by John Masters
He listened with half an ear to the conversation of his daughter Stella with her cousin Virginia Rowland, visiting for a few days. Virginia was still at home for the Easter holidays from Cheltenham Ladies College, an institution that, according to her, was a cross between Holloway Gaol and a women’s lunatic asylum. He was glad Stella was eating eggs and bacon hungrily, while she told Virninia about her work at Lady Blackwell’s hospital. Cate was glad she had finally got over the spell when she had not looked well and had lost her appetite. He had always thought of her as young, a girl with her hair down – but the hair had been up over a year, and, listening to her with Virginia, she suddenly seemed to have grown, and matured. She’d be getting married soon, in a year or two, perhaps. That young American had been down again, and was obviously smitten, a regular pursuiter, as the girls called them nowadays; in some ways a very suitable match, and he clearly loved her. Whether she loved him with the same single-minded determination was another matter.
Stella turned to her father. ‘Did you know that Naomi is in the Girton Fire Brigade, and has to work the pump? Uncle John told me yesterday … and she wants me to ask you to get an official copy of her sentence.’
‘She and Rachel Cowan were bound over to keep the peace for six months,’ Laurence said, looking up. ‘How can we get a copy of that?’
‘Well, it must be in writing somewhere, she says, and she wants to have it framed and put in her room.’
Cate smiled then and said, ‘I’ll telephone the Clerk of the Court in Hedlington and see what can be done.’
Virginia had eaten nothing but toast and tea. Sensible girl, Cate thought; she was too fat already. She grumbled, ‘Naomi spends the night in gaol … and is in a Fire Brigade … you’re a VAD and work with nurses and doctors …’
‘… and with dustmen and plumbers,’ Stella said.
‘Guy’s working in the fabric shop at Handley Page’s, Boy’s fighting in France … and I moulder away at that stinky Cheltenham Ladies College!’
‘You became sixteen only last month,’ Cate said. ‘You’ll be able to go to gaol and wash out latrines soon enough. The time will pass quickly … too quickly, for your parents.’ He pushed back his chair and said to his son, ‘We’ll go at ten o’clock, Laurence … not church clothes, but a tweed suit.’
‘Where to, Daddy? … Oh!’ The youth looked down at his nearly empty plate, turning pale.
Cate said, ‘To call on the Mayhews, remember?’
‘I remember,’ Laurence said, pushing his plate away, ‘Mr Mayhew will stink of whisky and Mrs will blub all over me. She’ll make me blub, too.’
‘That’s no disgrace, Laurence, when you’re comforting a woman over the death of her eldest son.’
‘I didn’t know that Samuel had been killed,’ Stella said. ‘He used to be an awfully naughty boy … Do you remember when he tied Mr Fulcher’s bootlaces together while he was guarding the prize marrow at the Flower Show? And when he and Charlie Miller painted Mr England’s donkey black and white and put it in with Mr Cawthon’s cows and Mr Cawthon rushed down here to tell you there was a zebra escaped from the circus?’
‘The Mayhews had a telegram from the War Office yesterday,’ Cate said. ‘Samuel was killed in action three days ago … I imagine they’d like me to ask the rector about a memorial service for him.’ He picked up his paper and went out, head a little bent.
26 England: May, 1915
Harry Rowland stood in front of the empty fireplace in the morning-room of Laburnum Lodge, a small sheaf of notes in his hand. His daughter Alice sat in her chair ten feet away, knitting. Harry declaimed: ‘The war is going well. Let the defeatists and weaklings take heed, and gather courage! Our troops have landed on the Gallipoli peninsula and opened a second front against the enemy …’
‘A third or fourth front, surely, Father,’ Alice said. ‘After the Western and Russian fronts, and Mesopotamia.’
‘I suppose so,’ Harry said grudgingly, ‘though I don’t know what good the Russians are to anyone … and between you and me, there’ll be another front soon. I hear that the Italians have signed a secret treaty, and will be coming in on our side any day. And that’ll keep the Austrians busy … Where was I?’
