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The Angel of Goliad
Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14, 1905.
A villa, a garden, a balcony.
Erase the balcony’s wrought-iron curves, exposing a bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-plate of the chair’s wheel-spokes.
The occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom.
These hands consist of tendons, tissue, jointed bone. Through quiet processes of time and information, threads within the human cells have woven themselves into a woman.
Her name is Sybil Gerard.
Below her, in a neglected formal garden, leafless vines lace wooden trellises on whitewashed, flaking walls. From the open windows of her sickroom, a warm draft stirs the loose white hair at her neck, bringing scents of coal-smoke, jasmine, opium.
Her attention is fixed upon the sky, upon a silhouette of vast and irresistible grace--metal, in her lifetime, having taught itself to fly. In advance of that magnificence, tiny unmanned aeroplanes dip and skirl against the red horizon.
Like starlings, Sybil thinks.
The airship’s lights, square golden windows, hint at human warmth. Effortlessly, with the incomparable grace of organic function, she imagines a distant music there, the music of London: the passengers promenade, they drink, they flirt, perhaps they dance.
Thoughts come unbidden, the mind weaving its perspectives, assembling meaning from emotion and memory.
She recalls her life in London. Recalls herself, so long ago, making her way along the Strand, pressing past the crush at Temple Bar. Pressing on, the city of Memory winding itself about her--till, by the walls on Newgate, the shadow of her father’s hanging falls . . .
And Memory turns, deflected swift as light, down another byway--one where it is always evening. . . .
It is January 15, 1855.
A room in Grand’s Hotel, Piccadilly.
One chair was propped backward, wedged securely beneath the door’s cut-glass knob. Another was draped with clothing: a woman’s fringed mantelet, a mud-crusted skirt of heavy worsted, a man’s checked trousers and cutaway coat.
Two forms lay beneath the bedclothes of the laminated-maple four-poster, and off in the iron grip of winter Big Ben bellowed ten o’clock, great hoarse calliope sounds, the coal-fired breath of London.
Sybil slid her feet through icy linens to the warmth of the ceramic bottle in its wrap of flannel. Her toes brushed his shin. The touch seemed to start him from deep deliberation. That was how he was, this Dandy Mick Radley.
She’d met Mick Radley at Laurent’s Dancing Academy, down Windmill Street. Now that she knew him, he seemed more the sort for Kellner’s in Leicester Square, or even the Portland Rooms. He was always thinking, scheming, muttering over something in his head. Clever, clever. It worried her. And Mrs. Winterhalter wouldn’t have approved, for the handling of “political gentlemen” required delicacy and discretion, qualities Mrs. Winterhalter believed she herself had a-plenty, while crediting none to her girls.
“No more dollymopping, Sybil,” Mick said. One of his pronouncements, something about which he’d made up his clever mind.
Sybil grinned up at him, her face half-hidden by the blanket’s warm edge. She knew he liked the grin. Her wicked-girl grin. He can’t mean that, she thought. Make a joke of it, she told herself. “But if I weren’t a wicked dollymop, would I be here with you now?”
“No more playing bobtail.”
“You know I only go with gentlemen.”
Mick sniffed, amused. “Call me a gentleman, then?”
“A very flash gentleman,” Sybil said, flattering him. “One of the fancy. You know I don’t care for the Rad Lords. I spit on ’em, Mick.”
Sybil shivered, but not unhappily, for she’d run into a good bit of luck here, full of steak-and-taters and hot chocolate, in bed between clean sheets in a fashionable hotel. A shiny new hotel with central steam-heat, though she’d gladly have traded the restless gurgling and banging of the scrolled gilt radiator for the glow of a well-banked hearth.
And he was a good-looking cove, this Mick Radley, she had to admit, dressed very flash, had the tin and was generous with it, and he’d yet to demand anything peculiar or beastly. She knew it wouldn’t last, as Mick was a touring gent from Manchester, and gone soon enough. But there was profit in him, and maybe more when he left her, if she made him feel sorry about it, and generous.
