A Man of His Time

by Phyllis Bentley

  ‘Well, it’s only what I expected,’ said Morcar in a casual tone.

  This was true; since Churchill’s death he expected no more good from life. But had it not been true, he would still have replied in the same offhand style - no councillor need think to ruffle him into showing despair. Nevertheless there was a terrible sinking at his heart, a feeling of total emptiness, as though every drop of courage and energy had been drained from it. He was to be spared nothing, it seemed.

  ‘Well, that’s the way to take it,’ said the Councillor doubtfully.

  ‘That’s right. Thanks for letting me know.’

  He put down the receiver and looked up; Nathan and Ruth were staring at him anxiously.

  ‘Well - the Ring Road’s approved,’ he said.

  Ruth exclaimed, and Nathan seemed to shrink and wither.

  ‘Where’s Chuff?’

  ‘He’s gone to Old Mill,’ said Ruth. ‘They just telephoned.’

  ‘They’re having some trouble with one of their fulling stocks,’ explained Nathan mournfully, ‘so he’s gone to see what’s wrong.’

  ‘What!’ shouted Morcar, bounding to his feet. ‘Get Old on the phone, Ruth - tell them Chuff isn’t even to look at those stocks - I’ll come along at once. Chuff is to do nothing - don’t you remember, Nathan, we had to repair the shaft of that far stock, just after the war, with poor wood and an iron band, because there wasn’t anything else available?’

  ‘Oh, aye, I remember now,’ murmured Nathan, still only half alive after the awful shock of the Ring Road.

  ‘It’ll splinter - God knows what it’ll do. Ruth, tell Chuff he’s to leave those stocks alone, he’s to wait for me. And see that he does so.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Morcar,’ said Ruth meekly^ snatching at the telephone.

  Morcar ran down the mill steps. His car was not in the parking area; Chuff of course had taken it.

  ‘Hi, you!’ shouted Morcar to a member of the designing staff who was ambling across the yard carrying a bucket. (‘Why a bucket?’ demanded Morcar inwardly.) ‘Is this your car?’ He struck the bonnet of a green Mini with his open hand.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man, alarmed.

  ‘Drive me to Old Mill,’ said Morcar, getting in.

  It seems they still need me,’ thought Morcar as they drove away. ‘I’ve got all this in a muddle; I shall have to think it out.’

  41. End of an Era

  It was nine-twenty on the morning of Saturday January 30th, 1965. The five members of the Stanney Royd household sat clustered about the television set in Morcar’s den. Mrs Jessopp, in the centre of the group, rocked herself slowly back and forth in the kitchen rocking-chair which Jonathan had carried in for her. It was a grey, dull, bitterly cold day and the fire had been heaped high with good Yorkshire coal and ‘made-up with small’, as Mrs Jessopp said - Stanney Royd was not yet in a ‘clean-air’ zone, thank goodness, thought Morcar - so that they would not have to break off from watching Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral to attend to it.

  The half-hour struck; the scene changed to the outside of Westminster Hall, where a Royal Naval gun crew stood drawn up in faultless lines; the bearer party of the Grenadier Guards came out from the Hall with measured step, bearing on their shoulders the coffin, covered with the Union Jack. The naval party received this with caps off and bent heads. The insignia of the Garter lay on a velvet cushion on the flag, and a row of officers now appeared, bearing Sir Winston’s orders and decorations on velvet cushions before them. The bearer party placed the coffin on the gun-carriage, the gun crew formed up, the thick white ropes were adjusted, the Earl Marshal of England raised his baton; silently, with exquisite precision, the cortege moved off. Bands struck into a funeral march.

  ‘But are they going to draw the gun-carriage by hand all the way to St Paul’s!’ exclaimed Jonathan, aghast. ‘It’s a considerable distance.’

  ‘It tells you everything in the Radio Times supplement,’ growled Chuff, passing the sheets.

  Morcar sympathized with his irritation at Jonathan’s interruption. He was himself deeply impressed by the punctuality, the simultaneity of movement, the perfect alignment, the accuracy and dignity, of the proceedings so far.

