It was as well he had written in detail, giving Adam an inkling of the magnitude of the task, for it was clear that Hamlet loved a lord and had not deigned to consider the needs of his regular customers. Adam said, after ringing for Tybalt, “I don’t question it's an order worth having, and it’ll keep Ratcliffe out of mischief until the leaves fall, but what about his farm runs? They’re his bread and butter and I won’t sacrifice them for that old fool's jam. How many frigates has Ratcliffe got down there?”
Tybalt, consulting Frankenstein, said four, adding that the depot manager would probably resort to men-o’-war, but here was an occasion where Adam, considering the problem in the general and dismissing the particular, was prepared to ride roughshod over his clerk. “Good God, man, you can’t shift a nobleman's French furniture and bric-a-brac across country on open waggons,” he said, “notwithstanding acres of tarpaulin. Down there it rains six days out of seven and, moreover, Ratcliffe's men-o’-war are old and springless. How would it look if the goods were sodden, or shaken to pieces by the time they arrived at his new place? No, my friend, we’ll have to shunt half-a-dozen frigates down from the Southern Square, and replace them from here. According to my recollection Abbott has nine based on Salisbury and they won’t all be in daily use at this time of year.”
“Mr. Abbott won’t like that at all,” said Tybalt, but Adam said Abbott would have to lump it. The Southern Square manager was an improviser, but Ratcliffe had hooked a big fish, and it was the business of Headquarters to make sure he landed it.
Twilight stole into the turret while they juggled with teams, vehicles, and mileages over the roads Ratcliffe's carters were likely to use in hauls across Devon uplands and along marshy river-bottoms, and it was dark before they found satisfactory answers to the complicated sums. Then Tybalt crept away, clutching a sheaf of instructions that would, Adam supposed, keep the conscientious chap busy far into the night. He said, as the clerk withdrew, “Take a cab home, Tybalt, and do your work at your fireside, after supper. It's damned cold in that counting-house when everyone has gone. Charge the cab to the petty cash. Even you’ll agree we can afford it today.”
Tybalt said, hovering, “Thank you, sir. Will you be making a night of it?” but Adam said he would not, having decided to spend the night at home and postpone the northern trip until the current problems were settled in detail.
There were one or two items that needed his attention before the last post went out, and he lit the lamp and one of his favourite Burmese cheroots, shooting his long legs under the desk and blowing smoke rings towards the vaulted ceiling. Slowly the clatter of the yard subsided as draymen came and went and Keate's staff walked the horses to their stables. Lights twinkled across the city beyond the river, and in the violet dusk he saw the Conqueror's towers dissolve. He thought, pleasantly, “What a day! I had a feeling we were turning the corner when I opened Dockett's letter but that was hours ago. Now we’ve not only turned it but been kicked round it and are running downhill at a pace that's making Tybalt's head spin! Dockett's slogan and removal bookings, Morris's Royal Worcester contract, Sam Rawlinson's dock-to-mill, all-the-year-round order in the Polygon, and now Ratcliffe having to borrow frigates from his next-door neighbour before putting his name to the best contract we’ve ever screwed out of his patch! If we go on like this we shall be clear of debt by September. One more heave and I could be owner of Tryst into the bargain!”
He got his bonus heave. Footsteps echoed on the staircase and he called, in response to a light knock, “Come in, whoever you are. This is Liberty Hall today!” and as the door opened he smelled lavender and looked into the eyes of the woman to whom he had been trying to write a letter all day.
He jumped up, crushing the butt of his cheroot into a saucer and exclaiming, “My God! Now it's you, Edith!” and he was so pleased to see her that he did not stop to reflect that she might be here to say good-bye before taking ship from Tilbury for Australia but lunged round the end of the desk, threw his arms round her, and kissed her on both cheeks and finally on the lips.
