The Strode Venturer (2 page)

I couldn’t see it then. Our circumstances were so entirely different; though the price he’d got for his plantation might be low it must still represent quite a nice amount of capital. But I was to remember his words much later and realise that they were true. We parted at the Air Terminal and he gave me his address—the Oriental Club. “If you care for a drink sometime….” He left it at that and as I picked up my case and went over to Information it never occurred to me that I should see him again. I asked for a cheap hotel and the girl at the desk fixed me up at one of those small residential places off the Cromwell Road. I took a taxi there, but the room wasn’t ready of course, and it was still too early for breakfast. I signed the register and had a wash, and then, leaving my bags with the night porter, I walked out into the grey loneliness of London. The traffic was still light, the clatter of milk bottles the dominant sound. A newsboy was delivering papers and across the road a lighted shop front showed two policemen in sharp relief; they stood quite still staring at a bosomy model dressed in a black brassière
and matching elastic girdle. Lights were on in some of the upper windows, boarding houses and shops mingling haphazardly with still-lifeless offices, and up a side street a glimpse of trees and an old Regency square.

There is something about London at this hour of the morning, a hint of greatness past and present, the sense of a leviathan stirring, stretching itself to meet the challenge of a new day. It never failed to excite me and tired though I was, I too felt the challenge. I joined two early workers waiting for a bus and when it came, its side lights and the red bulk of it rumbling to a stop in the empty street, I climbed to the upper deck and sat in the front to watch Knightsbridge and Piccadilly, all the old, remembered, familiar façades roll by. It was only later when I switched to a bus going City-wards that I was consciously aware of a destination, and all the way down Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill I had the sense of a pilgrimage, for the building I was going to visit was the power-symbol of the man who had broken my father.

It was a long time ago, more than thirty years, and I’d been away at school so that I’d only felt the impact of it through my mother and through our changed circumstances and the void my father left in our lives. At that age you don’t feel bitterness; you accept things as they are, adapting quickly and not thinking too much. It had meant Dartmouth to me instead of an expensive school and Henry Strode was just a name, a sort of monster whom I’d get even with some day. Now, of course, he was dead, too, and when I’d met his son sitting cross-legged on the deck of a dhow beached on an island in the Persian Gulf I’d felt no hostility towards him. He wasn’t that sort of a man and anyway our circumstances seemed oddly reversed—I was in command of a minelaying exercise and he was bumming a ride in a
sambuq
down to Mukalla.

We had reached the Bank and I got out at the bus stop by the Royal Exchange. The City was still dead, the rush-hour not yet begun. I walked slowly along Cornhill, staring at the still empty buildings, wondering what I was doing
there. This wasn’t my sort of world, which was probably why in all the years since my father’s death I’d never bothered to visit the scene of the battle he’d fought and lost up here in this close-packed, money-conscious square mile. Where Bishopsgate joined Gracechurch Street I came to Leadenhall Street and five minutes later I was in the shipping quarter, looking across at the façade of Strode House. It was smaller than I had expected, but perhaps that was because I had just passed the new Lloyds building. Also it looked dirty, but then so did most of the buildings in this area of the City; shipping had been depressed for so long that the only office block that looked as though it had been cleaned in living memory was the palatial headquarters of the Cunard Company.

Somewhere behind me, in St. Mary Axe, a clock struck eight. I crossed the street to stand on the pavement, looking up at Strode House with its scrolls and figures and pseudo Dutch gables all outlined in a coating of grime and pigeon droppings. It was a solid, pretentious building, unspeakably self-conscious—a merchant prince’s house crying aloud the power and riches of its dead builder.

The door was open and I went in. Marble floors and a big curved staircase with oil paintings, and hanging from the centre of a cupola that didn’t seem to fit the design, a magnificent Venetian chandelier. An old man in his shirt sleeves appeared from the door on my left. He was carrying a bucket and a broom with a cloth wrapped round its head. I asked him what time the staff arrived. “Some at nine, some at nine-thirty,” he mumbled and spilled some of the dirty water from the bucket on the floor with the deliberate movements of a man who has been doing the same thing every morning for as long as he can remember. “You wanting to see anyone in partic’lar?” There was no interest in his voice as he spread the dark water with slow sweeps of the broom.

“Mr. Strode,” I said.

