The Rise of Henry Morcar Page 30

  It was a pleasant experience, a delightful interlude. The sun shone, the little town was crowded with enthusiastic young people in light flannels and bright frocks; one took coffee on the lawns in the morning and waited for Jenny to emerge from the lectures; in the afternoon one watched Jenny playing tennis, or drove through the hilly green countryside; in the evening after an admirable dinner—the hotel was good—one walked along to the theatre and saw a play. Jenny commented shrewdly on these plays, and it was interesting to observe how often her remarks coincided with those of the critics in the better newspapers. Harington’s delighted pride in Jenny made him less disagreeable than usual; Morcar shared his pride and Christina’s fond affection for their daughter. It struck him, however, that Jenny was not quite her usual self. Never a bouncing or kittenish type, Jenny had usually a good deal of ardour, a joyous smile and a nice wit at her disposal; this week she seemed quiet, listless, preoccupied. Considering that she played tennis for her college, her game seemed dull; her grey eyes lacked sparkle and she argued with her father rarely. On his side Harington seemed to take an almost apologetic tone with her, as if trying to please. “To appease, is the word,” thought Morcar. One day the barrister offered to drive his daughter a considerable distance to see some battle site of the seventeenth century—the seventeenth century, it seemed, was Jenny’s special period. Morcar and Christina were left together; they drove off towards the Wye and spent a gloriously happy day in each other’s company. As they walked back along a woodland path to the lane where they had left Morcar’s car, their fingers interlaced, Christina’s lovely face suddenly clouded and she exclaimed:

  “Poor Jenny!”

  “What’s the matter with her? I’ve noticed something wrong.”

  “It’s David, you know. He was to have come to the Festival—not as our guest, just on his own at another hotel. A much cheaper hotel of course, poor pet.”

  “But why hasn’t he come?” said Morcar, astonished. “He loves her nearly as much as I love you.”

  “Nearly?” said Christina, smiling and swinging her lover’s hand.

  “Nearly,” replied Morcar firmly.

  She glanced up at him from her deep blue eyes; Morcar drew her towards him and they kissed.

  “It’s David’s week in camp with his Territorials, you know,” explained Christina presently. “Jenny wanted to change our dates, but Edward wouldn’t.”

  “And David couldn’t get out of it—camp, I mean?” said Morcar reflectively.

  “No. If there’s a war, those two poor children will take it very hard. And Edwin at sea. Perhaps there won’t be a war, Harry?”

  Morcar shook his head. “I’m afraid there will,” he said.

  After this Malvern was less bright to him. He seemed to see a shadow slowly creeping up from the horizon, menacing the throng of lads and girls, so earnest and full of high intent at the theatre, so lively and chattering on the lawns. Morcar had seen such a shadow creep up on another generation of harmless well-meaning lads and girls. This shadow now would soon blot out the sun for all these happy children; fingers of the shadow were already laid across the hearts of some, as for instance Jenny.

  The shadow grew and deepened; suddenly, on the morning of his departure, it leaped halfway across the sky. Morcar had to keep a business engagement in Bradford that noon, and made an early start for home. As he stood on the sunny steps of the hotel in the early morning, waiting for the garage supervisor to bring round his car, a man came up bearing a stack of newspapers. He bought one, opened it wide and read that Russia had concluded a pact, not with Great Britain but with Germany.

  “It won’t be long now,” exclaimed Morcar.

  “Your car, sir?” said the hotel porter, who was standing by to receive his tip.

  “No—the war,” said Morcar grimly.

  He drove home swiftly. “You may as well get the fixings up for those blackout curtains,” he said to the Syke Mills carpenter.

  Next day Mr. Chamberlain announced in the House of Commons that he stood by the guarantee to Poland even without Soviet Russia. Morcar rang up a building contractor and ordered a load of sand, in bags, to be sent to Stanney Royd.

  Hitler demanded that a Pole should be sent to Berlin to sign terms of agreement; Mr. Chamberlain announced that we were ready for peace and ready for war; Morcar ordered the Syke Mills skylights to be fitted with sliding shutters.

  On Friday September 1st Morcar took a small portable radio to the mill with him, as an announcement was expected at half-past ten. In his private office, very clean and fresh because it had received its annual repainting during Morcar’s holiday, he set the radio on his desk, switched it on and sent for Nathan. They listened together, and heard that Germany had invaded Poland at five-thirty that morning. Nathan’s face was so disgusted as to be comic.

  “Whew!” said Morcar.

  He reached for the telephone and bullied the building contractor about the sand for Stanney Royd.

  The sand was delivered on Saturday, but not in bags; the bags came separately, empty—there were so many orders for the government and local government, explained the contractor apologetically, that really he had not had time to fill them.

  Morcar spent Saturday afternoon and evening buying a few necessary items of equipment for his Stanney Royd cellar shelter, and fixing them.

