Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  She felt him sit down on the bed again. His hand touched her cheek and he said in his ordinary voice, ‘You’re a mad McLeod, Fiona. But I am responsible for you, since we are what we are to each other. I’ll not go for a soldier until later.’

  She opened her eyes wide, exhilaration sweeping like champagne through her so recently sluggish and empty veins – ‘We’ll come here again for the Whitsun weekend, darling! And we must find some important work for you, so you won’t be conscripted. You can paint in your spare time …’

  ‘I’m a painter, lass,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s not a little hobby for my spare time. It’s my life … and to tell the truth that’s why I’m not going to join up tomorrow. I’m frightened. How can I live without painting?’

  ‘Then you understand – how can I live without you? Why, oh why, can’t we get married?’

  ‘You know, Fiona.’

  Daily Telegraph, Friday, May 7, 1915

  GRAPHIC STORY FROM THE DARDANELLES

  Army Disembarked by Moonlight Dashing Colonials

  From E. Ashmead-Bartlett, Dardanelles, April 24 (via Mudros, Wednesday) … The first authentic news we received came with the return of our boats. From them we learnt what had happened in those first wild moments. All the tows had almost reached the beach, when a party of Turks, entrenched almost on the shore, opened up a terrible fusillade from rifles, and also from a maxim. Fortunately, most of the bullets went high but, nevertheless, many men were hit as they sat huddled together, forty or fifty in a boat.

  It was a trying moment, but the Australian volunteers rose as a man to the occasion. They waited neither for orders or for the boats to reach the beach but, springing out into the sea, they waded ashore and, forming some sort of a rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the enemy’s rifles.

  Their magazines were not even charged, so they just went in with cold steel and I believe I am right in saying that the first Ottoman Turk since the last crusade received an Anglo-Saxon bayonet in him at five minutes after five a.m. on April 25th.

  Cate made an almost inaudible grunt as he put the paper down. Journalistic bombast about bayonets! And inaccurate, too, as British soldiers had been fighting Turks in Mesopotamia for months. He stood up as Garrod came in and silently cleared the table.

  It was a pleasant day, sunny but not too warm, with a slight breeze, the sky fleeced with clouds. It would be a good day to visit his tenants, but he had been round to all of them – yesterday. Mayhew still seemed to be holding to his determination not to touch another drop until the war was won. It had taken the death of his son to shock him into such a step; but, in itself, the decision was all to the good, for Mayhew couldn’t take a pint or a glass and leave it at that – he had to go on when he could afford it, until, he was sodden. The visit to them the day after they’d had the War Office telegram had taught Laurence a useful lesson, for Mayhew had met them pale and upright, his hands shaking but the man himself sober and stern; and Mrs Mayhew had not wept but stood at her husband’s side, dry eyed, head up, only the tremor in her voice betraying her emotion as she thanked Christopher and Laurence for coming, and said yes, they would be grateful if Mr Cate would ask Mr Kirby about a memorial service for Samuel …

  It would be a good day to visit some other villagers … Miller the stationmaster. for instance; to ask what they’d heard of their son Charlie, in the Weald Light Infantry since last December, and now in France, he knew … a good looking boy, as mischievous as Samuel, Mayhew, but not as original: cannon fodder, the cynics would say.

  Then he ought to talk to Miss Macaulay, the postmistress, and somehow find a way to hint that it was more important than ever that she should refrain from reading people’s postcards and gossiping to Miss Morelock, the schoolmistress, about what she had learned from them. Inquisitiveness was not a mortal sin, but in wartime people were very touchy; and there were surely adequate means of censorship to make sure that military secrets were not being leaked through the mail. She was an excellent postmistress and otherwise a most worthy woman. He wished there was some sort of award he could recommend her for, but could not think of any with lowly enough ranks.

