The Passing Bells

by Phillip Rock

  He stood facing her, hands on hips, his slim body taut as a bent bow. A fiery little man, his dark eyes burning.

  “How spellbinding you are, Mr. Langham. I would hate to be a Frenchman debating you.”

  He waved a finger under her nose. “War is far too complex a matter for the military mind to grasp . . . but then you’ve heard that speech before, haven’t you? Why must I always make speeches when you come here? Such a terrible waste of time.” He sat beside her on the couch and cupped her chin in one hand, turning her face toward him. “You’re much too beautiful, Mrs. Greville. If I had married a woman with your face, I would still be a Liverpool solicitor.”

  “Is that why successful politicians have plain wives?”

  “It’s vital on the hustings. Men will never vote for someone with a beautiful wife. They feel he has achieved enough. Why grace him with further rewards!”

  “I could ask the same question.”

  He let his hand drop to the top of her dress and began to undo the buttons with nimble ease.

  “One wonders who is being rewarded the most by these brief encounters. Your appetites for the pleasures of the flesh match my own, stroke for stroke.” His hand was inside her chemise, pressed firmly against a naked breast. “You see? Your heart races . . . the breath catches in your throat.”

  “Please hurry.”

  “We shall make haste slowly, if you don’t mind. Savor it as always.”

  “Hurry . . .”

  “My, my . . . what a passionate little whore we are today.”

  “Please . . .”

  It had been raining steadily in Yorkshire, and the factory on the outskirts of Huddersfield was surrounded by a lake of mud and standing water. A tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire enclosed the place, and there was no signboard to say what kind of factory it was or to whom it belonged. Only when the army car which had brought them from Leeds pulled up in front of the main building did Charles see a small sign on one of the doors: ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR WORKS—EXPERIMENTAL.

  A gangly young man wearing a blue work smock stepped outside to meet them.

  “Major Greville? Mr. Bigsby?”

  “Aye,” Bigsby grunted. He spat a stream of brown saliva into a puddle. “Bloody ’orrible bit o’ country, Yorkshire.”

  “Dampish,” the young man said. He directed his attention to Charles. “My name’s Wilson. I’m plant manager here. Our Mr. Ross is over in shed number four . . . next to the railway siding.”

  “The package arrived, I hope,” Charles said.

  “Oh, yes. It was delivered early this morning. Ugly-looking thing, isn’t it? We pulled the engine out already.” He pointed off into the swirling drizzle. “Just keep to the duckboards. No point in driving there—your motor would only sink below the wheels.”

  Big Willie was inside the large corrugated iron building, electric lights shining off its steel-plated sides. It was a great rhomboid-shaped monster, with six-pounder naval cannons jutting from the sponsons on the sides. Men in coveralls were crawling all over it, and there was the dull boom of heavy hammers from inside the hull. Charles and Bigsby climbed onto the back of the tank and peered into the open engine hatch.

  “Is Mr. Ross there?” Charles yelled.

  The hammering ceased. An oily-faced workman looked up at them.

  “Aye, he be that. Mr. Ross, sur . . . coomp’ny callin’.”

  A tousle-haired man in grease-stained coveralls emerged from the inner gloom of the hull. Charles stared at him in disbelief.

  “But . . . you’re our Ross!”

  Jaimie Ross grinned and pulled himself out of the hatch.

  “Not exactly your Ross any longer, sir.” He wiped his fingers on a cloth and held out his right hand. “It’s fair good to see you, Mr. Greville. Indeed it is.”

  “I’m quite flabbergasted, Ross. I knew you’d gone with the Rolls-Royce company, but to find you here. . . .”

  “Oh, they’ve moved me back and forth a bit, sir. I’ve been at this factory the past three months.” He folded his arms and looked Charles up and down. “Major Greville. My, my. You look right smart in the uniform, sir. You one of the chaps responsible for this clanking dragon of a thing?”

