Point of No Return (6 page)

“I suppose it depends on the ranch,” Charles said. “Why, yes, I think I could arrange to come at five.”

“But don't say it's too unwise,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “You're so New England sometimes, Mr. Gray. Don't be too uncompromising, will you? Just say it's a little bit unwise.”

“All right,” Charles said. “At five. I'll remember. A little bit unwise.”

“And Mr. Gray.”

“Yes,” Charles said.

“I adore New Englanders. Father came from Maine.”

“Maine's chief export is character,” Charles said.

“Do you know,” Mrs. Whitaker said, “your voice sounds just like Father's when he was in a disapproving mood. You won't be too Olympian, too disapproving, will you?”

“Oh no,” Charles said. “Only a little disapproving. I'll see you at five, Mrs. Whitaker.”

Charles put down the telephone and rang for Miss Marble. He would have to call up Nancy and tell her he could not take the five-thirty train, but it was already ten-fifteen and Nancy would be at the chain store. Before he forgot, it would be well to tell Miss Marble.

Down there on the floor of the Stuyvesant you worked with the privacy of a goldfish. There might be certain sheltered corners in the neighborhood of the officers' desks, but there was no shelter at the edge of the green carpet where Charles and Roger Blakesley were stationed. They sat there in a kind of advanced bastion, barring the way to the higher executives, like a knight and a bishop on a chessboard, Charles sometimes thought, pieces expendable in a pinch, who had to pay for their own errors and for others' but who always must protect the rooks and the king and queen. Of course there was an outer ring of pawns in front. Individuals like Tom Joyce, his assistant, at his smaller desk well off the carpet, or Holland just behind him, or Miss Marble, were all protecting pawns. There was no physical railing to guard any of them from the customers.

Old Joe, who stood just inside the door, in a neat business suit instead of a uniform, was in the most exposed position, with duties roughly like those of a floorwalker in a department store. He was the one who helped with the counter checks and the deposit slips, who directed traffic and estimated the preliminary situation. It was he who decided that our Mr. Joyce or our Mr. Holland or, if it seemed justifiable, our Mr. Gray or Mr. Blakesley would be glad to help you.

Charles often wondered why this system of everyone's working in the open should exist. It might have been a part of the great tradition, stemming from the medieval days of the goldsmiths and the moneylenders, that all the workings of a bank should be as visible as the wheels and mainspring of a glass-enclosed French clock. It was perhaps a tradition that was deeply rooted in human suspicion regarding money and those who handled it. There must be positively no deception, everything open and aboveboard and nothing up the sleeve. If anyone had money in a bank, it seemed that he had an inalienable right to see the bankers sweating over it. Then, too, it established confidence to see a roomful of well-dressed, capable individuals sitting behind desks, reading, answering telephones, or moving in fixed orbits, according to their rank. You grew used to being an exhibit, of course, through time and training, and it was surprising how through sheer self-discipline you could avoid making mistakes of fact or even of judgment. You learned a lot about a certain kind of person there and certain facets of human nature. Granted that the clientele of the Stuyvesant was well above the average and that a high balance must be maintained for a checking account, you still met fools and rascals, and you encountered fear and hopelessness and avarice. Sometimes it seemed to Charles that all human behaviorism was mixed in some way with money.

“That's all now, Miss Marble,” he said, and he saw that Tom Joyce was coming over to his desk. It was his habit to come over in the morning to see if there was anything Charles wanted.

Charles must have looked much like Tom Joyce when he was twenty-six or -seven. Tom Joyce had come there fresh out of the Harvard Business School but had only worked at the Stuyvesant for about a year before he was drafted. He had returned there from Europe in 1946 as a captain of artillery to take his old place in the trust department about the time that Charles himself had returned, and now he was one of the bright young men, as Charles had been when he was twenty-six. New York had given Tom Joyce the same veneer and the bank had given him the same watchful manner. He made mental notes for future reference, he was careful, he was steady, he was giving his full attention to the business. He had so much promise that Charles would have liked to give him his place if he should be moved up. The only thing that interfered was age and lack of maturity. Tom Joyce was still too eager and impatient, as he had been once himself, too anxiously, openly competitive, without as yet the finished capacity for concealing his likes and dislikes. That was one trouble with being young and one that Charles was planning to point out when an opportunity arose.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Tom Joyce said. It was a little joke between them that was wearing rather thin, and besides military experience did not help at the Stuyvesant.

That will do, Captain,” Charles said. “Never mind the war.”

“Don't you ever mind it?” Tom Joyce asked.

“I'm too busy to mind it this morning,” Charles said, “but I'll tell you what. We'll talk about it if you'll come out some Sunday.”

“That'd be swell,” Tom said.

That was his trouble, overeagerness, but it was very pleasant to have anyone look at him as Tom Joyce did, pleasant and at the same time a little sad.

“It won't be as swell as all that,” Charles said. “How do you like it here downstairs?”

“It's swell,” Tom said.

It was a reflection of his own early enthusiasm, his own desire to sacrifice to get ahead, staring back at him over a gap of fifteen years.

“Banks are filled with nice boys, particularly up in front,” Charles said. “We're all delightful fellows.”

“There are quite a lot of bastards, too,” Tom said.

Charles thought, before answering, that this was indiscreet as well as over-eager.

“There are everywhere,” he answered, “and sometimes it pays to be one.”

“You're not one,” Tom said.

“Thanks,” Charles answered. It was not the conventional way to talk near the front desks of the Stuyvesant. “I'll tell you what I want right now, Tom. I want the Whitaker security list and I want everything on Smith Chemical. Tell them I'll be upstairs this afternoon to look things over.”

“Yes, sir,” Tom Joyce said. “I'll get them right away.”

