A Dangerous Fortune (11 page)

“A pound minimum.”

It occurred to Hugh that if he played and won he could afford one of the women in the next room. He did not actually have as much as a pound in his pockets, but obviously Edward’s credit was good here…. Then he remembered Tonio’s losing ten guineas at the ratting. “I shan’t play,” he said.

Micky said languidly: “We never imagined you would.”

Hugh felt awkward. He wondered whether to ask a waiter to bring him a drink, then he reflected that it would probably cost him a week’s wages. The banker dealt cards from a shoe and Micky and Edward placed bets. Hugh decided to slip away.

He returned to the main drawing room. Looking more closely at the furniture, he could see that it was quite tawdry: there were stains on the velvet upholstery and burn marks on the polished wood, and the carpets were worn and ripped. Beside him a drunk man was on his knees, singing to a whore, while two of his friends laughed uproariously. On the next couch a couple were kissing with their mouths open. Hugh had heard that people did this but he had never seen it. He watched, mesmerized, as the man unbuttoned the front of the woman’s dress and started to caress her breasts. They were white and flabby, with big dark-red nipples. The whole scene aroused and revolted Hugh at the same time. Despite his distaste, his prick grew hard. The man on the couch bent his head to the woman’s bosom and began to kiss her breasts. Hugh could not believe what he was seeing. The woman looked over the top of the man’s head, caught Hugh’s eye, and winked.

A voice in Hugh’s ear said: “You could do that to me, if you like.”

He spun round, feeling as guilty as if he had been caught doing something shameful. Beside him was a dark-haired girl of about his own age, heavily rouged. He could not help glancing down at her bosom. He looked away again quickly, feeling embarrassed.

“Don’t be shy,” she said. “Look as long as you want. They’re for you to enjoy.” To his horror he felt her hand on his groin. She found his stiff prick and squeezed it. “My goodness, you are excited,” she said. Hugh was suffering exquisite anguish. He felt about to explode. The
girl tilted her head up and kissed his lips, rubbing his prick at the same time.

It was too much. Unable to control himself, Hugh ejaculated into his underwear.

The girl felt it. For a moment she just looked surprised, then she burst out laughing. “My God, you are a green one!” she said loudly. Hugh felt humiliated. The girl looked around and said to the nearest whore: “I only touched him, and he creamed himself!” Several people laughed.

Hugh turned away and headed for the exit. The laughter seemed to follow him the length of the room. He had to restrain himself from running. At last he reached the door. A moment later he was out in the street.

The night had cooled a little, and he took a deep breath and paused to calm himself. If this was dissipation, he did not like it. The dollymop Maisie had been rude about his father; the ratting had been revolting; the whores had laughed at him. The whole lot of them could go to the devil.

A commissionaire gave him a sympathetic look. “Decided to have an early night, sir?”

“What a good idea,” said Hugh, and he walked away.

Micky was losing money. He could cheat at baccarat if he had the bank, but tonight the bank would not come to him. He was secretly relieved when Edward said: “Let’s get a couple of girls.”

“You go,” he said, feigning indifference. “I’ll play on.”

A gleam of panic showed in Edward’s eyes. “It’s getting late.”

“I’m trying to win back my losses,” Micky said stubbornly.

Edward lowered his voice. “I’ll pay for your chips.”

Micky pretended to hesitate, then give in. “Oh, all right.”

Edward smiled.

He settled up and they went into the main room. Almost immediately, a blond girl with large breasts came up to Edward. He put his arm around her bare shoulders, and she pressed her bosom against his chest.

Micky scanned the girls. A slightly older woman with a nicely debauched look caught his eye. He smiled at her and she came over. She put her hand on his shirtfront, dug her nails into his chest, stood on tiptoe and gently bit his lower lip.

He saw Edward watching him, flushed with excitement. Micky began to feel eager. He looked at his own woman. “What’s your name?” he said.

“Alice.”

“Let’s go upstairs, Alice,” he said.

They all went up the stairs together. On the landing was a marble statue of a centaur with a huge erect penis, which Alice rubbed as they went by. Next to it a couple were performing the sexual act standing up, oblivious of a drunk man sitting on the floor watching them.

The women headed for separate rooms, but Edward steered them into the same room. “All together tonight, boys?” said Alice.

