Crescendo

by Phyllis Bentley

  And then suddenly everything changed. It changed in the Easter holidays of this year, after Jerry had been away to stay with a friend in London. The boy’s reserve seemed to have grown upon him unduly; he appeared positively morose, strolled about by himself with his head bent, kicking stones, for hours on end, spent days alone out on the moors, and so contrived engagements and excuses that, as Arnold realised when it was too late, he never once set foot in the mill. Even so, Arnold had not attached much importance to all this. Lads had their private disappointments and worries, just as men had, one should not intrude, one should let them live their own lives. Jerry’s moodiness would pass.

  But it had not passed, and presently its cause had been made clear. On the last day of Jerry’s Easter holidays, the day before he was to return to school for his last term, Meg rushed out of the house to meet her husband the moment the car reached the top of the Hall drive at the end of the afternoon, and drew him through the open French windows into a small room known as the library—not that anyone ever read in it. Her eyes were wide with distress.

  “What’s wrong, love?” said Arnold, kissing her.

  “Arnold, I’m afraid this is going to be a great disappointment to you,” said Meg, her hands against his breast. “It’s Jerry. He asked me to tell you. He says he doesn’t want to go into the mill.”

  It was certainly a blow. For a moment Arnold’s long hard struggle seemed a useless waste of time. His world seemed to crumble beneath his feet. Yes, for a moment he certainly felt daunted. He sat down heavily. Meg sat down beside him and took his hand.

  “But why didn’t Jerry tell me himself?” said Arnold at length, perplexed.

  “I think he’s a little afraid of you, darling,” said Meg.

  “Afraid of me?” exclaimed Arnold, astounded. “What on earth for? Has he been getting himself into a scrape of some kind?”

  “No. He’s just a little afraid of you. You can be rather fierce at times, you know, darling,” said Meg with a smile.

  “Can I?” wondered Arnold.

  He considered himself for a moment. Possibly his long years of struggle had in fact made him a trifle tough. But that his son, Meg’s son, should be so afraid of him as not to venture to tell him his ambitions, wounded him deeply. It was so unnecessary too. He voiced his views.

  “He’d no need to worry,” he said, a trifle drily. “God knows I don’t want to force anybody into textiles if they don’t want to go. I’ve had too much trouble in them myself. I didn’t particularly want to go into them as a lad, so I could hardly blame Jerry for feeling the same. Besides, it may be better for the boy not to have all his eggs in one basket. He can earn an income outside Holmelea, and still draw the interest from his Holmelea shares.”

  “Holmelea shares?” said Meg, wondering.

  “After I’m dead, I mean,” said Arnold irritably.

  “You’re so good, Arnold,” said Meg.

  As always during the last twenty-six years, Arnold felt soothed, strengthened, supported, by Meg’s love.

  “Well, what does Jerry want to do, then?” he said in a cheerful, sensible tone. “Some profession? Medicine, like your father?”

  He gave a mental grimace as he contemplated the further long years of fee-paying which in that case lay ahead, but did not blench.

  “No. Oh, no,” said Meg.

  “Law, then?”

  Like most business men, Arnold detested the legal profession as an establishment devised on purpose to prevent business men from doing sensible things, but he admitted that one had to employ lawyers in order to keep out of trouble from silly regulations, and lawyers always seemed to flourish.

  “No.” Meg hesitated. “It seems to be something to do with literature and the arts,” she said at length.

  “Literature and the arts!” exclaimed Arnold in capital letters. “But has Jerry shown any talent for that sort of thing?”

  Meg said nothing.

  “But, Meg, he hasn’t. You know he hasn’t,” said Arnold, now really troubled. “I mean to say—look at his reports! That fellow what’s-his-name, that play-writer, you know, was at school with me and you could see at once that he was out of the ordinary. Always at the top in English, and writing poems for the school magazine, and so on. A perfect fool in everything else, of course. Jerry hasn’t done anything of that kind! Or has he?” he added, suddenly remembering how little he really knew about his son.

