Banker

NOVEMBER

To my great delight the cartoonist came up trumps, his twenty animated films being shown on television every weeknight for a month in the best time-slot for that sort of humour, seven in the evening, when older children were still up and the parents home from work. The nation sat up and giggled, and the cartoonist telephoned breathlessly to ask for a bigger loan.
‘I do need a proper studio, not this converted warehouse. And more animators, and designers, and recordists, and equipment.’
‘All right,’ I said into the first gap. ‘Draw up your requirements and come and see me.’
‘Do you realise,’ he said, as if he himself had difficulty, ‘That they’ll take as many films as I can make? No limit. They said just go on making them for years and years… they said please go on making them.’
‘I’m very glad,’ I said sincerely.
‘You gave me faith in myself,’ he said. ‘You’ll never believe it, but you did. I’d been turned down so often, and I was getting depressed, but when you lent me the money to start it was like being uncorked. The ideas just rushed out.’
‘And are they still rushing?’
‘Oh sure. I’ve got the next twenty films roughed out in drawings already and we’re working on those, and now I’m starting on the batch after that.’
‘It’s terrific,’ I said.
‘It sure is. Brother, life’s amazing.’ He put down his receiver and left me smiling into space.
‘The cartoonist?’ Gordon said.
I nodded. ‘Going up like a rocket.’
‘Congratulations.’ There was warmth and genuine pleasure in his voice. Such a generous man, I thought: so impossible to do him harm.
‘He looks like turning into a major industry,’ I said.
‘Disney, Hanna Barbera, eat your hearts out,’ Alec said from across the room.
‘Good business for the bank.’ Gordon beamed. ‘Henry will be pleased.’
Pleasing Henry, indeed, was the aim of us all.
‘You must admit, Tim,’ Alec said, ‘That you’re a fairish rocket yourself… so what’s the secret?’
‘Light the blue paper and retire immediately,’ I said good humouredly, and he balled a page of jottings to throw at me, and missed.
At mid-morning he went out as customary for the six copies of What’s Going On Where It Shouldn’t and having distributed five was presently sitting back in his chair reading our own with relish.
Ekaterin’s had been thankfully absent from the probing columns ever since the five-per-cent business, but it appeared chat some of our colleagues along the road weren’t so fortunate.
‘Did you know,’ Alec said conversationally, ‘That some of our investment manager chums down on the corner have set up a nice little fiddle on the side, accepting pay-offs from brokers in return for steering business their way?’
‘How do you know?’ Gordon asked, looking up from a ledger.
Alec lifted the paper. ‘The gospel according to this dicky bird.’
‘Gospel meaning good news,’ I said.
‘Don’t be so damned erudite.’ He grinned at me with mischief and went back to reading aloud, ‘Contrary to popular belief the general run of so-called managers in merchant banks are not in the princely bracket.’ He looked up briefly. ‘You can say that again.’ He went on, ‘We hear that four of the investment managers in this establishment have been cosily supplementing their middle-incomes by steering fund money to three stockbrokers in particular. Names will be revealed in our next issue. Watch this space.’
‘It’s happened before,’ Gordon said philosophically. ‘And will happen again. The temptation is always there.’ He frowned. ‘All the same, I’m surprised their senior managers and the directors haven’t spotted it.’
‘They’ll have spotted it now,’ Alec said.
‘So they will.’
‘It would be pretty easy,’ I said musingly, ‘To set up a computer programme to do the spotting for Ekaterin’s, in case we should ever find the pestilence cropping up here.’
‘Would it?’ Gordon asked.
‘Mm. Just a central programme to record every deal in the Investment Department with each stockbroker, with running totals, easy to see. Anything hugely unexpected could be investigated.’
‘But that’s a vast job, surely,’ Gordon said.
I shook my head. ‘I doubt it. I could get our tame programmer to have a go, if you like.’
‘We’ll put it to the others. See what they say.’
‘There will be screeches from Investment Management,’ Alec said. ‘Cries of outraged virtue.’
‘Guards them against innuendo like this, though,’ Gordon said, pointing to What’s Going On Where…
The board agreed, and in consequence I spent another two days with the programmer, building dykes against future leaks.
Gordon these days seemed no worse, his illness not having progressed in any visible way. There was no means of knowing how he felt, as he never said and hated to be asked, but on the few times I’d seen Judith since the day at Easter, she had said he was as well as could be hoped for.
The best of those times had been a Sunday in July when Pen had given a lunch party in her house in Clapham; it was supposed to have been a lunch-in-the-garden party, but like so much that summer was frustrated by chilly winds. Inside was to me much better, as Pen had written place-cards for her long refectory table and put me next to Judith, with Gordon on her right hand.
