Wicked Pleasures (116 page)

‘Great. Well, we shall all benefit from the proceeds, no doubt.’

‘No doubt.’

‘Sixty,’ said Max. ‘Sixty what, do you suppose? Sixty thousand? Sixty hundred thousand?’

‘Nah,’ said Angie. ‘Million.’

‘Yeah. I guess. That’s a lot of money,’ said Max, ‘for a bank this size to underwrite. And I bet it’s not the only one. Freddy’s so bloody greedy. It’s the thought of the commission.’

‘Not a lot of money these days,’ said Angie. It was 12 October.

‘Shireen,’ said Max, ‘do you hear a lot of talk of mezzanine finance these days?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Shireen, ‘all the time. Freddy’s very keen on it.’

It was 13 October.

Max talked to Charlotte. ‘I think Freddy’s overextending the bank’s credit. I really do. We should tell Grandpa. Fast.’

‘We can’t,’ said Charlotte. ‘He’s off on his cruise. On his second honeymoon, as he put it.’

‘When?’

‘Um – tomorrow.’

‘I think we should try.’

‘OK.’

Charlotte phoned Fred III. Max sat by the phone listening.

‘Grandpa? Charlotte. Listen, I need to talk to you. What? I know you’re going tomorrow, I wanted to say have a great trip and – look, I’m sorry, I know you’re busy but it’s important. Listen Grandpa, there’s something you have to know. It’s about Freddy. He’s – Grandpa, please. Please listen. He’s – well he’s overextending. He’s lending a lot of Praegers’ own money. Well I don’t know exactly, but it’s pretty serious. Well, I just do know. I can’t tell you quite – what? Oh, Grandpa, please please don’t do that. Please. It won’t –’

She looked at Max, her face troubled. ‘He cut me off. He’s talking to Chuck. Now we’ve had it.’

It was 14 October.

Chuck bawled them out. Quite pleasantly, but very firmly. He finished by pointing out that at such time as Fred III retired, Charlotte’s share of the bank no longer meant quite what it had done and she had to learn to do what she was told. ‘I can’t fire you,’ he said, ‘but I can make your life pretty uncomfortable. I would keep a clean profile if I were you.’

It was 15 October. There was a rumour on the radio of jitters on the New York Stock Exchange. Nobody took a great deal of notice.

Max was sitting at his desk at lunchtime when the
Daily Mail
called. Would Max like to comment on the story which had reached them that the Earl of Caterham was not in fact his father?

Max told them there was no story, that he had absolutely nothing to say, and that they should speak to their own lawyers about the laws of libel.

He put the phone down, feeling very sick, and went to see Charlotte.

‘The cat,’ he said, trying to sound amused, ‘seems about to leap out of the bag.’

‘What cat? Max, what are you talking about?’

‘I think Freddy’s talked to Nigel Dempster.’

‘What?’

‘Well, he did warn us,’ said Max.

‘I’ll talk to Charles.’

Charles told them they would be best advised to keep quiet. ‘Say nothing. Keep saying nothing. Tell Alexander and Tommy to say nothing. You can’t actually sue, when the story’s true, and it might damage the girls as well. Ride out the storm.’

They remembered his words rather vividly over the next twenty-four hours.

Max and Angie and Charlotte shared a curry that evening and tried to persuade themselves that Nigel Dempster had better things to write about than them. Charlotte tried to ring Gabe, but he was out.

‘Does he know?’ asked Max idly.

‘No,’ said Charlotte briefly.

They watched the news and the weather forecast, more from inertia than anything else; they were told that it was going to be a slightly windy night. Charlotte left early, and went home to bed. Angie and Max also went to bed, and fell asleep talking, without having made love.

‘I would never have believed this possible,’ said Max sleepily into Angie’s hair. ‘You must be losing your grip.’

‘Nothing wrong with my grip,’ said Angie, sleepier still. ‘It’s just that there’s nothing to grip on to.’

Max woke up to hear an incredible noise: a screaming in the air, and a tearing noise outside the window. He got up and looked out of the windows and wondered if he was still dreaming – or watching an old B movie. The plane trees all around the square were bent almost flat, straining at their roots; an
enormous sheet of what looked like metal was literally flying through the air. It was a huge street sign; it crashed into a tree and fell, awkwardly. Dark shapes were hurling along the ground like great black rats; they were, he realized, dustbins. Clouds of dust, tangled with sheets of newspaper and polythene, swirled along the street, caught in the branches of the broken trees. It was completely deserted; he looked at his watch. It was two in the morning. He ran to the back of the house, looked over at the gardens; a great tree had fallen, crashed from a garden two houses along, crushing the fences. The roof of the conservatory extension, Angie’s pride and joy, was smashed in by another fallen tree; half the shrubs had been torn up and were either twisted and caught up in the trees’ branches, or vanished altogether.

‘Angie,’ shouted Max, running back into the bedroom. ‘Angie, get up. It’s a nightmare out there. It’s the end of the world. Get up.’

Angie shot out of bed.

‘What is it? Are the boys OK?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Max. ‘I’ll check.’

Up on the fourth floor, the little boys slept sweetly, impervious to the drama; the nanny was staring out of the window, transfixed.

‘The lights have gone,’ she said. ‘I just tried. Angie, do we have candles?’

‘Sure. I’ll get them. I’ll just buzz down and see if Gran’s all right.’

‘Mrs Wicks isn’t there,’ said the nanny, ‘she was with her – her friend.’

‘Oh God,’ said Angie, ‘I hope she’s OK. What is this, what’s going on?’

‘I told you, it’s the end of the world,’ said Max.

In the morning they could see that it was not the end of the world. But it was the beginning of the end of a great many smaller ones.

