The soul, with its more high-minded approach than the body, departs on death a little fastidiously. Some people report a breeze; a little flutter of wings. Or a draught, as weak as the draught the engines of model planes give off. Plato believed that the soul headed out of the door as soon as the body died. You were born with knowledge, he said, which proved that you had a soul. Those tiny engines, fuelled by ether, would splutter and whine and cartwheel along the grass more often than they flew. When they did fly, they were doomed to nosedive almost immediately.

His mind is wandering erratically. It’s stress. He longs for the moment when he has the bank sold and the trusts paid back. He’s tried to tell himself that he has just been pragmatic, but the speech to the staff about values, followed by signing the FSA’s forms, has rattled him. He can’t say the word ‘fraud’ to himself. But he’s aware that he is not too different from Leeson and the Enron people and Lehman Brothers who tried to hide their debts with something called Repo 105. He has to repay, or he’s going the way of the crooks. The sleeping pills have caused him to dream, and he’s been dreaming about his pony, which is a very bad sign.

Estelle has set up in what was the directors’ smoking room, a panelled room with a huge fireplace. Her old-lady smell has infiltrated the room. It’s a combination of face powder and subtle decay. But why it should happen is a mystery to him. His grandmother also had this sickly, insidious aroma. Anybody who believes in God would need to explain why he cruelly allows (or causes) elderly women to moulder in this way. And much more insane arbitrariness. In this room the men of the family would smoke clay pipes and in later years Cuban cigars from Davidoff in St James’s Street. The panelling has been lightly roasted in the process.

Earlier he had noticed Estelle looking, mystified, at the Howard Hodgkin behind his desk. She sees me as a usurper, he thinks. The smart-alec son who thought he could do better. And he deserves her disapproval. He can’t wait to hand over this nicotine-stained old pile of English heritage to Cy who absolutely loves the directors’ apartments and the smoking room, although his doctor warned him off cigarettes years ago. The way he tells this story, or any story, is characteristic of a self-made man – every banal detail of his life and times – even being told to give up smoking – is part of an epic. He’s the hero in the narrative of his own life.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14