‘Try drinking out of a glass backwards,’ Loo said.
‘Please don’t touch my spider,’ Minty whispered breathlessly. He counted up to twenty aloud. ‘This isn’t much of a party,’ he said, ‘I’m not used – if my cup had not been broken – you took me by surprise, and then this about Hammarsten.’ He followed Loo with his eyes, maliciously observing every unfortunate point in her appearance. ‘It was good of you to come.’ But in his scorched eyes he expressed quite clearly his disapproval of the bad make-up, the cheap pretentious dress, the saucy hat. There were people these days one could not avoid meeting: but one retained standards.
‘I ought to be going,’ Loo said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Anthony said. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. We’ll find somewhere to sit. Skansen. Is it far to Skansen?’
‘Please, please,’ Minty said, ‘make yourself quite at home.’ He twisted himself this way and that in the convulsion of hiccups. ‘Treat my room as your hotel. Stay here and talk. You won’t be interrupted. No one comes to see Minty.’
‘That’s what I wanted to ask,’ Anthony said.
He laughed at them gently, patted them on the shoulder, the perfect Pandarus: ‘And I thought it was the pleasure of Minty’s company. False, false Farrant. And the sandwiches were no more than a bribe, you only pretended to like my condensed milk.’ But his expression disconcerted them: it was hopeless, but not quite resigned. Like a third-class berth in a boat going abroad he seemed to have known only strangers, he carried about him the smell of oil and misery. He said: ‘I must be off and get this news to the paper. Make yourselves at home.’ He put on his black coat and had trouble with the sleeves; one arm stuck in a torn lining and for a moment he was like a small black splintered pillar set in the open space the room provided. He was so lonely, so isolated that he drove the others back into the companionship they had lost; even a shared uneasiness, a shared bickering, had a friendly air compared with his extreme friendlessness. He said ‘Good-bye,’ but pointedly to Anthony; he couldn’t bring himself to look at Loo. He said: ‘Could you by any chance lend me a few crowns? I have my month’s cheque but no change.’
He wouldn’t look at them, he wouldn’t look at the bed, while he waited for payment. His gaze got no further than the ewer and basin, the spider under the glass.
‘Of course,’ Anthony said.
‘I’ll pay you back when I’ve been to the office, and pay you for the story as well. You said a quarter, didn’t you?’
‘You can have this one for nothing.’
‘You are too kind. Minty couldn’t possibly – Well, perhaps, this time. There’s so much shopping I have to do.’ At last he left them. He wore boots and they could hear him going slowly down until he had passed the third floor.
‘Oh,’ Loo said, ‘I knew it wasn’t respectable.’
‘What?’
‘Your job, of course. Mixing with people like that.’
‘It’s not my real job.’
‘Your real job’s no better. If he can say that about Krogh. . . .’
‘You can’t believe him.’
‘There’s a lot in what he says.’ She picked her way gingerly round the room; from everything she touched and saw she seemed to catch a little of Minty’s misery. It was contagious. It lay like a germ in the brown dressing-gown, it was a dusty scum on the water in the ewer; when she opened the cupboard (she was innately inquisitive) it was concealed in the litter there. She said: ‘A saucer, an empty tin of condensed milk, a knife, a spoon, a fork, a plate – it doesn’t match the saucer –’
‘Leave him alone,’ Anthony said. It had been decent of him to lend his flat when (it was obvious) he didn’t like girls. There was no need for indictment, but she wouldn’t stop. She said: ‘A box of matches – they’ve all been struck – why does he keep them? An old memo-pad. He doesn’t seem able to throw away anything. A magazine. A school magazine. An address list. A prayer-book – no, it’s a missal. What are these funny little things? Some game?’
Anthony knelt beside her. ‘They are incense-cones,’ he said. He juggled them in his hands, and the thin smell attached itself to his fingers like misery. ‘Poor devil,’ he said. Their bodies touched and suddenly they were together again in their hunger, their sense of time passing. ‘It’s a dreary world.’
