Theirs Was The Kingdom (49 page)

Towards evening, when the gas had been lit in the reeking warehouse, Adam summed up and his talk took an unexpected turn, surprising most of them by its note of caution.

He had had time then to adjust to his new role as leader of a team rather than a one man band and found that the changed situation gave him a freedom previously denied him. He spoke of wider aspects of the haulage trade, and its relation to the economics of a trading nation, projecting himself into the next decade in a way that left the more slow-witted baffled. They could not see how industrial competitors across the Channel and the Atlantic could concern them, although they were impressed by his grasp of affairs when he expressed doubts concerning Britain’s ability to hold on to the clear commercial lead she had enjoyed throughout the lifetime of every man present.

He said, as a kind of valediction, “Well, now, since you’re all in it up to your necks I can say what has been in my mind for some time. From here on, to my way of thinking, pickings won’t be what they were in the past and nothing like so easily come by. I shouldn’t have to harp on our dependence on national prosperity. Catesby can tell you what happens in a region when there’s a local blight, as there was in the Polygon through the war in the States when the cotton stopped arriving in Liverpool. It could happen again on a larger scale this time. We’ve grown up, every man jack of us, having it all our own way, with Britain carrying three parts of the world’s trade and having a clear lead over every industrial nation, but the gap is narrowing every week and that’s why I’m in favour of diversification and more reliance on the home market. Years after we began here, back in ’58, Germany was a hotchpotch of petty states, mostly agricultural. Now she’s a full nation, with more up-to-date notions of what’s demanded of an industrialised society than Britain, and a damned sight more energy judging by the letters my boy sends me. France and Italy are in the running too, and across the Atlantic the Yankees have only just begun to realise their potential. In ten years, in five maybe, we’ll all be squabbling for markets, and it won’t do for any one of us to go on living off our own fat, the way most big concerns have over the last twenty years. Don’t be deceived by all the yammering you’ve heard about the Empire. I was once, and I’ll own to it, but not any longer. In the years up to the turn of the century and probably beyond it, the Empire is likely to cost us a damned sight more than it earns. Right here is where the real money is minted and don’t ever forget it. For the rest, it’s a matter of building on the reputation we already have and don’t doubt that we can do it, and give our competitors, including the railways, a good run for their money, but it can’t be done without improving on the teamwork of the past. The first thing we’ve got to heave overboard is parochialism. From now on you don’t haul to suit me and Headquarters but each other, particularly where territories adjoin one another. And keep in mind your pockets are concerned as much as mine in every decision you make. I’ll add a tailpiece to that. I hope to God most of those decisions are taken independently for, to tell the truth, I’m getting too old and too testy to relish the role of peacemaker, a job I’ve been saddled with times enough in the past.”

They said their goodbyes then, hurrying away to Euston, King’s Cross, Waterloo, and Paddington to catch their trains. But Edith lingered, as she usually did, to say a private farewell, catching him in his turret as he was packing his grip to spend his first night at home in a week.

He looked very tired, she thought, and her heart went out to him as she saw his left hand massaging the muscles above the joint in his leg. She said, looking round his Spartan quarters, “You really did catch us on the hop, Adam, but you had that in mind, I imagine?”

And he said, with a chuckle, “You don’t begrudge me some light relief, I hope. If I’m to spend the rest of my days in this slum I need compensations of some sort,” and then, straightening himself, “It’s my life. The role of country gentleman never did suit me. Henrietta decided that long ago, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”

“It wasn’t,” she said, “or not altogether. I was thinking of your boys more than Henrietta. You’ve four of them well-grown, another in reserve. That’s more than most men can boast of. Isn’t it time one of them lent a hand?”

“They’ll come when they’re ready,” he said, carelessly. “Until then I’d as lief they stayed away. A man has to have heart and soul in this to make a go of it. That’s why I took the whole boiling of you into partnership.”

“Your lads won’t resent that?”

“I don’t give a damn if they do. The family is Henrietta’s concern. Mine is that quarrelsome bunch, scurrying back to their patches.” He paused. “Does that seem unnatural to you?”

“No,” she said, “not really. Not having watched Swann waving his banner-with-the-strange-device for a quarter-century. It’s you, and I wouldn’t have it otherwise. Neither would Henrietta from what I know of her.”

And then, opening her reticule, she took out a small, well-worn book and opened it at a marked page. “I’ve only a few minutes,” she said. “Tom is getting a cab from the rank. But I couldn’t leave without giving you this. There’s a poem by my favourite, Longfellow, and I think it’s relevant to you and that bunch down there. Halfway through your talking marathon I saw you for what you were, a bunch of hard-boiled privateers. Read it in the train on the way back to Croydon.”

