The Rise of Henry Morcar (3 page)

Now it was twilight and Harry stood in front of the Town Hall, which was festooned with coloured fairy lights spelling:
God Save Our Queen:
1837–1897. He was footsore, for Charlie had scorned the slow delays of the children's waggon, but completely happy— or rather, he would be completely happy as soon as the monster bonfire was lighted. A councillor whom his father identified as the chairman of the gas committee came out with a long rod lighted at one end and handed it to his wife, who helped by her husband timidly inserted it into the mass of logs and twigs and thus ignited the fire. At first the results were disappointing, only occasional gleams of fire within being seen; then suddenly a red tongue leaped up, the crowd cheered; soon the bonfire was a blazing mass throwing out sparks and smoke and long red flames, so hot that the crowd to leeward had to run from it. In its flickering light the banners on the warehouses at the other side of the square were clearly visible:
Long Live Our Noble Queen,
read Morcar:
Victoria, the Greatest Queen on Earth.

It was not long after this, on a very hot summer's day, when Harry, coming to the mill one afternoon with a message from home for his father, found his grandfather alone in the office, looking very glum. His fresh face was strangely sunk, his round blue eyes perplexed and disconcerted. He gazed at Harry in silence for a moment and then sighed and shook his head.

“What's the matter, Grandpa?” asked Harry practically. Without understanding why, he often felt a need to moderate his grandfather's reactions to life. They seemed to him altogether excessive and exaggerated—like a too highly inflated balloon they urged him to apply a pin.

Before the Alderman could reply, the foreman came in and said: “They're ready now.” John Henry Morcar rose stiffly, and taking Harry's hand in his, led him silently through the door towards the mill.

Harry hung back. “I've got my white suit on, Grandpa,” he said.

“Never mind,” said his grandfather in a loud hoarse tone.

He led Harry across the first weaving shed. The door to the next shed stood open, wedged with a block of wood, and Harry felt a shock of surprise as he saw the looms within stood still and sheeted. His grandfather paused in the doorway and looked around, then stepped back, kicked away the wedge, closed the door and gave a signal to a couple of men in aprons, strangers to the mill, standing by. These joiners lifted slats of wood into position across the door and hammered them fast.

Harry's heart quailed. To nail up looms and abandon them like that was like leaving people to starve and die alone. To watch this murder, in his white suit too, gave him an extraordinary feeling of guilt and shame.

“This is the Americans' doing, this is,” said Alderman Morcar in the same strange loud tone. “You'll never forget this day's work, Harry; you'll remember the Dingley tariff as long as you live. Won't you, eh? Won't you?”

He bent down so that the child's face was on a level with his burning red-rimmed eyes.

“I thought it was the McKinley tariff, Grandpa,” said Harry stoutly.

“They took that off and now they've put it on again,” wailed Alderman Morcar. “Grass will grow in the streets of Annotsfield, love, you mark my words.”

Harry felt sure that this was nonsense. Nevertheless the thought of the dead cold looms lay heavy on his mind, he never forgot them all his life.

The next scene in Morcar's mind was his grandfather's deathbed, which was irretrievably comic and tragic, so that he always laughed when he thought of it and then shook his head at his own heartlessness. Alderman Morcar in a very clean white linen nightshirt, his white beard beautifully brushed, lay propped up on pillows embroidered with his monogram, a peevish expression on his harassed but still fresh-looking face. His son and grandson had been summoned by his housekeeper suddenly in the middle of the night to take their last farewell; they had hurried into their clothes and run down Hurstholt Road and panted up the stairs, and now it seemed they were not welcome. When they entered the room old John Henry Morcar lay with his eyes closed, his face pale and very thin, his respiration heavy; he appeared on the point of death. His son went to him and took his hand, and Harry followed trailing after. Unluckily he left the bedroom door open. A draught blew in and ruffled the pillow-frills, and his grandfather opened his eyes and snapped out irritably: “How many times have I to tell you to shut the door, Harry?” He raised himself on one elbow to watch his grandson cross the room, and urged: “Don't bang it now,” as the boy struggled with the large black slippery knob. When the door was safely shut he lay back on his pillows and sighed. “If you two hadn't come I should have gone by now,” he exclaimed in a tone of unalloyed vexation. In spite of the solemnity of the moment Harry could not keep back a slight snort of laughter at this, for to be eager to die seemed to his young mind really ludicrous. His grandfather turned his head and stared at him sourly. Suddenly a strange look crossed the Alderman's face; his eyes widened; he whispered; “But it doesn't matter,” and let his head fall back upon the pillow. His breath fluttered and he was gone.

