Wicked Pleasures (117 page)

And then it was Monday. Monday, 19 October. Still nothing in the
Mail
Diary. Max went in early. He felt keyed up, edgy, not sure why. When the screens first went on, he blinked, thought it must be an error. They were a mass of red. Just endless red. Vernon Bligh rushed over to the trading desk, his smirking expression gone, panic engrained suddenly on his sharp features. ‘The market’s one twenty down,’ he said and his voice was hollow with shock. It was normally five, at the most ten.

Max felt himself begin to sweat; he got on the phone and called Jake, who was calm, almost amused. ‘Told you,’ he said, ‘told you it was too much. Only
thing is to sell. Sell fast. And pray for a dead-cat bounce, and then sell short.’

The dead-cat bounce is an old and very sick joke in the banking fraternity. It is said that if a dead cat hits the floor of a securities house, it will bounce. Between hit (when prices are at their lowest) and bounce there is money to be made.

Max sold. He did not sell alone. The market went down and down, into a black hole of despair. The cat lay comatose all day.

Every share went down by 25 per cent. Several by 50 per cent. And the really wild high fliers by 70 per cent. The dealers sat at their screens and tried to hold back the red sea. But they failed. It was panic, on a screaming, nightmarish, despairing scale, sharply intensified by the fact that for many of the dealers, personal fortunes were melting away as well. By mid-morning they sat at their desks, head in hands, faces wiped blank by despair, most of them refusing to answer their telephones. Or just staring at their screens in disbelief, watching the dollars pouring off the New York market.

By that evening at least one eighth had been wiped off London share prices.

Max and Tommy went out that night to eat at the Pizza Express in the Fulham Road. It was full of people, all talking quite cheerfully about the crash. Had everyone heard, everyone was saying, three, four billion pounds wiped off the stock market. Nobody seemed to take it very seriously; it was just another chapter, a bit of excitement, in the fairy story of Easy Money. As they drove back along the Fulham Road there was a report on the radio: Wall Street had fallen 500 points. ‘Jesus,’ said Max, ‘it can’t have done. Five hundred. Not five hundred.’

It had.

The crash followed the sun, rolling round the world from East to West. In the morning Tokyo went down, then Hong Kong. After London, New York again. By Tuesday night the London Stock Exchange had lost a fifth of its value. Some of the richest financiers in the world were wiped out; Australian markets suffered hideous damage, as a result of the Hong Kong suspension of trading. Rupert Murdoch lost $700 million in one day. Robert Holmes à Court was ruined. Everyone talked in superlatives. John Phelan, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, talked about financial meltdown. Jimmy Goldsmith forecast the end of the world.

There were various theories advanced as to its cause: that the stock market had simply overheated; that it was part of the inevitable rise and fall pattern of the stock market, and after the phenomenal rise there must be a correspondingly phenomenal fall; that it was initially at any rate a result of programme trading, the process whereby if a stock moved to minus 2 per cent, the signals went out on the screens to sell; that trades were made much more quickly than they had been pre Big Bang and the panic chain was set in motion faster; that there was no control, as there would have been pre Big Bang, from the jobbers who could have called at least a temporary halt, stopped the panic selling. Whatever the reason, the market fell and fell, on a great unstoppable roller coaster.

The dead cat did bounce briefly; on the middle of Tuesday in New York, evening in London. There was talk of suspending trading on the New York Stock Exchange, which was at that point in touch with the White House. It wasn’t suspended and the market rose by 200 points; but as the insurers moved in, selling furiously on the futures market to protect their investors, it fell again, lower still.

By the Wednesday, what had been a shocking excitement, a near fantasy, had become hard reality. Hundreds of thousands of people were ruined. And Max saw Freddy Praeger, sitting at his desk in St James’s, ashen, shaking, chain smoking, refusing to go home, and realized the full extent of what he had done to Praegers.

That weekend, Tommy received a call from the
Daily Mail
. So did Max. Max rang Hartest; Nanny answered the phone.

‘Nanny, you may get a call from the press,’ he said.

‘We have already,’ said Nanny.

‘Oh God. What did you say?’

‘I told them your father was away. And that if they had nothing better to do than ring us up, they should start looking for different jobs.’

‘Nanny, you’re wonderful.’

On the Monday Freddy and Chuck took off for New York. And the story was in the diary:

Max rang Angie. ‘The shit’s hit the fan,’ he said.

‘I know. I suppose it could be worse.’

‘It could. It could be on the front page.’

‘Just keep saying nothing,’ said Charles. ‘It’s the only thing that will work.’

Jake Joseph called. ‘What’s all this, my son? I always said you were a little bastard. Seems I was right.’

‘It’s a load of shit,’ said Max. ‘Just a complete fabrication.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Jake. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean your gorgeous sister was born on the wrong side of the blanket as well.’

‘Oh go to hell,’ said Max irritably.

Tommy rang to say he was really enjoying it and couldn’t he just make up one story to tell them?

Max said if he did, he was a dead man. Dead by starvation.

Several other people called. Max decided to use Nanny’s line. It seemed to work.

Max took Shireen to lunch at the Ritz.

‘It’s exciting you being in the papers,’ she said, looking at him interestedly. ‘How did that story start?’

‘I can’t imagine,’ said Max, ‘but you know what they say. Never believe anything you read in the papers.’

‘Yes,’ said Shireen, gazing at him, her eyes interestingly bland, ‘and you know what else they say. There’s no smoke without fire.’

