Theirs Was The Kingdom (68 page)

“Oh, I’m listening,” she said, “and it certainly isn’t me who is scared of being tied down, Giles Swann!”

“What?”

“You know very well what I’m getting at!”

“But I don’t! I say, look here…” and he floundered, miles out of his depth, but understanding dimly that the path of love had as many pitfalls as primroses. He understood, too, in that instant, that although they were much of an age, he was a rank amateur at the game and couldn’t hope to disguise it. “You don’t think I’m pretending, that I’m fooling myself for some silly reason…”

“Well, aren’t you?” She faced him, squarely. “If you aren’t why don’t we go back and find Papa right now and let him decide how soon we can be married?”

He had no kind of answer to this frightening proposition. It was not that he had reservations concerning her, but common sense told him that a man as intelligent and down-to-earth as Sir Clive Rycroft-Mostyn would almost surely think him the greatest fool he had ever met if he marched blithely into his presence demanding his daughter in marriage, on the strength of a couple of weeks’ skylarking in the Welsh hills. What puzzled him even more was her apparent inability to take this into consideration and her obstinate belief that her father (who must have given some thought to whom she might marry) would be likely to gratify her wish as casually as he had accepted her suggestion he should stay on as a guest, after the incident at the falls. He was beginning, slowly and rather painfully, to adjust to her immaturity, and it struck him that any child of an extremely wealthy man would be likely to behave in this headstrong, purblind way. He realised too that he was singularly ill-equipped to deal with a situation of this kind, never having previously met a person his own age with whom he could compare her, for the girls his sisters had introduced into the house were all, to a greater or lesser degree, disciplined young women with conventional tastes and manners.

She seemed now to be watching him carefully, almost speculatively, and it gave him a feeling of inferiority to be cornered in this way, unable to show her that marriage, or even a progressive courtship of the kind he had in mind, was not something you rejected or accepted, like a second helping of dessert. For this was clearly how she regarded it, and it cost him a pang to face the fact that this very circumstance trivialised her. He said at length, “Somehow I’ve got to make you understand, Romayne. What I’ve said, what you’ve just said… what I mean is, you’ll probably think differently about it in a week or two…”

“You wouldn’t mind if I did?”

It was not often Giles showed irritability but he did now. “Good Lord, of course I’d mind! I’ve told you I love you, haven’t I?”

“And I’ve told you I love you, so what on earth are we arguing about? We ought to be pleased and happy, didn’t we? You ought to be holding me, instead of examining all the pros and cons, like Mr. Tilsley marking my theory book!”

It was too much. There was simply no reasoning with her, or not in her present mood. He knew all about Mr. Tilsley. Mr. Tilsley was her music teacher, an inoffensive, myopic little man, to whom crotchets and quavers were the breath of life. He said, taking her hand and lifting her chin, “You’re absolutely right. This isn’t something we can map like a route, or solve like a sum on a blackboard. And anyway, we’re wasting precious minutes,” and he kissed her possessively on the mouth and then, liking it so much, repeated the kiss and stood off to watch his doubts swamped in a great wave of exultation as her arms went round him, and she pulled him down on her, kissing his cheeks and eyes and mouth, and murmuring his name over and over again. No more than that, just “Giles… Giles… Giles…” so that she invested it with a sort of glory, and he heard it as music more enthralling than anything Herrick or Marvell had written on the subject of love. They lay there saying nothing for a long time, until the certainty of their need for one another seemed to him as defined and permanent as the hills and the silver thread of river where it wound between belts of timber a mile below. He had no idea now how matters would resolve themselves but was happy to postpone analysis, blessedly content that it had happened, that she was here in his arms willing him to kiss her and touch her hair, that he could feel her grip tighten on his shoulder when he made so much as a token attempt to release her.

4

They gave him a lift as far as Chester in the waggonette, dropping him off near the great red cathedral when he told them that he did not want to travel on by railway but preferred to head on down the road to Warrington, where Catesby, of the Polygon, had arranged to meet him in the heart of the beat.

