Babylon South. Jon Cleary
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Chapter Three
1
The Springfellow Corporation was headquartered in a thirty-storey building overlooking Circular Quay. The first five floors were occupied by the Springfellow Bank; the next two by Springfellow and Company, stockbrokers; the next eighteen floors by outside tenants; and the top five floors by divisions, subsidiaries or affiliates of the Corporation. The very top floor was given up to the boardroom, a dividing office and reception lobby and the office of the Chief Executive Officer and Chairwoman of the Board. The Corporation’s PR chief, a woman versed in anti-sexist jargon, had tried to persuade her boss to call herself President and Chairperson, but Venetia had squashed her with, ‘President has come to mean someone who’s a figurehead – that’s not me. Chairperson is sexless – and that’s not me, either.’
Venetia sat in her office gazing out of the large picture-window at the ferries creeping into the quay, seeing them but only as on a memory screen; this had been her view for five years, ever since she had built Springfellow House. She had come an hour ago from the inquest on Walter. She felt at a loss, though of what she was not sure. She had long ago got over the physical loss of Walter; her widow’s weeds had soon turned floral. In those days she had worn a variety of colours. There had been the shock two weeks ago of the discovery of Walter’s skeleton (thank God they had not asked her to identify his bones), but she had recovered from that. The inquest this morning had been short, almost cold-blooded, and it had not upset her; she had been more concerned for its effect on Justine, who had accompanied her and who several times had shivered as if she were suffering from a chill. Then the coroner had declared that the remains were those of Walter Springfellow and that the deceased had died from a gunshot wound inflicted by a person or persons unknown and that the remains should be released into the care of the next of kin, namely Lady Springfellow. Up till then she had been calm, all her resources gathered together in her usual way, life (and death) put together as if according to the strictest of management principles.
Then, after dropping Justine off at her office on the floor below, she had come up here, come into this big room, closed the door and sat down and wept, something she had not done in more years than she could remember. She had at last dried her eyes, repaired her make-up and now sat staring out at a day she was blind to, wondering what was missing from her emotions. There was no grief, that had died long ago; no lost hope, for she had given up hope of Walter’s return years ago; no anger at his murder, for she could not, after all this time, whip up the urge for revenge against a person or persons unknown. Her eyes cleared, she saw the familiar scene beyond the window, and at that moment her mind cleared. She turned back to her desk, deciding that it was love that was missing. She had lost count of the men who had been her lovers; but Walter had been the one she had married and, until now, she had always told herself she had loved him. In her fashion, maybe; but it had been a deeper feeling than she had ever felt for any other man. With possibly one exception.
There was a knock on the door and Michael Broad put his head in. He was, as usual, immaculate. A fashion dummy right out of the John Pardoe windows, Zegna all the way down to his socks, where the Gucci shoes stuck out like those of an intruder behind a curtain. Not a hair out of place, thought Venetia and, suddenly feeling better, smiled at his bald head.
‘I have Peter Polux here, Venetia. Perhaps we could have a word before this afternoon’s meeting.’
He stood aside and Polux entered, his smile as usual chopping his red cheeks in half, his white shoes as bright as bandaged feet under his dark-blue suit. He must be the only white-shoe banker in the world, Venetia thought. She knew his history, as she knew the history of everyone who worked for her or with whom she did business. He had gone to Queensland twenty-five years ago from a small town in Victoria, and had made a fortune in real estate on the Gold Coast. Seven years ago he had gone into merchant banking and become one of banking’s high-flyers, taking risks declined by more staid bankers and bringing them off. He had been a founder member of the ‘white shoe brigade’, the new rich of the Gold Coast, and he had continued, as a thumb to the nose at the amused contempt of the supposed sophisticates of Sydney and Melbourne, to wear his white shoes on every occasion. He was a prominent Catholic, a papal knight, and he was famous for his gold rosary beads, which he often wore wrapped round his wrist like a holy bracelet. Venetia sometimes had the feeling that Polux looked upon the Catholic Church as a venture capital client: he certainly had a good deal of its business.
‘Venetia old girl—’ His wife had once told him he had no charm and now he was working on it; it was as heavy and rough-edged as a cannibal’s table manners. ‘Today’s the big day, eh?’
When Venetia decided to buy out the Springfellow Corporation and turn it into a private company, she had been thinking of going to London or New York for the money she needed, but the devalued Australian dollar and the volatility of foreign currency had made her demur. Michael Broad had suggested that, instead, she call in Polux and Company. It would be Polux’s biggest investment loan, they had the money and they offered good terms. After some thought, investigation and Broad’s persuasion, she had agreed.
‘Are we going to get any opposition from Intercapital?’ Intercapital Insurance was the biggest outside shareholder in Springfellow. ‘They may want to hang on for us to offer more.’
Polux shook his handsomely waved head; it was somehow an insult to the gleaming bald head sitting beside it. ‘Intercapital are cautious, Venetia old girl. They don’t think the bull market can last – they’re expecting prices to go down after yesterday. They’ll grab what they can while they can.’
‘What do you think about the market?’
‘Oh, it’ll bounce back – I don’t think it’ll peak till just before Christmas. Friday’s drop on Wall Street was just a hiccup, it happens all the time there. No worries there.’ He took out his rosary beads, a gesture of habit, and ran them through his fingers. Holy Mary, Mother of God, thought Venetia, pray for us bankers now and at the hour of our bankruptcy … He saw Venetia looking at the beads and he laughed and put them away in his pocket.
Venetia turned to Broad. ‘What about you, Michael? Are you bullish, too?’
She paid him 200,000 dollars a year, plus bonuses, and so far he had not failed her. He was greedy and ambitious, just as she was; she knew herself well enough to recognize her faults in other people. He was ruthless, too: something she only half-admitted to herself. It is not in human nature to be totally honest with ourselves; evolution still has a way to go.
‘Of course. I shouldn’t be recommending we go into this deal if I weren’t. Now is the time to buy, when the rest of them are wondering when it’s going to end.’
‘We could wait till prices go down further.’ She was only playing devil’s advocate and both of them knew it; she was as eager as he to complete the buy-out of Springfellow. Tomorrow she would be as rich as Holmes à Court and Kerry Packer and Alan Bond, at least in assets, Boadicea up there amongst the warring men. The thought made her giddy. Feminists would write hymns (hers?) to her, Maggie Thatcher might send a message of congratulations, if she could remember where Australia was … She smiled inwardly at her fantasies. She had a sense of humour, something the more rabid feminists and Margaret T., too, would never forgive her for. ‘It’s all hypothetical, anyway. We’ll have everything wrapped up by five o’clock this afternoon.’
‘Absolutely!’
Broad’s bonily handsome face lit up. He was the Spring-fellow corporate finance director, in his early forties, a little old for a whiz-kid but still called one by the kid columnists on the financial pages. A clothes-horse from an expensive stable, he was determined to impress from the first impression; he had spent almost a whole year’s salary on an Aston-Martin convertible when everyone else was buying a Porsche or a Ferrari; he let everyone know, with a sort of cultured vulgarity, that he was not run-of-the-mill. But he would never go too far. The sharp observer (and Venetia was one) could always see the invisible rein he kept on himself.
He had come out of Prague in 1968, when his name had been Mirek Brod and he had been a young idealist and