Heart of War

by John Masters

  Well, better brains than his must have been thinking of answers to these problems for months, and one of Johnny Merritt’s aeroplanes from Hedlington was buzzing overhead like a giant bumblebee, and a hen had escaped from the chicken run to lay an egg in the hedge beyond the lawn, a fact which she was now proudly cackling to the world. He turned the pages – ah, the Page for Women, which the Telegraph published every Saturday. One had to get away from the war sometimes or one would go mad … six drawings of autumnal coats and dresses … the skirts were about ten or twelve inches off the ground, he noticed … a long article about ‘Equal pay for equal work – Is this pure justice?’ The writer seemed to conclude it wasn’t … Butter and eggs going up in price … Fish dear all week, oysters very reasonable … hares not likely to be below 4s to 4s 6d … after harvest, ducks at their best, but a high price compared to normal times must be paid … Some recipes – Novelty suet pudding; Short paste or bread dough pudding; Yorkshire pudding with fruit; a potato cake; Stale Bread Sweet; Bread and apple pudding; Nursery pudding – ah, was this what Nanny used to force on him, as a boy, sometimes? … ‘Dredge slices of stale bread with sugar and toast on both sides. Then place the slices in a dish, and cover with stewed fruit of any kind or a mixture of cooked fruit.’ Sounded like it, indeed … the only sweet he’d hated worse than trifle, and …

  He heard Garrod come in and said, without looking up, ‘Some more coffee, please, Garrod … and tell Mrs Abell the kedgeree is excellent.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She brought the pot to him and poured coffee. ‘Sir …’ Her voice was low but firm. He looked up, quailing. He knew that expression. No escape, not for a minute.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘The Englands, sir. Young Harry’s been killed. A week ago … They got the telegram this morning, and a letter from Colonel Quentin half an hour later. Killed instantly by machine-gun fire near High Wood, the colonel said. He said he died doing his duty as a brave man and a good soldier and

  ‘… all ranks of the battalion join Mr and Mrs England in their bereavement,’ Cate finished. ‘I’ll go down right away. He was nineteen …’

  12

  Southern England: Mid-October, 1916

  Stella Merritt sat in the cottage’s small drawing room, staring at the lawn, and, beyond the hedge, the roofs of Beighton below. A bottle of Bristol Milk sherry was on the table at her side, and a tulip glass, half empty, beside the bottle. From the other reception room across the entrance hall she heard Laura the maid humming as she flapped a duster over the furniture in there. Mummy would have been on her like a ton of bricks for the way she cleaned – or didn’t. It was the same with Mrs Hackler, the cook. She wasn’t a good cook, and Mummy would have sacked her long since … but then who’d cook for her, and for Johnny when he came home? Except that so often he didn’t come home till after ten o’clock. She rolled the sweet wine round her mouth, and swallowed. That made her feel better, the warm glow spreading from her throat to her chest, her stomach and eventually to the tips of her toes.

  She felt restless, dissatisfied, unhappy. She was betraying Johnny with Charles Deerfield, which was wrong. She should stop that, but … Johnny didn’t make love to her very often, considering. Captain Irwin had done it three times in the one night in that pub, and he was thirty-six then. Charles always did it twice, after lunch, when they met. Johnny was only twenty-four but he came home so tired, and got up so early to study papers and designs that often she couldn’t tempt him, morning or evening …

  She jumped up, poured out a full glass of sherry and downed it in one gulp, then went to the corner, picked up the telephone, wound the handle, and called a number in Hedlington. The voice at the far end said, ‘Dr Deerfield.’

  ‘Charles? I must see you. Right away!’

  A pause: then – ‘Come to my office at eleven-thirty.’

  ‘All right.’

  She went to the door and called, ‘Mrs Hackler, I have to go into Hedlington.’

  Mrs Hackler came out of the kitchen drying her hands on her apron – ‘What shall I do with the partridge, then?’

  ‘Keep it for dinner, I’ll be back for tea.’