She made no complaint about this. She had been very silent during the last forty-eight hours, so much so that her father went so far as to acknowledge the fact by a wink across the breakfast table, implying that he was under no misapprehension as to the meaning of this wholly uncharacteristic sobriety on her part. The wink made Giles very uneasy until, the moment she had gone about her packing, he said, casually, “I daresay she’s bothered by the prospect of all that mumbo-jumbo awaiting her in town. Makes me damned glad I’m not a woman. Young shaver like you can’t imagine what those old beldames get up to at a time like this. However, I suppose I should congratulate myself on having one daughter instead of a clutch, like your father.” And at this Giles thought he might as well correct any impression Sir Clive had concerning the social position of the Swanns, and said, “The truth is, sir, my father won’t subscribe to it. I once heard him tell my mother he thought a season was a huckster’s way to go about getting daughters married off!” To his relief Sir Clive laughed.

“And so it is, by God. I’m beginning to think your father and I would see eye to eye on any number of things. No doubt I shall have the pleasure of meeting him sooner or later.”

“I certainly hope so, sir,” replied Giles, fervently. But if the magnate noticed his elation, he gave no sign but said, rising, “Let me say this, in order to spare my girl’s blushes. I’m uncommonly obliged to you for breaking your journey, and keeping her company the way you have. It’s lonely for a lass of her age, stuck away up here, and you’ve succeeded in keeping her out of mischief, where everyone else has failed. Are we likely to see anything of you in London later in the year?”

“I’d be delighted to call, sir, when I get back from the north. Would some time in October be convenient?”

“Whenever you like, my boy. Glad to see you. Or any of your brothers and sisters for that matter. What are your immediate plans? Or don’t you know?”

“I’m taking a look at the Polygon, sir… I’m sorry, that’s what it’s called on my father’s maps. Broadly speaking it’s the cotton belt, from Cheshire to the Lakes. Then I hope to visit Edinburgh and spend a month exploring our Scottish beat. After that it’ll be no weather for walking, so I shall take a train south, and hope to study the business from our Headquarters near London Bridge.”

“Good… good,” said Sir Clive, but vaguely, Giles thought, as though he had only asked out of politeness.

After that, on the landing near her room, he had no more than a brief moment with Romayne who seemed preoccupied and barely responded to his kiss saying, in extenuation, “I’m sorry, dearest… I’m in a terrible tizzy. That Prickle wrote again this morning, with hundreds of last-minute instructions, and I’m sure I shall leave something important behind.”

He said, with an air of modest triumph, “Your father has just invited me to call in the early autumn,” and that had the effect of riveting her attention for a few seconds. “Around October,” he added, “so if you feel inclined to fall in love with anyone else don’t make it final, will you?”

“You don’t need reassurance concerning that,” she said, “you’re just fishing for compliments,” and then, looking him carefully up and down, “Don’t ever throw away those walking clothes, Giles. It might sound silly but I’d rather you didn’t, not even when they’re worn out. You see they’re
you…
the first ‘you’ I ever saw and several minutes before you saw me. Just a young tramp but a very handsome one, of course. That was why I pretended to drown,” and before he could comment on this she gave him a peck on the tip of his nose and darted back into her room.

He stood and watched the waggonette weave through the traffic of the narrow street towards the station and then, whistling softly, turned his back on the city and began his dusty tramp along the flat Cheshire hedgerows, remembering when he saw a signpost for Daresbury that he was crossing the countryside Lewis Carroll had used as a background for Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. From here on he moved in his own Wonderland and the miles passed unheeded as he thought and thought about her, and all she meant and would come to mean in the future, so that it was with some surprise, towards sunset, that he saw the chimneys of Warrington on the skyline, and recalled that it was about here that his father and mother had met, much in the way that he had met Romayne. The recollection, vague as it was, gave him a curious feeling of drawing level with Adam, who, until then, had seemed as far removed from him in terms of age and experience as Chiron, the centaur-tutor of the Argonauts, who was his favourite character in mythology. He was tired and dust-parched by then and glad to accept a lift from a passing milk-float, finding the run-down-looking inn near the goods yard and falling asleep over his game pie and porter.