  “Not really. Just sort of an overseer.”

  “I talked to one of your bunch in London . . . telephoned up here the other day. He said the machine was underpowered. That’s a bit of a laugh, you know. This must weigh thirty ton and its got a one-hundred-five-HP engine in it. Doubt if you’d get more’n three miles to the hour on a dead-flat hard-paved road.”

  “That’s about it,” Bigsby said, spitting over the right side track.

  Ross stepped down to the ground and gazed reflectively at the tank’s engine, which hung in chains from a pully.

  “Daimler. A good engine, but not for this . . . thing.”

  “Do you have a better one?” Charles asked, stepping off the tank and standing beside him.

  “Oh, yes . . . two-hundred-and-fifty-HP inline, ready for production. A proper beauty. We also have a three-hundred-and-fifty-HP in the testing stage. Aircraft engines. But as I tried to explain to that sod in London, we don’t have them on the factory line. Won’t have ’em either for at least four months. Now, these hundred-five-HP Daimlers must be bulging out of the warehouses.”

  “Right,” Bigsby said. “That’s the bloody rub.”

  “We can fit one of our prototype Falcons in this hull so you could see how it’d move with a hundred more horsepower inside, but if time’s the problem I don’t much see the point of it.”

  “Neither do I,” Charles said. “They’re prepared to build fifty hulls now and they can’t wait four months for engines to go in them.”

  “If we could coax more bloody power from what we’ve got,” Bigsby said.

  Ross closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind his back. He rocked slowly on his heels for a minute and then said, “The gear ratios seem wrong to me somehow . . . and the carburation and exhaust systems are inadequate for the amount of stress the engine’s going to be put to. She’s goin’ to be fuel-starved . . . and she’ll vapor-lock sure as hell takes sinners.”

  Bigsby squirted juice again. “The gear box is a bloody ’orror. I been tellin’ ’em that all along. I know what it needs.”

  “Yes,” Ross said, “I think I do, too. If you could give my lads three days . . . around the clock. . . .”

  “Of course,” Charles said.

  “Modifications with available parts. Shouldn’t hold up your schedule by more than a week or two, and it would make a ruddy big difference in performance.”

  “Sounds good,” Charles said.

  “Fine. We’ll get on with it then. Like a mug of tea?”

  “Yes . . . I would at that.”

  “Mr. Bigsby?”

  “I’m not much for tea.” He chewed on his cigar and squinted at the dangling engine. “Bloody ’ot water’s bad on the ’eart.”

  It seemed odd to be walking beside Jaimie Ross, odder still to be seated across from him in the tiny engineering office. Ross poured two mugs of sweet, milky tea from a tea urn and then sat behind a battered desk.

  “Funny us meeting like this, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Charles agreed. “It is rather.”

  “I read about Mr. Wood-Lacy dyin’ at Gallipoli. Sorry. He was a nice chap. How’s his lordship and ladyship?”

  “They’re fine, thank you.”

  “And Miss Alexandra?”

  “She’s training as a nurse . . . at All Souls Hospital in London . . . the army nursing service.”

  Ross shook his head. “Hard to believe. She was tango-mad last time I saw her. The old world do change a bit, don’t it?”

  Charles stared into his tea. “Yes, it does.”

  “Been changin’ a bit for me, too. I got seven patents on this new engine. It’s really my idea and I’m responsible for its mass production. The company’s sendin’ me to America at the end of the month . . . to Cleveland and Detroit. Th
e Yanks are going to build the bulk of ’em under license for us. Lor’, think of it, me, Jaimie Ross, goin’ to America.” He sipped reflectively at his tea. “That Algy Bigsby’s a wonder, he is. I used to read his articles all the time in Mechanics and Journeymen. Quite an inspiration to me when I was a nipper. I never knew you to be much interested in mechanical things.”

  “No. I’m still not terribly interested.”

