A Dangerous Fortune (1994) Page 39

  "You sell North American bonds," Augusta said. "There's always a risk. That's what banking is about." She spoke triumphantly, as if she had caught him out.

  "The United States of America has a modern democratic government, vast natural wealth and no enemies. Now that they've abolished slavery, there's no reason why the country shouldn't be stable for a hundred years. By contrast, South America is a collection of warring dictatorships that may not be the same for the next ten days. There is a risk in both cases, but in the north it's much smaller. Banking is about calculating risk."

  "You're just envious of Edward--you always were," she said.

  Hugh wondered why the other partners were so silent. As soon as he asked himself the question, he realized that Augusta must have spoken to them beforehand. But surely she could not have persuaded them to accept Edward as Senior Partner? He began to feel seriously worried.

  "What has she said to you?" he said abruptly. He looked at each of them in turn. "William? George? Harry? Come on, out with it. You've discussed this earlier and Augusta has nobbled you."

  They all looked a little foolish. Finally William said; "Nobody has been nobbled, Hugh. But Augusta and Edward have made it clear that unless Edward becomes Senior Partner, they ..." He seemed embarrassed.

  "Out with it," Hugh said.

  "They will withdraw their capital from the business."

  "What?" Hugh was stunned. Withdrawing your capital was a cardinal sin in this family: his own father had done it and had never been forgiven. That Augusta should be willing even to threaten such a step was astonishing--and showed that she was deadly serious.

  Between them, she and Edward controlled about forty percent of the bank's capital, over two million pounds. If they withdrew the money at the end of the financial year, as they were legally entitled to do, the bank would be crippled.

  It was startling that Augusta should make such a threat--and even worse that the partners were ready to give in to her. "You're surrendering all authority to her!" he said. "If you let her get away with it this time she'll do it again. Anytime she wants something she can just threaten to withdraw her capital and you'll cave in. You might as well make her Senior Partner."

  Edward blustered: "Don't you dare speak of my mother like that--mind your manners!"

  "Manners be damned," Hugh said rudely. He knew he was doing his cause no good by losing his temper, but he was too angry to stop. "You're about to ruin a great bank. Augusta's blind, Edward is stupid and the rest of you are too cowardly to stop them." He pushed back his chair and stood up, throwing his napkin down on the table like a challenge. "Well, here's one person who won't be bullied."

  He stopped and took a breath, realizing he was about to say something that would change the course of the rest of his life. Around the table they all stared at him. He had no alternative. "I resign," he said.

  As he turned from the table he caught Augusta's eye, and saw on her face a victorious smile.

  Uncle Samuel came to see him that evening.

  Samuel was an old man now, but no less vain than he had been twenty years ago. He still lived with Stephen Caine, his "secretary." Hugh was the only Pilaster who ever went to their home, which was a house in raffish Chelsea, decorated in the fashionable aesthetic style and full of cats. Once, when they were halfway down a bottle of port, Stephen had said he was the only Pilaster wife who was not a harridan.

  When Samuel called, Hugh was in his library, where he generally retired after dinner. He had a book on his knee but had not been reading it. Instead he had been staring into the fire, thinking about the future. He had plenty of money, enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life without working, but he would never be Senior Partner now.

  Uncle Samuel looked weary and sad. "I was at odds with my cousin Joseph for most of his life," he said. "I wish it had been otherwise."

  Hugh offered him a drink and he asked for port. Hugh called his butler and ordered a bottle decanted.

  "How do you feel about it all?" Samuel asked.

  "I was angry before, but now I'm just despondent," Hugh replied. "Edward is so hopelessly unsuited to be Senior Partner, but there's nothing to be done. How about you?"

  "I feel as you do. I shall resign, too. I shan't withdraw my capital, at least not right away, but I shall go at the end of the year. I told them so after you made your dramatic exit. I don't know whether I should have spoken up earlier. It wouldn't have made any difference."

