Читать книгу The Money Makers - Harry Bingham - Страница 17

‘D’you know what Josie wants to talk about?’ asked Matthew.

‘Not me,’ said Zack. ‘Probably just wants to escape Mum for the evening. I’d go nuts in that grotty little house with Mum crying away all the time.’

‘Poor Mum. She certainly took the will terribly hard. I should visit her, but I’m working all hours at the moment.’

‘Mmm,’ said Zack, who was in between finishing at his accountancy firm and starting at Coburg’s. Despite his leisure time, he hadn’t called on his ailing mother. A silence began to grow, filled only by the rumble of traffic from Camden High Street. ‘Where’s George, d’you know?’ he said, changing the subject.

‘No, no one knows. Josie left loads of messages at his flat, but he’s either not there or not responding.’

‘I wonder what he’s up to. He’s going to have a bit of a job financing his lifestyle now.’

That was true enough. George’s playboy life had been paid for by huge dollops of cash from their father. No more cash, no more jet-setting.

‘You never know,’ said Matthew. ‘He’s probably persuaded a billionaire friend of his to give him a couple of million to tide him over. He was always good at getting cash out of Dad. Better than us.’

Zack shrugged. ‘I don’t think we need worry. George would get through a million in a matter of months.’

Both men laughed. They weren’t worried about George getting his million. Zack was the cleverest of the brothers, Matthew the most determined. George wasn’t smart and he hated work. Both brothers had always vaguely resented the ease with which George had taken cash from their father, but now it was payback time. Zack knew that Matthew was his only serious rival, and he was Matthew’s. The two men looked at each other warily. They were tense, defensive, nervous.

When the doorbell rang, Zack stood up quickly. ‘That’ll be her now. If you get the door, I’ll get her a drink.’

Matthew opened the door and found a stranger. It was Josephine alright, but as he’d never seen her. She wore a navy blue skirt with a white cotton blouse. A single gold chain was her only jewellery. Her long, dark, naturally curly hair was pulled back and pinned up. A few weeks before, Josephine had been a slim, pretty, lively girl with a passion for dance and parties. Today, she was professional, competent, unobtrusive. For maybe the first time, her mouth was tucked down, not up, at the corners.

‘Jesus Christ, Josie,’ murmured Matthew. ‘So soon?’

‘Yes, I was lucky. I got a last minute place at the Cavendish Secretarial School and I’ve been there a week now. It’s going OK.’

‘And this stuff – from M & S, I suppose?’

‘Yes. I’d never realised how much £500 could buy. I’m all set up now as you see.’

She gave a half-twirl as though to show off a party frock, but her heart wasn’t in it.

‘It’s not right, Josie. It’s not right.’

She looked away, not wanting to let Matthew see her quivering eyes.

‘I haven’t many options, have I? Besides, it’s how most girls my age get by.’

Matthew raised his arm, offering her a cuddle, but she gently pushed it away. She’d cry if he cuddled her and she wasn’t here to cry. Once inside, Josephine took a tumbler of gin and tonic with a sigh of relief. She stretched out her legs on Zack’s gleaming glass coffee table, uncomfortable beneath her brother’s dark unemotional scrutiny.

‘M & S, huh?’

‘That’s right.’

Zack just nodded. Josie saw his eyes pass the information to his brain, which stored the fact as just another item to be memorised and filed. He cut to the chase.

‘Well, Josie, are you going to reveal why you’ve got us together or shall we guess?’

‘I don’t think it should be all that hard to guess,’ she said, keeping her voice steady and reasonable. ‘Mummy’s shocked, she’s depressed. Even after a month, she’s showing no sign of improvement. I think we need to do something.’

‘She needs to get out,’ said Zack. ‘Get a job.’

‘She can’t. She can’t type any more, and secretarial work is all she’ll do.’

‘Oh, come on. We all know she could type if she wanted. She could do anything if she just pulled herself together.’

‘Zack! She’s in a bad way. She’s finding things hard.’

‘What are you suggesting? We take it in turns to sing her lullabies?’

Josie’s temper began to rise despite herself, despite her foreknowledge that Zack would be difficult.

‘I’m saying that she needs help. From all of us. Now.’

Zack snorted and threw himself back in his chair, leaving it to Matthew to ask more gently, ‘What? What did you have in mind?’

‘Mum had relied on the will to make her comfortable. Dad failed her, but we don’t have to. We can all get jobs. I’m hoping to find work as soon as I finish my course. We can all put as much as we can towards a regular income for Mum, maybe club together to get her somewhere decent to live. She’s never liked it where she is now.’

‘She’s perfectly capable of going out to work herself,’ snapped Zack.

‘How would you know? When did you last see her?’

Matthew once again sought to make peace.

