by John Masters
‘No more did I, but that’s all over and done with, and we’re united again. Rowland, you are a popular man in Hedlington, and one of the biggest employers. You have a good reputation for fair dealing and honesty. You’re a gentleman. You’re not as young as you might be, but the PM likes experience … How would you like to replace me as Member for Mid-Scarrow?’
Harry took up his sherry glass and drained it. So this was what Ellis had wanted. He felt no particular shock, only surprise; he had not expected this. He turned the idea over in his mind … to become a Member of Parliament … to be Harry Rowland, MP … He thought, if Ellis had come to me with this proposal a month ago, I would probably have given up the factory; but now …
Ellis interrupted his thoughts: ‘You won’t have to fight an election, because Asquith and Balfour have agreed on a truce for the duration of the war. If a member dies or resigns, the only candidate – of the two main parties – will be someone of the same party. So his election will be assured.’
Harry thought, that doesn’t seem quite fair. How can the people express their view about anything if there are no real elections? Suppose the government was losing the war through bad management? They’d still have their permanent majority in the Commons, so they couldn’t be thrown out.
‘Of course, the war may be over in a few weeks,’ Ellis said. ‘Some of the soldiers think so, and a lot of the politicians, particularly the Conservatives. Then you’d have to electioneer, but, between you and me, I don’t think it will be over so soon. Well, what do you say?’
Harry said, ‘When are you proposing to resign your seat?’
‘A year from now, more or less. I don’t want to fix an exact date yet, but it won’t be before the end of September next year, 1915 – D.V. – and it won’t be later than the end of 1915.’
‘May I ask why you want to resign? I trust you are quite fit.’
‘Oh, certainly, certainly. The fact is that I don’t like being in London so much. I have a nice house on Beighton Down, well, you know it, you’ve been there … and a good garden, which Janet wants to make the best rose garden in Kent, and that’s where I want to spend the rest of my life. I’d resign right away only the PM’s put me on a committee to study war production needs – I expect he’d ask you to replace me on that, with your experience – and I want to give my successor time to nurse the constituency. Just because there’s a truce, we mustn’t tell the electorate, here’s your next MP, and produce some fellow they’ve never heard of, or thought of as their MP, out of a hat…’
‘What does nursing the constituency consist of?’ Harry asked.
‘Come with me, as much as you can, whenever I’m in Hedlington on political matters. If I make a speech down there, sit on the platform with me. Sometimes, when I’m supposed to open a bazaar or the like, I’ll tell the local committee I’m busy in Parliament, and to ask you to take my place.’
‘I’m not much of a hand at speech-making,’ Harry said dubiously.
‘It’s easy. A little practice, and you’ll find it’s easier than falling off a log. The central committee people tell you what they want said. You never make more than three points, make each of them three times, in different ways, praise our brave soldiers and sailors nowadays, and mention God in the last sentence. Mention Him favourably.’ He chuckled largely and banged the bell beside him. ‘Made up your mind? Two more amontillado sherries, George.’
Harry said, ‘I can’t give up Rowland’s, you know.’
‘You won’t have to. The ordinary business of MPs is less than it was, because so much is done by the cabinet on its own authority. If you come up to London once or twice a week, that will be ample. You ought to have some place to stay overnight if the House sits very late, or you have to be on call for a critical vote – but I doubt that we’ll have any of those, with this truce … or you could stay at a hotel every time.’
‘My son Tom has a small flat, which is empty now.’
‘Good! Well…?’
‘When do you want to know?’
‘I’d like to know right away because we’re having lunch with the PM at 10 Downing Street. We are due there in – ’ He pulled a heavy half-hunter out of his waistcoat pocket – ‘twenty-five minutes.’
Harry said, ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t give you an answer until I have talked with Rose. She will be affected, and I shall take her advice. She’s wiser than I, and understands what I can and should do more thoroughly than I myself do.’
‘Very good. I shall tell the PM that. Or you can tell him yourself. Well, if we finish our sherries, and pump ship, we can walk to Downing Street in good time… I hope I am raising my glass to the next MP for Mid-Scarrow.’
