‘It’s all my fault,’ he said. ‘The muddle is entirely my fault. I’ll ring up Dawson’s to apologise, and let them know we’ll deliver as soon as possible. And I’ll get in touch with Dorling Brothers and apologise to them, too.’ He looked despairingly at the older man. ‘I’m so sorry, McIver. You should be doing my job and I should be your assistant. But is there anything else I can do about it now?’
There was a distinct thawing of the atmosphere while McIver rubbed his chin consideringly. ‘Well, Mr Ted, I might be able to persuade the transport people to change their schedule and do the redelivering today. Then we could at least show Mr Hugh that we’ve done our best.’
The ‘we’ and ‘our’ were very comforting to Teddy; he almost loved McIver for it.
‘And perhaps when you ring Dorling’s you might be able to sell to them. They like hardwoods, and we’ve been cutting a nice piece of padauk.’
‘I’ll certainly try. I’m most grateful for your support.’
They parted on good terms, McIver remarking as he left that it was a wicked world, a view that he invariably expressed when he was feeling sanguine about it.
When he had gone, Teddy resolved not to smoke, not to think about Sabrina until he had made the horrible telephone calls, the second of which he couldn’t make anyway until he’d heard from McIver. Meanwhile, he would go through the order book to see whether he could rustle up some more business. He struck lucky with Dorling’s, who wanted teak for a fitted kitchen they were making for a client. He asked them to submit the order in writing, addressed to him personally; he had begun to realise that many written orders had gone straight to the manager of the sawmill, which had meant he hadn’t been keeping track of them. And behind that lay the sinister implication that that was exactly what the manager had intended.
However, Sabrina rang back just before the office was closing to say that she’d told the Frankensteins about him, and they had been asked to arrive in time for dinner on Friday. His spirits rose: life was not too bad, after all. He would have the whole weekend with Sabrina, and the prospect of meeting her parents instilled in him nothing more than the mild excitement that curiosity engendered. It was true that he had inflated the hint Uncle Hugh had given him of there being serious changes at work: the possibility of Uncle Rupe coming down to run things had developed into the likelihood of himself being moved back to London, but he was an optimist and always tended to think that what Teddy wanted Teddy would get.
THE BROTHERS AND MR TWINE
There was a long silence after Mr Twine had finished speaking. Then Edward said, ‘What I can’t understand is how the bank can do this to us without warning.’
Mr Twine coughed nervously. He had been dreading this confrontation. The Cazalets were old clients. ‘I think if you consult your file you will find that they have, in fact, issued more than one warning expressing their dissatisfaction.’ The bank had actually been writing such letters for the past three years with no replies except for one brief missive, signed by Hugh, to the effect that the matter would be seriously considered.
Hugh now said: ‘I know that when I went to see them for some more money, they were distinctly sticky about it, but not a word was said about foreclosing on previous loans.’
Mr Twine selected three sheets of paper from the large pile and handed them to Hugh, who sat at his desk flanked by Edward and Rupert. He had known this old office when the Old Man was chairman and it hadn’t changed at all. Panelled in koko, his favourite hardwood, its walls were hung with faded framed photographs of men standing by colossal logs or enormous old trees, heavily captioned with names, provenance and dates. There were two very large photographs showing the London wharves after the Blitz that had destroyed them. A scarlet and peacock Turkey rug covered most of the floor. Hugh’s desk, in addition to pictures of his family, was still encrusted with the old blotter, the Dictaphone and an ancient typewriter. All that had changed was the man now sitting in his father’s chair. ‘Well, I’m damned! I don’t remember any of these letters.’
That, Mr Twine thought, was probably because you never read them.
Edward, who asked to see the letters, now said, ‘But if we sold off Southampton surely there would be enough money to pay off the bank, and then we could concentrate on London. Or, better still, perhaps we should bite the bullet and go for turning the whole business into a public company. I’ve been urging that option for years.’
