Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘The Socialist party here in Hedlington.’

  ‘Ah, that’s where I’ve seen you before. At a meeting. You may want women to be able to get jobs, but you know what really happens? The men they replace get sent to France. Look at what happened at the convalescent depot at Dartford, which that old crow Ellis was talking about just now … They put women in to cook instead of the soldier cooks, and the men ruined the new ovens, on purpose … tore out all the cooking equipment there was. Must have cost thousands to replace. The women were sending them to their deaths, see?’

  ‘We want women to be equal in everything. Equal in being against the war, too.’

  Bert looked at her more closely. ‘’Ere,’ he said suddenly, ‘come and have a drink in the Blue Boar. I’ll stand one … as long as it’s not port and lemon. I can’t afford that stuff.’

  ‘I can pay for my own drinks,’ she said.

  He pushed open the door of the Blue Boar’s public bar, then paused – ‘You don’t mind going into the public?’

  She said, ‘Of course not. I think there only ought to be one bar.’

  They were in the pub then, in a dense fog of pipe and cigarette smoke. There were half a dozen other women present, all respectable-looking working women or wives, with their husbands, drinking stout and ale and porter. Khaki and blue uniforms were evenly spaced among the civilians.

  ‘Two pints of bitter, mate,’ Bert called. ‘Grab that chair. What’s your name, anyway?’

  ‘Rachel Cowan.’

  ‘Bert Gorse. I work at JMC, and in the union office, on the side.’

  ‘I’m secretary of the Hedlington Socialist Party … all twenty of them. Do you have a relative living in Walstone? When I was staying with a friend last winter we met an old man called Gorse, who …’

  ‘Probyn. My father,’ Bert said. ‘The best poacher in Kent.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘Who were you staying with?’

  ‘Naomi Rowland. I was at Girton College, in Cambridge, with her. Her father’s John Rowland, of High Staining, a farm in Walstone.’

  ‘And her grandfather’s that old man up there on the platform in the Hall.’

  ‘I know … I didn’t want you to think I knew him socially.’

  ‘But you do.’

  ‘I can’t help that. I’m against what they stand for. I suppose your father is, too, if he poaches from all their preserves.’

  Bert drank his beer, watching her closely. Jewess, he thought, a bit la-di-da because of Cambridge; but came from Wapping or Limehouse or Stepney originally. Her family probably poor as church mice – synagogue mice. He answered her implied question, speaking slowly. ‘My dad’s a rum bird … He ain’t against toffs, and he ain’t for them, either. He doesn’t poach because he thinks the birds are his, not theirs – but because he thinks the birds don’t belong to anybody, which ain’t the same thing … He hates Lord Swanwick, that old fart on the platform, with the withered arm. He likes Cate, who’s squire of Walstone. And if you want to hear about poaching, wait till Christmas. Dad’s sworn to poach a dozen of Swanwick’s pheasants and have them on some of the gentry’s dinner tables by Christmas dinner, as presents from his lordship.’ He chuckled delightedly.

  Rachel said, ‘You mean, he’s told Lord Swanwick about this?’

  Bert shook his head. ‘Not him, not directly – but he’s told enough people so Swanwick’s sure to have heard by now. He’s got a plan, and he’s not the only one in it. He’s got some other blokes signed on to help. He’ll do it, wait and see … Now tell me about this Socialist party here. I don’t believe in the theory, see. I think if we are going to get a better deal for the working man, it’s got to be done in the factories. What we need is a national union shop, every single man, skilled and unskilled, in every single factory belonging to a union – no union card, no job – and all the unions linked together, so if one strikes, they all strike.’

  ‘What about the farms?’ she cut in.

  ‘Ah,’ he hesitated, ‘later, maybe. It’s hard to organize, farming.’

  ‘But it’ll have to be done soon, if farming is ever to become more than a cottage industry in this country.’

  ‘Perhaps … As I was saying, I believe in strong unions … discipline … getting at the bosses and the capitalists directly, through their pockets. What do you believe in?’

