They shook hands and he conducted Adam into an office under a squeaking hoist that continued its laborious work of transferring bales from handtruck to platform all the time they were below. He was friendly enough, however, and called for brandy to drink the health of his granddaughter, of whose existence, Adam soon discovered, he was aware. He also seemed to have kept silent watch on their movements over the period.
“Lass is settling to t’collar, I hope,” he said, as though Henrietta had been a filly of dubious reputation, and Adam said she was well on the way to becoming the fashion-setter in the district, and was costing him, one way and another, more than he cared to admit.
“Nay, tha’ll have to put a stop to that, lad,” Sam said, seriously, “and it can be done at her age. Wi’ strap if necessary. But then, I’m a fair one to brag, for you’ll ha’ heard I were fool enow to marry again?”
“No,” said Adam, “I hadn’t, and I’m sure it will be news to Henrietta. Congratulations, from both of us.”
“Tha’ can spare me that,” Sam said, glumly, “for I thowt as I knew women but discovered I didn’t, no more’n a bit of a lad. I picked a fair tartar second time round. Henrietta's mother was stiffnecked but our Hilda, she's ahead of her by a mile or more. Mind, she's a gradely lass, and a comfort to a man night times at my time o’ life, but there's no putting on her. We had our picture took by a chap who set up his studio hereabouts,” and he opened a drawer in his desk and extracted, not without pride, a photograph of man and wife, set in a gilded, oval mount with the obligatory palm-tree growing beside the table at which Sam was sitting.
The new Mrs. Rawlinson looked about thirty and well able to take care of herself. She had abundant hair, a robust, tightly corsetted figure, and a proprietary air, indicated by the presence of one muscular arm resting possessively on Sam's shoulder, as though holding him there until the police arrived, “Ah kept this one by if you care to take it, and show it t’lass,” he said and then, with a snort, “Eee, lad, there's no dam’ sense in father and daughter going to their graves wi’out a friendly nod to one another. I’ll own I were wrong about you, for I took you for a popinjay, wi’ nowt about him but swank and a way wi’ the lasses. I’ve kept my eye on that venture o’ yours and it's got around you give value for money. Are you ready to let bygones be bygones, and handle my stuff?”
“I’ll haul anyone's goods who pays on the nail,” Adam said, and the reply must have pleased Sam for he smacked his thigh and exclaimed, “That's how I’d like to hear a son o’ mine talk! I’m reet glad now Henrietta gave yon Goldthorpe the go-by. When I were in deep water, after t’mill were burned down, I soon found the difference between friends and vampires. Goldthorpe had the gall to offer me a loan at nine per cent. Think on it! Nine per cent! Come to finish I got what I needed at half the rate, and I’m in a fair way to setting up again, as you can see from where you sit, lad.”
Adam acknowledged this but queried Rawlinson's motives in offering him a road haulage contract. “You have the rail here,” he said, “and while we can make cheaper and quicker hauls to the north the bulk of your exports must go direct to Liverpool, by freight train.”
“Ah’m not concerned about what goes out,” said Sam, gloomily, “it's t’raw material Ah’m bothered about. You’ll have heard about the carry-on in the plantations no doubt?”
“I’ve heard there might be war between the states.”
“Might? Nay, lad, it's not just a bit of a shindig, that’ll sort itself out in a week or two. Six months from now no more than a trickle o’ cotton will come out of the Carolinas and Georgia, so how in hell are we to keep wheels turning in the Belt?”
For the first time since he had read of the dispute between the states Adam gave the matter serious thought. “If you knew it was coming,” he asked, “why didn’t you buy in bulk, the moment Lincoln was elected President?” but Sam said, blankly, “Nay, do you still think I’m that much of a fool, lad? I have bought, but not from the Liverpool men. They’re alive to it down there, and the scramble for bales began the moment word came of Carolina's secession. I bought in bulk, and chartered ships to bring it in and offload at Whitehaven. Why Whitehaven? Because if it came in to Liverpool it would start a run, and how could I trust the shipowners not to sell to others, and blackmail me into paying three times the wholesale? Nay, I were two jumps ahead of all of ’em. There's two cargoes up there awaiting my collection at this moment, and your waggons can hump ’em in any time you’ve a mind to, subject to a fair rate per ton, mind. That's what you and I should settle before we part company. No damn sense at all in letting money pass out of the family.”
