The Rise of Henry Morcar

by Phyllis Bentley

  “Please, how is Councillor Morcar?”

  “Eh, love, he’s dead!” exclaimed the mace-bearer distressfully.

  So then presently Morcar heard the sound of his father’s coffin being bumped down the narrow stairs of the house in Hurst Road, amid heavy breathings and whispered instructions from the undertaker’s men; again there was a sizeable funeral and many wreaths, again Morcar stood by an open grave and shuddered while a handful of earth rattled on a coffin lid. There was a funeral lunch at the house for some little-known relatives and a few friends, including of course the Shaws, while the Shaws’ maid and Winnie bustled about helpfully in the small kitchen. Mr. Shaw made what amounted to a speech extolling Mr. Morcar, praising him as a true friend, a kind husband and father, a generous giver of his time and energy in the service of the public. It was all true and Harry felt a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes until he glanced across at Charlie, whose long dark lashes, downcast, could not conceal his air of impatient derision. Harry really wondered at his friend’s expression and would have been hurt by it had he not known Charlie’s habit of being one jump ahead of everybody else in his perceptions—no doubt his derision was directed at something quite other than Mr. Shaw’s mild oration, thought Morcar.

  The party broke up at last; Winnie and the maid in spite of Mrs. Morcar’s protests finished the washing-up, then quickly went away. Mrs. Morcar and her son were left alone in the silent house, feeling strangely exposed now that the blinds no longer covered the windows. Mrs. Morcar sat silent for a long time, very upright in her chair as always, with her well-shaped hands folded in her lap. Her son sat opposite by the table, acutely embarrassed by his mother’s long immobility and silence, but too tender-hearted to violate her sorrow by any speech or movement which she might think unfeeling. At last Mrs. Morcar said:

  “Well, he died a Councillor.”

  She rose and left the room.

  8. Entrance to Industry

  Some three weeks later—it was in the summer holidays—Morcar came home from a morning on his bicycle to find his mother in her cooking apron with her sleeves rolled up, packing the red and gold dessert service into a large wicker skep marked J.H.M. He looked at these initials enquiringly, to conceal from himself the sinking of his heart. His mother followed the direction of his glance.

  “I got your father to keep the skep back when he gave up the mill,” she said. She added in a lower tone: “In case we wanted it.”

  A foreboding of death and disaster so long ago, so practical and so accurately fulfilled, wounded Harry; it seemed mean and disloyal, a treachery against his father.

  “When are we moving?” he asked abruptly.

  “Next Friday,” replied his mother.

  In later life nothing struck Morcar with such a sense of tragicomedy as his mother’s immutable preference for indirect communication. Mrs. Morcar never spoke to him directly of their financial situation and their plans, but it emerged in the course of the next few days that his father had left almost nothing on which his wife and son could live and that they were moving into a tiny house, really a workman’s cottage, in a row along Hurst Road. The College Board of Governors had been very kind, remarked Mrs. Morcar on another occasion; they had accepted the notice for Harry as though it had been given at the beginning of the term, so that there would be no further fees to pay—this was her method of informing her son that he was to leave school at once. Harry did not care twopence about leaving school, but to leave Charlie was a different matter. The Shaws were away on their summer holiday just then, at Bridlington, and Morcar was missing Charlie sorely. Now he found he was to do without Charlie always—except, of course, in the evenings and at the weekends. It was a bleak outlook. He sat silent, stunned.

  “Mr. Shaw is giving you the chance for your father’s sake, you know, Harry,” observed Mrs. Morcar next day, as mother and son sat at tea together. “So you must work hard and do the best you can.”

