Only When I Larf. Len Deighton
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about people dying in traffic accidents, if it isn’t someone you know, it’s almost impossible to care, isn’t it? It’s like feeling sorry for the dead angus when you are eating a really superb fillet with béarnaise. I mean, would it help the angus if I scraped the steak clean and just ate the béarnaise? Well, that’s the way I felt about the marks; if I didn’t eat them, someone else would, they were nature’s casualties. That’s the way I saw it.
‘Do you like children?’ asked Johnny the short one.
‘My sister has three,’ I offered. ‘Twin boys, nearly five, and a three year old girl.’
‘I’ve got a boy, nearly six,’ said Johnny. He announced the age like it was a trump card, as though a son of seven would have been even better. ‘Would you like to see a photo?’
‘She doesn’t want to see photos,’ said Karl. Johnny looked offended. Karl amended his remark. ‘Not your photos, nor mine,’ he said. ‘She’s working, what would she want with them?’ He ended the sentence on a note of apology.
‘I’d like to see them. I really would,’ I said. ‘I love children.’
Johnny brought out his wallet. Under a transparent window in it there was a photo of a woman. The hair style was out of fashion, and the dark tones of the picture had faded. The woman had a strange fixed smile as though she knew she was going to be trapped inside a morocco leather wallet for six years. ‘That’s Ethel, my wife,’ said the mark. ‘She worked with us until the baby came. She was the brains behind the whole company, wasn’t she Karl?’ Karl nodded. ‘She brought us out of the soft toy, and into the mechanicals and plastics. Ethel pushed us over the red line. She got our first contract with the big distributors here in the east. For a long time we were in Denver. Manhattan seemed big time to us when there were just the four of us working in Denver. Ethel helped me with the design work and Karl did the books and the advertisements. We worked around the clock.’
‘She doesn’t want to hear about Denver,’ said Karl.
‘Why not,’ said the fat mark. ‘It’s quite a story you know,’ he pulled photos from his wallet. ‘It’s quite a story,’ he repeated quietly. ‘We had only nine hundred dollars between us when we began.’ He prodded the photos with his stubby fingers. ‘That’s my wife in the garden, Billy was three then, going on four.’
‘And now?’ I said. ‘How big are you now?’
‘Now we are big. We could get five million if we sold out today, if we bided our time we’d get six. That’s the house, that’s my wife, but she moved. The negative is sharp, but the print’s not very good.’
‘Five million is peanuts to a big company like this,’ said Karl.
‘A big firm like this; who owns it,’ said Johnny. ‘A company like ours; it’s flesh and blood. It’s most of your life, and most of mine. Am I right?’ I nodded but Karl went on arguing.
‘Ten million is peanuts. A company like this is world wide, their phone bill is probably more than a million a year.’
‘You don’t measure companies in dollars,’ said Johnny, the fat one. ‘You’ve got to reckon on it differently to that. You’ve got to reckon on it like it’s a living thing; something that grows. We’d never sell out to just anyone.’
‘No?’ I said.
‘Lord no,’ he said. ‘It would be like selling a dog. You’d need to know that it was going to a good home.’
‘A company like this wouldn’t need to know,’ said Karl. ‘A company like this works on a slide rule. Lawyers figure the profit and loss.’
The fat one smiled. ‘Well perhaps they have to. After all they’ve got shareholders Karl.’
‘They’ve got different sort of minds,’ said Karl.
‘I don’t think we are like that,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Karl coldly. ‘Well you look like that.’
‘Aw come on Karl,’ said Johnny. ‘Do you have any pics of your sister’s kids?’ He was anxious to assuage the effect of Karl’s rudeness.
‘No,’ I said.
‘What are their names?’
‘The twins are Roger and Rodney and the girl is Rosalind,’ I said.
Johnny beamed. ‘Some folks do that don’t they? They keep the same first letter for the names.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘And there aren’t too many girls names beginning with “r”.’
‘Rosemary,’ said Karl. ‘Rene.’
‘Ruth,’ said Johnny, ‘and Rosalind.’
‘They already used Rosalind,’ said Karl.
‘That’s right they did,’ said Johnny. ‘Well there have to be more. Look, if I think of some really good ones, I’ll send them to you here at the office. How would that be?’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Rodney,’ mused Johnny. ‘Say, you’re English aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was born in Gloucester.’
‘We have a collection of English porcelain at home,’ said Johnny. ‘We have an English style of dog too, named Peter.’
‘For Christ sake,’ said Karl. Johnny smiled self-consciously. ‘I’ll just get some cigarettes,’ he said. He walked across to the cigarette machine.
‘He’s nervous,’ said Karl when he was out of earshot. ‘This is a big moment for us. We’ve worked bare hand on that factory. Johnny’s a bright guy, brighter than hell in fact. Don’t under-rate him because he’s nervous. He doesn’t do so much nowadays, but without his know-how on the mechanical side, we would never have got off the floor.’
‘There are a lot of people passing through the President’s office.’ I said. ‘Men on the threshold of making a fortune, and men due to be fired. I know all the signs of nerves, I’ve seen all of them.’
‘No one was more edgy than I am today, I’ll tell you.’
‘You seem calm to me,’ I said.
‘Don’t believe it. Johnny makes all the decisions about buying plant, staff, premises, but these exterior problems – the big finance decisions – he leaves to me. He does whatever I say.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said.
‘It’s like not having a partner at all. If I make the wrong decision this morning I could ruin us. We both have wives and kids, and we are both too old to look around for employment.’
I said, ‘You’d think you were in the foyer of the Federal Courthouse instead of on the verge of doing a deal with one of the biggest Corporations in America. I’ve never known this corporation back a loser. I think you are enjoying a little worry because you know that after this deal, you’ll never look back.’
‘What made you say Federal Courthouse?’
‘No reason,’ I said.
‘I used to have the damndest nightmares about that building.’
‘Tell me,’ I looked quickly at my wrist watch.
‘I’ve never told anyone before,’ he said. ‘But when I was a kid I used to help out in my father’s shop on a Saturday. One day I stole three dollars from the till and took my kid brother to the movies. On the way back from the movies he kept threatening to tell my folks. He showed me a picture of the Federal Courthouse and he said that’s where they took kids who stole money from their parents. He said they made the kids leap from the top of the building and that if they were innocent they just floated to the ground, but if they were guilty they fell and were killed. I was just