‘Conundrum’ sounded light, with the right element of mystery. People could read their own further significance into the shiny tracks if they so wished. Harriet just wanted them to give it to each other for Christmas.
In the conference room of the venture capital division of Moreton’s Bank, Harriet opened a small suitcase. As she had done on each of the previous similar occasions, she felt like a pedlar displaying her wares.
Inside the suitcase was a box, only a dummy as yet, but still looking enough like the box that Harriet wanted for the final Conundrum. The artwork for the design, bold Deco lettering backed by a sunray motif in brilliant colours, had been produced, after a dozen other attempts had been rejected, by a design studio recommended to Harriet by Jenny. The artwork had been proofed, using a five-colour run to give depth and richness, by an East End printer recommended by the design studio. Harriet had found her own manufacturer of boxes, and had a sample made up to her own specifications. All the experiments had been expensive. Harriet had paid out of her capital, knowing that she must practise no economies yet.
When the time came the design would be printed on to the packaging, and then laminated to give it sparkle. For now, Harriet could do no better than stick a laminated proof to the sample box.
Even so, she was delighted with the fresh impact of it.
The bankers inspected the packaging carefully. Harriet opened the lid to reveal the game itself. There were printed instructions, but as yet the sheet was only pasted inside the lid. There was no moulding to cradle the board or to offer little cups in which the counters and balls would neatly rest. That could come only when Harriet had raised the money for it.
Please, she wanted to implore the three pink faces. Instead she lifted out the black shiny board, fitted the white wings in their slots.
‘This is how it works.’
The three men gave their attention to playing Conundrum. Two of them were good at it. The third was not, although he was clever at concealing it by deferring to the others when his turn came, and by masking his deliberations with a knowing smile. Harriet thought that probably she was the only one who noticed his shortcoming.
Rather noisily, the other two challenged each other to produce the lowest score over three games. The atmosphere in the conference room became frivolous. Harriet kept the score, and declared the senior man the fair and square winner at the end. She thought that was probably important. The third man slipped out of the room, and came back again with a sheaf of papers as the game finished.
‘Quite intriguing,’ was the senior man’s verdict, and his assistants nodded. ‘And most strikingly presented.’ More nods followed.
Harriet allowed herself to begin to hope.
‘Now, shall we take a look at your plans for the business?’
All frivolity ebbed away at once.
Harriet took out her projections, one copy for each of the three pairs of fleshy pink hands, and she began to talk. She had rehearsed her pitch so thoroughly that the points came fluently one after another, in logical and convincing sequence. The dates and the figures and the estimates fitted together, as neatly as the wishbone gates into their slots. Harriet convinced herself as she talked. She could have sung, although she kept her voice dispassionate and level. They couldn’t refuse her now.
A hundred thousand pounds. In this financial cathedral, it was so very little.
As soon as she finished her pitch and answered their questions, she knew that they would indeed refuse her. She barely heard the formulae as they were reeled off, but the meaning was quite clear.
‘This is a fashion product, Mrs Gold, of course.’
‘The most unpredictable market of all. If only we could predict …’
‘The high risk attached to small ventures of this kind …’
The third one, the one who had failed to solve the game’s riddle, read from his sheaf of papers. It contained the financial histories of other companies, the proprietors of games and toys and fashion products that had failed to capture the market’s imagination. As they were afraid Conundrum would also fail.
Harriet rallied herself. ‘I believe you are misjudging. Conundrum is nothing to do with fashion. Its appeal is timeless. I know the market will respond to that appeal.’
They were shaking their heads, each with his own interpretation of polite regret. Harriet thought savagely that they looked like the three wise monkeys, possessed of the wrong kind of wisdom. The senior man stood up, and held out his hand.
‘You may well prove us wrong, Mrs Gold. I wish I could be sure that you won’t, and at the same time I wish you the best of luck.’
Harriet shook his hand, although she would rather have bitten it. She listened to his thanks for her kindness in letting them see her proposal, and his repeated regret that it appeared not to be quite the right investment for Morton’s, whilst many of their rivals might well take quite a different view of it. The one who couldn’t play the game held open the door for her, and then escorted her to the lift. She wondered if it might have been different had he been as good at it as her bus conductor.
She found herself in the street again, under the tall towers. All she knew for sure was that she had failed again. The game was good, she reasoned, so the fault must be her own. Her awareness of that, and the optimism she had felt about this meeting, made the disappointment harder to bear. She tried to think back over everything she had said, and to pin-point the moment when the tide had turned against her. But it was no use. She couldn’t work out exactly where she had gone wrong. They had given her a fair hearing, a long one she saw now, when she looked at her watch. And at the end of it they had simply decided not to back her.
Harriet hurried on. She was due back at Stepping, where Karen would be needing help. Tuesday afternoons were often busy, for no particularly obvious reason.
She was already recovering her balance. There wouldn’t be any failure if she refused to acknowledge it. This connection had been one possibility, and she had been wrong to place too much faith in it. There would be other connections, and one of them would hold. If she couldn’t believe that, she told herself, then it would be better to give up right away.
By the evening, when she let herself into the basement flat again, she had decided what she was going to do. She would get Mr Jepson to make up more samples of the game, a dozen at least, and she would have boxes printed and the best packaging she could manage. She would print posters and leaflets and lots of powerful, bright promotion material. She would take a bigger stand at the Toy Fair, instead of a modest one, and she would staff it with her own sales people, and she would give Conundrum the showiest splash she could possibly devise.
She had enough capital to do it. Just enough.
Then, when the buyers had seen and ordered, she could go out and borrow the money for the production run ten times over.
Harriet fed the cats, and they subsided into a purring dome of bicoloured fur in the only comfortable chair. She opened the small suitcase that she had taken to Morton’s with such misplaced optimism, and placed Conundrum and its bright box beside Simon’s original on the mantelpiece. She was standing back to look at it when she heard people coming down the steps to her basement door.
The visitors were Charlie Thimbell and a man called Henry Orde. Henry was an old friend of Charlie’s. Harriet knew him a little, and liked him. But she sighed inwardly at the sight of the two of them. She wanted to think about the day’s defeat, and to marshal her reserves of confidence once more, and now she would have to descend into the realm of sociability’.
‘Come in,’ she invited, not opening the door very wide.
The men came in anyway, in their bulky overcoats, bringing cold air with them and making the room seem tiny. Harriet blinked at seeing the place so unfamiliarly crowded, and Charlie stared around him.