George Evans 9780897337281, 9780897336796

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George Evans A.F. Gillotti

Ac a de m y Ch ic ag o P u bl ish e r s

A l s o by A . F. Gi l l o t t i

Death of a Shipowner Skim

G e o r g e E va n s

Published in 2013 by Academy Chicago Publishers 363 West Erie Street Chicago, Illinois 60654 © 2013 by A. F. Gillotti First edition. Printed and bound in the U.S.A. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Once again, for Susan

C h a p t e r On e

A f t e r lu nc h at F i e l di ng ’ s , one of George’s clubs, he and I have coffee in the drawing room that overlooks St. James’s Street. We sit in the bow window where the shallow alcove affords some privacy. The light rain that had begun while we were eating has become a downpour, and water is gushing down the gutters in the road. The afternoon has grown very dim, and the cars on St. James’s have their lights on. George orders port—I have refused his offer—and when it arrives, he begins to speak. Much of the time it appears that he is speaking only to himself, as if he needs to explain himself to himself, but I know that he also recognizes that there is a sympathetic, or at least non-judgmental, ear on the other side of the little table. What was I to expect of my neglected twenty-seven-year-old godson? He begins. Many years with no strong male presence at home might very well have resulted in something wholly unpresentable: a hairy apparition in great need of a bath, with a single earring and a safety pin through his cheek. But the pleasant-looking young man whom my secretary showed into my office late one August morning was clean and shorn, and dressed in a gray pin-striped city suit. Robert Fletcher had rung quite without warning, ten days before, telling me that he was working in London and asking if he could see me. I could not imagine why he should have wanted to since I’d not seen him for seventeen years or so, and had actually forgotten about him for rather longer. I asked him 

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to lunch—substitute for years of overlooked birthdays; or perhaps for the emotional support that I hadn’t provided. It took me a little while to recover from how much he resembled his father Charles. “Are you called Robert, or Bob, or. . . ?” “It’s Robert, Mr. Evans.” “You must call me George. A steak and chips sound all right to you?” “Fine with me, George.” “I thought we might try Simpson’s. Lots of character. Have you been before?” “Once or twice,” he said, with a slight air of insouciance; unbecoming, I thought, in one so young. “Well then, perhaps you’d prefer somewhere else?” “No, no. Simpson’s would be fine. I like it.” We went down the stairs to the ground f loor, past the receptionist, and out into the road. We paused at the lights at the corner of Old Broad Street and London Wall, and I mused that, however much like Charles he looked, if his few bumbling responses were anything by which to judge, he had none of his father’s diffidence or polish. It was a lovely day full of sunshine, and the air was pleasantly warm. We crossed Threadneedle Street and walked along Finch Lane past the Cock and Woolpack. It was apparent that Robert knew precisely where he was going. “How long have you been in the city?” I said. “About eight months,” he said, somewhat sheepishly. “I should have called you before, I know.” “No matter, my boy,” I said, magnanimously in my fashion, thinking, I understand why you might not have wanted to ring me; and I wonder if my understanding and yours are the same. We turned off Cornhill into the alley by St. Michael’s that leads between the Jamaica Wine House and the George and Vulture, where Dickens used to take a chop or two, and a pint of brown sherry. 

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Over a large glass of Sercial Madeira at the Jamaica, I asked him what had brought him to London. “The Manhattan Banking Corporation,” he said. “I’m in the corporate finance department.” “Just as most young American bankers one meets these days,” I said, raising my glass. “Your very good health.” By the look on his face, I could tell that young Robert did not consider himself one of the pack. We drank up, had another while standing in the queue at Simpson’s, and finally got two places in a booth for six in the front room of the first floor. “Let’s take care of the bookkeeping first, shall we?” I plucked a roll from the basket that the waitress offered. “Two rump steaks, medium rare, chips, spinach—you’ll have a sausage, Robert? No? Just one then, Barbara. And a carafe of the house red horror.” She left us to place our order with the red-faced, sweating chap who was slaving at the grill downstairs. “Your father would have been pleased,” I said at last, to Robert’s statement that he was a banker. “I don’t know whether he’d be pleased or not, George. I hardly knew him.” I tasted the wine, although it could not possibly have been in a bottle long enough to go off; more by way of gauging how fierce the headache might be. “Rather good weasel’s piss, this. Might even mistake it for coming from somewhere other than Algeria. How is your mother?” He sipped his wine, made a face—I could not tell whether it was in reaction to the wine or to my question—and stared out of the window. “Do you remember my mother?” he said. “How she used to be?” “I do, very well.” “How would you have described her?” “Intelligent, pretty, cheerful.” The last was stretching it a bit. I also didn’t say she had a bloody good figure. “Supportive. Worshipped your father, as far as I could tell.” 

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Barbara brought the food then, giving him time to frame his next remark while she passed the plates to us, reaching in front of the other four men whose table we were sharing. He took a heavy swallow of wine. “She isn’t cheerful anymore. She is no longer pretty. For the past several years she has begun drinking before lunchtime and doesn’t stop until she is put into bed at night.” I had begun to eat while this litany of horrors progressed. He had yet to pick up his fork. “Jean was not someone who could take emotional setbacks in stride,” I said. “She looked for balance and moderation in a world where neither exists for very long, if at all. She should stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with her life.” He stared at his plate, which was nearly as full as mine was becoming empty (one learned to eat quickly in boarding school— otherwise they took it away and one stayed hungry). “If you don’t begin to eat soon, my boy, your wicked godfather is going to get your lunch as well.” He took another draught of wine, looking thoughtful. The room was loud with lunchtime conversation: share prices, the rise in gold, the fall in gold, the rate of the dollar against the deutsch mark and yen, the latest takeover, hostile or friendly, the latest derivatives scandale. “When my father left,” Robert said, “and especially when he died, Mother went to pieces and she never came together again. I’ve been her emotional support for years and years and I haven’t enjoyed it much. It’s been hard never being able to bring a friend or a girl home because she’s so unpredictable. I think she ought to get married again, but she almost never sees anyone anymore, and even the circle of her so-called friends is getting smaller and less nice. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her now that I’m over here.” “But you must have considered that before you accepted the posting?” 

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“Of course,” he said. “But I couldn’t turn down a great career opportunity.” He began to eat rapidly. “All of life comes down to setting priorities, doesn’t it?” I said, but he went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “But when I told her that I was going to see you, she went bananas. She blames you for introducing Dad to the other woman. Nathalie?” “Yes. You know that Nathalie is my wife?” “Yes,” he mumbled, and looked at the table, aghast perhaps not so much by the fact—but, I suspected, by my admirable candor. “And you understand, don’t you, that what followed the introduction was no fault of mine?” “I realize that, George. But what actually happened?” If I hadn’t had a little difficulty believing his sincerity, I should have found his questions rather touching. Nevertheless, he too had worshipped his father—this shadowy figure of whom I was certain he had never seen enough—and had found the actions of his hero, that good man, incomprehensible. Barbara came to clear away the plates. I ordered stewed cheese. Robert wanted nothing, but he finished his wine and topped up my glass before refilling his. “Charles had been married for, what was it, thirteen years to a perfectly nice, diffident, emotionally dependent woman. Suddenly he met a different kind of woman, hardly diffident, one who depended on no one but herself. He was bowled over. Fell passionately in love. Went away with her. End of story.” I spread a little mustard and the stewed cheese over the toast, sprinkled the mess with Worcester sauce, and began to eat. “People do such things all the time, Robert. But remember this. They do them because they want to.” “But that wasn’t the end of the story.” “No. The real end of the story is that he died two years later. Perhaps Nathalie proved too independent even for him. But

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heart attacks, Robert, are not uncommon in hard-working men of forty-seven. “Would you like to meet Nathalie?” I said finally. “Perhaps that would help your understanding.” He did not answer, and I could not read his reaction. A sadder but wiser young man, perhaps, for having lunched with me. “Would you like some coffee? No? Then, dear boy, I’m afraid I must get back to the office, much as I’d like to continue this conversation. Perhaps you’ll have time to come down to Suffolk for a weekend.” “Thank you very much, George. I’d like that. And thank you for lunch.” He seemed relieved. “I would like to meet Nathalie.” We walked together up Old Broad Street (Manhattan Bank House is in Broadgate) and I left him at the corner of New Broad to return to my employer where I spent a filthy afternoon listening to the sniffs and whines of a Greek shipowner telling me why the vessel we were financing was no longer employed (no fault of his, of course), interfering temporarily with his cash flow and hence with the source of his loan payments to us. He hoped we would understand (bloody hell—what choice had we?) and that something could be arranged: capitalizing the interest due on Friday perhaps? Of course, my dear Gigi; anything for a good client like you; too bad we have bills to pay also. Waved him out the door with my most winning smile. Hoped he would be run down by a lorry: it would have given immense satisfaction, and the insurance might have gone some way towards repaying our loan. You know the sort of chap I mean: always acts as if he’s doing you a favor by letting you lend him money. “Who introduced that deadbeat to the bank?” “I believe you did, George,” said my secretary, who had witnessed the valedictions. “The question was rhetorical, Janet,” I answered, and closed my office door.

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Note to Controllers: Christopoulos cannot pay his bills. Interest in the amount of £65,000 more or less due the seventh is to be capitalized and of course backed out of accrued revenue. Copy to the M.D. Wouldn’t want Jonathan taken by surprise. From my office window on the first floor I could see the length of New Broad Street to the intersection with its bigger sister. The road was half in shadow now as the late summer evening was beginning. The pavements of Old Broad Street were choca-bloc with commuters going north to Liverpool Street. Broad Street Station no longer existed, having been torn down by developers who had built, on the site of the switching yards, ten or twelve glass, steel, and marble office blocks—a pigeon’s paradise called Broadgate to which, Robert told me, Manhattan Bank had moved some years before from their building in Moorgate. Was I too hard on Robert at lunch? I thought not. The world is hard on everyone. He might as well learn such things from me as from a total stranger. But would more of the truth have mattered? I should, for example, very much doubt that Charles would have been pleased that his son had become a banker. Would more of the truth have mattered? Unlikely. In the event, everyone’s truth is different. Why had Robert called me? Perhaps he was interested in his mother’s fate—but my instinct told me that fundamentally he was not. It seemed to me rather an exercise—some rite of passage, perhaps—that he’d had to go through before he could get on with his own life. So it was natural that he should have called on his godfather, his father’s oldest friend in London; scene of the crime, as it were. *** When I arrived home around seven at the f lat in Cadogan Square, Nathalie was knee to knee in the drawing room with one of her darkly handsome colleagues, file folders and glasses of white wine on the table between them. 

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“Hello, darling,” she said, lifting her head so that I could kiss her ever-inviting cheek. “This is Colin Broadbent from Poole’s.” That was the political PR firm of which Nathalie was a partner. Did I detect a faint but significant flush of embarrassment beneath Broadbent’s film-star tan as he rose in greeting? “Don’t let me interrupt,” I said, and left them to discuss, or plot, whatever it was they were discussing or plotting: one hoped it was another stratagem by which to put a dazzling new light on what everyone had known up to then was a thoroughly disreputable product or politician (they’re much the same), rather than anything more intime. I washed and changed into my blue velvet smoking jacket—a harmless affectation that I enjoy still; the jacket is fifty years old and belonged to an uncle—and decanted a decent claret from the hall cupboard before I joined my beloved. When I returned to the sitting room, Colin Broadbent and the file folders were gone. Nathalie was deep into a French biography of Louis XIV. With her ash-blonde hair, her long, trim body sunk back into the chair to the right of the fireplace, and her long, shapely legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, she was looking particularly languid and feline that evening, and much younger than her fifty-two years. After I poured a whisky and soda, topped up her wine, and sat down opposite on the other side of the hearth, she closed Louis with a snap, took off her glasses, and smiled. “Who is Colin Broadbent?” I said. “A client manager whom I’m directing on the CNB effort.” “That’s the campaign where some Tory lunatic is trying to persuade us that if only we privatize the prison system, all our problems will be solved.” “You know very well that the real issue is getting more value for the taxpayer, George. And getting criminals where they belong.” “One man’s truth is another man’s misunderstanding. Just joking, my dear. He’s very good-looking.” “Yes, isn’t he?” she said. Her sapphire eyes were mocking. 

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“Is he?” “Is he what?” “Broadly bent.” “I think not,” she said. “Think?” “Don’t be tiresome, George. I’m thinking I should introduce him to Trudy.” “You’ll never guess whom I lunched with today.” “The Prince of Wales?” “Robert Fletcher.” A moment’s hesitation. “Charles’s son?” “The same.” “Out of the blue?” “No, no; he rang up beforehand.” “I wonder why, though, after all these years?” I certainly had the old girl’s curiosity piqued. “I don’t know precisely. Perhaps he wanted to unburden himself about the wicked state his mother is in. She’s become a drunk, apparently.” After murmuring some phrase of sympathy, she said, “What is he like? Is he nice?” “Unexceptional, except that he is more guarded and unforthcoming than I would have expected in a lad of twenty-seven, particularly Charles’s son. Not anything like Charles, although he looks a lot like him. Nice enough, I should guess. No more oafish than others his age. Very American. More wine, darling?” “Yes, please. What is he doing?” “He’s a banker.” I hesitated with the next bit of information. I hesitated for the same reason I had not told her I was lunching with Robert in the first place. “He’s working in London.” I did not like at all how animated she had become. “What did you talk about?” “Other than his mother, not a great deal.” “I should love to meet him.” Magdalena called us to dinner. 

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“I invited him to come down to the country actually. Sometime. Not anything specific.” “Let’s have him, by all means.” She began to eat. “Perhaps we could have Colin Broadbent as well,” I said. “If you find him so attractive, George. But I would ask Trudy also.” “You do have the most amazing knack, my dear, of telling other people what’s good for them.” “That’s because I know what’s good for them, George. Such as your soup, which will be cold if you don’t start.” “Will you stay with the white, darling,” I said, “or will you join me in this rather splendid claret?”

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C h a p t e r T wo

I wa s r e t u r n i n g f ro m m y ta i l o r ’s —whom I kept at bay during the time by managing to pay fifteen shillings a week— on a windy, grey November morning in the mid-fifties when I turned into St. Peter’s Court, the alley in which my grateful employer at the time was situated, and discovered a stranger seeming to regard with awe the sooty Victorian Gothic building that housed the London offices of Thomson, Guthrie, the American private bankers. He was dressed rather better than most of my compatriots, so I immediately placed him as a foreigner, probably American, who was loitering about our forecourt. “May I help you?” I said. He was clearly somewhat embarrassed at having been caught out. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be joining the firm in New York in January, and since I’m here, I wondered what the London office was like.” He was a pleasant-looking chap of about my age and height with light hair and clear blue eyes—the kind that see clearly but perhaps not deeply—but, if one could judge from his appearance in a heavy coat, built more slightly than I. “Will you be coming to London, do you think?” “I have no idea.” “What department are you in?” “I’ll be in Corporate Finance.” “Would you like a look ‘round?” 

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“If it’s no trouble.” “No trouble at all, dear chap,” I said, even though it kept me from my morning’s task of reviewing the financial statements of some dreary Midlands boiler manufacturer. “My name is Charles Fletcher,” he said, and he held out his hand, which I shook. “Haven’t yet got used to the American practice. Very useful. I’m George Evans. Four centuries ago we were Welsh, but my ancestor Robert ap Evan decided that Henry Tudor knew a good thing when he saw it. Cowered behind a bush during the Battle of Bosworth Field, but was awarded a smallholding in the Marches. The family fortune has long since been dissipated, and I find myself. . .” I hesitated. “. . . in trade.” Charles Fletcher won me to him immediately by thinking this was funny. I led him into the wood-paneled entrance lobby. Gitting, the porter, sat at a desk to the left. To the right was the banking counter with two windows barred in black wrought iron filigree. “It’s quite in order, Gitting,” I said to the porter, a kind old cove with bushy white eyebrows. “This chap’s an American employee called Mr. Fletcher.” “Very good, Mr. Evans,” he said, metaphorically tugging his forelock and bestowing a benevolent look on Charles Fletcher. “The banking hall,” I continued. “’Round there,” I said, indicating the left of the broad carpeted staircase, “are the trading room and the directors’ dining room. Two post debs do the cooking and bring it up by cab from Pimlico. To lunch in the directors’ dining room is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Why are you laughing, Gitting? Follow me, Charles.” *** When I think now that that impractical, inefficient, positively Dickensian and thoroughly delightful building in which I spent so much of my life has long since disappeared to make room for some glass box with little steel and marble bits stuck on to make 

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it look different, I could weep. At the top of the staircase, a narrow corridor went off to the right, and another, perpendicular to the first, ran towards the back of the building. “Down there are the directors’ offices and a couple of conference rooms. On the left is where the peasants—your present interlocutor included—sit and do the work. Up there,” I said, indicating a second, much narrower flight of stairs, without the carpet this time, “are the gnomes: the controller and the company secretary. That sort. We keep them hidden away. They have skills.” Charles laughed again, which I found most agreeable. “Say, old fellow, are you doing anything for lunch? And have you any money? Of course you do. All Americans do. We’ll go to a chop house of my distant acquaintance, where you can buy me lunch.” I’d been to Simpson’s once before, welcomed to the city by my Uncle Rupert, who was in Lloyds. I rather think I’d made something of a pig of myself, because he had not rung me since, and I was unable to reciprocate. So Charles took me and, forty or so years later, I took his son. We sat side by side on the hard benches with four young men who were earning more than me and already running to fat. The table was bare wood covered with cutlery and wine glasses, salt cellars, pepper mills, and pots of English and French mustard. We ordered mixed grills and pints of bitter. “Do you like lamb’s kidneys, Charles?” “I don’t really like any offal,” he said. “Good. I was counting on that. I’ll have yours.” “How long have you been with Thomson, Guthrie?” “A year. I joined when the Colonel began to apply real pressure.” “The Colonel?” “The pater. He seemed to think I was taking rather a long time getting round to doing something that he might call useful.

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And I was living at home and drinking too much of his excellent claret.” “Where is home?” “In Suffolk. A large, underheated house that could be quite comfortable if the Colonel spent money on anything but himself. You must come down and see.” Without reminding, Charles held his plate so that I could slip the kidneys off, and we began to eat. “I should like that very much, George. Perhaps when I get back from Italy. I’m doing a bit of a tour before I start at the bank.” “What were you doing before?” “I was in the Army.” “Were you shooting communists?” “Not at all. I never left the States.” “I was in Egypt. Terrifically amusing. But I don’t trust the bloody Egyptians. The world’s changing. Europe is in decline, and every clown wants independence whether it’s good for him or not. Look what has happened to the French in Indochina. Going to be trouble in Egypt too.” “Suez, of course.” “Of course. That chap Neguib who threw out Farouk last year has a lot of popular appeal. And he’s thick as thieves with the Russians. I say, never mind all that. Where are you staying?” “In Eaton Terrace. With people called Barber.” “Nigel Barber?” He nodded. “You know them then?” “Yes. Rather well. John, son and heir, was two years ahead of me at school. And Julia. Have you met his sister Julia?” He seemed to color slightly. “I see you have. Let’s get out of here. I’ll stand you a port at the Jamaica. Have you slept with her?” Whether he was shocked at the suggestion, or at my bringing it up, I couldn’t tell, but he denied all. “She is. . .” he began haltingly.

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“A dish, I think you would say. I’m totally mad about her, but there are rumors that she is betrothed to another, less deserving, and certainly far less appreciative of her special qualities, than I.” “I don’t think she’s. . .” “Bright?” I said. “Oh, no. There is not a lot between those exquisite ears. But my, what ears, and eyes, and lips. Will you be terribly sweet, Charles, and pay for lunch?” I spied Piers Penrose on his way out of the trough. “Hello, Piers, are you coming to Andrew’s this evening? Here is an American friend of mine, Charles Fletcher.” Piers stared at Charles through rimless glasses. His glare was much older than the face that contained it. “I didn’t think Americans had any friends,” he said, and nodded slightly. “Do try not to be so tiresome, old thing,” I said. “We shall both see you this evening. Come along, Charles.” We repaired along the narrow passage to the Jamaica, which was jammed at that hour with bankers and brokers, mostly chaps with some sand in their boots, already well along on a life of warm friendship with Mistress Grape. The two large vintage ports cost a bomb, but they were worth it. “Delicious, non? You mustn’t mind Piers, although he is disgusting. He’s somehow got the idea that it’s frightfully smart to be anti-American.” “I can’t say it’s the warmest reception I’ve ever received. But how is it that I’m going to have the pleasure of his company this evening?” “I want you to come to a party in a very squalid house in World’s End. The food will be dreadful and the wine horrid, but there will be some very pretty girls. Do come, Charles.” *** When I arrived that evening at Andrew Falconer’s house in the back parts of Chelsea—paint peeling from every exterior inch— Charles was deep in discussion with Piers même. Or I ought 

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to say, he was listening politely while Piers babbled. Between them and me was a huge scrum blocking the doorway from the entrance hall to the drawing room, and the room was full of smoke and noise and laughter. I collapsed the scrum by wading through, clutching a bottle wrapped in paper. God, how I loved those parties then. Piers was holding up a glass with some murky red fluid in it. “Absolutely filthy, George. I think Andrew has actually tried to get the worst. . .” “I say, I am sorry for being late, Charles. Have you been able to fend for yourself? Obviously not, as you’ve been forced to talk to Piers. Piers, I meant to tell you at lunch you’re looking more dissolute than ever. Come with me, chaps.” I remember the kitchen was grey, lit by a single lightbulb hanging on a frayed cord from the middle of a high ceiling. There was a twin electric ring on a counter and a chipped and stained enameled basin with a single tap. A bare wood table was cluttered with large wine jugs in straw baskets. “Here is the explanation for the quality of the wine,” Piers said. “Whitechapel-bottled Chianti.” “To the rescue,” I said, and removed a bottle of claret from the tissue paper. The cupboards were yellow with age and sticky. In the second, we found three glasses, one of which had a chip out of the rim, and which I gave to Piers. I pulled the cork and poured, and we toasted M. le Comte, owner of the Chateau Quelque Chose who had allowed his wine to be bottled in London, thereby enabling me to afford it. “Do watch the rim, old fruit,” I said to Piers. “There’s a chip.” “Much better, George, but not very good.” “Gift horse, Piers, old thing.” “Greeks and gifts, dear boy.” “Beggars and choosers, old chap. Have you met our host yet, Charles? Then come along.” Falconer was much too preoccupied with his party and with dispensing the wine to have much conversation, but he 

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nodded pleasantly enough in Charles’s direction, welcomed him to London, and moved off. After that, Charles and I separated, and I went in search of one of the pretty girls I had promised him, but they all seemed to be occupied with other chaps. Had they but known what dynamite they were missing. When I circulated back to Charles, I discovered that he’d found a bird to chat up, a nice girl of my acquaintance called Anne Wheeler. She was tall and pretty, with long blonde hair and large blue eyes, but she was much too thin for my taste—built like a boy, really; very appealing to androgynies, I would have thought, so I was intrigued by Charles’s interest—and she was much too intelligent. She is now married to an old stick called Giles Bowden. When I arrived, Charles was fumbling with a notebook and pen. “Can you hold this, George?” he said. I took his glass and leaned over to kiss Anne on the cheek. “Hello, Anne.” “Hello, George.” “You know each other,” Charles said tautologically. “I know everyone, my boy,” I said. He finished taking her address. “Tomorrow night, then,” he said. She nodded and was carried away in the crush. “Well done, Charles. But why not this evening?” “She said she’s with someone.” “Well done all the same. You’ve done much better than I. Will you come back to the flat for a real drink instead of this rat’s piss? Splendid.” My flat in those days was on Cambridge Street in Pimlico in a house that had been converted into flats; peeling front door, grubby entrance hall, revolting fake Turkey carpet on the stairs which one took to number thirty-seven. The Maltese landlord had a fixation on the number seven; number thirty-seven was on the second floor, and it was the only flat on the second floor. We felt our way up the stairs in the dim light from the threewatt bulb to the flat that I shared with an unspeakable fellow— 

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no, no, that’s not quite accurate; he did not become unspeakable until later—with a delightful chap called Christopher St. Aubyn, who was not around at the time. I can’t remember why. It was fortunate in any event that he wasn’t around because it was his whisky from which I poured us each a large measure. Our living arrangements depended upon total trust and candor. Chris trusted me and I took what I wanted. He got his revenge ultimately. “Do learn to drink it without ice, Charles,” I said. “Ice spoils the flavor. And I don’t have any.” He raised his glass. “Your health,” he said. “How do you keep your butter without a fridge?” “Dear boy, this is Britain. We can’t get butter. The marge goes onto the window ledge. Your accent suggests New England.” “Close enough,” he said, looking thoughtful. “You have a good ear.” “Not at all. The Americans I’ve met from Thomson, Guthrie all sound like you. No wonder you were hired.” “I suspect that I was hired because my father knew Chip Guthrie.” Old Charles could be disarming. “Who is your father?” “That’s a good question. I’ve always identified him with what he does. He is a senior partner in a Wall Street law firm called Haldimand, Green and Fletcher. An expert in contracts.” “Sounds ghastly, but lucrative. Or else, lucrative, but ghastly.” He stopped in mid-raising of glass to mouth. “I’ve never thought of it that way,” he said, and drained his glass. “Not the one nor the other?” “No,” he said. “I grew up in Manhattan, which you know about, and in Bedford, outside of the city, which I’m sure means nothing to you but is a very nice place to grow up in. Rural. Mother, sister Margaret, Dad. Dad always came home from the office very late—I should love some more whisky, thanks—and so it was a long time before I even saw him at night and by that time I was off to boarding school.” 

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In the meantime, I had given Charles another bracing measure of St. Aubyn’s whisky. “Where did you go to school?” I asked, not that it would mean anything to me. “St. Anselm’s. Northern Massachusetts. You can’t have heard of it?” No, but the little flat reeked by now of sanctity: St. Anselm’s, St. Aubyn, perhaps even St. George? “No,” I said, “but it’s a splendid name. Good place?” “Not bad. The war made everyone very serious. Very cold in the winter.” “One expects that. Were you good at games?” “Not bad, not good. Football—American football, that is—hockey, soccer. I was too light for the first two and not fast enough for any of them. How about you, George?” “I detested games. What did you do afterwards?” “Afterwards? I went to Yale, of course.” “Why ‘of course?’” “Because my father went there, as did my grandfather.” “Is that automatic?” “By no means. What I meant was, it was expected.” “And then you did the Army?” “Yes. Another war. But when I left the Army, I surprised the senior partner of Haldimand, Green and Fletcher.” This effort at recall has begun to bring back a lot of things. I remember now that Chris was not away at all, but merely out for the evening, and chose that moment to lurch into the flat, in the very provocative mood he got into when he was drunk, with a charming girl who was also pissed and in a state of deshabillée. “Who the hell is this, George?” he said at the top of his voice. “Another of your rent boys?” And without waiting for an answer, he tugged the young woman towards his bedroom. As I recall, nothing happened between them that evening, despite his bravado, except that she was sick on his floor. It took Charles and me

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some time to remember what it was that we’d been talking about. During this search, I topped up our glasses. St. Aubyn had been too drunk to notice that it was his Scotch that we were drinking. “What is a ‘rent boy?’” Charles said. “A male prostitute.” “Oh.” “He didn’t mean it.” “You’re not queer, are you, George?” “Not at all.” “I must say, I do seem to be insulted with regularity in your presence.” “But not by me.” “Not yet.” “Self-pity is not attractive, Charles.” “Indeed. No, it’s not that. I was warned about you, George. Piers Penrose told me to be careful of you.” I feigned indifference, but I was truly annoyed at the little shit. “Said you’re very adept at using people.” “Poor Piers is just jealous because I love women instead of him. He developed a case of puppy love for me at school that he’s never got over. Tant pis. Heaven knows I’ve never given him any encouragement.” “That’s what I was talking about,” he said. “School. I surprised the old man. Had lunch with him at his club in Wall Street, and told him I didn’t want to go to law school right away.” “Law school was expected also?” “Yes. I told my father that I wanted to try something else for a while. I’d been cosseted in institutions—family, school, college, Army—for twenty-three years, and if I went to law school, it would add another three.” “What did he say?” “Could have knocked me over with a feather, George. He didn’t argue. What he said was—and I was so stunned by it that I wrote it down afterwards—what he said was, ‘The worst thing 

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that anyone can do is to spend his life doing something he does not want to do, out of a misplaced sense of duty, or a desire not to hurt someone else, or to avoid confrontation; or to do what he deems is expected of him.’” If only I had had a father who could have strung that many words together without belching. But the governor could never be described as suffering from the condition that Charles’s father had described; nor, in all candor, could his elder son. “That’s rather moving, Charles.” “I was moved,” he said, “and I thought that Dad had tears in his eyes when he said it. But when I looked more closely, they had become bland and opaque again.” He looked at his watch. “Good God, it’s nearly two. Most kind of you, George, but I must go. Thanks very much.” I saw there was no dissuading him—and in truth I was knackered and feeling the whisky—so I helped him out of the chair with the broken springs and sent him, rather unsteadily, on his way. “You have to get down the stairs rather quickly,” I said. “The feeble bulb that our slumlord keeps in here is on a timer.” “Good night, George. I’ll call when I get back from Italy.” I took him to dine here on the last night he was in England before he took the Queen Mary back to New York. He’d spent the time since his return from the Continent in fruitless pursuit of Anne Wheeler. What might have been had the pursuit not been fruitless. He might be alive still. Amongst other things.

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Chapter Three

I d i d n o t s e e C h a r l e s ag a i n until seven years later, when Thomson, Guthrie assigned him to London in the spring of 1962. In the intervening period we had, of course, talked from time to time on the telephone, and corresponded occasionally— he was much better at it than I. And when he came to London, he had a wife of five years standing. He had met Jean Forbes, as she was then, before dinner his second night out on his journey from Southampton in December 1954, and it turned out that her father was an old friend of Fletcher père. He’d married her two years later (I’d been invited but couldn’t afford to go). When they came to London the first time, she was not yet the querulous creature that she later became. She was, I should say, conventionally pretty, but with a splendid figure, so that one envied Charles his good fortune, and in the beginning, before reality took over, one daydreamed disloyally about being able to share in it. As it turned out, Jean Fletcher, despite her looks and her intelligence, was too lacking in humor, too emotionally heavy, to prevent Charles from falling in love with another woman. That he did so was no fault of mine, despite what Jean Fletcher might think. Charles was assigned to the corporate finance department in London before the collapse of Sterling, the restrictions on the movement of American capital abroad, and the consequent development of the Eurodollar market. As a result, his experience in London began with Sterling forms of finance and secu

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rities flotation. He came with a mandate to develop a presence for Thomson, Guthrie in ship finance, and as he knew nothing about it when he arrived, and I knew a little, we were logical partners. He was well grounded in operations when he arrived, and was a quick study. I presume to say such because I’d been at the game rather longer than he, and knew when he arrived that one, he could learn much from me, and two, he was earning a good deal more than me. I rather resented also that he was living with his wife in a super house in Chester Square, while I had to make do living with two other chaps in a flat in the western parts of Chelsea, which was not at all smart then. Once they’d gotten settled, Jean and Charles began to give dinner parties based on some of his parents’ dreary English friends; I was invited often, but thank heaven that stopped after a time. I had, by then, a partner myself, having inveigled myself into the affections and the knickers of Julia Barber—not the easiest thing to do at the time for a high-born Celt with no money; our couplings took place at her parents’ house in Dorset or— with trepidation that her flatmates would return—in her flat. We eventually married, which was a mistake. Julia was a sexy, goodlooking post-deb with no brains whatsoever. She could not settle without resentment into the role of hausfrau—after all, she’d grown up in an atmosphere in which her every whim was catered to by a servant. My own experience was rather different. Oh, yes, there was Nanny. The pater and mater were fond of old Nanny because she kept me out of the way—the embarrassment in the attic, as it were. Whenever she heard laughter, Nanny said whatever we— my siblings and I—might be doing was not useful. I learned from Nanny in that freezing nursery—and it is no mystery to me why she never felt the cold—that you never get what you want unless you work for it, scheme for it, take it. Whenever I asked Nanny for anything, she said no. Always. So I stopped asking. And when I took something—an extra piece of cinnamon toast with tea, 

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or a piece of chalk, or the odd sixpence lying about—I received the cane across the backs of the legs. So I learned to be clever. She’d know I’d taken something, or disobeyed her, or done something else heinous, but when she challenged me, I’d lie and she couldn’t prove it (mice, magpies, and later, my younger siblings were always responsible). She always, quite rightly, suspected me of whatever was the transgression of the moment, but she could not complain to the Colonel and his lady because the old bitch could not admit she’d lost control. I ought, in a way, to be grateful to her. She made life ever that much easier because I’d learnt my lessons well, and when I was sent away to St. Dunstan’s at eight I was skilled in the ways of the world, and had the additional advantage of being rather large for my age. Suffice it to say, I was for a time, before I lost interest, one of the leaders of my form. She lived with us long beyond her usefulness—I remember fondly the Colonel complaining that she ate like a horse—up there in the nursery knitting, but not for any of us. I don’t know what the old bag expected. Grateful George returned from school for the holidays not able to rest a moment until he’d seen his old Nanny? I’d have none of it. I avoided the wretch like the Black Death. She’s been dead for a quarter century; not nearly long enough. In the event when I came home from a hard day in trade, I wanted a hot bath, clean linen, a decent dinner, and a bit of slap and tickle. I always got the former and most of the time the latter—Julia did like getting laid, I’ll say that for her, although she’d started talking about children—but not much of what was in between, so there was little of hearth and home about our marriage. We lasted four years, and when I discovered she was having it off with the metaphorical equivalent of the milkman—that is, one of my former flatmates, the disgusting Chris St. Aubyn—I kicked her out; not, mind you, without regret. Old Julia was most appreciative in bed; and I lost access to her parents’ vast acres in Dorset and any odd lolly that she might have inherited. 

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My governor, on the other hand, usually waited until the nastiest weekend in December to invite his son and heir down to Suffolk to murder birds. And he never bothered to turn up the central heating, which he claimed he couldn’t afford; and judging by the paltry sum he left me—my demented brother Gareth and sister Mary receiving what amounted to Maundy money—I suspect he was telling the truth, in itself a highly unusual occurrence. Because he’d spent what there was on himself. How much, after all, could a younger son who rose to Lieutenant Colonel in the Welsh Guards amass after twenty-eight years faithful service to King and Country, unless he had managed to poach the regimental plate? But, as the bishop said to the actress, I digress, and have gotten ahead of myself. One of the wise old men at Thomson, Guthrie thought he had seen a market niche for us in the shipping industry, with the result that Charles and I set out together in 1962 to build a shipping portfolio. Our predilections ultimately made the division of labor easy. Charles was attracted to the pinched, austere Norwegians; not surprising, for Charles, which you may have gathered already, was rather pinched and austere himself; that is, until a dozen years later, as we shall see. I was attracted to the Greeks. It wasn’t because they were noticeably better businessmen, although it turned out that they were more conservative as a group than the Scandinavians. But they were infinitely more jolly. They never separated work and pleasure, so that one could be discussing the merits of this or that toothsome lass or racehorse or whatever at ten in the morning in a stuffy little office in Akti Miaouli over a cup of crushed shingle that the Greeks call coffee, or be deep into the details of a charter party at midnight while swilling whisky and throwing plates in a taverna. They were also so devious that it was endearing, and they came close many times to outsmarting themselves. The Greeks and I got on very well indeed. In the beginning of the beginning, however, Charles and I stuck together. In those days the general manager of Thomson, 

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Guthrie in London was an old stick named MacDonald from Dumfries. His control was apparently loose; he let one do what one wanted in the way that one wanted; but if at the end of the year one hadn’t produced the revenue that had been projected, you had to be the one sweeping up, turning out the lights, and locking the front door for all of the next year. Very simple and direct. But how one managed to reach the target was up to one. As a result, Charles and I spent a good deal of time in the offices of shipbrokers with whom I had a nodding acquaintance, learning the palaver; we passed Lloyd’s List between us; we talked to the Hull and Machinery people, and the Protection and Indemnity clubs, and the classification societies; and we talked to the banks who already did ship finance. In those halcyon days, you’ll remember, Sterling was still the currency of most charters and fixtures, and most finance was in Sterling (fifty percent of the valuation against a first mortgage and assignment of the earnings from a full payout charter—three years at most; virtually money for old rope). But those were the days of stable currency, low inflation, and low interest rates; the Arabs were sifting sand and washing in camel’s piss, and the lumpen proletariat knew their place: those days are gone forever. A colleague from Paris who was in Banker’s Wine Bar recently complained to me that “Travel ez not ze same anymore. My concierge ez going to ‘Ong Kong.’” At the end of three months, we were ready to make a foray into Oslo. It was on this trip that I learned how honest and upright old Charles was, how modest and unassuming, how reliable, faithful, loyal, etc.; in short, Charles at the age of thirty-one was a little bit of an old stick himself. Which made him most attractive to me, because I am the opposite. But as much as anything else, it may have been this uprightness that killed him: his inability to reconcile himself to things not being the way they ought to be in an orderly and moral universe. Our first call in Norway—on quite a young man named Paul Johansen who energetically and grimly ran his own firm of bulk carriers, P. 

