Theirs Was The Kingdom (84 page)

“Not Romayne, sir. Someone with practical experience of this kind of thing. But I’d prefer not to go into that now.”

“Suit yourself. Consult whom you please. But I think you’re the man for the job. I also happen to think you would find… well… let’s say fulfilment in a task of that sort.”

“Yes, sir, and thank you.”

They parted on this note, and there was little doubt in Giles’s mind at that time but that he would accept the post. But before he did he meant to consult John Catesby, up in the Polygon. Of all people he knew, Catesby was the best qualified to give him disinterested advice on the wisdom or otherwise of accepting a position of referee between Sir Clive Rycroft-Mostyn and the 6,860 men and women in his employ. He thought, as he made his way back to the Bermondsey headquarters, “He had that figure off pat. Maybe a little too pat. I wouldn’t put it past him to know how many on his payroll were potential trade-unionists.” It occurred to him that a paternally based provident scheme might be Sir Clive’s way of insuring himself against industrial anarchy of the kind men of his type were always prophesying as a result of workers’ participation in their affairs.

2

In the event he made up his mind almost at once. Catesby happened to call in at Headquarters that same week and, somewhat to Giles’s surprise, enthusiastically endorsed the prospect of having a member of the Swann family strategically placed in an industrial grouping as powerful as the Rycroft-Mostyn enterprises. “Why, lad, you could do a power o’ good there,” he said, as soon as Giles had outlined the proposal. “Right here what are you doing but preaching to the converted? Your father has seen things our way for years, but that old bastard and the scabs he runs with, well, I’ll be frank with you, I took a knock when I heard you were to marry into that family! Rycroft has a bad reputation as an employer and maybe you knew that from the start. But there, a lad doesn’t pick a lass on the strength of her folks, or not unless he’s fortune-hunting, and that’s not in your line, is it?”

“Not in the least,” Giles said, merrily. “As a matter of fact I always saw his money as a drawback, but a job like that gives point to working for him and the Governor has left it up to me. After all, he now has two sons established in the firm and I’ve always regarded myself as expendable. I’ll take it then, but I won’t pay you the compliment of telling Sir Clive who will be likely to make the bullets I intend to fire.”

“Nay,” Catesby said, seriously, “for Christ’s sake keep my name out of it, lad! I daresay I’ve been on Rycroft’s private list of trouble-brewers for years. However, I would take it kindly if you kept me informed on the sort of scheme you intend to promote and how he shapes to it.”

“I’ll do that, John,” Giles told him. “Maybe we could both learn something from the process.” And he went off to tell Romayne that he had agreed to work for Sir Clive as soon as they were married.

The prospect of him being regarded as, in her eyes at least, her father’s heir-apparent, kept Romayne in high spirits for weeks, and wedding plans were well advanced before another eruption on her part gave him a chance to put her father’s advice to the test.

It was a cloudless day, and they were enjoying one of their expeditions up to the old military canal, a few miles south of Tryst, where the lock-keeper was always ready to lend them his skiff for a water picnic.

The canal was joined, a mile or so below the lock, by a small river that emptied itself into the reach at a point where the banks were screened by thick clumps of elms and poplars, and the inflow promoted a certain amount of current that spent itself the far side of the pack-horse bridge.

He noted a mischievous sparkle in her eye as he sculled slowly downstream and was, in fact, thinking how pretty she looked, sitting on the stern with the sun glinting in her red-gold hair, and her chin tilted so that the down-slanting brim of her spectacular hat (a creation known, so she told him, as “The three-storey-and-basement” and the very latest in summer wear) threw a shadow across the lower half of her face. She said, suddenly, “Hi, let
me
row, Giles. Move back and I’ll take one oar,” but he said, glancing at the current, “Not until we can pull into the bank beyond the bridge. I can hold her steady there.”

“No, Giles, now!” and she half-raised herself, grabbing the starboard scull so that the little cockle-shell swung into mid-stream rocking dangerously, shipping water in the bows and finally throwing her off balance, so that she sprawled face foremost across the thwarts.

