A Future Arrived (29 page)

Dulcie was in the stall with mare and foal, the mare standing calmly, neck bent to the feeding bin, the colt, all wobbly legs and great staring eyes, standing shakily under Dulcie's arm as she rubbed his still glistening coat with a towel.

“Isn't he a love?” Dulcie said, smiling at Colin. “I'm going to name him California Collie, after you.”

Dulcie Greville was thirty-six and had the figure of a young girl, leggy and slim in her jodhpurs and riding boots. Her red hair reached the small of her back in tight braids, like the tail of a chestnut mare in a show ring. Her age showed only in her face, in a network of fine lines caused by sun and wind and the hard Derbyshire winters. Colin had seen her only rarely during the many summers he had spent in England. He had known
of
her, of course, Uncle William's wife, the bishop's daughter who had become an activist in all kinds of radical causes. He had once spent a few days at the farm when he had been thirteen, and Dulcie had spent an occasional weekend at Abingdon Pryory—reluctantly, because she did not like the place. Uniformed footmen and other displays of great wealth offended her. She thought it feudal. And although Hanna loved her because she had made her youngest son happy, she dreaded having her as a guest. Dulcie was apt to say the most outrageous things with the candor of a precocious child. Once, at a tea party, the vicar, while discussing with Charles the varied problems inherent in running a school, had foolishly remarked that young boys must be shielded against the “temptations of Onan.” Dulcie had picked up the man's fatuous inaccuracy. “But onanism does not mean masturbation, Vicar,” she had said in her high, clear voice. “It means ejaculation outside of the vagina … a rapid withdrawal of the penis before orgasm takes place. Quite an effective, if personally unsatisfying, method of birth control.”

Neither the vicar nor Hanna had been amused.

“C
ALIFORNIA
C
OLLIE
,” C
OLIN
said, grinning across the breakfast table at Dulcie. “I hope he turns out to be a winner.”

“He will.”

William grunted and stirred sugar in his tea. “All one can do is hope. Breed the best to the best and pray like hell.”

“I could feel his heart,” Dulcie said. “Strong and steady. Not a drop of fear in the little thing. An Ascot winner for certain.”

William slurped his tea and then glanced at his watch. “I'd better start getting packed.”

“Just get yourself shaved and dressed,” Dulcie said, “and leave the packing to me, if you don't mind.” She shook her head in bemusement as she watched her husband leave the room. “With all the traveling that man's done he still can't pack properly. Tosses in shirts any which way.”

“Why aren't you going with him, Aunt Dulcie? Paris should be lovely this time of year.”

“Oh, Paris is all right in its way. It's the people he has to meet I can't stomach. A bloated old rajah with pockets full of diamonds and a head filled with straw, and a French count who wears a black ribbon in his buttonhole to mourn the passing of the Bourbons. Now, I ask you, can you see me hobnobbing with that sort?”

“No.” He laughed. “Why does Uncle Willie?”

“Business. They want to buy one of the colts. Some utterly staggering sum so he really must go I suppose. An unraced, untried yearling worth thousands of pounds, and skilled men a few miles from here trying to raise their families on pennies. Odd sort of world, Colin.”

They drove into Chesterfield, where William would take the train to London.

“How long will you be gone, Uncle Willie?”

“About a week in Paris. And then over to Ireland. There are some horses I'd like to take a look at in Killarney and Limerick.”

“The Goliath filly among them?” Dulcie asked.

He nodded as he got out of the car, motioning to a porter to take his bags. “I hope I can persuade Merrivale to sell. We'll see.”

Dulcie tilted her face to be kissed. “Good luck.”

William kissed her, then winked at Colin in the back seat. “Look out for her, Colin, old man. Keep her out of mischief.”

Colin helped Dulcie and the elderly maid in the kitchen, shelling peas and peeling potatoes for dinner. The maid had a married daughter living in California. “Long Beach,” she said. “My Daphne is always after my comin' over and livin' there.”

“You should go, Agnes,” Dulcie said, sprinkling a leg of lamb with rosemary.

