Give Us This Day

by R. F Delderfield

  "Would a man with his arms full of planks notice a thing like that?"

  "No, but neither Charlie nor William will be called, will they?"

  "Not if I can help it. I've already given a list of witnesses who could help to the constable, and their names weren't on it. I'll give evidence myself of finding her, and of seeing that rail and that smouldering bonfire. Denzil will have to tell them how he missed her and searched the farm buildings. No more than that so far as I can judge, save to bear out the doctor's testimony."

  George said, "What will that testimony be?"

  "That depends on him."

  "Not really. If you've dropped this number of hints you will have gone further, just that much further. You saw him when he certified death. What did you say to him?"

  "What would you expect in the circumstances? I primed him, much as I'm priming you."

  "But it isn't the same, Gov'nor. He's not in the family."

  "In a way he is. In a way the coroner is, and the locals on the jury will be. Prejudiced in our favour that is, so where's a conflict of evidence to come from? Only the collie that followed her down to the river knows what really happened."

  There was another pause. Then Denzil said, pleadingly, "Tell it your way, Mr. Swann. Tell it the way you want it told and talked about afterwards."

  "Is that necessary?"

  "I have to hear it. Hearing it, maybe I can believe it. Now, and for the rest of my days."

  "Very well, Denzil." The querulous note had gone from his voice. He sipped his brandy and set aside his glass, moving over until he was close enough to lay his hand on his son-in-law's shoulder.

  "Listen, my boy, and listen carefully. None of us know and none of us will ever know, but this is how it could have been. There's no secret about how Stella felt as regards fire. I daresay it was how your mother felt until the day she died after watching your father die trying to save his cattle all those years ago. Or how I felt, watching my life work go out in smoke beside the Thames. Or how George feels, come to that, when he thinks on young Martin in that wretched trailer up in the Pennines. There's nothing strange about that. It's how any of us feel deep down about something that threatens anything near and dear to us. Besides, she was in the change of life. The doctor will testify to that. Under that kind of stress, multiplied a hundred times maybe by Martin's death, fear of fire dominated her thoughts, night and day. That's real enough, for it kept you and Robert and Dolly on the jump ever since the night George broke the news to you. But this time there was a fire of sorts, a glow from a dying bonfire across the river, and the river was running high. She went over to take a look and put too much weight on that rail. There's a strong current midstream when the river is high. Strong enough to carry her two miles downstream. Why do we have to assume it was anything but an accident? If it didn't happen that way, it happened some other way, brought about by factors we'll never know. Not us nor anybody else. Finish your drink, Denzil, and go on home. Take two of those pills the doctor left for Stella. They didn't help her, but I daresay they'll ensure you a night's rest."

  He went back to the fireplace and picked up his glass. When nobody moved he went on, "There's only one thing more I'd like to say, and doubtless Hetty will join me in saying it. It has nothing to do with today's wretched business, or the misery you've had to face in the last few weeks. It counts for much more than that, son, and as I say, it comes from all of us here, but especially from me and her mother. You've been a good husband to her from the beginning. All this time, ever since you helped her through that other piece of foolishness, Stella has had a good life and a full one. Try and bear that in mind. It doesn't come everybody's way and the fact that it came hers, after such a bad start, was your doing. No one else's, just yours, do you hear?"

  They went out then and George walked with them into the yard where their trap was waiting, lamps glowing in the light swirl of mist closing down from the spur above. He watched Robert help his father into the passenger seat and climb up himself, gathering the reins. Then, after the little rig had clattered through the arch and passed round the rhododendron clump at the head of the drive, he walked slowly back, hands deep in his pockets. The Gov'nor had given them their rations, plenty enough to get on with for the time being. But he had a queer certainty that his own were still awaiting him inside the house.

  * * *

  They were much as he had left them, his mother seated by the fire draped in her shawl, her face puffed under the eyes, her cheeks flushed by the brandy he had forced on her. But he noticed that the old man held himself poker-straight and thought, meeting his steady glance, By God, but he's a hard man to follow! How can any of us feel a gaffer so long as he's around? Adam said, with the merest trace of anxiety in his voice, "They won't let us down, will they?" and he said no, they wouldn't. Robert had got the message and would rehearse his father carefully in what to say and what not to say in the witness box. Adam said, "Right, then, now I can move on to you and your mother. Not about what's said in public, or gossiped around concerning your sister, but about things in general. It's time somebody spoke up and as long as I'm around I'll not shirk the job, not even tonight. Help yourself to another drink if you want one."

  "I don't need another drink, Gov'nor."

  "Well then, sit, for this will take time," and George sat. "It's about drift. Drift and muddle and woolly-mindedness generally. I've held my tongue until now, hoping one or other of you would take the initiative, but you haven't. Not you, nor Edward, nor Alex, who must have noticed what was happening to us since we ran into this string of setbacks. I don't count Giles. He has enough on his plate without worrying overmuch about us. You were ready to push on with that articulated trailer and I've not heard a word about it since young Martin was killed on the prototype. Have you shelved it?"