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Johansens Rederi A/S—was a success. He was looking to acquire another vessel and he didn’t like the lack of responsiveness from Hambros; not that they treated him badly, but they had a lot of other clients to look after, and we had very few. He had a twentythousand-ton bulk carrier (coal, wheat, ore, that sort of thing) on order at Akers Engineering, with the employment all sewn up in Lindstedt’s Norbulk pool, told us what Hambros had offered, and asked if we could better it. And we did. When we left Johansen’s office that afternoon, we had committed to a three-year loan of £1,000,000. After a dreary Norwegian dinner at the Grand Hotel, accompanied at vast expense—courtesy of the grateful employer—by mediocre claret, I suggested to Charles that we do the town if there was any town to do. He begged off, claiming that he wanted to call his wife, and get to bed at a decent hour. One caught in a moment the difference between Charles and me. Following those first two weeks—we never repeated the success of that first call on that trip, but we managed to make our presence known in the market, both to the banks and to the shipowners—I returned to Norway only when I was forced to. (Although I greatly enjoyed going to one of Johansen’s later launch parties for a vessel for which Jean Fletcher was the godmother; old Johansen began to melt a little in the heat that Julia gave off, and one could see a little regret in his otherwise opaque steel blue eyes that he ought to have chosen his ship’s godmother more carefully.) Charles got on very well with the Norwegians. We had established a bridgehead for Thomson, Guthrie in Oslo, and Charles followed through not only there but on the south and west coasts as well, with a good deal of success. But as far as I was concerned, at the end of those two weeks I was screaming with boredom. And even though I was chafing after being loveless for two weeks, beaching one of the buxom lasses I saw in the street—fresh from the farm they all looked—was quite beyond my capability or desire. I knew instinctively that my fortunes—in more than one way—lay elsewhere. 

C h a p t e r F ou r

I t b e g a n t o r a i n w h i l e Charles and I were walking to an early lunch at Gow’s on Old Broad Street. It was the Ides of November, cold and dark, nearly three years after Charles had moved to London. We moved quickly because of the rain and cold, saying little, heads bent against the slanting wet that was whipped beneath our umbrellas by gusts. I was glad when we reached the soot-blackened precincts of Broad Street and Liverpool Street Stations and we could get out of the raw air. Shaking our umbrellas, we entered Gow’s into the feeble orange glow cast by the wall sconces, which seemed brighter and more welcoming because of the darkness outside. We hung our coats and umbrellas on a tree and took our places at the counter. “Two large whiskies,” I said to the man behind the counter. “Certainly, Mr. Evans.” To fend off any feeble objections from the colonies, I said, “It’s cold, we are both wet, and it will do us a world of good. Probably prevent a cold as well. Christ, it’s filthy out.” The whiskies arrived. “And some water for my overbred American colleague,” I said. “Of course, Mr. Evans,” said the waiter, smiling. “Your very good health, Charles.” We ordered oysters and grilled sole, and a bottle of the house Sauvignon, and were left with our whiskies. “You’re right, George. The whisky hits the spot.” 

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“You must learn to listen to your wise uncle George. Speaking of which, do you remember what I told you would happen when the blessings of civilization were withdrawn from former European colonies? Look at what’s going on in Africa. They can’t wait to carve each other up for the Sunday joint. Even the Belgians are civilized by comparison. Have you ever had a real frite?” “I must say, George, the difficulties Africans and Asians are having administering themselves do not speak well for European colonial administration.” “Charles, you are bleeding all over me. Do be careful. It’s only our propaganda working overtime that has you believing the point of all that was to prepare these people for self-determination. Successful, I suppose. No, old thing; the point of colonial administration was to keep the natives docile while we exploited them.” I squeezed lemon juice over an oyster and added a bit of cayenne and swallowed it whole. “How’s Jean? It seems we haven’t seen you in months.” Charles looked through the window at the rain. When he looked back he said, “I think she’s bored, George.” “Bored? Bored in London?” “She’d rather be working. And she can’t get a job here.” “How does she fill her days?” “She’s a volunteer with an American women’s group for handicapped children. But stuffing envelopes and typing the odd announcement does not strike her as real work. And that takes up only a few hours a week anyway. She reads a lot. Goes to an art gallery or a matinee with a friend. Tennis on the weekend. It’s the kind of suburban life she’s said she always wanted to avoid.” “They were the best natives I’ve had in some time, Colin,” I said to the waiter as he removed the ravaged shells and returned with the sole. “Expensive as well. Thank God you’re buying, Charles.” “Am I?” 

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“You are such a good chap. But about Jean. . .” I topped up his glass and my own. “Küche, kirche, und kinder?” “That’s not the solution, George. Not for someone like Jean.” And who in bloody hell is Jean? I thought. A house in Chester Square, a cook in for dinner parties, a rising husband, an American salary. Spoiled bitch. I said nothing, however. I could have told Charles long before he told me that Jean was having a problem. For different reasons: Jean had begun to flirt at dinner parties, which always met with initial success because physically she was most desirable; but she failed. First, no one wanted to listen when she began to talk about serious matters—as she inevitably did—such as civil rights in Mississippi or American involvement in Vietnam. Second, she was so guileless that she did not realize that there is a point at which flirtation ceases to be innocent. I don’t know that Charles ever noticed what she was doing. He was still ga-ga about her and was terribly concerned that she wasn’t happy in a place that for him, both personally and professionally, was exhilarating. Had Julia tried the same tactic as Jean—which she would have done for entirely different motives, because there was absolutely nothing innocent about Julia, except her mind, which was innocent of intelligence—I should have broken one of her lovely legs. The change that came over Jean when her campaign to get Charles to get himself transferred back to New York met with success, because it dovetailed nicely with Thomson, Guthrie’s own plans for Charles—the change in her I say was palpable: she began to sparkle; she was full of ideas, of people to see and things to do. She was also pregnant with the daughter who would be named Margaret after Charles’s sister. Charles, on the other hand, was unhappy, although he had gone along with her wishes, and although his move was actually a promotion to manager. One of the results of which was that I, and by then my modest staff, were going to report to him. Mind you, I’d always liked Charles, but that was a bit much, and I think he knew it as well. For the time this uneasy situation obtained—I 

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mean when he was directly responsible for shipping, not when he was promoted to partner, and returned in 1968 to head the London office—we maintained a civilized truce, which from time to time became uneasy; when he questioned me rather too closely about my Greeks, for example, I had rather to put him in his place and remind him whose knowledge of the Greek market was better. How would Charles Fletcher have coped with Arkadis? I was being pressed—hounded might be a better term—to grant credit on rather loose terms to a minor deposit customer called Apollo Maritime, which was owned by a smarmy creature called Nicolas Arkadis. The pressure and the unpleasantness might have been unbearable for someone less resilient, less, shall we say, resourceful—Charles, for example—than I. I pushed back, but I fear they misconstrued. Suddenly, the pressure ended, and Arkadis became inordinately friendly. I was taken to lunch in the West End. We discussed the market. I was taken to dinner (having declined politely on Julia’s behalf—I had already put that matter into the hands of my solicitors). We discussed his plans for the fleet, seriously and with dignity. I was invited to visit them in Piraeus to talk further. When I checked in at Heathrow, I found that my ticket had been upgraded to first class. I was met at the airport in Athens by an Apollo company Mercedes and driven to the Hotel Grand Bretagne. At eight o’clock the car appeared to take me to Arkadis’s house on the coast where we had drinks on the terrace overlooking the sea, surrounded by oleanders and bougainvillea, and the attractive, charming members of the family whose greatest concern seemed to be whether there would be a recurrence of typhoid in Zermatt next season. At nine-thirty or so, four of us—Arkadis and I, Paul Artemis, his finance director, and a young man named Tony whose function I hadn’t sorted out—repaired to a dark, dark restaurant with wandering bouzouki players. The restaurant was warm and smelled—shall we say, earthy—and I strongly suspected that food was not its 

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main point. At the table we were joined by some ladies, all of who were young and attractive in a Levantine way. We drank Black Label or champagne and ate greasy roast kid. The woman to my right—big dark eyes and hair, and a low-cut dress with her tits swelling over-the-top—paid a great deal of attention to me and very little to the drink or the food. It was very difficult for me to concentrate on the terms of the loan we were negotiating with her tongue in my ear—which inter alia made it difficult to hear, what with the bouzouki music and everyone shouting at the top of his voice—and with her hand—active little mouse it was— playing between my thighs. At no doubt what he considered the moment juste, while the shipowner and his finance director were looking theatrically in another direction, absorbed no doubt in the aesthetics of the bouzouki, Tony whispered in my unoccupied ear that I might want to take a break upstairs. I recall nodding heavily—George, you missed your true vocation; there is more than one Welshman with dramatic talent—I grabbed a bottle of pop out of an ice bucket and two glasses, and went quietly, following my Rose of Chios or wherever up the stairway, noting carefully the heft and sway of her bum. Even before we had gone through the doorway of the small bedroom, the zip came down almost of its own accord and her dress was off and—it will no doubt come as a great surprise to you—she had nothing on underneath. A round, smooth body she had, rather too heavy for my taste, and unshaven armpits. She lay on the bed and began to writhe with badly simulated desire. I sat in the corner opposite, fully clothed in shirt and trousers and sipping bubbly, and awaited the inevitable. She sat up and called to me, but she was fortunately too slow-witted to come to me. The door burst open then and there was the glare of an electronic flash. When the papparazzo realized there was only a naked female in his viewfinder, he began shouting at her and pointing to me. I bowled the bottle at him and caught him just below the knee and he went flying out of the room, leaving the door wide open. I followed him through the 

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door, first blowing a kiss to my thoughtfully provided whore. I rejoined the company downstairs; the women had disappeared, as had the redoubtable Tony, and over coffee we again discussed the terms of the loan they were looking for, while Arkadis and his finance director struggled to keep the incredulity off their faces. I kept to the stiff terms I had mentioned when Arkadis had first mooted the loan for a vessel that ultimately turned out to have been rather less than well maintained and whose insurance survey and certificate of seaworthiness from the American Bureau of Shipping were total fabrications. In the event, we agreed only to disagree, and I took my leave with great thanks for a lovely evening, the last act of which was to be driven home alone (and at speed) to the Grand Bretagne. I can tell you that relations between Thomson, Guthrie and Apollo Maritime deteriorated rapidly thereafter, and when a couple of years afterward the receivers were called into Apollo and Arkadis was indicted—in absentia, it goes without saying— for fraud, dear old T&G had not a farthing of exposure to the mountebank. George: already at what—thirty-four or five? —what a wise cove you were. And Charles: Charles was unhappy, as I’ve said, but because he loved Jean, and for her sake, he was willing to return to New York. If you could have seen them together at that time, you would have drawn the same conclusion as I—that as a couple they were doomed. *** In the fall of 1967, I spent a month at Thomson, Guthrie in New York. Such a trip was a sop in lieu of money they gave foreigners who were about to be promoted to manager and I was—grâce à Dieu—one of these; and not under any illusions that I might one day become a partner. That Nirvana was reserved to Americans, and the odd—usually extremely odd—French duke who didn’t even need the money. The Colonel had by then fallen off the 

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twig, and the Colonel’s lady, like all good mothers ought everywhere, had moved out of the crumbling pile into the gatehouse to make room for the son and heir. I inherited also the disagreeable (and disreputable) farm manager who did my sugar beets and barley for me. Everything of course was now recorded as an expense in the farm accounts, and I began to understand how the old reprobate, my governor, had kept himself (but no one else, mind you) in vintage port. The result of all this was that life became more complicated, and I had to spend a good deal more time down in Suffolk going through Graham’s latest methods for cheating his beloved employer; but I also had access to more lolly as well, and I could afford to take Fiona with me to New York to keep me warm on cool autumn nights. Fiona was the latest in a series of fluffy bits with whom I chose to surround myself after my disastrous linkage with Julia. Bright girl, Fiona—too clever by half actually—eight years younger than I; a looker too, whose miniskirts left very little at all to wonder about. Dear old T&G paid for me and my modest keep, and Charles staked me to the rest against an oral promissory note—you may remember that we Brits who won the war still could not take more than tuppence ha’p’ny abroad and so needed to make other arrangements (how I used to resent running into the bloody Kraut tourists everywhere). The time in New York went all too quickly. It was a lovely October, with warm sunny days and clear crisp nights. Fiona spent her days pottering about the shops and museums, and at night we went to restaurants and jazz clubs afterwards, and even dancing once or twice, and home to bed to take the chill off. I managed to acquaint, or reacquaint, myself with all the old sticks who ran mother bank—not a bad lot they were, their natural Scots meanness tempered somewhat by the fact that they were Americans—and generally ingratiated myself without surcease or mercy all ‘round. The visit was so successful in fact that I even suspected for a moment or two over the Ovaltine at a partners’ lunch they may have considered that if they were ever to 

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make a Brit a member of the firm, they may have found the right candidate. Shipping was going through one of its usual equivocal patches then, but on the other hand, our exposures were not great and were well considered—in fact, one was more worried about one or two of Charles’s Norwegians than about any of George’s Greeks. It came right in the end, however. The devaluation of Sterling in 1967 put to an end its use as the currency of charter parties, and the Arab-Israeli war of that year brought a boom in shipping that lasted six years until the steep rise in oil prices and another Arab-Israeli war put it into spectacular decline; enough time for many shipping bankers in London to make and subsequently ruin their reputations. We saw a good deal of Charles and Jean, and it all went quite well. We had dinner out with them a couple of times, and dined at their flat with a number of their American friends, all of whom seemed to be lawyers. I remember one amusing chap who surmised that Fiona’s manner of dress might be “actionable”; amusing, that is, until he took rather too much of an interest in her and had to be sent discreetly off the pitch. Rather to my surprise Jean and Fiona got on well together. They had of course something in common: Fiona was a graphic designer and Jean, who by then was an advertising account executive, worked with them all the time; they knew the palaver. They were a decorous pair together. Fiona was very tall, with short bobbed hair that was very dark brown, vivid green eyes, and a long straight nose. Jean, you may recall, was very fair, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and a small nose that tilted up the tiniest bit at the end. As a matter of fact, she was looking quite pretty during our visit. The frown line between her eyebrows seemed to have disappeared; she had lost some weight and was in fetching trim; but still ultimately muy seriosa—after the badinage, we got Vietnam. I think she may have infected Fiona with some of her claptrap about women; I’d like to think so anyway for the old amour propre.

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We had a weekend amongst the birds and bees at Charles’s mother’s house in Bedford, Westchester. It was exactly the sort of place I thought at the time most Americans lived in—a big, wooden frame house with white clapboard siding and green shutters and green asphalt tiles on the roof and every other room a bathroom, the whole thing surrounded by oak trees with gold leaves and sugar maples whose leaves had turned red. Elizabeth Fletcher was an old dear, really, although, like Charles, she was very reserved and, just like Charles when she talked about her feelings (which was once, a passing reference to life with Charles’s governor, of which more later), she could do it objectively. I know she rather liked me; I know also she thoroughly disapproved of me. I suppose I did present a picture of an aging, not very nice adolescent; which, of course, was highly accurate. Fiona, who dressed for the weekend in a manner that for her was conservative, took old Lizzie’s breath away; but after the initial shock, they got on well, again to my surprise. But women do have this biological thing together, and are inclined rather to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Charles, I thought, looked rather tired and a little under the weather. He was obviously working hard and I surmised—correctly as it turned out—not getting much satisfaction either out of it or his life in general. Fiona had sussed out that Jean spent long hours at the ad agency, that she had a good position and was well paid, and, reading between the lines (Fiona now), she didn’t have much energy left when she got home; and what there was went to Margaret. Charles was last in the queue, and had to wait quite a long time before another Number 19 came along. I heard the other side of the story, one day at lunch at the Down Town Association, as I was nearing the end of my stay in New York. Over the bland food and the unexceptional claret, we performed several pas de deux around the shipping business. Charles thought I ought to involve myself more directly with the Norwegian portfolio, with which I was letting one of my juniors 

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play while I watched over his shoulder. Here I must acknowledge that Charles was perfectly correct; my problem was that I had difficulty keeping my eyes open whenever I discussed anything with a Norwegian. When things were going well for them one was patronized; when they were going badly they groveled at one’s feet. I do not like either, unless it is I doing the groveling or patronizing. As we were descending to take coffee after lunch I mentioned to Charles that he looked tired. He looked startled at the remark, possibly because he may not have recognized that it was so obvious, and probably because such a comment was uncharacteristic of your humble and obedient servant, etc. “I suppose I am,” he said. “I haven’t thought about it.” Smiling briefly, he said, “I haven’t had time.” Charles sipped his coffee and looked into the room without focusing. “The first summer we were back,” he began in response to nothing that I had said, “Jean and Margaret went to stay with my parents in July on Martha’s Vineyard. I followed them in August. “My father did not look well. Because of the firm’s rule, he had had to go into semi-retirement. He could still go to the office two or three days a week, but it was not enough. He’d been in the firm for over forty years. The last dozen or so he was one of the managing partners. His plate had been more than full. “Now it seemed he didn’t know what to do with himself. He had the whole summer off, but all he did was potter about aimlessly. He did none of the reading he always complained that he never had time to do. It was obvious to us that he found children tiresome after small doses. “He used to ask me to go on walks with him. I didn’t know what to expect at first: reminiscences about the firm, expressions of satisfaction or regret, advice. In fact there were none. He asked me about my experiences in the bank, but seemed not disposed to respond. He’d identify a bird or a wildflower. But mostly the walks were in silence. 

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“In October he had a stroke. He was in the library at the office at the time. When I was finally allowed to see him—he’d ended up in New York Hospital—he could move only his head. He couldn’t change his expression, and the only thing he could say was ‘Don’t.’ “When I heard that, when I saw this shell that used to be my father lying there, I remembered what he had told me just after I’d gotten out of the army. Did I tell you once? Do you remember? ‘The worst thing that anyone can do is spend his life doing something he does not want to do, out of a misplaced sense of duty, out of a desire not to hurt another person, or to avoid confrontation, or to do what he deems is expected of him.’” “I remember,” I said. “I never knew whether my father recognized that any of us were there. He stared, but he could not respond. He had another stroke soon afterwards and died. We were not close—not in the way that some men are to their fathers.” “I was a punishment to my own,” I said. “The result of one of the three certifiable times my mother demanded her conjugal rights and caused him to miss an evening of bridge at his club.” Charles was having none of my feeble attempts at lightening the atmosphere. He went on as if he hadn’t heard; and, in his way, he probably hadn’t. “But I felt an emptiness after he was dead; a loss of stability that I noticed only now that it was taken away. And I began to wonder what the hell it was that I was doing. I should have been—should be—happy. I have a clever, good-looking wife who loves me and in addition earns quite a lot of money, a delightful daughter, a stable job, enough money, and I’ll probably become a partner within five years. But it doesn’t add up, George. There’s something missing.” All around us was a pleasant buzz of male conversation. “I don’t know what it’s all about, George. Things are going swimmingly and not so swimmingly at the same time. The job I have now is okay, but it’s not international and it’s not my 

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major interest.” He paused for a moment. “I’m trying to get back to London.” “Indeed,” I said. “Why not? MacDonald is about ready for a nursing home in Hove in any event. Why not come as head of the office?” He looked truly startled at that suggestion, confirming for me what I had suspected for some time, that Charles was one of those rare coves who—unlike the rest of us who consistently make the opposite error—really undervalue their own worth. Charles was not relaxed. He clenched and unclenched his fingers. His legs were crossed and he shook his left foot slightly. “I do know that we can’t continue to live this way.” “You mean Jean and you?” He looked at me for rather a long time, as if considering whether he could—or ought to—continue. We had by then known each other for over a dozen years, ever since the first day when he had bought me lunch at Simpson’s. He knew what to expect from me; but I wonder what I represented to him. Romance; freedom; competence lightly veiled in an aura of  je  m’en fichisme (or the opposite)? I do know he expected no danger. “I do mean Jean and me,” he said. “The way we are living takes too much out of us. Often she gets home after I do. I travel; she travels. Margaret gets a cursory glance. We have a drink— in Jean’s case, a couple of drinks—and dinner and fall into bed exhausted.” I kept silent. Anything I might have said then would have been the wrong thing. It was not the amount of work, it was the nature of the work; it was not the marriage; it was the kind of marriage. I consider myself many splendid things, but seer was not one of them; even so it had been obvious to me before, and doubly so now, that Jean and Charles were incompatible. “No one ever tells one what to expect from a marriage and family. But this can’t be it. It does seem all so pointless somehow.” 

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“Don’t forget, old thing, that I am an expert in what a marriage should not be like.” My little remark fell to the floor with a dull thud. “Yes, well,” was all Charles said. “You need a change of scene. You both need a change of scene.” “I’m sure you’re right, George. Thanks for letting me bore you.” And over my mumbling demurral, he said, “We’d better get back.” Charles did return to London, but it took him nearly two years more, and the most difficult time he had was persuading not Thomson, Guthrie, who were delighted, and returned him not only as head of the office but also as resident partner, making him the youngest partner—thirty-eight—in the firm; the most difficult thing he had to do was to persuade Jean that giving up her job as an account executive was ultimately the best thing for their partnership as well. I do not truly hold it against Jean that Fiona decided not to return to London from the Land of Opportunity; it appeared that she had been pottering about more than the shops and the museums while I was slaving away in the bowels of Pine Street for my benefit and sporadically for hers. One grants that one or two leads came from Jean Fletcher; but Fiona did it all on her own, particularly when she discovered that she could be earning six times as much in the States as she had been in London, and the cost of living was not six times higher. *** Robert was born in October of 1969, and in spite of my generally disreputable demeanor, Charles asked me to be his son’s godfather, a position for which I thought myself supremely unsuitable, but which, for Charles, and against my better judgment, I accepted. Jean cannot have been best pleased, but to her credit, she said not a word. In the event, I wish I’d used my better judgment. 

Chapter Five

U n l i k e ly a s i t m a y s e e m , I gave a small dinner party for Charles and Jean not long after Robert was born. I should say rather that Spring Farm gave them a dinner party, even though it took place in a smart flat I had bought recently in Cadogan Square. There was no question of Thomson, Guthrie paying for it. They would have demanded all sorts of evidence that the guests had been customers, and that business had been discussed. The only business that should ever be discussed at a dinner party—particularly at one of mine, which at that time were as rare as a miser’s contributions to charity—is monkey business. The other guests were my current inamorata, an absolute dish called Susan Hunter; she was younger than Fiona, and not quite as bright—I’d learned my lesson there—a living example of how my tastes seemed to be growing younger and younger as the grappling hooks of middle age caught and held; somewhat, I blush at the comparison, like Tony Whitfield, of whom more later. Anne and Giles Bowden; he was a wearer of Silk, a little bit of a stick really, but rather a good man to know if one happened to be being tried for murder. To my surprise, Anne had already met Charles, although that was obviously why I had invited them in the first place. I’d completely forgotten that party I told you about, to which I’d inveigled Charles into going with me to Chelsea shortly after we’d met. But it was there that he’d met,

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and, Charles confessed to me, afterwards had become arse-overteakettle infatuated with, Anne Wheeler as she was then. Finally there were the aforementioned Tony Whitfield, a rapidly aging adolescent—more aging and more adolescent than yours sincerely—and his delicious wife Nathalie. Tony was an acquired taste. He could be good value at times, but mostly he was not, and the only reason he got invited anywhere, except by the like-minded swine he used to hang round with at his club, was that people loved Nathalie. Tony’s sense of humor was that of a schoolboy, and like many schoolboys his tastes ran rather to schoolgirls, or approximations thereof. Nathalie even at twentyseven was clearly too much for Tony to handle. There was no denying—is no denying, but you ought to have seen her then— that she was a looker, with her ash-blonde hair and deep blue eyes and high cheekbones; well-built too, although not lush; less full than Jean Fletcher, fuller than Anne (it goes without saying that Susan won the C Cup of 1970 award amongst that otherwise very decorous group of birds of Paradise who were at my flat that night for dinner). Tony could not cope with the combination of beauty and brains that Nathalie represented. All he wanted was to have every little whim indulged; exactly like your present interlocutor. The difference is that my choices were deliberate, and Tony never understood why he made the choices he did. He didn’t want to be challenged intellectually (or physically, for that matter): hence he sought solace in teenage (chronologically or mentally) popsies. Nathalie knew it all and unbeknownst to us all at the time was reaching the end of her tether. Why did she marry him in the first place? Perhaps simply the youthful vice of choosing appearances; when they married, Tony had dash and looks (but only a second son, mind you, which he also resented); good school, good regiment, a job in a respectable firm of stockbrokers. Why did I marry Julia? Julia and Tony—that would have been a pair: all grunts and squeals, followed by long, long silences.

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In the event, Charles was bowled over by meeting Anne again after so many years—have I told you he actually took her to dinner once?—and any ice there might have been melted immediately. The Fletchers had met Susan before with me. Jean was looking pretty and happy and started talking with Giles about Vietnam or something equally worthy, exactly the sort of thing to which he’d respond. Nathalie was looking more gorgeous than ever—something I managed to say, I believe, as I kissed her on both cheeks—and Tony, who looked moody when he arrived, brightened considerably when he saw Susan. He shook her hand warmly and held it much too long. One way or the other, it seemed, he was going to prove tiresome. We had a pink bubbly to start, served by the manservant I had in on occasions. We sat down in about thirty minutes. Susan had laid on some very queer caterer she knew who cooked like an angel. We had a carrot and tomato soup with some musty tasting herb floating on top, followed by a beef filet in pastry, along with one of my (that is, the late Colonel’s) truly splendid clarets—could it really have been a ‘53 Latour? I had driven the bottles up from Suffolk a month before to give the little darlings time to rest. Jean sat at my right and Anne to my left. Giles was at the foot of the table flanked by Susan and Nathalie. Charles was between Nathalie and Anne, of course, and Tony sat across. “You’re looking quite smashing, Jean,” I said in my most winning way. “Eaton Terrace must be going very well. What? The builders cannot possibly still be hanging from the waste pipes?” “Good heavens, George,” she said, entering into the spirit of the harmless badinage, “we’ve only had the house five months, and we’re doing a little decorating. You wouldn’t expect British workmen to be finished so soon.” “It’s clear that you don’t appreciate old world craftsmanship. Such delicacy cannot be rushed.” “There are compensations,” she said. “The bills come late too.”

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“Jean, you know they’re all filthy rich and don’t need the money; they do it only for the love of a job well done.” She had difficulty with that swallow of wine. I noted that Charles was having a good natter with Anne. I wondered whether he was thinking as I would in his place what might have happened if. Tony was trying, not very hard, and of course he was not succeeding, to disguise the fact that he was looking down the front of Susan’s silk blouse, which had a habit of falling open in the most fetching way—enough to wet the palate, but not too much for decorum. Here I must interject that Jean was wearing a silk dress that clung nicely to that bosom I so fondly remembered—from afar, I hasten to add. Anne was the slimmest of all. She was built like a boy really; probably evoked memories of public school in Giles, who I’m certain was straight, but occasionally made one think that he might have bent from time to time in the distant past. No matter; I don’t want to be hauled up for slandering, particularly by a Q.C. Nathalie, who was talking to Giles—and even from that distance, I could see how deep blue were her eyes—Nathalie was Nathalie: grace, style, character. Giles treated with her over the soup, probably about French politics, which Nathalie, being half French, followed rather closely. For myself, I thought the frogs got everything they deserved, but the events of May 1968 had unnerved even me. While the faithful dogsbody served the boeuf Wellington from the sideboard, Nathalie turned to Charles and began to chatter away happily, Heaven knows what about. Charles told me later that it was some harmless talk about her not being English and about her house in Aix. I don’t know what it was about them; but before I turned to Anne, as the good host I was, I experienced the sensation that a spark had leaped the gap between them, although neither one had recognized it yet themselves. Revisionist history possibly; but Tony Whitfield had seen or felt the same thing. I became aware that he’d got very still and was staring at Charles and Nathalie and ignoring Jean. 

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When dinner began, I learned later, Tony had put his hand on Susan’s very well-turned thigh, and had it put back firmly on his own, receiving as well a discreet talking-to from headmistress (oh George, that’s very good ). He’d begun to talk to Jean with the second course, but the sound of lively conversation from across the table had attracted his attention, and he became moody again, neglecting Jean, so that I had to take up the slack. Nathalie or not, I vowed that was the last time I was having Tony Whitfield to dine. A la française, I have cheese served after the main course so that everyone can give proper attention to the last of his wine, then we have the pudding. That evening, we had one of Pierre’s or Armand’s or whomever’s confections, light as a fairy, to follow. Then the ladies went off, and I broke out one of Spring Farm’s vintage ports. There was some tension in the room. I was not certain of the reason, but I suspected that Tony had had a frustrating evening (he must have had many such), having not been able to get hold of anything of real substance to squeeze or pinch or fondle, and having (no doubt once again) witnessed his wife having a good time that did not involve himself. “Splendid port, George,” Tony said. And over agreement from the other two, which he ignored, he said, “Something the pater put down for you at birth?” “Something he put down for himself, more likely, Tony. I believe this one was called ‘Entertainment: Wines and Spirits, Suffolk Agricultural Association’ in the farm accounts. You didn’t hear that, Giles.” “In the event, it is not my area of expertise. Although, George, if called, I should have to testify.” “I shouldn’t think of asking you to do otherwise, old thing.” I was nearly certain that Giles had been making a joke in his ponderous way, but one was never absolutely sure. I saw Tony lighting his cigar. He was in his late thirties, like I, but looked fifty-

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five, overweight from indulgence and lack of exercise. When he got the cigar going he turned to Charles. “Tell me, old chap, when are you Yanks going to put your inflation right?” He sounded hostile, as if, instead of the shambolic American involvement in Vietnam, Charles were personally responsible for the US inflation rate. Of course his hostility had nothing to do with inflation or Indochina, about neither of which Tony knew nor cared. No, dear old Tony had not appreciated Nathalie’s having been chatted up by this American; chatting up was only for Tony to do. I shouldn’t have minded chatting up Nathalie myself, come to that. Charles seemed not to notice, or chose to ignore, the antipathy. “Nixon must be given a chance. He’s been in office only a little over a year, and inherited the results of a bankrupt policy. He’s doing what he can, but it will take time, I’m afraid. But are you interested in American politics?” “Only to the degree to which they affect my pocketbook,” he said. “Otherwise not in the least.” Charles was too civilized to respond in the manner that Whitfield deserved. He simply smiled slightly and looked neutral. It was an unpleasant remark on Whitfield’s part, and signaled to me to bring our celibate conviviality to an end. Tony was being tiresome and I suspected that he knew he was and didn’t care, and I do not allow that sort of thing to go on at my dinner parties. I should much rather have listened to Giles discussing ax murderers. “Shall we join the ladies?” I said, rising from the table. Tony did not look surprised, which did not surprise me, but he looked suddenly (and briefly) rather sad, as if after all he could not help himself. I suspected that Charles would prefer to have continued his tête-à-tête with Nathalie, but as a good guest, he sat next to Susan, who was pouring coffee for everyone. I picked up two cups, one of which was for Nathalie. “How are you, old girl?” I said, sitting beside her. 

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“As well as can be expected,” she said. “As bad as that?” “As bad as that.” “Tell Uncle George.” But all she did was smile. “I like your Americans.” “I rather like them as well.” “Who is he?” Charles had managed to talk at length with Nathalie without telling her what he did. Most Americans in my ken can’t wait to tell you. It’s the way they identify themselves, really. Not like us. They seek reward through performance. We expect it simply because of who we are; because six hundred years ago an ancestor did something for Edward III or whomever, his heirs go on, century after century, being deferred to. Absurd, really. “He’s my boss.” “George, not really,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “You’ve had the boss to dinner.” “Not cause and effect, dear Nathalie.” “My faith in you would have been shattered.” “How much faith have you in me?” “None whatever,” she said. My God, she was beautiful. “How is Poole’s,” I said, asking after the public relations firm in which she was making her way. “More and more exciting.” “I despair to hear you say that it takes an office to excite you, Nathalie.” She did not answer, and not long afterwards said that they must go. “Please don’t,” I said. “We must, George. It’s been lovely.” She stood and I stood with her. She said to Tony, “I think we must be off.” I thought for a horrible moment—and I should not have put it past him—that he wanted to say, “You go without me,” but other than the brief look of distaste with which he greeted the idea of leaving, he said nothing, and disengaged abruptly from 

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Anne Bowden. Almost immediately after, the Bowdens and the Fletchers left. When Simon had finished cleaning up and had departed with a large number of my hard-earned banknotes, I gave Susan a Calvados and took a balloon of Armagnac for myself and we did—or rather, she did—the post mortems in the drawing room. “I never want to see Tony Whitfield again.” “I’m your slave, you sexy bitch. I’ll do anything you say. Or in this case, won’t do what you say not to. Does that work?” “I’m serious, George.” “As am I, in my inimitable style. No, darling Susan, you’re quite right. Tony is quite beyond the Pale. I’ve often told my chums that he’s an acquired taste. I think I lost it tonight. Although we must find Nathalie a nice adult to play with.” “What is your sudden interest in Nathalie?” “It’s not sudden, you luscious creature. How could one fail to be interested in such a beautiful, accomplished woman? It will, however, remain only an interest as long as you keep doing naughty things to me.” She ignored me. “I think Charles was quite taken with her,” she said. Although it was amusing, it was not something that I really wanted to hear. “Stuff Charles,” I said without heat. Susan, who was not as bright as Fiona, but who nonetheless was no fool, put down her glass and kissed me quite passionately. “I thought you were my slave,” she said. “I’d much rather you stuffed me.” How could a gentleman refuse?

