Give Us This Day (8 page)

“But you must have some idea.”

She said, pacing slowly across to the window, “All I can tell you is this. When George came to us, as a young man at Essling, he was very gay and nothing mattered to him. Nothing but laughter and picnics and kissing the girls. My sisters, Sophie, Valerie, and Gilda, they were his companions at that time, without a serious thought in their silly heads. But then George became interested in Grandfather Maximilien’s invention. It changed him. After that, when Grandfather was stricken, he stopped being a boy and we married and he brought me here, as you remember?”

“I remember. You and that damned engine.”

“You put him to work, and he pleased you very much, I think. But later you quarrelled over the engine, and we went to Manchester to live.”

“I remember it all very well. What’s all that got to do with George gadding off with the wife of one of his best customers?”

“It has everything to do with it. George has been hard at work for thirteen years. You have a saying for it, ‘Nose to the milestone’.”

“Grindstone.”

“Ah, so. Perhaps he thought it was time to laugh again before he grew old. The way he laughed when he first came to Vienna.”

“But he’s thirty-three now, and has a wife, four children, and a damned great business to watch over. Why can’t he do his laughing at home?”

She was still holding the magazine and glanced at it. “Husbands are not horses,” she said, so gravely that he suddenly felt like laughing himself. “That horse she is sitting so well was a colt once, but somebody took it and trained it and broke it to the bridle. You cannot do that with men like George. One day, for a little time, they will want to frisk again and it is better to let them. At least until they are tired.”

He thought, grimly,
I never did underestimate her. She’s got her head screwed on and no mistake…!
He said, kissing her, “You’re very wise, my dear. I was always fond of you but never more so than now. Would you like me to handle this my way, so long as I keep in mind what you just said?”

“You do what you think is right, Grandfather. George has no right to neglect the business you gave him so generously. As for me, you must understand it is a matter of waiting.”

“I understand that,” he said, “and I’ll promise you something into the bargain. This is between you, me, and George, and I’ll make damned sure I tread warily, and that he never discovers we confided in one another. Will you bring the children over on Saturday and stay until Monday?”

“Thank you, but no,” she said. “I would not like George to return to a house empty of everyone but the servants.”

She showed him the door, and the cabby hastened to settle him comfortably, but he brushed him aside impatiently. “Catch that nine-ten to Bromley and I’ll tip you a florin. Miss it and it’ll be sixpence.”

Suddenly he felt his years.

Four

Reconnaissance

A
s a tacitician, Adam Swann was decisive, seeing what required to be done and doing it without preamble. As a strategist, working on a long-term plan, he could be both cautious and diabolically tenacious.

In his army days, he had a reputation among senior officers as a good man to send out on reconnaissance. His eye seldom missed much of importance. His sketch-maps were models of neatness and accuracy, and it was much the same in the world of commerce. Before he cashed in a looted necklace of rubies, representing his entire working capital, he rode the full length of England, making meticulous notes on local industries, road and railway communications, terrain, and a hundred and one other things likely to be invaluable to a haulier. His eye for detail was excellent and his memory phenomenal. He had a few sound precepts from which he never departed, and one of these precepts was “Know your enemy.”

Thus, on returning to Tryst in the first days of July 1897, he took no immediate action but continued to probe, using his personal contacts, his treasury of social and industrial trivia, and his library of reference books to follow up his two definite leads, one heading for Barbara Lockerbie, the other concerned with the haulier, Linklater, currently using the Tooley Street exit of the yard to load goods stacked in one of his warehouses. Ten days elapsed before he was satisfied that he had learned all he was likely to learn concerning both.

Barbara Lockerbie was a high-class whore, who had emerged from obscurity with no capital beyond undeniable physical attractions and ruthless self-interest, deploying both to capture a rich and presumably excessively tolerant husband, then lead the kind of life that a selective harlot of her kind found agreeable. That is to say, to spend around three thousand a year on clothes, to stay looking young, to go everywhere, see everything, and, more important, to be seen by everyone. She had reached Sir James and his fortune via one husband and many lovers. Even the Prince of Wales was rumoured to be numbered among her admirers, but that Adam discounted, reasoning that if half the charmers reputed to have shared a bed with Edward had enjoyed his patronage, Edward would have declined years ago, as enfeebled as a Sultan of Turkey reared in a harem.

