Give Us This Day (10 page)

“It’s about a chap called Soper. I promised him we’d take him on. He’s out of a billet, and I’m obligated to him. He’s a member of the Shop Assistants’ Action Group and has had about as much as he can take from the drapery trade.”

“There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

Giles hesitated. “Yes, there is. If I want your help I owe you the truth. Did you read about that leaflet raid on the Jubilee procession in the papers? Fleet Street end of the Strand?”

“Yes, I did. A very juvenile business, to my mind. That sort of gesture is spitting into the wind. Did Soper get the sack over it?”

“He can’t go back. And he’s nothing put by to keep him while he looks for another billet.”

“He won’t get one without a character.”

“That’s why I’d like to help him.” He looked Adam in the eye. “How do you feel about the shop assistants’ cause, Father?”

“Sympathetic. If I was in drapery it would have been a bomb not a leaflet. Time they organised themselves like other trades. But that’s their business. It certainly isn’t mine at my time of life.”

Giles said, slowly, “I’ll not keep anything back. I organised that ‘spit in the wind’. I was there at the time. Me and Romayne.”

Adam wasn’t much surprised. He knew Giles was mixed up in various campaigns, all of which were probably as abortive as this one. He said, “It’s the wrong way to go about things, boy. Old Catesby, up in the Polygon, could have told you that. He was your kind, always chasing the millennium, and even went to gaol for it in his time. But he learned and started from the bottom up. Got a proper trades union organised, and then went right after parliamentary representation. You don’t get far over here, marching around with banners and distributing leaflets at public assemblies. People are too lazy and too indifferent. Legislation is the only lever the British will accept. Germany excepted, we’re ahead of others in capital and labour relations. This chap you’re telling me about, is he the wild man type?”

“He wouldn’t be if he worked for a firm like yours.”

Giles always gave him the impression he was only helping out at Swann-onWheels, that he had never been fully integrated, like George, Hugo, or even young Edward, and that his post as Claims and Provident Scheme Manager was a stopgap while he went on looking for a purpose in life. Yet his work had never been in question. Adam had heard George say that Giles’s tact and patience was worth five thousand a year to the network, if only on account of cases settled out of court, thus saving a sheaf of lawyers’ bills. Adam said, “This Soper, has he had any clerical experience?”

“Yes. Before he became a floor-walker at Beckwith’s.”

“George would have signed him on on the strength of your recommendation.”

“In a case of this kind I’d sooner approach you, Father.”

That was another thing about Giles. He still addressed him as “Father,” instead of the more familiar “Gov’nor” used by his brothers. It stemmed, he supposed, from the boy’s attitude towards him since the time they had first begun discussing history and politics when Giles was a child of thirteen. Adam always had the impression that Giles still regarded him as his mentor in these fields and would see that as far outweighing his vast commercial experience.

“If I’m to catch that train I must hurry,” he said. “Here’s Soper’s address.” He wrote rapidly in his notebook. “Maybe you could find time to call and look him over.”

“I don’t need to do that,” Adam said. “I’ll tell George he’s been highly recommended to me by an old customer and I want him given a chance. Good luck in the west, boy. Wish I was coming with you. I always liked that part of the country.”

“Why don’t you? I’ll be returning first thing tomorrow.”

“Things to do,” Adam muttered and escorted him into the street, where Giles had a hansom waiting. He watched him get in and responded to his hand wave, thinking,
Queer chap, old Giles, but so likeable… lovable even. More brains than any of ‘em if he’d put ‘em to better use, but you can’t have everything
… Then he climbed up the stairs to his room, still undecided on his next move in the confrontation he knew must occur within twenty-four hours.

He sat thumbing through his notes on Barbara Lockerbie, dismissing as improbable the possibility that George was engaged in genuine network business, gambling on the likelihood that they were off together somewhere and telling himself that his first priority was to intercept George before he turned up at the yard. He had Sir James Lockerbie’s town address, in Sussex Place, but it was unlikely George was holed up there. He had a country place somewhere but Adam did not know where it was, so he went down to reception and buttonholed the manager, whom he knew well, demanding to know if Sir James Lockerbie was a telephone subscriber. “I can soon find out, Mr. Swann,” the man said, “for I keep a list here,” and he popped into his inner office, re-emerging a moment later with the information that Sir James was listed as subscriber two-seven-five in the London area.

