Time&Money

by Robert Llewellyn

Chapter 5

Mary Congrieve carefully rolled up the hand written document she had prepared after her first meeting with Ryan Puddifoot. She didn’t use a quill dipped in an ancient porcelain ink pot as some might imagine but an Italian Montgrappa fountain pen made in 1935. It had an exquisite nib facilitating easy high quality calligraphy. Mary was given the pen when she joined the bank in 1982, it had always stayed in the building, and for the past 28 years, it stayed in her windowless office.

She slid the rolled up documents into a highly polished copper tube and screwed on the dome shaped top, the whole affair was about the size of a modest thermos flask. There were soft rubber rings around either end of the tube, these facilitated its rapid movements along the myriad of vacuum tubes throughout the building.

Mary got out of her chair and opened a cupboard door to one side of her desk, this revealed some large ledgers on a high shelf and beneath them, a grey steel unit. This was a vacuum station, dating from a similar period to her pen. It was installed by the Dawson Vacuum company, once of a fine building on the Old Kent Road, a business and building now lost to history.

She placed the brass tube onto a mount plate and pulled a small lever next to the tube. This brought down a transparent acrylic cover while simultaneously opening the tube valve directly above the brass canister. With a gentle whoosh, the brass tube was sucked up into the system. As Mary pulled the lever back up, she gave the transparent cover a little buff with the sleeve on her cardigan. She liked things to be tidy and there was a smudge on the surface. Mary knew the acrylic components in the vacuum tube system were made by Nash & Thomson, the same company that made Spitfire canopies during World War Two. This, she was aware, was utterly irrelevant information but she liked it and held on to all the knowledge she was given after her first year at the bank. She not only knew how the various financial instruments worked, she also knew how the physical structure and systems in the bank headquarters operated.

Nash & Thomson had done a good job because not one of the acrylic covers in the 24 vacuum stations in the entire office had ever had to be replaced, and they had been in daily use for over 85 years.

She sat back down and used her pen to fill in one line in the huge ledger Ryan had seen her reading. It read:

Puddifoot, R. Investment sum £5,000.00. 5 properties. No sales.

Current estimated value £6,750,921.14

Meanwhile, Ryan Puddifoot was waiting on the platform at Blackfriars tube staring at a poster featuring young, happy people advertising an online bank.

If you had known Ryan well you might describe his facial expression as ‘stunned.’ He was trying to understand all the things he’d just learned about his great Aunt, about the insane value of his inheritance, about what he was going to tell Hazel. Or anyone.

He had time to kill before he was needed at the Emirates stadium for the match that evening, so after some hesitation, caught the westbound train to Victoria, he felt he needed time to think and then he remembered the name of the street in Belgravia that Mrs Congrieve had mentioned, the address where he owned a modest two bedroomed apartment.

Once he got off the crowded train at Victoria, it wasn’t a very long walk to one of the most expensive areas of London, right next to Buckingham Palace and home to more foreign embassies that any other part of the city.

No matter his newly found but still theoretical fortune, he felt intimidated by the noticeable wealth and status of the houses and streets of Belgravia. He knew he didn’t belong there.

He found Wilton Crescent easily and walked around the long arc of large six story Georgian homes that faced a small park. Many of the buildings were embassies and Ryan wondered if he owned an apartment above one of them. How hard would it be to get in and out, could he live there, would he want to live there, where had all the rent money from the last 80 years gone?

He realised he had hundreds of questions he needed to ask Mrs Congrieve but he also knew that he would have to write another letter, post it and wait many days for a reply before he could go back and ask anything.

He found a small corner cafe behind Harvey Nichols and had a light lunch, he had bought a newspaper for the first time in many months and read it as he ate a freshly made and rather expensive pasta salad. So what, he could afford anything now.

After reading endless stories about the horrors of all the wars taking place, of mass immigration and the housing crisis, of the continuing economic depression and isolation in the USA, the homelessness, the food queue and the minor civil war in Portland, Oregon he folded the paper up and sipped his mug of tea.

He tried to imagine telling Hazel what he’d learned that day, he hadn’t even told her where he was going, merely implying he had a shoot in London again. Then again Hazel didn’t ask, but he realised he could not face explaining everything to her, she was much better with money than he was and would ask all sorts of difficult questions. In particular about a bank with no website, no bank cards, no public historical record and all record keeping being hand written. It was too complicated and tiring. He checked his watch, he needed to get to the football stadium, he paid the bill with his phone, blinked as he remembered the huge ledger the funny woman was reading from and set off to work.

Ryan was very familiar with being in his camera pit at the side of the pitch, he had a bottle of water, a chocolate bar and a little seat. With his huge noise cancelling headphones on, all he could really hear was the voice of Don Coutts, the director, rabbiting on with his endless list of commands to the seven strong camera crew. Ryan was happy to be pitch side, this was generally the shot that got used the least, but he still had to follow the ball.

He couldn’t help thinking this was all a bit of a waste of time now he was a multi millionaire. He should be in his luxury apartment in Cannes or somewhere, staring out over the Mediterranean as he sipped a chilled Chablis.

‘Camera 4, camera 4,! Ryan you fucking plonker.’ screamed Don Coutts. Ryan felt that horrible sick feeling when you know you’ve been off with the fairies and something has happened you completely missed. ‘Fucksake! I needed that shot.’ said Don Coutts a little more calmly. Ryan had worked with Don for over 10 years, this was the first time he’d ever missed a shot.

