Browning's son-in-law.

Oh, she had always known it was business first and last with Ralph, but she had never realised just how far he would be prepared to go for his own ends – or how low he would sink. How could he have done it – sat here and talked the way he had when all the time …

And what about that joky marriage proposal? she thought. Had he been joking? Or had he, even then, been hedging his bets? The latent anger fanned to fury and Amy reached for the telephone.

He answered it immediately; had he been expecting a call from Don Fricker to report on the success of his proposals? Amy wondered.

‘This is Amy Roberts,' she said formally, her tone barely concealing her fury. ‘I just wanted to tell you what I think of someone who could do what you've done.'

‘Oh? What have I done?'

‘As if you didn't know!' she flared. ‘You must think me a perfect fool, Ralph.'

‘I certainly do not! I have every respect …'

‘Respect! You wouldn't know the meaning of the word! How could you do it? Sit here and pump me about the business, pretend sympathy, when all the time you wanted Roberts Haulage for yourself! I've had Don Fricker here this morning making an offer, and very well primed about my problems. You were very prompt in reporting to him, I must say. When did you do it? When you arranged the day's schedule, I suppose. Oh, when I think what a fool I've been …'.

‘Amy …'

‘Don't “Amy” me! Yes, I have been a fool, I admit it. Fool enough to trust someone whose only motive is to further his own interests. You said yesterday that I had a lot to learn about the ways of business. Well, let me tell you – I have learned a great deal very fast. I've learned things today I never expected or wanted to learn. But I promise you this … I shall never be so naive again. And you won't find Roberts Haulage going down so easily. I'll make a success of it if it's the last thing I do!'

‘For heaven's sake, Amy …'

‘That's all I have to say. Goodbye, Ralph.'

She slammed down the telephone and when it rang a moment later she stonily refused to answer it. Let it ring. If it was Ralph trying to get back to her in order to try to mend bridges, she didn't want to know.

What he had done was despicable. But she'd show him that Amy Roberts was not beaten so easily. As she told him, she'd get the business back on its feet again if it was the last thing she did. And from now on she would do it with no holds barred. Oh yes, she had learned a thing or two today, most importantly that to be successful you had to be unscrupulous. She didn't like it, but there it was. One way or another, Roberts Haulage was going to survive – more than survive. And whatever she had to do in the effort she would do it.

With a cold ruthlessness she had not known she possessed, Amy set about pulling back Roberts Haulage from the brink of disaster. Her first act was almost suicidal. Taking her courage in both hands, she cancelled all contracts with Porter Timber. This meant a loss of business which might have proved disastrous, but Amy looked on it as cutting away diseased growth – taking the bad apples out of the barrel. Better to lose the trade than to have the contact constantly festering at the back of her mind, she reasoned; better to get rid of it cleanly and leave herself free to work and expand without the feeling of being indebted to someone she could not trust.

Then, with the same singlemindedness, she set about drumming up new business to fill the vacuum. If Frickers, with Ralph Porter behind them, had been able to take business from her, then it must be possible to take it back again. She worked tirelessly, throwing caution to the winds along with scruples, snatching at every opportunity, cajoling, wheeler-dealing, planning, often late into the night. She threw herself into it so wholeheartedly that there was no energy left over for regrets, no time for nursing an aching heart, and before long her efforts began to pay off. Roberts Haulage was becoming known once again for its competitiveness and reliability; dealing with the go-ahead Mrs Roberts began to be the fashionable thing to do.

The day Joe Bray telephoned to ask if she would take on once more the work that Frickers had been doing, she knew she was winning.

‘They're all right, I suppose – but it's not like dealing with you,' he told her, friendly but faintly apologetic, and triumph ran through her veins like wine. But she was too intent on winning the next contract, and the next, to throw her hat into the air.

For all her success, however, there were still times when one of the lorries was standing idle and Amy knew she could not afford to have it so. One night she racked her brains over endless cups of tea and cigarettes and next morning she had a suggestion to put to Herbie in the form of a ready-made decision – the way she always did things nowadays.

‘Herbie, I'm going to start using the old lorry to haul coal.'

Herbie looked at her without surprise. He had become used to what he privately called ‘Mrs Roberts'brainstorms'.

‘Haul coal? Where to?'

‘To customers, of course. There's a ready market in towns like Bath and Bristol. We could collect the coal from the pits, get it bagged up here and establish a round. I see no reason why it shouldn't work quite well alongside the haulage business, and it will be something regular we can fall back on. If we mean to stay solvent we have to expand and this would be far more manageable than going into long-distance haulage, for the moment at any rate.'

‘If you say so, Mrs Roberts.'

‘I do.'

And so the coal haulage business began and soon it was taking off so well that Amy was forced to acquire another lorry and employ a clerk for the specific job of dealing with the bookwork entailed.

