The Rise of Henry Morcar (48 page)

Morcar and Jenny were so deep in the whole Harington-Oldroyd problem that they were surprised to find Cecil and Fan back at the table apologising for their long absence. Looking up, Morcar found that the room now presented a dreary appearance of diminishing activity; he paid his bill and the party left.

They went out into the deep blackout of wartime London. It was as though a black velvet curtain hung always a few inches before their eyes. Nothing tried Morcar's patience and courage more than the blackout, and accordingly he made a point of walking with a jaunty air and a firm step. This was nearly his undoing, for as the four crossed the bottom of the Haymarket on their way to an Underground station, Morcar tripped over the invisible edge of a traffic “island” and began to fall headlong. He was saved from at worst a broken kneecap and at best some very severe bruises by Cecil, who gripped his arm as with a vice, swung him in an arc and with his other hand restored him to his feet. The young soldier's muscles must have been like iron to achieve this, for Morcar was nowadays a heavily built man. Morcar felt shaken and breathless and somewhat humiliated; his arm ached from Cecil's grip and he became suddenly conscious, from their expressions of concern, that he was very much older than his companions. He made light of his discomfort and continued to escort the two girls briskly towards their station, bought their tickets and directed them paternally towards their trains. As they vanished down the escalator a vague conversational cough sounded at his elbow. He turned to find Cecil, smiling diffidently and holding a ticket in his large hand.

“I see I can go from this station to Victoria,” said Cecil in his slow Yorkshire voice. “So I'll say goodnight. It's been a wonderful evening.”

He broke off, seemed about to speak again but hesitated, seemed about to hold out his hand but changed his mind. Morcar suddenly realised that Cecil had coughed to attract his attention because he had no other mode of engaging it, for there was no mode by which he could address his father without offering to wound. If the day had been embarrassing to Morcar, what had it been to Cecil? If life had been painful to Morcar owing to his complex family situation, what had it been to his fatherless son? Nothing of this showed in Cecil's manner; there was no resentment, no anger, neither cynicism nor self-assertion; his mild brown eyes, fixed anxiously now on Morcar, seemed simply to admit his own inadequacy and plead that his father should not be vexed. It occurred to Morcar that Cecil was a good boy, honest, affectionate, conscientious, decent, like so many thousands of his age who wore the British Army's uniform. He liked him.

“I specially enjoyed hearing all that about textiles,” blurted Cecil suddenly with an embarrassed smile.

“I'll go with you to Victoria and see you on the train,” said Morcar.

Southstone looked very different from the seaside holiday resort he had seen on his last visit, thought Morcar as he turned on to the front at Francis Oldroyd's side. Something must be allowed for the difference between summer and autumn, of course, but more was due to the difference between peace and war. The sea, grey and stormy, held no visible shipping, and Morcar guessed at the mines beneath those tossing waters. The cliffs were wreathed in barbed wire, with machine-guns snugly tucked into their hollows and mobile anti-aircraft guns mounted on their summits. Parts of the Promenade were wired off for various security reasons; the church had suffered from an incendiary, the traffic road was marred by three large bomb craters. The flowers in the beds had given place to vegetables of an edible nature, traces of which still remained in a few long tangled leaves, though most of the turnips and leeks and onions had been harvested and eaten. Of the houses, some were bombed to dust, some were hollow ruins, some had broken windows; the remainder were occupied by Army and Air Force. There were no visitors in bright-coloured frocks to be seen, no bandsmen in frogged coats; only the khaki and light blue of such of the island's defenders as chanced to be off duty.

“But don't you see there was no choice,” said Morcar with some irritation in reply to his companion. “The Government instructed us to concentrate the industry in order to economise labour, and we had to do as we were told.”

“Wasn't it a voluntary scheme? I understood so,” said the other, frowning. His limp was much more pronounced than on Morcar's last visit, and his handsome face looked thin and careworn. He still wore his hat at a debonair angle, however, even if the old school tie was a trifle shabby. Morcar reminded himself that the south coast of England in wartime was not a particularly comfortable place to live in—sleep, for example, was a rare luxury.

“Up to a point,” began Morcar, mollified by these reflections.

“It's a little hard for me to understand, in that case, why my son should be the one to suffer.”

“He won't suffer,” snapped Morcar, vexed again.

“But Old Mill is empty, as I understand.”

“At the moment it's crammed full of food under the Government's food-dispersal scheme, because of the bombing. They pay rent for it.”

“That won't bring in quite the same return as when my son ran the building as a mill, I fancy.”

