Crescendo Page 6

  Arnold had a great desire to take Jerry and Chillie down to Holmelea Mills together, so that they might see in each other’s company that the place was not in the least dark or satanic, but on the contrary extremely well-lighted and comfortable. The windows were large, the power mainly electric, the lighting fluorescent; the machines gleamed with speed and newness—he was always on the look-out for new machines, had bought another only yesterday; pieces of cloth were shot down slippery slides or wheeled about in neat trolley-carts, no man ever having to carry the weight of one on his shoulder. In fact, Arnold set such store on this visit to the mill that he made up his mind to insist on it if necessary. But no insistence was necessary; Chillie’s greed supplied the impetus. Arnold observed with sardonic amusement that Chillie wanted very much to come down to the mill and be fitted up with a suit length, while Jerry was ashamed of his father’s ham-handed generosity, as he regarded it, and took Chillie for walks on the moors instead. It was Chillie’s greed, too, which prevented any show-down taking place about Jerry’s project of living with Chillie in London. The boy often approached the subject but Chillie as often headed him off. Chillie had had second thoughts, Arnold surmised, and wanted the cloth and the comfortable weekend’s accommodation before he had to quarrel with his hosts.

  Tuesday morning, the last of Chillie’s stay, was thus reached without the mill visit having been paid, and Arnold was afraid that he would be obliged to exert pressure to assure it, when at the breakfast table Chillie suddenly said in a petulant tone:

  “I must see the Barraclough mills before I go.”

  “There’s scarcely time before your train,” began Jerry, but Arnold interrupted.

  “Come down with me,” he said. “I’m always there by nine. Bring your case—you can go on afterwards to Ashworth station. I’ll drive you. I have to call on some customers in that direction, some time today.”

  “We needn’t trouble you, Mr. Barraclough. We can go by bus,” said Chillie, intending as usual to show his high-minded contempt for every luxury.

  “Well, we can settle that later,” said Arnold impatiently. “I’ve picked out a few lengths, Jerry, for your friend to see.” (He could not bring himself to use the man’s absurd nickname, and Chillie’s real surname escaped his recollection.) He rose from the table, saying: “Get the car out, Jerry. Come along.”

  So now the three of them were turning into the yard of Holmelea Mills.

  “Here we are,” said Arnold again to Chillie, who sat beside him.

  2

  The moment Arnold entered Holmelea Mills he felt happy and at ease. This was his own stamping-ground; here he was appreciated and needed. He had hardly entered his private office—bright and sunny, with large windows overlooking the valley, and admirable modern appointments—before he was in the thick of business; his secretary presented him with a mass of opened letters, the telephone rang, the works manager came in, queries of every kind seemed to pour in upon Arnold, who answered them with ease and decision. During these first minutes Jerry and Chillie stood about the office in a rather hangdog style, very much in the way of the various people who hurried in and out and clearly feeling unwanted and insignificant. Between telephone calls, while he changed into his mill coat, Arnold urged them to sit down; Chillie took a chair and Jerry balanced himself on the end of his father’s desk, his fair head drooping disconsolately.

  “Now!” said Arnold at length briskly: “We’ll go up and see what we can find in the way of a suit-length.”

  He led the way to the lift. It was in motion, descending; it drew up and out stepped young Clifford from the cropping department.

  “I was coming to fetch you, Mr. Barraclough,” said he in a serious tone. “Ernest says, could you come up to the cropping-room for a minute?”

  “Something wrong, Cliff?” said Arnold.

  Clifford coloured and muttered.

  The four men crowded into the lift and Arnold pressed the button for the floor which held the cropping department. The lift drew up; Arnold pushed back the gates and strode ahead.

  He saw at once that something was seriously wrong.

