Kindling (21 page)

They stood for a few minutes looking out into the Yard. Then Warren turned back to the room.

“I’ve known of this,” he said, “before you told me.” He looked the other in the eyes. “At the same time, I mean to get things started here again.”

He dropped into a chair by the table. “Tell me this.
Suppose we go ahead now and build these ships, and more ships after them. Maybe well lose a lot of money.”

“You will that.”

“In two years from the start, how will we be then? The men will have had two years of steady work, regular food and beer. Will we still be working at a disadvantage then, compared with other yards?”

The manager thought for a long time before answering. “No,” he said at last, “I’d not say that we will. Two years is long enough for a man to get back his skill and strength, if he’s ever going to. Mind, there’s some, forty-five or fifty years old, that’ll never come back to work again, after five years’ idleness. But in two years’ time I think we could compete in price, Mr. Warren. After all, it’s a handy size, this Yard and it’d not take a great deal of work to meet our overhead.

“But it’ll be two years of bloody grief,” he said.

Warren nodded. “Still, I think we’ll go ahead. You should have your order by the end of the month, and be able to get started ordering materials. We’ll want sufficient capital to see us through, but I’ll look after that.”

The manager smiled. “It’s as you say. Mind, you’ll have a bonny little business if you can carry it through. Sharples folk were aye good folk to work before the slump came, and this Yard showed a profit every year.

“Soon as we get on to our feet,” he said, “we want to try and get back on to Admiralty work again. That’s where the Yard used to make its profit. There was seven Barlow destroyers at the Battle of Jutland, Mr. Warren. Did ye ever hear that?”

They went out, and spent some time in going round the Yard. Warren noticed a considerable difference since he had last seen it: the piles of scrap were cleared away, the fence had been repaired, the berths were orderly.

“You’re getting it in shape, all right,” he said.

“Aye,” said the manager, “but there’s a lot to do yet before we can start an’ build.”

He glanced across the Yard, critically. Beside the hydraulic guillotine he saw a woman coming towards them, picking her way delicately through the Yard. “Yon’s Miss MacMahon,” he said, “her that’s working at the hospital. Her father was solicitor to Barlows.”

Warren nodded. “I think she’s come for me.”

They walked to meet her; she greeted them both equally. To Grierson she said, “That man Harrington’s got a poisoned hand. It’ll be some time before he works again.”

The manager turned aside. “He was only on for three days,” he said resentfully. “They’re ower delicate, these folks.”

“Give them a chance,” she said. “They’re bursting with anxiety to get to work.”

“Aye, an’ then when you set them to work they go off sick. I know they’re willing, Miss MacMahon, but you can’t build ships with nothing but good wishes.”

“They’ll harden up.”

“Aye,” he said, “we must do the best we can with the material we’ve got.”

She turned to Warren. “I’ve got lunch for you in my room up at the hospital,” she said. “Is that all right? There’s really nowhere else that you could go, except the ‘Bull’s Head’, and that’s not much.”

He smiled. “That’s very kind of you,” he said. He turned again to Grierson, and had a final word or two with him, then left the Yard with the girl and went walking up towards the hospital.

“You can’t imagine what this little bit of work that’s going on here now has meant,” she told him. “It’s psychological. Everybody’s talking now about the Yard, and what the chances are of work again. It’s helped the place enormously.”

He wrinkled his brows. “Just by giving them something to look forward to?”

She nodded. “It’s been terrible this year,” she said gravely. “You know how it is when someone’s desperately ill—for days they may keep cheerful, hanging on. And then, one day, they let go, just don’t care any more, and you know they’re sinking then, that they’ll never get back.” She turned to him. “That’s what it’s been like in Sharples all this year, Mr. Warren. They’ve been—sinking.

“I honestly believe,” she said, “that if you’d come along this time next year you wouldn’t have been able to do anything at all in Sharples.”

“We’ve got a bad enough job now,” he said grimly.

They went into the hospital. In the front hall they passed the Matron, round and rubicund. She smiled at them, and Warren stopped and spoke to her.

