‘Conrad, do come in.’
John Aspinall had walked down from his office on the top floor to welcome the Clermont Club’s newest member personally. During the course of his progress from Oxford undergraduate with a passion – and talent – for gambling to the owner of London’s leading gaming club, Aspinall had learned a few things about managing an exclusive clientele. It was the personal touch that mattered.
Opening his club in 1962 in the exquisite Georgian architectural masterpiece at number 44 Berkeley Square, he catered for the client with good taste in every department – and the money to pay for it. The building itself offered a peaceful, refined setting for high-stakes gaming in the heart of London. The food and drink, often free of charge to members who ventured large sums of money at the roulette wheel and the card tables, were superior to anything on offer in the Capital’s more traditional gentlemen’s clubs. A troublesome debt was dealt with by friendly advice in Aspinall’s office, never by so much as the hint of a threat; after all, the whisper that a member was unable to pay his debts carried more weight in London than any threat, and it was said that because Aspinall knew how to whisper, he never had to. In any case, if you were rich and socially well-connected enough to be an asset to the Club, debts at the Clermont were sometimes negotiable.
But what summed it all up was the personal touch. Aspinall knew all his members, and their friends and spouses, by their first names, and he did his best to attend to their every whim. As a result, the right kind of people flocked to join. Conrad Rainer, successful Silk, whose wife had a trust fund, was one of them.
‘Let me walk you through the Club,’ Aspinall said, ‘then we’ll have a chat up in my office, and then I’ll introduce you to whoever may be here and leave you to get on with it.’
They walked together from the front hall and, with the bar on their left, gazed up at the house’s magnificent staircase.
‘This isn’t your first time in the building, of course?’ Aspinall said.
‘No. Ian Maxwell-Scott showed me around when he introduced me,’ Conrad replied, ‘though I didn’t have time to take it all in properly. I’ve spent more time down in the basement, in Annabel’s.’
Aspinall smiled.
‘Ah, yes. Mark has done wonders with the place hasn’t he? That’s good for us, too, of course, having such a prestigious night club downstairs. It was the house’s wine cellar originally, you know. There’s a staircase just on your right there, that they would have used for access in the old days but I don’t think it’s seen any traffic for many years now. I’m not even sure it would be safe, so I’ve closed it off.
‘Originally, the house was the residence of Lady Isabella Finch, a daughter of the Earl of Winchilsea. She was a spinster, quite a character by all accounts, well connected at Court – and she obviously wasn’t short of money. She bought the land in 1740 and commissioned no less than William Kent to build this house on it. She lived here from about 1744.’
‘I have to confess, I don’t know much about architecture,’ Conrad admitted, ‘but the name William Kent rings a bell.’
‘It should. He also built Devonshire House and Holkham Hall, though sadly this is the last surviving example of his London town houses. Just look at the staircase, and the way he’s made the curves correspond to the curves of the dome.’
‘It’s marvellous,’ Conrad said, as they looked up together.
‘It’s one of the glories of London,’ Aspinall replied, ‘and if I hadn’t got my hands on it, someone like Charlie Clore would have bulldozed it to build more of his ghastly modern blocks of flats.’
They began to climb the staircase.
‘But now, it’s all ours. The staircase and landing are like Holkham Hall in miniature. Kent reused a number of his best ideas, and you can see some of them in the rooms upstairs.’
They paused halfway up to admire the dome again.
‘I took the name of the Club from a member of the Fortescue family, the Earl of Clermont. Lady Isabella died in 1771, and the house remained empty for five years or so, but eventually Clermont bought it and made it something of a social centre in London. Apparently, there were all kinds of notorious goings on involving the rich and famous of the day, but fortunately, he didn’t do any damage to Kent’s work. We’ll come back down to the gaming rooms. Let’s go all the way up to the top, to my office, for a minute or two.’
‘So, it was Ian who introduced you?’ Aspinall said, once they were seated. ‘I’ve known him ever since we were up at Oxford. Have you known him for a long time?’
‘Actually, I know Susie better than Ian,’ Conrad replied. ‘We’re members of the same profession.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Aspinall said. ‘She was Susie Clark before her marriage, wasn’t she? One of the youngest, if not the youngest, woman to become a barrister in England.’
‘Yes, that’s right. I met Ian through Susie.’
Aspinall laughed.
‘They seem to do very well together. But to be honest – and I’m not telling tales out of school; they’ll be the first to tell you themselves – it’s something of a miracle they’re not both bankrupt several times over.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘They’re both incorrigible – never satisfied unless they’re betting huge amounts of money on something or other, and they don’t have a lot of talent for it. But the gods of the tables seem to smile on them. They always seem to win big just when all seems lost, and they somehow keep their heads above water. I love them both dearly, but they do worry me.’
‘Do you worry about all your members?’ Conrad asked.
‘Yes,’ Aspinall replied. ‘Well, they’re all friends. That’s the principle behind the Clermont: that you eat and drink with friends, and game with friends. Everyone knows the rules, and everyone knows their limits.
‘Do you know, Conrad, when I started the Clermont, it was just a small group of us. There was Ian, Dai Llewellyn, Dominick Elwes, Jimmy Goldsmith, Mark Birley, Lucky Lucan, and me. All of us friends, all used to playing together. And everyone played a part. Ian was in charge of food and drink. He’s quite an expert, by the way – that’s why the food and drink are so good here compared to other clubs. Dai was our social secretary. Dominick was our one-man membership committee – still is, come to think of it: recommending new members, making sure they’re suitable and all the rest of it. Then you’ve got Lucky and Jimmy, who know a lot of people, people with the right social background, with the right kind of resources to join a club like the Clermont. Of course, we have many more members now, but that’s how it started, with an emphasis on quality rather than quantity.’
He looked up to the ceiling.
‘Did you know I used to host games at the Ritz before I started here?’
‘I had no idea,’ Conrad replied. ‘Was that legal?’
‘Not at the time,’ Aspinall laughed. ‘But no one cared. And you know why? It was because it was all among friends, and they were the kind of friends no one was going to refuse, even at the Ritz – perhaps especially at the Ritz. And that’s how it is today at the Clermont. So, Conrad, this is what I want to ask of you: be my friend. If you have a problem – with losses, with another member, whatever it is – you come to me. You don’t go to anyone else, inside the Club or outside. You come to me. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
They shook hands.
‘Good. And you must know your limits. Members here tend to play high, but you don’t have to try to match them. I’m sure you know what I mean. What interests you?’
‘Chemin de fer,’ Conrad replied immediately. ‘I’ve played most of the card games, including classical baccarat, but never chemmy.’
Aspinall smiled. ‘Ah, well, you’ve come to the right place. Chemmy is a house speciality, and there’s a game on the go every night.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Getting on for 1 o’clock. Things should be warming up downstairs. Are you ready?’
‘Ready,’ Conrad replied. As they stood to leave, he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, John. What was it that made you offer me membership?’
Aspinall laughed.
‘Dominick told Ian he thought you were all right,’ he replied.