A Plague on Both Your Houses

by Ian Porter

  The couple were chatting away merrily when a young waitress, immaculate in tight auburn bun, freckles and a uniform of black dress, white apron and cap, delivered their cups of tea. She set down the sugar bowl and a tea spoon, and then hovered. The couple had stopped talking for a moment while the tea was delivered, and then both peered up at the literally waiting young woman, asking her silently why she was continuing to stand there.

  The waitress was used to this.

  “Only one spoonful per person allowed I’m afraid. I have to wait till you’ve done see, then take it to my next table.”

  Ruby never had taken sugar in her tea, and war shortages had at least cured Nash of his three sugars per cup habit. After two years of drinking unsweetened tea, sugar in his cuppa would now have had him grimacing.

  And in the good mood that he was presently enjoying, it tickled Nash’s funny bone that the waitress was standing guard to make sure he and his wife didn’t take a second spoonful from what was apparently the mighty Lyons’ Corner House’s only sugar bowl. He wanted to say something but appreciated that any joke he made was going to be at the poor waitress’s expense, which wouldn’t be right. He managed to keep a straight face while handing back the sugar bowl and spoon.

  “That’s all right duck, we’re both sweet enough already. Let the next table have two lots eh?” he said with a friendly conspiratorial wink.

  “Oh I’m not allowed to do that,” she replied with great earnestness before shuffling away with the bowl.

  The incident had not been especially funny, but the married couple were in such a good mood and so much on each other’s wavelength that they just looked at each other and burst into supressed chortling in any case.

  This had Ruby wince.

  “Ouch, I copped one in the ribs earlier.”

  “We’ll have Dr Alice have a look at it when we get home. You did bloody well there girl. Saved them silly little sods from a good hiding.”

  “Saved my silly big husband from copping a few as well. Four against one weren’t the best odds.”

  “It were down to three and I’ve dealt with worse,” said Nash with a grim smile. “But yeah, I suppose I would have copped a few for me troubles.”

  “Funny though isn’t it, when you say you’ve copped one. Do you suppose that’s from the word coppers? When a copper whacked you one in the old days, it became known as copped?”

  “Might be I suppose. Back when I were a lad the coppers used to roll their raincoats up as tight as they could and then use ‘em as soft coshes. They used to pick on us lads. We’d be walking along minding our own business and they’d give one of us a backhander with their raincoat. Wallop, that’s for nothing, now be careful.”

  “Always minding your own business were you?” queried Ruby sardonically.

  “Well…”

  The two shared a smile again.

  And then Ruby just blurted it out.

  “I was thinking. I wonder if I should consider becoming a woman police officer.”

  Fortunately Nash was not drinking his tea at that moment. He would have made an awful mess of the nice white tablecloth.

  There followed the inevitable conversation. Nash made it clear that he was horrified, and not just because of his history of always being on the wrong side of the law. He reminded Ruby of the amount of violence perpetrated on her, Sylvia and their fellow Suffragettes in the not too distant past by the police. Ruby countered that women police officers were different. She’d had a long conversation with her police woman friend in St Johns. Edna had told her that women police officers, or copperettes as they were nicknamed, were deployed to deal with the growing problem of juvenile delinquency. There were lots of young lads, now with no father, older brother or uncle figure to keep them in check, forming gangs and getting into trouble. Women could deal with them better than men. Look at what had happened earlier outside Selfridge’s. A woman had stopped what was about to become a nasty incident.

  Nash had to admit Ruby had done very well with those lads outside Selfridge’s. It was the first crack in his defence. But he continued with his counter argument. The two of them were committed to the anti-war movement. Ruby’s great heroine and friend Sylvia Pankhurst, was part of the international peace campaign. Surely being a policewoman was helping the government and therefore assisting in the war.

  Ruby put the case that mere day to day living helped the government in some way. The reason going to the pictures to see Charlie Chaplin was so much more expensive than before the war was because of the entertainment tax levied on cinemas to help pay for the war. The entrance charge for that football match she had played in did not all go to charity. The match organisers had to pay a huge amount of tax on the takings to the government. And even watered down beer had gone up in price threefold, and you could guess where most of the increase had gone.

  Ruby had originally only stated that perhaps she should consider becoming a police officer. She had just blurted it out without thinking it through. It was only a reaction to her success of a few hours earlier while the discussion with her policewoman friend was fresh in her mind. But the more Nash argued against, the more she came back with reasons for. She was talking herself round, as much as her husband.

  One of the things that had so impressed her with Nashey, from the moment she had first met him on the Titanic, when he had gone below decks to look for female passengers and crew to rescue, had been his care and understanding of women. Ruby got on to this subject. A policewoman helped her fellow women. She patrolled near army barracks to quell prostitution and to ensure young girls did not get carried away with patriotic fervour. This in turn stopped pregnancies and the spread of VD. Nash had seen the horrors of unchecked prostitution and syphilis in his younger days. He had to admit anything that minimised it was a good thing. It was another crack in his wall.

  Ruby continued by asking who was it who dealt with the air raids and the aftermaths? She immediately answered her own question. It was mostly Gorgeous Wrecks, policewomen and women fire officers.

