by John Masters
Fulcher said, ‘No, sir. Nothing here anyone would want to nick.’
Cate said, ‘All right, and well done.’ He followed Walstone through the hedge, through a spinney, and through another hedge to the road, where the Rolls-Royce was waiting, liveried chauffeur at the wheel – a man, for a change; old, beyond military age, but a man. They settled back on the padded leather upholstery and Lord Walstone said, ‘Very sorry to hear about Laurence, we are, me and the missus. Her Ladyship, I’m s’posed to call her now but I can’t get used to it … Is there anything I can do?’
Cate said, ‘Louise Rowland’s going to arrange demonstrations against military executions … I suppose I could ask you to speak to the Prime Minister and see if there’s any chance of getting a pardon, or at least a reduction of sentence. But …’ He looked straight ahead, not trusting himself to meet Walstone’s eyes – ‘I don’t really believe in any of that. We – my family, and people like us – have made the laws in this country for a thousand years … made them and enforced them. It isn’t right that we should cry to have a law changed when it hits us. And I’m not sure that Laurence wouldn’t rather die than spend the rest of his life in gaol.’
Walstone said, ‘There’ll be a general pardon soon after the war ends. ’As to be. So the thing is to make sure he’s still alive then, eh? Well, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll talk to Lord Swanwick. He knows the ropes around the Lords better than I do … and you’ll speak to Mr Harry, of course.’
The Rolls was sweeping majestically round the gravel to the front door of the Manor. It stopped, the chauffeur climbed down, somewhat rheumatically, and held open the rear door. Cate made to get out but Walstone caught his arm and said, ‘Ruthie’s baby’s due next month. We want to name it after you – Christopher.’
Cate said, astonished – ‘Well, that’s an honour, Lord Walstone. Thank you. But what if it’s a girl?’
‘Christine … One more thing. I ’ope you won’t offer to get that roof of Probyn’s fixed too soon.’
Again Cate was astonished – ‘But …’
Walstone laid a finger alongside his nose in the cockney conspiratorial gesture – ‘’Cos he’s better off in the Park. An’ if he doesn’t have a cottage to go back to, he might stay … seeing as his mother doesn’t want him to go on poaching my birds and rabbits and hares and fish.’ He laughed, deep in his thick throat. Cate got out, and looked, wondering, after the retreating back of the Rolls.
Cate walked slowly to the breakfast room. There was something debasing in the human condition that one felt hungry, longed for bacon and eggs or a savoury kipper, while your only son was under sentence of death, and your only daughter a …
He sat down and opened the paper, but looked up as unfamiliar footsteps crossed the parquet and then were silenced in the carpet. ‘Tillie,’ he said, ‘what are you doing here? You only got out of bed yesterday. You’re supposed to be resting.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ the kitchen maid said, pouring him his coffee. ‘Garrod’s took to her bed, with the flu. She says to tell you she’s sure she’ll be all right tomorrow, but meantime, if you don’t mind, it’ll have to be me, sir.’
‘Of course I don’t mind, Tillie. You’re pouring like an expert.’ He sipped the coffee, glanced at the headlines, then put the paper down and went to the sideboard to choose his breakfast. While he was helping himself to a fried egg, the door from the passage opened and Stella came in. She was wearing a white batiste nightdress with blue trimming, her feet bare. He said, ‘Good morning, Stella,’ put down his plate, and went to kiss her. She stood staring through him, her jaws working. ‘Shouldn’t you have your slippers on, dear?’ he said. ‘And a dressing gown?’ The nightdress, besides being very thin for the fresh May morning, the windows open, was also transparent. Her pubic hair was obvious, also the bulge of pregnancy.
Stella cried, ‘I can’t stand it, Daddy, do you hear, I can’t stand it!’ Her hair was dank and lank and she seemed to have been sweating heavily. ‘I’ve got to have some! Send me back to the hospital, anywhere where they’ll give it to me!’ Her voice rose – ‘I’ll kill myself!’
