Cissie shook her head. ‘He’s serious about this business he wants to start.’
‘Well, it’s up to you, but be careful.’
As soon as his son came in, Richard Dickson launched into the grievance he had been nursing since that forenoon, when Phoebe passed on what Cissie had said. ‘You might have told me you were going to start up in business, Bertram. I felt a complete fool when Phoebe – er, Mrs McGregor, told me.’
Bertram hoped that his father wasn’t getting too friendly with the woman. He didn’t want a stepmother coming between him and the Dickson cash, especially Phoebe, who would likely turn out to be interfering and money-grabbing. ‘I’ve never had a chance to tell you. I thought maybe a wholesale grocery, that should be easy enough to run, and Cissie’s going to do my books.’
‘So Mrs McGregor said, and I am none too pleased about that, either. You should have had the decency to ask me if I could spare her.’
‘I need her more, and I was going to tell you tomorrow.’
‘And ask for money to start you off, I suppose?’
‘Well, yes, but I’ll pay you back once I get on my feet.’
‘I can’t see you making it pay; you’ve never done a day’s work in your life. I don’t know what your grandfather will say, he’d his heart set on you going into the mill.’
‘He’ll be pleased I’m settling down. Are you going to back me or not? Just a few thousand.’
‘Just a few thousand?’ Richard repeated, sarcastically.
‘Mother would have let me have it.’
‘Your mother spoiled you. If she had only let me knock you into shape when you were younger, you would be a better man today. I can’t believe that the army has put some sense into you, but, all right, I’ll finance you and I’ll let you have Cissie to do your books. Perhaps she will be able to keep your nose to the grindstone and take your mind off all those flighty young girls you ran around with. I hear that you’ve been seeing quite a lot of her – is it too much to hope that you will stick to her? She could make a decent man of you.’
The inference that he wasn’t a decent man stung Bertram – he could have taken Cissie any time he wanted and hadn’t – but he merely said, ‘Thanks for saying you’ll help me out, Father. I’ll be able to go ahead now.’
It took exactly four weeks for Bertram to apply to the council for the necessary permission, to find a suitable building to use as a warehouse, to buy the groceries he needed to stock it and to engage some staff. Then, on the Thursday before Dickson’s Supplies was due to open, Cissie took her place in the small sectioned-off area he meant to use as an office, and started recording the invoices which had already piled up.
‘This is the purchase ledger,’ she explained to Bertram, ‘and I’ll start the sales ledger when you make some sales.’
‘I knew you’d manage.’ He dropped a kiss on her head.
‘None of that,’ she said. ‘This is a business arrangement, and there’s to be no nonsense.’
Bertram burst out laughing. ‘Right, Mrs Robertson, we’ll keep our relationship strictly formal during the day, but I can’t guarantee anything about the evenings.’
Despite wanting her so badly that it hurt just to be with her, he did not rush her, wooing her gently by treating her to meals out, to shows in Dundee and Glasgow, to drives in the countryside on Sundays, and very slowly, he could tell that she was softening, coming round. But he had better make sure of her by professing to love her.
On Hogmanay, Bertram asked Cissie to Huntingdon, and she was dismayed to find that neither his father nor grand-father was at home. She recalled the time she had been alone with Hugh Phimister in an empty house. What a fool she had been to run out when she did that night. If she had given in to him, she would have been spared all the agony of what happened later.
‘What are you thinking, Cissie?’
Bertram’s quiet voice took her out of her reverie. ‘Did you know there wouldn’t be anybody in?’ she asked.
He was stroking her hand as he might stroke a cat’s paw. ‘I knew Grandfather was going to see in the New Year with some friends, but I thought Father would be here. I swear I had nothing dishonourable in mind. You must know I love you, Cissie. It’s hard for me not to take you in my arms in the office and let everyone see how I feel about you.’
She couldn’t help smiling. The office window looked into the warehouse, and she could imagine what the storeman and the errand boy would say if they saw their boss kissing his book-keeper. ‘Maybe we’re together too much. You should go out with other girls.’
