The Money Makers

by Harry Bingham

  ‘Excusez-moi,’ said George, quickly coming to an end of his French vocabulary, ‘I’m looking for -er- Kiki.’ He used her nickname, as he had never mastered the correct way to pronounce her name and title. ‘I’m expected,’ he added lamely.

  The man and woman looked at George, at his Armani suit and designer sunglasses and through the picket gate at his shiny black sports car.

  ‘ Kelso. Tais-toi!’

  The man shouted at the dog to be quiet, but in vain. Then he spoke to George in rapid peasant French, waving his hands and shouting to drown out the barking dog. George understood nothing.

  Finally, the old man changed his approach. He searched around for a word and said, ‘Come.’ The two of them crossed the courtyard in the shadow of the keep, then entered a hallway lined with bits of armour and rusting weapons. The man tapped a rough wooden bench running the length of one wall. ‘Restez la. Stay.’

  George stayed. The cool was welcome after the sun. He leaned carefully against the wall behind, hoping its rough plaster wouldn’t come off on his new suit. Its careful cut struggled to hide George’s increasingly corpulent figure. Despite the cool he was sweating. After a wait of ten minutes or more, a neat young man slipped through a doorway at the end of the hall and approached.

  ‘Good morning. I understand that you have business with the family,’ he said, in French-accented but immaculate English.

  ‘Yes, please, I’m here to see Kiki. She’s expecting me. I’m George Gradley.’

  The neat young man hesitated briefly. He was wondering whether to correct George’s use of Kiki’s nickname, but decided against.

  ‘Yes. I believe she was expecting you an hour or so ago.’ That was true enough. George had got horribly lost and ended up crawling slowly behind a tractor which was also headed for the castle.

  ‘I apologise that there was nobody to receive you,’ said the neat young man without apologising. ‘The old castle is for staff only. Guests of the family generally prefer to arrive at the north entrance.’

  As he spoke, he escorted George rapidly down a series of dismal corridors until they arrived at a pair of nail­ studded oak doors. They went through and emerged into a high light-painted hallway, with bright sunlight streaming through large and airy windows. The colours were pale pastels. The curtains were silk. Two uniformed maids were at work polishing a Louis Quinze table on which stood a pretty porcelain bowl. The neat young man lifted the lid to reveal a heap of chocolates and popped one into his mouth.

  On they went. Up marble staircases, down more duck­egg blue corridors, eventually coming to a halt outside a pair of white and gilt double doors. The neat young man knocked out of politeness but swept on through. There, in the canary yellow room with its blue upholstered furniture and sky-painted ceiling, its tall glass doors flung open to welcome the sunshine and air from the gardens beyond, was Kiki.

  She was dressed in pale olive linen trousers and a cream cotton blouse. She had been practising the flute and laid it aside as George entered.

  ‘Georges, how nice to see you. Charles-Henri, thank you so much for rescuing him from the castle. I always get so lost in there. It gives me the terrors. And you will have his car brought round to the front, please?’ Thus thanked and dismissed, the neat young man left. ‘But you are a beast for being so late, Georges. There was nothing for it but to play my flute and that is so tiring, but so beautiful too, I suppose, so perhaps it’s good.’

  As she chattered, they kissed as friends kiss, and Kiki found George a seat amongst her litter of sheet music.

  ‘It’s really nice to see you again, Kiki. I’ve been looking for you for ages.’

  ‘I know you have, you bad man. I had to run away to my friend Maria in Argentina. I felt like a fox that you English enjoy to hunt. I only came home because I thought “Poor Georges, he wants to see me very much, so I suppose I should see him, even though I have a funny feeling about it,” but then of course you come so very late, so I have to play the flute until my lips are blue and I have to send poor Charles­ Henri to rescue you from the dungeons over there.’ She waved her hand vaguely enough that the old castle was probably included somewhere in the course of its long sweep.

  ‘Kiki, why did you run from me?’ asked George, as gently as he could.

  ‘Oh, Georges, what have you come to tell me, that you have left your precious factory for so long?’

