The Rise of Henry Morcar (46 page)

The Liverpool station was not in full working order owing to bombings, but a little train took Morcar to a junction where he caught an express. It was Saturday night. The train held many simple English families returning from a country jaunt, the children clutching drooping flowers. They all looked hot and tired and definitely shabby; but they were patient, quietly cheerful and kind, as always. Morcar thought of their scanty food rations, their scanty clothes rations, their almost nightly aerial visitations, and gazed at them with loving admiration; he felt there was nothing too good for these people, nothing.

He went up the steps of Stanney Royd about eleven o'clock. He had contrived to telephone from Manchester, and the door stood wide to welcome him. As his footsteps sounded on the threshold Heather, barking furiously, scurried out from the drawing-room. Mrs. Morcar followed. She fell on her son's neck, weeping, while Heather, almost hysterical with joy, whined feverishly and clasped his paws round Morcar's ankles.

Morcar looked through his correspondence and found that in his absence his undefended divorce suit had gone through; Winnie had obtained a
decree nisi
, in a few months he would be altogether free. A recent note from David reassured him about the Haringtons' safety. Morcar spent the weekend in a dream of happiness, strolling about the green Stanney Royd garden, looking at the loved West Riding hills. He was at home, in England; he could claim Christina for his own. He planned to go to London next weekend, to be married to Christina by next year's summer.

On Monday morning, before he even visited Syke Mills, Morcar went into the best Annotsfield bookshop and gave a large order for books to be despatched at once to the
Floating Castle.

On Wednesday he received a very courteous and pleasant note from the shipping company to which the
Castle
belonged, thanking him for the fine parcel of books, which they were sure would be greatly appreciated by the merchant seamen in their employ. Unfortunately the
Floating Castle
had already left Liverpool on an outward voyage. Should they reserve the books for her, or give them to the crew of some other of their vessels?

Morcar's face lengthened as he read. So the captain and crew of the
Floating Castle
were already back on the Atlantie! So the voyage which to him had been such an extraordinary event, such a dangerous ordeal, they were already repeating! This was the “speeded-up turnaround” of which the mate had spoken.
Evidently at this stage of the submarine campaign no ships could be spared, no men had time to rest on leave. The lifeline between Britain and America was strung out very thin; stretch it even a little further and it might break.

“And if it's like that for the Merchant Navy,” reflected Morcar: “I expect it will be just as bad for those destroyer men.”

He thought of the commander of the sloop: that lad so fresh and fair and young, so like Edwin Harington. He sighed, and put down the shipping company's letter very soberly, with a look of disappointment on his face. Christina's right, thought Morcar sadly; you can't break up the home of a lad who's fighting the battle of the Atlantic. We must wait.

Morcar's recent travels had made him tired of hotels, and for his London visits he installed himself in a service flat overlooking Hyde Park. He was asleep there one wintry morning in the December following his return from the U.S.A. when the telephone rang at his bedside. The call was so early that he snatched up the instrument in some alarm, and cried: “Harry Morcar here,” very urgently.

The caller evidently successfully pressed button A in a call-box, for pennies could be heard falling; but he or she remained silent.

“Who's this?” said Morcar. It was a locution borrowed from American acquaintances which Morcar enjoyed using, but it seemed to upset his caller, for there was no reply. “Who's that?” said Morcar, reverting to normal.

A Yorkshire voice said hesitantly: “This is Cecil.”

“Oh!” said Morcar. As always when his former wife or his son entered his life, he felt a painful constriction. As the young man said no more, he forced himself to utter the enquiry: “Is there anything wrong with your mother?”

“No. No, Mother's all right,” said Cecil. “At least, she was last night when I left her.”

“Did you bring me a special message from her, perhaps?”

“Not specially,” said Cecil.

At the end of his ideas, Morcar waited for some other explanation of the call, but none came. He said at last: “Where are you?”

“I'm in London on my way back from leave. Mother told me your address. She got it from Granny. She said I was to ring you up,” said Cecil.

