The Strode Venturer Read Online Free Page B

“Practically all our shipping companies are the same; they’ve been too bloody slow to move with the times. They’ve stuck to the small general-purpose tramp and let the Swedes and the Norwegians with their big specialised bulk carriers grab the much more lucrative long-term charter business. But the Strode Orient Line has been about the slowest of the lot. If you go to the meeting you’ll see the sort of management you’ve got.
    “The trouble with meetings,” he went on as we waited for the lift, “is that the chairman doesn’t have to answer any questions put to him by shareholders. It’s only when shareholders get together with sufficient voting strength to push the old directors out and get their own men in that the fur really begins to fly. Directors love their salaries, you know. Or perhaps I should say in these days of high taxation that, like politicians, they love the power and advantages of their position—the chauffeur-driven car, the big office, expense accounts, the ability to make and break people, to order others about. Those they cling to like limpets.” He laughed as we went out into the street. “So would I. And so would you if you had the chance. It’s the only way to live well in a country where the State dominates. The Russians discovered it long ago, and when all’s said and done the power of the State is now so great that the gap between our brand of capitalism and Russia’s brand of Communism is closing all the time.” We had reached Throgmorton Street and he paused. “Do I gather you’ve left the Navy?”
    “In the process of leaving,” I said.
    “Well, get yourself with one of the big institutions, or better still with a small one that’s growing.” He glanced round, seeming to savour the bustle of the street. “Whatever they say about the City, it’s still a huge dynamo with its tentacles reaching out to every corner of the globe. If you’ve the right contacts …” He smiled and left it at that. “Well, sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you.” A quick pat on the arm and he was gone, moving quickly across the street and up the steps into the Stock Exchange.
    The sun had broken through now and patches of blue sky showed between the buildings. I walked to the Bank and on down Queen Victoria Street. Here I was in an area of new office blocks and the sense of power and wealth that surrounded me was very strong. I felt suddenly alone and without purpose in a world that had its own built-in dynamic drive. I had always heard it said that a human being could feel lonelier in London than in any city in the world and now it was beginning to be true for me. It was natural, I suppose, that at that moment my thoughts should have turned to Barbara, now some eight thousand miles away. I wondered if she realized how she’d driven me to this and how much she was a part of the loneliness I felt.
    When a marriage goes wrong it’s difficult not to blame the other partner. You see their faults so clearly. You never see your own. How much was I to blame? Again, I didn’t know. She’d been barely twenty when I’d rushed her into marriage in 1949. I hadn’t stopped to consider how glamorous Ceylon must have seemed to a young and very vital girl straight from the austerity of post-war Britain. We were in love and it was so marvellous that that was all that had seemed to matter. It was only later that I began to realize that the vitality that had attracted me to her in the first place was not just physical, but an expression of a furious energy that conditioned her whole mental approach to life so that she grabbed at it with both hands like a child unable to resist forbidden fruit. She wanted the stars as well as the moon. The excitement and novelty of having children had satisfied her for a time, but after that … God knows what she had been up to in the long periods when I was away at sea. I hadn’t dared inquire too closely. The satisfaction of sexual appetite can be a useful