“Oh, one of the directors. Well, I wouldn’t know when they come in. I finish at nine.”

“Mind if I look at the pictures?” There was one half-way up the stairs that had caught my eye, a head and shoulders portrait familiar even at that distance.

The broom paused in a stroke and he turned and inspected me out of old watery eyes. “This ain’t a pitcher gallery, yer know. But no ’arm in looking.” He nodded. “You go ahead.” And he added as I climbed the stairs, “Don’t often get people coming ’ere at this time o’ the morning. An’ nobody don’t bother about the pitchers any more. They’re all dead, anyway, ’cepting the two in the boardroom.”

It had come as a shock to see my father’s face hanging there on the dark turn of the staircase, and as I stood in front of it the years rolled back and I was a kid again running down to greet him as he entered the house. That was when we’d lived in Eaton Square and there’d been a butler and every night people in to dinner or my parents out somewhere. I’d seen very little of him, but there was one holiday I could remember when we’d gone on a ship. I must have been about six or seven then and we’d had the ship to ourselves, no other passengers, so it must have been a freighter. He’d spent a lot of time with me then, up on the bridge, taking me round the engine-room. But something had gone wrong and he’d had to leave suddenly, and after that it hadn’t been the same with only my mother and some sort of governess, though the captain had still let me come up to the bridge. It was all a long time ago, the house in Eaton Square a dim memory, and this portrait, though familiar, quite unlike the father I’d thought I could remember—more rigid, more impersonal.

It was a boardroom picture, head and shoulders painted against a symbolic background of ships seen through a window. He wore a stiff collar very high against the throat and his thin, almost ascetic face looked lined, the eyes tired. There was no date given, just the name—Sir Reginald Bailey.

I called down to the caretaker and asked him how long he’d been working here. Forty-one years, he said, and I
wondered whether he’d known my father. I was still shocked at finding his portrait here, stuck on the wall like a trophy. There were other portraits above me. Were they also of men whose companies Strode had swallowed in the great depression of the thirties? “I come ’ere when Strode ’Ouse was new-built,” the old man said. He was leaning on his broom, staring up at me, curious now.

“You knew Henry Strode, then?”

“The Ol’ Man? ’Course I knew the Ol’ Man. There wasn’t nobody in Strode ’Ouse didn’t know ’im. ’Ere every morning punctuool at eight o’clock, ’e was, right up to the day he died. ’E ’ad a stroke and died in ’arness sitting at ’is desk up there on the first floor under the big pitcher of the s.s.
Henry Strode.
That was the biggest ship we ever built; the ’ole staff, every man jack o’ us, taken in a special train up to Glasgow to see her launched. Mr. Strode, ’e was like that—did things in style.” He shook his head and gazed around him as though the place were suddenly strange to him. “Things is different now. Never bin the same since the Ol’ Man died. But then we don’t breed men like ’im any more.” He hesitated, squinting up at me. “You connected wiv the family, sir? I didn’t ought to talk like this, but when you’ve lived through the great days—well, it’s me age, yer see. I’ll be sixty-five next year and then I’ll ’ave the pension.” He was still staring at me, his curiosity mounting. “You don’t look like a City gent, if yer don’t mind my saying so.”

“No, I’m not.” I moved back down the stairs, not wanting to look any more at my father captive on that wall. “Did you ever meet Sir Reginald Bailey?”

“Once.” He gave me a sidelong glance, his head at an angle, and I know he was comparing me with the picture. “Nineteen thirty-one, it was. I was doorman then. Livery, top ’at an’ all. Like I say, we did things in style then and the Ol’ Man, ’e puts on a lunch for Sir Reginald …” But then he stopped as though he knew he was on delicate ground. “This was one of the first City ’ouses to ’ave a directors’ dining-room,” he added lamely, and he veered away from the subject, muttering about the great days being
gone. “Seventy-three ships we ’ad at one time, vessels sailing all over the world an’ this place a ’ive of activity wiv clerks dashing in an’ out wiv bills an’ things an’ captins coming for orders an’ half the bankers of the City ’ere to lunch an’ do business. That room there—” He nodded to the ornate bronze doors to the left of the entrance. “That was the counting ’ouse as you might say. Millions, literally millions, ’ave gone through that door. Now the room’s empty an’ all we got left they tell me is seventeen ships. You want to see the old counting ’ouse? Got some nice pitchers. The Ol’ Man, ’e ’ad a pitcher painted for every vessel ’e ’ad built.”

