George Evans

Twenty-Two

GEORGE

EVANS

A.F. Gillotti

Academy Chicago Publishers

ALSO BY A. F. GILLOTTI

Death of a Shipowner

Skim

Published in 2013 by

Academy Chicago Publishers

363 West Erie Street

Chicago, Illinois 60654

© 2013 by A. F. Gillotti

First edition.

Printed and bound in the U.S.A.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Once again, for Susan

Chapter One

After lunch at Fielding’s, one of George’s clubs, he and I have coffee in the drawing room that overlooks St. James’s Street. We sit in the bow window where the shallow alcove affords some privacy. The light rain that had begun while we were eating has become a downpour, and water is gushing down the gutters in the road. The afternoon has grown very dim, and the cars on St. James’s have their lights on. George orders port—I have refused his offer—and when it arrives, he begins to speak. Much of the time it appears that he is speaking only to himself, as if he needs to explain himself to himself, but I know that he also recognizes that there is a sympathetic, or at least non-judgmental, ear on the other side of the little table.

What was I to expect of my neglected twenty-seven-year-old godson? He begins. Many years with no strong male presence at home might very well have resulted in something wholly unpresentable: a hairy apparition in great need of a bath, with a single earring and a safety pin through his cheek. But the pleasant-looking young man whom my secretary showed into my office late one August morning was clean and shorn, and dressed in a gray pin-striped city suit.

Robert Fletcher had rung quite without warning, ten days before, telling me that he was working in London and asking if he could see me. I could not imagine why he should have wanted to since I’d not seen him for seventeen years or so, and had actually forgotten about him for rather longer. I asked him to lunch—substitute for years of overlooked birthdays; or perhaps for the emotional support that I hadn’t provided.

It took me a little while to recover from how much he resembled his father Charles. Are you called Robert, or Bob, o......

It’s Robert, Mr. Evans.

You must call me George. A steak and chips sound all right to you?

Fine with me, George.

I thought we might try Simpson’s. Lots of character. Have you been before?

Once or twice, he said, with a slight air of insouciance; unbecoming, I thought, in one so young.

Well then, perhaps you’d prefer somewhere else?

No, no. Simpson’s would be fine. I like it.

We went down the stairs to the ground floor, past the receptionist, and out into the road. We paused at the lights at the corner of Old Broad Street and London Wall, and I mused that, however much like Charles he looked, if his few bumbling responses were anything by which to judge, he had none of his father’s diffidence or polish.

It was a lovely day full of sunshine, and the air was pleasantly warm. We crossed Threadneedle Street and walked along Finch Lane past the Cock and Woolpack. It was apparent that Robert knew precisely where he was going.

How long have you been in the city? I said.

About eight months, he said, somewhat sheepishly. I should have called you before, I know.

No matter, my boy, I said, magnanimously in my fashion, thinking, I understand why you might not have wanted to ring me; and I wonder if my understanding and yours are the same.

We turned off Cornhill into the alley by St. Michael’s that leads between the Jamaica Wine House and the George and Vulture, where Dickens used to take a chop or two, and a pint of brown sherry.

Over a large glass of Sercial Madeira at the Jamaica, I asked him what had brought him to London.

The Manhattan Banking Corporation, he said. I’m in the corporate finance department.

Just as most young American bankers one meets these days, I said, raising my glass. Your very good health.

By the look on his face, I could tell that young Robert did not consider himself one of the pack. We drank up, had another while standing in the queue at Simpson’s, and finally got two places in a booth for six in the front room of the first floor.

Let’s take care of the bookkeeping first, shall we? I plucked a roll from the basket that the waitress offered. Two rump steaks, medium rare, chips, spinach—you’ll have a sausage, Robert? No? Just one then, Barbara. And a carafe of the house red horror. She left us to place our order with the red-faced, sweating chap who was slaving at the grill downstairs.

Your father would have been pleased, I said at last, to Robert’s statement that he was a banker.

I don’t know whether he’d be pleased or not, George. I hardly knew him.

I tasted the wine, although it could not possibly have been in a bottle long enough to go off; more by way of gauging how fierce the headache might be. Rather good weasel’s piss, this. Might even mistake it for coming from somewhere other than Algeria. How is your mother?

He sipped his wine, made a face—I could not tell whether it was in reaction to the wine or to my question—and stared out of the window. Do you remember my mother? he said. How she used to be?

I do, very well.

How would you have described her?

Intelligent, pretty, cheerful. The last was stretching it a bit. I also didn’t say she had a bloody good figure. Supportive. Worshipped your father, as far as I could tell.

Barbara brought the food then, giving him time to frame his next remark while she passed the plates to us, reaching in front of the other four men whose table we were sharing.

He took a heavy swallow of wine. She isn’t cheerful anymore. She is no longer pretty. For the past several years she has begun drinking before lunchtime and doesn’t stop until she is put into bed at night.

I had begun to eat while this litany of horrors progressed. He had yet to pick up his fork.

