"What are you going to do with it, Sam? Leave it to charity?"
To judge by his father-in-law's expression, the question came close to killing him on the spot. He said, gesturing wildly with his fat, freckled hands, "Charity? Sweat bloody guts out for close on eighty years to cosset layabouts who never took jacket off for nobody, 'emselves included? Nay, lad, you can't be that daft! You know me a dam' sight better than that! Charity! There's too much bloody charity nowadays! No wonder country's not what it were in my young days, when it were sink or swim. Ah'm leavin' the lot to you, to do as you please with. And it'll amount to something when all's settled up, Ah'm tellin' you!"
"Good God, I don't want it, Sam. I'm already the wrong side of seventy, and I've got all the money I'm likely to spend!"
"Aye, I daresay, though a man can always do with a bit more. Besides, it's not as cut an' dried as that, as you'll see if you'll hold your tongue, lad. I've had Skina-rabbit Fossdyke make a trust fund in your name. That way you can spread it around whichever way you've a mind, so long as it stays in t'family."
"How do you mean, exactly?"
Sam was silent for a moment or two, seemingly occupied in getting his breath and marshalling his thoughts. Finally, he said, "Put it this way. You and me, we had nowt to begin with, but we each of us finished up with a pile big enow to make men tip their hats to us, didn't we?"
"You could put it that way."
"It's the on'y way to put it. Use that brass o' mine to feed any one o' them lads or lasses who shows my kind o' gumption. And your kind of gumption. Any one of 'em, mind, man or maid, who'll stand on their own feet an' look all bloody creation in t'face, same as we have. Do you follow me now?"
It made sense, Sam's kind of sense. Bloated and dying, in an ugly house in a Manchester suburb, Sam Rawlinson obviously looked back over his life with immense satisfaction, hugging his commercial success (the only success worth having in his view) as a just reward for his prodigious and profitable endeavours over the years, thereby earning the respect of all men dedicated to the same object, and a man with any other objective was a fool, counting for nothing. He would want to see that money well spent and in a way he would spend it if, by some miracle, his youth and vigour were restored to him at this moment. There was a kind of merciless logic in the gesture, for Sam would restrict the deserving to those who, like himself and his son-in-law, backed themselves against all comers. He said, with a shrug, "Well, you might do worse, Sam. I get the drift of it, and you can rely on me to do it your way. Is that all?"
"Nay," said Sam, "it's not all. Ah've been wanting a word in your ear for long enough. Mebbe I won't get another chance."
Adam waited, but for some moments Sam's gaze remained blank. Then, unexpectedly, he rallied and said, very carefully, "It were about young George. Him and that kiss-your-arse manager he sets such store on. What's the name? Same name as that old maid of a clerk you had down there, before you took it into your head to back out and leave t'lads to run your business."
"You mean Tybalt? Wesley Tybalt, the son of my head clerk?"
"Aye, that's him. I got word he wants watching."
It crossed Adam's mind then, and for the first time since entering the room, that Sam was wandering. Wesley Tybalt, the only child of his old friend in the rough and tumble days, had lately established himself as the most dynamic administrator they had ever had. George himself said so, others echoed his judgment, and even his excessively modest father, now retired and devoting himself full-time to his East End mission work, agreed with them. Sam had always been keenly interested in the expansion of Swann-on-Wheels, but he had never had anything to do with its dayto-day administration. It seemed extremely improbable that now, at nearly ninety, and a housebound invalid into the bargain, he could have discovered anything of importance about the firm's affairs. Wesley Tybalt had served his time up here, but so had everybody else who held a position of responsibility at Headquarters. It was a Swann rule that promising executives should spend six months in every region before joining the London staff, so Sam might well have met and evaluated Tybalt when he was based in the north. That could hardly account, however, for so direct a warning. He said, sharply, "You'll have to be a damned sight more explicit than that, Sam. I'm out of things now, as you well know. George is gaffer, and Giles is next in line. My other two younger sons, Hugo and Edward, are in the network, but I've never once had reason to suppose George wasn't making a thorough go of it. If there was a flaw in young Tybalt, I would have heard about it. One or other of the boys would have told me, and asked my advice, no doubt."
