And they were his friends. He liked Duncan. And although he hadn’t known Alex and Lenka for more than a few weeks, he liked them, too. Of course, he had known Tamara much longer, and he knew he had been right to defend her against Lenka. But he hadn’t liked to choose between these new friends and his girlfriend, and he resented Tamara for making him do it.
He remembered Lenka’s words, that Tamara was not good enough for him, and smiled. He was sure Lenka believed it, but he knew she was wrong. He was lucky to have someone like Tamara. She was attractive, she was fun, she had class. And she was good in bed. Chris was not as experienced as he would have liked to be in that regard, but he knew sex with Tamara was great. He hoped she would come over to New York again.
When he arrived back at the apartment, Duncan was waiting for him. Chris hadn’t seen him since Friday evening, and for the first time he wondered how Duncan had managed to avoid him so successfully all weekend.
‘Fancy a wee bevy?’ Duncan said nervously.
Chris smiled. ‘OK.’
They went to the Irish bar around the corner. They avoided anything but very small talk until the Guinness was on the table in front of them.
Duncan took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ said Chris.
‘I shouldn’t have mouthed off that stuff about British merchant banks. It was stupid. I knew it would wind up Tamara.’
‘And it did.’
Duncan coughed. ‘Yes, it did.’ He drank some more of his beer. ‘Look, I know Tamara doesn’t like me, and I don’t suspect she ever will, but you’ve been a good mate to me, especially here, and I don’t want to mess that up.’
Chris smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it, Duncan. Tamara can be awkward sometimes. I’m sorry you had to take that shit from her. I shouldn’t have told her about the Bond Math exam.’
‘The sad thing was, what she said was true,’ said Duncan. ‘I can’t hack the training programme.’
‘Now, no whining, Duncan. Anyway, where were you all weekend?’
Duncan sipped his beer. He tried to suppress a grin, but he failed. In the end, he gave up.
‘You didn’t?’ asked Chris.
‘I did.’
‘What, after the party?’
‘Yep.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yep.’
‘Don’t look so smug,’ said Chris. ‘I want details. I want details.’
‘Well, after we left, Lenka was pretty upset. In fact, we both were. So we just walked in silence for a while. Then we started talking about you and about Tamara. And then we were talking about other things.’ Duncan paused, a faint smile on his lips. ‘We got to Columbus Circle and started looking for a cab, and then I said I’d walk her back to her apartment.’
‘In the Village?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But that’s miles!’
‘Yes. But it didn’t seem like it. I mean, it seemed to take for ever, but we didn’t get tired or anything. It was very romantic. Then we got to her street and she asked me up to her apartment. She said I couldn’t just turn round and walk all the way back.’
‘And then?’
‘And then...’ Duncan smiled.
‘You have to tell me.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘OK, I suppose you don’t,’ admitted Chris. ‘But presumably you spent the weekend at her place?’
‘It seemed safer there than in our apartment.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Didn’t you notice I wasn’t there?’
‘No, I suppose I didn’t. I just thought you were skulking in your room, or something.’ Chris took a gulp of beer. Duncan and Lenka. He liked that. ‘Congratulations,’ he said.
‘Thank you. We’d better keep it quiet from the others on the programme, though. You never know what Calhoun would think.’
‘Sod him,’ said Chris. ‘But all right, I’ll keep it quiet. Ian’s got to find out, though. And Alex and Eric.’
‘If they do, they do,’ said Duncan. ‘Oh, by the way, Lenka says she’s sorry. About what she said to Tamara.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘She says she stands by what she said, she just shouldn’t have said it.’
Chris smiled. ‘Tell her that’s OK, too.’
5
Summer came. It was hot in New York in June and July, so hot that it was unpleasant to venture outside. The Brits were not dressed for it: their Marks and Spencer wool suits were the wrong clothing for the climate. The humidity was so bad that after walking more than a block they would find themselves drenched in sweat. The classroom was deliciously cool, but the subway was a sweltering hell. The air-conditioning on the Lexington line wasn’t up to a carriage full of sweaty commuters. Sometimes Chris, Duncan and Ian would bail out at Forty-Second Street and grab a cold beer in a nearby bar, before returning below ground for the second leg. Of course, Lenka managed to stay cool at all times, in outfits that Abby Hollis eyed suspiciously, but couldn’t quite bring herself to comment on.
The work kept coming. In addition to Waldern’s Capital Markets, which seemed to be a never-ending subject, they were given courses in Corporate Finance, Accounting, International Economics, Credit Analysis and Ethics. They were spoken to by people across the length and breadth of Bloomfield Weiss, from Tokyo to Chicago, from Global Custody to Equity Derivatives. The pace came in fits and starts, but the pressure never let up, George Calhoun saw to that.
Much to his surprise, Chris found that he actually enjoyed the course. As the concepts became clearer to him, and linked together to form a coherent whole, his interest grew. He particularly liked listening to the traders talking. These were popular sessions with the trainees: if Bloomfield Weiss was anything, it was a trading house. The staking of billions of dollars, the big men with big mouths, the macho language of violent sexual acts and physical disfigurement, all attracted a certain type of trainee. But that wasn’t what appealed to Chris. He was fascinated by the shifting relationships of markets, how supply and demand fed through to price movement, and how risk capital was managed so that losses were cut and profits allowed to run. He was less interested in the tall tales of Cash Callaghan, a top salesman from the London office, who bragged about ‘whippin’ and drivin’ those bonds’, and more interested in the quiet deliberations of Seymour Tanner, a twenty-nine-year-old star of the Proprietary Desk, who was rumoured to have made the firm two hundred million dollars the year before. For the first time, Chris was beginning to feel at home at Bloomfield Weiss. There was a job there that he could do, if they would let him do it.
George Calhoun was eager to crank up the competition. He wanted to fire up his trainees, make them hungry, give them something to aim for. So he put up a table of rankings, from one to sixty, or rather fifty-eight, following the departure of Denny Engel and Roger Masden. The rankings were based on the amalgamated scores from the various tests that were given out during the course. To add a bit of spice, he had drawn a big red line between number forty-five and number forty-six, the infamous bottom quartile. And he also announced that the top three trainees would receive a bonus at the end of the programme.
At number one spot was Rudy Moss. At number two, Eric Astle. And at number three, much to Calhoun’s fury, was Lenka. At the other end, Duncan was hovering around fifty; in other words in the bottom quartile, but within striking distance of escaping it. After his poor showing in the Bond Math exam Ian was at forty-two, but rising strongly. Alex was two places higher at forty, and Chris, to his surprise was at twenty-five. Despite the disparity in abilities, or perhaps because of it, the study group continued to work together. Eric and Lenka’s success was a source of pride for them all, and they all wanted to ensure that Duncan and Alex ended the course above the cut-off line.