Before Eagleberger could answer, Lawrence shook his head and said, ‘No – I don’t want to know. Charles – please go and wait outside for the car with the others. I’ll deal with this.’
Eagleberger, speechless, walked outside like a man in a daze. Sally and George were staring through the plate glass doors. As the doors swung shut, Lawrence turned to the receptionist.
‘Perhaps it would be better if we went into the manager’s office to sort this out?’
‘Of course.’ She was formal, correct, the earlier charm had vanished altogether.
Lawrence walked stiffly, sombrely round the counter into the office. She held the door for him and followed him into the office. He turned to her.
‘YES!’ He spun around and grabbed her and hugged her. ‘You were fantastic!’
She was laughing uncontrollably, tears smudging her makeup. ‘I think it worked, yes?’
‘Did it work? Did it work?! Yes – I think it worked.’ For a while they could hardly stand, let alone talk, so racked were they with laughter. Then Lawrence took out his handkerchief and gently wiped her eyes with it, then his own. He reached for his wallet.
‘We said five thousand Kroner, right? Well, here’s ten – and I’ll probably expense it!’
They both broke out in giggles, but she thrust the notes back to him.
‘No – we said five thousand, plus dinner on your next trip.’ She looked at him playfully. ‘Keep the money – I’ve wanted to do that ever since I started in the hotel business. But I will hold you to the promise of dinner. And let’s expense that!’
Riff-raff
OH GOD, HE thought, at the next stop they’ll probably come into first class. Already he could see that second class was full and the space between compartments was packed with people standing, talking, trying to read newspapers or science-fiction paperbacks. Some were clearly builders, travelling in to work on the City’s huge construction sites. Others were support staff, secretaries, settlement clerks, some of the thousands of worker bees who supported and processed the transactions that were generated by people such as him.
He was generally indifferent towards them, though some he instinctively disliked just by their appearance. A vacant-looking girl with frizzy dyed blonde hair and shocking red lipstick stood chewing gum. Probably thinking about whatever had happened in the pub last night with Wayne or Lee, or about the latest episode of some stupid soap opera. She was certainly too absorbed with her thoughts to look into first-class and notice him.
A youth in a cheap, ill-fitting suit with a ridiculously narrow tie and slicked back hair was staring at her while pretending to read some tabloid crap. Good luck to him. His idea of a good night out was probably ten pints of lager and a curry with the lads. He’d be lost at Glyndebourne or Covent Garden. What a life these people led.
As he relaxed in his seat he found himself comforted by the trappings of his position and success. He wore a dark blue chalk-stripe suit, tailored in Saville Row to flatter his widening girth. His shoes were Barkers, solid, traditional leather lace-ups, unlike the Italian slip-on brothel-creepers which some of the youngsters wore. He was wearing his City Club tie, whose traditional look he preferred to the brightly-coloured Hermès silk affected by his younger colleagues and by the Americans. His shirt, light blue cotton with white collar and cuffs, he had bought from Pink’s in their last sale, and his Pembroke College cuff-links were a cut above the fancy nonsense favoured by his flashier contemporaries. He felt comfortable, and was confident that he cut a dashing figure. He might be fifty-four years old, but he only felt forty-four, and that was what mattered.
They were just pulling into the next station and he could see from the crowds on the platform that first class would inevitably be invaded. He stood and took his briefcase down from the luggage rack, opened it and placed it on the empty seat next to him. Then he put his F.T. on the seat opposite him. There was no-one else in the compartment, and he had enjoyed the peace and privacy of the journey so far. If that was all about to come to an end, then he at least wanted to maintain some distance between himself and whom he jokingly referred to in his club as ‘the Great Unwashed’.
