One afternoon in the early 1960’s Edward Oates, stepping briskly along the main Hudley street, gazed contemptuously at the crowd of afternoon shoppers who held their heads down and hunched their shoulders against the scouring breezes. As was his custom, he wore neither coat nor hat and scorned those who coddled themselves in wraps or became dishevelled in the struggle with the perpetual West Riding winds; his crisp fair hair remained closely modelled to his head, his cheek was fresh and rosy; he held his head high; his stride, neither too long nor too short (as he often thought with pleasure) for his rather slender height, had an agreeable spring. His suit, though not as well-tailored as he could have wished, was made of tasteful (and expensive) worsted, trust him for that. If one meant to get on in the West Riding, one must wear good cloth. He bought an evening paper, the Hudley News, exchanging a pleasant word with the crippled newsvendor. It was part of his general good fortune, the essential fitness of his personality for a higher sphere—and also a piece of undeserved good luck, he reminded himself sardonically—that he had no disfiguring accent in his speech; he could mimic the Yorkshire dialect admirably, but took care to speak it only in quotation marks.
As he paused to receive his change—one day without doubt he would bestow it on the newsvendor with a careless wave of his hand, but at present he really could not afford such generosity, the mill where he worked as one of a group of designers was altogether too large and well-staffed to afford him swift promotion—as he paused thus, he saw beyond the cripple’s shoulder that one leaf of the door of the bank stood open, and a small van waited at the kerb. At the foot of the bank steps, on the pavement, rested a kind of trolley, similar to those one saw at railway stations except that the sides were deeper, forming as it were an open box. Edward, who prided himself on the precision of his observations, saw all this and had begun to wonder about its meaning—after all the afternoon was fairly advanced, the bank should be closed—when a uniformed porter came out of the building carrying a smallish but evidently heavy canvas bag, which he dumped in the box-top of the trolley. Another, younger porter, in similar uniform, with a similar bag, followed. The driver of the van stood by, gazing at them with a benevolent but detached air. None of the three gave any attention to the passers-by.
“I certainly don’t imagine it’s gold,” reflected Edward. “Silver perhaps, copper more likely. But what a fatuous way to conduct such an operation. Security absolutely non-existent. Anyone could nip up a bag and make off with it without let or hindrance. They don’t deserve to have any money.”
But I do, he thought; by God I do, and I’ll have it. Soon. Soon. The middle class is effete and decadent. His scholarship to the Hudley Grammar School had given him the chance to acquire a wider vocabulary than the one in use at home in Deacon Street; he had words at command and used them well. The middle class is effete and decadent, ripe for destruction; it is time we took over managerial duties and managerial power.
“Let it be soon,” he cried silently in a sudden raging impatience: “for God’s sake let it be soon. I don’t care how I do it. People who can transfer bags of money with such an idiotic lack of common precaution deserve no consideration, and I shall give them none.”
His heart rose happily on this reflection.
“I shall give them none. None.”
* * *
The bowl of sugar was put down in front of Elizabeth Hardaker. Acting according to her code, she handed it to her neighbour before taking any herself. The young nurse next to her helped herself and passed the bowl along to her neighbour on her other side. The bowl went thus right down the line and stayed at the foot of the long table. In spite of herself Elizabeth could not help giving it a glance, fleeting but wistful.
“Didn’t you get any sugar?”
“Well—no.”
“You haven’t the sense you were born with,” said her neighbour with rough affection. “Sugar, please! Hi there! Sugar!”
The bowl was passed back from hand to hand and dumped down in front of the blushing Elizabeth. Hastily she took a spoonful. Her coffee was cold now and she would have preferred not to drink it, but after the inconvenience she had caused her colleagues about the sugar, she felt that to leave it undrunk would be an insult. Accordingly she put the tepid acid liquid to her lips and forced her squeamish stomach to retain it. Soon, fortunately, she was obliged to leave the cup half-emptied, to return to duty.
Apologising for the coldness of her hands, she neatly and carefully wound the rubber straps round each of the patient’s ankles. Then the other rubber straps round each of his wrists. She secured the small rubber ring to the patient’s chest over the heart, by squeezing the air bulb. Then she inserted the plugs, so that the patient was now attached to the apparatus by five long flexes. Then she switched on the instrument. The action of the patient’s heart traced itself in a jerky line along the paper roll. The peaks were altogether too large and abrupt for safety, Elizabeth observed regretfully. Smiling quietly, reassuringly, soothingly, at the patient, she removed and tidied away plugs, flex and bands.
“Are you an X-ray operator?” enquired the patient crossly.
“No. I’m an electro-cardiograph technician.”
“Is it an interesting job? Is it well paid?” demanded the patient, vexed because he dared not ask the question he wished to ask about his cardiograph.
“It’s useful,” said Elizabeth earnestly.
A smile of satisfaction illumined her pale plain young face at the word.
* * *
Old Mr. Hardaker drew his piece glass from his waistcoat pocket, opened it and examined the cloth, which lay displayed in the traditional manner on the long, highly polished Ramsgill Mills warehouse table.
“Full of colour,” he said with satisfaction, handing the glass to his grandson.
At moments like these, Lucius’ heart warmed to his grandfather and he felt a certain pride—a half amused, half affectionate and very ephemeral pride, but still a certain pride—in belonging to the wool textile trade, in being Lucius Hardaker of Messrs. J. L. Hardaker and Sons, in this year some century and a quarter years old. His sister Elizabeth, who took an antiquarian interest in West Riding history, rather tiresome really but fortunately she had not flaunted it so much of late, said that Hardakers had made cloth much earlier than 1837; she had found documents—wills, records of court cases and so on—which showed Hardakers making cloth at Ramsgill a couple of centuries or more before Victoria came to the throne. Lucius was not interested in them, however.
“But why not, Lucius?” said Elizabeth surprised.
“They were just weavers,” said Lucius.
He meant that these early Hardakers were just ordinary fellows like himself, nothing to write home about in his opinion, but he had little gift for expressing ideas, and Elizabeth misunderstood him.
“How can you be such a snob, Lucius?” she said reprovingly in her calm stately tones.
“Easily,” said Lucius, laughing. At the time this conversation took place he had just finished dressing to go out; Elizabeth crouched on the end of his bed gazing up at him with earnest fondness as he tied his really rather nice dark green tie, brushed his thick straight black hair, put on his new green waistcoat and the jacket of his handsome suit.
“That’s a nice cloth you’re wearing, Lucius,” said Elizabeth.
“Olive bronze,” said Lucius. “That’s its trade name.” He gathered up his keys and money from the dressing-table and thrust them into his trousers pocket. Cigarettes in the jacket outer pocket, notecase, nicely bulging, in the inner. He looked at Elizabeth with an affection which was tinged with pity; she was so plain, with those prominent grey eyes, that pale almost pasty complexion, that very fine silky fair hair to which no amount of attention seemed able to impart an air of fashion, that rather beaky nose.
“Poor old Liz!” he thought. “Can’t see her ever getting married.” Even her attitude at the foot of the bed was contorted and unbecoming; the legs it revealed though long were too slender, not the kind of legs to warm any man’s heart. He thought of Carol, and his blood leaped.
As he made for the door he gave his sister’s shoulder (rather bony) a friendly slap. “Bye bye,” he said.
“Where are you going, Lucius?” said Elizabeth curiously. “You’re out so much. You don’t belong to any societies. I can’t think what you find to do.”
“Don’t worry about me, Liz,” said Lucius, who had no intention of telling her how he spent his leisure, and certainly did not feel under any obligation to do so.
“Are you all right, Lucius?” queried Elizabeth wistfully. “Really all right, I mean?”
“Of course. Why, doesn’t grandfather think so?” asked Lucius, alarmed.
“I don’t know.” Lucius frowned. “I really don’t know, Lucius. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think,” added Elizabeth honestly, “he wishes you took more interest in the mill, you know.”
“Oh, well,” said Lucius. “The old boy’s been very decent lately.” Dismissing all these petty cares he went out whistling.
Now as he looked down at the cloth which, it was hoped, was to succeed the olive bronze in popularity, a vague remembrance of this conversation crossed his mind and troubled him, and his moment of satisfaction passed. The intricate pattern of coloured threads leaped into vivid life beneath the magnifying glass, and he realised that he did not know whether the design was a good design or a bad one. It looked good, but he had a lurking suspicion that his grandfather’s ideas about cloth were perhaps slightly outdated. About life in general old Mr. Hardaker’s ideas were of course hopelessly out of date, reflected Lucius, so it was just possible that even in the matter of cloth, in which he had been an acknowledged master, time had passed him by. Lucius ought to be taking more interest, taking more hold. But he didn’t know enough to do so. He had taken a textile course in the Hudley Technical College but found it intolerably boring and his fellow-classmates (after those of his public school) impossible. To please his grandfather he had continued to attend, but he learned nothing. All the Hudley Technical College had done for him was to bring him Carol, whom he had met in the elevator. He ought, he knew, now to give a firm, well-founded, knowledgeable judgment on the merit of this cloth lying in front of him, but he simply was not able to do so.
The thought of bluffing it out, faking an opinion, entered his head only to be dismissed. Nothing of that kind would get past old J.L. Of course the old man was getting really old, he reflected dispassionately, giving a quick glance at the seamed and craggy face, where a slight puckering of the flesh still revealed the track of an old bullet wound, the short square body, the broad shoulders, slightly humped as the result of dragging a lamed foot for nearly fifty years. Surgery was not too good in that tedious old 1914 war, thought Lucius with cheerful contempt. Only thin streaks of black hair now lay across the dome of old J.L.’s bald head—Lucius was not capable of the reflection that his grandfather’s black hair had once been as thick and lustrous as his own. But J.L.’s black eyes were as bright as ever; he was a shrewd old bird, reflected Lucius cheerfully; a formidable old bastard. In any case it was not in Lucius’ nature to attempt a deception. The morals he had been taught at school—fear God, honour the Queen, love your country, do unto others as you would be done by—he now admitted to be out of date in an atomic world, but a new set of ethics had not yet presented itself with convincing clarity. He intended to be honest and honourable and above all lowdown tricks, of course, and was so when the issue presented itself clearly. Here it was quite clear; Lucius Hardaker was not going to fake an opinion to please anybody, even his grandfather. He handed back the piece glass and said nothing.
* * *
“A handsome lad. Spirited. Won’t lie. But I can’t even ask him for an opinion,” thought old John Hardaker sadly, folding up his piece glass. “He doesn’t know enough to give one.”
He remembered sadly, as he had so often remembered before, the fine son he had lost on the Dunkirk beaches. Of course he and Luke had often argued, often disagreed, often quarrelled; very likely he had built Luke up in his memory to an ideal which the reality would have disproved. Luke had certainly married a silly woman; Mildred’s endless chatter was a thorn in his side. Old Hardaker attributed Luke’s very early marriage to a very silly woman to the boy’s lack of a mother, who died in childbirth in 1914. Never should he forget the desolation of returning on sudden compassionate leave to find his wife Elizabeth lying cold and dead and the little black-haired baby howling his head off. His aunts had brought up Luke, but of course they weren’t the same as a mother and he and Luke had always been very close. A thousand incidents rushed through the old man’s mind as he surveyed his grandson. Lucius was a handsome lad without a doubt, tall, black-haired, grey-eyed, held himself well, with an agreeable colour in his cheeks and excellent manners learned at his public school—Luke had been a rougher type; thick black eyebrows and rather stocky; he hadn’t bothered to send him away to school; the boy had come early into the mill and soon knew almost as much about cloth as his father. Knew his own mind too, a good deal better than young Lucius. Followed it doggedly—as obstinate as they make ’em. He was barely seventeen when he made the decision which saved Ramsgill Mills. It was the awful slump year, 1931; old Hardaker, like a great many other West Riding textile men, was facing ruin and wondering every month whether the bank would let him have the money to pay his spinner’s bill. There came a month when it was clear they wouldn’t. Hardaker took a desperate decision; he piled unsold pieces into one of the mill vans and drove it secretly off to London, to an auction room he had heard of. Luke had demanded urgently to go too, and his father was glad enough of his company. A reserve price was put on the pieces, but this was not reached in the sale; the auctioneer glanced at John Hardaker to see whether he should close with a lesser offer. Hardaker, agonisingly perplexed, hesitated.
“Sell them!” said Luke in his ear.
“But it’s less than they cost to make.”
“We need the money,” said Luke grimly.
Hardaker nodded to the auctioneer, who accepted the bid. The sale was made; the Hardakers came home with a cheque for eight hundred pounds; Ramsgill Mills avoided bankruptcy for one month more; as a result J. L. Hardaker & Sons was eventually saved. Never, never must this situation be allowed to occur again, reserves must be built up; there must be a wide safety margin.
It was all the more disappointing when Luke and he had had such a frightful row over the boy’s marriage. He himself had been tactless, and Luke unforgiving. Mildred was suitable in birth and upbringing, of course; tall, pretty, fair-haired, nicely dressed; but a silly brainless woman of a kind one rarely saw in the West Riding; why had Luke, so strong and determined, chosen her? Because she was so feminine, old Hardaker supposed. He had shown his view of her too clearly, and Luke had raged, and before they had had time to make up the quarrel, there came the war. Well! After the boy had been killed on the Dunkirk beaches, Hardaker had done rather more than his duty by Luke’s widow. He brought Mildred and her two children to live with him at Ramsgill House, made her the mistress of the household, provided them all with an ample living, sent the children to expensive schools. The results were disappointing. Elizabeth was clever enough, but—a posthumous child born just after Dunkirk—delicate in health and uncomfortably intense; she had missed her degree at Leeds University because of an overwork breakdown. She had always liked the oddest books and plays, of which it was impossible for the rest of the family to make head or tail, but since her Leeds failure, as she insisted on regarding it, she had travelled increasingly out of line; she insisted on working at some hard minor job in the Hudley hospital, joined—for heaven’s sake!—the Labour party, and had recently actually given in her adherence to these anti-nuclear committees, or whatever they were called, wore their badge, and silently chafed (but her grandfather was aware of it) because there was no “walking” or “sitting down” to be found in the neighbourhood for her to take part in. Her mother’s scoldings and exhortations had no effect; though mild and quiet in manner, she had all her father’s obstinacy. Hardaker wouldn’t have minded, really, or rather, he would have put up with it cheerfully, if the girl had looked happy with it all, but she appeared to him perpetually anxious and lonely. No suitors presented themselves for her; very sweet as a child, she had grown up plain, and unlike her mother did not know how to attract a man. He was fond of her, though; she had better stuff in her than Lucius, whose reactions, to all problems including nuclear was to eat drink and be merry while the going was good. But with a name like that, what could one expect? Luke had been good enough for several previous generations of Hardakers; Lucius was Mildred’s idea Lucius knew nothing of cloth, and cared, thought his grandfather bitterly, less.
Hardaker, thus returned to the present, found himself gazing at his grandson, who was looking at his (extremely expensive) watch. The warehouse clock showed that the hour was approaching five. Almost time for the buzzer.
“Want to be off, eh?” said old Hardaker sardonically.
“Yes,” replied Lucius.
This plain unmodified statement soothed old Hardaker. At least, he thought, the boy doesn’t kowtow, he doesn’t make excuses, he doesn’t lie. We may make something of him yet.
“Off you go, then,” he said.
Lucius flew from the warehouse like a bullet from a gun. A moment later his scarlet M.G. bolted from the mill yard.
“Seems in a hurry, like,” said the warehouse foreman, smiling. “He’s courting, happen. Eh?”
“Happen,” agreed old Hardaker, dropping into the vernacular. “He’s told me nowt, ony road.”
“They don’t tell us owd uns anything nowadays,” said the foreman wisely.
* * *
The scarlet car stood on the grassy verge of the moorland road.
“It’s grand up here,” said Carol, holding her face up to the breeze. Her thick dark curls blew backwards. This pleased Lucius; he did not like it when she brushed them down over her forehead.
“What about it, then, Carol?” said Lucius gruffly, turning to face her. She had a short, sturdy body, not quite tall enough to be handsome, and square-hipped; but she glowed with health and vigour; her breasts were shapely, her lips rich and full.
“I shan’t marry you, my lad.”
“Why not?”
“You’re too soft. You don’t know what you want except that it’s the opposite of what your grandfather wants.”
“I want you,” said Lucius.
“Oh, really?” mocked Carol.
Lucius seized her in his arms and kissed her convincingly.
“Do you mind?” Carol rebuked him in the slang of the day, withdrawing herself.
“Why not?” said Carol sharply.
“I hate you to say it. It’s vulgar.”
“Why?”
“Lord, I don’t know. It just is.”
“You hate the way I do my hair, and the way I talk, and my clothes and my shoes and my mascara and my eye-shadow and everything about me,” said Carol.
“Not everything,” said Lucius, laughing. He kissed her rather more tenderly than before.
“Do you mind?” said Carol again to tease him. “Don’t think you’ve got anything on me because of last night,” she added fiercely.
“Ha!” said Lucius.
He took her in his arms, and held her so strongly that she could not wriggle free. After a moment she ceased to resist, and lay back against his shoulder. Her brown eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed.
“You daft thing!” she said fondly. “Why should I care twopence ha’penny about you?”
“You do, though.”
“More fool me.”
“You’ll marry me, then?”
“I shall have to, I suppose. Somebody with some sense’ll have to marry you or heaven knows what’ll happen. The whole great firm of J. L. Hardaker and Co. will come crashing down. It’ll fill the whole of the Ramsgill valley from side to side.”
“Don’t joke about the mill, Carol,” said Lucius soberly.
“Don’t tell me you really care about it?”
“What’s it to you if I do?”
“You don’t know whether you care or not. Except for the money, of course. What would you do if it did crash? You couldn’t earn enough to keep a cat alive, much less yourself.”
“Don’t be silly, Carol,” said Lucius uneasily.
“Much less yourself and a wife and a couple of kids.”
“That’s a different proposition,” said Lucius vigorously. “I bet you I could.”
“I bet you don’t know as much about textiles as my brother Ed.”
“He’s a designer, trained and all that,” said Carol with a certain respect.
“I know the markets.”
“Says you,” said Carol cheerfully.
“Kiss me, Carol,” commanded Lucius.
She laughed, hesitated, then put her lips softly to his cheek.
* * *
A resonant musical chime sounded along the street.
“It’s the ice-cream man!” cried all the children, and their eyes sparkled.
“Come along then,” said Carol, rooting in her bag for her purse. “Out! All the lot of you! Auntie Carol will buy you each one ice-lolly. Only one, mind!”
Shouting, laughing, screaming, jumping, the children poured out and rushed along the street. If any more of the family come along tonight, reflected Carol, they’ll have to sit on the doorstep, for there isn’t an inch of space left in the room. Of course it was just on Whitsuntide and they had all brought the children along in their new clothes to get their Whitsun pennies. But what with the two Oates cousins she’d been brought up with, who had two children apiece, and then three nieces of her mother’s married to miners Pontefract way, with their children, and some connexions, distant in blood but near in friendship, who lived up the road, of their grandfather’s, and even two of her grandmothers’ relations from Sheffield who had turned up unexpectedly, all with children, the place was crammed out; they were a large family nowadays and no mistake; it was grand. (And maybe I’ll be adding one soon, thought Carol, smiling grimly to herself; who knows? That’ll rock them. But I don’t care. Who cares about that sort of thing nowadays?).
