Wheels of Grace

by Crosse, Tania

  So did Grace! And certainly not before she had a chance to have that conversation with Martin. Now she and Larry turned off to the grocer’s which also served as the Sub-Post Office, and Larry held the door open for her.

  ‘You first,’ he said as they went inside. ‘And I’d wait until this evening before you read that pamphlet again.’

  Grace sucked in her cheeks. Yes, she supposed that, with her nose stuck in the pamphlet, she had taken too long walking into the village from the farm. But the passion burned inside her to do something useful with her life and joining the Suffragettes seemed to be the perfect first step. Besides, it would be one in the eye for John Sampson to see that she meant business!

  So she smiled up at Larry, her eyes alight with enthusiasm. ‘Yes. But I really think we should fight for what we believe in, don’t you?’

  ‘We may all have to do that sooner than you think,’ Larry agreed under his breath.

  ‘Grace dear, what can I get you?’ Mr Trathern beamed at her.

  ‘Mrs Snell asked me to post these letters for her, please,’ she answered, and the sub postmaster walked over to the separate Post Office counter.

  A few minutes later, Grace was striding back through the village and past the wheelwrights’ again. When she thought about it, apart from Larry’s words just now, there had not been so much talk of war recently, so perhaps her fears were unfounded and she need not speak to Martin after all. Not yet, anyway. The arrival of the pamphlet that morning was much more exciting, and Grace’s head was buzzing with thoughts of joining the Suffragettes. She gave most of her meagre weekly wage to her mother, but Temperance always insisted she kept six pence for herself. Grace rarely spent any money except on little presents for her family for birthdays and Christmas, and so over the years had saved a tidy sum. Now she wondered if there was enough to buy a length of white calico to make herself a simple dress, and decorate it with green and purple ribbons. Those were the Suffragette colours: white for purity, green for hope and purple for dignity. She could see herself proudly wearing it to Chapel on Sundays during the summer to demonstrate her support for the cause. That would really give John Sampson something to think about!

  Oh, she felt she was being borne along on a crest of inspiration, fired by this new passion in her life. What excitement it would bring! She couldn’t wait for the evening to come and her chores to be completed so she could study the pamphlet in depth.

  ‘My God, have you seen this?’

  It was some weeks later and Grace looked up as Farmer Snell lifted his head from the newspaper as he ate his breakfast. At the opposite end of the kitchen table, his wife was making bread, up to her elbows in flour.

  ‘What’s that, my lover?’ she asked, scarcely paying attention.

  ‘It’s happened, that’s what,’ her husband replied grimly, jabbing his head at the newspaper.

  This time, his wife began to wipe her floury hands on her apron. ‘What has, Mr Snell?’

  Grace stood still, watching as an ominous silence settled about the table. It seemed that Farmer Snell had something very important to announce and he nodded, pushing his lips forward in a dramatic gesture.

  ‘War,’ he declared. ‘Seems one Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated the day afore yesterday in a place called S‑a‑r-a-j-e-v-o,’ he read, pronouncing the strange, foreign name with slow deliberation. ‘Says here it was some young students sent by Serbia, like. After all what’s been happening, it’ll lead to general war within the month, I reckon.’

  Grace’s heart thumped in her chest. She had thought the situation had been settling down, and with the vision of John Sampson’s livid face that day still fresh in her mind, she somehow still hadn’t spoken to Martin. And now this. ‘But the Prime Minister’s been calming things down, hasn’t he?’ she protested, trying to dispel her own alarm. But it seemed that Larry had been right. War was creeping forward like some slithering evil, but Grace didn’t want to believe it. ‘And Lloyd George is firmly against war. It’ll blow over in time, won’t it?’

  ‘I’m not sure, cheel.’ Farmer Snell frowned. ‘And what about that young devil, Winston Churchill? Forceful character, and he seems to want war.’

  ‘Oh, let’s not worry about that now. Safe as houses here, we are. Don’t suppose it’ll affect us here too much, will it? Now then, Grace, put this dough to rise, will you?’