Mick reclined into fat feather-pillows and slid his manicured fingers behind his spit-curled head. Silk nightshirt all frothy with lace down the front--only the best for Mick. Now he seemed to want to talk a bit. Men did, usually, after a while--about their wives, mostly.
But for Dandy Mick, it was always politics. “So, you hate the Lordships, Sybil?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Sybil said. “I have my reasons.”
“I should say you do,” Mick said slowly, and the look he gave her then, of cool superiority, sent a shiver through her.
“What d’ye mean by that, Mick?”
“I know your reasons for hating the Government. I have your number.”
Surprise seeped into her, then fear. She sat up in bed. There was a taste in her mouth like cold iron.
“You keep your card in your bag,” he said. “I took that number to a rum magistrate I know. He ran it through a government Engine for me, and printed up your Bow Street file, rat-a-tat-tat, like fun.” He smirked. “So I know all about you, girl. Know who you are . . .”
She tried to put a bold face on it. “And who’s that, then, Mr. Radley?”
“No Sybil Jones, dearie. You’re Sybil Gerard, the daughter of Walter Gerard, the Luddite agitator.”
He’d raided her hidden past.
Machines, whirring somewhere, spinning out history.
Now Mick watched her face, smiling at what he saw there, and she recognized a look she’d seen before, at Laurent’s, when first he’d spied her across the crowded floor. A hungry look.
Her voice shook. “How long have you known about me?”
“Since our second night. You know I travel with the General. Like any important man, he has enemies. As his secretary and man-of-affairs, I take few chances with strangers.” Mick put his cruel, deft little hand on her shoulder. “You might have been someone’s agent. It was business.”
Sybil flinched away. “Spying on a helpless girl,” she said at last. “You’re a right bastard, you are!”
But her foul words scarcely seemed to touch him--he was cold and hard, like a judge or a lordship. “I may spy, girl, but I use the Government’s machinery for my own sweet purposes. I’m no copper’s nark, to look down my nose at a revolutionary like Walter Gerard--no matter what the Rad Lords may call him now. Your father was a hero.”
He shifted on the pillow. “My hero--that was Walter Gerard. I saw him speak, on the Rights of Labour, in Manchester. He was a marvel--we all cheered till our throats was raw! The good old Hell-Cats . . .” Mick’s smooth voice had gone sharp and flat, in a Mancunian tang. “Ever hear tell of the Hell-Cats, Sybil? In the old days?”
“A street-gang,” Sybil said. “Rough boys in Manchester.”
Mick frowned. “We was a brotherhood! A friendship youth-guild! Your father knew us well. He was our patron politician, you might say.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t speak of my father, Mr. Radley.”
Mick shook his head at her impatiently. “When I heard they’d tried and hanged him”--the words like ice behind her ribs--“me and the lads, we took up torches and crowbars, and we ran hot and wild. . . . That was Ned Ludd’s work, girl! Years ago . . .” He picked delicately at the front of his nightshirt. “ ’Tis not a tale I tell to many. The Government’s Engines have long memories.”
She understood it now--Mick’s generosity and his sweet-talk, the strange hints he’d aimed at her, of secret plans and better fortune, marked cards and hidden aces. He was pulling her strings, making her his creature. The daughter of Walter Gerard was a fancy prize, for a man like Mick.
She pulled herself out of bed, stepping across icy floorboards in her pantalettes and chemise.
She dug quickly, silently, through the heap of her clothing. The fringed mantelet, the jacket, the great sagging cage of her crinoline skirt. The jingling white cuirass of her corset.
“Get back in bed,” Mick said lazily. “Don’t get your monkey up. ’Tis cold out there.” He shook his head. “ ’Tis not like you think, Sybil.”
She refused to look at him, struggling into her corset by the window, where frost-caked glass cut the upwashed glare of gaslight from the street. She cinched the corset’s laces tight across her back with a quick practiced snap of her wrists.
“Or if it is,” Mick mused, watching her, “ ’tis only in small degree.”
