Off the Rails

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Your most loving and happy son, Nat.’

  Thank the Lord for that, Jane thought as she set the letter aside. Nathaniel will be pleased when he comes home and sees this. And it occurred to her that she would have a fly on the wall at Mr Hudson’s meeting after all. It almost made her believe in the wheel of fortune.

  28

  NAT CARTWRIGHT DRESSED with great care for his first assignment as a newspaper reporter, choosing the brown frock coat and cream-coloured trousers his mother had bought him when he first went up to Oxford nearly three years ago – what a long time it seemed – and finishing it off with a sky-blue cravat. He had a notebook in his hand, a local map of Derby and three well-sharpened pencils in his coat pocket and he felt he was ready for anything. All he needed was a meeting that was worth reporting.

  It was being held in the City Hall, which was easy to find because it was an imposing building. Smiling to himself because he was undeniably excited now, he strode up the stairs to the room which had been allocated to the shareholders and walked straight into a crush. Every seat was taken and the room was crowded to the walls with obviously angry men. The air was hazy with the smoke from their cigars and booming with the fury of their voices. Oh yes, Nat thought, this is going to be a meeting well worth reporting. There was a baize-covered table at one end of the room with its customary glass and decanter, a gavel on its wooden stand and an ornate seat set ready for the chairman but no sign of the man. Nat squeezed through the throng until he’d made himself a space by the back wall where he would have a good view, took his notebook in hand, licked his pencil and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long. There was a stir at the far end of the room, the door was opened and the great Mr Hudson bellied into the assembly.

  It was the first time Nat had seen the man on his feet and at such close quarters. He’d seen him several times out in the streets of York, of course, but always sitting in a carriage, usually waving to the crowd as if he were royalty. Now, having such a very close view, he cast around in his mind for a way to describe the man so that his readers could see him too. Powerful. Yes, there was no doubt about that. He oozed power. And grossly fat with that belly and that thick neck, those ugly jowls, those little piggy eyes. But not a pig. An animal with more strength and aggression than a pig. And then Hudson turned his head and glared at the crowd and Nat saw what it was and made his first note: ‘bull in the bull ring facing hostile crowd’. Then he too looked at the crowd and wondered who the matador was going to be.

  Mr Hudson called the meeting to order by shouting at them for attention. ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen! If you please.’ Then he sat down to deliver his address.

  The shareholders were growlingly unimpressed by the size of their dividend that half-year and shouted their disapproval: ‘Five per cent!’ they yelled. ‘Shame on you, Hudson! It’s a disgrace!’

  George Hudson stood his ground. ‘Share values rise and fall, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘We all know that. ’Tis a bad year. They’ll rise again. You have my word on it.’

  There was more growling but they had to accept his figure. He was right about share values. They did fluctuate. But when the growling had subsided, a man sitting in the body of the hall stood up and announced his name which instantly commanded an expectant silence. The matador? Nat wondered. Or just a picador? And he made a note of his name. ‘Mr Wylie.’

  ‘I have to say, sir,’ Mr Wylie began, ‘I find the company statement you have just read to us most unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory.’ Then he paused to allow the audience time to respond, which they did, angrily. ‘A more bald account,’ he went on, ‘I have never seen issued by any public body. It contrasts most unfavourable with the accounts of the London and North Western, which were open to all the shareholders and complete in every detail. ’Tis my opinion, Mr Chairman, that this company’s accounts should be thrown open for inspection by all this company’s shareholders, in the same manner.’

  The bull barely flinched. ‘Oh aye, I’ve no doubt that is your opinion, Mr Wylie. However, in my opinion there’s no call for it.’

  At that, there was so much shouting in the hall that for a few seconds he couldn’t make himself heard above the din and after two attempts to call the meeting to order, which were both totally ignored, he gave up the effort and decided to sit it out.

  Then another man rose from the body of the hall and looked round at the angry faces with obvious satisfaction, and this one, as Nat saw at once, was important enough to be granted silence as soon as he was on his feet. The matador without a doubt.