Another year and she had another idea – charabanc outings were becoming highly popular, so why not add a further sideline to the business and run outings in summer? Cliff Button, who had given up his attempt to be a town taxi-driver, was now back in Hillsbridge but according to Herbie was not doing too well – he would be ideal for the job of charabanc driver, for he was good with people and knew the area well. A small garage at Purldown which had tried somewhat half-heartedly to corner the market in day trips, was now in difficulties; Amy, with good returns from the other branches of the business, made an offer and took over their charabanc.

The diversifying of the business could have produced weak links, but Amy's driving determination ensured this did not happen. As the months passed, success piled on success. In the world outside, however, the depression was gathering in intensity, bringing empires crashing and causing widespread hardship to rich and poor alike. Millionaires committed suicide rather than face ruin, a terrifying run on the Bank of England almost bankrupted the country, the Government itself fell. But in Hillsbridge, one woman refused to be deterred from her planned expansion. Closing her eyes to the panic that was sweeping not only England but most of the Western hemisphere, seeing only a small firm with the potential to expand in a world where motor transport was becoming ever more necessary, she worked and planned accordingly.

Soon Amy was no longer able to handle every aspect of the business herself. She took extra staff onto the pay-roll, had an accountant to advise her on financial details and became a valued client who was greeted cordially when she visited the bank manager or her solicitor, Arthur Clarence. To the name of Roberts Haulage was added Roberts Transport, separate yet allied, and Amy found that a finger in extra pies meant a wider circle of contacts and reverberations of success which spread ever further like the ripples from a stone dropped in a pond.

As her business interests grew, so her personal concerns became less and less important to her. She still ensured that she had time to spend with the children, but her life was compartmentalised. Maureen joined Barbara at school and Amy employed a girl to come in every day to clean, cook, wash and look after them both after school and during the holidays – a girl old enough to be reliable, yet young enough to do as she was told. Rita Carter was neat, earnest and respectable, glad to have work when her father and brother, both former miners, were unemployed. Amy knew she would have none of the problems with her which she had experienced with Ruby Clarke.

That breach had healed to some extent – the two neighbours were on speaking terms once more – but there was a restraint between them which had not been there before the Oliver Scott episode, and Amy was never quite able to forget how ready Ruby had been to gossip about her. In fact, for a while she had worried that Ruby might exact her revenge by writing to the authorities to report Oliver for betraying the Hippocratic oath; but mercifully the whole thing had blown over, with Grace eventually making a partial recovery and the family leaving the district. From the night when their friendship had so nearly overstepped the boundaries, Amy had never seen Oliver alone again, and that too had been a tremendous relief. She felt she could not have looked him in the face without blushing. She knew she had courted disaster in encouraging his friendship and that she had been blind and stupid not to realise where it was leading. Had
he
realised? Amy sometimes wondered. That he loved Grace was in no doubt; just what had he been thinking of to play with fire the way he had done?

But it was safely over now and Amy was determined to ensure there would be no recurrence. All in all, relationships with men were a good deal too dangerous to dabble in, she decided. It was best to keep them on a strictly business level. That way neither hearts were broken nor fingers burned – and all energies could be concentrated on something far more profitable.

Sometimes, just sometimes, an element of loneliness crept in and Amy found herself longing in the night for a shoulder to lean on, someone to talk to, the warm contact of another human body. But with the coming of morning she always pushed such longings aside. Better to be self-reliant – the one person you could trust in this world was yourself! Better to be in a position to make your own decisions about your own future. Better to have no one but yourself to blame if things went wrong – and not have to look over your shoulder and wonder what someone else would think of the choice you had made.

Would I ever have found myself if Llew had not been killed? Amy wondered. And again: would Llew have proved a sufficiently good businessman to weather the storms as she had done? She pushed it away as a disloyal thought. Of course he would!

But nothing could deter her from the sense of purpose which permeated her days. And nothing could detract from the pride she felt in what she was achieving single-handed.

Minehead beach was deserted, a band of sand and greyish shingle which followed the curve of the bay. Above the town the mound of North Hill – that in summer would blaze with heather and gorse – rose darkly majestic and seagulls mewed and cried as they rode the gusting March wind. On a fine day it was possible to look across the water to Barry and the Welsh coast which bounded the Bristol Channel on the opposite side; today it was obscured by mist and the muddy sea, whipped into off-white horses, merged into the leaden sky.

On the bleak beach one lone figure was walking, head bent so that her chin was buried in the upturned collar of her fur coat, hands thrust deep into the warm cavities of her pockets. Amy Roberts'Russian boots scrunched and turned on the shingle, but she scarcely noticed; she was too deep in thought.