Jean was not someone who could take emotional setbacks in stride, I said. She looked for balance and moderation in a world where neither exists for very long, if at all. She should stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with her life.

He stared at his plate, which was nearly as full as mine was becoming empty (one learned to eat quickly in boarding school—otherwise they took it away and one stayed hungry).

If you don’t begin to eat soon, my boy, your wicked godfather is going to get your lunch as well.

He took another draught of wine, looking thoughtful. The room was loud with lunchtime conversation: share prices, the rise in gold, the fall in gold, the rate of the dollar against the deutsch mark and yen, the latest takeover, hostile or friendly, the latest derivatives scandale.

When my father left, Robert said, and especially when he died, Mother went to pieces and she never came together again. I’ve been her emotional support for years and years and I haven’t enjoyed it much. It’s been hard never being able to bring a friend or a girl home because she’s so unpredictable. I think she ought to get married again, but she almost never sees anyone anymore, and even the circle of her so-called friends is getting smaller and less nice. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her now that I’m over here.

But you must have considered that before you accepted the posting?

Of course, he said. But I couldn’t turn down a great career opportunity. He began to eat rapidly.

All of life comes down to setting priorities, doesn’t it? I said, but he went on as if he hadn’t heard me.

But when I told her that I was going to see you, she went bananas. She blames you for introducing Dad to the other woman. Nathalie?

Yes. You know that Nathalie is my wife?

Yes, he mumbled, and looked at the table, aghast perhaps not so much by the fact—but, I suspected, by my admirable candor.

And you understand, don’t you, that what followed the introduction was no fault of mine?

I realize that, George. But what actually happened?

If I hadn’t had a little difficulty believing his sincerity, I should have found his questions rather touching. Nevertheless, he too had worshipped his father—this shadowy figure of whom I was certain he had never seen enough—and had found the actions of his hero, that good man, incomprehensible.

Barbara came to clear away the plates. I ordered stewed cheese. Robert wanted nothing, but he finished his wine and topped up my glass before refilling his.

Charles had been married for, what was it, thirteen years to a perfectly nice, diffident, emotionally dependent woman. Suddenly he met a different kind of woman, hardly diffident, one who depended on no one but herself. He was bowled over. Fell passionately in love. Went away with her. End of story. I spread a little mustard and the stewed cheese over the toast, sprinkled the mess with Worcester sauce, and began to eat. People do such things all the time, Robert. But remember this. They do them because they want to.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

"No. The real end of the story is that he died two years later. Perhaps Nathalie proved too independent even for him. But heart attacks, Robert, are not uncommon in hard-working men of forty-seven.

Would you like to meet Nathalie? I said finally. Perhaps that would help your understanding.

He did not answer, and I could not read his reaction. A sadder but wiser young man, perhaps, for having lunched with me.

Would you like some coffee? No? Then, dear boy, I’m afraid I must get back to the office, much as I’d like to continue this conversation. Perhaps you’ll have time to come down to Suffolk for a weekend.

Thank you very much, George. I’d like that. And thank you for lunch. He seemed relieved. I would like to meet Nathalie.

We walked together up Old Broad Street (Manhattan Bank House is in Broadgate) and I left him at the corner of New Broad to return to my employer where I spent a filthy afternoon listening to the sniffs and whines of a Greek shipowner telling me why the vessel we were financing was no longer employed (no fault of his, of course), interfering temporarily with his cash flow and hence with the source of his loan payments to us. He hoped we would understand (bloody hell—what choice had we?) and that something could be arranged: capitalizing the interest due on Friday perhaps? Of course, my dear Gigi; anything for a good client like you; too bad we have bills to pay also. Waved him out the door with my most winning smile. Hoped he would be run down by a lorry: it would have given immense satisfaction, and the insurance might have gone some way towards repaying our loan. You know the sort of chap I mean: always acts as if he’s doing you a favor by letting you lend him money.

Who introduced that deadbeat to the bank?

I believe you did, George, said my secretary, who had witnessed the valedictions.

The question was rhetorical, Janet, I answered, and closed my office door.

Note to Controllers: Christopoulos cannot pay his bills. Interest in the amount of £65,000 more or less due the seventh is to be capitalized and of course backed out of accrued revenue. Copy to the M.D. Wouldn’t want Jonathan taken by surprise.

From my office window on the first floor I could see the length of New Broad Street to the intersection with its bigger sister. The road was half in shadow now as the late summer evening was beginning. The pavements of Old Broad Street were choc-a-bloc with commuters going north to Liverpool Street. Broad Street Station no longer existed, having been torn down by developers who had built, on the site of the switching yards, ten or twelve glass, steel, and marble office blocks—a pigeon’s paradise called Broadgate to which, Robert told me, Manhattan Bank had moved some years before from their building in Moorgate.

