The Rich Man’s House

by Andrew McGahan

  The following day produced the same clouds and rain as the two previous, but in the early afternoon the Wanderer steered south to the endmost cape of the island, and circling around it, entered the Wheel’s western waters. This, as everyone knew, was the famous side of the mountain, the side where all the history had been made, where Cook had landed, and where the great climbing expeditions of the thirties and the fifties and the sixties had tried and failed to scale the peak, before the final epic victory, Walter Richman’s victory, in 1974.

  It was also, the guidebook said, the more physically dramatic side of the island. Oh, yes, the eastern face was spectacular in its own right (at least when it was not hidden by cloud). But because of the curve of the Wheel’s great crescent, bent back like a giant bow, the flanks of the East Face receded from the viewer, making this aspect of the mountain seem austere and remote and chilling.

  The West Face, however, was another matter. The guidebook, with a reverent tone, promised passengers ‘a grand stadium of nature’ and ‘a titanic stage set for the drama of history’. And for all the hyperbole, the book for once was right.

  Now, as the Wanderer forged forwards, the great arc of the Wheel seemed to enclose the ship rather than recede from it. The mountain’s upper heights remained hidden, but even so, the great wall rising to the base of the clouds and curving in a half-circle forty-five kilometres across was a profound sight. The crescent enfolded an immense space of ocean, dark and wild, and yet the water might have been the sands of an enormous arena, roofed overhead by the vast canopy of the clouds.

  In the centre of this gargantuan amphitheatre, just visible through the sea mist, rose a lonely hump of land, from which a single mount rose like a pillar to meet the clouds. This was Theodolite Isle, the Wheel’s sole companion in all the wilds of the southern sea, and the only habitable land for a thousand miles in any direction.

  It was also home to Walter Richman, and Rita’s destination.

  She studied the isle from her balcony as the ship made its way across the inner sea of the great arc. Rain started to fall again, and it was near freezing out in the open, but she was too intrigued to retreat indoors. The great pillar of stone, she knew, was Observatory Mount. It lofted some two thousand eight hundred metres above the sea, sheer sided and narrow as a finger, and in any other part of the world would have been a wonder in its own right. But here, only a tenth the size of its awesome neighbour, it was reduced almost to insignificance. But only almost.

  And to think, someone had conceived to build their house atop its peak, to claim that lonely grim spire as their home …

  But of Walter Richman’s house as yet nothing could be seen—the cloud cut off the top of the finger as neatly as a scissor stroke. And Rita could almost feel the frustration of the other passengers on the Wanderer, foiled yet again by the overcast skies as they lined the decks and balconies below her, their necks craned upwards in vain.

  The island drew closer. Its eastern shoreline formed a natural harbour, and the waterline within was crowded with port facilities and sheds and one tall crane rising. Behind the harbour the land rose gently, a road winding up the slope, lined with various buildings, some small and anonymous, some larger and industrial looking, and one that appeared for all the world to be a large resort-style hotel. Beyond all this lay the Mount, stabbing upwards abruptly. Not so much like a finger, Rita decided; rather, it was an immense incisor tooth belonging to some great titan long dead and now decaying in the sea, the island formed by the monster’s huge jawbone, and the Mount a last surviving fang.

  The ship was slowing now, swinging its bow towards the mouth of the harbour. The haven—its name was Port Fresne—was not entirely natural, Rita could see now. The enfolding wings of the shorelines had been reinforced and lengthened by walls of concrete and piled stone. Much of the work, to Rita’s untrained eye, seemed only newly finished. Even so, and despite the port and all the buildings, the whole island, with its great prominence of rock towering up, and with the grey sea all about, looked a wild, forsaken place, barely touched by man.

  The Wanderer was at a crawl now as it entered the harbour, the ship far too large seemingly for what was only a small body of water. But doubtless the captain was sure of his room to navigate. Indeed, its bow and aft thrusters churning up froth, the Wanderer now performed a stately pirouette of some ten minutes’ duration to turn about on its axis, and then slip slowly sideways to come up flush against the one dock in the port that was long enough, just barely, to host it.