  It was not only that Ernest Armley, his foreman cropper, stood by with a face as long as a grave-digger’s. Croppers as a category were often moody and difficult, and Arnold for one did not blame them. Their machines ran fast, and new ones ran faster every year. The process of shearing the surface of cloth to make it smooth always presented a difficult problem requiring skilled judgment; crop too little and the surface remained rough; crop too close and the fabric’s coherence was shorn away. A cropping-machine must be watched every minute of the eight-hour day; the cropper couldn’t ever relax and discuss last Saturday’s football match with the chap working next to him. Ernest was a particularly skilful, reliable and conscientious cropper; a glum look from Ernest was accordingly normal. But this morning all the cropping-machines stood motionless; the men stood round looking helpless and upset, and the gaze of all seemed to be centred upon some pieces of bright brown cloth with self-coloured raised stripes, which had just come through the newest cropping-machine and lay in loose folds (in cuttle was the technical term) in the cart at the far end.

  “Well, Ernest? Something wrong?” said Arnold cheerfully.

  “Mr. Arnold,” began Ernest in a solemn tone. (This form of address revealed Ernest’s length of service with the firm, reflected Arnold; he had worked at Holmelea Mills when Mr. Barraclough meant Arnold’s father. “I’m afraid there’s been a very serious mistake made here this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m afraid so. These Bedford cords here.”

  “Well?”

  “They have to be cropped very delicately, you see.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, they’ve been cropped ordinary. The machines were set in the ordinary way, and it’s cropped them too clean. Too close, like.”

  With a horrid sinking at his heart, Arnold strode round the machine and stooping down lifted an edge of the brown cloth. Ernest followed.

  “It’s made them tender,” said Ernest, bending beside him.

  Arnold took the cloth in both hands and pressed his thumbs down strongly. The cloth split by the cord stripe.

  “Good lord!” exclaimed Arnold. “It’s as tender as tissue paper.”

  “Aye, it’s a bad business,” said Ernest mournfully.

  “The cloth can’t be worn. It’s useless. The manufacturer will invoice it up to us,” said Arnold.

  “He will,” agreed Ernest.

  His sad eyes roved, and Arnold perceived, what he had not before noticed, that every piece in the cart was brown, while heaps of other similar pieces occupied other trolleys at the side of the room.

  “How many of these Bedfords are there?” he demanded.

  “Thirteen.”

  “And how many have you cropped too close, eh?”

  There was an awful hush for a moment, then Ernest replied: “All t’lot.”

  “Good God!” exploded Arnold, violently losing his temper. “They’ll cost me sixty pounds a piece! Nigh on eight hundred pounds! Do you think I’ve got money to throw away? Do you think I’ve got eight hundred pounds to throw down the drain?” (The money was just the cost of keeping Jerry at a university for a couple of years, he reflected furiously.) “How did it happen? Who set the machines?” he raged. “Don’t you know enough about cropping after all these years not to set the gauge too close, for cords? Ernest? Eh? I’m talking to you.”

  “I weren’t here,” said Ernest sadly.

  “Not here!” bellowed Arnold. The enormity of it suddenly struck him speechless.

  “I missed my bus,” said Ernest in his heavy pompous tones, “and came late to mill. The lads here didn’t think on cords had to be treated special like, you see, so they just set to and cropped ’em ordinary.”

  “I don’t know what you think, Ernest, but I think it’s about time we had a foreman cropper at Holmelea who’s on the job when he’s supposed to be,” said
Arnold. He spoke savagely, fast and furious, and threw the end of the unlucky cord violently away from him. “Well! Whose are the pieces, eh?”

  Ernest muttered the name of an old and valued Ashworth customer.

  “I thought as much. Be a long time before he sends us any more. Give me the numbers, then. I’d better telephone him right away. May as well make a clean breast of it.”

  Ernest withdrew a stump of pencil from behind his ear and began slowly and clumsily to write down on the back of an old label the reference numbers stitched into the end of each piece. The younger men, awed by the magnitude of the row, silently shifted the pieces about and turned up the head ends to help him. Arnold stood by, fuming. At length Ernest proffered him the list, saying heavily:

  “I don’t suppose it’s much use, Mr. Arnold, to say I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t suppose it is,” snapped Arnold. “A. & J. Barraclough have lost eight hundred pounds and a good customer, and you say you’re sorry.”

