Tales of the West Riding (13 page)

I opened the door myself and jumped out quickly, for I felt I couldn't bear the parting, and wanted to get it over as soon as I could. So I put on a bright smile and swung round, ready to take my case and say good-bye and thank you. And there he was, standing beside me on the platform, with our two cases at his feet.

“What are you getting out here for?” I asked. I spoke pretty sharply, for I wasn't standing any nonsense, you know. And he said—what do you think he said?—he said:

“I live here.”

“
You
live
here
! In
Hudley
!” I said.

“Aye,” he said. “I work at Sykes's, same as you do. I didn't pick out till this morning that you didn't know me; I owned
you
soon as ever I heard your voice. I'm Albert Cockroft, you know,” he said, “from the pressing.”

Albert Cockroft! The slow man in the press-shop! And such a West Riding name! I could have cried.

“I'm sorry you don't like Hudley, Bessie,” he went on, very serious, “for I reckon I shall always have to live here.”

Well! I don't know how to explain it, Gladys, but somehow suddenly everything seemed different. Of course Hudley
is
dirty, and smoky, and ugly, and lots of things it shouldn't be; oh! there's lots of things wrong with Hudley. But somehow all of a sudden I didn't want to run away from it any more; I felt as
though I loved it somehow. I wanted to stay in it and do things for it; I wanted to change it, I wanted to make it grand. So I said:

“Don't talk so soft, Albert Cockroft,” I said.

You know, Gladys, I never use those Yorkshire expressions, I don't like them; but I felt I had to be Yorkshire just that once. It was now or never with Albert, and I meant it to be now. So I said: “Don't talk so soft, Albert Cockroft,” I said. “Don't you know a joke when you see one? What's wrong with Hudley, anyway?” I said. “Doesn't it make the finest cloth in the world?”

“So they say,” said Albert, but he still seemed down.

“Well, then!” I said. “And you help to make it, don't you?”

You never saw such a change in a man's face, never.

“If that's how you look at it, Bessie,” he said, “I shan't be sorry I took you off that rock.”

“That's how I look at it, Albert Cockroft,” I said.

Well, he didn't say anything, but he just looked at me, and I looked at him, and it was all settled between us, and I knew we should be wed.

And then he picked up our two cases, and we got out of the station, and began to walk up the hill. I looked across the valley and picked out Sykes's chimney, and there was a thin wisp of smoke just beginning to curl up out of it; and I knew the boiler tenterer had got back from his Wakes, and was starting up his fires ready for Monday morning. And do you know, Gladys, when I saw that smoke, I felt that happy, tears came into my eyes. It seemed so exciting somehow, so romantic …

One afternoon in the early 1960's Edward Oates, stepping briskly along the main Hudley street, gazed contemptuously at the crowd of afternoon shoppers who held their heads down and hunched their shoulders against the scouring breezes. As was his custom, he wore neither coat nor hat and scorned those who coddled themselves in wraps or became dishevelled in the struggle with the perpetual West Riding winds; his crisp fair hair remained closely modelled to his head, his cheek was fresh and rosy; he held his head high; his stride, neither too long nor too short (as he often thought with pleasure) for his rather slender height, had an agreeable spring. His suit, though not as well-tailored as he could have wished, was made of tasteful (and expensive) worsted, trust him for that. If one meant to get on in the West Riding, one must wear good cloth. He bought an evening paper, the
Hudley News,
exchanging a pleasant word with the crippled newsvendor. It was part of his general good fortune, the essential fitness of his personality for a higher sphere—and also a piece of undeserved good luck, he reminded himself sardonically—that he had no disfiguring accent in his speech; he could mimic the Yorkshire dialect admirably, but took care to speak it only in quotation marks.

As he paused to receive his change—one day without doubt he would bestow it on the newsvendor with a careless wave of his hand, but at present he really could not afford such generosity, the mill where he worked as one of a group of designers was altogether too large and well-staffed to afford him swift promotion—as he paused thus, he saw beyond the cripple's shoulder that one leaf of the door of the bank stood open, and a small van waited at the kerb. At the foot of the bank steps, on the pavement, rested a kind of trolley, similar to those one saw at railway stations except that the sides were deeper, forming as it were an open box. Edward, who prided himself on the precision of his
observations, saw all this and had begun to wonder about its meaning—after all the afternoon was fairly advanced, the bank should be closed—when a uniformed porter came out of the building carrying a smallish but evidently heavy canvas bag, which he dumped in the box-top of the trolley. Another, younger porter, in similar uniform, with a similar bag, followed. The driver of the van stood by, gazing at them with a benevolent but detached air. None of the three gave any attention to the passers-by.

