Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  Anger. I’m getting to know a little bit about anger. I’ve noticed that as soon as men who have been wounded learn that they are not going to die, their fear changes to anger. Not at the Germans—you will understand this—but at their superior officers. With the Stalemate so Stale at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any point to anything that happens out here. If their wound is bad enough to mean they’re being shipped home, then fear quickly turns to relief. In a way, they are the lucky ones.

  Our unit—you will remember my little lecture on blood transfusion, that night at Stratford—has had a mixed reception. To begin with, we were everybody’s favorite. Blood transfusions save lives—and who can argue with that? But they also mean that some wounds, which beforehand would have meant the Tommy being shipped back to Britain, now mean that he can be kept in France and, after a break of only a few weeks, brought back into the lines. That is not what everyone wants.

  Of course, we cannot save everyone and it is this that I have found most challenging. Dealing with the dead is wearing, harrowing—sad, sad, sad. But, in a sense, it is the dying who need us—need me—most. I say “me” not out of any sense of pride or in any egotistical (egoistical?) way. I am the only woman. Or, at least, I am usually. For these men who are dying—eighteen-year-olds, twenty-five-year-olds, forty-year-olds—I am their mother, their wife, their sister, their girlfriend, their daughter. You should see them, Hal. No one tells them they are dying, but one day, one night, early one morning, at some point, they realize that that is what is going to happen—and happen quite soon.

  And then you should see the way they look at me. They ask me to wear lipstick, makeup, to wear perfume. I hope I can say this to you, Hal, and that you won’t take it wrong, but I have to tell someone. They look longingly at my breasts. Yes, lustfully. These are men, nearing the end of life, most of whom haven’t got the strength to get up from their beds, yet I am made love to, ravished every day, in their heads.

  I don’t pretend that it is me that they are ravishing I just happen to be the nurse who is here. But I tell you, if there were some way I could share myself out, if there were some way I could satisfy these men, all of them, if the archbishop of Canterbury, or the pope himself, gave me some sort of sanction, I swear I would do it.

  I have held men—boys—as they trembled themselves to death, those who cried right till the last, and those locked in a sullen, solitary, resentful silence, who hate this life and the fate that has brought them here. I observe that the ministrations of a priest can comfort some, but for most, I dare to say, the warm flesh of a woman is a far better pillow from which to start whatever journey it is that the dead undertake.

  Sorry, Hal. I couldn’t say any of this to Ma and Pa, or to my flatmates in London. You’ve been out here, seen what I’ve seen, so I know you’ll understand.

  I’ve been shocked by the number of men out here who can’t read and write. Did you ever notice that? We expect people to die for their country but can’t give them a simple training that you and I take for granted. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get political, not in my first letter anyway!

  Hundreds of kisses. To think that I was frightened by an owl, and a bull in a field!!!!!

  Izzy

  Lottie’s presence in the flat had a beneficial effect on Sam. I had not realized, as perhaps I should have done, that in Middle Hill Sam had been lonely, that the pressures she had put herself under, by allowing herself to become pregnant, had isolated her from others her own age. Even her fellow teachers, who had been on her side, had kept a distance until the board met.

  In Penrith Mansions she was much more relaxed, and the flat rang with the sisters’ laughter. They quickly regained the camaraderie I presume they had had together when their mother was alive. They borrowed each other’s clothes, finished each other’s sentences and cigarettes, knew which foods they liked and loathed and how it must be prepared.

  When she moved her things into her room, Lottie brought with her quite a few theatrical props that she had acquired over the years and couldn’t bear to be parted from—a policeman’s helmet, a lion’s head, a birdcage, and an entire fake skeleton. “I call him George,” said Lottie about the skeleton. “He’s been the only man in my life for years now.”

  More laughter.

  Will was frightened by the lion’s head, however, so that was hidden away in the spare room.

  Lottie, naturally, had a fund of theater stories and, as Sam had said, she had a lovely singing voice and would, now and then, treat us to a music hall number she knew by heart. But what I liked to hear most were their stories of their shared childhood.

  “Remember that time,” one sister would say to the other, “remember that time when—” and they would be off down memory lane, Lottie beginning the story, say, then Sam taking over, then handing it back to Lottie, back and forth till they reached the all too familiar punch line, which they delivered together. It would have been the perfect comedy act except that the punch lines were really only funny—understandable—to Lottie and Sam.

  “Remember that time,” said Lottie one Sunday morning not long after she had moved in and as we were finishing breakfast, “remember that time when the vicar came round—”

  “You mean when he asked why we hadn’t been to church that Sunday?”

  Lottie nodded. “And Mum said it had been too nice a day for us girls to be cooped up in church, that we had been swimming in the river we used to go to, the Ryde, and that was much healthier than being in church.”

  “Lord, he was angry, that vicar. I thought he was going to hit Mum.”

  “And then Faye weighed in, and said, Church is boring anyway, whatever the weather—”

  “—boring sermons, boring prayers, dreary hymns—” they chanted in unison.

  “She really gave it to him.”

  “He never dared come back, anyway.”

  They were smiling at each other, thinking back to a time that Sam had told me was known in the family as B.T.: Before the Titanic.

