Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  Effie affectionately pushed him away. ‘Kitty’s right,’ she smiled. ‘There’s a time and a place for everything, and I’m not sure this is the time and the place for a passionate Latin-lover performance.’

  Caldwell parted the pink velvet drapes at the window. Outside, there was nothing to be seen but themselves, hovering reflected in the darkness, and occasional crossing-lights flying past like stray planets, accompanied by the lonely clanging of bells. ‘Who knows what place it is?’ he said. ‘And who knows what time it is? I haven’t heard us go over the long bridge into Albany yet; so we must be somewhere between Manhattan and sheer madness.’

  ‘Those martinis were strong,’ said Effie, with a mock-disapproving frown.

  ‘You bet they were,’ said Caldwell. ‘Beckman collared me in the passageway, and said, “I know you, you’re Caldwell Brooks, what the devil takes you to Chicago?” So I told him: and so he dragged me along to the club-car, very excited, and bought me a drink. He said he’s heard all about you, and he’d just love to do business with you. He’s been a California farmer for most of his life; and if you want to make friends with the fruit-and-vegetable fraternity, he’s your man. An excellent ally, although, from what I hear, a very unpleasant enemy if he doesn’t take to you.’

  ‘Disregarding gold and oil, in both of which we already have unbeatable connections, what else is there in California, apart from fruit and vegetables?’ asked Effie.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Caldwell.

  ‘Well, let’s invite Mr Beckman to dinner, shall we? asked Effie. ‘Let’s see if he can’t give us a little assistance.’

  ‘You really want to have him to dinner?’ asked Caldwell. ‘I thought we were going to have a little celebratory diner-à-deux.’

  ‘Caldwell …’ said Effie. ‘You know that business always has to come before pleasure.’

  Caldwell sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. ‘I think I’d better order up a pot of very strong black coffee,’ he said, disconsolately.

  A Negro messenger returned James Beckman’s acceptance of Effie’s dinner invitation with a promptness that was almost laughable, as well as bringing her a spray of hothouse gardenias and a bottle of Perrier-Jouët champagne. When Beckman arrived at eight o’clock sharp at her stateroom door, he was dressed in full white-tie regalia, with a blood-red handkerchief dangling from his sleeve, and a gold-knobbed cane, which he juggled like a conjuror. He was a small, barrel chested, bushily-moustachioed man, with the congested purple face of someone who has spent 80 per cent of his waking life outdoors, and the other 20 per cent losing his temper. Dan Kress had once called him ‘The Angry Eggplant’.

  ‘Miss Watson,’ said James Beckman, bowing his head, and kissing her white-gloved hand. ‘You don’t know what an honour this is. The First Lady of American Money; rich as Cleopatra and five times as beautiful.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t learn flattery like that in Morgan Hill, California,’ smiled Effie.

  ‘W-e-e-ell,’ said James Beckman, cocking his head to one side. ‘You sure do your homework, don’t you?’

  As a matter of fact, James Beckman had twice told Caldwell during their martini-session together in the club car that he had been ‘the most fortunate son of Morgan Hill, California,’ but he had obviously forgotten. He smiled at Effie, impressed, and then took two or three steps across the carpeted floor of the stateroom. ‘I have too tell you, Miss Watson, I was real interested when I heard that you was considering a move out to the Coast. We don’t have too much class out there, when it comes to banking. There’s Giannini, of course; and Wells Fargo; but no class. Not genuine Eastern, Wall Street style.’

  ‘You’re too kind,’ said Effie.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said James Beckman, with a grin. ‘Not too kind at all. Just telling you the truth. We need someone like you in California – someone who’s going to give our industry and our commerce some respectability, and style. Giannini’s okay, I’ve known Giannini for years. He used to trade in fruit and vegetables for his stepfather, so we’re part of the same community. But people still remember that Giannini set up his bank in a tent after the San Francisco earthquake, and that he used to display all the gold bars in his bank behind the counter, so that his customers could see how well his business was going. That’s frontier stuff, these days, and investors have gotten just a little bit too sophisticated for frontier stuff. Bankers should be classy, and quiet, and reliable; and you’ve got all of that.’

