"But it's wrong, Jo. It would be terribly wrong with anyone's husband, but yours…"
"It's not wrong unless I say it is, and I don't! I say it's right. Just this one time. As I say, he's drunk, but not so drunk as he won't stir the minute he feels a woman's arms around him. I should know. There's nothing I don't know about Clinton Coles."
The colour in Helen's cheeks flooded back. She sat twisting the ribbon of her nightgown, her eyes fixed on the smears of port on the dressing-table surface.
"How can you be so sure? I mean… why would a thing like that help?"
"I don't know why, I only know it will. Maybe it would break that awful sequence of dreams and, anyway, you'd come alive again and that's what's important right now. Besides, what harm would it do? Do you remember how we schemed to switch our beaux that time at Penshurst? Well, it would make you feel young again, ready to start over again. Good grief, Helen, how long is it since a man held you in his arms?"
It was a question she could not answer. Eight months had passed since Rowley was butchered, but long before that, ever since the first refugees came in ahead of Boxers rampaging in the west and north, Rowley had been preoccupied, wholly absorbed in his work as healer and comforter in the field. Maybe a year or more had elapsed since he had used her in that way, and much longer since she had felt herself a wife to him. And remembering this, the prospect of lying with Clint did not seem so outrageous, for she began to discern a kind of logic behind Joanna's reasoning. The mere thought of lying beside her jolly, ever boyish brother-inlaw, and of feeling his arms about her quickened her blood and breathing. What deterred her, however, was the cold-bloodedness of such a proposal, surely unique in the relationship of sisters. She said, wonderingly, "Don't you love Clint, Jo?''
"I love him in my own way. The way he likes, and the way I'm used to. But I love you, too, and I won't see you reduced to this, with no one to help, no one to turn to. Besides, he's had other women since we married. Not often, and never seriously, but he's had them. Believe me, I know what I'm doing, Helen."
"But if he's drunk… if he's asleep now…?"
"He'll come half-awake and then he'll drop off again, thoroughly fuddled. As soon as he does, slip out again. I'll wait for you here."
She got up, both hands still fidgeting with the length of ribbon. "How do you mean exactly? A thing like that bringing me peace? Helping me to forget?"
"You'll see. Do it, Helen. Just do as I say."
She got up, realising that some act of physical propulsion was needed, and taking Helen by the hand she opened the door. The gallery was in darkness, apart from the faint glow of the lamplight that touched the head of the stairs. She could hear Clint's snores, the only sound breaking the heavy silence of the night. Then she led the way along to her room, entered it ahead of her sister, and blew the candle out. She said, in a normal voice, "Shift over, Clint," and surprisingly he obeyed, his snores ceasing as he stirred. "There, get about it, girl," and she groped her way out, closing the door.
Helen had no certain knowledge now whether he was awake or asleep. She could hear his irregular breathing, and it caused her to hesitate a moment longer, telling herself that if he said one word she would turn back and tell Jo that such a thing was not to be thought of. He did not wake and presently she crept carefully in beside him, settling herself so close to her edge of the bed that she barely touched him. She could feel her heart thumping a rival rhythm to his swift, short snores as minutes passed before the warmth of his body communicated itself to hers and she turned, again very stealthily, lifting her right arm and groping for him where he lay just within her reach. She touched his exposed shoulder and fingertip contact with his flesh made her shiver so that instinctively she drew a little closer, touching him lightly with her knees and breasts.
Warmth and comfort seemed to pulse from him, communicating itself to her in a way that soothed rather than excited her, but the enlarged contact was enough to increase her rate of breathing so that soon, growing a little bolder, she enlarged her grip and pulled him half round so that he lay flat on his back. He moved sluggishly, almost unwillingly at first, but then, so it seemed, a tiny flicker of initiative passed to him and he flung his arm across her, drawing her closer as his volley of snores ceased abruptly.
Suddenly, outrageously it seemed to her, she wanted to giggle, the sheer absurdity of the situation inflating inside her like a large, coloured balloon, but she mastered the impulse and lay still for a moment, revelling in her own audacity and remembering a time—a thousand years ago it seemed—when she had first shared a bed with Rowley Coles as a girl bride who had entered marriage so confidently but had discovered, all too quickly, that her limited experience as a flirt counted for nothing with a groom cast in his solemn mould.
Time passed. It seemed to her an age had elapsed since she had joined him between the rumpled sheets and a sense of anticlimax stole upon her as she faced the fact that it was more than likely Jo had been mistaken about the certainty of him making the most of his opportunity. It seemed more than possible that he could lie there snoring until morning, and it was the prospect of advancing daylight that prompted her to summon up her courage to resolve the situation one way or another. She could, she reasoned, rely on a few seconds' grace if he was sufficiently roused to open a conversation. She could slip away while he was still bemused and tell Joanna to return at once. She could be clear of the room before he had found matches and candle, but in the meantime she felt she owed it to herself to put Joanna's theory to the test. Cautiously, an inch at a time, she lifted his arm and placed it against her breasts, holding it there, and was rewarded by the slow glow of satisfaction it brought her, as well as an insignificant signal that his senses were stirred inasmuch as he drew a little closer, stretched out his legs, and turned on his side, this time facing her. He did not wake, however, although his snores diminished to heavy, regular breathing and it was this, perhaps, that emboldened her sufficiently to turn her face towards him, and kiss his cheek. Lightly, almost teasingly, as though he had been one of those awkward young men who competed for modest favours in the far off days when she and Jo had been county belles with half-a-dozen swains at their disposal.
