Give Us This Day

by R. F Delderfield

  Then, amid a rush of movement and a confused outcry, the man he was holding let go of the stair-rail and whirled his fists, aiming a blow capable, he would have said, of felling a prize-fighter had it not been deadened by the enveloping folds of the dust-sheet; it was still powerful enough to knock him clear of the stairs to a point where he cannoned into the scampering Miriam, sending her crashing against the door of the store room. After that was the wildest confusion, the intruder heaving under the sheet and the four of them arriving in a body at the foot of the stairs and bolting headlong down the corridor to the staff entrance where Meadowes stood, mouth agape and hands upraised to ward off what must have seemed to him a concerted charge. He was swept aside, steel-rimmed spectacles flying one way, peaked cap another, and then they were clear and running through the crowd in the direction of Drury Lane.

  There was no immediate pursuit, or not so far as a glance over his shoulder could tell him as they doubled two more corners before arriving at the eastern arcade of Covent Garden, deserted now but shin deep in litter and baskets and barricaded with costers' barrows half seen under their tarpaulins. He stopped then, catching Soper by the arm and saying, breathlessly, "Into the market— a dozen places to hide!" and they both scrambled over the barrows, pulling the girls after them and found cover in the semi-darkness of the grilled caves beyond.

  Nobody said anything for a moment. The girl Miriam was grimacing with pain, and holding her right hand to her shoulder where it had come into violent contact with the store room door. Soper was spent but otherwise intact. The white of Romayne's petticoat showed through a rent in her skirt and she was already fumbling in her reticule for safety-pins. Then Soper said, soberly, "My God! That was a close shave! Who was he, Mr. Swann?"

  "How would I know? A plain-clothes detective maybe, keeping a lookout for something like this. He seemed to pinpoint the place at a glance."

  Soper's eyes widened as he said, "You mean somebody peached? Someone on the committee? He was stationed there waiting for us?"

  The narrowness of their escape put an edge on Giles's tongue. "I don't think anything of the kind. He was checking the route and saw something unusual. You and your leaflets probably. Why the devil didn't you wait for my signal like we arranged?"

  "We had trouble getting the window open. The frame stuck at less than an inch." This from the girl, still massaging her bruised shoulder.

  "But you actually threw leaflets. I saw some go down."

  "We broke the glass," Soper said. "We had to, there was no other way."

  Giles growled, "Well, at least we know how he spotted us. Not that it matters."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Swann. We muffed it. Most of the leaflets are still up there."

  Giles replied, sourly, "You don't fancy going back to finish the job?"

  Romayne said, sharply, "That's not fair, Giles! What else could they do in the circumstances? At least some leaflets went out."

  The girl Miriam began to cry, quietly and half-heartedly—a child warned that she will be given something to cry about if she doesn't watch out. Giles was suddenly aware of the overpowering might of the forces ranged against them, ranged against everybody in their situation, including the cheering crowds who would soon go home, sun-tired and satisfied with their brief vision of world domination, but expected to make it last until the next free show vouchsafed by the elite. A coronation, a royal wedding, or a Lord Mayor's Show.

  He said, more to himself than the others, "It's no use… these demonstrations… leaflets, placards, with everyone involved risking their jobs. There must be another way, a way that doesn't put everyone at risk." He looked directly at Soper. "You and Miriam would have been recognised by the janitor. You daren't go back to Beckwith and Lowenstein's now."

  "I don't have to. I've given notice. I told the floor manager I was moving to another billet up north. I was paid up last Saturday."

  "You've got another billet?"

  "No. That was a cover, in case something like this happened."

  "You've got a character?"

  Soper shrugged. "I'll use the ones I used to land that job, ones I wrote myself. I was in trouble at my last place. It soon gets around if you're a militant."

  "And Miriam?"

  "She can go back. Meadowes didn't see her."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "I'm sure," Romayne said. "She was last out and I knocked his glasses off while she was still in the corridor."

  Pride in her took possession of him, going a short way to soothe the frustration and humiliation of the day. He said, "You all came out of it better than me. I was supposed to be lookout but I let him get that far. If Romayne hadn't been sharp with that dust-sheet none of us would have got clear. I'm sorry I sneered, Soper. I had no right to. Your stake is a much bigger one than mine and I don't have to remind you what can result from using forged references."

  "That's all right, Mr. Swann." He put his arm round his girl and she winced. "It hurts horribly," she said. "Do you suppose we could find a chemist open and get some arnica?"

  "You stay here," Giles said. "I'll find a chemist's, and a pie-shop, too. You'll be safe enough here until the crowds start dispersing. Then we can all go home. Will you wait with them, Soper?"

  "Anything you say, Mr. Swann."

