friend that he realized that the intense outrage and anger Susan had caused him had been mingled with another sensation altogether. It was sexual desire.
Morell’s Indigestion Treatment, as Julian finally called it (the name implying something more medically ethical and ongoing in its benefits than simply an antacid tablet), was a huge success. All the chemists who already stocked the cough linctus took it immediately, recommended it to their customers, and ordered more. Printed on the cardboard pill boxes, under the name, was the message ‘Keeps the misery of indigestion away’ and on the bottom of the box was a helpful little paragraph instructing sufferers to take the tablets before the pain struck, not to wait until afterwards, as it doubled the efficiency of the medication that way.
Within weeks orders had doubled, trebled, quadrupled; Julian was physically unable to deal with the deliveries, and hired two salesmen/drivers (in whom he invested sufficient time and money to enable them to talk to the chemists with at least a modicum of authority), and Jim and Susan were equally unable to cope with the manufacture, and to oversee the filling and packaging arrangements. The company acquired a second building in Ealing, twice the size of the first, and invested the whole of the year’s profits paying builders and laboratory outfitters double time to get it operational in a month. Over half the women outworkers were taken on full time in the newfactory and Susan Johns became, at the end of her first year, factory manager. It meant she no longer did much of the laboratory work, but Jim had two other assistants working almost full time on research and manufacture, and Susan’s real talent was for administration, not formulation.
She and Letitia were a formidable team; Letitia found Susan not only interesting but challenging to work with, she had a mind like a razor, a great capacity for hard work and, even more unusually, an ability to exact a similar dedication from other people. Letitia liked her, too; she found her honesty, her courage, and her absolute refusal to accept anything without questioning it, interesting and engaging, and she was slightly surprised to find herself amused, rather than irritated by the way Susan regarded Julian with just a very slight degree of contempt. This was entirely missing from the attitude Susan had towards her. She liked Letitia enormously, and rather to her own surprise found her blatant snobbery amusing and unimportant; probably, she told herself, because it was so blatant. ‘She’s honest about it,’ she said once to Julian when he teased her about it, ‘she’s not a hypocrite, she doesn’t go round patronizing everyone, pretending she thinks everyone’s equal, she really believes they aren’t. Well, that’s all right. She’s entitled to her own opinion.’ Julian laughed, and told her she was a hypocrite herself, but she was unmoved; Letitia was her heroine, she admired her brain, enjoyed her guts and her sense of fun and was constantly delighted by the fresh thinking and innovative approach Letitia brought to the company. Letitia was fascinated by new financial systems; she spent hours reading reports from big companies, she lunched with financial analysts and accountants, and hardly a week went by before she introduced some new piece of sophisticated accountancy, and drove Julian almost to distraction by constantly updating and changing her methods.
‘I really can’t see what’s wrong with the way you’ve done things so far, Mother,’ he said slightly fretfully one evening, as he arrived home exhausted after a long session with the buyer for a chain of chemists in the West Country and found her deep in conversation with Susan over the latest refinements to her system and the effect it was going to have on the next year’s wage structure. ‘I spend my life trying to follow your books andwork out fairly crucial basic things like how much money we’ve got in the
Morell’s Indigestion Treatment, as Julian finally called it (the name implying something more medically ethical and ongoing in its benefits than simply an antacid tablet), was a huge success. All the chemists who already stocked the cough linctus took it immediately, recommended it to their customers, and ordered more. Printed on the cardboard pill boxes, under the name, was the message ‘Keeps the misery of indigestion away’ and on the bottom of the box was a helpful little paragraph instructing sufferers to take the tablets before the pain struck, not to wait until afterwards, as it doubled the efficiency of the medication that way.
Within weeks orders had doubled, trebled, quadrupled; Julian was physically unable to deal with the deliveries, and hired two salesmen/drivers (in whom he invested sufficient time and money to enable them to talk to the chemists with at least a modicum of authority), and Jim and Susan were equally unable to cope with the manufacture, and to oversee the filling and packaging arrangements. The company acquired a second building in Ealing, twice the size of the first, and invested the whole of the year’s profits paying builders and laboratory outfitters double time to get it operational in a month. Over half the women outworkers were taken on full time in the newfactory and Susan Johns became, at the end of her first year, factory manager. It meant she no longer did much of the laboratory work, but Jim had two other assistants working almost full time on research and manufacture, and Susan’s real talent was for administration, not formulation.
She and Letitia were a formidable team; Letitia found Susan not only interesting but challenging to work with, she had a mind like a razor, a great capacity for hard work and, even more unusually, an ability to exact a similar dedication from other people. Letitia liked her, too; she found her honesty, her courage, and her absolute refusal to accept anything without questioning it, interesting and engaging, and she was slightly surprised to find herself amused, rather than irritated by the way Susan regarded Julian with just a very slight degree of contempt. This was entirely missing from the attitude Susan had towards her. She liked Letitia enormously, and rather to her own surprise found her blatant snobbery amusing and unimportant; probably, she told herself, because it was so blatant. ‘She’s honest about it,’ she said once to Julian when he teased her about it, ‘she’s not a hypocrite, she doesn’t go round patronizing everyone, pretending she thinks everyone’s equal, she really believes they aren’t. Well, that’s all right. She’s entitled to her own opinion.’ Julian laughed, and told her she was a hypocrite herself, but she was unmoved; Letitia was her heroine, she admired her brain, enjoyed her guts and her sense of fun and was constantly delighted by the fresh thinking and innovative approach Letitia brought to the company. Letitia was fascinated by new financial systems; she spent hours reading reports from big companies, she lunched with financial analysts and accountants, and hardly a week went by before she introduced some new piece of sophisticated accountancy, and drove Julian almost to distraction by constantly updating and changing her methods.
‘I really can’t see what’s wrong with the way you’ve done things so far, Mother,’ he said slightly fretfully one evening, as he arrived home exhausted after a long session with the buyer for a chain of chemists in the West Country and found her deep in conversation with Susan over the latest refinements to her system and the effect it was going to have on the next year’s wage structure. ‘I spend my life trying to follow your books andwork out fairly crucial basic things like how much money we’ve got in the
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