  To the rector, then, to discuss the lesson for this coming Sunday. Old Kirby had been talking of retirement before last Christmas, but now who could replace him? So he was staying on, and enjoying it, and grumbling about the poor hunting there’d be this next season, with hounds half starved, huntsmen untrained, and the Master …

  Then, perhaps, to Garth’s cottage, to see Mary Maxwell that was, and the baby – Fletcher Gorse’s baby, of course, but no one mentioned that, though everyone knew. He ought to try to do something about that cottage before winter came, or they’d have a cold time if it was a hard winter … but where was the money coming from, with taxes taking more of his income all the time, and prices going up?

  Then, if he had time, to Ted England, to talk about shoeing the roan, and …

  Then … anywhere, as long as it would take his mind away from the casualty lists, the endless names that his imagination would not cease from converting into young men, sprawled dead, distorted, and cold in the mud.

  27 Cambridge: May, 1915

  Ten o’clock, not yet full dark, the moon a few days past full, and they were approaching the Main Gate of St John’s. Naomi was wearing beagling breeches and a man’s tweed jacket, with dark wool stockings and gym shoes, her hair tucked into a workman’s peaked cloth cap. She felt very conspicuous between the two men. Not that they were taller than she – Stan, on her left, was actually shorter, and Harry, on her right, only an inch or two taller; but she felt that everyone’s attention must be focused on them. Why were their feet making no sound on the pavement? What were they doing, heading for St John’s College at this time of the evening? Why, if they looked closely they must surely ask, did the shortest of the three, have his thick-lensed spectacles strapped to his face with darkened sticking plaster?

  Naomi eyed the great ornamented gate towering up ahead. She had passed by here twice in daylight, to have a careful look, once Harry had told her where her first night climb would take place – ‘Facing the main gate there are three lead drain pipes on the wall to the left. The middle one is strongest; it stands away from the wall so that fingers can be got in behind it; and it has a zigzag about half-way up.’

  Harry stopped and they gathered, pretending to be engaged in conversation. Harry muttered, ‘See the window by the bend in the middle pipe? You step on to the sill and then pull up to the top. A college porter lives in the window to the right. Don’t wake him.’

  He looked up and down the street and said, ‘I’m off.’ He headed for the pipe, seizing it high and pulling himself up, the rubber soles of his gym shoes giving him good friction on the wall to either side of the pipe.

  When he was twelve feet up, with Stan and Naomi pushed back into the shadows below him, Naomi saw two figures approaching trom the south. They were still fifty yards away but there was something she didn’t like about the way they walked, about the dimly seen silhouette of them. She nudged Stan, who looked and at once whispered sharply, ‘Prog and bulldog!’ Harry hesitated a second before calling down, ‘Go away. I’ll get up this pitch.’

  Stan and Naomi turned and walked off, forty yards ahead of the proctor. Behind them Naomi heard a brief grunt as Harry forced himself faster up the drainpipe. He should be on the battlements, lying down out of sight, before the ‘enemy’ passed. They’d have no reason to look up, and if they did they would see nothing … but the porter might be in his room … might be looking out of his window … It was no use worrying about all the ifs and buts, if you were to be a night climber. They walked briskly round a corner and turned sharp right into a narrow alley. ‘Face the wall,’ Stan muttered. ‘They probably won’t even look in.’

  Naomi faced the wall, resigned to whatever might befall. It was fun, doing this foolish and foolhardy thing with Harry and Stan, and she was glad she had met them, glad that she had persuaded them she was a good
enough climber to join them in their rooftop expeditions – the only woman among the small band of Nightclimbers of Cambridge, as far as she knew. But, since neither of them was still an undergraduate, a member of the university in statu pupillari, they weren’t really risking much – except life and limb, of course; and that seemed the least they could do considering what the soldiers were facing in France. Naomi, on the other hand, risked certain expulsion – not from the university, because she was not a member of it, for Cambridge did not accept women as members – but from Girton College. A few days ago she had told Rachel she didn’t care whether she was sent down or not, and somtimes she still felt like that; at other times, she thought she would care, very much. So why was she facing these physical and other dangers when half the time she felt that she was doing no more than play with naughty little boys?

  ‘They passed,’ Stan muttered, ‘we’d better go back and see what Harry’s doing.’

