‘But he stayed on as chairman of the board,’ Blackie interjected.

‘Yes, he did. But he failed to recognize the tenuousness of his position, and he also underestimated the other shareholders, both the old and the new. He just didn’t seem to realize that loyalty flies out of the window when there’s a great deal of money at stake. The board has been worried about the failing papers for years, and when Harte Enterprises approached them to buy up their shares they were willing to sell, almost to the last man. I’ve been acquiring shares in the company for years, and those, coupled with my last purchases, gave me a lot of power. Those shareholders who didn’t at first sell to me finally threw their weight behind me when I offered to step in and put new management into the company. Very simply, Edwin Fairley was outvoted at the last board meeting and had to step down as chairman. Harte Enterprises made an offer for the remainder of his shares and, surprisingly, he sold.’

‘Quite a coup for you, Emma, eh?’ Blackie remarked. ‘But I’m surprised you weren’t present at that board meeting to witness his demise. Winston said he represented you.’

Emma’s face changed radically and a cold glint entered her eyes. She said, ‘Forty-five years ago I told Edwin Fairley I would never see him again as long as I lived, and I haven’t. You don’t think I want to set eyes on him now, do you?’

Blackie shrugged. ‘I suppose not,’ he responded quietly. ‘Did Winston say how Edwin reacted when he learned you were behind his fall from power at the Gazette?’

Emma nodded. ‘Apparently he was poker-faced. All barristers are good actors, you know. Then he said, “I see.” But Winston told me Edwin had a peculiar look on his face, which he found hard to fathom.’ She paused and stared fully at Blackie. ‘Winston said he thought Edwin looked gratified. Odd, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, I would. I can’t imagine why Edwin Fairley would be gratified you had taken over his newspaper.’ He shook his head, baffled. ‘The paper that’s been in his family for three generations.’

‘God knows,’ Emma said, ‘it’s a mystery to me. I told Winston it was more than likely sheer relief he witnessed.’ She laughed ironically. ‘In one way, you might say I’ve lifted a burden from Edwin’s shoulders.’

‘Aye, mavourneen,’ Blackie said, and his face was unreadable as he lit a cigar. Maybe she’s right, he thought. Maybe Edwin Fairley is relieved, but not for the reason she thinks.

Emma rose. ‘I must go out and look for Paula. It’s time for her lunch. I won’t be a minute, Blackie. Please excuse me.’

Blackie nodded and followed her out on to the terrace. He stood watching her hurry down into the garden, his eyes trained on her and narrowed against the bright August sunlight. Emma drew to a standstill at the lily pond at the bottom of the garden and bent down to talk to Paula, who was playing with her doll’s pram on the lawn. Emma was as lithe as she had ever been, and in the distance, in her light summer frock and with her still luxuriant hair now tinted to the russet-gold shade of her youth, she appeared to be the young girl he had first met on the moors so long ago, and for an instant the decades fell away. He clearly recalled his little servant girl of Fairley Hall, and a slow smile spread itself across his face. Almost half a century had passed and so much had happened, things he had never dreamed possible. How extraordinary life was. And Emma went on for ever, as indomitable now as she had been then. He blinked and shaded his eyes. He saw her smooth her hand over the child’s head and then she straightened up and returned to the terrace, walking briskly.

Blackie smiled at her fondly. ‘You’re undoubtedly the most doting grandmother I’ve ever seen,’ he remarked with a chuckle. ‘And as for the wee one, why, she’s become your shadow.’

‘I suppose we do seem like an odd couple, the old woman and the five-year-old, but we understand each other.’ She turned back to look at the child and her face softened. ‘All my dreams and hopes and expectations are centred in her, Blackie. She is my future.’

PART SIX. THE VALLEY 1968

And yet, the order of the acts has been schemed and plotted, and nothing can avert the final curtain’s fall.

I stand alone. All else is swamped by Pharisaism.

To live life to the end is not a childish task.

– BORIS PASTERNAK, Doctor Zhivago

SIXTY

Emma sat at her desk in the lovely, upstairs parlour at Pennistone Royal, going over the legal documents spread out before her, her sharp eyes flicking swiftly across the pages. She eventually nodded with satisfaction, returned the papers to her briefcase, snapped it shut, and placed it on the floor next to the desk. Half smiling, she stood up and glided over to a small Georgian table, where she paused briefly to pour herself a sherry. She carried it to the fireplace and stood as usual with her back to the flames, endeavouring to warm her icy limbs.

Emma Harte Lowther Ainsley was seventy-eight years old. At the end of April, just a month away, she would celebrate her seventy-ninth birthday. And yet in old age, as in youth, her looks were still so arresting they startled with their vividness and clarity. Years before, she had stopped tinting her hair and it was a blaze of pure silver around her oval face, immaculately coiffeured and waved, the prominent widow’s peak protruding on to her wide brow as dramatically as always. Those once incomparable green eyes seemed smaller, hooded now by the ancient wrinkled lids, and they were more penetratingly observing than ever, and they missed nothing. Her face was lined and scored by the years, there were folds and creases in her neck, but her excellent bone structure had not blurred with time and her pink-and-white complexion was as translucent as it had been when she was a young woman. Her adherence to a simple diet had enabled her to keep her slender figure: she easily passed for a woman in her early sixties, without consciously wishing to do so, for vanity had never been one of her frailties.

This evening she wore a stunning black chiffon gown by Balmain, cut on loose flowing lines like a kaftan and with long wide sleeves. Emeralds threw off prisms of intense colour at her neck and ears and on her narrow wrists, and the huge square-cut McGill emerald blazed like green fire on her small left hand. In the past ten years she had acquired a different kind of beauty, a beauty that was austere and autocratic, and she looked exactly what she had become-a woman of immense power and substance. She was the true matriarch in every sense, and if she was demanding and imperious, she was also understanding, and even her enemies grudgingly acknowledged she was one of the most extraordinary women of her time. Eleven years older than the century, there was almost nothing she had not seen or experienced. She was a living legend.

She took a sip of the sherry, turned and placed the glass on the mantelshelf, and looked down into the fire reflectively, musing on the evening that stretched ahead. Her children and her grandchildren had all arrived, either last night or earlier that day, summoned by her to Pennistone Royal, ostensibly for a family weekend after her bout of pneumonia, but in actuality for the confrontation she had been planning for several weeks. Her face changed, and the light in her eyes dulled as she thought wearily of her children or, more accurately, of the first four she had borne-Edwina, Kit, Robin, and Elizabeth. The plotters caught red-handed in their scheming, but as yet unaware that she had been apprised of their duplicity and disloyalty, or that she had already circumvented them.

When her secretary, Gaye, had revealed her children’s plotting to her in New York in January, Emma had been shocked. But she had not permitted emotions to obscure intelligence, for it was her vivid intelligence which had saved Emma from disaster many times in her life. She had immediately seen everything with objectivity and without sentiment, and she had moved with speed and with consummate resourcefulness, as was her way when she was facing opponents. Whilst they were still fumbling around, inept in their intriguing, she had taken steps to render them powerless against her.