Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (10 page)

He caught the eight-seventeen, so favoured
by those who commute from Oxford to London every day. All the people having
breakfast seemed to know each other and Stephen felt like an uninvited guest at
someone else’s party. The ticket collector bustled through the buffet car, and
clipped Stephen’s first-class ticket. The man opposite Stephen produced a
second-class ticket from behind his copy of the
Financial Times.
The collector clipped it grudgingly.

“Have to go back to a second-class
compartment when you’ve finished your breakfast, sir. The restaurant car is
first-class, you know?”

Stephen considered the implication of these
remarks, watching the flat Berkshire countryside jolt past as his coffee cup
lurched unsampled in its saucer before he turned to the morning papers.
The Times
carried no news of Discovery
Oil that morning. It was, he supposed, only a little story, even a dull one.
Just another shady business enterprise collapsed in double-quick order; not
kidnap or arson or even rape: nothing there to hold the attention of the front
page for long. Not a story he would have given a second thought to but for his own
involvement, which gave it all the makings of a personal tragedy.

At Paddington he pushed through the ants
rushing around the forecourt. He was glad he had chosen the closeted life of
Oxford, or more accurately that it had chosen him. He had never come to terms
with London, which he found large and impersonal, and he always took a taxi
everywhere for fear of getting lost on the buses or underground. Why ever didn’t
they number their streets so Americans would know where they were?

“The
Times
office, Printing House Square.”

The cabby nodded and moved his black Austin
deftly down the Bayswater Road, alongside a rain-sodden Hyde Park. The crocuses
at Marble Arch looked sullen and battered, splayed wetly on the close grass.
Stephen was impressed by London cabs: they never had a scrape or mark on them:
cab-drivers are not allowed to pick up fares unless their vehicles are in
perfect condition. How different from New York’s battered yellow monsters, he
thought. The cabby swung down Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner, past the House of
Commons and along the Embankment. The flags were out in Parliament Square.
Stephen frowned to himself. What was the lead story he had read so
inattentively in the train? Ah yes, a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. He
supposed he must allow the world to go about its day’s business as usual.

Stephen was unsure how to tackle the problem
of checking Harvey Metcalfe out. Back in Harvard he would have had no trouble:
he would have made a beeline for the offices of the
Herald Record American
and his father’s old friend the business
correspondent, Hank Swaltz, would have given him the dope. The diary
correspondent of
The Times,
Richard
Compton-Miller, was by no means so appropriate a contact, but he was the only
British press man Stephen had ever met. Compton-Miller had visited Magdalen the
previous spring to write a feature on the time-honoured observance of May Day
in Oxford. The choristers on the top of the college tower sang the Miltonian
salute as the sun peeped over the horizon at May first:

Hail, bounteous
May, that
doth inspire Mirth and youth and warm desire.

On the banks of the river beneath Magdalen
bridge
, where Compton-Miller and Stephen had stood, several
couples were clearly inspired.

Later, Stephen was more embarrassed than
flattered by his appearance in the resulting piece on May Day at Magdalen that
Compton-Miller had written for
The Times
Diary: academics are sparing with the world brilliant, but journalists are not.
Indeed, it is an accolade they will freely bestow on any person who, being
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, is additionally female and
attractive, and in possession of a couple of good exam results. The more
self-important of Stephen’s Senior Common Room colleagues were not amused to
see him described as the brightest star in a firmament of moderate
luminescence.

The taxi pulled into the forecourt and came
to a stop by the side of a massive hunk of modern sculpture by Henry Moore.
The Times
and
The Observer
shared a building with separate entrances,
The Times
by far the more impressive.
Stephen enquired of the sergeant behind the desk for Richard Compton-Miller,
and was shown up to the fifth floor and along to his little private cubicle at
the end of the corridor.

It was still only just after 10 A.M. when
Stephen arrived and the building was practically deserted. A national newspaper
does not begin to wake up until eleven o’clock and generally indulges itself in
a long lunch hour until about 3 P.M. Between then and putting the paper to bed,
about 8:30 P.M. for all but the front page, the real work is done. There is
usually a change of staff staggered from 5 P.M. onwards, whose job it is to
watch for major new stories breaking during the night. The British papers
always have to keep an eye on what is happening in America, because if the
President makes some important statement in the afternoon in Washington it is
already late in the evening in London. Sometimes the front page can change as
often as five times during the night and in a case like the assassination of
President Kennedy, which was first learned of in England at about 7 P.M. on the
evening of November 22, 1963, the whole existing front page is scrapped to make
way for the sensation.

“Richard, it was kind of you to come in
early for me. I didn’t realise that you start work so late. I rather take my
daily paper for granted.”

Richard laughed. “That’s O.K. You must think
we’re a lazy bunch, but this place will be buzzing at midnight when you are in
bed sound asleep. How can I help you?”

“I’m trying to do some research on a fellow
countryman of mine called Harvey Metcalfe. He’s a substantial benefactor of
Harvard, and I want to flatter the old boy by knowing all about him when I
return.” Stephen didn’t care very much for the lie, but these were strange
circumstances he found himself in.

“Hang on here and I’ll go and see if we have
any cuttings on him.” Stephen amused himself by reading the headlines pinned up
on Compton-Miller’s board–obviously stories he had taken some pride in:

Prime Minister to Conduct Orchestra at Royal
Festival Hall Miss World Loves Tom Jones Muhammad Ali Says, “I will be Champion
Again”

Richard Compton-Miller returned with a
largish file for Stephen fifteen minutes later.

“Have a go at that, Descartes. I’ll be back
in an hour and we’ll have some coffee.”

Stephen nodded and smiled thankfully.
Descartes never had the problems he was facing.

