A Man of His Time

by Phyllis Bentley

  ‘We had a rare dust-up at Number 23 tonight,’ said Chuff cheerfully to him, coming in late one evening.

  ‘Oh?’ said Morcar, secretly pleased. ‘How was that, eh?’

  ‘I took Ruth. She and Grandma didn’t hit it off.’

  ‘They never do,’ said Morcar wisely.

  Chuff perfectly understood this obscure remark, as relating to daughters-in-law (or grand-daughters-in-law) elect, and the two men laughed comfortably together.

  Two other agreeable events occurred that summer.

  Everybody expected that Jonathan would do well in his Finals, and of course he did. He returned from Oxford looking rather drawn and wan, and muttered remarks cryptic to Morcar about his viva; but one morning in August as they all sat at the Stanney Royd breakfast table opening letters, Jonathan suddenly choked, crimsoned, and offered Morcar a document, saying in an odd tone:

  ‘Read it, Uncle Harry.’

  ‘Read it to me,’ countered Morcar rather peevishly - he hated to be reminded of his need of spectacles: ‘I haven’t my reading-glasses here.’

  ‘Well - I’ve got a First,’ said Jonathan, shy.

  At this the family exploded into joy. Chuff said: ‘I say!’ in an admiring tone; Susie rushed round the table and kissed Jonathan’s cheek; Mrs Jessopp suddenly appeared in the doorway beaming, and cried: ‘Congratulations!’ Morcar said very seriously:

  ‘Well done, my boy.’

  He offered his hand, and Jonathan took it with some emotion.

  It was indeed a solemn moment for Morcar, and he spent the day in a state of euphoria. He had kept his word to David Oldroyd, brought up David’s son carefully and well to the point where he could stand on his own feet and earn his own living. Morcar felt the satisfaction of a good unselfish action, honourably and not without toil completed. Jonathan was Christina’s grandson, too. While Jonathan rapturously telephoned his mother, Morcar went out into the garden and walked about alone, imagining for a few sweet secret moments that Christina was at his side and they were rejoicing together over her grandson’s success.

  Naturally Morcar told the good news to everyone he encountered at Syke Mills - Nathan was enraptured; ‘He was always a clever boy, was Mr Jonathan,’ he said, smiling all across his face - and to all the business acquaintances he met on the Bradford Exchange and at lunch. They were suitably impressed, so that when Morcar on his return to Stanney Royd that evening found the floor of his garage covered with stretches of dark-green waterproof material intermingled with short metal rods, he was in far too good a temper to utter a murmur to Chuff, who came running out of the house and began to bundle them all together in a hurry.

  ‘What’s all this, then?’ asked Morcar jovially, dismounting from his car.

  ‘It’s our camping stuff,’ said Chuff. ‘For our holiday. We told you, Grandfather.’

  ‘In the Lakes,’ added Susie, who had joined them and was struggling to fold up one of the odd-shaped objects.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. I’d forgotten. When are you off, then?’ inquired Morcar.

  At this Chuff seemed to scowl at him, and a shade of unhappiness blurred the brightness of Susie’s face. Morcar therefore, though ignorant of what this signified, quickly changed the subject.

  ‘What’s that you’re folding, Susie?’ he inquired mildly.

  ‘It’s a washbowl,’ said Susie, setting the object on its feet.

  ‘Very neat,’ approved Morcar. The things they think of nowadays, he reflected, it’s amazing.

  The small mystery of the date of their departure was cleared up a few days later, when Susie’s examination results arrived and to Morcar’s joy and amazement it turned out that she had acquired an astonishing number of O-levels. (Eight, counting one for Music.) It seemed that the holiday party had arranged to wait for the rather uncertain date of arrival of this pair of results, so important to Jonathan and Susie that they could not bear to risk being absent when the announcements arrived.

  When the news was announced Chuff, laughing, threw his arms round his sister and hugged her.

  ‘You can do it if I can’t!’ he cried proudly.

  Morcar was admiring the total lack of jealousy in this remark when he found that Susie had thrown herself into his own arms and was laughing and crying into his waistcoat.

  ‘I thought I could do it but I didn’t like to say so,’ she wailed in a muffled tone.