“Give that back to your brother, Maureen,” she said sharply, snatching a lolly from a well-curled little girl’s left hand. “That’s Kenneth’s lolly. You’ve got yours in your other hand. Lick that one.”
“I want Kenneth’s,” said Maureen.
“Well, you can’t have it. Don’t be so greedy, you little madam. Run along with you now or you won’t get your penny.”
“Kenneth can’t have a penny, he hasn’t got any new clothes,” shouted another child.
“Yes he can. He’s got some new shoes,” cried Kenneth’s sister, on his side at once. “Haven’t you, Kenneth?”
“Yes,” said Kenneth, who, of a tenderer disposition than his sister, seemed inclined to weep.
“Shoes don’t count.”
“Yes, they do. Don’t shoes count, Auntie Carol?”
“Of course.”
There it was, though. Some mothers went to work and spent every penny they earned on their children’s clothes; others stayed at home and looked after their children, but spent less on them. Which was best it was difficult to say. “I don’t know how anyone can bear to leave them, though,” thought Carol, as she shooed the mass of curls, hair-ribbons, white frocks, stiff petticoats, jeans, tartan shirts and suedette coats along the street.
“Where’s grandpa?”
“He’s gone upstairs, love. He’s busy with his Union work.”
Carol ran lightly up the stairs. Her grandfather, Sam Oates, large, slow and heavy, with his white hair cut so short as to bristle and his spectacles low on his massive nose, was sitting at an old ramshackle desk he kept in his room, carefully filling in figures on a form. Carol put her arm round his shoulders and kissed his large pink cheek heartily.
“Now then, Sam,” she said.
“You seem to be having a good time of it down there, the lot of you, to judge by the noise you’re making,” said Sam, pleasantly grim. He accepted the kiss by slightly moving his cheek against hers.
“We’re just going to have a cup of tea. Why don’t you come down and have a cuppa, eh?”
“This has to go off tomorrow. Regulations.”
“I don’t suppose the Union’ll go smash if it’s an hour or two late.”
“Rules is rules, my girl.”
“You seem to have got a lot of stuff there, grandpa,” said Carol, glancing at the bed, which was covered with rows of papers.
“I shall sort it out presently,” said Sam.
“Well—I’ll bring you up a cup.”
Downstairs, her brother Edward had come in. Edward was always a bit of a mystery to Carol. Their father and mother and a baby brother had been killed in a night of blitz on Sheffield, where their father was a highly skilled steelworker; Edward and she were fortunately on holiday in Hudley with their grandparents, who kept the orphaned children with them. An aunt with two children was widowed by the war about the same time, so of course she too came back to her parents’ home and they were all brought up together, hugger mugger. The grandmother presently died and Aunt Connie continued in command; a thin little wizened woman of demonic energy, with a heart of gold but a rather waspish exterior, against whom Carol was always in open rebellion, while Edward, though quite as determined to go his own way, always managed to “keep in” with her. Edward was the oldest of the children and the cleverest and soon soared out of their reach into the grammar school. Of course she was fond of him, because he was her brother, but he never seemed quite part of the family the way the others did. He didn’t belong to any Union, either, which of course made their grandfather right upset. Still, he was always kind and polite, and a real good hand when it came to figures and forms. He was good with children, too; look at him now, with all the kids leaping about him.
“Ed, grandpa seems in a bit of a mullock upstairs with his Union papers,” said Carol in his ear. “Go up and give him a hand.”
Obliging as always, Ed made at once for the stairway. “I’ll go up,” he said, “but I don’t suppose he’ll let me help. He never does.”
“Anything I can do, grandfather?”
“No, thanks, Ed.”
In his large careful handwriting his grandfather now signed the form. He was so slow in writing Samuel Edward Oates that Edward, swift in personal tempo, had to exercise conscious self-control to stand motionless until the process was completed.
“Shall I post it for you?”
“Nay, I’d rather take it myself.”
“I could get you a certificate of posting, you know.”
His grandfather looked at him over his spectacles.
“What sort of a thing is that?”
“It’s a new idea,” began Edward.
“I’ve been fifty years in Union work without using such a thing, and never had anything wrong, and I don’t need to begin now.”
“Just as you like, grandfather,” said Edward smoothly. As if I cared what happens to the old fool’s Union work, he thought, raging.
* * *
“I’m thinking of getting married, grandfather,” said Lucius.
“Good. Do I know her?”
“No. Her grandfather’s tentering foreman at Jarmayn’s and she’s shorthand typist there. Her brother’s a designer over in Annotsfield. Her father, by the way, is a branch secretary for the Union.”
A series of sarcastic remarks rose to Mr. Hardaker’s lips. “What is this paragon’s name, then? You’ve looked high, haven’t you? A shotgun wedding, I suppose?” But remembering the lasting grief of his quarrel with his son on a similar subject all those years ago, he made a strong effort and suppressed them.
“What is her name?” he said at length mildly.
His utterance was so muffled, so unlike himself, that Lucius looked at him in surprise. He had expected angry opposition.
“Carol Oates.”
“I take it she’s not had the upbringing of a lady,” continued Mr. Hardaker on the same mild note.
“That’s correct,” said Lucius pugnaciously, flushing.
“And no money.”
“None.”
“Why do you want to marry her, Lucius?” He wanted to add: “Wouldn’t a temporary association, a quick bit of fun, have been enough?” But he suppressed this too.
“Lord, how should I know?” said Lucius impatiently. “I want to, that’s all.”
“It’s as good a reason as any,” said Mr. Hardaker drily. “You’ll have trouble with your mother, though.”
“Then mother had better look out for herself.”
“Oh? Your girl’s got spirit, has she?”
“All the spirit in the world,” said Lucius.
Mr. Hardaker felt his old heart warm. Perhaps this might be just the thing for the boy? A tough little fighter? So long as she wasn’t a tough little bitch as well. Lucius was very young for his age, very ingenuous, very vulnerable. He might get badly hurt.
“Well—if ever you want to get out of it, let me know,” said Mr. Hardaker.
“Thank you, grandfather,” said Lucius with irony. “I shan’t, though. She’s my choice.”
Mr. Hardaker could not quite repress a snort at this. “You needn’t worry about money,” he said hastily, to cover this. He proceeded to outline arrangements for increasing Lucius’ salary to a level suitable to a married Hardaker. The arrangements were fairly generous, but not very. He could not quite bring himself to go to the limit of his generosity, to put an extra drain on the Ramsgill reserves, for a Trade Union official’s daughter.
Lucius felt disappointed. “Though after all, it’s better than I feared,” he thought. He would have preferred a hearty row to this half-and-half acceptance.
Mr. Hardaker felt partly vexed with himself for not having made a larger concession, and partly pleased that, as he thought, he had resisted his affection for his grandson, on behalf of J. L. Hardaker and Co.
“Trade’s not been so good lately,” he said in excuse.
“Liar!” thought Lucius. “He’d have given me more if Carol had been richer.”
His generous longing to pour out every possible luxury upon his love, to protect her from every possible want, was thwarted. He felt sore at heart, and angered by his grandfather’s hypocrisy.
* * *
Elizabeth was immensely thankful that the wedding ceremony had passed over safely, without any scene—hysterics, a faint, or even sentimental quiet sobbing—from her mother. During the weeks which preceded the marriage, it was Elizabeth—naturally; such things always fell upon the daughter—who had taken the brunt of her mother’s displeasure, because she spent more time with her than anyone else.
At first Mrs. Hardaker had wept like a thwarted child deprived of a toy. “But I don’t know her,” she complained to Lucius. “You can’t marry a girl I don’t know.”
“Now, mother,” said Lucius kindly, “it’s no use making a fuss. Carol’s a grand girl, she’s coming to tea on Sunday and we’re getting married in the first week in June. What are you going to wear?”
Lucius certainly knew how to manage his mother, reflected Elizabeth, smiling to herself as Mrs. Hardaker chattered on.
“As though it mattered what I should wear at a wedding like that! They won’t even have morning coats!”
“They can hire them,” said Lucius with a laugh.
“Such things don’t matter nowadays, mother,” said Elizabeth soothingly.
This drew Mrs. Hardaker’s fire on her daughter.
“That’s all you think. Of course they matter. Think of the photographs. I blame you for this whole affair, Elizabeth. Your silly ideas—they’ve spread to Lucius. I’m sure he’d never have thought of such a thing for himself. What would your father have said? I can’t possibly decide what I shall wear until I know what colour this girl will choose for the bridesmaids. Perhaps she won’t have any bridesmaids! Perhaps it won’t even be a white wedding!”
Mrs. Hardaker’s pretty eyes opened wide at the very idea of such an enormity.
“Oh, I think it will, mother,” soothed Elizabeth. “Everyone has white weddings now.”
“A June wedding,” said Mrs. Hardaker thoughtfully. “Of course that’s always nice.”
By the morrow she was sufficiently reconciled to the marriage to discuss with overflowing interest the questions of her wedding outfit and Lucius’ new house. But Carol’s visit on Sunday changed her tone. Carol, glowing with life in a very tight yellow dress which revealed all the curves of her blossoming young figure, was not prepared to be patronised—why should she? thought Elizabeth—and gave sharp answers to Mrs. Hardaker’s glib platitudes and Elizabeth’s more sincere speeches of welcome. Thus the bride and her future mother-in-law differed about the time and place of the wedding, the place and kind of the wedding reception, the number of bridesmaids and the type of house to be searched for. Gradually the condescending forbearance with which Mrs. Hardaker had begun the interview died away, a disconcerted, perplexed, defeated look spread sadly over her pretty, spoiled-child face; she actually sat silent—a very unusual event with her—glancing from Carol to Elizabeth as if they were speaking in a foreign language. When Elizabeth accompanied Carol to the door on her departure, Carol having arranged her curls in front of the mirror turned with an ironic smile to Elizabeth and said in a defiant tone:
“Tough. For you, I mean. I don’t care.”
“Oh, it will pass. Mother will come round. She can’t help it. She’s very fond of Lucius—mother and son, you know.”
“It’s not all that easy for me at home either,” said Carol with a grimace. “My grandfather thinks I’m a traitor, marrying into the boss class.”
“But surely all that class nonsense is out of date,” said Elizabeth impatiently.
“Not so as you’d notice—not in Deacon Street, anyway,” said Carol. “Well—goodbye.”
“I’m on your side,” said Elizabeth quickly. “I’ll give you all the help I can.”
“Thanks, but we shan’t need it,” said Carol.
Lucius now brought his car up and drove Carol away.
That night as Elizabeth went up to bed she heard a sound of weeping coming from her mother’s room. She knocked and entered. Mrs. Hardaker lay in the dark, sobbing. Elizabeth put on the light. She was used to tears from her mother, but these were tears of a different kind, anguished, heartfelt; the pretty face was tearstained, distorted.
“Why, mother!” exclaimed Elizabeth, shocked.
She went to the bedside and took her mother in her arms.
“What’s the matter, dear?”
“I can’t bear Lucius to marry that awful girl. She’ll take him away from us, Elizabeth, you know she will. I can’t bear to lose Lucius; since your father died he’s all I have.”
Elizabeth winced at this rejection of herself and her own faithful service—she had known already that she held no place in her mother’s heart, but to hear it announced so forthrightly was nevertheless painful.
“You must stop it, Elizabeth. You must break it off.”
“Mother, they love each other.”
“How do you know,” said her mother angrily. “You know nothing about it. You must persuade your grandfather to break it off.”
“I shall not attempt that, mother.”
“You’re so obstinate, Elizabeth, so pig-headed. You get it from your father. It’s very ungraceful in a woman. Give me my smelling-salts.”
Elizabeth brought the smelling-salts and the eau-de-cologne and a glass of water, bathed her mother’s eyes and forehead, kissed her very tenderly—such hopeless irrationality as her mother showed made her very vulnerable to life’s ills, in need of all possible protection, she thought—was recalled to hand reading-glasses and library book.
“There’s one comfort,” said her mother, settling herself against her pillows—“I’ll have the bedside lamp, Elizabeth, put the other lights out by the door—the marriage won’t last long.”
“Lucius can be obstinate too, mother.”
Her mother snorted. “They’ll quarrel,” she said with satisfaction. “Lucius will never be able to stand it. That yellow dress! I don’t think she had a stitch on, underneath.”
“Carol is pretty and spirited.”
“Nonsense. Don’t be silly, Elizabeth. Pretty! A girl like that! Nonsense. You have no sense at all.”
“Good night, mother,” said Elizabeth, with a great effort managing to keep her voice friendly and calm.
“Goodnight,” said Mrs. Hardaker crossly, opening her book—the reminiscences of some titled woman or other, thought Elizabeth in a rage.
This scene had been repeated at intervals with only slight variations during the uncomfortable weeks which preceded the wedding. In the daytime Mrs. Hardaker bent her energies on equipping the handsome new bungalow up the hill which was old Mr. Hardaker’s wedding present to his grandson, in extracting every possible further gift from him on Lucius’ behalf, and in planning her wedding outfit; but at night her sorrow overcame her. The clash between the genuineness of her mother’s grief which demanded her sympathy, and its ignoble selfishness and snobbery which she despised with her whole heart, kept Elizabeth in a turmoil of increasing exasperation; she began to be afraid that if her mother made some outcry at the ceremony, she herself would be unable to control her own contempt.
But as it turned out Mrs. Hardaker had appeared to enjoy the wedding. Looking extremely pretty in a charming lavender outfit, with a flowery hat perched on her still fair and very elegantly waved hair, she sailed up the chapel—the Oates family, it seemed, were very religious, strong chapel-goers—with a sweet childish smile, holding her bouquet (sweet peas, quite lovely) at just the right angle. From the porch where the bridesmaids were awaiting the bride Elizabeth frequently glanced at her mother; apart from fidgeting with her copy of the wedding service and whispering in old Mr. Hardaker’s ear till his shoulders stiffened with irritation, she behaved with complete decorum. As the wedding procession came up the aisle she turned round excitedly, gave a hard unfriendly look at Carol, an alarmed assessing look at Carol’s grandfather—a great big rather good-looking lumbering man, white-haired, spectacled, angry disapproval glaring out of his shrewd obstinate face—a contemptuous look at the other five bridesmaids, and a look of irritation at her daughter, who of course appeared quite hideous in the rather too bright pink, too elaborately cut dresses which Carol had chosen.
Relieved of anxiety about her mother, Elizabeth was able to give attention to the wedding of Lucius, of whom, though she thought him not very clever and not very industrious, she was in fact exceedingly fond. She put out of her heart all previous uneasiness and accepted Carol loyally as her brother’s wife, and kissed her very warmly in the vestry after the signing of the register.
Now they were in the reception room at the hotel; speeches had been made and healths drunk. Lucius’ speech was not very good but he looked so beamingly happy that everyone forgave him; the best man, rather afraid of Carol, overawed by the occasion, had not (fortunately) tried to be funny; old Mr. Hardaker had uttered a few craggy words and old Mr. Oates also had uttered a few craggy words; everyone agreed that the speech of the afternoon was made by Carol’s brother, Edward Oates, he put everyone in a good humour by a few really funny stories and well-turned phrases. Carol and Lucius had now gone to change; Mrs. Hardaker was talking to Grandfather Oates, who looked a trifle bewildered by the torrent of speech but not too cross; old Mr. Hardaker was being led round the very numerous members of the Oates clan by Carol’s Aunt Connie, with whom he appeared sardonically amused. Elizabeth found herself alone. She often found herself alone on social occasions. She was used to it, one might say, used to the idea that she was not sexually attractive, never destined to be the centre of an admiring group; she had schooled herself to accept this destiny with dignity and calm. All the same, it was painful.
“May I fetch you some tea, Miss Hardaker? I believe they are serving tea now.”
Elizabeth turned; the speaker was Edward Oates. She did not in the least require tea, but her mother’s opposition to the Oates family had thrown her so strongly on their side that she could not refuse.
“That would be very kind of you.”
He returned with two cups and seated himself beside her.
“As we are related now, I think you should address me less formally,” said Elizabeth with a smile.
“I should enjoy that. As we had met only once before today, I felt a certain diffidence—Elizabeth,” said Edward, also smiling.
There was a pause. Elizabeth wondered, as she had often wondered before, what one said to a man on these occasions.
“It suits you,” said Edward in a musing tone. Elizabeth, uncertain of his meaning, started. “The name, I mean. It has much dignity.”
“My brother calls me Liz,” said Elizabeth, laughing.
Edward made a moue. “Brothers have many privileges.”
“Are you and Carol very close?”
“No, not very,” said Edward in his thoughtful, considering tone. “But I have a great respect for Carol. She’s thoroughly loyal and honest. Sincere, you know.”
“That has been my impression,” said Elizabeth earnestly. “I think Lucius and Carol have every chance of being very happy.”
“Yes, indeed. You’re going to think me very rude, I’m afraid, Elizabeth,” said Edward, “but I simply must tell you that I don’t think that dress suits you.”
Elizabeth coloured painfully.
“But that of course isn’t your fault,” said Edward, “since Carol chose the style and colour. I am a designer, you know,” he continued, naming the great firm for which he worked, “so I am susceptible in these matters. This bright colour is quite suitable for the other bridesmaids.” He paused, but receiving no assent from Elizabeth, who thought the colour too ugly to be suitable for any girl, skilfully modified his statement. “Or at least they probably think so. But for you, one would prescribe something paler and simpler. A classic line. Please do forgive me.”
“No forgiveness is required,” said Elizabeth, “since my opinion agrees with your own.”
She tried to speak lightly, but in reality she was profoundly moved. It was the first time in her twenty-two years, yes, literally the first time, that any man had commented at all on her appearance. Edward’s approach was exactly the one she would have chosen; impartial, sincere (she thought), subtle, offering a compliment only by implication.
“I wish you would tell me something about your work—about modern textile design,” she corrected herself, fearing to be too personal. “Lucius may have told you I am keenly interested in textile history. I have done one or two papers for the Hudley Antiquarians.”
“Really! But this is delightful,” said Edward, drawing the chair closer to their table. He had a genuine gift for his craft and now talked about it in an interesting manner, with vivid and authentic details, for several minutes, concluding: “Is one obliged to write papers in order to join the Antiquarians? Or would a keen interest suffice?”
“A keen interest would suffice,” said Elizabeth, smiling. “If you would care to attend a meeting or an excursion, I should be happy to introduce you as my guest.”
“That would indeed be kind of you,” said Edward gravely. He wondered whether to ask for further details now, or whether to do so would be pressing the matter too urgently. Should he leave it, and allow her interest to mount by unfulfilment? Yes, he thought so. At this moment Lucius and Carol returned to the room; everyone rose and the ceremonies of farewell began. Edward glancing swiftly at Elizabeth saw that his instinct had been sound and the interruption useful, for she looked slightly disappointed. He rejoiced. The bait was taken.
* * *
Edward drew his piece glass from his waistcoat pocket, opened it and examined the cloth, which lay displayed in the traditional manner on the long, highly polished Ramsgill Mills warehouse table.
“Full of colour,” he remarked with genuine admiration. “You’ve got a lucky one here, Mr. Hardaker.”