The other guests remained a blur, most of them being doctors of some sort or another, or pharmacists like herself. Judith and I made polite noises to the faces on either side of us but spent most of the time talking to each other, carrying on two conversations at once, one with voice, one with eyes; both satisfactory.
When the main party had broken up and gone, Gordon and Judith and I stayed to supper, first helping Pen clear up from what she described as ‘repaying so many dinners at one go’.
It had been a day when natural opportunities for touching people abounded, when kisses and hugs of greeting had been appropriate and could be warm, when all the world could watch and see nothing between Judith and me but an enduring and peaceful friendship: a day when I longed to have her for myself worse than ever.
Since then I’d seen her only twice, and both times when she’d come to the bank to collect Gordon before they went on to other events. On each of these times I’d managed at least five minutes with her, stiffly circumspect, Gordon’s colleague being polite until Gordon himself was ready to leave.
It wasn’t usual for wives to come to the bank: husbands normally joined them at wherever they were going. Judith said, the second time, ‘I won’t do this often. I just wanted to see you, if you were around.’
‘Always here,’ I said.
She nodded. She was looking as fresh and poised as ever, wearing a neat blue coat with pearls showing. The brown hair was glossy, the eyes bright, the soft mouth half smiling, the glamour born in her and unconscious.
‘I get… well… thirsty, sometimes,’ she said.
‘Permanent state with me,’ I said lightly.
She swallowed. ‘Just for a moment or two…’
We were standing in the entrance hall, not touching, waiting for Gordon.
‘Just to see you…’ She seemed uncertain that I understood, but I did.
‘It’s the same for me,’ I assured her. ‘I sometimes think of going to Clapham and waiting around just to see you walk down the street to the bakers. Just to see you, even for seconds.’
‘Do you really?’
‘I don’t go, though. You might send Gordon to buy the bread.’
She laughed a small laugh, a fitting size for the bank; and he came, hurrying, struggling into his overcoat. I sprang to help him and he said to her, ‘Sorry, darling, got held up on the telephone, you know how it is.’
‘I’ve been perfectly happy,’ she said, kissing him, ‘talking to Tim.’
‘Splendid. Splendid. Are we ready then?’
They went off to their evening smiling and waving and leaving me to hunger futilely for this and that.
In the office one day in November Gordon said ‘How about you coming over to lunch on Sunday? Judith was saying it’s ages since she saw you properly.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘Pen’s coming, Judith said.’
Pen, my friend; my chaperone.
‘Great,’ I said positively. ‘Lovely.’
Gordon nodded contentedly and said it was a shame we couldn’t all have a repeat of last Christmas, he and Judith had enjoyed it so much. They were going this year to his son and daughter-in-law in Edinburgh, a visit long promised; to his son by his first long-dead wife, and his grandchildren, twin boys of seven.
‘You’ll have fun,’ I said regretfully.
‘They’re noisy little brutes.’
His telephone rang, and mine also, and moneylending proceeded. I would be dutiful, I thought, and spend Christmas with my mother in Jersey, as she wanted, and we would laugh and play backgammon, and I would sadden her as usual by bringing no girl-friend, no prospective producer of little brutes.
‘Why, my love,’ she’d said to me once a few years earlier in near despair, ‘do you take out these perfectly presentable girls and never marry them?’
‘There’s always something I don’t want to spend my life with.’
‘But you do sleep with them?’
‘Yes, darling, I do.’
‘You’re too choosy.’
‘I expect so,’ I said.
‘You haven’t had a single one that’s lasted,’ she complained. ‘Everyone else’s sons manage to have live-in girl friends, sometimes going on for years even if they don’t marry, so why can’t you?’
I’d smiled at the encouragement to what would once have been called sin, and kissed her, and told her I preferred living alone, but that one day I’d find the perfect girl to love for ever; and it hadn’t even fleetingly occurred to me that when I found her she would be married to someone else.
Sunday came and I went to Clapham: bitter-sweet hours, as ever.
Over lunch I told them tentatively that I’d seen the boy who had tried to kill Calder, and they reacted as strongly as I’d expected, Gordon saying, ‘You’ve told the police, of course,’ and Judith adding ‘He’s dangerous, Tim.’
I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t think so. I hope not.’ I smiled wryly and told them all about Ricky Barnet and Indian Silk, and the pressure which had led to the try at stabbing. ‘I don’t think he’ll do anything like that again. He’s grown so far away from it already that he feels a different person.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Gordon said.
