God Is an Englishman (77 page)

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Lee surrenders and the Yanks re-open the cotton ports. From what I hear, and I’ve had an ear t’ground, we could be back to milk and turnip hauls in the belt when the war ends and the same would be true of any other area where there’s a basic industry and plenty of track laid down.” Fraser, whose territory included the Newcastle-upon-Tyne shipbuilding areas, took up the point. “It depends on rival companies sinking their differences,” he said. “Some would as lief go bankrupt as accommodate one another, and that kind o’ foolishness operates in our favour and always has, to my mind.”

“It won’t last,” Catesby warned. “You’d travel a bloody long road to find a tighter-fisted clan than a railway board, and Fraser’s part right, most of them would watch other investors bleed to death be fore reaching out a hand. But in my area they’re beginning to see the mutual advantages of a cartel and when the notion catches on we can look out for a squall.” He pointed to the wall. “That map there is about filled in now. The next ten years or so will see a few more new lines opened up, but they won’t carry fast traffic and we can disregard ’em.

I’m thinking on places where t’main lines run close together. Suppose, here and there, they pool their road resources as some have already pooled their tracks?

Where do small concerns like ours stand then?” To Adam the threat was not entirely new. In his movements about the country, and in the work of keeping his railway map up to date, he had foreseen something like this, but his thinking had been con ditioned by the fierce rivalry known to exist between all the giant companies, whereas the smaller ones had never presented much of a freight challenge. A railway, of necessity, ran from point to point, and short runs were uneconomic. In a sense this had been the strength of their network, for the linking of two big towns by express trains had automatically isolated smaller centres either side of the track.

He said, putting this into words, “We started the business believ ing that the gridiron brought certain communities closer together and put others back in the days before the coaching companies ran regu lar services. Blubb can tell you about that, for he saw it happen. But Catesby has a point, and an important one. If the companies sink their differences, as they might well be obliged to do sooner or later, and organise freight lines as cartels instead of individual companies, then it follows they would do their damnedest to cut us out altogether. This won’t apply in areas like the Western Wedge and Mountain Square, where the track is thin and the terrain difficult, but it’s a real enough threat in the Polygon, in Kent, along the Border, and up in the Crescents. There are only two ways to meet it and we ought to consider both. One is to step up our speed and build on our GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 412

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reputa tion for punctuality down to the last minute. The other is to take time by the forelock and make a bid for sub-contracts with the railways themselves. Some freight lines have already done that, I’m told.”

“Aye, they have,” growled Blubb, who had never rid himself of his profound distrust for the gridiron, “and I’m told they run at about a penny a hundredweight above cost. There’s no damned sense in kissin’ the backside of a goods manager—beg pardon, Miss—for a haul that’ll cover the carter’s wages, and a bag of oats for his nag, while you turn a blind eye to the wear and tear of your vehicles and teams.”

“I’m not suggesting we do that,” Adam said. “Tybalt and myself could work out a practical quotation on every regular haul, provid ing each one of you gave me prospects and data from companies operating in your own areas. Has anyone here already made personal contact with a local goods manager?” Wadsworth had, admitting to being on friendly terms with the goods manager of the East Lincolnshire line that served the coastal area between Boston and Grimsby, and receiving a black look from Blubb on this account.

“That fact is,” he said, “some of the goods-yard men in Brockworth’s situation would welcome us. Those railway flats are well enough hauling heavy loads over short distances, but they can’t aver age more than three miles an hour over country roads and less in winter. It would pay Brockworth to hire my teams, if I could quote low enough to give the company its pound o’ flesh.” Ratcliffe, Lovell, and Dockett withdrew from the discussion for neither one of them were seriously concerned with railway competi tion, but all the others, notably Fraser, Vicary of The Bonus, Abbott, serving an area crisscrossed with railroads, the Crescent team, and the two depot managers from the Pickings, undertook to explore the possibilities of subcontracting for the haulage of freight consigned to their local railway companies. Only Blubb stood aloof, swearing and muttering under his breath, and saying that no good would come from roadmen consorting “wi’ bloody tea-kettle scum.” His prejudice did not surprise Adam and it even amused some of the younger men, who had grown up with the railways, and whose childhood memories of the coaching era were growing hazy.

