‘You haven’t! Is he more important than the Lord Mayor? Does he have a cat like Dick Whittington?’
‘He is the most important man in the City, Sophie. He has influence over everything. Everything. And I had to show him upstairs to Mr Frederick. “How do you do, young man,” he said to me very civilly on the staircase.’
‘One day, when women have the vote and true equality, those banks and counting houses will not be run entirely by men.’
Richard groaned internally as the tale of his triumph was turned into another attack on the wickedness of male society.
‘There are women working there already, Sophie,’ he said, trying to deflect her.
‘Oh, I know. I have met some of them at meetings. But they are only allowed in humble positions, operating the typing machines and junior clerking, that sort of thing. They’re not going to be important.’
Sophie’s eyes danced with passion as she preached her gospel. Richard looked at the vivacity, the animation of her, and he knew more than ever that he was in love with her.
‘But tell me,’ said Sophie, returning once more to Harrison’s Bank, ‘how did they take it? The partners, I mean. Were they very upset?’
‘Well, no, I don’t think they were,’ said Richard, moving off the path briefly as two very large dogs chased each other across the park, pursued by the shouts of their owners. ‘I think Mr Williamson, the partner who used to be the senior clerk, was the most upset of all.’
‘But he wasn’t even a relation!’ Sophie turned to him, shocked at the inhumanity of bankers.
‘Well, I think Mr Frederick – the one who’s senior partner now was worried in case there was going to be a run on the bank. That’s why he asked the Governor to call.’
Few matters in City offices escaped the notice of the junior staff. Gossip ran just as freely and just as widely inside the offices as it did on the streets and in the chop houses.
‘And the young Mr Harrison, Charles, he just seemed to be cross about the whole business. Maybe he was so angry with whoever had done such dreadful things to his great-uncle.’
‘Did you get to see the body, Richard?’ asked Sophie, turning ghoulish, something she would undoubtedly have discouraged in her pupils. ‘Was it very horrid?’
‘No, I did not, Sophie,’ Richard laughed. ‘I’m afraid I can’t satisfy your curiosity there.’
‘And will the bank continue to prosper? Surely things aren’t any different? Mr Frederick has been in charge for some time.’
Although she didn’t like to say so, Sophie was suddenly worried about Richard’s future.
‘In theory, you are right, Sophie,’ the young man replied, unaware of the girl’s concerns. ‘But in practice, I am not so sure. Most of the really important decisions were referred to the old man since Willi Harrison died. Many’s the time we have lost money, or not made as much as we might have done, while we waited for a reply to telegrams and messages to Blackwater. On one occasion, when the telegraph was broken, we lost fifteen thousand pounds.’
In spite of his youth and inexperience, Richard Martin had a sharp banking brain. He had watched and learnt a lot in his five years at Harrison’s and studying for his banking exams. ‘I just don’t know what’s going to happen. I just don’t know.’
Sophie knew little of the City. But she was sad to see Richard so sombre.
‘Can I ask you a favour?’ she said, looking at him directly.
‘Of course,’ said Richard, his heart beating a little faster.
‘I have to go for an interview with the headmistress on Thursday afternoon. I don’t know what she wants to see me about but I’m a bit worried. Could I see you in the evening, just to let you know what happened?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Richard. He wondered how he could deceive his mother. Maybe he could tell her he would have to work late at the office. Maybe he would be able to leave early on Thursday. ‘You’re not in trouble, are you Sophie? They couldn’t be unhappy with your teaching, your children are all doing so well.’
‘I don’t know what it is about. Maybe it isn’t serious. But she did give me a very strange look last week.’
‘Look,’ said Richard, ‘I’ll see you in that coffee house opposite Liverpool Street station at five o’clock. I’m sure they’ll let me go a bit early if I tell them it’s important.’
As they set off, Sophie was worried about Richard’s bank and her own interview. But Richard was feeling strangely elated. If she asked for this special meeting, didn’t it mean that she must care for him a little bit?
They buried Old Mr Harrison on a bright spring morning, the little church at Blackwater filled to overflowing with servants and tenants and local people as well as a number of visitors come from London to pay their last respects. His coffin was carried down from the house past the lake he loved, the sunlight dancing on the water and lighting up the classical buildings that shared his secrets. He was to lie in the new Harrison Chapel, next to his eldest son.
Some days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was walking up the drive to call on Old Mr Harrison’s sister, the oldest surviving member of the family.
‘She’s well into her eighties,’ Frederick Harrison had told him at his morning meeting in the bank’s offices in the City. ‘She can still see, she can still hear most of the time, but her mind is liable to wander. It’s as though parts of her brain get detached from the main instrument, then they rejoin it a little later.’
Johnny Fitzgerald had been despatched to Cowes to make inquiries about Willi Harrison, the eldest son who had perished in the boating accident. Powerscourt wasn’t sure how much would be remembered about the event, well over a year after the tragedy, or how much would have been exaggerated with time. But he needed to know if his brother-in-law’s information was correct.
He was shown through a handsome entrance hall, a cube of some thirty feet, full of paintings of the family. He thought he recognized Frederick in younger days, seated on a handsome horse, surveying his park.
Old Miss Augusta Harrison was waiting for him in the salon, a fine room with an ornate ceiling and views of the gardens beyond. She’s shrinking, Powerscourt thought, as she welcomed him formally to Blackwater. Every year she must be smaller than the one before.
‘And how can I help you, Lord Powerscourt?’ she said slowly, showing him to a chair by the marble mantelpiece.
‘I am very grateful to you for seeing me at such a difficult time,’ Powerscourt began, thinking that the mourning black reminded him of Queen Victoria. ‘I would just like to ask you some questions about your brother.’
‘That would have been when we lived in Frankfurt,’ she said slowly. Powerscourt wondered if she had never really mastered English and was slipping in and out of German in her mind. She paused and looked at Powerscourt suspiciously. ‘What did you want to know about my brother?’ She returned to normality. ‘I don’t know anything about the bank.’ She shook her head. ‘I never did and I don’t suppose I’m going to start now.’
‘I wanted to know how he spent his time when he was down here, you know, how he passed the time,’ said Powerscourt, looking at a Roman statue of a Vestal Virgin in the corner of the room.
‘Do you speak German, Lord Powerscourt? I find everything easier in German.’ The old lady seemed to be pleading with him, her gnarled hands rubbing together in her nervousness.
‘I’m afraid I don’t, Miss Harrison. My wife does, but she is not with me today. But take your time, please, I have no wish to hurry you.’ He smiled.
‘The trees are beginning to come out in the park,’ the old lady said. ‘I always like it here in the spring. It’s not as good as the Rhine, nowhere is more beautiful than the Rhine in the spring.’