  A horrible coldness shivered through Grace’s body. She was thinking of the other things Larry had said. It only needed a spark to set the whole thing off. And it would be like something the world had never known before. Could this assassination be that trigger? An excuse for Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia? Grace’s energies had been focussed so intently on the Suffragettes that her mind had blocked out her fears about the consequences for her family if war indeed materialized. But this sudden news had brought her anxieties tumbling down about her once more.

  ‘Well, I’m off to the village to see what others think about this,’ Farmer Snell said gravely, getting to his feet. ‘Your father has nipped home for his breakfast, too, and he’ll likely not have heard about it yet. So I reckon we can spare you for half an hour, Grace, can’t we, Mrs Snell, if you want to go and tell him.’

  ‘Aw.’ Grace saw the mistress purse her lips as if the gravity of the situation had just hit home. But then she nodded vigorously as she returned to her senses. ‘Yes, of course you can go, maid. Try not to worry your poor mother too much, mind.’

  ‘No, I won’t, Mrs Snell. And thank you.’

  Grace took off her apron and followed Farmer Snell out of the back door, not even bothering to put on the straw hat that she wore in summer. It was the very end of June, but Grace was scarcely aware of the early morning sunshine as her heart ticked nervously in her chest. She hesitated across from the front door of her family’s cottage, remembering the mistress’s words. Her mother would be alarmed to see her arrive home so unexpectedly, so perhaps it would be better to wait until her father came out again and give him the news first.

  As if on cue, Ernest emerged from the cottage at that very moment. His expression showed that he was surprised to see her, and she drew him aside. But as she spoke, everything suddenly seemed macabre and unreal, and the enormity of what this war, if it indeed came, could mean suddenly pressed in on every side.

  ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, Gracie,’ Ernest said after a few moments’ reflection, but she could see that he was deeply concerned. Her dear father, who always put everything to right, this time was being evasive.

  ‘Shall I tell Mummy?’

  ‘No. I’ll explain to her later. No point worrying her too much. It might be a storm in a teacup.’

  ‘Think so, do you?’ Grace asked sceptically. ‘When everyone else…?’

  She jerked her head towards the centre of the village. People were coming out of their homes and congregating on the bridge and on the road outside the Vencombes’ residence. Ernest met his daughter’s gaze from beneath dipped eyebrows and together they walked down in tense silence to join the other villagers.

  People were talking in small groups, their voices low as if they were almost afraid to articulate their fears and yet craved the reassurance of discussing events with their friends and neighbours. Grace realized that her father had found Farmer Snell and the farmer from Gnatham Barton up the lane who had evidently ridden down on his horse. Mr and Mrs Nelson who ran the general store in the square were outside their shop deep in conversation with a very animated Martha. Just now, though, it wasn’t Grace’s garrulous friend she needed to talk to. It was Martin she must speak to, no matter what! And before he had a chance to influence Stephen in any way, since though she loved her brother dearly, Grace knew he wouldn’t have the courage to back down once he had agreed to something. Fortunately Martha had her back to the road and Grace slipped past her unnoticed and scurried into Vencombe’s Yard in a whirl of desperation.

  She wasn’t surprised to see the men standing about discussing t
he momentous news. Mr Vencombe was slowly shaking his head as if he couldn’t contemplate what it would mean for them all, while John Sampson was declaring that he’d known all along that it would come to this. Grace shivered involuntarily, but her dislike of the man was of no importance now. Larry, Martin and Stephen stood together a little apart, and Grace hurried across to them, praying fervently that she hadn’t arrived too late.

  ‘Just a matter of time now,’ Larry was saying with what seemed like wistful resignation as Grace came into earshot.

  ‘Never mind, brother,’ Martin grinned, boisterously clapping Larry on the shoulder. ‘The army might not be able to take you, but I’ll fight well enough for both of us. Enlist as soon as I can, I will. Soon teach the Hun a lesson! Probably be over by Christmas, more’s the pity. Be a real opportunity to see a bit of the world!’

  ‘And I’ll come along of you!’ Stephen told him, his eyes shining. ‘Be a proper adventure, like! Always wanted to travel, me. Us can be in the engineers and mend broken wheels together.’

