Theirs Was The Kingdom (50 page)

“I don’t know what the devil I believe about you,” Adam said. “You turn up here, asking all these questions after twenty years…
Why
are you here? It isn’t to tell me about money you banked, and it can’t be that you’re associated with Stead in any way.”

“I’m a man who likes to pay his score, and that letter will pay it. With interest. How much did Deborah tell you about what happened to her in Brussels?”

“No more than was in the papers on her return. I gather she was beaten up by some scoundrel in the pay of the brothel-keepers. It was no more than I expected. Stead carried an extensive report of it and you obviously subscribe to the
Pall Mall Gazette.”

He said, moving to the window, “They would have killed her if they hadn’t got what they were after. She had a list of names. Big names. It was far more vital to them than she realised. Several high-ranking police officers were involved, as well as a couple of industrialists and a judge. She had all the pieces, and Stead, no doubt, would have put them together. Naturally they were scared. Well, they aren’t likely to meddle in that traffic again, not this side of the Channel. So long as Stead has the nerve to publish, of course.”

“Why don’t you deliver it yourself and make sure that he does?”

“That wouldn’t do at all, my friend. I should be sure to run into her and I wouldn’t like that to happen.”

“Listen here,” said Adam, “you’ve taken this much risk so why not a little more? I’m catching the seven-thirty to Croydon. I could arrange for you to see Deborah privately. She won’t reject you. She isn’t that kind of person. She’s a special kind of person. We found that out at the time of the train wreck. She saved Henrietta’s sanity for one thing. A child of eleven or twelve, with more courage than anyone about us. Why won’t you do that, Josh?”

“Mostly out of regard for you. She’d try and reclaim me and that would involve split loyalties. I’m past reclamation, anyway.”

“You always thought of yourself as being,” Adam said, “but it’s mostly a pose.”

“You know I’m talking sense, Adam.”

He knew it and was surprised, now that it came to the point, to feel jealousy concerning their relationship. For him, for so many years now, Avery had been dead and buried, whereas he had always taken more pride in Deborah than in any of his own blood, seeing her, possibly, as something he had created, much as he had created the network.

He said, gruffly, “I wouldn’t want her harmed, or even embarrassed by your arrest. She remembers enough of you to be deeply concerned if that occurred, so have it your way. I’ll deliver your letter and say nothing about your coming here if you prefer it that way.”

“I prefer it,” Josh said, with a smile, “and so do you.”

He walked slowly round the tower, cluttered with the apparatus of Swann’s life. “This place hasn’t changed,” he said, “and neither, for that matter, have you. I hadn’t looked for change, of course. Getting mauled in the train accident gave you a new lease of life. If you had come this far without a setback you would have been a Justice of the Peace by now, with any number of high-toned notions about letting a man like me walk loose. The possibility of standing trial as an accessory wouldn’t have stopped you. However, as I say, that amputation presented a fresh challenge and a man like you can’t exist without challenges. Will you shake hands, Adam?”

“Good God, why not? Do you suppose I’m that much of a prig?”

“I’m not calling you a prig,” Avery said, “just a good old British Puritan and there’s a difference. Prigs have secret doubts about themselves but Puritans don’t, not even when the world falls about them. You have sons of your own, they tell me. Why aren’t they here learning their trade?”

“I drive myself,” Adam said, “but I’ve never made a practice of driving others. Unless they happened to share my objectives.”

“And your boys don’t?”

“I wouldn’t say that. They’re individuals. Alex has taken a commission, George is getting to know himself, drifting about Europe, Giles and Hugo are still at school. And the youngest is still a baby. There’s time enough. Henrietta’s proud of them, and I’m damned if I feel like wet-nursing a crowd of amateurs.”

“And your daughters?”

“The eldest is married to a farmer’s boy. Happily, I might add, to head off your sneer.”

Avery said, with his woman’s smile, “You’re the last person on earth I’d sneer at. The only Puritan I know who is still a respecter of persons. A very
private
Puritan, Adam.”

