God Is an Englishman (92 page)

From Exeter he took a train to Worcester and was conducted by Morris on a tour of the porcelain factory, taking note that Morris was accepted as a man of substance by the merchants on account of cornering the market after his deal to haul china all the way to Car diff. Morris did not take kindly to supervision so he spent less than a day here and passed on into Bryn Lovell’s territory, astonished to find the taciturn Welshman married and legal guardian to a flock of copper-coloured children, the sons and daughters of a pretty half-caste, whose first husband had died of blackwater fever off the West African coast the previous year.

Lovell had always registered at Headquarters as the incorrigible bachelor, who sought the small bonuses of life in his books and social theorising, so that his new status came as such a shock to Adam that he felt justified in demanding an explanation. The old Bryn would have retreated into his terrible personal privacy but marriage, or multiple step-fatherhood, had greatly enlarged him, and he said, with a smile, “We all come to it, Mr. Swann, and I’ve no regrets for she’s a rare woman, with a still tongue and the sense to keep from under a man’s feet when he’s about his concerns. The truth is, I was nudged into it at Barry dock, where Lottie—Lizzie’s youngest that is—fell between jetty and a moored collier, and would have drowned if I hadn’t been there to fish her out with a boathook. I gave her mother a tongue-lashing for letting her stray there unattended and then one thing led to another, and here we are, six of us in the cottage where I thought to spend my old age reading books I’ll never have leisure to open now. Would you care to make the acquaintance of Lizzie while you’re here?” Adam said he would indeed and was introduced to a slender, sloe-eyed woman, who looked young enough to be the manager’s daugh ter and was, for Bryn said she was not yet thirty. She was very sub dued in her husband’s presence, but he noticed that, for all his long years of bachelorhood, Lovell seemed to adjust naturally to the role of paterfamilias and was already teaching the two older boys to read.

He went on to the Northern Pickings in thoughtful mood, reflecting that it did not do to make assumptions about anybody for, in spite of Lovell’s casual GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 493

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approach to his new responsibilities, it was ob vious that he derived great satisfaction from the reverent ministra tions of Lizzie and was very pleased with his readymade family. He met Godsall by appointment at Derby and found him chafing for promotion, although he seemed to be doing well on the fringe of the industrial area and holding his own with competitors in the Dale country, where he had hopes of organising a holiday-brake service, based on Ashbourne.

He said, when they were inspecting the stables, “How long is old rascal Blubb going to cling to the Kentish beat, Mr. Swann? He should have died of apoplexy years ago,” and Adam said that coachees of Blubb’s type had been known to make a century, and there were tombstones around to prove it, but that he intended to retire him on pension in the new year and Godsall should replace him, as promised. “Not that Blubb needs a pension,” he added, “the old reprobate has amassed a fortune in tips and commission, for it’s that kind of territory. Not like this, where they count the pennies.”

He went by train to Manchester, relieved to discover that the city was emerging from its long trance, as trickles of cotton came in from the Mississippi Delta following the surrender of Lee only six weeks before. Sam Rawlinson, whom he met at his new mill further west, told him it would be months before King Cotton settled himself comfortably on his throne again but the stresses of the reconstruc tion period were likely to bypass a man now buying Egyptian fibres.

“Are you investing in owt else but cattle and waggons?” Sam asked him, and when Adam said he intended to stick to what he knew, his father-in-law shook his head so vigorously that his blue jowls flopped like a bloodhound’s dewlaps.

There had been a time, he said, when he too had crammed all his eggs into one basket but the cotton famine had taught him that a man who did this deserved

“a mess on his britches.” They could talk this way now. Since present ing himself at the yard on his return from the East, Sam had been a regular visitor to Tryst.

