The Far Country (12 page)

He turned restlessly in his bed, unable to sleep. It was easy to say that good times would come again in England, but was it true?
In each year of the peace food had got shorter and shorter, more and more expensive, and taxation had risen higher and higher. He was now living on a lower scale than in the war-time years; the decline had gone on steadily, if anything increasing in momentum, and there seemed no end to it. Where would it all end, and what lay ahead of the young people of today in England? What lay ahead of Jennifer?

He lay uneasily all night, a worried and an anxious man. He got up at dawn and went out for a short walk before breakfast, as was his habit. He met Jennifer at the breakfast table and they talked of the work that lay before them, the undertaker coming at ten o’clock, the search for a second-hand furniture dealer to make an offer for the furniture left in the house, the estate agent to be found who would sell the house itself. These were easy and straightforward matters that had to be attended to before Morton went back to his practice in Leicester; more difficult was the personal matter that he must talk over with his daughter.

He broached it as they walked through the suburban streets. “I’ve been thinking about you going to Australia, Jenny,” he said. “There’s a lot to be said, for and against. I don’t think we want to decide anything too hastily.”

She glanced at him in surprise. “You don’t think I ought to go, Daddy?”

“1 don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to think. There’s this four hundred pounds dumped right into your lap, so to speak, and that’s what she wanted you to do with it. It might not be a bad idea to go out for a few months and see if you like it. There should be plenty of money to pay your passage out and home.”

“I wouldn’t want to stay out there, Daddy. I couldn’t leave you and Mummy.”

“We wouldn’t want to lose you, Jenny. But I must say, I get worried sometimes thinking of the way things are going here.”

The girl was silent. Even in her own memory the stringencies in her parents’ home had increased; her own wage packet bought a good deal less than it had bought two years before. With the optimism of youth she said, “We’ll get an election and a change of Government before long. Then everything will get cheap again, won’t it?”

He shook his head. “I wish I could think so. I don’t think it’s anything to do with Socialism. It’s been going on for thirty years, this has, this getting poorer and poorer. Too many people to feed here in England, out of too few fields. It’s the food-producing countries that’ll be the ones to live in in the future. You can see it now. Look at Jane Dorman!”

“That’s wool, Daddy. They didn’t make their money out of food. They made it out of wool.”

“Well, we’ve got to have wool, and we don’t grow enough of our own. I’m dressed in it almost entirely. So are you.”

Jennifer thought of her winter clothes. “Mostly, in this weather,” she agreed. They walked on for a time in silence. “If I went out to Australia I’d have to get a job,” she said. “I couldn’t just go out and live upon Aunt Jane.”

He nodded. “You could do that all right. I expect they want secretaries in Victoria.”

“What’s the capital of Victoria, Daddy? Is it Adelaide?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I think that’s over on the west coast somewhere. I’d have to look at an atlas.”

Later in the day, when they were having tea in the kitchen of her grandmother’s house before going back to the hotel, Jennifer said, “Of course, I’d like to go out to Australia for the trip. The only thing is, I wouldn’t want to stay there.”

“You’ve never been out of England, have you, Jenny?”

“I’ve been to France,” she said. “I’d love to go like that, if one could look on it as just a holiday. Six months or so. But I’d never want to go and live out there.”

“Why not?”

She struggled to express herself. “This is our place; this is where we belong. We’re English, not Australian.”

He thought for a minute. “I suppose that’s right. But that’s not the way the British Empire was created.”

“You don’t want me to stay out there for good, do you, Daddy?”

“I want you to do what’s best for you,” he said. “I’m worried, Jenny, and I don’t mind telling you. If this decline goes on, I’m worried over what may happen to you before you die.”

“That’s what Granny said,” the girl replied uncertainly. “She said that she was worried for me. Everybody seems to be worrying about me. I can look after myself.”

Her father smiled. “All the same,” he said, “no harm in going on a six months’ trip out to Australia if it gets dropped into your lap.”

“It seems such a waste of money.”

“It’s what she gave it to you for,” he said. “But it’s your money to do what you like with. Think it over.”

