Sleep in Peace (59 page)

Laura's only news of the outside world came from Geoffrey, who fetched medicine and ran other errands with his usual cool efficiency. Whenever Mr. Hinchliffe heard the lad's voice he demanded to see him, and Laura was obliged to urge Geoffrey to the duty of visiting his grandfather. With a swift frown on his dark handsome face Geoffrey complied, and standing at the foot of the huge brass bed, clutching his Grammar School cap politely in his hand, in his clear tones he recounted to Mr. Hinchliffe a great deal more than was good for him to hear, about the strike. Grandfather Armistead, he said, had wanted to join up as a special constable, but Mother wouldn't let him because of his leg, and Uncle Ludo had volunteered at the Town Hall for transport, with the Armistead car. Mr. Hinchliffe, propped up on many pillows, for he could not lie down, day or night, his eyes fixed avidly on the lad's slender, graceful figure, asked his grandson many questions and listened eagerly, puzzled but nodding to show his interest, to his replies. His bewilderment did not surprise Laura, for Geoffrey regarded the strike as a kind of exciting war, a jolly good scrap, an opportunity to have it out with those fellows and settle it, once and for all; an attitude utterly incomprehensible to the old Liberal. Geoffrey narrated with gusto incidents of strike-breaking, explained that peaceful picketing had been made illegal, that some of the West Riding municipal corporations were making their employees return their uniforms if they wouldn't work, and that Mildred, whose brother was a tramways inspector, was very angry about this. He longed to be old enough to drive or stoke an engine, and had begged Uncle Ludo, vainly, to take him along in the car.

“Peaceful picketing illegal!” commented Mr. Hinchliffe, surprised. “How can that be? Laura, I wish you would kindly bring me the morning newspapers. I persistently make this request to
you, and you as persistently disregard it. There is no need to treat me as a child in my own house, merely because I am slightly indisposed.”

Laura, who had not revealed the truth about the newspapers, temporised by saying that they were very irregularly delivered just now.

“Why, there aren't any newspapers!” exclaimed Geoffrey contemptuously. “The printers are all on strike with the rest.”

“What? What?” shouted Mr. Hinchliffe, starting up. “No newspapers? What do you mean, my boy? Have you forgotten the liberty of the Press?”

“Liberty my foot,” said Geoffrey with scorn. “They won't print a line—the Trade Unions won't let them.”

Mr. Hinchliffe, his eyes dilated, sprang from bed, and stood there a moment, before Laura could reach him, swaying woodenly, infinitely pathetic in his old-fashioned flannel nightgown; then his face twitched and he fell forward into Laura's arms.

A severe cerebral haemorrhage, the doctor said; the chances of recovery were slight; it was improbable that Mr. Hinchliffe would ever emerge fully from the coma into which he had now sunk, breathing stertorously.

Grace and Frederick were notified by telegraph, and arrived two days later; Grace an hour after, Frederick an hour before, their father's death, which took place in the early morning. Laura and Gwen had both spent the night in the house, and had just been summoned by the nurse to Mr. Hinchliffe's bedside when Frederick arrived. The nurse warned them that the time was short, so Frederick went straight into his father's room. Even at this late hour of his life Mr. Hinchliffe had occasional brief moments of comparative lucidity, and the entrance of Frederick stirred him to one now. His breathing ceased, he opened his eyes and gazed full at his second son. A look of disappointment crossed his face, he closed his eyes again and gave an unintelligible murmur which Laura nevertheless interpreted as “Edward.”

It was the ultimate repudiation of Frederick.

A few moments later Mr. Hinchliffe died.

His death was recorded, ironically enough, thought Laura, as a news item on one of the small sheets, twelve inches by nine, printed by means of typewriter and duplicating machine, issued as newspapers during the strike by a local press. A tiny paragraph of obituary summarised his life's work in politics, religion and economics, on the very day of the T.U.C.'s surrender.

Laura, describing the course of his illness to Grace and Frederick, explained that it was the strike, the failure of his co-partnership ideals to solve the economic problem, which had killed their father.

“The co-partnership scheme was vitiated from the start,” said Frederick gloomily, “by its perpetuation of the distinction between Capital and Labour—an arbitrary distinction, opposed to basic human justice.”

