Theirs Was The Kingdom (48 page)

From his seat at the end of the long table Adam could sense a clear-cut division in the nods of Godsall’s allies and the grunts of Hamlet Ratcliffe and Tybalt, the latter already wearing his “don’t-ask-me-for-money” look.

Godsall went straight on to restate his policy of buying up defunct public transport companies, of moving out into the short-haul passenger field to gather in the pennies and twopences that were there for the taking if Swann-on-Wheels showed the enterprise of earlier sorties into the world of wheels. He spoke for forty-five minutes and when he sat down, amidst a scatter of applause from his allies, Adam thought, “By God, if I was out looking for a successor there he is. Nobody here, least of all me, could convince him he’ll bite off more than he can chew at that counter! The omnibus field is already strewn with bankruptcies…”

But then Morris was on his feet, pressing home the attack, and after Morris, Rookwood, and after Rookwood, Jake Higson, who was not even qualified to speak as an independent manager, although it was clear he had Fraser’s backing, so that Adam thought, “I would have wagered a pound to a penny Fraser would stand with the Diehards… Time was when all the man craved was to go back to peddling from his cart…” But then he reflected that that was twenty years ago, before Fraser had stormed into the Lowlands and captured Edinburgh. Success changed a man. Sometimes it made him canny and cautious, but occasionally, as in Fraser’s case, it made him reckless; and Adam wondered at the source of the accord between his Scottish viceroys, one in his early sixties, the other thirty years his junior…

That was Monday, the first day of the conference, and the talk continued through two long sessions, with a break for beer and hot meat pies at the George, where Adam went out of his way to avoid becoming embroiled in conversation with any one of them.

Tuesday was Tom Wickstead’s day and Tom emerged as a progressive who had thought his theories through in a way that made some kind of appeal to men who opposed all change except changes proposed by themselves.

Like Markby of the Crescents, Wickstead was pleading for special purpose vehicles, this time for cattle transport. It was not only inconvenient to adapt men-o’-war and frigates for moving cows, horses, pigs, and sheep over limited distances but wasteful of time, money, and materials. A small fleet of waggons, specially built for this traffic, could be made to pay for itself in a single season in an agricultural region. And how many of Swann’s regions did not look to farmers for their bread and salt the whole year round?

Wickstead’s proposals interested Adam but not so much, perhaps, as the look in Edith’s face while her husband was putting his case. Towards the end of Tom’s speech, Adam found his attention wandering a little as he reflected on the relationship between two people he numbered as friends as well as employees. Working partnerships between a man and woman had always intrigued him but none more so than that of Edith Wadsworth and Tom Wickstead, sometime highwayman and footpad. He wondered, as he watched her, what had touched it off, and then he knew. It was Wickstead’s animal magnetism and Edith’s desperate physical hunger at the time, for she had never, as he well knew, resigned herself to spinsterhood. He thought, with an inward chuckle, “By George, I was lucky as well as Wickstead when she made her grab. If he had let her down, and it had come to a straight choice between the network and Tom Wickstead’s neck I know damned well what would have happened to my interests! Once he had got her to bed she would have held up a train for him…!”

Wednesday, and the ding-dong battle continued. Markby and Wickstead won majorities on their proposals and Godsall, with more difficulty, forced through a pilot scheme for a short-haul passenger service. The network already sported men-o’-war, frigates, pinnaces, box-waggons, and holiday brakes. Now they were lumbered with iceboxes and cattle-transport vans for which Wickstead had already coined a slang phrase, “four-footers.” Nor was that all. On Thursday Catesby declared himself for diversification, proposing, and getting accepted, a six-horse dray with a central shaft as thick as a cottage beam designed for transporting heavy machinery in the Polygon where, he declared, railway companies were still shortchanging one another to the profit of the road haulier. No Swann waggon could take the road without a slang christening. By the time the lunch break was announced they were already referring to Catesby’s six-horse drays as “Goliaths.”

