The Rise of Henry Morcar (6 page)

This was not true, for Mr. Morcar made every effort that could be made. Staunch and cheerful always, a smile fixed on his haggard face, he drank whatever medicine was prescribed, rested when he was bidden to rest, accepted a rug over his knees when one was offered, made no complaints about the loss of his business, spoke of the few yards of garden which separated the house from Hurst Road with genuine enthusiasm, welcomed old friends when they came to see him but was content with his family when they stayed away, attended the Town Council indomitably and was persistent at Eastgate Sunday School until the doctor forbade. Then indeed Mr. Morcar shrank and grew sad, and his clothes hung so loose on him it could hardly be believed they were his own. After a week or two of brooding he expressed the view that he ought to resign his ward and his Sunday School class, but Mrs. Morcar would not let him. With a persistence which Harry did not understand and which vexed him for his father's sake, she opposed all suggestions of resignation.

Accordingly when a new section of Hursthead Park, with a bowling green and a neat pavilion in the Swiss chalet style, which
had long been a pet scheme of his, was opened in the summer, Mr. Morcar was still a member of the Parks and Gardens committee. With infinite precaution he was conveyed to the scene, resting by the way on the green-painted iron park seats, and sat in front of the pavilion with his wife beside him, while the opening ceremony was performed by the Mayor of Annotsfield.

It was a bright July day, warm by West Riding standards, with scarcely any breeze. Mrs. Morcar was very smart in a bright blue dress of net over silk, a black transparent hat with an ostrich feather fastened in with a black velvet bow and a pink flower, and a long white feather boa. The courage of this attire Harry did not at the time appreciate, but he thought his mother looked very elegant. The new turf was a wonderfully fresh light green, the geraniums were very scarlet and gave forth a strange musky scent, the plants bordering the geometrical beds had deeply indented leaves, alternately purplish and silvery white in colour. Quite a fair-sized crowd had gathered to witness the ceremony, Harry and Charlie modestly concealing themselves in the rear.

“Before asking the Mayor to finish the good work he has begun, by bowling the first wood,” said the Chairman of the Parks and Gardens Committee, rising at the conclusion of the Mayor's speech: “I am going to call on our friend here, Councillor Frederick Morcar, who has been interested in this scheme from the start, just to say a few words to us, on account of him being so interested in the scheme.”

There was some applause, and Mr. Morcar, rising, smiled with pleasure. His gaunt face, livid cheek and burning eyes impressed the crowd, and the applause deepened. Mr. Morcar held on to his wife's chair and in a thin grating voice began a speech of which very few words could be heard—“Mr. Chairman” and “Parks and Gardens Committee” were all his son could distinguish. After a few sentences he hesitated, cleared his throat, seemed to consider, then waved his hand to the Chairman as if to return the conduct of the meeting to him, and sat down. Mrs. Morcar leaned towards her other neighbour and whispered urgently; the request was passed along through the Mayor, and the Chairman poured out a glass of water and rose with an anxious look to hand it to his colleague in person.

After a brief but hearty round of applause rendered to a sick man doing his duty the crowd turned abruptly towards the green where the next part of the ceremony was to take place; there was a general bustle, and when Harry next caught sight of his father he was being helped into the chalet by Mrs. Morcar and the Mayor. His mother's arm was round his father's waist, his father's head was bowed and he stumbled. Harry turned and pushed towards
the chalet roughly, Charlie at his heels. They came out of the crowd to find a policeman guarding the entrance. Harry halted, disconcerted, but Charlie slipped away and beckoning him with a nod, led him round to knock on a side door. There was a pause, then the door opened suddenly to reveal the Mayor's mace-bearer, a man with waxed moustaches and some insignia on the shoulders of his frock-coat. The points of his moustache seemed positively to bristle with outrage at the sight of the two schoolboys and he told them in a sharp emphatic whisper that they could not come in. At this Harry found his question stuck in his throat, so Charlie asked it for him.

“Please, how is Councillor Morcar?”

“Eh, love, he's dead!” exclaimed the mace-bearer distressfully.