  ‘Despite the fact that I’m a woman?’

  ‘Don’t underestimate the value of that, particularly in California. That’s not a minus, in California that’s a plus. Fruit and vegetable workers are used to giving their money to their wives to manage for them; they don’t have any particu lar prejudices about women handling their wages. You – especially with that trustworthy Scottish accent of yours – you’ll go down a treat. Make no mistake.’

  ‘I wish I could be half as confident as you are, Mr Beckman,’ said Effie.

  ‘You must call me James,’ he told her. ‘We’re all friends here, aren’t we? All brothers and sisters of the same blood, and the same currency.’

  Caldwell glanced at Effie from the other side of the room, where he was sulking slightly, with one hand pushed into his pocket, and a martini held in the other hand as if he felt like crushing the stem of the glass in one jealous squeeze.

  They ate dinner as the Twentieth Century swayed through New York State eastwards on its way to Buffalo, and the dark shores of Lake Erie. The stewards brought them Maine lobster bisque, broiled monkfish, porterhouse steak, and fresh fruit. Because of prohibition, the champagne that was served had technically been brought on board by the passengers themselves; but the stewards brought them plenty of ice and chilled champagne glasses.

  It quickly became clear to Effie that Caldwell had been right: James Beckman was going to be the key to winning the confidence of California’s fruit and vegetable growers in the San Joaquin Valley. He knew the farm owners and the foremen. He knew which crops ripened when, and how much a farmer needed to borrow from his bank to bridge the financial gap between planting and marketing. What was more, he was keen to form an alliance with a reputable New York banker with enough monetary muscle to see the growers through both bad times and good. At the moment, business was shaky for farmers all over the United States, since the Coolidge bull market had done nothing, in real terms, to improve their income. The profits from America’s dramatically increased productivity went mostly to the big investors and the banks, the holders of capital, while farm after farm went bust. ‘Well, farmers never have made money,’ Coolidge had commented blandly, although he had agreed to pose on the tail-gate of a haycart (in clean overalls ad highly-polished shoes) for a ‘harvesting’ picture.

  ‘I can’t see that California is headed for anything but a depression,’ James Beckman told Effie. ‘I’ve already lost millions of dollars in debts that I’ve been obliged to write off, sometimes out of kindness but mostly because you can’t sue a man who doesn’t have nothing. Yet, I’ll say this. Fruit and vegetables will always be needed. People will always have to eat. And if you help to support the California farmers now, when the price of that support is cheap to you but important to them, it’ll repay you a hundred thousandfold some time in the future, when the economy of this country stops swinging up and down like a teeter-totter.’

  Effie, to Caldwell’s undisguised vexation, laid her hand gently on top of James Beckman’s hand, and looked him directly in the eyes. ‘Mr Beckman,’ she said, ‘do you have something to tell me about the United Finance Trust of California?’

  Jame Beckman pursed his lips, and then looked down at their hands. ‘Well …’ he said. ‘Things haven’t been too terrific lately.’

  ‘You’ve kept that fact well disguised.’

  ‘I’ve worked hard at it.’

  ‘But?’

  James Beckman quite clearly felt like drawing his hand away, but couldn’t do it without appearing to be impolite. As
light as Effie’s fingers were, he felt that she was nailing him to the table; and he knew that she wouldn’t release him until he told her the truth.

  ‘We have some repayment difficulties,’ he said. ‘Nearly a third of our loan customers have defaulted.’

  ‘Are your investors aware of that?’

  ‘Not in specific terms, no.’

  ‘What would happen if they did become aware of it?’

  James Beckman stared back at her, brave now for the first time. ‘You know as well as I do. We’d go broke – along with half the fruit farms and fish canneries and freelance oil prospectors in California.’

  Effie still wouldn’t let go of his hand. ‘What’s your proposal, then?’ she asked him. ‘You didn’t give Caldwell two strong martinis just for the fun of it.’

