She drew back, smiling, eyes twinkling, half-outraged, all charade. Then she put her head to one side, shrugged, and opened her hands, as she had seen Jews do among themselves. "So," she said, "we are both blessed with families who know a good thing when they inherit it!"
Oskar, totally won over by now, nodded at her, nodded at Chambers, nodded at his brother. "You are right," he said to both men. "She is—astonishing."
But that judgement did not stop him driving some very hard conditions through in the two hours of lesser bargaining that followed. They had had weeks to prepare this; she had to think on her feet. All in all, she fancied she had come out of it quite well.
She had absolute control of the money, and there was no guarantee of its security or of any return upon it. At first she had thought they must be fools. But then she realized how great a compliment it was to her and what an enormous responsibility now rested entirely on her shoulders. If one granted that their confidence was not misplaced, then it was a very shrewd move on their part, for she now had to prove that she was not only more secure than a traditional bank but also could show a better yield.
When they had gone, she kicked off her shoes and lay back on the leathercovered sofa between the windows. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes.
"Why have you done all this for me, Chambers?" she asked.
"Ah!" He said no more until she opened her eyes and looked at him. "Perhaps," he went on then, "you are just on the point of believing that I really do not mean you ill."
"If you think it's time for candour," she answered, "let me say I'm still a mile or two short of that." Exhaustion robbed her of the tension this conversation ought to produce; they were, after all, talking about antagonisms that had tarnished their relations for many years—and there had been times when only fantasies of Chambers's sudden death, or departure for Australia, had helped her to sleep. Now? It did not give her heart a single extra beat. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps all of her, except her conscious mind, was on the point of this new recognition.
"When you first came to this office," he said, "I knew you were clever."
"You hated that."
"Yes…but not…it wasn't so simple. I did not hate you. I have never hated you."
"You've resented me. Remember how you taunted me for using red ink for liabilities and blue ink for assets? 'Pretty-pretty!'"
He laughed. "I do it myself now. I was thoughtless. Of course I resented you. I have to admit to that. But what I hated was having to confess that you were my…you see, even now, when I have said it to myself a hundred times—a thousand times—the word sticks in my throat. Superior. There! You are my superior." He sighed. "I make it better for myself by saying you are not only my superior but everyone's. Your grasp of finance is greater than…"
"I learned most of it from you," she said, feeling very embarrassed now.
"Even Jenny Lind must take singing lessons. But I have watched you. Whenever I tell you something, you not only absorb it at once, you make it fit with everything else you know. I give you an example. One of the most difficult things about banking to explain to people outside is why a country bank with a licence to issue its own money must try to drive all its competitors' banknotes out of circulation. Do you remember when I told you that? I cannot say I explained it, for you needed no explanation. I simply stated the fact. And do you remember what you said"—he snapped his fingers—"like that?"
"No." She shook her head.
"You said, 'I suppose that for the Yorkshire Bank to have one of its fiftypound notes in my purse is like you having fifty pounds of mine on deposit.'"
"But that's true," Nora protested. "They are different aspects of loan capital."
He buried his head in his hands and laughed. "Please!" He waved her to silence. "I do understand it. Forty years of close association with banking in its various forms have at last driven that point home."
She blushed and joined his laughter. "I'm sorry," she said. "I misunderstood."
"Do you not know that whole volumes of books have been written to establish the connection your mind leaped to in that one instant? Do you know there are country bankers who go to their graves not fully understanding it? Not here." He tapped his chest. "They know it for a fact, but they never understand it."
"Then they probably go early to their graves."
"Not at all. It is quite possible to go a lifetime in that sort of banking with a few simple rules to guide you and not one shred of understanding to hold them together."
"Yes!" Nora said, suddenly excited, for Chambers had just illuminated something that had often puzzled her. "Many of them are just like that. In fact"—she grinned, as if giving away a secret—"I prefer dealing with them; they never try to get clever."
Again he laughed. "You see? It is not only the high and abstract principles of this trade that come to you as second nature. Or first nature." But when his laughter died he said, "When you talk of 'clever' you mean me."
"I do," she said, made wary again by his sudden change of tone. "And never more so than now. If this is all some clever ruse, Nathaniel, to try to become a sort of junior partner in the management of the Wolff money, think on!" She had never once called him Nathaniel; the intimacy it implied now, coupled with her blunt hands-off, confused him.
"Oh, Nora," he said, also using her name for the first time, "for seven years my personal and professional admiration for you have been growing. Two years ago they utterly quashed my stupid resentment. I did hope that today…I did hope…" He sighed.
