The Rise of Henry Morcar (7 page)

Harry pondered. He admitted readily that, in the Yorkshire phrase, he was “slow in the uptake,” but the process when once accomplished was fairly sure. When he woke in the morning he knew that his mother meant to earn money by her talent for sewing and embroidery, that the Eastgate Dorcas meeting had offered to pay her for her services to them in cutting-out and general direction, that Mrs. Morcar had refused. Then he felt such a restless suspense, such a burning eager desire for the Monday after Wakes Week to arrive when he could go to work, that he could hardly contain himself. He threw the furniture about the house with a strength and energy which astonished his mother; with a slight frown of concentration down the centre of his fair placid forehead he carried in coal, cleaned the rusty range until it shone, rode off on his bicycle to fetch provisions, on his return swilled down the five lavatory steps. He observed that the other houses in the row kept their steps, the floor and the slab on the top of the tiny odorous chamber yellow-stoned, and remembering vaguely the utensils he had seen employed for this purpose, looked about in the scullery and found a bucket containing a brush, a cloth and a knob of the yellow stuff. A rough fibre mat, he seemed to remember, was also necessary. He found one, filled the bucket with water and going out to the back premises, knelt on the second step and began experiments with the yellow-stone. Suddenly his mother rushed from the house and snatched the bucket from him. Her face was white with fury.

“Come in,” she whispered in a tone of raging disgust. “Harry! Come in at once.”

“I'll just finish this,” said Morcar stolidly.

“No!” whispered his mother as before. “Come in at once!”

“Who's going to do it, then? You?” said Morcar.

“It's not a man's work,” said Mrs. Morcar, trembling with anger.

Harry considered. “I think I'd better do it,” he said presently. His tone was mild but final; he seemed to know that he was quite as obstinate as his mother. They were both holding the handle of the bucket; Morcar gave it a jerk towards him and the water slopped over on his mother's dress. With an angry exclamation she released her hold and moved with a swift step into the house.

Half an hour later, just as he finished the roof slab, she summoned him to a meal; her face was calm and she made no reference to the incident. Harry made no such reference either; he replaced the bucket and the mat in their proper places, washed
his hands at the sink and sat down to the table without a word. He then discovered that—for almost the first time in his life—he was not hungry. But it was necessary to eat, he felt, or the battle would be lost, so he chewed his way through the Saturday's steak staunchly.

The next week was a protracted ordeal. It was Annotsfield Wakes: the holiday week when the mills slumbered and all the Annotsfield inhabitants who could afford disported themselves at the seaside. The town lay empty beneath the bright hot sunshine; the looms were silent, most of the shops were closed. Morcar mooned about listlessly, alone, for the Shaws were still absent. His mother urged him to get out into the fresh air while he still had the chance, but as he had never experienced the limitations to freedom imposed by the hours of regular labour, he took this recommendation impatiently. However, there was nothing else to do; so he rode out on his bicycle every day. His favourite round was one often ridden by Charlie and himself; up the moorland road to the Moorcock, then by the rough path over the brow to Scape Scar, down the steep slope into the Ire Valley and down the valley road to Irebridge. But in Irebridge, instead of crossing the Ire and regaining Hurst by Hurstholt Road, he kept on the road towards Annotsfield so that he might turn off into the small side street where stood Mr. Shaw's business premises.

Prospect Mills was not perhaps a very inspiring sight; low and smoke-blackened, with dirty windows, it belied its name by gazing into a row of equally smoke-blackened small dark houses. To the side, wooden gates, once red now pink with time, gave on the yard Mr. Shaw shared with another tenant—who must be a wool-comber, decided Harry, judging from two or three huge taut sacks tumbled nonchalantly against each other in the far corner. Even in August the yard looked dank and muddy, and the squat brick chimney seemed to exude dirt. The double-leaf door to the office, also pinkish and peeling, was closed to-day, revealing to the full its need of a new coat of paint. But Harry, cycling slowly past, or glancing at the mill sideways from the shelter of a cross street—he would not for the world, of course, have been discovered openly viewing it—found it in the highest degree romantic. It was the centre of his hopes and dreams. That faded door was his entrance to the great world, the world where he would work for his own living, the world where he would be a man. He longed for next Monday with almost unbearable intensity. The days seemed years, and as if in corroboration his very face in the glass looked older by the end of the week.

