But now his emotions were of a different kind. Sadness grew in him all the
way back to Browdley, coupled with and finally outweighed by a breathless
satisfaction that the boy had asked him to write. Of course he would
write.
Winslow was transferred during the following week to a
hospital in the
South of England, where specialists were reputed to work miracles with skin
and cartilage; but it was not of this that he wrote in his first letter to
George. He wrote:
“DEAR MR. BOSWELL—Just a line to let you know my new
address. I expect to be here several months, as the work they do here takes
time—and patience too, I expect, by all concerned. The men call it the
beauty shop. But the main thing I have to tell you is about my mother. I’ve
had news that she is among those to be repatriated from a Jap prison-camp.
The Foreign Office sent me word a few hours ago, and though they couldn’t
give me any information as to how she is, or about my father at all, it
certainly is great news that she is actually out of enemy hands and on the
first stage of her way home. They don’t expect her to arrive for at least six
or eight weeks, as the ship is slow and has to take a roundabout route. By
that time I hope to be well enough myself to meet her—though the
doctors here only smile when I say it. I’m a bit stubborn, though, when I set
my mind on anything, which is a quality I inherit from her. Incidentally, I’d
like you to meet her, because I’m sure she’ll want to thank you personally
for your great kindness to me while I was at Mulcaster…”
When George took this over to Wendover the latter read it through and
turned on his friend a somewhat quizzical expression. “Well, George,” he
commented at length, “it settles one thing.”
“Aye, I’ve got to tell him.”
Wendover nodded. “And quickly too. You don’t want him writing to HER about
you.”
“I don’t see how he could.”
“There might be some port of call where he could send air-mail.”
“That’s so. Anyhow, I agree with you. Spill the beans and get it over.
Might even have been better to tell him in the first place.”
“One of the penalties of being too subtle, George. I could never quite
make out what your aim was—or still is, for that matter.”
“My AIM?”
“Yes—in regard to the boy.”
George answered: “I haven’t got an aim—except that I’d like to help
him because I like him. I never realized how much I like him till now that I
can’t see him. And I don’t think it’s because he’s Livia’s boy— it’s
because I like HIM. He’s a fine young chap—and a brain too… But I
suppose it’ll be an impossible situation when Livia gets back.”
“It might be. You’ll have to take that chance. But take it now—by
telling him.”
“Aye, I will. I’ll write tonight.”
George wrote a short letter containing the simple fact, and received in
reply by return the following:
“DEAR MR. BOSWELL—What a hell of a surprise! I’ll admit you could
have knocked me down with a feather, as they say. I’m a bit puzzled why you
didn’t tell me earlier, but perhaps it doesn’t matter. Of course I’d known
that my mother was previously married, but I was never told any of the
details. Frankly, the whole thing makes no difference to me, but of course it
may to her when she gets here. I don’t want to worry her, because from what I
hear and can guess, she must have had a pretty bad time…”
George wrote back, and they both kept up the correspondence without ever
referring to the personal matter again; nor did the youth even mention his
mother, or the progress of her homeward journey across the world. George
could not but feel that a barrier—temporarily, at any rate— had
come between them, and there returned to him his earlier shyness, diffidence,
and reluctance to believe that Charles really wanted to continue the
friendship. Then one day he read that the ship containing some hundreds of
women and children repatriated from Japanese prison-camps had put into an
English harbour. It was his turn to write, but he put it off, thinking that
even out of turn he could expect a letter from the boy about his mother
—telling of her arrival, condition, and attitude. When such a letter
did not come he eventually wrote briefly and rather meaninglessly about
nothing in particular, but to that letter he received no answer, and when,
after writing again, there was still no answer, he could reach only one
conclusion.
“I’m not surprised,” he told Wendover. “He probably thought it as good a
way as any other to close an episode.”
“That’s a rather tragic interpretation, George.”
“I don’t think so. I wanted to help him, nothing more—and now
Livia’s back, perhaps he doesn’t need help. Or at any rate, perhaps I’m no
longer one who CAN help him.”
