Heart of War

by John Masters

  6

  Hedlington & Walstone, Kent: Monday, May 1, 1916

  Betty Merrit gazed unseeing through the window at the scattered huts. Their corrugated-iron roofs, camouflage-painted, half blocked her view of the big hangars by the control shed and its little raised platform. Scents of spring flowers wafted in through the window, which was open, and the distant roar of an aircraft engine running at half throttle on a test bench was almost drowned by the nearer chortling of two blackbirds; but Betty was not aware of any of this. She had been working as Ginger Keble-Palmer’s assistant in the design office of Hedlington Aircraft for nearly three months now. At first she had found the work very difficult, and the formulae she had to use, all new to her, almost impossible to understand; yet she had felt that she was standing here not only as herself, but as a representative of all educated women; and, with Ginger’s patient guidance, gradually, it had become less difficult.

  Her left hand rested on the squared drawing paper, pinned down on the sloping draughtsman’s table. Her slide rule lay on the edge of the paper … the wings could be longer, narrower, giving a higher aspect ratio and better range and handling, while keeping the same wing loading. But that would give wing stress problems, and nobody really knew enough about the design of wing main spars … supposing she put the aspect ratio up by 15 percent, that would increase the span by … she picked up the slide rule and began calculating, jotting the figures down on the edge of the paper. Now a new spar length of 16 feet 7 inches from root to tip would produce new stresses and bending moments, requiring a newly calculated cross-section throughout its length. It was going to be a long job; all design was compromise … she decided to work it out roughly, and check the stresses with Ginger later.

  Across the room, behind her, she heard Ginger exclaim, ‘Vinton’s cut off one engine … or it’s died on him.’ He raised his voice and called, ‘Betty, listen! … Come on!’ They ran out of the hut together. The aircraft, one of the first two test models of the Hedlington Leopard, was making a sweeping turn beyond the downward east end of the field. It was about a mile away and five or six hundred feet up. It came on lurching as the idle port propeller imparted unexpected yaw at the slower landing speed … landed heavily on three points, bounced ten feet in the air, landed again and rolled to a stop nearly opposite them.

  Ground crews ran out with ladders to help the pilot and his passenger down. Vinton, the company’s test pilot, threw back his goggles, and said, ‘That’s what they call a series of landings, I believe … Port engine was overheating, Ginger. Needle off the clock.’

  The passenger was Johnny Merritt, now taking off his helmet and goggles. ‘She was doing fine until that engine went,’ he said, ‘but a bit sluggish on the controls.’

  Betty said, ‘I’m working on something that should improve that … increase the aspect ratio, lengthen the wings a bit. I think she’d be much handier.’

  Ginger said, ‘I didn’t know you were on that. I’ve been looking for light materials for the airframe, and asking Rolls Royce either to give the Eagle II an extra thirty or forty horsepower … for the same weight, by higher compression perhaps … or hurry up with the Eagle III.’

  A Rowland Sapphire drove up to them and Richard Rowland stepped out, preceded by his chauffeur, a young woman in immaculate green uniform, with breeches, gaiters, jacket and a man’s peaked cap with a patent leather brim. ‘Thank you, Kathleen,’ Richard said, ‘I won’t be long.’

  Johnny said, ‘I’ll see if Frank has the deputation ready.’

  ‘He’d better,’ Richard said grimly, ‘I have to go to Farnborough right after the meeting, to talk to them about planning for the Lion … Is Frank Stratton all right?’

  Johnny hesitated, ‘He’s fit enough, Richard … better than I would have believed possible, knowing how badly he was wounded … and he’s a wonderful floor man – knows everything, and what he doesn’t, he picks up. But he’s, well, listless, as though his heart isn’t in it. But he does his job.’

  Richard nodded, noting with approval that Johnny had at last taken to calling him Richard instead of Mr Rowland. He led into the main hangar, where the wings of a Leopard, nearly complete, spread from wall to wall; another, its wings on, but the fuselage only half completed, the engines not mounted, stood behind it, staggered diagonally, and a third, no more than a skeleton, behind that. In one corner, by the table and chair which were the factory foreman’s floor office, three men waited, while Frank Stratton sat in the chair.

