Morcar’s recent travels had made him tired of hotels, and for his London visits he installed himself in a service flat overlooking Hyde Park. He was asleep there one wintry morning in the December following his return from the U.S.A. when the telephone rang at his bedside. The call was so early that he snatched up the instrument in some alarm, and cried: “Harry Morcar here,” very urgently.
The caller evidently successfully pressed button A in a call-box, for pennies could be heard falling; but he or she remained silent.
“Who’s this?” said Morcar. It was a locution borrowed from American acquaintances which Morcar enjoyed using, but it seemed to upset his caller, for there was no reply. “Who’s that?” said Morcar, reverting to normal.
A Yorkshire voice said hesitantly: “This is Cecil.”
“Oh!” said Morcar. As always when his former wife or his son entered his life, he felt a painful constriction. As the young man said no more, he forced himself to utter the enquiry: “Is there anything wrong with your mother?”
“No. No, Mother’s all right,” said Cecil. “At least, she was last night when I left her.”
“Did you bring me a special message from her, perhaps?”
“Not specially,” said Cecil.
At the end of his ideas, Morcar waited for some other explanation of the call, but none came. He said at last: “Where are you?”
“I’m in London on my way back from leave. Mother told me your address. She got it from Granny. She said I was to ring you up,” said Cecil.
His mild grating voice sounded wistful, and Morcar, remembering his promise to Winnie, which he had hitherto implemented only by a generous provision of money through alimony and codicils and settlements, suggested hurriedly: “Come and have lunch with me.”
“Shall I?” said Cecil. His voice was now relieved and shy, yearning and happy all in a breath; it was clear that his father’s invitation had struck the note expected.
“Yes, of course. Don’t be later than one. Well—better say quarter to, then we can have a drink together.”
“Thank you,” said Cecil. As far as one could judge from his tone, he seemed to be expressing astonished delight, but with the young people of today one could never tell, reflected Morcar shrewdly.
“Do you know how to get here?”
“I’ll find out,” said Cecil cheerfully, hanging up the receiver.
Morcar had to attend a committee meeting at the Board of Trade that morning, and was delayed longer than he expected. On his return the porter, to whom he had given instructions to admit Cecil, told him that Private Morcar was in the flat waiting for him. Cecil’s name always stung Morcar, and he had to pause as he unlocked his door to compose his features into a suitably welcoming smile.
His son was sitting in an awkward position on the window seat, gazing out through the fine large windows at the Park Lane scene, busy even in wartime, and the frozen grass and bare branches of the Park beyond. He was also humming a song beneath his breath. He stood up to greet his father, his fair ingenuous face beaming. It was odd, thought Morcar, shaking hands though his flesh crawled at the touch of his child by Winnie, how some lads—David for instance—looked handsome in battle-dress and others emphatically looked otherwise. The neat workmanlike suit gave David a fine figure, broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs, flat belly, but Cecil’s tunic was at once too large and too small—“it fits where it touches,” thought Morcar, using a West Riding phrase angrily. It certainly did not touch the back of his neck, but clasped his waist too closely; the general effect was to make the lad look over-solid, ungainly, bulging, countrified. “Of course he’s a private and David’s an officer—the cut will be poorer perhaps,” thought Morcar, trying to be fair and make excuses. He enquired Cecil’s taste in drinks, but finding that the boy usually drank only beer, did not know the names of other drinks and had probably never had any kind of cocktail in his life, he set about mixing him a mild gin and lime. Cecil remained standing, gazing at him.
“Sit down—sit down and make yourself at home,” said Morcar. In spite of himself his voice was irritable, and Cecil’s mild brown eyes clouded like a scolded dog’s as he obeyed. “The cigarettes are on the table beside you. Help yourself,” said Morcar more kindly.
Cecil brightened and took a cigarette. As he briskly snapped his lighter, his head on one side, his eyelids lowered, he looked more manly, and the voice in which he began again to croon his previous ditty was a deep and quite pleasing baritone.
“Has anyone seen the Colonel?
I know where he is.
I know where he is.
I know where he is.
Has anyone seen the Colonel?
I know where he is—
He’s dining with the Brigadier.
I saw him, I saw him,
Dining with the Brigadier I saw him,
Dining with the Brigadier.”
“What’s that you’re singing?” said Morcar, amused.
Cecil coloured. “It’s just a song we sing. It goes through all the officers, and non-coms. too. And the private. They’re all doing something off the line of duty, more or less, except the private.”
“And what’s the private do, eh?”
“Holding up the whole damn line, I saw him,
Holding up the whole damn line.”
“Perhaps that shocks you?” said Cecil suddenly, colouring again.
