The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers

by Paul Torday

  I remember reading somewhere that the shortest unit of measurable time is called a nanosecond, and that is how long it took from the beginning to the end of our lovemaking. I had waited too many days and months and years for this union, often dreamed of, but always dismissed as so wildly improbable that I had tried to suppress the idea from my imagination, only to find it resurfacing as thoughts of Harriet came unbidden to my mind. Now it was real, it was happening - and then it had happened, almost before I knew what was going on. Afterwards we lay beside each other, and I held Harriet as close to me as I could.

  ‘Lovely but quick,’ she said into my chest. I felt her smile, rather than saw it.

  ‘The best thing that’s happened in this room for some time, all the same,’ I said.

  ‘The best thing that’s happened in this house,’ said Harriet. ‘Poor Aunt Dorothy.’

  We were silent for a few minutes. Then I asked, ‘Why, Harriet? Why me, and why now?’

  ‘Because you wanted me, Eck, and because I’ve begun to realise how important it is to be wanted. I’m not going to end up like Dorothy.’

  Harriet sat up and looked at me as she said this. Her face, heart shaped and naturally pale, was now tinted with a faint flush. Her eyes were more grey than blue. She seemed beautiful and unknowable. I could not believe what had just happened. After a few moments, and without saying anything more, we dressed again on opposite sides of the bed. Then Harriet straightened out the bedspread. The idea of continuing with our inspection of Aunt Dorothy’s belongings was unappealing.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see my mother this evening,’ said Harriet.

  ‘And I have to go back to London to meet my wretched boss tonight,’ I said, having retrieved my mobile and listened to Bilbo’s urgent summons to his house in Kensington Gate. ‘But you’re not going to vanish back to France,’ I added anxiously. ‘I am going to see you again, aren’t I?’

  ‘I am returning to France, Eck, but we will see each other again. I’m not making any promises, but I won’t disappear for ever. Call me, or write to me. I won’t come back to England just yet: I need more time. I’m not ready to make any big decisions yet.’

  It seemed to me that she had just made some kind of decision, but for once my tact overcame my instinct to tell her so. We talked for a little longer, but that was the nearest to a commitment I could persuade her to give me; I realised that, for now at least, it would have to do. After we had locked up The Laurels, I drove her to the village where her mother lived and, declining an invitation to go in, I dropped her off outside the house. Before she got out of the car I reached across and kissed her and, although she resisted for the briefest of moments, she then yielded and returned the embrace.

  ‘Goodbye, Harriet - don’t be away for too long.’

  ‘Goodbye, darling Eck - don’t be too impatient with me.’

  Then she let herself into the house.

  *

  As I drove back along the M4 all these images crowded everything else from my mind: the last image - that of Harriet disappearing into her mother’s house, one minute framed in the light from the hallway, the next second gone behind the closed door - stayed with me the longest. I wondered, despite her reassurances, whether I would ever see her again, or whether she would retreat once more into her self-imposed exile.

  By the time I arrived in London the traffic was relatively light. I parked close to Bilbo’s new home - purchased the previous year, the most recent and compelling testament to Bilbo’s stellar accumulation of wealth - walked to the front door and rang the bell. After a few moments the door was opened by a butler wearing a black coat and striped trousers.

  I was shown up to the drawing room on the first floor, where

  Bilbo awaited me, dressed in plum-coloured corduroy trousers over which he wore a green velvet smoking jacket and a cream silk shirt open at the neck. He looked like the national flag of some former Soviet republic.

  ‘Eck, dear boy,’ he said, as I came into the room. ‘Have a glass of something? There’s some champagne open.’

  ‘Whisky and soda, if you have it,’ I said. Drinks were dispensed by the butler, who then withdrew. We went and stood with our backs to an elaborate imitation of a roaring log fire. Bilbo gestured across the room to an enormous oil painting, a violently coloured pointillist composition of red and black. It was difficult to say at first glance what it was intended to represent.