  "What else did they say?"

  "Well, that's why I'm here, really, dear boy. I regret to say I'm a sort of messenger from the enemy. They asked me to persuade you not to resign."

  "Then they're damn fools."

  "That they certainly are. However, there is one thing you ought to think about. If you resign immediately, everyone in the City will know why. People will say that if Hugh Pilaster believes Edward can't run the bank he's probably right. It could cause a loss of confidence."

  "Well, if the bank has weak leadership people ought to lose confidence in it. Otherwise they'll lose their money."

  "But what if your resignation creates a financial crisis?"

  Hugh had not thought of that. "Is it possible?"

  "I think so."

  "I wouldn't want to do that, needless to say." A crisis might bring down other, perfectly sound businesses, the way the collapse of Overend Gurney had destroyed Hugh's father's firm in 1866.

  "Perhaps you ought to stay until the end of the financial year, like me," Samuel said. "It's only a few months. By then Edward will have been in charge for a while and people will be used to it, and you can go with no fuss."

  The butler came back with the port. Hugh sipped it thoughtfully. He felt he had to agree to Samuel's proposal, much as he disliked the idea. He had given them all a lecture about their duty to their depositors and the wider financial community, and he had to heed his own words. If he were to allow the bank to suffer just because of his own feelings, he would be no better than Augusta. Besides, the postponement would give him time to think about what to do with the rest of his life.

  He sighed. "All right," he said at last. "I'll stay until the end of the year."

  Samuel nodded. "I thought you would," he said. "It's the right thing to do--and you always do the right thing, in the end."

  Section 2

  BEFORE MAISIE GREENBOURNE finally said good-bye to high society, eleven years before, she had gone to all her friends--who were many and rich--and persuaded them to give money to Rachel's Southwark Female Hospital. Consequently, the hospital's running costs were covered by the income from its investments.

  The money was managed by Rachel's father, the only man involved in the running of the hospital. At first Maisie had wanted to handle the investments herself, but she had found that bankers and stockbrokers refused to take her seriously. They would ignore her instructions, ask for authority from her husband, and withhold information from her. She might have fought them, but in setting up the hospital she and Rachel had too many other fights on their hands, and they had let Mr. Bodwin take over the finances.

  Maisie was a widow, but Rachel was still married to Micky Miranda. Rachel never saw her husband but he would not divorce her. For ten years she had been carrying on a discreet affair with Maisie's brother Dan Robinson, who was a member of Parliament. The three of them lived together in Maisie's house in suburban Walworth.

  The hospital was in a working-class area, in the heart of the city. They had taken a long lease on a row of four houses near Southwark Cathedral and had knocked internal doors through the walls on each level to make their hospital. Instead of rows of beds in cavernous wards they had small, comfortable rooms, each with only two or three beds.

  Maisie's office, a cozy sanctuary near the main entrance, had two comfortable chairs, flowers in a vase, a faded rug and bright curtains. On the wall was the framed poster of "The Amazing Maisie." The desk was unobtrusive, and the ledgers in which she kept her records were stowed in a cupboard.

&nb
sp; The woman sitting opposite her was barefoot, ragged and nine months pregnant. In her eyes was the wary, desperate look of a starving cat that walks into a strange house hoping to be fed. Maisie said: "What's your name, dear?"

  "Rose Porter, mum."

  They always called her "mum," as if she were a grand lady. She had long ago given up trying to make them call her Maisie. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

  "Yes, please, mum."

  Maisie poured tea into a plain china cup and added milk and sugar. "You look tired."

  "I've walked all the way from Bath, mum."

  It was a hundred miles. "It must have taken you a week!" said Maisie. "You poor thing."

  Rose burst into tears.

  This was normal, and Maisie was used to it. It was best to let them cry as long as they wanted to. She sat on the arm of Rose's chair, put her arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

  "I know I've been wicked." Rose sobbed.

