Read Online The Decision by Penny Vincenzi - Free Book Online Page A

on the boom in every area of commercial life. London was the place to trade and its commercial heart, the City itself, was the centre of world finance.
    ‘It’s got fewer restrictions than any other capital city, that’s the thing,’ Matt told Scarlett over a drink one evening. ‘It’s like a bloody magnet, the money just comes pouring in, banks, insurance and that. And they need office space, all these people, loads of it.’
    ‘An awful lot of my passengers are businessmen,’ said Scarlett, ‘specially in First Class, coming in from God knows where, Paris, Rome, Berlin. It isn’t half strange thinking of Germans as customers rather than the enemy, but I’ve got used to it now. And then Boack fly them in from the States, they all say London is the place to be, you’re right.’
    Matt knew that he was on the brink of doing well. He woke every morning feeling upbeat and confident, positively looking forward to going to work. All the way in on the bus – where he sat in his new suit from the Fifty Shilling Tailors, a piece of brown paper set carefully down on the seat to keep it clean – and the bowler hat Mr Stein insisted he wore – ‘it looks so much more professional, Matthew, puts you up there with the accountants and the bankers, and looks as if you really know what you’re doing’ – he studied his work place, the great bustling burgeoning city, and felt proud to be a part of it in however small a way.
    He knew he had the army to thank for much of his progress. He’d chosen to go into the Royal Engineers, and learnt stuff which he could see he could find very useful in his future life as a property tycoon. They’d done things like constructing Bailey bridges and studying mechanics and road building, and he’d learnt to drive which he could never have afforded otherwise and managed to get himself put on a vehicle maintenance course. And then he’d played every sport available to him, fraternised with the locals – he tried not to think what his father would have to say if he knew he was snogging (and worse) with Germans – and some of the ATS girls were very … well, friendly. Sex was one of the things he missed most out in civvy street. There was precious little opportunity of getting a girl into bed when you shared a room with your brothers. It was one of the many reasons he, like Scarlett, yearned for a place of his own.
    He’d left the army as Corporal Shaw, RE, with two stripes on his arm, a tough young man rather than the stroppy boy who’d gone in; and he went to the Labour Exchange on the very day of his demob, got a temporary job as an office boy and spotted an advertisement for the job with Barlow and Stein a few weeks later.
    ‘We want someone with energy,’ Mr Stein had said at the interview. ‘Energy and common sense. And nice manners of course.’
    Matt said he had plenty of energy and a fair bit of common sense, and that he hoped they could see he had the other commodity.
    ‘My mum used to box my ears if I was cheeky.’
    ‘Good for your mum,’ said Mr Barlow.
    Matt got the job and felt immediately as if he had come home. This was a world he was completely comfortable in; he seemed to understand how it worked in the most fundamental way. Wherever you looked there were new buildings going up, or old ones being refurbished.
    There were the big boys of course: Jack Cotton, Charles Clore, Joe Levy, and Matt’s personal hero and role model Harry Hyams, who’d made twenty-seven million by the time he was thirty-nine. That’s what Matt was going to do, possibly rounding it up to thirty million. It wasn’t a dream or even a hope, it was what he planned with a hard-edged certainty, he was going to build and own properties and fill them with the thousands of new companies that were also being spawned by the booming economy.
    ‘It’s a bit like a blind date,’ said Mr Stein when he was explaining the business to Matt. ‘There they both are, girl and boy, building and tenant,