by Peter Rimmer
“No, the sun was shining.”
“How pleasant. England has many surprises… We made a great deal of money financing the Napoleonic Wars. Done correctly, wars can be very profitable. But only for some; Rhodes still controls the Chartered Company even though he resigned as Chairman. Strange man, Mr Rhodes. All that gold in the Transvaal. Tut-tut, Captain Doyle. Maybe you are right. All that gold should belong to the empire, seeing we British financed the exploration and the shaft sinking. You think they will find gold in Rhodesia?”
“No.”
“Neither do we… I think if the sun is really shining we shall walk to the club. What do you say, Captain Doyle? You look a fit enough man for a walk.”
Jeremiah Shank cut open the oyster, lifted the shell to his mouth and expertly tipped the contents down his throat. The shells on the oblong plate were spread over seaweed and ice with wedges of Spanish lemons at either end. Without looking at his lunch partner or saying a word he ate through to the thirteenth oyster and slithered the freshly killed fish from the half shell into his mouth. Then he sighed with pleasure and smiled at the banker.
“Perfect. Simply perfect, old boy,” said Shank in an accent honed to near perfection that would have fooled anyone other than old Harrovians, old Etonians and other members of the public school elite. The man next to him had been educated at Winchester and inwardly winced at being referred to as ‘old boy’ by a man who had crawled out of the bowels of a ship. The bank was always thorough when it came to lending other people’s money and knew the full career of one Seaman Shank. Even the more recent episode with the cutlass was recorded on the file of the Kimberley Diamond Corporation that would shortly offer its share to the public.
Unaware of his faux pas Jeremiah accepted a portion of halibut from the waiter in the City Carlton Club and added the white sauce from the boat the second waiter placed at his elbow. Each lunch companion complimented the other on the perfection of the chef’s cooking and toasted the success of the flotation. The banker all the time was trying to imagine the small man next to him killing four natives single-handed with a cutlass. The revolting little man might have saved his own skin in a fit of bravery, but ever since the banker met the diamond magnate he had wanted to plant his fist in the man’s crooked face, and the right drooping eyelid added the macabre to the revulsion. Aware of Rhodes’s interest in Kimberley Diamonds, he had kept his primal urge under control and smoothly concluded the transaction. The lunch, unfortunately, was obligatory.
‘What a day!’ Jeremiah thought to himself. ‘First, I told Cecil Rhodes to go to hell and now the Queen’s bankers have given me the financial power to compete with anyone in Kimberley.’ There was no doubt in his twenty-nine-year-old mind that he had finally arrived. With so much money how could Fran Shaw turn him down? He would buy himself a townhouse in the capital and allow the rich and famous to court his company. With Fran at his side, they would never guess his origin. Feeling replete and satisfied with himself he allowed his eyes to roam around the exclusive dining room of the Club and came eye to eye with Captain Doyle seated three tables to his left. The man who had discharged him from the Indian Queen without a Certificate of Character was staring at him with obvious contempt, and he wanted to get up and tell the weathered old sea captain that Jeremiah Shank was now the chairman of a major diamond corporation when the further implications made him stop in his tracks.
“You seem to know that man lunching with my brother,” said the senior partner of Baring Brothers to Captain Doyle.
“He was a member of my crew. What’s he doing here?”
“Exactly the same as you, Captain. Borrowing money and offering shares in his company to the public.”
“He’s a nasty piece of work.”
“Probably. But so are most self-made men, current company excluded of course. Your friend is chairman of the Kimberley Diamond Corporation. If you have some spare cash, you should buy some shares next month. Rather good investment I would say.”
“You know his background?” asked Doyle.
“Of course. Even down to the fact you failed to give him a Character Certificate. What the Royal Navy would call a dishonourable discharge. But the man has a way of making money which is what it’s all about, if you come to think of it. Would you like to join them for coffee?”
“Not on your life.”
