Until the Colours Fade

by Tim Jeal

  George Braithwaite had always viewed his father’s dedication with a humility befitting one who derived such benefit from its results; and certainly, before his conversation with Magnus Crawford at Bentley’s, the notion that he might one day come to the centre of his father’s industrial empire, to argue with him about the handling of a strike, would have struck him as too fantastic to merit even a passing thought. And yet, ten days before the election, George found himself walking across the factory yard with this very purpose in mind. George had not lightly decided to try to achieve the all but impossible task Magnus Crawford had set him; only because marriage to Catherine mattered more to him than anything else in life, had he dared provoke his father’s rage. George’s captaincy in the yeomanry, the fact that he would soon buy a commission in a fashionable regiment and later sit in the House as member for the borough, all owed more to his father’s expectations than his own wishes; but his proposal to Catherine had been his own independent choice. Having no fortune, she had never been part of Joseph’s plan for his son, and paternal indifference to the match had increased rather than diminished George’s determination to consummate it.

  As George climbed the iron stairs to his father’s office, he thought of Catherine to give him sufficient strength to face what would undoubtedly be a testing ordeal. As the price for abandoning his opposition to George’s pursuit of his sister, Magnus had demanded that George persuade his father to dismiss the Irishmen who had replaced his striking workers. With neither a full understanding of the reasons why Crawford had made this demand nor any clear idea how it might be achieved, George was a far from confident man as he pushed open the outer door of his father’s office.

  When George was shown in, his father was seated at a table by the window unsealing letters and sorting papers from a despatch box. Without looking up, he would dictate occasional memoranda to the elderly clerk perched on a high stool at an adjacent desk. On seeing his son, Joseph broke off in mid-sentence and came towards him with a low bow.

  ‘A rare honour, George,’ he murmured with feigned obsequiousness. George was always embarrassed by his father’s laboured jokes about his gentlemanly son who now looked down on all forms of trade. George did not at all despise the origins of his wealth.

  ‘The honour’s mine, father,’ he replied, looking absently at the piles of ledgers and the Liverpool shipping lists pinned on the walls. Joseph nodded to the clerk, who picked up a sheaf of bills and cheques and went out. When George was reclining in the room’s solitary armchair and his father leaning against a tall iron safe, an uneasy silence filled the office. George cleared his throat.

  ‘That was a deuced unpleasant business on the station road. I can’t seem to get it out of my mind.’

  ‘From what you told me at the time, I can’t say I’m surprised; we all owe you a debt of gratitude. I’m proud of you, indeed I am.’

  ‘My concern is to avoid the same sort of incident in the future.’

  ‘We all are. Quite right we should be.’

  George watched his father’s fat white fingers touching the gold chains across his grey waistcoat. From somewhere outside, he could hear the muted but incessant throbbing of the engine-house.

  ‘The point is how we can do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ George saw his father’s thick grey eyebrows raised in surprise.

  ‘Stop it happening again.’ George paused and thought a moment. Best take the fence straight on; no point in approaching at too oblique an angle and risk being misunderstood. ‘It seems to me the only way is to settle the dispute before the election.’

  ‘A grand idea, George,’ laughed Joseph, his smooth pink face creasing with merriment.

  ‘If you discharge your Irish hands, I believe the strikers would go back to work for whatever you saw fit to offer them. Learnt their lesson in my view.’

  His father nodded affably and flicked a trace of cigar ash from a lapel of his black swallow-tail coat.

  ‘The strike started because I reduced their wages. Now you say they’ll return for what they turned down before.’ He chuckled to himself and shook his head. ‘A fine spectacle I’d make of myself if I discharged the Irish and found my old work people as obstinate as before. If I go chasing after them, they’ll think I’m weakening; and I’ll tell you this, I’ll pay them nowt more than I offered before unless there’s an increase in demand. When profits fall, wages must fall too. They’ve not learnt that lesson yet, lad.’

