by Daniel Kemp
Our first direct genetic line to banking was to be found in 1407 in Genoa, where most of the royal houses of Europe deposited their money, at the Banco Di San Giorgio.
When England broke away from the Catholic Church in 1534 the then English King, Henry VIII, severed all links to that bank and ordered our lineal relative, Lord Phillip Paterson Earl of Harrogate, to return home and establish the Bank of Saint George in England. At its conception it operated in the same manner as its originator, handling the money of the Royals and other wealthy individuals. By the 1850s and the start of the Crimean War, it had evolved into what it still was on the death of my father, Elliot: the covert financial funding of all things the British Government wanted surreptitiously hidden from public scrutiny.
The Patersons, throughout the centuries, had been prodigious at bearing a male offspring to take up the chalice the bank presented. Only on one occasion had they faltered at the production of honest, upright, dependable bloodstock from which to draw on for the Bank's wellbeing. That juncture happened late in the nineteenth century, when the then Earl of Harrogate was only able to originate one son amongst his flock of eight children; and he, unfortunately, was convicted of manslaughter, killing a fellow card player whilst defending himself. The fact that the other man carried a single-shot revolver, and the heir apparent was unarmed, saved him from the charge of murder, because the horrendous injuries inflicted far outweighed the defence of one's own life. He was sentenced to a lenient prison term of three years, the only period in its history that a female Paterson ran the Bank's affairs.
You would never, through the years, find this bank listed in any directory, nor was it regulated by the Financial Services Agency nor governed by the Bank Ombudsman of its day. It was not even situated in the prestigious City of London; it had no need to be. With Victoria's accession to the throne, and a permanent royal residence established, Queen Anne's Gate, a relatively quiet street running parallel to Birdcage Walk and within easy walking distance of the Palace, the Houses of Parliament and Eton Square was where, if you were in the know, you would find that office. It was hidden behind a highly glossed black painted door, free from adornment of any badge or crest or name, with just a simple brass plaque stating 'Private.'
For a hundred years or more what lay beyond that door was never altered nor changed. A card system index introduced in the late 1800s was its only modernisation to its recording of secret British interference in the affairs of other nations.
In the Bank's developing years, deposits and the payments of profits were conducted in cash. Bags, or in some cases, chests, were deposited with my ancestral custodians and carried from palace to palace. Once, on a visit to Leeds Castle for some sort of pageant, there was an attempt to steal the monarchs treasury chest. In that attack by raiding Danes, The Honourable Jeremiah Paterson gave his life fighting alongside Henry, his King, and 'Keeper of the Royal Purse' was added to the name Paterson, alongside all its other titles.
In time, promissory notes, then cheques, took away most of the need of cash, but this bank still dealt in a commodity little mentioned in today's society; that of trust, on which all good partnerships are built. The vaults at 'Annie's', as the offices at Queen Anne's Gate became known, were full of banknotes and share certificates. Files on investors, past and present, were overflowing and the urgency of more space was prominent in the incumbent Patersons mind, so he exchanged the cash which littered his floors into bank Bearer Bonds. These bonds were extremely convenient in the transference of cash. They took up little room, as they were printed on a single sheet of paper, and covered any amount from a thousand to a million pounds or more. They could be used as currency, the same as cash or cheques, and were payable on demand from any commercial issuing bank. They carried a small amount of annual interest, as effectively the buyer of the bond was lending that commercial bank his money. One other facet of these sheets of paper was their anonymity. There was no name on them; simply a number which denoted the date of issue and the promise to pay the bearer the sum of money the bond was worth! In less scrupulous hands than the Patersons, it could have been an indiscriminate and easily abused system of handling money.
