Give Us This Day (23 page)

“No, Gov’nor. Gisela’s booked overnight at the inn. Tell Mother we’ll be over tomorrow. How are the children? They haven’t tired her too much, have they?”

“She’ll not like parting with them,” Adam said. “The old place is quiet these days.” And then he noted with approval that Gisela was pregnant again, and this added to his satisfaction, for it surely meant that that foolishness had been worked out of the boy’s system and he told himself he could take most of the credit for that.

She must have realised what he was thinking, for when she raised herself on tiptoe to kiss him she whispered, “In October, Father. Tell Mamma for me,” and they went out, with the enslaved Edward in their wake, leaving him alone with his thoughts that were among the most cheerful he had had up here since he was as young as the man who had just toted two tons of Madras rice nearly two hundred miles without a horse to haul for him. Provided, of course, one discounted the Percherons who pulled him out of the river.

He gathered up his papers and took what he thought to be his final valedictory look at the broad curve of the Thames and its procession of barges, tugs, and lighters shooting the arches of a bridge that had spanned this point of the stream for centuries.
And that’s another thing
, he thought.
They’ll have to think about replacing that for the passage of brutes like that one below.
But it wasn’t his business, thank God. He’d had his fill of problems, and there were plenty for the Georges and the Edwards to solve.

* * *

The sun was setting in its familiar orange glow upriver as he crossed to the new, brick-built stable block to look the vehicle over. It was neater, and far more compact than either of its predecessors, but it had none of the grandeur of a four-horse man-o’-war, a two-horse frigate, or even a well-turned-out pinnace. It stood there looking sullen and impersonal, a tool rather than a partner in the never-ending struggle of man to save himself time and trouble, and ensure that he claimed his portion of luxuries from the scrimmage. It was very difficult to visualise a day when the stink that still hung about it banished the prevailing odours of horseflesh, leather, and trampled manure. But he had no doubts at all on the prospect now. Transport would make another leap forward, almost identical to that of the ‘thirties and ‘forties, when coachman Blubb and his ilk grumpily dismissed Stephenson’s locomotive as “that bliddy ole tea-kettle.” And was it so surprising when you pondered it? The history of a tribe was and always had been the history of its transportation.

He went out and crossed to the main gate, looking about him at the rows of new buildings that surrounded his belfry like an army of youngsters bringing an old warrior to bay. Old George would have a fresh start at all events, for a great deal had happened here in his brief and busy St. Martin’s summer as The Gaffer; his Swann-song as the local jesters called it. The insurance had paid for most of the rebuilding and old Sam Rawlinson’s pile the rest, but although the layout was his, it wasn’t his yard any more. It was the domain of that engine in there, and he had no authority over it now that George was back.

The weighbridge clerk had a cab waiting and he got in, riding the short distance to London Bridge Station alone, for young Edward wasn’t to be found and he welcomed the solitude. Edward too was in the other camp now, and in a year or so he would be little more than a left-over of the century that had begun with cheers for Trafalgar and would go out with salutes from fourteen-inch guns and the cough and stutter of those snub-nosed replacements for Cleveland Bays, Suffolk Punches, Clydesdales, and Percherons. He didn’t mind, or not all that much. He had done what he set out to do and a little to spare.

Three

Drumbeat

M
uch as he had enjoyed being in command again of the affairs of Swann-on-Wheels, Adam was glad to return to the peace of life at Tryst with Henrietta, and found plenty to occupy himself, planting a bed of new roses in the garden, and studying the art dealers’ catalogues. He was still a keen observer of the firm’s activities, however, and it gave him great satisfaction in the year following George’s historic journey from Macclesfield to London to see his son tackling the problems still facing him with such determination. Now George was reunited with Gisela, Adam had no doubts in George’s ability as his successor. In spite of Adam’s own doubts earlier about a future for petrol-driven vehicles, he was now convinced that it would be George’s SwannMaxie which would ensure that Swann-on-Wheels remained the largest and most progressive hauliers in the country. Though it would take at least two to three years before a complete change-over to petrol ‘lorries’ could be made. There was certainly plenty to occupy George, in improving the technical performance of the new vehicle, and also in planning out what reorganisation and re-routeing was going to be necessary once the majority of long-distance journeys were being made by Swann-Maxies.

