Stone's Fall (20 page)

“I think I told you that John was preoccupied in the last few months of his life. One of the reasons was this. He always kept a careful eye on his businesses; it was his duty, he believed, to ensure that they were run well. Obviously, he could not watch everything. For this he had managers, on whom he relied to tell him what was happening and to implement his wishes. At the same time, he would often make visits to various plants and factories, to see for himself, so he could take the temperature, as he called it. He loved these trips. You think of him, no doubt, as a financier, a man who sat far away from everything, dealing with the abstractions of capital. He wasn’t like that at all. What he liked was putting it into operation, in the shipyards and the foundries and the engineering plants. He liked to see how a decision on his part could galvanise thousands of people into action. He loved his factories and, although you would no doubt not believe it, he loved the people who worked in them. The engineers, the fitters, the builders, the skilled workmen. He valued them far more than the people of his own society. Jenny the anarchist hates him; he was the worst sort of capitalist because he believed it was more than mere exploitation. He was proud of paying more than his competitors, proud of providing decent accommodation for those he employed.

“Last October, he went up to the shipyard in Northumberland and stayed for nearly a week. He often did this; every year I think he spent about ten weeks away, going round one plant or another. Sometimes there was a good reason; a huge decision on investment, problems with a contract, or something like that. Other times there was no reason at all. He simply wanted to be there, and smell the smell, as he put it. He spent as much time on the factory floor as he did in the offices, spent time talking to the men, and stood, watching. He believed you could tell the health of a company by the way it looked and felt. You didn’t need to see the books.”

“Did you ever go with him?”

“Not often. But then he didn’t often come with me on my trips either. Each of us to our own particular universe. He was happy in his, I in mine. There were somethings we could not share. And he needed to be without distractions. He would say that the factories would talk to him, and he had to listen. Sometimes, they would say one thing, the accounts another. Then he would become curious, and stay until he was satisfied. This time he came back perplexed. All had been well, he said. The yard was happy, the operations were smoothly run. They had recently finished a gigantic project to dig out a new dock which involved dredging a large part of the river itself so ships could be launched more easily. The cost of dreadnoughts is so astounding that I was always amazed by his ability to contemplate it. It didn’t bother John at all. For him, large sums of money were just small sums, with more noughts on the end. Something was either a wise investment or not. Whether it was for one thousand pounds or one million did not alter the principle.

“All was well. He was satisfied. Apart from one small thing. One of the accounting clerks had been dismissed for peculation. A small amount of money, nothing more than twenty pounds, completely insignificant. But he had been a young man, full of promise, who had been earmarked by one of the managers as someone who could be trained up and given a great deal of responsibility in years to come. The manager felt to blame, that his assessment of the young man’s character had been at fault. He had decided not to bring charges, but mentioned it to my husband.

“Most people in John’s position, I am sure, would not have bothered about it. All companies mislay a certain amount of money; it is considered inevitable. John thought differently. He had spent years developing his organisation and wanted to achieve perfection. It did not matter to him whether it was twenty pounds or twenty thousand or even two shillings; it should not have been possible, and if twenty pounds could disappear, maybe twenty thousand could too.

“So he looked further and came to the conclusion that this was not the only time such a thing had happened, although he could not discover many details. But he found out where they were going to, an address in East London which only a small amount of investigation revealed was occupied by this man known as Jan the Builder.

“What infuriated John was that he could not discover how these payments were being authorised. The man responsible clammed up and refused to say anything at all. So he decided to tackle the problem from the other end. And that was where I came in.”

“Yes,” I said. We had now got to the point—the only point, if truth be known, which interested me. Embezzlement and failures in accountancy procedures were all very well, but I was still fixated on the eyes of Jenny the Red, staring icily in a meeting hall. “Why did you come in?”