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Chapter Six

I t wa s i n e a r l y 19 70 that I first met Dmitri Iandakis, although I’d known about him for some time. By then dear old T&G had established its reputation as a shipping lender whose ability to pick quality amongst the rising owners of the second rank was second to none. I say this in all immodesty because it was mostly my doing, and that of the staff under my direction. Because of Charles’s present exalted position, he had almost nothing to do with the day-to-day loan business; the Shipping Division was just one of many that reported to him through the managers. I had broader responsibilities myself by this time, having taken under my wing the property portfolio and what we liked to call venture capital, but which wasn’t really—no obsessive entrepreneurs working in their garden sheds on the next greatest technological breakthrough; it meant simply deals in which Thomson, Guthrie took equity as part of the compensation. We did not invest. I was wary of property, which seemed to me a business in which great profit could be made and great losses incurred with equal ease; I also did not care for the smarmy types—some of whom, it must be admitted, had impeccable antecedents—who infested the business. I had always the sense after talking to one that I ought to ensure I still had my wallet and to send my suit to the dry cleaners. I relied completely on my instincts; I knew most of the tricks or could learn about the permutations quickly enough to avoid damage. 

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How does one like me protect himself, however, against the honest fool? Dmitri Iandakis was precisely our kind—my kind—of shipowner. A London-based Greek, middling size fleet, a few old dry cargo vessels with no debt on them that he was phasing out slowly at decent prices to overseas Chinese or to the knackers yard if they were in better condition; a half-dozen thirty- to fortythousand-ton bulkers, one of which had been chartered in to the Norbulk pool for a year when they were desperate for more tonnage—Lindstedt had reported that the ship was extremely well run and well maintained—and six-sixty to eighty-thousand-ton tankers. Iandakis was conservative and methodical. He made use of the latest technology available, he gave one accounts audited by the most reputable accountants, and supplied realistic cash flows. His risks were spread, he was not overgeared, and he was looking to expand. Thomson, Guthrie had, as I have said, a certain reputation. The drawback of that reputation was that it attracted good and bad, the artists of legerdemain; not that I minded, because some of them were very entertaining, and I had some very good lunches and dinners out of them—but it did waste time. It was our reputation therefore that brought Iandakis to me one grim day in February, with the sky low and pissing with cold rain, and all the lights on. On the other hand, Iandakis’s reputation preceded him, so I eschewed the bulletproof vest and athletic support I usually wore when un grecque inconnu came to see me. In the middle of the morning I could hear outside my monastic cell the removing of coats and shaking of umbrellas that indicated my secretary was looking to the creature comforts of a visitor. He was a pleasant-looking man of medium height, rather heavy, in his middle fifties probably, going bald, with a diffident smile and manner. “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Evans,” he said, offering his hand. Warm, dry, firm. 

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“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Iandakis,” I responded. “Filthy weather out. Would you like coffee? Or something stronger to take the chill away?” “No, most kind. Coffee if I may.” I looked around the door and sent my girl down the hallway for two cups of stewed newts that passed for coffee in T&G, London. “What can we do for you, Mr. Iandakis?” “Let me come quickly to the point, Mr. Evans. I am looking for a bank that understands the shipping business. A bank that can respond with alacrity to requests, not only for money, but for advice. Some of my colleagues in the industry—I name Per Lindstedt, for example, or John Pappadopoulos, for another— have indicated that you are that kind of institution. That you, in fact, are that kind of banker.” I nodded; he may have thought, in acknowledgment; but actually in assent. My secretary arrived with the coffee and I admired her legs while she set it out on the low table in front of our chairs. “At the moment my bankers are the Bank of London, who understand nothing unless I want an automobile loan. And Clark, Vezlay. . .” He could not help but see my ill-disguised grimace. Clark, Vezlay (that became eventually Multinational Capital Corporation Ltd.) was a slimy third-rate merchant bank staffed by dropouts from third-rate public schools who would have solicited for their aged grandmothers if it could have been done at a profit. “I know what you will say, Mr. Evans. ‘Hardly out of the top drawer. How did this man ever become entangled with that lot? Does it say anything about his discernment?’ Those are good questions, Mr. Evans. I will answer them. To the first I say I had bad advice from my wife’s great-uncle. To the second I say that it shows a great deal about my discernment at the time. But I was very young and I have learned. I do not like the people they have doing their shipping business—there is a man called Bechmann, 

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who says he is Swiss, but he could be anything—and I do not like some of the owners they finance. It can lead only to trouble, and I prefer to have a bank that will be around in the future.” In the circumstances I saw no need to do anything but nod sagely and look as if I knew what he was talking about, which I did actually. Iandakis went on. “I think the oil business will be with us forever.” “Forever, Mr. Iandakis?” “For our lifetimes, which for you and me, Mr. Evans, is forever. I think I recognize a gap in the market between the handy size and the big ships, the VLCC, that everyone is ordering now because Suez is closed and everyone has had to add six thousand miles to every voyage. Not every port in the world can take the big ships.” He was waxing enthusiastic now. The rain bashed against the windows. “There is room for large-size vessels—say sixty to one hundred thousand tons or so, shallow draft that can put into ports of consequence, or offload from VLCCs at transshipment terminals, say in the Caribbean. And what of product carriers and chemical tankers? In all of these markets, there is room for the prudent owner. Not—of course; I see the trepidation in your eyes—all at once; but gradually. “I shall continue to keep my interest in bulk carriers for the annuity income. For these I will seek finance of no more than a margin of fifty percent. But the question is, will Thomson, Guthrie be prepared to finance me at eighty or ninety percent for the tankers?” “Do you have any new buildings at the moment?” “Indeed. Two of eighty thousand tons at Hitachi.” I began to make notes. “With yard finance of eighty percent for eight years. I should like an additional ten percent against a second mortgage and an assignment of the earnings.” “Then the vessels are fixed?” I asked. “For four years to Texaco. Nigeria to US Gulf.”

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“Delivery dates?” “March and September this year.” “Price?” “Ten million dollars each.” “We don’t do second mortgages, Mr. Iandakis. I regard it rather like the peasant bridegroom after his lord has exercised his droit du seigneur.” “What would you propose in the circumstances then, Mr. Evans?” “I think we could consider a guarantee in favor of Hitachi against the contract, and a first mortgage—your registry is Panamanian? (old George had done his homework)—on delivery, and an assignment of the earnings. May I see your cash flows, Mr. Iandakis?” “Of course.” He brought a thick folder out of the briefcase next to his chair. I cannot understand why by that time I had not gone into shock. One usually got Greek cash flows—if one got them at all—scribbled in pencil on the back of a laundry ticket. I recall vividly one fellow who was insulted when I asked if I could see a written valuation of his fleet. “You don’t trust me,” he had said, putting his hand on his heart and looking wounded. It was a statement, not a question, and one was tempted to agree loudly. “All you’re risking is money,” he had brayed. “I’m risking my good name.” Iandakis was nothing like this. He was a professional, commendably straightforward, and he seemed at the time to be doing everything right. How I wish that the world then had become frozen in time. “But you understand, Mr. Evans, that I show you the cash flows of Odysseus Corporation on the understanding that you will revert with an answer, shall we say, within a week?” I helped him on with his coat, and saw that he retrieved his umbrella, and saw him down the staircase into the banking hall.

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“I have a good feeling about our conversation this morning, Mr. Evans,” Iandakis said. “And my instincts are always right. I think that we can work together.” “I as well, Mr. Iandakis,” I responded expansively. A good morning, well spent; nothing but the price of a cup of coffee and some of my time, for which, God knows, Thomson, Guthrie paid almost nothing. I should like from time to time to have offered to return my pay packet to the resident partner (Charles), saying that, as Thomson, Guthrie had such difficulty parting with so little, I was certain they needed it more than I. *** Shortly after Iandakis left, I went round to Charles’s office. “I say, old thing, don’t you think it’s time the grateful employer bought us lunch? Cancel whatever it was you had and come with me. I’m close to landing a whale.” We left St. Peter’s Court and the leaded windows and the mock Gothic, down Bishopsgate and into Cornhill, up the alley between the Jamaica—at which Charles paused briefly before he actually turned down the sherry or Sercial Madeira—and the George and Vulture, to which we were bound. I worked my usual magic and we were given one of the tables at which we could be reasonably certain of being alone for most of lunch. “You’ll have your usual, Charles? Then a half-bottle of your house weasel’s, Dolores, red, and a half-pint of bitter with some water for diluting for my friend.” “We must stop meeting his way,” Charles said. “My God, we must. It’s been sixteen years, old fruit. I can’t say you’ve improved in appearance.” At which he looked thoughtful. “I saw a real winner this ante meridian, Carlos. Dmitri Iandakis.” Charles lifted his eyebrows. “The fellow that Lindstedt raves about?”

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“Precisely.” I deftly sketched in the background: size and type of vessels, outstanding debt, reputation, insurance value of the fleet. “My question is very simple, Charles. Is Thomson, Guthrie ready to consider ninety percent finance? Are you ready to come to that?” At this distance, I seem to remember that Charles seemed not altogether attentive to the subject of our conversation, but that may be only a later gloss. In the event, what he said rather surprised me, because, as you will have gathered by now, he was most cautious and conservative. “I have no trouble with ninety percent,” is what he said, “but that small a margin goes well beyond my discretionary authority. I’ll have to talk to New York. You’ve seen his cash flows?” “If I weren’t the honest cove that you know me to be, Charles, I could say, with absolute truth, that I’ve seen them, and you’d be none the wiser. I’ve seen them. I haven’t looked at them. No purpose to it if ninety percent had been out of the question.” And summoning all the sincerity within me, which wasn’t—isn’t— much, and which—the summoning, that is—takes a deal of effort, I said, “I promise you, Carlos, you have never met a Greek like this.” Dolores brought our chops. I offered Charles some of my wine, which, to my delight, he accepted, and I ordered another half-bottle. “Do you see much of your friend Whitfield?” he asked. Given the circumstances in which they’d met, and in which they’d parted, I could not imagine that Charles had any but the most unpleasant memories of his only (and most likely last) encounter with Tony Whitfield. “Not much,” I said. “Less so than before. He continues to potter about the city feeling sorry for himself.” Charles looked up from his bubble and squeak. “Why sorry for himself?”

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“Did I not tell you that Nathalie ditched him?” “Not that I recall.” “The old girl decided she’d had it with Tony’s acting as if he was back in prep school. They are accordingly no longer a twosome.” “Rather hard on her.” “Not at all. She can fend for herself. Rather more than fend, actually. She does very well at Poole’s. It’s a public relations firm. No, I should say it’s rather harder on Tony, who’s really never learned to do anything for himself.” Charles looked with some distaste into the middle distance, thinking no doubt of his one meeting with Tony two months before. We finished our meal talking about not very much. I did get from Charles a firm undertaking to talk to New York if I gave thumbs up on the cash flows. Charles trusted me completely, you see. Dolores cleared away our plates and took our orders for nursery pudding. I asked for the bread and butter pud, which is lovely at the G&V and which they don’t have often enough. Charles asked only for coffee, but seemed not to mind that his glass was refilled. “She’s quite a lovely person,” he said to no one. “Dolores? Nathalie. Ah; quite a lovely person. An understatement, I should say. Nathalie represents a height to which I aspire but have little hope of attaining—yes, I know, the egregious Whitfield, but that was youthful folly, not to be repeated. In my estimate, there is nothing that Nathalie does not have, which now that she has shed my old backgammon adversary stands out in sharp relief: beauty, wit, sex. Perhaps rather too much wit.” “You’re not talking about a side of beef hanging in Smithfield, George.” He sounded quite angry. One of my greatest virtues is that of the quick recovery, because I must say I was taken aback; and while we were friends, I was ever mindful of Charles’s position. I wasn’t, indeed, quite certain what it was he was object

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ing to. “I only meant to say, old thing, that Nathalie doesn’t take me seriously, and you know that I like worship in a girl.” Charles was silent. Still. He looked at me but he didn’t see me. Charles was very, very far away from the George and Vulture. “Time to get back, George,” he said suddenly. He bolted his coffee and stood up, knocking over the half-glass of wine he had left. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said to me and to Dolores in a whisper as the red stain spread through the tablecloth. And one knew he was terribly embarrassed as well. Such things did not happen in Charles’s universe; not, at least, caused by himself. Dolores looked quite concerned, but I knew it was not because of the tablecloth. She was thinking about the bill, which Charles had forgotten utterly, as he was threading his way through the tables, his head down. “Put it on my bill, my sweet,” I said, and gave her a handful of florins. “Ta, love. I do hope the gentleman is feeling better.” It did not take much for one who knew Charles to recognize that the well-ordered world—cage, one might have said—that he had devised for himself was beginning to come apart. My main surmise was that things were not going well at home—again; it was a repetition of 1965. And there was an interesting new element. I believe that human motivation is really rather simple. Money, power, sex, in the western world, where basics of shelter and food are no longer a problem. Money had struck me neither as a problem for Charles, nor as a controlling drive; power he accepted reluctantly; I was shocked by the process of elimination to come to sex. It would thus appear that my phlegmatic New England colleague seemed after all to have some blood circulation. And what’s more, he wanted to share a duvet with Nathalie Whitfield. One certainly couldn’t fault his taste. We trudged back to St. Peter’s Court, Charles seeming not to notice that rain was dripping into his collar. I resolved on that short, grim walk that I should do what I could to help the love birds meet again. 

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I realize that this seems contradictory to my earlier denials, but not at all. I didn’t make anything happen; indeed, I couldn’t. I provided only an opportunity, and that I’ve admitted. That they might choose to take advantage of it was no doing of mine. And it might prove amusing as well. One could never tell what might happen.

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Chapter Seven

Th e r e wa s a wor m , how e v e r , in the heart of happiness, specifically my happiness. At about this time, Charles did something for which I didn’t think I could ever entirely forgive him. But such a small thing, you may say. He appointed a deputy. The man he chose was called Willie Armstrong, another North American, and an ineffective one at that. I knew Charles was under pressure from the head office to appoint someone. He even talked to me about it, sought my advice, asked whom I should like to see in the job; I thought he was having me on, that he couldn’t be that obtuse. I naturally named two or three people who were totally unqualified; thank God he didn’t choose any of them, but he did pick someone nearly as bad. “Charles, with respect, how could you have chosen that incompetent?” I said over a drink at Botolph’s Wine Bar the evening of the announcement. “I have been assured that Bill is capable,” he said, pursing his lips and looking as if he’d swallowed an entire lemon. “That I should not be put off by his apparent lack of experience. You surely didn’t expect me to pick any of your suggestions. Or did you?” “Charles, old fellow, my suggestions were schoolboy humor. I should have thought the best candidate for the job was obvious.” Rosy-fingered dawn crept slowly into those ice-blue Yankee eyes. He understood now. Oh yes, he understood. And I did as well. The thought had never occurred to him. 

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The bar was noisy. “You’re mumbling, Charles. I’m not certain I can take that and this quite disgusting Alsace at the same time.” “I said there was pressure,” he replied and looked away. “Of what sort?” “To appoint an American.” Our idyllic relationship—I had up to that point rather trusted Charles, at least as far as it was in me to trust anyone, and he was one of the few to whom I extended the privilege of being so regarded—was badly damaged at that point, although Charles never fully recognized it; he had, I think, a hint towards the end. Item, he had not considered me for his deputy despite a sixteen-year association and my unblemished professional record. Item, he tried to cover it over, and deception was not Charles’s way of doing things. As a teller of falsehood, he was exceedingly clumsy, exceedingly puritan New England, and he was dealing with a master. *** In the dismal autumn of 1971, Jean Fletcher’s mother became seriously ill and was taken into hospital. As soon as she could arrange it, Jean flew to Chicago and Charles followed a day later, leaving the children with the nanny. Charles had stayed behind to make certain that everything would run smoothly in his absence, but in truth he was so distracted during the hours before he left that he was ineffective. He knew—he told me later—how much Jean’s mother had meant to her, and how vulnerable she (Jean) was at that time, although he did not tell me any of the symptoms. There was, I suspect now—I could not know it at the time—guilt as well, that he was not as caring as he might be. If Jean was not prepared for her mother’s illness, perhaps even death, Charles was equally unprepared. After Charles had left, the egregious Willie Armstrong, all toothpaste smile and loud checked suits (no, I’ve fabricated that, I’m certain), was continu

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ously coming to me for advice. I answered his inane questions coolly but correctly. One could not be faulted for one’s behavior; but what purpose Willie served was difficult to ascertain. He seemed to be totally ignorant of the London market and the ways of the city, for which one might, might have been able to offer a lame excuse; but he also acted as if he knew nothing about banking, which was unforgiveable. For all Willie’s contribution during that difficult period, Charles may as well not have appointed anyone as his deputy. One almost began to believe that Charles had after all been forced to take this chap on (the retarded son-in-law of one of the senior partners, perhaps); he did seem an unlikely choice for Charles to have made of a free will. When Charles returned from Chicago, one could read the whole story from his appearance. The poor woman had died— waterworks gave way, it seems—and Jean was staying on to be with her pater. She had always been his favorite, and the old fellow would have felt totally abandoned without her. I wonder what choice Jean would have made had she known at the time how emotionally vulnerable Charles was soi-même. My natural skepticism suggests to me that she would have made the same choice. She and Charles had been drifting apart for years; marriages made in Heaven have a way of doing that, old Nobodaddy having another one of his little jokes. People grow up, change, almost always for the worse, when disappointment piles upon disappointment and the reality of what it means to be a human being becomes more or less apparent: why should a decision one made at the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven to love and to cherish etcetera still obtain at the age of forty when your interests, or lack of interests, and your associations, have been moving in an opposite direction from your once most intimate acquaintance? No bloody reason at all. For myself, I looked only to cheer up old Charles; he had become more of a stick at work than ever, with his long face and his lacking even the quiet humor he had once evinced. Naturally 

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I invited him to dine with Susan and me and Nathalie. We were a jolly foursome that evening; or rather I should say that we became one. When Charles arrived, he presented that somewhat sad visage he’d adopted at the office, and he was withdrawn. Having not been told by yours sincerely whom to expect, he brightened considerably when he saw it was Nathalie, who was wearing a lovely blue dress that went so very well with her eyes. There was good food sent in by the caterers, which Susan heated up expertly in the oven—cooking was not her forte, but given what her forte was, one forgave her—and the wine was (natürlich) excellent, preceded by whisky and followed by port and coffee in the drawing room in front of a pretty coal fire. As the evening progressed, one watched the care lines and the stress fall away from Charles’s noble brow. Ever the well-bred, he tried to keep his attention balanced between the two girls, but he paid more and more attention to Nathalie until by the time it was time to go he was completely absorbed by her, except for a few exchanges in general about some burning issue of the day, and Susan and I were left to plot a little skiing holiday to St. Moritz. They left together, Charles having accepted the offer of a ride from Nathalie. When I had returned from finding a taxi for the maid—the flat I had at that time was not large enough to have a maid’s room—Susan was sitting up in bed with a book in her lap and looking rather dewy-eyed. “Reading something moving, darling?” I enquired as I began to undress. “I’ve seen something rather moving, George.” “Oh? What’s that?” “Charles is quite taken with Nathalie.” “My sweet, any fool could see that.” My, what a sensitive cove you are, George. “No, I mean more than what you mean, George. I think he’s in love with her.” “You always have been perceptive about matters of the heart, my dearest. Are you, for example, in love with me?” 

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“Not at all, George.” Still half-dressed, I sat beside her on the edge of the bed and removed her glasses and the book from her lap. “And would you like me to make love to you?” “Yes, please,” she said. Natürlich. *** Charles’s life became very sticky at that time. Jean had stayed on in Chicago because she was worried that her father was not bouncing back from the death of his wife. Charles was naturally upset—he was very fond of Forbes père—but Jean had left him alone and he was vulnerable. And in that vulnerability he had fallen in love with Nathalie; and I knew it before he did; or before he would admit that he had. It was ludicrous. In a youngster—in his own son Robert, for example, to whom I had given an exemplary lunch—such a phenomenon would have been sweet if naive. In a forty-year-old man with knowledge of the world (one assumes; perhaps one assumes too much), what else could it have been but pathetic? Charles’s whole world was at risk: family, career, and had one but known, life itself, all for a bit of female flesh, however sweet it may have been. In my peregrinations, I have found—indeed I knew at an early age—that such things are best left to poets and other dreamers: forever wilt thou love and she be fair, und so weiter. That, dear fellow, is true only on an urn, or between the covers of a book. I heard someone maintain once that two is a couple and three is a political situation. Don’t believe the first part. Two are every bit as political, because each bundle of rags has its own needs and desires and will rarely subordinate itself to the other, unless he or she is a saint or a masochist; either one is a psychotic. As a cobber of mine once said, talking of a mutual friend whose sweet, accommodating nature was very difficult to deal with, “Robin is in good form, and you know what a nightmare that is.” Charles, come to think of it, was rather close to sainthood himself. Not, 

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however, your hero. I was a mere toiler in the vineyard, planting and pruning carefully, devising little traps for the horrid Willie. He really was a stupid man. I knew it; Charles came reluctantly to know it, to know he’d been led down the garden path by New York, and he knew that Willie had to be got rid of. I kept on at Charles about it, which at this time was unfair, because he was not himself—eating too little, drinking a little too much. Jean had returned and one knew that things were not going well at home; and he was in love with another woman. I pressed my advantage; I should not have been able to hold up my head had I not done so. “For God’s sake, George,” he raged at me one evening in Botolph’s over a not-bad Moulin à Vent, “whether Willie is or is not the right guy for the job is for me to determine, and I’ll not have you whispering in my ear. You presume too much.” I contrived to look suitably offended. “For the moment, Charles old thing, I have nothing more to say; nor, I must admit, have you indicated any further desire to listen.” I was attempting, the attentive listener will immediately discern, to match Charles pomposity for pomposity. “I’m taking a cab home. Here,” I said, giving him a pound note, “keep the change.” He caught up with me at the corner of Leadenhall Street, my pound intact. “I am sorry, George,” he said, putting his hand on my arm, remarkable for someone generally so physically remote. “I was being pompous. I know that Willie Armstrong is no good. I rather wish he would go away. I simply didn’t like being told what I already know by such an old friend.” And like magic there appeared a cab that we took together; oh, for those lovely bygone days when the drop was one and six. “Why don’t you just sack him?” I said. The cab started off down Cornhill. “Can’t be done,” he said. “Why not? Because of his connections with one of our esteemed partners?” 

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“Can’t be done,” he said again, therewith acknowledging my suspicions. Perhaps not by you, old thing, I thought. But I decided to do something about Willie other than designing ways of making him look ridiculous for my own amusement. I had to arrange things so that he looked—became, in fact—positively dangerous. It should not prove too difficult, but it might require Thomson, Guthrie having to lose a little of the ready. But at the end of the day it would be worth it, for T&G, for Charles, and possibly— just possibly—for moi-mème. “What are you doing at Christmas, Charles?” Charles sighed briefly. “We’re spending it in Chicago with Jean’s father.” “How is the old chap?” “Not well, I’m afraid. I can’t think it’s going to make for a jolly time. But it must be done, I suppose. And MacLeod has asked me to stop by the office on my way back to London.” “My Christmas will be a mixture of duty and pleasure. I’m having sundry wastrels down to Spring Farm. My demented brother Gareth and his brats, and my sister Mary and her husband. Fortunately, no brats, but the husband is deadly. Gareth’s wife is toothsome, rather. Susan of course. I’ve also asked Nathalie,” I added, almost as an afterthought. That was greeted with an icy silence. “Dear boy, have I said something wrong?” “Not at all,” he said in a monotone. We were in the Embankment now, passing the Inner Temple. “Who is this wicked stepfather Nathalie has mentioned?” One wondered in what venue Charles had picked up that one. “Ah. You’ve heard something about Colin Walker, have you? A nasty tale of which Nathalie bravely makes light. When the French government had acknowledged the probable death in the clutches of the Gestapo of Nathalie’s father, her mother decided not to spend the rest of her life mourning, and eventually remarried. That must have been 1957 or so. She married a chap with good antecedents, all sorts of connections, enormous charm, very 

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attractive to the ladies, and who was ten years her junior. Rather a slip of judgment there. He was—is—a rum chap indeed. “I’m sure he thought he was getting two for the price of one—innocence and experience, Nathalie at fifteen or sixteen and her ma in her late forties. In the event, as a result of the marriage, this chap got a goodly sum settled on him, enough to keep him in guns and plus fours, though he plays occasionally at merchant banking—and tried to get Nathalie into bed with him. Nathalie left as soon as she got out of school rather than put up with it, started a career, and eventually married the awful Tony. She stayed as far away from her stepfather as she could, which meant staying away from her mother as well, except when he was not around.” “Why wouldn’t Nathalie have said something to her mother?” “For that, dear fellow, you will have to ask the delectable Nathalie. I think it had to do with the fact that her poor ma actually loved this chap. Who tried a pass at Nathalie even in the hospital where her mother and his wife was dying. The awful thing is, this fellow is pissing away the bulk of her mother’s money, while Nathalie has only what she earns by the sweat of her lovely brow and a little from a trust that her father set up, and a house in Provence.” “Who was her father who was murdered by the Gestapo?” “He was a hero of the French Resistance.” The cab left Charles off first in Eaton Terrace. Deep in thought, he scarcely acknowledged my valediction. *** Ham MacLeod was not one to waste time, I thought. One wondered what it was he wanted to see Charles about. Early one evening in mid-January, Charles and I foregathered in Botolph’s Wine Bar to have a belated New Year libation (he had just come back from the States), to ward off the chill, and

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to hear the tale of his interview with Ham MacLeod, dreaded Senior Partner. He began in a surprising manner, however. “You won’t believe this, George. My mother has taken a lover.” She had some spirit, I remembered; and anyone who likes me (which is not the same as saying she approved) cannot be all bad. Like Charles, in fact. “Let’s drink to your mother,” I said. He went on as if he hadn’t heard. “I actually met the man. He came to lunch with us at my mother’s club. His name is Frank Compton and he sells government bonds. After he’d left my mother said they slept together.” “Hear, hear,” I said. “She said they go to the theatre together, and to the ballet, which he hates but knows that she likes, and to dinner parties. And that when they are in bed together, sometimes he reads aloud to her.” “My dear Charles, how absolutely sweet.” He looked startled. “Do you think so, George?” “Of course.” “After he’d left—Compton, that is—she said that she was having more fun than she’d had in a very long time. That there had not been much joy in the house I grew up in.” He said the latter haltingly, and I knew that he was feeling rather bleak. I said, “While you’re contemplating your navel, old fruit, shall I buy you another double Bell’s so that I can contemplate the barmaid’s? I’m dying to hear about your visit to mother bank.” She wasn’t actually much to look at but for two fantastic features: an incredible gap between her front teeth which for some perverted reason made me positively drool, and tits she might have balanced a drinks tray on. One encounter with those and one would have bounced ten feet into the air or across the room, depending on whether one were horizontal or vertical at the time of contact. When I returned, Charles had recovered his sang froid. 

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“Ham greeted me in a most friendly fashion, invited me to sit, wished me a Happy New Year.” “Please, Carlos. First, the mise-en-scène.” “In the old man’s wood-paneled office. Not very well lit. It was late in the afternoon, already dark out. I couldn’t see his eyes. He asked me how we were getting on in London.” “An opening gambit. He can read the statements as well as anyone. He knows we’re doing extremely well.” “Sure. And when he asked, ‘How is Bill progressing,’ I had a lapse because I’ve heard you referring to him so often as the egregious Willie.” “A bad word in these sceptered isles.” “Thank you very much, George. I am aware of such things. Nothing you do or say is inadvertent.” He smiled when he said it, but I wasn’t certain—am not certain even now—if it was as offhand as he seemed to imply with that smile. “Dear boy, I shall go broke buying you drinks to drag the story out of you.” “There was a great deal of badinage about his—that is, Ham’s—modus operandi. About how he wants to put the right people in place and let them get on with the job with the minimum of interference from head office. But now he wanted to interfere in the matter of Bill Armstrong. “He said I was keeping him on too short a rein, and that his creative streak was drying up. How he wanted me to give him his head and let him go where he wants. He said he thought we’d all be extremely pleased with the results. “Does it sound to you the way it does to me?” Charles knew exactly what the awesome Ham MacLeod had been saying to him, and I was touched that he was turning to me for confirmation. “Of course, Charles. You have been given orders to get rid of the egregious Willie, and carte blanche to do it any way you can short of arranging a murder; up to and including, I would say, losing some of the partners’ filthy lucre; including some of your 

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own, dear boy, lest you forget in your enthusiasm to sharpen the old parang.” “I agree with everything you say except losing money.” “’Give him his head. Let him go where he wants’?” Charles looked thoughtful. “Let me get another glass of this Scottish nectar while I think about the problem.” “I can’t, George.” “Of course you can. Let me get one for you, and if you don’t want it, I’ll have it. I do my best thinking when I’m partly pissed.” Which you know I do not get easily; especially not when my own pocketbook is involved. Standing at the bar while our pneumatic hostess furrowed her inch-high brow and did one thing at a time, I began to form a plan about Willie. I also began to see myself as the first nonAmerican deputy managing partner in the history of Thomson, Guthrie, London. Partner would, of course, have been enough, but in those halcyon days one was aiming higher. “Absent friends,” I said, raising my glass. “But how?” said Charles. “How to get rid of Willie? He must be seen to fall of his own deadweight.” “A dreadful pun for an old shipping man.” “Ah, not dead yet, are you? To continue: no mud must be seen to stick to the partners, to offend whomever he is the spastic relation of. You’re much too straight to think of something yourself, Charles. Leave it to your wicked uncle. It would in fact be best if you knew nothing at all about it. But there is a condition attached, my dear Charles.” “And that is. . .” “I become your deputy.” At which Carlos became molto pensivo. “I can’t guarantee anything, George, as you well know. That’s why we’re having this conversation now. You know perfectly well that Armstrong was shoved down my throat.” 

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“I guessed as much. But the problem is an opportunity. The appointment of Armstrong was a total cockup, and you will never be in a stronger position for influencing the choice of a new deputy than when Willie has been sent back to Nebraska or wherever he came from.” “I’ll do my best, George,” Charles said endearingly. “I think you’d make an excellent deputy managing partner”—not, mind you, “I’d like you to be my deputy.” And remember also, George, I said to myself later, what sort of firm you find yourself at the oars for. Charles might be as straight as only an old New England sort like he might be, but old Ham MacLeod would have given my governor a run for his money. *** Robert Murphy was one example of a type of which there were far too many in the city in those days. Or these days, come to that. As always with these chaps, his past was obscure. He claimed to be Australian, and indeed he spoke with a bizarre accent and used words such as “cobber” and “sport” and told disgusting jokes about Bruce and Sheila. I can’t recall where I’d first met him, but it was obviously somewhere I should not have been. He was no more Australian than I am, thank God; it was more likely that he came from the back parts of one of Britain’s more insalubrious places. The accent was the result of his trying to talk posh and not being able to. If you could see past the layers of fat and the cigar smoke, he had a certain raffish charm, and had achieved a deal of success. And he had big ideas: developing commercial and residential property in low-life areas south of the river, working the miracle (through contributions, or the naming of certain contractors over others, or outright baksheesh) of getting Labour-controlled borough councils and planning authorities to approve projects that could appeal only to capitalists and the luxury trade. I should normally not have allowed Murphy beyond the porter’s desk. But instead, I came downstairs to greet 

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him when he arrived, and accompanied him to the first floor and along the corridor to Willie’s office. Murphy was a bulky man, with straight black hair and a colorless complexion that suggested he did not like daylight. He smoked very large, very expensive Cuban cigars, and lit one as we sat down. “I’ve been following Thomson, Guthrie for some time now,” he said. “I like your style.” “What is it about our style that you like, Mr. Murphy?” I said. “You’re quick, and you come across with the goods. That adds up to my kinda bank. And that’s why I’m here.” He sat back puffing and waiting for us to ask him why he was there, which Willie did. “Five million quid to develop a property in Southwark Bridge Road. Hundred thousand square feet net. In return you take, say, a two percent equity kicker.” Armstrong was already looking for his pen to sign the agreement. “How do we get paid back?” I said. “From the permanent finance.” “And who is providing that?” Murphy was answering my questions, but looking mostly at Willie. No denying Murphy was astute: he had an unerring instinct for authority and weakness, particularly in combination. “With the kinda first-class covenants—tenants,” he explained to Armstrong, “I have in mind, that will be no problem. Look, all we’re talking about now is details. You can have the surveys, project plans, cash flows, all that crap. What I want to know is if you’re interested, so I don’t waste my time and you don’t waste yours. If you’re not interested, there are other banks who are.” “Of course we’re interested,” Willie said. “Fine,” Murphy said standing. “I’ll send the papers along straight away.” After we had seen him off, I said to Willie, “I like a good cigar myself, but not at eleven in the morning.”

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“I think I needn’t bother you with this one any longer, George. Thanks for your help.” He’d detected a hot one, you see. It would be his first deal for Thomson, Guthrie, and he would allow none of the basics to stand in his way. He wouldn’t run any check on Murphy, about whom questions were already being raised and rumors murmured; nor would he ask about the status of his other projects—Murphy was just beginning then to use funds borrowed for new projects to service debts on present works; nor would he even glance at the cash flow projections, which proceeded on the rosiest of assumptions. What Willie saw was a fat margin, and the equity kicker, and himself looking good in New York. He had the authority, but Charles had never before put him in the way of using it. *** As soon as Charles learned of our commitment to the Southwark Bridge Road Development Corporation Limited—£2,000,000 of which had already been drawn—and had got himself informed of some of the ghastly details, he knew it was a bad loan. He talked briefly to Armstrong about it—indeed they argued about it, Willie pointing out to Charles that he, Charles, lacked creativity—and sent a note to the Committee of Managing Partners in New York stating his belief that the loan—which had been committed with proper authority, but without his knowledge or agreement—was likely to be uncollectable. He instructed me to do some damage control work, which I immediately took up, canceling the remaining £3,000,000 commitment and demanding immediate repayment of the £2,000,000 that was outstanding, citing, as I recall, at least four technical events of default or failure to observe conditions precedent; inter alia, Willie’s grasp of documentation was feeble at best, and he tended to waive requirements simply by ignoring that they were in the contract. Heretofore he had had plenty of backup (those such as your

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humble servant ready to prevent a mess); in the case of Southwark Bridge Road, he was on his own, and had made a royal cockup. In the event, as soon as we made our demand, Murphy set his solicitors onto us, but to no avail. Word got ‘round the market, the Development Corporation went swiftly from bankruptcy to liquidation, a relatively simple matter, you see, as you are no doubt surprised to learn that the company had no assets worth mentioning and the project had never got beyond the planning stage; Murphy’s personal guarantee was worth nothing since everything of substance that he owned was in the name of Swiss nominees; he disappeared and his empire collapsed into a heap of claims and counter-claims, litigation, and bank foreclosures on half-completed, badly constructed buildings. I’m sure you remember it; it was one of the more famous cases in the city in the early seventies, and as a result put a couple of what we then called fringe banks to the wall. Thomson, Guthrie wrote off the entire £2,000,000. But I’ve got ahead of the tale. As soon as New York received Charles’s report, he and Armstrong were summoned by Ham MacLeod. When Charles returned to London, he seemed much chastened. They had, it seemed, been rather tough with him, which was of course unfair because he had only done our master’s bidding. Charles thought it unfair; but I had known exactly what was going to happen, and more or less how. “I know what MacLeod said,” I said. “’When I suggested you give Bill his head, Charles, I certainly did not imply that you were to maintain no overview.’” “More or less right,” Charles said. We were sitting in his office at eleven in the morning after he’d returned from New York. “All done for show,” I said. “If so, it was goddamned realistic.” “I think you needn’t worry. And Willie?”

