The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers

by Paul Torday

  I nodded.

  ‘I mean, not one word, not to anyone. Did you get Henry Newark signed up?’

  ‘Yes, the paperwork’s in the system.’

  ‘Good. We need more private clients for the Styx fund. Let me have your ideas as soon as possible. I want a target list.’

  I was beginning to feel guilty about Henry, and worried, too. I had thought his investment would be in the things we used to buy into: gold shares; German commercial property; soft commodities. We didn’t often buy shares in these businesses, but contracts for difference, options to buy or sell at a future date, swaps: complex derivative instruments that I didn’t really understand. I hoped somebody at Mountwilliam Partners did. Now we appeared to be putting all Henry’s money into a fund buying up the risk in low-grade mortgages owed by people trying to migrate from trailer parks to back-streets in mid-town USA. I must have looked concerned, because Bilbo asked, ‘Is something bothering you?’

  ‘I didn’t realise the Styx fund was so high-risk,’ I said. ‘That’s not the impression I gave to Henry Newark.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Bilbo. ‘Come and sit on my knee and I’ll give you a lesson in investment strategies.’

  I ignored the invitation and waited for him to say something more helpful.

  ‘We make money by taking risks,’ explained Bilbo. ‘If Henry wanted a risk-free investment he could have raised two million on his estate and put it in the post office. He invested in us because he likes the story we gave him when he came here. We create higher returns from our funds than anything else he’s ever heard of. He doesn’t want to be left out. He understands what we do here: leverage, take risks, make money, and move on.’

  ‘And are we always right? Do you believe all that stuff you just told us?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I believe any more. The partners believe in me. The market believes in me. If I take a position, the market follows me and wants to take positions in the me things. The price goes up, and we sell and move on to the next thing. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It really is quite hard to go wrong, Eck.’

  ‘It sounds like easy money,’ I said, intending irony. Bilbo ignored my tone.

  ‘It is easy money for people like me, Eck: impossible for people like you, who think too much. You’ve got to have nerve. You’ve got to have scale. If you’re big enough, nobody’s going to let you go bust. That’s why the deal with Aseeb is important to us. We go up into the Premier League on the back of his money.’

  And who did Aseeb get his money from? I wondered.

  ‘What happens if the Styx fund gets into trouble?’ I asked Bilbo.

  ‘It won’t get into trouble,’ he replied. ‘When have any of our funds got “into trouble”?’ He looked annoyed. ‘Haven’t you got any work to do? What about that target list?’

  I left the room and went back to my desk. Bilbo’s emphasis on confidentiality made me feel uneasy. If the deal with Aseeb was that good, why was it a secret even to the inner circles of the firm? Everything about Mountwilliam Partners was making me anxious. We were betting the house every time we made a trade. Meanwhile, out in the world, the storm that had just passed seemed like an outrider to the bigger storm that was coming. We heard its mutterings every day now, as it grew closer. The markets were nervous - whatever Bilbo said. A few weeks ago the interbank market, on which we, along with a lot of other people, relied, had dried up and we had had to draw on an emergency credit line from a Japanese hank to keep us going until we were able to liquidate some positions. Bilbo had not mentioned this in any of his briefings but it was common knowledge throughout the firm.

  *

  That evening, as I left the office and walked towards the tube station, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned, startled, to see Nick Davies. I hadn’t met him since I came back from Colombia and gave up my temporary job with the private security outfit he worked for. We had parted on reasonable terms, as far as I could remember. He looked unchanged, taller than I was and very thin, with receding black hair, a pale face, dark stubble on his chin, a thin mouth and a firm jawline. He was wearing a dark blue overcoat over a dark suit.

  ‘Hello, Eck,’ he said.

  ‘Nick, my God! Where did you spring from? How are you?’

  ‘I’m well,’ said Nick. ‘And you haven’t changed, from the look of you. Have you five minutes for a cup of coffee?’