  ‘My darling,’ said Morcar fondly - but not audibly. He stroked her hair. Aloud he said: ‘I’m very proud of you. We’re all proud of you.’ To himself he thought: ‘Here’s another for a university.’

  ‘We might set off tomorrow,’ suggested Jonathan happily from the background.

  ‘Why not today?’ cried Susie, raising her flushed cheeks.

  ‘Yes, why not?’ echoed Jonathan, laughing.

  ‘We should have to warn Ruth and G.B.,’ said Chuff.

  ‘They can come on Satnrdav as arranged.’

  Chuff looked sulky.

  ‘I want to take Ruth in the car. She can’t carry all her stuff.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be seeing her this morning at the mill. She can come with us this afternoon.’

  ‘Should you mind, Grandfather?’ asked Chuff.

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ said Morcar sardonically. The cool way they ran off with his secretary! Still, he supposed one of the other girls in the office could cope in her place. ‘I can’t give Ruth extra days’ holiday with pay, Chuff,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to the other girls. Ruth’s holidays are like everybody else’s, for a fortnight. I suppose she fixed her fortnight to date from Saturday. It’s the Annotsfield Wakes. I daresay I’ve seen the list, I don’t remember.’

  ‘We’d better go up on Friday night,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Chuff, still sulky.

  Later, Morcar said to Jonathan:

  ‘I’m sorry you’re taking G.B. on this trip.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t like him very much.’

  ‘He’s an earnest, conscientious young man, eager to work for the good of the community,’ said Jonathan hotly.

  ‘He’s brash, self-opinionated, ignorant outside his own specialty and full of resentment.’

  ‘His views may be a trifle extreme. But their general tendency is sound.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he likes me any better than I like him,’ began Morcar, making a great effort to be fair. ‘But—’

  ‘On the contrary, he admires you as an interesting specimen of Victorian entrepreneur - a typical man of your time.’

  ‘Victorian! Entrepreneur!’ exploded Morcar. ‘I was seven years old when Queen Victoria died. And I’m not an entrepreneur. I make things.’

  ‘You cause things to be made.’

  ‘And what does he make or cause to be made, eh?’

  ‘He’s busy with electronics research, Uncle Harry,’ said Jonathan reproachfully.

  ‘Very contemporary. Well, we won’t quarrel about him, Jonathan.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ said Jonathan warmly. ‘I don’t want to quarrel with you about anything, Uncle Harry. I’m too sensible of all you have done for me.’

  Morcar made a deprecating sound (whose general tendency, as Jonathan would say, he reflected, was ‘Pooh!’) and turned away. ‘I hope you all have a good holiday,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Uncle Harry. We shan’t see much of G.B. anyway, because he’s a rock-climber and we aren’t. He’ll be joining a climbing party most of the time.’

  For the next two days the house was in a turmoil. Tents and groundsheets and washbowls, sleeping-bags and tins of food, lay everywhere underfoot; Mrs Jessopp baked busily; trial packings took place on the lawn. At last on Friday evening the car was loaded; Susie sat in the rear surrounded by bags and tins; Chuff and Jonathan were in the front; Chuff drove; the spare seat was reserved for Ruth, whom they were to pick up at the Mellors’ flat; G.B. was to make the journey tomorrow on his motor-cycle. The car left.

  Morcar ate a peaceful meal alon
e. It was pleasant to eat in quiet and at one’s own speed, to be surrounded by silence, not to have to try to keep up with swift youthful conversation in the obscure modern idiom. After dinner he lay on the settee in his den, lighted a cigar and began to read the Journal of the Bradford Textile Society. Mrs Jessopp brought him coffee.

  ‘I hope you’re not too tired by all these preparations, Mrs Jessopp.’

  ‘Well, I am a bit. But it’s nice to see them all so happy,’ said Mrs Jessopp.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ said Morcar comfortably. Like Mrs Jessopp, he felt conscious of duty nobly done.

  Yes, the summer of that year had gone off well.

  26. Jonathan’s Future

  ‘I think he could do with some advice. I’d be most grateful if you’d let him come and talk to you.’

  ‘By all means send him along. But he doesn’t need any advice, you know. He needn’t worry about training. With a degree like that, he can go straight into a minor public school. Or even a major one. What was his old school?’

