A Battle of Brains Read online

  “She’s very poorly, sir. She won’t get up, but just lies in bed staring at the ceiling.”

  “Do you think she is really ill?”

  The housekeeper shook her head.

  “I don’t know what it is, sir. I talks to Emily who’s her lady’s maid and she says something about her Ladyship going back to a Convent where she’s been abroad.”

  Mr. Garrack’s lips tightened.

  He was silent for a moment and then he said,

  “Tell her Ladyship that I wish to see her at twelve o’clock and it is very important.”

  “I’ll tell her, sir.”

  When he was by himself in his study, Mr. Garrack sat for some minutes thinking.

  Over his long career he had coped with all types of different men and invariably, even though at times it was difficult, he always got his own way.

  He recognised that Yolanda was still suffering from shock, even though her encounter with Cecil Watson was now over three days ago.

  She had not come out of her bedroom since.

  She had merely sent messages to say that she was tired and was resting.

  Now from what the housekeeper had just told him, Mr. Garrack thought that he must do something, although he was not certain what it should be.

  It was exactly twelve o’clock when the door of his study opened and Yolanda entered.

  As she walked towards him, he could see that she was looking very pale and there were lines under her eyes which had not been there before.

  When she reached him, she said jerkily,

  “You wanted – to see me – Step-papa?”

  “Yes, Yolanda, sit down, I want to talk to you.”

  She sat down on the edge of a chair by his desk and looked at him apprehensively.

  Then she began,

  “I have something I want to say to – ”

  Mr. Garrack quickly put up his hand.

  “I think I must speak first, because I asked you to come to me.”

  “Yes, of course,” responded Yolanda in a dull and flat voice.

  “I have been thinking about your father, Yolanda. I admired him greatly, because he was undoubtedly a very brave man.”

  When he mentioned her father, Yolanda looked up in surprise.

  Her eyes were on him as he continued,

  “I think at the moment he would be very distressed and maybe humiliated if he thought that his only child was a coward.”

  Yolanda stiffened.

  “A coward?” she repeated almost under her breath.

  “Your father’s bravery in fighting a duel he knew he would lose was, to say the least of it, heroic. He could easily have refused and left Paris for England.

  “But he was brave enough to fight against a man who would undoubtedly beat him, because it would have been absolutely wrong and against his idea of honour for him to have run away.”

  Yolanda did not say anything.

  Her fingers were clenched together and she looked at her stepfather with a startled expression in her eyes.

  “As you know,” Mr. Garrack went on, “I have dealt with thousands of problems in my life and I have only got where I am today by standing up and fighting for what I wanted.”

  His voice dropped as he added,

  “I have not told you about the beginning of my life, as I do not like to talk about it, but I was actually a very unhappy child.”

  He looked towards the window as if he was looking back into the past.

  “My parents were of no particular importance and, as they had three other children, they did not want me. I was the youngest. I remember how I resented being treated as if I was of little account and made to give my brothers preference in everything.”

  There was a distinct bitterness in his voice that told Yolanda without him saying more how he had suffered.

  “I think that I must have been around ten or eleven years old when I decided that the only way I could actually defeat my brothers was if I was cleverer than they were.

  “I cannot think who put the idea into my head, but I worked hard at school until, at the end of term, I actually received a prize. That made me determined to have at least a dozen of them. I not only gained many prizes but I won a scholarship.”

  “That was indeed – clever,” remarked Yolanda.

  She seemed to force the words through her lips.

  Her stepfather thought that as she had spoken it was perhaps a step in the right direction.

  “I went on to University and because I worked by day and night, I was awarded a First and a final report of which anyone would have been proud.”

  He realised that Yolanda was now listening intently so he continued,

  “I next offered my best services to a factory in the neighbourhood and, based on my excellent reports from the University, they engaged me.”

  “And what did your family think?”

  “They were most surprised, but my elder brothers still laughed at me. I was paid only a small salary for the job I had undertaken. Quite frankly they thought I was a fool to work so hard.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I moved to a larger firm and from them to another. I soon learnt all each company had to teach me and thought I could do better.

  “Of course, I had many setbacks. Of course, people snubbed me for being too grasping and too pushy. I made quite a large number of enemies, but I also had friends who were really kind and understanding.”

  “Did your enemies upset you?”

  “When they opposed me, I fought back, although I did not win every battle, I, at least, showed them I had guts, which in those days were admired in a man of my station.

  “I had to lick some people’s boots. I had to put up with a certain degree of humiliation and from one job I was sacked for impertinence.”

  He gave a little laugh.

  “Actually I was telling the owner of a factory how to run it much better than he was doing at the time. As he knew that I was right and he was wrong, he wanted to be rid of me!”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went to the firm which was his greatest rival and offered the manager my services.”

