Death's Bright Angel

by Janet Neel

  ‘How far are we behind on VAT and PAYE?’ Sir James was scowling at the large sums postulated to go out over the next four weeks.

  ‘VAT is already four months overdue and the PAYE three months. Both lots — HM Customs and the Inland Revenue — are threatening actions.’

  ‘Bloody ridiculous!’ William Blackett fulminated. ‘Little Hitlers, trying to drive us out of business. We’ve been supporting the Government for over a hundred years by paying taxes. Let them support us for a bit.’

  Peter Hampton glanced at him. ‘It’s not our money, William. We collect the cash from our own employees by withholding a percentage of their pay, or from our customers if it is VAT, as agents for the Government. They won’t want to push the company over the cliff in a hurry, but in the end they’ll put in a writ.’

  ‘Any good news from Sales?’ Sir James was methodically considering the options.

  The Sales Director frenziedly assured the Board that all his sales force was working night and day. These assurances went on for some minutes, giving the main protagonists a breather, as he inveighed against the unseasonably warm weather which meant that the population of England and Scotland had massively refrained from ordering thermal knickers. ‘If we could just have a cold snap, we could do a million in sales, easily,’ he mourned.

  ‘Better do a snow dance, Currie.’ Sir James knew a hopeless cause when he saw one. ‘Would a quick increase in sales do much for us, Hampton?’

  ‘No.’ Hampton spoke flatly. ‘We should have closed the householdtextile operation in the spring and gone to the bank for the cash to pay the redundancies. That’s where we are bleeding to death.’

  There was a reflective and resentful silence round the table. Peter Hampton had indeed fought for this plan in April, but the nonexecutive Board members had not been prepared to accept it, coinciding as it did with a period of exceptional and misleading buoyancy in the household-textile market. Hampton spread his hands.

  ‘That’s twenty-twenty hindsight. I could have pushed harder, I suppose.’ He could have, indeed, he reflected, except that he would have been in absolutely no position to resign if the board had refused his advice.

  Sir James cleared his throat. ‘As it happens, I may have found another way round this problem. I may have found a purchaser for the household-textiles side.’

  ‘Who?’ demanded five people at once.

  ‘Connecticut Cottons. Americans. Had a word with their Chairman yesterday.’

  Peter Hampton shook his head. ‘Chairman, I don’t believe they can be serious. We did talk briefly in May. They have far too much capacity in the US and in Birmingham already.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sir James looked smug. ‘You’ve forgotten the quotas. They can’t cover the UK market by expanding in the US since the July agreement on imports, and the factory at Birmingham is uneconomic if they don’t get more through it. So, it’s either get more orders or close Birmingham.’

  Peter Hampton nodded slowly. It made sense for the American firm to buy their order book. It might even pull their chestnuts out of the fire if the Americans were prepared to put up some cash and take over the liabilities. In any year the thermal-wear business was profitable, and given time, without the drag of the loss-making household textiles, Britex could trade out of its difficulties.

  ‘Had another idea, too,’ Sir James volunteered, justifiably pleased with himself. ‘Met one of the high-up civil servants last week at the Cordwainers’ dinner — not the top man in the Department of Industry, but close. He seemed to think we might get some cash out of the government to help with redundancies and reorganization to preserve the jobs we’ll have left, because we are in an Assisted Area. Must be worth talking to them. I’ll have a word with Williamson — the MP. Time he earned the vast salary we taxpayers find for him.’

  Peter Hampton considered his Chairman with reluctant respect. In terms of social justice there could be no reason for paying this old man approximately three times an MP’s salary, but there was no doubt that this week at least he was earning his money. The range and depth of contacts that had enabled him to talk informally to two chairmen of major companies and a senior civil servant inside a week, and find at least a glimmer of hope for a hard-pressed company, was well worth paying for. At the same time he felt the familiar bitterness about the way the country was run. Start with the right school or university, and above all the right family, and you were made. Start without and it was nothing but hard graft all the way, and no net to catch you when you fell — as, short of a miracle, he was about to.

