Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  We walked on a short distance more until she put her hand on my arm again and we stopped. She turned to face me. “There is a third sort of love, you know. I thought about it a lot while you were in Zurich. I am falling in love with you, Hal. It’s not a thunderbolt, I can’t say that—and I hope that doesn’t hurt you. It’s more … more like the gentle unfolding of a flower as spring warms into summer. Will, of course, he loves you like … oh, I don’t know, like … like he now loves a cricket ball!”

  We both laughed so much that Will woke up.

  That night as we put Will to bed, he asked for his “cocoa book.”

  “Oh, Lord, I’ve forgotten it,” said Sam.

  “What on earth is a ‘cocoa book’?”

  “One of the things that happened while you were away in Switzerland. The Times produced a new dictionary for children—with a new printing technique that means they can do pictures in color. The book has a tin of cocoa on the cover and Will, as you know, loves his cocoa. Even more now that he has some sugar.”

  I smiled. “I’m interested in color printing myself—the Swiss are quite advanced. I’d like to see this cocoa book. What else happened while I was away?”

  “Apart from the zeppelin raids, you mean? Well, the king wants us all to drink less alcohol—especially at home; he thinks we’re all becoming closet alcoholics. Telegrams are now ninepence, not sixpence. I had my fortune told. Oh—and I went to a lecture, with Ellen, given by a psychiatrist, on how being in the trenches drives some people into shell shock, while it is the making of others.”

  “Doesn’t sound like my idea of fun. No theater?”

  She tucked Will up in his bedclothes.

  “You’re wrong. The lecture was very interesting—the man who gave the talk was from a hospital in Scotland. Some of the injured, the mentally injured, are really hard on their wives when they return. I hadn’t expected that.”

  She kissed Will good night.

  “As for theaters, you’re out of date. Since the zeppelin raids, the theaters have been closing down at night. The only performances for now are the matinees, and I can’t get away. Even then the theaters advise people to bring their knitting or something to read in case there’s a daylight raid in the middle of a performance.”

  She took hold of my hand. “Now, since I’ve forgotten the cocoa book, you’ll have to help out.”

  “Oh? What do you mean?”

  “You’ve just been abroad, traveling. You can tell Will a story. Come to that, you can tell us both a story.”

  On the Monday evening, when we returned to the flat, there was a surprise awaiting us, and a very pleasant surprise indeed. Instead of Lottie having received a dreadful telegram in our absence, who should have turned up but the man himself, Reg, as thin and as creepy-quiet as ever. He’d been given some leave, he said, but had had an eventful journey back from France. The train he’d been on had been shelled, the railway line itself knocked out of action for a few days, and then the Channel boat he was due to sail on had never arrived. It had been one fiasco after another and it would have been comical if so many people hadn’t been killed in the process and if it hadn’t taken so long for him to reach Lottie.

  Still, Lottie was out of her mind with relief and Sam was delighted for her sister, who hadn’t had much joy in the men department. While we had been in Stratford, Lottie had seen Ruth and invited her oldest sister and her man, Greville, for a “party” on that Monday evening. So the six of us shared some pasta and whisky, Reg told us stories about the Front, Lottie sang, and Ruth kept us amused with some stories from her factory, where something always seemed to be going wrong. Ruth and Greville stayed late, very late, and Sam and I made up the spare room. All the men went to bed, and the sisters stayed up, talking.

  I reached our room feeling content. What Sam had said the previous day, by the canal, had warmed me inside.

  I had just got into bed when Will came through. As sometimes happened, he couldn’t sleep and wanted company. I took him back to his room and read him a story, or I read as much of it as I needed to before he was fast asleep. I put down the book, tucked him in, savored the soap smell that always clung to him in bed, and went back to our room.

  On the way, I could hear Sam and Lottie and Ruth still talking. I wasn’t eavesdropping exactly but as I went by the door to the living room, I couldn’t help but overhear the word “Wilhelm.”

  I froze. I stopped breathing. I listened hard, letting my hearing adjust to where I was, to the faint sounds of their voices.

  Ruth was speaking. She had a louder, more authoritative voice than her sisters. “… long time now. And what does Will think?”

  “He thinks Hal’s his real father, of course.” I’d know Sam’s voice anywhere.

  “How long can you keep that up?”

  “I don’t know. The longer the war goes on, the harder it will be to tell him the truth. We were playing with his latest cocoa book the other day, and I showed him some pictures of uniforms … there were British uniforms, French uniforms, American uniforms—and German uniforms. Will took his crayon and scratched through the drawings of the German tunics.” She made a sound like a sigh. “It’s only natural, I suppose. But still…”

  She paused, but then more than one person was speaking at the same time and I didn’t catch what she said next.

  “… think Hal’s a lovely man.” This was Lottie.

  “But Wilhelm really got under Sam’s skin.” Ruth said this more gently.

  I could hear no reply. Was Sam nodding her agreement?

