Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

A waiter hovered on Isabel’s elbow. She ordered.

‘So what on earth are you doing here, now?’

I smiled. ‘I need the money. And I want to see if I can do it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the City. Just a few years, enough to earn a lot of money. And then I’ll go back to reading and teaching.’

‘And will you be able to do it?’

‘I think so. What do you think?’

Isabel studied me for a moment. ‘Perhaps. But I’m not sure you’ll want to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you’re intelligent, you pick things up incredibly quickly, and you do well with people. But to succeed in this business you need a killer instinct. And I’m not sure you’ve got it.’

For some reason, this criticism bit into me deeply. It was what I had half feared, and it was what I was out to prove was wrong.

‘Believe me, when I want to do something, I do it,’ I said. I meant it as a bold statement, but it came out a bit like a whine.

The corners of Isabel’s mouth twitched. Her eyes mocked me. ‘You’re just too nice a guy for this game.’

‘Grrrr. Cancel the fish. Give me a raw steak.’

Isabel shook her head. ‘You don’t convince me.’

‘Well, what about you, then? Do you eat government officials for breakfast?’

‘I surprise myself sometimes. And them.’

‘So how did you end up in this business? I mean Dekker isn’t exactly the World Development Fund, is it?’

‘You’re right. After I left university here in Rio, I studied development economics in the United States. At Columbia. And I guess I came to the same kind of conclusions as you. There was very little real difference that I could make.’

‘But why banking? I mean, wasn’t that a total sell-out?’

‘It was to do with my father.’

‘He put pressure on you to go into the family business?’

‘No. Far from it. Now, if I had been a son, that would have been different. Papai always wanted a son, I’m sure, but my mother died before she could give him one.’

I had wondered about Isabel’s mother, but I hadn’t liked to ask. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

Isabel shrugged. ‘I was only two. It would have been nice to have known her, but...’ Her eyes wandered off into space for a moment. ‘Sorry. Anyway, I was a girl, and girls of my father’s class get married before they are twenty-five to men of good family. Education is OK, and perhaps a job for a couple of years, but not a career.

‘Now in the States I saw women who were making careers for themselves in all sorts of different fields. They were becoming lawyers, bankers, doctors. But not me. I wasn’t supposed to do any of that. And then I found out that the man I was supposed to marry, Marcelo, was messing around with one of my friends while I was in New York!’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Yes. Oh dear. So I decided to make my own career in banking, in my father’s business. I joined Banco Evolução in São Paulo. But it’s difficult to be a woman and a banker in Brazil, especially if you have a father like mine. So I went to work for Dekker three years ago. Since then, I’ve won them fifteen bond mandates in Brazil.’

‘Not bad.’

‘I must sound terrible,’ Isabel said. ‘I’m not really a radical feminist. I’m just proud. And stubborn.’

‘And you like to annoy your father?’

For a moment I thought I had gone too far. ‘I love him,’ said Isabel defensively.

‘I know that. I could see that when you were with him. And he adores you. Maybe that’s why you rub each other up the wrong way.’

Isabel smiled. ‘That’s exactly why. My poor father. Somehow he has no control over us. He must wish we were ladies of leisure like all his friends’ daughters. Could you believe it when he offered me a job in the bank? “I’m sure we could find you something,” he said. I mean, I know Horizonte is one of the most successful investment banks in Brazil. But Dekker dominates the whole of Latin America, for God’s sake! And I’m responsible for most of their Brazilian business. And he thinks he can find some corner for the boss’s daughter!’

Actually, I was jealous of Isabel for her father. His deep affection for her was evident. He was a banker yet, unlike my father, this did not seem to automatically exclude all interest in other things. It’s true that his love of Russian literature appealed to me, but I was sure Luís could speak knowledgeably about a wide range of topics that would leave my father looking blank and uninterested. You don’t choose your parents. But Isabel seemed to have taken hers for granted.

‘You are pretty good at this banking business,’ I said. ‘I’m very impressed with this favela deal.’

Isabel blushed. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s good to see a case of international capital genuinely providing a solution for poverty.’

‘We don’t know whether it will work yet but, yes, it is. It’s probably the most satisfying thing I’ve done in my career so far. But that’s the exception rather than the rule. You just wait till you have to gouge a competitor’s eyes out to win a deal providing finance for a local bank to dodge taxes. And you won’t have to wait long.’

‘We’ll see.’

At Isabel’s suggestion I ordered a fish I had never heard of and that neither she nor the waiter could translate.

‘You’ve seen my father,’ she said. ‘What about your parents?’

‘I don’t see them much,’ I said. ‘My father was in finance too.’

‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘You know what it’s like.’

‘I’m afraid my father’s a very different kind of man from yours,’ I said. ‘Or, at least, he seems that way to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he worked for an old British stockbroker. Much like Dekker Ward used to be, I would imagine. He had lunches with his friends, gave his customers good tips, and then when his firm was bought out by the Americans in 1986, he retired to a small village in Norfolk. You know, on the east coast.’

‘I’ve been there,’ said Isabel. ‘It’s cold.’

‘It certainly is.’ I smiled. ‘He spends all day in his garden or reading the paper. I think at first he tried investing his retirement money on the markets, but he lost most of it so he stopped. I’ve never found it easy to talk to him, and I suppose I’ve given up now.’

‘What does he think about you joining Dekker Ward?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t told him.’

‘You haven’t told him!’

‘No. Awful, isn’t it? He always wanted me to go into the City, and I always refused. I can’t face telling him I’ve finally succumbed. I’ll tell him next week. Or the week after.’ I took a gulp of wine. ‘I’d love to have the relationship you have with your father. But we find it difficult to talk. My father doesn’t understand my life at all, and although I’m sure my mother could if she wanted to, she chooses not to discuss it. So I gave up.’

We were silent for a moment. I watched Isabel expertly parting the white flesh of her fish from the bone, biting her lower lip in concentration. Her skin glowed in the candlelight.

Then she spoke. ‘Nick, I’m sorry about being a little cold with you earlier. It wasn’t very fair of me. And it has nothing to do with you. Nothing. It’s just that I’ve got myself in trouble with men at Dekker before, and I don’t want to let it happen again.’

‘I understand.’ I thought of what Jamie had told me about her and Eduardo. How could this woman possibly have had anything to do with him?

‘Your friend Jamie, for example.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Yes. He kept on trying to ask me out. He made a pass at me twice.’

‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ I said, laughing. ‘He was just flirting. He’s very happily married. You’ve nothing to fear from him.’