The Lorimer Line

by Anne Melville

  Once upon a time, when she was a little girl, she had come this way often to play with Lydia. It was only about five years ago that the area adjoining this side of the garden, like the streets off Joy Hill, had acquired an undesirable reputation. Respectable families had moved out as unmarried but well-dressed females moved in. A half-crescent of bow-windowed houses came to an end here in a gazebo which afforded a view of the curving river, and which gave the whole street its name. Because of the steepness of the hill, and the erratic courses of the roads which climbed it, the entrance to The Gazebo was a considerable walking distance from the front door of Brinsley House. But for anyone whose legs were strong and who was not afraid of shadows, the path through the garden had made a good short cut. She had even persuaded her father to provide a small gate in the fence in order that she need not be tempted to climb it in a tomboyish manner.

  The gate was still there, although several years had passed since Lydia and her family had moved to Bath from their home at the end of the street. Margaret pulled down her veil and stepped through, staring sentimentally through the window of the house which for a short time she had known almost as well as her own. As she did so, she was startled to recognize the occupant of the front room.

  She ought not to have been surprised. David had mentioned - on the evening their engagement was announced -that Luisa had moved to live in The Gazebo. But the news had been pushed into the back of Margaret’s mind first by the happiness of her few hours at the ball, and then by the disasters and tensions which immediately followed it. Reminded now of her friend’s whereabouts, she was tempted to call, but was at once held back by doubts: the hour was late, and there was something about Luisa’s quick movements which seemed furtive, as though she hoped not to have been observed. No one normally had any occasion to pass the house at night, since the street led to nothing beyond except the viewpoint.

  While she hesitated, Luisa straightened herself, carrying a pile of clothes. She caught sight of Margaret through the window as she turned, and for a moment her expression was one of fear. It changed so rapidly that Margaret wondered whether she had imagined it. She stood still, waiting to see what was expected of her.

  Luisa put down the bundle of clothes and a few seconds later appeared at the door of the house. This time there was no doubt about the furtiveness of her behaviour. She was making sure that no stranger was about to see her. Only then did she smile and invite Margaret to come in.

  Once inside, Margaret looked curiously around the untidy bow-fronted drawing room. The little girl whom she had seen as a baby eighteen months earlier was standing in a corner of the room, sucking a finger and staring wide-eyed at the stranger. Luisa picked her daughter up and hugged her to her shoulder as if providing herself with a defence against Margaret’s reproaches.

  ‘How long have you lived here, Luisa?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘A year perhaps. No, less than that. I’m sorry.’ She sounded as though she sincerely regretted the hurt which Margaret was feeling. Almost as though it altered the situation she added, ‘But tonight we leave.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Doing a moonlight flit. This was one of the first English phrases I learned. Running away in the middle of the night, so that the landlord cannot claim my possessions.’ She looked at Margaret with defiance in her eyes, daring her to criticize. ‘There is two months’ rent due, and I have hardly enough money for food. When times are hard the music teacher is the first to be turned away. This is no longer a good city in which to live. You know that better than most.’

  Margaret nodded unhappily. Once before she had found Luisa in difficulties, and it had been the simplest thing in the world to make an excuse for providing her with food and a new gown and a present of money. One lesson which poverty was teaching her was that she could no longer afford the luxury of generosity. She could not offer even words that would be of any real comfort. After kissing Luisa and pretty little Alexa goodbye, Margaret climbed the steep path back to Brinsley House with a heavy heart. It seemed that the lives of all those who knew the Lorimers had been infected with ill-fortune.

  18

  The days which promise the most suffering are often the earliest to start. On the next morning, the morning of the trial, Margaret awoke at six o’clock after a night of uneasy sleep. As she looked from her window she saw the light of a lamp glowing in the tower room, and wondered whether her father had spent the whole night awake. Whatever the outcome of the trial might be, every day of its progress was bound to be an ordeal for a man who had never been accustomed to hearing his decisions questioned.

  The proceedings were due to start at ten o’clock and he had been ordered to surrender to his bail at nine. Margaret was appalled to discover that as early as seven o’clock a crowd was beginning to gather outside the house. The gatekeeper had been dismissed with the rest of the staff, so that there was no one to prevent the intrusion. Although there was no demonstration of hostility, Margaret found the mere presence of the silent watchers frightening. She made no mention of them, however, when her father appeared for breakfast. Instead she studied him covertly as he sat motionless in his place.

  His appearance was old-fashioned. Margaret was acquainted with the heads of the other banks in Bristol. They were all younger men than John Junius and were for the most part clean-shaven. To their business offices they wore high-buttoned coats of a light colour, with a loosely knotted tie or even a spotted cravat round their high wing collars. Sometimes they went hatless - certainly none of them wore on a normal working day the kind of tall black hat which the chairman of Lorimer’s would wear to the courtroom. It was not only mourning which dictated that John Junius should be dressed today entirely in heavy black except for his white linen: he had never within Margaret’s memory worn anything else. Whatever he had been in his youth he was a heavy man now, massively broad-shouldered, and his square-cut white beard and heavy eyebrows gave him an expression of authority even in this time of trouble. During the past year his shoulders had begun to stoop a little, but no one looking at him, Margaret felt, could fail to be impressed by his dignity.

