by Alec Waugh
In the end they decided, even for their children’s sake that it would be wiser to let it go. “They won’t be able to live there themselves,” he said. “It wouldn’t do to let them get too fond of it. Besides, it’s best to bring a man up in the atmosphere where he’s going to live. Most of us are going to be townsmen in the future. Children should be brought up in the future, not the past. In ten years’ time Tavenham and all it stood for may be an anachronism.”
In the directorate of Peel & Hardy the death of Huntercoombe involved the reconsideration of old arrangements. With profits increasing at an agreeable ratio, with the shareholders content and silent, there had seemed no reason to look ahead. The death of Hunter-coombe meant more than an empty seat upon the Board. It entailed a mental stock-taking. As each deliberated on the best policy to adopt, each in his own way wondered what position he himself would want to occupy when the war was over and the firm resumed its normal activities.
For the first time since he had resigned his position in the firm to join the Inns of Court, Hugh discussed his own future with his father.
“I’ll never be able to go back to an office desk after all this. I’ve got restless. I want movement, variety. I want to be able to use my freedom. If I had to sit at a desk all day, I’d just go mad.”
“My dear fellow, no one’s suggesting that you should.”
“There’ll be lots of things that I could do: outdoor things; my war record’ll be a help. Of course, I’ll be able to do a lot of odd work for the firm still. I could go on with the commission side of things.”
“I’d thought of offering you a place upon the Board.”
“That’s talking.”
“Of course I’d hoped you’d take my place here as Managing Director. I’ll have to sit rather looser in the saddle before very long. But I see that’s impossible. You couldn’t stand that kind of work. Not after all you’ve been through. You’re entitled to enjoy yourself. You’ve earned that. We’ll see you have it. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t help yourself to a share of our excess war profits.”
Prentice, too, took Huntercoombe’s death as the signal for his own retirement.
“I’ve been here long enough,” he said. “I’m over sixty. I want to enjoy my last few years. There’s my boy who’ll need all the money he can lay his hands on when he’s out of khaki. I’ll make my shares over to him, nominally. They’ll entitle him to a place on the Board. Why shouldn’t he have it? He’ll be quite useful, or rather, he’ll be no more useless than the average director is.”
The suggestion was put forward with that “We’re both rogues, aren’t we?” look that Balliol never found it easy to resist. He knew what Prentice was thinking. “You want your son on the Board. I want mine; I won’t oppose his election if you’ll see that my son gets on too.” How Prentice enjoyed playing to what he considered the baser human motives. How he smacked his lips over the venality of mankind.
It was as much as anything to bring into Prentice’s watchful eye that gloating look of a gourmet before a richly-seasoned dish, that he made as a definite proposition what he had intended to put forward as a very tentative and not very serious suggestion.
“I can’t help feeling that we should be wise to maintain the family traditions and invite the present Lord Huntercoombe to take his father’s place as Chairman of our Board.”
The quick light came into Prentice’s grey eyes. Balliol could guess his thoughts. Ah, but this is too rich, first his son, then his son-in-law. Nepotism run riot. Well, I’ve a card to play which’ll show that I recognize the game he’s up to.
“In that case I suggest that we should call a shareholders’ meeting at the shortest possible notice. When you’ve anything very radical to put across, it’s always best to do it when those who would normally be insurgent are too busy over something else to notice what you’re doing. Yes, I think we’d be wise to do that, Balliol.”
The slow smile with which he accompanied his advice was the chuckle with which the villains of melodrama rub their hands while they plot the kidnapping of the heroine. Prentice liked to conduct a conference as though the details of an incredibly shady transaction were being arranged. He could never realize that self-interest might be linked to a general welfare. As a matter of fact, Balliol reflected, an imminently suitable arrangement had just been made; far more likely to prove advantageous to the shareholders than any that could have been devised by the type of person who would have thought: “My son, my son-in-law, my partner’s son? But that’s impossible. Whatever will people think!”
The shareholders’ meeting was held half-way through September. The Board room was rearranged to accommodate a gathering of fifty. The Board table was moved below the window, with barely room for the directors to push back when they took their seats. Across the fireplace were three rows of chairs; each chair bore the printed report, sent to every shareholder, containing the balance sheet, the profit and loss account, the announcement that preference shareholders would receive their stipulated dividend of seven and a half per cent, and that for ordinary shareholders there would be a fifteen per cent, dividend. On the board table was a leather-bound brass-locked volume in which shareholders were invited to sign their names. The meeting was fixed for three o’clock. Anyone entering the room at half-past two would have imagined the scene set for one of those high dramas of modern commerce with which the novel and the film have familiarized the layman.
By ten past three, four of the chairs were occupied. Three of them by members of the staff who at a time of crisis had been given shares in lieu of a rise of salary and had found the exchange extremely profitable. They sat together self-consciously, aware of the power granted them this once a year to criticize their employers in the very room to which ordinarily they were summoned to answer the charge of their delinquencies. The fourth chair was occupied by a stranger: a nondescript man of nondescript appearance. He might be thirty years old, he might be sixty. He might have an income of three hundred, he might have an income of three thousand.
