by John Masters
But he knew that it was. Werner von Rackow’s own plane had been damaged in some earlier sortie and he had taken another. It was Werner’s arm that had been raised, between the thunder-heads, as he recognised the red spinner and stabiliser of the Butcher’s Camel, and in the same instant saw the flames of the tracer coming out of the gun muzzles.
Daily Telegraph, Monday, September 16, 1918
AMERICA’S WAR EFFORT
PRESIDENT AND STRIKERS
From our own correspondent, New York, Sunday. Even a year ago the signs of a greatly aroused nation were not always in evidence, but today those who know their United States well can not for a moment doubt that America is as wholeheartedly for the war as France or Great Britain … One may cite heartily the popular endorsement of President Wilson’s ultimatum to some munition workers here who deliberately broke the agreement which the unions had made with the Government, defied the national officers of their own organisation, and went on strike. Mr Wilson’s ultimatum amounted to a command in the name of the American people that the strikers shall either go back to work or join the army … The strikers are not very numerous, truly, but their conduct is regarded as pernicious from the standpoint of the country, which for the period of the war – employers as well as employees agreeing – has consented to submit all grievances to the War Labour Board and abide by its verdict. ‘In time of war,’ to quote the New York World, the foremost organ of democracy, ‘the American Government is not a suppliant for favor. In the name of the American Government and people, it commands.’
Strikes, strikes, strikes, Cate thought gloomily – at home, abroad, connected with the war, connected with nothing. Surely there must be some better way to manage the relations between employers and employed? Why not …?
Stella, from across the table, interrupted his chain of thought – ‘When I have my baby, I want Probyn’s Woman to help me.’
The remark came out of the blue: she had been eating silently, head down, as had been her custom ever since she had again joined him at meals. Cate said, ‘Don’t you think you’d better go to Hedlington Hospital, dear? There may be complications, like…’
‘This one won’t have apnea,’ she said. ‘I know it. It’s strong … I want to have it here.’
‘All right, then,’ Cate said. ‘We can warn Dr Kimball when your labour starts, so that he can come at once if Probyn’s Woman thinks he’s needed. She has a lot of experience.’
Stella said no more. Babies, Cate thought … what a lot of them there seemed to have been this year; and Ruth Walstone’s girl, born in June, about the only one to be born in wedlock, at the proper time … The Honourable Christine Hoggin, no less; and a sweet chubby little thing she was now, at nearly three months; also Virginia Robinson’s, Guy’s sister – hers was due any moment.
Ruth had come to the Manor not long after the child was born, ostensibly to show her to him; but actually to ask his advice about her sister-in-law, Anne Stratton, whose baby boy had been born two weeks earlier. Frank, Anne’s husband, was not the father, and had taken it very badly – you couldn’t blame him, could you? He’d cut her off, or to be more exact, cut himself off, from all association with her and the three kids they’d had before. Ruth was now asking him if he thought it would be a good idea for her to adopt Anne’s bastard. Would it help heal the breach, by removing the child from Anne’s care? He had not known the right answer to that one – only to praise her for the generosity of her impulse; and to advise her to wait. There was no hurry; and Anne herself would have an opinion on the matter.
And then there was Lady Helen Durand-Beaulieu, known now as Mrs Charles Rowland … Boy’s ‘widow’; her baby was astonishingly like his father; even at four months one could see Boy’s eyes, and the set of his jaw. They ought to come down and live at High Staining where they belonged. The village knew, of course; and of course, they understood. A great many women had been left with their wombs in bud when their lovers had taken the sacrament of death instead of marriage.
And Stella, his daughter. Oh God, he prayed, let the war end soon. Let John come back to her, and, with love and understanding, lift her out of this pit, and guide her to a new light, a new life. Let his service in the war, for all the evil it has done, all the misery it has spread, at least give him the strength and determination to do that.
Chapter 12
Hedlington and Walstone: late September, 1918
‘I’m making the announcement tomorrow – that I shall not contest the next election, whenever it may be. And if there is no election before the end of the year I shall apply for the Chiltern Hundreds on January 1st.’