  Rachel Cowan drew a deep breath and began: ‘The Socialist party believes …’

  Alice had listened to her father from among the audience and afterwards driven with him to the Oddfellows’ Hall for the Liberal dance. Now the dance had been going on for an hour and a half, and Jimmy Jevons’ Dance Band was playing somewhat raggedly; the platoon of empty and half-empty beer bottles and tankards beside their chairs explained why. Bill Hoggin was there, standing against one wall of the hall, tankard in hand and big yellow rosette on his lapel, his wife beside him. Glancing round, Alice saw that her father was in earnest conversation with the mayor, their grey heads bent together beyond the band. A hundred and fifty men and women were dancing an energetic waltz. She herself had just finished dancing with a soldier with large boots, who had twice trodden on her toes; her toes hurt and as she saw another soldier approaching, she stepped quickly towards the Hoggins. It was naughty of her to avoid the soldier, she knew; but just now she needed a little time to let her toes recover.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Hoggin,’ she said. ‘Good evening, Ruth.’

  ‘Evening, miss,’ Hoggin said, waving a cigar in the air with his free hand.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Alice,’ Ruth said, colouring up and half curtseying. ‘I do like your dress. It’s ever so pretty.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Ruth. I made it myself. It took me a long time, though, what with the Tipperary Room and the House Parties and the hospital canteen and the visits to the convalescent centres …’

  ‘You do so much,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Not enough. How’s the baby – Launcelot?’

  ‘Why, he’s eight months, Miss Alice, nearly nine … eight months and fourteen days.’

  ‘And always hungry,’ Hoggin said. ‘’E’s heating us out of house and home, now that Ruthie’s stopped feeding him her-self. Don’t have to pay for that, do you?’

  ‘Oh, Bill!’ Ruth said, blushing again.

  Alice said, ‘I should think he’d have to eat a great deal – of caviar – to worry you, Mr Hoggin. You’re doing so well, and we’re so pleased for you. It was very generous of you to hire the band for us tonight.’

  ‘Thanks, miss. I’m not doing so bad. Bought a car last week. Ro, ro … not a Rowland. Can’t remember the name.’

  ‘Rolls-Royce?’ Alice said.

  ‘That’s hit … Cost me a ruddy fortune, but they told me it would last for hever, so it’s worth it. Hand it shines a fair treat, sitting outside the ’ouse, house.’

  Alice smiled and nodded. Bill Hoggin had obviously been taking elocution lessons, so that his speech would better suit his new circumstances. As so often, the effort not to drop aitches resulted in putting them in, heavily aspirated, where they should not be. Ruth must have made him do it. The marvel was that he had agreed to any such thing.

  ‘We see Hoggin’s jams everywhere, in the shops,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Hoggin said, nodding, ’though, mind you, most of what ’as, has my label on goes to the troops in France.’ His eyes wandered, and he suddenly caught Alice’s arm. ‘’Oo’s that? That girl dancing, in the green dress?’

  Ruth cut in, ‘Why, that’s Miss Stella Bill – Miss Cate, Miss Alice’s niece. And let go of Miss Alice’s arm. What will she think of you?’

  ‘Sorry, miss.’ Hoggin dropped the arm, his eyes still on Stella dancing with Johnny Merrit. ‘Is Miss Cate a VAD?’

  Alice said, ‘Yes. In Lady Blackwell’s hospital. Not every day.’

  ‘But she’s not with the Fire Brigade? Or the special police?’

  Alice was puzzled. ‘No. How could she be?�
��

  Hoggin said, ‘Quite right, miss. ’Ow could she be? I must have made a mistake.’

  Alice opened her mouth to ask a question – her curiosity had been aroused – when a man’s voice said, ‘Miss!’ in her ear; and, then, all in a rush, ‘I would appreciate the honour of this dance.’

  She turned to face a broad-shouldered petty officer of the Royal Navy. He was about her own age – mid-thirties – blue eyes, bronzed, with many fine wrinkles round his eyes and the gold-embroidered crossed flags of a chief yeoman of signals on his arm. He was swaying very slightly on his well polished shoes and looking beseechingly at her, showing a fine row of white teeth.