  More talking all at once, then: “… I know you both think I’m foolish—to have fallen for Wilhelm, I mean, and to have slept with him… but I did, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Those weeks with him were so intense, I didn’t know life could be so …vivid. I thought my heart might stop at any moment when war broke out and I realized I might never hear from him again. I felt so sure he would find a way to let me know where he was and that he was safe. Hal came into my life too soon, really. I did a good job, I think, of not letting him see how inconsolable I was, how much I missed Wilhelm.”

  “And now?” Lottie again.

  “I don’t feel quite so overwhelmed by Wilhelm’s absence, as I did. Hal and I sleep together and it’s … it’s better than it has a right to be, in fact. Hal’s a considerate lover—he’s a considerate man—and when we are making love, I forget everything else. I never imagined I would need sex so much, but I do.”

  “Lucky you,” growled Lottie.

  “The funny thing is … I would be a lot fonder of Hal, but for Will.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The older he gets, the more he resembles his father—”

  “Isn’t that natural?”

  “Yes, of course, but what’s also natural, but in a different way, is that he has adopted some of Hal’s mannerisms. He’s become— becoming—a perfect mix of Wilhelm and Hal. He doesn’t realize he is a mix, of course, it’s all unconscious, but I can’t help but notice. Hal can’t know just how much Will looks like his father, and I’m not going to rub it in, that would be unkind. But I have to face this mix every day and it cuts through me. What am I going to do?”

  A pause.

  “If I were you, I’d throw in my lot with Hal.”

  “Lottie’s right,” said Ruth. “Even if Wilhelm makes it through the war without being killed, can you ever… a German husband… it wouldn’t be easy.”

  I never heard Sam’s reply. Just then I heard a movement behind me. Will, his pajamas crumpled and awry, was standing in the corridor, watching me. How long had he been there, I wondered, what had he heard?

  I lifted him up, took him back to bed, and read him the rest of the story.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Those were the brigadier’s first words when he clapped eyes on me the next day.

  “My sister-in-law’s fiancé came home from the Front, on leave. Family celebration.” It was just a white lie, about Lottie being engaged.
r />   He nodded. “What regiment is he in?”

  “The Yorkshire Fusiliers.”

  “He’s lucky. They’re at the sharp end, just now, near Bertrix. I thought all leave had been canceled. Anyway, was your break worth it? Was I right about that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good, now follow me.”

  He got up, came round his desk, opened the side door to his office. Through the doorway was a small room with a desk, at which sat a woman of about thirty. She was dark-haired, slim, and wore spectacles. She was dressed in trousers and a white shirt.

  “Hal, this is Nadia, your new assistant. Nadia, this is Hal, Colonel Montgomery.”

  Surprised at this turn of events, Nadia and I shook hands.

  “Now come through into your office.” He led the way to the other side of the room and opened a door.

  Beyond was a space about twice the size of Nadia’s, with a desk, a window looking out onto the fabled lawn, and—I could not believe my eyes—on the desk stood a telephone! I was to have a job that needed a telephone.

  I picked it up and put the earpiece to my ear.

  “Oh, it works all right, don’t worry about that. You’ll be shown how all the kit works in due course. Now, put down your things and come back into my office. We have a lot to get through today.”

  I did as I was told and trooped after Malahyde back into his room. He sat on the easy chair and beckoned me to the sofa. On the low table in front of him was a buff-colored folder.

  “Before I get to the heart of the matter, Hal, let me just say one thing.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Will Nadia be the first assistant you have ever had?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “In which case, please, don’t have an affair with her. It will make all our lives so much less complicated.”

  “Yes sir, but—”

  “I know nothing is further from your mind right now, and I don’t require you to respond at all, you’re an adult; just bear in mind what I say.

  I nodded but said nothing.

  “Right. Now here is your new responsibility.” He took out his expensive pen and played with it. “We are entering the final phase of the war. The Americans are in, and in the next year or so, the fighting will end. When the end comes, almost certainly, there will be a peace conference—a peace conference to end all peace conferences, I should say. And the hardest wrangling will be over who should pay what to whom for starting the war in the first place, who should have to dig deepest for nearly bankrupting one country after another. I want you to be in charge of calculating and masterminding our arithmetic on what the war has cost us.”

  I looked at him.

  “The cabinet has a Reconstruction Committee, Hal, but we need a proper audit of the war. Not just how many people have been killed but how many weapons and how much ammunition we have turned out, at what cost, how much legitimate business has been lost as a result of the war, what the expense is going to be for looking after families where the father is dead, what the cost of rebuilding damaged buildings is going to be, what the cost of medicines has been, how many ships have been sunk and what it will take to replace them. What we owe the Americans. I’m just mentioning the obvious things, of course. I want you, with Nadia’s help—she’s a statistician, by the way—to amass figures for everything. You have a head for this type of thing. I can’t be sure how cleanly we are going to win the war but sure as hell we don’t want to lose the peace. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, sir, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Aren’t people kind of busy just now, to provide such figures?”

  “Ah! A good point but your authority comes from the prime minister, Lloyd George himself. He will tell the cabinet about your new appointment and role this very week and senior figures in all relevant departments will be expecting to hear from you and will be under pressure from the P.M. himself to respond promptly. Don’t worry about that. This is important work. Top secret, of course.”

