The Rise of Henry Morcar (47 page)

“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 inter
est
ing,” 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.”