“I’ve always done what I wanted to do, Josh.”

“Me too. And that’s one definition of success they say. Give me ten minutes to get clear of the yard. I would leave you a forwarding address but if I did the first thing you’d do would be to mail that money back.”

They shook hands, much as they had done outside Harwich twenty years before. Then Avery pulled on his gloves, smoothed them very carefully, and went out and down the stairs without a backward glance. Adam found that he was sweating, despite the nip in the air and the dead stove. He thought, “I suppose I’m closer to him than anyone has ever been, but how close is that? A million miles?”

He picked up the letter, carried it to his wall-safe, and locked it away. Stead had already devoted a year to his self-appointed task of stemming the flow of harlots across the Channel. He could wait another few days.

2

He was familiar with the offices of the
Pall Mall Gazette
, and his card was enough to get him an audience with Stead, who received him cordially. However, there was apprehension in his manner when, after a formal handshake, Adam went straight to the subject of the beating Deborah had received in Brussels.

“You got my letter promising redress, Mr. Swann?”

“I did indeed,” Adam said, “and I should apologise for not replying but the truth is I felt too damned outraged. Let’s admit it, Mr. Stead, that wasn’t an assignment for an inexperienced young woman, and a professional like you must have been aware of that. Why did you take such a risk?”

“Against my better judgement. The fact is, Mr. Swann, Miss Avery is an extremely rare find, a young person with an active social conscience who has the ability to write ‘parlour-window’ prose. Not easy to find, I assure you.”

He must have noted Adam’s baffled eyes, for he went on, “I think of writing in terms of glass. A dirty pane for obscurity, stained glass for literature, ‘parlour-window’ for words you can look through at the meaning behind.”

Adam had come prepared to dislike the man, as he found himself disliking most of the over-earnest, over-shrill social campaigners he had met about the City in the last two decades. Stead, he discovered, had both charm and honesty, of a kind not easy to detect in his columns, that usually read like sermons by a latter-day Calvin, or at least a Luther, notwithstanding the validity of the wrongs they sought to right. He decided to hold Avery’s letter in reserve while he explored the man. It was not often one had an opportunity of studying a Titan at point-blank range.

He said, “I won’t pretend I like her being exposed to this kind of hazard. No responsible guardian would. Frankly, I’d sooner see her married, and settled in a suburb, with a husband and a couple of children to coddle. It’s always been my belief that any young man would be lucky to have Deborah, apart from the fact that she is likely to inherit money in due course.”

“I wasn’t aware of that,” Stead said. And then, “Would I be presuming if I asked you to tell me a little more concerning her background? She’s been reticent concerning that, apart from yourself, of course.”

“I can’t tell you one thing about her background, Mr. Stead. Not because I wouldn’t, and certainly not because I don’t trust your discretion, but for reasons outside my control. All I can say is that her father was once a very good friend of mine. When he ran into difficulties and moved abroad, he made me her guardian. That was when she was nine. Since then I’ve always regarded her as my own daughter. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“You need not be. Social backgrounds count for nothing here, Mr. Swann. Miss Avery has courage and she can write. That’s all that is important to me. And now, I imagine, you’ll use your influence to persuade her to leave me and dabble in journalism during spells between kitchen, sewing room, and nursery?”

“That’s not the reason I asked for an interview,” replied Adam, “but it’s not such a bad notion at that. Fleet Street is hardly the place one expects to look for a well-educated, personable young woman, is it?”

“Not as yet,” said Stead, “but it will be, hopefully in our lifetime. British women won’t always be content to stay in the seraglio.”

Adam made a guess at his age. It could not be much beyond the mid-thirties, yet he already looked ten years older. The face was lined and the eyes jaded. Only the set of the jaw, and his swift, nervous gestures, indicated the man’s lunging, restless character.

