God is an Englishman

by R. F Delderfield

  Edith said nothing. She was too busy wondering whether, in years ahead, both she and Adam would find themselves in the situation of the king who enlisted a powerful neighbour as an ally and found, when the war was over, that he had been absorbed along with the enemy. Her assurance was rather depressing when Edith recalled how tiresome and complex the work had appeared when she was up here alone, whereas Henrietta seemed to advance towards it with a kind of girlish gaiety. She would sometimes look across at that tumble of copper ringlets and try and imagine what was going on underneath them in a brain none of them had taken into account before it was confronted with slate hauls from Llanberis, and the profit represented by one of Dockett's furniture removals in Tom Tiddler's Ground. What would Adam be likely to make of it when he returned? Would things ever be the same between them when he came back with his pace inevitably slowed and his confidence in himself badly shaken?

  One other aspect of this conspiracy on their part surprised her. Henrietta never made a single reference to what had emerged from that confrontation at Tryst, and seemed to take it for granted that any woman associated with Adam Swann would be likely to fall madly in love with him. It was one aspect of their association that irritated her, taking issue with her loyalty and her determination to play fair. She was grateful enough for a clear conscience but sometimes it seemed to her a very lopsided distribution of largesse, for here was a woman several years younger than herself who bore his name, had already borne him three children, was still in possession of good looks and a good figure, and was now seen to possess an agile brain and a self-confidence superior to anything she had to offer. She kept these thoughts to herself, however, and because they were constantly occupied through that sweltering month they did not trouble her overmuch until news came that he had been measured for his leg and was likely, according to the latest bulletin, to be home by spring.

  Edith noticed then that the news did not seem to elate Henrietta so much as she would have expected, and it even crossed her mind, rather treacherously she supposed, that Henrietta was thoroughly enjoying the challenge and might resent an end to the interlude. This suspicion was so persistent that presently she had to bring it into the open, saying, half-jokingly, “I really believe you prefer it up here and feel more at home in this belfry than at Tryst!” and Henrietta replied, frankly, “In a way I do, and I know why. For the first time in my life I’ve been useful, and it's pleasant to learn you’re not such a fool as you took yourself for. Do you suppose women will ever get a chance to prove that they can do anything apart from cooking, scouring, mending, minding children, and making themselves available when husbands have time to be affectionate?”

  The question was posed with such honesty that Edith laughed outright. It expressed so exactly all the secret resentments she herself had nursed over the years against the assumption by men that women were no more than a piece of apparatus, equipped for reproduction and servitude at the back of the cave.

  “I daresay it will come dawdling over the horizon in time,” she replied, “but not in your time or mine. Men have been fighting and hunting for thousands of years. All they’ve done since is to exchange both pursuits for commerce. There's a rumour, I hear, of giving women University places, and training spinsters for professions, but I doubt whether we shall ever be regarded as fit for anything except a little clerking and clearing up after our masters.”

  “But that's ridiculous,” Henrietta protested. “You and I are plain proof that it is, and you especially. It's quite obvious to me that Keate and Tybalt couldn’t have managed without you when Adam was injured. They even admit to it, don’t they?”

  “They might, but I don’t think Adam will, or anyone like Adam, who isn’t already conditioned to receiving orders. Does that bother you? I mean, having identified with this side of his life, will you ever be able to carry on where you left off?”

  “I’ve really no choice,” she said, glumly, “for by the time he gets back I’ll have another baby to attend to and I don’t suppose for a minute it’ll be the last.”

  The casual announcement so stunned Edith that for nearly a minute she was incapable of comment. She stood beside Frankenstein gaping at her partner with amazement that was approaching awe.

  “You’re pregnant? But how…?” and she broke off as Henrietta, discerning the other's incredulity, said, “Why do you find it surprising? It doesn’t surprise me, although I must say it's a perfect nuisance in the circumstances.”

  “You’re saying you’re upset about it?”

  “Well, no, not upset exactly, but I do wish it could be told to wait its turn.” She rose, standing in such a way that Edith could see then there was not much doubt about her condition and she was surprised she had needed telling. “After all, I oughtn’t to grumble. I’ve always wanted children, a whole tribe of children. Stella was difficult but the other two came easily enough, and I’m not scared of having more. It's just that I’ll have to go home around Christmas and I’d set my heart on carrying on until the last moment so as to surprise him.”

  “You’ll certainly do that. Have you told him?”

  “No. I was only sure myself a fortnight ago. I put it down to the shock and worry.”

  “You’ll tell him now that you are certain?”

  “No, I won’t.”

