Free A Battle of Brains by Barbara Cartland Page B

hard.”
    â€œAnd then what happened?”
    â€œI moved to a larger firm and from them to another.  I soon learnt all each company had to teach me and thought I could do better.
    â€œOf course, I had many setbacks.  Of course, people snubbed me for being too grasping and too pushy.  I made quite a large number of enemies, but I also had friends who were really kind and understanding.”
    â€œDid your enemies upset you?”
    â€œWhen they opposed me, I fought back, although I did not win every battle, I, at least, showed them I had guts, which in those days were admired in a man of my station.
    â€œI had to lick some people’s boots.  I had to put up with a certain degree of humiliation and from one job I was sacked for impertinence.”
    He gave a little laugh.
    â€œActually I was telling the owner of a factory how to run it much better than he was doing at the time.  As he knew that I was right and he was wrong, he wanted to be rid of me!”
    â€œSo what did you do?”
    â€œI went to the firm which was his greatest rival and offered the manager my services.”
    There was silence before Yolanda enquired,
    â€œDid you tell him how badly the firm you had left was run?”
    â€œOf course I did.  I also gave him some information about what the owner was doing that he found useful.”
    He knew without asking that Yolanda thought this was wrong, so he added,
    â€œAs I have said to you before ‘ business is business ’. In the fight to rise to the top there is not a man in this world who has not used every weapon in his power to get there.”
    Yolanda did not speak and her stepfather continued,
    â€œI know what you are thinking.  What I have done your father would think was unsporting and unbecoming of a gentleman.  But if you think of it not as what happens in a gentleman’s soft life, but in the war of survival which is ‘below stairs’ so to speak, then you will understand.”
    â€œWhat you are saying,” Yolanda replied slowly, “is that it is a battle and the man who is not with you is against you as an enemy.”
    â€œExactly.  I see you understand.  That is what I am trying to make you appreciate.  In everyone’s life, sooner or later, things happen, which are not what you expect because they don’t keep to the written rules of what we now call ‘Social behaviour’.”
    He threw up his hands.
    â€œThat is the world in which the aristocrats and the upper class live where they have made unwritten laws that they obey, because it makes them, they believe, superior to those beneath them.”
    Yolanda thought this statement over for a moment.
    â€œI can see, Step-papa, what you are trying to say.”
    â€œI am trying to say that sooner or later in our lives we all come up against great difficulties and that is where we have to fight with every nerve in our bodies to survive.
    â€œI know that your father came up against so many difficulties in his life at one time or another. He somehow surmounted them and was still able to keep his own code of behaviour intact.
    â€œBut that is not to say that those against him kept to the same rules.  They cheated if they could and they were prepared to be treacherous in every possible way without worrying, as your father would have done, as to whether what they did was becoming of a gentleman.
    â€œWhat I am trying to explain to you is, whatever happened, however bad it was, however disgracefully those against your father behaved, he went on fighting even if it meant his death.”
    He looked at Yolanda as he spoke and after a long moment, she remarked,
    â€œThat is what you are telling me to do.”
    â€œWhat I am really saying, is that you have won a battle against a man who is a cad and a swine.  Now that you have done so, be magnanimous and forget him.  He is of no importance and it is just what your father would have