Her heart went out to her in a way she would have thought impossible an hour ago. She supposed it was more than the normal compassion one might be expected to feel for a woman in her circumstances, someone who had leaned on a man as self-assured as Adam Swann for so long. It had to do, she imagined, with their shared appraisal of someone who had been free and far-ranging, self-governing and uncurbed, and was now reduced to a dependent role that he would hate and fear.
She answered. “Not in the least wicked. Inevitable, I’d say, for any sensitive person who was close to a man like Adam Swann.”
She was much sharper than she looked and did not miss the inference.
“You were close to him?”
“I like to think I was one of the few who understood what he was trying to do.”
“Tell me then.” The voice was eager and far more alive than it had been a moment ago. She considered, choosing her words carefully. “Well, it wasn’t just a matter of running a business and making money. People and trends interest him more than goods and money and that always showed. In everything he did, every word he spoke. I think a lot of us sensed this but he didn’t proclaim it.”
“He must have to you?”
“To me, and to one other district manager, a man called Catesby, in Lancashire.”
She moved closer, sitting directly opposite, her hands in her lap. “What can happen now? I mean, how will somebody like him manage with such an awful handicap?”
“People do and with less start than he has. By way of temperament, that is.”
“But don’t you see, it's temperament I’m worried about. I’ve been to see him several times and he's different already. I can’t…well…get to him. He seems patient and resigned but that isn’t really him. He was never resigned to anything. I’d feel happier if he was restless and resentful, the way he used to be when things went wrong.”
“He's weak. He’ll need time to adjust, Mrs. Swann. I think we can leave that side of it to him.”
“But what else matters?”
“What he's created, what he's worked for all these years. That's extremely important to him. It will make all the difference if it's still there and he can return to it as soon as he can walk.”
“There's no risk of it not being, is there?”
“I think there is. It's a very personal concern. It isn’t the kind of business that runs itself.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
She was silent a moment. Then she said, earnestly, “What could I do to help?”
She had to think quickly and deeply, lest she should convey an impression that she was here for her own advancement or, indeed, that anything was at stake beyond the vital necessity of maintaining the impetus of the concern that offered, to her mind, his sole chance of rehabilitation. And then, like the wink of a heliograph, she saw a solution that could conceivably solve both problems, his deep, personal involvement with the network, and this woman's tenuous relationship with him as wife and partner, someone who could, providing she had the courage and was sufficiently desperate, exploit this situation to tremendous advantage. She said, drawing a deep breath, “I’ve been running things, Mrs. Swann. I had to because there was no one else qualified to do it. Mr. Stock is now trying to make me take over for as long as Mr. Swann is away and convalescent.”
“You don’t feel you could do that?”
“Yes, I could do it. Not nearly as well as him but I could do it if I had to.”
“But you have other plans?”
“I hadn’t when I came in here a few moments ago.”
Their eyes met for a moment. Neither flinched.
Henrietta said: “It's to do with me then?”
“Yes. It would be far better if you did it, Mrs. Swann.”
“Me? Me run the business? How would that be possible?”
“I think it would. Don’t ask me to explain why but I do. You could do it as well as me, perhaps better in the end. And I’d help. I’d help in anyway I could.”
“But suppose that were true. Suppose I could leave Phoebe in charge, and Deborah stayed on to help with the babies, what on earth would be gained?”
“As far as you’re concerned? A very great deal, Mrs. Swann.”
“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand. Do you mean the men would be more likely to take orders from me than from you? Is that it?”
It was a way out but she rejected it. It wouldn’t wholly convince her and she needed very much to be convinced. She got up and went over to the window, calculating risks of a kind that had nothing in common with those she had been taking in the tower, risks that seemed at this moment, not to qualify as risks. She said, finally: “I could easily offend you very deeply, Mrs. Swann, but for his sake, and yours too, I’ll say what I have to. If you did what I suggest, if you made that kind of effort, it would make a very great impression on him when he learned of it. It might even give him the kind of courage he needs and has to find somewhere.”
“Why should you think that might offend me, Miss Wadsworth?”
“I haven’t finished yet. Whoever takes his place and holds the thing together is going to earn his lifelong gratitude. That person should be you not me, Mrs. Swann.”
She heard the clock in the corner ticking the seconds away and its plangency seemed to fill the room, reducing the summer sounds outside to an infinite distance. She heard Henrietta say, in what seemed an incurious tone, “You’re in love with Adam?” and then, as though debating a point with herself, “You must be, otherwise you would have made a very different proposal.” She stood up and the scrape of the chair brought Edith round, so that they faced one another. “Is he…is he in love with you?”
She could answer this truthfully, thank God, and did with a directness tinged with bitterness. “No, and never was, Mrs. Swann, tho’ there were times when he might have imagined he was!”
