PART FIVE
Journey into Chaos
One
Win One, Lose One
In the long afterglow of her life, when warmth had stolen back into her bones, when she had adjusted, more comfortably than most women who had worn crinolines, to short skirts, sounding brass, and the rootlessness of the post-war era, Henrietta Swann would challenge those who claimed that the old world died in August 1914. Her memory calendar was at odds with those of her contemporaries, showing a discrepancy of some five years, and there was a logical reason for this. For Henrietta the onrush of the terminal sickness of the age began as early as the summer of 1909, when the first of a string of domestic catastrophes occurred, shattering her serenity and undermining her abiding faith in her destiny. And after that, in quick succession, came a long run of crises demanding more and ever more of her impressive stocks of resilience, and resource—and all this at a time of life when one could reasonably look for repose. For she had then entered upon her seventieth year and was ready, if only occasionally, to sit back and assume the role of an interested spectator.
It was not to be, however, and perhaps the scurviest trick fate played upon her at that time was to open the year with a discharge of Swann rockets designed to light up the achievements of the dynasty, enabling her to look back into the past and forward into the future with a grandiloquence that Adam had always found comic, particularly after she passed her sixtieth birthday and he came to see her as equating, on county level, with Victoria in that photograph showing her surrounded by a swarm of dutiful, popeyed relations, the least of them a duke.
The family firework display began on New Year's Day when the newspapers carried reports, some of them flatteringly detailed, of sovereign recognition of Hugo Swann, Layer on of Hands. The bombshell was not entirely unexpected. His wife, Lady Sybil, had been over at Tryst in late autumn dropping mysterious hints on the subject, but neither Adam nor Henrietta, or indeed anyone else outside Lady Sybil's exclusive charity circle, had regarded them as pointers to the fact that Hugo, least promising of all the Swann boys, would be the first to attain the rank of knighthood. Even when she saw it in print, Henrietta wondered, a little fearfully, if there had not been an embarrassing mix-up somewhere and Hugo's name had emerged from the hat in error.
For it seemed preposterous to think of dear, bumbling Hugo, one-time athlete, sometime war hero, latterly, she gathered, a kind of doctor's auxiliary at a hospital, as Sir Hugo Swann. She had never been one to minimise the achievements of any of her brood. Indeed, it had crossed her mind many times during the last thirty years that her husband's contribution to commerce should have earned him an official accolade of some kind. But Hugo, even in his heyday when he sometimes brought home two trophies a week, had never figured in her dynastic daydreams. There was no reason why he should when he faced such formidable competition on the part of his brothers, three of them well advanced upon their careers and winning mention, from time to time, in the national press. Alex had earned his first headline as long ago as 1879, when he sent home an account of that battle with the Zulus at a place with an unpronounceable name. George had fought his way to the forefront on four wheels and carried, or so it seemed to her, the whole country with him, for she never saw a motor-bus or a motor-car nowadays without reminding herself that the very first of them, so far as she was aware, had arrived in England with George's baggage when he landed with his Austrian bride in 1885. As for Giles, his present place in the high counsels of the nation could have been predicted when he was a boy of thirteen, reading his way through his father's library at the rate of one tome a day. Even Edward, they said, nine years younger than Hugo, was considered a gifted engineer and currently a Swann viceroy in one of the network's most lucrative sectors. Was it to be wondered at that she had overlooked Hugo, a man who walked with a white stick and was followed about by an ex-rough-riding sergeant who barked like a collie every time his master had need of him?
Yet there it was: Sir Hugo Swann, honoured, it seemed, for his work among the human wreckage of that awful war in South Africa. This had been the war that everybody had thought so splendid at the time but which was now dismissed as a faraway squabble that had been settled, in the way of all these colonial squabbles, by Earl Roberts's tact, Lord Kitchener's scowl, and promises of good behaviour all round.
Even Adam, so rarely surprised these days, had been stunned by the news, yet not so much as not to quarrel with the rumour that the honour was the result of canvassing behind the scenes on the part of Lady Sybil. He said when this story was relayed to him, "Once in a while, every hundred years or so, those honours brokers reward someone deserving by accident. Go down to Netley and watch him at work on patients. I did just that, admittedly out of curiosity, and I came away humbled. I'm not a religious man, but I believe in some miracles. One has to when one hears a blind man preach a sermon through his fingertips."
He did not say this to her, but his comments were repeated to Henrietta by Debbie's husband Milton. Neither did she take it up with him later, sensing that she would not comprehend any clarification he condescended to make and also (he was oddly touchy in some areas) that questioning on the subject would embarrass him. She was prepared, as always, to take his word on matters that baffled her and assumed, from then on, that Hugo's endowments, unlike those of his splendid brothers, had been hidden from her by an inscrutable Providence.