‘No,’ Loo said, ‘no. It’s good. There’s always this.’ ‘This’ was their kiss, the closer embrace, the half-reluctant effort which took them to the bed. But his passion wore itself out in his hands, it was vanity only which he experienced in the final act, it had never been anything else but vanity. One liked to make them helpless, to cry out, one was satisfied because one gave satisfaction, but there was no pleasure to match theirs, which was deep enough to make them surrender momentarily every mental conviction, so that Loo now used all the terms she scouted; she said, ‘I love you’; she said, ‘Darling’; she said, ‘It was never so good’. But his mind remained apart, working a trick, conscious of the house group over her head, the Madonna on the mantelpiece, peacocking himself when she cried: ‘I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to go,’ deceiving himself that it was his victory, that he remained untouched, that he had only added a scalp, when already as he dropped beside her, vanity was doing its work, exaggerating her charm and naïvety, branding his brain with half-fictitious memories. He looked at her, put his arm round her, vanity worked his defeat more completely than passion could do: already she was recovering. One could never feel the same again about a girl one had laid: one couldn’t avoid a certain tenderness.
‘Yes,’ Loo said, ‘there’s a lot in what he says. I did economics at school. He’s quite right about short-term loans. I do wish you had a respectable job.’
2
At last Amsterdam spoke in the slightly Cockney tones of Fred Hall. Krogh stood at the window and let the voice silt into the room through the loudspeaker. The early mist had nearly cleared, but the bowl of the courtyard still held it like a milky fluid. The statue was obscured.
One had to have a sense of proportion. The statue was not of such importance.
‘I tried to get you last night,’ the voice said reproachfully. ‘They put me through to the opera but you’d gone. I tried your flat, but you weren’t in. I’ve been up all night, Mr Krogh.’
He knew a thing or two, Farrant, and he didn’t like it. It was no use saying that it was unimportant. Everything was important just now when money was scarce and he had got to keep things steady until the American company was launched. A joke might ruin him at the wrong moment. ‘Go on, Hall,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s worrying you,’ but the line that morning was bad. He had to come to the desk to speak. After this is over, he thought, I’ll go upstairs for an hour away from people.
‘They are still selling.’
‘Then we must go on buying.’
‘There’s a limit, Mr Krogh.’
‘No limit.’
‘Where’s the money to come from?’
‘I’ve arranged that. The A.C.U. will lend the money.’
‘We shall need every penny they’ve got.’
‘You can have it.’
‘But the A.C.U. They’ll have to pass their dividend. It’ll start a panic. This won’t be a single break. It’ll be like a sieve. You’ll have holes sprung in Berlin, Warsaw, Paris, everywhere.’
‘No, no,’ Krogh said, ‘you exaggerate. You live too much in the centre of things, Hall. I’m right out of it here. When once we’ve started the American company next week, we can do what we like with the market.’
‘But the A.C.U.?’
‘We’re selling it. Batterson’s are buying. A million pounds down. That will fill any holes for a week, Hall. You’ve just got to go on buying.’
‘But the A.C.U. won’t have a farthing.’ He could hear the thin whistle of Hall’s breath far away in his room in Amsterdam.
‘They’ll be worth exactly what they are worth now. Only it’ll be in the form of shares in the Amsterdam company.’
>
‘But you know we aren’t worth the money we’re spending.’ Krogh had no need of television when he spoke to Hall; they had been together so long that he could associate every inflection with its accompanying action: the reproachful swinging leg, the doubting dangle of watch-chain.
‘Yes, you are, Fred,’ Krogh said. He was quite happy again because he was dealing with figures; there was nothing he didn’t know about figures, there was nothing he couldn’t do with them, there was nothing human about them. ‘You are worth everything. Our credit’s bound up with you. The A.C.U. is nothing. It has nothing to do with the main business. It’s an investment we are willing to sell. But if you go, the I.G.S. goes.’
‘Yes, but in actual value . . .’
‘Three minutes up,’ a voice said in German.
‘There’s no such thing,’ Krogh said, ‘as actual value.’ He took up an ash-tray and put it down again: E.K. ‘There’s only the price people are willing to pay. We’ve got to clear up every one of your shares on the market in Amsterdam. The price has got to be maintained.’