“Perfectly simple. I offered, and he accepted my offer. Not willingly or readily, but I am quite persuasive. You find it all perplexing, no doubt. That is because you know nothing of me apart from what you see. You think of me as a pampered lady, used to gliding through a ball or a dinner party, but quite unfitted for real life. Too delicate and refined, shocked even at the vulgarity of a middle-class hotel. Is that correct?”

I tried to protest and say nothing of the sort but, in essence, it was an accurate summary.

“As I say, you know nothing of me. I have a long name of impeccable lineage but that covers a multitude of things. Hungarian aristocrats are not necessarily wealthy or pampered. I was neither. John could not send one of his people to get close to this group; they would have been spotted easily. These payments were coming from inside his companies, and so he felt unwilling to trust anyone connected with them. He needed someone who could be convincing, and whom he could trust. He did not for a moment think of using me.

“I decided to do it. I go to Baden for the waters every autumn—indulgent of me, I know, but I find it pleasant to talk German again—and when I was there I began to read about anarchism and Marxism and revolutionary politics—very interesting, by the way. Then I borrowed the identity of a German revolutionary whom the German police had executed in secret. An accidental fall down the stairs. It was convenient for them—and lucrative—to let it be known that she had been released and had gone into exile. Xanthos organised it for me; I suppose money changed hands in his usual fashion. I studied the clothes and the mannerisms, the way of talking. I went on to Hamburg, then travelled back on a tramp steamer to London. I arrived as Jenny the Red, brutal, uncompromising, more ardent than most men. I got to know these people and they slowly began to trust me in a way they would never have done a man, or someone English. No one John could have found would have been anywhere near as convincing.”

I gaped, at her story and the pride with which she told it. It was so astounding it was ridiculous. It was all very well to lay claim to a hard and poor childhood, with nothing but a book of genealogy to burn for winter warmth, but I still did not easily credit it.

“Your husband allowed you to do this?”

“No. He expressly forbade it.”

“So…”

“Nobody gives me orders, Mr. Braddock,” she said, sounding not a little like Jenny the Red. “Certainly not John. When I proposed the idea, it was only a lighthearted suggestion. His opposition made me determined to see if it could be done. We were quite often apart; an absence of a couple of months was quite simple. I was established in my new identity well before he even discovered that I had gone against his wishes and, as I had been successful and was determined to continue whatever he said, there wasn’t a great deal he could do except accept my help.”

“But why did you want to?”

She shrugged. “Because.”

“Because what?”

“I wanted to. Perhaps I was a little bored. I will get little sympathy from you if I say that the life I lead has its dull side.”

“None at all.”

“But it does, nonetheless. Most of the people I know are content to while away their lives playing bridge and going to house parties. I have little taste for such things, which is why I have to go to Paris or Italy for stimulation. John generally understood and let me come and go as I pleased. He let me do this for him, however reluctantly, because he trusted me and knew he could not stop me. I was never really able to do much to help him, beyond the things you do as a wife.”

I shook my head, to try and knock all the contradictory thoughts out of it so we could get on. So, Elizabeth, Lady Ravenscliff, née Countess Elizabeth Hadik-Barkoczy von Futak uns Szala, transformed herself into Jenny the Red, revolutionary anarchist of Frankfurt. Repeat that sentence and see how easily you believe it. Then you will grasp my difficulties.

“Let us say, just for a moment, that I find all this credible,” I said, “which I don’t. What did you discover?”

“I discovered, in brief,” she said, evidently amused, “that Jan the Builder was part of this group which called itself the International Brotherhood of Socialists, who are, in fact, little more than criminals. Fanatical, of course; they are deeply embittered about the fate of their country, which doesn’t exist at the moment. But they use their anger to justify whatever they want to do, and that includes murder, robbery and extortion. They are violent, suspicious and, for the most part, not very intelligent. Only Jan is clever, but he is also the most violent of them all. He mixes his ardour with cunning and ruthlessness. He is quite a magnetic character. Women fall all over him.”

“Including Jenny?”

