Give Us This Day (22 page)

For two hours his progress was smooth and uneventful, apart from the sensation his appearance caused in villages and one or two small country towns. It was just short of Letchworth, after passing over a particularly rough stretch of road, that disaster struck again. Part of his cargo had shaken loose, promoting a snaking motion on a mild descent that ended in a hump-backed bridge, where he pitched so heavily that he had to slew the vehicle hard right on to the verge. In that swerve the nearside tyre left its rim.

He managed to stop almost at once, but the damage dismayed him. The tyre was twisted into a loop and half-severed by the iron rim, and he saw at a glance that it would have to be cut away and replaced with his spare.

He was still wondering how this could be done without lifting gear when the knife-grinder appeared, riding a trap with a high, hooped canopy and a sad-looking cocker spaniel crouched on either side of him where he sat on the box. The man was a singular-looking wayfarer, tall, spare, and narrow-faced, with sad, brown eyes to match those of his dogs, a Romany no doubt, who preferred his own company and obviously lived in his ancient two-wheeler.

His professional apparatus was stacked in a tailboard box or suspended from the canopy struts on short lengths of string, so that it jangled and rattled as the trap approached. Unlike most of the wayfarers George had encountered, however, he seemed to find nothing menacing about Swann-Maxie, and looked her over with mild interest before pulling in, tying his horse to an overhanging bough, and saying judiciously: “You’ll have to cut that loose, brother. And you’ll need something more businesslike than that clasp knife.” He foraged among his tools and produced a murderous-looking butcher’s knife. With a few swift slashes he rid the wheel of the ruined tyre which he then examined, with what seemed to George a professional interest. “The best Malayan rubber,” he said, sniffing it, “and you’ve given it a rare pounding, brother. Do you carry a replacement?”

“Yes,” George told him, “but to fit it I’ll have to raise the front wheels at least four inches and muscle won’t do it. I’d gambled on this happening near a farm or a forge where I could hire labour and borrow levers. By my reckoning I’m still five miles short of Letchworth.”

“Four and a quarter,” the man said, “but I have something better than a lever,” and he went back to his tailboard and dug deeply into it, dragging out what appeared at first to be a large bench vice, but on closer inspection was a multi-purpose tool with both curved and flat expanding surfaces, operated by large butterfly nuts, a marriage between a bootmaker’s last and an anvil. “A legacy of my father’s,” the grinder said. “He was a Jack-of-all-trades and made his own tools. He was a filecutter at one time and I find this useful for straightening agricultural implements. Scythes mostly and ploughshares. Do you carry a heavy wrench, brother?”

The man’s serious, methodical air made an immediate impression on George, so that it crossed his mind that the country must be teeming with inventors and would-be mechanics, grandchildren of the Industrial Revolution with inherited skills of every variety. He fetched his largest wrench, and the grinder selected a section of the front axle as an anchor for his expanding vice, spinning the heavy butterfly nuts with long, supple fingers until the tool was about one-third extended. Then, together, they applied the wrench and George was greatly relieved to see the rim inch from the ground until it was spinning free, after which they took a breather before tackling the job of fitting the spare tyre George had trundled out.

The man said, incuriously, “What would you be hauling south, brother?” When George told him it was Madras rice he said, “Now there’s a queer thing to be taking into London, and London is your destination, no doubt. Wouldn’t rice come in by sea and be offloaded on the spot?”

“Not this consignment. It’s an assortment of high-grade samples and came ashore at Liverpool. I only happened to stow it because it was there. I could have made up the weight with anything handy.” Although time was pressing, he felt obliged to give the man an explanation of his presence here on a country byroad, with a stranded vehicle and two tons of Madras rice. The traveller was a difficult man to surprise. All he said was, “To replace the drag-horse, brother, you will need to do one of two things in the new century. Either you will have to prevail upon a niggardly Government to surface every main road in the country, or you will have to find a means of cushioning those wheels in a way that will enable them to absorb the shock of every dip on your route. Springing alone won’t do it, although you have some powerful springs there. Are they making any progress with heavy, air-inflated tyres, on the lines of those fitted to the latest bicycles?”

