The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [191]
The next day young Hamish Graham made an appointment to see the local manager of the Bank of Scotland who was responsible for the TarMac account, and with whom he had dealt for the past ten years. Graham explained to the manager his plans for the future, submitting a full written proposal, and requesting that his overdraft facility might be extended from fifty pounds to ten thousand. Three weeks later he learned that his application had been viewed favorably. He remained in his lodgings in Edinburgh, while renting an office (or, to be more accurate, a room) in the north of the city at ten shillings a week. He purchased a typewriter, hired a secretary, and ordered some unembossed letter-headed stationery. After a further month of diligent interviewing, he employed two engineers, both graduates of Aberdeen University, and five out-of-work laborers from Glasgow.
During those first few weeks on his own Graham tendered for several small road contracts in the central lowlands of Scotland, the first seven of which he failed to secure. Preparing a tender is always tricky and often expensive, so by the end of his first six months in business Graham was beginning to wonder if his sudden departure from TarMac had not been foolhardy. For the first time in his life he experienced self-doubt, but that was soon removed by the Ayrshire County Council, which accepted his tender to construct a minor road that was to join a projected school to the main highway. The road was only five hundred yards in length, but the assignment took Graham’s little team seven months to complete, and when all the bills had been paid and all expenses taken into account Graham Construction made a net loss of £143. 10s.6d.
Still, in the profit column was a small reputation that had been invisibly earned, and that caused the Ayrshire Council to invite him to build the school at the end of the new road. This contract made Graham Construction a profit of £420 and added still further to his reputation. From that moment Graham Construction went from strength to strength, and as early as his third year in business, Graham was able to declare a small pre-tax profit, and this grew steadily over the next five years. When Graham Construction was floated on the London Stock Exchange, the demand for the shares was oversubscribed ten times and the newly quoted company was soon considered a blue-chip institution, a considerable achievement for Graham to have pulled off in his own lifetime. But then, the City likes men who grow slowly and can be relied on not to involve themselves in unnecessary risks.
In the sixties Graham Construction built highways, hospitals, factories, and even a power station, but the achievement the chairman took most pride in was Edinburgh’s newly completed art gallery, which was the only contract that showed a deficit in the annual general report. The invisible earnings column, however, recorded the award of knight bachelor for the chairman.
Sir Hamish decided that the time had come for Graham Construction to expand into new fields, and looked, as generations of Scots had before him, toward the natural market of the British Empire. He built in Australia and Canada with his own finances, and in India and Africa with a subsidy from the British government. In 1963 he was named “Businessman of the Year” by The Times and three years later “Chairman of the Year” by The Economist. Sir Hamish never once altered his methods to keep pace with the changing times and, if anything, grew more stubborn in the belief that his ideas of doing business were correct whatever anyone else thought; and he had a long credit column to prove he was right.
In the early seventies, when the slump hit the construction-business, Graham Construction suffered the same cut in budgets and lost contracts as its major competitors. Sir Hamish reacted in a predictable way, by tightening his belt and paring his estimates while at the