Give Us This Day (20 page)

The pleasant languor of her body encouraged a state of mind enabling her to isolate the uniqueness of the occasion in a way that had never been possible in the past. For then, like a heavy shadow, the shame of her encounters with other men, prompted by curiosity on her part and uncomplicated lust on theirs, had stood between her and physical fulfilment in the arms of a different kind of man, one whose chivalry and essential tolerance had been recognised by her from the first day she met him.

He knew of those earlier follies, of her seduction, before she was seventeen, by a groom and later a Belgian musician. She had allowed them to fumble her with clumsy fingers, then possess her for a few sweaty moments in isolated corners of the house. Her father had made sure that he did know when, washing his hands of her, he was still resolved to use Giles Swann as a go-between in his relations with his work force. He had laid the unsavoury facts before him like items in a police report, but it had not freed him from the need of her, nor scared him off, as it would have scared most men. Rather it had enlarged his area of compassion so that their subsequent relationship had never been soiled by the knowledge. As for herself, her lovers, if you could call them that, had never come close to teaching her anything of the least significance about the way to search out a relationship that promised to assuage the loneliness of spirit that had clouded her childhood and adolescence. Indeed, it was not until this moment, the culmination of the long haul that had led them to this unremarkable little house overlooking a ruined valley, that she recognised the act of physical fusion, even with a man she could respect, as little more than a starting point in the journey of the soul towards personal fulfilment. It was imperative that she should acknowledge this and acknowledgment was made with a gesture. She reached out and found his hand in the darkness, lifting it gently and mooring it under her breasts. Its presence somehow confirmed her full acceptance of the active role in their partnership.

Two

George versus the Clock

F
or George, the work was reminiscent of housebound hours spent over jigsaw puzzles in the nursery at Tryst, a methodical sorting and shifting of segments of a battle scene, or a farmyard, until the four cornerpieces were in place and the straight edges in approximate alignment, so that a start could be made towards completing the picture, but the analogy went far beyond that. Just as, bent over the tray holding the puzzle, the selection of a fragment was suddenly seen to be the correct one and a segment slotted into place, so it was with the third prototype of Maximus, whose assembly presented so many experiments, frustrations, and disappointments. There was a penalty of error, too. On the workshop floor a misconjecture could represent a wasted day, perhaps a wasted week, and he was working against the clock.

He had been through it all before. Once beside the Danube, sorcerer’s apprentice to old Maximilien Körner assembling his giant carriage that had ultimately crawled through the morning river mists like Jupiter’s war-chariot, and later during his earlier severance from the firm, when he had improved on Max’s model to a degree that had half-persuaded his father that the days of the dray horse were numbered.

But now the challenge was more immediate. All over Europe and the Americas men were bending brain and will to the solution of these selfsame problems, although a majority of them still regarded the mechanically propelled vehicle as a substitute for the brougham rather than the waggon and dray. He made the fullest possible use of their discoveries, however, adapting and often blending gleanings from word-of-mouth information, sketches, and sometimes spare parts, run down by the indefatigable Scottie Quirt, who had spent ten years drifting about the north and Midlands, hiring his skills to whoever would pay for them.

Like a jigsaw, yet he sometimes saw his task in a more majestic light. A range of mountains, with a few major peaks and innumerable smaller ones, each presenting a peculiar challenge of its own. Nothing was predictable in this wilderness. Sometimes the loftier peaks were easier to scale.

One such peak represented the ratio between thrust and laden weight, another the variation of gears to adapt to gradients, including a reverse gear; for without the ability to reverse, a vehicle was as cumbersome as a barge fighting a strong current. He estimated that he should be able to generate sufficient power to haul a five-ton load, more than any load Swann’s four-horse or two-horse waggons could haul, over indifferent roads, and this had been achieved by constant modification of the carriage until the overall weight of the vehicle was reduced to a point where its chassis did not fracture under the strain. The main structure of a Swann mano’-war, the heaviest category in use with the exception of purpose-built Goliaths, was of oak, four inches thick in places. A petrol-driven Maximus of corresponding strength would be impossibly heavy, so he switched to nickel-steel that was found equal to anything Swann was likely to haul, excluding heavy machinery. The gear changes operated through a gate, with a retaining bar to prevent reverse gear being engaged in error.

The third and fourth mountains to be scaled, however, presented greater challenges. They represented overheating, and a tendency for vital parts to be shaken loose by vibration and passage over uneven sections of carriageway, and he was assaulting these most of the winter. Overheating was eventually cured by the introduction of a perforated jacket made of copper, and the summit of the fourth major peak was reached on the unforgettable day that he and Scottie fitted their double semi-elliptic front and rear springs, affording the first real flexibility Maximus had ever achieved.

