Point of No Return Page 6

  Mr. Eaton was from the Middle West, where he had owned a number of small factories, and Mr. Eaton had obviously done well for himself because now he owned two apartment buildings free and clear, was a director of a chain of stores, and a part owner of a sugar refinery. He was obviously one of those adroit people who could move from one enterprise to another. The purpose of the loan was for additions to a tile plant. Part of the collateral was in government bonds and part in stocks. It surprised Charles that the officers had not given him the loan at once, particularly since it appeared that Mr. Eaton was a director of the Pacific Investors Trust and thus indirectly controlled several large accounts at the Stuyvesant which were not his own. If Mr. Eaton were disappointed personally, the disappointment might go much further, but recently Tony Burton and Stephen Merry had been exhibiting an unusual slowness in making decisions.

  “I wonder why he didn’t go to his own bank,” Charles said, “not that it’s any of my business.”

  Clearly Roger Blakesley was delighted by the question.

  “Because I met him first, Charles,” Roger said, “and I’m selling him on the personal service of small banks. I met him playing golf. I’ve seen quite a good deal of Godfrey Eaton. He’s a friend of Sam Summerby—you know, Tony—Sam Summerby from Baltimore.”

  Perhaps it was Charles’s imagination, perhaps he was becoming unduly sensitive, but it seemed to him that there was a slight rustle around the table. It seemed to him that everyone was watching them, and he realized that Roger had made a very good point. He knew that Roger was implying, without being obliged to say it, that he had brought in a very nice piece of business to the Stuyvesant, which was more than Charles had done lately. He was implying, without having to say it, that he brought in new business because he got around and sweetened contacts and played golf with people like Samuel Summerby, and everyone knew the Summerby Corporation. He was implying, without saying it, that it was too bad Charles played a very poor game of golf, and it seemed to Charles that he was called upon to give some sort of answer.

  “Are you on a first-name basis with him, Roger?” he asked.

  It was a small and sordid little contest. He was implying, without having to say it, that several times in the past Roger had been too prematurely friendly.

  “Of course I am,” Roger said. “I’ve known Godfrey Eaton for a year. Everybody at the club knows Godfrey.”

  “What club?” Tony Burton asked. “Where does Eaton play golf?”

  “Why, the Seneca Club,” Roger said. “I’ve got in the habit of playing there lately instead of at Oak Knoll. It’s a sportier course.”

  Mr. Burton nodded and made a note on a memorandum pad. The meeting had turned into a club’s committee on admissions.

  “I rather liked him myself,” Tony Burton said. “He’s breezy, but he has an agreeable personality. But Charles has put his finger on it. Why should he come around to us?”

  “Because he likes us,” Roger said. “He told me he liked you very much personally.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” Stephen Merry asked. “I like Tony personally.”

  Roger Blakesley laughed.

  “As a matter of fact, I do too,” he said. “That’s why the Stuyvesant is a great bank. Everybody likes Tony.”

  “I’d love Tony myself,” Charles said, “if he’d lend me three hundred thousand dollars. That’s the way it is. Love and money.”

  The officers laughed. Even the younger men around the table smiled, and Mr. Burton picked up a piece of paper. “He’s putting up enough,” he said. “There’s only one security I question.”

  “What?” Roger Blakesley asked.

  Mr. Burton frowned at the paper he was holding, and he looked very handsome there at the head of the table as everyone’s eyes moved toward him.

  “Here’s an unlisted company from a place called Clyde, Massachusetts—a block of five thousand shares at twenty dollars a share.”

  That was how Clyde came into the conference room, suddenly, out of nowhere. It came because Tony Burton’s mind had been on a loan when he should have been discussing trust business. It came like an unexpected gust of wind through an open window, except that there were no windows in the conference room—nothing but scientific air conditioning.

  “I remember that five thousand shares,” Roger Blakesley said, “but he has enough without it, hasn’t he? We ought not to disappoint him. He’s just the sort of person who in different ways controls a lot of business.”

