He’d agreed to this expedition for altogether different reasons to Lilian Grant’s. Her health had worsened since his hurried departure from England and a telegram he’d received aboard the ship had informed him that she was now so fragile her life was in the balance. His trip had taken on such a sense of urgency that much as he’d have liked to linger in Cape Town to enjoy its surprising beauty, he’d had to keep moving north. No point in disappointing her now.
While he’d waited the two days for the coach that would connect him with his ox wagon, he’d spent a splendid couple of days in Cape Town, even hiking partway up the dramatic Table Mountain. He had been treated to a sighting of what locals called the Tablecloth. His guide had explained that this meteorological phenomenon occurred when south-easterly winds blew up the mountain’s slope to meet the much colder air at altitude. The ensuing mist formed clouds to billow over the sharply flattened top of the mountain, and Reggie could see how it created the marvellous impression of a fresh white tablecloth being flung over the flat expanse. The clouds were believed to be a smoking contest between the devil and a legendary pirate – a man called Van Hunks.
Reggie wished he could have further explored this dramatic city, overshadowed by its curiously shaped mountain, but he was on a mission. A woman he wanted to impress was dying while a woman he loved had died; he didn’t want to lose his rage or the impetus that had brought him this far. A little girl needed saving and he was her only hope for a life of gentility – he was sure of it. And the truth he couldn’t share with anyone was that he needed Clementine more perhaps than she could ever need him.
The journey by ox wagon had so far taken forty days. He hadn’t known what to expect, having never travelled further than London. The voyage to Africa had been an adventure of its own and he would be lying if he didn’t admit that life on the ship had been splendidly lazy and indulgent. Two amorous women had tried in vain to win his attention. Their pretty, tinkling laughs and flirtatious behaviour had been fun, along with the pleasure of being trapped on board with other men for whom the best part of the day was taking leave after dinner to smoke cigars or pipes. It had felt exciting and dangerous at once to be presumed wealthy; this judgement was made simply by the company he kept, and did it matter that the wealth was not his? He’d been tasked with being its caretaker, and that meant responsibility, duty, status. It may not be his money but without him this last year since his father’s death and his move to Woodingdene, he wondered if it would still belong to Clementine or have been lost to poor investments that he was working so hard to counter.
Talking to Lilian he’d realised she had not been aware of her husband’s precarious financial position while he was alive. A recent meeting with his father’s solicitor had been numbing, but Reggie’s sharp mind had grasped the chilling situation quickly. They met at his father’s legal firm at Gray’s Inn. Mr Pottage, the family’s solicitor, was a portly gentleman who still favoured extravagant side whiskers and a luxuriant moustache, with a clean-shaven chin that gave him a weighty air of self-importance. Reggie thought about the moustache comb his sister had given him as an early birthday present before she went to Africa to die. He had it in his pocket this moment, a stylish tortoiseshell comb no more than two inches long that folded into an exquisitely wrought, solid-silver case. She’d engraved his name on one side. It was perfect, just like Louisa, and he used it daily. He imagined Mr Pottage could benefit from some grooming tools for his whiskers, which were grey, fluffy and unruly. That lack of pride in his grooming gave Reggie an insight into the conceit of the man’s profession.
Pottage sat behind his polished desk, surrounded by sweeps of bookcases filled with legal books, and he clearly enjoyed reading his paperwork to the rhythm of a large grandfather clock that sombrely ticked away the hours for which he would charge outrageously. The room smelled of beeswax polish, hair pomade and boiled eggs. Reggie noticed the detritus of eggshells that had been missed when the staff had cleared away the man’s luncheon tray.
‘I see you admiring the timepiece,’ Pottage remarked.
He hadn’t been admiring anything; he’d simply looked away with a trill of panic that somehow all this trouble was angling his way. ‘Yes, indeed, a most splendid clock, Mr Pottage. Returning to the matter at hand – actual bankruptcy, do you mean?’
Pottage sighed dramatically, pausing like a hammy actor in a play, giving his audience a chance to feel the moment of tension. ‘Foreclosure.’