“Won’t the war with the North compel the planters to export all they can pick?”
“Aye, they’ll try, no doubt, but there's talk now of a blockade, and if that happens all Lancashire is for the bankruptcy court, lad.”
“Given those two shipments, how long could you hold out?”
“A year, or more with what I’ve hoarded,” Sam said, so they agreed the rates there and then, with the minimum of bargaining. Sam urged him to come home to dinner and try Hilda Rawlinson's cooking, but Adam had wasted enough time already and was impatient to acquaint Catesby with the details of the deal and the Border Triangle situation, and then return to London to get things moving. Sam saw him as far as the station, and even went so far as to give him a paternal pat on the shoulder when the branch line train slid into the platform. He said, as they shook hands, “Will you gammon Henrietta into calling a truce, and sending me a picture of the little lass?” and Adam said he would do his best and mentioned that Henrietta expected her second child within a few months. The news delighted Rawlinson, who said, pursing his thick lips, “Eee, that's the style, lad! Put ’em to bed and give ’em plenty to think on!”
He watched the solid figure dwindle as the train gathered speed, thinking, “The old man might be a coarse brute, but he's human somehow, and all of a piece with the landscape.”
3
The travelling diary was still in use, but its function as a record had been superseded by a much fatter book, a book almost as thick as a Bible, with brown leather covers and a thousand ruled sheets.
Into this book went not only facts and figures relevant to the 1860–61 expansion, but a distillation of all Adam Swann's thoughts concerning the eight unexploited territories, together with a record of the teams he maintained, the men he signed on, and the nature of goods hauled. He did not make entries concerning income and expenditure. That was Tybalt's province and the clerk guarded it jealously. Adam's book was not a ledger in that sense. It was more of a private Domesday Book, used for the purpose of clarifying ideas before he was ready to share them with anyone, even his sleeping partner, Avery.
The book still exists, hundreds of pages covered with Swann's neat, angular handwriting, and one very early entry, dated June 1st, 1861, relates to his first inroad into Tom Tiddler's Ground. It is a laconic entry and reads, “June 1. House removal to Ventnor, I. of W. Blubb's haul as far as Lymington, then on by collier to Yarmouth. Blubb's teams turned back. Four horses hired the far side.”
The entry signified both an extension of territory and a deviation in the established pattern of his business up to that date. For this was the first house removal Swann-on-Wheels had undertaken, and concerned the transfer of the chattels of a naval captain who, on retiring, had elected to leave the Medway area for a cliff-top home where he could enjoy an uninterrupted view of Channel shipping.
Tybalt's quotation was cut to the bone, not only because the old seaman was tightfisted, and had rejected estimates submitted by other carriers, but because Adam suddenly came to realise that there might be money in house-removals, more commonplace now than even ten years before. Twenty years ago it was rare for a man to move out of the county where he was rooted, but now people were more restless, as if rail travel had given them a taste for migrating, and they were reluctant to settle anywhere until they were too old to be bothered.
In ter
ms of time and cash the firm lost money on the removal, but it gave Adam a chance to prospect the Isle of Wight and ended in the establishment of a base at Newport, equipped with four one-horse vans and an Islander, a young mail-driver called Dockett, in charge of the four men established there. Because, so far, nothing heavier than pinnaces were based there, and because the island seemed, more or less, to be self-supporting, the branch specialised in house removals from the outset. By the end of the year it was showing a profit.
The incident remained fixed in Adam's mind for another reason. The following day, June 2nd, Henrietta gave birth to his son Alexander, and although she produced a boy weighing well over eight pounds she was spared a repetition of the ordeal that had accompanied Stella's arrival, or so she assured him when he went in to congratulate her after the doctor had given his reluctant assent.