“If they are I didn’t get to hear of it,” George said, “and I made enquiries everywhere, here and abroad. The weight of a vehicle like this would be enough to puncture air-inflated tyres every mile or so, except on a first-class Macadamised road. This kind of mishap could happen twenty times a day.”

“Ah,” said the grinder, thoughtfully, “God is a great husbander of secrets, brother. He will reveal that one, no doubt, when the time is ripe. Will you join me in a short prayer, brother?”

“For the patenting of air-inflated tyres for heavy vehicles?” asked George, too surprised to smile.

“Why, no,” said the grinder, gently, “for God’s blessing on the remainder of your journey.”

“I should be obliged if you pray on my behalf, brother,” George said, not in the least disposed to laugh now.

The man closed his eyes and said: “Lord God, please to look kindly upon this traveller, and grant him a safe arrival. He is about Thy work, I think, and is not prompted by usury. Amen.” And, while George was still debating whether or not the grinder was correct in his charitable assumption, the man picked up the spare tyre and began to fit it to the rim of the wheel, motioning George to hold on to the spokes while he inched the taut rubber in place with the help of a broad-bladed file he had fetched when he brought his winch.

It was the work of a few minutes to lower the chassis, and when it was done George said, “I’m uncommonly obliged to you for your help. I hope you will allow me to pay you for your time and trouble.”

But at that, for no particular reason, the more sedate of the two spaniels gave a short, scornful bark and the knife-grinder said, “The dog rejects your offer of payment, brother,” and said it without the merest hint of a smile, so that George had no alternative but to suppose the grinder found nothing whatever surprising in his dog’s ability to form moral judgments or, for that matter, to understand every word that had passed between them.

He shook the man’s hand warmly, thanked him again, and went on his way in a mood of quiet exaltation, boosted not so much by the man’s skill and kindness but by his evident belief that the horseless carriage came within the orbit of the Almighty’s plans for mankind’s progress.
My stars
, he thought, as he moved off towards Dunstable,
you learn a thing or two on the open road. I daresay that’s where the Gov’nor learned most of his lessons. He’d relish that chap, to be sure.

By noon he was skirting St. Albans, and an hour later, on Barnet Heath, he was drinking a pint of ale and munching beef sandwiches, sparing a thought, as he refreshed himself, for the woman whose home lay a few miles to the northeast and who had, in a sense, shown him the way home again. His entanglement with Barbara Lockerbie seemed to have happened a long time ago and yet, in terms of the calendar, it was only ten months since he had walked out of her summer-house and begged a lift on a market cart to the scene of what could have been, but for his father’s tolerance, the wreck of his fortunes. And the thought of surprising Adam, with eight weeks in hand, added zest to the final stage down the old Roman road where carters, waggoners, bicyclists, and a few horseback-riders gave him a wide berth and sometimes shouted a jest into the wall of sound isolating him from other traffic.

At three-fifty-five by Gricklewood Church clock he was moving through traffic that reduced his speed to a crawl. By four-thirty, he was traversing Oxford Street to approach London Bridge from Cheapside, crossing the river and edging into the yard of The George at precisely four-forty-five. And there, on the flower-decked gallery, sat Gisela with tears in her eyes, so that he forgot Swann-Maxie for a few moments, abandoning her to a crowd of stablemen and urchins who approached her less reverently than his rustic audience north of Lichfield. Hardly a day passed now when a motor or a mechanically-propelled waggon of one sort or another did not turn on the cobbles, where coaches had discharged their passengers in the days before Stephenson laced the country with his gridiron and made the Shrewsbury Flyer as obsolete as a chariot.

She said, “It doesn’t even look out of breath… and you’re ahead of time. I hadn’t expected you until dusk and ordered dinner for seven-thirty. Shall I cancel it, along with the room, George?”

“Not on your life, my love, for if she’s none the worse for it, I am. I could eat a five-course meal and sleep the clock round, but I’m not foregoing the spectacle of the Gov’nor’s eyebrows lifting half the length of his head. Have you got a wrap and a veil?” When she nodded he told her to fetch them. Fifteen minutes later he had swung Swann-Maxie in a wide arc, repassed the arch of the inn, and was heading for the yard.

2

Adam was in his eyrie when Edward rushed in, almost incoherent with excitement; and this was enough to bring Adam to his feet, for Edward, a dour boy, went about his work with the air of wary concentration characteristic of old Sam Rawlinson when he was satisfying himself that a customer got what he had paid for but nothing in the way of a bonus.

