Theirs Was The Kingdom (54 page)

“You’re away above my head,” said Adam, “but then, you always are. Wouldn’t a place like Oxford, where you would mix with the best brains in the country, help you in that process?”

“I don’t think it would. I can’t be sure, of course, having nothing in the way of experience to go on, but I’ve got a feeling the
atmosphere
at Oxford would be too rarefied. It wouldn’t relate to the lives of ordinary people, like your managers and your waggoners, or even most of your customers come to that.”

“Are you saying you want to come into the business, after all?”

“Yes, I am, pater, but… well… it sounds infernal cheek on my part… given a certain condition. Two conditions really.”

“Well?”

“First, I’d like to spend the next six months exploring. I don’t mean like George, who’s getting technical knowledge, but exploring our country. Didn’t you do something just like that before you founded the network?”

“Yes, I did, but it didn’t occupy me six months. I rode horseback all the way from Plymouth, where I landed after seven years abroad, to Derwentwater.”

“Did it show a profit?”

“Yes, it did. Are you suggesting you do a Cobbett Rural Ride?”

“Good Lord no, sir, I’d walk.”

“ Walk?”

“Why not? I can do upwards of twenty miles a day and I’d see a lot in six months, given good weather.”

“I see. And what was the other condition?”

“That I could make another and final choice when I was—say—twenty-one. To stay on, and give you a hand wherever you thought I’d be useful, or take up a profession. The law, maybe, or the F.O., or journalism like Debbie, or even… well… politics if I saw an opening. Is that asking too much?”

In a way it was. The prospect of having Giles with him was a pleasant one for Adam, but not if his approach to the network was half-hearted, as sounded likely. On the other hand, he saw the boy’s point. There was no better way of getting to know one’s own country than to walk over it, stopping off here and there, and with time to absorb encounters and experiences en route.

He said, “Listen here, Giles. There’s no one who could prove more useful to me than you and that includes George, who is coming in anyway. George, however, is a technical man and the human aspects of the network won’t interest him. They’ve always interested me, however, and that’s why your conditions make sense. I’ll accept them, providing you make me a pledge in return. When it comes to the point, be absolutely honest with me. I’ll be sixty then, and slacking off I daresay, so you might be inclined to stay on out of consideration for my feelings. The others wouldn’t, but you would. Is that understood?”

“That’s understood, sir,” said Giles, seriously. And then, with a gleam in his eye, “I’ll start mapping out a route. Will you do one other favour for me? Tell Tommy—the Head, that is—what I’ve decided, and why? He’s annoyed that I don’t share his enthusiasm for Oxford. I’m sure he thinks I’m dotty but… well… you don’t, do you?”

“No,” said Adam, “I never did. You just happen to have a bump of curiosity that wouldn’t find room in the Crystal Palace. I doubt whether it’ll ever be satisfied, but there comes a time when one has to compromise between living life and dreaming it. I shouldn’t be too pontifical. I was thirty before I put dreams to work. Is that a bell they’re ringing down there?”

“Yes, the lunch bell. You live by that sound up here. No matter where you are it carries in this clear atmosphere.”

Giles took a long final look at the downsweep of field and coppice, one of the many views hereabouts that would remain imprinted on his mind until the day he died. Then, talking of Hugo, they started down the hill, the faint clamour of the bell reaching them on a southwesterly blowing in from the Atlantic.

Two

1

G
EORGE SWANN NEVER DID THINGS IN A HURRY.

The gentle pressures that finally prised him from the muscular arms of Rosa Ledermann, and extended his odyssey south and east to the curve of the Danube below Vienna, were such that he needed time to reflect and on this account took a meandering route that led him through the Tyrol to Gratz, a journey occupying him the better part of a week. The time was not wasted. Not only was he thus able to approach the Habsburg capital from the south, a route that gave him chance to absorb the beauty and tranquillity of the countryside sunning itself under the black pines of the Parapluiberg, he also had an opportunity to cast off the mood of gentle melancholy that had accompanied him this far. The city approaches made such an impact upon him that his spirit lifted at once, as though soaring on the bars of a Strauss waltz and whirling over the vineyards, the Kahlenberg, and, finally, the imposing silver-grey needle of St. Stephen’s tower. It was as though Vienna, having no room for the glum and careworn, spied him from afar and singled him out for a civic benediction.

He was a young man who was rarely downcast and almost never troubled, yet his obligatory move had disturbed him. By then, his involvement with Rosa was deeply emotional and how could it be otherwise? For George, packing his bags for Vienna, had a suspicion amounting to a certainty that frolic was on the point of exchanging its carnival mask for fatherhood.

