He replaced the phone and turned to his guest. ‘Don’t think I’m a soft touch – it’s not as painful as it sounds. Someone is sure to argue that as generous as my offer is, others should be asked to help raise some of the money. To foster team spirit. So I’ll end up offering matching sums, pound for pound. Get away with twenty grand, less than two years’ school fees.’ He declined to remind the visitor that in any event the money would not be coming from his own pocket but from the Foundation.
‘So, Mr Gooley, you want to become the Herald’s new City Editor.’
The young man slurped his tea in surprise. ‘I hadn’t realized there was a vacancy.’
‘There isn’t. Not yet at least. But imagine for a moment that there were. Why should you replace him?’
Gooley, put off-balance, wrestled awkwardly with his thoughts.
‘Why should it be you?’ Corsa repeated. ‘Or is that too difficult a question?’
‘It’s an unfair question.’
‘Yes, but I’m sure you’ll manage.’
Gooley returned his cup to the table, clearing the decks. He was a young man whose playing field of emotions stretched between enterprise and ambition, and the ground in between was exceptionally well trodden. He was not the sort of man to pass by an opportunity without launching himself at it with both kneecaps. It won him few friends, although the Herald’s City Editor might have counted himself amongst them, yet Gooley was still of an age where friends were little more than an audience.
‘OK. I’m a good journalist. I know the City, the institutions, how to gut a balance sheet.’
‘So do a hundred others.’
‘But far more important, I know men. City men. What drives them.’
‘Which is?’
‘Hunger.’
‘For fame?’
‘No, not in the City. Fame is for the gentlemen farther up the river at Westminster. That’s why they die poor and disappointed and in their own beds. In the City the hunger is for wealth. Money. Acquisition. And why so many of them die in other people’s beds. They’re warmer.’
Corsa was amused. ‘You sound as if you’ve made quite a study of this. Something of an academic, are you?’
It was the journalist’s turn to show amusement. ‘With my accent? You think I got that at university? No, Mr Corsa, I’m Oldham, not Oxford. Rugby league and Tandoori takeaway, that’s me, and I’ll waste your money on the finest claret only if it gets me a story. There’s nothing academic about me. I didn’t need books to understand the way the City men think. All I needed was a mirror.’
‘So we’re all avaricious, are we?’
‘Single-minded. Know what we want.’
‘And what do you want?’
Gooley looked carefully around the penthouse. His eyes were not adjusted to appreciate the refinement, the glow of Lalique, the elegant discomfort of the Mackintosh chairs. He was simply lost in the size of it all. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got a hundred silk ties in your wardrobe.’
‘A hundred and fifty.’ Corsa exaggerated, but the younger man’s eyes remained direct, disarmingly uncomplicated.
‘I want this, or something like this,’ he breathed. ‘I want to be part of it all. That’s why I want the opportunity to be your City Editor.’
Corsa’s appreciation of the man grew. ‘But along with the opportunities also go responsibilities. To me. I’m very much a hands-on proprietor. The City is my world, too, and I don’t like being taken by surprise.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘I’m talking a two-way relationship. I tell you what I know; you return the confidence. I want to feel it’s a team effort.’ Corsa was an excellent player of this particular game, flattering his journalists and editors into subservience, leaving their professional integrity intact while ensuring they did precisely what he intended. ‘It’s not that I want any inside information, you understand, but I need to know you’ve got your finger on the pulse. That the stories you print are well founded and not simply dreamed up over lunch. Understood?’
‘Sharing inside information with you would be highly unethical’ – Gooley paused for no more than the beating of a wing – ‘if you were to use it. I feel sure our relationship would be based on a deep and mutual trust. If I were your City Editor.’
‘Good. Very good.’ Corsa mused, then made up his mind. The present incumbent could go chew nut buns. ‘Very well, Jim, in the spirit of mutual trust let me give you something. News which you will be the first to hear. Not for printing yet, but I want you to think about it. You know that the Granite Group is the best damn company in the newspaper field, but the others are always snapping at us. And when these new European regulations come in there’s going to be one hell of a dog fight. So we are going to be as lean and as fit and as mean as possible.’
Corsa made chopping motions with his hand. Gooley nodded.
‘It means that our friend the current City Editor isn’t going to be the only one asked to fall upon his pen. I’ll be announcing more economies, more streamlining.’
‘You mean more sackings at mill.’ The journalist leaned forward in his seat, alert. ‘How many?’
Corsa hesitated. ‘Suddenly I feel as though I’m being interrogated.’
‘You are. That’s my job. How many?’
‘Another five per cent.’
Gooley whistled gently. Another five per cent on top of the corporate ransacking Corsa had already undertaken … He began to shift uncomfortably as though discovering he was squatting on a distress flare, and straightened his tie defensively. Then he drew a deep breath and returned Corsa’s stare. ‘That’s great news. The Granite Group getting itself ready for the challenges of the new millennium. Committed to driving through reform. Focused strategy. Shareholder values …’
‘You are going to do … very well, Jim,’ Corsa enthused, but the eyes were still sharp, restless. ‘You realize, of course, that some of the competition will undoubtedly try to twist the news to make it sound like a measure of desperation. Cutbacks caused by overexpansion, imposed by bankers, that sort of unimaginative crap.’
‘Which is why we need to get in there first, set the pace, get people thinking straight. Not have some jaundiced hack from The Times getting it all wrong and queering the pitch.’
‘Very prescient. There’s a deal riding on this.’
‘How much of a deal?’
Corsa knew he had found the right man. ‘A twenty thousand bonus if after the announcement the shares go up rather than down.’
‘Does that mean I’ve got the job?’
‘One final question. You’re not a vegetarian by any sad chance?’
‘Surely it doesn’t all come down to money?’
The question seemed almost to startle the older woman, causing her to pause on her tour of inspection in order to give the matter a considered response. ‘It’s not just the money, Mrs Ashburton, it’s the principle of the thing. What sort of father puts his daughter in that sort of position? Especially a father who’s supposed to set an example.’
‘I feel Sam should be our main concern.’
Miss Flora Rennie, headmistress and custodian of values both moral and material at the Werringham School for Girls,