Adam said, “I don’t deny that a great deal needs doing here and everywhere, but squalor, lust, greed, and injustice can be found in any big city. You see your duty as attacking it and most of us who care for the country’s health applaud you, more often than not, but then…” And he stopped, reflecting how irritated he would be if a stranger walked into his tower and began telling him how to conduct his business.

Stead said quietly, “I’ll heed advice from a man of your reputation, Swann. What did you intend saying before you thought better of it?”

“I’ve no reputation, save as a haulier.”

“You are too modest. It’s my business to know the good and bad among City businessmen.” He opened a folder on his desk and glanced at it so that Adam, swearing under his breath, thought, “Damn his impudence! He must have a dossier on every one of us operating within the square mile,” but then Stead smiled, shedding his extra years for a moment and looking almost boyish.

“You’ve been in business twenty-five years. I was a lad of ten when you set up but I remember your waggons when I played in the streets up north. Since then you’ve swept a thousand urchins off the streets and given them a chance to learn a trade. That’s a contribution to the national spring clean, isn’t it, Mr. Swann?”

“It’s my waggonmaster’s doing, not mine,” Adam growled. “They make good vanboys as a rule.”

“The case of Jake Higson, chimney sweep, wasn’t Mr. Keate’s doing. It was a personal venture, according to my record.”

It astonished Adam to realise that Stead knew chapter and verse of the Higson saga and he wondered, a little uneasily, what else reposed in that file. He said, “I was going to say that I’ve always fought shy of sensationalism. I was interested in Shaftesbury’s early campaigns after I saw one lad die in a street riot and another choke to death in my chimney, but Shaftesbury’s stage was Parliament.”

“Ah, yes,” Stead said, “but that was before a majority could read and write. The Education Acts of the first Liberal Government offered us a short cut, so why not use it? Offer me a choice between a newspaper and the House of Commons for getting something done in a hurry and I’ll take the newspaper every time. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here. I’d get myself elected as an unaligned Radical and make my stand in Westminster. But it’s the long way round. General Gordon is off to the Soudan in a day or so, and the Turks have stopped slaughtering Bulgarians. My achievements both, Mr. Swann, not Parliament’s. Not even Mr. Gladstone’s.”

Adam Swann had not been in business for a quarter-century without acquiring the ability to spot the chink in a man’s armour when he saw it and here, he told himself, was Stead’s. He might be sincerely dedicated to his work as a social reformer, and he was very far from being a hypocrite, but his dynamo was an unconscious lust for power. To some extent the discovery brought them on level terms.

He said, coolly, “That’s doesn’t answer my point, Mr. Stead. Or not entirely. We don’t have to pursue the argument, however. I had a reason for coming here and that reason only marginally concerns my ward.”

“But I should like to pursue it,” said Stead, smiling, “providing you’re not in the usual city man’s hurry to get back to your till.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

“Well then, in answer to that point you raised about the inescapable misery and squalor of any large centre of civilisation, it’s true, of course. There’s more misery, more hunger, more degradation, and certainly more tyranny in Calcutta, Baghdad, Constantinople, Madrid, and even some of the cities in the New World, Chicago for instance. But in a way that proves my point. London claims to be the social, financial, and democratic capital of the world. London is therefore under an obligation to swill out its pigsties from time to time. But I see our duty as something more positive than that. I see ours as a civilising mission, imposed upon us by God Almighty. Why else should we have amassed so much power over so great a slice of the globe? What we need here is a Christian approach to the use of wealth and the responsibilities money imposes on the wealthy. Yet we’re as rotten at heart as the capital of any Eastern despot once national and imperial sentiment is peeled away. I’m dedicated to that peeling process, Mr. Swann. You can’t look for a healthy society, much less a Christian one, if you cover festering wounds with Union Jacks, and that’s what we’ve been doing for a generation. Does that go some way towards convincing you that Miss Avery has a right to make her contribution?”

“It helps,” Adam said, grudgingly, and then, recollecting that he had a trump card in his pocket, produced Avery’s letter and laid it on Stead’s desk.