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“He was called into the committee of the senior managing partners and asked to explain how he could have made such a loan. He didn’t even try. He was fired on the spot, told never to come near the bank again, nor ever to return to London except with his own money. His family will be given every assistance in returning to the States, and the shipment of household goods will be paid by us, including whatever is left here in the bank of a personal nature. I’d appreciate it if you’d go through his desk and arrange precisely that, George.” “Have I permission to break open any drawers that are locked?” Charles looked startled. “Certainly,” he said with obvious distaste. “If there are any.” I waited what I thought was a decent interval, but nothing more was forthcoming. “Charles. I know that you’re anxious to bring it up, so I’ve decided to help. Did you discuss the matter of who is to replace the egregious Willie as your deputy?” The manner in which Charles passed his hand over his face told me that the news was bad. “We did discuss it, George. I said that you were the best man for the job. Of course.” “And the response?” “The response was that you aren’t serious enough.” “Serious? Not serious enough? Women are serious, Charles. Not banking. Wine is serious. Not banking. We eat, shit, fuck, and die. Do you call that serious? Who with half a wit would choose it? “Charles smiled sadly. “There are other things, George.” “For example?” “Love, for example.” “Bollocks, Charles, pure and simple. That’s balls to you, mate.”

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*** One of the drawers of Willie’s desk was locked, and his erstwhile secretary did not have a key; so I asked the handyman chappie from the bowels of the building to come pry it open, which he did, straight away, very neatly too, and went away. There were some hanging files inside the drawer, relating mostly to personnel matters—nothing about me, alas—and a thick brown envelope containing a large amount of cash—nearly £5,000 as I counted later—in £5 notes. How exceedingly odd, I recall thinking at the time. I decided to give the package sanctuary in the wall safe at Cadogan Square, and to wait to see if Willie tried to make a legitimate claim for it. Not long afterwards—a week or so, not more—Armstrong came through on the blower. “Hello, Bill,” I said. “How’s tricks?” George, you are wicked. “As you can imagine, George. Tell me. I had a few things of a personal nature in my desk. . .” “All returned to Darien. The toothpaste, the condoms, and so forth. Did it myself.” There was a brief silence at the other end of the wire. “Was there anything else?” “I didn’t take much time over it, actually. Simply a quick check to see if it was yours, and if so, into the box it went.” “What about the locked drawer?” “There weren’t any.” “The drawer on the bottom right then.” “Was that the one with the hanging files?” “Yes. Personnel records.” “Yes, that’s right. I went through all the files, and the drawer; there didn’t seem to be anything of yours.” “Was there a large brown envelope?” “No.” “George, can we meet for a drink?” “No.” 

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“But why?” “Because I don’t want to.” “I think you’re lying, George.” “Not at all, old thing. I deeply and sincerely do not wish to have a drink with you.” “I meant about the brown envelope.” “What brown envelope?” “Fuck you, Evans.” “Cheerio, Willie,” I said, and replaced the handset gently. Amongst his many attractive features, it appears also that Willie Armstrong was on the take—and I bet it came from Murphy— and could not possibly have a legitimate claim on the money. Otherwise he would have said, “Where is the five thousand pounds I was accumulating for my childrens’ education?” He was too dumb even to lie. In the time-honored fashion of all salvage operators, I thus claimed the prize; inadequate recompense in the event for the manner in which I had been treated by Thomson, Guthrie, and for the feeble way in which my good friend Charles Fletcher, I had no doubt, had pleaded my case.

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I n J u n e 1973, w h i l e I wa s heavily engaged in mucking out the stable left by Murphy and Armstrong, Charles’s new deputy arrived. L. Grant Reed was a tall, blond, clean-limbed American unsullied by the lapse of control in London. He had spent all of his working life at Thomson, Guthrie (he was about forty years old, a very old forty), albeit entirely on the domestic side, and was clearly bright, competent, and aggressive. I disliked him almost immediately because I recognized as soon as he appeared that my desire to become Charles’s—or anyone’s—deputy was never to be realized. Top management of T&G in London would remain American, and would never include the not inconsiderable talents of G. Evans, Esquire. And I disliked him particularly for an offhand question he raised one day when we were reviewing the shipping portfolio. “These Iandakis loans—” he said, peering at me over his halfmoon glasses, “ninety percent against the value of the vessels— what happens if the market declines by the time the ships come off-hire? What is the fallback?” It was a question I should have pursued at the time I’d made the loans—the first two eighty-thousand tonners that I told you about, and two of the hundred-thousand tons delivered in September of 1972 and fixed to Shell until March of 1975—but while it had occurred to me, I hadn’t followed up, in the euphoria of dealing with someone of such distinction as Iandakis, and 

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because I believed—I can hardly credit it now—in his comment that the oil business would be with us forever. “Iandakis is fundamentally a most conservative owner,” I said to L. Grant Reed. “He will have fixed those vessels again well before time.” This last I said without much conviction, because dear old Dmitri, I feared, was no different from all the other owners, who were ordering tankers and semi-submersible drilling rigs as if they were going out of style, before the yards put up the price by another five percent; the banks could not wait to finance this folly, because we all knew in our hearts that oil would pay for it. “The loans are only seventy percent of the value of the ships at the moment”—which was true—” and the market for secondhand tonnage is still going up.” His reply was simply a pensive “um”; it was a good point, and I hated him for making it. I waited nearly half an hour before I got on the blower to Iandakis. “My dear George,” he said, “you know me far better than that. If we fix again too early—which in the event the majors are not inclined to do—I should be missing the chance for greater profit, about which I should have a great deal of difficulty explaining to my shareholders”—all of whom were sisters, cousins, and aunts. “But you know also that I am not going to squeeze out every last cent. That I can explain to my shareholders. I like to sleep well at night also.” Thus assured, I tucked only a small worry into the back of my mind, instead of the major discomfort precipitated by L. Grant Reed. I did not know at the time whether Charles saw the words appearing on the wall opposite his desk. Reed was clearly a heavy­ weight, and his arrival in London was not simply to keep me from becoming deputy managing partner. For whatever reasons, Charles was not pleasing the head office as much as he had— that Armstrong was gone was fine, but the loss of £2,000,000 had not pleased them, nor had the appearance of the Thomson, Guthrie name in the gutter press in connection with the collapse

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of the Murphy empire. There was even an article in “In the City” in Private Eye at the time stating that Murphy had often sought cooperation of his financiers by providing gifts of cash and sexual partners—the gender (and age, one supposes) depending on the predilections of the particular banker. I certainly had reason to suspect Armstrong of the first, and wondered whether he’d ever taken advantage of the second; and with whom or what. There may have been other things. Except for the Murphy matter, Thomson, Guthrie was tautly run and profitable, but I would not have called it dynamic. Perhaps Charles was too conservative but his direction of affairs had kept the bank from any of the excesses of the property boom (except the deliberate undertaking I told you about) and subsequent collapse; our counterparties in the market still provided us funding at the interbank rate, and we were shown nothing but goodwill by the Bank of England. Whatever may have been the cause, and whether or not he realized that L. Grant Reed was his probable successor— sooner rather than later if he didn’t pull his socks up—Charles did, I know, feel the pressure. He became rather remote at this time—he stayed later and later at the office, and the times that we popped into Botolph’s or occasionally here to Fielding’s to celebrate the end of another day of servitude became rare. He seemed also to be distracted much of the time; I don’t know if he did it with others, but I often caught him in lapses of attention when I was replying with information he wanted. Perhaps it was only with me; L. Grant Reed would have cut him off at the knees, and it never came to that. It might have, but it never did. Susan and I saw the Fletchers socially less and less, which was just as well, because I’d found that Jean became tiresome after half an hour or so. She was losing her looks, and had begun to look older than Charles, although she was a couple of years younger. She often drank too much at dinner parties—fortunately it was manifest only to those of us who knew them well—and was proving an

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embarrassment to Charles. What would happen is that she would become very insistent on the point she was making—Watergate, or Vietnam, or the latest Arab-Israeli contretemps—and would brook no disagreement, which usually made life very difficult for whomever she was lecturing over coffee. The Fletchers began to leave quite soon after dinner, and to appear less frequently in society, which was rather difficult for the managing partner of a bank in London, who by definition had to entertain and be entertained as part of his job. Susan Hunter and I had settled into a cozy domesticity— or rather she had, and I for the moment went along. We lived agreeably in my flat in Cadogan Square. She spent her days as a decorous receptionist in one of the Cork Street galleries, where she managed to encourage the purchase of paintings by visiting foreigners simply by breathing deeply. In the evenings, we usually dined out, and at the weekends we went down to Suffolk, which was becoming more and more of a strain, of which more presently. She was a pleasant companion and bed partner, wholly enjoyable to look at, and had she remained only those, we might still be together now. But the curse of my life is that I’ve always preferred women who are al dente, have a streak of independence in them. That winter, acceding to a long-held wish of hers for sunlight and heat and blue water—of which in England I could provide only the heat—we decided to take a midwinter break in Antigua. I do not care much for lying about in the hot sand, so I spent my days on the beach pretty well covered up and under an umbrella with a book with large print which I did not need to move my lips too fast to enjoy, occasionally looking up to admire the architecture around me, other ladies’ as well as Susan’s—she invariably unsnapped the bra of her bikini when she rolled over to toast her back to keep me attentive. In the event, on one of these lazy days, surrounded by waves of heat alternating with trade winds, and

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the soft tropical air, she said rather dreamily, “George, have you thought about marriage?” “You know I have, darling,” I said, rather discommoded. “You have?” she said, looking up suddenly, with a wide, tender smile. “Once; I married Julia Barber you remember. Thought it a rum idea after a bit.” Her face fell. “I meant with me, George, as you knew very well.” “I did not know, my sweet,” I said. “Nothing could have been further from my mind.” “Could you bring it a little closer?” It was not a question, but I said, “But whatever for, darling? Don’t we have everything we want together without that encumbrance? Don’t you know that I truly love you, that we stay together because we want to, not because we have to?” But I knew already what was coming: children, school fees, stability, the future. That night we had a good dinner, and an excellent bottle of wine, we danced under the stars, and made glorious love, but all to no avail. Susan had fixed her mind on what she wanted, and if it wasn’t going to be with George, well then, tearfully, heartrendingly, it would have to be with someone else. That holiday in Antigua was the beginning of the end, although it took some months before she finally moved out. It was an amicable parting: I liked her then and I like her still; I simply was not inclined—and at that time doubted I’d ever be—to marriage again. And I had no interest in children. But I was forty-one, and she was thirty, and one supposes one understood. She is called Mrs. Pendleton now, married to a Tory MP, and has two boys at school, and she still looks in fighting trim. *** Shortly after Susan and I returned from our portentous Caribbean holiday, Charles asked me to join him for a drink after

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work at Botolph’s Wine Bar. It was just after the New Year, and I assumed that he was simply maintaining our long-standing tradition of taking a cup o’ kindness together. “I can’t say it has started out all that propitiously,” I said after we exchanged greetings over double whiskies. “I think old Susan and I are headed for a bustup.” For some reason he smiled; but only briefly, and most oddly, drank half his whisky. “I’m sorry to hear that, George. I’ve always liked her.” “No more sorry than I, dear boy. But she wants marriage and babies, and neither is in my plans for the future.” He was looking particularly thoughtful. “Better before than afterwards,” he said. “Let me get you another.” “Not yet, Charles. You go ahead.” Sometimes you can tell when someone is weary simply from his appearance. Standing at the bar, Charles made that impression. When he returned with his drink, another double, he said, “I’ve left Jean.” It was a bleak statement, in which there was certainly nothing of joy, or even of relief. I might have told him that I’d seen it coming for years, almost from the moment I’d first met Jean, but especially after Nathalie had appeared on the scene; but had Nathalie never appeared on the scene, or someone like Nathalie—as if there were such a woman—it would have happened anyway. Jean was a woman who knew her own value, but had no sense of self. But, in one of the few recorded examples of its kind, I exercised restraint and said nothing. Even I know when to keep quiet. “We simply no longer got along. We could not agree on anything, including how to bring up the children, and I think our tensions—the ones I am bringing home from the bank and those between us—were leading her to drink more and more. It was not good for her or for us. I think I’ve tried, George,” he said. “I think we’ve both tried.” I disagreed with him there; but Charles was my friend and I did not know Jean’s side of the tale. 

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“How is Jean taking it?” He passed a hand over his face and looked around the bar. To judge from the general buzz and laughter, no one else in Botolph’s had any problems at all. “She’s very bitter. She thinks I’m making excuses. She thinks I’m sleeping with Nathalie. And she’s very angry with you.” “With me? Why me?” “Because you introduced us.” “My dear fellow, that has nothing. . .” “I’ve told her that, George. And that I have not slept with Nathalie. But she is not prepared to listen.” “I should not imagine she would be at this stage of the proceedings.” He nodded glumly. One can, of course, be too discreet and incurious. “Are you in love with Nathalie?” “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I think that’s what you’d call it. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt this way.” “And she?” I said. “I think so.” For the first time since we’d entered the wine bar, there was the hint of a smile; a real one, not the rictus that had greeted my own announcement. Nathalie told me long afterwards that she had not wanted to fall in love with Charles, had not wanted to precipitate or contribute to the breakup of his family, but she could not help herself: he was unlike any man she had ever met in his simplicity, his straightforwardness, his goodness. Inasmuch as it is in any of us to be good, Charles was the only good man she had ever met, particularly following the likes of Tony Whitfield. That’s what she told me, old thing, and I don’t think she was drawing any invidious comparisons at the time. Before my Caribbean folly, I would have been pleased for Charles. Now I was not certain, but I said, “I wish you well, Carlos. Exactly what you need now in your life—more complications.” “This Reed fellow is working out, it would appear,” he said. His chain of association was interesting. 

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“I should say rather more than that, Charles. I would say the place has started humming since he arrived.” He looked at me blandly, waiting for me to continue. “I mean you’ve found your successor.” I admit now that was a shitty thing to say to Charles then, when he was terribly vulnerable, but I was hurt and vulnerable myself, and striking out is a way I have of dealing with it.

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Chapter Nine

C h a r l e s m i g h t h av e m a i n t a i n e d the warm hearth and home and at the same time asked Nathalie to be his mistress, but it was not in his character in the first place, and in the event, he did not like Jean enough any longer to go on living with her. I think he loved his children, but I think he was almost as reserved towards them as his own father had been towards him. And love had conquered all, at least for the moment. I don’t know that keeping such a balance would have put him under more or less strain. It would at least have avoided the disapprobation that was directed at him later from the senior partners’ room in New York. The Gospel according to Thomson, Guthrie was that one did not indulge in divorce. Towards the end of February, a little after Jean had left for Chicago with the children, Charles came into my office and shut the door quietly. “I wanted to let you know that I’m taking some holiday, George.” “This is a little sudden for the managing partner, isn’t it? Not at all like you, Charles.” “Yes. I know.” “I remind you, dear boy, that the partners don’t like surprises.” “Thanks. I have cleared it with Ham.” “Who wasn’t entirely pleased, but said he guessed he understood.” 

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“Almost exactly, George. I don’t know how you do it.” “Elementary, my dear Fletcher. Ham MacLeod and I are sisters under the skin. Ambiguity is a tool to be used whenever possible; it makes disclaiming responsibility so much easier. Where are you bound?” “We’re flying to Marseilles.” “With respect, Charles, that’s rather a long way to go for a bowl of fish soup. I know a frog place in Draycott Avenue. . .” “We’re going to Nathalie’s place in Aix.” “I am surprised.” “George, you’re thoroughly wicked.” “I know, old boy.” Just trying to keep his spirits up. And my own. *** The two weeks of sensual bliss that Charles and Nathalie had planned in the Provençal love nest were interrupted after eight or nine days because that was precisely when Tony Whitfield decided to take a walk in the woods with a loaded gun (well past shooting season) and managed to scatter what few brains he had all over his Barbour and the surrounding trees. No one ever knew why—he didn’t leave a note—but I could not help feeling that, given his superficiality, the reasons were trivial, such as the way in which he’d lost the last rubber of bridge at his club, or that he couldn’t get it up one night and his teenaged popsie had laughed at him. One heard later that he had left his affairs—as he had left his person—in a mess. Fortunately, Nathalie was well away from that, but being the ex-wife and all, she felt she had to return for the funeral, which was held in a little church in Wiltshire. I went as well, so that I actually saw Nathalie after their return before I saw Charles. It was a good day for a funeral, grey and raw, with occasional spits of rain. The church was not warm and it was dark, and I don’t think there could have been more than thirty people 

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there, some of whom were from the village and attended whatever ceremony was going, whether funeral or church fête. It was clear that the parson had struggled to find something nice to say about Tony without actually lying, especially since I doubted that he and Tony had frequented the same places; the vicar, in short, hardly knew him. His elder brother, however, did manage a creditable eulogy by concentrating on Tony’s younger days and his good service record; but one was nonetheless left with the overwhelming impression of a lack of promise fulfilled. Nathalie looked splendid and appropriately solemn in her ex-widow’s weeds. I offered her a drink in the village pub just before closing time before I gave her a lift back to London in Spring Farm’s BMW. “Your very good health,” I said. “You’re looking very well.” “Thank you, George. I am well.” “Good holiday?” “Splendid. What little there was of it, due to poor old Tony.” “His parting shot, as it were.” “Absolutely tasteless, George. You ought to know better.” “Mea culpa, madam. It’s part of my boyish charm. Are you going to marry Charles?” She tapped my wrist lightly. “You’re prying, George.” “Am I?” She laughed. I liked the way she laughed. “He’s not ready yet, nor am I. We’re happy to leave it at that for the time being.” “Are you moving to Eaton Terrace?” At which she smiled. “Shall we get back to London, George? It is kind of you.” How had I come to know Nathalie so well (well enough to make tasteless puns with)? I had known Tony at school, in the days when his charm had more substance than form. He went into the army, and I went into the city after National Service. He would buy me drinks at his club and I would lose ten shilling notes to him over the backgammon board, whenever he was posted home after spending time in some Commonwealth 

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backwater like Aden or Cyprus. He was in Malaya during the emergency and did rather well; how well I had not known until his brother’s eulogy. In the event, not long after he was posted yet again back to Blighty from foreign parts, he became engaged to a girl called Nathalie Dutailley, whom I met subsequently at a dinner party for the happy couple. She was about twenty or twentyone then, just a couple of years into her career in public relations. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid mince pies on; bright too; but my admiration remained from afar, in that she was engaged to a chap I called friend then, and I myself was busy servicing Julia Barber. So we became friends instead of lovers. Might we have become lovers then, and have saved all the buggeration since? I don’t know. She’s always known me too well. “Very smart,” she said when I helped her into the car. “Not mine, old girl,” I said, as the engine growled awake and we started off. “Belongs to Spring Farm.” “I adore these wonderful fictions of yours, George.” “The Inland Revenue loves them even more. Alas, Nathalie, the farm is producing more losses than I can use for tax relief. I’ve been thinking about selling up.” It goes without saying that this took place before the Common Agricultural Policy got rolling and beggared everyone but the farmers. “How long has the farm been in the family?” “Not long. The grand-père sold the house in Shropshire and bought the farm about the turn of the century. I think he had to leave the Marches hurriedly. Had been stealing horses or something.” “How about Gareth or Mary?” “I doubt that either gives a damn about it, but I will ask, of course. None of us is agriculturally inclined. You know I’m not.” “Nonsense, George. You’ve hayseeds in every pocket. But will you keep a house in Suffolk?” “Yes, but something a lot smaller; and manageable tout seul. You know Susan and I are no longer an item?” 

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“Charles told me. She tried to make you an honest man.” “A hopeless task.” “I rather liked Susan, George. She was awfully sweet.” “I still like her, old girl. But babies and marriage and G. Evans, Esquire. . .” “Agronomist.” “. . . Agronomist, do not mix.” I did not, at the time, tell Nathalie the whole story of why I felt I had to sell the farm because some of it would have a direct effect on her. That I was not destined to spend my days growing sugar beets and winter wheat and wading through pig shit was apparent to anyone who knew me. But I had been trying without success to be an absentee farmer of two hundred acres a hundred miles from London, employing one after another manager who was either dishonest or incompetent or whom I felt I could not trust generally. The cash flow had been negative for two years, and the banking business—ship finance in particular—was hotting up, and I had even less time to oversee the affairs of the farm. Thomson, Guthrie had not suffered at all—the Murphy business excepted, but that was done with malice aforethought—during the property boom and bust; shipping was another matter. The Arabs and the Jews had gone at it fang and claw once again the preceding fall. The Arabs had embargoed oil and suddenly woke up to the fact that they had what the rest of the world wanted; so they raised prices. Everyone else realized that we no longer could depend on such a source for our energy. Cutting back became the order of the day, and the tanker market (and subsequently, and to a lesser extent, the bulk carrier market) went into a ten-year decline. And my nightmare about Iandakis was coming true: he was having difficulty finding new charters for the tankers that were coming off-hire in September and the following March; and secondhand prices were coming down. Charles and I had been the founding fathers—as directed—of Thomson, Guthrie’s shipping business, and were responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the business 

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that had been done for the past dozen years. We’d made a packet for the partners; but I doubted that Ham MacLeod and his fellows would remember that when it began to look as if we were about to lose them a lot: thumb screws all around. It took nearly two years to flog the farm, at what must have been the bottom of the market. Until Maggie Thatcher came along and rescued us (or most of us), there was little confidence around as we lurched from incompetent Tory government into the Socialist slough of despond when proud Brittania, conqueror of half the world with a standing army the size of the population of Ipswich, had perforce to go hat in hand to the International Monetary Fund for the housekeeping money. Nevertheless, Spring Farm at last passed forever out of the Evans family into the hands of a steely-eyed gent from the next village who is now making a fortune growing rape seed. My sister Mary and her husband preferred their vine-covered cottage in Milton Keynes, and I suspect that Gareth didn’t recognize what I was asking him about. In truth, no one of us had any attachment to the house where we had spent a childhood neither seen nor heard, and from which we’d been sent away to school as soon as society allowed. The one attachment I did have—the governor’s cellar—had been removed already either to Cadogan Square or to commercial cellars around town. With the proceeds from the farm, such as they were, I bought a larger flat in Cadogan Square (keeping the first as an income-producing property—I can see your bookkeeper’s brain ticking over the taxes on all this—until a more propitious time to sell) and the house near Wickham Market. It is a nice house, isn’t it? And no redolence of Nanny. *** Charles relinquished the house in Eaton Terrace to L. Grant Reed and family and took a much smaller house in Chelsea, to which I thought Nathalie came to live with him. It was only later that I learned that while she spent extended periods of time with him 

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there, she never gave up her own place, and would often spend several nights alone. The argument was that they had both been hurt by their permanent arrangements before and had decided to proceed cautiously. Far too cautiously to my taste, but chacun à son gout. In the event, they seemed happy with it. For a time, until the world closed in again, Charles was as happy as I’d seen him since the early days. He had the quiet confidence of someone who is in love and who is loved in return. We were even (we thought) containing the problems in the portfolio. It pleased me to see the old chap so content, but I was certain his euphoria was deafening him to the sound of the drums from New York. I thought it definitely a rum thing that he should have given up the Eaton Terrace house to his number two. Undoubtedly, it made perfect sense: it would not have been wise to sell at the time, and Thomson, Guthrie thought rightly that a quite splendid house in central London had eventually to be a good investment; and Reed had a wife and three children in tow. All perfectly reasonable, but I did not like the symbolism, which I’m certain was not lost on Ham MacLeod.

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Chapter Ten

D m i t r i I a n da k i s c a m e to se e Charles and me one afternoon towards the end of August. We both knew what he’d come about, and it was not a happy occasion. We sat in Charles’s office, which was on the first floor at the front of the building, and in the morning caught a scrap of sunlight through the leaded windows that looked down the alley and gave a glimpse of Bishopsgate. Iandakis, having refused coffee, began without ceremony. “I am, I regret to say, unable to find a term fixture for the George and the Paul.” These were the eighty-thousand-ton tankers that we had financed which he called after relations—the George I., the Paul I., and so forth. “We may put them out on spot, but that will hardly pay for the cost of the voyage; debt service is out of the question, which is why I’ve come to you today. Unless we can restructure your loans to include no principal payments for five years and some capitalization of interest, which will give us a number of options, including layup, and unless we can get a complete waiver of maintenance of asset value, we shall have no alternative but to default on the loans and let Thomson, Guthrie realize what it can on the sales proceeds.” “With respect, Dmitri,” I said, “there appears to me to be a good deal of surplus cash flow in the fleet.” There was a tap on the door and Charles’s secretary looked in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Fletcher, but Mrs. Fletcher is on the line from Chicago. She says it’s urgent.” 

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Charles was immobile and impassive, either one of the best examples of sang froid I’ve ever seen, or else it was momentary paralysis: he had just heard a bald statement very baldly put by one of our erstwhile stellar customers, and he no longer trusted Jean enough to credit the urgency of her message. “Can you tell her I’ll ring her back shortly?” he said. “She sounds very upset, Mr. Fletcher.” “I’ll take it outside,” he said. “Excuse me.” In the silence that ensued, Iandakis said, “That sounded ominous. Shall we continue at another time, George?” “Let’s go on a little. You were saying about the fleet cash flow?” “There is surplus cash flow, but that is generated by different vessels in different companies with different shareholders. And, I dare say, different lenders. The ‘fleet,’ as you know well, George, is simply a bookkeeping device.” Charles came back then. He did not look well. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Iandakis, but I must ask that you continue your discussions with George in his office. One of my children. . . is quite ill and I must get to the States.” “I’m very sorry, Mr. Fletcher,” Iandakis said rising to his feet, and I knew he was thinking of his own children. “Thank you. You know George has my full confidence. I will support whatever is his decision.” Iandakis and I left it that I would study the papers he left with us and would revert quickly. I spent the next couple of hours on his proposal, which made sense to Iandakis, but which was not going to do much good for Thomson, Guthrie generally, or for the music hall team of Fletcher and Evans specifically. Capitalizing the interest meant simply increasing the loan on an asset with a declining value. If the vessels were able to pay their way in operating terms, but provide no debt service, they still had some value; if they had no income at all, they had value only as scrap, and that is the value to which the auditors would write 

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down the loans. I estimated that such a write-off could be as much as eight and a half million dollars. I could not envisage an alternative to Iandakis’s proposal. Arresting the vessels and auctioning them through the courts would be time-consuming and costly, and would guarantee a loss; operating them ourselves was clearly absurd; Dmitri’s personal guarantee would not be available, and would be worth nothing if it were. There were no other assets that could be pledged because the ownership structure of each of the vessel holding companies was different—as he had blandly pointed out, and which was perfectly true, but which had never been emphasized before, of course—scratch a Greek and you find. . . a Greek—and you would need board resolutions, shareholder and lender approvals, none of which would be forthcoming. Armed with these scintillating facts, at about six o’clock I went ‘round to see L. Grant Reed. Because of the possible writedown, which Charles could not have been focusing on when he gave me his ringing endorsement, I had to discuss the proposal and its implications with someone in management, who would then have to get final approval from New York before we could proceed with the restructuring. Reed’s eyes grew more and more opaque behind his little round wire-rimmed spectacles as I related the foregoing tale of woe. “In the circumstances, George, I cannot disagree with your recommendation. But I must say I cannot imagine why one would lend to one-ship holding companies.” “Nor can I, Grant. They’re two-ship holding companies, by the way. Nor could I have imagined that an honest, upright chap would suddenly turn all legal and technical on us. Nor did I foresee that OPEC would quadruple the oil price.” Reed remained very still for a moment or two. He said finally, “I’ll have a word with Mr. MacLeod.” Unlike the rest of the office, Reed never called Ham anything but Mr. MacLeod. That, along with some undeniable sterling qualities, has taken him very far. At seven-thirty, Reed looked into my office and seemed 

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rather disappointed to find me still at my post. “Mr. MacLeod has given the go-ahead to Iandakis’s proposal, George. He asked me to tell you that he is not at all pleased.” “Thank you, Grant. I hope you told him that I wasn’t pleased either.” “He also wanted to know where he could reach Charles. I gave him the Chicago number. Was that right?” “Yes, but he won’t be there for hours.” “Mr. MacLeod knows that. Goodnight, George.” “Good night, Grant,” I said to the closing door. I needed a large, strong drink and I needed a pretty woman to look at over it; therefore I rang the only pretty woman I was certain would be alone that night. There was no answer at the Chelsea house, so I tried Nathalie’s old flat. “Oh, George, isn’t it awful.” “I know only that one of his children is very unwell.” “Robert has a ruptured appendix. Peritonitis. He might die.” I was moved, but not deeply, that my godson might die. I was more upset for Charles; I had never really established any relationship with Robert. I could never—and can never—talk to children without my attention wandering. They bore me. That had been yet one more mark in Jean Fletcher’s large black book of George’s failings. I told Nathalie about the rest of Charles’s perfectly rotten day, starting with what we had been discussing when he received the news about Robert. “Let me buy you a very large whisky, Nathalie. Or if not that, will you sit and watch me while I drink one?” “Of course I will, George. But I can’t bear to go out now. Come here and I’ll make an omelette for us.” A handsome offer, you must admit, considering that she was upset for Charles and worried about his son. I took a taxi direct to her flat, which was also in Chelsea, but closer to Sloane Square than the house, in a tall, red-brick block of flats purpose-built in the thirties, and arrived at twenty past eight. 

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It was a small flat, but Nathalie had made it seem larger with a couple of strategically placed mirrors in the sitting room and white walls everywhere. There was a little balcony that overlooked the gardens at the rear of the building, looking west, and the balcony door was open to the mild late summer evening. I poured an enormous whisky for myself and gave her a glass of white wine. We were across from each other in the sitting room with a coffee table between us. “I had not realized you kept the flat. Haven’t I always talked with you or Charles at his house?” “Yes. But we both thought that keeping this place was a good idea. Both of us like to be alone from time to time.” I shouldn’t let you out of my sight for a moment, were I in Charles’s nightshirt, I said to myself. Aloud I said, “Well, your very good health, darling. You actually look smashing, Nathalie. Charles must be as good for you as you are for him.” “Thank you, George. I hope I am. He’s very good for me. I didn’t think men like Charles existed. I think he is incapable of deceit.” I don’t know why I said what I said next. Yes, I do. It was because I am capable of deceit and manipulation, much of the time for spite or fun, and certainly always to get what I want. And what I wanted more than anything then and thereafter was my good friend Charles’s lover. “Charles is a refreshing antidote to his deputy,” I said, “who has more hidden agendas than an entire company of Renaissance princes. Has Charles not told you about L. Grant Reed?” It was clear that he was nouvelles to her. “If Charles isn’t more careful, Reed is going to get his job.” “Charles hasn’t told me he feels threatened.” “He may not, but he would be wise to. And if he does, he probably did not want to worry you.” “Shall I do an omelette and salad?” she said, rising, although she was looking thoughtful. “Unless you’ll let me buy you dinner in the neighborhood.” 

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“No thank you, George. Come to the kitchen and open another bottle of wine. Or will you have more whisky?” You will note that nothing I had said was untrue. It was simply that I had chosen to say it when I had and how I had. There was no reason, especially then, for Nathalie to know that Charles’s job might be in question. I took the corkscrew that was proffered. “Something from the corner shop?” I said as I opened it. “Yes. It’s rather nice.” It was rather nice. I sipped it leaning against the doorway of the little kitchen while Nathalie assumed the role of bonne femme, tearing lettuce and beating eggs, and I wondered, vaguely, whether I was drinking too much. “How does this threat manifest itself?” she said. I did not want to cite the Murphy matter or the problems in the portfolio and who was being held responsible; or that Charles might be being thought of as somewhat less dynamic than the times required. That would have been over-the-top. I said merely, “Instinct, ma chère. When one has been around politics as long as you and I have, one learns to recognize them in operation.” She nodded distractedly, folded an omelette out of the pan and slipped it into the oven to keep warm while she made the other. “And you and I are Europeans, Nathalie. Whatever we’d like to believe, we know that the milk of human kindness turned sour some millennia ago, about the time that old Nobodaddy said let there be light and opened up endless possibilities for deceiving one’s neighbor. You said before that Charles is incapable of deceit; I agree. I fear also that he does not recognize it easily either.” I lit the candles and sliced a French loaf while she brought the omelettes and the salad to the table and poured the rest of the most excellent vin très ordinaire. How deftly, I mused, I had sketched the difference between Nathalie and me on the one side, Charles on the other. We sat down to supper. How, you might well ask, could I be doing what I was doing to my friend Charles, whom I truly liked very much, and on whom I had often relied and who had relied on me? The ways 

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in which he had failed me were, in the grand scheme of things, not really important. Had I in fact wanted to assume the responsibility of a deputy managing partner of Thomson, Guthrie, London, or merely the trappings of office, a sop to my irrepressible amour propre? Unlike everything else I do, which is deliberate, I think that at least in part I could not help myself then. It was not merely that I wanted to lie between those lissome thighs, although that was an important part of the agenda; but if what I was feeling then—if what I finally admitted to myself that I was feeling then—was love, then I was in love with Nathalie and had been for many years, and the great opportunist and vanquisher of women had been, with respect to the most desirable woman in his ken, slow off the mark. Had Susan Hunter and I still been together, I might perhaps have been content to take vicarious pleasure from Charles’s pleasure. If that had ever been true, it was true no longer. And what tentative thoughts were preoccupying Nathalie while we chatted about mutual friends during supper? Was she thinking that Charles’s presence in London might be in question? That was certainly what I’d intended, because she had a career in political public relations she would not easily relinquish. What indeed had been on Nathalie’s agenda when she asked me to come ‘round? Perhaps, I told myself, as she knew as well as I that nothing lasts forever, she was looking for a little insurance. Or perhaps she merely wanted some distraction to keep herself from brooding about Charles’s son. Despite these heated thoughts, at the end of the evening—all too short at a few minutes past eleven—I kissed her chastely on both cheeks, asked her to let me know when she heard from Charles about the lad, and left with a winning smile. Charles returned the following Monday and looked as if he’d aged ten years in the past week. I knew by then that Robert had pulled through, although he remained very ill. I knew also that 

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Charles had had to stop in New York to see Ham MacLeod on Friday. We had a brief meeting during which I filled him in on the details of our agreement with Iandakis. He listened and asked a few questions and that was all that we said to each other during the day, other than to arrange a drink at Botolph’s after work. As you know, I already suspected what I was about to be told when we went to Botolph’s about five-thirty. As if in confirmation, L. Grant Reed had for some days been struggling unsuccessfully to keep his self-satisfaction under control. “Ham was not at his warmest, George,” Charles said. “He went over everything: the Murphy affair yet again; Iandakis; the shipping portfolio in general—he was not complimentary towards you.” “I hope the old bastard chokes on his porridge.” “He thinks there’s some deadwood in the staff and in the client list that needs to be cleared out. He talked about the need for fresh directions. He said, ‘On a personal note,’ that he had been sorry to hear about Jean and me, although he understood that such things happened. He said one or two of the older partners did not approve of divorce.” “Why didn’t the old bastard come out and say that he didn’t approve either?” “The only part of our discussion that really strained credulity was when he said that he’d been thinking about my career. I’ve been in London long enough, he said. He wants me to return to New York to assist the senior partners in the management of the bank.” “It could have been worse.” “Not much, George. I can’t consider leaving London.” “Of course,” I said. “Nathalie. But what will you do?” He paused for a moment. The strain was apparent on his face. “I guess I have to bid sayonara to old T&G. I was thinking about it on the plane. It’s going to be difficult because of these large maintenance payments.” 