  Back when all this was being organised, Rita had at first assumed that the Wanderer would merely stand off from the isle while a launch took her ashore. But it had been explained to her that the seas were usually too rough outside the harbour to safely bring a launch alongside, meaning that the ship must enter the port and dock. But she wasn’t to worry, the docking would be purely a routine procedure.

  Now, however, having watched it all, and sensing the tension about the ship, Rita could tell that this was not routine at all. It had been a challenge of navigation. And the mortification grew in her at the enormity of so much bother for her sake—not just this docking, but the whole trip, the tens of thousands of dollars wasted to free up her cabin, the diversion of the ship from its usual route, the interference in the lives of its thousands of passengers, all of it just to deliver her.

  What did that say about her host? What kind of person arranged all this just to ensure the arrival of a single guest? Even for a billionaire, it seemed outrageously extravagant. So why was Walter Richman so determined, so eager, for her to be here?

  Well, she would find out soon enough. He might even be waiting for her right now down on the dock. Uneasiness swept through Rita. She did not feel ready. She looked down over the rail, but from her vantage could not see the gangway immediately below, only the dock workers to the fore and aft, securing the Wanderer’s lines.

  She sighed, and turned back to the suite, just as the knock came on the door: the first officer once more, arrived to escort her down.

  6

  RICHMAN UNAUTHORISED

  Excerpt from feature article by

  Alannis Harris, New York Times, 1989

  … which leads to the question that is often asked: how did Richman become, befitting his name, so damn rich?

  The answer is that he inherited his wealth.

  Yes, he has multiplied that inheritance several times over since, but much of Walter Richman’s money was really earned two generations back, not by his father, multi-millionaire industrialist Berthold Richman, but by his grandfather, Horace Richman, who first lofted the Richman name to prominence.

  Horace himself grew up comfortably middle class in the late nineteenth century, a third-generation American of English heritage, son of a prosperous Pennsylvanian farmer and landholder. Horace, however, had no interest in farming: his tastes were academic. Scholarships to first Andover and then Harvard saw him graduate in law. He never practised, however, moving instead immediately to join the federal civil service. His forty-five-year-long career peaked with the Washington-based posting of Deputy Secretary for Economic Affairs, making him second in rank in the entire Commerce Department, and frequent advisor to several presidents.

  Horace’s son Berthold (always known as Bert) was thus raised in a heady atmosphere of power and influence. He attended the same fine schools and colleges as his father, but was no academic, and had no interest in civil service. Having witnessed many a meeting between his reserved and proper father, acting for the bureaucracy, and a collection of charismatic entrepreneurs, ranging from cashed-up industrialists to flat-broke confidence men, Bert knew which side of the street he wanted to work. He was going to do business, not merely administrate it.

  Of course, it still helped to have a rich dad. In 1935, at age thirty-one, Bert secured a ‘loan’ from his father (the debt was never called in) of thirty thousand dollars, a fortune at the time. He used the money to invest in steel and armaments, with perfect timing, given the loo
ming troubles in Europe. By the end of World War II, having secured several key contracts for the construction of tanks and military transports, Bert had increased his holdings fifty times over. By then he was diversifying into mining, manufacturing, trucking and shipping. And he never slowed down. In 1950, he was one of the richest men in the United States.

  Meanwhile, in 1945, Bert had married wealthy New York socialite Rebecca Wells, daughter of US senator Douglas Wells. Thirty years old, known for her hot temper and heavy drinking, Rebecca had struck up a tempestuous affair with Bert—no angel himself—and when she fell pregnant, the two decided to marry. The child was born five months later, in December 1945, New York City.

  A boy, christened Walter Flagstaff Richman.

  His parents’ marriage was not a success. Their relationship remained permanently stormy, riven by arguments and alcohol and vastly differing ideas about life. By 1950, Bert and Rebecca were living apart, although they never divorced.

