Night Over Water - Ken Follett [48]
She could sell double the number of shoes she was making, if she had the manufacturing capacity. But her profits were swallowed up by Peter’s losses and there was nothing left for expansion.
Nancy knew what had to be done to save the business.
The chain of stores would have to be sold, perhaps to their managers, to raise cash. The money from the sale would be used to modemize the factory and switch to the conveyor-belt style of production that was being introduced in all the more progressive shoe-manufacturing plants. Peter would have to hand over the reins to her, and confine himself to running his New York store, working within strict cost controls.
She was willing for him to retain the title of chairman and the prestige that went with it, and she would continue to subsidize his store from the factory’s profits, within limits; but he would have to give up all real power.
She had put these proposals in a written report, for Peter’s eyes only. He had promised to think about it. Nancy had told him, as gently as she could, that the decline of the company could not be allowed to continue, and that if he did not agree to her plan, she would have to go over his head to the board—which meant that he would be sacked and she would become chairman. She hoped fervently that he would see sense. If he were to provoke a crisis, it was sure to end with a humiliating defeat for him and a family split that might never be repaired.
So far he had not taken offense. He seemed calm and thoughtful, and remained friendly. They decided to go to Paris together. Peter bought fashion shoes for his store, and Nancy shopped for herself at the couturiers’ and kept an eye on Peter’s expenditures. Nancy had loved Europe, Paris especially, and she had been looking forward to London; then war was declared.
They decided to return to the States immediately; but so did everyone else, of course, and they had terrible trouble getting passage. In the end Nancy got tickets on a ship leaving from Liverpool. After a long journey from Paris by train and ferry, they had arrived here yesterday, and they were due to embark today.
She was unnerved by England’s war preparations. Yesterday afternoon a bellhop had come to her room and installed an elaborate light-proof screen over the window. All windows had to be completely blacked out every evening so that the city would not be visible from the air at night. The windowpanes were crisscrossed with adhesive tape so splinters of glass would not fly when the city was bombed. There were stacks of sandbags at the front of the hotel and an underground air-raid shelter at the back.
Her terrible fear was that the United States would get into the war and her sons, Liam and Hugh, would be conscripted. She remembered Pa saying, when Hitler first came to power, that the Nazis would stop Germany going Communist; and that was the last time she had thought about Hitler. She had too much to do to worry about Europe. She was not interested in international politics, the balance of power, or the rise of Fascism: such abstractions seemed foolish when set against the lives of her sons. The Poles, the Austrians, the Jews and the Slavs would have to take care of themselves. Her job was to take care of Liam and Hugh.
Not that they needed much taking care of. Nancy had married young and had her children right away, so the boys were grown up. Liam was married and living in Houston, and Hugh was in his final year at Yale. Hugh was not studying as hard as he should, and she had been disturbed to learn that he had bought a fast sports car, but he was well past the age of listening to his mother’s advice. So, as she could not keep them out of the army, there was not much to draw her home.
She knew that war would be good for business. There would be an economic boom in America, and people would have more money to buy shoes. Whether the U.S. got into the war or not, the military was bound to be expanded, and that meant increased orders on her government contracts. All in