Sleep in Peace (51 page)

“But in any case, the Joint Works Councils recommended by the Whitley Commission,” began Mr. Hinchliffe.

“Were you thinking of starting a Whitley Council
here?”
said Mr. Armistead, his face a mask of startled disgust.

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Hinchliffe in his grating tones. “What else? It's our plain duty. But far be it from me,” he continued solemnly, “to persuade any man to any course of action against his will, much less to a course of such far-reaching consequences. If you do not see eye to eye with me in this matter, let us break up the company and return to our original firms, and I will carry out my plans alone.”

“Nonsense, Henry!” said Mr. Armistead uneasily. “Just when we've got so nicely started together! It's absurd. And how could you do all that by yourself, anyway? Have some sense, man.”

“Then let us go forward with the good work in brotherhood together,” urged Mr. Hinchliffe. “Let us make it a thanksgiving for your son, and a memorial for mine.”

Mr. Armistead was touched, and jingled the money in his trousers pockets thoughtfully.

“We have profited from this War,” went on Mr. Hinchliffe. “Is it to be said of us that we profited from the death of our fellow-men, our brothers, God's children? That we are unjust and unfaithful stewards?”

“No—no,” agreed Mr. Armistead. “I don't want to do anything that isn't right,” he added testily.

“We should be the first firm in Hudley to do what
is
right,” said Mr. Hinchliffe, smiling happily and pushing up his moustache.

“Aye—but remember the gas-engines,” said Mr. Armistead gloomily. “We were the first in Hudley to have them, you remember, and think of what they were like.” His vanity was stirred, however, and he remarked: “Well—I must consult Ludo,” in a more favourable tone.

“By all means,” agreed Mr. Hinchliffe. “I was hoping that Ludovic might become the Secretary of the Trust.”

“No, I think you'd better do that,” said Mr. Armistead thoughtfully.
“Ludo can do all the donkey work, you know, but you'd better have the responsibility.
If
we do it, of course.”

When this discussion had been conducted along the same lines on several different occasions, the probable profit-sharing scheme of Messrs. Armistead and Hinchliffe became the talk of the day in Hudley, and consequently in Blackshaw House and Cromwell Place. Grace and Laura, though not altogether understanding its details, approved strongly in principle; it seemed a step in the right direction. Gwen was no less strongly opposed to it.

“They don't share the bad times,” she said—to her, workpeople were always
they—'so
why should they share the good?”

“But by this scheme they would share in everything,” explained Laura: “Bad times, good times, responsibility, everything. No profit, no dividend for anyone, that's all.”

“They'd expect their wages, I suppose?” said Gwen in a tone remarkably like that of her grandmother.

“Well, Papa would expect his salary.”

“He doesn't
get
it,” objected Gwen, “if business happens to be bad.”

“Well, neither do the men.”

“They get Trade Union wages all the time.”

“When times are bad they get the sack,” put in Grace.

“You think you're very clever, Laura,” said Gwen fretfully, disregarding this, “because you've worked at the Ministry of Munitions, but let me tell you that that isn't in the least like ordinary life. You don't know the difficulties of business. You haven't heard Papa talk about it and talk about it, as I have when you were a mere child. Besides, what's going to happen to
my
shares? I have the children to think of.”

Laura sighed. “But don't you see, Gwen,” she began: “Your shares will always get the current rate of interest, and sometimes more.”

“It'll mean plenty of book-keeping,” observed Ludo grimly.

Ludo's attitude was, as usual, obscure; unlike Mr. Armistead,
who disapproved the principle but thought the scheme well framed, Ludo seemed to dislike the scheme but approve the principle. He carped at small details, but never gave an opinion on the fundamental issue involved.

At length Mr. Armistead, tired of being dragged at the heels of his partner's idealism but equally tired of the threat of being cut loose, peevishly, reluctantly and without quite meaning to do so consented to share the enterprise and give profit-sharing a trial.

The moment he had thus yielded, he became extremely busy and enthusiastic about the whole affair; he interviewed lawyers, helped to frame the deeds, and saw to the preparation of an illustrated brochure explaining the details to the men. He also had the bright notion of combining the inauguration of the scheme with a Peace Celebration.