  He stamped out of the department. He would liked to have slammed the door, but it was not of the slamming kind, being a heavy old swinging door, with a leather strap to keep it close where the years of use had worn it away. Lacking this means of expression, Arnold needed another so badly that he disregarded the lift, the gates of which Clifford was holding open with a subdued and deprecating air, and rushed down the stairs and into his office as hard as he could go. One or two workmen he met as he passed stared at his scarlet face in astonishment and grinned a little, backing up against the wall to get out of his way.

  “They’ll grin on the other side of their faces when they hear what’s happened,” thought Arnold furiously, for it was not only the loss of the money but the slur on Holmelea’s reputation which wounded him deeply.

  He strode into his office, snatched up the telephone and got at once into communication with the manufacturer of the unlucky cords.

  “We’ve had an accident with them and they’re useless,” he explained. “No use blinking it.”

  “It’s a nuisance. They were due to go to the States next week. How did it happen?” said the manufacturer, curious.

  Arnold went into technical details. “The foreman was away and the men set the machines too close.”

  “Well, we shall have to invoice them to you, Arnold.”

  “I know. You’ll have to debit them to our account.”

  “I’m sorry, but there it is.”

  “I’m not trying to get out of it.”

  “If you’re coming round this way today, Arnold, you might bring one of them with you. I’d like to see it—see the effect too close cropping has, you know.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Arnold pleasantly, perceiving that he was being let off lightly.

  “Right. Well, don’t take it too much to heart.”

  “I reckon I shall take it several hundred pounds to heart,” said Arnold grimly, putting on a Yorkshire accent to carry off his loss as a joke.

  “I reckon you will,” said the manufacturer in the same tone.

  Arnold put down the receiver and sat still for a moment, cooling down. Ernest of all people to do a thing like that! The solemn, serious, reliable Ernest! Well, you never knew! Poor old Ernest!

  “It’s the only mistake he’s made in all his time as foreman,” reflected Arnold. “But by God it’s a big one when it comes. I must say I’d rather he’d made a small one every year.”

  He gave an exasperated sigh. I suppose I shall have to go up and have a word with him presently, he thought, but I’ll let them all stew a bit first. Now, let’s see; what was I doing before this happened?

  Good God, he remembered suddenly, he’d been taking Jerry and that ghastly homo round the mill. He was on his way to the top room to find a suit-length for Chillie. He looked up in alarm at the office clock; well, there was plenty of time yet before the man’s train, fortunately. He sprang to his feet. But where were Jerry and Chillie? Had they stayed upstairs on the cropping floor, he wondered? Were they perhaps waiting for him there? He hurried out into the general office, calling for his secretary. She came towards him rather nervously, and said at once:

  “Mr. Jerry and his friend have gone to the station.”

  “Gone to the station?” said Arnold blankly.

  “Yes. They went by bus.”

  “There was no need for that,” exclaimed Arnold, wounded in his hospitality. “I meant to drive them—there’s plenty of time.”

  “I said so to Mr. Jerry, but he was determined to go,” said the girl.

  Arnold walked back thoughtfully into his private office and sat down at his desk. He looked out of the window, considering, and slowly the full enormity of what had happened flooded his mind. That he had promised Jerry’s friend a suit-length and failed to keep his promise was bad enough, but the real trouble was his explosion of wrath against that daft-head Ernest. He had shouted, he had sworn, he had not condescended to ask for an explanation of Ernest’s bus-missing; he had bellowed and stamped as if a few hundred pounds were all he cared about in the world. (He had unfortunately never mentioned the damage to Holmelea’s reputation, which would have appealed to Jerry’s young idealism as a more legitimate cause for wrath.) In a word, he had behaved exactly and precisely like the vulgar, mercenary, exploiting, capitalist boss which Chillie had spent the weekend trying to make him out to be, in the eyes of his son. Chillie must have been delighted.

