Karl, deep in his chair, looked across at Effie with the tense contentedness of a lover who is happy but knows that his happiness can only be short-lived. He said, ‘I very much wish you could stay.’
‘I wish I could stay, too. But, you know I’ll be back. As soon as I’ve sorted everything out with Robert, I’ll be straight back.’
‘You know,’ said Karl, ‘in Faust, Goethe wonders if it possible to say to a single moment, wait, wait. You are such a beautiful moment, you should stay. ‘Werd ich zum Augen-blicke sagen, verweile doch! Wait! Du bist so schõn! You are so beautiful.’ Well, that is how I feel now. That this moment should wait, that I should always be looking at you as you are in this firelight, my darling.’
Effie smiled, and repeated gently, ‘I’ll be back, if you like, I’ll take next week’s sailing.’
‘If I like!’ exclaimed Karl. Then, with great tenderness, ‘Yes, if I like. I have never before met anyone with whom I am so content, and so much relaxed. I could say to you, anything, I could reveal to you my guiltiest secrets and my dearest ambitions. I could say to you, I love you, I love you, and feel no reservation or uncertainty. You are the first person I have met, in front of whom I am not ashamed either to laugh or to cry.’
Effie came over, and knelt beside him, resting her arms on the arm of his chair, looking up at him with such affection and admiration that he couldn’t stop himself from leaning towards her and kissing her. ‘You are my destiny,’ he said. ‘Do you know that? Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan, the eternal in woman draws us on.’
Effie said, ‘What will you do while I’m away?’
‘Dream of you,’ said Karl. ‘And work, too! I have to work. These last three weeks have been a holiday for me. I have to settle this loan to Turkey, and there are also loans I have to authorise to munitions companies in the Ruhr, and construction companies in Hamburg. You know that we are widening our canal system in case of war.’
‘There won’t be war, Karl. If the British and the German people have only a tenth of the friendship between them that we have, only a hundredth; then there can’t be war.’
‘Well,’ said Karl, with a shrug. ‘Well all hope that there won’t be war.’
The evening passed. They talked of everything they could; shared as much as possible before Effie had to leave. Upstairs her trunks were already packed. In Hamburg, the Kronprinz Wilhelm, one of the newest of North German Lloyd’s ocean liners, was already docked and being stocked with food and clean linen for the journey which would take Effie back to Scotland. There was a nervousness in the air; the kind of electricity which makes horses stir in their stables. It would snow again before morning, all across the Bay of Heligoland, across Stade and Lúneburg, a north German night which Goethe, looking among his papers in his later years, would have dicovered that he had called ‘frozen music’.
At midnight, with all the velvet curtains drawn against the night, Karl’s old servant brought them small glasses of cloudberry brandy, so that they could drink a toast to themselves, and their future, and keep out the cold. Karl had not asked Effie to marry him. Marriage hadn’t entered their conversation even once. But there was a shared understanding between them that this visit would be only the first of very many; and that they would ride again across the snow, and across the grassland of summer, and that ahead of them were many years of laughter and amusement and affectionate silence.
Karl said, There is one more thing. I have written to your brother Robert since you have been here, and asked him again about the assurances he can give us that Watson’s Bank will participate in this loan. He has said that Watson’s always honours its understandings and its agreements, and that I have no need to worry. But, he cannot yet give me a written undertaking, because the British Treasury will not sanction a loan to Turkey, particularly in conjunction with a German bank, until they are sure that the American bank is happy about it. It is all politics and protocol. But you see the risk for myself and for Baeklander’s. Your brother is saying that he cannot support us until we have actually signed the agreement with the Turkish government, and he can tell the British Treasury that it is a fait accompli. He does not actually need the permission of the Treasury, he tells me. It is not mandatory. But Watson’s are doing so much business with the government, and with the military, that he hesitates to offend them.’
Effie said, ‘He’ll keep his word. I know it. I admit that he’s a very hard businessman, and he does take advantage of people who are weaker. But I’ve never known him to lie, or to go back on anything he’s promised.’