  George’s question had come first, but Kiki was the lady, so her question took priority. George knew what he wanted to say and cleared his throat. He spoke softly.

  ‘Kiki, I love you. I have loved you as long as I have known you. When you kissed me last year at my flat, I knew that I couldn’t stop loving you. When you came to the factory, I knew I couldn’t be happy without you. So here I am.’

  Awkwardly stooping on one knee, amidst the sheet music and the breeze from the open doors, George took out a small box from his pocket. He withdrew a simple diamond ring; a ring that had cost him thirty thousand pounds and maybe his factory as well.

  ‘Kiki, will you make me the happiest man alive and agree to marry me?’

  He looked up. Kiki’s face was wet with tears. Her wilfully unserious manner was gone, but, amid her tears, her head was shaking. Wordlessly, she plucked at his sleeve and drew him outside to a terrace hung at either end with a long gilt-framed mirror. In the gardens beneath, peacocks called amongst the fountains and gardeners fussed over topiary and roses.

  ‘Georges, I think you are the kindest, nicest man I know, and I am very fond of you, truly. But look at us. We are too different. If you marry me, you would hate me before we had spent a night together, and that would be too horrible.’

  George stood in front of the mirror and stared. The Armani suit couldn’t disguise the truth. He was his father’s son. He had his father’s bristling ginger hair, his father’s piggy eyes, his father’s heavy build. Of Yorkshire clay was George Gradley built and all the designers in the world would never be able to hide it.

  And Kiki? He looked at her reflection next to his. She was trembling with emotion, as though the breeze from the garden was softly shaking her. She was all the things he was not. She was light, fragile, beautiful, rich. He was heavy, plain, thick-skinned, penniless. It was unimaginable that she should ever leave this world of hers, her golden cage. Gissings, Yorkshire, the factory would suffocate her in seconds. Neither could George imagine moving into her world. Christ, he hadn’t even been able to find her front door. How would he cope living with her?

  He looked for a long time. Kiki was the most desirable woman in the world, but she would be no wife for him. He nodded miserably.

  ‘You’re right, Kiki. I wish you weren’t, but you are.’

  ‘My dearest Georges. I am too fond of you. That was why I had to run away to Argentina. I couldn’t bear to say no.’

  She let him embrace her. They hugged for a long time. Eventually, she detached herself gently and kissed him, letting him dab clumsily at her tears with his handkerchief. When he’d finished, she silently completed the job with her own tiny scrap of cotton and lace.

  ‘Georges, first you make me late and make me play my flute, and then you come and make me cry and spoil my make-up and just before lunch so Papa will want to know what’s wrong and I shall have to lie to him and I cannot lie to Papa, because he always knows,’ she chided, but her heart wasn’t in it. She invited him to stay to lunch. For a moment George was tempted, but in the end he refrained.

  ‘Thanks, Kiki, but I’d only be out of place. Besides, I’d best be getting back. My factory’s probably missing me.’

  ‘Tu as raison, Georges. You are right. Oh, and Georges, this is a terribly sweet little ring, but I think it belongs to some other lady.’

  She handed back the ring.

  ‘Somebody else? Come off it, Kiki. It’s only been you for years.’

  ‘What about your lady - Valerie, I think she is called?’

  ‘Val?’ said George, bewildered. ‘How do you know about Val? An
yhow, there’s never been anything at all serious between us. How could there be?’

  ‘Oh. Pardon. When I saw you with her, I thought, you must be ... I thought you were together. That was the other reason why I ran away so hard. I didn’t want to come between you and her. I hoped so much you would see that she was better for you.’

  George took the ring back. Gissings wasn’t doing so well that it could afford to waste half of its contingency reserve on an unwanted engagement ring. George put the ring in his pocket. He didn’t feel brokenhearted but somehow purged, like when you cry a lot at the end of a weepie, before walking out into the street with your friends and feeling the world return to normal around you. He was pleased he had come, but now felt able to go.

  George and Kiki walked slowly to the front of the house, into the grand hall, where there stood a bust of one of Kiki’s ancestors, one of the most influential men in the history of France. His solemn features were crowned with a preposterous yellow hat.

