Paper Money (2 page)

the same about Julia: if he had loved her before, he loved her now. This

girl was different. But wasn't that what fools always told themselves

before embarking on an affair?

Let's not be hasty! he told himself. For her this might be a one-night

stand. He could not assume she would want to see him again.

Yet he wanted to decide where his aims lay before asking her what the

options were: government had taught him to brief himself before

meetings.

He had a formula for the approach to complex issues. First, what have I

got to lose?

Julia, again: plump, intelligent, contented; her horizons contracting

inexorably with every year of motherhood. There had been a time when he

lived for her: he bought the clothes she liked, he read novels because

she was interested in novels, and his political successes pleased him

all the more because they pleased her. But the center of gravity of his

life had shifted. Now Julia held sway only over trivia.

She wanted to live in Hampshire, and it did not matter to him, so they

lived there. She wanted him to wear check jackets, but

Westminster chic demanded sober suits, so he wore dark, faintly

patterned grays and navy blues.

When he analyzed his feelings, he found there was not a lot to tie him

to Julia. A little sentiment, perhaps; a nostalgic picture of her, with

her hair in a ponytail, doing the jive in a tapered skirt.

Was that love or something? He doubted it.

The girls? That was something else. Katie, Penny and Adrienne: only

Katie was old enough to understand love and marriage. They did not see

much of him, but he took the view that a little father-love goes a long

way, and is a great deal better thin no father at all. There was no room

for debate there: his opinion was fixed.

And there was his career. A divorce might not harm a Junior Minister,

but it could ruin a man higher Up There had never been a divorced Prime

Minister. Tim Fitzpeterson wanted that job.

So there was a lot to lose--in fact, all he held dear. He turned his

gaze from the window to the bed. The girl had rolled onto her side,

facing away. She was right to have her hair short--it emphasized the

slender neck and pretty shoulders. Her back tapered sharply to a small

waist, then disappeared beneath a crumpled sheet. Her skin was faintly

tanned.

There was so much to gain. "Joy" was a word Tim had little use for, but

it entered his thoughts now. If he had known joy before, he could not

remember when. Satisfaction, yes: in the writing of a sound,

comprehensive report; in the morning of one of those countless small

battles in committees and in the House of Commons; in a book that was

correct or a wine that was right. But the savagely chemical pleasure he

had with this girl was new.

There; those were the pros and cons. The formula said, now add them up

and see which is greater. But this time the formula would not work.

He had acquaintances who said it never did.

Perhaps they were right. It might be a mistake to think that reasons

could be counted like pound notes: he was reminded, curiously, of a

phrase from a college philosophy lecture, "the bewitchment of our

intelligence by means of language."

Which is longer--an airplane or a one-act play?

Which do I prefer--satisfaction or joy? His thinking was getting woolly.

He made a disgusted noise, then looked quickly at the bed to see whether

he had disturbed her. She slept on. Good.

Out in the street, a gray Rolls-Royce pulled up at the curb a hundred

yards away. Nobody got out. Tim looked more closely, and saw the driver

open a newspaper. A chauffeur, perhaps, picking someone up at

six-thirty? A businessman who had traveled overnight and arrived too

early? Tim could not read the license plate. But he could see that the

driver was a big man; big enough to make the interior of the car seem as

cramped as a Mini.

He turned his mind back to his dilemma. What do we do in politics, he

thought, when we face two forceful but conflicting demands? The answer

came immediately: we choose a course of action which; really or

apparently, meets both needs.

The parallel was obvious. He would stay married to Julia and have an

affair with this girl. It seemed a very political solution, and it

pleased him He lit another cigarette and thought about the future. It

was a pleasant pastime. There would be many more nights here at the

flat; the occasional weekend in a small hotel in the country; perhaps

even a fortnight in the sun, on some discreet little beach in North

Africa or the West Indies. She would be sensational in a bikini.

Other hopes paled beside these. He was tempted by the thought that his

early life had been wasted; but he knew the idea to be extravagant. Not

wasted, then; but it was as if he had spent his youth working out

long-division sums and never discovered differential calculus.

He decided to talk to her about the problem and his solution. She would

say it could not be done, and he would tell her that making compromises

work was his special talent.

How should he begin? "Darling, I want to do this again, often." That

seemed all right. What would she say? "So would I," or. "Call me at this

number," or: "Sorry, Timmy, I'm a one-night girl."

No, not that; it wasn't possible. Last night had been good for her, too.

He was special for her.

She had said so.

He stood up and put out his cigarette. I'll go over to the bed, he

thought; and I'll pull the blankets off her gently, and look at her

nakedness for a few moments; then I'll lie beside her, and kiss her

belly, and her thighs, and her breasts, until she wakes; and then I'll

make love to her again.

He looked away from her and out of the window, savoring the

anticipation. The Rolls was still there, like a gray slug in the gutter.

For some reason it bothered him. He put it out of his mind, and went

over to wake the girl.

Felix Laski did not have much money, despite the fact that he was very

rich. His wealth took the form of shares, land, buildings, and

occasionally more nebulous assets like half a film script or one third

of an invention for making instant potato chips. Newspapers were fond of

saying that if all his riches were turned into cash, he would have so

many millions of pounds; and Laski was equally fond of pointing out that

to turn his riches into cash would be close to impossible.

