by John Masters
There were two areas where Bob believed his machine could be improved. First – the valves. Overhead valves were much better than side valves for his purpose: but they weren’t reliable unless you could use really high quality steel. If you didn’t, the valve head would like as not snap off under stress, and drop on top of the piston. He’d long wondered where he could get hold of the small amount of high grade steel needed … and Master Guy had come up with the answer, when he was home for the Christmas holidays. He said he’d get some from Handley Page the aircraft manufacturers, through a friend of his who was a designer there. The aircraft people all used high grade steel – they had to. It had taken Guy longer than he had expected, but he had done it, and the steel had come a fortnight ago, in the form of a rod three feet long and three-eighths of an inch in diameter, which was now standing against one wall of the shed. He’d get to that in due time; it would be a matter of hammering the heads to crude shape himself, and then completing on the lathe – first of course taking down the engine and machining new castings to make the overhead valves and rockers – a long job, but worth it.
The other main matter he must deal with was the frame. Most motor cycle frames seemed to have been inherited from the days of the bicycle. Consequently, they whipped when cornering at the much greater speeds of even an ordinary motor cycle. He wouldn’t be doing any cornering when he was running the flying kilometre for the out-and-out speed record – but there were other, longer distance records, which involved curves; and if he could come out of the Brooklands curve faster, he’d start even the flying kilometre faster … A stronger frame would enable him to do that; but he wanted rigidity without gaining weight. In fact, he wanted something like the frame Cotton had patented last year … straight tubes running from the steering head to the rear spindle, triangulated in two planes. He’d seen the patent diagrams, and he’d seen the mock-up the Butterfield brothers had built to Bill Cotton’s order, and he thought he knew steel tubing well enough to improve on it – not much, for it was already a very good design: but not much was needed.
He took out a pencil from his pocket, pulled a pad of squared paper from the drawer in the work table, and began to draw shapes for the frame …
93.48 miles an hour … that’s what he had to beat: Sidney George on a 998 c.c. Indian V-twin. When he’d got the new frame and overhead valves on Victoria she should be able to do 100, or close to it; but it wouldn’t do to go all out the first time. When you broke a record you got a good bonus in cash from the people who’d made your plugs, tyres, carburettors, oil, petrol, magnetos – all the accessories. The men who rode for records were a close-knit lot. Bob knew them all, and he knew that when they broke a record they did it by as small a margin as they could manage: that way, the next man would have a better chance to re-break it – and so get his bonus, too. So if it still stood at 93.48 he’d try for 95 or 96 … but he was going to make 100 the next time, whether Baldwin and Baragwanath and O’Donovan grumbled or not.
He looked at a design he had made. The top end of the tubing could be thinned down a bit as the strain of a fast curve wouldn’t come there, but lower down. He bent forward, making a thinner pencil line on the paper, then erasing the old one.
And when would that be – the time for his attempt? Brooklands had been closed to the public since the end of September, because of Vickers’ aeroplane factory sheds inside the track. Perhaps Master Guy could arrange it … he was a smart young gentleman. Or was there somewhere else he could take Victoria for the attempt when he was ready? He knew of nowhere … Well, the war couldn’t go on for ever. Meanwhile …
Someone had tapped on the back window. He sat up, slowly putting away pencil and paper. The mental pictures of frames and valves faded from his mind, as did Victoria, gleaming on her stand. He walked slowly towards the door.
Normally Bob Stratton took his dinner to the works in a tin box, strapped to the carrier of his bicycle, and ate it in his office, washing it down with a cup of tea from the woman who pushed a tea urn round the floor soon after the whistle blew for the noon break. He had his box with him, and most days would have been looking forward to eating its contents – today sausage rolls, bread, butter, and jam; but he had woken up this Monday morning with a headache, and it had not got better as he stood with Mr Harry at the main gate of the plant, waiting for the men to arrive … or stay away.
It had been a tense time, much more so than Bob cared to acknowledge. His stomach seemed to be tied into a hard knot, and his head throbbed, particularly behind his eyes.
