The Rise of Henry Morcar (42 page)

And even as he looked, his love seemed to stretch out all over England. To the camps where David and Cecil were training. To London, where Christina and Harington, and Jenny and Fan Oldroyd, were being subjected, said the newspapers, to violent day and night raids from enemy planes. To Kent, where Canon Harington and his vicarage had perished from enemy action; a German plane, swerving away from the London defences, had crashed and the old house, the yew, the Canterbury bells, the sweet Williams, the Canon's books, were all burned, while the old man lay buried beneath fallen masonry. To the coast, where Francis Oldroyd was engaged full time in Civil Defence—David had begged his stepmother to come north to safety, but she would not leave her husband. To the air, where as he understood G. B. Mellor was a Pilot Officer in a Spitfire, fighting for the mastery of the air in the battle of Britain. To the sea, where young Edwin Harington, out of sight, almost out of hearing, helped to bring in convoys. For that night, yes, for that night while he was on guard, the safety of all these had in some measure been in Morcar's care. He felt that he could never again lay down that charge, that burden.

“They're my people and I must take care of them,” thought Morcar.

The siren sounded just as the taxi drew up at the door of the Department which enjoyed Harington's services. Morcar felt nervous—not of possible enemy planes overhead, but lest in his lack of experience of London air-raids he should commit some naive action below the general level of London behaviour. The taxi-driver and the Ministry reception clerk, however, seemed to take no notice of the warning, and this reassured Morcar; he could play indifference as well as the next man.

He filled up a form; the clerk telephoned; an elderly uniformed messenger led him along corridors and up steps into a small room with some of its windows boarded up, where two girls, one dark, one blonde, typed and answered the continual summons of a knot of telephones. The girls were good-looking and well dressed, with
south-country accents and friendly manners; they put Morcar into a large leather chair and handed him a newspaper and informed him that Mr. Harington was in conference but would see him presently. A buzzer sounded above an inner door; the elder of the two girls, the dark one, rushed into Harington's sanctum with a notebook, rushed out again and began to telephone the Minister's private office. The other girl typed incessantly, except when a messenger came in with an armful of large envelopes and a locked despatch box, from which she immediately drew masses of files. Red and green labels protruded from these marked URGENT; VERY URGENT; PRIORITY; and so on; Morcar read them upside down. As far as one could judge from the blonde's conversation, high personages, people whose names one saw in the newspapers, telephoned continually demanding Mr. Harington, and were continually sidetracked to someone else of less importance. It was a new scene to Morcar and he watched it with a smiling interest; he felt like a schoolboy waiting to see a headmaster, but did not mind.

At last he was ushered into Harington's presence. The room was large and agreeably furnished in a spare modern style; a plain cord carpet, a large empty desk, a couple of comfortable armchairs. Some admirable modern posters of an advisory nature, issued by Harington's Department, hung on the walls.

“Well, my dear Harry, what can I do for you?” enquired Harington, shaking his hand. His tone was suave but his expression was fretful; it was clear he regarded Morcar's visit as the crowning exasperation of a harassed morning. “I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting but you had no appointment.”

Morcar began to remind Harington that, as his Department well knew, he was to visit the United States in the course of the next few weeks to assist in the export drive. At this point a concealed apparatus above the lintel hooted violently in three short blasts.

“Is that a new type of all-clear signal?” enquired Morcar with interest.

“No—that means imminent danger,” drawled Harington.

“Oh. I suppose people go into the basement and that sort of thing.”

“I really don't know,” said Harington with cold impatience.

Gunfire and heavy thuds sounded in the distance and came nearer, and Morcar had to shout the remainder of his explanation. His visit to the U.S.A. was decided after consultation with other textile interests whom he was to represent, and the Export Group had supported his application for an exit permit and travelling facilities. He had come to town to-day to pick up his
permit and passport and submit his papers to the censorship bureau. But now there seemed to be some hitch about his permit, while as for travelling facilities, they were apparently nonexistent—the steamship lines had told him they had no ship whatever sailing to the United States in December.