Across the street, the opera had let out--gentry in their cloaks and top-hats. Cab-horses, their backs in blankets, stamped and shivered on the black macadam. White traces of clean suburban snow still clung to the gleaming coachwork of some lordship’s steam-gurney. Tarts were working the crowd. Poor wretched souls. Hard indeed to find a kind face amid those goffered shirts and diamond studs, on such a cold night. Sybil turned toward Mick, confused, angry, and very much afraid. “Who did you tell about me?”
“Not a living soul,” Mick said, “not even my friend the General. And I won’t be peaching on you. Nobody’s ever said Mick Radley’s indiscreet. So get back in bed.”
“I shan’t,” Sybil said, standing straight, her bare feet freezing on the floorboards. “Sybil Jones may share your bed--but the daughter of Walter Gerard is a personage of substance!”
Mick blinked at her, surprised. He thought it over, rubbing his narrow chin, then nodded. “ ’Tis my sad loss, then, Miss Gerard.” He sat up in bed and pointed at the door, with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “Put on your skirt, then, and your brass-heeled dolly-boots, Miss Gerard, and out the door with you and your substance. But ’twould be a great shame if you left. I’ve uses for a clever girl.”
“I should say you do, you blackguard,” said Sybil, but she hesitated. He had another card to play--she could sense it in the set of his face.
He grinned at her, his eyes slitted. “Have you ever been to Paris, Sybil?”
“Paris?” Her breath clouded in midair.
“Yes,” he said, “the gay and the glamorous, next destination for the General, when his London lecture tour is done.” Dandy Mick plucked at his lace cuffs. “What those uses are, that I mentioned, I shan’t as yet say. But the General is a man of deep stratagem. And the Government of France have certain difficulties that require the help of experts. . . .” He leered triumphantly. “But I can see that I bore you, eh?”
Sybil shifted from foot to foot. “You’ll take me to Paris, Mick,” she said slowly, “and that’s the true bill, no snicky humbugging?”
“Strictly square and level. If you don’t believe me, I’ve a ticket in my coat for the Dover ferry.”
Sybil walked to the brocade armchair in the corner, and tugged at Mick’s greatcoat. She shivered uncontrollably, and slipped the greatcoat on. Fine dark wool, like being wrapped in warm money.
“Try the right front pocket,” Mick told her. “The card-case.” He was amused and confident--as if it were funny that she didn’t trust him. Sybil thrust her chilled hands into both pockets. Deep, plush-lined . . .
Her left hand gripped a lump of hard cold metal. She drew out a nasty little pepperbox derringer. Ivory handle, intricate gleam of steel hammers and brass cartridges, small as her hand but heavy.
“Naughty,” said Mick, frowning. “Put it back, there’s a girl.”
Sybil put the thing away, gently but quickly, as if it were a live crab. In the other pocket she found his card-case, red morocco leather; inside were business cards, cartes-de-visite with his Engine-stippled portrait, a London train timetable.
And an engraved slip of stiff creamy parchment, first-class passage on the Newcomen, out of Dover.
“You’ll need two tickets, then,” she hesitated, “if you really mean to take me.”
Mick nodded, conceding the point. “And another for the train from Cherbourg, too. And nothing simpler. I can wire for tickets, downstairs at the lobby desk.”
Sybil shivered again, and wrapped the coat closer. Mick laughed at her. “Don’t give me that vinegar phiz. You’re still thinking like a dollymop; stop it. Start thinking flash, or you’ll be of no use to me. You’re Mick’s gal now--a high-flyer.”
She spoke slowly, reluctantly. “I’ve never been with any man who knew I was Sybil Gerard.” That was a lie, of course--there was Egremont, the man who had ruined her. Charles Egremont had known very well who she was. But Egremont no longer mattered--he lived in a different world, now, with his po-faced respectable wife, and his respectable children, and his respectable seat in Parliament.
And Sybil hadn’t been dollymopping, with Egremont. Not exactly, anyway. A matter of degree. . . .
She could tell that Mick was pleased at the lie she’d told him. It had flattered him.
Mick opened a gleaming cigar-case, extracted a cheroot, and lit it in the oily flare of a repeating match, filling the room with the candied smell of cherry tobacco.
