Give Us This Day (36 page)

  He clamped his tall hat on his head and moved across the yard to his waiting cab, a tall, angular bird, who moved like a heron searching a river margin for the next meal. George stood a moment, deciding the priority of his consultations. He could be in Tryst in just over the hour, spend two hours with Adam, and still catch the express north by midnight. Gisela would have to wait for a wire telling her he would be absent for upwards of ten days. It wouldn't bother her overmuch. There had been many times of late when his dinner had gone cold and been fed to Laddie, their labrador.

2

The composite vehicle, although outlandish enough to be certain of exciting curiosity wherever it travelled, was yet unlike anything he had envisaged once the cupola was bedded down and shrouded in its tarpaulin.

  He had forgotten that the two Maxies, coupled fore and aft, would have to be stripped of their excess chassis fittings, for they would be used exclusively for propulsion and would carry nothing at all. Tailboards and bolted sides were removed within two hours of his arrival in Manchester, and it was two very skeletal vehicles that set off on the morning of the sixteenth for Channing's foundry in Bromsgrove.

  They arrived without incident and young Edward, bless the boy, was there to meet them, with his Goliath and team of eight Clydesdales, plus a plan to collect fresh teams, if necessary, at two stages en route. Edward had done some weight shedding on his own account, having shortened the central beam of the long vehicle by a good six feet, a mutilation he would be called to explain when he returned the vehicle to Melrose, the waggon-master in this area of the network.

  There was no time, unfortunately, for George to get more than a quick rundown on Scottie Quirt's refinements to the Swann-Maxie since that first trial run south, more than three years ago, but he saw at once that they greatly increased his chance of hauling that terrible weight southwest over Adam's devious route, carefully traced on his maps, a job he had been able to do on the night express that rushed him north on the night of the fourteenth. The system of force-feed engine lubrication had been improved, and the rear springing greatly strengthened, but by far the most important improvement was the new water-cooled braking system. One of his greatest fears had been a brake fire in the original fabric-lined footbrake. Now Scottie could assure him that the latest tests had established a safety margin in descents up to one in six, the maximum gradients they were likely to encounter on the route planned.

  The route itself had all the hallmarks of Adam Swann's famed familiarity with British highways and byways. Wherever a detour could avoid a steep hill, up or down, Adam had devised one, and had also paid particular regard to the width of bridges they were obliged to cross. There would be no difficulty, he told George, in negotiating main-road bridges, like the bridge over the Severn at Tewkesbury. They were all crossed regularly by haywains as broad in the beam as the Goliath, but it was possible he would pay a high price for the unavoidable detours over second-class roads that had never, at any time in their history, carried a four-inhand of the pre-railway era. The odd bottleneck, he warned, might well present itself here and there (he had ringed one over a tributary of the river Parret, at a place called Withypool) but his guess was that the leading edge of the load would clear the parapet, providing care was taken to load high.

  The warning, in fact, presented George with his first major problem. He had to strike a precise balance between making his load top-heavy—thus courting disaster in the form of a spill on uneven ground—and failing to provide the side clearance necessary for stone walls and parapeted bridges encountered during one or other of the detours. In consultation with Channing he compromised, settling for a clearance of four feet four and a half inches. The turret was then bedded down sideways, giving them an overall reduction in width of four inches either side, and while this in itself reduced stability, it was a risk they had to take. A saving of eight inches on some of the stretches of second-class road included in the itinerary was essential, despite the headshakings of Channing's foreman loader.

  As to fastenings, apart from four short lengths of chain securing the base of the turret to the staples of the Goliath, he used rope in preference to steel cable. High quality hawser rope offered a certain amount of flexibility. The strain imposed on a chain would prove a source of danger at every pothole and dip in the road.

