Paris was Maxim’s favourite city. He preferred it to London where he lived and worked, New York where he frequently went on business, and Berlin where he was born. Whenever he came back it always looked more beautiful than he had remembered it to be, forever took him by surprise.
He had first seen Paris in the early part of 1939, when he and Mutti and Teddy had been fleeing Nazi Germany, and he had never forgotten that time of his childhood, those gloriously happy weeks with his mother, the last he had ever spent with her. A multitude of images was engraved on his mind, and the memories had remained ever constant, would be forever part of him.
Thirteen years had passed before he had visited the city again. He had first returned in 1952 to celebrate his eighteenth birthday; the trip had been Mark’s idea, who had thoughtfully invited Stubby to join them as his guest. They had all had a wonderful time together, and Teddy, in particular, had thoroughly enjoyed herself. She had given birth to her second child in February of that year, a boy they named David, after Mark’s brother who had been killed in the war, and the prospect of a long weekend in Paris had excited her.
It’s just what I need,’ Teddy had exclaimed, when Mark had told her what he was planning for Maxim’s birthday. ‘I looked like a whale in a tent for so many weeks of my pregnancy, I can’t wait to buy some smart new French clothes, now that I’ve got my figure back. So Paris it is!’ she had enthusiastically agreed. But deep down inside, Teddy had always understood how much Paris meant to her beloved Maxim, knew that he held joyous memories of the months he had spent there with Ursula, and, in actuality, this was the real reason she was glad they were going. And so for once she had not fussed about leaving their two-year-old daughter Kay in the care of the nanny and Mark’s mother. She had even handed over the new baby with a smile on her face. Maxim’s eighteenth birthday celebration and the trip to Paris took precedence over everything. She loved Maxim deeply, as she had loved him from the age of one. He was like her own child, and she thought of him as such, considered him to be her son. He was, and always would be, her pride and joy; he could do no wrong in her eyes. And that was the way it was always to be. He was her favourite.
As it turned out the trip to Paris in 1952 had been truly memorable. But Maxim’s birthday had not been the only thing they had celebrated that particular June. He and Stubby had spent some of their time whooping it up and congratulating each other because they had concluded their first successful business deal.
A month before Maxim’s birthday they had sold the land they owned in the East End to one of the big London builders, and had made a tidy profit for themselves in the process.
This business venture had originally come about quite by accident, because of Mrs Threscoe, the Trentons’ charlady.
Stubby and she had had a soft spot for each other since his childhood, and over the years Stubby had become her most trusted confidant. In 1950, when her husband had been knocked down by a lorry and had subsequently died of his head injuries, Mrs Threscoe, who was childless, had come weeping to Stubby with her problems. Seemingly Jack Threscoe had left very little money; all of his savings were tied up in a piece of land in the East End, a bomb-site which he had purchased in 1946. With Jack gone, she was now ready to sell the land, needed to sell it, Mrs Threscoe had explained to Stubby. But to her immense dismay nobody seemed to want it.
When Stubby had told his best friend the story, Maxim had mulled it over for a couple of days, and had then suggested that they look at the land themselves. ‘If we’re going to be businessmen, now’s the time to start,’ he had said to Stubby, and had pointed out that rebuilding was going on in various parts of London. ‘That land might have possibilities. Perhaps we should buy it, Stubby. We’d be helping Mrs Threscoe out, and, with a bit of luck, it could prove to be a good investment.’
As it turned out, Maxim was right.
Before the sixteen-year-old boys had purchased the Threscoe bomb-site, Maxim had asked the opinion of Henry Rossiter, who was still in charge of his money. The merchant banker had called in his real estate experts, who had gone to look at the land; after receiving their report, he had informed Maxim that it would be a safe investment.