“So now you feel a bit shy with me, do you?” he said at last. “Well, I prefer it that way. What I know, that gives me a bit more grip on you, don’t it, than mere tin.”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s what a cove knows that counts, ain’t it, Sybil? More than land or money, more than birth. Information. Very flash.”
Sybil felt a moment of hatred for him, for his ease and confidence. Pure resentment, sharp and primal, but she crushed her feelings down. The hatred wavered, losing its purity, turning to shame. She did hate him--but only because he truly knew her. He knew how far Sybil Gerard had fallen, that she had been an educated girl, with airs and graces, as good as any gentry girl, once.
From the days of her father’s fame, from her girlhood, Sybil could remember Mick Radley’s like. She knew the kind of boy that he had been. Ragged angry factory-boys, penny-a-score, who would crowd her father after his torchlight speeches, and do whatever he commanded. Rip up railroad tracks, kick the boiler-plugs out of spinning jennies, lay policemen’s helmets by his feet. She and her father had fled from town to town, often by night, living in cellars, attics, anonymous rooms-to-let, hiding from the Rad police and the daggers of other conspirators. And sometimes, when his own wild speeches had filled him with a burning elation, her father would embrace her and soberly promise her the world. She would live like gentry in a green and quiet England, when King Steam was wrecked. When Byron and his Industrial Radicals were utterly destroyed. . . .
Revue de presse :
The Angel of Goliad
Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14, 1905.
A villa, a garden, a balcony.
Erase the balcony’s wrought-iron curves, exposing a bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-plate of the chair’s wheel-spokes.
The occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom.
These hands consist of tendons, tissue, jointed bone. Through quiet processes of time and information, threads within the human cells have woven themselves into a woman.
Her name is Sybil Gerard.
Below her, in a neglected formal garden, leafless vines lace wooden trellises on whitewashed, flaking walls. From the open windows of her sickroom, a warm draft stirs the loose white hair at her neck, bringing scents of coal-smoke, jasmine, opium.
Her attention is fixed upon the sky, upon a silhouette of vast and irresistible grace--metal, in her lifetime, having taught itself to fly. In advance of that magnificence, tiny unmanned aeroplanes dip and skirl against the red horizon.
Like starlings, Sybil thinks.
The airship’s lights, square golden windows, hint at human warmth. Effortlessly, with the incomparable grace of organic function, she imagines a distant music there, the music of London: the passengers promenade, they drink, they flirt, perhaps they dance.
Thoughts come unbidden, the mind weaving its perspectives, assembling meaning from emotion and memory.
She recalls her life in London. Recalls herself, so long ago, making her way along the Strand, pressing past the crush at Temple Bar. Pressing on, the city of Memory winding itself about her--till, by the walls on Newgate, the shadow of her father’s hanging falls . . .
And Memory turns, deflected swift as light, down another byway--one where it is always evening. . . .
It is January 15, 1855.
A room in Grand’s Hotel, Piccadilly.
One chair was propped backward, wedged securely beneath the door’s cut-glass knob. Another was draped with clothing: a woman’s fringed mantelet, a mud-crusted skirt of heavy worsted, a man’s checked trousers and cutaway coat.
Two forms lay beneath the bedclothes of the laminated-maple four-poster, and off in the iron grip of winter Big Ben bellowed ten o’clock, great hoarse calliope sounds, the coal-fired breath of London.
Sybil slid her feet through icy linens to the warmth of the ceramic bottle in its wrap of flannel. Her toes brushed his shin. The touch seemed to start him from deep deliberation. That was how he was, this Dandy Mick Radley.
She’d met Mick Radley at Laurent’s Dancing Academy, down Windmill Street. Now that she knew him, he seemed more the sort for Kellner’s in Leicester Square, or even the Portland Rooms. He was always thinking, scheming, muttering over something in his head. Clever, clever. It worried her. And Mrs. Winterhalter wouldn’t have approved, for the handling of “political gentlemen” required delicacy and discretion, qualities Mrs. Winterhalter believed she herself had a-plenty, while crediting none to her girls.
