Heart of War

by John Masters

  The earl puffed on his cigar – ‘With so many shops, surely you will have great difficulty finding enough assistants. Heaven knows we do here.’

  ‘It’s not the same, my lord. Girls nowadays don’t realize what an honour and what an education it is to work for the Earl and Countess of Swanwick – but they’ll work for me, because I’ll pay them well, and our shops are all in the cities.’

  ‘All women?’ the earl said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Every last one of ’em. We can’t get many men, so I thought, ’ell, we won’t have any. Less arguing, see?’

  ‘The managers, too?’ the earl gasped.

  ‘Most of them,’ Hoggin said emphatically. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many women we had applying when we advertised … women who could read, write, do algebra even. Some of ’em had been running the catering for hospitals, factories, hotels. We’ll get them, my lord, don’t you worry… We won’t have no bleeding ladies, though, begging your pardon, my lord … Theres ladies can run anything – look at the way Her Ladyship runs this place – but they generally don’t know much about saving the farthings, and they like the best things … best food … best bread … best eggs … We’re not going to sell the best, just the cheapest.’

  His Lordship looked with distaste at Hoggin and said, ‘That’s all you’re aiming for, in all the H.U.S.L. shops – just the cheapest, without regard to quality?’

  Hoggin said, ‘We’re after the people what before didn’t buy much in the groceries at all … didn’t buy tinned beans, but fresh ones and cooked ’em themselves … didn’t buy tinned meat … made their own jam and marmalade … Every one of our stores is going to look the same, and everything’s going to be in the same place, so the women’ll know where to go even in another town. There’s going to be big signs: Tinned Meat here, Tinned Soups here, Tinned Fruit here – now mind a lot of those will be our own brand, Hoggin’s Jam, Hoggin’s Bully, and they’ll always be the cheapest … An’ there’ll be a counter for meat, and another for fish, and another for veg and fruit, an’ p’raps another for things women are always running out of in the kitchen, like matches, soap, hand towels, knives, ladles, so we’ll ’ave a little bit of hardware, too. They’ve got a whole chain of stores like this over in America – call ’em Piggly Wiggly.’

  ‘Good God!’ the earl said.

  ‘An’ we won’t be buying a gross of tins at a time, like Wardle did in Hedlington before I bought him out – but five thousand cases … ’cos we’ll buy for all the H.U.S.L. shops from a central office, and distribute in our vans.’

  His Lordship said, ‘I wish you luck … though I can’t honestly say that the Countess or the housekeeper will ever patronize any of your shops.’

  Hoggin carefully rested his cigar in the ashtray set on a weighted green band astride the leather arm of the chair. ‘You won’t have to buy anything, my lord … but I ’ope you’ll be seen and photographed visiting some of our stores, because I’d like you to accept the post of Chairman of the company’s board of directors.’

  The earl said, ‘Well, Hoggin, that’s very …’

  ‘Two thousand a year screw … stipend,’ Hoggin said. ‘Plus one percent of the net profit after taxes – when we make one … That’ll come to a lot more than two thousand bradburies or I’m a Dutchman … but we won’t make real profits till 1918, I think.’

  ‘And you’ll be …?’

  ‘Managing Director, twenty thousand a year, plus ten percent of the profit … You won’t ’ave to do a thing, my lord, except visit the stores … have your name on all our paper and advertisements, “The Right Honourable the Earl of Swanwick, K.G.” It’ll look good!’

  ‘I haven’t got the Garter!’ the earl snapped. It was a sore point with him. His grandfather had worn the blue ribbon, all the more valued because there was ‘no damned merit about it’; but succeeding sovereigns had not seen fit to make either his father, or himself, members of England’s oldest order of chivalry.

  He said, ‘I don’t know, Hoggin … It’s trade, after all.’

  Hoggin swore under his breath, picked up the cigar, carefully relit it, creating a vile stink, and said, ‘My lord, I know you’ve been having trouble with taxes, rents, expenses of all kinds. I’ve been proud to help you ’cos I thin you’re a great English gentleman. Where would we be without the likes of you? No better than Frogs or Dagoes!’ he declaimed. ‘I paid for the repairs to the roof here.’

  ‘I know,’ the earl muttered.