“I certainly don't imagine it's gold,” reflected Edward. “Silver perhaps, copper more likely. But what a fatuous way to conduct such an operation. Security absolutely non-existent. Anyone could nip up a bag and make off with it without let or hindrance. They don't deserve to have any money.”

But
I
do, he thought; by God I do, and I'll have it. Soon. Soon. The middle class is effete and decadent. His scholarship to the Hudley Grammar School had given him the chance to acquire a wider vocabulary than the one in use at home in Deacon Street; he had words at command and used them well. The middle class is effete and decadent, ripe for destruction; it is time we took over managerial duties and managerial power.

“Let it be soon,” he cried silently in a sudden raging impatience: “for God's sake let it be soon. I don't care how I do it. People who can transfer bags of money with such an idiotic lack of common precaution deserve no consideration, and I shall give them none.”

His heart rose happily on this reflection.

“I shall give them none. None.”

* * *

The bowl of sugar was put down in front of Elizabeth Hardaker. Acting according to her code, she handed it to her neighbour before taking any herself. The young nurse next to her helped herself and passed the bowl along to her neighbour on her other side. The bowl went thus right down the line and stayed at the foot of the long table. In spite of herself Elizabeth could not help giving it a glance, fleeting but wistful.

“Didn't you get any sugar?”

“Well—no.”

“You haven't the sense you were born with,” said her neigh
bour with rough affection. “Sugar, please! Hi there! Sugar!”

The bowl was passed back from hand to hand and dumped down in front of the blushing Elizabeth. Hastily she took a spoonful. Her coffee was cold now and she would have preferred not to drink it, but after the inconvenience she had caused her colleagues about the sugar, she felt that to leave it undrunk would be an insult. Accordingly she put the tepid acid liquid to her lips and forced her squeamish stomach to retain it. Soon, fortunately, she was obliged to leave the cup half-emptied, to return to duty.

Apologising for the coldness of her hands, she neatly and carefully wound the rubber straps round each of the patient's ankles. Then the other rubber straps round each of his wrists. She secured the small rubber ring to the patient's chest over the heart, by squeezing the air bulb. Then she inserted the plugs, so that the patient was now attached to the apparatus by five long flexes. Then she switched on the instrument. The action of the patient's heart traced itself in a jerky line along the paper roll. The peaks were altogether too large and abrupt for safety, Elizabeth observed regretfully. Smiling quietly, reassuringly, soothingly, at the patient, she removed and tidied away plugs, flex and bands.

“Are you an X-ray operator?” enquired the patient crossly.

“No. I'm an electro-cardiograph technician.”

“Is it an interesting job? Is it well paid?” demanded the patient, vexed because he dared not ask the question he wished to ask about his cardiograph.

“It's
useful
,” said Elizabeth earnestly.

A smile of satisfaction illumined her pale plain young face at the word.

* * *

Old Mr. Hardaker drew his piece glass from his waistcoat pocket, opened it and examined the cloth, which lay displayed in the traditional manner on the long, highly polished Ramsgill Mills warehouse table.

“Full of colour,” he said with satisfaction, handing the glass to his grandson.

At moments like these, Lucius' heart warmed to his grandfather
and he felt a certain pride—a half amused, half affectionate and very ephemeral pride, but still a certain pride—in belonging to the wool textile trade, in being Lucius Hardaker of Messrs. J. L. Hardaker and Sons, in this year some century and a quarter years old. His sister Elizabeth, who took an antiquarian interest in West Riding history, rather tiresome really but fortunately she had not flaunted it so much of late, said that Hardakers had made cloth much earlier than 1837; she had found documents—wills, records of court cases and so on—which showed Hardakers making cloth at Ramsgill a couple of centuries or more before Victoria came to the throne. Lucius was not interested in them, however.

“But why not, Lucius?” said Elizabeth surprised.

“They were just weavers,” said Lucius.

He meant that these early Hardakers were just ordinary fellows like himself, nothing to write home about in his opinion, but he had little gift for expressing ideas, and Elizabeth misunderstood him.

