Ruined City (25 page)

'It's only for a time,' said Cheriton. 'They're getting hardened up already.'

'Aye. That first chap's left his off, I'm glad to see.'

On Christmas Eve, when the Yard closed for the holiday, the numbers of employed had gone up to a hundred and seventy-nine weekly wage earners. The small, returning ripple of prosperity had not passed unnoticed in the district; a shop, long closed, reopened to sell meat pies, cooked meats, black puddings and other delicacies. It did a good trade over Christmas
.
Small articles began to be sold at the door for the first time for many years; a man who gleaned a sack of holly in the country lanes disposed of it within an hour, a penny for a spray. A hot roast chestnut barrow came upon the streets, and did good trade.

A dairyman, apologizing for a shortage at the hospital about this time, observed that he was selling three times what he had six months before; he didn't know where to turn for milk, really and truly. Mr Williams reprimanded him severely and sent him away.

'It's quite true, what he said, you know,' observed the Almoner. 'There's more milk being bought now in the town than ever before.'

Mr Williams grunted. 'Aye,' he said. 'Soon as they get a little money they go and spend it.'

'On their children.'

'Aye. But they spend it, instead of saving for the next time.'

'I wouldn't quibble about what they spend on milk,' said Miss MacMahon. 'I suppose you can tell how prosperous a town is by the amount it spends on milk. Mr Warren ought to know about that; he deals with commodities.'

She told him about it next time he came to lunch with her. He came to Sharples once a week, arriving upon Friday afternoon, staying the night with Cheriton, lunching with her on Saturday at the hospital, and going back to London on an evening train. He missed one Saturday; when next he came she thought him looking worn and ill. He told her he had had a touch of influenza.

'You're looking rotten,' she remarked. 'Come up to the fire and get warm. How long have you been out of bed?'

'About two days,' he said.

She eyed him for a minute. 'You ought to take a holiday. Didn't your doctor tell you that?'

'I didn't have one. All I had was a sort of feverish cold.'

'You're going to have one now.' She lifted the telephone receiver and spoke into it. 'Would you ask Dr Davies if he would be good enough to come along to my room when he's done his lunch?' She laid the receiver down.

He frowned. 'That isn't necessary in the least.'

She laid her hand upon his arm. 'Don't be cross. I'd like it if you'd let him look you over. He's house physician here, quite good at his job. He'll make you up a tonic to take back with you.'

He laughed. 'Serves me right for putting my nose inside a hospital.'

Davies, a serious-minded, sandy-haired young man, took him to an adjoining room and stethoscoped him thoroughly. 'You had this operation here, last March, didn't you?' he enquired. 'And you've had no rest since then. You went straight out of here and went to work at once.'

Warren pulled on his coat. 'Very silly of me, I suppose.'

The young doctor smiled faintly. 'Not altogether the best thing you could have done.'

He laid his stethoscope upon the table. 'I should take a good long holiday now, if I were you. Go somewhere where it's warm — the south of France, perhaps — and don't take things too energetically. In a month you'll be a different man.'

Warren shook his head. 'I can't do that. I've got to keep things going.'

They discussed the matter for a little. 'Well,' said Davies at last. 'I'll make you up a tonic. But really, you should take it easier, you know.'

The financier smiled. 'You might as well tell a chap who's out of work to drink three pints of milk a day.'

The young man flushed. 'I'm here to tell people what they out to do. I can't see that they do it, either with you or anybody else.'

Warren nodded. 'That's right — I'm sorry I said that about the milk. But I can't get a holiday just yet.'

He went back to London on the evening train, carrying with him in his bag a large bottle of medicine, like any outpatient. Miss MacMahon walked with him to the station and saw him off.

'Mind you take that tonic,' she reminded him. 'It cost a lot of money, and we didn't give it you for fun.'

He smiled. 'It's good of you to look after me like this,' he said quietly.

'Why, no,' she said. 'It's good of you to look after us.'

The train carried him away towards Newcastle, and she turned back to the hospital. In the corridor, outside the Common Room, she stopped Davies.

'What did you think of Mr Warren?'

The sandy-haired young man considered seriously for a minute. 'There's nothing organically wrong, you understand. He's very much run down. A certain amount of nervous indigestion, and that sort of thing. I got the impression that he was working far harder than he ought to, probably worrying about his work. But I imagine that's his normal life.'

The Almoner bit her lip. That's half the trouble.'

During the early months of the New Year employment in the Yard increased enormously. By the end of January about four hundred and eighty men were working on the tankers; in the next month the figure rose to over seven hundred, and to a thousand by the end of March. With this increase in employment in the town, shops of all sorts began to come to life again; exteriors were repainted, giving Palmer Street a less desolate appearance, windows became filled with the new stock. A new shop opened to sell bicycles and motor bicycles; the increase of the traffic in the streets became most noticeable.

In April the Yard got another order, for a cargo steamer of three thousand tons.

It came through Sir David Hogan, who induced an impecunious shipowner associate to speculate on the future to the extent of ordering a replacement to his fleet. The deal was placed with the Yard through Warren Sons and Mortimer; the price was cut to bedrock for the sake of the order. 'Lord love us,' said Grierson. 'We'll have to call this one the
Misery.
At that price she'll be nothing but grief to us.'

Jennings turned over the pages of the contract. 'It says here she's to be called the
Argosy.
Twelve-inch lettering bow and stern.'

'Argosy
nothing. She'll be the Misery to us.'

'She'll give us continuity of work,' said Warren. Time enough to worry about prices when we've got our reputation back as builders of good ships. Till then we've got to take what we can get, and like it.'