  ‘I been contributing to the ’Ounds … supporting the Wire Fund … making personal loans …’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you’ve ’elped me, knowing the people you do in Parliament. You did a lot to make that bloody silly parliamentary committee see sense … There’s a lot of lords with their names on the paper of companies – breweries, soap factories, sausage makers, everything. And the title still means a lot. It means respectability, my lord! It’s worth money.’

  ‘I know,’ the earl said. ‘I’ve always despised those fellows.’ He shook his head angrily. He still despised the idea, but the blighter was really trying to do him a good turn. Two thousand a year wouldn’t solve his debts, but it would help, and if H.U.S.L. expanded successfully, there’d be more. He said, ‘All right, Hoggin. Where is the head office going to be?’

  ‘In my house for the time being. We’ve only got the one baby, and the place has ten bedrooms, so we’re going to use them as offices … and there are four big rooms downstairs.’

  The earl nodded and thought, now he’ll leave and I can interview that fellow who answered my advertisement for a gamekeeper: he could hardly be worse than the old fool he’d got now. And then he’d ride over to Beighton and find out what in blazes was giving the bitches diarrhoea, and …

  But Hoggin said, ‘There’s another matter, my lord.’

  ‘What’s that?’ the earl said. His mind wandered again. Have to find a cheaper source of meat for the hounds … horsemeat was getting too expensive, too much demand for it – a lot of it certainly being shipped to France for the Frogs to eat, bloody barbarians.

  ‘The missus and I would be honoured if you and Her Ladyship would honour us by partaking of tea with us, some time before Christmas.’

  The earl was startled … tea? with Hoggin? The fellow must be joking. But Hoggin said, ‘How about a week from today, then? You’ll let me know? Thank you, my lord, thank you! One more thing … I want to make a contribution to the government, to the war effort – a considerable contribution …’The beady eyes were fixed on His Lordship’s now: the voice had dropped and taken on a rasping edge … ‘Big enough to make sure it receives proper recognition. When I’m ready, I ’ope I can count on your advice as to ’ow, how to do it, so it hachieves my hobject.’

  Swanwick followed his guest to the front door and watched him climb into his Rolls Royce and be driven away by his liveried chauffeur. Then he returned to the library and sank heavily into his chair. He had hardly been able to believe his ears. Hoggin, after a knighthood! He began to shake with laughter – his first genuine laughter for years – at the ridiculousness of the idea: then the laughter turned bitter, and faded away, as he realized that these days the idea was anything but ridiculous, with enough money to back it. Sir Bill Hoggin! Bloody farce! It was beginning to look as though the British nobility was at last going under, after so many centuries, in a sea of taxes and ridicule … Lloyd George had a huge private fund he didn’t account to anyone for, but he himself didn’t know the Prime Minister well, and cordially disliked what he did know. He’d speak to Balfour, who was a gentleman, and Balfour could approach Lloyd George, on Hoggin’s behalf.

  Hoggin was sitting behind a big old-fashioned desk in what had once been the morning room of The Yews, on Gorston Road in Hedlington, two houses up from Laburnum Lodge, the residence of Mr Harry Rowland, M.P. for Mid-Scarrow. A thin gloomy man with a long face and protruding teeth stood in front of him, his hands washing each other with invisible soap. Hoggin sai
d, ‘Well, the Parliamentary Inquiry’s dead, old Bumley’s yelling that I’m the greatest public benefactor since whoever put in the drains, but we’re not out of the wood yet. There’s still the police.’

  Milner said, ‘I know. I’m sure they’re trying to find out where I got my extra money from.’

  ‘You won it on the geegees and they can’t prove different.’

  ‘Anyone can tell ’em that if I put as much as a tanner on a horse, it falls down at the start.’

  ‘They can’t prove anything. You keep your mouth shut … And from now on everything’s going to be respectable … no more wide boy tricks for me. You make more money straight. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true.’

  ‘You’d better hold a job for me in one of your stores,’ Milner said. ‘They’ve been looking for a chance to give me the sack ever since those receipts disappeared from the condemned food files.’

  Hoggin looked at him for a while, silent, then said, ‘You give me an idea, Milner, me boy. You’re coming into H.U.S.L. as General Inspector. You know all the tricks. Now you’ll see that no one plays them on me – none of the managers, the clerks, the suppliers, no one. You’ll be watch dog, all the way down the line, from the docks to the stores.’

