Lady of Fortune (10 page)

Thomas Watson slowly and thoughtfully rubbed the back of his neck, where his hair was close-cropped to stubble. Then he looked up at Robert with those pale cold eyes of his, and nodded. ‘What do you suggest I do with him? Send him to Aberdeen?'

‘One of our smaller branches, aye. Somewhere that he can acquire some basic, ordinary, down-to-earth experience. Two or three years of loaning out money to the fishing-fleets should show him the virtues of financial prudence.'

‘And keep him out of your way, too?'

Robert's lips tightened. ‘I didn't mean that, father. I'm thinking of the bank.'

‘Oh, aye, well, I suppose you are.' Thomas Watson pushed back his chair and walked around the library table to where his son was standing. ‘But you must remember that the bank is
me
. Watson's Bank, founded by Thomas Watson, and that the way the bank is controlled, and who works there, as long as I live, will be up to me, entirely.'

‘Father, it's for Dougal's own good.'

‘Aye. I know that. You're a good boy, Robert. Reliable. But you must remember that Dougal has his own life to lead, too.'

‘Father –'

Thomas Watson raised his hand. ‘Say no more about it. I'll send him away. I've been thinking about it for some time. I need a new manager at Stirling. Two or three years there will soon sort him out. And meanwhile, I expect twice the effort from you, in Edinburgh.'

‘You'll get it, father. You know that.'

There was another knock at the library door. This time, it was Dougal. Thomas Watson eyed him coldly, and then turned his back on him.

‘You know why I've come, father,' said Dougal, in the bravest voice he could manage.

‘I do?' asked his father, brusquely.

‘I've come to say I'm sorry for that mislear'd behaviour of mine over luncheon.'

‘I see,' said his father. ‘And is that a'?'

Dougal glanced at Robert. ‘Do you want me to say something else?'

‘I don't know,' said his father. ‘What do you think? Do you not consider that it's time to review your future with us? Both here at home, and at the bank?'

‘Well, father,' said Dougal, ‘I do have a suggestion to make. You hinted some time ago that I might go to work in London. And, well, I thought that with all the trouble we've been having between us, Robert and me, it might be worth thinking about.'

‘London?' said Thomas Watson. ‘And what makes you believe you could fare any better in London?'

‘I think I'd learn more; and more quickly. I agree with Robert that I need to learn more judgement. And London would be the place to do it. Besides, I'd be well out of Robert's hair down there. There'd be no more quarrels over the Sunday table.'

Thomas Watson sat heavily back down in his chair. ‘London, eh? I was thinking more of Stirling, or of Aberdeen.'

‘You mean you were thinking of exile?'

‘London's a fair bit further away than either of those.'

‘Och, I know that,' said Dougal. ‘But I've a good brain. I must have, as a son of yours. It would be a pity to waste it on a Godforsaken branch in the Highlands.'

‘You're blowing in my lug, again, Dougal,' said his father. ‘One of these fine days you'll flether yourself to death.'

‘But it's true, father. I'm a good banker. Different from Robert, maybe. More of a risk-taker. But if you send me down to London, I'll prove how well I can look after your money; and how much I can make, if I'm permitted my head.'

Thomas Watson closed his eyes. These sons of his; these quarrelling sons of his. Sometimes he didn't know which one of them he disliked the more: Robert, for being so much like himself, and so ready to oblige; or Dougal, for being so much like his mother, and so wily and independent. He had worked steadily and meagrely all his life to build up Watson's Bank into the respected establishment it was today, with its colonnaded head offices in George Street, within sight of the Register House. To think that either of these two boys might take it
over when he was dead was almost more than he could bear. And yet, what else could he do, but bequeath it to them?

‘I'll consider what you've said,' Thomas Watson told Dougal. ‘Perhaps I'll write to Mr Cockburn, at Cornhill, and ask his opinion.'

‘I'd like to go by Wednesday, father,' said Dougal.

‘By Wednesday? What kind of nonsense is that?'

‘I want to go, father,' Dougal insisted. ‘I can not put up with another Sunday like today.'