“I see. Probably best. My brother says from the first time he met Shank he wanted to hit him on the nose. You will understand fighting in the club is strictly frowned upon. Now, a glass of port and you and I will go back to my office and sign the papers. Pleasure to do business with you, Captain Doyle.” Idly, he wondered how many shares in African Shipping he would sell to the chairman of Kimberley Diamond Corporation. Men and their vanity were so easily manipulated, he told himself for the umpteenth time.
Captain Doyle left with one glare back at Shank as he followed the senior partner from the club. London society made him uncomfortable, and he was glad to be out in the street and sunshine. As they walked to Threadneedle Street, he wished he was back on the deck of a ship and for a moment regretted his decision to expand, forever on shore away from the passion of his life, the great sea oceans of the world. He knew selfishness was not always possible… The debt to Sebastian Brigandshaw and Tinus Oosthuizen had to be paid.
“The esteemed man with my brother is Captain Doyle, the man rather rudely staring at you as he left the club. You should buy some of his shares, Mr Shank. Do you know the man?” asked the junior partner of Baring Brothers, enjoying himself.
“Never seen the man in my life before.”
“Seemed to know you, Mr Shank.”
“Had me for someone else.” For a brief moment, the accent had slipped and the younger brother only just managed to suppress a smile.
“African Shipping, sir. Wonderful investment. Captain Doyle believes there will be a war in the Transvaal. This Kruger, so he says, is a man of great pride and will never back down and give in to Chamberlain’s demands. You see, there are more immigrants on the Witwatersrand developing the gold mines than Dutch burghers, and most of the newcomers are English. If Kruger gives them the vote as Chamberlain insists, he will lose control of the government and nobody likes to do that. With a pro-British government in the Transvaal, they will wish to join up with British Natal and British Cape and your Mr Rhodes will have the chance of his lifetime to build a railway from the Cape to Cairo. Does sound rather nice, opening up so much country to British trade. Snag is, the Boers will be back where they came from under British rule and that is what they trekked away from in the first place. Do you know Mr Rhodes? I’d very much like to know his opinion.”
“We have met in Kimberley. Kimberley is a mining town. Small, you would say.”
“And what was the opinion of the shortly disgraced Mr Rhodes?”
“He never gives an opinion that doesn’t make him money. How many shares can you get me in African Shipping? The logistics of fighting a war six thousand miles away would require a fleet of ships bigger than anything afloat at the moment.”
“Which is why African Shipping is laying the keels for ten modern ships.” Silently the younger brother forgave himself for exaggerating. The keels would only be laid after the successful flotation of the shares.
“Buy me as many shares as you can.”
“Certainly, Mr Shank.”
For the next few minutes Jeremiah Shank was silent, thinking of the consequences of war. His education had been minimal but his mind was crystal clear. Writing letters and adding up figures were for people he employed. It was the thinking that made the money. He could read and that was all the formal education he required; the rest he was born with. War. He could not get it out of his mind.
“You seem distracted, Mr Shank.”
“Excuse me, sir, but I must go.”
“Not another glass of port?”
“Could you order me a cab?”
“Where do you want to go, guv?”
“Anywhere�
�� I want to think,” said Jeremiah.
“Nice day for thinkin’ I’d say.”
“Shut up, cabbie.”
“Anything you say, guv.”
The horse, left to its own devices, began to make its way home out of the City of London across London Bridge and the River Thames. In the back, oblivious of the river, Jeremiah was thinking, taking different thought lines, different businesses, but each with the new ingredient factored into the equation. War. And how could he, Jeremiah Shank make money out of a war in South Africa? How would it affect his diamond mine? His estate in Rhodesia, where the rebellion had been laid to rest by swift public hangings? Food. He thought of food for an army. He thought of how long it would need to be fed. He thought of horses and how many remounts would be needed to stay in the field. He thought of the Boers and how long they would fight, and remembered the day he had broken into a cold sweat with dead bodies around him, the strength, anger and rage drawn from him by men trying to take what he had built. The Boers would fight for their own with the same bitter rage.
