The Rise of Henry Morcar

by Phyllis Bentley

  THE RISE OF HENRY MORCAR

  by

  PHYLLIS BENTLEY

  CONTENTS

  Prologue : To Remember

  I. Education

  1. Home and Mill

  2. Sunday

  3. McKinley

  4. Jubilee

  5. Tariff

  6. Shaw Family Album

  7. Death of a Councillor

  8. Entrance to Industry

  9. Design

  10. Springtime

  II. Action

  11. Gall to Arms

  12. Soldier

  13. Price of a Medal

  III. Defeat

  14. Winnie

  15. Wedding

  16. Wife and Child

  17. Homecoming

  IV. Fall

  18. Metamorphosis

  19. Interview with a Merchant

  20. Buyer and Seller

  21. Thistledown

  22. Christina

  23. Lovers

  24. Nadir

  V. Rise

  25. Boy off Train

  26. Old Man in Handcart

  27. Dictators and Diplomats

  28. David

  29. West Riding

  30. Argument of the Century

  31. Meeting

  32. Presages

  33. Peace with Dishonour

  34. Mustard Gas

  35. Marching as to War

  36. Export Group

  37. Disasters

  38. Call to Sacrifice

  39. Volunteer

  40. From Dunkirk

  41. Alone

  42. Patrol at Dawn

  43. Nocturne in London

  44. Lease and Lend

  45. Convoy

  46. Son

  47. Not in Uniform

  48. Marriage of True Minds

  49. Honeymoon in Wartime

  50. Death of a Hero

  51. Never on Earth Again

  Epilogue : To Work

  Prologue: To Remember

  The Siren warbled for the seventh time that night. Morcar, busy with the agenda of the committee on wool textile 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 the view added to the flat’s rent came into his mind, then he remembered he was trying not to think that kind of thought nowadays—through the window 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; 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 to 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 Morcar looked more searchingly, he saw that 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 nowadays 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 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 to-night. 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 to-night; indeed it sometimes seemed to him that half his life was spent in hiding his feelings 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 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 an earlier raid, 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.

  He wondered what went on within the two fair heads below. The girls were looking up at him; Fan wore a sardonic defiant grin, Jenny a fine quiet smile. Suddenly there began to race through his own mind pictures of his life; things he had not thought of, people he had not seen, for years, came up before him, fresh and vivid as when they were real, but with the added significance lent to them by later events.

  “Scenes from the life of Henry Morcar,” he thought sardonically. “Well! I hope this is not the last of the series.”

  In silence they waited for the bomb to fall.

  I. Education

  1. Home and Mill

  Henry Morcar was born in the very middle of the English middle class, the son and grandson of solid but not wealthy West Riding cloth manufacturers. He might have been the great-grandson of such a manufacturer too, for all he knew, but he set little store on great-grandfathers and never troubled to enquire. A good-natured, even-tempered, affectionate boy, healthy always, fair-complexioned, burly for his age, Harry spent a thoughtless and carefree childhood which included no poignant moments of anguished intensity. Accordingly his recollections of this period were scattered and overlaid. Certain places, people and incidents however were still vivid in his mind.

  One of these was his grandfather’s house, Hurstfield, which stood in Hurst, a suburb of the town of Annotsfield in Yorkshire, on the well-thought-of Hurstholt Road, where a group of similar houses looked across at the new Hursthead Park with the sober satisfaction of substantial ratepayers. Old John Henry Morcar’s house was built of good local stone, with bay windows in the rooms each side the door, to which two large flat steps whitestoned at the edges gave access. Its air of prosperity verging on affluence was emphasised by a family of steep gables, two above the attics and a smaller one over the front porch, two well-painted iron gates and a short curving gravel drive between, circumnavigating the front garden. The letters JHM in the rubber mat on the top step were always in complete repair, the pointing of the walls was fresh, the lace curtains were always spotless in their handsome symmetry, the front door was magnificently grained, the laurels by the gate were well pruned and the flower-beds and plot of grass were held in check by small plum-coloured tiles in the interests of neatness. Hurstfield lacked the pink marble pillars and glass conservatory of the more impressive house on the right, but was superior to the semi-detached houses on the left where the Shaws lived, which had a straight asphalt path to the front door and only one gable. The marble-pillar house had three maids, the Morcars two and the Shaws one of a more general kind. In the same way Alderman Morcar did not keep his own carriage, but never scrupled to take a hansom when occasion really required, offering a lift sometimes to Mr. Shaw from the station. Yes, the Morcars were middle middle-class, the backbone of England as Morcar’s grandfather often proudly told him.

  Down the hill to the right the road became suddenly precipitous and turned into Hurst Bank, and at the bottom of Hurst Bank lay a nest of mills and workmen’s houses, and one of those railway viaducts of which the hilly West Riding has such an abundance. Amidst this industrial cluster at Hurst Bank Bottom lay his grandfather’s mill, built in 1871, a substantial stone building with a couple of extra weaving sheds at the back and a shortish hexagonal chimney which had been added to at the top, so that it looked as if it wore a collar. The brass plate at the side of the door announcing that this was the abode of J. H. MORCAR & SON always gleamed with what Harry’s grandfather mystifyingly called elbow grease. Within, the office was fitted along the walls and in the centre with massive sloping desks of gleaming mahogany, divided along the top by a gleaming brass rail. High cushioned stools without backs were ranged along the desks, where inkpots, ledgers, round black rulers and letters to which were pinned snippets of cloth lay in geometrically neat array, quite dustless. A door on the far side of the office led into the mill; when this was opened the restless clacking of the looms rushed in and drew Harry towards the weaving sheds.