  ‘Nobody does this sort of thing as well as the British,’ he thought: ‘This is going to be a really great occasion.’

  He felt deeply moved and he hoped nobody would talk, for he wanted to take part in the ceremony in respectful silence. As the procession moved on through London at the same steady inexorable pace, however, on and on and on and on with unvarying tread, between lines and lines of silent mourners, the men standing bareheaded in respect, the women silently weeping, feelings of pride and sorrow overtook them all. Jonathan said no more, and his fine face fell into lines of grief and admiration; Mrs Jessopp ceased to rock, Chuff lounged but did not stir, Susie sat as if frozen.

  Morcar, though enthralled by the solemn and moving spectacle, attending Churchill’s funeral with all his heart and soul, nevertheless presently found his mind working. He thought about Churchill and his achievements, his pass ing and the termination of the era; he thought about himself, his problems, his early life, his relationship with Jonathan and Chuff, the decision about the future of Syke Mills which he had promised himself to take next Monday. It was in 1958, he thought, that life had begun to change for him. What, then, was his situation now?

  At first his reflections were dispersed, chaotic, but presently settled into reasonable chronology. Throughout they were deeply true to his nature; it struck him that perhaps no better opportunity for thought would ever occur for him, than this time of silent watching, when the nobility of the spectacle he watched released his thought to a lofty level. Perhaps indeed no better tribute would be given by him to Churchill than a profound meditation, the best of which he was capable, on the meaning and purpose of his whole life. His memory roved over the past. On the whole-he thought he had not acted too badly, though more by good luck than by conscious management - ‘better than old Hardaker, any road,’ he reflected sardonically - but that remained to be seen.

  First he considered himself from the physical point of view. He was still a strong and active man, but not as strong and active as he had been of old. He now wore spectacles, he was a little deaf, he handled small objects clumsily, he had had a bout of pneumonia and now this appalling head cold, he soon grew tired. Chuff was now a finer animal specimen than himself, and though Jonathan lacked Morcar’s robust appearance, he was in a wiry way healthy enough. Physically, therefore, the young men had the advantage, and in all matters of physique should be allowed to exercise their judgement.

  And mentally? Morcar remembered the letter he had dictated wrongly to Ruth, the mistake he had made in crossing to the wrong side of Scape Scar Lane. (He really must get himself a new chauffeur to replace Jessopp, by the way, and not allow indolence and sentiment to deter him; if not, either he would smash himself up by some carelessness, or he would become a nuisance to Chuff and Jonathan, relying on them to conduct his movements.) His memory, once infallible, now sometimes skipped a little and left blank patches. As regards design, the main theme of his life: last year the textile industry of Great Britain had achieved 169 million pounds’ worth of direct exports; of this figure he had furnished one million pounds, almost entirely from his own designs. It was not bad, it was not bad at all. In truth, he still had excellent design ideas. But, he must admit, less frequently than of old - one a year instead of half a dozen. Yes, he was (naturally) far less fertile than he used to be. Chuff’s powers were still growing to their height; Morcar’s - though he ventured to think, indeed he knew, his powers greater than his grandson’s - were on the decline. But when he looked back over his life he saw fifty years of experience in textiles, fifty years in which scarcely one day had passed without some textile thought, some business negotiation. This experience was an invaluable possession which ought not to be wasted. Look how things went wrong when he was away! Look at the Old Mill fulling stocks! (Now safely repl
aced by his instructions.) Inexperienced handling might have induced disaster. Then, too, Chuff had thought to replace one stock only, but Morcar knew that would make their beat uneven. Morcar told Chuff how to manage a funeral, he knew where to find advice for Jonathan about schools. (Though was it the best advice?) Yes, in some aspects of life, indeed in many, Morcar was still needed.

  On the other hand, the young people had more experience of modern phenomena. Jonathan knew what kind of speech Morcar should make to young students; Chuff knew more than his grandfather about bowls, dances, motorcycles - and what young people liked to wear.