  Mrs Hackler retired sulkily to the kitchen. Stella put on hat, veil, gloves, and long, warm winter driving coat and went out to the little shed they had had built to house their car, a Rowland Sapphire. It was there in the shed because today she had driven Johnny to Walstone station for a day’s work in London, and was to meet him at seven in the evening – unless work delayed him till the last train, or overnight.

  Young Sam, the gardener – gardener’s boy, he would have been before the war – was there raking leaves and piling them on the bonfire in the corner of the little garden. He worshipped Stella, the Sapphire only a degree less, and at sixteen was strong and growing fast into manhood.

  She called, ‘Sam!’ He looked up, ‘Yes, m’m?’ She smiled – ‘Would you start the car for me, please?’

  ‘’Course, m’m.’ He dropped the rake and came over, striding fast. The doors of the shed were already open and she climbed up into the driver’s seat. When the car was started she said, ‘Thank you, Sam,’ and drove out, and away.

  Dr Deerfield’s white-painted door bore a brass plate, reading Dr Charles S. Deerfield, M.D. and, below that, Alienist. It was closed but not locked, and she let herself in. He was working at his desk in the corner behind the couch where, he had told her, his patients lay, while he tried to find the roots of their problems; or rather, as he had often explained, tried to get them to identify those roots for themselves.

  He stood up and came toward her with arms outstretched. She held him off, bending her back – ‘Charles, we’ve got to end this.’

  He paused then, eyeing her quizzically – ‘You’ve said that before.’

  ‘I know … but I mean it … it doesn’t make me happy, the way it used to. Nothing does.’

  Gently he lifted her veil, saying, ‘Not even the sherry?’

  She shook her head, ‘No …’ It was no use. She just would not come here again. She closed her eyes. But this time, this last time … Her lips parted softly as his pressed down on hers, and she felt his body firm against her, hardening more at the groin, the male staff pressing against the material of her skirt, ready to pierce her. She groaned involuntarily, and tried to say something; but his mouth was insistent, and she was leaning back in his arms, stumbling. The edge of the couch was behind her knees and she half fell, half lay back on it. She opened her eyes … this was the moment she liked to see for herself … him bending over, pulling up her skirt till it was bunched round her waist, taking off her drawers, pulling them down. She raised her buttocks, breathing fast …

  Five minutes later he rose, wiped his genitals with his handkerchief and sat down beside her, stroking her hair – ‘That was good, yes?’ She nodded. His hand wandered to her pubis and stroked the tight blonde curls there – ‘So, nothing works any more?’

  She said wearily, ‘No. And I won’t come here again, Charles.’ She got up, pulled on her drawers and let her skirt fall. ‘That was the last time.’ Her head swam momentarily and she stumbled and almost fell. Charles said, ‘Ah, you had a few little drinks before you came?’

  She said, ‘Yes … Why did I let you seduce me?’

  He was about to answer flippantly when he paused, and considered, and said slowly, ‘Because I represented danger. Which I no longer do. I have become like Johnny to you … safe, boring. But I think I have something for you that will be more exciting than sherry ever was … more exciting even than making love, the first time.’

  She listened, eager in spite of herself. What on earth could he mean?

  He said, ‘Next time Johnny goes away for the day, warn me and come here early.’

  But what … ?’

  ‘Release from all your worries – not as sure as death, but much more pleasant … a trip to the Moon. You’ll love it … Heroin.’

  It was hard work. The sweat formed steadily under Alice’s mob cap and dri
pped into her eyes and down her cheeks. Mustn’t think of it as sweat, she told herself, half smiling – horses sweat, gentlemen perspire, ladies merely glow. But this wasn’t ladies’ work, standing at a long table filling 18-pounder shells with amatol from buckets. It was a messy business and all the time cleaners were swabbing the cement floor to lay the dust that formed when spilled amatol – trinitrotoluene stabilized with ammonium nitrate – dried off back to its natural powdered state. On the table at which she and a score of other women worked were boxes of transit plugs, wooden hammers, and little cotton exploder bags already filled with powdered TNT. As she filled each projectile with its high explosive amatol, Alice, and every other woman working at that table, tucked in its exploder bag and screwed in its transit plug, which would be replaced at the actual firing site by the proper nose fuse … Barrows and trolleys, rubber-wheeled, passed, loaded with completed shells and pulled by sweating men. Outside the plant doors armoured lorries waited to take the shells to ammunition trains, loading at Hedlington railway goods yard, which would take them to Ordnance Depots scattered round the south of England, or direct to the Channel ports, for loading in ships and onward transit to the Western Front, where they would be destroyed … and destroy.

