POLITICS
Wuthering Middles a moorland romance
FERDINAND MOUNT
n the little tray of snacks in the hotel room, there are teabags of Taylor's York- shire Tea, 'blended in Yorkshire to suit Yorkshire people and Yorkshire water' (eeh, tha's niver suppin' that Lapsang Sooshong muck, as J. B. Priestley used to say), and Coconut Fingers and Golden Crunch biscuits made by Paterson Bronte. How that name seems to part the mists over the bleak moorland and bring back memories of those days which I cannot recall but with a shiver. . . .
Paterson was the eldest of us, a pale though not ill-favoured youth. He had a sweet and helpful nature, always ready to enlighten his sisters with a short lecture on the advantages of proportional representa- tion. But from the first he could not abide our brother Bramwell's drinking and swearing, and he even became estranged from Charlotte when she began putting up posters of the Iron Lady alongside her fading engravings of the Iron Duke. It was at about this time that Bramwell fell under the influence of that strange diabolical creature Heathcliff, and they both joined the Federation of Conservative Students.
That was the final blow. Poor Paterson could bear life in our little community no longer, and one melancholy morning he trudged away from Haworth Parsonage over Ilkley Moor to seek his fortune. 'Biscuits' was the wild cry he flung back over his shoulder as the mists swirled around him.
For months, nay, years, we heard no- thing of him. Then one sunlit morning in September, the good woman who brought us meals on wheels from the social services in Bradford inquired if we chanced to be related to 'the Paterson Bronte who had hit the big time in Harrogate'. I hastened to that delightful watering-place to seek out my long-lost brother. What could have kept him from the bosom of his family for so long? What was his dark secret?
As I enquired the way in an hotel, I saw a sign directing passers-by to 'Social Democrats for Gay Rights'. Was this perhaps — but no, for I reflected that Bramwell and Heathcliff too had 'come out', as we called it in our homely York- shire way, and we had thought little or nothing of it. And indeed any such surmise was confounded at that very moment by the sight of my dear brother emerging from a room labelled 'SDP crèche' and accom- panied by a motherly-looking personage in a shawl leading two little children by the hand. After we had embraced, Paterson put his arm round this woman and said, 'Let me introduce you to your sister-in-law Gillian Bronte, she's heavily into consumer politics, and this is your nephew and niece, Jeremy and Sue Bronte.'
So this was the secret which poor Pater- son had been keeping from us, this was the unspeakable truth which had led him to bury himself the other side of the moors, a stranger to the dearest companions of his infancy. Those tendencies in him which we might have seen if only we had had eyes to see had finally taken fatal hold of him. He had joined the SDP.
Reader, you may imagine my feelings and my dark suspicions that it was my newly discovered sister-in-law who had led him down this reckless path. This insinua- tion Paterson stoutly denied: `Gilly and I went into this thing together.' It was with a heavy heart that I reconciled myself to my brother's new life, but I soon found that Gillian was an estimable person, even if she did press anti-smoking tracts into my hand and insist that my sisters should lose no time in attending a Well Woman Clinic.
Those heady days in Harrogate passed in such a whirl. My brother, who appeared to be a person of some consequence in these circles, quickly made me acquainted With his intimates. There was a saturnine doctor who was accounted moody and morose, but, reader, I must confess that I found him handsome, for I believed that his moodiness, his harshness had their source in some cruel cross of fate. Sometimes, at the end of the long hotel passage, I heard a husky female babbling, and a door would open and a strange woman with untidy straggling hair would come loping past me muttering 'I'm late, I'm late', in demented tones. At such times, a look of pain would cross the brow of my new acquaintance (who reminded me somewhat of Mr Rochester of Thornfield), as he murmured 'Oh not again, Shirley', and I grieved for his grief.
There was also of the company a neat little Scotsman, a Mr Steel, whom they called 'the Boy David', although he was long past boyhood. What part he played in that peculiar alliance I had yet to learn. He and the Doctor talked in lowered tones of a trip they had just made to Paris and of something precious they had acquired there which they called 'a minimum Euro- pean deterrent'. I know little of the great world, but I ventured to remark that what was so candidly described as a minimum was unlikely to prove much of a deterrent. 'It doesn't matter if we don't frighten the Russians, so long as we don't frighten the Liberals,' the Doctor said with a sardonic chuckle.
They were indeed remarkable bedfel- lows, for the Doctor and his friends never ceased to speak ill of Mr Steel and his friends who were present in great numbers. 'We don't all go to their conference, so why should they all come to ours?' was the constant refrain. A benevolent elderly gentleman, Mr Jenkins, spoke more kindly of them, but the Doctor's friends said, Roy's only nice to the Liberals because he's never had to talk to them.' The assembled, company seemed decidedly fond of Mr Jenkins, apparently because they had once treated him badly and wished to atone for their unkindness, and so they cheered his speech to the echo. It was indeed a distinguished oration, although I could not grasp quite what he meant, by declaring 'we must be an anti- party party', since to my innocent under- standing they already exhibited not a few of the vices of faction.
But they were so mild and gentlemanly to me that I soon felt at ease in their company. At times, I was even alarmed for their own sakes by their high-minded approach to the coarser sides of life. Mr Taverne, a lawyer who reminded me a little of a curate I knew in my days at Lowfield, presented a most impressive plan to abolish poverty by putting up the taxes levied on persons such as themselves. They received this with the most generous applause, quite indifferent to their own comfort. Alas, I fear that in the cruel world outside they may find a less kindly recep- tion.
There were also times when I found myself doubting whether Paterson and his friends were capable of that manly de- cisiveness which is so necessary to carry through great enterprises. When I heard their worthy spokesman let fall such pro- nouncements as 'We came to the conclu- sion after a long debate that we really must pause to think,' I feel half ashamed to confess it, but, reader, there stole into my heart a longing to see Heathcliff and Bramwell again.
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