God Is an Englishman (42 page)

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found, but in an urgent whisper, that involved a whistle like the approach of a far-off train, and when he took her hand, and told her about her great-niece Stella, he detected a softening of the rigid lines of her face and a momentary gleam in an eye that had silenced so many noisy children when she ran her dame’s school and done battle with those who disturbed her brother’s peace.

He sat there wondering what he should tell her of an enterprise he knew she thought of as vulgar, and unbecoming, but he need not have bothered. She soon demonstrated that she was more interested in Henrietta than in his concerns, and this he found puzzling, for the old besom had bullied the girl mercilessly when she was on hand. She now atoned, however, saying, in that insistent whisper,

“Took a rare fancy to that gel. She’s a better wife than you deserve, and she’ll prove it before she’s done with you. She’s got a will of her own and you might have done worse, boy. Have you realised that yet?” He said, smiling, that he had, and that nobody need remind him Henrietta had a will of her own, for she had talked him into hang ing a millstone round his neck in the form of a country estate that he could only visit one day in ten.

“That was the right thing to do,” Charlotte said, with a tiny splut ter of malice.

“It offsets having a husband in trade. It’s a pity your child was a girl. Henrietta told me she wanted boys, to carry on the family tradition.”

“That was just her way of enlisting you,” Adam said, but his aunt wheezed,

“She’s plenty of time. There’s another due, isn’t there? I hope she’ll be luckier this time.” She stopped, rallying her small stock of breath for what emerged as the first direct appeal he could ever recall her making, to him or to anyone else.

“Listen, boy, I’ve done my best for your father all the time you were abroad. Will you do something for me? Will you make me a promise that if that child of hers is a boy you’ll have the grace and good sense to let him take up a commission? I don’t ask this for myself, or on account of the family but for her. She…she wrote to me on the subject.”

“She
wrote
to you? Henrietta did?”

The old lady withdrew her hand and opened a gaol of a handbag that stood on the night table, taking out a letter addressed in what Adam recognised as Henrietta’s round, babyish hand. “Read it,” she ordered.

It occurred to Adam then that it was strange he should have been thinking of this obsession of Henrietta’s on the way over here, and the letter, a short and simple one that had obviously cost Henrietta some trouble to compose, touched him when he thought of her sitting at that bureau of hers, with her tongue curling between her lips, as she struggled to put her thoughts on paper and enlist an ally.

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“My dearest Aunt Charlotte,” she had written, “Adam tells me he is going to visit you and I’m glad because it is time he did and I wish I was with him because I shall never forget how kind you were to me that time he brought me home and I was so much in need of friends. I am expecting again in early June, and I don’t have to tell you how glad I am, for you remember I so wanted a family of boys. I love little Stella, of course, and she is going to be pretty, but I did very much want a boy and shall weep if I have another girl in June. Adam is away from home a great deal, but he seems to like what he is doing and I do love him very much, Aunt Charlotte, even though I am still sorry he gave over being a soldier like the Colonel and all the other Swanns. However, I do mean to make a soldier out of this one whatever he says, and I am sure you approve and so will the Colonel.

My best love to you, dear Aunt Charlotte, and to Adam’s father, and I hope your bronkitis is gone when the weather gets better. Your loving niece, Henrietta.” He did not say what was in his mind, finding it difficult to tell her that he knew Henrietta far better than she did, and that this appeal was no more than a crafty backdoor approach to achieve what had, indeed, already been achieved, a confrontation on the importance of family tradition. It passed through his mind that here was an unlikely alliance, an old woman, rooted in a tradition that went back across the three centuries, and the vanity of a girl who wrinkled her nose at realities that had been meat and drink to her father and probably a long string of Rawlinsons. But the old lady was now looking at him intently and he said, with a shrug, “Very well, since you both seem so bound to family precedent I’ll give him the option, providing he wants it. You’ll live another twenty years and be on hand to greet some pimply lad when he struts into the house in his scarlet and gold. There’ll be no question of buying him a commission by then. He’ll have to show some aptitude for soldiering,” and she said, “Poof! As if a Swann would lack it!” and then dropped off to sleep, so that he felt some small satisfaction in bringing her a composure she had probably lacked since the arrival of that extremely artful letter.