‘Don’t say another word, my dear fellow,’ the Prime Minister said to him as they sat down to lunch. ‘You must discuss the matter fully with your wife. We are, after all, in no hurry.’
Margot Asquith said, ‘You will be, if Henry Wilson’s right. I hear from France that he says the German advance will run out of steam in another week, and then we will be over the Rhine by the end of September.’
Harry watched her in fascination. She was tall and beak-nosed, dressed now in cream and scarlet with a sweeping hat. She was not beautiful, but wherever she was, attention concentrated naturally on her.
Ellis said, ‘Lord Kitchener doesn’t agree, I believe.’
The Prime Minister said, ‘Kitchener says flatly that the war will last at least three years. As you may have heard, he plans to raise no less than seventy divisions by the middle of 1916!’
‘Kitchener’s mind is like the revolving beacon of a lighthouse,’ Margot Asquith said, ‘most of the time it shows blank and dark, secretive, giving no information. Then the flash comes and a piercing light is thrown into some hitherto dark place.’
‘Very good, Margot,’ the other male guest said. He was a burly man, much the same shape as Ellis, but even taller and not so heavily paunched. He was the 17th Earl of Derby, who had served in the War Office earlier in the century, and also been Postmaster General, both in Conservative Governments; a great nobleman and a man of powerful influence in the country, particularly in his native Lancashire, he was much respected by politicians of both parties.
The two other ladies present were sisters, apparently old friends of Margot’s, and Harry never did hear their surnames. One was called Phyllis and the other Irene. Irene now said, ‘Lord Derby, I thought we had a big army, but we only have these few men in France. A contemptible little army, the Kaiser called them, didn’t he? Why is that?’
Lord Derby said, ‘The army is actually small by continental standards, because we have no conscription, as they all do. But we could put double the number of men into France now if it were not for imperial policing, particularly in India. Roughly speaking, half our regular army is always at home and half abroad at any moment. The infantry number about a hundred and twenty battalions – or did when I was at the War Office. So of those hundred and twenty, sixty are abroad – nearly fifty in India alone, the rest in Malta, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Rangoon, and so on.
The Prime Minister said, ‘I asked K when he would be able to get those men back and he said, “As soon as I can find troops to replace them” … I suggested the Territorials, but he has a low opinion of them. Still, we must take some risks, and many regular troops overseas are making preparations to move at this moment.’
Derby said, ‘But I imagine we will have to be sure the outlying German cruisers have been disposed of before they can sail?’
‘Certainly.’
Now Margot Asquith turned to Lord Derby, and started an animated conversation with him about the character and capabilities of the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Field-Marshal Sir John French. Asquith looked tired and grey, and his usually sharp eyes seemed to be unfocused, as though he was not really here in Number Ten, but miles away – perhaps in France with the BEF, perhaps on another planet.
Margot said, ‘French is too emotional. Good hea
vens, I’ve seen him crying like a child when someone congratulated him on what he did at the Curragh. It’s the French generals who are supposed to weep and gesticulate, not ours – even if this one’s name is French.’
Derby laughed dutifully, ‘Ha-ha.’
‘The man we ought to have in command is Smith-Dorrien,’ Margot said.
‘What about Haig?’ Ellis asked.
‘He looks beautiful, but …’ she tapped her head, ‘solid bone.’
‘Oh, come, Mrs Asquith,’ Ellis said, ‘he has a brilliant record.’
‘No imagination,’ Margot said firmly, ‘and an intriguer. As he’s a personal friend of the King, that could be very dangerous.’
The Prime Minister looked up from his soup. ‘You really mustn’t slander our generals like that, Margot. It gives me indigestion – to think you might be right.’
‘Oh, I am,’ she said cheerfully, ‘I am. What do you think Mr … ah, the famous motor car, of courseMr Rowland?’
Harry said, ‘I know nothing of our generals, Mrs Asquith, I fear. But they must be good surely, or they would never have reached their high positions?’
Margot Asquith said, ‘You are an innocent … Herbert, Winston tells me he has got Rupert Brooke into the navy, as a sub-lieutenant.’