This joint ceremony was held one sunny afternoon during the week after Wakes, in Blackshaw Mills. With boyish enthusiasm Mr. Armistead put up the flag, ordered decorations and engaged outside caterers to provide a knife-and-fork-tea. Long trestle tables were erected in the warehouse for the meal. Gwen, Laura and Grace each took charge of a tea-urn, while Mr. Armistead, Mr. Hinchliffe and Ludo each sat at the foot of other tables, so that Capital and Labour might be suitably mingled. Laura saw with pleasure that Ludo, who was to be a Director under the new scheme, seemed able to talk more freely with the workpeople than of old; there was a strong bond of comradeship between him and the younger men, who like himself had served in the ranks in the trenches.

After tea the whole gathering left the former Armistead side of the building, crossed into the Hinchliffe side and ascended the stairs. Laura, who had been enjoying herself in a mild impersonal way, suddenly felt deeply and intimately affected. These chilly whitewashed steps were the very ones she had ascended, long ago, with Edward; here he had stood and instructed her in the art of making cloth. It was one of the happy memories of her girlhood:
Edward's tall bony figure, his bright blue eyes, his firm, cool drawl, his controlled but permanent enthusiasm, the immense kindliness of his smile, her own sudden realisation that the making of cloth was an honourable and skilful craft. (Afterwards she had forgotten that, thought Laura, ashamed; remembered it at the School of Art, only to forget it again throughout the War.) Yes, these were the very stairs, and this she now entered the very room where she had admired his skill in examining—what was the proper term?—his skill in perching a piece of grey-blue cloth. Though the long light room was now filled with forms arranged to face a platform draped with flags and bunting, Laura saw it as it had looked ten years ago; the menders at this end, with their kettle and their geraniums and their shawls on nails, and Eva Byram giggling, and the two men perching, and Edward bending between them, gathering the folds of cloth in his bony hand. She had glanced up then through the sloping windows, and gained an odd view of the Blackshaw chimney, she remembered. She edged her way now between the forms, gazing aloft, shading her eyes from the sun with one hand, until she reached the point where the great round column could be seen. But what a magnificent perspective! What a grand subject! Decidedly I must draw that some day, thought Laura.

The workpeople were all seated; Laura hastily found a place in the rear beside Grace; Mr. Armistead and Mr. Hinchliffe, with two of the foremen, mounted the platform. Laura observed an empty chair at one tip of the platform circle; doubtless a place had been reserved for Ludo, and he had declined to take it. Mr. Armistead cleared his throat and rose. He was to make a speech, then! Laura saw that the meeting was to be more impressive, more of an occasion, more of an ordeal, than she had imagined; she awaited her father's remarks as Chairman with some trepidation.

Considerable applause, of a spontaneous and hearty nature, greeted Mr. Armistead; it was clear that the men were really fond of him personally. He looked handsome and dapper, bright-eyed
and well-groomed, and spoke in an easy, natural tone, grammatically but with homely locutions; Laura shed her nervousness and felt happy and proud of him as he went along. He bade them all welcome to this celebration of the victorious conclusion to the greatest war England had ever fought; then explained the figures of the profit-sharing scheme with a kind of nimble simplicity, so that Laura followed him ralher breathless but unconfused. At the same time she felt a certain doubt as to whether he really understood the deeper implications of what he was saying; there was always something a trifle childish, a trifle irresponsible, about her father, reflected Laura; he seemed to play at life as though it were a game, with arbitrary rules which one kept without question but without attempting to understand. But she was touched and pleased by his tribute to Mr. Hinchliffe and to Edward, to whom, without any reserve, expressed or latent, he honourably and enthusiastically gave the whole credit for the scheme. Moreover, when he remarked that he would say no more but leave the rest to his co-director, he actually meant it, and sat down without further words.