Henrietta, Adam noticed, continued to treat the old devil with caution, as though, at any moment, he would box her ears and drag her back to Scab’s Castle, but he had adjusted to Sam and they now did a great deal of business together. Sam was too old, however, to respond to the new mood of industry. He still tended to regard a man like Catesby as a potential Robespierre who would, given half a chance, hustle him into a tumbril and cut him down to size in St. Peter’s Square, Manchester. He even warned Adam that there was daft talk among cotton operatives of joining with other trades to hold a conference of delegates, and when this happened (if the Government was mad enough to let it) every em ployer in England had best look out for squalls.

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They parted affably and Adam went to Salford to see Catesby, now reaping the benefit of the soup-kitchen hauls instituted at the height of the cotton famine in sixty-three. “Not all the cotton-kings are like your father-in-law,” Catesby said.

“Some get religion once they’ve made a bloody pile, and those are the ones I go for. That chap Gladstone is God Almighty in the Belt, and they seem to think the Radicals will sweep the board as soon as Palmerston kicks the bucket. Then we might get progressive legislation out of that talking-shop at Westminster, for folk here have sworn they won’t stand for t’pay an’ conditions dished out before the Slump. Radicals are promising compulsory education, a ten-hour-day bill and extended suffrage. It’s been a long haul, since I stood at a loom from six nor ten when I were a little lad.”

“Sam Rawlinson seems to think something on the lines of the Oath of the Tennis Court is being cooked up,” Adam said, and Catesby replied, “Aye, and he’s none so far adrift either. The Association of Organised Trades has it in mind to hold a conference soon and I’ll doubtless be called upon to represent the waggoners hereabouts. Would that earn me my notice at Rawlinson’s instance?”

“You know me a damned sight better than that,” said Adam, grinning, “but don’t count on a delegate from my father-in-law’s patch.” He left Catesby dreaming of his social millennium, crossing the Pennines to see Fraser at his Hexham headquarters. Fraser was making giant strides up here. The incident of the wreck had injected confidence into him that he had lacked in the early days of his com mand, and now he had many Lowland customers on his books, and clamoured for more waggons and teams. Adam, seeing the progress he had made, promised him a rise in basic salary before turning south and crossing into the Crescents, calling on sub-depots at Whitby, Market Weighton, Newark, Boston, and Spalding.

Like a child emptying a Christmas stocking he saved Edith Wadsworth until last. He approached the Peterborough yard one humid afternoon and saw her before she saw him, framed in the uncurtained window of her office. He was rather shocked at her appearance. Even at this distance she looked tired, drawn, and rather bowed about the shoulders, as if the demands of her command had sapped her vitality. Instinct prompted him to withdraw behind the double gates, thinking, “If I know her she’ll be ruffled if I show up without a warning” and took refuge in a tavern near by, dispatching a note saying he was passing through on his way to The Bonus and would call in around teatime. He spent the interval walking round the busy town, counting the number of his waggons he saw, but GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 495

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the thought of her, slumped over her desk, with the strain of responsi bility apparent in face and posture, stayed with him so that he thought, “Did I do the right thing giving in to her, and making her gaffer of such a slice of territory? It’s a big bite to chew on, and I daresay she’s had jealousy and surliness from men like Vicary, Goodbody, and Homcastle.” He consulted his watch, finding it com ing up to four, and made his way back to the yard where the weigh bridge clerk, seeing him coming, emerged from his shed, saying, “Message from Miss Wadsworth, sir.

She’ll be expecting you for tea at her lodgings. Will you want to look around first, sir? Mr. Duckworth’s on hand.” He said no, smiling at the way he had been checkmated, and took her address. “Tell Duckworth I’ll call later if I stay on,” he said, and the man looked relieved and saluted. It was curious, he thought, how almost all his employees continued to behave to him as though he was still wearing a shako, and had a corporal’s guard within call, although not one among them had ever seen him in uniform.

