The Money Makers. Harry Bingham
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aboard, I suppose.’
Zack could feel the electricity already starting to rise behind this inane exchange, and wondered if she felt it too. Their relationship had been the most passionate either of them had ever known. It had been passionate in a sexual sense for sure. Scarcely a day had passed without their making love at least once and usually two or three times or more. But it had also been passionate in a worse sense. They had argued incessantly. They were strong-willed and had nothing in common. She loved balls, parties, horses, country houses. He loved philosophy, cynicism, and hating the things she liked. They had argued, stormed, and made love. Their friends had told them they didn’t belong together. Their heads had agreed but were powerless in the teeth of their bodies’ overwhelming mutual longing. Only when Sarah had finally left Oxford did distance allow the inevitable to happen.
‘What’s new?’ asked Zack.
‘I’m engaged,’ she said, ‘to a chap you might know. Robert Leighton.’
Sarah sounded like she expected Zack to know who she meant, but he didn’t. He raised his eyebrows.
‘He was at Eton while you were there, but I wouldn’t expect you to remember him … He’s nice and kind, he likes what I like, he loves me very much.’
Zack hadn’t meant anything by his question. He just asked it to say something and to defuse the electricity rising in the air. But her answer told him something. She felt the crackle of static too and she thrust her engagement at him as a defence.
‘That’s great news. I’m delighted. I hope everything works out really well for you both. I’m sure it will.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it will. And thanks.’ Their eyes met briefly then moved away. ‘Here, have you met the equity origination group yet?’
Zack walked off to shake more hands and grin at another set of people whose jobs he didn’t understand. Their voices were firm with each other now, just pleasant, nothing too familiar. But all along his right-hand side, where she walked beside him, he felt a prickle beneath his skin. Careful as he was to remind himself to keep guard, to step back, to break contact, two thoughts persisted.
First, he remembered just how good their sex had been. It had puzzled both of them that their sex could be quite so good when their relationship was such a disaster. It was almost as though their bodies understood something the rest of them had yet to grasp.
Second, it occurred to him for the first time that the future husband of Miss Sarah Havercoombe would step right into one of England’s richest families. For Miss Sarah Havercoombe, a million pounds would be small change indeed.
2
The sign must have been painted thirty years ago. ‘The Gissings Modern Furniture Company (Ltd)’, it boasted in giant pink lettering. ‘Our modern furniture means modern style but modest prices!’ The feeble pun was complemented by a picture of a secretary, complete with miniskirt and beehive hairdo, gesturing inanely at a suite of office furniture. No doubt it had looked cool in 1963, but in the late 1990s prices would have to be very modest indeed to tempt the average buyer.
George slowed his Lotus and turned in between the factory gates. Beyond the factory, there were a few fields of rough grazing, then open moor. It would be a bleak place to work in winter, comfortless in summer. A couple of men dawdling across the yard glanced at the newcomer, then stared. Not many Lotuses came to The Gissings Modern Furniture Company nowadays.
George turned the engine off and listened to its musical notes dying away. The yard which doubled as a car-park was covered with a mixture of rainwater, gravel, wood chippings, and machine oil. George poked his beautifully shod foot out of the car and stood up carefully, making sure his turn-ups weren’t dirtied by contact with the ground. He drew his Dior sunglasses from his jacket pocket, put them on and walked over to the door marked ‘Reception’.
A listless woman at the reception desk put down her copy of Puzzler magazine and stared at the apparition. George stared back. ‘Tom Gissing, please.’
The receptionist gestured towards a hideous suite of furniture in the corner of the small lobby. ‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘I’ll let Mr Gissing know you’re here.’ George sat on one of the Gissings chairs in the corner, which wheezed and creaked as he lowered himself. Just for a moment, George wondered why he’d come.
In time, an elderly man limped over to George.
‘Mr Gradley? George Gradley?’ he said shaking George’s hand. ‘I knew your father, you know, back in the sixties when he was starting up. Tried to have him join our Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club, but I fear he was a little fast for our ways. Still, he did well for himself and we’d have liked to have had him. You do look like him, you know. Everyone must tell you that. I’m very sorry, of course, to have learned of his, er, accident’ – the old man couldn’t bring himself to use the word death – ‘I always feel these things are terribly hard on the young. So much less experience of loss, you see. Nothing, really.’
As the old man rambled on, he led George to the proudly named executive office. A secretary, only about thirty but already ageless, watched them grimly.
‘D’you want tea?’ she asked.
‘Coffee, please,’ said George.
‘The machine’s knackered, so you’d best have tea,’ she said and left the room. She was short and squarely built, much as George himself was, and much as Bernard Gradley had been too. The ginger hair which crowned George’s head was there on hers too, worn in a bob. Her face was a bit wonky and her chin was too broad to be quite feminine. But George’s face was crooked too and his features were hardly delicate. To a stranger, the two of them would look like brother and sister. The old man took George to a table at one end of the room and twitched at some papers which lay there.
‘Mr Ballard from the bank told me you would be coming. It’s a relief to see you, not the receiver. I am afraid we had more or less resigned ourselves to that fate.’
‘Yeah, well, I haven’t made any decision yet.’
‘No, of course not. Well, you couldn’t. I mean, you’ll want to see the shop floor, and the cutting room, and the paint shop. And we have some wonderful designs on the drawing board right now. All we really need is a bit of a cash injection and I really believe we’d get ourselves going properly again. And our workers are excellent, you know. We’ve always kept the traditional craft methods here, and all our lads are properly trained. Lord, some of them must have forty years’ experience and I know there’s a round dozen of them who have been here longer than I have. Quality. That’s what we’ve never sacrificed. Our buyers don’t always recognise it these days. Don’t really care whether a joint is dovetailed or glued, you know. But if you do things the right way, it’ll tell in the end. Quality never goes out of fashion. That’s my motto. Well, my father’s actually. But he was right about that.’
A mug of tea slapped down in front of George.
‘Ye didn’t tell me how ye liked it, so I gave you two sugars.’
‘Thank you, Val,’ said the old man.
George didn’t like tea much, but the day before he’d enjoyed a rare day in London celebrating a friend’s new racehorse at the Café Royal in Regent Street. The meal had been served on the whitest china. The bergamot scent of Earl Grey tea had mingled with the smell of freshly baked cakes, warm napkins, women’s perfume, polished wood, and the promise of smoked salmon and brown bread. Kiki had been there, petite and elfin in a pale blue dress, gorgeous and inaccessible. She’d complained because ‘I had to fly to Paris two times for the dress fitting, then go back again because I swear there aren’t any nice shoes in London.’ As she complained, she’d twirled around angling for compliments which George and others had willingly supplied.
The smell of the tea steaming in front of him brought him back to reality. The tea was strong enough to poleaxe