Hour after hour, in waning daylight and later in the light of oil lamps brought into the ware house by Tybalt’s clerks, they were hard at it, reducing possibilities to notes, and rough notes to carefully arranged lists of all likely con tracts. When, at last, the conference broke up, and the delegates dis persed to their lodgings with the prospect of a Sunday journey back to their depots, a detailed campaign had been mapped out and Tybalt, flexing his right hand to moderate the effects GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 413

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of penman’s cramp, was more elated than Adam had ever seen him. He crowed, in the presence of a more restrained Keate, “Something spectacular might well come of this, Mr. Swann. I feel it, feel it here!” and he beat his pigeon chest with anticipated triumph. “The fact is,” he went on, “if it falls out as I think it might it could treble our turnover. Frankly, sir, I’ve always been disposed to try and co-operate with the railways, but Mr. Blubb isn’t the only prejudiced man in the yard. Some of the older waggoners stand behind him and at the risk of sounding impu dent, sir, I always entertained a suspicion that you yourself enjoyed beating the railway companies at their own game.”

“I did,” Adam admitted, “but I never made the mistake of imagin ing that we could stay in business indefinitely without them. Or the nation either for that matter. I’ve always subscribed to the theory that the history of a tribe is the history of its transportation system, and nobody but a fool would argue that British railways weren’t the best in the world, as well as being the first. Catesby’s right.

We’ve got to go to work for them, even if we have to do it on a margin of five per cent profit. Cut your estimates to the bone when you get down to them, Tybalt. What we need even more than capital now is a vastly increased turnover.

With that I can get credit wherever I need it.” He went up to his tower and retrieved hat, topcoat, and gloves, pausing for a moment to look down over the familiar view of the Thames, now picked out in blobs of gaslight so that the surface of the river showed as a linked line of triangular silver pools splashed across a scaffold of black velvet. It was Saturday night, and the weekly Saturnalia was already erupting in the streets between yard and docks, narrow blades of naphtha flares thrusting east-north-east across the bow of the river towards Rotherhithe. High above, stars were beginning to show so that the city looked like a fat, ageing courtesan, displaying the jewels of youthful conquests. He thought pleasantly of all that had been achieved in the last forty-eight hours, and what it promised in terms of expansion of a kind that even he had never contemplated, not even in his most optimistic moments.

They were a splendid team, and he owed their selection to no one but himself for he had handpicked every one of them, but in all other spheres he had needed constant advice and encouragement, above all encourage ment, and it seemed to him that he had been very lucky in this re spect. Not once had he been turned away by the people he trusted.

There was Josh Avery, blast him, whom most men would regard as a damned scoundrel, but whom Adam could still think of as a friend. There had been Tybalt and Keate, loyal and conscientious to a fault, and surely any enterprise would be GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 414

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lucky to have one much less two such men on hand and so deeply committed.

There was Catesby, whom he had once thought of as a rebel, but whom he would now trust with his pocket-book. And there was that truculent old diehard Blubb, who had repaid the trust placed in him tenfold over the last few years.

Above all there was Edith Wadsworth, and it continued to puzzle him to know precisely how he felt about Edith or, for that matter, how she felt about him, for although she was prob ably the most committed of all there was restraint in her approach every time they met, and he wondered if it had to do with him personally or with events that had occurred before they knew one another, a sense of having been cheated of the sweets of life when her sailor lover drowned off Holy Isle, condemning her to a life of make-do and loneliness. Then, as he was shrugging himself into his coat, he heard a rap on the door, and thinking it was Tybalt with an after thought, called, “Come on in,” and there she was, cloaked and hooded for her overnight journey back to Boston and no time to spare either if Wadsworth had been right about the train he meant to catch.