  She stood there looking, Edith thought, like a plump, stubborn child refusing to apologise, and in response to an impulse in which comradeship and humour were combined, she crossed the room and put her arm about her shoulders. “But why ever not? It isn’t likely to worry him, is it?”

  “Oh, it's not that,” said Henrietta, “it's just that I want to hold it in reserve. It’ll give him something to think about the moment he crosses the doorstep.”

  She considered this, finding in it further evidence of this indomitable woman's knowledge of the man Edith had once supposed she knew better than anyone alive. It was a very chastening thought and one that had the effect of removing yet another prop of self-esteem. She said, “I suppose you’re right,” and then, grudgingly, “You know him far better than I do,” and Henrietta said, lightly, “Well, I know that side of him. Better than he knows himself.”

  “You’re proposing to work here five days a week until Christmas?”

  “Why not? So long as I’m well and I’ve felt well ever since I took your advice. I’ll stay at the George, and go home every Friday afternoon. One good thing has happened that I didn’t hear about until after it was fixed. That convent Deborah attended is closing, and Adam arranged for her to live with us all the time. I suppose he was going to tell me that night, the minute we were alone. Did Mr. Avery's child impress you?”

  “Very much indeed.”

  “She's a strange little body. Sometimes she doesn’t seem like a child at all, more like someone studying to be a saint. That sounds rather silly, I suppose, but I couldn’t have got through those first days without her. Or without you for that matter, Edith.”

  “You’d get through anything,” Edith said, “anything at all, Henrietta!” and she meant it.

  “Will you come up again in the New Year?”

  “That won’t be necessary. By then you’ll know enough to run Headquarters at a distance.”

  She saw Henrietta's eyes sparkle. “You think that would work?”

  “Of course it would work.”

  She realised then that she had removed a weight from the other's mind, and it did not need much reflection to understand why. To have him come home, and find his wife in the nursery and herself back in command, would have cancelled out their entire strategy, but so long as she could continue to exercise control from Tryst Henrietta was likely to reap the benefit of all the work and enterprise she had contributed to the plan. It was well enough from her viewpoint, Edith supposed, but it was difficult to suppress a sense of being pushed even further into the shadows, where nothing awaited her but a lifetime of watching waggons through that office window at Peterborough.

  She said, with an effort, �
��Well, I’m glad for you, Henrietta, and for him too. I’ll go back to my lodgings now and start packing.”

  “You’re thinking of going back to the Crescents already?”

  She managed to smile. “Why not? You’re perfectly capable of managing here, and my patch is in dreadful disorder after three months with no real supervision.”

  She went out quickly then, for fear of betraying her feelings. It was ungenerous, she supposed, but she could not prevent envy mounting in her for the woman on the other side of the desk, someone who seemed to have virtually everthing when she had so little. The fact that Henrietta had earned her bonuses did not help.

  4

  When she saw him standing by the window, legs widely planted, hands deep in his breeches pockets, and an expression of uncertainty in his eyes, she could only think of him as yet another problem that had materialised out of a fog of dejection through which she had been walking ever since Henrietta had told her she was expecting a child in early spring.

  It was irrational that she should feel deprived on this account. The plan to involve Henrietta in his concerns had been hers, and the certainty of its succeeding beyond all expectations ought surely to have been an occasion for the greatest satisfaction. But she found as the train rushed her north, that she could not defeat envy with logic, or derive comfort from a sense of rectitude that Christians reputedly enjoyed when they had made a sacrifice, and she supposed this had to do with the near-certainty that she would never have a child. By Adam Swann or by anyone else.

  The mood endured all the way home as she reviewed successive phases of her life with a kind of gloomy relish, seeing very little that afforded her satisfaction. Society, she thought, was badly organised for people of her temperament, possessing vast reserves of affection fated to remain untapped. A man, even a fool of a man, could make any number of attempts to track down happiness, addressing himself to the task until he was toothless and senile, but a woman had so little time at her disposal and time for her was running out. Fulfilment was not to be found in a job of work. At best it was a distraction, of the kind she had found at Headquarters and now that she was resuming the rhythm of her old life it seemed scarcely worth the effort. For a woman as resilient as Henrietta there was a sense of purpose in everything she did, together with a sense of moving towards some definable goal, but up here, surrounded by men who looked to her not as a woman but as a gaffer, there was nothing to set one's sights on but increased turnover, or the satisfaction of beating men at their own game, sources of inspiration that were beginning to run dry.