He said, when the Colonel and he were at supper, “Don’t think of staying up here alone if she goes, sir. Henrietta would like you to make your home with us, and I should like it too. There’s room enough in all conscience, and you’ll find our part of Kent very much to your taste. Henrietta rides now and it would be pleasant to think of you squiring her round the countryside when I’m away.” The old man seemed attracted by the proposal, for he cleared his throat, saying,

“She really does remind me of your mother, boy,” and his glance shifted to the portrait of the little French woman over the fireplace. He went on, “Something GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 221

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almost piratical about the way we Swanns do our courting. I came across your mother in a pastry cook’s on what I thought of, until then, as enemy soil. Never had second thoughts about her nor her about me. Then you have to scoop a wife from some Godforsaken moor, and apart from the colour of her eyes they’re as alike as two peas. It doesn’t end there, either. There was that tale of your great-grandfather, who served under that damned scoundrel Cumberland. He married the orphan of one of the MacDonalds who had fought at Culloden. Had to resign his commission on that account I’m told, for he could hardly stand by while The Butcher hunted his wife’s kin up and down the glens. Maybe our true role is pacification through marriage.”

“Henrietta would enjoy that story about great-grandfather,” said Adam. “It has the correct romantic touch and doesn’t necessarily have to be true. Will you pack up and come south if you have to?”

“Aye,” said the old man, “gladly. You two and your children are all I’ve got now.” He rode post to Windermere and travelled down to the Rochdale area where he sent his card along to the gaunt new mill, already aiming one more plume of smoke at the blameless sky. A message was brought to him within the hour, and he walked up the hill to an offl oading siding where Sam awaited him in one of the bays, square jaw set, legs planted astride, as though poised to repulse any new attempt upon his dignity as a local overlord. In spite of his stance Adam noticed he had mellowed, and that his aggressive attitude was a pose. There was an aura of conciliation about him and a flabbiness that had not been there when he had come storming into the house to re claim his daughter two and a half years before.

They shook hands and he conducted Adam into an office under a squeaking hoist that continued its laborious work of transferring bales from handtruck to platform all the time they were below. He was friendly enough, however, and called for brandy to drink the health of his granddaughter, of whose existence, Adam soon dis covered, he was aware. He also seemed to have kept silent watch on their movements over the period.

“Lass is settling to t’collar, I hope,” he said, as though Henrietta had been a filly of dubious reputation, and Adam said she was well on the way to becoming the fashion-setter in the district, and was costing him, one way and another, more than he cared to admit.

“Nay, tha’ll have to put a stop to that, lad,” Sam said, seriously, “and it can be done at her age. Wi’ strap if necessary. But then, I’m a fair one to brag, for you’ll ha’ heard I were fool enow to marry again?”

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“No,” said Adam, “I hadn’t, and I’m sure it will be news to Hen rietta.

Congratulations, from both of us.”

“Tha’ can spare me that,” Sam said, glumly, “for I thowt as I knew women but discovered I didn’t, no more’n a bit of a lad. I picked a fair tartar second time round. Henrietta’s mother was stiffnecked but our Hilda, she’s ahead of her by a mile or more. Mind, she’s a gradely lass, and a comfort to a man night times at my time o’ life, but there’s no putting on her. We had our picture took by a chap who set up his studio hereabouts,” and he opened a drawer in his desk and extracted, not without pride, a photograph of man and wife, set in a gilded, oval mount with the obligatory palm-tree growing beside the table at which Sam was sitting.