  It came to Arnold suddenly that he had a picture in his mind of Chillie looking delighted, smirking venomously all over his sly face, with Jerry beside him, white and contemptuous and horror-stricken. Was this picture a remembrance of reality, or an invention of fear? It was real, thought Arnold, wincing; he remembered seeing the two faces in the background during that very unfortunate speech in which he practically threatened to give Ernest the sack. Of course he hadn’t the least intention of giving Ernest the sack, but he had felt savagely angry and had meant to wound. He had felt so angry that for a moment he had forgotten Jerry, Chillie and Ernest’s long service, and in so doing he had, he now saw, lost the game for his son’s affection.

  Arnold sat for some minutes by the window, his strong square hands, loosely clenched, lying on his desk. They were loosely clenched because he could not see how to continue fighting; he was defeated. His heart felt heavy and cold. He had failed Jerry. He had failed Meg. Of course he could probably manage to keep his son out of Chillie’s clutches, for the present at any rate. Jerry was under age and had no money of his own; short of very violent rebellion the boy would be obliged to obey his father if Arnold forbade him to join his friend, and a lack of money would be strongly operative in any case as regards Chillie’s willingness to receive him. But if Arnold exercised the rights of parentage and the power of money in this way, he would completely forfeit his son’s trust and affection. The only hope of retaining that affection was to convince Jerry that Chillie was worthless, that his father was a better man, more worthy of trust, than Chillie, and this hope Arnold had in the last hour destroyed. He struck his fist savagely on the desk and cursed Ernest; why the hell did he have to make an appalling mistake, the only one of his working life, on this particular day? Those confounded spoiled cords had hamstrung Arnold in his fight for his son’s future.

  3

  After a time Arnold roused himself with a sigh. He chose a handsome suit-length for Chillie and had it parcelled. He could not bring himself to go up and speak a soothing word to Ernest—indeed, if he saw Ernest while he was feeling as he did about Jerry, the word he spoke would probably not be at all soothing—but he sent a message for one of the cord pieces to be brought down. He drove into Ashworth with it in the back of the Jaguar, and discussed the details of the disaster in a lighthearted manner with its owner, though he felt all the time as if he could choke. He had a luncheon engagement with another customer at a hotel in Bradford, and kept it. But in the middle of the meal he felt he could bear his anxiety no longer; he excused himself and rose from the table and telephoned Holmelea Hall to
find out whether Jerry was there. To his relief the boy was at the Hall, but Meg did not sound happy as she announced this. Arnold asked to speak to his son. There was a rather long pause, then Jerry’s young voice said crossly:

  “Yes, father?”

  “I’m sorry your friend went off without his suit-length,” began Arnold in his kindest tone.

  “It’s of no consequence.”

  “I’ve chosen out a good one for him,” continued Arnold, describing it in technical terms. “Now if you’ll just give me his address I’ll have it sent on to him at once.”

  “I haven’t his address with me at the moment.”

  “Then perhaps you’ll telephone it to the mill office this afternoon,” said Arnold. “Or give it to me tonight.”

  “Please don’t trouble either way,” said Jerry shortly. “I don’t suppose Chillie really wants the cloth.”

  “I do,” said Arnold.

  “Well, that’s where we differ,” said Jerry. “Goodbye, father.”

  He rang off. Father was not the fashionable word for a male parent these days, and Arnold had rarely heard it from his son, who usually addressed him by the more childish but agreeable appellations of daddy or dad. This change of address confirmed all Arnold’s fears. He went back to the table feeling more wretched than he had done since the morning of his father’s death, twenty-six years before. To conceal this from his customer he put on a jaunty air and drank a little more than usual.

  This forced conviviality protracted their meal, and Arnold left Bradford a trifle late. He pushed the Jaguar hard whenever the traffic gave him a chance, and arrived at his next appointment on time but in a rush; hot, a trifle over-stimulated by whisky, profoundly uneasy and furiously angry with the whole universe, especially pseudo-artists.