  ‘Brankner,’ he announced. ‘As a major shareholder of this company, I would like to propose that a committee of investigation be set up to look into the company’s affairs.’

  ‘Yes!’ his audience shouted. ‘Quite right, sir. A committee of investigation. That’s what we want. Yes.’

  And they looked at Mr Hudson to see what he would say to that.

  George was furiously angry but he kept his control. ‘Tha can have my resignation if that’s what tha wants,’ he said, speaking as if he was daring them and he blew cigar smoke in their direction, contemptuously, and then sat back to see how they would respond to that. God damn it. How dare they treat him in this way? Didn’t they know who he was? Couldn’t they remember how well he’d treated them all these years? There wasn’t another man alive who gave such high dividends.

  ‘No, Mr Hudson,’ Mr Brankner shouted above the uproar. ‘Disabuse yourself of that idea, sir. That is not what we want. What we want is a committee of investigation. I propose that one be set up here and now and I put it to the vote. All those in favour?’

  There was another roar. ‘Aye,’ they shouted. ‘Aye.’

  ‘This is irregular, sir,’ George shouted back. ‘All proposals must go through the chair.’

  ‘They may go through the chair if you wish,’ Mr Brankner told him coolly, to renewed cheers. ‘Either way you’ll get the same result.’ And he turned to look round at the crowd. ‘Against?’ he asked.

  There was silence, then a cheer.

  ‘In that case,’ Mr Brankner declared. ‘I would say the proposal is carried. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Chairman?’

  George Hudson rose to his feet. ‘In that case,’ he said with as much dignity as he could muster, ‘there being no further business, I declare this meeting closed.’

  He was jeered from the room. And Nat put his notebook in his pocket and caught the last train back to Oxford.

  He spent the journey writing the first draft of his article, keeping the bull-fighting analogy because it seemed more apt than anything else he could think of, and finishing with a flourish. ‘This evening in Derby we have seen a triumph of English democracy. A man who believed that his power was so absolute that he was above the law has been voted into submission by the will of the majority.’ That night he sat up and transcribed a fair copy to send to the editor the next morning, and, because he was feeling proud of what he’d written, he wrote a second copy for his parents.

  Two days later he had a letter from his mother telling him how accurate she thought his writing was, and another from the editor to tell him that his article had been published in that day’s edition, that he had been appointed to the paper as a junior reporter as from the day of the meeting in Derby, and that, in that capacity, he was to attend the next two shareholders’ meetings of Mr Hudson’s companies which were to be held in the Grey Rooms in York in three days’ time. It was very hard to settle to mere study after that.

  Toby Henderson travelled up to York with Nat two days later. He said he had some news but that he would like to keep it until they were at table that evening and he could tell them all at once. It was very good news indeed. He was going to be ordained in York Minster in May as soon as he’d finished his finals and, what was even better, the dean had found him a living.

  ‘It’s in a little village called Snodwortham,’ he told them, ’which is about twenty miles away and not on the railway, I’m rather sorry to say
. But I shall run a carriage of some kind so there will be plenty of visiting.’

  ‘Have ’ee seen it?’ Jane asked.

  He had and was hoping to take Mary there the next day so that she could see it too and take a look round the vicarage, ‘which is a bit ramshackle at the moment, I must confess, but they have promised me I may make alterations and improvements and I’m sure Mary will advise me.’

  ‘I shall take a notebook,’ Mary told him, ‘and make a careful note of everything that needs to be done. Depend on it.’

  ‘I think we should have champagne tomorrow evening to celebrate,’ Nathaniel said.

  George Hudson was drinking champagne that evening too, although in his case he drank morosely and took little pleasure in it. He’d been pouring wine and spirits down his throat since early afternoon and he was maudlin with drink and self-pity.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said to Lizzie, over and over again. ‘After all I’ve done for ’em all these years. I’ve paid out bigger dividends than any man alive or dead. You know that, don’t ’ee, Lizzie. Much bigger dividends. You never heard a one of ’em complaining when the going was good. Oh no! They took the money when the going was good. Took it an’ glad to have it. It’s downright ingratitude. That’s what it is. Downright ingratitude.’