‘Have you thought about taking her to the doctor’s? Trying her out on antidepressants? She probably just needs snapping out of it.’

‘I have taken her to the doctor’s, yes,’ said Josie, still taut. ‘He spent three minutes with her, then wrote out a prescription for Prozac, which stopped her from getting to sleep, then gave her nightmares. If you want her to see another doctor, then it’s a private specialist she needs, paid for by us.’

Matthew lapsed into silence. He didn’t like the thought of leaving his mum without help, but he didn’t like the idea of offering his money before Zack had offered any of his. Zack lay slumped in his chair, swilling his whisky round his tumbler, then sat forward, alert again.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No? What do you mean, no?’

‘No, Josie. I’ve got three years to make a million pounds. I’m not going to work my knackers off only to miss the target by a few quid at the end, because Mum was too lazy to go out to work for herself.’

‘It’s not laziness!’

‘What else do you call it? The moment you start giving in to these sort of people, they learn to do less and less.’

‘These sort of people, Zack? She’s –’

‘And there’s no need to worry about money. In three years’ time, we’ll see to her properly. Either one of us wins Dad’s money, in which case he’ll see her right. Or none of us wins, in which case we’ll certainly have enough between us to look after her. It’s not a problem.’ Zack looked at Matthew for his agreement, which he gave with a nod. ‘I’m sure George would agree too. Stop worrying.’

‘She needs help now.’

‘Josie, you’re out of the will anyway. You may as well use your salary to look after Mum. It’s not as though she eats much or spends anything on clothes and stuff. We’ll pay you back in three years. If there’s a shortfall, you can always mortgage the house. Christ, in three years we just won’t have any problems. We’ll send you back to school for a start, and chuck that Miss Moneypenny outfit of yours in the incinerator.’

Josephine was furious. Angry and upset. She put her drink down on the table, hands shaking badly. She stood up.

‘For your information, this Miss Moneypenny outfit is what I expect to wear when I start to earn my living. And if you think I’m going to mortgage Mum’s home on the off chance that one of you three babies wins the Lottery in the next three years then you must be nuts. And if you think that it’s OK, now that she really needs you, to ignore her completely, then you’re totally out of line.’

Zack made no answer, but contempt was written on his face in lines of white.

‘Matthew, tell him.’ Josie appealed to her brother.

Matthew sat like a five-year-old, hoping that by keeping silent he could stay out of trouble. He didn’t have Zack’s abrasive selfishness, but he didn’t have his sister’s warm-hearted sense of justice either. He swallowed, but shook his head.

‘For God’s sake, you two. She’s not just some batty old cow. She’s your mother.’

Zack sat forward and opened his mouth. The others knew what Zack was thinking. He was thinking of saying that she was a batty old cow as well as his mother. Josephine was ready to throw her tumbler at him if he said it, but Matthew beat them both to the draw, interjecting quickly: ‘Josie, of course she’s our mum. But Zack’s right, you know. It makes no sense at all for us to devote our time or money to looking after her right now, when that could mean that we lose Gradley Plant Hire and all the money held in trust. Everybody is better off if we make sure that Dad’s money comes into the family instead of going to some godawful charity.’

‘So you’ll cooperate will you? Pool the money you make at the end of three years and divide up Dad’s money into quarters?’

It was a question addressed to both of them, but Matthew deferred to Zack, and Zack’s silence was implacable.

‘And now? What happens now?’ persisted Josie.

‘Well, I can see it’s going to be tight for the next three years,’ Matthew answered. ‘It’ll be hard for all of us. But we need to think of the future. And Zack’s right, you don’t want to be a secretary for the rest of your life. You will need a way out of that, you know.’

‘I’ll need a way out of that,’ repeated Josephine distantly. ‘So the answer’s no? You won’t help? Nothing?’

‘Of course we’ll do what we can.’ Matthew looked at Zack, who was adding to his whisky and looking away. ‘But realistically it won’t be much. But we’ll do what we can.’

‘I see.’

Josephine put down her drink. Her hands had stopped shaking. She picked up a heavy bronze statuette on a polished granite base from the glass coffee table in front of her. She turned it over in her hands. The statue was of a racing car. It had been a gift from Bernard Gradley to Zack, who had never liked it, but had never thrown it away either. She looked at it. It reminded her of her father’s campaign to win allegiance with money, and of his failure to do so. Love buys love, money buys money.

She held out the statuette and dropped it. It fell heavily and landed in the dead centre of the table, shattering the glass. Two diagonal cracks running from corner to corner split it into four pieces. Half the glass slid from its mounting and crashed on to the thickly carpeted floor. The remaining bits of glass stayed sticking out, suspended. The statuette lay on the floor surrounded by debris.

‘So sorry,’ she said, and left.