Cruel Legacy

‘Yes, yes, of course. I understand,’ Philippa assured her. She could feel her face starting to burn with embarrassed heat as she opened her purse. How much money did she have? Please God, let it be enough to pay for her petrol. Why on earth hadn’t she had the sense to realise for herself that this would happen? Andrew had always countersigned the petrol bill at the end of the month when he’d paid it and she ought to have recognised that with him dead problems might arise. The garage obviously had done.

Even as she felt the relief of discovering that she had enough cash with her to cover the bill, she was still furiously angry with herself and dismayingly aware of how dismally lacking in common sense and ordinary everyday awareness she must be not to have anticipated what might happen.

She could sign cheques on the joint account, a concession it had taken her many months to win, but only for amounts of fifty pounds at a time and never more than two hundred pounds in one month.

No doubt this was one of the reasons why the bank manager wanted to see her, she acknowledged as she left the garage and got back into her car.

Neville Wilson was a pleasant enough man, very much the archetypal bank manager type, worthy and perhaps a little on the dull side, addicted to his golf, and the type of man who enjoyed observing the conventions of small-town life and who would, in Philippa’s estimation, feel uneasy and out of his depth without them.

Andrew had often boasted to her that he was the bank’s biggest customer and that because of his flair and initiative, because of the way he had expanded the company, Neville’s stock had been increased with his head office.

‘It’s no wonder they’ve never promoted him,’ Andrew had told her after they had left one of the Wilsons’ dinner parties. Andrew had been in a good mood that night, boasting at the dinner-table about the new contract he expected to win.

‘He’s too cautious … too stuck in his ways. I keep telling him that these days to make money you have to spend it. His own boss agrees with me. In fact I’m beginning to think I should deal with the regional office direct and bypass Neville. I’d get much faster results that way. They understand how important speed is these days.’

Andrew had also been in an unusually expansive mood that night. He had made love to her when they went to bed, a sure sign that he was in good temper.

Made love … Philippa grimaced to herself at how very much her parents’ daughter she was at times. She and Andrew had not ‘made love’ at all—they hadn’t really even had sex; they had simply been physically intimate, physically but not mentally and certainly not emotionally.

She hadn’t seen Neville socially for several months after that, not until they had both been guests at a mutual acquaintance’s dinner party.

‘I’m sorry to hear that Andrew didn’t get that Japanese contract after all,’ he had said quietly to Philippa after dinner. ‘It must have been a disappointment to him. I know how much he was counting on it.’

Philippa hadn’t said anything. How could she have done? She had had no knowledge of the contract he was discussing and so she had simply smiled and changed the subject, asking him if he had managed to take time off to visit Wentworth to watch the golf—a special pro-am match which she knew would have appealed to him.

Now, as she remembered that conversation, her mouth twisted bitterly.

Had Neville perhaps been trying to warn her even then that things were going badly wrong for Andrew? But even if he had, what could she have done? She was the last person Andrew would have listened to or confided in.

Face it, she told herself as she walked into the bank. Andrew would not have listened to anyone who tried to tell him something he might not want to hear. He was simply not that kind of man.

She was several minutes early for her appointment and, bearing in mind the fact that she had used virtually all her spare cash to pay for her petrol, Philippa was just about to draw some cash from their account when she remembered the humiliating situation at the garage and decided to wait until she had spoken to Neville and sorted out whatever paperwork was necessary to enable her to take over their accounts.

At one minute to ten a young woman walked into the banking hall, tall and dressed in a smartly discreet, soft caramel-coloured business suit and a toning cream silk shirt. She gave off an aura which Philippa immediately envied. Although physically she was extremely attractive it was immediately obvious to Philippa as she observed her that it was not her looks that gave her her enviable air of self-confidence and assurance, her unmistakable and enviable professionalism.

This young woman was all that she herself had never been, Philippa acknowledged as she watched her; there were perhaps eight years, maybe even less between them but Philippa felt that they were divided by a gulf not of time but of life’s experience.

