Contango (Ill Wind)

by James Hilton

  His fluency suggested that the specifications had grown familiar to him by repetition, and Brown smilingly interrupted: “What I should like to know is the degree of skill required in the person doing this steering job?”

  “No more than in driving a car.”

  “Some of us prefer a chauffeur, even for that.”

  Palescu shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, but the modern man—”

  “You think he’s likely to take kindly to your aluminium cigar, eh? I doubt it. Personally, I’d rather lose half an hour and get carried on to Le Bourget, or wherever it is—assuming I were compelled to go up in the air at all.”

  “Nevertheless, sir, I believe it would revolutionise air-travel. I estimate that if a gyrector were released from an aeroplane over Croydon, it could land on any fairly large London roof within ten minutes.”

  “Really?” Brown proffered his gold cigarette-case and then a match. He was, in a sort of way, enjoying himself. How infinitely charming was this spectacle of youthful ambition, and what a tender cruelty there was in deflating it! “How would the poor fellow inside be spending his time during those ten minutes?” he continued, banteringly. “Would he be sitting or standing or what? Kneeling, of course, would be most appropriate.”

  “He would be lying comfortably face forwards—”

  “On his stomach? I wouldn’t call that comfortable. Besides, it would crease all his clothes. You can’t seriously expect any man over fifty to want to do gymnastic exercises in mid-air. Would he be able to see anything?”

  “Oh, yes. He’d have to see in order to steer.”

  “Ah, I’d forgotten those gyroscopic controls you mentioned. And also the little two-stroke engine puffing away at his heels. He couldn’t smoke, I suppose?”

  “I’m afraid not. Though no doubt—”

  “You might add a special smoking compartment later on, perhaps?” Brown began to chuckle, and was pleased when Palescu joined in the laugh against himself. “I don’t think you’re taking me very seriously, sir,” said the latter.

  “Well, well, my dear boy, you mustn’t mind if I concentrate on a few flaws in your otherwise brilliant idea. And this estimate of yours, about landing on a roof in ten minutes—what’s it based on? Tangents and decimals and what not, I suppose, all worked out on paper. There haven’t yet been any practical demonstrations, have there?”

  “No, because I can’t find the money. But the plans are all complete—I have them in my pocket now—”

  “Then there’s always this consolation—Providence, by keeping you hard up, is probably sparing your life.”

  “Maybe, sir, but I hope I shall soon find someone who holds a different opinion. My uncle’s firm would have financed me, if times hadn’t been so difficult. I’m now trying to interest a French aeronautical firm—that’s why I’m on my way to Paris.”

  “Good! I wish you luck—joking apart, I do sincerely. And even if this idea of yours doesn’t come to anything, don’t despair—you’re young and you’ll have many more chances.” Brown paid his bill, adding an adequate but not extravagant tip, and then stared through the window. “Chaumont, wasn’t that? We ought to be in Paris by five. … Well, good-bye—it’s been pleasant to have a talk.”

  Palescu shook hands, and Brown responded very cordially. Charming youth, he reflected, as he made his way back along the swaying corridors to his own first-class compartment, and he further reflected, almost with amazement, that his own boy, had he lived, would now be in his middle thirties.

  Brown stayed in Paris overnight and continued the journey to London the following day. He took a room at his club in Piccadilly. There was no particular hurry to go on to his home in Cheshire, for his wife and daughter were away, the household staff were not expecting him yet, and the house would probably be in the hands of decorators.

  At the club he met Mathers, one of his co-directors. They shook hands and took coffee together in the lounge. “Yes, I’m not sorry to be back in some ways,” Brown said, “though I do rather wish it hadn’t been my first visit to Italy. I’m bound to have collected a few unfortunate impressions.”

  Mathers nodded sympathetically. He was a shrewd man-about-city and a great friend of Sir George Parceval, the chairman of the company; so that he knew that Brown had been to Italy after some money which, for all the likelihood there was of extracting it, might as well have been down the throat of Vesuvius. “Any chance of salvage from the wreck?” Mathers queried.