“That is not any of your business,” she said quietly. “You will have to believe whatever you think is most likely.”

I blushed to the top of my ears with embarrassment. The woman had successfully thrown me into turmoil yet again. She could do it so easily, and there was nothing I could do to defend myself. I even think I must have derived some pleasure from being so tormented; certainly I put myself into that position often enough.

“What else?” I asked.

“I discovered that the money had been coming through regularly, that it was for a reason, and as long as it kept on arriving, they were content not to launch any expropriations. That is to say, they did not bother themselves with robbing jewellers’ shops, or murdering people. They do, however, have a formidable stock of weapons. I have been to target practise with them on Romney Marshes.”

“Pheasant?” I said hopefully.

“No. People. Not real ones, though.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed. Is this blackmail? Payments to stop them launching some operation against one of your husband’s companies?”

“I have not yet found out. Only Jan knows and he will not say. I have tried to persuade him, but I risk his suspicion if I press too hard. That is why I still go, despite John’s death. I believe I am getting close to discovering what all this is about, and having come so far, I will not give up now.”

I tried, but failed, to erase from my mind all thoughts of how she might try to persuade him. And I confess here—I am deeply ashamed—that I found those thoughts irresistible, exciting, rather than disgusting as they should be. Nor did I find I could reject them as absurd as easily as I should.

“That was my contribution, and John was burrowing into the finances to figure out who was sending the money. He had not told anyone else. That was his worry.”

“What do you mean?”

“He thought he had created a monster. That his companies had come to life, and were acting on their own. That they no longer responded to his orders, but followed their own instincts. That was why he told no one. He did not know who he could tell.”

“I think he may have discovered what it was all about,” I replied. “He was due to have a meeting with Xanthos about it. But he died instead.”

“I only saw him briefly, for a few hours when he came back, and we didn’t have time to talk very much. I was away for the weekend. At the Rothschilds’ at Waddesdon. Charming people. Do you know them? They were not John’s bankers, but they are such congenial company. You’d like them.”

She’d done it again. As fast as I settled into talking to one person, she shifted and became someone else. From the grieving widow, bored with English mores, to the critical, snobbish woman who had been so cruel to Mrs. Vincotti, to Jenny the anarchist, to the lustful woman who had driven me to a pitch of frustration, and now to the society gadabout. Do you know Natty Rothschild, darling? Such a sweet man… Of course I didn’t know the Rothschilds, and I was sure I wouldn’t find them charming at all. I felt as though I was talking to an actress who was playing several roles at the same time, all from different plays.

I glared at her; it was the best I could manage, as an explanation for the feelings behind it would have taken too long, and said too much. Besides, I’m sure she knew exactly what I was feeling.

“I think the obvious thing to do is to go to Northumberland myself and see if I can discover what he did. I will go tomorrow. It is something I can do well, and it will be pleasant to feel competent for once.”

“Do you want me to come as well?” she asked.

Great fantasies swept through my mind at the very idea and, for the first time, I was ready for them. I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not.”

CHAPTER
22

I went the next evening, on the night sleeper to Newcastle, leaving from King’s Cross at ten-fifteen. I had never been on a sleeper before, and I found myself childishly excited by the adventure. Not only that, I went first-class; money was no object so I thought I would indulge myself. My expenses were being met, and I now had (so the bank had informed me in a handwritten letter) £36 14s 6d in my account. I was tired, which perversely spoiled the occasion; I would gladly have stayed up all night in the crisp linen sheets, listening to the rattle of the wheels and seeing the sparks from the chimney fly past the window in the darkness like a private fireworks display. It was a two-berth compartment—I was not sufficiently used to my new status to buy myself a single—and my travelling companion was a solicitor from Berwick, a middle-aged man with a wife and four children, whose father, and father’s father, had been solicitors in Berwick before him. We talked over the brandy that the Great Northern provided before bedtime, served on a mahogany tray brought round by the porter, and I found his conversation soothing and congenial.