“More than luck went to make that design, Mr. Oates,” said the head Ramsgill designer, slightly huffed.
Edward paused, a fraction of time longer perhaps than was natural—and indeed his pause was entirely artificial, calculated.
“I only meant that it would bring luck to your sales department,” he said then, pleasantly laughing.
The remark nipped the designer’s nascent hostility in the bud, while Lucius and Mr. Hardaker received from the pause the message Edward intended: that the white-haired designer was growing old, that his designs recently had not been invariably winners, and that Ramsgill Mills had no separate sales organisation in any case. As the three men went down the stone steps into the courtyard, Mr. Hardaker observed with a casual air:
“How do you like at your place, then, Edward?”
“Well, the firm of course is excellent, as you well know, Mr. Hardaker,” returned Edward. (His heart beat fast, for this was a crucial moment which must not be bungled, but he kept his voice cool yet sunny.) “And my present job is very good too. But I don’t see much future scope—not much chance of promotion.”
“No?” said Mr. Hardaker. “Too many nephews around ready to become directors, eh?”
“Yes. And too many good men over me in the department,” said Edward with a grin. “Besides, designers are thought of as being purely technical experts, you know.”
“And you want to be managerial, eh?”
“I do,” said Edward, looking at the old man squarely.
Mr. Hardaker said nothing. But Edward was not dissatisfied.
Beside Lucius’ scarlet M.G. in the courtyard there now drew up a car of pale silvery hue.
“It must be Elizabeth’s,” thought Edward at once.
The quickness of his reactions was very useful, he thought: it gave him just that little extra moment in which to decide his course, before the other fellow reached the point. This encounter might be disastrous; too early. But as it had occurred, he was saddled with it and must turn it to advantage.
“May as well find out the extent of the opposition now,” he decided, and as Elizabeth in a pale clear linen dress dismounted from the car and came towards them, he exclaimed: “Elizabeth!” in a tone of pleasure, and went forward to meet her, briskly. Elizabeth coloured as he approached, and he guessed that she had heard of Lucius’s invitation to him (carefully angled for) to see the Ramsgill Mills and accompany Lucius home for an evening meal, and had come to the mill on an invented errand in the hope of meeting Edward. His guess was confirmed as Elizabeth gave Lucius a message from their mother, which might just as well have been telephoned. But the next moment he was confounded, for she turned to him and said frankly:
“I thought I might meet you here, Edward. I thought I might take the opportunity to tell you: there is an Antiquarian excursion on Saturday, if you would care to go. Probably you are already engaged,” she added hastily, subsiding into diffidence.
“Oh, I’ve already applied for a ticket—I’ve joined the group,” said Edward airily. “After what you told me of its work—I was interested.” His admiration for her honest frankness was so genuine that his next remarks had the ring of truth. “If you would—guide me a little on Saturday—I don’t know the ropes—one doesn’t want to vex people or make a fool of oneself—I should be extremely grateful—but don’t let me be a nuisance to you in any way, of course.”
“I shall be most happy to do so,” said Elizabeth with unconcealed pleasure. “They’re very friendly people.” She went on to speak of the route to be taken, the houses to be seen, tea arrangements, transport.
Edward listening carefully—he had not the slightest intention of making a fool of himself by not knowing the Antiquarian ropes; he never made a fool of himself by ignorance of ropes—found a moment to glance at Lucius and Mr. Hardaker. To his delighted surprise, not opposition, but approval and even pleasure, were to be read in their faces. (They had never heard Elizabeth talk so freely, with such happy animation, to a man before.)
“I’ve got them,” thought Edward exultantly. “I’ve got them all in a band.”
It gave him pleasure to use this Yorkshire phrase (meaning to hold people in a string, a noose as it were) about the Hardakers.
At Lucius’ handsome bungalow Carol, who was in the uncomfortable period of her first pregnancy, soon left the two men alone and retired to bed, after a rather snappy adjuration to them not to stay up too late talking. This seemed to convey to Edward’s ear that Carol knew they had some business to discuss, and he awaited Lucius’ opening move with interest. Sure enough as they sat together in front of the picture window looking out over the hilly West Riding landscape Lucius presently asked Edward in a hesitant diffident tone, what Edward thought of Ramsgill Mills.
“It’s good,” said Edward emphatically. “What a lucky fellow you are, Lucius, to have such a solid, reputable, old-established business behind you!”
“Old-established” was meant to arouse a slight uneasiness in Lucius’ mind. Edward perceived that it had in fact confirmed a slight uneasiness already existing in Lucius’ mind. He went on, delicately feeling his way.
“Of course, you’re in rather a difficult position—with your grandfather, I mean. I’m just the same with my own grandfather. We’re two generations apart. Old Sam! What a man! I wouldn’t hurt his feelings for the world, but sometimes, you know, when I see him struggling with all his Trade Union work papers—so much red tape, and he writes so slowly, it takes him hours—pathetic, really.”
“The Trade Unions are hopelessly out of date,” said Lucius with conviction.
“Agreed,” said Edward, though he felt obscurely angered. “And set against modernisation. I once tried to persuade old Sam to obtain a certificate of posting for an official paper, but it upset him, you know. I had to abandon the attempt. I don’t know if you ever find yourself in the same position with old Mr. Hardaker?”
“Yes,” said Lucius slowly. “Yes, I do.”
“I heard you soothing that customer on the telephone before we went down to the warehouse,” proceeded Edward, applying, as he told himself, the best, the most refined, butter. “You’re good at that, Lucius.”
And in fact the simple straightforward honesty employed by his brother-in-law had impressed him; it was like Elizabeth’s frankness; foolish but pleasant. If everyone were honest, of course, it would be useful, effective—but everyone was not.
“Did you notice any special thing at the mill which struck you as—out of date?” enquired Lucius slowly after a pause.
“Well, just one or two small things,” said Edward with an air of reluctance.
“Such as?” pressed Lucius.
“I thought your letter-head might be improved,” said Edward. “Of course that large ram beside a piece of cloth has always been your trademark, I expect.”
“I don’t really know,” said Lucius, considering.
The ram’s large convoluted horns, its extremely curly fleece, the look on its face which could only be described as sheepish, now suddenly struck him as naïve.
“I don’t think grandfather would like to change it,” he said.
“Of course not. I agree. Tradition must be respected. If the ram were a little smaller, perhaps, and differently placed, with the lettering in a more modern type-face—that might combine the best features of old and new.”
He’s a clever fellow, thought Lucius admiringly. He knows all the things I don’t. Type-face! He’s Carol’s brother. Elizabeth likes him. This last item rather surprised him, somehow, but also for some reason reassured.
Before Carol was brought to bed of her first child, Edward was installed at Ramsgill Mills as works manager.
* * *
A breath of fresh air, Edward flattered himself, blew through Ramsgill Mills after his arrival.
The letterhead was promptly remodelled—Mr. Hardaker did not like this at first, but after one or two of his customers admired the new style and asked who had designed it, he resigned himself to it and quite often gave it a keen scrutiny, trying to discover why it was in fact more pleasing than the old. Edward, observing the scrutiny, misunderstood its nature for contempt and felt humiliated.
It was time for the mill’s interior to be repainted; instead of the old whitewash Edward substituted wherever possible bright colours.
“Rather like a fun-fair at Blackpool,” said Mr. Hardaker. “Still, it’s cheerful, I agree.”
Edward also improved the filing system—again, Mr. Hardaker took the attitude that he could never find a letter nowadays and always had to ask someone from the outer office to find it for him, but the outer office approved the new system and gradually everyone grew accustomed to it.
Edward urged Mr. Hardaker so strongly to buy dictaphones that the old man with a sardonic smile gave in, and two were installed. But neither Mr. Hardaker nor Lucius, as they each discovered to their private disconcertment, had any gift for dictation without the assistance of a sympathetic typist, and the machines, unused, stood about growing dusty, a reproach and a humiliation to Edward whenever he saw them. At length he asked Mr. Hardaker’s permission to borrow one of them for some work of his own.
“Aye—take it away and don’t bother to bring it back,” said Mr. Hardaker, waving his hand as if relieved by the departure.
Edward also installed an intercommunication system throughout the mill; the Ramsgill acreage was really quite considerable and much time had been lost in the past, in his opinion, by the need to run round to find Mr. Hardaker or the various department heads when they were wanted. Mr. Hardaker approved of the intercomm but to Edward’s irritation did not often use it. The old man seemed positively to like to go stumping around, climbing steps and pushing open heavy doors, pausing here and there on his way back to the office while customers grew frantic waiting for him on the telephone.
“Why will he do it?” grumbled Edward to his brother-in-law.
“Well—he sees what’s going on in the mill, I suppose,” said Lucius mildly.
Edward had not thought of this, and coloured at his own naïveté. Mr. Hardaker could use the intercomm sharply enough when he wanted, however; he often barked at Edward down the phone so loudly that the department Edward happened to be visiting could hear his sardonic tones, and of course sniggered at his discomfiture.
For in spite of the tact and civility which he scrupulously practised, the workmen at Ramsgill did not like Edward. The older men and women grumbled that he thought he knew everything, he fancied himself, he was all out for himself, old Hardaker ought to have more sense, young Lucius had better look out or he would grab the whole place, and so on. This was all the more surprising to Edward because they did not appear to like Lucius much either, they said he knew nothing about cloth, did no work, spent twice what he was worth and was always after the women. They knew exactly why Lucius married Carol and took bets on the birth-date of their first child; but while some seemed on the whole to like Lucius rather better for his marriage—he stood by her, well they aren’t the first, she’s a spanking piece, and so on, were their comments—the older end were disgusted. Putting her brother in here, too, they said, over us as has been here for years; it isn’t decent. When Edward introduced some improvements in internal transport, so that they no longer had to sling the heavy pieces over their shoulders, but wheeled them about and slid them down wooden gullies, they gave him credit but did not change their view of Edward.
“You’ve got to hand it to him about them slides—they’re clever.”
“Oh, aye, they’re clever—he’s clever all right, is our Edward.”
“Clever as a load of monkeys.”
“He didn’t put them slides in to please us, though.”
“Why should he?”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“I’ll say this for Edward—he doesn’t mind us being comfortable so long as it makes him rich.”
They laughed, satisfied with the phrase.
The younger workmen at first tended to like Edward, regarding him as one of themselves, on their side, “with it” and against the older generation and the Hardakers, but he was so strict about his new regulations being kept, and so biting in speech when they broke them, that soon they simply detested him. They particularly resented his habit of turning up before and after the lunch hour, and just before the evening buzzer sounded. Of course this was to prevent their taking too long a time off in the middle of the day, and getting their coats on ten minutes before closing time so that they could rush off the minute the machinery slowed. From old Hardaker they would accept such supervision—it was his mill and you had to expect such things from the bosses; it was part of the class struggle—but from Edward they found it intolerable. Snooping, that’s what it is; can’t call your soul your own; who does he think he is; if this goes on I shall ask for my cards. Young and old enjoyed particularly an incident when Edward gave a stinging rebuke to a man he met in the mill gateway, returning to work in the afternoon some fifteen minutes late. It turned out that the man’s mother had had an accident in the lunch hour and been taken off to the hospital; furious at the rebuke the man went to Mr. Hardaker and complained, and Mr. Hardaker sent for Edward.
“I’m exceedingly sorry,” said Edward, feeling murderous but contriving a look of sincere regret. “I spoke too hastily.”
“Well—he apologised,” was the mill comment, on a note of doubt.
“Aye—if he meant it,” was the cool reply.
“Always hear the other side, Edward,” said Mr. Hardaker. “Close the door!” he bellowed as the young man left the office. Mr. Hardaker—whether from old-fashioned ideas of manners or from an angry fear of being overheard Edward could not determine—could not bear doors to be left open.
With the office staff on the other hand Edward was on the whole popular. The girls liked him immensely. He was polite, knew their names and place in the hierarchy and without ever overstepping in any way what was correct, somehow made them feel that he regarded them as female human beings. His instructions, given in his light agreeable tones, were always clear and easy to follow. They enjoyed the dictaphones and adding machines, approved emphatically of the new bright paint; the general trend towards automation introduced by Edward satisfied their dislike of physical work and desire to be in the mode.
Unfortunately this was not the case with the square paunchy greying Mr. Whitehead, the head cashier. A tried and trusted employee to Mr. Hardaker, a pernickety but lovable institution to Lucius, to Edward he was a pompous illiterate ass. He liked to use long words, sometimes inaccurately; he pursed his lips and opened his eyes very wide, he paused for effect and was capable at times of unexpected sly digs, very wounding to his juniors. He seemed to enjoy showing Mr. Hardaker the bills for all the items of expenditure incurred in Edward’s new schemes, hoping probably for an adverse comment on their after all not very alarming total.
“All right, all right,” said Mr. Hardaker one day, getting tired of this. “I knew what they would cost before I agreed to the purchase, Whitehead.”
“It’s not your wish that I should bring the accounts to your notice before I make out the cheques, then? The estimates are sometimes exceeded.”
“Well—if the estimates have been exceeded, yes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hardaker,” said the cashier.
As he moved away in his solemn gait he met Edward in the doorway. All three men knew at once that all three men knew that the subject of his discussion with Mr. Hardaker was something which concerned Edward. Edward coloured, Whitehead pursed his lips and gave him a solemn look; Mr. Hardaker meaning to be kindly said:
“What is it this time, Edward? Something else to frighten Whitehead, eh?”
“I hope not, sir,” said Edward smoothly, hating them both. “But he’s rather easily frightened.”
Whitehead, hurt, hastened his ponderous step and brushed by the young man.
So it happened that a few days later, when Edward asked him for a clarification of some minor point in Messrs. Hardaker’s relations with their bank, the cashier, looking at him over his half-spectacles, replied in a formal tone:
“I should have to take Mr. Hardaker’s instructions before familiarising you with our financial policy, Mr. Oates.”
“Oh, good heavens, don’t bother, then,” snapped Edward.
“Oh, it’s no bother, Mr. Oates,” said the cashier, and he rose and walked straight in to Mr. Hardaker and enquired in a loud tone: “Am I to acquaint Mr. Oates with all the financial side of the firm’s business, Mr. Hardaker?”
Hardaker, glancing in astonishment at the two men’s faces—the older crimson, the younger white, with rage—remarked drily: “I don’t think that will be necessary, Mr. Whitehead.”
“You don’t want to let old Whitehead get you down, Edward,” said Lucius in a kindly tone that afternoon. “He’s a silly old goat, you know, but a good cashier. Could you say a friendly word to him, do you think? I’ll soften him up for you beforehand, if you like.”
“It’s nice of you, Lucius, but it wouldn’t do any good.”
“Just as you like. He’s just as bad with me, you know. The job I had to get my expenses to London out of him last week, you wouldn’t believe. Still, it’s a good trait in a cashier.”
The only good thing about Whitehead would be his departure from Ramsgill, thought Edward viciously. And one of these days I’ll get him out. Trust me.
The only department in Ramsgill which whole-heartedly liked Edward was, oddly enough as he thought, the one where he had expected trouble. On his first morning at the mill when he walked into the designing department, extending his hand to the chief designer he blurted after a smooth greeting:
“I expect we shall quarrel like mad, but after all we’re both artists, so perhaps—”
He could not think what he had meant to say, could not finish his sentence—something about looking at things in the same way, perhaps? He cursed his own inadequacy. But in fact, for he was genuinely in love with design, this was the only absolutely sincere remark he ever uttered in Ramsgill, and his sincerity carried conviction. Besides, booking artistic quarrels in advance as it were, somehow diminished their venom; it was as if they had agreed that the rows they had were artists’ rows which nobody outside the department could understand. The rows came only dimly to Mr. Hardaker’s ears, as a kind of amusing debate thev were having up there; the designs which resulted were excellent.
“These are good, Edward,” said Mr. Hardaker, fingering the patterns with approval. “Your designs are good. For the rest, you’ll learn.”
Why did he have to spoil it all like that? Edward demanded fiercely. Why did he hire me to come and improve the Ramsgill organisation if he didn’t want me to change it? Really, old Hardaker was enough to provoke a saint. Edward, as he told himself with a grin, was no saint.
* * *
“Pity she couldn’t have waited a day longer, seeing it was the last of the month,” remarked old Hardaker sardonically when the first child of Lucius and Carol was born.
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Hardaker,” protested Mildred, flushing angrily.
“Oh, yes, you do. Another month on from the wedding day would have sounded better.”
“I don’t believe it for a moment!” cried Mildred. “The baby’s premature.”
“Well, it’s of no consequence now,” conceded old Hardaker. “They married in time, and he seems a fine healthy boy.”
“He’s a beautiful boy. Whatever her faults, Carol is a good wife to Lucius,” said Mildred, sewing hard.
“Let’s hope that whatever his faults, Lucius will be a good husband.”
The marriage of Lucius and Carol was in fact exceedingly happy. Their handsome modern bungalow on the brow of the hill was always spotlessly clean, and Lucius was extremely well fed. Indeed he ate so many “cooked meals” that he began to put on a little weight: he noticed this but could not be bothered to worry about it. Carol soon picked up a few terms of middle-class speech and taste, which she practised with scornful openness; she was always a favourite with Lucius’ male friends, and by her warm-hearted sincerity gradually won over their wives.
But although the marriage was a happy one and Lucius and Carol loved each other truly, warmly and permanently, as a husband and wife should, this did not preclude them from having spanking rows. During these rows Carol sobbed loudly and shouted. Lucius, at first overwhelmed, horrified by these unfamiliar tactics, suddenly found himself shouting loudly too. After these rows they would suddenly rush together and hold each other tightly with all their might and kiss with passion. As they grew more experienced in married life they tried never to let a quarrel continue through the night, or if this was impossible, never to let a quarrel continue after Lucius had left for the mill. For if this happened, they were both in an agony to make it up as soon as they had parted, and this was exceedingly inconvenient; Lucius telephoning home, or Carol sobbing on the ’phone to Ramsgill Mills, was sure to be interrupted by Whitehead’s prim nose or Mr. Hardaker’s sardonic eye.
They quarrelled, as married couples do, chiefly about their families.
Lucius simply could not keep up with the far-spreading ramifications of Carol’s family, in all of whose affairs Carol took a keen unfailing interest; he often annoyed her by confusing her aunt Connie, that tartar who had brought her up, with her cousin Connie, rather delicate and gentle, who was married to a miner in South Yorkshire. He did not understand how “the Sheffield people” fitted into the Oates family tree; he did not understand how he astonished Carol’s relatives by offering them sherry and whisky and soda. The older Oates members were shocked by the bottles Lucius revealed when he opened the sideboard door, and thought him inclined overmuch to drink. (This was not really one of Lucius’ faults, and the suspicion annoyed Carol greatly.)
Then, Lucius respected old Sam but could find nothing to say to him; the simplest remark seemed to set the old man off in a rage about some grievance against the bosses which had occurred at the turn of the century. Aunt Connie he frankly detested. Her small wiry body, her frizzed and scanty hair, her knuckly hands, her malign giggle and aggressive tone, were anathema to him.
“Why do you keep inviting the old harridan?” he said crossly. “You don’t like her any more than I do.”