  Brown shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Looks as if Parceval will have to wipe the whole thing off as a bad debt.”

  “How much does it amount to—roughly?”

  “Between fifty and sixty thousand pounds.”

  “I say… he won’t like that. Why can’t they pay?”

  “The slump has hit them. They’re old customers of ours—quite honest. People give you the same answer everywhere—the crisis; it seems to be the universal reason for everything.”

  Brown felt irritable as he discussed the matter; it was as if there were in the very atmosphere, of Mayfair no less than of Turin, some noxious element which he could not dispel, combat, or even identify. Changing the subject, he went on: “I took a short holiday in Switzerland on my way back.”

  “Ah, that must have been more cheerful. Where did you stay?”

  “Interlaken, to begin with. My first experience of really high mountains. Of course, when I was in India I often saw the Himalayas, but somehow they don’t really count—they might be a theatre back- cloth for all the use they are to the ordinary person. But Switzerland has tamed everything so magnificently—railways and funiculars to take you everywhere and hotels to give you whatever you want in most unlikely places—yes, I found it all very enjoyable. I should have stayed there longer, only a rather odd business happened that spoilt things just a bit towards the end, and made me leave suddenly.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll laugh when I tell you. Some woman—a guide to one of those tourist-parties they have—apparently mistook me for somebody else and fairly pestered the life out of me. My hotel happened to be opposite hers, and I simply daren’t show myself without her dashing out to talk. One awful day she got into the same train with me going to the Jungfrau mountain—that’s a wonderful trip, by the way—and never stopped chattering for seven hours. Really, I’m not exaggerating. In the end, I left Interlaken and went up to Mürren, chiefly to get away from her, and bless me if she didn’t follow me there. Then it turned out she’d thought I was someone else—or so she said—somebody named Gathergood, who’d been a British Agent somewhere or other—I think she was probably a little off her head, if you ask me.”

  “You don’t mean the Gathergood who got into trouble over the Cuava outbreak a few months ago?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t always see things in the papers. What about him?”

  “There was some bother with the natives, and he funked pretty badly and caused the death of a white planter—that’s roughly what I seem to remember, though I wasn’t very interested in the case.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem much of a compliment to be mistaken for him, then. Anyhow, I could see there’d be no holiday worth while if I stopped anywhere within reach of the woman, so I packed up and came away before my time. Odd sort of thing to have happened.”

  “Not so odd as you might think. The world is full of queer women. Did I ever tell you about the one who accosted me once in—”

  Mather’s stories were long and strictly conformable to type. They invariably depicted him as the object of perfervid passion on the part of some female, a passion whose fruits he had somewhat nonchalantly gathered, but only after a most fastidious scrutiny as to ripeness. There was a ripeness, indeed, about Mathers himself. Short in stature, with chubby cheeks, a completely bald head, and a rather quick-firing smile, his nickname amongst his business associates was unprintable, but implied a certain popularity. He was the type that rotary clubs offer to the world as ambassadors of goodwill towards men, and
the fact that he made, on the whole, more friends than enemies may perhaps be held to justify the choice. Brown liked him well enough.

  Mathers said, finishing his yarn a quarter of an hour later: “So, you see, Brown, that kind of woman is fairly common everywhere. If she’d been pretty it might have been rather fun for you.”

  “She wasn’t pretty.”

  “Well, anyhow, she gave you a memorable experience—that’s something to have happened on a holiday. I don’t suppose you met anyone else who’ll stick in your mind as well, eh?”