He was a happy man, was Mr. Jordan, who had created an entire universe of society in his little town on the edge of the country. On other occasions I might have found him dull, I suppose; his life of bridge and supper parties would never have suited me. But I took comfort in the fact that he liked it; and found my liking was tinged with longing. I feared for Mr. Jordan; I felt that the anarchists and the Ravenscliffs would succeed in sweeping all away, sooner or later, and the world would be the poorer for its loss. And then I slept, the sort of sleep which is entirely perfect. It was glorious and I remember thinking as I was in the deepest part of my unconsciousness that if death bore any resemblance to this, then there was nothing to fear at all.

When I woke up, the sun was shining weakly, and the porter of the night before—freshly shaved and tidy—was gently prodding me. “Morning tea, sir? Toast? Your newspaper? Hot water is on the shelf waiting for you. There’s no hurry at all, sir, but if you could be up and about in an hour…”

My travelling companion had already gone, so I had the compartment to myself, and I made best use of it. The sleeping car had been uncoupled and pushed into a siding, where it was quiet except for the twittering of the birds and the occasional noise of a steam train passing. It was a lovely day, all the better for the fact that what I was doing there stayed out of my mind completely as I drank my tea, read the newspaper, shaved and dressed in the leisurely fashion I decided that men of means must always employ.

I tipped the porter generously then walked peacefully out of the station, and into the middle of Newcastle. The air seemed heavier; the smell of coal hung in the air in a way I had not noticed in the compartment. The buildings were black with decades of soot from the air, every single one of them, and the architecture was grim and foreboding. There was none of the bright stucco of west London, grimy though that often was, few trees, and even fewer people on the streets. Only the deliverymen and a few people on bicycles were to be seen. Newcastle was a working town, a workingman’s town, and it was currently at work. I looked at the scene for a few moments, my bag in my hand, and decided there was no great rush. I was a man of business. That was why I was dressed in my best suit, my funeral and wedding suit, which I had changed into before I left. It was damnedly uncomfortable, but that served a purpose. It reminded me of my task and my role.

I behaved as I thought I should behave, and walked into the Royal Station Hotel just over the way and took a room for the night. Then spent the next hour unpacking and lying on the bed, wallowing in the opulence and comfort. I had never stayed in a hotel before. Not a proper hotel like this one. On the rare occasions I had travelled I had stayed in boardinghouses which rented rooms by the night, the sorts of place which were always cheap, sometimes clean and generally run by people like my own landlady in London. This was altogether different, and I took my time to get used to the room and to the lobby, then spied out the restaurant. It wasn’t that hard, I decided. If Elizabeth could pretend to be a German anarchist, I could masquerade as a member of the professional middle classes for a few hours.

Then I was ready. I asked for a cab to be summoned, and directed it to the Beswick plant, where I was to meet Mr. Williams, the general manager. I will sketch over most of my conversations, as they were not of great significance. I had sent a telegram the day before, saying I had been retained by the executors of the Ravenscliff estate to sort out certain matters regarding the will. I let it be thought that I was a lawyer, as it would have been far too easy to discover my ignorance had I pretended to be anything else. Even with this disguise there were moments of awkwardness, as Mr. Williams knew very much more about company law than I did. He was a grim, tight little man at first sight, and did not relish his time being wasted. Only as our conversation progressed did I realise there was very much more to him. He was an interesting character, in fact, and his initial caution derived principally from the fact that he detested people like me, or rather people like I was supposed to be. Londoners. Moneymen. Lawyers. With no understanding of industry and no sympathy for it. Williams had more in common with the artisans in his yards than he had with the bankers of the City, although both gave him grief. He was an intermediary, beset on all sides.

I won him over eventually. I confessed that I knew nothing of the City whatsoever, told him of my own antecedents surrounded by the bicycle shops of the Midlands, made myself out as much as possible to be more like him than the bankers of his imagination and experience. And eventually he relaxed, and began to talk more freely. “Why are you here, exactly?”