  Nash suggested she become a fire officer. He was weakening.

  “There’s worse things than fire now Nashey,” said his wife. “Look at this flu…”

  “Yeah! You look at this flu!” he interjected, his eyes bulging like organ stops to add emphasis.

  Just when her little finger had a small piece of her husband starting to get wrapped around it, the mention of the new eff word had allowed him to escape his wife’s grasp.

  A rejuvenated Nash warned her that being a policewoman would inevitably bring her into contact with large numbers of the public, which was clearly a health risk given the new deadly flu they had heard about was bound to spread home from the trenches.

  Ruby waved away his concerns. She had survived an ocean sinking; regularly being beaten up when a Suffragette; recently being bombed and knocked unconscious; lived for the past four years on scraps. If she could live through that lot she could certainly manage the flu. She had even survived Mrs Richmond’s cooking! If she could do that she could do anything!

  Nash retorted that the flu was no laughing matter. If big fit soldiers could be seen off by it so could a slip of a woman like her!

  “Exactly dear husband! Slips of women like me, like Sylvia, Alice, Maud and every other woman you know. And all the woman you don’t know. And every child and man as well. Goodness knows what might happen if this flu really grabs hold here. It might even end the war. One thing’s for sure darling, the police are going to need all the help they can get. I can’t stand by and let others do what I could do just because I’m afraid of catching the bloody flu.”

  Nash huffed. She always did this. Those clever women in the Suffragettes had trained her too well in arguing the toss. Back in those days when she had been shouting the odds from her soapbox, some wag might shout some abuse at her from the crowd, only to be cut to the quick by a rapier thr
ust of wit from his wife-to-be. He had always been very proud of her. The only trouble was now being married to such a woman, meant that when they argued he might say black and she could come back with white, and win every time, no matter how certain he had been that he was right. One minute he thought she had been joking about the flu, and the next she had turned the tables on him. Clever little cow.

  He knew he was on the ropes. And there was no referee on hand to step in to stop an unfair fight.

  The killer blow was delivered when Ruby mentioned Edna telling her about the government cover up of the Silvertown explosion. Police officers got to know things. Things that were kept from the ordinary man in the street. Working within the system could be very beneficial to those working outside it. Who knew what information she might glean that could be useful to her husband in his nefarious objector hiding business? She had not suddenly become Miss Warmonger. She was still the loyal wife of a man who believed this war was not theirs to fight. Nash started to show some enthusiasm, though he couldn’t see how she would be accepted as a police officer.

  “You’ve got a charge sheet as long as your arm; you know the cells at Holloway like the back of your hand; you attacked that copper outside The Monument when you were a Suffragette and that’s all on record; and when that prison doctor came to force feed you, you bounced a prison mug off his bonce!”

  He did not go on to say that she had also organised Emily Davison’s doomed attack on the Derby. He didn’t have to. That was always there unsaid, haunting her. He simply added his conclusion.

  “They ain’t going to have you as no copper are they darling?”

  “Well that’s just where you’re wrong darling. Most of those things took place when I was working for Mrs Pankhurst. I got away with most of the things I did for Sylvia. I got beaten up by the police in Victoria Park right enough, and nearly got brained by a soldier outside Buckingham Palace, but I wasn’t arrested either time. And Mrs Pankhurst is popular with the government these days. She’s thrown herself into the war effort gaining support for it with her speeches, and a lot of the women handing out white feathers were her girls. Remember that girl who gave you a white feather that time? She was an ex Suffragette. They want women like me to become copperettes. Where do you think the name copperette comes from? Suffragette, that’s where I’ll wager. They know the ropes where crime’s concerned. Takes one to know one, that sort of thing.”

  “I suppose you do realise Sylvia’ll disown you,” said Nash, with an air of resignation in his voice.

  “She’ll understand. I know we’ve always been on the opposite side to the police, and they gave us Suffragettes some right hidings, but we have to have coppers don’t we? There’d be anarchy without them. And there’s plenty who are decent men. Look at all the good work they’ve been doing in this war. Look how they helped out when poor Hildegarde was killed.” She then held up the cup of tea in her hand. “And we wouldn’t even be able to have a cuppa if it weren’t for them guarding the coal at railway depots would we darling?”

  “That’s all very well. But who’s gonna look after the nursery and toy factory? And hold Mrs Richmond to account at the restaurant.”

  “I can be replaced sharp enough. There are lots of ways to get through this war Nashey. I just want to do my bit to help women. The toy factory, nursery and restaurant are running well enough. They don’t need me anymore. Women are being attacked on all sides. By the government, the press, bullies in factories, pimps, gangs, soldiers and yes coppers. I can’t stand by and watch it and not do something about it.”

  Nash nodded and smiled.

  He had always thought that a fundamental weakness of the Suffragette campaign had been that they battered at the door of the castle, rather than having enough supporters inside to lower the drawbridge. Now he put his mind to it, having a wife inside the system was not such a bad thing.

  “You’ll be a bleeding good copper you will if I’m any judge,” he said with knowing certainty.

