Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  Land … the split was not only social; it was regional, in the sense that nearly everyone who lived in the country could get the fresh food needed, especially the children – the eggs, milk, butter, and meat, not to mention rabbits, fish, and game. The scarcities and the high prices were to be found among the working class in the towns, created by real shortages, bad distribution, and the machinations of the food profiteers. And the only way to correct the situation was a system of rationing, whereby the nation’s whole farm production, and all food imports, were bought by the government for the people, to be distributed on a basis of need, not of ability to pay … this was a strange sort of socialism he was preaching to himself! The people wouldn’t stand it any more than they’d stand for conscription. Not even those who would most benefit from it would like it … but events, as the war progressed, might force England into it.

  He went out and called up the stairs, ‘Stella!’

  ‘Yes, Daddy?’

  ‘I’m going over to Abbas to look at Frank Cawthon’s new cows. Want to come?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m studying the Manual of Nursing.’

  Cate found his cap and went out. Stella wasn’t looking well these past few days. Ought to get out in the open air more. Still, if she was to be a good VAD, the more she learned, the better.

  22 Hedlington: Saturday, March 13, 1915

  Harry Rowland and Bob Stratton sat side by side in the grandstand of Hedlington stadium, if grandstand is not too splendid a description of the tin-roofed section of seats, perhaps twelve rows deep, on the north side of the ground. For the rest, all round the playing field spectators stood on the grass – or mud – without even the simple amenity of duckboards, unprotected from whatever rain or sleet or snow might fall. A rope kept the spectators six feet back from the touch lines, and twenty feet back from the goal lines.

  It was raining lightly. It had rained off and on all morning. The crowd, almost all men, huddled further into their jackets, and pulled their cloth caps deeper over their heads, or took them off to dash the rain from them, then put them back on again. Many of the men were wearing large rosettes on their lapels, blue and white for Hedlington Rovers, red and white for Sheppey United. The rain was not heavy, and did not damp the crowd’s enthusiasm. The waving of rattles and shouting of cries were almost continuous, although, as there were barely fifteen hundred spectators, the sound was soon absorbed into the dense, damp air. From the grandstand Harry was hardly aware that the people across the field were shouting at all.

  When both sides were ready for the fray, the referee had not arrived. A Hedlington official was finally appointed and the game began at 2.15 p.m. The first half was keenly contested, the red and white having the balance of the play rather in their favour, if one is to judge by the amount of work the respective goalkeepers had to do, for Bell was frequently called upon, while Sykes had very little to occupy his attention. One surprise shot, however, in the first two minutes of the game, enabled United to establish an early lead. It was the only goal of the first half.

  Harry clapped as he watched, but his mind was not here. He was a major supporter of the Hedlington football club, and he had given his own Rowland’s Works team, and their wives, tickets to this game; but his mind was elsewhere – in the factory. The meeting was to be half an hour after the end of this game … a little more than an hour from now. He had rehearsed many times what he wanted to say, first in private, then with Bob. He was ready, and not nervous, but he could not stop himself from wondering what the outcome would be. The men were in a strange mood. The war had a lot to do with it: for one thing, every man who went away to the war made those who stayed behind that much more important, and that importance was being drummed into them by the trade union organizers, and the damned socialists.

  A yell went up loud enough to be clearly heard outside the stadium, and a thousand rattles set up their distinctive corn-crake sound. Hedlington’s centre half had passed to the outside right, who beat his man, dribbled fast down the touch line, and sent a high arching centre straight in front of the goal mouth, where the centre forward had headed the ball into the far corner of the net as Sheppey’s goalie swan-dived after it, in vain.

  The blue and white striped shirts danced and hugged each other round the goal mouth. Score 1-1.

  On the resumption four goals were registered, inside of ten minutes – the first by Hedlington and the last three by Sheppey, and that ended the scoring. The spectators, however, saw plenty to keep them up to a pitch of excitement, even though the football was poor. The players frequently tripped and kicked at one another and on occasions they ‘framed up’ in a threatening manner. The referee was far too lenient, and had a player or two on each side been sent off it would have been no more than they deserved.

