Theirs Was The Kingdom (83 page)

But she replied, dourly, “Aye, maybe. But it’s the gun that’ll bring you running, not me.”

“The
gun
? You think that’s all our partnership has meant to me? You don’t realise how I’ve come to think of you, as a person.”

She let her grey eyes play over him for a moment, then said, unsmilingly, “As a person, maybe. As a manipulator even. But not as a woman, Alex.”

It wasn’t true, or not in the sense she meant it, and not for the first time in a situation like this he yearned for the glibness of his brother George, or the subtlety of his brother Giles, neither of whom seemed to have the least difficulty in finding the right thing to say. “But that’s… that’s nonsense, Lydia! And it’s not fair to either of us! I’ve never met a woman I admire half as much, or anyone I need as much for that matter. For the fact is I’ve never had confidence in myself as a man or a soldier. It was… well… meeting you, listening to you, knowing you were there, loading for me as it were, that made the difference. All the difference in the world, you understand?”

At the word “need” her chin came up and her eyes seemed to expand so that they looked almost large enough to swim in. She took his hand, clutching it so fiercely that she dropped a glove on the gravel in front of the seat they occupied. He had seen that look of intensity once before, when she bade him goodnight on the steps of her home on the occasion of their first meeting. She said, fervently, “
Need
, Alex? You mean that?
Need
?”

And aware of gaining the initiative for the first time in their acquaintance, he said, emphatically, “Of course I mean it! I’ve thought of myself quite differently since that night we met. I couldn’t make a success of anything without you in the offing. That’s why I’m so damned low about sailing for India. I’ll tell you something else. This last month has been the happiest of my life.” And then, like a dissolving log-jam in the path of a torrent, all doubts concerning his future were swept away, for he saw her as a kind of bridge between himself and fulfilment and rushed on, heedlessly, “Why do we need to separate? If we married before I sailed I could get quarters, and you could come out on the first available boat, and India would be tremendous fun if you were there, for I’d know precisely how to tackle any job I was saddled with. Will you marry me, Lydia? Could it be arranged in such a hurry, because if not…” and he was going to say something conventional about her thinking it over, and perhaps discussing it with her father, but there was no trace of listlessness about her now as she said, with breathless positivity, “
Arranged!
Why, of course it could! How long do banns take? Three weeks, isn’t it, and you’ve got twenty-four days, not counting today! Things like that—as important as that—why Alex, they’ve been arranged in half the time,” and she threw both arms around his neck and embraced him with a fervour that made the playful approach of Cecilia seem anaemic. He noticed something else too, in that first, rapturous gesture on her part. Not only was she very pleasant to kiss but somehow her entire being had undergone a transformation in that she seemed, at that range, to contain more promise than any girl he had ever held in his arms.

Adam, watching them kneeling together at the altar of the garrison church in Deal, did not share his son’s sentiments. He had always favoured chubby, well-rounded women, and had often told Henrietta that he married her on the strength of her shapely bottom, the first part of her anatomy he had seen as he rode over the skyline of Seddon Moor and surprised her washing herself in a puddle.

He conceded that Lydia Corcoran was an interesting little body, with a healthy complexion, large, soulful eyes, and any amount of spunk to judge by that square, resolute chin. He was even prepared to admit she was right for Alex, who had struck him, over the years, as being much in need of a qualified pilot, and maybe a barker to draw a crowd for him. But Lydia Corcoran’s angularity, flat chest, and overall boyishness made no appeal at all to his senses. And to interest him at all a woman had had to do that, from the moment he was required to tip his hat to them.

He said nothing of her deficiencies, however, not even to Henrietta, who seemed, improbably, to have taken a great liking to the funny little thing. Instead, he congratulated himself on his own sagacity, as he invariably did at weddings, thinking back to the far off day when Henrietta, eighteen and as ignorant of men and men’s needs as a Carmelite nun, had stood beside him in the parish church at Keswick, subdued for once. But happily not for long.