The value of house-property, and of all industrial investments, had sunk to such a level that the whole of the savings of Mr. Hinchliffe's life-time were represented, for the purpose of death duties, by a sum of seven thousand pounds. His will was complex in terms, but simple in effect. As far as Laura could understand it, his dispositions went thus. The whole of his estate was left in trust. Grace drew the income from half of his estate for her life; on her death this half was to be distributed equally between her children if she had any—alas, poor Grace! thought Laura, sorrowing—or, failing issue, between Geoffrey and Madeline. The other half of Mr. Hinchliffe's estate was left in trust for Geoffrey and Madeline; but the income from this half was to be
paid to Frederick until Geoffrey and Madeline in turn attained their majority. As each child came of age, he or she was to receive absolutely half of the capital of this part of the trust. The Blackshaw Mills shares, objects of Mr. Armistead's anxious scrutiny, were specifically authorised to be retained, and allotted, half to one part of the trust, half to the other, and Geoffrey and Madeline, on attaining their majority, were to receive strictly half each of the shares belonging to their part of the trust. The intention, to pass over Frederick and at the same time secure the property to Mr. Hinchliffe's grandchildren, was only too clear. As it had never entered Frederick's head to wonder about the disposition of his father's property, he was perfectly satisfied with this arrangement; Grace thought it unjust, but considered inherited property altogether unjust; Gwen was delighted.

Unfortunately Mr. Hinchliffe, who had drawn his last will just after his wife's death, during the War, when Grace was in her early twenties and Frederick in gaol, had not appointed either of his children as executors. Nor had he appointed—and this rankled bitterly—Mr. Armistead; but on the contrary the bank which carried Messrs. Armistead and Hinchliffe. Poor Mr. Armistead, therefore, who was already in difficulties with the bank about the firm's overdraft, had now to negotiate with them also in their capacity as trustee, about the transfer of Mr. Hinchliffe's shares in the business to them, in trust for Mr. Hinchliffe's legatees. With the death of Mr. Hinchliffe, the prime mover of the co-partnership scheme, the General Strike, and the continued deterioration of the textile market, the scheme fell to pieces, and Mr. Armistead's only concern was to break free of it at the earliest possible moment. The bank was therefore reproving him about his overdraft, declining to increase it, supervising his withdrawal from the copartnership scheme, and watching the reconstruction of the business with an eye on Mr. Hinchliffe's estate, all at the same time in three different but equally powerful capacities; as a result Mr. Armistead felt like a nut placed on a pair of nutcrackers, with the
handles rapidly converging. A hundred times he sighed angrily about Henry Hinchliffe's lack of trust in him.

“If only I were an executor!” he said.

Laura, though she felt deeply for his many distresses, could not but see that it was to the advantage of Grace and Frederick's children not to have him in that position; for if Mr. Armistead had been their executor, the money from the sale of the house, Mr. Hinchliffe's War Loan and any other still solid investments, might all have been poured into Blackshaw Mills. As it was, Mr. Armistead urged the bank thus to employ it, in order to save and increase the value of the Hinchliffes' Blackshaw shares; but the bank would not look at the proposal. At length Mr. Armistead succeeded, at the expense of considerable sums which he could not in the least afford, in re-establishing the finances of the company. The Hinchliffes were still left with a large number of shares in Blackshaw Mills, which every day in these depressing times rendered more worthless; and with a small income of about seventy-five pounds each, from their father's gilt-edged investments. It seemed a small result for a lifetime's parsimony, thought Laura sadly. Mr. Hinchliffe neither smoked nor drank nor visited the theatre, he had never owned a car, he had denied Frederick the chance of a University education; and all for this.

