God Is an Englishman (83 page)

It seemed that once again Hamlet had turned local circumstances to good account. Lord Augustus, a fanatical fox-hunter who main tained numerous packs and country-seats between Exe and Tamar, had already passed into legend, and was now a figure of fun in a nation that had come to take the gridiron for granted. Adam could recall a time when Courtenay-Hopgood’s peers, equally devoted to the cult of the horse, had sneered at its challenger, but that was long ago, before men like Aaron Walker had poured molten gold through the chinks in their armour and bought off all but the diehards like Lord Augustus, who still opposed every railway bill that came be fore the Lords. Now, it seemed, Lord Augustus had taken a fancy to concentrate his packs in the hilly, wooded country behind Barnstaple Bay, not very far (as a hunted fox might run) from the spot where the lion Dante was induced to surrender, making Hamlet Ratcliffe’s chubby features almost as famous as those of Courtenay-Hopgood. There were no railways within miles of the new seat—Lord Augustus had made certain of that. Furnishings, Hamlet wrote, were to be drawn from hunting lodges dotted about the two counties, plus sufficient necessities from his main seat in East Devon to keep every waggon in the Western Wedge busy for a month. Hamlet added, as a postscript, that money was no object, Lord Augustus being one of the GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 443

3/27/09 5:14:49 PM

4 4 4 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N

wealthiest landowners in the country. His agent had given Swann-on-Wheels
carte blanche,
so long as the firm undertook to have everything in place before the cubbing season opened.

It was as well he had written in detail, giving Adam an inkling of the magnitude of the task, for it was clear that Hamlet loved a lord and had not deigned to consider the needs of his regular customers. Adam said, after ringing for Tybalt, “I don’t question it’s an order worth having, and it’ll keep Ratcliffe out of mischief until the leaves fall, but what about his farm runs? They’re his bread and butter and I won’t sacrifice them for that old fool’s jam. How many frigates has Ratcliffe got down there?”

Tybalt, consulting Frankenstein, said four, adding that the depot manager would probably resort to men-o’-war, but here was an occasion where Adam, considering the problem in the general and dismissing the particular, was prepared to ride roughshod over his clerk. “Good God, man, you can’t shift a nobleman’s French furniture and bric-a-brac across country on open waggons,” he said, “notwithstanding acres of tarpaulin. Down there it rains six days out of seven and, moreover, Ratcliffe’s men-o’-war are old and springless. How would it look if the goods were sodden, or shaken to pieces by the time they arrived at his new place?

No, my friend, we’ll have to shunt half-a-dozen frigates down from the Southern Square, and replace them from here. According to my recollection Abbott has nine based on Salisbury and they won’t all be in daily use at this time of year.”

“Mr. Abbott won’t like that at all,” said Tybalt, but Adam said Abbott would have to lump it. The Southern Square manager was an improviser, but Ratcliffe had hooked a big fish, and it was the busi ness of Headquarters to make sure he landed it.

Twilight stole into the turret while they juggled with teams, vehi cles, and mileages over the roads Ratcliffe’s carters were likely to use in hauls across Devon uplands and along marshy river-bottoms, and it was dark before they found satisfactory answers to the com plicated sums. Then Tybalt crept away, clutching a sheaf of instruc tions that would, Adam supposed, keep the conscientious chap busy far into the night. He said, as the clerk withdrew, “Take a cab home, Tybalt, and do your work at your fireside, after supper. It’s damned cold in that counting-house when everyone has gone. Charge the cab to the petty cash. Even you’ll agree we can afford it today.”

Tybalt said, hovering, “Thank you, sir. Will you be making a night of it?” but Adam said he would not, having decided to spend the night at home and postpone the northern trip until the current problems were settled in detail.

GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 444

3/27/09 5:14:49 PM

Valentine’s Day Breakout
4 4 5

There were one or two items that needed his attention before the last post went out, and he lit the lamp and one of his favourite Bur mese cheroots, shooting his long legs under the desk and blowing smoke rings towards the vaulted ceiling. Slowly the clatter of the yard subsided as draymen came and went and Keate’s staff walked the horses to their stables. Lights twinkled across the city beyond the river, and in the violet dusk he saw the Conqueror’s towers dissolve.

