Privilege Preserved (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 5)

by Andrew Wareham

  Matthew would not commit them to an invitation to Henry to stay.

  “You will wish to inspect our yard, Henry, one of the biggest in existence I believe, though very nearly matched by our London concern. I am in charge of the commercial aspects of the yard, the actual building and the sales and contracts side. Mr Alec Fraser, the Roberts chief engineer, has much to do with the more technical side while Mr Joseph Andrews, who you know well, of course, is responsible for most of our innovative design. Joseph, by the way, married your sister Mary very recently.”

  Henry did a little calculation, decided both were young for marriage, raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Matthew shook his head, not for that reason.

  “She made her mind up many years ago, it would seem, and waited only until they were, barely, old enough. She is to an extent right to have done so. Joseph is an exceptionally intelligent young man, one who is capable of losing himself in an engineering problem, and meets such problems every day. He needs a helpmeet to organise his life about him.”

  Henry remembered his sister as a busy, bossy little girl, well capable of organising her own life and a husband’s too.

  “Thomas is settled by now, I presume?”

  Henry made the expected enquiries about the family, was not surprised to hear that John was dead in the company of pirates, it was the sort of thing that happened to wild young men of his stamp. Matthew felt forced to state that his had been the ship that had ended John’s career, was almost affronted to discover that Henry was little interested, certainly not shocked.

  “That was bad luck, Matthew. I suppose that is why you have left the sea? Must have been upsetting, I should expect. Having to bury your brother must have been an unpleasant task.”

  “Not one I had to perform, thankfully, Henry, we did not come across John’s body. I suspect the sharks took him, he was wounded across the shoulder when I saw him so there would have been blood to attract them.”

  Henry was more interested in the reports of revolution that had been reaching the American press. The newspapers in the States had made much of the growing swell of popular unrest and the long overdue public demand for liberty from the Germanic tyranny that ruled England. Unfortunately they had been unable to report much in the way of actual insurrection, due, undoubtedly, to the actions of the authorities in suppressing such information.

  “It hasn’t happened, Henry. I thought last year that it would, and I do not know why it did not. The nearest thing to an uprising took place in Derbyshire and Nottingham a few months back. A few hundred of the indigent, poorly armed and half-hearted, believing themselves to be part of a great national movement which did not actually exist, lied to and abused, some offered bribes, some threatened to make them join. One farm worker was killed when the leaders attacked a farmhouse to steal a fowling piece, they were so poorly armed. They dropped their pikes and sticks and ran at the first word of soldiers. The leaders were taken up but there was no great attempt made to arrest the remainder. That, really, typifies the so-called revolution. A few who devoutly believe in the need for mass bloodshed, a few idealists who imagine that the world can be turned upside down with only the truly evil suffering in process and a great mass who are unhappy in their lives but will work hoping that things may improve for their children. I don’t know why, but I suspect the thing is that the English are different, Henry – the French may butcher each other in their revolutions, but it ain’t the English habit!”

  Henry was rather relieved. Business never prospered in times of revolution. Peace would be far more profitable, generally speaking, though there could be a big profit in guns in wartime.

  They arranged for Henry to make his way to the yard in the morning and to take a full tour of inspection. Matthew very carefully said nothing about sales or contracts and Henry judged it to be too early to make any exposition of his hopes.

  Henry ate his dinner thoughtfully, not especially impressed by reheated roast beef and soggy vegetables, the staple fare of the English public dining room. The wines were rather ordinary as well, and this had been recommended as the best hotel in Liverpool. He sat over a glass of brandy and mulled over the first meeting with his brother.

  Matthew evidently had memories of his brother that were not of the best; he must be persuaded that the nasty little boy had grown up to be a respectable man. The trouble was that Matthew seemed to have become a perceptive man of business, one who could sniff out the raffish, get rich quick tendency in a chance-met acquaintance, and Henry was just sufficiently self-aware to know that he would always cut corners. Not that it was his fault, that went without saying, he only ever did what was necessary to achieve a laudable end.

  He nodded to the waiter, walked through to the lobby where he picked up a newssheet, glanced at the headlines, poorly printed, he noticed, the American papers were better produced.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  The waiter smiled politely, hand not quite stretched out. Henry slipped him a sovereign, asked if there was a source of relaxation he could suggest – thirty days at sea was a long time. He was put into a cab, sent off to Mrs Pinkham’s house, a sufficient distance inland from the docks and highly respectable and well able to cater for Henry’s conventional demands.

  Matthew sat in his study, writing letters to be despatched by messenger at first light, alerting his brother Thomas to Henry’s reappearance and informing Lord Andrews that there were proposals from America relating to the construction of steamships on the great river there, brought by his brother who had become a businessman of some prominence, or so it seemed. He penned a note to Joseph so that Mary might not be taken by surprise. He would see Alec Fraser in person in the morning, could make sure he was aware of exactly what he was dealing with. He walked through to his wife, resting on her day bed and peering at him over her great mound of belly.

  “Has your brother changed at all, my love?”

  He shook his head.