‘That’s what concerns me. He hasn’t actually promised anything.’
‘Then, if you like, I’ll promise for him.’
Karl took her hand. ‘If you say it, then I am bound to believe it. In any case, if I want to complete this agreement with the Turks, I have very little choice except to go along with Watson’s. I have been turned down by Rothschilds, and turned down by Barings, Kleinworts, and Schroders. I tried France, but the French are too hysterical these days to support Turkey. They are too hysterical to do anything but chase their own tails around. If anybody plunges us into war, it will be the French. They are alternatively mad with anger and mad with fear. They have none of the stability of purpose which unites Germany and Britain.’
‘Karl,’ insisted Effie, ‘I solemnly promise you that Watson’s will join you in this venture. As soon as I hear from you that Baeklanders have settled the agreement, I will personally make sure that Robert draws up the papers for Watson’s to join you. I will bring the papers back here myself.’
‘You realise the implications if this does not happen,’ said Karl. ‘The Deutsche Kreditbank and Baeklanders will be liable between them to pay a loan of more than £20 million to the Turkish government. My bank I know is stretched extremely thin on the ground at the moment. A large proportion of our assets are tied up in shipbuilding and steel and other heavy industries in the Ruhr, long term risks. Baeklanders I know have been committing themselves deeply to Latin America and to the Pacific Islands. The reputation of our two banks, and perhaps of the whole of Western European finance, depends on this arrangement working, and being seen to work. Where we have shown the way, others will follow; but if others follow, there will a far greater chance of peace. Nations that are bound together by alliances are friends in name. Nations that are bound together by money are friends in fact.’
Effie said, ‘If there is so much risk involved, why are you working so hard to set up this agreement?’
Karl stroked her hair. ‘Because nobody else will, and because time is running short. Somebody must demonstrate that war is not the only way to release the pressures that are building up inside Europe. The Diskonto Bank are not interested; neither is the Darmstadter. Therefore, it must be me, and the Deutsche Kreditbank.’
Effie held his hand, and squeezed it tight. ‘I won’t let you down. You know that, don’t you?’
Karl nodded. ‘My lover,’ he said, softly. ‘My lover and my banker. Who else can say the same?’
Book Two
SHOW OF EVIL
‘The world is still deceived with ornament
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice
Obscures the show of evil?’
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
CHAPTER ONE
Robert, his face partly hidden by the green glass lamp on his desk, one hand lying plumply on his blotter like a red leather gardening glove that somebody had idly tossed into the lamplight, said, ‘You’re mistaken, my dearie.’
Effie said nothing, but sat where she was, on the opposite side of the room, among the aspidistras and the Queen’s Tears, perfectly dressed in a white wool day dress decorated with lilac-coloured ribbons, and a white hat with lilac fruit and flowers on it. Perfect, and pale; and very close to tears.
Robert stood up, and thrust his hands into his pockets. There cannot be any question of Watson’s getting involved in thi
s arrangement. I know full well that Baeklanders and Deutsche Kredit will be left holding the baby. But, that’s their lookout, I’m afraid to say. They should be glad of the business, don’t you think? Twenty million pounds is an awful lot of money.’
Effie said, ‘They can’t meet the loan without our support. You knew that from the very beginning.’
‘Of course I knew it,’ said Robert, affably. ‘They knew it, too, before they ever decided to enter into an agreement with the Turkish government. They took a risk! I said quite clearly that under certain circumstances I would be prepared to go along with them. But, as it turns out, those circumstances haven’t arisen. I’m not at all sure, for instance, that the Turks can provide us with adequate guarantees, and I’m quite unhappy with the way they’ve allocated so much money to the construction of private dwellings, rather than utility buildings. Homes for peasants are all very pleasant, don’t you think, but a country without offices and banks and police stations is a country without a heart.’
