A Dangerous Fortune (31 page)

Seeing Danny here at Kingsbridge, Maisie immediately feared something had happened to their parents, and she ran to him, her heart in her mouth, saying, “Danny! What’s wrong? Is it Mama?”

“Papa and Mama are just fine, so are all the rest,” he said in his American accent.

“Thank God. How did you know I was here?”

“You wrote to me.”

“Oh, yes.”

Danny looked like a Turkish warrior with his curly beard and flashing eyes, but he was dressed like a clerk, in a well-worn black suit and a bowler hat, and he appeared to have walked a long way, for he had muddy boots and a weary expression. Kingo looked at him askance, but Solly rose to the occasion with his usual social grace. He shook Danny’s hand and said: “How are you, Robinson? This is my friend the duke of Kingsbridge. Kingo, allow me to present my brother-in-law Dan Robinson, general secretary of the Working Men’s Welfare Association.”

Many men would have been dumbstruck to be introduced to a duke, but not Danny. “How do you do, Duke?” he said with easy courtesy.

Kingo shook hands warily. Maisie guessed he was thinking that being polite to the lower classes was all very well up to a point, but it should not be taken too far.

Then Solly said: “And this is our friend Hugh Pilaster.”

Maisie tensed. In her anxiety about Mama and Papa she had forgotten that Hugh was behind her. Danny knew secrets about Hugh, secrets Maisie had never told her husband. He knew that Hugh was the father of Bertie. Danny had once wanted to break Hugh’s neck. They had never met, but Danny had not forgotten. What would he do?

However, he was six years older now. He gave Hugh a cold look, but shook hands civilly.

Hugh, who did not know he was a father and had no inkling of these undertones, spoke to Danny in a friendly way. “Axe you the brother who ran away from home and went to Boston?”

“I sure am.”

Solly said: “Fancy Hugh knowing that!”

Solly had no idea how much Hugh and Maisie knew about one another: he did not know that they had spent a night together telling one another their life stories.

Maisie felt bewildered by the conversation: it was skating over the surface of too many secrets, and the ice was thin. She hastened to get back onto firm ground. “Danny, why are you here?”

His weary face took on an expression of bitterness. “I’m no longer the secretary of the Working Men’s Welfare Association,” he said. “I’m ruined, for the third time in my life, by incompetent bankers.”

“Danny, please!” Maisie protested. He knew perfectly well that both Solly and Hugh were bankers.

But Hugh said: “Don’t worry! We hate incompetent bankers too. They’re a menace to everyone. But what exactly has happened, Mr. Robinson?”

“I spent five years building up the Welfare Association,” Danny said. “It was a mighty big success. We paid out hundreds of pounds every week in benefits and took
in thousands in subscriptions. But what were we to do with the surplus?”

Solly said: “I assume you put it aside against the possibility of a bad year.”

“And where do you think we put it?”

“In a bank, I trust.”

“In the City of Glasgow Bank, to be exact.”

“Oh, dear,” said Solly.

Maisie said: “I don’t understand.”

Solly explained: “The City of Glasgow Bank went bankrupt.”

“Oh, no!” Maisie cried. It made her want to weep.

Danny nodded. “All those shillings paid in by hardworking men—lost by fools in top hats. And you wonder why they talk about revolution.” He sighed. “I’ve been trying to rescue the Association since it happened, but the task was hopeless, and I’ve given up.”

Kingo said abruptly: “Mr. Robinson, I am sorry for you and your members. Will you take some refreshment? You must have walked seven miles if you came from the railway station.”

“I will, and thank you.”

Maisie said: “I’ll take Danny indoors, and leave you to finish your walk.” She felt her brother was wounded, and she wanted to get him alone and do what she could to ease his pain.

The others obviously felt the tragedy too. Kingo said: “Will you stop for the night, Mr. Robinson?”

Maisie winced. Kingo was being too generous. It was easy enough to be civil to Danny for a few minutes out here in the park, but if he stayed overnight Kingo and his lotus-eating friends would soon get fed up with Danny’s coarse clothes and working-class concerns, then they would snub him and he would be hurt.

