The Rich Are with You Always (30 page)

  John's role was to get together as much hard cash as possible. Nora's was to start moving that cash around from bank to bank—and even from country to country—in quite novel and unconventional ways, so that when the time came, and there was no cash left to move around, the fact might go unnoticed for… how long? She had no idea. Last year an East India company in the tea trade had gone bankrupt, and the court found it had actually been insolvent for a quarter of a century—which had come as a great surprise even to the directors. Yet in each of those insolvent years they had turned over a good half-million.

  On such frail straws they floated their hope for their own survival.

  All that summer and autumn, John harvested for cash. If there was a contract that might be finished or brought to a stage payment, by mid-September, he bent heaven and hell to achieve it, even to the extent of moving men from longer-term contracts. For the first time in his career, John deliberately allowed some contracts to drag behind their timetable. The supervising engineers were naturally unhappy and only his promise to catch up—and his reputation to back such a promise—prevented the companies from operating the clauses that allowed them to take over the work and reassign it.

  He also tendered low for a host of tiny contracts—sidings, drains, realignments, even routine maintenance—things he would not normally bother with. And these too he hastened to finish before September. And every bill dated November or later he got discounted at once and turned into cash. He liquidated all his material stocks and bought everything spot, paying in ninety-day bills if possible.

  As the money flowed in, first in a dribble, then in a torrent, Nora began to move it around according to the strategy they had devised. At first she managed from their home up in Yorkshire; later, as the pace grew more hectic, she moved down to a suite at the Adelaide in London.

  There was no word to describe what she was doing. Swindle was too crude, for if the plan worked, no one would lose a penny; all that would have happened was that a few banks would inadvertently have lent them money for an undefined period. Most of the other words—cheat, defraud, shave, pluck, mulct, and so forth—suggested something too irreversible; in any case, they were too strongly associated with criminal and aristocratic behaviour. Nora's own word for her strategy was "hudsoning," a word fitted in every way to the matter, the manner, and the age. And if she ever used it where it was overheard, the eavesdropper would consider the activity admirable; for George Hudson was still the Railway King.

  The first bank she "hudsoned" was right on her (and Hudson's) doorstep: the York City and County. She let a draft go through for wages when Stevenson's had no funds in that particular bank to cover it. The manager, knowing what a big and steady account he had in Stevenson's, wrote a polite, almost obsequious letter, drawing their attention to the deficiency; but he allowed the payment. Nora composed a tart reply for John to sign, pointing out that these were difficult times for everyone and that sound firms and sound bankers would survive them best by staying calm. To underline the point, she kept that bank well in surplus for a good long time after.

  "Sound" and "staying calm" were the constant themes of the whole "hudson" campaign. Bank after bank bleated to John about a sudden dearth of cash in the Stevenson account. Each received a variant of Nora's lofty homily on the virtues of staying calm and of reposing confidence in firms whose soundness was beyond question—plus, to be sure, the gold to back the words and to sugar the message.

  Surreptitiously she sold her properties; from her lucrative firstborn at Alderley Edge to her failures at Pendle and Ayr—all went under the hammer. Money was tight that summer and they fetched only two-thirds of what she considered their true value; hoping for sixty thousand, she got a bare forty. But she was too busy then to grieve overmuch; the bitterness was to come later. In return for all this, Sir George handed them the deeds to Maran Hill, still unmortgaged; and he assigned his heavily mortgaged lands around Stockton. None of it was of any immediate benefit, for they could not risk turning him out. Everything had to go on as normal.

  The hudson strategy was not without its problems. The one account she did not meddle with was their permanent one with Chambers. Sooner or later every Stevenson bill came to him for discount; and every foreign transaction went via him. In addition, most of the banks they hudsoned would write to Chambers for reference. Stevenson's had to be able to rely on a good word from him. Even so, the abnormal number of requests for references that poured in from provincial and oversea banks was bound to set him wondering. At last he was driven to ask John whether Mrs. Stevenson was quite well.

  "I left him feeling uneasy," John reported back to Nora, "as you asked me to. But I hope he doesn't begin to panic."

  "On the contrary," Nora replied, "I hope he does. Begin to, I mean. The whole essence of this thing is in the timing. And Chambers is the key to it. He's no little provincial banker—yes sir, no sir, here's three bags full sir. The problem of Chambers demands very particular attention. We want him to begin to panic and then, just at the right moment, we must appear as the one rock in his own private storm."

  From that day, early in the October of 1845, she began drawing on all their outlying accounts and amassing the money with Chambers. But from that day too, events began to pass out of their hands. Now they had to watch every move in the City, snap up every bit of stray gossip and try to assess its true worth, take daily, even hourly, soundings of the railway intelligence. From that day, there was no appeal from the consequences of even one false move.

  For John, on his endless round of visits to cuttings and embankments, tunnels and bridges, it was sometimes hard to believe that all this buzz of well-organized industry could be brought to a halt by the movement of bits of paper in the far-off City. He stood, hearing the picks ring on the rock and watching the spoil fly from three hundred shovels, and he would realize that perhaps, even at that very moment, a papermaker in some small East End papermill was drying the very sheet on which Chambers or someone would write the final, damning words, "insufficient funds." Then the workings would fall silent. The navvies and the bricklayers, masons and blacksmiths would troop off to other masters. The bailiffs would seize the wagons, the stores, Thorpe Manor…their very furniture. He knew it could happen for he had seen it, too often now for his own comfort, when other contractors had gone under; indeed, his own business had been founded on the bankruptcy of another contractor.

