“I expected that,” Adam said.
A gleam of humour showed in Avery's green eyes. “Cards on the table, old comrade-in-arms. Even I couldn’t sell it as a necklace. The stones would have to be recut and disposed of separately. They’d lose a carat or two in the process.”
“I expected that, too.”
“Then let's consider. Thirty stones, varying considerably in size and quality. These big ones eight-to-six carats, the smaller ones three-to-five. All Burmese rubies, by the way, none of your Ceylon gewgaws.” He looked intently at nothing just beyond Adam's head, whistled a stave, and then went on, “Say an average of a hundred a stone in my kind of market, and that's the only market open to us in the circumstances. Three thousand pounds, less ten per cent.”
“Twenty-nine hundred,” said Adam. “I’m keeping one stone back.”
“Oh, come now, there are less expensive souvenirs of your wasted years with the John Company.”
“I’m getting married shortly and I want one of the medium-sized stones made up into a ring.”
Avery looked shocked. “Married, you say? Good God man, you can’t afford to do that yet, not even if I drop my commission to eight per cent for old times’ sake. But perhaps she brings a dowry and that's why you aren’t haggling?”
“She brings me the clothes she stands up in and even those were bought with my money.”
Avery said, curiously, “I was surprised to get your letter but knowing you its contents made sense. However, you’re not a man I would have thought to see hooked on that particular bait. Dear old Roberts, maybe, or ‘Circus’ Howard, or any of the young bucks who rode into battle carrying lockets and hair rings. But not you, Swann. Deep down I had the impression we had more in common than any two of them. Was I so wrong?”
“You were half right,” said Adam.
“How many of our Addiscombe class survived the Mutiny?”
“Only Roberts, and he's been badly bitten by the Imperial bug. You’ll hear more of him if he survives, but let's stay with the business on hand, Josh.”
“Don’t be so damned greedy. Thirty Burmese rubies are worth lingering over. Why do you need capital? Is it to buy your way into a crack regiment?”
“Far from it. I’m done with soldiering. I resigned and came home to take a bite at your cherry, Josh.”
He noticed then that curiosity, of the kind that made Avery as untypical as himself, had been aroused in the man and also, notwithstanding the prospect of financial gain, that it would have to be satisfied before he could enlist Avery as his agent. Even so it was not like trusting a civilian. Avery was a scoundrel but there existed between them the bond of shared experiences under fire, and it struck Adam that it might be to his advantage to put that bond to the test. He said, “I’ve got a dream, Josh. Not your kind of dream, to set up as a gentleman for at thirty plus I know myself better than that. Six months of it and sheer ennui would drive me back into the army. I need action but not the kind of action I was trained for. A very great deal has been happening over here in the last ten years, and I want to participate. Fortunes are being made every day by men with less initiative than we needed to survive in the field. Does that answer your question?”
“Only partly. What's the substance of your dream, Swann?”
Adam told him, as much but no more than was necessary, and Avery did not miss a word although, with those heavily lidded eyes, he might have been dozing. He said, pocketing the necklace, “Well, at least it's original, but I couldn’t say more than that, Adam.”
“I think you could if you cared to. You’ve been home long enough to get acclimatised.”
“I’m marginally involved in a variety of businesses but I’m not such a fool as to practise one. That would mean breaking my two golden rules, rising before noon and accepting personal responsibility. In short, I finance but I never operate. I leave that to people like you, people who dream dreams. However, it is true that I’m in a position to give you good advice. Will you listen, or do you prefer to make your own mistakes?”
“I’ve made one reconnaissance, and I intend making another before I take the plunge. There's something you could tell me at once. Assuming you advance three thousand, do I buy a rundown established business, or do I set up independently?”
“Nobody sells a business that is making money. Start one of your own but play for big stakes from the day you open. Three thousand, plus what you must have saved, isn’t a fortune for the caper you have in mind, but it's enough if you go about it the right way. You wouldn’t take kindly to a bonafide partner, I can see that, but you’ll need a backer, someone with close contacts among the men you’ll have to tout as a carrier.”
“You’d be prepared to back me?”
“Perhaps, but don’t let's keep it personal at this stage. My view is you’ll need guidance, and I could supply that if I had a mind to. You’ll need many other things—agents all over the country, upwards of fifty reliable drivers, and as many vehicles, coach-built by someone with a reputation at stake. You’ll need good horseflesh, for the coach roads have gone to hell since the railroads were built, and that means a number of strategically placed depots, with good stabling available. Damn it, I could sit here all day giving you free advice on any one of these matters but you know me. I don’t give advice, not even to old comrades-in-arms, I sell it. That's my business.”
“Then take first things first. Can you dispose of that necklace on the terms you mentioned?”
Avery said, thoughtfully, “I can do a lot better than that, Swann, depending upon how far you trust me.”
“Say the width of this table, Josh.”
