There was a long silence after Mr Twine had finished speaking. Then Edward said, ‘What I can’t understand is how the bank can do this to us without warning.’
Mr Twine coughed nervously. He had been dreading this confrontation. The Cazalets were old clients. ‘I think if you consult your file you will find that they have, in fact, issued more than one warning expressing their dissatisfaction.’ The bank had actually been writing such letters for the past three years with no replies except for one brief missive, signed by Hugh, to the effect that the matter would be seriously considered.
Hugh now said: ‘I know that when I went to see them for some more money, they were distinctly sticky about it, but not a word was said about foreclosing on previous loans.’
Mr Twine selected three sheets of paper from the large pile and handed them to Hugh, who sat at his desk flanked by Edward and Rupert. He had known this old office when the Old Man was chairman and it hadn’t changed at all. Panelled in koko, his favourite hardwood, its walls were hung with faded framed photographs of men standing by colossal logs or enormous old trees, heavily captioned with names, provenance and dates. There were two very large photographs showing the London wharves after the Blitz that had destroyed them. A scarlet and peacock Turkey rug covered most of the floor. Hugh’s desk, in addition to pictures of his family, was still encrusted with the old blotter, the Dictaphone and an ancient typewriter. All that had changed was the man now sitting in his father’s chair. ‘Well, I’m damned! I don’t remember any of these letters.’
That, Mr Twine thought, was probably because you never read them.
Edward, who asked to see the letters, now said, ‘But if we sold off Southampton surely there would be enough money to pay off the bank, and then we could concentrate on London. Or, better still, perhaps we should bite the bullet and go for turning the whole business into a public company. I’ve been urging that option for years.’
Mr Twine coughed again, a sign, Rupert recognised, that he had something to say and was not going to enjoy saying it.
‘I’m afraid, Mr Edward, that it’s too late for that. The value of the Southampton business has become so much less, due to the last years’ track record of loss, so now you would not get sufficient capital from its sale. And it’s too late planning to go public. That would take at least two years, and in any case the bank does not consider that the business is any longer yours to sell.’
There was a short silence. Then Hugh said, ‘Does that mean we’re going to be bankrupt?’
‘I’m afraid it does.’
‘And that means that we, personally, are bankrupt. They’ll take everything – our houses—’
‘No, Mr Hugh. If you will remember, I advised you to put your private properties in your wives’ names. As you most sensibly agreed to that, you will keep your houses. And, also, the directors’ pensions. Mr Hank and I saw to that when you became a limited company.’
‘What about Home Place?’ Hugh then asked.
‘That will have to go, I’m afraid. Your father bought it in the firm’s name.’
‘What about Rachel? It’s her home! I won’t have her turned out of it!’
Twine coughed again. ‘According to Mr Hank, with whom Miss Sidney made her will, her house in London, together with its contents, were all left to Miss Rachel, so she will not be homeless.’ His mouth, unused to smiling, made a heroic effort now.
‘She may have a house, but she has no income other than her shares in Cazalets’. She will be literally penniless! We have to do something about that.’ Hugh looked defiantly at the others; their faces showed varying degrees of concern and hopelessness. ‘It’s awful, but I’m out of my depth,’ he concluded mournfully.
‘I think we’ve had enough for one morning,’ Edward said. ‘One more question: what is the time scale for all of this?’
Mr Twine, who had been returning papers to his file, looked up. ‘I cannot give you precise dates. The assessors will probably take at least two months to produce their report to the bank. In the meantime, you should continue trading and say nothing to anyone about the impending bankruptcy. Nobody at all. Particularly not to any of your employees.’
‘So that they will be thrown out of a job at a moment’s notice without the chance to look for a new one,’ Rupert said, with deep bitterness.
‘Anyway, it will get around,’ Edward observed.
‘Even if it does, do not tell anyone that you know anything. I will be in touch with you as soon as I have any more to communicate.’ Twine got thankfully to his feet, shook hands with each of them and made his escape.
The trouble, he thought, as he boarded his bus, was that none of them were businessmen. He felt sorry for them in a way, but had lost respect. He would not personally have put any of them in charge of a sweet shop. He opened his paper and decided to take the afternoon off and go to the motor show. He was rather keen on the new bubble cars that sounded both cheap and practical; ‘bus suppositories’, the French called them, an insult probably generated by sheer envy of the Germans being better at car manufacture than they were.
Yes, he’d get a sandwich and a pint at one of the Earl’s Court pubs, and then he’d have a good look round the motor show before catching an earlier train back to Crouch End.
After Mr Twine had left there was a heavy silence in the room. Nobody moved. It was rather, Rupert thought, as though the injection of reality had paralysed them – as though they had become a still in an action film. Noises from the street below impinged: a paper boy crying for people to buy the latest edition of the Evening Standard, a squeal of brakes and some shouting. He heard the brief crescendo of an aeroplane, before they all finally stirred and became animate. Hugh reached for his pills and swallowed two with the dregs of his coffee. Edward flipped open the laurel-wood box, always kept full of cigarettes, and lit one. He offered the box to Rupert, who shook his head, then changed his mind.