He had worked for over twenty-five years in the City. It had seemed the natural thing to do once it was clear that flat feet and asthma would keep him out of the Hussars. He trained first as an accountant at what was then called Peats. After qualifying he moved to the corporate finance department at Barton’s, one of the great City of London merchant banks, where his uncle once ran the treasury department. He had been solid, rather than a star, and when others – hungrier and more ambitious than him – had been headhunted to other firms, he remained and gravitated inevitably upwards. He now ran syndicated loans, a specialised form of lending for large borrowers requiring more funds than one bank alone could muster. It was not the most exciting job in the City, but he had a competent team of juniors – ‘my chaps’ – to do the numbers for him, the hours were not unduly onerous and the margins were still sufficient to earn him a decent bonus, at least by the standards of the English merchant banks, if not the American.
It was also a very clubbable business, as banks reciprocated favour for favour in putting together their deals. This played greatly to his strengths. He was a very clubbable sort, among the right company, of course, and had the stamina to cope with a large lunch and an extravagant dinner on the same day – he called it ‘eating for the firm’, and his florid complexion and waistline were a visible testament to his efforts.
He looked up with irritation as the compartment door opened. A large builder came into the compartment, his jeans and check shirt and heavy work boots looking as out of place as his heavily stubbled head and chin. Several giggling, gum-chewing girls followed him, their accents as jarring as the smell of their bubble gum breath. One of them picked up his newspaper and without a word or a glance in his direction folded it, put it on the luggage rack and sat down opposite him. The nerve of these people! And none of them had first-class tickets! Why was there never a ticket inspector when you needed one? And then, to make matters worse, a pimply youth with a weasel face and lank, greasy hair came and stood in front of him. The scrawny specimen was wearing an embarrassingly ill-fitting brown polyester suit, his shirt collar was undone and his garishly loud orange tie was loosened. He had a rolled up tabloid under one arm. The youth nodded at the open briefcase on the seat.
‘If that’s yours, move it!’
The train was moving now, it was too late to jump up and call for the guard.
He felt himself blushing. They were all staring at him. His mouth was dry. He had a peculiar feeling in the pit of his stomach.
‘All right, then. I’ll move it!’
The youth picked up his open briefcase and tipped it upside down onto the floor, scattering its contents. His favourite Mont Blanc fountain pen rolled under the seat. One of the girls gave an embarrassed giggle. The youth grinned in her direction and made to sit down.
And suddenly someone was screaming. He realised he was standing up in the compartment and they were all looking at him, mouths open, aghast. And his knuckles hurt. He looked at his hand, and then at the bloody face of the youth lying on the floor. The youth groaned and rolled over onto his side, allowing a sticky mess of blood and saliva to roll down the side of his face.
The builder, tough and intimidating when he had entered, was holding his hands out, placating, pleading, calming.
‘Easy mate. Nothing to make a fuss about.’
And it felt good! A sudden rush of adrenalin came to him and his lips parted in a smile, though his mouth was dry. What have I done? He laughed. He could not understand how this had happened. He felt years younger. When had he last felt so good?
He could hear a commotion outside the compartment, and realised they had stopped at a station, though it was not a regular stop. And then, through the staring faces, two uniforms, one a railway employee, the other a policeman, sliding open the door.
‘All right, sir. Thi
ngs seem to have got a bit out of hand, don’t they? Why don’t you come with us and we’ll sort everything out?’
He nearly laughed. What was this patronising garbage? Couldn’t the oafish plod see what had happened?
‘I really don’t think that’s necessary, officer. And besides, I have a meeting at 8:30 which I can’t afford to miss. If you’d be kind enough to take care of this oaf, I’ll leave you my card and I’m sure we can speak later.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple, sir. You will have to come with us.’
The youth on the floor groaned and one of the girls, emboldened by the presence of the policeman, shouted, ‘He hit him! We all saw!’
Others nodded.
‘Shut up, you silly girl!’ he spat, staring at her venomously.
The policeman stepped forward and took him firmly by the arm.
‘Come with us, please sir.’
He was led out of the compartment, past the staring faces. What about his briefcase? His pen? His meeting? Oh God, he thought, what shall I tell the office? What shall I tell my wife? What if the papers pick this up? He felt trapped, a victim. This could not be happening to him.
