Banker

OCTOBER

Gordon was coming up to sixty, the age at which everyone retired from Ekaterin’s, like it or not. The bustle of young brains, the founder Paul had said, was what kept money moving, and his concept still ruled in the house.
Gordon had his regrets but they were balanced, it seemed to me, by a sense of relief. He had battled for three years now against his palsy and had finished the allotted work span honourably in the face of the enemy within. He began saying he was looking forward to his leisure, and that he and Judith would go on a celebratory journey as soon as possible. Before that, however, he was to be away for a day of medical tests in. hospital.
‘Such a bore,’ he said, ‘but they want to make these checks and set me up before we travel.’
‘Very sensible,’ I said. ‘Where will you go?’
He smiled with enthusiasm. ‘I’ve always wanted to see Australia. Never been there, you know.’
‘Nor have I.’
He nodded and we continued with our normal work in the accord we had felt together for so many years. I would miss him badly for his own sake, I thought, and even more because through him I would no longer have constant news and contact with Judith. The days seemed to gallop towards his birthday and my spirits grew heavy as his lightened.
Oliver’s problems were no longer the day-to-day communiqués at lunch. The dissenting director had conceded that even blue-chip certainties weren’t always proof against well-planned malice and no longer grumbled about my part in things, particularly since the day that Henry in his mild-steel voice made observations about defending the bank’s money beyond the call of duty.
‘And beyond the call of common sense,’ Val murmured in my ear. ‘Thank goodness.’
Oliver’s plight had been extensively aired by Alec in What’s Going On Where It Shouldn’t, thanks to comprehensive leaks from one of Ekaterin’s directors; to wit, me.
Some of the regular newspapers had danced round the subject, since with Shane still awaiting trial the business of poisoning mares was supposed to be sub judice. Alec’s paper with its usual disrespect for secrecy had managed to let everyone in the bloodstock industry know that Sandcastle himself was a rock-solid investment, and that any foals already born perfect would not be carrying any damaging genes.
As for the mares covered this year, [the paper continued] there is a lottery as to whether they will produce deformed foals or not. Breeders are advised to let their mares go to term, because there is a roughly fifty per cent chance that the foal will be perfect. Breeders of mares who produce deformed or imperfect foals will, we understand, have their stallion fees refunded and expenses reimbursed.
The bloodstock industry is drawing up its own special guidelines to deal with this exceptional case.
Meanwhile, fear not. Sandcastle is potent, fertile and fully reinstated. Apply without delay for a place in next year’s programme.
Alec himself telephoned me in the office two days after the column appeared.
‘How do you like it?’ he said.
‘Absolutely great.’
‘The editor says the newsagents in Newmarket have been ringing up like mad for extra copies.’
‘Hm,’ I said. ‘I think perhaps I’ll get a list of all breeders and bloodstock agents and personally – I mean anonymously – send each of them a copy of your column, if your editor would agree.’
‘Do it without asking him,’ Alec said. ‘He would probably prefer it. We won’t sue you for infringement of copyright, I’ll promise you.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ I said. ‘You’ve been really great.’
‘Wait till you get an eyeful of the next issue. I’m working on it now. Do-it-yourself Miracles, that’s the heading. How does it grab you?’
‘Fine.’
‘The dead can’t sue,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I just hope I spell the drugs right.’
‘I sent you the list,’ I protested.
‘The typesetters,’ he said, ‘can scramble eggs, let alone sulphanilamide.’
‘See you someday,’ I said, smiling.
‘Yeah. Pie and beer. We’ll fix it.’
His miracle-working column in the next issue demolished Calder’s reputation entirely and made further progress towards restoring Sandcastle’s and after a third bang on the Sandcastle-is-tops gong in the issue after that, Oliver thankfully reported that confidence both in his stallion and his stud farm was creeping back. Two thirds of the nominations were filled already, and enquiries were arriving for the rest.
‘One of the breeders whose mare is in foal now is threatening to sue me for negligence, but the bloodstock associations are trying to dissuade him. He can’t do anything, anyway, until after Shane’s trial and after the foal is born, and I just hope to God it’s one that’s perfect.’
From the bank’s point of view his affairs were no longer in turmoil. The board had agreed to extend the period of the loan for three extra years, and Val, Gordon and I had worked out the rates at which Oliver could repay without crippling himself. All finally rested on Sandcastle, but if his progeny should prove to have inherited his speed, Oliver should in the end reach the prosperity and prestige for which he had aimed.
‘But let’s not,’ Henry said, smiling one day over roast lamb, ‘let’s not make a habit of going to the races.’
Gordon came to the office one Monday saying he had met Dissdale the day before at lunch in a restaurant which they both liked.
‘He was most embarrassed to see me,’ Gordon said. ‘But I had quite a talk with him. He really didn’t know, you know, that Calder was a fake. He says he can hardly believe, even now, that the cures weren’t cures, or that Calder actually killed two people. Very subdued, he was, for Dissdale.’
‘I suppose,’ I said diffidently, ‘You didn’t ask him if he and Calder had ever bought, cured and sold sick animals before Indian Silk.’
‘Yes, I did, actually, because of your thoughts. But he said they hadn’t. Indian Silk was the first, and Dissdale rather despondently said he supposed Calder and Ian Pargetter couldn’t bear to see all their time and trouble go to waste, so when Ian Pargetter couldn’t persuade Fred Barnet to try Calder, Calder sent Dissdale to buy the horse outright.’
‘And it worked a treat.’