  “He would like me to think so, but I cannot be persuaded that he has become a man of character, he did not ring true. He is to be married on his return to the States, to a judge’s daughter, and he told me something of him but nothing of her. I may be doing him a disservice, but I saw a man in love with a dowry not a woman.”

  “He is well-off, you would say? He has not come back a failure and trying to weasel his way into the business?”

  “I wondered that, Charlie, but I am reasonably sure he intends to go back to the States. Besides, Thomas Miller vouched for him earlier in the year.”

  “So he did.”

  She was still not reconciled to Thomas Miller’s existence.

  She rolled to her side and stood up, slowly and a little clumsily but not noticing his outstretched hand – she was, she said, with child, not invalidish.

  “I must admit, sir, that I shall be quite happy to be relieved of this burden!”

  “A fortnight?”

  “Thereabouts – these things do not run to clockwork, or so I am told.”

  “How is Alec Fraser’s wife?”

  “Upset, as must always be the case, but she is a sensible girl and knows that it is not the end of the world.”

  She had miscarried at about three months and was far from home and her mother’s help. Charlotte could offer sympathy but there was too great a gap between them for anything more.

  “So, Matthew, he is your brother, what have you to say of him?”

  “No more than ever I would have when he was younger, my lord. He is intelligent, quite probably more so than I am, and he has an eye for an opportunity in business. He will be able to make a profit from steamships, sir, that is a certainty. But, whether we would also profit is far less of a sure thing. I simply do not trust him, my lord. I do not accuse him of coming here with any intent of cheating us, but the chance may arise and he will not be able to resist it when it does. With the best of intentions, of course, and only because he is forced to it, for the sake of his business partners in the States who deserve
much of him, and we are rich already, can afford to bear minor, insignificant losses for a year or two while the concern grows, which is for the best for us all, when you think about it!”

  “You suggest he lies to himself as well as to everyone else?”

  “He believes all he tells himself too, sir!”

  “Can we refuse to trade with him?”

  “Of course we can, my lord. But he would then bribe some of our people to give him copies of our drawings and details of our processes.”

  Tom shook his head, knowing that if once one of the men was suborned then he would be open to further dishonesty in the future.

  “Can you imagine any way to keep him honest?”

  “A bullet in his head would limit his scope for continued theft and fraud. I can think of little else that might.”

  “We can hardly refuse to deal with him and yet we cannot permit him to be our trading partner. Difficult! Thirty years ago and I know exactly what I would have done, but I am less willing to resort to the pistol now. We could insist on our own man being present at his new yard, purely from a technical point of view, to deal with problems as they arise rather than wait for a response from England, much as we have in mind for the Indian business.”

  “How long would our man live, my lord? From all I read and understand, New Orleans is duelling country.”

  Tom scowled, his solution shown to be ineffective.

  “Sell him drawings and the parts for his steam engines for the first two years, say, until he has his own manufactury working on one of their coastal coalfields. Then royalties for each engine he builds, accepting that the figures he gives will be false but thankful for the little we get. We will have no costs at that point, and any innovations will be offered to him against cash.”

  Matthew nodded, that could work.

  “We could as well, my lord, offer him the opportunity to recruit some of our young men who have learned the trade in our yard. I can think of three of my people who have gained a good degree of knowledge and are still no more than twenty and are working as mates to tradesmen who will still be there thirty years from now. It is a long time to wait for promotion!”

  Tom considered the point, realised that Matthew was saying that the young men would not dally that long, would inevitably take their skills to a new competitor.

  “Better in the States than in a firm in Bristol or Portsmouth or Newcastle or a dozen other ports where yards will grow. A good idea, Matthew. Be sure to present it to your people as Roberts looking after its men again, giving them the opportunity to prosper in the New World despite its inconvenience to us.”

  Matthew’s first thought was that there were some similarities of attitude in his brother and his father by marriage. Better, perhaps, not to make the comment.

  “How is Charlie?”

  “Very well, sir. Next week, she thinks.”

  “We shall stay here for the while then. Where is your brother putting up?”

  “At Freemans, sir. My father saw no alternative, and he can always tell the butler to count the silver spoons!”

  Marriage suited William Rumpage, he found. Not merely the obvious physical pleasures, though they were not unimportant, but the simple sense of belonging, of no longer being solitary. He had never realised that he was lonely, until he ceased to be.

  The house was full of life, somehow. There were flowers scenting the downstairs rooms, a smell of baking most days, as Millicent was used to making bread and scorned the very idea of buying it from a lesser tradesman. The rooms were polished, full of bright colour from new rugs and curtains and a few pieces of Etruria porcelain. The two maids scurried and the cook busied herself and William’s man made much of his duties, combining valet and footman and butler quite happily.

  Millicent’s parents had come to dine and been duly impressed by the size of the house, bigger by two bedrooms than their own. Her two younger sisters visited frequently, openly envious, while her brother, who would inherit the bakery, regretted that he could not seek a career in steam.