  So he was to go to work at Mr. Shaw’s! Immediately Harry’s world, which had looked so black, took on a happy, rosy, hopeful hue. He asked nothing better than to go to work at once—he was a big burly lad in his middle teens, he felt strong and shrewd and full of common sense, sure to do well; textile processes, in some way or other, were quite familiar to him and not in the least intimidating. It would be splendid to get out into the world, to earn money, to support his mother; he felt suddenly no longer a boy but a man, with a wide range of adventures opening before him, highly coloured, exciting. If now it had been discovered that his next year’s fees at school had been paid by his father, so that he could remain there another year, he would have been disappointed. And to work at Mr. Shaw’s! What a piece of luck! In his father’s lifetime he had not thought much of Mr. Shaw’s place, for Mr. Shaw leased half a brick mill at the bottom of the town between Eastgate and Irebridge, and its interior arrangements had seemed to Morcar incommodious and muddled. But now Prospect Mills seemed Paradise, since Charlie would be working there presently. A gush of joy and hope filled Morcar’s heart; he smiled all over his candid pleasant face, and asked:

  “When am I to start, Mother?”

  “The Monday after Wakes Week,” replied Mrs. Morcar. She looked doubtfully at his bright face and seemed to ponder, resting her hand maternally on the top of the cosied teapot. After a while she sighed and said: “Well!” and roused herself. When she had cleared away the meal she returned to the room with one of Mr. Morcar’s blue and white check aprons—the kind known locally as a “brat”—in her hand. “Try this on,” she said.

  Although Harry was not yet full-grown and lacked several inches of his father’s height, his shoulders were already broader.

  “It doesn’t matter—I can leave the top tape undone,” he offered.

  Mrs. Morcar did not even reply to this suggestion; she took out her sewing basket, unpicked every seam and with her customary skill completely refashioned the overall.

  On the following Friday the Morcars moved. Harry was active in the preparations, which he enjoyed, and rode on the box of the furniture van conveying a selection of their previous furniture to their new home. The van drew up at Number 102 Hurst Road, Mrs. Morcar who had gone on ahead opened the door, Harry clambered down and ran in. He stopped, aghast. The room was tiny, with a steep narrow staircase leading directly from the rear. He turned on his mother with an impetuous question, but she was gazing at him with such a look of anguish that he was astonished and alarmed—he had never seen such a naked expression of feeling in her face before—and mumbling instead something about helping to unload, ran out of the house again. As he helped the removal man to let down the back of the van and secure it by chains so that it formed a low platform, there was a tumult of feeling in his heart, which presently settled into the conviction, firm though inarticulate, unclarified, that this was a disaster and he must bear it like a man. Accordingly he became very cheerful and even facetious in his manner of handling the furniture, carrying chairs light-heartedly on his head and shouting “Whoa!” to the removal man as they struggled together to edge the Morcars’ sideboard through the tiny door. There was a neat little scullery in the rear with which he professed himself enormously satisfied, but it was beyond his powers of deception to show pleasure over the outside lavatory beyond, reached by a descent of five stone steps into the bowels of the earth.

  While they were in the very thick of the removal there came a knock at the front door and Harry found himself ushering in an elderly lady of the Eastgate congregation whom he knew by sight, carrying a parcel about which she seemed to have mysterious business with his mother. The parcel when opened contained, as he saw, a length of crash and a few scraps of brightly coloured material which proved to be intended as patterns. Mrs. Morcar was vexed at being caught in her apron with her sleeves rolled up and repeatedly expressed this vexation by observing that they would be straight tomorrow, but she broke off the work of removal to draw out from a sideboard cupboard a box full of coloured skeins of silk in great
variety, and proceeded to match them to the patterns with a good deal of care and animation. Harry hovering in the doorway could not but be interested in this matching process, and approved his mother’s choice amongst the bright twisted skeins, which however was overruled by the visitor. As the latter left she remarked:

  “About next Wednesday, then?”

  “Next Wednesday,” replied Mrs. Morcar firmly.

  “I’ll call about the same time?”

  “Harry can bring them round if you like,” offered Mrs. Morcar.

  “Oh, no, I’ll call,” said the visitor hastily, stepping into the street. She looked back over her shoulder and added in the high artificial voice of embarrassed kindness: “And you’ll perhaps think over that other matter and let me have your decision at the same time?”

  “You have my decision now,” said Mrs. Morcar fiercely. “What I do for Eastgate I do for love.”

