Far to the west, where the wild daffodils were done but primroses lingered in the high-banked lanes of his enormous beat, Hamlet Ratcliffe embarked on his customary spring tour. He no longer thought of himself as Swann's emissary but a merchant adventurer in his own right, obligated to keep in personal touch with all his customers and the new holiday centres growing up along the indented coast of the Wedge. He had no need to drum up trade nowadays and did not care to be reminded of a time when he had done it by recapturing a fugitive lion in a North Devon valley. He was a man of substance and prestige, whose waggons could be seen anywhere between Truro and Taunton, but who tended, of late, to identify himself with a revival of the coaching era. For at any time between Whitsun and mid-September you might encounter one of his three-horse brakes, bearing the Swann insignia and any number of parasols, bowling along the leafy approaches to Torquay, Devonport harbour, Bideford Bay, and sometimes tackling the fearful descent into Lynmouth, and he thought of these excursions as his private contribution to the enterprise, as indeed they were if you denied his wife credit she never claimed. It was enough for Augusta that “poor ’Amlet was ’ome and dry,” with his string of false starts behind him. He had at last found a calling where his rare and diversified talents could be channelled into a single impressive outlet.
The winter exertions had left their mark on the smooth face of young Rookwood, master of the Southern Square, whose terrain stretched from the Cotswolds to the Channel, from the Bay of a Thousand Wrecks to the roadstead where Nelson's flagship rode at anchor, reminder of a day when a plump little Corsican had spent himself trying to ruin British trade.
Fraser, Catesby, Lovell, Ratcliffe, and Rookwood. Godsall of the Kentish Triangle and Dockett of Tom Tiddler's Ground. Vicary in The Bonus, Goodbody and Horncastle of the Crescents; Morris, on his small, profitable patch in the Pickings, and Henrietta at Tryst—all to some extent, warmed themselves in the sunshine of personal achievement, reminding themselves that a leap of six per cent in winter turnover was something to crow about in the circumstances. But satisfaction is one thing and exaltation another, and there was at least one zealot among them who did not spare a thought for Swann's balance sheet that spring. For Edith Wadsworth, styled Edith Wickstead from eight a.m. on a day in the third week of May, Swann's waggons rolled unheeded, and carters, resigned to having their manifests challenged and their vehicles turned back at the weighbridge for shoddy loading, suddenly learned the true reason behind a complacency (sometimes amounting to slackness) that had been noticeable in the gaffer's attitude since her unexplained sally into what the company maps defined as Lovell's territory.
She, for her part, was not in doubt concerning their speculations. Gossip regarding her had been flying up and down the network grapevine for long enough, and it was probable that, within hours of the event, Fraser in the north, and Ratcliffe in the west, would hear about the early morning wedding, performed by a nervous young curate in front of two random witnesses.
2
She had never thought that such happiness was attainable, that such an exquisite harmony of the senses could be achieved. Her state of mind was one of blissful suspension, in which past, present, and future fused so that all her thoughts, assembling like a confused cavalcade, led back to him. And there seemed not to have been a time when it was otherwise.
They were lying on a deserted strip of shingle a mile north of the lighthouse, she with her back against a groyne, he with his head on her lap and seemingly asleep. They had exchanged no word for some time now and he lay perfectly still, with the sun warming his face and his long limbs in an attitude of graceful relaxation.
The sky up here, as always in East Anglia, seemed much higher and wider than anywhere else, an enormous cavern of blue that shaded off into the sea, relieved, here and there, by little streamers of cloud jockeying for precedence like her thoughts in the stream of time, inconsequent thoughts they were, some of them probing back into her childhood, when she had sat beside her dour father, fishing in a Yorkshire stream. Proud but outdated thoughts, of her determination to make a place for herself in this man's world. Jocund thoughts, of their brief association, beginning with her pursuit of him down to Harwich and ending here on this beach, with his head on her lap. But predominantly sensual thoughts that could make her smile but glow with tenderness as she recalled his light, fleeting touch on her hair as he initiated protracted but infinitely restrained caresses down the full length of her spine, over her buttocks, and between her thighs, so that contemplation of his gentle, possessive handling of her prompted her now to extend her hand as far as it would reach, touching his exposed wrist where it lay beyond the shadow of the groyne, to reach out and stroke it with the tips of her fingers , like a child satisfying itself that a gift had substance and was not part of a Christmas dream.
He was real enough and she compared him, as man and lover, with his predecessors, matching his restrained curiosity against Matt Hornby's bumbling enthusiasm and Adam Swann's steadfastness, and finding it strange that she should have persuaded herself she was ever in love with either of them, for they had both been men dedicated to their own concerns, whereas T m Wickstead was a giver in the sense that he did not take devotion for granted but set himself to earn it without diminishing himself as a man in the process.