  ‘Do you like my new Horowitz?’ he asked me.

  ‘Impressive,’ I replied. ‘Bilbo, it’s Friday night, and if you remember I took the day off for personal reasons, yet here I am, at some inconvenience to myself.’

  Bilbo examined his champagne for a moment and then looked up at me.

  ‘I paid nine and a half million for this house a few months ago. Do you think that sort of money just falls into your lap?’

  ‘I don’t know, Bilbo,’ I said. ‘I expect you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘Five years ago,’ Bilbo continued proudly, ‘I could hardly afford the rent on a three-bedroomed flat in Fadbroke Grove. Now I find myself, and my family, in more comfortable surroundings. Some of my good luck has been the result of hard work. What is more important, in our industry, is knowing how to stay one step ahead. It’s spotting the “alpha”; knowing something the other man doesn’t; having the balls to put your money on the table when other people are trying to take theirs off.’

  ‘What game are we playing now, Bilbo?’ I asked, wishing he would get to the point.

  ‘The game of buying what other people are selling; and selling what other people are buying. Right now, no one wants to know about sub-prime loans, for example. The investment community is beginning to treat them like toxic waste. You can buy sub-prime debt from US banks for twenty cents in the dollar and that’s in a falling market. But what I know,’ said Bilbo, tapping the side of his nose, ‘is that sooner or later the central banks will have to step in and support the market, before the whole banking system goes into default. So, Mountwilliam Partners is buying up mortgage debt at low, low prices. We’re buying equity positions in US mortgage corporations and German banks that we think might be affected, where we can leverage our position and effect break-ups. A lot of these banks will soon be trading below asset value. If you’ve got steady nerves, and don’t blink, there is a lot of cheap debt and banking stock out there.’

  I had heard Bilbo philosophising like this before. Last year it had been underpriced oil stocks, and he had been right about that. There was no doubt he had a nose for making money, but most of what he said went over my head. It wasn’t really my job to understand the arcane investment strategies of Mountwilliam Partners, although I did need to know enough about them to communicate the broad ideas. My real value to Bilbo was my ability, so far, to provide a steady flow of private clients, of whom Henry was a recent example.

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ I said.

  ‘You ought to be interested, Eck. We pay you a very good salary for a little light lunching and your attendance at a few cocktail parties and roadshows. You ought to be interested in how we earn you your salary,’ Bilbo said, snappishly. I had noticed him becoming a little more stressed of late. He was certainly more abrupt with me. The silky charm that had been on display when he recruited me seemed, for the time being at least, to have disappeared.

  There was a silence. I decided that, if I could manage to keep my mouth shut, I would get away from there sooner rather than later. Having made his point, Bilbo regarded the champagne bottle standing on a silver tray on a side table a few feet away, and decided he could get there and back on his own without ringing for the butler.

  ‘The problem is our capital base,’ he said, while topping up his drink. ‘To take full advantage of the opportunities we are now seeing, we need more funding of our own. The banks who act as our prime brokers have agreed we can go to thirty times margin and that will help, of course.’

  I blinked. Thirty pounds invested for every pound we actually owned was r
acy stuff. I wondered how Bilbo had persuaded the men in grey suits to give us this additional facility. Five times margin was conservative. Ten times was still reasonable. Last time I looked, we were trading at twenty times. Now we appeared to be entering the stratosphere.

  ‘But that’s not the answer, not in the long term,’ continued Bilbo. ‘We need a larger capital base to be able to play in the same league as the major funds. That’s why we need people like Aseeb.’

  I had wondered why Bilbo was so keen on doing business with an Afghan of uncertain provenance living in Dubai.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something in absolute confidence,’ said Bilbo. He stared at me as if to reassure himself that I was going to be a good soldier, and follow orders. ‘We’ve had an indicative offer from him,’ he told me. ‘We like Aseeb. My partners and I think that he would be a useful addition to the business. Money used to flow from west to east. It’s going in the other direction now. People like Aseeb have very large cash flows, but they want to invest in businesses in which they can have a measure of inside information and control.’

