Nantucket (20 page)

It now occurred to Andrew that if he had been unfaithful to Cathy with Venetia, they might have given up on their
marriage a lot sooner. Andrew would have confessed. He was that kind of man. Cathy could have said, “In that case…” and been free. So it turned out there was truth in Venetia's riddles. Cathy had been punished for what Andrew hadn't done.

13

By the time Andrew got back to his nameless house, the Governor had essentially taken over. Having known him since they were seventeen, Andrew recognised the signs. George became manic when there was a girl he wanted to impress. This rarely turned out to be advantageous to the girl.

Janis had been set up in the tiny study wedged among the bedrooms on the second floor. The door had been closed and all the guests had assumed it was a closet – everyone except Cynthia, that is, who seemed to have done a lot of exploring. “We need a place for Janis,” George had loudly announced. “We need a place for Janis to work, to get these agreements drafted.” Rosemary described the scene to Andrew when he got back from his walk with Cathy. Cynthia had suggested the study. There was a desk that faced the door, with a chair behind it and two others facing it. Andrew's Harvard diploma hung on the wall, above a small bookcase.

Seeing Janis sitting there, when he briefly looked in, it occurred to Andrew that she was good in tight places, good at making the best of things. Her humour and good manners probably didn't reflect a privileged upbringing as he had
initially supposed. Her mother was probably a single parent, an underpaid, enormously competent executive secretary – same as Judy's, come to think of it – who'd taught her how to fit in, how to be indispensable, how to never make anyone important uncomfortable. And with that training and emotional endowment, Janis had found her way to the Governor's office, devoting herself to a man whose political destiny meant he could never marry her, even if he came to love her. Along with self-discipline and resilience, Janis had a talent for having her heart broken.

Janis also had a laptop. She always did. “I never know when I'll have to issue a statement,” the Governor had explained, as if that would have been news. There was a printer under the desk that seemed to be willing to take instructions from the laptop. “A very helpful little machine,” George called it. To go with very helpful Janis, Andrew said to himself.

George had begun by ushering people in to see Janis, one by one, and interrogating them on what they wanted or needed or felt others were entitled to. “The Grand Bargain,” he initially called it. Janis took notes on a yellow legal pad. “I know how to make deals,” he told Andrew when he and Cathy returned.

“Several of us know how to do that,” said Andrew sharply.

Andrew was feeling far from manic. Bringing twenty years of marriage to a close didn't feel like something to celebrate, even if it was a relief. Rosemary seemed to feel that too. It was twelve years of marriage she was discarding, if he'd done the maths right. Anyway, she seemed a bit subdued.

The night before, once Sally had been outed, it had seemed to Andrew that Rosemary was assuming the role of hostess. He'd liked that. He wanted her to stay forever. Now, with Cathy in evidence, it felt like Rosemary had pulled back. Surely she
didn't think Cathy would go back to being the person she'd been. Or that Andrew wanted that.

“…political deals,” George was saying, warming to his subject, as six of them sat around the table drinking coffee while Janis worked away upstairs. “This is about rights and reputation as well as financial outcomes, and it's a multi-party understanding in which competing interests must be balanced.”

“I have no reputation to worry about any more,” said Cathy. “I'm going to my bedroom.”

“So it's a ‘Concert of Nantucket' you are aiming for,” said Shiva, “like the ‘Concert of Europe.' My uncle was a diplomat, remember,” he added, as if to apologise.

The Governor liked that. “You can do the economics, Andrew,” he said generously. “You'll do that better. There always have to be bankers to do the economics.”

“There were bankers at Versailles and no one listened to them,” said Shiva. “Keynes was there. He wrote his famous book about it.”

“Keynes wasn't a banker,” said Andrew. “He was an economist and a speculator.”

“Versailles was a failure,” said Rosemary.

“How about the Congress of Vienna?” said the Governor. “That worked, if I remember rightly.”

“‘Congress of Vienna' sounds like sex,” said Judy. Andrew suspected everything in the world reminded Judy of sex this morning.

