Lady of Fortune (82 page)

‘I don't mind if you call him your father,' said Dougal. ‘He has been hasn't he, all your life, and he's brought you up well enough.'

‘That's what I've been thinking,' said Alisdair. ‘At the moment, you're unable to move against my father in any way at all, because of the way he's set this loan arrangement up. You lack any kind of lever whatsoever. Or, rather, you did lack a lever. Now you have one.'

‘What's that?' asked Dougal, shifting in his chair.

‘Me,' smiled Alisdair. ‘If father thinks that he's going to lose me, and lose the only male Watson heir, then you can take it from me that he'll change his mind about it. I've talked to you now: I've seen just how wrong this Poind arrangement is. It's not only dangerous for Watson's New York, it's dangerous for the US banking fraternity as a whole, and ultimately dangerous to the whole world. If my father starts selling his own companies short, then it's quite possible that other investors will think that he's panicking, and start selling, too. The next thing we know, we'll have a major crash on our hands, not just here in New York but throughout Europe as well.'

‘Well, I think you're being over-dramatic,' said Dougal, ‘but I see your point. I've invited Robert down here this weekend for a meeting. Do you think that you can convince him that he's got to rearrange this loan agreement so that we're no longer at such serious risk?'

‘I don't know,' said Alisdair. He looked round at Effie, and she smiled at him. ‘I'll try.'

Robert was in a jagged mood when he arrived on Sunday morning. He had been planning to spend the weekend with Mrs Ernest K. Walsh, the flirtatious and beautiful wife of Congressman Ernest K. Walsh of New York; and he had been infuriated by Dougal's insistence on an emergency business meeting.

‘Is there no possibility that we can discuss this on the phone?' he had demanded; but Dougal, quietly, had said no.

They gathered in the dining-room, around the deeply-polished table, and the atmosphere was sharp and electric from the start. Alisdair sat beside Effie – a taking of sides which Robert couldn't fail to notice – and Dougal's secretary Rosalind had come out from Flatbush to take notes.

Dougal stood up, with one hand thrust into his vest pocket, and said, ‘I won't mince words, Robert. You've deliberately
used the loan arrangement you made through Watson's New York for your own purposes, whatever they are – and to put myself, and Effie to a lesser extent, in an impossible financial position. I don't know what you want out of us: I suppose you have it in mind to make that absolutely clear to us when it suits you. Perhaps you're thinking of gaining a controlling interest in Watson's New York or unlimited used of the bank's facilities to finance your friends in Germany. I don't know, and I don't particularly care. All I know is that you're not going to get it. Effie and I are insisting, here and now, that you release Watson's New York from any obligations either to your European investors, or your brokers, or any of your absurdly inter-related companies and holding companies; or, failing that, that you give us a further bill of exchange which covers the entire value of the common stock which your European investors now hold.'

Robert glanced from Alisdair to Effie, from Effie to Dougal. He smiled briefly at Rosalind and Rosalind smiled back at him. ‘Well, now,' he said, ‘I don't know why you're both getting so panicky. Haven't I told you before that it's against my own interests to do anything to damage Watson's New York? You're probably in safer hands now than you've ever been.'

‘Nonetheless,' said Effie, ‘we don't enjoy the idea of being so completely beholden. Both Dougal and I are absolutely adamant that you secure up to 100 per cent the loans you have made to yourself, and to your brokers; or, if you can't afford to do that, that you find an alternative bank to underwrite you.'

Robert pressed his hands together as if he were praying. ‘I see,' he said. ‘This is what I get for being financially constructive. This is what I get for pulling you two headfirst into the 1920s. Well, supposing I refuse? Supposing I remind you that you have contractual and moral obligations to meet, as principals of Watson's New York, and that I am not inclined to release you from those obligations?'

Dougal said, ‘Supposing I remind you that your son is not your son, and warn you that if you persist with this scheme, I shall make that knowledge public? Supposing I reveal that for nearly thirty years you have kept secret from me the fact that Alisdair is my natural heir, for the sole purpose of ensuring that the major part of any inherited assets from
Watson's Bank passed to your side of the family, and not to mine, nor to Effie's?'

That's preposterous!' shouted Robert. His face was bright red, and he was sweating. ‘You can't prove anything of the kind, and you know it!'

‘I don't have to prove it,' said Dougal. ‘All I have to do is announce that Alisdair is my natural son – a fact to which Effie is prepared to testify in a court of law.'

Robert stared furiously at each of them in turn, and at last at Alisdair. ‘Is this the thanks I get for bringing you up? That you should side with these two lily-livered bunglers? Jesus God!'

Effie said, in a quiet but penetrating voice, ‘You have a choice, Robert. Alisdair is quite prepared to continue to act publicly as your son; and to inherit and manage your interests on your behalf when you eventually have to retire, but only if you release his real father from this Poind Corporation arrangement. Thank you – neither of us missed the several significances of the word “poind”.'