“No more dollymopping, Sybil,” Mick said. One of his pronouncements, something about which he’d made up his clever mind.
Sybil grinned up at him, her face half-hidden by the blanket’s warm edge. She knew he liked the grin. Her wicked-girl grin. He can’t mean that, she thought. Make a joke of it, she told herself. “But if I weren’t a wicked dollymop, would I be here with you now?”
“No more playing bobtail.”
“You know I only go with gentlemen.”
Mick sniffed, amused. “Call me a gentleman, then?”
“A very flash gentleman,” Sybil said, flattering him. “One of the fancy. You know I don’t care for the Rad Lords. I spit on ’em, Mick.”
Sybil shivered, but not unhappily, for she’d run into a good bit of luck here, full of steak-and-taters and hot chocolate, in bed between clean sheets in a fashionable hotel. A shiny new hotel with central steam-heat, though she’d gladly have traded the restless gurgling and banging of the scrolled gilt radiator for the glow of a well-banked hearth.
And he was a good-looking cove, this Mick Radley, she had to admit, dressed very flash, had the tin and was generous with it, and he’d yet to demand anything peculiar or beastly. She knew it wouldn’t last, as Mick was a touring gent from Manchester, and gone soon enough. But there was profit in him, and maybe more when he left her, if she made him feel sorry about it, and generous.
Mick reclined into fat feather-pillows and slid his manicured fingers behind his spit-curled head. Silk nightshirt all frothy with lace down the front--only the best for Mick. Now he seemed to want to talk a bit. Men did, usually, after a while--about their wives, mostly.
But for Dandy Mick, it was always politics. “So, you hate the Lordships, Sybil?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Sybil said. “I have my reasons.”
“I should say you do,” Mick said slowly, and the look he gave her then, of cool superiority, sent a shiver through her.
“What d’ye mean by that, Mick?”
“I know your reasons for hating the Government. I have your number.”
Surprise seeped into her, then fear. She sat up in bed. There was a taste in her mouth like cold iron.
“You keep your card in your bag,” he said. “I took that number to a rum magistrate I know. He ran it through a government Engine for me, and printed up your Bow Street file, rat-a-tat-tat, like fun.” He smirked. “So I know all about you, girl. Know who you are . . .”
She tried to put a bold face on it. “And who’s that, then, Mr. Radley?”
“No Sybil Jones, dearie. You’re Sybil Gerard, the daughter of Walter Gerard, the Luddite agitator.”
He’d raided her hidden past.
Machines, whirring somewhere, spinning out history.
Now Mick watched her face, smiling at what he saw there, and she recognized a look she’d seen before, at Laurent’s, when first he’d spied her across the crowded floor. A hungry look.
Her voice shook. “How long have you known about me?”
“Since our second night. You know I travel with the General. Like any important man, he has enemies. As his secretary and man-of-affairs, I take few chances with strangers.” Mick put his cruel, deft little hand on her shoulder. “You might have been someone’s agent. It was business.”
Sybil flinched away. “Spying on a helpless girl,” she said at last. “You’re a right bastard, you are!”
But her foul words scarcely seemed to touch him--he was cold and hard, like a judge or a lordship. “I may spy, girl, but I use the Government’s machinery for my own sweet purposes. I’m no copper’s nark, to look down my nose at a revolutionary like Walter Gerard--no matter what the Rad Lords may call him now. Your father was a hero.”
He shifted on the pillow. “My hero--that was Walter Gerard. I saw him speak, on the Rights of Labour, in Manchester. He was a marvel--we all cheered till our throats was raw! The good old Hell-Cats . . .” Mick’s smooth voice had gone sharp and flat, in a Mancunian tang. “Ever hear tell of the Hell-Cats, Sybil? In the old days?”
“A street-gang,” Sybil said. “Rough boys in Manchester.”
Mick frowned. “We was a brotherhood! A friendship youth-guild! Your father knew us well. He was our patron politician, you might say.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t speak of my father, Mr. Radley.”