  Milner’s habitual gloom lightened – ‘Thanks, Hoggin. Just tell me when to start … How much?’

  ‘What are you getting now?’

  ‘Nine pounds fourteen a week.’

  ‘Fifteen quid – and a percentage of what you catch – fraud, theft, embezzlement … Get out now, the Heinz salesman is waiting.’

  Milner went out. Miss Meiklejohn, the secretary, who had a little desk in the hall outside, with typewriter and telephone, ushered in the head salesman in Britain for the Heinz Company.

  Hoggin said, ‘Sit down … Name’s Hansberg, right?’

  ‘Richard H. Hansberg,’ the other said in a strong Midwestern American accent – ‘I’ve received your letter and brochure about H.U.S.L. We at Heinz will be happy to supply you with anything in our line – in spite of the German submarine campaign.’

  Hoggin said, ‘What discount will you give me on orders of five thousand cases at a time?’

  The salesman was fiftyish, with pince-nez and a rosy complexion that yet managed to look unhealthy. He said, ‘The Heinz Company does not give discounts. Our prices to wholesalers are already as low as a reasonable profit margin will permit.’

  Hoggin said, ‘How much for five thousand cases of baked beans then? Delivered to our warehouse.’

  ‘Where’s that, Mr Hoggin?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. Either Birmingham or South London. We’ve got our eye on a couple of places.’

  Mr Hansberg said, ‘The price today would be four and a penny a case …’ He looked at the ceiling a moment – ‘A thousand and twenty pounds, sixteen shillings and seven-pence.’

  ‘Nine hundred even,’ Hoggin said.

  Mr Hansberg said, ‘I am sorry, Mr Hoggin, but it is against company policy to …’

  ‘Then don’t waste my bloody time!’ Hoggin roared.

  ‘I know where I can get baked beans at three and sevenpence the case.’

  ‘Not as good as ours, Mr Hoggin.’

  ‘I’m not after good stuff,’ Hoggin said. ‘Get out!’

  Mr Hansberg rose to his feet, looking as though he had walked into a brick wall, turned, and went out, with head bowed.

  Miss Meiklejohn came in – ‘Mr Blossom, from the Acme Boot Factory.’

  Hoggin stood up and advanced with hand outstretched – ‘Ah, Mr Blossom … Sit down … Care for a spot of whisky? Quite, quite … Well, we’re both busy men, I know, so let’s get to business. The plain fact is, we want to buy your factory, tear out all that you’ve got inside, and make the buildings into warehouses.’

  ‘That’ll be a fairly expensive proposition,’ Mr Blossom said, ‘though you’d get a good price for the machinery.’

  ‘Just scrap-iron rates,’ Hoggin said briefly. ‘It’s thirty years out of date. And we’re bidding on the buildings at warehouse rates – so much the cubic foot.’

  Mr Blossom seemed to sag in his chair. ‘But …’ he stammered, ‘we’re a going concern.’

  ‘Going under, more like,’ Hoggin said. ‘You owe the banks near forty thousand quid, and your sales ’ave been dropping for two years – since the war started. And the balance sheets is like what they call a novel, ain’t they – works of imagination?’ He gazed meaningly at Blossom. Blossom looked at the ceiling, the floor, the walls, anywhere but at Hoggin.

  Hoggin spoke more kindly. ‘Look here, Blossom, suppose I slip you ten thousand, in cash. You put it in your pocket, we close the deal, then you resign. Let someone else clear up the mess.’

  After a time Blossom said, ‘All right.’

  Hoggin said, ‘Bring the papers, all ready, a week from today, no, tomorrow week – we’ll sign them, and when you leave you’ll find your little attachy case heavier than when you came in, get it?’

  Mr Blossom nodded and went out. Miss Meiklejohn came in. ‘Your wife wishes to see you, sir.’

  Hoggin said, ‘My wife? Who? … Oh, Ruthie … What the hell does she want? Can’t she see I’m busy?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir,’ said Miss Meiklejohn, sniffing. She was thirty-five and genteel.

  ‘Orright, show her in … Ruthie, what the ’ell do you want, and look sharp about it, I got Mr Hawke of Hawke, Hawke, Snot and Phlegm coming with a lot of contracts.’

