The Rise of Henry Morcar

by Phyllis Bentley

  On Monday morning, before he even visited Syke Mills, Morcar went into the best Annotsfield bookshop and gave a large order for books to be despatched at once to the Floating Castle.

  On Wednesday he received a very courteous and pleasant note from the shipping company to which the Castle belonged, thanking him for the fine parcel of books, which they were sure would be greatly appreciated by the merchant seamen in their employ. Unfortunately the Floating Castle had already left Liverpool on an outward voyage. Should they reserve the books for her, or give them to the crew of some other of their vessels?

  Morcar’s face lengthened as he read. So the captain and crew of the Floating Castle were already back on the Atlantie! So the voyage which to him had been such an extraordinary event, such a dangerous ordeal, they were already repeating! This was the “speeded-up turnaround” of which the mate had spoken. Evidently at this stage of the submarine campaign no ships could be spared, no men had time to rest on leave. The lifeline between Britain and America was strung out very thin; stretch it even a little further and it might break.

  “And if it’s like that for the Merchant Navy,” reflected Morcar: “I expect it will be just as bad for those destroyer men.”

  He thought of the commander of the sloop: that lad so fresh and fair and young, so like Edwin Harington. He sighed, and put down the shipping company’s letter very soberly, with a look of disappointment on his face. Christina’s right, thought Morcar sadly; you can’t break up the home of a lad who’s fighting the battle of the Atlantic. We must wait.

  46. Son

  Morcar’s recent travels had made him tired of hotels, and for his London visits he installed himself in a service flat overlooking Hyde Park. He was asleep there one wintry morning in the December following his return from the U.S.A. when the telephone rang at his bedside. The call was so early that he snatched up the instrument in some alarm, and cried: “Harry Morcar here,” very urgently.

  The caller evidently successfully pressed button A in a call-box, for pennies could be heard falling; but he or she remained silent.

  “Who’s this?” said Morcar. It was a locution borrowed from American acquaintances which Morcar enjoyed using, but it seemed to upset his caller, for there was no reply. “Who’s that?” said Morcar, reverting to normal.

  A Yorkshire voice said hesitantly: “This is Cecil.”

  “Oh!” said Morcar. As always when his former wife or his son entered his life, he felt a painful constriction. As the young man said no more, he forced himself to utter the enquiry: “Is there anything wrong with your mother?”

  “No. No, Mother’s all right,” said Cecil. “At least, she was last night when I left her.”

  “Did you bring me a special message from her, perhaps?”

  “Not specially,” said Cecil.

  At the end of his ideas, Morcar waited for some other explanation of the call, but none came. He said at last: “Where are you?”

  “I’m in London on my way back from leave. Mother told me your address. She got it from Granny. She said I was to ring you up,” said Cecil.

  His mild grating voice sounded wistful, and Morcar, remembering his promise to Winnie, which he had hitherto implemented only by a generous provision of money through alimony and codicils and settlements, suggested hurriedly: “Come and have lunch with me.”

  “Shall I?” said Cecil. His voice was now relieved and shy, yearning and happy all in a breath; it was clear that his father’s invitation had struck the note expected.

  “Yes, of course. Don’t be later than one. Well—better say quarter to, then we can have a drink together.”

  “Thank you,” said Cecil. As far as one could judge from his tone, he seemed to be expressing astonished delight, but with the young people of today one could never tell, reflected Morcar shrewdly.

  “Do you know how to get here?”

  “I’ll find out,” said Cecil cheerfully, hanging up the receiver.

  Morcar had to attend a committee meeting at the Board of Trade that morning, and was delayed longer than he expected. On his return the porter, to whom he had given instructions to admit Cecil, told him that Private Morcar was in the flat waiting for him. Cecil’s name always stung Morcar, and he had to pause as he unlocked his door to compose his features into a suitably welcoming smile.

