Edward said: “Nell, my pet, allow me to present my cousin, Mr. Hugh Pilaster.”
“Welcome, boys,” said Nell. “Come and entertain these beautiful girls.”
“In a while, Nell. Is there a game tonight?”
“There’s always a game at Nellie’s,” she said, and waved toward a door at one side of the room.
Edward bowed again and said: “We’ll be back.”
“Don’t fail me, boys!”
They moved off. “She acts like royalty!” Hugh murmured.
Edward laughed. “This is the top stew in London. Some of the people who bow to her tonight will be bowing to the Queen in the morning.”
They went into the next room, where twelve or fifteen men were sitting around two baccarat tables. Each table had a white line chalked about a foot from its edge, and the players pushed colored counters across the line to place bets. Most of them had drinks beside them, and the air was full of cigar smoke.
There were a few empty chairs at one of the tables, and Edward and Micky immediately sat down. A waiter brought them some counters, and they each signed a receipt. Hugh said quietly to Edward: “What are the stakes?”
“A pound minimum.”
It occurred to Hugh that if he played and won he could afford one of the women in the next room. He did not actually have as much as a pound in his pockets, but obviously Edward’s credit was good here…. Then he remembered Tonio’s losing ten guineas at the ratting. “I shan’t play,” he said.
Micky said languidly: “We never imagined you would.”
Hugh felt awkward. He wondered whether to ask a waiter to bring him a drink, then he reflected that it would probably cost him a week’s wages. The banker dealt cards from a shoe and Micky and Edward placed bets. Hugh decided to slip away.
He returned to the main drawing room. Looking more closely at the furniture, he could see that it was quite tawdry: there were stains on the velvet upholstery and burn marks on the polished wood, and the carpets were worn and ripped. Beside him a drunk man was on his knees, singing to a whore, while two of his friends laughed uproariously. On the next couch a couple were kissing with their mouths open. Hugh had heard that people did this but he had never seen it. He watched, mesmerized, as the man unbuttoned the front of the woman’s dress and started to caress her breasts. They were white and flabby, with big dark-red nipples. The whole scene aroused and revolted Hugh at the same time. Despite his distaste, his prick grew hard. The man on the couch bent his head to the woman’s bosom and began to kiss her breasts. Hugh could not believe what he was seeing. The woman looked over the top of the man’s head, caught Hugh’s eye, and winked.
A voice in Hugh’s ear said: “You could do that to me, if you like.”
He spun round, feeling as guilty as if he had been caught doing something shameful. Beside him was a dark-haired girl of about his own age, heavily rouged. He could not help glancing down at her bosom. He looked away again quickly, feeling embarrassed.
“Don’t be shy,” she said. “Look as long as you want. They’re for you to enjoy.” To his horror he felt her hand on his groin. She found his stiff prick and squeezed it. “My goodness, you are excited,” she said. Hugh was suffering exquisite anguish. He felt about to explode. The girl tilted her head up and kissed his lips, rubbing his prick at the same time.
It was too much. Unable to control himself, Hugh ejaculated into his underwear.
The girl felt it. For a moment she just looked surprised, then she burst out laughing. “My God, you are a green one!” she said loudly. Hugh felt humiliated. The girl looked around and said to the nearest whore: “I only touched him, and he creamed himself!” Several people laughed.
Hugh turned away and headed for the exit. The laughter seemed to follow him the length of the room. He had to restrain himself from running. At last he reached the door. A moment later he was out in the street.
The night had cooled a little, and he took a deep breath and paused to calm himself. If this was dissipation, he did not like it. The dollymop Maisie had been rude about his father; the ratting had been revolting; the whores had laughed at him. The whole lot of them could go to the devil.
A commissionaire gave him a sympathetic look. “Decided to have an early night, sir?”
“What a good idea,” said Hugh, and he walked away.
Micky was losing money. He could cheat at baccarat if he had the bank, but tonight the bank would not come to him. He was secretly relieved when Edward said: “Let’s get a couple of girls.”
“You go,” he said, feigning indifference. “I’ll play on.”
A gleam of panic showed in Edward’s eyes. “It’s getting late.”
“I’m trying to win back my losses,” Micky said stubbornly.