  She had intended on arrival to go straight to the yard and take a look at the tangle she would have to unravel in the morning, but now she was here she jibbed at the prospect. The yard could damned well look to itself. There were days, weeks, even years to attend to anything she was likely to find down there, so she directed her steps towards her lodging, reflecting that the last time she had passed along this road she had thought of Adam Swann as a dying man and the time before that, on the occasion of his last visit, had lectured him merrily on the art of handling women. She must have made her point. He had gone straight home and handled Henrietta with such address that she was now carrying his fourth child in her womb and his business concerns in her head.

  She let herself in, expecting her landlady to call from the kitchen but there was no greeting and she thought, with a spurt of irritation, “The old slut is over at that sister of hers, and now I shall have to get my own supper if I want any,” and she opened the door of her sitting room to see Wickstead standing there, gazing thoughtfully into the street.

  She exclaimed, dropping her hand luggage with a clatter, “You!” and he turned and looked at her, as though by no means sure of his reception. He recovered almost at once, however, smiling his slow, impudent smile, so that she remembered his perfect teeth and at the same time was conscious of a rather disturbing sensation under her breasts and rush of colour to her cheeks that caused her to fall back a step. He was beside her then, heaving her bag on to the sofa and saying, “Did I frighten you? I’m very sorry, I didn’t think that was possible,” and she snapped, “For God's sake, don’t treat me as if I was a dragon! How do you come to be here? Who told you where I lived? How did you get in?”

  “Well, now,” he said, genially, “let's take those questions in order. I’m here to ask you advice on an important question—important to me, that is, and I was given your private address at the yard. As to getting in I didn’t pick the lock as you’re entitled to expect. Your landlady told me you would be home on the afternoon train and that I could wait if I cared to. She's had to go out and asked me to apologise. It seems her niece is having a baby and she was in a tizzy on account of it having arrived a week early.” He dropped his bantering manner and suddenly became solicitous. “You look tired and hungry. Your dinner's in the oven, shepherd's pie and apple tart, and I went out and bought this as an appetiser,” and he produced a bottle of hock and set it down on the table. She said, impatiently, “Wait here. I am tired and I am hungry.” Then, more affably, “Have you eaten?” “Yes, but I should enjoy sharing a glass of hock with you.” His charm was infectious and she suddenly felt very glad to see him, not only a liberty, but apparently as irrespressible as when she had parted from him on the Harwich platform some months before. It seemed much longer, like meeting someone remembered from childhood, and as she went into the kitchen, retrieving her warmed-up meal, she thought, “Something very odd is happening to me! Why should I feel so wretched at the prospect of Henrietta's baby and so delighted at meeting up with a professional thief ? Am I so far reduced that I welcome a scoundrel, so long as he has a pleasant smile?” and suddenly she felt more excited than hungry and spooned a small helping of pie on to a plate her landlady had left to warm, carrying it through to the sitting room where he was uncorking the wine. She said, trying hard to sound casual: “I’ve been in London since June. Mr. Swann was badly injured in that rail crash at Staplehurst,” and he said, “Yes, so they told me at the yard. How is he?”

  “Making very good progress in Switzerland. He had a leg amputated.”

  He looked at her curiously and she wondered how much he knew of her involvement with Swann. More than was good for her, probably, if he had taken heed of gossip at the yard, and thinking this she said, “You took a mad risk to go back there. Weren’t you afraid they would send for the police the moment you showed up on the premises?”

  “Not in the least,” he said, “I wouldn’t have bet much against you not showing me the door but I’d have staked all I have you said nothing about that job of mine that misfired.” He found glasses and poured the wine, and it occurred to her that this trick of knowing where things were, and making himself at home in a stranger's house, was part of his stock-in-trade. She sat and began to eat while he remained standing and lifted his glass. “Here's luck,” he said and then, swallowing hard, as though in need of stimulation, “You once hinted your firm could use a man like me, so long as he kept his hands in his pockets when he wasn’t driving. Was that Bible Class talk, or did you mean it?”

  “I meant it then but I’ve revised it since.”

  For a moment he looked dismayed, but his mercury bobbed up as he said, with a wry grin, “Oh, well, it was worth a try,” and reached for his hat.

  “Don’t be in such a damned hurry,” she said, feeling a malicious pleasure in regaining the initiative. “I simply don’t see you as a waggoner and that's all I meant by revision. You’d get bored in a month and go to stealing again. If I was employing you, and had the slightest expectation that you would adapt to honest work, I’d give you real responsibility. I’d put you on commission, too, so that the harder you worked the more you’d earn.”

  “You’d do that? Without worrying what I was up to when your back was turned? How could you, when you know I’ve never done an honest day's work in my life? Unless it was a plant, like that time I was hanging around waiting for Beckstein's diamonds.”