The Rise of Henry Morcar (43 page)

“Yes. But in Annotsfield we've only had an accidental stick or two. We hear the enemy go over night after night, of course. We get plenty of yellow and purple warnings. But they're always on their way to somewhere else.”

Christina guided him down a flight of steps into the basement of a house which was fitted up as a Wardens' Post. It had the same characteristics as posts in Stanney and Annotsfield, reflected Morcar; the same items of essential report equipment, the same kind of neat supplementary improvisations—only, here they had all been used. The wardens, here as at home, were both
men and women, mostly middle-aged, drawn from every income level. There was the banker, the tradesman, the housewife, the plumber, the shop assistant, the Civil Servant. They all greeted Morcar with great heartiness, especially when they learned he had been a warden himself. They hinted, tentatively, a polite curiosity as to why he had given it up.

“There isn't much air activity round our way,” explained Morcar. “And all those hills of ours take a lot of watching.”

Perceiving his interest to be genuine, the warden in charge of the post suggested that he might like to see the people sheltering in the Underground station. Morcar eagerly agreed, and as no alert had yet sounded, the warden offered to take Morcar and Christina there. He guided them down the spiral staircase which led to the Underground platform. It was a bright hell, thought Morcar; beneath the glare of the electric light, against whitewashed walls, lay the uneasy bodies of men, women and children, wedged against the stone stairs on either side by mattresses and rolled-up clothing. Late-comers with heavy bundles under their arms sought anxiously for a vacant stair. The platform below was crowded along the walls to the white chalk marks which defined the limits of the sleeping accommodation. Flushed children wandered excitedly from group to group, or tossed restlessly on improvised beds, unable to sleep; some of the shelterers read, some knitted, some simply lay and stared, bright-eyed, at the light; some sang mournful songs which seemed to cause them a cheerful hilarity. At one end of the platform members of the Women's Voluntary Services, in their neat green suits, with a nurse in a white coat, dispensed cups of tea, advice and sympathy. Behind them, signs indicated emergency lavatory accommodation. Electric trains arrived and departed at regular intervals with an effect of callous disregard, a couple of yards away from the feet of the sleepers. The heat and the hubbub seemed to Morcar quite appalling, but nobody looked downcast or anxious.

“What a people!” thought Morcar.

The warden led Morcar aside into an unused whitewashed tunnel, and proudly showed him tiers of iron bunks.

“These will be ready for use soon, and then they'll be able to get a real night's rest.”

As they emerged thankfully into the cool air, the siren sounded. Its long wailing rise and fall depressed Morcar; at that moment he echoed Mr. Churchill's wish that the sirens could be taught to bark defiance at the enemy, for the final sinking cadence seemed to retreat from hope and prophesy destruction.

“I must be off!” shouted the warden, running.

Christina seized Morcar's arm and dragged him along briskly,
but paused when they reached the top of the post's basement steps. “The gunfire's distant yet,” she said. “I needn't go down for a moment or two. You must go and shelter in our house, Harry.”

“Christina—I may not see you again before I go off to the States,” began Morcar hurriedly.

“Oh, Harry! Are you going so soon?”

“In a week or two.”

“By air?”

“No. Sea.”

“But won't it be very dangerous? The submarines seem very active just now.”

“Dangerous! That comes well from you, in London!” exclaimed Morcar. “I'm glad it's dangerous, he went on quickly: “I'm tired of being safe. If you think we enjoy it up in Yorkshire, being safe while you down here have air-raids every night, you're wrong. To hear about the blitz on the wireless and be able to do nothing to help—it's hell. Truly it is, Christina. Besides, we need the dollars,” he went on, swerving away from a feeling which embarrassed him. “We must push up our exports so that we can buy more tanks and planes. When I get back, my divorce will come on. I shall be free with any luck by next autumn. I'm putting all this badly because of the alert,” he said hurriedly, as the gunfire increased ominously and pink flashes lit up the sky. “Before the divorce is made absolute we must be careful of course, but afterwards you'll come to me, won't you?” Christina was silent, and Morcar put his arm about her and urged her: “You'll fix it up with Harington about a divorce, or come to me and let Harington divorce you, won't you?”

“Yes, Harry, I will,” said Christina deliberately: “As soon as the war is over.”

“No, no! Don't wait for the war—we may have to wait for years,” said Morcar urgently. “We've wasted far too many years already.”

“I can't do it now, Harry. I can't leave Edward and Jenny in London during the blitz. I can't break up Edwin's home when he's on the high seas.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I can but I won't,” said Christina. “You would despise me if I did, Harry.”