  Still, the activity all around him was reassuring, for every yard was another step nearer a payment to him.

  For Nora, whose daily landscape was that endless to-and-fro of paper, there could be no such comfort. The office servants were cheerful, knowing they were in a thriving company at a time when others were tottering; she had to run an endless gauntlet of their cheer. She had to endure the congratulations of Jackson on the steady increase in the firm's wealth. And all the time she knew it in no way matched the reckoning, whose day could not much longer be postponed.

  In mid-October the Bank of England raised its discount rate—a belated attempt to stem the flood of credit it had itself created. The rise was a mere token, from 2½ to 3 per cent, but people were so nervous they clutched at straws, assuring each other that now all would be well. In case Chambers should catch this new form of laughing sickness, Nora decided to pay him a visit.

  Chambers was a tall, lithe, powerful man. Something about him, and about his movements, reminded Nora of a leopard—not the leopards in zoos, but those on Egyptian papyruses. Semitic leopards. He had the same flat back to his head and angularity of neck, and his walk was tense and silent. At thirty-eight he was certainly a very handsome man, but there was nothing in that to endear him to her. His eyes, dark and set deep beneath a firm, unfurrowed brow, were sleek and watchful; one's first impression that they twinkled with a friendly mirth soon vanished. His lips too seemed to smile; but they were so mobile, even when he was silent—especially when he was silent—as to cancel out the cheer and leave instead the impression of a man unwilling to reveal how he might appear if he allowed himself to relax.

  His office had changed greatly since John and Nora had first seen it. Six years ago, Chambers had been in a very small way of trade, on the outer fringe of the dozens of banks that belonged to the London Clearing House. He had risen, however, with Stevenson's. As a Jew, he would never penetrate the very inner circles of the City; but, also as a Jew, he knew more European bankers and understood their ways better than any other London bank of his size. This and his link with Stevenson's had served him well over the last few years, and he had become something of an expert in railway funding, especially in European railways. Millions in British capital had gone into overseas lines, and Chambers had managed a greatly disproportionate share of it.

  So the delicate gilded furniture and the rococo mirrors had gone from his office; and in their place were desks and chairs that renaissance princes might have sat on in perfect safety, even had they topped three hundredweight. His inkwell was a silver replica of Kitson's new long-boiler locomotive,
Hector,
the gift of George Hudson and the York & North Midland. The quills stood in its funnel and the lid of the "boiler" hinged up to reveal the ink well.

  "Isn't that pretty," he said. "I'm so pleased with it. And how kind of Hudson."

  "Hudson is a one-man disaster," she said evenly. "It will take a generation for this country's railways to recover from what he has done in this one year."

  This opinion was so absolutely contrary to the general view of the man that Chambers merely laughed, as anyone might laugh at eccentricity.

  "You've done well enough," he said. "Stevenson's, I mean."

  She looked puzzled. "What d'you mean?"

  Her sharp tone startled him. "Your account, Mrs. Stevenson. That's what I mean. Your funds. Never better." He spoke as if to placate her.

  Now it was she who looked astonished. "You have no idea what it is all about?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  "You really don't know why we've done it?"

  "I assumed…" He faltered.

  "That it was an attack of prosperity, plain and simple?"

  He laughed. "Nothing to do with you is 'plain and simple,' ma'am."

  She did not laugh. "Then I must tell you, Mr. Chambers. In eighteen-thirty-six Sir Charles Knightley, one of the richest men in England, had to ride twenty miles to break open his daughter's money box and borrow a few sovereigns before he could…"

  "Yes, yes!" Chambers was impatient. It was a well-known story among City men and was often told as an example of what used to happen in the bad old days of ten years ago—and what, by implication, could never happen now.

  "Then I tell you, Mr. Chambers, I tell you most particularly, the money crisis of thirty-six is going to seem like a high feast when people look back on eighteenforty-five—and forty-six and forty-seven…and more for aught I know."

  He pretended to believe her. He pretended to take her analysis seriously. But he turned the conversation to the actual sum they had amassed. It was far too much for their daily operations, he thought. Why didn't they put it into something solid and endurable? Property, for instance? No doubt he thought the suggestion would please her.

  She persisted in saying that the wondrous new banking system was about to collapse and that only those with gold-in-the-hand were going to survive. She could see him growing quite testy beneath that polished urbanity of his. But she kept her best argument to last—until he was driven to assure her that "we people in the City have all these matters perfectly under control now, you know."

  "Then consider these facts, Mr. Chambers," she warned. "There are now over twelve hundred would-be companies looking for capital. And the total they seek is now around five hundred and sixty million pounds—of which they must deposit ten per cent by the thirtieth of this month. Fifty-nine million pounds!" she stressed. "Where on earth will they find it?" Even to name the sum brought a sinking feeling to her stomach. She knew only too well where they'd find some of it.

  "How can you be certain of these figures?" Chambers asked. "You'd have to comb through a year's issues of about thirty different railway magazines to be…"

  "Or keep a running total in your mind," she said. "All year."

  He laughed in agreement, thinking she was speaking in irony; then he realized she was not. "You have done that?" he asked.

  She stood up, smiling acidly, and bade him good day.