Sleep in Peace (60 page)

Laura, who was weary of this talk, sighed and turned the conversation by offering a small contribution of her own.

“Though I would rather have kept it for Madeline,” she said.

“I don't want to go away to school,” put in Madeline abruptly.

“Nonsense, Madeline,” said Gwen firmly. “You know nothing about it, dear. Of course you will go if Grandpa can afford.”

Madeline gave her mother a long, cool stare, then silently averted her eyes.

Indeed Geoffrey and Madeline, now fourteen and twelve respectively, were so dissimilar that outsiders found it difficult to credit that they sprang from the same parentage. Geoffrey w is tall, thin, dark and neat, rather talkative, decidedly conceited, inclined to be delicate, and very like Mr. Armistead; Madeline was short and stocky, robust, silent and untidy, with a good deal of tumbled fair hair, a square, florid face, and fine grey eyes like Frederick's. As far as Laura could see, the brother and sister had no love for one another at all; their tastes and friends were different, and they were never heard to exchange any communication longer than a sentence. When Laura compared their relation with that between herself and Ludo, she sighed for them. It was typical of the antagonism of the pair, she thought now with amused resignation, that Madeline should reject boarding-school offhand, while Geoffrey
desired so passionately to go to Rugby that he was exercising every possible pressure on his mother to enable him to do so.

This blackmail of the affections was duly passed on by Gwen to Mr. Armistead. She nagged him on the subject day and night, lamented the downfall of the Armistead family, since its latest scion was not to have the education of a gentleman, pointed out at what a disadvantage this would place him amongst his equals, and enquired if Mr. Armistead wished his grandson to turn out a rough Yorkshire-speaking provincial, who wouldn't know how to conduct himself in decent society. All this Laura had heard before, twenty-five years ago, when the same situation had arisen about Ludo. But now Gwen added a fresh argument. If her father could not provide the money, she said, she would find it herself.

“What's that?” said the startled Mr. Armistead.

There was her own money, her five hundred pounds in the business, said Gwen; it was no use to her there, it paid no dividends, it would be better employed by far in sending Geoffrey to Rugby.

“But, my dear Gwen,” said Mr. Armistead, half laughing, half in despair: “You can't withdraw your money
now
. Who would you find to buy your shares at par? (Not to mention that we don't want the shares to go out of the family.) I certainly can't find five hundred pounds, even if I wished to, and it seems Ludo hasn't anything saved either.”

“Do you mean my money isn't there?” cried Gwen.

“A business isn't a bank,” began Ludo in an explanatory tone.

“I never said it was, Spencer,” said Gwen, turning on him angrily. “Kindly don't interfere between myself and Papa.”

Eventually, between exasperation at Gwen's persistence, the impossibility of putting into her head any understanding of financial investment, and his own real desire to do what he believed best for his grandson, Mr. Armistead, wincing, again retrenched, cut down the salaries of himself and Ludo and the office staff, sacked one of the staff (putting the additional work on Ludo), resigned from his club, dispensed with a chauffeur—the Blackshaw housemaid
had already been disposed of—and thus squeezed out sufficient money, when added to the sums from other sources, to pay Geoffrey's fees at Rugby. Mr. Armistead wished Geoffrey to go to Shrewsbury, to establish an Armistead tradition there, but Geoffrey did not wish to go to the same school as his uncle, and whenever that suggestion was made, sat silent, with stubborn mouth and downcast eyelashes, looking, by one of life's little ironies, reflected Laura, remarkably like Ludo.

Thinking perhaps to reconcile him to Frederick, Gwen told the lad one morning in a bright artificial tone that his father had contributed largely to the fund to enable him to go to school. Geoffrey blushed to his ears, threw himself back in his chair and shouted:

“Then I don't want to go!”

“Nonsense, Geoffrey,” his mother reproved him.

“I won't go!” shouted Geoffrey. “I won't be beholden to him!”

“Leave the table, sir,” said his grandfather sternly.

Geoffrey dropped his knife and fork with a clatter, and stalked out.

So Gwen's refusal to return to her husband was inevitable; for it was impossible to expect Geoffrey to live with his father; a reconciliation could not be built on so steady a hate.