  We went to the cafe down the street and sat and talked for a while. Nick was friendlier than I remembered. Although we had worked together we had never been close: he was a reserved, private man, and very ambitious. Someone had told me he had gone into the security services after leaving the private security contractor we had both worked for and it wouldn’t have surprised me. He was very vague about his career, when I asked him, which made me think the rumour must be true.

  ‘Oh, I’m in some government agency you’ve never heard of,’ he said. ‘Liaison with the police: all I do is go to meetings all day long. But what are you up to? I heard you went into the world of money?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a City boy now,’ I admitted.

  Nick laughed. ‘So who are you with? Would I know the name? Some grand bank, no doubt?’

  I explained about Mountwilliam Partners, and Nick laughed again.

  ‘Funny, that,’ he said. ‘If someone had told me you would end up working for a hedge fund, I’d have bet a lot of money against it. But you must be enjoying it?’

  ‘It has its days,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I might give you a ring for some advice,’ said Nick. He looked at his watch. ‘I must get back to the office; I’m late for an after-hours meeting.’

  We agreed, with that absolute insincerity that attends such encounters, that we must meet again, and then Nick stood up and flagged down a taxi.

  As I resumed my interrupted journey, I wondered why I hadn’t been more pleased to see Nick. We might not have been great friends but when you work together, as the two of us had, there is usually some basis for warmth: shared memories, and old jokes. The encounter with Nick had an odd sort of quality that I could not pin down. What was he doing in that street? I wondered. There were few shops, and he had needed to take a taxi to get back to his own place of work.

  *

  I soon forgot about Nick Davies, however; my new worry was Charlie Summers.

  The thought of what he might be doing at - or to - The Laurels was becoming a serious concern. I had called Charlie once or twice on Aunt Dorothy’s number but he had not picked up the phone. Was he still there? Had he left, leaving the house in disarray? Had he fallen asleep with a cigarette in his mouth and burned the place down? He had not rung me from his mobile and when I tried that number, it failed to connect. It was impossible to tell what Charlie was up to, and the lack of information made me increasingly worried. In the end I decided I would have to drive down to Cirencester that Friday afternoon, to see what was going on.

  We had arranged that if Charlie was out he would leave the house keys under the hedgehog-shaped boot scraper beside the front door. When I arrived at The Laurels, to my surprise, the keys were in exactly the place I had specified. I went into the house and switched on the lights. Everything seemed to be the same as when I had left except for a faint stale smell that had not been there before. The house was tidy, with no other trace of recent occupation. In the kitchen I found a note on the table:

  Dear Eck,

  Not being one to trespass on other people’s hospitality, I am off now. Eck, I will never forget yr kindness to me when I was down and nearly out. There’s not many that would have done what you did for me. I shall not forget it in a hurry. If the day comes when I can repay you in any way C. Summers Esq. is yr man.

  I hope all in the house is shipshape and as I found it. Something has come up, a great opportunity, a real bonanza of an idea, from someone I have got to know in Holland. You will be surprised when I tell you, but for now it has to be a secret.

  You will be proud of me, Eck, one day. We will meet again I
am sure.

  Yrs in haste

  Charlie

  I could not imagine what had lured Charlie away from the comfort of The Laurels. Perhaps the gloom of the house had finally got to him. Perhaps he really had uncovered ‘a bonanza of an idea’. At any rate, he was gone - off my conscience and off my hands. I don’t know what I would have done if Charlie had still been there. I suppose I would have had to give him some sort of deadline, but that was no longer necessary. I didn’t think I needed to worry about bumping into him any time soon. In fact, I doubted that I would ever sec, or hear from, him again.