2

She had made the most of the respite he had given her. Her house keeper-landlady showed him into the ground-floor flat she occupied in a row of Georgian terrace houses overlooking a reach of the River Nene, where it wound its way across flat meadowlands on the southern edge of the town. She had changed into what he recognised (having hauled for so many suburban costumiers) as one of the new “double dresses,” with the upper skirt looped at the sides and bunched out behind, a style they were calling the “Grecian bend” whatever that meant. The colour, olive green, suited her but she had dressed her hair in a bang that did not suit her as well, for it added severity to her expression, as though she was a governess or a vicar’s wife entertaining a testy bishop.

He soon discovered, how ever, that the familiar and outspoken Edith was still there for she said, giving him her hand, “You didn’t imagine we were caught on the hop, did you? There is such a thing as a grapevine. We’ve had an eye cocked for you ever since you left town. Our problem, of course, is to decide in which direction you’re travelling, up the east coast and down the west, or vice versa. Try a cucumber sandwich. Mrs. Sprockett makes them for all my Grade A visitors.”

Her manner, bantering but half-resentful, bothered him a little. It was the first time they had been alone since she descended on him with her armoury of facts and figures more than a year ago, although she had been present at the GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 496

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annual conference, when her parcel-run pilot scheme was adopted by four other districts. He said, hoping to call her bluff, “Don’t take that tone with me. I remember you when you wore clogs and fried bacon beside the road. How is it working out, Edith?”

She looked at him sharply, as though he was posing a trick ques tion. “You don’t need to ask that, Adam. Tybalt puts my returns on your desk every Tuesday morning,” and he said, impatiently, “I’m not referring to turnover and you know I’m not. Is the loneli ness of power bothering you? You look to me as if you’ve been over working. You’ve lost weight for a start!”

“Oh, I could afford a pound or two,” she said, pouring his tea, and then, “‘The loneliness of power.’ That isn’t original, is it? Someone famous said it about kings and ship’s captains. Well, it’s a price I expected to pay, for the fact is I carry an additional handi cap as an unmarried woman. When I was a glorified waggoner I was at one with the men and their families, but as gaffer I have to watch my step, or I find myself accused of favouritism. The wives are the real sinners, of course.

They can’t or won’t accept a gaffer in petti coats. Most of them regard me as a compromise between a lucky harlot and the Tattooed Lady.”

“I’d back you to make light of that,” he said. “From my stand point you’re a tremendous success. Even sour old crab-apples like Blubb admit to that.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, nibbling at a sandwich in a way that suggested she would have preferred her bread and cheese, “the New Woman, climbing out of the seraglio and the schoolroom. But it’s a long, hard climb, Adam, longer and harder than I expected. You and I are ahead of our time. It’ll be another two generations before men as a whole will admit that some women can function outside the kitchen, the nursery, and the double bed!”

“There was Grace Darling and Flo Nightingale,” he prompted.

“Freaks,” she replied, “patronised by Beards.” There was bitterness in her voice and it continued to worry him although he was not all that surprised by it. He said, “Aside from the business, don’t you enjoy any social life? You were always one to make friends easily enough.”

“Not here, for I’m betwixt and between; that’s to say neither husband-hunting nor qualified to sit among the dowagers and talk scandal. It isn’t easy for any spinster but a spinster in authority…! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t lonely sometimes. For all that don’t go away thinking I regret taking the plunge. It might have isolated me but it paid another kind of dividend.”

“Tell me?”

“Do you need telling?”

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“I need telling. I’m happier about you than I was but I still worry. You’ve made a success of the job but that isn’t much to crow about if the price comes too high.

Does it, Edith?”

She looked across at him with a smile. “You never will take things as read, will you? If I had my time over again I should do the same thing, only sooner.

Handling a job like this, standing or falling by my own efforts, has given me back my self-respect and that’s worth all the work and worry that goes with it. Now stop turning me over and prodding me to see if I’m done, and tell me what goes on else where. You can begin with the truth about why you sacked Abbott and gave his patch to a boy like Rookwood.”

He told her the bare facts, reflecting that he had never recounted them to anyone, not even Henrietta, and he was not surprised by the objective view she took of the unsavoury business.