Contango (Ill Wind) (12 page)

His mood, as transient as it was instinctive, had moved him to an effort
of imagination which his natural indolence soon began to repel; after all, he
reflected, a moment or two later, perhaps he HAD been rather foolishly
snappish with a man who had only been trying to help him.

“I’ll come in with you,” he said quietly, “if
you’ll give Palescu five thousand.”

“Five thousand? My dear Brown, I’m delighted that you’ve
changed your mind, but really—five thousand! Remember what it is
we’re paying for—merely the commercial value of something that
hasn’t really a commercial value at all!”

Brown retorted, with a last despairing petulance: “I don’t
care about that. You’ve been talking about possible hundreds of
thousands for us. Surely five isn’t too much for him. He’s
young—he can do with it.”

“We can all do with it, for that matter. But the chief objection is
that any such large offer would immediately put the fellow on his
guard—don’t you see? Still, though it’s a risk, I’ll
double the sum I had originally in mind and say a thousand. I call that
generous, and so, I think, will Palescu. And we must have our interview with
him as soon as possible. You’ll join us then, and you agree to a
thousand as an outside offer?”

“Oh, all right, have it your own way,” answered Brown, as he
had answered once before. He was suddenly tired, and with his tiredness there
came a faint renewal of optimism, the drug to which he was accustomed.

By the time the three negotiators met the Roumanian a few days later,
Brown was once again in a mood to see most things cheerfully. Parceval had
definitely promised him the loan as soon as the Palescu business was settled;
the bank had agreed to a short delay in repayment; and Parceval, too, had
been assiduous in kindling hopes for the future. “I don’t mind
admitting, Brown, that you can be a great help to me in my negotiations with
the fellow.” (It was already “me” and “my”, but
that, after all, was only to have been expected.) “In fact, if you
hadn’t joined in with us, I fear he would have thought it so peculiar
that we might have had trouble in coming to terms at all. I’ll do the
talking, of course, but you’ll be there as
a—a—”

“As a guarantee of good faith?” suggested Brown, not very
tactfully, and Parceval laughed and replied: “Well, if you put it that
way, perhaps yes. You see, he likes you—more than he does me or
Mathers.”

“He LIKES me?” echoed Brown, with sudden shyness.

“Yes—seems to have taken quite a fancy to you.”

Brown blushed with happiness. To be liked by this youth seemed somehow
more satisfying than to have won the favour of any woman.

They all met Palescu at an hotel in Bloomsbury where he was staying, and
the youth’s welcoming smile made Brown feel that the interview was
probably going to be a very pleasant one for everybody. He hoped so; he would
enjoy it if it were; and, in fact, mightn’t it actually represent the
beginning of a new era of prosperity for himself, for his wife and daughter,
for the workpeople at his factory, for the firm’s shareholders, and, of
course, for Palescu too? A thousand pounds, as Parceval had said,
wasn’t so bad. “You all right now?” he began, admiring, as
he had done first of all in the train, the boy’s extraordinary good
looks. “Feeling quite fit again? That’s good. We’re all
going to go out and dine somewhere, I think.”

Parceval and Mathers subjoined their enquiries and felicitations; then
they hustled into a taxi and drove to the Café Royal. Parceval’s
choice; and it reminded Brown of the old days, when he and his son had
enjoyed themselves in London together; the Café was the place they had gone
to, often enough—no, not really often enough—that was the
point. That flying smash had happened so abruptly, cutting into the life of
the father no less than of the son—making everything ever afterwards a
little vague and unfinished. … He had the queer feeling now that a part of
him was living over again in that twenty-year-old past, and that Palescu,
smiling and chattering, was something more to him than a foreign stranger met
for only the second time.

During the meal conversation, at Parceval’s previous suggestion, was
kept on general topics; and Brown felt that Palescu was avoiding no less
carefully the subject which must be uppermost in his mind, as in theirs too.
The youth talked quite amusingly, though, and kept appealing particularly to
Brown, as if he, among them all, were an especial friend. Brown warmed to
such an attitude, and was in a pleasantly flattered mood when at last he lit
Palescu’s cigarette and then his own cigar.