  ‘Where does the cash come from?’ I asked.

  ‘Where does the cash come from? Who knows? Who cares?’ replied Bilbo. He drank some champagne and shrugged. ‘Where do any of these people get their cash? There are petrodollars being recycled by the Gulf families, squeezed from our pockets by OPEC. Huge funds coming out of China, no doubt earned from the sweat of labourers paid forty dollars a month. God knows where the Russian investors are getting their dollars. Of course,’ said Bilbo, ‘we are doing our due diligence on Aseeb. But cash is cash, and Aseeb has mountains of the stuff. He probably got it through trading activities of various sorts. The Gulf is a great entrepot, nowadays.’

  Vanessa, Bilbo’s wife, came into the room, dressed in a glittering dark blue evening dress covered in sequins.

  ‘Darling, are you ready yet? Oh, hello, Mr Talbot. I didn’t realise Bilbo had visitors. You mustn’t keep him long. He never seems to get away from the office, does he? We are already late for dinner.’

  She left the room. Bilbo looked at his watch and sighed.

  ‘I have to go now,’ he said. ‘Aseeb is waiting for you at the Berkeley. Give him dinner, same as last time. Answer his questions, if you can. He might have something for you.’

  ‘Such as what?’ I asked.

  ‘He might want to return that memory stick you gave him; if he does give you something, bring it to me here tomorrow morning, but not before ten o’clock.’

  ‘Couldn’t all this be done by email?’ I asked.

  ‘Silly boy,’ said Bilbo. ‘You never know who is looking at emails.’

  *

  The evening with Aseeb passed much like the previous one, except that this time he did not ask me any more questions about Mountwilliam Partners. I had already told him everything I knew. Instead, he asked me about myself. We were eating mezze in a small Lebanese restaurant in Mayfair. He approved of my choice. Our meeting appeared to be a purely social occasion.

  For a while the conversation was inconsequential: Aseeb helped me with the unfamiliar menu, and told me about Mourgh and Chelonachodo and other Afghan dishes. He was friendlier this time, but there was still that uncomfortable quality in his gaze.

  ‘You met Mr Bilbo in the army, I think?’ he asked me.

  ‘No. We were at the same school, although he is older than me.’

  ‘But you were also a soldier for a long time, no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You served in Iraq as well as Afghanistan?’

  ‘Briefly,’ I said.

  ‘You are discreet.’ Aseeb nodded approvingly. ‘That is good. I will ask no more questions about your soldier’s life. So: why are you working for a man like Mr Bilbo in an investment fund? It is very different to what you did before.’

  ‘Because there’s no money in sheep farming; which is what I would be doing now if Bilbo hadn’t rung me up.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Aseeb. ‘Farmers have a hard life everywhere.'

  Afghanistan was once a country of farmers, before the Russians came. Now it is more difficult. You like what you do now?’

  ‘It’s well paid,’ I said. ‘I’m lucky to have a job at all.’

  Aseeb’s saturnine face creased in the briefest of smiles.

  Then I asked, ‘And what do you do, exactly, Mr Aseeb?’

  The smile vanished.

  ‘I represent various families and business interests in the Middle East. I myself am a trader, and a banker.’ He made a pushing-away gesture with his hands, to indicate the subject was closed.

  ‘I wish to give you something for Mr Bilbo. Only he has the password to open it. Please take care of it. No doubt we will meet again.’

  Aseeb made it clear by his attitude that the flow of information would be strictly one way. I was there to answer his questions; he was not there to answer mine. He reached into a pocket and then pushed a small silver memory stick across the table towards me. It might have been the same one I had given him a few weeks ago. They all looked the same.

  Little more was said: Aseeb relapsed into his watchful silence, and made no objection when I offered to escort him back to the Berkeley. He didn’t suggest that any further entertainment would be required: no nightclubs, no last glass of whisky, no dancing girls. Aseeb was strictly business.