“Shocks me?” exclaimed Morcar, aghast.
“Disrespectful to the officers?”
“Don’t be a fool, my boy; I’m an old soldier myself.” It suddenly struck Morcar as intolerable that this boy, his son and Charlie’s nephew, should seem ignorant of this cardinal fact. “Your uncle and I joined the B.E.F. together in August 1914,” he said stiffly. The scene of Charlie’s death rose once more, for the thousandth time, vividly before his eyes. “I was with your uncle when he was killed,” said Morcar gruffly.
“Yes, I know,” said Cecil. His tone was respectful, and Morcar hazarded the guess that whatever Winnie might have thought about that incident herself she had at least not poisoned her son’s mind against him. He found himself actually feeling grateful to her. It was very uncomfortable.
“Well, let’s go down to the restaurant and have some lunch, shall we?” he said.
“Shall I take my coat?” asked Cecil in his simple Yorkshire tones.
“No—we’ll come up here again afterwards,” said Morcar. It’s like taking a child about, he thought furiously; he hasn’t the least idea how to conduct himself.
This impression was deepened in the restaurant, where Cecil was quite astray with the menu and not very certain in his selection of forks. It was so long since Morcar himself had felt uncertain about forks that when he saw Cecil waiting for his father to begin a course, his eyes fixed in anxious inquiry on Morcar’s right hand, Morcar did not at first understand what he was about and even looked down at his hand himself to see if there were anything odd about it. There was nothing odd; he picked up a fork and attacked his hors d’œuvres; Cecil with a look of relief did the same. Then Morcar understood the situation. “He’s nervous,” he thought. “Ill at ease. Afraid of doing the wrong thing. Afraid of me.” A rush of pity came into Morcar’s heart, and for the first time that day he connected the big clumsy young man before him whose ill-cut fair hair stood up in a tuft on the crown of his head, with the sleeping child in neat grey coat and gaiters whom he had carried in his arms from The Sycamores to Hurstholt on a night twenty-two years ago, and fondly loved. He exerted himself to talk, to set Cecil at his ease. But he found this impossible to achieve. He tried all kinds of topics, all methods of approach—the jocular, the man-to-man, the cynical, the hearty. To each Cecil said: “Yes,” in his slow grating Yorkshire tones. “Yes,” he said, and “No,” and “I don’t know really,” interspersing these conversational gems with a nervous little neigh of a laugh. “My God,” thought Morcar: “The boy is a noodle of the highest order.”
In despair he fell back upon textiles.
“I noticed you took your textile course at Annotsfield Technical,” he said. (He remembered that Cecil had passed only third class, but did not mention this.)
“Yes,” agreed Cecil.
“We’ve had some ups and downs in the wool textile trade during the war, I can tell you,” continued Morcar.
He thought he discerned a faint gleam of interest in Cecil’s placid brown eyes, and decided to continue. “In any case it’s the only thing I really know how to talk about,” he thought.
“Well—of course you know we’ve had Wool Control since 1939,” he said. “Wool’s been rationed since two months after the war began. We’ve had three war jobs to do for the country in the textile trade. First of all we had to clothe the Services. We began doing that about July 1939, and got pretty well ahead. But of course a lot of stuff was lost at Dunkirk, as I don’t need to remind you, Cecil. Besides, there were. all these Free French and Free Poles and Free Dutch and so on to provide for. The Dutch are very particular about the stuff for their naval men, which is what you might expect. And now this women’s conscription act has passed and we shall provide uniforms for the girls as well. That was the first job, though, clothing the Services. And the easiest. Then there was the Export Drive.”
Morcar sighed, and Cecil looked mildly interrogative.
“You see we wanted munitions and food and such from the U.S.A. and other countries, and the only way we could pay for it was by selling them our products, because our dollar reserve was exhausted and we’d already sold all our foreign investments,” explained Morcar—rather wearily, for he had explained it so often before, to Americans. “So the Government did everything it could to encourage us to export. We formed an Export Group to stimulate export, and some of the leading West Riding men visited North and South America to stimulate export, and some of us visited the U.S.A. privately to stimulate export—we thought of nothing else for months but stimulating export. I came back with plenty of orders. Then the Lease-Lend Act passed and export to the States wasn’t so vital. But still it was useful, I should have thought—it gave the Americans something in return for their goods, choose how.”
His voice was thick with resentment and Cecil ventured to enquire: “But didn’t they want it?”
“No! The Americans complained that materials secured by England under Lease-Lend were being made into non-war products and exported into their markets. Of course,” said Morcar thoughtfully: “If it were so, you can see how it would annoy them.”