  He got up as Richard and Johnny approached, and Richard took his place. He looked up, ‘Who’s the leader of the deputation?’

  ‘I am,’ a man in a cloth cap said. ‘Griffin, frame shop … We got to have more money, Mr Richard. We told Mr Johnny two months ago.’

  ‘And he told me. The company couldn’t afford it.’

  ‘Prices is going up,’ the man said. ‘Why, bread costs …’

  ‘I know,’ Richard cut in – ‘Our company … which as you know owns the J.M.C. as well as this, already pays more than any other employer in Hedlington. And our production is slow. We can’t pay more money until we get increased production.’

  Griffin said, ‘That ain’t all our fault, Mr Richard. ’Course, you can’t expect the sort of men you get now, and women, to work as well and as fast as men that’s been on machines twenty years … but the machines ain’t what they ought to be, either. For one thing, in my work, the steam rooms for shaping the wood ain’t hot enough.’

  ‘We keep running out of lacquer, when the wings are ready for doping,’ another man said.

  Frank said, ‘It doesn’t come on time from the manufacturer, Mr Richard.’

  Richard frowned, then turned to Frank – ‘We’ve got to increase production, if we hope to win the war … and if you men hope to get a raise … Frank, look into these complaints, and any others the men bring up – any man. Bring Mr Johnny here a list of them. Then get together with the shop foremen and see what can be done to make the work go faster. When you’re ready, tell us, and we’ll have another meeting with you men – and I want a representative of the women here, too. Then, if you’ll accept a plan to increase production we’ll agree to raise wages. Not before. Now, I have to go … to try to keep the jobs you have now.’

  He got up and, nodding to the others, walked swiftly out.

  Rachel Cowan looked at the huge pile of laundry stacked on Mary Gorse’s kitchen floor, and at Mary herself, bent over a zinc tub set on the table, up to her elbows in soapsuds. This was what ‘we’ must rescue women from, she thought, remembering the exact tone of Naomi Rowland’s indignant voice as they had walked on the lawns of Girton in the spring sunshine, the scent of flowers about them, the distant bells of Cambridge chiming for church: women must be free to realize their potential, women must be educated much as men, women must, women shall, women are … And here was Mary Gorse, half-witted Willum’s wife, taking in washing to feed the too-many kids … particularly the eldest, pregnant but barely twelve … and herself, living with Willum’s half-brother Bert … why? Because she loved him? Because they were both Socialists? Or because, she, as a woman, couldn’t face living without a man? And Naomi was in uniform, doing her bit for this bloody capitalists’ war … but they had not seen each other for months and then only briefly. The bells of Cambridge seemed as far away as her childhood, the ugly brilliant, little daughter of Jacob Cohen, peddler, of Whitechapel.

  Sweat filled the creases on Mary’s worn, calm face. Sheets and pillow cases occupied every inch of the line strung crisscross over the tiny back yard. How could she look so placid, Rachel thought angrily, when she’s being so exploited? She said, ‘I’ve moved in with Bert, Mary.’

  Mary did not raise her head from her work. ‘So I heard.’

  ‘We’re not married.’

  ‘I know.’ She raised her head, dashed some sweat out of her eyes with the back of a soapy hand, and bent again. A shaft of sunlight glowed in her grey-streaked fair hair. Rachel said, ‘It saves money �
�� we think alike … we have a lot in common.’

  ‘I’m surprised,’ Mary said, ‘you having been at Cambridge, and all.’

  ‘I wish I’d never taken that scholarship. I should have stayed with my own people and joined the working class struggle – our struggle.’

  Mary said nothing for a time, then – ‘If you get on so well with Bert, why don’t you marry him? Is it that you don’t hold with marriage and the church then, like Willum’s dad, Probyn?’

  Rachel hesitated, ‘Not exactly … I’m a Jewess, and I can’t become a Christian any more than Bert can become a Jew. Who’d marry us? And we don’t need it. Why should we do what the capitalist church tells us we must?’

  Mary changed the subject, ‘Bert’s walking well, considering.’

