The Rise of Henry Morcar
by
PHYLLIS BENTLEY
Prologue: To Remember
The Siren warbled for the seventh time that night. Morcar, busy with the agenda of the committee on wool textile reconstruction which he had come to London to attend next day, called in a preoccupied tone:
“Keep away from those windows, girls.”
Receiving no reply, he pulled off his new reading glasses quickly and looked up from his desk, first at the large sheets of glass-once a pleasure, now in the summer of 1944 a menaceâand then across the room. Through the windowsâfrom habit the amount the view added to the flat's rent came into his mind, then he remembered he was trying not to think that kind of thought nowadaysâthrough the window the Park over the road made a beautifully calm and sunlit picture, and the two young women by the hearth made a beautifully calm and sunlit picture too. In both cases the appearance of calm lied, thought Morcar, for the Park lay under the threat of an approaching bomb, and Jenny and Fan bore perplexities in their fair young heads and griefs within their breasts. Indeed, it was not like them to be so still; in the odd, bright, careless clothes the young affected nowadays, made for movement, their immobility looked strange. But it seemed they were both deep in reverie; Jenny's handsome intelligent face, Fan's usually so shrewd and saucy, were both blank as if their owners had withdrawn from the façade. Well! They had plenty to think of, certainly, with the problems of their future all unsolved. Fan's young man, if he could be called hers, was in the Normandy battle; while as for Jenny! Now that Morcar looked more searchingly, he saw that there was tension and not relaxation in their pose; Jenny upright on the settee, Fan folded in acute angles on a low stool, maintained their balance by a brooding concentration.
The two girls, who were friends in spite of their different natures, had dined with him, as they often did nowadays when he was in town; they found his flat easier to meet in physically than the cottage attic Fan occupied up at Hampstead, easier psychologically than the house of Jenny's parents in the select Kensington square. Morcar loved to have them with him; he had recently discovered that he was by nature a genial, lively, sociable man who liked the company of young people, lonely through no fault of his own. If he had discovered this afresh after so many arid
years, it was through these young men and women who were especially dear to him; for if Cecil was his son, David Oldroyd had been better than a son to him, and Fan was David's sister, while Edwin and Jenny were Christina's children; the lives of the five were interwoven with Christina's and his own.
Christina! His mind flew to the blue door, once so richly glossy, faded now in wartime but to him always the symbol of elegance, beauty and romance, which would swing behind Jenny when he took her home to-night. It was not in his code to approach the mother by way of the children; he kept Edwin and Jenny out of the problem, never used them as a means of meeting his love, would not accept the casual invitation to enter which Jenny was sure to offer to-night; indeed it sometimes seemed to him that half his life was spent in hiding his feelings for Christina from those whom it might hurt. But to be near Christina's daughter was to be near something of Christina, and so Morcar liked to be near Jenny. Outwardly she did not resemble her mother, for everything about Jenny was strong and fair and candid, while Christina, with her dark thick curls, her lovely tragic eyes, her sweet profile, her delicate skin and charming hands, had an air of uncertainty, of indecision; but the mother and daughter shared a loftiness of soul. Jenny was always complete and staunch and whole, whether in grief or joy; Christina ever frustratedâher very dress, though so delicious, was often marred by some slight careless omission, some unexpected roughness, which betrayed her deep inner trouble; but the generous warmth, the delicate integrity, of their spirits was the same. They loved each other, too, in spite of Harington. At the thought of Christina's husband Morcar's heart filled, as always, with rage and pain, for though he hated Harington he found it impossible to despise him. Sir Edward Mayell Wyndham Harington was no weakling and no fool; he knew his job, he was high in his Department, his acquaintance with powerful people and his sophistication were both immense. He was in the inner circle always, he knew how things were done. In his own way, too, he loved Christina, though it was a way which blighted, frosted. “My darling”, thought Morcar with tender pity. Oh, if only the war were won! Now that we've landed in Europe, thought Morcar hopefully, surely it can't be very long And then? Would Harington yield? Bracing; himself for the struggle, Morcar wondered.
In the distance a faint throb, like a distant road-drill, began to pierce the air, and steadily though at first almost imperceptibly grew in volume. There was something unpleasant, even sinister, in the persistence of the long-drawn-out unceasing very gradual
crescendo, the endless murmured repetition of the same vibrating note.
“Here she comes,” said Morcar. He sighed with exasperation, shut his glasses in their case with a snap and rose.
