Paper Money (11 page)

bought it shortly after the war; his meals were often expense-account

affairs with business prospects; and even the paintings he owned-kept in

a safe, not hung on walls-had been bought because his art dealer said

they would appreciate. To him, money was like the toy bank notes in

Monopoly: he wanted it, not for what it could buy; but because it was

needed to play the game.

Still, his lifestyle was not uncomfortable. A primary-school teacher, or

the wife of an agricultural laborer, would have thought he lived in

unpardonable luxury.

The room he used as his own office was small. There was a desk bearing

three telephones, a swivel chair behind it, two more chairs for callers,

and a long, upholstered couch against the wall. The bookshelf beside the

wall safe held scores of weighty volumes on taxation and company law. It

was a room without a personality: no photographs of loved ones on the

desk, no pictures on the walls, no foolish plastic pen holder given by a

well-meaning grandchild, no ashtray brought home from Clovelly or stolen

from the Hilton.

Laski's secretary was an efficient, overweight girl who wore her skirts

too short. He often told people: "When they were giving out sex appeal,

Carol was elsewhere getting extra rations brains."

That was a good joke, an English joke, the kind directors told each

other in the executive canteen.

Carol had arrived at nine twenty-five to find her boss's "out" tray full

of work which had not been there last night. Laski liked to do things

like that: it impressed the staff and helped to counteract envy.

Carol had not touched the papers until she had made him coffee. He liked

that, too.

He was sitting on the couch, hidden behind The Times, with the coffee

near him on the arm of the chair, when Ellen Hamilton came in.

She closed the door silently and tiptoed across the carpet, so that he

did not see her until she pushed the newspaper down and looked at him

over it. The sudden rustle made him jump with shock.

She said: "Mr. Laski." He said: "Mrs. Hamilton!" She lifted her skirt to

her waist and said: "Kiss me good morning."

Under the skirt she wore old-fashioned stockings with no panties. Laski

leaned forward and rubbed his face in the crisp, sweet-smelling pubic

hair. His heart beat a little faster, and he felt delightfully wicked,

the way he had the first time he kissed a woman's vulva.

He sat back and looked up at her. "What I like about you is the way you

manage to make sex seem dirty," he said. He folded the newspaper and

dropped it to the floor.

She lowered her skirt and said: "Sometimes I just get the hots." He

smiled knowingly, and let his eyes roam her body. She was about fifty,

and very slender, with small, pointed breasts. Her aging complexion was

saved by a deep suntan which she nourished all winter under an

ultraviolet lamp. Her hair was black, straight, and well cut; and the

gray hairs which appeared from time to time were swiftly obliterated in

an expensive Knightsbridge salon.

She wore a cream-colored outfit: very elegant, very expensive, and very

English. He ran his hand up the inside of her thigh, under the perfectly

tailored skirt. With intimate insolence his fingers probed between her

buttocks. He wondered whether any one would believe that the demure wife

of the Hon. Derek Hamilton went around with no panties on just so that

Felix Laski could feel her arse any time he wanted to.

She wriggled pleasurably, then moved slightly away and sat down beside

him on the couch where, during the last few months, she had fulfilled

some of his weirdest sexual fantasies.

He had intended Mrs. Hamilton to be a minor character in his grand

scenario, but she had turned out to be a very enjoyable bonus.

He had met her at a garden party. The hosts were friends of the

Hamiltons', not of his; but he got an invitation by pretending a

financial fancy for the host's company, a light-engineering group.

It was a hot day in July. The women wore summer dresses and the men,

linen jackets; Laski had a white suit. With his tall, distinguished

figure and faintly foreign looks, he cut quite a dash, and he knew it.

There was croquet for the older guests, tennis for the young people, and

a pool for the children.

The hosts provided endless champagne and strawberries with cream. Laski

had done his homework on the host--even his pretenses were thorough--and

he knew they could hardly afford it. Yet he had been invited

reluctantly, and only because he had more or less asked Why should a

couple who were short of money give a pointless party for people they

did not need? English society baffled him. Oh, he knew its rules, and

understood their logic; but he would never know why people played the

game.

The psychology of middle-aged women was something he understood much

more profoundly.

He took Ellen Hamilton's hand with just a hint of a bow, and saw a

twinkle in her eye. That, and the fact that her husband was gross while

she remained beautiful, was enough to tell him that she would respond to

flirtation. A woman like her was sure to spend a great deal of time

wondering whether she could still excite a man's lust. She might also be

wondering whether she would ever know sexual pleasure again.

Laski proceeded to play the European charmer like an outrageous old ham.

He fetched chairs for her, summoned waiters to top up her glass, and

touched her discreetly but frequently: her hand, her arm, her shoulders,

her hip. There was no point in subtlety, he felt: if she wanted to be

seduced, might as well give the message of his availability as clearly

as possible; and if she did not want to be seduced, nothing he could do

would change her mind.

When she had finished her strawberries--he ate none: to refuse

mouth-watering food was a mark of class--he began to guide her away from

the house. They moved from group to group, lingering where the

conversation interested them, passing on quickly from social gossip.