“She’s my aunt and she brought me up,” said Carol, to whom the argument of kinship was final. She could not understand why Lucius was so cool towards his own great-aunts, who, still living though retired to the balmier air of Eastbourne, occasionally visited Ramsgill.
With the numerous Oates children, however, Lucius was a success. He was pleasant and kind and good-humoured, gave them sweets, and after the swing had been put up in the Hill Royd garden, was always ready to give a child or two a turn on it.
On her side Carol raged, of course, against Mrs. Hardaker; Lucius equally of course stood up for his mother, though he often privately agreed with Carol’s criticisms. Under the pretence of tactful help Mrs. Hardaker contrived to be very wounding in the early days of the marriage. She was given to remarking coldly that Carol’s latest frock was “very nice and bright”; she went into a near convulsion over Carol’s plastic flowers and was apt to reset the dinner table or tea-tray while Carol was out of the room. Carol resented these indications privately, but after all the mother-in-law was a familiar joke, it was Mrs. Hardaker’s acknowledged privilege to be tiresome and Lucius did right to stand up for his mother; if it would please Lucius, Carol was not averse to fiddling with a few forks, though she thought all these class tricks were, in the Yorkshire phrase, silly work.
As regards Elizabeth, Carol said nothing. She stood back, as it were, and watched, suspending judgment, not understanding what she saw but respecting it. If any of her family asked her about her sister-in-law, she replied emphatically that Liz was a good sort and devoted to her brother, you never quite knew what she would do but she was all right, really, only rather too highbrow.
On Mr. Hardaker, Carol at first naturally took Lucius’ view that his grandfather was a tyrant, a mean old buzzard. Lucius, who continually read in the press about young men, no older than himself, drawing large incomes and disporting themselves on massive expense accounts, often grumbled about his grandfather’s meanness. “You ought to stand up to him more, love,” urged Carol, but she did not press the matter, seeing clearly enough that Mr. Hardaker was the source of all Hill Royd wealth, and Lucius and he must therefore be kept on good terms.
The birth of John Luke Hardaker produced a change, a realignment of forces, throughout the family. The two Mrs. Hardakers grew nearer to each other, although their mutual resentments were fiercer. Carol was deeply jealous of her child and determined to bring him up as she thought fit, whatever his grandmother might say; Mrs. Hardaker adored the child and was determined to have her grandson brought up as she thought proper. To him she transferred all the devotion which her son and daughter (in her view) no longer seemed to want. “Quite pathetic, really,” Carol described it. Mrs. Hardaker lavished on the baby all kinds of gifts; these Carol did not use if she could avoid it, stuffing toys thus presented away out of sight—though sometimes in an access of pity she brought them out when Mrs. Hardaker was coming to Hill Royd to tea. (John threw all his toys about rigorously without discrimination as to their donor; he was a robust and lively infant, a bold and adventurous little boy). Of course if Mrs. Hardaker’s gift was something really useful to the child, a blanket or a fine winter coat, then John was allowed to use it; the child came first, far and away beyond any resentment of Carol’s. Mrs. Hardaker felt exactly the same, and this was a strong bond between mother and grandmother. Then came the day when John, driving the garden swing ropes above the horizontal, which he was strictly forbidden to do, fell off and cut his head open. The doctor seemed long in coming; Carol sobbing loudly telephoned Mrs. Hardaker, who flew to her on the wings of a taxi. Carol was genuinely grateful.
The friend who had acted as Lucius’ best man, with Carol’s brother Edward and Lucius’ sister Elizabeth, were invited to be the child’s godparents. Elizabeth loved the child dearly, but her views on medical hygiene were more advanced than either Carol’s or Mrs. Hardaker’s, and neither of them believed her to be right—after all, she had borne no children. Accordingly the atmosphere was apt to be cool and strained at first when Elizabeth visited Hill Royd after her nephew’s birth. But one day when Elizabeth asked in her quiet tones “May I hold him for a moment, Carol?” and Carol put the child in her arms, the sight of Elizabeth bending lovingly over him and adjusting his dress with her long soothing fingers struck Carol suddenly as very pathetic.
“I wish you were happier, Liz,” exclaimed Carol.
“I’m happy when I see you and Lucius so happy, Carol,” returned Elizabeth.
But in the consciousness of her own barren and unwanted state as compared with Carol’s, her eyes in spite of herself filled with tears.
“Lucius, you must find someone for Liz to marry,” said Carol emphatically to her husband that night. “She ought to be married. You must look around.”
“I have looked around,” said Lucius uneasily. “But Liz—let’s face it: she isn’t very pretty.”
“What does that matter?” demanded Carol. “Lots of girls who aren’t pretty get married. If you had to be pretty to get married, half the girls in the world would stay single. Why, I remember—” She went off into a long account of how several cousins, of her own whom nobody could call pretty, had yet successfully achieved matrimony: the original subject of the discussion was lost in this family history, somewhat to Lucius’ relief. But Carol felt nearer her sister-in-law thenceforward.
The greatest change of relationship caused in the family by the birth of the first Hardaker grandchild, however, took place between Carol and Mr. Hardaker. When he called to congratulate her and she brought the child to him in her arms, as he bent to look at the boy she kissed the old man’s cheek heartily, and cried between laughter and tears:
“How do you like being a great-grandfather, eh?”
This, to Carol a mere natural expression of her exuberant joy in maternity and traditional belief in the claims of kinship, to Mr. Hardaker was strange and agreeable. It was a long time since he had received tenderness from any woman; he found himself moved and pleased. The boy was a handsome infant, really splendid—he seemed to make all Mr. Hardaker’s textile struggles worth while.
From that time onward Mr. Hardaker began to drop into Hill Royd at the weekend without waiting for an invitation. Carol was the kind of woman he liked, he decided: a good housekeeper, physically attractive, and with no tiresome intellectual pretensions. There was always warmth and laughter and plenty to eat and a hearty welcome from Carol at his grandson’s house, and soon his Sunday afternoon visits became an accepted custom. He usually brought a toy of some kind for the child, on whom he frankly doted. These toys were always to be seen prominently in use about the house. This was partly because Carol wished it, and partly because Mr. Hardaker felt so strongly akin to the boy that his presents were always just what young John Luke liked.
Lucius was always rather grumpy during these visits, Carol noticed. One Sunday afternoon when he returned to the sitting-room from the outhouse where he had been to fetch coal, Carol met him in the doorway, flusl ed and excited.
“Lucius, he walked!” she cried.
“Yes, he did indeed,” confirmed Mr. Hardaker, who was sitting very comfortably in an armchair by the fire, dandling young John between his knees.
Such a dark cloud crossed Lucius’ face, usually so pleasant and good-humoured, that Carol was quite taken aback. She did not press Mr. Hardaker to stay to tea, and as soon as she had seen him off, with appropriate farewell wavings from John in her arms, she came and sat beside her husband, who was staring moodily into the fire.
“What’s wrong, love? Aren’t you feeling well?” said Carol anxiously.
Lucius maintained a morose silence.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Lucius. Tell Carol,” said Carol in a coaxing tone. She kissed him, and holding John to his cheek, urged: “Kiss Daddy.”
Nothing loth, the child obeyed, in the offhand but convincing style employed by children towards a wholly accepted parent.
“He’s my son, not my grandfather’s!” burst out Lucius in a high hysterical tone which Carol had never heard from him.
“Well, Lucius!” said Carol in a tone of tender raillery. “Really!” She withdrew to a nearby chair, and setting the child firmly on his feet, said: “Johnny, show Daddy how you can walk. Lucius, hold out your hands to catch him.”
Delighted to show off his new accomplishment, John tottered across the hearthrug and threw himself beaming into his father’s arms. Lucius smiled and appeared to return to his usual good temper.
It was a pity, reflected Carol, that Lucius felt that way, because really old Mr. Hardaker had been so particularly taken with the boy that afternoon that she had really thought of asking him for an increase in Lucius’ salary, herself. But fortunately she had refrained, knowing, as she told herself wisely, how men felt about these things. But it was a pity.
“I bet I could get a raise out of him,” she often thought. “But of course I mustn’t try.”
Without exactly formulating to herself that Lucius was jealous of his wife and child with respect to old Mr. Hardaker, she knew that he would be wounded beyond bearing if his wife asked his grandfather for any favour on his behalf.
“He’d be hurt in his feelings,” she concluded. It was silly, of course, but men were like that. It showed how much he loved his wife and child, after all.
* * *
Edward read the clauses of the agreement carefully. It was impossible, he had discovered, to court Elizabeth Hardaker without a car, and so a car he must have. It was a nuisance. If the Hardakers had lived in Hudley instead of out at Ramsgill, the thing might have been managed, but the Ramsgill valley lay two miles out of Hudley. To take Elizabeth anywhere—to theatre, film, concert, meeting, restaurant—transport was therefore necessary. He simply could not face the prospect of asking her to travel by bus. Indeed if he did so, she would simply suggest that she picked him up in her own car. He had been thus picked up twice already, and twice was enough, he told himself; his pride could stomach no more. (Besides he feared that Elizabeth’s modesty would take fright and cause her to diminish her invitations.) Reading all the small print with particular attention, he observed with relief: No enquiries are made of Employers. Would it have been better, he wondered for a moment, to have asked old Hardaker frankly for the use of a mill car? But on what grounds? Edward’s Ramsgill duties did not require him to rush around the West Riding; it was his job to stay in the mill and organise production. Old Hardaker was therefore just as likely as not to refuse such a request. No; far better to get hold of a car on the hire-purchase system, and then ask permission to draw petrol from the mill pump—paying for it, of course. Or at least, promising to pay for it. Opportunities to fiddle petrol would doubtless be plentiful; he hadn’t seen Lucius filling up any forms when he drew gas from the pump.
Thirty-six months at rather over twenty pounds a month. It would be a squeeze, but it could be managed. But where on earth was he to find the two hundred pounds for the initial down payment? He had nothing like that sum. Many months’ instalments were still due on his motor-bike. That would have to go, of course. Pity he’d started on it. A bank, perhaps. Banks were always screaming at you to borrow money, imploring you in artistic little brochures, or on large well printed placards, to patronise their facilities; but when you really came to the point, he guessed, they wanted security like everybody else. He had none to offer. He wanted the car by a week on Saturday at latest.
“Is there any point on which you would like further explanation, Mr. Oates?”
“No, it’s all perfectly clear, thanks.”
“Fill up the form and hand us a cheque for two hundred pounds, and you can drive the car away.”
“It’s the two hundred pounds I shall have to do some homework on.”
“Perhaps you own a house? Or—”
“I own nothing but a good job.”
“Owning a car is the first step to a better one.”
“You’re entirely right,” said Edward with his air of frankness. “But at present I don’t just see my way.”
The salesman’s face registered his disappointment.
“But don’t worry,” went on Edward pleasantly. “I shall investigate the possibilities. There’s no way of avoiding this first down payment, this lump sum, I take it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“It’s good to know where you stand,” said Edward. “Well, I’ll take the form with me, and hope to see you again next week.”
The salesman’s face cleared.
Edward stepped away briskly. Where the hell should he get two hundred pounds? If he asked old Hardaker, even if he wasn’t refused, not only would the debt be a humiliation as regards the old man, but it would show in the mill accounts; all kinds of people would know of it—old Whitehead, that monument of integrity and pomposity, for instance, and the female office clerks. Not to be borne. What about Lucius? “Lucius, lend me two hundred pounds.” What a hope! Lucius hadn’t two hundred pounds to spare; he hadn’t anything to spare, Edward shrewdly suspected. Even if he had, he didn’t know it; the personal accounts of Lucius Hardaker were in a hopeless muddle, if Edward knew his man. Besides, Lucius would despise Edward if Edward borrowed money from him in order to court his sister. To court some bint, yes; to court a sister, no. It would be one of the things which were not done. Well, it would have to be a bank. An Annotsfield bank, thought Edward; yes, an Annotsfield garage and an Annotsfield bank; keep the whole thing as far away from Hudley and Ramsgill as possible.
“I’m afraid the answer must be no, Mr. Oates,” said the bank manager urbanely. “For a car, no. For repairs to property, now—that would be different.”
“But even in that case,” said Edward with equal urbanity, though inwardly he raged, “I suppose references would be demanded.”
“Oh, certainly. From a customer, a client of ours, someone with an account at this bank, you understand, we should require merely a reference from his employer. For a non-client, a reference from his employer and a reference from some other person known to us—someone in good standing.”
“And if the loan were not used for the purpose it was applied for,” said Edward, smiling, “the bank would take a very poor view of the matter, I am sure.”
“Oh, naturally! That would be false pretences,” said the manager, shocked. “And of course,” he added sternly, “if the repayments fell into arrears, the matter would be placed in the hands of our solicitors.”
“Well, I’m greatly obliged to you for being so frank and clear,” said Edward. “You’ve been most helpful.” He held out his hand.
The bank manager, mollified, took the hand in a friendly grip. “We should be very happy to have dealings with you at any time you cared to comply with our conditions, Mr. Oates,” he said. Edward noted with amusement that his tone was almost wistful; clearly he regretted having to turn away such an obviously up-and-coming young man.
“Thanks. Many thanks indeed,” said Edward pleasantly. (No point in making an enemy.) “I may take you up on that some time.”
Edward left the building with a cheerful air.
He was indeed well satisfied. He now saw how the loan could be effected.
* * *
“Grandfather, I’m selling my motor-bike.”
“That’s good news, any road.”
“And I’m buying myself a small car instead.”
“Ken has a car,” Edward defended himself, naming a cousin.
“I daresay. He’s ten years older than you. And collecting insurance, think on, he needs a car. What do you want one for?”
“In my present job I need one.”
“Gone over to the bosses, have you?” jeered the old man.
In spite of himself Edward coloured angrily. He kept his tone light, however. “I was hoping you’d sign a paper for me for the bank, grandfather,” he said.
“You want your head examined, lad. What sort of a paper?”
“Well—just to help me get a loan to complete the purchase. Will you?”
“No,” said Sam at once. “I’m not signing no paper for you or anybody else, Ed.”
“Don’t you trust me then, grandpa?” said Edward.
“No,” said the old man. “I can’t say as I do.”
His tone was jocular; he was proud of his grandson but thought him a little too clever for his own good—needed taking down a peg. Sam wasn’t going to encourage anyone in his family to get into debt, not he.
Edward was inwardly convulsed with rage. Wouldn’t you think his family’d be proud of him, after all he’d done; scholarships, technical examinations, the good Annotsfield job and now this first-class opportunity at Hardakers? Instead, they criticised, ran him down; thought nothing of him, didn’t trust him. His grandfather’s refusal was brutal, and so coarsely put. Well, he’d show them.
“I shall have to manage without you, then,” he said cheerfully.
“Seems so,” agreed old Sam.
The next day being Saturday, Edward visited another Annotsfield bank, and filled up a form applying for a £200 loan for the purpose of making repairs and improvements to his house at 5, Deacon Street, Hudley. He signed this form as Samuel Edward Oates, and gave as references his own employer and the minister of the chapel the Oates family attended—the Oates family were great chapel-goers, and Edward, though irked, had not thought it worth while to break the habit.
Of course, this bank transaction was dangerous. There were some awkward moments when the sweat stood on Edward’s brow. He tried to give his former employer’s name instead of Mr. Hardaker’s but could not pull it off; eventually he had to give both. Accordingly:
“What’s all this, Edward?” enquired Mr. Hardaker, emerging from the inner office with a frown on his face and the reference form from the bank in his hand.
“I’m sorry you’ve been troubled with it, Mr. Hardaker,” said Edward sincerely. “It’s matter between myself and my grandfather, really. I’m helping him with this, and he’s helping me to buy a car.”
Mr. Hardaker snorted. For a moment he wondered whether to advise the boy to get any loan he needed from Messrs. Hardaker’s. But from mere habitual caution he decided against it. He went back into the office and signed the form.
The worst moment of all was a sudden wild confusion at the bank when Edward could not remember whether he was pretending that his grandfather was making the application, or whether he himself was pretending to be his grandfather. It was a mixture, really. But he retrieved the momentary hesitation. The latter was, he supposed, the more correct view. Samuel Edward Oates was indubitably the owner of Number 5, Deacon Street, and it was easy to imply that he, Edward, had dropped the old-fashioned name Samuel recently, in order to explain why his reference letters called him Edward.
“It’s not a course to be recommended, Mr. Oates,” said the bank manager stiffly. “Creates uncertainties, you know.”
“But many people employ a ‘usual signature’ as a safeguard, don’t they?” said Edward with an innocent air. “If you prefer it, of course I’ll sign in full.”
He did so, writing Samuel Edward Oates without a qualm; got the loan and the car.
* * *
Mrs. Hardaker liked Edward Oates. He was always cheerful, well-mannered, pleasant; he listened with fresh interest to all her stories, which old Mr. Hardaker and her two children had heard so many times before.
“You mustn’t let me bore you, Mr. Oates,” she said to him occasionally with a smile.
“On the contrary,” Edward always replied on these occasions: “What you say interests me greatly.”
He spoke with truth, for her anecdotes were a mine of information about the Hardaker family and middle-class mores in general. He thus learned all about her marriage, the birth of her two children—Elizabeth perhaps posthumously, perhaps at the very moment Luke Hardaker was being mown down by German machine-guns on the Dunkirk beaches—the 1931 depression, her own bravery in marrying Luke so soon after, the efforts she had made to refurbish Ramsgill House after his death, old Mr. Hardaker’s assistance, Elizabeth’s delicacy as a child, Lucius’ prowess at games, old Mr. Hardaker’s odd pockets of meanness and generosity, and a hundred other such family details which filled in the Hardaker landscape and enabled Edward to tread warily amid its bric-à-brac. His interest was thus genuine and she felt it to be such, and it was a real relief to her, tucked away out here at Ramsgill, to have somebody to talk to. Tonight, therefore, when in response to her remark about her daughter’s wearing of a new frock of stiff blonde silk Elizabeth told her that she was going with Edward to a performance of the Annotsfield Thespians, she expressed approval.
“I think you might be a little kinder to Edward sometimes, you know, Liz,” she said, keeping her eyes down to her tapestry work, at which she had considerable skill.
“Kinder!” exclaimed Elizabeth, taken aback.
“Whatever his birth and upbringing, Edward has the manners of a gentleman. He’s thoroughly presentable.”
“Edward,” said Elizabeth proudly, for she loathed her mother’s standards of assessment, “is a very fine person and a true artist.”
“Whatever he is,” said Mrs. Hardaker—“I must speak out, Elizabeth. I’m your mother, after all.”
“Yes, mother,” said Elizabeth on a note of irony.
“Well, dear,” began Mrs. Hardaker. She paused, and her faded neck flushed. Elizabeth was always so difficult, she was rather afraid of her if the truth were told. She nerved herself to continue. “Whatever he is, he’s the only man who has ever shown any inclination at all towards marrying you.”
“Mother!” exclaimed Elizabeth in anguish. To have the most secret, the most delicate dreams of her heart thus torn out and displayed before the common light of ordinary day gave her as great a physical shock as if the same had been done to her physical entrails.
“I don’t like having to say this, Elizabeth,” continued her mother with some severity: “But you know, dear, you are very difficult. You don’t seem to attract men, somehow. Not very feminine, you know. It’s been a source of great anxiety to me. Anxiety, and worry.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been a source of anxiety to you, mother,” said Elizabeth.