  ‘They’re nasty jealous,’ Lizzie tried to comfort. ‘Don’t tek no notice of ’em, George dear. They’re not worth it.’

  By that time, he was weeping so miserably he barely heard her. ‘’Tis like being set on by a swarm of wasps,’ he cried. ‘That’s how ’tis. A swarm of nasty, little, low-grade, ungrateful wasps. Sting, sting, sting. On an’ on an’ on.’

  But cry as he might, he couldn’t stop the swarms and they were gathering for their next attack.

  After the fireworks at Derby, Nat was rather disappointed by the half-yearly meeting of the York and North Midland Railway Company, for it all went off rather tamely. The shareholders groaned when they heard that their dividend was only going to be six per cent, but there was no demand for a committee of investigation and no need for anybody to be called to order. However, the meeting that followed later that day was an entirely different matter.

  The shareholders of the York, Newcastle and Berwick were well primed and had a powerful pair of leaders in two quietly spoken gentlemen called Horatio Love and Robert Prance, who were much in evidence as the crowd gathered, moving from group to group, greeting and talking. There was no sign of the chairman as yet, so Nat moved through the crowd too. It didn’t take him long to establish that, as well as being shareholders, the two gentlemen were also members of the Stock Exchange and had been looking into the company affairs for what his informant said was a considerable time. ‘I think you’ll find Mr Hudson is in for a bit of a scrap, like,’ the man said.

  And a bit of a scrap it was. As soon as the company report had been read, Mr Prance rose to his feet and announced that there was something puzzling him about the company accounts. Then he paused, smiled and expressed the hope that the chairman could enlighten him.

  The chairman looked disconcerted but grunted that he had leave to proceed.

  ‘I have discovered,’ Mr Prance said in his gentle voice, ‘that shares that were valued at £15 and bought for £15 have been sold to this company at a price of £23.10s.’ There was a frisson of excitement but no interruption. ‘The total number of such shares bought by the York, Newcastle and Berwick,’ Mr Prance went on, ‘was 3,790. I am sure that no more than the odd hundred were bought by the public, so someone has received great benefit by selling them at this extravagant price to the company. We should like to know who that person was.’ Then he looked up from his notes and smiled at Mr Hudson.

  The chairman was caught red-faced and red-handed. ‘Well now,’ he said. ‘This is all very curious, Mr Prance. I cannot account for it, sir, leastways, I cannot account for it directly, you understand, on account of not having the full facts and figures in front of me. However, I shall certainly look into it for you. You have my word on it.’

  But that wasn’t the answer Mr Prance wanted and he wasn’t going to allow Mr Hudson to get away with it. ‘I can hardly believe that the chairman of a great company like ours would attend the half-yearly meeting of his shareholders without bringing the company accounts with him,’ he said smoothly. ‘We would be prepared to wait until you have perused them to refresh your mind.’ And he turned to address the meeting. ‘Would we not, gentlemen?’ He waited for their murmured agreement before speaking to Mr Hudson again. ‘I need hardly point out that this is a very large sum of money. The transaction could hardly have escaped your notice, for as we all know you oversee all the company’s business, personally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ George had to admit. This man was a deal too oily. ‘I just didn’t recall it to mind when you asked about it. Now I come to think about it, there was some business over share prices. Mr Nathaniel Plews had charge of valuing shares at that time, as I recall, and I suppose there might have been some overcharge. If he were here, he could answer you directly but unfortunately he was not able to attend. However I will personally guarantee to do whatever the shareholders think will be most just and fair.’

  ‘Fortuitous absence of chosen scapegoat,’ Nat wrote in his notebook, thinking, This man gets more unpleasant by the minute.

