South Riding Page 13

  “The point is—we know they’re sore and jealous about the colony.”

  Heyer laughed.

  “They’d better come and see us. There’s not one of us with a pound in the bank or a well-stocked fold yard. Does Carne know owt?”

  “Well,” said Hicks cautiously. “I don’t take much heed of council doings, and he’s no talker. But there was something I know a bit back upset him, because they had a meeting the day I caught that wire,” he indicated his shoulder. “I know he missed a committee, and I know he was fair put out. I heard him telling Captain Gryson. He said, ‘It’s that damned Snaith again. A man that’ud put up wire and never mark it is capable of anything.’”

  “That’ll be it. Snaith’s dead set on developing Kiplington and yon parts north of the railway. He’s said before that we’ve had too much of our own way down here. Our own way . . .”

  “By God! I’d like him to see my books.”

  They jeered, but there was anxiety in their laughter. Tom knew enough already to realise that a big new road and the consequent development of Kiplington would shift regular traffic and, still more, summer visitors, northwards. Heyer knew that he and his fellows in Cold Harbour Colony were singularly at the mercy of the Council. Both men were gamblers. Both had pluck. But they were realists enough to appreciate the precariousness of fortune.

  Tom didn’t like it.

  His vanity was imperilled. He had seen himself carrying Lily off, making their fortune, proving that it takes a man who has seen the world to be a man of the world. But sometimes, for a second, there opened before him a dark pool of doubt in which he saw reflected not the virile, successful, dashing, volatile ex-soldier, but a reckless fool gulled into investing all his capital in a moribund business in a dying area.

  He knew one certain way of reassurance.

  He strolled off to seek Lily in the kitchen.

  At least to his wife he was still a hero and adventurer. She saw him most satisfactorily, as he wished to see himself. In her calm presence he knew he was Tom Sawdon, the Colonel’s trusted friend, the conquering lover, the popular host of a successful inn.

  It happened that Lily had had a good day. She was thinking: Perhaps it’s all nonsense; perhaps I shall grow out of it.

  She sat darning stockings and listening to the radio.

  “Oh, Tom, do stop and listen a bit,” she pleaded, her charming head on one side, her lips parted. “It’s Elsie and Doris Waters. They are a scream.”

  This was how he liked to think of her—enthroned by the fire that he had lit, in the chair he bought her, her cheeks flushed with pleasure, her fair hair only a trifle faded, a blue ribbon round her still pretty throat.

  It was not possible that their venture could fail. He had never failed. The external intervention of contrary political interests simply did not enter into a world which had preserved Tom Sawdon through war and peace and brought him safely to haven at Cold Harbour.

  Yet he felt the need of action. He was anxious, and all anxiety, all sorrow and disappointment bored him. He must transform circumstances until they gave him cause for pleasure. He must prove the little scut wrong. He would go to Kingsport. He would listen to gossip.

  He would know for certain.

  “I may have to go to Kingsport to-morrow, Lil. Think you can manage?”

  “Why not? Haven’t I managed all those years when you went rattling away to the ends of the earth?”

  Ah, that was it. He had left her too often. He had wasted long years of her beauty and serenity.

  “Are you afraid Grandpa Sellars will run off with me?”

  That gave him an idea.

  I know—by God—I’ll buy her a dog. That’ll be company for her.

  He was restless, and knew that he must go somewhere, do something, put an end to the doubts teasing him. But he must also buy her something and prove his love for her. He must buy her a dog, for dogs went with the picture of successful inn-keeping which he had formed in his mind—a happy twilight—Darby and Joan, the firelit parlour and the dog. Something handsome and exotic—a Great Dane, an Alsatian. Something that would give character to the Inn and pay tribute to Lily’s quality—a watch dog, a present, a love token—because he was disturbed by the rumour of a road north of the railway line, because he had played that evening the high-minded host of the Nag’s Head, because he loved his wife, and because he liked dogs.

  His mind was made up. He would buy a dog to-morrow.

  4

  Sarah Acquires an Ally, and Carne an Enemy

  “I WOULDN’T go, Mr. Astell, I wouldn’t really. It’s not as if you held with them voluntary hospitals.”