  The band was playing a slow dance now. She didn’t recognize the tune or the rhythm. It must be one of the new slow foxtrots; but she thought she could keep step to it – or whatever step the yeoman chose to do, and would perhaps not get her toes trodden on. She said, ‘I’d be delighted,’ and, smiling adieu to the Hoggins, was swept off on to the creaking floor.

  The yeoman was a good partner. He might be a little drunk but it did not affect his dancing – perhaps even gave it a more fluid form. He held her close, and guided her with pressures of his body against hers, rather than with his right hand on the small of her back. It was the first time she had ever been held so close against a man, and after a minute of wondering whether it was quite decent, or proper, she surrendered to the flow and glide of the dance.

  He said, ‘’Tis a long time since I held a woman in my arms.’ She thought from his accent that he came from the same county as her sister-in-law, Louise – Yorkshire. If so, he was a long way from home.

  She said, ‘Are you married?’

  He shook his head, ‘Marriage and the sea don’t go together … You dance well, miss.’

  Blushing, she said, ‘So do you.’

  ‘And you’re pretty … right good looking.’

  They danced round the floor, Alice feeling her contours gradually melting into his. Her voice was unsure when she asked, ‘When do you go back to sea?’

  ‘Tomorrow, miss.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, thinking of the winter storms, the cold, and the death that lurked below the water.

  ‘It’s my ’ob,’ he said. His grip on her suddenly tightened, and he muttered in her ear, ‘Oh, lass, if I could only take you with me!’

  She felt a growing hardness against the lower part of her stomach, where his loins pressed against hers. Harder now, and she began to lose all power to resist; she was helpless with this man, looking hungrily, longingly into her eyes … and was she not looking back at him the same way, with no conscious volition on her part? She felt a tingling in her nipples and warmth between her thighs, deep in her loins. No man had ever done this to her before. Her mind whispered warnings, her body held him tighter, her hips pushed forward against his thrust.

  He changed the direction of their movement, and in a moment, without Alice realizing how it had happened, they were through the side door of the Hall and in the alley, the Hall towering above them on one side, a high brick wall on the other; and he was kissing her on the lips, his tongue sliding into her mouth, and now one hand was on her breast, caressing. He whispered, ‘Oh, lass … oh love …’

  He stooped quickly and raised her long skirt, his hand was inside her drawers. She sagged against him, passionately ready to give everything that was feminine or female about her, for the first time. He was fumbling at the fastening of his trousers when a man’s voice nearby called into the darkness, ‘Miss Rowland? … Miss Rowland?’

  And another voice, ‘I saw her go out this way, with a petty officer. She looked hot. Perhaps she’s been taking some fresh air.’

  The yeoman muttered, ‘Jesus! The candidate’s daughter!’ He wrenched free. She reached after him despairingly – she had been on the verge of knowing her womanhood wholly. But he was gone, hurrying down the alley, a shadow merging into the shadows, only the thud of his shoes echoing for a moment between the walls, then silence.

  Alice’s skirt had dropped, and she walked slowly, trembling, towards the Hall door. ‘Are you looking for me?’

  ‘Oh, there you are … your father asked me to tell you he wants to go home now, Miss Rowland.’

  It was a minor official of the local party, whom she had met once or twice. She said, ‘Thank you … It was getting awfully hot in there.’

  ‘It was, miss.’

  Then she was inside the Hall, walking towards her father, her trembling under control. She thought, I am considered so much an old maid that it never even crossed anyone’s mind that I might be doing something improper with the yeoman. A few minutes ago, they would have been right, but the yeoman had changed her as surely as though he had formally taken her virginity; for in her mind she was no longer a virgin. It would only be a question of time before some other man would see in her the longing to give, that the yeoman, aided by the drink, had seen or felt – and then the physical counterpart of the moral and mental change that had already taken place, would inevitably follow … not with the first man who tried, of course; she was not hungering for just any man, but when a man came who responded physically to her, and whom she could answer with the language of love, she would do so.