But the men had come, every one of them except Bert Gorse and three others: and of those three, one’s wife came pale and hurrying to swear her husband was in bed sweating with a fever and filling the chamber pot with vomit. So in the end two men, both recent union members, had supported Bert. Mr Harry greeted everyone as he came in with a brief, ‘Good morning, Johnson … Morning, Knight … glad you came.’ The men seldom said a word – just a nod and sometimes a wordless grunt. Their presence said what had to be said.
Bob got through most of the morning, then at half-past eleven went to Mr Harry’s office, told him he was not feeling at his best, and would like permission to go home. ‘Of course, Bob,’ Mr Harry said. ‘Stay out tomorrow, if you still don’t feel right. Would you like Wright to drive you home?’
‘No, no, Mr Harry. I have the bike.’
So he pedalled slowly home, the uneaten lunch still in its tin. At 85 Jervis Street he wheeled the bike up the front steps and took it into the house, leaning it against the wall at the foot of the stairs. He stooped over to take the bicycle clips off his trousers. By now Jane should surely have called from the parlour, wondering why he was home.
He stopped to pick up two letters and a postcard lying on the carpet under the letter slot in the door. The second post must have come just before he got home. Nellie the maid came running up the stairs – ‘Oh, Mr Stratton, you did give me a turn! I was afraid it might be the Ripper!’
‘Don’t be daft, girl,’ Bob growled. ‘He’s only killed two women and both of them at night, with a full moon, out of doors, and not close to houses … Where’s Mrs Stratton?’
‘Out shopping, sir. She said she’d be back by noon, but of course she wasn’t expecting you. Shall I …?’
‘I’ll eat what I have,’ Bob said, ‘if I eat anything.’
He went into the parlour, as Nellie hurried back down to the basement. Sitting down, he wondered whether he should take an aspirin. But he didn’t hold with drugs. Better to suffer, don’t let it think it’s got the better of you.
He glanced at the postcard – from that friend of Jane’s in Ramsgate. She’d read it aloud to him when she got home. A letter from Frank: he’d read that to her. The other letter was from a woman. He could tell that from the perfumed smell of the envelope, and its pinkish-blue colour, like a hydrangea. It was addressed to Mrs Bob Stratton in a large round hand, in purple ink. The postmark was Hedlington, Saturday 4.30 p.m.
Bob stared at it a long time. This wasn’t from a lady. Why should an ordinary woman in Hedlington write a letter, instead of coming round and telling Jane whatever it was?
He felt as he felt in the shed, when he heard the tap at the window – an oppressive and fearful yet rising excitement that could not be denied. He had to do it.
He opened the letter, and read. It was very short:
‘Dere Mrs Stratton Your husban as little girls and pays them money.’ It was signed ‘A Friend’: undated and un-addressed.
So, it had come; he ought to accept it, and acknowledge it, as he had always told himself he would do, when the time came. But now it was here and he desperately needed to deny it, and by denial somehow wash himself clean from the stain. That was exactly how he felt, those times, too, afterwards.
His headache, which had vanished when he saw the letter and first intuitively guessed what it might contain, now returned with splitting force. The walls of the room moved in on him, and retreated; the antimacassars on th
e backs of chairs and couch fluttered, though there was no breeze, no air. He felt that he would suffocate if he stayed a moment longer in there.
He half-walked, half-ran to the door, out into the passage, and towards the back door, stumbling over a pedal of his bicycle. Wrenching the back door open he started down the back steps then stopped, frozen. He had remembered some thing – the letter, left on the central table in the parlour. He stood, looking up to the sky; what should he do? Let it come, as come it must sooner or later? Refuse to hide? The sin itself was a punishment of God, so what did any punishment of man matter?