Mick shook his head at her impatiently. “When I heard they’d tried and hanged him”--the words like ice behind her ribs--“me and the lads, we took up torches and crowbars, and we ran hot and wild. . . . That was Ned Ludd’s work, girl! Years ago . . .” He picked delicately at the front of his nightshirt. “ ’Tis not a tale I tell to many. The Government’s Engines have long memories.”
She understood it now--Mick’s generosity and his sweet-talk, the strange hints he’d aimed at her, of secret plans and better fortune, marked cards and hidden aces. He was pulling her strings, making her his creature. The daughter of Walter Gerard was a fancy prize, for a man like Mick.
She pulled herself out of bed, stepping across icy floorboards in her pantalettes and chemise.
She dug quickly, silently, through the heap of her clothing. The fringed mantelet, the jacket, the great sagging cage of her crinoline skirt. The jingling white cuirass of her corset.
“Get back in bed,” Mick said lazily. “Don’t get your monkey up. ’Tis cold out there.” He shook his head. “ ’Tis not like you think, Sybil.”
She refused to look at him, struggling into her corset by the window, where frost-caked glass cut the upwashed glare of gaslight from the street. She cinched the corset’s laces tight across her back with a quick practiced snap of her wrists.
“Or if it is,” Mick mused, watching her, “ ’tis only in small degree.”
Across the street, the opera had let out--gentry in their cloaks and top-hats. Cab-horses, their backs in blankets, stamped and shivered on the black macadam. White traces of clean suburban snow still clung to the gleaming coachwork of some lordship’s steam-gurney. Tarts were working the crowd. Poor wretched souls. Hard indeed to find a kind face amid those goffered shirts and diamond studs, on such a cold night. Sybil turned toward Mick, confused, angry, and very much afraid. “Who did you tell about me?”
“Not a living soul,” Mick said, “not even my friend the General. And I won’t be peaching on you. Nobody’s ever said Mick Radley’s indiscreet. So get back in bed.”
“I shan’t,” Sybil said, standing straight, her bare feet freezing on the floorboards. “Sybil Jones may share your bed--but the daughter of Walter Gerard is a personage of substance!”
Mick blinked at her, surprised. He thought it over, rubbing his narrow chin, then nodded. “ ’Tis my sad loss, then, Miss Gerard.” He sat up in bed and pointed at the door, with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “Put on your skirt, then, and your brass-heeled dolly-boots, Miss Gerard, and out the door with you and your substance. But ’twould be a great shame if you left. I’ve uses for a clever girl.”
“I should say you do, you blackguard,” said Sybil, but she hesitated. He had another card to play--she could sense it in the set of his face.
He grinned at her, his eyes slitted. “Have you ever been to Paris, Sybil?”
“Paris?” Her breath clouded in midair.
“Yes,” he said, “the gay and the glamorous, next destination for the General, when his London lecture tour is done.” Dandy Mick plucked at his lace cuffs. “What those uses are, that I mentioned, I shan’t as yet say. But the General is a man of deep stratagem. And the Government of France have certain difficulties that require the help of experts. . . .” He leered triumphantly. “But I can see that I bore you, eh?”
Sybil shifted from foot to foot. “You’ll take me to Paris, Mick,” she said slowly, “and that’s the true bill, no snicky humbugging?”
“Strictly square and level. If you don’t believe me, I’ve a ticket in my coat for the Dover ferry.”
Sybil walked to the brocade armchair in the corner, and tugged at Mick’s greatcoat. She shivered uncontrollably, and slipped the greatcoat on. Fine dark wool, like being wrapped in warm money.
“Try the right front pocket,” Mick told her. “The card-case.” He was amused and confident--as if it were funny that she didn’t trust him. Sybil thrust her chilled hands into both pockets. Deep, plush-lined . . .
Her left hand gripped a lump of hard cold metal. She drew out a nasty little pepperbox derringer. Ivory handle, intricate gleam of steel hammers and brass cartridges, small as her hand but heavy.
“Naughty,” said Mick, frowning. “Put it back, there’s a girl.”
Sybil put the thing away, gently but quickly, as if it were a live crab. In the other pocket she found his card-case, red morocco leather; inside were business cards, cartes-de-visite with his Engine-stippled portrait, a London train timetable.