“Recently?”
“A long time ago.”
“Ah, yes, when we had that trouble here. When the boy was killed?”
“Yes, but nothing happened. Nothing that belittled you in any way. You, his children, this home you’ve made for him, always kept pace with the network. I was a long way behind, even in those days. Since things have changed for him I’ve dropped right out of sight. You must believe that, Mrs. Swann. For all our sakes.”
She was not afraid to look at her now. Her assumption, she supposed, was logical enough and neither of them, so far as she could see, had much to lose. Only he could lose, lying trussed up in bed with a stump where his leg had been and his life in ruins. All they were doing was to try and salvage some of the pieces. She moved to the door and turned, one band on the knob. “You’ll want time to think it over, no doubt.”
Henrietta's swift movement surprised her. She seemed to flit across the room like a random shadow and materialise on the threshold. She said, pushing the door shut, “No, Miss Wadsworth! I don’t need time. I’ve been all kinds of a fool concerning Adam in my time but I stopped being one some time ago. I understand that what you say is true, how much that business means to him, and how important it is that it should be there to come home to. I understand what it means to you too, not only for your own sake but for his.”
“You’ll do it? You’ll try?”
“If I didn’t then you’d have to and I’d deserve all that followed. I love Adam very much. I always have, although I didn’t find loving him easy until lately, until just before this awful thing happened to us.” A tiny gleam of humour showed in her eyes. “He isn’t the easiest husband for someone like me, without much to go on except instinct.”
“There's nothing wrong with instinct, Mrs. Swann. Certainly not your instinct.”
“No, but more was needed, a lot more. You realised that a long time ago.” She stopped, her hand to her mouth, and again Edith saw her as a child but a child from whom a sense of dread had been lifted. “My manners…! I haven’t even offered you tea…” She flung open the do
or and called into the hall. “Deborah! Tell Agnes to bring tea. Not here, in the sewing-room,” and turned back into the room. “How would I go about it? Where would I begin?”
“From here until he left for Switzerland. I could send papers and maps and specimen contracts. It would help you to pass the time and stop thinking. And I could spend Sundays here until I went back to my patch. When does the surgeon think he’ll be fit to travel?”
“By the end of the month, if he continues to progress,” her fingers twiddled with the tassel of her belt. “You think I should tell him? Suppose, as he gets better, he begins worrying? Won’t that be bad for him?”
“It's something we can guard against.”
“How?”
“I’ll send him the monthly returns. It doesn’t matter whether they’re accurate or not.”
“Miss Wadsworth?”
“Yes?”
“What's your Christian name?”
“Edith.”
“I’ll tell you something nobody else knows, Edith. Two things. You might know one of them but I think not.”
“Well?”
“Years ago, before we married, when he was helping me to run away from home, I did make a contribution to that business. I invented the name and trademark. I think he's forgotten that and I’ve never liked to remind him. It seemed like giving a present, then telling him how much it cost.”
She found she could smile at that and did, sharing a little in the excitement that had revitalised her and brought colour to her cheeks. “I see. And the other thing?”
“We’d none of us be alive if it hadn’t been for him. He was half-blind with blood, and more hurt than any of us, but he kept his head somehow. He held the children up to that poor man Blubb, the one Mr. Dickens wrote about, and after that—I still can’t imagine how—he dragged me across the carriage and lifted me high enough for them to reach.”
“Why did you keep all that to yourself?”
“It was something to hold on to. Can you understand that?”
She understood perfectly. If he had died, she supposed, it would have been in all the newspapers, but knowing him as Henrietta did it was something she would not dare to broadcast while there was the slightest chance of being called to account for it. A man who had renounced heroics would fight shy of that kind of publicity. She said, “Keep it secret. Most men would enjoy basking in that kind of sunshine but Adam isn’t among them.”
She would have preferred then to have driven away and been alone with her thoughts but this was not possible. She had to stay and be introduced to the children and Phoebe Fraser, to sip tea in the sewing-room with Henrietta and Avery's child, and all the time the unexpected success of her stratagem dragged at her. It was not that she regretted it, or was daunted by the problems and risks it presented, only that, in a sense, it slammed a door that had remained open ever since that day he ambushed her beside the Swale.
Five
1
TIME WAS THE ELEMENT THAT ELUDED HIM. HE WAS AWARE OF MANY THINGS, odd, unrelated things, the fact that it was summer, that he was help less, that he was in unfamiliar surroundings guarded by friendly gaolers. He had a sense too of having been involved in some kind of catastrophe associated with falling, with water and the smell of bruised grass, indicating a subsidence of some kind, a landslide, a food, or something of that nature. Beyond that no conclusive indication of why he was here, watched over and trussed like a fowl.