‘The poet? Herbert’s friend?’
‘Yes. And Raymond’s.’
Servants came silently to remove the soup plates and Margot said, ‘Roast grouse. We get bombarded with them every Twelfth … more than we can eat.’
The grouse arrived, preceded by a healthy aroma of decay, for they had been well hung.
‘And now,’ the Prime Minister said, smiling wearily, ‘we are going to have to talk shop, if you ladies will excuse our rudeness. I wish I didn’t have to bring the war to the dining-table, but Ares consumes Cronus as fast as Cronus consumed his children … Derby, Kitchener has told me about recruitment, and how the recruits will be physically disposed of and housed … and I must say it appears that a great many men are going to pass the coming winter in tents … but I have not understood about the provision of uniforms, especially of boots. I dare not take up any of K’s precious time by asking what he will regard as silly civilian questions – so would you be good enough to enlighten me?’
He went on eating, slowly, while Lord Derby began to answer the question with a long and careful explanation. Harry listened, feeling very much on the inside of great events – more so, really, than if they had been discussing the replacement of Field-Marshal French, or the plans for a general offensive; for those would sooner or later be matters of common knowledge, while who would know how the army got its boots? Margot, Irene and Phyllis talked among themselves, and Harry saw now why the women had all been placed at one end of the table, and the four men at the other. But they talked quietly, even Margot lowering her voice, until the explanations were over and lunch finished.
Margot was already standing up, and the men rising, when the butler entered and whispered a word in the Prime Minister’s ear. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went out of the room. Margot said, ‘Makepeace, bring the coffee to the Middle Drawing-Room, please.’
‘Yes, madam.’
They followed their hostess through double doors into the Pillared Room, across that and through another pair of double doors into the Middle Drawing-Room, which looked out over the garden of Number 10 and across Horse Guards Parade to the back of the Admiralty.
Margot said, ‘Do you have any relatives at the front, Mr Rowland?’
‘One son at sea and one in France,’ he said.
‘I have three sons,’ she said. ‘Stepsons, to be precise. I wonder how many of them will come through safely – if Lord Kitchener is right.’
‘Let us pray that they all will,’ Harry said. ‘Yours and ours and everyone else’s.’
‘That’s impossible,’ she said briefly. ‘It is a war, after all.’
The door opened and the Prime Minister came in. He seemed to have shrunk since the moment when he walked out of the small State Dining Room. He said, ‘The British Expeditionary Force, or at least part of it, is heavily engaged at Mons, and has been since early morning. President Poincare has just got through on the telephone to their Embassy here, and the Ambassador called me … It appears that Sir John has had to cancel his recent orders to advance, since our men are confronted by the German General von Kluck’s First Army … we are outnumbered nearly six to one. I’ve told the King.’
Derby said, ‘Mons? I think it’s in Belgium. A mining town … I must be getting back to the War Office, Prime Minister.’
‘You’d better. Give me a telephone call as soon as you hear anything definite. K will be very busy, I imagine.’
Lord Derby went out, after brief goodbyes. The butler came in with the coffee tray and Asquith sat down heavily in an easy chair. He rested his head in his hands and spoke slowly, seeming not to be aware that anyone else was present, for he did not address anyone in particular, or even the company in general, but as though soliloquizing – ‘K has always said that the big danger is that a gap may develop between the French army and ours. Then Field-Marshal French would be tempted to retire towards the Channel ports … and K says that must not be allowed to happen. He told me a week ago.’
‘Why, Prime Minister?’ Harry asked.
‘The French will feel that we have deserted them. And the Germans will be able to concentrate on finishing off the French, rather than have to tackle both of us at once.’
‘I see,’ Harry said, not seeing very well, but not wishing to pester the Prime Minister with further questions. Privately he was thinking, if the BEF retreats towards the Channel, and the Germans don’t divert troops to follow or mark them, they will be on the German flank, and that was supposed to be a good position.
Asquith finished his coffee quickly and stood up. Harry rose with him. He came over and said, ‘Keep this offer of ours a secret for the time being, Rowland.’