  All the women working in the plant had to wear rubber-soled shoes; no jewellery was allowed, of any kind, not even a ring or one of the new lady’s wristwatches; no other metal object could be worn or carried. When the women reached the plant for work they went first to a dressing room where they took off their outer clothing and put on, instead, over their underwear, khaki-trousered overalls, buttoning to the neck, a blue mob cap entirely containing their hair, and thin rubber gloves. There was only one naked light in the plant – in the canteen, where the workers could buy one cigarette at a time, to be smoked in the canteen itself. The amatol was melted purely by steam brought in by pipes to the various loading chambers through hundreds of feet of lagged piping from the boiler room, in a separate building. The loading chambers had strong walls and flimsy roofs, so that any blast would be funnelled upward, not outward.

  Alice had only been working a week, but still, toward the end of each day she not only felt tired, but had the beginnings of a headache. It was so today, and she found herself wondering how long to six o’clock and the end of her shift. There was no clock in any of the loading chambers, to give the workers no temptation to look up from their tasks, and so perhaps allow a shell case to go unfilled. Around her she heard the muttered gossiping of the women: that was forbidden, since there was supposed to be no talking except such as was called for by the work. But Bob Stratton didn’t seem to care, so the various shop foremen and forewomen didn’t enforce the rule, either … ‘proper scragger that Agnes Chittle is’ … ‘So I told her she wasn’t my forewoman, strite I did, the old miaow!’ … ‘Where’s Bessie today? ’Aven’t seen ’er since the dinner whistle. Is she sick?’ – ‘Nah, aht on the pigtrot, if yer arsk me.’

  It was difficult to concentrate for eight hours on end, with a lunch break, on work as repetitive and unrewarding as this. Most of the other women working here were younger than she … naturally, for most women of her age were married and by now occupied with the care of children and a house. And they were mostly of the lower class – again, naturally, for the upper class being better educated – though often only through governesses, and in such skills as French poetry, watercolouring, and flower arrangement – looked for war work suited to their talents: they became nurses, drove staff cars and ambulances, or organized other women … as she herself had done, she acknowledged, when she had been running a Tipperary Room and her House Parties. She liked her fellow workers, and had learned much from them, even within the week, about courage and determination. After the whistle went at the end of the shift, many of the women headed for the nearest pub and had a drink before going home – usually a port and lemon, sometimes a small gin, often a tankard of porter. Alice had never been in a pub in her life till now; and she was beginning to enjoy those evening visits, and look forward to them. The women were so like men in that hour – voices raised, singing, back slapping … My Bob’s been made Leading Seaman … Fifteen shillings they fined ’er, it’s a bleeding shyme … In ’ospital six months and them doctors ready to bury ’er every day, then she ups and walks out… No, they never married … Thirty-six hours I was, with me first, and no doctor – lost her, poor little mite …

  The whistle on the roof started its shrill blare and a foreman came down the aisles. ‘Six o’clock, six o’clock! Tidy up, tidy up!’

  Alice stooped to scrape up some amatol she had spilled on the table and took it, in the carton provided, to the bin at the end of the room; then back to her place, tidied her piece of table, and joined the crowd of other women going towards the exit doors.

  Ten minutes later she was walking out of the main gate, thinking of the lemonade she would have at the Star and Garter up the road. A woman and a man were standing beside the factory gate, in the road, shouting and waving pamphlets. ‘Stop the war! Join the Conscientious Objectors! Stop the slaughter of your brothers, husbands, fathers!’ She paused, listening. She recognized the man at once as Bert Gorse. He used to work in the factory when it made motor cars, then he’d gone to work for Richard and then there’d been a scandal, and pictures in the papers, because he had shot off his own big toe to avoid military service. And the woman: ah, it was Naomi’s friend from Cambridge, Rachel Cowan, who had spent the night in gaol with Naomi for allegedly assaulting the police outside the barracks.

