And Rodie, thinking it a charming fantasy but no more, was delighted to see her darling Stevie's strength returning so well. "It is the oaks," she said. "The fragrance of the oaks of Normandie." She had begun her soup kitchen and clothing depot for the poorer workers. Everyone's doing good works suddenly, Nora thought.
John assumed a quite disproportionate interest in the Dieppe line, though his deputy there was one of his best. Usually, too, there were small things that needed Nora's decision or advice and he would take a fly up from Rouen to Trouville to see her—though never, she noticed, finding time to stay the night. At the end of May, she threatened to seduce one of Rodie's young gardeners if John didn't stop with her; they resumed relations in a night of loving that left John in bed "with a spring chill" all next day. She felt that to be a particular triumph. Sarah had never left him so drained, she thought. It was also the first time she had ever felt sure, right from the night itself, that she had conceived. Next day she worked forward through the calendar; it might, she realized, be born on leap year's day next year.
That re-establishment of their marriage marked, in her mind, the last stage of her recovery. She wanted to return to England at once and catch up on all that had been left to look after itself: her children, the stable, her own property, the firm. She needed to be back there in London, putting out her roots into that rich soil, soaking in the information and conjecture that had become her life blood. Here she was too dependent on the papers, and the papers were full of gloom. To the journalists, the most ominous sign of all was now apparent: The weekly totals of notes and coins issued by the Bank of England's lending department had steadily fallen, week by week, from about forty-two million a week in January to less than thirty-two million by mid-May—a period in which it would normally have risen by an equal amount. Not one week had shown an advance on its predecessor.
But to her mind, there was an even more ominous sign, though no one seemed to remark upon it. All kinds of commodities were beginning to show quite unprecedented leaps. Wheat had almost doubled. Iron was rising even though all ironfounding, except for railways, was in decline. Indigo, tea, coffee, sugar, feathers, rice, rum—all were being to some extent run up. She worried for some time at this new evidence of instability but could find no explanation. Perhaps, she thought, there were firms whose basic unsoundness had been concealed by years of cheap money; now that they could no longer borrow to cover their insolvency, perhaps they were, as a last desperate throw of the dice, trying to speculate in commodities to recover their position.
In April there were five bankruptcies she considered abnormal—that is, of firms generally thought to be sound. In May, there were six. In June, ten. It was time to go home. The whirlpool was forming.
Chapter 43
The first shock, after her return, was to find that the precautions they had adopted against their own crisis in '45 were now being applied in the most slovenly way. The firm was now almost half as big again as it had been then, but at the present rate, they would be less than half as well prepared to face a general panic.
The preparation of accounts had also got slack, being brought up to date weekly instead of daily. It horrified her. Even the daily accounts were still a week or ten days behind the true state of affairs, because of delays at the workings and in the mails. To add to that delay seemed madness. John did not understand her concern. He preferred the weekly pulling-together of everything, rather than the confusing daily ups and downs.
She began to feel that her return was resented; they'd all been a lot more comfortable in the easier times when she was absent. But she steeled herself to all protest, took a room at the Adelaide for a fortnight, and restored what she considered to be proper discipline and procedure to the London office—supported by a string of blistering memoranda sent out to the clerks on the workings.
John had a lot of ruffled feathers to soothe on his visits to their various lines and other contracts, and he came back to tell Nora that she would have to be a bit more diplomatic. She said the time for diplomacy had passed. With the storm now brewing, only the tightest discipline would get them through.
"I don't manage that kind of a ship," he said patiently. "My lads do things not because someone orders them to it, but because they understand what's right from what's wrong."
"But in a crisis," she said, "there must be command and obedience. There's no time for committees and…"
He laughed. "I'm not turning myself into a water-colour version of Henry Peto and his military men. For one thing, I'd be so bad at it, I'd be bound to bungle it."
In the end, she agreed to smooth the rough edge of her tongue and her pen, but only because he virtually made it a command.
At their most heated moments, she could see a sort of anger and a desperation in his eyes. It was as if he felt himself trapped. Which, she had to admit, he was. The world, the good, ever-providing world, was closing down all around them. The rules were changing. We are all trapped by the rules, she told herself. John must accept it.
Their lovemaking became more tender and more frequent in proportion with these disagreements. It was as if they wished to show that, despite all the external conflict, they were at heart closer and more solidly united than ever. There came a time when she wondered if it was wise to reward their arguments with such pleasures; once or twice she thought she opposed him for the mere sake of provoking his frustration and the release that came when he was in her arms.