“But we don’t get wool from America, do we?” objected Cecil.
“No, of course not. But the Government have gone and promised not only that Lease-Lend material won’t be used in that way, but also that all our export trade shall be reduced to the absolute minimum necessary to buy us food and munitions. So our export drive has gone into reverse. We’re just throwing away our export trade in order to win this war. Chucking it into the gutter. Of course,” said Morcar hastily: “If it has to be done to win the war, well it has to be done, that’s all. But what a mess we’re going to be in after the war! Whew! I don’t like to think of it.” He fell silent and stared ahead, envisaging the mess. “However,” he resumed in a determined tone: “We’re making all sorts of plans already to cope with it. It’s export or expire with this little island, you know.”
“What do you think about Pearl Harbour?” enquired Cecil after a pause.
Morcar shook his head in grave concern. The truth was that in spite of his irritation about his sacrificed exports, he felt almost as sensitive about Pearl Harbour as an American. “It’s a bad do,” he pronounced briefly. “Now the third task of the textile trade in wartime,” he went on, veering away from the uncomfortable subject: “Is of course to provide cloth to clothe the civilian population, at reasonable prices.”
“Utility cloth,” said Cecil brightly. “What is it exactly? Grandfather talks about it but I don’t just understand it.”
“It isn’t any one special cloth,” said Morcar crossly, wincing at the introduction of Mr. Shaw into his favourite topic. “Utility cloths can have any kind of colour and decoration. The only thing standardised about utilities is their price. The scheme is just a means of compelling the manufacturer to make a considerable amount of cheaper cloths, that’s all. Otherwise, you see, he’d tend to make mostly expensive cloths, which give him most profit. Utility cloths must have their selvedges marked with a sign like this.” He drew it with a spoon edge on the table-cloth. Cecil craned forward and examined it with interest, the waiter with a stately disapproval, tempered by his memory of Morcar’s excellent tips.
“When will they be on the market?” enquired Cecil mildly.
“They’re pretty well ready now. Coffee, waiter,” said Morcar, lighting a cigar. “Well, that’s what the textile industry has to do, and the problem is how to do it with less than a third of our normal labour. The Government told us last spring we’ve got to concentrate—close some of our mills and let the work be concentrated into those that are left, so that they can run full all the time. Nucleus firms, they call them. Syke Mills, of course,” said Morcar, “is a nucleus firm.”
A look of fear sprang into Cecil’s eyes. “Do you think Prospect Mills will be a nucleus firm?” he asked. “Or will it be concentrated?”
“I should think it will be concentrated,” replied Morcar. “But it won’t matter,” he added impatiently. “Your grandfather will go on trading in his own name, only he won’t be making the cloths he trades in. Some other firm will be making them for him.”
“He won’t like that, Grandfather won’t,” said Cecil.
“I don’t think he’ll mind so long as he gets the money,” said Morcar brutally.
“I shall mind,” murmured Cecil.
“You were working at Prospect before the war, were you?” “Yes,” nodded Cecil.
“Well—I expect you’re bored with all this textile talk.”
“Oh, no; it’s very interesting,” said Cecil, accenting the word on the wrong syllable in the Yorkshire fashion.
Morcar was well aware that he spoke it thus himself sometimes, but this did not lessen his irritation at hearing it on the lips of Cecil. “Nay—you’ll think yourself back in Annotsfield Technical,” he said, rising. He felt vexed with himself for having exposed his beloved textiles in talk to Mr. Shaw’s grandson.
Cecil rose to follow him, upsetting his coffee cup as he did so, and they returned to Morcar’s flat.
“This is a posh kind of place, isn’t it?” said Cecil, looking round him with a smile of childlike pleasure.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” agreed Morcar drily. It struck him, however, that this spontaneous expression of opinion, the first Cecil had emitted, was in a way a kind of confidence on the young man’s part, a kind of indication that he was enjoying himself. Morcar for some reason felt soothed, and his voice was kinder as he asked the time of the train Cecil had to catch to rejoin his unit.
“My pass doesn’t expire till eight tomorrow morning,” said Cecil slowly, beginning to put on his khaki greatcoat.
“What time do you leave town, then?” said Morcar, helping him.
“There’s a train just after midnight,” began Cecil diffidently. “I thought of going to a theatre,” he explained in a sudden burst of confidence: “Only I don’t know which one to choose or how to get in.”
Morcar, repressing a sigh, took up the telephone and arranged the evening with his customary efficiency. He decided offhand that Cecil would probably enjoy best a simple type of leg-show, booked a box—the only four seats available—at a suitable revue, rang up Jenny and Fan at their respective government departments and secured their company for the theatre and supper afterwards. When he finally put down the telephone he found his son regarding him with shining eyes, smiling eagerly.