She beamed. “Your lunch is ready,” she said to them. “I’ve just been along, and it’s quite ready for you when you want it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” he said. “I didn’t mean to give you the trouble.”

“Hoots, Mr. Warren, that’s no trouble. You’re
welcome to it, any time that you’re in Sharples. I’ve been thinking, the hotel accommodation’s none so good in Sharples just now. I can always fit you up with a bed here, if at any time you want to stay the night.”

“You’ll have to pay for that,” said the Almoner. “That’s my end of the business.”

“Any time you like,” said the Matron. “Just let us have a card.”

She left them, and they went on down the passage to the Almoner’s room, where lunch was spread upon the table by the fire. A ward maid waited on them.

“How long have you been back from Visgrad?” asked the girl.

“Getting on for a month. I was out there for about a fortnight after we had lunch together.”

She smiled. “Did you take out the umbrella with you?”

He nodded.

“And it worked?”

“I got what I wanted—the right to float the business on the London market.”

She wrinkled her brows. “Does that mean orders for ships?”

“Broadly speaking, it does. If that issue goes all right, and I have no doubt that it will, it means that the Company, Laevol Ltd., will have to order tankers.”

“Will they be ordered from us, here?”

“I’ve arranged for that.”

She stared into the fire. “It’s wonderful,” she said quietly. “The change that it will mean—to everything. I can’t get used to the idea.”

He smiled. “That isn’t quite the end of the story.
The next thing is, we’ve got to get some capital for the Yard to work with, to finance the order and for new equipment and machinery. That means another issue.”

She wrinkled her brows again. “You mean, because of the order from Laevol, you’ll be able to get in more money to capitalise the Yard?”

“That’s it, broadly.”

They went on with their lunch, talking of Sharples, of the Yard, and of the hospital. And presently she said:

“About this new company, Laevol Ltd., Mr. Warren. I’d like to take up some shares in it, if I may. I had a legacy the other day, so I’ve got a little money to invest now.”

He did not answer for a minute. Then he said, “How much did you think of putting into it?”

“About five hundred pounds.” She hesitated, and then said, “Could you arrange that for me?”

He shook his head, smiling. “No, I couldn’t.”

“But why not?”

He eyed her for a moment. “I wouldn’t play about with foreign industrials, if I were you,” he said. “Leave that to the people who make a study of that sort of thing—the big corporations and insurance companies.”

She met his eyes. “But you’re offering the shares to people like me, aren’t you?”

“That’s a matter of form,” he said easily. “There’s only one way to make a public issue, and that’s to offer it to the public. But the bulk of this issue will be taken up by the investment corporations.”

She said, “I see.”

“I think you might split your five hundred into two
lots,” he remarked. “If you’ll let me look into it when I get back to town, I can let you have details of a couple of sound investments that will give you a safe dividend, and a slow capital appreciation. Then you could tell your bank to buy the shares—or, if you like, I’ll handle it for you.”

She turned and faced him. “You mustn’t take that trouble, Mr. Warren,” she said evenly. “I haven’t got any money to invest, really. I only asked you that because I wanted to know what you really thought of Laevol Ltd.”

There was a little silence.

“Well,” he said heavily. “You know that now.”

“Let’s have our coffee by the fire,” she said gently. “The maid can clear the table then.” She made him sit in the arm-chair, and poured out coffee for him.

“I’m sorry I did that,” she said at last, and smiled at him. “It was mean. But since we had that talk in London, in your rooms, I’ve known that things weren’t right, I felt then that you hated the whole thing. You do, don’t you?”

He sat there in the chair before the fire, and sipped his coffee. “It’s autumn now,” he said at last. “I told you in the spring that I would get this place going again, that day we went to see the mine. And I’m doing it. You don’t imagine I hate doing that, do you?”

“No,” she said wonderingly, “I don’t.”

He went on, half to himself, “In my sort of business it’s not very easy to see clearly what one’s working for. A young man works to make money, or to get married.” He raised his head. “You know that I’m divorcing my wife?”

