3
Finance
He was considerably distressed therefore, when one day Susie expressed dissatisfaction. The item concerned was their car. She was learning to drive, and one evening she observed casually that her tutor thought it would be better if she waited till she had acquired her new car before continuing her lessons.
‘We aren’t going to have a new car,’ said Jonathan, treating this as the sales talk which in fact it was.
‘Why not?’ said Susie mildly. ‘He says ours is out of date, and the gears and gadgets of a modern car would be different and confuse me.’
The adjective modern struck Jonathan as insulting in this connection. He reflected on the age of the car. It was, he remembered, the same car that Morcar had presented to the cousins quite a number of years ago. Chuff had sold his half of it to Jonathan for an almost nominal sum, as soon as he had saved enough from his Syke Mill earnings to buy one for himself. To travel on his honeymoon he had bought another, large, powerful and handsome; but that of course belonged to a different era, when he had become his grandfather’s heir and Managing Director of the mills. Still perhaps Jonathan’s car was a trifle antique. He said nevertheless:
‘Cars are expensive, and we shall need a good deal of money to set us up in Lorimer, you know. Furniture and things of that kind. And we may want to buy a house.’
‘But I have a lot of money,’ said Susie, happily. ‘A big cheque came only this morning from Syke Mill.’
Jonathan, who of course was incapable of inspecting or enquiring about Susie’s correspondence or the bank account he had established for her, was silent.
‘Don’t you want me to have a lot of money?’ said Susie with her customary directness.
Jonathan hesitated. ‘I would rather we lived on what I earned,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in unearned incomes. Everyone should have what they earn, what they deserve for their services to the community.’
Susie’s brightness slightly dimmed.
‘Grandfather wanted me to have the money,’ she said’
This was true, and Jonathan felt genuinely perplexed. Had he the right to deprive Susie of the enjoyments willed to her (and indeed to her through him) by Harry Morcar? He sighed.
‘I don’t think it’s kind to deprive Grandfather of his wishes just because he’s dead, and can’t stand up for himself,’ said Susie.
‘He doesn’t know, my darling.’
‘That makes it worse,’ said Susie gravely.
Jonathan smiled, but the smile was awry. If there had been the slightest tincture of greed in Susie’s utterance he would have seen the car project as a vulgar capitalist selfishness, but her eagerness was completely innocent, childlike. He wrestled with the problem all night, and in the morning, incapable of denying Susie something so reasonable, bought a modest car. The low price for the old one supported the salesman’s contention that a new one was overdue, and he felt relieved by this justification.
‘If we keep Uncle Harry’s money we must give a lot of it away,’ he said to Susie.
‘Of course,’ agreed Susie cheerfully.
4
University
The car certainly proved useful when they moved to Lorimer.
From the first they were exceedingly happy there. The city was northern, and full of those multifarious democratic societies which the north loves. They joined several, and enjoyed this widening of scope. The faculty surveyed Susie’s beauty with a kindly but serious air; they had a more discerning eye than persons met hither-to, and seemed to perceive that certain disadvantages might accompany this very unusual personal allure.
At the University the Vice-Chancellor was experienced and able, his wife intelligent and friendly; Jonathan’s professor, notable in his field, though outwardly stern was one of the kindest and most honourable men of letters he had known; there were, of course, a few mean and malicious, and a few more merely silly, men and women on the staff, but they were not much in favour and would soon, Jonathan surmised, vanish to scholastically lower though higher-paid positions. Jonathan felt immensely at home in the academic atmosphere. The quiet, urbane, polite speech, where no punches were pulled because words were used in their precise and potent meanings, agreed perfectly with his own inclinations; he enjoyed a feeling of boyish pride when he saw his gown hanging on the wall of his office.
The students were rather startling at first, certainly. Their English was too often poor, their accent ugly; if male they grew on their youthful heads and cheeks more hair than there was room for, and therefore usually looked dirty, as if soap could not penetrate the thicket; if female, they looked the same because their long tangled locks were so disagreeably unkempt. To be careless and slovenly in dress was the fashion, and affectionate demonstrations between the sexes ditto. But on all this Jonathan turned a forgiving and affectionate eye; their young faces were so eager, their ideals (though often vague and unpractical) so noble; their ignorance so touching. After a few test questions, meant to be awkward and designed to ascertain his views, they seemed to decide to like him; on his side he tried to handle their touchy adolescent egos with sympathetic and scrupulous care.
In his work he was indeed happy. He was allotted a course of first-year lectures on English novelists of the nineteenth century. This was a great pleasure, in fact, as he said to Susie, just his cup of tea. He rebuked himself sometimes for venturing to imagine that he lectured well, but in fact results showed that this was the case. Returning students’ essays, too, was a task he welcomed; he longed so earnestly to assist the struggling lad or girl in front of him to express their ideas, however banal these might be, that these sessions were always full of interest to him. Where he felt less certain was in his tutorial classes. He found that the student to whom a question was addressed either went on so boringly long that the discussion which was the object of the exercise never got under way, or replied in so scanty a fashion that no fruitful point emerged for discussion. In either of these conditions, Jonathan was not perhaps as yet quite formidable enough to command the attention of ten or a dozen students not much younger than himself; they grew restless, and interest in members of the other sex who were present crept in. Confessing this difficulty to his professor, he found that it was a common one and received some useful hints on control; he struggled and, he hoped, improved. On the whole he felt he was doing useful work, and rejoiced.