  "Not shelved, exactly. We halted production on the other two."

  "Was that a Board decision or yours?"

  "It was mine."

  "Then it underlines everything I've been thinking. Tell me something else. That new vehicle was going to put the old firm back on its feet, wasn't it?"

  "It would have done that."

  "How? In a few words, that your mother can understand."

  "Well, articulated vehicles can operate where we're meeting our stiffest competition, in congested towns designed for horse traffic, for it's there that one-man operators are hauling our goods in driblets. Apart from that, a trailer would more than double the weight of haul per vehicle. Only that way could we check the drift of big firms to organise their own haulage fleets. We could deliver faster and far cheaper."

  "It's much as I thought. But after Martin was killed you didn't push on?"

  "No."

  "I've never heard such damned nonsense! That isn't what I'd look for in a son of mine." His disgust created in him a need for further stimulation. He went over to the decanter and poured himself another brandy. "See here, it all adds up to what I feared. You're all losing your nerve and looking over your shoulders, and it won't do, d'ye hear? Why should we expect nothing but fair winds? The best of us run into squalls from time to time, but that's no damned reason for putting back into port, like a lot of frightened amateurs. We're not amateurs! We're the toughest and most experienced professionals in the game, and I thought I'd lived long enough to establish that beyond doubt. Do you think I never had self-doubts? I did, time and again, but I never let 'em make a nincompoop out of me. What's scared us so badly? Lay it out for yourself, clause by clause. Edward's flighty wife makes a fool of him, so he takes to the bottle and let's his region go to the devil. Oh, I know he's over it now, but my information is he still spends too much time in pubs instead of casting round for a wench to give him something better to think of in his off-duty hours. Clause two: your sister-in-law gets herself killed in a street fracas, but that's her business, not yours, and certainly not Swann's, as a firm earning its bread and salt in the open market. Clause three: we have a big drop in profits and you hit on a way to turn the
tide, but the first sign of danger and difficulty you run for cover and keep your head down, hoping the trouble will go away of its own accord. That boy Martin was a casualty, but you can't expect to come through everything, every hazard, unscathed, the way you did when you stole a march over everyone by mechanisation. It ought not to have led us here, sitting round like a lot of undertaker's mutes, feeling so damned sorry for ourselves that instead of fighting back we cry into our beer. With common sense, and a bold front, it could have been avoided. On your part and Denzil's. On Giles's and Deborah's, too, if either of 'em had had the damned sense to come to me and give me the facts."

  Henrietta spoke up, the first word she had uttered since Adam steered her into the room. "They were trying to save us worry, Adam. You're eighty-four…"

  He made a savage gesture with his free hand. "What the devil's my age got to do with it? I can still think clearer than any of you! I'm proving it now, and I'll prove it at the inquest tomorrow. Stella was sick and sickness needs treatment. I can't say whether she could have recovered or not, but that isn't the point. My complaint is that every one of you, saving Giles maybe, let your personal problems make fools of you, and that talk of sparing me grief is no more than a face-saver."

  Avoiding his eye, Henrietta said, in a whisper, "They meant well… What else could they have done?"

  His jaw shot out. "I'll tell you since you ask, Hetty. George here, and Denzil and Edward and Deborah, and Alex, too, as head of the family. They could have put their heads together and evolved something practical, instead of hushing it up and going at it piecemeal. That's what a firm and family is, or should be. But I blame you most of all, George, for you were the most like me in a rough and tumble. At least, I always thought so. I'm not so sure now. Well," he drained his glass, "it's not too late. At your age your mother and I had our share of setbacks, but we turned things in our favour and you can if you put your mind to it." He stopped for a moment, looking baffled, as though he had mislaid the thread of his argument and was too disturbed to hunt for it, but the check was temporary and George, sensing this, said nothing. The fire rustled. Outside the wind got up again and went to probing the tops of the avenue limes, seeking its familiar passage through to the chimneys that had resisted its siege for three and a half centuries. Hearing it at work George thought, He's like this house… rooted and braced, for all his eighty-four years. Who would suppose he had just dragged his own daughter from the water and was waiting to hear her death pronounced upon by outsiders? The worst affront you could offer him would be pity.

  He said, at length, "That's not all, is it, Gov'nor?"