He was up and about, however, when the landlady called him about eight, telling him that a Mr. Catesby was enquiring for him. It struck Giles, as he hurried downstairs, that his father’s managers were a punctilious lot, for he had not expected him until mid-morning.

He had met Catesby at Stella’s wedding and five minutes’ exchange of conversation confirmed his opinion that Lovell had been right, and that “he and that revolutionary chap would get along well.” Concerning his odyssey, Catesby came straight to the point.

“It’s not just transport you’re interested in, is it? I hear you want to take a close look at working conditions in the Belt. Does that mean you’ll be reading philosophy up at University?”

Giles told him that there was no question of his going up to University, and was surprised to discover Catesby’s reaction was similar to Thompson’s. “I’m not sure that’s wise, lad,” he said, gravely. “Education’s a fine thing, and a man ought not to pass up on it lightly. You’ll have heard plenty about me and my views I daresay, but what we need, if we’re ever going to remake society, is leaders above factory level, youngsters like yourself, maybe, with no personal axe to grind, men who can take an impersonal look at pay, conditions of work, bad housing, sanitation and God knows what else that’s amiss in places like this and the coalfields. Oh, I’m not denying it hasn’t improved since I were a lad, standing thirteen hours a day beside unfenced machinery. But the working day is still far too long, the factories are neither safe nor sanitary, and we still have to fight for every penny an hour on piece rates. However, you shall see for yourself if you’ve a mind to, and don’t be shy of asking questions. Your father never is, I’ll say that for him.”

“I’d like to ask one right now,” Giles, said warming to the man, “and it concerns my father. I’ve never really understood his attitude to the social problems of an industrial society. I mean, is he with you or against you? Sometimes he seems progressive but other times, well, he’s got a touch of the old-time gaffer about him. How do you rate him as a boss, or is it unfair to ask?”

“No, it isn’t unfair,” Catesby said, thoughtfully, “but difficult to answer. He’s a progressive certainly, and you’ll have heard in the Mountain Square that he’s looked on as a good gaffer by the men, top and bottom grades. He’s fair, generous, and won’t look on his workforce as cattle, the way most of ’em still do about here. But he’s the most obstinate cuss I ever struck. If he gets a wrong-headed notion it takes blasting powder to shift it, but if you succeed in changing his mind he’s never too high and mighty to own he was wrong. We’ve had our ups and downs over the last twenty-five years, mostly ups I might add. He doesn’t take kindly to sharing power with a trades federation, of the kind I’ve been working for all my life. I understand that, mind. He’s the last word in individuality and it’ll take another generation to hammer out a set of rules that’ll stand four-square, without leaning one way or the other. The thing is, however, your Dad is one of the few big employers who recognises the right of hands to have a say on their pay and conditions, and that’s why he and I get along, and why I’ve any amount of respect for him. If that answers your question let me put one to you. How does he rate as a father?” And Giles laughed, saying that this was even more difficult to answer, for Adam Swann’s real family didn’t live at Tryst but were spread across the network. “According to my mother,” he added, “he forgets our names sometimes, but I never knew him to forget one of yours.”

“Aye, that’s what I reckoned,” said Catesby, “and there’s a reason for it. After all, any damned fool can reproduce himself any number of times, but it takes a rare spirit to create a business like Swann-on-Wheels out of a Johnny Raw’s dream.”

The conversation established the tone of their relationship and all that week, and part of the next, Giles travelled about Lancashire in Catesby’s company, visiting half a dozen mills, from the model establishment, once owned by Sam Rawlinson, his grandfather, but now a cooperative nominally owned by his mother, down to the ramshackle eighteenth-century concern in Rochdale, where Catesby had worked as a lad.

“That wasn’t so long after they’d installed Cartwright’s power-looms,” he said, “those that were burned out time and again by hand-loom weavers, who saw their livelihood threatened. Not that I’ve ever had a dam’ bit o’ patience with Luddites, or any other give-us-the-old-days bleaters, although I understand well enough what scared ’em at the time. I never did see the sense of fighting machines when you can make ’em do the hard graft for you.”