She had understood this the first night she lay in his arms, when he had, she supposed, every excuse to assume an aggressive, proprietorial role, and it seemed to her restraint and consideration in those circumstances was rare in a man, something to be highly prized. Neither had he changed since, reserving for her a lover's courtesy that was surprising in a man whom life had used harshly and pitilessly. It was there in his humour and essential boyishness, in his tolerance and his willingness to embark upon marriage as an equal, but it was in the role of a lover that it found its richest expression, for he came to her shyly, almost reverently, when he must have sensed that nothing he did or demanded had the power to frighten or affront her, that she was eager to indulge him to the limit of his capacity and had said so in the moment of stillness that succeeded their first rapturous embrace.
He was not asleep after all or, if he had been, her touch had roused him. Without opening his eyes, he brought her hand up to his lips in a gesture that underlined the central theme of her thoughts and said, mildly, “Do you want children, Edith?” and she replied, “Yours, Tom? More than anything in the world.”
He considered this and she supposed he was reviewing it in terms of his past, but she was wrong, for presently he said, “Then it can’t be helped and the sooner you cut the knot the better. Providing you’re sure, that is.” Suddenly he opened his eyes and looked straight up at her. “Wait a minute tho’. Isn’t it dangerous for a woman to have a first child at thirty?” and she laughed, not because the question was characteristic of him, but because it underlined his curious innocence.
“Nonsense. It depends on health and mine is extremely robust. I’ve known women to have their first child at nearly forty but it won’t take that long if I can help it. But what did you mean? What can’t be helped? What knot had better be cut?”
“You leaving that yard. I was waiting for you to bring it up but since you haven’t I will. Write about it today, before that chap Swann comes back and pushes your nose on his grindstone again.”
“Is that an order, Tom?”
“Yes, it is, if you want children, my dear.”
His way of putting it touched her but it did not obscure the practical issues. She said, doubtfully, “Children will come, I daresay, but we’ve got more immediate problems. You haven’t a penny, and I haven’t either for I was never the saving sort. Here we are, man and wife, and not a stick of furniture or stitch of linen. That's bad where I was reared.”
“Then you mean to keep that job and have me keep mine?”
“It makes sense, for a spell anyway.” His frown made her laugh again. “Oh, come, do you take me for one of those women who have to be carried upstairs, and fed and watere
d like a sick cat from the minute she blushingly announces she's in a delicate condition? Henrietta Swann stayed on at Headquarters into her seventh month. Can’t I do as well as her?”
“I should hope better,” he answered, seriously, “but that isn’t the point. Not now I come to think about it,” and unpredictably he relaxed again, closing his eyes and pillowing his head comfortably on her thighs.
“Very well, what is the point? Before you doze off again.”
“How the devil can I give you orders with my eyes open?”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because the gaffer is there when you’ve got your hair up. Tonight, maybe, when you’ve let it down again.”
“I can’t see us conducting a serious discussion in those circumstances. Not for a month or two any road. And if you have it in mind don’t look for encouragement from me, Tom Wickstead. I’ve got you, and I mean to make the most of the novelty. I was ladless a long time, remember, and it was a cheerless business.”
He opened his eyes again. “Here's the point then. I don’t fancy sharing a wife with forty waggons and two score stable loafers. Not even for a year or so, so to the devil with the money it brings to the housekeeping purse. That's no kind of marriage, unless…” and he stopped, and she saw a troubled look in his eye.
“Unless what, Tom?”
“Unless you see it differently. Apart from being ladless how well did you like that life? How much of it was choice, how much necessity?”
She had to think about this. The easy answer was that she liked it well enough but that wasn’t what he was asking. His question had to do with Adam Swann, and it frightened her a little to realise this, for it implied somehow that he was not nearly so sure of her as she was of him, and this seemed to her a lamentable state of affairs, for it was so long since she had stirred jealousy in a man. She said, at length, “It was a good second-best. Never more than that, Tom.”
“You were always hankering after Swann?” He said it like a man cautiously emerging into the open but for all that she respected his honesty.
“Hankering is a hard word, Tom, but it's the right one.”
“You met him a long time ago?”
“Not all that long. Soon after he launched out.”
“But wasn’t he married when you met him?”
“Well married. With one child.”
“And now?”
“There's nothing now, or nothing but loyalty. It was loyalty that sent me scampering down there to do what I could after that crash although, if I’m completely honest, I suppose I was still half-hoping. Until I made her acquaintance, that is.”
“What then, Edith?”
“The spark went out and I was glad of it. In fact I was deeply grateful.”
“Grateful? To her?”
“To her and circumstances. It meant that I could stop day-dreaming, stop lying to myself, stop pretending every damned thing I did for the firm was prompted by pride and self-respect. I was far luckier than I deserved. When I got home you were waiting. The sword came out of the stone. It hurt but it healed. Does that answer your question, Tom?”
“Most of it.”