Gordon nodded. ‘Another thing Dissdale said was that Calder was as stunned as he was himself to find it was Ekaterin’s who had lent the money for Sandcastle. There had been no mention of it in the papers. Dissdale asked me to tell you that when he told Calder who it was who had actually put up the money, Calder said ‘My God’ several times and walked up and down all evening and drank far more than usual. Dissdale didn’t know why, and Calder wouldn’t tell him, but Dissdale says he thinks now it was because Calder was feeling remorse at hammering Ekaterin’s after an Ekaterin had saved his life.’
‘Dissdale,’ I said dryly, ‘is still trying to find excuses for his hero.’
‘And for his own admiration of him,’ Gordon agreed. ‘But perhaps it’s true. Dissdale said Calder had liked you very much.’
Liked me, and apologised, and tried to kill me: that too.
Movement had slowly returned to my shoulder and arm once the body-restricting plaster had come off, and via electrical treatment, exercise and massage normal strength had returned.
In the ankle department things weren’t quite so good: I still after more than four months wore a brace, though now of removable aluminium and strapping, not plaster. No one would promise I’d be able to ski on the final outcome and meanwhile all but the shortest journeys required sticks. I had tired of hopping up and down my Hampstead stairs on my return there to the extent of renting a flat of my own with a lift to take me aloft and a garage in the basement, and I reckoned life had basically become reasonable again on the day I drove out of there in my car: automatic gear change, no work for the left foot, perfect.
A day or two before he was due to go into hospital for his check-up Gordon mentioned in passing that Judith was coming to collect him from the bank after work to go with him to the hospital, where he would be spending the night so as to be rested for the whole day of tests on Friday.
She would collect him again on Friday evening and they would go home together, and he would have the weekend to rest in before he returned to the office on Monday.
‘I’ll be glad when it’s over,’ he said frankly. ‘I hate all the needles and the pulling and pushing about.’
‘When Judith has settled you in, would she like me to give her some dinner before she goes home?’ I said.
He looked across with interest, the idea taking root. ‘I should think she would love it. I’ll ask her.’
He returned the next day saying Judith was pleased, and we arranged between us that when she left him in the hospital she would come to join me in a convenient restaurant that we all knew well: and on the following day, Thursday, the plan was duly carried out.
She came with a glowing face, eyes sparkling, white teeth gleaming; wearing a blue full-skirted dress and shoes with high heels.
‘Gordon is fine, apart from grumbling about tomorrow,’ she reported, ‘and they gave him almost no supper, to his disgust. He says to think of him during our fillet steaks.’
I doubt if we did. I don’t remember what we ate. The feast was there before me on the other side of the small table, Judith looking beautiful and telling me nonsensical things like what happens to a blase refrigerator when you pull its plug out.
‘What, then?’
‘It loses its cool.’
I laughed at the stupidity of it and brimmed over with the intoxication of having her there to myself, and I wished she was my own wife so fiercely that my muscles ached.
‘You’ll be going to Australia…’ I said.
‘Australia?’ She hesitated. ‘We leave in three weeks.’
‘It’s so soon.’
‘Gordon’s sixty the week after next,’ she said. ‘You know he is. There’s the party.’
Henry, Val and I had clubbed together to give Gordon a small sending-off in the office after his last day’s work, an affair to which most of the banking managers and their wives had been invited.
‘I hate him going,’ I said.
‘To Australia?’
‘From the bank.’
We drank wine and coffee and told each other much without saying a word. Not until we were nearly leaving did she say tentatively ‘We’ll be away for months, you know.’
My feelings must have shown. ‘Months… How many?’
‘We don’t know. We’re going to all the places Gordon or I have wanted to see that couldn’t be fitted into an ordinary holiday. We’re going to potter. Bits of Europe, bits of the Middle East, India, Singapore, Bali, then Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, Hawaii, America.’ She fell silent, her eyes not laughing now but full of sadness.
I swallowed. ‘Gordon will find it exhausting.’
‘He says not. He passionately wants to go, and I know he’s always yearned to have the time to see things… and we’re going slowly, with lots of rests.’
The restaurant had emptied around us and the waiters hovered with polite faces willing us to go. Judith put on her blue coat and we went outside onto the cold pavement.
‘How do you plan to go home now?’ I asked.
‘Underground.’
‘I’ll drive you,’ I said.
She gave me a small smile and nodded, and we walked slowly across the road to where I’d left the car. She sat in beside me and I did all the automatic things like switching on the lights and letting off the handbrake, and I drove all the way to Clapham without consciously seeing the road.
Gordon’s house behind the big gates lay quiet and dark. Judith looked up at its bulk and then at me, and I leaned across in the car and put my arms round her and kissed her. She came close to me, kissing me back with a feeling and a need that seemed as intense as my own, and for a while we stayed in that way, floating in passion, dreaming in deep unaccustomed touch.
As if of one mind we each at the same time drew back and slowly relaxed against the seat. She put her hand on mine and threaded her fingers through, holding tight.
I looked ahead through the windscreen, seeing trees against the stars: seeing nothing.
A long time passed.
‘We can’t,’ I said eventually.
‘No.’
‘Especially not,’ I said, ‘in his own house.’
‘No.’
After another long minute she let go of my hand and opened the door beside her, and I too opened mine.
‘Don’t get out,’ she said, ‘because of your ankle.’
I stood up however on the driveway and she walked round the car towards me. We hugged each other but without kissing, a long hungry minute of body against body; commitment and farewell.
‘I’ll see you,’ she said, ‘at the party’; and we both knew how it would be, with Lorna Shipton talking about watching Henry’s weight and Henry flirting roguishly with Judith whenever he could, and everyone talking loudly and clapping Gordon on the back.
She walked over to the front door and unlocked it, and looked back, briefly, once, and then went in, putting the walls between us in final, mutual, painful decision.