  Was Morcar, then, so much needed, so useful, as to be entitled to hold the power over the younger generation that he undoubtedly possessed? He had the power because he had the money; how far was he entitled to use it? Well, first of all, decided Morcar firmly: I think a man should uphold his own basic principles, even to the point of severity. I was right to rebuke Chuff over his poor reports, I was right to lay strongly before him what I thought about his behaviour with Ruth. To give in about basic beliefs, to yield wrongly against one’s principles, is feeble and useless. The only way to obtain the respect of the young is surely to be worthy of it. Maybe that was*all you could do for the young: show them a way of living as a standard with which to compare their own.

  On the other hand - the procession was now entering the Strand, and a fresh band broke out in solemn music; gun salutes shook Morcar’s thoughts - on the other hand, Morcar sympathized with the resentment of the young at always having to do what the old told them to do instead of doing what pleased themselves. Yes, it was more than empathy, it was sympathy, thought Morcar, smiling grimly; he himself was a man who liked to go his own way, a man who hated to be governed. When Jonathan said that a man should make up his mind what he wanted to do, and not be bossed out of doing it, Morcar agreed whole-heartedly. Indeed he had often said the same himself. (To change one’s mind from rational consideration was a different matter.) But on the one hand, if the older generation did not pass down their ideas of civilization to the younger - ‘we have heard with our ears and our fathers have declared unto us,’ thought Morcar - there would be no progress in civilization at all, for each generation would have to start again from zero. On the other hand, unless the younger generation differed from the older, there would be no progress because no change, as Trollope remarked with his confounded woad, thought Morcar irritably.

  Is the conflict between the generations more difficult to resolve than the conflict of interests between contemporaries, wondered Morcar. Yes, he thought so. There were the biological factors, Oedipus and all that, to begin with. On top of that, the lives of the young are inevitably shaped by the patterns made by the older generation. Myself, Charlie, Jessopp, Winnie, Christina, David, Jennifer, Fan: we all made patterns (not always willingly) in which these three youngsters, Chuff, Jonathan, and Susie, are enmeshed. Even their characters, their faces, are handed to them by their elders. Naturally the young resent this curtailment of their free choice. The patterns are already made, and can’t be unmade, but though the young must cope with them, we should not require the young to like them.

  But because their environment is so different from that of the previous generation, their ideas cannot be yours, indeed must necessarily be different from yours. Everything your generation has added on to your childhood’s way of life, has made their environment different from yours. Except when their ideas appear to run counter to your morals, you have not the right to forbid them. Morcar coloured as he remembered the instruction he had cheerfully given his two young dependants about their car: ‘A sober colour and not too many gadgets.’ To warn them that in his experience many gadgets made a heavy expense for impermanent benefits was sensible, but what right had he to curtail their choice of colour? That he was paying the bill? That was a tyrannous use of power, he reflected; such a gift was not a gift, but an extension of one’s own personality. It was natural for young people to like new things, which sprang from the same impulses as themselves; new colours, new shapes, new clothes, new buildings. Had he the right to chain Chuff down for life to an old mill he hated? That a new mill could stand beside the Oldroyds’ first mill on the Ire would be pleasant; he could call it Syke Mill, which was its original name, and Susie’s modern lamb would look at home there. But the thought of all that glass and concrete was odious to him. Still, he must not allow himself to dislike new customs just because they were new; his bitterness against Beatle-cuts, beehive hairdos, shift dresses, and black stockings - did he just revolt against their unfamiliarity? He must try to judge, not by whether they were new or old, but by the criteria of taste he genuinely accepted.

  In change, the old see decay; the young, new life. Both are right.

  It was not much consolation, though perhaps a little, that the problem was not unique, but faced every generation. He remembered, not without a rueful chuckle, that the two Hardaker boys had treated Chuff as an old bore, that Jonathan was having a stiff struggle to make his school class respect him.

  Now his meditation was broken: the procession had reached St Paul’s. With a perfect dignity and accuracy which Morcar admired with his whole heart, the bearer party lifted the heavy coffin and carried it safely, with measured step, up the long flight of steps and into the great cathedral. Morcar was not one who greatly loved ceremony; but ‘I like it if it’s to do with something I believe in,’ he sometimes said. Now the spectacle greatly moved him; the rich blaze of colours in the uniforms, the superb pattern of human lines and curves - an orderliness not natural or easy, to be learned only with great effort, practised only with great control - the great ones of the world gathered to pay tribute to a commoner (‘none of them a patch on him,’ thought Morcar), the true grief on every face.

