by John Masters
‘And me with only one arm and all. God only knows what sort of a job I’ll be able to get when the war’s over.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I can work.’
‘Not if you have bairns to look after … not with my bairns, you won’t.’
‘We’ll find something.’
‘You’ll write to your mother, then … best, take a forty-eight and go and see her, and tell her. I’ll write to your father.’ She made a gesture of dissent, but he said firmly, ‘It must be done right, Virginia. If I was a toff, we might elope or something, but I’m not going to have any of your family saying “That soldier ran away with our Virginia for her money.” Besides, it’s the right thing to do. They’re your father and mother … Then, when it’s settled and agreed to, we’ll get married in church, and you’ll have a guard of honour of sergeants and bombardiers of the Royal Regiment.’
She said apprehensively, ‘But what if Daddy or Mummy say no?’
‘They won’t,’ he said confidently.
Ruth Hoggin sat beside Miss Plummer, the elocution teacher, in the day nursery of the big house, Launcelot squirming on a high chair across the table from them. He was wearing a velveteen suit with knee breeches and white socks, and patent leather shoes with a single pearl button fastening the cross strap.
‘How now brown cow,’ Miss Plummer said.
‘How now brown cow,’ Launcelot repeated. Ruth beamed with pride.
‘Rainy plain.’
‘Rain…’
Ruth cut in, ‘Miss Plummer said “Rainy plain,” Launcelot.’
Launcelot yawned and looked out of the window and fidgeted on his chair.
‘Try again, Launcelot,’ Miss Plummer said, ‘say “rainy.”’
‘Riney.’
‘No, Launcelot, rainy. Say that.’
‘Rainy. Look, old Sharpies, up tree.’ The little boy jumped down and ran to the open window. There he peered out, on tiptoe, waving one hand frantically at the old gardener, twenty feet up an elm tree on a long ladder.
Ruth said severely, ‘Come back, Launcelot, and sit down. You’ll never learn if you don’t pay attention and then what will they think of you at Eton College?’
Miss Plummer muttered in a low voice, ‘We must remember he’s only two and a half, Mrs Hoggin. He is really very advanced for his age.’
Launcelot came back unwillingly and climbed up into his chair. Miss Plummer said, ‘Say the words after me, Launcelot … “High.”’
‘High.’
‘Butter.’
‘Bu’er.’
‘Butter. Sounds the Ts, Launcelot.’
‘Butt-ter.’
‘Better, but not quite right … What?’ She sounded the H clearly.
‘Wot … old Sharples fall’s bloody noggin!’
Again Launcelot rushed to the window. The gardener teetered momentarily on his ladder, but recovered himself. Ruth said, ‘He uses such awful language … well, you know his father didn’t have any proper education and Launcelot picks it up … though, mind, Mr Hoggin speaks much better than he used to, thanks to you. But he still swears … he forgets, that’s it.’
‘Quite, Mrs Hoggin. I think it would be best if I took Launcelot for a litle walk now … just the two of us,’ she added pointedly as Ruth made to get up as though to accompany them. ‘He needs to concentrate on one person, one thing … not try to please his mother as well as hear what I am trying to teach him.’
Miss Plummer collected Launcelot and went out and down the stairs. Ruth followed more slowly, and, ignoring Miss Meiklejohn’s startled look, walked past her desk into Bill’s office. He glanced up – ‘Saw Launcelot going out just now … I’d have been torn limb from limb if I’d ’a walked out in clothes like those, when I was his age.’
‘That was different,’ she said. ‘Bill, we must have my mother to live with us.’
Bill rose slowly behind his big desk, ‘Your mother! What the bleeding ’ell do you think …?’
‘She is all but crippled. Nellie’s leaving to join the W.R.N.S. Ethel’s going back to London, and Mother doesn’t want to go there.’
‘She hates me, I’m dirt to her, the scum of the earth.’
‘Well, you used to use such awful language, and had nasty friends. Now it’s different. You’re an important man, and well off. And this is our house, not hers.’
