The Ka of Gifford Hillary Read online

  I said nothing for the moment, and he went on:

  ‘That will send the balloon up. The following day it will be front page news in every paper in this country, in the United States, and on the Continent as well. Your obvious integrity will be evident from the sacrifice you are making. Logic is on our side. We’ll have spiked the Admiralty’s guns and have the nation behind us. You have it in your power, Hillary, to enable the Government to go to the House on this thing without risking defeat—more, by enabling us to act in time, you may save us from annihilation by the Soviets in a few years from now. Will you do it?’

  ‘Has the Prime Minister approved this idea for catching the Old Lookers napping?’ I asked.

  Sir Charles made a little gesture with one of his long slim hands. ‘I don’t think we need go into that. We all know that, even if it meant the fall of his Government, he would still face the House and ask it to do what he felt to be the right thing for the nation. It’s my job, and that of my colleagues, to lighten, as far as we can, the burden he has to carry; and the heaviest one in a democracy is that of persuading the mainly ignorant masses to accept a programme that sound evidence has shown to be the best for them.

  ‘Of course, I am fully aware that my proposal to you is highly unorthodox, and if it got out that I had made it I should have to resign; but you wouldn’t think much of me if I did so for no apparent reason and left the baby for some other poor devil to hold, would you? Or if I shirked facing up to the issue?

  ‘Frankly, Hillary, I believe that if we continue with the Old Look, or even try to have it both ways, Britain will be as much a thing of the past within ten years as Greece or Rome; the only difference being that any of our grandchildren who may survive will not even be allowed to know about the great achievements of their race. That is why I don’t feel the least scruple about asking you to do this thing.’

  I realised then that by my last question I had implied that he was doing something vaguely dishonest. He had taken it very well; but, actually, that was the very last thing I had had in mind. No one could have been more of an antithesis to the modern politician whose eyes are always, flickering round to catch sight of a band-wagon on to which he can climb with the hope of doing a bit better for himself. Sir Charles was a most modest and retiring man. Rather than seek office he had been pushed into it by those who appreciated his many gifts. He was a younger son of one of our great families, who, like the Cecils, the Stanleys, the Churchills and the Seymours, had served the country with little thought of self for many generations.

  Smiling, I said: ‘That you feel the way you do, Sir, is quite good enough for me. But there is just one point that I have to consider. I am the largest individual shareholder in my Company, but I don’t hold a controlling interest. Our next Board Meeting is on Friday. It is then that Admiral Waldron will produce this order he has secured for two E-boats. When he has done so it will be up to me to turn it down. Naturally, my co-directors will think I’ve suddenly gone crazy; so, to win most of them over to support me in this altruistic sacrifice of the Company’s financial interests, I shall have to produce some very strong arguments. I realise, of course, that I must keep you out of it; but I’d like you to give me an idea how far I may go in using this material that you’ve shown me tonight?’

  After a moment, he replied: ‘I see your point, and it’s a very sound one. You must not disclose that you have seen these papers, as to do so would as good as give the game away; but providing you warn your co-directors that, for security reasons, what you are saying should go no further, I see no reason that you should not use the arguments in them. They won’t know where you’ve got them from, but they are so convincing that they should do the trick.’

  Later I was bitterly to rue the fact that he had given me such a free hand, or at least had not warned me to avoid quoting figures and the mention of certain special passages; but I suppose he took it for granted that I should keep those to myself.

  We had another drink together and talked on in a most friendly fashion for a further half hour. Then he let me out, and as I walked up Whitehall I felt the thrill that must come to every man chosen for any form of special mission. Little did I guess then what would have happened to me by that time on Friday night.

  4

  Friday 9th September

  I have found already that dictating this account helps to take my mind off the harrowing and unnerving vision of myself standing in the dock at Winchester and the Judge putting on the black cap to sentence me. So, while continuing to adhere to the strict truth in everything, instead of confining myself to bare facts as I had originally intended, I shall give free rein to the tendency to be discursive—where the matter warrants it—as indeed, it seems that I have been already to some extent; and so by this occupation may stave off the morbid contemplation of my only too well-founded fears. To resume my narrative.

  During the war poor old Southampton took a terrific pasting and our offices were among the many buildings destroyed in the blitz. For several years we suffered considerable inconvenience in a higgledy-piggedy collection of prefabs, but at last we got a rebuilding permit and were able to erect a fine modern glass and concrete block. The new Board-room is on its top floor overlooking our yards and with a vista of Southampton Water.

  At two-thirty on the Friday the Directors of Hillary-Compton assembled there, and before going any further I had better give some account of them.

  Our Managing Director is James Compton. His father started in the firm at the age of ten, in the bad old days of child labour, and by hard work, initiative and ability progressed right to the top. As a reward for his long and valuable services my grandfather made him a junior partner a few years before the concern was turned into a Company. James has not only benefited by a proper education but inherited the old man’s drive and knowledge of our craft; so my father took him on the Board in his early thirties. He is now just over sixty, and the mainstay of the firm. He knows far more about the practical side of the industry than I do, handles our labour problems with firmness and tact, and has his whole heart in the business. In matters on which his opinion differs from mine he fights me tooth and nail; but on the majority of questions we see eye to eye, and no man could have a more loyal and honest partner.