What appeared to be the start of a slide into oblivion for the Patersons began with the election of a Socialist ruling party in 1945, and its stance on pro-decolonisation of the Empire. To Lord Maudlin Paterson it seemed that the part that the Patersons had played in the building of that Empire was about to be betrayed. It was the final straw in the haystack that was enveloping him. Poor Winston the war boss, the leader of all free men, had been shown the door by a grabbing, ungrateful public, and an American named Marshall was throwing money at Britain's defeated enemies with none coming to the victors. Instead we, the only bastions of democracy left in Europe at the start, were subsidising that loan by being forced to repay huge interest on that debt for holding out until they deemed it time to step in and reap the glory. The bank, however, had prospered well. The war had proved profitable, through Maudlin's astute structuring of the assets he held on behalf of his clients, in stocks of American financial institutions, petroleum companies and currencies; but he baulked at becoming the Orwellian image of an American 51st state.
He made a monumental decision and contacted his old Etonian and Trinity college friend, the then head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, without the knowledge of the Foreign Secretary or the Cabinet Office, to whom his bank was responsible. He offered the resources of 'Annie's' directly to the SIS, the Secret Intelligence Services, behind the government's back. Chief, or 'C' as he is always known, accepted this patriotic proposal and adopted the Bank of Saint George under his secretive umbrella, thereby removing it from the clutches of the all-embracing arms of a nationalising programme for the supposed public good.
With the bank beyond the grasp of Attlee and his penny-pinching auditors, he could work his magic to his heart's content, safe in the knowledge that his largesse would hide his illusion. In 1956, at the conclusion of the crisis over the Suez Canal, the secret side relinquished its sole interest in the Paterson bank. It preferred to share it with the new Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, as he, with the SIS, sought ways to retain influence in the disappearing British Commonwealth whilst Maudlin sought more ways to secrete the names of the 'others' he now cared for. On his retirement, my Grandfather Lord Phillip Paterson managed the bank's affairs, but never delved too deep into the double entry bookkeeping accounts as Maudlin kept tight reins on his son. In 1981, my father, Elliot, took over the running of the bank.
Thanks to the birth of another brother, about the only thing I was grateful to my father for, I was destined towards a diplomatic career or in one of the services, it was always the youngest male who had the bank to look forward to; the rest of us Patersons were left with choices. My dynasty had seen conflict from the heights of Agincourt and the fields of Waterloo, to the slopes of Gallipoli, and on to the mud of the Somme and the sands of North Africa. They had served their country in those wars and in all the battles in between. Some of them were spared. Others were not.
After my own dalliance, I had a commission in the Blues and Royals and saw operational duty in Bosnia and Afghanistan, I was disillusioned. After nine years and a few months I came to the conclusion that the Army was not the life that I wanted. I was not that brave. For those that had charged the French archers, or the machine-guns and tanks, I had the uppermost respect; but for my part I had seen enough wanton death caused by political ineptitude, and news reporters wanting to be newsmakers, to realise that wars had changed. In my formative years of understanding of just who was who, depicted in the dull soulless portraits hanging in the Great Hall and corridors of the family home, I believed that the Patersons had invented the word patriotism…only I didn't want to wear the cross of Saint George so conspicuously.
As far as the diplomatic world was concerned, I had more self-respect than to simply regurgitate the policies of politicians, and had scant regard for in their sanctimonious crusade for pers
onal power and fame. I wanted the ability to shape and control what was happening, not just to react to the situations made by others. I moved sideways into 'the office' and the dim and shadowy world of The Defence Intelligence Staff, gathering information in the ongoing war against the undermining of this great country of ours.
* * *
I entered this prominent world of ours on the 29th of July 1970, and was given over straight away to my wet-nurse. I survived that experience and moved on, to various nannies, tutors and instructions, in all things needed for an Earl's first born to assimilate and learn from. I attended the Methodist Ashville Preparatory School, just beyond our estate, when deemed necessary. When I reached the age of 13 I was sent away to Eton College, carrying on the long tradition of Patersons as 'King's Scholars' boarders. My feet found the same indentations made by previous family members to the doors of Cambridge and Trinity College. While there, I spent most of my time making up for my lost childhood years by sharing beds with as many women scholars as I could.
