The Revenge of Captain Paine pm-2

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘Staring up at the ceiling counting the cracks in the paintwork?’

  ‘I got to ten and lost count.’ She was smiling now.

  ‘You got as far as ten?’

  ‘Don’t get conceited.’ She reached over and touched his hand. ‘But I just wanted to say it was… nice.’

  ‘Nice?’ he said, playfully. ‘A puppy is nice.’

  ‘I meant it just felt right. I hardly saw you in the last week.’

  Royce entered the room with the morning post on a tray and placed it on the table next to Emily. He departed with a bow of the head.

  ‘Mrs Garner from the lodge wants to know whether we’ll be hosting a midwinter ball this year,’ Emily said, a few minutes later, looking up from the letter she had been reading.

  That was another thing. Their neighbours hated Pyke, too, because, unlike Emily’s father, he refused to throw open the doors of the hall for such social occasions.

  ‘Tell that old harridan this year will be no different to last year or the year before that,’ Pyke said, not looking up from the newspaper. ‘If she wants a ball, she should host it on her own backside. It’s large enough.’

  Emily laughed out loud. ‘Don’t you think we should, one of these years? It might be fun.’

  ‘What? A room full of gormless twits and giggling girls might be fun?’ This time he glanced up from his paper, just in time to see Emily pulling a face at him. ‘I saw that,’ he added.

  Despite the bantering of their morning, the hall had come between them during their six years of marriage. Since Emily’s mother had died about a year earlier, Pyke had argued that a move into the city would give them more time together, but Emily couldn’t bring herself to break up the household and claimed it was their duty to maintain the old hall until Felix came of age and decided for himself whether he wanted to take the place on and adopt her father’s title. Anyway, Emily always said, making the one argument she knew he couldn’t refute, the country air was much better for Felix than the dirty, smog-filled air in the city.

  Their breakfast was interrupted again when Royce suddenly announced they had a visitor, and before Pyke could tell him they weren’t receiving visitors, Reverend Cole had shuffled into the dining room, apologising for his unannounced visit.

  Even before the curate had opened his pinched mouth, Pyke knew why the man had come. With Emily’s blessing, Pyke had scrapped the practice of tithing on the estate. None of the farmers who rented their land was compelled to give anything to the church and, as a result, its income had plummeted and the church itself had fallen into disrepair. Pyke couldn’t have cared less whether the building and its congregation sank into a deep bog but the murmurings of discontent among parishioners had reached a new high and various figures had been dispatched to the hall to plead with him for the reintroduction of tithing.

  Reverend Cole was an odious creature with sharp, twitching features and ferret-like eyes. His humpback was the most obvious sign of his deformity but rumour had it that his feet were webbed. He was a pompous, self-regarding little man and had made a nasty habit of intruding on them at inconvenient times — deliberately so, Pyke had often thought.

  Standing up, Pyke strode across to greet the diminutive curate and put a friendly arm around his shoulder. ‘If you ever show your nasty, rat-like face at this hall without a prior invitation again,’ he whispered, ‘I’ll come down to your church with a blunderbuss and shoot every single one of the stained-glass windows you’re so proud of.’ He gave the terrified man a final squeeze before releasing him. ‘Is that understood?’

  Ashen faced, the curate scurried from the room. Pyke looked across at Emily, who had raised her eyebrows.

  ‘What? I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Really? It looked to me like the man had just soiled his undergarments.’

  ‘I just said I’d be happy to donate some money to the church’s poor fund.’

  She gave him a hard look. ‘You’ve got to understand people are a little frightened of you.’

  ‘Frightened of me?’ Pyke tried to hide his delight at this prospect.

  ‘Yes.’

  He came up behind her and threaded his arm around her neck. ‘I suppose I can be a very frightening person.’ He kissed the whiteness of her neck.

  ‘The servants, too. Jo tells me these things. ‘ Emily tried to push him away.