  After dropping him off at his hotel, I drove back slowly to my flat in West Hampstead. It was late, and I was tired out by the day’s events. Images of Harriet kept flashing into my brain, like fireworks that were too bright and too noisy. Yet I wanted to concentrate on something that had been worrying me for a while. Two principals in a deal who never seemed to meet; documents too sensitive to be sent by email; a ‘trader and a banker’ from the Middle East doing a deal with Bilbo, who was burning through unimaginable quantities of cash.

  When I got to the flat and let myself in to the gloomy hallway, these random incongruences had begun to knit themselves together into a longer thread. I went into the sitting room and poured myself a whisky, only my second drink of the evening, and thought for a while longer. More questions were beginning to form in my mind. Why did Bilbo never have time to meet Aseeb, if the deal they were discussing was so important? What was the problem with using emails and telephone calls, or even dropping a letter in the post? Which particular eavesdroppers were Bilbo and Aseeb so concerned about? And why did they use me as an errand boy - because that was what I was? All the questions about Mountwilliam Partners that Aseeb had asked me had been a waste of his time, and mine too. Everything I could tell him he could have learned by taking the Financial Times for a week. Our conversations on both evenings had been stilted and unreal. With hindsight I now realised Aseeb had not been the least bit interested in what I had to say.

  He already knew it all.

  I sighed, and tried to push the subject from my mind. The world of hedge funds was still quite new to me; who knew what tricks some companies might use to get ahead? The information on the memory stick was no doubt commercially sensitive and electronic espionage was not out of the question. If Bilbo felt more secure using me as a go-between, I couldn’t complain, as long as it was legal. Of course it was legal: Bilbo was trying to build a reputation as well as growing his business. Of course it was. I finished my whisky and went to bed, dreaming of Harriet.

  *

  The following week, on a gloomy Monday morning in December, Bilbo sent me down to Stanton St Mary to obtain Henry’s signature on some paperwork. It was our practice to be with clients when they signed important documents, to answer any questions they might have, and of course to make sure they did not change their mind.

  The meeting with Henry was even more clandestine than my meeting with Aseeb. Henry still hadn’t told Sarah what he was doing, so I had to arrive at a time of day when he knew she would be out, hang around for a few minutes while Henry signed the documents, and then leave again as quickly as possible. It all seemed a bit cloak-and-dagger to me, but if that
was how Henry wanted to conduct his affairs, then that was how we would do it.

  When I arrived, it had started to drizzle. Henry barely smiled when he opened the door to let me in and, mumbling an apology over his shoulder, led me straight to the estate office at the far end of the house.

  ‘I’m sorry, did you want coffee?’ he asked. It was clear coffee was not a good idea, so I shook my head. Henry just wanted to get the whole business over with. I handed him the papers, and waited patiently for him to look through them. Henry was suffering from a bad case of nerves. Suppose he decided to put off signing? In that case, it would be my job to talk him round. Bilbo would skin me alive - or reach for a tent peg - if I failed to close a deal with one of my oldest friends. But Henry did not bother to read the documents. He looked at me as he sat at his desk and asked, ‘I suppose it will be all right, won’t it?’

  What a question. He meant: would we lose his money? He meant: would Sarah find out he had mortgaged Stanton Hall almost to the hilt? But we had already gone beyond all that.

  ‘Of course it will be all right, Henry,’ I said reassuringly. ‘There has never been a better time to invest. What I’m here for today is to make sure that you are completely happy that you understand the documents I’m asking you to sign.’

  Henry said nothing. His complexion was paler than usual, almost grey. I went on, because that was my job: ‘You are investing two million pounds in our Styx II fund. You are not entitled to redeem your money for a period of five years from the date of signature. You see here - and here - where you agree to pay our management fees and administrative charges?’

  I paused. Henry was still silent and chewed the top of the pen he had taken from the inside pocket of his jacket.