A Son of War

by Melvyn Bragg

  But this was different from anything and as the day went on and three fifteen p.m. approached, the difference dug away at his confidence. His imagination went on a rampage of fear. He kept repeating the lines of the song. And again. Even when he went to the lavatory. The clock went too quickly. Miss Bennett made him do a rehearsal in the dinner hour and told him to sing up and said he would be all right on the night, which he did not quite understand. Three fifteen was afternoon.

  It arrived. It came in a rush and he was not prepared for it. The other classes crowded into Formroom One, which was far bigger than all the rest, and then the grown-ups who stood at the back and the teachers who sat alongside the piano. Miss Steele, who was quite well known locally for her piano playing, gave two pieces with many swoops and trills. Mr Scott, the headmaster, who would give his speech after Joe’s song, introduced Miss Moffat who recited two poems. Pauline Douglas from the top class did an exhibition of Scottish dancing, kilted, with Miss Steele back on the piano. Then it was him. His name was announced. He had to leave his seat but it was as if only part of him left the seat, blushing deeply.

  Miss Bennett nodded and offered a personal smile of encouragement. He faced up to the audience, standing more or less at attention, sandalled feet anchored together on the shallow platform, socks at half mast, hands helplessly dangling down his sides. He saw those he knew and the room swayed just a touch as the little breakers of panic gathered pace and raced towards his throat. Miss Bennett sounded the brisk overture and then a voice sang:

  ‘When Johnnie comes marching home again

  Hurrah! Hurrah!

  When Johnnie comes marching home again

  Hurrah! Hurrah!

  The men will cheer, the boys will shout

  The ladies they will all come out …’

  And the song went out but something else seemed to go too. He heard the song and he was doing it but there was something so very strange, set apart from the voice, which he could not begin to name, as if he were one thing, the voice another, distinct, uncoupled. It touched him with fear and a kind of wondering numbness so that when he saluted at the end and people clapped it was as if he were dizzy and he did not know what to do until Miss Bennett said, ‘You can sit down now, Joe.’

  There had been no rise for more than two years and when it came the anticipated threepence an hour had melted down to twopence. There was no union. An ad hoc committee was mooted in the ten-minute tea-break and assembled in the twenty-minute dinner-break. Sam was one of the five.

  Even by midday the ardour of some of the most belligerent had ebbed. Strikes were foreign to the Wigton factory where a full day’s wages was a big consideration. But the committee, sitting in the hut - a corrugated-iron shelter with one cold-water basin - elected three of their number to go immediately to the office of the manager and part-owner, Mr Drummond-Gould. Sam said they should all go, and with no noticeable enthusiasm the two who had been excused accepted their inclusion.

  The manager’s office was approached through narrow, twisting passages, grudging routes between the shouldering sheds shuddering from the machines that turned out the transparent Cellophane paper. The smell from the chemicals fed into the process could be nauseating. But that smell, the local saying went, was money. The straitness of the route forced the men into Indian file.

  The last lap was across a narrow wooden bridge and up a flight of wooden stairs. Sam took them two at a time, reached the office door and looked around. No one had followed. He waited. No mistake. They had all dropped away.

  Mr Drummond-Gould’s secretary opened the door. ‘Can I help?’

  Sam took a breath, took a beat, weighed up retreat, regret, a certain angry disappointment, an unexpected amusement at it all, and the imperative of a decision.

  'Is the boss in, Susan?’

  The door was opened widely enough for him to enter the mean outer office. A door, half frosted glass, was broached by Susan’s dimpled knuckles and she answered the growl by opening it a sliver and announcing: ‘Sam Richardson to see you, Mr Drummond-Gould’

  ‘Well now.’ Sam thought he heard a rather sarcastic chuckle. ‘We mustn’t keep Sam waiting, must we?’

  ‘You can go in.’

  Sam obeyed, ignoring the clear, worried warning mapped on Susan’s open plump face.

  He was not asked to sit down.

