Adam, the patriarch, had the advantage of all of them in this respect. He had lived far longer than most of them and the jeopardies of his youth had developed in him a deeper awareness of the wanton twists of fortune. A guarded optimist in most respects, he had yet learned over the years to live like a boxer squaring up to an opponent of unknown reputation, poised on the balls of his feet and conserving his wind, even when he had an adversary sagging against the ropes. As a soldier and trader over more than six decades of high adventure, entailing so many brushes with sudden death and slow bankruptcy, he understood that it did not profit a man to underestimate the opposition, or overextend himself, or squander reserves of patience. Someone or something was always lurking behind the hill to exploit any such lapse and he had tried, in his gruff, solitary way, to instill this precept into his children and employees. With very little success, however, for neither the Swanns nor their henchmen had had much personal experience with failure, and even Henrietta could look back on the successive crises of the 'sixties with a sense of having met and surmounted them. As for the others, for the children and even the middle-aged among the pashas, not one of them could recall a time when Swann had not been a household word, when there had not been reserves of cash and credit in the bank, and, above all, a time when British citizenship did not carry, as it were, the golden star of precedence over every competitor in the world of commerce.
God knows, Adam sometimes thought, they had grounds for such confidence. Ever since the dawn of the new century, and particularly since the general advance of 1905–1908, family and firm had been riding high. George Swann was now acknowledged the most successful haulier in the country, with over two hundred petrol-driven vehicles on the road and still as many horse-drawn vehicles as his father had fielded in the days when the term "horseless carriage" was a carter's gibe. The Swann insignia was now seen in every corner of the country save only the Western Isles, where there was little or no profit in hauling, whereas the overall yield of the firm rose year by year, from fifteen per cent in 1901 to just over thirty per cent in the Swann Jubilee year of 1908. George had achieved his headstart and viceroy investors sometimes asked themselves where their wits had been holidaying in 1904, when he had been voted down by his fellow directors. Now his position was even more secure than his father's had been, for he was reckoned a general who had won not merely Waterloo but the peace that followed it. With his privately owned concern adding to the fleet of Swann-Maxie waggons at the rate of one a week, there seemed little prospect of anyone coming abreast of him.
In other fields, seemingly remote from transport, the Swanns had made their mark. Alexander Swann, close confidant of the War Minister and acknowledged expert on small arms, was a force to be reckoned with among the polo-enthusiasts who still thought of Haldane's Territorials as a kind of last-ditch reserve.
Giles Swann, although a little-known back-bencher, cold-shouldered by the patricians of his party, was known to have personal access to two or three powerful men in the Cabinet, notably the Welsh Wizard and the pacifist, John Burns. He was also enlarging his grip on his constituents in the valleys where he was known as that rare breed of politician who could be approached anywhere, anytime, and the prospect of unseating him now was considered remote. In the meantime, Hugo Swann, war-hero, not only lived on in the after glory of earlier athletic prowess but also had won fresh laurels at Netley Military Hospital. He was known as "Flexer" Swann among staff and patients, and there were some, among them the men he treated, who declared there was magic in his hands, a legend that his wife helped to foster among the splendid ones who attended her fêtes and garden parties organised on behalf of ex-servicemen.
Of the Swann girls, two had married men of substance, and even Edward Swann, a solitary young man seldom seen in the metropolis, had a high reputation as a mechanic among manufacturers and exporters in the great Midland swathe marked out on Swann's new maps as The Funnel.
