The Rise of Henry Morcar

by Phyllis Bentley

  Major Oldroyd answered: “I came because this war is not a struggle of nation against nation. It is a fight for justice and freedom and the brotherhood of man, against oppression and cruelty and tyranny. It is a fight for love against hate, for the good in man against the evil.”

  At this the people applauded, and the Captain cried out savagely: “Here we shoot men with such opinions!”

  Major Oldroyd shrugged his shoulders and replied: “That will not kill the opinions.”

  “But it will kill you,” said the Captain, laughing.

  “I am ready to die for freedom,” said Major Oldroyd. “And I am proud to die with these brave men, who believe in freedom, as my companions.”

  Here the crowd demonstrated again in Oldroyd’s favour by clapping and stamping and shouting, and the guards quelled them by beating the nearest over the head with the butts of their rifles. An old woman rushed up to the platform and shook her fist at the Captain. He jumped up and struck her across the mouth so that she fell to the ground bleeding.

  The Nazis must have seen now that the crowd was against them and that the trial was not serving their purpose, for a Nazi officer rose from his seat on the platform and whispered urgently in the Captain’s ear, and he hurried the proceedings to a close. The trial, if you can call it a trial where there were no lawyers and no witnesses and no jury, was all over in less than half an hour, and all the prisoners were condemned to death.

  Major Oldroyd then formed the condemned men into a square, and placing himself at their head, marched them off to the castle between the guards. He whistled an English tune for them to march to, and the others took it up and sang it. It was not a tune the eyewitness knew. The contrast between their brisk neat marching and the exaggerated antics of the guards excited the derision of the crowd, who were country people, not accustomed to seeing the goosestep. As the prisoners marched off, Major Oldroyd raised the salute of the resistance movement: the clenched fist. The Captain struck his hand down violently. But Oldroyd called out to the people: “I give you the salute of freedom!” and raised his hand again.

  Outside the castle the men were halted and made to dig a trench for their common grave, in a field. Major Oldroyd was unable to wield a spade properly owing to his broken arm. A young man sprang out of the crowd and offered to dig for him, but was driven back by blows from the guards.

  When the grave was finished the condemned men were lined up against the outer wall of the castle and executed by machine-gun fire. They all died raising their hands in the freedom salute.

  The spectators were sobbing. Many present declared that the men’s calm cheerful courage was due to the fine example of the English officer. “He was a very brave man and a very kind one,” a resistance officer said later. “We loved him very much. We shall remember him all our lives. He will always inspire us. He is one of those who make friendship possible between nations.”

  51. Never on Earth Again

  The siren warbled for the seventh time that night. Morcar, busy with the agenda of the committee on wool textile industry 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 of view added to the flat’s rent came into his mind, then he remembered that he was trying not to think that kind of thought nowadays—through the windows 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, he thought; 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 of 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 he looked more searchingly, 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 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 closely 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 tonight. 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 tonight; indeed it sometimes seemed to him that half his life was spent in hiding his feeling 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 nowadays 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 un
der 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 one of the earlier blitzes, 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. Through his own mind now raced 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.

  The impact was terrific, so that Morcar shut his eyes and crouched. The floor waved sickeningly, plaster flaked thickly from the ceiling and rained down on their shoulders, glass crashed and tinkled and went on crashing and tinkling, outside there was the long rumbling groan of collapsing buildings, a stifling brown dust rose about them, something heavy flew across the room and struck the wall within an inch of Jenny’s head. It was the lock of the door, Morcar discovered, cautiously opening his eyes; he had stupidly forgotten to stand the door ajar, and the blast had cut the lock as neatly out as if the heavy panelled wood were made of butter. Five long nails securing the lock had buried themselves in the wall.

  Slowly the noise subsided; the floor settled into the horizontal plane; everything was suddenly very still except the glass, which went on tinkling and crashing, and the brown dust in the air, which circled upwards in slow sinister curls. The all-clear sounded. Morcar drew a long breath.

  “Well!” he said.

  Fan sprang up and began to shake herself and Jenny free of plaster. Morcar gave Jenny his hand and helped her to her feet.

  “We’re alive, it seems,” he said, astonished.

  “Seems so!” said Fan, perky as ever though trembling slightly.

  All of a sudden they began to laugh and talk at the top of their voices. Look at the lock! Look at those nails! Look at the plaster! Look at the dust! “Oh, Uncle Harry!” cried Fan, running in and out: “Look at your bottles!” He went towards the sitting-room. For some reason he seemed to be limping uncomfortably; he glanced down and found that the blast had removed the sole from his left shoe. His decanters and bottles had leaped from the sideboard; some had accomplished the leap safely, more had perished. The windows were now open spaces surrounded by jagged spikes; the mirrors were all cracked, pictures were awry. There did not, however, appear to be any structural damage to the walls. Fan, with little fluttering exclamations, began to tidy, to repair such damage as was not beyond her skill, to restore cushions, to straighten pictures.

  “If I had a broom,” she said, “and a dustpan, I could do wonders with that glass.”