‘I don’t want any other girls. I’ve told you I love you, and I hoped you’d say you love me, too.’
‘I can’t, Bertram.’ She didn’t love him, not like she had loved Hugh. ‘I think a lot of you, but . . .’ She looked at him sadly. ‘I suppose you won’t want me to work for you now?’
He made a face. ‘I seem to have made a fool of myself, but I’m not such a heel as to blame you. Your job is there for as long as you want it. Now, I’d better drive you home.’
In the car, she could tell by the stiff way he was sitting that he was hurt, and wondered if she had been foolish not to pretend that she loved him. She would be set for life if she married him, but she couldn’t see herself letting him make love to her. In any case, he had said nothing about marriage.
Chapter Seventeen
1921
Emerging – unsuccessful yet again – from a large store, Bertram was so frustrated that he gave his car tyre a hefty kick before he opened the door and sat inside. This touting for business was degrading, and he wasn’t cut out for it. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could get some decent orders, but it was nearly always the same story: ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been dealing with my usual supplier for years.’
What if they’d been dealing with the same supplier since the bally flood, what difference did it make? He had tried to make them see he could give them better terms, he’d even pared his margin of profit practically to the bone, but only a few grocers had taken advantage of his offer, and even then, they hadn’t been generous with their custom.
The engine gave an asthmatic wheeze when he tried to start it and, gritting his teeth, he tried again. This time, the motor coughed into life and he leaned back to continue his thoughts. He must be losing his touch. Had he been dealing with women, his charm would have won them round. Women couldn’t refuse him anything – well, most women. Cissie was different. Even when he said he loved her – and that purely for the sake of getting round her – she had been unimpressed, damn and blast her! Well, he wasn’t going down on his knees. She’d had her chance!
Driving off, he was hit by a flash of inspiration. He had been concentrating on the better type of stores, but there were dozens of tiny back-street shops run by women – old, maybe, but every bit as susceptible to flattery as young girls – mostly in working-class areas, where disorganised housewives ran in and out all day, every day. Little gold mines! Even if each order didn’t amount to much, the sheer volume of them would mount up. Like Old Dick had once said when he was trying to make his grandson save a little of his pocket money every week, ‘Mony a mickle maks a muckle.’
The trouble was, Bertram mused, he was running out of funds, and he would have to tap his father again. As well as the five thousand he had originally been given, he’d had to ask for the odd fifty quid over the past year – he’d been dashed unlucky with the horses – so he would likely have to suffer another lecture. Still, it was the only way to keep Dickson’s Supplies going and his old man had plenty. It would all come to him in the end, anyway, so why shouldn’t he get some now?
Taking no further time to consider, he changed direction and made for Huntingdon, and in a few minutes, he zoomed up the driveway and screeched to a halt outside the house. His breathing nervously unsteady, he asked the housekeeper if his father was home.
‘No, not yet,’ Mrs Frain told him, ‘and your grandfather wasn’t feeling well, so he went to bed early. That’s a t
ray I’ll have to carry up,’ she ended hopefully, but Bertram did not rise to the bait.
Going into his father’s study, he poured himself a glass of whisky from the crystal tantalus. He had better only have one to give him Dutch courage, he reflected – he’d need all his wits about him.
Richard was surprised to see his son already there when he walked into his study. ‘You’re home early, Bertram.’
‘I’m in a bit of a tight spot, Father.’
Richard rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Again? How much?’
‘It’s not gambling debts, if that’s what you think. It’s the warehouse. The manufacturers are coming on a bit heavy, and I haven’t been getting enough orders to pay them.’
‘How much?’ Richard repeated.
‘About five hundred would stop the wolves baying.’