I displayed no prejudice to them being over-me or under me-graduates, as long as they furthered their education with my body. I was as attentive at my tutorials and lectures as my wandering mind and aching body allowed me to be, as it searched for other suitable experimental, or previously experienced, participants. At my Finals I received three 'one ones' in Engineering, Mathematics and Chemistry, and two 'one twos' in Physics and Economics, but had there been examinations for sexual prowess and endurance, I could have plastered the four walls of the dining room at Harrogate Hall with 'double first' certificates. And they were enormous walls!
Chauvinistic; not an incorrect word to describe me, I admit. I've never been completely sure whether I had a choice as to my relationship to women, or whether it had been passed down through the male chromosomes of John Holland, but I had never experienced a wish to form any lasting deep commitment to, or from, any woman that I met. My imagination could not stretch to the wearisome life of couples arguing or compromising over each others' obligations within their partnership. I was too selfish to share my life and risk criticism, and neither would I have recognised the saintly sacrifice many make in times of illness or approaching death. In this respect it could be levelled at me, the charge of being a hypocrite, because that is precisely what my father did. He left my mother when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer citing his own inability to cope, but my defence would rely on the fact that I would never have married in the first place.
The stance I took over his departure owed more to my own weakness, I suspect, than his own. I'm not proud of my psyche, and neither am I ashamed. I am what I am; and it is only me that has to live with that.
As far as my father was concerned, it was a different matter. He did not have only himself to answer to. On the surface, he seemingly had everything: a beautiful wife, five children who, for the most part, were happy and contented with their lives, and a lifestyle many could only imagine. He had the estate here in Harrogate where he could play the 'gentleman farmer' role with his Holsteins and Herefords whilst enjoying his hunting and his stables of polo ponies and those of his thoroughbred race horses. They had added seventeen trophies, in his time, to the bulging cabinets where the accumulated silverware was kept, showing the Patersons equine significance over the ages.
There was the Eton Square mansion with its eleven bedrooms, of which he only ever used the one, and only four others were occupied, the housekeeper with one maid, a cook and his valet-cum-secretary George. He had been in the Paterson employ for forty years; from boy to man, fourteen to fifty-four.
Abroad was the house in Portofino, Italy, where his yacht a sixty foot two-masted schooner, was moored. Occasionally, scholastic calendars, scholarly agendas, and 'Annie's' permitting, we holidayed there as a family, until he found his own world and withdrew himself into it again. He was a complex and introverted man with many interests that kept him away from his family in Yorkshire. Horse racing, as I have said, and also the polo and sailing for which the schooner Britannia was on show; having been either sailed by him, or delivered to Cowes for the biannual 'Fastnet' race, coming runner-up three times in the challenge cup. What was more important to him than any of these things were his 'women-friends'.
He had started keeping a mistress a year after marrying my mother, Alice, who was aware of all of them. He had six in total, throughout their 39 years of marriage. He had a penchant for professional partners: a famous classical singer the daughter of a titled family who dabbled in interior design, a barrister who has since taken silk, a college professor (who, innocently, I introduced him to) and a film executive. His final extramarital consort was a first violinist, whom he was still seeing up until his death, even though it was her father who caused that defended lawsuit with his allegations of financial corruption.
The thing they all had in common, my mother told me days before her short, but uncompromising, illness claimed her life, was that they all made him happy. A strange thing for her to say, but nevertheless, that was what she said.
“He needed the distraction that they gave him,” she had said. “I couldn't give him all that he required, other than legitimate children, and for that blessing I always loved him. He loved me back, but in a different way. Love doesn't die Harry, it kills without sorrow,” she concluded.
I had never had the opportunity to truly know her spending most of my later life away from home. But I had always loved and admired her, and, on her sharing of that information, respected her even more.