Gwen chose this moment to make a stand about Geoffrey's education. It was essential, she said, that Geoffrey should now go away to a public school. The Armisteads all agreed with her; Mr. Armistead and Ludo because they wanted him to go to a public school, Laura because she thought Geoffrey was getting spoiled at home. But none of them had any idea how the necessary fees could be provided. Geoffrey himself, though a brilliant cricketer and not without a certain facility in the lighter subjects, was not at all the kind of boy to win a scholarship, and showed no disposition to try. After discussing the idea of writing to Frederick with Laura until Laura was weary of it, Gwen at last wrote to Frederick, baldly suggesting that the income he drew from Mr. Hinchliffe's
estate might properly be used for this purpose. Frederick replied firmly that he detested public schools and much disliked the thought of his son's attending one; nevertheless, since he had left the bringing-up of his children to his wife, he would not now interfere with her projects, and he left the decision to her. He intended, he said, now to make a contribution to his family's support—this to Gwen's satisfaction proved to be a sum larger than the income which Frederick drew from his father's estate. He would have contributed earlier, continued Frederick, had he realised the conditions prevailing at Blackshaw Mills. He begged Gwen, however, to consider the alternative of returning to married life with him, in Hudley, if she greatly wished it, since he was now earning enough by free-lance journalism to support himself anywhere, but preferably in London.

It seemed to Laura that Gwen hesitated over this proposition. She gave her high mocking laugh when she read it and whenever she afterwards mentioned it to Laura, but as far as Laura knew she did not at once refuse it, and she introduced the topic of life in London rather frequently into the Blackshaw House conversation during the next few weeks. She also suddenly had her hair shingled, having scolded Laura for thus spoiling her looks, for years, and actually consented to smoke an occasional cigarette. There were certainly advantages to be seen, from Gwen's point of view, in returning to Frederick's side. It was not really agreeable, speaking socially, to live separated from one's husband; strangers, for instance, with the best of intentions often made awkward remarks. Then, too, even if Gwen had been willing to consider the social disgrace of a divorce, and even if Frederick had been willing to provide the necessary evidence—such things were done quite often nowadays, it seemed—but even so, it seemed that no other husband was likely to offer himself, since Gwen had now turned forty. Gwen's sexual impulses, never strong, had long found sufficient expression in parental love, and perhaps Frederick's would prove the same; while with the death of Mr. Hinchliffe
the memory of Edward seemed definitely to have receded into the shade, and would no longer rise between them. They need therefore neither love nor hate, but simply live together in a friendly fashion; now as a friend nobody could be more kind and considerate than Frederick. There was so much talk about pacifism in the papers nowadays that Frederick's conscientious objection in the War was in some circles positively fashionable, and scarcely anywhere regarded as a disgrace. Life in Blackshaw House, now that the children were growing up and becoming individualities, was congested and difficult; it would be delightful to command a place of her own again, however small. In London, too!

All these considerations operated in a sense favourable to Gwen's return to her husband.: But there was one insuperable objection: Geoffrey.

Geoffrey looked at the envelope of every letter which came for Gwen; when he found one with a London postmark, he fixed his eyes on his mother with an unwavering attention till she read it, waiting to hear whether it came from his father, and ready to make some scornful remark if it did so. When Frederick came to Blackshaw House, as he was obliged to do once or twice on business connected with the settlement of his father's estate, Geoffrey either flung himself hurriedly from the house, so that Gwen was obliged to make patently false excuses for his absence, or remained hanging on his mother's arm during the period of his father's visit, refusing to leave her side for a moment, so that Frederick and Gwen could get no moment alone together, springing jealously to anticipate Gwen's every want, and in general behaving in a manner thoroughly mawkish. Once Frederick, his business incomplete, was urged by Mr. Armistead to remain for the evening meal, and, reading no discouragement in his wife's eyes, accepted. Geoffrey sat at the table as white as a sheet, and barely ate a mouthful; when his father had left the house, he went upstairs and vomited violently. Laura had observed these demonstrations
with pity and sorrow; Gwen had not observed, but felt them. She therefore accepted Frederick's proposed monetary contribution, but temporised about her return to his roof.

But all that Frederick could offer was not enough to send Geoffrey to Rugby. Gwen therefore attacked Ludo, who after enduring her gibes in silence for some time, reluctantly and grudgingly promised a small sum towards his nephew's expenses.

“I can't think what Ludo
does
with his money!” repeated Gwen bitterly. “A bachelor, with no expenses! You'd think he would have saved money, and be able to help Papa by investing some in Blackshaw Mills, but he seems to have
nothing
. I can't think what Ludo does with his money.”