Everything Harvey Metcalfe wanted the world
to know was in that file, and a little bit he didn’t want the world to know.
Stephen learned of his yearly trips to Europe to see Wimbledon, of the success
of his horses at Ascot and of the pursuit of pictures for his private art
collection. William Hickey of the
Daily
Express
had titillated his readers with a plump Harvey clad in Bermuda
shorts over the information that he spent two or three weeks a year on his
private yacht at Monte Carlo, gambling at the Casino. Hickey’s tone was
something less than fulsome. The Metcalfe fortune was too new to be
respectable. Stephen wrote down all the facts he thought relevant and was
studying the photographs when Richard returned.

They went to have some coffee in the canteen
on the same floor. The cigarette smoke swirled mistily round the girl at the
cashier’s desk at the end of the self-service counter.

“Richard, I don’t quite have all the
information I need. Harvard wants to touch this man for quite a bit: I believe
they are thinking in terms of about a million dollars. Where can I find out
some more about him?”

“New York
Times,
I should think,” said Compton-Miller. “Come on, we’ll give
Terry Robards a visit.”

The New York
Times
office in London is also on the fifth floor of
The Times
building in Printing House
Square. Stephen thought of the vast New York
Times
building in
Forty-third
Street and
wondered if the London
Times,
on a
reciprocal arrangement, was secreted in the basement there. Terry Robards was a
wiry creature with a perpetual smile on his face. Stephen felt at ease with him
immediately, a knack Terry had developed almost subconsciously over the years
and which was a great asset to him when digging for stories.

Stephen repeated his piece about Metcalfe.
Terry laughed.

“Harvard isn’t too fussy where it gets its
money from, is it? That guy knows more legal ways of stealing money than the
Internal Revenue Service.”

“You don’t say,” said Stephen innocently.

The New York
Times’
file on Harvey was voluminous. “Metcalfe’s Rise from
Messenger Boy to Millionaire,” as one headline had it, was documented
admirably. Stephen took careful notes. The details of Sharpley & Son
fascinated him, as did the arms dealing and the few facts on his wife Arlene
and their daughter Rosalie. There was a picture of both of them, but the
daughter was only fifteen at the time. There were also long reports of two
court cases some twenty-five years before in which Harvey had been charged but
never convicted, and a more recent one, in 1956, concerning a share transaction
in Boston. Again Harvey has escaped the law, but the district attorney had left
the jury in little doubt of his views on Mr. Metcalfe. The most recent press
stories were in the gossip columns: Metcalfe’s paintings, his horses, his
orchids,
his
daughter doing well at Vassar, and his
trips to Europe. Of Discovery Oil there was not a word. Stephen admired Harvey’s
ability in later years to conceal from the press the more dubious of his
activities.

Terry invited his fellow expatriate to
lunch. Newsmen always like new contacts and Terry thought Stephen looked a
promising one. He told the cabby to go to Whitfield Street. As they inched
their way out of the City into the West End, Stephen hoped that the meal would
be worthy of the journey. He was not disappointed.

Lacy’s restaurant was airy and bedecked with
clean linen and young daffodils. Terry said it was greatly favoured by
pressmen. Margaret Costa, the well-known cookery writer and her chef husband,
Bill Lacy, certainly knew their onions. Over delicious watercress soup followed
by medallions de veau a la creme au calvados and a bottle of Chateau de Peronne
1972, Terry became quite expansive on Harvey Metcalfe. He had interviewed him
at Harvard on the occasion of the opening of Metcalfe Hall, which included a
gymnasium and four indoor tennis courts.

“Hoping to get an honorary degree one day,”
said Terry cynically, “but not much hope, even if he gives a billion.”

Stephen noted the words thoughtfully.

“I guess you could get some more facts on
the guy at the American Embassy,” said Terry. He glanced at his watch. “Oh,
hell, the library closes at four o’clock.
Too late today.
Time I got back to the office for an afternoon’s work.” Stephen wondered if
press men ate and drank like that every day. If they did, however did they
manage to get a paper out?

He fought his way onto the five-fifteen
train back with the Oxford-bound commuters and only when he was alone in his
room did he begin to study the material of his day’s work. He was exhausted,
but he forced himself to sit at his desk until the first neat draft of a
dossier on Harvey Metcalfe was prepared.

Next day Stephen again caught the
eight-seventeen to London, this time buying a second-class ticket. The ticket
collector repeated his piece about leaving the restaurant car after he had
finished his meal.

“Sure,” said Stephen, but he toyed with the
remains of his coffee cup for the rest of the hour-long journey and never
shifted from first class. He was pleased with himself: he had saved two pounds
and that was exactly how Harvey Metcalfe would have behaved.

At Paddington he followed Terry Robards’
advice and took a taxi to the American Embassy, a vast and monolithic building
which sprawls over 250,000 square feet and is nine storeys high, stretching the
entire length of one side of Grosvenor Square. Not as elegant as the American
ambassador’s magnificent official residence in Regent’s Park, where he had been
summoned to drinks last year, which was once the private home of Barbara Hutton
before it was sold to the American government in 1946. Certainly either of them
was large enough for seven husbands, thought Stephen.

The entrance to the Embassy Reference
Library on the ground floor was firmly shut. Stephen was reduced to a close
study of the plaques on the wall in the corridor outside, honouring recent ambassadors
to the Court of St. James. Reading backwards from Walter Annenberg, he had got
as far as Joseph Kennedy when the doors of the library swung open rather like a
bank. The prim girl behind a sign marked “Enquiries” was not immediately
forthcoming on the subject of Harvey Metcalfe.

“Why do you want this information?” she
asked sharply.

This threw Stephen for a moment, but he
quickly recovered.

“I am returning to Harvard as a professor
and I feel I should know more about his involvement with the university. I am
at present a Visiting Fellow at Oxford.”