  He went out into the blinding sunshine, working his way west towards Trafalgar Square and King William IV Street where, on his way to the rendezvous, he had seen shops open. "Anything you say, Mr. Swan…" They all looked to him for a lead, not because he was more qualified to give one than the least of them, but because he was a renegade from the far side of the barricades, a man who owned his own house, wore tailored clothes, and had a famous father. It wasn't good enough, not by a very long chalk, and somehow he would have to improve on it or leave them to get on with it alone. He found a chemist's and bought a bottle of arnica, then a market coffeestand where he bought four meat pies and four bottles of ginger beer, carrying his purchases back to their refuge in the labyrinthine corridors of the market. Romayne took charge of the girl, coaxing her to unbutton her blouse and expose a great purple bruise above the prominent collarbone. He noticed that she flushed when her neck and shoulders were bared and he turned aside, taking Soper over to the grille. He said, quietly, "You'll never get a billet after this and you know it. Have you any experience of clerical work?"

  "I was a ledger clerk at Patterson's, the wholesalers, soon after I left school."

  "Why didn't you stick to book-keeping?"

  "I got sacked after asking for a rise. No shindig at Patterson's, just a straight case of Oliver Twist on that occasion. Don't bother about me, Mr. Swann. I'll look out for myself."

  He liked Soper's spirit and wry sense of humour. Headstrong he might be, but if there were three Sopers in every city emporium the rough-and-ready tactics they had used today would be unnecessary. Real solidarity among the helots was what was needed, and it wasn't impossible. It had already been successful in the heavy industries up north. Bargains could be struck between the vast numbers of havenots and the Gradgrinds in their plush suburban houses. But there were not three Sopers anywhere, much less in a drapery store. More often than not there wasn't one prepared to risk his livelihood for a cause of this kind. He said, "I'll get you a billet with my father's firm. I can tell the truth about you to him. It'll be a fresh start."

  "And the Action Group, Mr. Swann?"

  "We shall have to work for parliamentary backing. It's not impossible. Other trades have achieved it. What we need is some kind of charter to cover all the retail trades."

  "That's looking way ahead, isn't it?"

  "It's better than this hit-and-miss campaign, and I'm going to put my mind to it. Have you got enough money to stay on in your digs for a week or so?"

  Soper grinned. "For a month. On credit if need be. The landlady's daughter fancies me, and she doesn't know about Miriam."

  "Where does Miriam live? She isn't living-in, is she?"

  "No. She lives with an aunt i
n Maida Vale."

  "Get her home and let her rest. She'd better show up tomorrow, and if she should be questioned tell her to give my wife's name as a reference. We'll say she spent the entire day with us and the janitor is mistaken."

  He looked relieved at that, Giles thought, and his estimation of Soper soared another point. "You could get married on the wage my brother George pays his warehouse clerks," he said. "It's above average."

  * * *

  They said little to one another on the way home. The heat in the suburban train was insufferable and everybody in the world seemed to be making his way out of the city. It was only later, when they were standing at the window watching the Jubilee bonfires wink across the Shirley meadows, that he said, suddenly, "How much does all this mean to you, Romayne? This house, servants, security, comfort?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "It's important I should know. Apart from that brief spell, when you ran away and worked in that sweat-shop, you've always been cushioned against poverty. Like me. Like almost everyone we know. We're really no more than salon revolutionaries and I'm tired of facing two ways. But it wouldn't be fair for me to make the decision alone."

  "What decision?"

  "To throw up the firm and get myself adopted as a Liberal candidate, if anyone will have me. Then work full-time at what I believe in, what I've always believed in from the beginning."

  She turned and looked at him speculatively. "You'd do that? You'd walk out on your father's firm for good?"

  "I would. Would you?"

  "You know I would."

  "It's that important to you?"

  "Seeing you spend your life working at something you believe in is important. It doesn't matter what. It never has really."

  He bent his head and kissed her. "I haven't the least idea how to go about it, but…"

  "I have."

  "You have?"

  "I've thought about it a long time now but I didn't say anything. It had to come from you. I think I know how I could get you taken up, with a real chance of getting to Westminster."

  "If you're relying on your father he wouldn't lift a finger…"

  "It's nothing to do with my father. It's an idea I had a long time ago, when we were on holiday in Wales, but don't ask me about it now."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I have to think about it, about the best way of going about it. Just let me work it out and put it to you when I'm ready."

  He thought, distractedly, I'll never know her. Not really, not like old George and Alex know their wives, and certainly not like my father knows Mother. I know no more about her now than that day I fished her out of that river below Beddgelert, when we were kids. But the devil of it is she knows me. Every last thing about me!

  The long day was almost done. From across the meadows came the faint, meaningless sounds of revelry, persistent celebrants sporting round their bonfires, reluctant to write "finis" to a day they would talk about all their lives. He said, as they settled under the flimsy bed-coverings, "Our joint resources won't run to more than three hundred a year, if that. We should have to sell up and move to wherever I was chosen. A terrace house or a cottage maybe."

