Felix Laski's office in Poultry did not display his name anywhere. It was an old building, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with two others of different design. Had he been able to get planning permission to knock it down and build a skyscraper, he could have made millions. Instead it stood as an example of the way his wealth was locked up. But he reckoned that, in the long term, sheer pressure would blow the lid off planning restrictions; and he was a patient man where business was concerned.
Almost all of the building was sublet. Most of the tenants were minor foreign banks who needed an address near Threadneedle Street, and their names were well displayed. People tended to assume that Laski had interests in the banks, and he encouraged this error in every way short of outright lying. Besides, he did own one of the banks.
The furnishings inside were adequate but cheap: solid old typewriters, shop-soiled filing cabinets, secondhand desks, and the threadbare minimum of carpet. Like every successful man in middle age, Laski liked to explain his achievement in aphorisms: a favorite was "I never spend money. I invest." It was truer than most dicta of its kind. His one home, a small mansion in Kent, had been rising in value since he bought it shortly after the war; his meals were often expense-account affairs with business prospects; and even the paintings he owned-kept in a safe, not hung on walls-had been bought because his art dealer said they would appreciate. To him, money was like the toy banknotes in Monopoly: he wanted it, not for what it could buy, but because it was needed to play the game.
Still, his lifestyle was not uncomfortable. A primary-school teacher, or the wife of an agricultural laborer, would have thought he lived in unpardonable luxury.
The room he used as his own office was small. There was a desk bearing three telephones, a swivel chair behind it, two more chairs for callers, and a long, upholstered couch against the wall. The bookshelf beside the wall safe held scores of weighty volumes on taxation and company law. It was a room without a personality: no photographs of loved ones on the desk, no pictures on the walls, no foolish plastic penholder given by a well-meaning grandchild, no ashtray brought home from Clovelly or stolen from the Hilton.
Laski's secretary was an efficient overweight girl who wore her skirts too short. He often told people: "When they were giving out sex appeal, Carol was elsewhere getting extra rations of brains." That was a good joke, an English joke, the kind directors told each other in the executive canteen. Carol had arrived at nine twenty-five to find her boss's "out" tray full of work which had not been there last night. Laski liked to do things like that: it impressed the staff and helped to counteract envy. Carol had not touched the papers until she had made him coffee. He liked that, too.
He was sitting on the couch, hidden behind The Times, with the coffee near him on the arm of the chair, when Ellen Hamilton came in.
She closed the door silently and tiptoed across the carpet, so that he did not see her until she pushed the newspaper down and looked at him over it. The sudden rustle made him jump with shock.
She said: "Mr. Laski."
He said: "Mrs. Hamilton!"
She lifted her skirt to her waist and said: "Kiss me good morning."
Under the skirt she wore old-fashioned stockings with no panties. Laski leaned forward and rubbed his face in the crisp, sweet-smelling pubic hair. His heart beat a little faster, and he felt delightfully wicked, the way he had the first time he kissed a woman's vulva.
He sat back and looked up at her. "What I like about you is the way you manage to make sex seem dirty," he said. He folded the newspaper and dropped it to the floor.
She lowered her skirt and said: "Sometimes I just get the hots."
He smiled knowingly, and let his eyes roam her body. She was about fifty, and very slender, with small, pointed breasts. Her aging complexion was saved by a deep suntan which she nourished all winter under an ultraviolet lamp. Her hair was black, straight, and well cut; and the gray hairs which appeared from time to time were swiftly obliterated in an expensive Knights-bridge salon. She wore a cream-colored outfit: very elegant, very expensive, and very English. He ran his hand up the inside of her thigh, under the perfectly tailored skirt. With intimate insolence his fingers probed between her buttocks. He wondered whether anyone would believe that the demure wife of the Hon. Derek Hamilton went around with no panties on just so that Felix Laski could feel her arse anytime he wanted to.
She wriggled pleasurably, then moved slightly away and sat down beside him on the couch where, during the last few months, she had fulfilled some of his weirdest sexual fantasies.
He had intended Mrs. Hamilton to be a minor character in his grand scenario, but she had turned out to be a very enjoyable bonus.
He had met her at a garden party. The hosts were friends of the Hamiltons', not of his; but he got an invitation by pretending a financial fancy for the host's company, a light-engineering group. It was a hot day in July. The women wore summer dresses and the men, linen jackets; Laski had a white suit. With his tall, distinguished figure and faintly foreign looks, he cut quite a dash, and he knew it.
There was croquet for the older guests, tennis for the young people, and a pool for the children. The hosts provided endless champagne and strawberries with cream. Laski had done his homework on the host-even his pretenses were thorough-and he knew they could hardly afford it. Yet he had been invited reluctantly, and only because he had more or less asked. Why should a couple who were short of money give a pointless party for people they did not need? English society baffled him. Oh, he knew its rules, and understood their logic; but he would never know why people played the game.