Tillie was still in the room, standing aghast by the sideboard. She came forward now, and reached for Stella’s arms – ‘There, Miss Stella, why don’t you go back to bed, and I’ll bring you up your breakfast. Eh?’ Gently she tried to pull Stella towards the door. Stella shrieked, ‘I don’t want any breakfast, I want heroin … now, now, now!’ She glared at her father, ‘Would they give it to Laurence before they shoot him, if he asks for it? The condemned man’s last request? Why don’t I kill someone … and then … and then …’ She burst into tears.
Cate took one arm, Tillie the other. Together they guided the sobbing young woman out of the room, along the passage and into her bedroom. ‘Help her to bed,’ Cate said. He went over to the wash-handstand, picked up a tube of pills and looked at the label – Seconal. That’s what they said to give her as a sedative. He shook out two tablets and filled a glass with water from the carafe by the bed. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take these.’ Stella took them obediently. They stood, watching her, as she sank slowly back into the bed and deeper under the bedclothes. After a time she said, ‘I’ll be asleep soon, Daddy … but then I’ll have to wake up, won’t I? And it’ll be worse again. Get me heroin. I need it. I know how to measure small doses, so I don’t go mad again … mad! If you don’t get it for me, I’ll have to run away again and get it for myself … the same way.’
‘But, your baby!’ Cate said. ‘The last one died because of the drug … didn’t it? You know it did. You wouldn’t have an abortion, but you’ll kill this one too.’
Stella said, her voice cold, ‘I can’t help it, Daddy. I’m sorry.’
She closed her eyes. They watched her for a minute more, then left together, walking silent one behind the other down the stairs – then Cate to his music room, to take down his violin, and Tillie to the kitchen, hardly able to see for tears.
The patrol was ten men of the Royal Irish Constabulary, under a sergeant. All eleven were armed with rifles and carried bandoliers of ammunition slung across their chests. They were walking down the narrow-gauge track of the Dingle and Tralee railway, the heather and gorse and bracken-covered slope of Beenoskee to their right, as they walked west, and the waters of Dingle Bay glittering in the morning light to their left. Across the bay, Macgillicuddy’s Reeks rose in shadow, the low sun behind them.
A steam engine whistled shrilly from behind, and the sergeant looked over his shoulder. That would be the seven o’clock from Tralee, a mixed train, like all the trains on this sleepy little line on the shores of the Atlantic. But it wasn’t in sight yet. The patrol plodded on along the narrow paths outside the stone ballast, two men in front, then a hundred yards back the sergeant and five more, not bunched but within easy talking distance, then a hundred yards back three more men. They were not searching the railway itself, but using it, as they had every morning for the past week, to get from their barracks in Dingle to hunt for IRA outlaws reputed to be hiding out in, and operating from the corries and gullies of Slievanea and Beenoskee. The IRA had raided both Dingle and Tralee, as well as Castlemaine, set fire to several shops and murdered one suspected British sympathiser; but they were also thought to be supplying German U-boats, which were known to use Dingle and Tralee Bays, with information on British sailings and ship movements.
The patrol trudged on. The engine of the Tralee train, now less than a quarter of a mile away, whistled again, loud and long … I’m coming, look out, look out! The sergeant waved his men to the side and they all stopped, moving to right or left of the single line, waiting, their rifles rested. The little engine approached, rocking over bog and rock on the crudely laid and barely maintained rails. Steam hissed from cylinders and steam chests, black smoke poured from the funnel. The sergeant looked to see who was driving. It was usually Paddy Hearne, from Tralee. Yes, it was Paddy, staring at them through the round glass window on the driver’s side, his hand on th
e throttle, no, on the whistle cord it must be, for the engine was whistling again. The sergeant raised his hand in salute as the engine passed, then suddenly hurled his rifle up towards his shoulder, for he had seen something on the footplate between the legs of the driver and fireman … a body, a man, a gleam of metal. But the rifle never reached his shoulder, as a man inside the first of the two little passenger carriages, propped at a window, fired and shot him through the heart. The sergeant toppled over backwards, as a storm of rifle fire broke out from the train. The two constables at the point of the patrol had hurled themselves flat in the heather and were firing at the train as it passed, rocking along now at what was for it the dangerous speed of 25 m.p.h. All five of the constables with the sergeant had been killed or badly wounded; also one of the three men at the rear. The train pounded on round a curve, the whistle now silent, smoke trailing across the face of Slievanea. The point men ran back towards their comrades, to be joined there by the two survivors from the rearguard.