  “The Nickerson Cordage Company, Clyde, Massachusetts,” Mr. Burton read. “Five thousand shares. Now of course we don’t want to disappoint Mr. Eaton, but has anyone here ever heard of the Nickerson Cordage Company? Wait a minute—” Tony’s glance had turned toward Charles. “Clyde. Let’s see. Charles, didn’t you come from a place called Clyde?”

  Mr. Burton had a good memory. As far as Charles could recall, he had only mentioned Clyde to him once and that was years ago when the Burtons were going to take a vacation trip to Maine. Mr. Burton had shown him a road map marked by the AAA and Charles had told him that Clyde was a pretty place, that he did not know about accommodations now but that he had once lived in Clyde.

  “Yes, sir,” Charles said. “I was born there but I haven’t been there for quite a while.”

  “Well, what about the Nickerson Cordage Company?”

  “They used to make rope,” Charles said, “and twine and fish nets. They were near the Wright-Sherwin Company in Clyde.” Charles cleared his throat. It did not seem appropriate to say any more, but Mr. Burton was still listening.

  “They used to build a lot of sailing ships in Clyde,” Charles said, “and they needed ropes for them.”

  He could see as he spoke the sheds of the Nickerson Cordage Company beside the river, a small and shabby plant, and he could remember the smell of tar and hemp that came from it. Mr. Burton was still looking at him and it seemed necessary to go on.

  “I didn’t know it was incorporated,” Charles said. “It must have grown.”

  “If Godfrey Eaton has money in it, it must be good,” Roger said. He spoke as an authority, as a golf partner and an intimate personal friend of Mr. Godfrey Eaton.

  “Well, we’ll leave this for now,” Mr. Burton said. His voice was resonant and agreeable, but it seemed to Charles that it had changed slightly.

  Charles relaxed in his leather-seated mahogany chair. It was peculiar that the name of Clyde should have cropped up at the table. Things happened all at once. You thought of a name or a face and then it would appear.

  “I remember Clyde,” Stephen Merry said. “The road to Bar Harbor used to go through it but it’s by-passed now. It’s a pretty little town, something like Wiscasset in Maine. Nice houses but not much of a hotel. Elm trees. I never knew you came from there, Charles.”

  “Well,” Charles said, “that was quite a while ago.”

  Mr. Burton picked up another paper but it seemed to Charles that he was still disturbed about the Nickerson Cordage Company.

  “Never mind it now,” he said. “It’s getting on towards lunch time.”

  Charles only half heard him. The mention of Clyde was taking his attention from the meeting. It was not that he was daydreaming, it was not that he was not listening carefully. He could see the faces about him very clearly and the papers on the table and the inevitable memorandum pads and newly sharpened pencils that were conventionally on every conference table, though you hardly ever used them except to draw squares and pictures if you did not smoke. It was only that he found himself wondering how he had ever got into that conference room and whether he really wanted to be there, and he wondered whether anyone else around that table had ever shared those thoughts. Certainly their faces did not show it, though they had all arrived there as he had, through some sort of accident, if only because banking was a dignified and fashionable pursuit and there wasn’t much else but business when you finished college.

  Charles glanced at his watch, not surreptitiously as one usually did at
conferences but deliberately. It was ten minutes past twelve, and he was relieved because that situation with Roger was beginning to be difficult. They were both of them showing off before the bank officers like college boys running for manager of some team, although they were both assistant vice-presidents. They were doing it in a very nice way, and of course they both were justified, but he was glad when it was over. In five minutes everyone was standing up, looking almost carefree because there would be a breathing spell for lunch.

  “I didn’t know the Eaton thing was coming up this morning,” Roger Blakesley said.

  Probably, under the circumstances, it was right to hover around Tony Burton and to show eagerness and zeal, but at the same time it might be possible to go too far.

  “Speaking of electric razors,” Charles said, “there was a story in the war—” He had decided that he would bring up electric razors after all.