  Rachel said, ‘Yes, but his toe hurts, and he only gets odd jobs now. The bosses won’t employ him after what he did.’

  ‘Well, that was to be expected, wasn’t it?’ Mary lifted a load of washing out of the tub, transferred it to the sink, and ran cold water over it from the tap.

  Rachel, stung by the last remark, said, ‘Bert doesn’t understand why you don’t have the law on Bob Stratton. There’s Violet six months gone, and she only twelve last month.’

  Mary said, ‘I don’t want to have the law on Mr Stratton.’

  Rachel said heatedly, ‘You should! He’s going scot free because he’s what he is, because Mrs Harry stood behind him and you didn’t want to offend her.’

  Mary said, ‘I’m sure Mr Stratton has enough troubles of his own without you or me making it more difficult for him. Now, if you’ll help me wring out these sheets …’

  They sat close in the saloon bar of the White Horse in North Hedlington, tankards of old and mild at their sides, heads close. Milner, a government food inspector, was speaking in a low voice – ‘The superintendent heard it first. He didn’t say anything to anyone till he’d found out more about it … then he warned three of us, on the Q.T., to keep our noses clean.’

  ‘Why?’ Bill Hoggin, food merchant, husband of Bob Stratton’s daughter Ruth, demanded.

  ‘He said, the high-ups are asking questions … and the sort of questions they ask point to our department – food inspection.’

  ‘No idea of who’s behind it, or at the top of it?’ Hoggin said. Six months of elocution lessons had done wonders for him; his accent was still clearly of East End London, but much modified. He seldom dropped his aitches, though occasionally putting them in where they had no business to be; his intonation was plummier, and had less of the cockney bite, except when he was much excited or interested.

  Milner said, ‘There’s only two possibilities. A departmental inquiry, inside the Ministry …’

  ‘Wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ Hoggin growled.

  ‘… or a parliamentary inquiry … Complaints have been made to M.P.s and they’ve been asking the Minister to look into it. The superintendent says there’ll probably be a Joint Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament … especially since Bottomley’s been on about it in John Bull since last year.’

  Hoggin quaffed his beer, wiped his mouth and sat a while sucking his teeth. His red face shone with colour and his neck bulged out over his stiff white collar. Beer spots and food stains marked his expensive worsted suit. ‘Comes at a bad time for me,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much to do with the food people any more – you know that … and we haven’t used any unfit consignments for two, three months. So they won’t pin anything on us now, unless they search all the grocers’ shelves. Another month and it would have been off them, too, and out of the warehouses … but I need capital, because – know what I’m going to do? – I’m going to start a chain of retail shops, groceries like, but selling bread, too, and fruit and veg, and meat, and everything cheaper than the little grocers and bakers and butchers can … Grocers and butchers and all them are trying to provide good stuff everywhere, which is fine for the gentry and rich blokes, but there aren’t many of them, and what the rest of the people wants is cheap stuff … so’s they’ll have more money in their pockets for motor cars, holidays, send their kids to better schools … An’ we’ll get the women in ’cos everything they want’ll be in the one shop – mine. … Well, that’s what I’m going to do, but I can’t buy and build and all the rest all by myself, so I’m going to have to raise a lot of money … go to the banks, a few millionaires … and I need a big name in front … An’ I won’t get the money nor the big name if there’s a stink going on … so, listen, Milner, me boy …’ he bent closer yet, ‘… there’s three things to be done, to save our skins. First is to get rid of any evidence. Second, at the same time, is to shut up the ones making the row, like Burnley. Third, if this Committee is appointed in spite of all that, nobble it!’

  Milner whistled lugubriously through his stained teeth, ‘Tall orders, Hoggin.’

  ‘They are,’ Hoggin said. ‘And your part is the easiest. Make it so that if there’s an inquiry, no one’s going to find the copy of the licence you sold me to buy condemned food as a pig farmer. Or the receipts for what I did buy … but only for the condemned stuff, see? The rest, what I bought off the docks, was all above board … and that was more than three quarters, eh?’

  Milner said, ‘Yes … It’s a dangerous business, destroying records.’

  ‘More dangerous not to,’ Hoggin said shortly. ‘Now, what do you know about these Joint Select Committees? Who appoints the members?’

