Lady of Fortune Page 8

  ‘I’ll consider what you’ve said,’ Thomas Watson told Dougal. ‘Perhaps I’ll write to Mr Cockburn, at Cornhill, and ask his opinion.’

  ‘I’d like to go by Wednesday, father,’ said Dougal.

  ‘By Wednesday? What kind of nonsense is that?’

  ‘I want to go, father,’ Dougal insisted. ‘I can not put up with another Sunday like today.’

  Thomas Watson pushed his thumbs into his black Sabbath waistcoat, and pouted out his lower lip. ‘Och, well, I’m sorry I struck you with the gigot. But you deserved a hiding for what you said.’

  ‘I want to go, father.’

  ‘Wheeping here, wheeping there,’ his father protested. ‘Where’s it all going to end? Supposing you find that London’s not to your taste?’

  ‘I will, father, I know it. And if by chance I don’t, well then, I’ll quit the bank and you’ll no hear of me again. Now, how can I say fairer than that?’

  Thomas Watson steepled his hands in front of his face and stared at Robert over his fingertips. ‘What do you think, son?’

  Robert shot an uneasy look at Dougal, and then said, ‘I think Stirling’s a better idea. London – well, Dougal could get us into a worse hotch-potch in London than he could here.’

  ‘You don’t think that Mr Cockburn could keep him under control?’ asked Thomas Watson.

  ‘I could keep myself under control,’ Dougal told them.

  ‘I still think Stirling’s a better idea,’ said Robert. ‘You’d be disciplined there by your budget, and by the needs of your borrowers. There’s no wild Jimmies in Stirling, looking to build motor-cars, or trying to invent a new-fangled way of shoeing horses. They’re just plain businessmen, with plain needs.’

  Thomas Watson closed his eyes. The truth was that although he did badly need a new manager in Stirling, and one in Aberdeen, he was quite keen on posting a member of his own family to London, to keep an eye on Mr Cockburn and the rest of his staff, and on the uncertain doings of the London Stock Exchange. It was a pity that the only member of his family he had to spare was Dougal; but then Dougal wasn’t as much of a skellum as he liked to make out. Thomas knew that; and Dougal probably knew that he knew. It was Thomas’s secret opinion that all of Dougal’s argumentative posturing over the Sunday luncheon table was nothing more than a way of expressing his frustration.

  He opened his eyes again. He said to Dougal, This is against my better judgement, but I’m going to let you go. I’m going to attach you to the trust department at first, and there you can learn about long-term investment, and about bonds, and securities, and funds. You have a way of getting along well with people, but that’s not enough, in a bank, because you won’t get along with people very well if they ask you to manage their money and you lose most of it on ill-judged investments. You will not, for the time being, be in charge of any lending whatsoever. You will manage; and you will not speculate. You will stay away from the Stock Exchange. It is a gambling-den. But you will pay attention to what goes on there; and you will learn everything you can about the flotation of common stocks and the promotion of holding companies. Some banks are squeamish about them. They consider that anything other than bonds and banking is lacking in prestige. But this is a modern world, and banks will have to learn to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.’

  Robert said, ‘Father, if I might say something –’

  But Thomas Watson shook his head. ‘My mind’s made up, Robert. If Dougal can do well in the trust department in London, then he can do well anywhere. If he can’t – well, then, I think he’d better slink off with that bushy tail of his between his legs.’

  ‘Father –’

  ‘You’re weak, the two of you!’ shouted Thomas Watson. ‘Tied to your mother’s skirts! I’d send you both away if I could afford to! Just you understand one thing, my fine young men, I like neither of you. You’ve as much harigals in you as a pair of slaughtered sheep; and it’s high time you were kicked out on your curpins and left to fight for yourselves!’

  He stalked over to the far wall of the library, where the books were all enclosed in glass, and locked away. ‘You see those,’ he directed his sons, his voice shaking with fierceness. ‘Rare books, first editions, ten shelves of medieval Bibles. Books that J. Pierpoint Morgan would pay a fortune to get his hands on!’