  Meg shook her head. Slowly and reluctantly, with head averted, she brought out that there was some young man whom Jerry had met in London while staying with his school friend there, who was engaged in doing everything that Jerry wanted to do, and Jerry wanted to go off to London with him and do it too.

  “But good lord!” exclaimed Arnold, aghast. “What is it he wants to do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Meg.

  She turned towards her husband, and Arnold saw that tears stood in her eyes and her lips were trembling. Arnold had seen tears in his wife’s eyes on only one occasion before in their life, namely when they lost their first hope of a child some twenty years ago. (One of the good things about his wife, Arnold had often reflected, was that she was not given to frequent tears—unlike his mother.) He was thus very much upset to see Meg’s tears now, and put his arm round her protectively. His wife buried her face in his shoulder and quietly, without any fuss, in her own reserved and undemanding manner, wept as though her heart would break.

  “Jerry says he feels at ease with this man Chillie—Chillie’s the only person in the world he feels at ease with. Why doesn’t he feel at ease with us any more, Arnold? We all love each other.”

  “Parents and children,” said Arnold gruffly. “When the children grow up they have to leave the nest, you know. Jerry’ll come round to us again when he gets a bit older.”

  “It’s hard, Arnold,” said Meg.

  “Yes, it’s hard,” agreed Arnold.

  He felt sore all over. But the boy had a right to choose his own career. Men should do the work they wanted and marry the girls they wanted and pay the necessary prices for their choice, in Arnold’s opinion.

  “Don’t worry, Meg. We’ll sort it out somehow. It’s a disappointment, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ll talk to Jerry,” he said staunchly. “If he really wants that kind of career, he’ll have to go to a university. I’m ready to start the boy off properly in any profession he chooses.”

  Meg gave him one of those looks of trust and love on which his whole life had been founded, and he felt that this difficulty too he could conquer for her sake, as he had conquered all the rest.

  The interview with his son, however, which he undertook that same evening, did not go off quite as well as he had hoped. Jerry stated with something like horror in his tone that he did not wish to go to a university.

  “Very well, don’t,” said Arnold. “But what do you want, Jerry? I only want to help you do what you want, you know.”

  Jerry, frowning and hanging his head, muttered that he wanted to go to London and live with Chillie.

  “But what does this Charlie do?” persisted Arnold.

  At this Jerry threw up his head and announced sharply, his fair face flushed:

  “It’s not Charlie. His name is John. Chillie is a nickname.”

  “Oh,” said Arnold. His tone was dry; with his practical, realistic view of life he tended to dislike nicknames, and why a man should abandon a decent solid name like John for a sloppy address like Chillie passed his comprehension. However, it was clear that Jerry thought Chillie extremely chic. Arnold experienced a pang of tenderness for his son’s youth.

  “What does—he—do for a living?” pursued Arnold, not quite able all the same to utter the appellation.

  “He writes and paints. He has a small private income, of course,” muttered Jerry, hanging his head again.

  It was at this moment that Arnold began to wish his son was not called Gervase. The boy’s reserve, which Arnold had hitherto regarded as an inheritance from Meg, the mi
strust of himself which he had been ready to regard as his own fault, now struck him as the kind of weak inability to face up to life he had known in his own father, which had contributed so greatly to the Holmelea misfortunes. Jerry’s obvious predilection for an unearned private income also struck him unpleasantly as resembling the conduct of the elder Gervase, who had maintained the standards of Barraclough gentility far longer than honesty dictated.

  “Well, Jerry, I’m afraid I can’t provide you with a private, that is an unearned, income,” he said gravely. “You’ll have to work for your living.”

  “Oh, of course. I thought perhaps just for a year or two—until I found my feet—it wouldn’t cost as much as going to Oxford,” said Jerry.

  “Found your feet at what?”

  “And perhaps to travel a little,” said Jerry.

  Arnold sighed. He jingled the coins in his pocket thoughtfully.