She said, a little breathlessly, “Father’s got a cab waiting. I made an excuse to come back, saying I forgot these,” and she held up a pair of cheap cotton gloves.

“I wouldn’t resort to anything as feminine as that for anyone but you.” He said, “I looked out for you to say good-bye but you’d gone. Your father seemed in a great hurry.”

“Well,” she said petulantly, “he can wait and if we miss the train we’ll catch the next.” Then, more directly, “You haven’t been near the Crescents since the summer and you haven’t written.”

“You expected me to?”

“I was curious to know if you followed my advice that time. I gather you took part of it, and bought Tryst.”

He told her then, holding nothing back, how he had struck a bar gain with Henrietta, and how it had appeared to provide a complete answer to his domestic problems. “Things have been jogging along happily enough,” he said, “and that’s due to your straight talking. I should have written but it wasn’t an easy thing to set down on paper.”

“It’s a good marriage now? It’s working in a way it didn’t work that time you followed me up to the Swale in the summer?”

“It was the perfect prescription and gave Henrietta something to think about.” He smiled, not quite comprehending her hesitant and pensive expression. “She’s expecting another child in February.”

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with her hands and began to fidget with her gloves. She turned away rather abruptly, crossing to the window and standing with her back to him. “That’s what I came back to hear,” she said. “I guessed it but I had to be sure,” but then, her voice rising, so that it seemed to him almost querulous. “I’ve wished times enough I’d given you very different advice but that’s my handicap. I’m a bad liar and I should always find it difficult to lie to you about anything, much less a matter of that kind.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

She turned and looked at him frankly. “No? Well, there’s no harm in spelling it out, or not now. I happen to love you, Adam Swann—no, let me say what I’ve got to say. It’s this. I’d come to terms with loving and losing one man and then, when I lost him, making do with what came out of the bran tub, if anything. I thought that was the kind of person I am and must abide by it. But as it happened I was wrong. Oh, I loved Matt Hornby, and it took me a long time to get over losing him that way, but then you had to come bustling up and soon it was Matt all over again. A different kind of love, maybe, but now I’m just as trapped as I was after Matt’s brig went down and slammed the door on me.” She paused but he said nothing, knowing she had not finished. Presently she went on, “Here’s the real reason I made a silly excuse to come back and it wasn’t to throw myself at your feet. It was to tell you that we aren’t likely to meet again.”

“But that’s nonsense,” he burst out, crossing to her and taking her hand but she snatched it away, saying, “Don’t touch me! For God’s sake don’t encourage me to undo all the good that’s been done here in the last two days. Before you know it you’ll be in a different kind of trouble. There are plenty of men who can separate private and business life that way, tuck someone like me away in a love-nest and hang up a sign, ‘Business as usual.’ But you’re not one of them, Adam Swann! I know you, and I think I know myself. We’ll have it all or we’ll have nothing and make the best of it. You’re not in love with your wife in the way I think of love but to run an under taking of this size you need your wits about you twenty-four hours of the day. That’s why a settled domestic background is essential to you, as much as it is to men like Keate and Tybalt, and all those others who depend on you. I’d put up a fight against that child-wife of yours, and not think the less of myself for doing it, but I don’t propose to pit myself against something as complex as Swann-on-Wheels. It’s far more than a means of livelihood to you, and far more than a profession. It’s
you,
the real you, and I wouldn’t care to put that at risk. That’s why I’ve made up my mind to go.”

“To go where? Damn it, this isn’t rational. It isn’t fair on you or me…” GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 416

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“Not fair? Don’t talk like a child! What’s the alternative? I could make you a good wife in every way and it isn’t solely your bed I want to share, or the sons I could bring you. There’s nothing I should like better than to share life with a man of your stamp. But things being what they are it’s out of the question, particularly since Henrietta has put her mind to the business. What could we salvage from a situation of that kind? A hole-in-the-corner association, with you dividing your time and energy three ways instead of two. Besides, as I said, I know myself better than that. If you held me in your arms once I wouldn’t give a damn what happened to Swann-on-Wheels or your wife.”