  The rain fell harder, as the Sheppey supporters swung their rattles in triumph, and the ground slowly emptied. Final score: Sheppey United 4, Hedlington Rovers 2.

  They were gathered in the main assembly shop, crowded round the work benches and the cars, against a backdrop of lathes and machinery, the driving belts now motionless. The arc lights glared down from the high ceiling on the wet cloth caps, the rattles, the blue and white favours, the damp sheen of their coats and the scarves still tied round their necks. It was not warm in there, but it was dry. Harry Rowland came to the end of his speech:

  ‘Let me sum up. The Union of Skilled Engineers is trying to persuade many of you to join it. One or two of you have done so. None of the union organizers works here except, as we have discovered, Albert Gorse. They are trying to cause dissension where none existed before, or ought to exist now. You get fair wages, as good as any in Kent. Bert Gorse has been telling you that skilled workers get thirty-five shillings for a five-and-a-half-day week in Wolverhampton and Coventry. That’s quite true, because there’s a lot of heavy industry there, particularly the manufacture of motor bicycles, motor cars and lorries, and there’s a big demand for skilled engineering labour. But you all know, too, that in a generally rural area the standard wage for skilled workers in industry is thirty shillings a week – and I am paying you thirty-two. Some of you, egged on by Bert Gorse and his outside friends, have been threatening you won’t work for less than thirty-five shillings a week – a wage we cannot afford to pay here, and remain competitive … The union organizers are also telling you your jobs will be taken away by women … by unskilled labour … that you will all be sent into the army unless you organize and let the union protect you … Hundreds of thousands of our boys have volunteered for the army. Yet still more production is needed. Those men have to be replaced somehow. We, the owners and managers, are certainly not anxious to see our skilled men go into the army, though of course we are all English and we hope that everyone will carry his fair share of the burden. On the contrary, it is to our interest to see that really essential men realize that they are more valuable here than in the trenches. Otherwise, who is going to make the guns and lorries and ambulances the soldiers need? … Yes, there will have to be replacements – dilution, the union calls it – and some will certainly be women, though I personally hope our women will never have to undertake the heavy, dirty work that many of you do, even if they are physically capable of it. The replacements will not receive equal pay for equal work, but equal pay for equally efficient work. If a man is not as skilled as the man he replaces … if a woman can’t do all that the man did, including the setting-up … neither will receive the same wage. That’s government policy in the government factories and arsenals, and I think it’s fair and right, so we’ll follow it here … What these outsiders are asking you to do, is to consider striking for more than twice a soldier’s pay … although he is risking his life every hour and we, all of us, live safe and comfortable at home and go back to our wives every evening.’

  He paused. He knew all the men, most of them very well, though none perhaps intimately: he sometimes wondered how well he knew Bob Stratton, in fact. Their minds were not made up yet. It was Saturday night, an
d they needed time; he had known this would be the case, and had determined that there should be no decision at this meeting. For one thing, the wives must be given time to talk to them. He ended – ‘I have decided, for the sake of Rowland’s, that Albert Gorse will be dismissed immediately. Any man who does not turn up for work on Monday morning need not turn up at any time. He will be dismissed from that moment. Now, Bert, it’s your turn.’

