South Riding

by Winifred Holtby

  Loss may be forgotten; wounded vanity heals; but even death could bring no cure for this disaster. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, were made equal by it. All pleasure had been bought for him at her expense. While he rode, dined, laughed, met friends and mastered horses, she lay there. Never again could she partake of joy. There was nothing that could ever happen, in heaven or on earth, which could erase the record of his violence. Oh, my love, my little love, forgive me.

  The matron said, “Oh, Mr. Carne, they’ve just brought me my tea. Won’t you come and join me?”

  “I’m sorry. I must get to my brother’s. He’s expecting me.”

  “I won’t keep you then.”

  But she wanted to say—at least have a drink with me before you go there. You’ll need it. She had met William Carne, the architect. She knew that there was no harmony between the brothers. The efficient snobbish builder of villas for West Riding manufacturers was not the matron’s idea of a man at all. As for Mavis Carne—his lean rapacious wife, trained like a greyhound for the vigorous athletics of social climbing— “she’s a horror,” the matron thought.

  But she knew Carne’s habit of going for all unpleasant business, head down, blindly obstinate, like a bull at a gate. He had to see his brother, so would get it over, marching off into the hot August afternoon to find an address vaguely indicated on Will’s new note-paper as “Greenlawnes, Harrogate.” It was over six months since he had visited William and Mavis and meanwhile they had moved to a district more exclusive and expensive than the last. They had built their own house. That was excellent. It meant that they must be doing well, and so could help him without any inconvenience to themselves.

  With characteristic lack of consideration they had not thought of telling Carne how to find their house. No taxi presented itself, so he trudged down the sunlit road on the hot pavements. He could walk twenty miles across the fields, but town defeated him.

  He loathed the thought of asking Will for money. He had learned no graces of the mendicant’s art. He only wanted a loan—for harvest wages till he could sell his wheat and for the monthly account at the Laurels. He did not want to go to the bank again. Fretton was growing difficult. Interest mounted higher. He was aware of the chancy nature of credit.

  Carne tried to reassure himself, but his mind was not ingenious. It lacked the subtleties with which some varieties can reassure themselves. He could have reminded himself that William was, after all, his younger brother, that he had played with him in the big tin hip-bath beside the nursery fire, hauled him up straw stacks, taught him how to ride the donkey. He could have reminded himself that Will had always been a bit of a coward, howling when the pony had run away with him, lying when a box of cigarettes was discovered in the cave they had hollowed out of the oat-stack, whimpering as a new boy at St. Peter’s—while he, Robert, had cuffed him into shape, championed and fought for him, idly magnanimous, stupid at lessons, brilliant at athletics, a natural leader in a country where muscles, courage, hot temper and slow good-humoured dignity are considered adequate requisites for leadership.

  Will had done his sums and drawn his little pictures and married a smart wife and made a lot of money. That was no reason why Carne should mind sounding him for a hundred pounds to see him over harvest.

  But the further he tramped the more clearly Carne knew that he did mind it. He hated the long hot walk, hated asking strangers to guide him: Can you tell me where is a house called Greenlawnes? Mr. William Carne’s place? The architect? He hated facing Mavis, who always seemed to be about the place. He hated the embarrassment of explaining his position.

  By walking three times in the wrong direction to avoid asking questions, Carne found it took him an hour and a half to reach Greenlawnes from The Laurels.

  The house stood back from the road in a smart prosperous geometrical garden. The lawns had been mown, the hedges clipped, the begonias planted in unhesitating rows. There was a cubist bird-bath, a crazy-paved sunk garden, a rubble tennis court, a grass court, a rose garden. The house was all white and chromium, and rectangular, with windows cut out of the corners “like rat-holes in a soap box,” sniffed Carne.

  A maid in a musical comedy uniform answered the doorbell and regarded Carne with a glacial manner which belied her gay appearance.

  “No, sir, Mrs. Carne isn’t in yet. No. I’m afraid not. Very likely; they have a lot of callers.”

  “I’ll come in and wait. And I’d like a wash,” sighed Carne.

