Keate's house, in a block of back-to-back dwellings built under the shadow of the wall marking the entrance to Brunel's tunnel, was recognisable even at a distance. Its curtains were clean and its step scoured free of soot. Its front door, opening on the pavement, had a polished brass knocker, and the room on which this door opened, perhaps twelve feet by ten, was lit by an oil lamp and scrupulously clean. There was a Turkey rug on the floor and a few pottery ornaments, and the walls were hung with texts, each embodying a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount.
Mrs. Keate, summoned from the adjoining kitchen, whence issued a rich smell of baking, was obviously a fit partner for the evangelist, for she was almost as generously built, and it astonished Adam that all three of them could be accommodated in the low-ceilinged room and still avoid collision. Keate addressed his wife as Martha but she took no such liberties with him, referring to him as “Mr. Keate,” dropping Adam a curtsey that was like the dip of a circus elephant. For all her size she was obviously subservient to her husband, making no comment when he peremptorily ordered tea but disappearing into the scullery after carefully closing the connecting door. While Keate was unearthing his register, Adam looked about him, sensing that Keate's family were in bed but not asleep, immediately above them. Every now and again he heard a subdued giggle, followed by a shushing sound and a light scuffle.
“How large is your family, Mr. Keate?” he asked, and Keate seemed uncertain, for he did a sum on his fingers and finally announced that the house sheltered eleven, including himself and Mrs. Keate. Then he corrected himself and said it was twelve, for he had forgotten Joseph, the baby, asleep in a laundry basket under the scullery table.
Adam could not disguise his astonishment. “You rear ten children? In this little house?” and Keate smiled, saying gently, “Well no, Mr. Swann. I cannot claim to rearing more than two, Matthew and Joseph, my own boys. The others live here until I find places for them.”
The last of Adam's misgivings based on the man's unction disappeared. “You mean, the other eight are boys like that coal-puddler we saw down at the wharf? They share the room above with your own lad?”
Keate said, with a kind of defensiveness, “What else can a man do? There are eight here, but there are one hundred thousand on the streets of London. They want for space, of course, but we manage somehow. Fortunately there is a stable in the area out back. We eat out there, in relays.”
“Where the devil do they all come from?”
“A variety of places. Some from homes where the parents have died or have been taken sick and laid off. Some whose fathers are on the treadmill or picking oakum, but a majority are children born out of wedlock and sold to baby-farmers, who abandon them as soon as the parent's back is turned. You might regard them as the more fortunate, for every year hundreds of farmed-out children die of neglect and starvation, and a few are deliberately murdered.”
“Good God,” exclaimed Adam, “it's as bad as India.”
“It's far worse,” Keate said, “for England has had the benefit of the Light.”
“How old are they?”
“Most of them couldn’t tell you. Ned, the biggest, is around eleven I would say. We could start him straightaway, and perhaps two or three of the others by the time your waggons are on the road. But perhaps I am presuming?”
“You’re not presuming,” said Adam, grimly. “May I see the children?”
“Why, certainly. They should be asleep but I’m afraid they’re not. Martha has her hands full when I’m not around at sundown,” and he motioned Adam to the ladder that led up to a trapdoor, as in a stable loft.
Adam went up carefully, for the ladder was old and rotten, and reaching the top lifted the trapdoor and stuck his head above floor level. The entire floor space was occupied by boys sleeping head to toe, and the urchin closest to him gave him a grin, winked, and said, equably, “Wotcher, Guv’nor!” There was no furniture and Adam noted that the bedclothes consisted of a few patched blankets, eked out with pieces of sailcloth and potato sacks. He closed the trap and came down.
“How do you feed that number of children if you’re out of employment?”
“I’ve been a saving man,” Keate said, “I had a little put by and I draw a few shillings from the mission when money is available. As I say, we manage.”
The thing that struck Adam most forcibly was the man's cheerful acceptance of so vast a responsibility, as though there was nothing remarkable about accommodating eight dockside waifs and two of his own children in a four-roomed hovel. One had the impression that, had someone suddenly presented Keate with a barn, the first thing he would have done would have been to scoop up every urchin within easy walking distance, trusting in his Old Testament God to fill innumerable bellies in the morning. He said, “Have you ever heard of the Underground Railway in the United States, Keate?” and Keate said that he had, and understood it to be some kind of organisation for the rescue and redemption of runaway plantation slaves. He did not, however, see the connection. He was not a particularly quickwitted man. Perhaps there was no room for quick wits in a body that housed so large a heart.
“It came to mind when I looked in that dormitory of yours,” Adam said. “You’re right, of course. Those children can’t be rescued by charity, not even charity on your scale. If I agreed to take a steady flow of them as van boys, and make sure they were trained in the care of horses and vehicles, would you be my adjutant? That would be an incidental office, of course. What I really had in mind was to make you my waggonmaster. I could pay you two pounds a week and make a regular contribution towards that orphanage you have up there. If the boys were coming straight into my service that would be in my interest as well as yours. Perhaps, when we were properly organised, we could enlarge your premises somewhat. Does a proposition along those lines appeal to you?”