  His father and grandfather were very willing that he should wander about the mill as he liked, provided he were wearing a navy blue sailor suit and not a white one. There had been tears from his mother when he returned once with a white drill suit all smudged; it was a new suit, she had finished machining it, pressed it and attached its black silk tie and whistle cord only that very morning, so that he should look well when walking out with his father, and now it was all smeared with textile grease. She wept with vexation at the sight and since tears were rare with her, both husband and father-in-law were appropriately impressed. But in a blue sailor suit of cloth from the mill Harry was free to wander as he chose, and accordingly he could not remember a time when he was unfamiliar with looms. He stood at the end of a loom-gate watching and wondering, his mouth perhaps a little agape, his sailor hat on the back of his round fair head, and occasionally his father—solid and cheerful in those days—passed by and smoothing his fine straw-coloured moustache threw out some information about picks or reeds, or his grandfather paused beside him and taking his hand explained the whole loom mechanism in technical language. His grandfather, a plump fresh-complexioned man with a round white beard, had a marvellous gold watch-chain— it cost a pound a link, said Harry’s mother—with two remarkable gold coins swinging from the centre; the coins and the loom divided Harry’s attention, so that he did not always hear all his grandfather said; but the incident occurred so often that imperceptibly he acquired a deposit of knowledge. The weavers too would smile at him and calling him “lovey” allow him to approach quite close and watch while they put fresh bobbins into their shuttles; he was a sensible boy, they felt, who would not get hurt or into trouble. In those days the weavers wore clogs at their work and shawls in the street, and sang hymns (or sometimes more secular songs) as they stood in the loom-gate. Harry early acquired the knack of talking and hearing through the noise of the looms and scorned those ignoramuses who tried to shout above it.

  2. Sunday

  On Sundays the Morcars attended the important Eastgate chapel in Annotsfield, where Alderman Morcar was one of the trustees, Harry’s father took a Young Men’s Bible Class and Harry’s mother was prominent in the Dorcas meeting, cutting out materials for the garments they sewed. She was young for this post, which she held because of her skill, and the whole family were proud of her on this account.

  On Sunday afternoon in the crowded school Harry sang Onward Christian Soldiers and Dare to be a Daniel with great gusto, feeling clean and good in his best velvet suit, his white silk scarf and his Sunday coat of pilot cloth (made by his mother from cloth from the mill of course) with its brass buttons and astrakhan collar. The volume of shrill sound was enormous, almost drowning the harmonium’s powerful roar; the lilting rhythm of the tunes made Harry feel excited and jolly.

  After the hymn and some prayers to which Harry did not listen very much th
e children filed out to the sound of a ceremonial march into the small classrooms which fringed the large assembly hall. Here, where glossy brightly coloured pictures of Bible scenes looked down on them from the walls, they were told a Bible story by their class teacher: Daniel in the lions’ den, David and Goliath, Jacob and Esau, Elijah and Elisha, the call of Samuel, the miracles of Jesus. Harry liked the Old Testament better than the new, for the stories were more exciting and concerned people more like Harry Morcar, but the parts in the New about the fishermen disciples had interest, because of the background of the bright blue lake and boats with sails and nets filled with silvery fish, such as Harry saw on his summer holidays at Scarborough. And the parts about sheep and shepherds were very good. There were sheep on the hills round Annotsfield. Harry made David his hero, admired Daniel, preferred Esau to his brother but supposed there must be something hidden in the story which he would understand when he grew up, to account for God’s preference for Jacob. For Samuel he felt little enthusiasm, but was suitably shocked by the spectacle of a High Priest whose sons robbed the people—it must have been terrible for a man in Eli’s position to have sons so completely lacking in respectability. Elijah was grand, so fiercely independent and somehow Yorkshire; it served Gehazi jolly well right to be turned into a leper and the ravens were splendid; Elisha in spite of the widow’s cruse seemed rather soft and disappointing. Towards the end of the class one grew a little tired and one’s attention wandered, for one was not a saintly boy who knew everything and won Sunday School prizes. On the other hand, one was not a bad boy who threw pellets and pulled the girls’ frocks from their gathers and was rude to the teacher when she read one’s name from the register. That would have been unkind, and Harry had no capacity for being unkind. Harry knew the Ten Commandments and (with a little prompting) the Beatitudes, and could recite the parables of the grain of mustard seed and the sower who went forth sowing, with reasonable accuracy, and furnish their explanations. A parable was an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. A miracle was—Harry was not quite sure what the teachers said a miracle was, but he knew a miracle when he saw one, perfectly. He believed in the miracles completely, of course, but found them a trifle irrelevant. What was clear was that one should be brave like David, honest like Eli, kind to children like Jesus; one should defend the right like Daniel and not tell lies (look at Ananias!) or heap up wealth (look at the rich man who died the same night). One should honour one’s father and mother, believe in God, love one’s neighbour and keep Sunday different from other days. God was one’s Father in heaven, and nobody could come between. Talents must not be buried but used; cleanliness was next to godliness; in the sweat of his brow man must eat his bread.