It was otherwise with Henrietta, sitting beside him, and contriving to look around thirty instead of forty-eight in a getup that put every other woman present to shame. She was not witnessing the ceremony as a mother or a mother-in-law but as a kind of adjudicator in the eternal duel of the sexes and thus found herself prejudiced in favour of the bride. This was odd, she reflected, remembering that Alex had been her ewe lamb from the moment his sex was announced by Ellen Michelmore, her midwife, for she had felt badly about her first-born being a girl. She supposed, therefore, that she was applauding Lydia’s David versus Goliath victory, and the courage and staying power of all women who went out to do battle with such modest equipment. For who would have thought a homely little pixie like her would have captured such a prize after so short a campaign? And with no bait save brains and a pair of soulful grey eyes. It really was remarkable, and had they been elsewhere she would have felt like applauding, for she saw Lydia Corcoran’s victory as a victory for all women in their miserably handicapped battle against the lords of creation, although she might not have acknowledged it as such had she not been convinced, from that first encounter at Tryst, that the dear boy did not see Lydia as other men would. There was that old saw about love’s blindness and she had made allowances for this at once, but it was the glitter of tears in Lydia’s eyes that told her the girl had faced up to this from the first, and surely meant that she would go out of her way to compensate for her deficiencies. In Henrietta’s eyes, this was a thumping good start to any marriage. Better than most grooms could look for, and better, to her way of thinking, than young Giles could expect come the spring, notwithstanding the looks, figure and dowry Romayne Rycroft-Mostyn would bring him.

As always at a family muster in church, she ran her eye proudly down the pews occupied by the Swann contingent and thought, seeing present one son-in-law, one daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren (a promising dividend in seven-and-a-half years if you thought about it). “Well, that’s another of them off our hands, and before this time next year it will be Giles’s turn. And after that Joanna’s, maybe. Or Helen’s. Or even Hugo’s, and before we know it we shall be left in that great place with the two little ones, and I daresay the emptiness of Tryst will take a bit of getting used to. But if Adam keeps his promise about spending most of his time there, I shan’t bother. One or other of them will always be coming back, and it will always be somewhere to dump the grandchildren…”

The thought was a reassuring one and worth a tear or two, so she reached in her sleeve for a handkerchief but suddenly thought better of it. She had never had the slightest desire to snivel at a wedding and only did it because people seemed to expect it of you. Instead, she did something that came far more naturally to her, sliding her hand along the leading edge of the pew until it brushed against Adam’s. Taking the hint, he squeezed it, grinned, and at once put on his solemn face again.

Three

1

I
T WAS THE MOST HUMILIATING OF THEIR MANY QUARRELS. NOT BECAUSE, ON THAT final occasion, it happened at an Oxford Street millinery counter, with a floor-walker and half a dozen assistants looking on, but because of all the unforgiveable things they said to one another on the way home, culminating in his rejection, on her doorstep, of her peace terms. For Giles did not see them as terms but as an ultimatum, and because he was more of a Swann than he knew, an ultimatum that had to be rejected, even against his better judgement.

Henrietta’s concern regarding the increasing roughness of Giles’s ride was not misplaced. A long engagement, to a girl of Romayne Rycroft-Mostyn’s temperament, was a marathon obstacle course and men older, wiser, and warier than Giles Swann would have failed it. Few, for that matter, would have stayed half the distance, yet somehow, because he had learned to make generous allowances for all kinds of idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies in people, Giles hung on; helped by his books, maybe, certainly by his monumental patience. But in the main because his love for her was rooted in compassion.

He did not see her as all the others did—a spoiled, wayward brat, with a rich father who was far more interested in power than parenthood—but as a beautiful, desperately confused child who had touched his heart and learned, through her instincts possibly, to look to him alone for help.

He was not so much of a prig as to acknowledge this and yet, deep down, he knew that it was so. On the surface the love that blew hot and cold in him was no more complicated than that any impressionable young man might harbour for a girl as pretty as Romayne Rycroft-Mostyn and there were times, many times, when he thought of himself as the most uniquely privileged male in the world. There were other times when he felt so bruised and battered by the contest that he was inclined to wonder whether he was equipped, mentally or physically, to accept such a challenge.

Then he would draw back for a day or so, to get his second wind he would tell himself, for he never seriously contemplated renunciation and usually, on her own initiative, she would bounce back into his life with all the gaiety and gusto of that first, idyllic month they shared together in the mountains. After that, for a period, she would conduct herself decorously until some ill-judged word, some fancied slight, some caprice or random manifestation of her eternal restlessness would promote yet another explosive situation and he would again retreat into himself, wondering if he had bitten off far more than he could chew.

