The Strode Venturer (16 page)

He let go of his desk and sagged back in his chair as though, now that the decision was taken, he could relax. “I have today added a codicil to my Will. The shares I hold in Strode & Company will pass to you at my death and they are protected from sale by my executors for the purposes of estate duty. You understand? I’m giving you what I hope amounts to final control of Strode & Company in the event of a showdown between Peter and the others.” And he added, “The market price this morning is fifteen and six. They have risen six shillings in a fortnight and the inference I draw from that is that Lingrose and his friends are mopping up the last few shares still held in public hands. I have seen this sort of thing happen before and I know what it means. The heat is on and they are pressing for control by one means or another.”

He put his handkerchief to his lips again, his face darkly mottled, his body slumped. “I think I must ask you both—to leave now. I just wanted you—to understand, Ida.”

“Of course.” Her voice was very quiet and restrained, the huskiness reduced almost to a whisper. “It was kind of you to explain.” She had got to her feet and she went round the desk and took his hands. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“No, my dear. Nothing. Nothing at all. Just remember me once in a while when I’m gone.” He smiled faintly. “I’m not certain—not yet—but I think perhaps it helps to be remembered sometimes.”

“Of course.” She smiled. “Often. But it’s not yet.”

“Very soon now, I fear.”

I, too, had got to my feet. It was difficult to explain how I felt. It was a lot of money to be handed by a stranger, a man I hadn’t known existed until a few weeks before. I didn’t think of it like that, of course. It was the obligation that hit me, the realization that with the lawyer’s knowledge of human reactions he’d tied me to Strode House for life. What he had done was to give me back part of the responsibility and power that should have been mine by birth and he’d done it in a way that had made me both a check and a prop to the man in whom he was really interested.

“Are you sure this is really what you want?” I asked him. I was still a little dazed or I would have realized he wasn’t the sort of man who didn’t know his own mind.

“Quite sure,” he snapped. And it wasn’t until Ida and I were going down the dark stone stairway together that I realized I hadn’t thanked him, hadn’t even said good-bye. I’d walked out of his office, leaving her alone with him, and had waited outside, my mind full of the future, realizing gradually the full extent of the obligation—and the challenge—I had had thrust upon me. And then she came out, dry-eyed but emotionally upset, and we walked down the stairway together without saying a word, out into the spring sunshine.

We walked through Lincoln’s Inn and across Kingsway and came to Covent Garden, neither of us having thought of taking a taxi or of going our separate ways. Once she said, “He knows he’s dying.” And later: “He’s been in our lives always—a sort of rock, something solid to cling to when we were in trouble.” She wasn’t upset about it any more, but the break in her voice showed the depth of her feeling. “I shall miss him.” And after that she didn’t say anything until we crossed the Market and came to the Round House pub by Moss Bros. “I think I’d like a drink,” she said then.

In the end we had lunch together for we were still under the old man’s spell, feeling ourselves drawn together by the web of circumstance.

“Where’s Peter now, do you think?”

“God knows!” For all I knew the
Strode Venturer
might be lying broken against the laval side of some newly erupted island. But I couldn’t help feeling that Peter was too live, too vital a man to get sunk without trace before he’d had time to get to grips with the world his father had bequeathed him. She must have felt this, too, for all she said was, “I hope he doesn’t make a fool of himself.” We had finished the meal and she was sitting facing me, smoking a cigarette and sipping her coffee. “I want you to promise me something. See that he doesn’t do just that. Like me, he can be terribly impulsive. He does things on the spur of the moment. He once told me all his travelling was on the spur of the moment. Somebody in a bar, a ship in a harbour, the signpost beckoning. He doesn’t plan. He acts. That’s why you’ve been left those shares. The old dear knows Peter’s weakness.” She smiled at me, a humorous gleam in her eyes. “You’re my brother’s keeper now. D’you realize that?”

I didn’t, of course—not then. I didn’t know him well enough to realize he needed one. But she did, and so did the old lawyer. It was only later, much later, that I came to understand the crazy streak in him. It wasn’t a question of instability so much as a certain theatrical quality in his make-up. His was a volatile, flamboyant nature feeding on excitement, carried away by his enthusiasm, his delight in the grand gesture. I was cast in the role of ground tackle, an anchor to keep him from wrecking himself.

