Driving to Lonsdale Road one morning to lay an urgent problem about Mrs. Womersley’s holiday before Edie, I saw a crowd of men, textile operatives I thought probably, demonstrating in front of the house next to John’s, where lived the head of the Hudley Labour Exchange. The men stood bunched on the path, carefully not treading on the grass or the autumn flowers, and talking amongst themselves, while one of the party kept his finger pressed on the door bell. There was no reply and the talking rose to angry shouts, in which insulting epithets about the manager were freely hurled. I walked up John’s path feeling deeply troubled, eager to help but conscious of my own futility as a mere bystander. I rang, there was a pause, then Edie admitted me very quickly, pulling me round the half-opened door with a conspiratorial air. Without a word she led the way to the kitchen, where the Labour Exchange manager’s wife sat with tears in her eyes, trying to drink the cup of tea which Edie had made for her. (I have seen this before, I thought, remembering my father’s disappearance into Ashleigh and its result, and I felt oddly aware that this too might be a crucial incident in my life.) The manager of the Labour Exchange was in fact away attending a regional conference, but the deputation of workers, on demanding to see him at the Exchange and being merely told that he was absent, had surged out to his private address.
“As if he wouldn’t alter the benefit rate if he could!” exclaimed his wife, with trembling lip.
It seemed to me that their inability to obtain an answer to their ring was irritating the deputation, and that for their sake as well as hers some explanation should be given.
“I’ll go into your house by the back way and open the front door and talk to them,” I suggested.
“Nay!” said the wife, rising to her feet: “I’ll talk to them myself. We’ve done nothing wrong and I’m not afraid of them.”
Brushing aside our expostulations, she went out by the front door, entered her garden and walked steadily through the knot of men, saying in a disagreeable tone:
“Perhaps you’ll allow me to enter my own house, will you? My husband’s in Leeds and you’ll get nothing here however long you stay.”
Their resentment intensified, the men angrily slouched off.
This scene, with its unnecessary suffering, its waste of admirable feeling, on both sides—the woman’s courage and her discourtesy, the men’s discourtesy and their scrupulous care not to damage the garden, the ignorance of both in the face of world conditions—this scene seemed to crystallize all that I wanted to say, not only for the West Riding, or even for all industry, but for all humanity; it seemed to me to provide a clear pattern of all human misunderstanding. I went home and wrote it down at once; and thus began the trilogy of novels which I myself, and I think my readers too, regard as my real work: Millstone Grit, Choose How and Hudley Pride. These very Yorkshire titles—for millstone grit is the name of the extremely hard rough stone of which the West Riding Pennines are composed, and choose how is a thoroughly Yorkshire phrase expressing laconic determination—reveal the extent of my concern, no longer for myself, but for my neighbours, my fellow men.
4
Prince Azgid’s home lion, when at last boldly faced, proved to be a tame beast kept for the purpose; a domestic pet, it leaped playfully over his head and then ran back and began to lick his hands. Neither my father nor the West Riding could ever be called tame or given to hand-licking; yet my problem concerning them was solved on rather similar though perhaps even more ironic lines.
Facing his lion boldly gave Azgid power in his realm; it was the same with mine. But my lion was ailing, and my duty was, ironically enough, to try to keep it in good health. My father and the West Riding were both struggling for their lives, and all my attention was turned, not to defend myself against, but to encourage, support and preserve them; meanwhile, they proved to be my true friends, who nourished my work from their own store.
5
The West Riding now began to rise slowly out of its great depression. Messrs. E. E. Jarmayne & Sons had survived the ordeal and presently flourished, and the strain on John relaxed. On myself, however, the strain increased. Financially I had all I required. My loan to Hilbert was repaid with interest. I was able to send Robert away to the minor public school of his choice—where I wrote him weekly letters as unlike my father’s hectoring epistles to Henry and myself as I could manage; I was able to buy a new car, to refurbish Ashroyd, to cushion in every useful way my father’s invalid existence. But during the last few years my father had become so completely dependent on me for comfort, interest and general reassurance that it was utterly impossible for me to leave him; I must tread at his side every step of the painful path downhill.