  Then he went to the library table and began to pull out drawers. Each drawer was covered with a sheet of polished plate-glass, and under the glass were arranged scores of drawings and manuscripts. ‘Original drawings by Blake,’ he said. ‘Original manuscripts by Robert Louis Stephenson, Sir Walter Scott, Swift and Dr Johnson and Napoleon!’

  Dougal said carefully, ‘We’re not asking you for any of it, sir. We’ll not take anything that we haven’t earned.’

  Thomas Watson stared rigidly at Dougal, as if Dougal had cursed at him, and then slowly turned away, towards the library fireplace, where the coal glowed dully behind a crisscross firescreen of woven brass. ‘You just don’t understand, do you?’ he said. ‘You’ll have to take it; along with everything else I own. Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of rare books; seven houses; and eight hundred and ninety acres of land, in Roxburgh, and Berwick, and Argyll. Seven hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bonds, in shipping, and steel, and wool. It’s my life; it’s what I’ve worked for. It’s what I am. And you’ll have to take it because there’s nobody else.’

  He sat down. ‘You didn’t know your grandfather,’ he said. ‘He was a harsh man; harsh in the way that a father was expected to be in those days. He’d give you a strapping as soon as ask you how you were. He was quite well off in the early days, when I was wee. You could almost say he was wealthy. But he had no sense of how to make his money grow; and he took to dining out on credit, and buying his meat on credit, and asking for tick at the public house. The poorer he grew, and the more afraid he was, the harder he thrashed me. He died without a penny; and the only way my mother supported herself was by taking in sewing, and by the lucky chance of inheriting that house on Home Street.’

  There was an embarrassed silence, and then Thomas Watson said, in a voice that was so quiet they could hardly hear him, ‘I struggled all of my life to protect myself from bankruptcy. That was the one ghoulie that haunted me; never mind the urisks or the sluagh. Well, I succeeded. You could call me a man of invulnerable means now. But what has it brought me? All those years of hard work, what have they brought me? I mean me, myself.’

  ‘It’s brought you respect,’ suggested Robert, uncertainly.

  ‘Respect?’ asked his father, without looking up. ‘Respect is something that happens in other people. I’m talking about me. Am I wiser? Am I more satisfied? Am I changed, or bettered?’

  He paused, and then he slowly shook his head. ‘I am the same boy who was afraid of his father’s labourings. I am the same boy who cried when the bailiffs chased his father down Canongate, and the men in the crowd took bets on whether he would reach the sanctuary line before the dogs caught his coat-tails. I am the same.’

  He raised his head, and examined his boys with those chilly eyes of his, and said, ‘All this fortune of mine, it was a mistake. I made it out of fear, and now all I can do is pass it on to two sons who are strangers. It has done me no good. It will do you no good. It is nothing more than a monument to my own wasted existence.’

  Robert and Dougal glanced at each other, embarrassed by their father’s sudden show of despair. Usually, he was all bluster and cant; a man of moralizing rage and pontificating certainty. Sure of himself, sure of Scotland, sure of God, and directly and confidently answerable to all three. It had never occurred to either of his sons that he might not be happy.

  Robert volunteered, uncomfortably, ‘Mother and Effie have gone out for a walk.’

  Thomas Watson turned and looked out at the snow falling. ‘Too cold for a walk, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Maybe they needed the fresh air,’ put in Dougal.

  Thomas Watson nodded, like a man drea
ming. ‘Air,’ he repeated, as if it were a clever explanation for the whole of his life.

  He never spoke to them like that again; or even mentioned that he had. But they knew now that they should never live their lives in the pursuit of security. There would never be security, or peace of mind. There would always be fear, and their lives would have to be lived in spite of it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was sleeting when the overnight train from Edinburgh clanked and jostled over the points into Kings Cross station. There was whistling and shouting, and the bursting of steam, but Effie could see nothing out of the carriage’s grimy windows for all the impatient passengers who had already gathered up their bags and their coats and their umbrellas and were queueing to get out of the doors.

  Dougal reached across the aisle and touched her hand excitedly. ‘We’ve arrived,’ he told her, eyes bright. ‘We’ve actually got to London.’

