Kindling (25 page)

“We’re a precious pair,” said Warren very quietly. “Couple of bloody share-pushers, if you ask me.”

“That’s right,” said Cheriton. “I don’t want you to think that I came into this thing with my eyes shut. I took a good deal of advice, as a matter of fact. It seemed to me to be a good thing to do. I’m sorry if we’re going to burn our fingers now—that’s just too bad. But I’m not sorry that we started up this thing in Sharples.”

He turned to Warren. “What is this trouble all about?”

Warren told him, omitting the City Police.

They smoked in silence for a time.

“Are all of us in this?” asked Cheriton. “We all signed the prospectus.”

Warren shook his head. “We haven’t got to be. You and Hogan have got to keep out of it—leave the dirt to me. I’ve been in the City all my life, and I know how to handle it.”

Cheriton frowned. “I don’t much like the sound of that.”

Warren smiled. “I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not,” he said. “I’m chairman of this Company, and I’m telling you what I want done.”

He paused. “You two have got to keep out of it. There’s a bad row coming up, but if we’re all mixed up in it the Company will bust, and that’s not what we set out to achieve. Now, it’s quite possible that I may have to resign from the Board over this. If that happens, you’ve got to take the chair yourself.”

The young man stirred uneasily. “I can’t do that. I haven’t got enough experience.”

“You’ve got old Hogan behind you. He’s too old to put into the chair, but he’ll back you for all he’s worth. Next, you’ve got to make Grierson managing director. He didn’t have anything to do with the prospectus, and that will please the shareholders.”

The other nodded. “That’s a good move. I’ve been meaning to suggest that for some time.”

“If there’s a row, and I retire, you’ll have to call an extraordinary general meeting of the Company to make these changes. Have that in the Yard—the registered offices of the Company. It’s three hundred miles from London, and you won’t get many shareholders will come that far to make a row. I’ll see that you get proxies enough to carry any motion that you want. Fix things so that the shareholders who do turn up have
a look round the Yard before the meeting, and they’ll come in all enthusiastic. And then, away you go with a new lease of life.”

The young man looked troubled. “I see it can be managed,” he replied. “At the same time, I hope very much that you aren’t going to retire.”

“I hope so, too. I started this thing, and I want to see it through. At the same time, we’ve got to think first of the Company. If the hunt is really up, and I’m afraid it is, you may be better off without me. But we’ll have to see how it goes on.”

“There’s one good thing,” said Cheriton. “I think we can get all the work we want to keep the Yard alive. Old Hogan’s found another shipowner—wants two small colliers.”

Warren grunted. “You’d better stick out for a better price, from now on.”

Next day he went down to the Yard with Cheriton. The three large berths were occupied by frames and steelwork growing into oil tankers; on the first of these the framework was completed, and the plating well ahead. In one of the two smaller berths the keel plate of the little tramp had been laid down, and frames were laid out on the ground beside.

“It’s coming on,” said Warren to Grierson. “Beginning to see something now.”

“Oh, aye. And the men are working better, too.”

“How many have you got employed?”

“Something over fourteen hundred. I’ll find out for you, and let you know. But we’ll be needing a lot more, now we’re coming on to the plating. That releases a lot of work, you understand.”

“How many will you have employed by August?”

“The inside of two thousand five hundred,” said the manager, after a minute’s thought. “Two three to two five.”

“And launch the first one at the end of October?”

“Aye—we’ll not be far off that.”

Warren stared up at the framing, towering high above his head. “It’s so—immense …” he said slowly. “I’ve never watched ships being built before. I’d not know how to start about a job like this.”

Grierson chuckled. “Start where you started this one, Mr. Warren,” he remarked. “Down in an office in the City.”

Warren smiled. “I meant the building of them.”

“Oh, aye, it’s not that difficult. You keep on adding bit to bit, you understand, and they get done before you know.”

Warren spent the morning wandering around the Yard. He was amazed again at what he had created. He watched the growing ships, the working men; it was incredible to him that he had started all this industry. He could not make himself believe that he was part of the organisation; he saw himself as a spectator to a great work being done by someone else.