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I know that.”

“Well. One gets to a stage, later on in life, when the things one used to work for don’t quite fit. I’ve got all the money I could ever want to use. And it’s when you get to my age that you begin to wonder what in hell you go on working for. What you expect to get out of it.”

There was a silence. She did not interrupt and presently he went on.

“One can’t just give up working, and do nothing. And so one’s got to find a motive, an excuse for going on doing the job one knows. I had time to think about all this when I was here in hospital. I was right away from it then, able to see my job from the outside. And it seemed to me then, as it does now, that there’s only one thing really worth working for in the City. That’s to create work.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about machines,” he said. “Every machine that’s put into a factory displaces labour. That’s a very old story, of course. The man who’s put to work the machine isn’t any better off than he was before; the three men that are thrown out of a job are very much worse off. But the cure isn’t Socialism—or if it is, I’m too much of a capitalist myself to see it. The cure is for somebody to buckle to and make a job for the three men.

“I believe that that’s the thing most worth doing in this modern world,” he said quietly. “To create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work. There’s no dignity, no decency, or health to-day for men that haven’t got a job. All other things
depend on work to-day: without work men are utterly undone.”

He had been speaking so softly that she had to strain to hear what he was saying; now he was silent for a very long time. At last he raised his head.

“You asked me about Laevol. Laevol’s a rotten company. But you know that already.”

She stirred in her chair. “How is it rotten?”

“It’s like an apple with a worm in it. It looks all right outside. If the worm’s got into the core, you may be able to eat the whole apple and never know it’s there. Alternatively, you may find half of him after the first bite.”

She smiled faintly. “I see. You mean it’s not a very reliable company?”

“That is so. But nobody knows just what’s wrong with it but me.”

“And you can’t put it right?”

He shook his head. “It’s all set now. I’ve got all the underwriting contracts in. You’ll see the prospectus advertised next Friday, in the papers; it goes to the public on Tuesday following. The issue’s going to be a great success.”

“What happens after that?”

He lit a cigarette. “After that? The first thing Laevol does is to place its order for the ships, three oil tankers. The Hawside Ship and Engineering Company takes that order—and glad to get it.”

She exclaimed, “Hawside? Did you call the Company after our little river here, the Haws?”

He nodded. “As good a name as any other. I never put much weight on names, myself.”

She wrinkled her brows. “Is that the Company that’s going to work here, then?”

He nodded, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “The Hawside Company was registered some weeks ago. I sold the Yard to them the other day—on paper. You might say that the Hawside Company is here already.”

She stared at him wonderingly. “But—but what does the Company consist of?”

He smiled. “Seven clerks, with a one pound share each. My own accountant is the secretary; the shareholders haven’t elected a Board yet. It’s got a capital of one hundred pounds, but that’s not all paid up, of course.”

“Is that the Company that’s going to build the ships?”

He nodded. “That’s right. It’s going to suffer a sea change next week—into something rich and strange, as you might say. It’s going to print itself a lot more shares. And it’s going to acquire a Board. I’m going to be chairman.”

“And what happens then?”

“Then it’s ready to take the Laevol order for the oil tankers—four hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of work. It won’t have any money to build them with, of course, so it goes to the public with its new shares, and makes an issue for five hundred thousand pounds. Then it gets down to work and builds the ships.”

She eyed him steadily. “Is a company of that sort going to be all right?”

He passed his hand across his eyes, a little wearily. “It’s going to be as right as I can make it. I can’t say more than that. It will have money, and an order to work at, good premises, a good secretary, and Mr.
Grierson. I’m going to be chairman myself, to stand by the Company for the first year or two. If I bring that to Sharples, I’ll have done the best I can to get things started here again.”

She laid her hand impulsively upon his arm. “Don’t think I’m criticising what you’ve done.”

“You’d have a right to,” he replied. “It’s not a very bright set-up, and I’m not proud of it. But to get anything at all to start up in the middle of a slump like this is difficult. I’ve done the best I can. You’ll get some work in Sharples—for a time, at any rate.”