London (142 page)

Some people, Eugene knew, felt that sending money out of the country like this was somewhat unpatriotic. But the banker explained: “Money knows no boundaries, Eugene. After all,” he pointed out, “in times past the Lombards and other foreigners lent money to England. Now it’s our turn to be the bankers. And long may it last!” he added.

The counting-house was a merry environment. The six clerks, all under thirty, went out drinking together most evenings. The City was also a great place for practical jokes. One favourite was to go round to the Royal Exchange and offer obviously bogus stocks. Any unwary taker was then hooted with derision by all the onlookers. One offer – Chinese Turnpikes – was so successful it was tried on newcomers regularly. A more serious case that year had been an enterprising rogue’s offer of bonds in a South American country he had invented, called Proesia. Having taken a considerable amount of money, he then vanished. Two unlucky investors had actually been ruined, but Meredith’s traders were young and brutal: they howled with mirth.

But though he was enjoying himself day to day, Eugene never lost sight of his objective. What was he worth? This was the expression one heard every day in the City. How else, in a financial community, could a man be measured? So far, apart from the modest amount he would one day inherit from his parents, the answer was: not much. True, it was early days yet, but there were plenty of stories of ambitious young men working their way into partnership and riches in less than ten years. “Look sharp about you, Eugene,” the other clerks told him. “That’s the name of the game.”

One way to make a little on the side was to dabble in stocks, but with very limited funds he was not sure how to get started. A young stockbroker friend enlightened him. “Futures, Eugene,” he assured him. “I’ll show you how they work.”

The futures market was a lively business. Instead of buying a stock or bond and holding it, a man could agree to buy it at a future date, in effect taking a bet on what its price would be then. But then, if he could find another buyer, he could sell this option to purchase at a higher price, and pocket any profit having put practically no money down at all. This trading of options, which a later age would call derivatives, had first begun back in 1720 at the time of the South Sea Bubble. Although it had since then been made technically illegal, it was carried on every day.

Eugene soon found it was a good way to train himself in the intricacies of taking risks. He kept a little book detailing all his trades, and after a year he was starting not only to show a modest profit but to develop strategies for offsetting one risk against another. “You’re getting the idea,” his friend told him. “It’s just like hedging your bets at the races!” Yet it was this kind of training that gave rise to Eugene’s first feeling of disquiet.

Without particularly meaning to, Eugene realized that he was forming a picture of the Meredith Bank’s activities, too. He began to make a catalogue of the principal people they dealt with and started to assess their businesses. And slowly he found himself coming to a rather uncomfortable conclusion. “I can’t be sure,” he had told Fleming, “but if some of these firms were to fail, I think Meredith could go under, too.”

“But you must assume,” Fleming comforted him, “that the Earl of St James is behind him.” As everyone at the bank knew, it was Meredith’s grandfather who had brought up the old earl and as a debt of gratitude St James had staked Meredith when he started his bank. The old man still liked to drop by from time to time: the business seemed to amuse him. “So I dare say,” concluded Fleming, “he’ll see you through.”

Besides the Bank and the Royal Exchange, there was one other growing place of business in the City. Housed only recently in premises close by the Bank in a narrow enclave called Capel Court, this extended trading room was known as the Stock Exchange and was mainly used by the men dealing in the innumerable issues of government debt. Its inmates had decided they were going to live like perpetual schoolboys. They even had a big stall that sold them cream buns, doughnuts and candies. But perhaps its most surprising feature was number 2 Capel Court, which the great prize-fighter Mendoza ran as a boxing saloon where young brokers and other young bloods could come and take a turn either with each other or with a professional bruiser.

Chancing to pass Mendoza’s with Meredith one day, Eugene saw a curious sight. The young fellow was on the short side but very compact. Stripped to the waist he had a boxing stance like a professional. He had a white flash in his hair and, for some reason, kept a red kerchief round his neck. He had just knocked down a broker and cheerfully asked if anyone else wanted a fight when Meredith hailed him.

“Hello, George! What brings you here?”

“Hello, Meredith!” He grinned. “Fight?”