She scrambled up and he was able to trim the boat somewhat by throwing his weight to one side, but they lost an oar and began to spin in the current, heading into one of the buttresses of the bridge. The impact caused her to lose her balance again and this time they rolled together in the bows, with more water slopping over the gunwale as the boat rebounded, shot through the arch, and grounded in an iris clump where a cattle path led down to the water.

“You damned little fool!” he shouted. “That water was deep and you can’t swim a stroke! Don’t you ever use your head, except as a post for silly hats?”

She was half-lying in the two or three inches of water they had shipped and her expression, as she raised her head and stared up at him, with her mouth open and her three-storey-and-basement hat half toppled, would have struck him as comical had he not realised how near she had come to over-setting them in a deep and turbulent patch of water. She said, rising to her knees, “How dare you swear at me! Nobody ever swore at me before!” And to his extreme indignation, she slapped him across the face with her wet glove.

It was not really a case of consciously following Sir Clive’s hint. The exasperation of months went into his reflex action as he threw himself forward grabbed her by the waist, threw her half across his knee, and began to spank her so soundly that her struggles rolled them half out of the boat. Then he loosed his hold on her, so that she pitched half in and half out of the shallows where, despite the dry spell, there was still mud in hoof sockets left by the cattle.

She shrieked, despairingly, “You
beast
! You
wretch
! Look at me! My new dress…!” But paying no further attention to her, he went off along the towpath in search of the missing oar and presently spied it in a patch of reeds some three hundred yards beyond the bridge.

He took his time retrieving it and in ambling back, thinking, “If this is the end I’m not sorry—she’d try the patience of Job, and mine’s about run out!” And suddenly the prospect of being free again, and no longer at the mercy of her moods, seemed to him almost desirable so that he approached the beached boat with a certain jauntiness that increased when, moving over the last fifty yards of towpath, he saw her hat floating in midstream.

He would not have been much surprised to have found her gone. It would have been like her, in one of these flaring tempers, to flounce off, no matter where she was, or what time of day or night it was, but she was still there, stooping over the canting boat and bailing with a tin bowl. She said, over her shoulder as he approached, “She’s almost empty. We could tip her and drain the rest,” but he replied, wearily, “Hang the boat, we’ve got to talk. Come and sit here,” and he took a seat on a rail that divided the shillet from the open pasture.

She threw aside the bowl and came and sat beside him, her expression almost serene, saying, “You found the oar, then?” and when he made no reply, “I’m sorry, dearest. It was a perfectly stupid thing to do. I really
am
sorry. Both for that and hitting out when you swore at me. Am I forgiven?”

He said, dismally, “I’m hanged if I know, Romayne. You gave me a frightful scare. I daresay I could have fished you out if it came to it but it was a crazy thing to do in deep water and approaching the bridge on a current.”

“Oh, I realise that,” she said, equably, “and I got a spanking for it and now I’ve apologised, so we’re quits, aren’t we?”

“I’m not sure we are, Romayne.”

“Why aren’t we?” Her eyes opened as wide as a child’s. “I don’t mind in the least saying I deserved what I got and it hurt, I can tell you. You can hit very hard when you lose your temper.” Suddenly she chuckled, an irrepressible chuckle that made him feel almost churlish for prolonging the quarrel. “I’ve never seen you lose your temper before. I wasn’t even sure you had one. It was quite exciting to see it soar right out of you. Like a sky-rocket!”

“Well, God knows, it’s a wonder you’ve never seen it soar before. There have been times enough. Or aren’t you willing to admit that?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure there must have been, but you always held on to it, didn’t you? And that… well… nagged at me.”

“Are you saying you deliberately provoked me just now?”

“In a way I did. Although I was the one who got the biggest surprise.”