I did my best to look a touch shamefaced. “It is completely foolish,” I said. “But the law requires that the executors confirm the existence of assets in the estate. That is, if the deceased leaves a pair of cufflinks to a friend, then the executor must confirm the existence of those cufflinks. I am here merely to confirm that this shipyard exists. I take it that it does? It is not a figment of the imagination? We are not making some error here?”

Mr. Williams smiled. “It does. And, as the law is a demanding beast, I will show it to you, if you wish.”

“I would like that very much,” I said with enthusiasm. “I would be fascinated.”

He pulled out his watch and glanced at it, then sighed like a man who can see his day being wasted and stood up. “Come along then. I normally do my rounds at lunchtime, but there is no reason why I should not vary my routine a little.”

“Your rounds?” I asked as we left the office, Williams having told his clerks where he was going. “You sound like a surgeon.”

“It is the same idea, in some ways,” he replied. “It is important to be seen, and to take the mood of the place. We have to do more and more of that, as so many of our people now join unions.”

“Does that annoy you?”

He shrugged. “If I were them, I’d join a union,” he said, “even though it makes my life more complicated. But I have always done this. His Lordship thinks—thought, I should say—that it is important.”

“Did you know him well?” I asked. “I never met him. He sounds an interesting man.”

“He was very much more than that,” Williams said, “but he will never be recognised as such. Actresses are better known than men of industry, even though the latter generate the wealth which keeps us from poverty.”

“So what was so great about him?”

Williams looked at me thoughtfully, then said, “Come this way.”

He took me through a doorway, along a corridor, then up a flight of stairs, then another, and another, and another. He flitted up nimbly enough, I puffed behind in the dark, wondering where we were going, until he reached another door, opened it and stepped out into the bright sunlight. “This is what was so great about him,” he said as I stepped through.

It was breathtaking, a sight such as I had never seen before, never even imagined. I knew, all schoolboys knew, about British industry. How it led the world. We knew about the rise of the factory, and mass production. Of iron mills and cotton mills and railways. And daily we saw the results: Sheffield steel, railway engines from Carlisle, ships built in dozens of yards all around the country. We saw the iron girders of bridges, visited the Crystal Palace and knew all about the other marvels of the age. How such things came to be was rarely taught to people like me. They merely existed. I had only ever seen the outside of factories, and there were few enough of those in London, and certainly nothing of any great scale. Even in my hometown the biggest employer, the Starley Meteor Works, only had a couple of hundred people.

I stared in utter amazement, and with emotions verging on awe. The yard was gigantic, so big you could not see the end of it, whichever way you turned, it was simply swallowed up in the haze of sunlight through smoke. A vast mass of machinery, cranes, yards, buildings, storage areas, assembly sheds, offices, stretching out before my eyes in every direction. Plumes of thick black smoke rose from a dozen chimneys, the clanking, thudding, scraping and screeching of machinery came from different parts of the scene. It seemed chaotic, even diabolical, the way the landscape had disappeared under the hand of man, but there was also something extraordinarily beautiful in the intricacy, the blocks of brick buildings set against the tin roofs and rusting girders and the dark brown of the river, faintly in view to the east. And there was not a tree, not a bird, not even a patch of grass, anywhere to be seen. Nature had been abolished.

“This is the Beswick Shipyard,” Williams said. “The creation of Lord Ravenscliff, more than anyone else. It is only one part of his interests; he reproduced factories like this across the country, and across Europe, although this is by far the biggest. What you see is not a factory, it is a sequence of factories, each one carefully linked to the other parts, and this, in turn, is linked to the other sites across the Continent. It is the most complex, elaborate structure that mankind has ever constructed.”

“And you run it all?” I asked, genuinely impressed.

“I run this plant.”

“How? I mean, how can one person have the slightest idea what is going on in that—chaos?”