“Sex works,” said Rosemary. “So presumably the Congress of Vienna did too.”

“My wife, the optimist – who read poetry at university,” said Shiva. “My soon-to-be-former wife, that is.”

“Thank you, Shiva dear,” said Rosemary. Just possibly, that
was his first outright indication that he intended more changes than retirement. Rosemary seemed all right with that. Andrew was more than all right that she was.

“The Congress of Vienna
did
work,” said Shiva, “for ninety-nine years – from 1815 to 1914.”

“So what's the difference,” said Judy, “between a ‘congress' and a ‘concert' – diplomatically, that is?”

“A concert is a harmonious arrangement,” said Shiva. “A congress is a meeting where you negotiate to achieve it. The Congress of Vienna is where the Concert of Europe was conceived, in fact. The Concert was sometimes called the ‘Congress System' because there was an understanding that problems would be solved through further meetings, further congresses, rather than wars.”

“Sex as a precursor to further sex,” said Rosemary.

“You would have been a fine diplomat, Shiva,” said the Governor, acknowledging Rosemary's contribution with a flicker of a smile. “Did you ever consider it?”

“An eldest son has no choice,” said Shiva. “Not if there is a lot of money to be attended to.”

“A prince and therefore a prisoner,” said Andrew.

“A politician of sorts,” said the Governor.

“But without the hope of losing an election,” said Shiva.

“More coffee, anyone?” said George, bouncing up from the table. And then: “I'd better check on Janis.”

“Leave her alone,” said Rosemary.

Andrew opened his mouth to second her suggestion but then closed it without speaking. There was no point in arguing with George when he was manic. You only had two choices. You could laugh or you could get grumpy. Laughing was much the better course, but Andrew was feeling twitchy and uncertain
on so many levels that his sense of humour seemed to be failing him. Don't be rude, he said to himself. Keep your thoughts to yourself. Having been told he had no immediate role, he went out onto the porch and sat on the steps.

Thinking about Venetia had been quite unsettling, actually. She'd been haunting him ever since Joe described his own experience of an English shooting party and the girl he'd failed to pursue. Venetia had visited him off and on for nineteen years.

There was Venetia getting into the bathtub, which was jolly and erotic. There was Venetia the tease, which was also erotic, and all that kissing, which felt sweet and genuine even if it was advertised as part of the teasing. Then the disappointments of his marriage had jumped out and confronted him. He'd cried like a four-year-old. And Venetia had been really nice about it, making it plain, in that oblique way the English have, that she didn't really think love was a game either, and that while she had no intention of getting involved, if he was willing to wrestle with the pain and complications of a divorce with a baby and no money, which she assumed he
wasn't
, she could be prepared to get serious. Or at least that was the shape memory gave events. “I was afraid you'd come,” she'd said. And she'd been right. Whether it was cowardice or virtue, he hadn't been prepared for pain and complications. Some evenings, when he'd drunk too much, it felt like the great failure of his life. And now here was Rosemary as a second chance.

“The issues seem to be,” said Rosemary quietly, sitting down next to Andrew when George went back upstairs, “and in no particular order: ensuring no one discloses the foolishness Sally got us up to last night; the fact that we all went to bed with quote, the wrong partners, unquote; your fees; the understanding
Joe and Shiva reach about combining bits of their respective businesses; Cynthia's payout from her pre-nuptial agreement; what Joe wants to offer Sally; what Shiva is prepared to offer Judy; whether Judy will accept anything – so far she refuses; who gets the seats on this evening's flight to Manhattan, and if Cynthia isn't one of them, who fills in for her on breakfast television; what story George tells Lydia – he hasn't brought that up but it's hovering over us like the
Hindenburg
; whether any of us need to vouch for him; whether we should; whether we have enough left-overs; whether Cathy will spend the night here or is going to ask Lydia for a bed; whether whatever Janis, poor girl, drafts would stand up in court if anyone wished to contest it; what court would have jurisdiction – oh, and I nearly forgot, how does Shiva go about giving Joe sufficient authority over the rest of his multi-billion-dollar empire to persuade Joe to take charge of it, which Shiva continues to want to do even though Janis tells him he shouldn't.” She paused. “That's my list, anyway.”