“A terrible way it is that.”

“You'd like it,” Colin said. “Sunny almost all year round.”

“Sun is it? I'm not a flower. I can do without sun. I was born in these hills. I'll not have me bones laid to rest in
Long Beach
.”

After dinner they took the dogs for a run, walking slowly up the long grassy hill behind the house, the dogs coursing off, chasing rabbits in the fading light. He found Dulcie easy to talk to, receptive, and understanding. He expressed his doubts about entering Cambridge, and he told her about Kate Wood-Lacy, her infatuation for him and that evening in the car after the dance.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Growing up is a terrible process, filled with awesome peaks and valleys. But one must be firm and plow ahead. Of course you must go to college … and of course you mustn't let Kate become too enamored. You're both at the age, you see. Hormones boil through the blood and quite upset rational thinking. You did the proper thing in putting on the brakes, as it were. Getting carried away is not an idle phrase, I'm sorry to say. The number of girls impregnated in these hills on warm summer nights would astonish you as much as it dismays me. Many of them run off in their shame to Manchester or London—others marry their boys. Of the two groups it's hard to say which is the more tragic. Although I would choose the latter. At least there are well-funded societies in England for the care of unwed mothers. There's something so terribly sad in seeing young people burdened with four or five kids and trying to feed them and themselves on thirty bob a week from the dole.”

“Is that one of your causes?”

“I belong to the Margaret Sanger Society, yes. It's certainly not a popular undertaking. Lecturing on birth control rarely is, but I feel it's necessary.”

“I'll say one thing for you, you've got plenty of moxie.”

“Moxie?”

“Guts … nerve.”

“Oh.” One of the Irish setters brought back a stick in place of a rabbit and dropped it at her feet. She picked it up and tossed it as far as she could. “It's not guts it takes, Colin, but patience. It's quite frustrating and boring most of the time. I'll be taking a day's swing through some of the towns on Thursday. Would you like to come with me? I give a lecture and pass out pamphlets and samples.”

He cleared his throat and stared at his feet. “Well … I don't know …”

Her laughter rang like a bell. “Oh, dear Colin, I think you're blushing. A lecture on nutrition and personal hygiene! You'll help me give out vitamin charts and toothbrushes.”

“Sure,” he said. “
That
I can handle.”

I
T WAS A
side of England that he had never seen and only vaguely knew existed. There was, Dulcie said as they drove through the dales, the England of the southern counties with its middle-class prosperity, and the England of the north. No prosperity here, only padlocked factory gates and pinch-faced men standing about on street corners. The England of the dole and the dreaded Means Test. The England where hope and promise had long fled and only apathy remained.

Bowsby-on-Tree was a typical small town in the district, Dulcie explained as they drove slowly across an ancient stone bridge and into the High Street. It had been a sleepy village until the mid-nineteenth century when a Manchester textile king had built a cotton mill there, using the driving force of the swift little river to run the machinery. The sprawling, ugly mill buildings dominated the town, rising above it with all the grim arrogance of a medieval castle. Housing had been spawned by its existence—rows of ugly brick houses lining narrow, cobblestoned streets. There had been a time when the sound of the mill machinery could be heard from one end of the town to the other, twelve hours a day, six days a week, year in and year out. A haze of lint had drifted through the streets like finely powdered snow. But that was no more. It was silent now and the air was clean. The mill had been shut down since 1930.

“No one who worked there loved the place,” Dulcie said. “God knows they didn't, but the mill meant a pay envelope every Saturday afternoon and a joint or roast chicken on the table for Sunday dinner. But a pay packet meant more than just food and clothing—they had a pride in their jobs. They were union people, paying their way, holding their heads up with the best of them.”

Men, old and young, walked slowly through the silent streets in groups, or stood in patient lines outside the labor exchange. It was a daily ritual. There was no work. There were only women and children inside the union hall, listening in apathetic boredom to Dulcie's lecture on vitamins. An occasional flare of anger and resentment …

“I'd ‘ate to see what my Tom'd do if I give 'im raw cabbage an' spuds t' eat.”