The kiss, light as it was, had a disproportionate effect upon her. He was sporting a growth of dark bristles announcing that, with the prospect of male company that evening, he had not bothered to shave for dinner, and the mere touch of his bristles on her lips was a sharp reminder of the contrast between Clinton and Rowland Coles, for Rowley had never needed to shave more than once a day and his whiskers were as soft and downy as a boy's. It emphasised, somehow, Clint's heavy masculinity and awareness of this, together with the weight of his hand on her breast, quickened her desire in a way she would never have thought possible a few minutes since. The initial shame that had restrained her from the moment Jo pushed her into the room fell away like shyness dispelled by a genial greeting, and she suddenly felt free and untrammelled by guilt, not caring, in that instant, whether he was awake or asleep. She withdrew her left hand and used it to encircle his head, cradling him closer and kissing him again, more purposefully this time so that his grasp on her breast tightened, then fell away as he made a halfhearted attempt to pluck at the join in her nightgown. He was too impatient or too sleepy perhaps, to loosen the neck ribbons, but the effort at least succeeded in banishing the last of her scruples. She plucked the bow loose herself and half shrugged herself out of the shift, her heart pounding like a steam hammer as she bared her breasts and enfolded him, showering his face with kisses now and straining towards him with a fervour she had never once displayed during Rowley's perfunctory embraces, for somehow she had always sensed a demonstration of this kind would embarrass him. Asleep, awake, or somewhere between the two, Clinton responded, reaching down to grasp the hem of her half-shed nightgown and hoisting it to her thighs. Then, so swiftly that she had no real awareness of the transition, the initiative passed to him and he half-rolled on her, muttering unintelligible words only two of which
she caught, but she could not have sworn that they were "fine woman." Then, with a kind of unconscious expertise, he bore down on her, and under the stress of his weight and clumsy handling she uttered a low cry, half an expression of protest, half proclaiming an intense physical release akin to the moment of waking after the methodical ravishment by the courteous Japanese colonel. Seconds later he was done with her and sleep reclaimed him again, his fuddled brain suddenly unequal to the struggle against the fumes of all the liquor he had shipped. He slipped away, rolling over on his back again, and his snores recommencing, his inert hand resting on her belly.
She lay very still, aware once again of the night sounds in the coverts and the pale glow of moonlight, almost blue it looked, shafting a gap in the curtains and touching a corner of the bed. Her body continued to tremble but her mind was inexplicably still. She knew then, savouring the knowledge with a deep sense of fulfilment, that Jo had been uncannily right after all. Not only about Clint but about her errant peace of mind.
PART FOUR
Reconnaissance
One
In the Beginning There Was George…
The transition of Swann-on-Wheels from a horse-powered network to a haulage system served by a fleet of mechanical vehicles, supplemented by horse teams where the terrain was more suited to hooves than tyres, was effected so quietly and so smoothly that it never qualified as a nine-day wonder in the trade.
Briefly, in city coffee houses frequented by shipping men, and in the loading yards of midland and northern factories, it was seen as a typical foray of that old fox Swann, who had been trying to corner the national hauling trade from the day he recruited his ruffian army of unemployed coachmen and Thameside waifs back in the 'fifties. Briefly because the 'fifties themselves were now viewed as an era not far removed from that of Stephenson's Rocket.
Swann, they recalled, flaunting his banner-with-the-strange-device, had always been an innovator, so there was nothing remarkable about his overnight conversion to horseless carriages. He would likely burn his fingers, but he could afford that, having exacted his percentage from almost everything carted over county borders during the last forty years. Even those among his rivals who actually owned a private motor and bumped their wives and families down to the seaside at weekends considered that he might, for once, have over-reached himself, especially when it got around that he was designing and building his own transport. But that again was to be expected of a man who had always been a jump ahead of his competitors and who still qualified as an eccentric in a world where eccentrics were rare and becoming rarer. After all, no one could challenge Swann's record as an amateur whose enterprise, launched with a hundred Clydesdales and half as many waggons, had gone on to become a household word in a single generation, and there was no denying the horseless carriage had come to stay. Only a small minority of merchants refused to entrust their goods to these clumsy, vapourtrailing equipages that people were beginning to call "lorries," once their overall performances were seen to be fairly satisfactory. A majority, remembering Swann's reliability and punctuality, were content (though not over-eager) to renew their contracts, reasoning that Swann and his successors must know their business, or how could they have survived the cut-and-thrust of the last half-a-century, when something revolutionary appeared on the world's markets every day of the week.
