Read Online Give Us This Day by R.F. Delderfield - Free Book Online
Authors: R.F. Delderfield
Tags: Historical
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sent the boy abroad and he seemed to remember that George had had a high old time in Paris, Munich, and ultimately Vienna, where he lodged in the house of a carriage-builder, with four pretty granddaughters. One of them, Gisela, George had married and not before time, if Adam’s arithmetic was correct.
Since then, so far as he knew, George had never had time to sow wild oats. For two years or more he had been besotted by that engine he brought home and after that, when he had proved his point by actually making the thing run, he had taken over as gaffer at the yard. The relationship of father and son, once strong, had weakened over the years. Since his retirement eight years ago, Adam had leaned on Giles harder than any of them, but he seldom talked shop with Giles. Mostly they discussed politics and social issues, subjects that interested them both. As for young Tybalt, he would take a lot of persuading that a young fellow in his position would play fast and loose with his future. Wesley Tybalt came from exceptionally sober stock, and his father was always on hand to hold a watching brief. It therefore seemed very unlikely that a man like Levison, head of a shipping business in Liverpool, could have heard anything but a rumour to the contrary, and yet… old Sam was certainly no fool when it came to a man’s commercial worth.
He recalled then that Levison’s firm used a rival haulage line. Linklater’s it was, a tinpot outfit, not regarded by any big haulier as a serious rival, and maybe it was there he should look for clues. A dispute between Swann-on-Wheels and Linklater’s maybe, in which the latter had been worsted by young Tybalt or George, or both, and had gone away with a grudge of some sort? A long shot, so long that it was hardly worth looking into, especially as he was supposed to be out of it these days. But he knew he was not out of it, and would never be out of it. Swann-on-Wheels had been his life for thirty-odd years. All his possessions and personal triumphs derived from it, and a man could never slough off a burden as big as that, certainly not when his own kin were carrying it forward into the new century.
He was glad then that he had arranged for Hetty to travel home while he stayed a night in town to view a furniture sale at Sotheby’s. Some choice pieces were coming up, part of the collection of Sir Joseph Souter, and he rarely missed an important furniture, picture, or porcelain sale these days. They filled the vacuum caused by his exchange of the roles of haulier and connoisseur. He would drop in at the yard after the viewing and have a word with both George and Tybalt, scratching around for confirmation of Sam’s hints if any was to be found. And having decided this, he made his mind a blank, as he had trained himself to do over so many tedious train journeys in the past. In seconds he was asleep.
3
He stood with his back to the familiar curve of the Thames looking the width of Tooley Street at the sprawling rectangle that had been the heart and pulse of his empire since he came here in the steamy summer of ‘58. A jumble of sheds, lofts, and stables crouched around the slender belfry tower, all that remained of the medieval convent that had once occupied the site. When the Plantagenets had used that bridge, the tower had doubtless summoned a few dozen nuns to prayer. During his long tenure up there it had overseen hauls the length and breadth of the island, a lookout post from which, in a sense, he could see the Cheviots and the Cornish moors, the Welsh mountains running down to the Irish Sea, and the fenlands that drained into the German ocean.
A slum, his wife and customers called it, and technically it was, pallisaded by a tannery, a glue factory, a biscuit factory, a huddle of tiny yellow-brick dwellings, and the grey-brown tideway where a thousand years of South Bank sewage had hardened into a belt of sludge, making its unique contribution to an overall smell of industry that he
Since then, so far as he knew, George had never had time to sow wild oats. For two years or more he had been besotted by that engine he brought home and after that, when he had proved his point by actually making the thing run, he had taken over as gaffer at the yard. The relationship of father and son, once strong, had weakened over the years. Since his retirement eight years ago, Adam had leaned on Giles harder than any of them, but he seldom talked shop with Giles. Mostly they discussed politics and social issues, subjects that interested them both. As for young Tybalt, he would take a lot of persuading that a young fellow in his position would play fast and loose with his future. Wesley Tybalt came from exceptionally sober stock, and his father was always on hand to hold a watching brief. It therefore seemed very unlikely that a man like Levison, head of a shipping business in Liverpool, could have heard anything but a rumour to the contrary, and yet… old Sam was certainly no fool when it came to a man’s commercial worth.
He recalled then that Levison’s firm used a rival haulage line. Linklater’s it was, a tinpot outfit, not regarded by any big haulier as a serious rival, and maybe it was there he should look for clues. A dispute between Swann-on-Wheels and Linklater’s maybe, in which the latter had been worsted by young Tybalt or George, or both, and had gone away with a grudge of some sort? A long shot, so long that it was hardly worth looking into, especially as he was supposed to be out of it these days. But he knew he was not out of it, and would never be out of it. Swann-on-Wheels had been his life for thirty-odd years. All his possessions and personal triumphs derived from it, and a man could never slough off a burden as big as that, certainly not when his own kin were carrying it forward into the new century.
He was glad then that he had arranged for Hetty to travel home while he stayed a night in town to view a furniture sale at Sotheby’s. Some choice pieces were coming up, part of the collection of Sir Joseph Souter, and he rarely missed an important furniture, picture, or porcelain sale these days. They filled the vacuum caused by his exchange of the roles of haulier and connoisseur. He would drop in at the yard after the viewing and have a word with both George and Tybalt, scratching around for confirmation of Sam’s hints if any was to be found. And having decided this, he made his mind a blank, as he had trained himself to do over so many tedious train journeys in the past. In seconds he was asleep.
3
He stood with his back to the familiar curve of the Thames looking the width of Tooley Street at the sprawling rectangle that had been the heart and pulse of his empire since he came here in the steamy summer of ‘58. A jumble of sheds, lofts, and stables crouched around the slender belfry tower, all that remained of the medieval convent that had once occupied the site. When the Plantagenets had used that bridge, the tower had doubtless summoned a few dozen nuns to prayer. During his long tenure up there it had overseen hauls the length and breadth of the island, a lookout post from which, in a sense, he could see the Cheviots and the Cornish moors, the Welsh mountains running down to the Irish Sea, and the fenlands that drained into the German ocean.
A slum, his wife and customers called it, and technically it was, pallisaded by a tannery, a glue factory, a biscuit factory, a huddle of tiny yellow-brick dwellings, and the grey-brown tideway where a thousand years of South Bank sewage had hardened into a belt of sludge, making its unique contribution to an overall smell of industry that he
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