There was simply no reasoning with her once she let her ungovernable temper erupt through the crust of her admitted need of him, a deep, personal need that sometimes appeared to him as an obsession rather than a normal relationship between a woman and man in love. Then there was nothing to be done but to stand clear and wait for the storm to blow itself out.

All in all, however, he was philosophical about the plunges, keeping his eye on the peaks and levels, for the poets had taught him that any woman worth her salt had to be wooed, and that the wisest woman in the world was short on logic. Once, after a particularly testing skirmish, he made a direct appeal to her father, expressing his doubts concerning his qualifications as a shrew-tamer. But Sir Clive, with whom his relationship had broadened to include humour, made light of his problems.

“The girl has always been exceptionally high-strung,” he said, offering his prospective son-in-law one of his best Havana cigars. “Growing up without benefit of a mother, in charge of rule-of-thumb pedants like those professional governesses and peasants like Maggie, in Beddgelert, hasn’t done much to help her over the hump of adolescence. Come to think of it, she’s been slower than most girls about the business of growing up, but I haven’t much doubt that will be remedied the moment she acquires married status and responsibilities to go along with it.” He looked at Giles shrewdly but kindly. “Sorry to counsel nothing but patience, lad,” he added. “But then, patience is your strong suit, isn’t it? That’s why I realised from the very beginning you were the right man for her. If you can’t tame the lass, nobody can.”

“I don’t seem to be making much progress,” Giles told him, glumly, but the industrialist dismissed this as excessive modesty. “You’re not the one to assess that,” he said. “I think you are, and you’re not suggesting Romayne is cooling off, are you?”

“No, sir. I’m prepared to admit that I mean a good deal to her but…”

“Mean a good deal to her? Good God, boy, face facts! She’s head over heels in love with you and can’t wait to call herself Mrs. Swann and have your babies! As for her temper, her damned contrariness—well, you have an advantage there that I never had. You’ve my permission to treat her as a wilful child if she tries your patience too far, and don’t wait until you’re man and wife to do it. Do you or don’t you intend to smoke that cigar you’re fidgeting with?”

Giles said, with a smile, “I haven’t your stomach for them, sir. I’ll manage with one of these if you don’t mind,” and he took out a cigarette-case Romayne had given him for his twentieth birthday gift and puffed away at a Turkish cigarette, Sir Clive watching him with the genial expression he reserved for the few people he trusted.

“Glad you had the sense to come to me,” he said. “Been meaning to broach something to you. I’ve already discussed it with your father as a matter of fact, and I daresay that was high-handed of me without sounding you first, but it’s my way. How are you settling to that haulage business, now you’ve had time to assess it as a career?”

“If you’ve been discussing me with the Governor you’ll know the answer to that,” said Giles, having learned that Sir Clive and his father had that much in common. Both liked to come straight to the point when discussing business.

“Yes, I think I can say I do,” Sir Clive replied, blowing out a cloud of smoke and watching it disperse in the draught from the window. “He was obligingly frank. Says you’ll never make a salesman, and he wouldn’t back you to get the better of someone who wasn’t hamstrung by the theory and practice of a gentleman. He mentioned points in your favour, however.”

“I’m glad to hear it. What were they?”

“That you had a way with people, work people. That you could get on their level without patronising them, and that’s damned rare in a gaffer’s son. Said you had a rare head for figures too, that neither of your brothers have, and that set me thinking. Towards selfish ends, I might add.”

Sir Clive Rycroft-Mostyn had always interested Giles and he supposed he had respect for him, but he was not a man one could like, or not in the way it was possible to compromise between Adam Swann as man and adventurer. Giles had, from the first, seen his future father-in-law as a man wholly obsessed with money, and with the power money gave him. Closer acquaintance had done nothing to mellow this judgement. He said, politely, “What proposition did you put to my father, sir?”

“One that could give you scope, I should say. You’ve been concerned with the employees’ Friendly Society, I understand.”

“I have indeed and it’s one of the best in being. I think the time will come when a scheme of that kind will be a statutory obligation for all big concerns. It already is in some parts of Germany.”

“Inclined to agree with you,” Sir Clive said, unexpectedly, “and that’s where I think you could find a place in my concerns. Now don’t shy away. Pay me the compliment of hearing me out, for I’m aware of your loyalty to your father and approve it. I wish to God I had at least one son I could fall back on but I haven’t. You look like being the closest I’ll ever come to getting one. Hold on a minute,” and he moved over to his wall-safe and spun the combination.