So for a minute, frozen … then he ran back, picked up the letter, stuffed it into his coat pocket, out again, and down to the shed. There he opened both doors, half-filled Victoria’s tank, lowered her off the stand, and wheeled her out into the lane. Carefully setting the spark and mixture, and turning the engine over a few times with slow pushes of his instep, he kicked hard and waited, his spread feet supporting the machine, until the engine was running sweetly. Then he opened the throttle and rode down the lane.
Twenty minutes later, riding with great care, he left the eastern outskirts of Hedlington behind him, and faced the Canterbury road. He opened the throttle a little more and watched the speedometer needle creep round to forty miles an hour … then fifty. Four miles out a secondary road that led to Beighton and Walstone curved off to the south. Beighton Down stretched along to his left, scattered thorn bushes, a few chalk outcrops, and a flock of grazing sheep the only things marring the pale grey-green sweep of the grass. The air was chill and damp, biting now through his serge jacket as though he was not wearing it. He should have worn his short heavy fleece-lined jacket and goggles, and leather helmet … but he had not come out here to be comfortable, nor to test Victoria, but to escape, from what he knew, after many years, was inescapable. A hundred times he had ridden fast along this stretch, measuring the resilience of the front fork and the rigidity of the frame, hearing and feeling the exact tuning of the engine, listening to the tyres. Not now.
The road was empty, the surface hard-packed macadam, close textured, damp from an earlier shower, but not wet, the sun hidden. He crouched forward until he was hunched like a monkey over the handlebars and then with his right thumb pushed the throttle wide. The machine bounded forward, at first with a single leap and then more gradually. Bob kept his eyes on the road, a four-and-a-quarter-mile straight, most of it gradually downhill before a final mile up. He stole glances at the speedometer … 58 … 65 … 75 … 80 … The wind shrieked by his ears and tore at his beard. His coat flew out behind him like a cloak … 83 miles an hour … a shade more, 85 perhaps. He bared his teeth and howled madly into the wind. She would go no faster and a vibration set up somewhere in the frame was jarring his arms through the handlebars. He howled louder, more desperately. But here was the limit. Victoria reached the foot of the rise at 85. Speed dropped slowly, with the throttle still wide, to 67 at the top of the slope. Bob leaned down, his tears falling on to the petrol tank, and throttled back. It was over.
His headache had not gone, but almost so. The other, the curse, had not gone, he knew, but for a time it would leave him alone. He turned the machine in the road and followed a private car back to Hedlington at a sedate speed … He’d have to look into these new countershaft gearboxes, a Juckes maybe, to replace the Sturmey Archer; and perhaps a chain final drive. He himself should be wearing a suit that fitted his body tightly. Perhaps he should talk to Master Guy about fixing some sort of metal shaping on the handlebars so that the air would flow over his head and past Victoria’s sides, too. His head was empty of evil, cleared by the rush of air, the smell of hot steel and burned castor oil of the lubrication system. She was a good bike – but she wouldn’t do a hundred, nor yet ninety-four, the way she was now.
Daily Telegraph, Saturday, March 13, 1915
FOOD PRICES
A Labour Conference
A conference called by the Workers’ National Committee to consider the causes of, and suggest remedies for, recent rises in the prices of food and coal, was held yesterday at the Kingsway Hall, London.
Mr J. A. SEDDON, president of the Trade Unions’ Congress, moved the following resolution:
That the most effective action the government can now take to reduce wheat prices is to intervene to remedy the deficiency in carrying ships, and that the Government should at once take steps to obtain the control of more ships, and itself bring wheat from Argentina, Canada, and elsewhere at the bare cost of transport.
That the Government should endeavour to secure control over such proportion of the Russian wheat and other supplies as may be necessary …
That the Government should set up a representative committee … to determine the prices to be paid for the home supply … fix prices for the resale of both the home and imported supplies at rates not to exceed 40s per quarter, any loss thus incurred to be borne by the National Exchequer.
That the Government should guarantee a fixed price … for the 1915 crop.
That in determining prices the payment of adequate wages to agricultural workers should be taken into consideration.