“No thanks. George, this is Eugene Penny.” He introduced them. “Penny, this is Mr George de Quette.” And Eugene realized that he was looking at the Earl of St James’s grandson.

Everybody had heard of George de Quette. Taking after his sporting grandfather rather than the sour Lord Bocton, he was renowned as the wildest, and jolliest young buck in England. He could ride like a jockey, fight like a turkey-cock and took no account of social rank. As for women, his exploits were legendary. He had been away for two years, sent by his father on a tour of the Continent, from which he had returned quite unchanged. Pulling on a shirt now he stepped out of the ring and chatted with them very pleasantly for several minutes.

It was typical of him that, seeing Penny in the street the following week, George remembered him at once and invited him into a coffee house. They had a delightful conversation, discussing the latest sporting events, but Penny discovered that the young aristocrat’s interests were wider than he had supposed. He had a considerable knowledge of France and Italy and had read quite widely. He even liked poetry.

“Everyone reads Lord Byron, of course. It’s the fashion,” he declared. “But I like Keats as well. People laugh at him because he’s not a gentleman, but did you read his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ last year? It’s beautiful.”

He seemed interested in the bank too, and asked Eugene all about his life there. Eugene even told him about his own trading in futures.

“I suppose banking’s like racing, really,” the young aristocrat remarked. “Study the form. Hedge your bets. I learned all I know from my grandfather. He’s a shrewd old devil, you know.” He smiled. “‘You’ve got to be ruthless.’ That’s what he’d tell me. ‘If something doesn’t work, get out, cut your losses, move on.’ That’s the art of all dealing, isn’t it?”

He was right, of course, Eugene thought. But if Meredith’s Bank got into trouble, he asked himself, would his lordship cut his losses? Just how ruthless, he wondered, would the sporting old Earl of St James turn out to be?

“I think,” said Lord Bocton to Silversleeves, towards the end of that year, “that my father shows promising signs.”

“Of seeing reason, my lord?”

“No, of madness. Indeed,” Lord Bocton continued, “he could go to prison.”

“You would wish that?”

“Certainly not. But we could save him from prison if you declared he was mad.”

“Might not prison serve your purpose, though?”

“Bedlam’s better,” Lord Bocton snapped.

“What exactly,” Silversleeves enquired, “has he done?”

It had disappointed Lord Bocton that his father had given him no great cause for complaint in the last two years. The development of villas in Regent’s Park had been slow and so Lord St James, who could not bear to be still, had instead purchased one of the stately, but far less ruinous terraced houses now lining the park’s eastern side. As for the earl’s dangerous politics, the situation had been calmer recently and with two forward-looking Tories, Canning and Robert Peel, joining the government, there was even a whisper that some modest reform might be desirable. If the earl was going mad, one had to admit that the present circumstances did not let it show to best advantage.

Help had come from St Pancras. In 1822 the select and aristocratic vestry of St Pancras had decided to build a new church that would be truly worthy of them in a suitably fashionable quarter. It was in the Grecian style and the vestry were delighted with it – as well they should be since it was for themselves. “God will not be troubled,” Carpenter pointed out, “by any prayers from poor people in there.” Its cost ran into tens of thousands, so the vestry had to increase the parish taxes. “The ordinary people of St Pancras will pay three times the former rate,” Carpenter protested. And then the Earl of St James, declaring that the whole business was monstrous, had refused to pay.

At first the vestry was embarrassed. They really didn’t want a scandal. But one or two members, who happened to be acquaintances of Lord Bocton, assured their brethren that they could not let this pass. “If he does it, hundreds will follow,” they warned. And three applications having been made to the earl, a warrant was now being considered for his arrest.

“We’ll let them arrest him first,” Bocton said with satisfaction. “Then we’ll save him.”

On a cold December morning Eugene looked up from his desk in some surprise to see a worried-looking George de Quette enter the counting-house and ask for Meredith. A few minutes later, he was summoned into Meredith’s parlour himself.

“Lord St James has been arrested,” Meredith explained quickly. “He’s refused to pay the parish rates.”

“I’d pay them myself,” young George explained, “but my allowance won’t run to it.”