And an engraved slip of stiff creamy parchment, first-class passage on the Newcomen, out of Dover.
“You’ll need two tickets, then,” she hesitated, “if you really mean to take me.”
Mick nodded, conceding the point. “And another for the train from Cherbourg, too. And nothing simpler. I can wire for tickets, downstairs at the lobby desk.”
Sybil shivered again, and wrapped the coat closer. Mick laughed at her. “Don’t give me that vinegar phiz. You’re still thinking like a dollymop; stop it. Start thinking flash, or you’ll be of no use to me. You’re Mick’s gal now--a high-flyer.”
She spoke slowly, reluctantly. “I’ve never been with any man who knew I was Sybil Gerard.” That was a lie, of course--there was Egremont, the man who had ruined her. Charles Egremont had known very well who she was. But Egremont no longer mattered--he lived in a different world, now, with his po-faced respectable wife, and his respectable children, and his respectable seat in Parliament.
And Sybil hadn’t been dollymopping, with Egremont. Not exactly, anyway. A matter of degree. . . .
She could tell that Mick was pleased at the lie she’d told him. It had flattered him.
Mick opened a gleaming cigar-case, extracted a cheroot, and lit it in the oily flare of a repeating match, filling the room with the candied smell of cherry tobacco.
“So now you feel a bit shy with me, do you?” he said at last. “Well, I prefer it that way. What I know, that gives me a bit more grip on you, don’t it, than mere tin.”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s what a cove knows that counts, ain’t it, Sybil? More than land or money, more than birth. Information. Very flash.”
Sybil felt a moment of hatred for him, for his ease and confidence. Pure resentment, sharp and primal, but she crushed her feelings down. The hatred wavered, losing its purity, turning to shame. She did hate him--but only because he truly knew her. He knew how far Sybil Gerard had fallen, that she had been an educated girl, with airs and graces, as good as any gentry girl, once.
From the days of her father’s fame, from her girlhood, Sybil could remember Mick Radley’s like. She knew the kind of boy that he had been. Ragged angry factory-boys, penny-a-score, who would crowd her father after his torchlight speeches, and do whatever he commanded. Rip up railroad tracks, kick the boiler-plugs out of spinning jennies, lay policemen’s helmets by his feet. She and her father had fled from town to town, often by night, living in cellars, attics, anonymous rooms-to-let, hiding from the Rad police and the daggers of other conspirators. And sometimes, when his own wild speeches had filled him with a burning elation, her father would embrace her and soberly promise her the world. She would live like gentry in a green and quiet England, when King Steam was wrecked. When Byron and his Industrial Radicals were utterly destroyed. . . .
La différence ouvre une nouvelle voie pour penser et vivre l'organisation du travail et les relations entre les entreprises
Les alliances font désormais partie intégrante d'une stratégie de développement réussie. Le potentiel de plus-value que doit générer un partenariat émerge des différences entre les individus et leurs organisations.
Un partenariat n'est pas la simple addition des hommes et des structures mais une nouvelle entité
Au sein de cette entité, les partenaires décident d'agir et de réfléchir ensemble pour réaliser des objectifs communs. Sa réussite dépend de la capacité des protagonistes à trouver un terrain d'entente («common ground») pour valoriser la différence.
Le leader radicalement nouveau sait créer des espaces d'interaction pour que s'exprime la dynamique du partenariat
La décentralisation du pouvoir et la circulation du savoir, devenues nécessités, aboutissent à la responsabilisation des acteurs. Le commandement laisse place à un système de coordination des énergies où la volonté de réaliser ensemble un objectif commun l'emporte sur le chaos des différences. C'est le seul gage de créativité et d'innovation, donc de réussite à long terme. -- Idées clés, par Business Digest
Le développement des partenariats dans tous les secteurs de l'économie marque une tendance forte dans l'évolution des stratégies mises en oeuvre par les entreprises pour faire face à un environnement turbulent.