By then it was time for the Diehards’ counterattack but when it came it was little more than a disgruntled sally. A spirit of resurgent optimism had invaded the warehouse and only a rump of veterans were prepared to advocate a policy of letting well alone. Hamlet Ratcliffe was one of them and brought a welcome whiff of humour into proceedings when he declared, in his buzz-saw brogue, that most of the previous speakers were “bliddy well mazed.” Undaunted by the roar of laughter this produced, he went on to state as his opinion that “they talked as though the Gaffer had vallen arse over tip into a goldmine.” The summing up was received with renewed laughter but Tybalt tut-tutted, partly because he was one of the few present who agreed with Hamlet but also, Adam suspected, because he disapproved of that kind of talk in front of a lady. He need not have bothered. Edith, catching Adam’s eye, chirped up, “Don’t mind me! I once drove waggons and I’m well used to it,” and everybody laughed, even the solemn Keate, who had maintained a basilisk expression throughout the four-day discussion.

Vicary of The Bonus, reckoned the laziest of the managers, and Bryn Lovell, of Mountain Square, had their say in support of Ratcliffe. Vicary took a restrained line, saying the network was doing well enough without meddling in passenger transport, but Lovell was more emphatic. “Down on my patch,” he muttered, “folk are used to walking to and from work on the feet God gave ’em. I see no call to meddle with omnibuses, when we’ve a good living out o’ freight haulage these twenty years. As for this avalanche of special purpose vehicles, what are the carpenters for? We’ve been hauling high-grade china in waggons my men adapted inside twenty-four hours once I sketched out what was needed in the way o’ racks and springing!”

It was getting dusk then and Adam suggested putting off his own statement until Friday, the final day of the conference, but at this there was a growl of protest and Stock said, spiritedly, “Take a vote, Mr. Chairman: Do we prolong this session until dinnertime, or do we adjourn until tomorrow and try and cram everything into the final day?” Adam took the vote. Unanimously the conference decided to sit.

3

He was slow getting to his feet. For four days now he had sat with his gammy leg thrust alongside the centreboard of the table, where it got some protection from the draught from the warehouse double doors. The twinge in his stump caused him to curse under his breath but for all that he was glad he had held his peace until now, for there was not a man among them who had not, to a greater or lesser degree, committed himself.

He gave them a minute or two to relight their pipes, clear their throats, and generally settle down. He had then a sense of crossing a threshold that was as final and unconditional as that he had crossed twice before in their presence, once when he sent out his first waggons in the autumn of ’58, and again, five years later, when he had thrown himself on their mercy after Josh Avery had squandered all his reserve capital on a Spanish whore.

He said, grimly, “I’ll not keep you here until dinnertime. What I’ve got to say won’t take long, although its repercussions may keep you at it for the rest of your lives. Here it is then, short and sweet. I’ve sat here four days listening to talk of expansion and diversification, with precious little said for sitting tight and playing safe, as I admit to doing these ten years or more, but let me get one thing clear. Broadly speaking, I’m with you, individually that is, but I’ll add something to that. I’ve never been in a position to think and act individually, or not since the very earliest days, when neither you nor I had anything much to lose. Since then, by God, I’ve had to think and act for you all, especially those among you with families, and I’ve had that in mind all the time, even when some of you sitting round this table thought me a reckless idiot. A man in my position, starting from scratch, was dependent on the goodwill and loyalty of every one of you, and I’ve had both in generous measure. Times change, however, and not one of us among the originals is the man we were, when we set out. And whilst, as I say, I’m in agreement with the most enterprising speaker who has had his say, I’m man enough to tell you to your faces I’d sooner step down or sell up before I shouldered that kind of responsibility at my age. Risks of that kind are for the young, gentlemen, but they can be faced and accepted by someone my age providing they’re shared. For twenty-five years now I’ve taken all the big decisions, and left you to make what you can of them, and in the main we’ve had a smooth passage. But I’m not here to harp on the past, so put it this way: we’ll take a crack at every one of the projects aired here since Monday but we’ll do it in partnership if we do it at all, and by partnership I mean full and equal partnership, as directors of a limited company, with every one of you who cares to come in backing himself with his own stake, up to the limit he can afford. A minimum of, say, five hundred apiece.”