“That's far enough.” Avery rang the bell, a waiter appeared and he issued orders for a meal. As soon as the waiter had disappeared, he went on: “There were rules in our kind of warfare. Sometimes our opponents didn’t observe them, but we had to, for political and fancy reasons. The war you’re so eager to join in is played without rules, except a few loose ones between the parties investing and the parties who do the spending and earning. You remember the Thugs in the North and Central plains? They sacrificed men to the god Kali. Over here two older gods share a six-day week, Mammon and Moloch. Jehovah still collects his dues on Sunday, but on the stroke of midnight his temple doors are slammed, everyone gets off their knees and goes back to Thuggery. You do business on that principle and it isn’t easy to accept at first.”
“I rode a horse from Plymouth to Lakeland, passing through a lot of country and keeping my eyes open so I’ll accept it. But sooner or later there will have to be rules. It’ll be that or French-style revolution, in my opinion.”
“Oh, they’ll bend rather than break if they have to. The holy Joes, men like Shaftesbury and Gladstone are already drafting legislation. Factory Acts, fenced machinery, compulsory education, even an extended franchise. But that won’t do more than enlarge the free-for-all and multiply your labour difficulties. Mammon will still work a six-day week. What you saw in the Midlands and North is a phase in the switch from an agricultural to an industrial economy, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. I daresay you think you can handle men, Swann, but you haven’t satisfied me yet that you can handle money. If you could you wouldn’t be here, falling over yourself to accept three thousand for something that deserves a place in the Tower of London alongside the Crown Jewels. The flower of the flock at all events, for I’ve never seen a ruby as large or as perfect as that big one. Maybe you should keep that in reserve. So here's a proposition. I’ll give you a banker's draft for three thousand and we’ll see what use you make of it. A year would be long enough, for by then you’ll either amount to something or you’ll have gone bankrupt. If that happens don’t look to me to bail you out. The partnership I bought for a song was owned by someone like you, who came home determined to climb on the haywain, fell off, and broke his neck. On the other hand, there's a certain promise about you, Swann. The way I look at it is this—you’re alive, and all the others save Roberts are dead, so it mus
t follow that you’re either exceptionally lucky or exceptionally quickwitted. I’ll gamble on you being both.”
“Am I to infer from that you want to put your own money up?”
Avery smiled and Adam thought of an old dog-fox sitting well to windward, and watching the pack stream by on a false scent. “No, my friend. I wouldn’t invest sixpence in transport by road, rail, or canal. For every transport venture that shows a profit ten stockholders throw themselves out of windows come quarter day. But I’ll cheerfully invest your money in it, being the difference between what I pay and what I get paid for twenty-nine rubies, won from the Ranee of Jhansi in all but single combat. How does that strike you?”
“As playing the hand you played in Bengal,” said Adam, “winner take all.”
“Ah,” said Avery, “but I’ve learned since then, and two years is a long apprenticeship in Pam's London. You never saw me take the risks in the field that I take every day in the city. Now you were once a death-or-glory boy, Swann. You even tagged on to Cardigan's charge at Balaclava, but I won’t hold that against you. I like that kind of man out ahead of me. He draws the fire and what have I got to lose but time?” He paused, thumbs hooked in the armpits of his canary yellow waistcoat. “You like my proposition?”
“So long as it isn’t committed to paper.”
Avery smiled and nodded three times, and Adam recalled that, although continuously interesting, he had never been liked, except by the troopers who always admired a showman. “I stopped putting things on paper when I resigned my commission,” he said, “but now and again I like to shake hands.”
They shook hands. It was a strange and rather casual beginning.
2
Looking back on that exploratory period in later years Adam always saw it as a feat of mountaineering attempted by an amateur.
The first base camp was his initial decision and then followed the long, toilsome advance. Later on, once he was fully committed and had his second wind, the foothills were accounted for at a good, steady pace, each successive summit representing an encounter, and what resulted from those encounters.
There was his chance meeting with Aaron Walker in the depot at Plymouth; the long ride across England; the witnessing of the riot that gave him an insight into the latent menace of the relationship between master and man and then, most improbably, Henrietta Rawlinson's flash of inspiration concerning the naming of the enterprise.
After that came his loose arrangement with Avery and all that emerged from that, so that he came to see this as the scramble that carried him, breathless but optimistic, to the peak. And it was here, again improbably, he came face to face with Saul Keate.
Keate, perhaps more than anyone else, was his catalyst, for it was Keate who was instrumental in recruiting and training his original labour force. Josh Avery's lazy patronage was to prove of great and lasting value to him in a variety of spheres, but no one aspect of it was as rewarding as his contemptuous gift of ex-sergeant Keate.
He met Keate on his final day in London, but all the preceding days, including three Sundays, were spent in affrays planned by Avery but executed without benefit of his chaperonage. For here Avery was as good as his word, generous with introductions and information but remaining very much in the background and only appearing from time to time, like the daemon in a pantomime.
Despite this, Adam could have gone further and fared much worse, for Avery's passport into the world of the men of Moloch and Mammon was not his flamboyance and surface charm, and not even his nerve or his access to capital although he used all these weapons. At a much deeper level it was his memory for trivia that put him on such good terms with a wide cross-section of men, without whom Adam might have floundered for months without achieving very much.
