The Rise of Henry Morcar (51 page)

And now the train began to move; the lovers' embrace was over, their fingers slipped from each other's grasp. Jenny tried to keep pace with the train, but it was not easy to thread her way amongst the other women.

“Harry! Harry!” called David suddenly in an urgent poignant tone, leaning far out of the window.

Much moved by this form of address, on David's lips not usual, Morcar flung himself forward and sprang to the step of David's carriage, holding on by the handle.

“Look after everything for me, Harry,” said David quickly.

“I will, lad. Goodbye and good luck,” said Morcar, releasing his hold and dropping to the platform.

“Goodbye,” said David.

Morcar kept the cutting from the London newspaper folded in his pocket-book. It grew worn and old; the paper yellowed, the print faded, the creases deepened into slits; but it remained
one of his most treasured possessions. From time to time, when he felt that his ideals needed encouragement, he drew it out and read it carefully.

The story of the death of Major David Oldroyd can now be told, though the resistance movement in Europe to which he acted as liaison officer must not yet be more closely identified.

The eyewitness from whom these details were obtained later became a member of the resistance movement and is now in England. His name cannot be given, as he has relatives still living in his native country.

Major Oldroyd was executed after a mock trial, after being in close captivity for about a week.

With him perished an American officer, a Czechoslovakian officer and ten other prisoners belonging to the country's resistance movement.

It is believed that the American and the Englishman were not tortured. Some of the resistance members had been deliberately blinded, and some bore wounds and sores. Major Oldroyd appeared to have broken his arm, for he wore a sling over his left shoulder, but not otherwise to be hurt.

The story of young Oldroyd's daring leadership of the movement, his bold denunciation of Nazism at the trial, and his fearless bearing on the way to execution, excited the admiration of the whole country and particularly the young men, greatly stimulating the resistance movement and adding to the difficulties of the Nazis. It was Oldroyd's task to supervise the supply of arms by air to the resisters, and it was while engaged on this task in the mountains that the party fell into the hands of a collaborationist patrol.

In order to impress the people of the neighbouring village, a mock “trial” was staged by the Nazis in the village hall, into which they drove all the villagers as spectators. A collaborating officer of the country, whom the eyewitness called “the Captain” and stigmatised as brutal, depraved and detested, was put in charge of the trial.

The eyewitness saw David Oldroyd sitting on the floor of the hall with his back against a pillar, smoking his pipe, which one of his fellow-prisoners helped him to light. When he was called up to be questioned and jerked roughly to his feet by the guards the pipe fell from his mouth and broke on the floor, and one of the guards put his foot on the pieces and stamped them into fragments. The villagers groaned their disapproval and the Captain shouted angrily for silence.

Oldroyd waved away the interpreter and answered the questions in the language of the country. He spoke quite quickly and eloquently. He had a fine ringing voice which could be heard distinctly all over the hall;
it was a pleasure to listen to him. He was a handsome man, too, with a very pleasant smile and lively blue eyes; he looked neat and correct in spite of his imprisonment. It was observed that his khaki uniform bore no insignia, and when asked for his rank and regiment he did not answer; he gave his name however as David Burg
(Editor's Note: Probably a mishearing for Brigg)
Oldroyd. The Captain questioned him closely about his political opinions.

“Why should you, an Englishman, come and interfere with the government of our country?” said the Captain. “What right have you to come here and stir up the people to wage war against us?”

Major Oldroyd answered: “I came because this war is not a struggle of nation against nation. It is a fight for justice and freedom and the brotherhood of man, against oppression and cruelty and tyranny. It is a fight for love against hate, for the good in man against the evil.”

At this the people applauded, and the Captain cried out savagely: “Here we shoot men with such opinions!”

Major Oldroyd shrugged his shoulders and replied: “That will not kill the opinions.”

“But it will kill you,” said the Captain, laughing.

“I am ready to die for freedom,” said Major Oldroyd. “And I am proud to die with these brave men, who believe in freedom, as my companions.”