  Mr Drummond-Gould chose this moment to light one of his famous cigars. Two a day, the men were told, one after he had come back from his dinner called lunch. The other after his supper called dinner. The lighting of the cigar was an absorbing job, it seemed, and Sam had time to weigh up his man.

  Even sitting behind his desk, in his white shirt that always looked so much whiter and crisper than anyone else’s white shirt and the heavy silk tie, the coloured silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, the fine subtly striped suit - not made locally - that announced, literally, a person of a more distinguished cut, Kelvin Drummond-Gould was a big man. The bets were that he was the tallest man in the town, broadly built but not yet gone to fat. His hair was black, wavy, thick, swept back. His face was rather bloodhound large, dark brown eyes, thick lips, a smile that flashed out like a scimitar. His wrist-watch had a heavy gold face. On the little finger of his left hand was a thick gold signet ring bearing markings that gossip related to nobility.

  What was respected about the man was that his engineering background and bloody-mindedness had kept a skeleton factory going through the war and managed to kick-start it back into life so that now it employed over three hundred, men and apprentices. What was relished by some and deplored by others was his mistress. He himself lived in solitary state in Wigton Hall, served by a housekeeper, a cook, two maids, a gardener and an under-gardener. His mistress, the outstandingly handsome wife of his senior employee, was still lodged with her oblivious, blind or complaisant husband in a respectable detached house ranked alongside other respectable detached houses on the West Road. There was a son whose looks were copied straight from Drummond-Gould without, it seemed, being brushed by a trait of the mother. The boy had gone early to prep school in another part of the county, but holidays were spent back in the town. Drummond-Gould motored regularly into Scotland, sometimes for two or three weeks, prompting more rumours.

  One puzzle was how the senior employee - an educated man also respected in the factory for his engineering skill and hard-headed maturity - managed to stay in the same town or even in the same county. How he managed to allow himself to be sent away on marketing expeditions up and down the British Isles, leaving the coast clear. How he managed.

  Finally, the cigar was perfectly serviced.

  ‘Well now, Sam … ?

  There was an empty seat to tempt him but he decided not to give Drummond-Gould the satisfaction.

  ‘The lads think twopence is not enough.’

  ‘The lads?’

  ‘The men.’

  'It’s the best I could come up with, Sam. Believe me.’

  Sam did not and his expression relayed that.

  ‘There’s been no rise for more than two years.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve given one now.’

  ‘The wages are low, Mr Drummond-Gould, when you compare. Around the county,’ he added swiftly, to head off the obvious question.

  ‘There’s worse.’ The manager breathed in the cigar like a sigh. The smoke filled his mouth and induced a dreamy look, then it funnelled out towards Sam, a blue-grey stream that smelt good and strong enough to chew on. ‘And there’s better. I concede that.’

  ‘We expected the threepence.’

  ‘If I could have afforded it …’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  The edge in Sam’s voice interrupted the flow. For the first time the manager looked directly at Sam and saw that the hard blue eyes were measuring him up.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  ‘We’ll be the judges of whether we take your twopence.’

  ‘Who’s the “we”?’ And, recomposed, Mr Drummon
d-Gould flashed the scimitar smile.

  ‘Everybody.’ Sam’s tone was over-emphatic.

  Another pull at the cigar was required.

  ‘Not what I hear, Sam. Not what I see before me now, either.’

  Hear? Who had spotted the wilt of support and welshed? Sam knew two possibles and following that thought they clicked into certainties.

  ‘I can’t see the men putting up with it.’

  ‘Yes, you can, Sam. I can read it in your face. Never go in for a diplomatic career.’ Once more the smile, this time with some warmth. ‘How many set off with you?’

  Sam shook his head.

  ‘Half a dozen? Three or four? They didn’t even make it to the steps.’

  Sam was beaten but he did not want to surrender. Not yet. Not until he’d got some sort of bat in, struck some sort of blow, something.