“Read that,” George Strode said, reaching across his desk to hand me a letter. It was the following morning and the letter was from the Admiralty. The
Strode Venturer
was apparently safe. She had returned to Addu Atoll on 14th April short of fuel and had requested permission from the naval officer in charge of the
Wave Victor
to bunker for the voyage to Aden.
In the circumstances there appeared no alternative but to accede to the request, particularly as it was made by a director of Strode & Coy. We would point out, however, that the
Wave Victor
is anchored at Addu Atoll for the refuelling of naval vessels. It is not to be regarded as providing a bunkering service for commercial vessels and you are warned that in the future …
The final paragraph read:
In view of the threat to life constituted by your failure to provide sufficient fuel for this vessel kindly forward by return a full report as to the reasons why the
Strode Venturer
could not make Aden without recourse to Admiralty bunkering facilities.

“Well, what do I say to that?” George Strode demanded. “Is Peter quite out of his mind? The chief engineer, Brady, must have warned him about the fuel situation. To sub-charter the ship and take her off for a joy-ride round the Indian Ocean knowing damn’ well he couldn’t reach Aden …” His words, tumbling over themselves, were choked by anger. “Do you know the man who wrote that letter?”

I glanced at the signature. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“Well, you know the form. Draft a reply—the usual thing, full inquiry, disciplinary action, and bring it down to me for signature. That should satisfy them.” And he added, “The
Strode Venturer
is due in Aden on Saturday. And I’ve just had confirmation that Peter’s still on board. I’ve cabled Simpkin to get him on a plane the moment the ship docks. I’d like a full report on his activities from you before I see him on Monday morning.”

But it wasn’t until the Tuesday that he arrived, and then quite unexpectedly. About four in the afternoon he came bursting into my office lugging an old duffel-bag. He heaved it up on to my desk and the mouth of it fell open, pouring a cascade of those manganese nodules into my lap. “Well, there you are—the first consignment.” He glanced round my office. “Why did they shove you up here? I barged in on a languid young man downstairs—acres of carpet and about a dozen pictures all to himself.”

“That’s John,” I said. “Henry Strode’s son. He acts as P.A. to his father.” I had moved the duffel-bag on to the floor and was clearing the stuff from my desk. “So you found the island.”

“I suppose you could call it an island, yes. It was the bed
of the Indian Ocean really.” He’d come straight from the airport, his tropical suit still rumpled from the journey, but he didn’t seem tired and he wanted to talk. “Never seen anything like it. All grey slime and weed and the empty cases of shellfish, and stinking like a dirty harbour at low water.” The description, the atmosphere of the place came pouring out of him compulsively, leaving me with the impression of a dark whale shape about three miles by two, a dead decaying mass from the ocean depths lying stranded in a flat calm oily swell a thousand miles from anywhere. He had seen the manganese lying exposed in drifts like banks of black metallic shingle. And here and there were outcrops of the basalt from which the nodules had been leached by the sea’s action. But most of the island was overlaid by sediment, a grey slime baking under a blazing hot sun. He wouldn’t tell me where the island was. “It’s way off any steamer track, clear of the flight path of any plane.”

“Volcanic?” I asked.

He shrugged. “In origin—yes, I suppose so. Sometimes, when the wind was southerly, the air became sulphurous as though gases were seeping out of some submarine rectum. But there was no vent on the island. I haven’t walked it all, but you can see most of it for it’s nowhere more than fifty feet high and damned difficult to approach, though we found deep water on the western side.”

“Any picture of it?” I was thinking it would help when it came to putting a scheme up to his fellow directors. But he hadn’t had a camera with him. Nor had any of the crew. “Just as well,” he said. “We don’t want anyone else out there searching for it.” He seemed to have forgotten about the ship’s officers.

“They must have known what you were up to, bringing off samples.”

He laughed. “They were scared stiff, most of them. There’s a damned queer atmosphere about a hunk of land that’s just emerged from the sea. Geology isn’t their business and anyway they thought I was crazy.”

“But they know where it is and they’ll talk.”