This then was the impersonal verdict on the transition. It was otherwise from within, where initial opposition to the change-over had been so resolute that it had been seen as a board-room mutiny. Here, indeed throughout the entire network, there had been a ransacking of conscience and personal prejudice that was regarded as a rich private joke by the minority that had voted in favour of George on what was accepted by Swann veterans as "The Watershed." That is to say, the period immediately prior to George Swann's famed cross-country jaunt with a six-ton gun-turret aboard, a feat that set every transporter in the country by the ears once they had digested the relevant logistics. The conversion was unanimous and all but immediate, and perhaps Jack-o'-Lantern Coles summed it up best in a Biblical parody of the incident that enlivened the otherwise dull speeches at the firm's annual dinner in December 1905. It was an occasion when the commissioning of the hundredth Swann-Maxie was announced by Scottie Quirt, and Coles said, proposing the customary toast to the firm: "In the beginning there was Adam. And Adam begat George. But George did much better in that he begat the giant Maximus, and Maximus begat the Swann-Maxie that did multiply until it darkened the countryside. But the elders of the tribe murmured against such begetting and took counsel among themselves, saying, 'It is not seemly in the sight of the righteous that so great a strain should be placed upon our pockets.' Yet George set his face against them and persisted. And it came to pass that they were convinced in spite of themselves, and took counsel one with the other again, saying, 'We have sinned and will go forth in sackcloth and ashes manifesting our fault. For this man has found favour in the sight of the Lord and we will henceforth bow down before him and do his bidding…!'"
It was recorded that even Young Rookwood smiled (he had never been known to laugh) but the others, Godsall and his fellow doubters, were more generous. Few annual dinner speakers had received such a weight of applause and laughter as Clint Coles, when he sat down and reached for his glass of hock. Converted they were, and to a man, but some went even further, becoming, as George told Adam after the 1906 New Year conference, "More Catholic than the Pope." And indeed they were, inasmuch as they were clamouring for vehicles much faster than Scottie could manufacture them. But notwithstanding this, George rejected his father's advice that he should put the patent out to tender among the two hundred-odd registered motor manufacturers now operating in the country.
"No, sir!" he said, with emphasis. "Swann-Maxie remains a private company in our name, although it's officially registered under the title of Swann & Quirt, Scottie owning forty-nine per cent of the stock. From here on we sell ourselves all the transport we need, even if we have to dribble it out piecemeal. That way we not only save money, we also modify week by week, using our experiences on the open road as blueprint material. Ten years from now, five maybe, fourfifths of those manufacturers will be broke and out of business. You recall what happened at the tail-end of the railway boom, before you set up in business?"
"I remember very well. There were two hundred bankruptcies in as many weeks, but there's no real comparison, is there? The founding of a railway company called for heavy investment, mostly for rights of way, and a motor can drive anywhere it pleases on established highways."
"I'm saying the majority of those pioneers are amateurs," said George. And when Adam reminded him that both he and George had been amateurs in their day he said sharply, "Not in that sense, Gov'nor. We mapped our markets in advance. That's more than you can say of this bunch. Most of 'em are financed by loan sharks, who make damned sure they skim any profit that emerges. Half of 'em are working in back street stables, buying their materials retail from blacksmiths and coach builders, and all of 'em, without a single exception so far as I know, are concentrating on the joyride market."
It made sense, as George's pronouncements usually did on reflection, and Adam, who had never stood in awe of anyone during twelve years' soldiering and forty years' trading, confessed to a certain awe of his son when he gave Henrietta a summary of the discussion that same night.
"I once thought of him as a chip off the old block," he said, ruefully, "but I'm well on the way to revising that opinion. Before he's done, the trade will think of him as the block and me as the chip."
It irritated her to hear him talking like that, even in praise of his own son, for she could never see him as anything less than an oak among saplings.
"He had two advantages you never had. Almost unlimited capital, and a father egging him on," she said, sharply, and was rewarded by a self-satisfied grin on his face as he reached over her to extinguish the bedside lamp.
"Ah, something in that." * * *
By early summ
er of that same year, he had a much sharper reminder of the debt George owed him when the new Swann maps appeared in the annual brochure. For there, set out for all to see, was the twentieth-century image of Adam Swann's earliest essay in commercial cartography, reproducing so many features of the original company maps, now framed and exhibited in the Swann museum at The Hermitage. For the revised theme of the network now was re-regionalisation and George, he noted, had even restored some of the first names bestowed upon regions by Adam in 1858.
He carried the brochure away to his perch on the knoll overlooking the southern boundary of the estate, as intrigued as a lad with a complicated mechanical toy. One by one, superimpositions of the new upon the old emerged as though he was looking at George's fleet of mechanically-propelled vehicles through the legs of a hundred Clydesdales, symbol of all the muscle, blood, and bone that had hauled his customers' goods from one end of the country to the other.
For to Adam the familiar tracings of old routes and boundaries of the network were clearly visible under the firmly drawn lines of the new frontiers, dictated not by railways, as in his day, but by the factors that had governed the path of the gridiron in Stephenson's day.
First, Zeus among them, was geology, the innumerable strata of chalk, greenstone, Lias, Trias, Permian, oolite, basalt, and granite that had prescribed the movements and habitats of men in these islands since the beginning of time and still, for all man's new technologies, called the tune and regulated the pace.
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