‘But…’ Hoggin said helplessly.
‘We’ve got to,’ Ruth said firmly. ‘It’s a daughter’s duty to look after her mother and father when they can’t look after themselves, and that’s what I’m going to do.’
She went out, closing the door behind her. Bill stared after her, then muttered, ‘ ’Cor stone the fucking crows,’ and picked up the balance sheet of another H.U.S.L. shop.
The Earl of Swanwick stood by the open French window of the blue drawing room of Walstone Park, hands in pockets, looking out over the sweep of lawn, the heavy trees of the Deer Park, half a dozen grazing fallow does with two bucks, and his elder daughter, Lady Barbara Durand-Beaulieu, in the driver’s seat of the little go cart she used to run small errands in the village. He said gloomily, ‘This offensive at Ypres is getting nowhere … for thousands of casualties. Bad as the Somme.’
‘How do you know, Roger?’ the countess said, without looking up from the book she was reading, Economic Housekeeping in Wartime.
The earl said, ‘Heard it at the Carlton yesterday … someone had heard it from his wife, who’d heard it from the wife of a Cabinet Minister.’
‘They should remember what Kitchener said,’ the countess said, looking up now. ‘He didn’t tell politicians anything about war operations because, he said, if he did they all immediately told their wives, except Asquith, who told other men’s wives.’
‘Ha! Got rid of him, anyway … Lloyd George at least knows what he wants to do, and does it … damned swine … I worry about Cantley.’.
‘We’ve been lucky so far,’ she said. ‘Since Arthur was killed none of our nephews have gone. And Cantley’s not been even wounded.’
‘The title would go to that damned cowboy in Canada,’ the earl said with deepened gloom, ‘and he hasn’t got enough money to keep up this place even if he doesn’t want to stay with his cows or steers or whatever they have on ranches in Alberta. … Wish Cantley would get married. A Yankee heiress … or the daughter of one of our beer barons. They all have pots of money … I sometimes wonder if he, hrrmph, likes women.’
‘He liked Florinda Gorse,’ the countess said grimly.
‘And now she has several million,’ the earl said disgustedly. ‘What the hell’s England coming to? … Perhaps we could marry Helen off, but she’ll never catch anyone if she stays at High Staining dressed in breeches and a cowman’s coat and big boots, reeking of cow dung. My God, she must be working twenty hours a day now, with John in gaol.’
‘She was looking very pale under that dreadful suntan the last time we saw her,’ the countess said. ‘And she was obviously sad that Boy Rowland had had to go back to the trenches … She’s in love with him.’
‘Boy? Good God! He doesn’t have any money … well, they’re not paupers and Richard’s going to make a great deal out of that aircraft company, but John won’t get much of it, if any…’
‘Whatever Boy has will have to be enough, if they decide to get married,’ she said. ‘We can not stand in the way of her happiness just for the sake of keeping up the Park, or preserving our way of life … When will this terrible war end, Roger? How long, how long?’
‘Until Hoggin has made another five million,’ the earl said viciously, ‘and Sir Launcelot is at Eton!’
The countess said nothing, returning to her book, trying to read the small print through blurred eyes.
Wilfred Bentley sat across the long table from Rachel in the big room at Hedlington Gaol where prisoners were permitted to receive visitors, at stated times, under the eyes of warders, standing by the room’s two doors. Farther along the table, beyond two pickpockets and a burglar, Jo
hn Rowland was being visited by his wife, Louise. They did not seem to be saying much, Rachel thought, just looking unhappily at each other.
Wilfred spoke in a low voice – ‘As you suggested, I visited Tim Vallance in the hospital – Lady Blackwell’s. He has a bullet through the shoulder, not very serious, they say. He was telling us it’s really bad out there now … they’re losing thousands of men every day in futile attacks near Ypres. The men aren’t being killed by German bullets and shells, a lot of them are being drowned in the mud … drowned! Vallance spent four days and nights in a shellhole, wounded, and when our attacks finally moved past the shellhole and they found him, it took six men an hour to pull him out of the mud!’