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“How was Chicago?” “As dreadful as you can imagine. When it was clear that Robert was out of danger, Jean reverted to type. She’s still very bitter. Claims she gave up her career for my own and now has nothing because she’s been away from it too long.” “Are there any men in her life?” “She doesn’t seem to be encouraging them. I think unconsciously she enjoys feeling bitter. I’m very worried about what this is doing to the children, George.” “Just remember, old thing,” I said, “that it’s as much her doing as yours.” “Thanks for that, George. But I know where the fault mostly lies.” To get him from this dolorous subject back to the other, I asked, “When are you supposed to return to New York?” It took him a while to make the switch, and I knew he was still dwelling on the matters of relative guilt and relative innocence. “Ham said I should take my time, but he’d like to see me in place by the beginning of March.” That was a little less than six months away. “L. Grant Reed is your successor?” “Yes.” “And there will be another American (to be named),” I used the shipping term tbn, “who will take over Reed’s position?” “Yes. To say that your star is no longer on the ascendant would be considerably understating the matter, George.” “It sounds as if a brilliant twenty-year career is coming to an end. But listen, Carlos, I’ve had a smashing idea. Been thinking about it for a bit. Why can’t we form a consultancy to specialize in helping banks work out their ship finance problems? Everyone has problems now, and they are all looking with suspicion on the officers who got them into the problems in the first place. You have an example before you. But you and I have vast experience in the field which could be flogged to very good use and quite 

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profitably. And would come entirely into our hot little hands and not go to keep Ham MacLeod’s grandchildren in gold caps.” “I don’t have the capital, George.” “It won’t take much capital, and that we can borrow.” He knew it was a good idea and he struggled with it. But he said finally, “I can’t take the chance, George. I need a steady income. I can’t afford feast and famine.” “How about Nathalie?” He became very still. “I should prefer that you not mention Nathalie in this context.” “Sorry, old thing, but you needn’t be quite so pompous. What I meant was that you’ve got some strong support there.” “Thank you, George. I know.” But I went on. “I saw her once or twice while you were in the States. I’m certain she’d go along with anything you decided to do.” He’d heard only the first sentence. “Did you indeed?” he said.



Chapter Eleven

H e di d no t l a s t u n t i l M a rc h . He saw a number of banks during the autumn, but no one was hiring at his level; and many of them, knowing the general reputation of Thomson, Guthrie, must have been inclined to wonder why this fellow wanted a change—policy differences did not seem adequate somehow. The real reason—because he was in love with someone in England who was not prepared to sacrifice her career in order to accommodate his—could hardly have been a recommendation to anyone. And he could not have persuaded Nathalie even had he wanted to: he already stood accused of having ruined one woman’s career. Nathalie told me much later that they had planned to spend Christmas at Aix, but Charles changed all that. He decided he had to see his children at Christmastime. Nathalie accepted this—in sorrow—but she had difficulty accepting that Charles seemed to have reversed his priorities, amor not vinciting omnia after all. I think she misread his signal there. I don’t think he loved her any the less; but ever the dutiful son, he had followed his governor’s dictum that he should not waste his life doing something he did not want to do because he did not want to hurt others, and now he was suffering for it. As he saw it, his economic life was threatened, his former wife cursed his name, his son had nearly died; and if he was suffering, then he must be guilty, according to his curious New England probity.

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Charles spent Christmas in Chicago, therefore, and Nathalie went to friends in Hampshire. And I went down to Spring Farm with a not-very-interesting girl I’d met at a dinner party because she was accommodating and because the idea of a monastic Christmas filled me with horror; as it turned out, it was the last Christmas I spent at the farm. *** Towards the end of January, I was in my office projecting where the next bad news was coming from aside from Iandakis (the hundred-thousand tonners were coming off-hire in March, and, wondrous to say, he had not found employment for them)—how about Norway, for a change of pace?—when I heard a siren very near, followed soon afterwards by a number of footfalls rushing up our internal stairs and along the passage towards the front of the building. I went through on the intercom, but at the same moment, my office door opened, and my secretary said, “It’s Mr. Fletcher, George. He’s collapsed.” I learned subsequently that Charles had had a massive heart attack. They took him to Guys Hospital, but he was dead within the hour. Just like that. As soon as we learned, L. Grant Reed rang Jean and Charles’s mother. I shot into a cab in Bishopsgate and went to Nathalie’s office in Smith Square. I asked in the entrance hall for Mrs. Whitfield on a matter of urgency. When Nathalie came out to see me, she knew in the way that people do who are close to each other. “You’ve come about Charles,” she said. It was a statement. I nodded. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” The blood had drained from her face and she supported herself on the edge of the receptionist’s desk. The poor girl, who had been mesmerized by the little playlet she had just witnessed, rose and put a supporting arm around Nathalie’s shoulder and said, “Can I get you something?”

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“No, thank you, Sue.” She straightened up. “Will you take me home, George? I’ll get my coat.” She did not break until I asked her whether she wanted to go to the flat. “No—our house,” she said, and when I’d given the address to the cabbie, she began to cry, and I held her while she cried. While I paid off the taxi, she tried without success to open the door. I let us in and supported her upstairs to their bedroom. She sat numbly on the edge of the bed while I drew the curtains. I pulled a pillow out from under the cover and she lay down on it. I removed her shoes and put a blanket from the cupboard over her. “Please don’t leave me, George,” she said to the darkness. “I won’t, darling. I’ll be in the sitting room when you need me.” The afternoon gloom had deepened into night. It was by now nearly four-thirty. I drew the sitting room curtains and turned on a lamp; and when I turned on the lamp I knew then viscerally what I’d known up to then only mentally: that Charles was gone and that there was a large hole in my life. I could not believe we would no longer be railing against the state of the world, or of the bank, at Botolph’s. For the first time since Nanny had taken a cane to me, I felt tears in my eyes; mind you, I was not crying—I thought I was incapable of that. The telephone on the desk sounded. I caught it in the middle of the second ring. “Who is that, please?” the telephone demanded. “To whom do you wish to speak?” “This is Colin Walker. I should like to speak with Mrs. Whitfield.” “One moment,” I said, and put the handset down on the desk. The little mechanical voice was saying, “Who is that?” I went upstairs. “It’s your stepfather, Nathalie.” “I will not talk to him.”

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This chap had continued to buzz around the edges of Nathalie’s life like a persistent bluebottle. He must have read of Charles’s death on the Reuters ticker. I retrieved the handset. “Mrs. Whitfield has told me that she does not want to talk to you.” “Who the hell are you?” “This is George Evans, Colin. Goodbye.” Who cared what else he said while I was replacing the handset? Nathalie called me and I returned to the bedroom. “Can you stay here tonight, do you think?” she said. “Of course. But I’ll have to go home to get some things.” “You can use,” she could hardly say the word, “his.” “I meant some clean clothing, darling. Charles and I don’t take the same size.” She began to cry again quietly. “Please come back soon. I cannot be alone tonight. And I don’t trust Colin.” “Nor do I, old girl. I’ll return in a jiffy. Can I make you some tea, or a drink, before I go?” On the way back from Cadogan Square, I picked up some Chinese takeaway in a grubby little place in the Kings Road in case either of us needed some food. By the time I had returned, Nathalie was in the sitting room in her dressing gown. She looked extremely worn and pale and in pain. I insisted that she take a drink, to which she agreed for my sake, but she hardly touched it. “Life had become so difficult for him recently,” she said. “He was so worried so much of the time, and he felt he had no right to accept any tangible help from me. I loved him so, George, but I had the impression he no longer trusted me entirely. “He was so kind, so gentle. He was so interested in everything. When we went to France, I saw all the familiar places through new eyes, his eyes: this mill, that church, that row of plane trees along the route. Because of Charles, I saw for the first time the beauty of the memorial to my father and the others on the road between Aix and Arles. I had always thought it rather without interest, but Charles looked at it for a while and told me 

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I was wrong, how in its simplicity it represented the human spirit at its best.” She laughed when she thought of it. “He made me cry,” she said, and then looked at her hands. A taxi went by in the road in front of the house, and through a wall I could hear that the neighbors were listening to the television news. “I think I’ll go upstairs again, George. I prefer darkness at the moment, and I cannot expect you to sit in the dark. The spare room has been made up. I think you’ll find something to eat in the fridge. I don’t want anything.” While I finished my drink and Nathalie’s I thought a lot about the past—all the things I’ve been telling you—and something about the future. Thomson, Guthrie and I were about to part company. Quite apart from the fact that I was enveloped in fog because of the state of the ship loan portfolio, there was no one at the bank I had so much liked or admired as I had Charles, on whom they had put severe pressure latterly—there was nothing and no one there that could retain whatever feeble gesture of loyalty I was capable of making. Towards nine o’clock I ate a cold spring roll and some cold stir-fried dog meat in corn flour sauce, and drank some Sancerre that I found in the fridge. I toasted Charles and wished him godspeed, although in my heart I knew that his journey had ended. *** The drawing room is nearly empty—George and I and a chap in the corner opposite snoring contentedly, his Telegraph at his feet in a pile. A club retainer comes in to put more coal on the fire. George asks me if I would like some tea, and places an order. He stares into the past, and it is a few minutes before he speaks again.

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C h a p t e r T w e lv e

Th e p o or c h ap wa s f l ow n to the States to be buried in the family plot outside Bedford Village. I’ve never seen the cemetery, although I intend to go one day. Nathalie and I were forced to bid him adieu from afar. Over the objections of his mother, Jean refused to allow us to come to the funeral: if there were any possibility of our appearing, she said she would return to Chicago with the children. There was nothing old Lizzie could do to overcome the depth of Jean’s feeling. Nathalie was shattered, although on the day we had a brief memorial service at midday for some of Charles’s London friends and colleagues at St. Botolph’s in Bishopsgate. Although he had never expressed, at least, to me, any particularly strong religious inclinations, I think he would have been pleased. The service was like the memorial to Nathalie’s father—simple, but not without interest. As Charles’s oldest friend in London, I said a few words about him, which seemed to be well received. And after work, I went alone to Botolph’s Wine Bar, which was in fact within sight of the church, drank a glass of the house red horror in his honor, and stuck pins into a little Ham MacLeod effigy. (No, not actually.) Hamish MacLeod finally awoke to the possibility that I might after all have something to contribute. He realized that while Thomson, Guthrie had problems in its ship loan portfolio, we did not have nearly as many problems as other banks, and given the state of the industry in the mid-seventies, that was 

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saying something quite positive. To give him his due, I think L. Grant Reed had a good deal to do with the change in Ham’s opinion, although it was certainly self-serving: he did not want to have to take on the problems himself in an industry with which he had not had much experience. So too little, and much too late, Thomson, Guthrie began to massage me with little messages of appreciation from the senior partners and with money (most of which, in the event, went to the U.K. Government to keep yobbos on the dole in beer money) to ensure that I stayed in their employ. I amused them, and myself, for nearly two years while I participated in this charade, and in truth I did my best for old T&G during that time; all the while I was on a leisurely search for fresh woods and pastures new. I was even rung by headhunters from time to time, who were in a mad scramble for shipping and property expertise, mostly on behalf of one large foreign banking bureaucracy or another. The result was that I enjoyed a few clandestine lunches before I told them I had no interest. I was looking for the sort of bank that would provide, in addition to a large increase in my pay packet, a considerable enhancement to my prestige—I wanted an organisation that would welcome me to its bosom by offering me a partnership or an executive directorship. Now that I consider it, this was my patient period generally. I saw Nathalie once every two or three weeks for dinner, and for a couple of years it was never more than that. I think she saw one or two other men during that time—and avoided seeing many more—but none of them knew or understood, as I did, what she had gone through, and none of them had, as I had, the patina of long association with her lover. She was grieving still and she was not to be rushed. I knew, as well as I’ve ever known anything, that she would come around eventually. So I did not worry, and was absolutely saint-like in my approach. I kept my baser desires in check with a series of short-lived relationships, and never had anyone to live in. They were all girls 

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of good family, some more interesting than others, but intellectual exchange was not the object of the exercise—divorcees, wives, women who had never married at all, but with a deal of charm. After I’d gotten the house in Wickham Market, there was even a Suffolk wife who went riding every Saturday morning. It is fortunate that her husband had never enquired too deeply into what she was riding, and had never found her horse tethered in my field. As he most likely did not consider the possibility that his wife might be having it off with another chap, he probably wasn’t interested in what she was doing on Saturday mornings. In my experience, many men care that their wives are being bedded by other chaps only because of the blow to their amour propre. They don’t consider what might have caused their women to fall into the outspread arms of those such as I; the reason generally is neglect of one sort or another. Without doubt it is sexual neglect, quite often; but more often it’s emotional or mental neglect. Tant pis for that Suffolk gent that I had moved into the neighborhood, because I have never been known to neglect a woman; not even Julia. *** One afternoon in early spring, two years after Charles had died, I received a call at the office from Elizabeth Fletcher. I had only met her a couple of times since the visit I’d made to America in 1966, when she’d come to London on her way to the Continent, but she’d always seemed well disposed towards me, the result no doubt of high marks from Charles, as well as of my own raffish charm. “I’m coming to London in two weeks with a friend, George. We’d love to dine with you, and I wonder also if you could arrange for me to meet Nathalie.” “I hadn’t realized you’d not met her, Liz,”—I was the only person who called Elizabeth Liz and got away with it—

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“but I’d be delighted to arrange it. Why should we not dine tous ensembles?” “That would be fine.” I chose a date two weeks hence, subject to confirmation when they arrived. “What is she like?” Nathalie asked when I told her about the projected dinner. “Somewhat reserved, but friendly—like Charles, in fact— tall, thin, handsome, very pleasant. She likes me, which shows a certain lack of judgment.” “And taste,” she said. “Why does she want to meet the woman who made two of her grandchildren fatherless?” “From what I know of her, she will not be judgmental. She had too much of that during her marriage to Charles’s governor. Indeed, she’s quite likely to be traveling with her lover. But she loved her son, and wants to know who he loved.” *** We arranged to meet in the bar at the Capital Hotel on Basil Street where they were staying and where we were to dine. Elizabeth was then in her mid-seventies, straight as ever, but she moved a little more slowly than I had remembered. She was indeed with the fellow whom Charles had told me about years before—the term lover by this time was ludicrously inapt. However charming Frank Compton may have been when he and Liz first met, he was close to being over-the-top now. He moved far more slowly than she, told every story three times, and interrupted one’s own. Lizzie must have been awfully fond of the old bird, or else she was awfully well-bred, because she never pointed out his manifest shortcomings to him; in fact, from time to time she squeezed his shaky old hand. But for Lizzie’s sake, I listened and smiled, and resisted my natural inclination to show that I was bored; in addition to which he was buying my dinner, so one had to grovel a bit.

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Charles’s mother, on the other hand, had all her wits about her, and when she saw Nathalie, it was a coup de foudre. Nathalie had chosen to dress somewhat demurely: burgundy silk with a somewhat higher neckline than usual, as I recall, a simple gold necklace and gold earrings. She had a way of looking at one that immediately established that one was the only person in whom she was interested at the moment. Her eyes did not wander about a room to see who else might be there. We had kir in the bar, served to us by David Levin, the proprietor, while Nathalie and Liz worked their magic on each other, and I heard another exciting tale (or maybe it was the same one as before) about bond-flogging in Wall Street. At the table, I maneuvered the old boy into sharing with me a côte de boeuf aux aromates, judging rightly that he’d still be gumming his first piece while I ate the rest. He also asked me to choose the wines, which was wise: an Alsace gewürtz to go with the fishy things at the beginning, followed by a not inconsiderable claret. I realized, however, that these two amazingly good-looking women had very quickly established a rapport and, side by side on the banquette, were engaged in a private conversation in which I could not participate, and Frank Compton would be incapable of participating. They were talking about Charles. It was just as well that I had to listen to a description of the incompetence of President Carter. At the end of the evening, we parted from them in the hall outside the bar. When I shook the old boy’s hand, he perked up briefly, probably because he realized that the long evening was over. Liz had tears in her eyes when she embraced Nathalie, who, when she turned to me for her coat, had them as well. Liz kissed me warmly on the cheek, and thanked me for my many years of friendship. “They didn’t end, Liz,” I said. “You and Frank must come back soon. You and I have hardly talked this evening.”

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It was never to be. Frank, who was a harmless old cove after all, died the following summer, and Elizabeth died a year later, without returning to London. They stood in the doorway of the hotel and waved while our taxi drew away. “I’ve been listening for years to Americans complaining about the ineptitude of their political leadership,” I said, “but these people are our presidents too—the little red button could wipe us all out. We should be able to vote for him as well.” I saw then the tears on Nathalie’s cheeks in the reflection of the passing street lamps. “I’m sorry, darling.” “No need, George,” she said. “It’s simply. . . we talked a lot about Charles. I wished I had met her with him. She’s a lovely woman.” “Yes, she is. I’ve always liked her. From the moment she took Fiona’s mini-skirts in stride.” “I didn’t think she was that reserved. She told me that the best memorial I could give to Charles is to fall in love again.” Hear, hear, I said to myself. Had the evening not been quite so emotionally moving, I suspect that Nathalie might have invited me up to her flat for a little postprandial this and that— the house having long since reverted to Thomson, Guthrie for use by another expat—but perhaps I’m dreaming; the wish father to the expectation, as it were. In the event, I merely kissed her at the doorstep and saw her safely inside while the cab waited to take me back to Cadogan Square. Dreaming or not, a couple of months later, during a dismal chilly late spring, I invited Nathalie to spend a weekend at Wickham Market, claiming, not without truth, that I was in need of advice about decoration. You do remember the house. You should come down again soon. It faces a farmer’s field across a narrow road. The drawing room is to the left as you enter and a sitting room and study to the right, off the entrance hall, with the dining room and kitchen and mud room and a gents at the back. Upstairs there are four decent-sized bedrooms and two bath

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rooms. At the back of the house there’s a small walled garden and a couple of acres of woods beyond. It’s called the Rectory; a most appropriate name for its present owner, don’t you think? Much nicer than Spring Farm could ever be, but I thought it could do with some female attention. In the event, I asked Nathalie to come down for the weekend, and after some hesitation, she accepted. Perhaps all she was looking for was a little dependable male warmth next to her in bed to ward off the chill. I think it safe to say that I surprised her. We took the Norwich train on Friday evening from Liverpool Street and changed for the local train at Ipswich. We reached Campsea Ashe at seven-thirty and drove to the Rectory, which is about four miles from Wickham Market, west of the A12. I showed Nathalie her room and returned to the sitting room to get a fire going. When she appeared, not looking as if she’d just spent ten hours marketing political positions to an unsuspecting public, I mixed a gin and vermouth for her and took a whisky myself. “You’ve got me down here on false pretences, George. This house needs very little, from what I’ve seen. It’s a lovely house.” “Not a bit of it, darling. I do need some help with the decoration. You haven’t seen all of it.” “A little bit of color here and there.” “But what colors, Nathalie?” “Whatever you like.” “I would prefer they be whatever you like.” She looked bemused. “Would it strain credulity if I told you I am in love with you?” “Yes,” she said. “And would you believe that I’ve never said it to anyone before?” “Absolutely not.” “Well, you are correct. But I’ve hardly ever said it, and I have not said it for a very long time. I say usually, ‘I want to make love 

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to you,’ or ‘I want to go to bed with you,’ or something rougher if the occasion seems to call for it.” “And what does this occasion call for?” “A statement of intent. I want to marry you,” I said. Nathalie greeted this sentiment with a healthy explosion of laughter, not precisely the reaction I was looking for; but her laughter was infectious, and I began to laugh myself. She had to wipe her eyes. “I do apologize, George.” “Not at all, darling. Let me top up your drink and let’s go to the kitchen while I heat up Mrs. Wilkins’s famous imitation of spaghetti bolognese and cook the pasta. Will you make the salad? I thought a straightforward Rubesco would go with this.” She looked around the useful but rather squalid kitchen. “I see now what you meant, George. This room could do with improvement.” “Now we’re getting down to business.” By the end of the meal, I had begun to take notes about cupboards and sinks and coordinating colors. We returned to the sitting room with our coffee. “I’ve asked some locals to dine tomorrow, darling. Do you mind?” “Not at all.” “Shall I introduce you as my fiancee?” “You’re serious, aren’t you?” “As serious as I’ve ever been. Which is not saying a great deal, I realize.” “Why can’t you just make love to me and let it go at that?” I could not entirely believe that it was I who was saying these things, but say them I did. “Of course I want to make love to you, Nathalie, but it is not simply that. I am in love with you, don’t you see?” “George Evans. . .” “Yes.” “. . . is in love. And with me.” 

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“Yes. My ears ring, my eyes swim, I am short of breath in your presence. I feel pressure at the top of the diaphragm—so— whenever I think about you, which is most of the time. When you’re not with me, I wonder whom you are with, and I envy him or her or them.” Bit by bit, as the successful entrepreneur and failed mathematician said, that one percent mounted up. Nathalie realized at last that I was serious. I could not be surprised that it had taken her some while. She had never heard me talk about my feelings before, or only in jest, and never in connection with her. Without question she knew that I was fond of her. What she could not know was how deep that fondness went, or indeed, that I was capable of such depth. We did the washing up, put the fire screen in front of the hearth, locked up, and went upstairs. She joined me in my room shortly after I had performed my ablutions. At the first, I was as anxious and nervy as a schoolboy at his initial encounter with some rural lass in a barn; but by the end of the night, we managed a quite lovely duet together.

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A l e x C r o s s a n d h i s w i f e C y n t h i a came to dine the following evening, and Fraser and Elizabeth Willis, and Arthur and Barbara Wright. Alex had just retired as a senior partner from Ransome Brothers, the investment house, and was spending his days pottering about the garden in Monewden and occasionally giving sound advice to his former partners. He was pressed into service again at the time of Big Bang and became one of the guiding lights of the Securities and Investments Board under Ken Burrell, and is still there with David Walker. He’s a good chap with all his wits about him; he doesn’t like one bit what is going on in the city these days. Hear, hear. It goes without saying that I did not introduce Nathalie as my fiancee. She knew Barbara and Arthur already, and Fraser Willis was quite taken with her. Fraser was a fellow to whom one normally had to shout; it was a way he had of avoiding things he did not want to hear, while all the while he was calculating whether he could make any money off one. He seemed most of the time to be an old buffer, slightly ga-ga, but it is curious how his deafness disappeared whenever he was sitting next to a goodlooking woman. Nathalie found herself subjected to every kind of approach except the hand on the knee, which Fraser was much too well-bred—and in truth, too old—to try as a gambit. If any woman had the lapse in judgment to fall beneath this transparent onslaught, Fraser would do his duty; but what actually fascinated 

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him was buying and selling rural property, and he was not too fastidious about the uses to which that property was to be put by the buyers as long as he made a profit out of the transaction, and the property was not too near his own vast acres. And after we’d eaten Mrs. Wilkins’s roast pork, and drunk the governor’s claret, and bid our adieus to the guests and made love again, Nathalie said, rather wistfully I thought, “It was nice to see Arthur and Barbara again. There are so many people I’ve not seen in such a long time.” “What did you think of the Crosses?” “He’s very good news. First stockbroker I’ve met who positively exuded probity.” “You’ve probably not met many brokers.” “Or too many. Not that Tony forced their company on me all that often. But Charles would love to have known Alex Cross.” That hurt a bit, if the truth be known. “I liked her as well. Very funny, very dry.” “And the Willises?” I asked. “She seemed rather subdued, but I didn’t talk to her much. He’s a fraud, without question. I couldn’t tell, because he was so interested in chatting me up, whether he’s benign or not. But I wouldn’t trust him.” “We were made for each other, darling,” I said. “Your thoughts about my guests exactly match my own. I adore the Wrights and the Crosses.” “But why do you have someone ‘round like Fraser Willis?” “Insurance, possibly.” “You think that because you invite him to dinner he will be less inclined to sell the property next to yours for new council housing or a fertilizer plant?” Put that way, it seemed most unlikely. I could only shrug against my pillow. “My impression is that Fraser Willis would accept bids on his aged mother if he found it profitable,” Nathalie said. 

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“I cannot disagree with you, my darling.” “My question remains: why invite such a man?” “I realize, Nathalie, that you are half-French, but you’ve lived most of your life in this country. Surely you’ve come to recognize that one thing the English do is have ‘round people they truly despise. Perhaps it has to do with expiating original sin, like cold baths and the lack of central heating.” “Is that why so many people over the years entertained Tony and me?” “Oh no, darling. That was due entirely to you.” I turned back the covers. “Your wit, your charm, your intelligence.” She began to laugh. “Not to mention your quintessential femaleness,” I continued. “As the man said of Georgian architecture, ‘good proportions, suitability, and direct design.’” What fun it was with Nathalie in those early years. *** It does not often happen to a banker that one’s borrowers are murdered—or certainly not to a British banker: the directors of the Banco di Sicilia might have a different observation—but it happened to one of Thomson, Guthrie’s clients around the same time that I decided to accept an offer from New Broad Street International. It happened, in fact, to our very first shipping customer, the dreary old Norwegian stick called Paul Johansen, who was shot dead Chicago-style in the center of Oslo, of all places. Johansen had been a lot less arrogant latterly. We’d been receiving periodic visits from him and his finance director, John Henriksen, who were in trouble because they’d taken on some tankers, instead of sticking with the bulk carrier trade with which they’d begun. Johansen was as avaricious as the rest, and while Henriksen had to do his bidding, I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He let slip when we dined alone one night that he’d advised Johansen against tankers, but the shipowner hadn’t listened.

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In the event, at the beginning of this series of visits to us and to other banks in the city, they were looking for ten-year finance for two VLCCs with no fixtures that were to be delivered in 1977, but we were no longer in that business, courtesy of your interlocutor and of the personal intervention of Ham MacLeod through his instrument L. Grant Reed. One could tell it was killing Johansen—no pun intended—to have to act humbly when humility was far from being his long suit. The last visits were even more pathetic because we were having to restructure the loans Johansens already had from us, with the burden of five hundred thousand more unneeded deadweight tons, still abuilding, unfixed and unfinanced, hovering in the background. Henriksen was entirely sensible, and, as far as any of us could see into the future, saw clearly what had to be done, and presented us with some feasible alternatives, all of which included asset disposals, about which there was no choice. In the middle of all this, Johansen was killed in front of the Grand Hotel (which I’ve always called the Petit to reflect the quality of the service). It had to do with drug smuggling or something of the kind, and involved Per Lindstedt, who was a big name then in the Norwegian shipping fraternity. One would have thought this would be the final nail in George Evans’s coffin, but nothing could have been farther from the minds of L. Grant Reed or Ham MacLeod; or at least they were keeping their true thoughts to themselves. They were not about to rock the boat—do forgive me—while I was guiding it pretty capably through some very heavy weather. I had no idea what they had in mind for me after I’d brought the ship safely into port, but I had no intention of waiting around to find out. Setting up a sensible scheme of repayment for the Johansen loans was the last thing I did for Thomson, Guthrie before I announced my departure for greener pastures as an executive director of New Broad Street International. It gave me great pleasure to give my resignation to L. Grant Reed. Everything was comme il faut: I asked to see him, was .

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granted an appointment, announced my departure a month hence. One could tell at once that he was not pleased. “We had plans for your development, George. Wonderful career path,” etc. “With respect, Grant, you ought not have kept them such secrets from the principal involved.” Reed did me the courtesy of recognizing my comment as inarguable. He said, “Will you talk with Mr. MacLeod?” “Of course.” Ham MacLeod actually got off his arse and came to London to talk to me. I was impressed by his effort, and even more by my new importance to T&G, but he tried to intimidate me into staying, and when that failed, his arguments were feeble. “Loyalty,” he bleated. “Loyalty should run in two directions,” I said. “Money,” he said. “Money is not enough,” I replied, although, had it been enough at the time, it would have been tempting. I knew, however, that it would never have been enough, because Thomson, Guthrie was not run that way: everything was done for the partners; other ranks received crumbs from the table. “What would keep you here?” he said at last, out of frustration. “A partnership and a chance to succeed Grant when he returns to the States.” Modest wishes, after all. “A partnership is not in the cards for you, George.” He delivered this message without intonation or passion, like the robot he was. “You will always have problems with your talented British staff, Ham, if you don’t hold that out as a possibility. It is perfectly obvious to us that we are discriminated against because we are British. It certainly has nothing to do with competence. Have you never wondered why so few of your senior officers are British?” Strong words, but having made my decision, I had 

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nothing to lose. So I pressed ahead. “Head office even treats its Americans badly.” “What do you mean?” “Charles Fletcher guided this bank through a very difficult period, with a minimum of loss, and what he received in return was more pressure to do better. It wrecked his marriage and ultimately his health.” “Thank you, George,” he said rising, and I with him. “I’ve heard quite enough. I trust it will not take you long to tie up the loose ends and to join your new organisation. By the end of this week ought to be sufficient.” “As you wish, Ham,” I said. “I’ve spent more than twenty underpaid years here. It’s time I got some of my own back. Cheerio,” I said, and opened the door and walked back to my room along the corridor from Reed’s office. In truth, I felt that I had not had such a bad innings; but the light was bad now, and it was time for play to stop.

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S o i t w a s t h a t I c a m e t o j o i n New Broad Street International in June of 1977 as an executive director, with responsibility for shipping, property, and what today might be called the middle market; much finance involving taking charges over assets, at which some people thought I had expertise. New Broad was at the time at the bottom of the road of the same name, facing Old Broad Street, next to Levy’s the greengrocers, and with its rear elevation in Blomfield Street. That building no longer exists either, but the bank made a tidy sum selling out to the developers. We—they—are now in Broadgate, and running very hard to keep up with the rental payments, which doubled. Short-term greed often ensures longer-term regret. In the event, I was clasped to the bosom of New Broad Street like a long-lost relation; in truth, they needed some help in the shipping and the property portfolios. I took over a sizable staff— not all of them competent—and was told to hire whom I liked, within reason. One was hardly used to being treated with such civility, but after a few weeks I thought I should go rather easily on the hiring and indulge, rather, in some well-deserved firing. Nor did they stint on the pay packet, most of which at the time was going to the government, but still left a few pennies to rub together; nor did they stint on the perks. I lunched every day that I did not have an engagement outside the building in a paneled dining room that was set aside for the senior directors, of 

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whom there were a dozen or so, and only occasionally used for entertaining outsiders—a visiting Royal, for example, or a minister of State, or the CEO of a multinational. The cooking was advanced school food, but the cellar was splendid. One felt one was with one’s own. New Broad Street International (New Broad Street Merchant Bankers, as it was, founded 1827 by East Anglian Quakers to underwrite trade with the United States) is a merchant bank engaged in corporate finance, lending for commercial property development, trade finance, some bond and share underwriting—but never as a market maker—and these days some foreign exchange trading. There are also a few people who pursue various hedging instruments on behalf of a few first-class corporate clients: swaps, caps, options, that sort of thing. In the late seventies, the bank was turning in a rather middling performance, a reflection of some of its middling management and some of their middling customers. It had had one very bad property experience, which until I arrived I knew only from the newspapers and from chatting up some of my chums in the property game, and didn’t want to have another. They’d taken a loss on Iandakis, of sainted memory, and were about to—nothing I could do to prevent it—take another on a small participation in a loan to a Mediterranean company that specialized in refrigerated ships. It was a place, in short, in which one could find something to get one’s teeth into. My colleagues—alas—were an indifferent lot; rather the usual city mix at the time: some bright lads from various backgrounds, many of whom were going on to better things; some dim bulbs from first-rate public schools; and a small collection of Continentals, some of them slightly shady. My favorite was a white Russian called Pavel Menshekov, who had fought for Mihailovic in Yugoslavia and for his trouble had got his teeth broken with a hammer by Tito’s minions. “My dear, one cannot think to this day why they let me go,” he would say with a self-deprecating little smile; but with enough 

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vodka there would be mention of a female comrade commander whom somehow he’d managed to keep happy. Pavel, at least, had blood in his veins. There weren’t many exceptions at the time to the general level of mediocrity amongst the more senior staff. The chairman was a non-executive director retired from some metal bashing firm ‘oop north,’ and came ‘round once a month for the meeting (and his fee) and the meal, at which he ate and drank a great deal. But Jonathan Sewall, the newish managing director, was a sound fellow—he had, after all, hired me—who was just starting to get his arms around the problems he’d inherited from his predecessor: too many people chasing the wrong kinds of business, with the consequent low return on capital employed. We saw eye to eye, which is why I think he took me on. Perhaps it was all those years in the presence of aggressive Americans and mean-spirited semi-Scots such as Ham MacLeod that made me require value for money in my department. In the event, after a couple of months’ discreet observation, I suggested to a number of people that they ought to seek early retirement, and some I bribed to resign; money well spent. I managed to cut my staff by ten. The result was an increase in energy by the remainder, which may have been fear; but people seemed also to be jollier, at least in my presence. We then set about cleaning up the portfolio, which was not in that bad of shape, with a couple of egregious exceptions, but New Broad had many marginal customers (marginal in the sense of not returning a good enough profit for the effort and the risk) who would have been better off dealing with the clearing banks, which we told them. There was a small amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but most saw the justice of our arguments. I also discovered that New Broad had trading lines with Multinational Capital Corporation, Iandakis’s bête noire, and a bank that was rapidly going to the wall. It goes without saying that the lines were cut in the twinkling of an eye, a move that, once it got around the City and was imitated, caused the Bank of England to put in the investigators. 