“Well, dear,” said her mother, flushing again: “One doesn’t like to feel one’s children can’t do what other people’s children do, you know. Now tonight, for instance. Why don’t you bring it off tonight, dear? Encourage him a little.”
“I shall not do that, mother,” said Elizabeth, rising. “Please excuse me, I must fetch my gloves.”
“Too proud, I suppose. It’s all such nonsense! Mark my words, Elizabeth, if you lose Edward you’ll never marry. If you want a man you must go after him. Now remember what I say.”
Elizabeth fled. In her own room, she threw herself on her knees by her bed and broke into an agony of weeping. Everything she believed in and honoured had been fouled and soiled, trampled into the mud by her mother’s talk. In one way of course there was a delicious assurance—if Edward’s attentions had become visible to her mother, surely they were real, not mere figments of her own imagination. But all this was ruined by Mrs. Hardaker’s exhortations: to “go after” a man, to try to trap him into marriage as her last chance of this allegedly desirable state, seemed to her so unspeakably vulgar that the mere mention of it made any “encouraging” action impossible.
The bell rang, Edward arrived. Elizabeth scrubbed her eyes, refreshed her make-up, snatched a fur stole and gloves and went down to him.
“Elizabeth!” sang out Mrs. Hardaker from the front room.
Edward made as if to enter to her but Elizabeth shook her head. Edward nodded his understanding, and they went out of the house in silence. In the sweep of the front drive stood Edward’s new car. Elizabeth was so preoccupied with her own sensations that she would not have noticed the car if Edward had not called her attention to it.
“How do you like her, eh? Blue and cream.”
“What an agreeable colour scheme, Edward,” said Elizabeth sympathetically at once.
Old Mr. Hardaker came round the side of the house.
“Is this the new car, Edward?”
“This is she. Neat but nippy,” said Edward.
Edward and Elizabeth climbed into the blue and cream car and drove off.
“You’re sad tonight, Elizabeth.”
“Yes.”
“Your mother has vexed you.”
“Yes.”
“Would it be impertinent to enquire what the vexation concerns?”
“No—since it concerned you,” said Elizabeth on an impulse.
“No! Oh, no!” exclaimed Edward. He was furious: to have the mother against him as well as the grandfather, he thought, it’s too much! If that old frip, that ageing garrulous hag, thinks she can halt my progress, she can think again. “In what way about me? She dislikes your coming out with me?” he demanded in an angry tone.
“No, no!” said Elizabeth, alarmed by the storm of feeling she had roused. “Quite the contrary. She thinks I am unkind to you—not sufficiently appreciative,” she added hastily, laughing, to tone down a statement which now appeared too crude. “Am I insufficiently appreciative, Edward?”
Good old bitch, she’s been urging on the match, thought Edward, delighted. Aloud he said in a tone of stern integrity: “That is a matter entirely between you and myself, Elizabeth.”
It was strange, yet so deeply satisfying, that Edward always seemed to say just the right thing, reflected Elizabeth.
“I am immensely satisfied with our friendship,” went on Edward, halting at the traffic lights. He glanced aside at Elizabeth. Dare I risk it? Is it too soon? If I don’t say any more it will appear as if friendship is all I hope for: that will chill her. He decided to gamble: “But only, of course, because I hope friendship will develop into something warmer,” he said.
Elizabeth made no reply. A delicious feeling of happiness, like a rosy glow, spread throughout her body. Can this be love? Can this really be me, the dull plain unattractive Elizabeth Hardaker, actually receiving what amounts to a proposal of marriage? Her cheek glowed. Edward glanced at her again. He thought triumphantly: “Done it!” At the same moment he felt a genuine protective pity for her which was almost love. Oh, you poor foolish Elizabeth, he thought; you silly child; so noble, so vulnerable, so easy to practise upon. “May I hope for that, Elizabeth?” he urged, leaning towards her. “Of course I know how many disadvantages I have to overcome before I can venture—this car, for instance—it’s on hire-purchase you know, but—”
“No, no!” cried Elizabeth, voicing her deepest convictions. Hire-purchase was to her of course, with her middle-class traditions, unthinkable, a class stigma; but then, as she reminded herself, she repudiated class distinctions with all her mind and heart. “These foolish snobbisms mean nothing to me, Edward. Surely they mean nothing to anyone nowadays.”
In her eagerness to console, to convince, to reassure, in her sympathy for him about the hire-purchase, she had laid her hand on Edward’s coat-sleeve. It was a beautiful hand, long, slender, well-cared for, totally lacking in pointed nails or coloured polish. Edward took it in his own, and bending forward kissed her lips—pale, but to his surprise full and soft. Edward was as subject to the savage compulsion of sex as the next man, and he had viewed as one of the disadvantages of his plan that it would entail marriage with a woman to whom he was not physically attracted. But there was something so clean, so clear, so honourable, so genuine about Elizabeth, about her simple dress of stiff blonde silk, her thin gold chain with the pendant of real stones so unlike the massive bulbous beads of the day, the elegant silk and lace which he saw around her armpit, that to his surprised delight he felt himself begin to stir. Her breast was heavy, warm. “This’ll do me,” he thought with satisfaction.
As he drove home he congratulated himself heartily. Couldn’t have come off better. Didn’t have to seduce her. So much less messy. It’s my belief they’ll be glad to marry her off. I must go slow at first, of course. I’ll see old Hardaker in the morning. But I mustn’t urge a speedy marriage or too swift promotion.
“I’m glad you’ve pulled it off, dear,” said Mrs. Hardaker triumphantly to Elizabeth. “All you had to do, you see, was to encourage him a little.”
* * *
“I hope it’ll be all right,” said Carol uneasily, gazing at Elizabeth’s extremely tasteful pearl engagement ring. Where on earth did Ed find the money to buy that, she wondered? It’s not diamonds, but still! Hire purchase, I suppose.
“It’s an old one, as you see,” said Elizabeth, smiling. “But I love having a ring with historical associations.”
Carol could not possibly believe this statement—every girl would prefer a brand-new ring, she was sure, thinking with satisfaction of the diamond cluster which graced her own hand—and she credited Elizabeth with making it in order to soothe Edward’s feelings. Accordingly she felt warmly towards her.
“Well, I’m sure I wish you every happiness,” she said with emphasis. “I was just a bit surprised, that’s all. I can’t imagine you and Ed—together—somehow.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I am very grateful to Edward,” she said softly.
Carol crimsoned with fury. Grateful! To a man! Hell! She turned away, rushed across the room and began to brush Johnny’s hair with such vigour that he howled and kicked her.
“Edward Oates,” she said angrily to her brother when they were alone for a moment later that evening: “I don’t see why you want to marry Liz.”
“The usual reasons.”
“I don’t believe you. She’s plain and she’s one of the high-flown kind.”
“It seems I prefer that kind.”
“No, you don’t. What I mean to say, Ed: she’s Lucius’s sister and he’s fond of her.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I commend his taste,” said Edward smoothly.
“Look, Ed. Lucius isn’t clever like you, but he’s a grand fellow all the same. What I mean to say: if ever you do anything to hurt Lucius, Ed, look out! I’ll get you! I mean it! So look out. Mind yourself.”
“I will,” said Edward, laughing. “Thanks for the warning.”
“There are times when I hate you, Ed.”
“Get along with you. You adore me. So does Elizabeth,” said Edward with a sly grin.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Carol gloomily.
“I don’t much like this engagement, Lucius,” she said bluntly to her husband when the newly affianced pair, whom they had been entertaining for the evening, had left Hill Royd.
“Why on earth not? You were always wanting Elizabeth to get married. Edward’s your own brother. Very nice arrangement. Keeps everything in the family. Edward’s a clever fellow.”
It was not possible for Carol to be disloyal to her brother. Besides, what had she to say, after all?
“I just hope it will be all right,” she murmured uneasily.
* * *
With great skill, and a carefully maintained gentleness and courtesy, Edward initiated his wife into the secrets of married bliss. For some time their intimacy went well. Edward was first astounded and struck into pity by Elizabeth’s innocence, which seemed to him extraordinary, and then enjoyed the triumph of his mastery over that innocence; Elizabeth was first astounded by the physical facts and the pleasure they gave her, and then immensely grateful to her husband for having thus made her into a real woman. For the first time in her life she felt equal to other women. She held her head high, smiled more readily, and extended the range of the colours and styles in her wardrobe; her face softened, she took more trouble with her fine silky hair and no longer appeared so plain. At first she tried to maintain her cardiograph work but this proved inconvenient for Edward’s mealtimes. Her first duty was to him, of course, she knew, so she gave it up and put in a few hours’ voluntary work weekly instead.
The young Oates pair decided to occupy a charming house, a couple of old weavers’ cottages thrown into each other, on the slopes of the far side of the Ramsgill valley, called Ram’s Hey. This house was Elizabeth’s choice, and (very fortunately, thought Edward) the wedding gift of old Mr. Hardaker, but even so, the outlay on carpets, curtains, furniture, decorations, seemed to him enormous.
This time Edward obtained a loan from a Hudley bank with ease—everyone knew he was marrying a Ramsgill Hardaker, and his grandfather-in-law-to-be had a useful word with the bank manager. But between this loan, and the still far from paid-up hire-purchase on the car, and the engagement ring, and clothes for the wedding and honeymoon and presents for the bridesmaids and air tickets to Italy and of course old Sam’s loan affair, Edward was at his wits’ end for money. Of course it would all come right presently, for surely soon he would be made a director of the firm and his salary be raised commensurately, but meanwhile he was really in the dickens of a mess. In fact he actually found himself on the eve of the wedding without enough cash in hand to pay the honeymoon hotel bills. Besides, he absolutely dared not leave the country without clearing off that S. E. Oates loan. Anything might happen while he was away, not available to tell the necessary lies. He imagined himself receiving, in Venice, say, a cable from his grandfather-in-law saying return at once bank fraud discovered. How Elizabeth’s adoring look would change!
Should he go to the bank? No; he had stretched his credit to the limit there. To Mr. Hardaker? The old man would grant the loan, of course; but the thought of his sardonic comments, now and to come, made Edward hot all over. To Lucius? At this stage Lucius would cheerfully agree but then discover to his astonishment that he was unable to find any money; Lucius with two children, a generous wife, a careless self and no method of accounting was up to his neck in debt in Edward’s opinion, even though Lucius himself did not yet know it.
At this point Edward with an angry exclamation snatched up the evening paper, picked a moneylender’s address from the advertisement columns and walked there rapidly.
He came out with five hundred pounds and a neat little booklet in which his large monthly payments were to be entered. He was immensely relieved; the sun shone again. But he was under no illusions as to what he had done. He had placed an enormous stake on himself and must win. “That a man as shrewd as I should do something so idiotic!” he scolded himself. But then he threw back his head and laughed; he enjoyed playing for high stakes and had always won so far. He paid off the Annotsfield bank with a sigh of thankfulness.
The honeymoon was a success, the house really charming. Both Edward and Elizabeth had taste and Elizabeth had knowledge. Entering his home after a good day at the mill and seeing it exquisitely kept, flowers elegantly arranged in large beautiful bowls, old furniture with tapestry chair-seats admirably stitched by his mother-in-law, agreeable ornaments, an odd modern picture or two bought by Elizabeth before her marriage which in their disintegration of form and colour satisfied his deep personal idiosyncrasy, Edward felt successful and happy. He kissed his wife, always neatly and tastefully dressed even when she wore an apron to prepare their evening meal—her Ramsgill dividends provided her with an ample personal allowance—and felt that he had done well to reach this pleasant temporary resting-place. Temporary, because as soon as he had cleared away the mess caused by the first operation, tidied away his debts, he meant of course to move on and up again. A merger, a takeover would give him the larger scope he was now ready for. Elizabeth summoned him to the table. The evening meals at Ram’s Hey were rather poor at times, Edward thought, but they were elegantly served, and quite soon, when some merger came off and he became a member of the joint board, he would hire a couple, a man and wife, to undertake the cooking. So far, the gamble had been decidedly worth while.
Presently, however, Edward began to experience a certain nagging dissatisfaction. He was jealous of Lucius’ and Carol’s two sons: hearty healthy rowdy boys with black hair and rosy cheeks and strong little legs, always running and tumbling and rolling and shouting. They laughed a great deal, their large brown eyes sparkling with glee. Their grandmother adored them, Edward observed with a jaundiced eye; old Mr. Hardaker seemed to enjoy the noise they made and liked nothing better than to stroll round the gardens of Ramsgill House clutching their hot dirty little hands. The children liked these present-bearing elders, and, thought Edward crossly, knew how to play up to them. Now Elizabeth showed no signs of conceiving. Edward resented this; he grew tired of answering cheerfully “Not yet” to the question of visitors to Ramsgill when Lucius said proudly: “Two boys.” Lucius positively carried photographs of the kids about with him and was always telling anecdotes about them to old Hardaker; it was really nauseating. John Luke and Thomas Oates were their names. Edward worked up a grievance that Carol should have used their father’s name for her second child without even consulting her brother, but this was a mere useful pretence; his real vexation was lest Elizabeth’s barrenness should seem to proceed from a lack of sexual potency on his part.
His enquiries became so frequent that at length Elizabeth grew troubled, and began to feel that once again she was failing as a woman. She nerved herself for a visit to her doctor.
She returned aglow; it seemed there had been a genuine physical hindrance, which a slight operation would put right. She told this to her husband with eager fervour. Edward pretended to share her enthusiasm, but in fact he felt for her at that moment the disgust of a robust and selfish organism for something ailing and imperfect.
However, she conceived. Her pregnancy was exceedingly uncomfortable, and Edward was often hard put to it to control his impatience with her ailments, which Elizabeth strove vainly to keep from his contemptuous eyes. Her labour was protracted and difficult, but Edward forgave all this when she produced a son. There was a moment, when he first saw the rather quiet little blanketed bundle, the little monkey face which was yet so like his own, when Edward felt a gush of happiness and a decision to put all his affairs straight and keep them so. For just a moment it seemed worth while to live an honest straightforward life, work for Ramsgill in an ordinary way and leave it as an honourable heritage for his son. He was surprised and annoyed later when the doctor told him that the birth had used his wife hardly and that it would be wise therefore if she had no more children, at least for the time. But after all, it did not greatly matter, since he had a son.
* * *
Unfortunately Henry Edmund, as the son of Edward and Elizabeth Oates was christened, proved to be a delicate child. Pale and fair in complexion, long and thin in body, weak in muscle, diffident and afraid in mind, he was not a boy Edward could feel proud of. The first year or so of his life was spent wrestling with stomach troubles which made him fretful; his petulant wailing cry, and the sight of the doctor’s car standing yet again at the door, too often greeted Edward on his return home. Elizabeth devoted herself to her baby whole-heartedly, and by her unfailing care, intelligently applied, coaxed the child along into life and something like health.
Mrs. Hardaker was in some ways helpful to Elizabeth with baby Edmund, but she wounded her daughter by her continual references to Lucius’s more robust children, whose early prowess was her unfailing theme.
“Fancy, Tom had three teeth at this age,” she would exclaim. “And here’s Edmund without one.”
“Mother, please don’t make comparisons,” pleaded Elizabeth at length. “It’s so depressing. Poor little Edmund does his best.”
“You can’t expect him to do as well as Tom, dear,” said Mrs. Hardaker in what was meant to be a comforting tone. “Look how small he was at birth.”
In spite of these depreciating comments she loved Edmund and nursed him tenderly enough.
Edward however did not love him. He was ashamed to have produced such a wreckling, and jealous of the time and love which Elizabeth poured out on an infant instead of on himself. He began to dislike Elizabeth; to find her high-mindedness naïve, her devotion to duty a bore. She was really very plain, he told himself irritably.
The sight of his own cheap car standing beside Elizabeth’s handsome and solid model in the old barn which they used as a garage, now began to annoy him. Very little pressure was needed to effect an exchange. He had only to say: “I shall be late tonight—I have to go to a meeting in Manchester this afternoon.”
“It’s only an hour’s drive, Edward,” said Elizabeth, surprised.
“Longer in my small vehicle,” said Edward with a grimace.
“But take mine, Edward,” replied Elizabeth, delighted to do him this service. He protested that he did not wish to deprive her. “It’s not deprivation,” said Elizabeth earnestly. “Yours is easier to park. I don’t drive long distances. Edward, you must take mine.”
He took it, and rewarded her by arriving home in good time and apparently high spirits. Soon the exchange of cars became so habitual that at Ram’s Hey it was taken for granted. Elizabeth once or twice suggested that he should exchange his own car for a new one, but he snapped at this so impatiently that she desisted.
The truth was, of course, that the instalments on the first car were not yet completely paid off. To pay them off would involve him more deeply than ever with banks and money lenders; and he was already in so deep that more involvement simply could not be risked. For now on top of his pre-marital debts he had to cope with all the continual outgoings to which the middle class is subject: heavy income tax, including schedule A demands for the house; rates; gas and electricity and telephone charges; motor licences; occasionally a jobbing gardener; repairs to the Ram’s Hey fabric; life insurance (on which Mr. Hardaker insisted), contributions to one of the private health insurance schemes (Mr. Hardaker again), specialists’ fees for Edmund; charitable subscriptions. No, he could not possibly afford a new car; luckily there was Elizabeth’s.
But after a time, as he might have expected, thought Edward bitterly, Mr. Hardaker noticed the exchange.
“Driving Elizabeth’s car again, I see, Edward,” he remarked drily. “Yours out of order?”
Edward in a fury returned to his own car. What had he got for all his efforts, he raged? A dull wife, a peevish ailing child, an inadequate income, a load of debt, an out-of-date car. His resentment against Elizabeth grew.
* * *
At last one evening when Edward came home from the mill particularly tired and vexed—Mr. Hardaker had made a fuss about the month’s petrol consumption—and found Elizabeth nursing the sickly child amid a collection of pill-boxes and medicine bottles (indicative of some new and expensive treatment prescribed by the specialist), with the fire low, dinner unprepared, her dress untidy, her pale hair drooping unbecomingly about her face, Edward felt he simply could not bear the married state any longer. The child’s howling had made their previous night hideous.
“I’ve been thinking, Elizabeth,” he said in his light crisp tones, dropping into a chair beside her: “Now that all is over between us, as it were, would it perhaps not be sensible of us to part rooms?”
Elizabeth’s face blanched slowly, so that her heavy skin took on the appearance of white scales; her pale eyes widened enormously, her mouth gaped as she looked up at him. (She has good teeth, thought Edward irrelevantly.)
“All over?” said Elizabeth in a low thick tone, as if she could hardly articulate.
“In a physical sense, I mean,” explained Edward hastily. “After what the doctor said about you, you know. No more children.”
The words, “It need not be quite all over,” rose to Elizabeth’s lips, but she was infinitely too proud to utter them.
“Of course, if you prefer it otherwise, Elizabeth,” began Edward, who was rather alarmed by the intensity of her reaction—had he presumed on her docility too far?
“No, Edward,” said Elizabeth slowly, gazingathim. “No. It shall be as you wish. I’ll arrange the spare room for you after dinner.”