He took the little book saying, “Longfellow, eh? I wouldn’t have thought he was your taste. Tennyson or Wordsworth, perhaps… You carry this about with you?”

“No,” she replied, “I’ve another copy at home. I popped across to that secondhand bookshop near the station in the luncheon break. Keep it as a souvenir of our twenty-first conference. I’ve written in it.”

He turned to the flyleaf and read her inscription.
For Adam, alias Simon Danz. In loving friendship and appreciation. Edith, Dec. 14th, 1883.

“You always were one for the little touches,” he said and kissed her, remembering another time when she had stood here in the dusk and asked him to make her manager of the Crescents at a time of crisis in her own life.

“We’ve come through a good many crises in the past, Edith, and been a great help to one another from time to time.”

“Yes,” she said, “and we’ve a way to travel yet, I hope. I must go now. We’re after catching the six-five. Otherwise it’s a longish wait.”

Then she was gone and he carried her gift over to the table lamp, screwing up his eyes to read the small print of the marked poem,
A Dutch Picture.

He saw the relevance at once and, as she had anticipated, it flattered him. The three final verses made an immediate impact and he read them twice, adjusting to the rhythm as well as the congeniality of the lines.

Restless at times with heavy strides
He paces his parlour to and fro;
He is like a ship that at anchor rides,
And swings with the rising and falling tides,
And tugs at her anchor-tow.

Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in his ear,
“Simon Danz: Why stayest thou here?
Come forth and follow me!”

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again,
For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen,
And sell him in Algiers.

He closed the book and drifted over to the window just in time to see the yellow lights of her cab as it passed through the double gates. They were all gone now, a staunch bunch in the main, but she by far the staunchest of them. Henrietta would own to that and maybe tease him about her when he showed her the Longfellow that night.

He picked up his papers and glanced at Tybalt’s trial cast as he stuffed them into his bag. Up here, with all of them gone, he often addressed himself aloud. “Simon Danz,” he said. “I hope to God you were well-found on that new voyage. Your namesake isn’t, despite the fact that his crew have chipped in. He’ll be scratching around for another ten thousand by the time spring is on the doorstep!”

He took a final look around the cluttered, friendly room and went stumping down the spiral stair to the yard.

Six

1

A
LWAYS ON CHRISTMAS EVE, HE WORKED LATE, NOT MERELY TO AVOID involvement in the bustle and clutter of Tryst, with the house spilling over with noise, laughter, and wrapping rituals, but because he derived a deep, personal pleasure from despatching the end of year bonuses to the networks, appending to each a brief note or a joke that linked Headquarters and outpost in a way that would not have been possible if the annual chore had been left to Tybalt and his clerks.

He had promised to be home in time for late supper, for this year, for the first time since the old Colonel’s death, they would all be present, Alexander having sailed in a day or two ago to be feted as one of Sir Garnet Wolseley’s promising young men, and George having returned a day or two earlier from Vienna, where he seemed to have based himself more or less permanently since dragging himself away from Munich. But for Adam, Christmas had always been less of a family occasion than a time for reassessment of the year’s progress, and in the days following the twenty-first annual conference, and all that emerged from it, there had been so much to do if the cooperative plan was to be launched in the new year.

About six-thirty, when everyone but the overnight staff had left the yard, the Southwark Cathedral carollers came to serenade him, singing “Once in Royal David’s City” and “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful” under his tower, their choirmaster hailing him when they had finished and directing one of his Cockney choirboys to catch the traditional sovereign Adam aimed at his cap.

After the choir’s departure he stood for a moment at the little Gothic window, looking out on the murky, yellowish glow surrounding the bridgehead, and across the river to the lights on Tower Hill. The never-ending rumble of London came up to him, a background noise you never heard unless you listened for it, and tonight it seemed clearer and sharper in the frosty air. It went some way to moderate the sourness of the all-pervading stink of the yard, a blend of horse droppings, acrid smoke, and tidal mud, not noticeably sweetened by the shutdown of the soap factory on his left and the tannery on his right.

Then, telling himself he must hurry if he was to catch the seven-thirty from London Bridge, he returned to his desk and made out a score of bonus drafts, reflecting that this was likely to be the last time he performed this office. Directors could hardly expect private bonuses as well as a share of the profits.

