The Strode Venturer Read online

  It was a boardroom picture, head and shoulders painted against a symbolic background of ships seen through a window. He wore a stiff collar very high against the throat and his thin, almost ascetic face looked lined, the eyes tired. There was no date given, just the name—Sir Reginald Bailey.

  I called down to the caretaker and asked him how long he’d been working here. Forty-one years, he said, and I wondered whether he’d known my father. I was still shocked at finding his portrait here, stuck on the wall like a trophy. There were other portraits above me. Were they also of men whose companies Strode had swallowed in the great depression of the thirties? “I come ’ere when Strode ’Ouse was new-built,” the old man said. He was leaning on his broom, staring up at me, curious now.

  “You knew Henry Strode, then?”

  “The Ol’ Man? ’Course I knew the Ol’ Man. There wasn’t nobody in Strode ’Ouse didn’t know ’im. ’Ere every morning punctuool at eight o’clock, ’e was, right up to the day he died. ’E ’ad a stroke and died in ’arness sitting at ’is desk up there on the first floor under the big pitcher of the s.s. Henry Strode. That was the biggest ship we ever built; the ’ole staff, every man jack o’ us, taken in a special train up to Glasgow to see her launched. Mr. Strode, ’e was like that—did things in style.” He shook his head and gazed around him as though the place were suddenly strange to him. “Things is different now. Never bin the same since the Ol’ Man died. But then we don’t breed men like ’im any more.” He hesitated, squinting up at me. “You connected wiv the family, sir? I didn’t ought to talk like this, but when you’ve lived through the great days—well, it’s me age, yer see. I’ll be sixty-five next year and then I’ll ’ave the pension.” He was still staring at me, his curiosity mounting. “You don’t look like a City gent, if yer don’t mind my saying so.”

  “No, I’m not.” I moved back down the stairs, not wanting to look any more at my father captive on that wall. “Did you ever meet Sir Reginald Bailey?”

  “Once.” He gave me a sidelong glance, his head at an angle, and I know he was comparing me with the picture. “Nineteen thirty-one, it was. I was doorman then. Livery, top ’at an’ all. Like I say, we did things in style then and the Ol’ Man, ’e puts on a lunch for Sir Reginald …” But then he stopped as though he knew he was on delicate ground. “This was one of the first City ’ouses to ’ave a directors’ dining-room,” he added lamely, and he veered away from the subject, muttering about the great days being gone. “Seventy-three ships we ’ad at one time, vessels sailing all over the world an’ this place a ’ive of activity wiv clerks dashing in an’ out wiv bills an’ things an’ captins coming for orders an’ half the bankers of the City ’ere to lunch an’ do business. That room there—” He nodded to the ornate bronze doors to the left of the entrance. “That was the counting ’ouse as you might say. Millions, literally millions, ’ave gone through that door. Now the room’s empty an’ all we got left they tell me is seventeen ships. You want to see the old counting ’ouse? Got some nice pitchers. The Ol’ Man, ’e ’ad a pitcher painted for every vessel ’e ’ad built.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll come back later,” I said and I gave him half a crown and asked him to have a drink on me. “What’s your name?”

  “Billings, sir. Any time you want ter know anything about the old days just come an’ ask me.”

  I thanked him and went out into the street where the traffic had thickened, piling up against the Gracechurch Street-Bishopsgate crossing in an almost solid block. I found a self-service café by Leadenhall Market and had some breakfast whilst I thought it out. But I knew the answer already. It wasn’t just a matter of having met Strode. It was the sense of continuity, of following in my father’s footsteps. And later perhaps—who knows? I was dreaming, dreaming of recovering what my father had lost, thinking of the little church overlooking the sea and the plaque my mother had had erected on the north wall. They had been married in that church and four years ago I had stood in the graveyard with the wind blowing in my hair and the rain on my face as they committed her to the earth. And afterwards I had gone inside and looked at that plaque: To the Memory of Reginald Horace Bailey who died at sea 21st December 1931. What he had built other men coveted. It was the first time I had seen it and I pictured her crying over the paper as she wrote that strange line. She’d cried a lot after his death. And now here I was, her only son, going to ask Strode’s son a favour. I hoped she’d understand. Pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford and anyway I’d liked Strode. Enough at any rate not to reveal my connection with the old Bailey Oriental Line.

  It was in the late autumn of 1955 I’d met him, sat talking with him all one night, about almost everything from birth to death and what happened afterwards. He was that sort of man. Now that his father was dead he’d presumably be on the board. I hoped it hadn’t changed him. Hoped, too, that the few hours we’d spent in each other’s company on Abu Musa would have made as much of an impression on him as they had on me.

  But when I returned to Strode House shortly after ten and asked for Mr. Strode, the commissionaire said, “Which one? There’s five of them work here.”