He never recalled seeing her more cock-a-hoop, but the child made a different impression on him. His daughter, he remembered, had looked alert and wise even at this stage, but the boy, with his square face, uncomprehending eyes, and utter indifference to everything but his mother's breast, seemed to his father a miniature parody of all the stolid, whisky-swilling regulars Adam had met in barrack messes from Deal to Allahabad. He looked also as though he would never open his mouth except to eat, drink, or utter a platitude, would execute every order he received to the letter, no matter how stupid or out-of-date it was, and would never, under any circumstances whatever, show a spark of initiative. “A rare plodder if ever I saw one,” thought Adam but said, dutifully, “Well, my dear, it looks as if you’ve got your soldier,” and Henrietta, unconscious of irony, cooed, “Oh, but he's beautiful, beautiful! And he's going to be as strong as a bull and as bold as a lion.”
They chatted awhile about the impending arrival of the Colonel, Aunt Charlotte having died a month ago, but she was not really interested in anyone but the child at her breast, and soon he excused himself, looking in the nursery where Ellen Michelmore was preparing Stella for her morning outing. He said, for something to say, “Mrs. Swann seems to have got through this last business fairly comfortably,” but Ellen replied, tartly, “It's never that comfortable, sir. If men had the babies I wager you’d hear them roar from here to Sevenoaks.”
Because he wanted to be on hand to settle the Colonel into his quarters Adam had stayed at home and for a moment thought of taking Stella a ride on his saddle bow, but then reflected that she was still too young for this kind of excursion, and he would have to wait upon the pleasure for a spell. A cautious, exploratory relationship was already developing between father and daughter, and whenever he was about the house he was conscious of the child watching him with her serious blue eyes. She was, he decided, an extraordinarily attractive child, with a curiously adult air of deliberation about everything she did, and a developing ear for words that she sometimes seemed to be rehearsing before translating to sound. He said, squatting on his hams, “Has Ellen told you you’ve got a brother?” and suddenly, for the first time, the child smiled, holding out her arms to him so that he said, eagerly, “I’ll take her. We’ll walk up to the crest and back,” and he swung Stella out of her pen, carrying her down the broad staircase and into the sunshine that was flooding the face of the old house.
It was full summer out here, with the woods humming with sound, and the smell of parched grass and wildflowers coming from the thickets. The gardener and his boy were at work on some delphinium beds in the lawn but Adam had never cared for cultivated flowers and said, “Come, I’ll show you some real flowers,” and hoisting her on his shoulder took the path through the rhododendrons and up to the spot where he had stood overlooking the house the day he had decided to lease it.
He had, if he was frank, no regrets about that decision. Henrietta, without knowing it, must have been acting in all their interests, for it was surely a wonderful place to spend the eternity of childhood and would encourage in the least imaginative a sense of belonging in a community that was safe and rooted. Where the timber fell away, and the drop to the stableyard was steep, all manner of plants had seeded themselves among the moss and bracken. On a stretch of stone wall built, he supposed, by the original Conyer to guard against a landslide, he saw herb robert, toadflax, wandering trumpets of convolvulus, bright red campion, stitchwort, the tall dragonfly spires of rosebay willowherb, and dozens of other wildflowers. Nearer to hand stood a single foxglove as tall as himself and sporting a hundred mottled bells. He saw the child's eyes stray to the flower and would have picked it but remembering it was poisonous, said, very articulately, “It's a foxglove, my love. Papa's favourite wild-flower. Fox—glove!” and Stella arranged her lips and echoed, with remarkable clarity, “Fox—glove!” It was the first identifiable word he had heard her speak, and it seemed to him a miracle, performed for his benefit. He set her down with her back to the wall, and finding that she could stand fairly steadily retreated a few yards into the wood, saying, “Walk, Stella. Walk to Papa!” The child braced herself, hands thrust back against the wall and then, pushing herself off, stumbled towards him, her fat little legs working like pistons. She reached him without a stumble and he said, triumphantly, “Splendid! Absolutely splendid! You’ve walked and you’ve talked, all in five minutes!” and swung her up to his shoulder again, thinking as he did so, “Henrietta can have her boys, any amount of them. I’ll settle for this one, for she's really mine” and with a light heart he went down the winding path to the forecourt where old Michelmore, who had swapped the profession of miller for that of groom and coachman, was awaiting him, holding the mare that had carried him the length of England and he had never disposed of, for somehow she had a place in the complicated pattern of his life over the last three years.