Reggie blinked with suppressed anger. ‘Good heavens!’ he said, suppressing the vulgar curse that leapt about in his throat. ‘Why am I only hearing about this now?’
Mr Pottage had regarded him with bemusement. ‘Because until now your role was to ensure Woodingdene’s smooth running, not manage its accounts. That was tasked to this law firm and your father’s accountants.’
He hid his indignation at the man’s disdain with an even tone. Mr Pottage’s arrogance was making his skin prickle.
‘And, it’s no longer a matter of management, dear boy. Financial decisions must now be made, so your input is necessary.’
Reggie read between the lines. It was obvious to him that they had realised they might need a scapegoat, so the time was right to bring in the inexperienced illegitimate son they despised.
‘And Lilian has no inkling?’
The solicitor looked offended. ‘We don’t trouble Mrs Grant with money matters, Reggie,’ he said, sounding almost weary that he should have to answer such a question. ‘Your father put us in charge until such time as family involvement was needed; I would like to spare Mrs Grant the ugly truth. And so, you are her daughter’s proxy, shall we say.’ He smiled benignly at his own clever words. Woodingdene was facing threat – more likely, Reggie thought, the Grant empire was under siege.
‘How long do we have?’ he replied, no longer choosing to be diplomatic about the news of potential bankruptcy. Reggie couldn’t recall offering up his first name either. Why wasn’t he Mr Grant, as his father had been? Clearly his father had been speaking about him in such an offhand way that he was known as Reggie in this office.
Pottage continued in a bored voice. ‘Your father made some poor investments against the best advice; his worst was to continue ploughing his cash into the Millwall Iron Works.’
Reggie, not trusting himself to speak, gave a slight shrug to encourage the solicitor to elaborate.
‘Listed on the London Stock Exchange, the company had a stellar beginning, with names like Brunel attached to it, at a time when shipbuilding and railways were expanding so fast it was staggering. Millwall Iron and Shipbuilding, as it was known, then suffered troubles with failed ship launches. It changed hands, flourished again for several years but began to fail once more. I counselled your father against this company —’
‘Why?’ Reggie interjected.
The solicitor merely shook his head. ‘I always felt its success was transient.’
‘There are notes to this effect?’
His unkempt eyebrows flicked up with irritation. ‘No, dear boy. This is the sort of private conversation that a solicitor has with his most important client. Your father had a stockbroker, of course, but big investments required a lot of legal involvement, which is why I was privy to most of his money matters.’ Pottage tapped a meaty forefinger in time to his words. He was affecting a conversation like a tutor’s with a student.
Reggie ignored the scolding and let him continue; he would choose his moment to remind Pottage of his actual status.
‘Despite my advice, he was determined to speculate on its success, particularly when it began making armour plates for Russia in the middle of the last decade. Your father was fond of Russia.’
‘Go on.’
Pottage gave a nervous tug of his bushy whiskers and explained in a weary tone. ‘There was a serious accident ten years ago involving its famous fly wheel, believed to be the largest in Britain. I don’t know if that’s true but it was certainly spectacular: nearly 40 feet in diameter and w
eighing around 110 tonnes. It killed a lad who had been raking over the furnace – mangled him, in fact. It was spinning fast and came unhinged to burst away from its tethers, essentially exploding. Bits of metal were hurled in all directions, injuring several other workers.’
Reggie hated the solicitor in that moment. He was sure neither the lad’s horrible death nor the plight of the families of the injured had registered as anything more than a passing sparkle of gossip and inconvenience to his city colleagues.
‘This blight on the company was exacerbated by the Panic of 1866 in the financial sector, and companies like Millwall, already on the brink, simply collapsed. Your father was not the only one who lost out, but he was the largest stakeholder.’ He looked up at Reggie with a sharp gaze. ‘Of course, this was one of several poor investments. Your father was an avid collector of the unusual and often paid a small fortune for eclectic items that in the short term offered no investment value. Let’s not forget the money pouring in to Woodingdene Estate and its follies.’
‘Follies? Mr Pottage, one could hardly consider Woodingdene anything but an asset,’ he bristled. ‘Is your home electrified through the power of water, sir?’