Alice Rowland let the words hang a while in the silence of the breakfast room, broken only by the rustle of her newspaper as she turned one of the big pages. Then she laid the paper down and said, ‘They’ll miss you.’
‘Who will?’ her father, Harry Rowland, said. ‘I don’t fit in any more … The war seems to have brought out the worst in our politicians, as it has brought out the best in our young men – and women.’
Alice said, ‘I meant that Mr Churchill and the Prime Minister and Lord Curzon trust you, because you tell them what the people really think.’
Harry nodded, swallowing a piece of gammon – ‘Perhaps, but my mind is made up. I’m tired. I’m old … and I don’t like the people I have to work with up there … I’m going away.’
Alice said, ‘You’re going to live abroad?’ She was surprised, for she had always imagined her father living on in Laburnum Lodge after his retirement.
‘Live abroad? Good heavens, no! Abroad is … beastly. Beastly food. Garlic. Stuffy rooms and guttural squawks. Men kissing each other on the cheek, waving their arms!’ He paused for breath, as Alice concealed a smile by sipping her china tea – ‘No, I’m going back to Devon. King’s Tracy, under the Moor …’ His voice grew dreamy – ‘I’d like to buy the vicarage, where I grew up … wonder if the big yew tree’s still outside the front door – don’t see why it shouldn’t be … but the present vicar will be living in it. So I’ll find a little house, and …’
‘Live by yourself?’ she said. ‘You can’t do that, Father.’
He said, ‘Oh, yes, I can! I’ve been relying on other people too long – your mother, then you. You have your own life to live … and, to tell the truth, so do I.’
He was seventy-six, she thought; and escaping from what had happened to his England, not by going to beastly ‘abroad’, but to the wonderful, perfect past. Well, why not? He would have to get a housekeeper; perhaps she would live in, perhaps not. A few years ago she herself would have felt it was her duty to go with him, to look after him; and the thought came now, only to be at once dismissed. As her father had said, she had her own life to live.
She said, ‘I’ll come and visit you as soon as you get settled in, with a housekeeper and maid, at least.’
‘That’ll be very nice,’ he said. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ He bent again over his gammon. Two minutes later he said, ‘Do you want to live here, or shall I put it on the market? I wouldn’t do that until you’ve found a place of your own, of course.’
She paused, thinking. But, really, the die was cast. She said, ‘You can do it at once, Father. I’m going to move in with the Cowells … Daisy and I have been discussing it ever since you first mentioned the possibility of retiring to me.’
‘I never thought I’d be leaving Laburnum Lodge, though,’ Harry said suspiciously. ‘I only decided I must do that, last night … couldn’t sleep … thinking of your mother … the boys …’ His voice trailed away.
Alice said nothing. He would forget; and soon, he did. He sat back, relaxed, his breakfast finished. He spoke dreamily, ‘King’s Tracy … Joe Wood at the bakery … Warren Church, the squire’s son … he and I used to get into some scrapes, I can tell you … Susan Chenevix-Trench, she was the prettiest girl I ever saw … till I met your mother, of course … used to climb trees like a boy, afraid of nothing …’
‘Major Guy telephoned the wing
commander and said he needed some leave. Colonel Freeman gave him ninety-six hours and he took my bike, Victoria, and rode off … after telling me to take ninety-six hours too … a Bristol flew me over this morning.’
Frank Stratton was talking to his sister, Lady Walstone, in the great drawing-room of Walstone Park. The room felt more enormous than it actually was, because of her. She didn’t belong in rooms like this, under those life-sized oil paintings of men in wigs and swords and lace ruffles.
She said, ‘We were all so pleased to hear about his VC, in the paper … Goodness, it was only yesterday! How time flies!’
Frank said, ‘He’s not taking much joy in it now, I can tell you. He and that German von Rackow were real friends, in spite of being enemies.’
‘His poor wife … widow now … if he was married. Perhaps he was a gay bachelor.’
‘He was married,’ Frank said shortly. ‘Major Guy went and dropped a wedding present on his airfield, at the time … Poor Victoria, I’ll bet the major’s giving her a hard time. After the major’s finished with it, the tuning’ll be in a mess, and everything’ll need cleaning, and … it’s worth it. Never seen a man look worse than when I saw him last. He’d just heard, and made sure, in his own mind, that he was the one that killed von Rackow.’ He stood up abruptly – ‘I’ll be off now, Ruth. It’s been good seeing you again.’
