Ravenscliffe (22 page)

‘It’s nowt o’t’sort.’ Amos sounded brutal but he’d learned from experience that unless the boy’s more fanciful notions were nipped in the bud, they had a habit of becoming enshrined in allotment law.

‘Tea?’ Anna said.

‘Grand.’

He sat down by Seth, who had resumed his reading. Anna placed a mug in front of him and sat down too.

‘So?’ she said, meaning, What do you have to tell me? She had known the moment he arrived that he wasn’t just here for the roses. He laughed.

‘Well. As it ’appens I do ’ave a bit o’ news.’

‘I know you do,’ Anna said. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m standing for Labour in t’by-election.’

Seth looked up from his book, Eve stopped stirring, Anna nodded. She sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction.

‘This is good news,’ she said.

‘I can’t win t’seat,’ he said.

‘You might,’ Eve said.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘It’ll go to t’Liberals. But still …’

‘I’m proud of you, Amos,’ Anna said. They looked at each other across the table, held each other’s gaze, and smiled.

T
he drawing-room window of the house at the western end of Caledonia Place provided a perfectly framed view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and this had been the principal reason why Silas had bought the property. He liked a striking view: insisted upon it. His plantation house near Port Antonio was high in the hills overlooking the startling turquoise waters of the Blue Lagoon; his London house in Mayfair had an unrestricted view of Hyde Park. This was his favourite, though, this view of the bridge across the Avon Gorge, and what it lacked in glamour it made up for in symbolism. The sheer ambition of Brunel’s vision; the triumph of endeavour and brilliance over the facts of the case; the realisation of the seemingly impossible. These things appealed to Silas. These, and the endless comings and goings of people on foot, in carriages, in motorcars: life – and sometimes death – running its course. Once, on a summer’s evening, standing at this window, he had watched a young man in evening dress walk from the Clifton end to the centre of the bridge then, without even a moment’s hesitation, vault over the iron rail and plummet into the broad brown waters of the Avon below. He had jumped with insouciance, as if he was clearing a
five-bar gate in a field. Silas hadn’t been horrified by this spectacle: rather, he was thrilled by it. He told his friends in Bristol, why pay to visit the Theatre Royal when real life is played out in such entertaining fashion through his own drawing-room window?

It was a long walk from here to the docks: an even longer one back. Bristol’s hills were steep and unforgiving and Clifton was up at the top on the edge of the downs where the air was sweeter. But Silas always preferred to walk. He didn’t enjoy the trams – too much proximity to fellow passengers – and he didn’t own a motorcar, because from what he could see, a motorcar made a fellow fat and lazy. So always he would walk, whatever the weather, and his brisk pace down through the teeming streets of Bristol towards the warehouse and dock kept him connected to the boy he once was: lean, sharp, energetic, ambitious. He had a strong sense of himself and this was because he was aware of being watched by others. If he was convinced of his superiority among men, he could hardly be blamed; he saw himself as they saw him: uncommonly handsome, moving through them with the strength and grace of a cat, elegantly fashionable in his London tailoring.

‘Whittam! Hey there!’

The voice hailed Silas from across the street, but the pavement was crowded and it took him a while to identify its source: a tall, thin, sallow man, the only stationary person in the tide of humanity, who waited patiently for Silas to spot him.

‘Trencham,’ Silas said when he finally picked out the familiar face. His greeting lacked enthusiasm, though he waited while the other man crossed the street, which he did incompetently, with scant regard for his own safety. Wilberforce Trencham was Bristolian born and bred, but he walked about the city like a bewildered newcomer.

‘One day,’ said Silas, ‘you’ll be hit by a tram or a horse and that’ll be the end of you.’

‘Wishful thinking, Whittam?’

‘Not at all, Trencham. You add spice to my life, and it would be the blander for your demise.’

Wilberforce laughed.

‘Are we travelling in the same direction or are you merely trailing me?’ Silas said pleasantly.

‘Both, as a matter of fact. I’ve an article to write on Fyfield’s new ship from Swan & Hunter. Lovely vessel, don’t you think?’ The question was clearly intended to rankle, so Silas remained stoically unruffled. Wilberforce Trencham, shipping correspondent of the
Bristol Mercury
, was determined to uncover pernicious professional rivalry between Whittam’s and Fyfield’s, even if he had to fabricate it, which he wasn’t at all averse to doing.

‘Haven’t seen it. I’m just back from Yorkshire,’ Silas said mildly.

‘Business?’

‘My business, yes. Not yours.’

There was no shaming Trencham. He merely changed tack and returned to the subject of Fyfield’s latest investment: ‘Purpose-built carriers, gross tonnage three thousand eight hundred, thirteen knots and the whole cargo space insulated. They reckon sixty thousand stems a trip, comfortably.’

Silas shrugged. ‘Nothing very innovative there. If you’re trying to imply that they’re nipping at my heels, I say, good luck to them. Nip away.’

‘Your own plans in this regard are bigger, are they?’

Silas smiled. ‘This is where we part company,’ he said, indicating the small tobacconist that supplied his favourite slim cigars. He sprang nimbly up the three stone steps and entered the shop while Trencham, unperturbed, strolled on towards the docks. He knew Whittam was up to something:
he always was. In any case the harbourside, always a fertile hotbed of gossip, was alive with the rumour that he’d negotiated a government contract to carry passengers to Jamaica on a new fleet of banana boats. Trencham mulled it over as he continued on his way: Whittam was well in with the Colonial Office – had been since he collaborated with them on commercial shipments to England from the Caribbean. Well. He’d have another crack at this particular nut later in the day: the harder its shell, the sweeter the kernel.