Mr Twine coughed again, a sign, Rupert recognised, that he had something to say and was not going to enjoy saying it.
‘I’m afraid, Mr Edward, that it’s too late for that. The value of the Southampton business has become so much less, due to the last years’ track record of loss, so now you would not get sufficient capital from its sale. And it’s too late planning to go public. That would take at least two years, and in any case the bank does not consider that the business is any longer yours to sell.’
There was a short silence. Then Hugh said, ‘Does that mean we’re going to be bankrupt?’
‘I’m afraid it does.’
‘And that means that we, personally, are bankrupt. They’ll take everything – our houses—’
‘No, Mr Hugh. If you will remember, I advised you to put your private properties in your wives’ names. As you most sensibly agreed to that, you will keep your houses. And, also, the directors’ pensions. Mr Hank and I saw to that when you became a limited company.’
‘What about Home Place?’ Hugh then asked.
‘That will have to go, I’m afraid. Your father bought it in the firm’s name.’
‘What about Rachel? It’s her home! I won’t have her turned out of it!’
Twine coughed again. ‘According to Mr Hank, with whom Miss Sidney made her will, her house in London, together with its contents, were all left to Miss Rachel, so she will not be homeless.’ His mouth, unused to smiling, made a heroic effort now.
‘She may have a house, but she has no income other than her shares in Cazalets’. She will be literally penniless! We have to do something about that.’ Hugh looked defiantly at the others; their faces showed varying degrees of concern and hopelessness. ‘It’s awful, but I’m out of my depth,’ he concluded mournfully.
‘I think we’ve had enough for one morning,’ Edward said. ‘One more question: what is the time scale for all of this?’
Mr Twine, who had been returning papers to his file, looked up. ‘I cannot give you precise dates. The assessors will probably take at least two months to produce their report to the bank. In the meantime, you should continue trading and say nothing to anyone about the impending bankruptcy. Nobody at all. Particularly not to any of your employees.’
‘So that they will be thrown out of a job at a moment’s notice without the chance to look for a new one,’ Rupert said, with deep bitterness.
‘Anyway, it will get around,’ Edward observed.
‘Even if it does, do not tell anyone that you know anything. I will be in touch with you as soon as I have any more to communicate.’ Twine got thankfully to his feet, shook hands with each of them and made his escape.
The trouble, he thought, as he boarded his bus, was that none of them were businessmen. He felt sorry for them in a way, but had lost respect. He would not personally have put any of them in charge of a sweet shop. He opened his paper and decided to take the afternoon off and go to the motor show. He was rather keen on the new bubble cars that sounded both cheap and practical; ‘bus suppositories’, the French called them, an insult probably generated by sheer envy of the Germans being better at car manufacture than they were.
Yes, he’d get a sandwich and a pint at one of the Earl’s Court pubs, and then he’d have a good look round the motor show before catching an earlier train back to Crouch End.
After Mr Twine had left there was a heavy silence in the room. Nobody moved. It was rather, Rupert thought, as though the injection of reality had paralysed them – as though they had become a still in an action film. Noises from the str
eet below impinged: a paper boy crying for people to buy the latest edition of the Evening Standard, a squeal of brakes and some shouting. He heard the brief crescendo of an aeroplane, before they all finally stirred and became animate. Hugh reached for his pills and swallowed two with the dregs of his coffee. Edward flipped open the laurel-wood box, always kept full of cigarettes, and lit one. He offered the box to Rupert, who shook his head, then changed his mind.
Hugh said, ‘If only we knew what they will sell Home Place for, we would know what money to raise.’
‘We’re in no position to raise any money at all,’ Edward replied glumly. ‘Speaking for myself, I’m broke. I’ve got debts, and nothing but my salary to live on and try to repay them.’
‘Edward! Do you mean you’ve saved nothing?’