“How can you be such a snob, Lucius?” she said reprovingly in her calm stately tones.

“Easily,” said Lucius, laughing. At the time this conversation took place he had just finished dressing to go out; Elizabeth crouched on the end of his bed gazing up at him with earnest fondness as he tied his really rather nice dark green tie, brushed his thick straight black hair, put on his new green waistcoat and the jacket of his handsome suit.

“That's a nice cloth you're wearing, Lucius,” said Elizabeth.

“Olive bronze,” said Lucius. “That's its trade name.” He gathered up his keys and money from the dressing-table and thrust them into his trousers pocket. Cigarettes in the jacket outer pocket, notecase, nicely bulging, in the inner. He looked at Elizabeth with an affection which was tinged with pity; she was so plain, with those prominent grey eyes, that pale almost pasty complexion, that very fine silky fair hair to which no amount of attention seemed able to impart an air of fashion, that rather beaky nose.

“Poor old Liz!” he thought. “Can't see her ever getting married.” Even her attitude at the foot of the bed was contorted and unbecoming; the legs it revealed though long were too
slender, not the kind of legs to warm any man's heart. He thought of Carol, and his blood leaped.

As he made for the door he gave his sister's shoulder (rather bony) a friendly slap. “Bye bye,” he said.

“Where are you going, Lucius?” said Elizabeth curiously. “You're out so much. You don't belong to any societies. I can't think what you find to do.”

“Don't worry about me, Liz,” said Lucius, who had no intention of telling her how he spent his leisure, and certainly did not feel under any obligation to do so.

“Are you all right, Lucius?” queried Elizabeth wistfully. “Really all right, I mean?”

“Of course. Why, doesn't grandfather think so?” asked Lucius, alarmed.

“I don't know.” Lucius frowned. “I really don't know, Lucius. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think,” added Elizabeth honestly, “he wishes you took more interest in the mill, you know.”

“Oh, well,” said Lucius. “The old boy's been very decent lately.” Dismissing all these petty cares he went out whistling.

Now as he looked down at the cloth which, it was hoped, was to succeed the olive bronze in popularity, a vague remembrance of this conversation crossed his mind and troubled him, and his moment of satisfaction passed. The intricate pattern of coloured threads leaped into vivid life beneath the magnifying glass, and he realised that he did not know whether the design was a good design or a bad one. It looked good, but he had a lurking suspicion that his grandfather's ideas about cloth were perhaps slightly outdated. About life in general old Mr. Hardaker's ideas were of course hopelessly out of date, reflected Lucius, so it was just possible that even in the matter of cloth, in which he had been an acknowledged master, time had passed him by. Lucius ought to be taking more interest, taking more hold. But he didn't know enough to do so. He had taken a textile course in the Hudley Technical College but found it intolerably boring and his fellow-classmates (after those of his public school) impossible. To please his grandfather he had continued to attend, but he learned nothing. All the Hudley Technical College had done for him was to bring him Carol, whom he had met in the elevator. He ought, he knew, now to give a firm, well-founded, knowledgeable
judgment on the merit of this cloth lying in front of him, but he simply was not able to do so.

The thought of bluffing it out, faking an opinion, entered his head only to be dismissed. Nothing of that kind would get past old J.L. Of course the old man was getting really old, he reflected dispassionately, giving a quick glance at the seamed and craggy face, where a slight puckering of the flesh still revealed the track of an old bullet wound, the short square body, the broad shoulders, slightly humped as the result of dragging a lamed foot for nearly fifty years. Surgery was not too good in that tedious old 1914 war, thought Lucius with cheerful contempt. Only thin streaks of black hair now lay across the dome of old J.L.'s bald head—Lucius was not capable of the reflection that his grandfather's black hair had once been as thick and lustrous as his own. But J.L.'s black eyes were as bright as ever; he was a shrewd old bird, reflected Lucius cheerfully; a formidable old bastard. In any case it was not in Lucius' nature to attempt a deception. The morals he had been taught at school—fear God, honour the Queen, love your country, do unto others as you would be done by—he now admitted to be out of date in an atomic world, but a new set of ethics had not yet presented itself with convincing clarity. He intended to be honest and honourable and above all lowdown tricks, of course, and was so when the issue presented itself clearly. Here it was quite clear; Lucius Hardaker was not going to fake an opinion to please anybody, even his grandfather. He handed back the piece glass and said nothing.