Bellman & Black (21 page)

“What do you know of William Bellman?” he asked his wife.

“The clothier from Whittingford?” She put her head on one side. “He lost his child in that outbreak of fever, didn’t he? Unless it was his wife . . . What does he want?”

“Money.”

“Hasn’t he plenty of his own? Besides, we’ve never met him.”

“Fact that a man prefers working to standing about chatting in other people’s reception rooms isn’t a reason not to invest in him. On the contrary.”

Critchlow’s interest was piqued. He wrote a reply inviting Bellman to his house.

·  ·  ·

By the same log fire, twenty-four hours later, William revealed the scheme to the haberdasher. He set out the idea, the costs (building,
stock, labor costs, warehousing), the time scale, the product range, the demand, the supply chain.

“All very sound,” the haberdasher said. “The profit?”

Bellman passed a leaf of paper to him containing a table of figures. “The first three years.”

In private Bellman had higher expectations than were shown on the paper. The private figures looked well founded to him. Still, he was businessman enough to know that a canny investor is likely to be put off by promises of gains that look too great. Safer all round to promise something less ambitious, enticing but attainable. So he had reined the figures in.

Critchlow drew the paper toward him and looked. He raised a rapid eyebrow at Bellman. “You’re sure of these figures?”

“No sensible man of business is ever sure of anything. An estimate is a guess. A conservative estimate is a conservative guess. But death doesn’t go out of fashion.”

The man rubbed his mouth with his hand, looked back at the page. The guess of a man like William Bellman had to be worth something.

“How much do you need?”

Bellman named a figure. “I’m putting up a quarter of that myself. I need three others.”

“Whom have you spoken to?”

William mentioned the names of the other investors with whom he had made appointments. Critchlow nodded. He knew them, and they were solid people.

“I like the idea. Give me some time to think it over.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You don’t waste time, do you? Tomorrow it shall be.”

William picked up his table of figures and left. The man sat back down in his chair by the fire and looked into the flames.

Death doesn’t go out of fashion, he thought.

This interview was repeated twice. William was offered brandy or
whiskey; he sat by a roaring fire; he set out his idea; he passed across a sheet of figures. None of the meetings lasted more than an hour.

William went home believing he had not long to wait, and he was right.

None of the haberdashers had ever invested so much money in a single project. None had ever made his mind up about a deal so rapidly, nor with such a surge of confidence. William Bellman was putting up a full quarter of the money himself, was he? Well, well, well.

Three men by three fires poured themselves another brandy—or whiskey—and leaned back in three chairs with three satisfied smiles. They were rich men and they were about to be made richer.

The morning brought William three letters. Yes, yes, and yes.

Good.

He could see the future. He could make it happen. He set about things.

F
irst the land. No simple matter, that. Then lawyers to see off the small tradesmen scratching a living there. Meanwhile architects and draftsmen to work on designs.

“Five storeys,” Bellman told them, “and the essence of it should be light. The center of the roof to be an octagonal glass window to the sky, and the entire building to be pierced through the middle, so that light will fall through the center of the shop and not only through the windows.”

“Hmm,” the architect said and stroked his beard. “Alternatively—”

“An atrium,” said William. “Exactly as I have described. How else can my seamstresses see to stitch? How else can my customers see the black detail on a pair of black gloves at four o’clock on a November afternoon?”

The architect presented plans for the building: there was no atrium. “It is hardly practical,” he pleaded. “It will be too hot in summer. Think of the maintenance costs! And is it safe?”

William sketched out the atrium himself in his calfskin notebook, tore it out, and handed it to the man. “Go to Chance in Birmingham for the plate glass. You must get these men”—another scribble and torn-out page—“for the installation. They are familiar with the ridge-and-furrow system. There is a system that will raise the entire glazed ceiling to let the hot air escape in summer. And if you don’t know how to do it, I’ll subcontract the entire roof to one of Paxton’s men.”

The architect produced new plans in accordance with Bellman’s wishes.

A manager of works was needed. Bellman’s architect knew just the man.

“Come with me, I’ll take you to him now.”

The man’s office was as comfortable as any reception room. He was plump and jovial, the buttons of his waistcoat shone, and he shook Bellman’s hand with confidence. Bellman suppressed a grimace at the handshake: it was the man’s clean nails, the soaped and scented softness of his skin. He stayed ten minutes with him then took his leave.

“He’s not the one,” he said. “He has not the voice for speaking to laborers. If a thing is to be done well, it cannot be done from the fireside. You have to be there yourself.”

“With respect, sir,” the architect said, “Bensen has a very experienced team of intermediaries and he has vast experience. You need someone who is your equal in talent and experience, someone who can take the responsibility of the construction off your shoulders, leaving you free for the rest of the enterprise,”

Bellman shook his head. It was not his way.

Someone younger, he thought. Calloused. Closer to the men. Closer to the work. He asked around, and his enquiries led him to a man called Fox.

They met in a small park, round the corner from a noisy construction site. Fox wore heavy boots, had dirt under his nails, and when he spoke to his men, he sounded like one of them. Fox reminded him a little of himself when young: talented, hungry for a big project. Bellman set out his terms plainly. He meant to pay Fox less than the fat man with the soft hands had wanted—a lot less—but the young man stood to gain not only a lengthy and lucrative contract but also something far more valuable: a reputation.