To keep him amused was the great problem. He slept much, but there were many long hours to be filled each day.
“It’s a pity he can’t knit,” said Anne once, looking at him thoughtfully. “Shall I try to teach him, Uncle Chris?”
With an amused vision of the offended dignity with which my father would receive such a proposition I exclaimed hastily: “Good heavens, no!”
At first I used to find him jobs to do to “help” me; he was proud and excited when asked to cut the leaves of review books or sort out recently typed articles. But these occupations had presently to be abandoned because his hands were too weak to cut the pages cleanly and he grew confused in mind over the difference between top sheets and carbon copies. And it was so with all his occupations. At one time, for example, he took to reading a great number of books. These were difficult to choose, for he was bored by novels of the namby-pamby kind, could not read biographies except very light ones, and grew over-excited about books of travel. Novels of the modern school, with their frank presentation of the facts of life, horrified him—or at least he said so.
“This is a shocking book, Chris, shocking!” he would exclaim, looking up at me with an expression of astonishment in his (now so childlike) blue eyes. “I hope you will never write anything like that. They oughtn’t to allow such things to be published!”
I discovered, however, not without amusement, that when reading such books he was always quiet and absorbed, and finished them much more quickly than any other type. But he could not take too many of this pungent kind or he grew over-worried about the morals of the present generation; to vary his mental fodder suitably was thus a task requiring some skill and care.
His attitude to my own productions was ambivalent. Intensely proud of them nowadays and ready to bristle at any word of criticism from John or his family, he was so angry with adverse reviews that he was apt to tear them up if not prevented. Yet he always remembered the critical remarks more clearly than the praise, and an hour or two after reading an unfavourable review would often exclaim crossly:
“Why don’t you write another play, Chris? You’re much better at plays than novels.”
He once burst into my bedroom in the middle of the night, barefoot and without a dressing-gown, carrying an open copy of Choose How—the author’s copies having arrived that morning—and exclaimed angrily, pointing to a certain passage:
“You can’t say this, Chris! It’s too near the truth! You’ll have to take it out!”
“But only you and I know that,” I replied soothingly.
My father was struck by this argument.
“Well—well, that’s so, I daresay that’s so,” he said. He nodded, much relieved, and allowed himself to be led back to bed again without further protest.
But all too soon his ability to read a book diminished.
“What does it mean? I can’t understand it,” he complained despairingly, reading out to me in a dragging querulous tone some quite simple sentence.
Explanations, I soon found, were useless. “Well, don’t try to understand it, father,” I said soothingly. “Don’t bother with it.”
“But I want to understand it,” he said with an angry glare. “I’m not a child, Chris. I want to understand it.”
“You’ll understand it tomorrow. You’re tired tonight
; you’ve read too much today. I get confused in the same way sometimes,” said I, taking the book from him.
My father snorted scornfully—but read less and less each day. Soon he could not read a book at all, and it worried him to have them offered. He read the newspapers instead all day, bending his proud head over them for hours, omitting not the smallest paragraph. Then this occupation too failed him, and he read only the headlines—it was quite astonishing to remember that he had once been able to do the crosswords. He played patience—but presently began only to lay the cards out and then at once reshuffle them; he could no longer cope with the rules of any game. I thought of jigsaws, and these at first were a great pleasure to him; a tray and stand were especially constructed, so that his work need never be disturbed, and when he opened a large new jigsaw and spread the pieces over his tray, his look of happiness was very touching. But soon he could only collect in groups the pieces of similar colour, he could not fit them together and wished me to do this for him. Then one night he had an unpleasant nightmare in which he thought he was in a jigsaw in separate pieces and could not assemble himself; jigsaws then were abandoned, and the tray hidden so as not to remind him of them. The wireless was similarly, at first, a great resource; but soon he could endure it for a few minutes only. Having called me down, or rung the bell and summoned Mrs. Womersley, to switch on some programme, in five or six minutes he would summon us again and when we arrived say in tones of angry contempt, pointing a scornful finger at the radio:
“Turn that thing off. It’s nothing but noisy nonsense.”
