South Riding (46 page)

“Much the same. Castle’s very bad.”

“Castle? Castle? Let’s see—he was shepherd, wasn’t he?”

“Foreman.”

“Of course. I remember. Fat chap with a vile temper. Threatened to thrash the life out of me when I left the fold-yard door open.”

“The young bullocks got out.”

“You know, I often think I wouldn’t mind being back at Maythorpe. Peace. Fresh air. I’m not at all well these days, you know, not at all well. Nerves. Blood pressure. Indigestion. Live like a cabbage, the doctor said. Cut down work. Don’t worry. Don’t worry! So simple, isn’t it? You know, I was just wanting to talk to you, Bob. Glad you dropped in to-day.”

Carne thought of the long and arduous climb which that casual “drop” implied.

“You must be sittin’ pretty—Government so hot about agriculture an’ all—wheat quotas, beet subsidy—all the rest of it. When you want a little spot of cash, all you’ve got to do is to sell a gee or something. By the way, did you get the Hunter’s Cup again at Flintonbridge this year?”

“No.”

“Oh!—well—as I was saying. The doctors are all agreed that I must get away. We were planning Le Touquet. Or perhaps some little quiet spot in the South of France. You need sun, he said—and by God, he’s right. I’m done. No relaxation. Up till all hours. When it isn’t on duty in the office, it’s on duty meeting the right people—bridge—drinking— Mavis has been a brick! I can’t tell you the way that little woman’s thrown herself into my interests. So, what I was going to say was—could you let me have fifty quid or so till Fawley’s cheque comes in? Couple of ponies would do it.”

William, of course, had always been the bright one, the clever boy at school, the spoiled son of the family, Robert, slower-witted, more patient, less completely preoccupied by his own desires, had again and again permitted his junior to exploit him, but until Mavis drove him that evening to the station in the new Humber Snipe (acquired, of course, for “business purposes”), he remained unaware how completely he had been defeated in the unequal contest.

When he proclaimed his lack of money, Will had immediately devised a dozen ways in which he could procure it. He could sell horses, he could sell his silver cups, he could sell some of his antique furniture. (“My dear fellow, your house is simply chock-a-block with sellable stuff. Chock-a-block.”) It appeared that he was simply smothered by his great possessions. He had not begun to realise his available assets.

He settled himself down in his third-class carriage. Mavis kissed her hand to him with raspberry-coloured lips.

“Bless you,” she breathed. “I knew you’d help us out. Good old Bob.”

Carne recalled an anecdote of a great-uncle Jim, of whom it was said, “You may go to borrow a shilling from Jim Carne, but you always end by lending him a guinea.” He decided that there was something in heredity.

T
HE
S
OUTH
R
IDING
had turned gold for harvest. Through the pale standing corn self-binders whirred behind the nodding horses. In the rich placidity of the mellow fields the brown-armed harvesters piled sheaves into stooks behind the reaper. In the stack-yards labourers forked with rhythmic movement, tossing sheaves from the wagons to the stacks. Children rode back in the empty rattling wagons carrying ’levenses for the men, beer, cold tea, cheese and bacon cake. North of Garfield came rumours of a motor-tractor, that reaped and thrashed in one tremendous effort, but that was still a monster, a curiosity for distrustful comment.

The golden tide of corn had rippled right to the huddled brick of Yarrold Town. Those warm rose buildings piled themselves against the exquisite height of Yarrold Parish Church, a legacy of twelfth century devotion, its delicate grey stone melting into the pale quivering summer sky of nineteen thirty-three. Corn, brick, and stone, food, housing, worship composed themselves into a gentle landscape of English rural life.

In the motor-bus, grinding along the softened tarry highway, Joe Astell rode to the Public Assistance Committee for the Cold Harbour Division of South Riding.