4
It was late August when he opened up the Crescents territory, finding a Yorkshireman named Wadsworth to supervise the east coast segments, based on Whitby, Newark, Spalding, and Norwich, with a control centre at Boston, where they leased a yard within sight of the Stump.
It was a huge slice of territory to manage, but Wadsworth, who had driven locomotives until he was involved in an accident that had left him lame, was familiar with every mile of it, and Adam thought himself fortunate to engage a man as intelligent and dependable. Wadsworth was a widower, and the father of a boy in his early twenties who was serving as a fireman on the Eastern Counties. He also had a daughter who kept house for him and was capable, during her father's absences, of taking his place in the Boston yard, exercising an amiable despotism over the waggoners, stablemen, and, on occasion, customers, who were not averse to a little sharp practice, for up here were some of the most penny-pinching hagglers in the country, men who would spend half-an-hour debating the difference between threepence and fourpence on the transport of a bag of hops.
He soon learned to trust Wadsworth and respect his judgement, but he never succeeded in making a friend of him, as he did his brisk, buxom daughter, Edith. With his penchant for fanciful nicknames, he always thought of Edith as Boadicea, having first encountered her driving a two-horse frigate, her red woollen skirt tucked up above her knees, her weight thrown back on the reins as she scolded the team. She looked, he thought, like one of the Iceni riding out to do battle with the Romans.
There was a great deal to do up here, and he spent the tail-end of the summer coming and going, assessing what the territory required in terms of men, waggons, teams, and premises. The first hauls were almost wholly agricultural, sugar beet, potatoes, Norwich turkeys, great round cheeses, and baskets of fish out of Hull, but later Wadsworth secured two iron ore contracts in and out of Middlesbrough. Within three months they were under a full spread of canvas, so that the Crescents began to overhaul the Polygon where, as Rawlinson had predicted, a crippling blight had set in following the tightening of the Federal blockade of the cotton states.
More and more during these busy weeks he felt himself drawn to Edith Wadsworth, partly by reason of her abundant commonsense and close involvement in his concerns but also,
in a way that disturbed him slightly, by the positive energy reposing in her strong, supple body, so that he caught himself thinking of her as a woman capable of bringing him something more than loyal and imaginative service in a stableyard. And this was odd, he decided, for he now thought of himself as a man of settled habits of mind and body, and he wondered if the strong impression she made on him could be traced to the way she looked at him and addressed him, rather than to his appraisal of her trim figure and cheerful good looks. She had a way of assessing him with a cool, steady gaze, as though she too was seeing him as a person outside his function as her father's employer, and sometimes, feeling defensive on this account, he would challenge her but with laughter in his voice. He said to her once, “You’ve got more initiative than half the men I employ. Have you ever wished you’d been born a man?” and she replied, with a candour he had learned to expect from her, “Do I look like one to you, Mr. Swann?”
“No,” he said, laughing, “I can’t say that you do, but it puzzles me why some likely young chap hasn’t snapped you up long ago. How old are you?”
“That's a saucy question to put to a girl,” she said, with an answering smile. “You wouldn’t have asked it of one of those fragile ninnies, who wouldn’t appear in public unless she was fenced in by hoops and a dozen petticoats, and had taken the shine off her nose. However, I’m used to it, for the lads don’t think of me as a woman, maybe because I’ll not stand for their nonsense. I’m twenty-four. Well on the way to the shelf.”
God is an Englishman Page 32
