Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  “Yes, but not in the way you mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “I became pregnant that night—yes. But that wasn’t unlucky in itself. We planned to get married and everything would have been— well, aboveboard. And we’d had what we’d had—this amazing evening of… sensual love. It was only when Wilhelm had to go back to Germany, and then war broke out, accidentally almost, that our luck changed. We didn’t know on the narrow boat what was about to happen. Nobody did. It’s not as if… as if Wilhelm tried to take advantage of me. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  The coffees arrived.

  “But isn’t the result the same?”

  “Not at all, don’t say that! If I’d just gone with Wilhelm for one night, acting like a slut, and got pregnant, yes, it would have been disgraceful, cheap, tawdry—all those things. But Will is the fruit of that night, that beautiful night… when … well, I’ve told you.” She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “When everything was perfect.”

  We both drank our coffees. The waitress brought my whisky.

  “And you’ve not heard from him at all?”

  She lowered her eyes. “No.” A short intake of breath. “I felt sure …” She looked at me. “No.”

  I swallowed. Wilhelm’s photograph was in my wallet, virtually in Sam’s direct line of sight. My own chest heaved. I took a gulp of water to buy time, so I wouldn’t be tempted to blurt out what I knew.

  “What would you like to do tomorrow?”

  She was still drinking her coffee and put down her cup. “You will never guess, never in a month of Sundays. You might have some idea if you knew, as you do know, that I love travel, and the idea of travel, and you might work it out if you knew, as you do know, that we only have tomorrow at our disposal, but—”

  “I’m lost,” I said. “Put me out of my misery.”

  “I enjoyed the play this evening, very much, but I know Stratford all too well. Since you ask, I’d like to spend tomorrow in Birmingham.”

  I was a bit flummoxed. I was very flummoxed. Who ever heard of anyone wanting to go to Birmingham as a tourist? But Sam explained: “I’ve never been, we can do it easily in a day without exhausting Will, it’s a big city, with hundreds of small firms, many helping the war effort, and it’s industrial. I’ve been living in rural peace and seclusion since before the war started and I want to see the grime and the soot, the overcrowding and the slums, the endless factory buildings and the acres of concrete without any trees, and the forest of chimneys spewing black smoke. That’s what’s fighting this war for us. In some ways, it’s as foreign as the Orinoco.”

  So I agreed. We finished our coffees, went upstairs, and, since it was so late, I walked Blanche back to her lodgings. When I returned to the Crown and knocked on the door to Sam and Will’s room, she appeared in her nightdress. It was very thin.

  She held her finger to her lips. “Will’s asleep.” Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed me lightly on the mouth. “What a lovely night, Hal. I love it how I can talk to you, about anything. Even … you know.”

  I left it there, and turned in.

  The Birmingham trip was a surprise, for me at least, and far more interesting than I could have imagined. We couldn’t do too much because we had Will with us, and since neither of us knew the city, I negotiated with a taxi driver at Snow Hill station for him to drive us around for half a day. He thought it was pretty odd that we didn’t want to go to any of the great hotels, or the theater district, or the cathedral, or the museum, or any of the better neighborhoods, but sought out Wilmot and Breedon’s wire factory in Balsall Heath and the British Small Arms depot in Aston. But, once he realized we weren’t joking, he entered into the spirit of things. And, like a true taxi driver, he certainly knew his own city.

  We began at the inland port just off the Bristol Road, where several canals conjoined in a large basin and where there could be found several ship’s chandlers, selling everything from carved tillers, to brass propellers, to ropes of all lengths and thicknesses, to waterproof paint, to paraffin lamps. Will loved all the strange shapes and colors and smells.

  We visited metal foundries in Longbridge, paint factories in Neachells, panel beaters in Acocks Green, the new RAF factory in Castle Bromwich, Saltley Dock, the James Motorcycle works in Harborne, the Waterloo coach works in Selly Oak, and the psychiatric hospital in Rubery.