For him it was a journey without satisfaction. Because his heart was tender and his imagination keen, the details of individual need and suffering hurt him. He would fight the battle for humanity in terms of an extra two shillings a week, a grocery order or a sack of coals. He would attempt to soften the inquisitional harshness of men and women who enjoyed, he thought, this business of hunting down the miseries of defeat, the shameful expedients of poverty. They got their money’s worth out of the joys of interference.

But Astell found no joy even in victory. The grudging ameliorations of a system which kept the defeated alive, so that they might not rise in their despair and seize for themselves and for their children those things they needed, gave him no sense of pleasure. This was no work for him—this mild solicitude for bare existence. He should be up, away, fighting to change the system, not content to render first aid to its victims. The picturesque streets of Yarrold closed in upon him. He saw not the lovely shades of the old brick walls, soft rose, warm purple, the patchwork of rough tiled roofs, the rambler roses frothing and showering round the small closed windows; he saw poverty and disease, stunted rickety children, the monotony of women’s battle against dirt, cold and inconvenience. The insecurity and loneliness of old age. Deprived of those natural consolations which come alone from work found worth doing. Astell despised himself, his task, his colleagues. An immense fatigue of disillusionment devitalised him. He climbed from the bus, a sad dispirited man.

Beyond a garden wall two girls and a tall young man were playing tennis.

“Forty-fifteen!” called a girl. She stood back for her service, tossed a ball in the air. “Jack, you foul pig. Play!”

Play—they could play if they wished on this warm August morning—these boys and girls of the fortunate middle-classes. Joe thought of the grim north country term of Play, which meant the enforced idleness of unemployment.

I can’t stand this much longer, he said to himself, and swung left to the building used by the Public Assistance Committee.

It was a disused Congregational Chapel, bought cheap during the War by the Yarrold Urban District Council and used for offices. To-day it was still partitioned with rough boarding and wore an air of gloomy improvisation redeemed from secularity by stained glass windows which imparted to petitioners and adjudicators alike complexions either decomposed or jaundiced, as the green and blue and yellow rays fell on their faces.

The committee was assembled when Astell crossed the passage where the applicants sat waiting and entered the room by one of its rough unpainted doors. They sat on three sides of a hollow square of tables, facing the chair where their victims would appear. Colonel Whitelaw, a youngish popular landowner, presided. Mr. Thompson, the relieving officer, a thin decent red-headed man, shuffled his papers.

He had lost over a stone since he undertook this work twelve months ago. His war record, his disability—three fingers off the left hand and he had been an engineer—and his eager honesty had won the job for him. But to-day his anxious face and troubled gesture proclaimed him as much a victim of the slump as those whose cases he examined. Astell nodded to him, aware of his harassed, kindly, rather muddled mind, of his pretty extravagant wife who had been a typist, of his debts, his unwise generosities, and his terrors.

He did not nod to Colonel Whitelaw.

He sat down in a chair near the relieving officer.

“Well—I think we’re all here, aren’t we? Alderman Tubbs can’t come. Oh, Carne’s not here yet.”

“Harvest. He’ll probably be late,” said Peacock.

David Shirley the coal-merchant, whispered to Astell, “If harvest lasted all year, we might get a bit of business done.”

Carne was a notable objector and interrupter, “safeguarding the rate-payers.” Safeguarding his own skin, thought Astell.

Before each member of committee lay a small pile of papers. “Each recorded a story of individual defeat. Here were the men and women who had fallen a little lower even than those on transitional benefit, the disallowed, the uninsured, the destitute. The Means Test was no new humiliation to them. Since the days of Queen Elizabeth those who had become dependent on their neighbours had to submit to inquiry and suggestion. What was new was the type of person who came to ask for outdoor relief. The middle-class worker fallen on evil times, the professional man, the ruined investment holder.

Astell was not moved by the special pity for these which distressed his colleagues. If their plight marked the failure of capitalism, so much the better—so much the sooner would end this evil anarchy with its injustice, its confusion, its waste, its class divisions. So much the sooner would come the transformation to the classless planned community. But he was not happy. His ruthless theory guided uneasily his tender heart.