They still sought him out in the last years of the old century, coming singly for encouragement, for consolation, or for a nugget of counsel from his bran tub of experience, and he was sometimes amused by their deviousness, for they often disguised their visits as duty-calls on Henrietta and needed a little prodding to come to the point.

Giles was a regular caller and the most outspoken, a man picking his path among Celtic caltrops sown for unwary Englishmen. George looked in oftener, with or without Gisela, giving a brash account of himself and his affairs, but often seeking to draw him out on a choice of routes, the breaking-strain of an executive, or the credit-worthiness of a customer.

Hugo was not such a frequent visitor at Tryst. For him it had been a frustrating and puzzling year, but it wasn’t until several months after Lady Sybil Uskdale’s nursing benefit sports meeting, in the Putney arena on August Bank Holiday 1898, that he found it necessary to come to see his father for some advice.

* * *

It was a very fashionable event and Hugo, ordinarily disdaining what he would have styled “a bunfight meeting,” would not have been there had it not been for the fact that Lady Sybil, president of the Volunteer Nurses’ movement, was a forceful and persistent woman, able to appreciate the drawing power of a track champion who held European records in amateur athletics for the mile and the marathon. At twenty-nine, Hugo should have been past his prime as an athlete, but he showed no sign of a decline during that first circuit, loping along with the measured stride that sports editors claimed did not vary by a centimetre and apparently in no hurry at all to prove he could lap the best of his opponents when the time came. But then Springer, the London harrier, crossed to the inside, inadvertently implanting a track shoe on the arch of Hugo’s right foot and causing him to swerve in a way that disconcerted a knot of competitors on their heels.

The result was a mix-up that steered the lamed champion into a marker post and the impact was violent enough to stun him.

When he opened his eyes, wincing with the smart of a lacerated foot, he was lying on a stretcher in the shade of some elms, and Lady Sybil herself was ministering to him with that compound of authority, despatch, and professional tenderness that made her so popular with photographers selling plates to the fashionable periodicals. On this occasion, however, she was not wearing her standard regalia of gleaming linen, but a Paris creation of striped silk that emphasised, as her rustling uniform could not, the graceful contours of her figure with its high bust and impossibly girlish waist. This, together with a tiny straw hat, gently angled and worn high, made the very best of her plentiful blonde hair that was wreathed, German fashion, over her temples.

It was a very reassuring spectacle to a champion wincing with pain and aware that he had lost his chance of fresh triumphs in the tail-end of the season. Hugo, forgetting his troubles for a moment, gazed at the vision with rapt attention, almost as though the track tumble had translated him to an Anglo-Saxon Garden of Allah where the queen of the houris awaited his pleasure.

The illusion faded, however, the moment the vision in striped silk spoke, saying, in a tone of voice that had never been challenged since nursery days, “Lie
quite
still, Mr. Swann, do you hear? You’ve had a nasty tumble and I feel entirely responsible for it. You must stay here until the doctor has examined that foot.”

He blinked once or twice but then the pain of his wound increased, as someone out of his line of vision applied a salve, and had it not been for the soothing touch of Lady Sybil’s white hand on his brow, he would have sat up and cursed the fool who had blundered across his path in that uncouth manner. Attendance at foreign sports stadiums had enlarged Hugo’s vocabulary, and bystanders, held at a respectful distance by Lady Sybil’s acolytes, might have learned an interesting variation of the British equivalent of, say, “clumsy fellow, born out of wedlock.” As it was, there was no alternative but to lie still until a doctor arrived, going over him as though he had been the heir-apparent savaged by would-be assassins.