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One recognized that one was expected to produce, so one produced. The object, of course, was to get to the point at which the whole thing was ticking over smoothly, and, having made an excellent first impression, which is always the longest lasting, one could then let up and not take things quite so seriously. In the beginning, I worked rather longer hours than I had at Thomson, Guthrie, trusting always, of course, that they would get shorter, and traveled a deal more as well. But on the whole, the late seventies were brighter for me than the years immediately proceeding. A chum, Sir Paul Buitenhuis, became Lord Mayor in 1977. I took Nathalie to the banquet at Guildhall (“Ladies are encouraged to wear their tiaras”), at which, it must be said, Callaghan gave not a bad speech, particularly in contrast to the Archbishop of Canterbury who banged on in his purple silk breeches about the striking fire service. And the Tories won the general election in 1979. And I had my love to keep me warm. Up to a point. I had had no idea, before my liaison with Nathalie, what long hours she kept: how often, when she was staying at Cadogan Square—she’d not yet given up her flat in Chelsea—I would arrive home before she; and how many nights she spent chatting up the Honourable Member for Semper Parva on behalf of some vested interest or other over dinner at Lockets before the division bell went and interrupted her sales pitch. It was merely one of the first things I learned as I set out on my voyage of discovery. *** Late that very hot summer, for the first time, I flew to Marseilles to join Nathalie, who was taking some time off before the party conference season started. Very rum place is the airport at Marseilles (the whole town too, come to that). It didn’t look as if there were a proper frog in the place—all North Africans, all with hard, sinister stares. It was no wonder that those with whom I had flown did not loiter with their cases. As soon as they 

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were disgorged onto the conveyor belt, they grabbed them and were off. The stares were very hard indeed when I went through the green channel and saw Nathalie waiting for me. I saw her an instant before she saw me—she was distracted for a moment— a white cotton blouse, a blue cotton skirt, beige sandals, and a straw handbag over her shoulder but held in front to foil the cutpurses. Her hair was drawn back rather severely, and her skin was lightly tanned, so that, when she looked at me at last and smiled, her blue eyes were bluer still. She looked relaxed, but she was nononsense. A quick peck on either cheek and we were on our way. In a little over an hour in her Renault, we were climbing the road to Rognes through vineyards in the hills north of Aix. Just after we’d passed a sign that indicated we had entered Beaulieu (not a village to be seen, however), she said, “That’s the house,” indicating through gaps in the trees a mas gleaming white in the sunlight. “All the fields near the house used to belong to my family, but Colin Walker persuaded my mother to turn these assets into cash, as he put it.” “Did he try to get rid of the house as well?” “Of course.” “What happened?” She shifted into second around the last rising hairpin. “He didn’t succeed.” “Madame, c’est evident. What I meant was, how did you stop him?” “He was preying on my mother’s vulnerability—she was already ill with cancer—so I did the same. I begged her to let the house remain in the family as a memorial to my father. And she did—she left it to me when she died.” The ground floor consisted of an entrance hall and a large sitting room, with a kitchen and bathroom at one end. There was a big dining room with a refectory table between the kitchen and the sitting room. On the first floor were three bedrooms and 

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another bathroom; more bedrooms on the second floor. There was a terrace on the south side of the house—the side in which the entrance was—partly open and partly shaded by a grape arbor, and not far from the house was a small swimming pool and some outbuildings. To the south and west were wheat fields and vineyards, and from the back of the house, on the north side where the windows were few and small, with stout shutters against the mistral, one could see the chalky white mountains rising in the distance through the heat haze. The cicadas were playing a symphony. “Welcome to Mas Dutailley, darling,” she said. She let her hair fall freely to her shoulders. I kissed her deeply. “I’m never going back to London.” “I’m so glad you like it, George.” “Of course, my final determination will depend on the quality of the service.” “Which will depend on the quality of the service,” she said, her eyes twinkling. As the sun went down and the sky turned from red to black, we sat on the terrace and drank cold Provençal rosé and watched the stars come out. The night creatures all around made an extraordinary racket. We had dinner indoors and returned to the terrace for coffee and Armagnac, and later swam naked in the pool. And for a few hours I forgot entirely that there even was such a place as London. Before we went to sleep, Nathalie warned me that I ought to watch out for scorpions; but, in all the visits I made to Mas Dutailley, I never saw one. Lizards, yes—masses of the endearing little creatures with their long flicking tongues; they reminded one rather of one’s colleagues in the city; but I don’t recall ever having seen a scorpion. We spent quite a delicious week together doing nothing. I’d made it clear to Nathalie early on that I was not totally dedicated to touring; a walk in the Cours Mirabeau beneath the plane trees to look at the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hôtels particuliers, followed by a good lunch and a 

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decent bottle of wine, absolutely; but no driving long distances to look at churches, or walled towns, or boring little provincial museums full of exhibits that haven’t been dusted since the end of the Third Republic. We did in fact visit the memorial to Nathalie’s father, which was on a windswept hill just off the N113 about two-thirds of the way to Arles. Now in September, it was bone dry and dusty all ‘round, but one could imagine the fields full of wildflowers in the spring. I did not think the monument was much: a tall, curving piece of metal, rather like the arc of a very large circle, mounted on a plain, massive stone base, all looking rather weather-beaten. The plaque was affecting enough: Michel Dutailley 1906-1944 mort pour la France—tortured and killed by the Gestapo—but I didn’t feel the spirit soar as had Charles. I said nothing about my reaction to Nathalie of course; simply mumbled that I saw what Charles had meant. She was still for what seemed an interminable amount of time, with the wind whipping the dust past us. No wonder the monument was pitted. *** Had Nathalie been in love with Charles Fletcher? Without a doubt, to my mind. In Tony Whitfield she had married the sort she was expected to marry, acting not unlike Charles, who was always doing what was expected of him, not to mention that marrying Tony took her further from the grasp of her stepfather. It was a marriage of convenience, combined with some youthful bad judgment. But Charles I think she loved with her whole being because—as she once put it—because he was good; unlike the rest of us was the clear implication. Including herself, one might add, however churlish that may sound. Did she ever succeed in getting Charles to see his fellow human beings as they are rather than as he would have liked them to be? I think not. Heaven knows I had a go at it with no greater success. Did she love me? After a fashion, I think. I believe she was very fond of me, certainly fond enough at last to marry me in Chelsea Old Town 

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Hall and come to live with me in Cadogan Square and Suffolk. I—of whom nothing had been expected, except that I would not embarrass the Governor—represented a solidity for Nathalie that she’d never known: she never knew her father, her stepfather was not to be trusted, her first husband was a dim bulb and unreliable, and Charles, the true love of her life, was destroyed by his internal conflicts. And there is no doubt that some of Nathalie— you may say the best part—had died with Charles.

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Chapter Fifteen

Th e n a t u r a l p o l i t i c a l i n c l i n a t i o n s of the partners in Poole’s, the firm from which Nathalie took her crust, gave the organization a distinct Tory hue, not at all a bad thing to have at the beginning of the era of Blessed Margaret Thatcher. It did not hurt either to have offices in Smith Square, where Conservative Central Office is; and it was positively good for a lobbying firm—for that is what they are—to be identified with the party of the enterprise culture. They spent a good deal of time in the House of Commons, pushing on behalf of this or that business interest: for example, the unrestricted import of gerbil pelts for the manufacture of small coats. Nathalie spent a long time at these tasks of persuasion, especially when she was dining with a client or with the member who was the focus of her efforts in parliament. As you can imagine, Nathalie’s looking the way Nathalie does, she had many offers to dine out. Most were legitimate, and I even went along on a few, but I was not a complete success; although I appreciated the free food and wine, which were often splendid, I did not always like those in whose presence they were partaken, barrow boys in good suits who kept their knives and forks hoisted in the air and gestured with them when they wanted to make a point, and whose conversation was limited to how much money they had made and how much more they were going to make, and what they’d bought the “lady wife” for a bit of fun the other week. One shudders at the idea of Parents’ 

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Day at the public schools in the near future. In the event, I fear I failed at disguising my feelings entirely—unlike Nathalie, who is a splendid actress, which is why she is so good at sales—and after a couple of initial disasters, was invited along when some balance seemed appropriate, or when the gent was of like mind and could talk of something other than his balance sheet. Some of the offers to dine were not legitimate. One software man from Basingstoke offered to channel all his public relations and his advertising business—worth a significant sum at the time—to Poole’s if Nathalie would sleep with him. She suggested that he take his account elsewhere. “Anything for the firm, Nathalie,” I shrugged when she told me this story. “Surely Godfrey”—I was thinking of Godfrey Poole même, the founder and managing partner—“has told you that.” “Of course, George. But I do draw the line at bad breath.” Did she ever have it off with one of her clients, or with the Member for Semper Parva? I doubt it; it would have been unprofessional and therefore unlike Nathalie. Was she always with a client when she was out late? I rather doubt that also. *** One day in the autumn of 1984—the Iran-Iraq War was dragging on and the tanker market was difficult in the circumstances—I left the bank before lunch to visit my tailor in Eastcheap (who can no longer be kept at bay on fifteen shillings a week—although it sounds so much more than 75p, doesn’t it?). One had noticed before that the Victorian building on the east side of Bishopsgate, home of Botolph’s Wine Bar, several doors below Camomile Street, was gradually being vacated; but Botolph’s had soldiered on, although without help from me. I had not been there since the day of the memorial service for Charles at St. Botolph’s six years before. I saw now that Botolph’s was closed and dark, and the building, with a great orange crane floating above, had begun to be taken down. On its site two years later 

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was a stone and glass box, with rounded edges to disguise the fact that it was a box, occupied by what I would not have called firstclass covenants—parvenu stockbroking firms; I should doubt there’s a single one left following Big Bang, the troubles in the gilt market, and the crash in October of ‘87—and a wine bar called Jeremy’s on the ground floor. The real Edwardian paneling and glass and the pressed tin ceiling had been removed and replaced with ersatz Victorian touches. I went into the wine bar once, but I had neither the heart nor the stomach to stay; I was also twenty years older than anyone else there. Progress of a kind, I suppose: the Capataz Wine Store is gone, and Levy’s and the old Paris Grill; the building that New Broad Street International occupied is gone, come to that; Broad Street Station; Liverpool Street Station is almost totally changed—one no longer gets wet waiting for a cab under the dripping roof; St. Peter’s Court off Bishopsgate is gone entirely, and with it, the building in which I spent more than twenty years of my city life; one hears from time to time that the George and Vulture is under threat; in the late eighties the facades of New Broad Street and Finsbury Circus were supported by massive steel supports, while the houses behind were eviscerated to make room for the new technology. They formed, when they were done, a film set: the substance was on the exterior. Confidence in Maggie’s Britain. They resemble leveraged buyouts in a way. On the outside they look the same, but the interior has changed beyond recognition. Don’t misconstrue: we’ve been to the trough and made a packet on LBOs just like everyone else; and some of these corporate circumcisions result in something of real use. But in the main, a few people get very rich very quickly, and bugger the rest. In the seventies it used to be called asset-stripping and was thought not nice. Now it is called enhancing value for the shareholders and that gives it a respectable face; we are no longer doing it for ourselves, you see, we’re doing it for others.

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Chapter Sixteen

N a t h a l i e d i d n o t j o i n m e in the claret at dinner that evening (the evening of the day I’d lunched with Robert Fletcher). She had, in fact, been drinking less recently because she claimed that she needed to be clear-headed all of the time. Nothing wrong with that, and Heaven knows she received telephone calls at all hours; but I feel a chap needs to relax from time to time, and wine is wonderfully conducive to that agreeable state. She’d left off criticizing my drinking some time before. Magdalena cleared the table and brought us coffee, which we take at the table or in the sitting room, depending on our mood, and cleared herself off to watch her television set. “I’m taking an early train to Shrewsbury, George,” Nathalie said. “I think it unlikely I’ll be back tomorrow night.” “Is that your drug company, darling?” “Indeed. There’s a bit of a flap over the introduction of a controversial product. They need some advice.” Such as which politician’s palm to grease, actually or metaphorically. I did not say what I thought. What I said instead was, “These days that’s either about cancer or AIDS.” “You know I can’t tell you.” “Come, come, my dear. Don’t be absurd,” I said, to which she smiled at me over her coffee cup. “Hemorrhoids,” she said.

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“You’re joking.” “Of course. George, do give some thought to inviting the Fletcher boy down for the weekend.” I don’t think her intent was merely to deflect me from talking about the reasons for her visit to Shrewsbury, although it had that result as well. Robert Fletcher—or the idea of Robert Fletcher— had stayed in her mind. She was curious, naturally I suppose, but in truth I did not care for the reason she was curious. I don’t think she gave a damn about Robert Fletcher or my godson; but she was intrigued by Charles’s son. “I think you’ll be disappointed, darling.” She put down her napkin and rose and came to me. “Perhaps I will, darling. But I should like to see for myself.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to bed now, George. I need an early start.” She kissed me lightly on the lips. I took the coffee things into the kitchen and left them for Magdalena to attend to, and returned to the sitting room for a couple of fingers of cognac. I thought there was still a warmth about Nathalie’s and my relationship, but it was not the fire that it had been at the beginning. We seemed to be drifting somewhat, albeit in parallel. No one’s fault really. We both had jobs that spilled over into our private lives—she more than I—and we had a reasonably active social life. We were not much alone together, even at the weekends, when we often had people to the Rectory to stay. I also resented the business that took her away overnight, although I did not of course let on. And while I thought it would never be something I could agree to, we now slept in separate bedrooms. It did seem a most practical arrangement; given her often late (or early) hours, and I get rough when awakened from a sound sleep. The following evening I managed quite by chance to round up Giles Bowden to dine with me at North’s in Pall Mall. Anne had arranged an evening with a friend whom he couldn’t stand, hence he was at loose ends. We had not seen them in some time, 

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and I was hoping to hear any number of lurid stories from the dungeons of the Old Bailey. I arrived at North’s rather earlier than he and went into the First Lord’s Room (so-called since the First Lord of the Treasury had once visited the club named after him by sycophants during the war of the American Revolution) which is where most members wait for their guests and may take a preprandial libation, as opposed to the serious drinkers who repair to the claustrophobic little bar on the lower ground floor where they can get pissed in privacy. The First Lord’s Room runs the width of the building and overlooks Pall Mall from the south. The walls are pierced by three floor-to-ceiling French windows that open onto false balconies. The mustard-colored walls are hung with eighteenth and early nineteenth-century portraits of sundry worthies, town types as opposed to landed gentry. North’s has always had the reputation for being a club of doers—one doesn’t know how I was elected; Fielding’s seems far more suitable—merchant venturers, barristers, a few literary types (the sort who bathe), a sprinkling of senior civil servants—from the intelligence services mostly, although they were represented to be from the Foreign Office or things such as the Anglo-Albanian Study Exchange Association, and a whiff of the Très Haute Eglise; the place seems always to have a faint smell of incense about it. In the event, I arrived in good time before Giles, waved to Geoffrey Burbage, a fat solicitor of my acquaintance, who was deep in conversation with a man called Arthur Wade, ex-Foreign Office in fact, whom I knew vaguely, and settled into one of the cracked leather chairs with a copy of the Times and a half-bottle of Mumm Cordon Rouge. The Times alas is not what it was, and the influence of the Australian is everywhere to be seen, not least in the deterioration in the quality of the writing. It has become a tool of the Government, I fear; I fear because I think a little independence is in order. The Times after all should not be to Downing Street what Pravda was to the Kremlin. 

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From the corner of my eye, I saw Alex Cross lumbering across the floor. You recall he is rather a large man, as well as somewhat overweight. I gestured in his direction. “Seeking refuge, George? We don’t see you in here much. Too busy with the backgammon crowd in St. James’s?” “Nathalie’s off in Shrewsbury on business. I’m dining with Giles Bowden.” “I haven’t seen Giles in a donkey’s age. How is he?” “Take a seat and see for yourself.” “Thank you, George.” He sat down with a great puff of air from the cushions. “Cynthia is with her sister this evening. A crisis of some proportions.” “What will you have?” “I think what you’re having looks rather splendid.” A moment’s negotiation and I had a bottle of the Cordon Rouge in a bucket next to me, and two more flutes. “Nathalie well?” he said. “Your very good health.” “And yours. Very well indeed. Goes from strength to strength. Puts me quite in the shadows. Not that I was ever out of them.” “Nathalie has a formidable mind, George. I’m rather happy she did not specialize in securities law.” “How do you find policing the city, Alex? All I know is what I read in the newspapers and the great wads of impenetrable prose that our compliance officer sends ‘round every half hour.” But Alex looked thoughtful. “You and I have been in the City a long time, George. There have always been crooks. Who can forget the property scandals of the early seventies? Who can forget Robert Murphy?” “Certainly not I.” “But now everyone seems concerned to make as much as he can as fast as he can, any way that he can, legal or illegal, and devil take the hindmost. It’s as if the computer has speeded up 

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everyone’s consciousness, but not their consciences, and if not their consciences, then not their appreciation of consequences, either. I hope I’m wrong. But in many ways I wish I’d stayed retired and in ignorance.” This was not the Alex Cross of old. “What—the Tiger of Lombard Street?” I was using a sobriquet that had been attached to Alex years before by one of the scrofulous left-wing tabloids and that those of us who loved him would not let him forget. “I’d nearly forgotten that, George. You’re much older than I thought. Speaking of age, is this elderly gentleman Giles Bowden?” Giles cackled as we exchanged greetings. “Were you trying a nice murder today?” “I fear not, George. Securities fraud. As Alex knows.” Alex nodded sadly. “The Mann case.” He rose. “I’m off. Nice seeing you, Giles. Thanks for the drink, George.” “You won’t join us?” “Thank you, no, George. Most kind. I’m going to bolt my dinner and incarcerate myself in the library for several hours.” Alex wandered off, looking preoccupied, as was I. “He looked rather unhappy, I thought,” Giles said. “Turning over too many rocks. He doesn’t like what’s crawling out from under.” “Surely he can’t be surprised.” “I don’t think he anticipated the extent. Or how high it could reach.” Giles paused a moment before he said, “No indeed.” “I was rather hoping you’d sing for your supper by describing a nice dismemberment in Surbiton, or something equally grisly. Instead I discover you’re doing nothing more interesting than securities fraud. That sort of thing is becoming a drug on the market.” One longed to ask him about the Mann case, but I knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t say anything other than what I’d already seen in the newspapers. It was yet another of the insider dealing 

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scandals (involving, apparently, almost half the board), but this was the first time I’d been close to anyone with intimate knowledge of such matters; or at least, so I thought—who knew what our own employees were getting up to? Over port and coffee in the smoking room after dinner, a plan began forming about the weekend on which Nathalie seemed so set. “You and Anne have not been down to the Rectory for a long time, Giles. Shall we fix up a weekend soon?” “That would be lovely, George.” He took a diary from his pocket and flipped through the pages, frowning and muttering to himself. “I’m afraid late September or early October will be the earliest we can do it.” I had out my own diary. “Shall we say the weekend of October ninth? That’s the Friday.” “Looks fine.” “I’ll confirm later. We’re thinking of having my godson Robert Fletcher to stay.” “Charles Fletcher’s son?” “The same.” “Anne will be interested in meeting him. Is he like Charles?” “He looks very much like Charles. But on brief acquaintance I would say not.” “What’s happened to his mother?” “Become a drunk.” Giles shook his head. “The tendency was there certainly when we knew them. You know, a lot of people blamed Nathalie over the dissolution of that marriage.” “A lot of people are very foolish much of the time. I know you’re not among that number, Giles. How can you assign blame to one person in something that complicated? Jean was a disappointed woman, Charles was under constant pressure, Nathalie met the sort of man she never knew existed. And the reasons for all of that began well before we knew any of them or before they 

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knew each other.” Was I protesting too much, I wondered. “I’m sorry, Giles.” “On the contrary, George. But how does young Robert come to be in London?” “He’s been transferred here by an American bank.” “In that, at least, he’s like his father. Which is it?” “The Manhattan Banking Corporation.” “I recall the name. Did they not go through a rather bad patch some years ago?” “There’s that formidable memory of yours again, Giles.” “It’s why I’m such an excellent barrister, George.” I think he was joking, but one never could tell with Giles. “Just so. They were in the middle of a large syndicated loan to a West African country when it blew up in civil war.” “Maraka it was, wasn’t it? And the bank was straightened out by a woman.” “Right again. She became the CEO. Rather dishy, as I recall.” “I see you still maintain your priorities, George.” “Of course, old thing.” *** At the end of the evening, Giles after all did pass on a few lurid stories from his real practice, which was much nastier than securities fraud. But crime is getting less healthy these days—no longer the sweet old dears who do away with their relations who are uncomplimentary about the budgerigar; these days it’s all drugs and muggings and has got increasingly violent. After his recitation, I felt quite as if I needed a spine stiffener before I returned to Cadogan Square. “Will you have a whisky and soda, Giles?” “No, thank you very much, George. I must be catching my train. Thanks for a lovely meal. It was nice to see Alex again.” “I’ll ask them to join us in October.” “Splendid.”

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The smoking room did not provide any more jolly company, so I wandered down to the bar on the lower ground floor. The doors to the garden were still open, despite night having fallen, and the air in the room was fresh. Geoffrey Burbage and Arthur Wade and a younger man with an American accent were in conversation. I asked Max for a whisky and soda and sat in the corner opposite at a little table beneath a wall sconce. As I was relighting my cigar, Colin Walker entered the bar through the French window. “Good evening, George,” he said. “I believe the tradesmen’s entrance is around the side.” “There’s no call for you to talk that way. I’ve never done you any harm.” “It’s on general principles, Colin. You remember what those are surely?” He was so angry he’d gone white, which I could see even in the underlit room. “I know who has poisoned you against me.” “Go no further, Colin, either physically or orally.” The three chaps opposite were all ears, and Max was preparing himself to intervene. I ought to have stood then, but the evening of drinking had somewhat slowed my reactions. “Be careful, George,” he said, becoming even more sibilant and slimy than normal. “Your horns do not become you.” I threw my glass but he was gone. It bounced harmlessly off the open door and fell unbroken to the carpet. I had managed to splash myself and the rug with whisky and ice. Cries of sympathy sounded in my ears—” Don’t pay him any attention” and “Bounder.” “How did he get in here?” I heard myself saying. “Reciprocal arrangements,” Max said. “The Beaux are closed in August.” I was shaking with rage and asked Max for a neat whisky. At that moment, I hated Colin Walker more than I’d ever hated anyone—more even than my father. Shortly thereafter, when 

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I had gained a degree of composure, I nodded to Burbage and company, and to Max, and left North’s. The composure was entirely external. I spent the cab ride home drafting letters of outrage to the club chairman, and discarding them all; and, despite a cognac in the drawing room after I’d got home, slept badly that night.

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Chapter Seventeen

N o t l ong a f t e rwa r d s , Robert Fletcher rang to invite me to lunch at his bank. In truth, I hadn’t much interest, but he said he’d like to introduce me to his corporate finance people, and as that was my job, and it was a free feed, I accepted. While he was on the phone, I asked him down to Suffolk the weekend of October 9th. “It’s rather d.i.y. during the day,” I said, hoping he’d decline. “Not to worry, George,” he said. “May I bring a friend? She won’t eat much, I promise.” “I take it you will not require separate bedrooms?” “Indeed not.” “Robert, we are having another couple to stay, and another couple in for dinner on Saturday, both old friends, who knew your father well. You will not take it amiss if I ask you whether this young woman is. . .” “She’s fine, George. She’s a colleague in Corporate Finance. Very smart. Princeton and the B School. I think you’ll like her. I’ll introduce you when you come for lunch.” The young woman in question was very attractive—dark hair, dark eyes, very good figure, good legs. She was wearing a dark suit and gold earrings when we were introduced—she was called Jan Woodward—and she had a firm handshake; rather too firm for a woman, I thought.

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“How are you, George?” she said, and did not wait for an answer. “Thank you for your invitation.” I demurred becomingly, and Robert whisked me away to one of the corporate dining rooms. At one end of the small dining room there was a bar set up on the sideboard, from which one of the bank lackeys poured sherry for me and tomato juice for Robert. The table was laid for four, but there was only one decanter of claret on the side board, with the empty bottle beyond. I noted that the cru was très petit: the sacrifices one makes for business. The next person to arrive was another American, Tom Davis, who was Robert’s immediate supervisor. We exchanged cards and he remarked on what good weather we were having (if it was good then, it must have been remarkable). The bank minion poured a large glass of Perrier with ice and lemon for Davis without his asking. “You’re reponsible for leveraged buyouts at New Broad Street, George?” Davis asked. “And shipping and property.” I did not have long to bask in the awestruck admiration I saw in his eyes. We were interrupted by the arrival of the department head—my counterpart at Manhattan Banking—a curious fellow called Max Fougere, who was certainly not American. By surname and his slight accent— despite a heavy overlay of American pronunciation and diction—he might have been French, but he looked rather Middle Eastern. Perhaps he was from the Midi (but he was too tall for that) or from North Africa. He did not volunteer any enlightening remarks. He was a large, heavy man with sleepy eyes and a small black moustache and slow movements. I distrusted him at once, and my instincts are rarely wrong. Over lunch—badly cooked with second-rate ingredients, and the wine was as mediocre as I’d feared, but no one else seemed to notice either the one or the other; indeed, Fougere drank still Malvern throughout lunch—we discussed trends in the LBO 

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market, now that the bloom was somewhat off the rose with many deals not living up to their promise (or worse), and heavy downsizing taking place amongst our fellow institutions. “Are you interested in sub debt?” Fougere asked. “Rarely, and never alone,” I said. “If we take subordinated debt, it will be as part of a strip.” By which I meant that it would have to come with senior debt and equity, and we are not one of your stuffee banks into which you can dump the riskiest parts of your deals, thank you very much. “Understood,” Fougere said, and I knew that he did. “How much can you provide in total finance—for the right deal, of course?” “Of course. Up to, say, thirty million pounds.” I was stretching our limit a bit, but one never knew what opportunities might arise. “But I must caution you that we do not often participate in deals from other banks; they normally participate in ours. Sound structure and documentation, you see. Best to do it oneself.” But if the fee were big enough, my fellow directors might find themselves able to bend a little. “I’d say our structure and documentation are second to none,” the enthusiastic Davis said. Robert, I noticed, said nothing, and looked for his cues to Fougere; and since Fougere said and did nothing to confirm Davis’s comment, Robert said and did nothing. The boy seemed a quick study, but I’m not certain he had chosen his role models wisely. The decanter was nearly half-full when the staff chappie came to clear it away, so I asked for a little more. No one joined me. We were given what appeared to be tinned fruit salad, but it may have been simply that the chef was so cack-handed that he managed to make fresh fruit taste as if it had been tinned. “Manhattan Bank went through a rather bad patch in 1980 or ‘81, didn’t it?” I said. Fougere sighed as if he’d had to respond to the question many times in the past, was thoroughly bored by it, but was too much the diplomatist to tell the enquirer to 

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piss off. “Ancient history,” he said. “The perpetrators of that folly are all gone, and there’s not a cent of Marakan risk left on our books. The fact is, George, the Manhattan Banking Corporation of today is nothing like the bank that used to stumble around the world making bigger and bigger loans at lower and lower margins to countries that any fool could see would be unable to repay.” I wondered what Max Fougere had been doing in the late seventies. “We’re interested in making money, George, not in losing it.” A novel concept, I thought. What I should really like to have found out was whether their extremely handsome female chairman was still about, although I knew that Fougere was not a man to be trusted with such an innocuous question; nevertheless I pressed ahead. “Is your chairman still Mrs. . . ?” An involuntary little smile passed Fougere’s lips. “Vanderpane. No. She retired in 1988.” Again, he could not restrain the little smile of satisfaction, which I interpreted to signify that he was aiming to move higher in the organization, and that Mrs. Vanderpane had somehow stood in his way. Must have been a clever girl. “She was the right person at the right time,” Fougere continued, “but she was yesterday’s chairman. The bank moved beyond her, and she recognized it.” His underlings hung on every word. “I’m afraid I’ve got a meeting,” he said, looking at his watch in the event I did not get the point, “so I must be off.” He rose slowly and we stood with him. “Very nice of you to come, George. Perhaps Tom or Robert can ring you when we have an opportunity we think might be of interest?” He extended a limp hand while uttering this slight, and I smiled winningly in return because I did not want to embarrass Robert, who in the event had not appreciated the insult. *** The weekend that Robert was scheduled to come down to Suffolk did not begin well. Nathalie and I took an early train down on Friday. I had invited Robert and his friend to join us, but he said 

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that he couldn’t get away that early and in the event preferred to drive. I warned him about Friday traffic and the difficulties of getting through northeast London at any time, but to no avail. The young man knew his own mind, even though it might be empty of knowledge. It was on the way down in the first-class carriage to Ipswich that Nathalie first mooted the idea of her going into politics. “Whatever for?” I asked, not as unkindly as it must sound now. “I think I could make a difference.” “I’ve never detected an overwhelming interest on your part in dealing with the great unwashed British public, Nathalie.” “With respect, George, that is what my job is all about.” “I do understand, darling. I meant politics as it relates to parties.” “You know I’m a natural Tory.” “Yes, but you’re also a frog, which can’t please the Tories much.” She dismissed this irrelevance with a wave of the hand. “I’ve been approached by Central Office,” she said, rather breathlessly, and I knew she was lost; to the siren call of Central Office, I mean. I can’t say I was pleased. I’d begun missing Nathalie rather a lot of recent, and the idea of her spending most nights—certainly more than she did already—loitering about the Palace of Westminster filled me with dismay. Why was I not happy for her? Because perhaps I am rather selfish after all, perhaps I liked my creature comforts too much, perhaps I envied her. Perhaps because I was still in love with her, but she was playing less and less of a part in my life; and I, perforce, in hers. “In what way will this madness manifest itself?” “They’d like me to stand in the by-election for Shrewsbury South when Bobby Warrender retires early next year.” I ought to have been proud, I know; or if not proud, then pleased as punch. But I wasn’t. There was much too much about Nathalie’s life that I didn’t know. I remembered vividly her trip to Shrewsbury in 

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August. That she had to visit her purveyors of Quack’s Magic Elixir I had no doubt; but that was not the only thing she had been doing. And why had she not told me? Thought that I would disapprove? She was probably right. We reached Campsea Ashe at about six-thirty and were at the Rectory ten minutes later, flying down roads that I knew like the back of my hand. By the time Ann and Giles arrived an hour later, the fire was laid—it was a chilly evening—the mackerel pate was already on the plates, and the daube de boeuf was bubbling away in the slow oven of the Aga. We put the Bowdens into the front bedroom, across the hall from ours. Both rooms have the best views from the house, across the fields to the village. I left them to settle in—after giving them each a drink; Giles looked as if he could use one—and helped Nathalie finish with preparations for dinner. Neither of us said anything about the absence of our other house guests, although I must say I was annoyed. Had I not warned Robert, I would have been more sympathetic. They arrived at twenty past nine, while we were savoring the daube. Nathalie and the Bowdens remained at table while I left to get Robert and his friend into the house and down to dinner as quickly as possible. I went into the forecourt to help them with their bags, and found Robert just unloading the boot of a BMW. “Sorry we’re late, George,” he said, “but the traffic was a bitch.” And, as if that were the end of it, he said, “You remember Jan Woodward.” Again the firm handshake. “The traffic is always a bitch, Robert,” I said. “Welcome to the Rectory.” I took them to the room on the back on our side without my usual bonhomie. “Now I’m sorry to have to tell you, but we’re in the middle of dinner, so please do join us as quickly as you can.” The young woman had the grace to look embarrassed. Robert was impenetrable. They appeared ten minutes later, the young man unforthcoming, the woman by that time very collected. She 

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had managed to change into something quite soft and fetching, and I recognized that she was after all rather a toothsome lass, despite the overlay of banking professionalism. My sense was that she knew what she was about more than my benighted godson. The introductions were no more awkward than one would expect under the circumstances and they sat down to eat the remains of the daube, while we got onto the cheese. We established for the Bowdens’s benefit that Jan was also American, and that they both worked for the same bank and in the same department. “We knew you when you were very much younger, Robert,” Anne said pleasantly. “How is your mother?” “Not very well.” “I’m sorry to hear it.” “She drinks too much, you see.” I had a feeling that Robert was rather enjoying being somewhat sensational; so much so that he did not recognize the poor impression he had begun to make. Jan Woodward came to his assistance by pressing Giles into discussing some of his more interesting cases. As he would, when presented with a question with such a vast possibility of response, he paused for a good while as he pondered an answer, and at the end of the deliberation, came up with rather a limp story about a straight-forward murder case. He was, no doubt, considering his audience. “Do you specialize in murder, Mr. Bowden?” she asked. “Criminal law actually. Recently I’ve been working on City-related crimes. Securities fraud, insider dealing, that kind of thing.” “How very interesting. What are those like?” “I was about to say I can’t tell you anything about them. They are sub judice.” “That sounds like what Robert says to me whenever I ask him about the deals he’s working on,” she said. “‘Need-to-know basis only.’ Do you prosecute or defend?” “Generally I act for the Crown; that is to say, I prosecute.” 

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And all the while Nathalie, I noticed, was observing the creature Robert most closely. He ate and drank a great deal, possibly because he was nervous, possibly also because he realized finally what a cockup he’d made. Given subsequent events, I have my doubts about the latter. Jan ate and drank very little, and was in as firm control of her faculties (and of Robert) at the end as she had been at the beginning. We had coffee and a cognac in the sitting room, and despite their youth and the lateness of the hour when they’d arrived, Robert and Jan were the first to go up to bed. When they left, we asked Giles and Anne what they’d planned for the following day. “We thought we’d go to Minsmere,” Anne said. That’s a bird reserve on the Suffolk coast near Dunwich. “Anne’s going for the birds,” Giles said. “I need a dose of bracing Suffolk air to blow away the legal cobwebs.” “You’ll find it bracing enough, I expect,” said the Provençal half of Nathalie. “Nonsense,” I said. “Summer is hardly over.” Anne said, “Generally speaking, George, I found the only way this year that I knew it was summer was by looking at the calendar.” “Gives us our pluck.” “I doubt if we’ll have any left unless I drag Giles,” who had settled deeper and deeper into the sofa, “upstairs to bed. Let us help with the washing up.” “No need,” Nathalie said, “there’s nothing to it.” Quite apart from the fact that I hate participating in the washing up, I should love to have cross-examined Giles Bowden, Q.C. on our guests under cover of the noise from the washing machine, but it was not to be. Anne did say as I kissed her good night, “He’s not at all like Charles, is he?” “Not in the least,” I heard myself say before I could prevent it.

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“Nor like Jean, for that matter. I’m sorry, George. I do hope you’ll forgive me.” “Not another word,” I said gallantly. “Sleep well.” Nathalie stood at the basin and the dishwasher while I cleared the detritus from the dining room. “I’m willing to give him a chance,” she said. “The poor boy was just nervous, I suspect.” “I don’t see that we have much choice, my darling.” “Although he looks so much like him, it’s difficult to believe he’s Charles’s son. I’m certain he has not shown his best side to us yet.” I was tempted to say that he was not in fact Charles’s son, because at a time when he needed Charles most, Charles was not there, having fallen in love with another woman—you, my darling, in fact—and having left not only Robert’s mother but also Robert himself. And if Robert was anyone’s son he was Jean’s, but a seriously unbalanced Jean. “I’m glad that Giles and Anne are here,” I said. “But what must they be thinking?” She said this to the air rather than to me, but it was a most uncharacteristic remark; she would not normally have thought that it reflected badly on us— rather the opposite, in fact, having taken the chance on people we didn’t know because he was connected with someone whom we had all known and loved. It was as if Nathalie were already considering her constituency. *** I had difficulty falling to sleep that night, and Nathalie was already breathing regularly by the time I had even begun to drift. From the room behind my head, I heard—reasonably muffled because the house was well-built—the unmistakable sound of a woman having an orgasm. I became, I must admit, vividly awake, and wondered whether Jan Woodward was actually experiencing pleasure, or whether she was faking it.

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C h a p t e r E igh t e e n

W e b r e a k fa s t e d at n i n e with Giles and Anne, the former stoking himself against the rigors of the North Sea gales with large mounds of Mrs. Wilkins’s homemade marmalade on brown toast. Anne as usual ate like a bird, nibbling at a crust as if it were the most delicious thing in the world. Nathalie and I each had a boiled egg. We were all doing our best to avoid what we most wanted to talk about; we failed, however. “She seems rather nice,” Anne ventured. “Very self-possessed. Intelligent,” Nathalie added. “On the other hand, he’s. . .” “Yes, well. . .” Giles paused in his second assault on the marmalade. “Puerile? I think that might be it.” “Good old Giles,” I said. “Always the one with the mot juste.” “Naive,” said Nathalie. “Yes that,” he replied. “Immature. Unformed.” “But not unintelligent.” Nathalie again. “No no, not unintelligent.” A pause. “His manners too leave something to be desired.” I said, “What we all mean is that he has a lot of growing up to do, and as Anne mentioned last night, none of us can believe

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that he is Charles’s son, despite the strong physical resemblance. I think in his present form he is not the son of anyone we used to know. Jean is not at all well, evidently.” “So he made quite clear last evening,” Anne said, for her somewhat fiercely. “I think it’s time we let the birds see us, Giles.” “What are you planning for lunch?” I said. “Not decided. A ploughman’s at the Slug and Ptomaine?” “Why not join Nathalie and me in Southwold. A new place I’ve discovered. Quite good if you stick to the simpler things. Good fish. Chez Simone.” “Sounds a treat, George. At what time?” “Will quarter past one suit? Good. Perhaps we can go for a walk afterwards.” “I shouldn’t miss that for the world,” Giles said. “George Evans going for a walk.” Anne patted Giles on the hand. “Giles, you say that every time we spend a weekend with George and Nathalie.” “Giles doesn’t appreciate what a great countryman I am.” “As much as I am a master jewel thief. Well, enough of this badinage. We must be off.” “What are Robert and Jan going to do?” “I haven’t the foggiest,” I said. “Perhaps we can show them the NatWest branch in the village.” “George, you are wicked,” Anne said. What in fact to do with Robert and Jan was a problem. I had no idea what they might be interested in, and they had not been forthcoming the evening before. I had told Robert before he came down to Suffolk that one was on one’s own during the day; but I was afraid they were going to end up underfoot. It did not help that I was rather annoyed with Nathalie—now placidly reading the Times over a second cup of coffee—for insisting on our having this callow youth to stay, although it must be admitted that I acquiesced. We could have asked him for a drink in London and I suspect she would have learned all she wanted to know. 

