[Cardiff, Wales – 9:08 AM, 24th of March, 1930]
A couple of weeks later, someone knocked on my door. I was sitting in the drawing room having tea with my mother when I heard it so I got up, walked across the house and opened the door.
Standing on the other side was a man I recognised almost immediately.
He was an older gentleman, neatly dressed, with the sort of composed appearance that seemed almost mandatory for senior figures in British finance. He had the quiet, reserved manner of someone who was accustomed to spending his days in rooms where nobody raised their voice unless something had gone catastrophically wrong.
"Mr. Sullivan, I presume?" He offered his hand. "Sir Ernest Harvey."
I shook it as I affirmed with a nod. For half a second, I simply stared at him.
Oh. That Ernest Harvey. Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.
"I doubt you know me personally," he said.
"I know who you are." My statement made his eyebrows rise slightly.
"Then perhaps this won't be quite as awkward as I feared." He gave a small smile. "I apologise for the unexpected visit. This was not intended to be announced beforehand."
"I gathered that." I said, biting my tongue.
He hesitated. "I was hoping I might speak with you for a few minutes."
I then asked, "Unofficially…?"
"Entirely unofficially," he said while I considered him for a moment and then stepped aside.
"That's fine. I was just having tea with my mother; please join us."
"Thank you," he said as I led him the short way through the house towards the drawing room at the back. I'm sure he was wondering why one of the richest men in the country lived in such a modest abode.
As we walked, I glanced through the window. Charlotte was in the garden.
Running back and forth. I had no idea what she was actually doing. A few minutes before, I and my mam were just casually chatting as we watched her play in the sandpit I had gotten for her, but now it seemed like she had gotten the zoomies.
It was the sort of energy that seemed to manifest itself primarily as suddenly deciding to run from one end of the garden to the other for no discernible reason.
I watched her for a moment.
I turned back towards our guest.
"Mr Harvey, this is my mother, Mary." I introduced her as she looked up from her crossword. "Mother, this is Sir Ernest Harvey. He's from the Bank of England."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sir Ernest." She said before returning to her puzzle.
"The pleasure is mine," he said as I sat down. Harvey remained standing for a moment, apparently uncertain whether he should sit.
I gestured towards the chair opposite me. "Please."
He sat, and I picked up the teapot and asked, "Tea?"
He smiled. "Yes, please."
I poured him a cup. There was something I rather liked about British etiquette. It wasn't particularly rigid. I mean at least, not in the way some other cultures could be. There wasn't a twenty-page manual explaining exactly how you were supposed to behave in every conceivable situation.
Instead, it was contextual.
Someone had come into my home. Therefore, I offered him tea. He was a guest. Therefore, I treated him as one. He was here unofficially, and therefore, we could speak rather more freely than we might have done across a conference table.
It was instinctive and that was probably what made it so difficult for outsiders to understand. The etiquette wasn't necessarily in the action itself.
It was in understanding the relationship between the people involved. Offering him tea was, in its own peculiar way, an invitation.
Are you going to behave civilly and speak to me as a guest, or are we going to admit this is a negotiation?
"I'll leave you two to your business."
"No, Mother, you don't have to; I'm sure he won't want to ruin the already limited time you spend with me." I was happy when she smiled lightly. She was awfully quiet these days. I noticed it more than I liked. She still spoke. She still smiled. She still went about her day. But there was something missing. Whenever Charlotte was around, however, that seemed to change; something about having a small child running around the house brought her to life again.
I contemplated whether I should just ask Kitty if she can live with us; I turned my attention back to Harvey.
"So…" I said, taking a sip of tea, fighting not to wince since it was too hot for my taste, "What exactly would entice a man such as yourself to come all the way out here to visit poor little old me?" I said it lightly, almost teasingly.
Harvey gave me a look. "Please, Mr Sullivan. We both know you're considerably more than that." He paused for a moment. "You made a rather interesting statement recently." My colleagues at the bank are rather concerned about it."
My silence was an urge to continue.
He placed his teacup carefully on the saucer. "You said that you had doubts regarding our ability to maintain the gold standard."
I smiled faintly. "Did I say that?"
I thought for a moment. "Oh, yes."
Harvey's expression suggested that he didn't particularly care. "Do you still believe it?"
I leaned back, pretending to mull over his words. "I don't want Britain to abandon the gold standard."
Harvey's expression relaxed slightly. "I sincerely hope you don't."
I took another sip of tea before saying, "But I have twenty-three million pounds that I need to be certain I can access when my businesses require it and if the government genuinely believes the gold standard is secure, then surely you don't object to me exercising my rights under it."
His expression changed only slightly, but I noticed.
He tried to say, "Mr. Sullivan…"
"No, seriously." I set down my cup, closing off any hope of negotiation. "If sterling is secure, then there should be no problem."
Harvey was silent.
"The whole point of convertibility," I continued, "is that the promise means something. If I bring sterling to the appropriate institution and request gold at the established parity, I should receive gold."
He watched me carefully. "And you are proposing to do precisely that?"
"If Britain remains on the gold standard." I nodded.