‘I understand.’
‘Except from your wife and immediate family, of course. I am sure they can be relied upon not to gossip about it.’
‘Certainly.’
‘Ellis, if Rowland accepts, let him tell you. And you do whatever is necessary to have your Liberal Association accept him. Rather, to make them think it is they who have chosen him. You understand?’
‘Certainly, Prime Minister.’
‘I must go. Lloyd George is coming over to discuss new taxes.’
Margot Asquith groaned. ‘What a bore … How long will he be staying?’
‘Two or three hours, I suppose.’
‘Oh good, that’ll give me time to get Irene and Phyllis safely out of the house before he’s free.’
‘My dear Margot, really!’
‘Herbert, don’t pretend you don’t know that Lloyd George can’t be alone with any woman for thirty seconds without attempting to obtain some sort of sexual satisfaction … and, astonishingly, often achieving it.’
Sunday night dinner at Laburnum Lodge was always a cold collation, to give Mrs Stallings the afternoon off. What service was necessary was provided by Brace, the houseman, rather than Parrish. This night the collation was Melton Mowbray pie, one of Harry’s favourites, and a salad. He tried to concentrate on the taste and satisfaction the pie was giving him, but memories of his visit to Downing Street kept crowding in, especially, and incongruously, a mental picture of the Chancellor of the Exchequer upending Irene on the main stairway and hurling back her petticoats to reveal… He shook his head and Rose murmured, ‘Is the pie not good, Harry?’
‘Very good, my dear. I was just daydreaming.’
Rose looked round. The trifle was on the sideboard, plates ready. She said, ‘You may go, Brace.’
‘Sure, ma’am? I’ve nothing to do.’
‘No. Go along. Take down the dirty dishes in the morning early. Walk the dogs now.’
‘Right, ma’am. Good night, madam, good night, Miss Rowland. Good night, sir.’
‘Good night, B
race.’
The servant left the room and Harry said, ‘I have something to tell you about my visit to London.’
‘As if that has not been quite obvious since your return,’ his wife said calmly.
‘But I’d rather wait till we are in the drawing-room,’ he said.
He returned to his eating. Asquith, distinguished, cautious … a brilliant man. Not as strong perhaps as some of the other pillars of the party, notably ‘the Welsh wizard’ as the yellow press called David Lloyd George. It would be a great experience to work with such as them in the highest service of the country. It was flattering that they apparently wanted his advice on war production – but he didn’t need to be an MP for that. He could say whatever he had to say as an expert, called in or co-opted with others to give advice and information to the Parliamentary Committee. Perhaps Ellis had told them about his reputation for fair dealing with his workers. He’d never allowed a union, of course, because, as he told the men, no employer could give them more than he was giving them, and stay in business; and they believed him. No trouble since January 1900, and that had only involved half a dozen men, and was soon over, with the troublemakers dismissed and other good men hired in their room. But things were different these days – the unions were getting more powerful everywhere, socialist members of parliament supported them, and there were a great many upstart employers with no sense of responsibility towards those dependent on them. Perhaps the whole country, civilians and soldiers, employers and employees alike, should be put under military discipline, and given military rates of pay, and no more; but that was unthinkable.
The meal finally ended, he led the way to the drawing-room, port glass in hand. Alice looked into the morning-room, picked up her knitting, and then joined her parents. She put the ball of khaki wool on her lap and started knitting. ‘What’s that?’ her father asked.
‘Socks for soldiers,’ she said, her head bent, ‘for Quentin’s men.’
Harry took his stance before the fireplace, thumbs in his waistcoat, gold watch chain across his waist. He said, ‘The Prime Minister has asked me to consider standing for Mid-Scarrow when Ellis retires, in about a year from now. Mr Asquith thought I could help the government in the matter of war production. I told them – Ellis was there at the lunch, also Lord Derby – that I could not give an answer until I had discussed the proposal with you, Rose. This is all in confidence, I may add, and must remain so until the Prime Minister decides to let it be known … that is, if I accept, of course. What do you think, Rose?’