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They appeared at ten-thirty, by which time Nathalie was doing some work in the garden and I was tranquilly reading the newspapers in the sitting room. “Good morning, Jan. Good morning, Robert. Slept well?” The lad was looking somewhat badly put together that morning, albeit freshly shaved. One of the problems was that he was wearing city shoes with his corduroys. She, by contrast, was looking as toothsome in daylight—although it was grey daylight, the sitting room is a light-filled room—as she had the evening before. The collar of a white blouse showed above the neck of a rust-colored pullover, and she was wearing very well-tailored beige wool trousers. Her shoes were entirely appropriate for the country. There was no question she knew what she was about. There was also no question that she was extremely attractive. It was not that she was pretty—Nathalie and for that matter Anne were each better looking—or simply that she was well-built, which she was, but she was very striking, and the darkness of her eyes was intriguing. Were they simply dark, or was there something behind their opacity? Or was I simply romanticizing a sexy bird? Whatever it was, the fact is that her choice of lover strained credulity. “Slept well?” I asked. “Very well, thank you,” they said together. I gathered up the newspapers. “Come, I’ll show you about breakfast.” I led the way into the kitchen. “Bread and toaster are there,” I said, indicating these homely domestic objects, “butter and jam on the table. Juice is in the jug. Eggs. Newspapers. Coffee? Both? I’ll make some.” Robert sat at the table yawning and glancing uncertainly through the Financial Times. He looked pasty, as if he got too little fresh air, and I felt suddenly rather sorry for him. The morning stripped away his cocky self-confidence, leaving for me a glimpse of the little boy I once used to observe, puzzled at the 

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tension between his parents. Jan made toast for them both. She was, it appeared, quite knowledgeable about his likes and dislikes, and I surmised that they were living together. As it turned out, that was not wholly true. “What are you going to do today, Robert?” I said as I poured coffee for them and for me. I sat between them at the head of the table. From the corner of my eye, I could see Jan putting minute quantities of marmalade onto her toast. She was very still. “What would you suggest, George?” One was tempted to ask what he was interested in, if anything. I would think that, having been invited to somewhere he’d never been, he would have bothered to inform himself a little about the surroundings. Either he was entirely incurious (why then had he bothered to come?) or else he expected, despite my warning, to be taken care of. “You can do what you like, really. We need to go to Southwold to pick up a couple of cases of wine. We’re meeting Giles and Anne for lunch, and you’re welcome to come along if you’d like. It’s a pretty town. Site of the Battle of Sole Bay in the Anglo-Dutch Wars.” “I’d love to come,” Jan said. “The Delcap deal went to Warburgs, Jan,” Robert said. She murmured an acknowledgment, but continued to smile at me. “I’m quite prepared to have them return to London,” I said to Nathalie when she appeared from the garden. They were upstairs getting ready for our excursion. “You know that’s impossible, George. We simply must make the best of it.” “I didn’t want him in the first place.” Her eyes widened and then narrowed, as they had a way of doing whenever she was truly annoyed. “You’ve made the point, George. You’re being tiresome.” On the way to Southwold, Nathalie suggested that we stop in at the church at Blythburgh, a splendid building (albeit a little 

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out of proportion in itself and in its venue: the tower is somewhat short for the length of the nave, the steeple having collapsed during a storm and never having been rebuilt; and it is much larger than the village would need) that lies majestically in the flat Suffolk landscape just off the A12. Her head tilted back, Jan said, “I thought Cromwell’s troops made a point of destroying graven images.” She was looking at the wooden carvings of angels on the ceiling. Robert had wandered off alone, glancing everywhere like a skittish animal and, I was certain, seeing nothing. “You’re quite right,” Nathalie said. “They did. I don’t know why they missed Blythburgh.” “They didn’t,” I said. “They were pretty bad shots, although they did destroy the angels’ wings. They’ve been restored. Perhaps some of them missed on purpose. There must have been one or two Roundheads who did not think this was all simply idolatry.” And looking at Jan Woodward then, the curve of her throat in profile, one could not fault Robert’s idolatry. “Don’t miss the carvings of the Seven Deadly Sins on the bench ends,” I continued. “My favorite is Gluttony.” *** At Chez Simone we sat three on a side on wooden benches, with Nathalie and me across from each other in the center. We had soupe de poisson and poached halibut with new potatoes and a green salad, except Robert, who of course does not like fish and had a veal chop instead. Neither Giles nor Nathalie had anything to drink because they were driving. The rest of us shared a couple of bottles of Rully. We sat very close together on the benches, and from time to time I felt Jan’s leg or hip press against me briefly; not intended, I was certain at the time. But I noticed the warmth of her next to me in that somewhat underheated room. “What took you into banking?” Giles asked her. “The impossibility of earning a living wage at a publishing house,” she said. 

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“What did you read at university?” “English and American literature; not splendid preparation for the world of business. At least of our business.” “What might have been better, do you think?” “Economics and finance,” she said, and added after a pause, “Military history, perhaps.” She smiled. “No, better—Italian Renaissance history.” I think she was speaking only partly in jest, but that may be hindsight. We picked up the wine after lunch—a dozen of claret and a dozen of Rhône that I had bought en primeur five years before and that Adnam’s, the wine merchants, had been storing for me. After we’d left the cases in the boot of our car, we walked a little in the town and along the row of brightly colored cabanas above the beach. The sky was solid grey, but with no suggestion of rain yet, and the stiff wind from the North Sea was cold. Anne suggested that we all go for a good walk along the strand at Aldeburgh. Jan accepted enthusiastically and Robert, reluctant as always, agreed to go along. Nathalie said that she and I needed to return to the Rectory. Nathalie drove fast, but with skill and care, completely unlike her half-compatriots. Her mind moved upon silence, I remembered from my school days. “I think ultimately he’s rather a sad boy,” she said. “More to be pitied than despised.” “I agree completely, darling. He seems to be without an anchor, making gestures he’s learned here and there, but that he doesn’t understand. No one to wipe his nose and dry his tears.” “Not surprising after all. His mother left him also.” “Metaphorically, yes. Jan seems to know what she’s doing, however.” “Rather too much so for my taste,” Nathalie said. “I’m not certain I altogether like her.” “Why not, darling?” “Too many hidden agendas, I fear.” “And Robert has none.” 

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“As far as I can tell, he has no agendas of any sort. I think she does most of his thinking for him.” “No matter, my darling. We won’t see them again.” “Won’t we?” she said, distractedly, her eyes on the road. It was odd that Nathalie did not like the girl. In the aura of quiet competence that surrounded each, they were very similar. “What did you say, darling?” “I said perhaps you ought to take Robert under your wing. He is your godson, after all. Heaven knows he needs some guidance.” The idea filled me with horror. “But the chap is twenty-seven, Nathalie, not fourteen.” And to the brief look that she gave me, I said, “Well, perhaps I ought,” I said.

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Chapter Nineteen

W e h a d M r s . W i l k i n s in that evening to cook and serve. When I came into the kitchen at seven-thirty, she was at the bubbling pots stirring this and watching that, and there was a lovely smell of lamb roasting with rosemary. “Good evening, Mrs. W. How are you getting on?” “Thank you, Mr. Evans.” “And how is Mr. Wilkins this evening?” She dismissed her husband with a wave of the hand. “Cranky as ever. I’ve left him propped in front of the telly with his bucket from the Compass.” The Globe and Compass was the Wilkins’s local pub. “Well I hope he knows how grateful we are that he lets you leave the nest at night to help us out.” Mrs. Wilkins guffawed. “I’m the one what ought to be grateful, Mr. Evans. Give him his telly and his pint and I mayn’t’s well be there.” “I know we can’t get along without you, so I don’t see how Mr. Wilkins can.” I think she blushed. She was a sweet old dear, heavy and with wispy white hair, looking like old grannies everywhere, and if you stuck to fairly basic things, joints and veg and potatoes, she did very well by you. I decanted four bottles of St. Estèphe to go with the lamb, put two decanters on the sideboard and two on the table that 

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Nathalie had laid when we returned from Southwold. I next set up the drinks tray and took it into the drawing room. And having found the whole day rather trying, and Robert extremely hard work, I decided to reward myself with a stiff whisky, a large measure of which I poured over a single ice cube. Robert was the next to appear, and, I was delighted to see, was properly dressed in a dark suit. He looked, in fact, well turned out. “Hello, Robert. What will you have?” “Is that Scotch, George? That would be fine. With some ice and water please.” I gave him his drink. “Your very good health.” “Jan will be down in a minute.” With Nathalie’s insistence that I should take him under my wing in mind—I realize that strains credulity, my own no less than yours—I did something I normally do not do with any guest. I asked him about his work. “I love it,” he said. “What is it that you love about it?” “I like being thrown in at the deep end immediately. We’re responsible for a deal from beginning to end: generating the transaction, valuing the company, structuring the debt and equity, analyzing whether the company can bear that level of debt. I like the problem-solving.” “And are you responsible for following the loan until it’s been repaid?” “And I can’t deny I love the bonuses that come along with doing deals,” he said, either not having heard me, or having chosen to ignore the question. “And Jan does more or less the same things?” “More or less. She’s an associate—I’m a vice president—so she does a lot more number-crunching and less deal generation.” “Is she good at it?” 

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“Very good at it,” he said, after a slight hesitation. As I should have expected, I thought. “And here is the very woman of whom we speak. Robert has just been singing your praises.” Jan had come into the room as Robert had been delivering his slightly reluctant encomium. “What am I very good at?” she said. She was wearing a wine-red dress that went extremely well with her dark hair and dark eyes, and gold earrings and a gold necklace. There was nothing particularly provocative about the way she was dressed—she erred rather on the side of conservatism—but I felt palpably attracted to her across the ten feet that had separated us as she had begun to approach. No fool like an old fool, George, I told myself; look, but don’t touch. “What am I very good at?” She was looking at me. “I believe Robert called it ‘number-crunching.’” “I suspect that means only that I have more patience for it than he does.” Robert put his hand around her waist and kissed her lightly and chuckled in a manly fashion without recognizing that she was being euphemistic. “What can I get you, my dear?” “I’d love some white wine, please.” I poured a glass for her and wished with all my being that the others would arrive soon because I did not like the way Jan Woodward was filling the room. Giles appeared next, rubbing his hands more like a notary than Queen’s Counsel, and standing with his back to the fire. He took a small, neat whisky. Anne and Nathalie appeared together soon afterwards, and the force of Jan Woodward’s presence was reduced for me to manageable proportions. Having seen that we were all well looked after, Nathalie took a glass of white wine and went to check on last minute things with Mrs. Wilkins. By the time the Crosses arrived, there was a good buzz of conversation 

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going, and I was, foolishly perhaps, rather pleased to see Robert perking up a bit. Since my conversation in the car with Nathalie that afternoon, I had been feeling rather protective of him; and feeling splendid about myself as a result. I left him describing the intricacies of leveraged buyouts to Giles, who seemed deeply interested—and probably was, although one could never tell with Giles—to greet the Crosses, whose car I had just heard crunching across the gravel in the forecourt. “Cynthia, how. . .” I said, with kisses, “. . . good. . . to see you. Come in quickly. It’s cold. We’ll have frost tonight. Hello, Alex.” “You haven’t been drinking, have you, George?” “Certainly. Come in, come in.” Kisses all ‘round as the Crosses greeted Anne and Giles, and Nathalie, who had by then returned to the drawing room, and then I introduced them to Robert and Jan. “Your father was a splendid man,” Alex said. Cynthia took Jan away. “But of course you don’t need to be told that.” “Thank you,” Robert said. He had no doubt been told such frequently outside his own household, but he didn’t know it himself. Alex was wrong: Robert had to be told. “What brings you to England. Are you visiting or. . .” “No, sir. I work here. I’m with an American bank.” I gave Alex a glass of wine and Cynthia a Perrier, topped up everyone else, and handed ‘round the nuts. When I returned to Alex and Robert, the latter was saying, “I’m not sure. Lebanese, I think. He doesn’t talk about it. At least not to me,” by which I assumed that Alex had asked about Max Fougere. Alex said, “I fear the thing I recall most vividly about Manhattan Banking is the Maraka loan fiasco some years ago. Although you are a very different institution now.” “Very different,” Robert said, nodding sagely. “Of course, I wasn’t at the bank then. Max always says that he could never understand why we went around the world in those days lending 

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more and more money at lower and lower spreads to borrowers who obviously would be unable to repay.” “What position did Max Fougere hold then?” “I think he was head of International Banking.” On which piquant note, Nathalie called us into dinner. *** Everyone had a tot of manzanilla with the mushroom soup to start, following which Mrs. Wilkins appeared with the lamb— already carved, bless her—and passed it around. The claret was every bit as good as I thought it would be. Poor Cynthia, who was on my right, had only half a glass because she was driving. “Shop doing well?” I asked her. She owned and managed a book and stationery shop in Framlingham. “Very well, George, thank you. I wish Alex would help out.” “Perhaps Ransomes would underwrite a bond issue for the shop.” “I’m serious, George. I think Alex is working too hard still. Retirement indeed. And he’s finding the City depressing these days.” “I don’t like it much myself anymore, darling.” She was looking at Alex, who was listening closely to Anne’s description of their visit to Minsmere. Cynthia went on. “I think he’s now rather glad that Anthony didn’t go into the city.” Anthony was their son, a bright lad with a first-class degree from Cambridge who was a professional photographer. I remember Alex’s being not quite approving of the son and heir’s choice of occupation at the beginning, just after he’d come down. “Where is Anthony now?” “Nepal.” Like all good mothers might everywhere, she looked as if she thought it dangerous. Anything so exotic must be. “Safer than London,” I said to her unspoken thought.

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I looked at Nathalie, who was in a three-way discussion at the bottom of the table with Giles and the girl. She was still the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on, and far outshone the still-dark creature across the table from her. *** As the ladies went off and Alex, Giles, and Robert moved closer to their genial host, I sent ‘round a decent port. It was not the best in the cellar, but not bad by any means: but I knew that neither Alex nor Giles was a great port drinker, and Robert would have too inexperienced a palate to notice or to care; too indiscriminate as well. “But why should there be such a stigma connected with trading on insider knowledge?” Robert said as he sat down, apparently continuing a discussion that had begun at the end of dinner. He was looking at Alex. “Apart from ethical or moral considerations, it’s against the law.” “Yes, I know. But why? Let’s say I’ve done my homework— read all the brokerage reports about a company and its industry, for example, and can put two and two together, and know a lot more than the guy who owns the stock. I should be able to take advantage of that information to buy shares he wants to sell. No one is forcing him to sell, after all. That’s not insider dealing, but I know something he doesn’t.” “And that’s precisely the point,” Alex said. “It’s not insider dealing. You’re talking about information to which everyone has access and can use or not use as he chooses. You know more simply because you’ve been more diligent, and probably more intelligent.” “And if the other guy wants to buy and I want to sell, and he hasn’t noticed that the bottom has fallen out of the market for widgets or whatever, that would be OK too.”

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“Of course. It depends on public access. Insider dealing is trading on information which you, and possibly your colleagues, have, but which is not available to the public. That is unethical as well as illegal.” “Here perhaps. And in the States. But not on the Continent; Spain and Italy, for example.” “Which no doubt explains why the capital markets in both are so well developed.” Not one to be deterred by irony, or perhaps even to recognize it, Robert plowed on. “But what if, in the two scenarios I outlined, the information were available only to a few people. What’s the real difference? You’re still not forcing the other guy to buy or sell; you can’t. I frankly don’t understand why we regard as illegal or immoral being smart enough to use information you have developed yourself, whether it’s available to others or not. Companies that do market research do it all the time to companies that don’t. Isn’t business—or life, for that matter—about trying to profit by getting an advantage over the other guy?” The table became very still. “I certainly hope not,” Alex said. The port had been ‘round again, but no one wanted more. “Shall we join the ladies?” I said. Alex and Cynthia left shortly after Alex had had a cup of coffee (“Lovely as always, Nathalie,” Cynthia said, “and your young friends are very nice.”) and I went outside to see them off. The air was very cold and the sky was still overcast. Alex stood beside the car that Cynthia was warming up. “I’m going to be in town much of next week, George,” he said. “Can you come ‘round to North’s one evening for a drink? I’ll ring you.” I watched their taillights disappear before I went inside to find everyone sitting in the drawing room looking slightly sleepy and cozy. Robert was sipping a glass of the eau de vie that

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Nathalie had offered the ladies, and looking, I thought, rather pleased with himself. A few moments later, Anne said, “I think I’m going to bed. Are you coming Giles?” She kissed Nathalie and me, and said goodnight to Robert and Jan. They followed soon afterwards, Robert looking rather unsteady as he stood up from the deep chair in which he had slumped. I suspected I would hear no orgasms from that quarter tonight, real or pretended. I had a weak whisky and soda while we washed the remaining things that Mrs. Wilkins couldn’t get to. “Alex has asked me to have a drink with him next week.” “When?” “He hasn’t said yet, but I don’t think I’ll need the Table of Moveable Feasts to choose a date.” “I’m out Monday and Thursday, and we’re going to the Ashfords Wednesday.” “So I’ve quite a choice then.” Most of the time, Nathalie ignored my puerile irony; but this evening she said, “Why are you in such a wretched mood?” I leaned against the kitchen counter, glass cloth in hand. “The lad gave us all the very strong impression tonight that he cannot tell right from wrong.” She turned off the water and dried her hands on the cloth I proffered. “He does need help, George. I think he could get into serious difficulty.” “I’m not entirely certain that I want to have anything to do with his difficulties.” But before she could protest, I said, “I suspect that’s what Alex wants to tell me next week. But don’t you think Miss Woodward can keep him to the straight and narrow?” “My suspicion is that she is part of the problem. And you know how good I am about people, George.” “Indeed you are, darling. You chose me, after all.” I kissed her lightly. “Anyone can make a mistake,” she said. 

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“Why would Cynthia say the young people were very nice? She is not given to saying things she does not believe.” “I think she hardly talked to Robert, and that Jan Woodward impressed her. Jan is very intelligent and very mature. She also has a number of sides to her character, and displays one or another depending on circumstances.” “Do you think it’s possibly something chemical between you, darling?” “Oh, it’s certainly chemical, George. I wouldn’t trust her for one moment.” “With a man?” “More particularly with my portfolio, darling.” But I wondered. *** Giles and Anne left not long after breakfast because they were taking their son—their only child, who was in the lower sixth at Harrow—to Sunday lunch on their way back to Putney. Somehow, one always had difficulty imagining Giles engaging in the act required to beget a child, particularly with Anne, about whom, although she was too spare for my taste, one had no difficulty picturing it at all. In the event, off they went, with great thanks for the weekend, many regrets at having to depart, and, I should have said, rather more affectionate farewells than usual, as if they were sympathizing with our problem; by which they would be signifying our young guests. Robert and Jan were not down in time for the Bowdens’s departure, but the sound of their car may have awakened them. Jan looked fresh and rested when she appeared. Robert had a slight greenish cast to his complexion and took nothing for breakfast. They spent what was left of the morning in the sitting room with the Sunday papers (we took the Telegraph and the Times, and the Observer to keep an eye on what the enemy was thinking) while Nathalie worked again in the garden. I finished 

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emptying the dishwasher from last night’s party, did the washing up from breakfast, carried in wood and kindling, cleaned the drawing room fireplace and laid the fire (I assigned Robert to look after the fire in the sitting room), and generally made myself useful around the house: the domestic George Evans. I offered them a walk before lunch, but they declined. At about one we drove to a pub called the Punch and Plow, between us and Wickham Market, which laid on a Sunday buffet that was not bad at all. Robert was still feeling under the weather and ate very little, although he did manage to choke down a half pint of bitter. We learned that Jan had a flat in Hereford Square, and that Robert lived in a small house in Pavilion Road. “Just ‘round the corner from us,” Nathalie said, unnecessarily. I think she felt that Robert, while immature (and badly bred), may have been basically sound, but was being led astray by the bewitching siren who was sitting on my right. In the cold light of that grey October day, with her ivory skin and the dark eyes that revealed little and promised much, one could appreciate how she might bewitch any man who that morning had held a mirror beneath his nose and seen it cloud over. Thus the weekend came to an end, much to our relief, and perhaps to theirs. We returned to the Rectory, helped them carry their things down to the car, and loaded the boot. It was decided that Jan should drive. I recommended they go through the city and along the embankment, but Robert, of course, told us not to worry, he knew the way, so I suspected they’d be taking an hour or so longer than they needed. Jan put her hands on my shoulders to say her goodbyes, and held me rather close, so much so that I imagined that her breasts brushed lightly against my chest. It was impossible in reality, this imagining, because she was wearing a thick duffel coat and I was in my heavy brown tweed jacket. And when she kissed me on both cheeks, I inhaled a strong, musky scent that stayed with me long after they’d driven off, Jan waving, Robert looking straight ahead. 

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*** We drove in silence to Campsea Ashe through the rain that had begun some time before we left at about seven. While we were waiting in the car for the train, I said, “I thought the constituency party picks who is to stand in an election.” “They do,” Nathalie said, “and I’m their choice. But Central Office encouraged their choice.” We could see the headlamp of the engine now approaching. “Isn’t democracy wonderful, darling,” I said, as I locked the car and we mounted the platform.

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Chapter Twenty

I m e t A l e x i n t h e F i r s t L or d ’s R o om at North’s the following Thursday evening. He was looking more than usually thoughtful. “Let’s go down to the bar, shall we?” I had not been in the bar—indeed, I had hardly been into North’s—since my encounter with Colin Walker in August, something I had preferred to put out of my mind; however I said, “Ah, this is to be serious drinking, is it Alex?” but he did not respond. “Good evening, Mr. Cross,” the barman said. “Good evening, Mr. Evans. Nice to see you again, sir.” “A whisky and soda, please, Alex.” “Two, Max.” We sat in the corner away from the bar and from the few others who were in the room. It was a little early for the real drinkers. “Your very good health,” I said. “And yours,” he said. “You know, George, that I want to talk to you a little about Robert Fletcher.” “Yes.” “He has the wrong end of the stick. If he weren’t Charles’s son, and your godson. . . Let’s say we don’t need more of his kind in the City.”

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I had known Alex Cross for more than twenty years and I could not remember a time when he had spoken so brutally. Quite apart from Robert Fletcher, the job he’d taken on was beginning to take a toll. “I shall certainly have a word with him. If it isn’t too late.” “I sincerely hope it isn’t. I trust he was only theorizing for the moment. But reporting to a man like Max Fougere, he has no guidance at all, and no impediments to putting theory into practice.” “Tell me about Fougere. I met him not long ago. Didn’t take to him at all.” “As slippery and devious as they come. You know, there are people whom one meets who stay more vividly in mind than most for one reason or another. Charles Fletcher was one of these, for his probity. Another is Max Fougere—for the opposite reason. I met him years ago in connection with a loan syndication— Sonatrach, I think it was. He’s one of those sorts of people who can look you in the eye and tell you with complete sincerity that he never said something that you know perfectly well that he said to you not half an hour before. He tried that one on with an oral commitment he’d made, but we refused to let him weasel out of it. “Following our conversation last Saturday, I went through some of my old files. Before he was head of International Banking at Manhattan Banking, he was in charge of Africa. That means he must have been one of the chief sponsors of the Maraka loan. You remember the Maraka loan?” “It keeps coming up like the bad penny. Seven hundred million dollars or so that went from primary syndication to rescheduling in less than a year.” “Precisely. The management at the time appeared not to have noticed that the country was on the brink of civil war. And now the man is in charge of leveraged buyouts for the same bank. I must say I thought Manhattan Banking had become better managed.” 

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“I as well. But you know as well as I, Alex, that there are people who preside over multiple disasters, yet survive to retire with a handsome payoff and the thanks of the corporation for a job well done. They know by instinct whom to cultivate and where not to put their signatures.” While Alex was at the bar getting a second round, my mind drifted back to the dear, dead days at Thomson, Guthrie. Old T&G is now incorporated. Ham MacLeod was no longer with us, having gone to his reward in a Calvinist Heaven (or Hell, which is probably much the same), and L. Grant Reed was now president and CEO. I thought of Willie Armstrong, fired for putting the bank’s money where his mouth was, who had disappeared entirely from my ken, and of Robert Murphy, who is still photographed occasionally by one or other of the tabloids, looking fat and greasy in Marbella or Rio, usually accompanied by an exquisite eighteen-year-old wearing next to nothing. Dmitri Iandakis, being the clever Greek we all thought he was in the first place, had survived and prospered, and now not only operated a large bulk fleet, but owned property all over London, Paris, and New York. From time to time I had lunch with him, as I did also with John Henriksen, who now ran the London office of the Norbulk pool. Alex having left after our second drink, and after my repeating that I would talk to Robert as soon as I could, I dined that evening at the club table next to a man who had a need to tell me in great detail about his last shoot—I remembered thinking at the time that given his quite visibly aged and infirm condition, I was surprised that he could even lift a gun, much less hit anything with it—which became poignant when I realized he was talking about something that had happened a quarter of a century before, and he remembered it as if it had taken place the preceding weekend. Nathalie had not yet returned from her dinner out by the time I got back to Cadogan Square. I had a finger or so of Armagnac 

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while I sat in the drawing room and thought about Charles and how upset he would have been to have heard his son—the little boy who had nearly died of peritonitis—speak, and been spoken of, in the ways I’d heard. But then it was an evening for nostalgia. I left some lights on for Nathalie, comme d’ habitude, and went to bed. *** I heard Nathalie come in, which was unusual, because I sleep quite deeply. It was 2:30 by the clock radio, and I could hear her moving about in her bedroom next to mine. I could also hear something else, which I did not immediately recognize. It was crying—Nathalie was crying. The only time previously I had ever heard Nathalie cry was about Charles. I rose and went to the connecting door between our bedrooms and opened it. “What is it, darling?” I said. She looked startled in the dim lamp light. She was sitting at her dresser, still dressed, a box of tissues before her. “Nothing,” she said to my image in the mirror. “What has happened, darling? Where have you been?” She wiped her eyes. “Truly nothing, George. I realized tonight—finally—that Charles is really gone.” “But Nathalie,” I said, “he’s been gone for fifteen years.” I know you will think me exceedingly dense, but I did not understand then. Nor did I understand at the time the look of distaste with which she regarded my image in the mirror. It passed very quickly. She looked down at the surface of the dresser. “Can I do anything for you? Would you like a drink?” “No,” she said quietly. “Thank you, George. Very much. No. I need to get to bed.” And just before I drifted off, I could hear the sound of her bath running. At three o’clock in the morning. I knew then what

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she’d been doing, and I wondered with whom. Normally, such a realization would have filled me with deep anger; but my reaction instead was one of foreboding. *** Talking to Robert was more easily said than done. “I say, old boy, a former senior banker in the city, someone who is close to the Securities and Investments Board, thinks you’re inclined to be a crook. So be a good chap, pull your socks up, and don’t be.” Without quite knowing how I was going to go about the problem of Robert, I decided to have Fougere in to lunch in one of our private rooms. It was not because I felt I had to reciprocate—his dismissal of me had been sufficient to obviate the need; if I owed anyone, in fact, I owed Robert and his boss Tom Davis—but it was something my rheumatoid elbow told me I ought to do: I thought of it rather as an exercise in lepidopterology. “Can you lunch one day week after next, Jonathan?” I said to the MD towards the fag end of November. He looked into his diary. “Tuesday or Wednesday.” “Pencil in both days, will you, and I’ll get back to you.” “Done. With whom?” “Max Fougere, head of European Corporate Finance for Manhattan Banking. I know, I know, but the man has a terminal case of amour propre, so I should be insufficient to draw him from his lair. And since Manhattan Banking is in the thick of the buyout game, we might pick up a bit of business from them.” Fougere was sensitive enough to realize that an effort was being made on his behalf when my secretary told his secretary over the telephone that Sewall would be lunching with us, and he accepted for Tuesday. On the day, Chef Fivethumbs even managed to produce a not-unpalatable meal, and I noted with amusement the slight widening of Fougere’s eyes when he noticed the

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wine, which was a Beycheville of reasonable vintage. He managed somehow to drink a glass or two, and I don’t think he even touched the Malvern water. He was more lively than the first time I’d met him, and clearly thought he was bringing enlightenment and opportunity to the poor natives in the form of a deal codenamed “Pottery.” “It’s a middle market manufacturer of stoneware and earthenware,” he began, and throughout addressed his comments mostly to Jonathan. “They have a solid market share and good growth prospects. It’s a classic situation. The managers own about six percent between them and want to buy the rest.” “Who owns the remainder?” “The public—but no really big shareholders to worry about. Our thought is to finance the tender offer, take the company private, and refloat it in no more than three years. We reckon an internal rate of return of about sixty percent—and that’s conservative.” Jonathan said, “It sounds most attractive, Mr. Fougere.” “Please call me Max, Jon.” Jonathan hated being called Jon. “Max then. What amount are you proposing?” “In total, eighty-five million pounds. At about seven times projected 1996 earnings before interest and taxes, eighty-two million pounds, plus three million in fees.” “And you anticipate no difficulty with the tender offer in the present climate?” Did I detect a slight—indeed nearly imperceptible—sigh of impatience from Fougere? “None,” he said. “The shares dropped only about five percent in the recent correction, which says to us really solid value.” Or that the shares were overvalued, I thought. “We are offering the shareholders nearly nine times anticipated 1995 EBIT, and the shares now sell for less than four in the market.”

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“Won’t the shareholders notice the wide discrepancy?” I said, keeping the incredulity out of my voice. “No doubt. But management believes the shareholders would rather have jam today than jam tomorrow, which is the reason why the shares are undervalued.” One reason, I thought. Management might be another reason that the shares are discounted. “Management believes that they are being hamstrung in their efforts to add value because the shares are widely held and publicly traded in a market that does not recognize their value. They have plans for expansion, and a need for capital, that they frankly don’t feel the shareholders would understand. They believe they can run the company much better and realize its full value if it were privately held for a while, and they are prepared to put a million and a half pounds of their own money in to prove it.” I did not find it difficult to keep from salivating over this latest exercise in management disingenuosness. I should have been tempted to say as much, but Jonathan, ever the diplomatist, asked Fougere to describe the financing structure. “Senior debt of fifty-eight million, sub of twenty-two, and equity of five. Banks will share the remaining equity pro rata to their position in the senior debt, but for Reg K purposes, as you know, American banks must take any equity above nineteen point nine percent in the form of warrants or options.” “And for how much are you looking to us?” “We intend to underwrite twenty-five million of the senior debt—I didn’t tell you, by the way, that we think we’ve got the sub debt placed already—and we’d like to keep the group of senior lenders relatively small. Say up to half the remainder? Sixteen point five?” “Entirely doable,” Jonathan said. “Please have your people send us the offering memo.” As Fougere rose from the table, I said, “Is Robert Fletcher involved in this transaction?”

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“No,” he said. “The deal manager on this is a fellow called Tony Burroughs. One of your lot,” he added chuckling, as if he couldn’t imagine a Brit being able to put together such a complicated operation. The comment did not go down well with Jonathan either. Fougere recovered as gracefully as he could, thanked us— well Jonathan really—for lunch and our time, and said that Tom Davis would be in touch with me that afternoon. Once again he managed to convey that men in exalted positions such as his, and by implication Jonathan’s, did not get involved in the details: that was left to the underlings, such as your obedient servant. Jonathan and I went to the ground floor to see him off and returned upstairs together. “Good heavens, what an awful man,” Jonathan said. “You ought to have warned me.” “You might not have come to lunch. Then we would not have been offered this unparalleled opportunity.” “How does it sound to you?” “Like one of the walking wounded. Why aren’t they underwriting the whole thing? They’re big enough. I doubt that we’ll want anything to do with it, Jonathan, but we’ll give it a look. There’s a slight whiff of Billingsgate about it also.” “Billingsgate?” “Who after all are the ultimate insiders? Isn’t it the management?” “That’s a little over-the-top, George,” he said. “No doubt you’re right, Jonathan.” *** Within half an hour of waving Fougere off, I received a call from Tom Davis. “I understand that New Broad Street might be interested in participating in the Pottery underwriting,” he said, somewhat breathless with enthusiasm. “Can you tell me your fax number, 

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George? We thought we’d fax you the term sheet and the projections, so you could get started right away, and follow up with the whole package this afternoon by courier.” “I’m not certain we have a facsimile machine, Tom. No, only kidding, let me ask.” Of course I didn’t know the number. I got it from my secretary Janet and repeated it to Davis, who had been holding on. “Your point of contact with us will be a chap called Malcolm Bond.” “Shall I send the fax to him then?” He sounded slightly disappointed. “No, you can send it to me. But send the full presentation to him.” Poor Davis had no idea why I was being spiky. *** Malcolm Bond was a bright young graduate from Durham and the London Business School who had been with New Broad Street for nearly five years. I described to him as much of the transaction as I could remember and told him that the offering memo was being sent to him that afternoon. “But they’re faxing the term sheet and the projections to us as we speak, Malcolm. So that we can get started right away.” “Most thoughtful of them.” “Now, my boy, you know that only executive directors are allowed to be cynical at New Broad Street.” “Sorry, George. I lost my head.” “But I do want you to cast your most steely gaze on this one.” Janet appeared with the fax and I asked her to make a copy. “Is there anything specific bothering you, George?” Malcolm asked. “Instinct. I would not normally buy a new car from the man who is offering us this deal.”

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“Manhattan Banking’s track record in LBOs, both here and in the States, is extremely good,” he said. “They’re right up there with the big boys and as far as I know, they’ve had very few problems. I think their loan loss experience on these deals is appreciably below that on their general portfolio.” “But they haven’t done that many transactions in London yet, have they?” “Half a dozen, I think.” “Hardly a seasoned portfolio. I also find it unusual for them not to underwrite a deal of this size.” Malcolm went away with his copy of the fax to begin work, but I admit I could not entirely contain my curiosity. Without the full presentation it was impossible to tell, of course, but the projections at first glance looked very rosy indeed: historical sales growth, for example, was about five percent; in the first three years after the proposed buyout, sales growth was twenty percent, twenty percent, and fifteen percent, and thereafter dropped back to the historical rate. Cost of goods sold rose at no more than historical rates, which meant an appreciable decline as a percentage of sales, and jolly good margins. All due, no doubt, to those plans management thought would be so incomprehensible to the shareholders. I was working on my expense plan for the following year when Malcolm rang at five-thirty that evening. “I have the full presentation now, George. Sixty pages, not counting the financial appendices, the market study, and the asset appraisal. It looks a pretty thorough job.” “What is the company?” “It’s called Warwick and Wonder. It’s in Derby.” “Never heard of it. I trust you’ll have the material digested and a recommendation for me by, say, six-thirty? Just joking, my boy. But I did get the impression that this is on rather a short leash.”