  The hall was black and white and scarlet. A bowl of glass fruits stood on a glass-topped table. The bathroom was green and black with fishes writhing along the green tiled wall and a bath into which one descended by marble steps. The drawing-room was off-white, with immense white sofas, and vases filled with sprays of pearly honesty, and an uncarpeted floor of pale polished silvery wood.

  Well, well, thought Carne. After this a hundred or so will be nothing.

  There were cigarettes in glass stands on the stone mantelpiece. There was a cocktail bar like an operation theatre in one corner. The maiden offered Carne a cocktail. He hated gin; he wanted a cup of tea or an honest whisky and soda. He wanted anonymity; he wanted death. He sat himself down in one of the vast billowing chairs and waited. The fatigue, the heat, the emotions of the day had overwhelmed him. When his sister-in-law came clicking on high restless heels along the corridor she found him lying sprawled, his hands hanging to the floor, his head tilted backward, deeply asleep.

  “Well, well,” she called in her high mocking voice. “Don’t let me disturb you, my dear boy.”

  He sprang awake with a grunt and stared at her painted malicious face, her black pencilled line of eyebrow, her white linen sheath of costume. She was straight, brittle and inhuman as a glass wand.

  “Don’t mind me. Tuck up again and go bye-bye by all means. I’m expecting some perfectly lousy people in in a few minutes. They’d be charmed to see you. Lazy creatures, you farmers. Have a cocktail?”

  “No thanks. Where’s Will? Didn’t he get my note?”

  He levered himself with an effort from the enveloping cushions.

  “Out, poor pet. Chasing non-existent business. Well, if you won’t drink, I must. I’ve been having a perfectly frightful afternoon. I’m done to the wide.”

  She busied herself with the glittering and tinkling surgical instruments of the cocktail bar. “Simply too exhausting. Duty calls, dunning—always the perfect wife, I am. Everything for poor dear Will’s sake.”

  She settled herself with her drink upon the sofa. She looked as cool and unnatural as a gilded lily.

  “Throw me a cigarette. Mantelpiece. Well, how are the dear dark elemental things of the countryside—the cows, aimless, homeless and witless, aren’t they? The passionate peasants?” Carne bent over her to light her cigarette. “You’re putting on weight, you know.” She poked with a pointed raspberry-painted finger-nail at his waistcoat. “Tummy running loose. Fat of the land. That’s country life. Poor Will’s like a scarecrow. It’s an ‘ard world.”

  The “lousy people” began to arrive. They came from tennis courts and hotel lounges, from golf-links or motor rides. Their shrill, clipped voices rang in Carne’s aching head. Their lean clipped figures swam before his eyes. Darling, how frightful, marvellous, putrid. So at the ninth hole . . . completely off my drive. . . . Monte Carlo—Gleneagles— Wimbledon.

  Oh, hell, thought Carne. Yet he was vaguely cheered by all this evidence of prosperity. He had been himself—in another far-off life—to Cannes and Monte Carlo. He did not want to be reminded of bitter-sweet memory.

  He caged himself in a corner, glowering silently. By the time his brother arrived, he had less than an hour left before his train time.

  The unspoken ferocity of his mood gained him private audience in the small breakfast-room. He stood with his back to a bleak little panel in the wall which, during cold weather, was an electric fireplace, and scowled down at the lean, nervous architect who had the high perspiring forehead and querulous
egotism of the hypochondriac.

  “It’s all very well for you, Bob,” wailed Will Carne. “Open air, good country food, your own farm, no worries, plenty of exercise, regular food. You look marvellous, marvellous. Jove, I’d give a lot to feel really fit again.”

  Carne grunted. He was staring with contemptuous appreciation at his brother’s paraphernalia of luxury.

  “You don’t know what it’s been like, this last two years,” moaned Will. “Every one scared stiff. Not a soul building. Private people worried, corporations bitten by the economy bug. Sweating your heart out for contracts you don’t get. Whistling for your bills.”

  “This house,” suggested Carne, “must have cost a penny or two.”