  His son was sitting in an awkward position on the window seat, gazing out through the fine large windows at the Park Lane scene, busy even in wartime, and the frozen grass and bare branches of the Park beyond. He was also humming a song beneath his breath. He stood up to greet his father, his fair ingenuous face beaming. It was odd, thought Morcar, shaking hands though his flesh crawled at the touch of his child by Winnie, how some lads—David for instance—looked handsome in battle-dress and others emphatically looked otherwise. The neat workmanlike suit gave David a fine figure, broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs, flat belly, but Cecil’s tunic was at once too large and too small—“it fits where it touches,” thought Morcar, using a West Riding phrase angrily. It certainly did not touch the back of his neck, but clasped his waist too closely; the general effect was to make the lad look over-solid, ungainly, bulging, countrified. “Of course he’s a private and David’s an officer—the cut will be poorer perhaps,” thought Morcar, trying to be fair and make excuses. He enquired Cecil’s taste in drinks, but finding that the boy usually drank only beer, did not know the names of other drinks and had probably never had any kind of cocktail in his life, he set about mixing him a mild gin and lime. Cecil remained standing, gazing at him.

  “Sit down—sit down and make yourself at home,” said Morcar. In spite of himself his voice was irritable, and Cecil’s mild brown eyes clouded like a scolded dog’s as he obeyed. “The cigarettes are on the table beside you. Help yourself,” said Morcar more kindly.

  Cecil brightened and took a cigarette. As he briskly snapped his lighter, his head on one side, his eyelids lowered, he looked more manly, and the voice in which he began again to croon his previous ditty was a deep and quite pleasing baritone.

  “Has anyone seen the Colonel?

  I know where he is.

  I know where he is.

  I know where he is.

  Has anyone seen the Colonel?

  I know where he is—

  He’s dining with the Brigadier.

  I saw him, I saw him,

  Dining with the Brigadier I saw him,

  Dining with the Brigadier.”

  “What’s that you’re singing?” said Morcar, amused.

  Cecil coloured. “It’s just a song we sing. It goes through all the officers, and non-coms. too. And the private. They’re all doing something off the line of duty, more or less, except the private.”

  “And what’s the private do, eh?”

  “Holding up the whole damn line, I saw him,

  Holding up the whole damn line.”

  “Perhaps that shocks you?” said Cecil suddenly, colouring again.

  “Shocks me?” exclaimed Morcar, aghast.

  “Disrespectful to the officers?”

  “Don’t be a fool, my boy; I’m an old soldier myself.” It suddenly struck Morcar as intolerable that this boy, his son and Charlie’s nephew, should seem ignorant of this cardinal fact. “Your uncle and I joined the B.E.F. together in August 1914,” he said stiffly. The scene of Charlie’s death rose once more, for the thousandth time, vividly before his eyes. “I was with your uncle when he was killed,” said Morcar gruffly.

  “Yes, I know,” said Cecil. His tone was respectful, and Morcar hazarded the guess that whatever Winnie might have thought about that incident herself she had at least not poisoned her son’s mind against him. He found himself actually feeling grateful to her. It was very uncomfortable.

  “Well, let’s go down to the restaurant and have some lunch, shall we?” he said.

  “Shall I take my coat?” asked Cecil in his simple Yorkshire tones.

  “No—we’ll come up here again afterwards,” said Mor
car. It’s like taking a child about, he thought furiously; he hasn’t the least idea how to conduct himself.

  This impression was deepened in the restaurant, where Cecil was quite astray with the menu and not very certain in his selection of forks. It was so long since Morcar himself had felt uncertain about forks that when he saw Cecil waiting for his father to begin a course, his eyes fixed in anxious inquiry on Morcar’s right hand, Morcar did not at first understand what he was about and even looked down at his hand himself to see if there were anything odd about it. There was nothing odd; he picked up a fork and attacked his hors d’œuvres; Cecil with a look of relief did the same. Then Morcar understood the situation. “He’s nervous,” he thought. “Ill at ease. Afraid of doing the wrong thing. Afraid of me.” A rush of pity came into Morcar’s heart, and for the first time that day he connected the big clumsy young man before him whose ill-cut fair hair stood up in a tuft on the crown of his head, with the sleeping child in neat grey coat and gaiters whom he had carried in his arms from The Sycamores to Hurstholt on a night twenty-two years ago, and fondly loved. He exerted himself to talk, to set Cecil at his ease. But he found this impossible to achieve. He tried all kinds of topics, all methods of approach—the jocular, the man-to-man, the cynical, the hearty. To each Cecil said: “Yes,” in his slow grating Yorkshire tones. “Yes,” he said, and “No,” and “I don’t know really,” interspersing these conversational gems with a nervous little neigh of a laugh. “My God,” thought Morcar: “The boy is a noodle of the highest order.”