  "You aren't wicked," Maisie said. "We're all women here, and we understand. We don't talk of wickedness. That's for clergymen and politicians."

  After a while Rose calmed down and drank her tea. Maisie took the current ledger from the cupboard and sat at her writing table. She kept notes on every woman admitted to the hospital. The records were often useful. If some self-righteous Conservative got up in Parliament and said that most unmarried mothers were prostitutes, or that they all wanted to abandon their babies, or some such rot, she would refute him with a careful, polite, factual letter, and repeat the refutation in the speeches she made up and down the country.

  "Tell me what happened," she said to Rose. "How were you living, before you fell pregnant?"

  "I was cook for a Mrs. Freeman in Bath."

  "And how did you meet your young man?"

  "He came up and spoke to me in the street. It was my afternoon off, and I had a new yellow parasol. I looked a treat, I know I did. That yellow parasol was the undoing of me."

  Maisie coaxed the story out of her. It was typical. The man was an upholsterer, respectable and prosperous working class. He had courted her and they had talked of marriage. On warm evenings they had caressed each other, sitting in the park after dark, surrounded by other couples doing the same thing. Opportunities for sexual intercourse were few, but they had managed it four or five times, when her employer was away or his landlady was drunk. Then he had lost his job. He moved to another town, looking for work; wrote to her once or twice; and vanished out of her life. Then she found she was pregnant.

  "We'll try to get in touch with him," Maisie said.

  "I don't think he loves me anymore."

  "Well see." It was surprising how often such men were willing to marry the girl, in the end. Even if they had run away on learning she was pregnant, they might regret their panic. In Rose's case the chances were high. The man had gone away because he had lost his job, not because he had fallen out of love with Rose; and he did not yet know he was going to be a father. Maisie always tried to get them to come to the hospital and see the mother and child. The sight of a helpless baby, their own flesh and blood, sometimes brought out the best in them.

  Rose winced, and Maisie said: "What's the matter?"

  "My back hurts. It must be all the walking."

  Maisie smiled. "It's not backache. Your baby's coming. Let's get you to a bed."

  She took Rose upstairs and handed her over to a nurse. "It's going to be all right," she said. "You'll have a lovely bonny baby."

  She went into another room and stopped beside the bed of the woman they called Miss Nobody, who refused to give any details about herself, not even her name. She was a dark-haired girl of about eighteen. Her accent was upper-class and her underwear was expensive, and Maisie was fairly sure she was Jewish. "How do you feel, my dear?" Maisie asked her.

  "I'm comfortable--and so grateful to you, Mrs. Greenbourne."

  She was as different from Rose as could be--they might have come from opposite ends of the earth--but they were both in the same predicament, and they would both give birth in the same painful, messy way.

  When Maisie got back to her room she resumed the letter she had been writing to the editor of The Times.

  The Female Hospital

  Bridge Street

  Southwark

  London, S.E.

  September 10th, 1890

  To the Editor of The Times

  Dear Sir,

  I read with interest the letter from Dr Charles Wickham on the subject of women's physical inferiority to men.

  She had not been sure how to go on, but the arrival of Rose Porter had given her inspiration.

  I have just admitted to this hospital a young woman in a certain condition who has walked here from Bath.

  The editor would probably delete the words "in a certain condition" as being vulgar, but Maisie was not going to do his censoring for him.

  I note that Dr Wickham writes from the Cowes Club, and I cannot help but wonder how many members of the club could walk from Bath to London?

  Of course as a woman I have never been inside the club, but I often see its members on the steps, hailing hansom cabs to take them distances of a mile or less, and I am bound to say that most of them look as if they would find it difficult to walk from Piccadilly Circus to Parliament Square.

  They certainly could not work a twelve-hour shift in an East End sweatshop, as thousands of Englishwomen do every day--

  She was interrupted again by a knock at the door. "Come in," she called.

  The woman who entered was neither poor nor pregnant. She had big blue eyes and a girlish face, and she was richly dressed. She was Emily, the wife of Edward Pilaster.