Oh dear, she thought. Not the waterworks, please. "Listen," she told him. "I cannot possibly—not after this—regard you as hostile. That would be churlish. More than churlish. It would be wicked of me." She paused a moment. "And, of course, I am grateful. And I will show it appropriately. But what I said before was true—I do need your critical—not hostility, but you know what I mean. I need to know, when I think 'what-next, what-next,' which I do about twenty times a day, I need to ask, as well, 'What'll that bugger Chambers say?' D'ye see?"
He laughed. "I promise you, Nora, my admiration will vanquish only my resentment. All my other faculties, critical and professional, are at your service."
"Then you may take me out to dinner," she said. And on their way downstairs she told him it wouldn't be too difficult. "Criticism is just a habit. Like most things in the end. Did you know I'm having another baby? There's a habit!"
"Good heavens! I hope all goes well this time."
"It's got to. John and I couldn't afford another illness."
After dinner, when the wine had relaxed them both, she took his hand and played with the rings on his fingers and said, "Tell me, Nathaniel, why am I so angry?"
"Angry?" It was not the word he had expected. "You mean now? With me?"
"I mean now. With…everything. Myself."
"It doesn't show."
"A lot of things don't." She got one of the rings off and tried it on each of her fingers. "All too small," she said.
Chambers took it back and looked at it reminiscently. "Onkel Felix," he said. "I wonder." He looked at her. "This was my uncle Felix's ring."
"What do you wonder?"
He looked at her a long time before he answered. "I remember once—it was, I think, the first time the business world ever have intruded into my childhood—Uncle Felix was in shipping and he had tried for years to gain a certain contract—this was in Hamburg—to carry Russian furs for a Hamburg merchant. And we children were to meet with my aunt and to have lunch at the menagerie with my uncle. It was a celebration. After years of negotiation, he was going at last to sign this great contract, which would make his fortune." He smiled. "It did too. But that lunch was terrible. Terrible."
"Why?" She was intrigued, wondering what it could have to do with her. "Did he not sign?"
"Oh, he signed. Oh yes. And for half an hour, he was more jovial than any of us ever remembered. He was a moody man. Very unpredictable. But at that meal he was marvellous. He joked wit
h us. And teased us about little things. Things he knew about us. And slowly these jokes grew more pointed, more cutting. As if he wanted us to know he knew everything. In the end, no one was laughing anymore and he was completely insulting. You say 'a cloud comes down' over someone; well, it was exactly like that. I swear he made the whole terrace darken. We were sitting out on a terrace. Then my aunt just touched his arm and said, 'Felix!' in the most mild reproof. And I thought he would throw the table over us all. He stood up. Shivering. He was smoking a cigar. He always smoked cigars. And he took it out and mashed it in the jelly! Huge hands… mash mash mash! You can imagine how such a scene impressed itself in childish minds. Then he walked away and paced around the gardens, in real torment."
"Yes!" Nora said. "I feel a little like that. Not so dramatic. But I can understand the feeling."
"My aunt said he was always like it after he had signed a contract. Always. First elation. Then anger. The contract, she said, became a prison. By evening he was already thinking of ways to break it. Then he would feel free again."
The story had helped her divine her own mood. "That's not it," she said. "I couldn't be so childish. I think I am angry that I shall be doing it all with other people's money. I want it to be my own." She smiled and, taking the ring from him, put it back on his finger. "And now that I know the reason, I don't feel nearly so angry." She squeezed his hand and let go. "I'm glad we are friends at last, Nathaniel. There are some terrible months ahead. At least we are all going to be united in facing them."
"Not 'at least,'" he said. "At last."
Chapter 44
In August, the Bank put its rate up to five and a half per cent. There were eighteen abnormal bankruptcies. The first to go were all corn chandlers who had speculated back in May, when prices were up to 105s. a quarter; now, with an abundant harvest and huge grain landings from America, the price was down to 60s. and falling. The corn dealers fell with them, many for large amounts. In their wake fell the banks who had discounted their bills and suppliers who had furnished them with goods that could not now be paid for. The ripples spread.
In September, there were thirty-seven bankruptcies. The reserves fell. Issues fell. Commodities fell—with wheat down to 50s. Only the Bank's rate rose yet again, now to six per cent. It was not just commercial firms that went bankrupt; several banks went to the wall too—among them the Royal Bank of Liverpool. Most of the Duke of Buckingham's sixty thousand acres went up for forced sale and the duke himself was adjudged bankrupt. The Duke of Beaufort and the Earl of Mornington were both tottering.
To be in London and in commerce in those months was like standing on a large ship and watching the biggest, blackest sky you ever saw build up over the weather quarter. The solid, reassuringly massive vessel you went aboard in the calm waters at the quayside slowly comes to seem as frail as cheap furniture. No wind is upon you yet; no great swell pitches you. But you know the storm is inevitable and it is going to be worse than anything you ever imagined. You cling to the small incidents and occurrences of normal life as to something precious and vanishing.