For a moment he could make little sense of the lad’s jabberings, but finally he gathered it was something to do with George and said, “Hold it, boy! Start from the beginning. What’s George been up to now?”

Edward, pointing to the window, said, “He’s here. With that petrol waggon and a load of rice for Dickenson’s!”

“George here? With Dickenson’s rice…?” and following the direction of Edward’s finger, he hastened round the end of the desk to the window. What he saw made him grunt with surprise, for there below, in a tight circle, was every waggoner, clerk, and farrier on the staff, all gazing up at his son and daughter-inlaw, enthroned on a streamlined version of the juggernaut he had seen thunder past his holly bush ambush on its test run up in Cheshire nine years before. The boy was right about the rice, too. The tailboard was down and already a couple of jubilant warehousemen were offloading Dickenson’s sacks.

He called, scarcely less excited than Edward, “
George! Gisela!
Wait, I’m coming down!” as if he expected them to vanish in a cloud of blue exhaust gas. In reply to Edward’s “Hold a bit, Gov’nor, I’ll fetch ‘em up here!” Adam snapped, “Nay, you won’t, lad! This is one time I bend the knee to George! He’s two months in hand, by God!” He followed the boy down the winding staircase, sniffing the unfamiliar stink of engine oil that introduced an entirely foreign element into the blend of smells about the yard. He called, as George handed Gisela down, “Hi! How far have you come in that thing? When did you set out?” Gisela answered, saying, with just a hint of triumph, “Yesterday morning! He left Macclesfield at seven a.m.”

“You’re telling me he took
you
along?”

“No,” she said, descending and kissing him, “of course he didn’t, Father. I came on today by train, and met him by appointment at The George. But he’s not to stay. He hasn’t had a hot meal since he set out, and he slept by the road last night.”

“He’s time for a drink, none the less,” Adam said, and bawled, more to express his elation than to disperse the crowd, “Get on with whatever you were doing, the whole lot of you! Damned thing won’t run away. Jenkins, tow it in the man-o’-war shed. And if there isn’t room make room, d’ye hear?” Then he led the way up the stairs again, with George, Gisela, and Edward at his heels, and Edward, bright lad, didn’t have to be told their various tipples, bringing out brandy, sherry, and ginger-beer for himself. Alone among the latterday Swanns, Edward had no head for liquor.

Adam said, raising his glass, “Well, here’s to the two of you, and I’m more pleased to see you than you can imagine. Your mother hasn’t stopped nagging me since I took up this packload again and I’m re-abdicating tomorrow, like it or not!”

But then curiosity overcame everything else as he remembered those rice sacks and he said, “Just how much freight did you haul? Edward said something about two tons.”

“Edward had it right. It’s sample rice, from Monday’s Liverpool shipment. The other half set off by waggon the same hour as me but I’ll lay you long odds it doesn’t get invoiced until sundown tomorrow. And even then they’ll have to hustle.”

The calculated subtlety of it tickled Adam. It was the kind of trick he would have played on doubting Thomases a generation ago, and he did not begrudge George his moment of triumph. “She came out of it well, then. Damned well, I’d say. A hundred and seventy-five miles in—what was it?—two legs often hours apiece? Well, you’ve proved your point, and I’ll make sure everybody about here knows it. How long will it take you to build more of those snub-nosed monsters and get ‘em into commission?”

“All of two years,” George said, “but that will be Scottie Quirt’s job as soon as I’ve approved the blueprints for modifications. There’ll be Swann heavies on the roads for a long time yet.”

“Ah, that’s what you say. A sop to my pride, no doubt.”

“No, it’s true. We’ve got our lead and there’s no point in going off at half-cock again. I nearly came a cropper twice and on both occasions I had more luck than I deserved. A man needs training to handle one of those on the open road, and apart from production we’ll have to school a team of likely lads as drivers,” and he sketched his adventures, as much for Edward’s benefit as his father’s.

Adam could see the boy was exhausted and took Gisela aside, telling her to take a cab back to The George. “If only to wash all that grime from his face,” he said, and to George, “You’ll be coming on to Tryst with me and the lad after we close up?”