For the first time since they had met Keate shed his formal demeanour. His pink cheeks became pinker and for a moment he looked, most improbably, embarrassed. Then, as Martha Keate appeared with the tray, he bowed his head. “It is more than I hoped when Mr. Avery brought me word of you, Mr. Swann. Do you place much reliance in the power of prayer, sir?”
“None whatever,” said Adam promptly, but Keate did not flinch. He said, carefully, “Some men don’t. God gives them other means of forming judgements. How do you form your judgements, Mr. Swann?”
“By instinct usually. That's what's guiding me as regards you, Keate.”
“It could work that way,” Keate said, and left it at that.
Martha began to pour the tea and suddenly the giant's head came up. He was over his moment of embarrassment and looked Adam in the eye. “You won’t regret the impulse,” he said, “for if I pledge my loyalty to a man it's his for good. Those boys up there, I’ll not gammon you about them. We’ll get our failure rate, but it won’t be striking, I can promise you that.” And then, with an air of having disposed of preliminaries he opened his register, an exercise book filled with his round, childish scrawl. “How many vehicles will you be putting on the road in the first instance?” and when Adam told him round about thirty he said, running his huge hand over his chin, “Any fool can handle a one-horse waggon in open country. It's different managing a team hauling a loaded, fixed-axle dray. That needs patience and sobriety, and I can’t promise you more than ten sober men, Mr. Swann, or not yet. We’ll do our best, however, but it might help if I had some inkling as regards areas of operation. Are you that far advanced with your plans, sir?”
“Not by a long chalk. But when they’ve been decided upon I’ll see that you get copies of schedules, together with maps. There is one other thing you should know. Mr. Avery will be acting as my backer and London agent, but I shall be responsible for the actual running of the business.”
“And I would be responsible to you alone, Mr. Swann?”
“Yes, and so would the waggoners and boys. Mr. Avery's concern begins and ends with consignors, and only that in the metropolis.”
“I’m yo
ur man, Mr. Swann. Now sup your tea, sir, before it goes cold. Martha, get Mr. Swann a cab from the mews. I’ll sift this book for a labour force, and on Monday I’ll run down the men and engage them, provisionally, at a rate of one pound a week plus two shillings a night out-of-town allowance. Would that be satisfactory to begin with?”
“Perfectly. I’ll leave that side of it entirely to you until I return to London. Did Mr. Avery mention I was to be married before then?”
“No, sir, he did not, but I should like to drink the health of you and your good lady, Mr. Swann,” and Keate raised his cup, bringing to this simple act the deliberation he brought to every gesture he made and every word he uttered. It was the first time Adam could recall his health, or anybody else's health, being drunk in tea, and it seemed a fitting end to one of the most interesting and instructive evenings he had ever spent. He took out the box containing the ring and snapped it open. “Mr. Avery's wedding gift to my fancée,” he said. “The swan on wheels is to be our trademark. It was my fancée's fancy and I intend stencilling it on all our vans. Does that strike you as frivolous?”
“Indeed not,” said Keate, “quite the contrary. Every reputable enterprise should have a readily recognisable trademark. Our own is a case in point, recognisable the world over,” but Adam had not yet quite adjusted to Keate and wrinkled his brow so that Keate, with one of his childlike smiles, said, “You asked me a moment ago if I was out of regular employment, sir. I’m not. I never am, but now I have two trademarks. A swan on wheels and a cross.”
Mrs. Keate returned to announce that a cab was waiting under the tunnel embankment at the end of the road. She dropped Adam another elephantine curtsey and they went out into the street. Darkness had fallen now but the carnival still had an hour to run, and its subdued roar could still be heard from the direction of the river. Keate walked him as far as the four-wheeler, its side lamps winking from the shadow of the tunnel approach. Adam said good-bye, shook hands, and scrambled into the musty interior, but he did not tell Keate he had left five guineas on the tea-tray, having placed it there less as an advance in wages than as conscience money.
2
Pride sustained her up to the last moment, the moment when he reached down among the well-wishers and rose-petal throwers, grasped her hand bearing the wedding ring his mother had worn, and hoisted her into the waggonette as if she had been a prize, won on a storming day. Then pride slipped away, leaving a vacuum that was more frightening and bewildering than anything in her experience, so that she sought most desperately to fill it with memories in which he played little part, for they belonged to the pleasant days spent in the old house in the company of Aunt Charlotte and the gentle old man whom she had come to love.
Memories were less fickle than pride. They sustained her as far as Thirlmere, where, she sensed, he made shift to strike a bargain with his shyness that had taken refuge, now that they were man and wife, in a stolid withdrawal without parallel in their association. Indeed, it seemed to her that he was back in the world whence had come all those incomprehensible letters about a man called Avery, and another called Keate, and a third called Blunderstone, and a fourth who sold cart-horses, people who clearly took precedence over herself and everyone else in the sanctuary he had found for her and was now compelling her to leave.