She said, gaily, “Thank you, sir, but you smell of tobacco!” and he said, holding her at arms length, “And you of lavender, and the bonnier for it!” There was, he noted, a latent sparkle about her as though, for some deep-seated reason, she was moderately pleased with him and herself. She said, “As to the lavender, it's my Sunday clothes. I don’t go to church often enough and they lay about in closets. However, I didn’t come here to discuss clothes.”
He said, anxiously, “You’re not on your way to join a ship? How could you be? Your father's still in the Infirmary, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said, “and doing well. He’ll be home in a day or so, and back at work after a fortnight's convalescence. No, Adam, there's no ship and my father doesn’t even know I’m in London, for what I’ve been about is a hole-and-corner business and I’m not sure he’d approve. He might even regard it as treacherous, for I set to work on his cronies in his absence. Quite shamelessly, I might add.”
Her gaiety kept bubbling through and she peeled off her gloves with what he could only regard as a debonair nourish. “Being greeted in that way,” she went on, “has unsettled my thoughts and that's a pity for they were very well organised when I entered the yard. Tybalt and Keate know I’m here, by the way, so please behave for we aren’t in Wharfedale now.”
“You’re here on business? My business?”
“Very much so.” She looked around. “A convent bell-tower may be a romantic place to work but it's too Spartan for women lieutenants. You don’t even have a fire.”
“Oh, I never feel the cold,” he said, “I’ve never quite shed the relief of escaping from under that steamy Bengal heat. Suppose we go somewhere more comfortable? Down to the George, where I could buy you tea and hot muffins?”
“I had tea when I left the train and I’ve not much time, for I mean to catch the seven-ten back to Peterborough. Why Peterborough? Because I’m established there. Permanently I hope but I can’t be sure. It depends on you, I suppose.”
“You’re talking riddles and that means you’re concealing something.” An unpleasant thought struck him. “You’re not married, are you?” and she laughed and said, with the same note of gaiety, “What if I were? What's it to you?”
“I can tell you that,” he said, catching her mood, “I’d be jealous and any blessing you extracted from me would be a grudging one!”
Her eyes danced and he began to sense that the threat of Australia was receding.
“You really are a bit of a Turk, Adam, and it isn’t very flattering, even though I’ve never made much secret of my availability as second fiddle. However, I’ll not let myself be sidetracked for, as I said, I haven’t the time. I mean to catch that train and make sure you catch yours. Has that child of yours arrived yet?”
“Any day now, and I’ve just had Henrietta's father here. He's buying up an Egyptian cotton crop for a new mill he's opened in the Polygon and we’ve landed the haulage contract from dock to loom.”
“That's very encouraging,” she said. “How is business generally?”
“If you had asked me yesterday I should have said middling but right now it's booming. We’ve had the best day I can ever remember,” and he told her briefly of Dockett's success, Morris's new contract, Ratcliffe's deal with Lord Augustus, and Sam's plans in Rainford.
“Well,” she said, “that cuts me down to size. I was hoping you were down in the dumps because I’ve got something in my reticule that might be the means of getting Swann-on-Wheels out of debt by Christmas. Now it seems, I’m only the fairy on top of the cake.”
She opened her bag and took out a folded tracing, smoothing it out on his desk. He recognised it as a map of the Crescents and the northern half of The Bonus, including most of Suffolk, scored by the sinuous “Y” of the Great Northern, where it ran north to Peterborough and forked, the eastern branch slicing her territory, the western arm taking a westerly course to Doncaster. To the right, a com
plicated criss-cross of lines, were the arteries and spurs of the Eastern Counties, with its main route stretching from Peterborough to the sea at Lowestoft. A red-pencilled oval ringed the entire network. He said, motioning her to his swivel chair, “What the devil have you been up to while your father was in the Infirmary?”
“You remember that railway contact he mentioned at the conference in December, a nice little man called Brockworth? Well, he's the goods manager for the Eastern Counties, based at Cambridge and often in our part of the world. He's a widower, luckily, with two young children and I…well, let's say I was able to do him a very good turn. His sister, who keeps house for him, fell sick, so I had the children to stay over the Christmas. It was just before father went into the hospital to have his hernia seen to.”