"Not George," Sam said, once again clamping his aggressive jaws like a rat-trap. "George is a loner, as you've good cause to know. Your memory's not that short, lad."
That much at least was true. Ever since taking over, George had gone his own way without seeking anyone's advice but the business had prospered under him, despite an occasional misjudgment, like the premature introduction of those mechanical vans some years back. As for young Tybalt, Adam had been prejudiced in his favour a long time now, partly, no doubt, because he had received such unswerving loyalty from his father over a period of thirty years. He had met him often during his visits to the yard, a tall, loose-limbed, toothy young man, with thin sandy hair and an ingratiating manner. Not a boy you could like, perhaps, but one who knew precisely what he was about when he came to having charge of the network's clerical concerns. Every single question Adam had ever put to him concerning stock and trends and routes had prompted a concise and realistic answer. He said, doubtfully, "What put this into your head, Sam? Where did it come from? Has George been up here lately?"
"He came once. A few weeks since, when I was still up and about, but he weren't the same lad as back along. There were no flies on him then but there are now. One in particular, I'd say."
"Who would that be?"
"Nay, I can't swear to that. I could've one time, when I was around to put the ferrets in if I wanted to know anything partic'lar. But I'll lay long odds it's a woman. He were dressed to the nines and had his hair smarmed down and smelling like a garding."
"Did he talk to you about business?"
"Nay, he didn't. And that was what made me sit up an' take notice, for he alwus had before, whenever he looked in on me. Like I say, he weren't t'same lad at all, so I got to talking with one or two of the old uns who dropped in to pass the time o' day wi' me and I got a hint or two."
"What kind of hint?"
"That Swann's New Broom was cutting a dash wi' the quality an' leavin' too much to his clerks. I seen many a good man go bust that way. So have you, I daresay."
"And young Tybalt. Have you ever met him?"
"Can't say as I have but old Levison has. Come to think on it, Levison was the one who tipped me the wink."
"Who the devil is Levison?"
"Levison and Skilly, big warehousemen, Liverpool way. Done a deal o' business with 'em in my time, but they don't haul by your line. Their stuff goes south on the cheap with Linklater's outfit. These things get around. They always have an' they always will among folk who count."
"What got around, exactly?"
"Nowt to speak of…" He was tiring rapidly and his breathing became laboured so that Adam thought, I can't press him now, although I'd give something to know what put that bee in his bonnet. He rose, massaging the straps of his artificial leg. "I'll think on it."
Sam said, watching him narrowly. "Bloody memory's not what it were, dam' it!" He fumbled for his hunter watch, hanging by its heavy gold chain from the bedrail. "Time for me green pills," he said, vaguely. "Better fetch our Hilda up, lad. You'll be staying over a day or so?"
"We're staying at the Midland. Hilda has enough on her hands, Sam."
"Aye," Sam said, listlessly, "she's a good lass, but she never did the one thing I expected of her." He rallied momentarily, glaring the full length of the bed at an atrocious seascape hanging on the far wall. "Ah'd have liked a son to follow on. Hetty's litter is well enough but a la
ss isn't the same, somehow."
His chin dropped and his thick red lips parted. Adam went out, closing the door softly and calling to Hilda that it was time for Sam's green pills. Hetty asked, handing him a cup, "How did you find him, Adam?"
"Very talkative," Adam said, thoughtfully. "He'll soldier on a bit yet if I'm any judge." And then, as if she had expressed a contrary view, "He's a man of parts, your father. There aren't many of his sort about nowadays."
"There never were," Henrietta said, "even when I first remember him. That was twelve years before you saw him ride a boy into the ground the night they were burning his mill." Then, in a more conciliatory tone, "Do you suppose he remembers things like that now, Adam? Now that he's dying, I mean?"