The murmur was now much stronger and more clearly defined and not to be mistaken for anything but the sound of an approaching flying bomb.
“It's coming this way,” said Morcar, putting a hand under each girl's elbow to help them up. “Best get into the hall.”
“You always think they're coming this way,” pouted Fan, nevertheless rising obediently, for the murmur had now become a penetrating grind.
The absence of glass in the entrance hall window, whence it had disappeared in an earlier raid, made it a useful refuge when fly-bombs were overhead. Fan lounged at the side of the boarded-up gap, Jenny sat down on a stiff hall chair. Morcar looked around and unhooked the mirror from the wall.
“What are you doing with that, Uncle Harry?” said Fan as he clasped it in his arms.
“Admiring the Morcar profile, love,” said Morcar genially. “What else?”
He laid the mirror carefully face downwards on the floor.
The noise in the air grew and grew, until it seemed as if a heavy railway train rolled overhead. They all looked up, expecting a diminution as the bomb passed by, but the sound increased to a clamorous roar.
“Down! Down!” cried Morcar suddenly. “Under the table! Quick!” The girls slipped obediently to their knees, Fan in a single graceful jerk, Jenny heavily, for she was with child and near her time. “I'll have her out of this tomorrow, Admiralty or no Admiralty,” thought Morcar, helping her: “I'll get her up to Yorkshire where she'll be safe. She owes it to the child. If there is any tomorrow,” he added grimly. He felt something at his knees, and found the girls trying to pull him down; but there was no room for him beneath the table, and he shook his head. The raucous thunder of the fly-bomb now crammed the air. “Nay, this is ours, this is it,” he thought. “If the engine cuts out now, we're for it.” The noise abruptly ceased. “Ours! Well,” thought Morcar, jocularly speaking Yorkshire to himself to keep his spirits up: “If we're bahn to die, we may as well die thinking o' summat fine, choose how. England!” thought Morcar.
He wondered what went on within the two fair heads below. The girls were looking up at him; Fan wore a sardonic defiant grin, Jenny a fine quiet smile. Suddenly there began to race through his own mind pictures of his life; things he had not
thought of, people he had not seen, for years, came up before him, fresh and vivid as when they were real, but with the added significance lent to them by later events.
“Scenes from the life of Henry Morcar,” he thought sardonically. “Well! I hope this is not the last of the series.”
In silence they waited for the bomb to fall.
1.
Home and Mill
Henry Morcar was born in the very middle of the English middle class, the son and grandson of solid but not wealthy West Riding cloth manufacturers. He might have been the great-grandson of such a manufacturer too, for all he knew, but he set little store on great-grandfathers and never troubled to enquire. A good-natured, even-tempered, affectionate boy, healthy always, fair-complexioned, burly for his age, Harry spent a thoughtless and carefree childhood which included no poignant moments of anguished intensity. Accordingly his recollections of this period were scattered and overlaid. Certain places, people and incidents however were still vivid in his mind.
One of these was his grandfather's house, Hurstfield, which stood in Hurst, a suburb of the town of Annotsfield in Yorkshire, on the well-thought-of Hurstholt Road, where a group of similar houses looked across at the new Hursthead Park with the sober satisfaction of substantial ratepayers. Old John Henry Morcar's house was built of good local stone, with bay windows in the rooms each side the door, to which two large flat steps whitestoned at the edges gave access. Its air of prosperity verging on affluence was emphasised by a family of steep gables, two above the attics and a smaller one over the front porch, two well-painted iron gates and a short curving gravel drive between, circumnavigating the front garden. The letters JHM in the rubber mat on the top step were always in complete repair, the pointing of the walls was fresh, the lace curtains were always spotless in their handsome symmetry, the front door was magnificently grained, the laurels by the gate were well pruned and the flower-beds and plot of grass were held in check by small plum-coloured tiles in the interests of neatness. Hurstfield lacked the pink marble pillars and glass conservatory of the more impressive house on the right, but was superior to the semi-detached houses on the left where the Shaws lived, which had a straight asphalt path to the front door and only one gable. The marble-pillar house had three maids, the Morcars two and the Shaws one of a more general kind. In the same way Alderman Morcar did not keep his own carriage, but never scrupled to take a hansom when occasion really required, offering a lift sometimes to Mr. Shaw from the station. Yes, the Morcars were middle middle-class, the backbone of England as Morcar's grandfather often proudly told him.