‘You probably won’t make a great deal of money on it when you sell, which obviously you will do one day, but you certainly won’t lose,’ he had assured Maxim, and he had then purchased the land on their behalf. Mrs Threscoe had asked for five thousand pounds, which gave her a decent profit; the boys had agreed to her price without haggling and had split the cost down the middle, so becoming partners. Maxim had used money from the Westheim funds, which were in Henry Rossiter’s control; Stubby, with permission from his father, had plonked down the entire legacy his uncle had left him, plus three hundred pounds contributed by his doting mother.
Two years later they had sold the Threscoe bomb-site for twenty-five thousand pounds, and had made a straight profit of twenty thousand, much to their surprise. And everyone else’s, in fact.
They were supposed to have started university that year, having graduated from St Paul’s School in July, at the age of eighteen. But they had rejected Oxford. Instead they had started their own company with the profits from the Threscoe deal.
Teddy had objected initially, and so had Stubby’s father, but they had both been won around in the end, thanks chiefly to the intervention of Henry Rossiter.
‘Forcing them to go to Oxford now is rather like closing the door after the horses have escaped,’ Mr Rossiter had said to Teddy and Mr Trenton with a chuckle. ‘It seems to me that these two young bucks have embarked on commercial careers already, and rather successfully, I might add. So why stop them now? I think they’re going to do very nicely for themselves.’
Mark had tended to agree with the merchant banker. His endorsement of the scheme had ultimately convinced Teddy that she was not making a mistake by permitting Maxim to go into business, rather than continuing his higher education. And she had given him her blessing.
Maxim had planned to be a financier, and had never intended to open a real estate business, and if it had not been for Stubby he would not have done so. But because the East End property had turned such a good profit, Stubby had persuaded Maxim to stay in this field, at least for a while. They took offices in Jermyn Street, formed a company called Westrent, which was a contraction of their last names, and started to buy bomb-sites wherever they could find them.
For the most part they concentrated on major industrial cities in the provinces, which had been heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe during the war. They concentrated on Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Coventry and Birmingham, managed to find suitable tracts of land at decent prices, sites which they considered to have great potential for future building projects. Once they had had the land cleaned of rubble and fenced in, they had sensibly held onto the sites until really good bids had been made. In some instances they had had to wait several years to make the right sales; ultimately, Westrent was in profit largely because of the post-war building trend which suddenly boomed in England in the mid-fifties.
1952 was also the year Maxim had decided to change his name legally. When he had first mentioned to Teddy that he wished to anglicise Westheim, by dropping the heim and calling himself West, she had agreed it was a good idea, and as his guardian had given her consent. ‘Your parents planned to do that anyway,’ she had informed him. ‘In fact, your mother brought the matter up to me several times when we were in Paris in 1939. You know how much she loved England, wished us all to become English. She would be so pleased if she knew you intended to do this, and so would your father. He had wanted to adopt West as the family surname even before we left Germany, but the prince didn’t think Admiral Canaris could get new passports.’
Eventually he had changed his name—and his nationality as well. He had become Maximilian West, naturalised British subject, with a British passport and the right to vote in the elections.
And in the ensuing years since his eighteenth birthday Maxim had not looked back.
r /> When wheeling and dealing in real estate had become less challenging, and had actually begun to bore him, he had purchased several small, unprofitable companies: a printing plant in Wakefield, a bus company in Bristol and a brick yard in Nottingham. In a relatively short span of time he had put them on their feet, through a bit of brilliant reorganisation and with the help of the new management teams he had sent in. Subsequently he had sold them, making excellent profits on all three. And thus a second company, Westinvest, was born.
Aside from his business acumen and his brilliance with figures, Maxim had the ability to read, understand and assess a balance sheet and all its ramifications immediately with the greatest of ease. He also had imagination and vision. And then there was his gut instinct, which he always relied on, sometimes sweeping away analysts’ reports and recommendations in favour of his own instinctive reaction to a deal, the ‘feel’ he had for it. All of these elements were important factors in his success, were to stand him in good stead for the future.