  ‘The servants hate me because I’m not your father.’ Surprised by her reticence, he put on a frown, adding, ‘Are you saying you don’t want to go back up the stairs and have me ravish you all over?’

  ‘Jo’s only just combed my hair,’ Emily said, laughing. But her arm was peppered with gooseflesh.

  ‘We could always fuck here on the table but I dread to think what Royce would do if he saw us.’

  Emily giggled at this prospect and at Pyke’s crude impression of the elderly butler, and when he next tried to embrace her, she looked around to make certain they were alone before kissing him back. ‘Are you quite sure you’ve got enough powder left in your pistol?’

  Pyke gave her a look of mock consternation. ‘Enough to see off an invading army, my dear.’

  ‘I told you, it’s my lady, not my dear,’ she said, as he carried up her the stairs in his arms.

  As Pyke lay in her bed, the air thick with her perfume and his sweat, he closed his eyes and tried to remember when he had last been this happy. Then he recalled his brief conversation with Marguerite and the stranglehold Peel enjoyed over him and he felt his good mood begin to fade.

  ‘A few weeks ago, you mentioned a meeting you were hoping to attend, bringing together different radical and trade union figures in the capital.’

  She looked over at him, surprised. It wasn’t often he asked about her work. ‘What of it?’

  ‘I was wondering when it was, that’s all.’

  ‘This Monday.’ Wrinkles furrowed her brow. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I thought I’d come and support you.’

  Emily sat up in the bed. ‘Why? You’ve not shown much interest in what I’ve been doing before.’

  Pyke put on a hurt expression. ‘Don’t you want your capitalist husband there? Are you afraid I’ll embarrass you in front of the mysterious Captain Paine?’

  ‘Who said Captain Paine will be there?’ This time there was a note of suspicion in her voice.

  ‘So you think he actually exists?’

  She gathered the sheet around her and stared out of the window. ‘Where has all this suddenly come from?’

  ‘I’m just trying to show an interest,’ he said, playing up the hurt.

  That seemed to placate her a little. ‘Before the meeting, I have to visit the trustees of an orphanage in Hackney. Would you like to come with me?’

  Pyke sank back into the mattress. ‘I was just wondering whether you’ve met him, that’s all.’

  ‘Have I met Captain Paine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t answer him and continued to stare out of the window as though something outside had gripped her attention.

  Later that morning, Pyke took Felix for a walk in the grounds of the Hambledon estate. In order to reach the starting point, they took the carriage to the outer fringes of the estate and from there walked briskly across open fields. It was a crisp autumnal day and above them the sky was a vast uninterrupted expanse of blue. Beneath their feet the mud track was hard and the verges were choked with blackberries and nettles.

  Pyke had expected his own progeny to be fearless and hardy, rather than the frail specimen scampering along beside him. This frailty did not make him love the little boy any less — he felt a fierce protectiveness towards his son that meant he would do anything in his power to see that the lad came to no harm — but Pyke sometimes wondered how it had happened; how he, of all people, had fathered a child whose arms and legs were as thin as pipe cleaners and who was so prone to illness.

  They walked for a while in silence.

  ‘Nanny Jo read me a story last night but I fel
l asleep before the end,’ Felix started. ‘It was about a fox and a donkey and a lion.’

  Pyke nodded his head. ‘One of Aesop’s fables.’ He racked his brains to remember the story.

  ‘Do you know what happens in the end?’

  ‘The one where the donkey, fox and lion go hunting together and the fox makes a pact with the lion to give up the donkey?’

  Felix took his hand. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, so the fox persuades the donkey to follow him and arranges that he should fall into a deep pit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the fox thinks, wrongly as it turns out, he can save himself from the lion by giving up the donkey.’

  ‘What happens next?’

  ‘When the donkey has been pushed into the pit, the lion turns on the fox and eats him. Then he eats the donkey.’

  Pyke looked down and noticed his son’s terrified expression. ‘So the lion kills the donkey and the fox?’