  They walked out of the alley and back the way they had come, towards the Main Gate of St John’s. Under the gate, looking up, they saw a dim blur on the battlements, and made out the hand signal ‘Come on!’

  Stan said, ‘You next.’

  Naomi reached up the pipe as high as she could, when Stan ejaculated, ‘Good God, they’re coming back!’

  Naomi let go and with Stan walked off eastward along the outer wall of St John’s Once again, after a couple of minutes of purposeful walking, they turned off this time down three steps into a small area. Once more the proctor and his top-hatted bulldog passed, the proctor’s mortarboard tipped forward on his head, his long gown flowing. Once more Naomi and Stan headed for the Main Gate.

  ‘Someone else might be climbing here tonight,’ Stan muttered, ‘and the progs got wind of it.’

  When they reached the base of the drainpipe they found Harry waiting for them. ‘This is no good,’ he said. ‘The court’s full of porters, crossing and recrossing. So I shinned down. My old gyp just came out and told me someone’s left a note at the Master’s, that he would cross the Bridge of Sighs this week. Let’s move off’

  A few yards along the street he said, ‘If the university is preoccupied with St John’s, tonight’ll be a good time for us to tackle Trinity.’

  Stan said, ‘What climb?’

  ‘Great Gate and Hall to the Lantern.’

  Stan whistled softly, ‘That’s a bit stiff for Naomi, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can do it,’ Naomi said, feeling queasy at her stomach. Trinity lantern tower had always seemed to her to be un-climbable, though Harry had told her it had actually been done. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ she added. ‘Don’t forget I have a two-mile walk when we’re finished.’

  ‘We’ll be coming with you, of course,’ Harry said.

  Twenty minutes later, having reached the roof of the Great Gate of Trinity College, they started along the battlements, heading southward, stooping low to pass gabled windows where lights burned which would cast their silhouettes into the court below. After two minutes careful progress, Harry, in the lead, muttered ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Tower … look, put one foot here.’ Naomi stretched her left foot up on to a sloping tile. ‘Now spring and reach for the ledge … There!’ The ledge was in her hand, and from there it was easy to the top of the Tower.

  Stan joined them and Harry pointed into Trinity Lane, about fifty feet below. He said, ‘Some climbers always bring a couple of boxes of matches up here to throw at people in Trinity Lane. They can never imagine where the matches have come from. No one there now, though. Come on.’

  At the next corner, Naomi had to stretch to her fullest to reach the ledge and scramble up. Then the three padded silently left past the end of Hall, looked down into Nevile’s Court, and faced the climb of Hall itself.

  Harry said, ‘The slightly raised coping which edges either end provides the key. Holding its square edges with both hands and placing the feet on the narrow lead gutter – there – the climber pulls up hand over hand, the tension of the arms keeping the feet from slipping. The stone plaster on the summit is generally embraced with panting satisfaction.’

  ‘Is that from the Guide?’ Naomi muttered.

  ‘Yes. I know the whole book by heart, just about. But it’s not as bad a climb as he makes it sound. It’s a dry night, so our gym shoes will give a good grip – just lean well forward and walk up. You can hold the coping if you feel the need … All ready? Here we go.’

  He went up fast, a dim shape in the gloom. Naomi and Stan waited a few seconds, then followed. Now they were on top of the ridge of the great Hall, and rested briefly, all breathing hard after their exertion. After a moment Harry began to recite – ‘The distant towers of the Great, New and Nevile’s Courts, looming against the dark sky, lit by the flickering lights far below; the gradations of light and shadow, marked by an occasional moving black speck, seemingly from another world; the sheer wall descending into darkness at his side; the almost invisible barrier that the battlements from which he started seem to make to his terminating in the Court if his arm slips – all contribute to making this esteemed, deservedly, the finest viewpoint in the college alps … Absolutely true, as you can see, except that we have a moon tonight, and no street lights. Do you really want to do the Lantern?’

  Naomi peered left, at the thin tower of the Trinity Lantern, lead and glass and stone, about twenty-five feet high, rising from the middle of the Hall Ridge. She felt a sharp spasm of nervous fear, but quelled it. She said, ‘Yes.’

