FICTION: EILEEN BATTERSBYreviews Other People's MoneyBy Justin Cartwright Bloomsbury, 258pp. £18.99
BANKERS ARE LIKE governments: both remain confident that, whatever messes they make, the people will – and do – pay. Justin Cartwright’s topical 11th novel is so astute it sizzles with knowing. Yet no matter how loudly this clever satire may make one laugh – and it is relentlessly funny – there is so much truth within the lively, intelligent narrative that it is evidence of its poise and skill that it never becomes a polemic. But then the South African-born, London-based writer has long been one of the most sophisticated exponents of the well-observed and artfully nuanced English comic novel.
Few living British novelists write English fiction quite as well as Cartwright. The quality that sets him apart from most of his contemporaries is that, beneath the humour and the irony, he has a subtle awareness of the essential fragility of humans, however flawed.
Above all Cartwright is a storyteller, and the narrative here concerns an esteemed family bank with a 350-year history buttressing its delusions of grandeur. How does a banker earn a knighthood? Well, Sir Henry Trevelyan-Tubal did. But now he is dying, albeit fading in style, in his grand villa in Antibes, where a stroke has left him incapacitated. He remains well dressed and is waited on by his devoted employee, Estelle. She has always loved him, but, too plain to entice him, she was never more than a servant. Back in London the lovely Fleur – much younger, failed actress, second wife – keeps her grief at bay through furtive sex with her personal trainer. Henry’s nervous second son, Julian, is desperately attempting to conceal various toxic debts while secretly selling the bank to a huge US institution that has immense resources and is keen on acquiring tradition.
Cartwright, whose finest novels include the ethereal Masai Dreaming(1991), the Booker-shortlisted In Every Face I Meet(1995), White Lightening(2002) and The Promise of Happiness(2004), formerly worked in film; his eye for detail is as adept as is his ear for dialogue. Many brilliant exchanges are batted between the characters, particularly Julian and his able right hand man, Nigel.
Most of the extravagance though, is reserved for old Artair MacCleod, Fleur’s first husband, once a theatrical force of sorts but now reduced to staging low-budget Thomas the Tank Engine productions for the younger citizens of Cornwall and the rest of the West Country. The eccentric Artair may initially appear to be an unusual self-indulgence from the always disciplined Cartwright, but he soon becomes pivotal to the action. When the allowance Artair receives from his ex-wife’s family as part of the divorce deal fails to arrive in his bank account because of emergency cutbacks at Tubal’s, the struggling impresario’s outrage is picked up by a young journalist and, in turn, her world weary editor, who once worked on a London newspaper. The editor schools the young journalist in how to pursue the story, and before long she has acquired an insider eager to destroy Tubal’s.
Banking is exposed as a murky underworld inhabited by sharks, many of whom regard opera as more social investment than art form. Cartwright has done his research but does not allow it to overpower the narrative, as he is intent on his characters. While en route to a high-class art dealer, Julian, having reclaimed a painting his father had given to Estelle, reflects on the now dead man. “His father never grasped the idea that great wealth corrupts . . . His father regarded his wealth as a confirmation of his unique qualities, qualities which selective breeding of the privileged had produced.”
The fact that the picture Julian is holding under his arm while he stands alone in a pub, and considers his father, is a Matisse worth £30 million adds to the madness of the situation. Earlier, when Estelle had told the Tubal lawyer that Sir Henry had loved the painting, that it was the last thing he saw before he died and that she had written proof that he had given it to her, the lawyer’s response was to threaten her with jail.
There is a great deal of street fighting and territorial one-upmanship among the central characters, and old Harry emerges as a cold man who may have driven his first wife to suicide and who never inspired love in either of his sons; the elder one, Simon, has pursued a life of extreme adventure in jungles and deserts rather than work with his father.
Yet Cartwright, for all his razor humour, can look beyond the cowardly and the selfish. Vapid, weak Fleur, a woman whose life has been determined by men, stands at the dying Harry’s bedside and notices that his eyes are reddish: “She thinks his soul has been crying. She tries to imagine what it’s like to be barely alive.” Later she has a meeting, stage-managed by lawyers, with Artair in which she basks in his affection and recalls “his naive belief in the inevitable triumph of art over bourgeois values . . . absolutely mad nonsense”. As these thoughts are running through her mind Artair stares at the wall behind her, exclaiming: “Jesus, Fleur, that looks like a Cézanne.” To which she replies, “It is.” Artair, the most unlikely hero in this manically engaging novel, says with a sigh: “My God, it is so beautiful.” The crazy old dreamer who is writing a celebratory play about Flann O’Brien gazes at it, “transfixed”. Cartwright appears to be saying that if there is any hope for any of us it is to be found in the arts, not in banking. It seems a fine thesis on which to balance a novel that exudes characteristic Cartwright skill, wit and savvy.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