  “You’re right, my dear chap. You’re dead right. Had to do it, of course. Way of business. But God knows how it’ll ever get paid for. Owe the bank over two thousand already, and Mavis sold her Imperial Tobacco Shares to pay for the furniture. None of our old stuff would do, of course—and it sold for a song. You’ve no notion how lucky you were, sticking to the land. How’s Maythorpe?”

  “Much the same. Castle’s very bad.”

  “Castle? Castle? Let’s see—he was shepherd, wasn’t he?”

  “Foreman.”

  “Of course. I remember. Fat chap with a vile temper. Threatened to thrash the life out of me when I left the fold-yard door open.”

  “The young bullocks got out.”

  “You know, I often think I wouldn’t mind being back at Maythorpe. Peace. Fresh air. I’m not at all well these days, you know, not at all well. Nerves. Blood pressure. Indigestion. Live like a cabbage, the doctor said. Cut down work. Don’t worry. Don’t worry! So simple, isn’t it? You know, I was just wanting to talk to you, Bob. Glad you dropped in to-day.”

  Carne thought of the long and arduous climb which that casual “drop” implied.

  “You must be sittin’ pretty—Government so hot about agriculture an’ all—wheat quotas, beet subsidy—all the rest of it. When you want a little spot of cash, all you’ve got to do is to sell a gee or something. By the way, did you get the Hunter’s Cup again at Flintonbridge this year?”

  “No.”

  “Oh!—well—as I was saying. The doctors are all agreed that I must get away. We were planning Le Touquet. Or perhaps some little quiet spot in the South of France. You need sun, he said—and by God, he’s right. I’m done. No relaxation. Up till all hours. When it isn’t on duty in the office, it’s on duty meeting the right people—bridge—drinking— Mavis has been a brick! I can’t tell you the way that little woman’s thrown herself into my interests. So, what I was going to say was—could you let me have fifty quid or so till Fawley’s cheque comes in? Couple of ponies would do it.”

  William, of course, had always been the bright one, the clever boy at school, the spoiled son of the family, Robert, slower-witted, more patient, less completely preoccupied by his own desires, had again and again permitted his junior to exploit him, but until Mavis drove him that evening to the station in the new Humber Snipe (acquired, of course, for “business purposes”), he remained unaware how completely he had been defeated in the unequal contest.

  When he proclaimed his lack of money, Will had immediately devised a dozen ways in which he could procure it. He could sell horses, he could sell his silver cups, he could sell some of his antique furniture. (“My dear fellow, your house is simply chock-a-block with sellable stuff. Chock-a-block.”) It appeared that he was simply smothered by his great possessions. He had not begun to realise his available assets.

  He settled himself down in his third-class carriage. Mavis kissed her hand to him with raspberry-coloured lips.

  “Bless you,” she breathed. “I knew you’d help us out. Good old Bob.”

  Carne recalled an anecdote of a great-uncle Jim, of whom it was said, “You may go to borrow a shilling from Jim Carne, but you always end by lending him a guinea.” He decided that there was something in heredity.

  6

  Mr. Mitchell Faces an Inquisition

  THE SOUTH RIDING had turned gold for harvest. Through the pale standing corn self-binders whirred behind the nodding horses. In the rich placidity of the mellow fields the brown-armed harvesters piled sheaves into stooks behind the reaper. In the stack-yards labourers forked with rhythmic movement, tossing sheaves from the wagons to the stacks. Children rode back in the empty rattling wagons carrying ’levenses for the men, beer, cold tea, cheese and bacon cake. North of Garfield came rumours of a motor-tractor, that reaped and thrashed in one tremendous effort, but that was still a monster, a curiosity for distrustful comment.

  The golden tide of corn had rippled right to the huddled brick of Yarrold Town. Those warm rose buildings piled themselves against the exquisite height of Yarrold Parish Church, a legacy of twelfth century devotion, its delicate grey stone melting into the pale quivering summer sky of nineteen thirty-three. Corn, brick, and stone, food, housing, worship composed themselves into a gentle landscape of English rural life.

  In the motor-bus, grinding along the softened tarry highway, Joe Astell rode to the Public Assistance Committee for the Cold Harbour Division of South Riding.