At a quarter past three Victor rose to his feet.
“As I think that as many shareholders as can be expected to arrive, already have arrived, I will call upon the Managing Director to read you his report.”
It was a long report. Balliol enjoyed addressing a meeting of four persons as though it were a gathering of four hundred. No one reading the typewritten account of the proceedings would have imagined that he was not trying to convince an audience that contained innumerable different points of view. His sense of humour was tickled by the patent absurdity of the dramatic pause with which he would preface some such exordium as “Gentlemen, there must be, I am aware, those among you will hold …” to be followed a few sentences later by “I will give the same answer to those others who are dissenting on the grounds that…” His vindication of the firm’s policy, his prophecy of the firm’s future, his tribute to the loyal industry of the staff lasted twenty-seven minutes.
The proceedings after this oration proceeded with exemplary speed. The adoption of the report and balance sheets was moved, seconded, passed. The firm’s action in co-opting three new directors and electing a new chairman was approved. A vote of sympathy to the late chairman’s son was moved and seconded. With no opposition a vote of thanks to the chairman was proposed. The motions were proposed and seconded by the three shareholder members of the staff. Each in turn rose self-consciously. “I should like to move that,” “I should like to second that.” The nondescript stranger took no part in the proceedings. He sat silent and motionless. The moment the meeting was declared to be at an end, he picked up his hat and left the room.
“Now who on earth was that?” asked Balliol.
The leather-bound volume was examined. His name was Briggs. He lived at Maidstone. For fourteen years he had been the owner of four shares. It was the first time he had attended a meeting.
“And why now?” said Balliol. “And then to do nothing when he comes; neither to express grat
itude nor to find fault? His purpose eludes me. There are times when the purpose of the whole human race eludes me.”
“That is neither here nor there,” said Prentice. “Let us be thankful for his solitary presence. The moment we cease declaring a dividend you will find our seating accommodation uncomfortably inadequate.”
The board meeting that followed the departure of the shareholder was of a perfunctory nature. Minutes were read and signed. There was no business to be transacted. The caretaker’s wife presented herself with a tray of office tea and office bread and butter.
Prentice took one bite at his slice, then laid it down.
“Margarine. I really think that it is to the return of butter that I look forward more than anything when I consider how pleasant the world will be when the war is over.”
“I don’t think you’ll have long to wait,” said Victor.
Every issue of the evening papers brought the news of hastening victory. The allied armies were streaming across northern France. In the east the Turks and Bulgarians were near the breaking point. It was happening so fast that nobody could realize that it was happening. Only yesterday the Germans had been shelling Paris. Haig had written his “Back to the Wall” despatch. Peace was centuries distant. Complete victory was declared impossible.
But now, only a few weeks later, peace terms were a general topic of discussion.
“I’ll be glad of a holiday,” said Hugh.
His brother-in-law looked at him searchingly.
“I can’t say that you look too fit.”
“I don’t feel too fit.”
“What’s the matter? That gas still?”
“That and other things.”
“You’d better come down to Tavenham for a rest cure. We’d best have all the fun out of it we can while it’s still there.”
Early in May the first announcements that Tavenham was for sale had been sent out. Every house agent in London had its particulars. Once a month a small photograph appeared on the back page of The Times. But nobody was very confident that a purchaser would be found till the war was over. No one was going to commit himself at a time when the future was so uncertain. Putting it up for auction would be a waste of time and money. Early in October, however, Victor received a typewritten letter signed Johnstone Buckleigh, with the word “Sir” in typed brackets after the signature, stating that Messrs. Willett of Sloane Square had given him an order to view Tavenham, and that with Lord Huntercoombe’s permission he would avail himself of that permit on the following Friday afternoon.
Victor looked him up in Who’s Who. He had been knighted in 1917. He was not in the 1916 issue. He was a man of forty-three. He had been educated privately. He was married and had two children. He was the chairman of the Phitclose Shoe Company. His recreation was golf. He was a member of the National Liberal Club. “Government contracts and a gift to the party funds,” was Victor’s verdict. “A vulgarian, I bet you.”
On the following Friday a long, low, very polished Rolls-Royce limousine swung soundlessly up the drive.
Said Victor, “As I expected, he’ll be fat, red-cheeked; veined nose, double chin. He’ll be wearing violently checked plus fours, a club tie and gleaming brogues.”
To his surprise a tall, thin, quietly-mannered, quietly-dressed man opened the car’s door for himself, and stood, looking up at the long low line of the house’s frontage.
“That’s nice,” he said. “It’s how I hoped it would look, how I was afraid it wouldn’t.”