Her first husband was an architect and her abandonment of him had led to a soon-forgotten scandal, the poor devil having thrown himself under a train at Liverpool Station soon after her desertion. The woman, he decided, was lethal, and his appraisal of her steeled him to take swift intervention to head off possible disaster, even though he doubted whether the hardheaded George was the type of man who would ruin himself over a woman, no matter how much he was besotted by her. You could never tell, however, in situations of this kind. Avery, his former partner, had been cynical and world-weary at forty, and an experienced roue into the bargain, yet he had sacrificed everything he possessed, and ultimately laid himself open to a charge of double murder, in order to spend himself between the legs of a Spanish music-hall artiste. Adam even recalled his self-justification when they met for the last time, a few hours before he smuggled the idiot out of the country. He had asked, “Have you ever been sexually enslaved?” and when Adam said he had not, “It happens. It happens to the cockiest of us. Take care it doesn’t happen to you, Adam… A man can turn a blind corner as I did when I first took Esmerelda to bed…”

Avery was surely an object lesson for, like him, George’s weakness had always been women. He wished he knew more of George’s early life in those days when the boy had been opening oysters in the network and on the Continent. The character of Gisela was no real guide to his taste. A man seldom married the kind of woman who could bring him ecstasy, plus a brief escape from care and responsibility. Usually he looked about for something more maternal and mature.

His investigations into Linklater’s, the carriers, were more positive. They were a relatively small firm, dealing mostly in sub-contract work, but currently expanding. They had a fleet of about three hundred waggons and bases in a few of the big manufacturing cities in the north and Midlands. Starr, Linklater’s partner and son-in-law, had a dubious reputation in the trade. There had been a lawsuit some years back, concerned with the loss of a valuable consignment of agricultural machinery, and Starr emerged from it technically innocent but with his reputation tarnished. The discrepancy between the comments of the weighbridge clerk and those of the coffee-stall proprietor continued to puzzle him, and he decided that it was here he must resume his investigations and that it must be done with delicacy.

George was back at work now, no doubt, albeit temporarily, and a direct approach in the circumstances seemed inadvisable, precluding another visit to the yard. He could have questioned one or other of George’s brothers, notably Giles, who was close to him, but he rejected this as putting too much strain on family loyalty. After turning the matter over in his mind, he decided his best course was to approach Tybalt senior, who could make innocent enquiries on his behalf, not only about Linklater’s, but also concerning the relationship of his son and George, how often George was absent and for how long at a stretch, and maybe the precise function of that padlocked warehouse on the east side of the yard. He told Henrietta that he was going up to town for a day or so to attend sales, and she accepted the excuse without question. His only excursions these days were concerned with landscaping and collecting.

He packed a bag and set off for old Tybalt’s terrace house in Rotherhithe, where he busied himself with mission work in company with his lifelong friend, the former waggonmaster, Saul Keate. Tybalt received him rapturously. He had always seen Adam as the temporal equivalent of his nightshirted Jehovah, for whom he was at pains to rescue fallen women, alcoholics, and destitute children. His dedicated service to Swann, over a period of some thirty-five years, he regarded as tribute to Caesar, sanctioned in the Good Book, and Adam, while mindful of his idiosyncrasies, held him in high esteem, for he had brought tremendous devotion to his job as chief clerk, sometimes sitting up half the night to trace a missing sovereign or run down a mislaid invoice. He was a small, undistinguished-looking man with a round bald head and huge trusting eyes that blinked nervously behind spectacles. He almost dragged Adam into his house, demonstrating such enthusiasm that it made initial enquiries somewhat embarrassing, until Adam confessed that he was worried about the immediate future of the firm.

That stopped his fussing. He said, looking almost agonised, “Worried, Mr. Swann? But surely there’s no need… I mean, all the information I have is that we’re booming along, positively booming along!”

“Oh, I daresay we are from an outsider’s standpoint, and you and I are numbered among the outsiders these days. Financially the firm is sound enough, I can assure you of that. No, it’s more specific. You might say a family matter, to do with my son George, as a matter of fact.”

Tybalt still looked grave but his concern moderated. “You’re telling me Mr. George is trying to re-introduce those mechanical waggons?”

“I wish he was. That at least would indicate he was still absorbed. The fact is, Tybalt, he’s fancying himself as the man about town and, to my mind at least, neglecting his responsibilities as gaffer down there.”

“I’m very surprised indeed to hear that,” said Tybalt, and looked it. “I always thought him… well… forgive me, Mr. Swann, a bit too go-ahead… and, how shall I put it? Experimental? But he’s always struck me as a young man with a very astute head on his shoulders, and an absorbing interest in the work.”

“Me too,” Adam said, “but he’s falling off, or so I’m told, from a very reliable quarter.”

Tybalt looked evasive and twiddled his neat penman’s hands. “I… er… I earnestly hope that source isn’t my boy Wesley, sir. Oh, I know Wesley is very dedicated to the firm, but I wouldn’t like to think he’s been talebearing. At least, not without seeking my advice first.”

“How often does he seek your advice, Tybalt?”

Tybalt looked down at the plush tablecloth, stacked with buff envelopes he had been addressing to mission subscribers. “I’ll be as frank as you’ve been, Mr. Swann. Not nearly as often as I should like. Hardly ever, in fact, since he came in from the regions and Mr. George appointed him in my place.” He paused and Adam looked away. It went against the grain not to take Tybalt into his full confidence but what proof had he got, or was likely to get, that Wesley, in Sam’s quaint phrase, “needed watching”? Time enough if proof turned up. It would likely break the old chap’s heart.