The funeral was on Saturday, and after it was over Jennifer went with her father to St. Pancras to see him off. Then she travelled down by train to Blackheath through the drab suburbs of New Cross and Lewisham. As she went the blazing Australian deserts, the wide cattle stations, the blue seas and coral islands that she had read about in novels danced before her eyes; it seemed incredible that these things could be within her grasp, these places could be hers to go to if she wished. Only the inertia of giving up her job and going, of getting out of her rut, now stood between her and these places.

She had a duty to perform on the Sunday, the duty of writing to Jane Dorman at this queer address, “Leonora, Merrijig, Victoria” to tell her of the death of Ethel Trehearn, and to tell her about the disposition of her five hundred pounds. She sat down on Sunday
morning to write this letter; when she had finished, it was a straight, factual account of what had happened, with the unpleasant fact glossed over that the old lady’s death had been virtually from starvation. She could not bring herself to tell anyone in another country that such things could happen in England. At the end she wrote,

“As it stands now, I’ve got four hundred of your five hundred pounds, and I’m not too happy about it. She gave it me because she wanted me to go out to Australia and see if I would like to make my life out there, and to visit you. I should like to see you, of course, but as for living in Australia I think it’s very unlikely that I’d like it; I suppose I’m incurably English. If I did come I’d have to get a job, of course; I’m a qualified shorthand typist with four years’ experience since I got my diploma. Do you think I could get a job in Melbourne, or would that be difficult?

“Do tell me if you would like to have the money back and I’ll send it at once, because honestly I don’t feel as though it’s mine at all.

“Yours sincerely,
“J
ENNIFER
M
ORTON.”

She got this off by air mail at midday on Sunday, and relaxed.

That was a time of strain and gloom in England, with the bad news of the war in Korea superimposed upon the increasing shortages of food and fuel and the prospect of heavy increases in taxation to pay for rearmament. In the week that followed Jennifer’s return to work the meat ration was cut again, and now reached a point when it was only sufficient for one meagre meal of meat a week. When shortages are shared equally they are nothing like so painful as they would be in a free economy; if the Smiths can afford to buy meat and the Jones not, the strain may be intolerable, but if nobody can have the meat the lack of meat soon ceases to annoy. Nevertheless the present cut produced some serious and heated discussion at the lunch table between the men, which Jennifer listened to with interest. There were about three hundred clerical staff in that office of the Ministry of Pensions, and they mostly lunched together in one large canteen.

Forsyth, head of Department D.S. in Rehabilitation, said, “The plain fact of it is that these Argentinos have got us where they want us. They’ve got the food and we’ve got to have it or go under.”

Morrison, in the Accounts Branch, said, “We can’t pay the prices that they’re asking. The economy won’t stand it.”

“We’ll have to do without something, then. Free spectacles and false teeth. We’ve got to eat
something.”

Somebody said something about the Minister of Food, “—that—fool. Getting the Argentinos’ back up.”

Sanders, from the Assessment Branch, said, “I don’t agree at all. It’s easy to sling mud at him, but he’s done a marvellous job.”

“In what way?”

Sanders said, “Well, the country’s never been so healthy as it is now. Everybody gets enough to eat. The only thing that you can say against the food is that it’s a bit dull sometimes. But everybody gets enough of it. Nobody dies of starvation in this country, like they do in France. That’s the difference between a controlled economy and
laissez faire.”

Jennifer thought of one old lady who had died of starvation, but she said nothing. Her grandmother could have applied to the relieving officer, of course…. She could not speak without showing indignation, and it was better not to make a row before the men.

Morrison said, “There’s one big difference between this country and France.” He spoke with the deliberation of an accountant, and with a slight North Country accent.

“What’s that?” asked Sanders.

“You take a successful professional man,” said Morrison slowly. “A leading surgeon, maybe, or a barrister. With taxes and costs the way they are, he really hasn’t got a chance of saving for his old age, not like he could before the war. He’ll save something, of course, but a man like that, he doesn’t get into the big money much before he’s forty-five or fifty, and in the few good years that he’s got left he can’t save enough to retire on in the way of life that he’s accustomed to. He just can’t do it, with the tax and surtax as it is. You’ve only got to look at the figures to see that it’s impossible.”