  1 sat at the kitchen table wondering what to do with myself. Most weekends I spent at my real home, at Pikes Carth Hall. I wondered whether I should drive up north, or go back to London. I hated being in town on Saturday and Sunday as there was never anything to do. All my friends who still lived there were married by now, and were either away in t he country most weekends, or else busy with their families. I didn’t feel like looking up Henry and Sarah. I wasn’t sure I could see Henry again at the moment without somehow giving the game away. What a way to feel about one’s oldest friend. Sarah was very sharp. If she saw the two of us together, she would know something was up, and would nag away until she discovered that I had talked Henry into borrowing two million pounds by mortgaging the house they lived in, so that he could invest it in one of our funds. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I felt about what I had drawn Henry into. And what about all the other people I had persuaded to invest in one of Bilbo’s funds? I needed to get away from these thoughts, which were beginning to wreathe themselves about me like black smoke.

  I could drive up to the North of England. I could go back to London and spend the weekend watching television. I took out my mobile phone, which had a web browser among its many other features. After fiddling with this for a quarter of an hour I managed to establish that there was a flight leaving Gatwick for Nice at six the following morning.

  After a few more minutes, I had managed to book myself a return flight to the South of France. Then I got back into the car and drove to my flat in London, to pick up my passport and some clean clothes.

  I wondered whether I should ring or text Harriet to tell her I was coming or just turn up. I thought that if I did the former she’d find some reason to put me off, so decided that I would take my chances. The worst outcome would be that she would be away, and I would spend Saturday and Sunday watching French television in a French hotel bedroom. No doubt it was raining as hard there as it was here. I could probably do better than that. If she wasn’t there, I decided, and she probably wouldn’t be, I would go and have the most expensive dinner money could buy, somewhere in Nice. If she was there, then whatever would happen would happen.

  It was a long time since I had done anything truly spontaneous. It was a long time since I had taken a step without any thought or premeditation, without calculation, where I was absolutely blind to the future. That was what was in my mind the next morning, as the plane carrying me south reached the cloud base and plunged into the soft, wet vapour: would we emerge into darker, stormier landscapes or a brilliant blue sky?

  Twelve

  No further memory remains of that flight, or which car I hired, or how I found my way to the small town in Provence, near to where Harriet lived. I remember very clearly arriving in Fayence and parking the car with the vague idea of buying a present: a bottle of wine, a bunch of flowers, some sort of peace offering to make up for my sudden, and perhaps unwelcome, arrival. A number of images had flashed through my mind on the journey here: Harriet sitting drinking a glass of wine with a muscle-bound Frenchman and saying, ‘Oh, hello, Eck . . . perhaps you don’t know my old friend Francois . . .’

  Other, more dreadful versions on the same theme ran ill rough my brain as I drove: walking into her house and finding Harriet sharing, not a glass of wine, but a bed, with Francois. After all, what right did I have to assume there would be no such rival? What promises had she made to me: none, except that she had given herself to me.

  In the end our meeting was much more prosaic than these caffeine-fuelled phantasms that chased through my brain. I got out of the car, locked the doors, and turned around to look for the exit to the car park nearest the shops: and saw Harriet. It was so unlikely that, for a few moments, every-thing that followed had an almost cinematic quality. She was walking slowly past a row of cars, carrying a plastic carrier bag. She didn’t see me at first as her head was slightly bent.

  I called her name, not too loud, and she turned in my direction. My memory says that she dropped her carrier bag when she saw me, that there was a splintering sound as a bottle smashed. I believe that all that really happened was that she put the carrier bag down, and a bottle fell sideways, perhaps breaking something.

  ‘Eck,’ said Harriet. Then, more coherently: ‘Eck? What are you doing here? Are you on holiday?’

  Harriet says now that she did not say anything quite so stupid but I am sure those were the words she spoke. I walked across the car park to her, drew her to me and embraced her.

  ‘I had to come and see you,’ I said. It was not much of an explanation.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, but she was smiling.

  ‘Can we go to your house and I’ll explain myself there?’

