Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  It was a stirring speech, in its quiet way, but even so people were a bit wary. A lot of people don’t like injections, or the sight of blood, and a pint sounded like a lot. The doctor reassured everyone that giving a pint did not endanger the donor’s life, that the only precaution that needed to be made was bed rest for twenty minutes after the blood was taken, to check there were no adverse reactions, and a cup of tea.

  I was clued up more than most, of course, so as soon as he had finished his presentation, I volunteered. That encouraged others, I think, and he led a small group of us to a tent made of tarpaulin that had been pitched on the lawn of the central courtyard—the one I had not known existed until very recently.

  He made me take off my jacket, lie down on a small bed, and roll up the sleeve of my shirt. As he slid the needle into my arm, and because I think he wanted to take my mind off what was happening, he said, “You were quick to volunteer. The mention of blood does funny things to some people.”

  I explained about Izzy.

  “She’s a brave girl,” he said.

  “War does funny things to people. She was my little sister; now she’s … she’s … really grown up …” I trailed away.

  “Think how many lives she’s saved,” he said as he fitted a tube from my arm to a bottle hanging by the bed. “She’ll be able to hold her head up when this is all over. That’s more than can be said for a lot of people.” He nodded across to the wall of the tent, where there was an army recruiting poster showing the head of General Haig.

  I said nothing.

  The doctor came round again a short while later, when the bottle was almost full, and disengaged all the equipment, removing the needle from my arm.

  “Do you write to your sister?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell her about this, tell her what we are doing. It will reassure her. I was in a unit like hers—until I was promoted to safety. So I know how exposed she is feeling. Tell her the idea of transfusion is catching on. Lots of people are shying away—as I said, blood does that to people—but far more can see that it is a practical, if slightly grisly way to help the people at the sharp end.”

  “How often can one give blood?”

  He made a face. “We don’t know yet—we’re still experimenting. Maybe twice a year, unless it’s an emergency. But we’ve got all your details, and you’ll get a letter from us in due course, thanking you for your help and telling you what blood group you are. Always remember the group you are; it’s a useful piece of information and you never know when it might come in handy.”

  “What group are you?”

  “AB—that’s the rarest.”

  “The elite, eh?”

  “Oh no, not at all. Quite the opposite, really. It means that if I am in an accident, or lose blood in an operation, or if I get sent back to the Front and am wounded, I can be given blood from anyone, not just AB. In blood transfusion, group O is both the elite and the commonest. More people are group O than any other group. And type O can be given to anyone, whatever their own group. People who are type O are common, but also the royals when it comes to transfusion.” He grinned. “Now, I’ll have the nurse bring you some tea. Condensed milk, I’m afraid.”

  Through her courtship with Reg, and with Reg being so mad about fishing, Lottie had discovered some unusual backwaters of London, canal and river walks that Sam and I would never have found for ourselves. At weekends we explored these almost secret places. They were often an unusual mix of wildlife—foxes, fish, water rats, exotic weeds and plants—and industrial bric-a-brac: coal barges, oily wharves, dead factories, char-à-banc parks. A landscape that, as Sam said, needed its own Constable but had never found one.

  On these walks, Sam and I talked. She unwound after school and I—I have to admit—often told her secrets of my work that I wasn’t meant to. The canal banks were not exactly overpopulated, very few German spies were in evidence, and I suppose I wanted her to know that what I was doing all day long was not exactly a waste of time.

  It reminded us, of course, of the riverbank at Stratford, when we had first met. I also suspected that it reminded Sam of how she had first met Wilhelm, and been proposed to. But neither of us talked much about him now. Faye’s outburst had affected us all.

  However, my visits home had left their mark on me, and I remember one of our walks, a gray day when the wind gusted along the canal, creating patterns on the water, ripples in patches, dead leaves collecting in sodden masses against sticks and logs lurking in the weeds by the bank.

  Sam had her arm in mine and, as usual, we were alone.

  “Do you…,” I said, “have you ever thought… would you like Will to have a brother or sister?”

  She squeezed my arm. “You’ve never asked that before. Why now?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a natural question, isn’t it, in the circumstances? It must have crossed your mind.”

  Sam didn’t say anything for a while, and we walked on. The canal curved just here and we were sheltered from the wind.

  “We’re doing all right, aren’t we?” Sam squeezed my arm again. “I’ve never regretted my decision, Hal. You know that, don’t you?”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “But that was my answer. I told you, that evening in the cricket field in Middle Hill, and again at the railway station… that I didn’t love you, Hal. But we made a deal that suited both of us and, as I say, I don’t regret it, not one bit. You’ve been wonderful, to both Will and me, and to my sisters—though you’d never know it from the way Faye behaved. And the school I’m in is so much more … real, I suppose. I feel much more useful there than I ever did in Middle Hill. That was a surprise, in coming to London. I didn’t expect that but I’m very grateful for it.”

  It was my turn to keep silent for a while. The canal straightened out and we approached a lock. We could hear the water sluicing through the gates as it began to fill up, to allow a barge to come upstream.

  “I had hoped… I had dared to hope, for more than gratitude.”