He left that Yard at lunch time with regret, and went up to the hospital to lunch with the Almoner. She was waiting for him in her little room, the table laid for lunch, the room alight with daffodils.

“It seems all wrong for you to be up here in the middle of the week,” she said. “It makes me feel to-morrow will be Sunday.”

She paused. “It doesn’t mean trouble, does it?”

He smiled at her. “Not more than I can manage.”

“How did the Laevol thing go off?”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

She said no more, but busied herself in giving him his lunch. She talked to him of Sharples, of the Yard and of the hospital; she told him there was talk of a new cinema.

“Another thing,” she said. “There aren’t so many patients coming to the hospital. I was going over the returns with Mr. Williams, and comparing them with last year. Out-patients are down a lot. In-patients as well, but not so much.”

“You’ll be losing your job if this goes on.”

“I don’t know that I’d mind so much about that now.”

He nodded slowly. “It makes a difference, now the place is getting on its feet. I feel the same.”

She looked up, startled. “You do?”

He did not answer her question, but began to talk about the Council, and the administration of the town. But with the coffee he turned again to her.

“I’m going back on the four-thirty,” he said. “Before I go, I’m going to take a walk up on to the hill—towards the mine. Would you care to come up there this afternoon?”

“What for?”

He smiled. “I want to see the place as a whole, before I go back.”

She thought about it for a moment. “I’d like to.”

In the warm afternoon they walked together up the hill out of the town. At the top, they paused beside a gate.

“This is the place I wanted to come to,” he said. “We came here once before.”

She nodded. “You told me you were going to put the town to work again. And now you’ve done it. Are you satisfied?”

He stared out over the town. A wreath of smoke hung over it, dimming the outlines of the river. “It’s not finished yet,” he said. “We’ve only made a start. I’d like to see the rolling-mills get started up, even if we have to leave the mine. But I think it will come now; if the Yard gets a decent run of work the rest will come back.”

He turned to her. “I may be retiring from the Board,” he said.

She was amazed. “But—you can’t do that …” she said. “I mean—you are the Company. You started it for us.”

He nodded. “That’s so. But there are two sorts of people in the company world—the starters and the runners. The people who can start things up aren’t usually the best at running them—you want a different sort of mind for that. I’ve been a starter all my life—I never was a runner. But all my Board are runners—Cheriton, Hogan and Grierson. They’re all good runners. Your Company would be quite safe with them.”

“But—why should you retire?”

“I’ve done my job,” he said simply, “and I’m tired. I want to have a rest.”

She laid her hand upon his arm. “You ought to take a holiday.”

“I may be going to retire from business altogether,”
he said. “I don’t know that I shall ever work again.”

There was a momentary silence, and then he said, “When my wife left me, I had to look around for something big to get stuck into—in the way of work. I found this Sharples thing to work at. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to tackle, and the best worth doing. But now, my job is coming to an end; Sharples is going now. There’ll be difficulties ahead, of course, but not more than the Yard can overcome. There’s not the need for me here now. I might look out for something else to start, but I don’t think I shall.”

“You must take a long rest,” she said. “Travel for a time—forget about your work.”

He smiled. “It’s not much fun doing that alone. Would you come with me?”

There was a pause; the wind sighed in the hedges, over the blackened town. “If you wanted me to,” she said quietly.

He shook his head. “There’s a couple of months to go before my decree gets made absolute,” he said. “We’ll wait and see what happens in the meantime.”

She raised her eyes to his. “I know that you’re expecting trouble of some sort,” she said. “I don’t know what it is, and you don’t want to tell me. But I want you to know this. I’m here, if you want me, and I’ll always be here if you want me. That—that’s what I wanted you to know.”

He smiled down at her. “I’ve known that long enough. If it hadn’t been for that I should have chucked this Sharples business long ago.”

She dropped her eyes. “I’m not sure that I quite know what you mean.”