  Ruth Hoggin, nee Stratton, stood her ground before the desk. She was small and big busted, and, as Miss Meiklejohn looked refined, Mrs Hoggin looked mousey. She said, ‘When you came home, before lunch, you said you had invited Lord and Lady Swanwick to tea next week. Did they say they would come?’

  ‘They didn’t say no,’ Hoggin said. ‘They’ll come.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she muttered, agitatedly running her hand through her thin hair.

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Well, then I must have a new dress and hat. I don’t have a thing to wear … and I must get my hair done that morning.’

  ‘Wot the hell,’ he began; then, ‘Oh, all right. Go to Jonas and Johnson and get yourself a nice dress an’ hat and gloves and all the rest.’

  Ruth said, ‘I am not going to wear anything from Hedlington. I am going to London … to Barker’s.’

  Hoggin stared at her – ‘Barker’s in Kensington? Why, that’ll cost you…’

  ‘You can afford it,’ she said. ‘I’ll go tomorrow so that I’ll have time to alter the dress a bit if it isn’t a perfect fit. I shall need twenty-five pounds.’

  ‘Twenty-five pounds! Why …!’

  She waited, and at last he opened his wallet and gave her the money, secretly proud of her. He liked people who stood up to him.

  She turned to go but he said, ‘’Arf a mo’ … how’s Launcelot? I haven’t seen him for a week.’

  She said, ‘Well, he’s still asleep when you get up in the morning, and he’s been put to bed when you finish work. He’s all right … a bit thin …’

  ‘I hear him crying a lot, don’t I?’

  ‘He’s teething,’ she said. ‘He only has two more to come in, but they’re giving him trouble. Come up and talk to him now, Bill. You really should.’

  Miss Meiklejohn marched in – ‘Mr Hawke is waiting, sir.’

  Hoggin growled, ‘Let him wait … Tell him I’m going to spend ten minutes with my baby son … No, tell him I’m having a shit, crap, whatever you want to call it, and he’s welcome to join me if he doesn’t want to wait.’

  ‘Really, sir,’ Miss Meiklejohn stammered, and ‘Bill!’ Ruth cried, but Hoggin was out of the door, calling over his shoulder, ‘Come on, Ruthie, I don’t have all day.’

  Bill and Ruth Hoggin stood in the window of the drawing room of The Yews, watching the snow fall with mixed emotions. Ruth was wearing her new dress, floor length, soft purple, of pure silk, with a high collar and a sash of a lighter shade of purple, almo
st heliotrope, and a hat of purple felt, with an ostrich feather dyed the same heliotrope as the organdy sash. Her gloves, halfway up her forearms, were of the same heliotrope. ‘They won’t come,’ she muttered, half to herself. ‘It’s snowing too hard, even if they ever meant to.’

  If they didn’t come, all her work, all the extra cleaning and polishing in the house, the arranging and rearranging of furniture, would have gone for nothing. But, if they didn’t come, she would not have to face the ordeal of entertaining them, knowing she would do something wrong – everything wrong. Why, oh why, did Bill have to invite them?

  Hoggin, standing with hands clasped behind his back, his belly pushing out in front with the gold watch chain curving across it, suffered from no such dichotomy; he hoped that the earl and countess would brave the snow and come. If they didn’t, he would ask them another day; for he was determined to let Hedlington and the world know that he was an intimate of that most noble family.

  At a quarter past four Ruth said, ‘They’re not coming. I wonder they didn’t telephone …’

  Hoggin grunted, and at eighteen minutes past four the maroon-painted Humber with the earl’s coronet on the door swept slowly in through the opened gates, and Hoggin and his wife hurried out into the hall, to stand five paces back from the front door, where Harbinger the butler waited. The moment the bell rang Harbinger swung open both doors, admitting a whistling wind and a flurry of snow that stippled the first ten feet of the hall with white dots and flakes.

  Harbinger turned and announced: ‘The Right Honourable the Earl of Swanwick and the Countess of Swanwick.’

  The Hoggins went forward together, Ruth’s knees shaking. She found herself dropping a curtsy before the gaze of the Countess, while Hoggin bowed from the waist. Harbinger had already taken Lady Swanwick’s fur coat and was helping the earl out of his overcoat. The earl gave the butler his hat and rubbed his hands together – ‘Damned cold out there, Hoggin!’