  William Blackett, who had been silenced, presumably by shock, came back into the meeting like a loud-hailer. ‘What’s Hampton here been bloody doing, for God’s sake? We hire ourselves an expensive Master of Business Administration to run a perfectly good business and in three years you’re telling me we are bust.’ He stopped under his father’s minatory stare.

  ‘I’m not here to make excuses, but we aren’t the only ones.’ Peter Hampton who had been expecting this attack spoke evenly. ‘Even Allied had to close five factories last year, and they took write-offs of £150m. They can carry that — just. Brown Ashmore and Williams have gone. It’s a holocaust. Three years ago, in this very room, all the people who are here now agreed that we should invest and put in more spinning and weaving capacity, on the basis that this was a £100m turnover business. Three years later we can only sell £40m and that’s not for want of trying. We can’t cut our costs fast enough, and we are stuck with interest on the money we borrowed.’ He paused for breath, and waved down William Blackett. ‘I’m sorry for all of us and particularly for the people who work for us, but some of you have had an easy living out of this firm for years. William, happen your dad has found us a way out, but it’ll be a very long haul, and we don’t need bloody fools like you, who’ve put nothing into the business, whining.’ He stopped, shaking, and thought calmly that he would probably be out on the streets a few weeks earlier than otherwise after that, but Sir James surprised him again.

  ‘Shut up, both of you. We have to pull together or we may as well ask the bank to put a receiver in right now. Hampton, you and I go and see the bank and then the DTI. William, you do the MPs, Williamson and then Jamieson. He met that civil servant too. Tell them they can both come down with us, earn their pay.’ He bent an eye on the rest of the meeting. ‘The rest of you, get out there and keep the business running, that’s what you’re there for. And look cheerful!’

  4

  Henry Blackshaw looked with pleasure at the Thames, glinting in the brilliant unseasonable November sun that was causing such dismay to the sales force at Britex, and stopped to lean on the parapet and to look up towards the City. A slightly built Yorkshireman of fifty-four, he was also a victim of the recession. Until July that year he had been Managing Director of two large subsidiaries of United Textiles, the second biggest textile group in the UK. One of his companies and four other major subsidiaries had been closed over the last eighteen months, leaving two managing directors markedly surplus to requirements. Rather than a job at head office, imprecisely specified and working to a younger man, he had chosen to accept his Chairman’s alternative offer, that of a secondment to the Department of Trade and Industry.

  ‘We’ll pay you same as you’ve been getting plus a cost-of-living supplement for London, we’ll keep up the car and pay reasonable expenses,’ the Chairman had offered. ‘The Department pays us a Deputy Secretary’s salary for you. We make a loss of about £20,000 a year on the deal, but it’s worth it to us in favours owed and in what you learn about how their minds work and the friends you make. In two years’ time you come back to us, and with any luck this recession will have eased and we can give you a decent job. No guarantees, mind; it might have to be redundancy in two years’ time. Go and see them,’ he had suggested blandly, ignoring Henry’s open reluctance. ‘We’re not putting you out to grass — we’re trying to do a favour where we can when we’ve got time. I can’t send Derek Barlow there, he has no fi
nesse, and these civil servants are clever buggers. I’ve got to send someone who knows how to see them off.’

  So Henry had gone to see them and had been reluctantly impressed. He had been received by the Deputy Secretary, Bill Westland, and a very smooth Indian called Rajiv Sengupta, who had interviewed him once, then asked him to come back. The second time they had given him lunch, and Bill Westland had been both direct and friendly.

  ‘We want you to come, Mr Blackshaw — Henry, then, if I may. We particularly need your expertise in textiles to enable us to sort out which firms we should be helping. If any.’

  ‘What sort of help are we talking about? Soft loans?’

  ‘Mostly grants, in fact. Where we are trying to save jobs at risk in a collapsing company, every case is special, and we will do what we have to, subject to Ministers’ views of course. We do not have a fully developed policy in this area. We are still building up a body of practice, and that’s why we need people with specific experience of financing industrial companies and projects.’ Westland had passed menus to him and to Rajiv, and was rapidly and expertly scanning his own.