‘They’re unloading a packet. There are rumours –’
‘You’ve got the money. You can keep the price steady. The selling won’t go on.’
‘So I’ve got to go on buying all today?’
‘Your ghosts may give out. The money won’t.’
‘But Batterson’s will never buy.’
‘I’ve given them my personal assurance of the value of the A.C.U. holdings. They are dealing with Krogh’s, Hall.’
‘But when they do examine the books –’
‘They’ll find the holdings are all in the form of shares in our Amsterdam company, and the Amsterdam company is a daughter company of the I.G.S. You can’t have a better investment than Krogh’s.’
‘We can’t get the money any other way, Mr Krogh?’ The voice was not really very troubled; what Krogh said went with Hall, went a great deal further than a little fraud. He was obedient to the letter; there was something medieval in his devotion: like the knights who attended on Henry the Second he hung on Krogh’s wishes, would have anticipated them if he had had the brains. ‘Will no one rid me?’ and Hall was at his elbow, arranging what he understood better than Krogh did, a little frame-up, a spot of blackmail.
‘You know as well as I do, Hall, how close money is. We can’t take any more short-term loans. Too many are falling due as it is.’
‘I suppose they’ll raise hell when they find out.’
‘Not when the purchase is over. They’ll be responsible to their shareholders. They won’t dare to press us. They’ll have to give us time. When America has gone through, I’ll buy the company back from them if they want it. We can do what we like then. And I’ve taken precautions. I’ve predated the purchase of the shares.’
‘Six minutes up.’
‘Did the directors agree to that?’ Hall asked with respectful admiration.
‘Yes, yes,’ Krogh said. It was not worth while explaining to Hall that one did not trouble to consult Stefenson, Asplund, Bergsten about such small routine matters as signing cheques. He had their signatures on a rubber stamp. He had not approached Laurin in the matter; that could wait awhile. The purchase of the Amsterdam shares was pre-dated too far back for Laurin to have had any say. He said gently over the telephone: ‘Everything is all right now, Hall.’
‘What you say goes.’
‘A few days ago I was nervous, a little nervous. I didn’t feel prepared. There are methods these Americans use. They worked a strike here and Laurin was ill. But I settled that. It never even got into the papers, and I gave no written promises. Things are going very well now, Hall.’
‘And I’m to go on buying?’
‘This morning should finish it. You can count on the money from Batterson’s. When you are finished in Amsterdam, come to me here. I may want you. Someone’s causing trouble at the works.’
‘I’ll come at once, Mr Krogh.’
‘Good-bye, Hall.’
‘Good-bye, Mr Krogh.’ But the voice came back, broke across the announcement ‘nine minutes’: ‘Don’t think it’s a little fraud I object to. You know I wouldn’t stick at a little fraud. If the value’s there.’
‘There are values and values.’ Krogh said gently. ‘Value isn’t a thing you can measure. Value is confidence. As long as we receive money, we’re valuable. As long as we’re trusted.’ He disconnected Hall.
Hall was the right man in the right place. A clever man would have been more frightened. He felt a little drained of strength after reassuring Hall, but not the less confident: a pleasant physical weariness. Hall had said: ‘The friction’ll be too great,’ and Hall had been wrong. Hall had always been wrong, but never obstinately wrong. Arguing with him, one marshalled one’s facts, one cleared one’s mind; now, one could have tackled the less trusting, the more cowardly Laurin. He rang up Kate and asked her: ‘Where’s Laurin?’
‘He’s still ill – at Saltsjöbaden. Listen, Erik, I want to speak to you.’
‘Not now. In five minutes. I’m going up to the silent room. Where’s your brother?’
‘He hasn’t come in yet.’