He sat on the edge of his desk, and folded his arms, a gesture that his father often used. ‘Apart from that, Effie, I’ve already committed three million pounds to Ekstasis, the Greek shipping fleet, and if I start messing about with the Germans and the Turks, they’ll cancel. Bound to cancel! Do you really think that I can afford to throw away solid bread-and-butter business, just to paddle around in one of Karl von Ahlbeck’s airy-fairy schemes for a super-government of bankers? Use your head, Effie!’
‘Robert,’ said Effie, controlling her voice as steadily as she could, ‘Robert, I promised.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to say that you had no business to promise,’ Robert told her. ‘I sent you to Germany simply for the experience of it, and to make sure for me that this so-called “triumvirate” of banks was as potty an idea as I had first thought it was. When you explained to me what Karl von Ahlbeck had said to you, I was quite convinced that the scheme was absurd. He’s an incompetent amateur, a dilettante, in a field in which even professionals find it difficult to survive.’
‘But Karl was certain that you had already agreed to go ahead. If this arrangement falls through, he could be ruined.’
Robert leaned forward on his desk, and a curve of lamplight illuminated the side of his left cheek, and the underneath of his left eye, so that he took on the appearance of a living death-mask. ‘Karl, I’m afraid, was counting on eggs that not only haven’t been hatched, they haven’t even been laid. I’m sorry if this is going to give him any trouble, but there you are. Everything he did, he did because he chose to. I didn’t force him.’
Effie was silent for one bitterly tight moment. Then she said, ‘You didn’t force him, no. You didn’t force him. But you seduced him, didn’t you? You used a woman to tie him up in knots.’
Robert stared at her, unblinking. Effie said, ‘You showed him my photograph, didn’t you, the first time you met him? He liked it so much that he kept it, and that gave you a wonderful idea. Why not set the poor man up for a huge confidence trick, and use your own sister for bait?’
Robert lowered his head, then raised it again; and when he raised it, he was smirking. ‘Effie,’ he said. ‘Effie, Effie, Effie! Do you know how much you’re like mother? Always suspicious, always seeing boogies under the bedstead.’
‘This is not a boogie, Robert. This is true. I don’t know why, but you wanted to ruin Deutsche Kredit, and Baeklanders, too. Well, not ruin them, perhaps, but cripple them.’
‘Effie, this is nonsense.’
‘Is it?’ Effie challenged.
Robert walked around his desk again. ‘I think we should have some luncheon, don’t you? Why don’t I take you to the Caledonian?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘I don’t see that being hungry has very much to do with it. You don’t have to be hungry to eat.’
‘Any more than you don’t have to be in need of revenge to wreck two perfectly sound banks,’ Effie retorted.
Robert looked at her more keenly now. He came closer, and stood over her, thoughtfully biting at his thumb. She didn’t look up at him; but stared instead at his bottom waistcoat button, and the gleaming chain of his pocket-watch.
He said at last, ‘You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you? You’ve only been back in Edinburgh two days, and already you’re champing at the bit like a brood mare who’s had a good strong smell of stallion. You’ve been lovers, haven’t you, you and the excellent Count von Ahlbeck? You’ve been lying in his bed these past three weeks. Well, well. You’ve done it at last. The Unback’d Filly has finally been broken in.’
Effie could scarcely speak for the lemony contempt which filled her mouth. ‘God, you’re so coarse,’ she told him. ‘God, you’re a coarse-mouthed brute.’
‘Coarse?’ exclaimed Robert. ‘What’s coarse about love? You’re in love with him, aren’t you? What’s coarse about that? You’ve enjoyed the sacrament of sex, haven’t you? You didn’t think it was coarse while he was driddling around on top of you, did you?’ Driddling was usually used in Scotland to describe the inept motions of someone who couldn’t dance properly, and only swayed their middle from side to side.
