A Dangerous Fortune(28)
“I see.”
“Off you go.”
Hugh left Mulberry’s office, which was on the fourth floor, and ran down the stairs. He was happy that Mulberry had accepted his tray idea and relieved that he was not in worse trouble over the lost bill of lading. As he reached the third floor, where the Partners’ Room was, he saw Samuel Pilaster, looking dapper in a silver-gray frock coat and a navy-blue satin tie. “Good morning, Uncle Samuel,” Hugh said.
“Morning, Hugh. What are you up to?” He showed more interest in Hugh than the other partners did.
“Going to count the applications for the Russian loan.”
Samuel smiled, showing his crooked teeth. “I don’t know how you can be so cheerful with a day of that in front of you!”
Hugh continued down the stairs. Within the family, people were beginning to talk in hushed tones about Uncle Samuel and his secretary. Hugh did not find it shocking that Samuel was what people called effeminate. Women and vicars might pretend that sex between men was perverted, but it went on all the time at schools such as Windfield and it never did anyone any harm.
He reached the first floor and entered the imposing banking hall. It was only half-past nine, and the dozens of clerks who worked at Pilasters were still streaming through the grand front door, smelling of bacon breakfasts and underground railway trains. Hugh nodded to Miss Greengrass, the only female clerk. A year ago, when she had been hired, debate had raged through the bank as to whether a woman could possibly do the work. In the event she had settled the matter by proving herself supremely competent. There would be more female clerks in the future, Hugh guessed.
He took the back stairs to the basement and made his way to the post room. Two messengers were sorting the mail, and applications for the Russian loan already filled one big sack. Hugh decided he would get two junior clerks to add up the applications, and he would check their arithmetic.
The work took most of the day. It was a few minutes before four o’clock when he double-checked the last bundle and added the last column of figures. The issue was undersubscribed: a little more than one hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bonds remained unsold. It was not a big shortfall, as a proportion of a two-million-pound issue, but there was a big psychological difference between oversubscribed and undersubscribed, and the partners would be disappointed.
He wrote the tally on a clean sheet of paper and went in search of Mulberry. The banking hall was quiet now. A few customers stood at the long polished counter. Behind the counter, clerks lifted the big ledgers on and off the shelves. Pilasters did not have many private accounts. It was a merchant bank, lending money to traders to finance their ventures. As old Seth would say, the Pilasters weren’t interested in counting the greasy pennies of a grocer’s takings or the grubby banknotes of a tailor—there was not enough profit in it. But all the family kept accounts at the bank, and the facility was extended to a small number of very rich clients. Hugh spotted one of them now: Sir John Cammel. Hugh had known his son at Windfield. A thin man with a bald head, Sir John earned vast incomes from coal mines and docks on his lands in Yorkshire. Now he was pacing the marble floor looking impatient and bad-tempered. Hugh said: “Good afternoon, Sir John, I hope you’re being attended to?”
“No, I’m not, lad. Doesn’t anyone do any work in this place?”
Hugh glanced around rapidly. None of the partners or senior clerks was in sight. He decided to use his initiative. “Will you come upstairs to the Partners’ Room, sir? I know they will be keen to see you.”
“All right.”
Hugh led him upstairs. The partners all worked together in the same room—so that they could keep an eye on one another, according to tradition. The room was furnished like the reading room in a gentlemen’s club, with leather sofas, bookcases and a central table with newspapers. In framed portraits on the walls, ancestral Pilasters looked down their beaklike noses at their descendants.
The room was empty. “One of them will be back in a moment, I’m sure,” Hugh said. “May I offer you a glass of Madeira?” He went to the sideboard and poured a generous measure while Sir John settled himself in a leather armchair. “I’m Hugh Pilaster, by the way.”
“Oh, yes?” Sir John was somewhat mollified to find he was talking to a Pilaster, rather than an ordinary office.
“Yes, sir. I was there with your son Albert. We called him Hump.”
“All Cammels are called Hump.”
“I haven’t seen him since … since then.”
“He went to the Cape Colony, and liked it there so much that he never came back. He raises horses now.”
Albert Cammel had been at the swimming hole on that fateful day in 1866. Hugh had never heard his version of how Peter Middleton drowned. “I’d like to write to him,” Hugh said.
“I daresay he’ll be glad of a letter from an old school friend. I’ll give you his address.” Sir John moved to the table, dipped a quill in the inkwell and scribbled on a sheet of paper. “There you are.”
“Thank you.” Sir John was mollified now, Hugh noted with satisfaction. “Is there anything else I can do for you while you’re waiting?”
“Well, perhaps you can deal with this.” He took a cheque out of his pocket. Hugh examined it. It was for a hundred and ten thousand pounds, the largest personal cheque Hugh had ever handled. “I’ve just sold a coal mine to my neighbor,” Sir John explained.