Robert was silent for a long time, gnawing at his lips and staring at them with unfocused hatred. ‘God, you're incompetent,' he said at last, and pushed back his chair. ‘God, you don't even know what you're doing! I created an empire out of this family – something that father couldn't do and that neither of you could do. I built Watson's Bank into one of the most important international banks in the whole world, second only to Chase. I laid everything down for the future, unselfishly, so that one day Watson's Bank would tower over every other bank on Wall Street or in the City of London. What the hell does it matter whether Dougal fathered Alisdair or whether I did? What the hell does it
matter?
Watson's Bank will be the greatest in the world one day; the richest bank since the great days of Rothschilds. You want to know why I tied Watson's New York up into such knots? First, just to prove to you how weak and vulnerable you both were – you, bankers! – you would have swallowed that offer I made if it had naked hooks on it. All you were really interested in was sentiment and quick profits. ‘Oh, for the good old days, when Robert was with us, we used to make amazing money in those days.' Of course you did! I worked for it and I worked hard, and I never would have let one of you elbow your way into
my
bank and persuade
me
to sign a
contract which
specifically
states that the bank will arrange loans for stock purchases up to the value of £24 million, provided that each block of shares is purchased at not more than a twenty-point margin. It's all in the contract, read it! You gave me
carte-blanche
to borrow money from whichever US corporations I chose, and lend the money out to brokers at eight or nine per cent, so that my European customers could get themselves in on the stock market! So far, I haven't had one single word of complaint, either by mail or by telephone, to indicate that any of my customers are dissatisfied. In fact, on average, their shares have gone up by 21
points since they bought them only a short while ago! You're getting commission on the loans, you're getting commission from the brokers, you've got all the collateral you need. What else do you want?'

There was a second's pause, a second's silence, and then Alisdair said, very clearly, ‘Loyalty, father, that's what else. The respect that one member of a family ought to show to another. The right not to be used for commercial ends. The rights to have one's sentiments respected.'

He walked around the table, and stood beside Robert with an expression on his face of hurt, of regret, of sadness; but also of righteous anger. ‘You deliberately kept from me all of my life the fact that I was your brother's son, and not yours. You stole me away for your own purposes, whatever they were, and whatever they still remain. My real father believes that you wanted to make sure that your descendants alone would inherit the bank's assets. I don't know whether he's right or wrong. Aunt Effie doesn't know either, even though she's just as guilty of keeping my real parentage from me as you are. You betrayed my birthright for your own gain. You used me in a way which no real father ever would have done, and for that I deny your fatherhood, and I repudiate your right to call me your son.'

He lifted his arm, and pointed across the table at Dougal. ‘That man is my father. He would have brought me up and educated me and trained me just as well as you, if he had ever been given the chance. More than that, he would have taught me some morality.'

Robert looked his adopted son up and down, and then said, ‘You realise what you're sacrificing.'

‘I'm sacrificing nothing, except a directorship of Watson's
Bank. I'm still the oldest male heir, and nothing can ever take that away from me. You haven't created an empire, father. You've done nothing but erect a financial temple to your own squalid vanity.'

Robert was very calm now. He stood up, knocked back the last of his whisky, and snapped his fingers to Rousseau to bring him his coat and his hat.

‘I can see that I have landed, like some unfortunate sailor, among a community of raving fools.'

‘What are you going to do about it?' asked Effie, sharply, ‘Return to the land of hideous hypocrites?'

Robert stared at her ferociously. ‘You,' he said, ‘should have been strangled at birth.'

And without saying anything else, he snatched his hat from the butler, and stalked out of the house. Dougal, Effie, and Alisdair sat at the dining-table and looked at each other with caution and with sorrow. Dougal said, as the motor of Robert's Rolls-Royce started up with a loud, over-confident roar, ‘He won't let this pass, you know. He won't forgive us for this.'

‘Do you want his forgiveness?' asked Effie.

‘I don't,' said Alisdair. Then, ‘Perhaps. But I do feel free.'

Dougal flipped a quarter between his fingers, over and over and over. ‘I'm afraid, Alisdair, that you'll never be free. Great wealth brings with it great responsibility. Freedom from want brings captivity to work; freedom from hunger brings captivity to worry. Nobody in the whole world, except for idiots and women, can have it both ways.'

‘Well, thank you,' said Effie.

‘I'm excluding you,' said Dougal. ‘I always do.'

All of them, of course, gravely underestimated the ferocity of Robert's anger, or even understood why he was angry. They were meddling children, as far as he was concerned; and their attempts to blackmail him into altering the terms of his £24 million loan were muddle-headed and ludicrous. So they
were threatening to deprive him of his heir? What did he care about that? The greater share of Watson's Bank, when he died, would still go to Alisdair, and Alisdair had been educated to manage the bank's money in the same quick and ruthless style in which Robert had always managed it.

Effie and Dougal didn't even begin to understand that he had set up the foreign investment arrangement to their own best advantage: that he had intended from the beginning to nursemaid them through the Hoover bull market and through the crash which he personally believed must inevitably follow it some day soon; that he was going to do nothing more than guide the destiny of Watson's New York through good times and bad until it was strong enough to stand on its own, strong enough to be part of a worldwide Watson's empire, under his, Robert's, overall direction.

He saw himself as a benign financial emperor; whose word was stern and whose sword was quick, but who had always kept the interests of the Watson family closest to his heart. He had only wanted to get Dougal out of Edinburgh all those years ago, because he had believed that Dougal was threatening the stability of the bank's expansion, and making a mockery of its investment department. He only wanted to take over Watsons New York now because Dougal was so ill, and so befuddled. And after Watson's New York, (thanks to Effie's fear of him, and her successful move to Los Angeles) there was the Commerce Bank of California to absorb, a ready-made headquarters on the West Coast. He had discussed the whole possibility with Caldwell, and Caldwell had seen the sense in it. Effie would be protected from her own madcap financial jiggery-pokery; Caldwell would act as Robert's West Coast agent; and the whole worldwide Watson group would flourish and expand.