The psychology of middle-aged women was something he understood much more profoundly. He took Ellen Hamilton's hand with just a hint of a bow, and saw a twinkle in her eye. That, and the fact that her husband was gross while she remained beautiful, was enough to tell him that she would respond to flirtation. A woman like her was sure to spend a great deal of time wondering whether she could still excite a man's lust. She might also be wondering whether she would ever know sexual pleasure again.
Laski proceeded to play the European charmer like an outrageous old ham. He fetched chairs for her, summoned waiters to top up her glass, and touched her discreetly but frequently: her hand, her arm, her shoulders, her hip. There was no point in subtlety, he felt: if she wanted to be seduced, he might as well give the message of his availability as clearly as possible; and if she did not want to be seduced, nothing he could do would change her mind.
When she had finished her strawberries-he ate none: to refuse mouthwatering food was a mark of class-he began to guide her away from the house. They moved from group to group, lingering where the conversation interested them, passing on quickly from social gossip. She introduced him to several people, and he was able to introduce her to two stockbrokers he knew slightly. They watched the children splashing around, and Laski said in her ear: "Did you bring your bikini?" She giggled. They sat in the shade of a mature oak and looked at the tennis players, who were boringly professional. They walked along a gravel path which wound through a small landscaped wood; and when they were out of sight, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. She opened her mouth to him, and ran her hands up inside his jacket, and dug her fingers into his chest with a force that surprised him; then she pulled away and looked furtively up and down the path.
Quickly he said: "Have dinner with me? Soon?"
"Soon," she said.
Then they walked back to the party and split up. She left without saying good-bye to him. The next day he took a suite at a hotel in Park Lane, and there he gave her dinner and champagne; then he took her to bed. It was in the bedroom that he discovered how wrong he had been about her. He expected her to be hungry, but easily satisfied. Instead, he found that her sexual tastes were at least as bizarre as his own. Over the next few weeks they did everything that two people can do to one another, and when they ran out of ideas Laski made a phone call and another woman arrived to open up a whole new series of permutations. Ellen did everything with the delighted thoroughness of a child in a fairground where all the rides are suddenly free.
He looked at her, sitting beside him on the couch in his office, as he remembered; and he felt suffused with a sentiment which he thought people would probably call love.
He said to her: "What do you like about me?"
"What an egocentric question!"
"I told you what I like about you. Come on, satisfy my ego. What is it?"
She looked down at his lap. "I give you three guesses."
He laughed. "Would you like coffee?"
"No, thank you. I'm going shopping. I just came in for a quick feel."
"You're a shameless old baggage."
"What a funny thing to say."
"How is Derek?"
"Another funny thing to say. He's depressed. Why do you ask?"
Laski shrugged. "The man interests me. How could he possess a prize like Ellen Hamilton, then let her slip through his fingers?"
She looked away. "Talk about something else."
"All right. Are you happy?"
She smiled again. "Yes. I only hope it will last."
"Why shouldn't it?" he said lightly.
"I don't know. I meet you, and I fuck like… like…"
"Like a bunny."
"What?"
"Fuck like a bunny. This is the correct English expression."
She opened her mouth and laughed. "You old fool. I love you when you're being all Prussian and correct. I know you only do it to amuse me."
"So: we meet, and we fuck like bunnies, and you don't think it can last."
"You can't deny the whole thing has an air of impermanence."
"Would you have it otherwise?" he asked carefully.
"I don't know."
It was the only answer she could give, he realized.
She added: "Would you?"
He chose his words. "This is the first time I have had occasion to reflect upon the permanence or otherwise of our relationship."
"Stop talking like the Chairman's Annual Report."
"If you will stop talking like the heroine of a romantic novelette. Speaking of Chairmen's Reports, I suppose that is what Derek is depressed about."
"Yes. He thinks it's his ulcer that makes him feel bad, but I know better."
"Would he sell the company, do you think?"
"I wish he would." She looked at Laski sharply. "Would you buy it?"
"I might."
She stared at him for a long moment. He knew that she was evaluating what he had said, weighing possibilities, considering his motives. She was a clever woman.
She decided to let it pass. "I must go," she said. "I want to be home for lunch,"
They stood up. He kissed her mouth, and ran his hands all over her body with sensual familiarity. She put a finger into his mouth, and he sucked it.
"Good-bye," she said.
"I'll call you," Laski told her.
Then she was gone. Laski went to the bookcase and stared unseeingly at the spine of The Directory of Directors. She had said, I only hope it can last, and he needed to think about that. She had a way of saying things that made him think. She was a subtle woman. What did she want, then-marriage? She had said she did not know what she wanted, and although she could hardly have said anything else, he had a feeling she was sincere. So, what do I want? he thought. Do I want to marry her?
He sat down behind his desk. He had a lot to do. He pressed the intercom and spoke to Carol. "Ring the Department of Energy for me, and find out exactly when-I mean what time-they plan to announce the name of the company that won the license for the Shield oil field."
"Certainly," she said.
"Then ring Fett and Co. for me. I want Nathaniel Fett, the boss."
"Right."
He flipped the switch up. He thought again: do I want to marry Ellen Hamilton?
Suddenly he knew the answer, and it astonished him.