The Money Makers (34 page)

The helicopter was right over Gissings now. It swooped down low and circled the factory. Glass rattled in the windows and the noise drowned out every other sound. It was just about possible to make out the faces of the pilot and passengers inside. George stared and stared again. His mouth moved but the din brushed his words away. And, as the helicopter prepared to land in the field adjoining the factory, George rushed from the room.

He burst out into the timber yard and ran across to the shed which used to be the factory sawmill. Red in the face, he clambered over the wire fence to reach the helicopter and its gradually slowing blades. From its side, a door swung open. A foot appeared; then a swirl of aquamarine silk; then, at last, whole and smiling, fragile and beautiful, Kiki emerged, blinking and clutching at her hat.

‘Georges, sweetheart, we have had such a horrid time trying to find you. You are such a beast for hiding away.’

‘Kiki, wonderful to see you,’ panted George. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a big bear hug.

‘Georges,
sois sage,’
she chided. ‘You are squashing my new dress and you are squashing me. You have got so big.’

‘Kiki, why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I’d have got things ready.’ George gestured grandly around the timber yard.

‘Stupide!
I didn’t know I was coming. But then I was going to this wedding in Scotland and I thought Yorkshire is on the way to Scotland, so I thought I would stop off and see you, because I miss you, but I didn’t know that Yorkshire was so big and nobody seems to have heard of your factory and it was ages before I could find your address in my book and we had to stop and ask our way ever so many times and -
enfin!
- we have found you, but, Georges, I think you are ill, no?’

George was red in the face and almost trembling with excitement.

‘No, Kiki, no. I’m fine. Just pleased to see you. Come on in. Or let me show you around?’

She shrugged.

‘Oui.
If you want. This is what you spent your money on, no? It is not very beautiful, I think, but I suppose factories are not so beautiful. I don’t think I have ever seen a factory, unless you count the place where Papa puts his precious cognac into bottles. I went there once but it made me very ill with the migraine.’

She chattered on, as George barged through the heavy polythene doors that led on to the factory floor proper. You were meant to wear a hard hat, but George never bothered and somehow he felt that Kiki would be unlikely to let an orange plastic monstrosity anywhere near her carefully styled hair. So he let her keep her precarious blue-green hat, nodding with feathers and silk and strips of lace, and they moved out on to the factory floor.

George ushered Kiki along the yellow lines marking the routes where pedestrians were safe from hoists, forklifts, and the flying debris of the big cutting machines. He held a burly arm around her as she picked her way across the scurf and oil marks which covered the floor.

Usually, when George was showing clients or suppliers around the floor, he kept up a busy chatter, telling his companion about the plans for improvement, numerous little tricks of production, laughing at the antiquated equipment. This time, George was silent. For the first time since he’d come to Gissings, he became aware of the noise. Lathes, saws, drills, hoists, trucks, turning equipment, plane tables, electric sanders and god knows what else banged, whined and howled away. Workmen yelled, laughed, and pointed. On the breeze-block walls, the dirty calendars seemed as big as tarpaulins.

There was more to see, of course, but for Kiki a little went a long way.

‘Let’s go and get something to drink,’ said George. The lifts had been knackered for years, so they trudged up the two flights of stairs to George’s office.

‘It is always so noisy?’ Kiki asked. ‘I think perhaps I am not so
industrielle.’

‘Yeah, I suppose. You get used to it,’ puffed George. He used not to be this unfit, but the daily fried breakfasts had gone straight to his middle. He looked more like Val every day. He should really join a gym or something and get in shape. The meeting was still going on when he got back.

‘Would you lot mind clearing out, please. I’ve got a visitor.’

‘There’s something important you should know,’ said Val, not moving.

‘Yeah, well, it’ll wait till later. Meanwhile, would you mind getting us some drinks? What do you want, Kiki?’

Kiki blinked like a bird.

‘Some Badoit mineral water would be very nice, if you have it. Otherwise some Perrier would be fine. I like it with a slice of lemon, but no ice, please.’

Kiki smiled at Val. She was trying to be easy.

‘It’s tap water, tea or coffee,’ said Val.

‘Oh, I see, you are out of Perrier. I know. It’s the same with me all the time, but luckily there is a dear little man who brings it to me when I run out. Some coffee would be very nice, instead. Espresso, please. I prefer cappuccino but it makes me giggle and I try so hard to be serious.’

The only coffee they had was instant, of course, and George intervened with a request for two teas. ‘Not too strong,’ he said, but he might as well have wished for world peace.

Val came back with two cups of tea, darker than a peatbog.

‘There. Just the way you like it. I didn’t know if you wanted sugar,’ she added, for Kiki’s benefit, ‘so I put one in, just in case.’

Kiki stirred her tea politely until Val had left, then she pushed the mug away. George started to apologise, but she interrupted.

‘Don’t worry, Georges. I am not so thirsty and luckily there is a little bar on the helicopter if I get dry.’

She paused and George paused. Kiki perched on the edge of her chair. She had spread a handkerchief on the seat to protect her dress and was carefully keeping her arms away from the sides. She thought about taking her hat off, but looked at the table and thought better of it. Things were a little grimy, perhaps, George thought, greasy with long use. Val cleaned the place every now and then, but mostly just to keep the dust off things. No one would ever enter Gissings for a Factory Beautiful competition.

Kiki consulted her little jewelled watch.

‘Oh, Georges, it took us so long to find you, now I don’t have any time. But I see you are well. You are happy, I hope?’

George spread his hands. He had no idea.

‘God, Kiki, this place is a different world. It’s all changed so much since Dad died. Christ, I’ve changed. Sometimes, it’s OK, but other times ... other times, I miss it all . .. I miss ...’ He tailed off. He missed her, but couldn’t say so. He longed to kiss her, but might as well have been a thousand miles distant.

