Theirs Was The Kingdom (69 page)

Giles looked at the line of clattering looms and expressionless men, women and girls tending them. Much earlier in the day he had seen a hundred or more turn out and clatter down the cobbled streets in their clogs, and he supposed they would stand here until shutdown, unable to communicate one with the other above the ceaseless roar and rattle of the looms, and the monotonous whine of the complex of belts above their heads. The fearful drabness of their existence compared to his, or that of someone like Romayne Rycroft-Mostyn, occurred to him, so that he recalled, for the first time in a month, those smutty-faced urchins in the gallery below the Welsh hills. He said, as they regained the airless yard, where the bale-breakers were hard at work, “
Do
the machines work for them? Are they ever going to squeeze anything out of them, beyond a pittance to keep them penned there in all that racket? What’s gone wrong and when did it start going wrong? Surely people led richer and more interesting lives in mediaeval villages.”

The manager grinned. “Aye, lad, you got it bad, haven’t you? But there’s nowt to be ashamed of on that score. Your father tells me you called in on Lovell, in the Rhondda. How does it compare?”

“If I had to choose I’d prefer the silence underground, for at least a man can think down there. From the safety angle the mill’s better, or looked so.”

“A damned sight safer than it were. In my young days every fourth man you passed in a mill town lacked a hand or an arm. We reckoned to lose about one lad a day from an accident. Keep your eyes open and you’ll still see some of the old uns at their begging.” He lit his short pipe, drew on it, and led the way out on to the railway sidings, where a Swann-on-Wheels pinnace stood with a sleek Cleveland Bay between the shafts. From the box-seat Giles could see clear across the landscape, a grey sea of tile and slate broken here and there by a tall chimney and the looming bulk of a mill. High above the blue-black streamers of murk the July sun was fighting a losing battle with a pall of smoke that lay over the entire plain, dense where chimneys proliferated at a town, ragged above strips of green, featureless country between, almost solid over Manchester to the southeast.

Catesby said, “When did we start going wrong? You might say a century ago, when they moved the power-looms in, took the weavers out of their cottages, and herded them into brick and tile gaols of that kind. But don’t run away with the idea it were all beer and skittles before that. I’ve known families work from dawn to dusk in their own hovels for less nor one skilled lass takes home today. It’s not just a matter o’ living in towns either. You’re country-bred. I don’t have to tell you what a farm-labourer living in a tied cottage picks up come Saturday. Or what happens to him when the damp in his bones slows him down. When did it all start? The day some fool invented the wheel and money, I reckon, but that’s neither here nor there now for we’re hitched to ’em both, for better nor worse, and it’s up to all of us to make ’em work. That’s what the Trades Union Congress is all about, some kind of attempt to strike a balance between master and man. I daresay Lovell let on I was for revolution. That’s a cock-eyed notion on his part. They’re always trying that on i’ France, and take it from me, for all their bloody brickbats and barricades, working conditions aren’t so good there as they are right here, i’ Rochdale an’ Burnley. Or in the Rhondda for that matter. Nay, lad, that’s no way to change industry. You’ve got to have gaffers who know what they’re about, and gaffers won’t work for nowt any more than a mill-hand or a miner. The thing to do is to admit that right out and work at it together. I’m as loyal to t’bloody system as anyone, and don’t let anyone tell you diff ’rent. I’m hopeful too, at long range that is. All I’ve fought for since I came out o’ gaol, after the rioting back in the fifties, is common sense. Common sense on both sides. I don’t ask for more than that, and your Dad will tell you the same.” He gathered up the reins and cracked his whip over the nag’s head. “We’ll move on then. You’ve a rare lot to see yet.”

Slowly and inquisitively Giles picked his way over the Polygon, surprised to find, here and there, sizeable stretches of arable land and any number of prosperous farms. In this way it differed materially from the coalfields, for here industry had been concentrated in densely populated pockets, with the spaces in between relatively sweet if one could ignore the all-pervading acrid whiff of smoke carried on the wind high above ploughland and pasture.

The towns, he noticed, had many things in common with the Welsh mining villages. The serried rows of tiny dwellings were almost identical, acres of brick and slate broken, here and there, by a red-brick chapel of one sect or another. But the men, women, and urchins he encountered did not seem bowed down by the drabness of their surroundings or, for that matter, by the terrible demands made upon them in the slab-sided, smoke-belching factories where they spent upwards of seventy hours a week. On the contrary, they seemed as perky and easy-going as the miners, and there was often the sound of laughter in the steep cobbled streets, even from homegoing shifts at twilight. When he drew Catesby’s attention to this the manager’s reply was similar to Lovell’s, in the Rhondda.

