They said good night.
It was the last day of October, and ignoring the bursts of rain against the dark window, Bellman sat down to his desk with relish. Every last Friday of the month his heads of department wrote their accounts of the last four weeks’ trading: the rises and falls in sales of different lines, the factors that had influenced the takings. Most of this was known to him already, from his thrice-daily tours of the shop in trading hours; still he enjoyed this hour after closing time alone with the reports. Whether bonnets were up or down, and why; the sudden run on serpent motif jet; stationery takings up and the difficulties with an Italian supplier of gloves—his interest in these bread-and-butter aspects of the business was unflagging. A big funeral—two months ago it had been the funeral of the Earl of Stanford—could boost the profits of almost every department. As he read, questions occurred to him, points of action, things to follow up, so here and there he noted something in the margin: a question mark, an arrow, a word or two. He forgot nothing.
From the written reports he proceeded to the chief accountant’s figures. He need do little more than glance at the page. If there was an error it would jump out at him, obvious as a statue in the middle of a dance floor. He looked over the rows and columns, everything looked all right. It was only the bottom line that gave him pause for thought. He peered at it more closely, then held the paper a little farther away. He dropped the paper onto his desk and stared at the point where wall met ceiling. What was going on?
It had been another good month, hadn’t it? An endless stream of customers who grieved, purchased, paid, and left consoled. For every customer who left the store, another entered. For every customer who came out of mourning, another was just entering it. Those that came out of mourning would, as likely as not, one day go into it again. There was a strong feeling—and why discourage it?—that to keep mourning garb “for next time” was asking for trouble. And when his customers died and could never spend another penny, why even then—especially then—they contributed to the success of Bellman & Black . . . Let the poets and the novelists write what letters they would, let Household Words print a dozen such letters a week, it made no difference. People continued to die, and when they died the bereaved wanted their mutes and their lined coffins and their new black gowns . . .
Nothing had changed. Boys had used thousands of yards of paper and of string to wrap parcels to send to all corners of the country. Girls had stitched thousands of yards of black thread into black crepe and merino and cashmere. He had seen the invoices for the thread and the string. All was well.
He picked up the figures and looked again. Level sales. No increase on last month.
Bellman frowned. Was this leveling off the effect of the market having reached its natural limit? If so, it would be no great disaster. They could go on forever at this level. Was it possibly—his chest contracted—the sign of something else? Was this flat month the precursor to a downward turn?
Bellman stood by his chart, pen in hand. He rose to ink in his takings and hesitated. It couldn’t be! Verney’s balletic fingers must have made a mistake. A decimal point astray somewhere. A three that wanted correcting to an eight. He would get him to right it tomorrow.
He put his black pen back in its holder.
What target should he set for next month? What was happening in London? The temperature was falling. It was cold, and soon it would be colder. People would try and stretch their fuel, and the poor would have to do without it altogether. It would be a choice between logs for the fire and something for the pot. Snow would cut people off in the country. Food would be harder to come by in isolated areas. The well-off were not immune to winter. Even in their furs they would shiver through Sunday services. In icy streets, feet would fly out from under people; bones would be broken; infections would set in. Illness would harness the weakening effect of winter to its own ends.
Bellman took up his blue pen to fix next month’s target. It hovered over the chart. For the first time he imagined the line extending itself into a downward curve. He tried to wipe the image from his mind and decided that, in any case, it was a job that would be better left till morning, when he and Verney had had a chance to go through it all properly.
· · ·
At some black hour of the night the curve of Bellman & Black’s sales figures etched itself on the darkness, and Bellman found himself studying it again. His brain continued making calculations—had never stopped, it seemed. Haberdashery plus millinery plus stationery plus funerals plus . . . March plus April plus May plus June . . . Apoplexy plus influenza plus consumption plus old age plus heart trouble . . . The additions went on and on, he lost his way in the lists of figures, had to go back and start again, because he had lost count—
But what was it that he had forgotten?
The curve rose and rose and rose, ever more steeply, July, August, September, every month above and beyond Bellman’s most ambitious predictions. He went to place his sales target on the graph and an invisible hand closed over his, forced it down, beyond where he meant it to go.
So low? That’s impossible! he thought. But a dark certainty bled into him: the sales would fall and fall again.
Down and down went the figures, one transaction after another, half a yard of ribbon and a baby’s tombstone, a jet hat pin and two dozen yards of black merino, four servants kitted out in mourning, and mutes, eight, for the funeral of an earl, and—what had he forgotten?
Down and down, the curve drawn smoothly on the endless sky over Whittingford, down and down, toward the old oak tree—
Bellman was awake.
His heart was beating fast, and he had an obscure sense of something unpleasant receding from his mind as sleep retreated.
The match spat and flared and he was grateful for the company of the little candle. He drank some water. He would get up for a while till he felt better. Perhaps the room was stuffy.