There remained the minor peaks, each with a range of problems of their own, so that it was sometimes like inching his way up a shingled incline sown with brambles and quickset thorn. They represented braking, solved at last by internal expanding shoes operating in drums; uneven transmission, overcome by a new type of carburetter intake copied from a French model; lubrication, and a hundred and one other problems, each of which proved desperately time-consuming. Even so, by late April, ten months from the day he had stripped son of Maximus down to its last rivet in the Salford yard, he had done what he had set out to do. He had, he told himself, a vehicle capable of hauling a sizeable load south to H.Q. in two days, averaging seventy-five miles a day from the final testing ground, a mile east of Macclesfield, to London Bridge.

“Will you take me with you, George?” Gisela asked, when he was ready for the gamble, and he said, regretfully, that he could not. A passenger meant extra weight and, aside from that, the driver would have to face a formidable buffetting. It was a silly risk to take in view of the fact that she was now five months pregnant.

“Then I shall go by train,” she said, “and it’s a great pity. I should enjoy your father’s expression when he comes down from that tower and finds a Maximus in his yard.”

“Oh, you could still do that,” he said, anxious to acknowledge her loyalty and invaluable help over the past ten months. “Set out by train the day after I leave and when you get there wait for me in the yard of the old George, somewhere between five and six. If I break down I’ll telephone Bendall’s factory in the Borough and he’ll send someone over with a message. In that case catch the train on to Tryst, but say nothing about the trial run. I’ll catch them bending or not at all.”

She said, gravely, “You will make the journey, George. If you had doubts you would not set out.”

“But this is a pure gamble.”

“No, George. Your father, he is a gambler, but you are not the same. Your father would gamble on his luck, but you? You would not put one pennypiece on a horse unless you owned it, trained it, and rode it in the race. That is the difference between you.”

It increased his confidence to hear her talk that way, and he went blithely about his final preparations after Scottie Quirt had left them to take a holiday with his family in Glasgow, and she had packed her things to follow him to London. She saw to it that he should lack nothing for the journey that was in her power to supply, and it was while she was baking pasties for him, the night before he was due to set off, that he said, “I’ll make it up to you, Gisela, I swear it.”

“Ach, but you already have, George. I have been very happy up here. It has been like the old days, when grandfather Max was alive. Will you travel loaded?” she replied.

“Part loaded. I’m taking two tons of rice down to the Madras Trading Company, in Cheapside.”

“Why rice?”

He grinned. “Proof, of a kind. A four-ton load is due to go south by road tomorrow. I’ve shipped half of it aboard and given Carstairs, the yard goods manager, instructions to despatch the other half at seven o’clock, the same hour as I leave.”

“And you plan to get there well ahead of him?”

“We’ll see. I’ve worked out a route and my worst gradient is one in twelve, but I’m still scared of overheating.”

She said, “Suppose the motor is as good as you think it is, and suppose you prove it to all of them, what are your plans when you take over from father again?”

“A fleet of ‘em,” he said, briefly, “with all the four-horse waggons withdrawn and their teams allocated to frigates and some extra Goliaths, for it’ll be years before we can develop a non-rigid vehicle to haul the really heavy one-piece loads—boilers, generators, and the like. There’s only one thing I should enjoy more than making it in two days.”

“And what is that?”

“Grandfather Max to wish me luck.”

“He’s here,” she said. “I dreamed of him last night. Both of you, locked away in that stable at Essling.” Then, remembering how Max had died, “There’s no danger, is there?”

“None for me. Plenty to oncoming traffic. I’m resigned to being cursed by every carter from here to London Bridge.”

* * *

The rice had been loaded the day before and every foreseeable contingency guarded against. Twenty gallons of fuel was stowed in ten-gallon drums forward, and he had even shipped a water-cask in case she boiled at a point on the route where no water was readily available. He had a spare tyre, too, although if one left the rims, he was doubtful of replacing it without Scottie’s help. After he had run the vehicle out and warmed her up, he went over all his preparations again, while it stood there trembling like an over-trained racehorse at the tape. He thought of the Swann-Maxie as female, although he had seen its two predecessors as male. Maybe it was because she was so much trimmer, or perhaps because all the months he had sweated over her she had reminded him so often of the maddening unpredictability of a woman. He thought, Maximus doesn’t suit he
r now, and Maxima doesn’t sound right. If we do build a fleet on this model, it will have to have a trade name, and Max ought not to be forgotten. He finally settled o
n a hyphenated name, Swann-Maxie, and looked up at the clear April sky, praying for propitious weather, at least as far as Market Harborough or Kettering, where he planned to let her cool off for the night, depending on his progress.