As regards housing accommodation, Jonathan and Susie were fortunate. In the summer vacation, before term claimed Jonathan, they found an old, indeed almost decrepit, cottage on one of the pleasanter roads leading out of the city, and spent a good deal, which nevertheless the result justified, in restoring it to full and agreeable use. White-painted, with the garden tidied to reveal bright country flowers (yellow and crimson and golden) the outside was charming, and Susie showed great skill in making the interior equally attractive. Jonathan, who knew his mother’s skill in this respect, once suggested that she should be consulted, but Susie replied simply:
‘I want to do it myself, Jonathan.’
There was no more to be said. The young Oldroyds visited house sales and antique shops, and Old Cottage was admired and frequently visited by faculty and students alike, for Susie’s musical evenings were both respected and enjoyed.
Summer faded into autumn and sharpened into winter. Wood fires crackled warmly on the huge old hearth; Susie bent over her tapestry, Jonathan read to her or talked about his students. They discussed moderff novels and plays without alarm, and were happy in agreement. When they found that Susie was with child, their happiness became complete.
III
Chuff
1
Designer
Returning from his honeymoon, Chuff entered Syke Mill whistling cheerfully. The new car had coped smoothly with the gradients of the Highlands, of which the scenery was certainly striking, his wife proved all that he desired, and his own performance had been decidedly satisfactory. The Syke order book was full, running on the patterns Morc
ar had prepared the previous year, and no crashing error seemed to have been made in the three mills during his absence.
But all too soon this content was dimmed. Nat Armitage rang up to welcome him home and pleasantly told him of one or two points on which Syke Mill had consulted him during its managing director’s absence. Chuff, though vexed, thanked him energetically, and by this means contrived to indicate that it was unnecessarily good of a non-executive Chairman to interest himself so keenly in the mill affairs.
‘And how’s your pattern range coming on?’ pursued Nat.
‘I’m just going up to the design department now,’ said Chuff—a remark intended to call forth the answer he received.
‘I won’t keep you, then,’ said Nat hastily.
Chuff found the design department depressing. Its head, a long thin lean bald elderly man in spectacles named Simmonds, was no doubt extremely reliable and had perfect textile taste, but could never conceive a design which would sweep the market. The two younger men, and even the run-and-fetch boy, had the same air of uncreative loyalty; a woman in the thirties, whose eyes held a spark of revolt, was engaged with colour ranges of yarn and seemed to know her job, but the whole department seemed quiet, passive, remote from life’s hurly-burly, almost as if lying on a dusty shelf, waiting of course, thought Chuff crossly, for Morcar to rush in with an idea to startle them into hectic activity. The months which had passed since his grandfather’s death had not diminished his personal grief, but perhaps pushed it into a more distant corner of his heart, and his present reaction was to feel vexed with Morcar.
‘What on earth was he about, falling and letting himself get killed like that?’ he thought irritably.
It was delightful, however to return home to lunch in his own house, with his own wife at the corner of his own table, and eat viands prepared for his satisfaction alone.
‘You look worried, Chuff,’ said Ruth, solicitous. ‘Of course there’ll be many problems waiting for you; they’ll have missed you while you’ve been away.’
‘Yes, and Miss Sprott isn’t a patch on her predecessor,’ said Chuff smiling. (Miss Sprott, a very maiden lady in the forties, was Ruth’s successor as Chuff’s personal secretary, in reality a very good one, as the sensible Ruth at once remarked.) ‘Well—I’m worried about the design department, as a matter of fact. I don’t think much of Simmonds.’
‘Technically he’s perfect,’ said Ruth.
‘Oh, I daresay, But he won’t set the Thames on fire.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Grandfather did.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Ruth with fervour.
‘I must get somebody new there, decided Chuff. ‘It’s no use to keep putting it off. I must do something. But how you find a brilliant new designer, I don’t know. New and young.’
‘Mr Morcar came out of the Annotsfield Tech—and so did you.’
‘True.’
‘You might go and see the Principal.’
‘Oh, lord!’ said Chuff ruefully. ‘He didn’t think much of me, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s different now,’ said Ruth, soothing.
A few evenings later, therefore, Chuff, feeling uncomfortably like the merely average student he had always been at the Tech, was ushered in to see the Principal, who gave him a grin showing complete awareness of their former and present situations.
‘I was deeply grieved by your grandfather’s death,’ he said. ‘Mr Morcar was a man of great skill in his craft, and of massive integrity—also extremely lovable.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Chuff, nonetheless wishing that these tributes, which seemed to condemn him by comparison, would cease. ‘I want a young designer,’ he blurted.
‘Ah. For the present or the future?’