  Today there was something else: a determination to fight which revealed itself in the set of his lips. Only the fact that he would take no food at the breakfast table that morning testified to the strain of the occasion.

  They were both startled by a ring at the door. Mr Broadbent came in with a flustered expression on his face, and John Junius looked surprised, for he had arranged to meet his lawyer outside the courtroom. Muttering something about a new development, Mr Broadbent began to pull papers from the case he carried, but John Junius stood up to stop him.

  ‘We will go to the tower,’ he said.

  Margaret felt uneasy as she watched him stride out of the room. Everything about the day was disturbing – the tension in her father’s mind, the watchers outside – even the numbers pasted on to each piece of furniture in preparation for the auction made her feel as though she were a trespasser. The house was no longer her home, the chair on which she sat did not belong to her, the portraits of her ancestors would soon hang in the house of some stranger who did not know who they were. Whatever the verdict, her father’s life, as he had lived it until now, was finished. His business no longer belonged to him and he could not hope ever again to maintain the style or receive the respect due to a Lorimer. He would fight, she supposed, for his reputation; but even if he won the future could hold little for him.

  Mr Broadbent returned alone.

  ‘Your father was kind enough to offer me a little refreshment,’ he said. ‘I have left him some papers to study. We will travel down to the courtroom together in half an hour’s time.’

  Margaret was glad to offer him the breakfast which neither of them had touched, kept hot in the silver warming dishes which would soon disappear with the rest of their possessions.

  ‘Are they new papers?’ she asked, as she placed a plate of kidneys in front of him.

  ‘Of a most disquieting kind, Miss Lorimer. They appear to h
ave been prepared by Mr Gregson before he fled from the country. They will not have the force of a statement on oath, of course, and Mr Gregson will not be submitting himself to cross-examination. But they will undoubtedly suggest to the prosecuting counsel a number of awkward questions to be asked.’

  ‘And my father will have answers to them?’ Margaret inquired anxiously.

  Mr Broadbent hesitated.

  ‘Mr Gregson’s statements do not entirely accord with the information in my instructions from Mr Lorimer. I have no doubt that your father will be able to substantiate his own version of affairs. But it appears that Mr Gregson was in the habit of making a note of any conversations he had with his chairman on matters of importance. Again, his notebook will have no legal force. But it will have been found amongst his papers in the manager’s office when they were impounded immediately after the failure, and it is regrettable, to say the least, that I was not aware of its existence until today.’

  ‘Mr Broadbent, you surely do not believe that my father was to blame for the collapse of Lorimer’s?’

  ‘Many factors were to blame, Miss Lorimer. Even the harshest judge will not attempt to lay all the weight on one man’s shoulders. When our counsel stands up in court he will admit no fault at all. But since we are in private here, I should perhaps give you some warning of what may happen, so that you can prepare your thoughts. It is not an easy thing for a gentleman of your father’s age and character to admit that he has made mistakes. But I fear that mistakes were made. Some of them many years ago, and none of them so grave that they deserved the penalty they have attracted. Your father will go on trial because he was too proud to say to the world, a year ago, “I have made misjudgements and now they must be paid for.’”

  ‘If you will excuse me, Mr Broadbent, I will go to him,’ said Margaret abruptly. She ran towards the tower without knowing what she would say. She had nothing to offer except the assurance of her affection for him; and how much would that weigh, she wondered, against the humiliations that today and the succeeding days would bring as his judgement and even his honesty came under attack? Her footsteps slowed as she climbed the spiral staircase, and her heart chilled with the familiar apprehension which had attacked her in this same place as a child on her way to punishment.

  She told herself to be brave, and began to run again, her footsteps clattering noisily on the stone steps. As she flung open the door without knocking she saw her father standing by the casement windows which overlooked the gorge. One of the windows was wide open, in spite of the cold winter air outside, and he was pushing at the other of the pair as though it had stuck. At the sound of the opening door he turned to look at her. She did not at that moment understand the expression on his face, but she never afterwards forgot it. For a few seconds father and daughter faced each other across the room as though they had been petrified. Then John Junius half turned and put the whole of his weight behind the bulk of his shoulder as he flung it against the jammed frame. There was a crash of breaking glass and splintering wood. Then there was silence, for he uttered no cry as he fell.

  For a moment Margaret stood where she was by the door, unable to move. Her eyes and her brain refused to accept what she had seen. She wanted to scream, but was unable even to breathe. Only when she felt herself beginning to fall did she clutch at the door for support and force herself to steady her mind at the same time as her body. Very carefully, with her breath panting outwards in little cries, she crossed to the empty window frame and looked down.

  He was still alive. Even from this height it was possible to see his head jerking backwards in agony. Margaret’s first hysterical scream had stifled itself, but now she screamed in the deliberate knowledge that the sound would bring help faster than any other cry. She was right, for both Mr Broadbent and her father’s manservant came running quickly enough to be at the foot of the spiral staircase by the time she reached it herself. She had no breath to explain, but gestured that they should follow her into the garden.