“What about you?” said Andrew. There was just a little space between them on the step, he noticed.

“I spend tonight in the servant's room with you no matter what. I assume that's not negotiable.”

“I suppose we have to make lunch,” said Andrew. No, it certainly wasn't negotiable. Maybe he should have said that.

“And dinner for whoever's left,” said Rosemary.

“Should we go to the store?”

“In a bit. You should probably talk to George some more. He's too excited to be thinking clearly. In fact, the people who should go to the store are Cynthia Jane and Rosemary.” Andrew raised an eyebrow, which Rosemary ignored. “You should talk to Joe and Shiva – separately. They both seem to trust you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They told George they do.”

“That's nice.” It was more than that. For an investment banker trying to be “broker to the deal,” it was the ultimate accolade. But Andrew wasn't opening any champagne yet. There was a lot of anxiety in the air.

“It's a sort of hybrid agreement,” said Joe when Andrew found him in the garden.

Andrew was only half listening. I should have told Rosemary I trust her, he kept saying to himself. She's
my
broker. She's my
salvation
. I must tell her the next chance I get. “Yes, Joe,” he said aloud, having missed Joe's last sentence.

There were a couple of surprisingly comfortable cast iron chairs in a corner of the garden. Joe had been sitting in one of them, by himself. He'd looked from a distance like he was meditating but that seemed unlikely. Andrew didn't think Joe was a meditating kind of guy.

“Shiva and I can bind ourselves as individuals,” Joe repeated. “We can promise you your fees. You've ‘performed.' I told Janis to put in a ‘whereas' to the effect that you've brought us together and enabled us to see the path we plan to go down and that your work is essentially done. But neither of us can bind our companies. I have shareholders. He does too, at some levels of the organisation chart, but there's also his family. All we can do here in Nantucket regarding the deal itself is sign a loose agreement in principle. But we as individuals can agree to pay you the $40 million if our companies don't.”

“It ought to be $20 million,” said Andrew. You'll never succeed as an investment banker if you give money away, he told himself.

“I know. Scale would be $10 million each. And you'll
never succeed as an investment banker if you keep giving money away.”

“Rosemary was probably confused when she said twenty million each. Anyway, it was never my money.”

“I doubt very much that Rosemary is ever confused,” said Joe. “But I do like it that you raised the matter with me. I'm happy to leave it at $20 million each if Shiva agrees. Janis is drafting it that way. I'll talk to Shiva about it.”

“That's very kind of you,” said Andrew.

“Well, look, there's some other stuff you've done that I probably can't pay you for, so it's fine.”

Even on Wall Street, Andrew told himself, getting a finder's fee for reconnecting a client with a friendly dominatrix was probably unusual. “Are you…?”

“Yeah,” said Joe. “I've talked to Cyn. The divorce process will start next week, which has settled her down a lot. We've both known it wasn't working. That's part of what made her come unglued last night. I've just got to figure out where to put her for the next couple of months. She can't stay in Greenwich. Sally will be there.”

“Cynthia commutes from Greenwich?” Andrew said. “She would have to leave the house at five in the morning to get to the studio.”

“She does – or did. But she liked the whole Greenwich concept. She liked being there on the weekends.”

“So you could barbeque,” said Andrew.

“Cyn says living in Greenwich allows her to be normal. She says television is an artificial world.”

If Greenwich meant normality, Andrew wasn't sure about Sally living there.

“If you have a car pick you up at five,” said Joe, “it's
surprisingly quick getting into the city. I've ridden in with her a few times to see how it worked. She didn't like having me in the car. Cyn has to read the newspapers every morning, of course, and she does that then. Part of her shtick is knowing what's happening in Europe. If she needs an update from network people in London or Paris or wherever, they can do that while she's in the car too. And I suppose the trip in from Greenwich is when she puts on her game face.