Crescendo (2 page)

The incident which really caused the iron to enter Ernest's soul, as he preferred to describe it, took place in his teens, at the mill where his father was employed. Those were the good days in the wool textile trade, the post-first-world-war boom days, and Ernest's father had had no difficulty in getting the boy taken on. The pride and joy with which Ernest set off to the mill beside his father on that Monday morning, his first day at his first job, would never be forgotten by Ernest; he could see yet the happiness which beamed back at him from his dark brown eyes as he combed his straight dark hair in front of the mirror by the sink in the living-room downstairs. Father and son took a tram together through the early morning dark; they met other workers from the mill in the crowded tram, Ernest was introduced and men nodded kindly to him. They entered the mill and clocked in, the buzzer sounded, the machinery stirred; Ernest felt that now he was indeed a man.

Ernest was bidden to the warehouse, where the pieces of cloth were packed and despatched, and ordered to assist an old man who was stitching up bales of cloth with string threaded through a long thick crooked needle. At this time a tall, weedy
youth with rather large feet and thin though muscular arms, Ernest heaved at the heavy bales and held the coarse sacking in position energetically. Presently a sudden silence, a sudden cessation of all chat, warned him that some boss or other was in the neighbourhood. Out of the corner of his eye he perceived such a one approach: a youngish man in a blue suit, boss's son probably, with a collar and tie. He paused nearby and appeared to watch Ernest. Not unwilling to be commended, Ernest tugged at the heavy wrapper with especial zeal, then turned eagerly towards the next bale. As he had thought, the blue-suited boss was watching him.

“Finding that a bit heavy, eh?” said the boss.

His understanding, sympathetic tone was very agreeable to Ernest; it would be something to tell at home, that the boss had spoken to him so friendly like on his first morning. He felt himself colour with pleasure.

“Aye, just a bit,” said Ernest truthfully, nodding.

“You'd better get your cards, then,” said the boss, and turned away.

Even now, more than thirty years later, Ernest, sitting at his present boss's side, prosperous, respected, a foreman earning fourteen pounds a week with a television set and a threepiece upholstered suite and an electric washing-machine (all paid for, not bought on the never-never, mind you, Ernest would have none of that, except for Kenneth's motor-bike)—even now he could not think of that awful moment without deep anguish. To be sacked like that on his first morning! Before breakfast! To say he was stunned was altogether below the mark; it almost killed him. His mouth dropped open, his eyes almost fell out of his head; he felt the blood drain away from his cheeks. (And indeed his complexion was never bright-coloured again; from that moment onward—the doctors mightn't be able to explain it, thought Ernest grimly, they could pooh-pooh it as they liked, but it was a fact—his face was colourless.) He stood silent and motionless, swaying on his
feet, till some of the men came up to him and with great kindness and sympathy urged him to go home right away. They clapped him on the shoulder, they handed him his cap and coat, they said they'd explain it all to his father when he came in—luckily the lorry had driven off before the incident, for if it had occurred in front of his father, Ernest thought, he would without any doubt have died of shame. He found himself in the open air with his insurance card in his hand; he thrust it into his coat pocket as if it burned him.

His first impulse was to get home and hide himself as quick as he could, but he remembered in time that his two sisters would not have left for school yet, and he did not want to face them. So he walked home taking a long way round. He had sometimes thought since that this was a pity. If he had reached his mother while he was still in a blazing rage, so that he could have stamped and shouted and perhaps even—for he was only a boy after all—given out a sob or two, and received comfort from her, it might have been better for him. As it was, by the time he reached home it was too late for that. His anger had turned cold and hard and lay like a bar of iron—yes, just like iron, the psalmist knew what he was talking about—heavy in his entrails; it would never melt again.

His mother, energetic woman, was standing on tiptoe hanging out the weekly wash on the clothes line stretched across the street, when he arrived. She gazed at him aghast, a clothes peg in one hand, and came down slowly on her heels.

“Ernest! What's matter, love? Are you feeling poorly?”

Ernest could not speak; he raised the sneck of the door-latch and went into the house. His mother followed him.

“What's wrong, love? It's not your father happened an accident?” she said in terror.