Even with the afternoon sun shining into the cab he shivered again at the terrible implications. And this time the British would be fighting men with modern rifles who knew how to shoot a buck dead with one shot from seven hundred yards, dropping the bullet in the animal’s head using the wind. ‘Ships. Horses. Cattle,’ he repeated to himself. Kimberley would be safe as part of the Cape. The Boers would never dare invade British territory. By the time the horse trotted over the cobbles into the East End of London, Jeremiah Shank was richer than Croesus. Not once had he looked out of the cab, his mind’s eye searching Rhodesia to buy horses for breeding, cows for breeding, men to work his great estate. But above all, he was going to buy a controlling interest in African Shipping and throw the great Captain Doyle back in the sea.
Only when the horse stopped outside a council house in Bermondsey did Jeremiah come back to the present, and when he did and looked out of the cab at the mean street and the meaner houses, he knew with a fright exactly where he was, a place he had told himself for fourteen years that he would never go back to. Three semi-detached houses down from where the horse had stopped was 37 Pudding Lane and outside on the mean step were two boys he strongly suspected of being his brothers.
“Bleedin’ horse, came right home,” said the cabbie into Jeremiah’s horror. “Bought the ’orse from some bloke around ’ere, see.”
“I’m taking a walk.”
“Not ’ere you aren’t, guv. Don’t like toffs, ’ere about.”
“I know my way around.”
“Not ’ere, guv, please. Bleedin’ ’orse done it, ain’t he? All I got, this ’orse an’ cab. Take away my licence they will, losin’ toff in Bermondsey. Come on, guv, where you really want to go?”
Jeremiah gave him a half-crown and told him to wait, walking down the familiar cobbles with the familiar sounds and smells. Old Smiler was still selling his cockles and whelks as was Mary with the same pushcart and her jellied eels. Come the winter, both would be selling chestnuts hot off the coals, Smiler and Mary thick in their old coats and mittens, red fingers bitten by the chilblains and gas lamps hissing in the fog, and far away the foghorns sounding from the river. There were two boys playing on the street with nowhere else to go, and as he walked past the boys he had never met, both gave him a look of fear mingled with hatred and the street was just the same. He stopped, turned and looked back at the boys on the step and stared them down, making them break and run back to the front door that opened on old hinges. A big fat woman yelled at him, “What you want?” and slammed the old door shut with the boys inside and the brass knocker clanged once more after the door was shut in final confirmation.
And when Jeremiah reached the cab, the cabbie was ashamed to look at him as the fare was crying.
The dawning came moments after the door knocker clanged for the second time; the top hat and cane, the well-cut suit, the spats covering the shiny shoes had masked the man at first glance. Opening the living room curtain an inch she saw the nob get into the cab, not thirty yards from where she stood on the bare wooden floor, and the man was crying, the one eyelid drooping half shut, the crooked nose the way he had been born. She watched the last forlorn look at 37 Pudding Lane. Ethel Shank let go the curtain: to some extent, there was even justice in the fine clothes. Then she thought how sad it was that Jeremiah, the name Fred had wanted, looked like her brother and not the man who was really his father.
“Mum, why you crying?” asked the youngest.
“Never you mind,” she said and tried to put the image of the first in her litter out of her mind.
Lord Edward Holland, known as Teddy to his many friends, was lucky not to see the fat, blousy woman peeping through the corner curtain. There was no resemblance to the sixteen-year-old chambermaid who had taken his fancy, a luscious lass from the docks of London who had come to Bramley Park to earn her way in life. Teddy had left Eton and was waiting to go up to Cambridge to read philosophy and was bored at home for the first time in his life when the flashing eyes, big bust and solid thighs caught his attention. At first he had ignored the signals, until his libido overcame his better sense of decorum. The girl was a servant and should have been below his dignity but it was a hot summer, and there was nothing else to distract his attention. So when they found each other alone in the copse behind the ornamental lake, a walk he had always taken in summer to think of life, he did not imagine it as an ambush but a magical chance that would not come again in a hurry. She had looked at him with liquid eyes and led him into the bracken where he proceeded to lose his virginity to surprisingly expert hands. And like all men, he never forgot the first woman in his life.
