by Lodge, David
“It was a real lark,” said Debbie, a pretty pale-faced girl with blonde hair cut like Princess Diana’s, and a figure of almost anorexic slimness. “Held in a sorter castle. Just like a horror film, wonnit?” she said to Basil. “Suits of armour and stuffed animals’ heads and everyfink.”
At first Robyn thought that Debbie’s Cockney accent was some sort of joke, but soon realized that it was authentic. In spite of her Sloaney clothes and hair-do, Debbie was decidedly lower-class. When Basil mentioned that she worked in the same bank as himself, Robyn assumed that she was a secretary or typist, but was quickly corrected by her brother when he followed her out to the kitchen where she was making tea.
“Good Lord, no,” he said. “She’s a foreign-exchange dealer. Very smart, earns more than I do.”
“And how much is that?” Robyn asked.
“Thirty thousand, excluding bonuses,” said Basil, his arms folded smugly across his chest.
Robyn stared. “Daddy said you were getting disgustingly rich, but I didn’t realize just how disgusting. What do you do to earn that sort of money?”
“I’m in capital markets. I arrange swaps.”
“Swaps?” The word reminded her of Basil when he was her kid brother, a gangling boy in scuffed shoes and a stained blazer, sorting conkers or gloating over his stamp collection.
“Yes. Suppose a corporate has borrowed x thousands at a fixed rate of interest. If they think that interest rates are going to fall, they could execute a swap transaction whereby we pay them a fixed rate and they pay us LIBOR, that’s the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is variable…”
While Basil told Robyn much more than she wanted to know, or could understand, about swaps, she busied herself with the teacups and tried to conceal her boredom. He was anxious to assure her that he was only earning less than Debbie because he had started later. “She didn’t go to University, you see.”
“No, I thought she probably didn’t.”
“Not many spot dealers are graduates, actually. They’ve usually left school at sixteen and gone straight into the bank. Then somebody sees that they’ve got what it takes and gives them a chance.”
Robyn asked what it took.
“The barrow-boy mentality, they call it. Quick wits and an appetite for non-stop dealing. Bonds are different, you have to be patient, spend a long time preparing a package. There are lulls. I couldn’t last for half-an-hour in Debbie’s dealing room—fifty people with about six telephones in each hand shouting across the room things like ‘Six hundred million yen 9th of January!’ All day. It’s a madhouse, but Debbie thrives on it. She comes from a family of bookies in Whitechapel.”
“Is it serious, then, between you and Debbie?”
“What’s serious?” said Basil, showing his capped teeth in a bland smile. “We don’t have anybody else, if that’s what you mean.”
“I mean, are you living together?”
“Not literally. We both have our own houses. It makes sense to have a mortgage each, the way property prices are going up in London. How much did you pay for this place, by the way?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“Good God, it would fetch four times that in Stoke Newington. Debbie bought a little terraced house there two years ago, just like this, for forty thousand, it’s worth ninety now…”
“So property governs sexuality in the City these days?”
“Hasn’t it always, according to Saint Karl?”
“That was before women liberated themselves.”
“Fact is, we’re both too knackered after work to be interested in anything more energetic than a bottle of wine and a hot bath. It’s a long day. Twelve hours—sometimes more if things get lively. Debbie is usually at her desk by seven.”
“Whatever for?”
“She does a lot of business with Tokyo… So we tend to work hard on our own all week and live it up together at the weekend. What about you and Charles? Isn’t it time you got hitched?”
“Why d’you say that?” Robyn demanded.
“I was thinking, as we saw you through your front window from the pavement, that you looked just like some comfortably married couple.”
“We’re not into marriage.”
“I say, do people still say ‘into’ like that, up here in the rust belt?”
“Don’t be a metropolitan snob, Basil.”
“Sorry,” he said, with a smirk that showed he wasn’t. “You’ve been very faithful, anyway.”
“We don’t have anyone else, if that’s what you mean,” she said drily.