“Night and day, I’ll work,” he promised, and Bellman believed him. The project would be the making of Fox, they both knew it. They shook hands, both satisfied.

Together Bellman and Fox visited stonemasons, builders, and carpenters.
Fox spoke their language—“My father was a builder in Exeter”—and Bellman watched and listened. Then he asked questions and Fox fell silent, listening to Bellman ask about materials, the raw costs, the transport costs. He watched Bellman scribble sums in the notebook he always carried in his deep pockets, work out reductions, take it upon himself to draft letters to quarriers and timber merchants. Sometimes coming away from a potential tradesman and shaking their heads together over a man’s perilously weak grasp of his own business, Fox would say, “Ah, but he’s got a good lad working for him. Did you see the work he was doing? Very nice. Now the lad would be an asset . . .”

“Steal him away,” Bellman directed, and Fox set about the theft of the apprentice.

·  ·  ·

The enterprise was not only a building to be constructed out of stone, but also a legal entity that had to be made secure and watertight with pages of impenetrable jargon. Bellman spent long hours in lawyers’ offices poring over paperwork, puzzling out contracts of labyrinthine complexity. He arrived at these meetings with a series of commonsense questions and listened to the answers with a quite uncommon intelligence. The instructions he gave were decisive, and framed in the lawyers’ own language. If there was any aspect of ownership, responsibilities, and entitlements he was in doubt about, it did not appear so to the lawyers, who were impressed by his decisiveness and acuity.

The third aspect of the venture was financial. The grand entrance hall of the Westminster & City Bank was an impressive place. Half a mountain of Italian marble sliced into slabs for the floor and walls, hammered, chiseled, and pumiced into columns, expensive, hard, intimidating. Few entered here without an inner tremor: respectable ladies felt their voices tremble like schoolgirls as they asked for their balances, and baronets adopted an exaggerated swagger as they made a withdrawal. Even the blameless vicar suppressed a nervous cough. It was impossible to escape the awareness that somewhere in this place dozens of suited
clerks labored like angels over their ledgers, entering in black copperplate the sage economies and financial imprudences of every customer, keeping account of every transaction in guineas, shillings, and pence, until the day of reckoning. No, the grand hall of the Westminster & City was not a comfortable place. No matter how stain free one’s balance, it caused the souls of even the most prudent to quail.

Quailing was quite unknown to William Bellman. He took the steps three at a time and entered the hall with as much awe as a bee that flies into Westminster’s other great cathedral and comes to rest on the altar there. Quite by chance, Mr. Anson, a senior manager at the bank, was passing through the hall as Bellman strode in, and had noticed his indifference to the grandeur. A strong, dark man, possessed of great energy and force, he entirely bypassed the clerk at the desk where an ordinary customer would have made an appointment, preferring to cast an observant eye over everyone in the hall. When it alighted on Mr. Anson he stepped purposefully toward him and introduced himself and his requirements in a few words. “Are you the man to help?”

Anson was not used to being accosted in this informal fashion, but something in Bellman’s manner and demeanor told him it would be worth his while giving him a few moments, and a few moments were enough to persuade him to give the man a longer hearing.

In a private room Bellman set out his financial projections. It was a large loan that Bellman wanted. The construction of the shop was being paid for out of capital, but a loan was wanted in order to stock the shop. Anson considered the figures Bellman had prepared.

“So you are in need of a loan and will be holding the shop account here too. A personal account as well, perhaps?”

“Two.”

“Two personal accounts? Both for yourself.”

Bellman nodded without explanation.

Well, that was unusual, but he could see no administrative or legal impediment. Anson looked at the proposed turnover figures. Overoptimistic,
he thought, but if Bellman achieved even half of what he intended he would be doing well enough to cover the repayments. The outlook was rosy. There was nothing to stop him agreeing to a deal today, and besides, he had the feeling that if Bellman didn’t get the answer he wanted here and now he would take his figures and his business to another bank.

“Glad to be able to help,” he said and offered a hand. Bellman took it and gave it a firm, single shake by the end of which he was already on his feet and ready to leave.

Anson accompanied Bellman back to the hall. They shook hands again, and the banker watched his new customer cross the marble floor toward the exit with the same assured and purposeful gait he had used when entering, undaunted by the great vault above his head, undiminished by the expanses of marble around him. How unusual, he reflected. This is a man to whom a bank is just a place to put money. If money were raindrops then the Westminster & City is no more than a water butt. Large, expensive, and made of marble, but a water butt nonetheless.

Turning into the corridor leading to his colleague’s office in search of the paper he had left there this morning, he congratulated himself. If Bellman’s venture did as well as he thought it might, then he, Anson, had just done the best day’s business in his life—and in less than three-quarters of an hour.

O
ne wet February day, Bellman stood under a cloud-thick sky surveying his site. The ramshackle buildings of yesterday were gone, razed to the ground, and London’s earth had been broken by a hundred shovels to expose this vast crater. There were no shovels today: impossible to work in weather like this. Inches of rain lay in the bottom of the pit, and the new raindrops fell so heavily and insistently into it that there was a continual splashing and flying of water. Rain slicked Bellman’s hair to his scalp and darkened his coat to an indistinct color. Puddles were seeping through the stitchwork of his shoes. Every man and beast that had shelter had withdrawn to it, so Bellman was alone in his contemplation—except for a solitary rook on a rooftop, indifferent to the rain, who eyed both man and site with an air of faint interest.