So then presently Morcar heard the sound of his father's coffin being bumped down the narrow stairs of the house in Hurst Road, amid heavy breathings and whispered instructions from the undertaker's men; again there was a sizeable funeral and many wreaths, again Morcar stood by an open grave and shuddered while a handful of earth rattled on a coffin lid. There was a funeral lunch at the house for some little-known relatives and a few friends, including of course the Shaws, while the Shaws' maid and Winnie bustled about helpfully in the small kitchen. Mr. Shaw made what amounted to a speech extolling Mr. Morcar, praising him as a true friend, a kind husband and father, a generous giver of his time and energy in the service of the public. It was all true and Harry felt a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes until he glanced across at Charlie, whose long dark lashes, downcast, could not conceal his air of impatient derision. Harry really wondered at his friend's expression and would have been hurt by it had he not known Charlie's habit of being one jump ahead of everybody else in his perceptions—no doubt his derision was directed at something quite other than Mr. Shaw's mild oration, thought Morcar.

The party broke up at last; Winnie and the maid in spite of Mrs. Morcar's protests finished the washing-up, then quickly went away. Mrs. Morcar and her son were left alone in the silent house, feeling strangely exposed now that the blinds no longer covered the windows. Mrs. Morcar sat silent for a long time, very upright in her chair as always, with her well-shaped hands folded in her lap. Her son sat opposite by the table, acutely embarrassed by his mother's long immobility and silence, but too tender-hearted to violate her sorrow by any speech or movement which she might think unfeeling. At last Mrs. Morcar said:

“Well, he died a Councillor.”

She rose and left the room.

Some three weeks later—it was in the summer holidays—Morcar came home from a morning on his bicycle to find his mother in her cooking apron with her sleeves rolled up, packing the red and gold dessert service into a large wicker skep marked J.H.M. He looked at these initials enquiringly, to conceal from himself the sinking of his heart. His mother followed the direction of his glance.

“I got your father to keep the skep back when he gave up the mill,” she said. She added in a lower tone: “In case we wanted it.”

A foreboding of death and disaster so long ago, so practical and so accurately fulfilled, wounded Harry; it seemed mean and disloyal, a treachery against his father.

“When are we moving?” he asked abruptly.

“Next Friday,” replied his mother.

In later life nothing struck Morcar with such a sense of tragicomedy as his mother's immutable preference for indirect communication. Mrs. Morcar never spoke to him directly of their financial situation and their plans, but it emerged in the course of the next few days that his father had left almost nothing on which his wife and son could live and that they were moving into a tiny house, really a workman's cottage, in a row along Hurst Road. The College Board of Governors had been very kind, remarked Mrs. Morcar on another occasion; they had accepted the notice for Harry as though it had been given at the beginning of the term, so that there would be no further fees to pay—this was her method of informing her son that he was to leave school at once. Harry did not care twopence about leaving school, but to leave Charlie was a different matter. The Shaws were away on their summer holiday just then, at Bridlington, and Morcar was missing Charlie sorely. Now he found he was to do without Charlie always—except, of course, in the evenings and at the weekends. It was a bleak outlook. He sat silent, stunned.

“Mr. Shaw is giving you the chance for your father's sake, you know, Harry,” observed Mrs. Morcar next day, as mother and son sat at tea together. “So you must work hard and do the best you can.”

So he was to go to work at Mr. Shaw's! Immediately Harry's world, which had looked so black, took on a happy, rosy, hopeful hue. He asked nothing better than to go to work at once—he was a big burly lad in his middle teens, he felt strong and shrewd and full of common sense, sure to do well; textile processes, in some way or other, were quite familiar to him and not in the least
intimidating. It would be splendid to get out into the world, to earn money, to support his mother; he felt suddenly no longer a boy but a man, with a wide range of adventures opening before him, highly coloured, exciting. If now it had been discovered that his next year's fees at school had been paid by his father, so that he could remain there another year, he would have been disappointed. And to work at Mr. Shaw's! What a piece of luck! In his father's lifetime he had not thought much of Mr. Shaw's place, for Mr. Shaw leased half a brick mill at the bottom of the town between Eastgate and Irebridge, and its interior arrangements had seemed to Morcar incommodious and muddled. But now Prospect Mills seemed Paradise, since Charlie would be working there presently. A gush of joy and hope filled Morcar's heart; he smiled all over his candid pleasant face, and asked:

“When am I to start, Mother?”