The television was not working, but the radio was full of it, of stories of the greatest hurricane to have hit England for over 100 years, great destructive gusts running at up to 120 miles an hour, causing almost inestimable damage, of great forests torn up, of tons of shingle being thrown from Brighton beach smashing windows and doors, of horse boxes and caravans, lifted like so many toys and tossed around in the air, of roads and railway lines blocked by fallen trees, of people dead. It was a disaster such as the gentle climate of Britain had scarcely ever produced.

Their telephone was out of order; Max walked down a Piccadilly strangely deserted in the blustery sunshine, and used the public phones in the Ritz. He called Hartest; Georgina sounded cheerful. They had lost several trees down the Great Drive, the boathouse had been literally tossed into the air, a couple of the stone statues had been lost from the terrace, and half the stable roof had gone, but they were comparatively sheltered, they were lucky. Martin and Catriona had several windows smashed, and had lost a lot of their roof. Alexander had been up all night, fretting, pacing the house, worrying about the slates, the domed roof on the Rotunda, the tall downstairs windows, but everything was all right and he was calm now, busy with Martin and the circular saw, clearing the drive.

Charlotte had not even heard the storm.

Mrs Wicks and Clifford had been asleep – ‘In separate rooms, I hope,’ said Angie, ‘they’re not married yet’ – but Clifford had woken to hear the window of his back basement smashing as a metal dustbin was blown against it. He had greatly enjoyed coping with the emergency and activating his generator. It had put him in mind of the Blitz, he said, when he had been an air-raid warden.

Max had coffee in the Ritz dining room, and then decided to go to Praegers. It was still strangely deserted; the trains and tubes were not running, there were hardly any cars. Hundreds of suburban roads had been blocked by the falling trees; people were literally trapped at home.

He suddenly remembered, with a sense of dread, about the Dempster column. He bought a paper and opened it with shaking hands. There was nothing. He felt initial relief and then intense anxiety again. There was tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …

Max walked down to St James’s and along to the Praeger building. There was nobody there. He used his pass key and went in; the lift wasn’t working so he walked up the stairs to the fourth floor. It was eerie. No lights, no sound. It was cold.

He went into the trading room; the screens were all dead.

‘Shit,’ said Max aloud.

He walked along the corridor and down the stairs slowly to the first floor. The executive floor where Chuck and Freddy had their offices. Maybe he could put the desolation to good use.

Chuck’s door was locked; well, it would have been. Shireen would have the key, but Shireen wasn’t there. Trapped by fallen trees out in Bromley, no doubt, where she lived. Max hoped she was all right. He was actually rather fond of Shireen.

He tried Freddy’s office. That was not locked. He pushed the door carefully, slowly. This was great. He could go through Freddy’s files and – ‘Good morning, Max.’ It was Freddy. He smiled his chilled smile at Max. ‘Not many of us in. Can I help in any way?’

‘No thanks,’ said Max, furious at himself for being caught, at Freddy for being there. ‘Your flat was obviously OK.’

‘Fine. Just a little damage in the square gardens. And you?’

‘Oh – not too bad.’ He didn’t want to get involved in discussion of damage to houses; didn’t want Freddy to know where he had spent the night.

‘And Hartest?’ said Freddy. ‘Any damage there? Have you spoken to your – to Lord Caterham?’

Max looked at him very coldly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he was out, moving trees. But I spoke to my sister, and she was fine. How kind of you to be concerned, Freddy.’

He went back to the Ritz and tried Mortons. No reply. He decided to go into the City. There were a few buses running; he got one as far as Chancery Lane
and then walked. Most people were friendly, eager to talk, drawn out of their usual reticence by the drama; but as he walked down Fleet Street, he saw people, quite ordinary respectable-looking people, helping themselves to shoes, jumpers, shirts from broken shop windows. It was a sobering sight: the English, looting. He reached Mortons at about eleven; there was nobody there, so he walked on to Coates Café. Coates Café had a small clutch of people there, dealers mostly, enjoying an extremely leisurely breakfast. They’d been there for hours, they told him; then they were going to try the screens again. Jake wasn’t there.

By midday a handful of the dealers were working; things, they said, were sluggish. Max shared a liquid lunch with a couple of friends, and then at around three decided to go home to Pond Place. The quiet, the emptiness was beginning to get on his nerves. It made him uneasy. As he passed St Paul’s a cab came past, and he got in it. The cab had its radio on. In the first few hours of trading, said the newscaster, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had crashed by over 100 points. Its biggest ever one-day fall, the bland, emotionless voice said. And so it was that the news began to drift into London. The real news. The real news of the real disaster.

It was 16 October.

The weekend was quiet. The phone lines were restored. Angie called a builder friend on Saturday morning, and had him send over some men to fix the conservatory roof. She and Max and the boys got in the car and drove around in a great convoy with what seemed like half the population of London, looking at the damage in the parks. It was a sad and ugly sight. On the Sunday Charlotte said she was going down to Hartest. Max went with her. That was sad too. At least a hundred trees had been torn up in the parkland, and lay where they had fallen, like great moribund dinosaurs. Alexander was very upset. He loved his trees; he paced up and down the drive, looking wretched. He grieved over the boathouse too; it had been put up by his grandfather, he said, it had been part of the fabric of his life. Max grew impatient with him; he felt sorrier for the Dunbars, who were virtually homeless. Georgina had suggested they move into Hartest, while their roof was fixed, but Catriona had refused to consider it. Georgina said she wasn’t sure if it was shyness, or simply a feeling that she ought to be at home. Either way, Alexander said he was glad they hadn’t accepted the invitation.