  “Probably not. There were some fellows at Interlaken whom I got to know, but I didn’t find them very interesting. Quite the pleasantest person I did meet was a young Roumanian on the train to Paris—a really delightful youth who was on his way to try and sell an invention to a French aeroplane firm. Had an English mother, he said, so he spoke English perfectly. And he was full of that same cheeky sort of optimism that—that my own boy used to have. You never met him, did you? He was just like that—had the most amazing ideas that weren’t of any practical use, yet he always believed quite firmly that they were going to make his fortune and turn the world upside down.”

  “What was this Roumanian’s bright idea?”

  “Oh, what he called a ‘gyrector’ to land passengers from aeroplanes.” Brown gave a sketchy and slightly satirical exposition. “Perfectly mad, of course. I should think the Frenchmen will have a pretty good laugh over it, though they won’t be able to help being charmed by the fellow personally.”

  “He didn’t try to get you to take it up, I suppose?”

  “Naturally, I was careful not to let him guess who I was.”

  They both laughed and then went on talking about other matters.

  Not that Brown was anyone of any special importance. He was merely the head of the firm of Brown and Company, recently absorbed in Amalgamated Engineers, Limited. Brown and Company was quite an ancient concern of its kind, having been founded by an ancestral Brown at the beginning of the nineteenth century; its detailed history, indeed, would provide a useful epitome of the Industrial Age itself. Brown the First had begun as a workman in the famous firm of Boulton and Watt; with initiative to launch out independently and the luck to do so at the right moment and on a rising market, he had ended as a fairly rich proprietor of a small but prosperous business. Throughout the Victorian era that prosperity had developed, not by leaps and bounds, but with an intermittent progress that made the privately-held shares a more acceptably gilt-edged investment year by year. After 1900, when the firm became a public company, profits had fallen off a little, but during the War years munitions contracts had made Brown little less than half a millionaire. Then had come the slump, the long years of deepening depression, until in 1928 he had met Sir George Parceval and been induced to join up with a group of similar companies to form the merger-combine, Amalgamated Engineers, Limited. That promises of a quick and automatic return to prosperity had not been fulfilled was due, no doubt, to the world-crisis, against which even a Parceval could not contend.

  This Stuart Brown, great-great-grandson of the founder, was not much like that fiercely individualist pioneer. By the time it reaches a fifth generation, a dynasty usually manages to produce some divergence from original type, and Brown the Fifth was certainly divergent. In appearance he was tall, slim, clean- shaven and blue-eyed; a flatterer might even have added, distinguished-looking. But a detractor could equally have specified a forehead that was not quite decisive, and a general air of casualness that just escaped the excuse of elegance. Born a Northerner, well educated in the usual public-school tradition, and of intellect sufficient not to have absorbed that tradition too thoroughly, Brown was a likeable and even interesting personality, but he wore an almost constant air of observing life rather than participating in it, and his frequent pose of being the hard-headed business man was merely amusing to his friends. His tastes were quiet; he liked his garden, and music, and certain kinds of books; he did not care for sport, and was bored by much of the ordinary routine of pleasure-seeking. He was, in fact, too lazy to be fashionable in these matters. But he had a discriminating affection for good clothes, good food, good wine, good farming, good gramophone records, a good cigar, and, amongst men, good company. Women bored him as a rule, though he was devoted to his wife. She was an American of an old and quite poor Virginian family; he had somewhat spoilt her, and their one surviving child, though pretty, was both snobbish and extravagant. Both wife and daughter usually spent the summer months across the Atlantic, and during such periods Brown could always fall back into club-life and bachelorhood with a scarcely perceptible bump.