“All that has nothing to do with this Department, my dear Morcar,” said Harington impatiently.

“Really?” said Morcar, astonished. “I understood—”

“You should go to another Ministry,” said Harington, giving its name.

“Oh. In that case I'm sorry I troubled you,” said Morcar, rising.

“Not that I suppose for a moment that they'll be able to help you,” drawled Harington. “But they're the proper channel, you know.” He pressed the buzzer, and instructed the dark girl to make an appointment with the appropriate official for Mr. Morcar.

“I shall see you tonight, perhaps?” said Morcar, taking his leave.

“At home? It's very doubtful, I'm afraid,” returned Harington shortly. “I'm sleeping here at present. I can't leave.”

The all-clear sounded as Morcar left the building, but an alert came as he sat giving luncheon to Fan Oldroyd (who was now like everybody else working in a Ministry) and again two or three times during the afternoon. Hurrying from one government office to another with eventually satisfactory results, Morcar observed that nobody appeared to take any notice of these short raids at all, except to raise their voices occasionally when the gunfire drew near.

“They're a remarkable people, these Londoners,” he said to himself. “Even Harington.”

He made this observation as he was walking down Shaftesbury Avenue, which had suffered very recently from bombs. Some buildings had vanished altogether, some had become mounds of pinkish rubble; window-frames gaped blackly, fringed sometimes by sharp spikes of glass; the iron porches of theatres were twisted and blackened. Hose-pipes lay in massive curves across the road and A.R.P. personnel were busy about them. The surface of the road was charred and muddy. The day was dreary, and the whole scene struck Morcar as indescribably cheerless. In Charing Cross Road a huge hole gaped, round which buses carefully steered their way—the hole was large enough to accommodate a couple. Some premises, façades merely through which one saw sordid ruin within, bore a notice stating they were unsafe for entry or human occupation; several bookshops thus lacked interiors,
and the assistants, pale and red-nosed from the November cold, sold only from the outside stalls, wrapped up in mufflers and thick coats. Here and there a little shop, its windows boarded, its doors hingeless, propped against the wall, or vanished altogether, bore a scrawled notice announcing:
Bombed out but not sold out; business as usual.
Blasted houses, divided in two as if by a giant knife, exposed the intimacies of private life to the public view: a dressing-table, a washstand, a bed with a striped mattress, perched aloft in the third storey, inaccessible now to any but a climber's foot, beaten upon by wind and rain. These soiled relics of what were once warm human habitations depressed Morcar particularly. There's nothing romantic about being bombed, he thought; it's just a miserable, uncomfortable mess. And therefore it takes all the more courage to stand up to, he concluded.

The winter afternoon drew towards its close, and Morcar began to experience a strangely poignant feeling of brooding anticipation. The dusk gathered, but no lights appeared save the dim pinpoints of hand torches and tiny circles on the buses; half-seen figures stumbled along as though through greyish mist, and entered screened doorways with an effect of relief. Everything seemed waiting, waiting. Morcar found the phrase “the doomed city” reverberating in his mind; it was perfectly possible, he reflected, and indeed not unlikely, that when if ever the war was over, London would look like the ruins he had seen in Rome, on the Palatine. A pang of angry grief went through his heart at the thought. Dark closed in, the muffling choking dark of the London blackout. The blackness seemed to press down on Morcar's head, so that it was with difficulty that he straightened his neck and walked upright. The edges of pavements became pitfalls to be negotiated with attention; each passer-by offered a possible collision. The streets became unfamiliar, so that one continually felt lost, as in a nightmare. Morcar had promised to meet Jenny at the bar of a hotel not far from the Admiralty where she was now working. He negotiated the screens and the black curtains with careful patience, and entered a foyer which seemed of dazzling brilliance by contrast with the murk outside. At once his spirits rose; here at last was a familiar scene. Not quite familiar, he discovered presently, for there were very few people having drinks; the waiter with whom he entered into talk explained to him that nowadays people liked to get home before the night raids started.