Thus every pastime in turn moved out of his power. Yet the long hours had to be spent somehow, and he relied increasingly on human conversation. Edie and Anne were faithful helpers in this respect, and John called once a week, but naturally my father preferred the company of his contemporaries, and his great treat was a visit from or to my uncle Alfred. Such visits, however, which one would have thought simple to arrange, in fact involved the maximum of complexity. Uncle Alfred suffered severely from arthritis, and could only venture out of the house when feeling well, on a warm dry day, and in a car; the synchronization of the weather, Uncle Alfred’s health, my father’s health and my own freedom to fetch and return one or the other of the old gentlemen, was the subject of endless tedious discussions. Why a taxi should not have sufficed was a mystery which we could not fathom, but when this means of transport was once tried, they were both very much upset and stayed in bed for a couple of days afterwards, and my father later reproached me severely for my unkindness in the matter. Next time a visit was arranged I took care to convey him to Lonsdale Road and fetch him home, but unluckily a telephone call from London delayed me and I was a few minutes late. By the time I arrived dusk had fallen; my father was almost hysterical, and had to be given brandy to restore him.
“This is ridiculous, Chris,” grumbled John, who arrived from the mill during this process. “Taking you from your work like this! Can’t you make father see he’s spending pounds every time he interrupts you? Netta should be here to look after him—it’s a woman’s job.”
“The West Riding would be too bleak for Stephen’s weak chest,” said Edie, shaking her head.
If I could not help a certain sardonic amusement at the purely financial value attached by John, and the low value attached by Edie, to my work, I agreed that from the human point of view Edie was certainly right: Stephen’s weak chest was infinitely more important.
After five years of what I think I may honestly call faithful attendance on my father, it was one of life’s most painful ironies that I was not with him when he died. I was absent in London, on business. Arrangements for my father’s comfort during this two-days’ absence of mine had been planned to the minutest detail; John was to sleep at Ashroyd, Edie was to shop, Anne was to call, the doctor was to pay one of his periodical visits in order to give my father a sense of protection and reassurance. I had enjoyed my brief holiday, had bought one or two entertaining gadgets for my father’s comfort and made one or two remorseful plans for his better amusement, and was just dressing to catch a morning train for the north when the telephone rang in my room. The hour was so early that I guessed at once what had happened, and this premonition was confirmed when I heard John’s voice.
“It’s father, Chris.”
“Another stroke?”
“He’s gone this time, Chris. Edie thought we shouldn’t tell you till you got home, but I thought you’d better know at once.”
“I’m sorry I was away.”
“Yes. He didn’t know, though. Mrs. Womersley just took him his morning tea and he sat up and then fell back.”
I felt a grief so strong that it surprised me, but could not find a word to say.
“Well—I must go for my train. I’ll be home at two-fifteen.”
“I’ll meet you,” said John.
My father’s funeral was well attended, and many of his contemporaries came up to me to speak well of him. In particular, my uncle Alfred hung around me, limping after me wherever I went and explaining to each fresh group:
“He was a grand chap, was Edward—straight as a die.”
This at first angered me. What was the use, I thought, of admiring my father’s honesty after he was dead? If it had been acknowledged fifty years ago, and my father allowed to share in his father’s estate, we should all have been spared much misery. But then I reproached myself: after all, I too had lived long without proper respect and affection for my father. So when my uncle Alfred repeated his tribute, I warmly agreed.
“Yes, that’s very true.”
“Aye, and he was clever too,” said a voice at my shoulder.
I turned to find Mr. Hodgson, looking old and frail but very neatly brushed. He explained that he was now living in Bradford with a married daughter.
“But your father, you know, Mr. Chris—he was a clever chap; I often think he’d have made a name for himself, like you, if he’d had more chance. You get your energy from him, you see.”
“That’s very true, too, Mr. Hodgson,” I agreed.
