Give Us This Day

by R. F Delderfield

  "But she's back for good now," said Edward, with a hint, he thought, of desperation. "We shall have to talk later, Gov'nor. George wants the top table seated. The caterers have been complaining to him that the soup will go cold." They moved on, the girl inclining her head to him with an enigmatic little smile that encouraged him to whisper to Henrietta, as they took their seats in front of a side table bearing a gigantic cake surmounted by a silver swan, "Young Edward is hooked. Look over there, on the left, that girl in green next but one to Edith!" He saw her look, frowning with concentration, for he was aware that she was concerned by her youngest son's extended bachelorhood. "It's Edith's girl… the one that came along after her boys were grown. She's…" But then George was on his feet, and Edward was calling for silence in order that grace could be said, and both of them were caught up in conversations with their neighbours, so that he judged the subject of ending Edward's bachelorhood would not arise until they were back at the hotel and preparing for bed. For that was usually Hetty's time for family inquests, confound it. She never seemed affected by the fatigues of the day.

  * * *

  A sustained clatter of china and cutlery, a nonstop hubbub of talk; the quality of the beef, the hundred and one quips sparked off by the rivers of champagne, ale, Madeira, and port. This was a celebration dinner to be remembered and relished as Swann-on-Wheels entered its second half-century. He had never been much of a trencherman—the short commons of youthful campaigns had seen to that—but he had always appreciated good company and a collective sense of achievement. The latter touched him now like a shaft of sunlight, illuminating the long and adventurous road they had travelled together, since he stood on or about this spot (there were no warehouses, as such, in those days) and wished old Blubb, his Kentish manager, good luck on the first Swann Embassy to pass the gates.

  So few were present who could share that memory. Keate, the aged waggonmaster could, of course, and Bryn Lovell, about his own age, called out of retirement by the stupendous occasion. Dockett, too, and Morris, formerly of Southern Pickings based on Worcester. And Edith, whose father had once managed Crescent North, plus two of the original yard staff, a smith and a night-watchman. A mere eight out of a company of over three hundred, but it didn't matter all that much. There were memories enough to be bandied around and most of them got an airing tonight.

  "Do you remember that damned awful winter of 'sixty-five, when we had floods in five southern regions and snow blocks on every road north of Birmingham?"—"Do 'ee mind old 'Amlet vetching that bliddy lion home and getting civic honours from the Mayor of Exeter? Nobody told 'is Worship the poor brute would've rin from a tomcat with a vull set o' teeth…!"—"Wass you born, bach, when Bryn Lovell hauled that Shannon pump up a mountain to pump the water out of Pontnewydd pit, then?"— "…Seven ton that turret weighed, or so I heard. But George always reckoned it as a shade over six."—"…I first smelled smoke when I was coming out of the weighbridge hut and next minute, woof—up she goes, and a Clydesdale goes tearing by…" Up and down the tables like the exchange of so many brightly coloured balls in a complicated party game that everyone could play, even young Kidbroke, fourteen-year-old van boy, who had drawn a lucky ballot paper in Southern Square, for only last week Kidbroke had been present when a Swann vehicle broke down on a narrow bridge over a Hampshire river and blocked main road traffic for nearly an hour.

  And then the cake cutting and the speeches, amusing most of them, and well spiced with anecdotes, but one or two rambling and heard with impatience, so that when it came to his turn he thought, I must cut it short… They'd sooner flirt and guzzle than listen to me. But there was complete silence when, in response to Edward's stentorian "Pray silence for Mr. Adam Swann, our Founder," he rose to his feet and put on his reading glasses in the unlikely event he would use his notes.

  He thanked them all gravely for honouring himself and the firm and told them a little, just a very little, of what it had felt like to take the gamble he had taken as a rank outsider in the transport stakes of those days. But then, perhaps because he could sense their genuine interest, he warmed to his favourite theme: the marriage of capital and labour that had been his policy ever since he signed on his first two score hands, and that other Swann precept, selecting local men who knew their areas and potential customers for executive positions in most regions between here and the north. He told them something of the tightrope days, of the first managerial conference a few months before the present managing director was born and how, on that occasion, "We came so close to bankruptcy that Mrs. Swann will tell you those weeks were responsible for the first patches of white on a head where anyone among you tonight would have difficulty in finding a single dark hair." But this reminded him of his original thoughts for a wind-up and he continued—interrupted by a few shouts of "Hear, hear!," and a cry of "No politics, please"—"We hear a great deal these days, of Women's Rights, and a woman's eligibility to take a responsible part in running the country, so let me conclude by reminding some of you younger folk of a crisis this firm survived, as long ago as 1866, solely on account of the skill and courage of two women, both of them happily in our midst. I refer to my wife, and to Mrs. Tom Wickstead, who encouraged her to take over the personal direction of Swann-on-Wheels when I was abroad, learning to use this tin leg of mine.