He took his tale to Miss MacMahon, and told her all about it..'It's wonderful,' she exclaimed. 'You must be terribly proud to have done this. Because this is a real order, isn't it? I mean, there isn't a worm in this apple?'

Warren smiled. 'No — this one is comparatively sound.'

She considered for a minute. 'There's one point that I don't quite see,' she said. 'Why did your firm have to come into it at all? Why wasn't the order placed straight with the Yard?'

He smiled, a little cynically. 'Shipbuilding finance,' he said. 'It sounds better put that way. Ordinary people call it hire purchase.'

'Oh. . .'

'In times like these,' he explained, 'the shipowner has all his money locked up in his ships. He may want another ship, but he hasn't got the cash to pay for it. The shipbuilder, on the other hand, hasn't got the money to build it.'

'But that's absurd,' she said. 'You can't get anywhere, if that's the way of it.'

He smiled. 'Oh, yes, you can. They both come running to the bank to borrow money.'

There was a momentary silence.

'I see,' she said. 'So Sharples can't quite get along without you, even yet.'

'Not quite,' he said. 'But every order that we get brings the Yard nearer to standing on its own feet. That's why I'm so pleased we've got this little ship to build. It means that owners will consider us again.'

She eyed him steadily. 'So far as I can see, it means that one bank is considering us all the time.'

'That may be. But I couldn't have gone against the owner, if he'd had no confidence that Sharples could turn out a decent ship.'

She turned towards the window. 'Sharples is getting like it used to be,' she said. She stared out into the street. 'Last year, on a Saturday night about this time, there wouldn't have been a soul about. Just — desolate. And now, look at them.'

He came and stood beside her. The street was thronged with women shopping with their men, laden with baskets and with paper bags, shabby and ragged, but alive and vital in the light of the street-lamps. A few cars, tradesmen's vans, stood in the road; there were many bicycles
.

'It's different, isn't it?' she said, 'They're talking about getting the trams running
.
'

'It's certainly a change
.
' He smiled. 'Another sign of progress. I didn't know you had an evening paper here.'

She nodded. 'Did you see the boy?'

'Down there, coming towards us.'

She peered down the street. 'It's only on Saturdays that we get that. Because of the football news. It comes from Newcastle.'

They stood and watched the crowd as the boy came towards them. For a minute he was hidden from their sight. Then the crowd parted and he was quite near to them; his placard was displayed before their eyes.

It said:
'revolution in laevatia'.

'Oh — look,' said the girl. 'Does that mean anything?'

She glanced up quickly at Warren; bis face was very hard.

'It's a bad one, that,' he said quiedy. 'Let me go and get a paper.'

He came back in a minute with the paper in his hand, and spread it out upon her table. Together .they read down the short account in silence.

'Well,' he said. 'It couldn't have been worse.'

She laid her hand upon his arm. 'I'm terribly sorry. Did you know any of these people who were shot? Deleben, the Prime Minister — did you know him?'

He nodded. 'He wasn't a bad chap.' He paused. 'The other one — Theopoulos — the one who was shot in the cabaret. He was the one I did the business with.'

There was a long silence. The girl looked up at him at last, powerless to help. 'This is a very bad one,' he repeated. 'I don't know what this is going to mean.'

She turned again to the paper. 'I don't understand about these parties. The People's Party were in power, were they?'

He nodded. 'They were the conservatives. The Government were pretty stable under them. But this other lot — the Social Reform Party — they're just the mob. And look who's leading them!'

She stared at it, uncomprehending. Potiscu? Did you know him?'

He laughed shortly. 'He's the one who got the umbrella.'

He stared at the account again. 'Looting — and burning — murdering in cabarets — soldiers shooting down their officers in cafes. . . . God knows what this will mean to us, up here.'

She stared up at him, open-eyed. 'I hadn't thought of that.'

He smiled. 'Don't worry — it'll all pan out all right. But I must get along to London right away.'

He caught the night train down from Newcastle, and was ir London in the early hours of Sunday morning. He went straight to his flat and read the morning papers carefully; the situation was as bad as it could be. He spent an hour at the Laevatian Embassy, but got little comfort there; in the afternoon he attended an emergency conference at the London offices of Laevol Ltd. He came away from that with little new information, but with one certainty: the preference dividend, due in May and secured upon the profits of the State Railway, would not be paid.

'There can't be any profit on the railway after this,' remarked the secretary. 'Look at the Decree — free transport of all food materials and free travelling for all manual workers. There cannot possibly be any profit after that to pay our dividend. And anyway, they'll probably rescind the Agreement now — it's subject to Laevatian law, that one.'

Warren's lips narrowed to a line. 'It's bad,' he said.

'It's bad, all right,' remarked the secretary, a little hostile. 'This should have been foreseen.'

In the City the next morning, the Laevatian news was treated with concerned derision, as a joke in rather poor taste. During the day the Laevol shares fell catastrophically from twenty-two shillings to fourteen and six; next day they were marked down to about nine shillings, where they hovered for a week or two. A feeling of hostility was evident; the
Argus,
relating the news, took the occasion to comment acidly upon the 'flotation of a certain company, which would now seem to be a subject for investigation'.

Mr Todd, who held few of the Laevol shares, took the matter philosophically. 'Write 'em off the books,' he said. 'They'll never be worth anything now.'

Mr Castroni was not amused. 'My godfathers,' he said. To hear you talk! I put the best clients that I've got into this thing, and look at it now! Thirty thousand pounds of my clients' money gone already, and the rest not worth a sausage
.
Look at that I'

'Moral — use your own judgement, and not other people's,' said Mr Todd.