  ‘Stop the war! Stop the slaughter in France! … Come to the meeting tonight … seven o’clock, outside the Town Hall!’

  Rachel’s voice was shrill and carried far. Few of the women workers took a pamphlet, several spitting on the ground at the feet of the agitators. Alice went up to the woman and took a pamphlet. She said, ‘You are Rachel Cowan, aren’t you? I got you out of the police station last spring.’

  The other woman said grudgingly, ‘I remember.’

  Alice raised her voice, ‘Naomi’s in London with the Women’s Volunteer Motor Drivers. She’s well.’

  Rachel said, ‘I’m glad to hear it. Tell her … Oh, don’t bother. She knows … Stop the war! Stop the slaughter! Come to the meeting!’

  Alice passed on, as a woman behind her shouted, ‘Shut yer trap, ye dirty bitch! ’Ow dare you, while our men’s fighting out there?’

  ‘But don’t you see?’ Rachel cried, ‘we’re trying to …’ Alice heard the woman behind her spit, then an arm hooked into hers, and the same voice said, ‘Come and ’ave a drop of stout with me, luv. Need to wash the taste of them shit-eating bastards out of our mouths, eh?’

  The Star and Garter was full to overflowing when they forced their way into the public – like rugby football players, Alice thought; and who could have imagined she’d ever be shoving like this, giggling, arms linked with her friend’s, whom she’d never seen before, both pushing together, other women laughing, shouting. ‘Two ’arf pints milk stout,’ the woman yelled. ‘No, make it pints, ducks.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t …’ Alice began.

  ‘’Course you can! Thirsty work, filling them bleeding shells.’ She leaned over two other women and took the pints, black filled, foam topped, from the barmaid. ‘’Ere … down the ’atch! Where’s your old tin can?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  The woman looked at her more closely, and said, ‘Ah, you’re a proper miaow, ain’t yer? I asked, where’s yer old man, yer husband?’

  ‘I’m Alice Rowland,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘Cor stone the crows!’ her companion exclaimed. ‘Mr Harry’s daughter? Never expected to be ’aving a drink with the likes of you.’

  Alice raised her huge glass, ‘Well, here we are anyway. Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you, miss!’ The two women drank. Alice could not get the picture of Rachel Cowan and Bert Gorse out of her mind. Perhaps she should go to the meeting and at least hear what they had t
o say. The war had become so dreadful, the casualty lists quite unbelievable. She had heard it whispered that the British Army had lost 60,000 men killed and wounded on the first day of the Somme battle – sixty thousand in one day! And that battle was still raging, three and a half months later.

  Her companion said, ‘’Course, I wish the men was ’ome. It’s lonely back ’ere for us women, ain’t it? ’Tain’t right, some’ow … but we don’t want ’em back and they don’t want to come back till we’ve shown the bleeding ’Uns wot’s wot and ’oos ’oo, eh? … Miss, look, there’s a pal of mine, Jimmy Pierson, ’e’s an up’olsterer. Married, of course, but ’is wife don’t come to the pub with ’im … Jimmy!’ She raised her voice – ‘Come ’ere!’ The man was small and alert-looking. He had been talking to another man, taller, darker, wearing spectacles, rather pale of face. Both were in their forties, Alice thought, and so safe from conscription.

  The one addressed as Jimmy bussed Alice’s companion heartily on the cheek, and said, ‘’Ello, ducks … This is my friend, Dave Cowell … Mister David Cowell, M.A., I’d ’ave you know.’

  The other man smiled, a little shyly. ‘I’m a schoolmaster.’ He looked at Alice, and the other woman quickly said, ‘This is Miss Alice Rowland.’

  The schoolmaster said, ‘I thought I recognized you. You came to the school with your father once, when he was giving away prizes.’