Читать книгу South Riding - Winifred Holtby - Страница 29

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"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 semi-amateur 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 to-morrow 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 hæmorrhage, of a sanitorium, 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 hæmorrhage, 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 individual 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 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 woke 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 arm-chairs 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 hæmorrhage.

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.

"You're not really such a philosopher, I bet," he smiled at her. "I don't believe you naturally let ill alone."

"Good Lord, no. But after you've been teaching for nearly twenty years, you learn to accept some of nature's limitations."

The party at the lower table was enjoying itself. Mrs. Brimsley, the widow, had not had an evening in Kiplington for years. They were teasing her now about Bill Heyer. Joe saw Miss Burton listening with interest, her red head cocked, her face quizzical. She observed his attention.

"Who are they?"

He told her.

"I've driven round the colony. Three or four of our girls come from there. A grim place."

"Yes—a socialist experiment carried out by people who don't believe in socialism."

"Poor devils. Look here—are you on the Higher Education Committee?"

Joe shook his head.

"A pity. I'd like to do a bit of lobbying. Have you seen my buildings? How would you like to run a school with a basement full of black beetles?"

He laughed.

"It's all very well to laugh; but they get into our shoes. I have to pretend I don't mind and that the girls are idiots to be scared, but I'm simply terrified. I dream of them at nights. Can't you do anything? You're an alderman."

"Have you seen our council?"

"It seems to me that you hardly need to see it. Tell me—is there really any hope from any of them? They can't all be as reactionary as they seem."

"They're not. We have a few fellows with imagination."

He was thinking of Snaith and the clever work he had done with the new motor road to Kiplington. Get that through, and the Waste Housing Scheme was as good as adopted.

He began to explain to Miss Burton just why it was so important.

"It should affect you and your school too. At present this place is a dead end—the waste-paper basket of the South Riding, people have called it. They come here after they've failed in Kingsport or Hardrascliffe because the rates are low and the air's good and nobody keeps up an appearance. But—you wait . . . I'm not really an enthusiast about local government, but you do at least get solid concrete results—swimming baths, sewage farms." He smiled bitterly. "You begin by thinking in terms of world-revolution and end by learning to be pleased with a sewage farm."

The voices from the table below rose clearly.

"We'll get Carne down to the Club. We'll ask him for a lead. If Snaith thinks he can twist the Council round his finger, we'll teach him there's some one still works for our interests."

"It'll have to be after Christmas then," said Mrs. Brimsley. "There's the Children's Concert, and then the W.I. play, and then the Christmas parties."

"Will that be time enough? We don't want to wake up one morning and find the road laid and the Wastes drained and all our traffic lost, while we dance round Christmas trees."

"Nay—they won't start work till after Christmas. Scheme's got to be approved by Ministry of Transport," said the more easy-going Heyer.

The interval was over. The tables were being swept away again, the Jazz Octette returned. The four colonists moved their chairs against the wall. They were not dancers.

"What has Carne to do with this?" asked Sarah Burton.

"Oh, he'll fight the new road, I expect."

"Why should he?"

"Because he's a gentleman farmer—survival of the feudal system. Because he hates Snaith and does everything he can to block his programmes. Because whenever we propose anything for Kiplington and Kingsport, he drags up his fifty or so colonists. They're all ex-service men. Old Comrades of the Great War."

Sarah's sharp green eyes read his. She nodded.

Another black mark against Carne of Maythorpe. She knew now—through Mr. Tadman who told Mrs. Tadman who told Cissy who told Miss Parsons who had told Sarah, that Carne alone among the governors had opposed her appointment to the High School. He had done well. She was against him.

I know his type, she thought—aristocrats, conservatives, vindicators of tradition against experiment, of instinct against reason, of piety against progress. They were pleasant people, kind, gracious, attractive. They cultivated a warm human relationship between master and servant. They meant well. And they did evil.

She said as much to Astell.

"You know the story of the difference between the North and South Americans and their attitude towards the negroes? The Southerner says: 'You're a slave, God bless you;' the Northerner: 'You're a free man, damn you!' I remember how a man I used to know in South Africa said he loved the natives. He was an Afrikaans farmer who believed in flogging blacks for breach of the Masters and Servants Act."

"Of course—you were in Africa too."

"I hate this feudal love in which there's no give and take. 'I love the ladies.' 'I love my labourers.' Love needs the stiffening of respect, the give and take of equality."

She flushed. She was thinking of Ben and his attitude towards women, of Van Raalt and a hot night in Cape Province, when she stood among the orange and lemon blossom with violets at her feet, a night made for love and beauty and kisses, and she had wasted it arguing passionately about the colour question. She had broken with Van Raalt and determined to take a new post in Australia. Her South African dreams had exploded in a burst of anger. Her mother's illness had intervened; she had forgiven her puzzled lover long ago. But she still resented the sacrifice of so sweet a night.

She looked at the scene below her.

It seemed to her that the evening had melted into a triple fugue. There was the carnival—pierrots and butterflies, gypsies and Quaker girls flowed out again across the floor. The saxophone wailed its dirge—the closing song of 1932.

"No more money in the bank;

No cute baby here to spank.

What's to do about it?

Let's turn out the lights an' go to bed."

Dancing, weaving the mazes of their formless unpatterned pattern, they forgot the empty boarding houses along the esplanade, the stagnant shops, the hunger of uncertainty. They were no longer typists and accountants and engineers and market gardeners. They belonged to a pageant without design; they moved to a rhythm without reason—"What's to do about it?"—dancing their way towards 1933.

A little above them sat the four older people from Cold Harbour, more experienced, wary, conscious, planning what it was that they would do about it. They would persuade Carne to oppose the Skerrow-Kiplington Road Scheme. They would obstruct progress. Their movements had a pattern—drawn according to what they thought was their local interest and others' civic duty.

And higher still among the palms and dignatories sat Authority. Astell, Sarah—planning a new order of government, planning dignity, planning beauty, planning enlightenment.

She turned to Astell, a little amused at the conceit and solemnity of her vision.

"You'll have to help me. I'm lost in the quicksands of local politics. And Carne's one of my governors. What's to do about it?"

She hummed her tune.

"In the long run," said Astell solemnly, "he can't stop us. But the undertone of reaction is always strong."

He had almost forgotten how to talk to a woman, but he was so grateful for her vitality, so glad of her congenial indiscretions, that his face, stiffened by pain and loneliness, learned new expressions of mobility with which to smile at her. Sarah, thinking that in Carne she had acquired a new enemy, felt confident that in Alderman Astell she had found a friend.