The Money Makers (20 page)

Two of the lucky winners were already known. One was Adam Campbell, an unimpressive Englishman with little hair and less dress sense. He looked like a nerd, but he was expert in a branch of mathematics that the bank’s London options desk badly needed. The second lucky man was an Argentine, Diego Burelli. The man was handsome as a movie star, impeccably connected with the leading families of Argentina, and possessed of a commercial instinct second to none. He was destined to head up the Buenos Aires office and would do it well.

So that left sixty-one students and three places. Matthew was a strong contender, as was Sophie. There were probably only four other serious contenders: Scott Petersen, the golden-haired Californian; Heinz Schiffer, a blustering German with heavyweight supporters in Frankfurt; Karen Onsley, a skilful trader, who had two parents, three uncles, a brother and a sister already working on Wall Street; and Fujimoto Takako, a dapper Japanese with an uncanny capacity for alcohol and a sixth sense for the Asian markets.

What should Matthew do? Put the binder down and go on his way pretending not to have seen it? But why should he? He had worked late, unlike his colleagues. In a way, this was a just reward for his diligence. What’s more, how did Matthew even know that the others hadn’t already found, read and copied the binder? He wouldn’t put it past Karen Onsley, or Heinz Schiffer for that matter.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, the fact was that Matthew reached for the binder, opened it, and began to read. He began to read it standing up. Then he continued to read it sitting down. Then, realising that a single sitting wouldn’t do justice to the excellence of his discovery, he took it to the photocopier and copied every page.

He put the binder back where he’d found it, and walked out of the bank with the thirty-five photocopied pages in his briefcase. Each one was gold, pure gold.

10

‘This is good. Very good.’ It was Sally Dummett speaking, head of Gissings’ tiny design team. She held a drawing of an office suite and turned it so that the others could see it. ‘Every piece has a superb finish. The design is very up-to-date, very crisp. It’s like a really good sports car, clean, sharp and functional.’ She checked herself before she got too carried away. ‘But at the same time, the construction is dead simple and the materials are as cheap as anything. First class.’

The others round the table nodded gloomily. It was first class, but it wasn’t Gissings’. The drawing carne from a brochure put out by one of their major competitors, Asperton Holdings. Andrew Walters, the sedate head of production, responded.

‘Well, I grant you that it looks very well to the untrained eye, but there are still plenty of customers who want the traditional construction methods. And we have to face the fact that with our equipment we simply can’t produce stuff like that at the right price. Maybe not at any price.’

‘I’m not saying what we can or can’t produce. All I know is that George is right. We’re getting further and further behind the game.’

Dummett looked at George for his support, but none was forthcoming. George hadn’t done a day’s work in his life before coming to Gissings and a few months of hard work now didn’t make him an expert. He just did what he could with common sense and Val’s encyclopaedic knowledge.

‘What we really need is a bit of capital,’ said Walters.

‘It wouldn’t cost all that much to bring our tooling up to minimum modem standards. A hundred thousand or so should cover it.’

‘No. No, no.’ It was Jeff Wilmot who interrupted, the mousy accountant who had the nerve-racking job of keeping Gissings’ accounts in order. ‘We simply can’t, we can’t even contemplate, can’t
begin
to contemplate that magnitude of expenditure. Unless, I mean, of course, unless ...’ he looked nervously at George to see if by any chance George was going to toss a hundred grand on the table. George didn’t. ‘Well, I mean, we simply can’t afford anything which isn’t absolutely critical.’ Ballard had agreed to a further extension on the loan, but it hung above them still, a boulder capable of crushing them at any moment. The debate meandered on, without conclusion. Sally Dummett was right: Gissings’ products were hopelessly out-of-date. Walters was right: the factory was decaying as it stood. And Wilmot was right: there was no money to spend. The discussion had a lost and hopeless feel.