And yet, into the heart and mind of the ageing Adam Swann, head of the tribe, there stole, on this high tide of fortune, a sense of unease as he stumped about his arbours, flowering shrubs, and exotic trees on that estate of his sixteen miles southeast of London Stone, and if you had taxed him with it he would have found it very difficult to express in words. It was not that prospects, after so far a run, were due for a change on that account alone, for to accept this would have been admitting to superstition and Adam was the least superstitious of men. Neither did it stem from the stridency of firm and family but from the mood of the tribe as a whole, that had now, seemingly, made a complete recovery from the blight of selfdoubt of a few years ago, when sixty thousand farmers had beaten them thrice in a single week. National preoccupation with what he saw as the fairground aspects of the new era might have contributed to his apprehension, for everywhere there was prattle about the garish stucco city they had erected at Shepherd's Bush and were comparing, to the former's advantage, with the Great Exhibition of 1851. And this, he thought, was nonsense, for alone among them he could remember the Great Exhibition and its air of earnest exploration, whereas now, at this fun parlour they called the White City, the most talked-of exhibit was the giant flipflap, a joyriding contraption of extraordinary silliness. Then there was the everincreasing emphasis on outdoor sports, as if German and American competition could be held at bay by an army of cricketers, yachtsmen, prizefighters, jockeys, lady archers, and lady tennis champions. Tremendous coverage was given, even in sober journals, to the antics of these tumblers and less and less, or so it seemed to him, to the real business of the nation, so that the British Empire might be going the way of Rome when the approach of the barbarians failed to deflect citizens from gladiatorial conventions in the Coliseum.
The very titles of current successes in West End theatres underlined the pervading frivolity of a nation hitherto dedicated to the pursuit of profit—The Merry Widow, A Waltz Dream, The Flag Lieutenant, and My Mimosa Maid. Slang was finding its way into the verbal currency of debutantes and top-hatted city gents, as well as that of street urchins. A serious campaign, aimed at extending the franchise to educated women, was treated, by press and public alike, as a lively sideshow running a close second to the White City's flip-flap, so that sometimes he began to equate London—in his day the most industrious city on earth—as a new Vienna, awaiting, indeed sometimes seeming to invite, total eclipse by Berlin and Chicago.
There had been a time, less than twenty years ago, when he would not have wagered a sixpence on the prospects of a successful overseas challenge, but it did not require a dedicated newspaper reader like himself to see Germany and the United States as strong contenders for the title of top dog today. Over on the Continent, he sensed, people still had their noses to the grindstone, whereas over here Bank Holidays, seaside trips, beanos, regattas, day excursions by motor brakes, and all manner of diversions were beginning to rank high on the programme of thirty-shilling-a-week clerks and even, he suspected, collarless artisans, among whom were a thousand or more Swann carters.
He was all for giving the underdog a fair crack of the whip, but underdogs ought never to forget that the only road to advancement lay through the portals of application and self-development. Certainly not through the turnstile of the White City or the nearest professional football stadium.
He wondered sometimes how that tough old warrior, John Catesby, he who had fought so hard and so courageously to establish the Trades Union Congress, would have regarded it. Contemptuously, he would say, remembering The Polygon manager's passionate avowal of the dignity of labour, but there it was—the sons of men whom Catesby had helped to liberate from stupefying labour in mill and factory were now more elevated by news that Britain had won four out of the first five prizes in the International Balloon Race than in improving machinery designed to strike a bargain between boss and hired hand. They did their work—shoddily if some of the new products he had handled lately were their judge—then rushed off to an athletic field somewhere, more often to watch than to play, for th
e gladiators who drew the largest crowds nowadays were professionals and even village cricket, they told him, was entering a decline.
Glum as they were, however, he kept these thoughts to himself apart from a hint or two to Giles, still struggling towards the Millennium, for it gave him no pleasure to puncture the self-confidence of George, Alex, and Edward, and he saw little of the girls now they were all off his hands.
So it was, when George came to him with an invitation to occupy the seat of honour at the forthcoming Jubilee banquet he was planning for late September, he thanked him and accepted, saying, "You'll not want me to make a speech, I hope?" And at that George laughed and said he most surely would be required to speak, for he was down to reply to the toast "Swann-on-Wheels, 1858–1908."
"Who else could do it with your style?" he demanded. "Come to that, who else has survived to challenge the authenticity of all the I-remembers you'll weave into your text?"
