Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  “Cyril started it?” said Lottie.

  “He was one of them. Yes.”

  “And what happened?”

  A pause while Faye chewed her toast. “The police arrived and he was arrested. I think he was kept overnight in the cells. I’m going down there later.”

  “Oh, Faye. Don’t get mixed up in all that.” Sam reached out and put her hand on Faye’s arm.

  Faye shook it off. “I can look after myself. In any case, I’m on Cyril’s side.” She glared hard at Sam. “We’re not as barbaric as the Germans.”

  It was about now, I think, that we went to a concert at the Bechstein Hall, as it then was, in Wigmore Street. Later in the war its name was changed. All the property of the Bechstein Piano Company was seized by the government, and the hall auctioned off. Its original name was obviously too German for the times, and the new owners, Debenhams, changed it. (The change occurred virtually simultaneously with the royal family changing its name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor.)

  Sam liked going to the Bechstein Hall, and she loved in particular the vocal recitals that were given there on Sunday afternoons. She was less enamored of the endless wranglings over whether it was unpatriotic to listen to German music, as some of the newspapers insisted.

  “Brahms has been dead for decades,” she would say, “Schubert for nearly a century. What have they got to do with the war?”

  I could see both sides of the argument, but I didn’t want a fight. On the Sunday I am thinking of we were just leaving a concert where a Scottish soprano had been singing a variety of Schubert songs, and there were people outside the hall with placards, likening concertgoers to traitors and conscientious objectors.

  Sam had insisted we come to this concert, so I asked her what it was that she especially liked about Schubert.

  She turned her head toward me for a moment, then looked straight in front again. “He was Wilhelm’s favorite and… well, I’m sorry, Hal, but it would have been—it is—Wilhelm’s birthday today. I’ve tried to forget, but I can’t. Not for now. Being here, I felt… I feel… that much closer to him, I suppose. I’m sorry, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I don’t want to lie to you and you asked me a direct question. Given how you and I met, our agreement, if I were found out lying to you … what would you think of me?”

  She squeezed my arm. “It’s not much, is it, Hal? Me promising not to lie to you. Not much of a commitment, I mean. But look what a mess Faye’s life is—she’s living a lie. I couldn’t do that.”

  “What other favorites did Wilhelm have?” We had reached Baker Street, where we could catch an omnibus home. “If you tell me, I’ll know what not to talk about.”

  She squeezed my arm again. “Don’t be silly, Hal. We don’t have to be so … regimented. But I can’t just forget him. You can pretend, if you like, that he never was, but I can’t. I won’t. Every time I look at Will, I see his father—the resemblance is quite marked. You need to know that. I don’t know how long Wilhelm will… you know what I’m trying to say, in a way that won’t hurt you …” She trailed off.

  I did feel hurt, but then I told myself not to be so … so one-sided, a phrase Lottie had used. I had told Sam a lie, a massive lie; in fact, I too was living a lie, just as Faye was. And what would happen if I was found out in my lie? What would Sam think of me?

  I was promoted again that summer. It was due mainly to a combination of two factors. In the first place, I spotted something in Die Zeit, the Hamburg newspaper and probably Germany’s best (and therefore more censored than most). In some ways it was unexceptional—a simple boast, on the front page, about the paper’s rising circulation, the sort of thing all newspapers indulge in when recent statistics suit them. On an inside page, however, the paper gave a breakdown of its figures, according to the area around Hamburg where it sold. These figures showed that there had been an average increase in circulation, over the previous six months, of 4 percent, but that it had varied from −0.5 percent in Witzhave, to +1.3 percent in Moisburg, to +13 percent in Hetlingen.

  As I say, I didn’t know much about newspapers but what I did know was that, by and large, newspaper readership was fairly stable; it moved up or down by no more than a few percentage points every year. That made sense—readers are loyal to their papers and don’t like to chop and change. But if those figures were true, then in one area of Hamburg circulation was rising by 13 percent a year, unthinkable normally. What could explain it?