  Stan said, ‘Are you sure? We don’t want to damage the glass – it’s irreplaceable.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Naomi snapped, feeling quite the opposite.

  They edged along the ridge, the tiled roof falling away steeply on either side. Naomi kept her eyes on the Lantern until she reached it. There Harry stretched far up, took a grip, and muttered to her, ‘This is not hard for tall people – like a lot of the Cambridge climbs.’ He pulled up, swung his left ieg out to the side, and continued with long easy fluid movements. After a few moments Naomi knew he was there, and moving, but could not see exactly what he was doing. The lantern was usually lit at night, but had been left dark since the first Zeppelin raids on England earlier in the year.

  Naomi followed, reaching far and high. The stone was firm, the footholds wide. She realized that it was what she had seen from the ground that had frightened her. Trinity Lantern stood up there on top of the Great Hall like a thin pinnacle, seemingly without holds, spectacular, unclimbable. Here, in the dark, no sense of height in her as she kept her eyes upwards, she felt oniy the strength in her arms and legs sweeping her on, as she saw the holds, reached, thrust, reached again.

  Harry’s hand was stretched out for her. ‘Good girl! I can’t swear to it, but personally I’ll take fifty to one, in quid, that you’re the first woman ever to sit on top of Trinity Hall Lantern …’

  ‘There’ll be more,’ she gasped. ‘Stan’s not coming up. No room, he said. He’s right.’

  She waited till her breath was again even. Cambridge was spread out like some dark tumbledown fortress below – far more exciting even than the Guide’s description, and that had been written in 1901, she knew. Water gleamed in the Cam, far to the west. King’s mighty chapel soared up to the south.

  ‘Let’s go down,’ she said.

  It was not a difficult climb or a long climb up the drainpipe in the angle of the Girton wall to May Frobisher’s window. May was tall, attractive, brilliant without effort, and her parents were rich; and it was easy to climb in through her window trom the pipe, if the window was left open. That was the way Naomi had gone out, and now she returned the same way. May was asleep, a dark shape in the bed and Naomi did not awaken her but opened the door, looked up and down the passage and slipped out. She was glad that May was rich; she was risking her Girton career by letting Naomi use her room for this purpose; but if anything happened, and they were both sent down, which would certainly be Naomi’s punishment, and probably May’s too – well, it wouldn’t be as bad as if it invo
lved Rachel. For Rachel, Girton meant everything: for May, it was an interlude in a life that was going to be beautiful and pleasant, whether she stayed at Girton to graduation or not.

  Naomi slipped into her own sitting-room, closing the door carefully behind her, and leaned back against it, yawning and stretching. It was done, and she was home safe and undiscovered. She felt a strong surge of relief, a lightening in herself. She must have been tenser than she thought, walking back along the Huntingdon Road with Harry and Stan, trying to stride like a man. The absence of lights had helped, she knew: for a patrolling police constable had come suddenly upon them out of a side street, but in the gloom he had not detected anything amiss.

  She walked through to her bedroom, and began to draw the curtains, then paused, listening to a nightingale trilling and soaring in Yew Tree Walk. After a minute, yawning again, she finished drawing the curtains, lit the paraffin lamp, and undressed. Wearing only her nightdress she began to wash her hands and face at the wash-handstand, in cold water from the jug.

  The outer door to the passage opened and in the mirror over the basin she saw Rachel Cowan slip in, also wearing only her nightdress, a white cotton one with a pattern of small red flowers. ‘Thank heavens you’re back!’ she whispered, coming into the bedroom. ‘J-B was round an hour ago, and I was terrified you’d just be coming in.’

  ‘What was she doing?’

  ‘Just making a round. She saw my light under the door, she said, and came in … told me I mustn’t damage my eyes by reading too much at night. I’m sure she didn’t come in here. I would have heard.’

  Naomi sat down and began to brush her hair. Rachel said, ‘You mustn’t do it again, Naomi. If you’re caught, they’ll send you down. And it’s so dangerous … Here, let me do that.’