‘It is true that Mr Leyland is averse to crowds, generally speaking.’ The private secretary lowered his voice; Merrill sensed that he relished his position at the president’s side and the insights it permitted. ‘There are a good number who conduct their business hereabouts whom he would not care to meet. Who might well seize upon the chance to speak with him.’ Carlens surveyed the hundreds streaming around them: this world of men, emptying out at the day’s end, marching off to stations and omnibus stands. ‘The chances are slight, of course – but still, eyes peeled, eh?’
Cannon Street was broad and busy, bending away to the right; beyond the buildings was a clipped view of St Paul’s, the half-dome almost lost in the dark, starless sky. Directly ahead, among the bright shop fronts, a steady procession of people was disappearing between a stationer’s and an optician’s, down a tiled stairway into the underground. Merrill knew the District line with regrettable intimacy. It was an unchanging fact of his existence, ridden from Earl’s Court to Temple and back again: an hour eaten out of each and every day. Routine had numbed him to the point where he didn’t usually notice how it was. That evening, though, as he left the street and hurried onto the steps, he saw it as the president must surely be seeing it. The cracked and grubby tiles. The cement floor, littered with flattened cigarette ends and scraps of paper. And the blasted smoke, that gritty, metallic smell, tobacco and coal intermingled, hazing the air and making the subterranean ticket hall yet dingier.
The president and Uncle Bob had stopped in the middle of this low-ceilinged atrium, a pair of ill-matched rocks lodged in the ceaseless flow of commuters. Uncle Bob, clearly uncomfortable, was tugging at his grizzled moustache. Leyland was taking in his surroundings with evident distaste, coughing genteelly in the muddy atmosphere.
‘Tickets, Merrill,’ said Uncle Bob, as if this was obvious and really should have been guessed. ‘First class, back to Temple.’
Chastened, Merrill went to join the queue. Five windows were open at the office, and perhaps two hundred people presently trying to pay. He could only choose a line and stand in it. Around him was a dense, lulling murmur, several dozen shifting conversations, their words blurring together. His thoughts wandered to a common in high summer, near a friend’s house at Richmond; to Emily in her blouse and boater, and that song they’d all sung together: Within the musk-rose bower, I watch, pale flower of love, for thee …
‘Louse!’ someone shouted.
Merrill turned sharply to see a man, a perfectly ordinary-looking man in a blue sack coat, standing up close before the president and yelling in his face.
‘Louse,’ he repeated. ‘Villain – wrecker!’
A companion was trying to restrain him. Carlens strode forward to assist, planting a hand on the shouting fellow’s chest and gesticulating angrily, ordering him away. Uncle Bob was colouring, huffing something under his breath, outraged on their master’s behalf – for Leyland himself seemed entirely unmoved. He was looking across the concourse as if this man in the blue sack coat simply didn’t exist. Seeing he would get no response, the assailant barked ‘wrecker’ for a second time, and asked the president loudly if he understood at all what he had done, what he had destroyed; and then he stalked off furiously towards the street.
Merrill returned his gaze to the ticket office. Not that slight a chance then, Mr Carlens! he thought. He wondered what lay behind this little confrontation. There was much talk about Frederick Leyland over at Temple Lane. President of the National Telephone Company, Merrill had learned, was but one of his positions. Leyland was also a major figure in electricity, having a sizeable stake in Edison, and a ship-broker with a huge transatlantic fleet. This was the origin of his wealth, in fact, numbering upward of thirty steamers. The very idea of it boggled the mind. It was said that his ambition knew no boundary or scruple – that the shipping company up in Liverpool had been won through the betrayal of his mentor, and he had conducted himself ever since with absolute ruthlessness, leaving a trail of crushed competitors in his wake. And every company director bested in negotiations and lawyerly manoeuvrings had an operation behind him – sales merchants and accountants and clerks, each with his wife, his infants, his poorly parents. A lot of livelihoods. A lot of lives.
The tickets were purchased distractedly, Merrill almost forgetting to buy first class. It was hardly his habit. Uncle Bob was talking with determination about some subject or other, in order to dispel any lingering unpleasantness. The four men started down the central staircase to the platforms. Merrill was regarding Leyland more closely than ever, studying the precise arrangement of the hair above his collar, which had the look of having been trimmed that same morning. A warm, dirty wind gusted up to meet them. The president coughed once more, against his hand.
‘Already, Colonel,’ he remarked to Uncle Bob in his detached manner, ‘I believe you can see quite clearly where the problem lies.’
They were attracting notice. You couldn’t fail to spot it; Leyland was being recognized. Merrill recalled the more salacious rumours that bubbled through the Temple Lane offices – rumours that claimed it was not merely companies their president had wrecked. This was a man with a great appetite for women, as brimming with lust as he was empty of passion, and with the means to make any obstacle to his desires vanish; and unburdened, furthermore, by any guilt or self-reflection upon the matter.
‘He doesn’t care who knows about his activities,’ one especially talkative junior surveyor had confided, equal parts scandalized and impressed, over an after-hours mug of porter. ‘It doesn’t trouble him a jot.’
Such behaviour, the surveyor had continued, had naturally added to the number of Leyland’s foes. There had been a wife at one point, a beautiful woman, well-liked and decent, who was driven out in the coldest, cruellest fashion. Leyland’s essential nature was one that could not help but repel. Over the years he had suffered vicious ruptures with everyone from his doctor to his decorator.
‘His decorator?’
‘That was a while ago now. A dreadful to-do. The plan for his dining room went awry, you see, and they disagreed over the bill. Yankee fellow it was, a Mr Whistler. Friend of the wife’s as well. It’s said that Leyland threatened to take him out and whip him in the street.’
Merrill followed art. It was one of the reasons for his family’s concern. ‘You mean James Whistler, the artist?’ he’d asked. ‘The painter of nocturnes, who has a show coming at the Goupil Gallery?’
This had met only with a shrug.
The party headed onto the westbound platform. It was filled with City men, standing alone mostly, buried in their newspapers or simply staring at their shoes. The air was yet more turbid than in the concourse. Spherical lamps hung at intervals along the tiled ceiling, but the smoke soaked up their light, obscuring them to the point where the furthest were reduced to fogged, yellowish smears. Weaving between the other passengers, Leyland led them beneath the large, plain clock that hung at the platform’s midpoint. Then he went to the edge and beckoned for Uncle Bob to join him. They began pointing down at the tracks, conversing in low, purposeful tones.
Carlens stayed in the middle of the platform, monitoring those nearby – a couple of whom were directing sidelong looks at the president.
Merrill stood next to him. ‘Train shouldn’t be more than a minute or two.’
The private secretary wasn’t listening. ‘You see now,’ he said, nodding towards Leyland, ‘what this is about.’
Merrill kept quiet.
‘Electricity,’ Carlens enlarged. ‘Or rather electrification.