  Bob Stratton helped Harry down from the work bench where he had been standing. Bert Gorse slowly pushed forward through the huddled men, and climbed up on to the bench. He, too, had been to the football match, Harry saw. His coat was damp and the big rosette, as big as Harry’s, soggy wet on the shabby lapel. He began to speak … about the need for skilled men to stand together, or they were at the mercy of the employers. Mr Rowland talked as though he, Bert Gorse, had been spending all his time trying to persuade men to join the union. Yes, he thought they should – because it made the working man part of an organization as powerful as the boss – more powerful sometimes … but the men would know that he hadn’t always been speaking about joining the union. Once, he’d asked many of them to gather and discuss dangerous machinery. The foreman said they didn’t have the right to talk about that on Mr Rowland’s time … but he’d rather waste half an hour of production than see one man go out of here without a hand or an arm … Another time, he’d asked them what they thought of the state of the lavatories … And again, about the way Mr Rowland and Mr Stratton were putting three jobs together and making two men do them. That way they got more work out of a man for the same money … As to wages, they knew better than he, or Mr Rowland, what it was like to raise a family on thirty-two shillings a week, with prices going up every day … And let nobody listen to talk about the boys in France. The war would be over one day, though the way the government was running it now, that day would be a long way off … and the soldiers would come back home. To what? To lower wages than they were getting when they left? To working conditions forced on them in the pretence that it would help the men at the front? Let no one misunderstand – everything that he and the union were working for here was for the men at the front, too, so that they would come back to a better England, a better Hedlington, a better job.

  He looked at Harry Rowland, and said, ‘I am sorry you gave me the sack, Mr Rowland. If the men believe me, likely you’ll have to be taking me back.’ He turned once more to the men. ‘If you want more pay, and better conditions, don’t come to work on Monday. Come to the union office on Stalford Street, instead. Thank you.’

  He stepped down. Somewhere at the back of the shop a man whirled his rattle briefly, a strange harsh sound in the echoing workshop; but Harry could not tell whether it was in applause or derision, or for whom. He stood up. ‘That’s all. Beckett, close the factory, please.’

  The men crowded out in silence. In five minutes the great hall was empty except for Harry, Bob Stratton, and Beckett, the night watchman, holding a heavy bunch of keys. Harry turned to Bob. ‘I know you don’t drink, Bob, but would you like to watch me have one in my office?’

  Bob nodded, and they walked together down the hall, out and across the gravelled yard to the manager’s wing, where the clerical work was done and the records kept, next to the design department.

  Harry sat down at his desk, opened a cupboard, and poured himself a stiff whisky, with a little soda from a siphon. ‘How do you think it will go?’ he asked.

  ‘Hard to tell, Mr Harry … I wish we’d won the match this afternoon.’

  Harry nodded. It was a wise remark; he had certainly been right not to have a vote or a show of hands now. The men were not in a cheerful mood, partly, at least, because of the defeat in the soccer. He said, ‘I’m going to London on Tuesday, Bob … Vauxhall is getting huge orders, and our car is very similar to theirs.’

  ‘Just as good. Better.’

  Harry said, ‘Ours costs a bit more … Another thing I hear through Mr Ellis, is that there’s a move on in Whitehall to make all manufacturers who get military contracts standardize their machines … have one ambulance design, one staff car design, and so on, and make everyone turn out just that design.’

  ‘Won’t work,’ Bob said decidedly. ‘We make ours. Vauxhall makes theirs.’

  ‘Suppose we’re pressed to have parts interchangeable at least, and nuts and bolts?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be as good as what we have now. Each part is designed for a certain job in a certain machine. If the parts are the same, but the job or the machine’s different, it isn’t going to be as good – stands to reason.’

  ‘We might be forced to do something about it, though. I can see the problems of replacing damaged parts in the field. If they have three different makes of staff car in use, there’d have to be three times as many spare parts … What will we do if a lot of men don’t show up on Monday?’

  ‘There’s still some skilled men left in Hedlington … might have to offer more money to get them out of the jobs they’re in.’

  ‘What about women?’

  Bob said, ‘I don’t like it, Mr Harry. They’d be nothing but trouble, even if they could do the jobs.’

  Harry sipped his whisky. He agreed with his foreman: he didn’t like the idea of women in the factory, except in clerical jobs, or sewing in the upholstery section, but there were two inescapable facts to be faced: one was that the supply of men was running out, and two, that many intelligent and energetic women were eager to do just such work – anything, it seemed, to show what they could do outside the home.