  Maisie got up and kissed her. Emily Pilaster was one of the hospital's supporters. The group included a surprising diversity of women--Maisie's old friend April Tilsley, now the owner of three London brothels, was a member. They gave cast-off clothes, old furniture, surplus food from their kitchens, and odd supplies such as paper and ink. They could sometimes find employment for the mothers after confinement. But most of all they gave moral support to Maisie and Rachel when they were vilified by the male establishment for not having compulsory prayers, hymn-singing and sermons on the wickedness of unmarried motherhood.

  Maisie felt partly responsible for Emily's disastrous visit to April's brothel on Mask Night, when she had failed to seduce her own husband. Since then Emily and the loathsome Edward had led the discreetly separate lives of wealthy couples who hated each other.

  This morning Emily was bright-eyed and excited. She sat down, then got up again and checked that the door was firmly shut. Then she said: "I've fallen in love."

  Maisie was not sure this was unqualified good news, but she said: "How wonderful! Who with?"

  "Robert Charlesworth. He's a poet and he writes articles about Italian art. He lives in Florence most of the year but he's renting a cottage in our village; he likes England in September."

  It sounded to Maisie as if Robert Charlesworth had enough money to live well without doing any real work. "He sounds madly romantic," she said.

  "Oh, he is, he's so soulful, you'd love him."

  "I'm sure I would," Maisie said, although in fact she could not stand soulful poets with private incomes. However, she was happy for Emily, who had had more bad luck than she deserved. "Have you become his mistress?"

  Emily blushed. "Oh, Maisie, you always ask the most embarrassing questions! Of course not!"

  After what had happened on Mask Night, Maisie found it astonishing that Emily could be embarrassed about anything. However, experience had taught her that it was she, Maisie, who was peculiar in this respect. Most women were able to close their eyes to just about anything if they really wanted to. But Maisie had no patience with polite euphemisms and tactful phrases. If she wanted to know something she asked. "Well," she said brusquely, "you can't be his wife, can you?"

  The answer took her by surprise. "That's why I came to see you," Emily said. "Do you know anything about getting a marr
iage annulled?"

  "Goodness!" Maisie thought for a moment. "On the grounds that the marriage has never been consummated, I presume?"

  "Yes."

  Maisie nodded. "I do know about it, yes." It was no surprise that Emily had come to her for legal advice. There were no women lawyers, and a man would probably have gone straight to Edward and spilled the beans. Maisie was a campaigner for women's rights and had studied the existing law on marriage and divorce. "You would have to go to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court," she said. "And you would have to prove that Edward is impotent under all circumstances, not just with you."

  Emily's face fell. "Oh, dear," she said. "We know that's not so."

  "Also, the fact that you're not a virgin would be a major problem."

  "Then it's hopeless," Emily said miserably.

  "The only way to do it would be to persuade Edward to cooperate. Do you think he would?"

  Emily brightened. "He might."

  "If he would sign an affidavit saying that he was impotent, and agree not to contest the annulment, your evidence won't be challenged."

  "Then I'll find a way to make him sign." Emily's face took on a stubborn set and Maisie remembered how unexpectedly strong-willed the girl could be.

  "Be discreet. It's against the law for a husband and wife to conspire in this way, and there's a man called the Queen's Proctor who acts as a kind of divorce policeman."

  "Will I be able to marry Robert afterwards?"

  "Yes. Nonconsummation is grounds for a full divorce under church law. It will take about a year for the case to come to court, and then there's a waiting-period of six months before the divorce becomes final, but in the end you will be allowed to remarry."

  "Oh, I hope he'll do it."

  "How does he feel about you?"

  "He hates me."

  "Do you think he'd like to get rid of you?"

  "I don't think he cares, so long as I stay out of his way."

  "And if you didn't stay out of his way?"

  "You mean if I were to make a nuisance of myself?"