  Morcar, who had sighted the headmaster of the Annots-field Grammar School in the restaurant car of the London train, and taken the opportunity to sit opposite him and introduce the problem of Jonathan’s future, gave him the name of Jonathan’s sufficiently well known public school.

  ‘Well! There he is. They’d be glad to have him. Just tell him to write to the Head. And to his housemaster too, perhaps. Old Starkey’ll jump at him.’

  ‘He wants to go into a comprehensive school.’

  ‘What! He must be mad!’ exclaimed the headmaster.

  ‘He’s an earnest, conscientious young man, eager to work for the good of the community,’ said Morcar sardonically, for it seemed to him that the words Jonathan had used to praise G.B. really represented what the young man wished to be himself.

  The headmaster stared. There was a pause.

  ‘Well, if that’s the case, of course it’s very commendable,’ he said drily. ‘If that sort of thing is what he wants to make his career, he’d better go to the Department of Education at Leeds University. He may be too late to get in this year - he should have applied earlier. If he has any difficulty, I’d be glad to take him for a few terms myself. It would be useful teaching experience for him; he’d realize what he didn’t know and needed to learn. We’re terribly short of staff. Yes,’ he concluded, obviously turning his timetable over in his mind: ‘I could fit him in very well. But after a term or two in Annotsfield he must go away, you know, Mr Morcar. It’s a great mistake for a young schoolmaster to stay too close to home.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Morcar.

  ‘Tell him to write to the Annotsfield Director of Education.’

  ‘I’ll lay it before him,’ said Morcar with irony.

  ‘Ah,’ said the headmaster, laughing, ‘that’s what we have to do nowadays with these young people. Lay it before them and let them choose. I’m all for it myself.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Morcar with a sigh.

  27. First Day

  Jonathan could hardly keep the smile of happiness from his face as he decorously followed the long line of masters into Assembly at the Annotsfield Boys’ Grammar School on the first morning of the autumn term. All were wearing their gowns; Jonathan, wearing his for the first time in his native county, was very conscious of its freshness but could not help enjoying it and at the same time looking forward eagerly to the day when it would be old and shabby after say a quarter of a century’s long and faithful service. Service was the operative word; after all these long years of feeding his own mind he was now at last going to do something for somebody else. He could hardly restrain his eagerness to begin.

  A few minutes later the door of the classroom closed behind him and he was shut in with the thirty-five ‘twelve plus’ year-olds of ‘his’ form, IIA. (Ironically enough, he thought, on one of the walls of the room hung a large diagram illustrating the development of the woollen trade. However, let that pass.) He had met his form briefly before prayers, when the headmaster had introduced him as coming from ‘a very famous school,’ and explained what to do about the register. After his departure Jonathan had experienced a little tentative badinage about dinner-money. Jonathan had taken this correctly, he thought, quelling affably certain mystifying remarks which flew about the room - ‘Will it be Tuesday this term, Mr Oldroyd?’ ‘It’s always Tuesday.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Is it the same money this term, sir?’ ‘It should be more for you, Smithy.’ ‘My mother says it should be less,’ and so on - by saying with a pleasant smile: ‘Now not too much noise, please,’ and asking a chubby fresh-faced boy named, it seemed, Grimshaw who sat in the third row and was active in the conversation, for enlightenment on the subject of dinner-money.

  ‘Don’t you know about dinner-money, Mr Oldroyd?’ demanded Grimshaw in a tone which Jonathan was forced to admit held a certain contemptuous incredulity. He coloured, but kept his irritation out of his voice and replied mildly: ‘No. Please inform me.’

  ‘Some of us stay to dinner at school,’ began Grimshaw.

  At this moment a bell sounded; there was a general rush to line up at the door, and form IIA departed for Assembly with fair decorum.

  Now they were all back again in class. Jonathan drew out from his desk the folder of material which he had carefully prepared for this lesson. Tudors and Stuarts formed the syllabus for form IIA, he had been told, and he looked forward immensely to presenting a rich, glowing picture of the world of the Renaissance to these boys, a picture they would never forget.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear about dinner-money, Mr Oldroyd?’ inquired Grimshaw, standing.