  Ross smiled. “I get the picture. I’ve had to deal with the army chaps on a few occasions. They turn deaf when a man with grease on his hands speaks to ’em. I suppose old ‘spittin’ ’ Bigsby tells you and you tell the brass. Is that it?”

  “Something like that.” His face felt hotter than the tea.

  “Gor, the bloody army. They think they’re fightin’ in the bleedin’ Crimea or in India’s sunny climes. Must be a strain on you. Still, as long as the job gets done . . . that’s the main thing, isn’t it? Get the better equipment out to the lads. Anything to that land fort?”

  “Some people seem to think so, but most of the generals are dubious. One of them called it a pretty toy. I’m sure it’s more than that.”

  “Looks like it could crush barbed wire and deflect bullets easily enough. That is, if it has enough power to move across no-man’s-land.”

  “That’s your job now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And it can be done. It won’t be perfect by any means. You can expect twenty percent breakdowns at least. The ratio of weight to power plant is ridiculous. It needs at least a three-hundred-horsepower engine to give it momentum. . . . Eight to ten miles per on the flat . . . five on shell-pitted ground. Tell ’em that.”

  “My job,” he said hollowly.

  “That’s right,” Ross said, slurping tea. “Your job, and you’re bloody welcome to it.”

  He was too much the outsider. Bigsby and Ross, the grimy mechanics, they spoke an arcane language that set them totally apart from him. They all seemed relieved when he excused himself and went back to the car. He told the driver to take him to Flockton Moor. After a fifteen-minute drive over sodden hills, they came to a featureless moor, with rows of wooden barracks, corrugated iron huts, and bell tents. He saw a flagpole, the Union Jack whipping in the wind . . . a sentry box on the side road . . . men at drill . . . a skirmish line moving through the gorse. . . . He felt a sense of peace. His familiar element. He thought of Windsor and the Second Battalion . . . first platoon . . . D Company . . . “Right as bloody rain, sir!”

  The officers’ mess was in a tar-paper and wood shack that leaked in a few spots. There were no battalion trophies to be seen, simply because there were no battalion trophies to be displayed. No honors won but the honor of having been formed in the first place. Volunteers all—except for a sprinkling of regular officers and NCO’s seconded to the battalion from other units. For the sake of administrative convenience, the War Office had attached this battalion of amateurs to the Princess of Wales’s Own Yorkshire regiment, the Green Howards, but not one man in a hundred knew anything at all about that venerable concern.

  “Nor cares less,” Fenton said, nursing a whiskey. “Mill hands for the most part—the woolen trade—but they’re tough birds and eager to kill Germans.”

  Fenton looked lean and fit, Charles was thinking, feeling a pang of envy.

  “Are you up to strength?”

  “Over strength as a matter of fact, except for officers and NCO’s. I should have thirty-five officers but have only twenty-six. But it’s the same everywhere, and they’re eager chaps and not afraid to work hard. The senior NCO’s are first-rate. Seduced a couple away from the Coldstreams, and one who had been with me during the retreat, Sergeant Major Ackroyd. I stole him from the Middlesex.”

  “Bit of a pack rat, aren’t you?”

  “Got to be, old fellow. There are just so many experienced men to go ’round and I want my battalion to have its fair share. It’s trench experience that counts. Yorkshiremen love a good fight, but I need calm and steady hands to tell the lads when to shoot and when to keep their bloody heads down.”

  Charles sipped his whiskey and glanced across the room. Two pink-cheeked first lieutenants were playing darts. Their combined ages wouldn’t have reached forty.

  “They’re getting horribly young.”

  “Yes,” Fenton said. “Coming right out of public school. Make them full lieutenants if they’ve had any OTC.” He drained his drink. “Winnie’s with me, you know. We found a roomy old house up the road at Highbury. Stay the night with us. No point in your driving back to Huddersfield.”

  “No . . . I shan’t be missed.”