‘… a second front against the enemy.’
‘Yes … The country is solidly behind the government, and the government is united in its determination … Ellis told me privately that there’s a great deal of intrigue going on, and Asquith may be out soon. Or, more likely, a coalition government will be formed, with Mr Asquith as PM, but all parties represented … Everyone must do his bit, man, woman, and child, if the Huns are to be defeated. The torpedoing of the Lusitania, with the murder of 1198 innocent souls, has finally shown the world what we, who have been fighting for ten months, know already – the Huns are indeed just that – Huns, barbarians.’
He boomed on, Alice listening. He made a good speech, she thought; rather in the style of Lloyd George, a man whom he privately detested as an upstart and a libertine. Unlike Lloyd George, whom she had heard once, her father passionately believed everything he was saying. Or believed that it was in the best interests of the country that it should be said. That was fortunate because, from what she heard from the soldiers who came to the House Parties, and the women she listened to at the Tipperary Club, the war was not going well; and it certainly was not being run well.
… I’m so tired of Smith that I can hardly find words to express it. It’s something to do with growing up – when I came here three years ago, I was a girl, and it was all exciting, and so large. I felt liberated, and very sophisticated. Now I’m twenty, a grown woman, and it all seems so childish – the rules and regulations, don’t-do-this, musn’t-do-that. It’s even more to do with the war over there. I know that because it’s not only Smith that feels so boring and confining, but the US of A itself! I’ve been at Dad for ages to let me quit Smith, and I think he realizes now that I mean it. But he asks, what are you going to do instead? And now I am going to tell him I must go to Europe, to take my part in the war. So be prepared to have me come over. And I’m not going to come just to be your housekeeper, either. I could do that at home, looking after Dad. I’m going to drive an ambulance in France … or make shells in England … wear trousers, anyway, and wear my hair short and done up in a bandanna, like the women in the photos in the newspapers …
Johnny folded the letter and put it away in a drawer of his desk. It would be nice to see Betty again, whatever she decided to do; and she was right in her determination to come over. The world’s fate was being settled here.
He picked up a folder at the corner of the desk and re-read what he had already written in his report to his father. So far, so good, he thought, and took up his pen:
As I mentioned in my last, the Rowland Motor Car Company is not doing well. They are not getting the government orders they were counting on, partly because they won’t settle for anything less than the best – which puts their cost up; and partly because their product is difficult to maintain in the field. It is a great pity (from their point of view) that old Mr Rowland did not retire when he was planning to. The company needs a new broom, a new brain, new direction.
As for the war in general – we are nearly half-way through 1915 and the position has not really changed. There is a stalemate on the Western Front and some of the Allies are desperately trying to find a way round it, always hindered by the French, who regard any diversion of effort from that area as a betrayal. Most of the German colonies in Africa have been occupied, but all their soldiers have not surrendered, so fighting continues. The Dardanelles have not been forced, in spite of heavy British casualties. Another British army is invading Mesopotamia, moving up the Tigris. These are partly to seize enemy territory and partly to break (or avoid) the impasse by going round it geographically. Other ways have been tried – e.g. tactically – by the Germans in their use of poisonous gas at Ypres last month; by new methods of attack, as by the British at Neuve Chapelle in March. So far
all have failed, for two reasons: lack of sufficient reserves to exploit success gained; and inability to move what reserves there were to the vital point quickly enough. It has been shown that it is possible to break into a fortified trench line – as the British did at Neuve Chapelle; but it has so far been found impossible to break through. What invariably happens is that the forces which have succeeded in breaking in are isolated by curtains of shell and machine-gun fire, and then systematically wiped out by counter-attacks.
This is not an encouraging prospect; but it seems to be a fact. We can expect further major allied attacks in the West – the French will not permit them anywhere else; and these will achieve limited success for short periods; and this will continue until some decisive means is found for breaking the tactical stalemate. (I didn’t think all this up myself, Dad! I’ve been talking to officers and men on leave, and reading between the lines of the military ‘experts’ – though in this war I am beginning to doubt whether such an animal exists!)