“Tomorrow will do,” said Edward, colouring slightly.
“I prefer to do it tonight,” said Elizabeth as before.
* * *
Edward found the new arrangement a great relief.
Elizabeth on the other hand found that it was in the afternoons when one was overwhelmed by one’s grief. In the mornings one rose with courage restored by sleep, there were many services to perform for the child and about the house, one’s daily help was present and one kept up a cheerful façade. In the evenings the effort of maintaining an air of cheerfulness for Edward and any guests provided a sufficient occupation. But in the dead time of the afternoon, when the woman had gone and the child slept and Edward was at the mill, one sat alone and idle by the fire. Then was the time when the sense of being unwanted, rejected, despised, of one’s whole life being a failure, of having experienced the most cruel deception possible to a woman, filled one’s heart with desolation. Her husband did not care for her and never had cared for her. All those agreeable speeches, those tender acts of courtship, were lies. It’s been the same tune all the time, thought Elizabeth bitterly; I am undesirable, no man has desired or could desire me; I was a fool ever to think otherwise.
Yes, in the dead of the afternoon, when the heavy sobs tore one’s throat, one had to get some help in order to stay alive. One took it where one could find it, gratefully.
* * *
Mr. Hardaker awoke. It was dark—about four in the morning, he guessed. He found himself in the grip of an extraordinary sensation. The whole of his torso seemed swollen, curving above him like a barrel. Stiff. Rigid. Almost solid. He could scarcely breathe. The air had only the tiniest passageway to his lungs. He tried to gasp, but could not. He could not breathe at all. He could not move. This is the end, he thought. Well, what of it? Why not? I’m not at home in this modern world. Just as glad to leave it. Yes, this is the end. Take it quietly. No fuss. Lie still. Something will break soon and it will be the end. I played too hard with that young scamp John, this afternoon. Overdid myself. The laughing saucy face of his great-grandson, the fresh rosy cheeks and sparkling brown eyes, rose up before his mind’s eye, and he smiled. Suddenly he experienced a piercing anguish. It was not safe. No! The boy’s future was not safe. There was something wrong. He did not trust—something. What, was obscure—there was something. He must not die. He must not leave Ramsgill. Not yet. The bell. Ring the bell. The bell!
He made a tremendous effort to heave himself up. Something broke. Something in that stiff barrelled body of his broke and turned. A sharp flashing pain, stabbing, severe, but a release. If this is what they mean when they say “he died in his sleep,” reflected Hardaker sardonically, it’s not as cosy as it sounds.
Time passed. This sheet is very rough, he thought, feeling it in surprise.
More time passed. It was not a sheet, he discovered. It was the carpet. He was lying on the floor of his room, face downwards, soaked in sweat, stinking of excrement, scrabbling at the rug with feeble fingers.
This won’t do, he decided. Must get up. Must reach that bell. Can’t leave young John. Can’t leave Ramsgill, though I don’t know why.
He seized the bedclothes and hauled. Pain somewhere. Mustn’t try himself too hard. Go gently. That’s the way. Don’t give up, though. Now the chair. Now on his knees. He crouched, gasping. Be all right in a moment.
At long last his breathing eased, the great thumping heartbeats diminished in violence. Calm and grim, he got to his feet, rang the bell and arranged himself neatly in his bed, tucking in his bedclothes.
* * *
“Hullo! Telly gone wrong?” said Lucius, coming in at midday from the mill. He kissed his wife, who sat knitting sweaters for the boys, with her head down.
“No.”
“Where is it, then?”
“Where do you suppose?”
“How should I know, Carol?” said Lucius rather less affably than usual, throwing himself down in his chair.
“Where do you suppose it is?” shouted Carol, springing to her feet. “It’s gone back where it belongs!”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“You haven’t paid for it! It’s not ours. I got the man to come from the shop—he’s charged us for three months’ rental—I paid it out of my housekeeping. He was quite nice about it.”
“Have you gone mad, Carol?” cried Lucius, horrified. “What on earth are you talking about?” Seeing then that her face was crimson, her mouth set in a tight line, her eyes filling with tears, he remembered her condition—she was pregnant with their third child—and changed his tone: “What’s the matter, dear?” he said in a loving tone. “Aren’t you feeling well? Has something gone wrong? Have you had the doctor? Don’t be frightened. I’ll call him.”
He advanced and took her in his arms, intending to give her a soothing kiss on his way to the telephone. Carol slapped his face hard. He staggered back and sat down on the settee.
“Now calm down, Carol,” he said in the cold tone he only used when he was really angry. “Sit down and tell me what this is all about.”
“How dare you ask me that question!” raged Carol. “You’ve deceived me! You’ve done wrong by the children!”
“Don’t be silly. You know perfectly well I’ve done nothing of the kind.”
“What are all these, then!” shouted Carol, snatching a handful of papers from the table beside her and tossing them up into the air.
“Unpaid bills! Rates! Electricity! Gas! Telephone! Television!”
“There’s only the last quarter,” said Lucius crossly. “And the new telly. So calm down, Carol. You’ll do yourself harm. And upset the children,” he added. “Where are they?”
“I took them over to Elizabeth’s for the day to be out of the way,” said Carol in a quieter tone.
“What on earth did you do that for? Now Edward will know all about this silly row,” said Lucius. “What were you doing going into my bureau, anyway?”
“I was turning it out ready for spring cleaning.”
“That doesn’t excuse you looking at my private papers.”
“I’m your wife.”
“Even so.”
“Oh, I suppose it wasn’t the action of a lady!” shouted Carol mounting again into rage. “Let me tell you, Lucius Hardaker, I was brought up by my grandfather to be honest about money, and such a thing as a bill was never seen in our house. Anything we had, we paid for when we bought it.”
“What about hire-purchase?”
“That’s different.”
“No, it isn’t; it’s just the same.”
“When the rates and that came, we paid it that very day. And you call yourself a rich man!”
“No, I never did that, Carol. If you married me for a rich man, you made a mistake.”
“The rates are very large, Lucius,” said Carol in a slightly softened tone.
“You’re telling me. Everything’s large, and constantly getting larger.”
“But look at these, Lucius. Shoes! Why did you let me buy those shoes with the diamanté heels, if you couldn’t pay for them?”
“I like to see you look nice,” said Lucius in a choked tone.
“There’s two pairs for you, too. Not to mention the children. Of course they’re always growing out of their things. Their feet grow. I can’t help them growing, Lucius,” wailed Carol. She sank down on the settee beside him; he put his arm round her and she wept on his shoulder. Suddenly she withdrew. “And from those wine-merchants,” she said accusingly. “Where’s that one, now.”
She bent down and began to scrabble amongst the bills which covered the floor. Remembering her condition, Lucius could not allow her to do this, and had to go down on his knees and seek out this particular bill, about which he felt a little guilty.
“Look at it!” wailed Carol. “Whisky and sherry and beer and all sorts of things, Lucius!”
“It’s no more than everybody has,” said Lucius staunchly.
“That’s what you think. You are a fool, Lucius, you really are. I can’t think why I put up with you.”
“Look, dear,” said Lucius earnestly. “You’re making an awful fuss about nothing. I get a bit behind with things, I know, but I straighten up by the end of the quarter.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How much do you think you owe, then?”
“Oh, fifty or sixty pounds,” said Lucius, conscious of a rather too optimistic estimate.
“Do you, indeed. Well, I’m not your mother, Lucius; I can add. I’ve added all these up and they come to close on five hundred pounds.”
“Surely not!”
“Add them yourself and see.”
Lucius scooped up a handful of the wretched documents and even on a rough calculation very soon perceived that his wife’s notion of the total was more nearly correct than his own.
“I’d no idea it was so much,” said Lucius uneasily. “Well, we must make a special effort and pay them off by the end of the quarter.”
“You’ll pay them off tomorrow.”
“I can’t, Carol.”
“You must go straight to your grandfather tomorrow morning and tell him what a donkey you’ve been, and ask him for the money.”
“I can’t do that,” said Lucius, not without a certain sombre satisfaction. “Because he’s ill.”
“What’s the matter with him?” demanded Carol sceptically.
“He had a severe heart attack in the night. Mother telephoned.”
“Oh, poor old thing. I’m ever so sorry. Have you been to see him, then?”
“No. He’s to be kept quiet today, no visitors. I’m going tomorrow. Look, Carol. About the television set. You didn’t really send it back to the shop, did you?”
“I certainly did. I telephoned to them to send a man, and he came and took it.”
“You silly child, don’t you see you’ve destroyed my credit? We shan’t be able to buy a thing in Hudley except for ready money. They’ll all know; they’ll all send their accounts in. You’ve destroyed my credit. Why, it might even affect the mill.”
“What’s credit?” jeered Carol sulkily. (She was rather frightened, however.)
“I must put that right. I must go and pay for the telly this afternoon. For heaven’s sake give me some lunch,” said Lucius irritably. “I must get on to this. I shall have to go down to Hudley. Now you stay in this afternoon and wait for them to bring back the television set.”
“How about the children?”
“Fetch them later. You must stay in till the man’s brought the set back.”
“How will you get the money, Lucius?” murmured Carol, subdued by his angry tone.
“Leave that to me.”
“I’m sorry if I did wrong, Lucius,” said Carol, weeping.
“Whitehead,” said Lucius in a peremptory tone to the cashier when he got back to Ramsgill that afternoon, “I shall have to have some money from the petty cash.”
“Yes, Mr. Lucius. Is it for expenses?”
“No, it’s a personal loan. Put it down to me. I’ll settle it with my grandfather when he comes back.”
“Yes, Mr. Lucius,” agreed the old man without hesitation. “How much did you want?”
“How much have you got?”
“We never keep more than £50 in the petty, sir; Mr. Hardaker is very particular about that. We might have a couple of pounds or so more, but that would be all. I’ll just look and see, shall I?”
“I’ll take fifty,” commanded Lucius.
Mr. Whitehead’s eyes widened, but he made no comment.
“Certainly, Mr. Lucius,” he said in a deferential tone.
It was near the end of the month and Lucius’ personal bank account was low, but with the aid of the Ramsgill loan he paid the television account and had the set sent back at once to Hill Royd.
“I’m sorry we’ve caused you all this trouble,” he said in his pleasant voice and with his pleasant smile to the owner of the firm as he wrote out the cheque. “But my wife is just a little off colour at the moment—a trying time, you know; though we have two already—and these whims sometimes take her. I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh certainly, certainly, Mr. Hardaker,” said the man with an air of relief. “We thought it must be something of that kind, if you’ll excuse me saying so. I hope Mrs. Hardaker will be—” he could not think of a sufficiently delicate phrase to cover the situation, and ended rather lamely—“all right.”
“Thanks,” said Lucius, smiling and nodding as he left the shop.
Beneath his affable exterior he was in a fury; to have to play up his wife’s pregnancy to a shopkeeper in order to re-establish his credit seemed to him a degradation to which his grandfather ought not to have subjected him.
* * *
Pale and cross, Mr. Hardaker propped up on pillows surveyed his grandson.
“They tell me I shall have to stay here a few weeks.”
“Don’t you think you’d better have a nurse, grandfather?”
“No. Your mother will look after me. She’s a good nurse.”
Mrs. Hardaker beamed. Armchair and tapestry abandoned, hair dishevelled, harmonies of dress forgotten, carrying a tray of excellent invalid food prepared by her own hand, she was truly happy. To nurse, to nourish, to cherish, was her natural maternal function, which she loved to exercise.
“You’ll have to get yourself a white coat, mother,” Lucius teased her, pleased by her alert and cheerful look.
“Nay, don’t encourage her; she’s nurse enough already,” said his grandfather, smiling however. “You and Edward will have to sign the cheques. It’s the twenty-fifth next week, think on.”
“That rule doesn’t operate with spinners now, grandfather. But I won’t forget, trust me,” promised Lucius.
“With a wife and two children to support, you’d better not,” scolded Hardaker, grimly joking to conceal his own lapse of memory.
“True enough. And we’ve another coming, it seems,” said Lucius.
“Really, Lucius?” said his mother eagerly.
“Seems so.”
“When?”
“Now, Mildred,” said Mr. Hardaker irritably. “Lucius and I are having a business talk. Come to think of it, Edward can’t sign the cheques. He isn’t a director.”
“Do they need two signatures?”
“Of course they do, Lucius! Don’t you remember the arrangements when you were made a director when you were twenty-one? Have some sense, boy!”
“Now don’t excite yourself, Mr. Hardaker,” purred Mildred. “Lucius can bring the cheques up here for you to sign, can’t you, Lucius?”
“Of course.”
Mr. Hardaker gazed at his grandson and sighed. A fine handsome fellow, warm-hearted, affectionate, and since his marriage quite hard-working, but no grasp of finance. No real feeling for cloth, either; though that didn’t matter so much now they had Oates. “Heaven knows what a mess he’ll make of Ramsgill while I’m away,” thought the old man, as his mind roved over the multitudinous complex pieces of business he had had in hand before his collapse. “And I’m going to be away a long time, I can tell.”
“What do you say we make Edward a director, Lucius?” he said at length. “Then you two could sign the cheques.”
“Yes. I think he deserves it,” agreed Lucius.
“Now that he has a son and all, it seems the right thing, perhaps. Edmund’s your father’s grandson the same as your two, think on.”
“Of course.”
“Well—we’d better have a special general meeting of shareholders,” said the old man wearily. “We’ll have it here, in my bedroom. Let’s see now, who are they; me, you, your mother, your sister. Did we give Edward a few shares on his marriage? Seems to me we did.”
“Yes, we did,” said Lucius.
“Edward has been hinting to him about the annual dividend,” guessed Mr. Hardaker. “Well, tell old Whitehead to get out the notices for a shareholders’ meeting, quickly,” he said aloud. “Nay, what am I thinking about? It’s the Board of a company that makes appointments. You ought to have reminded me, Lucius. The Board—at the moment that’s only me and you. Still, we’d better have formal notices. They have to be sent out so many days before the meeting, I think—I don’t remember how many, but Whitehead knows. Get them out this afternoon. Don’t delay. We’ll make you managing director in my place, and Edward a director. I’ll stay chairman—for the present.”
“Grandfather,” said Lucius, colouring. “If I’m to be promoted I hope it will mean more salary. I need a rise.”
“For heaven’s sake, Lucius!” protested Mr. Hardaker, irritated by this (to him) untimely intrusion of a minor matter. “You draw far more than you’re worth already. Your salary was raised when you married.”
“I’ve two children now,” said Lucius stubbornly.
“And a third coming. I know. Well, it’ll have to wait till I get back to the mill and see how things stand.”
“But how long are you going to be away, grandfather?” burst out Lucius, a look of concern appearing on his open face.
“How should I know?” snapped the old man, too much vexed by this stress, as he thought, on a point about which he felt an uneasy uncertainty, to take Lucius’ meaning. His mind was on his own failing health, not on his grandson’s income. “You’ll have to get used to being without me. You’ll have to lose me some day.”
Lucius was left with the impression that his grandfather was shortly about to die.
Naturally he communicated this impression to Edward, who, delighted, returned at once gleefully to driving Elizabeth’s car.
The following week Edward Oates became a director of Messrs. J. L. Hardaker.
* * *
“It seems we have to congratulate you, Mr. Oates,” purred Mr. Whitehead, beaming at Edward over his half-spectacles.
“Seems so,” agreed Edward, smiling. (Yes, and you’ll find it out, you old bastard, he thought.) “Would you care to explain the Ramsgill finances to me now that I’m a director, Mr. Whitehead?” he said in a half-joking tone. (I mean it though, so watch out.)
“Certainly, certainly, Mr. Oates,” replied the cashier, beaming. “Of course you understand that on the previous occasion when you made the same request I wasn’t empowered to comply. I’m sure you understand that.”
“I understand perfectly, and you were absolutely right,” said Edward with his best air of conviction. “But now, if you wouldn’t mind—you will have to take it slowly with me, Mr. Whitehead, I’m afraid, because I’m not familiar with operations on this scale. I rely on you to inform me fully and keep me straight.”
The flattered Mr. Whitehead gave an exposition both clear and detailed. The old buzzard knows his stuff, thought Edward; he’s sharper than you’d think. Disappointment, disillusionment, near despair, crossed through his mind as he listened. There seemed almost no loophole through which he could get his hands on some of the Ramsgill money which he needed with such terrible urgency. A few pounds from the petty cash, of course, he could now get hold of by alleging some necessary entertainment of customers; where old Mr. Hardaker would have demanded to see the bills, that kindly dunderhead Lucius would take Edward’s word for the expenditure. But the amount he could glean from that source was not worth the trouble. The Ramsgill weekly wages bill, approximately four thousand pounds, looked more attractive, but on enquiry proved, at any rate at first sight, to be invulnerable. Edward had hoped that the fact that some members of the Ramsgill labour force were on piecework, their earnings therefore varying from week to week, would give scope for drawing more than was necessary from the bank, leaving a surplus which Edward could perhaps fiddle; but this, it seemed, was impossible; the calculation of the wages bill was a terrific task which occupied Mr. Whitehead and an assistant for a whole day; when it was accomplished, a telephone call to the bank stated the exact form in which the money would be drawn; so many notes, so much silver; Lucius then drove Mr. Whitehead to the bank to obtain this requested currency. The time of departure, and the car used, were varied in deference to the many grab raids which were a feature of the times; but in fact, Edward decided sardonically, nothing would be easier than to conk old Whitehead on the head and snatch his old-fashioned black bag. But though he would have enjoyed doing it, any physical assault of this kind was useless to Edward, who wished to retain the appearance of a thoroughly respectable citizen. (For such a robbery accomplices would be necessary, and these were out of the question, because of blackmail.) He observed with pleasure, though, that the monthly statement from the bank showed only the serial number of each cheque drawn and its amount, omitting all mention of the person or company in whose favour it was drawn. The counterfoil of course would show this name. But surely there was a gleam of hope here.
Edward thought continually on the subject; he kept a close watch on all the firm’s monetary transactions and apprised himself of the largest cheques which Ramsgill customarily drew. The spinner’s cheque he dare not touch, nor did he in general wish to operate any scheme which might damage the Ramsgill credit. It would be better, of course, to wait until Mr. Hardaker died and then borrow the sum he needed from Lucius openly. But the old man tiresomely lingered on while Edward’s difficulties accumulated.
There came a morning when Edward said firmly to himself that he couldn’t wait a day longer. Money he must have by the morrow, or his whole situation would blow sky-high.
The day was Thursday; Mr. Whitehead, looking harassed and frowning, was immersed in piecework wages calculations. He gave Edward the merest glance, irritable enough but very brief, when the young man approached his desk and stood behind his shoulder. By the greatest good fortune there lay on the desk a rate note from the Hudley Corporation, demanding a payment of some £1800 for the year; the moiety, the half of this sum, was now due; if desired, the whole sum could be paid at once and discount secured.
“I’ve an appointment at the Borough Treasurer’s office to discuss our rateable value again, Mr. Whitehead,” said Edward in his light brisk tones. “I’ll take this note with me, if you don’t mind, and the cheque.”
“Certainly, Mr. Oates,” said the cashier crossly. He opened the top drawer of the desk and drew out the current cheque book, then looked about wistfully for an unoccupied area on which to put it down.
