The Moneychangers

by Arthur Hailey

  It was during that time—the thought of it shamed him now—he had suggested they divorce. Celia had seemed shattered and he let the subject drop, hoping things would get better, but they hadn’t.

  Only at length, when the thought occurred to him almost casually that Celia might need psychiatric help, and he had sought it, had the truth of her malady become clear. For a while, anguish and concern revived his love. But, by then, it was too late.

  At times he speculated: Perhaps it had always been too late. Perhaps not even greater kindness, understanding, would have helped. But he would never know. He could never nurture the conviction he had done his best and, because of it, could never shed the guilt which haunted him.

  “Everybody seems to be thinking about money—spending it, borrowing it, lending it, though I guess that’s not unusual and what banks are for. A sad thing happened yesterday, though. Ben Rosselli, our president, told us he was dying. He called a meeting and …”

  Alex went on, describing the scene in the boardroom and reactions afterward, then abruptly stopped.

  Celia had begun to tremble. Her body was rocking back and forth. A wail, half moan, escaped her.

  Had his mention of the bank upset her?—the bank into which he had thrown his energies, widening the gulf between them. It was another bank then, the Federal Reserve, but to Celia one bank was like another. Or was it his reference to Ben Rosselli?

  Ben would die soon. How many years before Celia died? Many, perhaps.

  Alex thought: she could easily outlive him, could live on like this.

  She looked like an animal!

  His pity evaporated. Anger seized him; the angry impatience which had marred their marriage. “For Christ’s sake, Celia, control yourself!”

  Her trembling and the moans continued.

  He hated her! She wasn’t human any more, yet she remained the barrier between himself and a full life.

  Getting up, Alex savagely punched a bell push on the wall, knowing it would summon help. In the same motion he strode to the door to leave.

  And looked back. At Celia—his wife whom once he had loved; at what she had become; at the gulf between them they would never bridge. He paused, and wept.

  Wept with pity, sadness, guilt, his momentary anger spent, the hatred washed away.

  He returned to the studio couch and, on his knees before her, begged, “Celia, forgive me! Oh, God, forgive me!”

  He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, heard the young nurse’s voice. “Mr. Vandervoort, I think you should go now.”

  “Water or soda, Alex?”

  “Soda.”

  Dr. McCartney took a bottle from the small refrigerator in his consulting room and used an opener to flip the top. He poured into a glass which already contained a generous slug of scotch and added ice. He brought the glass to Alex, then poured the rest of the soda, without liquor, for himself.

  For a big man—Tim McCartney was six feet five with a football player’s chest and shoulders, and enormous hands—his movements were remarkably deft. Though the clinic director was young, in his mid-thirties Alex guessed, his manner and voice seemed older and his brushed-back brown hair was graying at the temples. Probably because of a lot of sessions like this, Alex thought. He sipped the scotch gratefully.

  The paneled room was softly lighted, its color tones more muted than the corridors and other rooms outside. Bookshelves and racks for journals filled one wall, the works of Freud, Adler, Jung, and Rogers prominent.

  Alex was still shaken as the result of his meeting with Celia, yet in a way the horror of it seemed unreal.

  Dr. McCartney returned to a chair at his desk and swung it to face the sofa where Alex sat.

  “I should report to you first that your wife’s general diagnosis remains the same—schizophrenia, catatonic type. You’ll remember we’ve discussed this in the past.”

  “I remember all the jargon, yes.”

  “I’ll try to spare you any more.”

  Alex swirled the ice in his glass and drank again; the scotch had warmed him. “Tell me about Celia’s condition now.”

  “You may find this hard to accept, but your wife, despite the way she seems, is relatively happy.”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “I find that hard to believe.”

  The psychiatrist insisted quietly, “Happiness is relative, for all of us. What Celia has is security of a kind, a total absence of responsibility or the need to relate to others. She can withdraw into herself as much as she wants or needs to. The physical posture she’s been taking lately, which you saw, is the classic fetal position. It comforts her to assume it, though for her physical good, we try to dissuade her when we can.”