  ‘This is the climax of the affair, the highest moment,’ thought Morcar soberly.

  He did not in the least believe in any bodily resurrection, but the sentences announcing it, as the procession moved up the cathedral, had a deep relevance to human longing. As for To Be a Pilgrim, which the vast congregation now proceeded to sing, it expressed Morcar’s view of life exactly.

  Who would true valour see

  Let him come hither;

  One here will constant be

  Come wind, come weather;

  There’s no discouragement

  Shall make him once relent

  His first avowed intent

  To be a pilgrim.

  ‘That’s Churchill exactly,’ thought Morcar, and he felt he owed it to Churchill to reduce his chaotic and muddled thoughts to firm practical conclusions. He struggled to do so.

  All parts of a man’s life, thought Morcar, were important to one’s estimate of him as a man, the last ten years as much so as the first. Therefore one’s standards must be maintained through one’s last years: old age must be lived with dignity and honour. Dealings with the new generation must therefore be such as one’s best judgement approved.

  How to do this? How to withdraw gracefully so as to retain enough power of action to continue to be helpful, but little enough to give the younger generation full scope? He could not deny that he had been hurt when Old Mill had asked Chuff to advise on their broken stock instead of himself, and ignobly glad when his own knowledge was needed; yet his own knowledge was really needed. Again, there was more feeling beneath the apparently callous surface of the young than one would guess at first sight. Chuff suffered from Jonathan’s mental superiority, and was sorry for his grandmother; Susie wept over her fringe and resented Jonathan’s mother; Jonathan was hurt to have ‘prank’ applied to his CND endeavours and sacrificed an easy future for the sake of his ideas. How to behave wisely and well towards them?

  It struck him that this was one of the severest challenges, the trickiest assignments, of his whole career. How to meet it?

  First, of course, one must love the new generation. For him this was not difficult: Jonathan he had always loved and indeed admired; Pussy was his darling; for Chuff he
had grown to have a solid realistic affection. Of course love of this kind put one always at a disadvantage. It was a law of life that the older loved the younger more than the younger loved the older; to the older, the younger were a fulfilment, to the younger, the older were a hindrance to fulfilment. You cared for the young’s happiness more than they cared for yours. This must just be accepted. It made you vulnerable, they tended to get their way by being unhappy if you didn’t allow it, because you cared for their un-happiness more than they cared for yours.

  How, then, to judge when to give them their way, when to yield?

  Not to give way, weakly, for to do so was mere self-indulgence, sparing oneself pain. Not to refuse unthinkingly, for that was mere self-indulgence, pushing aside problems, enjoying the exercise of power. Decisions must be taken after a rational consideration of all the factors concerned.

  True; but one of the factors was that it was the young’s lives which were at issue. Morcar had perhaps ten years, of diminishing participation, to live; Chuff had fifty or sixty. He had the right to decide how he should live for that long time. Wherever possible the young should be given their choice. Lay before them one’s own view, one’s own wishes, one’s own experience, but let them choose.

  It is natural and right that a man should wish to be a man of his time, not a stale leftover from a previous age, thought Morcar, remembering Jonathan’s phrase, and G. B. Mellor’s estimate of himself. Well! True enough! Nobody can take your past achievement from you, so don’t try to grab the future too. Churchill was dead, but his deeds would not be forgotten. There was more in it than that, thought Morcar, but he could not quite fathom its meaning.

  The service was over. The national anthem was sung; the last post and reveille were sounded, piercing, unbearably poignant, from the silver trumpet; the dead march was played, the last hymn rolled out. The coffin was borne out of the cathedral and down to the Thames’ side; the launch left the pier; planes flew in formation overhead; the tall cranes bowed their heads in the drivers’ last tribute; the great man’s coffin was entrained for the quiet country churchyard.