She saw Neville coming out of his office, and stood up, but it was the girl whom he greeted first, before turning to Philippa and making an apology that he hadn’t been able to join the other mourners at the crematorium.

As he showed them both into his office, it was the girl again whom he showed to the more prominent of the two chairs, quickly introducing her to Philippa as the representative of the firm of accountants the bank had called in to handle the firm’s liquidation.

Thanks to Robert, she had been semi-prepared for such an announcement, but the gravity of Neville’s voice and the way he was frowning down at the papers on his desk still heightened her anxiety, the shock of hearing what she dreaded sliding coldly through her stomach, her body tensing.

Habit and training cautioned her simply to sit and listen, to retreat into the protection of a semi-frozen silence, but older instincts urged her to accept reality, warned her that it wasn’t just herself she had to protect and defend but her sons as well.

Neville was still frowning. He coughed and cleared his throat.

‘I realise this has come as a shock to you,’ he told her. ‘But it has to be discussed, I’m afraid.’

‘Yes … yes. I appreciate that,’ Philippa told him huskily. ‘It’s just …’ She could feel her throat beginning to close up, weak tears of fear and panic threatening to flood her eyes.

She couldn’t cry … she mustn’t cry … she was not going to cry, she told herself fiercely. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the expression on Deborah’s face and momentarily envied her.

She was young, so obviously self-confident and in control of her life, that faint hint of pity Philippa could see in her eyes making her feel worse rather than better.

Gritting her teeth, she lifted her head and looked directly at Neville.

‘Could you explain the exact situation to me, Neville?’ she asked him quietly. ‘I … Andrew didn’t discuss his business affairs with me. He wasn’t that sort of man and I——’

She broke off, her face hot, aware of how stupid she must sound and aware too of the covert message within her words, the in-built need to apologise for herself and ask forgiveness.

Neville Wilson watched her. She was still in shock, poor woman, and no wonder. This wasn’t the first time he had been in this situation and it wouldn’t be the last. He had warned Andrew about the risk he was taking, but Andrew had refused to listen and it was no surprise to Neville to hear that he had kept Philippa in the dark about his business affairs.

‘A lot of men are like Andrew,’ he told Philippa. ‘I sometimes suspect that it’s partly the excitement of the secrecy of keeping everything to themselves, of being totally in control that drives them on and makes them successful. Unfortunately, it’s the same need for secrecy and control that works so dangerously in reverse when things go wrong.

‘I tried to warn Andrew on several occasions about what he was doing but …’

‘But the bank still loaned him money,’ Philippa intervened quietly.

Neville gave a small shrug. ‘Things were different then. It was a time of expansion; head office wanted us to lend and Andrew had the collateral, or at least …’

‘Your husband’s business isn’t the only one to suffer,’ Deborah told Philippa. ‘One of the problems a lot of small businesses have had to face is that the value of their collateral, the means by which they secure the money they borrow, has sharply depreciated. Bankruptcies are very much on the increase at the moment …’

‘And suicide?’ Philippa asked sharply before biting her lip and apologising huskily. ‘I’m sorry … It’s just …’

She was here, after all, to listen to what Neville and this young woman had to say, not to give way to her own emotions or express the anger and resentment she felt at what had happened to her.

Deborah watched her. There was no mistaking the other woman’s shocked distress. Deborah actually felt sorry for her, her plight reaching out to her in a way she hadn’t expected. Would she have felt a similar empathy had Philippa been a man? She didn’t know, but then a man would not have been in such a situation, would he?

In the office and at home reading the bank’s file on the company and its owner, it had been easy to criticise and condemn, to be distanced from the effect that Andrew Ryecart’s financial ineptitude and arrogance had had on other people’s lives, but here, facing one of, if not the prime victim of Andrew’s overweening pride, Deborah suddenly realised exactly what Mark had meant when he had said that it was a side of their work he simply had no stomach for.