  James Beckman said quietly, ‘My proposal is that you take over the whole of United Finance, and re-capitalise it. My proposal is that I work for you as your operations manager, and get out on the road and bring in as much investment capital as I can; and that you put out some long-term money into buying up farming land and oil claims. I emphasise long-term. I think the same way that you do: that this bull market isn’t going to last for very much longer, can’t. I’ve seen the farms and the factories at first hand, and I know for myself that the stock prices they’re quoting on Wall Street bear no relation to the actual value of their productivity, no matter how much their productivity’s improved. What’s more, wages aren’t going up; and if wages don’t go up, then the ordinary guy in the street isn’t going to be able to afford the products that the factories and farms are churning out. Confidence in the market means nothing without actual prosperity. You know that as well as I do. That’s why you moved out of Watson’s New York, right?’

  Effie at last took away her hand. James Beckman retrieved his own hand instantly, and smoothed the back of it with his other hand as if he had been scorched, or chilled. Effie thought for a moment, and then said, ‘You’re trying to sell me a finance business that’s going broke, and whose only assets are steadily losing their value by the day. Why should I be interested?’

  ‘Why else are you moving to California?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m going to bide my time and wait till the bottom falls out of the market, and then buy you up for next-to-nothing. Why should I invest twenty million dollars today when I could get the same thing for two million in a month or two’s time?’

  James Beckman slowly smiled. ‘You can’t kid me, Miss Watson, any more than I can kid you. We’re two of a kind, you and me.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘We have the same insight into the market. The same view of money and what it means. You won’t wait until the bottom falls out of the market because the farms and the business need to be kept at their best, and because the last thing we want to do is allow the manpower to disperse and the land to degenerate. It’s people we’re investing in here, not just soil, or mineral rights. Frail, vulnerable, ordinary human beings. They’re what generate money; they’re what actually create wealth from nothing at all, real hard wealth you can bank on. That’s what you’re going to California to find, and that’s what I’m able to sell you.’

  Caldwell looked at Effie sharply, and then reached across the table for the bottle of Perrier-Jouët. ‘Do you think this is something we ought to be drinking a toast to? he asked, in a tart voice. ‘Or not?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Twentieth Century Limited raced through Ashtabula, Ohio, just after midnight, a cascade of green and golden luxury that seethed past the sleeping lakeside community as swiftly as a comet’s tail which its residents would never be able to grasp. Coming, one minute, in a drumming of rail joints, heralded by the pessimistic tolling of crossing-bells; then gone, – flash – leaving nothing more than a swirl of cindery smoke, and singing track.

  James Beckman had returned to his stateroom; but Effie and Caldwell were still up, and talking. Caldwell had brought a flask of cognac with him, and they had poured a little into small cups of black Turkish coffee. The train swayed, jolted, and then regained its equilibrium. Caldwell watched Effie as she sat under the muted lamplight in her peach silk evening wrap, as the smoke her cigarette curled around her and shuddered with the motion of the train.

  ‘You’re going to support him?’ asked Caldwell, trying to be nonchalant.

  Effie nodded. ‘I think so. He’ll get us directly into the small-farm market without us having to do any groundwork at all.’

  ‘Well …’ said Caldwell, pulling a face.

  ‘It was your idea to talk to him,’ Effie reminded him.

  ‘Sure. But I was drunk then. I’m sober now.’

  ‘And now you’re sober you disapprove?’

  Caldwell sat back, and crossed his legs. ‘Not entirely,’ he said.

  ‘Then what’s the matter?’

  Caldwell laced his fingers behind his head, and closed his eyes. He looked for a moment or two as if he had fallen asleep; but Effie could see that he was unusually tense. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, without opening his eyes, ‘I’m concerned at his attitude towards you. I mean his personal attitude.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean,’ said Effie, coolly blowing smoke. ‘What was it about his personal attitude that upset you so much?’

  Caldwell opened his eyes, and stared at her. ‘You know what I mean. Don’t pretend that you don’t.’

  ‘You think he was too friendly.’

  ‘If you want to put it that way.’