Now, at the age of twenty-five, he was managing director of Westrent and Westinvest, owned an elegantly furnished flat in Mayfair and a sleek new wine-coloured Jaguar, and belonged to some of the best private clubs in town. He cut quite a swathe in smart London society, escorted numerous beautiful young women, including a couple of well-known starlets, and was considered to be something of a playboy by the British press.
The gossip columnists loved him, although he failed to see the reason why, and were forever exclaiming in print about his dashing good looks, his elegance and his style, his gorgeous female companions, the parties he gave, his wealth.
He considered the parties and the women and his social life in general to be all so much folderol, the fluff of life, and therefore of little value or consequence. The only thing which truly mattered to him, really interested him, and gave him genuine pleasure, was his business.
Maxim’s success as a businessman was of paramount importance to him, ruled his life, and he was constantly telling Stubby that he intended to make a million pounds by the time he was thirty. Stubby never once doubted him. Nor did Maxim doubt himself, and making that million was the yardstick by which he judged himself and his achievements. And so it drove him.
Five years to go, he thought, as he came up into the Place Saint-Michel, and stood at the edge of the pavement, waiting for the lights to change. A little smile struck his mouth; he was quite confident he would achieve his goal.
As far as Maxim himself was concerned, the real secrets of his success were single-mindedness of purpose, dedication, hard work, and the ability to put in very long hours without suffering from fatigue. He was fortunate in that he had immense stamina, only needed about five hours’ sleep; he usually rose at four in the morning, was at his desk in the flat by four-thirty, where he did paperwork until seven, when he left for his office in Jermyn Street where he put in a full day. He thought nothing of working seven days a week, for weeks on end without a break. Maxim had long acknowledged that he was a dyed-in-the-wool workaholic, which was why he guffawed when the papers called him a playboy.
He thought of this now, and chuckled. Some playboy, he muttered under his breath. If only they knew.
The truth was, the beautiful women he took out were merely decorative accessories to wear on his arm. Of course, he had fallen in love several times. And out of it, rather rapidly. In between he had had numerous affairs. But none of the women had lasted very long with him. Simply put, he had never managed to find the right woman. He wondered sometimes what he was looking for exactly. Perfection? But he was smart enough to understand that there was no such thing as a perfect woman. Or man, for that matter. In any case, he did not want a paragon.
Still, true love did seem to elude him.
The lights changed to green, and Maxim crossed the Place Saint-Michel and headed towards the Rue de la Huchette.
Within seconds he was sauntering down that narrow old street, experiencing a sense of nostalgia as he glanced around. Here on his left was the Hotel Mont Blanc, where he and Stubby had stayed on a couple of occasions, and immediately opposite was the El Djazier, the North African nightclub which they still frequented sometimes, going there to drink mint tea, ogle the exotic belly dancers, and eat couscous with harissa, the hot piquant sauce which blew his head off, but which he nevertheless enjoyed. And a few yards further along were the famous jazz joints, where some of the American jazz greats came to play and musicians of all nationalities to listen, as did he and Stubby from time to time.
He paused when he saw the Rue du Chat Qui Peche.
It was only a little alleyway, but he had never forgotten this street because the name had so delighted him when he was a child. ‘It means the Street of the Cat Who Fishes,’ Mutti had said, translating the French for him. Filled with glee, he had laughed out loud, tickled at the idea of a cat who fished.
They had been on one of their outings, he and Mutti and Teddy. ‘Investigating the quaint bits of Paris,’ Mutti had called their wondrous excursions, and ever since those days this picturesque area had remained a favourite, and he often returned to walk around these narrow cobbled streets, to browse in the bookstores and galleries.
Maxim went on walking up the Rue de la Huchette, past the little Greek and North African restaurants, until he came at last to the top of the street, and into a wide, open area like a square called the Rue de la Bucherie. Here he headed for one of the cafes which fronted onto a series of little gardens and faced the Cathedral of Notre Dame which stood on the lie de la Cite, the small island in the Seine.