  There was silence before Yolanda enquired,

  “Did you tell him how badly the firm you had left was run?”

  “Of course I did. I also gave him some information about what the owner was doing that he found useful.”

  He knew without asking that Yolanda thought this was wrong, so he added,

  “As I have said to you before ‘business is business’. In the fight to rise to the top there is not a man in this world who has not used every weapon in his power to get there.”

  Yolanda did not speak and her stepfather continued,

  “I know what you are thinking. What I have done your father would think was unsporting and unbecoming of a gentleman. But if you think of it not as what happens in a gentleman’s soft life, but in the war of survival which is ‘below stairs’ so to speak, then you will understand.”

  “What you are saying,” Yolanda replied slowly, “is that it is a battle and the man who is not with you is against you as an enemy.”

  “Exactly. I see you understand. That is what I am trying to make you appreciate. In everyone’s life, sooner or later, things happen, which are not what you expect because they don’t keep to the written rules of what we now call ‘Social behaviour’.”

  He threw up his hands.

  “That is the world in which the aristocrats and the upper class live where they have made unwritten laws that they obey, because it makes them, they believe, superior to those beneath them.”

  Yolanda thought this statement over for a moment.

  “I can see, Step-papa, what you are trying to say.”

  “I am trying to say that sooner or later in our lives we all come up against great difficulties and that is where we have to fight with every nerve in our bodies to survive.

  “I know that your father came up against so many difficulties in
his life at one time or another. He somehow surmounted them and was still able to keep his own code of behaviour intact.

  “But that is not to say that those against him kept to the same rules. They cheated if they could and they were prepared to be treacherous in every possible way without worrying, as your father would have done, as to whether what they did was becoming of a gentleman.

  “What I am trying to explain to you is, whatever happened, however bad it was, however disgracefully those against your father behaved, he went on fighting even if it meant his death.”

  He looked at Yolanda as he spoke and after a long moment, she remarked,

  “That is what you are telling me to do.”

  “What I am really saying, is that you have won a battle against a man who is a cad and a swine. Now that you have done so, be magnanimous and forget him. He is of no importance and it is just what your father would have done.

  “It was an unpleasant episode in your life, but now Watson can only win if you continue to brood about him and destroy your future happiness by doing so.”

  Yolanda rose and walked to the window.

  She stood there looking out into the garden.

  After a long pause, she murmured,

  “He terrified me.”

  “Of course, he terrified you.

  “But it was my fault in asking you to help me and I can only say how sorry I am. At the same time you must realise that you and I are making Watson seem of far more importance than he really is in the world, because we are thinking and talking about him.”

  “I will try not to think about him again.”

  “Good!” her stepfather exclaimed. “Now let me tell you what we are going to do. We are going to London!”

  Yolanda turned round.

  “Why?” she enquired.

  “Because I have business there for one thing and also I would like you to be in touch with your mother’s and father’s friends. It is what your mother would have wanted you to do and I admit I was quite wrong to bring you here to the country while the Season was still taking place.”

  “But I am in mourning – ”

  Her stepfather looked at her.

  “Do you really begrudge your mother being with your father whom she adored?”

  Yolanda stared at him in a startled way.

  She thought it was a strange remark for him to make.

  “I know what you are thinking, Yolanda, and I do know how very much your mother loved your father and he loved her. And I knew I could never take your father’s place, so I did not try to do so.”

  Yolanda was still staring at him.

  “It was the greatest moment of my life when your mother permitted me to look after her and comfort her a little. It is something I shall never forget and because I loved her, I want to believe that she is happy now.”

  He spoke so movingly that Yolanda found it hard to realise that it was actually her stepfather speaking.

  “What you and I have to do now is exactly what your mother would want you to do. That is to go back to London and to be in contact with those who loved her and your father and spend the last month of the Season with them.”

  He smiled before he added,

  “I am not going to give a spectacular ball for you – that can easily wait till the winter. But we can hold dinner parties and dances in my house in Park Lane and I am sure that you will receive a great number of invitations.”

  Yolanda was gazing at him as if she could not take in what he was saying.

  He held out his hand.

  “Come along, Yolanda, we both know that we want your mother to be happy and have exactly what she wants, just as we tried to give it to her when she was with us.”

  She bent forward and took his hand.

  As she did so, for the first time ever, she placed her arms round her stepfather’s neck and kissed his cheek.

  His arms closed round her and he realised that she was crying.

  “It is all right,” he soothed. “Everything is all right. We now understand each other and we will do what your mother wants.”

  “How can you be so kind, so understanding? I have been feeling so alone and so scared, but now I feel I have you.”

  “Of course you have me, Yolanda, and together we will win our battle.”