In his nightshirt and nightcap he stood looking out. All was quiet, all was dark. Beyond the grand facades of Regent Street were other streets, smaller, more modest, with rooms over the shops where butchers and booksellers and tobacconists slept with their wives and their children. And farther out, the densely populated areas where whole families shared a single room and a house might be home to a hundred people. People. Living and dying, it made no difference, they were all customers.
Bellman’s back felt stiff and his feet were painful. He knew he was tired but he didn’t feel sleepy. It was the accounts. It wasn’t like Verney to make a mistake. His boys were accurate, and he had a method where everything was checked and double-checked. But somewhere a mistake must have slipped through. What other explanation was there?
He would fetch the workings and go through it all himself.
Bellman did this.
It all worked out just as before.
His face grave, Bellman lifted his candle to illuminate the graph on the wall. His eyes followed the entire curve from the first month’s trading to now.
Something struck him.
Ten years! he thought. For ten years I have been drawing this graph on this office wall.
How could that be? Had ten winters come and gone? He had not seen it happen. But that would make him . . . forty-nine! He did the sums and to his great perplexity found that he was indeed forty-nine. He peered at himself in the window glass. Against the background of night his white self was spectral. His hair was gray. He looked tired. He was tired.
He shook his head in wonderment at the man in the risible white nightcap and gown. How was it possible? Ten years, and he hadn’t noticed. He who noticed everything! He who forgot nothing!
His stomach lurched, as if the ground beneath his feet had suddenly given way.
That, again, he thought.
The nausea came first, the dizziness a second later.
He drank a brandy and the trembling subsided somewhat.
Come on, he chided himself. Focus on the numbers.
They added up, didn’t the
y? Yes. And at the same time they didn’t.
Fashions in bonnets. Coffins in Lancashire. The Earl of Stanford.
Or was there something else behind it?
One thing only affected the profits of Bellman & Black: death.
So, Bellman wondered wearily, whose hand was it that nudged his own and placed the monthly target always a bit higher than he intended? Was it the same hand that covered the mouths and pinched the nostrils of the sick? That applied pressure over the trigger finger of the sick at heart? That pressed laudanum into the hand of the lovelorn?
Whose was it?
Black.
The quaking took hold of him again; he placed a hand on the desk to steady himself. He remembered with a sense of foreboding that he had never completed that contract.
In his anxiety to find the draft he opened one drawer after another. He turned out papers, which slithered between his trembling fingers and onto the floor. On hands and knees he riffled through them by candlelight, squinting, panting with frantic effort.
How much, William wondered, do I owe?
He couldn’t find it.
Well, never mind. He could write it out afresh. The essential thing was to get the sums in order.
He fretted over calculations, jotted extraordinary figures into his notebook, added things up one way and another and squinted at the results.
It was too much. Far too much.
And nowhere near enough.
· · ·
The next morning Verney was astonished to find his employer asleep at his desk with papers strewn on the floor all around him. He was still in his nightshirt, his white nightcap stained with ink where his head had come to rest on a set of wild and unfathomable calculations. Without waking Bellman, Verney gathered the papers together before tiptoeing from the room. Outside the door he orchestrated a prolonged burst of sound—heavy footsteps, much jingling of keys and jiggling of lock—before reentering the office. By that time Bellman had removed himself and his fantastical calculations into his bedroom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mr. Anson of the Westminster & City nodded.
“Well, it’s a bit short notice, but I dare say I could call by and see Mr. Bellman this afternoon if it’s urgent.”
The young man swallowed. “I believe that Mr. Bellman is . . . hoping—expecting, I should say—to see you sooner than that.” He coughed. “If it can be managed, sir.”
George Anson stretched his legs out under his desk and looked over his glasses at the young man.
“If I understand you correctly, Mr. Bellman would like me to walk over to his office now, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Anson had a hundred things to do, but curiosity and concern conspired in him. What is the good of being the manager of the Westminster & City Bank after all if you let your diary tell you what to do?
He rose from his chair, ignoring the dismay of his secretary. “That’s my coat, if you would. Behind the door. We’ll step over there now, shall we?”
Relief broke onto the young man’s face.
· · ·
On entering Bellman’s office, Mr. Anson saw immediately that the great businessman was not quite himself. His eyes were red-rimmed and there was a slow, lumbering aspect to his movements, as if he were in pain.
“It’s about the sleeping account.”
Mr. Anson understood what Bellman meant, though he had never heard him use this term for it before. It was his second personal account. Over the last ten years Bellman had transferred one-third of his personal income into it. He had never drawn a penny out. It now represented a large—a very large—fortune. From time to time Anson had suggested investments to his client, but while Bellman was happy enough to risk the funds he held in his other account, and had seen significant returns, he had always refused absolutely to touch this money.
“Glad to hear it,” Anson now said. “Where are we to put it, then?”
“Nowhere.”
“Nowhere?”
“I want to make an additional transfer of funds.”
“What sum?”
Bellman named a figure.
Mr. Anson took a breath that did not adequately disguise his surprise.
