Give Us This Day (7 page)

“Quite sure, thank you. Haven’t all that much time,” and he drifted off, wondering whether the crumb or two he had picked up during the brief exchange had any significance outside his imagination. There had been that split second hesitation concerning George’s whereabouts, and a defensive narrowing of sandy eyebrows when he asked about the pilfering. Nothing much, certainly nothing to justify Sam’s comment that Wesley Tybalt wanted watching. All it might mean was that he was covering up for George’s philandering and that spelt loyalty of a sort. There was the swanky way the chap dressed, an impression that he considered he had hoisted himself a niche or two above his Bible-punching father, and one other thing that might or might not have significance: the fact that Wesley watched his progress the whole way across the yard to the gate and only slipped out of sight when he stopped to speak to the weighbridge clerk on the way out.

“Are we busy, Rigby?”

“On the jump, sir. Things slacked off during the celebrations but they’ve picked up since.”

He put a spot question, striving to make it sound offhand. “Do we sub-contract to that North Country haulier, Linklater? I came across him in the old Polygon this week.”

“Linklater? No, sir. We used to but they’ve got their own yard in Rotherhithe now.”

“Ah. Well, good day to you, Rigby.”

“Good day, Mr. Swann,” and he left, stumping slowly down Tooley Street in the direction of the river, but stopping opposite what had once been his favourite coffee stall, run by an ex-cavalryman with a long, facial scar, acquired, so he said, serving with the 9th Lancers, known as the Delhi Spearmen after their fine performance in the Mutiny.

He crossed over and ordered a cup of coffee for old times’ sake and Travis, the proprietor, greeted him with enthusiasm. “My stars, it’s time enough since you looked in, Mr. Swann, sir! Alwus reckoned you was my most reg’lar earlybird in the old days.”

“I’ve taken to lying in at my time o’ life, Travis,” he said, recalling how often he used to stand there sniffing the early morning tideway reek after an all-night session in his tower. And then, seeing the barred entrance to the yard a few strides up the street, a freak line of enquiry occurred to him and he added, “Did that new exit improve your trade, Travis? I would have thought carters coming and going there would have been your regulars, seeing there are two coffee stalls nearer the main gate.”

“I thought it would but it didn’t,” Travis said. “They don’t use it during the day, tho’ vans call in for stuff night-times now and again.”

“Light traffic?”

“All kinds but not your waggons. Stuff you’ve hauled into town for local carriers. I see one o’ Gibson’s beer drays waiting there one evening last week. And on’y last night a Linklater two-horse took a load aboard. Short run hauls, they’d be, and short-haulers were never much good to me, sir. My best reg’lars were the chaps who had been hauling long-distance and were dam’ sharpset by the time they got here. I do see Mr. Hugo from time to time. You must be right proud of him, sir.”

He forced his mind away from the disturbing knowledge that one of Linklater’s vehicles had been here within the last few hours, despite the weighbridge clerk’s assurance that their sub-contract work had fallen off since they opened their own yard at Rotherhithe nearer the docks, and contemplated the new Englishman’s obsessive interest in sport. A man like Travis, he supposed, would see Hugo as the superior product of a commercial family. In his own youth, railway kings and engineers had been the popular idols. Now reverence was reserved for muscular oafs who could break track records, kick footballs from one end of the field to the other, and hit cricket balls for six. He said, “Ah, Hugo, he’s the best free advertisement Swann-on-Wheels ever had, or so my other sons tell me,” and finishing his coffee moved off towards the station, his mind still occupied assembling the fragments of information his visit had accumulated.

They were beginning to multiply. George’s unexplained absence; Wesley Tybalt’s defensive manner; a new gate that wasn’t used during the day, although it opened directly on that padlocked warehouse; the weighbridge clerk’s ignorance that Swann was still subcontracting for the firm of Linklater, the original source of Sam’s information that “young Tybalt wanted watching.”

It made no sense, any of it, and he supposed in the end he would have to come right out with his suspicions, if his vague uneasiness justified the word, and ask George whether, in his view, there was anything worth investigating. But then another thought occurred to him and he wondered whether, in the circumstances, George was the right one to approach. George might be reticent about his own frequent excursions into the provinces, and almost surely resentful if neglect of duty was implied. What was needed was more detailed information concerning George’s alleged “gadding about,” and how much reliance he placed, in his absence, in Wesley Tybalt. The obvious source concerning the first was Gisela, George’s wife. As regards Wesley, Tybalt senior would be worth a visit, especially as, according to his son, he called in at the yard from time to time.

He caught his train and settled grumpily into a corner, watching the evening light play tricks with the smoky labyrinth down there under the ugly complex of bridges and viaducts and telling himself that he was an ass, at his time of life, to bother himself with what was amiss, if anything, with the network. He had pledged himself long ago to leave all the worrying to his successors, and so far he had honoured that pledge, occupying himself with landscaping and collecting down there in the fresh air. It had kept him out of mischief for years now, and doubtless prolonged his active life, but he began to understand, for the first time since his retirement, that it was really no more than a substitute, and a poor one at that. His real ego, all that he was as a man and creator, had gone into the network, and the merest hint that it was threatened roused him like a man menaced in his sleep. George had made one bloomer over the introduction of those petrol-driven waggons and a dog was allowed one bite, so they said. But not two and not at the vitals of Adam Swann’s lifework. Not if he could help it, by God!

4

He had always been a man of action, compelled to put theories to the test at once and after no more than cursory contemplation, so that anyone who knew him would not have been surprised at his decision to leave the train when it stopped at Petts Wood, on the way to Bromley. George had set Gisela up in a fine house here, where the southeastern spread of the metropolis had petered out and the countryside was still unspoiled. It was a more convenient base than his own, deep in the Weald, and miles from the nearest station. The train service was excellent and George could be in the yard within thirty minutes of quitting his doorstep.

He took a four-wheeler to the cul-de-sac where George’s windows looked out over a spread of arable fields and birch coppices, enjoying the prospect of surprising Gisela, for, although a foreigner, she had always ranked as his favourite in-law. She represented nearly all that Adam expected of a wife, concerning herself exclusively with home and children, and making no attempt to fashion her husband into the Galahad brides-in-waiting dreamed about before they had their corners rubbed off. He had never had the least doubt but that she loved his boy dearly, and both he and Henrietta had taken to her the moment she stepped ashore from the Dover packet all those years ago, soon after George confounded them with the news that he was married.

They had four children now, the eldest, Max, aged eleven, the youngest a rosy little bundle born last year and christened Henrietta, just as the third child, Adam, had been named for him. The stamp of the Continent lay heavily on this branch of the family. All the boys favoured their mother, with hardly a trace of their Anglo-Saxon father. Their manners were impeccable and their approach to him reverential. Like their mother, they used the word “Grandfather” as though it were a title. He had no doubt but that one or more of them would prove a useful addition to the firm in the new century, for they already showed signs of that Teutonic application that had made the Germans Britain’s nearest rivals in trade and industry.

The house, taken over from a failed speculator (George had a nose for failures and the bargains that went along with them), stood in its own grounds and was comfortably furnished, although its decor was too Germanic for his taste. Gisela was delighted to see him and pouted when he told her he was only stopping off on his way home, that Henrietta expected him at dusk, and that he was keeping the cab. “I only looked in to find out where I could locate George,” he said. “I tried the yard but he’s away off somewhere. When do you expect him back, my dear?”

She said, dutifully, that she could never predict George’s comings and goings. Sometimes days passed before he turned up, his arms full of gifts for the children. “He spoils them,” she added. “It is not good, and I tell him so often. He is very busy just now, yes?”

“It seems so,” he said, “but no matter how busy a gaffer he is he shouldn’t cut himself off from his base. Tybalt senior always knew where to find me, even if Henrietta didn’t. I was told he had been in the Midlands.”

She turned away suddenly, so abruptly indeed that she gave herself away, for his sharp eye caught the droop of the lip. She said, with a shrug, “Then perhaps it is not business this time. Perhaps it is that woman!” He was so taken aback at her frankness that he gasped.

“George keeps a woman?”

“I do not think that he keeps her. I believe she has a rich husband.”

“God bless my soul! He’s told you about her?”

She turned and studied him with an expression that could have been mistaken for one of patronage. She was flushed, certainly, but he would have said that was due to irritation rather than embarrassment. Irritation not with him but with the entire British race, whose approach to this kind of thing continued to baffle her after years this side of the Channel. “George has told me nothing. How could he, being English, and brought up as an English gentleman?”

“Then how… I mean… are you telling me he doesn’t love you any more? You and the children?”

The pink flush deepened. “I cannot say as to that, Grandfather. He is very fond of the children and spoils them as I said. But there are two kinds of mistresses, are there not? One is a… how would you put it?—a toy, he will soon discard. The other is a substitute for a wife put aside, yet without losing her rights.” She paused, concentrating hard. “Perhaps ‘rights’ is not the word. Would ‘status’ be more exact?”

“Who gives a damn about that?” he burst out. “I heard he had taken to gadding about. The rumour had reached as far as his grandfather, up in Manchester, so it follows I’m probably the last to hear he’s off the rails! How does that come about? Why the devil didn’t you come to me or the boy’s mother? We could have straightened him out. We always have before.”

She said, considerately, “Please sit down, Grandfather. It is not good that you should become so excited over something that is perhaps of small importance.”

He sat down, hypnotised by her placidity.
It’s too long since I crossed the Channel
, he thought.
Here I am, looking at everything through English eyes
. But he said, with a lift of his hand, “I don’t understand how any woman in your position can take that view, Gisela. George has no right to treat you in this way. His mother would be outraged.”

“Then do not tell her, Grandfather.”

“I’m not sure I will. I should have to think about it. But I’ll tell you this. Whoever she is, that woman is making nonsense of his responsibilities at the yard and that’s important. To me, at all events. It’s what brought me here in the first place!” He was rewarded by a frown on the girl’s pleasant features, as though he had found a chink in her complacency.

“Ach, that is not good,” she said. “You are sure of it?”

“I’m sure of it. Who is this woman? Do you know her? Have you met her?”

“Wait,” and she got up, crossing to a huge bureau bookcase that occupied most of the south wall, an item of furniture that he would have thrown out as a baroque monstrosity, better left in Central Europe where it originated. She opened a drawer, rummaged there, and returned carrying a copy of
The Illustrated London News
, open at a page of social gossip. There was an illustration of a meet of the Quorn, featuring half-a-dozen celebrities and hangers-on, guzzling their stirrup cup. There was only one woman in the group, a handsome wench with what he recognised as a first-class seat. The caption below told him she was Lady Barbara Lockerbie, wife of the well-known Scottish industrialist, Sir James Lockerbie, “An exceptionally able horsewoman, whom readers will recall excels not only in the hunting field but in the pursuit of winter sports.”

“If he hasn’t told you about her, how can you be so sure?” he demanded, returning the magazine and this time she smiled. “George is not a good liar, Grandfather. And I am not a fool.”

He decided not to press the point and take her word for it, racking his brains for anything specific he might remember about James Lockerbie, who had bought his Scottish title, they said, with a sizeable contribution to Scottish Liberal Party funds when they were in low water after the last election. He knew nothing at all of his wife, save that she was obviously half his age, for Lockerbie had been prosperous in the days before Swann-on-Wheels surged over the border to capture the Lowlands trade. He made, if he remembered rightly, sanitary units, designed by that slightly risible genius, Thomas Crapper, supreme in the field of water-closets. It all added up to a very bad joke and the taste in his mouth was so sour that he rose abruptly, saying, “You leave this to me, Gisela. When he shows up don’t tell him I’ve been here, do you hear?” But then, recollecting her pronunciation on the two types of women who lead husbands astray, he said, “What do you think about her? I mean, is it a passing fancy, or is it something more serious?”

“Ah, I am not qualified to tell you that yet, Grandfather. It began only last March, when he met this woman at the launching of his first trading vessel in Scotland. It is still only July, is it not?”