Next, Harry stood in Annotsfield cemetery in a storm of rain. A man in decent black whom he guessed to be the undertaker murmured: “Let it go,” and four labourers, panting a little, for old Mr. Morcar was a heavy man, lowered the coffin jerkily into the grave. One of the four, a young man with big clay-smeared boots, stood beside the minister at the graveside, and at the words
ashes to ashes, dust to dust
threw in, rhythmically, seriously, but with an inescapeable effect of brutality, two handfuls of earth, which fell with damp plops on the coffin lid.

Then there was the cemetery in sunshine, and a huge grey marble slab like the head of a bed, on which was engraved below the name of John Henry Morcar, the proud words
Alderman of this Borough.
The stone also contained references to the Alderman's
long dead wife, and to an infant perished ten years ago named Clara. Who was she, wondered Harry.

It was about this time that Morcar saw a picture which later recurred too often: his mother in a long white cooking apron with her sleeves rolled up, removing china from a vast cupboard. It was her back that he saw: the high-piled light brown hair, the sloping shoulders crossed by the broad linen strings of the apron, the smooth white elbows, the neat tape bow at her firm waist. He had no idea of the meaning of her actions, but something in her attitude alarmed him, he felt disaster in the air. He went up to her for reassurance. Clara Morcar smiled at him, straightened his flat bow, exclaimed at the state of his eton collar, and receiving an affirmative reply to her question whether he was hungry, suggested he should visit the kitchen, where she had been baking currant buns. Harry went off and came back munching but not entirely cured of his disquiet. A large wicker skep from the mill stood by the cupboard and Mrs. Morcar was carefully packing into one corner a pile of red and gold dessert plates, hand-painted, which were the family's pride.

“Why are you packing the plates, Mother?” enquired Harry.

Mrs. Morcar smiled. “Never mind, love,” she said.

She looked at the clock and made to untie her apron and gave no further explanation, for an invincible reserve was interposed between her and the rest of creation. Why? At this moment Harry suddenly found in his mind the knowledge that the infant Clara mentioned on the gravestone was his own younger sister, and that his mother was still sad because she had lost her. He put his arms round her waist and tentatively inclined his head towards her breast. Mrs. Morcar, smiling maternally, somewhat perfunctorily patted his head and Harry was confirmed in his belief that she did not much care for caresses. “Silly boy,” she said. Her tone was kind and not meant to wound, but Morcar changed his embrace into a playful attempt to untie her apron strings, and their relationship was settled. Henceforward, though their affection was staunch and loyal it was practical and calm, neither outwardly demonstrative nor deeply passionate.

Did this scene take place in Hurstfield, or in the smaller house the Fred Morcars then lived in, of which Harry retained little recollection? Probably in Hurstfield, because Harry soon knew that they were not to live there, and that this disappointed long-cherished expectations. No explanations were made, but it seemed they were to move to one of the semi-detached Sycamore houses, next to the Shaws.

From that time Harry's recollections were clearer, for the
Shaws were for years the main thread and still the deciding factor in his life.

The Shaws were a large and bustling family; Mr. and Mrs. Shaw had four children already and more seemed to be continually arriving. “Let 'em all come!” cried Mr. Shaw, cheerfully dandling the latest infant on his knee: “There's nothing so lovely as a baby.” “Isn't she beautiful?” he would cry, gazing admiringly at his offspring, who, from the violent shaking he had administered, was wont to give him a somewhat sour look in return and show a tendency to vomit. When this occurred John William Shaw called loudly for his wife and his eldest daughter. “Annie! Winnie!” he shouted disgustedly. “Come here and take this child! Come and take this child, can't you?”