  The cavalcade, when it was lined up, resembled nothing within his experience. Fore and aft were the snub-nosed Maxies, that did not look like first-generation descendants of the vehicle he had driven south with a couple of tons of rice aboard. With their hooded cabins and naked chassis, they suggested a couple of half-demolished covered waggons, of the kind American pioneers hauled across the prairie, whereas between them the foreshortened Goliath looked more like a raft than a waggon. In reserve, in charge of two Welsh waggoners Edward had recruited in the Mountain Square, were the eight Clydesdales, four harnessed to a man-o'-war, four more tethered behind and all looking, George thought, ashamed of enlistment in such a caravanserai. The man-o'-war they pulled was laden with stores and tools, including the tool kits of the Maxies, thus saving a little more weight. Edward said, "The team could make the whole journey with that light load at your likely pace, but I've wired for reserve teams to be held in readiness at Gloucester and Taunton. It depends how much you're likely to demand of them."

  "I hope to God nothing at all, lad," George said. "They're insurance and nothing more on this kind of haul, but I'm glad you're along nevertheless. Ride in the waggon. Channing has taken upon himself the job as outrider in his Daimler. He'll keep five miles ahead and arrange clearances in the towns."

* * *

  They moved off in the early afternoon of the sixteenth, with more than five days in hand; at the last minute Channing sent word by one of his clerks that the Admiralty had given them an extra twelve hours, reckoning that the fitting of the cupola, in Channing's presence, could be accomplished in three days. The deadline was thus set forward to one p.m. on Monday afternoon, by which time they were expected to pass the dockyard gates.

  It was a perilously tight schedule, even with the twelve-hour bonus, for it allowed for no more than twenty hours for stoppages during travelling time. Quirt, after inspecting the cargo very thoroughly, said, "Could we not travel nights, Mr. Swann? It would add a good deal to the margin, even if we moved at half speed," but George said he had set his face against night travel. The moon was in its first quarter, and the route was far too involved to risk a wrong turning or too swift a passage over rough ground. "We'll need strict march discipline," he told both Quirt and the waggoners. "At dusk we'll camp and move off again at first light. Thank God it's a June haul. At five miles an hour we could never have made it at any other season of the year."

  "Will you be heading us?" Quirt wanted to know. George replied, "No, Scottie, that's your honour. I'll drive number two where I can watch that load. God help us all, it's like travelling two-fifty miles carrying a juggler's end-ofthe-act pyramid. At the least sign of trouble, I'll give you a long blast on the horn and when you hear that brake, but do it as though you were stroking a crocodile."

  "I'll mind that," Scottie said, "and here's my signal to you for synchronised braking," and he reached into the driving cabin of the leading Maxie and showed George a pennanted lance. "When you see that flag, brake. It'll show on the offside, I've tested it."

  It was twelve miles to Worcester over the first and largely experimental leg of the journey, and he was thankful there were no detours marked on Adam's route. The surface of the old Worcester-Droitwich coach road was good and apart from Rick Hill, that slowed them to a nervous two miles an hour, they covered it without incident. The load seemed steady enough and the engines behaved well. Positioned immediately behind the turret, George could not so much as glimpse Quirt's vehicle, but every now and again on gentle slopes, he could feel its slow, insistent tug that became, over the miles, a kind of Morse code regulating his speed. He thought, thankfully,
That chap is steady as a rock. I wouldn't have cared to play this cat-and-mouse game with anyone else as a partner. I don't think he's given a damned thought as to what could happen to him if the load ran away, for I couldn't hold it…
But then he made a supreme effort to put such gloomy thoughts out of mind, and glanced over his shoulder for a peep at Edward's man-o'-war trailing them by some fifty yards. They passed through Wychbold and Droitwich about tea time, and he calculated their progress at a little short of six miles an hour. Men, women, and children stopped to gape, and shoppers pressed themselves back against the facades of the buildings as they trundled past. Everything on wheels gave them the widest berth possible and one drayman, after a single startled glance, cut a corner over the pavement into the nearest side-street. The traffic here was light but George knew this would not be so in a more populous town like Worcester. He could only hope that the local authorities had responded to Channing's demands for clearance.