  I might not have followed through with these thoughts had it not been for the fact that the Battle of Jutland had recently taken place and I was aware of the debate in naval circles as to whether the British navy had done well or badly. Some said that the German fleet had run away; others pointed out that Britain had lost more ships—far more ships—than the Germans had. So naval matters were on my mind— on everyone’s mind, come to that.

  I therefore took the trouble to look up a map of Hamburg, and it was what I found on the map that caused me to involve Sheila again. She brought in our naval specialist, who, as it happened, didn’t agree with me. In cases like this, a table leader was entitled to go to Pritchard with the idea his or her table had come up with, but he or she had to take along the dissenting individual. Which is what happened that time.

  “Ah! Another Hal special, is it?” said Pritchard, knocking the tobacco out of his pipe by tapping it on the heel of his shoe, his shiny shoe as it happened. “Julian, you here as well?”

  Julian Mayhew was the naval expert.

  “Julian disagrees with me, sir.”

  “Does he indeed?” Pritchard grunted and reached for his tobacco. “Okay. So be it. Why don’t you all sit down and Hal can kick off.”

  We did as we were told, Sheila reverting to her usual perch on the radiator.

  When everyone was settled I started on in, giving Pritchard the circulation figures for Die Zeit.

  “Okay,” said Pritchard. “The statistics seem fairly straightforward. What’s your interpretation?”

  “Sir, in Hetlingen there has been a massive increase in circulation. In my view that can be due to one of only two reasons.”

  I looked across to Julian. I shouldn’t have. He had disbelief written all over his face.

  “One, there was another newspaper published in Hetlingen, which has ceased publication, so that all the people who read it have transferred overnight and en masse to Die Zeit.”

  “Or—?”

  “Or … there has been a massive influx of population, in the last six months, since the previous set of figures were compiled.”

  “And—? I know you, Hal. You are busy making inferences. What is it this time?”

  “Areas like Witzhave and Moisburg, which haven’t seen much of an increase or have actually seen a drop in circulation, are all inland areas. Hetlingen, however, is on the coast—or, more accurately, it lines the estuary of the Elbe, Hamburg’s river, which flows into the North Sea.”

  “Yes, I know about the Elbe and the North Sea,” Pritchard said dryly. “Go on.”

  “Well—and here I’m guessing, sir—maybe the influx of population has to do with shipbuilding, a new shipyard, or the massive expansion of an existing one. I know it’s a guess, sir, but—well, what with the Battle of Jutland being such a fiasco, for both sides, I mean, maybe this signals a change of military policy—”

  “Hold on! Hold on.” Pritchard held up his hand, the one with the pipe in it. “That’s a lot to read into some circulation figures. Julian, let me hear from you.”

  “That’s exactly my view, sir. I agree with you, and with Hal, that the circulation figures are interesting in themselves, and that there’s a development that needs to be explained. But it doesn’t necessarily have to do with population movement, and it certainly doesn’t have to do with naval affairs. We’ve picked up nothing on naval matters for a few weeks.”

  “Hmm.” Pritchard at last had his pipe going. “How big a jump is thirteen percent?”

  “Massive,” I replied. “I
checked with British newspapers. Their circulations fall by plus or minus three to four percent a year—a year, not every six months. If a paper goes up or down by as much as eight percent a year, it’s big news. A slump of eight percent and the editor would be fired. But, and this is the killer point, a big jump or slide always occurs across the board—everywhere the paper sells. We’re not seeing that happen here.”

  “I don’t see what Jutland has to do with this.” Pritchard sat back now, his pipe well launched.

  “As I read it,” I said after a pause, “neither we nor the Germans can draw much comfort from that battle. We had several ships destroyed, the Germans retreated as fast as they could into harbor. I therefore conclude that the Germans must concede that they can’t win this war at sea, as their navy is presently constituted. They must expand—and expand fast—their most successful and most fearsome vessel: the submarine.”

  “You mean—?”