“Couldn’t Lord Bocton help?” Eugene ventured.

The other two looked at each other. “I’m paying,” Meredith said swiftly. “God knows, George, I owe him everything.”

“It has to be carefully done,” George explained. “If he ever found out we’d interfered. . . .”

“We need someone not known. Someone discreet,” said Meredith.

It turned out to be relatively easy. As soon as he made his offer it was clear to Eugene that the senior clerk in the vestry office was extremely relieved.

“You say this money comes from. . . ?”

“Well-wishers in the parish, sir.”

“I did not catch your name.”

“I act for unnamed parties, sir. As you will see, this entirely clears Lord St James’s obligation.”

“Yes. It certainly does.”

“In which event, surely, his arrest. . . .”

“No longer necessary. Quite.”

“But if he refuses to pay?” objected a junior clerk.

“He can refuse to pay till Doomsday,” the senior clerk retorted with asperity, “but if he
has
paid, or someone has, we’ve no claim against him, have we? He can’t go to gaol,” he added with satisfaction, “even if he wants to.” He turned to Eugene again. “I’m much obliged to you, sir – to those you represent. Saved us a deal of embarrassment. All charges dropped. He’ll be out within the hour; I’ll see to it myself.”

Eugene strolled towards Holborn, happy with the way his business had gone. But after he had walked a quarter of a mile, he was stopped by a cry of “Hey! Stop, sir!” followed by the sound of hurrying footsteps behind him, and he turned to see the tall, bottle-green person of Lord Bocton, advancing towards him, accompanied by a lugubrious man with a long nose.

As it happened, Lord Bocton and Silversleeves had just called in at the vestry office to make sure their quarry had been safely trapped before they set about the rest of their plan. Now they caught up.

“Were you in the vestry office back there?” demanded Lord Bocton.

“I may have been,” Eugene replied. “But then again,” he added sweetly, “I may not. Might I ask what business it is of yours?”

“Never mind that, sir! Are you trying to pervert the course of justice?”

“No.” He wasn’t.

“Do you want to be arrested?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“What is your name, sir?”

Eugene allowed a look of delicious puzzlement to steal over his face. “My name?” he frowned. “Why, sir, that’s strange. I can’t remember.” And while they gazed in stupefaction he abruptly turned a corner and vanished into a side street.

For several moments Lord Bocton and Silversleeves stood staring at each other. Finally Silversleeves spoke. “He could not remember his own name, my lord. Now that is a sure sign of insanity.”

“Oh damn your insanity!” cried Bocton, and furiously strode away.

1824

They had gone further than usual that day, since a kindly neighbour had offered them a ride in his cart.

Lucy and Horatio were a well-known pair in their humble little street. The thin, pale five-year-old girl would take the toddler out with her every afternoon if he was well enough, because they told her it would make him stronger. And tiny Horatio, with his shock of white hair, would hold her hand and struggle along gamely beside her.

Their neighbour, having business near the Strand, dropped the two children at Charing Cross and promised to return to pick them up in half an hour. It was a good place for the children to wander. The space before them, which would in due course be enlarged and laid out as Trafalgar Square, was gently sloping. On its southern side were the entrances to the stately streets of Whitehall and Pall Mall. Just visible to the right was the handsome classical façade of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and immediately before them stretched the buildings of the Royal Mews where the king’s horses and carriages were kept.

The summer afternoon was hot and dusty, sweet with the smell of horse dung. Great brown clouds of flies rose with a huge buzz each time a passing cart disturbed them. In the middle of the open space some stall holders had set up a little market; and from the classical pediment of St Martin’s, pigeons and doves would swoop down to pick up scraps from around the stalls. Several street vendors moved about, crying their wares. As the two children wandered contentedly about their attention was caught by one young woman with a basket and the gentle cry – “Lavender! Buy my lavender!” – which somehow sounded to Lucy more haunting than the rest. The woman came over and offered them a sprig, and when Lucy explained that she hadn’t any money, she laughed and told her to take it all the same. The smell of it was wonderful and Lucy asked the girl where it came from.