Give Us This Day Read Online Free Page A

New Broom had lost some of its inflexibility of late and those within close range of it noticed, or thought they noticed, a wholly uncharacteristic irresolution in the way the broom was wielded. A strange, unwonted peace had settled on the network. Dust had been allowed to settle in out-of-the-way corners at Headquarters and in the regions beyond, so that regional managers who had been at the receiving end of George Swann's barrage of watch-it-and-wait-for-it telegrams ever since Old Gaffer put his feet up told one another the gale was easing off a point or two, and that the Young Gaffer, praise God, was "running out of steam," as the Old Gaffer would have put it. They were men of the world, mostly, who had been around Swann yards long enough to remember George as a pink-cheeked lad with an unpleasant tendency to pop up in unexpected places when least expected. They fancied, therefore, that by now they knew him as well as they had known his father, but they would have been wrong. For George Swann had not run out of steam. On the contrary, he could have been said to have built up such a head of steam over the years that it became imperative that somebody come forward to open a safety-valve on his explosive energy. And this, in fact, was what had happened the moment Barbara Lockerbie crossed his path. Any steam that remained in George's boilers was now at her disposal, not Swann's.
      It was nine weeks since they had met, seven since he had become her lover, and a long, fretful week since he had held her in his arms, shedding his packload of responsibilities much as Christian shed his sins and watched them roll away downhill on his journey to the Celestial City. Unlike Christian, however, George had reached the Celestial City at a bound, for Barbara Lockerbie, saddled with an ageing husband and currently between lovers, had an eye for men like George Swann, recognising him instantly as someone in such desperate need of dalliance that he was likely to prove virile, generous, and unencumbered with jealousy concerning competitors past and present.
      She was right. He took what she offered gratefully, without seeking to lay down conditions and without a thought as to how deep a dent she was likely to make in his bank balance. He did not enquire why her elegant boudoir was slightly tainted with cigar-smoke, or who had paid for that cameo set in emeralds that had not been on the dressing table the night before last. He was as eager as a boy, as trusting as a spoiled mastiff, and as uncompromising in his approach as a shipwrecked mariner beached by sirens after years of toil and celibacy. That was why, when she declared these Imperial rites vulgar and took herself off to her country house in Hertfordshire before they were due to begin, she knew with complete certainty he would find a way of accepting her invitation to join her while Sir James Lockerbie, rival gallants, and his little Austrian wife, Gisela, were city-bound by the national junketings. She was not often wrong about men and she was never wrong about George Swann. Before the tail-end of the procession had passed under the Lockerbie window, George had composed and rehearsed an urgent summons from his Midlands viceroy. With luck, he could make Harpenden by suppertime and a Lockerbie carriage would convey his wife and family home to Beckenham. He rejoiced then that he had granted the network an extra day's holiday in honour of the Jubilee. It meant that no one would look for him until the following Thursday.

    3

    For Adam Swann, seventy, it was appropriate weather, and for Alex, thirty-six, campaigning weather. For Hugo, twenty-eight, it was athletes' weather, and for George, thirty-three, hauling and whoring weather. There remained the Swann Conscience, not quite silenced by the jangle of bells and the boom of royal salutes, and for Giles, its keeper, it was something else again. Protest weather, possibly, for Giles, almost alone among that vast crowd, was not present