  On Sunday, sitting at breakfast, with the sun pouring into the side windows, he heard the announcement that if Germany was not out of Poland by eleven that morning, Germany and Britain would be at war.

  He went at once to the telephone and rang up the Haringtons. By a lucky chance he managed to make the connection, though with considerable delay owing to the emergency, as the operator phrased it. Christina answered. Morcar’s heart always leaped with pleasure when he heard her voice, but what he had to. say today must be said to her husband. He asked urgently for Harington and soon heard the barrister’s drawling arrogant tones. He wondered a little how Harington would feel now on the verge of war, with all his optimistic prophecies falsified; but there was no time for tactful sparing of his feelings.

  “Edward—send your family up here to be out of the way of air raids,” urged Morcar. “My mother will take care of them. I’ve plenty of room at Stanney Royd.”

  “Thanks. Many thanks. I haven’t considered what we ought to do yet,” drawled Harington. “I may send Christina away to her father.”

  “I shan’t leave London unless you do, Edward,” said Christina’s voice in the distance.

  “You’ll do what you’re told, my dear,” snapped Harington. Then making his voice mellifluous again, he said to Morcar: “I can’t yet believe it will really come to anything.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late to hope any more,” barked Morcar: “We shall be at war in a couple of hours.”

  “I daresay you’re right. I still feel it was all quite unnecessary,” drawled Harington in a peevish resentful tone. “But now that we are in it I suppose we must do our best.”

  “Yes. Well. You can all come here, think on,” cried Morcar as the connection began to fade.

  He smoked a cigar sitting beside the wireless, and endured a church service and some musical inanities until a quarter past eleven. Then the Prime Minister’s voice—the voice of a business man defeated in a bargain, thought Morcar, though the words had. dignity—announced that England was at war.

  Morcar went out into the garden, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and began to shovel the sand into the bags. Jessopp came out to help; he held the bags while Morcar filled them. Mrs. Morcar, erect, undaunted, watched him from the kitchen windows. It was a glorious sunny September day. Red Admiral butterflies zigzagged about the garden; the trees were scarcely tipped at all with gold. Something cold touched Morcar’s hand.

  “Why, Heather!” exclaimed Morcar, stooping to pat the dog. “Come to help me, eh?”

  Steps rounded the corner of the house, and David Oldroyd appeared.

  “Sandbags?” he said, sketching a
salute to Mrs. Morcar.

  “I’m going to put these in a parapet round yon cellar window—I’ve got it nicely fixed up inside,” said Morcar. “Give me a hand.”

  David took off his coat and began to tie the ears of the bags. Morcar thought he seemed quiet and unlike himself.

  When the sand was all bagged and the bags stacked in a neat redoubt around the window of the strengthened cellar, Morcar invited David down to inspect the new air-raid shelter. He was justly proud of its neat lay-out. Steel props supported the strong old roof, which consisted of two huge slabs of stone. There were four comfortable chairs, for Mrs. Morcar, her son—“though I shall be out on the warden’s job usually, I expect,” said Morcar—and the two Jessopps. There was a table, two pitchers of water, some mineral syphons, china, first aid appliances, cards, books. A hammer, a hatchet—“to cut our way out if the house comes down on top of us,” said Morcar—a couple of flashlights, a kettle with special fuel and a new oil stove completed the amenities.

  “Very neat and nice,” said David.

  His tone was flat and perfunctory, and Morcar felt a boyish disappointment, for he had expected his arrangements to be admired and praised.

  “You’ve done something similar at Scape Scar, I reckon?” he said as they wriggled through the cellar window (to test the escape route) into the sunshine. “And what about Old Mill?”

  David hesitated.

  “I suppose I shall have to give up Old Mill,” he said slowly.

  “Give it up?” exclaimed Morcar, horrified. “Why?”

  “I’m of military age, you know,” said David. “I shall be a soldier, not a manufacturer, for the next few years.”

  “Ah,” said Morcar. His tone was preoccupied, for he was seeing in swift startling flashes many pictures of his own early life: Charlie and himself enlisting, Charlie winding a puttee for the first time, Charlie in the shell-hole. Charlie’s face, dead, and his own 1919 face in the mirror in the train to Annotsfield.

  “In fact, I’m a soldier already,” David was saying soberly. “I’ve got my papers—I leave tonight.”

  “That doesn’t mean you need give up Old Mill. Why should you?”

  “I’ve nobody to leave in charge. I shall have to give it up.”

  “Nay—I’ll run it for you!” said Morcar strongly.

  David exclaimed, flushed, and began to stammer incoherently in a voice which shook.

  “I shall ask nothing a year as a wage, and then you can double it from time to time to show your appreciation,” joked Morcar.