  William had enjoyed the discovery that he was a great man. He had been a navvy, the lowest of the employed classes, and now he was a leading businessman in the local community, he was respectable. The attorney who lived next door greeted him politely when their paths crossed and the neighbour on the other side, who was senior clerk in one of the local banks, doffed his hat to him. He was happy to be visited by the rector of the parish church who welcomed him to the locality and hoped to see him of a Sunday; Millicent, dispensing tea, said how delighted they would be to sit in one of his pews.

  “And there we must be seen, William Rumpage! For you should become a churchwarden in a year or two and busy yourself in the borough if you are to become Mayor, as you deserve, sir!”

  He was quite happy to be bullied into the paths of virtue, though he could not really conceive of aspiring to the heights of mayoralty.

  “There are more than two hundred men working at your yard now, William, and that, I do believe, makes you the biggest of employers after the brewery. Fifty thousand pounds in wages is no small sum, and you, sir, are no small man!”

  He had no ambition to become his own man, to set up in his own business. He knew of three navvies who had moved into contracting, running their own gangs and taking their own contracts for roads and canals. Two of them, he had been told, were rich men now, the third, he knew, was locked away in debtors’ prison and with no prospect of ever attaining his freedom. He had risen too far to take that sort of risk. He earned ten, perhaps fifteen, times more than a farm labourer and had two thousands tucked away in his bank – Roberts’ own bank, so it was safe. By the time he was sixty he expected to have a respectable fortune to live on and leave to any children he might have. He did not need to make himself wealthy and it was not really his place to be, he did not wish to move far above his natural station in life in the way my lord had done. Besides that, he was building steamships, and there were few men in the land could make that claim.

  He walked to his office at the yard, stretching out in the early sun, aware that Milly was feeding him too well for his own good, that he needed to keep the flesh down, running through the morning’s activities in his own mind. Check Number Three Slip, that was the most important task, they were to lay their biggest, longest keel yet, starting next day and he must make sure that everything was ready. He knew it would be, his foreman was totally to be trusted, which was why he was foreman, but he needed as well to know that the boss was wide awake, must never be tempted to slack off.

  The afternoon would be less enjoyable. The yard was losing scrap metal, he was certain that a proportion of the offcuts of brass and bronze and gunmetal were being stolen, a clever thief who knew not to loot everything, just to skim off the top. Establish how it was being taken out of the yard and then the who would quickly become obvious. He had been watching for a month now and was fairly much certain it was not going out of the gate in the men’s dinner bags. The most likely carrier was one of the regular delivery drays, coming in and tipping its load at the doors of one of the workshops, a small sack easy enough to throw on unobserved.

  He had thought the matter through, had decided it had to be from a small firm, one that would send the same man week after week. Glass cut to size for portholes and deck cabin windows was always bought from the same small glaziers and was needed weekly, was due in mid-afternoon. He wandered into the gatehouse, a greeting for the guards, as was his occasional practice.

  “George, the glaziers’ dray. On your list for this afternoon, I think.”

  “Yes, Mr Rumpage, sir.”

  “Give it a quiet once-over when it comes in. No fuss, just see what’s where, any odd sacks or boxes under the driver’s bench, that sort of thing. If there’s anything there when he comes out, that wasn’t there when he went in, if you see what I mean, tip me the whistle and keep him at the gate while we just have a look-see.”

  “Mickey Shore, the driver, sir. Dad to Fred Shore, he’s mate
to one of the millwrights, sir.”

  “Nothing to be said, George.”

  “I knows how to keep me chaffer shut, Mr Rumpage!”

  “So you do, George. Sorry!”

  A small sack, at most two shillings worth of copper and brass offcuts and spoilt pieces. A letter to the glaziers sent by the office boy and their manager was on site within the hour, outraged that a valuable contract had been put in jeopardy. Both Shores lost their jobs and were given a warning that they would be taken up and handed to the constable if they were ever seen near the site again.

  “Two quid a week in wages, thrown away for a few bob! What’s the sense in that, George?”

  “Ain’t none, Mr Rumpage, but there ain’t never, is there? I seen plenty of wide boys in me time, sir, but I ain’t never seen one of them what was rich. I don’t reckon they steals because of the money, it’s like because they ‘ave to, because it makes ‘em think they’re cleverer than the likes of you or me what works for a living. Begging your pardon, sir, but I thinks you’re wrong to let ‘em go like that. Better off in Botany bloody Bay than ‘ere scrounging off us.”

  “You’re probably right, George, but it goes against the grain with me to send a man away for two bob. But there’s bugger all else for them, when all’s said and done, they won’t turn honest, that you can bet upon!”

  There was no resentment amongst the men; general opinion was that they were fools, either for getting caught or for stealing so little. The main interest lay in whose son would get the job that had come vacant.

  “Best to be one of the millwright’s sons, Mr Rumpage.”

  “Keep it in the family, makes it easier for them, I suppose, Knocker.”

  His foreman, who had the unfortunate surname of Dore, shook his head.

  “They’re all Old Mechanics, Mr Rumpage, look after each other and keep anybody else out to push wages up. Best we should let them have what they want when it don’t matter to us. No sense fighting them for something they want and we don’t care about.”