‘I did have a nest-egg, but it’s all gone now.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t got anything saved either,’ Rupert said. ‘What with moving from the flat into a house, and the children getting steadily more expensive, I really haven’t been able to. I’m sorry, Hugh, but I can’t help you there. About buying Home Place, I mean. You and I pay our bit towards its upkeep as it is.’ The fact that Edward had refused to help with that still riled him. ‘Anyway, as Twine said, Rachel has the house in London.’
Edward looked at his watch. ‘I must leave you. It’s business not as usual. A Danish bloke wants to buy teak for hi-fi speakers.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet. ‘I should go home, old boy. You can’t do anything when your head’s giving you gyp.’
Hugh scowled at him, but he pretended not to notice.
Christ! Edward thought, as he collected his hat and overcoat from his office. What the hell am I going to do? The thought of facing Diana with even worse news made him feel cold at the back of his neck. He again thought of Villy then. She would have been easy to tell: she would have grasped the essentials at once, would have supported him and also been intelligent about how to cut down expenses … If only she had enjoyed going to bed with him …
Rupert left Hugh’s office to settle some dispute down at the wharf: the drivers were acting up again. They had been grumbling ever since last Christmas when four of the lorries had simultaneously broken down. They had a point, he knew, because nearly the whole fleet was long past decent service. Most of them had gone through the war, been patched up, had new or reconditioned engines fitted, but apart from the expense of maintenance, there was all the nuisance involved with them so frequently being late with deliveries, or failing to deliver at all. Edward had persuaded Hugh to agree to buy four new lorries so they now had, Rupert hoped, four satisfied drivers although, these days, that would not prevent them striking to back up the others.
At least he didn’t look like having to move to Southampton, and Zoë would be pleased about that. But looming on his horizon, hardly acknowledged by his brothers, was the likelihood of his being without a job, of them all not only ceasing to be employers, but unemployed.
This set up a conflict. On the one hand it let him off doing something he had never really wanted to do. He wasn’t, never would be, a businessman. He had been persuaded, notably by Hugh, that it was what he ought to do, had seen the argument that theirs was a family business, and with a wife and two children to look after, it had become the soft option. But he had never stopped minding that he had given up even trying to be a painter, feeling that thereby he had betrayed himself. After all, Archie had continued to paint, and was beginning to make a bit of a name for himself as a portraitist. And he had a wife and two children to care for, too. It could be done: he simply had not had the courage to do it before. The thought excited him now – it would give him freedom; it was the road less travelled. He and Archie might band together to teach, take some cheap place in Italy or France where their families could enjoy a holiday while they worked. He longed to skip the problems of the wharf and go and find Archie to talk to him about all this. On the other hand, he would be plunging Zoë into poverty; they might not be able to afford the house, and then there were school fees, Georgie’s zoo, and Juliet going through a most difficult stage – Zoë had been talking about sending her abroad to learn cooking and French to get her over Neville. They wouldn’t be able to afford that now anyway.
Then he thought of all the men who would have to be laid off, and his heart sank. ‘I must be sympathetic but firm,’ he told himself, as he drove to East London. But somehow these two pieces of advice didn’t seem to go together very well at all.
Hugh, left to himself in his office with a raging headache, resisted the desire to go home. He rang his secretary, told her he was going to lie down for a bit, and, no, he didn’t want any lunch. He arranged himself on the stiff little horsehair day-bed he had always kept for this purpose and tried to sleep but his anxiety about Rachel kept him awake. If he mortgaged his house, would that provide enough money to invest for an income? He simply didn’t know. If all three of them took out mortgages, surely that would be enough. If Rachel kept the little house in Abbey Road, and perhaps took in a lodger, that would help, too. But he knew that Edward would not agree to a mortgage, and he didn’t like the idea of persuading Rupert to do that either.