  Walter would be their only progeny.

  He resided mostly with his mother throughout his childhood, but seldom in one place, for Rebecca was a devoted worldwide traveller. She was also a keen skier, visiting resorts throughout the USA and Europe, which was how Walter received his introduction to alpine landscapes. He was a talented skier, but as he matured he showed more interest in going up mountains than skiing down them. In the French Alps, at the age of twelve, he began training under some of the great Chamonix climbing guides of the era. When he was fourteen, Walter and his mother flew to Australia to take a scenic cruise to the Wheel. The boy came away awestruck by what he saw, and more enamoured with the idea of climbing than ever.

  Then, in 1960, Rebecca was killed in a skiing accident in Switzerland, and Walter, fifteen years old, was forced to return to New York to live with his father. The two were almost strangers to each other, and the next few years were troubled, for Bert thought it was time his son put aside the jet-set lifestyle and buckled down to economic studies and to learning the family business.

  It soon became plain that Walter indeed had a ready head for finance, but to his father’s disappointment, the youth couldn’t seem to shake the climbing bug. He was forever sneaking away from school or from his father’s office to go rock hopping with other disreputable types who shared the hobby. And on holidays he always managed to arrange, without his father’s knowledge or financial aid, to get himself included on climbing expeditions to more serious mountains in the Rockies or in Alaska.

  His father did all he could to hinder this, but at age eighteen Walter came into his mother’s inheritance—she had left her own considerable fortune solely to him—and now that the youth was privately financed, there was nothing the senior Richman could do to stop his son going climbing full time.

  In the seven years that followed, from 1963 to 1970, Walter relentlessly roamed the world’s high places, bagging peak after peak, sometimes as a solo climber, but more often as part, or occasionally leader, of a team. By the age of twenty-five, from Everest on down, he had knocked off six of the ten highest mountains in the world (the Wheel aside) and his reputation as a climber was spreading white-hot through mountaineering circles.

  But so was another reputation.

  He was not a man liked by his fellow climbers. Indeed, those who climbed closely with him on an expedition seldom did so a second time. That he was arrogant and selfish and ambitious to the point of recklessness was not so much the problem—name a successful climber who wasn’t some, or all, of those things. Nor was it that he was unpleasant company: he could, most claimed, be quite engaging, at least on a short or casual acquaintance.

  The problem was his dishonesty. He was rich, yes, and funded many of the expeditions in which he was involved, but he was also cheap. For instance, he skimped far beyond sensible economy on vital supplies and equipment for the rest of the team, although his own gear was always first rate. He was notoriously slow in paying the wages of camp staff, even the wages of the all-important Sherpas, if in the Himalayas. Verbal agreements were often dishonoured, and even signed contracts were barely respected. And when challenged, he was quick to resort to lawyers and counter-suits.

  More annoying still was his grandstanding. Talented a climber as he undoubtedly was, he seemed compelled to ram that talent down everyone’s throat. He was notoriously greedy in claiming credit on team climbs, forever eager to be seen as the key player in any ascent, even if it had patently been a group effort. Worse, his self-aggrandising extended even to that gravest sin of all in the climbing world: claiming or implying that he had bagged certain peaks or difficult routes which in fact he had not.

  This last habit was particularly baffling, seeing that his real achievements were so impressive anyway. As one climbing companion wrote, having spent a week with him once, blizzard-marooned in a two-man tent in a high camp,

  He was the damndest person to understand. He was always going on about money and about getting ripped off by everyone around him. I suppose it’s because he knows that everyone else knows how rich he is, therefore he thinks people are always trying to take him for a ride. And he wouldn’t shut up about how good a climber he was, how he was better than everyone else. Christ, I knew that he really was a good climber, as good as anyone I ever saw, but it was like he was terrified that, again, because he came from money, no one would take him seriously no matter what he did.

  But worst of all—and you only realised this after spending a lot of time with him—he was boring. Fucking deathly boring. You couldn’t have a conversation with him, you could only sit there and listen. He never listened back. His eyes turned into blank walls if you tried to talk about yourself. A few days locked in with someone like that, you start going mad.