  Effie had neatly tied the ribbons of her grey travelling-bonnet, and fastened the silver burr-thistle brooch which held her long grey travelling-cape together. Dougal was wearing a new green winter coat of good tweed, and a new bowler-hat, which made him look unexpectedly boyish. The salesman in Rowan’s of Princes Street had assured him that the hat was ‘the very latest London style,’ although in comparison with the bowlers worn by Englishmen on the train, it appeared to Effie to be rather too wide about the brim, and far too high in the crown.

  Mr Cockburn’s assistant, a small dapper man with pince-nez spectacles and black wavy hair, was waiting for them at the ticket barrier.

  ‘Mr Watson! Miss Watson! How do you do! Nathan Cohen! Welcome to London! Got your bags? This way, then!’

  His short legs scurrying, Nathan Cohen led them rapidly through the crowds, the railway-porter trundling speedily behind them with their suitcases on a trolley, and almost catching up with their heels. Effie was stunned by the noise of roaring steam-locomotives, by the echoing of shunted carriages, and by the cacophony of hundreds of voices and whistles and cries and shouts. Everybody seemed to be in such a grim tearing hurry; and she glimpsed with amazement a man snatching a copy of the Evening Standard from the bookstall, and tossing his penny at the newsvendor behind the counter. She had never seen money thrown before.

  A boy in a damp cap and a dirty apron was screeching, ‘Pape-ear, pape-ear! Lord Kitchener wivdraws! Getcha pape-ear!’ and the accents of everyone around Effie sounded peculiarly flat and clipped. It was like listening to a roomful of people cutting up paper with small, sharp scissors.

  ‘This way! We’ve a carriage waiting!’ called Nathan Cohen, without looking around once to see if they were following. Dougal and Effie hurried after him to the station forecourt, which was crowded with a chaotic tangle of hansom cabs, mail carts, closed carriages, motor-cars, and barrows. The sleet fell through the yellowish gaslight like discarded sparks from some filthy celestial furnace; and there was such a reek of coal-smoke and horses’ urine that Effie had to cover her mouth with her handkerchief. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, but it could have been midnight.

  Nathan Cohen, after darting this way and that, at last found their carriage, a black closed landau with a rain-bespeckled hood. Effie climbed gratefully inside, and settled herself in the far corner while Nathan paid off the porter, and while their trunks and bags were noisily loaded on to the back, and strapped up.

  ‘Well, now!’ said Nathan Cohen, climbing into the carriage himself, and tugging off his wet gloves. ‘We’re going to take you first to Mr Cockburn’s house, at Eaton Square, and then we’ll see about some lunch!’

  ‘It’s so riotous here,’ said Effie.

  ‘Riotous! Is it? Well, I suppose it is! But that’s the metropolis for you! I suppose Edinburgh’s quite docile, by comparison! Is this your first time south?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Effie, feeling suddenly very inexperienced and provincial. ‘But I expect I can quickly get used to it.’

  ‘You’re going on to Putney, aren’t you?’ asked Nathan Cohen. ‘Well, you’ll find it quiet enough at Putney! It’s a little place on the other side of the river. Transpontine, don’t you know. That’s what we call it, anyway. Almost bucolic!’

  Effie wiped away the condensation from the window with the back of her glove, and peered out at the horse-drawn omnibuses which cluttered Marylebone High Road. Every one of them was emblazoned with posters for Nestles Milk, Colmans Mustard, Mellins Food, and Frys Pure Concentrated Cocoa. In fact, Effie could almost have believed that London was actually owned by a partnership of Nestles Milk and Frys Cocoa (in conjunction with Liptons Tea), because there were so many scores of posters for them.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many omnibuses in my whole life,’ she remarked.

  ‘Not as many as there were a few years ago,’ said Nathan Cohen, crossing his plump little legs. ‘Last of an era, these are. The electric trams are all over the place now. Much faster, you see, and they don’t need feeding! You take a look at those omnibuses, you won’t see them around for very much longer.’

  They arrived after forty minutes at Eaton Square, only a quarter of a mile from the walls of Buckingham Palace. Here in London, the sadness of Queen Victoria’s death last week seemed to have a far more personal meaning; and Effie saw several gentlemen on the streets with black armbands, and some with black scarves tied around their hats. London, after all, was the hub of the great British Empire, and her empress had just passed on to higher service.