  Mrs. Corner, Alderman Astell’s landlady, paid spasmodic tribute to Socialist theory as she understood it, whenever it coincided with Astell’s interests. This was not often. The conviction which had driven him through desperate poverty to a hardly-earned schoolmastership, out of school into a conscientious objector’s prison, from prison to a semiamateur printing press on the Clyde, from Scotland to Dublin, Dublin to South Africa, and from South Africa back, a physical wreck, to England, had done, she considered, damage enough already. She held no brief for it. Her late husband had voted first Radical, then Labour, but now here was Mr. Astell turning out on a cold November night, with a sea roke blowing, to sit up till all hours in a stuffy hall just because the Mayor, who was a friend of his, had asked him, as the new alderman, to present the prizes at the Hospital Fancy Ball.

  “I’ve no patience,” said Mrs. Corner, who had nursed one man till his death through pneumonia and pulmonary tuberculosis, and had no desire to bury another for the same reason. “Go out and sit talking there till midnight and wake up tomorrow with one of your coughing fits, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You’ll go and kill yourself one of these days and then may be you will be satisfied.”

  Astell was not afraid of death. He was afraid of a haemorrhage, of a sanatorium, of the survival of his restless mind imprisoned within a helpless body. When he returned a doomed man from the Transvaal, he had been told that any further political campaign or emotional excitement might finish him off quickly. Only by a quiet light routine in the open air, and preferably by the sea, could he hope to preserve some kind of utility during the crippled remnant of his life.

  “Live like a cabbage,” said the doctors. Astell, coughing, sick, exhausted by fever and emaciated by haemorrhage, submitted to their orders. Once he had known himself. He had been a fighter, driven by faith, shrinking from no hardship. In his Glasgow days nothing had been too much for him. He knew well that he was distinguished by no special talent; but to possess energy beyond the common run seemed simply a matter of indivdual choice. Others could speak better, write better, negotiate better. Joe Astell worked. He would do anything, go anywhere. Even when he married, he chose a little Jewess, gay, dark, equally ardent, selfless, who followed him from Glasgow to Dublin, where he went to report on Black and Tan outrages, from Dublin to Lanarkshire again, then died from influenza in 1924, before he left to work as a trade union organiser among the native miners in the Transvaal. He had thought himself inexhaustible, if ever he thought of himself at all, until the week when he had collapsed, after a speaking tour, with what at first was thought to be pneumonia, and which had developed into tuberculosis. He had spent three months in South African hospitals, then he had come to England for an operation at the Fulham Hospital for Tuberculosis. From that time he had been a stranger to himself, constantly ailing, unable to be sure that he could keep an appointment or fulfil a promise, horrified by his own unreliability, ashamed of impotence.

  His colleagues had been kind to him. In Yorkshire there had been a little printing press kept by the deceased John Henry Corner. He had turned out pamphlets, leaflets and a small local monthly paper cheaply for the trade unions and co-operative societies. It was suggested that Astell should inherit his work—a light job, run as an excuse for pensioning invalids. So he came to Yorkshire, lodged with Mrs. Corner, and slept in the garden
hut built for her late husband.

  There were days when he could not work at all, nights when he lay in terror waiting for the cough which tore his body, dawns when he awoke with racing pulses, hunted down corridors of dreams by hounds of fancy. Yet, month by month, confidence returned to him, his attacks of fever recurred less frequently, he dared to stand for election to the County Council, and find himself a councillor, then alderman, the pampered lodger of good Mrs. Corner, the guest of the Mayor of Kiplington at a dance for the Cottage Hospital.

  The hot air from the Floral Hall puffed out as the door opened and hit him like a blow. The powdered chalk from the dance-floor made him cough. But he handed his coat to a boy scout and went forward doggedly, when necessary he smiled at an acquaintance, shook hands with the Mayor, and permitted himself to be led up to a row of basket-work armchairs on the platform. There he sat, under palms and paper festoons, a silent, lean, lonely man, with a flushed pretty face, as incongruous as a mask. Before him whirled pierrots and Dutchmen, Quakers and Oriental Ladies. Beside him sat clergy and doctors and councillors. At his feet the Jazz Octette crooned soulfully.