Thomas Watson pushed his thumbs into his black Sabbath waistcoat, and pouted out his lower lip. ‘Och, well, I'm sorry I struck you with the gigot. But you deserved a hiding for what you said.'

‘I want to go, father.'

‘Wheeping here, wheeping there,' his father protested. ‘Where's it all going to end? Supposing you find that London's not to your taste?'

‘I will, father, I know it. And if by chance I don't, well then, I'll quit the bank and you'll no hear of me again. Now, how can I say fairer than that?'

Thomas Watson steepled his hands in front of his face and stared at Robert over his fingertips. ‘What do you think, son?'

Robert shot an uneasy look at Dougal, and then said, ‘I think Stirling's a better idea. London – well, Dougal could get us into a worse hotch-potch in London than he could here.'

‘You don't think that Mr Cockburn could keep him under control?' asked Thomas Watson.

‘I could keep myself under control,' Dougal told them.

‘I still think Stirling's a better idea,' said Robert. ‘You'd be disciplined there by your budget, and by the needs of your borrowers. There's no wild Jimmies in Stirling, looking to build motor-cars, or trying to invent a new-fangled way of shoeing horses. They're just plain businessmen, with plain needs.'

Thomas Watson closed his eyes. The truth was that although he did badly need a new manager in Stirling, and one in Aberdeen, he was quite keen on posting a member of his own family to London, to keep an eye on Mr Cockburn and the rest of his staff, and on the uncertain doings of the London Stock Exchange. It was a pity that the only member of his family he had to spare was Dougal; but then Dougal wasn't
as much of a skellum as he liked to make out. Thomas knew that; and Dougal probably knew that he knew. It was Thomas's secret opinion that all of Dougal's argumentative posturing over the Sunday luncheon table was nothing more than a way of expressing his frustration.

He opened his eyes again. He said to Dougal, This is against my better judgement, but I'm going to let you go. I'm going to attach you to the trust department at first, and there you can learn about long-term investment, and about bonds, and securities, and funds. You have a way of getting along well with people, but that's not enough, in a bank, because you won't get along with people very well if they ask you to manage their money and you lose most of it on ill-judged investments. You will not, for the time being, be in charge of any lending whatsoever. You will manage; and you will not speculate. You will stay away from the Stock Exchange. It is a gambling-den. But you will pay attention to what goes on there; and you will learn everything you can about the flotation of common stocks and the promotion of holding companies. Some banks are squeamish about them. They consider that anything other than bonds and banking is lacking in prestige. But this is a modern world, and banks will have to learn to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.'

Robert said, ‘Father, if I might say something –'

But Thomas Watson shook his head. ‘My mind's made up, Robert. If Dougal can do well in the trust department in London, then he can do well anywhere. If he can't – well, then, I think he'd better slink off with that bushy tail of his between his legs.'

‘Father –'

‘You're weak, the two of you!' shouted Thomas Watson. ‘Tied to your mother's skirts! I'd send you both away if I could afford to! Just you understand one thing, my fine young men, I like neither of you. You've as much harigals in you as a pair of slaughtered sheep; and it's high time you were kicked out on your curpins and left to fight for yourselves!'

He stalked over to the far wall of the library, where the books were all enclosed in glass, and locked away. ‘You see those,' he directed his sons, his voice shaking with fierceness. ‘Rare books, first editions, ten shelves of medieval Bibles. Books that J. Pierpoint Morgan would pay a fortune to get his hands on!'

Then he went to the library table and began to pull out drawers. Each drawer was covered with a sheet of polished
plate-glass, and under the glass were arranged scores of drawings and manuscripts. ‘Original drawings by Blake,' he said. ‘Original manuscripts by Robert Louis Stephenson, Sir Walter Scott, Swift and Dr Johnson and Napoleon!'

Dougal said carefully, ‘We're not asking you for any of it, sir. We'll not take anything that we haven't earned.'