Rachel said, ‘They can’t keep all this secret. More and more men are going to be coming home to the hospitals and the convalescent depots. We must make them realize that now is the time to strike … refuse orders, refuse to go back.’
Bentley said, ‘If only we could get enough men to do that, at the same time! Otherwise, the few who do will be court martialled and shot, and …’
Bert Gorse had come in, unnoticed by either of them, and was standing behind Bentley. He had heard what had been said, and cut in, ‘Might be best if we get hold of a lot of soldiers on leave or sick here, and fix a date which they can pass on to the blokes in France, so on that day everyone downs their rifles – except perhaps to shoot their officers and sergeants first. It’s time to stop the talking. What we want is mutiny in the Army and the Navy.’
Bentley said, ‘I don’t know whether we all want that, Bert. Russell and others are doing something in what I think is the right direction. Look at this.’ From his pocket he drew out a pamphlet and held it up so that Rachel, behind the bars, could read it. The heading, in thick black type, was:
AN OFFICER FROM THE TRENCHES SPEAKS
by Captain S. Sassoon M.C.
[Rachel read on] I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to win it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, upon which I entered as a war of defence, and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this War should have been so clearly stated, as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuate us would now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the War but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they do not have sufficient imagination to realize. [Signed] Siegfried Sassoon, Captain, Royal Welch Fusiliers.
‘I know him,’ Bentley said, ‘or, at least, I’ve met him … in a theatre last December.’
‘If he’s an officer, he’d be one of the blokes we ought to be shooting,’ Bert said.
Bentley said, ‘You – we – would be very foolish to shoot Sassoon, or men like him. They’re on our side.’
‘Not on mine,’ Bert said. ‘On stopping the war, p’raps, but that’s not really what we’re thinking of. We’re thinking of after the war.’ He finished abruptly, ‘I got work to do.’ He at once turned back – ‘’Fore I go, I meant to tell you – Dave Cowell’s been sacked.’
Rachel paled, ‘Sacked? From the school? What for?’
‘Letting you use his clasroom for one of your meetings, of course.’
‘That’s a disgrace!’ Rachel said. ‘That’s … persecution!’
‘That’s it,’ Bert said. ‘That’s just what it is. Persecution. Now p’raps you understand better why we say everything’s got to be changed in this country, not just the war ended.’ He went out, past the hard, neutral scrutiny of the gaolers guarding the door.
Rachel said, ‘They really are swine.’
Bentley said, ‘I don’t know Cowell, but perhaps he’s the sort of man who could be useful to us.’
‘If we could find a job for him. He has a wife to support.’
Then neither said anything for a while. After the long silence, both staring at each other, Bentley said, ‘Did you get my last letter? It should have arrived the day you were arrested. Bert should have brought it to you.’
She shook her head.
Bentley said, ‘I think he opened it … destroyed it…’
Rachel said, ‘I used to love him. Or thought I did. We were lovers, for a time … I feel sorry for him, sometimes, but…’
‘You have no other place to go?’
She shook her head; adding, after a while, ‘I have to live in Hedlington. We don’t have much of an organization here, but it’s something, and I have to look after it … two, really, the Socialist Party and the No-Conscription Fellowship. Dave Cowell’s a Socialist, but he didn’t belong to the N.C.F – just thought we ought to be given a meeting place, in fairness.’
He said slowly, ‘I have nothing to keep me in Winchester, except five other members of the Fellowship, and they can find another chairman. You’re my teacher, my guru in socialism. Could I come to Hedlington and help you?’
She said, ‘Yes … you could … it would be wonderful, Wilfred … really wonderful.’
She smiled at him then, through tears, and he smiled back at her. There was much more to be said between them, of course, and they both knew it; but the visitors’ room in Hedlington Gaol was not the place to say it.