“It’ll be a wonderful evening, won’t it?” said Cecil.
“I hope so,” replied Morcar drily.
When towards the close of the wonderful evening the party were seated at a table eating expensive though scanty viands and listening to such dance music as wartime could afford, it struck Morcar that while Cecil was certainly simple and naïve, he was not perhaps such a noodle as his father had at first thought him. Though he had met the two girls for the first time that evening and the theatre had afforded few opportunities for talk, the young man’s behaviour to Jenny and Fan respectively showed a sound common sense, an instinctive appreciation of character, for he treated Jenny with serious respect, Fan with affectionate amusement. In accordance with wartime custom the four were not in evening dress. Jenny and Fan wore the dark business clothes in which they had coped with the secrets of the national war effort all day, Morcar had a dark lounge suit and Cecil was of course in battledress. While Jenny’s plainly cut frock and simply dressed hair became her fine serious face admirably, Fan’s very fair smooth curls, black suit and fluffy white blouse gave her the appearance of a black kitten with a white forehead and waistcoat. Morcar told her so in a tone of compliment.
“How do you manage to look so spruce, Uncle Harry?” Fan teased him in return. “Every time I see you, you wear a different suit and tie. Have you used all your coupons? Do you buy your suits in the black market?”
“Good heavens, no!” exclaimed Morcar, horrified.
“Then how do you manage always to be so smart?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, young lady, I had fifteen suits in my wardrobe when the war started.”
The two girls laughed; Jenny’s laugh was soft and low, Fan’s high and silvery.
“My, my! Fifteen! What ostentation!” cried Fan severely.
“Nay—just advertisement. If you make cloth you’ve got to show it off.”
“Good wine needs no bush,” said Jenny with mock solemnity. “It needs the landlord should seem to drink it with enjoyment, though,” ground out Cecil slowly.
“That’s very true,” approved Jenny.
“And witty!” cried Fan on a sarcastic note. “Oh, how witty! Really I don’t know how you think of all these witticisms, Cecil.”
Morcar glanced at his son with some fear that he would be hurt by Fan’s sharp tongue, but Cecil’s wide smile persisted, and he continued to gaze at Fan as if he enjoyed her. She was certainly a pretty if naughty little thing, thought Morcar appreciatively; full of sex and very silky.
Cecil’s thought processes had now ground to a conclusion, and he remarked to Fan:
“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one day. That’s a Yorkshire saying, you know,” he added hastily.
“You needn’t tell me that. I’m as Yorkshire as you are,” returned Fan in her sharp little tone.
“You’ve been away a long time though,” said Cecil.
This simple answer somewhat disconcerted Fan, and the distant music reaching their ears rather more loudly at that moment, she glanced over her shoulder and exclaimed pettishly:
“Can’t we dance, Uncle Harry?”
“Why not? What about you, Cecil?”
“I’ve got very big boots on,” hesitated Cecil.
“Three-quarters of the population of Great Britain are wearing Army boots tonight,” pouted Fan.
“Have those statistics been checked by your Reference Division, Fan?” queried Jenny, smiling.
“I hadn’t thought of that, Miss Oldroyd,” said Cecil.
Though mild, his tone undoubtedly held a note of sarcasm; Fan looked a trifle taken aback and Morcar, amused, felt that perhaps Cecil was better able to hold his own with his own generation than his father had imagined. (After all, he reflected, Cecil was Winnie’s son.)
“If you’ll risk the boots I’ll risk annoying you by treading on your toes,” continued Cecil.
Fan pouted again and tossed her head, but without further speech rose and led the way to the dance floor.
“Do you want to dance, Jenny?”
Jenny shook her head. “I’d rather talk about David.”
“What exactly is he doing now?” said Morcar, drawing his chair a little closer to hers.
“Learning to jump. By parachute, you know.” “Is your father still adamant?”
“No, I think he’s weakening. He says now that all he asks is that we should wait for a few years. David’s father says the same. Colonel Oldroyd says he hasn’t any money to help us with, and David has no right to marry till he’s paid for Old Mill. He thinks it would be wrong, dishonourable even, for David to marry while he’s still in debt to the bank.”
“If we all went by that principle,” said Morcar with derision: “Very few West Riding manufacturers would be married.” Morcar at present kept Old Mill going; the business paid its way and was gradually clearing off the bank’s mortgage. But he could not divert any of his own orders to Old Mill, as he would gladly have done to give David a helping hand, because of the stringent wartime Wool Control regulations.
“I think Colonel Oldroyd feels it particularly because since poor grandfather’s death Daddy seems to be rather affluent,” explained Jenny.
