Standing before the window with his back to her as she loosed the ribbons of her pill-box and slipped out of the green hussar jacket, he said, “I’ll sleep on that truckle bed, Henrietta, and we’ll breakfast up here at eight,” but she said, surprisingly, “No Adam, stay here with me. I…I’d prefer that, I really would,” and when he turned, saying, “You’re sure? You mean that? Or is it just because you think it's expected of you?” she replied, firmly, “Not in the least, Adam. I love you very much, and I want to be a good wife to you. Always.” Then, as he still seemed hesitant, “Unhook me at the top, for I can’t reach,” and turned her back so that he unfastened the row of tiny hooks of the bodice and when that was done, and she had shrugged herself half out of it, he kissed her shoulders and neck as they stood there for a moment, with her weight resting lightly against him. Then to the wonder of both of them, the initiative passed to her, for she reached up and pulled his hands down, holding them over her breasts and his touch must have gone some way to banishing taboos that lingered, for a moment later the five petticoats lay in a tumbled heap on the rug and the gaping corset, miraculously released from its central hook, joined them there and she was standing in her cotton shift and a pair of frilled pantalettes, not unlike those she had been wearing when he first saw her standing in the puddle.
He said, “We’re going to be very good for one another. You believe that now, don’t you?” but she had had enough talking and turned in his embrace, her arms encircling his neck and her small, compact body pressed to his with all her strength. There seemed nothing to say that was capable of expressing the sudden tenderness he felt for her at that particular moment, so he kissed her eyes and mouth and hair, not only in response to the mounting desire he felt for her but with a kind of deliberation and compassion. It crossed his mind then that this was as new an experience for him as for her. Innocence was something he had never encountered, and now that he did it made his occasional sallies seem arid, so that he could not, on any account, accord her the kind of treatment both parties took for granted in a hired transaction and said, gently, “Go to sleep now. We’ve got the whole of our lives before us…” But she replied, seeming to guess what was passing through his mind, “I’m your wife, Adam, and I want to give you something, not just because you’ve given me so much but because—well, because I’m not the least bit afraid any more. Look I’ll prove to you I’m not…” and she pulled her chemise over her head and began to fumble with her stockings. He reached out and extinguished the light, appraising her body in the glow of the fire, and thinking he had never looked at a woman who held out more promise, not only of physical fulfilment but something more difficult to define: solace, perhaps, or an end to a deep, personal loneliness that he had mistaken until this moment for a compound of pride and self-sufficiency. He said, more to himself than her, “I know now why I wanted you,” and passed into the dressing room where he shed his clothes without haste, still half-inclined to leave her, and wondering whether her professed eagerness was a form of hysteria of which it would be churlish to take advantage.
She was not hiding under the coverlet but standing where he had left her on the hearthrug, and he noticed that she had even removed her hair ribbons, so that her breasts were half-masked by tresses that reached almost to her waist, trapping within them a few gleams of firelight.
She met his gaze so frankly that he thought, “I hope to God I can be gentle with her,” and then, “Who was I to question her experience or lack of it? She's not the only one who needs help…” and he began to praise her with his hands, first cupping her breasts and kissing them, then caressing every part of her body.
He was surprised not so much by her initial passivity as by his own restraint, that came to him easily and naturally until the moment when he raised his hands to her face and kissed her mouth that was the one part of her that was not passive and inclined him to lift her and hold her cradled like a child for a moment before lowering her, less patiently, to the bed. Then, in a matter of seconds, it seemed, he entered her with the minimum of difficulty, finding in her pathetic attempts to accommodate him a measure of pride and satisfaction that he had never encountered in the arms of a trained harlot, for she came to him gladly as a person and not as an instrument, and this, in his experience, was unique.
He said presently, when they were still, “If I hurt you it was because…” but she shook her head, almost defiantly, and when he made a slight movement to withdraw she clung to him so that gladness swept through him, and he buried his lips in her hair, lifting his hand to stroke her cheek and wondering how he could express his relief and gratitude in words that she would find acceptable. Then it came to him that words of any kind were superfluous, and her refusal to be parted from him spoke for itself, telling him that she had clearly expected something infinitely more devastating than this, and was herself savouring a kind of triumph that she had succeeded in conjuring from him a temperance that she had suspected would have no permanent role in this kind of encounter.