“Oh, don’t let me disturb you—I’ll do it,” said Edward. He walked off with note and cheque book, followed by the cashier’s look of relief.
In the office he now shared with Lucius—they had moved into old Hardaker’s—he sat down at his desk, made out a cheque for the required sum payable to Edward Oates, and its counterfoil as paid to the Hudley Corporation. (If his hand shook a little, his writing was still perfectly clear.) He then closed the office door rather carefully, and going over to Lucius’ desk placed both his hands on its flat surface, and leaning on them said calmly:
“Lucius, lend me twelve hundred pounds. I owe it.”
Lucius started and coloured. “My dear fellow!” he exclaimed. “I should be delighted to help you out if I had the money. But I haven’t. I’m hard up myself. Only the other week I had to borrow fifty quid from the petty cash.”
“Really!” said Edward, simulating surprise although he was aware of the transaction.
“But why are you so deep in?” continued Lucius. “Elizabeth has her dividends.”
This was the aspect of the case which presented itself first to his mind, because he had privately often envied Edward for this agreeable addition to his housekeeping.
“I had nothing at all when I married Elizabeth,” said Edward with precision. He had made up his mind that the only way to secure Lucius’ aid was by absolute frankness. “My car—the engagement ring—our household furniture and so on—I had to borrow money for the lot. Edmund’s delicacy,” he added with simulated reluctance, “has not assisted me in my difficulties.”
He thought this appeal to Lucius on behalf of his sister’s son would not fail, and he was right. Lucius’ colour deepened and he shifted uneasily in his handsome revolving chair (once the property of old Mr. Hardaker’s grandfather).
“I’m truly sorry you’re in trouble, Edward,” he said sincerely. “What is so maddening is that Ramsgill could easily afford to clear us both, only my grandfather is so pigheaded about not depleting the reserves. Of course, when—” he paused; he could not quite bring himself to say that on his grandfather’s death the matter could be accommodated.
“I can’t wait,” said Edward briefly. “I’ve struggled—I’ve done everything I can.”
“Can’t you borrow it? The bank would grant an overdraft, I’m sure.”
“I’ve borrowed this money already—I owe it—my creditors won’t wait—I must have the money.”
“What about your Ramsgill shares?”
“They’re already with the bank as security.”
Lucius was horrified. That any of the Ramsgill scrip, so traditionally sacred, should be pledged and in danger of leaving the Hardaker family, opening the way for an intruder into the family firm, was to him an outrageous, impossible situation, which must be rectified at once.
“We’d better just draw a cheque on the Ramsgill account, to cover both of us,” he said hastily.
“Yes. Mr. Whitehead of course will go straight to Mr. Hardaker.”
Lucius looked alarmed. “The shock might kill him,” he said.
“I’ve thought of a way by which the transaction might be concealed for a time.”
“Oh, really?” said Lucius, relieved. “How could that be done?”
Edward laid the cheque book, open, on Lucius’ desk. Lucius took so long to read cheque and lying counterfoil, or at any rate so long to understand their purport, that Edward trembled with vexation.
“I don’t quite see,” began Lucius.
“We can hold back the rate-demand note to the Corporation, and cash the cheque for ourselves,” explained Edward. “Of course; they’ll send us a second notice eventually, but there’ll be a delay of several weeks. By that time—”
He paused, not wishing to be the first to mention the eventuality of Mr. Hardaker’s death which would bring about Lucius’ accession to the majority of the shares and the control of Ramsgill. His meaning, however, was sufficiently clear.
“By that time we may be free to explain to Whitehead that we conducted the little manoeuvre in order to spare your grandfather from shock. If we are not free by then, we can point to the counterfoil and say we sent the cheque. There’ll be correspondence and further delay.”
“What would you do with the demand note?”
“Lose it. Of course we should have to pay it eventually.”
“It seems to me,” mumbled Lucius, embarrassed, “like cheating, you know.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Edward indignantly. “We shall pay the sum back gradually—with interest if that is preferred—after all it’s your own firm, Lucius. It’s merely a temporary accommodation.”
“If I were sure old Whitehead wouldn’t go to my grandfather, I’d rather sign a cheque for each of us, straight out. I might forbid Whitehead to tell grandfather. Yes, I think—”
“But Whitehead’s such an old fusspot, he’d take the first bus up the hill to your grandfather’s bedside,” urged Edward, mindful of the fact that the sum he intended to allocate to himself from the cheque was twice that allotted to Lucius. He knew what Messrs. Whitehead and Hardaker would think of that.
“He’d never forgive us if we lied on a counterfoil, Edward. Whitehead, I mean.”
The brutal words We can sack him rose to Edward’s lips, but he held them back. Instead, he said mildly: “He won’t either way. Whether we take the money outright or by this method.”
“That’s too true.”
“Of course, if you prefer to tackle your grandfather yourself.”
Lucius paused.
He had not the slightest desire to face his grandfather in a fury, and the thought of becoming known in the West Riding—for his mother’s discretion was not to be trusted—as the man who had killed his grandfather by badgering him for money on his deathbed, was equally repugnant.
“Elizabeth will be—upset—if I can’t get clear, I’m afraid,” said Edward, giving the impression of a man modestly using the least emphatic word he could think of, in order not to obtrude his distress.
The thought of his sister, careworn already by that poor delicate kid, weeping over the arrival of a court summons for her husband, or bailiffs or something of that kind, was too much for Lucius. He signed the cheque.
“£1200 for you and the rest for me?” he said.
“That’s right,” said Edward.
He put his signature below his brother-in-law’s and turned away to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
* * *
“It’s this awkward gap in the generations left by the war,” said Henry Morcar, lounging in robust health and admirable tweeds by Hardaker’s bedside. “Here am I touching seventy, and David Oldroyd, my adopted niece’s son, is seventeen. My own son’s not with me, you know; couldn’t settle after the last war; went out to South Africa to join his mother’s brother.”
“They’re heading for a lot of trouble there,” said Hardaker, tactfully avoiding any reference to Morcar’s family affairs—he’d been divorced from his wife for years.
“They are indeed. But Cecil and Fan have a fine place. Tobacco. I went out there last year. However—to come back to this merger idea. It’s this way: who’s to fill the gap between David and me? I make nothing of managers.”
“Nor me.”
“Now your two—what age are they?”
“Both just turned thirty.”
“That young Oates of yours you’ve just made a director—a clever young fellow, by all accounts.”
“Yes.”
“Married to your granddaughter, so he’s in the family.”
“That’s right. They’ve a son.”
“Oates is a good designer.”
“From you that’s praise indeed.”
“Capable on the managerial side too, I’m told.”
“Aye, he is. But I’m bound to say it’s Lucius, my grandson, that I’m most concerned about.”
There was a pause.
“Well—I’m not an ungenerous man, John.”
“I know that, Harry.”
“I don’t believe in dead wood on boards of directors, though. He’d have to take his chance.”
“That’s not a proposition to attract me.”
“I can see it wouldn’t be. But he’d have his shares, after all.”
“He’s very good with customers, Harry. They like him. He’s very steady and reliable. He must have a seat on the board.”
“What’s his best line, then? Does he know yarns?”
“He’s not too bad there,” lied Hardaker convincingly.
“Well—I shall have to think what terms I can offer.”
“Aye, do. And let me know. Write to me here, not at the mill.”
“I’ll do that. No use shouting about the thing till we’ve got a bit further with it. If it doesn’t come off, no one need know.”
“No. I’d rather the lads didn’t know yet. Might unsettle them,” said Hardaker, thinking: Oates would leave Ramsgill and go to Morcar like a shot if he thought Morcar’d take him.
“If we were merged instead of being competitors, we could effect a lot of economies.”
“We could.”
“And be a really big concern. Our cloths would fit in. Your quality’s always been good, John.”
“It has been and it is.”
“Of course, I should have to tie things up pretty tight on my side, you know.”
“You’d be a fool if you didn’t. But I know I can rely on you to be fair.”
“You aren’t all that far away from me at Syke Mills.”
“Not as the crow flies. But we aren’t crows. There’s a two-three Pennine hills on the way between Ramsgill and the Ire Valley, think on.”
“They’ve improved that road down to the Valley from the moor road above you, considerably of late.”
“Really,” said Hardaker, impressed.
“Yes. I came that way this afternoon. You must have a look at it when you’re about again. Well, goodbye, John. Take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
Hardaker lay back comfortably on his pillows. The thought of putting Ramsgill Mills into the care of Harry Morcar, one of the finest manufacturers in the trade and as honest as the day, made him feel really alive again. Of course, most people in the West Riding thought that Morcar’s adopted niece, the widowed Jennifer Oldroyd, was really his daughter; but what of that. A youthful indiscretion. (His wife, one always understood, had been a horror.) In Morcar’s hands Ramsgill and Lucius and Elizabeth and their children would be as safe as, in these nuclear days, anyone could hope to be. He himself could be vice-chairman under Harry, retire gradually as the lads grew up into their jobs, and die in peace. He felt better than he’d felt for weeks. Right back on his feet again. He must get out a few facts and figures quickly about Ramsgill production to impress Morcar. He’d go down to the mill the moment the doctor would allow him—perhaps even a day or two before.
* * *
“Well, don’t look so surprised to see me,” said Mr. Hardaker, closing the office door behind him. “I’m not dead yet.”
“So it appears,” said Edward, laughing. “It’s good to see you at Ramsgill again, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Hardaker. He looked towards Lucius for some similar expression of welcome, but none came. Lucius was in fact looking ill, reflected Mr. Hardaker, very bleached in complexion, altogether wretched and as if shocked. Surely his marriage hasn’t gone wrong after all, reflected Mr. Hardaker crossly; he had the sense to choose a good hearty girl and get two fine children from her, surely he hasn’t thrown it all away for some silly fancy—he won’t get any help from me if he has any ideas of that kind. Oh, of course there are three children now.
“How is my new great-granddaughter, eh? Got a name for her yet?” he probed obliquely.
“Carol Elizabeth,” replied Lucius in a hoarse whisper.
“Very nice,” approved Mr. Hardaker without listening.
But Lucius’ expression did not change. Something obviously was wrong there. And now that Mr. Hardaker looked more closely at the young men, he saw that Edward too appeared a trifle pale. Had they heard something about the merger and resented his secrecy? Or did they dislike the idea? He had Morcar’s letter outlining proposals, in his pocket, and had arranged to discuss them with him at Morcar’s headquarters mill—he owned three—that afternoon.
“I mustn’t stay long; I’ve an appointment at Morcar’s in Iredale at four,” he probed again.
But the young men showed no interest. They had heard nothing. What could it be, then? Those new automatic looms in the far shed, perhaps? He enquired about their performance.
Edward at once became genuinely enthusiastic and offered to take Mr. Hardaker down to the far shed to see them in action. Mr. Hardaker was disappointed; he wanted his grandson at his side. But he could not deny Edward without wounding the lad, so the two set off together, Edward politely opening the door and standing aside for the Ramsgill chairman to pass.
“Whitehead, you and I must have a long session together tomorrow,” said Mr. Hardaker cheerfully, clapping the cashier on the shoulder as they passed through the outer office.
“Yes, indeed, Mr. Hardaker,” said Whitehead, beaming.
It was very agreeable to the old man to be back in his mill. Far too experienced in the Yorkshire character in general and Yorkshire workmen’s character in particular to expect any effusive greetings, he was genuinely surprised and pleased when the foremen of the various departments all came up to him as he passed through, shook his hand and told him they were right glad to see him back, while quite a few of the other workpeople nodded their heads at him, or glanced downwards with an embarrassed smile which showed their shy awareness of his presence. Everything seemed to be going well, Mr. Hardaker decided, looking around him with a shrewd eye; the two lads seemed to have done a good enough job. Why then had Lucius worn that frightened hangdog air? Something at home, evidently. He must get to the bottom of it at once.
By the time he had gone up and down several sets of stairs, walked along several sheds filled with clacking looms, stood talking with several men, crossed a yard, examined a few pieces and glanced at some machines, the old man felt tired, but did not intend to admit it. Edward opened the door into the yard, where Mr. Hardaker’s handsome black car stood in its appropriate parking place.
“You’re allowed to drive, then? That’s good,” he said.
“I can do anything as long as I sit down to it.”
“And since you’ve paid your first visit to Ramsgill in the afternoon, I take it that’s a better time of day for you than the morning?”
“Yes, that is so,” admitted Mr. Hardaker. “Dressing and shaving tire me. However,” he added brusquely: “You needn’t write my obituary notice yet.”
Edward laughed. Somehow his laughter sounded a trifle hollow to Mr. Hardaker, he could not exactly say why. Decidedly there must be something wrong between Lucius and his wife, for this would also explain Edward’s uneasiness, Carol being his sister. Carol was the one to tell him; she was always—sometimes quite outrageously—frank.
“I’ll go to Hill Royd now, at once, I won’t go back to the office,” he decided silently. “I’ve just time before I go to Morcar’s.”
“What you need now is a cup of tea,” said Edward. He glanced at his watch. “It’s a little early,” he lied, “but I expect we can lay it on. Or will it be waiting for you at home?”
Mr. Hardaker did not wish to be delayed by a cup of tea, and as Edward wished to keep him away from Lucius at all costs, the old man soon drove off.
“Are you mad, Lucius?” demanded Edward fiercely. “Can’t you control yourself at all? Need you stand about looking as if you’d been struck by lightning?”
“I have,” said Lucius.
“Such childish behaviour,” muttered Edward, flinging himself aside. “Losing your head.”
“What do you propose to do, then?” demanded Lucius. There was in his voice, Edward reflected angrily, for the first time a hint of that sardonic note so characteristic of his grandfather. To be Lucius’ partner might not be as comfortable as he had hoped. But luckily Lucius was involved in Edward’s misdeeds and could not with impunity cross him.
“About what?” snapped Edward.
“About that forged cheque.”
“It’s not forged.”
“Falsified, then.”
“We’ve still some weeks—”
“No, we haven’t. The monthly statement from the bank will come tomorrow. That cheque will be listed as paid, but we’ve no receipt to show from the Hudley Corporation.”
“It’s a pity you didn’t show this remarkable financial grasp a little earlier, Lucius.”
“Yes, it is. Whitehead will show grandfather the statement and absence of receipt—you heard them arrange to have a session together. Grandfather will find the trick out tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“There’s only one thing to do; own up. We must tell grandfather this evening.”
“My God, Lucius!” cried Edward. “Don’t you see what that will do to me? Your grandfather will throw me out of Ramsgill.”
Lucius paused. “Yes, I expect he will,” he said.
“If he does, by God I’ll take you with me,” said Edward with vicious emphasis. “I’ll wreck your credit—I’ll tell the tale everywhere—I’ll put the whole idea down to you.”
“Who’s losing his head now?”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, let’s think of something to do.”
“There’s nothing we can do, except own up,” said Lucius. (He could not bear to use the word confess.)
“Then we’ll be Mr. Hardaker’s slaves for the rest of his life.” said Edward bitterly. “Everything we do he’ll carp at.”
The change in Lucius’ face showed him that he had struck home.
“He’ll tell Carol and Elizabeth.”
“No!” exclaimed Lucius. “No!”
“Yes, he will. He’ll take it out of us in every possible way. It’s a pity, because we’ve been at ease these last few months—working together has been pleasant. At least it has been pleasant to me,” said Edward, ending on an interrogative note.
“And to me,” responded Lucius. “I’ve felt free, I’ve felt my own man. We haven’t done so badly, either.”
“Why did he have to recover,” raged Edward. “If only he’d quietly died.”
“Well—he’s very much alive.”
“For the moment. He’s very easily tired, he’s very frail. He might have an attack again any time. In his car, for instance. He might easily collapse and go over the edge of the road or crash in traffic.”
“Not before tomorrow afternoon.”
There was a pause.
“He’s gone to Morcar’s Iredale place,” said Edward then in a strained voice. “He’ll come back by that moorland lane they’ve just resurfaced.”
Lucius was silent and looked aside.
“Nobody knows we know he’s gone there, except ourselves,” said Edward hoarsely. “The office door was closed.”
The two men exchanged a long strange look.
* * *
Mr. Hardaker’s reception at Hill Royd was all that could be desired. Johnny and Tom, their bright cheeks indicating their admirable health, were rushing around the garden in mufflers and wellingtons, pretending to be aeroplanes; they vanished round the back of the house as he dismounted from his car. Carol answered his ring.
“Why, Grandpapa!” she exclaimed, beaming. She kissed his cheek. “How lovely to see you! Have you come to see Baby? She hasn’t woken from her nap yet but I daresay she will soon. I’ll just pop the kettle on. Come and sit down. Or would you like just a peep at Baby first? She looks lovely when she’s asleep.”
Mr. Hardaker allowed himself to be guided to the cot, in which lay a beautiful little creature. Her abundant hair and long eyelashes were dark, her round cheek rosy with sleep; she opened deep blue eyes and drowsily closed them. Mr. Hardaker respectfully raised her tiny little fingers and placed a five-pound note beneath.
“How good of you, grandpapa!” said Carol gratefully. “You are kind, really! You look tired, though. Come and sit down. Sit down here. I’ll just make a cup of tea.”
It was difficult to believe anything could be seriously wrong in a household where the mother looked so confidently happy.
“How is Lucius, Carol?” Mr. Hardaker enquired when she returned.
“Oh, he’s splendid. Very well,” said Carol, cheerfully pouring cups of strong tea with a lavish hand. “He was a bit worried a few weeks ago—we had quite a row!” She laughed. “About some bills. Lucius is a grand fellow, you know, grandpapa, but a little bit careless at times. But it’s all over now. He’s paid them all.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Hardaker, rather surprised but pleased.
“Yes. I told him he must. He’s really as good as gold. And so lovely with the children.”
“There’s nothing whatever wrong here, then?” said Mr. Hardaker, looking around him at the untidy, warm, lived-in room with satisfaction.
“Nothing whatever except we’re short of money,” said Carol, laughing.
Mr. Hardaker scowled. “Why doesn’t Lucius tell me so, then?” he grumbled. He stopped suddenly and coloured a little; it seemed to him that he vaguely remembered Lucius saying something of the kind to him on various past occasions. Nothing detailed, though; nothing to take seriously. “Well—I shall have to have a talk with Lucius, a serious talk,” he concluded.
“Yes, do. Why did you think there might be something wrong here, Grandpapa?” said Carol.
“I was at the mill just now and I thought Lucius looked worried. In fact, both Lucius and Edward seemed a trifle off-colour. I just wondered if there was something upsetting them,” replied Mr. Hardaker.
There was a pause.
“Have you seen Elizabeth lately, Mr. Hardaker?” said Carol.
Her tone was so unusually quiet, subdued, almost delicate, that Mr. Hardaker was startled.
“Elizabeth? No. Why?”
Carol paused again.
“I think you should go to see her some afternoon. When she’s alone, you know. I do really, Mr. Hardaker. I’m not throwing you out, you know, but I think it would be a good idea if you went now.”
Mr. Hardaker got up in a hurry. “But why? What’s wrong with Elizabeth? Is it the child?”
Carol said nothing, but fetched his coat and helped him to put it on. Nowadays this was rather a breathless business for Mr. Hardaker, but he controlled his weakness and said in his usual commanding tone:
“Carol, tell me at once; what is the matter with Liz?”