“No. I've lost my job.”

“Lost your job! Why, you've hardly getten it.”

Drily, Ernest related the incident.

“Whatever will your father say!” exclaimed his mother.

She had perceived at once, what Ernest only now understood, that his father's position among his fellow-employees had been compromised by the dismissal of his son. His father would lose face, having a son to be ashamed of. It was an added misery.

“Well, never mind, love,” said his mother warmly, putting her arm about Ernest's shoulders. “It wasn't your fault. Don't take on, now.”

“I won't,” said Ernest grimly.

“I'll make you a cup of tea,” said his mother.

He drank it sitting in his coat, with his elbows on the table, then took up his cap.

“Where are you going, love?” said his mother. “Stay home a bit with me.”

“I'm going to Labour Exchange,” said Ernest.

“Well,” said his mother, reluctantly conceding the point.

Luckily those were the good days of the wool textile trade, the post-first-world-war boom days, thought Ernest again—he hadn't realised at the time just how lucky that was, but by God he had realised it later. He got another job by the end of the week, with a bigger firm which owned several mills in different locations around Ashworth, so that outwardly, you might say, the “sympathetic” incident, as Ernest always called it to himself, hadn't done much harm. But inwardly it had made a lasting mark. The wound had never healed, but lay there always ready to suppurate. The bitter disappointment, even the in-justice, of the dismissal, might have been endured. The Armleys worked it out among themselves that probably the job given to Ernest was wanted for the son or nephew or friend's son of some person more important to the firm than Ernest's father, and this theory seemed strengthened if not absolutely confirmed by the identity of the lad who held it after Ernest. Then why could they not have said so straight out? (By
they
Ernest meant the boss class.) It would have been unjust to sack Ernest thus, but at least open and honest; it could have
been endured. It was the pretence of sympathy which sick-ened Ernest. Sham! Cant! Humbug! Bunk! Never believe
them
again! Never let
them
take you in by pretending to understand, pretending to be on your side, for it was always lies! Never show a weakness, for
they
would always take advantage! Never! Never again! Never!

It was from the date of the sympathetic incident that Ernest became the over-earnest glum young man whom Millie joked about. He also became a very staunch, steady Trade Unionist and an admirable workman. He'd show 'em!

For the next few years there was nothing, certainly, to cheer him. In 1926 came the General Strike. (“Serve 'em right!” thought Ernest with a sombre joy.) In 1931 came the frightful business recession. The firm his father served collapsed. Ernest was pleased, though for the Armleys it was, of course, a disaster. There were simply no jobs going in the textile trade; the old man got work for a few weeks as a night-watchman on some road repairs, but then the rheumatism which his hours of driving in the rain had started years ago descended on him and crippled him, and Ernest was left as the main financial stay of the family. (His sisters were by now both married, but their husbands were out of work like everybody else and on the dole, and they had children to keep.) An excruciating reorganisation took place in Ernest's firm; for a couple of years nobody ever knew from one week to the next whether they would have a wage-packet to take home or not. Ernest lay awake at night sweating with fear lest he should lose his job. He felt as if he were being buffeted incessantly by stormy seas which threatened to drown him, without being able to do anything to help himself—he had no confidence at all, of course, that
they
would manage to extricate the textile industry from its troubles. However, somehow he kept his job, and somehow—small thanks to
them
, Ernest felt sure—the waves gradually calmed, though just before they really settled, his father, worn out by it all, developed rheumatic fever and painfully died.
Ernest felt angry about this; it was a shame his father could not see his son's later prosperity.

However, there it was. His mother and Ernest were left alone together. His mother began to tease him about getting married.

“And what would you do if I got wed?” enquired Ernest.

“Go to our Amy's,” replied his mother promptly.