Archie Campbell and Fiona Rowland were sitting in the Savoy dining-room, at a table in the windows that should have looked out over the Embankment, the Thames, and the sweep of Rennie’s beautiful Waterloo Bridge; but the heavy curtains were drawn, black cloth sewn inside them and the overlapping join of the curtains secured by big pins, so that no light should show to guide a Zeppelin, perhaps already finding its way up the silver path of the Thames by tonight’s glittering stars.
Under protest, Archie was wearing a dinner jacket and black tie, for to dine here one had to wear either evening dress or uniform. He told himself that it was ridiculous, but he could not deny that in fact he felt uncomfortable, not being in uniform. Most of the women were wearing evening dress, though one or two were in nurses’ or VAD uniform. That was different, Archie thought. Surely a woman who had been regimented all day in serviceable clothes would take a delight in putting on a pretty dress, baring her arms, letting the light gleam on the swell of her bosom … as Fiona was, sitting opposite him, her back to the curtains. He had only seen her three times, each for a weekend, since their stay at Dalmellie.
He said, ‘There’s a Light Infantry officer, behind my left shoulder, two tables away. He might know you.’
Fiona glanced in the direction indicated. ‘He’s not Wealds … Shropshires, I think. I never know. Quentin spent hours when we were first married, going down the army list, showing me badges, all sorts of things. I know all the Highland regiments, of course, by their tartans.’
Archie said, ‘I’ve always been surprised that you don’t cut my throat instead of … what you do do. I’m a Campbell.’
‘It’s the MacDonalds who have always been our enemies. The McLeods never were so bitter about Glencoe as the other clans … And I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t care who sees me with you.’
The swarthy waiter brought their grilled Dover sole, with maître d’hotel butter, and filled their long-stemmed wine glasses with a Clos Haut Peyraguey, then stood back against the wall, keeping an eye on their table and the other three for which he was responsible.
Archie said, ‘Ginger Jones was round to my studio three, four days back. He’s dyeing his hair, and is going to enlist – said it was the only thing a decent man could do. He’s sixty – and a very good painter.’
‘And a fool, apparently,’ Fiona said. ‘He might at least have waited until conscription comes. It will, you know … I feel it in my bones. And then what will you do?’
Archie shrugged. ‘What can I do? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.’
‘Not impossible, though. You’re thirty-seven … they’ll probably take men up to forty. But they won’t take men in vital jobs here … and they won’t take married men.’ She looked straight at Archie, waiting for him to acknowledge her unspoken offer.
He did not meet her eyes, but after a long time said, ‘I’ve talked to men who’ve come back from France – wounded, or on leave. They all say the same thing, that they want to get back there, because the air’s clean, there’s no humbug. England stifles them … hot air, false patriotism, hypocrisy.’
Fiona said, ‘War is like a disease, Archie … a cancer, because it has a life of its own. Do you feel sick with it?’
He spoke with an accented Scots burr. ‘Aye, lass, perhaps it’s burrning in my hearrt and liver.’
‘I can feel it, though I haven’t got it, like you have. I just feel it. It makes my skin dry and uncomfortable, even in the bath. Perhaps I feel all those men dying.’
‘You have the gift, like your mother.’
She said, looking beseechingly at him, ‘Archie, you’re thinking you ought to enlist. Don’t do it. I can’t live without you.’
Archie, in his turn, finished his wine: again the waiter came forward to refill the glass. Archie said, ‘Ah mun do what ah mun do, lass. Ah’ll be joining the London Scottish before the week’s oot.’ There, it was said, and now that it was said, he would abide by it. She was right – the war had somehow got into his bones, all uninvited. Perhaps it was a disease – he had not wanted it, or expected it, but it had come … If she had not spoken, he would probably have wasted another six months before doing what he ought to do, feeling more and more uncomfortable every day. Now she had made up his mind, for he could not allow her to dictate what he must do.