“We’re saving money,” Micky said, and Edward laughed.

“At school together, were you?” she said knowingly, as she closed the door behind them. “Used to frig each other off?”

“Shut up,” Micky said, embracing her.

While Micky kissed Alice, Edward came up behind her, put his arms around her, and cupped her breasts. She looked faintly surprised but made no objection. Micky felt Edward’s hands moving between his body and the woman’s, and he knew that Edward was rubbing himself against her rump.

After a moment the other girl said: “What shall I do? I feel a bit left out.”

“Get your drawers off,” Edward told her. “You’re next.”

 CHAPTER THREE

JULY  

1

AS A LITTLE BOY
, Hugh had thought Pilasters bank was owned by the walkers. These personages were in fact lowly messengers, but they were all rather portly, and wore immaculate morning dress with silver watch-chains across their ample waistcoats, and they moved about the bank with such ponderous dignity that to a child they appeared the most important people there.

Hugh had been brought here at the age of ten by his grandfather, old Seth’s brother. The marble-walled banking hall on the first floor had seemed like a church: huge, gracious, silent, a place where incomprehensible rites were performed by an elite priesthood in the service of a divinity called Money. Grandfather had shown him all around: the carpeted hush of the third floor, occupied by the partners and their correspondence clerks, where little Hugh had been given a glass of sherry and a plate of biscuits in the Partners’ Room; the senior clerks at their tables on the fourth floor, bespectacled and anxious, surrounded by bundles of papers tied with ribbon like gifts; and the juniors on the top floor, sitting at their high desks in lines like Hugh’s toy soldiers, scratching entries in ledgers with inky fingers. But best of all, for Hugh, had been the basement, where contracts even older than grandfather were kept in vaults, thousands of postage stamps waited to be licked, and there was a whole room full of
ink stored in enormous glass jars. It had amazed him to reflect on the process. The ink came into the bank, it was spread over the papers by the clerks, and then the papers were returned to the basement to be stored forever; and somehow this made money.

The mystery had gone out of it now. He knew that the massive leather-bound ledgers were not arcane texts but simple lists of financial transactions, laboriously compiled and scrupulously updated; and his own fingers had become cramped and ink-stained by days of writing in them. A bill of exchange was no longer a magic spell but merely a promise to pay money at a future date, written on a piece of paper and guaranteed by a bank. Discounting, which as a child he had thought must mean counting backwards from a hundred down to one, turned out to be the practice of buying bills of exchange at a little less than their face value, keeping them until their due date, then cashing them at a small profit.

Hugh was a general assistant to Jonas Mulberry, the Principal Clerk. A bald man of about forty, Mulberry was good-hearted but a little sour. He would always take time to explain things to Hugh, but he was very quick to find fault if Hugh was in the least hasty or careless. Hugh had been working under him for the past year, and yesterday he had made a serious mistake. He had lost a bill of lading for a consignment of Bradford cloth destined for New York. The Bradford manufacturer had been downstairs in the banking hall asking for his money, but Mulberry had needed to check the bill before authorizing payment, and Hugh could not find the document. They had been obliged to ask the man to come back in the morning.

In the end Hugh had found the bill, but he had spent most of the night worrying about it, and this morning he had devised a new system of dealing with papers for Mulberry.

On the table in front of him he had two cheap
wooden trays, two oblong cards, a quill pen and an inkwell. He wrote slowly and neatly on one card:

    
For the attention of the Principal Clerk

On the second card he wrote:

Having been dealt with by the Principal Clerk

He carefully blotted his writing then fixed one card to each tray with tacks. He put the trays on Jonas Mulberry’s table and stood back to survey his work. At that moment Mr. Mulberry came in. “Good morning, Mr. Hugh,” he said. All family members were addressed this way at the bank because otherwise there would be confusion among all the different Mr. Pilasters.

“Good morning, Mr. Mulberry.”

“And what the dickens is this?” Mulberry said tetchily, looking at the trays.

“Well,” Hugh began. “I found that bill of lading.”

“Where was it?”

“Mixed up with some letters you had signed.”

Mulberry narrowed his eyes. “Are you trying to say it was my fault?”

“No,” Hugh said quickly. “It’s my responsibility to keep your papers in order. That’s why I’ve instituted the tray system—to separate papers you’ve already dealt with from papers you haven’t yet looked at.”