  Milner drank deep of his beer, set his tankard down and wiped his lips with his sleeve – ‘The superintendent said they could be any number up to fifteen members … equal numbers from both Houses …’

  ‘The fewer members the better for us,’ Hoggin said. ‘Can’t nobble all them buggers. ’Ave – have – they actually started horganizing this committee yet?’

  ‘The superintendent said not.’

  Hoggin said energetically, ‘Then we’d better shove our oar in now. Better our friends organize it than blokes what don’t like us, eh? An’ I have pals, specially in the Commons – made it my business to. Meantime, I’ll deal with Mr Horatio Fucking Bottomley, and find a big name. Which I think I already ’ave, in my bleeding pocket.’

  Bob Stratton, lying on the couch in Dr Deerfield’s office, wished he was not wearing his thick porridge-coloured woollen vest and long underdrawers; but Jane had insisted – ‘Ne ’er cast a clout till May be out.’ And here it was only the first of May … but he’d heard that the jingle didn’t mean May the month, but may, the hawthorn blossom … They used to have maypoles in Hedlington when he was a lad, and boys and girls danced round them, entwining each other in the coloured ribbons springing from the top of the pole.

  ‘Go on,’ the doctor’s voice, with its funny little accent, was somewhere behind his ear.

  ‘I saw lots of little girls’ … things,’ he said grudgingly. ‘In those days, girls and women didn’t wear drawers, so when they bent over, you’d sometimes see … the thing. Some of ’em bent over ’a purpose, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘I remember …’; he stopped, avoiding the memory.

  The doctor said, ‘Go on, Mr Stratton.’

  ‘I can’t remember now …’ He’d taken Victoria out a dozen times since – since Violet told him – and he’d never got her above eighty-five, when she’d done over ninety before. It seemed like not doing what he used to do in the shed, with the girls, had changed him, so that he couldn’t do the right things for Victoria any more. She was sluggish, and so was he.

  ‘Are you sure you can’t remember? Think please.’

  The thought that he had cut off returned. He saw a girl … what was her name … Helen Tubbs? … about nine, and him the same … bending over to tie her bootlaces, she saw him behind her, between her legs, and bent farther … all the way down, the dress hoisted up by the motion … he’d been four, five feet away, no more, and no one else by … It had felt good, amazing, near paralysed him, and his finger smelled funny for a long time afterward, so that he didn’t want
to wash it.

  ‘Can’t remember,’ he said.

  Dr Deerfield sighed almost imperceptibly, and said, ‘Well, let’s go back to the beginning again. Tell me just what you can remember about your very early years – when you first saw your big sister, naked, for instance …’

  Dirty nonsense, Bob thought, what has that got to do with it? Why should he answer these impertinent questions from a dratted German? But he’d promised Mrs Harry, and Jane … What a price! Better if he’d gone to prison and be done with it. Then he’d always be himself, at least.

  Stella Merritt looked across the table at Dr Deerfield from under her eyelashes. It was nice being a married woman and not having to worry about chaperones; better still to be married to a darling like Johnny, who had said, when an unexpected crisis arose at the Aircraft Company, that of course she must go to the lunch with Dr Deerfield without him.

  The doctor was of medium height, a little pudgy, in his late forties, with an olive skin, a high-bridged nose, huge liquid brown eyes, and long hands and fingers. She had met him first at the Hedlington Hospital when she was staying with her grandmother at the time of Granny’s cancer operation. Stella had met him once or twice since at Granny’s house; and then there had come this invitation to Johnny and herself to have lunch with him. In spite of Johnny’s words, Stella felt pleasantly excited to be lunching alone with the doctor, while still wishing Johnny could be there … poor Johnny, he worked so hard.

  They had ordered and were waiting for the food, glasses of dry sherry beside them – Stella’s second. The doctor said, ‘How did the shopping go, Mrs Merritt?’

  ‘Oh, badly,’ Stella said. ‘The shops are so empty … and what they do have is usually of poor quality, and so expensive … but I did find a pretty afternoon dress for myself, and I bought two ties for Johnny.’