The depression deepened.

Mr. Armistead's efforts to find work for Blackshaw Mills became less and less successful, and his efforts to find money to carry them on became more and more involved. Every week he was obliged to discharge a few more men—who, thus reduced from a living wage to the weekly twenty-three and sixpence of unemployment insurance, found their purchasing power reduced by precisely the amount! subtracted. Since every other employer of labour was doing the same, the purchasing power of the community decreased every week, and they sold fewer goods; then the manufacturers discharged more men, and the market was decreased once more. It was a vicious circle which no one had the knowledge, or the courage, to break. Yet every unemployed man in the kingdom passionately needed the cloth for a new suit, and every unemployed man in the West Riding passionately longed to make that cloth, and every master spinner, manufacturer, dyer and finisher passionately longed that they should make it.

“The capitalist paradox,” murmured Laura, while Ludo said: “This confounded Labour Government.”

More and more looms at Blackshaw Mills fell idle; the men went on the dole and the machinery decayed; whole sheds and rooms stood empty and lifeless, so that the entire mill had a stagnant, deserted air. In the warehouse, formerly so brisk and active, full of cheerful men in overalls packing pieces in glossy brown
paper and huge wicker skeps, there was only one man, and sometimes only one pile of pieces, to be seen; on the Hinchliffe side of the archway, in the room where formerly fine botany coatings, waiting to be dyed and finished, lay stacked in huge piles reaching almost to the ceiling, one miserable heap of cheap crossbreds which Mr. Armistead could hardly bring himself to handle cowered by the door. All the workers had a subdued and miserable air; not only were they in hourly dread of losing their own employment, but already their brothers, fathers, wife's relations and friends were out of work and dragging on their slender savings. At one time Mr. Armistead, seizing upon every expedient which flashed across his tired brain, sent out Ludo to seek for dyeing and finishing work. Ludo explained mildly to Laura that this was really useless, since manufacturers were too jealous of their new designs to send their cloths to another manufacturer's premises to be finished; but Mr. Armistead complained that Ludo's lack of success was the fault of his manner—and indeed Ludo, who loathed soliciting custom, was apt to be at once too deprecating and too haughty. Presently Mr. Armistead actually accepted the indignity of “weaving on commission”—weaving, that is, as Ludo explained secretly to Laura, for their father could not bear to hear the words mentioned, other manufacturers' orders, from yarn provided by them. This had the advantage that Mr. Armistead had not to find money for the yarn; but it was the sort of thing done in normal times by little men in grubby little sheds tucked away in Hudley back streets—Spencer Thwaite would have turned in his grave if he had known it was going on in Blackshaw Mills. But anything which kept the Blackshaw looms clattering and at the same time staved off the spinner was clutched at eagerly by Mr. Armistead; for the twenty-fifth of the month, spinner's settling day, had become a nightmare—he could not sleep or eat as the day approached. To find the money for his weekly wages bill and his monthly spinner's account Mr. Armistead had to practise a kind of infernal jugglery; he kept two
banking accounts, overdrew first at one and then at the other, paid off one with the other, threatened one with the other, and never revealed to either that he was equally in debt at both. Ludo was no help to him in any of these arrangements; Ludo had a solid basic honesty which distrusted clever manipulations of figures and especially his father's manipulations: “What's the good of putting it down in another way?” he objected crossly: “You can't make a loss of eight thousand pounds into a profit, however many columns you arrange it under.” Gradually everything the Armisteads owned was drawn into the maw of the bank, as security for overdraft. All Mr. Armistead's savings, his War Loan and his Corporation stock, Ludo's insurance policy—the deeds of Blackshaw Mills had gone to the bank's strong-room long ago.