A prolonged whine in the air increased to a shrill but heavy roar and ended in a violent concussion. The blast seemed to rock the houses; some windows fell out along the street, Morcar's coat was dragged from his shoulders and Christina swayed in his arms. Before they had quite recovered their balance they were pushed
aside by the warden in charge, who rushed up the steps crying vehemently: “Incident by the Underground!”

“I must go—goodbye, Harry!” cried Christina, running after the warden. “Stay the night at our house—don't try to reach your hotel.”

Morcar groped about for his hat, which had fallen off, and, sheltering in doorways or surface shelters during the worst moments, made his way back to the Underground station. The sky was full of the reeling shafts of searchlights and the sudden flashes of gunfire; planes grated continually overhead, as it seemed to Morcar, very low; bombs whined and thudded; broken buildings rumbled heavily to earth; shrapnel spattered the roadway like rain; glass tinkled in sudden cascades from the window-frames. Morcar's predominant sensation was one of anger; to think of Christina enduring this hell of danger every night made him almost mad with rage. It came to him as he crouched angrily behind a glassless shop front that, once he was divorced, he could force Christina's hand by telling Harington himself of their liaison. This idea made him chuckle grimly.

The raid had not finished when his train reached the Strand, but it had become a point of honour with him not to stay in a shelter while Christina was outside one. His walk through the streets was dangerous and highly uncomfortable, and several wardens and policemen shouted at him impatiently to get inside, but he persevered, and reached his hotel in safety.

The winter of 1940–1941 was an awkward though interesting time for an Englishman to visit the U.S.A., for a vast argument which vitally concerned England was in the throes of nationwide discussion. The proposed “Lease and Lend” Act, to enable the President
to procure any defence article for the government of any country whose defence the President deems vital to the defence of the United States
, had just been laid before Congress; if passed, England would be able to secure munitions even when her dollar reserve became exhausted; if not passed, England would soon have to conduct and furnish the war against Hitler without any American armaments.

As Morcar made acquaintance with the teeming life, the myriad aspects, of the great continent, the argument for and against this Act raged round his head. He gazed with admiration at the soaring beautifully proportioned New York skyscrapers (the view of which from the Bay he thought fully equal to Venice)
and was amused by the effect their express elevators had upon his entrails; he felt the sub-zero bite of the winter wind, heard the grinding of the ice across the frozen lakes and rivers, flew over the jagged peaks of the Rockies and the vast rolling prairie plains, and respected the courage of the pioneers who crossed and tamed them. He travelled in the handsome olive-green steel trains with their poignant clanging bells, their powerful headlights, and chuckled at American ingenuity as he buttoned himself into the seclusion of his berth behind neat green curtains. He blinked doubtfully at the brilliant but uncoordinated whirling traceries of Broadway; he appreciated the æsthetic grace of the long unswerving slope of Fifth Avenue; he opened wide eyes at the complex subtlety of the garb of its crowds of well-dressed women. (Christina, he felt, would think the New York fashions excessive and Jenny didn't count because she cared little for fashions, but little Fan Oldroyd would dote on them.) And wherever he went he heard about him the echoes of the national argument.
This is not our war.… This is our war.… Our national security is not involved in a British defeat.… Here are free men like ourselves struggling to preserve themselves and their freedom.… England is of course fighting for her existence, but it is not our battle.… Britain is standing alone in defence of liberty.… Britain is despotic, arbitrary and tyrannical.… No, democracy is not dying.… America first.…
With his mind full of pictures of bombed London, bombed Hull, bombed Sheffield, bombed Liverpool, Morcar found that the phrases he overheard sometimes assuaged but more often inflamed the prejudices he had taken with him across the Atlantic.

Of course, thought Morcar, half crossly, half amused: the Americans have quite the wrong idea about modern English life. They think in terms of dukes and coronets, footmen and lodgekeepers, curtseys and caste. When Morcar told them he had never seen a duke in his life and didn't intend to if he could help it, they gazed at him in astonishment; when he explained that in the West Riding dukes and such-like were not much thought of, they gave him a glance of incredulous suspicion and turned away. They thought England was still 'way back in the 1850's or whenever it was that those feudal times flourished, thought Morcar vaguely, uncertain himself. They expressed surprise at the short a's and general intelligibility of his accent, and when Morcar, blushing a little, informed them that several millions of north-country British spoke as he did, they said politely: “Is that so?” with complete disbelief. Nay, they even put every Englishman down as a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, reflected Morcar indignantly, a real George III. Morcar could well understand how they felt about George III, for he felt like
that himself about the Spanish Armada when he chanced to remember it. But what exasperated him so was that Americans seemed never to have heard that the English disliked George III quite as much as they did, both at the time and later; that the majority of English people—certainly all the business men in the West Riding—couldn't agree with them more, as David would say, in the poor view they took of that stupid and tyrannical king and his actions. Americans had never heard of how the West Riding fought Charles I, the siege of Bradford and all that kind of thing. Of course he himself didn't know much American history, admitted Morcar honestly.