  His father’s folded arms and omniscient smile made George’s heart sink.

  ‘To prevent riots you could surely pay at an artificial rate for a few weeks.’

  ‘I’ll not tamper with the law of supply and demand come war or famine. How do I pay the false rate? Out of profits, that’s how; and what does that do? Drives capital out of spinning, and we’ll end the day with thousands seeking less work for lower wages. Let them as wants higher wages seek other work and, when demand returns, them as stayed in the trade will be few and the capitalist must pay them a high rate. Leave well alone and all comes right.’

  After his speech Joseph looked at his son with the self-satisfaction of a priest who has successfully defended the true faith from a dangerous heresy and sees the heretic penitent at last. George recognised the look and dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

  ‘But men in Rigton Bridge have no other work to seek. The mills have destroyed the hand-loom trade.’

  For the first time Joseph’s sleek smile faded.

  ‘Come, lad, can I control the size of population in this town? That power rests with the people themselves.’

  ‘Our mills drew them here,’ replied George, driven on only by his determination to satisfy Crawford. He had never opposed his father so firmly and feared that he would not easily be forgiven.

  ‘They came freely and have no claims on me,’ said Joseph in the incisive high-pitched tone which George knew was a danger signal. ‘It’s a master’s right to seek out those who’ll work for the lowest wage. I did that, and I’ll discharge not one of my new hands to buy off riots. I thought you had a better head on your shoulders, George.’

  Joseph paced over to the window and looked out at the towering factory buildings opposite. George glared at his father’s broad back, and felt sharp spasms of anger. Would Crawford have made a better showing? No man on earth could move his father when he had made up his mind. Joseph had evidently been thinking for, when he turned round, his lips were compressed and his brow furrowed. A moment later he told George that he would not after all be required to negotiate with the confederacy of new voters for the sale of their votes.

  ‘I’ll look to that myself. It’s no job for faint hearts or soft heads. I’m told their leaders have been to see what they can get from the Liberal’s agent. They’ll not double-cross me that way. I’ll have answers for that game.’

  ‘What answers, father?’

  ‘Good enough to keep them in line. If they’re after honey they can expect some wasps.’

  George was shaken by the savage way his father had spoken.

  ‘What if people discover what you’re up to?’

  ‘It’s done in most elections, and I’ll make mine no exception. D’you think those as sells their votes would like things done a different way? I’ll pay for my election and not with short-change either. A borough’s lucky when a rich man stands. With the Independent out of business, there’ll be none to raise a noise, so who’s to care?’

  George thought of Magnus Crawford but said nothing. His father laughed when he saw his son was about to leave.

  ‘Take heart, man; I’ve a rough tongue when others tell me what’s to be done. Stick to soldiering, George. Learn your trade with the yeomanry and then we’ll see what’s to do. The best regiments won’t be too good for the Braithwaites; not if it’s the Guards. I’ll run to five thousand, I tell you.’

  ‘Thank you, father.’

  Before George was out of the room, his father had returned to his letters and papers. As he went do
wn the stairs, George cursed himself for ever having tried to achieve what Crawford had asked of him. Now what could he tell the man? That he had failed as he had known he would? That his father had humiliated him yet again? Better not see Crawford at all and let him draw his own conclusions. Seconds later George had an idea which did a lot to ease his depression. If Crawford was going to blacken him in his sister’s eyes, might not he, George, repay the compliment and improve his chances at the same time? He would go to Catherine a week or so before her decision was due and tell her what her brother had said about her motives. After swearing to her that he had never believed a word of these lies, he would humbly renew his proposal. Shocked by her brother’s duplicity and deeply moved by her suitor’s spontaneous demonstration of trust and loyalty, might she not there and then accept him? Even if this procedure did not bring immediate success, George was hopeful that it might ultimately tip the scales in his favour. Leaving the factory gates, George could not imagine how so simple an idea had previously eluded him.