  'They’ll accept it, Sam. I know that. You know that. You’re a smart fella. Restless, but they often make out the best.’ He paused and once more made deliberate and theatrical play with his cigar which, he openly indicated, had been produced as an entertaining prop, to tease the young man, to taunt him with this contemptuous caricature.

  ‘What would you say if I told you I was considering you as a foreman?’

  ‘I wouldn’t welsh for you, mister. Thanks all the same.’

  Susan’s farewell nod was funereal.

  Ellen preferred the cold to the heat. Heat flustered her. Her clothes were never right. As a girl she had gone down to the river and felt cool in the grass after a swim but that was a blocked option now. The sun scorched her and although her dark complexion would tan quickly, the intermediate phase of smarting red was uncomfortable. It fussed her and she disliked the obvious weakness of being fussed. So this sudden soar into high summer, serious heat after a bitter July, she publicly welcomed - everyone felt they deserved some sun - but secretly disliked.

  It made harder work of her club-round on such a hot Saturday evening. Ellen had taken this over from Mrs Askew. These weekly collections of a few pence, or a shilling or two, were copied into Ellen’s book and also into the book of the club member and the money was there, to be spent on the catalogue, whenever occasion struck. Ellen had taken it on as a favour to Mrs Askew who had anticipated no more than two or three weeks’ absence, but her husband’s slow deterioration and his absolute refusal to go into hospital effectively confined her to her house.

  Despite the movement out to the estates, the old town was intact. Ellen still walked in the layered maze of centuries, which she loved. It was a physical pleasure, always, for her to turn into alleyways and lanes one person wide, dark little tunnels from which she was ejected into a cobbled yard of quaint and cosy, though to later eyes poor, damp substandard dwellings, but that did not prevent her always enjoying the old weave of time and people and place.

  Grace had been set back by her fall and there was a new frailty -just a shade but visible. Ellen sluiced herself with cold water before making tea and taking it up to the front room, still Grace’s headquarters. The east-facing room mantled her in cool relief.

  They were alone in the house on this Saturday evening. Joe was away with the Wigton Junior Swimming Team, competing in White-haven. Sam was at a hound trail, helping out with Henry’s business, less enthusiastic since Leeds. Leonard and Mr Kneale who were becoming ‘thick as thieves’, Grace said, were taking a stroll around by the baths and up to Lowmoor Road no doubt, said Grace, enjoying themselves ‘talking about how everything’s going to blow up or go to pot’.

  Ellen poured the tea, put in Grace’s sugar and milk and stirred it before placing the cup on the convenient side table. It was impossible to do all this without both women feeling awkward.

  ‘Where’s Colin?’

  ‘He’ll be in one of the pubs.’ Grace’s attempt to neutralise her tone failed.

  It’s not easy to settle into a new place.’

  ‘Not easy.’

  Grace could have been referring to the careful passage of the cup from the table to her mouth. She blew on the tea, several steady breaths, and then sipped, held the cup in both hands, did not attempt the journey back until further cooling, more sips.

  ‘He’s done well,’ said Ellen, defying evidence, determined, even desperate, that her half-brother be shown in the best light. There was no reply, none deserved, she knew that, but still the silence hurt. Why could what she wanted for him not be so? Just come about by wanting it? It was little enough. For him to steady himself, not even get a full-time job, that hope had drained away, but - just to stop being a worry, that would do.

  ‘I wish he could have held on to the delivery job on Saturdays, though,’ she added. ‘Joe loved going out in that pony and trap. And Colin is good with animals.’

  ‘He is.’ Grace nodded and returned the cup. ‘He is good with animals. And,’ she added, her contribution to dispelling the gloom that threatened to depress the two women whenever they talked about Colin, ‘he’s been a big help to me since the fall. He’s laid fires and done a bit of cleaning and washing up, not what you’d expect from a man but he’s more than lent a hand.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Ellen smiled, in that moment happy. ‘Like our dad?’