  “What’s that about electric razors?” Roger asked quickly.

  “There was a story in the war,” Charles said, “about someone who brought one to Port Moresby in New Guinea and there weren’t any outlets at Moresby.”

  Charles was pleased to see that Tony Burton looked amused.

  “Do you use one of those damned things, Roger?” Tony Burton asked.

  “Of course,” Roger said. “When you get the hang of one, you never want anything else.”

  “Don’t you?” Tony Burton said. “Well, I wouldn’t give one houseroom.”

  4

  I Remember, I Remember, the House Where I Was Born

  —THOMAS HOOD

  There had been times in the past when Charles was embarrassed because he was not a Harvard or a Yale graduate as the New York banks he dealt with most were full of Harvard and Yale men, but in recent years he no longer felt any particular handicap. He had lunched at the Harvard Club often enough to find his own way to the checkroom and Malcolm Bryant had left word at the door that he would be at the bar.

  Charles found Malcolm at once, standing beside a middle-aged man who wore a tweed coat and gray slacks. The sight of a tweed coat in the city made Charles slightly uneasy for it showed that Malcolm’s friend, like Malcolm, belonged in some category where correct dress was not necessary. The tweed coat meant that he had just dropped in casually from the country and that he was a teacher or writer or something, and though it was a relief occasionally to meet personalities like this, still it was an effort in the middle of a crowded day to shift to them from people like Tony Burton and Roger Blakesley.

  “Hello, Charley,” Malcolm said. “This is Guy Lake. Mr. Gray, Mr. Lake.”

  Mr. Lake shook hands with Charles unsmilingly. His brown hair was closely cropped. His face was thin and studious.

  “Malcolm says you’re a banker,” Mr. Lake said. “Malcolm says he picked you up somewhere at a desk. It’s been quite a shock to Malcolm.”

  “It was quite a shock to me, too,” Charles said. “I still haven’t got over it.” He smiled. At least he was able to deal with people. Experience had finally taught him to watch and wait and to find out what people were like.

  “What’ll you have to drink, Charley?” Malcolm asked.

  At first Charles thought of saying that he would not have anything, but this would have been needlessly austere so he said that he would like a sherry.

  “That’s the boy, Charley,” Malcolm said, and he waved one hand at Charles and put the other on Mr. Lake’s shoulder. “You know when I was doing that job on Yankee Persepolis, Guy—”

  “Yes,” Mr. Lake said. “I know when you were doing it.”

  “Well, Charley was right there. That’s where I met Charley.”

  “I know,” Mr. Lake said. “You’ve been telling me.”

  Charles picked up his glass and wondered uneasily just what Malcolm had been telling him.

  “That’s right,” Malcolm said. “I’ve been telling you—and he never read it. What do you think of that? It hurts me. It really hurts me.”

  “If it hurts you, you’d better take another drink,” Mr. Lake said. “Alcohol kills pain.”

  “That’s a very good idea, Guy,” Malcolm said. “Two more bourbons and plain water. In fact it hurt me so much that I went right to the store and bought him a copy.”

  “What,” said Mr. Lake, “is that thing still in print?”

  “You’re damned well right, it’s still in print,” Malcolm said. “Where’s that book? I had it here.”

  “You left it at the other end of the bar, sir,” the barman told him.

  “Oh yes,” Malcolm said. “Well, get it for me, will you?”

  “Are you going to give it to him?” Mr. Lake asked. “You ought to make him buy it. It shows you’re an amateur.”

  “He wouldn’t buy it,” Malcolm said. “Do you buy Guy’s books, Charley?”

  Charles smiled again.

  “No,” he said, “but I suppose I should.”

  There was nothing more difficult than standing at a bar with people who were a little tight and only being able to drink sherry. The barman had passed Malcolm an academic-looking volume in a plain dust wrapper with Yankee Persepolis printed on it—A Social Study—MALCOLM BRYANT.