  In despair he fell back upon textiles.

  “I noticed you took your textile course at Annotsfield Technical,” he said. (He remembered that Cecil had passed only third class, but did not mention this.)

  “Yes,” agreed Cecil.

  “We’ve had some ups and downs in the wool textile trade during the war, I can tell you,” continued Morcar.

  He thought he discerned a faint gleam of interest in Cecil’s placid brown eyes, and decided to continue. “In any case it’s the only thing I really know how to talk about,” he thought.

  “Well—of course you know we’ve had Wool Control since 1939,” he said. “Wool’s been rationed since two months after the war began. We’ve had three war jobs to do for the country in the textile trade. First of all we had to clothe the Services. We began doing that about July 1939, and got pretty well ahead. But of course a lot of stuff was lost at Dunkirk, as I don’t need to remind you, Cecil. Besides, there were. all these Free French and Free Poles and Free Dutch and so on to provide for. The Dutch are very particular about the stuff for their naval men, which is what you might expect. And now this women’s conscription act has passed and we shall provide uniforms for the girls as well. That was the first job, though, clothing the Services. And the easiest. Then there was the Export Drive.”

  Morcar sighed, and Cecil looked mildly interrogative.

  “You see we wanted munitions and food and such from the U.S.A. and other countries, and the only way we could pay for it was by selling them our products, because our dollar reserve was exhausted and we’d already sold all our foreign investments,” explained Morcar—rather wearily, for he had explained it so often before, to Americans. “So the Government did everything it could to encourage us to export. We formed an Export Group to stimulate export, and some of the leading West Riding men visited North and South America to stimulate export, and some of us visited the U.S.A. privately to stimulate export—we thought of nothing else for months but stimulating export. I came back with plenty of orders. Then the Lease-Lend Act passed and export to the States wasn’t so vital. But still it was useful, I should have thought—it gave the Americans something in return for their goods, choose how.”

  His voice was thick with resentment and Cecil ventured to enquire: “But didn’t they want it?”

  “No! The Americans complained that materials secured by England under Lease-Lend were being made into non-war products and exported into their markets. Of course,” said Morcar thoughtfully: “If it were so, you can see how it would annoy them.”

  “But we don’t get wool from America, do we?” objected Cecil.

  “No, of course not. But the Government have gone and promised not only that Lease-Lend material won’t be used in that way, but also that all our export trade shall be reduced to the absolute minimum necessary to buy us food and munitions. So our export drive has gone into reverse. We’re just throwing away our export trade in order to win this war. Chucking it into the gutter. Of course,” said Morcar hastily: “If it has to be done to win the war, well it has to be done, that’s all. But what a mess we’re going to be in after the war! Whew! I don’t like to think of it.” He fell silent and stared ahead, envisaging the mess. “However,” he resumed in a determined tone: “We’re making all sorts of plans already to cope with it. It’s export or expire with this little island, you know.”

  “What do you think about Pearl Harbour?” enquired Cecil after a pause.

  Morcar shook his head in grave concern. The truth was that in spite of his irritation about his sacrificed exports, he felt almost as sensitive about Pearl Harbour as an American. “It’s a bad do,” he pronounced briefly. “Now the third task of the textile trade in wartime,” he went on, veering away from the uncomfortable subject: “Is of course to provide cloth to clothe the civilian population, at reasonable prices.”

  “Utility cloth,” said Cecil brightly. “What is it exactly? Grandfather talks about it but I don’t just understand it.”

  “It isn’t any one special cloth,” said Morcar crossly, wincing at the introduction of Mr. Shaw into his favourite topic. “Utility cloths can have any kind of colour and decoration. The only thing standardised about utilities is their price. The scheme is just a means of compelling the manufacturer to make a considerable amount of cheaper cloths, that’s all. Otherwise, you see, he’d tend to make mostly expensive cloths, which give him most profit. Utility cloths must have their selvedges marked with a sign like this.” He drew it with a spoon edge on the table-cloth. Cecil craned forward and examined it with interest, the waiter with a stately disapproval, tempered by his memory of Morcar’s excellent tips.

