"Bloody bollocks!"
Eunice had exploded. At about this stage in the proceedings, she usually did.
"Our dad would be turning in his grave," she roared in her smothered Welsh accent. "Free books for the ignorant? That's daylight bloody Communism!"
Equally furiously, Dolly disagreed. She usually did.
"That's a living lie, Eunice Lavender. Dad would be standing up and clapping his hands off. Children's what he prayed for with his last breath. He loved us. Didn't he, Paulie?"
But Paul was in some far Wales of his own. His eyes were still closed, and he wore a misty smile.
Jamie Pringle deftly passed the ball to me. "Tim. Very quiet today. Got a view?"
For once my diplomatic skills eluded me. On any other day I could have dredged up a distracting topic for him: pressed Henry to move faster in his dealings with the city authorities, raised an eyebrow at the Pringle administration costs, which were the only item in the accounts to show an increase. But this morning I had too much of Larry in my head. Wherever I looked round the table, I kept seeing him lounging in one of the empty thrones, dressed in my grey suit that he'd never given back, spinning us some story about this chum in Hull.
"Monty. Your shout," Jamie ordered.
So Monty dutifully cleared his throat, seized a piece of paper from a pile before him, and treated us to a report on our distributable income. But alas, after deduction of charges, costs, and sundry disbursements, there was for the tenth meeting running no income to distribute. Not even the House of Pringle had yet come up with a formula for distributing percentages of nothing to the Poor and Needy Gentlefolk of Wales as defined by the Borders Act of whenever it was.
We lunched. That much I know. In the panelled sanctum where we always lunched. We were served by Mrs. Peters in white gloves, and we polished off a couple of magnums of the 1955 Cheval Blanc, which the trust had thoughtfully laid down twenty years ago for the resuscitation of its hard-pressed officers. But I forget, thank God, almost everything of our dreadful conversation. Dolly hated niggers: I remember that. Eunice thought them lovely. Monty thought they were all right in Africa. Paul preserved his mandarin smile. A splendid ship's clock, which by tradition determined House of Pringle time, kept noisy record of our progress. By two-thirty, Dolly and Eunice had stormed out in a red-faced huff. By three, Paul had remembered something he had to do, or was it somewhere he had to go, or someone to meet? Must be his barber, he decided. Henry and Monty left with him, Henry murmuring outstanding matters in his ear at four hundred pounds an hour, and Monty desperate for the first of a large number of cigarettes to get him back to par.
Jamie and I sat pensively over our decanter of partners' port. "Jolly good, then," he said profoundly. "Yes. Well, then. Cheers. Here's to us."
In a moment, if I did nothing to stop him, he was going to launch himself upon the great issues of our time: the cockiness of women, the mystery of where North Sea oil profits had gone—he gravely feared to the unemployed—or how decent banking had been ruined by the computer. And in thirty minutes exactly, Pandora would pop her stupid pedigree face round the door and remind Mr. Jamie that he had another meeting before close of play: which was Pringle Brothers code for "The chauffeur is waiting to drive you to the airport for your golf at St. Andrew's" or "You promised to take me to Deauville for the weekend."
I asked after Henrietta, Jainie's wife. I always did, and dared not vary the ritual.
"Henrietta is bloody marvellous, thank you," Jamie replied defensively. "Hunt's imploring her to stay on, but old Hen isn't sure she wants to. Getting a bit tired, frankly, of the Antis buggering everything up."
I asked after his children.
"Kids are doing splendidly, Tim, thank you. Marcus is captain o' Fives, Penny's coming out next spring. Not real coming out, not the way the girls did it in our day. But a lot better than nothing," he added, and gazed wistfully past me at the illustrious names of Pringle's Fallen of Two Wars.
I asked whether he'd seen any of the mob recently, meaning our crowd at Oxford. Not since the Oriel bash at Boodle's, he replied. I asked who had been there. It took me two more moves before, seemingly off his own bat, he was talking about Larry. And really it was no great work of art on my part, because in our year if you talked old buddies, sooner or later you talked Larry.
"Extraordinary chap," Jamie pronounced with the absolute certainty of his kind. "Gifted, vast talents, charm. Decent Christian background. father in the Church, all that. But no stability. In life, if you haven't got stability, got nothing. Pinko one week, chucking it all in next. Chucked it in for good this time. Corns are all capitalists now. Worse than the bloody Yanks." And then, almost too easily, as if my guardian angel were whispering in his ear: "Came to see me not long ago. Bit seedy, I thought. Bit hangdog. Certain awareness of having backed the wrong side there, I rather think. Natural enough when you look at it."