“Could you connect me?” Adam asked, “I’ve important business with him and don’t want to waste time calling on him if he is out of town.”

“Certainly, if you’ll step into my office, Mr. Swann. The hotel telephone is in there. Very few of my guests ever seem to have need of it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Adam said. “We managed well enough with pen and ink in the old days,” but he followed the manager into the office and watched him twirl the handle before asking the London exchange for number two-seven-five. After a few moments he offered Adam the earpiece. “Speak slowly and distinctly, sir,” he advised, “and don’t hold the mouthpiece too close. No one will disturb you in here,” and tactfully he left, closing the door.

A disembodied voice at the end of the line said, “Sir James Lockerbie’s residence. Who is calling?”

“Swann,” Adam said. “Director of Swann-on-Wheels. Is your master in town?”

“No, sir,” the voice said, “he’s abroad. Could I send a message, sir? Is it social or business?”

“Social,” Adam said, heading off a switch to Lockerbie’s London headquarters. “Is her ladyship at home?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. This is Medley, the butler speaking. Her ladyship is in the country.”

“Well, see here, Medley,” Adam said confidentially, “I’m very anxious to send her an invitation she’s expecting. Could you oblige me by giving me her country address?”

“It’s not usual, sir. Mr. Swann, you said?”

“Yes. Your master has been doing business with me for thirty years and my wife is extremely anxious that this invitation reaches Lady Lockerbie by today at the very latest.”

“I see. Well, Mr. Swann, I think I would be exceeding my duties by withholding the country telephone number. I think you’ll catch her there later, sir. After six, I would say, for I understand she’s attending the local regatta today.”

“I’d be uncommonly obliged,” Adam said, trying to keep the jubilation out of his voice. “What is it?”

“Swanley Rise, number six, sir. It’s in Hertfordshire and you get it through the Barnet exchange.”

“Thank you very much indeed,” Adam said. “I’ll get in touch with her before dinner,” and he hooked the earpiece on to its gilded standard, reflecting that he might have been unjustly prejudiced against telephones. They certainly saved time and trouble on occasion.

He went out into the sunshine, wondering how to pass the hours until early evening. He intended staying clear of the yard, where his presence, twice in ten days, would certainly alert Wesley, and there were no auction sales advertised that he cared to attend. He had no wish to run over to Gisela’s either. The wretched girl had enough worries without him adding to them, and momentarily he was at a loss as to how to put in the time. Then his eye caught the destination board on the front of a ‘bus—The Tower & Minories—and fancy jogged him like the elbow of a playful uncle. The Tower of London. The grey pile he had stared across the river at for thirty years when isolated in his Thameside eyrie, but had not visited since he was a lad. He said, aloud, “Damned if I won’t look in there, like any gawping provincial. Why not? I need something to take my mind off my worries for an hour or so,” and he moved out into the crowded roadway and swung himself aboard.

The ‘bus set him down on Tower Hill, where some of his favourite characters from the past had taken their final glimpse of the world in the upturned faces often thousand Cockneys, assembled to witness a spectacle that was even more popular than a bear-baiting or a cock-fight. Strafford, who put too much trust in Princes; old Lord Lovat, for his share in the Jacobite rebellion; and that nincompoop Monmouth, who died gamely, they said, but only after crawling on his knees before that bigot James. Well, they managed these things more discreetly nowadays, and he wasn’t at all sure that the condemned thanked them for it. He had a notion that a man needed an audience on occasions like that and might even look for a chance to show his paces at the last minute. He went down to the public entrance and past the Traitors’ Gate, once again making a character assessment on the men and women who had climbed those slimed steps from the river. Tom More, too holier-than-thou for his taste; Tom Cromwell, the prototype of many a crafty merchant he had bested in his salad days; and young Elizabeth, who learned her lesson well during the period she lived here in the shadow of the headsman. Then up to Tower Green, where a raven gave him a speculative eye, as though the old ruffian queried his purpose there.