He seemed resigned now. "How much?"
"Twenty-three million pounds." I said, fighting with every fibre of my being not to break out into laughter.
The silence that followed was considerably longer. I could practically hear the arithmetic occurring behind Harvey's eyes. The number wasn't trivial.
Britain's monetary authorities had substantial gold holdings, but the reserves were not some limitless pile of bullion sitting in a vault waiting for anyone who wanted it. The entire point of the system was confidence that the reserves and available credit were sufficient to defend sterling when demands arose.
And twenty-three million pounds was an enormous individual demand. Just over ten percent in fact.
But that wasn't even the part I found most interesting. It was what happened afterwards. Because if I did it publicly, I wouldn't necessarily be the only person doing it.
That was the real threat.
If one of the wealthiest men in Britain publicly announced that he intended to convert £23 million into gold, how many other investors would start wondering whether they ought to do the same? How many foreign creditors would become nervous? How many banks would begin protecting themselves? How many businessmen would decide that holding sterling was suddenly a little less attractive?
A gold standard depended upon confidence.
And confidence was contagious.
So was fear.
Harvey finally spoke. "You appreciate that such an action would place considerable pressure upon the Bank. Indeed, you might place considerable pressure upon the entire monetary system."
"I appreciate that too." I nodded. "If Britain remains on the gold standard, I intend to exercise my right to convert those funds."
He looked at me. "And yet you intend to proceed?"
His face hardened slightly. "Surely you understand that the consequences could be rather more extensive than your own finances."
I looked at him. "If the gold standard is as secure as you believe it is, there should be no problem."
He didn't answer.
I continued.
"You have three choices, Sir Ernest." He frowned.
"You can honour my redemption." I raised one finger. "You can suspend convertibility."
I raised a second. "Or you can attempt to persuade me not to exercise it." I raised a third.
He stared at me. "And I assume," he said slowly, "you would be receptive to the third option?"
"No." That came out almost immediately.
Mother made a small noise that might have been a suppressed laugh. Harvey looked at her. She looked innocently back at him. I had already explained what I was doing a few weeks ago.
I took another sip of tea as he said, "You've backed us into a rather uncomfortable position."
"I wouldn't put it quite that way." I thought for a moment. "I'd say I've presented the government with a perfectly ordinary financial transaction and allowed the government to decide how confident it actually is in the system it has chosen to defend."
I smiled. "And…of course, I have no intention of doing anything improper."
That was true. I wasn't threatening violence. I was simply saying that I intended to exercise a financial right available to me under the system.
The fact that doing so might expose the system's vulnerabilities was not, strictly speaking, my fault.
Harvey sighed. "Mr Sullivan, we are willing to give guarantees that…"
"No." He stopped as I shook my head. "If Britain keeps the gold standard, I will begin exchanging that twenty-three million pounds at the end of this month."
His expression became considerably more serious. "And if Britain doesn't?"
I shrugged, and then, remarkably, Harvey smiled. "You are enjoying this."
It seemed like an animal that had been caught and accepted its fate; he was relieved.
We continued talking for another half hour.
We discussed business, London, the weather, family, a little politics, a little finance…
Nothing particularly important.
Here I was, effectively telling one of the most senior figures in British finance that I intended to tell the entire British establishment to go fuck themselves, and we were sitting in my drawing room drinking tea like two men who had simply bumped into each other at a club.
Eventually, Harvey stood. "I really must be going."
"Of course." I walked him towards the door.
He paused at the door. "Mr Sullivan. I hope you appreciate the seriousness of what you're doing.
"I do." I said, to which he nodded.
Then he left.
For a moment, I simply stood there, but then I walked back into the drawing room and sat down. She looked at me.
She had been remarkably quiet throughout the entire conversation. Eventually, she said, "Are you sure you weren't a little hard on him?"
My expression changed, and the amusement disappeared. My voice was flat when I answered in that way all kids do when trying to justify something to their parents. "Mam…"
She waited for me to continue, so I did. "It's people like him who are the reason Dad and Jack and Billy are all dead."
She looked at me, and I shook my head.
"Not him specifically." I wanted to make that clear. "I'm not saying Sir Ernest Harvey personally caused their deaths."
I looked down at my tea. "But people like him."
I paused.
"People who are absolutely convinced they're doing what's best for the country, and perhaps they genuinely believe that." My hands tightened around the cup. "But sometimes being convinced you're doing the right thing doesn't make the consequences disappear. And I'm done not stirring the boat because it's uncomfortable."
When the economy collapsed, it wouldn't be the people sitting in comfortable offices in London who suffered first.
It would be the people who couldn't afford another week without wages. The people who couldn't afford coal. The people whose children went to bed hungry because there wasn't enough money for dinner.
We all like to pretend we can ignore politics, that it is some nebulous thing that doesn't affect us, but we can't. Politics is simply people disagreeing about fundamental things which run a state. Everything was political, whether we like it or not.
I then muttered to myself, "Well, if changing the wind isn't going to make them change course…I'll just have to take the helm myself."
"What was that, dear?" she asked.
I shook my head. "Oh, nothing."