  “Look,” he said: “How would it be, Jerry, if you asked this friend of yours to come and stay at Holmelea?”

  The sudden flash of happiness in his son’s face hurt Arnold more than anything in the last twenty years. How unhappy the boy must be at home, to take such joy in the anticipated visit of a stranger!

  “Well, then, ask him for your long half-term weekend in June. Your mother and I only want your happiness, Jerry.”

  “I know, dad.”

  “We shan’t stand in your light.”

  And so, last Friday afternoon Arnold came home from the mill to find that the guest had arrived. (Jerry having risen at the crack of dawn had contrived to reach home for lunch.) A shabby and bulging suitcase stood in the hall, and sounds of animated conversation came from the drawing-room. Arnold, feeling nervous, settled his tie and went in.

  Meg, Jerry and Chillie were still at tea. Meg was pouring into one of the best Rockingham cups, Jerry stood attentively at her side waiting to hand it to his friend, Chillie with his arm stretched across the back of Jerry’s chair was gazing up at the tall fair boy.

  Arnold was instantly and irrevocably convinced that the man Chillie was a sexual pervert. He was dark, bearded and though somewhat slovenly in dress not ill-looking, but Arnold had not spent a rather dissipated youth and several years in the army for nothing; he knew the signs.

  He closed the door behind him; at the noise Chillie looked up and their eyes met, and Arnold knew that Chillie knew he knew. The whole affair was perfectly clear. In Chillie’s eyes Jerry was not only handsome but rich, and he intended to live for a few years, while the infatuation lasted, on an allowance provided by Jerry’s father. Arnold had the disgust for sexual abnormality often felt by strongly virile men of instinctive, unthinking disposition, and such a rage possessed him at the thought that Meg’s son should be mixed up with this dirty fellow that he could hardly contain himself; it was all he could do not to rush at Chillie and batter him with his fists.

  “Well,” said Arnold. “Our guest has arrived, I see.”

  Introductions were effected. Arnold sat down and declined tea. His manner was so grim that it was impossible not to notice it. Meg glanced at him beseechingly, Jerry with astonishment. The boy’s young face showed that he was completely unaware of the true nature of Chillie’s feeling for him. Arnold saw this with a thankfulness which left him weak. Arnold fixed his gaze on Chillie and kept it there. After a moment or two of this the man shifted about in discomfort, and at last said lightly:

  “I’m afraid I’m not quite the friend you expected for Gervase, Mr. Barraclough?”

  His tone, smooth, liquid, assured, was yet impertinent.

  “He thinks he’s got such a tight hold on Jerry he needn’t trouble to be polite to me,” thought Arnold. Aloud he said roughly: “Well, I hadn’t expected a beard.”

  “Arnold, dear!” Meg rebuked him.

  Jerry coloured and said quickly:

  “In Yorkshire that sort of personal remark is considered friendly and forthright, Chillie.”

  He gave his father an angry glance. A satisfied smile gleamed for a moment on Chillie’s lips. For a moment Arnold was at a loss to interpret this sign of triumph, then he understood. “It’s his game to set Jerry against his parents,” he thought. “Once he gets the boy to London with him, he knows we shan’t let him starve.” Clearly it was Arnold’s line to combat this by being as pleasant, friendly and agreeable as possible. He smiled and said in a cheerful, kindly tone:

  “Sorry if I was a trifle heavy-handed. It’s as Jerry says, in Yorkshire we pride ourselves overmuch on speaking our mind. Did you point out the mill to your friend as you passed, Jerry?”

  Jerry frowned a little and said shortly: “Yes.”

  “It wasn’t as large as you had expected, perhaps?” said Arnold mildly, turning to Chillie.