  ‘Not now,’ said Jonathan. Grimshaw scowled and sat down with a flop. Fearing he had hurt the boy’s feelings, Jonathan added hastily: ‘Later. Now we must begin our lesson.’ Suddenly experiencing a slight nervousness, he paused to collect his thoughts, and turned over the pictures in the folder, deploying them on his desk.

  ‘Are those pictures, sir?’ inquired a thin boy in spectacles, who sat in the front row.

  ‘Yes - Shackleton,’ replied Jonathan, congratulating himself on remembering the boy’s name.

  ‘Can we see them?’ pursued Shackleton with some eagerness.

  ‘Later,’ said Jonathan, smiling.

  ‘Latah, latah,’ chanted Grimshaw. ‘Everything’s latah.’

  Jonathan, astonished, gazed at him reproachfully. Grimshaw stared back, undismayed.

  ‘Will you put this map up, please, Shackleton?’

  ‘Can we have some drawing-pins, sir?’

  Jonathan, who had remembered this detail, produced a box of these at once.

  ‘Ooh, they’re green. Fancy, green drawing-pins,’ said Grimshaw in a mock-heroic tone.

  The map, however, being large and very clear, attracted and held attention, and the slight shuffling and surreptitious conversation which had hitherto formed a background, died away. Jonathan began his lesson, explaining how, beginning from the period they were about to study, the extent of the known world had increased. In developing this theme Jonathan mentioned the spice routes from the East.

  ‘Ooh! Gob-stoppers!’ cried Grimshaw.

  The class laughed.

  ‘What are gob-stoppers, Grimshaw?’ inquired Jonathan, who was not familiar with this (perhaps Yorkshire, he thought) expression.

  ‘They’re very large sweets, sir,’ explained Shackleton kindly.

  ‘Sweets! But spices are not sweets,’ said Jonathan, laughing.

  ‘Oh, yes, they are! Toffees! Chocolate almonds! Humbugs ! That’s spice,’ cried various members of the class.

  ‘Pomfret cakes,’ added a boy in the back row.

  ‘Pomfret cakes; well now, that’s rather interesting,’ said Jonathan eagerly. ‘Pomfret, that is short for Pontefract. Liquorice used to grow round Pontefract, you know, and so Pomfret cakes were made there.’

  ‘They’re still made there!’ cried a boy. ‘My uncle says—’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, they are,’ said J
onathan, pleased to be able to agree. ‘But nowadays all the liquorice comes from Turkey.’

  For some reason the class seemed to find this rather disheartening, and fell silent.

  ‘Well, that’s what you said, sir,’ said Shackleton reasonably after a pause. ‘Spice comes from the East.’

  ‘But it’s not that kind of spice I was talking about,’ cried Jonathan, horrified to find how far he had been led from his subject. ‘Spices are nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon - all pungent in taste, not sweet.’

  ‘Pungent?’ said somebody in a questioning tone.

  ‘Savoury,’ explained Jonathan.

  ‘Spicy,’ said somebody else.

  There was a titter.

  ‘Well, that’s where we get the word from,’ said Jonathan. ‘Nutmeg, cinnamon—’

  ‘What do the use spices for, sir?’ put in Shackleton.

  ‘To flavour food when cooking, give it a savoury taste.’

  ‘Stew? Would they flavour stew with spice?’

  ‘Stew - and - gravies,’ said Jonathan, somewhat at a loss.

  ‘I don’t like stew,’ came from the right.

  ‘Oh, you should taste my grandma’s stew,’ said Grimshaw, smacking his lips.

  ‘Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves,’ resumed Jonathan in a summarizing tone: ‘were brought—’

  ‘He clove her in twain,’ observed Grimshaw.

  At this Jonathan looked very grave. For a moment he was silent, debating whether to notice the remark or not. To his surprise, he found that the class had fallen silent too, and was eyeing him with some anxiety. He decided to disregard Grimshaw’s (perhaps ignorantly lewd) comment, because he really could not think of anything suitable to say in reply.

  ‘Let us trace the spice routes,’ he said in a cold tone, turning to the map and beginning to talk about Venice.

  For a few moments all went reasonably well. A picture of Venice, and one of a doge with fur-edged coat, were passed round the class with reasonable expedition, and favourably received.

  ‘Where do furs come from, sir?’ inquired Shackleton.

  Jonathan hesitated, framing his reply.