  “Well,” hesitated the other woman. “I honour you for it of course, Mrs. Morcar.” She seemed to wish to urge the matter further but to find it impossible in view of Mrs. Morcar’s stern bearing, and gathering her skirt into her hand went off down the street.

  That very night, though plainly wearied by the removal which in any case was not yet quite complete, Mrs. Morcar cut the crash into lengths for antimacassars, tacked their edges ready for hemstitching, and applied orange-coloured transfers to the ends, pressing the flimsy paper with a hot iron to imprint the pattern on the material.

  Harry pondered. He admitted readily that, in the Yorkshire phrase, he was “slow in the uptake,” but the process when once accomplished was fairly sure. When he woke in the morning he knew that his mother meant to earn money by her talent for sewing and embroidery, that the Eastgate Dorcas meeting had offered to pay her for her services to them in cutting-out and general direction, that Mrs. Morcar had refused. Then he felt such a restless suspense, such a burning eager desire for the Monday after Wakes Week to arrive when he could go to work, that he could hardly contain himself. He threw the furniture about the house with a strength and energy which astonished his mother; with a slight frown of concentration down the centre of his fair placid forehead he carried in coal, cleaned the rusty range until it shone, rode off on his bicycle to fetch provisions, on his return swilled down the five lavatory steps. He observed that the other houses in the row kept their steps, the floor and the slab on the top of the tiny odorous chamber yellow-stoned, and remembering vaguely the utensils he had seen employed for this purpose, looked about in the scullery and found a bucket containing a brush, a cloth and a knob of the yellow stuff. A rough fibre mat, he seemed to remember, was also necessary. He found one, filled the bucket with water and going out to the back premises, knelt on the second step and began experiments with the yellow-stone. Suddenly his mother rushed from the house and snatched the bucket from him. Her face was white with fury.

  “Come in,” she whispered in a tone of raging disgust. “Harry! Come in at once.”

  “I’ll just finish this,” said Morcar stolidly.

  “No!” whispered his mother as before. “Come in at once!”

  “Who’s going to do it, then? You?” said Morcar.

  “It’s not a man’s work,” said Mrs. Morcar, trembling with anger.

  Harry considered. “I think I’d better do it,” he said presently. His tone was mild but final; he seemed to know that he was quite as obstinate as his mother. They were both holding the handle of the bucket; Morcar gave it a jerk towards him and the water slopped over on his mother’s dress. With an angry exclamation she released her hold and moved with a swift step into the house.

  Half an hour later, just as he finished the roof slab, she summoned him to a meal; her face was calm and she made no reference to the incident. Harry made no such reference either; he replaced the bucket and the mat in their proper places, washed his hands at the sink and sat down to the table without a word. He then discovered that—for almost the first time in his life—he was not hungry. But it was necessary to eat, he felt, or the battle would be lost, so he chewed his way through the Saturday’s steak staunchly.

  The next week was a protracted ordeal. It was Annotsfield Wakes: the holiday week when the mills slumbered and all the Annotsfield inhabitants who could afford disported themselves at the seaside. The town lay empty beneath the bright hot sunshine; the looms were silent, most of the shops were closed. Morcar mooned about listlessly, alone, for the Shaws were still absent. His mother urged him to get out into the fresh air while he still had the chance, but as he had never experienced the limitations to freedom imposed by the hours of regular labour, he took this recommendation impatiently. However, there was nothing else to do; so he rode out on his bicycle every day. His favourite round was one often ridden by Charlie and himself; up the moorland road to the Moorcock, then by the rough path over the brow to Scape Scar, down the steep slope into the Ire Valley and down the valley road to Irebridge. But in Irebridge, instead of crossing the Ire and regaining Hurst by Hurstholt Road, he kept on the road towards Annotsfield so that he might turn off into the small side street where stood Mr. Shaw’s business premises.