"If he does he doesn't regret 'em."
"But… shouldn't he? I mean, now that he's going? I'm sure I would. You too."
"That's the difference between us and between the times, too. In Sam's day, in my early days come to that, it was kill or be killed. You can't expect a man reared in a jungle to fall to his prayers in his dotage. Not without his tongue in his cheek that is. He asked me to ask Hilda to show us a copy of his will."
"I don't want his money."
"You're not getting any, m'dear," he said, enjoying her swift change in expression that told him that, in so many ways, and notwithstanding her lifelong disapproval of Sam's ethics, she was still Sam Rawlinson's daughter.
2
He was wrong. Sam died in his sleep three days later, and they were obliged to stay on for the funeral. In the interval, Adam had chatted with the old chap several times, but neither made further reference to that curious warning about the dash George was cutting with the quality or the dubious reliability of his yard manager, Tybalt. Instead they talked about old times, and mutual acquaintances in the cotton world, and Adam was not surprised to see several of his cronies at the graveside, heavy, unsmiling men, watching the committal of Sam as though his coffin contained money as well as a corpse. It was not until the journey home that Adam re-addressed his mind to the hints Sam had dropped, turning them over and over as the train rushed southwards at nearly twice the maximum speed it had attained when he escorted Henrietta, an eighteen-year-old bride, on her first journey out of the north. George was cutting a dash among the quality. George was taking time off to squire a woman, obviously not Gisela, his pretty little Austrian wife. George was leaving too much to his manager and the manager needed watching. It didn't add up to much and finally he asked of Henrietta, who was deep in the Strand Magazine he had bought her at the bookstall, "Is everything all right between George and Gisela, Hetty?"
She looked up a little irritably. "All right? So far as I know. Whatever made you ask a question like that?"
"Just something Sam said, but he might well have been rambling. George was there a few weeks back and looked in on them. 'Dressed to the nines an' smellin' like a garding' according to Sam."
"Is that all he said?"
"More or less. He hinted that George was gadding about and maybe neglecting the business, but I couldn't make head nor tail of it at the time. Do you see much of Gisela these days?"
"Not as much as I did but that doesn't signify anything. She's four children now, and a big house to run." She prepared to re-address herself to her magazine and he said, with a grin, "Don't you care that much, Hetty?"
"No," she admitted, frankly. "I can't say as I do. They're all old enough and ugly enough to watch out for themselves, as my nanny Mrs. Worrell would have said. George in particular, for George has always gone his own way. How old is he now?"
"Thirty-three last February." He had a wonderful memory for trivia but he had a special reason for remembering George's exact age. The boy had been born on St. Valentine's Day, 1864, a day when the fortunes of Swann-on-Wheels, near to foundering at that time, had taken a dramatic turn for the better, paving the way for what Adam always thought of as their sortie torrentielle into big business. Because of this, and the boy's temperament, he had always seen George as a goodluck talisman. They had never looked back from that moment, not even when he was away from the yard for a whole year learning to walk on one sound leg and an ugly contraption made up of cork and aluminium.
"Well," she said, "there's your answer. He was always a wild one but Gisela knows how to manage him. You've said so yourself many a time."
"So I have. Go back to that story you're reading. It must be a good one."
"It is," she told him, "it's a Sherlock Holmes." The conversation lapsed, but he continued to think about it, trying to make a pattern out of the few stray pieces but not succeeding, no matter how many times he fitted one into the other, so he fell to marshalling his recollections on the boy's past.
For years now George had been a slave to that yard, devoting even more time to it than had Adam himself in his early, strenuous days. That much was known about George, not only inside the family and firm but all over the City, where men talked shop over their sherry and coffee. It was hard to imagine George as a masher, a gadabout, or even a dandy. He had an eye for the girls, certainly always had, ever since, as an eighteen-year-old, he was all but seduced by one of the manager's wives up in the Polygon. What was her name again—Lorna? Laura?—Laura Broadbent, that was it, who had a brute of a husband, a man George had ultimately unmasked as a thief. It was on account of that he had sent the boy abroad and he seemed to remember that George had had a high old time in Paris, Munich, and ultimately Vienna, where he lodged in the house of a carriage-builder, with four pretty granddaughters. One of them, Gisela, George had married and not before time, if Adam's arithmetic was correct.