“Nay, an’ why not? A Lancashire man in work is an optimist, no matter how much bloody muck he lives in. There are compensations, lad, that a Southerner like yourself can’t be blamed for missing while he’s wiping smuts from his eye. For one thing, the folk hereabouts are proud o’ what they produce, and so they should be. Best spun cotton i’ t’world. For another, they’ve got their pastimes, pigeon-fancying and suchlike. But the main thing that keeps ’em going is one another, I reckon.”

The Polygon tour stirred him deeply but it did not have the scarifying effect of the day spent below ground in Wales, and this was not because the people up here had less to put up with or worked, in the main, under better conditions. It was a personal amelioration, his state of mind having mellowed in the interval. A very young man deeply in love is not the best kind of emissary for an expedition of this sort. Instead of concentrating his mind on the glaring evidence of social injustice, Giles found himself making mental notes that would never find a place in a blue book or statistical survey. The girls, he noted, still ogled young men under the gas-lamps after dusk, and young men, pale but neatly turned out, still circled the gravel paths of the blighted little parks of a Sunday afternoon, sporting their buttonholes and twirling their canes. And once, when they were jogging back to Salford yard through a thunderstorm an hour after sundown, they happened to pass a junction where a flash of lightning revealed a lad and his girl locked in a passionate embrace under a tilted umbrella. Catesby, noticing his glance, grinned and said, with a perception Giles had learned to expect of him, “Aye, lad, that’s still free. Even here, in t’bloody Polygon downpour.” Then, in that aggressive tone they all seemed to use up here, “You can tour the regions from Tay to Channel but there’s another product that gets pride o’ place i’ Lancashire, apart from cotton. Rare pretty lasses if you’re looking for ’em, and I alwus was at your age!”

Giles said nothing to this. He liked and trusted Catesby but could not bring himself to speak Romayne’s name to anyone as yet.

The day he was making ready to move one of the clerks came into the Salford warehouse and asked if he had a moment to spare for a lady enquiring after him. His heart missed a beat, for the only woman who knew his whereabouts, with the exception of his mother, was Romayne, but it seemed very unlikely that she had followed him up here. He was so excited at the possibility, however, that he dashed across to the weighbridge without enquiring the visitor’s name, stopping short when he saw a fashionably dressed woman in her thirties standing beside the checker, who pointed to him, saying, “There’s Mr. Swann, Mrs. Broadbent.”

The woman looked confused but then smiled rather nervously and said, “You won’t know me, Mr. Swann, but I heard you were here. I… er… just wondered if you could give me any news of your brother, Mr. George Swann.”

There was something so hesitant in her approach that his chivalry was touched and he said, tipping his hat, “You’re a friend of George, Mrs. Broadbent?” Then, seeing her glance at the checker, “Would you like to come into the office? The clerk there is having his lunch and Mr. Catesby is away today.”

She murmured her thanks and followed him, saying, as he motioned her to a chair, “You’ll think it frivolous, no doubt, but I was always anxious to hear about George, and it didn’t seem… well… fitting to write to the firm. After all, the dear boy has probably forgotten all about me by now. Does the name ‘Broadbent’ mean anything to you?”

“I’m afraid not,” he said, knitting his brows and trying to guess the relationship between this shy, pretty woman and George, but she went on, swiftly, “My husband was manager here for a time. He left. There was… well… trouble, and I thought your father or brother might have told you. Obviously they didn’t.”

“You mean trouble involving you, Mrs. Broadbent?”

It seemed unlikely but one never did know what George might get up to and he remembered now that, prior to going abroad, he had lived in the Polygon.

“No, Mr. Swann,” she said, firmly, “not in any way. I daresay my husband tried to imply as much but there was nothing…
nothing
you understand that Geo… Mr. Swann need regret in any way. The fact is he stayed with us out at Bowdon while he was up here, and I grew very fond of him. He’s a very charming young man, Mr. Swann, and in the circumstances… well, naturally I’ve wondered about him. Is he well? Is he working in London with your father’s firm?”