There were pointers but they did not lead him anywhere. The pungent whiff of disinfectant, the occasional appearance of the man he took to be his chief gaoler, a long-jawed, gold-spectacled busybody with a Hebraic nose, who smelled of camphor, a succession of bowls held to his lips, lips that were clothed in bristles and whispered when his fingers passed across them. But time, in relation to phases in his remembered past, eluded him, so that presently he surrendered to it and let it swirl him along like a slow current.
Once he had adjusted to the sense of drift he could focus on landmarks of one kind or another. The Cumberland fells were a constantly recurring background, and so was the Addiscombe riding school, where “Circus” Howard would entertain them with his acrobatics, and Roberts, grave and serious-minded, would be looking on, his face stiff with disapproval. Roberts was a fairly constant travelling companion, sometimes riding beside him through sweltering heat to Cawnpore, or putting his case concerning the ethics of their profession, but then, less probably, so was that bewhiskered ass Cardigan, justifying the destruction of a brigade in a valley between two ranges of hills, and the logic of his dream rejected this for he had never exchanged one word with Cardigan.
Sometimes the images telescoped and then proliferated. Henrietta would appear in that cageless green crinoline she had worn in their ride over the Pennines and at other times—the image was very vivid on these occasions—she wore a dove-grey dress and a severe poke bonnet that made her look sad and remote. Once or twice she appeared from nowhere wearing no clothes at all, so that he could study her as she moved unconcernedly across his line of vision giving him time to appraise the symmetry of her shoulders, thighs, and buttocks, and the slow, sensual ripple of her heavy copper ringlets. Other, more shadowy figures hailed him and were lost—Hamlet Ratcliffe, driving a frigate at a furious pace, Catesby reading a letter from his son, Bryn Lovell, swarmed over by piccaninnies, and Edith, tall, swaying, and immensely dignified as she picked her way through a maze of waggons, all of which seemed to be driven by Blubb.
It was Blubb who became his first, fixed point, a moonfaced familiar he could use as a kind of base, and presently he saw him constantly in the same incongruous frame, a railway carriage window through which he stared and stared, with an expression of outrage in his eyes and his slack mouth agape. He became very irritated with Blubb's immobility and understood, for the first time, why Tybalt and Keate disapproved of him and never mentioned his name without frowning. Then, one stifling afternoon, Blubb withdrew from the window and was replaced by the long-jawed gaoler who smelled of camphor, and for once he could comprehend what the man was saying and recognise kindly concern in his serious eyes. He said, apropos of nothing, “Well, now, that's rather better. You won’t have much to show for it. Just a seam, like a crease in a sheet.” And then, more jocularly, “You’ve still kept your tan. You’ll never win sympathy as an invalid, Swann, but don’t let that concern you. You won’t be one much longer.”
There was more talk of this kind before he slipped away again, and he could not have said how long passed before he opened his eyes again and saw, of all people, old Sir Nevil Cook, the evangelist M.P., who was said to own twenty-three biscuit factories and had been so intrigued by that story of Luke Dobbs, the chimney sweep. He saw and heard Sir Nevil quite clearly and could even demand to know how he came to be there, and what, in the name of God, had happened to himself and everybody else over such a long period of lunatic confusion. The magnate said, anxiously, “Er…how much do you recall, Swann? Sir John thinks that is important.”
“Sir John who?”
“Sir John Levy. The surgeon. He's been looking after you, for weeks now.”
“Weeks? What the devil happened to me?”
“You don’t know?”
“I remember some kind of fall! Did I take a bad toss from a horse?”
The old fellow looked uncertain at this but presently, blowing out his pink cheeks, he said, carefully, “You were in a bad railway accident at Staplehurst. You and your family. It happened close by, on the 9th June. Your wife and children were with you…”
“Henrietta…the children…?”
“They were unscathed, I’m happy to say. You were hurt.”
He digested this. Then he said, thoughtfully, “A railway accident. I remember vaguely. The boat-train—what's the date now? How long…?”
“It doesn’t matter, old chap. It's of no consequence at all.”
“Tell me, and tell me where I am and how badly I was injured.” And when the old fellow hesitated, “I’ve se
rved through two wars. I’ve seen everything in my time.”
“Very well, it's mid-July. The seventeenth, and you’re at my country house, Rising Hill. We brought you over here from Tonbridge shortly after it happened. As to your injuries, you had a very bad gash on your face but that's healed up splendidly, a dislocated shoulder and a broken wrist, both responding well to treatment, severe concussion…and…er…severe injuries to your leg. Your left leg.”
“How severe?”
The old man looked as if he was being threatened with a pistol. He said, “Sir John can explain, Swann.”
“You explain, Sir Nevil. Come, I’m not a child.”
God is an Englishman Page 78