Effie abruptly stood up. ‘You’ve done this on purpose,’ she said. ‘I know it, Robert. There’s no other explanation. You sent me to see the Count von Ahlbeok because you knew that we would get on well; and, as it happily turned out for you, we got on better than you could even have anticipated. He fell in love with me, just as much as I fell in love with him; and because he fell in love with me, he trusted me when I said that Watson’s Bank would honour its agreement with him, whether anything had been put into writing or not. He trusted me, Robert, because he adored me. And you knew he would! By God, you knew he would!’
Robert turned his back on her. After a long while, he said, ‘Very well. You’re right. I did hope that I could win some time if I sent you to see the Count von Ahlbeck; and, if you want the whole truth, I did hope that he would commit the Deutsche Kreditbank too heavily to the Turkish loan. But you can’t blame me entirely. He was blethering about that loan as if it could herald a new Golden Age of Capital. He was more than a little unrealistic, in my opinion. He was fantastic. A head full of whigmeleeries, and a pocket full of idiot schemes. None of the other banks in Germany think anything of him, and even his great chum the Kaiser only approves of what he’s doing because it might help the Second Reich into the Mediterranean. A place in the sun, that’s all the Kaiser wants. He’s not at all interested in Golden Ages of Capital. Are you? I mean, truly?’
Effie stared at Robert rigidly, so chilled with disgust and chagrin and terror that she could hardly make her lips move.
Robert said, There’s something else, too. The Deutsche Kreditbank were competing with us very aggressively to lend money to the Chapada das Mangabeira emerald-mining company in Recife, in Brazil. It could be one of the most profitable loans that a British bank has ever made. Comparable with Rothschild lending money to Rhodes, for his diamond diggings. Well, we couldn’t let a tyro like the Count von Ahlbeck beat us to it, could we? We had to do something to improve the odds.’
Effie said, in a voice like chilled porridge, To improve the odds, as you so sportingly describe it, you gave away your own sister’s virginity, and broke her heart.’
‘Och,’ said Robert, as if she had paid him an overwhelming compliment, ‘you don’t have to put it like that.’
‘How should I put it? What do you want me to say, except that you are some species of reptile, who devours with emotion and without remorse? You have inherited the very worst from our father, and something of hell besides. You haven’t thought of me, you haven’t considered what I might feel, not for one second. You haven’t thought that I might have fallen in love with Karl von Ahlbeck, and that now I shall never be able to see him again. How can I, when I gave him my solemn promise that Watson’s Bank would help him? How can I, when I shall have to admit that I was a stupid ridiculous victim of an abominable scheme, just as he was, and that I have b
etrayed not only his trust but his love as well?’
Robert wad doodling patterns in a small patch of discarded tobacco-ash on the top of his desk. ‘Well,’ he said, at last. ‘I suppose you can put it down to experience. It’s a difficult world. Nobody ever said otherwise.’
‘Difficult?’ cried Effie. The tears ran from her eyes now, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. ‘How can you call it difficult, when you have just destroyed the only real love I have ever had? For Christ’s sake, Robert, how can you call it anything but grotesque? I love him, Robert! I love him! He and I are the same flesh, the same passion, the same person! Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what it is to make love to somebody, and not to know where their body ends and yours begins?’
Robert looked up at her stiffly. His mouth was pursed in disapproval. He said, ‘No.’
Effie, slowly, sat down again. Out of her purse she took a lace handkerchief, one of the handkerchiefs that Karl had given her, and wiped her eyes. If only she didn’t know now what she hadn’t known then: that this handkerchief Karl had given her to celebrate her arrival would only be used to wipe away the tears of their parting.
She said, ‘What about Baeklanders?’
‘What about them?’
‘They’re going to suffer too.’ Her voice was congested with grief and tears.
Robert couldn’t help smiling. ‘Well, that was a little embellishment of my own. The Count von Ahlbeck asked me if I could recommend an American bank to assist him in setting up this triumvirate of his, and of course I rushed to recommend Baeklanders. It amused me to think that Dougal would wake up one morning to discover that, even in New York, he couldn’t get away from me.’
Lady of Fortune Page 33