  Grace’s mouth dropped open in abject horror. The voices around her seemed to explode in a mingled, incomprehensible cacophony and all her eyes could focus on was Stephen’s face alight with excitement. Oh, dear God. It was all her fault. All her fault for hesitating because of the fear John Sampson had instilled in her. She knew it now. She had been a coward and this was the result. Well, she would stand up to that fear now.

  ‘But you could get hurt,’ she blurted out, ‘or even killed.’

  She grasped hold of Stephen’s arm, burning with guilt and with her eyes boring desperately into his. Surely he could see he couldn’t do this to their mother? To any of them?

  But before either of them could say a word, Martin went on exuberantly, ‘Don’t worry, Gracie. I’ll take care of him. Come on now, Steve. Let’s go into Tavistock and find out how we can join up.’

  Grace glanced across at Larry, choking on her silent terror and willing him to put a stop to it all. But all he could do was narrow his eyes and say levelly, ‘Don’t you think you should wait until war is actually declared?’

  But Martin only shrugged. ‘You just said yourself it’s only a matter of time. No, Steve and I want to be in on it from the start, don’t we, Steve?’ He took Stephen’s other arm, propelling him forward. Stephen glanced over his shoulder at his sister, but his look said that he couldn’t change his mind now, could he?

  Grace’s hand let go of Stephen’s sleeve and fell to her side. Her stomach felt empty. Sick. She could have prevented this, if only she had faced up to reality and hadn’t had her head in the clouds over the senseless campaign about votes for women. Perhaps John Sampson had been right after all. And suddenly the half-sewn white dress up in Grace’s room filled her with anger and self-loathing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘YOU’VE DONE WHAT?’

  ‘I’ve joined the Battery,’ Stephen declared, his chest swelling beneath its threadbare waistcoat.

  ‘The … B-battery?’ Grace stuttered. ‘B-but—’

  ‘The Third Devonshire Battery, Fourth Wessex Division of the Royal Field Artillery, Territorial Force. So what does you think of that, then?’ came the proud reply.

  Grace glared at him over the gate. She had been bringing in the dried laundry from Mrs Snell’s washing line when he had suddenly appeared, beckoning her over to him. All day, she had been trapped in her own crucifying world of guilt, hardly able to concentrate on her chores. She prayed as she had never prayed before that Stephen and Martin would be told they would have to wait until war was declared before they could enlist. Or, even more passionately, she begged God not to allow any military conflict to materialize at all. But she hadn’t thought of the Tavistock branch of the Territorial Army. Now, as she saw the grin spreading over her brother’s face, she felt her knees begin to quake.

  ‘Oh.’ And then as the reality of his words kicked home, seething fury swept her guilt and horror aside. ‘Oh, Steve, how could you?’ she challenged him. ‘You know how Mummy still grieves over our lost little brothers and worries herself to death if one of the tackers so much as sneezes. And now you go and really give her summat to worry about!’

  She watched the delight slide from her brother’s expression and his brow lifted defensively. ‘Well, that’s the whole point, doesn’t you see? I doesn’t want to join the army proper, like. They’m the ones what’ll be sent to do the proper dangerous fighting, and besides, I doesn’t want to commit myself for years on end. But I does want to do my bit. Surely you sees that?’ he questioned earnestly.

  ‘No, I don’t! You’d be doing your bit as you put it here in Walkhampton. The country still needs to be fed in times of war, and making farm-carts is an essential part of that without putting your life at risk!’

  ‘Well, I thought you’d understand with all your talk of Suffragettes and doing summat useful with your life. And I won’t be taking any risks,’ Stephen insisted. ‘The Territorials be just that. To defend England if the Hun try to invade us, and that’ll never happen.’

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  ‘And you doesn’t know for sure that there’ll even be a war. And if there is, it’ll be across the Channel. It’s highly unlikely us’ll be invaded, but Mr Asquith wants us to be prepared just in case. So joining the Territorial Army is about the safest thing I could do. I thought you’d be pleased. I’ll only see other parts of England, and that only if I’m lucky. I could’ve waited to join some volunteer force and go abroad, which is what I’d really like, but that’d be more dangerous.’