He thought, pleasantly, “What a day! I had a feeling we were turn ing the corner when I opened Dockett’s letter but that was hours ago. Now we’ve not only turned it but been kicked round it and are run ning downhill at a pace that’s making Tybalt’s head spin! Dockett’s slogan and removal bookings, Morris’s Royal Worcester contract, Sam Rawlinson’s dock-to-mill, all-the-year-round order in the Polygon, and now Ratcliffe having to borrow frigates from his next-door neighbour before putting his name to the best contract we’ve ever screwed out of his patch! If we go on like this we shall be clear of debt by September. One more heave and I could be owner of Tryst into the bargain!” He got his bonus heave. Footsteps echoed on the staircase and he called, in response to a light knock, “Come in, whoever you are. This is Liberty Hall today!” and as the door opened he smelled lavender and looked into the eyes of the woman to whom he had been trying to write a letter all day.

He jumped up, crushing the butt of his cheroot into a saucer and exclaiming,

“My God! Now it’s
you,
Edith!” and he was so pleased to see her that he did not stop to reflect that she might be here to say good-bye before taking ship from Tilbury for Australia but lunged round the end of the desk, threw his arms round her, and kissed her on both cheeks and finally on the lips.

She said, gaily, “Thank you, sir, but you smell of tobacco!” and he said, holding her at arms length, “And you of lavender, and the bonnier for it!” There was, he noted, a latent sparkle about her as though, for some deep-seated reason, she was moderately pleased with him and herself. She said, “As to the lavender, it’s my Sunday clothes. I don’t go to church often enough and they lay about in closets.

However, I didn’t come here to discuss clothes.” He said, anxiously, “You’re not on your way to join a ship? How could you be?

Your father’s still in the Infirmary, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said, “and doing well. He’ll be home in a day or so, and back at work after a fortnight’s convalescence. No, Adam, there’s no ship and my father doesn’t even know I’m in London, for what I’ve been about is a hole-and-corner business and I’m not sure he’d approve. He might even regard it as treacherous, for I set to work on his cronies in his absence. Quite shamelessly, I might add.” GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 445

3/27/09 5:14:49 PM

4 4 6 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N

Her gaiety kept bubbling through and she peeled off her gloves with what he could only regard as a debonair nourish. “Being greeted in that way,” she went on, “has unsettled my thoughts and that’s a pity for they were very well organised when I entered the yard. Tybalt and Keate know I’m here, by the way, so please behave for we aren’t in Wharfedale now.”

“You’re here on business?
My
business?”

“Very much so.” She looked around. “A convent bell-tower may be a romantic place to work but it’s too Spartan for women lieu tenants. You don’t even have a fire.”

“Oh, I never feel the cold,” he said, “I’ve never quite shed the relief of escaping from under that steamy Bengal heat. Suppose we go somewhere more comfortable? Down to the George, where I could buy you tea and hot muffins?”

“I had tea when I left the train and I’ve not much time, for I mean to catch the seven-ten back to Peterborough. Why Peterborough? Because I’m established there. Permanently I hope but I can’t be sure. It depends on you, I suppose.”

“You’re talking riddles and that means you’re concealing some thing.” An unpleasant thought struck him. “You’re not married, are you?” and she laughed and said, with the same note of gaiety, “What if I were? What’s it to you?”

“I can tell you that,” he said, catching her mood, “I’d be jealous and any blessing you extracted from me would be a grudging one!” Her eyes danced and he began to sense that the threat of Australia was receding.

“You really are a bit of a Turk, Adam, and it isn’t very flattering, even though I’ve never made much secret of my availability as second fiddle. However, I’ll not let myself be sidetracked for, as I said, I haven’t the time. I mean to catch that train and make sure you catch yours. Has that child of yours arrived yet?”

“Any day now, and I’ve just had Henrietta’s father here. He’s buying up an Egyptian cotton crop for a new mill he’s opened in the Polygon and we’ve landed the haulage contract from dock to loom.”

“That’s very encouraging,” she said. “How is business generally?”

“If you had asked me yesterday I should have said middling but right now it’s booming. We’ve had the best day I can ever remember,” and he told her briefly of Dockett’s success, Morris’s new contract, Ratcliffe’s deal with Lord Augustus, and Sam’s plans in Rainford.

“Well,” she said, “that cuts me down to size. I was hoping you were down in the dumps because I’ve got something in my reticule that might be the means of getting Swann-on-Wheels out of debt by Christmas. Now it seems, I’m only the fairy on top of the cake.”

GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 446

3/27/09 5:14:49 PM

Valentine’s Day Breakout
4 4 7

She opened her bag and took out a folded tracing, smoothing it out on his desk. He recognised it as a map of the Crescents and the northern half of The Bonus, including most of Suffolk, scored by the sinuous “Y” of the Great Northern, where it ran north to Peter borough and forked, the eastern branch slicing her territory, the western arm taking a westerly course to Doncaster. To the right, a complicated criss-cross of lines, were the arteries and spurs of the Eastern Counties, with its main route stretching from Peterborough to the sea at Lowestoft. A red-pencilled oval ringed the entire net work. He said, motioning her to his swivel chair, “What the devil have you been up to while your father was in the Infirmary?”

“You remember that railway contact he mentioned at the con ference in December, a nice little man called Brockworth? Well, he’s the goods manager for the Eastern Counties, based at Cambridge and often in our part of the world.

He’s a widower, luckily, with two young children and I…well, let’s say I was able to do him a very good turn. His sister, who keeps house for him, fell sick, so I had the children to stay over the Christmas. It was just before father went into the hospital to have his hernia seen to.”

“What’s that to do with a shift of base to Peterborough? Unless you intend to take on his children permanently?”

“Oh, he’s already suggested that,” she said, laughing, “but I poli tely declined.

The children are nice enough, a bright boy we might employ in a year or two, and a little girl called Angela, but Brockworth himself is no catch, not even for a girl like me. He earns a good wage and has money in the bank I’m told, but he’s fifty-plus and has a wall eye. You’ll have to believe I didn’t strike that kind of a bar gain with him.”

“What kind?”

She took a deep breath, so that for a moment he saw her not as a handsome woman but a vivacious schoolgirl, giddy with enthusiasm for a fad or fashion that pushed everything else out of mind.

“It’s astounding what a volume of goods traffic they handle,” she said. “Far more, proportionately, than the bigger companies that look on goods traffic as small beer compared with fare-paying passengers. Maybe it’s the comparative isolation of their territory, with so many scattered communities. Scattered, mind you, but settled and prosperous, quite unlike the places Ratcliffe and Lovell operate in the West and the Mountain Square. East Anglia is thickly pop ulated, and its industries, although small, are very diverse. But you’d know that.”

“I know it. Go on about the Eastern Counties.” GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 447

3/27/09 5:14:50 PM

4 4 8 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N

“They’re not a particularly wealthy company and sometimes I get the impression they’ll be squeezed out in the end. They can’t afford to invest in more spurlines, like the Great Western and the L. & N.W., and they’ve gone about as far as they can with the capital at their disposal. You remember a majority of depot managers approved that idea we had of exploiting the rivalry between the companies? Well, I went one better than that. I told Brockworth we could offer him a scheme to cover every town, village, and hamlet east of Peter borough to Norwich and beyond, and even down into Vicary’s territory in The Bonus. With a difference, however, and an important one. In this case they transport the goods over their lines to a dozen or more dispersal points,
but they do it in our sacks, which
are sealed on loading.
At each depot we offload them and deliver the rest of the distance in pinnaces.”

“Why in pinnaces?” He had forgotten his personal involvement with her, forgotten indeed that she was a woman at all for this was a new kind of challenge and his imagination took fire. He might have been tackling a logistical problem with Tybalt or her father.

“Because the Eastern Counties handle very few heavy goods,” she said. “It’s all parcels weighing anything between ten to twenty pounds consigned to places like village stores and private addresses, farms and manufactories employing under a dozen hands. Small stuff granted, but an enormous volume of it, and the fact that they make the main haul means we can cut costs to the bone and make it up on turnover. I’ve even worked out test figures. If we deliver a thousand parcels a month, at an average weight of ten pounds apiece, we could show a net profit of threepence a pound on everything under a twenty-mile haul and more if the haul is not above five miles. Pin naces are half as cheap to run as frigates and only a third as costly as a man-o’-war. They’re faster, too, and we could build on our reputa tion for speed. We should need a fleet, of course, but outside London you don’t use your small vans much. Most of them in the territories are doing odd-job work that can’t show you a profit of a penny a pound. I could multiply that by three and keep at least thirty vans in day-to-day use all over Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire. That’s not all, either. If it paid off we could employ the same tactics with bigger lines all over the country, using the Eastern Counties as a pilot scheme. A study of the annual turnover would give us all the information we need to make every railway in the country a sound proposition on the subcontract basis. You might ask, since they already have the traffic, why they should share it with us, but the answer is so simple I wonder we’ve never hit on it before.