More Tales of the West Riding (15 page)

“Philip—I think I'll get her off to Switzerland. That school where the Ormerod girl went, you know.”

“Well, it might be a good idea,” said Mr Lumb with reluctance. “Because it's all very well, First Aid classes and that, Alison, but the last tram from Hudley got into Moorfoot half an hour ago, so where is she now? I think she often meets him.”

In fact, his suspicions were justified. Frank Hollis and Margaret Lumb were walking arm in arm together through the rain from the Moorfoot tram terminus to Moordale Lodge, pausing at times to admire the occasional stars. They were very happy. After two or three meetings filled with hope, doubt, discouragement, despair and joy, they were beginning to feel confidence in each other's love.

It was clear, from the crowd of people jostling amiably about the room, that the meeting would be well attended. Frank Hollis made his way towards Mr Lumb. He felt nervous and shy, but had made up his mind that he would accost Margaret's father tonight, whatever distress it caused him.

“Good evening, Mr Lumb,” he said.

“Good evening,” said Lumb shortly. He was in a very bad mood and hardly able to speak with decent civility.

“I wondered if perhaps Mrs Lumb and your daughter, your elder daughter, would be attending tonight.”

“No.” Lumb turned to the young man a face quite ravaged by pain. “My daughter left for Switzerland this morning,” he said. “She has gone to school there for three years.”

“Three years!” exclaimed Hollis. It was a blow under which he reeled. Mr Lumb, he noticed, looked as badly as he himself felt. He turned away, almost staggering in his pain. In fact, he was right. Mr Lumb had seen his daughter
off at the station that morning, and at the very last moment she had said to him hardly:

“I shall never forgive you for this, Daddy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. I don't want to go. You know it and you make me go. I shall never forgive you.”

“You will be home for the holidays in a month or two.”

Mrs Lumb wept, and her husband spoke with vexation to her.

“I mean what I say.”

Mr Ormerod now took the chair. It had been suggested that the Councillors should sit on the platform grouped around him, but Mr Ormerod had been unusually disagreeable about this. It was difficult enough, he had said to himself, to control a meeting when the people quarrelling were in front of you and down on the floor; but if they were seated on each side of you it was impossible. Wagging your head from side to side looked too foolish, and in any case if they began to shout at the same moment—and this was precisely what Messrs Crabtree and Hollis would do, he knew it—one could only look in one direction at a time. So seated on the platform was Mr Ormerod, flanked by the Clerk to the Council, Mr Ward and the Waterworks Engineer from Duckersfield. The Medical Officer of Health was not present, but had sent a letter in his place which condemned the Moordale National School Water Supply in terms so short, cold and clear that there was really no arguing against them. Or so at least Frank Hollis thought.

Mr Ormerod arose and made a pleasant warm-hearted speech of welcome.

“I am sorry not to see more ladies present,” said he, smiling at the three farmers' widows, who were present because they indubitably paid the rates.

“You only sent one ticket!” shouted a voice from the rear of the room at this.

Everybody laughed, and Mr Ormerod, accepting the rebuke, smiled and continued: “For it is upon them, I think, and I am sure you will agree, that the burden of an inadequate water supply chiefly falls.”

Several men exclaimed: “True! That's right!” and everyone felt comfortably convinced of their own wisdom, in perceiving this.

Mr Ormerod read the Medical Officer of Health's letter. It was so blunt, and scolded Moordale so severely for its long delay in providing a proper service, that everyone looked glum and fell silent. Mr Ormerod judged this a good moment to introduce Mr Ward, who had brought a large local map with him. A good deal of fuss supervened while Frank Hollis fixed this across a blackboard easel and provided Mr Ward with a pointer. Mr Ward, however, knew his employer's lands extremely well, and if his southern accent made rather heavy work of some of the Moordale names, he knew the gradients to a foot, and showed an acquaintance with the heather, cotton grass, bogs and rough bent grass of the area which called forth several corroborating cries of “That's right!” from his experienced hearers.