I let out a delighted laugh. "Jamie! You're not telling me Larry's become a capitalist entrepreneur, are you? I think that's too ripe."
But Jamie, though he could laugh like a maniac without warning—and usually without humour—only helped himself to more port and waxed more sonorous. "Don't know what he's become, to be frank. Not my business. More than a mere entrepreneur, that's for sure. Something bit more eloquent of the moment, if you ask me," he added darkly, ramming the decanter at me as if he never wanted to see it again. "Not a lot of due respect there either, to be frank "
"Oh dear," I said.
"Rather exaggerated idea of himself." A resentful swallow of port. "Bit of overcompensation going on. Lot of crap about our duty to help the newly freed nations find their feet, right old wrongs, establish norms of social justice. Asked me whether I intended to pass by on the other side. 'Steady on, old boy,' I said. 'Hang about. Weren't you one of the chaps who gave the Sovs a bit of a leg up? You've got me a bit foxed, if you don't mind my saying. Bit stumped. Confused.' "
I leaned forward, showing him that I was all attention. I composed my face into an expression of fascinated, sycophantic incredulity. I strove with all my body language to will his damned story out of the fogged thickets of his lonely little mind: "Go on, Jamie. This is riveting. More."
"Only duty I've got is to this house, I told him. Wouldn't listen. I thought he was an intellectual sort of chap. How can you be an intellectual, not listen? Talked straight through me. Called me an ostrich. I'm not an ostrich. I'm a family man. Pathetic."
"But what on earth did he want you to do, Jamie? Turn over Pringle Brothers to Oxfam?" It flitted through my mind as I said this that it wouldn't be at all a bad idea. But my face, if it was doing its job, revealed only my sincere sympathy that Jamie should have been the target of such bad form.
A half minute's silence while he rounded up his intellectual resources. "Soviet Communist Party was going private. Right?"
"Right."
"That was the story. Selling off Party property. Buildings. Rest homes, offices, transport, sports palaces, schools, hospitals, foreign embassies, land galore, priceless paintings, Faberge, Christ knows what. Billions of dollars of the stuff. Make sense?"
"Indeed it does. Russia Limited. It began in secret with Gorbachev, then it ran riot."
"How Larry got in on the act, anybody's bloody guess. Pringle Brothers doesn't have his connections, pleased to say." Yet another huge swallow of port. "Wouldn't want 'em. Wouldn't touch 'em with a barge pole, thank you. No way, Jose."
"But, Jamie—" I dared not sound as if I cared, though my time was running out. "But, Jimminy"—his Oxford nickname—"sport, what was he asking you to do? Buy the Kremlin? I'm fascinated."
Jamie's reddened gaze fixed itself once more on his company's Roll of Honour. "You still working for whoever you used to be working for?"
I hesitated. Jamie had once applied to join us, but without success. Since then he had tossed me the odd snippet from time to time, usually after we had had the same information better and earlier from other sources. Did he relish our mystique or resent it? Would he tell me more if I answered yes? I chose the middle path.
"Just the odd bit of this and that, Jamie. Nothing onerous. Listen, you're killing me with curiosity. What on earth was Larry up to?"
A delay for more port and grimacing.
"I'm sorry?"
"Two cracks of the whip. Phoned me a couple of years ago, talked a lot of crap about wanting to put a nice piece of business in my way, was I game, matter of several millions, old-pals act, come and see me next time he was in town, bugger all happened. Went off the air."
"And the second bout? When was that?"
I scarcely knew which to press harder: the what or the when. But Jamie took the decision for me.
"Larry Pettifer was up to the following," he announced in an alarming boom. "Larry Pettifer claimed that he had been authorised, by a certain ex-Soviet state agency, name not supplied—correction, by persons in that agency, their names also not supplied—to conduct a dialogue with this house, concerning the possibility of opening an account with this house—series of accounts: offshore, naturally—whereby this house would receive substantial sums of hard currency from sources not accurately defined—would in effect hold said monies on a no-name basis—and make certain disbursements in accordance with such instructions as would from time to time be received by this house from persons entrusted with a certain code word or letter reference, which would be matched by a similar code word or letter reference held by this house. The disbursements would be substantial, but they would never exceed assets, and we would never be asked for credit."
