Papa would have preferred tequila, Micky knew, but hard alcohol was not served at Methodist tea parties.
Augusta looked at Micky. Always quick to sense other people’s moods, she said: “I can see that you’re not enjoying the party. What’s the matter?”
He did not hesitate to confide in her. “I was hoping Papa could help Edward by bringing new business to the bank, but it involves guns and ammunition, and Edward has just explained that Uncle Seth won’t finance weapons.”
“Seth won’t be Senior Partner much longer,” Augusta said.
“Apparently Samuel feels the same as his father.”
“Does he?” Augusta said, and her tone was arch. “And who says that Samuel is to be the next Senior Partner?”
HUGH PILASTER WAS WEARING a new sky-blue ascot-style cravat, slightly puffed at the neckline and held in place with a pin. He really should have been wearing a new coat, but he earned only 68 pounds a year, so he had to brighten up his old clothes with a new tie. The ascot was the latest fashion, and sky-blue was a daring color choice; but when he spied his reflection in the huge mirror over the mantelpiece in Aunt Augusta’s drawing room he saw that the blue tie and black suit looked rather fetching with his blue eyes and black hair, and he hoped the ascot gave him an attractively rakish air. Perhaps Florence Stalworthy would think so, anyway. He had started to take an interest in clothes since he met her.
It was a bit embarrassing, living with Augusta and being so poor; but there was a tradition at Pilasters Bank that men were paid what they were worth, regardless of whether they were family members. Another tradition was that everyone started at the bottom. Hugh had been a star pupil at school, and would have been head boy if he had not got into trouble so much; but his education counted for little at the bank, and he was doing the work of an apprentice clerk — and was paid accordingly. His aunt and uncle never offered to help him out financially, so they had to put up with his looking a little shabby.
He did not much care what they thought about his appearance, of course. It was Florence Stalworthy he was worried about. She was a pale, pretty girl, the daughter of the earl of Stalworthy; but the most important thing about her was that she was interested in Hugh Pilaster. The truth was that Hugh could be fascinated by any girl who would talk to him. This bothered him, because it surely meant that his feelings were shallow; but he could not help it. If a girl touched him accidentally it was enough to make his mouth go dry. He was tormented by curiosity about what their legs looked like under all those layers of skirt and petticoat. There were times when his desire hurt like a wound. He was twenty years old, he had felt like this since he was fifteen, and in those five years he had never kissed anyone except his mother.
A party such as this drum of Augusta’s was exquisite torture. Because it was a party, everyone went out of their way to be pleasant, find things to talk about, and show an interest in one another. The girls looked lovely and smiled and sometimes, discreetly, flirted. So many people were crowded into the house that inevitably some of the girls would brush up against Hugh, bump into him as they turned around, touch his arm, or even press their breasts against his back as they squeezed by. He would have a week of restless nights afterwards.
Many of the people here were his relations, inevitably. His father, Tobias, and Edward’s father, Joseph, had been brothers. But Hugh’s father had withdrawn his capital from the family business, started his own enterprise, gone bankrupt, and killed himself. That was why Hugh had left the expensive Windfield boarding school and become a day boy at the Folkestone Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen; it was why he started work at nineteen instead of doing a European tour and wasting a few years at a university; it was why he lived with his aunt; and it was why he did not have new clothes to wear to the party. He was a relation, but a poor one; an embarrassment to a family whose pride, confidence and social standing was based on its wealth.
It would never have occurred to any of them to solve the problem by giving him money. Poverty was the punishment for doing business badly, and if you started to ease the pain for failures, why, there would be no incentive to do well. “You might as well put feather beds in prison cells,” they would say whenever someone suggested helping life’s losers.
His father had been the victim of a financial crisis, but that made no difference. He had failed on 11th May 1866, a date known to bankers as Black Friday. On that day a bill broker called Overend & Gurney Ltd had gone bankrupt for five million pounds, and many firms were dragged down, including the London Joint Stock Bank and Sir Samuel Peto’s building company, as well as Tobias Pilaster & Co. But there were no excuses in business, according to the Pilaster philosophy. Just at present there was a financial crisis, and no doubt one or two firms would fail before it was over; but the Pilasters were vigorously protecting themselves, shedding their weaker clients, tightening credit, and ruthlessly turning down all but the most unquestionably secure new business. Self- preservation was the highest duty of the banker, they believed.
Well, I’m a Pilaster too, Hugh thought. I may not have the Pilaster nose, but I understand about self- preservation. There was a rage that boiled in his heart sometimes when he brooded about what had happened to his father, and it made him all the more determined to become the richest and most respected of the whole damn crew. His cheap day school had taught him useful arithmetic and science while his better-off cousin Edward was struggling with Latin and Greek; and not going to university had given him an early start in the business. He was never tempted to follow a different way of life, become a painter or a member of Parliament or a clergyman. Finance was in his blood. He could give the current bank rate quicker than he could say whether it was raining. He was determined he would never be as smug and hypocritical as his older relatives, but all the same he was going to be a banker.
However, he did not think about it much. Most of the time he thought about girls.
He stepped out of the drawing room onto the terrace and saw Augusta bearing down on him with a girl in tow.
“Dear Hugh,” she said, “here’s your friend Miss Bodwin.”
Hugh groaned inwardly. Rachel Bodwin was a tall, intellectual girl of radical opinions. She was not pretty — she had dull brown hair and light eyes set rather close together — but she was lively and interesting, full of subversive ideas, and Hugh had liked her a lot when he first came to London to work at the bank. But Augusta had decided he should marry Rachel, and that had ruined the relationship. Before that they had argued fiercely and freely about divorce, religion, poverty and votes for women. Since Augusta had begun her campaign to bring them together, they just stood and exchanged awkward chitchat.
“How lovely you look, Miss Bodwin,” he said automatically.
“You’re very kind,” she replied in a bored tone.
Augusta was turning away when she caught sight of Hugh’s tie. “Heavens!” she exclaimed. “What is that? You look like an innkeeper!”
Hugh blushed crimson. If he could have thought of a sharp rejoinder he would have risked it, but nothing came to mind, and all he could do was mutter: “It’s just a new tie. It’s called an ascot.”
“You shall give it to the bootboy tomorrow,” she said, and she turned away.
Resentment flared in Hugh’s breast against the fate that forced him to live with his overbearing aunt. “Women ought not to comment on a man’s clothes,” he said moodily. “It’s not ladylike.”
Rachel said: “I think women should comment on anything that interests them, so I shall say that I like your tie, and that it matches your eyes.”
Hugh smiled at her, feeling better. She was very nice, after all. However, it was not her niceness that caused Augusta to want him to marry her. Rachel was the daughter of a lawyer specializing in commercial contracts. Her family had no money other than her father’s professional income, and on the social ladder they were several rungs below the Pilasters; indeed they would not be at this party at all except that Mr. Bodwin had done useful work for the bank. Rachel was a girl in a low station in life, and by marrying her Hugh would confirm his status as a lesser breed of Pilaster; and that was what Augusta wanted.
He was not completely averse to the thought of proposing to Rachel. Augusta had hinted that she would give him a generous wedding present if he married her choice. But it was not the wedding present that tempted him, it was the thought that every night he would be able to get into bed with a woman, and lift her nightdress up, past her ankles and her knees, past her thighs—
“Don’t look at me that way,” Rachel said shrewdly. “I only said I liked your tie.”
