Give Us This Day (56 page)

  His eye roved among them, ironically but affectionately, revisiting their several beats and recalling, over half a century, the men who had planted the Swann banner in every shire of the four kingdoms. Higson and his band of Lowlanders and Highlanders, inviting ridicule by appearing in the kilt to which, no doubt, few of them were entitled. Their leader, Higson, was not among this minority. Adam recalled him as a rawboned lad of thirteen, with an accent that placed him no more than a mile from this spot, but none of the young bucks would have the temerity to remind him of his origins tonight. Higson's record was far too impressive. Within two years of crossing the border he had captured the Lowlands from the natives. In another year he had consolidated his gains. And in two years more he had won the Swann accolade, wresting it from that other gamin, Rookwood, who tonight moved among the upper echelons of celebrants like an exalted Palace flunkey, a cut above everyone save only George and himself, and only marginally below them in Swann seniority.

  It was curious, he noted, how the ballot-chosen retainers took their several cues from the regional chieftains. Higson's lot looked like a score of moss troopers embarked on a border raid, whereas the men around Rookwood were a sober, respectable bunch, every man jack of them wearing gloves and evening dress, as though Rookwood had held an inspection on Salisbury Station before setting off for town.

  Bertieboy Bickford's westerners were easily distinguished by their brogues and the volume of laughter, a heavy-jowled, redfaced, breezy troupe, who might have been recruited from Dartmoor and Exmoor smallholdings. The Lovell boys had travelled up with a covey of Welshmen, whereas Clint Coles's contingent were Irishmen to a man and gave the impression of having foregathered in advance at the George Inn, down the road, in order to fortify themselves for long speeches. Scottie Quirt was here from the north, with what seemed to Adam an entirely different breed—younger men mostly, many of them still in their twenties—and it struck him that mechanically-propelled vehicles would be unlikely to attract mature men, just as if the general post caused by Stephenson's railways nearly a century ago was being repeated all over again with the phasing out of the horse. Watching them, catching a word or two of their technical jargon, his mind returned for a moment to old coachman Blubb, who had been thrown on the scrapheap by "that bliddy teakettle," that had reduced professional coachmen to the status of carters.

  The elegant Godsall, of the Kentish Triangle, came up to pay his respects to Henrietta and as they exchanged courtesies Adam reflected that Godsall was probably the only bona fide gentleman he had ever enrolled as a manager. Now, they said, he drove about Kent in a big Daimler car, like the one King Edward owned, so that in a sense the ex-guardee was a link between the old cadres and the new.

  He managed to have a word with his grandson, Rudi, down from The Polygon and accompanied, he was glad to see, by that saucy little baggage he had married in such a hurry. He said, addressing her, "Well, now, and who's minding my great-grandson tonight?"

  "Our Lottie, Grandfather—my youngest sister that is," she replied, pertly enough. "But she wouldn't do it for less than half a crown and only then if we gave her permission to have her young man in until Mam comes at suppertime."

  "Ah," he said, chuckling, "you Lancastrians are razor sharp when it comes to putting a price on yourselves. They always say Yorkshire folk have the edge on you, but I never believed it."

  "The difference is," she said, "on our side of the Pennines we don't mind parting with it once we've got it." And he thought approvingly,
Young Rudi knew what he was about when he picked that lass, and so, I'd wager, did she, when she jumped the starter's gun. But they're well matched, somehow, and that's half the battle at their age.
" He turned aside to have a word with Dockett, of Tom Tiddler's Land, one of the very few originals here tonight.

  Then someone beat a gong and the company began to sort themselves out, but the warehouse was so crowded that it took some time for guests to find their seats. In the hurly-burly he bumped into young Edward, who looked very spruce in a London-cut evening suit, with a red carnation in his buttonhole and a blue silk collarette embroidered with the swan insignia. "It's George's idea," Edward said, grinning. "I'm toastmaster, you see," and then, moving to one side, he displayed his partner, the most attractive girl Adam had seen in a very long time.