  “Comforting or not,” Alex said, “the essence is that after having had the best possible treatment for four years, my wife’s condition is still deteriorating.” He eyed the other man directly. “Is that right or wrong?”

  “Unfortunately it’s right.”

  “Is there any reasonable chance of a recovery, ever, so that Celia could lead a normal or near-normal life?”

  “In medicine there are always possibilities …”

  “I said reasonable chance.”

  Dr. McCartney sighed and shook his head. “No.”

  “Thank you for a plain answer. Alex paused, then went on, “As I understand it, Celia has become—I believe the word is ‘institutionalized.’ She’s withdrawn from the human race. She neither knows nor cares about anything outside herself.”

  “You’re right about being institutionalized,” the psychiatrist said, “but you’re wrong about the rest. Your wife has not totally withdrawn, at least not yet. She still knows a little about what’s going on outside. She also is aware she has a husband, and we’ve talked about you. But she believes you’re entirely capable of taking care of yourself without her help.”

  “So she doesn’t worry about me?”

  “On the whole, no.”

  “How would she feel if she learned her husband had divorced her and remarried?”

  Dr. McCartney hesitated, then said, “It would represent a total break from the little outside contact she has remaining. It might drive her over the brink into a totally demented state.”

  In the ensuing silence Alex leaned forward, covering his face with his hands. Then he removed them. His head came up. With a trace of irony, he said, “I guess if you ask for plain answers you’re apt to get them.”

  The psychiatrist nodded, his expression serious. “I paid you a compliment, Alex, in assuming you meant what you said. I would not have been as frank with everyone. Also, I should add, I could be wrong.”

  “Tim, what the hell does a man do?”

  “Is that rhetoric or a question?”

  “It’s a question. You can put it on my bill.”

  “There’ll be no bill tonight.” The younger man smiled briefly, then considered. “You ask me: What does a man do in a circumstance like yours? Well, to begin, he finds out all he can—just as you have done. Then he makes decisions based on what he thinks is fair and best for everyone, including himself. But while he’s making up his mind he ought to remember two things. One is, if he’s a decent man, his own guilt feelings are probably exaggerated because a well-developed conscience has a habit of punishing itself more harshly than it need. The other is that few people are qualified for sainthood; the majority of us aren’t born with the equipment.”

  Alex asked, “And you won’t go further? You won’t be more specific?”

  Dr. McCartney shook his head. “Only you can make the decision. Those last few paces each of us walks alone.”

  The psychiatrist glanced at his watch and got up from his chair. Moments later they shook hands and said good night.

  Outside the Remedial Center, Alex’s limousine and driver—the car’s motor running, its interior warm and comfortable—were waiting.

  10

  “Without doubt,” Margot Bracken declared, “that is one crappy collection of chicanery and damn lies.”
r />   She was looking down, elbows aggressively out, hands on slender waist, her small but resolute head thrust forward. She was provocative physically, Alex Vandervoort thought—a “slip of a girl” with pleasingly sharp features, chin jutting and aggressive, thinnish lips, though the mouth was sensual over-all. Margot’s eyes were her strongest feature; they were large, green, flecked with gold, the lashes thick and long. At this moment those eyes were glaring. Her anger and force-fulness stirred him sexually.

  The object of Margot’s censure was the assortment of advertising proofs for Keycharge credit cards which Alex had brought home from FMA, and which now were spread out on the living-room rug of his apartment. Margot’s presence and vitality were providing, also, a needed contrast to Alex’s ordeal of several hours ago.

  He told her, “I had an idea, Bracken, you might not like those advertising themes.”

  “Not like them! I despise them.”

  “Why?”

  She pushed back her long chestnut hair in a familiar though unconscious gesture. An hour ago Margot had kicked off her shoes and now stood, all five-foot-two of her, in stockinged feet.