  Grace drew in a harsh breath between her teeth, letting her anger subside. ‘So, what happens next?’ she asked, since she supposed – reluctantly – that what Stephen had said made sense.

  ‘Aw, just a bit of training of an evening. We won’t get our uniforms for a few weeks. Can’t wait for that, I can’t. Like a man in uniform, you girls, doesn’t you?’ he winked mischievously.

  Grace did not return his jocularity. ‘When you say we, I assume you mean you and Martin?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ Stephen pulled an awkward face. ‘Proper interested in Martin, they was, him being quite educated, like. Shows at once, it does, by the way he speaks. Not like me. Never could cotton on to a better way of talking like you has, Gracie. Anyways, they said Martin would probably be officer material. They’ve taken all his details and he’s going to come to the training sessions, but they advised him to wait and see what happens. Might be better for him to sign up to some other battalion when the time comes. Maybe some volunteer force or summat. He might be more use to the army like that.’

  ‘Oh, he might, might he?’

  ‘Yes. And he definitely wants to go abroad to fight, even if it’ll be more dangerous, like, so he’s going to wait.’

  Grace closed her mouth into a knot. Well, she had to admit that the situation was not quite as bad as she feared. But if she had spoken to Martin in the first place as she should have done, Stephen probably wouldn’t have been enlisting in any military group at all.

  ‘So, you haven’t told Mummy and Daddy yet?’ Grace managed to contain her misgivings sufficiently to ask.

  ‘Well, no,’ Stephen faltered, and now he shifted his eyes evasively. ‘I though as maybe you might—’

  ‘No, I will not! If you think you’m brave enough to join any part of the army, then you’m brave enough to tell them yourself!’ And with that, she spun on her heel and flounced away. But even as she picked up the full laundry basket and made for the house, she recognized that what she was really taking out on Stephen was her own anger at herself.

  ‘War were declared overnight, Farmer Snell!’ Grace heard the paperboy announce gleefully as he handed in the newspapers at the back door. It wasn’t his custom to knock but today, Grace considered bitterly as his words percolated into her brain, was clearly different.

  ‘Wish I were old enough to fight,’ the boy persisted, his voice high with excitement.

  ‘Thank the Lord you’re not,’ Farmer S
nell replied gruffly.

  Grace paused but momentarily as she kneaded the day’s bread on the table. She felt as if her head was truncated from her hands which went on working apparently of their own accord. It had been reported the previous day that the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, had remarked while he watched the London gas lamps being lit at dusk that ‘the lights were going out all over Europe’. That was exactly how Grace felt, as if a cold darkness had invaded her entire being. She had tried to ignore it, this sense of impending doom, even though they had all seen it coming for so long. After all the recent events – Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia, Russia mobilising its army, and in the last few days, Germany declaring war on both Russia and France – it was inevitable that Britain would become involved. And now it had happened.

  It was the Fifth of August. Grace was sure she would remember that date for ever. And yet now it had come, she felt oddly calm. Relieved almost. As if the waiting, with its vain hope that the whole situation would just go away, was the hardest thing to bear. And yet the uncertainty was just as crushing. What would it mean for them all? For young men like Stephen and Martin? Would it all be solved by Christmas as so many believed? Or would people like Larry, who predicted it would explode into the biggest conflict man had ever seen, be proved right?

  She glanced up as Farmer Snell entered the kitchen, already reading the headlines of the newspaper in his hands.

  ‘This is it,’ he said gravely. ‘Germany invaded Belgium yesterday, and Asquith declared war at eleven o’clock last night.’

  ‘Saints preserve us,’ Mrs Snell murmured, and she solemnly crossed herself.

  The gesture seared into Grace’s mind, and she stopped in her work, absently observing her floury hands. ‘We’m at war, then,’ she stated quietly.

  A thousand thoughts milled about in her brain. Up until then, she had mainly thought of the looming troubles as being between nations. Britain, the country, the government. But now, it truly was we. Not just the men who would be fighting on the battlefield, but everyone. And yet, Grace felt curiously detached, devoid of emotion. This had happened, and they must get on with it, whatever it might bring. And the deep emptiness of acceptance weighed heavily on her heart.