The Lorimer Line (2 page)

As was his custom, John Junius Lorimer arrived in the room while the grandfather clock in the hall outside was striking the hour. In his old age - for he was now in his seventy-eighth year - he had become heavy and moved slowly. But his white hair was thick and plentiful, curling on to his collar, and his square-cut beard and sideburns framed a pink and healthy face. His bushy eyebrows had not turned white but remained the rich chestnut red of his youth. From beneath them his greenish-blue eyes, missing nothing, took a quick roll call of the room.

The force of his personality dominated the room at once. When John Junius expressed a wish in the boardroom of Lorimer's Bank, of which he had been chairman since his father's death, that wish passed swiftly downwards as an order not to be questioned. At this hour of the day his requests were addressed upwards in the hierarchy towards the Almighty, in the form of prayers, but this did not prevent them from emerging as instructions. With equal clarity he read a passage from the Bible. Margaret, who knew it by heart, allowed her attention to wander.

The great dining room was used only for entertaining guests and for family prayers. It was furnished on a grand scale, with Venetian chandeliers suspended over the huge mahogany dining table. Round the walls hung a set of family portraits, and from her earliest childhood Margaret had enjoyed studying them and wondering what the men depicted there were really like. Samuel Lorimer had at first commissioned paintings of himself and his youthful son, Alexander, from life. Then - mindful of the social respectability bestowed by the possession of ancestral portraits - he had ordered a complete set of forefathers from the same artist - who consequently found it easy to indicate a family likeness. Even that light-hearted Stuart adventurer, Brinsley, had been awarded a resolute Hanoverian jowl.

With surprise Margaret noticed that since yesterday there had been an addition to the black-framed line - the portrait for which her father had been sitting earlier in the year. She scrutinized it with interest. The artist had succeeded in catching the subtleties of his subject's expression. The long nose and downward turn of his mouth gave John Junius a forbidding look: yet his cheeks curved with benevolence. It was an accurate picture of a man who tyrannized both his family and the bank which bore his name but who was at the same time capable of large generosities and small kindnesses, a man who judged every business venture by its profitability but who would buy a new piece of carved jade with no motive except to delight his own eyes with its beauty. There were few amongst his business associates, or even within his family, who wholly understood John Junius Lorimer. The artist, Margaret decided, had well earned his handsome fee by suggesting the inconsistencies of character without attempting to resolve them.

Guiltily she realized that the reading was over, and that while she was staring at the portrait, its subject was staring at her. In the same grave voice with which he had intoned the final prayers, he requested his daughter to follow him to the tower.

This was an order which on many occasions in the childhood of his three children had filled them with terror. Every morning after prayers John Junius turned his attention to whatever domestic problems had arisen the previous day, so that by the time he left the house his mind would be free to concentrate on the affairs of the bank. All too often these domestic problems had been solved by harsh discipline. Today, however, Margaret could reasonably hope that he wished only to discuss the arrangements for the afternoon. She climbed the stairs without apprehension.

The situation of Brinsley House was a dramatic one. All its best rooms afforded a spectacular view of the tree-clad
cliff on the further side of the gorge. From the lowest terrace of the steeply tiered garden it was possible to look straight down at the water of the Avon itself as it curved towards the estuary and the open sea. But the panorama from the tower dwarfed both these spectacles. Through the windows around its highest room John Junius Lorimer was able to look down on the city or over to the hills. From here he could admire the miracle of the new suspension bridge, which owed its existence to his efforts, or catch the first glimpse of a pennant which meant that a ship, of the Lorimer Line was returning safely to port. He could watch with pride as the tall ships passed almost directly underneath, pulled by the little steam tugs which made it no longer necessary for them to wait at the mouth of the Avon until a high enough tide could bear them in. He could observe the bustle of the docks as one cargo was unloaded and another loaded, as sail-makers and carpenters repaired the ravages of a voyage round the Horn. And with pride again he could watch the slow and graceful start of a new voyage which would take the ship and all its crew away from their home port perhaps for as long as three years.

The ships, it was true, belonged to William now. John Junius had made that part of his empire over to his elder son six years earlier – not because at the age of seventy-one he felt himself any less competent to run the line, but in order that William should taste responsibility whilst his father was still in a position to advise him. Soon there would be no more masts, no more of those breath-catching moments when the unfurled sails filled with the wind, seeming almost to lift the craft out of the water and fly with it through the air. But even William's enthusiasm could not transform the whole fleet to steam overnight. The sailing ships still came gliding up the river, and every member of the family took a personal pride in their brave
adventures. With the Lorimers ‘all ship-shape and Bristol fashion' was no idle boast.

John Junius was standing in his favourite place by the window as his daughter came into the tower room.

‘Good morning, Papa.'

‘Good morning, Margaret.' He accepted her kiss without warmth. He had never been a demonstrative father, and since the incident of the Crankshaw alliance eleven months earlier he had deliberately withheld even the pretence of affection. Grudgingly permitted to have her own way, she could not expect to be quickly forgiven for it. ‘I wished only to remind you that today is the Bank Holiday.'

He spoke the last two words with distaste, as though he had been asked to sample a new dish prepared from suspicious ingredients. Still as active physically as he had been ten years earlier, he had nevertheless lost the ability -and indeed the wish - to take kindly to new ideas. It was the business of Government, in his opinion, to see that the affairs of the country were run for the maximum of profit and prestige, but with the minimum of interference with the private affairs of its citizens. To impose the obligation of leisure on a conscientious staff and to compel Lorimer's Bank to close its doors on a day not determined by its chairman was an impertinence. However, the imposition was a law and must therefore be obeyed.