Mr Seddon said the price of wheat and flour would not have risen 54 per cent since October last if the Government had not neglected its duty … The causes of higher prices were mainly three:
The inaction of the Government.
Speculation and gambling in the wheat markets of the world.
Robbery by a shipping ring.
Mr TURNER of the Glasgow Trades’ Council, proposed as (an) amendment:
The most effective action that the Government can now take is speedily and drastically to deal with the situation by controlling ships, food prices, and house rents.
The price of coal was the subject of consideration at an afternoon meeting of the conference. Mr R. SMILLIE, president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, moved:
That maximum prices for coal should be fixed by the Government. That railway trucks belonging both to the separate railway companies and to private traders, should be pooled and run to their fullest economic use.
That in fixing shipping freights for coasting vessels under their control the Government should have regard to normal rates rather than to the excessive rates inflicted by private shipowners.
That the Government commandeer coal supplies and distribute to consumers through municipal or co-operative agencies.
Mr G. LANSBURY referred to the ‘capitalistic class’ as the great enemy of the workers … He appealed to the conference to be united in fighting off ‘the enemy within the gates’, and to clear out of the way ‘all those who stood between the people and decent living’.
Revolutionary talk from a lot of wild men, Cate thought … but a lot of anger and genuine frustration, too. The miners were paying more for everything they bought, though their wages had not gone up – if anything, they had gone down; yet the price of coal had risen abnormally. And, as much as any comparable group in the country, the miners had answered Kitchener’s call for recruits. Yet what the talkers were proposing was that the Government should take over the country as a whole … and what evidence existed to prove that the Government, any Government, was better able to run the shipping business than the shipping industry? The insurance business better than Lloyds? The finances of the country better than the Bank of England?
Yet … yet … it was not right that speculators should force up the price of wheat for their own gain. But two could play at that game. If the British Government started buying up wheat supplies in bulk, on a national basis, in order to keep prices down, what was to prevent the government of Russia, or Argentina, from holding back the whole supply, on a national basis, to force prices up?
He turned back to the report of the conference:
In a few weeks the passage of the Dardanelles would be forced. There was something like 10,000,000 quarters of wheat locked up in Russia awaiting shipment. That huge supply would be placed upon the market …
&nb
sp; That should help, at least temporarily, Cate thought … once the Dardanelles were in fact forced.
23 Hedlington: Tuesday, March 16, 1915
‘The knives, forks, and spoons are set out like this. You always start with the outside ones, and move in towards the centre at each course …’ The man speaking was the adjutant of the Weald Light Infantry Depot, a tall captain with a big black moustache and a weary drawl. The new officers were standing crowded round the officers’ mess oak dining-table, where one place had been set for a seven-course dinner, complete with wine glasses.
The adjutant continued, raising his voice slightly to be heard above a bugle from the quarter-guard sounding ‘Orderly Sergeants’: ‘This is a sherry glass … this big goblet is for red wine, this long-stemmed one for white wine, this bowl shape for champagne. Port glasses are not put on the table until after the rest have been cleared away. When wine is served, you …’
Fred Stratton listened with an odd emotion, half interest, half resentment. He had been dining in mess for over three months now, and knew all this about how to comport oneself as an officer and a gentleman. Some of the others might not – the fellow who’d been growing coffee in Kenya until the war broke out seemed to be a rough diamond, and he didn’t like to be told, either. He was muttering now, something about what the hell good was all this bollocks in the trenches. The adjutant didn’t hear him, or pretended not to. And there were two or three come up from the ranks, old sweats, regular sergeants promoted to be quartermasters of the new Kitchener battalions as they were raised; but even a quartermaster was a lieutenant, dined in mess, and so had to know how to use the cutlery. But most of the 2nd lieutenants here, now in their final weeks of training before being posted to active battalions, were public schoolboys. Glancing at some of them as they listened, Fred noted that they were displaying no signs of boredom or resentment. Well, after all, this was in the end their country, certainly their army; they were the natural heirs to it – so they would not do anything to make any part of it seem ridiculous or unnecessary.