  We got back to Snow Hill station around midafternoon and found we had to wait about an hour for a train to Stratford, where we would make our connection for Middle Hill. It was going to be a long day, especially for Will, who was already fast asleep.

  There was a barrel-vaulted roof over the station, made of fancy wrought iron and glass, and next to the main platform a restaurant with a chrome contraption that made tea. There were soldiers everywhere. We bought our teas and found a table. Sam stirred sugar into her cup and put her other hand on mine. “What do you think? Do you see now why I wanted to come?”

  “I can see that it’s prosperous—despite the slums and the grime. That it’s full of life, activity, full of things, many of them new things. I would never call it beautiful and I wouldn’t want to live here.”

  She squeezed my hand. “Someone has to live here. Someone has to make the things we live by, fight by.”

  “I know that, Sam. What’s your point?”

  She sipped her tea. “I’m one of four sisters. One is in the theater, one is a gardener, I’m a schoolteacher—only Ruth is involved with the war. Is that right? Seeing everyone here, making guns, ammunition, boots, wire and screws and paint that go into weapons—is teaching enough, close enough, involved enough?”

  “You sound like my sister. Is that why you wanted to come?”

  She sat back. “It was one reason. But Wilhelm’s in the war—he must be. You’ve been in the war and someday soon you’ll go back into it. Is my family doing enough?”

  Now I put my hand on hers. “You can’t take the whole war on your shoulders. Teaching is not a waste. Your sisters are grown up; you can’t think for them.”

  She nodded. “I understand all that, of course I do. But you see my point about travel. Even a short trip like this, even a day out in a new place, a grimy place, a smoky industrial no-man’s-land, an ugly place, gives you a fresh perspective, makes you think—”

  “—and makes you unsettled.”

  “Oh, I’ve been unsettled for a while.”

  I drank more tea.

  “Sam, what if the war lasts a long time? They said at first it would be over by Christmas. It’s about Stalemate already. What if it lasts another year, two … more?”

  She closed her eyes. “I’ve thought about that too, about little else. What about if Wilhelm is in the war—as he must be—and he is killed? What if the school board goes against me and I find I’m out of a job next week?”

  A train was steaming in. People were getting up from their benches. It wasn’t ours.

  Sam looked miserable but visibly tried to brighten. “That could be a blessing in disguise. It would force my hand, force me to change, get more involved in the war.”

  “Do you really want that?” I said. “What about Will? And, in a sense, in a very real sense, you’d be fighting Wilhelm.”

  She was watching a group of children being shepherded onto the train. “It’s a dreadful possibility. But war does that to us. Wilhelm had read that famous German military historian, Clausewitz. Clausewitz fought one war himself on the opposite side to his two brothers. They could have killed each other and it was accepted then. The same is true now. I’m in the same position.” She smiled. “Not that I’m comparing myself to Clausewitz.”

  She placed her hand on mine again. “Don’t mind me. I can talk to you and I like human contact. All our family like touching and feeling; it came from our mother, I think. What I’m really saying is: what a mess, what a mess my life is in, what a mess my emotions are, what a mess my future is, what a jumble my thoughts are. Everyone else is so black and white about this war, bu
t I’m not. How can I be?” She drank some tea. “Which is where you come in.”

  She squeezed my hand again.

  “You must think me terribly self-centered, talking in this way. But… well, it’s been a wonderful two days for me, Hal. Will is a lovely baby but his conversation isn’t much above gurgles and burps and his main interests are food and what happens at the other end of his alimentary canal.” She grinned. “It’s not just that you’ve been a wonderful listener, which you have, but the play last night, and now Birmingham, in all its grimy glory, its sheer filthy usefulness and practicality, which I half-anticipated, has done wonders for me. Strange as it may seem, sitting here in this vast station, surrounded by all this soot and squalor, I feel cleansed. And I have you to thank for that.”

  She lifted my hand and kissed it. “You’ve helped me see that, whatever the school board says, it’s not the end of the world.”