I shook my head. “I’ll come back later,” I said and I gave him half a crown and asked him to have a drink on me. “What’s your name?”

“Billings, sir. Any time you want ter know anything about the old days just come an’ ask me.”

I thanked him and went out into the street where the traffic had thickened, piling up against the Gracechurch Street-Bishopsgate crossing in an almost solid block. I found a self-service café by Leadenhall Market and had some breakfast whilst I thought it out. But I knew the answer already. It wasn’t just a matter of having met Strode. It was the sense of continuity, of following in my father’s footsteps. And later perhaps—who knows? I was dreaming, dreaming of recovering what my father had lost, thinking of the little church overlooking the sea and the plaque my mother had had erected on the north wall. They had been married in that church and four years ago I had stood in the graveyard with the wind blowing in my hair and the rain on my face as they committed her to the earth. And afterwards I had gone inside and looked at that plaque:
To the Memory of Reginald Horace Bailey who died at sea 21st December
1931.
What he had built other men coveted.
It was the first time I had seen it and I pictured her crying over the paper as she wrote that strange line. She’d cried a lot after his death. And now here I was, her only son, going to ask Strode’s son a favour. I hoped she’d understand.
Pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford and anyway I’d liked Strode. Enough at any rate not to reveal my connection with the old Bailey Oriental Line.

It was in the late autumn of 1955 I’d met him, sat talking with him all one night, about almost everything from birth to death and what happened afterwards. He was that sort of man. Now that his father was dead he’d presumably be on the board. I hoped it hadn’t changed him. Hoped, too, that the few hours we’d spent in each other’s company on Abu Musa would have made as much of an impression on him as they had on me.

But when I returned to Strode House shortly after ten and asked for Mr. Strode, the commissionaire said, “Which one? There’s five of them work here.”

I hadn’t expected that and the trouble was I didn’t know his Christian name. “The one I want is the son of Henry Strode, the founder.” But even that wasn’t sufficient to identify him. There were apparently two sons, whereas I had got the impression that he was the only one. “There’s Mr. Henry Strode,” the commissionaire said. “He’s the chairman and managing director of Strode & Company. And then there’s his younger brother, Mr. George Strode. He manages Strode Orient.” I chose the latter since he ran the ships and was passed on to his assistant, a small, pale man with narrow eyes and sandy hair who sat at a corner desk in a huge office on the first floor. “I’m afraid Mr. Strode isn’t in to-day,” he snapped at me like a dog that’s not sure of himself. The dark panelled walls were full of pictures of ships and the portrait of a heavily-built, vital old man hung over the fireplace. “You haven’t an appointment, have you? He never makes appointments for Thursdays.”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t an appointment. But I wrote to him.”

“He didn’t mention it.” He was frowning nervously. “Mr. Geoffrey Bailey you said? I haven’t seen any letter.”

“I wrote from Singapore. But perhaps it went to his brother.” And I explained about not knowing his Christian name and how we’d met in the Persian Gulf.

He shook his head. “Mr. Strode has never been in the Persian Gulf.”

“Then it must be his brother.”

“I don’t think so.” He was puzzled now. “I’m quite certain Mr. Henry Strode hasn’t been in the Persian Gulf either.”

“If I could have a word with Henry Strode then …”

“I’m sorry. He’s never in on Thursdays. Neither of them are. It’s their day for hunting.” He said it almost with malice as though he disliked his employer. “You could see John Strode, if you like. He’s Mr. Henry’s son.”

But that was no good. “I’ll come back to-morrow, then.”

He shook his head firmly. “To-morrow’s the annual general meeting. He couldn’t possibly see you to-morrow.” He bit his lip, strangely agitated. “Would Monday do? I think Monday would be all right.” He glanced at a diary. “Three o’clock. It’s a personal matter, presumably?”

“Yes, personal,” I said and left it at that, unwilling to explain the purpose of my visit to this terrified little clerk. “Just find the letter I wrote from Singapore, will you, and let Mr. Strode see it. That explains everything.” And I added as I went to the door, “The secretary probably has it since he acknowledged it.”