  It was since their departure in June that everything had seemed to go wrong. Even now, after his return from Italy, he was only slowly beginning to discover how wrong they were, and when he took his seat at the long mahogany table for the September board-meeting, his face expressed no greater concern than a general peevishness at the continuing malaise of the world. He felt rather tired and uncomfortable, but then he always did at those board-meetings. The sleek panelled room in the palatial offices in Finsbury Square struck such a different note from the one he had been used to in pre-amalgamation days, when he and a few friends had settled Brown and Company’s affairs by means of a weekly gossip in the works-office at Stockport. Those cosier and more intimate scenes were linked in his mind with prosperity, while this cold, Persian-carpeted magnificence was a background to constantly expanding trouble. In some ways he wished he had never joined the combine; it seemed pointless, anyhow, to attend the meetings, for he rarely spoke or made suggestions. Between a dozen and a score other directors sat with him, and he scarcely knew all of them yet by sight, much less personally. They had all been brought in like himself; heads of individual firms, they had yielded to the blandishments of Parceval’s talk about rationalisation, with the perhaps appropriate result that their only function nowadays seemed to be to listen to Parceval and vote as he told them.

  Not that Brown distrusted Parceval. On the contrary, he felt towards him an admiration that positively throve on their private antipathies. Sir George was most things that Brown was not. He was brisk, intense, and possessive; always immaculately turned out, he presided at board-meetings like the high- priest of some excessively stately ritual. He knew more about finance than engineering, and his arrangements of the combine’s balance-sheet had certainly put it beyond the comprehension of most people except accountants. Brown was hopelessly fogged; he had long since ceased to wonder how much he himself was worth, except that he knew he had exchanged Government securities for shares in the combine—a bad bargain, as revealed by 1930 stock- market valuations. But if he ever expressed misgiving, Parceval would say, in that boomingly bland way of his: “My dear Brown, the combine has saved you already. If you’d stayed out of it, it would have undercut and bankrupted you by now.” Which seemed to Brown a rather depressing argument.

  During that first board-meeting after his return, Brown had as much of a tiff with Parceval as was possible between two persons of such differing temperaments. It arose out of the Italian debts which Brown had failed to collect. Brown asserted that the debtors, though unable to pay, were perfectly honest; Furnival appeared doubtful.

  “But damme, man,” Brown exclaimed, heatedly, “they’ve been clients of ours for thirty years, and their fathers before them!”

  To which Parceval responded: “They owe us fifty-six thousand pounds, and it was on your recommendation that we allowed them credit to such an amount. I don’t think I need say any more.”

  And Brown, after that, both looked and felt like a rebuked schoolboy.

  Parceval, however, had one more thing to say that was of importance; an announcement that the current year’s preference dividend would have to be passed. Brown, hardly calm after his previous outburst, was again indignant. “Surely—” he began, and then found that he could think of nothing to express his feelings but another reference to history. “For half a century Brown’s have pai
d the dividends on their six per cent preferences. Never have they defaulted once! And the shareholders were induced to exchange into the combine’s seven per cents by being assured that their dividends were going to be even safer! It’s scandalous!”

  “The money cannot be paid,” answered Parceval coldly, and a few of the other directors, whose companies could not boast of such a record as Brown’s, supported him. “With large sums of money owing to us, we are bound to protect ourselves, and we shall do so in future, I hope, by greater care in the extension of credits to customers overseas.”

  Brown subsided again. “Oh, have it your own way, then,” he muttered, under his breath. Parceval always did have his own way, anyhow.

  After the meeting, however, the great man seemed anxious to make any necessary amends. He accompanied Brown in the lift and to a taxi, chatting affably meanwhile. “I was glad to hear you had a good time in Switzerland,” boomed the voice that had squashed so many awkward interruptions at shareholders’ meetings. “Mathers was telling me. He also said you met a young Roumanian on the way home—chap with some kind of aeroplane gadget he wanted to sell— wasn’t that it?”

  Brown forced himself to explain the matter briefly.

  “Well,” answered Parceval, “I’m connected with a company that manufactures aeroplanes, you know, and I don’t want to miss anything good.”

  “I don’t think his idea was at all good. Quite impracticable, it seemed to me.”

  “MIGHT have something in it, though—you never can be sure with these inventor fellows. I don’t know if you could get in touch with him easily, but if he cared to call at my office in London I wouldn’t mind hearing him talk.”