In July, there were thirteen abnormal bankruptcies, some of them vast. The effect in the City was immediate and drastic. You could see people looking at each other and saying, "Who's next?" Merchants of the greatest reputation had difficulty getting their bills discounted. The mischief of suspicion was abroad and the flimsy card-house called "confidence" was teetering. The reserves, which had been steady or even rising since the rate went to five per cent, once again began to fall. Exchequer bills, despite a doubled rate of interest since January, were now at a discount for the first time in years.
There was no question now of a return to France that year for Nora. The Auberge Clément, not to mention the plans for Deauville, would have to be left to themselves and to chance for another year. Sam wrote from Newcastle to say he would not be able to come to France; he did not say "this year" or put any term to the statement.
The change in Sarah was too profound to escape notice, even in those troubled months. She no longer moped around with unread books and half-written letters; she no longer said how much she envied Nora her full and busy life. Her work with the Female Rescue Society seemed to have transformed her. Everybody remarked on how vigorous and active she was nowadays. She even became quite an adventurous rider and took a couple of fairly nasty falls.
Nora, who knew exactly why Sarah was so radiant, wondered that she could find so little anger in herself against John. It was the fear of the gathering storm, she said (and she meant in the world of business); it would be so great that she and he could not afford to fall out. In fact, she was almost looking forward to it. They were never more united than when they were staving off disaster together.
What did this rather minor affair with Sarah matter in the face of that?
At the end of July, she drew up her own accounts, for the benefit of the Wolff brothers, and showed profits for the year of £33,279 14s. 10d., or twenty-seven per cent on the total investment, hers and theirs. Of course, these were book values—the notional increase in the value of her land as it was developed. It was not actual, bankable cash. The fall in trade had not affected development yet; so it had proved the best sort of investment for the year. The Wolffs were £2,318 35s. 1d. better off, even after her commission, which came to a useful £409 25s. 3d. They ought to be delighted with that, she thought as she drew the final double line under the summary of accounts.
They were so delighted that they came tumbling over the German Ocean as fast as steam could carry them—having first written to Chambers to ask if there was any possibility that the referees he
had chosen to audit the accounts might have been bribed by Mrs. Stevenson. They asked to see her the day after their arrival, arranging the meeting in Chambers's office.
They were late. While she waited, impatiently, Chambers watched her with cool amusement.
"I suppose I oughtn't to tell you," he said, "but I will. They are coming here to offer something very big."
She looked at him, undecided. "How big?"
"Very." He would not be drawn further.
And there they were, breathless as a pair of running dogs, on the stair.
Oskar Wolff-Dietrich was a squat version of his brother, but clear-skinned and sharper-eyed. He made notes of everything on tiny loose sheets about the size of small playing cards. Like a dealer, he kept squaring them up between his fingers when he was not writing. This time he did the talking, so that he could dictate the pace of the dialogue and not lose it while he wrote. And before he started to write, each time, he said "Sorry, excuse" in a flat monotone.
At first the technique unnerved Nora, until she realized why. It was stopping her mind from working at its usual pace. The apparent luxury of having so much thinking time, while he wrote, was a delusion; the mind wandered off along so many permutations of possibility, which it would never have time to notice much less explore in the ordinary cut and thrust of argument, that it ended up confused and irresolute.
As soon as this became clear, she took to talking with Chambers in a polite undertone while Oskar Wolff was busy; she spoke of trivial details of their business or that week's bankruptcies or other City gossip. She noticed that the notes became much shorter once she started this tactic. Julius Wolff smiled complicitly at her, as if she had done something very clever.
Oskar had wasted his rather good gambit on the generalities; by the time he came to the day's actual business, Nora was level again.
"Our purpose, Mrs. Stevenson, today is to explain to you that we, last year, were the vanguard of a much larger army."
"Army?" she questioned.
He shrugged. "Forgive me. Corps. Group—what do you say for a collection of capitalists?"
"Clutch?" Nora suggested.
Chambers laughed and agreed.
"There are many of us in Holstein, Brandenburg…Schleswig…Braunschweig… and also France who fear revolution this year, next year…"
He went on in this vein for some minutes, sketching a banker's view of the history of socialism and communism in Europe; Nora wondered how they would respond if she just casually let slip that her brother was one of the revolution's leaders.
"Without mentioning your name, Madame Stevenson, we, my brother and I, have allowed it be known, in a very small, very select circle of close acquaintances in banking and the mercantile fraternity, that we have invested part of our capital in a number of English firms and properties."
"I hope you were able to say you were pleased, Herr Wolff."
The brothers smiled at each other. "We had to lie," Oskar said.
"No one will have believed twenty-seven per cent," Julius explained.
"We said twelve per cent. As a result, we have gold coin to the value of just over one hundred eighty thousand pounds to invest."
She thanked God that Chambers had told her it was big; even so, it was three times what she had expected. She thought rapidly. It was more than her own fixed capital. Fixed capital! Already she was thinking like a banker! The arrangement would have to be different.