Jamie's monologue had slowed to fifteen revolutions per minute, and there were only nine minutes left to go by the ship's clock.
"Were they big sums? I mean, banking big? How much money was Larry talking about?"
Jamie again consulted the board behind my head. "If you were to think of a figure in the order of the figure that certain trustees and their advisors were deliberating this morning—I would not think you far wrong."
"Thirty million sterling? What on earth would they be buying? Where did they get it from? I mean that's money, isn't it? Even for you? It certainly is for me! Whatever was he up to? I'm absolutely entranced."
"Laundering, what it came down to. Acting under instructions, my feeling, and hadn't got the hang of 'ern. Had some associate or partner we'd be dealing with up north. He'd be some sort of co-signatory up to certain sums. Stank."
My time was running out. So was Jamie.
"Did he say where up north?"
"What's that?"
"You said he had some pal up north."
"Macclesfield. An associate in Macclesfield. Could have been Manchester. No, it wasn't. It was Macclesfield. Used to screw a girl there. Cindy. Worked in the silk trade. Silky Cindy."
"But where in God's name does Larry Pettifer get thirty million pounds from? All right, they're not his—but they must be somebody's!"
Wait. Count. Pray. Smile.
"Mafias," Jamie growled. "Isn't that what they call 'em over there? Competing mafias? Papers are full of 'em." He shook his head and muttered something like His business.
"So what did you do?" I asked, trying desperately to preserve a tone of amused mystification. "Call in your partners? Send him packing?"
The ship's clock was ticking like a bomb, but to my despair Jamie still said nothing. Until suddenly he gave a violent start of impatience, as if it were I who had kept him waiting.
"One doesn't send people packing in these situations, thank you. One gives 'em lunch. One talks old times. Says one will think about it, discuss it with the board. I did tell 'em there were a couple of problems, some practical, some ethical. I suggested it would be nice if they told me who their client actually was, what he was proposing to trade in, and what the tax status would be. A little authentication would help. I suggested they organise an approach through the Foreign Office—at a high level, of course. They did have some letter with them from the embassy in London. Signed by some official. Not the ambassador. Could have been forged. Could have been kosher. One simply doesn't know."
He was examining the assay marks on the back of his coffee spoon, comparing them with the spoon from the empty place next to him. "Broken set," he muttered. "Extraordinary thing." He was crestfallen. "Hell did that happen? Ask Ma Peters. Bloody careless."
"You said they, Jamie," I said.
"What's that, old boy?"
I put a hand on his sleeve. "I'm sorry, Jamie—I may have misheard. I thought you said they. Do you mean Larry didn't come alone? I don't think I quite got that bit."
" 'They' is correct." He was still studying the spoons. My head was racing. Checheyev? The associate in Macclesfield? Or Larry's chum from Hull University?
"So who came too?" I asked.
To my surprise, Jamie gave a superior and very salacious smile. "Pettifer brought an assistant. Dolly girl is what I would have called her. Assistant was going to be his intermediary, he said. Do the brainwork. Mathematics not up Larry's street, but this girl—mustard. Brighter than Larry by a mile, when it came to numbers."
I was greatly amused. I must have been, for I gave a jolly laugh, though the inside of me was frozen in alarm. "All right, Jamie. Don't hold out on me. She was Russian. She had snow on her boots."
His superior smile would not let go of him. He put down the offending spoons. "Wrong. Decent English girl, far as you could tell. Decently dressed. Spoke the Queen's English well as you and me. Wouldn't be surprised if she was the
moving force. Given her a job here any day.”
“pretty?"
"No. Not pretty. She was beautiful. Word I use very seldom, matter o' fact. Hell she was doing mixed up with a shit like Pettifer, God knows." He had entered the territory he loved best. "Figure to kill for. Lovely little bottom. Legs all the way up. Sat right there in front of me, swingin' 'em at me." He struck a philosophical note. "One of the most extraordinary things in life, Tim, and I've observed it over and over. Pretty girl, have anyone she wants, who does she go for? A shit. Pound to a penny Pettifer beats her up. She probably likes it. Masochist. Same as m' sister-in-law, Angie. Money to burn, looks to kill, Angie goes from one shit to another. Lucky to have any teeth left, way they treat her."