  "Three hundred a year is six pounds a week," she said. "People bring up big families on that and there's only two of us. Go to sleep, Giles."

  It was a clue, he thought, linking her sponsorship with her apparent inability to bring him a child. In a curious way their relationship had shifted of late, ever since her fourth and last miscarriage. Perhaps she saw him as the only child she was likely to have and was determined, in that queer private way of hers, to make the best of it. His arm went round her but she did not respond, although he could tell she was wide awake. He had a sense then of complete dependence on her and with it a sudden and inexplicable onrush of confidence in the future. Perhaps the day had not been such a failure after all.

  Three

  Bedside Whisper

  Most men, Adam reflected, were diminished by deathbeds, but Sam Rawlinson, his eighty-eight-year-old father-in-law, was clearly an exception. Sam, half-recumbent in a bed that had never been adequate for him, looked so excessively bloated that he made the ugly, over-furnished bedroom seem very cramped for visitors, who were obliged to squeeze themselves between bed and wardrobe and then sit very still for fear of overturning the bedside table littered with Sam's pills and potions.

  Adam was surprised to find him not only rational but loquacious, as though, in the final days of his long, bustling life, he was in a rare ferment to get things tidied up and sorted out, and he received Adam almost genially, croaking, "Now, lad!" in that broad Lancashire accent of his he had never attempted to convert into the city squeak that many men of his stamp affected once they had made their pile. Henrietta had already been in with Hilda, Sam's statuesque second wife, who seemed, improbably, to be giving way to the strain of the old man's final battle against odds, the only one, thought Adam, he was certain to lose. She warned Adam, "You'll find him low but he's tetchy with it. He's had me on the jump for more than a month now. Try and keep him off his dratted affairs, will you?"

  He climbed the gloomy, paint-scarred staircase, reflecting as he went that no one had ever succeeded in keeping Sam off his affairs, for they had been meat and drink to the old reprobate ever since, as a slum-bred lad in Ancoats in the first years of the cotton boom, he had kicked and throttled his way from coal-sorter, to bale-breaker, to the looms, and, at thirty-odd, to part-ownership of his first mill where he worked his hands like galley-slaves. He was already a man of substance when Adam met him, forty years ago, and the fact that Sam still addressed him, at seventy, as "lad," made him smile. Long, long ago they had come to terms with one another, rarely referring to their first confrontation, when Sam had stormed into the Swann homestead threatening to prefer charges against him of abducting his eighteen-year-old daughter. In view of this understanding, they were spared soothing bedside prattle, customary in the circumstances. Adam said, bluntly, "Is there anything special you want doing, Sam?"—a clear enough indication to a man as forthright as Rawlinson that time was running out.

  "Nay," Sam said, "nowt special, lad, tho' I'm reet glad you've come an' no mistake. Couldn't have said what I'd a mind to say to t'lass. Women don't set a proper value on these things."

  "What things, Sam?"

  "Brass," Sam said, uncompromisingly, "and what to make of it. Eee, they can spend it fast enough, the least of 'em, but I never met one who could put it to work. Now that lass o' mine, she'll have made sizeable holes in your pockets over the years."

  "I'm not complaining," Adam said, "and neither should you with an army of grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to spare. There'll be plenty to share whatever you're inclined to leave."

  "That's the rub," Sam said, heaving himself up in an effort to make himself more comfortable in the rumpled bed. "Ah've had second thowts about that. One time I had it in mind to see after our Hilda and split t'rest so many ways. Then Ah got to thinkin'. Most o' the beneficiaries wouldn't have a notion what to do with a windfall that came their way, so I went to old Fossdyke and drew up t'new will. Hilda'll pass you a copy of it if you ask her."

  He was breathing noisily and his broad, battered face had a deep purple flush, so that Adam said, "We don't have to go over it, Sam. You can trust me to follow your wishes."

  "Aye," said Sam, emphatically, "I can that. Come to think of it, you're one of the few Ah've always trusted, and there's none so many o' them." He paused, as though reflecting deeply. "I were luckier'n I deserved about you, but I've owned to that times enough, haven't I?"

  "I've been lucky myself, Sam. What do you want to tell me about your money? That Henrietta is getting the whole of the residue?"

  "Nay," Sam said, clamping his strong jaws, "she's getting nowt, or not directly. Nor young George either, tho' I still reckon him the flower o' the flock."

  It astonished him to hear Sam say this, and with such emphasis. He could understand a man of Sam's temperament fighting
shy of splitting his money into so many insignificant packages, thereby making it seem a less impressive total, but he had always believed Henrietta, as Sam's only child, would inherit the bulk of his fortune, and that George, who had been championed by his grandfather when the boy threw everything aside to redesign that petrol waggon he had brought home from Vienna, would come off best among the children.