“And how’s the job?”
“In jeopardy,” said Robyn, leading the way back to the living-room. Debbie, perched on the arm of Charles’ chair, her hair falling over her eyes, was showing him a little gadget like a pocket quartz alarm clock.
“Is Lapsang Suchong all right?” Robyn asked, setting down the tea tray, and thinking to herself that Debbie probably favoured some brand advertised on television by chimps or animated teapots, brewed so strong you could stand the teaspoon up in it.
“Love it,” said Debbie. She really was a very difficult person to get right.
“Very interesting,” said Charles politely, handing Debbie’s gadget back to her. It apparently informed her of the state of the world’s principal currencies twenty-four hours a day, but as it only worked within a fifty-mile radius of London its liquid-crystal display was blank.
“I get ever so nervy when I’m outside of the range,” she said. “At home I sleep with it under my pillow, so if I wake in the middle of the night I can check on the yen–dollar rate.”
“So what’s this about your job?” Basil asked Robyn.
Robyn explained briefly her situation, while Charles provided a more emotive gloss. “The irony is that she’s easily the brightest person in the Department,” he said. “The students know it, Swallow knows it, the other staff know it. But there’s nothing anybody can do about it, apparently. That’s what this government is doing to the universities: death by a thousand cuts.”
“What a shame,” said Debbie. “Why doncher try somethink else?”
“Like the money market?” Robyn enquired sardonically, though Debbie seemed to take the suggestion seriously.
“No, love, it’s too late, I’m afraid. You’re burned out at thirty-five, they reckon, in our game. But there must be something else you could do. Start a little business!”
“A business?” Robyn laughed at the absurdity of the idea.
“Yeah, why not? Basil could arrange the finance, couldn’t you darl?”
“No problem.”
“And you can get a government grant, forty quid a week and free management training for a year, too,” said Debbie. “Friend of mine did it after she was made redundant. Opened a sports shoe boutique in Brixton with a bank loan of five thousand. Sold out two years later for a hundred and fifty grand and went to live in the Algarve. Has a chain of shops out there now, in all them time-share places.”
“But I don’t want to run a shoe shop or live in the Algarve,” said Robyn. “I want to teach women’s studies and poststructuralism and the nineteenth-century novel and write books about them.”
“How much do you get for doing that?” Basil asked.
“Twelve thousand a year, approximately.”
“Good God, is that all?”
“I don’t do it for the money.”
“No, I can see that.”
“Actually,” said Charles, “there are a great many people who live on half that.”
“I’m sure there are,” said Basil, “but I don’t happen to know any of them. Do you?”
Charles was silent.
“I do,” said Robyn.
“Who?” said Basil. “Tell me one person you know, I mean know, not just know of, somebody you talked to in the last week, who earns less than six thousand a year.” His expression, both amused and belligerent, reminded Robyn of arguments they used to have when they were younger.
“Danny Ram,”
said Robyn. She happened to know that he earned a hundred and ten pounds a week, because she had asked Prendergast, the Personnel Director at Pringle’s.
“And who’s Danny Ram?”
“An Indian factory worker.” Robyn derived considerable satisfaction from uttering this phrase, which seemed a very effective putdown of Basil’s arrogant cynicism; but of course she then had to explain how she came to be acquainted with Danny Ram.
“Well, well,” said Basil, when she had finished a brief account of her experiences at Pringle’s, “So you’ve done your bit to make British industry even less competitive than it is already.”
“I’ve done my bit to bring some social justice to it.”
“Not that it will make any difference in the long run,” said Basil. “Companies like Pringle’s are batting on a losing wicket. Maggie’s absolutely right—the future for our economy is in service industries, and perhaps some hi-tech engineering.”
“Finance being one of the service industries?” Charles enquired.
“Naturally,” said Basil, smiling. “And you ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait till the Big Bang.”
“What’s that?” said Robyn.
Basil and Debbie looked at each other and burst out laughing. “I don’t believe it,” said Basil. “Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“Not the financial pages,” said Robyn.