  ‘Eats them, too.’ There was no point in sugar-coating the tale.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To teach the fox a lesson.’

  ‘What lesson?’

  ‘Don’t trust anyone, especially not your natural enemies.’ Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘It’s a useful lesson for business, too.’

  Felix screwed up his tiny face. ‘Is that what you do, Father? Business?’

  ‘Indeed it is.’ Pyke patted him gently on the head. ‘But if I had been the fox, I wouldn’t have turned my back on the lion.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you always have to keep those stronger than you in full view.’

  Felix thought about this. ‘What if you were the lion?’

  ‘If I was the lion, I’d make sure I was so fierce that the donkey and the fox would never dare to plot against me.’

  ‘Why would they try and plot against you?’ Felix seemed confused. ‘What if they were your friends?’

  ‘There are no friends in business. People will always try and cross other people to make money.’

  ‘What’s money?’

  Pyke was momentarily startled by a magpie that landed on the path in front of them. Quickly he looked around for another. ‘Money is freedom, Felix, but you can’t have freedom without security. Security is like curling up inside your blanket. If you can’t protect your family and loved ones from other donkeys and foxes, you’re not a good husband or father. And you won’t ever be free to do what you want.’

  At some point they had crossed over into Morris’s land, and though Pyke could just about see the outline of Morris’s Palladian house in the distance, it took him another ten or fifteen minutes to locate the field where he had been the previous night.

  They weren’t alone, either. Marguerite and another gentleman, this time definitely not Morris, stood over the grave. Concealed behind an oak tree, Pyke watched them more closely. The man had a shovel in one hand and a dog leash in the other; at the other end of the leash, an enormous English mastiff was trying to peer down into the grave. Even from this distance Pyke could see that the man was not Marguerite’s equal. His appearance and clothes were too scruffy and he stood a deferential distance away from the grave. Who or what had just been buried? he wondered. A family pet perhaps? Or a young child? But if a child had just been buried, why was Morris not there at the graveside? And why was there no clergyman presiding over the events?

  Felix was becoming restless. ‘What are they doing?’

  Pyke pressed his finger to his lips and said, ‘Ssshhh.’

  He had been sufficiently intrigued by his encounter with Marguerite the previous night to return to the scene, but now he was there he felt uneasy, as though he had intruded on a private moment that he’d had no right to see. Later, he recalled Marguerite’s willowy figure, her blonde locks pinned under a black lace bonnet, and it was hard not to be moved by her sadness.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered to his son. ‘The carriage is waiting for us. Your mother will be wondering where we’ve got to.’

  Felix fell in beside him. ‘What kind of dog was that?’

  ‘A mastiff.’

  ‘Oh.’ He trotted happily along next to him. ‘Who was the woman?’

  ‘A neighbour.’

  ‘Why didn’t we go over and say hello?’

  Pyke stopped and bent over to face his son. ‘I want this to be our little secret. Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Of course I can.’

  Smiling, Pyke patted him on the head. ‘Because you know what happens to people who can’t keep secrets?’

  ‘No, what?’ Felix stared at him.

  Pyke raised his arms above his head and roared. ‘The hungry lion eats them.’ He started to chase Felix along the path.

  But Felix tripped on a loose branch and fell on to his knees. He began to cry and Pyke felt a familiar shame washing over him. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for the lad — throw himself in front of a pack of wild horses if it meant keeping Felix from harm — but he did sometimes worry about the boy’s robustness and his worrying penchant for tears.

  FOUR

  On Monday, the flagstone pavements in the City of London were filled by eight in the morning: a mix of red-faced jobbers clutching sheaves of paper, bank clerks on their way to early morning meetings at the Baltic coffee house and the London corn exchange; street vendors trying to make themselves heard over the clanging of wheels and clattering of hoofs; old ladies selling hot pies from wooden stalls; dead-eyed men on street corners displaying their stocks of knives; petty thieves surreptitiously offering stolen trinkets; and costermongers selling fruit and fresh fish from rickety hand-pulled carts.

