doubt beside it. If not that, there could be reservations about Alex's discretion in the company he kept.
Either way, those doubts and reservations would be in the directors' minds near the end of this year, as Jerome Patterton's retirement neared, and the board reopened the subject of the bank presidency. And while directors were big men in some ways, in others, as Alex knew, they could be petty and prejudiced. Why? Why did it all have to happen now?
His dark mood deepened while Margot regarded him, her eyes questioning, her expression still anxious and uncertain.
She said more seriously than before, 'I've caused you trouble. Quite a lot I think. So let's both stop pretending that I didn't.'
He was about to reassure her again, then changed his mind, knowing this was a time for honesty between them.
'Another thing that has to be said,' Margot went on, 'is we talked about this, knowing it might happen, wondering whether we could remain the kind of people we are independent yet stay together.' 'Yes,' he told her, 'I remember.'
'The only thing is,' she said wryly, 'I didn't expect it all to come to a head so soon.'
He reached for her, as he had done so often before, but she moved away from him and shook her head. 'No, let's settle this.' Without warning, he realized, and without either of them intending it, their relationship had reached a crisis. 'It will happen again, Alex. Let's not fool ourselves it won't. Oh, not with the bank, but with other related things. And I want to be sure we can handle it whenever it does, and not just for one time only, hoping it will be the last.'
He knew that what she had said was true. Margot's life was one of confrontations; there would be many more. And while some would be remote from his own interests, others would not.
It was equally true, as Margot had pointed out, that they had spoken of this before just a week and a half ago. But then the discussion had been in abstract, the choice less clear, not sharply defined as events of the past week had made it.
'One thing you and I could do,' Margot said, 'is call it quits now, while we've had fun, while we're still ahead. No hard feelings either side; just a sensible conclusion. If we did that, stopped seeing each other and being seen together, word would travel quickly. It always does. And while it wouldn't wipe out what happened at the bank, it could make things easier for you there.'
That, too, was true, Alex knew. He had a swift temptation to accept the offer, to exorcise cleanly and swiftly a complication from his life, a complication likely to become greater, not less, as years went by. Again he wondered: Why did so many problems, pressures come together Celia worsening; Ben Rosselli's death; the struggle at the bank; the undeserved harassment today. And now Margot and a choice. Why?
The question reminded him of something which happened years before when he once visited the Canadian city of Vancouver. A young woman had jumped to her death from a 24th floor hotel room and, before jumping, scrawled in lipstick on the window glass, “Why, oh why?” Alex had never known her, or even learned later what were her problems which she believed beyond solution. But he had been staying on the same floor of the hotel and a talkative assistant manager had shown him the sad, lipsticked window. The memory always stayed with him.
Why, oh why, do we make choices that we do? Or why does life make them? Why had he married Celia? Why had she become insane? Why did he still hold back from the catharsis of divorce? Why did Margot need to be an activist? Why would he consider losing Margot now! How much did he want to be president of FMA? Not that muchl
He made a forceful, self-controlled decision and thrust his gloom away. The hell with it all, Not for FMA, nor boards of directors, or personal ambition, would he surrender, ever, his private freedom of action and independence. Or give up Margot.
'The most important thing is,' he told her, 'do you want it to be the way you said just now a 'sensible conclusion'?' Margot spoke through tears. 'Of course not.'
'Then I don't either, Bracken. Or am I ever likely to. So let's be glad this happened, that we've proved something, and that neither of us has to prove it any more. '
This time, when he put out his arms, she did not hold back.
6
'Roscoe, my boy,' the Honorable Harold Austin said on the telephone, sounding pleased with himself. 'I've been talking with Big George. He's invited you and me to play golf in the Bahamas next Friday.'
Roscoe Heyward pursed his lips doubtfully. He was at home, in the study of his Shaker Heights house, on a Saturday afternoon in March. Before taking the phone call he had been examining a portfolio of financial statements, with other papers spread on the floor around his leather armchair.
'I'm not certain I can get away that soon or go that far,' he told the Honorable Harold. 'Couldn't we try for a conference in New York?'
'Sure we could try. Except we'd be stupid, because Big George prefers Nassau; and because Big George likes doing business on a golf course, your kind of business that he attends to personally.'
It was unnecessary for either of them to identify 'Big George.' For that matter, few others in industry, banking, or public life would have needed to.
G. G. Quartermain, board chairman and chief executive of Supranational Corporation,SuNatCo was a bravura bull of a man who possessed more power than many heads of state and exercised it like a king. His interests and influence extended worldwide, like those of the corporation whose destiny he directed. Inside SuNatCo and out he was variously admired, hated, courted, lionized, and feared.
His strength lay in his record. Eight years earlier on the basis of some previous financial wizardry G. G. Quartermain had been summoned to the rescue of Supranational, then ailing and debt ridden. Between then and now he had restored the company's fortune, enlarged it to a spectacular conglomerate, thrice split its shares and quadrupled its dividend. Shareholders, whom Big George had made wealthy, adored him; they also allowed him all the freedom of action he desired. True, a few Cassandras argued he had built an empire of cardboard. But financial statements of SuNatCo and its many subsidiaries which Roscoe Heyward had been studying when the Honorable Harold telephoned resoundingly contradicted them.
Heyward had met the SuNatCo chairman twice: once briefly in a crowd, the second occasion in a Washington, D.C., hotel suite with Harold Austin.
The Washington meeting came about when the Honorable Harold reported to Quartermain on the subject of a mission he had carried out for Supranational. Heyward had no idea what the assignment was the other two had completed the main part of their conversation when he joined them except that in some way it involved government.
The Austin Agency handled national advertising for Hepplewhite Distillers, a large SuNatCo subsidiary, although the Honorable Harold's personal relationship with G. G. Quartermain appeared to extend beyond this.
Whatever the report was, it appeared to have put Big George in a jovial humor. On being introduced to Heyward, he observed, 'Harold tells me he's a director of your little bank and you'd both like a spoonful of our gravy. Well, sometime soon we'll see about it.'
The Supranational chieftain had then clapped Heyward across the shoulders and talked of other things.
It was his Washington conversation with G. G. Quartermain which prompted Heyward in mid-January two months ago to inform the FMA money policy committee that doing business with SuNatCo was a probability. Later, he realized he had been premature. Now it seemed the prospect was revived.
'Well' Heyward conceded on the telephone, 'perhaps I could get away next Thursday for a day or two.'
'That's more like it,' he heard the Honorable Harold say. 'Whatever you might have planned can't be more important to the bank than this. And, oh yes, one thing I haven't mentioned Big George is sending his personal airplane for us.'
Heyward brightened. 'Is he now? Is it big enough for a fast trip?'
'It's a 707. I thought that would please you.' Harold Austin chuckled. 'So we'll fly from here Thursday at noon, have all of Friday in the Bahamas, and be back on Saturday. By the way, how do the new SuNatCo statements look?'
'I've been studying them.' Heyward glanced at the mess of financial data spread around his chair. 'The patient appears healthy; very healthy indeed.'