He said, ‘Now, let’s go to bed. We don’t have much time left.’
Laurence Cate stood in his room at Charterhouse, looking down at the kestrel in his left hand. It was a tiercel, the dark brown eyes staring unwinking at him, the talons fast on the twig he had put between them when he first found the bird, under the chapel, an hour ago. He held it round the chest, its left wing in his grasp, the right free, for the right wing was broken. Very gently he moved his right hand to the wing, watching the bird’s eyes, waiting for it to turn and pierce his hand with that curved sharp beak. He had gloves, but could not wear them for this – to feel with his fingers just where and how the wing was broken. He was fortunate that he had found and been able to capture the kestrel within a few minutes of its accident – he thought it must have been stooping on a mouse or small bird and flown into the chapel wall.
The broken bones moved freely under his fingers. He reached the humerus at the joint of the wing, and the kestrel’s head turned slowly, looking now at his hand, a few inches from its beak. It half opened the beak; but Laurence could swear that it was not in preparation to strike, but to stifle any sound, or show of emotion at the pain it must be feeling. He felt the bone carefully … a simple fracture of the humerus an inch down from the elbow joint. The hawk never moved, seeming to gasp for breath, its beak wide.
Laurence took his right hand away and the hawk relaxed in his left. He had a small stick ready, for he had known roughly what to expect, and had already cut a clean handkerchief into strips an inch wide. He put the bird down on the table, whispering, ‘Lie still … don’t flap.’ He needed both hands now, as he gently took the broken bone, aligned the stick along it, and bound the two in a splint with the strips of handkerchief. Then he folded the wing in a normal closed position and bound it to the bird’s body in the sort of sling that Probyn Gorse called a brail. The hawk lay quiet under his hands, barely moving, its beak again open, its thorax heaving.
Laurence straightened his back – ‘There!’ He opened the suitcase he kept under his bed and put the kestrel in it, pushing his dressing gown under the lid to hold it open, then slid the case back under the bed. He must find a name for him … he’d call him Graves after the big senior boy he’d admired so much his first term here … And he’d have to find raw meat for him – scraps from his plate wouldn’t do. Rockwell had a mousetrap, and often caught something … He stooped to peer in at Graves; ‘Graves,’ he said, ‘good man! You’ll be flying from the Manor soon, and you’ll keep all the mice out of the stables, won’t you? And your name’s Graves, don’t forget.’
‘What the blazes do you think you’re doing, Cate?’
The voice behind him made
him leap to his feet, turning as he did so. Overstreet stood in the open doorway, frowning at him. Laurence had heard nothing. Overstreet had no business to come in without knocking; but he was a Blood, a small tough member of the school football team, small but a bully.
He stooped down now, grabbed the kestrel and pulled him out of the suitcase. ‘What are you going to do?’ Laurence gasped. He doubled his fists. He ought to hit Overstreet on the nose … charge him … he was bigger than he was … he ought to …
Overstreet said, ‘You’re not allowed to keep birds in the room, and you know it.’ He threw the kestrel out of the open window. It tried wildly to flutter then fell head first on to the stone pavement forty feet below, and did not move.
Overstreet stood with arms akimbo in the doorway, staring at Laurence. ‘Well?’
Laurence said miserably, ‘Get out,’ and burst into tears.
‘Cry baby,’ the other boy said, and went out, leaving the door open.
Guy took his run up and bowled again. The boy at bat in the net was the same age as himself, and as tall, but his skin was swarthy though his eyes were deep blue, and his hair fair. His full name covered three lines of print and included the word Stuart a couple of times; he was the Duke of Torla, a Grandee of Spain, First Class. He was a good cricketer, for he concentrated. He had detected Guy’s change of pace and went far out with his right foot – he was a left hander – to smother the ball. Guy walked back … a machine-gun firing through the propeller, the report reaching Ginger Keble Palmer at Handley Page had said. A French aviator called Garros had invented it, or used it. But how could that be, if the propeller was not to be shot to pieces?