London - Edward Rutherfurd [546]
“Electric rails have worked in Chicago,” he told him. “London is the most populous city in the world, with a crying need for more transport. I want you to do me a feasibility study. I’ll find the investors. This thing can be done!” And he had paid him, cash down, the first part of a fee that had made the engineer blink.
Mr Gorham Dogget’s presence in her house had sent Esther Silversleeves into a tizzy. She had asked the Pennys to give her support. The Barnikels, though they were fond of her, were apt to get impatient with her social efforts; the Bulls, though always friendly, had moved apart. But the respectable Pennys could be relied on. They had also brought their son, a bright young man in the City, very smartly dressed she was pleased to see. The gentleman from Boston seemed to find them acceptable company. The food – Arnold only liked plain food, but she had secretly had the cook prepare some puddings that were really rather daring – seemed to be finding favour. The maid’s uniform had been starched twice. The only thing she had been unable to make up her mind about, wondering how and whether to handle it, did not finally come out until the duck was served.
“My maiden name was Dogget, the same as yours,” she ventured.
“Really? Your father a Dogget? What did he do?”
She saw Harriet Penny glance at her nervously; but she had prepared for this.
“He was an investor,” she said with only the faintest blush.
“Sounds a good man! We came over with the Mayflower,” said Mr Gorham Dogget, and turned his attention back to young Penny who, it seemed to him, had some interesting ideas.
If Esther had found the Bostonian a little abrupt over some of her conversational gambits, this was made up for by the pleasure he seemed to take in the younger generation. Her own eldest son Matthew and his wife had evidently found favour. Matthew was a lawyer with a good firm of solicitors and the Bostonian had already indicated that he might have some work for him. As for young Penny, he was eager to push the family insurance business into an exciting new area. “For the first time in history there is sufficient prosperity not only in the middle class but in the small shopkeepers and even the skilled artisans for them to afford life insurance,” he informed Dogget. “The size of each policy, naturally, will be small; but the volume of numbers is potentially huge. The Prudential Insurance Company is already active here, but there’s plenty of room for us, too.” The Penny Insurance Company had recently taken on the younger Silversleeves son as an actuary. “Get the numbers right and offer cheap rates and there’s nothing we can’t achieve,” young Penny assured them all.
“A sound, forward-looking young man, your son,” the Bostonian murmured to Harriet Penny.
But it was when her desserts were being served that Esther Silversleeves really got her chance to shine. For it was then, glancing around the table, that Mr Gorham Dogget casually enquired: “Does anyone here know anything about a fellow called Lord St James?”
Oh, but indeed she did. Flushing with pleasure at the connection she could claim, Esther began: “I hope you won’t think we are getting above our station . . .” This little phrase, used whenever she became socially self-conscious, made the Pennys secretly wince and had caused the Bulls to become rather distant. “But I can tell you all about the earl. He and my brother-in-law are partners together in shipping.”
“A vessel, you mean?”
“Yes indeed. She’s called the Charlotte Rose: a clipper. They think she can beat the Cutty Sark herself!” She became rather confidential. “In fact, the earl has bet on it so heavily that I believe his fortune may rest entirely on my brother-in-law’s shoulders. He’s the captain, you see.” And she beamed at them all, thinking how well she had done, while Mr Gorham Dogget looked thoughtful.
Time was running out for Lucy Dogget. If she wanted to try to save the girl, she knew she must make the effort soon.
Lucy Dogget was seventy