Adam's verdict was only part of the truth. Lady Sybil had, indeed, been tireless on Hugo's behalf, but his selection from a swarm of probables was really another kind of miracle, brought about by a flash of inspiration in the minds of what Adam called the honours brokers and what others called the Faceless Ones; it was an inspiration, lighting up the imagination of men rarely responsive to romantic impulses and national moods. Men who, for the most part, were guided by motives far too complex to be comprehended by the man in the market-place, who might regard Hugo Swann's services to the nation as more deserving than, say, the transfer of a small part of a large fortune to areas where its arrival would make the maximum noise.
But circumstances, on this unique occasion, combined to answer Lady Sybil's prayers. When the list of candidates for New Year's honours were being considered, it was apparent, even to the Faceless Ones, that to elevate them en bloc would be to give substance to recent murmurs that knighthoods had ceased to be earned with anything but hard cash, discreetly distributed, later "discovered" by the press. Thus it was that Hugo came to be seen as a kind of minority candidate, isolated among a swarm of contenders whose prospects, on the face of it, were infinitely brighter, almost as though the adjudicators had reasoned, "As God is our witness, his claims upon us barely exist. He was once acclaimed by the great unwashed as a pot-hunter. He was careless enough to lose his sight in a conflict that is now regarded as a national blunder. He has since buried himself alive in an infirmary without so much as an M.D. to explain his presence there. He has no influence anywhere, has never contributed a pennypiece to either great political party and his nod in anyone's direction would count for nothing in the way of preferment. But stay! We are overlooking the obvious! Sporting laurels, sacrifice on the field of battle, and political anonymity are the very ingredients capable of producing a compound capable of exploding the myth that our rewards are bought and sold."
So it was that Hugo's name went forth and Lady Sybil, bringing the news to him, was taxed to convince him that it was deserved.
"Me? Knighted? But it's quite absurd, Sybil! What have I ever done to get knighted?" he asked her, quite amazed.
"Hugo, dear," she said, taking his hand, "it's for what you've done right here."
"Here? In Netley? A bit of massaging?"
"Yes, dear, for… a bit of massaging. They see it as important."
She realised she could never hope to make him understand that and did not try. She had watched him expand day by day, coming to terms with his disability in a way that a man learns to adapt to the customs of a strange country and create, within h
imself, a sense of belonging. He had learned to dispense with eyes, not so much because his other senses had enlarged themselves but because, through his bones, sinews, and nerve ends, he had regained his old ascendancy over competitors in the field.
"I couldn't accept, Sybil," he said. "The fellows here would see it as swank."
"That isn't so, Hugo dear. You must take it. There's a very good reason why you should."
"What reason?"
"Because it signifies official acceptance of the work you are doing here. I don't mean personally, but in the wider sense, of men like you helping and encouraging one another, of establishing the value of expert massage inside the medical profession, of proving that a man without sight can play a useful part in society. That's why I insist you accept, Hugo."
It was, of course, a shoal of red herrings. She did not give a button about the abstract aspects that tripped so glibly from her tongue, but she understood the regenerated Hugo Swann well enough to realise that these were the likeliest means of overcoming his essential humility, and she was right. He sat thinking a moment, hands resting on his enormous thighs, and presently he said, "Would it help to persuade them to set up that training centre I suggested? Would it convince some of those stick-in-the-mud army surgeons that a masseur and an osteopath isn't necessarily a quack?"
"I think it would."
"Very well, then. I'll accept."
"Thank you, Hugo. I knew you'd be sensible," and she was glad she could safely indulge herself in a smile of triumph and went her way rejoicing. For although she was glad for him, she was even more relieved for herself, seeing the recognition she had won for him as the last and most impressive of the string of penances laid upon her for her share in encompassing his fate. She had no way of knowing that his enlargement since he had been caught up in rehabilitation work had been brought about by an almost parallel process, that his successes here had in themselves been acts of atonement for taking the life of a child on a ridge thousands of miles from Southampton Water. It was some time since he had been troubled by the dream that had returned to him time and again over the years, a dream of looking down on the face of an enemy in a slouch hat who lay flat on his back staring sightlessly at the sky and then, although manifestly a dead face, transformed its features into those of a child he had never seen, his own seven-year-old son.
2
The second rocket soared a month or so later when Edward, coming into the hall at a run, announced that Gilda Wickstead had at last capitulated and agreed to marry him at Easter.
The news, long expected but unaccountably delayed, delighted Henrietta so much that she found she could forgive the stupid girl for keeping everybody on tenterhooks for the better part of six months. It was a relief to see the youngest of her sons released from the private purgatory to which that Wickstead girl had consigned him, and there had been times, over the last few months, when she could have shaken his beloved until her teeth rattled, notwithstanding her sincere regard for Edward's mother-in-law elect.
Time and again she had tried to coax from Edith the source of her own and her handsome daughter's reservations on the match, but no important information had been forthcoming. Edith hinted that the girl had been spoiled, first by her father and then by her brothers, that she wasn't ready for marriage, that she might not be content to vegetate in the English provinces after so much acclaim in foreign cities, and even that Gilda might have ambitions of her own that did not include marriage. It was this hint that alarmed Henrietta, for she had a suspicion that Edith, known to be sympathetic to the Pankhurst hell-raisers, was hinting that Gilda was a suffragette, as if two martyrs in one family wasn't enough to get on with. But Edith, challenged on this point, smiled and shook her head.