  I hadn’t expected that and the trouble was I didn’t know his Christian name. “The one I want is the son of Henry Strode, the founder.” But even that wasn’t sufficient to identify him. There were apparently two sons, whereas I had got the impression that he was the only one. “There’s Mr. Henry Strode,” the commissionaire said. “He’s the chairman and managing director of Strode & Company. And then there’s his younger brother, Mr. George Strode. He manages Strode Orient.” I chose the latter since he ran the ships and was passed on to his assistant, a small, pale man with narrow eyes and sandy hair who sat at a corner desk in a huge office on the first floor. “I’m afraid Mr. Strode isn’t in to-day,” he snapped at me like a dog that’s not sure of himself. The dark panelled walls were full of pictures of ships and the portrait of a heavily-built, vital old man hung over the fireplace. “You haven’t an appointment, have you? He never makes appointments for Thursdays.”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t an appointment. But I wrote to him.”

  “He didn’t mention it.” He was frowning nervously. “Mr. Geoffrey Bailey you said? I haven’t seen any letter.”

  “I wrote from Singapore. But perhaps it went to his brother.” And I explained about not knowing his Christian name and how we’d met in the Persian Gulf.

  He shook his head. “Mr. Strode has never been in the Persian Gulf.”

  “Then it must be his brother.”

  “I don’t think so.” He was puzzled now. “I’m quite certain Mr. Henry Strode hasn’t been in the Persian Gulf either.”

  “If I could have a word with Henry Strode then …”

  “I’m sorry. He’s never in on Thursdays. Neither of them are. It’s their day for hunting.” He said it almost with malice as though he disliked his employer. “You could see John Strode, if you like. He’s Mr. Henry’s son.”

  But that was no good. “I’ll come back to-morrow, then.”

  He shook his head firmly. “To-morrow’s the annual general meeting. He couldn’t possibly see you to-morrow.” He bit his lip, strangely agitated. “Would Monday do? I think Monday would be all right.” He glanced at a diary. “Three o’clock. It’s a personal matter, presumably?”

  “Yes, personal,” I said and left it at that, unwilling to explain the purpose of my visit to this terrified little clerk. “Just find the letter I wrote from Singapore, will you, and let Mr. Strode see it. That explains everything.” And I added as I went to the door, “The secretary probably has it since he acknowledged it.”

  “The secretary.” He seemed suddenly confused. “If it’s Mr. Whimbrill you want, then I’m sure …”

  “No, no,” I said. “I’ll come back on Monday.” And I went out and closed the door, wondering what sort of man George Strode was that his assistant should appear to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  Remember
ing what Billings had said about the portraits in the boardroom I walked past the head of the stairs and opened the first door I came to. A young man sat alone at a big desk, smoking and staring out of the window. I asked him where the boardroom was and he told me in a bored voice that it was the second door on the right. It proved to be no bigger than the office I had just left, but the pictures on the panelling were all portraits. The same face looked down from the position of honour over the big stone fireplace—a head and shoulders this time, the hair grizzled instead of white, the eyes more vital, the mouth less sour, but still the same heavy, fleshy face, the sense of thrust and power. The pictures I had come to see were on the right and left of this portrait. Underneath were the names Henry Strode and George Strode. The faces had something of the same heaviness, but that was all; they had inherited none of the ebullient vitality, the strength, the personality of their father. And neither of them was the man I had met in the Persian Gulf clad like the nakauda of the dhow on which he was travelling.

  I went back to the central portrait, trying to see in it a resemblance to the Strode I knew. But he had been small and wiry, his face thin, almost drawn, and burned black by the sun, the hair black, too, and the ears very pointed so that he had an almost faunlike quality. This had been accentuated when he smiled, which he had done often, causing little lines to run away from the corners of eyes and mouth. My memory of him was blurred by time, but I thought, looking up at that portrait, that the only thing he shared with his father was the same powerful impression of vitality, that and something in the eyes, a sort of zest. Or rather it had been zest in the case of the man I knew—zest for life and a strange excitement; here I thought it looked more like greed.

  I was thinking of my father again as I went down the stairs, of what he must have gone through, everything he had worked for smashed by that ruthless man whose face I had now seen for the first time. He had died shortly afterwards. It hadn’t meant anything much to me at the time for I was at Dartmouth busy coping with the problem of fitting myself into a new life. It was only when I got home and saw my mother suddenly turned grey in a matter of months that I felt the impact of it. She had moved to Sheilhaugh, a little farmhouse on the Scottish border that had originally belonged to her family, and was busying herself keeping chickens … “Everything all right, sir?” It was the commissionaire, polite and friendly.

  “Yes. Yes, thanks.” And then on the spur of the moment, not thinking what I planned to do, I asked him where the annual general meeting would be held.

  “Right here, sir.” He nodded to the bronze doors on the right of the entrance.

  “What time?”

  “Noon to-morrow. You’re a shareholder, are you, sir?”

  “Yes, I am.” I hesitated. “You’ve been here some time I take it?”

  “Over ten years.”

  “Then perhaps you could tell me whether there’s another son—a son of the founder who doesn’t work here.”

  For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he said, “Well, it’s not for me to discuss the family’s affairs, but I believe there was a son by the Old Man’s second marriage. It’s just gossip, you know. I’ve never met him and I don’t think anybody else has. Was he the one you wanted to see?”

  “Do you know his name?”

  But he shook his head. “No, only that he’s … well, a bit of a rolling stone, if you see what I mean.”