One said briefly, ‘’Twas the Lady’s lot … A woman was in there, firing straight at me … but the carriage rocked and the bullet went over my head.’
Another said, ‘See what you can do for these poor fellows, Tim. I’ll run on down to Tralee and get the soldiers out.’
‘The buggers’ll have vanished by then,’ a third said. ‘Bad cess to them!’ He stared down the empty line, slowly shaking his head.
Two miles away, the man who had been lying concealed on the footplate, rose to his feet, and said, ‘Stop her here, Paddy.’
‘This is a bad day’s work for Christian men,’ the old driver said gloomily. He pulled back the brake lever and closed the injector. The train ground to a standstill. The man in the cab said, ‘It can’t be helped, and it’s for you as well as us.’
The driver shook his head, ‘I didn’t ask for this.’
‘Well, you’re going to get it … Tell ’em you would ’a been shot if you’d raised a finger … and that’s the truth. The Lady’s back there, and if it hadn’t been you, it would have been me.’
He jumped down to the ground, to be joined by a dozen other men and a woman, all piling out of the two carriages that, with five small goods wagons, formed the train. A sandy road ran nearby and as the train stopped a removal van appeared from the direction of Dingle. The men who had carried out the ambush ran to it and piled in the back. A moment later it rolled on eastward.
Paddy Hearne, the driver, walked down the line to the half dozen genuine passengers, who had been on the train before the Lady’s gang had stopped and boarded it in the wild moors. ‘Everyone all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes … but no thanks to those murthering shiteheads. One of the constables was firing straight at me … how was he to know I wasn’t one of them?’
Paddy shrugged and shook his head. These were hard times.
Meanwhile the van drove on fifteen miles towards Tralee, then stopped. The gang inside got out, and scattered. The van proceeded, to be searched twice by police; but nothing and no one was found.
The next day, in a back room of a comfortable old house in Killarney, the owner of the house, a feed merchant of the Sinn Fein persuasion, brought his guest the day’s paper. He was chuckling as he handed it to her – ‘You’ve laid them by the ears this time, Lady – five dead, two seriously wounded. And not one of your people scratched. They know it was you. Look!’
He pointed to the headline – OUTRAGE IN KERRY BY MRS CATE’S GANG; and underneath – CONSTABULARY AMBUSHED AND MURDERED FROM TRAIN.
Margaret read without much interest. She knew what had happened better than the reporters from the Irish Times could possibly know. It was a pity, in a way, that they knew it had been her work: better that the English should feel that they were fighting not particular people but a great amorphous, nameless, all-pervasive hatred. She turned to the front page and at once the word ‘Margaret’ caught her eye. She tensed, feeling cold; and read on: Margaret – Laurence under sentence of death for desertion – CC. She read it again; and again; then laid the paper down. Her host turned from the window – ‘Exciting, isn’t it? … Are you all right?’
She sat, thinking hard. At length she said, ‘Send a telegram to the Viceroy … have someone unknown give it to a boy, with money. It should read – take this down – “Margaret Cate wants to know situation regarding her son Laurence Cate Lieutenant Weald Light Infantry under sentence of death in France. Reply in Irish Times tomorrow or next day.” No signature.’
‘But … they may not answer. They may take no notice.’
Margaret said slowly, ‘Yes … Add to the telegram, at the end “Negotiations on her surrender possible.”’
The man’s mouth was open – ‘But, Lady … they’ll hang you!’
She said, ‘Please be quiet. It is painful enough to find myself considering giving up our fight, without having my nose rubbed in it.’
‘But …’
‘Please leave me alone. Do not return until you have the Irish Times with their reply. No, I do not want any food.’ She stalked out of the room.
Cate held the telephone close to his ear as the Prime Minister’s private secretary read aloud to him the text of a telegram received by the Viceroy of Ireland from his wife, Margaret Cate. The secretary ended – ‘Negotiations on her surrender possible.’
Cate held his voice steady, ‘What is the Government going to do?’
‘The Prime Minister has not decided yet, sir, but he thought you should be told of this development.’
‘Would you hang her, while sparing Laurence?’ Cate asked, his voice now trembling with a mixture of fear and anger. ‘A life for a life?’