  I didn’t see Sam for a couple of days after our weekend with King Lear and the grime of Birmingham. She said she wanted to spend her evenings preparing for her ordeal before the school board later in the week, so I stayed overnight at the Crown in Stratford and attended two other plays being put on at the Guild Chapel—Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. By Tuesday evening I wasn’t quite as expert on Shakespeare’s tragedies as Sam was, but I was no longer a complete novice.

  In the second play, there was an actress who reminded me very much of Izzy—same hair, similar figure, same high level of energy in her delivery. I couldn’t sleep that night, my thoughts switching between my sister and Sam, so I got up early and revisited the river where we’d walked on our first time together. The swan with the cygnets was still in a bad mood.

  Sam had at least confessed that her life was a mess. That was something from my point of view. From the way she had talked to me, the intimate details she had let surface, her self-absorption, I began to see that she was feeling the strain of living alone with a young child, with no one to share the burden—psychological, financial, practical. And her future was bleak.

  A gust of wind swept in a flurry across the surface of the Avon.

  As for Izzy, she would be arriving at the Front by now. I felt a mild anxiety on her behalf but she, I knew, would be all fired up and excited. I couldn’t help grinning at the river. The Germans had better look out.

  I thought back to our last evening, our dinner at the Crown and the “lecture” she had given me. The news from the war just then was mixed. Five thousand Austrians had been killed in defense of Galicia and the Australians had announced they were going to make munitions to help us. Various schemes to enable British companies to trade with the enemy via China had been exposed and stopped. On the other hand, Venice had been bombed—why on earth had the Germans done that? Poison gas had been used against the Russians, and British losses, so far, the government said, amounted to 258,000. In London a free buffet for soldiers had been installed at London Bridge, Emmeline Pankhurst had held an impassioned meeting about what women could do for the war effort, and there had been a big meeting of children in aid of Serbian relief Concerts were being held at the Aeolian Hall in aid of the French. Several art galleries had organized exhibitions of war art, in aid of the troops.

  That all seemed to emphasize Izzy’s point of view: London was the place to be.

  Later that morning, in class, we were given some German newspapers to read, papers that were several weeks old and, we were told, had reached us via Switzerland. We were to read with two aims in mind: to be aware of words, terms, and usages that we were unfamiliar with, and to see what we could analyze and predict about German civilian morale, from the tone of the articles. The last part was an interesting exercise but, at about eleven o’clock, I was called out of class and asked to report to Major Romford’s office, and at double-quick time. Oh God, I thought, now what?

  His office, lined with box files and stinking of tobacco, was near the main entrance on the ground floor. It had a door made of frosted glass. The door was partly open but I knocked anyway. No point in getting off on the wrong foot.

  “Come in!”

  He was sitting there, all mustache and uniform, writing, but looked up immediately. He glared at me but said nothing. Instead, he nodded, down and to his left. I could see that the telephone was off the hook.

  I picked up the receiver in trepidation. Use of the telephone was new to me. Izzy had said during our dinner at the Crown that our mother wasn’t well. I could think of only one reason for this call.

  “Hello?”

  “Montgomery?” barked a brisk voice. “That you? Pritchard here. Remember me?”

  “Oh, oh. Yes sir, of course. Yes.” It wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all.

  “These bloody phone things can be unreliable, so I’ll come to the point. Two points, really. You hearing me all right?”

  “Yes sir, loud and clear.”

  “Right. Well. Point one, you were right about the German figures. Spot-on. I’ve checked and I’ve double-checked and you were bang on the button. I would have phoned before but we’ve had a flap on. Fortunately, it was a misprint in my lecture, so it’s not a mistake we’ve made in our actual policy. Thank the bloody Lord. But that’s not the point. You spotted a mistake, an important one, and I owe you a vote of thanks.”

  I said nothing.

  “You there?”

  “Yes sir. Thank you.”

  “But I can do better than a vote of thanks. That’s point two. Am I right in thinking that you are learning very little in Stratford?”