  There was a laurel wreath on the door of Mr Cockburn’s spacious and elegant Georgian house; and in the hallway, a portrait of Her late Majesty had been festooned with black ribbons and rosettes.

  Mrs Cockburn, however, a tall and brusque lady in her mid-forties, had already begun to acquire the distinctive bearing of an Edwardian. Her vividly brown hair was swept up, and embellished with pearls, and she wore a narrow-waisted morning-dress of dark russet velvet, which swept the carpets with a cultivated whisper, She carried her sharpened nose as high as she could conveniently manage, and smiled often, although rarely in amusement. The Cockburns had been in India for fifteen years, with the Crown Commissioners, and later with the Delhi Bank; and Mrs Cockburn’s extended isolation from fashion had made her acutely sensitive to every changing nuance in dress and behaviour.

  ‘I’m in such a tizzy,’ she said, showing Dougal and Effie through to the drawing-room. ‘We were supposed to be going to Paris next week, and then Vienna, and then suddenly we’re not, because of the funeral. Malcolm has to go, of course, because of the bank. But it’s all quite tiresome.’

  Dougal said, ‘It’s very good of you to receive us.’

  ‘No trouble, I assure you,’ said Mrs Cockburn. ‘Would you care for some tea? Or would you rather change first? It must be frightfully tedious, that train journey from Scotland. I’ve never attempted it myself. I get impatient if I have to sit still for ten minutes, let alone ten hours!’

  She bustled out, leaving Dougal and Effie together, in a drawing-room of tall Regency mirrors, gilded Regency furniture, and hand-painted wallpaper with bamboo and birds. A gilded clock chimed the half-hour.

  Effie said, ‘Do you think you made the right decision?’

  ‘Coming to London, you mean?’ asked Dougal. He stood up, and walked around the room. He picked up a silver-framed photograph of Malcolm Cockburn resting his foot on the head of a slain Bengal tiger; and then he went across to the sat-inwood harpischord on the far side of the room and tinkled the keys. He played, badly, The Bluebells of Scotland.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I think I’m going to like it.’

  ‘Even if you’re stuck in the trust department.’

  Effie said, innocently, ‘Father wouldn’t know, you know, if you did a little speculative investment of your own. Just a few thousand here and there.’

  ‘Cockburn would tell him.’

  Effie brushed her skirts straight. ‘Och, I doubt it. Cockburn’s not going to upset you, is he, when he knows that in ten years’ time you might inherit half
the bank? Look at this house here. It must cost him a fortune to keep up. He’s not going to risk losing it for the sake of a family quarrel. As long as you keep your head, and don’t overspend, he’ll let you do what you like.’

  Dougal closed the lid over the keys of the harpsichord. ‘You’ve not met the man, and already you’ve got him weighed up?’

  ‘I did talk to mother about him, before I left.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘That Mr Cockburn’s a good man, loyal, but likes his luxury. Not a rocker of boats, if you see what I mean. He prefers not to take risks, nor to upset people.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Dougal.

  ‘Well, think of it,’ enthused Effie. ‘All the inventions and new businesses there must be in London! All crying out for investment, and financial support! You could take your pick.’

  Dougal narrowed his eyes, and looked at his sister with mock-suspicion. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘who’s the banker around here, you or me?’

  ‘You, of course. But you’re not above taking a little advice, are you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Mrs Cockburn came sweeping back; followed by a pretty young blonde-haired maid carrying a tray of tea and homemade biscuits. The maid set down the tray on a side table, and blushed when Dougal smiled at her.

  ‘It really is too bad,’ said Mrs Cockburn, perching herself on the far edge of the William Morris sofa. ‘You would think that royalty, of all people, could have chosen a more convenient time to pass on.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us can choose the moment of our departure, Mrs Cockburn,’ smiled Effie.

  ‘Oh, don’t you?’ Mrs Cockburn retorted. ‘Well, I have planned exactly when I shall pass away. It will be after lunch, on an August afternoon, and I shall be sleeping in the garden of our house in Buckinghamshire. I shall do nothing dramatic. I shall simply listen to the bees humming and the birds singing; and I shall not wake up for tea.’