  “There you are,” Malcolm said.

  “Why, thanks, Malcolm,” Charles said. “Thank you very much.”

  Malcolm put his hand back on Mr. Lake’s shoulder.

  “Charley’s a nice boy, Guy,” Malcolm said. “You see why I like him, don’t you? He has that repressed quality.”

  “It’s too bad you haven’t got some of it yourself,” Mr. Lake said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way,” Malcolm said. “It’s healthier to be an extrovert—happier. Are you happy, Charley?”

  “Frankly, no,” Charles said. “Not at the moment, Malcolm.”

  Mr. Lake began to laugh.

  “You’d feel happier if you had another drink,” he said. “How about another drink?”

  Charles was trying to remember what it was he had once liked in Malcolm and he thought it was largely that Malcolm had been an older man who had been very decent to him. There was still that gap in age as they stood there in front of the bar.

  “How about lunch?” Charles asked. “I haven’t got much time, Malcolm.”

  “Now that’s what I was saying, Guy,” Malcolm said. “It’s control rather than introversion. It’s control and environmental influence. We once went through an intense emotional experience together, something that must have shaken us both. Sex has a way of doing that. And now he asks about lunch. That’s what I call control. Get me another bourbon and water.”

  “You’d better get lunch, Malcolm,” Mr. Lake said. “I’ve got to be going now. I’m glad to have met you, Mr. Gray,” and he shook hands and walked away.

  Malcolm Bryant scowled and shook his head.

  “He’s a conceited bastard, isn’t he?” he said.

  “I didn’t have a chance to find out,” Charles said, and he knew he never would find out.

  “Well, he’s a conceited bastard,” Malcolm said. “He’s an ornithologist. We were on a trip once in the Orinoco.”

  “Oh,” Charles said, “I remember. You used to talk about the Orinoco.” He had been bored and ill at ease, but suddenly it all was different. “So you got to the Orinoco, did you?”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said. “I got there.”

  Up to that moment, it had been hard to remember much about Malcolm Bryant but now everything was beginning to be clearer. The mention of the Orinoco gave Charles a slightly guilty but at the same time a pleasant feeling. It brought him back to a time when he had been able to consider seriously regions like the Orinoco as places he might conceivably visit. He had never been able to understand Malcolm’s interests or activities. He had only known him as an eccentric person, engaged in pursuits that demanded a queer accretion of knowledge.

  Malcolm had always talked about foundations and fellowships and expeditions and surveys, and part of his life had sounded as dry as dust and part of it un
intelligibly exotic. As they stood by the bar, he gave Charles an impression of being removed by virtue of his own brains and ability from all ordinary obligations. The fact that he was older brought back to Charles a familiar callow feeling, one partly of admiration and partly of envy, though envy was not exactly the right word. He had never envied Malcolm Bryant as much as he had mistrusted his influence. He was thinking again that people like Malcolm Bryant fitted into no reasonable category. They were pampered, preposterous creatures who lived an artificial life, who did not understand or want to be like other people.

  “I guess you have to have a Ph.D. to go to places like that,” Charles said. “You have to know about bugs or snakes or rubber, I suppose.”

  Malcolm was regarding him in his old friendly, detached way, as though he were examining a strange human specimen.

  “Yes,” Malcolm said. “It’s better to have a Ph.D., but it’s more important to think of a project. Then you sell that project to somebody and they give you the money and you go. That’s why I’m going to New Guinea tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Charles said, “are you going to New Guinea?”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said, “for the Pacific Investigation Institute. They had to have an anthropologist. Walter Sykes was going—you know, Sykes at the Peabody, who did that work on the Micronesians. He’s overrated, if you want my personal opinion, and he keeps harping on the Haynes method. His kidneys gave out last week and so they went around to the Birch Foundation and the Birch found me.”

  “Oh,” Charles said. It was like groping in the dark in an unfamiliar room that was filled with odd odors and awkward pieces of furniture. “You mean you just pack up and go?”