In my early years, when I had time with her, it was her reasoning that endeared her to me so much. She never did adopt the 'I know best because I'm an adult' line. Instead, she sat and spoke to me, not at me. She was gentle in her words and explanations, and a patient listener to mine. There was always a smile and a reassurance from her, and I felt a sense of belonging when with her. Something I never felt from my father, to whom I was never close.
He had left her to die when he heard that she had just a small amount of life left in her, informing my sisters, Rose and Elizabeth, that he could not handle the situation of dealing directly with death; they would have to. I was overseas at the time, June 2008, as was my middle brother Maurice, but I managed to return for those final days. My youngest brother Edward, who lived in a rented flat in Cadogan Gardens, would not be released from his London duties, he informed us. He added, as an afterthought, “I will not allow him to see your mother during her decline.” Sage words from such a learned man!
He was a user of women, in my opinion, rather than an admirer of them. I'm both, I suppose, having already admitted to my disconnection and unwillingness to any commitment. However, my addiction to women is not solely driven by sexual appeal. I hope I am not so one-dimensional and one day, I may change.
It was my brother Edward who first raised concerns about my father when he approached me at Alice's funeral.
“There's something amiss with Dad you know. I can't put my finger on it, but something's not right. Do you think you could have a word?” He stupidly asked.
“Don't be as foolish as you look Teddy. Mum's dead. Learn to wipe your own backside there's a good chap.”
I then walked away from him, and from all things to do with London.
Chapter Three: Red-Veined Snake Head Fritillary
I've never been one to reminisce, to rediscover memories locked away in parts of the mind only psychologists know about, but in those last few days that I had with my mother, I found myself swept away in her nostalgia. I had not thought of my father as being a handsome man but there, in the photographs of their wedding, stood a person I could not recognise as him. As to her beauty, the wedding memorabilia only testified more strongly in confirmation of what I already knew. As to the man beside her, it was a stranger that I stared at. He looked taller than I remembered with jet-black hair combed back from his forehead, sharp clean features in a strong commanding face far more mature than the 26 years of age that he was then. There was a dashing, debonair look about
him, a nonchalant character whom I could believe had swept my mother off her feet, as she had told me. He was not the person I had always remembered him as.
“He was impetuous then, Harry, romantic and audacious a lot like you are today, I suspect. He was dangerous around women. Are you the same?” I didn't answer that question of hers, but understood entirely what she meant.
To me, he had always been an eccentric old man with no hidden charms or fascination. I searched those photographs and more, to find some of us together, but could find none. No snaps of us two kicking a ball or hitting one, riding ponies and whirling mallets in unfinished chukkas or leaning over the side of the boat and landing fish. In fact, none of us being father and son. Perhaps there were no secret memories, none there to find, even had I have looked closer. No shared happiness, no laughter, no hugs and certainly none of affection. Perhaps he had entered my life as he had left it; a disillusioned, self-obsessed man.
As I have said, to me he had never changed. He was portly in build and slow in movement, more deliberate than made so by his slightly excessive weight. He had thick white hair parted at the side, dull blue eyes shaded by broken red veined cheeks and nose, and his constant spectacles, wearing his reading variety permanently around his neck. At all times he was smartly dressed, his pocket watch suspended from his buttonhole by a double gold chain and carried in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Always grey light or dark; pinstriped or checked, but always a shade of grey, for his daily London attire.
“I never wear black, too sombre…looks like you're in mourning,” he explained. “Blue is for those continentals, the Italians and Southern French, goes with their colouring. And never, never wear brown that's for those shirt-lifters. Lots around in my day, especially up at Cambridge. Mind you Harry, the breeding ground was Eton. Never could spot them there…I wasn't their type. Now there seems to be more Queens than Kings everywhere, even here!” We were in Boodles, his London club, too many year ago to recall, but I can remember vividly what he was doing, he was renowned for it. Expounding on life in general and demonstrating his practised skill at cognac consumption, there was no one in the family better at both.