He heard Lady Sybil say, in a more peremptory voice than she had employed to him, “Into the committee tent! Move the chairs! Take the trestle table away! Bring the chaise-longue from the terrace! Cushions, too, lots of them!” People scurried in all directions, two stewards lifting the stretcher and bearing him away, like a dying warrior king, across the trampled grass to the welcome coolness of the pavilion where, under Lady Sybil’s expert direction, he was made very comfortable and given a glass of iced lemonade, held to his lips by the mistress of ceremonies.

Then, quite suddenly, it seemed, everybody except Lady Sybil disappeared and the sound of distant cheering came to him from the arena, rising to a climax as the winner, whoever he was, breasted the tape. He asked, a little petulantly, “Who won?” and she said, gently, “Never
mind
who won, Mr. Swann! You won’t be concerned with who wins or who loses for quite some time. I’m having you taken to my town house as soon as the brougham comes round. I’m afraid you must regard yourself my patient until that foot has healed.”

It crossed his mind to remind her that stunning good looks and extreme elegance did not entitle her to prescribe his comings and goings for as much as an hour, but meeting the level gaze of her cornflower blue eyes all he could mumble was, “It’s nothing, Lady Uskdale… a mere scratch…” She smiled down at him in such a bewitching way that he was deprived of the will to get up and limp outside to discover who had carried off the trophy he had expected to win at a canter. Instead he lay back among his cushions, wondering why a woman as celebrated and socially exalted as Lady Sybil Uskdale should make so much of a few foot punctures and mild concussion. Being Hugo, a stranger to the world of high fashion, he decided it must be because she regretted having enticed him to appear at a bunfight meeting and inadvertently eliminating him from more serious events in the near future.

His surmise, of course, was a long way from the truth. Nothing so trivial as a twinge of conscience had ever prevented Lady Sybil Uskdale from acquiring anything she coveted, and at this moment, having made up her mind in a single intuitive flash, she coveted Hugo Swann so jealously that he would have blushed had he discerned her motive.

He was not necessarily stupid to so misread the situation. More sophisticated men than Hugo Swann had pondered the secret motives of Sybil Uskdale for years without arriving at any significant conclusions. The eldest and by far the most decorative of the famous Uskdale girls, she was now within two weeks of her thirtieth birthday and the only one among them unmarried. And likely to be, so most London hostesses predicted, for her hauteur was a legend, and all the eligible bachelors she seemed to find repellent; she scared away less exalted candidates with a mental superiority that was the very worst card an eligible spinster could display in the presence of a suitor. Even her detractors (among them the frustrated mothers of a dozen or more spurned eligibles) had to admit that Sybil had had her chances, some of them splendid chances, all the way back to her coming out ball, twelve years before. Yet here she was, within days of the spinster’s Rubicon, still pottering about first-aid posts, obsessed with some horrid plan of luring nice girls from the real business of life in order to learn how to alleviate the sufferings of the victims of road or railway accidents, as if these things couldn’t be left to the professionals and lower-middle-class girls who went in for voluntary nursing in the hope of finding a husband. It never seemed to occur to the most discerning of them that Sybil Uskdale saw her vocation in precisely these terms.

In the course of her long, semi-regal passage through the ballrooms and drawingrooms of fashionable London, Sybil Uskdale must have encountered a regiment of gallants who would have needed no more than a soft glance, a blush, or a mere hint to bring them to the pitch of proposal. Yet so far not one of them had been given the signal, and the simple reason for this lay in the impossibly high physical standards Sybil Uskdale set herself when her thoughts turned to marriage.

It was not that she did not desire to be married. She did, and with all her heart. Indeed, had the more staid of her hostesses been granted access to her secret fantasies in this field, it is doubtful if she would have received invitations into their homes. For the truth was Sybil Uskdale panted for a man, providing he was one who was neither a middle-aged widower nor a member of the younger set that she thought of, in her eccentric way, as a “pebble.”

The origin of this line of thought is interesting, illustrating her singularity in that closed society. As a child she had paid occasional visits to Folkestone, where it was fashionable at that time to rent a villa by the sea, and there she had witnessed a group of local boys diligently throwing pebbles at a shelving ledge twenty feet up a cliff overlooking the promenade. Every now and again a pebble lodged itself among a small pile but nearly all of them rebounded and fell among the gorse growing below. When, some time afterwards, she was introduced to the young men who were paraded round Belgravia’s drawing-rooms like so many colts each season, she at once equated them with the pebbles flung by little Folkestonians in the hope of making a lodgment. She never did and she never could think of herself as anything so commonplace as a ledge, and throughout a succession of seasons no single pebble lodged with her, but this was the fault of the pebbles, not the pitchers. In a later era, when Victoria had at last made way for her more relaxed heirs, newspaper editors found certain labels for young men making regular appearances at these exclusive mating functions. They called them “chinless wonders” and “debs’ delights,” and Sybil Uskdale would have regarded the soubriquets as very apt. Their chinlessness offended her estimate of what a husband should look like. Not one of them had ever looked remotely like Hugo Swann, as he lay concussed on the stretcher under the elms at Putney on that hot August afternoon. It was then that Sybil suddenly realised, and with a sense of liberation so compelling that it required strict self-control not to proclaim it aloud, that here was the man she had been looking for all these years and that her quest was now at an end.

She had always been attracted to athletes and was herself an ardent bicyclist and tennis player, so that she knew all about Hugo Swann when she invited him to participate in her nursing fete. It did not matter to her that he was a prosperous tradesman’s son, and the fourth in line at that. The notion that like should mate with like was passing out of fashion anyway, and it was now considered almost chic to marry into trade, so long as the word was elevated to “commerce” and so long as the commerce had resulted in wealth. All the Uskdale wealth reposed in land, and, as everybody knew, land was at a discount now, what with successive agricultural depressions, and millions of pounds of refrigerated food were pouring into the ports from the dominions and colonies. Far better a tradesman’s son with a beautiful body than a pebble with an uncomfortable country house, his father’s mortgages, and a thousand unproductive acres in the shires. Particularly a tradesman’s son of Hugo Swann’s splendid proportions, who looked, she thought, like Achilles lying on his shield as she ran her approving glance the length of his bronzed body, happily open to close inspection in his singlet and running drawers. A shaft of sunlight, striking through the branches, teased his thighs, sown with short golden hairs that grew all the way down to calves knotted with solid muscle. A long ecstatic sigh escaped her as she contemplated those hairs, and the thicker growth just visible above the hem of his singlet, and she had a vivid impression of what it would feel like to lie beside him and feel the weight of that huge sword arm across her breasts. Then her fancy went further and she contemplated the extreme satisfaction it would give her to stroke those short, curling hairs and the limbs they grew upon and she made up her mind in a matter of seconds. Hugo Swann’s days of bachelorhood were numbered.

* * *

Hugo came to see Adam a few months later when it had finally dawned on him that Sybil Uskdale was resolved to land him, weigh him, and, for all he knew, mount him in a glass case and hang him on her boudoir wall. Because he was Hugo, childlike in a situation of this kind, Adam handled him gently, managing to persuade him that he had reached a stage in life where he would be well advised to settle for a rich, influential wife, who regarded him as a person of enormous consequence and would coddle him in a way that would compensate him for the sacrifice of bachelorhood.

“The trouble with your line of country is that it gets tougher in direct ratio to your weight and wind,” he said. “You’re what age now? Thirty, is it?” and Hugo conceded ruefully that he would not see twenty-nine again. “Well, then, you’re past your prime, old lad, and may as well admit it. She’s wealthy and well-born so they say, but not as grand as she pretends. Her grandfather was in Chilean nitrates to my recollection, and his father was a Pennine weaver with a few bright ideas. However, that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is, do you want middle-aged freedom at the price of lonely old age? Some men reckon it’s the better bargain and for all I know you might be one of ‘em.”