Nevertheless, he still lingered by the desk and his slowness made Charles look up at him sharply. Charles was about to ask what else he wanted but stopped when he saw the other's face and the guileless admiration in it. It was exactly the way he had looked at Arthur Slade in the old days.

“I've been thinking about Smith, too,” Tom Joyce said. It was strange how easy it was to forget that subordinates could sometimes think. “The first quarter earnings were off again.”

“Yes,” Charles said.

“I met a friend of mine yesterday,” Joyce went on. “He has a brother on the floor. He said—”

“Run along now,” Charles said, “and never mind what friends' brothers on the floor say—never.”

Sometime, he was thinking, he would have to have a talk with Joyce. He would have to make him see that the trust department was a great machine not governed by anyone's individual judgment but by the collective decisions of committees and boards. It might be possible to speak out in meeting and to influence the committee's decision, but that was all. When it came to trends, and the drop in Smith might indicate a trend, the conditions of industries and individual companies were being watched by a dozen subordinates. It was all very well to notice them but it was no use thinking you were a Napoleon running the trust department.

There was nothing more futile or more stultifying to sound investment judgment than being swayed by what other people said. It was one of the first things he had learned when he had started with E. P. Rush & Company in Boston and he had learned it again and again and perhaps he was still learning. The truth was that people who knew anything never said a word. The mere fact thay they were in a position to know guaranteed their silence. Personally, he had never obtained a word of useful information from them except by indirection. You had to work it out yourself. You had to read between facial lines and between the lines of all the financial reports, but in the end it all depended on yourself. There were certain rules, of course, but in these days even rules were flexible because they were influenced by personalities. If you were a good investment man, in the end you had to depend upon yourself. You had to have a sense of the whole financial balance coming from an accumulation of fact, and that accumulation developed as slowly as a stalagmite in a cave, drop by drop. He was thinking as he read the financial reports on the desk before him that they were all written by stupid little people and that no man in a high category would ever dare write one because there were always famines, the wind and the tide.

At any rate he had developed sufficient ability to concentrate so that he could block off the mechanical sounds and the sounds of voices and footsteps. He was also able to break off from abstraction to immediacy. When he heard Joe speak to him, he was able to lay down his papers instantly and still to remember for future reference exactly where he left off.

“Mr. Gray,” Joe said, “here's a gentleman to see you.”

Joe had not said there was a gentleman who
wanted
to see him. There was no opportunity to ask who he was or what he wanted. The gentleman was right there.

3

The Business of America Is Business

—
CALVIN COOLIDGE

Charles often wished that he was a back-slapping type like Roger Blakesley. Roger had a habit of cultivating acquaintance and contact as scientifically as a market gardener could start young tomatoes in flat boxes and tend them until they grew into vines. It was related to the extrovert, the Dale Carnegie practice of making everyone your friend and being a friend to everyone. Charles had never been good at using personal liking for business purposes, yet naturally he had developed some sort of technique since he was continually dealing with people.

Charles could see that the man whom Joe had brought to his desk was eight or nine years older than he, and this would place him in his early fifties. It was always hard for him to recall, when he met anyone of this age suddenly, whether he had ever known him before, because fifty is a period in life when time begins altering faces in all sorts of disagreeable and incongruous ways. Charles knew instantly that he was not a salesman and that he was not connected with any gainful occupation. Michael Cavanaugh, the bank detective, had once told Charles that he could always tell from one look whether a man had been in jail or not but he could not explain how he could tell this. Charles could not tell either why he knew his visitor was not a business man, except that his face was not smooth enough, his manner did not have that sort of breezy assurance, his clothes lacked uniformity. He had lumpy intellectual features, deep-set eyes and heavy, muscular hands. His shoulders were broad and his coat fitted badly. He was not in business, and at the same time Charles was certain that this man did not want to see him about money. His face with its rather untidy gray hair might have been that of a college professor or some minor employee from a Washington bureau or, finally and most probably, that of a crank, imbued and intoxicated with a social economic theory. You had to be very careful handling anyone like that. He gave Joe a quick questioning glance but there was no help in Joe's placid, pleased expression.

“Good morning,” Charles said carefully.

The stranger answered in a nasal, twanging voice.

“Well,” he said, “if it isn't Charley Gray.”

Charles tried hastily to recall where or when or in what phase of his life they could have met. It might have been at Dartmouth. It might have been in Boston. It might have been somewhere in the war—they all looked different out of uniform.

“Charley,” the stranger asked, “don't you remember me at all?”

It was one of those unpleasant moments that you could do nothing about and it was better not to try. This unknown from his past had an outdoors and at the same time an indoors appearance. His mouth was large. There was a patch of stubble at the left of his chin which he had missed in shaving.

“Come on,” the stranger said. “I could tell you anywhere, Charles. The child is father of the man.”

“Did I know you when I was a child?” Charles asked.

“No, you didn't,” the other said. “You knew me when I was thirty-two. My God, Charley, I'm Malcolm Bryant.”

Then, of course, he remembered. The deep eyes, the large mouth, the heavy hands—everything came together into sudden focus. He had been thinking of Clyde that morning and there in front of him was Malcolm Bryant, who, of course, had been locked untidily away in memory. It was not an entirely agreeable experience, for it illustrated how easily one could forget things that one once was certain could not possibly be forgotten.

He found himself shaking hands again with Malcolm Bryant and Malcolm was saying that he had dropped in to cash a government check and the cashier had asked him if anyone in the bank could identify him. Then he had looked across the room and there, by God, was Charles. At least the business of the check was useful because it placed everything on a routine basis. Charles initialed the check and gave it to Joe to cash and asked Malcolm Bryant to sit down in the visitor's chair beside him.

“How's Jessica?” Malcolm asked.

“I don't know,” Charles said. “I haven't seen her for quite a while.”