Grand Days (27 page)

Here she was bringing him up to date on trains. She wanted him to be the wiser one. She wanted to be girl to his man. She then found herself asking how much older he was than she, and whether she should be taking his hand. She let it go. He was a married man and there had never been any suggestion of impropriety. Until now, though, he had seemed to be almost of another genus to her, a mentor, not a man as such. He had become a man as such.

He asked her to do the ordering — ‘My French is rusty' — and complimented her on her French and her ‘aplomb' and also on her accented English. She said it was because her mouth had to make French sounds every day. They drank their tea and ate their cakes and talked of the health and fortunes, of the births, deaths, and marriages of mutual acquaintances back home.

He asked her whether she read much in French. She said she tried to.

He told her that when he was in Paris for the Peace Conference one of his jobs had been to read the Paris newspapers each day.

‘Not a bad job,' she said.

‘There were forty-three daily newspapers in Paris then,' he said wryly.

The Australian substitute delegate, Freda Bage, came into the salon then and joined them.

 

Two days later a message came to her to telephone John at the Hôtel de la Paix. She did and he said he wanted her to meet James Jackson Forstall, an American who could answer all her questions about the stock market.

She went again to the Hôtel de la Paix for tea, this time in the suite of James Jackson Forstall, a hearty American in his forties.

‘You will probably not know this,' John said, smiling in the direction of Forstall but talking to Edith. ‘This man is buying La Pelouse for the Secretary-General's residence. As a gift to the League.'

She didn't know that. La Pelouse was a fine mansion in which Sir Eric lived and she'd been there for League receptions. It impressed and warmed her that this American should be buying La Pelouse for the League.

John said that he sometimes believed that the United States had two foreign policies. ‘The one that comes from Washington and the one that comes from people like James and Rockefeller and Carnegie.'

Mr Forstall liked that.

John told Forstall that he'd mentioned the skulduggery of pools. ‘But I'm afraid I don't really know the ins and outs of it all. I said you could enlighten us, Jim.'

‘I hope, young lady, you're not contemplating setting up a stock market pool?' Forstall smiled at her. She said it was about
time she understood something about the stock market. Everyone else seemed to be talking about it these days.

Forstall said, ‘If you do set up a pool, you must include me. That's all I ask.'

‘I will when I know what one is and if I like the sound of it.'

The men laughed.

Forstall said that people could manipulate the stock market by forming a pool — which was really a group of share buyers getting together to distort things.

‘They buy and sell shares in a company with no apparent pattern — for no reason, you see. Their pattern of selling is based on nothing. What it does is that it makes that particular stock “active and higher” and so makes people interested in the stock. Speculators outside the pool then begin to buy up the stock because of this activity. They believe that someone somewhere knows something about this stock that they don't. The stock continues to attract more speculators and the price continues to rise. Then comes “pulling the plug”.'

Edith wrote down in her notebook the expression ‘pulling the plug'.

‘At a carefully judged moment, the pool manager feeds the stock held by the pool back onto the market. They unload their shares in that company at a profit and then the price collapses. That's called pulling the plug.'

‘Isn't there a law against it?' she asked. ‘This pulling the plug?'

‘If the Democrats ever get their way, there will be.'

‘How could you tell whether a stock was being manipulated?' John asked.

‘You can't. Unless you knew the company being manipulated, and knew that any active trading in their shares was without reason.'

‘Or unless I were part of the pool.' She smiled at him.

Mr Forstall chuckled. ‘I like this girl, John.'

At this point John excused himself. ‘I want to chase up an Assembly medallion for myself. You stay on, Edith.'

She did not particularly like the idea of staying on alone in the suite with Forstall and said she must go as well. It was more that she felt a little intimidated by him; he was not from her milieu. It was easier to appear bright in a threesome than in a couple. Forstall looked at his watch and suggested that they move down to the lounge.

She agreed to that.

In the lift he said to her, ‘Put your notebook away. Learn to let the mind take notes. Don't try so hard to remember. The mind will retain what it needs to remember to survive. Never took a note in my life. Never wrote down a damned thing.'

He placed her hand under his arm in a friendly way as they walked into the bar.

Over drinks — Mr Forstall having a Coca-Cola, she having a gin fizz — he told her not to be scared about pools and other talk of traps and pitfalls. He said that they were excuses for the faint-hearted. ‘The reality of it all is that people invent things, people still get companies going, people want to make things and do things, and to do this they need money. In the end, as haphazard as it may seem, people with money exercise judgement to find people with good ideas. Good things are made and people find reward.' He said that most money was still to be made by venturing in small companies.

Stocks, he said, were influenced by rises in the interest rates charged by banks on money, by foreign wars, by domestic upheaval, by apprehension in a country and by rumour. ‘Remember that Nathan Rothschild said that the time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.'

‘How then do you get to the stock exchange?' she quipped.

‘By telephone,' he replied, joining her playfulness. ‘Stay off the streets. The great mystery is judgement — something which I seem to have.'

He told her that if everyone knew as much as everyone else and was equally smart, you could never have a chance of making money on the market. ‘Everyone would invest only in those shares which would yield the greatest return, that is, the same shares. But people are not equally informed or equally wise. So it is always in a state of play. The secret is to be able to identify the overvalued share and the undervalued share.'

He had given her too many ‘secrets' to keep in her mind. She tried to follow his advice about memory, but every time he mentioned the word ‘secret', she tried too hard to remember it. She realised Mr Forstall had a love of secrets and mysteries.

‘Any analysis of stocks is always incomplete. Except mine.' He laughed. ‘No, I too have taken some whippings. What I mean is that you can never know all there is to be known. And there is never an equality of knowledge.' He told her that it came down to two rules which were mutually contradictory.

He was also, she noticed, fond of reducing the world to one or two rules.

He said she could choose either of these rules. ‘I give you these with my blessing. May you prosper whichever path you ride along. The first fork is this: take more trouble than the other investors in gathering information. This is one approach. It means working like the devil day and night to find out. You listen, you read, you prowl around and you poke about. It then becomes a vocation. It means you study the world and all its madness every waking moment.'

She thought that maybe she did that already.

He took a sip of his Coca-Cola. ‘Or you can do another
thing, you can ride along another trail. You can put together a collection of shares bought pretty much unaimed, you understand? You close your eyes and fire. Then open and see what you hit. Sit back and see how they go. You'll probably make money just as well this way. Maybe never as much as the first way.'

‘My father favoured new companies.'

‘Is he rich?'

She thought about this and was fazed by the question. She didn't really know. ‘He isn't poor.'

Forstall enjoyed the answer. ‘He isn't poor. I like it! We call that “venture capital”. Did you know that?'

‘No, I didn't know that.'

‘Sure you can get big returns on that. But you meet some fancy talkers, some big dreamers, some impractical asses. Brilliant but hopeless people. But you can also meet the young geniuses. My advice: if venture capital is your inclination — mix them. That's James Forstall's advice: mix them. Old and new, big and small, north and south, dreamers and mechanics.'

Edith decided there and then to buy an unaimed bunch but she didn't know whether or not to wait for blood to be running in the streets.

‘Should I wait for blood to be running in the streets?'

He chuckled and then his face clouded for a second or two. ‘If you wish to become a Nathan Rothschild, you can, sadly, always find some place in this unhappy world where blood is running in the streets. But at times the stock market bears no relationship to the economy or to the real world. Sometimes it becomes a world unto itself.'

He looked deeply into her eyes, a look she was coming to know in men. ‘You could let me invest for you.'

She thought this attractive and easy. But no, it was her mother's money — she would have to play a part in its manage
ment. She would have to have stewardship. ‘If I am to understand this business,' she said, ‘I'll have to learn by venturing.'

‘So be it. Now tell me — which trail will you take?'

‘A random bunch.'

He smiled but she didn't know whether it was in approval. ‘Tell me all about yourself,' he said, ordering another drink for her. ‘How'd you meet Latham?'

‘He is a friend of my father's, through the Rationalist Society. I did science at university but decided I was not really a scientist. I liked insects and flowers but not science. I was good at birds too, owls especially. I had an interest in politics through my father and uncle — my uncle once stood for a state seat but lost. I helped him put leaflets in letter boxes, went to rallies, worked as a helper. John offered me a job as his assistant when he was elected — if I would learn to type. So I went to Melbourne — federal parliament is there. I learned to type, but working with John was not all typing. He's been arguing for Australia to have its own Department of Foreign Affairs.'

‘And you ended up in Geneva?'

‘Thanks to John.'

‘Where did you get your French?'

‘School, university — but really I learned it from the family who lived next door when I was growing up. They were French. I grew up with their daughters. That is where I really learned it. And my parents knew the French writer Paul Wenz who lives in Australia and we always spoke French with him.' She silently supposed that he wouldn't have heard of Paul Wenz and that she was talking too much.

‘The League is the future. You know that?' Forstall said.

‘I believe it to be.'

‘My country has to join the League — hell, we should be running the League.'

‘No country should run it.'

‘There will always be a leader in any herd. You just have to be sure that leader is benign — not out to hurt anyone — and wise — that is, knows what it's doing. Or if not, at least controllable. My country can become wise, if it works at it.'

As they parted, he said, ‘I'll give you another piece of advice about the buying of stocks and about life. It's Gypsy wisdom. The Gypsy tells his son to get up on a horse and ride it so that he can see how it looks. The Gypsy's son says to his father, “Should I ride to buy or ride to sell?” Do you follow that?'

‘I think I do.'

‘You probably already know that people who are trying to gain influence ride the truth differently than those who are trying to hold influence. There are different ways of riding the truth.'

As she walked home, she made another leap in her thinking. Given that she were to invest her mother's gift, she would use any earnings from the shares for eccentric causes. Or if she made pots of money, she would, like James Forstall, give something to the League. A library or a radio station. Her investment of her mother's legacy would be a memorial to her mother. That was what she thought. This decision seemed to nicely complete her musing about the money she had and the stock market. As a first step she would place her mother's gift at the disposal of the Landolt syndicate for now, invest it in Cooper's scheme. Although the financial situation of the League looked better as the Assembly adopted the budget for the coming year.

 

That week-end, in bed with Ambrose, she talked to him about the stock market.

‘The question is,' she said, ‘do I wish to lead a humble but decorous life or do I wish to lead a life of dash and of risk?'

‘Dash! With dash, Edith! With pure caprice.' Ambrose was always championing caprice in her life. In everyone's life. He often quoted Emerson: ‘I would write on the lintels of my doorpost: whim.'

Perhaps that was why she liked James Forstall's idea of buying some shares ‘unaimed' — maybe this would give expression to caprice in her life.

She said to him, ‘And I dare say that you are for me a caprice.'

‘I like the idea of being your caprice,' said Ambrose, and then, ‘I am going to play the market, too.'

‘What with?'

‘With whatever boodle I can scrape together.'

He must have sensed that at that moment his debt to her entered both their minds, because he said, ‘I will repay that loan, you know.'

She raised herself in the bed and looked at him. ‘I know you will repay, my sweet,' She did not know this at all and was surprised to hear iron in her voice, as much commanding the repayment as assuring him of her trust.