He walked from Waterloo railway station to the City, because he believed

that laziness caused heart attacks in men of his age. This concern with

his health was foolish, for he was as fit a fifty-year-old as could be

found within the Square Mile. Just short of six feet tall, with a chest

like the stern of a battleship, he was about as vulnerable to cardiac

arrest as a young ox.

He cut a striking figure, walking across Blackfriars Bridge in the

brittle sunshine of the early morning. His clothes were expensive, from

the blue silk shirt to the handmade shoes; by City standards he was a

dandy. This was because every man in the village where Laski had been

born wore cotton dungarees and a cloth cap; now good clothes gave him a

buzz by reminding him of what he had left behind.

The clothes were part of his image, which was that of a buccaneer. His

deals usually involved risk, or opportunism, or both; and he took care

that from the outside they looked sharper than they were. A reputation

for having the magic touch was worth more than a merchant bank.

It was the image that had seduced Peters. Laski thought about Peters as

he walked briskly past St. Paul's Cathedral toward their rendezvous. A

small, narrow-minded man, his expertise was in the movement of cash: not

credit, but physical funds, paper money. He worked for the Bank of

England, the ultimate source of legal tender. His job was to arrange for

the creation and destruction of notes and coins. He did not make

policy--that was done at a higher level, perhaps in the Cabinet--but he

knew how many fivers Barclays Bank needed before they--did.

Laski had first met him at the cocktail-party opening of an office block

built by a discount house. Laski went to such affairs for no reason

other than to meet people like Peters, who might one day come in useful.

Five years later, Peters became useful. Laski phoned him at the Bank,

and asked him to recommend a numismatist to advised on a fictitious

purchase of old coins. Peters announced that he was a collector, in a

small way, and that he would look at them himself, if Laski wished.

Splendid, Laski said, and rushed out to get the coins.

Peters advised him to buy. Suddenly, they were friends. (The purchase

became the foundation of a collection which was now worth double what

Laski had paid for it. That was incidental to his purpose, but he was

inordinately proud of it.)

It turned out that Peters was an early riser, partly because he liked

it, but also because money was moved around in the mornings, and so the

bulk of his work needed to be done before nine o'clock. Laski learned

that it was Peters's custom to drink coffee in a particular cafe at

around six-thirty each day, and he began to join him, at first

occasionally, and then regularly. Laski pretended to be an early riser

himself, and joined in Peters's praise of the quiet streets and the

crisp morning air. In truth he liked to get up late, but he was prepared

to make a lot of sacrifices if there was half a chance of this

farfetched scheme coming off.

He turned in to the cafe, breathing hard. At his age, even a fit man was

entitled to blow after a long walk. The place smelled of coffee and

fresh bread. The walls were hung with plastic tomatoes and watercolors

of the proprietor's home town in Italy. Behind the counter, a woman in

overalls and a long-haired youth were making mountains of sandwiches

ready for the hundreds of people who would snatch a bite at their desks

this lunch-time. A radio was on somewhere, but it was not loud. Peters

was already there, at a window seat.

Laski bought coffee and a leberwurst sandwich and sat down opposite

Peters, who was eating a doughnut--he seemed to be one of those people

who never put on weight. Laski said: "It's going to be a fine day."

His voice was deep and resonant, like an actor's, with just a trace of

some East European accent.

Peters said: "Beautiful. And I shall be in my garden by four-thirty"

Laski sipped coffee and looked at the other man.

Peters had very short hair and a small moustache, and his face looked

pinched. He had not yet started work, and he was already looking forward

to going home; Laski thought that tragic. He felt a momentary pang of

compassion for Peters and all the other little men for whom work was a

means instead of an end.

"I like my work," Peters said, as if reading Laski's mind.

Laski covered his surprise. "But you like your garden better."

"In this weather, yes. Do you have a garden Felix?"

"My housekeeper tends the window boxes. I'm not a man of hobbies."

Laski reflected on Peters' hesitant use of his Christian name. The man

was slightly awestruck, he decided. Good.

"No time, I suppose. You must work very hard."

"So people tell me. It's just that I prefer to spend the hours between

Six P M. and midnight making fifty thousand dollars than watching

actors--pretend to kill each other on television."

Peters laughed. "The most imaginative brain in the city turns out to

have no imagination."

"I don't follow that."

"You don't read novels or go to the cinema, either, do you?"

"No."

"You see? You've got a blind spot--you can't empathize with fiction.

It's true of many of the most enterprising businessmen. The incapacity

seems to go with heightened acumen, like a blind man's hypersensitive

hearing."

Laski frowned. Being analyzed put him at a disadvantage. "Maybe," he

said.

Peters seemed to sense his discomfort. "I'm fascinated by the careers of

great entrepreneurs," he said.

"So am I," Laski said. "I'm all in favor of pinching other people's

brainwaves."

"What was your first coup, Felix?"

Laski relaxed. This was more familiar territory.

"I suppose it was Woolwich Chemicals," he said.

"That was a small pharmaceuticals manufacturer.