But it was her job to find the stomach for it, as Ryan would no doubt point out mockingly to her when she tried to express her present feelings to him.

Silently she listened as Neville Wilson explained the position to Philippa.

‘Andrew fell into the same trap as many other people during the eighties,’ he told her. ‘He bought the company when interest rates were low and then borrowed heavily to re-equip it, bringing in new plants and taking on extra men, secure in the knowledge that there was an increasing market for his goods. Over-trading is the term we bankers use for it,’ Neville told her drily. ‘But, unfortunately, men like Andrew very rarely listen to our words of caution. Additionally, matters were made worse in Andrew’s case by the fact that not only did interest rates rise steeply, but he had also gambled on winning an extremely large new contract and had expanded, borrowing extra money to spend on the plant and new buildings on the assumption that he would get this contract. At that time the value of his assets merited such a loan but, of course, now …’

‘I suspect that your husband’s accountants, like the bank, would have cautioned him to think very carefully about what he was doing,’ Deborah intervened. ‘We always counsel companies not to put too many of their eggs in the one basket, so to speak. Several small contracts are always much wiser and safer than one large one. Several small ones to provide the bread and butter and one large one for the jam are, of course, even better. Even if your husband had obtained this large contract he could still have been facing severe problems. What a lot of these large companies do is use their contracts as bait, and once they have their fish well and truly hooked and dependent on their contracts to stay in the business they use that power to force down the price of the goods or services they’re buying. It’s standard market practice but often, in the euphoria of obtaining a good new contract, even the most sensible of businessmen can forget that fact.

‘In your husband’s case, unfortunately, he was already over-committed financially before he expanded to take on this contract. Once he realised he wasn’t going to get it, the only way the business could have survived would have been via a very large injection of cash. He couldn’t borrow any more money. He had already borrowed up to the full extent of his assets and as it is the bank will be very lucky to recoup all of its money.’

‘So there’s no way the company could be kept going?’ Philippa asked her.

Deborah shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, there isn’t. If there were, the bank, or more likely your husband’s accountants, would have recommended appointing receivers; they would have taken over the running of the company and tried to keep it working as a going concern until they could find a buyer …’

‘And there’s no way that still could be done?’ Philippa asked her eagerly. Perhaps if she talked to Robert, stressed to him how many people would be put out of work if the company closed down, played a little upon his pomposity… his public image and the acclaim he would receive locally if he ‘saved’ Kilcoyne’s … ‘If there were someone who could invest …’

Deborah shook her head again. Why was it that she felt so much pity and compassion for this woman? She was the antithesis of everything she was herself, pitifully defenceless and unaware, the kind of woman who probably never worried about anything other than what to serve at her next dinner party, whose knowledge of world affairs was probably limited to the name of Hillary Clinton’s dress designer and who was probably more familiar with the current cost of a Chanel suit than with the current state of the share index.

The kind of woman who almost exactly mirrored the type personified by her own mother.

Deborah frowned abruptly. Where had that thought come from?

‘Not unless this someone could come up with two million pounds,’ she told Philippa briskly.

Philippa could feel the colour leaving her skin, her blood felt as though it was being sucked back through her veins by some giant vacuum pump, leaving her physically shaking … physically nauseous.

‘Two million pounds! B-but that’s impossible …’ she started to stammer. ‘Andrew would never borrow so much money … He couldn’t!’

Deborah said nothing, pausing for a few seconds before removing a sheaf of papers from the file in front of her and saying quietly, ‘It’s our job as liquidators appointed by the bank, who are the main creditors—that is to say your late husband’s biggest debts are with them—to recoup as much of this money as we can, and this process is normally done by liquidating the company’s assets … hence the term liquidation.

‘What I have here is a list of those assets over which the bank has a charge; that is to say that when your husband borrowed this money from the bank he secured it by signing over to the bank those assets.’

Philippa tried to listen but she was still in shock, still stunned by the extent of Andrew’s debt. Two million pounds … how could he have borrowed so much money?

