Ken Follett: Paper Money

At least he could look forward to bedtime. He rolled over, yanked open the drawer of the bedside table, found a tablet, and put it in his mouth. Then he sat up and picked up his cup of tea. He sipped, swallowed, and said: "Good morning, dear."

"Morning." Ellen Hamilton sat on the edge of the twin bed, wearing a silk robe, perching her cup on one slender knee. She had brushed her hair already. Her nightwear was as elegant as the rest of her large wardrobe, despite the fact that only he ever saw it, and he was not interested. That did not matter, he surmised: it was not that she wanted men to desire her-only that she should be able to think of herself as desirable.

He finished his tea and swung his legs to the floor. His ulcer protested at the sudden movement, and he winced with pain.

Ellen said: "Again?"

He nodded. "Brandy last night. Ought to know better."

Her face was expressionless. "I suppose it has nothing to do with yesterday's half-year results."

He heaved himself to his feet and walked slowly across the expanse of oyster-colored carpet to the bathroom. The face he saw in the mirror was round and red, balding, with rolls of fat under the jaw. He examined his morning beard, pulling the loose skin this way and that to make the bristles stand up. He began to shave. He had done this every day for the last forty years, and still he found it tiresome.

Yes, the half-year results were bad. Hamilton Holdings was in trouble.

When he had inherited Hamilton Printing from his father it had been efficient, successful, and profitable. Jasper Hamilton had been a printer-fascinated by typefaces, keen on the new technology, loving the oily smell of the presses. His son was a businessman. He had taken the flow of profits from the works and diverted it into more businesses-wine importing, retailing, publishing, paper mills, commercial radio. This had achieved its primary purpose of turning income into wealth and thereby avoiding tax. Instead of Bibles and paperbacks and posters, he had concerned himself with liquidity and yields. He had bought up companies and started new enterprises, building an empire.

The continuing success of the original business disguised the flimsiness of the superstructure for a long time. But when the printing complex weakened, Hamilton discovered that most of his other businesses were marginal; that he had underestimated the capital investment needed to nurse them to maturity; and that some of them were very long-term indeed. He sold forty-nine percent of his equity in each of the companies, then transferred his stock to a holding company and sold forty-nine percent of that. He raised more money, and negotiated an overdraft running into seven figures. The borrowing kept the organization alive, but the interest-rising fast through the decade-ate up what little profit there was.

Meanwhile, Derek Hamilton cultivated an ulcer.

The rescue program had been inaugurated almost a year ago. Credit had been tightened in an attempt to reduce the overdraft; costs had been cut by every means possible from cancellation of advertising campaigns to utilization of print-roll off-cuts for stationery. Hamilton was running a tight ship now; but inflation and the economic slump ran faster. The six-month results had been expected to show the world that Hamilton Holdings had turned the corner. Instead they demonstrated further decline.

He patted his face dry with a warm towel, splashed on cologne, and returned to the bedroom. Ellen was dressed, sitting in front of the mirror, making up her face. She always managed to dress and undress while her husband was out of the bedroom: it occurred to him that he had not seen her naked for years. He wondered why. Had she run to seed, the fifty-five-year-old skin wrinkling and the once-firm flesh sagging? Would nakedness destroy the illusion of desirability? Perhaps, but he suspected something more complex. It was obscurely connected with the way his own body had aged, he thought, as he climbed into his cavernous underpants. She was always decently clad; therefore he never lusted after her; therefore she never had to reveal how undesirable she found him. Such a combination of deviousness and sensitivity would be characteristic.

She said: "What are you going to do?"

The question caught him off balance. He thought at first that she must know what he was thinking, and be referring to that; then he realized she was continuing the conversation about the business. He fastened his suspenders, wondering what to tell her. "I'm not sure," he said eventually.

She peered closely into the mirror, doing something to her eyelashes. "Sometimes I wonder what you want out of life."

He stared at her. Her upbringing had taught her to be indirect and never to ask personal questions, for seriousness and emotion spoiled parties and caused ladies to faint. It would have cost her considerable effort to inquire about the purpose of someone's existence.

He sat on the edge of his bed and spoke to her back. "I must cut out brandy, that's all."

"I'm sure you know it has nothing to do with what you eat and drink." She applied lipstick, contorting her mouth to spread it evenly. "It began nine years ago, and your father died ten years ago."

"I've got printing ink in my blood." The response came formally, like a catechism. The conversation would have seemed dislocated to an eavesdropper, but they knew its logic. There was a code: the death of his father meant his assumption of control of the business; his ulcer meant his business problems.

She said: "You haven't got ink in your veins. Your father had, but you can't stand the smell of the old works."

"I inherited a strong business, and I want to bequeath to my sons an even stronger one. Isn't that what people of our class are supposed to do with their lives?"

"Our sons aren't interested in what we leave them. Michael is building his own business from scratch, and all Andrew wants to do is vaccinate the whole of the African continent against chicken pox."

He could not tell how serious she was now. The things she was doing to her face made her expession unreadable. No doubt it was deliberate. Almost everything she did was deliberate.

He said: "I have a duty. I employ more than two thousand people, and many more jobs are directly dependent upon the health of my companies."

"I think you've done your duty. You kept the firm going during a time of crisis-not everyone managed that. You've sacrificed your health to it; and you've given it ten years of your life, and… God knows what else." Her voice dropped on the final phrase, as if at the last minute she regretted saying it.

"Should I give it my pride as well?" he said. He carried on dressing, tying a tight little knot in his necktie. "I've turned a jobbing printer's into one of the thousand biggest companies in the country. My business is worth five times what my father's was. I put it together, and I have to make it work."

"You have to do better than your father."

"Is that such a poor ambition?"

"Yes!" Her sudden vehemence was a shock. "You should want good health, and long life, and-and my happiness."

"If the company was prosperous, perhaps I could sell it. As things are, I wouldn't get its asset value." He looked at his watch. "I must go down."

He descended the broad staircase. A portrait of his father dominated the hall. People often thought it was Derek at fifty. In fact it was Jasper at sixty-five. The phone on the hall stand shrilled as he passed. He ignored it: he did not take calls in the morning.

He went into the small dining room-the large one was reserved for parties, which were rare these days. The circular table was laid with silver cutlery. An elderly woman in an apron brought in half a grapefruit in a bone china dish.

"Not today, Mrs. Tremlett," he told her. "Just a cup of tea, please." He picked up The Financial Times.