‘It’s a foul, what the fuck is going on?’

Ryan looked past the camera to try and see what was going on. Don’s voice came into his headphones again, very stressed. ’Other end of the pitch you wazzock. Okay, camera 3, can you zoom in and get this, Ryan’s asleep or dead. Fuck knows.’

Ryan was moving the camera as fast as he could to try and get a steady shot of the drama unfolding by the goal of the visiting team. He’d missed a critical moment in the game. He knew there would be ‘notes’ from the channel producer and Don, he would have to apologise, they would want to know what was wrong and he’d want to say, ‘I’m bored shitless shooting football and I don’t need the money any more, bye.’

But he knew he would say no such thing.

In the windowless office Mary Congrieve was preparing another page in one of her enormous ledgers when she heard a gentle tap on her door.

‘Come’ she said.

The door opened and Keith stood in the doorway, an impressive figure, a gentle giant until called on to be less gentle which had only happened a handful of times. Keith said quietly ‘Lord Renbury is here for his 2pm Mrs Congrieve.’

‘Please show him in.’

Keith stood to one side revealing Lord Renbury behind him, a small angry looking man in a very well tailored three piece suit. He walked into the room and sat down without being asked.

‘This is very difficult.’ said Renbury. ‘there has clearly been a breach in security on your end.’

‘I very much doubt that your Lordship.’ said Mary sternly.

‘Listen here,’ said the bloated and red faced old man. ‘I was in my club the other week, the Tuesday, or was it the Wednesday, no, it was the Tuesday, that’s right and a young chap, I’m not sure of his name, anyway, he asked me if I could make in introduction.’

‘An introduction?’ Asked Mary.

‘Yes, an introduction to Hussey’s.’

‘Did he really name the bank?’

‘Yes, very clearly. He was very polite, he whispered that a good friend had told him all about it. I couldn’t believe my ears.’

‘Oh dear.’ said Mary flatly.

‘I’ve had an account here since I was a young boy. Nearly 70 years years I’ve been a client and never, ever, has anyone asked me anything about Hussey and Company. How could this happen?’

‘It would be very helpful if you could remember this gentleman’s name.’ said Mary, writing notes on a clean sheet of paper she had extracted from a drawer.

‘No idea, and he wouldn’t tell me who told him about this bank.’

‘Did you enquire?’ Asked Mary carefully.

‘I told him I had no idea what he was talking about and I wanted to know who made up the cockamamy story. He just apologised and left the room.’

‘When was this?’

‘Last Tuesday, definitely Tuesday.’

‘The 15th?’

‘Correct, at my club.’

‘White’s?’ asked Mary

‘Indeed.’ came the gruff response.

‘At approximately what time?’

‘I’ve no idea, just before lunch.’ said his Lordship.

‘We shall certainly look into it m’Lord. It is very distressing for you. May I get Keith to bring in a cup of tea?’

Lord Renbury made a dismissive gesture with his small hand. ‘The other thing I wanted to find out was if…’

‘The Martington Hall sale has gone through?’

His Lordship nodded.

‘I’m afraid we are still waiting to hear your Lordship.’ Said Mary. ‘The archive can take a little bit of time to refresh as you know, however we are confident that the sale will have gone through.’

Lord Renbury was not a hereditary peer, was merely a member of the new intake in the house of Lords during the previous administration. He was a very generous supporter of the Conservative Party which had, as was the tradition, bought him a seat in the British upper house. Some may question this as being a form of corruption, of having political power for sale in the Mother of Parliaments. Renbury knew this was poppycock, he was a gentleman of high standing, there were no scandals in his closet, just a very impressive property portfolio stretching from a villa on the Greek island of Paxos, discreet apartments in Rome, Madrid and Paris, a large house in Richmond and a sizeable chunk of the inner Hebridean island of Iona. Lord Renbury, who had inherited a modest trust fund when he turned 21 had been bequeathed an account at Hussey’s by his parental grandfather, a mine owner from country Durham.

All of these properties had been purchased by Lord Renbury long before he was born, he was in the process of buying another, Martington Hall, a 12 bedroom Tudor manor in Shropshire. He was buying the property in 1951 at a cost of £7,500.

As the bank’s motto states, You cannot go back in time, but your money can.

Mary stood up and shook Lord Renbury’s hand, Keith entered the room and moved to the alternate door, opening it for his Lordship.

‘Good day to you.’ said the squat little red faced Lord.

‘Good day your Lordship’ said Keith. He gently shut the door and stood with his hands clasped in front of him facing Mary.

‘We have a bit of a problem here Keith,’ she said, ‘his Lordship was approached by a person unknown but easily traceable. The approach took place in White’s club last Tuesday, by someone who appears to be aware of our existence but possibly not a client of the bank.’

‘I see.’ said Keith. He extracted a small black notebook from his inside pocket, took an expensive looking fountain pen from the other pocket and started jotting down notes.

‘Would you mind getting in touch with certain parties who have helped us in the past, to try and discreetly resolve this problem?’

‘Certainly Mary, I will get on it right away.’

Keith went back into the reception area and closed the door quietly, Mary Congrieve sat back in her chair, rested her chin on her right hand and stared in the mid distance. She was worried, it was always stressful introducing a new client to the bank, but having someone who is clearly not a client of the bank aware of their name, let alone their prevestment capability, that was very worrying.

She pulled out a sheet of paper, unscrewed the top of her Montgrappa and started writing. She was going to have to inform upstairs.