  “When will they be on the market?” enquired Cecil mildly.

  “They’re pretty well ready now. Coffee, waiter,” said Morcar, lighting a cigar. “Well, that’s what the textile industry has to do, and the problem is how to do it with less than a third of our normal labour. The Government told us last spring we’ve got to concentrate—close some of our mills and let the work be concentrated into those that are left, so that they can run full all the time. Nucleus firms, they call them. Syke Mills, of course,” said Morcar, “is a nucleus firm.”

  A look of fear sprang into Cecil’s eyes. “Do you think Prospect Mills will be a nucleus firm?” he asked. “Or will it be concentrated?”

  “I should think it will be concentrated,” replied Morcar. “But it won’t matter,” he added impatiently. “Your grandfather will go on trading in his own name, only he won’t be making the cloths he trades in. Some other firm will be making them for him.”

  “He won’t like that, Grandfather won’t,” said Cecil.

  “I don’t think he’ll mind so long as he gets the money,” said Morcar brutally.

  “I shall mind,” murmured Cecil.

  “You were working at Prospect before the war, were you?” “Yes,” nodded Cecil.

  “Well—I expect you’re bored with all this textile talk.”

  “Oh, no; it’s very interesting,” said Cecil, accenting the word on the wrong syllable in the Yorkshire fashion.

  Morcar was well aware that he spoke it thus himself sometimes, but this did not lessen his irritation at hearing it on the lips of Cecil. “Nay—you’ll think yourself back in Annotsfield Technical,” he said, rising. He felt vexed with himself for having exposed his beloved textiles in talk to Mr. Shaw’s grandson.

  Cecil rose to follow him, upsetting his coffee cup as he did so, and th
ey returned to Morcar’s flat.

  “This is a posh kind of place, isn’t it?” said Cecil, looking round him with a smile of childlike pleasure.

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” agreed Morcar drily. It struck him, however, that this spontaneous expression of opinion, the first Cecil had emitted, was in a way a kind of confidence on the young man’s part, a kind of indication that he was enjoying himself. Morcar for some reason felt soothed, and his voice was kinder as he asked the time of the train Cecil had to catch to rejoin his unit.

  “My pass doesn’t expire till eight tomorrow morning,” said Cecil slowly, beginning to put on his khaki greatcoat.

  “What time do you leave town, then?” said Morcar, helping him.

  “There’s a train just after midnight,” began Cecil diffidently. “I thought of going to a theatre,” he explained in a sudden burst of confidence: “Only I don’t know which one to choose or how to get in.”

  Morcar, repressing a sigh, took up the telephone and arranged the evening with his customary efficiency. He decided offhand that Cecil would probably enjoy best a simple type of leg-show, booked a box—the only four seats available—at a suitable revue, rang up Jenny and Fan at their respective government departments and secured their company for the theatre and supper afterwards. When he finally put down the telephone he found his son regarding him with shining eyes, smiling eagerly.

  “It’ll be a wonderful evening, won’t it?” said Cecil.

  “I hope so,” replied Morcar drily.

  When towards the close of the wonderful evening the party were seated at a table eating expensive though scanty viands and listening to such dance music as wartime could afford, it struck Morcar that while Cecil was certainly simple and naïve, he was not perhaps such a noodle as his father had at first thought him. Though he had met the two girls for the first time that evening and the theatre had afforded few opportunities for talk, the young man’s behaviour to Jenny and Fan respectively showed a sound common sense, an instinctive appreciation of character, for he treated Jenny with serious respect, Fan with affectionate amusement. In accordance with wartime custom the four were not in evening dress. Jenny and Fan wore the dark business clothes in which they had coped with the secrets of the national war effort all day, Morcar had a dark lounge suit and Cecil was of course in battledress. While Jenny’s plainly cut frock and simply dressed hair became her fine serious face admirably, Fan’s very fair smooth curls, black suit and fluffy white blouse gave her the appearance of a black kitten with a white forehead and waistcoat. Morcar told her so in a tone of compliment.