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“It couldn’t be any shorter, George. According to the title page, an answer was due last Friday.” “How very interesting, Malcolm. Could it be that this transaction is not the equivalent to the discovery of fire that we’d been led to believe?” I was glad that Robert seemed nowhere within shouting distance of the deal. “Who signed the cover letter?” I could hear him shuffling papers. “Tom Davis, Managing Director, and Anthony Burroughs, also a Managing Director. There’s one other name. ‘Please do not hesitate to contact us’ blah blah ‘Any questions should be directed to Tony Burroughs or to Jan Woodward, Associate’ and gives their telephone numbers. Wonder if she’s good-looking.” “She’d eat you alive, my boy.” “Good God, George, you don’t mean to say you’ve met this woman? I’m impressed.” “Quite rightly too. My godson works at Manhattan Banking. He brought her down to Suffolk for the weekend not long ago. She is said to be an excellent number-cruncher.” “That remains to be seen. Is she good-looking?” “Enough to cause suspicion of a conflict of interest if you go anywhere near her, Malcolm. Now be a good chap and get on with your own number-crunching. I’m working on the salary plan for next year.” There were already two marks against the Warwick and Wonder buyout: Manhattan Banking was not underwriting the whole of what for them must have been a relatively modest transaction, indicating a degree of uncertainty perhaps; and, given that the deadline for response had already passed by the time we were sent the offering memo, it might be concluded that the transaction had been in the market for a while and was not going well. There could even be a third mark against: they had not changed

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the response date, which meant they were either careless, or else thought we were too dumb to notice. Just before I left the office I rang Robert, but he had already gone. I left word to have him ring me the following day. *** We were dining in that evening, and when I arrived home, Nathalie was already there, looking particularly radiant, sitting by the jolly gas fire with her glass of white wine and another biography of some obscure Frog. Before I’d even removed my coat, I kissed her and made an improper suggestion. “Not with Magdalena. . .” she began. “Any woman with cleavage like Magdalena’s knows the facts of life, Nathalie.” She laughed. “I was about to say Magdalena is in the midst of cooking a good dinner for us and would be very disappointed if we didn’t sit down when it was ready.” “I will not have my sex life organized by the cook,” I declaimed. “On the other hand, she is a very good cook.” I hung my coat in the hall cupboard and started towards the back parts of the flat to perform my ablutions. “When you come back, George, there’s champagne on the sideboard.” I stopped and looked back into the drawing room. “What are we celebrating, darling?” “When you return,” she said. I washed and changed into my smoking jacket, opened the champagne, and took champagne and bucket into the drawing room, along with two flutes. “Excellent champagne. I don’t recall buying this.” “You didn’t, darling. I bought it today.” “I’m expiring from curiosity.”

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“International Communications Group wants to buy Poole’s for ten million pounds.” “Good God, that’s wonderful darling,” I said, not thinking it quite as wonderful as I hope I sounded. “Cash?” She nodded. “Mostly. Fifteen percent is deferred. And we all have to sign three-year contracts.” “Of course. They’re not paying ten million for the desks and chairs and PCs. I assume the fifteen percent is payable after three years? I hesitate to be indelicate, but how much. . . ?” “Godfrey gets two million, two. The other partners divide the rest evenly.” “So you will receive about a million, six?” “A little less, yes.” “Makes my ten bob a week from New Broad Street look rather paltry. But I do get luncheon vouchers.” “Are you happy for me, darling?” “Of course I am, my sweet. Did you doubt it? Have you signed on the dotted line yet?” “Not yet. It only came up today. We met on it this afternoon and have all agreed to sleep on it. We’ll decide tomorrow.” I poured more champagne for us both. “What is there to decide? Where payment would be most tax-efficient?” “A couple of the partners think we might be undervaluing ourselves. . .” “I hope you’re not one of them.” “Knowing me as you do, George, what would you think?” “I think you don’t like the deferred element, but are willing to go along. I think you have a bit of the residual bonne femme in you, darling. I think you know the precise value of your experience, contacts, and expertise. I think you’ll take the money and run.” “Certainly take the money. Can’t run for three years.” Magdalena called us into dinner, which was a vegetable terrine and chicken in a white wine sauce. 

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“Speaking of running, I assume they don’t mind your running for parliament?” “Godfrey won’t admit it openly, but it probably tipped the balance in our favor. We’ve known that ICG has been in the market for a political PR link for some time.” “That being the case, my darling—this chicken is delicious, by the by—shouldn’t you be getting a slightly greater slice of the pie?” In the euphoria of the moment, no doubt, she had forgotten to tell me that she had a side letter from Godfrey in which he agreed to pay her an additional one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds from his proceeds. “Lovely euphemism that,” I said. “’Communications.’ Congratulations again, darling.” I raised my glass to her and drank. “On another subject—yes?—our careful cultivation of Robert Fletcher has paid off. I had lunch today with the frightful man he works for. They’ve offered to share a deal with us.” “Is it Robert’s deal?” “No. But your close friend Jan Woodward worked on the projections.” Nathalie looked distinctly bilious. “Is it a good one?” “Unlikely, but it’s a little too early to tell. The management wants to take the company private and get rich. They manufacture cups and saucers. That sort of thing. I think it’s rather downmarket stuff. It does not have a good nose.” We took our coffee in the sitting room, sitting opposite each other with the fire between. “You want to like Robert, don’t you?” I said. She looked away. “I do, yes. But he makes it rather difficult.” “I’m afraid, darling, that with Robert, what you see is what you get.” She said nothing.

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We spent the night together in her bed, but long after she had fallen asleep, breathing deeply and rhythmically, I lay awake, staring into the darkness. I thought about learning so late in the day about Central Office’s plans for Shrewsbury South; and about the additional hundred twenty-five thousand pounds; and about the remarks of the detestable insect Walker last August that I had never addressed, but that had lain buried just beneath the surface; and about the night not a month before when she’d come home weeping.

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R o b e r t d i d n o t r e t u r n m y c a l l from the preceding day, and I was constrained to ring him again, inviting him to a drink at my backwater in St. James’s. “May I bring Jan?” he said. “I think just the two of us, Robert. Fielding’s admits women only one evening a year, and this is not the evening.” We sat with our drinks in the bow window—just as we are now—overlooking the street. “How does one become a member of a club like this, George?” “You are proposed and seconded. You need ten supporting signatures and you must meet the membership committee. Assuming all that has gone well, in seven years or so your name might come up for a vote. And if no one casts a black ball against you, you’d be elected a member.” “I see,” he said. “We’re discussing a transaction with Manhattan Banking.” “I know. The Warwick and Wonder MBO.” “But you’re not working on it, are you?” “No, but Jan is.” “And that’s how you know the name.” He hesitated slightly. “It’s common knowledge in the bank,” he said. He lied poorly.

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“It sounds as if your security arrangements are rather in disarray,” I said, but I did not leave him long in his nearly palpable chagrin. “Tell me something about the deal manager. He’s called Burroughs.” “Jan thinks he’s an airhead.” “What do you think?” “I don’t know him all that well. Seems a nice enough guy to me. Probably not too bright.” “How, therefore, can we rely on what he tells us about Warwick and Wonder?” “If you’re talking about the offering memo, George, three or four people will have put that together. Tony Burroughs probably found the transaction and is the team leader, but the memo is a team effort. And besides, Jan’s done the numbers, and she’s very, very good.” “With respect, Robert, I find that computers enable people who do not know what they are doing to appear as if they do. I am certainly not saying that is the case here. But there is more to the exercise than projections.” “Of course,” he said, rather too hastily. “And when I ask for certain sensitivities—flat sales growth and higher interest rates, for example—and some computer wizard appears in less than half an hour with six or seven fresh, closely-printed pages, he has not assimilated all the implications. There seems to be an inverse relation these days between the thought put into financial projections and the speed with which they’re produced.” All the while Robert watched me and appeared to be listening, but he had crossed his legs and was tapping the air with his foot, as if he’d rather be somewhere else. “Who decides whether your bank will participate in a transaction?” “A committee. Max and Tom sit on the committee. And others. They’re all managing directors.” 

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“Is there a credit man on the committee?” “Oh yes.” “And if he is not in favor of a transaction, what happens?” “He can be overruled.” “By whom?” “George, I don’t know if I should be telling you all this stuff about how we operate.” “It will be very helpful, Robert. By whom can your credit man be overruled?” “By Max or Tom.” “What happened in the case of Warwick and Wonder?” “I really don’t think that’s any of your business, George.” The foot was going even faster now; but Robert was not impatient— he was nervous. I thought then that it might be merely about the subject of my questions. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just thought, well…” “No need to apologize or explain, my boy. Was it Max or Tom who overruled your credit chap?” I think he actually blushed. “Tom. But Max would have too if he’d been at the meeting.” “And what do you think of the deal?” Robert brightened considerably. “I think it’s a terrific opportunity to get in on the ground-floor of a seriously undervalued company.” It would seem that Robert and Jan’s pillow talk was quite thorough. “Have another. Good.” I rang the bell. “Two more of the same, Duncan, thank you. What are you doing for the holidays, Robert?” “If we can get away, we’re going to spend a week in New York with Jan’s folks. And my mother, or course. And then a week in the Caribbean.”

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“Never much liked lying in the sun getting sand in everything and sticky from suntan oil. Or sunblock now, I suppose.” “We love it.” I had a brief fantasy of Jan Woodward lying on a sunlit beach, away from her pinstripes and her PC and her laser printer, in a shockingly brief bikini. “And Jan is from New York?” “Kansas City. Her parents were divorced when she was young and her mother moved to New York, and remarried. A couple of times actually. We’re seeing her mother and stepfather number two. She never talks about her father.” “Is it wise that she talks to you about Warwick and Wonder, Robert? You do seem to know a lot about a transaction that is supposed to be confidential.” Again his foot started tapping the air. He looked most uncomfortable. “I told you, George. It’s common knowledge in the bank. It really is.” Please believe me, he was saying; whining rather. “Why are you so concerned?” “Appearances, Robert. You rather surprised a number of us when you were down in Suffolk in October with your comments about insider trading.” “Oh that,” he said. “I was just kidding. Playing devil’s advocate, you know, that kind of thing.” “I’m glad to hear it. But in the business you and I are in, old chap, we should not only be honest, we should be seen to be honest. I suggest that you indulge in no more devil’s advocacy.” “Sure, George,” he said, but his foot never stopped tapping the air. *** Malcolm Bond rang the following morning. “The shares of Warwick and Wonder have been more than usually active for the past few months, George. Turnover is double what it has been historically.” 

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“Meaning that it’s already in the market that there’s going to be an offer from some quarter.” “Well I hope it’s rumors in the market. But given the normal trading levels, it would not take many purchasers to show the present activity.” “I hear what you’re saying, my boy. Let’s talk to Jonathan.” *** Malcolm said, “the shares have generated little interest for years, and the price has hardly moved, except to fall when everything else falls and to take an inordinate amount of time to recover to their former mediocre levels. It’s no wonder they haven’t been able to go to the market with that kind of record. The activity I mentioned to George has taken place in the last two or three months. It’s not a lot in absolute terms, but it’s a lot of activity for this company; although the price has not appreciated more than five or six percent.” “What do you conclude from all this?” Jonathan said. “I think the shares of Warwick and Wonder are being carefully accumulated by a relatively few investors. They may be just punters taking a flier, or institutions looking for a position—that strains credulity—or they may be in the know. My money would be on the latter.” “I dare say you may be right, Malcolm. But it could be perfectly innocent. Let’s hope so anyway. Does the transaction make sense otherwise?” Malcolm looked from him to me. “I don’t know yet what I think.” As I knew Malcolm to be quite a decisive chap, I took that to signify that he hadn’t found anything especially compelling about it, but was still trying to see the bottle as half-full rather than half-empty. “By the way, George,” he continued, “you were right about the underwriting positions Manhattan Bank has done in the past in London. They’ve taken up to two hundred million pounds.” 

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“So their not taking on a mere fifty-eight is a trifle unusual.” “Indeed.” In the end, although Malcolm laboured long and mightily to find something of virtue in the deal, we declined to join the underwriting group for the Warwick and Wonder buyout. There were too many fundamentals against as far as we were concerned. The repayment schedule was unusually sensitive to sales falling just a little short of projections (which turned out to be, as Malcolm put it, rather more than optimistic) or to a blip up in interest rates. The independent market study barely supported the sales projections, and carried a health warning about the cost savings to be realized on the level of growth forecasted. Most important, at a presentation that Manhattan Banking arranged in the middle of December, management failed to impress the tiny audience of rather hard-bitten merchant bankers—whether the three Japanese there were impressed or not was impossible to tell at the time—to whom they came across as a thin veneer of what passed for civilization in the Midlands overlaying spivs on the make. I could see that even Max Fougere was somewhat embarrassed by their performance. They reminded me, in fact, of Midlands versions of the less salubrious Greek shipowners I used to encounter in the old days, and one understood at last why the shares had always generated so little interest. What none of us could understand is why Manhattan Banking, which had a solid reputation in corporate finance, should have made such a cockup. Malcolm suggested that at the time the deal was first mooted—probably late September—time was getting short for people who had not done any bonusable transactions for the preceding ten months; it was a time when people started reaching for deals, and were none too fastidious about the details; and it happened every year at around the same time. Perhaps it was simply that. Perhaps they were reaching for deal flow, trying to build their name in the London market, but far less cautiously than they had in the States. Perhaps Fougere 

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needed another deal with his name on it to assist his climb up the greasy pole. *** In mid-January, Bobby Warrender, who had represented Shrewsbury South for nearly thirty-eight years, applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and the by-election was scheduled for the Ides of March. Nathalie had by the time of the announcement bought a flat in the constituency, which, if she won, she’d need, and if she lost was a good investment, and spent more and more time away from Cadogan Square. I was becoming a parliamentary widower even before my beloved was elected to parliament. At about the same time, mid-January, the management of Warwick and Wonder, supported by Manhattan Banking Corporation (and only they), announced a tender offer of 112 pence a share for all the outstanding shares of the company. Upon the announcement, the shares, which had been trading in the range of 95 to 98 pence, actually fell a couple of pence before they began climbing towards the offer price. Market sentiment was reflected also in a Lex column in the Financial Times which said, “If there is value to be unlocked in the assets of Warwick and Wonder, this is not the management whom shareholders should choose to do the unlocking. It is to be wondered when the outside directors will wake from their deep slumber.” Wake they did, however, shortly thereafter, and on advice from their merchant bank consultants, recommended strongly against the tender offer as being in the interests neither of the company nor of the shareholders. It was a devastating blow to the tender offer, and resulted in failure. There was a board room struggle whose outturn was the resignation of the managing director, the finance director, and a couple of lesser luminaries, who left vowing revenge. They were equally graceless at the Extraordinary General Meeting that followed, but the shareholders supported the outside directors, who included the chairman, 

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by fifteen to one. They would shortly discover how prescient they were. *** But again, I’ve got ahead of my story. At the end of the month, Jan Woodward rang me at the office to ask if she could see me. “Certainly,” I said. “Is it about Pottery?” “Yes.” “When would you like to come over.” “I didn’t mean at the office, George. Can I buy you a drink? Not in the city. My flat, perhaps?” With a sense of foreboding, I suggested Ernie’s in Jermyn Street, from which I could beat a retreat to Fielding’s where I was dining that night with Geoffrey Burbage. Nathalie alas was again in Shrewsbury. *** We agreed that I would pick Jan up in a cab at Moorgate at six. She was waiting outside Manhattan Banking House when I arrived shortly thereafter, and, in the light the driver turned on when she got into the taxi, she looked rather under strain. She kissed me on the cheek. “How nice to see you, George,” she said, woodenly, and pointed at the driver, meaning she was not going to say what was on her mind. “For me as well,” I said. “How’s business these days?” “It couldn’t be better,” she said without conviction, but there was an edge to her voice, as if she were about to cry. We drove the rest of the way in silence, moving slowly in the heavy traffic along the Embankment, into Northumberland Avenue, along the bottom of Trafalgar Square into Pall Mall and then turning right up Lower Regent Street, she in her corner staring out of the window, and I in mine, wondering what the hell all this would turn out to be, and breathing in the strong musky 

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scent of her. The perfume that Jan Woodward wore ought to be made illegal. Ernie’s Bar was full of media people, absorbed in each other and in themselves. The young belonged; the middle-aged, obviously on the lookout for popsies half their age to prove to themselves that they were immortal after all, did not belong. I did not connect immediately why I had chosen Ernie’s, except that it was one of the few bars that I knew in the West End that was not a club. I had, in fact, hardly ever been in Ernie’s, and the last time was with Tony Whitfield. We sat at a table towards the back of the room, away from the piano. Jan waited until the waitress had taken our order before she spoke. “I’m rather worried about Robert,” she said, without pre­ amble. She was wearing a charcoal-grey wool suit, with a straight skirt and a short open jacket, and a white silk blouse. In that light, and against the dark of her suit, her skin looked very pale. Her eyes, if anything, seemed even larger and darker than I’d remembered. It was true that she was about half my age, but I was not old enough to be her father. No one could be. There was something about her far older and more primitive, and more intoxicating than desire: she was a temple priestess who coupled with the supplicants; and then tore them to shreds. She drank and looked into my eyes. “Has he done something foolish? In connection with Warwick and Wonder?” She looked quickly around to see if anyone was listening, but as I could hardly hear myself speak, I suspect there was no one who could overhear us, even had he or she wanted to. She nodded to me and looked away. In profile, one could see more easily her long, dark lashes, and the straight nose, and her upper lip that turned up slightly as if forever anticipating a kiss. “What has he done?” 

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“He bought shares.” “He’s a fool.” She looked for a moment as if I’d struck her physically. “He wanted. . .” “I’m sorry, Jan, I can’t hear you.” “I said, he wanted to get rich.” “Most people work to do that, without committing criminal acts.” She looked at the table, and seemed to be struggling to control herself. “He couldn’t wait. He kept asking me for more and more information. I couldn’t. . .” She paused and looked again into my eyes. “I couldn’t deny it to him.” “How much has he spent?” “Two hundred thousand pounds.” “Where on earth did he get that kind of money?” “He borrowed it. And the worst part is that he has no way of repaying it. He can’t sell the stock for what he paid for it, and there’s almost no market anyway.” No, my dear young thing. That is not the worst part. “What possessed him? Did he think there was no risk?” “He thought it was a sure thing. I may have had something to do with that. I mean,” she hurried to say, lest I misconstrue, “that I thought the prospects for the company were excellent.” I did not believe her; either she was a poor analyst, which I could not believe, or she was lying. “Can you help him, George? He’s not a criminal. As you say, he’s just been foolish. He was trying. . . trying to impress me, I guess. I feel guilty, as if it’s partly my fault. I want to make it up somehow.” Again the direct gaze of those dark eyes. “I’ll do anything to help him. Anything at all.” It would have been obvious to all but the most obtuse what she was offering me. And she could not have known that I was about to spend yet another night in bed alone, and that my doubts 

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about Nathalie were growing, supported by what appeared to be nearly direct evidence. But I could imagine too the maelstrom into which I would plunge if I chose to lie between those firm young thighs; however, the time had long since departed—since my ill-suited marriage to Julia, in fact—when I let sexual desire substitute for thought. “Why hasn’t Robert come to me? Why have you?” “He can’t admit he’s been so stupid. But he hasn’t asked me to talk to you; he doesn’t know. Please don’t tell him, George.” She put her hand over mine: long, slim fingers with nails painted red. Her hand was very warm. “But I shall have to talk to him,” I said. “The fact that he cannot repay his debt is the least of his worries.” For the first time—before she replaced the metaphorical veil—she looked genuinely frightened, as if she had finally understood the full consequences; that, or something else, perhaps. *** I put Jan into a cab on St. James’s and walked down to my club, feeling drained and rather wishing I had not arranged to dine with Geoffrey. He is a nice fellow, a solicitor, rather on the grandmotherly side. He used to be in Whitehall, Foreign Office, I think, and some say he used to be in one of the secret services. It amused one to envisage this overweight, elderly man bounding over rooftops with a revolver in one hand and a blonde in the other. But he was, curiously, not someone in whom I would choose to confide. “One hears that Nathalie is standing for Shrewsbury South,” he said. His knowledge was not yet public, although there had been rumors. “That’s been a fact for months, Geoffrey.” “I’ve known for months, old thing.” “How did you know?”

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“I know everything,” he said. I could not tell if he were shaking his head or simply shaky with age. “Nathalie’s quite ambitious to try to fit into Bobby Warrender’s shoes. How is she, by the way?” “She’s very well indeed, thank you. Nathalie is an ambitious girl; and capable as well.” “One hears both.” “What else do you hear, Geoffrey?” He just sat there enigmatically, like a large, public-school educated Buddha, and shook his head. “You’re being especially elliptical this evening, Geoffrey.” “It’s my stock-in-trade, dear boy. I am a solicitor after all.” I was not going to press him and he would not elucidate even if I had. Indeed, I had no need of further hints and whispers. *** Given all that Jan Woodward had said the evening before, I was surprised in the morning when I received a call from the reception desk that Mr. Fletcher had come to see me. When Janet had showed him into my room, he looked a worried young man indeed. “Would you like coffee, Robert? No? Then what can I do for you?” He looked down at the hands he had crossed in his lap and I could tell by the way his shoulders were moving that he was crying quietly. When he looked up, in a few moments, his face was awash. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse. He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and blew his nose. “I bought shares in Warwick and Wonder, George,” he said, simply. “When?” “At the beginning of November.” “So it could not be taken merely as an unlucky coincidence. I think we’d better get a cup of coffee after all. Outside.” 

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We went around the corner into Old Broad Street to a greasy cafe and sat at an unwiped Formica-topped table. “Begin at the beginning.” “I set up a Jersey shell company and bought the shares through that. I thought it couldn’t fail.” “Where did you get the money?” “I borrowed it. Two hundred thousand. If everything had gone okay, it would have not been outstanding long. I could have made nearly forty thousand pounds.” “You wanted to ride the appreciation in the market.” “Of course. Tendering would have been much too dangerous. But it hasn’t worked, and it was so slow.” He looked striken, but one was not sure whether it was because he understood what he’d done, or merely because he couldn’t repay the loan. I was unsettled by how deliberate, how sly his activities had been. “Can you help me, George?” he said. “Why did you do it, Robert?” He shrugged. “Everyone does it.” “Where did you get that idea?” “People talk about it all the time.” “Robert, I don’t know who these people are, but what you’ve done is very grave. Do you understand that? Do you understand it carries criminal sanctions?” He nodded, but I wondered. Had the Warwick and Wonder buyout have worked, gone off without a hitch, Robert would have sold his shares in the market for around 112 pence, or even higher, and there was a reasonable chance that no one would have been the wiser, especially since it was a modest transaction as these things go, and would not necessarily have attracted attention (although the increased activity that Malcolm Bond had noticed might). He would have repaid the loan with interest, and pocketed a tidy profit. “Tell me why the son of Charles Fletcher would even consider such a thing?” I said, my voice lowered even further. 

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“Who was Charles Fletcher?” he said, looking through me. I could have answered my own question. He had done what he had done because he was Charles Fletcher’s son. The poor fellow needed to deserve the rejection that had haunted him since he was nine or ten years old; it was the only thing that could make the rejection comprehensible to him. So he struck out at Charles and Jean, and at me as well, and the value system we supported. And encouraged by ethical imbeciles such as Fougere, he worked in an atmosphere that supported the notion that the accumulation of wealth in the shortest possible time, with scant attention paid to the means, was the highest good. He was thus vulnerable to anyone with a strong will and a singleness of purpose, for good or ill. “I did not hear that, Robert.” As if he had read my mind, he said, “I said that Jan thought it was a sure thing.” “Are you answering my question, Robert? About why?” “It was her idea in the first place,” he said. “That’s not what she told me last evening.” He looked as if he’d been struck in the face. “You were with Jan last night? She told you all this?” “She gave me her version. She said you kept pressing her for information.” “That rotten bitch.” “Keep your voice down, Robert.” The few people in the cafe had begun to stare. “Come along, my boy.” I said rising. “I’ll show you where our new offices are going to be.” “That rotten bitch,” he said again when we had reached the street and started towards Broadgate. “The whole thing was her idea. Even the Jersey shell company. She was going to feed me information on the deals she was working on, and I would give her stuff on my deals. We were going to buy only small amounts, so as not to attract attention. What the hell was she trying to pull last night?” 

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“She did ask if I could help you, Robert. I hesitate to say what else went through my mind.” “What was it? Covering her ass? Her word against mine?” “Something like that.” It was with difficulty that he was containing his anger. “Can you do anything, George? The loan is coming due on February fifteenth.” Again the loan. The idiot banker who had lent this callow fool two hundred thousand pounds deserved to lose it; but I said, “The loan is easy. I can arrange security for that. It’s the act itself that’s giving me a problem, although it does not seem to be troubling you as much as it should.” We stopped at Broadgate Circle and leaned on the balustrade. There were three or four ice skaters going ‘round and ‘round, alone with their thoughts. “Can you talk to Mr. Cross?” “We are not discussing a traffic violation, Robert. I will not talk to Alex. The best thing for you is to admit to Manhattan Banking what you’ve done. Talk to Davis, who seems a nice enough chap. I’m certain they’ll help you, although you’ll have to resign.” And you will never work in the City or in financial services again, I was thinking. What a memorial you’ve left to your father. He was staring into space. “Did you hear me, Robert?” “Yes I did, George. I was just thinking how unfair it all is.” “What is unfair? Getting caught at not playing by the rules?” “And you won’t talk to Mr. Cross?” “I will not,” I repeated, although as it turned out it was fortunate that I talked to Alex and to Giles both. “When do you think you can arrange the security for the loan?” “I’ll get it started this afternoon. But you must talk to Tom Davis as quickly as possible, Robert.” He looked blank. “You know, George, you and Jan and I are the only people who know about this so far.” 

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“That will not last, Robert. Whatever you’re thinking, don’t compound the foolishness.” Whatever else she was, Jan Woodward was bright, far more intelligent and mature than Robert. I wondered what had persuaded her to put Robert onto what was such an obvious loser; what in fact had led her to pick Robert in the first place. I arranged to guarantee the loan, and secured my guarantee by providing equities and bonds, in return for an extension of the maturity by two years. In all but name, I became the borrower. After we had signed the papers for the restructuring the following Monday, I told Robert in a jovial way that he owed me two hundred thousand pounds plus interest, but as I never expected to see the money, I never got him to do anything formal, such as sign a note. He was very cool when we met at his idiot bankers, but I thought that after the enormity of the samakritika which he’d just undergone, putting distance between himself and his confessor was not untoward. He did not thank me, however, which I thought ill-bred in the extreme. When we reached the street, he called me a lousy bastard. The wind whipping around in the downdraft from the Stock Exchange tore his words to shreds. “Do you know what you’re saying?” “You bet I do, you cocksucker. Jan didn’t call you. You called her. You propositioned her. That’s why you took her for a cozy drink in the West End.” “Why would she have told me all those things?” “To get you off her back.” “She’s lying, Robert, and she’s manipulating you.” He was struggling to restrain himself, I could see, his hands balled into fists inside his gloves. Had he tried to strike me, I cannot guess what the outcome might have been. Instead he said, “If Jan’s lying, she’s not the only one. Thanks for the hush money, you son of a bitch. It’s not going to keep me quiet.”

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But by then I was walking up Old Broad Street, and whatever else he said was carried away by the wind. Except to wonder briefly at the poverty of his invective, I no longer cared what Robert did or thought. *** I spoke to Giles first, over a drink at Fielding’s. We sat here in the bow window, where I had delivered my warning to Robert, by then far too late. “You’ve given him good advice, George. Has he acted on it, do you know?” “I do not.” “And you’ve talked to Alex?” “Not yet, but I shall.” “I should, if I were you, as soon as possible. I did not care for that threat that Robert made.” I said nothing. “Alex will act on what you tell him, you know.” *** “How pathetic,” Alex said when I’d finished relating the story to him. “But did you have to support the boy’s loan? It’s going to look strange if—or perhaps I ought to say when, because it’s inevitable—it gets into the press. Will take some explaining.” “I didn’t do it for the boy, Alex. I did it for Charles.” *** By way of the Securities and Investments Board, Alex did bring the matter to the attention of the Securities Association, the selfregulating organization to which Manhattan Banking belonged, but by then the Department of Trade and Industry had already begun an investigation into the trading activity preceding the tender offer for the shares of Warwick and Wonder. The bulk of

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the activity derived in fact from management and friends of management acting through offshore nominees, and made Robert’s purchase seem a peccadillo by comparison. In the event, it was only when the DTI began its highly public investigation that Robert Fletcher admitted his malfeasance to Manhattan Banking Corporation; but the story he told, and that the press, particularly the gutter press, picked up, was a highly imaginative version of reality. The headline that will stay forever in my memory was “Godfather becomes ‘The Godfather.’” According to Robert, I had manipulated him into the share purchase, and when it all went wrong, tried to keep him quiet by taking the loan off his hands. The illogic of the story seemed to have escaped the notice of the tabloid that published it. It was a clumsy lie, made clumsier still by the lateness of his admission, but the young man did understand the importance of firing the first salvo. The investigators came very quickly to the conclusion that there was nothing to the allegations. My suit against the newspaper that started it all has still to be heard, but there is no question that I shall win a tidy sum. No one else from Manhattan Banking Corporation was implicated for the moment, although within three months Max Fougere was gone quietly from London and, I understand, from the bank. Tom Davis was sacked. Because of the publicity, Jonathan Sewall did ask me for the sake of the bank to take an indefinite paid leave of absence, although he left me in no doubt that he never thought there was anything in Robert’s fantasies. Of course I acceded to his request, but I have a lot of time on my hands now and have recently asked him if I might do some consulting for New Broad Street, although not participate in the decision-making. He is considering the idea. The papers gave it a run for three or four days until something more lurid and less arcane came along. There was a brief revival of interest when the distraught mother appeared from 

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America to bail her son, and there was a front-page photograph of Jean looking overweight and ten years older than I knew she was, puffy-eyed and pasty, no doubt from the whisky she’d had for breakfast rather than from emotion. She was unequivocal in her replies to questions that she did not like me, but at least she did not accuse me of anything. In the beginning, one did not see Jan Woodward mentioned anywhere, and I wondered if Robert were indulging himself in more folly by protecting her. But the truth came out, as it usually does, and they began accusing each other; and as the DTI investigation into activity surrounding the Wisdom and Wonder shares went further, they discovered that a nominee company in Luxembourg had bought an option on WW shares, a derivative that in order to succeed required the shares to decline. The authorities found that the person behind the nominee company was called J. Woodward, who had put her lover deliberately into a deal that was bound to fail in order to enrich herself; all of which was most helpful to me, because it was quickly apparent to all with a professional interest that it had not been George Evans who had been manipulating the boy. Both of them are in the States now, awaiting trial here, and engaged in community service as a condition of their release. Giles thinks it may never come to trial, because the director of public prosecutions has much larger fish to fry (such as the management of Warwick and Wonder), and because of the public service they are performing. In a way, Giles has told me, it is too bad for my sake if they do not come to trial here, because I would then have a chance to clear my name in the wide public, as undoubtedly it has been already in private amongst my friends and colleagues.

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Th e p u b l ic c a lu m n y t h at s w e p t ov e r me just before the beginning of the by-election campaign did Nathalie no good at all; but had it not occurred, would the electors have returned Nathalie as member for Shrewsbury South, instead of turning Bobby Warrender’s majority of fourteen thousand into a deficit of three, which put her second to the Liberal Democrat candidate? I don’t know. Nathalie was freighted with a number of liabilities: although undoubtedly attractive, she was an unknown quantity, she had no apparent political experience, she was halfforeign, and French at that, and she was, perhaps, too graceful for the hustings. National television followed the campaign more closely than they followed most by-elections because one of the candidates was rather more photogenic than the usual run; and there’s nothing like sex (at a safe distance) to keep the British public titillated. So the campaign was followed up to the bitter end. I was not allowed to be in Shrewsbury for the election night festivities—which turned out to be obsequies—but on the telly I caught her speech of concession to the evident winner (an earnest accountant or something of the kind) and heartfelt thanks to the party workers. She looked worn out and very tearful, but she did it all with her usual grace. As far as I know, she spent the night in Shrewsbury and was back at her desk in Smith Square the following afternoon. 

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Certainly the Tories considered me a liability, and latterly they convinced her of it as well, which is why she now lives in Westminster Gardens in Marsham Street, just a stone’s throw from Smith Square, and I remain at Cadogan Square. One wonders, however, how much convincing she really needed. In the event, I don’t know what was said to her by one of the whips or the party chairman or whomever, but when I came into the flat one evening in May, she was sitting in the drawing room, without a book, but with her glass of white wine. “Good evening, darling. I didn’t expect to see you so early.” “I need to talk to you, George,” she said, and I knew more or less what she was going to say. This being no time for informality, I kept on my city pinstripes, but did manage to pour myself several fingers of whisky. “We’ve come to a watershed, you and I,” she began. “So it would seem.” “We don’t appear to have much in common anymore,” she said, “if we ever did.” That hurt. “I’m ambitious, and you’re not. I’m. . . hungry, and you seem well-content. We do not share a vision about the future. You appear incapable of getting along with my colleagues or my friends. . .” “By which, dear Nathalie, you mean that you are willing to suffer fools stoically, if not gladly, in the service of your ambition, and I am not.” “Perhaps,” she said, although I thought not in anger but in sadness. “I think I can make a difference in politics or government, and you do not.” “I’ve not heard you mention government before, Nathalie. Things hotting up at Central Office, are they?” She ignored this sally, as I suppose she ought. “What drew us together,” she said finally, “was our love for Charles. But it is no longer enough to keep us together.”

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And you, dear girl, I thought, are no longer the woman with whom Charles fell in love. When I heard much later that Nathalie had sold Mas Dutailley, I knew that she had severed all links with the past. I thought of the monument to her father and the others, and how she might never see it again. Not that I thought much of it, you understand; but that she might never go near it again was not quite right. Oddly enough, though, I am still in love with Nathalie, and from the time I met her as Tony Whitfield’s coltish fiancee, I cannot remember a moment when I wasn’t. I almost never see her anymore; and of course she sleeps with other men, men who may not be jollier than I, but who are certainly more useful. But time is moving on. I have aches and pains now that I didn’t have last year or even last week, but I still like a bit of slap and tickle with some regularity. Nathalie has, at least, brought to my attention that there are masses of parliamentary widows. If, for example, the husband of Susan Pendleton—Susan Hunter of sacred and especially profane memory—spends a good deal of time at the House and in his constituency, and the boys are away at school, who knows what she and I might not get up to when the cool weather comes and night falls early? George stops talking, and passes his hand over his eyes as if he wants to wipe away his vision of the past; some of it, anyway. It is nearly seven-thirty, and, despite his kind offer to dine, time for me to go. As I move to rise, he puts a hand gently on my arm. One more thing, old boy, he says. You recall the night, or I should say, the morning that Nathalie came home awash in tears? I found out at last where she’d been; one of the last things she told me before she moved away. She’d been in a house in Pavilion Road. Isn’t that where Robert lived? I ask, fearing the answer. George nods. Yes. She had just seduced Robert, hoping perhaps by that act that he would somehow metamorphose into Charles. She’d been 

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looking for Charles all those years after he died, you see. And found only imitations; the last a shoddy one indeed. And confirmed emotionally what she had long known intellectually, that he could never be replaced. Not by me, not by the occasional lovers she took—oh, yes—and certainly not by his son. George shifts his weight forward in the deep chair. I rise and he rises with me to help me with my coat and walk me to the door. Goodnight, old boy, he says. We must have lunch again when I’m back in the city. I shake his hand and go through the doorway and stand for a moment on the front steps of the club while the door closes behind me. It has stopped raining. As the door is opened again to admit some dinner arrivals, I look back and see George still standing in the entrance hall where I’ d left him, not hearing or ignoring the greetings of his clubmates, and regarding something that no one else can see.

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