He asked her about a few mutual friends, but the answers she gave were meaningless. He had lost touch with the friends they’d shared and, short of a miracle, he’d never mix with them socially again. What did he care if Xavier and Julia were engaged? Why should he mind how the von Hattenburgs disgraced themselves at Monaco?

She tried asking him about his life, but that was worse than useless. George’s life was completely taken up by things of whose existence Kiki was completely ignorant. If he tried to explain, she would find it all
tres desagreable
and sympathise with George for having to put up with such terrible things.

After twenty minutes of mutual discomfort, Kiki looked at her watch again. It was time to go. George escorted her back across the timber yard, offering her his arm and sympathising with her about the plight of her shoes. Her hat nearly blew off into a puddle of waste water and oil, but he caught it in time.

The helicopter took off. Kiki waved from the window until she was no more than a speck in the distance. George waved back, a heavy-built man in a dirty yard. He stomped back upstairs. Val, Darren and Wilmot had regrouped, wearing long faces. Jeff Wilmot began to speak.

‘Er ... it has come to my attention ... that is, I was looking ... the cash flows appear to have been mislaid. Unfortunately, it seems that they were left ... that is, I left them ... inadvertently, er, in a non-secure location. It seems there is a risk ... maybe a serious risk ... that confidential data may have become available to - er - commercially hostile sources.’

What the hell was he talking about? There is nothing on earth more pompous than a guilty accountant. Val interjected.

‘Wilmot went to visit an old friend of his in the Aspertons’ finance department. He left a briefcase there with our cash flows inside. The Aspertons deny having found the case, but it seems virtually certain that they’ve found it and examined the cash flows under a microscope.’

There was a punch line coming, but George was slow to see it. Val helped him again.

‘If they see how well we’re doing, they’ll stop us using their paintshop. If we have to rig up a paintshop of our own, we’ll use up all the money you wanted to spend on expanding production.’

For a moment, George looked at the scene through Kiki’s eyes. A grimy little room, sitting in a worn­out building above a tired and ugly old factory in a rainswept comer of England. Three people besides himself: an overweight woman without make-up, a scruffy youth dressed in whatever he found on his bedroom floor that morning, and a nondescript man dressed in nondescript grey, hiding a nondescript soul. And the fuss? The fuss was all about whether they could find a way to paint some furniture to sell to customers to make some money to give the bank. Make a million? He’d fly to the moon first.

‘OK OK. Please all get out of here. I need some time alone.’

Only Val hesitated before leaving. She wasn’t just his secretary. She was his lover too. She didn’t like the way the rest of the world became unimportant the moment a pretty little rich girl fell out of the sky in her helicopter. She’d talk to him about it later, but right now she’d let him be.

Val went off to eat her sandwiches with a couple of the girls from marketing and admin. They asked her about the girl in the helicopter, but Val said nothing. When she returned to her office, Gissings’ only fax machine held a piece of paper in its out tray. It was a short note from the Aspertons. The paintshop contract would terminate after the stipulated one month’s notice period. Wilmot was an idiot, but these things happened. What was needed now was a Chief Executive with his eye on the ball.

Val knocked on George’s door and walked in.

George was gone. The van he drove was gone from the yard and there was no answer from Val’s phone at home. He had left no indication of where he had gone or where he could be reached.

Val had been brought up never to swear, and years passed when she never once did. But if you had been able to see her lips move as she surveyed George’s empty room, you would have seen her top front teeth briefly touch her bottom lip before her mouth opened once more.

It was a short word, and it rhymes with luck.

13

That day Zack had caught three trout, Lord Hatherleigh just the two. When the fish were grilled and brought to table, Zack laughingly offered to give Hatherleigh a fishing lesson. Hatherleigh took his revenge, imitating Zack’s early attempts at casting a line. Zack claimed Smudge and Bonnie, the spaniel puppies, would make better fishing instructors than Hatherleigh, and proceeded to demonstrate why. The fish disappeared in a torrent of laughter.

For much of the main course Zack had been forced to excuse himself, as he took a phone call to work. A maid brought him a plate of beef to eat while he was talking, and he made it back to table in time for pudding.

The meal ended in a happy confusion of cheese, nuts, coffee, brandy, port and cigars. Only after midnight did the guests disperse. A local taxi firm ferried those who lived nearby back to their homes. The family, Zack, and the other house guests began to move upstairs to their rooms. Sarah walked up with Zack.

‘You were really funny this evening,’ she told him. ‘You and Dad had everyone in stitches. Even me, and I’ve heard it all before.’

Zack found it hard to put all the Sarahs together. The Sarah of tonight, radiant in silk and pearls, easy and vivacious, always the centre of conversation and laughter. The Sarah of a few hours before, filthy and sweating, showing a new stable lad how to muck out a horsebox. The Sarah of London and Coburg’s: professional, hard-working, tidy, self-eff acing. Zack mentally added another Sarah to the list. Sarah unclothed. Sarah in bed with him. The Sarah knitted to him by a million strands of electricity.

‘I love your dad. Your mum, too. I feel more comfortable with your family than I do with my own.’

Sarah stood slightly ahead of Zack on the great marble staircase. A Gainsborough portrait of one of the Hatherleigh viscounts gazed down on the scene impassively. For two centuries, he’d watched people come and go. The fashions changed, but people didn’t. Sarah turned.

‘You’ve changed so much. I can’t believe it.’

Zack could smell Sarah. Not just her perfume, but her.

‘I haven’t changed as much as you might think,’ he said softly.

‘Oh, come on. A few years ago, you’d have wanted to turn Ovenden House into a shopping mall. Now I hear you and Dad discussing the best way to keep poachers out.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘What did you mean?’