Deborah looked up at Neville Wilson. It was his job to explain to Philippa Ryecart the extent of her husband’s debts and the consequences of them.

Silently she started to replace her papers in the file.

‘And the people who work for the company?’ she heard Philippa asking her urgently as she stood up. ‘What will happen to them?’

‘They’ll be served with redundancy notices,’ Deborah told her. ‘There’ll be a formal meeting this afternoon informing them officially of what’s happened and …’

‘Redundancy!’ Philippa shivered as she looked across at Neville.

‘There isn’t any alternative, I’m afraid,’ he told her. ‘It’s standard procedure in such cases. Every extra day the company is in operation merely adds to its debt. I just wish I’d been able to persuade Andrew to listen to me when I tried to warn him about the risks he was running, but——’

He broke off as Deborah interrupted him to say quietly, ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow morning as arranged.’ She turned to Philippa. ‘I’m sorry all this has to come as such a shock to you,’ she told her.

As she left the office she was thanking her lucky stars that she was not the sort of woman who could ever fall into the kind of trap that Philippa had been caught in. To be so dependent on a man and so unaware of his financial affairs.

It crossed her mind that Ryan was very much the same kind of man as Andrew Ryecart had been.

In Neville’s office Philippa stood up, preparing to leave, but Neville waved her back into her seat, saying, ‘Not yet, Philippa—we still have one or two things to discuss … about Andrew’s personal affairs.’

Andrew’s personal affairs. Philippa stared numbly at him. She was still in shock. She had gone beyond her own personal anger and bitterness now, totally overwhelmed by her awareness of how many lives Andrew’s egomania had destroyed.

All those people soon to lose their jobs; and in a town where all too probably they would not be able to find new ones.

‘How could he have done it, Neville?’ she asked shakily. ‘How could he have taken such a risk?’

‘He was that kind of man, Philippa,’ Neville told her. ‘He thrived on the excitement of taking that kind of gamble. He enjoyed taking risks.’

‘With other people’s lives … other people’s welfare?’ Philippa asked him bitterly. At the back of her mind was the thought that Andrew had not merely been a gambler addicted to the dangerous thrill of taking a risk, he had also been a coward, happy to gamble recklessly with the futures and livelihoods of others, but totally unable to face up to the consequences of losing that gamble when it affected him personally.

‘You wanted to talk to me about Andrew’s personal affairs,’ she said wearily instead. ‘The house was in Andrew’s name but I suppose it will only be a formality having it transferred into mine as his widow … like the bank accounts.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘To be honest I haven’t given much thought to that side of things and I should have done. It was a bit awkward at the garage this morning when I went to get petrol. They’ve stopped Andrew’s account and I had to use the last of my cash. I’ll need to draw some more from the joint account.’

Neville cleared his throat and looked down at his desk. ‘I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as that, Philippa.’

As she looked into his face and saw his expression Philippa felt her stomach drop with all the speed and sickening effect of a high-speed lift. She knew even before he spoke that there was something seriously wrong, but her throat had gone so dry she couldn’t even begin to ask what it was.

‘Let’s take the house first, shall we?’ Neville was saying. ‘When Andrew approached the bank for an additional loan we could only grant it against some sort of security. The company’s assets were already tied up to secure the existing loans he had and so the only security Andrew had to offer was the equity in the house, and of course his insurance policies. If the house had been in joint names the bank would, of course, have been obliged to inform you of this and to get your signature to a document agreeing to it; however, as it was in Andrew’s sole name …’

Philippa was shivering and yet it wasn’t cold in the room.

‘What are you trying to tell me, Neville?’ she asked him through chattering teeth.

‘The bank now owns the house, Philippa, along with all of Andrew’s other assets.’

Philippa could see how much he was hating telling her this; she could see it in his eyes, and in the nervous betraying movements of his fingers as he fiddled with the file on his desk.

‘And, like the company’s assets, these will have to be sold and the money utilised to pay off the bank’s borrowing.’