  Angus McFarlane is our Chief Engineer. He is a tall thin bachelor, who says very little and, I believe, spends most of his leisure poring over his stamp albums. But he is a first-class technician, and I have never known him advise us wrongly about types of engines for our speed boats and motor launches. When he had been with us for some years we decided to give him a seat on the Board as being more convenient than having to summon him so frequently to it.

  Charles Toiller is the Secretary of the Company and has been with it since my grandfather’s time. He is a Chartered Accountant and has all the Company’s financial affairs at his finger tips. In addition the little man carries all our principal transactions for many years past in the egg-shaped dome of his bald head. He is getting on now, as he was nearly sixty when my father died; and it was then that James Compton and I decided to promote him to a Directorship.

  Admiral Sir Tuke Waldron, K.B.E., D.S.O., etc., has, since his retirement from the Navy, been our Sales Manager; but his connection with the Company goes much further back than that. His father was related to mine by marriage, and when our business was floated as a Company he took a large block of shares in it. By inheriting them, the Admiral became, after myself, the largest shareholder. As we are boat-builders to the Admiralty, he was naturally precluded from holding a Directorship during his service career, but it had for long been understood that on retirement he should join the Board.

  He was retired as Vice-Admiral, so is still only in his middle sixties. To look at, he is the choleric type of sea-dog, with a red face, bushy white eyebrows and an apparently unlimited capacity for despatching pink gins; but he is far from being a stupid man, and has a most likeable personality. I do not, of course, suggest that Admiralty contracts can
be obtained by taking people out to lunch, but in securing any business the personal touch does count where tenders are equal; and he has many friends in the right places. He had not been long on the Board before he began to produce results; so in due course we made him our Chief Salesman, and in the five years he has been with us we have never had reason to regret it.

  The Right Honourable Annibal William Fitz-Herbert Le Strange, 14th Earl of Wiltshire, Viscount Rochford and Baron Blackmere, known to his friends as Bill, is my father-in-law. The only serious row I have ever had with James Compton was due to my insistence that Lord Wiltshire should join our Board. At the time I was so ashamed of foisting a ‘guinea-pig’ on to my colleagues that I tried to sell them the story that as he had always been a keen sailing man it was intended that he should join the principal yacht clubs round the coast, and so would be able to bring us a lot of business; but the truth is that landing him a Directorship was part of the price I had to pay for Ankaret.

  The Le Stranges are one of those very old families which have seen lots of ups and downs. At present they are in a ‘down’ from which I think it unlikely that they will recover. One of them had come over with the Conqueror, and they had done very well for themselves in Norman times. Under the Plantagenets a line of Barons Blackmere had been posessed of great estates, and held numerous castles for the Crown. But they backed the wrong horse in the Wars of the Roses and for a hundred years or so wilted into little more than country gentry. Under Henry VIII they had popped up again, as they were close connections of Sir Thomas Boleyn.

  Sir Thomas’s principal claim to fame was that Bluff King Hal, having seduced both his daughters, became so crazy about the younger of them that he divorced his wife and made her Queen. Papa’s reward for his complaisance was to be created first Viscount Rochford then Earl of Wiltshire, upon which the lady’s brother took by courtesy the lesser title. The cousins Le Strange were brought to court and secured some valuable pickings. But their luck did not last, as the lively young Queen was accused of jumping into bed with several gay sparks, among them Rochford. So both sister and brother had their heads chopped off on Tower Hill, and the rest of the family fell into disgrace.

  Yet in the long run the Le Stranges got a big boost as a result of the King’s amour and the incest of which Anne Boleyn was accused. By the first they had become kinsmen of Anne’s daughter, afterwards Queen Elizabeth, and by the second the Earl of Wiltshire was left heirless; so that on his death the peerage fell into abeyance. Half a century later another handsome Le Strange persuaded the Virgin Queen to revive both titles in his favour, and, in addition, wheedled some very profitable monopolies out of her.

  For the next fifty years the family were in clover; but when the Great Rebellion broke out they naturally sided with the King, so they lost everything and had to go into exile. Charles II restored most of their lands to them, but on his death they once again backed the wrong horse by siding with Monmouth against James II; and two generations later they made another blunder by joining Bonny Prince Charlie in ’45; so from 1685, for about a hundred years, they were very much under the weather.

  Then there had come a sudden revival, obviously due to the Earl of the day having married the daughter of a Sheffield Alderman. This heiress brought into the family not only a considerable fortune but also business acumen. Her son cashed in on the industrial revolution and by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne the Le Stranges were once more immensely rich. But by the middle of the century, probably without realising it themselves this time, they had begun to go downhill again.

  To all the extravagances to which the more empty-headed of the Victorian nobilty were prone they took like ducks to water. Scores of servants, a plurality of houses, ceaseless entertaining, grouse moors, yachts, villas in the South of France, cards, horses, and secret establishments for pretty ladies, reduced them in three generations from great landowners to titled people of only modest fortune.