Sitting down at his leather-topped desk, Richard took his chequebook and pen from the top drawer. ‘I’ll give you four. You wouldn’t take my advice before you went blindfold at this venture, but you had better listen to me now. Sell out and pay all your creditors in full, before you go bankrupt. You can come in with me if you like, but you will have to learn every facet of how the mill works, as I had to do with my father. If you ignore that advice, you are on your own.’
He blotted his signature and held out the slip of paper. ‘I’ve made it out to Dickson’s Supplies, not to you.’
‘So you don’t trust me,’ Bertram sneered.
‘You’ve never given me any reason to trust you. It’s been one scrape after another ever since you were a boy. If your mother was still alive . . .’
‘If Mother was alive she’d be more generous than you.’ Bertram put the cheque in his breast pocket, then burst out, petulantly, ‘I’ll show you, though! I’ll make a success of that warehouse if it kills me. There’s money to be made out of groceries – look at Thomas Lipton.’
Standing up, Richard shook his head. ‘Thomas Lipton had a head for business, and there’s nothing in yours except women and horses. You should marry a nice girl and settle down.’
‘Had you anybody particular in mind?’
‘What’s wrong with Cissie?’
‘She’s too sensible about everything.’
‘That is the kind of girl you should marry, not someone who spends all her time buying fripperies, like your mother did. She had no thought of the hard work involved in making the money she wasted.’ Richard took a step towards the door, then halted. ‘Your grandfather didn’t look too well this morning. Is he about?’
‘Mrs Frain said he’d gone to bed early.’
‘I hope it’s nothing serious, but I’d better go up and see him. Just go through to the dining room, I won’t be long.’
Bertram did not move after his father went out; he had some thinking to do. Not about his father threatening to stop coughing up – he could get round Pater any time he liked – it was his grandfather’s illness that worried him. He hated the idea of giving up his bachelorhood, but if Old Dick was on the way out, it might be wise to take the plunge before he kicked the bucket, to fool the old boy into thinking his grandson had turned over a new leaf. But not with Cissie – he couldn’t picture himself tied to her for life. Millie Winton? Bertram brightened at the thought of his old girlfriend, a ravishing redhead, full of fun and, with her father an MP, she could open doors for him. She’d never actually let him go all the way, though he could bet she knew a trick or two. He hadn’t seen her around for quite a while, but he knew the places she usually hung out. He’d take her out a few times, pile on the love talk and then pop the question. She would likely agree to a speedy wedding if he convinced her he couldn’t bear to wait.
Cissie was alarmed at the amount of demands piling up on Bertram’s desk. His recent orders were better than they used to be, but they’d still to be paid, and how would he keep going when he couldn’t pay his own bills? If he had still been taking her out, she might have said something to him, but he was treating her just as an employee now, and humble employees didn’t interfere.
She was taken completely by surprise when Bertram came in and told her to write out cheques for all his creditors. ‘I’ve had a stroke of luck,’ he explained. ‘I think I’m on my way up at last.’
‘Oh, I’m glad,’ she smiled. ‘I was beginning to think . . .’
‘You know what thought did. Seriously, Cissie, if things go on like this, all my worries will fly out the window.’
Wishing that it wasn’t over between them, she gathered up the red-lettered ‘Final Notices’ to make out the cheques to settle them.
When he arrived home that night, Bertram was overjoyed to find that both his father and grandfather – who had turned out to have only a bad cold – were out, and that there was no sign of Mrs Frain. She would likely have gone to bed long ago, and the way was clear for him to sneak a look at Old Dick’s will to find out if he had got round to changing it. His heart pounded when he went into his grandfather’s room, but it didn’t deter him, and when he found a metal cash-box in the bottom drawer of the tall-boy, he guessed this was where important documents would be kept. Taking care to set them down so that he could replace them correctly, he took out yellowed receipts, some dating back to before he was born, letters from all over the world and, right at the bottom, a large brown envelope. Sitting down on the wicker chair, he withdrew the contents with trembling fingers.