‘And how long … how long will that take?’ Philippa asked him.

What she meant was, how long would it be before she no longer had a roof over her head?

‘I don’t know. That will be head office’s decision, not mine, since they sanctioned the extra borrowing.’

‘And the bank accounts?’ Philippa asked him, dry-mouthed. ‘The money in them?’

Surely there must be something for her … If not, how on earth was she going to manage … how on earth would she live?

Neville shook his head.

‘They’re all well over the overdraft limits, I’m afraid, Philippa.’

The overdraft limits. She swallowed, swamped by shock and despair.

‘I truly am sorry about all this,’ Neville commiserated with her.

It was a far more common situation than many people realised. He could name half a dozen small business sole traders whose partners were living in blissful ignorance of the fact that the bank now owned their homes and that all that stood between them and repossession was the size of the current month’s or in some cases the week’s takings.

Philippa stood up, the room felt so claustrophobic she could hardly breathe.

‘I’ll be in touch with you just as soon as I’ve heard from head office,’ Neville was saying, adding awkwardly, ‘In the meantime, try not to worry too much. At least the boys’ school fees are paid until the end of the year. The local Citizens Advice Bureau run a debt counselling service, Philippa. Why don’t you go along and see them?’

What for? Philippa wanted to ask him. Are they going to give me the two million pounds to repay Andrew’s debts? But she was so close to tears she dared not risk saying anything. It wasn’t Neville’s fault that Andrew had behaved so recklessly … so … so dangerously.

Had Robert known about any of this? she wondered as she stumbled into the fresh air. Was that why he had been so anxious to dissociate himself from things? And her parents? How would they react once they learned that she was going to be homeless?

She could feel the hot, weak tears of panic and self pity buried in the back of her eyes as she hurried towards her car, head bent not so much against the sharp buffeting wind as against the potentially curious and pitying glances of any passers-by.

She had parked her car in the town square, empty on a Monday of its market stalls. The square was dominated by the commanding façade of the town hall, built at the height of the Victorian age and far too large and domineering for its surroundings.

As she unlocked her car and removed her ticket, Philippa suddenly realised that the pound coin she had used to buy parking time had been virtually all the change she had got from paying for her petrol, and those notes with which she had paid for it had been all the money she had had.

The panic that hit her as she stood clinging on to the half-open door of her car was like nothing she had ever experienced in her life. It rolled over her, swamping her, reducing her to such a shocked and humiliated state that she could feel the shame of what had happened as though it were a fire that physically scorched her body.

For how long had they virtually been living on credit … owing money to the bank? For how long had she been spending the bank’s, other people’s money, totally unaware …? Why hadn’t she realised … questioned … guessed … ?

But no matter how hard she tried to lash herself into a self-anger strong enough to obliterate her fear, it just wouldn’t go away.

Somehow she managed to get herself into her car and get the engine started, her body trembling violently as she tried to come to terms with what she had learned.

When she got home and saw her brother Robert’s car parked outside the house and Robert himself standing beside it looking anxiously down the drive, her relief was almost as strong as her earlier panic. Robert would know what she ought to do, she comforted herself as she got out of the car. She was his sister, her sons his nephews; they were a family and he was far more experienced and knowledgeable about financial affairs than she was.

‘What is it?’ he asked her as soon as he saw her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

Philippa shook her head. ‘Let’s go inside,’ she told him, and then she realised that he wasn’t on his own and that his wife was in the car.

She got out and gave Philippa a cool look. ‘Duty’ was a word she was frequently heard to utter and, looking at her, Philippa could see that it was ‘duty’ which had brought her here now.

‘You’ve seen the bank?’ was Robert’s first question once they were inside.

‘Yes,’ Philippa confirmed. She swallowed hard as she told him, ‘The bank has called in a firm of accountants to act as liquidators, and …’

‘Never mind the company—what about Andrew’s personal assets?’ Robert asked her.