"A militant? Our Gilda? No, you can put that aside, Henrietta. If Gilda campaigns, it will be for Gilda."
It was strange and rather chilling, Henrietta thought, that a mother could talk that way about her daughter, almost as though she neither liked nor trusted her. Gilda was exasperating, certainly, and probably more experienced mashers than Edward had succumbed to her undeniable charms, but she wasn't unlikeable, or even particularly vain. Reluctantly, for Henrietta was very fond of Edith, she put it down to maternal jealousy, of the kind she herself had sometimes felt (although never admitted to) for Helen and Joanna, when they were young, slim, pretty, and licensed by a tolerant father to play fast and loose with a troop of young gallants in a way that would never have been allowed a generation before.
But then, just when Henrietta was beginning to resign herself to having a bachelor son at the tail of the family, everything sorted itself out and she was plunged into preparations for what she thought of as the last of the first generation weddings, and grandchildren's weddings were not the same, for you hadn't the fun and the bother of helping to stage them. Henrietta always put as much effort into her sons' weddings as those of her daughters. It was a wonderful excuse to try out the very latest fashions seen in one or other of the dozens of costumiers' catalogues that found their way into Tryst at all seasons of the year.
Her pleasure might have been muted had she known the background of Gilda Wickstead's hesitation, aired during a rare, serious discussion between mother and daughter a day or so before Edward came pounding into the house with news of his reprieve.
Edith had not enjoyed watching the son of her oldest and dearest friends waiting on her doorstep. Like Henrietta, she would have preferred to take some positive action calculated to hasten a climax. Nothing would have given her greater satisfaction than seeing Gilda marry into the Swann family, but all her life—as regional manager, as wife, and as mother—Edith Wickstead had been excessively irritated by ditherers.
Just as Henrietta would have liked to have shaken a decision out of Gilda, Edith was sometimes tempted to apply a spur to Edward. Ordinarily, and she had got to know him very well during his managership of her old territory, he was a very practical young man, but her daughter's presence seemed to reduce him to the status of a minor flunkey privileged to serve royalty. And this, she had long since decided, was quite the wrong approach to make to a girl of Gilda's temperament. She would have liked to have said to him, "Look, Edward, for everybody's sake, but mostly your own and hers, tell the girl to make up her mind on the spot. You've a great deal to offer, and all she is bringing to you are looks that won't last her a lifetime! If she turns you down then go out and find somebody who will make you a better wife, lad. If she accepts then in heaven's name assert yourself. A man who doesn't won't get far with our Gilda!"
In the event, it was Gilda who herself raised the matter, admitting that she was fond of Edward but that was as far as it went.
"Then it's not far enough," Edith said tartly. "Your common sense should tell you that, girl!"
And Gilda replied, with one of her superior smiles that made Edith regret yet again Tom's insistence that she should receive the best education they could afford, "On the contrary, Mamma, it's my common sense that urges me to marry Edward as soon as may be. Before he goes off the boil, that is, for I'm not likely to get a better offer here or abroad. I surely don't have to tell you the Swanns are better off than anyone else we know."
The cynicism implicit in the girl's reasoning was so much at odds with Edith's character that she came close to boxing her ears but restrained herself, saying, "That's no way at all for a girl your age to talk, Gilda! Either you care for the boy or you don't, and money, given enough to be housed, fed, and clothed, should have little to do with it!" She saw her daughter's eyes widen.
She said, wonderingly, "You really believe that, don't you? But then, you're a romantic, and I'm not, so we aren't likely to agree about it, are we? Was Papa penniless when you married him?"
Not simply poor, Edith reflected, remembering how, in effect, she had had to do the proposing, but a man with a police record, who had served time in broad arrows and had been planning an act of theft when serving as one of her waggoners. Suddenly it occurred to her that here was an
occasion when part of the truth about Tom Wickstead, so carefully hidden from the children over the years, might have a beneficial effect upon his daughter. She said, quietly, "He was not merely poor. He had seen the inside of a gaol and was busy hauling himself up by his bootstraps!"
She had expected that the information, regretted as soon as it was out, would have shocked the girl half out of her wits. All it produced was a shrug of Gilda's pretty shoulders. She said, "Oh, that isn't new to me, Mamma. Papa told me how you met and what he had been only a month or so before he died."
"He told you! All three of you?"
"No, just me. I was named for his sister Gilda, wasn't I? The one who went on the streets while he was in prison."
"He told you that… everything? About his father being transported, about his mother dying in the workhouse?"
"Yes."
"But why? I mean, what possible motive did he have? And for not telling me that you knew? Did you pass it on to the boys?"
Give Us This Day Page 54