Max looked at her thoughtfully. ‘If you promise not to say anything to anybody, I’ll tell you how it started.’

‘Oh Max, of course I promise.’

‘It’s an old old story that’s gone around for years. It’s because some halfwitted servant we had went around saying that I was adopted. It resurfaces from time to time.’

‘But why?’

‘I told you. She was half-witted. And my father had fired her. I suppose it was her idea of revenge. She just went on putting it about. That’s all. But you really must not talk to anyone about that.’

‘Oh Max, you know I won’t.’

Max gave her some more champagne, patted her hand and turned the conversation to Praegers. There seemed a strong possibility that Praegers London was going belly up.

‘Bretts went right down the pan, apparently. And that was just one of Freddy’s little games,’ said Max to Charlotte. ‘He’s off to do a whitewash job. See what they can haul out of the ashes. While Fred’s away.’

‘Well they can’t do much,’ said Charlotte. ‘Fred’s not stupid.’

‘They can buy some time. Praegers New York hasn’t done too badly. I just talked to your friend Gabe. They have huge reserves, and they weren’t seriously exposed. It’s my guess Chuck is going to try and transfer some money from New York to London, to cover the losses.’

‘He can’t do that, surely. Not without Grandpa knowing.’

‘He probably could. Chris Hill would have access to the funds. He could certainly authorize a transfer. But Grandpa would pretty soon know about it. I suppose they can at least buy some time.’

‘Not a lot, I hope,’ said Charlotte.

When Max was getting ready to leave that night, the girl in reception phoned up to him.

‘There’s a couple of reporters down here,’ she said. ‘What shall I do with them?’

‘Just ignore them,’ said Max.

He went along to see Shireen.

‘The press is downstairs,’ he said, ‘don’t start talking to them, will you? You’ll have your picture all over the papers in no time.’

‘Max, of course I won’t.’

Max rang Nanny and told her to unplug the telephones.

The following day, both the
Mail
and the
Mirror
had a picture of Shireen on one of their inside pages, and a story about what the
Mail
described as Below Stairs Talk, and the
Mirror
described as the Servant Girl’s Revenge.

Charles was cautiously optimistic; he said if this was what the papers were reduced to, they clearly hadn’t got anything more tangible to say.

Nanny was indignant, and said Max could have warned her, but that she and Mrs Tallow had both dealt with the reporters very firmly, and told them the girl in question had left twenty years earlier.

‘I told you not to talk to them,’ said Max.

‘I wanted to talk to them,’ said Nanny. ‘Mrs Tallow and I are enjoying it.’

‘Oh,’ said Max humbly. ‘Well, don’t say anything more, will you, Nanny? And keep it from Alexander.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Nanny.

Shireen was defiantly apologetic.

‘They promised they wouldn’t use it, they said they just wanted some background.’

‘Just the same, I told you not to talk to them. Honestly, Shireen.’

‘Sorry, Max.’

Max grinned at her. ‘Never mind. You can repay me one day.’

The strange thing was, he found, now that the thing he had been dreading for so long, the doubt over his parentage, had been publicly cast, that people were talking about it, discussing it, gossiping about it, debating it, he simply didn’t care. It seemed infinitely foolish somehow, unbelievable, as unlikely to him as it sounded, as it looked, there in the paper, in black and white.

He was almost – not enjoying it, but just possibly savouring it. He embellished and embroidered the story of the sacked servant, and when nobody seemed to be interested in it any more, he was almost put out.

‘I think,’ he said to Charlotte, ‘we may have laid the ghost.’

‘I think you’re speaking a little soon,’ she said.

Freddy and Chuck came back after three days. They looked tired, but considerably more cheerful. There was something else about them; something Charlotte and Max didn’t like.

‘They look as if they’ve got something on us,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m worried.’

They had come in at midday; they went for a long lunch at the Ritz, and then continued drinking for some time in the boardroom. At six o’clock Chuck wandered into the trading room.

‘Come and join us in the boardroom,’ he said, ‘have a drink.’

‘Sorry. Got a prior engagement,’ said Max cheerfully.

‘This is more important,’ said Chuck, with one of his plastic smiles. ‘I think you’ll agree when you hear.’

Max went down to the boardroom with a sense of vague anxiety but no more. He could not believe Chuck and Freddy could have pulled off anything very dramatic. Charlotte was there, looking equally cheerful.

Chuck had his back to them as they went in; he turned to face them.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘This business in the papers must have been awkward for you.’

‘Not really,’ said Max. ‘It seems to have died a death now. I wonder how they got the story in the first place.’

‘I can’t imagine,’ said Chuck. ‘Drink?’

‘No,’ said Max. ‘Thank you.’

Chuck shrugged. ‘You could need it,’ he said. ‘Charlotte?’

‘No thank you,’ said Charlotte. ‘Er – is everything all right?’

Chuck turned innocent eyes on her, gave her his most charming smile. ‘Absolutely fine. Why shouldn’t it be?’

‘Oh – we thought there were problems. After the crash.’

‘Well naturally we have problems. Everyone does. But nothing that can’t be contained. No cause for serious concern.’

Charlotte’s eyes met Max’s. They’ve done a transfer, said her look. Chris Hill’s played ball with them.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m so pleased.’

‘Now,’ said Chuck, ‘are you sure you don’t want a drink?’

‘Yes, I’m quite sure,’ said Charlotte puzzled.

Chuck shrugged. ‘OK. You’re going to take this neat then? No watering down? No Valium?’

‘Chuck,’ said Max. ‘Take what neat? Get to the point.’