“Not raw, dear. Boiled
gently
until just fork tender and then chopped together with a bit of marge. Boiling vegetables for hours destroys the vitamins.”

“Boiled down proper is 'ow my Tom likes it.”

“Yes, dear, perhaps he does, but I'm sure you can see how much more nutritious …”

It was all quite hopeless. Their mothers had boiled vegetables into watery shreds, and their mothers before them. And her demonstration—in a frying pan over a Primus stove—of how to sauté a sheep's liver so as to retain all the goodness of the meat fell on stone ears and, slice by succulent slice, into reluctant mouths. Liver they tossed into smoking fat and fried until it could have been nailed to the sole of a boot.

“It must be very discouraging,” Colin said after the women had left.

“Oh, I'm used to being ignored. When I was in college I joined a Communist group for a while. That was in nineteen twenty and we were pressing for diplomatic recognition of Lenin's government. We spoke on street corners and in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons, but no one paid the slightest attention to us.”

As they were leaving, an elderly, portly man wearing a neat but threadbare suit and a plaid wool cap came into the meeting room. Dulcie introduced him to Colin as Harry King, a union steward. “Well, Dulcie,” he said. “Still at it, eh?”

“Still trying, Harry.”

“Oh, aye, aren't we all. You hear about the march yet?”

“What march?”

“News travels slow through the dales, I take it. It's come Saturday week. As many good lads as we can got a hold of. All the Board of bloody Trade rogues are meetin' in Manchester, includin' Lord Don't-give-a-damn. We're goin' to beard the boogers with the petition before takin' it down to Westminster. I spotted your car as I come oop High Street and figured you'd not be wantin' to be left out.”

“And right you are, Harry. Thank you. I'll be there.”

“It's not a long march, just enough to attract the press. The plan is to start off from here on Wednesday and be at Manchester Town Hall Saturday afternoon. The way I figure it, should be well over a thousand of us … skilled men from all the trades.”

“That's fine, as broad a spectrum of journeymen as possible.”

“Oh, aye, that should make them sit oop and take notice. Smudger Smith's bringing a couple hundred machinists from Sheffield and Rotherham. Should be a right smart showin' I figure.”

“It should indeed. I'm looking forward to it.”

Colin carried all the gear back to the car and checked the ice chest to make sure there was enough ice left to keep the liver from spoiling. “Where to now?”

Dulcie got into the car and sat for a moment behind the wheel looking thoughtful. “I think I'll forget about the other towns today, Colin. Presenting the petition to the Board of Trade in Manchester is a good idea, but I can't trust Harry King to alert the press about it. His idea of press coverage would be the
Barnsley Weekly Advocate
. We need the London papers. I'll get home and start making some phone calls.”

“What petition are you talking about?”

“Twenty-five thousand people in three counties signed one calling for the government to give contracts for rearmament work so that more factories can open. Take this mill. Among other things, they wove khaki cloth for the army since the Boer War.”

“Gee, Dulcie, I always thought you were an ardent pacifist.”

“I was,” she said flatly, starting the car. “Hitler changed my mind.”

T
HEY CAME FROM
the mills and the factories, the great “works” of South Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derby. Quiet men in neatly patched clothing with the unmistakable air about them of the undernourished and the unemployed. There were a scant thousand in all, mostly men, but a few mill girls among them, banded together in a group and looking forward to the march. Harry King was disappointed at the turnout, but there had been so many marches in the past few years, all of them coming to nothing, that many had stayed away out of apathy. This one began on Wednesday morning from the football field outside Bowsby-on-Tree. A breakfast of tea and cheese sandwiches was provided by private citizens and the town council, and then the cavalcade started out on the long, meandering route to Manchester. Dulcie and Colin trailed the marchers in a Ford estate wagon carrying first-aid supplies. When the marchers reached the town of Haddlesfield in the late afternoon, two medical students from the University of Manchester joined them and set up shop in the back of the wagon.