“Well,” Parceval said at length, “we’re all
delighted to find you none the worse for what happened last week. And now, as
perhaps you’ve already guessed, we’re ready for a chat about one
or two matters arising out of that little adventure.”

Palescu nodded, smiling at them all, but especially at Brown.

“Of course,” Parceval resumed, “we realise, as you must
do also, that the demonstration you gave was hardly a complete success. We
were naturally a little disappointed….”

And so it went on. Parceval was at his suavest, mellifluously and
deprecatingly reasonable. But somehow, Brown sensed, Palescu was seeing
through the reasonableness—not, of course, to any accurate perception
of what lay behind it, but with a sufficient clairvoyance of the need for
wariness. The smile faded a little from his face; he became alert, tense,
unmoving. He kept nodding, saying “Yes” and “No,” and
waiting for Parceval to go on speaking— perhaps hoping he would give
himself away. Parceval was naturally in no danger of doing that. But the
youth’s attitude could not but disconcert him a little; he had thought
it would be fairly easy to come to terms. Several times, like two
chess-players gradually becoming conscious of each other’s ability,
they fell into a mutually baffled silence, and during one of these intervals
Brown interjected, not very sensibly, he was aware, but with some idea of
relieving his own private tension: “Jolly plucky to try out the thing
at all, anyway. Damned uncomfortable to be stuck in the mud like that, I
should think.”

“Yes, damned uncomfortable,” answered the youth, with a
mocking but somehow friendly smile. Then he turned to Parceval and the
contest of wits was continued.

At last Parceval got as far as saying: “Still, you mustn’t
feel that we regret having interested ourselves in you. What are your plans
for the future?”

“I don’t know. It depends on several things.”

“Do you propose to carry on with your invention—I mean, do
you intend to try to bring it to some degree of success?”

Palescu answered: “I consider I have already done THAT.”

There was something cold and a little contemptuous in the retort that gave
Brown a tiny thrill of admiration. How tepid and occasional, he reflected,
was his own impatience of Parceval in comparison! He said: “Quite
right, my boy, you haven’t done so badly”—and felt
marvellously indifferent to the cautionary glare with which Parceval favoured
him.

Parceval, however, made haste to agree. “That’s true, of
course, as Brown says. Please don’t misunderstand me. You’ve hit
on an interesting idea—interesting, certainly—I don’t
think anyone could deny that. And you’ve also put a good deal of work
into it, and even if it hasn’t done all that we hoped, it
might—sometime— give someone else an inspiration that might
possibly be of use. To be quite frank, I and my friends here are prepared
to—well, in a sense, to gamble on that slender chance. To the extent
of a small sum, I mean. We wouldn’t object to paying you—oh, say
five hundred pounds—for the full rights.”

“If you wish to buy,” answered Palescu very calmly, “my
price is ten thousand.”

Parceval leaned back in his chair with an elaborately forced smile.
“Utterly ridiculous! We’re wasting our time, then, if you really
mean that. I’m sorry, personally, for it would have given me pleasure
to think that you were making a little profit, but of
course—”

Mathers gave Palescu a shrewd and not unkindly glance. “Take my tip
and don’t overreach yourself,” he remarked. “If you really
don’t want to sell, all right, but if you’re merely in a
bargaining mood you might as well bid for the moon as try to put it over a
business man like Sir George here, or myself.” He added, by way of
polite afterthought: “Or Brown.”

Palescu smiled. “You Englishmen are no doubt the cleverest men in
the world.” He glanced at Parceval and then at Brown, and Brown knew
suddenly, with a further thrill, that the youth not only disliked Parceval
but knew that he, Brown, disliked him too.

Finally, over an hour later, a compromise was reached at six thousand five
hundred. While Parceval was writing the cheque, Brown occupied the silence by
chattering: “When my son was your age—he’s dead
now—he was rather like you in some ways—having bright ideas and
risking his life over them. In the end he lost his life. Flying,
yes—twenty years ago, in the pioneer days. …” But Palescu was
hardly listening; he was prudently reading through the document that Parceval
had handed him to sign.