  "Very few here will remember that challenge, and how it was met, but some will—among them four of the originals, Keate, Dockett, Morris, and Lovell, respectively waggonmaster and managers of three regions at that time. For the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, I came home from Switzerland in June of that year expecting to have to start all over again, but several surprises awaited me. The first was that there was more money in the bank than when I had left. The second was that Miss Wadsworth was no longer Miss Wadsworth but Mrs. Wickstead. And the third—spare Mrs. Swann's blushes—was that I had a three-months-old son I didn't even know about, who grew up to be the Member of Parliament for Pontnewydd in the Mountain Square! So be damned careful, all of you, how you approach the subject of Women's Rights in the future!"

  It was probably the most successful joke that he had ever used to terminate one of his speeches, and he took advantage of the laughter and applause to sit down and take a sidelong glance at Henrietta, who was indeed blushing, a rare occurrence for her these days. Everybody rose to their feet then and the cheer they gave him could have been heard—indeed, was heard according to young Harry Hitchens, a vanboy who lived hard by—in Tower Bridge Road.

  She whispered, laughing, "Really, Adam, you might have warned me."

  "Not on your life. Haven't seen you blush in fifty years."

  "Can you wonder, with you for a husband?" she replied. "But I must say they're all very kind, and I'm so glad I came. Do introduce me to that girl Edward's squiring. I'd like to look her over, for it's time he settled down like the rest of them."

  But it wasn't that easy in the mêlée that followed, with so many of them passing in and out of the warehouse as they cleared the floor for the dancing that was to follow. He had a brief word with George, congratulating him on the smooth organisation of the dinner, and in tempting so many of them down to London. "Bright idea to have it right here, too," he added. "At a hotel or assembly rooms it wouldn't have been the same somehow. Hello, Milton, my boy, glad you could get here," as he greeted Deborah's husband, the journalist, who asked of George, "Have you told him yet?"

  "No," George said, "I haven't had a minute. Tell him yourself and see what he thinks. He likes to pretend he's out of it, but that's rigmarole. If we offered him a seat on the board he'd jump at it, wouldn't you, Gov'nor?"

  "Don't deceive yourself as to that," Adam said. "I've done my stint. You're not thinking of enlisting Milton, are you?"

  "In a way he is," Milton said, "but on a part-time basis." As George moved away to welcome the five-piece orchestra they had hired, Jeffs said George had offered him a tempting screw to found and run a magazine for circulation within the network.

  "Why,
that's a perfectly splendid idea," Adam exclaimed. "Who thought of it?"

  "Who else but Debbie? I earn a good living but the Street is a young man's life and a three-day-week editorial job of that sort would be a wonderful standby. You approve of it, then?"

  "Wholeheartedly," Adam said. "What will you call it?"

  "We haven't decided. How about The Swann Bulletin?"

  "Too dull," Adam said, "we've always had a reputation for quirkish titles. How about The Swann Migrant?"

  Jeffs laughed, saying, "You really are on top of your form tonight, Gov'nor."

  Henrietta, he noticed, was surrounded by wives and daughters, and he needed a breath of fresh air, so he slipped out into the yard and stood by the old horsetrough, reviewing a scene bathed in silver moonlight, with the outline of the new buildings stark and clear against the sky and, hard to his left, the slender tower of the belfry that was still the ark of the tabernacle as far as he was concerned.

  Moved by an impulse, he drifted across to it, aware of stirrings and giggles in the patches of shadow where, no doubt, some of the younger ones were making the most of their opportunities. He went in and tackled the winding stair, needing no light on ground as familiar as this and stumping his way up to the queer, octagonal room at the summit, where the door stood open and moonlight flooded the floor about the narrow casement. And then he stopped, sniffing Turkish tobacco and vaguely aware of a figure standing by the embrasure, looking out on the wide curve of the Thames. He said, jocularly, "Hello there? Who's been sleeping in my bed on this night of nights?"

  The figure turned, moving into the moonlight, and he saw to his surprise that it was Edith, her mantle thrown over her shoulders and a cigarette in her hand.

  "You? Well, I don't know! What drew you up here, I wonder?"

  "Memories, mostly. Whenever I thought of you in the old days, and it was every day before I married Tom, it was always here, Adam. Never at Tryst, and never out on the network," she said.

  "I didn't know you were a smoker."

  "Just occasionally, when I want to think. They're Turkish. Will you have one?"

  "No, thanks, I'll stick to my cheroots." He lit one, blowing the smoke up to the cobwebbed rafters as he said, gaily, "Edward introduced me to that girl of yours. She's a rare beauty, Edith. Tom would have been very proud of her."

  "Yes, he was," Edith said, "although he didn't have long with her. He died before she put her hair up."

  He might have been wrong but he thought he noted a drag in her voice, enough to prompt him to say, "You still miss him terribly, don't you?"

  "Yes, I do. I thought it would get a little easier every day, but it doesn't. Times like this, when all the survivors get together, are the worst. It wasn't so bad when the boys were at home, but they had to move on. I was glad when George gave them a chance to prove their mettle in a busier sector."

  "Well, you've got Gilda home now, I hear."

  "Gilda isn't the same, Adam."

  "How do you mean?"

  She turned, drawing thoughtfully on her cigarette. Its aromatic whiff reminded him, momentarily, of the military base at Scutari, where he had spent a month recovering from a wound received in the Sebastopol trenches. "Your boy has proposed to her, Adam."