“That would amount to—some seventy-five percent of your personal liquid wealth . . . Of course it is possible, anything you wish is possible . . . Your intention would be to maintain the funds in cash?”
“It is.”
Anson brought his fingertips to his lips while he thought. The role of a bank manager was a delicate one. It was not for him to know what his clients meant for their money. How much they spent and on what was no concern of his. But sometimes he sensed something troubling in his clients’ money, and one part of his job, as he conceived it, was to act as go-between when his clients and their money had a falling-out, a failure to understand each other. He allowed silence to grow in the room while he considered the matter.
It was logical to conclude that Bellman kept it apart from his other wealth for some special purpose, but no word had ever been spoken to indicate what that purpose might be.
“To see money sitting with its feet up by the fire when it could be put to work earning a good return—it goes against the grain with me, Bellman.” Anson spoke with a grimace, shaking his head sorrowfully.
Bellman was unmoved. He did not answer but only sat, staring through the window, blind to the street but seeing, Anson thought, something fearful in the far distance of the mind’s eye.
It couldn’t be debts. He knew Bellman. Not as a friend exactly—they had never had any conversation that you might call personal—but he knew the habits of the fellow’s life. Bellman only worked. He did not gamble, nor did he frequent brothels. Not a breath of scandal, financial or moral, had ever attached itself to his name. He lived for his work only, and his work was a success. The haberdashers knew every last detail of the financial affairs of Bellman & Black, and you only had to see their smiling, contented faces in the bar at Russells to know that all was well there. He knew the accounts like the back of his hand, and it was as clear as day that Bellman did not live expensively. In fact, his personal spending was as restrained as that of the most modest country vicar.
Was it possible that the man was being blackmailed? Had some villain got a hold over Bellman and was extorting money?
“Are you expecting to be in need of the money in liquid form at some time in the near future?”
Bellman put a hand over his eyes, as though the light was hurting them. “Perhaps. I don’t know.”
“Bellman, I am your banker and one who has known you these last ten years and has your best interests at heart. Seeing you in this state, I am obliged to ask a difficult question: Tell me, are you acting as a free man in making these arrangements?”
Bellman stared at him. “Free?”
“If some person is extorting money from you, there are things that could be done . . . Lawyers . . . With perfect discretion. It could be dealt with by others, your name need never be mentioned.”
Then Anson saw a thing he had never expected to see. Bellman squeezed his eyes closed and a tear welled out of them.
“No lawyer can get me out of this. I am bound.”
When Bellman’s eyes opened, Anson saw melancholy of the blackest tint.
Bellman took a breath and went on, as if the tear had never been shed. “Furthermore, the quarterly payments into the account are to be made on a monthly basis henceforward. And from thirty-three percent they will rise to fifty percent. All clear?”
Anson walked back to the bank a troubled man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tick!
What ghastly watch is this, counting down the seconds so painfully?
Tick!
What an eternity of time between ticks. Any tick might be the last.
Tick!
He must not let the watch run down.
Tick!
But how to wind it? He feels for the watch in his breast pocket
. . . But what is this? The watch is not in his pocket! It is ticking inside his chest!
Tick!
And any tick might be the last . . .
Tick!
· · ·
Bellman awoke leaden hearted. Something foul and chilling had enveloped him while he slept; it clung about him with the sheets. He escaped by rising immediately and plunging into activity: he shaved too quickly and cut his chin, was too nauseated for breakfast, gnawed at a piece of bread to try and settle his stomach. In his office he did two hours’ letter writing before his first meeting of the day. He could do two jobs at once—or three. He piled task upon task, crammed every hour, every minute with ceaseless challenge. He prolonged his day beyond even his own excessive habits, and when he had worked nineteen or twenty hours, the despair he met in the bathroom mirror could not prevent him from falling into an exhausted sleep. He did not emerge rested though: his mind, ever on guard, continued its grim battle through the night against a vaguely formed, forbidding foe, and when he woke it was to the same clinging foulness.
There were nights when he sank into his usual exhausted coma, then found himself wide awake an hour later. His conscious thoughts were no better than the sick horrors that assailed him in his sleep. Awake or asleep, it made no difference: trapped birds, the panicked flapping of wings, the brush of feathers close to his ear . . . He lay awake, sweating and breathing heavily while his heart beat fit to wake the dead.
· · ·
Insomnia took its toll.
Jerking into consciousness, as if from sleep, it was full daylight, and there was Miss Chalcraft opposite him.
“Yes,” she was saying, “the new girls we took on from Pope’s, when they closed, are wonderfully quick . . .”
He was in his office, seated at his desk, entirely unable to remember his senior seamstress’s arrival in the room, nor anything that they had spoken about prior to this moment. Her manner was entirely normal. Clearly she had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
Not only did he have no memory of her arrival in his office, but he also failed to remember their last meeting—had he really agreed to take on Pope’s seamstresses when his competitor closed? Was that wise, when his own sales figures were so uncertain?