  So that was it and the Strode I’d met was probably still wandering around the world. Feeling suddenly tired I went out again into Leadenhall Street, to the throb of buses and heavy lorries pumping diesel fumes into the narrow gut between the grubby buildings. I would like to have gone back to the hotel and had a bath, perhaps a short sleep, but it was a long way and there was at least one other man I knew in the City, a stockbroker in Copthall Court. The last time I had seen him had been at a party in Harwich Town Hall the night before the North Sea Race. I’d been crewing in one of the R.N.S.A. boats; he’d been racing his own yacht. That had been nearly five years ago.

  I went down Bishopsgate and then turned left into Threadneedle Street, a gleam of watery sunlight softening the façade of the Bank of England. All about me were buildings that seemed to date from the massive Victorian age of greatness, richly ornate, stolid buildings grimed with dirt, their interiors permanently lit by artificial light. The people in the streets, mostly men wearing dark suits, some with bowler hats, looked pale and ill, like busy termites coming out of dark holes in the grey slabs of the buildings. And when I came to Throgmorton Street and the Stock Exchange, the City seemed to swallow me, the narrow street closing in above my head. A top-hatted broker passed me, his pallid features a dyspeptic grey, his mouth a tight line. Youths jostled each other as they scurried hatless from place to place. And on every face, it seemed to me, there was a strange lack of human feeling as though the concentration on finance had bitten deep into all their souls. It was an alien world, far more alien to me than a foreign port.

  Copthall Court was through an archway opposite the Stock Exchange and in a building half-way down it I found the firm I wanted listed among about a hundred others on a great board opposite the lift. Their offices were on the sixth floor, a group of poky little cubby-holes looking out on to the blank wall of the neighbouring building. To my surprise George Latham seemed as bronzed and as fit as when I had last seen him. What is more he recognized me at once. “Come in, dear boy. Come in.” He took me into his office which he shared with two of his partners and an Exchange Telegraph tape machine that tickered away erratically. “Excuse the mess.” There was barely room to move in the litter of desks and papers. “Only got back the other day. Been in the Caribbean and now I’m trying to catch up.” He was a big bull of a man, broad-shouldered, with a massive square-jawed head. “Well now, what can I do for you? No good asking me what to buy. I don’t know. Market should have gone to hell with the collapse of the Common Market talks. But it hasn’t, God knows why.”

  “I want your advice about some Strode Orient shares I hold.”

  At that he raised his eyes heavenwards and heaved a sigh. “For God’s sake, man. What price did you pay?” And when I told him I’d inherited them from my mother who’d been given them in 1940 he seemed relieved. “I thought for a moment you’d been caught when they were run up to over five shillings a couple of months or so back. A takeover rumour, but nothing came of it. Strode & Company blocked it. They own about forty-five per cent of the shares.” He reached for The Financial Times and checked down the list of quotations. “They’re now about two bob nominal. Just a moment. I’ll get the Ex Tel card.” He went to a filing cabinet and came back with a card that gave all the details of the company. “Yes, I remember now. Some slick outfit thought they’d make a killing. The company owns seventeen vessels standing in the balance sheet at just over a million. The scrap value alone must be all of that and even in the present depressed state of shipping there’d be a market for the five newer vessels. Say a million and a half for them and half a million for the rest. That’s two million plus half a million cash. The capital is four and a half million in one pound shares which means that at five bob a share, which was what these boys were offering, they would have had the whole boiling for little more than a million.”

  “They offered me ten shillings a share,” I said.

  “And you didn’t take it?”

  I told him the whole story then, producing from my pocket the company’s photostat copy of the letter of acceptance my mother had signed. He read it through and then shook his head. “I can’t advise you on this and I doubt whether your solicitors could either. You’d need to take counsel’s opinion to find out whether it really was binding on you as the present owner of the shares. How many do you hold?”

  “Twenty thousand.”

  “Well, I can tell you this: you put twenty thousand on the market as it is at present and you wouldn’t get anywhere near two bob. Probably you wouldn’t get an offer. Still, it might be worth spendin
g fifty quid for an opinion—just in case the boys who were after the company become active again. You never know. They may find a way of getting control. Let’s see what the market thinks.” He reached for the telephone and in two minutes had the answer. “Well now, this is interesting. Apparently they’ve switched their campaign from Strode Orient to the parent outfit, Strode & Company. The jobbers say they can’t hope to get control through the market. As with Strode Orient, the public holds less than fifty per cent of the capital, but they’ve pushed the shares up from around eight shillings to nine shillings and sixpence in the past month so it looks as though some of the family may have sold out. Not that it helps you.” He sat back in his chair, swivelling it round to face me. “Pity your mother couldn’t have sold her shares when old Henry Strode was alive. I remember when I first started in as a stockbroker after the war Strode Orient were virtually a blue chip and stood at over four pounds, which meant that at that time her holding was worth all of eighty thousand.” He smiled. “But that’s the Stock Exchange for you. If you know when to buy and when to sell …” He gave a little shrug. “Maybe I live too close to it. I’m in and out of the market and I make a bit here and there, but as you see, I’m still working for my living.”