Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  “And?”

  “I told you, women are practical, unromantic. I had a son by then—you—and Izzy was on the way. I was happy, your father and I had a splendid life. Harold—that was the other man’s name—didn’t try very hard to win me back. I think part of him just wanted to show me he had got over me and that his life had turned out well. He returned to America and I never saw him again.”

  “Did Father know any of this?”

  “No. Your father is like you, very self-contained. He doesn’t need to be loved and is much better at loving. He’s been wonderful to me. He still is.”

  “You don’t think I need to be loved?”

  “No. Am I wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I find what you say slightly disturbing.”

  “Don’t. It means you have the capacity to make others very happy, but that you will never yourself taste the real heights of happiness or the depths of despair. It’s the way you are made, the way most men are. Rejection will never crush you, as it crushed the wife of Izzy’s doctor friend.”

  I couldn’t think what to say then, and was relieved that my father was approaching.

  “Darling, let’s go in,” he said to my mother. “It’s going to rain.” To me, he said, “Sam is cutting some roses, for you to take back to London. What a beautiful woman, Hal. And from what she’s been saying, she seems very fond of you. I take back any criticisms I may have made. I’m quite bowled over.”

  I have to hand it to the prime minister but also to Sam. Since our visit to Edgewater, she had managed to persuade the daughter of the vicar in Old Church Street to look after Will on Saturday afternoons as well as Saturday evenings. This meant that we could resume our walks around London and along the canals before going straight on to the theater, which, now that the zeppelin raids had died down, had reinstated evening performances. On one of these walks, in June I think it was, along the Vauxhall canal, I was telling Sam about Lloyd George’s plan for assessing the cost and quality of a life. I’d made quite a bit of headway but I asked her if she thought it was a crass idea. I shouldn’t have—it was still top secret—but the cityscape of the canal put me at my ease. So much of my time with Sam had been spent on the banks of canals; I felt safe there, in the familiar surroundings.

  Sam had her arm in mine and squeezed it. “I’m sure you’ll be criticized by some people, Hal. But I think it’s a wonderful idea. We were doing a similar sort of exercise in school only last week. If one of us teachers—in peacetime of course, not now—were to take out life insurance, then that’s exactly the sort of calculation you would do: work out the amount of money someone would earn over a lifetime, work out what the average length of life for that sort of person might be. We did it for teachers, and the amounts of money involved are staggering.”

  I had a bit of a cough just then and cleared my throat. “I suppose I could contact all professional agencies, find out how many lawyers, teachers, doctors, bricklayers, postmen, plumbers, and writers have been killed, and go on from there to work out the earnings that have been lost. Is that the cost of a life, though? Is one life worth more than another?”

  “Don’t call it the cost of a life,” she said, “or the price of a life. Call it the cost of death. It would be very powerful, Hal. Depending on how you phrase it, how you present it, the whole country will want a copy.”

  The canal where we were was very run-down. Sheets of paper, algae, rubber tires, old clothes all disfigured the water.

  “Remember how you used to say these scenes needed their Constable?” I asked.

  “Yes, and they still do. A proper painter would find beauty here. Don’t change the subject, Hal. If you did this statistical exercise, it would be very valuable, but why not contact some special associations and ask them to send you any details of specific people—postmen who were brave and won awards and then were killed, bricklayers who showed exceptional bravery but who didn’t win awards but were still killed. Calculate how much they would have earned had they lived. Do the same for doctors, teachers, writers, actors, train drivers, zoo workers … make it a memorial for everyday people, as well as stars. Specific examples would bring it home. Think of all the families—like Will and me—who don’t have someone like you to complete their lives, to bring in money. I think Lloyd George is right. Let the archbishops say that putting a cost on life is crass or even blasphemous; I think most people will understand and approve. And you’re in the right place at the right time to do it. It would sell like hotcakes. Hot scones, remember?”

  She laughed, stood on her toes, and kissed me.