  Although later on she had time to ask herself whether a man who saw that his life was over would have thanked her if she had managed to save it, it did not occur to her in that moment of emergency that there was any choice. She left the two men bent over her father’s broken body as they discussed in low voices whether he could be moved, and ran through the house to the steps which led down from the front door. The waiting crowd stirred and muttered as the door opened, and then prepared to settle back in disappointment when they saw who it was. But her voice made it clear enough that something dramatic had happened.

  ‘A doctor!’ she cried. ‘Will one of you fetch - ‘Her voice broke off in astonishment as she saw that one of the watchers was Dr Scott. At any other time she would have found it unbelievable that such a man should stoop to take pleasure in the humiliation of someone who had once been his generous patron, but now the doctor’s presence seemed almost a miracle. She called him by name and he came, although reluctantly. The crowd murmured amongst itself, the volume of noise rising as their suspicions grew that at the last moment they had been cheated of their victim.

  John Junius’s eyes were closed when Margaret returned to his side with the doctor. He was groaning, as though he were trying to force words out of his mouth, but the sounds grew weaker at every moment.

  ‘Have you something on which he could be carried?’ demanded Dr Scott. ‘If there is no stretcher, a door might serve. And more helpers will be needed to take the weight.’

  Margaret nodded her understanding and hurried off towards the house with Mr Broadbent and the servant, leaving Dr Scott kneeling on the ground with his head bent low over the jerking body as he strained to hear John Junius’s gasping words. Suddenly there was a loud cry that stopped her in her tracks. She had never heard such a sound before, but had no doubt what it meant. At first she was unable to move. Then she forced herself to turn slowly back.

  John Junius was dead. The limpness of his limbs and the impossible angle at which his head had twisted away from his body left no room for doubt. But for the first moment her grief was held back by incredulity. Dr Scott had raised his patient’s shoulders from the ground and was shaking the body in fury, shouting as he did so in a kind of gibberish which Margaret could only just comprehend.

  ‘Where is it?’ he was yelling as she ran back, Mr Broadbent at her side. ‘Tell me, damn you, what have you done with it?’

  The lawyer was the first to reach Dr Scott. He pulled him away with a violence that sent him staggering off balance across the lawn. John Junius’s body fell back on to the ground as it was released. Margaret knelt down beside her father, but for a second time the dignity of death was disturbed by Dr Scott’s ravings.

  ‘I’ll find it,’ he was shouting. ‘He’s buried his treasure, but I’ll find it. No matter how deep, I’ll find it.’

  With each shouted sentence he tugged a plant from the flower bed and hurled it across the lawn. Then he flung himself on the ground and began to scrabble in the earth with his bare hands, flinging the soil in all directions as he continued to shout.

  ‘He must be mad!’ exclaimed Margaret, listening in horror as his ravings continued. ‘I think his losses have unhinged him.’

  She felt Mr Broadbent’s hand touch her shoulder briefly.

  ‘I will see that he is removed, Miss Lorimer. And I will send at once for your brother. The court also must be informed. Is there someone I can call to keep you company here?’

  Margaret shook her head.

  ‘I will stay with my father until William comes.’

  For a moment longer Mr Broadbent looked down at the dead man.

  ‘It is God’s will,’ he said. Then he turned to help the manservant, who had already pulled Dr Scott to his feet and was struggling to control his wildly threshing arms.

  After they had gone, the garden was very quiet. Heedless of the cold and damp, Margaret knelt beside her father’s body. It was at this moment that she understood what an ill service she would have done him if her w
ish to save his life had been successful. She had always believed without question the definitions of good and evil which twice every Sunday thundered from the pulpit. To take one’s own life was without question a sin; or so she had been brought up to accept. But the events of the past few weeks had made her less sure that it was as easy as the preacher claimed to judge between right and wrong, black and white. She knew that she ought to feel grief at losing her father, but instead she could not control a curious impulse of happiness on his behalf. He was a man who all his life had been accustomed to take decisions with certainty and courage. It would have been a poor ending to such an existence for him to hear the way he must spend the remainder of his days laid down by others. Mr Broadbent had said that his death was God’s will. But it seemed to Margaret, as she kept a peaceful vigil by her father’s side, that in death - as so often in life - it was the will of John Junius Lorimer which had prevailed.

  Book Two

  The Children of the Chairman

  Part I

  Margaret and William

  1

  A dead man attracts more sympathy than the same man alive, even when there is no other change in his circumstances. John Junius Lorimer’s final decisive act enabled the routines of disgrace to be replaced by those of death, to the great benefit of his reputation.

  As soon as it was learned that both defendants were now beyond the jurisdiction of the court, the trial was adjourned sine die: it was unlikely to be resumed. The statement which David Gregson had left behind him when he fled from Bristol received no publicity and even the manner in which John Junius had died was concealed by a statement made by Mr Broadbent in the coroner’s court. His client, he said, had been preparing to attend the court with a full defence of all the charges brought against him. But his health had been much affected by the strain of the previous weeks, and it was feared – there had been no witnesses –that a giddiness which had overcome him several times before had on this occasion occurred while he was leaning out of the window of the tower room in Brinsley House to watch the progress of a Lorimer ship below.