  The hall porter came in with a rather mottled countenance, to see if anyone were hurt. The bomb had struck a building at the back of Morcar’s flat, about fifty yards distant, on the side away from the Park.

  “Fifty yards!” marvelled Morcar. “If it’s like that at fifty, what is it like at ten?”

  “Don’t, Uncle Harry!” Fan begged him, pretending to shudder. “Porter, could I have a broom?”

  “You’d best not touch anything, miss, unless you wear thick gloves,” recommended the man. “And don’t sit down, sir.” He indicated to Morcar a cretonne-covered armchair of which every inch was penetrated with pointed slivers of glass.

  “I think I’ll take these young ladies home. Perhaps you can clear up a little meanwhile?” said Morcar.

  Jenny had picked her way to the glassless window and was looking out. The other two now joined her. The brown dust was settling, and the space where it had previously formed a house could be seen. “That’s dust to dust indeed,” thought Morcar. Rescue workers were already on the job, searching the débris for casualties. The other dwellers in the street, with that gay courage which Morcar could not sufficiently admire, were already out in the roadway shaking their carpets to remove the glass, making jokes to each other about their experiences during the falling of the bomb.

  “I shan’t have to do my washing-up, anyway, ’cos there ain’t no china left to wash,” cackled a Cockney voice.

  “I thought the cat was blasted in the bath, but it was only a bottle of red nail-polish,” floated up in very Oxfordian tones.

  “A great people,” thought Morcar, smiling, reminded somehow of his grandfather’s deathbed. “Well, girls; I think we’d better go while the going’s good.”

  He went into his bedroom to change his shoes. The telephone rang. Morcar picked it up impatiently.

  “Harry Morcar.”

  “Oh, Harry, is it you? Oh, Harry! Are you safe? Is Jenny there? Is she safe?”

  “We’re all quite safe, Christina,” said Morcar soothingly.

  “Wasn’t that one near you, then?”

  “Yes, it was rather,” said Morcar. “Just at the back of our street. The flat’s knocked about a bit, but nothing much really.” Because while they waited for the doodle-bug to fall he had been thinking of all the long course of his association with Christina, he was off his guard and his voice was particularly loving. He looked up to find Jenny standing in the doorway gazing at him. Startled, he went on hastily: “Jenny’s here—would you like to speak to her? I’m bringing her home at once.”

  “Yes, oh yes. Be sure to come in, Harry,” said Christina in her soft graceful tones. “I was so worried about you. Bring Jenny now—Edward is troubled about her being out.”

  “She must come up north with me tomorrow,” said Morcar firmly.

  “Yes, I quite agree. Edward quite agrees. Is that you, Jenny my darling?”

  When Jenny had spoken a few reassuring words the three left at once, and reached the nearest Underground station without hearing another siren. On their way Fan saw a half-empty bus which she said would take her all the way home, but Morcar suggested grimly that if the bus were empty it was empty for a very good reason; Fan must travel cosily under ground or cease to consider herself his daughter-in-law elect. Fan pouted but smiled, and obediently descended into the safe earth. She went north, Morcar and Jenny west towards Notens Square.

  “Oh, what a bore!” exclaimed Jenny as they emerged at the Kensington station, pointing. The Alert board
was displayed, and indeed another flying-bomb could be heard approaching through the air. “How many is this since dinner?”

  “Eight, I think.”

  “I counted seventeen in bed last night,” said Jenny. “Seventeen loud ones, I mean; I don’t count them if they’re a long way off.”

  “Jenny, you must give up your job and come north,” said Morcar firmly. “You owe it to David’s child, you know.”

  “I begin to think perhaps I must,” said Jenny thoughtfully.

  They were interrupted by the noise of the bomb, which came flying directly overhead. The summer dusk was beginning to fall, and the red glare in the tail could be seen distinctly. The doodle-bug, emitting its hideous steady roar, whizzed in a business-like manner diagonally across the street just above housetop level, curved around to the left, and dived. One minute its graceful form, tilted at a steep angle, could be seen silhouetted against the greenish sky; the next there came the loud explosion, the rumbling groan of falling buildings, the crash and tinkle of falling glass, the swirling brown dust, the nauseating heave of the pavement beneath their feet.

  “I should get tired of these if I lived in London,” said Morcar in a peevish tone. “Come along, Jenny—we’d better hurry before the next one comes along. Yes—there goes the all-clear.”

  He took her arm and urged her forward, but to his surprise she hung on him heavily and did not move.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked quickly.

  Jenny’s face was white. She looked very steadily in the direction where the bomb had fallen.

  “My God!” cried Morcar. “You don’t think—”

  On a common impulse they started forward. “I don’t think it was anywhere near Notens Square,” said Morcar.

  “No, nor do I,” said Jenny. “Still, one wants to know—”

  “Of course,” said Morcar. “Naturally. One wants to know. Just to be sure. One gets these frights and afterwards of course laughs at them. I don’t think it was anywhere near.”