The secretary’s young voice was anxious, patient – ‘We don’t know yet, sir. It is a very difficult decision for the Prime Minister.’
Cate said, ‘I understand. Thank you. Thank him.’ He replaced the receiver and walked slowly to his study. Margaret had always loved Laurence the most. Stella’s disappearance had not produced a word from her, but this … for her only son, she would give her life. In his study, his eyes dimming with tears, he found his violin, and began to play.
Harry Rowland arrived late at 10 Downing Street. He had been held up at a committee meeting in the House, and now, at the end of the cul de sac, he had to struggle through a mob of a hundred men and women waving placards and chanting endlessly, ‘No more firing squads … no more firing squads …’ Among them he recognised Bertrand Russell at once from his flying mane of grey-brown hair and aquiline face; and, just beyond Russell, his own daughter-in-law Louise Rowland. He wished that the demonstrators, shouting and chanting outside the Prime Minister’s house, would direct their appeal more closely to Laurence’s situation: he, for one, could not support a general ban on capital punishment in the army. What would happen if soldiers shot their officers, for instance, and got away with no more than a few years in gaol? How would that be worse than what they were already facing in the trenches?
He reached the door, panting, and said to the police sergeant on duty – ‘Harry Rowland, MP, sergeant. I have an appointment with the Prime Minister.’
The sergeant saluted and waved him in. Harry went slowly up the stairs to the Middle Drawing-Room. Lords Swanwick and Walstone were already there. The windows were open and the noise of the demonstrators seemed louder in here than outside. The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was standing by the window, but back from it, so that people outside would make out no more than a general shape. He turned and said, ‘You’re late, Rowland. Don’t explain … Listen to those people. I can see Russell and that dragon, Miss Marshall. Where’s Clifford Allen?’
‘In prison,’ said Winston Churchill, standing the other side of the window, a big cigar in his hand.
Lloyd George said to Harry, ‘Are you responsible for this demonstration?’
Harry said stiffly, ‘No, Prime Minister, I am not … though I knew it was to take place.’
Lloyd George said, ‘Shut the window, Winston, there’s a g
ood fellow. We can’t hear ourselves think … Now, you three have to persuade me that Lieutenant Laurence Cate, who has been sentenced to death by a court-martial for desertion in action, should be pardoned.’ He swung on Walstone – ‘Are you any relation of his?’
Lord Walstone said, ‘No, Hi’m not. But Hi’ve known the family for some years.’
Lloyd George turned to Swanwick – ‘And you?’
Swanwick shook his head – ‘Family friends. I think he’s … I hate to say this, lost two sons out there myself … but I don’t think he should have been sent out at all. He loved birds … animals … never liked to kill anything … even hated fox hunting.’
The Prime Minister’s massive head turned towards Harry – ‘Do you agree?’
‘Yes. I don’t know whose fault it is … The country desperately needs officers in the trenches. Every fit man ought to go. But we don’t send out men with only one leg, or who are stone deaf, or blind. We don’t send out haemophiliacs. Laurence, we have been told by his uncle, who is also his commanding officer, is constitutionally unable to take the noise, the fury, of battle. He retreats from it, sometimes only into a dream world, but sometimes, apparently, by physically removing himself.’
‘Deserting his commanding officer, the Army Act calls it,’ Churchill said.
The Prime Minister said, ‘Do you agree with what Swanwick and Rowland have said, Walstone?’
‘Yes, I do. I ’aven’t known the Cates hintimately for as long as they have, but all I’ve heard about young Mr Cate is the same as what they’ve told you.’
The Prime Minister said, ‘Very well. I’ll think about it.’
The deputation looked from one to another. Harry knew the Prime Minister’s ways best and headed for the door. The Lords Swanwick and Walstone mumbled goodbyes and followed.
Alone in the Middle Drawing-Room with Churchill, the PM said, ‘What do you think?’
Churchill said, ‘I would strongly recommend that we do not interfere with the normal course of military discipline. Haig and Rawlinson think that they must make an example of anyone who deserts, in case the Germans should renew their attacks of March and April. They think that it would be particularly improper and inadvisable to let an officer escape execution when private soldiers do not, for the same crime.’