But Danny said: “I have to be back in London tonight. I just came to spend a few hours with my sister.”

Kingo said: “In that case allow me to have you
driven to the station in my carriage, whenever you’re ready.”

“That’s real kind of you.”

Maisie took her brother’s arm. “Come with me and I’ll get you some lunch.”

After Danny left for London, Maisie joined Solly for an afternoon nap.

Solly lay on the bed in a red silk bathrobe and watched her undress. “I can’t rescue Dan’s Welfare Association,” he said. “Even if it made financial sense to me—which it doesn’t—I couldn’t persuade the other partners.”

Maisie felt a sudden surge of affection for him. She had not asked him to help Danny. “You’re such a good man,” she said. She opened his bathrobe and kissed his vast belly. “You’ve already done so much for my family, you never have to apologize. Besides, Danny won’t take anything from you, you know that; he’s too proud.”

“But what will he do?”

She stepped out of her petticoats and rolled down her stockings. “Tomorrow he’s meeting with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He wants to be a member of Parliament and he hopes they will sponsor him.”

“And I suppose he’ll campaign for stricter government regulation of banks.”

“Would you be against that?”

“We never like the government to tell us what to do. True, there are too many crashes; but there might be even more if the politicians ran the banks.” He rolled on his side and propped his head up on his elbow to get a better view of her taking off her underwear. “I wish I weren’t leaving you tonight.”

Maisie wished the same. A part of her was excited at the prospect of being with Hugh when Solly was away, but that made her feel more guilty still. “I don’t mind,” she said.

“I feel so ashamed of my family.”

“You shouldn’t.” It was Passover, and Solly was going to celebrate the ritual of seder with his parents. Maisie was not invited. She understood Ben Greenbourne’s dislike of her, and half felt she deserved the way he treated her, but Solly was deeply upset by it. Indeed, he would have quarreled with his father if Maisie had let him, but she did not want that on her conscience too, and she insisted he continue to see his parents in a normal way.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” he said anxiously.

“I’m sure. Listen, if I felt strongly about it I could go to Manchester and spend Passover with my own parents.” She became thoughtful. “The fact is that I’ve never felt part of all that Jewish stuff, not since we left Russia. When we came to England there were no Jews in the town. The people I lived with in the circus had no religion at all, mostly. Even when I married a Jew, your family made me feel unwelcome. I’m fated to be an outsider, and to tell you the truth I don’t mind. God never did anything for me.” She smiled. “Mama says God gave you to me, but that’s rubbish: I got you all by myself.”

He was reassured. “I’ll miss you tonight.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over him so that he could nuzzle her breasts. “I’ll miss you too.”

“Mmm.”

After a while they lay side by side, head to tail, and he caressed her between her legs while she kissed and licked and then sucked his penis. He loved to do this in the afternoon, and he cried out softly as he came in her mouth.

She changed her position and nestled in the crook of his arm.

“What does it taste like?” he said sleepily.

She smacked her lips. “Caviar.”

He giggled and closed his eyes.

She began to stroke herself. Soon he was snoring. When she came he did not stir.

“The men who ran the City of Glasgow Bank should go to jail,” Maisie said shortly before dinner.

“That’s a bit hard,” Hugh responded.

The remark struck her as smug. “Hard?” she said irritably. “Not as hard as what happened to the workingmen whose money was lost!”

“Still, no one is perfect, not even those workingmen,” Hugh persisted. “If a carpenter makes a mistake, and a house falls down, should he go to jail?”

“It’s not the same!”

“And why not?”

“Because the carpenter is paid thirty shillings a week and obliged to follow a foreman’s orders, whereas a banker gets thousands, and justifies it by saying he carries a weight of responsibility.”

“All true. But the banker is human, and has a wife and children to support.”

“You might say the same of murderers, yet we hang them regardless of the fate of their orphaned children.”

“But if a man kills another accidentally, for example by shooting at a rabbit and hitting a man behind a bush, we don’t even send him to jail. So why should we jail bankers who lose other people’s money?”

“To make other bankers more careful!”

“And by the same logic we might hang the man who shot at the rabbit, to make other shooters more careful.”