And then, as the train moved off, taking the staring faces with it, he stopped on the platform and looked up at the sky. It was clear and blue and the air was fresh and today he didn’t have to go to work. Suddenly he was twenty years younger. He threw his head back and laughed and laughed and laughed.
The policeman looked at him, puzzled and perhaps a little nervous.
‘Don’t worry, officer,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll come quietly.’
Bonus Round
‘HOW MUCH?! Are you kidding, Johnson is one of our top guys! We can’t give him a lousy million – he’ll be out of here in a nano-second.’
‘Hey, Mark, calm down, okay? There’s no need to get so worked up about these numbers. And don’t personalise it so much. I know you care about the guys, but you know there’s a squeeze on – the bonus pool simply isn’t as big as we’d all like.’
They relaxed, though they were still looking warily at Mark.
‘Okay, we’ll go with the million, but don’t be surprised if we have a hell of a reaction from him on bonus day – he’s just bought a mother-fucker of a place in the country. Someone told me it covers three English counties!’
This brought a smile and the mood seemed to lighten. There were four of them around the table – Mark Jones, the American global head of Corporate Finance, Digby Smithe, the head of Mergers and Acquisitions, Dick Greenthorne, the Canadian-born head of Client Coverage, and Paul Soames, the department’s chief administrator from New York – a nobody in revenue-generating terms, but powerful because knowledge is power. They were known as the cabalito, and each year at this time they clustered in small glass-sided meeting rooms where the rest of the department could see them plotting, planning and running numbers.
‘Digby, do your M&A guys really need to be paid so much?’ Digby sat up, concerned, ready to fight to protect his troops. ‘Looking at this schedule, I see two things.’ Mark ran his finger down a long list of names. ‘First, the average length of service in M&A is much longer than in the department as a whole. I know we’ve discussed this before, but some of these guys just aren’t going to leave the firm, however badly we pay them. Look at this – Euan Taylor, he’s been with us fourteen years, for Christ’s sake! He ain’t going anywhere. Or Bill Parker, he’s been here seventeen years! These guys have to get a loyalty discount.’
Greenthorne and Soames nodded their support.
‘I’m sorry, Mark, but I just don’t accept your argument,’ countered Digby uncomfortably. ‘Just because someone doesn’t move firms every two years doesn’t mean he has no options. It may just mean he’s happy.’
‘Exactly!’ cried Mark triumphantly. ‘And if he’s happy, we don’t need to stretch to keep him. So he gets a discount – Paul, I want you to run a scenario where we take the base case bonus and then deduct fifteen percent from everyone who’s been here more than five years, and twenty-five percent from people who’ve been here ten years or more. Let’s see if that gives us much spare capacity. Now, where are the problem areas?’
Paul looked down the list. ‘Well, there’s Tim Gregory. He nearly left for Barton’s back in September. We kept him, but only after a fight.’
‘I remember.’ It was Dick Greenthorne, showing some real interest for the first time. ‘I was involved in love-bombing him. It was a hell of a sweat to keep him. But as I recall, we didn’t actually guarantee him a bonus in the end.’
‘That’s right,’ said Paul, ‘he stayed on the basis of a “trust me” from Mark. Mark – what would you like to do?’
Mark looked at them. ‘Are you guys crazy? I want to toast the bastard. No one gives us that much trouble and gets away with it. He’s blown it with Barton’s and no headhunter will take him seriously now. Put him down for the same number as last year, less one third.’
Even Digby nodded his agreement to this.
‘What about John Moore? He was smarter. We did have to give him a guarantee.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Mark looked thoughtful. ‘He’s a tough bastard. What did we guarantee him?’
‘One point five.’
‘That much? Shit. Still, he’s one mean son of a bitch. Let’s put him down for one point six.’
‘Is that logical?’ It was Digby, reluctantly questioning Mark’s decision. ‘An extra hundred thousand is neither one thing nor the other.’
