surfaced at moments of stress.
Hamilton had begun badly, in a meeting with a finance director who had
proposed a schedule of expenditure cuts amounting to a fifty-percent
shutdown of the entire operation. The plan was no good–it would have
helped cash flow and destroyed profitability–but Hamilton could see no
alternatives, and the dilemma had made him angry. He had yelled at the
accountant: “I ask you for solutions and you tell me to close up the
bloody shop!” Such behavior toward senior management was quite
intolerable, he knew. The man would certainly resign, and might not be
dissuaded.
Then his secretary, an elegant unflappable married woman who spoke three
languages, had bothered him with a list of trivia, and he had shouted at
her, too. Being what she was, she probably thought it part of her job to
take that kind of maltreatment, but that was no excuse, he thought.
And each time he cursed himself, and his staff, and his ulcer, he found
himself wondering: What am I doing here?
He ran over possible answers as the car took him the short distance
between his office and Nathaniel Fett’s. Money as an incentive could not
be dismissed quite as easily as he sometimes pretended. It was true that
he and Ellen could live comfortably on his capital, or even the interest
on his capital. But his dreams went beyond a comfortable life. Real
success in business would mean a million-pound yacht, and a villa in
Cannes, and a grouse moor of his own, and the chance to buy the Picassos
he liked instead of just looking at reproductions in glossy books. Such
were his dreams: or such they had been–it was now probably too late.
Hamilton Holdings would not make sensational profits in his lifetime.
As a young man he had wanted power and prestige, he supposed. In that he
had failed. There was no prestige in being chairman of an ailing
company, no matter how big; and his power was rendered worthless by the
strictures of the accountants.
He was not sure what people meant when they talked about job
satisfaction. It was an odd expression, calling to mind a picture of a
craftsman making a table from a piece of wood, or a farmer leading a
herd of plump lambs to market. Business was not like that: even if one
were moderately successful, there would always be new frustrations. And
for Hamilton there was nothing other than business. Even if he had
wanted to, he had not the ability to make tables or breed sheep, write
textbooks or design office blocks.
He thought again about his sons. Ellen had been right: neither of them
was counting on the inheritance. if asked for their counsel, they would
certainly say: “It’s yours–spend it!” Nevertheless, it went against his
instincts to dispose of the business which had made his family rich.
Perhaps, he thought, I should disobey my instinct–following it has not
made me happy.
For the first time he wondered what he would do if he did not have to go
to the office. He had no interest in village life. Walking to the pub
with a dog on a lead, like his neighbor Colonel Quinton, would bore
Hamilton. Newspapers would hold no interest–he only read the business
pages now, and if he had no business even they would be dull. He was
fond of his garden, but he could not see himself spending all day
digging weeds and forking in fertilizer.
What were the things we used to do, when we were young? It seemed, in
retrospect, that Ellen and he had spent an awful lot of time doing
absolutely nothing. They had gone for long drives in his two-seater,
sometimes meeting friends for a picnic. Why? Why get in a car, go a long
way, eat sandwiches and come back? They had gone to shows and to
restaurants, but that was in the evening. Yet there had always seemed to
be too few free days for them to spend together.
Well, it might be time for him and Ellen to start rediscovering each
other. And a million pounds would buy some of his dreams. They could
have a villa-perhaps not in Cannes, but somewhere in the Sud. He could