  Sam stopped and pulled my arm, so that I was forced to face her. She raised herself on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. “I know,” she whispered. “I know. But we get along, don’t we? We’re comfortable together. I’ve never said this before, Hal, but—I love what you do to me in bed. It took time, didn’t it? But we got there. And it’s so much better, not having to bother with messy contraceptives, or you… you know, you pulling out at the last minute and spoiling everything. You being the way you are—it’s a bonus in a way. God, I make so much noise, these days—does that embarrass you?”

  “No. Not at all. I find it erotic.”

  “Can’t we be content with that, for the time being? I can’t say what’s not in my heart, Hal… you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  I brushed her cheek with my fingers. “No. Do you think about Wilhelm still?”

  She leaned her head on my shoulder. “Don’t do this to yourself, Hal. We have our life now, and it’s building. I was in love with Wilhelm, and part of me always will be, I suppose. When he spoke English, he had an accent, of course, but I loved it; it made him different, it made him him. And people always say Germans don’t have a sense of humor—yet he could be very funny. He thought the Kaiser was a ludicrous figure—dangerously ludicrous, yes, but Wilhelm was always making fun of him. Still, the war’s been going on for nearly three years now and who knows where Wilhelm is, whether he’s alive and, if he is, whether he ever thinks of me. He’s in the past, Hal. We are living here and now, on the bank of this cold canal, and we’re making a life.”

  She lifted her head and looked at me.

  “Remember you told me to read war poetry to the children at school? Well, I did, and that set me reading more poetry. There’s a new set of verses by this Irishman, Yeats, W. B. Yeats.”

  “Uh-huh, I’ve heard of him.”

  “But I’ll bet you haven’t read his new collection, about the birth of this new political movement in Ireland—”
>
  “You mean the IRA?”

  “That’s it. It has these lines, Hal: ‘Wherever green is worn / all is changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.’ I’m not sure I have it exactly right, but don’t you think that’s a wonderful phrase— ‘terrible beauty’?”

  I looked at her.

  “Don’t you think that’s true—that some things can be both terrible and beautiful at the same time? What is beautiful for some is terrible for others? You and I were thrown together, accidentally, by this terrible war, both suffering, both maimed in a way. Both trapped, as you once put it. But, as I say, we’re building, creating a better life than we had; it’s not too fanciful to say that Will will have a more beautiful life than would have happened if you hadn’t… if you hadn’t come along.”

  I swallowed.

  We stood and watched the barge, in the lock, gradually come into view as the water rose.

  “Look at that,” whispered Sam. “That barge, that filthy dirty barge, unlovely and belching black smoke behind it. Hardly a thing of beauty, is it? But it’s going from one level to another, a new horizon as the lock fills. That’s like us.” She laughed. “Not my best metaphor, I agree.” She leaned into me. “You can’t hide the past, Hal, but you can detach yourself from it, up to a point anyway.”

  The lock doors opened and the barge moved toward us, and then past us. The man at the tiller nodded.

  “Why isn’t he at the Front, I wonder,” said Sam in a low voice. Too old, too infirm, maybe he’s transporting crucial cargo.

  “Women are doing so many jobs now that only men did before the war. It’s changing our psychology. Men and women will be different after the shooting stops.”

  “If it ever does stop. What effect will growing up in a war have on Will, do you think?”

  Sam retied her scarf around her neck. “Children are more resilient than they sometimes seem. He’ll be fine. For one thing, he has a man around. You’re more important to him than the war, Hal.” She squeezed my arm again and said, “Let’s go back now,” and we turned and retraced our steps.

  Before we had gone very far, she said, “When am I going to meet your parents, Hal? Or are you going to keep me hidden forever?”

  Now I squeezed her arm. “Would you like to?”

  “It would be a step forward, don’t you think? A step up.”

  “My mother would grill you for hours. It would be like being a prisoner of war.”

  “I’m a schoolteacher, Hal, in a rough school—remember? I can handle myself.”

  We didn’t decide anything there and then. But, as we walked back along the canal bank on that dreary day, I suddenly felt brighter. Sam had signaled progress. She wasn’t in love with me but things were changing between us, I was sure of it.

  “Good morning, Colonel Lockart, and to you Montgomery. Sit down, please.” Brigadier Malahyde was the same as always: immaculate suit, regulation length of shirt cuff showing beyond his tailored jacket, brogues so shiny you could comb your hair in the reflection, the crease in his trousers sharp enough to slice ham with. If you had any ham. “Got something for me, I take it?”

  “Yes sir,” said Lockart. “But… well, as is usually the case with Hal, it’s out of the ordinary.” He looked over at me. “It’s your show and your neck.”

  The brigadier chuckled. “Oh dear, Hal. This had better be good.”

  I leaned forward and crossed my fingers. “Sir, my wife is a schoolteacher and one of her fellow teachers, who has become a friend, has a fiancé who is an assistant harbormaster in the Port of London.”

  The brigadier rested his chin on his fist.