  Blackwood’s bank occupied the upper floors of a dilapidated Georgian town house on Sweeting’s Alley, a narrow passageway that ran between Cornhill and Lombard Street. It was not a particularly auspicious home for a bank, and even their most loyal customers complained bitterly about having to climb up a steep, winding staircase to reach the main banking hall, which at one time had been someone’s drawing room. For a while, Pyke had considered moving to better accommodation, but whereas the additional space and a more prestigious address would be welcome, he had grown fond of the old building, of its homely charm and low rent. It had everything he needed, and if it meant the customers had to walk up some stairs then so be it: to earn the high interest rate his bank was prepared to pay for their custom, most would doubtless be prepared to struggle all the way to the very top of the building.

  At nine o’clock, Pyke swept into the boardroom only to find that his two partners, Jem Nash and William Blackwood, were already seated. Blackwood was leafing through some documents, while young Nash had his boots up on the table and was reading the personal advertisements on the front page of The Times, as he liked to do each morning. ‘You know what it tells me?’ he had said to Pyke once. ‘That the whole world is for sale. Everything, but everything, has a price. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a child for sale.’ Pyke had told Nash that he’d once seen a baby for sale at the annual Bartholomew’s fair and that piece of information had seemed to delight him further. ‘Isn’t this a great time to live? Nothing is outside the market.’ This time Nash put the paper away, to greet him, while Blackwood murmured ‘Good morning’ as Pyke took his usual seat by the fire and handed the clerk his coat and gloves, making it clear that he wanted them to be left alone.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, before he’d even taken his seat, ‘I have some exciting news to report.’ He told them about the proposed deal with Morris and outlined the likely rates of return. ‘In the first year alone, we’ll earn as much as seven or eight thousand in interest payments.’

  Nash smiled and nodded his head. Blackwood, unsurprisingly, seemed concerned. He reddened slightly and stared down at the polished grain of the table.

  ‘Is there a problem, William?’

  ‘I was just wondering about the wisdom of taking on yet more risk, especially at a time when we’re already more exposed than I’d like to be.’ Blackwood wa
s a small, timid man with thinning hair and rotten teeth, who crept around the building like an old retainer.

  Pyke chuckled bitterly. ‘If you had your way, we’d simply lock up our customers’ money in the vault and leave it there. This business is founded on risk.’

  ‘The money we invested in General Steel has yet to pay a penny in dividends and, as I’m sure you know, the Grand Northern share price has fallen under ten pounds for the second time this month.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The bank’s most fundamental obligation is to pay cash to all of its customers on demand. If just a quarter of our customers demanded their money tomorrow, and gave us the necessary notice, we wouldn’t be able to pay their balances.’

  ‘Everyone gets their twice-yearly interest payments, don’t they? People who want to close their accounts receive their full balances.’ Pyke shook his head. ‘Your problem is you’ve got no balls, William. No guts. No courage.’

  Blackwood stared at him, aghast at being spoken to in such a frank manner. ‘And you’re nothing but a… gambler, recklessly speculating with your customers’ money to line your own pockets.’

  ‘Don’t forget your pockets, William. You earned what last year? One and a half thousand. That’s almost a thousand more than you earned the previous year and the year before that. I didn’t hear you complain then.’

  Nash sat back in his chair, grinning. Since Pyke had given him a small percentage of the business, Nash supported him come what may in these meetings.

  ‘All we need is for a handful of customers to demand their money and we’d be in trouble. This bank is teetering like a house of cards and to make matters worse you’re proposing to take on more long-term debt; debt in a company whose share price has just dipped below ten pounds. It’s sheer madness.’

  ‘By my reckoning, we’ve currently got about a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of discounted bills sitting in the vault earning three, maybe four, per cent. I’m instructing you to sell them so I can lend that money to the Grand Northern Railway. This way we’ll more than double the return on our investment. Eight thousand per year instead of three. Is that understood?’