  It was not that she was pretty, in the way most young girls appeared to him nowadays, especially when they were dressed for an outing, or that her hair was a high, flaxen crown of exceptionally soft texture, or indeed that her eyes, a genuine violet, were veiled in long, curling lashes, so that she reminded him a little of Madame Récamier in David's portraits. She had intelligence as well as good looks in her smooth oval face, and a bloom on her cheeks that made him think of standing in his rose garden contemplating a handful of fallen petals and inhaling their sweetness. He thought, My word, she's a stunner! I wonder wher
e he found her…? But then Edward said, "You've met Gilda, Gov'nor. She's Gild
a Wickstead…"

  "It was a long time ago, when I was in pigtails, Mr. Swann. You came up to the Crescents once or twice when Father was alive, but I've been abroad since I left school."

  He took her hand, enclosing it in both of his and thinking,
Now why the devil didn't Edith tell me she brought this lovely creature along…?
But then, his sharp old eye catching the way his son was looking at her, he knew the reason. The boy was obviously much smitten by her, and Edith would prefer to leave introductions to him, providing he wanted to make them. He said, "My word, you're quite grown up. I didn't realise… we don't, you know, at my age… Abroad, you say? Where?" And she said Switzerland, where she had gone to learn French and German and later as a teacher of English at Tours University.

  "But she's back for good now," said Edward, with a hint, he thought, of desperation. "We shall have to talk later, Gov'nor. George wants the top table seated. The caterers have been complaining to him that the soup will go cold." They moved on, the girl inclining her head to him with an enigmatic little smile that encouraged him to whisper to Henrietta, as they took their seats in front of a side table bearing a gigantic cake surmounted by a silver swan, "Young Edward is hooked. Look over there, on the left, that girl in green next but one to Edith!" He saw her look, frowning with concentration, for he was aware that she was concerned by her youngest son's extended bachelorhood. "It's Edith's girl… the one that came along after her boys were grown. She's…" But then George was on his feet, and Edward was calling for silence in order that grace could be said, and both of them were caught up in conversations with their neighbours, so that he judged the subject of ending Edward's bachelorhood would not arise until they were back at the hotel and preparing for bed. For that was usually Hetty's time for family inquests, confound it. She never seemed affected by the fatigues of the day.

* * *

  A sustained clatter of china and cutlery, a nonstop hubbub of talk; the quality of the beef, the hundred and one quips sparked off by the rivers of champagne, ale, Madeira, and port. This was a celebration dinner to be remembered and relished as Swann-on-Wheels entered its second half-century. He had never been much of a trencherman—the short commons of youthful campaigns had seen to that—but he had always appreciated good company and a collective sense of achievement. The latter touched him now like a shaft of sunlight, illuminating the long and adventurous road they had travelled together, since he stood on or about this spot (there were no warehouses, as such, in those days) and wished old Blubb, his Kentish manager, good luck on the first Swann Embassy to pass the gates.

  So few were present who could share that memory. Keate, the aged waggonmaster could, of course, and Bryn Lovell, about his own age, called out of retirement by the stupendous occasion. Dockett, too, and Morris, formerly of Southern Pickings based on Worcester. And Edith, whose father had once managed Crescent North, plus two of the original yard staff, a smith and a night-watchman. A mere eight out of a company of over three hundred, but it didn't matter all that much. There were memories enough to be bandied around and most of them got an airing tonight.

  "Do you remember that damned awful winter of 'sixty-five, when we had floods in five southern regions and snow blocks on every road north of Birmingham?"—"Do 'ee mind old 'Amlet vetching that bliddy lion home and getting civic honours from the Mayor of Exeter? Nobody told 'is Worship the poor brute would've rin from a tomcat with a vull set o' teeth…!"—"Wass you born, bach, when Bryn Lovell hauled that Shannon pump up a mountain to pump the water out of Pontnewydd pit, then?"— "…Seven ton that turret weighed, or so I heard. But George always reckoned it as a shade over six."—"…I first smelled smoke when I was coming out of the weighbridge hut and next minute,
woof
—up she goes, and a Clydesdale goes tearing by…" Up and down the tables like the exchange of so many brightly coloured balls in a complicated party game that everyone could play, even young Kidbroke, fourteen-year-old van boy, who had drawn a lucky ballot paper in Southern Square, for only last week Kidbroke had been present when a Swann vehicle broke down on a narrow bridge over a Hampshire river and blocked main road traffic for nearly an hour.