  ‘Oh! My hat! I have been looking for you.’

  She put it on. In the enormous yellow shadow cast by the brim, George and Kiki kissed, fondly and sadly. Kiki’s face was still a little damp.

  ‘Adieu, Georges,’ said Kiki. ‘Bonne chance.’

  ‘Bye, Kiki. Don’t forget me.’

  George got into his Mercedes and headed for the road to Bordeaux. For the past six weeks he hadn’t been able to get Kiki out of his head. Whenever he’d thought of Val or the factory, he’d felt an almost physical sense of repugnance. But now, driving away, far from being heartbroken, he felt OK. And far from thinking obsessively about the woman he was leaving, he couldn’t help looking forward to seeing Val again. He thought of her strong arms and cosy embrace, their ease with each other, their shared nights in bed, sex followed by steaming mugs of sweet tea, their shared passion for everything to do with the factory.

  Val was the same as George. So close were they, she could almost be his sister. But she wasn’t his sister, she was his lover. And George had an expensive engagement ring to dispose of.

  9

  Matthew touched a few buttons on his keyboard and his trading portfolio came up on screen. He hardly needed to look. All he cared about was the Western Instruments position and he knew that well enough. The bond price had rallied a bit, following some less-bad-than-expected results, but he was still heavily underwater. To sell or not to sell?

  There wasn’t a question really. He had lost his faith in Cornish. Fiona was right. He must see a dozen opportunities like this every year, and he launched a bid only every four or five years. Betting on a takeover is like putting your money on the 30-1 outsider in a horse race: your odds of success are low, but the potential rewards are high. It’s an attractive way to gamble, but a dumb way to trade.

  The phone rang. It was a client interested in unloading some IBM bonds, ‘in search of something with a higher yield’. As it happened, Matthew needed some IBM bonds to square out a trade from the week before, so he was able to quote a good price. The client hit his bid right away and Matthew began to scribble out a ticket.

  ‘You’re not interested in Western Instruments, are you?’ he asked, before hanging up. ‘I’ve got a position I need to unwind and I can let you have them at a quarter of a percent better than the market price.’

  ‘Western Instruments? You’re kidding. You’re not? Let me have a think and I’ll call you back.’

  Fifteen minutes later the client called back, keen to proceed. Matthew confirmed the price and they did the deal for all twenty-five million. With a mixture of relief and pain, Matthew scribbled out the ticket.

  He had sold his bonds at seventy-eight cents in the dollar, giving him a loss of one and a quarter million bucks. His first year in the markets was turning out to be a mess, but, on the positive side, Matthew had put an end to the fiasco and learned a lot in the process.

  Now for Plan B.

  10

  Pale November sun tilted across the park. Behind him, Ovenden House glowed a rich gold, but Zack had no eyes for it. He stood by the archway leading into the rose garden and paused.

  The arch was covered by a rambling rose of the palest pink. So late in the season, most of its flowers had long since turned into a litter of petals on the flagstones beneath, but a few late sprays still held their blooms. Feeling he should have something in his hands, Zack reached up to snap off a couple of tresses. But the old rose was unexpectedly resilient and it fought the attempt to steal its treasures. He persisted and ended up yanking off three decent sprays of roses, but at some cost to the plant. Where he had broken the tresses, the stalk was mangled and one entire section was ripped away from the arch. He patted it back into place and hoped no one would notice. He took the roses and went in search of Sarah.

  He hadn’t far to look. Sarah was kneeling beside a wooden arbour, planting a rose. On either side of her, yellow roses flushed with red sprang up, silent echoes of the setting sun. Sarah looked up.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she said.

  Zack kissed her and offered her the roses.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I’m giving you some roses.’

  ‘You can’t give them to me. They’re mine already.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘This is my rose garden. Daddy gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. And the rose you’ve got there was named after me by its breeder. It’s the Rosa Sarah Havercoombe.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I won’t give you them then. I’ll present them. To you, my dear.’