A few weeks ago Giles would have been completely mystified by Mrs. Broadbent, but Romayne had taught him to distinguish between a polite enquiry and a concealed canvass, of the kind she was pursuing now. He said, “George has been abroad ever since he left here, Mrs. Broadbent. Paris, Munich, and now Vienna. He’s been learning the haulage business with Continental firms and I believe he’s expected home around Christmas. We exchange letters occasionally. Could I give him any message from you?”

“Oh, no,” she said, suddenly alarmed, “no message… it was just… well, I’ve wondered how he was getting along. He wasn’t very happy here.” She broke off there, rather pointedly, but then, as though forcing herself to continue, “He… he wasn’t
sent
abroad? Because of me, I mean?”

“Indeed no. My father thought it was a good idea to learn the languages and broaden his experience. We deal with many Continental wholesalers and he’s to take over when my father retires. He and my father get along very well. They always have because… well, because, George is cut out for a business career, more than any of us.” And then, because by now she was twisting her handkerchief into a knot, and seemed close to tears, he said, “Look, ma’am, it’s none of my business, but if you would like to send a message or write it wouldn’t go any further than these four walls. George and I have always been friends. Who could help liking George?”

She seemed to consider this for a long minute. When she looked up she had herself well under control and smiled. She was, he decided, a very handsome woman, with a curious combination of fragility and dignity. At the same time she somehow conveyed an impression that life had not used her kindly.

“Very well,” she said, with a kind of forced brightness, “just give him my very best wishes, and say I’ll always be interested in what he does when he becomes as important as your father. He was extremely kind and considerate to me when I badly needed a friend and because of that I won’t ever forget him. Don’t tell him that, of course. It wouldn’t do, would it, although my husband and I parted company long ago, and perhaps he would like to know that. Tell him that I went back to my old job at the pub in the Shambles. There!”

She stood up, very relieved it seemed to bring the interview to a close. “Thank you for listening, Mr. Swann.” She paused, regarding him intently with serious grey eyes. “You aren’t much alike, are you? Temperamentally, maybe, but to look at I mean?”

“My mother always tells me I’m the odd man out,” he said. “George is more like Alex, the eldest, and Hugo, the one after me. There are nine of us altogether, you know, and we’re a mixed bunch. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to write to him yourself, Mrs. Broadbent? I could enclose it in a letter.”

“Quite sure,” she said, and sounded as if she meant it.

He saw her out to a cab waiting on the far side of the weighbridge, handed her into it, and returned her surprised smile at the courtesy. “Nine!” she said, after a nod towards the cabby. “My word, but your mother must be right proud of you! Goodbye, Mr. Swann, and thank you so much.”

He watched the cab move off and returned thoughtfully to the yard, wondering just what to make of Mrs. Broadbent and her emotional involvement with George. He had always envied his brother’s high spirits, and the ease with which he established a personal relationship, but perhaps he had taken too much for granted and now he found himself hoping that George would enlighten him when he passed the message on. The encounter, however, explained something that had puzzled not only him but all the family. That was the sudden termination of George’s apprenticeship on home ground and the abruptness of his departure abroad. The key was obviously Mrs. Broadbent and he was glad he had made her acquaintance. In a roundabout way it enlarged George and brought him that much closer as a brother.

5

North along the western edge of the Pennines, round the elbow of the Ribble and seaward towards Kendal in dry, August heat. Then, having got his second wind, and adjusted to the demands of the rough hill tracks he chose in preference to roads, on to Windermere, Ambleside, and the pass that ran under the western shoulder of Helvellyn, pausing hereabouts to visit Wordsworth’s cottage and wonder what secret lay behind the self-imposed exile of a man who had blown such a lusty trumpet on behalf of the French Revolution and then hidden himself away in this lonely spot, where Sister Dorothy had written of gathering foxglove seeds, tying up scarlet beans, nailing honeysuckles and listening, long after William had retired to bed, to Coleridge reading part of
Christabel.
Fresh from his tours of the coalfields and the cotton belt, Giles saw it as a kind of defeat, a rather shameful opting out of the role of zealot that had inspired the
Sonnet to Liberty.
Or maybe it had something to do with the springs of creativity. Having reached the age of thirty, the man’s genius had seemingly spent itself so that he turned his back on everything but the cycle of the year under these fells. He realised then that his journey had confirmed something important. Poetry was well enough but he could no longer think of a poet as a man marching with the vanguard. Poets had a job as standard-bearers but the real fighting was for more down-to-earth chaps, the Lovells and the Catesbys maybe, who would probably regard poor old Willie Wordsworth as a windbag.