“What's that to do with a shift of base to Peterborough? Unless you intend to take on his children permanently?”
“Oh, he's already suggested that,” she said, laughing, “but I politely declined. The children are nice enough, a bright boy we might employ in a year or two, and a little girl called Angela, but Brockworth himself is no catch, not even for a girl like me. He earns a good wage and has money in the bank I’m told, but he's fifty-plus and has a wall eye. You’ll have to believe I didn’t strike that kind of a bargain with him.”
“What kind?”
She took a deep breath, so that for a moment he saw her not as a handsome woman but a vivacious schoolgirl, giddy with enthusiasm for a fad or fashion that pushed everything else out of mind.
“It's astounding what a volume of goods traffic they handle,” she said. “Far more, proportionately, than the bigger companies that look on goods traffic as small beer compared with fare-paying passengers. Maybe it's the comparative isolation of their territory, with so many scattered communities. Scattered, mind you, but settled and prosperous, quite unlike the places Ratcliffe and Lovell operate in the West and the Mountain Square. East Anglia is thickly populated, and its industries, although small, are very diverse. But you’d know that.”
“I know it. Go on about the Eastern Counties.”
“They’re not a particularly wealthy company and sometimes I get the impression they’ll be squeezed out in the end. They can’t afford to invest in more spurlines, like the Great Western and the L. & N.W., and they’ve gone about as far as they can with the capital at their disposal. You remember a majority of depot managers approved that idea we had of exploiting the rivalry between the companies? Well, I went one better than that. I told Brockworth we could offer him a scheme to cover every town, village, and hamlet east of Peterborough to Norwich and beyond, and even down into Vicary's territory in The Bonus. With a difference, however, and an important one. In this case they transport the goods over their lines to a dozen or more dispersal points, but they do it in our sacks, which are sealed on loading. At each depot we offload them and deliver the rest of the distance in pinnaces.”
“Why in pinnaces?” He had forgotten his personal involvement with her, forgotten indeed that she was a woman at all for this was a new kind of challenge and his imagination took fire. He might have been tackling a logistical problem with Tybalt or her father.
“Because the Eastern Counties handle very few heavy goods,” she said. “It's all parcels weighing anything between ten to twenty pounds consigned to places like village stores and private addresses, farms and manufactories employing under a dozen hands. Small stuff granted, but an enormous volume of it, and the fact that they make the main haul means we can cut costs to the bone and make it up on turnover. I’ve even worked out test figures. If we deliver a thousand parcels a month, at an average weight of ten pounds apiece, we could show a net profit of threepence a pound on everything under a twenty-mile haul and more if the haul is not above five miles. Pinnaces are half as cheap to run as frigates and only a third as costly as a man-o’-war. They’re faster, too, and we could build on our reputation for speed. We should need a fleet, of course, but outside London you don’t use your small vans much. Most of them in the territories are doing odd-job work that can’t show you a profit of a penny a pound. I could multiply that by three and keep at least thirty vans in day-to-day use all over Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire. That's not all, either. If it paid off we could employ the same tactics with bigger lines all over the country, using the Eastern Counties as a pilot scheme. A study of the annual turnover would give us all the information we need to make every railway in the country a sound proposition on the subcontract basis. You might ask, since they already have the traffic, why they should share it with us, but the answer is so simple I wonder we’ve never hit on it before. The bulk of lightweight traffic carried over the rail in this country is carried at a loss. Some of their sacks and crates go half-empty, except at Christmas time. On the figures I squeezed out of Brockworth on the strength of a pigeon pie I baked him, it never has paid a railway to haul small parcels from door to door. You’ll find most companies ready to subcontract, providing you cut them in on the profits. You can’t absorb all this at once Adam, it's too complex and will need time and thought. That's why I wrote a detailed report, summarising the information I coaxed out of Brockworth.”