  It seemed that they had when the outskirts of the city were reached. The road was empty of everything save knots of interested bystanders, and with his back to the westering sun, a photographer, using a tripod, took a picture of them on the move. The river was crossed at a snail's pace, George noting with satisfaction that there was ample clearance of the low parapet, and they took the left-hand fork beyond the Cathedral, clearing the city by six-thirty and heading south for Tewkesbury. Malvern gradients tended to slow their progress now so, at eight o'clock, George gave the signal to halt and a farm cutout enabled them to pull off the road. Scottie's engine was running hot, although his own was still behaving well, and while Edward, who had elected himself quartermaster, was seeking the farmer's permission to camp and cooperation as regards stabling, he called Scottie down.

  They had checked load and engines by the time Edward returned with news that they were welcome to sleep in the barn and later their host ambled out, a pipkin of a man with a complexion as streaked and rosy as one of his own Worcestershire apples, to stare thoughtfully at the halted cavalcade and wrinkle his nose at the unfamiliar stink of the petrol fumes. His phlegm endured until George, thanking him for his hospitality, told him they had covered the twenty-two miles from Bromsgrove in a little over four hours. The information impressed him. "From Bromsgrove? In under five ower? Wi' that hump aboard? Why, you woulder had to pass the city, then?"

  "We got police clearance," George explained.

  "Arr, you'd need it, I reckon," and he continued to stare thoughtfully at the nearest Maxie until George, feeling some further courtesy was required, asked him if he would care to look at the engine under one of the bonnets.

  "Not I," he said, and retreated into his yard with such precipitation that even the dour Scottie Quirt smiled.

  "So far so good," George said, "but we'll have to step up our average tomorrow. I've just worked it out. It's four point six."

  "If we can hold it at that I'll no' complain," Scottie said, taking a bottle and two tin cups from his luncheon-box. "Those Taffies are brewing their tea but you'll tak' a drop o' this, will you no'?"

  "I'll tak' both," George said, calling to Edward to join them.

* * *

  It was too good to last, of course. Around midnight when all five of them were snoring in the barn, thunder rolled down from the Malverns and presently it came on to rain, a heavy downpour on the roof sending Scottie out to check on the tarpaulin bonnet covers draped over the engines. By first light the storm had passed, but when George went outside he saw to his dismay that the ground under the Goliath was soggy and an offside rear wheel, where the crushing weight of the cupola bore heaviest, was buried to the rim. They fetched straw, cinders, and brushwood, and after a warm-up tried to move back on to the road, but the wheels of Scottie's Maxie spun dangerously and it was no help to bring George's vehicle round from behind to double the traction. Edward said, dubiously, "Maybe the horses could do it better, pulling on a long trace from firm ground," but all George's experience told him no trace could stand that kind of strain. Time was passing. The sun was up now and they had already wasted over an hour. "We need a solid platform under that wheel," George said. "Planking would do, providing it was heavy enough." He was on the point of seeking help at the farm when Edward said, "The man-o'-war has an iron plate on the waggon bed. It's one of the old type, before we fitted slide rails. Have you got a heavy screwdriver in your kit?"

  It was worth a try. After ten minutes' tussle with deeply embedded screws, they had the plate off, an oblong of sheet iron worn smooth on its topside by the passage of innumerable crates. They scooped a layer of red mud from the leading edge of the embedded wheel and hammered the metal under the rim with a sledge, too busy to snatch more than a few mouthfuls of the fried bacon the Welsh waggoners, Morgan and Rees, had prepared. Closely synchronising their acceleration, they applied maximum power, and with a long suck and a rattle the Goliath was heaved back on to the road. George thought, watching Edward plod away to his waggon without comment, Damned if he isn't a chip from a couple of old blocks, the Gov'no
r and Sam. And that's equal to anything, even a two-hundred-mile haul with this weight aboard. They moved off under the clear sky, passing Hanley Castle on their right
, then heading down the old coach road to Tewkesbury at a good seven miles an hour. They were ninety minutes behind schedule.

  Channing was waiting across the Severn and jumped on the step of George's vehicle, shouting above the clank and rattle of the procession, "Don't stop, Swann! I've clearance as far as the Abbey. Is she riding well?"