“I hope it isn’t going to worry you.”
“No.” George’s answer was decisive. “Give me something to do and I’ll
worry over it. But when I can do nothing…”
But George did worry, nevertheless, if that was an adequate word for the
quiet intrusion of thoughts about the boy into every momentarily unoccupied
fragment of his time and mind. Those fragments, however, were few on account
of increasing pressure of official work. There was, for instance, Browdley’s
annual budget which, as chairman of the Finance Committee, he must prepare
for annual presentation. More urgent still was a general tightening-up of
air-raid precautions and civilian defence, for which London had issued
specific instructions, believing that northern England’s long period of
relative freedom from enemy air attacks might be coming to an end. There were
also meetings and conferences on other matters with the Medical Officer about
a chickenpox outbreak, with local union officials and plant-management
committees, with regional groups in charge of War Loan drives, charitable
funds, and so on. Least arduous of all—indeed, a kind of optional
luxury in which George frankly indulged himself amidst all the urgent
necessities—was an interview with an idealist town-planner whose vision
of a new Browdley included wide boulevards, American-style apartment houses,
and glass-walled factories.
George almost forgot his personal affairs as he turned over the nicely
water-coloured drawings and marvelled at large green blobs representing trees
that could not possibly grow to such a size in less than twenty years. But
there was an even more fundamental anachronism. “Do you realize,” he said, a
trifle impishly, “that your plan would mean pulling down practically the
whole town?”
“That was rather the idea,” came the quiet reply.
George laughed. “I see. And it might be a good one except that if you once
did pull the place down I can’t really imagine why anyone should want to
rebuild it at all. It’s really only here because it’s here, so to say. A
century ago they needed coal for the cotton mills, so they had to build the
cotton mills near the coal—but now they don’t need the coal so much, in
normal times, or the cotton mills either. I doubt if they’d put up half of
these towns if they had the chance to begin all over again.”
“I know what you mean, sir. Growth and then decay. It happens with towns
as with human beings.”
“With countries, too, and empires.”
“And down to the smallest villages. There’s a place near here called
Stoneclough—”
George started at the sound of the mispronounced word. “CLUFF—they
call it. You’ve been there?”
“Yes, I just happened along—by accident. Very interesting. Seems to
be completely uninhabited, including the big house at the top of the
hill.”
“Aye—there’s nobody at Stoneclough any more.”
“I took some photographs—thought of working it up into an article
—The Forsaken Village, or some such title. But I doubt if it would be
of enough general interest till after the war.”
“And maybe not then,” George answered moodily.
But he liked all such contacts with enthusiasts in their own special
fields. As a contrast, it fell to him the same week to visit the
parliamentary member for Browdley, none other than that same Wetherall (now
Sir Samuel) who had defeated him in the 1919 by- election, again in the
general election of 1923, and had represented the town in the House of
Commons ever since. An old man now; and like most former enemies, he had made
his peace with George. The political truce since the war began had brought
them even closer, so that George was genuinely sorry to hear that Wetherall
was ill. They spent an afternoon together in the manufacturer’s house just
outside Browdley, talking over old times and old squabbles. Wetherall was
still rich, still worried about taxes, still unaware that anything had
happened to make the world vitally different since he was a boy. His solution
for the problems of the post-war cotton trade was that all Indians should
wear their shirts a few inches longer, and he couldn’t understand how the
Japs could possibly have taken Singapore after the place had cost the British
taxpayer so much money to fortify. Capping it all, he persisted in believing
that George had changed during the years into someone much more like himself;
it gave him satisfaction to say (as if to justify his own liking for the
Mayor)—“Ah, you’re not such a firebrand as you used to be. You’ve seen
a bit of reason these last few years.”
George, reflecting what he HAD seen—the blitz raid on Mulcaster, for
instance—hardly thought he would call it reason. But why argue with an
old fellow who looked as if only his illusions could nourish him precariously
for a few more years at most?