  “But, Mr. Morcar,” stammered David. “I can’t accept—it’s too good—of course I should be profoundly grateful—but—”

  Intensely embarrassed, Morcar put a deterring hand on his arm. “Say nowt, lad,” he begged. Looking away, for he was moved, he saw the dog Heather sitting on his haunches, surveying the sandbags from his brown eyes with a judicial considering air. “Tell you what—I’ll keep Heather for you too,” said Morcar, pointing to the dog. “Unless you’d prefer him to go to your father.”

  “I think Heather would prefer to stay in Yorkshire,” said David.

  36. Export Group

  It was March 1940. Morcar was out for a walk with David, who had a few days’ leave. The two men came out of the gate of the park to high fields, and struck up a stony lane towards the moor. David stooped and released Heather from his lead, and the dog bounced rapturously ahead.

  “It’s grand to be out here again,” said Morcar, sniffing the keen air appreciatively. “I never seem to do any walking now you’re away, David. I wish you were back home, lad.”

  “I might as well be back home for all the good I’m doing in the Army, at present,” said David bitterly. “The Army! My God!” But he had vented his vexation on this point already and was never one to press his own affairs at the expense of his listener’s; he turned instead courteously to Morcar’s grievance. “You know, the idea of this new Export Council seems thoroughly sound to me—I can’t understand why you don’t like it. According to the Cash and Carry Act in the United States, we can only get munitions from there by paying dollars and bringing the stuff across the Atlantic ourselves. Our dollar reserve is getting very low, so we must earn more dollars. The only way to earn dollars is by selling our products in the States. We make the cloth, we sell it in U.S.A., we use the purchase price to pay their munition manufacturers for aircraft and tanks and guns. They get the cloth, we get the munitions. God knows we need munitions,” concluded David.

  “I know all that,” said Morcar testily, though conscious that he understood the matter better when thus simply stated.

  “So we must have more exports—we must have an export drive.”

  “We must have more exports, but I don’t see any need for a Drive, or a Council, or a Group, or any of these things with high-falutin’ names,” growled Morcar. “I’ve exported scores of thousands of yards of wool tissues, as the Board of Trade calls ’em, in the last twenty years, and I don’t need any Government official to teach me how to do it. Especially when they’ve never been in a mill in their life, and most of them haven’t. Look at Edward Harington!” he went on, for this was a sore point with him: “Here he is with a high-up job in one of these Ministries or Departments or what not, pretending to be an expert on industrial relations. He doesn’t know a single thing about industry except what he’s picked up from me.”

  “That might be not inconsiderable, however,” said David, smiling.

  Morcar snorted.

  “Everyone in wool textiles doesn’t know his job as well as you do,” urged David. “This Export Group will co-ordinate the export effort of the whole industry.”

  Morcar snorted again.

  “You don’t mean you intend not to co-operate?” said David in alarm.

  “I shan’t have much choice, seemingly,” said Morcar in a disgruntled tone. “If the Government sets up an Export Group for the Wool Textile Industry or whatever the name of the thing is, we shall have to do what it says, choose how.”

  “You form one of a Sub-Group, and the Sub-Group elects its own representative to the Export Group, as I understand it.”

  Morcar groaned. “All this jargon,” he muttered crossly.

  The two men reached the open moor, and paused to admire the turbulent hills which, in mat shades of green and sepia, rolled tumultuously away in every direction. The wild March wind roared round their ears and stung their faces; dark grey clouds chased each other swiftly across the sky, occasionally throwing to earth heavy spears of steel-coloured rain. In the distance Annotsfield, its mill-chimneys agreeably miniature, clung precariously to several hillsides. Heather galloped away, his black pointed ears emerging occasionally above the sombre stems of the plant which gave him his name.

  “By the way, where’s your cousin GB nowadays?” asked Morcar, as his eye identified the distant slope of Booth Bank.

  “R.A.F.”

  “Of course I shall co-operate with anything that’s intended to help win the war,” said Morcar in a milder tone, reverting to the Export Group. “But you can’t expect me to like it—any more than a dog likes being put on a lead.”

  37. Disasters

  It was April 1940. Mrs. Morcar and her son sat at luncheon in Stanney Royd. Morcar had switched on the wireless so that they might hear the one o’clock news.

  They listened. An involuntary gasp of horror came from both. The dog Heather, asleep by the hearth, awoke abruptly at the sound and pricked his rough black ears. They all remained silent and motionless for a long moment while the BBC droned out details.

  “Ring the bell, Harry,” said Mrs. Morcar at length in a stifled tone. “I can’t eat anything after such disasters.”

  Morcar glanced with distaste at his own full plate and vigorously pressed the bell.

  38. Call to Sacrifice

  It was May 1940.

  Morcar entered the lounge of the Annotsfield Club.

  “… and so Churchill is Prime Minister at last.”

&nbs
p; “Thank God!” said Morcar.

  “You needn’t be so chirpy about it—he only promises us blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

  “Who cares?” said Morcar.

  39. Volunteer

  “… men of reasonable physical fitness and a knowledge of firearms should give in their names at their local police station.”