“It’s some kind of change in the rules of the Stock Exchange,” said Charles, “that will allow people like Basil to make even more money than they do already.”
“Or lose it,” said Basil. “Don’t forget there’s an element of risk in our job. Unlike women’s studies or critical theory,” he added, with a glance at Robyn. “That’s what makes it more interesting, of course.”
“It’s just a glorified form of gambling, isn’t it?” said Charles.
“That’s right. Debbie gambles with a stake of ten to twenty million pounds every day of the week, don’t you my sweet?”
“’Sright,” said Debbie. “Course, it’s not like having a flutter on a horse. You don’t see the money, and it’s not yours anyway, it’s the bank’s.”
“But twenty million!” said Charles, visibly shaken. “That’s nearly the annual budget of my University.”
“You should see Debbie at work, Charles,” said Basil. “It would open your eyes. You too, Rob.”
“Yeah, why not?” said Debbie. “I could probably fix it.”
“It might be interesting,” said Charles, rather to Robyn’s surprise.
“Not to me, I’m afraid,” she said.
Basil glanced at his watch, extending his wrist just long enough to show that it was a Rolex. “Time we were off.”
He insisted that they went outside into the slushy street to admire his BMW. It had a sticker in the rear window saying BOND DEALERS DO IT BACK TO BACK. Robyn asked what it meant.
Debbie giggled. “Back to back is like a loan that’s made in one currency and set against an equal loan in another.”
“Oh, I see, it’s a metaphor.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” said Robyn, hugging herself against the damp chill of the evening.
“It’s also a joke,” said Basil.
“Yes, I see that a joke is intended,” said Robyn. “It must rather pall on people following you down the motorway.”
“Nobody stays that close for long,” said Basil. “This is a very fast car. Well, goodbye, sister mine.”
Robyn submitted to a kiss on the cheek from Basil, then from Debbie. After a moment’s hesitation and a little embarrassed laugh, Debbie brushed Charles’ cheek with her own, and jumped into the passenger seat of the car. Charles and Basil waved vaguely to each other as they parted.
“You don’t really want to visit that bank, do you?” Robyn said to Charles, as they returned to the house.
“I thought it might be interesting,” said Charles. “I thought I might write something about it.”
“Oh well, that’s different,” said Robyn, closing the front door and following Charles back into the living room. “Who for?”
“I don’t know, Marxism Today perhaps. Or the New Statesman. I’ve been thinking lately I might try and supplement my income with a little freelance journalism.”
“You’ve never done anything like that before,” said Robyn.
“There’s always a first time.”
Robyn stepped over the soiled tea things on the floor and crouched by the gas fire to warm herself. “What did you make of Debbie?”
“Rather intriguing.”
“Intriguing?”
“Well, so childlike in many ways, but handling millions of pounds every day.”
“I’m afraid Mummy will consider Debbie what she calls ‘common’—if Basil ever dares take her home.”
“You rather gave the impression that you thought her common yourself.”
“Me?” said Robyn indignantly.
“You patronised her terribly.”
“Nonsense!”
“You may not think so,” said Charles calmly. “But you did.”
Robyn did not like to be accused of snobbery, but her conscience was not entirely easy. “Well, what can you talk about to people like that,” she said defensively. “Money? Holidays? Cars? Basil’s just as bad. He’s become quite obnoxious, as a matter of fact.”
“Mmm.”
“Don’t let’s ever become rich, Charles,” said Robyn suddenly anxious to mend the little breach that had opened up between them.
“I don’t think there’s any danger of that,” Charles said, rather bitterly, Robyn thought.
PART IV
“I know so little about strikes, and rates of wages, and capital, and labour, that I had better not talk to a political economist like you.”
“Nay, the more reason,” said he eagerly. “I shall be only too glad to explain to you all that may seem anomalous or mysterious to a stranger; especially at a time like this, when our doings are sure to be canvassed by every scribbler who can hold a pen.”