Here the crowd demonstrated again in Oldroyd's favour by clapping and stamping and shouting, and the guards quelled them by beating the nearest over the head with the butts of their rifles. An old woman rushed up to the platform and shook her fist at the Captain. He jumped up and struck her across the mouth so that she fell to the ground bleeding.

The Nazis must have seen now that the crowd was against them and that the trial was not serving their purpose, for a Nazi officer rose from his seat on the platform and whispered urgently in the Captain's ear, and he hurried the proceedings to a close. The trial, if you can call it a trial where there were no lawyers and no witnesses and no jury, was all over in less than half an hour, and all the prisoners were condemned to death.

Major Oldroyd then formed the condemned men into a square, and placing himself at their head, marched them off to the castle between the guards. He whistled an English tune for them to march to, and the others took it up and sang it. It was not a tune the eyewitness knew. The contrast between their brisk neat marching and the exaggerated antics of the guards excited the derision of the crowd, who were country people, not accustomed to seeing the goosestep. As the prisoners marched off, Major Oldroyd raised the salute of the resistance movement: the clenched fist. The Captain struck his hand down violently. But Oldroyd called out to the people: “I give you the salute of freedom!” and raised his hand again.

Outside the castle the men were halted and made to dig a trench for
their common grave, in a field. Major Oldroyd was unable to wield a spade properly owing to his broken arm. A young man sprang out of the crowd and offered to dig for him, but was driven back by blows from the guards.

When the grave was finished the condemned men were lined up against the outer wall of the castle and executed by machine-gun fire. They all died raising their hands in the freedom salute.

The spectators were sobbing. Many present declared that the men's calm cheerful courage was due to the fine example of the English officer. “He was a very brave man and a very kind one,” a resistance officer said later. “We loved him very much. We shall remember him all our lives. He will always inspire us. He is one of those who make friendship possible between nations.”

The siren warbled for the seventh time that night. Morcar, busy with the agenda of the committee on wool textile industry reconstruction which he had come to London to attend next day, called in a preoccupied tone:

“Keep away from those windows, girls!”

Receiving no reply, he pulled off his new reading glasses quickly and looked up from his desk, first at the large sheets of glass—once a pleasure, now in the summer of 1944 a menace—and then across the room. Through the windows—from habit the amount of view added to the flat's rent came into his mind, then he remembered that he was trying not to think that kind of thought nowadays—through the windows the Park over the road made a beautifully calm and sunlit picture, and the two young women by the hearth made a beautifully calm and sunlit picture too. In both cases the appearance of calm lied, thought Morcar, for the Park lay under the threat of an approaching bomb, and Jenny and Fan bore perplexities in their fair young heads and griefs within their breasts. Indeed it was not like them to be so still, he thought; in the odd, bright, careless clothes the young affected nowadays, made for movement, their immobility looked strange. But it seemed they were both deep in reverie; Jenny's handsome intelligent face, Fan's usually so shrewd and saucy, were both blank as if their owners had withdrawn from the façade. Well! They had plenty of think of, certainly, with the problems of their future all unsolved; Fan's young man, if he could be called hers, was in the Normandy battle—while as for Jenny! Now that he looked more searchingly, there was tension and not relaxation in their pose; Jenny upright
on the settee, Fan folded in acute angles on a low stool, maintained their balance by a brooding concentration.

The two girls, who were friends in spite of their different natures, had dined with him, as they often did when he was in town; they found his flat easier to meet in physically than the cottage attic Fan occupied up at Hampstead, easier psychologically than the house of Jenny's parents in the select Kensington square. Morcar loved to have them with him; he had recently discovered that he was by nature a genial, lively, sociable man who liked the company of young people, lonely through no fault of his own. If he had discovered this afresh after so many arid years, it was through these young men and women who were especially dear to him; for if Cecil was his son, David Oldroyd had been better than a son to him and Fan was David's sister, while Edwin and Jenny were Christina's children; the lives of the five were closely interwoven with Christina's and his own.