‘Well, of course I should like both,’ said Chuff honestly. ‘But—well, I don’t know. I have an elderly man whose technique is perfect. I want someone with new ideas. But not too young, you see, or he won’t have any influence. If you see what I mean.’
‘And you have come to see me?’ said the Principal in an interrogative tone.
‘I hoped you would find me one,’ blurted Chuff.
‘Mr Morcar,’ said the Principal, suddenly becoming very stiff: ‘You are perhaps not aware that we never recommend students to textile firms. Most of our students come on Day Release from textile firms where they are apprentices. I am sure you will understand that we could not suggest to these students that they should leave their present employers.’
‘Oh, quite—of course not,’ said Chuff, flurried.
‘All we do—or could do—would be to place an announcement of the job on our notice board.’
‘I might as well advertise it in the Annotsfield Recorder.’
‘You could do that, of course.’
‘I don’t want to do that,’ said Chuff, vexed. ‘I don’t want to tell the whole West Riding that Morcars need a new designer.’
‘I see your point. These lads,’ went on the Principal after a pause, ‘range from sixteen to twenty-one, you know.’
‘That’s rather young for my purpose.’
‘It’s a five-year course.’
‘I know your textile course,’ said Chuff grimly. ‘I took it.’
‘So you did. Well, it just occurs to me that we have a young man, a part-time teacher, who might suit you. He teaches here one evening a week, and for the rest of the time is a free-lance designer. Carpets, curtains, fabrics of all kinds, I believe.’
‘That’s not textile design in my sense of the word.’
‘Agreed. But he has a thorough textile training. He’s taken his City and Guilds examination—he won a medal —he knows the new man-made fibres—and I believe he has a real flair. Or so the head of the department tells me. He teaches both weaving mechanism and design. As he teaches here only one night a week, it seems to me he could do your job without interference with his work here.’
‘How old?’
‘About twenty-five, I imagine.’
‘He sounds hopeful,’ said Chuff, beginning to congratulate himself on his clever discovery. ‘Is he an Annotsfield man?’
‘No. West of England.’
‘Ah. Smooth broadcloth. High quality cloth. Why is he up here, then?’
‘I don’t know. He’s married. His wife is an artist, and he too paints. I believe in his spare time.’
‘Well,’ said Chuff very cheerfully: ‘He sounds just the ticket.’
‘Would you like to see him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I send for him? He’s teaching tonight.’
‘Well, no,’ said Chuff, wriggling. ‘That’s a little too, too——’
‘You don’t want to commit yourself.’
‘Not yet’
‘Shall we go round the textile department together, then? And come across him en route?’
Chuff agreed gratefully, and the two men went down to the basement in the lift.
‘This is Mr Paul Yarrow,’ said the Principal, leading Chuff to a young man who, standing by a squared blackboard on which was inscribed in coloured chalks an embryonic textile design, was evidently discoursing about it to a dozen or so lads in desks in front of him. ‘Ah, a stripe, I see.’
‘I don’t much care for stripes,’ said Chuff, without thinking. (He had grown to detest stripes ever since he had learned to perceive what an awful striped suit he had been wearing when he first landed in England—what his grandfather must have thought of it!) ‘That is, if they’re too obtrusive,’ he added hastily.
‘I never made a stripe more than half an inch wide,’ said Yarrow in a resentful tone. His accent was what Chuff had learned to label south-country.
‘I should hope not indeed,’ said Chuff. He glanced at the short lengths of yarn which hung over the board. ‘A good blue,’ he observed.
‘Excuse me, I just want a word with——’ began the Principal, turning and hurrying towards the door. ‘Mr C. H. F. Morcar of Henry Morcar, Limited,’ he added with a wave of his h
and. ‘You’ve heard of Morcars, I am sure, Mr Yarrow.’
‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ said Yarrow.
Chuff looked at him. According to the standards of the day he was well dressed, wearing dark blue corduroy trousers and a white wool jumper with a polo neck. His hair was very dark, glossy and abundant; carefully carelessly arranged in heavy waves which spread over his large white forehead. Sideburns of course, and a beard of course. (Chuff did not like beards; he associated them partly with old Boer farmers, and partly with his maternal great-grandfather, old Mr Shaw, who he always understood had been a pettifogging rascal.) The face, however, was well-shaped; the eyes, dark and large behind’ their horn spectacles with broad sidepieces, defiant but perhaps honest. He certainly looked ‘modern’. ‘We took him by surprise, after all,’ reflected Chuff. It occurred to him that this Yarrow lad might know more about textiles than he did; he had better leave the investigations of his qualifications to Mr Simmonds. ‘A good blue,’ he repeated. Yarrow said nothing, rather markedly.
‘You’ve got your City and Guilds, I gather.’
Yarrow muttered an affirmative.
‘And you’re well acquainted with the new man-mades?’
‘I am.’
‘The truth is,’ said Chuff, extremely embarrassed but also rather proud of himself for this, his irst important independent action, ‘I want a young assistant designer. If the idea interests you, call and see the head of my design department, say tomorrow afternoon.’
Ring in the New Page 4