  And so that is what I did. I updated my report for the brigadier and Lloyd George, arguing that any document should contain more than just brutal statistics that might be useful for the peace negotiations and, furthermore, that a more popular version should be prepared, with specific examples from a wide variety of professions, to bring home what losses, and what kinds of losses, the war had inflicted on so many people. We would, I said, be able to calculate how many fewer musical tunes had been composed in an average year during the war, how many jokes had been lost by comedians being killed, how many babies had gone unborn.

  It might be crass but, as Sam had instinctively grasped, altogether it would be very moving.

  I heard back from Lloyd George inside a week, before June was out, when the brigadier called me in. It was late one day and he asked me to sit down and offered me a whisky. He was his usual dapper self.

  “The P.M. thinks your idea is brilliant and has given the go-ahead. When can you have it ready?”

  “I don’t know. A year maybe.”

  “You’ve got six months.”

  I grimaced. “Why the hurry?”

  “Propaganda before any peace conference.”

  I shook my head.

  “Hal, you’ve crossed an important line and don’t appear to have realized it. Lloyd George knows who you are now. For the moment, he thinks you can do no wrong. But that has its downside. Failure isn’t an option. Or, I should say, failure would be fatal. For you—and for me.” He paused, to let that last phrase sink in. “Fighting the peace is going to be as hard as fighting the war has been. As things stand, you are going to play an important role in that. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”

  One Saturday in early July I was standing at the window of the flat, looking out, when I saw Sam and Will coming back from the shops. I frowned. Unless I was very much mistaken, and I wasn’t mistaken, Will was limping. What had happened? Had he been injured? If so, when? He’d been perfectly able when he and his mother had left the flat, and all they had done was walk to the shops and back. But he was very adventurous, curious, as I have said before, always getting into scrapes. I was immediately worried.

  However, as I heard them entering the flat, the gas meter suddenly gave out and I hurried to refill it with shillings. Sam was cooking something or other and the water had to be kept boiling.

  I had just finished feeding the meter when she came through into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Will?” I said.

  “In the loo,” she replied.

  “I watched you from the window,” I said. “I saw him limping— what’s happened?”

  Sam put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shhh.” She looked round. The boy was nowhere to be seen. “I told him the other day that tomorrow is your birthday. He’s planning a little surprise. Say nothing for now.

  “By the way,” she added, as an afterthought, “after I told him it was going to be your birthday, he looked hard at picture frames in the shop. He said you had a photo of someone in your briefcase, in among your official secrets, and he thought a frame would be good. But we couldn’t find what he said was the right size. What is this mysterious photograph? I’ve never seen it.”

  I went cold. I’m sure I blushed. But I had anticipated that something like this might happen. “It was George Romford, the man I killed in Zurich. I had to write a report and his photo was part of that. The report was top secret an
d so was the photo. I had to write it up so I can’t be prosecuted after the war. Hardly the kind of photo you’d want to frame, even if you could.”

  Did I sound convincing? Sam didn’t like being reminded of my time in Switzerland, when I could have been killed, and so she said nothing.

  When Will came out of the loo he had lost his limp. I scooped him up, ready to read him a story.

  The next morning, very early, he came into our room carrying an envelope and a small package.

  He held out the envelope and package and said, “Happy birthday, Hal.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking both. “What is all this?” Whatever was inside, I was touched. Even if it had all been his mother’s idea, he’d had the grace to hand me the items himself.

  I opened the envelope. Inside was a piece of folded paper. It was covered in squiggles in different colored crayons, an attempt at some figures, and what could have been guns, together with some kisses and the words “Happy Birthday, Hal,” obviously written by Sam.

  “It’s wonderful,” I said. “The best birthday card I ever had.” I meant it. “I’m going to keep it on my desk at work.” I leaned over the edge of the bed and kissed him.

  He picked up the package from the bedcover and put it into my hands.