Pourtant, deux opérations de ce type sur trois se soldent par des résultats jugés décevants : objectifs non atteints, bilan financier négatif... Partant de ce constat, «The difference engine» présente un cadre conceptuel («the partnering grid») destiné à comprendre et à analyser les facteurs de réussite d'un partenariat.
Il est essentiel de souligner la manière dont les auteurs nous font partager leur conviction. Grâce à un travail de recherche d'une grande richesse et illustré d'exemples détaillés, Anne Deering et Anne Murphy réussissent à concilier des conceptions divergentes du management prenant en compte la réalité profonde des organisations. Le résultat propose une démarche transposable au contexte et à la culture de toutes les entreprises.
Le succès d'un partenariat est avant tout une affaire de relations humaines. À la notion de partenariat (synergie, collaboration, transversalité...), on associe encore facilement l'idée selon laquelle «1+1=3». Cette représentation mathématique induit deux erreurs. D'abord, celle de confondre potentialité et résultat ; ensuite celle de contenir une situation complexe dans une formule simple.
Pour les auteurs, le partenariat est plus proche de «1+1+...+1 = valoriser les différences pour innover rapidement ensemble». Adopter ce principe suppose d'abandonner des schémas hérités d'une vision linéaire du monde en décalage avec le monde d'aujourd'hui, complexe et varié.
Il ne s'agit pas pour autant de perdre son identité, mais d'intégrer les perceptions respectives des partenaires dans un cadre commun qui valorise (voire tolère) les différences. Humour et convivialité sont des ingrédients à ne pas négliger dans ce processus qui garantit la construction d'une relation sur le long terme en prévenant les risques inhérents à l'expression à retardement de différences ignorées.
L'efficacité d'un partenariat est largement fonction de la qualité du dialogue développé et des informations échangées. Anne Deering et Anne Murphy attirent notre attention sur la place centrale occupée par la confiance dans une relation de partenariat ; non pas comme une condition a priori, mais comme une dimension à cultiver par les personnes qui ont à collaborer directement. Les principaux moteurs en sont les rencontres, le partage d'informations et de connaissances. Sur ce point, les nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication présentent une réelle opportunité. Elles sont conçues sur des principes qui effacent la hiérarchie et le pouvoir fondé sur la propriété de l'information. Leur déploiement contribue à rendre visible et à structurer les échanges pour que progressivement les règles et les conventions tacites, peu appropriées au développement d'interactions, disparaissent.
Le leadership d'un partenariat s'exerce dans le cadre d'une organisation en réseau, flexible et adaptable, caractérisée par la variété des acteurs et des perceptions en jeu, la multiplicité des interactions possibles et un système de pouvoir déconcentré. «The difference engine» apporte une alternative à la vision classique du rôle du leader. Sans les opposer, mais en jouant sur leur complémentarité, le partenariat privilégie le groupe à l'individu, le «faire ensemble» au «faire», la qualité de la relation à l'objectif, la réactivité à la planification...
Dans ce schéma, le leader assoit sa raison d'être sur sa légitimité à diriger l'équipe dans une situation donnée (expertises, qualité personnelle...). L'évolution du contexte modifie le profil du leader et amène le pouvoir à changer naturellement de mains, sans déjuger la personne passant le relais. De la même façon, la stratégie est très évolutive : elle se développe à partir d'opportunités détectées et évaluées par les partenaires, pour former ainsi l'objet-même du partenariat. -- Frédéric Dubois -- -- Business Digest
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- ÉditeurBantam Dell Pub Group
- Date d'édition1991
- ISBN 10 055307346X
- ISBN 13 9780553073461
- ReliureRelié
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état : Assez bonVery Good/Very Good. First Edition... En savoir plus sur cette édition
EUR 19,24
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The Difference Engine
Edité par
Bantam, 1991
(1991)
ISBN 10 : 055307346X
ISBN 13 : 9780553073461
Ancien ou d'occasion
Couverture rigide
Edition originale
Quantité disponible : 1
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Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : Very Good. Dust Jacket Included. 1st Edition. Very Good/Very Good. First Edition. N° de réf. du vendeur 000075
Acheter D'occasion
EUR 19,24
Autre devise