She opened her reticule again and produced a little black book. He flicked through the pages, finding them covered with her handwriting and close columns of figures. Here was the answer to most of the doubts and queries he was likely to raise, methodically indexed and cross-referenced, in a style that would have earned the unhesitating approval of Tybalt.
He said, “You’re right, Edith. It would need thought and very careful calculation before we were in a position to offer quotations, but the idea itself doesn’t need a moment's thought. You’ve done most of the thinking and I don’t have to tell you what this could mean if it comes up to expectations, yours or mine. It's the biggest single advance we’ve ever made, or are likely to make, and I’d be a fool not to see that at once and give you credit for it. Now let's consider the personal element. Do you think I could go forward with this without making some kind of recompense? This map, this report you’ve compiled must have represented weeks of hard grind on your part, and it doesn’t fit in with what you hinted about emigrating the last time you wrote. What's happened in the interval? I have to know that because, if I go forward with the scheme, you would have to be part of it. The most important part.”
For the first time since she had slipped into the room some of her composure left her. Then, looking at him frankly, she said, “Nothing very complicated. I suppose I saw myself more clearly than I have in a long time and I didn’t like what I saw, a woman racing down the years to middle-age and living off a diet of self-pity and regrets. First Matt, drowned at sea, then you, married to a woman who loves you well enough to change into the person you need.”
“Just what am I to make of that?”
She stood up, brushing shreds of tobacco from the sleeves of her dress where her arms had rested on his desk. “I made up my mind once and for all about you the last time I was here. I’ve been unlucky myself but that doesn’t give me the right to steal some other woman's happiness. I’ve always despised weaklings, men and women, and I was fast becoming one myself, incapable of standing on my own feet and looking the world in the eye.” She paused. “You want the whole truth? Very well, here it is. I’ve gone through a bad time since you came to me at Richmond last summer. I knew then there would never be anyone else but you and for a time, and I don’t mind admitting this, I half made up my mind to get you if I could. I lay awake thinking of little else right up to the time of that conference, and even afterwards. It wasn’t fear of scandal that held me back but the difference in you since you put your foot down at home and kept it down. You were still growing, and who was I to check that for purely selfish reasons? I suppose some people would call that conscience but, believe me, it wasn’t. Women don’t have consciences about men they covet and besides, I’m not a religious person, and I don’t even believe in an after-life. It was something more earthy, a sen
se of fair play if you like, or my own long-term interests and yours. I was quite serious about emigrating and went right ahead with my plans. Then, one night, I found myself looking in the mirror saying, ‘Stand up, for God's sake! Be someone in your own right. Running away to Australia won’t help for over there, a man's country if ever there was one, you won’t even get a chance to express yourself, as you can right here on your own doorstep.’ I went downstairs in my nightdress, stoked up the stove and burned those emigration papers. You want to hear more?”
“Every word.”
“Well, then, the next morning I went out after Brockworth and from there on it was easy, or easier every day. I was doing something, using my brains, being somebody with a job on hand.”
“You always had a job on hand, Edith.”
“A makeshift one, that didn’t require anything more than managing a team and keeping an eye on a few beer-swilling waggoners. This was different. This was creative. I suppose that's why I understand you better than anyone in the network. I don’t know what's in your mind but I’ll tell you what's in mine. Father is about finished. He's still good for work but only work at a desk, and that isn’t good enough in our kind of business. If you adopt that scheme make me boss of all the Crescents and you’ll never have cause to regret it. It isn’t a woman's role, maybe, but I’m not a fashionable woman and never was. My brain is as good as any man's on your list and a lot better than some—Ratcliffe's for instance, and Vicary's, down in The Bonus. I’d get a different kind of fulfilment out of that and you’d profit by it. But perhaps that's another thing you’d like to think on.”
God is an Englishman Page 63