Christina! His mind flew to the blue door, once so richly glossy, faded now in wartime but to him always the symbol of elegance, beauty and romance, which would swing behind Jenny when he took her home tonight. It was not in his code to approach the mother by way of the children; he kept Edwin and Jenny out of the problem, never used them as a means of meeting his love, would not accept the casual invitation to enter which Jenny was sure to offer tonight; indeed it sometimes seemed to him that half his life was spent in hiding his feeling for Christina from those whom it might hurt. But to be near Christina's daughter was to be near something of Christina, and so Morcar liked to be near Jenny. Outwardly she did not resemble her mother, for everything about Jenny was strong and fair and candid, while Christina, with her dark thick curls, her lovely tragic eyes, her sweet profile, her delicate skin and charming hands, had an air of uncertainty, of indecision; but the mother and daughter shared a loftiness of soul. Jenny was always complete and staunch and whole, whether in grief or joy; Christina ever frustrated—her very dress, though so delicious, was nowadays often marred by some slight careless omission, some unexpected roughness, which betrayed her deep inner trouble; but the generous warmth, the delicate integrity, of their spirits was the same. They loved each other, too, in spite of Harington. At the thought of Christina's husband Morcar's heart filled as always with rage and pain, for though he hated Harington he found it impossible to despise him. Sir Edward Mayell Wyndham Harington was no weakling and no fool; he knew his job, he was high in his Department, his acquaintance with powerful people and his sophistication were both immense. He was in the inner circle
always, he knew how things were done. In his own way, too, he loved Christina, though it was a way which blighted, frosted. “My darling,” thought Morcar with tender pity. Oh, if only the war were won! Now that we've landed in Europe, thought Morcar hopefully, surely it can't be very long. And then? Would Harington yield? Bracing himself for the struggle, Morcar wondered.

In the distance a faint throb, like a distant road-drill, began to pierce the air, and steadily though at first almost imperceptibly grew in volume. There was something unpleasant, even sinister, in the persistence of the long-drawn-out unceasing very gradual crescendo, the endless murmured repetition of the same vibrating note.

“Here she comes,” said Morcar. He sighed with exasperation, shut his glasses in their case with a snap and rose.

The murmur was now much stronger and more clearly defined and not to be mistaken for anything but the sound of an approaching flying bomb.

“It's coming this way,” said Morcar, putting a hand under each girl's elbow to help them up. “Best get into the hall.”

“You always think they're coming this way,” pouted Fan, nevertheless rising obediently, for the murmur had now become a penetrating grind.

The absence of glass in the entrance hall window, whence it had disappeared in one of the earlier blitzes, made it a useful refuge when fly-bombs were overhead. Fan lounged at the side of the boarded-up gap, Jenny sat down on a stiff hall chair. Morcar looked around and unhooked the mirror from the wall.

“What are you doing with that, Uncle Harry?” said Fan as he clasped it in his arms.

“Admiring the Morcar profile, love,” said Morcar genially. “What else?”

He laid the mirror carefully face downwards on the floor.

The noise in the air grew and grew, until it seemed as if a heavy railway train rolled overhead, They all looked up, expecting a diminution as the bomb passed by, but the sound increased to a clamorous roar.

“Down! Down!” cried Morcar suddenly. “Under the table! Quick!” The girls slipped obediently to their knees, Fan in a single graceful jerk, Jenny heavily, for she was with child and near her time. “I'll have her out of this tomorrow, Admiralty or no Admiralty,” thought Morcar, helping her: “I'll get her up to Yorkshire where she'll be safe. She owes it to the child. If there is any tomorrow,” he added grimly. He felt something at his knees, and found the girls trying to pull him down; but there
was no room for him beneath the table, and he shook his head. The raucous thunder of the fly-bomb now crammed the air. “Nay, this is ours, this is it,” he thought. “If the engine cuts out now, we're for it.” The noise abruptly ceased. “Ours! Well,” thought Morcar, jocularly speaking Yorkshire to himself to keep his spirits up: “If we're bahn to die, we may as well die thinking o' summat fine, choose how. England!” thought Morcar.