The first leg of the journey, as far as Cheadle, was encouragingly uneventful. Gradients rather than mileage had dictated his choice of route, and the roads thus far were level and fairly free of traffic at that early hour. He averaged seventeen miles an hour over the first thirty-five miles, and she seemed to be behaving impeccably. In all the villages crowds of boys ran alongside shouting up at him, some of the bolder ones in ribald terms, but the older folk just stood by and gaped, and only one old chap, mounted on a spirited bay, shook his crop threateningly when the horse reared at a farm gate. He thought,
There’ll be plenty of that before people get used to motors. I daresay a majority would like to see that damned Red Flag Act
back on the statute book, but that won’t happen. It’s already cost us the lead we might have gained over Continental mechanics.

It was after Cheadle, as he was following the valley of the Trent in a southeast direction, that he had his first scare. He had tackled a long incline at a slow walking pace and breasted the summit with a great sense of relief. Below him, curving eastward in a wide, scimitar sweep, lay the white road running between low hedgerows, with a straggle of farm buildings at the bottom where the river was crossed by what appeared, at this distance, a shallow ford. He thought, gratefully,
Well, here’s a mile or two of coasting
, and changed gear, forgetting for a moment the down thrust of the load behind him, but sensing its compelling weight when he realised the slope was much steeper than it looked.

There was nothing to give him an accurate indication of his speed, but by the time he was two-thirds of the way down it seemed to be far in excess of the limit he and Scottie had agreed upon when they were planning the route mile by mile. His teeth rattled every time the wheels struck a dried-out puddle crater, where underground springs had been at work all the winter, and then, as the road flattened out, he saw a herd of cows crossing from left to right, and it seemed to him that nothing could prevent him ploughing into them.

He had rigged up a handbell on a short length of rope, the bell itself fitting into a bracket on the canopy support, and he took his left hand from the spokes of the steering wheel to ring it furiously so that an aged cowman, emerging from the nearside gate with a pair of yapping collies at his heels, glanced up and saw his approach at a distance of about eighty yards.

George had never seen a man look more astounded, and for what seemed like seconds he stood there, hand on gate, mouth wide open. But then, with remarkable agility for a man of his years, he turned and ran up the hedge, diving head first through a clump of ash saplings that grew there and disappearing in a flash while his cows, unimpressed, pursued their leisurely progress across the road to the opposite gateway.

A violent collision seemed inevitable, even though only two or three cows still remained on the road, and a collision would certainly have occurred had it not been for the dogs. Almost equally terrified, but more conscientious than the cowman, they bounded forward, nipping the heels of the laggards, while George threw his entire weight on the brake lever without, it would seem, doing much to check the thundering onrush of the Swann-Maxie; now it was as though the weight at his back was propelling man and vehicle down the last stretch of road straight into the river.

And then he saw something else, the narrow entrance to an old packhorse bridge marking the ford, and he knew that to stay on the road was to gamble the entire enterprise on his ability to steer a straight course between the stone parapets. He did not possess that much faith in his own skill. There was no more than an inch or so to spare on either side and in response to a split-second decision, he chose instead the nearest of the two ford approaches as looking the shallower of the two. He shot off the carriageway at an angle of about sixty degrees and the sheet of water that rose on impact enveloped him, rising in a solid column like a waterspout. And then, without so much as a lurch, Swann-Maxie stopped dead in about a foot of water, and people came running from all directions, converging on both banks and dancing and gesticulating as the hiss of steam from the radiator sounded the knell of his odyssey.

There was no one to blame but himself. No rustic cowman could have anticipated the onrush of a monster weighing some five tons laden weight on a country byroad miles from the nearest city, and no medieval builder could be blamed for building a bridge only inches wider than the largest haywain then in use. The fault lay with himself, for changing gear at the summit and putting too much reliance on his powerful handbrake, and he climbed down into the current cursing himself in German, still his favourite language for abuse.

The water rose to the level of the hubcaps, so that he saw at once it was not a matter of the engine being flooded but rather doused in that first surge of water. As he realised this his spirits lifted, for he reasoned that the automatic inlet, the valves, the surface carburetter, and the ignition tubes could be stripped down and dried, although the process would occupy him at least two hours, even if no vital piece of mechanism had been dislodged by the jolt.