Was I too hard on Robert at lunch? I thought not. The world is hard on everyone. He might as well learn such things from me as from a total stranger. But would more of the truth have mattered? I should, for example, very much doubt that Charles would have been pleased that his son had become a banker. Would more of the truth have mattered? Unlikely. In the event, everyone’s truth is different.

Why had Robert called me? Perhaps he was interested in his mother’s fate—but my instinct told me that fundamentally he was not. It seemed to me rather an exercise—some rite of passage, perhaps—that he’d had to go through before he could get on with his own life. So it was natural that he should have called on his godfather, his father’s oldest friend in London; scene of the crime, as it were.

* * *

When I arrived home around seven at the flat in Cadogan Square, Nathalie was knee to knee in the drawing room with one of her darkly handsome colleagues, file folders and glasses of white wine on the table between them.

Hello, darling, she said, lifting her head so that I could kiss her ever-inviting cheek. This is Colin Broadbent from Poole’s. That was the political PR firm of which Nathalie was a partner.

Did I detect a faint but significant flush of embarrassment beneath Broadbent’s film-star tan as he rose in greeting?

Don’t let me interrupt, I said, and left them to discuss, or plot, whatever it was they were discussing or plotting: one hoped it was another stratagem by which to put a dazzling new light on what everyone had known up to then was a thoroughly disreputable product or politician (they’re much the same), rather than anything more intime. I washed and changed into my blue velvet smoking jacket—a harmless affectation that I enjoy still; the jacket is fifty years old and belonged to an uncle—and decanted a decent claret from the hall cupboard before I joined my beloved. When I returned to the sitting room, Colin Broadbent and the file folders were gone. Nathalie was deep into a French biography of Louis XIV. With her ash-blonde hair, her long, trim body sunk back into the chair to the right of the fireplace, and her long, shapely legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, she was looking particularly languid and feline that evening, and much younger than her fifty-two years. After I poured a whisky and soda, topped up her wine, and sat down opposite on the other side of the hearth, she closed Louis with a snap, took off her glasses, and smiled. Who is Colin Broadbent? I said.

A client manager whom I’m directing on the CNB effort.

That’s the campaign where some Tory lunatic is trying to persuade us that if only we privatize the prison system, all our problems will be solved.

You know very well that the real issue is getting more value for the taxpayer, George. And getting criminals where they belong.

One man’s truth is another man’s misunderstanding. Just joking, my dear. He’s very good-looking.

Yes, isn’t he? she said. Her sapphire eyes were mocking.

Is he?

Is he what?

Broadly bent.

I think not, she said.

Think?

Don’t be tiresome, George. I’m thinking I should introduce him to Trudy.

You’ll never guess whom I lunched with today.

The Prince of Wales?

Robert Fletcher.

A moment’s hesitation. Charles’s son?

The same.

Out of the blue?

No, no; he rang up beforehand.

I wonder why, though, after all these years?

I certainly had the old girl’s curiosity piqued. I don’t know precisely. Perhaps he wanted to unburden himself about the wicked state his mother is in. She’s become a drunk, apparently.

After murmuring some phrase of sympathy, she said, What is he like? Is he nice?

Unexceptional, except that he is more guarded and unforthcoming than I would have expected in a lad of twenty-seven, particularly Charles’s son. Not anything like Charles, although he looks a lot like him. Nice enough, I should guess. No more oafish than others his age. Very American. More wine, darling?

Yes, please. What is he doing?

He’s a banker. I hesitated with the next bit of information. I hesitated for the same reason I had not told her I was lunching with Robert in the first place. He’s working in London. I did not like at all how animated she had become.

What did you talk about?

Other than his mother, not a great deal.

I should love to meet him.

Magdalena called us to dinner.

I invited him to come down to the country actually. Sometime. Not anything specific.

Let’s have him, by all means. She began to eat.

Perhaps we could have Colin Broadbent as well, I said.

If you find him so attractive, George. But I would ask Trudy also.

You do have the most amazing knack, my dear, of telling other people what’s good for them.

"That’s because I know what’s good for them, George. Such as your soup, which will be cold if you don’t start."

Will you stay with the white, darling, I said, or will you join me in this rather splendid claret?

Chapter Two

I was returning from my tailor’s—whom I kept at bay during the time by managing to pay fifteen shillings a week—on a windy, grey November morning in the mid-fifties when I turned into St. Peter’s Court, the alley in which my grateful employer at the time was situated, and discovered a stranger seeming to regard with awe the sooty Victorian Gothic building that housed the London offices of Thomson, Guthrie, the American private bankers. He was dressed rather better than most of my compatriots, so I immediately placed him as a foreigner, probably American, who was loitering about our forecourt.

May I help you? I said. He was clearly somewhat embarrassed at having been caught out.

I’m sorry, he said. I’ll be joining the firm in New York in January, and since I’m here, I wondered what the London office was like.

He was a pleasant-looking chap of about my age and height with light hair and clear blue eyes—the kind that see clearly but perhaps not deeply—but, if one could judge from his appearance in a heavy coat, built more slightly