Forsyth said, “That’s right.”

“Well, if a man like a first-class surgeon can’t save properly for his old age, nobody can,” said Morrison. “That means that nobody in England can feel safe. Everybody in this country today is worried sick for what may happen to him and to his wife when they get old, except the very lowest paid classes, who can get by on the retirement pension.”

“Well, how do you make out that things are any better in France?” asked Sanders.

“This way,” said the accountant. “In France the man like the surgeon or the barrister is taxed much less than he is here, and the working man pays proportionately more. I don’t say that’s a good thing—it may be, or it may not be. The fact is that it’s different. In France, the leading surgeon or the leading barrister
can
save for his old age, and save enough to give him security in the way of life he’s used to. He’s not worried sick for what may happen to him. In France, if you’re successful enough, you’re all right. That means that in France you’ve got
some
happy and contented people. Here you’ve got none.”

“Yes, but hell!” said Sanders. “That’s at the expense of the under-dogs.”

“I don’t say it’s not,” said the accountant equably. “I’m just saying that the French system does produce
some
happy people, and ours doesn’t.”

The argument drifted inconclusively along till it was time to get back to the offices.

A day or two later, to Jennifer’s interest, the subject of emigration came up. None of the older men seemed particularly interested in it. “My nephew, he went out to Canada,” one said. “He’s an engineer; got a job in a tractor factory in Montreal. He was out there in the war with the R.A.F., so he knows the country. He’s doing all right, but he says the winter’s terrible.”

“It’s not right, the way these young chaps go abroad,” said Sanders. “If it goes on, the Government will have to put a stop to it.”

Jennifer spoke up with suppressed indignation. “Why should they do that?” she asked. “Why shouldn’t people go abroad if they want to?”

Sanders was about to answer, but the accountant intervened. “Because the country can’t afford it.”

The girl said, “They pay their own passages, don’t they?”

“I’m not speaking about that, Miss Morton,” said the accountant. “Look, suppose it was you who wanted to go to Canada.” It was uncomfortably near home, but the girl nodded. “How much do you think you cost?”

“Me? In money?”

“That’s right,” said Morrison.

“I don’t quite know what you mean,” she said.

“I’ll tell you, very roughly,” he said. “When did you start working?”

“I got my first job when I was eighteen,” she told him.

“Right. For eighteen years somebody in this country fed you and clothed you and educated you before you made any money, before you started earning. Say you cost an average two quid a week for that eighteen years. You’ve cost England close on two thousand pounds to produce.”

Somebody said, “Like a machine tool.”

“That’s right,” the accountant said. “A human dictaphone and typewriter combined, all electronic and maintains itself and does its own repairs, that’s cost two thousand quid. Suppose you go off to Canada. You’re an asset worth two thousand quid that England gives to Canada as a free gift. If a hundred thousand like you were to go each year, it’ld be like England giving Canada a subsidy of two hundred million pounds a year. It’s got to be thought about, this emigration. We can’t afford to go chucking money away like that.”

She said puzzled, “It’s not really like that, is it?”

“It is and all,” said Morrison. “That’s what built up the United States. Half a million emigrants a year went from Central Europe to America for fifty years or so. Say they were worth a thousand quid apiece. Right—that was a subsidy from Central Europe to America of five hundred million quid a year, and it went on for fifty years or so. Human bulldozers.”

He leaned forward on the table. “Believe it or not,” he said, “Central Europe got very poor and the U.S.A. got very rich.”

There was laughter at the table. “It’s a fact, I’m telling you,” said the accountant. “Central Europe got very poor. If all that manpower had stayed at home in Poland and in Czechoslovakia we might have had a good deal less trouble from Hitler. We want to watch the same thing doesn’t happen here. It could do, easily, if too many people start emigrating.” He paused. “It could be the ruin of this country.”