  His guarantee didn’t wash with Mr Prance any more than his excuses had. ‘That, sir,’ he said, ‘is not satisfactory to me and I doubt if it is satisfactory to the other shareholders here.’ There was vociferous agreement. ‘Therefore I wish to propose that a committee of enquiry be set up to investigate this company’s affairs.’

  ‘Caught’, Nat wrote.

  The motion for a committee of enquiry was passed unanimously, there and then, and to everybody’s satisfaction Mr Robert Prance was chosen to chair it. Nat couldn’t wait to get home to tell his parents.

  ‘Splendid,’ his grandmother said, when the tale was told. ‘That’ll larn him.’

  And his mother said, ‘I’ve heard of your Mr Prance. By all accounts, he’s a very good man.’

  ‘After what I’ve seen of him this evening,’ Nat said, ‘that would be my opinion of him too.’

  ‘He’s writing a report on Mr Hudson’s doings,’ Jane told him. ‘It should make good reading.’

  ‘Is he so? Nat said. ‘When will it be published? Do you know? I’d like to get hold of a copy. Maybe I could interview him about it, if he were agreeable. Any revelation about Mr Hudson’s activities would be newsworthy. My editor would love it. He can’t stand Mr Hudson at any price.’

  ‘Hold your horses,’ Toby said, laughing at his eagerness. ‘You’ve got finals to sit before you can start reading reports.’

  ‘Finals,’ Nat told him happily, ‘will be easy after this.’

  As it turned out, for neither of them had any real problems with any of the papers and earned themselves double firsts and what Nathaniel called ‘well-deserved praise’. And when the academic slog was over, there was the May ball, to which Mary was invited, and which they all enjoyed uproariously, and then a week of parties and fireworks and gallons of champagne to drink, so that although Mr Prance’s report was published none of them noticed it.

  It had actually come out in April and it was incendiary. Mr Hudson’s wrongdoings were listed and examined, calmly and inexorably, one after the other. It was established that he was the one who had fixed the price of the Great North of England shares which he had then sold to the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway at an exorbitant profit, exactly as Mr Prance had said at the company meeting. In addition to that, there were other charges. Rails had been bought cheaply and sold for huge profits, compensation cheques had been withheld from landowners and left in Mr Hudson’s account to accumulate more profit for him and shares in the Bradbury Junction Railway Company had been illegally appropriated. It was unanswerable and it had to be answered.

  By the time Nat and Toby came down for the last time – Nat to begin full-time work with The York
shireman, Toby to start his life as a clergyman and to set about redecorating and modernizing his shabby vicarage, according to Mary’s detailed requirements – the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway had sued their chairman for £30,000 and the citizens of York were agog with gossip, either shaking their heads at the news or rubbing their hands, according to their opinion of the man, but all of them telling one another that his downfall was imminent. By the beginning of May, the rumours reached Richard Nicholson’s elegant house in Clifton Green.

  At first he tried to tell himself that it was a storm in a teacup and would soon pass over but the rumours persisted and when he read that his brother-in-law was being sued by the York, Newcastle and Berwick for illegal share-dealing, he remembered the shares they had bought and sold together and was seriously alarmed. Painful though it most certainly would be, he would have to buy this dreadful report that everyone was talking about and read it for himself.

  He found a copy in the bookseller’s beside the Minster and bought it, which took a moment of courage because he felt that everybody in the shop was staring at him accusingly and it was a struggle not to look shamefaced. Then he hid it in his pocket and took it home to see what it contained. It shocked him so much that he couldn’t speak for the rest of the day. He couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it. I may be a bit of a fool, he told himself – that was undeniable, everybody knew it – but I’m not dishonest. Never have been, never will be. And yet there it was. In print. The shares were crooked. He and George had broken the law. Oh dear God, how could it have happened?

  He lay awake all night, in a state of terror, worrying and fretting and feeling sick and utterly at a loss to know what he could do. It wasn’t until dawn was breaking at slow last that he remembered Lizzie. That was the answer. He would write to his sister and ask her what he ought to do. She knew George better than anyone else. She could tell him.