He stood for a minute beside the slab marking the spot where the scaffold had stood, remembering the luckless Ann Boleyn and rekindling his lifelong resentment for the least likeable of England’s monarchs, who had her pretty head lopped by the Calais executioner. They said the damned scoundrel (Adam had never regarded Henry as anything else) waited outside the city wall for a cannon shot, announcing the fact that he was a widower, before riding off to Jane Seymour, and he wouldn’t put it past him.

He looked in at the tower that had held so many state prisoners, thinking,
If you played for high stakes in those days, you earned anything you took away from the table.
Then he tackled the winding stair to the horse armoury, peering at the exhibits with the eye of a man who had seen more carnage than most, and afterwards stumped down again and crossed to the battlemented walk overlooking the river, where Raleigh was said to have spent most of the daylight hours during his long imprisonment here. He must have been in a particularly fanciful mood today, for he found himself thinking of Raleigh as a kind of Giles, a man full of promise who somehow never achieved much, perhaps because he attempted too much, and never learned the trick of concentrating his energy. Yet anyone who could write that valediction of Raleigh’s was a man of parts, surely… What was it again…? A few lines that had appealed to him so strongly when he learned it at school that it had remained with him all these years:

E’en such is time that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have
And in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways.
Shuts up the story of our days.

But from this grave, this earth, this dust, The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

It occurred to him to wonder how much store his own family set upon hope of a personal resurrection. Not much, he would say, for all their regular church-going when they were youngsters. Henrietta, he knew for a fact, never let herself contemplate death—her own or anyone else’s. Alex, professional soldier, would have come to terms with it long ago. George wasn’t the spiritual type, or Hugo either. The one might see Paradise from a Turkish janissary’s standpoint, a perfumed garden, full of houris, and the other as a super sports stadium, where he won every event on the card. Giles was more difficult to predict. He was too intelligent not to have renounced conventional doctrine long since, but, like Adam, he had a powerful belief in man’s potential and in the never-ending struggle between good instincts and bad. As for the girls, they had almost certainly given a great deal more thought to their clothes, looks, and figures than they gave to their souls, and not for the first time he envied men like Raleigh their deeply-rooted faith in an all-seeing, all-caring Creator, universal at the time, he supposed, before tiresome fellows like Darwin and Huxley set about confusing everybody.

The sun was moving down towards the higher reaches of the river now, and he glanced at his watch, taxing his long memory regarding the likelihood of one or other of his many business cronies about here who would be likely to possess a telephone and let him borrow it for an out-of-town call. He decided on Crosby, a timber importer, with offices in Cannon Street, and went out on to Tower Hill again where, after some tea and a cake in a bunshop, he whistled a hansom and gave the cabbie Crosby’s address. A few moments later they were threading their way through westbound traffic, very thick about here, and not getting any better, despite so many road-widenings since he had become a regular user of these streets forty years ago.

The man set him down outside Crosby’s place at the very moment a threehorse fire-engine dashed past, moving in the direction of the bridge, the epitome of urgency with its clanging bell and rattle of equipment, gleaming brass and straining greys, moving over the ground as though they were quite aware of the fact that they took precedence over drays, four-wheelers, hansoms, bicycles and even the odd motor in the press. The driver’s handling of the team was a pleasure to watch and everybody did his damnedest to give the vehicle clearance. Then, in its wake, came another, and finally a third, so that the cabbie said, “Someone’s in trouble, sir. Looks as if it’s on the South Bank. They usually manage with their own brigades,” and he pointed with his whip at a blur of smoke hanging in the clear air above the southeastern angle of the buildings.

“That’ll make traffic worse,” Adam said, recalling the clubbed approaches to the bridge on that side whenever anything of this kind was afoot over there, but then his quick ear caught a single word shouted by a newsboy at a customer buying his paper a few yards along the kerb and he almost ran over to the lamp-standard where the boy had his pitch.