Underground. Various
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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. Mr Leyland is always thinking of the future. You know of his share in the Edison company? He sees this line being powered that way, and lit that way too. He sees telephones connecting the stations – connecting the platforms and the offices. Vast improvements, Mr Merrill. Vast indeed.’
Merrill crossed his arms, frowning slightly as if in contemplation. He was impressed, rather to his annoyance, and stung by a sudden and profound sense of inadequacy. He simply could not think in these terms. His grand idea, the sum of his life’s ambition, was that he might write for the stage – and that was receding into the distance at a rate of knots. Now he sought chiefly to keep his damned family at bay, and escape the censure of Uncle Bob. This long-limbed black-clad rake, so sinister and ridiculous, had plainly wrought more than his share of harm – but he had vision. It was the only word. Leyland saw the shape of things to come, and the practical changes that would affect the progress of cities. Of entire nations.
‘There’s gold down here,’ Carlens went on, satisfied by Merrill’s reaction, ‘in these wretched tunnels. Mr Leyland perceives it clearly. A rich seam of it. He changed shipping, you know, changed it for good, and now he’ll change the underground. Make his fortune all over again, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘And the boon for London will be incalculable,’ Merrill added. ‘I mean to say, Mr Leyland will – well, he will be doing the people of this city an enormous service.’
Carlens was eyeing him with a certain pity, as if noting a lack. He inclined his grey bowler in acknowledgement. ‘Quite so.’
A high-pitched whistle sounded off to the right, and light broke around a corner of the tunnel. A few seconds later the squat, sooty locomotive heaved itself into the station, sending banks of smoke and steam rolling through the still mistiness of the platform. Its wheezing chugs and the prolonged whine of its brakes made any further conversation impossible. Leyland and Uncle Bob stepped back, for a moment reduced to silhouettes; then Uncle Bob went after one of the leading carriages, following it a few yards along the platform before opening a door for the president. As the juniors hurried up behind them, Merrill noticed the ‘1’s stencilled on the carriage’s other doors: first class. There was less competition for seats here, most of those out on the platform making for the other, inferior sections of the train. They had a compartment to themselves – unheard of in second or third class at this time on a Monday. Merrill embarked last and took a place on the left, directly inside, facing Carlens. The furnishings, he noticed, were a little fresher and better made; the upholstered bench seats a few inches further apart. The smell was the same, though: tobacco ash and gas, and the ever-present smoke. He reached over to close the door.
There was a shout from the platform guard and the blast of a pea whistle, and the underground train pulled from the station. Once they were out in the tunnel, Uncle Bob asked Leyland about the City and South London Railway, one of the new, deep-running lines, which had been using electric traction locomotives for over a year. Leyland was disdainful. It was a ramshackle operation, he replied, unreliable and poorly implemented. The generators barely provided sufficient power for the engines – there was nothing left for lighting or—
This bout of coughing seemed to catch him unawares. It sounded different, constricted, as if his throat was tightening. The carriage swayed upon the track; the single gas fitting hissed softly above them. Merrill looked away into the inky sheen of the window, just as the train arrived at Mansion House. The platform here was as busy as the one at Cannon Street. Two well-fed managerial types advanced on their compartment. Carlens held the handle, keeping them out, waving them on with his other hand. The gentlemen persisted, but the private secretary held firm. Eventually the whistle blew, and with shakes of the head they went to board elsewhere.
‘Are you well, sir?’ asked Uncle Bob.
‘Quite well,’ Leyland answered hoarsely, between coughs. ‘It will pass.’
The train continued westwards. Recovering himself, the president addressed Uncle Bob, sketching the outlines of a new concern that would be able to take full advantage of this opportunity he had detected. Merrill gathered that it would be founded on the Edison company, which would be bought out, gulped down whole, much as Leyland had done with his shipping firm in Liverpool.
‘Edison can be improved,’ he said. ‘Expanded. I’m convinced of that. This underground