“Well, Chris,” said John when at last the ceremony was over: “You’ve been a good son to him. You’ll be able to go back to your own life now.”
6
But, in a way, I had “lived” far more intensely in those past few years with my father in the West Riding than during my time in London. For during every moment of those Hudley years my personal feelings and thoughts were strongly (even if wretchedly) involved; and that is life.
There were other boons, too—if they were boons—which my attendance on my father had conferred on me.
His illness was in a way a shelter. Although my devotion to him during those five years was very genuine, still it also supplied me with a useful excuse. The unwanted outside duty, the time-wasting social function, which would have taken me from my work, I was able to evade because I “had” to be engaged with him.
Again, his illness sheltered me perhaps (whether for good or ill I do not altogether know) from some of the literary philosophies of the period. While the West Riding struggled for its life and I struggled there to learn to love my father, I could not feel that those around me, or I myself, were hollow men or stuffed men; the industrial scene was not to me a waste land, a rats’ alley; whatever its faults—and of course they were many—its centre emphatically held. I liked and respected the West Riding in its hour of trial; it showed itself perplexed, confused, ignorant and sometimes stupid, of course, but also infinitely kind, vigorous and courageous. So the whole portentous creed of despair and guilt, the return to irrational belief, the abandonment of reasoned statement as a method of communication, which were the literary message of the 1930’s, passed me by; and when I emerged from my seclusion, though admitting the power and grace with which they were often conveyed, I simply could not believe in them. It may well be that the world will end with a bang—a consummation which we must of course all strive to prevent. But it shows to me no sign at all of ending with a whimper�
��at any rate, not in the West Riding.
7
I have interrupted John’s remarks, which were spoken as we entered Ashroyd together and took off our coats for the funeral luncheon, in order to insert my relevant later reflections. In reality he continued:
“What do you think of Netta’s boy, eh?”
For Netta had brought Stephen to his grandfather’s funeral, and they were staying at Ashroyd.
“I haven’t seen much of him,” I replied in a guarded tone. “They only arrived last night, you know.”
“A bit like poor old Henry, don’t you think? Disdainful, you know. Not as good-looking, though.”
“He’s not as good-looking as his father, either,” said I.
“Well, he’s only young yet,” said John in a kinder tone. “Seventeen, eh? He’ll p’raps look better when he’s filled out a bit—you were a trifle weedy yourself, Chris, if you remember.”
“I remember,” I said grimly.
We went into the front room, where the caterers we had engaged had in our absence at church laid a long trestle table for a cold meal. Netta and Edie were engaged in a friendly skirmish as to who should sit where; canvassing the complicated questions of precedence involved as between sons of the deceased, daughter, grandchildren and eldest son’s wife, with hushed enjoyment. John sorted us all our brusquely, and I found myself seated at one end of the table facing him, with Netta on my right and Stephen on my left. Uncle Alfred and Edie were similarly placed as regards John, and the three girls and Robert arranged themselves between. Accordingly I had a very clear view of my beloved little sister and her son.
The passage of time leaves its traces almost imperceptibly on those whom one sees every day; they are very clear on those one sees only after a long interval. It was a shock to find that Netta was (of course) middle-aged. But surely she looked older than her years? After all she was barely forty, yet this short, plump little body, with bowed shoulders and rather scanty, wispy, colourless fair hair, seemed almost to belong to an older generation than myself. Her once brilliant complexion had faded, and her arched eyebrows and wide round eyes, the horizontal lines across her forehead, her uptilted nose, seemed to set her face in an expression of continual naïve surprise. Her black dress was ugly, her hat ill-chosen, and she wore a very cheap and tasteless brooch. She talked a great deal —she had always talked a great deal, but now her light tones had a certain tinny quality and her utterances, frankly, a certain silliness. Her life has been hard, I thought as I listened to her, harder than we have understood. It was now that I realized with shame that I had not written to her once since her marriage, except on the occasion of Geoffrey Graham’s death.
Noble in Reason Page 23