  I opened it.

  I laughed and said, “Will, that’s very thoughtful.” I looked at Sam and smiled.

  “It was his own idea,” she said. “When we were in the shop.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “He’s got a very adult sense of humor for a three-year-old.”

  Will had given me a tin of shoe polish.

  I turned back to Sam and said quietly, “And what about the limp thing?”

  “Oh yes,” said Sam. “Will, what about the limp?”

  He made a face and gulped. “I forgot.”

  “Oh no!” his mother said, grinning. “Come here, climb on the bed, and let’s tell Hal what the plan was.”

  Will clambered onto the bed and settled down between us.

  Sam did the talking.

  “About a week ago, Will and I were at the shops when we saw a blind person with a white cane. Will asked why the man had a cane and what it meant to be blind and I told him. Now, it so happened that a couple of weeks before, at school, we had done an exercise with a young class, to get them to understand blindness and deafness. For a couple of hours we had them moving around the building wearing masks so they couldn’t see.”

  She paused as Whisky joined the party, jumped on the bed, and settled next to Will.

  “We did the same with deafness, giving the children big ear mufflers for a couple of hours. The aim was to teach the children about blindness and deafness in a vivid way, so they will have sympathy with those conditions and understand them.”

  She shoved Whisky, who had made himself rather too comfortable between us.

  “Anyway, I told all this to Will and it was his idea—his, not mine—to limp along with you today for a whole day, your birthday, to see the world as you do.”

  I looked at Will.

  He shrugged theatrically. “I forgot. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m touched anyway,” I said. “That was very thoughtful, very sympathetic. Now, I’d better get up and shine a few shoes.”

  “I’ll get mine,” said Hal, and scrambled off the bed and ran to his room. Whisky barked and scampered after him.

  “Here,” said Sam. She handed me a package. “Happy birthday. It’s only one thing—your parents would approve.”

  It was a book. As she well knew, I only ever wanted books, at birthdays and at Christmas, and at any other time of the year, come to that.

  “I hope it’s not too serious,” she said. “But it’s by a Swiss, and with your time in Switzerland… I thought it might appeal to you.”

  I took off the wrapping and read the title: Psychology of the Unconscious.

  “I’ve read it,” said Sam, “and it’s fascinating. Ellen Smith told me about it at school. It’s new, a new theory, showing how we all have hidden reasons for why we do things, why we think and behave in certain ways without being aware of it. The author’s a Swiss called Carl Jung.”

  So I didn’t get up straightaway, after all. Since it was my birthday, and since I had a new book, I lazed in bed for an hour, reading. Then I ate a leisurely breakfast and had a lingering bath. I went out to get the Sunday newspapers, read them for a while, and only then did I start to do what I did most Sundays: clean and polish all our shoes.

  Will, although he liked shiny shoes almost as much as I did, had never shown much interest in cleaning them but today he sat with me. I gave him a cloth with a smidgen of black polish on it and he made a halfhearted attempt to clean one of his little boots. I was concentrating on what I was doing and I only noticed just in time that he had lost interest in shining shoes and had somehow managed to open the tin of polish he had given me as a gift.

  He was about to lick what was inside.

  “Will!” I cried. “No! You’ll be sick. Smell it if you want to but no licking or eating.”

  Affected by the urgency in my tone of voice, he did as he was told and held the polish up to his face.

  I couldn’t resist it. Quick as a flash I tapped his hand that was holding the tin—and a smudge of black polish attached itself to the tip of his nose.

  He gurgled with laughter. Laboriously, he got to his feet and held the tin in front of my face—and then did the same to me.

  I lifted the cloth I had, dipped it in the polish, and drew two lines of black down his cheeks. “You look like a Red Indian.”

  He did the same to me.

  In no time our faces were covered in black, so that we resembled a couple of Africans more than Red Indians. I lifted him up and we stood in front of the mirror.