  Courage they had never lacked; so two of them fell in the 1914 war. The double death duties administered the final blow to the already crippled estate. The family seat, the town house and the last acres all had to go. In 1918, at the age of eighteen, Bill came into the title. Of course, he had been educated at Eton and was already an ensign in the Life Guards; so his friends were mainly young men with extravagant tastes who did not have to worry much about money. In the circumstances one can hardly blame him for having dissipated, during the early twenties, the few thousands that had been saved from the wreck.

  In 1923, as a means of averting bankruptcy, he had married an American heiress; but he was much too transparent a character to disguise for long that his heart was not in the match. He must have been extremely good-looking. I’m told that when it was discovered at Eton that his first name was Annibal, his school fellows had nicknamed him ‘handsome Annie’. Anyhow, women had fallen for him like ninepins and he had had scores of affairs; yet the fact remained that the only person he had ever really loved was a second cousin of his, the lovely Lady Angela Chippenham, and she was just as much in love with him.

  The young American wife soon tumbled to the situation, and she was not prepared to keep her coronet at that price. One cannot blame her, but I think she might have been a little less malicious about it. Not only did she throw her Earl out on to the pavement from their flat in Grosvenor Square, but nothing could persuade her to refrain from citing Lady Angela.

  Actually I don’t think Lady Angela minded, because it meant that she would get Bill for keeps. Proud as they make ’em, she refused to deny the charge and said some pretty cutting things about plain little girls who thought they could buy love with dollars. As soon as the divorce came through Bill made an honest woman of her; but her family were by no means wealthy, so he had to leave the Guards and try his hand at commerce.

  As a peerage was still something of an asset for shop-window dressing in the business world of those days, he managed to keep himself afloat; but only just, because he was too lazy to make the best of his opportunities, abhorred routine, and got so bored with his jobs that he chucked most of them up after a few months.

  Meanwhile, his wife had presented him with a son and daughter. Fortunately in 1928 Lady Wiltshire was left by an aunt the income for life on quite a tidy sum. It was anyhow sufficient for her to meet the expenses of a medium-sized house in one of the streets off Belgrave Square and to educate the children; but in 1946 she died from injuries received in a car smash, and her income reverted to another member of her family.

  The four years that followed proved far from easy ones for Bill. His boy, who enjoys his second title, Rochford, and is known as Roc, was then nineteen, and Ankaret was two years younger. From 1928 onward Bill had been quite content to let his wife foot the household bills, while he devoted such money as he could pick up to shooting, fishing, a little mild racing and such other pastimes as he had been brought up to enjoy. At her death he suddenly found himself up against it.

  Roc was far from being a young man of promise. He had all his father’s bad points and few of his good ones. In fact he has turned out to be about as decadent a specimen of the British aristocracy as one could find if one raked the shadier West End night-clubs for a month.

  To do his National Service he was, of course, put into his father’s old regiment, the Life Guards; but he failed to get a stripe, much less graduate for a N.S. Commission. When he came out Bill got him a succession of jobs in the City; but he could not hold down any of them and, as his father could afford to give him only a very small allowance, he took to downright dishonesty.

  For a time he got along by sponging on his friends and borrowing all he could from them without the least prospect of being able to pay them back. Having exhausted all such sources, he then got engaged to a rich widow twice his age and pawned her jewels without her knowledge, counting rightly on the fact that she might throw him over but would not face the humiliation of bringing an action. Next, he got in with a set of rogues and lent himself to a little bogu
s company promoting. He escaped from the results of that only because he had the luck of the devil; and twice, since I married Ankaret, I have had to come to the rescue financially to save him from being sent to prison. Recently he seems to have become a bit more canny and is now picking up a living at some sort of job in the film industry; but one never knows from one day to another when we shall suddenly be told that he had started issuing dud cheques again.

  After Lady Wiltshire’s death the house had to be given up, and Bill had Ankaret left on his hands. But his problem about what to do with her was solved by the ‘family’ rallying round. One of her aunts undertook to present her, and, while none of her relatives could afford to give her a permanent home, they agreed to have her to stay in turn for long visits until Bill could make some suitable arrangement for her to live with him.

  Even if he could have earned enough money, I don’t think he would have attempted to do that; because having unloaded Ankaret suited him very well. He settled down in a small bachelor flat and salved his conscience by occasionally buying her a few clothes or sending her a cheque for pocket money. In consequence, after her coming-out season the poor child had practically to live in her boxes, mostly at country houses but occasionally in London.

  Being young and healthy she took it quite philosophically; but from one point of view it was most regrettable. She has a real flair for art and four years of this unsettled existence deprived her of all chance to study it properly. Had she spent them at the Schools I am sure that by now she would have made a name for herself; as it is she can draw really beautifully, but her paintings lack something which only a mastery of technique can give. That apart, such a life is far from being a good background for a girl of her age and temperament, as no one was really responsible for her, and, providing she behaved tactfully, the different relations with whom she stayed all allowed her to do more or less as she liked.