Wetherall went on: “Just as well I’ve kept you out of Parliament till
you’ve grown sensible, George. You’ll not do so bad when your time
comes.”
“Why… what… what makes you say that?”
“George, you old twister, don’t pretend it never entered your mind before!
Listen—and this is in confidence—I probably won’t stand at the
next election. God knows when that’ll be—after the war or after I kick
the bucket, whichever comes first. But I’m telling you this so you’ll be
ready.”
George was suddenly aware of the peculiar truth that it HADN’T been in his
mind, not for quite a time, and that it revisited him now as an almost
strange idea, with all kinds of new angles and aspects to be considered. He
said, sincerely enough: “I’m sorry you’re thinking of giving up, Sam. Over
twenty years for the same constituency must be pretty near the record…”
“Yes, and it’s meant a lot of hard work, one way and another, but I don’t
grudge anything I’ve done for the town, any more than you do, George. After
all, it’s Browdley that made me what I am.”
George thought that was very possible.
“So when they sent me to Parliament I made up my mind I’d do the best I
could for them.”
George thought that was very possible also, since during the entire period
of his membership of the House, Wetherall had made only two speeches. One was
about the local sewage scheme, which George had persuaded him to be for; the
other was against the revision of the Anglican Prayer Book, which nothing
could persuade him to be anything but against.
George said cheerfully: “Well, Sam—don’t give up yet. And I wish
you’d try to fix things with the Ministry about our Children’s Home. We ought
to get an extra grant for that, what with all the kids from the bombed areas
we’ve taken in…”
Sometimes the cheerfulness sagged a little and George saw
the future in a
hard bleak flash of momentary disillusionment; but even then he was prone to
diagnose his mood as due to overwork, and therefore not to be taken too
seriously. The cure was usually a good night’s sleep or a chat with Wendover.
The priest’s help was all the more tonic because of the fixity of their
disagreements, and also because (as George once laughingly confessed) he was
far too modest to suppose that he could exercise any influence in reverse;
but Wendover, with equal banter, wouldn’t even concede that this was modesty.
“It’s your instinct for self-preservation, George. We authoritarians keep you
going. How would you know your opinions were free unless you had ours to
attack?… But I’ll suggest this—that before the century ends, it may
not be freedom that the world values, so much as order. Order out of chaos. A
new world, George, with an old discipline.”
“Aye, but suppose that road leads to Moscow, not to Rome—what would
you chaps do then?”
“I should follow my Church, of course. But why assume that the two roads
are ultimately so far apart? One thing I DO know—that if the Church so
decided, it would be very easy for a Catholic to change his mind about
Communism, just as Moscow could doubtless make terms with Rome for as good a
reason as Constantine ever had… And what a tremendous bond that is in a
chaotic world—two major disciplined forces that know their own power to
enforce a decision!”
“You’ve forgotten the Standard Oil Company. That makes three.”
“Let’s say, then, forces that can command not only obedience, but willing
sacrifice.”
“Which lets in Hitler. He could command all that at first. But in the end
he was defeated by free men.”
“Only when they themselves learned to organize, obey, and sacrifice. And
as soon as they forget that lesson there’ll be other Hitlers.”
“Aye, and as soon as we forget we’re free we’ll have Hitlers in our own
ranks.”
“There’s danger in whatever we do, George… But don’t misunderstand me…
I’m not pleading a cause.”
“Well, I AM—and millions are fighting for it too! Today’s my
future—like theirs—and what happens by the end of the century
doesn’t give us much comfort—”
“Nor me either. It’s merely that I’m content to let wiser men shape events
that can’t yet be properly foreseen. Whereas you have to settle the whole
destiny of mankind here and now to satisfy an itching conscience. Quite a
handicap!”
“I’d do better if I didn’t think for myself, is that what you mean? Maybe
I would—depends on who did the thinking for me. But I want to CHOOSE
who… see? And that’s democracy—even for a little fellow.”