Mark nodded and rubbed his chin, uncertain what to do.
‘One point seven five? Or keep him at one point five?’ It was Paul, trying to be helpful.
Mark still looked uncertain.
‘We can’t take all day!’ Dick was impatient to get on. ‘One point seven five. He’s a tough bastard, but we need tough bastards.’
‘Done,’ concluded Mark. ‘Who’s next?’
‘Two of my chaps, I’m afraid,’ said Digby. ‘Higgins and Thorpe. They weren’t promoted last year, and their bonuses really were a little light.’
‘Promotion?’ Mark sneered. ‘Promotion? What rank are these guys?’ He looked at the schedule. ‘Assistant directors. Okay, make them executive directors, put up their base salaries, and raise their bonuses by ten percent.’
‘Only ten percent?’ Digby looked anguished.
‘Sure. If these guys are concerned about promotion, let them have promotion. Most people want money, it’s Brits that want gold braid. If we promote these guys, we needn’t pay them. Who else?’
Paul ran his eye down the list. ‘I think that’s the lot. While you were talking I ran some numbers in the spreadsheet on my laptop. We’re coming up about a million short on our base case.’
The four men stood and peered at the laptop. By starting with base case assumptions, looking at the numbers they felt they needed for the department, they had done a ‘bottom up’ bonus analysis. The figure it had produced exceeded the likely amount Mark had indicated as being available to the department by a million pounds.
‘Let’s cut the associates’ and analysts’ bonuses,’ suggested Dick.
Paul tapped some numbers into the laptop. ‘Doesn’t make much difference. If we cut them by fifty percent, it still only gives us half a million.’
‘It makes a big difference to them,’ protested Digby.
‘Leave it out, Digby,’ Mark squashed him. ‘These guys are expendable. We can buy them by the yard. Do the cut, Paul.’
Paul looked at the numbers. ‘We’re still half a million short.’
They all looked at Mark. ‘Well, we could tweak it some more, play around a bit at the edges and see what we can do, but if this is as tight as we can get it, then let’s go with this. I’ll take the half million off my number.’
‘Very decent of you!’ Digby stood and shook Mark’s hand.
‘Good going, buddy – thanks!’ Dick slapped him on the back.
Paul said nothing.
‘Okay, gentlemen, that
concludes things for this year. Paul – give the numbers to Personnel. The exact timetable for bonus awards and notifications should be coming out early next week. I’ll keep you posted.’
Digby and Dick stood up and left. Paul was about to leave when Mark asked him to stay behind for a moment. When the door closed, Mark turned to Paul, a big smile on his face.
‘Fantastic! We did it again.’ The two men, grinning, exchanged a high five. Paul re-opened the laptop and typed in a password.
‘Okay, here we are, let’s see,’ he peered at a new column that had appeared on the spreadsheet. ‘Ah yes, three point five.’ He looked at Mark. ‘That’s three point five in your departmental ‘contingency fund’ – happy?’
Mark grinned back. ‘Very happy. If we deduct half a million for the overrun for the department, that’s three million extra for the two of us. We’ll do the usual seventy-thirty split. Mine will have to be agreed with the board, of course, but that isn’t usually a problem. In fact last year they congratulated me and asked how I ran such a tight ship!’
Paul looked at him. ‘Any special plans this year?’
‘Nope.’ Mark shrugged. ‘I’ve finished the place on Long Island, but you know what they say – no matter how much you have, you can always find something to do with it!’
Baggage
‘GOOD MORNING. Take a seat. Now, is it Christina or Chris?’
‘My friends call me Chris.’
‘Fine. Well, under these circumstances I think I’ll call you Christina. Now, looking at your CV, I see that you went to Millfield, most impressive academic record, did a lot of skiing – must have been fun – and then came up to Cambridge to read Law. And you’re expecting an Upper Second in finals. So – what’s gone wrong?’
‘Wrong?’
‘Yes. Why aren’t you expecting a First?’
Dave Hart Omnibus II Page 39