"Oh, I daresay a few old crocks will shake the moths out of their festive rig on the promise of free liquor. Not poor old Keate, the original waggonmaster, for he's ninety and anyway he's a teetotaller. But I daresay a few old stagers like Bryn Lovell, Young Rookwood, and Jake Higson will want to boast about their long service records. Where are you holding it? At the George Inn?"
No, George told him, it was planned to take place in the largest of the new warehouses, specially decorated for the occasion, and every region was balloting for a deputation of twenty employees, for even the warehouse could not accommodate everyone who would want to come.
"There'll be over three hundred by my reckoning," he added, "and on the same night every region is holding its own celebration dinner. I've allocated a grant of fifty pounds to every depot."
"Wives?"
"A few of them. Would mother be interested, do you suppose?"
"I wouldn't care to be the one who told her she hadn't been invited." Noting George's smile added, "Why do you ask such a question, boy?"
"I don't know… maybe because I've always sensed she regarded the network as a rival."
"So she did. But your mother's far too sharp to turn her back on the Other Woman. I found that out when you were a toddler."
It crossed his mind then to wonder how much they knew of Henrietta's achievement when she had hauled the business out of the doldrums that time he lost his leg and was out of action for a year. Little enough, he imagined, for it was all so long ago, and so wildly improbable at the time. It was a transformation, overnight, of a feckless girl into a merchant princess, and it gave him the bare bones of the speech George wanted him to make.
"Send her a card and all the trimmings," he said. "She'd appreciate that, boy."
2
Edith, he recalled, had once seen them as privateers-men, converging on the Thames to plan a string of piratical affrays, but when he reminded her of this, in the interval when they were milling around before taking their seats, she smiled and said, "But they've come en masse today, with their private retinues, so I see them a little differently. As trained bands, converging on the capital to squeeze the best terms out of the man who hires them. Or as a company of mercenaries, assembling under some old brigand like Sir Robert Knollys before cutting a swathe from Lower Normandy to Gascony."
He liked that and thought about it for a moment as he watched them exchanging banter round the seating plan George had fastened to a blackboard near the double doors. A White Company, well versed in the use of weapons, and masters of their own tactical skills, yet still needing the strategical direction of a veteran like George, a man they had come to trust and admire, forgetting the occasions when he had led them on unprofitable ventures and remembering only more recent triumphs in which every one of them had shared.
They had come here from every corner of the islands, bringing with them their local prejudices and babel of dialects, but disposed for once to set aside old rivalries and frontier skirmishes, for they would see themselves as meeting on neutral ground.
His eye roved among them, ironically but affectionately, revisiting their several beats and recalling, over half a century, the men who had planted the Swann banner in every shire of the four kingdoms. Higson and his band of Lowlanders and Highlanders, inviting ridicule by appearing in the kilt to which, no doubt, few of them were entitled. Their leader, Higson, was not among this minority. Adam recalled him as a rawboned lad of thirteen, with an accent that placed him no more than a mile from this spot, but none of the young bucks would have the temerity to remind him of his origins tonight. Higson's record was far too impressive. Within two years of crossing the border he had captured the Lowlands from the natives. In another year he had consolidated his gains. And in two years more he had won the Swann accolade, wresting it from that other gamin, Rookwood, who tonight moved among the upper echelons of celebrants like an exalted Palace flunkey, a cut above everyone save only George and himself, and only marginally below them in Swann seniority.
It was curious, he noted, how the ballot-chosen retainers took their several cues from the regional chieftains. Higson's lot looked like a score of moss troopers embarked on a border raid, whereas the men around Rookwood were a sober, respectable bunch, every man jack of them wearing gloves and evening dress, as though Rookwood had held an inspection on Salisbury Station before setting off for town.