His mild grating voice sounded wistful, and Morcar, remembering his promise to Winnie, which he had hitherto implemented only by a generous provision of money through alimony and codicils and settlements, suggested hurriedly: “Come and have lunch with me.”

“Shall I?” said Cecil. His voice was now relieved and shy, yearning and happy all in a breath; it was clear that his father's invitation had struck the note expected.

“Yes, of course. Don't be later than one. Well—better say quarter to, then we can have a drink together.”

“Thank you,” said Cecil. As far as one could judge from his tone, he seemed to be expressing astonished delight, but with the young people of today one could never tell, reflected Morcar shrewdly.

“Do you know how to get here?”

“I'll find out,” said Cecil cheerfully, hanging up the receiver.

Morcar had to attend a committee meeting at the Board of Trade that morning, and was delayed longer than he expected. On his return the porter, to whom he had given instructions to admit Cecil, told him that Private Morcar was in the flat waiting for him. Cecil's name always stung Morcar, and he had to pause as he unlocked his door to compose his features into a suitably welcoming smile.

His son was sitting in an awkward position on the window seat, gazing out through the fine large windows at the Park Lane scene, busy even in wartime, and the frozen grass and bare branches of the Park beyond. He was also humming a song beneath his breath. He stood up to greet his father, his fair ingenuous face beaming. It was odd, thought Morcar, shaking hands though his flesh crawled at the touch of his child by Winnie, how some lads—David for instance—looked handsome in battle-dress and others emphatically looked otherwise. The neat workmanlike suit gave David a fine figure, broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs, flat belly, but Cecil's tunic was at once too large and too small—“it fits where it touches,” thought Morcar, using a West Riding phrase angrily. It certainly did not touch the back of his neck, but clasped his waist too closely; the general effect was to make the lad look over-solid, ungainly, bulging, countrified. “Of course he's a private and David's an officer—the cut will be poorer perhaps,” thought Morcar, trying to be fair and make excuses. He enquired Cecil's taste in drinks, but finding that the boy usually drank only beer, did not know the names of other drinks and had probably never had any kind of cocktail in his life, he set about mixing him a mild gin and lime. Cecil remained standing, gazing at him.

“Sit down—sit down and make yourself at home,” said Morcar. In spite of himself his voice was irritable, and Cecil's mild brown eyes clouded like a scolded dog's as he obeyed. “The cigarettes are on the table beside you. Help yourself,” said Morcar more kindly.

Cecil brightened and took a cigarette. As he briskly snapped his lighter, his head on one side, his eyelids lowered, he looked more manly, and the voice in which he began again to croon his previous ditty was a deep and quite pleasing baritone.

“Has anyone seen the Colonel?

I know where he is.

I know where he is.

I know where he is.

Has anyone seen the Colonel?

I know where he is—

He's dining with the Brigadier.

I saw him, I saw him
,

Dining with the Brigadier I saw him
,

Dining with the Brigadier.”

“What's that you're singing?” said Morcar, amused.

Cecil coloured. “It's just a song we sing. It goes through all the officers, and non-coms. too. And the private. They're all doing something off the line of duty, more or less, except the private.”

“And what's the private do, eh?”

“Holding up the whole damn line, I saw him
,

Holding up the whole damn line.”

“Perhaps that shocks you?” said Cecil suddenly, colouring again.

“Shocks me?” exclaimed Morcar, aghast.

“Disrespectful to the officers?”

“Don't be a fool, my boy; I'm an old soldier myself.” It suddenly struck Morcar as intolerable that this boy, his son and Charlie's nephew, should seem ignorant of this cardinal fact. “Your uncle and I joined the B.E.F. together in August 1914,” he said stiffly. The scene of Charlie's death rose once more, for the thousandth time, vividly before his eyes. “I was with your uncle when he was killed,” said Morcar gruffly.

“Yes, I know,” said Cecil. His tone was respectful, and Morcar hazarded the guess that whatever Winnie might have thought about that incident herself she had at least not poisoned her son's mind against him. He found himself actually feeling grateful to her. It was very uncomfortable.