  She wiped her eyes.

  Then Mr. Garrack suggested,

  “Let’s have a glass of champagne because we both need it. Then after luncheon we will go riding. I think you will agree that we should take Chestnut and the new horses which we have yet to name, to London with us.”

  Yolanda smiled at him.

  “They too will want their London Season!”

  *

  At luncheon her stepfather set out to amuse her.

  He told her stories of things that had happened to him when he was abroad and spoke of new projects he had invested in which had proved disastrous.

  Because she asked him, he told her with pride about some business deals that had been a huge success and had eventually made him a multi-millionaire.

  As soon as luncheon was finished the horses were brought round to the front of the house from the stables.

  They rode together first into the paddock and then to look at the new jumps, which had been erected while Yolanda was lying in bed.

  They rode over the broad acres of his estate.

  “You must be very proud of all this,” she exclaimed.

  “It is what I always told myself I would have one day – a house bigger and better than anyone else’s. It was blessed when your mother came to stay and she was even more beautiful than any of the pictures on my walls.”

  “I meant to talk to you about your pictures.”

  The horses were now walking side by side and the sun was shining on Yolanda’s golden hair.

  She was not wearing a hat as there was no one to see her except her stepfather – it was the way she had enjoyed riding with her father.

  “Why do you buy so many expensive and famous pictures?” Yolanda asked him.

  “First because I enjoy looking at them and secondly because I know it will impress the people I want to impress.”

  She liked his response because he was so frank.

  “Have they come to see them?”

  “Quite a number came while your mother was here. That is what I am hoping you will do now you have taken your mother’s place.”

  Yolanda looked a little puzzled and he explained,

  “We shall entertain the right people who will know a masterpiece when they see one and who perhaps have one or two in their own homes. I promise you that I have no intention of wasting their beauty on those who don’t appreciate them!”

  Yolanda knew what he was telling her – he would not in future ask men like Cecil Watson to stay with them in the country.

  She did not respond to his comment so instead she gave him a smile, which made her, for an instant, look very much like her mother.

  “We are going to enjoy ourselves, although I know it is only a question of time before you will fall in love and leave me.”

  “I will never leave you completely, Step-papa. It is what I very stupidly thought I might do, but I promise you I shall not contemplate it again.”

  “We will make this house a very happy one,” he told her quietly, “just as when people stayed with us when your mother was alive, they always went away feeling very happy and different to when they arrived. As one woman said to me, ‘it has been Heaven this weekend being with you two wonderful people. Please, please ask me again’.”

  Yolanda’s eyes softened as she listened.

  “It is a very nice idea, Step-papa, and that is what we will do. I know it would please Mama.”

  “I know that too and I am certain she will help us.”

  *

  That night when Yolanda went to bed, she thought how stupid she had been.

  She had not attempted to understand her stepfather before now.

  She had actively disliked him and be
en snobbish enough to believe that he was rather common and beneath her.

  Now when he had told her frankly of his struggles and difficulties to reach right to the top, she realised it was something he had always done alone and without love.

  Until he had found her mother.

  Yolanda was now thinking of just how much she had meant to him – she could hear it every time he spoke of her.

  The sincerity in his voice and the expression of love in his eyes was very moving.

  ‘We were so incredibly lucky that he was so kind to us,’ she said to herself. ‘And it was most ungrateful and stupid of me not to understand.’

  She was now determined to make it up to him.

  When she said goodnight, once again she put her arm round his neck and kissed him affectionately.

  It was the way she had kissed her father.

  She knew her stepfather understood without words what she was saying to him.

  When they went upstairs, she slipped her hand into his.

  “It is really so exciting to be going back to London, Step-papa. But you will help me?”

  He realised that she was asking him to keep away from her any man who might frighten her.

  His fingers tightened over hers.

  “I am always here for you, Yolanda, and I shall be extremely careful whom you meet. Let’s at first keep to your mother’s friends. I know some of them already, who I met when you were away in France and I am sure that if I appeal to them, they will welcome you with open arms.”

  When they reached Yolanda’s bedroom, they kissed again.

  Then Mr. Garrack went to his own room.

  Yolanda found that the housemaids had packed all her gowns and the trunks were now standing in her room waiting for any last item before they were locked.

  She thought as she looked at them that this was the beginning of a new adventure.

  It was what her father had often said when they had moved from a place they could not afford, and sometimes it was because the people there were wary of playing cards with him because he won so much from them.

  ‘A new adventure!’

  She breathed the words to herself.

  Then she felt that her mother was somehow smiling at her and telling her that was what it would indeed be.

  ‘Perhaps,’ mused Yolanda, ‘I shall find someone as attractive as my Papa and that will be the most wonderful adventure of all.’