  ‘As William is not saying, he and the present Permanent Secretary practically invented the Industrial Development Unit, always called here the IDU,’ Rajiv observed.

  ‘It is probably my only lasting and effective contribution to sensible administration,’ Westland agreed with a trace of smugness. ‘Dealing at high speed with a lot of applications for assistance requires a level of numeracy and a body of expertise which we could never have recruited in a hurry by conventional means. In theory, a civil servant is supposed to be able to attempt any task, but, as Rajiv and I have cause to know, that is in practice neither possible nor desirable. The IDU, therefore, consists largely of people seconded to us for periods of up to two years, plus a small civil service staff.’

  ‘I am most of the small civil service staff,’ Rajiv offered, and Henry thought about him while he chose a meal. He was used to elegant Indians in the textile trade but had not expected one in the Civil Service. This was a particularly elegant version, attired in a beautiful dark-blue suit which Henry, to whom it was second nature to assess any wool cloth in his vicinity, mentally priced at a month’s salary for this particular civil servant, even before you took the Hermès tie and Gucci shoes into account. Or the made-to-measure plain pale blue shirt. Disconcertingly, Rajiv read his mind.

  ‘Two of my uncles run businesses in Delhi. My father has several companies which make steel tubes in the Midlands and which I am thankful to say are not candidates for assistance from the Government. The remaining two uncles are senior civil servants in the Indian Civil Service, and since my father has no particular need of me in his business, I taught at Cambridge for five years and then joined the Civil Service here. The day may come when I have to take over from my father, but it is not here yet.’

  ‘Lucky man,’ Henry said, deciding not to be rattled. ‘How big is the whole Unit?’

  ‘One director — you, we hope. Four deputy directors, two of whom are partners in major accountancy firms, and two from industry. Twelve case officers, mostly young accountants or merchant bankers, aged about twenty-eight.’

  ‘Do you have difficulty recruiting?’

  ‘No, no, people have been very good about letting us have their chaps.’ Westland made a swift selection from the wine list and caught Henry’s eye. ‘You are quite right, of course, it’s good business for them. Civil servants are very conservative people: once we know someone, we go on using him or her for everything. And people seem to enjoy their time with us.’

  Henry had been taken on, after lunch, to meet some of the other members of the IDU, uniformly tall, healthy, public-school twentyeight- year-olds, virtually indistinguishable from each other at first sight. Examination of their curricula vitae had, however, confirmed the Department’s boast; most of the top firms of accountants had indeed been very good about subscribing their best people. It would be a real pleasure to work with people of this calibre.

  That lunch seemed a long time ago, though it was only four weeks, he thought, as he worked his way through helpful but muddled reception staff at the Department’s glass palace in Victoria Street. This obstacle passed, he was welcomed by Rajiv Sengupta, introduced to his secretary, to the messengers, to the clerical workers and to his high-priced staff, still looking uniformly healthy, young and keen.

  ‘Finally you will wish to meet the Principal who will be working with me on the political side. Her name is Francesca Wilson,’ Rajiv offered. Henry noted the use of Civil Service jussive, with interest. ‘You will wish’, his Chairman had told him, grinning, means ‘you had better, soonest’. He decided to go along with it for the moment, but to alter the programme slightly.

  ‘My motor does not start in the morning without coffee,’ he announced, uncompromisingly. ‘Might I have some, and perhaps Miss Wilson can join us after that?’

  Rajiv stopped short in the dingy corridor. ‘My dear Henry, I do beg your pardon. So like the private sector have we become here that we seem completely to have missed out on the morning coffee. There is a machine, the products of which are virtually indistinguishable, but there is certainly a button marked “Coffee”. It does produce a liquid more like coffee than, for example, the button marked “Soup”.’

