The Prime Minister nodded. He looked, Powerscourt thought, strangely unperturbed at the terrible tidings passing across his table. There was worse to come.
‘Tell me, Governor,’ he said, turning to look the tea importer straight in the eye. The fingers continued strumming nervously on the table. ‘Leaving aside the question of the Jubilee, now almost upon us, what would be the impact of the crash of Harrison’s Bank on the reputation of London as a place of business?’
The Governor’s eyes looked wilder yet. ‘Catastrophe, Prime Minister.’ The Governor said the word catastrophe very slowly, dragging it out so the full horror could sink in. ‘There is no other word. The City’s reputation would be ruined, coming so soon after the near collapse of Barings seven years ago. Business would disappear to the Continent, to New York. It would be a catastrophe, Prime Minister. Could I just refer back to Barings?’
‘No, you may not at this moment refer to Barings!’ The Prime Minister was very firm. ‘I have my own thoughts on Barings as I was in office myself at the time. Lord Rosebery, as a former Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, could you tell us your view on the impact of such a collapse so close to the Jubilee?’
Rosebery looked surprised. The Prime Minister himself had been Foreign Secretary for a far longer period than he had.
‘It would be a very great blow to the prestige of Great Britain,’ Rosebery began. ‘The foreign press, come to report on the glories of the Jubilee, would report instead on the weakness of what had been one of this nation’s greatest strengths. They would glory in our discomfiture. We would be humiliated abroad. It would be as though some great Roman general were to be told, on the eve of his triumph through the streets of Rome, that the armies had mutinied and the colonies had raised the standard of revolt. The prestige and authority of the nation overseas, invisible but invaluable, would be greatly weakened. The Titan would still be a Titan, of course, but it would be a wounded Titan, limping on its passage, with blood dripping on the floor as it passed by.’
The Prime Minister managed a menacing smile.
‘Thank you, Rosebery. Tell me, Governor, why do you not appeal to the patriotism of your colleagues, swear them to secrecy in your dealings, persuade them to save Harrison’s Bank for the honour of their country?’
The Governor stopped drumming his fingers on the table. He looked as though he might be about to cry.
‘Prime Minister,’ he said, ‘I have considered that. Of course I have. But I do not believe that such an appeal would work.’
‘Is there no patriotism left then?’ The Prime Minister was almost shouting now, turning the full authority of his office and his personality on the man beside him. ‘Does profit come before the honour of the country? Does it, Governor?’
The Governor was on the ropes now. Powerscourt didn’t think he would get up again.
‘I don’t think the people in the City would put it like that, Prime Minister. But if it came to a choice between preserving their own houses and their own balance sheets, and some misty notion of the honour of the country abroad, I have no doubt how they would react. They would choose to keep what they had, rather than throw it away. Please may I return to Barings, Prime Minister? On that occasion it was the Government itself that led the rescue. Surely it is up to the Government to do so again.’
The Prime Minister banged a very large fist on the table. The pictures shivered on the walls. ‘Do not speak to me of Barings in that false fashion. The Government did give certain guarantees, but only when we were sure they would not be needed. Your predecessor had his rescue mission already in place when we gave our undertakings. They merely underwrote the confidence that the rescue would succeed. You do not have any rescue mission in place. You sound, forgive me for saying so, incapable of putting any rescue mission in place. Not a canoe, not a paddle boat, do I see about to set off from the quays of Threadneedle Street. You in the City are incapable of rescuing this wretched firm. It is politically impossible for the Government to commit itself to such sums without asking Parliament. Harrison’s must sink, and the reputation of the City and the prestige of the British Empire will sink with it.’
Silence dropped on the room. Powerscourt was thinking, not of the impact of the crash on the City of London, but of Lady Lucy and her tragic family, the Farrells. He remembered Lucy telling him that the eldest child had also died, that the father was at death’s door. The rooms they lived in were owned by Harrison’s Private Bank. Burke had told him on the way to the meeting that the flats would have to be sold, whatever remained of the Farrell family thrown on to the cruel streets of London once more. One more widow, three more homeless children. He wondered how many more families would lose their homes if Harrison’s failed, more statistics to be added to the enormous totals of the capital’s poor.
The Governor was wishing he was back in the peaceful company of his teas and his warehouses. His firm had made a fortune out of Jubilee Tea, a new blend, produced specially for the occasion, combining the finest flavour of the finest teas in the empire. It would have a bitter taste now. Rosebery was feeling relieved, not for the first time, that he was only a visitor and not the occupant of Number 10 Downing Street. William Burke wondered if the Prime Minister had deliberately forced the meeting to crisis point, only to pull a rabbit from his hat at the end. Powerscourt was looking at the portraits of previous Prime Ministers looking down on them from the walls, Melbourne looking avuncular, Pitt looking exhausted, Liverpool impassive.
‘Powerscourt!’ The Prime Minister at any rate had not given up yet. ‘It is thanks to your efforts that we know of this terrible plot. We are grateful to you. I know that you are not a man of finance, but have you any counsel to offer us now at the eleventh hour?’
The Prime Minister thought it would be only polite to hear from Powerscourt before he closed the meeting. He didn’t expect to hear anything of substance. He was already contemplating the diversion he would have to invent to draw attention away from the problems in the City, the immediate despatch of troops to some remote part of Africa, a revival of the Russian menace on the frontiers of the Raj perhaps. India would be best, he decided, the threat from the Russian Bear would play well on the patriotic feelings of the Jubilee.
Powerscourt was to tell Lady Lucy afterwards that the Prime Ministers on the wall had come to his rescue. Directly opposite him was Disraeli, dressed in pomp and splendour as Earl of Beaconsfield in his last days, but still with something of Shylock or Svengali about him, conjuring ancient mysteries from the East to dazzle a mourning Empress.
‘I was wondering about the Suez Canal,’ he began slowly. The plan was still taking shape in his mind.
‘The Suez Canal?’ the Governor said scornfully. His fingers were tapping remorselessly on the table once more. ‘What in God’s name has the Suez Canal got to do with it?’
The Prime Minister was gathering his papers, his left hand searching automatically for his train ticket to a more peaceful world.
‘I was thinking of the way it was bought actually,’ said Powerscourt, refusing to be put off by the Governor. ‘It had to be done in secret. The Government could not ask for help from the Bank of England in case word leaked out and the shares went up in price or were bought elsewhere. So they asked one man for a loan. Just one man. Rothschild. It was all done in less than half an hour, I believe.’