The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(226)
The news of the General Strike’s collapse caught him as he was going home after driving Fleur to the canteen. A fizz and bustle in the streets, and the words: ‘Strike Over’ scrawled extempore at street corners, preceded the ‘End of the Strike – Official’ of the hurrying newsvendors. Michael stopped his car against the kerb and bought a news-sheet. There it was I For a minute he sat motionless with a choky feeling, such as he had felt when the news of the Armistice came through. A sword lifted from over the head of England! A source of pleasure to her enemies dried up! People passed and passed him, each with a news-sheet, or a look in the eye. They were taking it almost as soberly as they had taken the strike itself. ‘Good old England! We’re a great people when we’re up against it!’ he thought, driving his car slowly on into Trafalgar Square. A group of men, who had obviously been strikers, stood leaning against the parapet. He tried to read their faces. Glad, sorry, ashamed, resentful, relieved? For the life of him he could not tell. Some defensive joke seemed going the round of them.
‘No wonder we’re a puzzle to foreigners!’ thought Michael. ‘The least understood people in the world!’
He moved on slowly round the square, into Whitehall. Here were some slight evidences of feeling. The block was thick around the Cenotaph and the entrance to Downing Street; and little cheers kept breaking out. A ‘special’ was escorting a lame man across the street. As he came back, Michael saw his face. Why, it was Uncle Hilary! His mother’s youngest brother, Hilary Charwell, Vicar of St Augustine’s-in-die-Meads.
‘Hallo, Michael!’
‘You a “special”, Uncle Hilary? Where’s your cloth?’
‘My dear! Are you one of those who think the Church debarred from mundane pleasure? You’re not getting old-fashioned, Michael?’
Michael grinned. He had a real affection for Uncle Hilary, based on admiration for his thin, long face, so creased and humorous, on boyish recollection of a jolly uncle, on a suspicion that in Hilary Charwell had been lost a Polar explorer, or other sort of first-rate adventurer.
‘That reminds me, Michael; when are you coming round to see us? I’ve got a topping scheme for airing “The Meads”.’
‘Ah!’ said Michael; ‘overcrowding’s at the bottom of everything, even this strike.’
‘Right you are, my son. Come along, then, as soon as you can. You fellows in Parliament ought always to see things at first hand. You suffer from auto-intoxication in that House. And now pass on, young man, you’re impeding the traffic.’
Michael passed on, grinning. Good old Uncle Hilary! Humanizing religion, and living dangerously – had climbed all the worst peaks in Europe; no sense of his own importnace and a real sense of humour. Quite the best type of Englishman! They had tried to make him a dignitary, but he had jibbed at the gaiters and hat-ropes. He was what they called a ‘live wire’, and often committed the most dreadful indiscretions; but everybody liked him, even his own wife. Michael dwelt for a moment on his Aunt May. Forty – he supposed – with three children and fourteen hundred things to attend to every day; shingled, and cheerful as a sandboy. Nice-looking woman, Aunt May!
Having garaged his car, he remembered that he had not lunched. It was three o’clock. Munching a biscuit, he drank a glass of sherry, and walked over to the House of Commons. He found it humming in anticipation of a statement. Sitting back, with his legs stretched out, he had qualms. What things had been done in here! The abolitions of Slavery and of Child Labour, the Married Woman’s Property Act, Repeal of the Corn Laws; but could they be done nowadays? And if not – was it a life? He had said to Fleur that you couldn’t change your vocation twice and survive. But did he want to survive? Failing Foggartism – and Foggartism hadn’t failed only because it hadn’t started – what did he really care about?
Leaving the world better than he found it? Siting there, he couldn’t help perceiving a certain vagueness about such an aspiration, even when confined to England. It was the aspiration of the House of Commons; but in the ebb and flow of Party, it didn’t seem to make much progress. Better to fix on some definite bit of administrative work, stick to it, and get something done. Fleur wanted him to concentrate on Kenya for the Indians. Again rather remote, and having little to do with England. What definite work was most needed in connexion with England? Education? Bunkered again! How tell what was the best direction into which to turn education? When they brought in State Education, for instance, they had thought the question setded. Now people were saying that State education had ruined the State. Emigration? Attractive, but negative. Revival of agriculture? Well, the two combined were Foggartism, and he knew by now that nothing but bitter hardship would teach those lessons; you might talk till you were blue in the face without convincing anyone but yourself.