  ‘Which way do you want to put it?’ asked Effie. She was teasing him now, prodding him; and he was aware of it, but too snarled up in his own jealously to get free.

  He said sharply, ‘I just think that business matters ought to stay business matters, that’s all.’

  ‘You didn’t like me putting my hand on his?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘You didn’t like me kissing him goodnight?’

  ‘I didn’t actually think it was necessary.’

  Effie stood up, and went across to the bar. Steadying herself against the chromium rail, she poured them both a last glass of champagne. Caldwell watched her with an expression that was both petulant and anxious.

  ‘There’s one thing you’re going to have to learn if you stay with me,’ Effie told him. ‘I’m a woman, in a man’s business. I’m disapproved of by almost everybody. My business partners, the public at large, the Administration, the Church, the Club. Strictly speaking, I don’t exist. If I wish to make any banking moves whatsoever, they have go be carried out for me by male executives, who have to pretend that they have never heard of me, and who must never admit that what they are doing is at my behest. I’ve only had the privilege of a vote for seven years; don’t think that they’re ever going to admit me to the Stock Exchange, or to the charmed circle of Morgans and Wiggins and Mitchells. They won’t.’ More softly now, she said, ‘I’m not complaining. Banking is what I was born to do, even if I was accidentally born the wrong sex. But remember that I have always had to be accommodating in order to survive; I have always had to be pleasant, and coy, and compromising, even at times when I’ve actually felt like shrieking out loud. When I speak to men like James Beckman I have to speak to them as if I’m a teasing, titillating girl, instead of an experienced and hardheaded woman of business. It’s the only way. I hate it, but it’s the only way. You’ll see me do it again and again, and if you can’t stand it, then I can only say that you’d better leave me now; because there is no other possible way for me to do what I have to do, and live the life that I have to lead. I’ve no choice, Caldwell, and if you want to stay with me, then neither have you. It’s the way of the world. It’s the way of my world.’

  Caldwell accepted the glass of champagne which she offered him. They were passing Saybrook now, on their way to Geneva. To the north of them, the vast darkness of Lake Erie turned in the night like an impenetrable mirror; to the south, the tiny lights of mid-America were scattered over thousands of square miles of farms an
d towns and villages. America, 1928, sleeping poor but sound under its quilts and its blankets, in its city apartments and clapboard houses, in the first year of the Model A Ford, the year of Barney Google, with his Goo Goo Googly Eyes, in the year of dance marathons and flagpole sitters and Al Smith, the Happy Warrior.

  ‘I love you,’ said Caldwell. If I’m acting jealous, then I apologise. I’ve never been jealous before, not about anybody.’

  Effie knelt down on the floor next to him, and rested her elbow on the arm of his chair. ‘You know something?’ she said. ‘You ought to have married a very sweet, very pretty, very incapable girl ten years your junior.’

  ‘Do you really think I’m so immature?’

  ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘I don’t think you’re immature at all. But you’ve never been in love with anybody before, have you?’

  He stared at her, without speaking. He knocked back almost half of his glass of champagne. Then he said. ‘I guess I’d better go.’

  ‘I haven’t upset you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Not at all. I think you’ve frightened me, just a little. But you haven’t upset me.’

  ‘Why do I frighten you?’

  ‘Because I always thought you were weak. Talented, clever, but vulnerable, that’s what I always thought. Now I’ve found out that your weakness is your greatest strength, and that’s a shock. You don’t see why? Any woman less pliant than you would have cracked up a long time ago. Have you seen that advertisement for Postum decaffeinated coffee – ‘Why Men Crack’? Well, I don’t think you would have cracked because you drank too much coffee with caffeine in it; but you might have cracked if you’d tried to conduct your banking business like a man. You didn’t though. You made your fortune by acting feminine. Your beat the system, and that’s why you frighten me, and impress me, too.’

  ‘Don’t you believe you’re just as good?’ asked Effie, touching his knuckles, tracing the veins on the back of his hand.

  ‘I believe I’m a goof,’ said Caldwell. ‘I thought I was smart till I came across you. Now I can see you running rings around me without even losing your breath.’