Sins of the Fathers by Susan Howatch

bastard Lloyd George. I want a line into that rival camp today, Scott. I don’t care
     how you do it, but get it in.’
    ‘Right, Sam. Will that be all?’
    I sighed, moved restlessly to the window and looked down at the magnolia tree in the patio. ‘I guess so … But how times change!’
     I added impulsively. ‘When I was a young kid on Wall Street we all sat around like gods and waited for clients to come crawling
     to us for money. Now the clients sit back and let us fight each other for their custom. Competitive bidding! My God, Paul
     Van Zale must be turning in his grave!’
    Scott smiled but made no comment, a respectful young man tolerating the nostalgia of an older generation.
    ‘Okay,’ I said abruptly. ‘That’s all. Check back with me when you’ve talked to Whitmore.’
    ‘Yes, Sam.’ He departed.
    I reached for the red phone again.
    ‘Mr Van Zale’s wire,’ droned the aide.
    ‘Christ, isn’t he in yet?’ I hung up and summoned my secretary. ‘I’m going to have to chair the partners’ meeting. Get me
     the major file on Hammaco.’
    In the conference room I found a dozen of my partners lounging around the table and gossiping about golf. In the old days
     at Van Zale’s long before I had joined the firm, the half-dozen partners had sat at huge mahogany desks in the bank’s great
     hall while the senior partner alone had been secluded in the room which now belonged to Cornelius, but later when the bank
     had merged with another in 1914, the great hall had been assigned to the syndicate division and the partners had been given
     their own individual rooms on the second floor. Now that the bank had expanded the space had again been rearranged; Cornelius
     had kept the senior partner’s office on the first floor and the six partners who had been longest with the firm had kept their
     rooms on the second, but the remaining partners had returned to the great hall, still known as ‘the sin-bin’ in commemoration
     of the syndicate division. The syndicate men themselves had moved to Seven Willow Street, the adjacent building which we had
     acquired during our expansion after the war.
    Cornelius had chosen his partners with typical shrewdness. First came the window-dressing, six men in their sixties who could
     provide not only solid experience but a solid respectable front. Then came the six men in their fifties, men who might be
     somewhat less orthodox but who had all resigned themselves to the knowledge that they would never sit in the senior partner’s
     chair. That left the three men in their forties, and these had to be watched with scrupulous care in case they acquired delusions
     of grandeur and attempted to annex more power than they could be trusted to handle.
    Cornelius and I were, as always, the youngest. Cornelius had not yet faced the day when he felt obliged to hire a partner
     younger than himself, although now we were both past forty we knew he should give the partnership a shot of youth before it
     became senescent. However Cornelius disliked thinking of young ambitious men one rung below him on the ladder. People thought
     this was odd and said most men in his position would have welcomed the opportunity to impose their power on younger men, but
     I understood Cornelius’ reluctance all too well. Cornelius and I knew better than anyone just how dangerous ambitious young
     men could be.
    As I entered the conference room the partners straightened their backs and stopped talking about golf. I smiled warmly at
     them. They smiled warmly back. Cordial greetings were exchanged as one of the Van Zale aides passed around the coffee cups,
     and then we all settled down to our traditional daily discussion.
    In fact the partners’ meetings were a waste of time and I favoured cutting them back to one a week. The purpose was to keep
     each other abreast of our different projects and to have consultations about policy, but the partners in the sin-bin always
     knew what everyone else in