  He saw at once, by a disagreeable flash in the man’s eyes, that he had hit the mark. Jerry’s calm assumption that the world was the oyster of any Barraclough of Holmelea had deceived Chillie into crediting the Barracloughs with a higher status than they now possessed. Chillie had let his disillusion show a trifle at the sight of the mill, and Jerry had seen it and been a trifle vexed. Arnold was pleased. The battle was joined. It was the greatest battle of his life, more important even than that earlier battle he had fought to save the Barraclough honour, and he meant to win. The great thing was to keep Jerry’s affection and trust, so that when the revelation about Chillie was finally made to him by his father, he would believe it.

  “I’m afraid I know absolutely nothing about dark satanic mills, textile or otherwise,” said Chillie crossly.

  “Well, we can soon cure that. If you wish, of course. Bring your friend down to the mill any time you like, Jerry. But only if it wouldn’t bore him. Each man to his trade, you know.”

  “My father knows a great deal about cloth,” offered Jerry.

  “Indeed?” said Chillie with an air of ineffable boredom.

  “As much as you know about pictures, I dare say,” said Arnold cheerfully. “Or is it books?”

  Chillie coloured and seemed a little uncomfortable. Suddenly he took a corner of his loose jacket between his fingers and offered it to Arnold.

  “Is this good cloth, Mr. Barraclough?”

  He meant to provoke Jerry’s father into a jeering “Yorkshire” answer which would shame Jerry. Arnold, who of course had perceived the poor quality of the stuff the moment he entered the room, bent forward and felt the jacket with a serious air.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said pleasantly. “We could fit you up with something better than that at Holmelea, if you cared for it. You must come down some morning and we’ll see what we can find.”

  “But wouldn’t that be damaged cloth, Arnold?” said Meg. “Sent back to you by the manufacturers?”

  “A damaged piece isn’t damaged in every yard,” explained Arnold. “We could find a suit length of good stuff, I’m sure.”

  “Is trade unionism strong in your mill, Mr. Barraclough?” demanded Chillie abruptly.

  “Of course,” said Arnold impatiently. “I don’t employ any non-union labour. Who does, these days?”

  The battle continued through the weekend. Chillie had a melodious voice, a fluent ease of speech, an admirable diction, and he gave these weapons the fullest possible play. His aim throughout was to make Arnold appear a mercenary, vulgar, greedy, bourgeois capitalist, an exploiter of his employees, a reactionary, a cumberer of the earth, a stupid ignoramus on all artistic matters; altogether unworthy, therefore, of his son’s love.

  Arnold did not find these insinuations quite as difficult to counter as Chillie had evidently expected. He was not especially enamoured of the capitalist system, merely preferring it to any of the alternatives which had yet been suggested, and he was quite ready to discuss these alternatives in an unheated style. In matters of art he yielded gracefully to Chillie’s superior knowledge, contriving however to put a few questions of a probing kind which revealed to Arnold and Meg, if not perhaps as yet to Jerry, that Chillie had never done a hand’s turn of
real work in any art whatever, in his life. To the anxious enquiries by Meg, in the privacy of their bedroom, as to what Arnold thought of Chillie, Arnold replied briefly that he was a bad lot, and must be prevented at all costs from carrying off Jerry.

  “We’ll send the boy to a university,” said Arnold. “At a university he’ll meet men who really know what’s what in these matters, and then he’ll see what a phony poser this chap Chillie is.”

  Arnold did not, however, as yet tell his wife the whole truth about Chillie and the nature of his designs on their son. The knowledge would upset Meg terribly, it would break her innocent heart in pieces—he felt he must save her from it if he possibly could. Besides, it would be so embarrassing for Jerry. Far better that the matter should remain quietly private between his son and himself. At the bottom of his heart Arnold knew that he was keeping Meg in reserve. If all else failed, he would have to tell her; her anguished outburst of grief would convince Jerry if nothing else could. But sons were apt to resent the frustration of their wishes by a parent’s grief. No, he would try not to tell Meg. He would be perfectly polite and considerate to Chillie as long as he was in the house, and the moment he was gone he would tell Jerry his suspicions. But the boy’s trust and affection must be retained, repeated Arnold to himself, so that Jerry would believe him.