He had a fleeting impression of shock moving from face to face like a travelling beam of light. There was no audible reaction, discounting Tybalt’s wheeze and Catesby’s muttered oath heard from the far end of the table. But the shock was present in their several expressions and in their silence, so after a brief pause he went on, “There’ll be conditions, of course, although not so many of them. I’m no great shakes at finance and never was, as Tybalt will tell you, but I’ve worked out a draft scheme for Stock’s approval, and when he’s studied it, and given you advice and guidance if you want it, then we’ll convene an emergency conference, not in four months’ time but in four weeks or less. I’ll hold on to fifty-one per cent of the stock until we settle down. After that, dependent upon how my family view it, I’ll throw more into the pool, with a proviso that may sound stupid to some of you but strikes me as being the only way to maintain the policy we’ve held fast to until this moment—equity among all managers in the eyes of H.O., irrespective of the size of their territory or length of service. That means that no one of you will have the edge over another for that, as I see it, would be the way to ruin. One man one vote, as they say, whether he has a small stake or a big one, up to a limit that could be adjusted year by year. And instead of a conference each December we’ll have board meetings once a quarter. And one other thing, as vital as anything I’ve said so far. No one will be penalised for not coming in. A manager who stays out is still a manager, up to the moment of retirement. That’s about it, then. There’ll be questions, I daresay, and it’s up to you whether we have them now, with a clear day ahead of us to sort out detail, or save them until tomorrow.” And he sat down, just a shade embarrassed, but conscious none the less of having said all he had meant to say in far less time than he had anticipated.

Catesby’s voice emerged from the continuous buzz as Adam’s gammy leg again sought the limited protection of the centreboard. Catesby, his fanatical eyes softened by an almost missionary gleam as he said, in a voice pitched above his usual gravelly key, “Before questions… Before
anything!
… There’s something called for now and I’m calling it! Three cheers for the Gaffer, and let ’em hear you in Rotherhithe!” Then, to be sure, Adam Swann was deeply embarrassed, more embarrassed than he had ever been in his life. Then he flushed, lifting a protesting hand but it failed to stay them. By then they were all out of their seats and clustering round him, and there could be no question of himself or Stock or Tybalt or anyone else calling the conference to order and resuming discussion, for somehow, without knowing it, he had touched a common chord in everyone round that table and the spontaneity of their goodwill was something that moved him as he had never been moved in his public or private life. At last, above the general uproar, Tybalt managed to make himself heard, and convened the final sitting for ten o’clock the next morning. After that, in a convoy of cabs and waggonettes, they repaired in a body to the George where, in the hour before dinner, they swam in a tide of ale. Even Keate and Tybalt, sworn teetotallers both, broke the rules of a lifetime by drinking the Gaffer’s health in brown sherry.

4

It was late on the last day of conference before he addressed them again. By then a framework for the cooperative had been hammered out by Stock and given the finishing touches by Tybalt, so that they had something to work upon for their next general meeting, scheduled for the last week of January. All twenty of them took advantage of his offer, the better off among them buying in to the limit. The two sub-managers present, Markby of Crescent North, and Jake Higson, who would soon be a manager in his own right, bought themselves a token stake. The less ambitious projects, Markby’s iceboxes and Tom Wickstead’s four-footers, were approved; Tybalt undertaking to make a careful survey of all the data sent to him in the next six months regarding the possible purchase of public transport concerns in four of the territories, none of them likely to be expensive at this stage, for each involved no more than two or three vehicles. Notwithstanding this, however, expansion and diversification on this scale promised to absorb a great deal more money than the new capital subscribed, and Tybalt, making a hasty cast, estimated it would need upwards of ten thousand pounds to get a footing in public transport, commission the building of a fleet of special purpose waggons and provide the teams to pull them, especially if they went ahead with Catesby’s project to compete with the railways for heavy haulage in the cotton belt.