The Tally Man, Book Two of The Stoker Trilogy

Chapter One
A New Career

It was in the dark economic atmosphere of 1931 that twenty-year-old Charles Horace Stoker sacrificed the security of the Enfield solicitors, Cavendish, Brigham, Mabey, for the unpredictable world of commerce. Charlie Stoker was introduced to Collick’s department store in January of the year.

The Wall Street crash of 1929 had caused immense economic suffering world-wide. Ironically, Great Britain was not at first affected as disastrously as many other countries, having already been in depression since 1920. Nevertheless, by the end of 1930 the impact of the collapse upon the British economy had become fierce. Exports had halved in value and unemployment had reached an all-time high. It now accounted for more than twenty percent of the workforce.

As throughout the preceding decade, London and the South-East was suffering less than other regions of the country. Many people in the north and west, seeing their businesses and careers threatened by the damage to the coal and cotton industries, moved south in search of better opportunities.

The Collick Estate recognised a potential for gain from this trend, and in 1928 established a construction company to build detached and semi-detached houses on land purchased cheaply in the leafy areas to the north and north-east of London. Charlie and Margret Stoker now lived in one of these houses.

The Estate’s wealth was widely spread, and in two quite separate domains. Lord Roderick Collick personally presided over the estate itself with its six managed farms, plus four large farms in Hertfordshire not within the estate, and two further estates, in Scotland and in Yorkshire.

His brother, the Hon. Stephen Collick, oversaw an assortment of industrial enterprises, split into four divisions. Firstly, there was a newspaper and its associated businesses, including a large printing works and a precision engineering company. The construction company formed the rapidly growing second division. Thirdly, there was a tea plantation in Ceylon, and finally, there was the textile division: two textile mills in Yorkshire and a department store in London. The mills produced high quality woollen cloth, but had been experiencing hard times for several years and were struggling to remain solvent.

With the exception of the department store, the day-to-day operation of all the businesses was delegated to highly qualified and well-established management teams. It was from these that the family received the bulk of its income.

The department store, however, was regarded by the confirmed bachelor as his own pet operation. Together with the mills, it had been handed down from his mother’s family; but it was his father, Lord Collick, who had wasted a great deal of money and time renaming and extending the store, and building a grand façade to the front.

When, shortly after the Great War, the old man’s health began to fail, he handed Stephen the reins. He charged him with ensuring that his dream of a store as grand as the famous West End and Knightsbridge businesses would be established in the East End of London.

Unfortunately, Lord Collick’s ailing health coincided with the ailing state of trade in his grand emporium, and after a few years of struggle, Stephen concluded that the East End of London demanded a different sort of business. It needed a department store for all people. It must be a store that met the needs of those without the resources to purchase its wares, while still catering for the more opulent residents of Leytonstone, Ilford and Stamford Hill.

He decided upon a system that incorporated the luxury of visits to his imposing store with the age-old trade of the tally man. To implement this plan, he appointed a sales manager, who was tasked with setting up and training a team of salesmen-collectors. They would sell goods to customers by encouraging them into the department store to choose merchandise, or by carrying stock to sell to them in their own homes. The sold goods would be paid for by regular payments over a period of twenty weeks.

Each salesman’s responsibilities would be threefold: to keep his customers’ accounts active and healthy by collecting the weekly payments; to repeatedly sell more goods to perpetuate the accounts; and to open new accounts.

* * *

On a Sunday at the end of January, Charlie and his wife Margret had travelled from their new home at Chigwell to lunch with his mother and her friend the Hon. Stephen Collick at Mrs Stoker’s house in Amhurst Road in Hackney. After lunch, leaving the ladies to chat, Stephen Collick drove Charlie in his shining red Lanchester motor car to the Collick’s building in Whitechapel Road.

The building was comprised of five floors: basement, ground level and three upper floors. Bypassing the impressive frontage, Stephen unlocked the staff entrance door and took the lift to the top floor. In the comfort of his office there, he explained his proposal to the young man. It was, he said, a very long-term plan.

In a slightly tense tone of voice, he reminded Charlie that when they had first been properly introduced, some eighteen months earlier, he had mentioned his conviction that Charles Stoker’s son should be granted the opportunity to build the sort of material success denied to his father. Since that day, he had come to know Charlie well and to recognise in him much of his father’s character.

“He would have been proud of you, Charlie. You have his build, his looks and his strength of character.”

He looked admiringly at the young man for a moment, then continued, his voice again tense.

“Today, before I begin to explain what I have in mind, I have to insist that what is said here, what will be agreed in this office this afternoon – indeed, our very presence here today – must never be spoken of outside these walls; nor ever referred to in a casual conversation.”

He paused for reaction and acknowledged Charlie’s slow nod of the head with an inclination of his own.

“At that first meeting,” he continued, “you expressed your hopes of building your father’s shoe business. You said that what you had enjoyed most of all there was talking with the customers. In the intervening period, you have endured a great deal of stress and have been compelled to make life-changing decisions.

“Today, I intend to give you the opportunity to make another decision: to learn about not only shoes but the much wider world of commercial business. Only by understanding fully the many aspects of an organisation could a person properly attempt to run the show. And that is what I desire for you, Charlie. I want you to learn how to manage this business from the bottom to the top.

“I am, as you know, a bachelor. I am wealthy, and much of that wealth I owe to the extraordinary work of your father. I have now reached the point in my life when I have just two dreams – two ambitions. They are to establish this department store as the retail beacon in the east of London that my father envisioned; and to retire in twenty years’ time knowing that what will then exist will continue to thrive under your guidance. Only then, will I feel my debt to your father is paid. Only then, can I die at peace.”

The two men were facing each other in comfortable matching chairs either side of a coffee table on which a tray held a decanter, two sherry schooners, a silver cigarette box with matching table lighter, and an ashtray. On the wall to Charlie’s right, above the fireplace, was the portrait of a thin-faced man with a Prince Albert moustache, in black waistcoat and jacket with an upstanding collar and bow tie. The tiny plaque beneath the frame was indecipherable from where he sat, lips slightly apart, struggling to absorb what he was hearing.

The room became very still when Stephen Collick stopped speaking, but eventually Charlie said, “Excuse me, sir, this is all a bit overwhelming. May I smoke a cigarette?”

Collick was at once his usual warm self. “Of course, dear boy, help yourself and I shall be delighted to join you. Shall we enjoy a sherry, also?”

Charlie lit and inhaled. Stephen Collick lifted the decanter and filled the glasses. He also took a cigarette from the box. They smoked and sipped silently, the older man quite content to wait until his protégé was ready to speak.

Charlie drew another lungful of smoke and breathed out slowly, fighting to control his whirling thoughts. He had huge respect for Stephen Collick. He much admired his amenable manner, to say nothing of the man’s generosity. But this… this was a move of another order completely. When he had calmed himself enough, he said:

“I remember you talking to us about your debt to my father, and Mum said that you’d told her years ago there would always be a job for Charles Stoker’s son, but I naturally thought it would be in the print works, like my dad. Partly, I thought that was why I was doing a physics course.”

“If that were what you really desired, Charlie, I should have accommodated you. I have seen, though, that that is not where your heart lies. It is not where you see your future.”

Stephen smiled his shy smile. “Neither, I now understand, do you see it in the legal profession.” The smile became a chuckle.

“No, not that!” Charlie grinned briefly. “Mr Collick… Stephen, Sir… you are… this is… this is quite unbelievable. As you can see, sir, I’m struggling to say something coherent. I’m told I tend not to show my feelings, and I don’t usually say a lot, but today I can’t stay quiet.”

He drew a deep smoke-filled breath and crushed the cigarette into the ashtray.

“I have to confess I don’t understand how you can have that sort of faith in me. After all, I’m only twenty, and all I’ve achieved so far is to make a bit of a mess of my life. Yet you’ve made Chigwell possible for Margret and me, and now you’re mapping out a future that I have no right to expect. The only thing I can say for certain is that I will accept whatever terms you lay down, and I’ll drive myself to the limit to succeed and never to let you down.”

“You won’t let me down, Charlie Stoker. I don’t think you will ever let anyone down. You are your father’s son and you have, in addition, your mother’s sound common sense. To have you at my side will give me the greatest happiness of my life. Let us shake hands on it.”

He stood up, almost six feet tall and slim; Charlie did likewise, two inches taller and broader in the shoulders. Stephen stepped around the table and grasped the young man’s hand. Then he pulled Charlie to him in a close hug and held him there for some seconds.

“We shall build an empire, you and I, Charlie Stoker,” he whispered. He gently released the embarrassed young man and said, “Come, sit. Let’s have another sherry, there’s more to be said.”

They settled back into their seats and with refilled glasses toasted the future. Then Stephen adopted his serious face once more.

“Charlie,” he said, “as you have no doubt already concluded, I am a man of conviction. I rather lack a forceful personality, but I do have a great inner drive. What I am about to tell you, I have told no other person, ever. I am going to tell you a little of the past, and why, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, this afternoon’s meeting is not taking place.

“I was not blessed with the happy childhood you may have imagined. My father, Lord Collick, was a hard man, a ruthless man, who had inherited two large estates and other associated assets, but was in financial difficulties when his first wife, Mary, the mother of my half-brother Roderick, died in childbirth. Very soon afterwards, in 1882, he married Elspeth, my mother. She was the only child of a business associate, a Yorkshire industrialist, Reginald Battersby. Lord Collick married her solely for her wealth, and he used the marriage to forge deeper links between the two business empires.

“He was furious when in 1884, while I was still a baby, grandfather Battersby died, leaving most of his fortune in trust with my mother for me when I should reach the age of majority. Nevertheless, my father soon managed to take control of most of my mother’s affairs. He contrived to act as administrator of the trust.

He also proceeded to abuse and to bully my mother until he drove her to an early grave in 1902. For the last eight years of her life, when I was away at school and university, she, a mild and gentle person, found it necessary to live alone in a separate house on the far side of the estate to obtain a modicum of peace. That house, Parklands, in which she died, she left to me and it remains my home.”

“I was always referred to as her boy rather than their son, and as it gradually became apparent that I had inherited mostly Battersby characteristics – a mathematical mind and an inclination to read a great many books – my father and my half-brother both treated me more and more as an outcast. Their attitude changed only when I came of age and received my inheritance.”

“At that time, the print works, a major component of the family estate, was running under the direction of my uncle, Sir Arthur Collick, who had recently retired from the army after thirty-six years of service. A far more level headed person than my father, he had assumed control of the printing works in 1901.”

“Uncle Arthur was a wise old bird, the two brothers being as different as chalk and cheese. His disciplined guidance was to prove of great benefit to me when I commenced working there after graduating from university in 1904. He made my father recognise that I was now not only a major shareholder, but also the one member of the family most intellectually capable of protecting the interests of the estate. Thereafter, my father began to treat me with a grudging respect, but with little affection.

“So, you see, the Collick Estate’s industrial interests, the newspaper, the printing works, the mills, the construction company and this venture, grew principally from the Battersby fortune. This store began life as Battersby’s, built by my grandfather to sell the textiles from his Yorkshire mills.” He raised his arm to point at the portrait above the fireplace.

“That is his portrait. It was hanging at Parklands but I prefer to see him here. He left this store to my mother independently of the other family businesses and she bequeathed it to me. My father changed the name during the war, when he formed his misguided concept of a rival to Harrod’s. When he handed me the reins he was just beginning to realise his error. He was already a sick man and he feared the business would fail. He instructed me, as the financial brain of the family, – he used the term derogatively – to sort it out. He died nine years ago, believing to his dying day that I would have to close the store and sell the property.”

He paused for a moment.

“But I am getting ahead of myself. Back to 1904. I had always been what is generally called a loner, even at university; and at Clerkenwell the only person with whom I formed a close association, my first really close association with anyone, was the works engineer, your father, Charles Stoker.”

“Charles, a brilliant engineer, was everything I admired in a man. We were of similar ages, and from the very first, we became friends. He had the most wonderful laughing blue eyes and he used to explain to me with a fervour his ideas for the development of processes and equipment. I was able to calculate the financial implications of his proposals for the company, and together we formed plans for the business that I would press upon my uncle until they were adopted. And they always were, and the business grew.”

“Charles was constantly suggesting bold innovations in the use of old machinery. He made possible the development of new markets for the company. We spent a great deal of time together and I grew to love him, Charlie, and to live for the hours I was in his company. I was a lonely young man. My mother, the only person ever to show me love, had died a few years earlier. I had never had a friend of my own, and here was this bubbling blond engineer who seemed to see everything, from our very first meeting, as I did. I was emotionally overwhelmed by him. He instinctively understood my need for love, and he respected and returned it in his gestures and in his natural all-encompassing warmth.”

“Then, he met Millie Cowper. I watched, as everything I felt for him I could see him feeling for her. I was jealous of your mother, to whom I had barely been introduced. I was envious of the love they clearly had for each other – I myself have never been able to enjoy such a contentment with another person – but I could see that Charles was joyously happy and contented. Not that his manner toward me ever altered.”

“My uncle made him works manager in 1911, but the extra responsibility changed him not a bit. He was still the same bubbling, sparkle-eyed colleague and confidant. Inevitably, though, through time, with increased workloads, a wife, his home, and then the birth of his child, a little distance did grow between us. I was pained, and when the opportunity came for me to work elsewhere within our operations, I took it.”

He downed the last of his schooner of sherry and raised an eyebrow and the glass towards Charlie. The invitation was met with a shake of the head and a polite smile that said nothing of what the young man was feeling. His own sherry poured, Collick resumed:

“Then came the war and service. When my uncle made his suggestion about the Royal Flying Corps, Charles of course jumped at it. He saw it as both his duty to his country and an opportunity to make new discoveries. He went off to France and I went to headquarters. We remained in contact for some time until, a year or two later, I was sent to Palestine. When I returned, I had become a very rich man in absentia. That wealth has continued to grow ever since – but you know about that, Charlie.”

Charlie stared blankly across the table, not sure what he was hearing, or why. After a moment, he shrugged.

“I suppose so,” he said slowly, “but what I don’t see, Sir, Stephen, Sir, is exactly why you’ve told me all this personal history. I’m embarrassed to be hearing all this about your private life. I can certainly see, now, why you said what you did about the secrecy of this meeting, and I fully understand about learning the business. That’s one thing, but it doesn’t mean I should know all this about your private life, does it? You’ve told me things that are too personal. It doesn’t concern me. It’s none of my business.”

“It is, Charlie, because I am making it your business.”

The tone was firm but not unkind. Stephen Collick continued:

“While your father was alive, I was compelled by his edict to watch your family from a distance. After he died, I have engineered matters so that I have been able to come closer to you. Your mother, a person always worthy of great respect, has since become a dear friend, something quite rare for me; and now you have blossomed into a youthful version of the man I loved. I have no one else to care about in my life, Charlie, and I do not want my property or my work to be wasted on, or ruined by, the Collick family. I want to be able to pass on whatever I have to you, to Charles Stoker’s son, and that is why you have the right to understand why I feel as I do.”

Charlie gestured toward the silver box and looked enquiringly at Stephen Collick. Stephen, smiling, lifted the lighter. Charlie took another cigarette. He lit it and, head lowered, spoke at little more than a whisper:

“You said you became very close to my father. You grew to love him, you said. What exactly did you mean? Did you mean you were…” – he hesitated, unsure how to express such a relationship – “… you were lovers?” He drew deeply on his cigarette in an attempt to hide his embarrassment.

Stephen Collick’s face bore the look of a concerned parent. “Love is a multifaceted diamond, Charlie, never to be confused with carnal lust. Carnal desire is mere fleeting gossamer. I loved your father, but ours was not a gossamer relationship.”

Charlie pondered over that, aware of the evasion within it. As for carnal relationships, he himself had good experience of that and of its consequences. Moving to a less sensitive subject, he said:

“My head’s in a whirl, sir, Stephen. Allowing for all you’ve told me, I still can’t understand how you can have such belief in me. How do you envisage me learning, I think you said: ‘to manage this business from the bottom to the top’?”

Stephen’s smile became comfortable again.

“I am very glad you asked me that. That is the other reason for the secrecy of this meeting. All the staff employed at this store are well aware that I am who I am, the bachelor brother of Lord Collick. They assume I am an instrument of the Collick Estate. I have never discouraged this assumption and have always encouraged a rather forward-looking policy of promotion on merit for all staff. It has been emphasised that the opportunity is there for any member of staff to rise to the very top of the tree, should they show themselves to have the necessary qualities. To date, though many aspire to higher levels, I have seen no sign of that potential. Very few men are blessed with the talents to run a company, Charlie.”

“You, however, do have those qualities, but if I were now to introduce you as someone chosen to succeed me, it would completely defeat what has been built. It would destroy the faith and the dreams of many. No. Quite simply, Charlie, you must be just another young man starting at the bottom of the ladder with the determination and ability to rise to the top. You will reach the top of the tree because you are the man you are, and not for any other reason. Whatever post you are appointed to will accord you exactly the same privileges as any other member of staff in a similar position.”

“I shall appear somewhat remote until you reach the level of authority with which I communicate directly. I shall at no time indicate any preferential sign of personal acquaintance. My secretary will mention to Mr Fortescue that your name has been passed to her as someone looking for a career, a not unusual occurrence. He, the personnel manager, will invite you for an interview. You will take it from there, and I shall proudly watch you climb the ladder.

“The only other matter of concern is that of income. You must accept the lowly wage offered by Mr Fortescue and you will be paid in cash, each Thursday. There can be no exceptions to the rules.”

“However, privately and quite independently of your wages from Collick’s, an account will be opened in your name at Martin’s Bank in Bishopsgate and a payment will be made into that account by Maxwell and Thrape, my personal solicitors, on the first day of each month. This private income will allow you to meet your obligations at Woodside Way.”

He paused, at once assuming his usual diffident air as he switched from managing director to family friend. “Now you understand how I see the future, Charlie. What do you think? Are you content with that?”

Charlie licked dry lips. The Hon. Stephen Collick was like a chameleon. He appeared exactly as he needed to appear at every moment. His smile came and went like a flash of lightning. Yet, always, integrity and honesty oozed from every pore of the man.

The elegant aristocrat had confided his love for the young man’s father. The more Charlie listened to and talked with him, the more he appreciated how his father might have responded to that love. Indeed, his own feelings toward Stephen were by no means merely a sense of gratitude. The man exuded kindness, warmth and sensitivity. His diffident sincerity cried out for reciprocation. Charlie was unsure exactly how to respond, but he realised that the starting point must be to grasp the opportunity presented to him.

“Yes, sir,” he replied, “I am content.”