He was sealing the last letter when the watchman, Hadlow, put his head round the door, saying, “There’s a cocky little cove down in the yard, sir. Demands to be shown up. I kep’ telling him we was closed for the ’oliday, but he took a sharpish line wi’ me. Says he’s an old friend o’ yours an’ won’t detain you a minnit. Says he’s got something you’ll want.”

“Let him come up,” Adam said, carelessly, “but I mean to catch the seven-thirty so hold a cab, Hadlow.”

“Yessir!” and Hadlow left, saluting, as they all did, although it was now more than twenty-five years since Adam had worn epaulettes.

People were always popping in and out of the tower at this hour, when the countinghouse was closed, the weighbridge clerk gone, and he was the only one in authority about the premises. He did not look up from his desk when he heard the scrape of a boot on the stair and the creak of the door.

He said, briefly, “Well, what is it?” expecting, no doubt, a complaint about an overdue haul from Vicary’s territory across the river, or some optimist who was still awaiting a Christmas delivery.

The visitor said, in a voice that reminded him of someone attempting to imitate the quaver of a music-hall tramp, “Sorry to butt in, Guv’nor, seein’ it’s Christmas an’ all, but I got a present for yer…” And he looked up very swiftly for, notwithstanding the disguise, there was something chillingly familiar about the voice and the stunted, round-shouldered figure swathed in a topcoat, scarf, and jauntily-angled topper that stood in the doorway.

He said, rising, “What the devil
is
this…?” and the visitor laughed. There was no disguising the derision in the sound. It was the laughter of a man dead to him for more than twenty years.

He said, jaw agape, “
Avery! Josh Avery, by God!
It
can’t
be…!” And he stumped round the end of the desk to confront the stocky figure, who raised his chin so that Adam could see the pointed features of a man who had first befriended him and ultimately betrayed him, leaving his nine-year-old daughter in Adam’s care as a hostage.

It was only then that he remembered the fearful risks Avery was running by coming here, a man with a double murder charge hanging over him and no means, at this distance, to establish his innocence. For who would be likely to believe that a rake like Avery had shot a man in self-defence after a whore had squeezed him dry, and afterwards fled into the night in the back of one of Swann’s frigates as far as Harwich, where he had bribed a Dutch skipper to carry him to the Continent?

He would have expected Josh to have aged after all this time, and particularly after the kind of life the man had led up to the time of his flight, and probably since. He had not, or not all that much. The hair under the brim of the hat was grey but it was still plentiful and the pale, clean-shaven face, with its curiously sharp chin, high cheekbones, and restless green eyes, was that of an Avery he remembered long before their parting near Harwich all those years ago; a man who had scandalised the regiment in India by seducing his colonel’s wife, and been drummed out once that silly, pretty Kitty Sullivan had been packed off home, with Avery’s child in her belly.

The characteristic impudence was there too, in the man’s jauntiness that nothing, it seemed, could eradicate, so that Adam thought, not for the first time, “How the devil did he manage to sire a child like Deborah, who crusades for outcasts and gets herself cut to ribbons for her pains?”

He said, carefully, “You know what you’re about, I suppose, but I shouldn’t have to remind you that you’re taking a high risk coming here. Damn it, you haven’t even gone to the trouble of disguising yourself. I would have recognised you anywhere, given a good look. You’re still a brandy man, I imagine?” He went to his cupboard beside Frankenstein, took out a bottle and glasses, and poured a couple of stiff measures, giving one to Avery and disposing of his own in a gulp.

“As to anyone recognising me, that’s nonsense,” Avery said, cheerfully. “How often did I show up here when you were hardly more than a horse and cart man? You’ve come a long way, Adam, but that’s no surprise, is it? I always said you would.”

“We’ll not talk about me,” Adam said. “You’ll have followed the career of Swann-on-Wheels, no doubt, for you always knew what was going on in city counting-houses, as well as city brothels.” But then he relented, for he had never borne Josh any malice and added, “I don’t mean to sound unfriendly, Josh, but a lapse of time, even twenty years or more, doesn’t scotch a murder charge. Unless you’ve come back to face up to it, that is, and I don’t think you have. It wouldn’t be in character, would it?”

“Not in the least,” Josh said, “but I had a purpose for all that. However, don’t concern yourself about the possibility of my arrest and trial for that business at the Chanticleer. Even if they laid me by the heels I daresay I’d wriggle out of it, with my connections one place and another. Until they begin to suspect the author of these notes, that is,” and he drew from his pocket a wallet containing a bulky envelope and laid it on the desk. “I dropped in to give you this. It was something I didn’t care to entrust to the mails.”