It remained for Mr. Hinchliffe to elucidate the moral issues involved, and this he did in a speech of intense earnestness and conviction, rising at times to real nobility. The applause which greeted him was more prolonged though less intense than that for Mr. Armistead; Laura judged that the men had more respect for him than for her father, but less affection. His oratorical Victorian style was perfectly suited to the subject in hand. The war to end war was over, he said, and a new era of peace, righteousness and brotherhood was about to begin on earth.
Peace on earth, goodwill in heaven
. It would be a tragedy if all the suffering, all the loss, of the past four years—”in which all of us here have shared,” said Mr. Hinchliffe: “I in the loss of my dear son, you too in the loss or injury of those near and dear to you—if all this suffering should be wasted. They died to save the world for democracy,” said Mr. Hinchliffe, “and we are being false to their trust in us,
false to the cause for which they died, if we do not implement this great ideal of brotherhood in every sphere of life at the earliest possible moment.” The new League of Nations had inaugurated brotherhood among the nations of the earth; no longer should we have secret diplomacy, and the maintenance of an artificial balance of power by alliances essentially military; the nations of the earth would meet together and discuss their grievances in a spirit of determined comradeship, frank amity. In the industrial sphere too, strife should be replaced by brotherhood; this could only be done if the problems of production and distribution were approached in the spirit of, and their solutions firmly based on, justice. (Applause.) All those engaged in industry should share in its profits, its responsibilities, its control. (Applause.) He was proud to say that his son, as long ago as 1911, had perceived this great necessity and this great ideal; his son in that year had made notes of a scheme which in all essentials was the one presented to them to-day. It was in some sense as a memorial to his son, and in every sense an implementing of his son's ideal—

“My son,” boomed Mr. Hinchliffe: “My son's papers… my son's scheme.”

The meeting dropped away, and Laura saw only Edward. Edward against a hundred backgrounds of place and time: Edward holding her Knur-and-Spell drawing, Edward greeting her the first time she went to Cromwell Place to tea; Edward at the piano at Blackshaw House, his bony fingers giving the notes a deep, firm caress, his face dreaming, stern; Edward on the Ellistone, with the West Riding behind him, Edward fingering cloth in Blackshaw Mills. Her picture of him was suddenly and inexplicably crossed by that of the florid animal Charles; and at once Laura knew, inevitably and for ever, that Edward was her man. For if it had been Edward, that night in the taxi—a strange warm pang went through Laura at the thought. She ached for Edward, body and soul; merely to put her arms round Edward's shoulders and
draw him to her would be supreme happiness, the only thing she desired in life.

“Are you all right?” whispered Grace.

“Yes,” lied Laura shortly.

“You look pale,” said Grace.

Laura met her eyes and tried to smile. At this moment Mr. Hinchliffe again spoke the words
my son
in that deep, poignant tone. Laura's face involuntarily changed, and she saw that Grace saw the change; she saw too that Grace had known what Laura now knew, many years ago.

She murmured: “Edward.”

Grace slowly nodded. “I know,” she said.

The smooth, tense legato which Edward had played at Ludo's twenty-first birthday party seemed to Laura, now as then, to flow through the air in strong, smooth curves, like a gleaming satin ribbon, except that the ribbon was now no longer colourless, but sombrely and magnificently purple—the hue of pain. For Edward was no longer there; Laura would never see him again.

Mr. Hinchliffe in his booming tones repeated all that he had said already about the community of suffering bringing forth brotherhood—a brotherhood of which he hoped his son's scheme might be said to be a true expression.

When he had finished, the head warehouseman, on behalf of the workpeople, presented the directors with an illuminated address expressing their appreciation of, and hearty co-operation in, the new scheme.

Hudley was back from the war, Hudley was very prosperous, for trade was booming and soon the German reparations would make it more booming still—so Hudley felt it could now enjoy itself with a clear conscience. It bought new furniture and new clothes, gave up going to Church in the evening, and took to dining late instead of eating high tea, for it certainly did not mean to put up with the tedious, flat, provincial, old-fashioned kind of life which its elders had compelled it to live before the War. An American song current at the time put the matter succinctly:
How'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
, it enquired,
After they've seen Paree?
It was discovered that if the returned soldiers, sailors, airmen, WAACs, WRNs, land girls, munitions workers and so on were to be kept at home at all, home would have to be made more amusing. For four years they had been consistently over-stimulated by fear, hate, patriotic fervour, danger and physical fatigue; and though for the first few days after they came home they found it deliciously cosy and restful not to be excited, very soon their jaded nerves, like over-stretched elastic, began to crave some violent stimulation, since they had lost the capacity of responding to anything mild.