However, statistics would suggest that offspring must have intermittently resulted. In fact, my staff have been approached numerous times by women who were, in my opinion very misguidedly, trying to elicit paternal acknowledgment and in some cases even payment for their brood.
None was ever given.
Most of these ladies understood the hints they received and disappeared as best they could. A few were not so wise. They also disappeared, but perhaps rather more in the passive sense. It is most unwise to go up against the great Moriarty.
If a woman engages in relations, she knows she can get pregnant. That is her risk, not mine. If she takes that risk, she must pay for it. If she is smart, she can look at it as a long term investment…
That is entirely up to her. I am not involved.
Women have an inherent vulnerability.
Men do not.
Men do of course take risks of their own. Many fail. The strong succeed.
That’s all there is to it.
It has occurred to me that, in funding the prolongation of this war, the greatest war the world has ever seen, with deaths that will surely far outpace the Napoleonic accounts, I am quite probably also funding the deaths, the horrible and senseless deaths, of some of my own natural sons. Some of my sons are probably already too old to be in this war, some are too young. But some must be of the right age and disposition to be right there in the trenches, officers and foot soldiers of all ranks, firing and being fired at by the weapons procured and funded by Mr M’s operations. Which means they are being funded by me. (If any of my daughters are so bereft of femininity as to go to war, in the guise of nurses and what not, well, that is entirely their own fault and I have not a tear to shed for the well-deserved fate which will surely find them.)
What kind of father kills his own sons?
What kind of father doesn’t, is my answer.
***
1918.
I am writing this almost three years after my fateful meeting with the Other Mr M.
Reading my notes from that time, I cannot but smile at my naivety.
I thought then that the venture we collaborated on was impressive. And it was. It certainly exceeded everything I had done to date. But I really had no idea…
War, financially speaking, is unlike any other beast. Yes, there can be runs on the banks, there can be bubbles that burst and new economies that fly away. But war is the true a massacre of mammon.
The funds we channelled into Mr M’s business and the interest they accrued have grown exponentially, as have the numbers of the dead and crippled on the battlefields.
Among the young (and not so young) men who died were, inevitably, many of those who used to work as our associates in peace time. The nations may be bankrupting themselves but they still have the power to conscript and I cannot buy everyone out.
But unlike the rulers and nations who fight this war, my own intentions are not lethal. I merely accept the death of thousands as a necessary accompaniment to the greatest surge of profits this world has ever seen.
Ah - my sister informs me in a self-satisfied voice that those deaths are not in the thousands, or the tens of thousands. They are, in fact, in the millions which surely must be a world record.
The dead of this war that some have started to call the Great War, rank around the 15 million mark right now, after barely four years. According to Emmeline.
It appears that Napoleon has been left behind by history. Supplanted by his betters.
The Napoleonic wars are almost a century past
Is it perhaps a law of nature, that such grotesque bloodletting occurs only once in a century?
Up in the small dark room, surrounded by her ledgers, my sister contorts her face into what passes as a smile.
‘My dear James’, she says, giving my childhood name a most condescending inflection, ‘I hardly think so. This war may be coming to an end, but the next one is already being prepared.’
For the fraction of a second, I feel a shimmer of a shiver running down my spine.
Is this not enough?
Then I remember.
No, it is not enough.
It never will be.
The world has never seen such an increase of money, but that is not to say that there cannot be more. If this war has proven one thing, it is both the power and the innovation of finance.
My sister has returned to her ledgers. The white ones are now filling all her shelves, and are towering over her desk.
She moves to push her hair away from her cheek.
In the brilliant light of the new electric lamps which I have generously installed with some of my profits, I notice a slight difference in the familiar outline of her face.
Can this be?
I walk across to the other side of the room and ask a casual question about the quantification of civilian casualties. My sister looks up to answer. Yes, there can be no doubt.
For the first time in her adult life, my sister has lost weight.
‘Emmeline’, I say, ‘is it not time to partake of a few cakes?’
She shakes her head.
Still, her chins wobble.
But not quite so much as before.
‘By all means, James, go ahead’ she says. ‘But I choose to abstain.’
‘Why?’ I say.
And indeed, why, after all these years, would Emmeline suddenly wish to strive for a more pleasing form?
‘Are you sick?’
Again, that contortion of the face that could be a smile. I cannot help wondering what it will look like if she loses weight in earnest. My sister will never be a beauty, and besides, for suitors and a second marriage, it is far too late. But still, I wonder…
Of course there is provision for dear Emmeline in the event of my untimely death. Including the succession of ownership of that little key which will keep her locked away from the wider world forever.
‘I am not sick’, she says. ‘ But for the first time, I wish to prolong my life.’
‘Why would you wish to do that’, I say and I cannot keep the disgust out of my voice.
‘Because’, Emmeline says, quite impervious to my feelings, ‘I want to see the future.’
She smoothens out her white gown. Is it possible that she has taken to wearing white now all the time (although it surely is the most unflattering colour for a woman like her), to match those morbid white ledgers recording the casualties of war?
‘I want to see the war’, Emmeline says very seriously, ‘the war to come for which this one is a mere shadowy rehearsal, a feeble preliminary of quite limited proportions, the war to come which will encompass not just one continent but all of the earth. It will be the pinnacle of my profession.’
‘And what profession is that’, I say.
She takes her pen away from the page and looks at me straight.
‘The accountancy of death’, she says.
THE END
Nyla Nox is the author of the ‘Graveyards of the Banks’ trilogy. 'Graveyards of the Banks 1 - I did it for the money' available at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Graveyards-Banks-Midnights-Successful-Universe-ebook/dp/B00U7HRVNK
'Graveyards of the Banks 2 - Monsters Arising'
https://www.amazon.com/Graveyards-Banks-Monsters-Nyla-Nox-ebook/dp/B013BV5N2E
‘Graveyards of the Banks 3 – Slaughterhouse Morning’ will come out in 2016.
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