It was curious how quickly he could adapt to Josh Avery, who had always enjoyed making a prodigious mystery of everything he was about. The years between slipped away as though they had been weeks. They might have been sipping a brandy together in a regimental canteen, or in Avery’s Guildford Street lodgings in the earliest days of the partnership.

Adam said, picking up the envelope and glancing at the addressee, “What can you and a chap like Stead have in common? He’s the Holiest Joe in Fleet Street, and your daughter, as fine a young person as anyone could hope to meet by the way, works for him. Did you know that?” and when Avery smiled, “Damn it, of course you did. There’s nothing you don’t know, except how to lead a civilised life. I said once that I was done with your commissions, Josh. I’m damned if I deliver this unless you tell me what it concerns.”

“No harm in that,” said Avery. “A list of people in the pay of Brussels whore-masters. I settle my debts unconventionally, Adam. But I do settle them, as you’ll find out when your bank statement comes in after Christmas.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Adam growled, not liking the turn of the conversation. “What the devil do you mean, I’ll find out via the bank?”

“A matter of nine thousand, plus interest. Paid into your account from a bank at The Hague. It was posted three days ago and will have been credited by now, so there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. I’ve added the interest at eight per cent to cover the cost of raising my girl and giving her an education that leads her into the kind of scrape she was in a while back. I forget the exact sum. It was around the fifteen thousand mark.”

“You’ve paid fifteen thousand into my bank?”

“Indeed I have, and don’t think I can’t afford it.”

“But Great God, man, you landed in Holland almost penniless, unless you were lying to me that night I took you to Harwich.”

“That was one time I didn’t lie,” said Avery, “not to you at all events. I was down to one ruby and the odd guinea or two, but I had friends. Since then I’ve married money, a great deal of money. At a price, of course. My wife is a Hohenzollern. Hellishly plain but amiable in her own way, the way Prussians are when they want something and Lisa wanted me. Not that you could call me a remittance man. I earn my oats. I had something to do with promoting Government loans needed to build the fortifications systems round Liège and Namur, and after that one thing led to another. However, that isn’t what I came to see you about. The repayment to you was an incidental and don’t pretend you can’t do with it. Is it true you’ve formed a company, and taken your managers into the firm?”

“It’s true, but I’m damned if I understand how you knew it. My bank doesn’t know yet.”

“Ah, bankers,” said Avery, “they only know what’s sent to them in large print and misunderstand most of that. They won’t understand your motives, for instance, as I did, the moment I heard about it.”

“You should. The very last thing you said to me was take the staff into my confidence and I did just that. I had to. You’d squandered all my capital on that woman Esmeralda.”

“That’s so,” Avery mused, unabashed, “but it was to your ultimate advantage. And my daughter’s advantage, too. That way she came by a respectable upbringing.”

“ We gave her more than that, Josh. She got all the love she needed.”

That did disconcert him a little. He said, “Yes. I’ll concede that, Adam. For all that, I think I would have had more sense than to let her stick her nose into a foreign hornet’s nest at the nod of a rabble rouser like Stead. How did that come about?”

“It wasn’t my doing. I did my best to stop her. After all, she’s of age and as pigheaded as a daughter of yours is likely to be.”

“Aye, I gathered that,” he said, “when I read what happened to her in Brussels. How is she now?”

“Sadder and wiser, like most of us when we’ve had the stardust beaten out of us.”

“Is she still hitched to Stead and that woman Butler?”

“She’s still with Stead.”

“Damn it, that’s an odd line for a lass to take,” he said, grumpily. “Is she so plain?”

“On the contrary, she’s extremely attractive.”

“Then why didn’t you and that plump little pigeon of yours find a husband for her?”

“Because she didn’t want a husband. Not everybody who has made his pile puts his daughters up to auction, Josh.”

“You think of her as your daughter then?”

“God damn it!” he burst out, “of course I do! And so does Henrietta. We’ve had her since she was nine, and she’s been our daughter from the moment I winkled her out of that seedy convent where you left her.”

He remained unruffled, saying, mildly, “You’ve told her about me?”

“As much as I think she should know. If you’re that interested why the devil didn’t you write? The last word I had of you was from the Mother Superior, who died soon after I lost my leg in that crash at Staplehurst.”

“I didn’t have to write,” Avery said. “You were always in the news. I would have got in touch with Henrietta if you had died in that shambles. You believe that, I hope.”