“But don't you understand, David's firm is still in existence. David Oldroyd Ltd continues to trade under its own name, but Henry Morcar Ltd makes the cloth in which Oldroyds trade. After all, Colonel Oldroyd,” urged Morcar slyly: “Syke Mills and Old Syke Mill will be under one management again, as I understand they were in your father's time.”

“But not under the same name!” exclaimed Francis Oldroyd.

His tone was poignantly regretful. “He cares after all!” thought Morcar, astounded. The idea that Francis Oldroyd was not a willing deserter from the West Riding but a wistful exile, flashed across his mental sky with an effect of forked lightning. “He must have been wretched, all these years,” thought Morcar.

“Stranger things have happened than that they should once more become so,” said Morcar gravely in an entirely different tone. “Perhaps I ought to tell you—I've the greatest respect for David's abilities, and I mean to make him my partner after the war. If the young fool will accept,” he added to himself silently.

“I understand you have a son of your own to provide for, Mr. Morcar,” said Colonel Oldroyd stiffly.

“Aye. He's in Africa at the moment. Landed at Casablanca. But that's nothing to do with Syke Mills. He won't be working there.”

“David, I believe, thought it might be otherwise,” said Oldroyd as before.

“No.” (I will
not
have Mr. Shaw's grandson at Syke Mills, thought Morcar.)

“They talk a good deal about the industry together, I fancy.”

“David and Cecil?” said Morcar, amazed. “Why, have they met?”

Oldroyd glanced at him. “I understand that my daughter made them known to each other,” he said sharply.

Morcar's exclamation was cut short by the sound of a very near siren, which wailed up and down the scale in an ear-splitting fashion. A distant drone of aeroplane engines began immediately.

“We're having a lot of these tip and run daylight raids just now,” said Colonel Oldroyd, hobbling rapidly towards an old suntrap shelter across the road which, glassless, the paint peeling from its gilded little dome, offered a somewhat pathetic reminder of happier days. “From converted fighters flying singly. They drop a bomb or two and run for it, and shoot us up on their way home. Down!” he cried suddenly in a loud warning shout.

He flung up one hand in an instinctive pointing gesture as he crouched and—rather slowly and clumsily because of his
stiff leg—began to lower himself to the roadway. Morcar looked over his shoulder and was horrified; an enemy plane, huge, tilted, in distorted perspective, seemed already below the level of the house-tops and swooping straight towards them. The noise of its engines throbbed painfully in his ears, he could see the swastika on the upper surface of its wings quite distinctly. He threw himself on the ground and buried his face in the crook of his arms. The roar of the engines seemed to fill the whole air, leaving only just enough room for a sudden whing and spatter of bullets followed by a running tinkle of broken glass. Still the engine-roar increased; there was an awful moment when Morcar thought the German would crash directly upon their bodies; to keep his head down, refrain from looking up at the swooping peril, required a continued act of courage. Then the noise diminished as if the plane had passed the lowest point of its arc and lifted; another second and its drone was far away, out over the sea. The anti-aircraft guns had now opened up vigorously; Morcar, climbing stiffly to his knees and then his feet, saw the sky above the Channel dotted with sudden puffs of white which drew a network round the aircraft. One puff turned black and expanded explosively.

“By God, I believe we've got it!” exclaimed Morcar, dusting himself down with one hand and shading his eyes with the other as he gazed out to sea. A distant whine began to pierce his ears: “Yes, I believe we've winged it,” repeated Morcar with great satisfaction, glancing towards his companion. Then he exclaimed, for Colonel Oldroyd had not risen from the ground.

Morcar hurried to his side and knelt beside him. “Are you hurt, Oldroyd?” he asked anxiously—then exclaimed again, for he saw the bullet-hole.

Oldroyd made an attempt to raise himself on his arms, but blood gushed from his mouth with the effort and he slipped to the ground again. The movement knocked his hat crooked; Morcar gently pulled it off and laid his hand on the wounded man's shoulder in a protective and consoling gesture. He looked around for help; a group of R.A.F. men over the way were clustered about a couple of their number, one of whom sat on the ground bent double, the other clutched his shoulder. Morcar shouted to them, but his voice came thinly. Suddenly a grey-painted ambulance, clanging its bell, rushed round the corner in search of casualties. Morcar raised his hand and shouted again to summon it. The driver swung it towards him; the First Aid men sprang down, pulled out a steel stretcher, laid it beside Colonel Oldroyd, gently rolled him on with the aid of his overcoat, covered him with a grey blanket. They knew him, and spoke his name regretfully.
With the swift efficiency of much practice they raised the stretcher and pushed it along its grooves to its place in the ambulance. Morcar, dazed and bewildered—the whole affair had occupied only a couple of minutes—climbed in beside the stretcher, knocking his head against the lintel of the ambulance door as he did so.