  For him it was a journey without satisfaction. Because his heart was tender and his imagination keen, the details of individual need and suffering hurt him. He would fight the battle for humanity in terms of an extra two shillings a week, a grocery order or a sack of coals. He would attempt to soften the inquisitional harshness of men and women who enjoyed, he thought, this business of hunting down the miseries of defeat, the shameful expedients of poverty. They got their money’s worth out of the joys of interference.

  But Astell found no joy even in victory. The grudging ameliorations of a system which kept the defeated alive, so that they might not rise in their despair and seize for themselves and for their children those things they needed, gave him no sense of pleasure. This was no work for him—this mild solicitude for bare existence. He should be up, away, fighting to change the system, not content to render first aid to its victims. The picturesque streets of Yarrold closed in upon him. He saw not the lovely shades of the old brick walls, soft rose, warm purple, the patchwork of rough tiled roofs, the rambler roses frothing and showering round the small closed windows; he saw poverty and disease, stunted rickety children, the monotony of women’s battle against dirt, cold and inconvenience. The insecurity and loneliness of old age. Deprived of those natural consolations which come alone from work found worth doing. Astell despised himself, his task, his colleagues. An immense fatigue of disillusionment devitalised him. He climbed from the bus, a sad dispirited man.

  Beyond a garden wall two girls and a tall young man were playing tennis.

  “Forty-fifteen!” called a girl. She stood back for her service, tossed a ball in the air. “Jack, you foul pig. Play!”

  Play—they could play if they wished on this warm August morning—these boys and girls of the fortunate middle-classes. Joe thought of the grim north country term of Play, which meant the enforced idleness of unemployment.

  I can’t stand this much longer, he said to himself, and swung left to the building used by the Public Assistance Committee.

  It was a disused Congregational Chapel, bought cheap during the War by the Yarrold Urban District Council and used for offices. To-day it was still partitioned with rough boarding and wore an air of gloomy improvisation redeemed from secularity by stained glass windows which imparted to petitioners and adjudicators alike complexions either decomposed or jaundiced, as the green and blue and yellow rays fell on their faces.

  The committee was assembled when Astell crossed the passage where the applicants sat waiting and entered the room by one of its rough unpainted doors. They sat on three sides of a hollow square of tables, facing the chair where their victims would appear. Colonel Whitelaw, a youngish popular landowner, presided. Mr. Thompson, the relieving officer, a thin decent red-headed man, shuffled his papers.

  He had lost over a stone since he u
ndertook this work twelve months ago. His war record, his disability—three fingers off the left hand and he had been an engineer—and his eager honesty had won the job for him. But to-day his anxious face and troubled gesture proclaimed him as much a victim of the slump as those whose cases he examined. Astell nodded to him, aware of his harassed, kindly, rather muddled mind, of his pretty extravagant wife who had been a typist, of his debts, his unwise generosities, and his terrors.

  He did not nod to Colonel Whitelaw.

  He sat down in a chair near the relieving officer.

  “Well—I think we’re all here, aren’t we? Alderman Tubbs can’t come. Oh, Carne’s not here yet.”

  “Harvest. He’ll probably be late,” said Peacock.

  David Shirley the coal-merchant, whispered to Astell, “If harvest lasted all year, we might get a bit of business done.”

  Carne was a notable objector and interrupter, “safeguarding the rate-payers.” Safeguarding his own skin, thought Astell.

  Before each member of committee lay a small pile of papers. “Each recorded a story of individual defeat. Here were the men and women who had fallen a little lower even than those on transitional benefit, the disallowed, the uninsured, the destitute. The Means Test was no new humiliation to them. Since the days of Queen Elizabeth those who had become dependent on their neighbours had to submit to inquiry and suggestion. What was new was the type of person who came to ask for outdoor relief. The middle-class worker fallen on evil times, the professional man, the ruined investment holder.

  Astell was not moved by the special pity for these which distressed his colleagues. If their plight marked the failure of capitalism, so much the better—so much the sooner would end this evil anarchy with its injustice, its confusion, its waste, its class divisions. So much the sooner would come the transformation to the classless planned community. But he was not happy. His ruthless theory guided uneasily his tender heart.