In such a mood Nora looked to the cleaning of her hunting saddles and equipment, ordered dresses for the winter, listened to the head gardener's plans for next season's flower beds, and went through the book list from Hatchard's—all familiar acts made poignant by the crisis now upon them. Would she be doing any of these things next year?
In October, the crisis came. There were eighty-two bankruptcies that month. No one would discount bills beyond thirty days, and almost no business was done apart from railway business. Toward the end of the month, the Bank's reserves, which had stood higher than nine million pounds at the beginning of the year, were down to a million and a half. Issues of money, which were tied by law to the reserves, were at an unprecedented low. Once again it seemed as if cash was going to vanish from the tills of banks and shops.
Stevenson's had only £240,000 in notes and coin; their outgoings were now at least £45,000 a week, so they could face less than six weeks of a money famine.
"It's a good thing you have the Wolffs' money," John said. "It might be what saves us."
"Oh, no," she said, feeling almost panic-stricken. "That's not its purpose."
He laughed. "Of course it is. They gave you absolute discretion. You said so. It is still in cash, I hope."
"At the moment, yes. But I don't feel I have that kind of discretion."
He became angry. "You behave as if you weren't part of the firm."
"I tell you what I will do," she said, not wanting to cross him so directly. "You raise a cash loan from Chambers. Every pound he lets you have, I will match from the Wolff fund."
Next day he came home in an ill temper. "Not a penny," he said. "All the years we've banked there! Not a penny. I made that man. The ingratitude!"
"John," she said, trying not to anger him further, "you must know that he wouldn't withhold support gratuitously. We're one of the lucky ones—to get any of our bills discounted. You go and stand in the Salisbury Arms or any tavern and listen to the grumbles. Even Chambers can't conjure money out of air."
"You talk just like him," John said. "His very words."
"We should have stored up more cash this spring and summer."
"We! You mean I."
She shrugged.
"You may have forgotten that I had to run the firm singlehanded."
"Of course that was my fault."
"No!" He turned his anger on himself now. "No. You know it wasn't. Oh, darling." He put his arms around her, but it was an effort. "I am so afraid now. The City is terrible. You have never seen such gloom on so many faces."
She was annoyed with him still though, for making her feel such a traitress in not offering the Wolff fund to the firm.
She felt even worse next day when she went in and told Chambers to buy Exchequer bills with the entire fund. He was to spread the buying and to switch to consols if the rate rose more than twenty points.
He was a bit taken aback. "You know the rate is very low? Thirty-seven under."
She knew the risk well enough, but she shut out all objection, from him as well as from her own thoughts. She did not even wonder why she was courting disaster like this.
That evening she told John what she had done. She had expected him to be angry, but he merely looked at her with a cold malevolence she found ten times more frightening.
"Don't you see," she said, "what with the land I have and the way that is going up in value as it's developed, and with my commission on the Wolff fund in time, there's less and less need for you to keep taking off ten per cent of your profits to put into our trust fund, mine and the children's. So Nathan and I are agreed…"
"Oh, it's Nathan now!"
"Listen, will you! Chambers and I are willing to put the trust fund's securities as guarantee to Stevenson's against…"
"No!" he roared. "Never! It's out of the question."
"Why, John?" she asked innocently. "Would it not be safe?"
"Of course it would be safe. But the whole purpose of having such a fund is to secure you and the children against the firm's bankruptcy."
"What a lovely arrangement!" she mocked. "If Stevenson's goes bankrupt, the children and I have a quarter of a million to play with—money that could have saved the firm. How d'you think that would make us feel?"
"But you can't use such a fund for such a purpose. It'd be like standing on your own hands and lifting yourself off the ground."
"Well!" She turned from him and flung her hands up in a hopeless gesture. "There's two completely incompatible ways of looking at the same thing. In fact, there's no way of stopping Chambers and me from putting the fund as guarantee. We could guarantee this month's entire crop of bankrupts if the whim took us."
He walked across to her and turned her to face him. He was very calm now. "You'd go against my express wishes?" he asked. His voice was completely neutral.
She thought of many evasions before, and equally calmly, she said, "If your
wishes were contrary to your best interests—yes. You should have thought of all this before you made me a joint trustee."
"I shall tell Chambers that if ever he does such a thing, he'll never see a penny of mine."
She smiled, trying to rekindle his warmth. "Of course we wouldn't. You provoked me into saying that. I only talked about the trust fund because I knew you'd reject the idea. And I thought you'd understand I had the same reasons for rejecting your use of the Wolffs' fund."
But he would not now be moved. "The two cases are worlds apart. Well"—he smiled thinly—"if I'm not to have your confidence with the German money, I shall have to use the land you've been buying."
"Use it?"
The Rich Are with You Always Page 46