"Short- or long-term?" she asked. If it was short she could not, in all honour, touch it. To say nothing of banking prudence.
"Long as you like."
"Really?" She did not believe it.
"For you, not us. We have an arrangement. It's thirty people involved, you see. We agree, each other among, that five per cent of the total can be withdrawn any year. But we manage it among ourselves. We do not touch this sum we bring to England."
"It doesn't affect you, Mrs. Stevenson," Chambers said. "They are assured you have the money securely invested, so they treat it among themselves as any banker treats fixed capital. They can lend on it."
"It's right back to early Lombard days," Julius said excitedly.
When Nora said nothing, Oskar asked what she was thinking about.
"I'm wondering if I'm on the right side of the fence."
"I think," Oskar said casually, "you ought instead to wonder how such a sum may be kept in one identifiable piece."
It was a very oblique reference to one aspect that was worrying Nora. "Her" property was all legally John's, despite his power of attorney, which he (or his executors—and these things had to be faced) could revoke at any time. If Stevenson's got into trouble, she could get the Wolffs' ten thousand (or, now, twelve thousand–odd) out safely for them. But she'd never manage that with this far larger sum.
"I think," she said, "we will go back to the arrangement that Herr Julius Wolff proposed last year. Then there is no dispute over title. And you merely give me power of attorney."
Oskar laughed. "And fifteen per cent? And cancellation fees? And management fees? No, no, Mrs. Stevenson. Not this year."
She had not dared look at Chambers yet. Her proposal, in effect, made all this capital unavailable to Stevenson's—or, at least, available only at her whim. How did he, as Stevenson's banker, feel to be sitting here taking part in such a discussion?
"Listen," she said, directly to Oskar. "When I made those conditions it was only ten thousand pounds. I did not want the trouble. I wanted you to withdraw. Now it's different. Now I withdraw. Unreservedly. All those extra conditions."
"All?" Oskar was astonished.
"Except, of course, the cancellation fee, or I have no protection. And the fifteen per cent—or I have no incentive."
Oskar did not laugh. "Ten per cent," he said.
"I never ask for more than I want," Nora said, as if she did this a dozen times a day. "And I never settle for less than I ask. Fifteen per cent."
"Twelve. Fifteen is not reasonable."
"Nothing is reasonable or unreasonable. That just happens to be my price. I am not greedy."
Chambers had stopped breathing. Oskar was furious. "Not greedy!"
"Of course not. If I were greedy I would snap at every little morsel you held out. On the contrary, my appetite for money is so sated that if you want to tempt me, you must lay out a very good feast. Fifteen per cent."
"Twelve and a half. We meet halfway."
Nora stood, hoping her nervousness did not show. The two brothers stood too, and then, prompted by them, Chambers. In this room, he had long ago forgotten her sex. "Let us go and see the new Academy exhibition," she said. "There's a young painter called Roxby I'm rather interested in."
"If we agree to fifteen, where do you put the money?" Oskar asked.
"Is that a condition?" Nora did not budge.
Oskar sat down, defeated. "No," he said.
Nora sat down too. Julius laughed and dug his brother in the back. She realized there had been a competition between the two. Oskar must have called his brother a fool for giving so much away last year; and Julius must have challenged him to do better. She had wondered why, all through the meeting, she had sensed hostility from Oskar but a sort of cheering-on from Julius.
It worried her. She did not want to start with his hostility. She stood again, saying, "Come over this side, Herr Oskar. I will show you something."
Chambers had a street plan of London framed on one of the walls. She took Oskar's arm and led him to it. Chambers and Julius followed.
"Long ago," she said, "hundreds of years ago, before even I was born, London finished here." She ran her finger along Long Acre. "And out here were all fields and a little stream called 'How Bourne.' And there was a merchant, called William Harpur, who bought a farm here, most of these fields, which we now call Holborn." She ran her finger from about Kings Cross to Lincoln's Inn. "He gave it when he died to a charity, called the Harpur Trust, to support the schools of Bedford, which was his town. I don't know what he paid
. A few hundred pounds, perhaps. Today? A million. The income alone supports eight schools."
Oskar whistled.
"People nowadays say, 'Oh, if only my forebears had been wise in Harpur's time! How rich I would be now.' Well, I tell you, in the year nineteen forty-seven, there will be people in London saying, 'Thank God for our great-grandfather Oskar Wolff who bought us Chalk Farm—or Notting Hill gravel pits—or Forest Hill.'"
Oskar shook his head and chuckled, knowing what flattery was being so blatantly thrust upon him. He dug her in the ribs, like a colleague, and said, "No, no, dear lady. They say, 'Thank God for great-grandmama and fifteen per cent!'"
The Rich Are with You Always Page 45