The man’s fleshy chins wobbled.
‘I suspect you – like most – rely on gas. But my father’s far-reaching plans mean that in just the next few years all the lakes around Woodingdene will produce clean hydro-electricity to light the entire property. No smell, no potential explosions, no ventilation issues or threat of suffocation, no lack of pressure. I shall see to it that his dream is realised.’
The man didn’t take a backward step, not even to concede he might have spoken out of turn. ‘Well, who would want it, Reggie? Potential electrification aside, you’d need a buyer with an equally, er . . . shall we say, diverse view and similar passion to purchase it.’
‘It’s not for sale.’ Reggie hadn’t meant to say this aloud – not yet, anyway. But now it was out and he was committed.
‘That’s the family’s decision, but a property can only be valued either by the land it sits on, or what a buyer would be prepared to pay for the whole. I have to admit I’m not convinced that any gentleman of means would find the house as . . . well, intriguing as your father did when he built it.’
He was not going to argue its aesthetic value with a man who lived in a lost decade. ‘So, land value is what you’re saying.’
Pottage grimaced. ‘You’re not selling, so this part of our conversation is purely academic, but let’s talk it through anyway, shall we?’
Reggie was pleased to see the man looked at least vaguely embarrassed in that moment.
‘The bank would try to sell it, presumably, if the worst occurred, but you would need to be realistic that it would be unlikely to sell as a whole property. Instead it would be broken up and the bank would sell off divided portions and then other people of means could build their glamorous homes among the grounds, which I would be the first to admit are nothing short of spectacular. The house? Well, dear boy, its quality is tempered by its . . . well, its uniqueness, shall we say?’
Reggie hated that Pottage spoke as if they were some sort of partnership. The ‘we’ was beginning to annoy him.
The solicitor continued. ‘Furthermore, without wishing to labour the obvious, it’s in the north, and it would require a man of money to want to invest far from London. He would need a lot of spare cash as well as a liberal view – not an easy sell.’ He took a breath, pleased he’d got that all out of his thoughts, and reached for a cup of tea that was no longer there. ‘The point I’m making is that your father invested on whims, on emotion, and I’ll grant that much of the time – certainly in his earlier days – he got it right, but his mistakes, which seemed to outnumber his successful decisions as he grew older, are now having a dire impact. You will no doubt wish to take this up with your father’s bankers, but from our perspective as your legal counsel, Reggie, the financial situation is beyond precarious. You’re going to need to sell off as much as possible, as well as find a serious injection of cash. The best asset to liquidate at this time is Woodingdene – purely for its land value.’
‘What’s the time limit on this?’
‘There is no time, dear boy. The limit is reached and the situation is urgent.’ He began to land a pointed forefinger once again on the leather of his desk in time with his words. ‘Cash is required now before the dominoes begin to fall.’
‘Cash,’ Reggie repeated, trying not to sound incredulous but failing.
The older man nodded slowly, eyes closing, as if looking for patience while communicating with a dullard.
Reggie waited, forcing the solicitor to focus on him again.
‘Perhaps five thousand pounds might give you a couple of years of breathing space so you can find the buyer, but we would also need to dismantle large portions of his portfolio.’
‘Mr Pottage, I wonder where you imagine I might suddenly find that sort of immediate cash.’ He offered up a tight, inquiring smile.
The solicitor looked momentarily vacant. He frowned and gave Reggie what sounded like an entirely honest appraisal.
‘I thought I’d made that clear. Woodingdene will need to have its financing scrutinised. No doubt you would need to sell off some of its land in the short term to give you funds to cover your immediate and ongoing debt. You would certainly need – and I mean within weeks – to pare back your father’s portfolio of stocks and shares. He has so much artwork spread around the houses – most of that should be put up for auction. Do you still need the London house?’
‘The London house remains, sir,’ he said firmly. ‘However, I will certainly take a long, hard look at the family’s art collection.’
‘You need to be liquid, Reggie. I gave your father identical advice not long before he died.’
‘And he didn’t listen?’