He laid some papers straight upon his desk; there were a few letters he would take upstairs with him. He noticed an envelope containing the tickets for a series of concerts; he smiled and tore them up. Things are going very well now. It seemed incredible to him that a few days ago he had been worried to the point of hallucination. I’ve been thinking too much about the past. He had always despised people who thought about the past. To live was to leave behind; to be as free as a shipwrecked man who has lost everything. Chicago, Barcelona, the school in Stockholm, the apprenticeship at Nyköping, the hut beside Vätten dropped away like the figures on a platform when the train moves out; they dropped back against the waiting-rooms, the buffet, the lavatories; they were left behind, they hadn’t caught that train. He thought: I enjoyed last night. I’ve never felt so rested. I can look ahead now.
Passing the window to reach the door, he was caught again by the fountain. But this time, suddenly, he saw it, the great handled block of green stone, with delight. It wasn’t the past, it wasn’t something finished to the nipple, to the dimple, to the flexed knee, it was something in the present tense, something working its way out of the stone. His delight was momentary, but it enabled him to forget the fountain. He thought: Next week America, and then we can go ahead, no depression can hurt us then and he thought with pity: They call it fraud, this clarity, this long intricate equation of which at last I can see the solution. He was possessed all the way up the glass lift-shaft to the silent room next the roof with a pure inhuman joy.
3
Kate read the memorandum over carefully. At first it meant nothing to her. She knew nothing about the A.C.U. except that it was the most prosperous combine of paper-mills in Sweden. It had been one of the best investments that Krogh had made and he had made it on his own responsibility without consulting his directors. It had been an investment pure and simple, a use for surplus money, and its sale to Batterson’s meant nothing at all. He was selling his control at a profit to be used elsewhere. Why worry?
But she worried none the less. The short-term loans worried her. It was untidy, the continual shifting of small blocks of capital; it offended her in the same way as dust on a mirror. One wanted a clear image. Somebody knocked on the door. She thought: There can’t be anything wrong, this is solid – these offices of glass and steel, the rare woods, the eighteenth-century wall-paper in the directors’ dining-room, the works at Nyköping, this bowl of expensive flowers. She thought of the A.C.U. The figures were set out on the memorandum: production 350,000 tons annually, of which 200,000 tons are for export; associated pulp mills: production of mechanical pulp 300,000 tons; of chemical pulp 1,000,300 tons; the associated saw-mills, 15,000 miles of logging channels, 50,000,000 logs floated annually. This was real, nothing was more real.
‘Welcome your erring brother,’ Anthony said.
Kate looked up. This is more real, she thought: those are figures, I’ve seen what Krogh can do with figures, but this is myself. He grinned at her. ‘I’m late. Is the great man angry?’
She said: ‘What’s up?’ He was cocky, but he was sullen. He stood there pluming himself in her mirror, waiting for her to guess what he had been at. His was the weakness which should have been hers, the uncertainty, the vanity, the charm of something rash and unpremeditated. It was the nearest she could get to completeness, having him here in the same room, arguing, bullying, retreating. She bitterly envied lovers their more complete alliance.
‘I’ve been seeing Loo,’ Anthony said.
‘Who’s Loo?’
‘The Davidge girl.’
‘You needn’t tell me that,’ Kate said. ‘She’s left her powder on your coat.’
‘She wants me to leave here.’ He said uneasily, ‘She doesn’t think my job’s respectable.’ He wilted with grace against her desk; he was all the moral conscience, she thought, that they could summon up between them. She could see her own face in the mirror behind his back – the pale careful profile, the long lids which qualified the hardness of the eyes, so that it was possible to believe that perhaps in the last resort she hadn’t the energy to be completely ruthless. Good Looks and Conscience, she thought, the fine flowers of our class. We’re done, we’re broke, we belong to the past, we haven’t the character or the energy to do more than hang on to something new for what we can make out of it. Krogh is worth us both, but she watched the graceful curve of Anthony’s attitude, the padded shoulders of his new overcoat: one can’t help loving oneself.
‘Well,’ Anthony said, ‘there’s something in what she says. I don’t know whether it’s a job for – well, you know what I mean.’
‘I wish I did.’
‘Well, damn it all, if one must use the word, for a gentleman.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Kate said. ‘It’s our only chance.’
‘I don’t mean your job. That’s different.’
‘It’s our only chance,’ Kate repeated. ‘We haven’t got a future away from here. This is the future.’
England Made Me Page 15