“They’ll talk, yes. But you’re wrong—they don’t know where it is. There were only two sextants on board besides my own and I got hold of those before we sailed. As soon as we were in the area—I had Don Mansoor with me and his reckoning of its position was a little vague—I started a square search. You know how confusing that can be unless you’re plotting it yourself. And I saw to it that nobody else kept a track chart.” He had seated himself on the edge of my desk and was toying with one of the ore pieces. A strange smell of the sea and of decay had invaded my office. “If we follow this up—get out there quick …” He stared down at the lava-like substance he held in his hand. “There’s shiploads of this stuff there—millions of tons of it for the taking. With a surplus of shipping and the eastern countries taking over our traditional cargoes it’d make a difference to have our own freight source, wouldn’t it? And nobody owns the island. An opportunity like this comes only once in a lifetime….”

He was still sporting that little French beard and with his skin tanned to the colour of old teak and his eyes alight with excitement he looked very strange indeed. I thought of the other times I had met him, how on each occasion he had seemed in his element. But here in the City, dressed in a tropical suit.… It was one thing to dream of resuscitating Strode Orient, quite another to convince the directors. Dreams and company balance sheets, the hard facts of money, don’t go easily together.

I started to tell him this, but he brushed the difficulties aside. “Even my brothers must see the possibilities. It’s so damned obvious.” And he went on: “I don’t just bring back a bag of ore. I had Number Four hold half-filled with the stuff. We were digging it up with shovels and bringing it off in the boats for two solid days.” He laughed. “When we got to Aden, there was our little agent, Simpkin, running up the wall because he’d been told to rush me off by plane and I wouldn’t leave till I’d got samples away to a long list of industrial concerns I’d had prepared back in Singapore. He sacked Deacon, by the way. Did you know that?”

I nodded. “The instructions were sent over a week ago.”

“Well, that’s soon put right. And after I’d got the samples off, I had the rest of it transhipped to a freighter bound for the Tyne. Wouldn’t be surprised if I make enough to cover the fuel bills.”

“That would help,” I said. And I tried to explain to him what the reaction had been at this end. But he was so full of his own plans that he couldn’t conceive of any opposition to them.

There was a knock at the door and Elliot came in. He stood there for a moment, staring. “Are you Mr. Peter Strode?” He said it with the air of a man forced to make friends with a rattlesnake. And then he added hastily, “Mr. George would like to see you.” He held the door open. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

That first meeting with his brother must have opened his eyes to the position, for he came back to my office half an hour later in quite a different mood. “Let’s for God’s sake go and have a drink.

“They’re not open yet,” I said. “Not in the City.”

“To hell with the City. We’ll go down West.”

He left the duffel-bag in my office and we went down the stairs together. “Only been in this place twice before. Always hated it.” He stopped at the head of the main staircase, looking down at the ornate entrance with its glistening chandeliers and marble floor. “Incredible, isn’t it? Modelled on a palazzo in Milan. My father was very fond of baroque. It appealed to the flamboyant side of his nature.” He smiled. “Italian palazzi, Haussman’s Champs-Elysées, the Escorial — anything really big. You never met him, I suppose?”

“No.”

He nodded, still smiling. “Just as well, perhaps, you wouldn’t have liked him. He was a man of enormous appetite, egotistical, ruthless—anything he saw he wanted to own. Another twenty years and he’d have got his hands on half the ships in the country.” He gave a little shrug. “I hated him, of course, but that was years ago. Now I understand him better, can appreciate that driving energy
of his, that acquisitive, expansive lust for the power that money gives.” His dark hand tightened its grip on the smooth wood of the staircase rail. “This is the first time in my life I ever felt the need of him. He’d have known how to make a thing like this come to life, and he’d have backed me … I’m damned sure he would.”

“Well, he’s dead now,” I said and there wasn’t much kindness in the way I said it.

He nodded and started down the stairs. “Yes, he’s dead and brother Henry sits at the desk where he used to sit.” One of the freight department clerks went past us, his eyes almost popping out of his head as he stared at my companion. We reached the portrait of my father and Peter Strode hesitated, glancing at me. Was he checking the likeness or was he considering how I must feel working in this building? I couldn’t be certain, for his eyes were without expression and he didn’t say anything.