He smiled. “That is where Ravenscliff was a genius. He developed a way of controlling all this, and not just this, but all of his factories, so that any moment you can find out what is going on, where it is happening. So that chaos, as you call it, can be tamed and the hidden patterns and movements of men, and machinery and capital and raw material, can be forced to act in a way which is efficient and effective.”

“Elegant?” I suggested.

“That is not a word a businessman often uses, but yes, it is elegant, if you wish. Not many people can, or want to, understand it, but I would even say it has a sort of beauty to it, when it works well.”

“And the reason for all of this is…”

Mr. Williams pointed, out to the east towards a dark grey shape. “Can you see that there?”

“Vaguely. What is it?”

“That is HMS
Anson.
A Dreadnought, 23,000 tons. Three million different parts are needed for that ship to do its job. Every one must work perfectly. Every one has to be conceived, designed, fabricated and assembled into its correct place so that the ship will perform properly. It must sail in the tropics and in the Arctic. It must be able to fire its guns under all conditions. It must be ready for full speed at a few hours’ notice, capable of sailing for months at a time with no repairs. And all of those pieces have to be gathered together and put in place on time, and within budget. That is the point of all this. Would you like to see it?”

Williams led me down the stairs and across a cobbled road to what seemed very like a cab stand. “The plant is three miles long and two miles deep,” he said as we got in the back of a horse-drawn buggy that was waiting there. “I can’t waste my time walking around, so we have this system of carriages around the place. The horses are used to the noise.”

And we clattered off. It was like going through a city, but a very strange city, with no shops, few people walking about, and no women. Everyone was dressed in working overalls. Instead of houses, there were warehouses, vast and windowless; blocks of offices, equally grim in appearance, and other mysterious buildings which Mr. Williams pointed out as we passed. “That’s Foundry No. One,” he said, “where the plate is made… the Gun Works, where the cannon are assembled…” And so we went on, the old horse clopping its way, with me in the back listening to Mr. Williams’s explanations, and veering wildly between elation at what man could achieve and a certain feeling of gloom at the thought of the power of this vast organisation.

“And this,” Mr. Williams said with the slightest quaver in his voice as we turned yet another corner, “is the reason for all of it.”

Many people have seen a dreadnought, far out to sea, or even in dock. They are impressive, breathtaking sights, even then. But only if you see one close up, out of the water, do you get any real sense of how enormous it is, for then all that is normally concealed, the gigantic bulk of the ship that is under the waterline, becomes visible. It went up, and up and up, until I thought its very top was lost in the clouds. From end to end it was so vast that the prow could not be seen at all; it disappeared in the haze of smoke pumped out by the factory chimneys. I had no idea how advanced the building work was; it looked as though it would take years before it was ready and even then I could not easily imagine how anyone expected such a thing actually to float, let alone move.

Mr. Williams laughed when I asked. “We launch in ten days’ time,” he said. “From laying down the keel to final fitting out should take twelve months. We are now eight months in and making good time, I’m glad to say. Every day we run over costs us £1,100 in lost profits. Well? What do you think?”

I shook my head. I truly believe it was one of the most remarkable moments of my life, to be confronted in this way with full proof of man’s audacity and invention. How anyone even dared to contemplate building such a thing was quite beyond my powers to imagine. And then I saw the people, the army of tiny figures scurrying up and down the scaffolding, shouting at the cranemen as gigantic squares of armour plate were lifted up, the riveters methodically pounding rivet after rivet through the holes already made, the supervisors and the electricians and the plumbers taking a break after their labours. Many hundreds of men, machines ranging from the huge hydraulic cranes to the smallest of screwdrivers, all working together, all apparently knowing what they were to do and when they were to do it. All to produce this beast, which had started out on its long route to the high seas in a decision taken by Ravenscliff months or years before. He spoke, and it was done; thousands of men, millions of pounds reacted to his decision, and were still following his orders, even after his death.