Avery directed him first to Blunderstone, a coach builder who made drays and waggons for some of London's most prosperous breweries, and here, in the waggonmaster's yard off Galleywall Road, he invested a third of his promised capital in a fleet of waggons, placing his orders on the strength of Blunderstone's designs for one-horse and two-horse vehicles, of the kind in general use for the transport of light and heavy goods over provincial roads. To Adam's amazement the coach-builder was able to promise delivery within eight weeks of signing the contract.
From here he was passed on to McSawney's stables, where he spent a day inspecting cart-horses of every breed and crossbreed, heeding the advice of McSawney's nagsmen but, in the main, making his own decisions. He left McSawney's having spent another five hundred pounds’ worth of Avery's money on a string of haulage animals capable of transporting the baggage train of a battalion over terrain where no metalled roads existed. The beasts he chose, Clydesdales for the heavy work, Cleveland Bays for lighter, faster routes, were probably the best available in Europe. The Clydesdales particularly inspired confidence. The smallest of them stood seventeen hands, weighed two thousand pounds, and was capable, he was told, of hauling a full load twenty miles a day if harnessed to the type of dray Blunderstone was making to his specification. His cavalryman's eye was attracted to the Percherons and Suffolk Punches, but he chose the two alternative breeds as most likely to serve a purpose that was becoming more clearly defined every day after discussions with wholesalers to whom Avery introduced him, usually by letter.
These letters amused but slightly embarrassed Adam, representing him as a man well-established in the haulage business, and invariably referring to him as “…my good friend Swann, owner and managing director of Swann-on-Wheels, Ltd., a concern I have no hesitation in recommending as highly competitive in rates and time schedules.” The wholesalers, who seemed to have many dealings with Avery and his associates, accepted this introduction at its face value, and by keeping his wits about him Adam was able to learn a good deal about likely competitors, notably the main line railways, whose rates seemed to him high and whose service was accepted as being notoriously unpunctual.
In the course of his expeditions in and about the city, and an occasional visit to the wharves above and below London Bridge, Adam came to the conclusion that, although railways now linked the capital with every main centre of industry south of Tyneside, the policy decisions of almost every important manufacturer in the country were made within hailing distance of London Wall. Here were based the distributors of all the clamorous enterprises that had quadrupled their output under the impetus of steam, and although most of them might have originated in places like Seddon Moss, in one or other of the pottery towns, in the Yorkshire dales, or the coalfields of the North-East and Midlands, the newcomers lost no time in acquiring the brashness of the London-born merchant, and were quick to adopt his contempt for provincials. He met Staffordshire men who would never have admitted to walking two hundred miles southeast in search of work after the riots of ’48, and Manchester men who might have been among those who fled from the yeomanry sabres at Peterloo but had since learned to look upon their northern kinsfolk as chawbacons. He heard a Batley man mangling his vowels in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal a strong Yorkshire accent and correct the odd idiom that slipped out when boasting of how much shoddy he had shipped to the Orient last month. They were all, it seemed, disenchanted with the provinces and spoke of their home towns, if at all, as an absentee bishop in the last century would have referred to rural pocket-livings that enabled him to drive a coach and four through his fashionable diocese. Every one of them had an office or a warehouse hereabouts, the steel men of Sheffield, the wool barons of Bradford, the more important spinners of Rochdale and Oldham, the leather men of Leicester. Here, eating themselves to death in fashionable chophouses, were Dubliners, Glaswegians, Lancastrians, Geordies and Welshmen, merchants with thriving businesses on Mersey and Tyne, and Midlanders building their mock-Georgian houses in Kensington and Bayswater on the proceeds of factories that were fouling the skies over Walsall and Dudley. There were spare men, gross men, sober men, and men whose clothes and breath reeked of the taproom. There were men who were open-handed and others who, like Rawl
inson, would have taken pride in skinning a grape for a profit. There were men who spent their time impressing others that they were on Christian-name terms with the cousin of an earl, and others who made a cult of vulgarity and could have been hobnobbing with Sam Rawlinson the day before yesterday. Three things they had in common, an impressive display of whiskers and energy, and an insatiable greed, but it was greed that made the more socially ambitious among them as ruthless as a starving fox in a hen-run. To Adam Swann this had advantages. Transport rates quoted at a penny a hundredweight below the current average ensured their civility from the moment he entered their offices, and not one of them demanded credentials after glancing at one of Avery's larded introductions.
He had taken lodgings in a small hotel kept by an ex-butler in a clean little street off the Gray's Inn Road, returning there each evening too tired to do more than enter up his day-book, eat a simple dinner, and go to bed, but he found, to his surprise, that sleep did not come as easily as it had after a day in the saddle and that, in the last afterglow of the sunset, his thoughts would return not to the debts he had incurred during the day but to Henrietta, some three hundred miles to the north-west.
God is an Englishman Page 16