Theirs Was The Kingdom (74 page)

“Do you think I haven’t tried to locate her?” he growled, but she made a gesture of impatience that reminded him of her father, once the terror of his factory floor.

“You haven’t tried hard enough. Somehow Deborah has to be rescued from this awful business before she finds herself in real trouble, in gaol as likely as not. But that isn’t the real point.”

“What is then?”

“Your family is.
Us!
The boys particularly. How do you suppose a scandal like this would affect Alex and Giles? Alex is waiting on promotion, and Giles is hoping to marry one of the wealthiest heiresses in the land. Don’t you think you owe them some consideration?”

He said, slowly, “I hadn’t thought of that. But now that I do it doesn’t seem to me relevant. You don’t really believe Stead is doing this to boost his circulation, do you?”

“I don’t care what his motives are. They don’t concern me, or you either. The moment Debbie is found, and it’s proved she helped to kidnap this child, her association with us will be broadcast throughout the land. She’s regarded as a sister to Alex and Giles, and you’ll be dragged into it too, mark my words. I don’t often stand up to you, Adam, and I can’t remember how long it is since I ran contrary to you, but I do now, even if it means marching into that man’s office and demanding Debbie is restored to us and her part in this hushed up, do you understand?”

“No,” he said, stubbornly, “I don’t. Why should I? Debbie isn’t a child. She can do as she likes with her life, as I told you the last time she was in trouble…”

“Indeed she can’t!” She circled the desk and stood over him threateningly, as though he had been one of the children in need of a whipping. “We’ve given her home and family, and she owes it to us to keep our name out of the mud! You won’t ever accuse me of not having been a good mother to her, I hope. I was always very fond of her, and grateful to her for the way she stood by me when the others were too little, and you were at death’s door. But that doesn’t mean I’ll let her drag any one of us down into this… this
cesspool!”
and she swept her hand across the desk so smartly that some of the papers she had thrown there fell to the floor. “There’s another thing, too. I’d have taken it kindly if you had let me know about this earlier.”

It was years, he reflected dismally, since they had fallen out on this scale, years since she had railed at him like a scold, or accused him, as she did now, of disloyalty to her and her children. How long ago exactly? More than twenty years, when he had taken her to task for allowing a brutal master sweep to send a boy into one of her flues and choke to death on soot, touching off a quarrel that almost parted them. He said, deliberately, “You stand by that, Hetty? You don’t give a damn what happens to any of these children Stead and Debbie are fighting for?”

“Not a pin!” she said, unblushingly, and it struck him then that, notwithstanding half a lifetime together raising of a family of five sons and four daughters, they were still as far apart on the wider issues of life as on the day they met a mile or so south of the wretched little town where her father had ridden a boy rioter into the ground.

He rose heavily and crossed to the window, looking out on the sunlit paddocks.

“Well,
I
care,” he said, at length. “I care very much, and I’m no Holy Joe. I care because I’m British, and sometimes I’ve been proud of the fact, for at least we have the men and the courage to scour our privies in public now and again. That’s more than you can say for most tribes.”

He turned back to her. “See here, Hetty. You’ve led a sheltered life here in the country, and so, for the most part, have our boys and girls. You’ve done that on the money I earned, and I like to think every penny of it was earned honestly and decently. You’ve enjoyed comfort and security, and we’ve built something worth having right here where we stand, and up at the yard, and out along the network. But what the devil is any of it worth if we take our stand alongside the people crucifying a man like Stead, for the crime of making us aware of our social responsibilities? You quote my duty to Alex and Giles at me, as if they could be matched with the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds sold to goatish old satyrs whose sexual appetites have to be whetted on virgins. I don’t give a damn how closely my name, or Debbie’s, or yours, or the children’s are tied to those of Stead and Bramwell Booth in this instance. I happen to believe in those articles, even if he went about getting his material clumsily and recklessly. Someone had to do it, and it might interest you to know that because of him Parliament is already passing a law to extend the age of consent to sixteen. And not before time, God damn it.”