  “Yes. I think it’s worth investigating whether the Germans have built a new submarine dry dock at Hetlingen and shipped in a workforce to build large numbers of vessels.”

  Pritchard turned his gaze on Mayhew.

  “All this from a change in newspaper circulation?” Julian asked. “I think it’s going too far. We have people on the ground in and around Hamburg—we must have or we are all lost. You can’t just build a dry dock—several dry docks—without anyone noticing. If what Hal says is happening is happening, we’d already know about it.”

  Pritchard looked at Sheila.

  “Hal’s given us a target, somewhere to look, and a clue as to what to look for. I’d say it’s worth acting upon.”

  “It’s not that simple,” growled Pritchard, “and I’m surprised at you, Sheila. Whoever we have on the ground there, they’re not just twiddling their thumbs, playing with a sponge in the bath. They’re busy, doing other things, worthwhile things. If I ask for them to be pulled off doing proven good work, to chase this … theory, we could be doing more damage to the war effort than help.”

  Silence.

  He looked at me. “Anything else?”

  “Die Zeit has a circulation of four hundred and fifty thousand. Of that, seventy thousand are sold in and around Hetlingen. If circulation has risen by thirteen percent, that represents nine thousand, one hundred copies. Say a third of the new readers are married—making twelve thousand people in all who’ve moved in. That’s a huge factory by any standards. Can we afford to ignore the figures?”

  Pritchard tapped his teeth with the stem of his pipe.

  The rest of us waited.

  “No. Not this time, Hal. I’m not convinced, not until we have something else. I’ll keep the documentation here, in a file. But I’ll not send it upstairs, not yet.” He drew on his pipe. “That’s all.”

  Sheila rolled her eyes at me and we trooped out of Pritchard’s office.

  Dear Hal,

  Short note. You are in my thoughts because we have just treated a man who had been shot in the pelvis. He lost blood but we mended him.

  You are also in my thoughts because, a few days ago, we received a batch of old, out-of-date newspapers. Among these were some copies of the Times. I was delighted to see that page 5 is still going strong. One paragraph, three lines long, said: “The Hampton Court crocuses are in perfect bloom. Now is the time to go and see them.” Who writes this? What sort of subeditor chooses to put something like this in among the casualty lists, the battle reports, the new laws about rationing? Don’t get me wrong—I think it’s wonderful. Very few Times readers will live anywhere near Hampton Court, to be able actually to visit the flowers, but it’s a paragraph of warmth, of sanity, in among all the darker events. Some anonymous journalist on the Times is doing us all a service. Reading those few words is the best thing that has happened to me all day.

  Lucky you, getting a newspaper every morning.

  Have to stop. Must write letters for some of the wounded.

  Huge love,

  Izzy

  On nights when Sam and I weren’t going to the theater, or to a concert, or to a lecture, and Faye wasn’t going out with Cyril, we devised our own entertainment. Some evenings were devoted to hair washing, when Sam, Faye, and Lottie would all wander around the flat with their hair in towel turbans and I would read to them for an hour, sometimes recent novels I liked, sometimes poetry Sam had spotted, and sometimes from Lottie’s magazines about the party life of the smart set in London. Sometimes we made respirators. These were pads of absorbent cotton wool between layers of gauze, about six inches long and three inches deep, to fit over the mouth and nostrils and fastened around the head by tapes. They were designed to help cope with a gas attack, should one occur, and we took any spares we made—over and above what we needed—to the local army barracks, for distribution.

  And sometimes, when we really wanted to relax, we played charades.

  Lottie, being a theater type, was the organizing genius here. She loved acting herself, though she had never dared try it on the professional stage. She would think up hilarious and often very clever phrases for us all to act out and, as the evenings wore on and the whisky began to take over, some of her ideas turned decidedly risqué.

  I was by far the worst actor of the four of us. The sisters, of course, were used to the intimacy of large family life, their shared childhood, and had a string of in-jokes and in-talk that I simply didn’t understand. They had borrowed one another’s clothes and stolen one another’s makeup for as long as they could remember, and their great triumphs and disasters, in the “men department,” as they called it, were revisited every so often, accompanied by gales of laughter.