Silas didn’t care what Wilberforce Trencham did or didn’t know about his plans for expansion, but it amused him to watch the journalist rooting around for information like a rat in a dustbin. Trencham had been on his tail for one reason or another for years, ever since Silas emerged from the sale of the Global Steamship Company with three quarters of a million pounds, a ready-made fleet of ships and the drive and flair to go it alone. He was an industry phenomenon: a ship’s lad turned managing director and major shareholder – and when the spoils were divided, Silas hadn’t had to pay a bean. The shares and the ships were a gift from Sir Walter Hollis, the Global chairman; whether for services professional or personal, no one was entirely sure, and even now, years later, there was speculation on this score. But however he had come about his generous haul, there was no denying his judgement in business matters. It was Silas who predicted the decline of the cane-sugar industry just before it damaged the company’s fortunes; it was Silas who made the case for increasing the banana trade, creating new business for the company and giving Jamaica’s failing economy a timely boost. The Colonial Office, alert to Jamaica’s difficulties, had funded Global’s early investigations into the feasibility of shipping
bananas to England, then subsidised the first refrigerated shipment; the benefits at home and abroad were legion if this new trade should prove profitable. When the
Dominion
returned from its maiden voyage – steaming in to Avonmouth to a rapturous reception and a band playing ‘Under the British Flag’ – it bore in its hold eighteen thousand stems of bananas and forty crates of mangoes for good measure. Silas was on board, all breeze-blown hair and noble dignity, like a Crusader returned victorious from the Holy Land. At a gala dinner that evening, where Bristol’s merchants sampled the fruit before it was packed onto railway wagons and sent to grocers and costermongers up and down the country, Silas addressed the assembled company: ‘The
Dominion
is returned, the
Trinity
and the
Emperor
are ready to sail,’ he said. ‘We are poised, gentlemen, on the brink of a new prosperity, once more leading the world in innovation and discovery. Let us be upstanding and raise a toast to the glorious fruits of the British Empire.’

‘The glorious fruits of the British Empire!’ they boomed at once and as one, acknowledging by their mass compliance the unassailable position of Silas as the saviour of Jamaica’s economy, the linchpin of the Global Shipping Company and the king of the banana trade. Small wonder that he thought so well of himself.

He was in his warehouse now, taking the stairs two at a time to the office accommodation above. His clerks hadn’t expected him back today, and a shiver of alarm disturbed the room as Silas crossed it. Not that standards slipped while he was away or that they had anything to hide: simply that it was pleasant to work without his presence from time to time. They sat at their Davenport desks, pens poised above silver inkwells, and
watched warily as he strolled between them. When he reached the door of his own office he turned, surveyed the room, and said, ‘Brigstock?’

‘Sir?’ A startled young man stood at once, as if he was in a schoolroom.

‘What can you tell me about the new Fyfield’s vessel?’

Brigstock, not long in the employ of Whittam & Co. and new to the joys of tonnage, knots and hold capacity, trembled visibly and there wasn’t a man in the room who didn’t pity him.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he said – and he sounded truly contrite – ‘I haven’t seen it yet.’

‘Then your presence here is surplus to requirement. Please leave your desk as it is so your replacement knows exactly where he is to begin. Now …’ he gazed about the room placidly ‘… Jones. I put the same question to you.’

Another man stood while behind him Brigstock made as small a performance as possible of leaving the room.

‘She’s called
Port Morant
sir, room for twelve passengers, insulated hold for sixty thousand stems, not quite as fast as ours, sir, at thirteen knots.’

‘Thank you,’ said Silas. ‘Now, Jones, alert Mr Oliver to my presence here and ask him to join me in my office.’

He closed his office door on the room and saw, from the small stack of papers on his desk, that there was business to attend to, but for the moment he ignored it and instead stood at the window and stared down at the teeming dockside. The water was crowded with vessels but he could pick out the
Port Morant
– could even pick out Trencham sizing up the new ship while a Fyfield man boasted to the journalist of its special qualities. Silas could see nothing very extraordinary: certainly nothing to worry about. Behind him the door opened and Hugh Oliver walked in.

‘Brigstock passed me on the stairs. Looked pretty hangdog,’ he said.

‘He’s a fool.’

‘He had potential. Would have made a good clerk if you’d given him longer than five minutes at it.’

‘The competition takes delivery of a new ship and Brigstock either doesn’t know or doesn’t care,’ said Silas. ‘I don’t call that good. I call it incompetent.’

‘Still, he was a capable lad. You know your trouble?’

‘Of course I do. You tell me every time I dismiss someone.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you again. Everyone has to be like you. No good being an excellent clerk, if you don’t live and breathe boats and bananas.’

‘Quite,’ said Silas. ‘Brigstock can find employment in a company where boats and bananas don’t figure. Now. Two things you need to know: one, we’re buying a coal mine in Yorkshire and two, we’re diversifying.’

Hugh Oliver looked anxious. The coal mine came as no surprise; the diversification, however, was news to him. He was second-in-command at Whittam & Co. – the ‘& Co.’, he liked to say, on the painted fascia of the warehouse front. And yet always, always, the boss was several steps ahead of him.