  Joe watched the Carnival and thought of death. “If you killed yourself at it, you might be satisfied,” Mrs. Corner had said. Perhaps she was right. For what tormented Joe was not his career cut short nor his threatened life, but that he was living while better men were dead. He thought of them—of O’Leary shot in a Dublin yard in ’21, of Mullard worn out in the strike of ’23, of Cook, Grimshaw, Vender, of his wife, Rebecca. These had been warriors. The movement could ill spare them. Yet they were gone and he remained, a semi-invalid, nursing himself, coddled and comforted, presenting prizes, if you please, instead of giving ’em hell at a street corner.

  There had been a time when he had railed against his treacherous body. It had seemed then that his disease alone was enemy enough for him. He had sweated and agonised and panicked. He had woken at dawn to wonder if he would live to see the noon. He had feared to sleep, lest he should be awakened by a hemorrhage.

  But now that was over. The disease was temporarily checked, and he had time to turn his attention to a battle in which he had allowed himself to be put upon permanent light duty. Surely other men had fought to the end and died in harness? What was he waiting for? In what future event would his existence be of such importance that he must treasure it now while his betters went into the fighting line and died?

  “Glad to see you, Astell. Good of you to come.”

  “I say, ought you to be here? On such a night? Why, that is good of you.”

  They crowded round him. They were pleased to see him. Their friendliness embarrassed him, and made him cough; his coughing increased their sense of obligation. He was in a trap of humbug. He loathed his popularity. If he had done his duty, they would have hated him. Their cordiality was the measure of his defeat.

  “Hope you’re keeping as well as possible,” said Mr. Peckover. “Don’t think I’ve seen you since you achieved your new honour. Allow me to congratulate you.”

  “The first Socialist, surely, to be made an alderman in the South Riding? I don’t agree with your politics, you know, Astell; but we know we can trust you to keep them in the background, eh? No politics where the South Riding’s concerned, eh?”

  Oh damn them, damn them! Every word insulted him. There was not a soul here, not a soul, who could understand what he felt about it all. Why had he come? Why had he thought it his duty?

  Fool, fool, fool!

  The waltz ceased. The Jazz Octette departed. The Ladies’ Committee ran out with little tables, and set on them plates of queen cakes and tarts and sandwiches—ham, salmon and potted beef—trifle and jellies. Four people, not in fancy dress, made for the table immediately below Astell’s seat—a big, fine one-armed man, a plump talkative middle-aged woman, a handsome, smiling, merry man with a smart moustache, and his faded pretty wife. Astell recognised the one-armed fellow as Heyer, the ex-service man from Cold Harbour Colony. He did not know the others, but he saw the care with which both men attended the fragile pretty woman, heard her called “Lily,” and also “Mrs. Sawdon,” and realised that these might be the new host and hostess of the Nag’s Head at Maythorpe. He liked the look of Sawdon, a pleasant fellow, and found himself listening to their conversation.

  “Well, we had only the girls, but if I’d six sons,” Sawdon was saying, “I’d put ’em all into the Army or the Police Force. Army for choice. The King’s uniform—you can’t beat it. It’s a grand life if you know how to behave yourself.”

  “That’s right,” Heyer handed the widow a cup of coffee with his one hand. “You do know where you are in the Army.”

  “And look at trade now! Look at farming.”

  “That’s right,” agreed the widow.

  Here, thought Joe Astell, is the raw material of canon fodder in capitalist quarrels. You know where you are in the Army—do you? He looked at Heyer’s mutilated body; he thought of the millions dead in the Great War. He tried to confirm his certainty of conviction. His apt mind responded with a score of arguments. Not for a moment did he retract the opinions which had earned him imprisonment and contempt.

  But the easy comradeship of these men wounded him. He liked them. They were comely and courageous, honest and gay and decent. In a big town he too would have had comrades. But here in Kiplington he was isolated. Here he lacked men of his own kidney, and these Colonists were his political opponents. He had fought against their interests on the council. He thought them over-favoured, the spoiled children of an outrageously unbusiness-like and sentimental administration. Their ideas were pernicious, their memories alien. Yet seated there between Mr. Peckover and a potted palm, his bowels yearned towards them.