But Tybalt went on, with difficulty, “Mind, I don’t complain, not really. Wesley’s twenty-eight now, and holding an important position in the firm. He’s married, too, and feeling his feet, I daresay. The truth is, Mr. Swann, all these young people tend to regard our kind as silly old buffers, with old-fashioned notions as to how a business should be conducted. Have you been into the clerical department lately?”

“No.”

“You’d be astounded, I think. It isn’t at all like it was, not even when I retired, a mere three years since. They’ve got two of those telephones now, an automatic letter-copying machine, and three young women clacking away at typewriters. I’ve even seen a little horse-play there when I’ve looked in, and Wesley has been out and about. I never did approve of young women going out to business. It must present a great moral temptation, even to girls properly brought up.”

“Tybalt,” Adam said, hiding his smile, “I’m not talking about new business equipment. Or even about a kiss and a cuddle between a clerk and a typewriter operator. I’ve been given a hint that there’s some well-organised hanky-panky going on down there, and the only clue I can give you is that it’s centred on that warehouse on the east side, the one they keep locked, even during the day. That, and the exit behind it into Tooley Street, another innovation since our day.”

“Er… could you be a little more precise, sir?” asked Tybalt, wringing his hands, and Adam said no, he couldn’t, because he didn’t know anything more, save that the firm of Linklater might be implicated, and he repeated Sam’s remark as to his source and the discrepancy between the testimony of the weighbridge clerk and the observations of Travis, the coffee-stall tender. As he expected, Tybalt made very little of it. “I’d trust the clerk,” he said. “He’s one of the old hands. I think that other man must have been mistaken. I knew about the exit, of course, and the padlocking of the doors, but I think you’ll find we haven’t done business with Linklater for some considerable time.”

“Can you swear to that?”

“Well, sir, how could I? It’s three years since I handled ledgers and invoices. But Wesley could tell me on the spot.”

Adam said, carefully, “I’m not sure that’s the right way to go about it, Tybalt.”

“Why not?”

“Because it implies loss of confidence on my part. Wesley would know I’ve asked you to make enquiries, and I had my own chance to do that when I was there less than a fortnight ago. I didn’t take it because… well, because I’ve got a suspicion that both your son and mine are being systematically hoodwinked by trained thieves, men actually serving in the yard. Wesley told me they had had an outbreak of pilfering, but my guess is they only nailed the small fry.” He took a deep breath. “Will you do something else for me, Tybalt? Something you might find a little distasteful?”

“I’d do anything for Swann-on-Wheels. You surely know that, sir.”

“Yes, I do, but it isn’t all that difficult. I’d like you to drift into the yard on some pretext and keep your eyes open. Make it around six, when the clerks are in a rush to be off, and you can get a look at the day-book without anyone knowing. They won’t mind leaving you in there. Would you do that, without consulting Wesley? I’ve a reason for it.”

Tybalt said, diffidently, “I think I should know the reason, Mr. Swann. The boy means everything to me now his mother’s been taken. We only had the one chick.”

“Well, it’s very simple. My impression is that Wesley and George are very close, as close as you and Keate and I were in the old days. He’d regard it as his duty to warn George that I was about to pull him up for playing the fool and George is sharp enough to set matters right before I can get at him. What I’m really saying is, I don’t want to be left with half a case. If I challenge him I’ve got to be able to quote an actual instance of neglect on his part and I think I can do it. Does that satisfy you?”

“Perfectly,” said Tybalt, and came as close to winking as Adam recalled in their long association. “It isn’t easy to show them a pint of experience is worth a quart of enthusiasm, is it, sir?”

“No, but neither is it impossible, Tybalt.”

They talked on awhile about old times, but when he left Tybalt he did so gladly. In a way, he supposed, he was cheating the man, but there was no alternative so far as he could see. Sooner or later Tybalt might have to face up to the fact that Wesley was either an idiot, being gulled by his own underlings, or was himself a skilful thief.

* * *

It was four-thirty when he left Rotherhithe, finding a cab in Jamaica Road and clip-clopping along the familiar South Bank that had so many lively memories for him. It was here he had walked with the giant waggonmaster, Keate, in search of Thameside waifs, whom Keate later recruited as vanboys, and a happy notion that had been too. At least a dozen of the gamins, dredged from the mud, had gone on to hold responsible positions in the firm. One had become a regional manager and was still entrenched in what had been, in his time, the Southern Square, and recalling that Rookwood was now a man of substance, with a grown family of his own, nostalgia assailed him. He thought,
I told myself I could slough it off when I marched out and left George and the others to get on with it, but it’s not so easy, as all that. There’s something to be said for taking one’s ease, but I miss the rough and tumble of life down here in the thick of it.
And in a curious way he felt grateful to George and Wesley Tybalt for drawing him back into the swirl of the enterprise.