The whole mess was his fault, he thought miserably. If he’d listened to Edward and the advice given them by that banker chap of Louise’s they would not be in this pickle. If they’d gone public they would have walked away with millions. And then, when the same chap had offered to sound out the most successful of their rivals, he had refused to consider it. He’d been, in fact, a bloody fool. And as a result, he and Edward – both now in their sixties – would have to look for jobs. So would Rupert, of course, but he was so used to thinking of him as his little brother that he forgot he was fifty-five. None of their ages augured well for new starts. And, worst of all, there was Rachel. She had no income at all, and it was all his fault.
RACHEL
It had taken her months to brave Sid’s house, shut up now for nearly a year – since last November, to be precise. She had asked Villy, who lived nearby, whether, if sent the keys, she would go and see that it was all right. Villy had reported back: nobody had broken in, but she had closed the shutters on the ground-floor windows, made sure that the water was turned off, but left the telephone, electricity and gas for Rachel to decide about when she came. She returned the keys and said that if she wanted any help she would be glad to supply it and, in any case, Rachel was always welcome for lunch or supper.
When she finally opened the front door and stood in the tiny hall, the dank stillness enveloped her. It was dark in the house and she hastened to open the shutters. The sitting room was covered with dust and the rug sent up little eddies of it wherever she trod. She could have written her name on the top of the Erard upright, and the sheet music that lay beside it was not only grey with dust but also limp with damp. She went to the far end of the room, where French windows opened onto the steps down to the garden, which was now a yellowing jungle, thick with fallen leaves that almost obscured the few emaciated Michaelmas daisies that had survived. She steeled herself to go upstairs – she knew that this would be the worst – and went first to Sid’s bedroom, which she had shared with her. The wardrobe had Sid’s clothes hanging there still: her winter coat, her Aran jersey, a tweed skirt and her best dress – a silk crêpe affair that she hated and never wore.
The chest of drawers was full of her underwear and night clothes – and when she opened the top drawer, Sid’s aroma rose to meet her: the dear familiar scent of China tea and pepper was overwhelming. For minutes she stood inhaling the precious essence, then saw an opened box nestled among the garments. It was half full of painkillers, much stronger ones than she had seen Sid take. All part of her trying not to worry me. Rachel looked wildly round the room to stop herself crying. On the table by the window stood a small vase of dead chrysanthemums, with the silver-backed brush and comb that had belonged to Sid’s mother. She had cleaned them regularly, although she never used them; the silver was tarnished now.<
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She went down to the basement, with its dark kitchen and bars on the windows, and there were the dishes from their last breakfast, washed up and lying on the draining board. Everything in the kitchen was dirty, covered with a thick layer of dust, and smelt overwhelmingly of damp.
Rachel realised that she was extremely cold – unable not only to do anything but even to think of what she should do. Make some coffee or tea. She remembered that the water was turned off, but there might be some left in the electric kettle. She shook it, and there was. Coffee would be best since there was no milk. The kettle took a long time to boil, since it badly needed descaling.
She wiped a mug with a drying-up cloth, and also wiped the seat of a kitchen chair. Every now and then a bus rumbled down the road outside, but otherwise there was an oppressive silence.
She sat at the table with her hands clasped round the mug. ‘I can’t live here,’ she said aloud. ‘I can’t.’
WARNING THE FAMILY
‘Well, at least it means we shan’t have to move.’ She was undressing, getting ready for bed, which she always did extremely slowly; she seemed impervious to the cold, and wandered round the room in her petticoat. Rupert lay in bed, watching her.
‘We’ll be pretty hard up. We might not even be able to keep this house.’
‘Oh, Rupe! We will! I can easily do without a cleaner.’ She picked up her hairbrush and sat on the bed beside him to have her hair brushed.
‘I just feel I ought to warn you. I’ll need to get some sort of teaching. But even so—’
‘Archie manages it. The point is, my darling, that you will be able to paint at last, which is what you’ve always wanted. And when you’ve got enough pictures painted perhaps you and Archie could have a show together.’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 232