For a month they trysted in the bracken until Teddy went up to Cambridge to find out how much people in general and women, in particular, enjoyed his company. Invitations flowed for the holidays and Teddy only came back to Bramley Park at Christmas to find the chambermaid gone. Embarrassed to make enquiries that would raise eyebrows, he tried to put the girl out of his mind, wondering with a feeling of guilt if anything had come from their lovemaking. He was the third son of the Marquis of Surrey and with two older brothers, the title was never going to be in his hands, only the money from his over-rich American maternal grandfather.
The title went back to Richard the Second of England who bestowed it upon his half-brother, the king’s father having married a widow. Along with the peerage went a large estate, but by the time Teddy’s father came along the only thing left was a very old title and nothing else. The marquis, having taken up carpentry to earn a living, emigrated to the States where, to the young man’s surprise, he was met by a New York newspaper reporter who had picked up from the passenger list one John Holland, Marquis of Surrey. When the reporter had looked up the name in Debrett’s, he knew he had a story. Despite all the talk of being a Republic, American people, especially the new rich, craved the old world of aristocracy and inherited privilege. The paper man did his research and by the time his syndicated article came out across America, people might have thought a King of England had come to take up residence in the one-time colony.
Sensibly John Holland explained his financial predicament to the reporter at the beginning to find himself booked and paid for in the best hotel, clothed and paid for by the best tailor in New York, and launched on the unsuspecting but totally gullible New York society set. Like Teddy, his father was a very likeable sort of chap and was soon on every society lady’s list, especially the ones with daughters. The rich can buy anything and soon after his arrival, John Holland was bought by the iron man for his only daughter. The iron man was stupendously rich as every iron rail laid across the vastness of expanding America came from his foundry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bramley Park was bought back by the man from Pittsburgh and John Holland was reinstalled in the family seat that his father had lost to the creditors. The iron man lived long enough to see the birth of a grandson who would inherit the ancient title to his great
satisfaction… Somehow it made all that money worthwhile. John Holland to his pleasure found himself not only back in the ancestral home but one of the richest men in England, thankful to give up his saw and spirit level. Being a man of good faith he sent the paper man a large personal cheque, and set about breeding a family and living the way he had wished to be accustomed.
When Teddy the third son turned twenty-one, he inherited half a million pounds and went off on his travels, having finished with Cambridge. But all the while through the rest of his life he felt a twinge of guilt over never finding out what happened to the chambermaid, the chambermaid who never grew older than sixteen in his mind.
A week after Jeremiah had made the cabbie whip up the horse to get out of the East End of London, the prospectus of Kimberley Diamond Corporation was published in the Daily Telegraph and ended up on the silver tray next to Teddy’s letters. Teddy was taking his breakfast under the elm trees, the same breakfast he ate every morning, summer and winter. Bacon and eggs with one sausage. The mid-August day was perfect, the scent of flowers strong for the early morning, and there was a slight dew on the perfectly cut grass where the lush green foliage of the elms prevented the sun from reaching the lawn. It was the kind of morning that felt grand to be in England.
At forty-six Teddy felt well satisfied with his way of life. His elder brother was off in the colonies governing some country Teddy had never heard of until his brother’s appointment. His second elder brother was still in Egypt waiting with the British Army to revenge Gordon’s death at Khartoum. He was on Kitchener’s staff and had been for some time. The remainder of Teddy’s siblings, all girls, were married, even the ugly one with all her money, catching an impoverished baron, and Teddy was left to enjoy Bramley Park. He was a little round in his stomach but still handsome in a mature kind of way, so he told himself. He had never married, and he was happy.