Ruth stood up with him. She laid a hand on his arm – ‘Frank, see your children while you’re here … please! They’re upstairs, waiting.’
‘You had no business telling them I was coming,’ Frank snapped.
Ruth began to cry. Frank said, ‘It’s good of you to give them a roof over their heads … and food. But I don’t want to see them. They’re not mine, any more.’ He went out, closing the door quietly behind him.
Ruth stood alone in the centre of the vast, baroque splendour, dabbing her eyes. In her dad’s little house at 85 Jervis Street, she would have had a good cry, and enjoyed it, but here … the place was making her act like those ladies up on the walls, the wives and daughters and mothers of Earls of Swanwick – standing straight-backed, head up, like them, though the tears were streaming down her plump cheeks.
She did not hear her husband come in, only his gruff voice, ‘Patience on a monument … I thought you was having a heart to heart with Frank.’ She turned and he saw her tears – ‘What’s the matter? What’re you crying for?’
She said, ‘Anne and Frank … it’s so sad. She’s so lonely, she feels awful, she doesn’t love the man, the father …’
‘Either of them,’ Bill Hoggin, Lord Walstone, said sarcastically. ‘There was two, I know, who was hopping in and out of her bed.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Bill,’ she said. ‘It was the war. If Frank raised a finger she … she’d crawl back on her hands and knees. But he doesn’t want her.’
‘He may, in time,’ Bill said, more gently. After a pause he said briskly, ‘We’ll be having a new head gamekeeper here by this time tomorrow, or my name ain’t Bill Hoggin – 1st Baron Walstone in the County of Kent,’ he added, rolling the mighty title round his tongue. ‘You run along now, Ruthie. Probyn Gorse has been called to the presence and heven now hawaits my summons in the ’all.’
‘Probyn?’ Ruth said. ‘You’re going to offer him the job of head gamekeeper? He won’t take it.’
‘I think he will,’ Hoggin said. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief, that’s my motto. He’s the best poacher in Kent, everyone knows that … So all I had to do was make him think he’d better give up poaching. Cate and Kirby and everyone’s told him to, but he didn’t listen till his mother told him the same.’
‘But …’
‘Run along now.’ He gave his wife a smack on her behind as she hurried out of the room by the far door. Alone, Bill went to the fireplace and pulled the great knotted crimson bell-pull hanging to one side of it. The door opened and Chapman the butler came in. Hoggin said briefly, ‘Bring Gorse.’
The butler bowed silently. He’d never thought he would be able to stomach service under Hoggin, but in truth it wasn’t bad. He knew his mind, he gave clear orders, he saw that what he wanted done was done; and he paid very well. So why should his accent and humble beginnings bother him? Rank is but riches, long possessed; Hoggin hadn’t possessed them for long, that was all.
In the hall Probyn waited, standing, deerstalker cap in hand, the grey prominent through the reddish dye in his thin hair. ‘This way, Probyn,’ Chapman said and held open the ornate white- and gold-painted door. Probyn went in, head up. He wasn’t afraid of Hoggin, any more than he’d been afraid of Swanwick. He just wondered what the lord wanted him for.
Hoggin, standing in front of the fire, hands clasped behind his back, heavy gold chain looped imposingly across the bow window of his expensive blue suit, said, ‘I need a head gamekeeper, Probyn. You been living in one of my cottages for three months now, since the fire. As head gamekeeper you get a better one, the big one behind the stables. You and the missus can move in there … there’s a little plot that goes with it – an acre, it is, so she can grow tomatoes, peas, strawberries, anything she wants. Screw – a quid a week more than Skagg was getting, that’ll be seven quid a week … no rent, of course.’
Probyn’s mind seemed to be stuck in glue. It had been very comfortable living in the little cottage these past months … hot and cold water in the kitchen, a geyser in the bathroom, a place for the ferrets and his gear. And now Hoggin was offering him really the same job he’d been doing all his life, only in reverse. If he didn’t take it, he’d start poaching again. He knew it. And then his mother would come again, and …
He said, ‘Very well, my lord. I’ll move today and start tomorrow.’