Christopher Cate and Isabel Kramer sat opposite each other in the 1st class compartment, gazing into each other’s eyes. Their luggage was on the rack, neatly labelled as belonging to Mr and Mrs Cate, temporarily of the Mersey Hotel, Liverpool. The sole other occupant of the compartment was a tall, heavily built man, reading The Times. They had both recognized the 17th Earl of Derby, currently Secretary of State for War, obviously going home to mend political fences in his native Lancashire, but they did not impose on him. Ahead, the train engine was labouring heavily up the Camden Bank, a banker puffing from behind. Isabel’s eyes shone behind the veil, a half-smile warmed the curve of her lips. She made a moue at Christopher, of a kiss. He glanced at Lord Derby, but the nobleman had not noticed.
The train plunged into a tunnel and the compartment was filled with an acrid cloud of coal smoke. The roar of the wheels on the rails and the clacking over the joints grew very loud. The lights came on overhead and Lord Derby pulled his window closed, muttering, ‘Hope you don’t mind … just for a few minutes.’
‘Not a bit,’ Christopher said.
They sat in silence, hammered by sound until the train burst out into the light. A station passed … steps going up to an overbridge, advertisements on each step – Iron Jelloids, Iron Jelloids, Veno’s Lightning Cough Cure … Do you use Pear’s soap? … A boon and a blessing to men, the Earl and the Owl and the Waverley Pen … a big ink blot, Stephen’s Ink … The earl reopened the window. The engine ahead shrieked long and loud. The one behind had dropped off.
Christopher remembered something, felt in his pocket and handed Isabel a letter. ‘From Laurence. Came yesterday,’ he muttered. ‘Forgot to show it to you.’ Mustn’t let on, of course, that they had met at Euston a quarter of an hour before the train time.
She produced a pair of spectacles from her handbag, raised her veil, and read. At length she handed it back saying, ‘He’s surviving, at least … better than I feared he would, to tell the truth.’
‘He hates it, though,’ Christopher said. ‘He’s trying to hide it, but he hates it really – the dirt, the smells … same as Boy, only more so. I wonder if he should have gone into the
Navy, really. We did talk about it once, long ago.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘but … perhaps he should have stayed at home. Look what was in my mail this morning.’ She held out a pamphlet. Christopher read the heading: AN OFFICER FROM THE TRENCHES SPEAKS, by Captain S. Sassoon, M.C. He read on; at the end, he handed the pamphlet back to Isabel, saying, ‘I feel sorry for him, but I don’t think he’s right.’
Lord Derby lowered his newspaper and said, ‘I could not help overhearing your conversation, sir, madam … and seeing the heading of that pamphlet, reflected in my glasses … You have a son in the trenches?’
‘Yes, Lord Derby.’
The earl took the recognition as no more than his right, which it was. There were precious few people in Britain who had not seen a hundred press photographs of that burly well-paunched figure with the face and rolled neck of a jovial butcher, a bowler hat a size too small for him perched on his head. The bowler was in the rack above his head now.
‘This Sassoon has an excellent record … great gallantry. He has a Military Cross, as you see … was put in for a Victoria Cross … but he’s been got hold of by the No-Conscription Fellowship people. That letter was polished up by Bertrand Russell.’
‘The philosopher?’ Isabel asked.
‘Yes, madam,’ Derby growled, ‘and traitor, if you ask me. They wanted to use Sassoon for their own purposes, and tried to do so. But fortunately another young officer of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, Robert Graves, intervened through highly placed friends, and we were able to have Sassoon sent to a convalescent home rather than have to court martial him.’
‘Graves?’ Christopher said. ‘There was a boy called Graves at Charterhouse when my son first went there. I wonder if this is the same one.’
‘I couldn’t say,’ the earl said. ‘Just thought I’d let you know that Sassoon is being used by people who want us to lose the war.’
Cate said, ‘I see. But he does raise a point. What are our war aims? Is it possible that we could now achieve what we went to war for, by negotiation?’
The earl said heavily, ‘Not a chance sir. After so much blood’s been spilled, neither side’s going to give up without getting revenge.’