  He said, ‘We have no alternative, Bob. We’ll try them anywhere, in any job here, any at all. We’ll run courses of training for them … machinists, drivers, tally clerks, lathe operators, everything … And until they can prove they’re as good as the men, we’ll pay them less. Twenty-four shillings a week. That’s half as much again as they’d have been getting six months ago.’

  Bob said, ‘They’ll never be as good as the men. They’ll get tired … or tired of the job, and go home.’

  ‘We’ll see … I hear JMC is going to hire women right from the start.’

  Bob nodded. ‘Mr Richard and that American are already running training courses for unskilled labour – they’re getting mostly women. And their factory’s up. They’ll have the first lorry out soon.’

  Harry didn’t want to talk about Richard. A little more chat and he’d go home. He said, ‘How’s the new grandchild coming along? Has he been christened yet?’

  ‘Next week ’

  ‘What’s he going to be called? Bob – after you?’

  Bob Stratton laughed – a short unhumorous snort – ‘Ruthie’s going to call him Launcelot, Mr Harry. Hoggin nearly burst a blood vessel when she told him, but nothing’s going to change her mind. He’s going to be called Launcelot, and he’s going to go to Eton School when he grows up.’

  Harry laughed in turn, but genuinely. He thought both ideas were funny, very funny. He’d always liked little Ruthie, at least partly because she had always had a slightly eccentric streak. If young Launcelot Hoggin won a scholarship and became Launcelot Hoggin, Colleger, that was the only way he’d ever become an Etonian.

  He asked Bob after the rest of his family: they were all well. Frank was with Mr Charles, and hadn’t been sick or wounded. Fred was still in the barracks, but getting more and more impatient to get to France.

  Harry said, ‘Mr Ellis told me there’s been very heavy fighting just these last two days. Near a place called Neuve Chapelle, he said. Severe casualties among the Indians, and their British officers.’

  ‘Ah, there’s been nothing in the papers about that. They want to keep that quiet, like, I suppose.’

  ‘There hasn’t been time really, Bob.’

  ‘Fred’s well out of it, if you ask me. But he’s impatient. He’s always found Hedlington a dull place … How’s Master Guy? Playing rugby, I suppose? He ought to be careful. He might damage his right hand, and then what would happen to his bowling?’

 
‘He may be doing something even more dangerous than bowling for Yorkshire before another summer’s out … And there isn’t going to be any county cricket this year, more’s the pity. Guy thinks he would have been ready for it. I had a long letter from him a few days ago.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘He gave me a carefully reasoned explanation of why we should stop making motor cars and make aeroplanes instead.’

  ‘Aeroplanes? Here? Master Guy’s got aeroplanes on the brain.’

  ‘His arguments were very persuasive. He thinks the demand for motor cars will go down during the war, and be controlled, while the demand for aircraft will go up – spectacularly. There will be a technical explosion, now that the war is forcing us to find solutions to problems without regard to cost. Frankly, it is an exciting prospect. But I just can’t see it. Perhaps I’m too old. Both of us are.’

  ‘And too sensible, Mr Harry. Those things don’t have no future.’

  Mr Hunnicutt had again given his sermon against labouring on the Sabbath. Dinner had been roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. The wind was blowing wet leaves about the garden and banging a small bough against the wall of the shed. Inside, Bob Stratton had just put the card with the old Rowland advertisement in the window facing out on the lane, and sat down on his high stool, staring at Victoria on her stand.

  The wire wheels had been balanced and tuned by Cox, who had replaced Collis in the job. The Dunlop tyres were racing type, smooth and thin. The inlet ports were smooth as glass. The engine was a side valve Blumfield twin cylinder of 998 c.c. Bob had been very much tempted to bore it out to 1100 c.c., but in that case the only record he could go for was the out-and-out. If he kept it under 1000 c.c., he could make a 1000 c.c. record at the same time as the out-and-out; and that would be worth a lot of extra money.