  “All right, look at that!” She pointed to the announcement which began: WHY WAIT? YOU CAN AFFORD TOMORROW’S DREAM TODAY! “What it is, is dishonest bullshit—high-powered, aggressive selling of debt—concocted to entrap the gullible. Tomorrow’s dream, for anyone, is sure to be expensive. That’s why it’s a dream. And no one can afford it unless they have the money now or are certain of it soon.”

  “Shouldn’t people make their own judgments about that?”

  “No!—not the people who’ll be influenced by that perverted advertising, the ones you’re trying to influence. They’re the unsophisticated, the easily persuadable, those who believe that what they see in print is true. I know. I get plenty of them as clients in my law practice. My unprofitable law practice.”

  “Maybe those aren’t the kind of people who have our Keycharge cards.”

  “Dammit, Alex, you know that isn’t true! The most unlikely people nowadays have credit cards because you all have pushed them so hard. The only thing you haven’t done is hand cards out at street corners, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you started that soon.”

  Alex grinned. He enjoyed these debating sessions with Margot and liked to keep them fueled. “I’ll tell our people to think about it, Bracken.”

  “What I wish other people would think about is that Shylocking eighteen percent interest all bank credit cards charge.”

  “We’ve been over that before.”

  “Yes, we have. And I’ve never heard an explanation which satisfied me.”

  He countered sharply, “Maybe you don’t listen.” Enjoyable in debate or not, Margot had a knack of getting under his skin. Occasionally their debates developed into fights.

  “I’ve told you that credit cards are a packaged commodity, offering a range of services,” Alex insisted. “If you add those services together, our interest rate is not excessive.”

  “It’s as excessive as hell if you’re the one who’s paying.”

  “Nobody has to pay. Because nobody has to borrow.”

  “I can hear you. You don’t have to shout.”

  “All right.”

  He took a breath, determined not to let this discussion get out of hand. Besides, while disputing some of Margot’s views, which in economics, politics, and everything else were left of center, he found his own thinking aided by her forthrightness and keen lawyer’s mind. Margot’s practice, too, brought her contacts which he lacked directly—among the city’s poor and underprivileged for whom the bulk of her legal work was done.

  He asked, “Another cognac?”

  “Yes, please.”

  It was close to midnight. A log fire, blazing earlier, had burned low in the hearth of the snug room in the small, sumptuous bachelor suite.

  An hour and a half ago they had had a late dinner here, delivered from a service restaurant on the apartment block’s main floor. An excellent Bordeaux—Alex’s choice, Château Gruaud-Larose ’66—accompanied the meal.

  Apart from the area where the Keycharge advertising had been spread out, the apartment lights were low.

  When he had replenished their brandy glasses, Alex returned to the argument. “If people pay their credit-card bills when they get them, there is no interest charge.”

  “You mean pay their bills in full.”

  “Right.”

  “But how many do? Don’t most credit-card users pay that convenient ‘minimum balance’ that the statements show?”

  “A good many pay the minimum, yes.”

  “And carry the rest forward as debt—which is what you bankers really want them to do. Isn’t that so?”

  Alex conceded, “Yes, it’s true. But banks have to make a profit somewhere.”

  “I lay awake nights,” Margot said, “worrying if banks are making enough profit.”

  As he laughed, she went on seriously, “Look, Alex, thousands of people who shouldn’t are piling up long-term debts by using credit cards. Often it’s to buy trivia—drugstore items, phonograph records, bits of hardware, books, meals, other minor things; and they do it partly through unawareness, partly because small amounts of credit are ridiculously easy to obtain. And those small amounts, which ought to be paid by cash, add up to crippling debts, burdening imprudent people for years ahead.”

  Alex cradled his brandy glass in both hands to warm it, sipped, then rose and tossed a fresh log on the fire. He protested, “You’re worrying too much, and the problem isn’t that big.”