After a while George intervened. ‘Look, we all know there’s truth in everything that you lot are saying. So we can either give up now or we can at least have a go at saving things. If we have a go, then the starting point has got to be a decent product, and at the moment our stuff is overpriced and out-of-date. Sally, would you be able to design us some completely new product ranges? It would need to look great and we’d need to be able to produce it in our clapped-out factory.’

‘I can have a go.’

‘You mean “Yes, definitely,” don’t you, Sally?’

‘Yes, alright. I mean, definitely.’

‘It’ll look as good as that Asperton stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Better?’

‘Yes, better.’ Dummett was enthusiastic. She had a thousand designs in her head, which, in Tom Gissing’s time, had stayed right there. Now they could start to pour out.

‘Good. Now, Andrew, how are we going to produce the stuff?’

Andrew Walters spread his hands. In Gissing’s day, the boss had always been sympathetic to Walters’ preference ‘for doing things right or not at all’. George wasn’t like that. He didn’t understand the first thing about production and he hadn’t a clue about traditional furniture construction.

‘Our new products are going to be cheap and easy to produce, right, Sally?’

‘Right.’

‘But we need to make sure that the production side is involved from very early on to make sure that the designs are adapted to what our factory can do. So, Andrew, I want you to be involved in Sally’s work from now on.’

Walters was less than thrilled with the idea of being a junior sidekick to Sally Dummett of all people.

‘OK,’ he grunted, ‘but obviously, I’ll need to give priority to keeping the shop floor running properly.’

‘Mmm,’ said George. ‘I guess that’s a pretty much full-time responsibility?’

‘Well, with our machines in the state they’re in .. .’

‘Fair enough. In that case let’s nominate someone else from the production side to support Sally. I’d suggest that young man, Darren, from the cutting room.’

‘No,’ interjected Walters quickly. ‘I’m not sure that Darren has the necessary maturity. Let me think about who would be more suitable. Perhaps I might be able to find some time ...’

‘Good. That’s settled then,’ said George, selectively deaf. ‘Val, would you mind fetching Darren for us?’

Andrew Walters continued to protest, as George turned to Wilmot.

‘And I want you to be involved too, Jeff. I want you to cost out all of Sally’s designs and I want you to get estimated sales prices from marketing. If there’s not enough profit, then you send Sally back to her drawing board. Right?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Wilmot. He had long harboured resentment that Tom Gissing had never involved him in anything more than bookkeeping. For Gissing, making furniture had always come first, making money had come a long way behind. The philosophy was an attractive one, but it had almost killed the company. Wilmot would be glad to be involved.

Just then, Val came back into the room with a scruffy young man in tow. He had more hair on his stubbly chin than on his shaven skull. He wore an earring in one ear and a pair of sneakers so dirty you could farm them.

‘Alright?’ he asked, nodding greetings to the room.

‘Good morning,’ said Andrew Walters.

‘Good morning, Darren,’ said George. ‘Andrew and I would like you to do something for us. Andrew?’ Andrew Walters began, pompously, to explain what was required. When Walters’ explanation started to sound like an order to obstruct change of any sort, George interjected gently with his own explanation. Darren wiped his nose and listened.

‘Yeah, alright. Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said.

Darren had come to George’s attention when a hoist in the warehouse had broken. Walters said it needed replacing, but Darren, who was in there bumming a tenner off the warehouse operative, had interjected. ‘Bet I can fix that,’ he’d said.

Walters said it was dangerous to attempt a patched-up job on anything load-bearing, but George invited Darren to do as he said. By the end of the day, Darren had fixed the hoist using nothing more complex than an ordinary car tool-kit and a length of steel wire. Walters examined the job, said it was temporary, insisted that the hoist be used for half-loads only, but couldn’t find anything seriously the matter. Val said that Darren was the most natural engineer she’d ever seen at the factory, and his best mate Dave ran a good second.

‘OK, then. Sally, Jeff, Darren, Andrew - you all know what we’re doing?’