She lay there for what seemed to her a very long time, listening to her own heartbeats and to his, and waiting until she was quite sure he was asleep before she eased herself half free from his sprawling embrace, and could turn her head and look at him in the light of the coals rustling in the grate. He looked, she thought, very boyish lying still like that, with his dark hair tumbled on the pillow, and his lips parted showing a glimpse of strong teeth, each of them big, square, and dependable like the rest of his features. She studied him critically and with a ground swell of amusement that was based, she suspected, in his recent antics, for suddenly and very surprisingly she no longer thought of him as her senior by some twelve years but an approximate contemporary, like Sarah Hebditch. And it was thinking of Sarah that reminded her she was now in triumphant possession of the secret that had eluded her for so long, and she wondered very much why it had been swaddled in so much secrecy and whispering and shushing and head-nodding, for in a way it was very close to what she had expected and had somehow half-known, although no one had ever hinted that it was so richly rewarding in the sense that it swept you out of the eternity of childhood and on to a plane where you were no longer entirely dependent on the whims of adults, especially male adults. It could even become (with a little practice) an excessively pleasant experience but she was not, at the moment, assessing it from a physical standpoint but rather what it meant in terms of status within the confidence of a male, particularly a lusty, well-disposed, tolerant male like the one asleep beside her and beginning to snore. It provided answers to a whole range of related questions that had puzzled her, concerning the way strange men looked at her, and where Sam got to when he departed in his Sunday broadcloth on business engagements to areas where his kind of business was rarely conducted, and the popularity among Seddon Moss males of the pantomime posters outside the Hippodrome depicting smiling young women with thighs as thick as hams and bosoms like the flying buttresses of the new town hall. It had a good deal to do, she supposed, with all manner of other things, women's fashions, saucy jokes, and unmentionable words, and even went some way to explaining Makepeace Goldthorpe's desire to marry her.
It was at this point that she related what had occurred to her current position as Mrs. Adam Swann, and she wondered how much part her looks and figure had played in his initial championship that had developed, in less than three months, from an uncle-niece relationship to the pair of them lying side by side in a double bed, without benefit of nightdress and nightgown. She was by no means sure, even now, how much this could be credited to the impact she had made upon him as a woman rather than a stray, and was content to leave it in abeyance for want of further evidence. There could be no doubt, however, that he found her more satisfactory as a mate than he had looked for little more than an hour ago and this, regarded in isolation, was a perfectly splendid development, for it surely followed that she possessed the ability, properly deployed, to keep him interested in the years ahead.
Then she had another,
more generous thought, and this brought her added satisfaction, for until now their relationship had seemed to her very lop-sided, all give on his part, all take on hers. It was very gratifying to reflect that at any time he came seeking kisses she was licensed to give him not merely her lips but a body of which she was properly proud, and in which he evidently delighted. This not only gave her a sense of permanence but a taste of something she had always envied men, glorious independence.
A rustle of coals interrupted her reverie, and she eased herself out of his grasp and then out of bed, to creep round the room, retrieve her scattered clothes, and pile them on a rocker chair by the window. He continued to snore softly and suppressing a giggle, she slipped into the dressing room, groped her way to the washstand and sponged herself, taking the greatest care to do it without splashing. Then she went back into the main room and peered about for her nightdress, recalling that it had been lying on the coverlet when they came in. She found it at last and was in the act of slipping it over her head when an owl in a copper beech close by hooted and for some reason this released the giggle so that she glanced nervously at his pillow, or rather her pillow and thought, as she edged herself back into bed, “To think of the hours I spent embroidering this négligé and he never even saw me wear it before he went to sleep. I wish now I’d done something more practical, like knit him a pair of socks.”
A kind of proprietary smugness stole over her and she felt for his hand, lifting it very carefully and bringing it to rest under her breast. His warmth and stillness was like a balm, healing the harassments and anxieties of the long, eventful day. In such warm and cosy proximity with him she could contemplate the physical aspects of the tremendous occurrence, remembering not only his conversation about that South Sea island word—what was it again?—”typhoos” or “taroos”— but also her discussion with the Colonel concerning the biblical verb, “to know.” Well, she certainly knew him now, and he knew her, without any reservations whatever and presently, blushing in the dark, she was able to ponder the mechanics of the ritual with the objectivity she could bring to the purchase of a new dress or a bonnet. She had to admit, at this stage, that the preliminaries and the aftermath had been both congenial and gratifying but as to the act itself she had certain reservations. It was not that it had proved as painful as he seemed to anticipate but it certainly qualified as startling, and there had been a moment, she recalled, when she had had to make a great effort to master panic. Something told her, however, that this was linked to its novelty, and that knowing precisely what to expect was surely more than half-way to acceptance. She supposed now that she would have a baby and the prospect, far from scaring her, only added to her sense of achievement. Taken all round it had been a stupendous day for getting on in the world, and she supposed men must feel rather like this when they had won a battle or secured a rich contract. As though to assure herself that she was indeed sleeping upon the field, she settled herself more comfortably within his listless embrace and lifted his heavy hand to her lips. Then, with a sigh almost loud enough to wake him, she slept.
Three
1
HE HAD COME TO TERMS WITH THE BIG CITY, WITH ITS STINK, ITS SQUALOR, ITS grime, its sulphurous smoke, its nonstop groundswell of greed and noise and muddle, and one reason why he had been able to do this was the unique observation post he had secured for himself in those first frenetic months.
Avery had found them a depot, a large, tumbledown area in the centre of a seething rectangle formed by the Old Kent Road, Tooley Street, Tower Road, and the river itself. It was not the most salubrious base he could have picked on the south of the river, but it had the great advantage of being cheap and central. It had started out in life, several centuries ago, as a nunnery, and the chapel tower, three storeys high, still remained, a forlorn witness to God and his angels among a vast clutter of sheds, stables, and ashstrewn yard wholly given over to Moloch. It was here, in a strange octagonal chamber that had been the nunnery belfry, that Adam had his office, maintained his logbooks and account ledgers, and hung his wall-maps and all the data gathered in the journeys he made in his first eighteen months in England.