  But for all his flaws, Richman’s money, in the cash-starved world of mountaineering, meant he never lacked for new climbing partners, even when the old ones stormed off in disgust.

  As for romantic partners, he had no lack there either. He was young, wealthy, undeniably handsome, with all the dash and glamour of a daredevil mountaineer, and charming when he wanted to be. But in all those years no long-term relationship developed, and in truth there was hardly the time, so rarely was he away from climbing for any protracted period. His first love remained the mountains.

  Then, in December 1970, Bert Richman, only sixty-six years old, died suddenly of a stroke. The bulk of his estate—controlling interest in a vast collection of industries, plus investment and real-estate portfolios—passed directly to his son.

  Walter, who had been about to start an expedition in the Andes, abandoned his plans and flew to his father’s home in New York. For fully four months he holed up there, consulting with his father’s financial associates and company directors, and also with a legion of more mysterious experts. The business world held its breath: what would the twenty-five year old do with such an immense burden thrust upon him? Could he cope? Or was his father’s empire doomed?

  Walter’s answer, when it came, would horrify the stock market to such a degree that it caused the largest crash of 1971.

  But it would make climbing history.

  7

  ALIGHTING

  It was not Walter Richman who greeted Rita when she stepped off the gangway into steady rain. It was Clara Lang, sheltering under a large umbrella and offering a second to Rita.

  ‘Welcome to Theodolite Isle,’ the major-domo said, her smile lopsided as she raised an eye to the huge ship looming over the dock. ‘I’m glad that you made it without any trouble.’

  ‘I feel ridiculous,’ Rita replied, but glad at least to see a minimally familiar face.

  Clara Lang laughed. She was dressed in a dark grey suit under a black raincoat, with a scarf thrown around her neck against the cold. ‘Why? All those people, they’re dying of envy, and of curiosity too.’

  Rita spared the ship an upward glance and saw a thousand faces staring straight down at her, every rail and balcony packed with people, the expression on every face almost identical. Who is
this woman? Why is she so important that we had to stop here for her?

  She ducked her head. She had been assured by her butler and by the first officer that the staff were under order not to reveal her identity to anyone—and she believed the assurance.

  Still, what if one of those people up there simply recognised her? Oh, it was unlikely, she knew. Even in the days of her minor fame, she had been careful with her public persona, wary of the unstable types she might attract. She had not put her picture on the back of her book, and her online presence had always been minimal. True, there were newspaper photos from the LA incident. But it was all more than a decade past; her clothes, her hair, they were completely different now.

  Still, someone might know her. And she did not want to be known, not in attachment to the Richman name and all its false glamour. She had earned her anonymity, and wanted to keep it.

  ‘Shall we get going?’ asked Clara, with a nod towards a car that was waiting at the rear of the dock. A steward from the ship was already placing Rita’s bags into its boot.

  Rita nodded and they set off under the umbrellas, the rain battering furiously for a moment. There was no one else visible on the dock or among the sheds, other than the workers attending to the Wanderer’s ropes. But away beyond the bulk of the ship, in a sheltered corner of the harbour, two other craft were moored mid-water. One was a squat and functional-looking ocean-going barge. The other was a huge, sleek, luxury yacht, gleaming a splendid gold in the grey light.

  ‘Was that my alternative ride?’ Rita asked as they went, indicating the yacht.

  ‘Obscene looking thing, isn’t it?’ nodded the major-domo. ‘The William Bligh. Mr Richman gave it the name. A joke, I assume. It’s quite new.’ They came to the car, a black luxury sedan, and she pulled open the front passenger door. ‘Believe it or not, that’s the first yacht he’s ever owned. He always thought the idea was ridiculous—whenever he wanted a boat, he just leased one. But now that he lives on an island, it does come in handy to ferry guests to and fro. Along with the helicopter. There’s a pad down here, of course, but the more exciting one is up top.’