“But why? For heaven’s sake, Romayne, you’re not a kid running wild in Wales, as you were when you did something nearly as crazy to attract attention to yourself. Two months from now you’ll be a married woman. In a year or so you might even have a child of your own. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

She said, seriously now, “A great deal more to me than it does to you.”

“Now what can you mean by that?”

“Just what I say, Giles. Marrying you, being your wife, having our children, means just about everything to me. You’re the only person I care about in the world, the only one I ever did care about, although I don’t think I could say why or not exactly.”

“Well, then…”

“No, you listen, Giles. That isn’t so in your case. Oh, not because you aren’t in love with me, but because there’s such a lot of you. There’s
always
been a lot of you, and you Swanns stick together as a tribe. If you lost me I daresay you’d mope for a spell but you’d soon get over it. One of your sisters would find you a nice, tame girl, and your mother would fuss over you, and if you cared to you could talk things over with that nice father of yours. You’re just one of a clan, you see, whereas you are all I’ve got, for I don’t count Papa, and he would admit to that if you asked him. There you are, and it’s all fearfully lopsided, isn’t it?”

How did one reply to this kind of plea? And in a way it was a plea. A minute passed before he said, carefully, “All right. But if I’m so important to you why the devil do you keep letting me see the worst of you? I can understand us quarrelling every now and again. Even people in love don’t see eye to eye all the time, but hang it, you go out of your way to provoke scenes every so often, the way you admitted doing just now. What kind of reason can there be for that?”

“No one reason.” She sat with her hands spread behind her along the rail, her eyes fixed on the further bank.

“Then tell me, if you can.”

“One good reason is all this stupid waiting. Another is all the fuss everybody is going to.”

“As to the waiting, it’s nearly over, isn’t it? And as to the fuss, you know I don’t give a rap whether we have a spectacular wedding or a private affair, with just the two families. What are the other reasons?”

“They’re about things you feel but can’t put into words.”

“Well, just try.”

She turned her head then and looked at him, calmly and speculatively. “I suppose you could call it exploring, like men when they climb mountains and cross jungles to see what it’s like the far side of a continent. What I mean is, you love someone, and you think you know them, but you don’t, of course. You go on finding out new things about them all the time, the way I found out you had a temper, and could act as Gilpin did provided you were goaded enough.”

“Who is Gilpin?”

“Gilpin?” Her eyes became vague for a moment but then cleared. “Oh, no one special. A groom at a place we had in Hampshire, years ago. He was the only other man who hit me but he did it with a riding crop and I had bruises on my behind for nearly a month.”

“Good God! What made him do that?”

“I took a mare out that was said to be dangerous. She wasn’t though, just weak-kneed and broke a leg, a hundred yards from the stable. Gilpin came up and went for me with the crop. I suppose I deserved that too.”

“What on earth did your father do to Gilpin?”

“He gave him a sovereign, I think. I’m not sure. He left soon after. Where was I?”

He passed his hand across his brow. “You were trying to explain…”

“Oh, yes, I remember. Well, a girl thinks a lot about love and husbands, long before she actually experiences either one of them. I don’t know how it is with boys. Not the same, I imagine. Then you fall in love, the way I did that morning by the river, and naturally you’re very curious to find out everything you can about the man you’re in love
with
, and want to spend your life with, but to do that properly you can’t just drift along hoping to learn things by accident. At least,
I
can’t. It’s so boring, especially so in our case, when we have to keep holding back all the time. Do you follow me?”

“In a way,” he said. “In a dim sort of way. But look here, Romayne, haven’t you ever asked yourself if it might be boring after we’re married?”

“I haven’t needed to. I realised it would be exactly the opposite the moment I kissed you on the way home to breakfast after you fished me out of the river that time.”

He sat thinking a moment. “Listen here, Romayne, at the risk of sounding terribly stuffy and pompous, I ought to remind you marriage isn’t just a matter of kissing, and sharing the same bed. It’s deciding things together, working things out together, giving way to one another now and again, all kinds of humdrum things of that kind.”