Amy was the younger of Ernest's sisters; her husband had turned into an invalid and Amy had to go out to work, so that a grandmother to look after the children would be of real assistance. Ernest pondered. He was now twenty-six, but had never yet seen a girl he had a fancy for. He looked around seriously to see if he could find one. Almost at once his eye fell on Millie. (Or perhaps after all he had noticed her before? He was never quite sure about this, though he often gave serious thought to the matter.) Millie was a mender at Holmelea Mills outside Ashworth where Ernest still worked after all these years; in a large light room opening off his own department she sat before a window, dealing with knots and broken ends in the cloths. Mending was highly skilled work so that menders' wages were relatively good; it was also a craft which mothers often taught their daughters. There were several of Millie's relatives, of different generations, beside herself in the mending-room; in fact, it was quite a family party; they were all large, plump, jolly women, with abundant brownish hair and sparkling grey-blue eyes, much given to laughter. Indeed their favourite beginning to an anecdote—and they told many—was: “It was that laughable …”

The gas stove on which the men's lunches and cups of tea were heated stood in the mending-room, and the menders were not averse to “giving an eye” to the food and drink of such of the men as were friendly with them. Ernest never ventured to ask this favour, but listened with interest, even smiling a little, to the repartee freely exchanged around him as he stood by the stove. When he began seriously to consider marriage somehow his thoughts flew at once to Millie, though he had hardly exchanged
a word with her in his life. One day when after the customary joking about men, women and their relationships which brightened the lunch hour the others had trooped out, Ernest lingered a little and said on an impulse, leaning his tall lean form against the door:

“You'd never marry a chap like me, Millie, I don't suppose.”

“Why not?” snapped back Millie, quick as a flash. “Why do you suppose so, Ernest Armley? You cheeky thing!”

“Well—it seems obvious like,” said Ernest, considering gloomily the long, sallow face, the heavy eyebrows, the serious dark brown eyes, which he saw in the glass when he shaved.

“It isn't obvious to me.”

“I didn't mean any harm, Millie,” said Ernest in his slow tones apologetically. “I was only just supposing.”

“You've got no right to go supposing about me.”

“No. Well,” said Ernest on a valedictory note, beginning to edge away round the door.

Millie followed him.

“Thinking of getting wed at long last, are you, Ernest?”

“Aye—well—I might,” conceded Ernest. Rallying a certain sardonic humour which he possessed (though Mr. Arnold, for instance, would never credit him with it, thought Ernest crossly) he added: “Have you any objection, Millie?”

“No objection at all, so long as you don't marry me,” snapped Millie.

“Don't say that, Millie!” protested Ernest. He was so deeply wounded that he blurted out his real feeling: “I've always had a fancy for you, you know.”

“Then why didn't you say so before, gaumless?” exclaimed Millie, laughing up into his face.

“Well, I were worried,” began Ernest seriously.

“You worry too much, Ernest Armley,” said Millie, for the first of a thousand times: “Ernest by name and earnest by nature, that's what
you
are.”

“Will you wed me, then?” said Ernest incredulously.

“Of course! Auntie, Bertha, Nora!” cried Millie, running to the centre of the room and shouting joyously: “Me and Ernest's going to get wed!”

Ernest's mother thought he was marrying beneath him, while Millie's relations all wondered what she saw in that long glum fellow, but they all came round to the match in the end. “She's a right good lass, is Millie,” said Ernest's mother eventually, and Ernest was well aware of the verdict of his relations-in-law upon himself: “He worrits too much, of course, but he's a real good husband.”

Nobody, not even Millie herself, would ever understand how Ernest felt about Millie. They went to live up Walker Street, though it was inconvenient for Ernest's work, because Millie's relations were all clustered in that district and Millie needed her family to live amongst as a fish needs water. The house was always full of a hurly-burly of hearty, laughing, jolly people; there were Millie's sisters and cousins and aunts, with their masculine counterparts, and Ernest and Millie's three children, and their friends, and now that Nora was married, a couple of grandchildren as well. (Kenneth was courting, too.) That he, Ernest Armley, that solemn dull fellow who lost his first job before he'd held it a day, should have a house of his own, a wife who was an excellent if slapdash cook, three fine children—Nora was very nicely married to his own second-in-command, Kenneth almost out of his engineering apprenticeship, Iris at the Ashworth County Modern School and doing well—no! He could never believe it. Of course it was all due to Millie. He could never be sufficiently grateful to her. He felt deeply and tenderly protective towards her merry spirit; he must never let anything cloud that warm-hearted gaiety.