  After a pause, Lottie said, “Are you going to bring up Will religious?”

  Sam was suddenly serious. “Left to me, no.”

  “What do you mean, left to me’?”

  I was puzzled by that phrase too.

  “I mean that, as Hal here knows, I have next to no faith, not after … what’s happened. But…but…” She looked directly at me. “This is going to hurt you, Hal, but Wilhelm, Will’s father, is a Catholic. And many Catholics have strong feelings—rules—about how their children are brought up.”

  There was silence around the table.

  “Thankfully, I don’t need to bother about it just yet, but I can’t ignore the fact that I’ll have to face it someday.” She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I’ve made a mess of things and there’s no escape, no simple way out.” She sighed, withdrawing her hand. “This sort of thing is going to recur and recur. I’m sorry.”

  Lottie was looking at me. But I couldn’t read her expression.

  I had been at the War Ministry for two and a half weeks when I noticed an item in the Berliner Zeitung that I thought worth bringing to Pritchard’s attention. The Berliner Zeitung was a small paper that circulated more in the north of the country than anywhere else and it reached us, I think, not via Switzerland but through Russia and Scandinavia. The copy I had was three weeks old.

  The procedure, when anyone found anything he or she thought was significant, was first to explain one’s thinking to one’s team leader. If the team leader agreed that the item was important, it would be discussed with the rest of the team, and with one other team leader, from another table—this was as a form of “quality control,” so that Pritchard was not constantly being disturbed by half-baked fantasies.

  My idea passed these early hurdles and so, at about half past eleven on what I remember as a very wet Thursday morning, Sheila and I knocked on Pritchard’s door.

  “Come in!”

  Sheila poked her head round his do
or. “I think Hal may have something, sir.”

  “Has he, indeed?” growled Pritchard, as we shuffled into his office. He fixed me with a look. “How long have you been here—two weeks?”

  I nodded. “Nearly three.”

  “Not the quickest first idea, but not the slowest either, not by a long way.” He turned to Sheila. “You’ve tried it on others?”

  “Oh yes, sir.”

  “Good, good. Well, sit down.” He waved me to a chair and himself slumped into another. Sheila was already perched on a radiator. She seemed familiar with it.

  “Okay, now, what is it?”

  I leaned forward with the newspaper in my hand. Pritchard understood German, of course.

  “I’m tired, Hal,” he whispered. “Tell me what’s in it.”

  I looked at Sheila. Did she take precedence, was it her job to tell Pritchard? But she just smiled and lit a cigarette. “Tell him, go on.”

  I took a deep breath. This is what I had come south to London to do. “It’s the Berliner Zeitung, sir. A small piece of news in an archaeology column.”

  “Archaeology?” Pritchard’s growl grew deeper.

  “Yes, sir. German archaeologists are the best in the world and there’s been a bit of a fuss among them, because a new wartime institute has displaced an archaeological museum and, in the process of being moved, some priceless antiquities were broken.”

  “Ye-e-e-s?”

  “The new institute is called the Haber Institute.”

  Pritchard didn’t speak.

  “Fritz Haber is one of Germany’s most distinguished chemists, perhaps the most distinguished chemist. Among his discoveries, he developed the mechanism whereby we fix nitrogen from the air, producing the raw material for both fertilizer and explosives. It’s partly because of Fritz Haber that German agriculture and German bombs are better than ours.”

  “I’m listening.” He had lit his pipe.

  “All that’s important, but old hat. If he’s been given his own institute, he must be on to something new, and something to do with the war.”

  “Do you have any idea what?”

  I cleared my throat. “Haber’s speciality, sir, is the behavior of gases—what happens when they are heated, cooled, compressed, what medical uses they may have, how they affect animals and plants.”

  Pritchard looked at me. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “The Germans have started to use some poisonous gases at the Front, but from what I’ve read, they’re not very effective and not very efficient. For Haber to have his own institute means the Germans have decided to improve this aspect of their weaponry—and that Haber himself, who is very ambitious, is convinced biological weapons can be improved.” I hesitated. “It’s not very pleasant, sir, but I think you should have our people inside Germany find out all they can about Haber’s institute.”

  The long and the short of it is that, about three weeks later, the whisky came round. We were never told much, but obviously the institute had been checked out by our people on the ground and what I had inferred might be happening was actually happening. It was good news that I had put two and two together, but less good that Haber was turning his formidable brain to gas warfare.

  From then on, I was an accepted part of the crew in the Gym and, when my probation period expired, the rest of the science table took me round to the Wellington for a celebratory drink. As they say in the Mafia, I had made my bones.

  As soon as we had settled into the flat, Sam did the responsible thing and found a doctor locally, in case any of us should fall ill. He was also someone who, more immediately, could look after Will, check on his rate of development, and keep an eye out for the more common baby illnesses. It was while she had taken Will for one of these visits— early one evening—that Lottie buttonholed me in the living room as I was reading the paper.

  “You didn’t know Wilhelm was a Catholic, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Would it have made any difference, if you had known? Would you still have made Sam the offer you did make?”