  "He has? Well, I'm delighted to hear it, and Hetty will be, too. She has a great deal of respect for you, Edith, and I don't have to tell you how pleased I should be to acknowledge a daughter of yours as my own."

  "I didn't say she'd accepted him."

  "A girl as pretty as Gilda would be sure to keep a man on a string for a month or two."

  "There's more than that in it. Gilda… well, she's different somehow. Very sure of herself. Too sure, I sometimes think. That's the penalty of over-educating a girl. It would take her a long time to settle down after all her travels abroad, and the kind of people she met and mixed with in France, Switzerland, and Italy."

  "Well, that's her prerogative. How old is she, exactly?"

  "Twenty-two. She's already had half-a-dozen proposals. One was from a French count, I believe." Then, hesitantly, "I don't know Edward very well, Adam, but what I've seen of him I like. He seems a very practical lad, more like George than any of the others."

  "He's practical all right. George tells me he's shaping up wonderfully."

  "Sensitive? Easily hurt?"

  "I couldn't say. No more or less than most lads his age. He's very dedicated to his work. That's all I could say. I didn't have much part in raising them, you recall. Right here was my family, up to the time I retired, and by the time I did they had all grown up and most of them had gone."

  "Well, I wouldn't like to see a boy of yours hurt or humiliated, and I've even gone so far as to tell Gilda as much. If she means to marry him, fair enough. If she doesn't, I won't have her encouraging him too much."

  It surprised him to hear her talking like this, indicating as it did the underlying reason for her presence up here alone, as if doubts concerning her daughter's romance had driven her here, clear away from the noise and high spirits below. He said, "Look here, Edith, don't you concern yourself. Edward's a grown man and must learn to look to himself in matters of this kind. Was that why you came up here? To mull it over in solitude?"

  "Partly," she said, "but not altogether. I had a queer sensation down there tonight, when they were all congratulating one another on the past, present, and future prospects of the firm. I can't describe it, exactly, but it wasn't altogether removed from… well, a sense of foreboding. So silly on an occasion like this."

  "Not so silly," he said. "I've had a niggle or two under my own ribs just lately. Not about the firm, however, about the country generally."

  "Tell me."

  "I can't, or not precisely. It's old age, I daresay, and the rate of change I see about me. But the fact is, as I see it, we're too damned confident, the whole boiling of us. We've all had a wonderful run for our money, had it all our own way for too long. As a trading nation, I mean. I thought we would slow down and take stock when we got that drubbing from the Boers a few years since but we didn't. The minute we had 'em on the run we were the same arrogant, overweening tribe of chest-beaters. It never seems to occur to anyone that the Continental and American competition is getting tougher every day. There's a lot I don't like about the international scene for that matter. These constant confrontations between Russia, Austria, Germany, and France, and our politicians' tendency to stick our nose in, instead of minding their own till and exploiting the tremendous potential in the dominions and colonies. The Continent's business isn't our business, and I never did trust the French any further than you could throw the Arc de Triomphe!"

  He had succeeded in cheering her up anyway, for she laughed, saying, "You don't change a bit, Adam. And I'm glad, and so is everyone down there. Come, I've not had more than a word with Henrietta, and if anyone finds us up here in the dark the old rumours will start circulating on the Swann grapevine."

  "Not," he said, mournfully, "at my age. At yours, maybe, for you don't look more than forty in moonlight." He took her hand and led her across the threshold and down the stairs into the brightly-lit yard, thinking as he did of a time she came up here with some tomfool notion of emigrating to Australia simply because she believed herself hopelessly in love with him. But that was before she met Tom, he thought. After that I might not have existed. This prompted him to ask her, as they crossed the yard to the warehouse, whether she had ever told Gilda and the boys about Tom Wickstead's past as a man who had once walked abroad with a revolver strapped to his wrist. "Never," she said. "What purpose would it have served? Besides, he never was a bad 'un in that sense, not even before I met him. He was only hitting back at a society that had stamped on him and his. His father was transported for twelve years for stealing a piece of cloth to make clothes for his mother and sisters. His mother died in the workhouse at thirty-five and his eldest sister went on the streets, for it was a case of that or starve. Incidentally, he named Gilda for her. It's ironic how the wheel tu
rns full circle, don't you think?"

  He had no time to answer for, seeing them, half-a-dozen people converged on them, but he thought about it at intervals all the evening and later when Henrietta said, as they undressed, "I had a talk with that girl of Edith's. She seems terribly brainy—Deborah's sort of braininess. I do hope Edward hasn't bitten off more than he can chew."

  He replied, a little grumpily, "If he has he can spit it out. The same as we all have to from time to time. Turn out the light, woman. I'm dog-tired and you ought to be."

  And then, as she climbed into bed and settled herself, he forgot Gilda and Edith, too, his mind basking a little in the splendour and fulfilment of the Jubilee, and all it represented in terms of personal and collective endeavour. As to the nation, he supposed it was like Edward, mature enough to absorb any shocks and disappointments that lay ahead and equipped to ride them out, the way he had done since he came to this city to prise up a few of those golden paving-stones they were always talking about in the shires.