“I mean just this,” he said. “You had faith in the town, that it could pull itself up out of the mess if once it got a chance. And I had faith in you.”

He stared out over the river and the Yard. “That’s what brought work back here again,” he said.

He turned to her, and took her hand in his. “We’ll be able to do great things together,” he said quietly. “I might put off retiring, after all.”

She stood there looking up at him, her hand held in his own. “You’ve got your own romantic style,” she said softly. “I like it, Henry, because it’s you—the real you. I wouldn’t feel it was the real you if you were making love to me, in all your trouble. I’d feel that you were acting. But when we get in smoother water, I’ll expect a bit more than talk about your companies.”

He stroked the hand that he still held in his own. “A house in Oxfordshire,” he said. “In the country somewhere, by a river. Where one could do some fishing, of the quieter sort. Would that be what you’d like?”

She nodded without speaking.

And presently she stirred. “It’s nearly four,” she said. “I know you want to catch that train, and I won’t keep you maundering with me. But Henry—remember this. I’m always here.”

“I know, my dear,” he said. “It’s that that makes this bloody thing worth while.”

He went back with her to the town, and caught his train to London. He took a taxi to his flat and slept uneasily; in the morning he went down to his office.

Morgan came in to him shortly after he arrived. “A Superintendent Bullen of the City Police was here late
yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I told him that you would be in in the morning.”

There was a momentary silence.

“All right,” said Warren evenly. “I’ll give him a ring.”

The secretary retired. Warren got up from his desk, walked to the window, and stood for a few minutes looking down on the familiar little court. Then he turned back to the telephone.

“Superintendent Bullen?” he enquired. “This is Henry Warren speaking—Warren Sons and Mortimer.” He listened for a moment. “You’d better come along here right away.”

In a few minutes two quietly dressed City gentlemen were with him in the room.

“I shall have to ask you to come down the street with me to my office, Mr. Warren,” said the Superintendent. “I have a warrant here for your arrest, on charges in connection with the Hawside Ship and Engineering Company Ltd.”

A
LLARDYCE
, his solicitor, was distressed and shocked. He came hurrying to the Guildhall, to the visiting-room where Warren was waiting for him. A policeman was seated in the room.

Warren rose from behind the long table that divided the room. “Sorry to have brought you to a place like this,” he said.

The solicitor sank into a chair on the other side of the table. “I cannot tell you how sorry I was to get your message. Still—I understand that our time is limited. I have found out that you appear before the magistrates to-morrow morning—yes, of course, you know that. The police will ask for a remand. I shall apply for bail, of course.”

“You won’t get it,” said Warren.

“I think we may. I shall plead that in a case of this sort the defence cannot be handled adequately except in your own office. The complexity of the matter. The mass of documents that have to be examined.”

Warren smiled. “There isn’t going to be a defence,” he said.

Allardyce eyed him seriously. “Do you mean you want to plead guilty?”

“That’s right.”

The solicitor was silent. “I find that very difficult to believe,” he said at last. “If facts are as stated in
the charge, there must be some good reason for those facts. Your business isn’t a bucket shop. You had no reason to want to make money in that way—and in point of fact, I understand that you made practically nothing out of the issue.”

Warren nodded. “All the same,” he said, “there will be no defence.”

“Why not?”

“For several reasons. Firstly, because I did it.”

The solicitor raised his hand, and shot a quick glance at the policeman.

“I very much appreciate your wish to get me out of this,” said Warren. “But frankly, Allardyce, that isn’t practical. There’s a confidential letter of mine that they’ve got hold of which blows the gaff properly. I’m sorry, but there it is. It’s a waste of my money and the Crown’s money to contest a case like this.”

“I think,” said the solicitor, “that you should make an effort.”

“I don’t,” said Warren.

After a pause he said, “You’d better understand my point of view. We couldn’t win this case, but even if we did, I’m finished in the City after this. That’s the first point—whether we plead guilty or not guilty, I’m retiring from the City.”

“I see that,” said Allardyce thoughtfully.