‘He invested in more ships,’ the older man said, leaning forward with exasperation. ‘You’d think he might have learned something from Millwall Iron, or even the great storm of 1859. More than one hundred and thirty ships were lost, along with eight hundred lives. Your father had investments in at least three of those ships and he recouped nothing. One of them was the Royal Charter, a clipper carrying his share of the gold that had been prospected in a place in the Antipodes called New South Wales. A strange name that I can’t quite remember. I want to say Lemon but it’s not that – it is a fruit, though. Oh, that’s right. Orange.’
‘Orange?’
The older man nodded. ‘Apparently it’s a gold rush town. The gold find was considered “notable” and your father put up the money for a team of Cornish miners to sail to Australia in March of 1851. They found plenty of gold, but all those men went down with the ship and so did their bullion.’
‘And so did we, it seems,’ Reggie said, breathing out with disgust.
‘I’m afraid so. Bad luck, yes, but your father was also putting up valuable cash on various speculative investments. He had his hands in so many projects – I have to say, it’s never a wise proposition to spread oneself so thin.’
Reggie didn’t appreciate this rebuke and looked away while pretending to cough. He excused himself not long after, claiming he needed to head back to Northumberland to make some hard decisions.
Learning the depth of debt, none of it his but all of it now his sole responsibility, made Reggie even more desperate, but in a new way. Mr Pottage managed to make him feel like a conspirator in the fall of the empire. ‘Your father would not wish Lilian to learn of this situation,’ he counselled as they shook hands in farewell.
That meeting in Pottage’s office felt like a lifetime ago, yet it had been barely eight weeks.
They’d made it through the challenging, often tense and dramatic Mitchell’s Pass of the Western Cape and were now officially in the Little Karoo Desert. It had required their oxen to haul them up a dangerous ascent of over 600 feet before dropping into the town of Ceres. The pass itself was astonishing, hacked out of the mountai
ns a quarter of a century before by a talented engineer who’d eloped with the fifteen-year-old daughter of a French colonel, Reggie was amused to learn. As far as Reggie was concerned, it was little more than an animal track they rode upon. The only human sound that punctuated the silence was the yell of the drivers as they cracked their whips to urge their beasts to pull harder.
For the most part, Reggie found himself bored by the Karoo: flat, parched bushland with a sparse population of acacia, their long white thorns speaking silently of the region’s inhospitable ways. The sense of danger was enhanced by wind, dust and the fact that sanitation was a luxury to be yearned for, along with the unsettling threat of lions and cheetahs. He did hope that the sheer size of the herds of springbok that moved in a relentless migration around these parts kept those carnivorous cats sated. He would be glad not to see any of these famed hunters firsthand, although he’d heard several hair-raising stories from the wagon drivers and was glad to note that each rode with a shotgun at his knee.
Here he sat, quietly removed from the four wagons and their parties, each staying within close range of the small circle of fires. He suspected the oxen would alert them to predators, given they were hobbled beasts and more likely to sense danger than sleepy men with rifles. Reggie assured himself that so long as he remained wary and stayed within sight of the fires, he should be safe from marauding carnivores. Away from the conversations of his fellow travellers and seated near the tethered oxen, he had a chance to think.
He pretended to write in a diary using candlelight, so the others wouldn’t think him odd for keeping his own company. He silently conversed with the ox closest to where he sat, mostly to hear the thoughts that had been kept tightly enclosed within his mind.
‘You see, Ox, in sharing the secret of my father’s debts, Mr Pottage has tumbled a new sense of duty onto my shoulders. Selling off, as he blithely puts it, takes care . . . it needs a strategy. I wouldn’t want to give anyone in London the impression that the Grant empire is crumbling – that would bring out the predators, and genuine investors would be scared off. I have to be cunning in a way my father never was. I have to set about saving Woodingdene for Clementine without the rest of the world knowing we are sinking.’ He sighed as he got his thoughts more clearly into perspective. ‘I am now the person charged with hauling us to the stormy sea’s surface so that we can take a breath and look to clambering to safety. I have come to the conclusion, Ox, that the security of the shore can only be reached if I can have access to the trust fund of Clementine.’
The Diamond Hunter Page 8