  "No, though I'm speaking out because somebody has to, and there's only one excuse for your muddle-headedness to my way of thinking. It's the times, the way the whole damned lot of you are going about things lately. Not just here but clear across the world. You're all sleep-walking, and if you don't prick yourselves awake you're in for a God Almighty tumble. For here we are, with everything to make a new world and a new society, but all people with money in their pockets are concerned with is a month at the seaside, the next country house-party, Fanny's coming-out dress, a search for gentility and soft living generally. Even the international apparatus we rely on to keep the garden-party going is as antiquated as feudalism and not nearly so efficient, and this attitude has a nasty habit of spreading down, to the city clerk, whose main ambition nowadays is to hoist himself another niche up the social scale. Not that there's anything wrong with that—as a spur, for it's what makes the world go round. What's wrong is the way he goes about it. Not by hard work, clear thinking, self-education, and self-reliance, but by putting on airs, currying favour with the fellow above him, and learning how to talk with a plum in his mouth. It's all a sham and I hate shams wherever I find 'em. I hate backsliders, too, so if you'll take a tip from me, George, you'll go out of here and do some hard thinking and hard planning, the way you used to before you had things too easy. And you can pass that on for what it's worth once we've got tomorrow's business behind us." He turned his back, spreading his hands to the fire as though signifying by this gesture that he had finished.

  George turned to his mother. "Could I telephone Gisela and say I'll be staying overnight and going home after the inquest?"

  "Of course. We'd be glad. Find Phoebe and tell her to air the bed in the big guest-room."

  "I'd sooner have my old room. Is that possible? Without too much trouble?"

  "Of course it's possible. Tell her to get a girl to make up the bed and put a bottle in." She glanced at the clock. "They won't have all gone to bed yet."

  "I'll see to it then, don't you stir."

  He went out without another word and they heard him climbing the back stairs that led to Phoebe's quarters in the east wing.

  She said, "You hit him too hard, Adam."

  "I had to. I got through to him. That's what matters."

  "Haven't you anything saved up for me?"

  He seemed to her to relax a little.

  "Certainly no broadside, Hetty."

  "Ah, but something?"

  "Advice. It can wait until this wretched business is behind us."

  "That isn't necessary." She chose her words carefully. "I was wondering… would it be possible for me to… to come with you tomorrow?"

  "To the inquest? You could face that?"

  "I'd prefer it to waiting here alone and hearing a second-hand account. George isn't the only one who has been waiting for things to go away of their own accord."

  He looked at her tenderly, feeling a pity for her that he had been unable to feel for Denzil, or even for Stella lying under the poplars with her hair enmeshed in the flotsam of the river.

  "It's different for you, Hetty. Nothing I said applied to you. When you were young and spry you faced up to things better than any woman I know."

  "You're not young, Adam, and you still don't shrink from them. Not even from something as bad as this."

  "I'm a very obstinate old cuss."

  "I don't think it is a question of age. I was thinking back, when Robert came to us to say she was missing—back to that time of Stella's other trouble with the Moncton-Prices. You were hundreds of miles away then, but I managed."

  She could have reminded him of other occasions, many of them, when she had faced trouble squarely and alone, and made decisions most women of her acquaintance would have shirked making. The fire had died in her now, and deep down she could isolate the agent that had extinguished it. It was not age but pride, and a very counterfeit pride indeed compared with his. Flabby, overweening pride, that most people would call conceit.

  She said, "Part of what you said to George applied to me. For years now I've thought of myself not only as privileged but deservedly so. Bad things just didn't come my way. Not because I was lucky but because I was sharp. Well, it isn't so, and I see that well enough now. If the others must have a share in what happened to Stella, I'm not blameless. I should have visited her more and found out for myself how things stood. The reason I didn't would be hard for you to understand."

  "Tell me if you want to."

  "The truth is I lost patience with her long ago, ever since she sold out to the Fawcetts to the degree she did and let herself go. As a woman, I mean. I was never able to see it for what it was, a rejection of all she had thought of, up to that time, as the strictures and conventions of her own class, or that it was a natural result of what happened to her as a young bride."

  "That isn't true, Hetty. Damn it, you steadied her up by young Fawcett. Do you imagine I didn't know you handed her to him on a platter?"

  "Not for her sake, for my own. I would have married her off to a tinker if necessary. Later on, when I realised she didn't give a button for her waistline, or the clothes she wore, or even the way she came to speak, I think I began to despise her. It never once occurred to me that she really grew to love that farm and what it stood for, or that in her own way she loved Denzil as much as he loved her and coming to his level was the best way of show
ing it. Well, it's too late to alter that now, except to be kind to the boy, and do what I can to nurse him through the next year or so. God knows, I mean to do that." She got up, discarding her shawl. "I'll see Phoebe about George's room. Will you be long?"

  "No, not long."

  He caught her hand as she passed him and pressed it to his lips. There was no point in trying to eradicate her sense of guilt now, but he would set about the job shortly, just as soon as the page was turned on tomorrow. And after that somehow, by some means, direct or devious, they would fight their way through to a peaceful close.

  2

  She thought of him then as performing the office of the Dutch boy in that old story about the hole in the dyke. A man more resolute and steadfast than any man in the world, self-dedicated to the task of averting a catastrophe. And although she was emotionally involved in every word they were saying, and aware of the covert glances they stole at her from time to time, she had eyes only for him and no more than a cognisance of the others who followed one another into the witness-box, or those who sat mute, listening to the dismal tale.