About Wednesday an idea struck him. The antimacassars were already finished and called for, so he felt at liberty to ask his
mother to do some sewing for him. He took his school cap down from its peg and offered it to her. “Can you unpick the badge?” he demanded gruffly. For answer his mother covered her face with her hands and sat thus, motionless. Morcar wriggled irritably; all this emotion! Mrs. Morcar suddenly took down her hands, unpicked the crest and pressed the cap with a hot iron from within, so that the marks of the stitches became invisible.

At last it was Saturday, and the people of Annotsfield began to return to their homes to resume their labour. In the evening Hurst Road was full of workers in bright clothes carrying bags and baskets and paper parcels, streaming homeward from the station. Morcar slept wretchedly, tossing from side to side in a feverish though vague ambition. Sunday came. Chapel in the morning passed the time on well, and there were some good fighting hymns which Morcar sang with gusto. The afternoon was terrible. He went down to the Sycamores to see if by some happy chance the Shaws' plans had been changed and they had returned earlier—a picture postcard from Charlie had announced their coming on Monday morning. But the house was empty. Harry went round to the back; he would like to have watered the garden with a hosepipe, but dared not because it was Sunday. He tried the door of the Den, but it was locked. The father of the family who now lived next door, in the Morcars' old house, was in the garden as he returned and spoke to him kindly; Harry coloured and hurried away. Then there was tea, then there was Chapel, rather sad and sentimental so that his mother quietly wept; and then at last as they walked homeward Harry saw thin feathers of smoke beginning to rise from the mill chimneys. The men were re-lighting the boiler fires ready for work on the morrow. Then there was supper; then there was a slight ceremony in laying ready the brat, setting his alarm clock and discussing with his mother what time he would be home for dinner. Harry wished to stay at the mill all day without a break, but his mother was firm for his return at midday—on his bicycle, she said, the distance between Prospect Mills and Hurst Road was small. Mr. Shaw, she said, was sure to expect it. She was equally certain that Mr. Shaw would not require Harry to go to Prospect before breakfast tomorrow morning. Harry, who had envisaged himself climbing the steps on the stroke of six, was keenly disappointed and argued the matter stoutly.

“But Mr. Shaw won't be there himself, child, and he'll be vexed if somebody puts you on to work that he doesn't intend.”

Harry yielded on both points only as far as the first day was concerned. “I shall see what Mr. Shaw wants,” he repeated
several times in an earnest important tone. “I must do what he wants, Mother.”

His mother sighed at last, told him he had better get off to bed and kissed him goodnight. To his astonishment he fell asleep immediately.

He woke at just the right moment next morning and sprang out of bed at once. His mother seemed still asleep for no sounds came from the next room and he wondered with some diffidence whether he would need—for the first time in his life—to wake her, but luckily just as the problem became acute he heard her stirring. She was prompt with his meal and nothing occurred to delay him, and soon he was riding down Hurst Road towards Annotsfield. The morning was rather cool and dull, but the birds were singing in the park trees. Morcar was keenly happy. At last! At last! He rode with beautiful precision, but without any schoolboy flourishes, down the hill and across the knot of traffic in the centre of Annotsfield and along Cloth Hall Street and East-gate, weaving in and out of trams with sober skill.

At last he reached Prospect Mills. Half the red door stood open. Morcar picked up his bicycle and carried it in, up the four stone steps, depositing it in the dark back passage where his machine and Charlie's had so often leaned before; he took the brat out of the bicycle pouch, snatched off his cap and gave a clumsy pat to his thick fair thatch, then pushed open the office door and entered industrial life.

An elderly man with greying hair, thinnish, wearing crooked pince-nez and a morose expression, sat on a high stool at the sloping desk which ran down the centre of the room. Morcar did not remember to have seen him there before. He looked up at the boy sideways over his glasses and said: “Yes?”

