Free The Money Makers by Harry Bingham Page A

you, not the receiver. I am afraid we had more or less resigned ourselves to that fate.’
    ‘Yeah, well, I haven’t made any decision yet.’
    ‘No, of course not. Well, you couldn’t. I mean, you’ll want to see the shop floor, and the cutting room, and the paint shop. And we have some wonderful designs on the drawing board right now. All we really need is a bit of a cash injection and I really believe we’d get ourselves going again. And our workers are excellent, you know. We’ve always kept the traditional craft methods here, and all our lads are properly trained. Lord, some of them must have forty years’ experience and I know there’s a round dozen of them who have been here longer than I have. Quality. That’s what we’ve never sacrificed. Our buyers don’t always recognise it these days. Don’t really care whether a joint is dovetailed or glued, you know. But if you do things the right way, it’ll tell in the end. Quality never goes out of fashion. That’s my motto. Well, my father’s actually. But he was right about that.’
    A mug of tea slapped down in front of George.
    ‘Ye didn’t tell me how ye liked it, so I gave you two sugars.’
    ‘Thank you, Val,’ said the old man.
    George didn’t like tea much, but the day before he’d enjoyed a rare day in London celebrating a friend’s new racehorse at the Café Royal in Regent Street. The meal had been served on the whitest china. The bergamot scent of Earl Grey tea had mingled with the smell of freshly baked cakes, warm napkins, women’s perfume, polished wood, and the promise of smoked salmon and brown bread. Kiki had been there, petite and elfin in a pale blue dress, gorgeous and inaccessible. She’d complained because ‘I had to fly to Paris two times for the dress fitting, then go back again because I swear there aren’t any nice shoes in London.’ As she complained, she’d twirled around angling for compliments which George and others had willingly supplied.
    The smell of the tea steaming in front of him brought him back to reality. The tea was strong enough to poleaxe a navvy and the sugar had been added with a shovel. Jesus Christ. George was penniless. In a month or so’s time when his cash ran out, George wouldn’t even be able to afford a mug of tea like this one. And as for mingling with the likes of Kiki, the thought was absurd. The only way she knew how to have a cheap day out was to forget her purse, and that only meant somebody else picked up the bills. George shoved his mug away.
    ‘Let’s take a look around,’ he said.
    The old man led him around the factory. A sawmill operated at one end of the complex. Logs came in, were sawn and treated, and lay stacked in neat rows. Right now it was clear that the sawmill was not exactly busy. The few men who were there made no pretence of working when they saw their boss. Instead they stared bluntly at George and George was not left in much doubt whether they approved of what they saw. The day was dull with rain on the moors, but George tucked his sunglasses more firmly on to his nose.
    The factory floor was busier. Around half the men glanced up and continued to work, the rest gave George the same candid appraisal he had received in the sawmill. The verdict, he guessed rightly, was the same.
    The old man hadn’t lied when he spoke of craft methods. The factory used machine tools, of course, but each piece of furniture was sawn and assembled by hand. Gissing showed George how they had been forced to compromise standards by the imperative of cutting costs. Dovetailed joints had given way to tongue­and-groove, tongue-and-groove to nails and glue. Old man Gissing seemed to want to lament each nail until George dragged him off. The tour finished with the paint shop, the warehouse, and a totally absurd factory shop, whose last customer had died in the shock of the Profumo scandal.
    Back in the executive office, the old man pulled out the company’s accounts. It was a relief to see