As a sign of his acceptance he had last year for the first time invited the entire staff and board of directors of Lorimer's, together with their families, to take tea in the gardens of Brinsley House on the afternoon of one of the unwanted holidays. On that first occasion it had been an innovation involving the anxious organization of food and entertainment and an apprehension of awkward social encounters. This year it would be merely a repetition, the development of a new tradition which would one day become an old tradition. Although John Junius had been

grumbling about it for the past three weeks, he was in fact reconciled to the prospect.

In theory, of course, his wife was in charge of the domestic arrangements for the afternoon. She could be expected to appear as the guests arrived, since the occasion was one which justified expenditure on new silks and ribbons, but it was realistic of John Junius to go over the arrangements in advance with his daughter. However much he might deplore Margaret's stubbornness, he was bound to recognize that she was efficient as an organizer.

Margaret was able to assure him that everything would be to his satisfaction. The only choice still to be made was whether the trestles should be set out in the house or the garden, and she had promised to give a decision not later than noon.

‘In the garden,' said John Junius definitely. He could lock up his collection of jade animals in their glass cases, but the Indian and Persian screens which he also collected might be jostled or even fingered by a class of person not accustomed to such beautiful objects or aware of their value.

‘The ladies will be wearing their best bonnets,' Margaret reminded him. ‘If there should be rain - '

‘It will be a fine day,' her father told her. ‘Surely you heard me mention the matter in prayers this morning? I have had occasion before to remark on your lack of concentration.'

Margaret was tempted to defend herself by saying that she had heard the request, but without recognizing it to be a guarantee. However, she had been accused of pcrtness too often already, and there was a matter which troubled her more than the weather.

‘Will Mr Crankshaw be present this afternoon, with his family?' she asked.

‘Naturally. All the directors have been invited. You can hardly expect Mr Crankshaw to absent himself in order
that a foolish young woman shall be spared a moment of embarrassment which, I am bound to say, she richly deserves.'

‘Of course not, Papa.' It was not the director of the bank whom she was reluctant to meet but his son, Walter. A year ago the two fathers had proposed a business arrangement which would have linked their wealthy families by marriage to the benefit of both. The Crankshaws owned the site of the new docks which were under construction at Portishead and which the Lorimer Line would need to use as its new ships, with their larger tonnage, found it impossible to come up the river to the Bristol docks. The details of the settlements to be made on the young people had already been agreed before Margaret was informed of the plan. She felt no responsibility for the feelings of Mr Crankshaw, but it must have been humiliating for Walter - who had agreed to the proposal with apparent enthusiasm - to be told that she had rejected it. She had not seen him since then.

Both Margaret and her father had another matter which they wished to raise during this daily conference, but neither was anxious to appear too eager. It was John Junius, accustomed to taking the initiative, who spoke first.

‘That young woman who used to give you music lessons,' he said. ‘Italian.' He paused to allow Margaret to remind him of the name.

‘Luisa,' she obliged. Her teacher was only five years older than herself and they had become friends. ‘Signorina Reni.'

‘Of course. My carriage happened to take me past her in the city on Friday. I had remembered her as a handsome young woman who dressed with some style, considering her circumstances. I was shocked to see that she had become shabby. And too thin. In fact, as though at any moment she might faint from lack of food.'

‘I am sorry to hear it, Papa. She left Bristol a year ago to nurse her sister. I was not aware that she had returned.'

‘Could you not send a message to her and suggest that she might come here this afternoon and accompany you in a few songs? Perhaps even join you in a duet. I remember that her voice was pleasing. It would give us the opportunity to make her a small present.'

‘At such short notice it would hardly be possible, Papa. If she has no suitable dress, she would not like to appear before company. Besides, we have not practised together. And I think it would not be proper for me to sing this afternoon.'

‘You have a beautiful voice,' John Junius declared. Margaret flushed with pleasure at the compliment, not only because her father paid her so few, but because he himself in his younger days had possessed a fine voice and still retained his musical sensibility.

Margaret knew well enough that nothing else about herself was beautiful. She was too small and her expression was too determined, even fierce. Her step was firm and bustling: she had never found it possible to languish in an elegant manner. Her complexion was freckled, and she had inherited the curly red hair which had made her father a striking figure when he was young. On a young man it was no doubt acceptable, but she felt it to be unseemly on herself. She plaited her hair as tightly as she could and coiled it round her ears; but its tight waves eluded her control and she could never give the proper impression of calm tidiness. She knew that her father, who loved beautiful things, who would sit for an hour staring at a detail painted on one of his screens or caressing some tiny jade animal within his cupped hands, had never been able to find in his own daughter anything for his eyes to admire. But it was true that her voice, although not strong, was clear and true.

Nevertheless she felt bound to press her objection.

‘Most of the bank staff are strangers to me, Papa,' she said. ‘We have hired musicians to entertain them after tea. If I were to join that entertainment, it would be to make myself a public performer.'

‘If you have nothing prepared, that's the end of it,' said her father. His displeasure was clear in his voice. Margaret had a favour to beg and could see the need to change his mood before she introduced the new subject.

‘I shall invite Luisa to luncheon tomorrow,' she said. ‘At least she may enjoy a good meal to start with, while I discover what the trouble is. And then I shall ask her to practise with me. When we are ready, we will sing together for you and Mama and your friends one evening after dinner. You know that I am always ready to do that. The opportunity to make her a present can easily be arranged.'

Her father nodded his approval.

‘The thought does you credit,' he said, as though he had forgotten that the thought was in the first place his own. He nodded at his daughter to dismiss her. But Margaret's own request was as urgent as his.

‘I would like your permission, Papa, to engage a lady's maid for myself.'

‘What's wrong with Marie-Claire?'

‘She is Mama's maid. She thinks it wrong that she should be expected to wait on more than one mistress.'