The Money Stones [antikvár]

Part OneCHAPTER ONETo be an accountant is to suffer a social disease. Take parties for instance. Tell someone you're an airline pilot or an actor and there's immediate interest. People ask questions or tell anecdotes about someone else in that line and inevitably end up with: 'and he was a fascinating man too.' Whereas own up to being an accountant and it's a conversation stopper guaranteed to start a panic. As if the entire gathering may be subjected to a lecture on Pythagoras or the law on income tax. I've always put it down to people's lack of numeracy. They figure numbers bore the hell out of them so anyone who spends a lifetime at it must be boring too.I remember a party Bertie gave years ago. I was an articled clerk then and shared a flat in Belsize Park with two other refugees from the provinces, Bertie Marks and Terry Abbot. Bertie was in television, still is I expect, behind the cameras not in front of them, but always close enough to the action to be involved in press receptions and parties and the like. Not that we lacked for parties. London in the swinging sixties was full of them - half a dozen a night if you wanted, and more on weekends. But Bertie's were always the most boisterous and full of the weirdest people. Like this actress who was a big name then in some TV thing. Dreadful it was and I only watched it to gaze at her, wistfully and full of longing, like a dog at a bone in a butcher's window. In real life she was even more beautiful. All ash-blonde hair and the kind of tan which comes slowly on expensive holidays. For something to talk about I was asking her about the actors she worked with in the television series.