If the Americans knew little of ordinary peacetime life in England, naturally they had even less idea of English life during the war. How could they have any idea of that strange existence, in Mr. Churchill's words so grim yet gay? But at least many of them seemed eager to hear of it, and listened with sympathy to what he could tell. Stumbling and stammering, Morcar found himself answering volleys of questions after dinner-parties, in club cars and train washrooms, at the drugstore counter; talking to “small groups” at luncheons, at last positively standing up and addressing Rotarians in quite a formal way, describing the blitz and the blackout and the sound of the siren, and what it felt like to spend sixteen days crossing the Atlantic in a small ship whose captain had been torpedoed twice before. After Morcar had finished his business engagements, he was stuck in New York for several weeks, trying to find a passenger ship home when no such ship existed; with time on his hands, nothing to do but haunt the British consul's office daily, he talked gladly to everyone who wanted to hear. “You're English, aren't you?” said the taxi-driver. “Yeah, I knew you were English soon as I heard your voice. I was over there in 1918. Things seem kind of bad over there today, don't they?” Morcar explained just how bad they were. “Kind of sad,” commented the taxi-driver. The negro redcap, pointing to the label on Morcar's case, asked if he had recently crossed the ocean. Morcar explained that he had just come over from England. “How is it with you in England?” asked the man earnestly. As they stood outside the platform gate in the palatial station, Morcar described the air raids. “You are doing a pretty fine job out there, yes
sir,”
concluded the porter, solemnly shaking his fine dark head.

On the other hand there were incidents not so pleasant. There was a young reporter who came up after a Rotarian lunch which Morcar had attended, and in a brisk unfeeling manner asked Morcar all sorts of questions offering to show that the British barrage balloons were useless, the anti-aircraft guns
antiquated, the Army defeated, the Navy all washed up. Morcar kept his temper and answered as politely as he could, till the lad said in his cool efficient tone: “Now just one final question: Do you think England has any chance of winning the war?” “Yes!” shouted Morcar, crimsoning. The reporter looked astonished by so much vehemence. “Sorry to sound violent,” apologised Morcar affably: “But it's a kind of personal matter with me, you know.” There was a lady in Detroit, too, who remarked in a doubtful condescending tone: “Well, it does
look
as if England were doing all she could before asking for help.”

But on the other hand, again, every hotel had a collecting tin on its reception desk for British War Relief. Morcar earned many a sour look from reception clerks by shaking these tins to see if they contained any contribution; they were always most generously heavy with coin. His hosts' wives seized eagerly upon him and enquired what would be the most useful articles to include in their Bundles for Britain. Clergymen called upon him by appointment and asked what would be the most efficacious method of assisting British youth. One day, every shop window in Fifth Avenue showed some labelled British goods: whisky and cloth and gloves and books. Many had beside them the packing-case in which they had travelled, to prove that they had genuinely crossed those dangerous submarine-haunted three thousand miles of sea.
Britain delivers the goods
, read Morcar, gazing into a window decked in red white and blue; his heart was touched and he felt kindly towards every retailer on the Avenue. On the night after one of the big fire raids on London Morcar chanced to be dining with a party of business acquaintances in a famous New York restaurant. The headlines that morning had been terrible; Morcar had cabled to enquire about the Haringtons' safety but had as yet received no reply. At the dinner he exerted himself to be lively and cheerful, but found difficulty in sustaining the part. One of the guests turned to him and observed in a friendly candid tone: “I'm afraid your country took an awful bad beating last night.” In spite of himself Morcar winced and coloured. The man's eyes rounded with concern, he called up a waiter and whispered instructions. The waiter nodded and went to the orchestra, and the strains of
There'll always be an England
filled the room. The merchant beside him turned a beaming happy glance on Morcar. Between appreciation for the feeling which had prompted the orchestral request, embarrassment at this public exposure of his wound, and concern for his country and his love, Morcar could hardly speak or eat. It was several days before he received a cable from Harington saying laconically and not altogether reassuringly:
“All unhurt.” The cable was brought to him as he sat in the barber's shop in his hotel. As he looked up after a long sigh of relief and fumbled beneath the white gown to get a quarter out of his pocket, he found the eyes of bell-boy and barber fixed on him sympathetically. “Bad news from England?” asked the barber, razor poised in hand. “Not too bad,” said Morcar.