She introduced him to several people, and he was able to introduce her

to two stockbrokers he knew slightly.

They watched the children splashing around, and Laski said in her ear:

"Did you bring your bikini?"

She giggled. They sat in the shade of a mature oak and looked at the

tennis players, who were boringly professional. They walked along a

gravel path which wound through a small landscaped wood; and when they

were out of sight, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. She

opened her mouth to him, and ran her hands up inside his jacket, and dug

her fingers into his chest with a force that surprised him; then she

pulled away and looked furtively up and down the path.

Quickly he said: "Have dinner with me? Soon?" "Soon," she said.

Then they walked back to the party and split up. She left without saying

good-bye to him. The next day he took a suite at a hotel in Park Lane,

and there he gave her dinner and champagne, then he took her to bed. It

was in the bedroom that he discovered how wrong he had been about her.

He expected her to be hungry, but easily satisfied.

Instead, he found that her sexual tastes were at least as bizarre as his

own. Over the next few weeks they did everything that two people can do

to one another, and when they ran out of ideas Laski made a phone call

and another woman arrived to open up a whole new series of permutations.

Ellen did everything with the delighted thoroughness of a child in a

fairground where all the rides are suddenly free.

He looked at her, sitting beside him on the couch in his office, as he

remembered; and he felt suffused with a sentiment which he thought

people would probably call love.

He said to her: "What do you like about me?"

"What an egocentric question!" "I told you what I like about you. Come

on, satisfy my ego. What is it?"

She looked down at his lap. "I give you three guesses."

He laughed. "Would you like coffee?"

"No, thank you. I'm going shopping. I just came in for a quick feel."

"You're a shameless old baggage."

"What a funny thing to say."

"How is Derek?"

"Another funny thing to say. He's depressed.

Why do you ask?"

Laski shrugged. "The man interests me. How could he possess a prize like

Ellen Hamilton, then let her slip through his fingers?"

She looked away. "Talk about something else."

"All right. Are you happy?"

She smiled again. "Yes. I only hope it will last."

"Why shouldn't it?" he said lightly.

"I don't know. I meet you, and I fuck like .. like ..."

"Like a bunny."

"What?"

"Fuck like a bunny. This is the correct English expression."

She opened her mouth and laughed. "You old fool. I love you when you're

being all Prussian and correct. I know you only do it to amuse me."

"So: we meet, and we fuck like bunnies, and you don't think it can

last."

"You can't deny the whole thing has an air of impermanence." "Would you

have it otherwise?" he asked carefully.

"I don't know."

It was the only answer she could give, he realized.

She added: "Would you?"

He chose his words. "This is the first time I have had occasion to

reflect upon the permanence or otherwise of our relationship."

"Stop talking like the Chairman's Annual Report."

"If you will stop talking like the heroine of a romantic novelette.

Speaking of Chairmen's Reports, I suppose that is what Derek is

depressed about."

"Yes. He thinks it's his ulcer that makes him feel bad, but I know

better."

"Would he sell the company, do you think?"

"I wish he would." She looked at Laski sharply.

"Would you buy it?"

"I might."

She stared at him for a long moment. He knew that she was evaluating

what he had said, weighing possibilities, considering his motives. She

was a clever woman.

She decided to let it pass. "I must go," she said.

"I want to be home for lunch."

They stood up. He kissed her mouth, and ran his hands all over her body

with sensual familiarity. She put a finger into his mouth, and he sucked

it.

"Good-bye," she said.

"I'll call you," Laski told her.

Then she was gone. Laski went to the bookcase and stared unseeingly at

the spine of The Directory of Directors. She had said, "I only hope it

can last, and he needed to think about that. She had a way of saying

things that made him think. She was a subtle woman. What did she want,

the marriage? She had said she did not know what she wanted, and

although she could hardly have said anything else, he had a feeling she

was sincere.

So, what do I want? he thought. Do I want to marry her?

He sat down behind his desk. He had a lot to do. He pressed the intercom

and spoke to Carol.

"Ring the Department of Energy for me, and find out exactly when--I mean

what time--they plan to announce the name of the company that won the

license for the Shield oil field."

"Certainly," she said.

"Then ring Fett and Co. for me. I want Nathaniel Fett, the boss."

"Right."

He flipped the switch up. He thought again: do I want to marry Ellen

Hamilton?

Suddenly he knew the answer, and it astonished him.

TEN A. M..

THE EDITOR of the Evening Post was under the illusion that he belonged

to the ruling class. The son of a railway clerk, he had climbed the

social ladder very fast in the twenty years since' he left school. When

he needed reassurance, he would remind himself that he was a director of

Evening Post Ltd." and an opinion former; and that his income placed him

in the top nine percent of heads of households. It did not occur to him

that he would never have become an opinion former were it not that his

opinions coincided exactly with those of the newspaper's proprietor; nor

that his directorship was in the proprietor's gift; nor that the ruling

class is defined by wealth, rather than income. And he had no idea that

his ready-to-wear suit by Cardin, his shaky plum-in-the mouth accent,

and his four-bedroom executive home in Chislehurst marked him plainly,