Everyone nodded.

‘Yeah. We’re alright, eh, Sally?’ said Darren.

‘Oh, yes! Just raring to get going.’

‘Good. Just one other thing. As you know, the annual British Furniture Showcase is being held at the Olympia exhibition centre in three months’ time. We’ve got a stand booked, and of course it’s a huge event for us. All the big national buyers are there, all our customers, everybody. We’ve got to have our products ready by then. Not drawing board ready, but production ready. In fact, I want to have our warehouse well stocked with products, so we can start shipping the day we get the orders.’

Wilmot and Walters both began to shake their heads.

‘Frankly, we’ll be doing well to have a set of designs by then. We can always show the drawings to buyers and promise to keep them in touch with developments,’ said Walters.

Wilmot nodded vigorously.

‘I don’t think our cash position will allow us the luxury of building prior to receipt of orders,’ he said, but George was having one of his bouts of deafness.

‘Good, so that’s agreed,’ he said.

11

The Victoria sponge wouldn’t have held the fifty-three candles which Helen’s age demanded, but she took a grave pleasure in the five it did have and she sat over them, her face lighted and warmed by the flames beneath.

‘Careful, Mum,’ said Josie.

She took her own hairband off and settled it on her mother’s head, to keep her hair back from the burning candles. Helen was quiet today and uncertain in her movements, but behind her eyes there was a self-aware adult intelligence, watching the world and her own fumbling part in it. She smiled at her daughter, finding with effort the words for ‘Thank you’. Josie smiled back. Zack watched briefly, impatiently.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘Can’t you just blow out the candles and get on with it?’

It was six thirty in the evening. Zack had landed at Heathrow an hour ago and was stopping off at his mum’s birthday party on his way back into work. Matthew had already phoned from New York to send his love. George couldn’t come down from Yorkshire midweek, but he’d be here at the weekend. Helen looked anxiously at her daughter, disturbed by Zack’s interjection.

‘When Mum’s ready,’ said Josie. ‘This is her party, not yours.’

She was tired, but determined not to let Zack spoil things. She’d defend her mum from his snappiness, just as she’d protect her from the candle flames. She could manage it all, she knew that now. Earn a living, look after Mum, keep the house, even find space to enjoy the good times.

She glanced at Zack, seeing him suddenly as he was. Not as the obstreperous elder brother she had always known, but as the investment banker he had now become, travel-weary in his Jermyn Street suit, mind still engaged on business. How would he be if she were his secretary? He wouldn’t notice her. He’d remember her name and be polite for just as long as she managed to take his calls, sort out his meetings, and handle his paperwork without error. The minute she failed, he’d snap. Even if she got it right and he felt snappish, he’d snap.

Brother and sister, banker and secretary, watched a little longer. The candles burned down to stumps and the flames began to gutter.

‘There, now -’ began Zack.

‘There you go, Mum,’ said Josie. ‘Let’s see if we can blow them out.’

Helen rounded her lips into an O and blew. The action which had once been unthinking now demanded painful concentration, reconstructing every neural command from a blank template. The damaged bits of her brain would remain damaged and new parts had to learn unfamiliar roles. It was tough, a harder challenge than the one faced by her sons. Helen produced a draught of air, but one nowhere strong enough to blow out a candle.

‘Well done, Mum!’ exclaimed Josie, finishing the job.

‘Well done.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ muttered Zack.

The cake was a shop-bought one with icing sugar sprinkled on top and a layer of artificial cream and cheap jam smeared meanly through the middle. Zack took his slice and, without tasting it, set it down away from him.

‘I’ve got you presents. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to wrap them.’

He rummaged in his duty-free shopping bag. He brought out perfume and chocolates, both expensive, and handed them to his sister.

‘Here, Mum. Look at this,’ said Josephine, helping her mother’s hands to find and hold the gifts. ‘Can you smell that? Isn’t that lovely? Do you want a chocolate?’