  ‘He’s willing enough.’ Grace nodded and did not add aloud ‘just like his father’. Nor did she confide to her brother’s daughter the comparisons and similarities between Colin and their father whom she had loved. She confided them to no one. But at such a moment, caught off-guard by the terrible longing of Ellen to fathom her unknown father though all she had were the blatantly unreliable reports offered by Colin, she was badly tempted to unlock her store.

  It would do no good.

  ‘He seems to have made his home here, any road,’ Grace said, and smiled with just the merest stiffness in the lips on the right-hand side of her face. The doctor had said the stroke had been minor and she should make a complete recovery.

  ‘Yes.’ Ellen greeted this as if it were proof of an achievement. ‘He has, hasn’t he?’

  ‘He needs a lass. Courting would sort him out.’

  ‘There isn’t much sign of it.’

  ‘We’d be the last to know.’

  Ellen smiled at the reassurance but she did not believe it. Colin had made no fast friends outside the family. In Wigton it was possible to know that with some certainty.

  ‘Ruth’s found herself a man, a salesman from Maryport.’

  ‘I hope he’s worth the wait,’ said Grace. ‘She must have thought she was on the shelf

  ‘She’s a very nice-looking woman.’

  ‘There’s plenty of those …’ Evidence of the positive kind was offered as a concession. 'I married late,’ she said. And, unsaid, would that your father had not married early. Or at all. Some men, Grace had concluded, were simply not born for marriage and he was one.

  When Leonard and Mr Kneale came in, Ellen made a fresh pot of tea even though she had been ready to go. She came up the stairs with the tray to serve them in the drawing room just as she had done since childhood.

  After a rather lyrical passage from Mr Kneale on the balmy quality of the air and, more importantly, the fascinating quality of the light, which had led him to take five ambitious photographs across the town from the Lowmoor Road, Leonard turned an avuncular face towards Ellen and said: ‘Your Sam isn’t going in for being a Communist, is he?’

  ‘Leonard!’

  ‘I told Grace I’d bring it up,’ Leonard said, pleased with his mischief, always pleased to have a teasingly personal line to Ellen who had been all his unborn children.

  Ellen looked from one to the other and held her tongue as she had learned to do.

  ‘The same man tried to start a strike down at the factory,’ he announced to Mr Kneale, who had not heard the story.

  ‘It wasn’t a strike. It was just for extra pay.’ Ellen’s face was hot, her words flat and emphatic. Grace’s warning frown failed to deter Leonard, who had taken on authority since her fall.

  ‘
If that’s not a strike then blow me down. What do you think all the other Communists and socialists are doing? Extra pay’s always the excuse.’

  ‘We mustn’t,’ said Mr Kneale, ‘confuse socialists and Communists.’

  ‘When it comes to strikes they’re all in the same boat.’

  ‘They have different aims,’ said Mr Kneale, ‘and that is very important. I’m sure that Sam would never dream of being a Communist.’

  ‘That’s how they all start,’ said Leonard.

  ‘Not Sam. And anyway. None of them went with him.’ Ellen had been hurt for Sam when he had confessed to his failure, yet it made her proud of an action she would otherwise have considered unwise.

  ‘All mouth.’ Leonard was grim now. ‘Like the big cheese Mr Nye Bevan. “The Tories are lower than vermin,” he says. That’s a terrible thing for a man to say in this country. Who’s lower than Nye Bevan? Nothing but jumped up.’

  ‘Now then!’ Grace reached for her old impaired command and did indeed recover enough of it to subdue her husband.

  ‘Nye Bevan,’ said Mr Kneale, whose fair-mindedness in all such matters would never be compromised, ‘will turn out to be as great a man of peace as Winston Churchill was in the war. “From the cradle to the grave” is a more worthy remark of Bevan’s, Leonard. I agree about the vermin, distasteful’ And his moon face pinched with a representation of distaste. ‘But for what he is doing for the health and general benefit of the people, there will be monuments, Leonard, and I speak as a Liberal.’