Carol met his eyes but made no reply. She opened the door, and taking him firmly by the arm, helped him down the steps.
“Give her my love,” she said.
* * *
Mr. Hardaker knew what was the matter with Elizabeth as soon as she kissed him in welcome. She appeared astonished and a little embarrassed to see him, but her embrace was warmer than usual; she exclaimed with a strangely wistful air: “How lovely to see you out again!” took his coat and seated him by the fire with gestures of very real affection. But it did not need the bottle and glass on the stool beside her to inform Mr. Hardaker. Her walk was unsteady, her speech blurred; the air about her reeked of alcohol.
“Elizabeth, you’re drunk,” he said.
A slow heavy flush invaded Elizabeth’s face. She turned aside from his look and was silent. Mr. Hardaker leaned forward and took her hand.
“How long has it been going on, love?” he said in a tone of deepest sympathy.
“Just a month or two.”
“You’re unhappy with that fellow!” exclaimed Mr. Hardaker furiously. “I ought never to have let you marry him.”
Elizabeth covered her face with her hands and broke into sobs. Her grandfather pulled her down beside him so that she leaned against his knees. He put his arm about her and drew her head to his shoulder.
“Tell me all about it, Liz,” he urged. “What has he done, damn him?”
“He never loved me, grandfather,” sobbed Elizabeth. “I never attracted him in the least. At first I believed he loved me, I believed everything he said, but once you perceive one falsity, you see all the lies. As though a coloured veil of lies was suddenly split; it all floats away and the whole landscape looks different.”
“She’s thought about it, she’s gone over it over and over again and worked it all out,” thought Mr. Hardaker sadly, discomfited nevertheless that a woman could express herself at such a moment in such high-flown terms. In spite of himself he could not help feeling that a grief expressed in such fanciful comparisons might well itself be fanciful. “But why else should he want to marry you, Elizabeth?” he said soothingly. “A man doesn’t go into marriage lightly, you know.”
“To get into Ramsgill,” flashed Elizabeth. “That was all he wanted. Grandfather, turn him out.”
“But what would you and the child live on then, my dear?” said Mr. Hardaker.
“I could go back to work. Grandfather, we’ve always been honourable people at Ramsgill. Edward isn’t honourable. He cares only for himself. You must get rid of him, you must turn him out. He’ll bring us all to disaster!” cried Elizabeth, beating his knee with her hand hysterically.
Every prejudice which Mr. Hardaker had ever felt against Edward, every irritation, every small distrust, rushed back into his mind.
“How has this quarrel come about exactly?” he demanded.
“There has been no quarrel. We’ve parted rooms at his request, that’s all,” said Elizabeth with bitterness. “But that’s only one thing, grandfather, that’s only the small rent in the veil. Everything he has said and done now shows as the falsehood it really was.”
“But it may be just this drinking of yours, Elizabeth. It must grieve Edward, you know.”
“He doesn’t know of it. Oh, it’s sufficiently obvious, I’ve no doubt,” said Elizabeth. “I expect the whole Ramsgill valley knows it. I’m sure Carol knows. She brought the children over here one day and fetched them in the afternoon. But Edward and Lucius don’t know. Edward doesn’t see it because I take precautions and he avoids me, and Lucius of course never sees anything, poor dear. There’s Edmund,” she said as the child’s fretful wail came to their ears. She rose. “He’s awake. I must go.”
“Elizabeth,” said Mr. Hardaker strongly, holding her by the wrist. “Leave Edward. We’ll get you a separation from him. It’ll be a tough job; he’ll cling like a leech and unfortunately he owns some Ramsgill shares, but I’ll buy him off somehow. Slip a few things into a suitcase for yourself and the child, and come home with me now. I’ll postpone my appointment; I’ll drive you home. Wouldn’t you like to do that, eh?”
“Yes, I should. But would it be right? After all, he’s my husband. I ought to stand by him. I made marriage vows.”
“Don’t make a martyr of yourself, girl,” said Mr. Hardaker. “It’s never any use. Stand up for yourself for once. You have your rights.”
“And what would mother say?” blurted Elizabeth suddenly.
“What does that matter? It’s my house.”
“I don’t know whether I could stand the humiliation, grandfather. Mother would remind me every minute of every day that I couldn’t hold my husband.”
“Well, of course, if you’d rather be miserable with a scoundrel than stand up to a few silly remarks from your own mother, there’s nothing more to be said,” said Mr. Hardaker crossly, disgusted. “My God, look at the time. I’m due in the Ire Valley in ten minutes. Think it over, Elizabeth,” he added more kindly as he made for the door. “But make up your mind fast. There’s a merger suggested for Ramsgill; if we’re getting rid of Edward it’ll be off. So think fast. Mind what I say, now: don’t sacrifice yourself for nothing. Of course, you know best how things are between yourself and your husband.” He looked at her unhope-fully: her drooping hair and tearful face, her air of perplexity and her wobbling gait, irritated and saddened him. No spirit, he thought; naïve, high-flown, spinsterish—I don’t altogether wonder at Edward, damn him. Carol has twice her sense. “Have a word with Carol, perhaps,” he suggested. “She sent you her love. You might just telephone Henry Morcar at Syke Mills and tell him I’ll be a few minutes late,” he added in a different tone as he opened the front door, giving the number.
* * *
“Carol,” said Elizabeth in a high shaking voice: “I’ve rung you up to tell you—it’s only right that you should know—you’ve always been so kind and sympathetic. I’m thinking of leaving Edward.”
“Oh, no! No, Liz!” said Carol emphatically. “You mustn’t do it. Think of Edmund. Of course I’ve seen for a few months that it hasn’t been going as well as it should—”
“You mean you knew I was drinking,” said Elizabeth.
“Well, really, Liz! I never thought of it that way—I just thought—but don’t leave Edward, Liz love, don’t. A woman leaving her husband, you know, that’s dreadful. For Edmund’s sake, Liz.”
“I notice you don’t say for Edward’s sake,” said Elizabeth, regaining her composure.
Carol exclaimed. “Of course I do, Liz love,” she said.
“You’re lying, Carol my dear,” said Elizabeth. “And you’re not a good liar. You knew from the beginning, from when we were first engaged, that he didn’t really care for me. You knew, didn’t you?”
“No, of course not,” lied Carol unconvincingly.
“I well remember how uneasy you were when we first announced our engagement.”
“Liz, you sound terribly, terribly—I don’t know exactly, but it doesn’t sound a bit like you. Sort of cynical, as if you didn’t care.”
“I do care, Carol,” said Elizabeth, her voice shaking again. “But what’s the good? I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving Edward. He’ll be delighted, I assure you.”
“No! No! Look—I’ll come round to see you.”
“How can you, with all those children?”
“I’ll get my next-door neighbour to sit in with them.”
“It is no good, Carol,” said Elizabeth sharply. “Don’t come. I’m going out. I shan’t be here.”
“Elizabeth,” said Carol, deeply earnest. “You must not leave till you’ve told Edward. That’s only fair. You must wait till he comes home from the mill. You must, really.”
“I shall have to do that in any case,” said Elizabeth with irony, “because he’s driving my car. I’m just taking Edmund out in his pram, as usual.”
* * *
“I may as well be straight about it, Harry—it’s a habit of mine. I’ve bad news for you,” said Mr. Hardaker, sinking into an agreeable armchair in Henry Morcar’s handsome and commodious modern office. “I’m afraid the merger idea is off.”
“Why? Young men not like it?”
“Nay, I haven’t told them,” said Hardaker wearily. “But the one you’re interested in—Edward Oates—I don’t feel certain about him. My grand-daughter and he are splitting up. She thinks he’s a scoundrel.”
“It may be only just a matrimonial row, you know. Young women—especially if they’re in the family way—get hysterical ideas sometimes.”
“She’s not in the family way. They split rooms a couple of months ago.”
“A couple of months? That sounds more serious,” said Morcar thoughtfully. “Haven’t they any children, then? I thought you said—”
“One. A wreckling, poor child. Elizabeth says Edward only married her to get into Ramsgill.”
“It would be more convenient if all this were just a young couple’s flare-up.”
“It would. But I don’t think it’s that. Somehow—” Mr. Hardaker paused and ruminated. “Somehow I don’t think I’ve ever been quite sure of Mr. Edward Oates. Of course if you want to offer him a big job here in Syke Mills, now’s your chance. Take him and welcome.”
“Thank you for nothing,” said Morcar with a grimace. “I want somebody I can trust.”
“Well, you may find yourself able to trust him.”
“But you can’t.”
“No. Of course, I may be doing him an injustice. But when his own wife says he’s dishonourable and wants you to throw him out—”
“It gives you to think.”
“It does indeed.”
“Does he hold any Ramsgill shares?”
“Yes, damn him,” said Hardaker with a sigh. “I shall have to buy him out and that’s going to cost a pretty penny. I wish I were misjudging him. He’s such a clever lad—really very capable, and as you said yourself a good designer.”
“Pity.”
“Would you like to come over and have a look at him? Elizabeth may be wrong, you know.”
“I might at that,” said Morcar thoughtfully. “But only if he doesn’t know what I’ve come for. Otherwise it’s useless.”
“How could he possibly guess? I shan’t tell him, you may be sure.”
“Have you mentioned anything at all about the merger to them?”
“Harry,” said Hardaker soberly. “I give you my word I haven’t said a word of it to a living soul. It crossed my mind this morning, when they both seemed so uneasy, that they might have heard a word of it from your side—”
“—so I told them I was coming over to see you this afternoon. Just to see their reaction, as it were.”
“Well?”
“There wasn’t any. They showed complete indifference. Didn’t even ask me what I was coming to see you about. They dismissed it as just one of old grandfather’s—”
“Ploys.”
“Exactly.”
“All right, I’ll come. Tomorrow, eh? Because if it’s not to be a Ramsgill merger, it will have to be somebody else, you know, John. I want to get a good man settled here and working under me to learn my ways, as soon as possible.”
“I understand. Come about half past three and we’ll all have our cup of tea together.”
“And no mention of a merger or anything of that kind, to a soul.”
“You have my word,” said old Hardaker stiffly.
* * *
The wintry twilight was just sinking into dusk when the sound of a car travelling up the steep winding lane towards them came to the ears of the two men as they stood at the edge of the moorland road. It was the dead time of the afternoon; the mills were still at work, but the traffic out here had dwindled as car-owning men made for home. At a turn in the lane the black car now appeared for a moment, far below.
“Here he comes,” said Edward to Lucius, grimly.
They watched in silence as the black car wound round the folds of the hill towards them. The wind blew cold; the turbulent landscape of rocks and heath had now lost almost all its colour; the road was mercifully empty; dark grey clouds drove furiously across a pale watery sky.
“Suppose he doesn’t stop?”
“Don’t you know him better than that?”
Edward climbed into the car which had brought them—Elizabeth’s as usual—which stood on the grass verge of the main road, and drove it obliquely halfway across the first bend in the lane; then dismounted.
“Hadn’t you better put on your lights,” suggested Lucius, “in case it looks odd without them?”
“Losing your nerve again?” jeered Edward. Nevertheless he reached into the car and turned on the side lamps. He then opened the boot and drew out the jack lever. “Here; take this.”
Lucius trembled as the cold iron touched his hand.
“Make to take off the wheel,” said Edward, handing him the jack.
Obediently Lucius stooped and tried to place the instrument for this purpose. But he could not find the proper position; the bars of the rear axle and the jack seemed to swell and diminish and become entangled. At least, however, in his stooping position he was spared a view of the black car’s approach; only heard the scrunch of the wheels as it drew up behind him.
“Anything wrong?” called old Mr. Hardaker’s voice. “Can I help?” He opened his door, dismounted. “You!” he said, surprised. “What are you two doing here?”
This was the point of no return, for he had recognised them. Lucius sprang up, whirled round, found himself face to face with old Hardaker. Behind him loomed Edward, his face livid, his mouth open, distorted; he cried: “Now!” and struck Hardaker’s head with a spanner. Blood spurted and flowed. A most extraordinary look of childish fright came over the old man’s face; his eyes widened, he put out gloved hands and stumbled forward.
“Strike, damn you!” yelled Edward.
Lucius lifted the lever. Even now he could not bring himself to strike at the face, but hit hard at the shoulder. A bone cracked and Hardaker fell sprawling in the road. Then Lucius remembered all the dangers and frustrations and jealousies to which this old man’s existence exposed him, and he struck savagely, over and over again, not knowing what he was doing, until Edward laid a hand on his arm, saying: “That’s enough.”
They lifted the body between them and wedged it at the wheel in Mr. Hardaker’s black car, then pushed the car across the lane, across the rough grass verge, over the rocky edge. Suddenly it slipped from their hands, sprang down the steep slope, stumbled, hit a rock, overturned and burst into flames. It seemed to Lucius that for one very brief moment he saw a body thrown into the air as the petrol tank exploded.
“Well, that’s that,” said Edward. “Let’s get away from here.”
They threw their weapons into the boot and jumped into their car. After an uncomfortable moment Edward, swinging the wheel and accelerating hard, got them up out of the sheltering curve and on to the main moorland road. A lorry passed, but it was travelling swiftly and the driver could have had but the barest glimpse, if any, of their number plate. Edward drove fast; after a few minutes they left the moor behind them, and came to fields, the church, Ramsgill village.
It was now quite dark, and suddenly in the valley below and on the distant hills long chains of lights sprang into existence, marking the roads, punctuated by blocks of lights here and there—the mills. Smaller and dimmer gleams came up in scattered houses on the upper slopes. At a turn in the road the lights of Hudley could be seen reddening the dreary sky. From this height there was, indeed, a superb industrial panorama, a West Riding nocturne. It was so beautiful and so friendly, so familiar to Lucius and so well-loved, that tears of fond sentiment stood in his eyes. He was glad to be away from the cold wild moorland, with all his problems solved and left behind him. He could scarcely believe that he would never see his grandfather again. Poor old thing! But what a relief! He lived through the murder again.
“Edward,” he said suddenly: “I have a feeling I saw—the body—thrown clear of the car.”
“What does that matter?”
“Perhaps we ought to have gone down to make sure?”
“Good heavens, no! It was sure enough.” Edward paused, and added with meaning: “There were plenty of rocks.”
“To account for the injuries, you mean.”
“Exactly. Though you let yourself go, rather.”
“You struck the first blow,” said Lucius in a heavy menacing tone.
“We’re both in it together—we know that,” said Edward impatiently.
“Yes, we are.”
“All we have to do is to stick together and tell the same story.”
“Oh, I agree.”
“Well, here we are,” said Edward, driving through the arch way into the Ramsgill Mills yard. “Don’t forget: we’ve been to call on Butterworth the merchant in Annotsfield—where you were very convincing, I must say, Lucius, about our new spring ranges; an admirable performance—we’ve been to Butterworth’s in Annotsfield and we’ve come back by the usual Denbridge Road.”
“Not over the moors,” said Lucius.
“Why on earth should we have come over the moors?” said Edward irritably. “Of course we didn’t come by that roundabout route. Don’t forget, Lucius: we didn’t know where Mr. Hardaker had gone and so of course we couldn’t know which way he would be coming back.”
“You surprise me,” said Lucius sardonically.
“Nobody knows that we knew, so we didn’t know,” said Edward with emphasis. “For heaven’s sake remember that; it’s our alibi.”
“I shan’t forget,” said Lucius.
* * *
They drew up by the office door.
Carol came running down the steps.
The two men gazed at her almost stupefied. After the frightful crisis through which they had passed, they were unable to return to normal life so promptly.
“Ed,” said Carol, laying her hand on her brother’s arm as he dismounted. “I’ve been waiting here a clock hour for you. If you want to save your home you must go up there at once. Elizabeth rang me up in a terrible state. She’s thinking of leaving you.”
“Good God! Why?”
“That’s for you to say, Ed,” said Carol soberly. “But she’s serious, I can tell you that. You must go at once.”
For a moment Edward actually experienced relief. To be free of his dreary wife, he thought, would be splendid. Then he suddenly remembered that at this particular moment he could not possibly afford to appear to be on bad terms with any member of the Hardaker family. He sprang back into the silvery car and drove off at once to Ram’s Hey.
* * *
“Elizabeth, this is all nonsense,” said Edward severely. “You’re upsetting the child.”
Edmund was indeed screaming his disapproval; he did not like being lodged in his carry-cot and laid down on the floor of the Ram’s Hey hall. Elizabeth made no reply to her husband; she opened the front door, carried out the cot, opened the back door of her car and wedged the cot on the seat.
“You love me, Elizabeth,” began Edward.
“I used to love you,” said Elizabeth, returning for her suitcase.
“If I had known how much you cared about the room business, Elizabeth,” began Edward again.
“Don’t humiliate me any further, Edward,” said Elizabeth coldly. “It’s quite unnecessary, believe me.”
She opened the boot of the car and threw in the suitcase, then climbed behind the wheel.
“Must we really part, Elizabeth?” said Edward incredulously. “Won’t you think it over? Why this sudden decision?”
“Carol knew you never loved me; she knew when we were first engaged.”
“Carol knows nothing of my feelings. Where are you going now?” said Edward with dignity. “I have the right, I think, to know where you are taking my son.”
“To grandfather’s, of course.”
We can pass it off to the outer world by pretending she went to support her mother, thought Edward in a flash; old Hardaker’s burnt-out car will be found soon, Mrs. Hardaker will be in hysterics—yes, it will appear quite natural.
“Well, I shan’t attempt to stop you, Elizabeth. I shan’t attempt to exercise my authority over you, that’s not my idea of how to behave,” he said with a noble air. “You’re tired out with nursing Edmund, you don’t know what you are saying; I shall hope you’ll return home tomorrow afternoon—” she’ll have had enough of her mother by then, he thought—“and we’ll forget all this and be happy together.”
He stooped to kiss her cheek, but she turned her head sharply aside. Offended, he stepped back, and gave her a small stiff bow as the car drove away.
It was only after its sound had died away in the distance that he remembered: the blood-stained spanner and jack handle lay in the boot of the car she drove. If her case became stained—if Mr. Hardaker’s body should be intact—
Frantically he leaped into his own car and drove after her to Ramsgill House. But he was too late.
* * *
Extract from the Hudley Weekly News:
To Woollen and Worsted Manufacturers, Cloth Finishers, Dyers and others,
Re Messrs. J. L. Hardaker, Ltd.
(In Voluntary Liquidation after the Recent Sad Events)
By order of the Trustees for the Shareholders
Messrs. X, Y and Z
have been instructed to offer for SALE BY AUCTION, on the premises, on Tuesday –th, 196–, at eleven o’clock precisely All those Extensive Freehold Manufacturing Premises known as
RAMSGILL MILLS, Ramsgill, Hudley.
The works, which have been well laid out, occupy a commanding position on the main Hudley-Annotsfield Road, with a
GROUND AREA of 14,000 square yards.
The buildings, which are of substantial construction and in good condition, contain a
FLOOR SPACE of 75,000 Square Feet.
Also, on the four following days at 10.30 a.m. each day, piecemeal
The whole of the MANUFACTURING PLANT AND MACHINERY, comprising the following lots …