  And yet, he admitted to himself, some of what Margot had said made sense. Where once—as an old song put it—miners “owed their souls to the company store,” a new breed of chronic debtor had arisen, naively mortgaging future life and income to a “friendly neighborhood bank.” One reason was that credit cards had replaced, to a large extent, small loans. Where individuals used to be dissuaded from excessive borrowing, now they made their own loan decisions—often unwisely. Some observers, Alex knew, believed the system had downgraded American morality.

  Of course, doing it the credit-card way was much cheaper for a bank; also, a small loan customer, borrowing through the credit-card route, paid substantially higher interest than on a conventional loan. The total interest the bank received, in fact, was often as high as twenty-four percent since merchants who honored credit cards paid their own additional bank levy, ranging from two to six percent.

  These were reasons why banks such as First Mercantile American were relying on credit-card business to swell their profits, and they would increasingly in future years. True, initial losses with all credit-card schemes had been substantial; as bankers were apt to put it, “we took a bath.” But the same bankers were convinced that a bonanza was close at hand which would outstrip in profitability most other kinds of bank business.

  Another thing bankers realized was that credit cards were a necessary way station on the route to EFTS—the Electronic Funds Transfer System which, within a decade and a half, would replace the present avalanche of banking paper and make existing checks and passbooks as obsolete as the Model T.

  “That’s enough,” Margot said. “The two of us are beginning to sound like a shareholders meeting.” She came to him and kissed him fully on the lips.

  The heat of their argument earlier had already aroused him, as skirmishes with Margot so often did. Their first encounter had begun that way. Sometimes, it seemed, the angrier both became, the larger their physical passion for each other grew. After a while he murmured, “I declare the shareholders meeting closed.”

  “Well …” Margot eased away and regarded him mischievously. “There is some unfinished business—that advertising, darling. You’re not really going to let it go out to the public the way it is?”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t believe I am.”

  The Keycharge advertising was a strong sell—too strong—and he would use his authority to exercise a veto in the morning
. He realized he had intended to, anyway. Margot had merely confirmed his own opinion of this afternoon.

  The fresh log he had added to the fire was alight and crackling. They sat on the rug before the fireplace, savoring its warmth, watching the rising tongues of flame.

  Margot leaned her head against Alex’s shoulder. She said softly, “For a stuffy old moneychanger, you’re really not too bad.”

  He put his arm around her. “I love you, too, Bracken.”

  “Really and truly? Banker’s honor?”

  “I swear by the prime rate.”

  “Then love me now.” She began to take off her clothes.

  He whispered with amusement, “Here?”

  “Why not?”

  Alex sighed happily. “Why not indeed?”

  Soon after, he had a sense of release and joy in contrast to the anguish of the day.

  And later still, they held each other, sharing the warmth from their bodies and the fire. At last Margot stirred. “I’ve said it before and I say it again: You’re a delicious lover.”

  “And you’re okay, Bracken.” He asked her, “Will you stay the night?”

  She often did, just as Alex frequently stayed at Margot’s apartment. At times it seemed foolish to maintain their two establishments, but he had delayed the step of merging them, wanting first to marry Margot if he could.

  “I’ll stay for a while,” she said, “but not all night. Tomorrow I have to be in court early.”

  Margot’s court appearances were frequent and in the aftermath of such a case they had met a year and a half ago. Shortly before that first encounter Margot had defended a half dozen demonstrators who clashed with police during a rally urging total amnesty for Vietnam deserters. Her spirited defense, not only of the demonstrators but of their cause, attracted wide attention. So did her victory—dismissal of all charges—at the trial’s end.

  A few days later, at a milling cocktail party given by Edwina D’Orsey and her husband Lewis, Margot was surrounded by admirers and critics. She had come to the party alone. So had Alex, who had heard of Margot, though only later did he discover she was a first cousin to Edwina. Sipping the D’Orseys’ excellent Schramsberg, he had listened for a while, then joined forces with the critics. Soon after, others stood back, leaving debate to Alex and Margot, squared off like verbal gladiators.