‘Fancy it being Dissdale who bought Indian Silk,’ Pen said. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Especially as he was saying he was short of cash and wanting to sell box-space at Ascot,’ Judith added.
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘But after Calder had cured the horse Dissdale sold it again pretty soon, and made a handsome profit, by what I gather.’
‘Typical Dissdale behaviour,’ Gordon said without criticism. ‘Face the risk, stake all you can afford, take the loot if you’re lucky, and get out fast.’ He smiled. ‘By Ascot I guess he’d blown the Indian Silk profit and was back to basics. It doesn’t take someone like Dissdale any longer to lose thousands than it does to make them.’
‘He must have colossal faith in Calder,’ Pen said musingly.
‘Not colossal, Pen,’ Gordon said. ‘Just twice what a knacker would pay for a carcass.’
‘Would you buy a sick-to-death horse?’ Judith asked, i mean, if Calder said buy it and I’ll cure him, would you believe it?’
Gordon looked at her fondly. ‘I’m not Dissdale, darling, and I don’t think I’d buy it.’
‘And that is precisely,’ I pointed out, ‘why Fred Barnet lost Indian Silk. He thought Calder’s powers were all rubbish and he wouldn’t lash out good money to put them to the test. But Dissdale did. Bought the horse and presumably also paid Calder… who boasted about his success on television and nearly got himself killed for it.’
‘Ironic, the whole thing,’ Pen said, and we went on discussing it desultorily over coffee.
I stayed until six, when Pen went off to her shop for a Sunday-evening stint and Gordon began to look tired, and I drove back to Hampstead in the usual post-Judith state; half-fulfilled, half-starved.
Towards the end of November, and at Oliver Knowles’ invitation, I travelled to another Sunday lunch, this time at the stud farm in Hertfordshire.
It turned out, not surprisingly, to be one of Ginnie’s days home from school, and it was she, whistling to Squibs, who set off with me through the yards.
‘Did you know we had a hundred and fifty-two mares here all at the same time, back in May?’ she said.
‘That’s a lot,’ I said, impressed.
‘They had a hundred and fourteen foals between them, and only one of the mares and three of the foals died. That’s a terrifically good record, you know.’
‘Your father’s very skilled.’
‘So is Nigel,’ she said grudgingly. ‘You have to give him his due.’
I smiled at the expression.
‘He isn’t here just now,’ she said. ‘He went off to Miami yesterday to lie in the sun.’
‘Nigel?’
She nodded. ‘He goes about this time every year. Sets him up for the winter, he says.’
‘Always Miami?’
‘Yes, he likes it.’
The whole atmosphere of the place was back to where I’d known it first, to the slow chill months of gestation. Ginnie, snuggling inside her padded jacket, gave carrots from her pocket to some of the mares in the first yard and walked me without stopping through the empty places, the second yard, the foaling yard, and past the breeding shed.
We came finally as always to the stallion yard where the curiosity of the residents brought their heads out the moment they heard our footsteps. Ginnie distributed carrots and pats with the aplomb of her father, and Sandcastle graciously allowed her to stroke his nose.
‘He’s quiet now,’ she said. ‘He’s on a much lower diet at this time of year.’
I listened to the bulk of knowledge behind the calm words and I said, ‘What are you going to do when you leave school?’
‘This, of course.’ She patted Sandcastle’s neck. ‘Help Dad. Be his assistant.’
‘Nothing else?’
She shook her head. ‘I love the foals. Seeing them born and watching them grow. I don’t want to do anything else, ever.’
We left the stallions and walked between the paddocks with their foals and dams, along the path to the Watcherleys’, Squibs trotting on ahead and marking his fence posts. The neighbouring place, whose ramshackle state I’d only glimpsed on my pursuit of the loose five million, proved now to be almost as neat as the parent spread, with much fresh paint in evidence and weeds markedly absent.
‘Dad can’t bear mess,’ Ginnie said when I remarked on the spit-and-polish. ‘The Watcherleys are pretty lucky, really, with Dad paying them rent and doing up their place and employing them to look after the animals in this yard. Bob may still gripe a bit at not being on his own, but Maggie was telling me just last week that she would be everlastingly thankful that Calder Jackson stole their business.’
‘He hardly stole it,’ I said mildly.
‘Well, you know what I mean. Did better at it, if you want to be pedantic’ She grinned. ‘Anyway, Maggie’s bought some new clothes at last, and I’m glad for her.’
We opened and went into a few of the boxes where she handed out the last of the carrots and fondled the inmates, both mares and growing foals, talking to them, and all of them responded amiably to her touch, nuzzling her gently. She looked at peace and where she belonged, all growing pains suspended.