The committee slipped into its usual routine.

The chairman read out a name.

Mr. Thompson, coughing nervously, stripes of blue and emerald shifting across his face, stood up and read out the applicant’s particulars.

“Millicent Ethel Roper. Single woman. Sixty-one, Occupies one room in private house belonging to Esther Snagg, widow. Rent five and sixpence. Crippled with rheumatism. Does a little charring when well enough. Only living relative married sister in Barrow-in-Furness. This sister used to send her a little money, but her husband, a riveter, is now unemployed, so the gifts have stopped. No other resources.”

“How badly is this woman crippled?” asked the chairman. He himself had suffered from rheumatism ever since his adventures in the mud of Passchendaele, and was inclined to be tolerant to rheumatic cases.

“She seems to vary. In the damp weather she can hardly move from her chair.”

“She ought to be in an institution,” said Mrs. Brass, the jeweller’s wife.

“She’s very insistent that she doesn’t want to go there. She declares that most of the year she’s self-supporting. She only needs help over her bad times.”

“Had she ever any other calling?”

“Dressmaker. But her hands are too crippled now.”

“Well. We’d better see her.”

The relieving officer went to the door.

“Miss Roper,” he called, his voice more peremptory than his intentions, for he was both sorry for her and nervous for himself.

There was a pause, and then the little creature hobbled in. She was indeed, deplorably deformed. Her head was drawn to one side by contracted muscles. Her harlds were so cruelly distorted by lumps and swellings that they were more like monstrous fungi than human members. But her face with its sideways glance was undismayed. Her shrewd brown eyes swept the committee with alert intelligence.

“Come here to the table, can you, Miss Roper? And sit down, won’t you?” The chairman prided himself on his easy manner.

Miss Roper sat down. She was entirely unintimidated by this tribunal that had power over her future.

“You used to be a dressmaker?”

“Yes—I was, till I lost the right use of my hands. Look at ’em. Bundles of carrots at first you could have called them. Bundles of potatoes now, more like.” She thrust out the mottled lumps.

The traditional humour of the poor angered Astell. He felt humour to be an inappropriate emotion. The Shakespearean tradition of finding the lower classes funny, whatever tragedy touched the kings and nobles, outraged his humanity. But Miss Roper was a character. She refused to conform to his sense of decency.

“How long is it since you were able to sew?” continued Colonel Whitelaw.

“Six years now—I sold my machine. A beauty. Treddle, it was.”

“Then you’ve done office work?”

“Charring. Scrubbing wherever I could get it. Many’s the time I’ve done your husband’s shop, Mrs. Brass.
And
not before it needed it. You’d be surprised the amount of muck folks carry on their feet. Just like you’d never guess the muck an’ sweat they get on their clothes until you start remodelling.”

Miss Roper was enjoying herself. She loved talking and all audiences were welcome.

“And recently you have not been able even to do much cleaning?”

“No. Look at me hands. Look at me knees,” said Miss Roper. She raised her skirt. Before the shocked gaze of the committee she exposed a grey alpaca petticoat, a pair of black wool stockings, and the blue and white striped frills of flannelette knickers which she proceeded to pull back with cheerful vigour. “Look at that. Would you like to kneel on that scrubbing a step?”

“No—no. Of course.”

Hastily the chairman waved away all doubts of her disablement, horrified by the thought of further revelations.

“Don’t you think,” Mrs. Brass suggested—she had been irritated by allusions to her husband’s place of business— “Don’t you think you’d be happier in an institution? We’ve got those nice new buildings up in South Street. You’d have proper medical attention and no worry there.”

“I dare say I should. But I do quite nicely with Mrs. Snagg. All I want is a bit of something towards my rent and a bit to live on and I can manage till I get my old age pension.”

“But aren’t you very lonely in that back bedroom? In South Street you’d have companions of your own age and much more comfort.”