nursery stairs. She turned them as a sheepdog turns sheep—with a Look.
"If Cox says you're good, I'll tell you a story later," John promised. He and Nora went to the winter parlour.
The previous week's accounts had come from the London office—summaries of the ledger entries at each contract. Nora had been doing her regular weekly check.
All the firm's business—that endless battle with rock and mud, mountain and marsh (and good men and rogues)—was eventually rendered down to neat rows and columns of figures and passed across Nora's desk. In the earliest days, she had kept every account and made every entry herself, in a schoolchild's penny copybook. Now they came in a dozen hands: loose-leaf copies of ledger pages from the workings and fat duplicate account books with gold lettering on their leather spines, sent up weekly by William Jackson, the chief clerk in their London office.
Over the years, Nora had developed "the sharpest eye in the City," as Jackson said. She noted with amusement the way he would often try to anticipate her by pencilling little notes beside certain entries: I question this…too low?…twice last week's figure… and so on. In this way, he placed himself on her side of the table in her relentless weekly inquisition.
At first Jackson had not liked his situation one bit—to work for a man and yet to take most of the orders from his wife! And in matters of finance too, where women were supposed to be most supremely ignorant. It went hard. But now she had no greater champion. She needed only to indicate the slightest preference for something and Jackson would turn it into an iron rule. For instance, she had once said she thought it might make accounts easier to follow if debits and liabilities were in red ink, and credits and assets were in blue. The younger clerks made jokes about working in Mrs. Stevenson's Drawing Academy…and would she like the accounts on lace-edged paper…and much more in that vein; but from that day onward, Jackson insisted on Nora's red-blue system. And now everyone agreed it made the pages much easier to read at a glance.
She wished it were as simple to overcome all other opposition to her central role in the business. Their banker, Nathan Chambers of Dowgate, was a particular antagonist. Five years earlier (a lifetime, it seemed), she had intercepted a few letters to him and used them in applying some gentle pressure. Chambers had laughed at the time, and since no actual harm had been done, she had thought herself forgiven. And she had to admit that he never flatly opposed her, never was rude or even short with her; indeed, he treated her with great deference, was always chivalrous and attentive, and always praised her financial…what did he call it? Intuition!
That was the trouble. In a thousand subtle ways he gave out that her brilliance was intuitive. Unreliable. Not based on logic or analysis. At heart it was (that most damning of all City judgements) "not sound."
He never said it openly. He never failed to imply it.
The judgement was doubly galling to her since all the facts spoke the other way. At John's instructions, Chambers took a tenth of all the firm's profit and put it into a trust fund for her and the children. No one but Chambers could touch it; certainly it was beyond John's control. Thus, if the inconceivable happened and Stevenson's failed, Nora and the children would be safe. They would have (at the moment) ninety thousand pounds to fall back on. That was all that Chambers, safe, stolid, sound Chambers, had made out of the eighty-odd thousand he had been given to invest. Yet she, intuitive, unreliable, unsound Nora, had taken a mere nineteen thousand pounds—the entire profit of the victualling licences over the last five years—and turned them into investments worth all of sixty thousand.
It began after their first year in business, at Summit Tunnel over near Manchester. When they got their profit
"If Cox says you're good, I'll tell you a story later," John promised. He and Nora went to the winter parlour.
The previous week's accounts had come from the London office—summaries of the ledger entries at each contract. Nora had been doing her regular weekly check.
All the firm's business—that endless battle with rock and mud, mountain and marsh (and good men and rogues)—was eventually rendered down to neat rows and columns of figures and passed across Nora's desk. In the earliest days, she had kept every account and made every entry herself, in a schoolchild's penny copybook. Now they came in a dozen hands: loose-leaf copies of ledger pages from the workings and fat duplicate account books with gold lettering on their leather spines, sent up weekly by William Jackson, the chief clerk in their London office.
Over the years, Nora had developed "the sharpest eye in the City," as Jackson said. She noted with amusement the way he would often try to anticipate her by pencilling little notes beside certain entries: I question this…too low?…twice last week's figure… and so on. In this way, he placed himself on her side of the table in her relentless weekly inquisition.
At first Jackson had not liked his situation one bit—to work for a man and yet to take most of the orders from his wife! And in matters of finance too, where women were supposed to be most supremely ignorant. It went hard. But now she had no greater champion. She needed only to indicate the slightest preference for something and Jackson would turn it into an iron rule. For instance, she had once said she thought it might make accounts easier to follow if debits and liabilities were in red ink, and credits and assets were in blue. The younger clerks made jokes about working in Mrs. Stevenson's Drawing Academy…and would she like the accounts on lace-edged paper…and much more in that vein; but from that day onward, Jackson insisted on Nora's red-blue system. And now everyone agreed it made the pages much easier to read at a glance.
She wished it were as simple to overcome all other opposition to her central role in the business. Their banker, Nathan Chambers of Dowgate, was a particular antagonist. Five years earlier (a lifetime, it seemed), she had intercepted a few letters to him and used them in applying some gentle pressure. Chambers had laughed at the time, and since no actual harm had been done, she had thought herself forgiven. And she had to admit that he never flatly opposed her, never was rude or even short with her; indeed, he treated her with great deference, was always chivalrous and attentive, and always praised her financial…what did he call it? Intuition!
That was the trouble. In a thousand subtle ways he gave out that her brilliance was intuitive. Unreliable. Not based on logic or analysis. At heart it was (that most damning of all City judgements) "not sound."
He never said it openly. He never failed to imply it.
The judgement was doubly galling to her since all the facts spoke the other way. At John's instructions, Chambers took a tenth of all the firm's profit and put it into a trust fund for her and the children. No one but Chambers could touch it; certainly it was beyond John's control. Thus, if the inconceivable happened and Stevenson's failed, Nora and the children would be safe. They would have (at the moment) ninety thousand pounds to fall back on. That was all that Chambers, safe, stolid, sound Chambers, had made out of the eighty-odd thousand he had been given to invest. Yet she, intuitive, unreliable, unsound Nora, had taken a mere nineteen thousand pounds—the entire profit of the victualling licences over the last five years—and turned them into investments worth all of sixty thousand.
It began after their first year in business, at Summit Tunnel over near Manchester. When they got their profit
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