She was unconvinced. He realised that before she replied, calmly, “Well, there’s your answer. Leave it to Parliament.”

But he burst out, “Good God, woman! Do you suppose Parliament would have lifted a finger if it hadn’t been shamed into it by people like Stead and Debbie? You ought to be damned proud of her. I am, and I wish I could find and tell her so!”

He stumped out then, undecided whether or not he had made the least impression on her but not caring either, for suddenly the serenity of Tryst became abhorrent to him and he felt a desperate need to submerge himself in the stink and clamour of the yard. He went out to the stables and saddled his favourite mare, brushing aside Stillman’s startled enquiry as to where he could be going so late in the day. Five minutes later he was heading through summer lanes towards Croydon, and as he rode, scenting honeysuckle from the overgrown hedgerows, he remembered another time he had lunged out of the house in the same way, in search of a compromise between his public and private life. It was the morning after Henrietta had tried to solace him the only way she knew how, after that blear-eyed little eunuch had been dragged from his chimney and laid on his hearthrug and he thought, bitterly, “Twenty years ago, by God! Luke Dobbs then and Eliza Armstrong today, and neither one qualifying for the protection of the most powerful state in the world!” But then, remembering Stead, and the power that resided in his pen, his spirits lifted a little and he said aloud, “I’ll go to him and offer to help, damned if I don’t!” and maintained a mile-consuming trot through the darkness until he saw the lights of the livery stable where he stabled his horse.

4

Tybalt was at the weighbridge when Adam returned from his breakfast visit to the coffee stand, a regular port of call whenever he spent a night in his turret.

He saw at once that the little clerk was more than usually agitated, for he was peering up and down the street like an anxious mother awaiting an overdue daughter from a party. The moment he spotted him he came trotting across the pavement, exclaiming, “My word, Mr. Swann, I’m relieved you came straight back! He’s here! He’s been here twenty minutes or more!” and then, with a fearful glance left and right, “I… er… took the liberty of showing him up, before anyone in the yard recognised him. I mean, it just wouldn’t do, would it?” But Adam, not in the best of humours, growled, “What the hell are you blathering about?
Who’s
here?
Who
have you shown up?” Tybalt’s face went blank as he said, “You mean you weren’t expecting him? I thought, naturally… well, in the circumstances…” and then he fell into step as Adam strode across the yard and said, breathlessly, “Mr.
Stead
, sir! He came into the countinghouse asking for you… fortunately I was there alone, so I hustled out and showed him upstairs at once. Did I do right, sir? It seemed to me the wisest course…”

Adam stopped short at the foot of the stair. “Stead’s here? Stead came calling?”

“Just after you left. He said you’d written.”

“I’d written, but I had no reason to think… Yes, Tybalt, you did the right thing. You say nobody else spotted him?”

“Nobody, sir.”

“Then make sure I’m not disturbed, and when I blow down have a cab at the foot of the stairs.”

“Yes, sir. Certainly, Mr. Swann,” and he darted away, as though the mere presence of W. T. Stead on the premises would infect him with plague or, at the very least, attract a crowd that would trample him and his clerks underfoot.

He was standing over by the window, looking down on Adam’s favourite view, the broad curve of the river between the bridge and the forest of masts on the south bank. He looked, Adam thought, like a man near the end of his tether. Hunted, tense, and drained of energy and yet, if you watched the eyes, defiant and undefeated, still able, as he turned extending his hand, to summon a smile of recognition.

“I’m afraid I rattled your head clerk, Mr. Swann.”

“It doesn’t take much to rattle Tybalt.”

He found himself doing a mental sum and surprising himself with the answer. Stead, as he knew, was twenty years his junior, but no one, seeing them together now, would have believed it. At thirty-six the man looked in his mid-fifties, his beard streaked with grey, the mouth firmly compressed, as with pain he was just able to bear. “The poor devil is killing himself…” Adam thought and suddenly he was ashamed. Ashamed for himself and Tybalt, for Henrietta and everyone who jeered and cavilled and sniggered at what this North Country parson’s son was about. There was even something shameful about his circumstances here. Fleeting and furtive, like a convict on the run, seeking someone from whom he could beg a meal and a refuge.