  “Some time ago I expressed an interest and last weekend he invited me—us—to his office to see how the port works. I won’t bore you with the details but I did notice something I think is worth repeating. Colonel Lockart here agrees.”

  Lockart made a sound, a sort of gurgle. The brigadier didn’t move.

  “One of the ships that was leaving the port that day—this would be last Saturday—was called the Samuel Hood. It had a cargo of insecticides and it was bound for South America, Uruguay, via Morocco. Samuel Hood is dead now but he was the founder of the Hood-Frankel Company, an Anglo-German chemicals outfit that, before the war, had offices in London and Hamburg. Of course, the company has not had any dealings—officially, at any rate—with its German counterpart since August 1914 but I wonder if, unofficially, the same thing is true.”

  The brigadier took his chin from where it was resting, on his fist, and sat back. “Go on.”

  “I looked up Hood in the stock lists—they are doing well. Their share price is up eight percent this year. According to the German papers, Frankel is also doing well. Now, before the war Britain exported thousands of tons of pyrethrum—that’s the basis of an insecticide— to Germany, and Hood-Frankel had about forty-five percent of the business. But here’s the thing: pyrethrum is isolated from chrysanthemum petals and, as well as being the basis for insecticides, it distils down to picric acid—an explosive.”

  “So you’re thinking—?”

  “Why is the Samuel Hood sailing for Uruguay via Morocco? I checked with the economic attaché at the Uruguay embassy here in London. Last year she imported precisely seven tons of pyrethrum— they get most of their insecticides from the United States. It occurred to me that Hood is selling pyrethrum to Frankel, exchanging the goods in Morocco, and in effect supplying explosives to the enemy. Who tracks if goods actually end up where they are supposed to?”

  The brigadier did as he always did. He took out his expensive pen and began scribbling on the pad in front of him. “If you’re right—”

  “If I’m right, it means that people who think they are making insecticides in the Hood factories in Canning Town are in fact making stuff that is being used to kill our own soldiers.”

  “I realize that,” said the brigadier. “That’s not what I meant. I was going to say that a major shareholder in Hood is Sir Kingsley Draper, junior minister in the Foreign Office. He gave up his shares when he took on his official duties, but whichever way you look at it, this is a major scandal. If, however, we go public, we alert the Germans to what we know.”

  He looked at Lockart, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. The silence lengthened. Then: “In the first place, I think Hal should transfer to this office. I don’t know how we’re going to play it, but the fewer people who know about this the better.”

  On our way back from a concert at the Wigmore Hall one Sunday afternoon (the name change had taken place by then), Sam and I had reached Baker Street, where we normally caught an omnibus home. But this time, after waiting twenty minutes for a bus that, as sometimes happened in wartime, was obviously not coming, we decided to walk the whole way, and cut across Hyde Park.

  We entered the park at Speakers’ Corner. I knew about Speakers’ Corner, of course, though I had never made a point of going to hear all the religious and political extremists and nutcases who made it what it was. Sam had her arm in mine and we drifted from speaker to speaker, comparing styles, smiling at the way they handled hecklers, invoked the Almighty, or thundered about the doom that was just around the corner. There were communists, Indian anti-imperialists, Zionists, Irish anti-British nationalists, and, inevitably perhaps, rabid anti-German zealots. When I realized that we had strayed into an anti-German orbit, I tried to hurry Sam out of earshot, but she wouldn’t be rushed.

  “No, Hal. Hold on. Let’s hear what he has to say, and how he says it.”

  It wasn’t pleasant. The gist of his argument, as I remember it, was that although the world had stumbled into war, in reality the Germans had started it, that they had wanted a fight, to prove their newfound industrial and military power and because “they think they are better than we are.” It was probably what most people there that day wanted to hear, and I began to think he was being paid by the army recruiting services. But then he changed and broadened his argument, to say that this was a war quite unlike any previ
ous war in history, because of the vast number of civilians involved as conscripts, and that as a result we were creating a generation of children without fathers and that, according to the new psychology—a Germanic psychology, no less— this too was the first time such a thing had happened in history and that as a consequence an entire generation would grow up disturbed, that the emotional effects of the war would last a long time, be far more severe than we yet knew, and that Britain would never be the same again. As a rhetorical flourish, at the end, he lifted aloft a baby, a baby in a shawl to which were attached, incongruously, two medals. The child, he said—he declaimed—was his nephew, his brother’s son, a son his brother would never meet, because he himself was dead, shot to pieces somewhere in France. The medals were the baby’s father’s.

  The speaker was beginning to rant, and Sam pulled at my arm. “Let’s go,” she said softly.

  We wormed our way through the crowds and reached the open park proper. We headed southwest. Gradually the sound of shouting, and heckling, subsided.

  Neither of us spoke for a moment.

  Then Sam said, “Some of the children at school who have lost their fathers have begun wearing their medals.”

  “Do you approve?”

  “I don’t mind. Why wouldn’t I approve?”

  “Isn’t it a bit like wearing your heart on your sleeve?”

  “Oh no! Don’t say that, Hal. These are orphans, or half orphans anyway. It’s a badge of pride. Surely you see that. A badge of honor.”