He found a seat at a pavement table, and when the waiter came to take his order he asked for a citron presse. The afternoon had suddenly become very warm, and he leaned back in the wicker chair gratefully, loosened his tie, opened the top button of his shirt, trying to cool off.
Within seconds the lemonade arrived, and Maxim sipped it, relaxed, and let his thoughts drift for a while. It was odd how childhood places always tugged at him, pulled him back. Whenever he went to Berlin, whether on business or to see Aunt Irina, he usually made a point of passing by the Tiergartenstrasse and the Tiergarten.
The lure of childhood, he thought, how strong it is with me… I wonder if it is with everyone else? Or is it because I lost so much when I was a child… had such irretrievable losses? Do I come back to Paris and Berlin in the hopes of finding something which escaped me long, long ago? Am I on an eternal quest? What is it I hope to find?
The answers to his questions were elusive, as they always were…
A short while later Maxim paid and left the cafe, ambled off to Shakespeare and Company. This was a secondhand bookshop nearby, run by a friendly American called Bill, with whom Maxim had been acquainted for the past few years. After staring in the window for a couple of seconds, he finally went inside, and asked for the owner, only to be told by the American girl working there that Bill would not be in the shop before six.
‘Any message?’ the girl asked, smiling broadly, showing her perfect white teeth.
Maxim shook his head. ‘Just tell him Duke stopped in to say hello, and that I’ll try and swing by tomorrow.’
‘Okay, Duke,’ the girl said, and went on arranging a number of books ort a shelf.
Maxim watched her for a moment, fascinated by her choices. They were an esoteric selection: novels by Richard Wright, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell and Anais Nin. These writers, all of whom he had read, had absolutely nothing in common with each other, as far as their writing was concerned. He could not for the life of him understand why the girl was placing them together. And then he remembered that they had all lived in Paris at the same time, and were old friends. Obviously she saw this as some sort of link between them. The Paris Clique, he thought, and smiled.
Maxim browsed in Shakespeare and Company for a while, and to his delight he spotted a copy of The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw, his favourite writer. He looked inside the book and discovered it was a first edition, published by Random House in 1948. He bo
ught it at once, and left the shop clutching it, well pleased with his find. He had a whole shelf of first editions at the flat in London, and this copy of early Shaw would make a wonderful addition.
Crossing the square, Maxim went past the Hotel Notre Dame, headed down the Quai Saint-Michel, walking in the direction of another secondhand bookshop, one of a slightly different nature. Arcel and Fils sold antique books, some dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and many were rare, others first editions, yet others genuine collectors’ items.
At the sound of the door opening, the owner swung around from the shelves where he was standing, and peered down the shop. His face lit up at the sight of Maxim.
‘Monsieur West, bonjour! C’est un grand plaisir pour moi de vous voir.’
‘And it’s a great pleasure for me to see you, Monsieur Arcel,’ Maxim replied, walking forward, thrusting out his hand cordially.
The owner of the shop shook it vigorously. ‘The book I wrote to you about is in the back room. I will get it. Please excuse me for a moment.’
‘Of course,’ Maxim answered. He was looking forward to seeing this rare volume on antique jewellery, hoped that it really was as special as Monsieur Arcel had indicated in his letter. If it was, it would make a nice present for Mark.
Maxim slouched against the counter, leaning on one elbow, and glanced around the shop.
It was then that he saw the girl.
He straightened, looking at her alertly, his attention caught.
She stood at the far end, silhouetted against the window. The light of the late afternoon sun surrounded her like an aureole, turned her long blonde hair into tresses of spun gold. Her face was in profile, and it was exquisite. He noted the smooth brow, the small straight nose, the chiselled chin, the long neck rising from the white silk shirt she wore with a navy-blue cotton dirndl skirt. She was slender, willowy, bare-legged, and her feet were in sandals. Yet despite her casual dress there was an elegance about her, an aristocratic dignity.