“Hugh, you’re just being perverse.”

“No, I’m not. Why treat careless bankers more harshly than careless rabbit-shooters?”

“The difference is that careless shots do not throw thousands of working people into destitution every few years, whereas careless bankers do.”

At this point Kingo interjected languidly: “The directors
of the City of Glasgow Bank probably
will
go to jail, I hear; and the manager too.”

Hugh said: “So I believe.”

Maisie felt like screaming with frustration. “Then why have you been contradicting me?”

He grinned. “To see whether you could justify your attitude.”

Maisie remembered that Hugh had always had the power to do this to her, and she bit her tongue. Her spitfire personality was part of her appeal to the Marlborough Set, one of the reasons they accepted her despite her background; but they would get bored if she let her tantrums go on too long. Her mood changed in a flash. “Sir, you have insulted me!” she cried theatrically. “I challenge you to a duel!”

“What weapons do ladies duel with?” Hugh laughed.

“Crochet hooks at dawn!”

They all laughed at that, then a servant came in and announced dinner.

They were always eighteen or twenty around the long table. Maisie loved to see the crisp linen and fine china, the hundreds of candles reflected in the shining glassware, the immaculate black-and-white evening dress of the men and the gorgeous colors and priceless jewelry of the women. There was champagne every night, but it went straight to Maisie’s waist, so she allowed herself only a sip or two.

She found herself seated next to Hugh. The duchess normally put her next to Kingo, for Kingo liked pretty women and the duchess was tolerant; but tonight she had apparently decided to vary the formula. No one said grace, for in this set religion was kept for Sundays only. The soup was served and Maisie chatted brightly to the men on either side of her. However, her mind was on her brother. Poor Danny! So clever, so dedicated, such a great leader—and so unlucky. She wondered if he would
succeed in his new ambition of becoming a member of Parliament. She hoped so. Papa would be so proud.

Today, unusually, her background had intruded visibly into her new life. It was surprising how little difference it made. Like her, Danny did not appear to belong to any particular class of society. He represented workingmen; his dress was middle class; yet he had the same confident, slightly arrogant manners as Kingo and his friends. They could not easily tell whether he was an upper-class boy who chose martyrdom among the workers or a working-class boy who had risen in life.

Something similar was true of Maisie. Anyone with the least instinct for class differences could tell she was not a born lady. However, she played the part so well, and she was so pretty and charming, that they could not quite bring themselves to believe the persistent rumor that Solly had picked her up in a dance parlor. If there had been any question of her acceptance by London society, it had been answered when the Prince of Wales, son of Queen Victoria—and future king—had confessed himself “captivated” by her and sent her a gold cigarette box with a diamond clasp.

As the meal progressed she felt the presence of Hugh by her side more and more. She made an effort to keep the conversation light, and took care to talk at least as much to the man on her other side; but the past seemed to stand at her shoulder, waiting to be acknowledged, like a weary, patient supplicant.

She and Hugh had met three or four times since his return to London, and now they had spent forty-eight hours in the same house, but they had never spoken, of what had happened six years ago. All Hugh knew was that she had disappeared without a trace, only to surface as Mrs. Solomon Greenbourne. Sooner or later she was going to have to give him some explanation. She was afraid that talking about it would bring back all the old
feelings, in him as well as her. But it had to be done, and perhaps this was a good time, when Solly was away.

A moment came when several people around them were talking noisily. Maisie decided she should speak now. She turned to Hugh, and suddenly she was overcome with emotion. She began speaking three or four times and could not go on. Finally she managed to get a few words out. “I would have ruined your career, you know.” Then she had to make such an effort not to cry that she could say no more.

He understood right away what she was talking about. “Who told you that you would have ruined my career?”

If he had been sympathetic she might have broken down, but luckily he was aggressive, and that enabled her to reply. “Your aunt Augusta.”

“I suspected she was involved somehow.”

“But she was right.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said, getting angry very quickly. “You didn’t ruin Solly’s career.”

“Calm down. Solly wasn’t already the black sheep of the family. Even so, it was difficult enough. His family hates me still.”