  He had become a Socialist through love of his fellow men, not through dislike of them, and now he felt an emotional barrier between himself and his neighbours which no logic could remove. He saw himself, an awkward priggish man, with a harsh voice and tactless manner, tolerated simply because illness had reduced his fighting powers, weakened his quality.

  It was all wrong.

  “I don’t know if you’ve met our socialist alderman— Alderman Astell, Miss Burton, our new head mistress at the High School.” Mr. Peckover beamed appropriately. Joe Astell found himself shaking hands with a small red-headed woman who reminded him so much of somebody that he stood staring at her.

  Miss Burton smiled.

  “He says ‘Socialist Alderman’ rather as if it were Prize Freak,” she said unexpectedly. “Are socialists such rare birds here? Aldermen seem to be three a penny. May I sit down here?”

  “Excuse me,” said Joe in the solemn rasping voice which so much offended him. “Are you any relation to Miss Ellen Wilkinson?”

  “Oh, the hair? No, I’m not. I wish I were. I think she’s a grand girl. But hers is soft and beautiful with a natural wave. Mine’s a vulgar frizz. It’s very sad for me. Do you know her?”

  “I’ve met her. There’s some think she takes too much upon herself. But I liked her. I think she’s got guts.”

  Guts.

  He thought of the ex-service man and public house keeper below him. They had guts, but the wrong ideas. He had the right ideas but—would a man with guts have given way so easily? Would a chap like Heyer be sitting on that platform because he had only half a lung? Wouldn’t he rather be carrying on somewhere, somehow?

  The red-haired school mistress was talking. Her voice was attractive, deep, clear and amused. Joe thought of his own harsh solemn tones and hated them.

  “I once took some of my girls to hear her speak in London. I thought it would do them good.”

  “Did it?”

  “We-ell. I’m not sure. They liked her hair and her green frock, and her way of speaking. But I’m not sure how many took in any of her ideas.”

  “Did you want them to do that?”

  “Well, I think any ideas are better than none for sixth form girls. They’ve got to go through their political adolescence, and I’d
rather they fell for Ellen Wilkinson than—say— Oswald Mosley.”

  “You’re a socialist then?”

  “I’m a school-marm. I take no part in politics.”

  “That’s evasion. You’re either a socialist or not. There’s no half-way house.”

  “Isn’t there? I should have thought there were a dozen. If you mean—do I vote Labour? Yes, I do. I’m a blacksmith’s daughter, you know. I come from the working-class and I feel with it. There are certain things I hate—muddle, poverty, war and so on—the things most intelligent people hate nowadays, whatever their party. And I hate indifferentism, and lethargy, and the sort of selfishness that shuts itself up into its own shell of personal preoccupations.”

  “That’s all right as an emotional background, but emotion isn’t enough.”

  “I know that. But it’s the beginning. It prompts our first subconscious recoil from or attraction to new ideas. The emotions bred by our circumstances and nature decide where we shall get off, as they say. Or whether we get off at all. I’m a teacher and it’s my job to watch young things. Some girls only react spontaneously to one group of ideas—say ‘husband,’ ‘love,’ ‘babies,’ and off they go quite clear of their direction— moved by a Life Force or instinct or whatever you choose to call it. Others, while they are still at school, are simply immature play-boys—mention games, colours, matches, sport, prizes and they’re wide awake. With others the words exploitation, injustice, slavery, and so on start the wheels going round.”

  “You don’t think it matters?”

  “I don’t think you can change the first and third groups much. You can educate their minds—give them a certain amount of knowledge to direct their energies. The middle group you might alter a bit—but many women, like many men, never grow up. They prefer games all their life. They like to attach their instincts for competition, achievement and the rest of it to something immediate, concrete and artificial— golf, bridge—even money making.”

  Joe watched her. He liked her eager ugly face, her quick confident speech. She was a woman of his own kind. He could imagine quarrelling with her to be great fun. His spirits rose. The sense of isolation sloughed from him.