  And then the cake cutting and the speeches, amusing most of them, and well spiced with anecdotes, but one or two rambling and heard with impatience, so that when it came to his turn he thought, I must cut it short… They'd sooner flir
t and guzzle than listen to me. But there was complete silence when, in response t
o Edward's stentorian "Pray silence for Mr. Adam Swann, our Founder," he rose to his feet and put on his reading glasses in the unlikely event he would use his notes.

  He thanked them all gravely for honouring himself and the firm and told them a little, just a very little, of what it had felt like to take the gamble he had taken as a rank outsider in the transport stakes of those days. But then, perhaps because he could sense their genuine interest, he warmed to his favourite theme: the marriage of capital and labour that had been his policy ever since he signed on his first two score hands, and that other Swann precept, selecting local men who knew their areas and potential customers for executive positions in most regions between here and the north. He told them something of the tightrope days, of the first managerial conference a few months before the present managing director was born and how, on that occasion, "We came so close to bankruptcy that Mrs. Swann will tell you those weeks were responsible for the first patches of white on a head where anyone among you tonight would have difficulty in finding a single dark hair." But this reminded him of his original thoughts for a wind-up and he continued—interrupted by a few shouts of "Hear, hear!," and a cry of "No politics, please"—"We hear a great deal these days, of Women's Rights, and a woman's eligibility to take a responsible part in running the country, so let me conclude by reminding some of you younger folk of a crisis this firm survived, as long ago as 1866, solely on account of the skill and courage of two women, both of them happily in our midst. I refer to my wife, and to Mrs. Tom Wickstead, who encouraged her to take over the personal direction of Swann-on-Wheels when I was abroad, learning to use this tin leg of mine.

  "Very few here will remember that challenge, and how it was met, but some will—among them four of the originals, Keate, Dockett, Morris, and Lovell, respectively waggonmaster and managers of three regions at that time. For the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, I came home from Switzerland in June of that year expecting to have to start all over again, but several surprises awaited me. The first was that there was more money in the bank than when I had left. The second was that Miss Wadsworth was no longer Miss Wadsworth but Mrs. Wickstead. And the third—spare Mrs. Swann's blushes—was that I had a three-months-old son I didn't even know about, who grew up to be the Member of Parliament for Pontnewydd in the Mountain Square! So be damned careful, all of you, how you approach the subject of Women's Rights in the future!"

  It was probably the most successful joke that he had ever used to terminate one of his speeches, and he took advantage of the laughter and applause to sit down and take a sidelong glance at Henrietta, who was indeed blushing, a rare occurrence for her these days. Everybody rose to their feet then and the cheer they gave him could have been heard—indeed,
was
heard according to young Harry Hitchens, a vanboy who lived hard by—in Tower Bridge Road.

  She whispered, laughing, "Really, Adam, you might have warned me."

  "Not on your life. Haven't seen you blush in fifty years."

  "Can you wonder, with you for a husband?" she replied. "But I must say they're all very kind, and I'm so glad I came. Do introduce me to that girl Edward's squiring. I'd like to look her over, for it's time he settled down like the rest of them."

  But it wasn't that easy in the mêlée that followed, with so many of them passing in and out of the warehouse as they cleared the floor for the dancing that was to follow. He had a brief word with George, congratulating him on the smooth organisation of the dinner, and in tempting so many of them down to London. "Bright idea to have it right here, too," he added. "At a hotel or assembly rooms it wouldn't have been the same somehow. Hello, Milton, my boy, glad you could get here," as he greeted Deborah's husband, the journalist, who asked of George, "Have you told him yet?"

  "No," George said, "I haven't had a minute. Tell him yourself and see what he thinks. He likes to pretend he's out of it, but that's rigmarole. If we offered him a seat on the board he'd jump at it, wouldn't you, Gov'nor?"

  "Don't deceive yourself as to that," Adam said. "I've done my stint. You're not thinking of enlisting Milton, are you?"