Theirs Was The Kingdom

by R. F Delderfield

  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.

  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

  ALWAYS 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.