Within Blackshaw House, life was uneasy, harassed, lived under a perpetual strain. None of the family ever actually went short of a meal, or lacked clothes to cover them, but all the shifts and humiliations of poverty were theirs. Mercifully Gwen, with her customary acuteness, had paid Geoffrey's fees for two years in advance, so the lad's schooling was safe; but to keep a boy who grew as Geoffrey grew and had the tastes which Geoffrey had, in clothes and pocket-money, not to mention such items as top hats and cricket bats, was a severe strain. Ludo, however, came out well here; he understood Geoffrey's difficulties and sympathised with them (especially when Geoffrey was not present), and he knew when the boy's demands must be acceded to and when they were unreasonable—he knew, for instance, that a top hat could be ironed and made to serve again, but that long flannel trousers were essential. It was the family's pride to keep Geoffrey happily at Rugby, and they kept him there. But the household was conducted with a grinding economy. The outside woodwork of the house was not painted for seven years; under the constant wind and rain of the West Riding weather the unprotected wood began to crumble away.

“We shan't have a front door left soon,” grumbled Gwen.

“Save having to open it,” countered Ludo.

Ravelled window cords, loose door knobs and muted bells were repaired to the extent of Ludo's carpentry, but no further, and consequently there grew up in the house a collection of objects which did not perform their function. “That bell doesn't ring— that window doesn't open—do be careful with that knob,” were admonitions constantly heard. To report that an electric light bulb had given out was as dangerous as to be a bearer of bad tidings in barbaric courts of old; to remark that the soap was low produced a frown; to complain that a towel grew thin was the nadir of bad taste. A burst pipe in a winter frost, or a damp spot in Laura's ceiling which revealed a disturbed slate, was a disaster; a pink rate-note from the Hudley Corporation, a calamity. As for having the bath painted or the mortar of the house pointed, Mr. Armistead shouted with rage if such matters were even mentioned. Fish rarely appeared on the table, because it was so wasteful; Gwen worried herself sick over an increase of a couple of shillings in the grocer's monthly bill. Gwen and Laura bought cheap hats in shops they had never entered before, Ludo's only coat was a filthy mackintosh, Madeline's school blouses were patched under the arms. The jobbing gardener was instructed to come once a month instead of once a week; the beds were left bare of bulbs in the winter, and sown with packets of cheap seeds in spring. In the drawing-room, the vases were filled with tulips of glass, to save the price of living flowers. To leave an unnecessary light burning was a major crime; and the last of the series of rubber mats bearing the name of Armistead, which had lain in the front porch ever since Laura could remember, gradually wore away and was not replaced.

It was about this time that the Armisteads, except Ludo, gave up going to morning Church. Laura gave it up from disbelief, Mr. Armistead from weariness and discouragement, Gwen because she had to cook the Sunday dinner. For, with tears in her eyes, Gwen had at last been obliged to give notice to Mildred. Mildred, her work-roughened hands trembling in her lap, wept
in return and said she would gladly stay on for very small wages, but her sister's husband was out of work and had to be helped, so she couldn't afford. She therefore left, after more than thirty years' service, and a very real desolation descended on the household at her departure.

One of the tasks which fell to Laura's share of the housework as a result was the care of Ludo's room, and she was much struck, and rather distressed, by the number of religious objects now to be found there. Sacred pictures, a crucifix, several books heavily marked with a cross and therefore presumably of a devotional character, struck the atheistic Laura as a drug with which Ludo was trying to dope himself through the depression. Her mind being thus attuned to hints on this subject, she presently perceived that Ludo no longer attended the Hudley Parish Church, but a church on the other side of the town which was noted for its “High” practices. It was no business of hers, and she mentioned it to no one; but she privately marvelled at the infinite variety of human nature, which caused one man to waver in his faith in the goodness of God, and another, his son, to redouble it, beneath the stress of the same torment.

For that Ludo and Mr. Armistead were undergoing torment could not be concealed. There was one awful Friday, for instance, when the packet of notes and coins which represented the housekeeping allowance was given to Gwen by Mr. Armistead with three pounds missing.

“But it's three pounds short, Papa!” cried Gwen. “You've put in three pounds too little! Ludo's counted it wrong, I suppose.”

Mr. Armistead was silent; Ludo in evasive hints gave Gwen to understand that they simply had not been able to find enough money to pay the wages bill at the mill this week. They were only three pounds short of the necessary total, and probably some account would be paid them to-morrow and they would have money in hand, but meanwhile the only thing to be done was to let Blackshaw House stand the brunt of the shortage. For a while
Gwen was silent, utterly dismayed; the wolf indeed approached the door! But presently she said in a cheerful tone: