God Is an Englishman (61 page)

He said, touching the manager’s shoulder, “You’re wishing it had been you, John,” and Catesby, raising himself said, “Aye, I am that! He had another fifty years to fight. I’m nearly done.”

“You’ll live to see changes for all that, and your boy helped them forward.” Then, seeing that little he could say would revive the fighter in the man until Catesby had had time to absorb the blow, “I passed three of our waggons on the way in. You didn’t waste any time getting them rolling. Will you write H.Q.

when every laid-off team is at work?”

“Aye, I’ll do that,” Catesby said, thickly, and with a tremen dous effort roused himself, stood up and offered his hand. Adam shook it, thinking that, with deputies like him and Lovell and Edith Wadsworth, he was better placed to take some hand in reshaping the times than in getting himself elected as a legislator. He went out and caught a street-car to London Road, boarding the express for Derby and then a slow train for Ashbourne, his next port of call.

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Riverside Confessional
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Derby and Buxton, where Godsall, a young ex-ensign recently installed by Avery, had made a promising start hauling cheap manufactured goods, mostly tinware, and was breaking new ground with the transport of roof tiles, earthenware, and high-quality porcelain that rated a higher fee than any other type of goods, except explosives.

He took a liking to Godsall, a man of good family who, like him self, had turned his back on a military career in favour of trade but had had the good sense to do it much earlier than Adam. Godsall had served in China under Napier, and had “seen the light,” as he jokingly expressed it, in the course of a pointless war in a bad cause.

He was a lively young man, with plenty of ambition, and because they had both been under fire Adam found he could communicate with him more freely than with civilians. Godsall said, “After storming the Taku Forts I decided that if I was to risk my neck and live rough there was no reason to pay for the privilege. My father was supplementing my pay and allowances to the tune of a hundred a year, but he didn’t take kindly to my resigning a commission. He and my sisters are appalled by my going into trade. They talk about me as if I was dead.”

“Don’t lose sleep over that,” Adam told him. “I made the same decision after the Mutiny and in five years I haven’t reconciled my wife to the word “merchant.” You’re making headway up here. When Blubb down in the Kentish Triangle is too old and too soused for the work, would you consider taking over the Tonbridge depot? It’s more profitable than this will ever be, and the prospects for you would be that much better.”

“Better wait and see how I shape, Mr. Swann,” Godsall said, and Adam, approving his caution, passed down into the other Pickings, based on Worcester, then on into the Southern Square, where the enterprising but unlikeable Abbott was handling a fleet of nearly thirty waggons based on Salisbury, and collecting the milk piped into the capital along the South-Western every morning.

From here, having settled to the collar again, he found his way back to the headquarters, not caring for the stench of London after the clean air of the uplands but reflecting that he had seldom made a more rewarding journey. He was surprised, on entering the Bermondsey yard, to see his own yellow gig standing outside Tybalt’s office, and as he approached the Colonel came out of the counting-house, his old face lighting up as he saw his son. Then the expression of pleasure faded and was replaced by a look of uncertainty, as he said, with obvious relief, “Well, thank God you’ve shown up at last, boy! They told me you might be hard to find,” and Adam, scenting more trouble, said, “Anything wrong at home?”

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“Not wrong exactly,” the Colonel said, evasively, “but there could have been if I hadn’t taken a hand.” He looked round carefully. “We’d best talk, boy, and when I’ve had my say no word of it is to reach Henrietta about me waylaying you. That way she’ll think she’s kept her silly secret, and good luck to her. Where can we go?” Adam led the way up the belfry stairs and threw open a window. “This is as good as any place,” he said, grimly, “for I’ve reconciled myself to camping here until I’m as old and evasive as you.”

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Four

skiRmish on shallott

1

When Henrietta opened her eyes shortly before eight and found him gone she was reassured rather than otherwise. His abrupt disappear ance at once suggested a return to familiar habits, and this was con firmed as soon as she had checked his room and stables and satisfied herself that his travelling bag and the livery horse were missing. Her spirits soared when, by the evening post, a note from Tybalt reached her, announcing that he was off on one of his far-ranging trips and would be absent for about a week. Gleefully she sought out the Col onel, saying, “I’m not really surprised. It was time he came out of his sulk, and he was almost himself again last night. This surely means he’s decided to put that dreadful business behind him.” And then, rather resentfully, “Why do you suppose he took it so much to heart? Sometimes he almost made me feel as though I had a hand in kill ing the poor little wretch.” The old man rubbed his nose thoughtfully. He had grown very fond of his daughter-in-law since he had made his home with her but he did not credit her with the ability to read his son’s mind or, indeed, to do anything beyond amuse him for an hour or two. In that respect, he mused, she wasn’t in the least like the shrewd little brunette he had courted half-a-century ago, for Monique had been an inward-looking person with a Frenchwoman’s intuitive knowledge of men and male inconsistencies. He said, guardedly, “Ah—um—well, he’s half-French, remember, and we must make allowances for that. The French are a rum lot, with any amount of rum ideas. I recall that even the dull-witted among ’em was half a politician and he’s very far from being dull, m’dear. Got a damned sight more brains than any Swann I ever heard of and I daresay I should have spotted that when he was a half-grown lad and put him to a profession where there was a use for ’em. Made a lawyer of him, maybe, or a parson, al though that was always GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 325

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reserved for the fool of the family in my day.” She laughed at that, kissed him, and skipped away to spend an idle hour with the children’s governess, a gossipy little spinster only a year or so older than herself. Later that day, when supper was done, he passed her room on his way to his own and heard her sing ing so that he thought, with a twinkle, “Maybe she has learned how to handle him after all, for they shared the same bed again last night.

It isn’t so hard to guess what sent him briskly about his business at crack of dawn for she’s a pretty, saucy little pigeon when she sets herself to please,” and suddenly, for the first time in years, he warmed himself for a moment at a physical memory of Monique, with her little rounded limbs and soft, luminous skin, and begrudged the years they had been separated before her death in early middle age.

Her high spirits, and a sense of release, carried her on into the next day, as though to compensate for a month under the cloud of his displeasure. By mid-afternoon, with a heat haze lying over the river valley, she had ridden off through the woods that ran the length of the eastern border of the estate, stretching almost to the river above the islet that she thought of as Shallott.

It was cooler down here and the water was so low that the stream could be forded anywhere, so she crossed over and walked her placid cob along a screen of pollarded willows that lined the towpath until she came to the ox-bow where the head of the islet pointed upstream, its spur piled with the flotsam of spring floods. Down here, with grain fields on each bank, spring was in pell-mell retreat from sum mer. The cuckoo honked his monotonous notes, and wild iris grew in great clumps among the reeds. A vole dived and swam along the bank, its progress marked by a rippling “V,” and finches flirted tire lessly in the thickets. On the far bank, where the woods thinned out, the glades were carpeted with bluebells and the river breeze, soft as a child’s kiss, riffled the surface of the pools.

She had reined in here, on a stretch of path where it ran between two ranks of trees, when she heard a heavy splash that seemed to come from the blind side of the islet. A moment later a blond head bobbed round the spur, moving into midstream towards a pool that was never less than five feet in depth. Then, peering through the foliage, she recognised the swimmer as Miles Manaton, youngest of the Manaton tribe at Twyforde Court, three miles downriver. The sun, slanting through the willows, glinted in his long fair hair and the wisps of that absurd Sir Walter Raleigh beard he was trying to grow, but then, as he turned on his back to float with the current, she saw that he was naked, and giggling she backed away to a point where she could overlook the pool without fear of being seen.

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Skirmish on Shallott
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She knew Miles slightly, having met him at the croquet parties old Mrs.

Halberton had given the previous summer. He was, she recalled, a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery, and on the last occasion they had met he had appeared in his splendid uniform, with frogged jacket, strap-over trousers with a broad red stripe and plumed busby with scaled brass chinstrap. Some of the young women had declared themselves on the point of swooning and had clustered around him in a swarm, one of them even venturing to finger the gold wire of his epaulette. She had thought him very conceited then, and had made a point of demonstrating her failure to be impressed, and he must have noticed this for, later on, when they were all sipping tea and talking nonsense on Mrs. Halberton’s lawn, their eyes had met for a moment and he had smiled. He was, she supposed, a handsome man if you cared for the dandified type. He had a narrow head, curling hair, regular features, a slim, boyish figure in a uniform that would flatter any figure, and a pale complexion, a great contrast to Adam’s tan that turned almost mahogany after a day in the sun. Now she saw that the rest of Miles’ body was as pale as his face, so pale that it looked almost feminine floating there in clear water between the browns and greens of the foliage.

The spectacle interested her without embarrassing her. She had seen but one man mother-naked and he was not in the least like this but altogether harder, tauter and more sinewy, with bunches of knotted muscles and a chest that was like a black mat. Miles Manaton’s chest was as smooth and white as her own, and even his pubic hair was no more than a tuft of golden down.

She took her time, watching him enjoy himself cavorting in the pool and then, with an other giggle, she turned the cob and headed him upstream a hun dred yards or so, cocking an ear meantime for the sound of splashing, and promising herself that when it ceased she would ride down again and let him know that he had been spied upon for this, she thought, would surely puncture his insufferable conceit.

She gave him ten minutes and then rode out into a more open sec tion of the bank, urging the cob into the shallows and letting him drink. In the event, however, it was he who surprised her, for sud denly he called in a cheerful voice, and she saw him standing on the tip of the islet in a shirt, a pair of breeches, and his elegant, calf-length boots. Even in this unconventional dress he looked far more of a man than when he had been naked and certainly more masterful, for although he was fair there was something Byronic about the way his shirt flared open at the neck, and the trick he had of standing with legs planted astride and hands resting on hips.

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He called, “Hello, there! It’s Mrs. Swann, isn’t it?” and shaded his eyes against the sun so that she called back, “Yes, Mr. Manaton. And when you go swimming again put a notice on the towpath!”

She thought that would take the bounce out of him, but it did noth ing of the kind. He threw back his head and laughed, calling, “You’re a regular Peeping Tom!” and it was almost as though he had said, “How lucky you are! That’s a rare privilege, I can tell you!” so that suddenly she found herself blushing.

He shouted, cupping his hands, “Ride on over. Take the narrow part of the channel, it’s no more than a foot deep,” and when she hesitated, “This is a wonderful place. I used to come here a lot as a boy!” The statement did a little to reassure her. He was, she thought, still a boy, and therefore likely to be manageable, so she started across the twenty-yard strip that divided the islet from the path.

He came to greet her, a pleasant smile on his woman’s mouth, and droplets still glistening in his beard. She said, for something to say, “I often come by here and I’ve always wanted to cross. It looked a romantic place, as if there ought to be a castle on it.”

“Oh, but there is,” he said, and when she looked astonished. “Well, not a castle, exactly, but a bower. It was a place people used to fish but that was before your time.”

He talked, she thought, as though she was a little girl and his half-grown beard gave him the right to patronise her.

“Get down,” he went on, almost as an order, “and I’ll show you. We’ll tether the cob.”

She was not in the least sure about getting down but to refuse would be to give him the advantage, and he had already taken far too much for granted, as though she was one of those young idiots who had flattered him at the croquet party. With a man of his type, she thought, it simply would not do to stand on ceremony, and the ob vious way to draw level was to avoid giving him the impression that she took him seriously. She said, “Hold the bridle, then,” slipped her stirrup foot free, hooked her leg over the horn, and slid to the ground, managing to elude his attempt to catch her. He said, looping the cob’s reins round a thorn tree, “It’s in here, under the trees. One of your predecessors built it, years ago. Then old Wilson Conyer patched it up, for he used to come here after the trout.”