The Rise of Henry Morcar by Phyllis Bentley Page A

long ago, so practical and so accurately fulfilled, wounded Harry; it seemed mean and disloyal, a treachery against his father.
    â€œWhen are we moving?” he asked abruptly.
    â€œNext Friday,” replied his mother.
    In later life nothing struck Morcar with such a sense of tragicomedy as his mother’s immutable preference for indirect communication. Mrs. Morcar never spoke to him directly of their financial situation and their plans, but it emerged in the course of the next few days that his father had left almost nothing on which his wife and son could live and that they were moving into a tiny house, really a workman’s cottage, in a row along Hurst Road. The College Board of Governors had been very kind, remarked Mrs. Morcar on another occasion; they had accepted the notice for Harry as though it had been given at the beginning of the term, so that there would be no further fees to pay—this was her method of informing her son that he was to leave school at once. Harry did not care twopence about leaving school, but to leave Charlie was a different matter. The Shaws were away on their summer holiday just then, at Bridlington, and Morcar was missing Charlie sorely. Now he found he was to do without Charlie always—except, of course, in the evenings and at the weekends. It was a bleak outlook. He sat silent, stunned.
    â€œMr. Shaw is giving you the chance for your father’s sake, you know, Harry,” observed Mrs. Morcar next day, as mother and son sat at tea together. “So you must work hard and do the best you can.”
    So he was to go to work at Mr. Shaw’s! Immediately Harry’s world, which had looked so black, took on a happy, rosy, hopeful hue. He asked nothing better than to go to work at once—he was a big burly lad in his middle teens, he felt strong and shrewd and full of common sense, sure to do well; textile processes, in some way or other, were quite familiar to him and not in the leastintimidating. It would be splendid to get out into the world, to earn money, to support his mother; he felt suddenly no longer a boy but a man, with a wide range of adventures opening before him, highly coloured, exciting. If now it had been discovered that his next year’s fees at school had been paid by his father, so that he could remain there another year, he would have been disappointed. And to work at Mr. Shaw’s! What a piece of luck! In his father’s lifetime he had not thought much of Mr. Shaw’s place, for Mr. Shaw leased half a brick mill at the bottom of the town between Eastgate and Irebridge, and its interior arrangements had seemed to Morcar incommodious and muddled. But now Prospect Mills seemed Paradise, since Charlie would be working there presently. A gush of joy and hope filled Morcar’s heart; he smiled all over his candid pleasant face, and asked:
    â€œWhen am I to start, Mother?”
    â€œThe Monday after Wakes Week,” replied Mrs. Morcar. She looked doubtfully at his bright face and seemed to ponder, resting her hand maternally on the top of the cosied teapot. After a while she sighed and said: “Well!” and roused herself. When she had cleared away the meal she returned to the room with one of Mr. Morcar’s blue and white check aprons—the kind known locally as a “brat”—in her hand. “Try this on,” she said.
    Although Harry was not yet full-grown and lacked several inches of his father’s height, his shoulders were already broader.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter—I can leave the top tape undone,” he offered.
    Mrs. Morcar did not even reply to this suggestion; she took out her sewing basket, unpicked every seam and with her customary skill completely refashioned the overall.
    On the following Friday the Morcars moved. Harry was active in the preparations, which he enjoyed, and rode on the box of the furniture van conveying a selection of their previous furniture to their new