“Now then, sir—you can't stay in there. Get down please. There's other stretcher cases, you know, and every minute counts,” said one of the First Aid men kindly. “We're taking him to the Victoria Hospital; you can follow us there.” He laid a hand on Morcar's arm and made to usher him from the vehicle.

“You'll be all right, Oldroyd,” said Morcar in a strained voice which he strove to make natural, bending over the stretcher. “I'll just go along and tell your wife—I'll stay with her till you're comfortable. I'll let David and Fan know presently, when we see how you are. Don't worry about anything.”

The dying man, his eyes full of the knowledge of his plight, looked up at him with a contorted smile. “Thanks. I wish I'd been in uniform,” he whispered.

“The wedding has taken place at St. Something-or-other's, Knights-bridge, London,”
thought Morcar, mentally composing the notice in the
Annotsfield Recorder
while waiting for the arrival of the bride: “
Of Major David Brigg Oldroyd, D.S.O., and Miss Jennifer Mary Harington, only daughter of Sir Edward Mayell Wyndham and Lady Harington, of
3,
Notens Square, London. The bridegroom, who is the only son of the late Colonel Francis Oldroyd, D.S.O., and Mrs. Oldroyd, has had a distinguished career in the Army.
They won't be able to say what he's done in the Army,” mused Morcar, “for none of us are allowed to know. He wears a maroon beret so presumably he's Airborne. It's my belief he parachutes into France, or Greece, or Jugo-slavia, or Norway or some of those places, to help the Resistance Movements, but of course he won't say a word about it.
Colonel Oldroyd was formerly a textile manufacturer in the Ire Valley, and in peacetime Major Oldroyd was connected with Old Mill in that district. The best man was Pilot Officer G. B. Mellor, the bridegroom's cousin. The service, fully choral, was conducted by—
a couple of bishops, they look like to me,” thought Morcar, craning his neck to see the clergy as they came out of the vestry: “But of course I'm not up in these things. However many choir boys are there? I wonder how much Harington has to pay them per head? Ah, here comes Jenny.
The bride, who was
given away by her father
— Harington looks in a vile temper; he grows smaller and more vituperative every time I see him—
the bride wore a dress of ivory satin, originally worn by her great-grandmother on her bridal day.
Dearest Jenny,” thought Morcar fondly: “How nobly beautiful you look! A wedding is a sacred thing to you.
Her full court train was carried by two little friends of the bride. Her veil of Brussels lace was lent by the bridegroom's stepmother. She carried a bouquet of white roses, the white rose being the emblem of Yorkshire, the bridegroom's native county. The single bridesmaid was Miss Frances Oldroyd, stepsister of the bridegroom, who wore a picture gown of dove grey, with a diamanté headdress, and carried a posy of white gardenias.”

Morcar had heard all these details discussed very fully on the previous evening and in Christina's recent letters, so that the wedding group held no surprises for him. What he was unprepared for was the effect of the ceremony on himself. It was so long since he had seen David for more than passing glimpses that the young man had become an idea to him rather than a person. But now he found the person much finer than his imaginings. David had been a graceful, handsome, lively lad; he was still handsome, and all his movements had the ease of well-co-ordinated muscles, but he was now a man—a man who had had to take decisions involving life and death and accepted the responsibility without shrinking. He had broadened and toughened; his complexion had bronzed and his forehead was not now unlined; when he laughed at a joke his eyes lit up with the merry look Morcar knew of old, but in repose his face was rather stern. The first impression the onlooker received of him was that of a striking and daring personality with an iron will, pursuing without reservation and in spite of every difficulty an ideal end; it was only in intimacy that the charm of the old David—the friendly gaiety, the happy sparkle, the loving goodwill—warmed the air. Morcar viewed him now with a respectful admiration which strengthened his former affection for the boy. As David and Jenny stood at the altar together and spoke the old vows which pledged their faith through all the chances and changes of life—David in a strong ringing tone and Jenny on a note quieter but no less warm and firm—Morcar felt a deep emotion. This is what life ought to be, he thought, as David put the ring on Jenny's finger; those two are good as sunshine and true as steel; their love is enduring and noble. His own petty preoccupations seemed to fall away from him, and the true significance of human life, all its tragic grandeur, its high romance, its aspirations so eagerly pursued amid such sordid and petty conditions, its amazing endurance, its sweetness
and its pathos, seemed to open out before him. The more venerable of the two clergy was now approaching the climax of the service.