Maisie said: “I don’t understand.”
Solly explained: “The City of Glasgow Bank went bankrupt.”
“Oh, no!” Maisie cried. It made her want to weep.
Danny nodded. “All those shillings paid in by hardworking men — lost by fools in top hats. And you wonder why they talk about revolution.” He sighed. “I’ve been trying to rescue the Association since it happened, but the task was hopeless, and I’ve given up.”
Kingo said abruptly: “Mr. Robinson, I am sorry for you and your members. Will you take some refreshment? You must have walked seven miles if you came from the railway station.”
“I will, and thank you.”
Maisie said: “I’ll take Danny indoors, and leave you to finish your walk.” She felt her brother was wounded, and she wanted to get him alone and do what she could to ease his pain.
The others obviously felt the tragedy too. Kingo said: “Will you stop for the night, Mr. Robinson?”
Maisie winced. Kingo was being too generous. It was easy enough to be civil to Danny for a few minutes out here in the park, but if he stayed overnight Kingo and his lotus-eating friends would soon get fed up with Danny’s coarse clothes and working-class concerns, then they would snub him and he would be hurt.
But Danny said: “I have to be back in London tonight. I just came to spend a few hours with my sister.”
Kingo said: “In that case allow me to have you driven to the station in my carriage, whenever you’re ready.”
“That’s real kind of you.”
Maisie took her brother’s arm. “Come with me and I’ll get you some lunch.”
After Danny left for London, Maisie joined Solly for an afternoon nap.
Solly lay on the bed in a red silk bathrobe and watched her undress. “I can’t rescue Dan’s Welfare Association,” he said. “Even if it made financial sense to me — which it doesn’t — I couldn’t persuade the other partners.”
Maisie felt a sudden surge of affection for him. She had not asked him to help Danny. “You’re such a good man,” she said. She opened his bathrobe and kissed his vast belly. “You’ve already done so much for my family, you never have to apologize. Besides, Danny won’t take anything from you, you know that; he’s too proud.”
“But what will he do?”
She stepped out of her petticoats and rolled down her stockings. “Tomorrow he’s meeting with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He wants to be a member of Parliament and he hopes they will sponsor him.”
“And I suppose he’ll campaign for stricter government regulation of banks.”
“Would you be against that?”
“We never like the government to tell us what to do. True, there are too many crashes; but there might be even more if the politicians ran the banks.” He rolled on his side and propped his head up on his elbow to get a better view of her taking off her underwear. “I wish I weren’t leaving you tonight.”
Maisie wished the same. A part of her was excited at the prospect of being with Hugh when Solly was away, but that made her feel more guilty still. “I don’t mind,” she said.
“I feel so ashamed of my family.”
“You shouldn’t.” It was Passover, and Solly was going to celebrate the ritual of seder with his parents. Maisie was not invited. She understood Ben Greenbourne’s dislike of her, and half felt she deserved the way he treated her, but Solly was deeply upset by it. Indeed, he would have quarreled with his father if Maisie had let him, but she did not want that on her conscience too, and she insisted he continue to see his parents in a normal way.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” he said anxiously.
“I’m sure. Listen, if I felt strongly about it I could go to Manchester and spend Passover with my own parents.” She became thoughtful. “The fact is that I’ve never felt part of all that Jewish stuff, not since we left Russia. When we came to England there were no Jews in the town. The people I lived with in the circus had no religion at all, mostly. Even when I married a Jew, your family made me feel unwelcome. I’m fated to be an outsider, and to tell you the truth I don’t mind. God never did anything for me.” She smiled. “Mama says God gave you to me, but that’s rubbish: I got you all by myself.”
He was reassured. “I’ll miss you tonight.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over him so that he could nuzzle her breasts. “I’ll miss you too.”
“Mmm.”
After a while they lay side by side, head to tail, and he caressed her between her legs while she kissed and licked and then sucked his penis. He loved to do this in the afternoon, and he cried out softly as he came in her mouth.
She changed her position and nestled in the crook of his arm.
“What does it taste like?” he said sleepily.
She smacked her lips. “Caviar.”
He giggled and closed his eyes.
She began to stroke herself. Soon he was snoring. When she came he did not stir.
“The men who ran the City of Glasgow Bank should go to jail,” Maisie said shortly before dinner.
“That’s a bit hard,” Hugh responded.
The remark struck her as smug. “Hard?” she said irritably. “Not as hard as what happened to the workingmen whose money was lost!”
“Still, no one is perfect, not even those workingmen,” Hugh persisted. “If a carpenter makes a mistake, and a house falls down, should he go to jail?”
“It’s not the same!”
“And why not?”
“Because the carpenter is paid thirty shillings a week and obliged to follow a foreman’s orders, whereas a banker gets thousands, and justifies it by saying he carries a weight of responsibility.”
“All true. But the banker is human, and has a wife and children to support.”
“You might say the same of murderers, yet we hang them regardless of the fate of their orphaned children.”
“But if a man kills another accidentally, for example by shooting at a rabbit and hitting a man behind a bush, we don’t even send him to jail. So why should we jail bankers who lose other people’s money?”
“To make other bankers more careful!”
“And by the same logic we might hang the man who shot at the rabbit, to make other shooters more careful.”
“Hugh, you’re just being perverse.”
“No, I’m not. Why treat careless bankers more harshly than careless rabbit-shooters?”