  They were in the car, old Wright tucking a foot robe round her father’s knees. ‘Guy Fawkes’ Night,’ he said as the car moved off. ‘You’d never know it, though. No fireworks, no bonfires, no guys. The war … ’ His voice trailed off into silence.

  She thought, yes, the war is changing more things than the celebration of Guy Fawkes’ Night. She was suddenly certain that the war, acting powerfully and invisibly, had been the prime mover both in her and in the yeoman tonight.

  Her father said, ‘There was a blind soldier in the Hall this evening … so young … I wonder where he lives. I want…’

  He fell silent. Alice said, ‘You want what, father? To help him? He’s probably at some hospital or convalescent home.’

  ‘I want to ask him something,’ her father said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What I should do, if I’m elected … try to stop the war? … press it to the bitter end? … He’s been there. He knows.’

  The Times, Tuesday, November 9, 1915

  HOUSE OF LORDS, Monday

  The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on the Woolsack at a quarter past four o’clock.

  Conduct of the War

  Cabinet Criticized

  The adjourned debate on matters relating to the war was resumed. Earl LOREBURN said: I was disappointed in not observing in the course of the debate any prospect that the Government intended to change its course in dealing with these matters. No Government can prosper in this country unless it has public opinion behind it. That is what gives you recruits, and that is what enables us to get our loans subscribed, to prevail against the unrest in the industrial world, and to preserve order better than any police can do.

  There is a Censorship for the Press. The Government do not inform Parliament of many things we ought to know … Admiral Cradock’s fleet was destroyed in the Pacific. It was said that he had asked for more ships. Is that true? … Then there was Antwerp. To us civilians that seems a very strange adventure. Men wholly untrained, who belonged to the Naval Reserve were sent out to Antwerp. Did the military authorities approve of that before they were sent? … Then there was the loss of the three cruisers in the North Sea – a very serious misadventure. Sailors tell you these cruisers ought to have been recalled beforehand. No court-martial was allowed on that loss, and yet courts-martial on such occasions are an ancient tradition of the navy.

  I come to the Dardanelles expedition. We know what that has been, though we do not know to the full extent all the blunders and suffering caused by it.

  What’s to be said about munitions? Can anyone say where the blame lies for that? A Minister and an ex-Minister had a controversy on that subject, and one of them intimated that he might be obliged to disclose the whole truth and not merely a part of it. I suppose frien
ds intervened and all was covered up. But this cost thousands of lives.

  We are again on the brink of serious difficulties in the Balkans. A new change has taken place in Lord Kitchener’s temporary absence, which I hope will be short. I asked a week ago whether the landing at Salonika was effected with the approval of the naval and military authorities … there was no real answer given.

  Has provision been made for our forces in Mesopotamia and in East Africa and Egypt?

  Nearly all the youths of Europe are under arms. I was told … that already 15,000,000 have been either killed or disabled for life … Apart from this high death rate the cost of many thousands of millions on war debt will alter the whole face of civilization, and will cast a burden not only upon our industry but also upon the lives of our children and our children’s children, and we must add to that the destruction over vast areas of industrial countries.

  It is no exaggeration to say that if this conflict goes on indefinitely, revolution and anarchy may well follow. Great portions of the Continent of Europe will be little better than a wilderness peopled by old men and women and children. Viscount MILNER: In the course of this discussion little has been said about the Censorship. Of course, we are all absolutely agreed that there must be a censorship to prevent information getting to the enemy which might be useful to the enemy. But the fact remains that the war news published in this country, from first to last, has been most seriously misleading. It has been constantly doctored in an optimistic sense.

  I would ask any candid man to compare the first impression he derived of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle or the terrible battles of September 25th and 26th – the first impression he derived from official telegrams with the impression he subsequently gathered, and the knowledge he subsequently acquired from the furtive admissions and laboured explanations of the official world and the reports of individuals who were present at these terrific fights … Not once or twice, but many times, I have been pained to hear officers who have returned from the front say that on the whole the German official reports of engagements between us and them have been more trustworthy than the British.