  The Royal Windsor Fusiliers and the Green Howards had fought side by side at Inkerman in the Crimean War and had shared the same marching tune ever since, “The Bonnie English Rose.” It was an apt description of Winifred, Charles decided as they walked on the moors after supper. The rain had stopped and the sky flamed with sunset. He stood beside Fenton and watched Winifred striding through the gorse in muddy boots, whistling for her Bedlington, which was off on a rabbit hunt.

  “I’m glad for you and Winnie. You seem very happy together.”

  “She’s a fine woman.”

  “And a downright lovely one.”

  Fenton lit a cigarette and blew smoke through his nose. “I detect a vague bitterness in your manner, Charles. Are you and Lydia getting along . . . or is it rude of me to ask?”

  “Oh, we get along without strain . . . considering the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “My job. I hate what I’m doing, Fenton. And I feel manipulated . . . pulled onto an inside track by invisible wires. Well, not so invisible, come to think of it. I’ve just closed my eyes so far.”

  Fenton dropped his half-smoked cigarette at his feet and crushed it with the heel of his boot.

  “If Lydia is pulling a few wires, it’s only for your benefit. You came within an inch of being killed at Gallipoli, old boy. She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t think of that. And you’re not skulking in an attic, you know. For every man at the front, there are a dozen serving usefully—no, vitally—behind the lines. Only amateurs feel compelled to charge the foe with drawn sword. Professionals take the billets as they come, fair or foul, good job or bad. Make the best of it.”

  “It’s rather a question of my own self-respect, Fenton.”

  “Bugger that,” Fenton said angrily. “You’re one of the few men left in the army who went ashore from the River Clyde. That ranks with the Charge of the Light Brigade or the bloody stand at Albuera. There isn’t a soldier alive who wouldn’t touch his cap in respect. Stop sticking needles in your flesh.”

  “A man should do what he feels is the right thing for him,” Charles said with a quiet intensity. “If he doesn’t, he pays for it in some way. This may sound like an odd paradox, Fenton, but I never felt so alive, so needed, as I did at Gallipoli. My function was simple . . . to lead and inspire my men. I did that well. I was a damn good officer and . . .”—his voice trailed off until it was virtually inaudible—“I was happy.”

  Fenton found it impossible to sleep. Not that it mattered very much. He had told his batman to wake him at four, as always. Usually, he was in bed by ten-thirty, and after a quick shave, a spot of breakfast, he was off to the camp before reveille. But tonight he had sat up drinking with Charles until two in the morning. No more talk about Lydia or his problems, thank God, just jawing about old times at Abingdon Pryory. But the man’s moodiness had still remained, like a dark shadow beneath the surface.

  Winifred stirred and moved against him. Her hand created an opening in his pajamas and drifted slowly across his chest in a loving tracery.

  “Thought you were asleep,” he murmured.

  “No. Just silently respectful. I could almost hear you thinking. Dull army matters, no doubt . . . How many cans of bully beef per man . . . boot laces . . . spare socks? I wonder if Napoleon thought about such things.”

  “Probably.”

  “But that’s
not on your mind, is it?”

  “No. I was thinking of Charles. I have a feeling he’s going to do something rash.”

  “Charles never does anything rash.”

  “He let you get away. But that was more foolish than rash, I suppose.”

  “Some people might say it was sensible.”

  “Some people still think the earth is flat.”

  She lay silently beside him, listening to the night wind moaning and whispering down the chimney. Then she said, “Does Charles know that Lydia was in love with you?”

  He raised himself on one elbow. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Women can sense those things. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when you were teaching me how to tango. She was dancing with Charles, but watching us. I was just eighteen, but women are born with the instinct for understanding other women. Were you in love with her?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No. Even if you were, you’re not in love with her now. A woman can sense that, too.”

  He bent his head and kissed her. “You’re the only woman I love . . . the only woman I shall ever love. I’m a disgustingly lucky man, Winnie.”