Moments later, he was quivering with fury. The will had been changed, and what a devil the old boy was! There was a small legacy to Mrs Frain, another to an old friend, and his shares in the mill went to ‘my son Richard Dickson, who will thus become sole shareholder.’ Shorn of all legal jargon, it went on to say that his money should be put in trust for his first legitimate great-grandson. Should such a child not be born at the time of his death, his whole estate was to go to Richard.
This was a bad blow to Bertram, but what enraged him most was a note at the foot, in his grandfather’s spindly, shaky handwriting. ‘I wish I could bequeath my business acumen to my grandson, Bertram, who has inherited only his mother’s selfishness and empty-headedness. When he reads this, I hope he will understand why I have left him nothing.’
Taking great gulps of air to force down the bile that was rising in his throat, Bertram put everything back in the cash-box, viciously hoping that Old Dick would rot in hell when he did pass on. Not only had he made a fool of his grandson, he had also cast a slur on said grandson’s mother, a saintly woman who had devoted herself to her only child.
It was some time before Bertram could trust himself to go downstairs again, and the first thing he did was to knock back a couple of whiskies. Feeling calmer, he gave himself up to thought. Even though everything was to be put in trust for a child as yet unconceived, surely a father would have the right to draw on it when the time came? What was even more promising, the old man looked good for some years yet, long enough for his grandson to make a success of Dickson’s Supplies; it was beginning to go like clockwork now. If he could prove that he had some business sense, Old Dick would probably relent.
Bertram poured himself another whisky. There was no hurry to find himself a wife. He would soon be raking in money hand over fist from his warehouse, through his own efforts, and he meant to enjoy it. As long as he could stay solvent, he could live it up.
Bertram was returning to the warehouse each afternoon with a pad filled with orders. ‘It’s easy as pie,’ he exulted to Cissie. ‘I’ve got all those old women eating out of my hand, and even some of the men are thawing to me.’
She was pleased for him. Business was booming, and he had even spoken of taking on a commercial traveller to canvass for orders, another storeman and a girl to help her in the office. He was his old charming self again, though he still hadn’t recovered from her saying she didn’t love him, which she regretted now. His dedication to the building up of Dickson’s Supplies showed that he was not the playboy she had thought, and love had gradually crept up on her.
‘Richard’s
surprised that Bertram’s doing so well,’ Phoebe remarked, one night.
‘He was just unlucky before,’ Cissie sighed. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’
‘Nothing’s ever his fault, according to him, so his father says. His mother spoilt him, you know. Richard doesn’t speak about her much, and I don’t think they got on very well.’
Cissie smiled. ‘I think you get on with him pretty well.’
Blushing a little, Phoebe murmured, ‘I like him.’
‘Not too much, I hope.’
‘If things were different, I could like him an awful lot. What about you and Bertram? What went wrong there? I thought he was quite keen on you.’
‘He told me he loved me, and he was really hurt when I said I didn’t love him.’
About to say that only his pride would have been hurt, her stepmother thought better of it. ‘I think Richard hoped that you’d be the right one for Bertram, but I’m glad you had the sense to steer clear of him.’
‘It’s Bertram that steers clear. All we speak about nowadays is the warehouse, though I’m still glad I’m working for him.’
Her blush made Phoebe exclaim, ‘You do love him!’
‘Yes, I do, now.’
‘I still don’t care much for him, but if you want to patch things up, why don’t you put out an olive branch?’
‘We didn’t quarrel.’
‘He could be waiting for you to make the first move.’
‘I don’t want him to think I’m running after him. I’ll wait a while yet, and see how I feel.’
Some weeks later, when Phoebe came home from being out with Richard, her eyes were so starry that Cissie said, ‘What happened tonight? I can see you’re excited about something.’
It was a moment before her stepmother answered. ‘Richard took me to his house – and before you ask, he didn’t do anything out of place. He took me into the drawing room, as he called it, and just looked at me for a minute, then he came right out and said he loved me.’
‘Oh, Phoebe, what did you say?’
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