Blushing and twisting his cap in his hands, Harry gave his name. “I've come to work,” he explained.

“Oh yes, I remember now—Mr. Shaw told me,” said the cashier in an unexpectedly kind voice. “Well—Mr. Shaw isn't here yet; he's coming back from Bridlington this morning. Well now, let me see. I don't just know what Mr. Shaw means to put you at.” Harry gazed at him anxiously, and he responded to the appeal. “You can help next door till he comes.” Relieved, Harry hung up his cap on a hook by the door and began to unroll the brat.

“That's a fine apron you've got there,” said the cashier, amused.

“It was father's,” muttered Harry, looking down.

The cashier stood up and turning him round in a rough but friendly manner tied the tapes for him, then pushed him through the inner door of the office into a long light room which was
apparently the Shaws' warehouse and place of despatch. Various piles of finished pieces stood about on low wooden platforms and shelves; they were not very numerous—“but of course they'd send everything out they could before Wakes,” reflected Harry quickly. A knot of men stood gossiping at the far end of the room; at the cashier's shout they broke up and in a leisurely way resumed their avocations. One was measuring cloth on the long wooden table, golden with use; another was packing; a third seemed to be in charge, and came towards them enquiringly. The cashier explained Morcar.

“Can you write and figure and such?”

Harry said he could, and accordingly he was put to help a dark short solid man, addressed as Booth by the rest, at the weighing machine. They lifted a piece on to the platform of the scales; the man adjusted the weights and called the result to Harry, who wrote it neatly on the ticket attached to the piece, while Booth entered it in a book; then they lifted the piece off the scales to a table, where Booth stitched its number and some particulars into the end of the fabric in an odd-looking sewing-machine. Harry was happy to find his first textile task so well within his capacity and Booth approved his clear figures and careful accuracy, so they got on together well enough. At first Harry could not understand a word his companion said, his speech was so broadly Yorkshire, but after a time his ear adjusted itself, and he began the long slow process of learning his trade. He was allowed to lift the huge iron weights, to feel the cloth, to discuss its design, texture and destination; presently he was allowed to try the sewing-machine. His first attempt with this was not very successful and he was standing with his hands behind his back watching his companion manipulate the machine slowly so that he might see where he had erred when a distant bustle arose which grew louder and nearer, and presently Mr. Shaw rushed in. The effect was that of a whirlwind; the men's slow sure actions were galvanised to a feverish tempo; tickets fluttered in the air, pieces of brown paper fell to the ground, tempers rose; two of the men were sent off on errands and left with hurried steps; Mr. Shaw seemed to examine every piece in the place and be dissatisfied with its appearance or its progress. Eventually his tour of the room brought him back to Morcar.

“You'll have to do more than stand about with your hands behind your back if you're to stay at Prospect, Morcar,” he cried hastily. “We've no room for do-nothings. We've no Councillors here.”

The men all looked round with interest, and one sniggered slightly. Harry's face burned.

“I were just learning him the sewing, Mester Shaw,” said Booth in a vexed defensive tone.

“Work, honest work!” exclaimed Mr. Shaw, vanishing into the office.

As he had not set Harry any other task, the boy remained with Booth, in whose goodwill he found no diminution. But Morcar now felt guilty and unhappy. To be called a do-nothing! And what had Mr. Shaw meant about no Councillors? He had just reached the point of asking himself whether Mr. Shaw could possibly have meant something insulting about his father when his employer stuck his head into the room and called to Booth that the Inspector was at the door, he'd best go help him.

“And you, Morcar,” he added on a savage note, frowning: “Make yourself useful—if you can.”

Booth accordingly crossed the office and clattered down the steps, Morcar at his heels. At the door stood a flat horse-drawn cart, from which two men were throwing back a waterproof cover, revealing a couple of heavy wooden boxes and some fifty-six-pound iron bar weights of the kind Morcar had seen for the first time that morning.

“Give us a hand with this lot,” invited one of the men.

Booth and Morcar took a box between them and staggered up the stairs. Morcar would have descended to help with the iron weights, but was prevented by his companion.