Mulberry grunted noncommittally. He hung his bowler hat on the hook behind the door and sat down at the table. Finally he said: “We’ll try it—it might be quite effective. But next time, have the courtesy to consult me before implementing your ingenious ideas. This is my room, after all, and I am the Principal Clerk.”

“Certainly,” Hugh said. “I’m sorry.” He knew he should have asked Mulberry’s permission, but he had been so keen on his new idea that he had not had the patience to wait.

“The Russian loan issue closed yesterday,” Mulberry went on. “I want you to go down to the post room and organize the counting of the applications.”

“Right.” The bank was raising a loan of two million pounds for the government of Russia. It had issued 100-pound bonds which paid five pounds interest per year; but they were selling the bonds for 93 pounds, so the true interest rate was over five and three-eighths. Most of the bonds had been bought by other banks in London and Paris, but some had been offered to the general public, and now the applications would have to be counted.

“Let’s hope we have more applications than we can fulfill,” Mulberry said.

“Why?”

“That way the unlucky applicants will try to buy the bonds tomorrow on the open market, and that will drive the price up perhaps to 95 pounds—and all our customers will feel they’ve bought a bargain.”

Hugh nodded. “And what if we have too few applications?”

“Then the bank, as underwriter, has to buy the surplus—at 93 pounds. And tomorrow the price may go down to 92 or 91 pounds, and we will have made a loss.”

“I see.”

“Off you go.”

Hugh left Mulberry’s office, which was on the fourth floor, and ran down the stairs. He was happy that Mulberry had accepted his tray idea and relieved that he was not in worse trouble over the lost bill of lading. As he reached the third floor, where the Partners’ Room was, he saw Samuel Pilaster, looking dapper in a silver-gray frock coat and a navy-blue satin tie. “Good morning, Uncle Samuel,” Hugh said.

“Morning, Hugh. What are you up to?” He showed more interest in Hugh than the other partners did.

“Going to count the applications for the Russian loan.”

Samuel smiled, showing his crooked teeth. “I don’t know how you can be so cheerful with a day of that in front of you!”

Hugh continued down the stairs. Within the family, people were beginning to talk in hushed tones about Uncle Samuel and his secretary. Hugh did not find it shocking that Samuel was what people called effeminate. Women and vicars might pretend that sex between men was perverted, but it went on all the time at schools such as Windfield and it never did anyone any harm.

He reached the first floor and entered the imposing banking hall. It was only half-past nine, and the dozens of clerks who worked at Pilasters were still streaming through the grand front door, smelling of bacon breakfasts and underground railway trains. Hugh nodded to Miss Greengrass, the only female clerk. A year ago, when she had been hired, debate had raged through the bank as to whether a woman could possibly do the work. In the event she had settled the matter by proving herself supremely competent. There would be more female clerks in the future, Hugh guessed.

He took the back stairs to the basement and made his way to the post room. Two messengers were sorting the mail, and applications for the Russian loan already filled one big sack. Hugh decided he would get two junior clerks to add up the applications, and he would check their arithmetic.

The work took most of the day. It was a few minutes before four o’clock when he double-checked the last bundle and added the last column of figures. The issue was undersubscribed: a little more than one hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bonds remained unsold. It was not a big shortfall, as a proportion of a two-million-pound issue, but there was a big psychological difference between oversubscribed and undersubscribed, and the partners would be disappointed.

He wrote the tally on a clean sheet of paper and went in search of Mulberry. The banking hall was quiet now. A few customers stood at the long polished counter. Behind the counter, clerks lifted the big ledgers on and
off the shelves. Pilasters did not have many private accounts. It was a merchant bank, lending money to traders to finance their ventures. As old Seth would say, the Pilasters weren’t interested in counting the greasy pennies of a grocer’s takings or the grubby banknotes of a tailor—there was not enough profit in it. But all the family kept accounts at the bank, and the facility was extended to a small number of very rich clients. Hugh spotted one of them now: Sir John Cammel. Hugh had known his son at Windfield. A thin man with a bald head, Sir John earned vast incomes from coal mines and docks on his lands in Yorkshire. Now he was pacing the marble floor looking impatient and bad-tempered. Hugh said: “Good afternoon, Sir John, I hope you’re being attended to?”