Hugh said, ‘If only we knew what they will sell Home Place for, we would know what money to raise.’
‘We’re in no position to raise any money at all,’ Edward replied glumly. ‘Speaking for myself, I’m broke. I’ve got debts, and nothing but my salary to live on and try to repay them.’
‘Edward! Do you mean you’ve saved nothing?’
‘I did have a nest-egg, but it’s all gone now.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t got anything saved either,’ Rupert said. ‘What with moving from the flat into a house, and the children getting steadily more expensive, I really haven’t been able to. I’m sorry, Hugh, but I can’t help you there. About buying Home Place, I mean. You and I pay our bit towards its upkeep as it is.’ The fact that Edward had refused to help with that still riled him. ‘Anyway, as Twine said, Rachel has the house in London.’
Edward looked at his watch. ‘I must leave you. It’s business not as usual. A Danish bloke wants to buy teak for hi-fi speakers.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet. ‘I should go home, old boy. You can’t do anything when your head’s giving you gyp.’
Hugh scowled at him, but he pretended not to notice.
Christ! Edward thought, as he collected his hat and overcoat from his office. What the hell am I going to do? The thought of facing Diana with even worse news made him feel cold at the back of his neck. He again thought of Villy then. She would have been easy to tell: she would have grasped the essentials at once, would have supported him and also been intelligent about how to cut down expenses … If only she had enjoyed going to bed with him …
Rupert left Hugh’s office to settle some dispute down at the wharf: the drivers were acting up again. They had been grumbling ever since last Christmas when four of the lorries had simultaneously broken down. They had a point, he knew, because nearly the whole fleet was long past decent service. Most of them had gone through the war, been patched up, had new or reconditioned engines fitted, but apart from the expense of maintenance, there was all the nuisance involved with them so frequently being late with deliveries, or failing to deliver at all. Edward had persuaded Hugh to agree to buy four new lorries so they now had, Rupert hoped, four satisfied drivers although, these days, that would not prevent them striking to back up the others.
At least he didn’t look like having to move to Southampton, and Zoë would be pleased about that. But looming on his horizon, hardly acknowledged by his brothers, was the likelihood of his being without a job, of them all not only ceasing to be employers, but unemployed.
This set up a conflict. On the one hand it let him off doing something he had never really wanted to do. He wasn’t, never would be, a businessman. He had been persuaded, notably by Hugh, that it was what he ought to do, had seen the argument that theirs was a family business, and with a wife and two children to look after, it had become the soft option. But he had never stopped minding that he had given up even trying to be a painter, feeling that thereby he had betrayed himself. After all, Archie had continued to paint, and was beginning to make a bit of a name for himself as a portraitist. And he had a wife and two children to care for, too. It could be done: he simply had not had the courage to do it before. The thought excited him now – it would give him freedom; it was the road less travelled. He and Archie might band together to teach, take some cheap place in Italy or France where their families could enjoy a holiday while they worked. He longed to skip the problems of the wharf and go and find Archie to talk to him about all this. On the other hand, he would be plunging Zoë into poverty; they might not be able to afford the house, and then there were school fees, Georgie’s zoo, and Juliet going through a most difficult stage – Zoë had been talking about sending her abroad to learn cooking and French to get her over Neville. They wouldn’t be able to afford that now anyway.
Then he thought of all the men who would have to be laid off, and his heart sank. ‘I must be sympathetic but firm,’ he told himself, as he drove to East London. But somehow these two pieces of advice didn’t seem to go together very well at all.
Hugh, left to himself in his office with a raging headache, resisted the desire to go home. He rang his secretary, told her he was going to lie down for a bit, and, no, he didn’t want any lunch. He arranged himself on the stiff little horsehair day-bed he had always kept for this purpose and tried to sleep but his anxiety about Rachel kept him awake. If he mortgaged his house, would that provide enough money to invest for an income? He simply didn’t know. If all three of them took out mortgages, surely that would be enough. If Rachel kept the little house in Abbey Road, and perhaps took in a lodger, that would help, too. But he knew that Edward would not agree to a mortgage, and he didn’t like the idea of persuading Rupert to do that either.
The whole mess was his fault, he thought miserably. If he’d listened to Edward and the advice given them by that banker chap of Louise’s they would not be in this pickle. If they’d gone public they would have walked away with millions. And then, when the same chap had offered to sound out the most successful of their rivals, he had refused to consider it. He’d been, in fact, a bloody fool. And as a result, he and Edward – both now in their sixties – would have to look for jobs. So would Rupert, of course, but he was so used to thinking of him as his little brother that he forgot he was fifty-five. None of their ages augured well for new starts. And, worst of all, there was Rachel. She had no income at all, and it was all his fault.