He did not have to explain the reservation either. He had made no reference, not even an oblique reference, to the fact that she was not a virgin when she came to him and he was not as innocent as all that. “It wasn’t Swann,” she said, suddenly understanding that this was important, “for Swann was never my lover. One man was, a very long time ago,” and she told him of Matt Hornby. He said, thoughtfully, “You were in love with that sailor?”
“I thought I was and he would have married me. There was never any doubt about that. But you learn a lot in twelve years, Tom. I don’t have to explain that, do I?”
“Not to me,” he said, and was silent awhile. She knew then that they were safely past yet another crossroad, and that his confidence had reached a point where she could put it to a different kind of test, one that would not have been possible had she admitted to having been Swann's mistress.
“I’ll give up that job right away,” she said, “but there's a condition. You take on where I leave off.”
It did not startle him as much as she had anticipated. He might even have guessed what she had in mind.
“You think I could hold that down? Gaffer of three areas?”
“If I was behind you you could, and in a few months you wouldn’t need me, you’d have plenty of ideas of your own.”
“Would they give me a chance like that?”
“I’d see that they did and they aren’t likely to question my judgement in the Crescents.”
“Very well. I’d like it that way.”
He was silent for a moment and she wondered whether he was juggling with the mechanics of the yard, with waggons, freight, teams, insurance rates, and the idiosyncrasies of half-a-hundred hired hands, but she was wrong again. With him you never could tell, for suddenly he said, with the utmost seriousness, “Can you sit on your hair? Like the Empress Elizabeth of Austria?”
“Just about,” she said, laughing, “with a little cheating.”
“How could you cheat?”
“By tilting my head and throwing out my chest.”
“I should like to see that,” he said, chuckling, and she said. “You shall then, tonight, but I couldn’t possibly do it in a corset.”
“That's better still,” he said, and throwing up his arms pulled her face down and kissed her on the lips.
“What a wife!” he said, smiling up at her. “She finds a way of trebling my income on her honeymoon. Why didn’t I think of that when I was skulking around with my eye on Solly Beckstein's sparklers?”
3
There was talk of travelling down to Marseilles and taking a sea voyage as a final stage of convalescence, but in the end he came overland by chaise and train to Basle, to Dijon, over green Burgundian hills to Picardy, and thence to the crowded harbour of Calais, where every other ship flew the British flag and quays were piled with packing cases, some of them stencilled with names he recognised.
For the first time in months he adjusted his mind to commerce, pondering the implications of what he saw among the bales and boxes of the harbour, and remembering that France was a highly industrialised rival, and that an even bigger rival lay just across the Rhine. If British goods were accumulating on the Calais quays how many were being lifted at this moment from the holds of vessels in far-off places, where the British exercised a monopoly? He thought, with satisfaction, “Nothing's changed much and I’ll be back in the thick of it in a week or two,” and then, watching a string of handbarrows trundle past carrying baggage and plastered with English labels, “God is an Englishman, sure enough!” and cheerfully acknowledged his insularity, as well as the ache of homesickness soon to be appeased.
The first thing she noted about him was his fitness.
Even from a distance he looked bronze and taut, with a tan that was deeper and healthier than the legacy of the Indian sun she recalled from earlier days. He seemed to have filled out too, especially about the shoulders, and there was a certain jaunty confidence about the way he carried himself, like a boxer advancing into the ring against an opponent he was sure of beating.
Another novelty about his bearing was present in his gait, a movement that seemed to match a breezier, saltier personality than she recalled, in that it suggested humour and a kind of mockery in its long, easy roll and the casually attained precision of its stride, but before she had time to think about all this his arms were round her and because, for so long now, she had thought of him as an invalid, she was quite startled by the ease with which he swung her clear of the ground and held her half-suspended, her new green bonnet pushed slightly askew, her body crushed against the solid bulk of his chest.
She had rehearsed all manner of things to say but forgot them all, or perhaps she could not have said them in any case, for he drove the breath from her body, and all she could do for the moment was to dangle, the toes of her tasselled Polis
h boots clear of the ground. Then he set her down and the children clamoured for attention while she self-consciously straightened her bonnet and tried to come to terms with this ridiculous parody of a cripple, and the first, immensely satisfying thought that occurred to her was that he had not only retained the power to make her head spin and her knees buckle but seemed, in some fashion, to have been improving on the art all the months they had been separated, and this recalled to her the thought of the shock he was likely to get when he climbed the staircase to the paint-scarred nursery to find he was the father of four children not three. She was glad then that he was engrossed with an armful of children and that there was bustle and scurry all around them. It gave her time to compose herself as they trooped away to the boat-train and fussed over luggage that had already replaced him as focal point in Alexander's eyes, once he had announced that it contained presents for each of them. Hearing him say this, she reflected; “I should be wary of that word, Adam Swann. You’ve surprised me I’ll own, and a very pleasant surprise it is, but you’ll need all your bouncing good health to absorb the surprise I have in store for you in an hour or so!”
God is an Englishman Page 85
