Give Us This Day (37 page)

Nine miles on, at Longford, they made their first deviation, swinging left on to a flint road towards Barnwood and aiming to cut a wide semi-circle round Gloucester, seen in the near distance.

Their route would take them over higher ground on the northern slope of Robinswood Hill, and their speed was necessarily much reduced here, for the road was narrow, its surface gritty, and the summer foliage thick enough to swish the tarpaulin of the turret that he now thought of, in the farmer’s terms, as “The Hump.” Drops of last night’s rain slashed his windshield, blurring his vision, but they made steady progress through Barnwood and were within three miles of the Tuffley junction when Scottie’s lance signalled a halt. He climbed down to discover that the linked vehicles completely blocked the road, with drainage ditches, halffull of storm water, on either side. Scottie said, “Look yon,” and gestured ahead.

A huge oak, growing in the nearside hedge, spread its branches overhead, making a green arch, and he saw at once that it was far more than a matter of brushing through a screen of twigs and leaves. A low slung bough, thick as a weaver’s beam, reached clear across the lane. It would strike The Hump at least two feet below its summit and further progress, pending its removal, was impossible.

He understood then the full hazards of detours and they seemed to him, at that moment, far in excess of narrow city streets, when they could at least rely on police cooperation. Out here was nobody, not even a handy farm to seek assistance, and a longish halt could play havoc with their time schedule. He was standing there fuming when Edward nudged his elbow and he turned to see the boy—he still thought of him as such—holding a large bow saw with powerful, widely—spaced teeth.

“That chap Morgan was a woodsman before he joined us,” he said, equably. “He’d make short work of that, George.”

“Where did you get that saw?”

“It’s standard kit in my beat,” the boy said, and looked mildly surprised that his brother, Managing Director of the network, should need to be reminded of such an elementary detail. Morgan, a middle-aged man with a wall eye, came forward diffidently, saying, in his singsong brogue, “Have it down, I will, in no time at all, Mr. Swann. But she’ll have to be hauled clear and it’ll take horse-flesh to do it.”

He was right, of course. The bough, sawn near the trunk, would fall athwart the road and form a kind of cheval-de-frise into the bargain. Once again George felt his basic policy vindicated, a partnership of horse and machine, for he would have baulked at using a Maxie for such a purpose in this enclosed country. Even so it was not easy to accomplish. The cavalcade all but blocked the road; the horses would have to be brought forward from the rear and the hedges were high and thickly sown. He said, “Get it down, Morgan. Edward, tell Rees to bring the Clydesdales forward on the nearside. It’s just about possible to squeeze past if he uses the ditch. If it isn’t we’ll backtrack, find a gate and breach the damned hedge higher up.”

It was early afternoon now, and apart from their hasty breakfast at dawn none of them had eaten. His own contribution was to light a fire, brew tea, and lay out home-baked loaves and local cheese he had bought at the farm. Before the kettle was boiling, the rasp of Morgan’s saw ceased with a long, splintering crash and the road ahead was choked with foliage. But by then three of the Clydesdales had been dragged slithering through the narrow gap, their huge hooves making a ruin of somebody’s drainage system. Morgan, in need of a breather, climbed down from his perch in the bole and took charge of the tea while the others went forward to fix drag ropes to the branch, fastening them to the severed butt.

It was even larger than it looked and at first the Clydesdales couldn’t budge it, but then Morgan called to Rees to stop fooling and cut away smaller branches, and they went to it with the saw and axes until the main trunk could be prised from its hold on the soggy banks. They had to drag it forward three hundred yards until they came upon a field gate, and desperately heavy work it was for man and beast, but within just over an hour from the time of halting they cleared a path through the debris and moved on, munching as they drove, forcing a two-mile-an-hour passage through the lane to more open ground beyond.

The detour still held an unpleasant surprise. Within a mile of the main road the ground rose steeply as it wound under the scree, and their rate of progress became even slower as the two engines wrestled with the weight of a load he was beginning to hate like a mortal enemy. It was past five o’clock when they met an anxious Channing striding up and down the road with his hunched, heron’s gait, and George made a spot decision to take advantage of an open quarry entrance with a hard-packed surface and call it a day, over-ruling Channing’s advice to push on.