He could not, despite his persistent search for an honest answer, be absolutely certain of this for neither, it seemed, could Rosa, who was somewhat careless with her favours. Yet to George it seemed probable, and probability was enough to rouse his conscience, hitherto quiescent.

Judged on the standards of his day and generation, George Swann had received a very liberal upbringing; although basically selfish, he was very far from being a callous young man, and would, at a pinch, have faced the music. Rosa, however, would have none of this, having, it appeared, her own long-term plans. She saw him now as she had always seen him, a young and personable English gentleman, who had been sent out into the world ignorant, naked, and vulnerable, who was likely, indeed certain, to fall victim to the first enterprising trollop he met. It had been thoughts like this that had encouraged her to make a man of him on the night of the
Oktoberfest
, and she might well have left it there had not Herr Swann proved such a diligent pupil, making what she could only regard as spectacular progress throughout the winter and on into the spring. But there came a time, in the first weeks of April, when facts had to be faced and she faced them resolutely but genially, like the good Municher she was.

Their relationship had not undergone any dramatic change since his initiation. She continued to address him as Herr Swann and behave towards him in the same manner as she behaved towards all the other lodgers who came and went, and all her regular callers who dropped in from time to time, men like the beaming, broad shouldered policeman, Kurt, and Ebert, the walleyed postman, whom George thought of as Kurt’s most dangerous rival, for he was said to have money in State bonds.

To George, weekly and sometimes bi-weekly access to Rosa was an unlooked-for privilege, but Rosa did not regard it as such. Her ability to divorce body and soul would have been unflattering to a man more experienced in these matters, but George did not quarrel with it. In some way it absolved him from responsibility.

He found, after that first occasion, that he could look upon Rosa with a surprising degree of objectivity, as though a close study of her charms was part of his curriculum as a footloose student. In this way, for a matter of seven blissful months, he contrived to have the best of both worlds, up to the night she told him, with a nonchalance that he found almost shocking, that she was pregnant and expected her child in August.

Up to that moment it had been a rewarding occasion, for although he had grown accustomed to Rosa indulging him as she might a venturesome, likeable schoolboy, on this particular evening she had shown signs that he was able to rouse her to some extent, and Rosa Ledermann, even half-roused, was capable of invoking a sense of considerable gratification in a man. She was so big, so powerful, so direct and possessed of so much positive energy, that her body seemed equipped to solace every man in the world. Her limbs had a way of enveloping a lover to the point of all but extinguishing him.

It was in the still moment that followed this shattering experience that she said, in a tone that he recognised as valedictory, “So,
mein süsses Kind…
You are a man now that any woman would wish to please, and it is time you went in search of her,
gelt?
It is not part of your father’s plans, I think, that you should remain in München for one year more.”

It made him uneasy to hear her say that, and in such a matter-of-fact tone, particularly at a moment like this, when he was savouring a sense of profound fulfilment. He said, raising himself on his elbow and looking down at her broad, placid features, “You wish me to stop coming here unless I am invited?”

“Ach, no,” she said, impatiently, “it has been a pleasure,
mein Schatz.
You do not need to be told that, I think. But it would not do for you to live here when I marry.”

He had completely forgotten until then that she might wish to remarry, and for a moment he was too amazed to comment. Then he said, “Marry? Marry who, Rosa?”

“Kurt,” she said thoughtfully, as if not finally decided. “Yes, I will take Kurt. He is not so thrifty as Ebert but he is younger. Besides, I am with child, and Kurt is fond of children.”

If the announcement that she was contemplating remarriage astonished him, the fact that she was pregnant threw him into such a turmoil that he leaped from bed with a cry of dismay.

“A child?… You’re expecting a child? And you can talk of it in that way?” But then the full significance of her announcement caught up with him. “A child! Why it might…
Is
it…? I never thought! Oh, my God, Rosa!”

She looked up at him mildly. It seemed to her that he was making very heavy weather of so small a storm, but then, she reflected, he was young and, until she had taken him in hand, touchingly innocent, like most Englishmen who had passed this way.

She said, “Ach, put it from your mind,
Hertzliebchen.
I should not have told you. It is likely that the child is Kurt’s. But if it were not, then there is no occasion to fuss. I too am fond of children, and it is time I had another. I am thirty-six. The years are flying.”

Despite the numerous occasions he had surrendered to those white, muscular arms, he had not yet adjusted to her philosophy that enabled her to regard the birth of a child, of whose father she was unsure, as a day’s work that had been neglected and should be attended to before the light failed. He said, with a kind of despair, “But good God, Rosa! It might… it almost surely
is
mine.”