“Well, let's go down to the restaurant and have some lunch, shall we?” he said.

“Shall I take my coat?” asked Cecil in his simple Yorkshire tones.

“No—we'll come up here again afterwards,” said Morcar. It's like taking a child about, he thought furiously; he hasn't the least idea how to conduct himself.

This impression was deepened in the restaurant, where Cecil was quite astray with the menu and not very certain in his selection of forks. It was so long since Morcar himself had felt uncertain about forks that when he saw Cecil waiting for his father to begin a course, his eyes fixed in anxious inquiry on Morcar's right hand, Morcar did not at first understand what he was about and even looked down at his hand himself to see if there were anything odd about it. There was nothing odd; he picked up a fork and attacked his hors d'œuvres; Cecil with a look of relief did the same. Then Morcar understood the situation. “He's nervous,” he thought. “Ill at ease. Afraid of doing the wrong thing. Afraid of me.” A rush of pity came into Morcar's heart, and for the first time that day he connected the big clumsy young man before him whose ill-cut fair hair stood up in a tuft on the crown of his head, with the sleeping child in neat grey coat and gaiters whom he had carried in his arms from The Sycamores to Hurstholt on a night twenty-two years ago, and fondly loved. He exerted himself to talk, to set Cecil at his ease. But he found this impossible to achieve. He tried all kinds of topics, all methods of approach—the jocular, the man-to-man, the cynical, the hearty. To each Cecil said: “Yes,” in his slow grating Yorkshire tones. “Yes,” he said, and “No,” and “I don't know really,” interspersing these conversational gems with a nervous little neigh of a laugh. “My God,” thought Morcar: “The boy is a noodle of the highest order.”

In despair he fell back upon textiles.

“I noticed you took your textile course at Annotsfield Technical,” he said. (He remembered that Cecil had passed only third class, but did not mention this.)

“Yes,” agreed Cecil.

“We've had some ups and downs in the wool textile trade during the war, I can tell you,” continued Morcar.

He thought he discerned a faint gleam of interest in Cecil's placid brown eyes, and decided to continue. “In any case it's the only thing I really know how to talk about,” he thought.

“Well—of course you know we've had Wool Control since 1939,” he said. “Wool's been rationed since two months after the war began. We've had three war jobs to do for the country
in the textile trade. First of all we had to clothe the Services. We began doing that about July 1939, and got pretty well ahead. But of course a lot of stuff was lost at Dunkirk, as I don't need to remind you, Cecil. Besides, there were. all these Free French and Free Poles and Free Dutch and so on to provide for. The Dutch are very particular about the stuff for their naval men, which is what you might expect. And now this women's conscription act has passed and we shall provide uniforms for the girls as well. That was the first job, though, clothing the Services. And the easiest. Then there was the Export Drive.”

Morcar sighed, and Cecil looked mildly interrogative.

“You see we wanted munitions and food and such from the U.S.A. and other countries, and the only way we could pay for it was by selling them our products, because our dollar reserve was exhausted and we'd already sold all our foreign investments,” explained Morcar—rather wearily, for he had explained it so often before, to Americans. “So the Government did everything it could to encourage us to export. We formed an Export Group to stimulate export, and some of the leading West Riding men visited North and South America to stimulate export, and some of us visited the U.S.A. privately to stimulate export—we thought of nothing else for months but stimulating export. I came back with plenty of orders. Then the Lease-Lend Act passed and export to the States wasn't so vital. But still it was useful, I should have thought—it gave the Americans something in return for their goods, choose how.”

His voice was thick with resentment and Cecil ventured to enquire: “But didn't they want it?”

“No! The Americans complained that materials secured by England under Lease-Lend were being made into non-war products and exported into their markets. Of course,” said Morcar thoughtfully: “If it were so, you can see how it would annoy them.”

“But we don't get wool from America, do we?” objected Cecil.