Jenny was late; he had ceased to watch the door for her when suddenly she came towards him, radiant in a hooded coat of bright warm blue. Morcar had time to recognise the stuff as of David's manufacture before he saw, following Jenny as she threaded her
way through the empty tables, David himself. David—in battle-dress, which Morcar had not seen before—looked well and lively, much happier than when Morcar had seen him in the spring. After greeting the young people cordially, Morcar commented on their cheerful looks.

“David's happy because he's training for something dangerous,” said Jenny, glancing at her love with mock reproach and real admiration.

This was a sentiment Morcar understood. “What are you up to, then, David?” he eagerly enquired.

“I'm afraid I mustn't tell you—it's all very hush-hush,” replied David with a smile. “It's not at all dangerous yet, just bookwork, mugging up the necessary knowledge. I've just been to the War House—I have to get back to camp tonight.”

The drinks Morcar had ordered came; he paid for them, sat back, and raised his glass to the young pair. It gave him pleasure to see them together, for they were most admirably matched in body, mind and spirit. They replied suitably to his toast but then fell silent, and as Morcar contemplated them it struck him that of course they wished to be alone. Hastily he rose and explained that he must go; they smiled at him kindly but with obvious relief and sent messages by him to Christina.

“Mother doesn't know David's here—it was an unexpected visit. Tell her I may be a little late. I know it's her night at the post and she can't wait dinner for me. I'll scrounge something for myself when I get in,” said Jenny.

The Underground was bright and cheerful, the Kensington streets correspondingly black to Morcar's eyes; although he knew them so well he lost his way twice and was profoundly thankful when at last he found himself on the Haringtons' doorstep. He fumbled for the bell and rang; the door was opened almost immediately by Christina.

“Oh, Harry, I'm so glad you've come,” she said in a tone of relief. “You're rather late—I was afraid I should have to go out and leave you.” She drew him in and closed the door. In the bluish light of the wartime hall lamp Morcar saw that she was dressed in dark blue jersey and slacks. “It's my night on duty,” she explained.

Morcar was so familiar with every cadence of her voice that he knew at once Harington was not in the house. He picked her up in his arms and kissed her vigorously.

“No, no, Harry,” said Christina.

“Why not? Winnie served divorce papers on me yesterday,” said Morcar cheerfully, taking off his coat, “I shall be free next year.”

Christina made no reply, but drew him into the dining-room. The windows were boarded; the dining-table had been pushed to one end of the room; the other end was arranged as a sitting-room, with a small table, a radio, and armchairs.

“We're living in this room at present,” explained Christina. “Safer downstairs, you know. Besides, there's a good deal of glass all over the drawing-room and we haven't managed to get the windows boarded yet.”

She rang a handbell—blast had put the other out of order, she explained—and told the elderly maid to put a portion to keep hot for Miss Jennifer and then serve dinner.

“I must go to the post. Will you walk there with me, Harry?” she said when the meal was over.

“Of course. I should like to see as much of everything here as I can,” said Morcar gravely. “So that I can tell them all at home what it's like.”

Christina put on a dark coat on which was stitched a blue armlet with the letters C.D. in yellow, slung her respirator over her shoulder, and balanced a steel helmet marked with a white W on her head. The tin hat slipped sideways on her dark curly hair; in this position it framed her lovely face enchantingly, but was not much use as a protection against falling shrapnel.

“Your strap's too loose,” said Morcar in an experienced tone. He took off the helmet and adjusted the buckle. “That's better?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Christina, smiling up at him.

Morcar took her face between his hands beneath the helmet, and kissed her—her sea-blue eyes, her rich mouth, the tip of her nose for a joke, her mouth again. Then the pair set out for the post.

“You're a warden, then?” said Morcar, drawing her arm through his and interlacing their fingers.

“Yes. Jerry's late tonight,” said Christina, looking up at the sky. It was now crossed by white shafts which swayed and stabbed: the searchlights. “Haven't you had any raids in the West Riding, Harry?”