“Ja,
es mag sein
—it is possible,” she conceded, equably. “But I think not. It is likely to be Kurt’s and that is why I told him I will marry him and that he may live here if he continues with the police until he has his pension. He has nine years to serve,” she added, smiling.

He said, pulling on his clothes as though she had despatched him for the midwife, “What… what do you think I should
do
, Rosa? I’m sorry, God knows. If it
is
me, that is, but I never thought… well, it always seemed to me that you… what I mean is, you’ve
been
married and had children… I took it for granted you…”

She took pity on his frightful confusion at that point and hoisted herself up, smiling at him indulgently.

“Ach, I did not bother. Cease to blame yourself. The thing is done and it does not distress me. Why should it? I have a good home and money in the bank. I have good health and Kurt has been anxious to be the father of my children since two years. One more will not concern him. He will be made happy by the news.”

He continued to gape at her as she swung her legs to the floor and then, heaving herself across to the mirror, began to pin up her abundant blonde hair.

On previous occasions he had enjoyed watching her perform this office, stark naked and with a mouthful of hairpins. It gave him a cosy, proprietary feeling, and a sense of being one up on all the gentlemen abed in England. But now there was no particle of complacency left in him. He said, dismally, “You’ve been so decent… such a sport, Rosa!” She turned her head sharply but only, it appeared, to add to her proud collection of English idioms. “‘Sport?’ That is a word we do not associate with love. But the English, perhaps, yes?”

It was just too much for George’s damped-down but resilient sense of humour. He chuckled, then tried to stifle the chuckle and began to cough and splutter so violently that his eyes misted as he said, “In a sense, I suppose. Certainly as applied to you,
Liebling.
What I meant was you’re such a… well… generous person, someone who gives and gives and never seems to expect anything in return,” and he buttoned his shirt collar and went over to her, bending to kiss her neck and her shoulders.

For her, however, his dilemma needed immediate attention. Ignoring the gesture, she removed six pins from her mouth and laid them in a row, like six grenadiers.

“You asked me what you should do, Herr Swann. It is clear what you must do. You are twenty-one, yes? You have a rich and indulgent papa, yes? You came here, on a letter of credit. Is that the correct phrase?”

“Introduction.”

“
Ja
, introduction. And you have others, yes?”

“Three, and I could always get more. I have one for Stockholm, one for Berlin, and one for a big coach-building firm near Vienna.”

“Then I will decide for you. Stockholm is grey and cold most of the year. And its people, I am told, do not laugh much. Berlin is full of Prussians. You would not like it there. Vienna, that is the place for a young man with money in his pocket. The wine is good. The women are very pretty. The waltz is a foolish dance but you cannot have everything. My advice,
Engelchen
, is go to Vienna. Go at once. Time does not wait upon the young, although they think it does.” She lapsed into German, smiling her broad, maternal smile;
“Du bist ein Bienchen das am Sommertag Honig suchen sollte.”

“What does that mean, Rosa?”

“It is difficult.” She thought for a moment, hand on hip, looking like a muscular nymph in a painting he had seen somewhere on his travels, a nymph painted by an artist who liked his models round, ripe and full of promise. “You are a little bee who should be seeking honey on a summer’s day. For you,
Hertzliebchen
, there will always be plenty of honey.”

2

He thought of that when he left her at the station a week or two later, and for some reason it reminded him of the poem
Venus and Adonis
, favourite reading among the more sophisticated of the Fifth at school and easier to memorise, he recalled, than excerpts from
The Merchant of Venice
or
Macbeth.
The lines returned to him now, doing service, possibly, as a requiem for Rosa, whom he sensed he would never see again but would never forget:

I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or on dale.
Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

It seemed extraordinarily apt, although he had never seen himself as a candidate for anyone so churlish as Shakespeare’s Adonis. It made the poem live for a moment, giving it a relevance that it must have had for many adolescents down the centuries. Rosa had indeed performed the office of a park, and a very verdant park at that, and now that it came to the moment of parting he was choked by the strength of his affection for her. He made a gesture then that had the power to touch her, crossing to an aged flower-seller sitting at the station entrance, dropping a handful of loose change into the woman’s lap and gathering up an armful of flowers, daffodils, freesias, and narcissi. Their scent and colour were redolent of all the gaiety he had experienced in her company and her city.

He thrust them towards her and hurried away, blushing, to catch his train, and she watched him go, her arms full of flowers, a rare expression of indecision on her broad, pink face. Then she sighed, so gustily that the flower-seller stared at her curiously, watching her stride away, carrying her flowers and her regrets, if she had any, into the swirl of traffic.