  “Well, there are a lot of new technical words I’m learning, new scientific concepts, that sort of—”

  “Yes, yes, but you can learn all that down here.”

  “Sir?”

  “I want you down here, Montgomery, and I want you P.D.Q. You can start Monday—yes?”

  “At what, sir, and where?”

  “Now, don’t be obtuse, man. You’ve been too long with the cows. I’ll be doubting my own decision if you go on like that. I want you here, in the Ministry of War. Northumberland Avenue, just off Trafalgar Square. As an intelligence analyst. We need people with your experience and wide reading and attention to detail. Your German will come in handy as well. You’ll get a promotion, of course. Captain, I should think. I’ll fix it with your CO. That good enough for you?”

  “Yes sir.” That seemed to be all I could say as I fought to keep the grin off my face with Major Romford less than three feet away. “Where will I live?”

  “You’re being bovine again, man. In a bloody hotel, of course. To begin with, anyway. You’re on a captain’s pay as of this conversation. A hotel won’t ask you for money till you’ve been there a week. Now, do you know where the ministry is? Do you know London? Do you know Northumberland Avenue?”

  “I’ll find it, sir.”

  “That’s something. Eight o’clock Monday. Ask for me.”

  “Very good, sir. And thank you.”

  “Be warned: you’ll be worked hard, a damned sight harder than on that course. So have a couple of days off now. You may not get another chance for a good while.” The line went dead.

  I replaced the receiver.

  Romford looked up. “Well?”

  “That was Colonel Pritchard, sir. To say that I was right about the steel production figures. And to say that I am to report to the Ministry of War on Monday. Intelligence analysis.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Cocky, aren’t we?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Things come easy for you, don’t they? Always have, I expect. Doors open for people like you—I suppose Daddy’s in the same club as Pritchard, eh?”

  “Don’t be so—”

  “Our paths will cross again, Montgomery, and when they do …” He smirked. “Your class are all alike. Now, verpiss dich!”

  Nothing too technical there.

  At seven o’clock sharp that evening, I was at the lockkeeper’s cottage. I was carrying a bag but I had a suggestion as well.

  “There’s a cr
icket game in that field beyond the church.” I held up the bag. “Liquid picnic. Let’s take Will. The fresh air will do him good.”

  Sam was hesitant. She handed me the library book I had given her and which she had finished reading. “There will be dew soon. I don’t want him to catch a cold.”

  “Come on! It’s a lovely night. We’ll only go for an hour. If he falls asleep, fine.”

  “I was planning on staying in, working at what to say at the school board tomorrow.”

  “You’ve had ages to do that and it’s too late now. You’re either ready or you’re not.” I picked up Will’s shawl and took a blanket from Sam’s laundry basket by the fireplace. “Come to the cricket. Let them see you’ve stopped hiding.”

  “Hal! I haven’t been—”

  I silenced her with a look, and she relented.

  The cricket field backed onto the church graveyard, beyond the stream and its family of moorhens. We passed through the iron fence at the kissing gate. When we arrived the game was already well under way with a “crowd” of about fifty people grouped around the “pavilion,” otherwise a white-painted wooden shed with a green corrugated iron roof and a few rusty hooks where the numbers for the score hung. I could make out a crate of beer near where the scorer sat. He perched his scorebook on a second, upturned empty crate.

  We lay on the grass on the side of the field opposite the pavilion, where we could be seen but not heard. I spread out the blanket and Sam laid Will on it. He began wriggling in an attempt to crawl. Sam watched him, enthralled.

  I took a package from my bag and handed it to her.

  “For me? What is it?”

  “It’s a gift, of course, a surprise. Open it and see.”

  She looked doubtful.

  “I found it in Stratford,” I said softly, trying to reassure her. “I couldn’t resist it—you’ll see why.”

  She took off the wrapping, pulling at the string with her fingers.

  Applause rang out across the field as someone hit a four.

  “It’s a map,” breathed Sam, taking the wrapping away and holding up what was inside.