  Prospect Mills was not perhaps a very inspiring sight; low and smoke-blackened, with dirty windows, it belied its name by gazing into a row of equally smoke-blackened small dark houses. To the side, wooden gates, once red now pink with time, gave on the yard Mr. Shaw shared with another tenant—who must be a wool-comber, decided Harry, judging from two or three huge taut sacks tumbled nonchalantly against each other in the far corner. Even in August the yard looked dank and muddy, and the squat brick chimney seemed to exude dirt. The double-leaf door to the office, also pinkish and peeling, was closed to-day, revealing to the full its need of a new coat of paint. But Harry, cycling slowly past, or glancing at the mill sideways from the shelter of a cross street—he would not for the world, of course, have been discovered openly viewing it—found it in the highest degree romantic. It was the centre of his hopes and dreams. That faded door was his entrance to the great world, the world where he would work for his own living, the world where he would be a man. He longed for next Monday with almost unbearable intensity. The days seemed years, and as if in corroboration his very face in the glass looked older by the end of the week.

  About Wednesday an idea struck him. The antimacassars were already finished and called for, so he felt at liberty to ask his mother to do some sewing for him. He took his school cap down from its peg and offered it to her. “Can you unpick the badge?” he demanded gruffly. For answer his mother covered her face with her hands and sat thus, motionless. Morcar wriggled irritably; all this emotion! Mrs. Morcar suddenly took down her hands, unpicked the crest and pressed the cap with a hot iron from within, so that the marks of the stitches became invisible.

  At last it was Saturday, and the people of Annotsfield began to return to their homes to resume their labour. In the evening Hurst Road was full of workers in bright clothes carrying bags and baskets and paper parcels, streaming homeward from the station. Morcar slept wretchedly, tossing from side to side in a feverish though vague ambition. Sunday came. Chapel in the morning passed the time on well, and there were some good fighting hymns which Morcar sang with gusto. The afternoon was terrible. He went down to the Sycamores to see if by some happy chance the Shaws’ plans had been changed and they had returned earlier—a picture postcard from Charlie had announced their coming on Monday morning. But the house was empty. Harry went round to the back; he would like to have watered the garden with a hosepipe, but dared not because it was Sunday. He tried the door of the Den, but it was locked. The father of the family who now lived next door, in the Morcars’ old house, was in the garden as he returned and spoke to him kindly; Harry coloured and hurried away. Then there was tea, then there was Chapel, rather sad and sentimental so that his mother quietly wept; and then at last as they walked homeward Harry saw thin feathers of smoke beginning to rise from the mill chimneys. The men were re-lighting the boiler fires ready for work on
the morrow. Then there was supper; then there was a slight ceremony in laying ready the brat, setting his alarm clock and discussing with his mother what time he would be home for dinner. Harry wished to stay at the mill all day without a break, but his mother was firm for his return at midday—on his bicycle, she said, the distance between Prospect Mills and Hurst Road was small. Mr. Shaw, she said, was sure to expect it. She was equally certain that Mr. Shaw would not require Harry to go to Prospect before breakfast tomorrow morning. Harry, who had envisaged himself climbing the steps on the stroke of six, was keenly disappointed and argued the matter stoutly.

  “But Mr. Shaw won’t be there himself, child, and he’ll be vexed if somebody puts you on to work that he doesn’t intend.”

  Harry yielded on both points only as far as the first day was concerned. “I shall see what Mr. Shaw wants,” he repeated several times in an earnest important tone. “I must do what he wants, Mother.”

  His mother sighed at last, told him he had better get off to bed and kissed him goodnight. To his astonishment he fell asleep immediately.

  He woke at just the right moment next morning and sprang out of bed at once. His mother seemed still asleep for no sounds came from the next room and he wondered with some diffidence whether he would need—for the first time in his life—to wake her, but luckily just as the problem became acute he heard her stirring. She was prompt with his meal and nothing occurred to delay him, and soon he was riding down Hurst Road towards Annotsfield. The morning was rather cool and dull, but the birds were singing in the park trees. Morcar was keenly happy. At last! At last! He rode with beautiful precision, but without any schoolboy flourishes, down the hill and across the knot of traffic in the centre of Annotsfield and along Cloth Hall Street and East-gate, weaving in and out of trams with sober skill.