  I loved the sisters’ frankness and complete lack of embarrassment in front of one another.

  “You’re such a cow, Lottie,” Sam would say after Lottie had made some cutting remark or other.

  “I know,” Lottie would agree eagerly, “but I can’t help it.” They would rib each other about the shape of their breasts, the ugliness of someone’s ankles, or speculate freely about what they thought this or that politician was like in bed.

  On one evening of charades, Lottie and Sam were playing against Faye and me. It was late, and Lottie and Sam were a game ahead, when Lottie set me to act out one final phrase. She took me to the edge of the room, so Faye couldn’t hear, and whispered, “Premature ejaculation.”

  I laughed nervously. This was going to take some doing.

  Lottie was already smiling, ready to laugh at whatever moves I might make.

  It was hardly the most suitable phrase, given my predicament, but Lottie didn’t know about that.

  Or did she?

  A horrible thought struck me: that Sam had shared this intimacy with her sister.

  Sam was smiling too, but was she blushing as well? And was that because ejaculation was a sensitive subject so far as I was concerned, and she was worried I might be embarrassed? Or because she feared that Lottie had, in a roundabout way, betrayed a confidence she had been told?

  I didn’t know and I decided I didn’t care.

  I turned to Faye and held up two fingers.

  “Two words.”

  I nodded. I put my fingers in my ears and led them down to my belly. This was a convention we had devised many nights ago in the flat, to indicate a stethoscope.

  “Medical condition,” said Faye.

  I nodded again.

  There was nothing for it, so I grabbed Lottie and lay her on her back on the carpet. She had got me into this; she could now help me out.

  “At last!” breathed Lottie. “What kept you, Hal?”

  All of us were laughing now, as I proceeded to lie on top of Lottie and started to simulate making love.

  “Incest!” said Faye, laughing.

  “That’s not a medical condition,” said Sam.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “It’s only one word, anyway,” Sam went on.

  “Do it twice, then,” said Lottie.

  “Is it my turn next?” said Faye.


  Whisky suddenly came into the room, anxious to see what all the fuss was about. He started licking Lottie’s face.

  More laughter.

  I suddenly stopped what I was doing and gave the best imitation I could of a climax.

  “Poor you,” said Faye to Sam. “Is it over that quickly every night?”

  Sam collapsed into laughter, rolling about on the sofa. Lottie’s frame heaved on the carpet.

  “Oh God, I know what it is,” said Faye, suddenly mock serious, trying to keep from laughing. “Premature ejaculation!”

  “Yes!” chorused Sam and Lottie together.

  “Brilliant,” cried Lottie. “How did you guess? Hal’s acting was terrible, as usual.”

  “I wasn’t acting,” I said.

  Yet more laughter.

  “If that’s what you call sex, Hal, Sam really is in trouble.” Lottie got to her feet and straightened her dress. “Seriously, Faye,” she said, “that was a brilliant guess.”

  Faye shook her head, trying to keep from setting herself off again. “You don’t understand,” she said. “Hal’s acting wasn’t bad at all…” She looked from one sister to the other. “He reminded me of Cyril.”

  I should think they could have heard the laughter from Penrith Mansions across the street in the Thomas More.

  Two days later, Sheila and I were summoned back to Pritchard’s office. Mayhew was there again.

  “Sit down,” Pritchard said. “And Sheila, sit on a chair this time, will you. I want you in my direct line of sight.”

  We sat.

  “This came in earlier today.” He pointed to a folder on his desk, stenciled SECRET. “It’s for my eyes only so you don’t get to see it, I’m afraid, but you can take it from me it’s a drawing. One of our people on the ground observed building going on north of Hamburg, on the right-hand side of the estuary of the river Elbe. She drew what she saw—and sent it to us. The scientists have looked at it. It’s what they call a ‘conning’ tower for a submarine.”