Mrs. Shaw, a large fair comely perplexed-looking woman, arrived on the instant of these summons, panting, but Winnie deferred her arrival to suit herself. If Mrs. Shaw was out of hearing at the kitchen range this cool delay of his daughter left Mr. Shaw uncomfortably landed; his cries grew louder and his irritable distress mounted to a pitch when he was apt to dump the baby into the arms of anyone who stood handy—his eldest son Charlie, for instance, or even Charlie's school-friend Morcar. But Harry did not like Mr. Shaw well enough to submit to such an imposition. Mr. Shaw's exiguous body, usually quivering with some vehement vexation, his scrubby dark pointed beard and thin dark hair, his bright irascible brown eyes and sallow complexion, made a disagreeable impression on Harry, he did not at first know why.

Luckily Charlie, though his slight stature and dark hair were his father's, had inherited much of his mother's disposition as well as her fresh skin and clear colour. He was a lively restless boy, full of invention, an admirable mimic, always crying: “Come on!” and leading the way at the double to some new and usually risky activity. But he was also warm-hearted, generous and loyal, and fully cognisant of the value of Morcar's staunch solid qualities. The boys were friends; at the height of their many swift quarrels it never occurred to them to break the partnership of Shaw and Morcar.

They attended Annotsfield College together, rushing off each morning in their Norfolk suits (of blue cloth from their father's mills), wearing their school caps with the Annotsfield crest, with satchels slung over their shoulders, to catch one of the steam trams down the long hill from Hurst to Annotsfield. Morcar was, always ready first; it seemed to him now that he had spent hours of his life standing on one foot in the Shaws' asphalt walk by the side of the house, from time to time shouting “Are you coming, Shaw?”
and listening to the sounds of disturbance within. Occasionally Winnie would throw up a window and, thrusting out her pointed pert little nose and round bright-coloured cheeks, advise him of the progress of her brother's preparations and the altercation he was having with his father. She too, at least until she tied her smooth hazel hair back with a big brown bow, went down to Annotsfield to school, but it was a point of honour with her never to start till she had seen Charlie off the premises. Suddenly Charlie would rush out of the back door—Mr. Shaw from time to time had the notion that the children should use the back door so as to save the front hall carpet—and shouting: “Come
on,
Morcar! We shall be late,” run exceedingly fast up the road, Morcar following steadily after. They arrived on the school steps just as the bell ceased to ring.

At school they shared a double desk together; assistant masters of timid disposition sometimes tried to separate them, feeling the pair to be a focus of disorder, but separation proved injudicious, driving them merely into disorder of an angrier kind. In lessons Charlie was quick and untidy, Morcar neat and slow. Charlie always finished his sums or French sentences or chemical experiments before the rest of the class, and had plenty of time to fly paper darts, play miniature knur and spell (that old Yorkshire game) with ruler and indiarubber, or beat Morcar at noughts and crosses. He never tempted Morcar to play till Morcar's class task was also finished, but this loyalty made him all the more impatient with his friend's lagging understanding. He explained what the teachers had failed to make clear to Morcar in a sibilant whisper which grew in volume with his impatience.

“No talking there, Shaw,” commanded the master.

“Please sir, Morcar's so
slow,”
cried the exasperated Shaw.

Indeed Morcar recalled absolutely nothing of what he had learned at school except some arithmetic and a little geometry, together with the fact that a Saxon earl of his name in northern England had rebelled against the Norman William the Conqueror—though when and why remained obscure to him. Oh, and the Spanish Armada, of course. Imagine any foreign nation thinking they could invade England! But Morcar remembered vividly Charlie's eager face, his witty schoolboy retorts, his thin pointing finger (rather dirty), the élan with which he shot up his hand when he knew the answer to a question, his disgust when Morcar got a written answer wrong. Morcar also remembered a rather handsome box of crayons given him by Charlie for a birthday present, which he used to colour maps at school. As regards maps and painting-lessons Morcar to his own surprise was rather effective, whereas Charlie's choice of colours was somehow
ordinary and crude. But this was the exception to the general rule of Charlie's superior success in school, for Charlie usually took second or third place in class, while Morcar hovered comfortably halfway down.