The new Mrs. Rawlinson looked about thirty and well able to take care of herself. She had abundant hair, a robust, tightly corsetted figure, and a proprietary air, indicated by the presence of one muscular arm resting possessively on Sam’s shoulder, as though hold ing him there until the police arrived, “Ah kept this one by if you care to take it, and show it t’lass,” he said and then, with a snort, “Eee, lad, there’s no dam’ sense in father and daughter going to their graves wi’out a friendly nod to one another. I’ll own I were wrong about you, for I took you for a popinjay, wi’ nowt about him but swank and a way wi’ the lasses. I’ve kept my eye on that venture o’ yours and it’s got around you give value for money. Are you ready to let bygones be bygones, and handle my stuff?”

“I’ll haul anyone’s goods who pays on the nail,” Adam said, and the reply must have pleased Sam for he smacked his thigh and ex claimed, “That’s how I’d like to hear a son o’ mine talk! I’m reet glad now Henrietta gave yon Goldthorpe the go-by. When I were in deep water, after t’mill were burned down, I soon found the differ ence between friends and vampires. Goldthorpe had the gall to offer me a loan at nine per cent. Think on it! Nine per cent! Come to finish I got what I needed at half the rate, and I’m in a fair way to setting up again, as you can see from where you sit, lad.”

Adam acknowledged this but queried Rawlinson’s motives in offer ing him a road haulage contract. “You have the rail here,” he said, “and while we can make cheaper and quicker hauls to the north the bulk of your exports must go direct to Liverpool, by freight train.”

“Ah’m not concerned about what goes out,” said Sam, gloomily, “it’s t’raw material Ah’m bothered about. You’ll have heard about the carry-on in the plantations no doubt?”

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“Might?
Nay, lad, it’s not just a bit of a shindig, that’ll sort itself out in a week or two. Six months from now no more than a trickle o’ cotton wil come out of the Carolinas and Georgia, so how in hell are we to keep wheels turning in the Belt?” For the first time since he had read of the dispute between the states Adam gave the matter serious thought. “If you knew it was coming,” he asked, “why didn’t you buy in bulk, the moment Lincoln was elected President?” but Sam said, blankly, “Nay, do you still think I’m that much of a fool, lad? I
have
bought, but not from the Liverpool men. They’re alive to it down there, and the scramble for bales began the moment word came of Carolina’s secession. I bought in bulk, and chartered ships to bring it in and offload at Whitehaven. Why Whitehaven?

Because if it came in to Liverpool it would start a run, and how could I trust the shipowners not to sell to others, and blackmail me into paying three times the wholesale? Nay, I were two jumps ahead of all of ’em. There’s two cargoes up there awaiting my collection at this moment, and your waggons can hump ’em in any time you’ve a mind to, subject to a fair rate per ton, mind. That’s what you and I should settle before we part company. No damn sense at all in letting money pass out of the family.”

“Won’t the war with the North compel the planters to export all they can pick?”

“Aye, they’ll try, no doubt, but there’s talk now of a blockade, and if that happens all Lancashire is for the bankruptcy court, lad.”

“Given those two shipments, how long could you hold out?”

“A year, or more with what I’ve hoarded,” Sam said, so they agreed the rates there and then, with the minimum of bargaining. Sam urged him to come home to dinner and try Hilda Rawlinson’s cooking, but Adam had wasted enough time already and was impatient to acquaint Catesby with the details of the deal and the Border Triangle situation, and then return to London to get things moving. Sam saw him as far as the station, and even went so far as to give him a paternal pat on the shoulder when the branch line train slid into the platform. He said, as they shook hands, “Will you gam mon Henrietta into calling a truce, and sending me a picture of the little lass?” and Adam said he would do his best and mentioned that Henrietta expected her second child within a few months. The news delighted Rawlinson, who said, pursing his thick lips, “Eee, that’s the style, lad! Put ’em to bed and give ’em plenty to think on!”

He watched the solid figure dwindle as the train gathered speed, thinking,

“The old man might be a coarse brute, but he’s human somehow, and all of a piece with the landscape.”

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The travelling diary was still in use, but its function as a record had been superseded by a much fatter book, a book almost as thick as a Bible, with brown leather covers and a thousand ruled sheets.