  A short while later we were sitting in her house, a lime-washed dwelling west of the town. You could not see the Mediterranean from Harriet’s villa, but somehow it was there, in the distant haze. From its hillside, the house looked down over a fertile plain that was covered by a patchwork of small vineyards and farms, and the occasional stand of poplars. The house itself was small and single-storey. There was a kitchen, a utility room, a small sitting room, a bathroom and two bedrooms inside. Outside, an area of rough grass contained by a terraced wall formed a sort of garden in which sat two wrought-iron chairs and a round wrought-iron table.

  I had done my best to describe what had moved me to make this journey, trying not to apologise too much, and after a while Harriet simply took my hands, folded them in hers for a moment and said, ‘Don’t worry, Eck: there’s no need to explain, although your idea of patience isn’t mine. It’s no more than a couple of weeks since we last saw each other.’

  I must have looked crestfallen because she added, ‘I’m glad you’re here, all the same.’

  A pale sun shone down through a pearly sky. It was chilly, hut I did not feel cold. A great sense of calm had spread through me, as if I had taken some drug and could hardly move a limb. After a while Harriet collected up the coffee pot and cups from the table and started being practical.

  ‘Now I’ll have to go all the way back to town and do some more shopping. I suppose you haven’t eaten yet. Are you staying somewhere?’

  ‘I’ve made no plans beyond booking the plane seat,’ I told her. ‘I’m not presuming on staying here, or having you cook for me. I’ll check into a hotel and we can go out to lunch. I’ll do whatever suits you best.’

  ‘We’ll have lunch here,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s nearly one o’clock now. I’ll just go back into town and buy a few extra dungs - no, don’t come, I’ll be much quicker without you. Then we can see what to do with you.’

  *

  When she was gone, I stood up, stretched, and walked about die little house. It was immaculately tidy and clean. There was a small desk in one corner of the sitting room with a laptop on it, and a pile of folders full of letters and documents. There was also a photograph of Bob Matthews and Harriet standing beside each other. He was in uniform. I was not sure, but I thought it might be a copy of the picture that stood in Aunt Dorothy’s house. I resisted the temptation to peer into Harriet’s bedroom. Having finished my tour I went back into the garden and sat there: the sun was stronger now. This was not someone’s home, I thought, but a place to live and eat and sleep in. There was no sense that it belonged to anyone in particular. Harriet had reduced herself to a condition of perfect anonymity.

  Later on, after a lunch of salade nico
ise and a couple of glasses of white wine, Harriet said: ‘I suppose you had better stay here. I can make up the bed in the spare room.’

  ‘Haven’t you anything planned?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry about me if you have - I don’t expect you to drop everything just because I turn up out of the blue.’

  Harriet laughed.

  ‘There’s nothing to drop. I don’t have much of a social life here. I was a bit of a recluse when I first came to France, and it’s been hard to change the habit. People give up asking you out after a while.’

  ‘No Francois, then?’

  ‘Who’s Francois?’

  I explained about the muscle-bound Frenchman.

  ‘You do have a vivid imagination! No, there is no Francois at the moment. I’m sorry to be so boring.’

  ‘I’m not really that disappointed,’ I said.

  Harriet gathered up the plates, and I got up to help her. In the small kitchen she stood with her back to me, loading the dishwasher; her fair hair was cropped so that the nape of her neck showed when she bent her head. I kissed the exposed part of her neck and she shivered.

  ‘Don’t, Eck, you nearly made me drop a plate.’

  She finished loading the dishwasher and turned to face me. We stared at each other for a moment.

  ‘No mobile phone ringing this time?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s turned off.’

  ‘You’d better come into my bedroom, then.’

  Making love to Harriet this time was infinitely less strange and more joyous than it had been in the spare bedroom of Aunt Dorothy’s house. Perhaps the South of France is more conducive to lovemaking, particularly more so than The Laurels, a house steeped in the loneliness of its former occupant. I also think it had something to do with the fact that we were now in Harriet’s home: anonymous enough, it was nevertheless where she existed, and lived her life.