  Will loved it, and his gurgling laughter grew louder. He ran his little fingers down my cheeks, drawing squiggly patterns not unlike those on the birthday card he had made for me.

  I gave him a mustache and a pointed beard.

  He insisted on doing the same to me.

  “Hal, oh no!” Sam stood at the end of the corridor, looking appalled.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re Red Indians with beards and it’s only shoe polish. Nothing a good bath won’t get off.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “Have you seen the time? It’s a quarter to one.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve arranged a surprise birthday lunch for you. Ellen Smith and her husband, people you work with. They’ll be here any minute. Oh, Hal!”

  I ran a bath and Will and I got into it together. He loved that.

  In truth, however, getting the polish off was a good deal harder than I had imagined. I had to use almost a whole bar of soap to remove everything, and Will didn’t make it any easier. He so loved being in the bath with me that he wouldn’t sit still.

  It was not until one-thirty that I was ready to face the guests Sam had invited, all of whom had arrived by then. But she had told everyone why Will and I were missing, they all thought it was very funny, and that helped the lunch go with a bang. The guests stayed until about five, by which time Will was flat out, and Sam went to rest.

  After the guests had gone, I read her birthday present for a couple of hours, every so often getting up to check on Will. He was still fast asleep, exhausted by the day, and he reeked of all the soap I had lathered on him during the bath we had shared. He usually smelled of soap when he was asleep in bed. I had grown to love that smell.

  In the early evening Sam got up, wearing her dressing gown. “How would you feel about another birthday gift?”

  “I’m happy with one. I was brought up that way, you know that.” She was smiling. “But you don’t know what this gift is.” I looked at her.

  “Will gave me the idea. I don’t think you and I have ever taken a bath together.”

  Throughout the war, we hadn’t seen much of Ruth, Sam’s eldest sister. A
seamstress, helping to run a factory in North London, making uniforms, she was always very busy and it was obviously important work, and much in demand. In July 1918, however, we got a letter from her inviting us to her engagement party. Sam quickly accepted.

  The party was held in the factory—not as bizarre as it might sound because as well as uniforms, Ruth’s factory made tents for the army, and so they had no difficulty in erecting a big one for celebrations.

  I remember the event for three things. One, there was a slight awkwardness because Faye and Lottie were both there and we were all involved in an elaborate piece of choreography, carefully avoiding each other throughout the evening. (It wasn’t too difficult; there were more than three hundred people there—Ruth really did have a big job.) The second thing was that, at one point, Ruth drew us away from the crowd and took us into the factory proper. “I have something to show you,” she said to Sam.

  She led us into a small office and drew open the doors of a large cupboard. “This is a new line we are introducing. You can have one free if you want.”

  In front of us was a line of infantry uniforms, but in children’s sizes. I could see why Ruth had brought us here all by ourselves.

  Sam was flustered. “Can I think about it, Ruth?” she said.

  “Of course,” said Ruth softly. “They’ll be in the shops in about a month. I just thought I’d … you know… let you have a private preview.”

  “Thank you,” said Sam.

  We went back to the main party.

  Ruth’s fiancé, Greville, was a wiry Welshman from Aberystwyth, with hard gray eyes and a long neck.

  “They’re something, these Ross sisters, eh?” He grinned, looking from me to Sam. He had prominent cheekbones, too, which made his face seem longer.

  I nodded. “Four firebrands.”

  “You’re in the War Ministry?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “You?”

  “Security. Can’t say any more.”

  “I understand. How did you meet Ruth?”

  “She helped me with a case.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “You bet. I can’t say too much about that either, but we needed to put some men behind the German lines and for that we needed German uniforms. We had captured a couple but nowhere near enough. Ruth was able to copy them perfectly—how she got the right material, and the right color, and the right stitching, and so quickly, I’ll never know, but she did and the operation was a success. She’ll get an honor after the war—one of these Labor Medals I should think.”