He was a pioneer in this kind of gadget. Every contrivance that conservative merchants thought of as new-fangled, Sir Clive Rycroft-Mostyn made it his business to install, once he had satisfied himself it was likely to increase his administrative efficiency. He was one of the few businessmen Giles knew who subscribed to the London Telephone Company, and at his headquarters in Black-friars he already employed two lady typewriters and their ungainly, chattering machines.

He came back to Giles with a typewritten document bound in strong, buff covers and tied with tape. “Run your eye down the first page. It’s a privilege, I assure you. I wouldn’t show it to anyone.”

It was a list of all the Rycroft-Mostyn enterprises and although Giles had always known they were extensive, he was astonished by their variety now that he saw them listed in their various categories. The tally included mines, iron foundries, a tinplate works, the cable factory Romayne had mentioned the first day they met, several Scottish export warehouses that Giles recognised as regular ports of call by Jake Higson in the north, and over a dozen companies concerned with land and property development in London and north-country cities.

“How many men does your father employ?” asked Sir Clive, having given him a moment to absorb the list.

“Nowhere near as many as you, sir. Around two thousand, I believe. Concerns of this size must absorb almost double that number.”

“More than double. Six thousand, eight hundred and sixty, to be exact. And what is more to the point: nearly half that total are women. Tell me, does the initiation and maintenance of a provident scheme along your father’s lines interest you?”

It had never once struck Giles that Sir Clive regarded his employees as people, certainly not in the sense that Adam did, and had done from the earliest days of the network. He said, carefully, “I don’t think a provident society on our lines would survive long in your concerns, Sir Clive. The men run it themselves for the most part and on an area basis. You’ve always set your face against cooperatives of any kind. You’ve told me so, more than once.”

“Aye, I have,” Sir Clive said, blandly, “and I’m not going back on it, but there’s more than one way to kill a cat. Having taken a close look at your scheme, I can think of half a dozen variations. Cooperatives, no. I can’t see myself putting power into the hands of people I employ. Neither would I stand by and watch others play fast and loose with my capital. But suppose I was prepared to put pound for pound against employees’ contributions, and invest the money accruing, profits to be ploughed back into a fund for sickness and accident benefits and a bonus based on increased output? Could you draft a scheme on that scale, involving over six thousand hands operating a dozen different industries?”

“Certainly I could, providing you supplied me with the information I should need.”

“What kind of information exactly?”

“Rates of pay, annual turnover, and profits on one year’s trading for each concern.”

He might have been mistaken, but it seemed to him Sir Clive’s expression hardened at the word “profits” and it helped to resolve him. He thought, “Damn it, it’s time I knew where I stand with him as well as his daughter… If he has something like this in mind it’s prompted by prestige not charity…” and he went on, “There’s one thing, however. My father’s provident scheme is small fry compared with anything on that scale and I’m not saying I’m the man for the job. Any trained actuary could do it more objectively. If you’re serious, that is.”

“Oh, I’m serious, lad.” The smooth, cherubic face assumed a genial expression so that Giles saw it as that of an intelligent, greedy baby. “I’m quite serious, but you’re wrong on one count. An actuary couldn’t help me to come to a hard decision about something as momentous as this, but you could, I’m persuaded of that. For one thing, you’re a born radical, unless I am mistaken. For another you’re of the generation touched by the hem of the worthy Doctor Arnold’s gown. No, no, I’m not sneering, lad. You youngsters, products of the new schools, have been educated to apply Christian ethics to business practices. I didn’t have that advantage and neither did any one among my managers. We all came up in the cut-and-thrust, devil-take-the-hindmost days of an earlier generation. The only academy I ever attended was the Academy of Midnight Oil, but I’m no stick-in-the-mud or I wouldn’t have got as far as I have. Well?”

Giles considered. It was tempting, even if it meant turning his back on a man he understood and respected, and putting his future in the hands of someone he had never trusted.

“You want me to decide now?”

“Certainly not. Take as long as you please. We could shelve it until after you’re married, if you prefer.”

“I could give you an answer before that. I should have to discuss this with my father, and well… with… someone else, who I believe would encourage me to take it up.”

“Romayne is in favour of it. I can tell you that now.”