Thomas Watson stared rigidly at Dougal, as if Dougal had cursed at him, and then slowly turned away, towards the library fireplace, where the coal glowed dully behind a crisscross firescreen of woven brass. ‘You just don't understand, do you?' he said. ‘You'll
have
to take it; along with everything else I own. Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds' worth of rare books; seven houses; and eight hundred and ninety acres of land, in Roxburgh, and Berwick, and Argyll. Seven hundred thousand pounds' worth of bonds, in shipping, and steel, and wool. It's my life; it's what I've worked for. It's what I am. And you'll have to take it because there's nobody else.'

He sat down. ‘You didn't know your grandfather,' he said. ‘He was a harsh man; harsh in the way that a father was expected to be in those days. He'd give you a strapping as soon as ask you how you were. He was quite well off in the early days, when I was wee. You could almost say he was wealthy. But he had no sense of how to make his money grow; and he took to dining out on credit, and buying his meat on credit, and asking for tick at the public house. The poorer he grew, and the more afraid he was, the harder he thrashed me. He died without a penny; and the only way my mother supported herself was by taking in sewing, and by the lucky chance of inheriting that house on Home Street.'

There was an embarrassed silence, and then Thomas Watson said, in a voice that was so quiet they could hardly hear him, ‘I struggled all of my life to protect myself from bankruptcy. That was the one ghoulie that haunted me; never mind the urisks or the sluagh. Well, I succeeded. You could call me a man of invulnerable means now. But what has it brought me? All those years of hard work, what have they brought me? I mean me, myself.'

‘It's brought you respect,' suggested Robert, uncertainly.

‘Respect?' asked his father, without looking up. ‘Respect is something that happens in other people. I'm talking about me. Am I wiser? Am I more satisfied? Am I changed, or bettered?'

He paused, and then he slowly shook his head. ‘I am the same boy who was afraid of his father's labourings. I am the same boy who cried when the bailiffs chased his father down Canongate, and the men in the crowd took bets on whether he would reach the sanctuary line before the dogs caught his coat-tails. I am the same.'

He raised his head, and examined his boys with those chilly eyes of his, and said, ‘All this fortune of mine, it was a mistake. I made it out of fear, and now all I can do is pass it on to two sons who are strangers. It has done me no good. It will do you no good. It is nothing more than a monument to my own wasted existence.'

Robert and Dougal glanced at each other, embarrassed by their father's sudden show of despair. Usually, he was all bluster and cant; a man of moralizing rage and pontificating certainty. Sure of himself, sure of Scotland, sure of God, and directly and confidently answerable to all three. It had never occurred to either of his sons that he might not be happy.

Robert volunteered, uncomfortably, ‘Mother and Effie have gone out for a walk.'

Thomas Watson turned and looked out at the snow falling. ‘Too cold for a walk, wouldn't you say?'

‘Maybe they needed the fresh air,' put in Dougal.

Thomas Watson nodded, like a man dreaming. ‘Air,' he repeated, as if it were a clever explanation for the whole of his life.

He never spoke to them like that again; or even mentioned that he had. But they knew now that they should never live their lives in the pursuit of security. There would never be security, or peace of mind. There would always be fear, and their lives would have to be lived in spite of it.

It was sleeting when the overnight train from Edinburgh clanked and jostled over the points into Kings Cross station. There was whistling and shouting, and the bursting of steam, but Effie could see nothing out of the carriage's grimy
windows for all the impatient passengers who had already gathered up their bags and their coats and their umbrellas and were queueing to get out of the doors.

Dougal reached across the aisle and touched her hand excitedly. ‘We've arrived,' he told her, eyes bright. ‘We've actually got to London.'

Effie had neatly tied the ribbons of her grey travelling-bonnet, and fastened the silver burr-thistle brooch which held her long grey travelling-cape together. Dougal was wearing a new green winter coat of good tweed, and a new bowler-hat, which made him look unexpectedly boyish. The salesman in Rowan's of Princes Street had assured him that the hat was ‘the very latest London style,' although in comparison with the bowlers worn by Englishmen on the train, it appeared to Effie to be rather too wide about the brim, and far too high in the crown.

Mr Cockburn's assistant, a small dapper man with pince-nez spectacles and black wavy hair, was waiting for them at the ticket barrier.

‘Mr Watson! Miss Watson! How do you do! Nathan Cohen! Welcome to London! Got your bags? This way, then!'