  8

  As Tom Strickland walked along Store Street, a light rain was falling and the narrowness of the thoroughfare made it impossible for him to avoid the dirt thrown up by the wheels of carts and drays. In such conditions the crossing-sweepers looked as though they were made of mud and filth. Although the street was partially paved, the numerous rag-shops, gin palaces and pawn-shops marked it out as a resort of the poorer classes.

  The stalls of a street market forced Tom against the entrances of courts and open doorways, through which he could see blackened staircases and backyards piled high with rubbish, some of it floating in slimy water from overflowing rain-butts. Pushing past ill-clad groups of haggard women bargaining for scraps of stale meat and frost-bitten vegetables, he came to Conduit Row and turning down it reached a small open space with a horse trough and a pump in the centre. On one side was a long windowless wall with a central archway leading to a soap and candle factory and on the other a terrace of seedy but still dignified eighteenth century houses with tall railings, torch snuffers and overhanging lamp-brackets. These buildings would once have housed doctors and solicitors but, with the growth of the town and the flight of professional men to new suburban villas, they were now mostly given over to cheap lodging houses.

  The last house in the terrace was slightly larger than the others, but it was not for this reason that Tom stopped and looked up at the dirty windows and cracked brickwork. With an air of surprise he pulled a letter from his pocket and checked the address. Still puzzled, but satisfied that he had indeed come to the right place, he walked up the steps to the door. The day before, he had received a note from Magnus Crawford asking him to come here, and, although he had had no idea what the man wanted with him, curiosity had proved stronger than his irritation over Crawford’s behaviour outside Bentley’s the week before. He felt irritated with himself for the hold Crawford had over him, but was honest enough with himself not to deny it.

  On the door were two ornate painted signs: E. J. Clegg, Drapery Clothier and Hatter. Workshop Only, and, just below it, B. & J. Truscott & Co. Lithographic and Copper-Plate Printers. So much smaller was the discoloured brass plate next to the bell-pull that Tom had not at first noticed it. When he did, he laughed out loud; on it were two words: Rigton Independent.

  On entering the editorial office, Tom saw no sign of Crawford. The room was long, draughty, low-ceilinged and well-lit only at the far end, where a large trestle table stood near the window, covered with a litter of proof and manuscript pages, a dusty pile of books for review, and numerous empty soda-water bottles and cigar boxes. Balanced on a flat-topped coal scuttle, in front of a small bright fire, sat a youth with ink-smeared arms and hands and similarly marked corduroy breeches. As Tom advanced, the boy lazily doffed his paper hat, but made no move to get up. Not so a large red-whiskered man behind the trestle table, who rose at once and introduced himself as the paper’s cashier. Tom explained his business and, having learned that Crawford was expected shortly, sat down to wait.

  Never having been in a newspaper office before, Tom was considerably surprised by what he saw; he had always imagined messenger boys running in and out, compositors busily setting up pages, and the steady thump of a steam-press in the background. Now he felt acutely embarrassed that he had ever suggested that Crawford should put money into such an apparently run-down concern. The unpleasant thought occurred to him that Crawford might have summoned him to point out the fatuity of his suggestion.

  Looking around him, he noticed several broken window panes stuffed up with rags. Against the wall nearest him were a dozen or so stacks of unused paper ranged from floor to ceiling, partly blocking a doorway, through which could be seen a hand-press and beside it another machine for compressing the printed sheets. It seemed most unlikely that the Independent would be able to earn much more than would be needed to pay the printer and compositor.