  It was so top secret that I can’t put some of my findings down on paper even now. But it is fair to say that over the next few months, Nadia and I became, so far as I know, the most well-informed individuals on what the war had cost the country. The brigadier was as good as his word and Lloyd George’s instructions to the cabinet produced the intended effect. I found that my name was known around Whitehall even if my face wasn’t. I learned to use the telephone, and senior people—very senior people, indeed—took my calls, or returned them promptly.

  Our first task was to establish what Britain’s level of economic activity was in August 1914. That wasn’t too difficult. Finding out what had happened since wasn’t anywhere near as straightforward. I suppose the best idea I had, on this front, was to ask each permanent secretary—the civil service bigwig in the relevant departments—to recommend one individual whom they trusted and I could deal with. That way I wasn’t passed from pillar to post, and no one could hide. In effect, I had about a score of people working directly to me.

  It was exhilarating work and there were two consequences. One, I paid far more detailed attention to the news. The nearer the end of the war seemed, the more pressure there was on me. And two, I started to arrive home later and later. Sam was not pleased.

  “You hardly see Will in the mornings, and he’s in bed before you get home. I know that what you’re doing is important, but Will is important too. Can’t you get home early on, say, two nights a week?”

  “I’ll try.” I meant it. I had enjoyed telling Will stories and he, I think, enjoyed hearing them.

  The following night I did come home early, only to be met not by Will but by a very irate—in fact, a spitting mad—Lottie. As I let myself into the flat, I heard a scream and she came charging down the corridor, her arms outstretched. As soon as she reached me she lunged forward and tried to run her sharp nails down my cheeks. With difficulty, I held her off—she was much smaller than I was but she was clearly fired up with some grievance or other. That gave her strength.

  Sam was not far behind and grabbed at her sister. “Lottie!” she cried. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  We didn’t so much calm her down as pin her against the wall between the two of us.

  “What… what the heck is going on?” I managed to breathe at length. “What am I supposed to have done?”

  “The military police came here today,” said Sam quietly. “They arrested Reg. Took him away.”

  “Why? What’s he done?”

  “Deserted,” breathed Sam.

  “And you told them!” screamed Lottie. “You gave him away, you lousy bastard !”

  “I did not!”

  “You did! You’re the only one who could know his regiment is still at the Front—”

  “Lottie, please. I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “You did, you did!” she screamed. “You’re a smoothy civil servant sod. You shopped my lovely Reg, the only man I ever had. I hate you!”

  She burst into tears and slumped down the wall by the tallboy in the corridor.

  We all sat on the floor, breathing heavily. By some miracle Will was asleep.

  At length, after a long silence broken only by our breathing and Lottie’s sobs, Sam said softly, “Hal… you didn’t, did you—?”

  “Sam! How could you even ask?” I was shocked. Was blood still thicker than water with her? “How could you ask?” I repeated. “Even when someone in the office said he thought that the Yorkshire Fusiliers were still at the Front, it never crossed my mind… How could you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Again, we sat in silence.

  “What… will happen to him, Hal?” Sam asked the question that was on Lottie’s mind.

  “If he has deserted … if he has … he’ll face a court martial.”

  “And?”

  I said nothing.

  “And?”

  “It depends on the verdict. I’m sure it won’t—”

  “If he’s found guilt
y?”

  They were both looking at me.

  “He could be shot.”

  Lottie screamed, “Nooo!”

  Lottie moved out. She could not be convinced that I had not betrayed Reg and insisted that she no longer wished to share the same roof with me, nor accept my hospitality. And for the first time, she also had some harsh words to say about Sam’s romance with a German, and what the war had done to their family.

  Sam was distraught, Will confused.

  I was annoyed, more than anything. I had most definitely not done what Lottie accused me of doing, and her leaving meant that Sam had now fallen out with two of her sisters. On top of everything, Lottie would no longer be there to babysit. The flat—once Gare Montgomery—felt strangely empty.

  We found a daily woman fairly quickly who could clean and look after Will, but it wasn’t the same as having Lottie. There had been no charades since Faye had gone and now we didn’t even have Lottie’s obsession with the smart set to complain about. There was no singing in the flat.

  One good thing among this mess: I had bought Will a (very tiny) cricket bat after the Stratford and Middle Hill trip but he had lost interest, the way children do. The bat and ball lay strewn around his bedroom along with all his other half-forgotten (though jealously guarded) toys. But following the story I had made up for him in Stratford, I had begun reading to him, and he seemed to enjoy that. And so did Whisky, who would lie on the bed during these sessions and go to sleep when Will did. So cozy did these moments become for me that I looked forward to them and began keeping more regular hours, as Sam had asked, leaving work between six and six-thirty so I could see Will and read to him. It also helped keep my relationship with Nadia on a fairly formal basis. Twice she asked me out for a drink after work, but after two refusals she gave up.

  Sam and I slipped into an easy, comfortable way of life, staying at home most evenings. She had found that the daughter of the local pub landlord would babysit at weekends and so we didn’t miss Lottie as much as we might have done. We resumed our visits to the West End theater, though Saturday matinees lacked some of the atmosphere of evening performances.