“The motors have taken a terrible beating on that incline,” he told him. “There’s no sense in pushing our luck. We’ll give them a good going over while your chauffeur runs my brother and the waggoners to the nearest inn. They’ve earned a hot meal and a night’s rest.”

“There’s a good inn at Whaddon, a mile or so further on,” Channing said, deferring to him. “Will you join us for dinner?”

“Not me,” George said. “Quirt and I will stay with the load. We can make do where we are,” and Channing, thankfully a man of few words, moved off.

They gave the engines an hour to cool off before going over them part by part, tightening nuts, checking the braking systems, refuelling the twenty-gallon tanks with the aid of a funnel. The long drag had been wasteful of petrol, and it was difficult to estimate how much the drum had in reserve. Probably enough to see them through, George thought, for he knew he could not count on the certainty of a fresh supply. Between them they fed and watered the horses, rigging up an improvised corral at the face of the quarry. They were docile giants and would come to no harm in there, and when they were dealt with he reckoned up his mileage as a mere twenty-one, the product of eleven hours on the road. It wasn’t good enough, and for the first time he felt a prick of doubt. Scottie Quirt, knowing his moods so well, voiced it when he said, “We’ll need a clear run tomorrow I’m thinking. Will you risk passing through Bristol?” The words of his father came to him, saying, after a long squint at his sheaf of maps, “The Avonmouth route is the flattest, but that means a snarl up in that city and a stiffish climb out of it to the west. If it was me, with that weight aboard, I’d detour via Keynsham. That’s not a bad road, or wasn’t in my day.”

“We’ll take the long way round,” he said. “The Gov’nor usually knows what he’s about between here and Pentland Firth,” and making a pillow of a bag of oats, he stretched himself on the waggon-bed and slept.

3

His confidence had returned by the time they moved off, shortly after six the following morning. Channing must have been astir even earlier, for he brought Edward and the waggoners to the quarry by the time the engines were warmed up, and George moved out ahead of his rearguard, not imagining he would make such good time over the next leg that they would have difficulty keeping convoy.

It was another fine, clear morning and a chorus of blackbirds and finches whistled them good luck as they swung back on to the main Gloucester-Bristol road and went trundling down the lush green strip between the two cities, sometimes holding the cavalcade at a speed of approaching nine miles an hour and moving over the best surface they had encountered as yet. Just beyond Almondsbury they branched left to begin the wide detour of Bristol, finding the country more built over, and the roads much firmer and broader than during the Gloucester detour. They stopped for a cool-off and a bite to eat in Stoke Gifford, and just as they were moving off again Channing drove up with news that Edward and his team were at least three miles behind. “He seems to think you’ll want to press on,” Channing said. “You aren’t likely to need the horses in this area, are you?” George told him no and gave him a careful note of the proposed route as far as Burrow Gurney, where they were due to rejoin the main road. By ten o’clock they were under way again, probing through Kingswood to Keynsham and encountering no bad gradients, although three slowed them to under two miles an hour.

The Hump seemed to be behaving with great circumspection. Its lashings remained taut and it cleared four Great Western Railway bridges with inches to spare. He thought, That’s another astounding aspect of the Gov’nor’s memory. I
s there anyone else in the country, even a veteran railwayman, with his kind of memory for low-level bridges? He wondered briefly how Adam had come by it, for ther
e must have been many changes in the railway network since he reconnoitred the country’s highways and byways on horseback, with his little red book on hand to note down every feature of the landscape likely to feature in a haulage estimate. It was really no wonder the Swann veterans still held him in awe, even now, when he was more concerned with his tulips and cypresses than the nation’s business. He knew all their beats far better than they themselves knew them, and neither was his knowledge for trivia confined to topography. Near here, where the Kennet and Avon and Wilts and Berks Canals converged on the river, he recalled Adam throwing out one of those stray pieces of information that enlivened any journey or discussion with him. “It was the scene,” he had told George, “of the first real clash between King and Parliament, at the very start of the Civil War. The Cavaliers, so-called, caught their opponents on the hop and got the impression, poor wights, that the war would be won at a blow.” They pushed on through Whitchurch and Bishopsworth to the Great West Road, making good time over narrowing roads. By noon they were back on the broad highway, having covered upwards of forty miles in just under six hours.