  To pass the time, Tom looked at back numbers of the paper. Four pages in length, two were taken up by a melodramatic fiction serial and by advertisements for remedies, usually excluded by the better papers: ‘Yoland’s Specific Solution for speedily curing gonorrhoea, gleets, strictures and expelling bladder stones.’ The correspondence, he suspected, was entirely written by the staff, since exchanges between ‘A Cotton Master’ and ‘Vindex’, or some such pseudonym, invariably went against the first named. The rest was made up of political articles – always hostile to landlords, manufacturers and magistrates – and local trivia, consisting of sporting events, regional antiquities, and a feebly satirical section called ‘Town Talk’. Tom was glancing through an article castigating the missionary societies for idolising the suffering negro, while ignoring the white factory slaves at home, when Crawford burst in.

  Not seeing Tom at first, Magnus tossed his hat and cape to the ink-smeared youth, and then swept some books off the top of a cupboard and unearthed a bottle of madeira. He was turning to offer the red-whiskered man a glass, when he saw Tom.

  ‘Mr Strickland, forgive me. I’m late. I’m afraid madeira serves for port and sherry here. Take a glass?’ Without waiting for a reply, he turned to the boy. ‘If you’re awake, Moggs, light some lamps.’ Then, having handed Tom a glass and introduced him briefly to the cashier, Crawford led his guest into the printing room and shut the door behind them.

  Tom watched Crawford walk across to the printing press and slap its greasy metal frame, as a lover of horses might the flank of a favourite hunter.

  ‘Just a poor old Stanhope, but still in working order. Comforting, wouldn’t you say, that Caxton changed the world with something still more primitive?’ He laughed loudly at Tom’s consternation.

  ‘Did you pay the fine?’ asked the artist uneasily.

  ‘I did; though not, between ourselves, to control a rag of a radical weekly.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘Patience, Mr Strickland.’ Magnus saw that Tom was looking absently at the compositor’s table. ‘Ingenious how the letters are divided up, wouldn’t you say? More than fifty divisions in the lower case alone; how the man finds anything is a mystery to me.’ He picked up a handful of metal letters, examined them for a moment, and then stared at Tom with unexpected directness. ‘I’m going to make Joseph Braithwaite sweat a little for his election.’

  Tom smiled to himself.

  ‘Last time we met, the idea seemed to hold little attraction for you. May I ask your reason?’

  ‘Personal ones, Mr Strickland.’ He tossed away the letters and rested a hand on the compositor’s stool. ‘I don’t like him, I don’t like his methods either.’ He saw that Strickland was looking at him intently. ‘Have you ever wanted to atone for anything?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then serve in a colony.’ He paused and narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m bored, Mr Strickland, perhaps that’s the truth of it; bored enough to welcome any diversion, even borough politics, if I can…. Do you know I’ve heard it said men used to fight duels for nothing
… nothing except to make something happen. A man may still gamble for that reason. Absurd in these civilized days, don’t you think? An artist has his work of course to occupy him; idle minds must seek other panaceas.’

  ‘The desire for justice?’ murmured Tom with a smile.

  ‘You flatter me, but leave me my imperfect motives. The wish comes first, the reasons merely justify.’ He refilled his glass and grinned at Tom. ‘No more metaphysics. I paid the fine because the editor also happens to be the Liberal candidate’s agent. Before I saved his livelihood, he told me nothing, afterwards he became quite confiding.’ He laughed softly. ‘You see, Mr Strickland, I’ve decided to trust you.’

  ‘Then tell me what he told you,’ said Tom, concealing his excitement. He knew that he was being told these things for a reason and he was filled with a desperate impatience to discover what it was. Crawford’s pretence of levity did not deceive him; the man had paid out three or four hundred pounds for information and was certain to use it.

  ‘Last week,’ replied Crawford, ‘our editor had a visit from half-a-dozen anonymous individuals, who came to visit him in his capacity as Liberal agent. They claimed to represent the interests of seventy others – most of them recently enfranchised voters. These six solid citizens were out to sell their tidy parcel of votes for a fine sum; they’d already taken money from Braithwaite and wanted to see whether the Liberal purse could measure up – if it failed, the votes went Braithwaite’s way. I’m going to treat with them on the Liberal’s behalf.’