  She took the roses briefly, before crying out.

  ‘Ow! Damn!’ she said, sucking her hand. ‘You might at least have snapped the thorns off.’

  Zack said sorry again and started to pick the thorns off the bouquet. It was rather prickly. The more he handled the roses, the more petals they shed. November roses are hardly the most robust of flowers, even the Rosa Sarah Havercoombe. By the time he had finished, the tresses had lost nearly all their flowers. It wasn’t how he’d envisaged the scene, but romance wasn’t his strong suit.

  ‘We’d better go and have a look at the poor old rose. You should never just break things off one, let alone at this time of year. Frost can damage unprotected wood.’ Zack walked in Sarah’s wake back to the archway.

  ‘Oh, Zack. You’ve made a real mess.’

  Sarah opened an unobtrusive green metal cupboard positioned just inside the arch. Inside, amongst other implements, were two pairs of secateurs. Sarah took one of them and began to tidy the plant.

  ‘I haven’t done any lasting damage, have I?’

  ‘No, not lasting. Roses do shoot again after being pruned, you know. It’s one of the magic things about them. But don’t congratulate yourself on a job well done. This particular Sarah Havercoombe was doing perfectly well without your interference, thank you.’

  Sarah finished snipping. She dropped the pile of rose clippings just outside the gate, where they would be collected for burning. She put the secateurs away and closed the cupboard. Peace was restored.

  ‘Sorry about the rose.’

  ‘It’s OK. Forget about it. Next time do it properly.’

  ‘There’s something I wanted to say. It’s the reason why I wanted to bring you roses. I want to marry you, Sarah. I mean, do you want to marry me?’ Zack stopped. This proposal had been a mess from beginning to end. He took the threadbare roses from Sarah, dropped on to one knee, took her hand in his and started again.

  ‘Dear, sweet, beloved Sarah, will you make me the happiest man in England, and be my wife?’

  He offered her the bunch of roses, by this stage not much more than a bunch of sticks with the thorns picked off. She took them and her hand was shaking.

  ‘Oh Zack, dear Zack! I will.’

  11

  Inevitably, the van broke down. George was no mechanic and, anyway, there were no tools. There was no garage nearby and if there had been, it would have been closed. It was ten o’clock at night and pouring with rain.

  There was nothing
else for it. George heaved the van on to the verge, took his suitcase from the back and began the five-mile tramp home. He’d be soaked before he’d gone a mile, but in a way it was a nice way to return. At the end of it, there would be a thick cup of tea, maybe some sausage and egg and, he hoped, the strong comfort of Val’s embrace.

  He trudged out of Ilkley along the country roads which would take him up the hill to Sawley Bridge. On either side, the wind moaned in the wet grass, and every now and then a horse or sheep ran startled away into the night. His suitcase was wet and heavy in his hand. All it contained was designer rubbish that he’d bought for Kiki’s benefit. He wouldn’t be needing it any more.

  A little way off, a lake beat its waves in the blackness. From a ditch beside the road, he hauled a rock out of the sucking mud, opened his case and dumped the rock inside. He zipped the case up, squelched out into the field, and threw his case far out into the waters of the lake. The case bubbled and disappeared. Farewell Kiki. Farewell all that super-rich, French Riviera, your-chateau-or-mine world that George would never again enter.

  Welcome Val. Welcome Yorkshire. Welcome Gissings.

  By the time he arrived at Val’s house, it was long gone eleven and he was soaked through and glad to be back. When he tried his key, he found the door bolted from the inside. His knock brought Val to the door in her dressing gown.

  ‘Hi, Val. It’s me.’

  ‘So I see,’ said Val, making no move to let him in.

  ‘May I come in?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No. I’ve decided to stop letting rooms. Just tell me when you want to come round and get your stuff. It’s all in boxes in the shed.’

  ‘Letting a room, Val? I thought we ... I mean I’m sorry about buggering off like that. I really am. I’ve got so much to tell you. I ... it was wrong, I know. It was something I had to get out of my system, but it’s gone now. I promise. It won’t ever happen again.’