He said, more to soothe his own conscience than reassure Stead, “You don’t have to apologise to me. For being here, I mean. I already deeply regret the tone of that letter I wrote. I was concerned for Miss Avery, for, as I said, she’s more than a daughter to me.” Then, “Why did you come, Mr. Stead? You could have written or sent a messenger.”

“I have the reputation of doing my own dirty work, Swann.”

He spoke with bitterness, a depth of bitterness that Adam would have thought uncharacteristic of the man.

“You’re getting plenty of support.”

“At a safe distance, yes. You’ve read the articles?”

“Very carefully.”

He moved round the end of the desk where lay a pile of yesterday’s newspapers.
Lloyd’s News
and the
St. James’ Gazette
, two journals heading the hue and cry, were on the top of the pile. He turned and looked across directly at Adam.

“I didn’t answer your question. You’re a man in a big way of business. I don’t have to tell you where your business interests stand in the matter.”

“You’re used to finding yourself in a minority, but it’s my experience that you’ll win everybody over in the long run.”

“Not this time,” Stead said. He seemed to stagger, so that Adam said, “For God’s sake, man. Take a seat and let me offer you a drink.”

He crossed to his cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy, pouring two measures. It occurred to him then that the editor was probably a teetotaller but it did not deter him. If ever a man needed a stiff drink it was Stead. He pushed the glass across to him. Stead said, leaving the drink on the blotter, “Concerning Babylon, Mr. Swann, I assume you’re among the uncommitted. Like most of my regular readers.”

“That depends.”

“On how deeply Miss Avery is involved?”

“No, not on that. As I reminded my wife last night, Deborah is thirty. At that age one should have made up one’s mind on most issues, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, I would.” The thin smile came and went again. “But you’re getting on for twice that age and still ‘havering,’ as the Scots say. How do you explain that, Mr. Swann?”

How did he explain it? How did it come about that he had read every word of the Babylon articles, and every counter-charge laid against Stead, but was still unable to make a clear-cut decision concerning what seemed, on the face of it, a festering sore on the body of a nation that prided itself on its Christian ethics, that claimed, almost, to have invented freedom, justice, and the rights of the individual.

He said, thoughtfully, “I met one of the bloodhounds. A man called Burbage, watching my ward’s lodgings on behalf of
Lloyd’s News.
He implied that what one read in your newspaper or his was no more than the tip of an iceberg. Does that apply to the ‘Maiden Tribute’ series?”

Stead stooped and heaved a briefcase on to the desk. “Having made your acquaintance, I came prepared.”

He unlatched the catch and upended the case. A shower of documents cascaded on to the blotter, most of them written transcripts and newspaper cuttings. Here and there was what appeared to be a dossier, bound in covers, the size of a school exercise book. “It would take a busy man like you too long to sift this much evidence. Take your pick and ask any questions you choose. The answers are all here…” he tapped his forehead, “and likely to stay there until the day I die.”

He was on shifting ground and knew it. Stead was not here to answer testy enquiries concerning Deborah. He had a more specific purpose in mind, involving not so much Deborah’s loyalty but his own, a man who, long years ago, had raised hell about a dead chimney sweep. He picked a dossier at random and read the title aloud,
“Case of Elsie Griddle, aged fifteen (Comparative portraits).”
He was aware of Stead’s Old Testament eyes watching him and was almost grateful to Elsie Griddle, whoever she was. As long as he could avoid Stead’s eyes he was uncommitted.

“Compare the two portraits, Swann.”

The voice seemed to boom from a great distance, but there was enough authority in it to make him wince. “God damn it,” he thought, “what am I doing here, standing like a schoolboy with a botched lesson… this is
my
office,
my
headquarters… Did I invite the fellow here to hector me?” But it didn’t feel like his office so much as a courtroom, with himself in the dock.