He spoke as though he had already made up his mind. He had a manner that Victor liked. His voice was characterless in a way which suggested that at some time or another a brogue or accent had been ruthlessly rolled out. But it had a pleasantly unaggressive self-confidence. He was wearing a brown tweedy kind of suit. His shoes were thick-soled and had the rich brown that comes of use. His shirt was of a pale neutral-coloured cashmere flannel. His tie was a dark brown poplin. They were the kind of clothes that a countryman would have worn. But something in the way he wore his clothes, perhaps Victor thought, in the neatness with which the tie fitted in the angle of the collar, showed quite definitely he was a townsman.
As they walked round the house and grounds he talked of himself with an engaging candour.
“The war made me, of course. I was well-to-do before the war. I am a rich man now. You will say that nobody has a right to make money out of the war. That’s nonsense. War gives a man a chance to show his talent. A lieutenant becomes a general, an industrialist becomes a millionaire. The country rewards those who are of service to her. And I have been of service. I’ve kept my factories running day and night. I’ve seen that the troops had boots when they were needed: good boots. I did something that was necessary better than the others could. One deserves to have a reward for that.
“And now I mean to have a say in the way the country’s run. I’m going into Parliament. That’s why I want a place in the country. If you’re going to represent the people, you’ve got to know the people, move among them. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to move away from the Midlands. I shouldn’t carry the same weight down there. They remember my beginnings. I picked on this place because the village was called Buckley. In a generation or two my name and the village will get linked. There’ll be a feeling we came from the same roots. It’s nonsense in a way, but at the same time it stands for something. Yes, this is the kind of place I want. The only thing is that I want it quick. I believe the war’ll be over before Christmas. I believe there’ll be a general election before Easter. I want to run as an M.P. for this division with a real stake in the place. I want these people to know whom they’re voting for. The man who’s taken Tavenham; that’ll mean something to them. Can I move in by the end of the month?”
The speed of his decision astonished Victor.
“Do you always make up your mind as fast as that?”
“Always. I never reason about things. I go by instinct. The heads of my departments bring me sheets of figures. I never look at them. I say to myself, ‘You’ve taken forty hours making out that balance sheet. I haven’t spent forty seconds looking at it. That explains why you’re where you are and I’m where I am.’ Well, that’s settled then, Lord Huntercoombe. I move in on November the first. Whatever minor details there are our lawyers and agents can arrange. I’m not a man to bother about pennyworths of tar.”
He shook hands heartily.
It was half-past four. For two and a quarter centuries the Tavenhams had owned this house. In seventy-five minutes its transfer had been arranged to a family of whom no record had existed anywhere when the last brick of Tavenham had been laid.
“Still, I’m glad it is going to a man like that,” thought Victor. “There are some people whom I’d have hated to think of here; whom I’d not have sold it to. But this man’s real. He’ll start a tradition here. It’ll be a new tradition. But it’ll be English. It’ll be sound.”
The house would still stand for an ideal of service.
III
On a November morning with the long avenue of chestnuts gold and amber in the misted sunlight, with the dead leaves lying like crimson shadows below the beech trees; the tufted grasses of the paddock sparkling with dew-rimmed cobwebs, Ruth and Victor drove away from Tavenham to a London that was breathlessly awaiting the Armistice that meant Peace and Victory.
“I’m glad it’s happening now,” said Victor. “I don’t think I could have borne it afterwards, when everyone was coming back from the war and the place was settling back into its old life. Now it’s just one more change, when everything is change.”
They had decided to stay at Ilex till they had found a suitable London house.
It seemed very much like old times to have Ruth back in her old room again, to hear from the hall the sound of children’s voices, to find a pram set in the shelter of the balcony. It was to seem even more like old times a few days later, when the morning of the thirteenth brought an excited cable from Malaya. “Darling, I am so happ
y. We are coming back all of us by the first boat—Lucy.”
It seemed as inconceivable that Lucy should be coming back as that the Armistice had been signed. “We shall have the whole family here for Christmas,” Balliol prophesied. It did not seem possible. Two years ago the family had been scattered. Lucy in Malaya, Ruth at Tavenham, Hugh in France, Francis at Fernhurst, only Helen left. And now they were all coming home. It wasn’t possible. Something was bound to happen to prevent it.
But nothing did. First Francis came back from Fernhurst for his Christmas holidays. Then Hugh arrived from Grantham with a fortnight’s leave pending demobilization. Then on Christmas Eve itself a taxi, laden with luggage drew up at the front door, Lucy was rushing up the path, behind her two little girls were pulling each other by the hand, while a large, florid, heavily-built man argued with the taxi-driver. Lucy was in her father’s arms, he was holding her away from him at arm’s length, examining her, saying, “But you haven’t altered in the least.” Her mother was agreeing. “She’s exactly the same, isn’t she, Ruth?” “Of course she is. And I thought she’d be shrivelled with tropic heat—and Lucy darling, this is heaven. Oh, the toddlers, and Stephen.”