The belfry, his eyrie as he called it, had an impressive view, even when the smoke pall shrouded all the one-storey buildings around. From his desk he could look between other buildings at the sluggish Thames, the Tower itself, the wharves and barge traffic, the London Docks, and even the western edge of the Surrey Commercial Docks further east. He could see the smoke puffs of the Bricklayer's Arms goods depot, a large tannery, a biscuit factory, a match factory, and, passing between these points down the arteries that linked them, the ebb and flow of wheeled traffic and the scurrying, doll-like figures of draymen, hawkers, urchins, clerks, and dockers, and the more deliberate passage of the paunched gentlemen who held this multitude in thrall.
Up here, forty feet above the apparatus of his own adventure, he had leisure to dream, to take a detached view of his endeavours and what it meant in terms of his future and Henrietta's and the child she would bear him soon, but it was not often that his dreams were personalised or localised. More often they probed across the river to the shires where hedgerows were still green, where trees stood, where the pace of life was still as leisurely as it had been in Tudor times, and every now and again, when a ship went down with the tide, he would follow it in his fancy, rounding the North Foreland and sailing to distant shores he had seen and to others he had not and probably never would now that his anchor was down. Yet it intrigued him to reflect that he was now an active participant in this gigantic and ever-expanding business, that it really mattered to him how much tonnage of manufactories were gathered here to be transported to every corner of the world and also that, as this imperial venture grew and grew, so would his own concerns, and those of the sixty-odd men and boys who looked to him for their wages every Saturday.
It gave him a feeling of contributing that he had never had as a mercenary, and for the very first time in his life he felt a glow of self-justification, of being who he was and where he was. In a subtle way this certainty began to enlarge him as an individual, so that his personality flowered under the triple pulse of power, responsibility, and risk. He shed much of his barrack-square brusqueness and shyness, involving himself in the destinies of underlings in a way that had never been possible in squadron or regiment. For he was now committed, deeply committed, and so, in a sense, was the least of Saul Keate's vanboys moving to and fro down there on the greasy cobblestones between warehouse, stable, and waggon park. One and all, he told himself, they would sink or swim with him, and an understanding of this not only reinforced his confidence in himself but endowed him with tolerance and patience and put a curb on his temper.
Everybody about him noticed this broadening and deepening of his character. Not only Henrietta, bustling about her little house in Shirley twelve miles to the south-west, but hardbitten men like Josh Avery, and dedicated men like Keate, and all the crusty old carters and snotty-nosed urchins Keate had recruited on his behalf. Paternalism not only grew on him but suited him. Little by little they began to trust both him and his judgements, and he secretly basked in that trust.
The depot had been other things besides a nunnery. At some time in its existence it had served as a brewery and then as a knacker's yard, and later still a livery stable. There was no form about its design, for every trade had left its stamp upon the place, a labyrinth within a labyrinth, a slum hemmed in by slums. It was surrounded by a long, clapboard fence with double gates on two sides, and a central yard enclosed by a tumbledown warehouse cut up into sections, a waggon park on the north side, where vehicles not in use or in the course of repair were housed, innumerable sheds and dumps and tackrooms and lofts and finally, in somewhat better heart, the stables themselves, where there was always activity, even at night and on Sundays.
It was still very much a London enterprise, although plans to expand as far north as Berwick, and as far west as Truro, were in train and awaiting the drying
out of the roads. The delay in launching out had chafed him during the initial stage, but now he saw that Avery's advice and Keate's doubts had been justified. There was so much to do, so much to hire and buy, so much to be committed to memory and to paper. Avery had said, when he had displayed his original wall maps, “Good. From the beginning I urged you to think in guineas instead of sixpences—now I’ll add a rider to that. For God's sake, don’t go off at half-cock! You’re facing stiff competition, not only in the haulage field but from the railways. You’ve got to prospect your areas one by one, and plot your rates and routes down to the last penny and the last half-mile. The potential is there awaiting you, but you have to be able to give a service that no one else is prepared to give, you have to be in a position to guarantee punctuality and intact delivery of every product the country is putting on the home and overseas market. The name Swann has got to be synonymous with speed and reliability. Ensure that and you can build a reputation in six months and once it's there you’ll be your own best advertisement, providing you can make good your promises. Merchants will seek you out, their pockets stuffed with lading bills.”
Keate's comments had been more restrained, perhaps because, unlike Avery, he had lived his life thinking in terms of halfpennies. Keate, warned of the projected expansion and the establishment of depots right across the country, had demurred on the grounds of equipment and staff, for it already seemed to him that this strange, impulsive man had taken an excessively large bite at the cake and would need a decade to digest it. He had hummed and hawed over the difficulties of finding enough men who could be trusted to operate efficiently and honestly at such distances, and the number of horses and waggons needed to establish links between the source areas and the nearest railheads. It seemed to him a prodigious undertaking, almost like the exploitation of a sub-continent, and because of this he urged consolidation before serious thought was given to the kind of expansion Adam had in mind.
God is an Englishman Page 22