In the Head Porter’s Lodge at Wokingham School, the old man pointed with bent back to the tap in the kitchen sink. ‘It drips … has for years. And the WC gets blocked … has for years. Of course we didn’t have a WC when I come here first, in 1875 that was, just an earth closet down the back there.’
‘Who do you see to get things like that fixed?’ Battery Sergeant-Major Stanley Robinson, husband of Virginia née Rowland, Guy’s younger sister, said.
‘Clerk of the Works. Sam Gillis. Likes to be called Mister Gillis, but ’cor, I remember when he come here to clean the boys’ boots, that was long after I come, in 1893 that was … You got a wife, ain’t you?’
Robinson said, ‘Yes, she’s with her mother now, having a baby … our first.’
The old man hunched and crabbed through to the little parlour – ‘Well, ain’t much room in here for a family … but you’ll be all right till you have three. After that … you’ll have to ask them to make you Clerk of the Works.’ He cackled feebly. Stan thought, it was clear why the Wokingham School governors had decided they must have a younger Head Porter.
The old man lowered himself into a chair and indicated another, opposite, for Stan. He said, ‘The young gents are in class. No one’ll come by till twelve … you’ll see … You’ll have to have the uniform made special, on account of your arm.’
‘Of course,’ Stan said shortly. He had lost his left arm and a piece of the shoulder to a German shell in 1915, but was still sensitive about it – ‘Where do I get it made?’
‘Cowper’s in Reading. Cap too. One, green, with badge. The badge is the same as the young gents in the Officers’ Training Corps wear, so it don’t cost. One green uniform overcoat. Four pairs of white cotton gloves. Them’s for greeting the governors, royalty, and the like. If your hands get cold you got to buy your own wool gloves. Black shoes or boots at all times when in uniform. They’ll buy you one pair a year. The headmaster, you call “Headmaster” when you see him – “Good morning, Headmaster” – see? The other masters you call by their names … There’s Mr Lamb, I don’t know what he teaches, I know what he looks like … Mr Thompson, Mr Hayes, see? The young gents you call “sir”, or “Mr”, not “Master”, even if their voices ain’t broken. They’re hot on that, I can tell you … The young ge
nts don’t get out of them gates after four o’clock, five o’clock in summer, ’less they have a pass signed by their housemaster or …’
The telephone rang. Stan started and made to reach for it, but the old man said testily, ‘I’m the Head Porter still, Mr Robinson.’
‘Sorry, Mr Hurdle,’ Stan muttered.
But it wasn’t for Mr Hurdle, and after quavering, ‘Eh? What?’ a couple of times, he handed it over. Stan recognised the voice at once – the clear high upper-class tones of Virginia’s mother, Mrs Fiona Rowland. She said, ‘Stanley? This is Virginia’s mother.’
‘Yes,’ Stan said. God, what should he call her?
‘Virginia’s pains have begun. They’re still half an hour apart but the doctor has come and says everything seems fine. He has some other patients to see but he’ll come back to stay when the pains get down to ten minutes. He thinks that won’t be for four hours, at least.’
Stan said, ‘Thank you, m’m. Can I speak to her?’
‘I’m afraid not, Stanley. The telephone is in the hall and she’s in another room … Oh dear, here she is, she’s got out of bed …’ Suddenly another voice came on, his wife’s, hoarse, deep, warm with the Yorkshire accent she had deliberately acquired with the WAAC in Aldershot, so that he would feel comfortable with her. ‘It’s started, darling, it’s started,’ she gasped. ‘It isn’t bad … It’s lovely … Oh darling I love you I love you … wish you could be here. I heard Mummy talking and … I must go back … I’ll call again as soon … as I can …’
Slowly Stanley replaced the instrument. The birth process of his first child had started. It was her first, too, of course. Old Hurdle was saying, ‘Well, I’ll finish packing … I’ll be gone by three … going to live with my daughter at Weston-Super-Mare, I am … suppose I’ll be spending my time standing by her front door, touching my cap to everyone that passes, saying “Morning, Mr …” … but I won’t know their names, will I?’