  And so it was decided. Ruby had talked herself into becoming a police officer. Nash looked forward without enthusiasm to the terrible stick he was going to get from everyone he knew about his wife becoming a police officer.

  Chapter 17

  “I soon realised that a great change in the mentality of the people was taking place. They had lost their confidence.”

  Toni Seider, The Autobiography of a German Rebel

  Fritz was intrigued by what he had read in the newspaper that morning. A horse had collapsed dead in a Berlin street. Caused by what? Nobody cared. Supposing it was anthrax? Nobody cared. Within minutes anyone in the area with speedy access to a knife or any other implement with a cutting edge, had stripped it of its flesh to the bone, quicker than any butcher could have managed. If the ordinary German in the street was that desperate for horse meat, imagine what wealthy restaurant goers would pay for elephant steaks. Klaus had arranged a good price at a Dresden slaughterhouse to have the carcass butchered, and Fritz himself had appointments set up at several large Dresden hotels who had all shown an interest in buying steak from him. He had been a little hazy when it had come to providing them with information on exactly which cuts of meat were available, but he had assured them that it was not horse.

  But the smile was wiped off his face when he arrived at Klaus’ farm to find that the shortage of meat had led farmers to being ordered by the authorities to slaughter their entire milk cow herds. Thus Klaus now had neither the time nor inclination to assist further with the dead elephant escapade. Fritz would have to sort out the Dresden end of the operation himself.

  With some slaughterhouses having been closed down due to the lack of work, the remaining ones were likely to be at full throttle now that so many cows were being destroyed, so Klaus warned that the Dresden ones were likely to be too busy to bother themselves with a solitary elephant carcass. He made a few telephone enquiries on behalf of his entrepreneur friend, to find his concerns were justified. The place that had initially accepted Klaus’ booking for the elephant now reneged on the deal and he was unable to find a replacement venue.

  Fritz could see his great enterprise failing miserably. Frau Burchardt had already wired the balance of the payment to the zoo. He would not be able to cut either the carcass or his losses. He was now the not so proud owner of one elephant – dead. And it had already been arranged with the zoo that it would be taken away within the next twenty four hours.

  There was also the small matter of his forthcoming meeting with his moneylender at her bank, when she would be expecting him to be carrying a discreet but thick wad of high denomination bank notes.

  In his panic, Fritz jumped on the next train to Dresden without a plan. An expensive taxi tour he could ill afford, of the hotels he had telephoned earlier, confirmed his worse fears. The more upmarket ones were not interested in elephant steaks, and the rest had no means of taking on a whole carcass.

  He wondered whether the zoo had some form of deep freeze facility. Could they keep the carcass for him for a time?

  The questions certainly needed to be asked, so he had started to shuffle towards the zoo when a large beer restaurant, not unlike the sort of bierkeller one might see in Munich, hove into view. Desperation took him through the front door. The shortage of decent food and beer to sell meant the place was quiet. He asked the man behind the bar if the manager was in, as he had some meat available for sale. Not surprisingly the owner was fetched in double quick time.

  Fritz told the man what he had for sale and the logistical problems inherent in its supply. After the obvious shock and humour had dissipated, the bar owner said he might be interested at the right price.

  On the train journey from Berlin some calculations had been made. The most expensive meat item Fritz had sold recently was a whole boiled ham, for which Frau Burchardt had paid him one hundred and forty marks. Klaus had advised that an elephant carcass would surely produce enough steaks
for it to be worth at least a hundred times more than a ham. So Fritz asked for fourteen thousand marks. This was met with laughter. He was asked where he thought a bar owner could lay his hands on that sort of money. And to make it into an attractive dish, he would have to add sauerkraut. There was also the problem of refrigeration and storage, so he would have to sell steaks at a good price, no more than one mark thirty pfennigs per plate, to shift them quickly.

  But this was all simple negotiation. The fact was the bar owner knew Fritz was in no position to haggle. He offered seven thousand marks, minus whatever it cost to have the carcass butchered and transported, take it or leave it. The former was chosen with a grudgingness that hid great relief as well as excitement at the profit realised.

  Phone calls were made, logistics of butchery, transportation and payment sorted, and Fritz made the last train home with bulging pockets.

  ******

  Aldo had gone down with flu and was in a bad way with it. Mrs Burchardt’s doctor had been summoned but having seen the patient, had failed to impress when stating that bedrest was as good a treatment as any. And followed that by reassuring his usual client that she should not worry unduly if she should catch the disease, as it appeared to be attacking younger adults rather more powerfully than the mature person.

  Looking at the condition her poor chauffeuse was in, Mrs Burchardt found it difficult to believe that if it were not wartime, simply doing nothing would have been the best prescription. She suspected that all worthwhile remedies were being used in the war effort. And the idea that the flu was less likely to affect her than a strapping young woman like Aldo, was absurd. She summoned her black market man, sending him a letter by messenger, confident that he would be able to get his hands on the sort of medicines that would help resist the disease in the first place, and also, should one capitulate to it, assist one to avoid suffering in the way that Aldo was doing.