At Burrow Gurney they took another breather, but Edward did not show. Instead Channing reappeared, like a daemon in a pantomime, with news that the wagon team had headed straight through the city to save time and were now leaving it by the western approach. George thought, It’s damned temptin
g to push on, but I daren’t run too far ahead. The long stiff climb at Churchill is less than ten miles ahead and before that I’m going to need the horses as brake insurance at Lulsgate Bottom. He was glad then that Edward had showed initiative i
n taking a short cut and held their speed down to a crawl over the next stretch, halting again at the head of the incline and biting his nails until Channing and Edward showed up almost together and he could use the armourer’s Daimler for a preliminary survey.

The hill into Lulsgate was steep, certainly, and would have to be tackled with excessive care, but the road surface was better than average and Channing agreed to drive ahead, producing, to everybody’s amusement, a large red flag of the type all motorists had been compelled to carry until the 1896 Act of Parliament had been rescinded.

He said, attempting a joke, “Anyone who sees that will assume you’ve been in purdah for the last five years,” but Channing, although taking his point, did not smile. Clearly the trip was playing havoc with his nerves and George thought,
That’s the difference between planners and doers. He’s a planner and can design superb weapons in that foundry of his, but I wonder how would he behave if he was called upon to use ‘em in action?

He came back to the stationary cavalcade resolved to use the drag chains, with the man-o’-war shoed on both rear wheels and acting as a holding force. They moved off in bottom gear, inching down the long slope at a slow walking pace, and he was very relieved when they arrived at the dip and could unhitch the waggon and take advantage of the flattish stretch towards Bridgwater. Channing, scouting ahead, said there was a cutting sown with flints this side of East Brent, and reaching here George decided to curb his exuberance and call it a day. They had come fifty-nine miles in under twelve hours, bypassing one of the largest centres of population in the country and tackling one of the toughest descents on the route map. He helped empty Scottie’s bottle of whisky to celebrate.

* * *

Their luck seemed set fair now. They moved off to a quick start on Day Four to tackle the Churchill climb and take early advantage of Channing’s traffic clearance in Bridgwater. At the summit of the slope he deployed all eight Clydesdales on chain traces, climbing the hill at a crawl with the draught animals strung out ahead, but they kept moving and reached Bridgwater before many carters were abroad.

After that it was flat, easy country to Taunton, eleven miles further on, another town where they were shown every courtesy. The Taunton-Wellington stretch slowed them down, proving hillier than he had expected, but they tackled every ascent with the greatest caution and had no recourse to deployment or the waggon-brake on descents. Edward kept up well and Channing roved ahead with his blood-red flag. By mid-afternoon they were in Cullompton, an hour and a half later in Pinhoe, only a few miles short of Exeter. There was still plenty of travelling time. He pushed on the odd four miles over the lowest crossing of the Exe at Countess Wear and found a halting place in a section where the county authorities had all but completed a road-widening project just beyond the Great Western Railway’s coastal stretch on the west bank of the estuary. Their progress, he told them with glee, had been spectacular. They had come, at his reckoning, seventy-one miles in a smooth, uneventful haul. They still had a day and a half in hand to cover the fifty-odd miles to Devonport.

By far the most direct route to Plymouth was inland, heading for Newton Abbot, but the main coach road ran over two very formidable hills, crossing the Haldon escarpment, and George, having had personal experience of them during his occasional forays into the Western Wedge, recalled that they were not only steep but tortuous. His father had urged the longer way round, following the coast as far as Teignmouth, then turning sharply inland and moving up the Teign estuary to Newton Abbot.

At many places the road ran beside the railway, said to be the most expensive stretch to maintain in the country, and there were several sharp laps approaching and beyond the little seaside resorts that had grown up under the red bluffs. They reached Newton Abbot without incident, however, and took the road to Totnes, tackling a stiffish slope out of the town, and from there, moving very slowly in this undulating country, heading for South Brent, where the range of tors indicated impossible motoring country to the north.