ELIZABETH GASKELL: North and South
1
The following Wednesday morning, Robyn found herself back in Vic Wilcox’s office, rather to her own surprise, and certainly to Wilcox’s, to judge from the expression on his face as Shirley ushered her in.
“You again?” he said, looking up from his desk.
Robyn did not advance into the room, but stood just inside the door, stripping off her gloves. “It’s Wednesday,” she said. “You didn’t send a message telling me not to come.”
“I didn’t think you’d have the nerve to show your face in this place again, to tell you the truth.”
“I’ll go away, if you like,” said Robyn, with one glove off and one on. “Nothing would please me more.”
Wilcox resumed flicking through the contents of a file that was open on his desk. “Why did you come then?”
“I agreed to come every Wednesday for the rest of this term. I wish I hadn’t, but I did. If you want to cancel the arrangement, that’s fine by me.”
Wilcox looked at her in a calculating kind of way. After a long pause he said, “You might as well stay. They might send me somebody even worse.”
His rudeness was provocation enough to walk out, but Robyn hesitated. She had already expended a lot of time and energy in the past couple of days wondering whether to go back to Pringle’s, expecting from hour to hour a message from Wilcox or the VC’s office that would settle the question. No message had come. Penny Black, whose advice she had sought after squash on Monday evening, had urged her to go back—“if you don’t, he’ll think he’s won”—so she had gone back. And now the voice of prudence counselled her to stay. Wilcox evidently hadn’t lodged a formal complaint about her conduct the previous Wednesday, but if she resigned from the Shadow Scheme it would all come out. Though she wasn’t ashamed of her intervention on behalf of Danny Ram (and Penny had been deeply impressed) there had been, she privately acknowledged, something slightly Quixotic about
it, and she didn’t relish the prospect of having to explain and justify it to Philip Swallow or the VC. She came further into the room and peeled off her remaining glove.
“As long as one thing is understood,” said Wilcox. “Everything you see or hear while you’re shadowing me is confidential.”
“All right,” said Robyn.
“Don’t take your coat off yet—we may be going out.” He spoke to Shirley on his intercom: “Phone Foundrax and ask if Norman Cole can spare me a few minutes this morning, will you?”
…
For once, Wilcox himself put on an overcoat, an expensive-looking camelhair garment that, like most of his clothes, seemed designed for a man with longer arms and legs. In the lobby they ran into Brian Everthorpe, swaggering in from the car park, huffing and puffing and rubbing his pink hands together. Robyn hadn’t seen him since the previous Wednesday—mercifully he hadn’t been present at the meeting with the Asian workers, though he must have heard about it.
“Hallo, Vic, I see your beautiful shadow is back, she must be a glutton for punishment. How are you, my dear? Get home all right last week, did you?”
“I managed,” Robyn said coldly. Something knowing about his grin made her suspect that he had been responsible for tampering with her car.
“Bad on the motorway was it this morning, Brian?” said Wilcox, glancing at his watch.
“Terrible.”
“I thought so.”
“Always the same, Wednesday mornings.”
“See you,” said Wilcox, slicing through the swing doors.
Robyn followed him outside. After the weekend’s partial thaw, the weather had turned bitterly cold again. The remnants of last week’s blizzard had frozen into corrugated patches of ice on the car park, but Wilcox’s Jaguar was just outside the office block, in a bay that had been neatly scraped clean and dry. The car was long and low and luxuriously upholstered. When Wilcox turned the ignition key, a female vocalist sang out with startling clarity and resonance, as if she were concealed, complete with orchestra, in the back seat-well: “Maybe I’m a dreamer, maybe just a fool—” Wilcox, evidently embarrassed to have his musical tastes thus revealed, snapped off the stereo system with a quick movement of his hand. The car glided away, ice crackling under its tyres. As he drove, he explained the background to the morning’s business, an appointment with the Managing Director of a firm called Foundrax, situated not far away.