Bertieboy Bickford's westerners were easily distinguished by their brogues and the volume of laughter, a heavy-jowled, redfaced, breezy troupe, who might have been recruited from Dartmoor and Exmoor smallholdings. The Lovell boys had travelled up with a covey of Welshmen, whereas Clint Coles's contingent were Irishmen to a man and gave the impression of having foregathered in advance at the George Inn, down the road, in order to fortify themselves for long speeches. Scottie Quirt was here from the north, with what seemed to Adam an entirely different breed—younger men mostly, many of them still in their twenties—and it struck him that mechanically-propelled vehicles would be unlikely to attract mature men, just as if the general post caused by Stephenson's railways nearly a century ago was being repeated all over again with the phasing out of the horse. Watching them, catching a word or two of their technical jargon, his mind returned for a moment to old coachman Blubb, who had been thrown on the scrapheap by "that bliddy teakettle," that had reduced professional coachmen to the status of carters.
The elegant Godsall, of the Kentish Triangle, came up to pay his respects to Henrietta and as they exchanged courtesies Adam reflected that Godsall was probably the only bona fide gentleman he had ever enrolled as a manager. Now, they said, he drove about Kent in a big Daimler car, like the one King Edward owned, so that in a sense the ex-guardee was a link between the old cadres and the new.
He managed to have a word with his grandson, Rudi, down from The Polygon and accompanied, he was glad to see, by that saucy little baggage he had married in such a hurry. He said, addressing her, "Well, now, and who's minding my great-grandson tonight?"
"Our Lottie, Grandfather—my youngest sister that is," she replied, pertly enough. "But she wouldn't do it for less than half a crown and only then if we gave her permission to have her young man in until Mam comes at suppertime."
"Ah," he said, chuckling, "you Lancastrians are razor sharp when it comes to putting a price on yourselves. They always say Yorkshire folk have the edge on you, but I never believed it."
"The difference is," she said, "on our side of the Pennines we don't mind parting with it once we've got it." And he thought approvingly, Young Rudi knew what he was about when he picked that lass, and so, I'd wager, did she, when she jumped the starter's gun. But they're well matched, somehow, and that's half the battle at their age." He turned aside to have a word with Dockett, of Tom Tiddler's Land, one of the very few originals here tonight.
Then someone beat a gong and the company began to sort themselves out, but the warehouse was so crowded that it took some time for guests to find their seats. In the hurly-burly he bumped into young Edward, who looked very spruce in a London-cut evenin
g suit, with a red carnation in his buttonhole and a blue silk collarette embroidered with the swan insignia. "It's George's idea," Edward said, grinning. "I'm toastmaster, you see," and then, moving to one side, he displayed his partner, the most attractive girl Adam had seen in a very long time.
It was not that she was pretty, in the way most young girls appeared to him nowadays, especially when they were dressed for an outing, or that her hair was a high, flaxen crown of exceptionally soft texture, or indeed that her eyes, a genuine violet, were veiled in long, curling lashes, so that she reminded him a little of Madame Récamier in David's portraits. She had intelligence as well as good looks in her smooth oval face, and a bloom on her cheeks that made him think of standing in his rose garden contemplating a handful of fallen petals and inhaling their sweetness. He thought, My word, she's a stunner! I wonder where he found her…? But then Edward said, "You've met Gilda, Gov'nor. She's Gilda Wickstead…"
"It was a long time ago, when I was in pigtails, Mr. Swann. You came up to the Crescents once or twice when Father was alive, but I've been abroad since I left school."
He took her hand, enclosing it in both of his and thinking, Now why the devil didn't Edith tell me she brought this lovely creature along…? But then, his sharp old eye catching the way his son was looking at her, he knew the reason. The boy was obviously much smitten by her, and Edith would prefer to leave introductions to him, providing he wanted to make them. He said, "My word, you're quite grown up. I didn't realise… we don't, you know, at my age… Abroad, you say? Where?" And she said Switzerland, where she had gone to learn French and German and later as a teacher of English at Tours University.
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