Mr Ormerod was pleased, and introduced the Waterworks Engineer. Few things are less interesting, however, than a stream of statistics presented orally. At first pleased to learn how much water each individual Moordaler consumed a day, the audience presently grew bored, yawned, even talked to their neighbours a little. Figures of mains and gallons were difficult to visualise, and cubic capacity even more so. When, however, they learned that the new proposals would bring in thirty thousand gallons each day and that the necessary reservoir need not be large or expensively constructed, they relaxed into approval and applauded the Waterworks Engineer quite heartily.

“And now for the finance,” commenced Mr Ormerod.

Mr Crabtree gave a loud and deep groan. Everybody heard it and was alarmed. Would the expense be so awful?

“Mr Chairman, I have said before and I say it again, that we ought not to rush into this heavy expense without due consideration.”

“We've been considering for four years, Councillor Crabtree.”

“Mr Chairman, may I speak?”

“Yes, Councillor Hollis, but please be brief.”

“Mr Chairman, we have all heard the letter of the Medical Officer of Health, in which he condemns utterly and totally the water supply to this school. Every moment the water trough remains in the yard here, Moordale children are in danger.”

“Pipe the water in the trough away somewhere, then,” said Crabtree.

“Where shall we pipe it to?”

“Nay, that's your look-out. I don't care.”

“Murderer!” shouted Hollis.

“I won't stay here to be insulted,” cried Crabtree, clumsily rising.

“Councillor Hollis, you must withdraw your epithet,” said Ormerod firmly.

“I don't feel at all inclined to.”

“That is my ruling, as chairman of this meeting,” said Ormerod. “Withdraw.”

“Shut up and sit down, Hollis,” said Lumb, exasperated.

“It's all very well,” cried Hollis, “but none of you have children at the school. Lord Mountlace doesn't live here; Councillor Crabtree has no children anyway; Councillor Lumb gets all the water his mill needs from lower down the Eddle. None of you know anything about the children and none of you care.”

“Could we possibly have an account of the probable expenses?” put in Greenwood in a calming tone.

“Certainly.”

Crabtree and Hollis, both wanting to hear this, resumed their seats.

The clerk detailed the finance required, concluding by saying that in the present stage of Moordale accounts, only an additional twopence would be required on each rate as paid at present.

“Twopence in the pound,” enlarged Crabtree.

“Twopence in the pound, of course,” said Mr Walsh irritably.

“I've heard it would be six and fourpence on every pound,” said one of the farmer's wives with gloom.

“I am glad to be able to tell you that that is incorrect, madam,” said Ormerod.

“Let us murder a few children rather than pay six and fourpence, certainly,” threw out Hollis.

“Really, Councillor Hollis, do please modify your expressions,” urged Ormerod.

“Aye, but, Mr Chairman,” said a man rising from the back row: “Could it be true what he says, like? Mr Hollis, I mean. If a child drank summat from trough here, would it be dangerous, like?”

“It might be,” said Ormerod carefully.

“Well, then, I think as how we ought to have a piped service properly, like.”

“Hear, hear,” came from several parts of the hall.

“All nonsense,” threw out Crabtree.

“Murderer,” said Hollis in a quiet but very distinct tone.

Crimsoning, Crabtree shouted: “I will not stay here to be insulted by a young whippersnapper.”

He rose and swiftly, in his ungainly sideways fashion, tripped from the room.

Everyone paused a moment, dismayed. Then Hollis suddenly sprang up and followed.

“After him, Tom!” cried Lumb, hauling himself up from a rather small chair. Greenwood, astonished, obeyed.

Whether Mr Lumb thought that one of the quarrelling men would attack the other, and if so which, it is impossible to tell, and probably Lumb himself did not know his own mind in the matter. But by the time Lumb and Greenwood tracked down the quarrellers in the spring dusk, Crabtree had fallen sideways into the much-discussed trough, and Hollis was either pulling him out or pushing him in. Greenwood thought the former, Lumb suspected the latter. There was a good deal of splashing and slipping in which Crabtree's short but plump and heavy body was—except for his head, which protruded oddly—deeply imbedded in the trough; Hollis actually climbed in, stooped over his enemy and with some expenditure of muscle pushed him up and out, while the newcomers hauled on his legs. All four men were pretty well soaked when Crabtree at last stood on his own feet at the trough's side, supported under the arms by Lumb and Greenwood.