She had not missed him so much as she anticipated or, for that matter, so much as she felt she should have missed him. In a sense the Colonel had taken his place, petting and flattering her, as his son had never done, and probably never would even though it seemed to her she had forgone a courtship. Meantime, Aunt Charlotte had embarked upon a rampage that roared through the house like a gale, engulfing them all in flurries of dress lengths and linen, in cartons, packages, appointments, and expeditions. Notwithstanding the excitement it generated, she was glad to leave the old lady to continue her planning alone, and creep into the comforting presence of the Colonel. At his request, she would seat herself under the portrait of the little French lady who had thrown flowers under his mare's hooves and later (it seemed hardly possible) presented him with that long, lunging, impulsive young man who had ridden over the crest of Seddon Moor, seen her standing in her pantalettes, and whisked her out of one life and into another.
She found that she had no fear whatsoever of the Colonel, and it was hard to believe that anyone could have feared him, even when he was young and fierce and flourishing that great sabre of his that hung over the hearth. All the fire had gone from him, quenched perhaps by the caresses of that pretty little thing in the oval picture, or perhaps by her early death. Sometimes he would tell her stories, and sometimes he would read to her from a book written by a French soldier, who had been young when he was young but had fought on the other side, and had any number of adventures in distant corners of Europe. It was this Frenchman, indeed, who helped to build the bridge between them, for when she repeated that she wished Adam had remained a soldier, and hoped for soldier sons, he had looked at her speculatively and said, in that slippered voice of his, “You really wish that, my dear? Then stick to your guns and I’ll load for you!” Then, as though catching himself in a role he had long since renounced, he added, seriously for him, “You’ll have a say concerning the children, no doubt, but don’t quarrel with this business of his. It means more to him than family tradition, and he's done his duty by that. Come to that, he's showing more nerve than any one of us did in the past.”
“Now how can you say that?” she demanded, darting a glance of approval at a brace of cockhatted Swanns whose portraits occupied panels on either side of the window seat, “Adam is only starting a carrier's business, and while I daresay that's clever of him, considering he's had no business experience, it isn’t the kind of thing one associates with bravery, is it?”
“There are many kinds of courage, my dear,” he said, gently, “make up your mind to that,” but she replied, “Tell me then, for I want very much to be a good wife to him, and could be if only I…” but there she stopped, for even in his tolerant presence it was difficult to admit that she considered all tradesmen and all businessmen louts or misers, like her father and the Goldthorpes, and everything they did dull, mucky, and degrading. She would have liked very much to have said this, for she sensed that he shared her point of view, but it seemed disloyal to his son so she concluded, lamely, “…if only he had stayed here and given me time to get used to him.”
This had the same effect upon the Colonel as some of her remarks had upon Adam, for he laughed and then converted the laugh into a cough that became a real cough and gave him a moment to compose himself.
He said, breathlessly, “Oh, come now, my dear, you can’t expect him to waste time courting a girl as pretty as you,” and then, more seriously, “You admitted you were in love with him, and frankly I was delighted to hear it, and so was Charlotte. However, I daresay we could persuade him to wait a little. Suppose I asked Aunt Charlotte to help you compose a letter…” but he got no further, for she realised that he was teasing her and told him that he should be ashamed of himself, and that if she was in mind to delay the marriage she had no need to consult Aunt Charlotte or anyone else, and in any case had no intention of giving Adam an opportunity to back down on his proposal. In support of this she quoted a girl she knew in Seddon Moss, who had tried those tactics and had ended up attending her beau's wedding as a bridesmaid.
It was this kind of relationship, easy, warm, and gay, and soon she began to use the old man as a mooring post for her emotions, bringing him not only her hopes, fears, and doubts, but also Adam's letters, that she declared were not love-letters at all but business reports that might have been composed for a mill-overseer. He was able to reassure her, saying, “That's an aspect of Adam you’ll have to adjust to, my dear. The boy was away from home for seven years this last time, and we only had seven letters from him and those read like a page out of this book, only less comprehensively set down. For all that he's affectionate and I’ll vouch for it. His mother was, and he's got French blo
od in his veins, that offsets the Swann stodginess.”
“You’re the least stodgy man I ever met,” she said, but he replied, shaking his head, “Don’t deceive yourself, my dear. The Swanns have been suet puddings for generations. Ten out of every dozen went straight into the army from school, and those who survived became potterers, like me. But Adam, he's either a throwback to some thieving archer, or the end product of his mother's line, tradesmen to a man. Thank your stars that it is so. It means you won’t have to sit at home waiting for notes like these from Walcheren, or Alexandria, or Bombay. Neither are you likely to find yourself a widow at twenty-five, or nursing a legless hulk through the prime of life. Think on that, Henrietta, and take comfort from it. Keep glory where it belongs, between the covers of a book, like Baron de Marbot's.”
God is an Englishman Page 19