Edward lowered his voice. “I’ll pay for your chips.”
Micky pretended to hesitate, then give in. “Oh, all right.”
Edward smiled.
He settled up and they went into the main room. Almost immediately, a blond girl with large breasts came up to Edward. He put his arm around her bare shoulders, and she pressed her bosom against his chest.
Micky scanned the girls. A slightly older woman with a nicely debauched look caught his eye. He smiled at her and she came over. She put her hand on his shirtfront, dug her nails into his chest, stood on tiptoe and gently bit his lower lip.
He saw Edward watching him, flushed with excitement. Micky began to feel eager. He looked at his own woman. “What’s your name?” he said.
“Alice.”
“Let’s go upstairs, Alice,” he said.
They all went up the stairs together. On the landing was a marble statue of a centaur with a huge erect penis, which Alice rubbed as they went by. Next to it a couple were performing the sexual act standing up, oblivious of a drunk man sitting on the floor watching them.
The women headed for separate rooms, but Edward steered them into the same room. “All together tonight, boys?” said Alice.
“We’re saving money,” Micky said, and Edward laughed.
“At school together, were you?” she said knowingly, as she closed the door behind them. “Used to frig each other off?”
“Shut up,” Micky said, embracing her.
While Micky kissed Alice, Edward came up behind her, put his arms around her, and cupped her breasts. She looked faintly surprised but made no objection. Micky felt Edward’s hands moving between his body and the woman’s, and he knew that Edward was rubbing himself against her rump.
After a moment the other girl said: “What shall I do? I feel a bit left out.”
“Get your drawers off,” Edward told her. “You’re next.”
AS A LITTLE BOY, Hugh had thought Pilasters bank was owned by the walkers. These personages were in fact lowly messengers, but they were all rather portly, and wore immaculate morning dress with silver watch-chains across their ample waistcoats, and they moved about the bank with such ponderous dignity that to a child they appeared the most important people there.
Hugh had been brought here at the age of ten by his grandfather, old Seth’s brother. The marble-walled banking hall on the first floor had seemed like a church: huge, gracious, silent, a place where incomprehensible rites were performed by an elite priesthood in the service of a divinity called Money. Grandfather had shown him all around: the carpeted hush of the third floor, occupied by the partners and their correspondence clerks, where little Hugh had been given a glass of sherry and a plate of biscuits in the Partners’ Room; the senior clerks at their tables on the fourth floor, bespectacled and anxious, surrounded by bundles of papers tied with ribbon like gifts; and the juniors on the top floor, sitting at their high desks in lines like Hugh’s toy soldiers, scratching entries in ledgers with inky fingers. But best of all, for Hugh, had been the basement, where contracts even older than grandfather were kept in vaults, thousands of postage stamps waited to be licked, and there was a whole room full of ink stored in enormous glass jars. It had amazed him to reflect on the process. The ink came into the bank, it was spread over the papers by the clerks, and then the papers were returned to the basement to be stored forever; and somehow this made money.
The mystery had gone out of it now. He knew that the massive leather-bound ledgers were not arcane texts but simple lists of financial transactions, laboriously compiled and scrupulously updated; and his own fingers had become cramped and ink-stained by days of writing in them. A bill of exchange was no longer a magic spell but merely a promise to pay money at a future date, written on a piece of paper and guaranteed by a bank. Discounting, which as a child he had thought must mean counting backwards from a hundred down to one, turned out to be the practice of buying bills of exchange at a little less than their face value, keeping them until their due date, then cashing them at a small profit.
Hugh was a general assistant to Jonas Mulberry, the Principal Clerk. A bald man of about forty, Mulberry was good-hearted but a little sour. He would always take time to explain things to Hugh, but he was very quick to find fault if Hugh was in the least hasty or careless. Hugh had been working under him for the past year, and yesterday he had made a serious mistake. He had lost a bill of lading for a consignment of Bradford cloth destined for New York. The Bradford manufacturer had been downstairs in the banking hall asking for his money, but Mulberry had needed to check the bill before authorizing payment, and Hugh could not find the document. They had been obliged to ask the man to come back in the morning.
In the end Hugh had found the bill, but he had spent most of the night worrying about it, and this morning he had devised a new system of dealing with papers for Mulberry.