“I thank you, gentlemen,” said Crabtree with his usual pomposity. “I was inspecting the tank when my foot slipped.” He put a hand to the top of his spine. “The trough should be covered. I understood Mr Hollis to say at an earlier meeting that the trough was covered.”

His tone was peevish and accusing as usual.

“The heavy spring rains have swollen the water till it threw off the covering board,” explained Hollis, drying his face with his handkerchief. “The paving stones around the base are green with moss and slippery. I'm not surprised you lost your footing.”

“Are you hurt?” asked Lumb impatiently.

“Bruised, I fear,” replied Crabtree with dignity.

“You have to thank Mr Hollis for saving you from drowning.”

Crabtree snorted angrily and offered no thanks.

“You'd best walk home quickly or you'll catch a bad cold,” urged Greenwood.

“Take my coat,” said Hollis drily.

Crabtree snorted again but did not refuse the coat thrown over his shoulders. Without more words he turned and walked away through the gate.

“That was foolish of you, young man,” said Lumb.

Hollis shrugged and walked off.

Yes, the whole affair was foolish. Indeed, silly. And all because people lose their tempers and say more than they mean. Silly, yes. But tragic too. For Hollis died of it, you know. Yes. Typhoid. He'd swallowed some of the trough water. They put up a plaque to him on the school wall, inscribed:
In Memory of Francis Hollis, first headmaster of this school and a devoted member of Moordale Rural District Council.
Of course the plaque vanished with the old school building and wall when the new school—very fine at the time, quite inadequate now—was built.

“Frank. Oh, Frank,” mourned Tom Greenwood. “Best man I knew.”

“He was a nice lad,” mused Mr Ormerod, who unveiled the plaque. “Over-enthusiastic, you know. An extremist. Damaged his own cause. But honest.”

“Foolish,” said Mr Lumb, shaking his head. “Pity.”

Mr Crabtree was not present at the ceremony.

The Moordale water supply was a great success. Margaret is an excellent nurse—appointed matron this year in some large southern hospital. She does not often come home.

1848-1974

One day several years ago—it was about 1956, I think—I was sitting on a March evening reading the
Hudley Star
, our little town's evening newspaper, when I encountered this paragraph.

A prominent local Esperantist, Mr Joe Dean, of 13, Pickles Street, Hollow Bridge, died, in Hudley General Hospital during the weekend. For nearly half a century he had corresponded with people in over 50 countries in different parts of the world. Among people from whom he had letters were a Tibetan priest, a Paris wine merchant and a Czech miner. Mr Dean had been a textile worker. He leaves a widow.

I smiled, in fact I actually chuckled, to myself. I looked up Pickles (originally Pighills) Street in my local “Where Is It” directory, and found that it was even more remote than I had thought. Hollow Bridge—I don't know when it got its name; some time in Queen Elizabeth's prosperous days, I expect—was a small, active, commercial suburb of Hudley, down in the valley with an old packhorse bridge across the Hollow and quite a sizeable nineteenth-century bridge leading to a main road over the Pennines into Lancashire farther on. But Pickles Street was not in Hollow Bridge but on Hollow Bank, a steep hilly tract running up the side of the Pennines, with a farm and a weaver's cottage or two here and there
scattered about the rough grassy slopes, but really very far away from anywhere. The thought of dear Mr Joe Dean corresponding with people in Tibet, Paris and Czechoslovakia, toiling away at night in Esperanto by the light of a lamp, his good wife knitting at his side, both very proud of his linguistic skill, pleased me. What a race we are in the West Riding, I thought with pride. So obstinate, so individual, with these odd quirks we're so proud of; it may be pigeons, the Messiah, politics, teetotalism or Esperanto, but whatever it is we do it with our might and defy anybody to be amused.