With the transaction complete, the general tension dissolved into a more
festive atmosphere. Brown called for a celebratory bottle of champagne, and
there was much more drinking and chattering before the party separated. Brown
was the liveliest of the four. He was quite boyishly elated, and when he bade
goodbye to the Roumanian on the pavement outside, he shook hands with much
fervour. “Well, if you’re ever in England again you must let me
know,” he said. He could not, at that stupid moment of farewell, think
of anything warmer to say, though he felt it; and with a fussy little gesture
he searched in his pocket and reciprocated Palescu’s first
intimacy—a visiting-card.

A few days later, as he motored to Liverpool through the pleasant Cheshire
countryside, he was still free from all misgiving. Parceval had lent him the
necessary money, and he had had quite a cheery interview at the bank on the
previous day. Moreover, his wife and daughter were due to arrive on the
Berengaria during the late afternoon, and he was warmly looking forward to
meeting them.

A lovely blue-golden day, with the fields and villages shining with
autumn. Just the time for welcome and home-coming.

When, towards sunset, he stood on the landing-stage smoking a cigar and
watching the liner curve importantly into the estuary, his heart pulsed
happily within him. Wife, girl, money, the future— everything looked
all right again. He found it easy to think so, and that the world, after his
recent bad dreams about it, wasn’t really so bad. Even Parceval
wasn’t. He didn’t care for the man a great deal, but he had to
admit he was a smart fellow.

The club-house at Santa Katerina followed the Amerind
tradition of pink adobe; it stood on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the
milk-blue Pacific, and from the long, round-arched sun-balcony the
millionaires’ yachts and speed-boats could be observed in all their
toy-like diversions. On the landward side a path led along a steep arroyo
through eucalyptus woods to a Greek temple and a so-called natarium, both of
white marble and designed in the classic Ionic style. The whole estate, which
included an eighteen-hole golf-course and a bathing beach by the sea and
tennis-courts and a landing-ground for aeroplanes, belonged to an exclusive
and expensive country club which in the spring of 1929 had exuded dollars,
both corporately and individually; and the result, after commissioning an
architect of genius, was principally the club- house. It rose up like some
fantastic dream-palace amidst the white yucca blossom, at sunset rosy-red and
rather unbelievable against the background of sky and hills. That, of course,
was if one approached it from the sea. From the land, however, it displayed a
peculiarity; part of the central block, to some extent obscured by trees, was
still unfinished, so that a gap of naked steelwork intervened between the two
ten-storey wings. This gap was a legacy of the Wall Street crash in the
autumn of 1929, and the consequent discovery that even the purses of
film-magnates and realtors were not quite bottomless.

But, even so, the club-house at Santa Katerina stood for the peak
achievement of a civilisation; or perhaps for a ripeness which by the summer
of 1931 had turned to over-ripeness. There had been rumblings and mutterings
from afar, recorded on that seismograph of calamity, the ticker-tape; for
instance, Sylvia Seydel, the movie-actress, was supposed to have dropped a
million dollars in General Motors stock. So much was probably no more than
she had earned during the past two years, but she was over thirty now;
salaries were being cut; younger rivals were coming along; the future was
less reckonable than had seemed likely. Still, as she walked from the
club-house to the natarium on a perfect June afternoon, an observer would not
have sensed her misgivings. That little procession—the film-star with
her retinue of friends, secretaries, and miscellaneous
hangers-on—approached the swimming-pool through the heavily scented
woods, splitting the sunshine as it fell in slabs across the path, and
stirring the green dusk with their talk and laughter. But there was another
sound, a murmur that swelled into a roar as they reached the sun-drenched
colonnade; voices threaded into pattern by the ribbon-melody of jazz; Santa
Katerina en fęte for a water-party. Sylvia had seen such spectacles many
times before—far too often for her to be impressed particularly on
this occasion; yet it was, in fact, a scene of almost breath-taking
loveliness. The architect who had chosen just that spot for a swimming-pool,
and had made his employers pay for white Carrara marble, had shown mystic
insight; there was a pagan rapture in the poise of the slim columns reflected
lambently in the water; to be alone there, at midnight under a high moon,
would have put one amid the ghosts of dead Hellas. Yet to be there in the
throng that afternoon was more—it was perhaps to see Hellas come to
life again.