“The Monday after Wakes Week,” replied Mrs. Morcar. She looked doubtfully at his bright face and seemed to ponder, resting her hand maternally on the top of the cosied teapot. After a while she sighed and said: “Well!” and roused herself. When she had cleared away the meal she returned to the room with one of Mr. Morcar's blue and white check aprons—the kind known locally as a “brat”—in her hand. “Try this on,” she said.

Although Harry was not yet full-grown and lacked several inches of his father's height, his shoulders were already broader.

“It doesn't matter—I can leave the top tape undone,” he offered.

Mrs. Morcar did not even reply to this suggestion; she took out her sewing basket, unpicked every seam and with her customary skill completely refashioned the overall.

On the following Friday the Morcars moved. Harry was active in the preparations, which he enjoyed, and rode on the box of the furniture van conveying a selection of their previous furniture to their new home. The van drew up at Number 102 Hurst Road, Mrs. Morcar who had gone on ahead opened the door, Harry clambered down and ran in. He stopped, aghast. The room was tiny, with a steep narrow staircase leading directly from the rear. He turned on his mother with an impetuous question, but she was gazing at him with such a look of anguish that he was astonished and alarmed—he had never seen such a naked expression of feeling in her face before—and mumbling instead something about helping to unload, ran out of the house again. As he helped the removal man to let down the back of the van and secure it by chains so that it formed a low platform, there was a tumult of feeling in his heart, which presently settled into the conviction, firm though inarticulate, unclarified, that this was a disaster and
he must bear it like a man. Accordingly he became very cheerful and even facetious in his manner of handling the furniture, carrying chairs light-heartedly on his head and shouting “Whoa!” to the removal man as they struggled together to edge the Morcars' sideboard through the tiny door. There was a neat little scullery in the rear with which he professed himself enormously satisfied, but it was beyond his powers of deception to show pleasure over the outside lavatory beyond, reached by a descent of five stone steps into the bowels of the earth.

While they were in the very thick of the removal there came a knock at the front door and Harry found himself ushering in an elderly lady of the Eastgate congregation whom he knew by sight, carrying a parcel about which she seemed to have mysterious business with his mother. The parcel when opened contained, as he saw, a length of crash and a few scraps of brightly coloured material which proved to be intended as patterns. Mrs. Morcar was vexed at being caught in her apron with her sleeves rolled up and repeatedly expressed this vexation by observing that they would be straight tomorrow, but she broke off the work of removal to draw out from a sideboard cupboard a box full of coloured skeins of silk in great variety, and proceeded to match them to the patterns with a good deal of care and animation. Harry hovering in the doorway could not but be interested in this matching process, and approved his mother's choice amongst the bright twisted skeins, which however was overruled by the visitor. As the latter left she remarked:

“About next Wednesday, then?”

“Next Wednesday,” replied Mrs. Morcar firmly.

“I'll call about the same time?”

“Harry can bring them round if you like,” offered Mrs. Morcar.

“Oh, no, I'll call,” said the visitor hastily, stepping into the street. She looked back over her shoulder and added in the high artificial voice of embarrassed kindness: “And you'll perhaps think over that other matter and let me have your decision at the same time?”

“You have my decision now,” said Mrs. Morcar fiercely. “What I do for Eastgate I do for love.”

“Well,” hesitated the other woman. “I honour you for it of course, Mrs. Morcar.” She seemed to wish to urge the matter further but to find it impossible in view of Mrs. Morcar's stern bearing, and gathering her skirt into her hand went off down the street.

That very night, though plainly wearied by the removal which in any case was not yet quite complete, Mrs. Morcar cut the crash into lengths for antimacassars, tacked their edges ready for
hemstitching, and applied orange-coloured transfers to the ends, pressing the flimsy paper with a hot iron to imprint the pattern on the material.