“Aye. And I daresay also he has a horror of debts to the bank,” said Mbrcar feelingly.
“But what does all that matter, Uncle Harry?” said Jenny earnestly. “It’s all out of date. I’m working myself—I’m earning—I always intend to work. I shouldn’t like it if David were rich. We don’t want to wait. After all, there’s a war on. Suppose David.… Parachuting isn’t a particularly safe operation.”
“Well,” began Morcar.
They put their elbows on the table and went into the whole situation thoroughly. Jenny was prepared to marry David against her father’s wishes, and David was prepared to marry Jenny whenever and on whatever terms Jenny thought desirable, but they both naturally preferred the happier solution of parental consent, David on his father’s account and Jenny on her mother’s, whose life would certainly be made a misery if her daughter made a runaway match with a man whom she liked and her husband disapproved—a protégé, moreover, as Morcar reflected uncomfortably, of her lover’s. Whether it would be wise to bring Colonel Oldroyd and Mr. Harington together or not was a subject of endless discussion between the young people, Morcar and Christina. Jenny, who had met David’s father and liked him, desired a meeting between the two; Morcar felt that it would at least convince each father of the other’s gentility but that they might easily quarrel—both were proud and wilful men, devoted to their children. Christina strongly opposed a meeting at present. She seemed to fear Harington’s temper now even more than of old, and this fear told Morcar a sorry tale of what she had to endure from her husband in private. David thought a meeting proper and therefore desirable, and made many efforts to arrange one; but the onerous duties of Harington in the Civil Service, Colonel Oldroyd in Civil Defence and David in the Army made real difficulties which in their turn provided admirable excuses for the reluctant fathers. David and Jenny considered themselves engaged and this was tacitly conceded by both families; but Jenny now reported that when she had begun to wear a ring which David had given her, a terrible scene took place with her father. It was so terrible, reported Jenny, that her mother had wept, and therefore she herself had not worn the ring in her father’s presence again.
“Have you heard from Edwin lately?” said Morcar by a natural transition, to which Jenny of course did not hold the key.
“Yes. He’s still on the Atlantic, so far as we can discover.”
Morcar and Jenny were so deep in the whole Harington-Oldroyd problem that they were surprised to find Cecil and Fan back at the table apologising for their long absence. Looking up, Morcar found that the room now presented a dreary appearance of diminishing activity; he paid his bill and the party left.
They went out into the deep blackout of wartime London. It was as though a black velvet curtain hung always a few inches before their eyes. Nothing tried Morcar’s patience and courage more than the blackout, and accordingly he made a point of walking with a jaunty air and a firm step. This was nearly his undoing, for as the four crossed the bottom of the Haymarket on their way to an Underground station, Morcar tripped over the invisible edge of a traffic “island” and began to fall headlong. He was saved from at worst a broken kneecap and at best some very severe bruises by Cecil, who gripped his arm as with a vice, swung him in an arc and with his other hand restored him to his feet. The young soldier’s muscles must have been like iron to achieve this, for Morcar was nowadays a heavily built man. Morcar felt shaken and breathless and somewhat humiliated; his arm ached from Cecil’s grip and he became suddenly conscious, from their expressions of concern, that he was very much older than his companions. He made light of his discomfort and continued to escort the two girls briskly towards their station, bought their tickets and directed them paternally towards their trains. As they vanished down the escalator a vague conversational cough sounded at his elbow. He turned to find Cecil, smiling diffidently and holding a ticket in his large hand.
“I see I can go from this station to Victoria,” said Cecil in his slow Yorkshire voice. “So I’ll say goodnight. It’s been a wonderful evening.”
He broke off, seemed about to speak again but hesitated, seemed about to hold out his hand but changed his mind. Morcar suddenly realised that Cecil had coughed to attract his attention because he had no other mode of engaging it, for there was no mode by which he could address his father without offering to wound. If the day had been embarrassing to Morcar, what had it been to Cecil? If life had been painful to Morcar owing to his complex family situation, what had it been to his fatherless son? Nothing of this showed in Cecil’s manner; there was no resentment, no anger, neither cynicism nor self-assertion; his mild brown eyes, fixed anxiously now on Morcar, seemed simply to admit his own inadequacy and plead that his father should not be vexed. It occurred to Morcar that Cecil was a good boy, honest, affectionate, conscientious, decent, like so many thousands of his age who wore the British Army’s uniform. He liked him.
“I specially enjoyed hearing all that about textiles,” blurted Cecil suddenly with an embarrassed smile.
“I’ll go with you to Victoria and see you on the train,” said Morcar.