  Henry was just opening his mouth to indicate that there were some privations up with which even the beleaguered private sector did not put, when he became aware that someone in a nearby office was reading the riot act in no uncertain terms.

  ‘Peregrine, for God’s sake, we are not working class.’ The beautifully pitched female voice made it sound like an important plank of party policy. ‘If mystery voices ring us up in the middle of the night offering threats, we go the police. We do not sit shivering, or working out who we can enlist on our side; we advance smartly to the nearest nick and tell them all about it. What’s the matter with you?’

  The party in the corridor, rooted to the spot, was wholly unsurprised to hear no response to this trenchant enquiry.

  ‘What do you mean, embarrassing?’ The clear, superbly produced voice rendered every word fully audible in the corridor. ‘You mean that you, or Sheena, will find it difficult to explain to the police that you are receiving threatening telephone calls from her ex-husband – sorry — estranged husband, is it? Perry, get yourself together, ring up the police — it’s Edgware Road for you, same as me — and they will send some decent bored detective who has heard it all before, and will doubtless have some method of dealing with the problem. More embarrassing to wake up dead, won’t it be?’

  Henry and Rajiv, by mutual consent, moved to tear themselves from this fascinating conversation, and retreated, fast, to Henry’s office.

  ‘As soon as Francesca is off the telephone I will bring her to meet you,’ Rajiv offered.

  ‘The young woman offering her views on the proper behaviour to adopt when being threatened by ex-husbands?’

  ‘That is Francesca. Not short of views on the proper conduct for most situations. I’ll get coffee,’ Rajiv volunteered and disappeared again into the corridor. He returned carrying two paper cups of pale brown liquid, calling over his shoulder to someone in the corridor, ‘Now, please. Do the submission later.’ He put the cups down carefully, and Henry and he gazed sadly down at them.

  Henry picked one up gingerly, found it too hot to hold, and put it hastily down again, slopping it. As he looked round for something to mop up with, he became aware of someone new in his room, and straightened up to find himself face to face with a distinctly compelling presence. Straight off a tapestry, he thought, as he looked into dark-blue eyes under straight eyebrows and a solid dark fringe. Add a helmet with a nose-piece to shield the long straight nose, and you would have any one of the nameless Norman foot-soldiers who marched through the Bayeux tapestry. He noted with fascination the way the straight uncompromising lines in the face broke up as she smiled in greeting. A tall girl, slightly taller than he in her shoes. He
straightened unconsciously to his full five foot eight as he shook her hand.

  ‘I’m Francesca Wilson. How do you do,’ she said, not making it an enquiry. ‘You can’t drink that muck. We all have illegal kettles here, and make our own.’

  ‘Illegal kettles?’

  ‘All kettles are illegal in this building. The wiring dates from before the Second World War, if not from before the First, and minutes come round every week pleading with us not to overload it — by switching on lights, for example. The coffee and tea provided by the management are so unspeakable — you drank some? — that we all have kettles and make our own. One day there will be a terrible bang and the whole building will combust.’ She sounded notably unperturbed and wholly authoritative, producing a Kleenex and briskly mopping up his spilt coffee. ‘Your secretary has a kettle, don’t you, Mary?’

  His secretary, a solid middle-aged lady of reassuring competence, confirmed from the outer office that she did indeed, and would produce coffee at once. Henry invited Francesca to stay and asked her cautiously what project she was engaged on.

  ‘I don’t work on projects in that sense. I translate the views of the IDU on a particular project to Ministers and vice versa. I could use some help, actually, on a particular case. One of Martin Bailey’s, Rajiv; should I call him in?’

  ‘If you feel the need of him.’ Rajiv sounded slightly acid and the girl glanced at him doubtfully, but summoned, apparently from thin air, a tall earnest blond young man whom Henry recognized as one of the respectful group of young accountants who had been presented to him that morning. He noted sardonically, as the little meeting composed itself round his table, that this particular young man was obviously dazzled by Francesca, who was completely unconscious of her effect. He stumbled over the opening explanation and Francesca took over at once.