  “Yes … I think so.”

  “How much would it take to make a difference?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. What are you getting at?”

  “I mean: Sam’s life’s a mess, she said so herself. How much messier can it get before … well, before you regret what you rushed into?”

  “I don’t know—and I’m not sure I want to talk about this, Lottie. You’re her sister, yes, but—”

  “There’s such a lot you don’t know about Sam, about us Ross girls. She’s really not—”

  “Lottie, stop!” I closed up the paper and set it down on the low table in the middle of the room. “Let your sister and me get to know each other at our own pace, in our own way, and one step at a time—”

  “I’m only trying to help, to give you an inside track—”

  “I don’t want an inside track, I don’t want any help. I like things just the way they are, and if I get more things thrown at me—like the fact that Wilhelm is a Catholic—then I’ll deal with them as they arise.”

  “But it’s all been such a rush. Surely I can—”

  “No. What happened, Lottie, wasn’t rushed because we are both impetuous people; what happened happened quickly because there’s a war on, and because I was offered a job, a job I couldn’t turn down, in London. Your sister’s not headstrong and neither am I. We are just making the most of the … unusual circumstances.”

  “But don’t you want to be loved? Don’t you want to be loved for who you are, rather than because … of what you have?”

  I didn’t reply straightaway. But after a moment, I said, “When we first met, that day you were waiting on the bench, outside the flats, you said you would give our ‘pretense marriage’ your blessing if I really loved your sister. You have lived with us long enough now, surely, to realize how much I do love her—”

  “But it’s so one-sided!”

  “How do you know? How can you know what goes on inside a… even a pretense marriage?”

  “Oh, Hal! I live here, I can see—”

  “Yes, you do live here; you live here with my blessing. And, so long as you do, Lottie, I want you to keep your thoughts about Sam and me to yourself. I love your singing, I love your trips down memory lane with Sam, I love all the laughter and girl talk. I love it for itself and for the fact that Sam is so much more relaxed here in London than she ever was in Middle Hill. That’s partly thanks to you and partly thanks to me.”

  I leaned forward, for emphasis. “Now let me ask you a question. You think you know your sister—yes?”

  She nodded eagerly.

  “But did you ever think she would get pregnant, and by a German?”

  “Well, no—”

  “There you are … you don’t know her nearly as well as you think you do. People are not always an open book, even to themselves. Sam isn’t a child anymore, she’s no longer the young girl you used to know, and you shouldn’t keep trying to fit her into the old mold.”

  We sat in silence for a while.

  Eventually, Lottie said, in a much quieter tone, “But don’t you want to be loved?”

  “You shouldn’t ask these questions … people hardly ever have simple motives for what they do. Let Sam and me make our life as best we can, given the raw materials. This war is not going to be over anytime soon, and anything can happen—will happen.”

  Another long pause. “Leave us be, Lottie, please … I do not want the subject raised again—ever. If you’re going to stay, you must accept this one condition. Are we clear about that?”

  She looked at me.

  “Well?”

  She nodded.

  Just then, we heard Sam and Will on the stairs outside the flat, and we never had time to conclude our conversation properly. As I went to open the front door, I just had time to whisper, “I meant what I said. Never raise the subject again.”

  WILL TURNED ONE in March 1916. Five of us ce
lebrated his birthday: Will himself, of course, though he didn’t know too much about it; Sam; me; Lottie—who was still with us, babysitter in chief—and Whisky, a small Highland terrier puppy who was Will’s first birthday present. Sam, Lottie, and I shared a bottle of Scotch and sang songs from a new revue we had seen in the West End, called “Hullo!”

  Sam and I had settled into the flat, and flat routine, and Chelsea routine remarkably easily, considering we had come straight from Middle Hill. In fact, we hardly talked about Middle Hill or about Stratford. It was painful for Sam to look back—Wilhelm disappearing, and the school board ruling that never happened—and I now had two obsessions: intelligence analysis and Sam herself, and so I didn’t look back either.

  So far as our landlord was concerned, and the local shopkeepers, Sam and I were married, and Lottie played along.

  We spent the winter exploring London, and here I have to admit Lottie came in very useful. It had soon become clear that she was going to find it very difficult to get another job in the theater. The music halls were doing well—in wartime, everyone wanted a good laugh, or to hear some familiar sentimental tunes. But the straight, or “legitimate” theater, as it was called then, and which was the theater that appealed to Lottie, was having a thin time. So the few weeks that she had been intending to stay turned into a few months. In fairness, she was most helpful. She always managed to have somewhere else to go at weekends, so that Sam and I could be together on Saturdays and Sundays.

  We loved our weekends and, once we had bought a better push chair for Will, we walked all over London. And not just the nice bits, the pretty bits, the parks and the areas with big houses, but the other places too, the industrial areas, the canals, the warren of forgotten lanes and wharves by the river. We got to know all the bridges, the railway sidings, the lock-up specialist shops underneath the railway embankments. We explored new pubs, the great Wren churches, the bits of Shakespeare’s London that were still extant. We learned where the new omnibuses were garaged at night, where the police stabled their horses, the Jewish shops that were open on Sunday.