It was March 1940. Morcar was out for a walk with David, who had a few days’ leave. The two men came out of the gate of the park to high fields, and struck up a stony lane towards the moor. David stooped and released Heather from his lead, and the dog bounced rapturously ahead.
“It’s grand to be out here again,” said Morcar, sniffing the keen air appreciatively. “I never seem to do any walking now you’re away, David. I wish you were back home, lad.”
“I might as well be back home for all the good I’m doing in the Army, at present,” said David bitterly. “The Army! My God!” But he had vented his vexation on this point already and was never one to press his own affairs at the expense of his listener’s; he turned instead courteously to Morcar’s grievance. “You know, the idea of this new Export Council seems thoroughly sound to me—I can’t understand why you don’t like it. According to the Cash and Carry Act in the United States, we can only get munitions from there by paying dollars and bringing the stuff across the Atlantic ourselves. Our dollar reserve is getting very low, so we must earn more dollars. The only way to earn dollars is by selling our products in the States. We make the cloth, we sell it in U.S.A., we use the purchase price to pay their munition manufacturers for aircraft and tanks and guns. They get the cloth, we get the munitions. God knows we need munitions,” concluded David.
“I know all that,” said Morcar testily, though conscious that he understood the matter better when thus simply stated.
“So we must have more exports—we must have an export drive.”
“We must have more exports, but I don’t see any need for a Drive, or a Council, or a Group, or any of these things with high-falutin’ names,” growled Morcar. “I’ve exported scores of thousands of yards of wool tissues, as the Board of Trade calls ’em, in the last twenty years, and I don’t need any Government official to teach me how to do it. Especially when they’ve never been in a mill in their life, and most of them haven’t. Look at Edward Harington!” he went on, for this was a sore point with him: “Here he is with a high-up job in one of these Ministries or Departments or what not, pretending to be an expert on industrial relations. He doesn’t know a single thing about industry except what he’s picked up from me.”
“That might be not inconsiderable, however,” said David, smiling.
Morcar snorted.
“Everyone in wool textiles doesn’t know his job as well as you do,” urged David. “This Export Group will co-ordinate the export effort of the whole industry.”
Morcar snorted again.
“You don’t mean you intend not to co-operate?” said David in alarm.
“I shan’t have much choice, seemingly,” said Morcar in a disgruntled tone. “If the Government sets up an Export Group for the Wool Textile Industry or whatever the name of the thing is, we shall have to do what it says, choose how.”
“You form one of a Sub-Group, and the Sub-Group elects its own representative to the Export Group, as I understand it.”
Morcar groaned. “All this jargon,” he muttered crossly.
The two men reached the open moor, and paused to admire the turbulent hills which, in mat shades of green and sepia, rolled tumultuously away in every direction. The wild March wind roared round their ears and stung their faces; dark grey clouds chased each other swiftly across the sky, occasionally throwing to earth heavy spears of steel-coloured rain. In the distance Annotsfield, its mill-chimneys agreeably miniature, clung precariously to several hillsides. Heather galloped away, his black pointed ears emerging occasionally above the sombre stems of the plant which gave him his name.
“By the way, where’s your cousin GB nowadays?” asked Morcar, as his eye identified the distant slope of Booth Bank.
“R.A.F.”
“Of course I shall co-operate with anything that’s intended to help win the war,” said Morcar in a milder tone, reverting to the Export Group. “But you can’t expect me to like it—any more than a dog likes being put on a lead.”