Since then, so far as he knew, George had never had time to sow wild oats. For two years or more he had been besotted by that engine he brought home and after that, when he had proved his point by actually making the thing run, he had taken over as gaffer at the yard. The relationship of father and son, once strong, had weakened over the years. Since his retirement eight years ago, Adam had leaned on Giles harder than any of them, but he seldom talked shop with Giles. Mostly they discussed politics and social issues, subjects that interested them both. As for young Tybalt, he would take a lot of persuading that a young fellow in his position would play fast and loose with his future. Wesley Tybalt came from exceptionally sober stock, and his father was always on hand to hold a watching brief. It therefore seemed very unlikely that a man like Levison, head of a shipping business in Liverpool, could have heard anything but a rumour to the contrary, and yet… old Sam was certainly no fool when it came to a man's commercial worth.
He recalled then that Levison's firm used a rival haulage line. Linklater's it was, a tinpot outfit, not regarded by any big haulier as a serious rival, and maybe it was there he should look for clues. A dispute between Swann-on-Wheels and Linklater's maybe, in which the latter had been worsted by young Tybalt or George, or both, and had gone away with a grudge of some sort? A long shot, so long that it was hardly worth looking into, especially as he was supposed to be out of it these days. But he knew he was not out of it, and would never be out of it. Swann-on-Wheels had been his life for thirty-odd years. All his possessions and personal triumphs derived from it, and a man could never slough off a burden as big as that, certainly not when his own kin were carrying it forward into the new century.
He was glad then that he had arranged for Hetty to travel home while he stayed a night in town to view a furniture sale at Sotheby's. Some choice pieces were coming up, part of the collection of Sir Joseph Souter, and he rarely missed an important furniture, picture, or porcelain sale these days. They filled the vacuum caused by his exchange of the roles of haulier and connoisseur. He would drop in at the yard after the viewing and have a word with both George and Tybalt, scratching around for confirmation of Sam's hints if any was to be found. And having decided this, he made his mind a blank, as he had trained himself to do over so many tedious train journeys in the past. In seconds he was asleep.
3
He stood with his bac
k to the familiar curve of the Thames looking the width of Tooley Street at the sprawling rectangle that had been the heart and pulse of his empire since he came here in the steamy summer of '58. A jumble of sheds, lofts, and stables crouched around the slender belfry tower, all that remained of the medieval convent that had once occupied the site. When the Plantagenets had used that bridge, the tower had doubtless summoned a few dozen nuns to prayer. During his long tenure up there it had overseen hauls the length and breadth of the island, a lookout post from which, in a sense, he could see the Cheviots and the Cornish moors, the Welsh mountains running down to the Irish Sea, and the fenlands that drained into the German ocean.
A slum, his wife and customers called it, and technically it was, pallisaded by a tannery, a glue factory, a biscuit factory, a huddle of tiny yellow-brick dwellings, and the grey-brown tideway where a thousand years of South Bank sewage had hardened into a belt of sludge, making its unique contribution to an overall smell of industry that he never noticed, not even now, after he had been inhaling the furze and heather scents of the Weald throughout years of lazy-daisy idleness. He knew every cranny of the enclosure and loved what he knew, seeing it as the powerhouse of the four clamorous tribes that had used this tideway as a base to conquer half the world. Not with sabres and muzzle-loaders like traditional conquerors (although the British had resorted to these times enough) but latterly with merchandise, spewed from their clattering machines and the gold that poured into these few square miles of avarice, expertise and grimed splendour.
Give Us This Day Page 5
